Into Darkness

by Peter Fugazzotto

  “We’ve got a mission to finish,” said Marley. “Huang Di Prime is counting on us.”

  Gomez did not hide his laughter.

  “My d-dear Dr. Plain, we meet… we meet… we meet again,” said Ragnar.

  “The thing is looping,” said Finn.

  “Who c-comes to pay tribute?”

  Patch’s VR interface was suddenly hijacked. The room, in ruins, immediately transformed. She stood in a cavernous mead hall. A Viking warrior, pale bearded and grim-eyed, sat on a carved ivory throne, slavering dogs growling at his feet. Behind oaken columns, men glowered with spears and shields.

  “An usurper has entered my realm,” rumbled Ragnar. His words shook the walls of the room. The ground trembled beneath Patch’s feet.

  He had transformed her as well. Gone was the exoskeleton. Gone the pain that burrowed deep in her bones. Gone the wrinkles and dark patches that spotted her skin.

  She was young again, dressed in ermine, garlanded with numbingly sweet jasmine flowers, her hair black and full of sheen.

  The others were similarly transformed. Gomez’s gun was replaced by a two-sided axe, his combat skin now draped furs and leathers. Marley perched sword in hand, dressed in a skirt of shimmering mail. Adams and Finn were in leathers and helmets, both impossibly bearded, with braids and twists of cloth in their hair. Even Penelope had returned. She was slim, veiled, in flowing silks.

  “He brought a traitor into my midst.” Ragnar’s fist cracked the ivory arm of the throne. “But I am the master of my realm and those who enter only do so at my p-p-pleasure…my pleas…pleas…”

  The transformation buckled. The mead hall disintegrated into the ransacked server room. The skeletal servitor on the makeshift throne spasmed, the fingers of its right hand snapping open and closed.

  “This is madness!” Gomez waved his rifle. “We need to get out of here.”

  “What happened, Ragnar?” said Patch. “What has Rom done?”

  The servitor’s head swiveled so loosely that for a second it looked like it would fly off its shoulders. “He’s cornered me. I c-c-can’t get out. My world reduced to this prison. He has infected the networks. I tried to counter it b-b-but … too late. I retreated. Here. A stronghold. But his p-p-poison consumes me. I’m dying.”

  Adams cursed. “I should have ended things long ago.”

  “Can we bring the colony back online from here?” asked Marley. “Do you have enough control of the facility to do that?”

  “Once… it would have been possible,” answered Ragnar. “Rule m-my empire from this room. But… he has cut my connection. Only here… do I rule.”

  “You can’t override him? We only need it for a short time to get a message back to Prime. Can you connect us again?”

  “He will t-t-tear me apart. Barbarians at the g-gates.”

  “So that’s it,” said Gomez. “We’re screwed! Stuck on this rock!”

  “The usurper controls the networks. He has isolated me.”

  “But we hear him through the our comms networks. He is broadcasting,” said Marley.

  “Yes, he controls the comms structure.”

  “But it’s not destroyed?”

  The servitor shook its head spasmodically, the human bones rattling against its metal skull.

  “Then we need to take it back,” said Marley. “We get to the control of the comms system, win it back from Rom, and bring the colony back online. Prime can send in reinforcements. We can achieve this mission. Bring the colony back to the corporation.”

  “The doors are locked,” said Ragnar.

  “No way to open them?”

  “I have the access codes.”

  “Then give them to us.”

  “Everything for a price.”

  Ragnar transformed for a moment back into the king but the image flashed and Patch shivered inside her exoskeleton.

  “What do you want for the codes, Ragnar?” asked Marley.

  “A simple thing. A trifle. A broken thing.”

  “No,” said Adams. He shuffled backwards, his hands falling on Penelope. “No! I know what he wants.”

  “What good is a king without a queen. How can Ragnar rule without another at his side? I want her by my side. The only one worthy to sit beside me. A queen already. I want Penelope. Give me Penelope and I will give you the access codes and the map that will lead you right to Rom, right to what you are looking for.”

