by S A Asthana
A lone cloud interrupted the blue—a cumulus, puffy like a piece of cotton, probably about a thousand meters high. She wanted to reach out and touch it. Poke it, so rain could fall. Ah, who was she kidding? It only rained over the oceans, everyone knew that. She closed her eyes. A rainstorm came over her with its wetness, thunder, everything. The drops washed away all the grime. They cooled her skin. She soaked in their purifying touch. And the—
Bastien interrupted her bliss, “How did you get all of your equipment?”
Belle lay quiet for two breaths. “Long story, but the short of it is when I escaped New Paris, I lived in the ghettos of Nippon One, and one of the illegals there introduced me to an organization called the Rogu Collective. A local thief outfit. I got in good with them. They taught me things for eight long years, things I hadn’t dreamed I could do. Soaked it all in, knowing I’d be back one day. My skills, my tech, that robot you destroyed so easily—everything. I owe them.”
“Quite a story. Us Parisians seem to have colorful stories in common.” Bastien’s eyes were fixed on nothing and Belle couldn’t help but stare at them. They were intense and beautiful. Oh god, were they beautiful. They could burn through the rising sun or light up a starry sky.
“You don’t… look like a murderer,” she said, wondering how he would react. It was an honest assessment. There’d been nothing so far to make her think he wasn’t decent, a good man caught up in a bad situation. Belle had been around plenty of men, and the ones with nefarious intentions always had a tell—a certain look from the corner of an eye, or even a nasty scent. But not this one. This one smelled better than anything else despite the sweat glistening against his skin. Something like honey. He was a strong, selfless individual, a type of man unlike many others.
“I'm no murderer.” A vein jutted along his neck. “Thanks, by the way… for saving me from the crash.”
An unfamiliar feeling brewed just under her chest. Belle couldn’t place it. “I would be dead if it weren’t for you saving me last night.”
Their eyes locked. Something strange and visceral intertwined in the moment. Flames spread across her heart. She wanted to run over and jump into his arms. Lock sweaty lips and make passionate love on the sand. While their skin pressed against skin, sunlight would tan their naked bodies. It would make everything worthwhile. All the pain, suffering – everything would make sense. She wondered if he felt the same.
“We should get going.” Bastien stood.
Her face went blank. “Y-yeah….”
Belle let out a sigh louder than she’d wanted. I read that all wrong – what am I, fifteen?
The two resumed their trek. The night’s cool moonlit breeze was absent, now replaced by oppressive heat.
“What’s it like?” she asked, not because of true curiosity, but more to get her mind off him.
“What? Mars?”
Belle nodded, her eyes studying the Eiffel tower in the distance.
“Cold,” he replied. “Like… steel.”
“Still better than here, I bet.”
Bastien dropped his head. “Yes. It didn’t have to be this way here.”
“New Paris deserves a second chance.”
“Let’s hope we can deliver it.”
Belle wanted to keep talking, but there was nothing left to say. New Paris did deserve another chance. Parisians shouldn’t have to live like animals. They merited better. Her father had tried, as well as his father. But it had been hard. Lack of resources didn’t leave many options. Earth’s reserves had been depleted long ago—one of the many causes of World War Three. But her family had given New Paris their best shot. Built a refuge, grown it into a functioning settlement. Was it perfect? No. But it had been better than what it was today. She would have carried their legacy forward. She’d had dreams for New Paris. It would never have become a Nippon One or a Port Sydney, but it could have resembled something closer to civilization, not the hell it was now.
I could still make a difference. I can—
A distant, mechanical din cut the heat like an icy wind. It sounded heavy, menacing as if it belonged to a leviathan. Belle squinted. “What is that sound?”
Bastien appeared to know it well—he skimmed the horizon. Seconds later, he pointed. Belle followed his finger to a massive white spacecraft hovering over dunes in the distance. Sand spit away in its wake, making the vehicle appear as if it was a comet flying just over the desert.
