“Thanks, but I’m neck deep in logs,” she replied, reviewing the selection of drinks. There was a citrus blend that swirled orange and pink that was labelled as a ‘cool, brisk nutrient rich treat’ and she punched that one. Having one machine for the ten officers in that berthing space was a high privilege. She’d seen images of an enlisted cadets berthing, and they had one machine for every forty-two bunks. It didn’t look like they got fresh fruit drinks, either. Alice chose a medium sized cup and the machine produced a cold, sealed container. The straw popped up as she picked it up. “I’m still working hard to stay ahead, neck deep in logs. Are you waiting for Ute?”
“Yeah, they still can’t fit her vacsuit right,” Perry said, shrugging his big shoulders. “She’s just putting on something she can outrun me in. What kind of logs?”
Alice took a sip of the thick, tart citrus drink and winked at Perry.
“Oh, can’t talk about it,” he said, nodding. “See you in Stellar Cartography?”
“I finished my class time,” Alice said. “I’ll see you in the wardroom though.”
“Hi!” Ute said as she emerged from her bunk room. Her smooth, wide head was covered in the middle by a strip of fabric that flowed down her back and spread out across the rest of her body from the midsection down. Alice could see at a glance that the sweet hearted girl seemed comfortable in the strange outfit.
“Hi, Ute, how are you?” Alice asked.
“Good!” she replied. “Did you hear? I scored all hundreds in the navigation and procedure tests. All the way up to qualification nine.”
Alice hadn’t heard, but then, she was starting to realize how little she knew about what was going on thanks to her unwavering focus on the program. Those categories had six qualification levels plus three more for capitol ship combat piloting, a category she passed her general qualification for, but decided not to pursue past the basics.
“That’s amazing, you’re probably the first to have perfect scores.” Alice said, surprised and happy for the small mergillian.
“Oh, yeah, I’m going to be a pilot.”
“We don’t know that for sure, remember?” Perry reminded her. “Not until we get our assignments when we’ve finished here.”
“Right,” Ute said, her light whistling voice a little more serious. “Where else would they put me though?”
“Lead navigator?” Perry said. “You’re definitely smart enough for it.”
Alice smiled at watching the pair, and wondered if other people were as amused when they watched her and Iruuk together. She knew she was the Perry of their relationship, the practical one.
“I’d have to make Commander,” Ute said. “No way any trainee is getting that rank when we graduate.”
“I don’t know,” Alice interjected. “How are your science and math scores?”
Ute checked her small comm unit and nodded to herself. “Ninety-nine point one average,” she said as though those weren’t high enough for Alice to envy her a little.
“They might have trouble finding anyone better than you, Ute,” Alice said. “They’re going to put you somewhere important, or you could end up teaching.”
“You think so?” Ute asked. “I’d be happier flying, but teaching new trainees could be interesting.”
“I’d brace yourself for good news on assignment day,” Alice said. She looked to Perry, who was nodding at Ute. She knew he was on a similar track as she was with a minor as a combat pilot.
“You’re probably going to be my boss,” Perry said.
Ute’s laughter was sweetly musical, and her colour shifted from green and off white to a reddened hue. “Good, then I won’t have to go running with you all the time.”
“You don’t like hanging out with me?” Perry said, winking at Alice.
“Oh, no,” Ute replied, taking him seriously. “I do, but I’d rather play Gator or watch holos.”
“I know,” Perry said, “Just kidding. Speaking of running.”
“I guess,” Ute said, looking to Alice. “See you later.”
“See you two,” Alice replied. She returned to her bunk and brought up the holographic directory of Noah’s logs. The next audio segment started months after the elevator shaft. There were several hundred static two dimensional images that were captured leading up to it. Once the privacy curtain was closed again she started the next log file, audio only. An image of the middle Commerce Complex Building appeared, taken from the nearest shore. It was marked three weeks after the end date of the previous log.
“That’s where the fun ended, with that improvised grenade. It went up with a real bang, Lurk wasn’t kidding, and it had an electromagnetic pulse just large enough to put the bots waiting for me at the doorway out of commission.”
