“There aren’t any animals,” said Three. “It’s all…plants. But plants aren’t supposed to act like this!”
“The Captain was right,” said Seven. “This whole world hates us. How refreshingly honest.”
“We are definitely not welcome here,” said Four. “You think this world knows we’re here to terraform it?”
“Don’t anthropomorphise,” said One. “Just deal with what’s in front of you.”
“We have to get to Base Three,” I said. “Power up all weapon systems. Remember your training. And try not to shoot me in the back.”
Well done, Paul, said my AI. Take charge. You’ll get through this okay. Paul? I wish you’d talk to me, Paul.
We strode forward, off the landing pad and into the jungle, and opened up with everything we had. I had an energy weapon built into my left hand. I fired it, and a huge mass of seething vegetation just disappeared. Good weapon, very effective, but it took two minutes to recharge between shots. My right hand held a projectile weapon, firing explosive flechettes. I moved my hand back and forth, cutting through all the plants in front of me like an invisible scythe. But my armour only held so much ammunition. So I used both weapons to open up a trail, and then stepped forward onto it and kept going.
Nine was right there beside me. He had a flame-thrower working, burning the thrashing plants right back to the ground. Two moved in on my other side. He had a grenade launcher. Lots of noise and black smoke, and bits of dead plant flew through the air. We worked well together, opening up a wide path before us. My armour was locked onto Base Three’s beacon, and all I had to do was head straight for it.
We all felt the shockwave as the Duchess of Malfi took off, throwing itself back up into the sky again, but none of us could spare the time to watch it go. We had to keep all our concentration on the plants trying so hard to kill us. They pressed in from every side, clawing and scraping and hammering at our armour, searching for weak spots, for a way in. The various fires we started never seemed to last long, and for every plant we killed there were always more pressing forward to take their place. The jungle had already closed in behind us, cutting us off from the landing pads.
We moved slowly, steadily forward, all twelve of us together, an oasis of calm rational thought in a sea of violence, heading for Base Three. I’d tried contacting them on the open channel, but there was no reply. I remembered the Captain’s voice, telling how Base Two had been found wide open and deserted…But I couldn’t think about that. Not when there were still so many plants to kill.
With my ammunition reserves already running low, I had no choice but to shut down my guns and fall back on the amazing strength built into my armour. I grabbed striking plants with my steel hands, tore them apart as though they were made of paper, and threw them aside. Some twisted around my hands as I held them, still trying to get at me. A long bristling creeper wrapped itself around my arm, constricting furiously, but I tore it loose with one easy gesture, crushing it in my hand. Thick and bloody pulp spurted through my fingers. It couldn’t touch me. Nothing could touch me. And it felt good, so good, to be able to strike out at a world that so openly hated us.
Two was pulled down by a mass of lashing creepers. They just engulfed him in a moment, crushing him with implacable force. His armour cracked in a dozen places under the incredible pressure. The creepers broke the armoured joints, and pulled Two apart. He died quickly, the plants soaking up his spurting blood before it even reached the ground. Seven ran out of ammunition, or his gun jammed. Either way, he just stood there looking at it, and the top of a tree came slamming down like a massive bludgeon and slammed him into the ground. All his joints ruptured at once, and blood flew out of his armour at a hundred points. He didn’t even have time to scream. We never saw what happened to Ten. We just looked around and he wasn’t there anymore. We heard him screaming over the open channel for a while, and then there was only silence.
The rest of us ploughed on through the jungle, killing everything that came at us. It was only two miles to Base Three, but it seemed to last forever.
We finally burst out of the jungle and there it was, right before us. Reassuringly solid, rising tall and majestic into the blood-red sky, untouched by the world it had come to change forever. There was a shimmering in the air around it, from the force shield. It made the Base look subtly unreal, as though we’d fought all this way just to find a mirage. But the energies the field generated were more than enough to hold the plants back, and we stumbled across a wide-open perimeter and entered the Base courtyard. The force shield had been programmed to let us through, and we strode through the shimmering presence like walking through a sparkling waterfall, out of danger and into safety.
A few plants got through the force shield by clinging stubbornly to our amour. We quickly ripped them away, tearing them apart and then trampled them underfoot until the pieces stopped moving. Some of the larger growths clung to our armour as though they were glued there; so we all washed each other with our flamethrowers, just to be sure. We didn’t feel anything inside the hard suits. When we were finished, we turned to face the main doors and found that gun barrels had appeared on either side of the doors, covering us. Possibly to assist us against invading plants, possibly to remind us that Base Three was ready to destroy any or all of us should the need arise.
Because the armour made us too powerful to be trusted. And because everyone knew that if you weren’t crazy before they put you in the suit…
The main doors slid smoothly open, and those of us who’d made it through the jungle stamped heavily forward into Base Three, tracked by guns all the way. Once we were all inside, the doors closed very firmly behind us. Human lighting, and a human setting, seemed strangely pale and wan after the extreme conditions of the planet’s surface. The Base Commander’s voice came to us through overhead speakers. Like the ship’s Captain, he was just a memory deposit imprinted on the Base’s AI. I doubted he was as happy about it as the Captain had been.