“It’s a 1.V10.” Bastien’s eyes were glued. “Martian attack craft.”
“No.” Belle stood next to him, her hand on his shoulder.
“Capable of carrying a hundred soldiers and several tanks. They’re invading.”
“There’s about to be a bloodbath.” Her heart pounded. “We’re too late.” Her knees buckled and she fell to the sand. She could barely sit, let alone stand.
“Too late,” she repeated. Images of men, her revolutionaries, swirled in the chaotic wind of her mind like loose pieces of paper. Their faces in a crowd were as clear as the lines on her palm. Their chants rang loud. “Belle! The savior of New Paris.”
Some fucking savior.
A man’s face stood out among them, his gaunt cheeks and bald head coming together in a strangely endearing manner. Peter told her she had a gift and believed in her. The Jacobins had believed in her. So much so they’d give their lives for her.
The night she’d been welcomed into this band of men had been full of hope—a chance to finally turn to a new chapter. A much-needed escape from the story that had preceded it—a story that had been filled with nothing but misery.
I was supposed to turn the page for New Paris. I was supposed to bring it hope. But how can that happen now? Hope is gone. All is lost. Those men flitted away with the wind, their chants replaced by onward and upward.
She opened her eyes to see Bastien’s face an inch from hers. “Onward and upward.”
She was not in the mood for inspiration.
Bastien pressed, shaking her by the shoulders. “Snap out of it.”
She didn’t budge.
“You are the rightful ruler of this city,” he said. “This is your chance to prove it. Save your people. Get them to safety. We might not be able to stop the battle, but we can help the people.”
“How?” She fumed through gritted teeth. “Between Marie and the Sydneysiders, the people will get erased.”
“We can still save some. Make a difference.”
She turned away with a sigh. “No, we can’t, Bas.”
“The underground room where I first met you, and the tunnel where you knocked me out. And the other room, the bunker, where you had me tied up. We can hide people in those locations for safety.”
Walls packed with skeletons were a part of that plan. Tunnels, hidden away from Marie and her army, spread out with possibility. As they drew closer Belle could smell the dirt, feel the musty air of decades past against her skin. He was right. “There are places. Yes, places unknown.”
If she made it back to West District, she could lead the way to the secret passages into the Catacombs. People could be saved.
In a surge of energy she shot to her feet, her exhaustion now a distant memory. “We need to get back in.”
“Back through the main entrance?” Bastien asked. “The hangar?”
“No, I know another way in.” She began to sprint.
CHAPTER 20: CUBE
Cube dashed across the 1.V10’s storage bay, its metal feet clanging loud against metal floors. There will be consequences—the General’s words repeated on a loop in its memory units. Failure was never an option, no matter what the percentages.
“Did we just get fired upon?” Cube asked.
A hurried voice rose up in its communication unit. “We’ve been spotted.”
“Details?” Cube’s voice was as calm as if reading a menu.
“They’ve got several portable and ground SAMs in position,” the pilot answered, “outside the hangar.”
“How many?”
>
“Twenty total.”
Cube tilted its head as if processing the information. A memory of massive, black SAMs sitting at the back of the hangar flickered through its processors. “They are expecting us. Land us over designated coordinates.”
“But, I—”
“Land us.”
“Y-yes.”
Stupid humans could never keep calm. That’s why they died so easily.
Cube walked into an empty mechanic room near the storage bay and hooked its limbs into clamps on the wall. It wouldn’t get tossed about if the landing got rough. Thrust vibrated the floor as the spacecraft descended. G forces pushed Cube back against the wall. Landing was projected within fifteen seconds—1.V10s were bulky, but deceptively fast. And they could also take a punch, although twenty SAMs wasn’t a punch, it was more an all-out assault.
>RUN ANALYSIS
>ASSAILANT: 20 Surface to air missiles
>TYPE: Mitsubishi SAMS generation 13
>TARGET: 1.V10
>CONCLUSION: >99% statistical probability of crash
Connecting to the cockpit’s security camera, Cube gained access to the pilot’s line of sight. The man sat at the bottom end of the video feed, his back to Cube, and the cockpit windshield spread wide just ahead, separated from the pilot by a narrow console littered with buttons and screens.
