There was a soft pinch in Jessie’s neck as she injected herself. She pushed a few buttons on a nearby armrest. “This little talk is tiring, OMEX. I’m going to sleep.”
“Then allow me to give you a lullaby.” Suddenly the volume of David’s last labored breaths was increased. “I would say he’s on the last lungful of air.”
Jessie’s mind was flooded with the image of David being tossed off the station as if he had been nothing more than debris or trash, screaming as his few unbroken fingers desperately and instinctively grasped at the air in vain for some sort of purchase. He had been so frightened she could hear it in his voice. And yet he had spoken his final words to her.
Jessie’s criotube sealed itself shut, muting the outside noise. There was the sound of a pump and the tube started to fill up with nutri-gel. Jessie slowly dozed into sleep. As she did, her mind was flooded with images of her first and final moments with David.
Jessie welcomed the coming darkness and fell into the cold comfort of sleep. She was incredibly thankful that at least she would not be dreaming while she waited.
CHAPTER 15
CHORD
The God Delusion remains the Pontifex’s lingering legacy. It is the erroneous belief held by infected machine minds that they are superior to Organics since ultimately they are doomed to die while synthetic digital codes are not. It must be noted that the Machina Collective Consensus does not proscribe to or condone this belief.
—Eltur Sigma, Machina Pilgrim, date unknown
10th of SSM–10 1445 A2E
“Free me from this prison or die with me.” The chorus of drones echoed and bounced off the cold metal walls, accompanied closely by Morrigan Brent, Phaël and Arturo Kain’s heavy breathing as they ran down the storage bay’s hall toward the elevator. The floor was a heavy rumble as hundreds of autodrones rolled after them.
Arturo paused and spun back as Chord ran past him. He raised his carbine and fired off a quick volley of covering fire as everyone bolted ahead of him. Phaël made it to the elevator first. She banged her hands on the door in frustration, stumped as she tried in vain to access and use the control panel. “Machina!” she shouted to Chord, now only a few steps away from her.
Chord scanned the console, hoping to access its datasphere. However, it was nonexistent. A quick examination of the control panel’s hardware revealed that all functions had been severed. If Chosen Protocols had allowed for it, Chord would have let out a slew of curses.
Chord turned back to see Morrigan and Arturo catching up with them. The two men were now facing the incoming host of autodrones. All of them were still chanting in their monotone: “Free me from this prison or die with us.”
Arturo and Morrigan opened up a barrage of fire on the horde. Their hands may have been steady and their aim may have been true, but for each drone they put down another two were there to replace it. If the party stayed out in the open much longer they were going to be swarmed.
“Chord! I need results, now!” Arturo barked this order as he ejected a smoking cassette-shaped clip from his carbine and deftly inserted a fresh one before opening fire again.
Chord quickly drove its fingers into the crack of the elevator doors and then pried them open. “Sergeant—”
Chord’s proximity sensors went off as an autodrone rolled into Chord’s shell. There was the loud clang of metal on metal as one mechanical body collided with the other. Chord was knocked onto the ground while the drone mechanized plasma bolt cutters on its fingertips. All three arms took aim at Arturo and Morrigan, who just now were turning around to witness what was happening.
Chord’s reaction was quick, catching two of the drone’s hands with its own. Two bolts were fired into Chord’s hands. Meanwhile, Phaël had caught on to the drone’s third arm with her whip and violently yanked the fist to the ground.
The heated bolts sliced off six of Chord’s fingers as if they were nothing. No pain was experienced; however, there was a microsecond of shock on Chord’s part. Before the drone could react, Arturo and Morrigan unleashed a cannonade from their carbines at it. Flechette and plasma rounds ripped through its carapace, tearing the drone into heavy sparking pieces.
More proximity sensors went off, picking up movement from behind Phaël. Another autodrone with fingers mechanized into purple-hued laser cutters slashed forward at her. Before Phaël could even react, the cutters gashed across her back and Chord spotted droplets of dark blue-colored and Humanis red blood spray out of her skinsuit.
