by C. Gockel
“Sixty’s out here,” Volka protested.
“Would Sixty want you dead or infected?” Ben suggested tightly.
Volka growled but retreated behind their line of saplings and raised her rifle to the cloud on the horizon. That thing had taken Sundancer, and it might take Sixty, too. If she lost him...Lifting her rifle, her lip curled and her nostrils flared. “If you don’t make it back, Sixty, I will murder you.”
“Volka sends her regards.” Carl Sagan’s thoughts piped into 6T9’s ethernet channel. The werfle was still in the backpack, safe inside his “sausage suit.” 6T9 was jogging with an industrial grade magni-spike gun in one hand and had a crate of spare rounds of said spikes under the other arm. Jogging in front of him were two Marines and Isaacs carrying the rolled up camo-netting between them like a rolled-up rug. Jogging was the right word. They’d sprinted to the abandoned pod, but the netting was long, and the terrain was rough with jutting boulders and ragged trees they had to weave between. Normally, 6T9 would be enamored by the view. He loved watching humans in motion. His Q-comm had given him the happy ability to look at any human physique during physical activity and imagine what that physique would be like in intimate activities. He liked all human physiques, and it was wonderful to contemplate the softness of adipose tissue and the strength of muscle and sinews. The Marines were rather extreme examples of the latter, and he would ordinarily be contemplating how those extremes could play out in various scenarios that involved considerably less clothing—but he was too worried about the storm clouds ahead and the prospect of a coming confrontation. He wanted to believe that if humanity were infected, it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. They’d still be humans, just with slightly modified goals—perhaps only a singular goal: to infect all other humans with their disease. But surely there would be time betwixt all that pestilence spreading for sex and food? He thought of the broken shell of the artificial world, and the world that was nothing but black waters. Somehow, he doubted he’d like an infected galaxy.
Carl’s voice filtered through the ether. “Volka says she wants to kill you.”
6T9 skidded to a halt in shock, processor whirring, trying to understand the implications of that.
“But she means it in an affectionate way.”
Sixty began jogging again. “Sometimes I don’t understand humans.”
“Sometimes?” Carl said.
The Marines halted abruptly, necks craned upward to the horizon. Sixty’s mouth dropped. “Birds,” he whispered.
“Oh, you didn’t know,” said Carl. “Yes, they are here to attack and infect.”
Sixty exhaled. He’d been right. “Move,” he said to the Marines. They took off at a faster pace, but Sixty’s Q-comm was sparking, analyzing the speed of the creatures’ approach. They weren’t going to make it to the outcrop in time.
“Dr. Isaacs,” Sixty said, sprinting to catch up. “You said there was a secondary entrance up ahead.”
The doctor nodded.
Sixty grabbed his arm, forcing the team to halt again, and said, “You and the other humans will take Carl there. I’ll spread the camouflage netting myself.”
One of the Marines, Hale, looked up at the approaching cloud. “You’ll need cover. I’m coming with you.”
Sixty shook his head. “I cannot be infected. You can.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for the mission and everyone else!”
Sixty stood stunned for a moment. Carl’s voice crackled over the necklace. “He’s right, Sixty.”
6T9 swallowed and met Hale’s eyes. They were dark brown. 6T9 didn’t know much more about the human than his name, eye color, and that he was a Warrant Officer with a specialty in explosives.
Carl’s thoughts filtered through the ether. “He is determined to save his team and angry at you for wasting time.”
To deny him would be to deny him his free will and endanger more lives.
“Right,” Sixty said, dropping his burdens. He swung the backpack around, pulled Carl out of the pack, and thrust Carl at Isaacs. As Isaacs and Ramirez retreated with the werfle, 6T9 threw the refill round of spikes into the bag, hauled it on, and slung an end of the netting over his shoulder. The netting was designed to withstand the most extreme climates, to conceal heavy equipment and research shuttles with holo technology, as well as to secure them to the ground. It was woven of metal wire and heavy. As Hale picked up the other end, 6T9 had to admit that it would have been awkward to carry it himself. Sixty and Hale headed toward the outcropping. The sky on the horizon was dark with the birds, and even though 6T9’s apps put them at 1.7 kilometers away, their shrieks were already audible.
