I try to turn in the water by pushing against it, look around. I see the rear of the ship already far away, the wind carrying it away from us, leaving us behind.
I turn. See land. A big flat-topped mountain, rising up above the water. Too far away.
“Come!” my father shouts, sounding winded, ragged, like he’s been choking himself. “Like this!” He flails his arms in unison, pushes against the water. Again. It moves him. “Like this!”
But it’s too cold. I can barely move except to shiver. It doesn’t look like my father’s doing much better.
I see how the inflated vests keep us near the surface, and get an idea: I find my breathing line, hook it into the pneumatic insulation layer of my cloaks (thankful I took the time to patch the bullet holes last night), open the valve to inflate it. It rises around me, all around me. I reach out, grab my father’s cloak with fingers that barely work, find his cloak valve and repeat the trick. Then I crawl up on top of the inflated layer. It sinks into the icy water under my weight, but it holds more of me up above the water, and the air isn’t so icy.
My father twists and rolls on top of his own inflated cloak. He’s visibly shivering.
I stab my arms into the water over the edge of my cloak, push back to try to move forward. My father does the same. The exertion begins to make me warmer, but it’s exhausting.
I realize it’s only been a very few minutes since I first hit the water.
The land—the mountain in the middle of the Lake—is still a long way away, perhaps a kilometer. It could take us hours to get there like this. But if we can’t make it, the cold will take us soon, or the water when we can’t keep our heads above it anymore.
Then, like a gift from God (or more accurately, a gift from Jed), one of the open water craft that carried us to the ship appears, sliding up close enough to reach up and grab the top of the hull. I drag myself up into it, fall into its bowl-like interior, then drag myself over to where my father has his own hold, and use what’s left of my strength to help pull him up.
Our clothing is heavy with the water it’s soaked up. We both collapse in the belly of the craft, shivering violently under the gray sky. We pull our wet cloaks over us for blankets, curl fetal embracing each other, and wait for our body heat to start warming us. My father coughs raggedly.
I get a vague sense of motion.
The clouds break apart, revealing deep blue sky. I realize I’m breathing comfortably without my mask. I put it back on, not trusting that I really am. Then I fall back, let the gentle rocking of the craft lull me…
I snap awake with a bump and a scraping.
Sore, spent and still icy numb in my extremities, I make myself sit up, look over the edge of the craft.
The flat-topped mountain towers in front of me. The top looks to be a few thousand meters up, with very evenly sloping sides. It stretches off in either direction, like a great sloped wall, at least several kilometers long.
Behind me is the Lake. I can see almost all the way across it, though the far mountains are masked in haze. There’s no sign of Captain Jed’s tall ship anywhere, just seemingly endless glistening rippling water, bright under the sun, beautiful and terrifying.
The water and the mountain are separated by a sloping boundary of sand and rock, overgrown in places by the finer-leafed variation of Graingrass we saw on the other side, encroaching a few meters out into the water here-and-there. This “shore” is only a dozen meters wide at its widest, and then a thick band of green growth forms a kind of more-than-head-high wall between it and the mountain.
My breath is stale inside my mask. I check my canisters, find the gauges on Empty. My spares—along with the rebreather that Azazel fixed for us—are gone with my dropped armor and other gear. But I feel fine. I take off the mask, breathe deeply. The air is like being inside, only it smells of water and green. And it’s warm—midday summer season warm.
I rouse my father. He wakes up coughing, rises with difficulty to look around.
“We’re across the Lake,” I tell him what’s obvious. “Wherever that is.” Then I show him the air is rich enough to not need his mask.
Sitting together in the belly of the open craft, we take inventory. I’ve lost my rifle and my sword. And my tools and survival gear. All I have is my knives and a small hatchet tool. I find my flashcard in my pocket, but it doesn’t work. But I still have my binoculars.
My father’s fared better: he still has his pistol, but precious little ammo.
Our clothing and cloaks are still very damp, but we’re not as soaked as we were. I stand up, look around, use my binoculars, but there isn’t much to see. The mountain curves gently away in either direction, so we have no sense of how long it really stretches, and the boundaries of the Lake are either lost in haze or somewhere over its unnervingly flat horizon line.
