What did that matter?
Eyes kept wide, JI turned to regard the king’s ramm, and the epiphany hit. The mekkers had a king. The king topped the KOL.
All he had to do was get the information to Aunt M and providing he convinced her, she might turn on the judge.
And do what? He dragged his hands down his face.
And do what?
Not a clue. Lost again, he wavered, then asked himself what would Fern do?
What would Ryke do? What would he, the JI who never doubted himself have done?
Acted.
Getting the message to Aunt M was the final hurdle. The judge would have a communication system that could reach any ramm, unless things were terribly different when this mech was made. That did not help him. Aunt M had no such system. How then?
The mechling. Skunk. The distance was great, but it could run.
“We have an hour!” someone shouted from the meeting area behind him. “We have an ultimatum. Surrender in an hour or he will do worse.”
JI tuned out the anguished discussion rising from the remaining delegates.
He reached down and plucked the mechling from its chosen position curled around his foot and held the furry thing close to his face. Though Skunk wriggled its nose, and he’d never noticed it had a nose before, it also studied him. The thing was afraid. Like him these had developed emotional…flaws upon becoming self-aware.
“You are going to be brave,” he told it, “and deliver a message to the mech called Aunt M that is sitting next to Fern on the hull. Okay?”
He rattled off the message.
This one might not be able to converse with him, but it could understand, and it could talk to Fern if close enough. And Fern could tell Aunt M.
Then?
He’d hope Aunt M had a better plan than he had, and that the mech still liked people, and wanted to take down the judge.
It was also possible the programming would not reverse.
“You hear me? Be brave. We all have to be a little brave today. For Fern.”
It blinked at him with big eyes his logic told him were designed to appeal to people.
Cute though.
“Go.” He dropped it beside his feet and watched it sprint off, fluffy tail bobbing. Right direction. Crap camouflage though. Maybe the KI-mech would regard it as a useless mechling and of no consequence.
This was at least something, and better than shooting her.
“Girl,” he sucked in air. “This was my best idea. I hope you and Aunt M have a better one.”
Now to return to feeling lost and despairing.
It seemed late in life to take up biting his nails.
Chapter 35
The devastation shocked her. Hurt as she was, Fern anguished over the dead on the landship and the downed ramms and trucks the KI-mech had obliterated, like a rabid pest controller smashing rats.
Smoke rolled into the sky. Flames licked high. And she, she was still trapped.
Skunk was running toward this quiescent mech, a green-and-white blob scampering through the long grass. Then he disappeared somewhere beneath the mech, only to reappear minutes later, beside her. The message it brought from JI was already scrolling into her head.
His words, in his voice. That hurt more than the wires.
“M!” she yelled. “M! I have a message for you from JI.”
“You do?” The mech crawled closer again, rising from where she’d been perching like a wiry gargoyle brooding over a burning city. “Tell me. It is a good message?”
“It is. He wants me to tell you a new king was appointed, Mako Laste, and the king has instructed you to no longer obey Judge Ormrad, and instead to aid the opposing forces. Us.” She bit off the last word and managed a smile.
But would it work?
“Proposal. That I place higher priority on this message of dubious origin and supposed king, over the judge’s sigil, which also had some points I could not verify, such as the method by which he gained the sigil.” Aunt M remained still. Minutes ticked past. “Done. I will obey the king.”
“Good.” Ohmigod she could be freed…or not. “One last thing. The judge gave an ultimatum. He will fire again in…less than an hour. An hour from when he did that.” She eyed the battle scene before them, her stomach lurching. Nausea. Was it from blood loss, pure shock, fear of falling, or the gruesomeness of everything this day?
“Aunt M, we need to stop this thing. You must know its insides, its system?”
“So, you don’t want me to take you down to safety? I see the logic in that. No time. No…time. What can I do to this KI-mech?” He tapped a pincer on the hull. “I think I can get into its system. I can extrude a microscopic tendril of my neural system. I learned this when I became what I am. I don’t think I am likely to be able to influence it in time. I’d need to worm myself physically into the KI-mech brain and this is so big. I would have to transfer all of me, all my brain, and become it.”
The musings of Aunt M were driving her a little nuts.
Taking over…
“What if I could get into the KI-mech? I can control a mechling.” And she didn’t have to crawl her brain inside it to do so. Ewww. So much ewww today.
