by Will Crudge
I am nothing. Shattered. Broken.
I spend the next several months in a perpetual state of severe melancholy. My brain’s chemicals are askew. I can’t find my soul. I am a husk of damaged goods.
Only Marble’s unshakeable empathy drives me to leave my bed. I haven’t seen the brilliant glow of the binary suns in the sky since I lost myself in the Rage. He brings me food. He strokes my hair. He even bathes me with washcloths and hand-soap.
I would have let myself die without his grace. I owe him my life. I hold myself responsible for Trixie’s fate. I should have stayed in that bunker. She would have been taken either way, but at least I wouldn’t have forced the enemy’s hand. My actions prompted their escape.
Marbles explained everything to me many times. It took weeks before I bothered to listen. I don’t know if it was the depression from the Rage nearly killing me, or if it was my own defense mechanisms that tried to numb me from the emotional trauma. All I know is that the more time that passed, the more I blame myself for her kidnapping.
He tries to explain that it was her plan the entire time. She knew that my Rage would take me if I tried to intervene. She wanted to be taken if it meant that I would be safe. She’d always known that she would have to sacrifice herself for our survival. She did what she thought would keep us safe, and I spit in her face with my selfishness.
Now I am a depressed sack of meat, and I have nothing to show for it but my own self-loathing. I couldn’t save the only mother I ever knew. The only mother Marbles actually had. I did that. It’s on me.
It’s his resilience that kept me alive. He doesn’t blame me. Even if he did, he never shows it. Sometimes I wonder if he hides his blame for fear that he’ll alienate me. I’m all he has left. Perhaps his logic is holding back the disdain he holds for me. If only to maintain some semblance of companionship.
I wrestle with this irrational thought process for years. It takes nearly a decade of reassurance and meditation to overcome them. I had almost become a victim of my own self-hatred, but Marbles is my rock. My antidote.
I never tell him about Kaylen. I’m not certain it actually happened. I became so mentally devastated by the surge of energy that it took years for me to come to grips with the fallout.
I bet you’re wondering what actually happened. I can only tell you what Marbles told me. These are his words.
“I didn’t realize you’d left the bunker until it was too late. I methodically lured the drones away and picked them off one by one. I blocked their messaging capabilities, but I couldn’t block their visual feeds, so I had to work fast.
When I took out the last drone, I was torn between checking on Trixie and coming for you. The choice was made for me when I got within a hundred meters of the back-side of the ridge. I picked up the energy signatures from a swarm of suits of powered armor, and I had to assume the worst for Trixie. It killed me to not investigate any further, but when I detected the bunker area was clear, I came back for you.
You were gone. I could have cried if I was capable of it. But the area was teeming with enemy troops, so I figured something had happened to spread them out. I hacked their feeds, and there was a standing order to hunt down a ‘female combative.’ Nothing was specified about your identity, but the order was clear. ‘Target is extremely dangerous. Engage in force!’
Being that there was only one human female that they didn’t bring with them, and factoring in the fact that you’re lethal as shit, I put two and two together.
I didn’t know where you were, and the reports were conflicting. I had to assume that the only ones who had spotted you were dead.
I couldn’t risk exposing myself, so I hid behind the rocks and scanned for your bio-signature. I never did pick it up, though. The Rage had changed your signature to something I’m not built to classify. It was something… alien, per say.
I spotted you leaving the ship. Your skin was glowing with some kind of energy that defied classification, so I assumed it was Primal Rage. All I know is that it comes from beyond this plane of existence so my third-dimensional faculties would be powerless to home in on it. I was stuck with visual tracking.
You just strode out into the open as if nothing were wrong at all. Your eyes were beyond glowing. They were beaming like brilliant blue flashlights, but you didn’t even blink. You looked as if the thrusters were at full burn, but there was nobody at the helm!
At first, they tried to get you to surrender, but you just ignored them. Some of them tried to tackle you, but you wouldn’t budge. One poor soul’s suit of armor began to melt against your energy. You were like a nude goddess just out on a relaxing stroll while hordes of troops tried to subdue you.
When restraint failed, they tried immobilizing you with leg shots and pulse blasts. The only thing they managed to do was knock away whatever unburnt shreds of sub armor you had left. The only thing that didn’t melt was your sword, and the ceramic pistol grip of some kind of rifle you must have been carrying earlier. I suppose the rest of the weapon melted, and you didn’t realize it.
I’ve never been able to detect the molecular structure of your sword, but whatever it’s made of, it seems to be impervious to your Rage. That’s my guess, anyway.
When immobilization failed, they pummeled you with everything they had. Nothing worked. You just stood out in the open with an expression of wonder on your face. The laws of physics didn’t apply. Even heavy slugs didn’t seem to knock you off balance. You were there, but not affected by anything around you. I can’t explain it.
Then you seemed to be consumed by a blinding flash of colors. My energy scan blew a circuit breaker, and I had to put my visual sensors into a full maintenance cycle before I could see again.
When my vision came back, and my backup sensor array came online, I saw nothing but scorched soil and a flaming frigate taking off. The ship escaped in one piece. They must have assumed everyone outside the ship’s hull was dead.