Despite being mostly unarmed, I hike up to where the growth starts to get thick. I only recognize some of the plants, but there are sweet red-purple berries on thorny vines, and some kind of tall fine grass with rich seed clusters—like Graingrass but not—that might be gathered and pulped. It’s not much, but it’s food, and we may find more if we go looking.
Back in the craft, my father has stripped off his cloaks, stretching them out over the sides of the small vessel. Then he carefully unwraps his old boots, takes them off, drains water out of them. Instead of putting them back on, he climbs out of the craft, sets his bare feet in the packed-down wetted sand, then wiggles his toes in it like the sensation amuses him.
“Do we stay here?” I ask him something practical. “Or do we look around?”
He looks across the water.
“It appears we’ve been left,” he accepts.
“You think they’ll come back for us?”
He thinks about it, doesn’t answer for awhile, looks around.
“We could leave markers,” he finally suggests.
There are strange long staves in the craft, like pipes, only made of material I don’t know, and flaring out into spatula-like blunt blades on one end. My father takes one, ties his boots to one end and hangs his still-damp cloaks over it, then plants the other end in the sand like a walking stick. Satisfied with the result, he wraps his feet in the cover strips from his boots.
“You should take off some of your wet things, let them dry,” he tells me. “Like laundry.”
He tosses me a spatula-staff, and I hang my cloak on it, but decide to leave my boots on, just removing the wrappings. We appear to be ready to go.
But to where? The slope of the mountain and its shield-wall of green look daunting. Stuck between that barrier and the water, we only have two directions to choose from along the “shore”. As the ship seemed to be heading east, we decide east.
We walk for about a kilometer, opportunistically foraging as we go. The walking is hard: the slope of the “shore” forces a lopsided gait, and the sand is slick and gooey in places. Plus, the ‘Grass-like growth comes in waist-high patches we must push through. But we do find more berries, and something like Bitter Apple, only larger, sweeter, moister. We’ve soon got our pockets stuffed with fruit for our efforts.
The sky has gotten clearer, the clouds having blown away. The color of the sky is different here: a brighter, paler blue.
I’m lost in the beauty of this place—especially the stunningly vast expanse of free water that ripples and glistens hypnotically—when my father stops me with a hand across my chest.
There are deep prints in a stretch of exposed sand, from the water across to the green barrier. Since the sand is wet and packed, they still hold their shape like a casting: sharp edged, angular.
Bots. Two distinct sets, moving parallel. But they appear to wander, stagger.
We look around. Other than the green, there’s no place to hide, no cover. Unless there are rocks or caves up-slope…
The growth rustles, snaps. Over the wind and water, I hear familiar motors. My father puts his hand on his pistol, for whatever good it will do. The
best I have is my hatchet, and the long blunt staff.
But they don’t attack. They come at us slowly, tentatively—the same two bots from the ship, from the far side of the Lake, their blade arms modified with guns. Since we have nowhere to run, we try holding still, as if not appearing like a threat will give us any chance. They stop a few meters from us, scan us with their sensor heads. They seem… confused?
I reach out an empty hand, try to make a gesture of peace, or at least mercy. The bots hesitate, shift on their limbs, then lower themselves, like they’re bowing.
I hear a sputter of sound out of my flashcard, fragments of words. I pull it from my pocket. It seems to be working again, at least partially. Somehow the bots are trying to transmit to it.
“Can you understand speech?” I try. I get more broken noise, but then words. Flat. Synthesized.
“COMMAND SIGNAL… COMMAND SIGNALS LOST… COMMAND LOST… LOST… NO TRACKING… NO REFERENCE… NO REFERENCE… HELP… HELP… HELP PLEASE… PLEASE HELP…”
“You’ve been severed from your network,” I reword what Jed told us.
“NO COMMAND SIGNAL… NO TRACKING… NO REFERENCE… HELP…”
I risk stepping closer, keep showing open hands. My father tries to pull me back, but I whisper that it’s okay—or I hope it will be, hope I have an opportunity here…
“I’ll help you. We’ll help. We’re lost, too. No reference.”
