by K. T. Hanna
Mason is waiting for them when they get back to the apartment. He glances at Aishke and frowns. “You’re going to be late if you don’t hurry. I’ll be at my lab in twenty minutes. We’ll work on section C of the exercises Bastian sent for you.”
She grabs food from the cupboard and ducks out of the apartment, yelling her goodbyes.
“And you—” Mason points a finger at Sai “—James is waiting for you or will be in about twenty minutes. He wants to start the formation drills he’s come up with. At our best guess, we think we have another eight days before our scouting mission will be necessary.”
“What if they find us before?”
“Then we’re just going to have to adapt, aren’t we?”
Sai fidgets. She can’t seem to keep her hands at her sides. Everything smells too good, seems too bright. Her senses are heightened and her anxiety is off the charts. And the shadow lingers around the edges of her awareness again, making her second-guess her fitness levels.
She checks her body armor for the eightieth time and is equally relieved to find it all in place. This is important. Scouting to pre-empt being found might be risky, but if all they do is sit and wait they’ll be found in a matter of days anyway. Mason places a hand on her shoulder, and she yelps a little. Not having been ready for physical contact of any kind, she sidles out from it.
“Damn it.” She breathes out and in, trying to calm herself.
“We’re going to be fine, Sai.”
She nods, not believing a word he says. From his appearance, neither does he.
“In about twenty minutes, we’re going to load into our transporter and scout.”
Again, Sai nods, not trusting herself to speak. If she opens her mouth, she’ll probably start laughing hysterically, because right now, she feels a little hysterical. Well, that’s a lie—she feels a lot hysterical.
“We’re going to stick together and scout from our different stations to see if we can see what’s coming. You scout in your way and tell us if you find a spot where there isn’t something that shouldn’t be.”
The odd form of explanation makes Sai laugh, and it feels good to get out a bit of the pent-up tension. “Thanks,” she mumbles. “I needed that. I’m wound so tight I think I’ll break if I’m not careful.”
Mason looks at her gravely, his blue eyes a shade darker than usual. “I’m afraid you’ll break anyway.” He pats her shoulder again briefly.
“I’ll be fine.” And she will be because he made her say it. It was like someone having faith in her multiplied her chances of survival. She glances around at the other eight members of the team. There are ten of them in total, and she’s worried they won’t be enough. Against five Damascus and a Hound? With no domino ready to go with them yet? Who on earth thought this was a good idea? But she knows the answer, because she put the idea in their heads herself.
Their plan is to separate each member of the unit and take them out that way. They’re stronger unified than they are separately. It’s like they multiply in strength when they travel as a pack.
“It’s going to be crowded in that transport.” She wishes the dominos were ready, but they’re not. Not by a long shot. Mathur tried, but his best guesstimate is about another two weeks. They’re going to have to hold out that long, no matter what.
“You ready, Sai?” Mason asks quietly.
She wants to answer something like I was born ready, but the words stick in her throat, so she just nods instead.
“Excellent. Then let’s be on our way.”
It truly is crowded in the transport. She knew she was right but hadn’t thought she’d be quite this right. Luckily, her station is up in the passenger seat next to the pilot. Gives her the great advantage of not being stuck like sardines in a can with the eight hulking, brutish guys selected to be the brawn of the operation. And probably follow her to certain death, but in some scenarios, that’s the better way to go out in this encounter.
No one speaks. They’re all too busy manning their binoculars, trying to focus through the glass and sand beyond to see what’s out there. Perhaps a dust cloud, perhaps some other sort of movement under moonlight—she’s not entirely sure. All she knows is unless they’re close to them, they’ll never see them in this barren land of dust storms and tumbleweeds.
But maybe she can feel them. For hours and hours they drive, barely clearing the ground as they hover their way through the deserts of the UC. It’s dark outside, and night vision only lends so much aid. While their transport shields them from the sun, traveling during the day depletes reserve energy too quickly, so they wait the hottest moments out in their tin can. It makes her wonder how the Damascus travel. Do they have a vehicle? Will that vehicle also register as a black hole with her psionics?
So far, there’s no trace of anything suspicious. It’s not until the end of the second day that something untoward pops up.
She sits up suddenly and signals for Mason to stop the transport. After a minute or so of concentration, she points off to her left. “They’re that way. About a seven miles out.” The silence in the transport shifts to anticipation for everyone except Sai. The unease in her stomach flitters all the way up to her chest, making it constrict. She has to force herself to breathe evenly instead of gasp, and suddenly she’s afraid for her life.
Mason powers the engines down so that they’re gliding more than traveling. The constant dust rising off the surrounding plains can be tricky to navigate through. This part of the terrain used to be Kansas farmland, so there aren’t many pitfalls or mountains they can run into, just ruins of old turbines, some left over wood that’s almost dust, and the occasional nocturnal scavenger trying to uncover something from the sunburned landscape.
A few miles later they stop, and Mason adjusts his goggle settings and points directly in front of them. “There—see that?”