Alice laid back, sipping on her drink while she listened to Noah tell his story.
I had to use both of those power cells to get into the main power control room then get safe inside. If I never have to crank another manual door opener, I’ll be a happy man. I jammed the last two between me and the soldiers with forks from a food station I passed, thinking I was some kind of genius. It wasn’t the worst move, since it gave me just enough time to cause the power reserves to discharge through the building’s outer armour. I was operating under Emrine’s access credentials, so I really just had to find and run the command routines. Lurk understood what was going on, and said; “Boot,” before I entered the final command. I took my boot off, let him crawl inside, disconnected his cybernetic harness and sealed the top of the boot with some emergency tape from my kit. That was one smart lizard, I think the reason why they never became popular synthetic pets was because they didn’t talk much. Or maybe it was because they were too smart.
I executed the command that sent all the power from the reserve surrounding the underground vault to the outer frame of the building. It was an emergency combat measure that was built in, I can’t take credit for how powerful that blast was or the engineering that went behind making those systems work together.
I didn’t know it then, but the command echoed to nine other defence platforms across the planet. Most bots aren’t made to withstand an electromagnetic pulse that powerful, not much is.
The soldiers were in the room a moment later and my back was to them, so I kicked the boot I stashed Lurk in further under the counter. “Stay there,” I told him.
They had me out of the console chair and up against the wall so fast there was nothing I could do. I was surprised to see that there were only two of them. Ruben’s right eye socket looked like a charred mess, but that didn’t stop him from trying to activate the dead terminal I’d set the EMP off from. “Son of a bitch! I can’t believe you did it!”
The soldier who held me against the wall was shorter than me, but she was so much stronger, it felt like she was going to grind my face through the plating. “My weapon’s dead.” She said, throwing her sidearm across the room. “Everything’s dead.”
“I know, I wonder how many guys we lost when their cybernetics burned out,” Ruben said as he walked across the room towards me. “I didn’t think this asshole would go through with it, so I forgot to tell them to seal up and get ready.”
“I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know,” I pleaded. Sure, I’ll admit, when my life is hanging by a thread and there’s no other option, I’ll say pretty much anything to get out of it. I did, but that didn’t last more than a minute or so before the short soldier asked a question I didn’t want to hear.
“What do we do with him?”
“Let him down,” Ruben said. “He’s just a kid, so we’ll be nice.”
She followed orders and I flexed my twisted arm while I turned to face Ruben. “Honestly, man, I thought it was the best thing, I didn’t mean to hurt you or any of your guys.”
“Arm feel better?” he asked.
“I’ll be all right, sure.”
“Good,” was the last word he ever said to me. His fist came down across the side of my head so fast and hard I didn’t real
ize I was falling until I was on the floor. They beat me for what felt like hours. After a while it was almost like a conversation spoken with fists, boots, knees and random parts of the room that were all harder than me. I left a couple teeth on the edge of that console, my arm was broken under a chair leg, and the rest of my body got to know the shapes of their knuckles and their shoe sizes really well.
I wanted to crack wise when they left, but I coughed up a throat full of blood instead. Lurk couldn’t do anything, but he curled up in front of my face while I laid there. I passed out, I’m pretty sure, thought it was all over for me, but that wasn’t Ruben and his friend’s intention.
They wanted me to survive, all messed up. I don’t know how much time passed before I started dragging myself around with my good arm. My suit could have straightened everything they broke out, but the controller was burned out.
I did my best to splint my arm, but I couldn’t do much about my leg. Everything hurt, especially dragging that around. I finally found an emergency medical station one floor up – stairs are nothing but pain when you can only move horizontally, trust me – and there was enough restorative in cream and injection form for five people, probably six. There was no food though, and I was hungrier than I’d ever been.
I raided that medical station, by the time I was done there were no chemical lights, restorative chemicals, auto-splints, or anything left. Everything got dragged into a nearby supply closet, even though every trip was agony. The auto-splint was nothing fancy, you strap it to whatever you’ve broken, tighten the braces, then it traces the break with something that looks a bit like a claw but doesn’t clamp onto anything – confusing, I know – and then there’s a click. According to the instructions, you yank on a little handle hard and it straightens then sets the broken bone.
