by Isaac Hooke
She did that now, climbing for all she was worth. The gap slowly closed between her and Tanner. He must have glanced down, because all at once she caught up, and he was waiting for her.
When she reached him, she transferred the Box from her mouth to one hand, giving her teeth a break. Her jaw felt strangely light with the weight gone.
"You okay?" Tanner said.
She glanced down.
She couldn't see the city through the storm, but the rock wall was visible enough. Brute climbed relentlessly, a snarl on its face. Roughly five paces separated her from the thing. She thought to dangle the Box out to the side, and threaten to destroy the Control Room, just as she'd threatened to do with the Revision Box once before. But she could tell that the four-armed Direwalker didn't care about the Box. No, it wanted her. Its one good eye stared at Ari with hatred. Its other was an empty socket of gore and blood.
"Tanner!" she said.
He hadn't moved. "I'm here, Ari. What is it?"
"Take it!" She passed the Box upward. He grabbed the side handle, and when she was certain he had a decent hold, she let go. "I'm going to put on the tracker!"
Tanner peered past her. "Ari hurry!"
She reached into her blazer, and her hand closed around the small, spherical shape. She attached the cold metal to the bottom of the Box and pressed a button. A blue light on the tracker began flashing. Now Tanner would be able to move the Control Room from the Outside.
"Give me your sword," she said. There was one last chance.
But she'd waited too long.
"Move!" Tanner said.
A vise clamped around her ankle and Ari felt her body stretch. She nearly lost her hold on the rope.
Brute had grabbed her leg of course. She tried to shake the Direwalker off, tried to kick it in the head. Useless. Its second hand reached up, and latched onto the upper half of her calf.
A stream of flame tore past from above. It was a little too close to her body and she felt her skin blister. Brute took most of the flames in the face, but the fire caused the Direwalker no injury whatsoever.
Brute's third claw fastened onto her leg, higher up. And finally the fourth pierced her. The Direwalker now fully supported itself with her body, and its entire weight dragged on her. Blood trickled down her skin in a perpetual stream. She thought she understood what it felt like to be an animal hung from the butcher's hooks.
One of us has to make it.
"Ari." Tanner's voice sounded muffled.
She looked up at him. He gripped the Box by the handle, between his teeth. He held the rope in one hand, the fire sword in the other. She thought she heard him sob.
It was past her time. Well past her time.
"It's all right," she said. "I'm free now."
A claw dug into her thigh. Then her belly. Her chest. Her upper back.
The Direwalker pulled itself up to eye level. That gory socket stared right into her face.
She let go of the rope.
71
Tanner watched Ari and the Direwalker plunge to their deaths.
The wind buffeted him, striving to take him from the wall. But he watched.
Ari and the Direwalker rebounded from the wall several times as they fell, and finally vanished in the snowstorm.
Tanner sheathed the fire sword. One of the side handles of the cursed Box was in his mouth, and he bit down harder on it. He was so angry at himself, and at her, that he just kept biting down. Soon all his gol-strength was focused on that task. One of the teeth near the back of his mouth couldn't take the pressure and exploded. He didn't care. He bit down. Bit down. Bit down.
Blood trickled over his chin.
He relented at last, easing the pressure. Though the Box was designed to handle more abuse than any old chest, he'd break the handle if he wasn't careful.
Tanner climbed through the tears, mechanically, not really aware of his body. The snow gusted around him in freezing gusts. His skin tightened, and icicles formed along his brows, his mustache, his hairline, and his eyes. Who would have thought a body could produce so many icicles?
He climbed.
Though he didn't want to.
No. He had to.
Or else her death was for nothing.
Maybe she'd disbelieved reality before she struck the ground. It was a small hope, but he clung to it nonetheless, like a desperate child who clung to his favorite toy while starving to death.
Twenty minutes passed.
He made it to the point where the second rope overlapped the first, and, twining his arm around the first rope so that he wouldn't fall, he slid the Box between that arm and his chest, holding it there. With his free hand, he knotted the end of the second rope to the handle of the Box. It wasn't easy, tying multiple knots with one hand, but he managed.
He pulled himself up, and swung his legs onto the Box, and sat there a quarter of a mile above the city. He moved cautiously, worried that the handle might break off under his weight at any time, or that the knot would unravel. The city was veiled beneath the storm below.
With his sword he cut the first rope in case Brute was on its way up again. He watched the rope descend in a coil like a falling viper.
He scabbarded the blade and retrieved the handmirror from his cloak. Then he began the process of disbelieving reality. It was difficult, pretending that the reflection was real and that he was the illusion. Difficult, because he kept seeing Ari fall to her death.
But the world blinked early.
Tanner awoke in the Outside. Beside him, Ari was a dead weight in his arms. He shook her, called her name, but she didn't move. She hadn't disbelieved reality after all. Of course she hadn't. There wasn't enough time. Her face was pale. Her lips blue.
She would never wake up.
There was only about an hour of oxygen left anyway, so maybe it was for the best.
Movement drew his attention across the room, and he realized why he'd been pulled out early.
