The Complete Clockwork Chimera Saga
Page 34
Get this done, get back inside, grab a bite of lunch, and I should still have plenty of time to spare before our––Daisy noticed something poking out of the dust. Hey, does that look like a piece of an AI cradle to you?
“I see it. Not sure, though. Might be.”
I didn’t know we had any of those in with the salvage out here. Figured the big brains would want to keep any high-value components like that tucked away inside.
“Might have been in the last load Donovan and Bob dropped off. Maybe it was just covered by dirt and got overlooked.”
Daisy sighed. Well, I’d better go get it.
She trudged out in front of the hangar doors, making her way to the mostly buried device. She knew she was well clear of the doors themselves, so their cycling open was of little concern to her.
Yep, it’s part of a cradle, all right, she commented as she pulled the unit free from the dusty soil. There. That wasn’t so hard. Once in a while, things actually go my way.
“Always tempting Murphy, aren’t ya, Daze?”
Yeah? What can he possibly do to me that’s any worse than being stuck out here?
“Um, you’re in a near-vacuum at sub-freezing levels, two hundred thirty-eight thousand miles from Earth. You really want to ask that question?”
Daisy laughed as she began dragging the AI cradle back to her pile of salvaged parts.
“All is clear inside, Daisy,” Sid informed her over the comms. “Hangar Three will now cycle open.”
“Copy that. Thanks, Sid.”
“My pleasure, Daisy,” he replied as the massive doors began to move with a low rumble she could feel through her boots.
“Oh, and guess what? I found a partial AI cradle. It must’ve somehow come in with the last salvage load.”
“Interesting,” Sid replied. “It would be useful to have some extra componentry on hand as backup parts, should the need ever arise.”
“Yeah, I thought you’d––”
“Daisy, dive left!” Sarah shouted in Daisy’s head.
She trusted Sarah completely, and knew far better than to pause for even a second to ask why. Dropping her cargo, Daisy dove as hard to the left as she was able, landing at an awkward angle as she roll-bounced and tried to scramble to her feet. Behind her, rocks were tumbling down from above.
She ran as best she could in the awkward gravity, trying to get clear. It was like a nightmare, one where no matter how hard you tried, your feet felt like they were trapped in sucking mud.
“Daisy, I sensed a geological disturbance. Are you okay?” Sid asked.
Heart pounding loud in her ears, she turned and looked back at the relatively small mass of rocks that had shaken loose and come tumbling down when the door’s rumbling disturbed them.
Thanks, Sis. You saved my ass just now.
“I saved both our asses, technically. But you’re welcome.”
Daisy turned and began walking for the airlock.
“I’m okay, Sid. We had another rock slide out here. Nothing too big, but how about you have Donovan do a few flyovers and hit the hillside with his engine wake to shake free anything else that’s loose up there so we don’t have any more issues.”
“Of course. I’ll have him do that when he heads out on his next drift run.”
“Thanks. I’m calling it a day out here.”
“Understood. I will request that Barry and Ash clear the new debris as soon as they are able.”
“Sounds good to me,” she replied.
I did my part. All the salvage is back where it should be. Fatima can’t give me any grief about not completing her task.
Daisy looked at the newly fallen pile of rocks.
Aw, shit.
The AI cradle––at least what was left of it––was sticking out from beneath the debris at all sorts of wrong angles.
Better it than me, she figured.
“Hey, Sid. Sorry, but the cradle got smashed up pretty good in the rock slide. I don’t know if anything is salvageable.”
“Understood. While regrettable, what is important is that you are safe.”
Her hear trate slowly lowered back to normal as she made the long trek back to the welcome warmth and relative safety of the base.
Exiting the airlock into the base’s fresh air, blissfully free of the restrictive bulk of the space suit, Daisy took a quick whiff of her sweatshirt as she walked the quiet corridors of Dark Side back to her quarters.
I suppose a shower would be the polite thing, she considered.
“No need to assault Fatima with your post-labor BO.” Sarah chuckled in her head.
“Not to mention Tamara’s funk rubbing off on me from earlier,” she said with a laugh.
“Eww, you did not just go there.”
“Totally did.”
“You’re such a freak, Daze.”
“Says the disembodied ghost of a genetically-engineered planetary savior.”
“Okay, you got me. Point taken.”
“Don’t sweat it, Sis. They still push that ‘chosen one’ crap on me too. Being dead, you’re the lucky one in that regard. At least they leave you alone.”
“In their defense, they don’t know I’m here. And excuse me? I’m lucky being dead? Screw you, Daisy. I’d trade with you any day just to be able to enjoy a meal, or go for a run, or take a really good dump.”
“Jeez, Sarah. Really?”
“You never know what little pleasures you’ll miss until they’re gone.”
“Any other classy gems or insights you want to share?”
Her sister went silent, but Daisy could almost hear her gleeful giggle in the recesses of her mind as she walked to her quarters.
Unlike the somewhat restrictive living spaces she had been accustomed to aboard the Váli, Dark Side Base was like a resort by comparison. Not exactly a resort, perhaps, but it was a much more spacious and comfortable living arrangement at least, one aspect of which were the private showers in each crewmember’s quarters.
