by Isaac Hooke
She rubbed the eagle tattooed to the inside of her wrist. “If it pleases you, my name is Lana,” she said. “I’m a pilot. At least I was. Not a Keeper. You must understand, they made me assume that role, using the memories of another. I was not in control of my body. You must believe me.”
“Lana,” I said. “I believe you.”
“I’m not a Keeper!” she said, her voice borderline hysterical.
I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Lana. I believe you.”
She met my eyes for the first time, and her rapid breathing slowed. Our faces were only a handspan apart. I’d told her she was beautiful before, when she was my Keeper. Now that I was even closer to her, I realized she was more than beautiful: there wasn’t a flaw anywhere on her face under that makeup.
“You’re UC?” she said.
“I am.”
Her brow furrowed. “But you saved me.”
“I did.” I could lose myself in those eyes.
“Uh, Rage?” Hijak said.
I looked away, feeling embarrassed.
“The Phant . . .” Hijak continued.
I glanced at the deck. The red liquid had abandoned the table, and was approaching Lana and me.
I released her shoulders, snatched my gloves from the table, and backed away with Lana.
“These beings can communicate telepathically,” Lana said. “My former possessor is most likely communicating what it sees, and what we have done, to the others at this very moment.”
“If that’s true, then why hasn’t the Guide raised an alarm?” I thought of the robots I’d terminated along the way here. The Phants had definitely seen me before now.
“The communication is queued, and takes a minimum of twenty Stanminutes to process, even if the Yaoguai are in close proximity.”
“That’s gotta make coordinating in combat difficult.”
“They can communicate faster with the Mara, those you name the Workers. And the Burrowers. They can use them to exchange signals. They—”
“Let’s roll,” I interrupted her, turning toward the exit hatch. “You can tell me all about them later. We’re cutting it close here as it is. I want to head to engineering. See if we can take over the ship with your help. We have a friend on the bridge too, I think. Otherwise I would’ve set off security alarms ages ago.”
“You’ll never take engineering,” Lana said. “The liquid demons flood that deck.”
“Oh.” So much for that plan. “Then I guess we’ll eject through the airlock, and just get the hell out.”
“Only one of us can escape through the airlock.” Hijak looked directly into my eyes. “You know that.”
I scowled at him. “I’m not leaving without you two.”
Hijak pressed his lips together. “The Guide only expects you, Rage. If we all go, he’ll shoot us down. Just leave us. We’ll hide out, try to survive. Cause what damage we can.”
“We all go through the airlock,” I said. “Or none of us do. No more arguing. Let’s get you two suited up.”
“Your friend is right,” Lana said. “The Guide will hunt for us, at least initially. He will want me, especially. I have much knowledge of them. Too much.” She glanced at the Phant in disgust.
“I’m not letting you stay,” I said. “For exactly that reason. Humanity needs what you know.”
Lana bowed her head. “If it pleases you, I do hope to come. But there is a better way to escape than by ejecting from an airlock.”
I frowned. “Well, speak, woman.”
“The hangar bay,” she said simply.
“The hangar bay? Why? You want to take a shuttle?” I could see that. She was a pilot after all. “Won’t that make it even easier for the Guide to shoot us down?”
“No,” Lana said. “We take the mechs.”
I snickered. “It’s a nice thought, but Hijak and I aren’t even provisioned to pilot SK mechs.”
“If it pleases you, in fact you are. The ATLAS mechs on this ship have their provisioning systems disabled. Anyone can pilot them. I disabled them myself, or rather, my possessor did. It wanted to give all the Learned the ability to use the machines of humankind, regardless of the qualifications of the original human host. Door security ship-wide was disabled for the same reason. Why do you think every hatch opens for you?”
She did have a point about the hatches.
“Okay, but that still doesn’t solve the little problem we’ll have once we leave the hangar bay,” I said. “Specifically, how to avoid becoming easy targets for the point defense system of this starship.”