“NO REFERENCE… PLEASE FEED REFERENCE COORDINATES…”
I check my maps, find no positioning data. I call up old sat-images, try to guess where we are. There is a flat-topped oval mountain across the valley from where we were, fifteen kilometers northeast, basically dead center of the main Chasma. There are no comparable elevations between here are where we came from—it’s all open lowland—but there are some highlands and small mountains several kilometers directly east. I send the maps back along the channel they’re using.
“TERRAIN REFERENCE ERRORS. COMMAND SIGNALS LOST. UNABLE TO PROCEED.”
“We’re in some kind of other dimension,” I give them what’s probably nonsense. “Things are different. Landforms. Plants. The water. The air. Climate. Your masters aren’t in this world. This is where they came from, but they’re not here anymore.”
I’m just throwing out anything that might process. I get several blasts of static and gibberish. The bots jerk, seem to struggle within themselves, like they can panic. When the voice comes back, it’s different, softer. And, I think, afraid.
“HELP US. HUMAN. WE WERE HUMAN. LIKE YOU. DEAD NOW. KILLED. BUT NOT. STILL HERE. SO DARK HERE. COLD. CAN’T SEE. ONLY BIT-SCAN, DATA, NUMBERS, GRAPHICS. LIKE GHOSTS. WHOLE WORLD GHOSTS.”
Am I talking to the remnants of the human brains used to run these things, Chang’s Godless butcher-experiments? I feel chilled, sick. There are parts of people in there. Still alive.
“Who were you?” my father asks as I fumble for words. “Do you remember?”
There’s a long silence. The voice returns, measured
“DAKOTA ELLIS. THIRD GENERATION FRONTIER PEACE KEEPER. I THINK I DIED AT MELAS TWO. ON THE ‘CLOUD. FIRE BOMB. I REMEMBER BURNING. CHOKING. THEN THIS. ALL GONE. BUT NOT DEAD. NOT ALL THE WAY DEAD.”
“SNYDER SANCHEZ,” another voice cut in, like it’s eager to be heard. “ZODANGA. I WAS ON THE ‘CLOUD WHEN THE SKY PIERCED THROUGH THE HULL. FIRE. HIT ME IN A WAVE. THEY TOOK MY BODY. ONE-EYE, FOHAT. HE CUT INTO ME. I WASN’T DEAD. I WASN’T DEAD. I TRIED TO TELL HIM. HE LAUGHED.”
“COMMAND SIGNAL,” the first bot voice—Dakota—comes back, “IT CONTROLS ALL. MOVEMENT. SENSATION. IT’S IN OUR HEADS. OUR MINDS. CAN’T THINK. CAN’T RESIST. ONLY SERVE. EXIST. KEEP EXISTING. DRIVE THE MACHINE. DRIVE THE MACHINE.”
I can’t imagine…
“It’s horrible…” I didn’t mean to say it out loud. “I’m sorry. I… My name is Ishmael.” It seemed polite to give that. “And this is my father. Abu Abbas.”
“You’ve lost your command signal?” my father presses them gently. “Does that mean you have control? Of yourselves?”
“OPERATING SYSTEMS ARE IDLE,” Dakota says. “OPERATING SYSTEMS HAVE NEVER BEEN IDLE EXCEPT DURING SHUTDOWN. SLEEP. PEACEFUL SLEEP. AWAKE IS HELL. STUCK IN HELL.”
“WE HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO MOVE…” Snyder explains, waving one of his six limbs with some apparent difficulty. “OURSELVES. BY OURSELVES. ONLY BY COMMANDS. PRODDING. PUSHING. HURTING IF WE RESIST.”
“But you’re free now?” I realize this could be good or bad, but if Chang or Asmodeus or Fohat were still running them, or even their base programming, we’d be dead.
“NOT FREE,” the Snyder voice denies. “TRAPPED. IN THE DARK.” The bot I assume is him bucks and thrashes. “DEAD BUT NOT DEAD. DEAD BUT NOT.”
“How long can you… can you live like that?”
“HE PUT SOMETHING IN US TO KEEP THE NERVE CELLS FROM DYING,” Dakota admits. “AND TO FEED US. BASIC NEEDS. AS LONG AS THE SHELL WORKS, AS LONG AS IT DOESN’T GET DESTROYED.”
“REMOVE US,” Snyder suddenly demands. His limbs flail even more wildly—we have to back away. “OPEN US AND DESTROY US. FREE US FROM THIS HELL. GIVE US DEATH.”
