Long Fall

by Chris J. Randolph

  The armored troopers did not. "Fire!" Captain Moreno cried.

  Yellow-tinted beams burst from their rifles and converged on the target's chest. Energy cascaded off in more bands than Kai could perceive, but the invincible thing marched on, nearly as deterred as a Rozom soldier sprayed by a garden hose.

  Kai tightened his fist, and cried out, "You have to retreat." But he didn't expect anyone to listen, and at that, he wasn't disappointed.

  The construct walked forward at an even pace while Kai prayed the troopers would retreat, but their bravery outweighed their reason. The machine drew its red hand across its body, and some of the troopers recoiled in fear. Then its demon hand struck and the armored troopers flew away, the force causing some of their suits to shatter and spray off in bits. The meat inside bent and tore, coating the wall behind in gore.

  Kai refused to believe what he was seeing, and he reacted too slowly. Three were dead before his feet left the floor, and more would follow in milliseconds.

  The fingers of his left hand danced and primed his electric knuckle guard. It siphoned energy from tissue as he leapt forward, and he placed himself between the biomechanical menace and its waiting prey.

  The construct's next attack came and Kai intercepted it, knocking the fist off target with his own carefully placed punch. Before the enemy could change strategy, Kai flowed through his combat forms, assailing the monster's face, chest, and short-ribs. He grasped the extended arm and spun himself behind it, then drove his charged knuckles into the base of the automaton's skull.

  Several hundred kilowatts of electricity lashed out into the enemy's nervous system, forcing its arms and head to jerk backward. It dropped to the floor, but immediately placed both hands down and raised itself up.

  The troopers had regrouped and again opened fire to no effect, while the Eireki construct concerned itself with Kai. Its helmeted head twisted around and stared hate into his eyes, and it produced a noise that shook the bedrock of his spirit.

  But he did not flee. Kai sank into a combat stance and waved the thing on, silently wondering just how long his tired bones could hold out against such a force.

  Rather than standing, the Eireki construct wheeled about on its hands and thrust its feet at him. He vaulted over of the attack and struck twice with blows that rocked the thing left and right.

  His feet touched down and he spun just in time to see the construct's riposte. He crushed time into a dense point and yet the attack still came at a speed that defied all reason. His programmed instincts flared to life and his body reacted of its own accord, twisting in place to evade the impact... and in that, it was partially successful.

  Kai flew back, tumbling end over end through the armored troopers. The force scattered them while he continued to flip, but he managed to right himself and land on one knee and the opposite fist.

  He released his grasp on time and it rushed forward again as the human troops resumed their fire. Kai prepared to dive back in when a dark-blue hand took hold of his shoulder.

  "Hold," Captain Moreno said, and Kai obeyed. It was a rare voice that had such an effect on him.

  He regarded the soldier whose squad was about to die fewer than ten paces away. "I have to stop it," he growled. In his own ears, he sounded like some kind of evolutionary throwback, a bestial precursor to the Somari people still yet to descend from the trees.

  "You'll get your chance," she said, "but you're the only weapon we have. Faulkland has other plans."

  Before Kai could break free of her childlike hold, Legacy's infernal gravity lifted them into the air and flung both into a transit tube. The hospital and its unfinished battle shrank away from him, and Kai could only watch in anger and frustration.

  Their trip was short, and at the other end they landed gently in a chamber which Kai had never seen before. It was long and multi-leveled with video feeds displayed on the inside surface of its white walls. They showed the rampaging construct from numerous angles, some zoomed in to dissect various features of the thing's body while others reflected the scene as a whole.

  Each of the several dozen crew were encased in grey armor with gold accents. Either they believed themselves to be the next target, or they had no idea where the Eireki construct was headed. Kai found neither option particularly savory.

  One of them approached him and opened its helmet, revealing the aged but unwithered face of Admiral Faulkland. Wrinkles hinted at a face that had once smiled a great deal in the past. "I've heard what you can do," he said, "but it's still hard to believe you're standing after that kind of punishment."