  Forty-One

  “WE SHOULDN’T GIVE him what he wants,” Gomez whispered to Marley. His VR goggles dangled around his neck, torn off when Ragnar projected his mad world. He rubbed at his back. The pain was returning. “Another fucking machine I don’t trust.”

  He huddled with Marley by one of the servers. Finn and Adams crowded by the door. The latter clutched his pistol to his chest.

  Marley hid her face behind spread fingers. “We don’t have enough explosives to blast every door. We don’t even know where we’re going. The maps are messed up. The mining complex is huge. The comms station that Rom commandeered could be anywhere. We don’t have the luxury of time. The spiders will find us. They’ll hunt us down.”

  “Patch could lead us. She’s gotta know. She’s lived here for years.”

  The doctor had gone to Ragnar, kneeling awkwardly in her exoskeleton before the mad servitor.

  “We should blast him to pieces,” said Gomez. He toggled his rifle to missile mode.

  “You know he’s not in there, right? That servitor is only a tool. He’s somewhere else. In the network of servers in this room.”

  “Servers can be blown up, too.”

  “And you think we could destroy him before he seals the door and cuts off our air? How fast do you think your reaction time is compared to an AI network? Think he doesn’t suspect us? You don’t think he can hear our whispers?”

  “So we bow down to the machine?” said Gomez.

  “He gives us what we want,” said Marley. She rubbed the back of her neck. “We complete our mission and we get home.”

  “I don’t trust Ragnar.”

  “This isn’t up for a vote.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “It’s simple,” said Marley. She turned towards the two men at the front door. “Adams, Cap, come here for a second. Quietly. I’ve got a plan.”

  The captain hesitated. His gaze flitted to the servitor on the throne. He shared hushed words with Finn, who nodded and positioned himself between Penelope and Ragnar.

  Adams shuffled over. Blood curtained half his face. Gomez could not tell whether it was from a gash on his head or the spiders he had slaughtered.

  “What is it, Marley?”

  Marley answered with the butt end of her rifle against his temple. The captain dropped to the ground, his gun skittering across the floor.

  Marley turned to the king on the throne. “You got yourself a deal, Ragnar. Give me a map to Rom and the access codes, and you’ve got yourself a new queen.”

  Forty-Two

  MARLEY WAS ON her knees, a greasy cable plugged into the data port in the back of her skull.

  The data poured through the connection. Lines of code and schematics scrolling down Marley’s VR interface. She was connected again. Not with Huang Di Prime, not with the larger universe, but with the warped and degenerate mind of Ragnar. Even though she was only connected to a cordoned partition, she inhaled the data as it washed through her. It filled her, stretching to far corners of her mind. The whole of the colony was hers: the passages, the systems, the access codes, the loading dock at the far end of the colony.

  Then she saw something that Ragnar tried to hide. He had a direct data line to a deep space ship in a loading bay. A ship that could launch off the colony and transport them back to Earth. A way to escape.

  He had found a way to evade Rom. He could transfer himself to the ship and escape the colony. Marley wondered how much of his damaged self would transfer.

  “Trying to hide something from me, are you?” she asked.

&nbs
p; Gomez who squatted by the unconscious Adams glanced up at her. “Me? What?”

  “Ragnar has a ship. One that can get us off the colony. He’s been hiding it. The ship was his final bargaining chip. He’s transferring his self over to it piece-by-piece, small packages of data so Rom will not find out and attack. If his spiders cut the line, Ragnar would be trapped here forever.”

  “You know where the ship is?” asked Gomez. He pressed a gauze into the bloody gash on the captain’s head.

  “I know where Rom is.”

  “Marley, we’re losing here. We’re in way too deep. We should get off this rock. Nothing good will come of going after Rom. You saw what his spiders did to Orlov. Who knows what else he has in store for us? Survival first.”

  Marley savored the metallic taste of the data. Then it was gone. Ragnar cut the feed. With each passing moment, the memory corrupted. She needed to be connected again. Such emptiness to be alone with her own thoughts, the creeping self doubt, the unknown, a fear of something she had forgotten.