“If it pleases you,” Lana said. “We reside in the ring belt above the gas giant Tau Ceti III. Do you realize what this means?”
I did: rocks, and a whole lot of them.
“Though the Guide hunts us,” Lana continued, “we can remain hidden in the ring belt for days. Maybe weeks. Enough time for a rescue party to arrive. The Guide will not stay overlong, and risk discovery.”
I glanced at Hijak.
“Up to you, Rage,” he said. “Though to be honest, I still don’t trust her.”
“If we can’t take over engineering, then one way or another we have to get off this ship.” I edged away from the red Phant. “And if we really are inside a planetary ring belt, jetting out of here in ATLAS mechs is a hell of a lot better than doing it in jumpsuits, or even a shuttle.”
“Not ordinary ATLAS mechs.” Lana had a knowing glint in her eyes. “ATLAS 6 mechs.”
That sealed the deal.
I was excited for all of two seconds, because the door irised open and ruined my mood.
A guard robot stood outside.
Its rifle was pointed directly at me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Shaw
Looking down, I watched the glowing vapor pass through Battlehawk’s chest area. The Phant seeped directly into the ATLAS 5’s brain case. It was almost as if the alien entity intuitively knew where the AI resided, like it could somehow detect the quantum residue produced by machine consciousness. Or perhaps the Phant merely had experience with human tech.
Either way, I remained very still, wondering the whole while if the alien vapor would incinerate me in the process.
The tunnel became strangely quiet. The eager clatter of countless alien limbs fell silent.
“I am afraid,” Battlehawk said.
Machine consciousness was a prickly issue. Just because a machine was self-aware didn’t mean it was really alive, the humanists argued. Emotions were delete-able subroutines, and therefore any entity whose personality and feelings could be added or subtracted piecemeal could not be sentient, the argument went. I wasn’t so sure about that, because I’d met more than a few sentient-seeming robots in my life.
Anyway, neural programmers had the ability to bestow the full gamut of emotions on robots and Artificials, but some emotions were strictly illegal outside the lab, such as anger. The only emotion most machines were allowed, especially in the military, was fear. It aided in self-preservation, they said.
Though right now I wished the ATLAS programmers had deleted all fear.
“Forgive me,” I told the AI.
“I understand why you do this,” Battlehawk said. “Still, I will miss . . . sentience.”
There wasn’t really anything I could say to that. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was making a mistake.
The last of the vapor vanished within Battlehawk’s brain case.
It was done then.
Battlehawk was gone.
The crabs had formed tentative half circles on either side of Battlehawk, and gave the mech room, apparently uncertain whether this tower of servomotors and steel was friend or foe.
The hydraulically actuated joints of the ATLAS 5 abruptly engaged of their own accord, and dragged my body along. The inner cocoon twisted and bent around
me, and all I could do was surrender to the movements.
Battlehawk squeezed a fist in front of its vision sensors, as if the Phant in control was relishing in its newfound power. The mech turned toward the beasts without taking any hesitant first steps—I suspected the Phant within had possessed an ATLAS before.
An unsaid understanding passed between Battlehawk and the beasts, because the latter began an organized retreat. The slugs became immaterial; the crabs retrieved their dead and shuffled away. Most of the Phants receded too, satisfied that one of their kind was now in control.
Two alien mists remained behind however, and came up alongside Battlehawk. The vapors merely floated there, and I felt somehow exposed, as if the Phants were peering right through the outer shell of the mech at me. I half-expected the cockpit to eject me into their deadly embrace, or for the vapors to seep through the ATLAS and incinerate me. Maybe the mists would kill Fan as well. Or instead.
But none of those events transpired. The two Phants merely floated past, moving deeper into the tunnel, toward the small cavern that contained the teleportation disc.
Battlehawk followed.