  Kai said, "Had the construct been more thorough, I would not be."

  Faulkland nodded with grim understanding. "You managed to hold your own when you reengaged, though. Find a second wind or something?"

  "No," Kai said. "I simply fought smarter." As much as some revered the first time doing something, Kai always preferred the second pass. That was where refinement began, and refinement in his eyes was divine.

  Faulkland's focus kept straying to the monitors, but there somehow wasn't a hint of fear anywhere in him. There was only weary resignation. He looked at Kai and said, "I need you to be honest. If you had all of our resources at your disposal, do you think you could beat it?"

  A certain tingle told Kai his mission-comp was thinking hard. After nearly an entire second, it relayed a series of scenarios to him, and he picked the one that spoke to his spirit.

  "Back in the laboratory, Legacy exhibited a useful behavior. She doused the containment chamber in some variety of inert coolant. Is it possible to lower its temperature further?"

  Faulkland nodded. "Yeah, she can take it down near zero kelvin."

  "Then it may just be possible," Kai said. With that, they walked toward the front of the room and made preparations.

  Chapter 36

  The Astronomer Who Fell Into a Well

  The Eireki construct blasted through one wall after another for the next thirty minutes, carving a straight line towards its goal. It left a trail of dead and mangled troopers behind it in numbers that simply boggled Kai's mind.

  It was a needless waste of strategic assets, but Kai understood why the Fleet troops didn't pull back. If they believed there was any chance at all of eliminating the threat, they would continue to fling themselves into its ravenous jaws until none were left standing.

  The monster reached its target virtually unscathed despite their best efforts, and Kai arrived several seconds later, accompanied by both Admiral Faulkland and Esperanza Moreno. He'd have preferred to face the menace alone but their involvement proved non-negotiable.

  They set down on an octagonal landing pad in a small ante-chamber, opposite a defensive wall with a hole tunneled through it. A large cavity lay beyond, crossed by twisting walkways and a tangled thicket of heavy cables. Kai could see the Eireki construct marching determinedly out, while a caged light throbbed further on at the chamber's core.

  His two companions spot-checked the sizeable cannons affixed to their hips, which were more powerful versions of the rifles Kai had seen earlier. He walked out ahead and waved for them to follow.

  Legacy's hollow-drive chamber reminded Kai of some Somari underground installations, which were slightly smaller cylinders set upright instead of on their sides. He'd penetrated two such facilities in the years before a unified government arose, and the familiarity gave him a dangerous measure of confidence.

  He turned to his teammates as they lifted up into the air. Their flight was stiff and graceless, quite unlike Donovan who moved with the deftness of a native animal. The observation gave Kai pause, but there was no other option. They would have to manage.

  He looked to the front again, then dropped to all fours and pounced forward. He sailed through the open air and began to swing from cable to cable, sometimes spinning around one to change course toward the next. This was much like how his forebears had moved through the trees, but modern Somari refused to do so after childhood, believing it to be primiti
ve and unsophisticated. Sinit-class infiltrators like Kai received special training, though, as their work was rarely confined to the ground.

  He could feel the ship's nearly imperceptible touch as he went, tracking him in anticipation of their plan.

  It didn't take long to outpace the monstrous construct's plodding progress, but unlike before, it now subtly reacted to Kai's position. It had finally come to appreciate him as a threat, and that realization further stoked the perilous confidence sparking up inside him.

  Kai hit a particularly large cable and clutched tight, then reoriented himself and prepared to attack. He signaled to his team, channeled force and heat into his legs and thrust out across the air.

  The enemy construct stopped and turned to face him while beams of searing light crashed into it. Kai landed on the catwalk with a roll, came to his feet and dashed forward while his momentarily disoriented target stumbled onto its back foot.

