Archon of the Covenant

by Hanrahan, David

  “Follow me closely.”

  It led her to an unadorned, steel vault door that swung open, wide, with a swipe of its coiled hand across a small sensor. The pathoton’s dimmed lights reflected the musty interior of a winding, steel ramp leading downward, into the earth. The gradient lit up with a succession of incandescent lights and the pathoton raced ahead, descending into the depths. Becca followed, sprinting down the ramp as fast as she could, gripping at the rails as she pinballed into the netherworld. Her thoughts careened from one question to the next, unanswered. Her soggy footsteps trailed after the whirring tires of the pathoton as they wound down the ramp.

  They stopped at a landing connected on opposite sides with a reinforced cableway stretching from one direction to the next. The long, industrial passage began to rattle and plumes of oxygen and steam erupted from ventilation shafts running along the tunnel. Long fluorescent lamps lit up overhead. The pathoton led Becca down the clanking cableway before finally coming to the forward silo landing. The main antechamber loomed before them, shrouded in darkness. From several floors below, a series of orange lights sparked in a serpentine crawl, igniting the gigantic vault in a soft glow. The payload came into view. It was no missile – the silo housed a towering, three-stage carrier rocket. A heavy-lift launch vehicle. The floodlight above the landing lit the upper fairing and military serial stretching around the cylindrical wall. The model designation was emblazoned down the center body in block, vertical letters:

  ARCHON V

  The pathoton reached out to an access panel on the wall beside them and flipped a switch. A connecting platform began to slowly extend underneath the landing, locking into the fairing. A series of small, oval windows went around the payload and a light clicked inside, illuminating the inside of the rocket. A face peered out from within. Becca’s eyes locked on a Latino boy who was looking out. He pressed his hand against the small window. The pathoton led Becca across the walkway and opened the fairing access door. Inside the payload, four children, about Becca’s age, were snugly fastened into seats circling the inside payload walls. An empty seat was directly across from Becca as she approached the access door. She looked around at the other passengers. They were terrified. The boy Becca saw looked at her and pleaded:

  “Oye! Ayudame! Me siento tanto miedo. Por favor, por favor. Necesitamos a salir!”

  The boy broke down sobbing and the other kids began to cry as well. The pathoton looked down at Becca and pointed at the seat, commanding her in its broken vocoder:

  “Sit down and buckle up.”

  Becca crossed into the payload, crossing over a tangle of wrapped cables in the floor of the module and found her open seat. As she buckled in, she looked back at the pathoton, which was already back at the access panel and punching in a series of commands on the vertical keypad. Becca and her fellow passengers heard a low, grinding screech coming from the upper levels of the silo. Once again, Becca smelled the sweet vapor of creosote and rain wafting over the air. Just outside the access door, a series of raindrops fell on the walkway. The massive closure doors were opening above them. The pathoton wheeled back over to the access panel, clasping its hands around the thick, titanium door, looking back inside at the passengers. Becca fidgeted with her seatbelt, pulling it taught, before looking out at the machine on the walkway – its headless torso leaned in to the shuttle pod, arachnid sensors twisting around, scanning the inside. It gently pulled out of the payload but then jerked suddenly, tilting its body upwards at the closure doors, startled by something in the loft. In the low din of the storm raging outside, and light patter of raindrops in the jetway, Becca could hear them once more - the revins were gathered at the top of the silo, screaming into the cavernous depths of the cold, dim vault below. They crawled over the exhaust vanes and paced nervously near the edge of the silo doors, peering down at the walkway where the pathoton stood. They breathed in deeply, smelling the air. They pointed down at the landing, growing more animated. Others were gathering behind them. The mob swelled. They pushed at each other, elbowing closer, before finally one fell, careening off the nose and tumbling end over end, past the pathoton on the walkway and into the abyss below. The pathoton rushed back over to the access panel and furiously punched in a series of commands on the keypad. Becca looked outside the module, into the silo landing. A series of loud crashes were echoing off the walls of the rocket, screams zipping outside her window on the opposite side. A revin fell directly on the walkway outside, writhing in pain on the floor. It rolled back and forth, shouting out some gurgled pain, its lungs filling with blood. It spit out a clump of sputum on the walkway and looked straight ahead at Becca – its broken jaw opening wide, teeth and blood drooling out of its mouth, smiling madly. As it rose, a fractured rib plunged out of its malnourished chest, white bone, like a horn, piercing the air. It took a pained step forward towards the children but managed only the one foot down before the pathoton sunk its hand around the revins neck, crushing its esophagus – the revins broken body wriggling like a clump of earthworms in a child’s hand. The pathoton tossed the emaciated revin over the edge, one-handed, and leaned back into the passengers, looking straight at Becca and imploring her:

  “You will be okay.”

