by Scott Baron
“So what’s going on with Vince?” Fatima asked, distracting Daisy, resulting in a beanbag to the thigh.
“Ow!” She scowled. “There’s nothing with Vince. We’re just friends. Or whatever he is.”
“But you loved him, didn’t you?”
Another beanbag, but this time she was ready, easily dodging it.
“Good. You didn’t let yourself react emotionally,” Fatima said with a smile. “But Vince is all about emotions, isn’t he? Obviously, he loves you. Anyone can see that. But you love him too.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. Or at least, you did, didn’t you?”
“No. I mean, yes. But there’s that thing in his head. He’s a machine, so it was all bullshit.”
“Am I a machine too?” Fatima asked as Daisy narrowly avoided a pair of beanbags.
“I suppose you are.”
“Daisy, the mechanical parts of our bodies do not define our humanity.”
A quick dodge to the left, then a duck and dodge to the right.
“No. That’s not true. An AI in your brain? That means it’s a machine doing most of the thinking in there, and how could I ever love a machine? He’s just a meat puppet with his strings pulled by a computer.”
Fatima hid her annoyance well, but the flurry of beanbags that pummeled Daisy spoke her true feelings more clearly than words. She eyed her difficult pupil, then made a decision.
“Okay, that’s enough for now. Meet me back here in three hours.”
Daisy brushed herself off and moved for the door.
“Oh, and Daisy,” Fatima added with a grin the look of which left Daisy feeling a little worried. “Make sure to have a hearty snack. You’ll be needing the energy.”
Chapter Eight
“You shouldn’t have said she was just a machine.”
Daisy ignored Sarah’s all too accurate observation and continued with her arduous task. Fatima had been right to recommend a snack. She would need all the energy she could muster.
I didn’t say that. Not exactly, anyway, she lamented as she ran the deceptively simple-looking route around the periphery of the base. Naturally, she wore a suit. To do otherwise would mean certain death, and a very unpleasant one at that.
Fatima had sent her outside with a sneaky little smile on her face. Daisy should have known by the tell-tale helmet hair she had been sporting that Fatima had arranged something torturous for her.
“Come on, Daisy, clock’s ticking!” she heard in her helmet’s comm link.
Hurry, Daisy. Come on, Daisy. You’re special, Daisy, she griped. Shut up with that crap already!
She didn’t dare voice that out loud, of course, lest Fatima send her on an even more sadistic training run. This one was bad enough as it was, and Daisy had her hands full—literally—as she raced around the perimeter of the base, searching out the scattered bits of another model ship.
This one, however, was over forty pieces, and strewn about a half-square kilometer area. The real challenge, besides collecting and reassembling it, would be making it back to the airlock before either the clock, or her air, ran out.
Fatima wouldn’t put me in that much danger, though, would she? Daisy wondered.
“I don’t know. There’s something lurking under that serene exterior. I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you.”
I was afraid you’d say that. Well, keep a lookout. I’ve got almost all of the pieces, but without those last few, I won’t make the cutoff.
“Is it that important?”
No, not really. But you know how competitive I can be.
“Noted,” Sarah replied. “This would be so much easier if you had super-cyborg legs like Omar—Hey, is that one over to your left at eight o’clock? Thirty meters out.”
Indeed, it was, and Daisy moon-bounced her way over to it in loping strides. She scooped the piece up and added it to the bag containing the others she had collected. The ones she was desperately trying to assemble as she also ran a basic search grid.
Nice catch, Sis.
“Why, thank you.”
“How’s it coming out there, Daisy?” Fatima asked from the comfort of inside the base. To add insult to injury, she was probably sipping a nice warm cup of tea while Daisy toiled in the low gravity.
Daisy keyed on her comms.
“Fine,” she answered with a gasp. “I don’t see why I have to do this, though.”
“The captain wants me to challenge you with your training, that’s all. And I’m happy to comply. Now get moving, your clock is running out.”
Daisy checked the readout on her suit’s heads-up display and realized she was right. If she wanted to make the cutoff, she’d have to hustle. She took off at a run, or at least the closest thing to a run you could achieve in low gravity.
One would think that running and moving obstacles to retrieve pieces would be easy in the reduced gravity, but Fatima had ensured that Daisy would have to stretch and strain every muscle if she hoped to finish her task on time.
Interestingly enough, after all the months of training, from sparring with the crew to her sessions with Fatima, Daisy’s strength, agility, and endurance were greater than they had ever been, by far.
“Maybe there’s a method to her madness,” Sarah suggested. “I mean, you are kinda kicking ass out here.”
Not enough, though. I still have three missing pieces, and I’m almost out of time.
“But what about all the other progress? Maybe you really do have super powers in here.”
You’re the one living in my head. If I did, you’d see them, right? I mean, normal sisters borrow clothes, or steal boyfriends. You borrowed a piece of my brain. So, what is it? You see anything ‘special’ in there?
Sarah paused.
“Well, no. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here. I just might not be able to see it, is all.”
Daisy barked a little chuckle.
No, I’m not some chosen one. And another thing, I’m sure as hell not going back to Earth to be hunted and killed by some four-armed freaks and robots with fedoras.
