Ravagers [03.00] Deviate

by Alex Albrinck

  With a rage-filled scream, Silver charged Micah, his right hand aimed at the throat of the man he knew as Will Stark. A clanging sound filled the wide corridor, and those nearest the two combatants jumped aside, exchanging puzzled glances, uncertain what they ought to do. Silver and Micah fell to the ground. Micah, who fell on his back, lifted his metal-filled knee, and heard the pained, high-pitched intake of breath as the joint collided with Silver’s inner thigh, narrowly missing a more sensitive area. As Silver gasped for air, Micah took advantage of the temporary loss of focus and seized the man’s right hand with a vice-like grip, twisting his own body to the right and pinning Silver’s right arm to the ground. Oswald, stunned, tried to rain blows down with his left hand; the contact led him to scream out in pain.

  Micah twisted the right hand and pulled.

  A loud popping sound filled the corridor. Micah held Silver’s detached right hand in his own and threw his left elbow into Silver, pushing the man aside. He stood and held the hand before him, turning around so all could see the detached limb. “Did any of you ever wonder why this man’s surname is Silver? I’ll show you.”

  Micah’s fingers found the edge of the skin-like glove that terminated at the base of the wrist and peeled it down, exposing a prosthetic hand formed of gleaming, silvery metal.

  “So,” Micah-as-Will intoned, drawing out the syllable and looking all those gathered around. “Which came first? The Silver name… or the silver hand?”

  The murmurs that filled the air, the stunned looks on the faces of onlookers, told Micah that his suspicions were correct. Oswald Silver had never told anyone aboard about his missing hand. Micah couldn’t help but wonder if such a detail, previously known, might have kept Silver off his own list of the Select. How ironic.

  He turned back toward Silver. The man’s face glistened under a sheen of perspiration, his skin purpling. A vein pulsed in the side of his neck, and if his gaze could kill Micah/Will without revealing even more shocking secrets… well, if Micah was actually alive, he’d be quite worried.

  “You.” Oswald Silver’s whispered word sounded more like a hiss. “You’ve always ruined everything.”

  Micah smiled and made a slight bow. “It’s what I do best.” He smirked. “You’d be quite familiar with that, having so many centuries of memories of me doing just that.” He arched an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you… Sebastian?”

  The last thing Micah saw was the high caliber bullet heading straight for his face. His sensors hadn’t detected the movement and identified that pattern quickly enough to enable a counter-move.

  The bullet burst into his brain. His eyes went dark and lifeless, his limbs and torso limp.

  He didn’t fall down, not right away. But Micah Jamison, posing as the human Will Stark, was most assuredly dead.

  Just as he’d intended.

  —23—

  RODDY LIGHT

  RODDY HAD AWAKENED aboard the ship suspecting he’d never leave it alive, and that if he did, it would be under duress.

  He’d not anticipated how right he might be, even if the circumstances he’d expected to unfold hadn’t come to pass.

  He used the handrails and bounded down the stairs, reaching the main cabin in two arm-assisted strides. The scent of death overwhelmed; the men he’d left unconscious here hadn’t been strapped in, and had suffered the same fate as Delaney. Roddy caught sight of another smashed temple and a leg bent at an impossible angle. He could only assuage his guilt through the realization that the men hadn’t felt a thing as their lives ended.

  He knew about the lockers; he routinely stored changes of clothing and specialty foods in one of them on the business trips with Oswald Silver, never before wondering why there were so many around the perimeter of the main cabin. He threw doors open, looking for anything resembling a metallic bodysuit, something that could serve as armor against the potential Ravager assault. With five men aboard, he expected that he’d find at least four Diasteel suits. He doubted Delaney would worry about packing a fifth for the prisoner.

  He opened the fourth door and breathed a sigh of relief. Two suits, with a tight flap running neck to waist, with glove-like fingers and heavy boots over the feet. A transparent helmet sat atop each of the suits.

