“Come on, Maung,” Than said.
Maung shook his head, too engrossed to realize Than couldn’t see it. “This is amazing. And it can’t hurt us.” He gestured at the Sommen corpse, which was at least three times larger than him, and so massive that in Earth’s gravity it would’ve crushed the computer underneath. “And the only reason it’s dead is because it looks like someone blew up the doorway at the same time it floated in. They must have used a massive, massive charge.”
“Maung, I’m telling you; we need to—” but Than went silent before he finished.
Maung saw something out of the corner of his eye. At first what was happening wasn’t obvious and he watched while a rubble pile near the door shifted, sending small pieces of plastic to float before they settled. Whatever it was, the thing had blinking lights. Finally it worked its way free and Than hissed into his microphone.
“Shit! That’s a security bot. They were supposed to have all been deactivated!”
Maung froze. The bot shot jets of mist from its base, using gas propulsion to float along, swinging multiple coil guns and grenade launchers along a wide arc as it scanned. It hovered away, toward the door.
“What do we do?” he asked. “Will it come after us?”
Than didn’t answer. The robot floated closer to him and shot a blue laser, which rastered back and forth over Than’s helmet, inching its way down until it stopped, shutting off once it reached his waist. A flashing light cut on. “We’re going to have to run, Maung. It’s using shape detection to see if I’m human and from what I know of these things, it’s pinging me now to see if I’m friendly; military units have auto-transmitters—both radio and light based—that respond with the correct code. We don’t have them.”
Maung thought for a second. He knew that what Than said was important and the words reminded him of something else but he couldn’t remember. He was about to curse the fact that his semi-aware was off when it hit him.
“The nano-mines and the traps,” he said.
Than whispered. “What about them?”
“If that thing is pinging or sending any kind of signal other than radio, has it activated the Sommen traps nearby?”
As soon as Maung said it Than jumped, first kicking off a nearby desk and then placing his boots against the robot itself, pushing off hard so he rocketed toward the exit; the robot smashed into a table, then spun at the same time it careened toward Maung.
“Run!” Than screamed.
The robot knocked into Maung and sent him sprawling on top of the Sommen corpse, pushing him forward so that his faceplate slid against the green armor. He closed his eyes. Maung almost switched on his semi-aware but the robot jetted away, sending a hissing sound through Maung’s helmet from control gas that slapped against it. By the time he lifted himself up, the robot had already steered itself after Than and was picking up speed before it disappeared through the exit.
Maung slipped, floating toward the floor. Whatever he’d held onto had broken free from the Sommen and he looked down to see it tumble next to him, a long rifle-like object, jet black except for a silver end that narrowed to a point. This was important, Maung thought—not like anything the one in Charleston had carried. He was about to reach for it when his headlamp illuminated what looked like a cloud of mosquitoes and a pattering against his helmet sounded like a sandstorm, just before his suit computer chimed. A red light blinked on his heads-up display.
“Than,” he whispered. “Nano and microbots. Thousands of them.”
“I have my own problems, Maung!”
Maung went rigid. Within a few seconds the sounds on his helmet ceased and the air cleared so he lifted an arm and tried to see them, telling his suit to magnify the view. Nothing. Maung did his best to recall what he could about microbots but the data wasn’t there, only the information that he already knew: They could be deadly, but his suit made him invisible as long as its coating remained intact.
“Circle back,” he said, “bring the security bot to me, the way you came.” Maung pushed off through the room’s exit and down the hallway, following after Than and hoping he still had contact.
“What? Why?”
The signal was weak, and Maung breathed harder, using every muscle to pull himself through the dark corridor and wreckage. “The nanos. You’ll be safe in your suit but the bot won’t. If you lead it back this way the cloud of nanos may attack it.”
Than didn’t answer. After a minute Maung stopped himself, shoving his hand into a hole in the wall and grabbing hold of its edge when he recalled this was the spot where the man had been staked to the tower of computer equipment; ahead of him was the tail end of the nano cloud. It looked wispy. Portions of it stuck to the hallway’s wreckage and white plastic and then let go, leaving Maung with the impression that the cloud was a single organism, an amoeba-like thing that crept forward according to wants and needs that he couldn’t comprehend. It was gray, but where his helmet lamp shone, the cloud sparkled.
“Come back this way,” Maung said. “I’m at the cloud, all you have to do is float through it!”
Than’s voice sounded strong in his speakers, and Maung thought he perceived a light in the distance, making the cloud of nanos look like fog. Without warning, sparks pierced the cloud and flashed past him, some bouncing off the walls and forcing Maung to duck through the hole; he tried not to think about the corpse, which now stared directly over his shoulder.
“It’s shooting at me!” Than shouted.
“You’re almost to me. Once you’re through the cloud, there is a hole in the wall on your right; I’m there. We can go up to get away.”
“This better work.”
Maung stared at the hole leading to the corridor where the nano cloud floated, and noticed the light from Than’s helmet lamp got closer. He looked up to check if they could escape that way by launching upward, above the staked corpse and out. The tower passed through the ceiling above where a meter-wide gap opened between the ceiling and the computer equipment so he sighed with relief after mentally gauging the gaps—plenty of room for them to pass. He was about to push off and investigate further when a flash of light blinded him; Maung raised an arm to shield his face, making him spin slowly until his head pointed toward the floor.