The motion detectors had triggered.
Three iron golems closed.
Part IV
They Have Wakened Death
72
Tanner sat on the floor against a terminal, in the real world with its steel walls and its flickering lights and its unbreathable atmosphere. His spacesuit felt too tight, a body-wide noose, constricting his every movement and his very breathing. The Ganymede landscape mocked him beyond the shattered window, its icy surface pocked, lifeless, uncaring.
In the spacesuit beside him lay Ari. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were blue, her face ashen.
Dead.
Three iron golems—machines—bore down on him. They looked like steel barrels on treads, with wiry arms capped by pincers, heads topped by sword hilts, and three glass disks gleaming in place of eyes.
If Tanner wanted to live—and he did—he had to act right now, because those machines would reach him in seconds.
He scrambled to his feet and disconnected the wireless access port—his umbilical to the Inside—from the suit and tucked it away in his utility belt. On the floor beside him lay an iron desk leg, ready to be used as a weapon. He snatched the leg up and turned toward the closest machine—
A pincer hit him in the chest.
Tanner slammed into the terminal. Gasping in pain, he rolled away from another blow, and positioned the wide desk between himself and his attacker. The machine didn't pursue.
Instead, it was looking down at Ari.
The other machines were closing. With difficulty Tanner hauled himself, heavy suit and all, onto the desk. A good position to strike down at the machines.
The first machine hoisted Ari up by the neck.
"You leave her alone!" Tanner swung the iron leg.
The machine's head swiveled up. The movement saved its vision, because the brunt of Tanner's blow hit the cross-guard of the head. One of the glass disks still shattered though. Not good enough—you had to smash all three disks to disable the machines.
Tanner swung again, but th
e machine intercepted the blow with its free arm. Those steel pincers closed around the iron leg and silently cracked it in half.
The machine struck out with that arm. Tanner was hit, and he stumbled over the terminal, sprawling backward onto the desk.
The machine returned its attention to Ari and smashed her faceplate. The last of her oxygen misted from the opening.
"No," Tanner said, climbing to his feet.
The machine smashed its pincers into her helmet a second time. Fragments of skull and brain tissue splattered her suit.
"No, no." He was watching her die a second time.
The machine tossed her body away like so much trash, and then swiveled its bloody pincers toward Tanner.
The other two machines approached from opposite sides of the desk.
Tanner took a running leap and landed heavily beside the machine he'd partially blinded. He ducked a swing from its metal arm and, resisting the urge to go to Ari's body, he made his way toward the pile of crumpled desks that formed a ramp beneath the window.
It felt like he was wading in a snowdrift. The artificial gravity of the ship remained active despite the depressurization, and the bulky suit weighed 150 lbs by itself. Add in his own weight, and he was lugging around 300 lbs. Not an easy load, to say the least. He almost wished he was wearing some of those motorized leg gyros under his suit.
He struggled to the top of the ramp, and looked back. The iron golems were rolling over Ari's spacesuit, making sure she was thoroughly dead.
His vision blurred, and his knees buckled slightly. Though he felt like giving up, Tanner had to live. Otherwise she'd died for nothing.
The machines turned toward him.
"Goodbye Ari." He blinked away the tears and jumped out.
The instant he left the ship the natural gravity of the moon took over. He landed lightly in the ice and nearly took a tumble. The gravity outside was almost 1/7th the simulated earth gravity. Even including the weight of the suit, he was now only 42 lbs.
He adapted quickly enough, and bounded more than two paces with each step. The surface felt a little slippery, which was expected, and he found that he had to lean in the direction he wanted to go, keeping his center of mass forward.
He activated the helmet light, brightening the somewhat murky landscape. The light had an oddly sharp quality. There was no diffusion, because there was no atmosphere for the light to diffuse in. He looked down. The light reflected from the surface almost blindingly, and he quickly quartered the intensity.
According to the archives, Ganymede was covered in a mantle of ice. Indeed, the yellow surface reminded him of pictures of pack ice he'd seen in the archives, replete with giant icebergs rudely protruding from the surface. On average, the icy crust of Ganymede was 100 km deep, but this area was at the top of a mountain range, and if he looked carefully he could see the outline of the yellow mountains encased in the ice below. A layer of sand, grit and silicate sheathed the ice in places—debris from the aerial bombardments that had dug through to the rock below.
He did his best to avoid the icy shards and debris that scattered the surface, not the easiest task given that the rubble ranged in size from fist-sized crags to boulders bigger than houses. Still, he had surprising energy levels, despite the fact he hadn't eaten in two days. Adrenalin could do that to you.
A surge of guilt filled him as he bounded across the moon. Ari should be here with him, at his side.
But she wasn't.
He'd left her in that room.
Dead.
From the starry heavens, the Great Red Spot of Jupiter looked down at him, accusing, mocking.
Tanner glanced back, the cone of light from his helmet swinging toward the ship.
