by J. N. Chaney
Dash counted down on his hand and then he moved, rushing through the opening, dropping the meter or so to the deck and flowing forward while taking aim with his weapon. He scanned a big compartment, though not as big as some of the massive ones they’d encountered. It seemed to contain racks for elongated cylinders, each about two meters long and sitting upright. Most of the racks sat empty, with only a dozen or so of the cylinders in place. More consoles and displays lined the bulkheads, while a single, massive door gaped open across the compartment. An ominously jointed mechanical arm was folded up against the ceiling above, ending in a series of grippers that looked purpose-made to pick the cylinders up.
Dash waved to Ragsdale, and they both crept forward. Somewhere in the distance, Dash heard a burst of that shrill, metallic scraping, before it faded into dead silence again.
Once they’d all entered the chamber, Conover came forward again, stopping beside Dash and gesturing at the mysterious cylinders. “I know what they are, now that I can see them. They’re weapons. Probably missiles or torpedoes or something like that.”
Dash gave the cylinders an uneasy glance. They seemed innocuous enough—essentially featureless and made of a crystalline material that seemed to incorporate Dark Metal. The Slipwing’s missiles were considerably bigger. But if these were Golden weapons, then looks meant nothing. The Unseen’s Lens, which could fit in the palm of your hand, could collapse and blow up stars.
“So it’s a magazine,” Viktor said, giving the cylinders a wary look then pointing up at the creepy, articulated arm. “That probably grabs a missile and loads it into that conduit we just followed, and then its transported, somehow, to where it’s fired from.”
Dash followed Viktor’s reasoning and nodded. Made sense. Maybe the conduit used magnetism or grav generators to smoothly move the missile to where it was needed.
“They fired most of them then,” Ragsdale said, looking at the sparse cache. “Must’ve been a hell of a fight.”
“This ship crashed for a reason,” Dash replied.
Freya gestured at the door. “I think I know where we are now. Through there, then right.”
Dash readied himself to lead the way, but not before eyeing the cylindrical weapons. He wondered how stable they were and whether they could be rigged to blow to cover their escape if things got too hot. Options were good. Explosive options were often better if the situation called for chaos.
But no, of course not. They could end up destroying Gulch and everything on it. Worse, it represented yet another danger to Port Hannah—and the tight, hard look on Ragsdale’s face showed that he knew it.
They followed Freya’s directions, eventually coming to yet another of the massive compartments. This one, like the one they’d encountered earlier, contained yet more of the massive, transparent cylinders, storage tanks, and connecting troughs.
As soon as their lamps lit up the cylinders, they all gasped.
Unlike the ones they’d found before, these cylinders weren’t empty.
Some contained little more than small, crumbled heaps that could have been coarse dirt. But a few still held the remains of what had obviously once been living creatures, now just desiccated husks, somehow preserved for two thousand centuries by the arcane properties of their containers.
“That’s unexpected,” Dash said, then he saw something that looked like a cross between a large bird and a snake, but grey and brittle. Empty eye sockets and a gaping mouth swallowed his lamp’s light.
“Would have been nice to have some warning about this,” Leira snapped at Freya. But the botanist just gave her head an emphatic shake.
“I’ve never seen this before,” she said, staring at another corpse, this one more insectile, with a chitinous carapace longer than Dash was tall. “I’d have remembered, believe me, and said something.”
“So what you’re saying is that you really don’t know where we are,” Ragsdale said.
“No. Or, yes, I do, though not exactly.” She pulled her gaze away from the horrible remains in the cylinder. “I know generally where we are. Like I said, I would have remembered this horror show.” She pointed at a corridor leading out of the compartment, slightly uphill from them, which meant it traversed back toward the rear of the ship. “I must have entered that tube further back, so that way. I don’t think much farther back, either.”
Ragsdale gave her a skeptical look, but before he could speak, Conover interrupted him.
“The Golden were studying these lifeforms I think.” He gestured at one that looked vaguely human, but with a grossly elongated skull, solid sheets of bone instead of ribs, and two pairs of legs jointed so they bent and flexed backward. “That one looks dissected, at least partly.”
Dash saw what he meant. One of the curved sheets of bone that would have covered its torso had been cut apart and spread wide, revealing whatever now long-decomposed innards the creature might have had. It could have been surgery, of course, but Dash agreed with Conover: dissected was probably right.
“They were studying other creatures,” Viktor said, his face grim. “Taking them apart to learn how their anatomy worked.”
“Let’s hope they were already dead when they did it,” Ragsdale muttered.
Dash nodded. “Let’s hope they were. The Golden were looking for ways they could add tech to these poor bastards.”
“The same sort of thing these machines want to turn us into,” Freya said, shuddering. “I had no idea about any of this” She stepped away and leaned on a trough.
Dash wondered if she might be sick. He thought about talking to her, but a hissed word from Leira brought him to where she was kneeling beside Amy, who sat with her legs splayed out, resting against a pedestal supporting a section of troughs.
Dash only had to take one look at Amy to know she was in serious trouble—as in, they were almost out of time and she was going to die trouble.
Leira gave Dash an imploring look. “We have to do something.”