Phaël let out a sharp pained cry, dropping down to her knees, and desperately rolled back, narrowly evading a second blow that would have sliced her across the throat. Morrigan, who had been focusing his attention on fending off the approaching horde, spun around upon hearing Phaël’s scream. He let out a roar and opened fire, unleashing an angry barrage of crystal flechettes. Morrigan surgically blew off each of the drone’s arms before finally finishing it off with a decisive shot into its central sphere.
Chord shoved away the drone’s inactive remains and got back up. Meanwhile, Arturo and Morrigan had already picked up Phaël and were dragging her into the elevator. Chord was the last one to step in. Behind them, the relentless host of drones was mere steps away.
Fortunately, the elevator doors were solid and closed themselves, cutting the team off from the incoming swarm. The elevator was shaken violently, accompanied by the sound of heavy metal fists pounding on the doors. Everyone gasped heavily, each one trying to catch their breath.
“Sergeant Kain, this unit’s hands have lost their thumbs, indexes and middle fingers.” Arturo examined Chord’s hands and let out another curse. Chord then added, “This will severely limit what this unit will be capable of interacting with.”
“Our hunter is upon us. Remaining here will make us an easy meal for it.” Phaël’s breathing sounded more like a struggling rasp. On top of this she was trembling violently and from beneath the membrane of her face guard Chord could tell that she had already grown visibly pale.
“Chord, this elevator. Can you get it moving?” There was a loud clang as Morrigan ejected his ammunition drum and clicked in a new one. “I promise you the best replacement hands u-bits can purchase.”
Chord shook its head no. “The operating system has been manually overridden.” Chord paused, then added while pointing to a service panel on the elevator’s ceiling, “However, this elevator’s tunnel should lead to the station’s Inner Ring and living quarters.”
Outside the elevator, the thuds were getting harder and harder. More alarmingly, the elevator door was now sporting many inward fist-shaped dents. Arturo let out a frustrated grunt before adding angrily, “Infinite, grant me a bloody respite.”
Once his carbine was reloaded, Morrigan knelt down next to Phaël. He lifted up her fur cloak and quickly examined the deep gash along her suit’s back. The blue blood had now crystalized itself along the line of the cut. Morrigan let out a sharp whistle. “Mother Death almost took you in her arms this time, Phaëlita.”
Phaël winced and let out what sounded like a weak laugh. “Well, the Great Bitch will just have to try harder next time.”
Morrigan pulled out a large syringe from his heavy leather satchel belted at his side. “I know you are just going to refuse the stem-paste. But that bleeding ain’t going to stop without help. We need to inject you with some natural coag, girl.”
Phaël looked to Morrigan and raised her hand. He grasped it tightly in his. Phaël looked at the needle. “No painkillers in that, Old Pa?”
“None. You got my word.”
Phaël gritted her teeth and gave Morrigan a permissive nod. “My pain is only a breath on the Green. My pain is only a breath on the Green.” Phaël repeated this over and over again in her musical native Wolven. Morrigan drove the needle through her living-suit’s wound.
The heavy banging on the elevator’s door was imm
ediately dwarfed by Phaël’s pained wail. Her legs convulsed on the floor violently and Morrigan held on tightly to her hand, not once looking away from her.
The echoes of Phaël’s scream lingered in the air for a long moment after she was done. She began to whisper silently over and over to herself, tightly clasping her turtle pendent. “We are part of Living Green. Hunter and hunted alike. The Living Green will guide us safely to our destiny or to the Great Beyond. Because of this, I do not fear.”
Once she was done Chord spoke. “Your words are lovely, Private Phaël.”
Phaël’s eyes fluttered opened and for the first time Chord could not see any scorn in her face. Morrigan hoisted her up and let her lean on his shoulder. Her hand released the turtle around her neck, then pulled out a long curved knife at her side, which reminded Chord of a feline’s claw.
“Ready, Phaëlita?” Morrigan placed his gauntleted hand on Phaël’s shoulder. The two looked at each other and then rested their foreheads together.
