ALIEN THE COLD FORGE

by Alex White

  The door rips open and Anne Wexler drags him inside. She shuts it just as quickly and envelops him in a tight embrace.

  “Oh, my god,” she gasps. “Oh, my god. It’s you. I can’t believe it’s you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah… Yeah. I—the crew getting the server, they’re… Josep—”

  He nods.

  She pulls him back in for another embrace, then plants a hard kiss on his lips. When she withdraws, her posture is commanding. She has a shotgun, and through the chamber grating, he sees the bright orange of an incendiary round.

  “Don’t get any ideas about a farewell fuck,” she says with a weak smile. “I just wanted to make sure I got one more kiss.”

  “I hope it was good.”

  “It wasn’t. We can work that out later, though. We’re not going to die down here.”

  The contents of the closet are anything but helpful: cleaning supplies, a few scrapers, a portable power washer with a little tank. If they were dealing with humans, Dorian could grab the lye and stick it in the sprayer or something. Then again, firearms would be more than enough to handle humans. His grip tenses around the checkered walnut grip in his hand.

  “Agreed. What’s our play?”

  “We’ve got to get in contact with Lucy. We don’t have any wireless allowed in the SCIF, but there’s a comm in each of the labs. From there, we go to climate control, which is near the main access point. It’s sealed, with no windows, so the bastards won’t catch us there.”

  Dorian nods. “Got to be a few dozen snatchers out there. We won’t last five minutes in the open halls.”

  Anne pushes some of the bottles of chemicals out of the way to reveal an electrical conduit cover, magnetic bolts holding it fast to the station wall.

  “These go all through the SCIF,” she says. “Man-sized tunnels for the techs to make emergency repairs and pull new cables.”

  “Okay,” he says, pulling off the maintenance cover. It’s almost pitch black inside, and it’s unnervingly quiet. Dorian has no doubt that the creatures could easily squeeze inside if they chose. He checks the safety on his pistol to make sure he doesn’t misfire.

  “I’ll follow your lead.”

  13

  LOCKBOX

  ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION

  LISTENING POST AED1413-23

  Date: 2179.07.27

  (Unspecified A): We’re in-system.

  (Unspecified B): What about scanners?

  (Unspecified A): Our contingency took care of it. Indigo flag is flying blind.

  (Unspecified B): Good. Time to give these Weyland-Yutani fucks a taste of their own medicine.

  An alarm wakes her. It’s… her medicine alarm? She hasn’t heard that in ages. Marcus is supposed to take care of it before it becomes a problem. How long has she been asleep?

  Then Blue remembers. Her caretaker is gone.

  Getting her own medicine will be almost impossible for her after being reliant on Marcus for so long. Even though it’s just a few feet from her bed, she might accidentally pull out her G-tube or colostomy bag. She worries that she’ll administer the wrong dose, in spite of the fact that she has an intellijector for each med, because her eyesight is failing, and she can’t read the labels. Everything doubles and drifts, because of her demyelinated optic nerve and atrophied muscles. She wonders how long it will be before she never sees anything again.

  Her portable terminal rests across the room from her, where Marcus left it on a work desk. Even though she’s spent hours at that desk, with her resting body on the bed, the distance now seems insurmountable.

  She scoots her foot toward the edge of her bed, and her leg doesn’t want to cooperate. Even if it did, she knows it won’t properly hold her weight. Blue remembers the last steps she ever took—six years ago, at her apartment in Boston. She took a shit, washed her hands, made a bowl of cereal and then spilled it all over her couch trying to get back to a seated position. She’d cried when the caretaker arrived to help her into a motorized chair.

  What a wimp she’d been.

  If only she’d known how bad it was going to get.

  If she can just gracefully slide to the floor, she can get across to her meds and the portable terminal. She’ll get herself situated in the electric wheelchair, too, in case she needs to get around.

  Butt firmly on the bed, she reaches a toe down toward the cold floor, and after a long stretch, touches. She starts to move her other leg when her rump slides free, taking her to the ground in a graceless fall. She cries out as she bloodies her lip on Marcus’s chair.