I did my shin first, and I screamed so hard that my voice was raspy for days. Again, I passed out. When I came to, the auto-splint was locked in place, my shin was straightened. Pain killers would have been a good idea, but I guess I was too delirious before I put the splint on to realize that I had a bag full of them in Safe-Dose applicators. I found them before I used the second auto-splint on my arm, and watched the whole procedure with fascination instead of suffering and screaming. That’s the way to go, I tell ya.
While I was busy doing that, Lurk got to a tube of restorative cream and ate some. By that night, his belly swelled up so big that I was sure he’d either die, or pop and then die. All he’d say is; “Full,” and croak as though he couldn’t be happier. Sometimes I forget he’s a synthetic. He doesn’t actually need food, but he can eat. I deactivated his impulse to find food after that, afraid of what he might chomp and swallow next.
The swelling settled down about a day later, but it took another month for his skin to return to its regular shape, so he was a wrinkly lizard in the meantime. I explored the Commerce Building on a crutch made out of a tall chair leg and part of a backrest carefully at first. I was sure there were soldiers around, but I was wrong. They’d moved on. I found what was left of most of Ruben’s unit. They had deep cybernetics, a lot of them had strength and environmental survival enhancements that died in the electromagnetic pulse because they either didn’t have their helmets on, or they weren’t outfitted right to resist the EMP. Someone had mercy-killed a bunch, and there wasn’t a speck of food or good supplies left behind.
I took a few power cells that were still good, and some ammo, but doubted I’d find anywhere to use them. Clean water was everywhere, so I drank constantly, and took a camelback from one of the bodies. I finally found food near the top level of the third building where there was a commercial section. It was all preserved stuff, but I made a pig of myself, throwing up after my first meal.
The bots murdered dozens of people there, the smell was something I’ll never forget. All the cafeteria goers were caught by surprise when the machines turned on them, and even though I knew there was little chance anything with a microprocessor survived the blast, I was still careful around the robot servers. Why anyone thought installing full-blown artificial intelligences into waiter bots was a good idea, I’ll never know. Your waiter doesn’t need synthetic emotions or a developing personality. They just need decent food service software and maybe a little social programming. Why put a artificial intelligence in a robot when all they’re going to do is suffer in the service industry? I’ll never get it.
That night I enjoyed a second meal much slower, feeding Lurk bits of fruit and lettuce that were well preserved in their cases. He pretended to love it, no artificial intelligence in him, just all right mimic software. His bio converter made good use of the food though, recharging his battery and feeding the synthetic skin.
As night fell I watched falling stars streak across the sky endlessly and wondered if the Daring Dickenson was one of them.
Part Ten
The cafeteria became home for a while. I respectfully dragged the more whole bodies into a conference room. It took days, but it was worth it when they were all gone. The smaller chunks that didn’t seem to belong to the more whole people went too, but I devised a way to make a partial protective suit out of bags first. By the end of that week there was a conference room with ID badges hanging on the door, like a communal gravestone. I scratched; “Their Machines Did Them In,” on the door, as though anyone would suspect anything else.
The blood spattered, nasty looking bots that served in the cafeteria until they went berserk were mostly too heavy to move. A couple were really light, the more human looking ones, so I put them in the window facing outward in the next hallway. Over the next few weeks their poses were adjusted to look less and less dignified as I pulled parts that worked out of them and reposed each one as though they were fighting each other, or trying to call for help, or playing a circular game of grab-ass. The funniest pose I accomplished was one where a cute android waitress was looking embarrassed in the middle of the rest, who were made to look like they were reacting to a terrible smell originating from her. I called it the “Fart Tableau” and I changed it after a few days because it was a little too funny. It didn’t seem right, they were killers, after all.
