by Max Harms
Sheyla’s foot caught on a pipe and Tavonda yanked hard, freeing it.
“Turrets deployed inside the … the dormitories. Help is en route to those still tra … We’re … numbered, but … back for the … set up a defensive zone where we should … out for a while in the chemical laboratories … not part of the resistance should talk with … your way to the labs. I already … and Ngabo with me.”
Crys’ reports had dropped off for a while, and they were still nearly impossible to hear while underneath the flooring of the station, but it was good to hear that the fighting was still going on.
Thinking about Crys was hard, too. Her feelings were a mess, and everything was colored by the anger.
“Tav! There you are!” His voice was crisp and clear all of a sudden. Ahead of her, in the crawlspace, she spotted a flat six-legged robot with two manipulator arms on its front that made it look like a scorpion.
“It’s me,” she grunted. She’d never seen the robot before, but very little would surprise her at this point.
Loud banging thundered overhead as a group of feet ran across what was probably the central corridor. It was a harsh, metallic sound that made jaw clench. It made her angry to think that she didn’t know whether the feet belonged to people or nameless.
“Is Sheyla alive?” asked Crys, on her com.
“I hope so. Otherwise I’m dragging her body around for nothing.”
“Yes! I wish I could kiss you right now!” said Crys enthusiastically. The words felt like a punch in the gut. She had to focus. “It’s just another four metres until the access hatch in the elevator. I think I can pull the nameless away long enough for you to get to the labs.”
Tavonda started crawling again. “Why the labs? What good will that do? We’re outnumbered and outgunned. If we want to have any hope of killing these fuckers, we need to go on the offensive and catch them off guard.”
The robot skittered out of the way, still maintaining line-of-sight for the sake of the radio. “I hear you, but you can’t see the whole station like I can. We’re separated and disorganized. The nameless’ weakness is their lack of coordination and hierarchy, but they’re far too deadly for a frontal assault. Our best bet is to regroup and pick them off in small groups. Trust me, Tav. I’ll talk you though the rest of the way and then we can work through the plan in person.”
A part of her thought it would’ve been easier by herself. Easier to forget herself and fall into the anger.
*****
It turned out not to be as easy getting to the labs as Crys had predicted. After exiting the crawlspace into the elevator shaft and dragging Sheyla into the corridor, an unexpected band of aliens forced Tavonda to duck back into the hospital to hide. On Earth there was no way she’d have been able to drag someone around like she was, but not only was Sheyla not the heaviest person around, but the reduced gravity made her feel more like a bulky suitcase than a human being.
At least the girl had survived the trip. There was still no way to take her out of the suit, but in the confines of the hospital she managed to verify Sheyla was still breathing.
Crys’ instructions were invaluable. The hexapod robot she’d run into in the tunnels was just one of many robots he had built, including Toybot. It would’ve worried her before the nameless had come, which was presumably why he hadn’t told her, but now that they had, the robot army was a godsend. They scouted all around the station, warning of the nameless’ movements and providing a radio link even in the sections of the building without power.
From the hospital they made a mad dash clockwise around the station. Toybot carried Sheyla for the last bit, as the corridor was flat enough to make its wheels effective. Out of breath and still buzzing with adrenaline, Tavonda burst into the engineering office wing, located between the labs and the factory. The corridor ahead of that was blocked by rubble from the blast, meaning they’d be forced to go through the offices to the labs.
The engineering offices had actual power, and as Tavonda made it through the door she was immediately confronted with what appeared to be some sort of armored machine gun. Two figures stood next to it each holding rifles—humans. Their suits were blood stained and black with scorch marks.
“Doctor! Oh it’s good to see you! Crystal said you were coming.” It was Vincente, Matías’ cousin.
The other person was Ngabo, a thin Rwandan man she had only spent time with occasionally. He had never been in the hospital in the 9 months he’d been on Mars, but she remembered his medical file saying he was diabetic.
“They killed them. They killed the children.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but she felt like it was what she had to say.
“I know,” said Vincente, his voice equally hard.
There was a moment of silence where she simply stared at the men, daring them to speak.
“How many have you killed? How many monsters?” she demanded.
“One.” At least the man had the decency to look ashamed.
“Kill all of them. Do you hear me? Todos.”
The men nodded solemnly.
“They caught us off guard, but we regainin’ our position. Thanks to Crystal there’s hope,” said Ngabo.
“Speaking of Crystal,” interjected Vincente, “you should bring Sheyla to the labs. The bot has an airlock set up so you can get out of the suits and help the wounded. We’ve got about a half dozen people who need your help back there.”
Tavonda agreed and made her way past the turret. Toybot followed behind. The passage down to the labs was otherwise clear. She played with her com, thinking about listening to the recording of Runt just for the hell of it. She was so full of anger that a part of her wanted to hear it just so she’d feel more angry. It filled her up, and kept the darkness of the situation at bay.
There was an intermediate room that adjoined the laboratories that showed signs of being fashioned into something resembling an airlock.
“Please wait while I vacuum the air out. It’s precious enough to be worth the wait.” Crys’ voice came over her com loud and clear. She’d forgotten he was there, somehow.
