by J. N. Chaney
“No, they won’t,” Dash said.
Ragsdale looked at him across the top of the carbine. “How do you know that?”
“Same way I know they’re over there in the first place,” Dash replied. “Before Sentinel yanked me out of that mess of Golden data, I was able to work out the ship’s plan for us.”
Amy gave a slow smile. “Why do I suspect I’m not going to like this?”
“You’re not,” Dash said. “None of us are. We’re not being attacked because the ship has other plans for us.”
“Which are?” Ragsdale asked.
“See, I’ve been wondering why we’ve heard all that ominous noise behind us but nothing has caught up. We already know they can go right through the walls if they want to. The utility bots can, so the Dreadfoot surely can. But we seem to be able to stay ahead of them.”
“Okay,” Leira said, “I’m really starting to not like where this is going. What are you telling us, Dash?”
“What I’m saying is that we’re not being chased,” Dash said. “We’re being herded.”
“You were right, Leira,” Viktor said. “I don’t like where that went at all.”
“Herded?” Ragsdale lowered the carbine a fraction. “What do you mean herded? Herded where?”
“That part I’m not as clear about,” Dash replied. “I don’t think we’re actually being herded to any particular place. We’re just being pushed, forward and, you might have noticed, to the right.”
“But why?”
“Now comes the part I really don’t want to hear,” Leira put in.
“I’m not entirely sure. Sentinel didn’t let me stick around long enough to get more than a broad outline of the plan. I think that the ship doesn’t want us dead. I think it actually wants to take us alive.”
“There can be no good reason for that,” Viktor said.
“Depends on your point of view, I guess,” Dash said. “If you’re a Golden AI, there are probably lots of good reasons for it.”
“There is one, particularly compelling reason,” Sentinel said. “Ordinarily, this ship, like the Forge, would be able to fabricate a variety of mobile units—bots, as you call them. The Dreadfoot are the most lethal, being specifically designed for security and combat tasks. In its current state, however, it is unable to do so. Moreover, all of its crew are dead.”
“It needs us to make more bots?” Ragsdale said. “Why?”
“Not to make more bots, no,” Sentinel replied. “Its systems are too badly damaged to do that in any feasible way. Accordingly, it seeks a fresh substrate, upon which it can apply technology to create new mobile units.”
“You mean—it wants to capture us,” Conover said, “and then merge us with its own tech and turn us into new minions.”
“Yes. You are the fresh substrate. You have the advantage of being already mobile, and aware, and capable of manipulating and interacting with the material world.”
“The Golden themselves are a mix of living thing and machine,” Dash said. “That’s how their own creators, the Makers, made them. Now, they want to do the same to us. Turn us into…sort of, honorary Golden, I guess. A thing that could be studied, worked with—in order to facilitate wiping us out.”
A long silence followed. Freya broke it by muttering, “And I’ve been coming here, over and over, and never knew.” Her breath became shallow and fast. “I wouldn’t have come if I suspected.”
Ragsdale turned and grabbed her arm. “No. You will not lose it. We need you, Freya. We need you to get us out of this ship. That’s all that matters.”
“We have to get moving,” Leira snapped. “Now.”
Dash nodded. “Yeah, we do. Trouble is, where to? We can’t go forward. At least not this way.” He gestured at the doors. “And we can’t go back, because the Dreadfoot are closing in. As more of them wake up and come online, they’re being sent to block passages, junctions, compartments. Once they’ve got us completely hemmed in, they’ll close the ring. We’ll end up facing so many of them at once that we’ll be overwhelmed no matter what we do.”
Dash was calm and collected in the face of unfolding what was a gruesome fate, but he wasn’t ready to roll over. Not yet. Nor would he allow his team to see him crack, because that achieved nothing.
“That’s why they’re taking their time,” Viktor said. “They know we can’t get out.”
“Sentinel,” Leira said. “The Archetype. We need it to start digging to us, right now!”
“Unfortunately,” Sentinel replied, “it is not that simple. I can determine the broad outlines of the wreck, but that is all. I can discern no detail beyond that. The ship’s very nature prevents it. Therefore, I cannot determine where you are. Also, the ship is heavily damaged, but it is damage that I cannot observe, and the ground on top of the wreck is a complex mix of rock, soil, and wreckage.”
“We get it,” Dash said. “You can’t just dig down to us.” He looked at the others. “That means we need another way out. Freya, what about that third, crappy way you mentioned?”
Dash saw panic playing across her face, but to her credit she spoke with a grim resolve. “Maybe. I only used it once.”
“Doesn’t matter. It seems to be our only option.”
A shrill, ear-scraping squeal rose from behind them. It was distant, but even as they listened, it grew louder.
“Anything, Dash,” Leira said, a note of panic rising in her voice. She put a protective arm around Amy. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just do it—go somewhere, do something.”
“Freya,” Ragsdale said, “it comes down to you. You have to lead us out of here. So take us to that third way out, now.”
Freya swallowed hard, then nodded. “Okay. It’s back this way.” She turned, frowning, then nodded again.
“Toward the Dreadfoot behind us?” Dash asked.
“Yeah. Not far, though.”