  It tossed Becca the blinking flash drive and she caught it, nodded knowingly, and the pathoton leaned back out of the module, backing away from the fairing as the access door began to close. Revin bodies were dropping into the silo – a chorus of shouts screaming past the small viewing panes, falling into the dim, orange ether of the lower depths. Bodies racing past as if the still rocket was splitting through limbo. A large, muscular revin crashed feet first on the shoulders of the pathoton, sending it barreling into the rail of the walkway, bending in the heavy safety rail and mangling the sensor array on its shoulder. Sparks flew out from stripped coils around the pathoton’s upper frame and it flailed at the herculean creature on its shoulders. The pathoton thrashed its arms wildly, standing upright and crashing backwards into the cableway wall, pinning the revin against a steel truss along the tunnel in a thunderous crack. The mammoth revin gasped, the wind knocked out of its lungs, and collapsed along the plank. As it looked up, the pathoton was swinging one fist down towards its skull. The revin rolled backwards and knocked the mechanical pummel to the side. The pathoton rattled, lurched forward then back, struggling to stay upright. Its gyroscopic servo and sensor array were badly damaged. It listed on the diamond plate, shaking convulsively before the revin, which stood up to face the machine. The pathoton was malfunctioning. It bellowed out into the passage:

  “YOU WILL BE OKAY!”

  It repeated this emphatically, over and over, as if saying it loud and fast enough would save it. Becca could hear this booming edict from within the shuttle module, but couldn’t see the violence raging just outside. The hulking revin screamed back and dove at the dazed android, sinking its hands in the cables wrapped around its frame, ripping at them, pulling them out like tendons from tissue. The pathoton went still, its pendulum slowly failing, and started to fall backwards towards the landing. They crashed into the access panel and the walkway began to retract from the fairing. The rain poured down atop the sparking wound in the pathoton’s frame and the exposed circuitry ignited – white alloy blazing in the archway, crowning the pathoton in flames like a headless horseman ignited in the netherworld. The short-circuit cycled the pathoton through its re-boot. It came to, grabbing each arm of the sinewy creature, holding its tensed limbs out like the Vitruvian Man. The top of the pathoton burned intensely and the revin closed its eyes, screaming out. It felt its arms ripping from the sockets and, when it opened its eyes again, it was upended and falling down the silo shaft, blood spurting from its quartered shoulders. It crashed to the concrete exhaust duct at the bottom, shattering all its bones. Blood expunged from a jaw broken wide. It opened one eye in time to see its own severed arms falling towards it.

  The pathoton, shoulder still ablaze, rushed down the cableway as more revins were falling
through the closure doors from the desert floor above. They were beginning to pile at the base, near the launch duct, bruised revins atop broken bodies, saved by their brethren from the fall. Soon, they’d find the fire escape and be able to make their way up. They slithered over one another, gazing up at the dark sky sliced open by the retracted plates. They could hear the shouts of their companions at the top. One banged on the blast shields covering the lower walls, rattling out a shrill echo throughout the silo. The cries of the revins at the bottom ascended the vault, meeting the bedlam of the others at the top as they fell inwards.

  On the other side of the cableway, the pathoton sped through a three-ton blast door and emerged in an elaborate alcove - the launch control room. Ages back, soldiers sat at terminals, hand on a key and ears peeled to headsets, patiently awaiting the word to end the world. Ministers to the ICBM. The sixties era IBM circuit boards had been stripped out. A Martin-Marietta logo was all that remained from the cold war launch center. Now, this room gleamed with digital phantoms – bright blue holographic displays carried into the air from sunken prisms and painted the compass chamber with the celestial bodies of the solar system. The pathoton, with scapula flaring brightly from arm to arm, brought its hands to rest in the air above the center console. As its palm moved, twisting in the air above the console, fingers flicking outward and in, the holograms spun wildly in the air. They swirled above the prisms, flickering staccato, flashing arcane code, before finally displaying the silo. A series of lights blinked green beside the diagram of the rocket and the whole complex began to reverberate violently. The incandescent lights lowered throughout the complex and red alarm strobes along the walls began to flash. The launch was initiated. The countdown had begun. The hologram depicted a timer next to the payload: 5 minutes, 4:59, 4:58 4:57. Suddenly, the holographic depiction of the rocket’s base began to flash red. A gentle voice boomed throughout the control room:

  “Warning! Exhaust ducts are blocked. Lower fire escape is open. Warning!”

  The alarm blared out unyieldingly, booming through the concrete and steel passages like a foghorn in a crawlspace. The pathoton scrambled back into the cableway, racing towards an open chamber before the first blast door – a small living quarters littered with empty juice boxes and torn MRE’s. A rosary was hung on the door handle. The red strobe alarms lit the pathoton in the blinking light of paradise lost. The headless machine, ablaze, plummeted through the subterranean labyrinth, headlong into the inferno. The pathoton cut into the open sleeping quarters and plucked a twin mattress off a cot, swooping into the room before tearing back down the cableway, polyurethane tires screeching along the steel plate.

  The fire escape emptied into the cableway, just before the silo landing. As it neared, a web of fingers were protruding from the chain-link door. The metal webbing pushed in with a rush of revin bodies crushing up against it. The handle on the gate began to turn – a limb falling into it haphazardly from the inside, or some spark alighting in the mind of the poor soul pushed inward just beyond. The pathoton crashed into the mob spewing out of the escape just as the door unhitched, pushing them back into the stairway with the mattress, arms and hands breaking through on the sides like seedlings emerging from soil. They crushed up against the mattress and the pathoton leaned inward, its tires squealing on the diamond plate and arms shaking as it held the mattress against the mob. The upper torso of the pathoton was now engulfed in a metal flame from its shoulder – its titanium spine flaring a shower of fire into the cold air of the cableway passage.