The edge of the overhang was just 11.3 meters ahead. The way was clear. They had 1.15 minutes until the birds reached them. Every second of that minute seemed like an eternity. 6T9 was acutely aware of the crunch of stones beneath his feet, the blueness of the sky where there were no birds, and shouts from below. He reached the edge, dropped his side of the roll, and an instant later Hale dropped his. The next millisecond, the birds were upon them, twisting around 6T9 in a whirlwind. He heard phaser fire and saw it between the throng of birds swirling around him like angry leaves in a whirlwind. They didn’t attack him though. In his mind, Carl’s voice sounded, “It’s like Sundancer when we first met her! You don’t exist to them.”
6T9 looked around in confusion; the birds were attacking Hale in earnest. Dead bodies of birds lay all around the Marine, but he’d fallen to one knee, and they were pecking at his helmet and his suit as he struggled with his rifle. 6T9’s skin went hot, and his emotion apps kicked in. Roaring with rage, 6T9 raised the spike gun and shot the birds above Hale’s head.
“You can kill!” Carl Sagan’s voice in the ether was surprised.
“I can’t kill humans,” 6T9 growled, stepping over to Hale and beating birds off of him with the magni-spike gun.
Whatever he’d been struggling with, Hale fixed, and he shouted at 6T9, “I got this! Get the net!”
Lip curling in anger and dismay, 6T9 eyed the human’s suit. Tatters of it were billowing in the breeze caused by the beat of birds’ wings.
The stock of Hale’s rifle began glowing. “Go!” he shouted.
“Go!” Carl cried. “The others threw blankets over the front entrance, but they’re being torn to shreds.”
Eleven lives to Hale’s one. It was simple math that even an unaugmented human could do. The Marine gave a furious growl and aimed his rifle at the sky. A plume of fire erupted from it and mushroomed out at its apex. Birds screamed and fell shrieking to the ground in charred husks. “Go!” Hale shouted.
Spinning, 6T9 knelt over the netting and began unlatching the hooks that held it in the neat roll. He released the first. Refilling the magni-spike gun, he nailed that corner of netting to the cliff. In his mind, Carl said, “I’m collecting fascinating data. Although these birds are possessed, they don’t possess more than bird-brain intellect.” 6T9 unlatched another hook and began the process again. Carl continued, “They can’t read minds, and they’re not able to start fires or perform telekinesis.”
In the orange glow of the fire plume, 6T9 raced to the final hook. “They can, however, relay data to their central host,” Carl continued. “Which means—”
The fire plume vanished.
“—they—or rather, it—will figure out what you are and what you’re doing,” Carl finished just as 6T9 released the final hook, and above him, the plume of protective fire vanished.
Birds set upon him an instant later. He felt their talons on his suit. He tried to push through and unroll the net, but the birds blackened his vision. He had his eidetic memory and didn’t need to see, but the creatures buffeted his body so much that his motions became clumsy.
6T9 heard a human growl too close. For a moment, he could see Hale’s helmet was off, and he was using it to bludgeon the birds. 6T9 dropped and began pushing on the netting, but the roll was meters long and needed to be unrolled at both end
s.
“Carl!” 6T9 grunted, trying to unfurl the unwieldy thing. “We need help!”
Sparks erupted in the wings of birds, and Carl said, “There are too many of them, 6T9!”
17
Darkness Speaks
Twisting a branch over her head, Volka knocked a bird down with a forward twirl. Shifting the weapon to the side to catch another, Volka heard Carl say, “There are too many of them, 6T9!” There were birds in the cave that had made it past the Marines’ phaser fire and through their fabric, sapling, and duct tape barricade. She was too busy beating them to bloody pulps to ask him where Sixty was. She caught another bird in the breast with a quick forward thrust and broke the neck of a creature pecking its way through a hole in their patchwork shelter above Ben’s head. The job of killing the birds that made it through had fallen to her because she was really good at it. Years of stick fighting paying off again. Ben, by contrast, had an “app” that allowed him to accurately aim two phaser rifles at once.