The restoratives and the medication I stole from that one closet were enough for me to recover in a few weeks instead of months. My leg healed up in just three weeks, I guess it could have gone faster, but I dosed only as heavy as the instructions told me to, I knew about as much about medication as I know about life on Mars – almost nothing. My arm was all right, out of the splint, I was a little worried about a little bump on the bone where it was broken, but it didn’t hurt. It was time to explore, and I couldn’t help but climb a service tube up to the roof of the cafeteria. I ran up a service stairway there and before long I was on top of the building. Lurk climbed out on my shoulder and we watched the sun set over the distant skyline of what I assumed was New Tokyo. A forest of steel and towering endura-crete was bathed in the red and yellow hues of their sun. I don’t actually know if Lurk was watching the sunset with me, he might have just come out for some air, my suit was getting pretty ripe by then.
The sun finished setting and the reality of the situation on Iora started to sink in. Until then I was focused on hiding, healing, staying close to food and listening for anyone or anything that might still be in the building. For the first time I started wondering what I’d do next. There were years worth of preserved food in the cafeteria between what was in passive stasis systems, gel containment, and the foods that wouldn’t go off for a decade or more. I had my emergency pile, all bagged up and ready to go, and even that was enough to last three months thanks to the high efficiency nutrient bars I found, but I only put that together because I was bored. That, along with leftover medical supplies, a couple hand lights I managed to rig up from bot parts that survived the EMP, and a makeshift machete I made from a protective plate off the side of one of the machines made up my whole go bag. I was still on the lookout for more useful stuff, so it was a work in progress.
I wondered if my fig
hter survived the EMP, it could fly without complex electronics, it was that old, but where would I go? The questions started getting louder in my head, boiling down to two main ones: Do I stay here? Why would I go?
I could imagine having to run. I had no working weapons other than a nasty looking machete that couldn’t be that useful, really. I didn’t know if I could make something out of the thing I had, the inside of my sidearm looked so needlessly complicated that I gave up after poking at it for a few days. There was little chance the soldiers left anything, and any weapons lockers in the building should be locked. “But someone had to go down fighting, right?” I asked Lurk. “I mean, if the bots went nuts, and this is a defensive platform with a vault at the bottom, someone had to open a weapons locker with something useful inside before the EMP zapped everything. A lot of the guns I’ve seen would still work if they got zapped.”
“Search?” Lurk croaked.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I hate leaving the cafeteria, but I think I’m going to have to. Besides, I’ve only got about thirty restorative tablets left. That’s enough for me, but not enough to trade with, or enough to get jacked up on if I get into real trouble.”
“Four a day,” said my lizard.
“I know, that’s what the bottle said, but that’s for someone at full body weight, I’m skinny for my height, so even that’s probably a heavy dose for me. It’s working, though.” I thought about the large building beneath me. It was huge, and I was sure there would be secure areas hiding who knew what. “What I need is a crowbar.”
“Tonight?”
“We’ll start exploring tomorrow,” I told Lurk.
The sun set and the stars came out, a display that only the cosmos could put on in as near as no light as I’ve ever seen on a planet. I could see a group of stars that formed a perfect set of boxes, and it took me a while, but I noticed that they were moving in such a way that I concluded that they belonged to something that was slowly rotating. One of the stations that were in orbit, maybe, it was big, whatever it was, and I was thankful that it wasn’t directly overhead. If it crashed shielded, the destruction would be unimaginable. There were many lights that didn’t have the right behaviour to be stars. If I found one that was obviously under power, turning, weaving, I could at least hope that there was something alive up there. I lost count of how many lights I followed across the sky before giving up that night. None of them moved in a curve, or turned as they crossed my field of vision. I pretended that I wasn’t looking for the DD or any of the other ships I knew, but I was fooling myself. There was no way I could make them out, but I still hoped someone got out alive. There could be friends on the planet, in the same hemisphere most likely if they made it to escape pods. Some of them must have. Finding them was a problem. Normally I would have had the Stellarnet on my comm, helping me figure out what lights belonged to what, or a sort of legal Navnet connection set up to tell me where everything went. None of that was going to happen, and I felt blind. Even worse, without anyone I knew aside from a synthetic lizard, I felt lost.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale Page 5