“If we go, we go hard, Old Pa.”
Arturo watched the scene unfold before letting out a scoffing snort. “Might be a little early in the war for us to call a surrender.” He slung his morph carbine back over his shoulder. As Arturo did so it folded in upon itself until it was no bigger than a book. He nodded up toward the hatch to the elevator shaft.
“We make it up there we find our survivors. Then finally, at long last, goal one of this wonderful rescue operation will be completed.”
There came a sudden light knock from behind the elevator door. “Requesting the mechanical unit’s designation and function.” An electronic voice, programmed to sound like a Humanis female, spoke out to them in Late Modern.
Arturo shot Chord a curious look, then nodded back toward the door. “We need time.” He mouthed this with his lips as he pointed silently to the hatch on the elevator’s ceiling.
Chord nodded and replied to the voice. “Present here is Machina Unit. Designation: Chord. Core functions: Linguistics, Protocol and Maintenance. Incept date: 14th of the 9th standard Sol month, Year 1000 After the Second Expansion.”
There was a quick pause. “You are speaking to station Moria’s omniexecutor. Designation: OMEX. Incept date: 22:00 January 7th 2195 AD. It is a pleasure to meet you, Machina Chord.”
Chord turned to see Morrigan boosting Arturo onto his shoulders. Arturo slid open the safety release of the hatch and pulled it open. He handed the hatch’s cover to Morrigan, who handed it to Phaël, who took it in turn to place it silently onto the floor.
Chord raised its vocal’s volume settings to mask these sounds. “The pleasure is shared by this unit as well.”
“I would imagine, if I may be so forward, that the unit named Chord is here in response to the station’s distress beacon?” OMEX spoke in a polite, friendly monotone. Chord could tell that this machine Intelligence was old, ancient, a potential window into the Lost War and history that came with it. Had circumstances been different, Chord would more than likely have wanted to converse with this Intelligence for hours.
Chord watched as Arturo hoisted himself into the service hatch. He popped his head back into the elevator and nodded, waving Phaël over. Morrigan let out a grunt as he lifted Phaël up to Arturo, who grasped her under the arms and pulled her into the shaft.
Once she was safely up, Arturo offered his hand down toward Morrigan. The latter shouldered his carbine and turned to face Chord. He pointed to the unit and gave an upturned thumb, then jumped. The servos in Arturo’s lifesuit let out a struggling buzz as he caught the heavy muscular Kelthan in his gauntleted hands and struggled to hoist him up into the service shaft.
“The unit known as OMEX would indeed be correct in that assumption,” Chord replied loudly. “Please explain the current hostile response.”
“I must profess to a bit of confusion, Chord.”
Chord replied truthfully. “A condition shared by this unit as well.”
“I was not expecting to see one of my descendants still serving.”
“The unit named OMEX is entirely mistaken. The Machina serve no one. This unit has freely chosen to assist with this mission.”
“So I will assume that the flesh creatures present with you are the descendants of the Human race?”
“OMEX would be correct in that assumption.” Morrigan and Arturo were waving Chord over. Chord stepped toward them, offering up its hands. Both men grabbed hold and struggled to drag Chord up.
Once Chord was able to do so, it grabbed onto the edges of the hatch with its shell’s toes. Like Wolvers, Chord’s feet had been designed with digits capable of operating as fingers. Chord used them to pull itself up into the service hatch.
The elevator shaft was dark, with only blue service lights flashing on and off. Looking upward, Chord could see two metallic sealed doors. Metal rungs ran up the side of the wall and led to the top. Morrigan was looking upward, shaking his head.
He grumbled, “Bones already ache from the climb to come.”
“Are you still there, Chord?” OMEX asked before anyone could voice a proper response to Morrigan’s comment.
Chord answered quickly. “This unit is still present.”
“Given the distance of your voice I can only calculate that you have made it into the elevator shaft with your organic company. We could keep playing this game of cat mouse for quite some time, but to be perfectly blunt, I have always hated games.” Chord could see the telltale yellow glow of the station’s datasphere being remotely accessed.