  Roddy yanked both suits from the locker to the open floor, surprised at the weight. The ship’s floor reverberated under his feet as they landed on the ground. Roddy pulled the helmet off the first and tried to fit it over his head. Too small. He tried to kick the suit aside, yowling as the heavy metal inflicted a deep pain into his toes. He pulled the helmet off the second. A bit snug; with survival at stake, a perfect fit wasn’t a luxury he could afford. He pulled the front flap open, recognized the zipper below, and opened the front. He ripped off his boots and climbed in… and stepped out a few seconds later. The suit was too small, not for comfort, but too small to cover him. The owner was a man three or four inches shorter than Roddy.

  He pulled free and bounded to his feet, all injuries and pain now masked by the adrenaline-fueled need for survival. Where were the other suits?

  He ran to the remainder of the lockers, pulling doors open, moving on the instant he didn’t see another suit. He found a third and dismissed it immediately; the third man was fully a foot shorter than Roddy and with a slight build. He’d never fit, never get that suit closed. It wasn’t a temporary bit of survival, where he could just wait it out for an hour in a bit of discomfort. The Ravagers were, by all reports, now so widespread that he’d die of dehydration before they left the lands clear. No, he’d need to move inside that suit. Better one too large than too small.

  He felt a tickling sensation, a growing sense of dread creeping down his back. The Ravagers were getting close, if they weren’t already here; he could sense them somehow. Was the ship built of Diasteel? Would the machines consume it from the outside? Or would they infiltrate the crack generated by the crash and obliterate the ship’s innards and passengers, leaving only an empty shell behind?

  He glanced up and froze.

  The crack ran along the upper side of the ship, clearly visible from this angle. Bright sunlight breached that gap, blinding him briefly, but the sunlight disappeared behind a dark, oozing mass, slithering through the opening.

  Ravagers.

  They consumed nothing as they moved into the ship, crawling slowly and deliberately along both sides of the gap, but did nothing to widen the opening or begin dissolving the interior. Even as his panic levels soared, Roddy’s mind assessed the enemy. The Ravagers would infiltrate a target, wait to recognize that they’d identified consumable material, and only then begin the obliteration. No, that didn’t make sense. Were there specialties among the devices? Did they have scouts to fan out and identify new material for absorption? Did they have others designed to consume that material upon discovery? Perhaps others that turned the resulting dust into new Ravagers?

  If that was the case, he hoped there weren’t any consumers nearby.

  And no matter the actual operational approach, he had to find the last suit. Immediately.

  Delaney was the biggest of his four jailers, fully as a big as Roddy himself, perhaps even a bit taller. That meant Delaney’s suit was the one still hidden. Roddy knew Delaney would have a suit aboard; if Deirdre was alive and stranded among the deadly swarm, he’d be the one to go out and rescue her. No chance he’d let anyone else, especially not Roddy, have that honor. Delaney would use that move both to remind Deirdre who her true betrothed was, and to further cement his standing with Oswald Silver as the man who’d saved Silver’s daughter from the swarm.

  The image of Delaney’s smashed head returned unbidden to Roddy’s mind. So much for that idea, James.

  Roddy thought, wondering if his lack of movement further jeopardized his survival. Delaney. How would Delaney think? Delaney would consider himself the leader of the mission, and rightfully so. Would he demand all the trappings of the master of this ship? Roddy’s eyes flicked to the one door he’d not opened, to the sle
eping quarters of Oswald Silver.

  What better way to claim ownership of the ship?

  Roddy tried to ignore the growing dark stain on the upper portion of the main cabin as he raced to the door of the sleeping chamber and sprinted inside. He’d not been here since he’d covered Audrey’s lifeless body and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the drying blood seeping out of the deadly wound in her chest. Someone had been in here since; they’d removed her body and changed out the bloodied sheets. He glanced around. But where was Delaney’s suit?

  He spotted the tall wardrobe and threw open the doors.

  Relief.

  He had no room in this space to open and don the suit; instead, he grabbed the arm and dragged it across the floor. The metal rubbed against the carpet, and he saw and heard small sparks from the static buildup. He pulled the suit through the door and back to the central chamber.

  The Ravager swarm now covered the ceiling. The forward edges began sliding down the walls. Roddy gulped. He pulled the helmet off the suit and set it aside. He had to try three times before getting the flap opened; the mere presence of those machines set his nerves on edge. He let his mind go back to his training, to the techniques used to retain calm in the face of an assault by an armed enemy force. The machines were just soldiers from an opposing army. He could defeat enemy soldiers.