Amy raised her eyes and gave a slow blink. “Hey, Dash,” she said, her voice a rough whisper. “This turned out…to be a…a fun trip, huh?”
“Fun doesn’t begin to describe it,” he said, forcing a smile. “Anyway, you’re going to have to hang in there a while longer, girl.”
She nodded. “Yeah. Trying.” Her voice was bone dry.
“I know you are.” He took her hand, squeezed it, and looked at Leira. “How are we for clean-clot?”
“Maybe two or three more applications, then we’re out.” She left unspoken the fact that they’d have none for any other serious wounds any of them might suffer, because they all knew that.
“What about using a stim?” Dash asked. “Perk her up, so she can move faster.”
“Are you crazy? A stim’s going to stress her heart, lungs, everything.”
“He knows that, Leira,” Amy said. “Lots of risk. Sure. Doesn’t change…the fact it might be the only way…to get me out of here.”
“Not going to happen,” Leira insisted.
“I’m just…slowing you down.”
“You’re coming out of this alive, cuz,” Leira said, “or neither of us are.” She leaned in until her nose was almost touching Amy’s. “Even if we need to crawl, I will not leave you. But no stims. Got it?”
Dash understood that Leira would not be swayed and gave ground by offering her a tight smile. So did Amy. They both knew that trying to convince Leira otherwise was utterly futile, so they didn’t even bother trying.
“Okay, we’ll make using a stim plan B, then,” Dash said.
“More like…plan z…at this point,” Amy said, trying to grin, but only losing it in a wince, then a burst of dry coughing.
“Dash?” Viktor said as he stood with Ragsdale and Conover, looking at something behind one of the storage tanks behind the cylinders and their appalling contents.
Dash squeezed Amy’s hand again, told Leira to get her ready to move, then headed for the others. As he passed between two of the cylinders, he found
himself imagining—against his will—humans caught inside them, trapped, subjected to the vile experimentation of the Golden. Not just any humans, but people he knew. These people.
Dash cleared his mind forcefully, then and joined Viktor and the others.
“What have you guys found—” He stopped, looking down. “Oh.”
It was another Golden corpse. This one hadn’t been protected from the force of the ship’s impact when it crashed; it had clearly been flung against the bulkhead hard enough to smash its Dark Metal-infused suit into disarticulated components, exposing circuits and flaky remnants of delicate internal structure.
“I don’t feel sorry for it,” Viktor said, giving the cylinders and their terrible contents a sidelong glance.
Dash knelt beside it. Little remained of the skull inside the transparent helmet, aside from a synthetic jawbone. “Neither do I,” Dash said, then leaned in and glared into the helmet. “In fact, I hope you took a long time to die and it hurt like hell the whole time, you mechanical sonofabitch.”
He took a moment to yank a few, loose circuits and components from among the ones exposed by the ruined suit, then stood and looked around. Freya had come up behind them and was staring down at the Golden corpse with a baleful glare. He opened up the sample bag slung over her shoulder and jammed the scavenged components into it.
“There,” Dash said. “Now it’s not just plants you’ll be bringing out with you. It’s pieces of one of these bastard Golden, and my suspicion is it’s more than just a machine.”
She looked at Dash. “I didn’t know.”
“I know. But now you do.”
Freya gave him a firm nod. “Yes. I do.”
18
Dash recognized the place Freya had led them to. It was the first compartment they’d found containing the transparent cylinders. He knew that because of the tattered glove, and other odds and ends they’d found here previously.
“Those are mine, yes,” Freya confirmed, when he asked her about it. “I’ve probably left things scattered all through this ship.”
“Okay,” Dash said, a flicker of hope kindling inside him. “That means we know our way from here. So, assuming nothing gets in our way, we should be back on the surface in what, maybe an hour?”
He saw similarly cautious optimism take a bit of the edge off all of them—or, rather, all of them except Leira, who just looked from Amy, to Dash, and gave her head a barely perceptible shake.
Amy’s not going to last another hour, is what that headshake said.
Dash gripped the carbine, his knuckles turning white, that faint optimism dying like a spent fusion cell. To have come through all of this, and then to lose Amy anyway wouldn’t be right. He couldn’t imagine them being without that infectious grin.
Conover stood mute, his eyes fixed on Amy. Dash took a quiet step to him, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. “She’s going to make it. But we need to move. Do you understand?”
“I—yeah,” Conover said, wanting to believe but not quite getting there.
Dash started to turn to Ragsdale, desperate that the man might know something—some old military trick, maybe—that would help them keep her alive long enough to get her to help. But Sentinel cut in before he could speak.
“There have been developments,” Sentinel said.
“Developments? What sort of developments?” Dash didn’t like Sentinel’s ambiguity; it never seemed to go anywhere pleasant.
“There are two, and they are distinctly different, but are both also related.”
“Can you just get to the point, please?”
“There may be a way to help Amy. There may also be a way to neutralize the threat of the Golden ship, as its systems are progressively powering up through a self-repair protocol.”
“Self repair? Wait. Are you saying this ship could become operational again?”
