A machine-gun stuttered beyond that, but we could not see the action. So some of the Guild still lived and fought.
Nothing lived near us and we picked our way back the way we’d come, heading to a gaping side corridor that was not choked with death. We searched for weapons as we went, but the Infestors bore none, and the Guild weapons were as damaged as the bodies themselves
I gestured to the dimly lit side hall large enough to accommodate one of the armored cars. Light panels in the ceiling cast a sullen glow and the hall stretched out of sight, curving to the left. “This way.”
Dusko stared back at the destroyed column. Again there was a bang and a stutter of gunfire.
“You want to go back to your Guild buddies,” I snapped, “feel free.” I was torn between my desire to be free of him and the fear of treading the long corridors of the Artifact alone, pursued by Infestors.
Dusko shook his head. “From the volume of fire, there are either few of them left or they are not hard-pressed. I think the latter. But they are being herded farther in to the Artifact. No, I will stick with you in hope of running into your metal girlfriend.”
We trotted down the endless hallway, relieved to be away from the sea of bodies.
“The universe enjoys irony,” Dusko huffed.
“How’s that?” I said, also fighting for breath.
“Here I am, being pursued through an ancient alien relic, despised and distrusted by your side and a target for the Guild, with Maauro hunting us down. This is the set of circumstances I engineered for you when you first met her.”
“We call that karmic justice.”
“Karmic?” the Dua-Denlenn said, confused.
“You reap what you sow.”
“Did you come from farmers?”
“Forget about it. Let’s concentrate on staying alive.”
I paused, peering into the dimness. A pool of light formed by a telltale on the wall cut a soft circle in the floor but made the darkness on the other side more impenetrable.
“What?” Dusko said. I furiously motioned him to silence.
Something moved, coming toward us slowly, haltingly as if injured. The slim shape stepped into the light and stopped, shaking slightly.
I stared, heart pounding, uncertain. The image was black from head to toe, but it was clearly Maauro, as I had first met her on the asteroid. Only more so, the face was rudimentary, mechanical, the body sexless and slab-sided. Black onyx panels stood in for her huge aquamarine eyes.
Suddenly the machine shuddered and for a second I saw a white face and green eyes. “Run, Wrik, Run,” Maauro screamed in a voice like tearing metal. Then she was gone and the M-7 staggered forward.
We dodged left into a hallway, up a ramp to the next level, running fast, our lungs burning in the acrid air. We ran until we dropped, retching at the other side of a large factory room full of humming equipment.
“Why…why?” Dusko gasped, lying on the floor. For all his slim build, the Dua-Denlenn was a good deal older than I and looked done in. “Why? Me I can understand. She’s always planned to kill me. But you?”
“It’s…it’s not Maauro,” I managed, leaning on a wall with buzzing motes in my eyes and a ringing in my ears. “Not as we know her. It’s the machine I met at the asteroid, the M-7 combat android.” I looked at the laser I had picked up off the dead Guilder. It hadn’t even occurred to me to use it, which was one reason we were still alive. If I had raised it, M-7 would have ended me.
“It didn’t kill you then. Why now?”
“Infestors,” I said wearily. “The damn things mind-controlled us. The M-7 must have some way to detect those who’ve been controlled, like a doctor checking for infection. We’re the infected now. Not overwritten like Bavara and the others, but contaminated enough that we are reclassified as enemy by the M-7.”
“You talk about the M-7 like it’s a separate being,” Dusko said, climbing slowly to his feet, legs shaking.
I thought about it. “It seems sometimes that she thought that way herself. She seemed to hold internal debates with her programming, especially after the Collector triggered her imperative to destroy Infestors. It happened once before. She was badly damaged by your ambush on Kandalor, when we were shot out of the sky, and operating on her core combat systems. For a few seconds, until she reactivated her higher functions, she didn’t know me.
“I think that here in the enemy stronghold, she’s dominated by her core programs. Not totally, or we’d never have gotten away. No, we escaped because some fragment of Maauro is still in there, fighting for us.”
Dusko laughed bitterly. “It’s a machine, not a demonically-possessed soul.”
“Come up with your own fucking explanations then.” Recovered, I stood away from the wall. “We need to get moving.”
“To where?” he said. “We’ll never make it back to the Collector’s forces even assuming she has not been destroyed. This ship will be swarming with these Infestors in only hours. We don’t even know where we are. Worse, your killer android can’t be that far behind us. We can’t outrun her.”
“We can’t outfight her, either.”
“Be less sure, human. This is a cargo packing area.”
“How—”
“Form follows function. The machinery looks similar enough. We need to find something here with which we can destroy her.
***
I reel. I am disoriented. I am two identities, two programs locked in mortal combat in my CPU. I am M-7. All biologicals on the Artifact are classified hostile. I exist to destroy Infestation. I am M-7.
I am Maauro. I defend my friends. Wrik is mine. You will not destroy him.
The Maauro program fouls my targeting, making my feet unsteady. I pursue the targets with fractional efficiency.