  It’s been so long since she’s felt physical violence against her person. Her life consists of surfing from one wave of ambient pain to the next, and yet the blow from the chair waters her eyes. She loathes herself for her weakness.

  Blue claws her way across the floor on her side, careful not to let herself pull out the feeding tube, her catheter, or her bag. She hasn’t entirely lost coordination in her legs, and even though the muscles can’t keep her upright, they can push her along the ground. She reaches the desk and climbs up the side, eventually coming level with her arrangement of prescriptions.

  Sitting down on the desk she grabs the intellijectors, one by one, and does her thigh, her belly, and the back of her arm. Then she silences the medicine alarm.

  What the fuck is wrong with Dorian and the crew? It’s one thing to take away her surrogate body. It’s another for them not to send a doctor around to make sure she survives the goddamned day cycle.

  She checks her portable terminal. No messages. She has to get a signal to her benefactors so they can speed up the rescue, and—

  —or maybe she shouldn’t.

  What if they know she’s blown? What if they expected her to commit some sabotage to make their rescue happen, and they won’t come if she can’t accomplish the task? She can’t risk telling them the truth about the situation.

  Instead, Blue focuses on the one thing she can affect: Marcus. Sudler hasn’t come around to gloat about his victory, so she can safely assume he’s otherwise occupied. If she can get Marcus back online, maybe she can get out of here and contact her benefactors from the safety of an escape pod.

  To make this escape work, however, she’ll have to get the portable cipher drive, her meds, the drives with her research, and Marcus—all inside a pod. The cipher is hidden under her mattress. If she can get Marcus back online, she can easily steal her remaining supply of medicine. It’s kept in cold storage in the med bay. Kambili is in there, but that piece of shit won’t be calling anyone.

  Next comes her research. That will be at the center of attention right now, and Director Sudler has made sure nobody trusts Marcus. She can’t just go walking around in her android body, yet there’s no way to steal her data without it.

  When the Company first gave her Marcus, she secretly opened up some of his wireless data ports. It was an act of paranoia—one that no longer seems unrealistic. The ports wouldn’t respond to an open scan, but a targeted attack might reactivate him. Blue unfolds her portable terminal and begins typing.

  They should’ve come and searched her room after accusing her of malfeasance. They should’ve taken her portable terminal, tossed her bed to find the cipher drive, and confiscated any data sources she possessed. But they didn’t, so sure were they that she was utterly immobile, and she logs in with ease.

  >>Weyland-Yutani Systems MARCUS

  >>Trademark and Copyright 2169, All Rights Reserved

  >>Bootloader v1.6.5 BY DR_HODENT

  Basic Motor Functions………OK

  Basic Cognitive………OK

  Basic Thinking………OK

  Higher Thinking………OK

  Fine Motor………OK

  ISIS………OK

  OSIRIS………OK

  SET………OK

  RA………SUNRISE

  >>Marcus Online

  >>Last Connected Five Minutes Ago: 0829 2179.07.27

  She draws up short at the
last status message. That can’t be right. She’s been out of commission for at least a few hours. Has Sudler been ordering Marcus around while she was unconscious?

  “Okay,” she mumbles, and begins to type. If he really got into Marcus’s head, she won’t be able to access her pilot programs.

  //EXECUTE PILOTSTRAPPER.IMT

  Searching Local Neural Networks…

  …

  …

  The ellipses roll past, her heart beating in time with the appearance of each one. It’s taking longer than usual— often a sign that the program is missing. However, she isn’t sure how long it’s been since she’s had to reload her code from scratch. Maybe it’s always taken this long.

  She gasps aloud.

  >>AWAITING BDI CONNECT_

  Blue eases to the floor and crawls back to her bed, wishing she had made it to the motorized chair, muscles aching all the while. She reaches across to the brain-direct interface gear and pulls its gelatinous cap over her head, snapping the plastic outer visor tight across her nose. She taps a button at the side of the set, and strength begins to return to her limbs.