Over the shrieking of the birds and the flapping of wings, someone shouted, “Should I use another flame burst?”
“No,” said Young. “Drains the charge too fast. We’re holding…”
“If the ‘bot doesn’t drop the netting soon, we won’t hold much longer,” someone said.
Volka agreed with him. The duct tape was strong, but the cave opening was filled with bits of thermal blanket and insulation as the other makeshift bits of the fortress walls fell to the birds’ attack.
The researcher and one of the Marines who’d gone with Sixty to get the netting had re-entered the cave with Carl in tow through a tiny side entrance that had been immediately filled by boulders. They’d brought Carl to the mouth of the cave, and now, inside his suit, his necklace crackled. “James! You must go to 6T9. He’s right overhead!”
“On it,” said James, ripping back a piece of duct tape in the corner and slipping through the resulting flap. Volka bit her lip, wanting to follow him. In her second of hesitation, a bird burst through another opening.
“Sixty’s okay, Volka,” Carl spoke the words into her head. She wanted to go to Sixty, but she was needed here. Shoving a rectangular storage container with her foot to block the place where James slipped through, she knocked the new bird down and beat it past when it was dead. Another bird came in, and another. They began to enter more rapidly, and men had to put down their weapons to fight them off. Volka felt a bird latch to her back, threw herself against a cave wall, and stepped on the bird with her heel, only to have another launch at her head. She struck it and saw two more latching onto Ben. She knocked one off of him but didn’t even manage to stun it. It shrieked and flew at her as she caught another with her hands and wrung its neck. More of the deranged birds flew in. Picking up her discarded branch, she whacked the one that was trying—thankfully, unsuccessfully—to pick its way through her helmet and knocked another away from Ben. She could see tiny tears in his suit. John had said the disease could be transmitted through humid air for short periods of time, through ingestion or inhalation of dust from the birds’ guano, and through blood from a bite or a scratch. The tear in Ben’s suit didn’t pierce the inner protective layer, and there was still his underclothes and his skin beneath that, but they were ridiculously outnumbered. She felt a mirthless laugh bubbling in her stomach. She’d made it all the way from Luddite Luddeccea to the ultra-technological Galactic Republic to die under the beaks and talons of glorified chickens.
No, they weren’t trying to kill her. They were trying to make her like them. With a growl, she redoubled her efforts. Another hole opened, and even as Volka cracked the skull of the bird that flew through it, another bird emerged through another opening. Ben abandoned his plasma rifles and reached for duct tape to attempt to patch it up. Near Carl Sagan, a bird’s feathers caught on fire. Around her, there was frantic swatting—and then the cave darkened with a whoosh, and birds shrieked in rage. Volka killed another gull, spun to catch the next with her branch, and found that her target had been trapped between duct tape and a sort of heavy tarp flung over the saplings.
“The android got the cami-netting up!” someone shouted, slicing the neck of a bird caught between the net and duct tape. Volka exhaled in relief, at once seeing why Sixty had wanted the netting. The space between the knots on the net was only a few centimeters wide—too small for a gull—and whatever it was made of was strong. Outside the netting, the gulls were enraged.
She exhaled in relief, and then someone said, “He’s bought us some time.”
Volka looked around the interior of the cave opening, now free of living invaders. She looked at the birds lunging at the exterior. It was only a matter of time. 6T9 had promised to be with her when she died. He’d thrown down the netting, but was he still functioning? “You promised you’d be with me…where are you, 6T9?”
6T9 lay atop the outcropping, flat on his stomach, safe beneath the plume of a firestorm streaming from James’s plasma rifle. He’d needed Hale’s help to unroll the bundle. The man’s face was hopelessly bloodied with scratches, but Hale gave 6T9 the thumbs up signal and bounded to his feet. “Let’s get out of here,” he shouted.
