Hellcats: Anthology

by Kate Pickford

  “Five units to lockdown. Prepare for lockdown. Five units to lockdown,” the alarm chanted.

  “Okay, Viz, my name is Kat.”

  It hackled again.

  “No, my name is…” Kat caught herself. “What am I doing? It doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here or when they turn off the life support, you’ll die.” The lights cut, and for a moment they were in pitch black, before the faint glow of the emergency lighting came on in the corridor. “Great.”

  Kat summoned a feeble glow from her hair, which flickered different colours intermittently. “That’s really fried. Let’s hope it lasts just a bit longer. At least there’s enough light to see by.” She opened her backpack, flicked the clip to Unhide and rummaged through the items which were now visible inside.

  “Four units to lockdown.” The alarms had stopped doing the full spiel now, which was a mercy.

  Tension was building up in Kat’s spine. “This will be unpleasant, Viz. Those assholes left us in here to die, and if no-one comes along…” She exhaled. “It might be a long time before we make it out of here.”

 

  A brief siren startled her. “Three units to lockdown.”

  The room was getting colder, fast. Kat laid her coat on the disgusting floor in the darkness and sat on it cross-legged. The cat appeared in the dim circle of light and curled up on her lap.

  Shivering, she took her emergency survival kit from her backpack: a heat-retaining blanket, and an oxygen bubble. She flicked the blanket over her shoulders, and laid the oxygen bubble next to her, unwilling to turn it on until she had to.

 

  That made her smile despite the cold. “My name is Katrina, but people call me Kat. Or Lady Kat sometimes, but you don’t have to do that.”

 

  Kat snugged the blanket closer over them. Her breath was a thick mist in the fading light of her hair. Some of the larger strands flickered and went out.

  “Two units to lockdown.”

 

  “I hope you come through this okay, Viz.”

 

  At least that made her smile. The rest of her hair gave one last flash and went dark. But they were not plunged into pitch darkness as she had feared. A pale blue glow shone from her left wrist, getting brighter all the time.

  Kat stared at it. Oh, man. The Eclipse. I’m not shielded from it. Still, at least this far underground it will contain the blast if everything goes wrong.

  The air got colder and colder, and the glow from her wrist got brighter. As the oxygen ran short, her breaths got more laboured, and she could feel the cat’s ribcage heaving. She picked up the breathing apparatus. Too short of breath to speak, she thought at it. Viz. Get your head by mine. For oxygen.

  The cat did not respond, but as she slid down the wall it clambered off her lap. She wriggled onto her back, and it lay on her chest, cheek by her cheek. She pulled the oxygen bubble large enough for both and lay panting for a few moments. Then with one last effort, too cold to even shiver now, she dragged the heat blanket over the cat.

  As the breath frosted on the top of the blanket, she stretched her arm out away from the cat, in a vain attempt to do it as little damage as possible. Still, if the cold got it first, it would not matter about the radiation.

  Varin was sitting in his study waiting when Stella came in.

  The android, indigo and sleek, raised a hand to brush back a stray strand of the nanobot hair haloed around her face. “The alarms show that Lady Kat entered the server room, but all sign of her disappears after she reaches the elevators.”

  “Hennam?”

  “Whereabouts unknown.”

  “And Kat’s ship?”

  “Still in the shuttle bay. The guards say no-one has approached while they have been there.”

  Varin slammed his fist on the table. “Nonsense like this is why she needs a crew, or at least a companion! She’s been getting more and more reckless with herself this last hundred years. It’s not good.”

  “She’s perfectly capable of looking after herself,” Stella ventured.

  He sighed. “I know. It’s just that when you are alone for so very long…it changes you. You forget that people care for you. And you forget how to care for them. I’ve lived a long time, Stella, and she’s the only one that’s been there from the start, even if we’ve never got on that well. But she can be pretty damn irritating. And always late at Eclipse!”

  “It sounds as if she is as drained as you are by it.”

  “Well it’s not like we have any choice in the matter.” Varin stood and walked to the balcony from which he could see most of the city below. “How long till Eclipse? If she leaves it much longer…”

  “I know. We’ve just gone into lockdown. There are less than six units till Eclipse.” Stella glanced up at the fierce brightness of the two suns as they moved nearer together. “We should go. It’s getting near.” There was a blip on her wrist display. She frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “An alarm…in the power system.” The android cocked her head on one side.

  “Can you trace it?”

  “Yes…it originated in the lower levels. There’s a power fluctuation” —Her eyebrows went up— “in room U744712. A signal. Binary code. Lady Kat is locked in there, apparently.”

  Varin swore. “Damn it, Kat, what the hell are you doing there?”

  Stella looked up at the merging suns above. “Four units to Eclipse, sir. Orders?”

  “Ready the chamber. There’s no time for you to go. I’ll fetch her myself.” He twisted the top of his wrist unit a quarter turn and flipped it up to reveal a blue jewel, set in his wrist.

  “Be careful, sir.” Stella warned, but as she spoke, he disappeared. She turned back to the console. “Right. Let’s get this thing warmed up. It will be tight.”