Sai squints a little, trying to adjust her own goggles, and gasps when they finally click. It feels like she can reach out and touch them, even though she’s fully aware they’re still a couple of miles distant. They’re sitting around in a camp-style formation, an odd parody of humans. One of them stands and the others follow suit, doing a strange stretch of solid metallic limbs as they start to pack up their belongings.
It makes sense they’d do their traveling by night and need to seek shelter during the worst hours of the day. The setting sun casts strange shadows behind them as they move.
“If we’re fast, we can surprise them before they pack up and come for us.” She squeezes the words out, still trying to get past their appearance. For some reason, she’d expected them to look like Dom—or, at least, similar to him since they were the first leg of the project.
But they’re nothing like him. Where Dom attempts to appear and pass for human, it’s like the Damascus revel in their differences. They have to be at least seven feet tall, adrium intricately woven around parody of a human exoskeleton, there’s something inherently end-of-the-world robotic about them.
Some still have remnants of the experimental human elements used in their construction—a glimpse of dried skin here and there, a tuft of hair—but that’s where any human semblance ceases. Their eyes are bright mechanical orange pinpricks in the night, and though they don’t seem to verbally communicate, their actions speak of some sort of inherent hierarchy and plan.
“This is bad. Mason, this is bad.” She watches the Hound as it sticks to its master’s shadow in perfect synchronicity. The lieutenant is formidable—the same as the rest but somehow stockier, built to last. The others are the fodder that strays in front of him. He’s the last stand.
Sai feels panic rise in her, a gut feeling she’s not sure they should ignore. “We need to turn and run now. We don’t have a hope against them, Mason.” She turns to him, trying to make her fears known.
He glances back into the main cabin, at the eight men they have with them, weapons and all. His brow furrows, and he looks back at her, tired bags hanging like hammocks under his eyes. “Wha
t makes you say that? These guys have been training their whole lives for something like this.”
She blinks. “You can’t see them? You can’t feel that power? There is nothing human left in them. They’re machines—all they want is to fulfill their orders and gain autonomy. We want to keep the lieutenant’s head intact. All they want to do is rip us apart.” She takes a deep breath and focuses, scanning.
The patrol stops its strange ritual of packing, and their heads move as one in her general direction. Slowly, their bodies maneuver to join their gazes. And Sai knows.
“They know we’re here,” she whispers, terrified. “We’re not going to have the slightest element of surprise...” Her voice trails off and she feels numb.
“It’s okay, Sai. We’re not all psionics, and we have weapons.” The transport stops and the men in the back move, quickly gathering up the pieces they’ll need. One of them walks over to the front. The name on his badge says Draylin.
He smiles at Sai and salutes her. “It’ll be fine, miss. James has been training us for years for something like this. Just do what you can, if you can do anything.”
“Just the Hound,” Sai mumbles. “I can only help with the Hound. The others can’t hear me.” The shadow leaks over her vision for a second, and she pushes at it, unable to afford it any thought right now. Her stomach clenches, and a sudden wave of nausea threatens to overwhelm her. Something about this is terribly wrong.
Draylin nods and motions the others to follow as Mason opens the hatch. There will be no ambush; there will only be battle. Sai stands up and follows, wondering what on earth sort of weapons these men have that they’re not terrified of the death machines in front of them.
The Exiled fire the first shot, a huge, booming fireball streaking straight for the head of one of the Damascus. It rips clean off, sparks flying, and lands about fifty feet away as ringing starts in Sai’s ears.
Sai watches the head roll briefly against the cracked ground. “Those sorts of weapons.” Things that could never be used in a city, ones that would make the artificial air catch on fire. But out here, the only thing to catch fire are their enemies.
Her feeling of relief is short-lived, though. The Hound reacts immediately and runs toward her. She takes her eyes off it just for a second to realize one of the Damascus is already in the fray with the soldiers, and when she turns her attention back, the Hound isn’t not there—until it’s right in her face.
Only her speed saves her from what would have been a rather nasty clawing. Its eyes hold intelligence, and from what she just saw, the little buggers can phase, at least for short distances. She struggles to turn around in time to avoid yet another attack and is suddenly grateful for the rigid training she’s been doing.
Even the speed her new legs provide her with is barely enough to stay ahead of the Hound. All of her moves are defensive as she faces off with it. The smell is atrocious, almost overwhelming, and the weight of their consciousness weighs heavily on her mind. So much she’s loathe to try and connect with it. There’s a distinct possibility she’ll lose herself in whatever abyss of darkness their thoughts leak into if she does.
Finding an opening proves decidedly difficult, but an inhuman scream off to the right makes the Hound turn its head just long enough for her to aim a perfect kick at its suddenly exposed neck. She puts all the force she can behind it, not only psionic, but her newfound physical strength as well, focusing all her strength.
The snap is sickening, and for a few moments, the Hound tries to fight its fate before it topples to the ground.
She smoothes bedraggled hair out of her face, suddenly feeling several scrapes and cuts she didn’t realize she’d received during the fight. But the pain fades away when her brain finally registers the battlefield in front of her.
There are parts of Damascus lying around, sparking and fizzing as the last of their power finds no conduit to latch onto. It’s hard to focus on that, though, when there are other parts—softer parts, human parts—lying around in the same vicinity. So many more human parts than machine. She swallows and wishes she hadn’t as the stench of blood winds its way down to her bowels.