  * * * * *

  The alpha crept along the mineshaft, gracefully navigating the darkness with ease. It was at home in the black. Its legion of killers followed close behind, sniffing at the air, footsteps softly crumbling gravel under soles. Their heavy breaths dampened the limestone rock face, the sound of one prolonged whisper carrying on the air. They heard the girls voice again, cracking and fading, but near:

  “Let them get me. Let them. Let them. Let….them….”

  As the alpha neared the end of the mineshaft, a dull glow alighted in the passage just before them. The sentinel’s LED light flickered, illuminating the ashen body of the alpha and casting the light back on itself. They looked at each other in the flush of phosphor filling the cramped cavity, specks of copper glimmering on the mine walls. The naked hellion straightened its back and looked down on the twisted wreckage of the machine. Its pallid skin wrapped around bones and dark blue veins. Its chest moved in and out with each steady breath. It looked around the bent panels and twisted frame of the sentinel. Eyes darting about. The others inched closer. DDC39’s vocoder cracked, its own soft voice barely audible amongst the panting of the revins:

  “We are the redemption.”

  The pale harbinger cocked its head to the side, pondering this jumble of sounds, confused but curious. It looked to the side and saw the pickaxe resting against the wall in the shadows. The alpha smiled and bent over to pick it up, casting a crooked glance back at the machine as it listed in the dirt. With one swift arc of its forearm, it swung the pickaxe through the air, slicing downwards to the sentinel’s base. Bearing down into the destruction. Old versus new. The alpha’s swing came to an abrupt halt in mid-swing, the axe tumbling to the ground, clanking along the fissure and back into the darkness. The sentinel’s shadow hand had shot up, grasping the alpha’s wrist, tautly wrapped around its arm and sinking its fingers into the creature’s delicate skin.

  * * * * *

  The first stage booster fired in the lower levels. A deafening roar ripped through the open halls of the subterranean Titan halls. Becca leaned forward in her seat and could just see the back of the pathoton as it burned like a quasar, blocking the revins from breaking through the fire escape. The howling blast shook the rocket’s frame and the children bawled again. Becca implored them:

  “It’s okay! It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

  But she was terrified. She felt the module shaking, annihilation riding on the ballasts of ammonium perchlorate. The first stage boosters fired into the flame deflectors at the bottom level. The revin bodies, twisted and crammed into the exhaust ducts, ignited beneath the massive engines – the solid rocket propellant burning through the flesh and bone like stove flame through paper.

  The pathoton pushed forward and the revins stumbled back into the cramped stairway. The red strobe alarms flashed with the madness of the siren call, bellowing through the cableway:

  “Warning! Lower fire escape is open. Exceeding unsafe temperatures. Blast doors must be closed. Warning!”

  Further down the passage, the series of four-ton blast doors began to retract into the inward chambers.

  “Warning! Launch countdown commenced. Warning!”

  A searing heat carried through the staircase and ripped past the edges of the mattress. The rectangle was encircled in a ring of fire and, above the din, the screams of a hundred revin souls pulsated through the floral pattern of the bed. The stitches began to melt and pop. The revins went mad, pushing from the other side, backing the pathoton into the entryway. The hellfire of propellant melted the springs and cast them back like serpents ablaze, the fabric blasting into the pathoton with the roar of the rocket engines ripping through the staircase. Marrow and flesh flew through the air, the revin bellies blooming open and emptying into the heat, casting their insides into the furnace. The pathoton howled its glitch into the conflagration and Becca heard it through the module walls:

  “YOU WILL BE OKAY!”

  * * * * *

  The alpha’s eyes widened and it gazed down at the trembling frame of the machine. The sentinel had the alpha’s wrist gripped firmly. The others saw their herald held still by the sentinel and they tumbled forward, pushing past each other at the chance to tear the thing apart. The light began to fade and a faint clicking sound radiated beneath the revin, like an igniter on a gas range. The alpha’s expression turned dour and it looked helplessly at the mess of bent panels and stripped cables adorning the sentinel’s trid
ent frame. DDC39 could no longer see, but it heard some sound coming from the anemic being wriggling in its grasp. The alpha saw the spark flickering beneath the base of the machine and it mouthed out some recognizable sound. Its lips pursed and it sounded like a familiar objection. Its lips drew back, almost as if it was saying:

  “Stop!”

  * * * * *

  ARCHON V lifted off the base, pulling upwards through the silo and out of the closure doors. The blast incinerated the naked bodies squirming upwards through the egress and tore through the anodized wire wrapped around the pathoton, fiber optic cables peeling backwards and evaporating in the inferno. Becca pressed her hand against the oval windows and peered outwards. Raindrops rolled down the aluminum silicate panes. The silo vanes spewed rocket blast aloft, pouring upwards, igniting a sea of flesh on the desert floor. The charred remains of the pathoton fell to the plank in the blackened landing, which went dark save for bone embers swirling in the air.