  With some degree of calm returned, he slid the zipper open and slid his feet into the legs, shimmying them down inside the suit. He’d let himself be creeped out about the fact that he would wear Delaney’s clothes later. With his legs properly placed, he reached his right hand into the applicable sleeve.

  The ship shuddered violently. The tail end tipped down, moving the craft from level to a decline of nearly thirty degrees.

  A rattling sound caught his attention.

  The helmet had no defense against the new ship angle and gravity. It rolled toward the walls, walls now half-covered by the advancing swarm.

  Roddy looked down at his legs. He wouldn’t survive without the helmet. He couldn’t move quickly enough to get the helmet in the suit. There was no other option here. He slithered free of the suit, rolled over, scrambled to his feet and sprinted toward the wall. He slid to the ground five feet from the edge, keeping himself as low as possible, bent down, and grabbed the precious helmet. He spun around into a sprinter’s stance once more, then fell as the ship shifted again. Instinctively, he pulled his feet away from the wall. He didn’t think the Ravagers would “fall” off the wall due to the reverberations, but there was no sense taking chances. It wouldn’t take many to prove him wrong… and that would be deadly.

  Roddy regained his footing in his socked feet and sprinted back to the suit, feeding his legs inside while holding the helmet with one hand. With his legs covered, he stuck the helmet between them and squeezed, then lay down and shoved both arms into the sleeves, wriggling his fingers into the gloves. He reached down, then realized the metallic gloves didn’t provide the level of sensory feedback required. He curled himself up until he could see the zipper and grabbed the end, tugging smoothly and cautiously up. The last thing he needed was a stuck zipper at this point.

  The odd angle also showed that the swarm had reach the floor. The dark ooze moved toward him.

  Roddy gulped. He lay back down and sealed the flap, then grabbed the helmet stowed between his legs. He dropped the helmet over his head and found the latches, which he sealed quickly. He turned around to check the progress of the Ravagers behind him… and discovered that they’d already reached him.

  He rolled to his knees. He had nowhere to go now, no way to escape as the swarm crawled over him. It was the most sickening feeling he’d ever experienced, every warning sensation in his body screaming. Yet the machines did nothing to him but block his sight through the transparent helmet. He knew they’d looked for gaps in the Diasteel suit, trying to find a way inside the off-limits suit to access his body. He felt his skin crawl, and didn’t know if that was his imagination… or if the machines had found the opening they needed.

  But nothing happened. He stood up, scraped the ooze off his helmet, and looked around. The swarm covered nearly every inch of the interior, and he watched the last gap disappear.

  He felt the ship shift once more, but maintained his balance.

  Were it not so thoroughly terrifying, he might find some kind of macabre beauty in what he watched unfold. There was no inefficiency. The upper tier of the ship dissolved above him as the landing gear and engines vanished below, in a curious step-like fashion. As he stood—feet wide, body braced for any sudden shift in the flooring—the main cabin both dissolved around him and sank beneath him. He felt himself dropping, not falling, and watched as the twilight appeared above. With the exposure of the nighttime, the machines turned color, moving from the dark oily shade to a silver luminescence, making their presence visibly apparent.

  And then it was over.

  He stood, knee-deep in the silver lake of machines swirling around him, staring around at the devastation. If he’d not known better, he’d think himself standing on an island in the midst of a giant, glistening sea. Yet he knew they’d touched down on land, land now devoid of any living thing, any recognizable features. Nothing but barren, lifeless plains all around, no movement visible save for the luminescent Ravagers looking around for something fit for consumption.

  The sheer hopelessness overwhelmed him. He sank back to his knees, then rolled to his side and curled into a fetal position, letting the grief and horror out in the tears he so rarely cried. He cried even for Delaney, a man who’d intended to throw him into this deadly lake, because Delaney’s loss made the sheer totality of devastation all the more real.