“You? Wait. Let me begin. While we think.” The red lights on the top of his globular body, which she’d always regarded as Aunt M’s eyes, began to flicker. He scrabbled on the hull and seemed to find a spot he liked and placed a pincer, just so, and twisted. “Here, yes. The mech has neural cords all through the under-hull region. Think of them as similar to your human sensory receptors. I’m going in.”
The red dimmed, brightened.
“In. Ah. I have a connection. Let me try something. I think I may be able to alter the way the KI-mech thinks.”
“What will that do?”
“If I make it think on the same wavelength as a mechling…”
She could talk directly to it? Smart Aunt M.
“Oh yes. Do that.” Her neck was paining her. Up here so long, and twisting to keep M in sight, she was tired. Panting, she closed her eyes and let her head flop back to rest against the hull. “Tell me,” she whispered. “…if you succeed. I’m just going to sleep now, a little.”
“No! No, you must not, Fern. You are too pale. Stay awake. Wait. I’m trying to get it to change.”
“Good for you.” The darkness was welcoming her. “Hey! Maybe if you change your own wavelength, I could do somethin’ through you?” That’d come out slurred.
“Stars, no. You’re not rifling through my drawers.”
Had M said drawers? She must be dreaming…
“Fern.”
Something hard was poking the side of her face.
“Fern!”
“Mmm?” Blinking, she focused and saw an Aunt M limb poised over her face. Crap, she’d fallen asleep.
Things are desperate, remember?
She blinked some more, felt the pains that’d dulled to a throb, spring to life.
“I’ve done it. Try to talk to the KI-mech, please. Time has grown short.”
“Okay. Okay. Let me see.”
Like a mechling but not a mechling. She felt around, using this odd sense she’d acquired upon arriving on Aerthe. And there it was.
Big and blurry. Fast thoughts, slow ones. Ticking over. Everything interconnected. How to talk to it, though?
She wormed inward, feeling as if this was something new, that her boneless body numbed by too much pain was allowing her to remove herself from her own mind and squirm in.
Merely ordering it about was impossible. It was too large a place, spread out like a forest. Yet here was the center, and her, she could perhaps, do…something.
See.
She opened her eyes, on a multi-facetted dreamworld. This was her inside the KI-mech, looking out.
Looking out over the land. The fires. The smoke. The little people.
What if.
She strained, poking about below and found a leg, another, two more.
Wa
lk. She lumbered forward and almost fell, sensed others trying to order her to stop.
The judge and his men, of course, but she was now his god. He lived inside her. If she could have smiled, she would have.
Got you.
A small tinny voice that she recognized as the Aunt was pestering her. You’re bleeding more, Fern. The scavs are thinking of another attack. You’re driving the mech aren’t you? Stop or they will kill you.
Kill her? They could not, for she was this gargantuan mech and she knew where to go now she had the control. To the Chasm.
They will kill you!
The pinpoint glare of weapons firing at her, registered. Then she remembered her human body, out there, pinned to the front. M was right.
There was a way to tell them what she did.
The short-range communicator. She found it within and sent a message to the king.
The judge no longer controls this mech. It is being taken to the Chasm.
She couldn’t say that she, Fern, was driving it. They would not believe her.
Do not fire or it may turn on you again. Let the Chasm, Aerthe, destroy it.
The firing lessened, stopped.
In the distance, she felt her human heart slow, beating less rhythmically, weaker. She was bleeding, dying. Tears were running down her face, out there, scalded by wind, her skin torn by wires, blood painting her red.
Talk about having to break eggs to make an omelet.
An egg? Seriously, Fern. Her last memory of herself would be as an egg. A heroic one, though. And here she was talking to herself.
A mech, she was a heroic mech-egg.
Yeah, girl.
The KI-mech stomped onward, climbing the lower hills, heading toward its doom.
And hers. There was no way she could think of to spare herself.
*Aunt M, if you can somehow hear this, jump.*
*I can’t. I have to stay or the frequency in the KI-mech’s mind will revert to what it was.*
*Oh. Then, can you do this for me?*
*What is this, Fern?*
*Hold my hand, my human hand, please. You’re a friend, and I want someone holding me when I die.*
*You’re not dying, Fern. This I swear by every atom of my metal body.*
She didn’t reply. She needed to keep her concentration on walking.
She must go up this mountain then fall into the Chasm.
Chapter 36
The KI-mech passed to his left and began to ascend the low foothills, and JI leaped into his truck and followed. Unlike the mech he had to use the road and so he found himself falling behind. Fern was alive though, and either she or Aunt M were directing the mech, or so he guessed. There was no other likely reason.