  Varin’s apartments took up the whole top of the tower which reached up into the heavens like a needle. The top three floors comprised one vast chamber in the middle, reinforced with plasteel and forcefields of all sorts, and the living areas circled it.

  As she had done on the previous Eclipse, Stella fired up the forcefields which both protected the chamber from the Eclipse and kept the forces within it contained. Then she cycled open the vault doors and stood outside the outer chamber.

  Five units to Eclipse now. There was a flash, and Varin was back, carrying Lady Kat in his arms, with a snarling feline crouched on her chest. He was gasping, and Lady Kat was very still, her skin blue-purple with cold. He staggered into the elevator.

  “Shall I shut the doors, sir? We have four units to go.” He nodded, breathless, and Stella closed the vault doors. “Will you be requiring anything else?”

  “We’ll be fine now,” he gasped. “You can deactivate for the storm. Thank you, Stella.”

  She opened the charging platform, clipped herself into the stand, and nodded to him. “I’m set to wake as soon as the storm abates, but if you need anything before then…”

  “The console. I know. Thank you.”

  With a thought, Stella sent the elevator down to the shielded chamber, and deactivated herself.

  Kat woke up to find herself, not on the charnel-smelling floor of her prison, but on a cushioned sofa in a bright pale room. “What…?”

  Viz was curled up on her lap.

  “You’re awake then.” A familiar voice startled her.

  “Varin?” Kat sat up.

  Viz gave her a poisonous look.

  She ignored him, wrapping her arms about herself. “How long till…”

  “Any moment.” He held out a hand. “Come on. It’s time.”

  Reluctantly, she took his hand. It connected with a jolt, the jewels flaring suddenly, and she h
ad strength to stand again. “Do you ever wonder about this? Who we are when we put the other chips in?”

  Varin sighed. “Of course I wonder, and of course it makes me uneasy but…we did this to ourselves. There must have been a reason.” Viz hissed and jumped to the floor as Varin pulled Kat to her feet, the gem in his wrist glowing more with each second they were in contact. “Whatever was going on, it caused both of us enough distress to offload that entire part of our personalities onto a memory chip. But with each Eclipse getting more unstable, and the way it makes the jewel react, this is the only place that can contain the radiation it gives off.”

  “And those memories are needed to control it, I guess.”

  They walked together over to the side table, and removed their memory implants, shutting them in a radiation-proof box. When they set it into place in the table, it withdrew under the surface. A panel slid over it, revealing another box as it did so. This new box opened to reveal the other pair of memory implants, the ones they only used at Eclipses.

  As she reached for the alternative memory implant, an older model with a personality bypass, Kat hesitated. She glanced at Viz. “Viz, there will be some hellish radiation in here shortly. Any implants you have will get fried. Are you organic?”

  The cat jumped up onto the table.

  “It’ll have to be the cupboard I’m afraid.” She opened the door on a high cupboard. “It is shielded though.” Varin brought a bowl of water while she bundled up a cushion and set it on the shelf. The cat clambered in. All her other implants, and Varin’s, went onto the upper shelf, and she shut the door. Viz settled on the cushion, staring through the glass at them.

  “Ready?” Varin asked.

  Kat licked her lips and nodded.

  The pair slotted in the new memory chips. They stood for a moment, as everything became nebulous and then solidified around them again. The plastiglass above them flared and darkened as the suns rolled into one bright light, which was echoed by the sudden magnesium-bright glare in the chamber, as the jewels in their wrists flared unbearably. The forcefields inside the chamber shrieked as loudly as the ones outside.

  Then the jewels began to dim to a more manageable level, as did the sunlight outside. Kat held out her arms and Varin swept her up in a long embrace. Kat rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s been so long… Why do we do this to ourselves, Varin?”

  He leaned his head against hers. “Because we couldn’t stand remembering any more than we could forgetting.” He glanced up. “And because the Eclipse is the only time we are not dangerous together. We only have such a short time…”

  She nodded and straightened. “Three days this time?”

  “Yes.” He kissed her temple as she stood next to him. “End simulation. Run programme twenty-one.”

  The furniture blurred and faded, and the room became a grassy field, with a little group of colonist’s domes nearby.

  “Mama! Papa! I found the brightest feather, look! Aliss is going to wear it in her hair for the party with her new blue clip!”

  Kat fell to her knees to catch the little boy up in a hug, tears coming to her eyes.

  Varin crouched to join in. “Did you, young mischief? And what does Aliss say to that?”

  Their son turned to sit on Kat’s lap and she wrapped her arms around him. “Aliss said ‘I like your feather, Harry,’ and I said she could have it and she said I could come to her party…”

  Viz watched from his cupboard in considerable confusion. The humans were acting like a mated pair, playing with their kitten. As time went on, the simulation jumped from child to young man to adult and then onto an old man with kittens of its own. But as he aged, the joy in their minds became more edged, and darkened to sadness. When the child, now an old man, died, they stood by the grave, hands entwined. Their hearts were breaking, to the extent that even through the tenuous link it had forged with the female, Viz was saddened. They finished the day with a meal with their son’s children, now already adult, and then Kat murmured “End simulation, please.” The rural landscape disappeared, and the humans curled up together on the bed. They wept together and spent some time just holding each other before they slept. Viz would have joined them, had it not been for the solar storm raging above, but little enough of him was organic that he would have been significantly damaged.