My sound and vision feeds remained intact. Either the Phant in control of Battlehawk didn’t know how to shut them off, or it wanted me to see and hear everything. I noticed there was no “blue tint of possession” overlaying the vision feed, like there had been while reviewing Battlehawk’s archives. The tint must be introduced during the recording process.
When Battlehawk passed the dismembered carcass of Queequeg, I had to close my eyes. My chin quivered, and I knew if I looked at the body I’d break down in tears. I had to be strong and clearheaded now of all times. My life depended on it.
Good-bye, Queequeg.
The ATLAS 5 returned to the small cavern and approached the metallic disc set into the bottom of the cave.
One of the escorting Phants hovered over the device—
Then it was gone.
There was no flash. No sound. The glowing vapor merely vanished from existence.
The second mist moved over the disc—
It too blinked from this world.
I still didn’t understand why my Improvised Explosive Device hadn’t teleported earlier. Perhaps the disc was monitored remotely in some way. But as Fan had scolded me, I had no idea how the alien tech worked.
Speaking of Fan . . .
“Now might be a good time to make your exit,” I sent over the comm. “Fan?”
Either he was ignoring me, or couldn’t hear me. Perhaps he was already gone.
Or dead.
Battlehawk stepped onto the disc.
My pulse quickened.
This was it.
Just like when jumping from one solar system to another via Gate, I felt nothing. One moment Battlehawk and I were surrounded by the natural walls of the Geronium cavern, and the next we stood in a corridor.
The bulkheads and overhead were made of black pipes overlapping at different depths and densities to form a solid surface, while the deck was a raised gangway formed from the confluence of said pipes. The only light came from the headlamps of my mech. A metallic disc similar to the one in the cavern lay beneath me.
I’d observed all of this before via Battlehawk’s archives, so as the ATLAS trod the surreal passageways it was almost like I was reliving a dream. One thing I hadn’t noticed in the video was that those black bulkheads seemed to writhe sinuously as we advanced, just as if they were comprised of living vipers. Indeed, when we got close to one bulkhead, I saw that the pipes bent in random directions along their lengths in real time.
We passed different-colored, gaseous Phants occasionally, as well as alien beings in various jumpsuits. They all seemed to be moving with purpose. The jumpsuit aliens were bigger than humans for the most part, but the tallest only came up to Battlehawk’s chest. Some wore translucent helmets, and I saw features—most of them hideous—that ran the gamut from insectile to algal. Metallic objects, bars, maybe, were attached to the back of most of the visible heads, with either glowing red vapor or droplets of red condensation congregated about the metal.
Phants?
If so, that didn’t bode well for me. Not at all.
Battlehawk entered the alien menagerie I remembered from the vid archive.
The chamber I feared.
Glass holding tanks lined either wall, filled with different creatures. Alien Weavers hung from the ceilings of most tanks, and drilled metal parts and chips into the sedated lifeforms. Willing participants of cybernetic alteration, or forced? The latter, most likely.
When Battlehawk reached the midpoint of the chamber, a spherical robot of odd design floated forth to intercept us. Rectangular bars of varying lengths protruded from the robot’s entire exterior, vaguely reminding me of caricatures of Earth I had seen where exaggerated skyscrapers crowded out the continents. The black object was about the size of a volleyball and floated a meter off the deck.
A blue cone of light erupted from the sphere, and bathed Battlehawk. The robot proceeded to revolve around my mech. Scanning it?
The robot made a bleep-blurp noise and retreated.
An alien approached, one of the jumpsuit cyborgs. It nearly matched my ATLAS 5 in size, and its jumpsuit was all tubes and spheres and servomotors. It had three legs and seven jointless arms (four tentacles in front, three in back), and its torso was capped by a glass dome. It was the same type of alien jumpsuit I’d seen in the defile on Geronimo, except this one was actually occupied.