Immediately there was trouble—a heat-seeking missile flew into view outside the windshield and struck the craft’s nose. A quasar-brilliant flash overwhelmed them as the entire vehicle jolted. Cube felt its left arm swing loose from its clamp but fitted the limb quickly back into position. As things settled, the video flickered back and showed cracks stretching halfway across the windshield. The Eiffel tower, standing tall, appeared disjointed through the fractured glass.
“Shoot down the hangar,” Cube commanded. “That’s the source of trouble.”
The pilot pressed a trigger and multiple lasers, brilliant shafts of sinister red, shot forth from the craft’s tip one by one. A few missed, but the rest incinerated the target. The hangar, looking like a toy replica thousands of feet below, exploded, spewing sand and smoke up into a black plume. The structure’s defenses were no match for an attack from the lasers. Each was equivalent to several kilo-joules worth of energy compressed into a single beam, one of the deadliest weapons in the solar system.
Despite the destruction of the hangar, the 1.V10 was doomed. Three SAMs pummeled its underside, burning the metal hull. Circuitry crackled. Engines exploded.
“What is the status?” Cube asked. There was no answer. “I repeat, what—”
A missile burst through the windshield and detonated inside the cockpit cutting the video feed. The spacecraft jolted and keeled to the right. A computerized voice rang out, “Crash imminent.”
Metal walls buckled, sounding like an ear-shattering symphony. Cube braced for impact. There was nothing else to be done at this point. The familiar notes would ease the situation.
> PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
Odd. Cube tilted its head, processing the result.
> PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
“Does not compute,” Cube stated.
> PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
> PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
> PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
The data recovery must have lost the file somehow.
> EMOTION = frustration.dat
The crash shook the craft violently. The fiery cockpit sizzled, exploding once again, burning whatever was left of the pilot’s mangled corpse. Cube’s head wobbled vehemently, but its body remained clamped in place.
The commotion died seconds later as the 1.V10 came ripping to a standstill. Sudden silence. It was like a building just after an earthquake—no certainty whether it would hold or crumble in on itself. Cube ran a quick diagnostic check of its own systems. Besides minor scratches across the armor, there was no serious harm. But one oddity did stand out. Cube’s hands were curled into tight fists. It was a strange response to a less than optimal situation. Cube, by way of its programming, wasn’t prone to showing signs of nervousness or anxiety. These were foreign concepts to machines, after all.
It uncurled the fingers slowly. Focus pivoted back to the mission. Operation LNP was still clear as code.
>GOAL: Kill Marie.
Cube connected to the craft’s speakers wirelessly. “Alpha unit, report to storage bay.”
Unclamping itself, Cube rushed out into the bay and found the first of the soldiers trickling in. Most appeared unharmed, but a few sported bruised faces. Others hobbled. Cellular entities were so fragile.
As the soldiers formed queues, Cube estimated that a quarter of them had sustained some kind of injury from the crash. Nothing debilitating. The Alpha unit could still function at one hundred percent capability.
“Attention, Alpha unit.” The soldiers stood alert as best as they could. “Ground force navigator, detail our position over New Paris.”
“We are located over the back of West district” The man’s bloodstained face was lit brightly by a map on a tablet. A red dot hovered above green lines denoting their position over the tunnels directly below. Not ideal but still manageable. The change would have to be accounted for. The operation’s timeline would absorb this disruption. Marie still needed to be terminated within twelve hours, three of which had already been burned by travel time from Port Sydney.
“All TopGunners must be accounted for and ready for action.”