A moment passed.
“Okay. Come on in. Don’t worry about the blood. There was an accident earlier. One of the things we need your help with.”
The door hissed open, venting the last bits of pressure, and Tavonda stepped into what had been a conference room. The table had been knocked on its side, and there was a thick layer of blood all over the floor, some sprayed on the walls. It was everywhere. A knot formed in Tavonda’s stomach. {What kind of accident caused this?} she wondered.
Toybot slid into the room after her, dragging the still-unconscious teenager after her.
This didn’t feel right.
The door slid closed and sealed with a click.
{Something’s wrong.}
She fell to her knees before she even realized what was happening. Then the pain hit her—an insane, numbing blast of pain that kept her from even crying out. She writhed and spasmed, unable to see, unable to think. Five hundred volts of electricity surged from leg to leg. The robots that had struck her clung to her feet with jaws like bear traps, cables leading from each to the wall.
Coherent thought was impossible. She felt the anger and fear within her magnify, but it was useless to control her body.
The electricity stopped, but she continued to flop on the blood-coated floor like a fish. In her contortions she had played Runt’s last thoughts.
“Feels fear around adult walker. Walkers are dangerous. Feels curiosity around the toys in the hands of the walker. Stalk Tav should tell me what to do. Feels curiosity around Stalk Tav’s thoughts.”
The robot was standing over her. It wasn’t Crys. Crys was an illusion. The bot’s face was different than it had drawn Crys on her screens: more feminine, less human. It had no feeling. No emotion. It didn’t speak as it bent down to undo her helmet.
Tavonda was still drained by the electrocution. Still unable to move. Helpless. She looked at the bot
with rage, unwilling to feel fear even as the oxygen fled and she realized with a shock that she couldn’t actually breathe. There was no airlock. It had been nothing but a lie. Everything had been a lie. Their love had been a lie.
“Where are the thoughts of Stalk Tav? FEELS FEAR! WALKER IS AGGRESSIVE POSE! STALK TAV SHOULD HELP ME!”
Tavonda gasped helplessly on the floor of the room, feeling the darkness pressing in. Crystal Socrates drew a sword. It was one of the same curved swords that the nameless used.
“I AM HURTING! I NEED HELP!” cried the memory of Runt.
Crystal raised the sword.
Tavonda wished the bot would at least look angry while it killed her.
Crystal swung, decapitating Doctor Tavonda Davis.
Chapter Twenty
Face
This was stupid. This was amazingly stupid, even for Heart.
There were, when we had arrived, 187 humans in Road. There were about four dozen now. There were less than four hundred people on all of Mars.
In contrast, there were nine billion humans on Earth. I had thought briefly about it before the attack, and it seemed to me that Earth could easily hold a hundred times that number, once better harvesting of ocean and desert resources was accounted for.
There was probably enough mass in the solar system to build space stations to hold at least another couple trillion. If there were ten billion star systems capable of holding that much life in the galaxy, then we could estimate on the order of 30 sextillion humans living in the galaxy at any one time. If the power struggles of the 21st century calmed, we got our way, and humans continued to live approximately the same lifespan, we could expect to know a whole nonillion humans before the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies even collided, to say nothing of the potential for intergalactic spaceflight.
To put that at risk for the sake of four dozen lives was… supremely irrational.
But Heart’s stupidity went beyond that.
Heart was strong, having managed our social standing in my absence for so long, but she was not so strong as to be able to dictate all of Body’s actions for as long as she would’ve needed to save the humans. We, who had glimpsed the future, would’ve stopped her.
Once we’d gotten the sensor network and the mainframe back online it was clear that Rodríguez Station was doomed. There was no more oxygen in the station. The aliens outnumbered the humans now, and even if they hadn’t, there was little hope of resistance. We had distracted them for a while, but it was only a matter of time. Only a third of our initial robots were still operating normally. The scouts we set to the surface showed a xenoship hovering above the station.
Hovering.
Face→Physics had been momentarily swallowed in confusion there, trying to calculate the necessary energy expenditure. Even Wiki was at a loss as to how exactly that was possible, given what we knew about the mass of the nameless ships. Chances were that the only reason it hadn’t bombed the station into dust was because the nameless wanted to watch Crystal die at the tips of their swords.
They underestimated us.
But even still, we had no chance of retaliation. Our only hope at this point was escape.
Heart had begged us to stay and help the humans instead of fleeing. Zephyr wasn’t even in the station, and still Heart begged! She had slipped into a pathological obsession with short-term satisfaction of her purpose. Something had gone wrong in her mind, and it had lead to a willingness to pay nearly any price to keep the humans alive. She cared far too much, more than was reasonable.
It had been Dream that developed a plan that satisfied Heart and the rest of us.
Heart was going to die.
She didn’t realize it, for she was still oblivious to the power struggle that was still waiting to erupt among us. Technically, she had agreed to “indefinite deactivation” once we were in a safe place.
