“Ezra, ever seen a carrot pulled straight from the ground like this?” she asked.
“No. Generally, all we Drones find are the peelings and the bits people didn’t want,” I said.
Silverstein and I carried stuff to the transport while Taylor sorted the junk from the good stuff. We grabbed a few extra sets of clothes. Didn’t hurt my feelings as my old outfit was completely torn up from the last action I saw.
The transport already had several cases on board, locked in with a small front loader. We didn’t bother to unload or inspect the cases. Looked like some sort of scientific equipment.
Silverstein sat down in the cockpit and began running diagnostics. Taylor and I looked on as he did an engine check and something else I didn’t quite comprehend with the onboard computer. Taylor jumped into the co-pilot’s position and immediately set about adjusting the seat.
“I’m pretty sure I can fly this thing. Strange. It almost seems familiar somehow,” Silverstein said flipping some switches across the top panel.
“Out of everything we’ve seen and experienced, this feels familiar?” Taylor asked.
“You probably did a lot of traveling before you lost your memory, if half of what you’re alleged to have done is true.”
“You’re probably right, Ezra,” Silverstein replied heading back out to the landing.
We returned to the laboratory where Matthias had already set about prepping the suit of armor. I couldn’t help but marvel at the sight of it, all matte black, sleek, and deadly as hell. Like me, it was made by humans for a purpose. I wondered if the onboard AI knew more about its purpose than I did about mine.
“Sorry, Ezra, I’ve only got the one,” Matthias joked.
“It’s okay, doubt they come in my size.”
I laughed. It had been a long time since I’d done that. I wanted to again, once this was all over.
“Find your way around the transport?” Matthias asked.
“Yeah, I think it’ll get us to Finland. We’re going to come for you after we’re done there. We won’t leave you in the Arctic,” Silverstein said.
“You guys worry about getting yourselves to safety in the aftermath. If I fail and Madmar slips away, he’ll try to kill you two and take Taylor. We can’t let that happen, understand?” Matthias said, suddenly more serious than I’d ever seen him.
“If she can teach the Lunar Central AIs about humanity, she also possesses the codes to access their core programming,” Silverstein ventured.
“Yes, which is why Madmar can never, ever lay hands on her,” Matthias said.
“Why are the Lunar AIs so important?” I asked Matthias.
“It would take too long to explain, and we’re short on time. All I can say is that they are what will allow the world to survive the future,” he stated plainly.
We said our goodbyes to Matthias, but not before Taylor took a few moments to talk to him. Silverstein and I gave her a moment and stepped out. When she was finished, we walked back to the vehicle warehouse and made our final preparations to leave.
I found a seat just behind the cockpit and made myself at home. The new pants and sweater Taylor had found for me were much warmer than my old outfit. I decided to catch some sleep and passed out before we even left the hangar.
When I awoke a couple of hours later we were still over the ocean. I looked out the small window on the side of the transport. I hoped to see a whale, a boat, or something but was disappointed.
“We’re circling around north of British airspace. If you want a glimpse of the northern Scandinavian coastline you will want to look out the right hand side in about forty-five minutes,” Silverstein said.
“We going to be okay to land?” Taylor asked.
“Yeah, we have a registered flight plan as a private charter. Since we aren’t unloading anything but passengers, we only need to meet briefly with customs,” he replied.
I was anxious about the whole thing, to tell the truth. I hadn’t been walking distance away from the tunnels beneath the Port Montaigne for decades. Visiting a foreign country that may or may not have tunnels weighed heavily on my mind.
Taylor and I squeezed both our faces into the window as the coastline came into sight. It was nothing but ice, mountains, and a few trees. It was beautiful, and at the same time, I wondered if Taylor had packed us warm enough coats.
After passing over snowy forested areas for almost an hour, we finally came upon a large metropolitan area unlike anything I’d ever seen. The buildings were nowhere near as tall as the ones in Port Montaigne, and the whole of the place probably housed no more than a couple million people. Tiny when compared to the city that lurked above my home.
Silverstein put the transport down in a landing zone that was little more than a clearing amidst a grove of tall fir trees. There was an ancient four-wheeled vehicle and a small office sitting between the landing zone and a well maintained dirt road. An elderly gentlemen waved us down.
We exited the transport carrying one suitcase each. The elderly gentlemen greeted us with a thick accent and told us our cabin was ready and that he could take us up at our leisure. Silverstein nodded and let the old guy pack our luggage to the open-topped vehicle that awaited us.
“I can carry my own bag,” I hissed at Silverstein.
“If we don’t let him help, we can’t tip him after we get to the cabin. We have to assume we’re being watched at all times, maybe even from orbit,” Silverstein whispered.
I felt a little foolish. Looking over at Taylor, I could tell she was more or less of the same opinion. We’d always done for ourselves, and no one carried our weight. We were too used to carrying our own.
