by C. Gockel
“Where is here?” Alaric demanded.
Volka met his gaze, and her fingers twitched with the desire to touch him. “This is Sundancer’s imagination.”
“Who is Sundancer?” Alaric asked, taking a step toward them, unhindered by his cast.
Carl cried, “Don’t—”
Volka stepped toward Alaric. “Our starship.”
Alaric backed away, gaze flashing around Sundancer’s imagined bridge. “This is madness.”
“It’s not,” Volka said. “She’s our…” She bit her lip. “Our friend.”
“No, no…” Alaric shook his head, taking another st ep back.
“Don’t be afraid,” Volka said, holding a hand toward him.
Halting his retreat, Alaric stared at her just a moment, and then his lip curled and he shouted, “Fire! Now!” The sun outside the ship erupted, and Alaric vanished. For a moment, there was silence aboard Sundancer’s bridge, and then it shook, and the sun beside them throbbed. Volka shouted in rage, but she wasn’t sure if it was Alaric’s, Sundancer’s, or hers.
“We must go,” Carl said.
…and then they were back in the tunnel, but instead of darkness, they were surrounded by phaser fire. She sucked in on her lips. Alaric was firing on them…again. He’d never believed in visions.
Carl squeaked and stretched on 6T9’s forearm. “I feel like I was hit by a hover bus.”
“We’re being fired on by remote control drones,” 6T9 said, dropping the hover so low they skidded over the track below, sending sparks flying.
Turning in her seat, Volka saw drones hovering a meter and a half off the tunnel floor. Shaped like spheres that had their bottom quarters sawed off, they had dark gashes running around what would be their equators. Phasers protruded from the gashes, orange and primed. She winced, and a blast clipped the top of the hover by Volka’s window, making the composite glow with heat. Pulling away, she hissed in pain.
Unbuckling his seat belt, 6T9 said, “I won’t leave you until you die, and I have an idea.” Turning around, half standing, Carl still on his one arm, he said, “Get onto my side, face backward, and tuck yourself into the fetal position. ”
Volka looked down at her pack.
“Bring only your sketchbook,” he said.
Nodding, she tore it out of the pack, stuffed it down her shirt, and then, unfastening her belt, she fumbled to his side of the hover. He handed her Carl as she maneuvered onto his seat. “Curl around him,” 6T9 said. “I’ll curl around you.”
Nodding, she tucked the warm weight of the werfle to her stomach and awkwardly pulled into the fetal position on the seat. The hover was darting side to side, rocking her with it, and she flinched at a blast of phaser fire that came way too close. The space was tight, and 6T9’s chest was against her back. He wrapped one arm around her legs and the other over her head, pulling them closer. “You trust me,” he said, like it was a revelation, and she stiffened at the tone, unsure if she deserved the awe behind it. She felt what might have been a kiss on the back of her head, and she swallowed.
A blast of phaser fire hit the hover, sending the craft rolling. The hover collided with the walls, floor, and ceiling, and inside Volka, 6T9, and Carl did, too—but 6T9 never let her go and took the brunt of it. Another blast loosened the door on the driver’s side and then the one above them. The doors tore off when the hover bounced against the ceiling, falling behind them, sending up sparks, and briefly hiding the drones from view. And then the hover rolled over and did not right itself. Without a roof, they dropped to the tracks below. Carl squeaked; Volka bit her lip and tasted blood. Beneath them, 6T9 didn’t make a sound, even when they bounced and skidded along the track. They came to a stop, and Volka opened her eyes to see the drones only meters away. She tried to get off 6T9, to scramble away, but he smacked a hand over her mouth and held her still. “Don’t move!” he whispered urgently beneath her.
Volka went limp. Her heart pounded in her ears. The killing machines were not five paces away. Her eyes went wide, and then the drones flew above them in a whirr of hover engines and phaser blasts. She followed their path with her eyes and saw the hover still bouncing through the tunnel, sending off sparks as it collided off the surfaces.