“Welcome to Base Three,” said a very male, very authoritative voice. Military to the core. Presumably intended to be the kind of voice we’d accept orders from. “Welcome to Abaddon. None of you can leave until the job here is completed. I have been assured that once the terraforming equipment has been assembled, and tested, you will all be picked up and sent…somewhere more pleasant. You can believe that or not, as you please. I see nine of you. How many left the ship?”
“There were twelve of us,” I said. “Three of us died just getting here.”
“Get used to it,” said the Base Commander. “Nine out of twelve is a lot better than the last crew they sent.”
“How many crews have there been, before us?” said One.
“That’s classified,” said the Commander. “But learn the lesson well. Now you know what to expect from Abaddon. Everything here hates you. Every living thing on this planet wants to kill you. The air is poison, the gravity is deadly, the radiation levels would fry your chromosomes. We are at war with the world.”
“Will we be allowed access to information compiled by the previous crews?” I asked.
“Of course,” said the Commander. “Study the files all you want. Profit from their mistakes. But all you really need to know is that every other crew who came here is either dead, or missing and presumed dead. So stay alert. And kill everything you see, before it kills you. Now: go to your quarters. Get what rest you can. You start work first thing in the morning.”
We all had more questions, but he didn’t want to talk to us anymore. Eventually we gave up and followed the illuminated arrows set into the floor, guiding us to our private, separate, quarters. We didn’t want to be around each other. We had nothing in common, except what had been done to us, against our will. No one ever volunteers to be put into a hard suit.
There was a common room, but we had no use for it. We had nothing to say to each other, didn’t even want to look at each other. That was too much like looking at ourselves.
My ro
om was a steel box, with a basic bed to lie on. No comforts or luxuries, because those were human things. My AI opened up the front of my armour, and I fell out of it. Or what was left of me fell out. A mess of tubes and cables still attached me to the inside of the suit, delivering nutrition and fluids and taking away wastes for recycling. I lay on my side on the bare bed, my back and all its attachments still stretching away into the suit standing upright in the middle of the room. Like a guard watching over me.
I breathed heavily, slowly, disturbed by how different the Base air seemed after the familiar recycled air of my hard suit. Seemed was the best I could manage; I had no sense of smell or taste anymore. I didn’t have much of anything, anymore. No legs, and only one arm. Half my torso replaced by medtech holding me together and keeping me alive. No genitals. Half my face gone, replaced with smooth plastic. The rest of me was mostly whorled and raised scar tissue. I lay on my side on the bed, my eye squeezed shut, so I wouldn’t have to see myself. I can’t sleep inside the suit; if I could, I’d never leave it, and never have to look at what they’d done to me in the name of Science and Mercy.
Are you all right, Paul? The warm female voice of the suit’s AI drifted through my mind. I was never free of her, even when I wasn’t in the suit.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Leave me alone. Please.”
You know I hate to see you like this, Paul. It breaks my heart. Or it would, if I still had one. I wish I still had arms so I could hold you. But I’m still here, still with you. Even if all I can do is comfort and reassure you. Be the one sane voice left in your head. You might be a thing in a hard suit, and I might be just a memory imprinted in silicon, but we’re still man and wife. I’m still Alice, and you’re still my Paul.
“You’re the voice they put in my head to keep me from going psycho,” I said. “Let me sleep…”
Why are you so hard to talk to, Paul? We always used to be able to talk about everything.
“That was then; this is now. Please, let me sleep. I’m so tired…”
Yes. Of course. I’m sure things will seem much better in the morning. Just remember: whatever’s out there, you don’t have to face it alone. I’ll be right there with you. Are you crying, Paul?
“Goodnight, Alice.”
Goodnight, Paul.
They dragged me from the wreckage of the aircar, more dead than alive. They saved my life, and then expected me to be grateful. They told me my wife was dead. Alice was dead. I was so badly injured they had to cut more than half of me away, and then they decided the only way to save me was to seal me into a hard suit. Only the really badly damaged go into hard suits, because the bond is forever. And the process is extraordinarily expensive. But the Empire has a desperate need for people in hard suits, to do all the really dangerous work on truly hostile alien worlds, so they’re always ready to cover the bill. And people who might have been allowed to die mercifully in their sleep wake up to find they’ve been sealed in a steel can, forever. Indentured for life, to cover the Empire’s expenses.
Is it any wonder so many of us go crazy?
These days, every hard suit has its own built-in AI, to interface with the occupant. To talk with them and console them, encourage them in their work and keep them sane. To help with this, the AIs are programmed with the memories of someone close to the occupant, someone who cared about them. A wife or a husband, a father or a daughter. Anyone who could provide a memory deposit. Everyone is encouraged to make regular deposits at the Memory Bank, in case there’s an accident, and the brain needs to be reinforced with old memories. The Empire doesn’t tell you that they have the right to those deposits, once you’re dead. They don’t want you to know. It would only upset you.
They imprinted my dead wife’s memories onto my suit AI from a memory deposit made some years earlier. She always meant to update it, but somehow she never got around to it. She had no memory of dying in the car crash. She had no memory of the last three years. You’ve changed, she kept saying to me. You haven’t, I said. And I cried myself to sleep every night, even as she tried to comfort me.