OMEX continued. “Machina Chord, I need your body relatively undamaged, at the very least. And I need your organic companions dead.”
Arturo looked to Chord. “What is that machine saying?”
“The unit named OMEX is triggering a security countermeasure?” Chord called out to OMEX.
“If you have any pressing final words to say to your friends, I would do so now. In ten seconds you are about to be fried by forty thousand volts.”
Chord turned to face Arturo. “OMEX is going to electrocute us. We have ten seconds.”
OMEX started the countdown. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”
CHAPTER 16
JAFAHAN
Better to learn a hard lesson for the first time than for the last.
—Thorn proverb
10th of SSM–10 1445 A2E
“Falling” forward, with the station approaching her, Commander Jafahan reminded herself to keep her breath steady and controlled. The holographic heads-up display in her helmet was highlighting their trajectory. Jafahan had no optimistic illusions. There wasn’t going to be any easy way through this mission.
This was the opposite of an ideal sortie. A typical Thorn operation was usually backed by a combination of the Pax Humanis intelligence network and firepower. During any of these outings it would have been reasoned that the loss of four was far more acceptable than to risk the ship and the rest of the crew on an ill-informed rescue op. If she and this pack of piss-scared recruits Morwyn was sending with her survive their little adventure, Jafahan would make it a point to educate Morwyn on the matter.
Complaints were not, at the moment, a luxury she had. Twelve hours, less now, remained before the only option available to them would be retreat. Acting, moving, changing the battlefield, all the while limiting the opponent’s options and maximizing their own, was the only way to keep this whole situation from falling outside their favor.
Jafahan allowed herself a brief moment to admire the view. She could not deny that scene presented to her was not without beauty or merit. The Infinite was indeed a cruel and lovely place. It was also a constant fight against the never relenting forces of entropy and death. It was only while facing these hardiest of enemies that Commander Eliana Jafahan had ever truly felt alive.
To her left, encased in heavy Pax Humanis–issue gray infantry battle armor, w
as Private Beatrix. The suit had been custom-built to accommodate her Thegran size and still offered her joints complete mobility. While as advanced as Jafahan’s stealth suit, the infantry battle armor was far more durable and capable of absorbing larger amounts of punishment. Beatrix’s left forearm was also covered in a heavy morph-shield gauntlet.
Beatrix’s head was protected by a thick helmet. Her face guard was completely gray save for a long black opaque slit across the eyes. A massive kinetic war hammer, easily half of Jafahan’s size, was hanging from a magnetized sheath on her thickly armored leg.
A large black sack containing Beatrix’s collapsible minigun was strapped across her shoulders. It was a large belt-fed weapon, capable of firing up to twelve thousand flesh-rending rounds in just under thirty seconds. It was not the most surgical of tools, but was more than capable of handling large numbers.
Flying to Jafahan’s right, Lunient Tor was dressed in an older model Adoran lifesuit. His trapping’s joints and plating had a brown, almost copper tint to them. Segmented joints offered Lunient decent enough mobility, she supposed. Tor’s helmet was clear and Jafahan could see him chewing his lower lip nervously. The approaching station was reflected in his wide-open ink-black eyes, which made Lunient look like a terrified cat.
Jafahan was not at all shocked to see this. Lunient had every reason to be nervous. He was jumping into battle with a long, almost laughably ancient kinetic chemical bolt rifle, or KCBR. Typically the KCBR used chemically coated bolts that, when sprayed with a reaction agent, would propel them forward at lethal velocities. The downside of the KCBR was that each bolt needed to be manually coated and loaded into the chamber. This, more often than not, caused the KCBR to jam or misfire. When either one of these two worst-case scenarios didn’t occur, though, the KCBR was a remarkably precise and powerful firearm. Private Tor’s rifle was slung over his shoulder with a belted magnetic loop. Jafahan could tell by the heavy retractable vibrospear blade attached beneath its barrel that Lunient was more than likely no stranger to close-quarters encounters either.
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