6T9 muttered, “Nebulas.” He ripped Carl from her grip, and the werfle squeaked as 6T9 flipped Volka over and pressed her between the ties of the tracks, Carl beside her. Pinning her beneath him, 6T9 pushed her face cruelly into the gravel. Rocks tore at her cheeks, she smelled her own blood, and spit gravel and dirt from her mouth. And then she saw light, even though she was face down in gravel; it was so bright it crept in from the sides. The light was followed by a deafening boom.
6T9 lay stretched out above Volka and Carl. His Q-comm downloaded diagrams of their skeletal systems. Their bones might as well be butterfly wings. 6T9 pressed them tight as he could to the tunnel floor. The ground rippled as though it were the surface of a pond a stone had been cast into, and rocks fell from the ceiling.
A hover exploding wouldn’t cause such a shockwave—plasma fire hitting a controlled detonation device like the type used in mining could, and plasma on such a device would do more than just cause a rumble. The drones must have hit a planted charge. “Hold your breath!” 6T9 shouted, realizing what was to come. He felt Volka’s lungs struggle, and then a fireball rolled over them, melting the synth-skin on his back. He had shut off his pain receptors, but as his liquified skin dribbled along his spine, he felt like he might scream with the wrongness of it. His internal alarms were blaring, and another part of him was screaming that Volka and Carl should not be here. They could die.
There was a loud whoosh, and the fire retreated. Rocks and pebbles pelted the ground around them and embedded themselves in the soft surface of 6T9’s melted synth-skin. “Volka? Carl?” he whispered. “Are you…?” Conscious. Did he want them to be? If they were unconscious, they would not be in pain.
Carl’s thoughts whipped into his mind. “Next time, could you give a warning?”
“No,” 6T9 replied aloud. “I was too busy calculating the exact time to release the doors so their fall would obscure our drop as they bounced down the track, and then I was too busy protecting you and flying the hover as far into the tunnel as I could.”
Volka panted, and then, lifting her head, cried, “Sundancer! We’re coming!”
6T9 blinked. Was Volka mad or lying to the space craft?
“Get off of us!” Carl cried. “We have to reach her!”
6T9 hesitated, wanting to savor the last moments of life in their bodies, willing the beats of their hearts to continue forever. They had so little time left.
“Sixty.” Volka began to struggle. “Are you hurt too much to move?”
Even though he didn’t like the idea of not being able to protect them, he said, “I’m still very functional,” and rolled off. Not meeting their eyes, he sat up, the skin on his back stretching oddly, and a strange sensation of cold zinging along his spine. “Even if we can reach her,” he said dismally, “We don’t have the explosives we need to free her from the glacier. And then we have to wake her.” He put a hand over his eyes, his circuits going dark. He had no more ideas. Surely there were explosives at the tunnel’s mouth, but that was nearly a kilometer away, and how would they get them?
“He can’t see what we see,” Carl said mysteriously.
The weight of the werfle’s paw on his thigh made 6T9 look up.
“She’s awake,” Carl said. “And I don’t think we’ll have to worry about the glacier.”
“How will we get out of here?” 6T9 asked. He felt oddly like a dumb ‘bot again. He comprehended their words, but felt like he was locked out of some greater understanding.
Volka and the werfle blinked at him. Volka’s eyes went wide. “You can’t smell the fresh air!” Grabbing his hand, she stood and tugged.
Hefting Carl onto his opposite forearm, 6T9 rose unsteadily to his feet. He wasn’t sure they both weren’t delusional, but then again, he�
�d never really been sure Sundancer was anything more than an illusion. But Volka’s hand was real , warm, and she’d reached out to him of her own initiative. It made his circuits dance even though he knew the contact was nothing more than comradely. He wondered when his standards for physical fulfillment had sunk so low.
From the mouth of the tunnel came a hum.
“Drones,” Volka murmured.
“Run!” Carl cried.
They ran. The cold seeping along 6T9’s spine depleting his power reserves at an alarming rate. Within a few meters, they were stumbling in darkness. The light fixtures in the walls had been damaged by fire or falling debris. Knowing it might give them away, and would drain his power reserves even more quickly, 6T9 turned on the emergency lights that shone through the whites of his eyes. Volka glanced over her shoulder at him, gasped but didn’t let his hand go, and she stopped stumbling.