First thing in the morning turned out to mean five a.m. Base time, of course. With its two suns, Abaddon had a planetary cycle that would drive anyone crazy. The alarm drove me out of my bed and back into the armour, and then I followed the arrows in the floor to the transport ship kept inside the Base, where the plants couldn’t get at it. The ship blasted up through the top of the Base, through the force shield, and out across Abaddon to the unfinished terraforming equipment we’d come to work on.
We sat in two rows, looking at each other, strapped firmly in place. No windows, no holoscreen, no sense of where we were or where we were going. It was, at least, a fairly smooth ride compared to the trip down. The transport ship dropped us off in a clearing full of crates and half-assembled machinery, and shot off again the moment we’d all disembarked. The Commander didn’t want to risk his ship; he’d have a hard time replacing it.
For a while, we just stood there together, looking around us. Piles and piles of wooden crates and something really high-tech in the middle of the clearing, looking distinctly unfinished. It didn’t look like something that would eventually transform the entire planet, something that would tame the jungle and make Abaddon a place where people could live—where plants would behave like plants.
At least we had a pretty large clearing to work in. The ground had been specially treated so nothing could grow on it. It was grey and dusty, and solid enough that even our heavy footsteps sounded dull. The jungle had grown right up to the edge of the perimeter, and, once again, the moment we appeared everything went absolutely insane with rage. Every living thing strained forward, frantic to get at us.
I did ask why the terraforming equipment couldn’t be surrounded by a force shield, like the Base, but apparently the field’s energies would disrupt the delicate terraforming equipment. So it was up to us to defend it the hard way. Only three of us were scientists, specially trained to assemble the equipment; the rest of us were just grunts, trained to walk the perimeter and slap down the plants as they pressed forward. They couldn’t survive long on the grey ground, but it didn’t stop them making mad suicide rushes to get at us and the equipment.
So the six of us divided up the perimeter and walked back and forth, each of us protecting our sector. The plants surged endlessly forward, as though just the sight of us drove them out of their minds. We walked back and forth, shooting them and frying them, blowing them up and cutting them down, and still they kept coming. To preserve our ammunition, we quickly learned to meet them with the built-in strength and speed of our armour.
The plants lashed us with barbed flails, ground at us with bony teeth inside flower-heads, tried to force their way in through our joints, or just crush us under coil after coil of constricting creepers. We tore them up and ripped them apart, and our armour ran thick with viscous sap and sticky juices.
The violent colours and clashing shades didn’t get any easier to deal with. The light was still painfully bright, and the wind slammed back and forth so viciously our armour had to fight to keep us upright. We set fire to the jungle, but it never lasted. We blasted the plants with heavy gunfire and ravening energies, and they just kept coming. We tore the plants up out of the ground, with their roots still twitching, and still they fought the hands that held them, as though our presence on this planet alone was an offence beyond bearing.
There was a kind of sentience in the plants, in the jungle. I could sense it. They knew what they were doing. They hated us. The plants must have known they would die, that their continuing assault was suicide for every individual plant…but the jungle didn’t care. We were the hated enemy. We had to be fought. The plants came at us again and again, their barbs and teeth and thorns clattering viciously against our armour with almost hysterical rage. And all the time they were keeping us occupied, other plants were trying to break through on some unguarded front, to get at the scientists and their equipment. As though the plants kne
w they were the real threat. The six of us worked the perimeter, killing everything we came into contact with. One, Three, Eight, Nine, Eleven, and me. We didn’t talk to each other. We had nothing to say. Occasionally we’d overhear the three scientists on the open channel, discussing some technical matter. It might as well have been machines talking.
There wasn’t much left of my senses. Torn flesh and brain damage had seen to that. The armour replaced them with specially-calibrated sensors, channelled through the suit AI. So I could see and hear for miles, and the pressure sensors built into my steel hands were sensitive, as well as strong. It wasn’t touch, but it would do. I was isolated from the world, but I could still experience it. I missed taste and smell, but it’s wasn’t like I had any use for them anymore. It was all tubes, now.
My vision was sharp enough that I could see every detail, every colour and shade and shape, of every plant I killed. I could hear every scream and howl they made as they pressed forward, all the sounds of rage and pain and horror. I wondered, briefly, how that was possible. Plants didn’t have vocal chords. Wind blowing through seed pods, or reeds, perhaps…It didn’t matter. I was here to kill the plants, not understand them.
And killing them did feel so very good. I was strong inside my suit, strong and powerful in my armour. Stalks and flails and creepers tore like paper in my steel hands, and I could rip apart the largest plant with no effort at all. I broke everything I hit and everything I stepped on died; I smiled so very broadly behind my smooth featureless helm. Another reason why people don’t trust us: Because any one of us could do a hell of a lot of damage to people, if we ever lost control.
Three cried out suddenly, and I looked around just in time to see his hard suit disappear under a mass of writhing blue and purple creepers. They wrapped right around him in a moment, burying him under layer upon layer, until he’d disappeared in a cocoon of pulsating vegetation. And then they just jerked him off his feet and hauled him into the thrashing jungle.
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