by mikel evins
He looked at me sidelong for a moment.
“You know we’ll have to come back here again to get those creche records?”
I nodded.
“Even so,” I said, “We can’t just give up on the woman we came to rescue.”
He sighed, then nodded.
“You’re right, of course. Okay. Let’s bag her up and go.”
I took a membrane generator from my utility pack and fitted it to her. She didn’t even stir as the membrane blossomed around her. I touched my membrane to hers and sealed them together, then patted Jaemon’s shoulder. Zang and Yarrow watched the whole thing with worried expressions.
“So,” said Zang when I was done. “Let’s move.”
We glided back out of the room and down the corridors. The membrane seal towed Seher Altan behind me. We flew down the space between the stairs and the lift shafts to the ground floor, and then to the building’s entrance, where the solitary zombie robot still waited.
Jaemon found another push release inside, banged it, and shoved open the door. He led us out past the waiting zombie.
“Is she all right?” said the zombie, still using Angel’s voice. She sounded worried.
“No,” I said. “She’s very sick. We will return her to our ship at once for treatment.”
“Once, I could have treated her here,” the zombie said sadly.
“Why can’t you now?” Yarrow said.
“I’m zorry,” said the zombie. “I can’t talk about that. It’s not allowed.”
“I’m getting really tired of hearing that,” Jaemon growled.
“The hatch at the far end is closer than the one we came in,” said Zang.
“Thank you for your help,” I said to the zombie.
“I’m sad to see her go,” the zombie said. “Will you take the archive records of the remaining crew? Can you hlp them?” The ship’s voice sounded abject.
“We’ll have to come back for them,” I said. “This woman needs immediate medical attention.”
“I understand,” said the zombie with deep disappointment. “I hope you can help.”
“Let’s move,” Jaemon said. “No time to waste.”
“Jaemon,” said Captain Rayleigh, speaking on our private channel. “We’ve got movement. A lot of it. It doesn’t look like the zombie robots, and it’s coming in behind you, from the same direction that you came from.”
“Sounds like Zang’s right about the far hatch, then,” I said.
“Moving,” said Jaemon, and popped his jets. We all did the same and followed him back to the avenue. We turned toward the far end of the habitat and jetted for the hatch.
We rose well above the bulk of the buildings, saving time by avoiding the need to dodge obstacles. From high in the dark air of the habitat the downtown was a complicated jumble of shadows. I looked back the way we had come and saw no sign of whatever it was that was tracking us. Ahead was equally black and mysterious. We flew into an abyss.
The tall buildings thinned out and there were waves of lower residential buildings, then parkland with rings of single-family homes, and finally we could make out the end of the footpath and the familiar hatch and tunnel. We dived for the hatch.
A crowd of perhaps two dozen zombie robots milled around the hatch, meeting us with a chorus of greetings as we closed in on them. They were a jumbled arrangement of maintenance mechs of different types, with different dead people attached to them in different clothing. Some of the corpses were missing limbs. All were years dead and dried out. Many of them carried tools of various kinds.
“What are all of you doing here?” Jaemon said. He spoke to the zombies as if they were ordinary acquaintances. How quickly the bizarre becomes routine.
“I’m sorry,” they said in unison. “I can’t talk about it. It’s not allowed.”
We all joined them in the last part of their rote formula.
“Why am I not surprised?” said Jaemon.
“They’re getting close,” said the Captain.
“All right,” Jaemon said, “Out the hatch.”
Zang jetted to the airlock and in a few seconds had the inner hatch open. I went through first to make it easy on Seher Altan, who had made the trip as if floating in an airbed, stirring only a little from time to time. The others squeezed in behind me. Our membranes popped a little as we closed the inner hatch and the airlock depressurized.
“Some of the—whatever they are—are past you now,” said the Captain.
“Past us?” said Jaemon. “That doesn’t make any—”
“I’m afraid it does,” said Zang as the outer hatch slid open. She stuck her head out then pulled it back in.
“They’re outside waiting for us,” said Zang.
“What are?” said Jaemon.
“Bots. About a billion of them. Marble sized. They don’t look friendly.”
Kestrel said, “I count one thousand, seven hundred sixteen.”
“A thousand, a billion,” said Zang, shrugging.
“Close that hatch!” Jaemon snapped.
Zang did it. Our membranes rustled as the airlock repressurized. She squeezed past us and banged the inner hatch open again. We poured out among the gathered zombies and Zang said, “Fry me, they’re inside, too.”
She pointed the nozzle of her flamethrower up and forward and lit up the dark with a brief burst of fire. We saw a swarm of black spheres smaller than a billiard ball.
A wave of the balls plowed into the front rank of zombie robots, making crunching and banging noises and knocking pieces off the zombies. The zombies responded by raising their tools and advancing clumsily, bobbing and bumping, jerking hard as more ball slammed into them.