All three machines had piled onto the surface in pursuit. The malevolent red beams of light on their heads shot back and forth, scanning the immediate vicinity as the machines ran their pathfinding algorithms. The metal goliaths drove right over the smaller ice fragments, but like Tanner had to divert around the bigger boulders. Still, those grooved rubber treads were designed for terrain like this, and their speed more than compensated for any obstacles.
The machines were gaining on him.
73
Tanner was still looking over his shoulder when his boot hit the jagged edge of an ice fragment. He stumbled, and it took him a few strides to regain his balance.
He knew he couldn't outrun those machines, so he bounded over a series of progressively taller fragments, heading for an ice boulder that was a little taller than a full-grown man. There was no way the machines would be able to reach him on that, not with those treads. When Tanner landed on top of the boulder, he stopped too suddenly and almost fell off the other side. He recovered his balance, turned toward the three machines, and waited.
Listening to his own harsh breathing, he remembered something.
"Nitrox levels?" he said, well aware that his exertions were costing him precious oxygen.
The suit responded instantly, projecting a message onto the helmet glass.
Estimated Oxygen: 5 minutes.
Five minutes? There was supposed to be an hour left.
"Switch to the reserve," he said. "The reserve!"
Another message flashed.
Reserve Currently In Use.
Shit.
He was done. Might as well give up now. Trapped out here on the Ganymede surface, three murderous machines closing in, five minutes to live... there was no way he could make it back to the ship in time, even if he could defeat the machines.
Despair overcame him and he sank down on the boulder, deep down, and he didn't think he'd ever get up again.
Ari had died for nothing.
Ari had—
No.
It wasn't over yet.
He wouldn't let her death be for nothing.
He wouldn't give up now, though everything seemed hopeless.
He would fight to the end.
He swore it in his heart.
He swore it to Ari.
"Once more unto the breach." He stood.
The three machines approached, treads bobbing malevolently over the small fragments that littered the ground. The machines spread out, coming at the boulder from different angles, and dug their pincers into the ice, perhaps hoping to find handholds. They succeeded only in chipping away fragments.
The machines began rearranging the surrounding pieces of ice on the surface, pushing some, picking up others, and soon a rough ramp began to take shape, formed of three rows of similarly-sized fragments, each row smaller than the last. The machines set more fragments on top of those, and bashed them into place until the ice broke and filled in the gaps.
The machines worked methodically, and surprisingly fast. The ramp was three-quarters done now.
Tanner considered making a break for it. But he realized he'd rather die fighting than on-the-run. He'd make his last stand here.
He waited, trying to keep calm, trying to conserve his oxygen, hoping the machines would finish their little ramp before his air ran out.
They did.
Two machines took up guard positions on opposite sides of the boulder in case he still decided to jump. The first machine swayed up the ramp.
It was time.
Tanner grabbed the wireless access port from his belt and repeatedly slammed the pointed end into the ice boulder until a fragment broke off. He lobbed the shard at the approaching machine's head.
He missed.
Tanner broke off another fragment. He took careful aim this time, and threw the ice at those glass eyes—
This time he managed to hit the machine, but still missed the eyes, and the ice bounced harmlessly away from the cross-guard on its head.
The machine stalked onto the boulder.
Crouching, Tanner gripped the wireless access port like a dagger.
74
Tanner was just about to launch himself at the machine when a stream of light arced past, low in the sky.
An att
ack.
The strike landed roughly fifty paces away.
A sun-bright flash blinded him. He felt the impact of multiple rocks striking his suit, pressing the material into his chest, and he was flung from the boulder. He heard cracking glass, and knew his faceplate had been hit, and for a moment he thought it was going to shatter. Although there was no atmosphere to carry the sound waves of the impact, he heard the persistent scrub of grit against his suit from the fragments of ice and rock the attack had thrown up. It sounded like a hundred termites burrowing into wood.
He still couldn't see—the white afterimage of the flash consumed his vision.
He hit the ground and immediately bounced. He hit again, and again, skimming across the surface. His impacts increased in frequency until he found himself in an all-out roll. He felt the jab of several small fragments of rock and ice from the surface, and a part of his mind worried that the jagged edges would compromise his suit. He rolled and rolled.
When he finally came to a stop, face-down on the surface, he was still breathing.
Dizzy, but breathing.
So the suit hadn't been punctured at least.
Something nagged at the back of his mind, something important that he couldn't remember, and just when he had it nausea overcame him and he dry-heaved. It was probably a good thing that he hadn't eaten in the past two days, because he would have tarred the entire inside of his helmet. Still, the bitter taste of bile crawled up his throat and made him dry-heave three more times.
He waited for more hurtling rocks, or any other signs of ongoing attack, but none came. The last attack he could remember had occurred two days ago, the same attack that had forced Ari and Tanner into the spacesuits in the first place. A fresh attack was long overdue.
But the attackers had fired just once.
Why?
He turned over and lay on his back. He still couldn't see anything—though the white afterimage had faded, now everything was black. The attack would have had to penetrate deep to dig up a dust cloud as big and persistent as this. He gingerly rubbed his glove across the cracked faceplate in case there was grime or something else coating it, but the view remained dark.