Three giants, each three meters tall, thundered into the room, their large, talon-wielding, metallic feet quaking the vehicle’s floor. They were oval glass-pods with protruding humanoid metal arms and legs. There were steely crab claws where there should have been fingers. And thick, spherical plasma cannons sat atop the pods where there should have been heads. A soldier sat buckled into a seat within each pod, acting as the brain, his head encased by a helmet that would translate voice commands into actions. Cube considered these tanks to be the operation’s highest assets. Second to itself, of course, but still higher than the cellular entities who were part of the unit. Those were expendable, but not the tanks.
Cube commanded, “Open the hatch.”
The navigator ran to a computer terminal and Cube turned to the team. “We may not have made it here in the way we planned, but we will secure victory. We are in attack mode.” The tone might as well have been a weather report up on Mars.
Some soldiers shouted “Hurrah!” Others simply nodded. The energy was lackluster. A side effect of the crash, perhaps. Or Cube’s dull call to arms.
“When we get down there, I require the navigator to remain on my right. You will get us to Marie’s quarters in the East district.”
The navigator nodded vehemently.
“And we will form the triangle formation from our drills.” Cube titled its head. “A TopGunner at each point, the rest in the middle, with me at the center."
The robot paused to let the humans catch up. In the absence of ones and zeros, it took longer for these biologic units to process information. Stupid humans. “There will be civilian casualties. They are acceptable. Stay indexed on the fact Marie started this. We are going to end it.”
Now the room broke into cheers and hoots. Adrenaline had slowly but surely overtaken the soldiers. The men and women, whether bruised or not, lusted for action. They appeared primed for the fight ahead, an Alpha unit that flexed as a single muscle.
“Are you ready?” Cube turned to the navigator at the computer terminal.
He nodded and opened the hatch door in the storage bay’s floor, revealing sand underneath. Clouds of hot air burst in along with the stench of burnt metal. The 1.V10 would not be flying anytime soon, if ever again.
Cube pointed at one of the TopGunners. “Provide us passage.”
The metal giant walked
over to the opened hatch, its tall gait deceptively smooth. Once in position it crouched low on its inverted knees, its bulky frame still looming large over the soldiers and pointing down its cannons. The Alpha unit took a collective step back, expanding the circle around the scene.
A dense burst of plasma blasted from the cannons and ripped apart the desert floor as if it was nothing more than paper. A ring of thick smoke spread up and away from the hatch door, along with sand, and ballooned until it filled the storage bay. Soldiers covered their faces for several strained breaths and eventually peered through the cloud—a hole was now visible where there was once desert. The plasma had torn wide a passage into the sewer city.
“I can see the floor below,” the tank’s pilot shouted. “The rubble will make the drop fifteen feet.”
Cube nodded. The operation was about to shift into high gear. The probability of a victory was high per calculations. An element entirely unaccounted for would have to emerge for Cube’s 99 percent projection to drop.
The door to a narrow compartment in Cube’s left thigh slid open and a pistol emerged. “Breach the city.” The TopGunner jumped down first and landed with a loud thud, sending broken bricks, twisted metal and specks of sand into the air. The controller shouted “Clear” a few seconds later.
The soldiers went next. One by one, they jumped down the hole, landing among the rubble. Some stumbled onto their knees. Others fell flat on their faces. Eventually, they stood and formed the desired formation as best as possible.
When it was the remaining two tanks’ turn, Cube found its right hand clenched again. Strange behavior. Does not compute.
>PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
“Most unfortunate.” Cube forced its hand open. The underlying code would need a review to see which module was behind the fist. At a later point, since more pressing matters were at hand.
The robot jumped down and landed firmly in a sand heap, trembling the ground with its weight. Clouds of dirt cut visibility to just ten feet. Suboptimal situation. A sleek flashlight jutted from Cube’s right shoulder, pivoting on a smooth hinge with a whir and pointed ahead, its light beam piercing through the dusty haze. A large chamber, one lit by several wrought iron candle chandeliers, came into view. Tents and metal shacks littered the space—warm bodies denoted by thermo-optic signatures cowered within each. These were adults, although some appeared to be children. The little humans were about to die, their chances of surviving the pending battle slim. Not a concern.