I found you unconscious. Your vitals barely registered anything, but I got you to respond to my voice. I’ve been caring for you ever since.
I can’t even bring myself to look outside. There’s at least a full company of dead troops out there, but there’s no point in burying them. Their bodies are burnt to ash, and only the heat-resistant shells of their armor remain.
But I have one more thing to show you…”
He did have something to show me indeed. The Rage must have been influencing me more than I realized. My memories were fragmented as a result. But apparently, I did something to ensure we’d always have a chance at vengeance.
When I was first taken by the Crimson fuck-heads, I planted a tracking beacon on their leader’s armor. I had already lost all memory of it, and my mind must have been completely gone while it happened. But the footage doesn’t lie.
As I was lifted up by the two stooges, their leader reached to grab my weapons. Somehow, the Rage took control of my floppy arm and slapped the micro-beacon in the inner seam of Peterson’s leg armor.
Marbles checked the Nova’s sensor array and confirmed that a standard UAHC beacon had gone active during the time. All we have to do is get off of this rock, and the killing season is open!
But watching the footage triggered something else in me. A memory. A sensation. I remembered what I felt when I encountered Peterson. Some kind of raw connection. It was as if he were one of my kind, but whose genetics were in its unrefined form.
It’s a new sensation for me. When my kind is first born, we need some artificial intervention to unlock our gifts to their full potential. It’s rare to sense an unrefined set of our genes. Rarer still to encounter someone in their adulthood with them.
This Peterson must be a traitor to our kind. Or more likely, the son of a traitor. Treachery against the Guild is very rare, but it does happen. Now the stakes are higher than ever.
A traitor has Trixie. A traitor must die.
THE OTHER TRACKS
“Wake the fuck up, sugar tits!” Marbles shout
s. He kicks me awake. I kick him back. I stub my foot. I am now awoken by pain.
“Fuck! I guess I’m awake now!” I say with a grimace. My pinky toe is on fire. Likely broken… again. My kind may be tough as nails, but our physical durability is often dependent on our mental focus to tap into ethereal reserves. Granted, I can’t really reach out across time and space to summon primal Rage anymore, but over time I have honed my other spooky abilities.
But I need to hone better. A broken toe will take three days to heal. Sure, I can harness the pain to fuel my drive for vengeance, but I also need to stand correctly to train.
“Breakfast is ready.” Marbles says. He says it every day. Our routine has been the same for years. It’s the only true comfort I afford… That, and the new sub armor that marbles managed to fabricate from a cache of repair kits he stumbled upon two years ago.
“Let me guess. Protein enriched plankton goop in a bowl?” I ask sarcastically.
“Yes.” He says, then he turns to look at me meaningfully. Devoid of facial features that give expression, I’ve mastered reading his body mechanics in lieu of his static metallic face. “You know, you don’t have to eat this garbage, right?”
“Yes, I do.” I say with no betrayal of emotion. I don’t let on that I’m slightly annoyed with him. He’s been trying to derail my rage infused path of self-denial for a while. He means well, but I need to embrace suffering.
“The stasis field still has hundreds of fresh eggs in there. It wouldn’t kill you to act like a human every now and then.” He lectures. I ignore.
“I need a spoon.” I say as I wave him off with my hand, and then look at him expectantly. I’m being a little dick-ish, but I’ve never been a morning person.
He hands me a spoon and then takes the seat next to me. I sit at our tiny dinner table, and he watches me eat. Coffee is not something I consider a treat, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. But even my grumpy-ass needs to be realistic.
The XT-80 only has another five years of anti-oxidant based food. Coffee helps to supplement this. And it fuels my rage. Notice I didn’t capitalize ‘rage’?
“I’ve been pouring over the attack data again…” Marbles starts to speak, but I wave him off. I get annoyed when he brings up the attack data. He’s been picking away at it for the last ten years but hasn’t found anything useful. I don’t know why he won’t let it go.
“Now I’m telling you to stop torturing yourself!” I shoot him a scowl. “You’re an advanced digital entity, remember? You couldn’t have possibly left anything un-analyzed!”
“What if that’s because I was looking in the wrong place?” He says in a childish tone as if to tease me about something.
“Where else is there to look?” I scoff. “You’ve got all the data that the cams and internal sensors picked up when the reactor was spun down, all the way until they left. The main sensor array’s memory got corrupted when we got the main reactor online. It’s useless!” I remind him. It’s the same argument we’ve had a thousand times.
Until it wasn’t…
“I did a subroutine parody check on some of my more vestigial systems while you were asleep.” He says with a head tilt. I just blink as if it was supposed to mean something.
“I never bothered to before. Especially since some of my original hardware has been rendered useless, or redundant. I was thinking about removing any un-needed mass to boost my speed, so I…”
“Get to the point!” I yell with my palms jutting out and facing the ceiling. I haven’t had enough coffee to deal with cryptic speech.
“Yeah, yeah. Relax.” He says as he gently pats my arm to get me to calm down. It doesn’t work. I just glare at him with maximum bitch-face.
“Spit… It… Out!” I say sternly.