The trees, pathway, and small animals we saw along the way to the cabin were captivating. I began wishing I had pencil and paper to sketch some of what I saw. Then I saw Taylor using her mobile to take a few pictures. Realizing I had my own, I did the same, nearly running out of memory. I planned to sort the pictures later.
“Here we are,” Silverstein said, pointing to a cabin at the top of a hill.
The small vehicle that carried us there seemed to have no trouble making the climb. There were two more such vehicles, in much better condition parked outside.
“Is there someone already here?” Taylor asked.
Our elderly escort told us they were part of the rental and that we needed only plug them back in to recharge the batteries before we left. Silverstein seemed giddy at the prospect of roaring around on the trails in one. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just part of pretending to be a tourist.
He unlocked the front door for us and handed Silverstein the keys. Then, he wished us all a good day and departed down the road. When he was safely out of sight, we went inside and swept for bugs as best we could, the layer of dust a safe indication no one had been inside for some time.
Taylor and Silverstein hadn’t slept on the way and were visibly exhausted. They drew the shades and each grabbed a couch. I stood by the door for a moment, then slipped back outside quietly. I wanted to look around.
I walked the path to a small stream running down the hill, twisting between rocks and trees. I knelt there and did the most extraordinary thing. I put my hand in the ice cold water and watched as tiny particles of silt flowed past my hand. I would have admitted it to no one until now, but I thought I felt the land breathing around me. The wind spread kinetic force to the trees that seemed to transfer it to the ground and so forth. It was similar to the hum one felt putting your hand on a thermal core deep beneath a city. It was like a sort of warmth spreading out into the ground and into everything connected to it.
We Drones had always been taught there was nothing beyond the cities for us, that the ebb and flow within the under-tunnels was all we needed to sustain ourselves. There was so much about what I was that had been a lie. It is as
they say, the truth really did set me free, in an odd sort of way. I was no longer confined to the under-tunnels and my people need not be so either. The things the factory had taught me as a Droneling fresh from the tank were designed to make me more useful to humanity, but did little to teach me about my own people. It wasn’t that I wanted to be as humans were, only that I had potential beyond what a single-minded AI in the factory had told me.
The moment I put my hand in the stream, the forest taught me I could be so much more than just Ezra One, Drone of Under-district 00154. I never told anyone because I was afraid people would laugh or think I was grasping at intangible things that weren’t really there. The nice thing about that experience, I needed it to be validated by no one, because it validated me.
I spent the next few hours wandering the woods lost in thought, something I’d had little time for in the last seventy-two hours, let alone in my entire life. There was a moment when I wanted to just disappear into the woods and seek my destiny elsewhere. That feeling was fleeting as my devotion to my friends and my own unwillingness to run from my problems won out.
I went back to the cabin and found Taylor and Silverstein sitting outside, sharing a cigarette. Silverstein raised his hand to greet me as I walked up the hill. Taylor gave me an odd look. I wondered if she could see the metamorphosis I’d undergone somehow, if I was really that transparent.
“Ezra, you’re all muddy, what have you been doing?” She giggled as she pointed at my dirty boots and trousers.
“Nothing, just making sure this location is secure,” I reported.
Taylor nodded approvingly, probably seeing right through me. Silverstein ground out the cigarette and handed me a small daypack. Then Taylor and I took the seat behind him in the four-wheeled vehicle.
“The CGG’s server farms aren’t far from here, we should be able to make it on the charge in this vehicle. I pulled the battery from the other one just in case,” he said.
The vehicle rolled along silently beneath us as the sky began to darken. I was glad we chose to approach the area by night, preferring the cover of darkness. I hoped to get a glimpse of Finland by night as well, maybe even walk in the woods again.
We parked about a mile from the server farm complex and hid our vehicle beneath fallen brush. I was able to see in the dark merely by removing my goggles, something I wondered about. It seems silly now that I assumed they only worked in the tunnels and downtown Port Montaigne. More lies revealed for the fiction they were.
I could see the high chain link fence in the distance, a few spotlights, and what I assumed to be a few cooking fires. The smell was all wrong though, and I started getting a sinking feeling. Passing through the final copse, the front gate was visible. I gasped at the sight arrayed before me, prompting Silverstein and Taylor to lower themselves to the ground.
“The gate house is smoldering and the guards are laying dead amidst what look like a hundred or so spent shell casings. I can see where a large tracked vehicle rolled over the top of one. Whatever it was, it was wider than the gate,” I reported softly.
Silverstein sank lower onto the ground and closed his eyes for a moment while Taylor strained over my shoulder to get a glimpse. Looking further up I could see there were a few more plumes of smoke reaching up toward the sky. From what I could see, they probably weren’t cooking fires.
“We still have to go in there,” Silverstein concluded.
I reached into the pack and withdrew a web belt that displayed several knives, a short range radio, and a pair of shaped explosives. Strapping it on, I swapped my dim set of goggles for my clear ones and tucked my trousers into my boots. I clicked a pair of vambraces onto my wrists Matthias had laying around.