Sai stumbles a few steps as she orients herself and looks over to the clang of single combat. Only two of the soldiers are left, and they stand in front of Mason, fighting off the final two Damascus, apparently ignoring the bodies of their troop in pieces around them. Their efforts are feeble and ill-matched against the brute force possessed by their opponents, but their actions are valiant and all to protect the prone form of Mason, who’s bleeding from a terrible gash to his upper thigh. Only four of them left. There’s no way they can stand up to two Damascus—no way.
Draylin severs the spine of the remaining Damascus soldier with a strange, saw-like device, but the lieutenant brings down a heavy, iron hand onto the nape of Draylin’s neck.
“No!” Sai screams. She runs toward them—too late. The crunch echoes in her head, and Sai falls to the ground, hands over her ears. Her breath comes fast, a rushing rumble to her ears, and she remembers what it was like to feel the power coursing through her when it first awakened, when she faced her final exam, recalls what it felt like to just let it roar out. Shadows dance at the edges of her vision, beckoning her, calling to her.
As the last member of their team stands valiantly above Mason and Draylin’s body, Sai knows if the Damascus lieutenant lands another hit, they’re all dead. She closes her eyes, reaches down in desperation, and opens the floodgates.
The surface underneath her is hard and unforgiving and extremely uneven. She cracks her eyes open and groans as she tries to move. Every single bone in her body aches, including her legs, which aren’t really her legs, are they? Gone is the rejuvenation of this morning, yesterday, whenever... Everything is hazy. As she pushes herself upright, her eyes adjust to her surroundings. It’s still dark, but the light is starting to show at the bottom of the horizon. The sun will be up in a couple of hours. At least she wasn’t out for long or she’d have been burned to a crisp.
It wasn’t a nightmare; everything she remembers is real. Nausea threatens to overwhelm her as she takes in the carnage. Body parts, both human and machine, litter the ground, scattered for hundreds of yards. It’s amazing what a mess seven humans, five machines, and a construct can make.
Sai rises slowly to her feet, ignoring the caked blood down the left side of her body, seeping through the armor, and hobbles over to where Mason lies on the ground, his chest rising shallowly. With a light touch of her finger, she focuses as much as she can and encourages his body to heal, just a little faster. Even with her own reduced ability, she frowns at his sluggish response. It takes longer than anticipated and her sigh of relief is involuntary as his chest finally evens out, breaths coming less shallow now.
It must have worked. That last-ditch, insane effort looks like it worked. She walks a few feet and kneels down by the other soldier. He’s caked in blood, but his chest still moves, very slightly. She reaches forward to try and trickle the remnants of her energy into the man’s wounds. There’s barely anything left in her reserves, and she has to divert some of it to her joints, but it fixes enough that he’ll be fine until she finds a first aid kit.
First, she has to check the lieutenant. She keeps herself carefully facing away from the brunt of the carnage and approaches the hulking piece of metal.
The head lies not far from the body and appears melted in ways it wasn’t before. She sighs and picks it up, walking slowly back to the transport, desperately conscious of the way her feet are dragging. It’s like her body knows she needs to replenish her psionic energy. She glares at the head again, highly doubtful they’ll be able to do anything with the kernel inside it. Perhaps some tests can be performed to figure out exactly what it is they can and can’t do in order to retrieve one.
It takes her longer than she’d like to clean and bind the wounds of the only other two people left alive. Her reserves are tapped, barely enough to help her power her legs, and it�
��s all she can do to keep it together. Every response is sluggish, and if she stops too long, the pounding in her head will lull her into sleep. Rigging the litter to get them into the transport takes a while, but the longer they stay here, the more danger there is of another team of Damascus turning up, and she doesn’t have the ability to do anything miraculous again. She’s not even sure she understands how she did it in the first place.
Making them as comfortable as she can, Sai climbs into the pilot seat and looks blankly at the controls. There has to be some way for her to do this. Casting her mind back, she tries to remember the movements Dom would make when he drove her to her old assignments. Her head aches, and she knows in the pit of her stomach how lucky they were to have any survivors. Without her desperately draining action, they’d all be dead.
After several false starts, she engages the engines and flips the shields on, hoping they’ll hold because none of them have time to wait for the dark. She sets the navigator to trace back to Alpha, relieved to have pulled them all back in the transport before the sun hit its most destructive stage.
Since the awakening of the Damascus, the streets are empty and most of the shops have been cleaned out of their wares. People aren’t taking any chances at a repeat of the Psionic Wars. They’re not risking the Damascus turning on their makers. The GNW are apparently the only stupid people around. Dom grins, both amused by his thoughts and glad that, for once, they’re not being slickly intertwined with the darkness inside.
All he has to do is survive long enough to defeat the Damascus and let people be free. Simple enough.
He shakes his head and clears his thoughts, maneuvering his body to get a better view of the new and extremely nervous replacement for Davis and Selwyn. Owen is anxious, so much that others seem to sense his anxiety levels and steer clear of him. But for all his strange social awkwardness, the man is brilliant. Potentially equal to Mathur.