  The second day followed the same pattern. Kat rose heavy-hearted and swollen-eyed. Varin was quiet. Viz watched the humans follow their grandchildren and great-grandchildren through their lives, the simulations going on further, to their great-great-grandchildren.

  The third day, they did not run a simulation. They just sat huddled together on the sofa, while face after face flashed past on the holovid. Toward the end of the day, it finished.

  Kat leaned her head on Varin’s shoulder and they sat for a while, numbed with loss upon loss upon loss. “Varin…” She passed a hand over her face. “What if this is it? What if we never die? Ever?”

  He tightened his arms around her, dropped a kiss on her head, and for a moment they were both silent. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Then we are truly cursed. But nothing lasts forever, Kat, nothing. We were made like this by the explosion. The alien passed this energy, whatever it is, to us when he split the jewel. It makes sense that we must be able to pass it onto someone or something else, somehow. So all we have to do is to find out who and how. It must have come from somewhere, the jewel.”

  Kat lifted her arm, pale where her wrist unit was normally, and they both looked at the silver-blue mark on it. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s healthy to keep putting ourselves through this, too, reliving the loss of everyone we loved. Harry’s been dead for so many years now. Should we accept that and forget him? But… I don’t think I can, and even if we did, how would we merge these memories with the ones we put in the other chips? The people we are now must be different from you and I. I hope that life seems kinder to us. Or have we failed at this too?

  Varin shook his head. “I don’t know what to do about it either. But things are changing, Kat. Look at how much brighter the jewel has been, this Eclipse. If it goes on like this, something will have to give. I pray it’s in a good way, that’s all.”

  There was the sound of a far-off siren, and above them the watery light of the single sun became stronger again. Where the two of them had their wrists held together, a bright magnesium glow flared, becoming brighter every second.

  “It’s time.” Varin put his wrist behind his back.

  Kat did the same, rolling away and getting to her feet. The flare faded but did not wink out. “We have such a short time together. A day or so every hundred years… I don’t even know what the me on the outside is like anymore. For all I know, the pair of us might have turned into absolute monsters.”

  “I know. It makes you doubt yourself. But I don’t doubt Stella, and I know she would tell me if I did. Or if you did.”

  They returned to the little drawer next to the cupboard where Viz sat, and again the glow grew so bright that the cat had to shut his eyes.

  “I love you,” Kat whispered, kissing him briefly.

  “I love you, my beautiful wife.” Varin stroked her face with incredible tenderness. Then, with unspoken agreement, they each reached up and clicked their memory chip out of place, putting it in the box which sealed their old selves away for another hundred years. The other box presented itself and they inserted the everyday memory chips, reeling as the personality bypass was removed and their normal selves rebooted.

  “Is it over?” Varin looked up to see the growing corona around the single star.

  “I guess so, more or less.” Kat opened the cupboards and began to reinstall her implants, nearly jumping out of her skin when Viz sat up and mewed. “Sky-whales save us! I forgot you were in there!”

 

  Kat looked stricken. “Oh dear, and I didn’t feed him. Is there anywhere shielded in my quarters?”

  Varin nodded. “The lower levels have an extra lay
er of shielding between them and the rest. He should be fine in there. Would you like to share dinner this evening?”

  “I won’t, thanks. I’m exhausted. Whatever happens here, it wipes me out. Viz?” As the cat jumped down, she nodded awkwardly to Varin and, picking up her backpack, hurried away.

  She went into her chambers on the lower floor, spacious rooms in cool blue. It was a relief to close the door on all the chaos, both of the solar storm and the change of memory chips. Going to the kitchen, she ordered a plate of meat for Viz and a protein drink for herself. She downed the drink, grimacing at the taste, and disappeared into the shower where she remained for some time. Eventually, she reappeared wrapped in a fluffy robe and sat on the bed. “Was that enough food? I can get you more if you’re hungry.”

  Viz sat on the edge of the table and viewed her.

  “Yeah...that just freaks me out so much. And yet I keep coming back, every time there is an Eclipse. I keep trying not to but it just happens. Then I go in, swap my chip, and the first thing I know is I’m clipping it in again. But… I left myself a message, at the beginning and…”

 

  She reached for her wrist and stopped. “Damn it, those morons destroyed TX, didn’t they? Stella, can you roll my message from about 600 years ago, the one about the Eclipses, please?”

  Stella’s voice issued from nowhere. “Certainly.”

  A holo played. It was Kat, looking haggard. “I’m leaving this message for myself because what we’re about to do... It’s mad, I suppose, but we’re doing it for our own sanity. But I know full well that later on I will query this, so: Future me, past me is doing this for your good. Everything is so overwhelming and so…impossible to cope with, and it’s getting worse and worse. So we decided we needed to split off the past from the present and start again from now. I’m confident that this will make a big difference. But every Eclipse you need to come back to be the old you for a few days, just while we manage the solar storm, and then when Eclipse is over you’ll be new you again, and go off to do whatever you like.”