When the base had been fully manned, only the officers and science crew were afforded private rooms in the safer confines of the rock-ensconced technical buildings. Now, housing barely a dozen humans total, the inhabitants had their pick of lodging.
The facilities that had not been hidden under the moon’s rocky surface were rendered empty shells when the alien invaders bombarded them to oblivion as they passed on their way to Earth. In the aftermath, the remaining intact structures, safely tucked under rocky ledges, briefly housed the few dozen survivors out of a base of hundreds.
They had thought they’d somehow miraculously escaped unharmed.
They were wrong.
The remaining habitable spaces soon began suffering catastrophic decompression one by one when the aliens’ horrific AI virus was released, sending the powerful mind of Dark Side Base spiraling into insanity and collapse. In the span of but a few hours, it had vented nearly every chamber to space before melting down into a spasming chunk of fused neuro-circuitry as the virus overloaded its core.
The handful of remaining survivors who had been lucky enough to have had access to space suits before decompression found themselves alive, but unable to power up the base without a viable AI operating system.
They even pulled the fried, half-meter-cube of the AI brain from its docking bay and attempted to override the safeties manually. It was a valiant effort, but the base was military in origin, and top secret at that.
The security protocols originally designed to keep anyone from disabling the AI to take over the base had ultimately resulted in those poor souls suffocating in their suits as they ran out of oxygen, unable to restart the scrubber network that provided them an endless supply of fresh air.
Daisy tried not to think of the long-dead bodies Fatima had slowly dragged out of the facility when she came to live in it all those years ago. It must have been horrific, but she had done that, and far more.
In fact, over the decades, Fatima had somehow accomplished the seemingly Sisyphean task of rebuilding a
nd restoring most of the facilities and hangars not directly impacted in the attack.
One by one.
By herself.
She had restarted the organic materials food replication processors and air scrubbers first, followed by the water system that tapped into a deep ice field hidden far beneath the moon’s surface. The breaking of the hydrogen/oxygen bond provided the base both a source of combustible fuel in the form of hydrogen, and a clean oxygen supply indefinitely.
The hangars took a bit more work, and it wasn’t until nearly a decade later that she managed to get the first of them fully functional. From there, she spent the next few years repairing a small utility ship, and once that was finally flight-worthy, she set to work, drifting in the debris field, maneuvering using only her compressed air thrusters in order to stay off Chithiid scans as she slowly accumulated useful parts from the destroyed fleet scattered in orbit.
It wasn’t much of a life, but at least it was life.
“At long last,” Daisy said with a sigh as she stepped into her quarters. She reached into her shower compartment and spun the knob, a steaming blast of water beckoning her to join it. Daisy stretched high, then twisted from side to side, feeling her cracked ribs twinge uncomfortably as she did.
“Not quite healed,” Sarah commented.
“Nope. Not yet. Apparently, even I don’t heal that fast, it seems.”
“Bummer.”
“I’ll survive,” she replied with a little laugh as she stripped out of her funky workout attire and stepped into the beckoning hot water.
Chapter Three
Daisy’s hair was still damp as she walked the corridor to the mess hall, her stomach rumbling loudly, as if to urge her on faster.
Despite her abdomen’s vocalizations, a patch of expertly-welded wall made Daisy stop in her tracks, as it had more than once since she’d taken up residence there. She ran her finger admiringly over the perfect seams, lingering as she traced across the one, and only, tiny imperfection in the weld.
All by herself, she did this. Dragged the metal here, sealed the breach, welded it all together. And the whole time without a single human to help her.
Daisy shuddered at the thought. The loneliness must have been unbearable, yet Fatima seemed the most tranquil and at peace of the entire crew.
Who knows? Maybe her training actually will be useful, Daisy pondered as she wondered if it might even help her calm her mind and accept this unexpected new life.
She continued on her way, her footsteps quietly echoing off the walls. Up ahead, she noticed the research lab’s door was open, faint music drifting out into the hall.
“Hey, Chu,” she called out as she passed the open door.
The technician looked up from his work and flashed a warm smile.
“Hey, Daisy. Dang, you look pretty beat up. Training with Tamara again?”
“You know it.”
“Well, if you break anything, let me know. I’m pretty sure I can get the medbot to fix you up in no time.” He laughed and returned his attention to the microscope in front of him.
Chu, she had learned, while looking human, actually possessed an impressive array of artificial organs, as well as several ceramisteel replacement bones. She never did ask him what happened to him to require such invasive repairs, and figured he likely wouldn’t want to relive whatever necessitated them.
He was one of the resident crew Daisy got along with easiest, and she saw no reason to sour that relationship. Besides, the uncomfortable fact was, all of them were modified to at least some extent, though some, far more than others.
Tamara had served as her ship’s botanist, and her mechanical arm, though designed for combat, also accommodated a variety of attachments, allowing her to swap out accessories for her gardening work as needed. She loved that arm, and Daisy doubted she’d take an organic replacement even if Mal grew her one.
Finn, their chef-slash-apparent former commando, also had a partial metal arm, as well as several replacement fingers on his other hand, acquired after an incident during the flight to Dark Side Base.