One of the balls glanced off my shoulder. I moved to shift Seher Altan behind me and took my shotgun off my back. There was a bright plume as Zang shot a jet from her flamethrower between two of the zombies. The edge of the jet clipped one of the zombies and its dessicated head caught and burned ludicrously.
A blue-white flash erupted as Yarrow’s arc gun played over the advancing wave of ball bearings. Half a dozen of them popped in showers of sparks, leaking black smoke into the fading glare.
Jaemon swore and gestured wildly toward the tunnel.
“Go! Go!” he said. “Retreat! There are too many.”
We jetted for the mouth of the tunnel as the zombies spread themselves into a wall between us and the ball bearings. The sounds of crunching and banging faded as we sped into the tunnel, then they grew louder again.
“Oh, come on!” Zang said.
Ahead of us at the other end of the tunnel was another wall of zombies gradually being taken apart by ball bearings.
“Now what?” said Zang, turning toward.
Jaemon swore again.
18.
“The spine bridge,” I said. They blinked at me.
I jetted to the spine side of the tunnel. Exactly at the center of its length I found the hexagonal hatch I expected.
“Zang?” I said, knocking my fist against the bulkhead. She frowned slightly and jetted to me.
“Oh!” she said. She hung the flamethrower nozzle on her belt. In a few seconds she had the hatch open, and we were looking down a long tunnel with transparent walls. Bright flashes and loud bangs reminded us of the robotic carnage taking place just meters away.
A flat catwalk led nearly a kilometer to what looked like another hatch. A lift ran along the tunnel’s ceiling, with sideways doors above us. Wrapped around it all was a supporting framework with a narrow spiral staircase, again sideways, that ran the length of the tunnel, enclosing the walkway and the lift shaft inside the transparent walls.
“Oh, look at that,” said Yarrow. “How clever.”
Jaemon frowned. “What the—?”
“It’s for when they spin the habitats,” Yarrow said. “This way becomes down.” E pointed behind us.
“Oh, sure, of course,” said Jaemon.
“I wonder why they aren’t spinning now?” Yarrow said.
>
“Just be glad they’re not,” Jaemon said. “That’s a lot of stairs.”
“The ball robots,” I said.
“What?” said Jaemon.
“The ball robots. They rely on zero G to maneuver. If the environment were spun up for gravity, the floating bots wouldn’t work.”
Jaemon frowned.
“Hunh,” he said. “You might be right. Let’s move before they get past the zombies.”
We moved into the tunnel. Zang banged on the control surface again to slide the hatch closed again. We jetted down the tunnel, floating in a tight line along the catwalk. In the middle of the catwalk, with the infinite expanse of stars surrounding us, I felt much like I had during our jumps across the gulf between ships. I looked back and down and saw starlight glinting on a thousand somethings, more bots stalking us outside the ship. A sudden premonition made me turn my cameras forward and magnify the view, but I didn’t see any of them ahead of us.
“Watch out when we open the hatch,” I said.
“You see something, Lev?” said Jaemon.
“No,” I said. “But they came in behind us, and they were waiting for us at the far end of the tunnel.”
“I see your point,” said Jaemon. “Swell.”
We jetted to a halt in front of the hatch at the far end. Jaemon stuck his face against the transparent port at the top of the hatch and I could see one of his spotlights playing around in the chamber on the other side.
“Don’t see them in there,” he said.
“Hmmm…” said Zang.
Jaemon waved her forward and she poked at the control surface until the hatch slid back.
“Welcome to Angel of Cygnus,” said a familiar voice. “How may I help you?”
We looked at each other.
“Angel, it’s us,” Jaemon said.
“I’m sorry,” said the ship. “I don’t recognize you. Do you have identification cards? Is that Seher Altan with you? Why is she confined?”
“Angel, we’ve been over this,” said Jaemon.
“Have we?” The ship sounded uncertain. “I’m afraid I don’t remember.”
“We were sent to rescue Seher Altan. She’s very sick.”
“Rescue her from what? If she’s sick she should be in a medical center. There is one across the bridge behind you. I can give you directions.”
The ship spoke a little too fast, with the exaggerated diction of someone who’s upset but trying to conceal it.
“We just came from that medical center,” I said. “You helped us find Seher Altan and helped us evade a large collection of small mechs that were apparently pursuing us.”
“I did?” The ship sounded confused. “I did? Are you sure?”
“Close that hatch,” Jaemon said to Zang, who moved quickly to the hatch and slid it closed. She poked at the control surface for several seconds.
“I think that’s sealed it,” she said.
The chamber in front of us was a large arc wrapped around part of the ship’s spine. Its walls, like the walls of the tunnel, were transparent. We could see the gargantuan structural members of the spine, and, through the far wall, another chamber, filled floor-to-ceiling with regularly-arranged geometric structures.
“I think that’s a data center,” I said, pointing at the structures.
“Could we get the archive data out of it?” said Yarrow.
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s worth a try.”