As the alien neared, I discerned the head inside that translucent dome. It reminded me of an octopus or squid more than anything else, though with four eyes and two very long beaks. There wasn’t any water inside the helmet, just a subtle, violet mist. I had the impression it was the kind of lifeform that might exist within the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.
The alien reached up with one of the trunk-like appendages of its jumpsuit and plucked a squirming Fan from his hiding place between Battlehawk’s jetpacks and upper back.
“No!” Fan’s voice came over the comm. “Shaw, help me!”
I strained my muscles against the inner cocoon of the cockpit, but I couldn’t move.
“Why are you still here? I told you to go!” I fought against the cocoon. I wanted to help.
But I couldn’t.
The alien carried Fan away. “Shaw!”
“Cockpit, open!” I said.
Nothing.
“Inner shell, release!”
The mech ignored my command words. There was a manual hatch-release switch somewhere in the cockpit, but I couldn’t reach it if the inner cocoon wouldn’t open.
The Phant wanted me to stay inside.
Not that I’d be able to do a thing if I got out anyway. The only weapon I had was the knife tucked into my utility belt. I didn’t even have a working jetpack. Nor did Fan.
I watched helplessly as the alien carried Fan to an empty tank. The twin plates of glass composing the front face of the tank slid aside, and the alien tossed Fan within.
Fan rushed forward, trying to get out before the glass sealed, but he didn’t make it. The top was still open, so he leaped up and grabbed onto the rim.
Mechanical arms were already lowering a slab of glass from the overhead, and Fan collided with the slab as he hauled himself up. He fell back, losing his grip. The slab contacted the other surfaces with a resounding thud, sealing Fan inside the tank.
The ominous shape of an Alien Weaver resided in the upper corner of the tank. The robot seemed dormant for now, its limbs curled around its black body.
Fan ran to the far side of the tank, away from the Weaver, and pounded at the surface with his fists. “Let me out!”
Battlehawk proceeded into the glass tank across from Fan’s. Twin plates of glass sealed the entrance behind the ATLAS 5, and a similar slab lowered from a
bove, trapping me and the mech inside. I spotted the dormant Alien Weaver built into the roof of this tank, and shuddered.
In Fan’s tank, white mist now vented inside from floor ducts. The mist became transparent as it diffused the tank, and I realized an atmosphere of some kind was being prepared.
The Alien Weaver in Fan’s tank abruptly dropped down and spread its appendages, like a giant spider encroaching on its prey. A tube of wiring connected it to a black box on the tank’s roof, and as the Weaver approached Fan that tube uncurled behind it.
“No!” Fan said over the comm. “No!”
“Fan!” I transmitted. “Cut its wiring if you can! Fan?”
The Alien Weaver must have communicated something to Fan, because he spouted some strange words in Korean-Chinese over the comm. Using the aReal in my helmet, I translated them.
“My password is The dragon will rise 954. The dragon will rise 954!” He repeated the phrase again and again, his voice becoming a shriek.
His embedded ID password, no doubt. Not really something you’d want to fall into enemy hands, and yet he’d given it up just like that. I couldn’t really blame him though, not when he faced that iron monstrosity. I didn’t think I would hold up much longer when my turn came.
The Alien Weaver gripped Fan by the neck, and one of its telescoping limbs pressed into his jumpsuit.
Fan stopped struggling. He’d been injected with something, I thought, which meant these aliens were already familiar with human physiology. They must have captured a few SKs from the original party sent to Geronimo.
Invisible lasers cut into the tough fabric of Fan’s jumpsuit, leaving behind charred black lines. The Alien Weaver promptly ripped away the suit around those lines, and then tore off his undergarments. The robot set Fan’s naked body on the floor, facedown.
Fan still breathed—the atmosphere within the tank had reached the necessary temperature, pressure, and composition required for human life, then. These beings had definitely captured some of us before. More than some.
The Alien Weaver produced a metallic bar and a bone saw.
I shut my eyes. I wasn’t going to watch as he was converted into some alien cyborg.