Gustavo, the ship’s navigator, possessed a cybernetic eye, along with a chunk of skull that had been replaced. He was massively enhanced, fine filaments running from his brain to the AI connection in his head, allowing him to plug directly into the ship and help navigate the vessel when Mal needed assistance.
Doctor McClain and Captain Harkaway each sported a mechanical leg, though Harkaway’s was far older and slowly showing signs of wear and age. Reggie, the Váli’s co-pilot, sported a shiny metal left hand, five replacement ribs, a ceramisteel femur, and a bunch of other mods, all required by some ailment that had ravaged his body.
Then there was Vince. Oh, Vince. The times they had shared still made her warm inside. She had been so in love with him. Then she saw the scans revealing the almost undetectable enhancements to his body. Reinforcements, to joints, filaments of metal fused to bones, and a small AI mounted in his brain.
The shitty thing was, she had truly loved him up until that revelation. The revelation that her boyfriend was a machine.
That particular discovery had hurt her much more than the others, though, in all fairness, it was Vince who actually felt the pain far more tangibly when Daisy, having just learned his true nature moments before, abruptly sealed a door on him, cutting his arm off at the shoulder.
He had survived the trauma, his limb reattached in their ship’s medical unit, and only sporting a thin scar for the ordeal. Not only that, he had shortly afterward both saved her from Earth’s hostile surface, as well as forgiven her for what she had done to him. All in the same day, no less. It was more than a little bit of a mind fuck.
Don’t think about that, Daisy chided herself as she walked to get some chow. Get your shit together. There are plenty of people here who aren’t entirely human.
“Yeah,” Sarah muttered. “All of them.”
Stop reading my thoughts.
“Stop making them readable. It’s your choice, you know.”
Yeah, yeah.
She knew it was true, though. She just needed to focus better. Also true was the fact that the other inhabitants of the base, those who had survived attempts to retake Earth and failed, only to wind up stuck on the moon, were enhanced and repaired as well.
Each and every one of them.
Daisy really was the only entirely organic person in the entire base. It could be a lot to handle, and her odd mentor did her best to help her cope, though that wasn’t exactly in her job description.
Fatima was essentially the mother hen of Dark Side Base. She was not just older in pure calendar years, but her unique medical status, which kept her out of cryo, meant decades upon decades of actual up-time. She didn’t look old, per se, not with her custom gene therapies, but while the rest of the team had cycled in and out of cryo for decades while they awaited the next assault to retake Earth, Fatima passed the time the old-fashioned way. One day at a time.
As a result, she had slowly adopted a worldview that was a bit unconventional, but who was to tell her otherwise? At the end of the day, whether it was her decades spent on her own with only a genius AI for company, or her modified neural status, Fatima just saw things differently than others.
Maybe that’s why she took me under her wing, Daisy mused. Another mind-fucked freak show to keep her company.
“That you are,” her secret mental passenger chimed in with a laugh. “And she doesn’t know the half of it.”
Whatever the case, she had taken to training Daisy in a multitude of non-combat skills over the past several months, leaving the martial ways to Tamara and the others.
Aside from Tamara, there was just one other person who could likely give her a run for her money sparring. But whatever terms Daisy had come to with her ex’s not-entirely-organic status, she just couldn’t bring herself to engage in that much physical contact with him.
It was really Vince’s AI-enhanced brain that freaked her out the most. She could
n’t help wondering, was it the man or the machine she had thought she was in love with? Add to that her deep-seated dislike of mechanicals in general, and it was a recipe for heartache, but no matter what she rationalized with her mind, it still hurt a little bit every time he was near.
So, while Daisy and Vince may have finally re-established something of a cautious friendship once more, she still refused to spar with him. It was a big step on its own that they had recently begun revisiting their old habit of watching select gems from Captain Harkaway’s video collection, and even that was still a bit awkward. Unlike in the past, and despite the visceral urges that sometimes flared up––in defiance of Daisy’s logical mind––they no longer curled up against one another as they once had while they watched the videos.
Except for rare incidental contact, they essentially never touched at all, but at least they could watch programs together and enjoy each other’s company, however unconventional the situation may have become.
Nice of Harkaway to have loaded all those old videos, she mused.
Once she knew how old they all really were, Daisy had realized that each and every one of the captain’s cherished movies and television programs, stored away on all those memory chips, was technically a classic. The last remnants of a planet long-dead.
Good thing I didn’t get hooked on a show with a cliffhanger, she thought with a grim chuckle. With the end of the human race, the next season would be a long time coming.
Chapter Four
The mess hall was empty when Daisy entered. In what was a rare occurrence, the sound of Finn’s knives slapping against the cutting board did not fill the air.
It was actually a bit refreshing, cooking for herself in silence, and was something she wished she found time to do more often.
Time wasn’t exactly the issue. More like a lingering sense of discomfort around the base personnel. The same personnel who were almost always filtering in and out of the mess hall. Everyone was great to her, that wasn’t an issue. They treated her well––even better than that––but the lingering gazes as they watched her go about her day could be exhausting.