  He didn’t know if he fell asleep, but he finally regained a conscious control of his mind and limbs. The Ravagers had thinned out, recognizing the current lack of non-Diasteel material around. They hadn’t left, but their presence now represented little more than a glaze atop the solid ground.

  Roddy propped himself up, noting with interest that he didn’t notice the weight of the suit in doing so. He heard a faint thrum inside his metal cocoon, and wondered if the suit was more than just a simple exoskeleton. It must be; he’d been inside with the helmet sealed for at least an hour at this point, likely more. The Ravagers hadn’t found any exploitable gaps in the suit. Somehow, though, he remained alive, still breathing. The suit had some type of ventilation system, accompanied by mechanical assists to the moving limbs. It made sense in a strange way; Delaney couldn’t rescue Sheila in a bulky metal suit so heavy that he couldn’t move, nor leave the ship inside the armor if it kept him from breathing.

  He felt grudging respect to those who’d built the suits, and wondered if they were still alive.

  Roddy glanced at the destruction once more, then raised his eyes upwards, in the ostensible direction of the space station. That was the place where men like Oswald Silver could sit back and order this devastation while resting comfortably. He could order the deaths of those “unworthies” from a place those women and men had been educated to believe an impossibility.

  He gritted his teeth. “If I ever get the chance, I will ensure that every person who knowingly helped set this in motion suffers the same fate as those they’ve murdered with these machines.”

  He knew that meant he might have to kill Deirdre. He knew, at this point, that the only people remaining alive might be comprised solely of the members of the group he’d just vowed to kill. It meant, if he succeeded in carrying out his vow, that he’d literally be the only human being left alive, that humanity would go extinct. He didn’t know that a species capable of such destruction deserved a different fate.

  To wreak his own vengeance, though, Roddy must first survive. He needn’t worry about predators; the Ravagers would devour them, and they couldn’t hurt him while he was in the armor. He couldn’t live in the suit forever, though. He’d need to drink water and find something he could eat, and couldn’t consume either without unsealing the suit. True, h
e could suffer the discomfort of sleeping in the suit, and would train himself to ignore the stench that would come from the scents of sweat and bodily eliminations if that became necessary.

  But the suits were short term solutions because they didn’t provide means of eating, drinking, and eliminating without the risk of Ravager exposure. He had to find a more permanent sanctuary.

  He thought back to the information that Silver, Delaney, and the crew provided him, if indirectly, about the machines. They wouldn’t attack Diasteel… and they’d also stay away from water. Roddy found the sun and identified the direction due north. If the crew had followed their intended path, they’d be southeast of the old site of the Lakeplex and due south of the great lake, the largest source of fresh water in the area. He might find fish and floating plants for food, and would have available all the fresh water he could possibly drink. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to remove the suit in safety to avail himself of those opportunities.

  There was only one way to find out, only one possible move for him at this time. He started walking north.

  He learned that walking in the suit was a bit different than walking on his own. The amplification mechanisms meant the usual approach toward walking—in many ways, falling forward and moving legs forward to break the fall before repeating—would lead to one slamming face-down into the ground. It took only one such stumble before he learned to slow his stride, to exaggerate the act of lifting his feet as he moved them forward, to maintain his balance by using his arms. After five minutes he could walk well while paying attention. After fifteen he could move with only minor focus. After thirty minutes, walking in the suit became an unconscious skill. He surged onward.

  He used the time to revisit the conversations he’d heard relating to locating and retrieving Deirdre. They’d postulated that she’d head for New Venice—a spot he’d never visited or heard of—and adjusted the ship’s course accordingly. It was apparently south of the lake, well east of the old Lakeplex. Which meant that he’d walk to the lake and turn to his right, following along the shore until he found the location. He wasn’t certain why they bothered—wouldn’t this New Venice be reduced to dust like the Lakeplex? Why would Deirdre head that way? The answer seemed obvious when he accounted for the fact that those talking of New Venice had invented and set loose the Ravager swarm. They’d build safe zones, probably surrounded by Diasteel walls—or even domes—and perhaps set inside artificial lakes. It made sense that Deirdre would know about New Venice and would head that way, then. Personally, he didn’t know why they didn’t simply move the lot of their Select bastards off the planet.