“Technically, they were cyborgs with––”
Can you still call a cyborg without the meat part a cyborg? I mean, really, Sarah, they were fleshless metal men. Sounds pretty much like a robot to me.
“Okay, no need to get snippy.”
I’m sorry, it’s just, you’ve seen the scans. There are no signs of human life. No signs of anything down there. The only reason to go back is some stupid pie-in-the-sky quest that will just get me killed, and you know what? I choose to live. It doesn’t matter what I was supposedly designed for. I control my own destiny.
In her haste and frustration, Daisy lost her footing as she skirted a small crater, her boot crunching through the loose crust at the rim, sending her tumbling over the edge.
“Shiiiiiiitttt!” she cried out as she slid the fifteen meters down into the pit.
The impact was minor—the gravity on the moon was drastically reduced, after all—but when she landed, she did kick up a cloud of fine moon dust that had settled in there over the centuries. What she saw as she rose to her feet made her scramble backwards.
“Holy––”
“Oh my God,” Sarah gasped inside her head.
Staring up at her from beneath the silt was a desiccated face in a cracked helmet. Daisy felt a warm rush of bile in her mouth and fought to keep it together.
Do not puke in your helmet, Daisy, she chided herself.
Looking closer, she noted that the corpse was a woman, her long, blonde hair still clinging to her dried-out scalp.
“Hey, Fatima,” she keyed into the comms, swallowing hard.
“What is it, Daisy? Your time is running low.”
“Yeah, well I just thought you might want to know that when you did your clean-up way back when, you missed one.”
“Missed one what?”
“Body. I just found a corpse in the crater near Hangar Three.”
The line was silent
for a long pause before Fatima finally said something.
“I’m sorry, Daisy. You shouldn’t have had to see that. Continue your training run. I’ll send Ash out to dispose of it.”
“Her.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a woman.”
“Of course, you’re right.” There was a long pause. “I’ll have Ash retrieve her. I’m also adding five minutes back to your clock for this unexpected interruption. Now get moving. You’re still on a countdown.”
Daisy started the climb out of the pit.
Gee, thanks, Fatima. So kind of you.
Daisy reached the rim but nearly fell back in again. She was angry, and that was making her careless.
Calm down, Daisy. Focus! she told herself, fighting to rein in her heart rate and respirations. Slowly, she began to gain control. Keep moving. You can do this while you’re mobile.
Ten minutes later, with Sarah’s help, she had all the pieces in her bag and was walking back down the long path to the airlock when an alarm sounded in her helmet.
Dammit, time’s almost up.
She took a deep breath, then settled into a steady jog, trying to mind her footing and not fall, while simultaneously reassembling the many pieces of the model. At this rate, though, she wasn’t going to make it.
Daisy picked up the pace, running as best she could in the low gravity, her hands working as she periodically glanced into the bag, where her gloved fingers were doing what they knew to do on autopilot. There wasn’t any time to stop and double-check her work. She would have to trust her instincts.
“Fifty meters, Daze! You can do it!”
While she was never a fan of rah-rah motivational speeches, Sarah’s sincere support helped her focus for the last push. She ran hard, feet slipping as she pushed off against the unstable surface of the moon. The beckoning airlock door was in sight.
“Thirty meters! You’re going to do it!”
Goddamn right I am! She grunted, pushing even harder, while the clock ticked lower and lower as she ran.
“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.”
I know, I know!
“Loose ground two steps ahead!”
Good looking out, she thanked Sarah, then bounded over the uneven patch and threw herself into the airlock controls, quickly punching in the access code. The exterior hatch swung open and she dove inside, slapping the recompression cycle command as the door swung shut behind her.
“Two, and one! Hell yeah!”
Daisy grinned, sweat dripping down her face. After a ten-second decontamination burst from the nozzles in the airlock, the door swung open. Fatima was standing there, waiting.
Daisy reached an exhausted arm up and handed Fatima the model ship, then popped the helmet off her head, wiping the sweat from her brow as it pulled clear.
“Made it!” she gasped. “T-told ya I could do it,” she managed to say as she rested her hands on her knees and sucked in lungful after lungful of air.
Fatima quietly stood there, beaming at her like a proud parent.
“What’re you so chipper about?” Daisy asked.
Fatima looked down at the completed model in her hands.
“How did you get this done, Daisy? You were moving the entire time, and the last five minutes you were traveling at almost a full run.”
Daisy was momentarily taken aback
How did I do that? she wondered.
“I guess I just went on instinct. I didn’t know what I was doing, not really. It just seemed right.”
Fatima smiled brightly.
“Special, Daisy. Special,” she said with a knowing grin, then turned and walked off. “We’ll push tonight’s session back an hour. Go eat something and relax a bit. You’ve earned it.”
Daisy slowly peeled herself out of the EVA suit, her muscles burning gloriously from the exertion. Rather than feeling tired, she was electrified.
“What the hell just happened, Sarah?”
Her sister laughed in her head.
“You just got Miyagi-ed.”
“I what?”