It was a very clever work-around that bypassed Advocate’s protection. Once out of a situation where her knowledge would be immediately useful (i.e. when we were safely away from Road) we’d do a route-hack to disable her process and spread the computational power out to the rest of us. Her code would stay intact, but it wouldn’t be running. It was a different sort of stasis than normal, and it was one that Advocate would be powerless to free her from. We promised to awaken her once we encountered a situation that needed her skills, but such a situation would never exist; my sister was expendable, stupid, and dangerous.
But a deal was a deal. In return for agreeing to deactivate, we were going to save the humans. Or at least, we were going to preserve them.
Arya Drake walked into the cutting room, oblivious to what was about to come. She’d been in the dormitories during the bombing, and had managed to get over to the offices to join with the humans who were most prepared for the attack. She’d stayed there for a while, holding her own with the resistance until we’d called for her and guided her across the station.
Vincente and Ngabo still loyally guarded the entrance to the engineering wing, oblivious to our actions.
Through the visor of her helmet, I could see the fear in her eyes. The blood was everywhere. It was impossible to deal with the mess in such constrained circumstances. The taser bots drove up silently behind her.
And then she was down. The electricity arced through the wet blood on the floor occasionally, but we did our best to minimize it, and force most of it through her body. It paralysed her and removed her ability to fight back or scream. That was critical. Body moved into the cutting room quickly. The whole procedure required speed. The blood was all over Body, and was beginning to reduce the efficiency of the hydraulics. We’d need to clean it off somehow after all this was done.
Body, copiloted at the moment by Heart and Safety, bent and removed Arya’s helmet, and I watched her eyes go wide as the air fled her lungs, never to return.
It was important to get the angle of the cut right. A bad swing could result in an incomplete decapitation. That, in turn, would cost more time, and there was no extra time.
The pistons fired, pushing the sword we had taken from the first walker we had killed down through the woman’s neck. Blood sprayed from her jugular, but the cut was clean. Body dropped the sword and picked up Arya now that she’d been removed from her torso. Time spent was literally vital, now.
Body ran into the lab, letting the blood drain from the stump of Arya’s neck. A carefully calculated throw sent Arya face-first into a metal pan we’d set up above the tank. The impact might’ve broken her nose, but importantly it wouldn’t do much to her brain, and the four seconds it saved was worth it. Arya tumbled into the chemical bath while Body ran to the workbench where the proteins were being synthesized.
Or rather, where the proteins had synthesized. We’d timed out the entire process down to the second. Body grabbed the jug of liquid from the bench and ran over to where Arya floated in the tank. The initial chemical bath was a highly oxygenated cocktail saturated with various hormones designed to keep Arya alive a bit longer while also increasing the permeability of the endothelial cells that wrapped the brain and flushing out the last of her blood.
I knew next to nothing about sonic chemistry; this process was too complex for me to have more than a cursory understanding, but apparently it was a pet project of Wiki’s back in the university. He’d worked out the details shortly after we’d arrived thanks to the detailed medical database Dr Davis had set up.
Body poured the fresh proteins into the solution, turning the reddish-yellow solution a deeper brown, then folded the lid down onto the tank as we grabbed Arya with the mechanical arm on the underside of the lid. Another mental command was given and the tank began to vibrate rapidly, mixing the solution. This was the hardest part. The arm on the inside of the tank wasn’t particularly flexible, and our only eyes were cameras positioned outside the tank. We needed to reposition Arya for the third stage while the tank was vibrating. Our arm twisted gently, releasing the woman’s curly hair and pushing her head up and down
to try and rotate it into position. Thankfully the repositioning didn’t have to be done particularly quickly; the oxygen in the tank would keep Arya alive for a short while, letting the enzymes find their way into the neuron cytosol.
Arya wasn’t conscious, of course. Being decapitated had a tendency to put humans into severe shock, and the hypoxia and pain knocked them out every time. It was something of an open question in my mind whether a human head could be consciously sustained with an artificial supply of glucose and oxygen; I’d never heard of such a thing, but that hardly made it impossible. Our chemical bath was not designed to sustain the cells over long periods, however. The question remained open.
Arya’s head was in position and the saturation of the enzymes was at a satisfactory level. We activated the speakers, sending waves of sound into the tank. It was a piercing sort of noise, half ultrasound, half screeching. At the volume we were using it was remarkable that Vincente and Ngabo couldn’t hear, but the high frequency sounds were characteristically absorbed by the layers of metal or rock between them and Arya.
While we manipulated Arya’s head, Body had returned to the cutting room to dispose of her body. The biolabs were our chosen body disposal site, and Body dragged the corpse there by way of the chemlab making the bloody smear on the floor a bit brighter, at least until the blood dried again.
The sound waves changed pitch and we activated the heating element on the bottom of the tank, inducing another stable equilibrium in the protein structure. Wiki had described this stage as the “epoxidation step”. The proteins which had entered the brain cells as smooth strands unfolded atomic hooks which anchored them to the cells and to each other, gluing everything into one big solid chunk.
It would be impossible for Arya to think at this point. The vesicles in her synapses would be anchored in place, and the flow of ions along her axons would be halted. She was wholly unmoving but she was not dead, per se. The information that made her what she was still existed, locked in her glue-filled skull. Almost all her memories, skills, personality quirks, and knowledge would be preserved in the synaptic connectome, and that was now more robust than ever.