I hope not, Dash thought, as they readied themselves to move. Because the part he’d left out, that essentially all of the Dreadfoot were now powered up and active and were about to start closing in on them in earnest, meant they were no longer going to be taking their time. They’d be coming now, and they’d being do it fast.
17
They stopped after only a brief trip back to a junction, along a short corridor, and into a compartment. This one contained yet more controls, lights flitting inconsistently across all of them. A massive tube or conduit cut through the compartment, rising from the floor, turning ninety degrees, then continuing horizontally through the rear bulkhead. The compartment was partly crushed, about a third of it having been effectively flattened into a narrow crawlspace. The forces responsible had also ripped a chunk out of the conduit, revealing that it was hollow.
“In here,” Freya said. “We have to crawl for part of the way. After that, we can walk. It will take us about two-thirds of the way back to the rear of the ship.”
“I don’t like this at all,” Ragsdale said, cradling the carbine and, like the rest of them, trying to ignore the loudening shrieks and squeals. “This is a tube. We get caught in it and we’re dead.”
Dash tilted his head at it. “This might actually work out better for us.”
“What do you mean?” Leira asked, bracing herself against Amy, who continued fighting a valiantly just to stay on her feet.
“I don’t think this ship can actually see us,” he replied. “I’m not sure of that—I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around inside its AI brain to check for sure—but either its internal sensors don’t work, or…” He shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t know why, but it apparently can’t. That’s part of why it’s moving the Dreadfoot so carefully, to close off a smaller and smaller area of the ship. It knows we’re somewhere in here, but not exactly where.”
“Oh, I get it,” Conover said. “It can only really see us when we end up fighting bots, or when you interface with it.”
“Yeah. Every time I do that, it gets a new fix on our location.”
“So don’t d
o that anymore,” Ragsdale said.
“You think?” Dash peered into the conduit. “If we move quietly enough, there’s a chance we can use this to get outside the Dreadfoot perimeter. That would put us behind them.”
“Meaning we can go out Freya’s way,” Viktor said, nodding, “or maybe even the way we came in.”
“Yeah, except the ship might anticipate that,” Ragsdale said. “There might be some of these Dreadfoot things in that pipe right now, coming for us. We’d run into them with nowhere to go.”
“Possibly,” Dash replied. “But it’s our only chance. And besides, there are probably dozens, maybe hundreds of possible conduits, pipelines, tunnels, and what have you in this ship. There aren’t enough Dreadfoot or bots to cover them all.” Ducking under a torn section of the conduit, he put his foot inside it. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky with this one.”
Crawling through the narrow space added a brooding sense of claustrophobia to what was already a very, very bad day, Dash thought. He’d never been especially bad with tight spaces, but he didn’t particularly enjoy them, either. Night vision and thermal showed nothing ahead, nor did the visible light shining from his helmet lamp ahead of him. Just cylindrical pipe, then utter darkness.
He crawled on. Behind him, the others scraped and bumped along, making far more noise than Dash liked. But he saw no way around that. Leira had to help Amy, who struggled along like a trooper; Viktor and Freya still slid the Golden corpse along, its suit scraping softly against the conduit—probably the quietest of the bunch. Dash had actually thought of just ditching the damned thing to get rid of its encumbrance, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it—at least, not yet. Assuming they were able to get out of this, it was just too valuable a prize to toss away.
Assuming they were able to get out of this.
He glanced back, his light glaring into Viktor’s face. Dash muttered an apology and swung the light away again. He had worried that the ship might be able to track the Dark Metal tech in the corpse’s suit, but Conover had said the corpse and its tech were generating no power. He’d mused that maybe even Golden power supplies gave out after two hundred thousand years, or there’d been damage done that just kept it shut down.
Or it was a trick, and the ship was tracking them with it right now.
Didn’t matter, Dash told himself as he crawled, slowly working uphill and back along the length of the ship.
Suddenly, the conduit vanished.
Wait. No, it didn’t. Rather, they’d reached a junction where several smaller conduits, including the one they’d just traversed, merged into a much larger one. He gestured at a gaping, circular opening around which he had to crawl to avoid plunging into some unseen blackness, making sure Viktor saw it. Viktor nodded, and did the same for Conover behind him.
Dash stood up and walked, which was a relief after the narrow confines, a few meters away, looking ahead, while the others gathered behind him.
“Everyone good?” He kept his voice to as much of a whisper as he could.
A chorus of assent, with Amy managing a weak affirmative despite hovering on the brink of unconsciousness.
Dash waved them forward, his jaw set with finality. They’d come a long way from the motley collection of couriers and engineers to emerge as a team—a cohesive unit forged under the heat of battle with a race that thought of life as a four letter word.
A shrill squeal cut the air. It came from beneath them and to their right.
Dash froze and held up a hand, an urgent gesture to stop.
They did, all of them going utterly still, even holding their breath.
The metallic squeak got louder, until it sounded almost right underneath them.
It stopped.
Dash slowed, then stopped, blood pounding in his ears. He willed his pulse to slow, taking long breaths and letting them out through his nose like a silent prayer.