“Concussion grenades,” said Than, chuckling for a reason Maung failed to grasp. “At least they weren’t fragmentation. Stupid bot must be half broken already; it thinks there’s an atmosphere here.”
Than was beside Maung now, pressed against the corpse so that his helmet scraped against the man’s frozen face. There was no time for a prayer. Both men were upside down and the bot tried to navigate its way through the hole so that it could take another clear shot at Than, but there was something wrong. The cloud thickened and swarmed around the bot, dimming its blinking lights, and the machine fired a jet to send itself smashing against the wreckage in the corridor. It fired again, blindly. Fléchettes ricocheted everywhere, sending sparks each time they contacted metal.
“Screw this!” Than shouted; he kicked at a section of electronics, forcing himself down into the gap between the computer tower and the floor.
“We need to go up,” said Maung, too late.
Maung followed him. Now there was time for prayer; he begged his ancestors to stay at his side, to help him not to fear the deep into which Than took them and for them to keep demons at bay.
“We are almost out of oxygen,” Maung said.
Than sounded out of breath. “I know. But we’ll make it, Maung; if there are still bodies, wreckage, and weapons on these levels, there are still oxygen bottles. Somewhere. Reclamation crews and drifters haven’t touched this stuff yet and leakage on oxygen would have been minimal.”
Maung lost his sense of time as he followed Than, who kept going downward, and the wreckage and death became a blur since it only got worse as they continued. Finally they reached a level where the equipment tower stopped, blending and broadening into a massive conical base or foundation that looked
as though it was anchored to the asteroid itself. Maung’s headlamp couldn’t shine far enough to see any walls and he thought to himself that the chamber they’d landed in must be huge.
“What is this place?” Than asked.
Maung touched the base of the tower, which had been partially molten. “I don’t know. The Sommen melted parts of this, though, for some reason. So it must have been important.” His headlamp lit up a line of chairs, their backs to the tower and reclined as if they were acceleration couches that circled the tower base, disappearing on either side in darkness. A distant, unreachable part of his brain recognized them and Maung got goose bumps. “I’ve seen this before. Or something like it.”
“Come on,” Than said. “Let’s see if they have an emergency supply station around here. I need air.”
But Maung waited; he was half there, half in his memories where he dug to reach the source of his unease and recollections. Than’s light dimmed. It looked to Maung as though he watched a firefly at night, its tiny glow insignificant and small compared to the infinite darkness and he was about to ask Than to wait when the man clicked in.
“Maung, come here! You have to see this.”
Maung’s knees were stiff, his legs exhausted. He thrust into the darkness toward Than and gently floated down to the floor where he jumped off again, advancing in lazy bounding arcs through the huge space, until finally his headlamp illuminated something green. Than was close now. But Maung still couldn’t tell what was giving off the green tinge until he got closer, where his exhaustion evaporated as soon as he pulled focus.
“Sommen.” he said.
Than nodded. “Dead. And more than one.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Hundreds. Thousands? I guess that whatever reason they came down here for, it was important. Why else would they sacrifice this many?”
Something else clicked in Maung’s mind, aligning itself with his experience in Charleston, with the computer tower, all the couch chairs and now this. He pushed off.
“Where are you going?” asked Than.
“I have to know. This means something, Than; it’s important.”
“Know what? What’s important?”
But Maung couldn’t answer. The Sommen dead lay thick so they obscured the rock floor and he guessed the creatures had frozen on massive stomachs, face down as if they expired while crawling forward with their last strength; all of them carried the same weapons that Maung had seen previously. But there were no marks—no indications that any of them had been shot or damaged. His light played over them and its limited range made it impossible to see everything in the pitch blackness, so that he had to mentally piece the images together in a mosaic, a scene where thousands of Sommen corpses formed a gruesome carpet of green.
“We need oxygen, Maung.” Than bumped into his shoulder and Maung sighed with relief, glad that he wasn’t alone.
“I know.”
“I mean soon, I’m on my last ten minutes.”
“We need to find dead soldiers,” said Maung. “Human ones. It’s possible they carry spares. I don’t think—”
Than grabbed his shoulder and stopped Maung, then pointed in the direction of his headlamp. “There. In the direction the Sommen were heading.”
They hauled themselves along the floor, using the Sommen corpses as if they were handholds and Maung remembered snorkeling as a kid where his father told him not to swim but to pull himself along the reef instead. He smiled at the memory. The Sommen formed a long green reef and Maung wished he were back there now, back in Myanmar where every winter his father took him to the beach for a week.
They reached the far wall. Black rock sloped upward into the darkness and where it met the floor Maung saw orderly arrays of equipment and workstations, with massive couches like the ones they saw earlier, but these had been ripped apart and Maung thought he traced claw marks on the metal desks. The Sommen must have been furious upon reaching this point, he figured, because the alien corpses stopped in an almost straight border, past which there were only humans. Parts of them. The dead soldiers wore vacuum suits like Maung hadn’t seen—ones that were skin tight except where the creatures had clawed their way through, allowing human insides to spill out before freezing. None of them had heads and Maung dry heaved.