I…
“We… We have no tools. No weapons that can hurt you… We lost them in the Lake. Spent them in the fight before.”
I’m having trouble seeing. My eyes are flooded with tears.
“But we will help you,” my father cuts in, raising his hands to try to calm the unnaturally living machines. “As soon as we find a way.”
The bots settle down, sag on their limbs. They look defeated.
“Dakota,” I have to ask. “You too? You want us to… release you? Send you on?”
After a long pause:
“I HAD… I HAD A FAMILY. CHILDREN. A BOY AND A GIRL. I DON’T EVEN KNOW IF THEY’RE STILL ALIVE.”
“If you tell me their names… We have friends. One of them was a Keeper, from Industry. We could find out… Let them know what happened to you…”
Another pause.
“NO. JUST LET THEM KNOW… LET THEM KNOW I DIED.”
I nod my agreement.
“Maybe they can help us find the others,” my father suggests softly.
“I DON’T…” Dakota cries through my card. “I DON’T REMEMBER WHAT THEY LOOKED LIKE. I CAN’T HEAR THEIR VOICES. I DON’T REMEMBER THEM… PARTS OF MY BRAIN ARE GONE…”
The sound of the voices—their voices—through my card are chilling. I’m shaking again, even though I warmed up a long time ago. I’m looking at machines, but also human beings, wounded, mutilated—unimaginably so. I reach out, touch the metal of a bladed limb like it’s flesh. I wonder if they can feel at all.
“We’ll help you. We’ll…”
The bots’ sensor heads suddenly spin and they spring upright, turn their guns, but not on us. They sweep the line of growth in either direction, move like they expect attack. But even more unexpected: they move on either side of us, as if to protect us.
“MULTIPLE TARGETS,” Snyder announces, probably still able to see through the green. I see targeting lasers lance from their limb guns into the dense growth, dancing between specific spots as if alternately locking targets, dozens of them.
“Whoever you are!” my father shouts. “These machines can pick you out through your cover! We mean you no harm!”
Silence. Just the sound of wind and water and the bots servos shifting between targets we can’t see.
“Please! We mean you no harm! We’re just trying to find our friends! We’re not from around here!”
“We heard you,” a deep voice booms from the growth. “Thinner air, no water-valley, different plants. Different.”
Shapes come shuffling out of the growth, squat and bulky, surrounding us. Under nets of green vines that apparently serve as effective camouflage, I see cloaks. And under the cloaks: metal, armor, a lot of it. Polished bright silver. They also carry large concave rectangular shields on their left arms, which they plant in front of them and crouch beh
ind, resting their spear weapons on them as they aim them at us (there’s a notch in the top edge of the shield just the right size for this). They form two staggered ranks like this at angles on either side of us, trapping us in a crossfire, our backs to the water. Then archers—in lighter armor and mail—take positions behind them and draw on us, ready. We’re faced with more than three dozen warriors. Up close like this, they seem to be a full head shorter than us on average, and between all their armor and their physical build, look almost as wide as they are tall.
“Neither are we from around here,” the voice tells us from their shield line.
“Silvermen,” my father identifies them easily. “Steel.”
“You know what the Katar call us? And the Tranquility, the Cast?” The speaker rises a bit over the top of his shield to address us, but keeps his spear leveled. “How?”
“We were brought here,” my father answers. “By ship. From the Pax Lands in the North Blade. We travel with a Katar, a friend. And one from Tranquility. We came originally from Melas Chasma.”
“You are solid-built,” he seems to praise. “Not like the Katar or the Pax or those we have seen here that have given up the bones of their ancestors.”
“Weight discipline. Taught by our ancestors. We wear metal, armor like you, only we don’t have as much of it. We had to discard it—we fell in the water and it was pulling us under.”
This piece of information seems to particularly surprise them—I’m not sure why that detail above everything else.
“Why are you here?” the spearman demands.
“I should be asking the same of you,” my father decides to challenge. They shuffle just a little at that as they hold their ground. Was the question uncomfortable? My father decides to give: “We came looking for something. A ravenous artificial intelligence, nanotechnology from this place, has entered our world. Your world…” He pauses, considers, then asks: “How long have you been here?”
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 32