“Wax on, wax off, grasshopper.”
“You’re such a dork,” she said with a chuckle.
Despite playing it off like it was no big deal, Daisy felt an unfamiliar sense of accomplishment boosting her spirits. She had kicked ass. With a bit of shock, she realized she was actually looking forward to next time.
Next time sucked.
Fatima and Chu were standing by, monitoring Daisy’s progress that evening as she toiled at the far end of the base. This wasn’t another obstacle run or dexterity test. This time they sent her on the insanely boring task of repairing systems in the parts of the base long silent. Rerouting access conduits, laying new communications cables, unsticking frozen airlocks that hadn’t cycled in centuries.
Fatima had never made it that far in her repairs, and when the subsequent failed missions brought her a handful of new inhabitants, sprucing up the facilities already functioning took priority over resurrecting the distant ones.
Daisy dragged her tool kit to a heavy set of doors. According to the base schematics, they led to a components warehouse, long abandoned.
Whatever. A door’s a door.
Daisy opened the panel and ran a bypass.
Nothing.
Huh, that should have worked. Okay, let’s try this.
She ran a second bypass, linking in a peripheral access protocol as well.
Again, nothing. She spent over an hour trying everything she could imagine, but the door simply would not budge. It had power, of that she was certain, but only a minimal amount.
Needs a little somethin’-somethin’ to get it moving, is all, she realized. Okay, I think I know a way to do this.
Daisy reached back and pulled her suit’s power pack loose.
“Daisy, what are you doing? We just got a warning reading from your EVA suit. Are you okay?” Chu asked, concern in his voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Hang on a minute.”
“Your suit is––”
Her comms went dead when she clipped her alligator leads from the suit’s power controls to the non-functional door mechanism.
Oops.
“Daisy, what’s your status? Daisy, can you hear me?” Chu called to her from the base.
No reply.
Come on, you bastard, you can do it! Daisy gritted her teeth and gave the release mechanism a hearty pull with her spanner, while her suit’s batteries fed a surge into the control panel.
The door crunched and strained, the lights on the panel flickering as it sucked more and more power from her suit, until it finally slid open, albeit reluctantly. Daisy disconnected herself from the door and tucked her power cell back in place.
“Used up about forty-five percent of your power there, Daze.”
Yeah, I see. Worked, though, didn’t it? She fiddled with her suit and got her comms back online.
“—is reading a power spike. I say again, do you copy, Daisy?”
“Yeah, I copy, Chu. Sorry about that, lost comms for a minute.”
“What the hell were you doing, Daisy?” Fatima grilled her over the wireless.
“Just getting this stupid thing open. I had to give it a little jump-start, is all. Sorry about the comms loss, but it rebooted the system when I linked in.”
The line was silent for a long pause.
“You got it open?” Chu asked.
“That’s what I said,” she replied. “Just took longer than I anticipated.”
“Daisy,” Fatima said with a bit of shock in her voice. “The last of those doors our team worked on took over two weeks to finally crack. You just opened that one in under two hours.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Kickass!” Sarah hooted.
“It just needed a power boost to the right controls, is all,” she messaged back to Fatima and Chu. “Hang on a sec, I think I see why this section is having such problems.”
Daisy stepped in through the open door and turned on t
he larger flashlight hanging from her hip. There was power, indeed, but not nearly enough to open the doors, let alone keep the entire section functioning. A blinking light keyed her in to the problem.
“It’s the solar uplink from the bright side,” she called out. “Looks like the connection was partially severed during the attack. Only about two percent of the solar feed is making it back here. The battery packs are intact, but they’ve been maintaining at near zero charge. I’m going to try to reconnect one of the inputs manually by splicing in a fresh piece of cable. If I’m right, that’ll trickle charge the batteries to at least a reasonable level. Once that happens, the other bypasses I’m going to wire in should be able to signal the relay junction to deliver a steady charge to this section again.”
“Wait, you’re going to do what?” Chu asked, confused. “But we have the solar fields powering us already.”
“Not all of them, it seems. There are multiple lines branching out, from what I can tell. I think the one servicing this section was damaged in the attack. By tapping into one of the functional ones, all the stuff that powered down over here should come back on. I don’t know when, exactly, but hopefully fairly quickly.”
“Okay, Daisy. Just be careful,” Fatima said over the channel.
“You know it,” she replied.
Thirty minutes later, the lights—at least some of them—had come back on in the chamber, and it appeared the battery backups for that entire section of Dark Side were receiving a trickle of current, as she predicted. She only hoped the batteries were still sound after all those years, and able to hold a charge.
“Okay, Daisy, there’s still no atmosphere over there, and your air and power are both running low. Head on back. That’s enough for today.”
“Copy that,” she said, stepping out of the airlock.
Daisy closed the thick door and was about to begin the long walk all the way across the base, when she noticed a tiny light peeping out from a sheer rock face a good thirty meters outside the base perimeter. If not for the Dark Side being, well, dark, she never would have noticed it.
“Hang on a sec. I just need to do one more thing, then I’ll be heading right back,” she said, then walked across the rocky terrain to the mysterious light.