“Although the available data regarding the self-repair capabilities of Golden technology is incomplete, that is unlikely. I have collected enough data to render a more complete analysis of this wreck. The damage to this ship has been catastrophic, with essentially the entire forward third of it having been destroyed. It can, however, pose a variety of other, more immediate threats.”
“To Port Hannah, you mean,” Ragsdale said.
“Primarily, yes.”
“Okay,” Dash said, “what are you proposing we do here, Sentinel?”
“I have been studying the various data streams you have encountered when you interface with the Golden technology. I believe that the ship’s AI is off-line and dormant. It may have been irrevocably destroyed by battle, which is why the ship was caught in this planet’s gravity well and crashed.”
“And?” Dash asked.
“Without that awareness, the various systems’ ability to resist intrusion is greatly diminished. I believe it will be possible, therefore, to access systems that could dramatically improve Amy’s condition. Then it should be possible to cause all systems to shut down again, permanently.”
“You mean turn the ship off again?” Dash said.
“That is correct.”
“And help Amy?” Conover said. “Let’s do it! What are we waiting for?”
Dash looked at Conover, understanding dawning. Of course. Conover’s gnawing fear hadn’t been about himself; it had been about Amy. He’d done a good job of keeping that to himself, though. Now, with a glimmer of hope, he no longer bothered.
“Let’s just wait a moment, here,” Viktor said. “I’m as anxious as anyone to help Amy out here, absolutely. But really, Dash? Using Golden tech?” He looked at her, kneeling beside Leira, waiting to resume their passage out of this damned ship.
Dash moved and knelt in front of Amy and Leira. “It really only matters what you guys think,” he said. “Sentinel might be on to something. But Viktor’s doing his job as our voice of reason. We’ve got no idea what the risks are. This is uncharted space.”
Leira just turned to look at Amy, who merely knelt, slowly gasping. Dash waited, trying hard to not dwell on the most obvious example of Golden biotech they’d encountered—the partly-dissected corpses of different races, some or even all of which might now be long-extinct because of the Golden.
Amy lifted her head. It was slow and laborious. “A…no-brainer, right? It’s that, or…”
She didn’t have to say the rest.
“Okay, Sentinel,” Dash said, “where do we need to go to do this.”
“You will need to move to a location in the ship that contains the Golden life-enhancement systems.”
Dash looked at the glassy cylinders around them. “Don’t suppose those would be a bunch of big, clear tubes connected by troughs, would they?”
“That would be correct.”
“Well, what do you know,” Dash said, giving Viktor a wry look. “We’re in luck for a change. Sentinel, we’re already there.”
“Then you will need to place Amy in one of those cylinders, ensuring that the system of feed-troughs leading to it is intact.”
“Oh, I really don’t like where this is going,” Viktor said, but Conover stepped forward.
“This one,” he said, pointing at a cylinder. “It seems intact, and it’s getting power and data.” He knelt beside Amy and looked at Leira on her other side. “The two of us should be able to do this.”
“Hang on a second,” Dash said. They needed to work fast, he knew; this was burning up time they didn’t have. But still, he needed to understand what was happening here. “These tubes are sealed, from their base, right up to the top of the compartment. How do we get her inside one in the first place?”
“As I said, I will be able to access the relevant systems. That includes opening the cylinder, despite the risk,” Sentinel said.
“The risk? How much more risk can there be?” Dash asked, incredulous.
“Mingling systems is a last resort, but I thought you should know. This is not any ordinary immersion into Golden technology. This is biological,” Sentinel sai
d.
“Playing God,” Dash muttered.
“In a sense, although this is a very human decision, and you are making it. Dash, you are the Messenger. Amy trusts you,” Sentinel said.
Dash looked at Amy and nodded. “Do it.”
But Sentinel said, “I cannot.”
“Bullshit. You just said—"
“I cannot until I have a connection to the Golden data streams.”
Dash stared. “A connection to their data streams?”
As soon as he asked, he knew what had to come next. It was the only logical possibility.
“She’s worth it,” Dash said.
“That is correct,” Sentinel replied, then paused for the first time in her speech to the crew. “She is.”
Dash stood. “As soon as I do that, the ship will know where we are. And as soon as that happens, we’ll have those Dreadfoot swarming after us.”
“Almost certainly correct,” Sentinel said.
“And you don’t see a problem with that.”
“On the contrary, I see many problems with it. But I can offer no other alternatives.”
Amy shook her head. “No. Can’t…do this. Too much—”
“Amy,” Leira said, her voice strained, “be still.” She looked up at Dash, eyes pleading. “How long will it take to heal her?”
“I do not know,” Sentinel replied. “And I will not know until the process has begun.”
Dash walked away a few paces, then back. Then he did it again.
The clock continued to tick down. The Dreadfoot would be here eventually. Of that he had no doubt, even if they hadn’t heard any of those metallic squeals for some time now. He suspected those were pretty much theatrics anyway, a way of sparking fear and herding them where the ship wanted them. That meant that the Dreadfoot could be minutes, even seconds away.
But even if that wasn’t the case, as soon as he connected, the ship would send the Dreadfoot rushing in. Unless the process of healing Amy to the point of being stable happened really quickly—as in, within a very few minutes—they might very well be caught here, swarmed, and then all killed.