Nodding, 6T9 leaped up, preparing to jump over the edge. The protective plume of orange vanished.
“I’m out of charge!” James said at the same time Carl cried, “6T9, look out behind you!”
6T9 looked back, and his mouth gaped in a useless expression of shock. A single bird was swooping from the sky. Its wingspan was 7.392 meters. His Q-comm informed him unhelpfully that it probably had to dive into air currents to take off in flight, and then it informed him of the most likely target. “No,” Sixty said, sprinting toward Hale, James three steps behind him. Smaller birds pelted them, slowing their steps, and before their eyes, the enormous bird swept Hale away.
The other birds retreated. Sixty stood shocked, but James grabbed his arm. “We have to protect the others.” Sixty stared at him dumbly. James yanked him forward, dragging him over the edge of the outcropping. 6T9’s feet connected with the ground, and he looked up. He saw the enormous bird, just barely keeping Hale aloft, gliding to the valley floor, 2.93 kilometers away. In the giant bird’s wake, the other birds trailed.
“We can’t go after him!” James said.
“Listen to James,” Carl cried into his mind. “You can’t save Hale. He is infected, and he has other plans.”
The birds that had been attacking the shelter were gathering over Hale. He was at the center of a whirlwind retreating over the valley floor, now over 4.4 kilometers away.
“We must go after him,” said Sixty, taking off down the hill. He’d gone less than a kilometer when an explosion ripped from the valley, knocking 6T9 from his feet.
Volka watched through the netting in horror as a fireball rose up from the valley floor. The birds in the whirlwind above the Marine fell to the ground like ashes. At the epicenter, there was a crater, and from the crater fallen trees fanned out like dominoes. Fire followed in an orange and black carpet of flame and swirling smoke. Sixty, who’d been racing down the hill, was knocked from his feet, and for a split second she was confused—and then the shockwave came. The saplings trembled, dirt and rocks fell around her, but the cave held. James took off down the mountain. A moment later, he was helping Sixty to his feet and they were retreating to the shelter. The birds in the sky circled aimlessly above them.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Eh…err…that was a grenade?” Ben said.
“That was no grenade,” Volka said, her skin prickling at the lie. She might be an ignorant hick from Luddeccea, but she’d shared a bed with a Luddeccean going through military training. Grenades were for throwing into a room to clear it of enemies; they were not for flattening whole forests. The impact looked nearly as big as the exclusion zone by New Prime. There were fires, but thankfully, the wind was sweeping the fire down the valley, away from the cave. She turned and glared accusingly at Ben.
Ben lifted his
hand as though to wipe his face, but was hampered by his suit. He averted his eyes “They’re new…We’re not supposed to talk about them.”
Carl’s necklace crackled. “Little Boys are what you call those explosives. Clever name.”
Volka had no idea how it was clever, and her brow furrowed.
“They’re actually fusion devices, not fission,” said Ben, looking away.
And some of those words Volka did understand. She exhaled. They had some sort of device that was a portable nuclear bomb. Something the size of a grenade. Not a suitcase nuke, a “pocket nuke.”
“Hale has bought us more time. There are fewer birds now,” said Young.
Carl’s necklace crackled. “I heard his final thoughts. If you like, I will share them.”
For a moment, there was only the cry of the few remaining gulls, sounding frantic and confused instead of filled with rage.
“Yeah,” said Young. “Do that.”
Hale’s voice crackled from Carl’s necklace. “To Hell with this.”
“That’s our boy,” said someone, and there were murmurs of assent through the cave.
James and Sixty reached the fortress. They lifted the netting and slipped through.
A nuclear bomb would have destroyed even Sixty, but Volka realized his protective programming wouldn’t have let him do anything but run toward Hale and try to save him. The same programming made him feel like a failure when humans died. As he came in, Volka put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She couldn’t see his expression through her reflection on his helmet, but he nodded.
Someone said, “I think maybe Hale had the right idea.”
Volka felt her heart fall. Maybe he had. She would rather die than be infected. The darkness made her feel nauseous and made her hair stand on end.