  “We have a mission to complete,” she said. She licked her lips imagining an eternal connection to the data. “Rom is our objective.”

  Forty-Three

  GOMEZ STOOPED OVER Adams, wiping the blood from his hands onto his pants. Marley had hit him too hard.

  “We should leave him,” said Finn at Gomez’s shoulder. “He’s going to be useless when he wakes.”

  The captain had been unconscious since Marley had clocked him. Gomez had not seen that coming. Marley was unpredictable. How far would she go to complete the mission? In the end, Gomez had one mission to complete, a mission different from hers: to get him and his crew off this rock. But he was failing. The ship had been destroyed, Hendo murdered, and Orlov as good as dead. He had not protected them. He had not done as he had promised.

  “We could carry him,” said Finn.

  “We got enough problems,” said Gomez. “As batshit as he was before, he’s only going to be crazier when he finds out we gave his box away to a robot.”

  Patch and Marley dragged the shell that held Penelope to a server complex near the throne. When they finished, Ragnar’s servitors wheeled out of the shadows and their thin metallic arms worked with a breakneck precision unscrewing the housing that contained Penelope and soldering and wiring her to the larger mainframe.

  “We can’t leave Cap here. Ragnar will kill him,” said Finn.

  Gomez shrugged. “He was never going to make it out of here alive. Not even sure if he wanted to.”

  “I thought we all stood together. All in and all out,” said Finn.

  “For the crew. The team. He’s not one of us.”

  “Hollow words.” Finn scowled. He spat on the ground near Gomez’s feet. “The crew’s not getting out of here. At least not in one piece. You led us into hell and you’re not getting us out. This is the end.”

  A red heat swam in front of Gomez’s vision. Those words burned. He saw the wreckage of their ship, Hendo falling to the bullets, and Orlov getting dragged down the hall. And he could not contain the fury, not when one of his own questioned him, and the rage raced right to his fist and he was about to bring it hard across Finn’s jaw when a sudden shriek stopped him.

  Orlov screamed in horror.

  “”Fuck! Fucking shit! I can’t feel my arms or legs! I can’t move! Help me!”

  She bucked on the ground, swaddled in the blanket, forgotten by the others. Gomez had brought her in the room but then had let his attention drift. She had been unconscious and they were safe enough. He had no reason to watch her.

  Gomez ran to her side and pulled the blanket around her. “It’s okay, Orlov. Everything is going to be okay. You don’t worry now. Everyone gets home.” He turned his head to Marley and hissed. “Get me a patch. Something strong. Something that will keep her under.”

  “She gonna wake to it at some point,” said Finn. “She’s gotta learn to face it. Our living hell.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Orlov. Her eyes rolled back in her head and then glared at Gomez. “I can’t feel my fucking limbs! What did you do to me?”

  By then Marley had rushed to Orlov’s side and slapped another sedative patch on her neck. After Orlov’s eyelids flickered to closing, Marley spoke. “Finn’s right. You know that, don’t you, Gomez. She’s going to have to know. It won’t be easy. But she can survive.”

  “That’s not surviving. It’s as good as dead.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Marley grabbed Gomez’s arm and shook him. “Life can go on. It can even be better.”

  “Are you alive when you are half a machine?” He tore his arm from her grip.

  “I’m alive.” She grabbed his wrist and dragged him closer.

  “But are you human? Look at you.” His wrist burned beneath her grip but, as much as he struggled, he could not free himself. “More machine than human. Your mind addicted to the interface. You don’t even want to be human anymore! All you want is to be connected to that AI again. He’ll eat your soul. He already has. Anything for your fix! Complete the mission! Doesn’t matter how many bodies you leave in your trail!”

  “And what kind of mercenary are you?” asked Marley. She tightened her grip. Pain seared up his arm and he fell to his knees. “The cowardly kind? The kind of man that shrivels up in the face of danger? Have you never been afraid before? And so ready to toss out one of your own when she can be made whole again?”

  “What kind of life is worth living?” Tears gathered in the corner of his eyes.

  “Better alive than dead.” She released her grip and flung his arm back into his chest.