  She slips into Marcus like a swimming pool, all the discomfort melting away inside his skin. It’s cold here. She peers around, expecting to find synth storage, but sees frosty cubic packages lining a hundred shelves. Robots work diligently by the blue lights of their barcode scanners, moving the packages to and from various shelves.

  Blue blinks. She’s in the cold storage. But why?

  She runs her fingers down the bare skin of her arms, and though they’re freezing cold, there is no frost on her hair. Marcus couldn’t have been here long. She climbs to her feet and gauges the dimensions of the space. She’s in the SCIF, on one of the sub-decks.

  Blue needs to get out of here, get back to her room, and start sneaking her necessities onto an escape pod. If she leaves by herself, there’ll be a shortage during an evac, but the crew will find a way.

  No sooner has she thought this than red light stains the air and klaxons sound out.

  “All personnel, evacuate the kennels immediately. Containment failure. Repeat, all personnel, evacuate the kennels immediately.”

  * * *

  Blue takes some shortcuts in the run to Juno’s cage, slinging herself up pipes and leaping whole floors on the stairwell. She normally keeps Marcus’s superhuman abilities in check, since they tend to unnerve the crew— or make them jealous. She hoped she’d never have to field a statement about how lucky she was to have Marcus’s body.

  Now she eschews modesty in the face of crisis, vaulting across another bundle of pipes, then leaping between two catwalks to sprint for Juno’s glass cage. It comes into view, all bright lights and beige walls. She spies eight or nine members of the crew, frantically working at the different terminals. When she arrives, she slaps a palm to the door. Her synth body’s biometric access still works.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” Lucy screeches. “She ought to be under arrest! Get out! Commander, get her out of here!”

  Blue hadn’t noticed Daniel when she came in, but he makes his presence known. He’s suited up and armed with a pulse rifle and mag sling. Marcus might have superhuman abilities, but that rifle would punch through his brain case with no trouble at all. Daniel’s taut muscles coil.

  He looks up at Blue with cautious eyes.

  “I don’t know how you got Marcus back online, but you can’t be here.”

  “And you can’t fire those caseless rounds in here, Commander Cardozo,” she replies, “not unless you want to puncture the hull.”

  “You do your job, and I’ll do—”

  “I don’t have a job,” she says, interrupting. “Now just shut up and listen. You have to seal the kennels.”

  A shadow passes over Daniel’s face. “I know that. We’re doing it.”

  Blue takes a quick breath. This is going to hurt her just to speak the words.

  “And you can’t let anyone out. Those creatures… they’ll take advantage of any chance at escape. Through the vents, along the main passageway—they’ll get out the second they have the chance, and all of us will be as good as dead.”

  “Oh, that’s convenient,” Lucy says. “Director Sudler is down there.”

  “This isn’t about whether or not I keep my job!” Blue shouts. She doesn’t hold back, and Lucy recoils, her large eyes traveling to Marcus’s deadly arms. “You know what those things can do to us!”

  Daniel clears his throat. “Anne… is down there, too.”

  Blue falters, her confidence shaken. She knows what they have to do: destroy the kennels with extreme prejudice, but every time she tries to speak, Anne’s disappointed face pops into her mind.

  Of all the lovers in Blue’s life, Anne had been the cruelest, leaving Blue because she was “depressing.” Yet despite their icy professional relationship, Blue can’t imagine letting Anne die.

  “How many are down there?”

  “Eight people,” Daniel says. “We have to give them a chance to come up with something.”

  “It…” Blue swallows. Her whole world has come to the brink of collapse. “It doesn’t matter. If Anne is in there, she’s already dead. We have to lock it up. And I—I need to initiate the quarantine-all-kill. Lucy, make the announcement.”

  The protocol will sever the kennels from the station and drop them into the heart of Kaufmann, incinerating everything inside. Millions of dollars and eight human lives. It’s a worst-case scenario, one that will damage the orbit of the Cold Forge and necessitate an early evac. The protocol was designed for exactly this situation.