“I don’t know about this,” said Angel’s voice fretfully.
A bright blue-white light flooded the control center from high overhead. There was a shudder, a bang we could feel in our bodies, and the deck below us flew up and smacked into us hard. I felt a roar that seemed to come right through my bones, huge, low, continuous.
Zang coughed and pushed herself up to a sitting position.
“The drives,” she said. “Angel’s drives.” She looked up. “They’re firing.”
19.
“Ow,” said Jaemon, lying on his face. “Gravity.”
“Feels like about a G,” I said.
“I noticed,” said Jaemon. “Ow.”
Seher Altan groaned and tried to roll over. I helped her onto her side, concerned that she might have trouble breathing on her back. Zang was rubbing her elbow.
“Let me see,” I said.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I just banged it when I landed.”
I started to get up, and couldn’t.
“Oops,” I said, and unsealed my membrane from Seher Altan’s. I got my feet under me and clumped over to Zang, moving heavily in the simulated gravity.
She let me rotate and palpate her elbow.
“It’ll be fine,” I said.
“Told you,” she said.
“It’s gonna be sore for a bit.”
“Yep.”
“Hey,” said Yarrow, “How come they weren’t waiting for us in here?”
“Yeah,” said Zang. “How come that?”
Jaemon looked into my cameras.
“Because they wanted us in here?” I said.
Jaemon said, “I knew you were going to say something like that. Zang, see if you can get that hatch open again, will you?”
She looked at him for a couple of seconds, then heaved herself to her feet and thudded over to the hatch. She banged and poked at it for several seconds, then swore.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Jaemon said. He sighed.
“Well, Esgar,” he said. “We’re prize suckers.”
“It was a trap?” the Captain said.
“What else?” Jaemon said.
“Hang tight,” said the Captain. “We’ll figure something out. I’m guessing you noticed Angel’s drives cutting in.”
“Oh, did they?” said Jaemon. “That explains the gigantic floodlights and the sudden reappearance of gravity. By the way, ow.”
“We’re on it,” said the Captain. “Kestrel’s coming after you. We’ll be caught up in no time.”
“Gonna be complicated with both ships under acceleration,” said Jaemon. “And watch out for those bots. Angel left them behind to get in your way, you know.”
“We’re already past them,” said the Captain.
“There are more of them in here.”
“We know. We’ve been following along.”
“Okay,” said Jaemon. “At least we found a data center.”
“I think I’d better get in there quickly,” I said, “And find out if I can figure how to grab the archive data.”
“Are you worried that something else bad is coming?” said Yarrow.
“Aren’t you?” I said. “When is being herded into a box ever good news?”
“Good point,” said Yarrow.
20.
“Let’s see,” said Jaemon, easing carefully into a chair. It was one of perhaps two dozen that sat before curving banks of control surfaces along the two long walls of Angel’s spinal control center.
“We got Seher Altan,” he continued. “We don’t have the creche archives, yet, but maybe we can get them from those things on the other side of that wall—” He pointed to the inner wall of the Control center, behind which rows of blocky structures stood in stacks—“We can’t get back out of here, and if we did, we’d find a few thousand angry ball bearings waiting to beat us to death, or we could jump off an accelerating ship and fall into open space, where a few thousand more angry ball bearings are maybe waiting for us. Did I miss anything?”
“Yeah,” said Zang. “Something deliberately herded us in here before switching on the ship’s drives.”
“Why did it do that?” said Yarrow.
Jaemon said, “If I had to guess—”
“And you do,” said Zang.
“—I’d say it was to make it harder for Esgar to get us out of here.”
“I think Kestrel can catch this ship pretty quickly,” said Yarrow.
“I can,” said Kestrel. “But Angel and I are both under acceleration. You cannot simply leave through a hatch
and jet over to me. You would fall away behind us. If you get too close to me before you fall away, you could end up in my drive exhaust. I could build a bridge for you to cross, but that offers Angel another way to attack you. She can cut her drives, which will cause her to fall behind me, snapping the bridge and endangering the lives of anyone on it.”
“Oh,” said Yarrow.
“I may be able to do something,” said Kestrel. “I’ll let you know shortly.”
“Meanwhile,” I said, “I suppose I should try to get the creche data.”
“Good idea,” said Jaemon. “We’ll come with you.”
“Someone should stay with Seher Altan,” I said.
“Let’s bring her,” said Jaemon. “I don’t want us getting separated.”
“You’ll be able to see me,” I said. “I’m only a few meters away. I don’t like moving her in this gravity.”
“Let’s bring her,” said Jaemon. He held my gaze for a few seconds.
“All right,” I said. “Let me carry her.”
I clumped over to where she was curled on her side, shivering. I bent and slipped my arms under her shoulders and her knees, then slowly straightened, lifting her carefully. I rolled her toward me, so that she curled about my torso, and then raised the temperature of my arms and chest to warm her. Her skin was clammy.