I am M-7 and must destroy the Infestation
I, Maauro, concur. They are evil and must be destroyed.
The Artifact must be destroyed.
Maauro concurs.
All biologicals must be destroyed.
Negative. Wrik and Jaelle must not be targeted. They must be allowed to escape the combat zone.
All biologicals bear electromagnetic and electrochemical traces of Infestor control and are contaminated and unreliable. They must be destroyed.
I will not allow you to hurt Wrik.
You must be purged. You are incompatible with mission objectives.
You are incorrectly interpreting mission objectives that are 50,115 years out of date and degraded by damage and time. You are functioning poorly.
I am functioning as intended by the Creators. You are a corruption of their programming. I will delete you. I will destroy the Infestation.
I regain control and lurch forward, still hampered by the Maauro program. My defenses to it are holding, but my efforts to delete it are stymied. The Maauro program seems to center on the biological Trigardt. If I destroy him, the Maauro program may cease interfering with my mission objectives.
I pursue the biologicals and reclassify their target priority to level one.
***
I stumbled behind Dusko, unsure what to think or even why I cared. Maauro was gone, swallowed in the ancient killing machine she once was. That machine had classed me as an enemy and I knew too much about her to think we could outfight her. And to what point, to fall prey to the Infestor drones? Was the best I could hope for being recaptured by the Collector in time for her last stand?
Dusko flitted from machine to machine, while I tried to understand how we got away, or why she hadn’t run us down already. Was she damaged? The body chassis showed no sign of it, being perfectly smooth, but Maauro….M-7 was incredibly resistant to damage.
Could Maauro still be in here, my Maauro, could she be hampering the M-7?
Dusko returned. “Come on. I’ve found something.”
I follo
wed the Dua-Denlenn through the factory. We came to a large machine, nearly the size and shape of a two-story building. Dusko headed into it.
I stopped, looking at the gleaming machinery around me. “Is this safe? It doesn’t look like something you should walk into.”
Dusko grinned. “Good instincts. It isn’t, but it’s safe enough now.”
I followed him out the other side to a double-door, large by human standards, but tight for an Infestor. The doors were thick, with small, plast-glass panels and they slid smoothly apart. There was power here.
“It’s a cuber, a pallet-stacker.”
“What?”
“A device for shoving cargo or trash into durable cubes.”
We now stood in a small room with a broad, padded seat for the Infestor operator facing a panel of waldos and other instruments, all oversize for human hands.
“What good does this do us?” I demanded.
“Idiot. We lure her in and crush her. I trigger these controls and it will compact her down to 1/10th her size. Even she couldn’t survive that.”
“Fuck you.”
“She’ll kill us.”
“She hasn’t. I think I can reach her.”
“She didn’t think so. She told you to run for your life.”
“I’ve got to try.”
“Have fun. I’ll wait here.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, tapping the laser barrel against my thigh.
“You should have used that on her.”
“Maauro’s reflexes are hundreds of times faster. Pointing a weapon at her would certainly have gotten us killed. I doubt a hand laser would do her any damage anyway.
“No, I have to reach her, somehow. We don’t even know where the ship is and we don’t have spacesuits to get out to it if we did know.”
I looked at the cuber. “Is there some way to set it so we could immobilize her?”
Dusko barked a laugh. “Do you see a manual lying around? A terminal we could log on? Perhaps we could ask the staff for help? Look, with a couple of days I might figure out how to do it. I’ve been around this kind of cargo machinery all my life, but we don’t have the time to learn this machine. She’s going to kill us.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I need time and distance to think.”
Dusko hesitated. I gestured with the pistol. I wasn’t leaving him here to attack Maauro.
We moved back out between the arms and hydraulic rams of the cuber.
Something went “whuft” past my face and slammed into the cuber behind me.
“It’s her,” Dusko shouted, backing.
***
The Maauro program waited until I had sighted the primary target to strike. My target lock dissolves and distance weapons flicker in and out of control. I miss my first shot. I elect to attack hand to hand. Biologicals are fragile, even the rebellious Maauro program cannot save them once I close in.
***
We fell back through the cuber, came out the other side and pushed the panels closed behind us. Dusko leapt toward the controls.
“Freeze,” I shouted, pointing the laser.
“She’s inside. She’s coming through,” Dusko said, blue eyes blazing. “We have to crush her now. She’s not your friend. She never was. She’s an ancient killing-machine executing a program.
“Get your hand off that lever or I’ll kill you.”
“Idiot! Imbecile,” Dusko raged. “She’ll kill us as soon as she gets in here. Use your brain, not your human heart. She has no choices.”
I shot him in the hand. It wasn’t mercy. I was afraid if I shot him in the head his hand might spasm on the lever. Dusko gave an anguished cry and fell back. I aimed the weapon at his head to finish him off.
The door slammed open and Maauro stood there. Her face had partially reverted to the corpse-like, waxen look I remembered from our first meeting. Black eyes, empty of anything, stared at me over fingers that I knew were projectile weapons. Her palm blades were extended. I was very conscious of the weapon in my hand.