  Then the chamber's walls blasted jets of chilled biological plasma, forming a fog so dense that none of Kai's senses could penetrate it. Instead, his mission-comp analyzed the roll and swirl of the inert clouds, and statistically reconstructed the moving objects within.

  The instant before he crossed into frigid vapor, Kai commanded his muscle machinery to flare with power and his entire body began to glow like an incandescent filament about to burn out. Miraculously, the heat stabilized as he pierced the cloud's skin, and he managed to neither immolate himself nor fall prey to shock.

  A flickering spectre of the construct loomed ahead of him, blinded and confused by the sudden assault. It twisted back and forth at the waist in search of the impending attack, but its senses weren't sophisticated enough.

  One step away, Kai's super-charged muscles contracted and then burst out, driving his fist forward with a speed and force he'd never thought possible. At the same time, Legacy's gravitational forces adeptly pressed along the chain of muscle and bone, further accelerating his attack.

  His knuckles struck. The chamber echoed with the deafening crack of a one-tonne bomb, and the force of it flung the construct backward, trailed by spinning vortices of gaseous coolant.

  Kai jumped down and spun about the walkway, the massive chamber spiraling around as he approached the enemy's side. He was still inverted when he struck, kicking twice before returning to his feet, then he drove his elbow through its face.

  Legacy assisted him so artfully that he completely forgot about her influence; he could focus on the fight while she worked quietly behind the scenes.

  As the Eireki construct bounced up from the floor, it was already reacting. It slapped at the ground and launched itself back to its feet, and slid from there directly into a new attack pattern.

  Kai prepared himself and time congealed. The monstrous construct stepped forward with an excess of swagger and adopted an unfamiliar stance. It kept its chin low and raised its rear hand as a guard while leaving the front hanging loose.

  When it threw its first blind punch, Kai contorted to avoid the attack and sent his own strike around the offending arm and into the construct's facemask. From there, he trapped and locked the extended arm, then torqued hard and slammed it back to the floor.

  Still holding the appendage, he bent it back and held it as a lever, keeping his enemy safely pinned. Legacy's limitless strength reinforced him, and the Eireki machine simply couldn't overcome them together.

  Time melted and poured forth.

  "What now, Sinit?" the mission-comp asked, voice rich with curiosity.

  "We wait," he said, and hoped it would make a difference.

  It did, but not the difference he was looking for. Before Kai could understand what was happening, the construct pushed back against its own joint and dislocated the shoulder with a loud crack. That gave it just enough leeway to twist free of the hold, and it capitalized on the opening with terrible swiftness. Blows came in quickly, battering the inside of Kai's elbow, armpit, throat. Legacy could offer no help.

  An armored hand gripped Kai about the face, pressing at his skull with crushing force, and it flung him into a thick conduit.

  Things sparked and exploded around him while his vision was left a mess of flickering colors and darkness. Electricity wracked him, fouling his nerve pathways and causing him to jerk uncontrollably.

  The mission-comp came to his rescue. What was initially chaotic became serenely orchestrated, and the excess energy flowed along his bones and into the armored knuckle guard. The clever move bought him just enough control to roll free of the damaged conduit and out to safety.

  The visual errors retreated quickly and he relocated his foe, which had resumed its march to the hollow-drive. It was nearly there, and the two armored troopers held their fire for fear of damaging the ship's living core.

  Kai had no time to repair nor plan an attack. He had only desperation, but that was a weapon that'd served him well in the past. A battlecry welled up in his throat and surged out his mouth while he launched out across the chamber and once more into the fray.

  The construct casually jumped up to the hollow-drive's cage and climbed inside, where lights were now frantically dancing in fear. Kai reached the cage a quarter of a second later, grabbed hold and shoved himself inside.

  He tried to compress time but his neural circuitry was exhausted, and Legacy's coolant jets were out of range, so his body temperature spiked monumentally.

  There would be only one chance. It came a moment too late.

  The Eireki construct swung its fist back and drove it into the hollow-drive's transparent casing. A thin crack appeared, but the structure didn't give way.