As the thunderous silence went on, Dash put a finger on the trigger of his carbine and looked back. The others, eyes so wide he could see white around them, were all bracing themselves the same way.
And still the silence dragged on.
And then it ended with a burst of piercing squeals. Dash expected something to come ripping through the conduit and thought about switching to the plasma pistol. In this tight space, a single shot would probably incinerate them all, but at least they wouldn’t be taken alive.
But the squeals moved off to the left and began to fade.
They waited until the racket had moved well into the distance.
Dash froze, one foot lifted as a shudder vibrated the conduit he was standing on. He pressed his lips together. Now what?
More whispers drifted from behind him. He lowered his foot and looked back—and down, so the glare of his helmet lamp didn’t hit the others square in the face. Dash desperately wanted to push on and just get the hell out, but he waited. It might be something important.
Finally, Conover sidled forward and leaned toward him. Dash caught a whiff of sweat, tinged with that slightly acrid scent he’d come to recognize as spent, fear-induced adrenaline. He ignored it. They were all tense, and Conover was still young, despite his seasoning.
“Dash, this is ship is powering up fast now. I can see it all around us. Power flowing along new routes. Data, too. Systems are coming online.”
Dash glanced down at his own feet. The conduit still trembled slightly beneath them. “Yeah, I kind of figured that. What are you suggesting?”
“I don’t think it’s getting ready to go for orbit again.”
“I doubt even the Golden can take something with this level of damage and get it spaceworthy, let alone upper atmo,” Dash said.
Conover glanced back at the others then turned again to Dash. “How risky would it be for you to touch it?”
“Integrate with the Golden tech again? The ship would know our location. Instantly.”
“I know. But all of those Dreadfeet—or whatever they are—are behind us now. Maybe our best course is to just make a break for it.”
Dash met Conover’s eyes. He got it. Fatigue had started scraping the edges off all their alertness. They hadn’t had time to rest, or eat, or do anything but take the occasional swig of tepid water. Things that wanted to kill them lurked nearby. And now, the whole ship seemed to be waking up, like some evil, monstrous beast rousing itself from slumber, threatening new sorts of peril they couldn’t even imagine. Conover’s attempts at resolute bravery were noble, but he was frayed to the edge of panic by legitimate fear.
Conover had come a long way, but in many respects, he really hadn’t left childhood far behind. The dangers he’d previously faced, like the Slipwing’s fall into the crushing pressure of a gas giant, or his own fall into a pit opening into the blackness of an underground stream, had been sudden, short, and sharp. This was different. This was a slow, grinding menace, steadily growing all around them. And while Conover’s youth and inexperience might make him a little more vulnerable to it, none of them were immune.
Dash kept his eyes on Conover’s. “We are going to make a break for it. But we’ll do it when the time is right, and it’ll make the difference. In the meantime, I need you to keep those nifty eyes of yours peeled, so you can let us know the things we need to know. As for me and Melding with this ship”—he forced a brittle grin—“the two of us don’t get along very well. And I’m not sure even Sentinel can keep it in one, non-Golden-possessed piece for much longer when I do it. So let’s save that for if and when we really, really need it, okay?”
Conover gave him a grateful nod. “Got it. I’ll let you know the second I see anything that really scares the crap out of me.”
Dash peered around the edge of the opening in the side of the conduit. Having switched his lamp off as they approached, and making the others do the same, he scanned the space beyond; first in night vision, and then in thermal.
Nothing.
He whispered for Conover and Freya to come forward, then he leaned close to Fr
eya as she knelt beside him.
“What do you know about this place?”
She shook her head. “Not much. I’ve only come this way once. And honestly, I don’t remember if I entered this pipe thing here, or further up.” She waved her hand into the blackness still ahead of them.
Dash turned to Conover. “How about you? You see anything we should know about?”
Conover had been staring intently through the opening. He looked back and said, “More power, more data. But there is something new.”
“Describe it,” Dash said.
He could barely make out Conover’s frown in the wan light flickering from whatever systems had become active in the compartment. “I’m not sure. It’s just a different signature. I haven’t seen it before.”
“Damn. Is it awake? Moving around?” Dash waved a hand in frustration.
“No, it’s not like that. It’s steady, but kind of weak and diffuse.” Conover gave an exasperated shrug. “Sorry, I can’t be more helpful, Dash.”
“Don’t be. Even if we aren’t sure what it is, knowing it’s there is better than not knowing, right?”
“I guess, yeah.”
There was more movement as Ragsdale came forward. “No sign of any threat behind us. You and I should both enter there together. This opening is big enough for two to go through at once.”
“You’re just tired of bringing up the rear,” Dash said, smiling.
“Believe me, glory’s the last thing on my mind.”
Dash nodded, then gave a quick outline about how they’d proceed. He and Ragsdale would enter both at once, going right and left respectively. Once they’d gotten themselves set, the rest would come through, pulling the Golden corpse and other bits and pieces they’d retrieved from various bots and other systems with them.
As he and Ragsdale readied themselves, it struck Dash that a lifetime of making things up as he went along was coming in handy. Sometimes instincts were more powerful than tactics, and this was one such moment.