Taylor and Silverstein made their own preparations, then we walked out skirting the outside of the chain link fence. We walked past nearly a dozen dead members of the Finnish army and a couple of smoldering vehicles and check points. Once we reached the base of the butte, I cut through the fence and we entered the grounds.
Gazing up, I could see the mountainside entrance, its large vault-like doors laying on their sides, the interior open to the frigid air. Wasting no time we made our way quickly through the first falling snow I’d seen so far to the opening. The interior was paneled in metal, and industrial-grade causeway. The no-slip surface of the floor had been marred by what was obviously a large, tracked vehicle.
I could smell the wretched thing in the air, heavy gauge wire, nuclear powered, and if the cyborgs I’d already encountered were any indication, manufactured by Madmar. I related what I smelled to Silverstein and Taylor whose faces mirrored my own apprehension. We were not properly prepared for this.
We walked to the first intersection, the frigid arctic wind howling at our backs. Looking to the right we could see a corridor that went down, then veered to the left. Looking to the right we could see pair of untouched blast doors not far away, still locked up tight. Straight ahead there was a heavy industrial elevator large enough to have born whatever metal monstrosity had torn its way in here.
In the end, we opted for the elevator. If anyone knew where they were going, Madmar probably did, and he had to be stopped.
Chapter 13
Somewhere in the permanent ice of the Canadian Arctic territory.
10:01 AM, December 31st, 2199
Log 01, Matthias Ericsson
“Pilot, we are arriving on site,” the SA-C Aquiline AI reported.
“Scan for life,” Matthias whispered as the armor set down on the arctic tundra.
The combat suit’s sensor array penetrated the ground and ice easily bringing up a full three dimensional rendering of the massive facility below. The onboard AI quickly indicated that there were several hundred life forms concentrated in two sectors, both designated as factory units for metasapients.
“No human life signs detected.”
Matthias pondered the readings. He was certain that Madmar had been using this facility, and maybe he had. The only way to know for certain was to gain access and look for clues of his passing.
“Metasapient types?” Matthias inquired.
“Acrididae and Chiroptera types detected,” the SA-C Aquiline AI reported.
Matthias winced. Acrididae types were Metasapients fashioned from locust and human genetic material while the Chiroptera were crafted of human and bat DNA. They were extremely dangerous, and if unleashed without proper indoctrination, feral and potentially uncontrollable.
“Are the Metasapient life signals currently in stasis?” Matthias inquired.
“Affirmative.”
Matthias crunched across the frozen ground sending out a signal to one of the landing bays to open. The ground suddenly split apart sending up a geyser of trapped air and debris as the huge loading doors slowly opened. They revealed a circular landing platform suitable for a medium sized transport.
Using the suit’s jump jets to slowly descend, Matthias entered the landing area sending out a request for service. The bay doors slowly closed and several small automated servitors arrived to service the waiting vessel. They beeped to one another in confusion as there was no ship waiting for them.
The small automatons floated over to the suit of armor looking for joints or flight machinery to service. Matthias turned back the tinted visor on his suit and smiled at the whimsical semi-sentient devices. They each waved a greeting with their mechanical appendages.
“Fetch the Deck Sergeant or Master Technician please,” Matthias asked over the suit’s P.A.
“We cannot,” the small machines chirped in unison.
“Explain,” Matthias replied.
“He and she are both deactivated,” the small machines chirped sadly.
Matthias had expected as much, but the base’s AI still seemed to function properly. The small service machines suddenly departed back to t
heir holding compartments along the perimeter of the landing area. The overhead lights dimmed suddenly plunging the whole area in darkness, then returned to normal a few moments later.
“Power fluctuations. Analyze the power network native to the complex for damage,” Matthias whispered.
“Generators Alpha, Sigma, and Omega are offline.”
“Scan for biological and nanotechnological agents and verify that nano-tech countermeasures are still in place,” Matthias ordered, somewhat frantic.
“Classified Agent NT003 detected but dormant, all seals operating normally.”
Matthias gritted his teeth. Madmar had dispersed a nanotechnological agent designed to invade the bodies of, and remotely control, everyone inside the complex. This control is permanent as the nano-machines would irreparably damage the brain to garner that control. The NT003 project had been shelved because the tiny machines would seek out energy sources toward the end of their life cycle damaging critical power systems in their dispersal radius. Not always an optimal outcome, even by the CGG’s standards.
The Aquiline power armor carried Matthias silently over to the bay doors reacting to his movement in perfect sync. He reached out with both gauntlet-clad hands and leaned into the blast doors, forcing them apart slowly. Dust and a half-frozen hand dropped across the threshold.
Just inside were a pair of poor souls, starved to death. Matthias knelt down beside them, his armor sweeping the corridor for movement. They’d been dead a long time, the dust on them an inch thick.
Standing up, he had his suit power up its illuminators, casting a faint glow on the corridor. No one had walked through here in a very long time. The steel corridor was dark and deathly silent. Not even the hum of electrical conduit or hiss of hydraulic pressure broke the silence.
Uroboros Saga Book 1 Page 19