  Lucy’s rage has boiled away. Blue can see it in her eyes: Lucy knows she’s right. No matter what they do, they won’t be able to save those inside the kennels—not without jeopardizing the lives of those who remain. They could call for a Marines emergency rescue, and the soldiers would be there in four short weeks. The snatchers will have broken out of their confinement by then.

  “We have to do something…” Lucy says.

  Blue’s gaze drifts to the ground. “Lucy, it’s the right—”

  “Fuck! That’s not what I meant, okay? Like I fucking know they’re going to die! I just… like, isn’t there something we can do? Like, should we tell them?”

  Daniel nods. “I’d want to know. I’d also want to have a few moments of quiet before the end.”

  “They already know,” Blue says. “But maybe you’re right—you should say something.”

  Lucy leans down and clicks the intercom key, then lets off, then clicks it again.

  “This is Lucy Biltmore… To any crew inside the kennels, quarantine protocol is in effect. We’ve contained the outbreak by sealing off your area, but… there’s no way we can open the doors. If any of you are listening, if any of you can still hear me—”

  Lucy can’t contain herself any longer, and she breaks down weeping. Blue wants to join her, but she can’t—not while there’s a containment threat. She looks over to Daniel, who gives her a pained smile. He’s seen this before, hasn’t he? There’s something in his eyes that tells Blue he hasn’t just lost soldiers, he’s lost them slowly, impotently.

  “Commander Cardozo,” Blue says. “We’ve got to sever the kennels. It’s the only way to be sure. If anyone is still alive in there, they’ll… they’ll be looking for a way out. If they can get out, then…”

  He crosses his arms and arches an eyebrow.

  “You mean we have to send Anne falling into a star.”

  Blue shakes her head. “Please don’t make this any harder than it is. You don’t even know if she’s alive. And if someone opens a passage between the kennels and the SCIF, what are you going to do?”

  “It won’t work,” Lucy says, sniffing. “We haven’t rebuilt Juno yet. Someone has to get out there and trigger the explosive bolts manually.”

  “Then I’m going to suit up in the Turtle,” Blue says. “You going to help me, Commander?”

  “All right. Suit up. I’ll be your operato
r from control.”

  14

  SEVERANCE PACKAGE

  Blue mashes the final stage airlock cycle and the door opens to reveal the light of Kaufmann. She knows to look away this time, but the solar load still stings her cheeks and eyes. She spins and eases out in the Turtle, backing toward the star.

  As she clears the golden airlock doors, she glances right to see where Silversmile had opened up the heat shields in the kennels. She’ll have to range a lot further in the EVA suit to blow the load-bearing bolts. Once the section is severed, she’ll have to avoid it, or it will take her into Kaufmann, too.

  She shouldn’t be incinerating her future. Her research is probably in that module, along with the samples she needs. But this is what she’s duty bound to do in a containment failure. So she fires her thrusters in short bursts, moving along the outside of the kennels at more than a yard per second. She has to get this over with quickly, or she’ll lose her nerve.

  Anne is probably dead. There’s no way to get her out. Half the crew are still depending on Blue.

  She knows sadness, but physically feels nothing beyond the heat of radiation. A monstrous calm settles over her bones in the weightlessness, and she knows it’s because of Marcus. His physicality knows no fear, no pounding heart, no sudden watering of the eyes. He simply is, and through him, Blue will kill her only real friend.

  If it was only Sudler down there, she’d gladly blow the kennels free. She’d want him to know who’d done him in, too.

  Blue reaches the first manual junction. This is her first time atop the station with this view. Her eyes travel down the central strut, past the docked Athenian, to the crew quarters where her body lies. Working every day inside the serpentine tunnels of the kennels, it’s easy to forget how large they are, but outside, the enormity of the structure is inescapable. It’s like a giant wart on the outside of the Cold Forge. There are several dozen murderous specimens beneath her, ready to spread across the station like a plague.

  She fires a short burst of her jets and settles onto the hull, attaching a magnetic handhold so she has leverage. Blue grabs a tool from her belt and ratchets open the panel, which bears a written label.