The drones’ hum behind them became louder. 6T9’s Q-comm unhelpfully informed him that they were only fifty-five seconds from firing range, but he could feel the frigid open air, too. Five seconds later, he saw the cold distant light of the sun, shining from a hole in the ceiling, just half a meter across about a meter above his head. Two seconds more, and they were beneath it.
“How will we—?” Volka started to ask.
6T9 tossed Carl through the opening. The werfle disappeared from view, squeaking in the real world, and complaining over the ether, “Warn me next time!”
6T9 was too busy to explain that he’d had to focus on the force needed and the precise angle, or that the countdown in his mind was blaring.
Kneeling, 6T9 said to Volka, “On my shoulders! Now!” But he knew it was too late.
Alaric sat in the captain’s chair aboard the bridge, gripping the arm rests. He wasn’t going mad. His mind was still his own.
The remote drones’ visual readings were playing on the main screen. The tunnel was lit in the orange of their plasma chargers .
“What is that thing?” one of the ensigns asked. Aboard the LCS everyone held their breath. A nightmare was crouched on the floor. It had an exposed spine of silvery metal. Human-like flesh embedded with stones fanned out on either side of the gaping central gash. It didn’t appear to have a head. The cross hairs for the drones’ weapon firing systems hung above the thing—Ran seemed shocked. Alaric was shocked, too. A new alien. A new enemy?
Volka emerged from the shadows and sat upon it—and the thing rose to its feet.
“It’s the android!” Alaric shouted. “Fire.”
“Yes, sir!” Ran said.
The cross hairs lowered to the thing’s back. Volka stood on the thing’s shoulders and was abruptly hefted out of view. Ran fired, and the ship shook.
On the screen, the robot pitched sideways as though out of balance. The drones’ shots went wide.
“What?” Ran exclaimed.
“It’s an earthquake,” Alaric said. The ship continued to shake, but in the tunnel, the android regained its feet and looked directly at the drones. There were the remains of a deflected plasma bolt on its chest, and light shone from the whites of its eyes, making it look as though its irises were black. It looked like a devil, or, Alaric supposed, an angel.
“Mother of God,” said an ensign.
“Fire!” Alaric ordered, but the cross hairs only bounced erratically on the screen. Ran said, “I can’t get a lock. The drones’ hover systems are malfunctioning—”
Agrawal said, “It was the earthquake—our hover systems are still recovering.” Which was when Alaric realized the ship was still shaking .
The android crouched and leaped out of view.
“Follow it!” Alaric ordered.
The drones advanced shakily. “After shocks, sir,” said Ran. “I’ll get it under control in a moment.”
Volka’s words in the dream played in Alaric’s mind. It’s a starship.
Had it been a dream? There was an android that could deflect plasma blasts and seize minds. There was nothing in the Red Gorge for weere, man, or machine…unless…
“Agrawal, get us ready to leave atmosphere,” Alaric said.
“Yes, sir,” said the engineer.
“Sir,” Ran said. “I won’t be able to control the drones through the rock of—”
“They have a ship,” Alaric declared with certainty. A ship that had evaded all their sensors. Republic technology had taken a giant leap forward while Luddeccea had enjoyed a hundred years of relative freedom and peace. A peace they would pay for now.
The Republic could not be allowed to believe that Luddeccea was helpless, or that they would stand idly by when the Republic fostered internal rebellions. He thought of Volka, her mind completely lost. Luddeccea would not indulge kidnappers and mind theft. He wasn’t religious, but Volka was. She wouldn’t call it just “mind theft.” She’d call it “soul theft”…and what was the soul if not the mind? The Volka he knew would never sacrifice her soul.
His nails tore into the arm rests’ poly coating, but his voice, when it rang out on the bridge, was cold to his own ears. “We have to destroy it.”
21
Thaw
I feel you…so close …be safe…be safe… Volka didn’t hear the words as she stood in the snow and stared down into the tunnel shaft, Carl wrapped around her neck. She felt them in her heart. Sundancer was awake, knew they were here, and that they were in danger. The connection sent a thrill to her heart; at the same time, she felt like she would weep. To be so close and to lose made her heart and her throat threaten to seize up. “Sixty!” she called down meters of ice into the magni-freight tunnel. The ground shook. She heard phasers and sank to her knees. “Sixty!”