  As the thing reached back to hammer the device again, Kai lunged across the last few meters and bashed his knuckles into the side of its head. Energy surged through them both like an angry god's rebuke, and all turned to purest white.

  Unconsciousness took him.

  ***

  The soft bliss of Marcus Donovan's dreams gave way and he was thrust into lucidity. He floated disembodied in a shifting green mist, and the voice of Legacy howled all around him in anguish and mortal terror.

  He scrambled to make some sense of the situation. His body lurked out beyond the edges of this place, flitting away from any attempt to grasp it, and his memory was a formless haze. But he was awake. Noncorporeal but awake.

  "Why'm I here?"

  Legacy was too overcome to respond.

  If the road to waking was blocked, he needed to find another path. He sent out riders that searched the expanse for open circuits, even a workstation to tap into, but only one presented itself. It was the link that bridged him to Legacy.

  Whatever was going on, Marcus knew it was an emergency. Something unthinkable was happening, and it required his immediate intervention. A dark feeling told him he may already be too late.

  A sea of mind lay on the other side, stormy, churning, and chaotic. It threatened to swallow him whole, and yet he had to do something.

  He stilled the core of fear that burnt brightly inside him and drove himself into the link. The green mist parted, giving way to a tunnel of streaking stars and the massive pull of a gas giant. He was immediately plummeting out of control, and try as he might, the fear would not be abated.

  He screamed and the stars screamed with him.

  Then the two were one, an imperfect amalgam that threatened to spin apart at any moment and be undone. He was the ship and Marcus Donovan at once, with only thin tendrils of naked desperation clutching at the mismatched seams.

  He was in a panic, but recognizing the fact was enough to lead him back toward reason. He could feel the fear, mold it, and with some effort place it safely aside. With it still itching at the back of his minds, he looked past and searched throughout his cavernous body for information.

  The smashed and bloody remains of many Eireki littered his veins. Arterial walls had been shredded around a wound that stabbed deep into his core, and at its end, the hollow-drive screamed in pain.

  His life energy lea
ked out as he drifted through the heavens, the shining Earth all the while beckoning him from below. But before he could sink into despair, his consciousness dove into the drive chamber and more closely examined the scene. The Yakara berzerker was there, brought to stillness but alive, with the alien infiltrator laid out beside it. Alex Faulkland and Esperanza Moreno hovered nearby encased in MASPEC armors.

  They were flying the way Marcus did, and it gave him a momentary flash of pride, but pride had to wait. His focus instead attacked the hollow-drive, washing over its shell with dozens of sensor organs. They found a single incomplete crack, but against all odds, the machine was intact.

  Legacy had begged it to persevere, and the hollow-drive fought its own instinct to self-destruct.

  Marcus whispered to the drive and touched it lovingly, and the peculiar device returned, huffing and panting, to calm. You're alright, he told it, you will heal.

  And soon its soul once again sang brightly within him.

  He sensed that as long as he didn't reach above half-thrust, the device should hold. They could figure out a more permanent solution later.

  His attention shifted from the chamber to the void that surrounded him, and the growing feel of atmosphere brushing along his belly.

  Marcus stoked the hollow-drive's fire and felt an immediate surge in his flesh. Dozens of muscles lit up within him, lenses designed to focus gravitic force in order to manipulate artificial wells. He unleashed them, and it felt like grasping and pulling himself across a satin sheet.

  Legacy and Marcus' thirteen-kilometer body began to rise. Good, he thought to himself, just a bit more and I can push us into a stable orbit.

  The hollow-drive's casing held, and little by little, its output crackled and grew. The great ship flexed and slid out away from the Earth's atmosphere easily... and then came a bang.

  Pain thumped in Legacy's forward arm, one of two structures that connected her primary hull to the eight-kilometer factory complex. Armor and meat tore away, and the blast pushed the two sides apart. He bent and strained, fighting with all his might to hold on because he couldn't lose the factory.