“Take it easy, Maung,” said Than. “Breathe.”
Maung kept searching. Some humans must have been hit by the Sommen weapons, which blew holes through them and then through the equipment, melting everything in its path and leaving deep pits in the rock. Than scavenged for oxygen while Maung reached down for one of the soldiers’ helmets; they looked strange. An external air line attached to the side instead of the back, and from the rear protruded a cylindrical socket that looked familiar; when he ran his fingers over it Maung saw the gold contacts inside. He dropped the helmet and backed away.
“We have to go, Than.”
Than lifted a pair of small black tanks. “I found two. They’re awkward to carry but thankfully have universal valve fittings and are half full.”
“Now,” Maung said. “We have to go. I know what these are.”
Than took them on a different route back to the control center, and soon Maung went dizzy from navigating through crawlspaces and access ports. He understood why the helmets had sockets. There was no need to crack one open and see the dead face of a frozen warrior, his or her last expression stuck in one position, and he remembered the Sommen’s reaction back in Charleston even before he took over its armor systems. It had charged. Just like these Sommen had swarmed and charged, ignoring the danger to personally address the threat of human Dream Warriors instead of using nanos, and he imagined how they must have been frenzied by the time they reached the wall—enough to tear their human targets to pieces.
The Allied dead in this place; they were all Dream Warriors.
If the Allies had Dream Warriors too, so many, this must have been how they won against the Chinese; but why hadn’t they slaughtered Maung and his unit?
Nam yelled at them over the radio before they could return but Maung was too deep in thought to hear and he barely kept his eyes open for having been through so much in such a short period of time. His muscles weakened. The low gravity took longer to get used to than he’d anticipated and now that he’d seen the deepest part of the rock he wondered how he arrived at this place, asking his ancestors to certify this was the path, to send him a sign. Maung guessed that it had to be; only someone like him recognized the corpses for what they were, which meant he was here for a reason.
They squeezed into the control room airlock and Than motioned for Maung to raise his arms.
“Why?” he asked.
Than pointed at the spray nozzles, which popped out of the walls and ceiling. “Dielectric mist. Followed by a shock that kills any nanos remaining on our suit. You can’t get rid of them all without it.”
Maung watched as Than transformed; blue electricity arced along the creases of his suit and over his helmet, and he looked down at a forearm to see the same. A few moments later they finished and opened the inner door, which was when Nam propelled forward and poked Than’s chest with a finger, shouting, and Maung smiled because he was glad to finally remove his helmet and not have to hear his own breathing. He hooked into a seat and closed his eyes.
Maung woke up and thought that his mother was there, and that his son sat on his lap, and he swore he smelled thanaka. But it must have been a dream; his family was on the other side of the solar system and for a moment he’d forgotten. He forgot what he just learned about the Sommen and human corpses and forgot that death was the smell that seeped through Karin and into sunny side until he recalled a version of a game he used to play in school as a teenager—when he and his friends put a dead fish in the ceiling over their teacher’s desk. Within a day or two, it stunk up the whole school. Nam stared at him from a chair on the other side of the room and between them was the prison-port hologram, the dots slowly moving across it in a way
that showed Maung nothing, a meaningless dance impossible to understand.
“Than is off duty,” Nam said. “You and I will be too, as soon as our relief arrives. They’re late.”
“What was this place?” Maung asked.
“What do you mean?”
Maung rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The day seemed like it couldn’t have happened, but he smelled the rankness of his suit; he reeked like a garbage dump.
“I mean besides a port. Like the building we’re in right now. What went on here?”
Nam shrugged. “A communications facility. That’s what we’ve always been told, Maung. Than said you ran into nanos and found a sea of Sommen corpses, was there something else that makes you think there’s more to this place?”
“That many Sommen corpses . . .” said Maung. But the idea was lost, and he cursed himself when he couldn’t pick up his original train of thought. “I’m tired, Nam. I don’t want to ever have to clean up what we saw today. Not that much blood. At least in the war the blood would run off, soak into the soil; here it just stays. Frozen forever.”
Nam nodded. “You don’t have to worry. I already notified the chief and he’s going to tell the Americans that they have a problem with one of their bases—a cache of Sommen dead and their technology that somehow got overlooked.”
It took a moment for Maung to realize what Nam had said, and he gathered his thoughts. “If they come,” he said, “what if they find me?”
“Then the Americans will find the new Maung, the Maung who volunteered for guard duty because it paid so much, not Maung the Dream Warrior, running from capture.”
Maung considered telling everything. His thoughts traced a path that made him feel cautious, but they hit the same dead end as always—without revealing why he should worry, without allowing him to reconnect the dots, ones which he had seen so clearly before falling asleep. He sighed and, despite the low gravity, never felt so heavy. Maung was about to give up when he saw the hose leading into the back of Nam’s helmet.
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