There was a sound like electrical static, and then a horrific shape emerged from the tunnel and clung to the icy, near-vertical slope. It had scales on its back that oozed blood, and it had sharp bright metal teeth along its spine. She gulped, realizing it was Sixty, and that the scales were rocks embedded in his skin. The bright sharp teeth were his metal vertebrae. He hadn’t complained once about the fall from the hover. Throwing herself down onto the ice and snow, she grabbed his wrists. Sixty looked up at her with glowing eyes, and the light within them faded. She heard the buzz of drones below and more phaser fire. Down in the gorge, she heard a crack and a boom. The earth shook again. 6T9 swayed dangerously, and for a moment, she thought she would lose him. But then he drove his fingers into the ice and snow and pulled himself up. He was panting when he reached the top…even though he said he didn’t need to breathe.
Bouncing on her shoulders, Carl said, “We have to hurry! 6T9 says even though the phaser blasts and explosion fully charged him, his exposed spine is conducting the cold to his systems, straining his thermo-regulators, freezing his joints, and making it power intensive to move. He’ll be completely drained soon.”
Volka hastily shrugged off his coat, and threw it over his shoulders. He put it on with jerky movements.
Carl squeaked. “Also, the ice above is about to give way.”
For the first time, Volka looked up instead of down. One of her paperbacks had featured a story that took place in the Red Gorge. The narrator attested that the gorge was over 2,012 meters deep. She’d thought that had been hyperbole, but now she believed it. Clinging to the gorge’s sides were huge ice sheets. The ground trembled, and a loud crack echoed through the chasm. Volka scrambled to her feet. Before she could even turn around, 6T9 had stood and scooped her and Carl in his arms and started running. Volka’s eyes went back over his shoulder to the hole he’d just emerged from and went wide. “A drone!” she cried. Its phasers were charged and hot and—they fell. Or more appropriately, 6T9, Carl, and Volka slid down a sharp incline only a few meters high. Phaser fire streaked over their heads, and then there was another crack—and no sound at all. 6T9 was already on his feet and running again. Volka could only gape over his shoulder. A huge icy sheet from the side of the gorge was falling. She saw one of the drones reach the incline’s edge, and then the icy sheet hi
t. The world shook, the drone vanished in the icefall, and broken bits of snow and ice rained down on Sixty, Volka, and Carl.
6T9’s arms went limp in the onslaught, and Volka barely landed on her feet. Regaining her balance, she gazed across the gorge. Carl leaped from her shoulder. He stood on his hind legs and pointed. “There!”
Volka followed the direction of his tiny paw and her lips parted in awe. A few hundred meters north along the gorge wall was an area of dark red almost free of snow. Steam rose from it, and in the midst of the steam was Sundancer. Her pearlescent exterior stained red with silt, her body half submerged in red sands.
“She melted the glacier around her,” Carl said, and Volka noticed the water streaming away from the ship, turning to ice a few meters down the gorge. “The falling ice caused the tremors, the tremors caused more ice to fall, which caused more tremors and…” There was another boom and a crack, fortunately on the other side of the gorge and in the opposite direction of the ship. “It’s still happening.” The werfle hopped across the icy ground.
Looking over its shoulder, it squeaked up at Sixty, “I don’t know if we can get her out of the sands, but we have to try!”
“We see you,” Volka said, barely paying attention to Carl. Happiness and the sensation of recognition bubbled through her…and she answered it. But her response was bittersweet. Alaric had betrayed her in the end.
Trying to block out the feeling of betrayal, she said, “We’re coming.” She tried to let the feeling fill her and overflow to Sundancer. Taking 6T9’s hand, she tried to pull him in Sundancer’s direction. He didn’t move. Looking back, her heart fell. Sixty’s head was bowed and his shoulders slumped. He was trying to zip up his coat, but his hands were shaking too much. Gently pushing his fingers away, she zipped it for him. He put his hands atop hers at the collar. They were ice cold. He met her gaze, and she had to look away—they were too close and it was too much.