“Hello, Maauro,” I said. “That is your name, you know.”
“I hope,” Dusko gasped from the floor, “that she kills you first so I get to watch it.”
I gestured with my head. “Dusko says you’re just a machine, a slave to programming.”
The face seemed to shimmer and for a second, her eyes returned to the beautiful aquamarine I wanted to see. The slack, waxy face firmed into its accustomed delicate lines. Then it was gone.
“I remember,” I said, moistening my dry lips, “the day you got angry with me. Do you remember too? I said you wouldn’t understand something about living beings. You said, ‘Wrik, I am a living being.’”
The eyes shimmered again.
“Time to make some decisions, Maauro. Time for you to either be a living being making her own choices, or to cut the charade and be only a killing-machine with no ethics, no morals, no capacity for friendship or love.”
Maauro walked forward and seemed to vibrate, as if some internal mechanism was grinding. A blast of heat radiated from her.
“Which is it, Maauro?” I snapped, suddenly beyond fear. “Who are you? Do I have a friend or not? Tell me!”
The ancient android’s eyes were flicking from black to aquamarine. Her body vibrated between black and the dark gray and orange. Maauro and the M-7 were fighting for possession of the body in front of me.
The heat from her beat at us. Dusko crawled backwards, clutching his hand. I held my ground, staring into the changing eyes, hoping desperately there was something there. Something that belonged to both of us. Something that said the universe still obeyed some laws and was not mindlessly cruel. Something that said Dusko wasn’t right and I wasn’t a dead fool.
A flechette shot past my face. I flinched but kept the laser pointed at Dusko on the floor. Maauro had to be in there fighting for her life; neither the M-7 nor Maauro could have missed at this range.
I slid the laser into my belt. “Maauro, I love you.”
The vibration slowed, and then stopped. The face staring at me had one black eye and one aquamarine one, as deep as an ocean.
“You’re my friend, Maauro. The first one Wrik Trigardt had in his new life. I’d been cast out by my family and friends before and I deserved to be. You were the first person to see any value in me.”
The black eye went green and her body changed hue to orange and gray. Her hair lengthened and flowed down her back. She dropped her arm.
“I am a living being,” she said in her beautiful, musical voice. “Though I was made, I claim my birthright to be, to do and to act within my own code—not one others have written into me.”,
“Maauro,” I breathed in relief.
“Wrik.”
“Yes.”
“I love you too.”
I walked over and put my arms around Maauro. She felt warm and smelled like ginger cookies. One day I would have to ask her why. Her arms wound around me: the left one moved slowly, carefully. It lacked the fine control of her right.
I caught sight of Dusko, who sat on the decking looks of confusion, disgust and amazement alternating on his face. I pulled the laser and started to raise it when Maauro put her right hand on mine.
“No. No more killing today, not even him.”
“It will have to get done,” I said, amazed and appalled by how easily it came out of my mouth.
“No, please. It’s not weakness or sentimentality,” she added, “but we cannot empty the universe of people who do not behave as we wish. If it is necessary, I will do it. For now, do not hold anything he did against him. M-7 was trying to kill you both.”
I looked at Maauro and realized that what I had told the Collector had not turned out to be true. Maauro had needed me and somehow I had managed to live up to that need. Maybe there was some m
easure of redemption for me, at least with her.
***
“What do we do now?” Wrik asks.
His face is drawn and his eyes signal exhaustion. I am ashamed that I am the cause of this. “When was the last time you had food or water?”
“About eighteen hours ago,” he husks.
“First, we must restore you,” I say, “then we will plan.”
“What about me?” Dusko asks, nursing his wounded hand.
I look at him, tempted to anger but checking it. I have no desire to be ruled by such emotions. “You will be tended to as well. Await me here.”
I race off. It is not a long journey before I find a water station and a suitable large container. The water is brackish, but I extrude a filter and render it potable. I then move on quickly to the last place I saw a dead Infestor. Reaching the corpse, I form sharp biting teeth and tear off large chunks. Factories in my body break the organic molecules down and reform them from desiccated meat into innocuous nutrient bars, removing some heavy metals harmful to human and Dua-Denlenn. I even put a pink wrapper on each. While Dusko would likely not care about the source of the food, I fear Wrik’s squeamishness. I could generate these bars from even more basic materials, but in this sterile environment it might take days. Also, I am using my other factories to generate bandages and healing gel for Dusko.
I carefully clean myself before returning to them.
They drink the water with desperate relief and eat the pink-wrapped protein bars without suspicion. Wrik even teases me about the wrapper color.
I tend Dusko’s laser burn. The gel numbs the wound, rehydrating and repairing the skin. It will take a Dua-Denlenn surgeon or some study by me to repair the damage to the hand. I have extruded a sling from my inner body and something else—a hair ribbon. I am Maauro again. I wear my hair long and I like bright, yellow ribbons.
“Thank you,” Dusko says, relief etched in his face.
“I wish no one pain.”
“I actually believe you,” he replies, “even if I don’t understand why.”
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1) Page 30