  “Depends what we give up,” said Gomez, slowly rising.

  “Who are you decide whether Orlov gets a second chance?”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Marley, we’re never going to get a second chance unless we get off this rock. You drive us deeper into the lair of Rom and our odds of getting out of here alive drop by the minute. Fucking spiders! You saw them. He’s got an army of them. We can’t stop them! How long before we’re facing a wall of them? The EMP is done. What do we fight them with?”

  “You can’t make the choice for Orlov.”

  “Whatever we do, we can’t let her wake again,” said Gomez. He fell back down to his knees, his hands in his lap. He had no energy. He turned from Marley. He could not argue anymore. He needed to get out of here. He needed to get away. This was not the way the mission was supposed to go. Everything had gone sideways.

  “So we’re supposed to carry her, and Adams?” asked Finn. “Hard enough to fight the spiders when we’re fully mobile.”

  “Not leaving her here with the fucking machine,” growled Gomez.

  “I can fix her,” said Ragnar. The skeletal servitor rose from the makeshift throne. His head lolled, the servos clicking as his head leveled. “My surgeons,” he waved a hand to the servitors wheeling about the room. “They can work miracles. Rom is not the only one.”

  “No!” shouted Gomez. He charged at the servitor but Marley caught him by the throat with an icy hand, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him to the ground. He struggled futilely against her grip. “You can’t do this! Not to her! It’s worse than murder!”

  Marley bent so that her lips were close to Gomez’s ear. Her breath was hot. The sour smell of her sweat washed over his cheeks. “You can’t make the choice for Orlov.”

  Forty-Four

  MARLEY BIT BACK tears as Orlov thrashed beneath her hands.

  “What they fucking did to me. Animals! I’ll kill them all!” She squirmed beneath the wrap of blankets.

  Marley laid a hand on her chest. She peeled off the last of the sedative patches and in their place stuck on stim patches. Orlov’s pupils dilated.

  “You going to leave me to die? On this rock? Never see the stars again.”

  “There are choices,” said Marley. She brushed the blonde hair out of Orlov’s eyes.

  “Gomez?” Orlov called.

  Gomez stood by one
of the dented servers. His gaze averted. His head hanging.

  “There are choices,” repeated Marley. “We can give you a new opportunity.”

  Orlov’s gaze fell to Marley’s biometal limbs. “You offer me the armor of a soldier reborn? What price do I have to pay for that?”

  “Maybe later down the line the corporation might be able to arrange something. And, yes, for everything in this life, we pay a price. But right now I can’t give you limbs like mine.”

  Orlov tried to get up. But nothing supported her. Her breath sped up in agitation. “So what’s the choice?”

  Marley nodded her head to Ragnar, the robotic skeleton on his throne. The light behind his face shield had gone dark and he slouched. He looked as if at any moment he would slide off clattering to the floor.

  “What is that?” asked Orlov.

  “Ragnar.”

  “The colony AI? That’s what we came chasing after? He is a servitor. He’s not an AI. We made a horrible mistake. Gomez,” Orlov called, “you dragged me on this job. You promised to get me back in one piece.”

  Gomez laughed. Marley saw tears hanging in the corners of his eyes. “My word is worth nothing. But I won’t let them take your humanity away.”

  “Back off, Gomez.” Marley rose with her hand at her pistol.

  “This shit is going sideways,” said Finn.

  “You want your revenge?” asked Marley turning back to Orlov. “You want to get back at them for what they did to you?”

  Orlov’s eyes watered. “I’ll kill every last one of those fucking spiders.”

  “Here are the choices, Orlov. We can do nothing. Leave you here in this room. We go after Rom. Complete the mission. If we survive, we come back for you. Find a way off planet or wait for Huang Di Prime to send in reinforcements. But we might not return. Things happen. Or we take Ragnar up on his offer.”

  Orlov shook her head. “What offer?”

  Marley swallowed and continued. “Ragnar can give you a chance to be a part of the team again. Once we get back to earth, we can undo what he has done. I’ll talk to Prime about augmenting you.”