“I apparently have a small bank of ROM units that are intended for nano-bot data collection.” He says.
“You don’t have a nano.” I say angrily.
“Yes, but the hardware was inadvertently rigged to my display.” He says as he rolls his chest screen thingy out of his chest. I tilt my head as I see the screen come alive. Its sensor array track data from the onset of the attack.
My eyes get huge, and I lean into a glare at it. “I thought this footage was lost!” I gasp.
“So did I.” He says with a half shrug.
“Is there anything useful here?” I ask intently as I watch the screen as if it were still in real time.
“Yes.” He says. The screen zooms in as he slows down the feed. For the first time in ten years, something hits me out of left field.
“There were two other tracks!” I shout. There they were. Only the track of the pocket-frigate broke off. The others simply disappeared out of sensor range.
“Exactly!” He nods. “Even my digital mind forgot all about them. I must have done some kind of brain dump, as you like to call it. Once the frigate came for us, I never gave the other two tracks any thought.”
“You, forgetting something?” I say in disbelief.
“I was processing a lot of data at the time. Running internal sims to conduct the course of action analysis, as it were. I had to blank out anything not pertinent to our situation at the time. I never suspected we would lose the main files when the reactor had issues, so I guess I never thought to factor them in.” He explained.
“Ok, well… how, exactly, is this useful?” I ask.
“Because I don’t think these other two tracks were enemies.” He says.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
He nods. “I’ve been running a tactical analysis on the whole feed. There’s an 86.54% probability that the pocket-frigate was chasing them down.”
My eyes get wide. My mind is racing. I pause to process the implications. Marbles babbles on about margins of error with his sims, and the resources he gleaned from rigging some junk together in engineering. I could care less. I’m lost in thought.
“That’s why we may need to go on a little adventure.” He says. I blocked out most of what he said leading up to that statement, but it caught my attention.
“Adventure?” I ask. He nods again. “What kind of adventure are we talking about?”
“The kind where we venture out to below the equator and find the crash sights of these other two vessels.” He says.
I just break out into a laugh. We’ve never had the need to leave the Nova. There’s been no evidence of human habitation, and we’ve got everything we need to sustain us for years to come. We don’t even know what lies beyond our sensor range. It’s a crazy proposition.
“That could be five thousand kilometers of trekking for a very low probability of ever finding anything!” I spout.
“That’s what I thought too.” He said with a chuckle. Apparently, he’s enjoying himself. I know him too well. He’s about to drop a bombshell. “But what if it was only fifty clicks?”
A LITTLE MORE THAN ‘FIFTY’
“Sixty-seven clicks is more than fifty, Marbles!” I say with a very rare glimmer of humor. I’ve been a basket case of rage for a decade, so this is a new feeling for me.
“To be honest, I was thinking more like one hundred and twenty, but I knew you’d never go for it if I told you that!” He chuckles. I slap him.
“Quit! I’m just kidding!” He says as he shields himself with his arms. My slapping doesn’t hurt, but he always plays along. “Sixty-seven clicks is still within a few clicks of the margin of error!”
“Well, enough chit-chat! Let’s go see this thing!” I say. We’ve been humping it for a few days now, and I’m eager to see my prize.
Marbles could never definitively located the other vessel. He assumed it was an escape pod, and that the main craft went into an erratic vector when the crew bailed. They likely didn’t survive, but we may never know for sure.
Apparently, the visual display made us assume that both tracks went beyond the equator. That ended up being a glitch. The escape pod was confusing the sensor unit and made the tracks appear to be following a
similar entry vector. This vessel’s true track data was logged in a separate file altogether.
It was certainly a civilian vessel, and Marbles believes that this ship’s crew was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were likely shot down to keep them from reporting a Crimson vessel operating outside of Crimson controlled space. Poor bastards.
The ship was a civilian freighter and was miraculously in one piece. It didn’t hit a rocky ridge like the Nova did. The crew may have survived if they didn’t panic and tried to use escape pods while entering the atmosphere in a meridian orientation.
We get within a few paces of the ship, and we can see the particle beam hits on the thruster array. That confirms that they were shot down. They may have tried to use the planet’s curvature to evade the pocket-frigate, but they may have gotten too close to the magnetic pole. We may know more if any of their systems are intact.
We searched for half an hour. It was slow going because of the warping of the bulkheads, but we persevered regardless. We’ve spent the last three decades in an even worse shipwreck, so for us, it was a light-hearted stroll.
Their systems were smashed. The commercial grade data stores were never rated to sustain an impact like this, so there was very little we could learn. The only thing we kept seeing was ‘LISD’ logos everywhere. Neither of us knew what that meant until we found an old-fashioned rulebook. On paper, no less.
‘League of Intergalactic Space Donkeys’
I am not making this up. From reading the rule book, we could only determine that it’s a racing organization. No mention of actual donkeys, though. That part is still a mystery.
Then a thought pops into my head. “We need to check the hold.”
“Well, I figured we would. What’s the rush?” He asks.
“Think, tin-man!” I scold him. “Maybe this is a racing team of some sort. What if there’s a racing skiff in the hold?”
I love it when I’m right.
EPILOGUE