Half-way up the mountain, he turned to see a trail of scav trucks following him. No rams – the mekkers were scared of this place – with good reason. He’d heard them talk of it eating their war machines, pulling them in. This was what was planned for the KI-mech.
Would it work on something that huge? From the stories told, of how seas of water poured in and were swallowed, he thought it possible. But would Fern and Aunt M get clear in time – that he had no way of telling.
He raced up the road, plowing through puddles, sending water flying, sliding at times. It’d rained here recently and going over the edge of a cliffside road would not help him. He had to slow and could only watch with his stomach in his mouth as the mech, the red monstrous thing, reached the top, advanced again with its legs being hidden by terrain. Then it disappeared.
After a single fervent curse, with no one in the passenger seat to talk to, JI drove in silence.
* * * * *
The internal monitors inside the KI-mech, the mechling views, came to her intermittently, when she could spare attention from where the mech walked. She spared it as often as possible because of one reason: the judge. He’d begun by standing and shouting orders, looking about wildly. As they approached the Chasm, he’d run to the command center.
Currently, he was screaming at the viewscreen, with his mouth so far open his teeth showed. His eyes bulged. Spittle flew.
As the KI-mech took that step into space over the Chasm, Fern felt herself ripped from the inside of its brain and returned to her body. A pity. She’d missed seeing the judge slamming into the viewscreen and pissing himself.
Bound in place on the circle, she fell face-first into the fog, the wind whipping back her hair and making her eyes sting. Perhaps she would fall forever.
Better than whatever was at the bottom.
The mech lurched as if saving itself, its brain kicking back in. It tilted sideways and slid down the steep face with the giant legs running on air. Slewing, caught on rock projections that it shattered as it met them, grinding alarmingly, it spun as if in slow motion and ended up descending backward and upside down.
A small tide of loosened rocks followed them down.
Still fastened to the nose, Fern watched the sky diminish then be swallowed in white. Light glowed through the mist.
Something tugged at her. Aunt M was neatly snipping the attachments of the metal circle to the mech. Freed from the ship, she was still wired in place.
Like a fevered seamstress, accompanied by an orchestra of metalhead demons making music to kill the ears, Aunt M severed the last wires then ran across the nose, and dropped Fern over the side.
Her lungs caught, her heart surely stopped, then she hit something solid. More freaky pain. Until she slowed, rolling to a stop on a ledge. A few wires still threaded through her, though most had pulled out. The fingers of her outstretched hand wept fresh red blood.
So cold, but she was too tired to shiver. A large black crystal lay on the shelf near her hand. Disbelieving, she curled her fingers around it.
Her vision blurred, swam. The last thing she saw was Aunt M, sliding out of view into the mist, rolling and wrapped in wires that whipped about his many legs.
* * * * *
She’d be alive. She had to be.
And Aunt M? JI wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to see him again.
He reached the top and found a man there ahead of him, peering over the edge, where fog sifted. Low clouds and fog, and that strange blueness stitching and swirling high above. Aerthe had made this.
Too late. She was gone.
He ran to where the man stood, and the fog parted enough that he could see patches where the far side of the chasm showed. He’d wondered if the mech could fit. Hah. A city could’ve been swallowed. Vast torrents of water poured over the edge.
If the mech had gone to the bottom, no one would be coming out.
“Tell me what happened.” He crouched as if by doing so, by lessening the distance, he could see to the bottom of the Chasm. He could not.
Yet…there was a patch of red that was definitely part of the KI-mech. A leg.
“You see it. Yes? That’s where the war machine fell.”
“Yes. I see.”
The mech began to slide as he watched, and the last visible portion of it vanished into the depths, like a carcass dragged away by a predator. Wisps of fog swirled across below, teasing him.
“Did no one escape?”
“None that I saw. I am Sassik, the caretaker of the Chasm.” Sassik was a big scav, though of darker coloring than most, with his hair gathered into a tail with a gold clasp. “Was there someone you wanted to find alive?”
“A woman called Fern. She was bound to the front of it.” Could she have escaped if still there? No. He kept his mouth rigid, unwilling to show his grief.
He should not give up so easily.
“Then I’m sorry, but she’s gone. You can climb down and look. I did it once, but what the Aerthe takes, she keeps.”
“You climbed down?” He turned to check out this caretaker, noticed a woman with blue hair approaching.
“I did.” He scooped the woman to his side. “For Blue, I did. I made a wish on a crystal and so did she. It’s why we’re together.”
Those wor
ds seemed almost a deliberate challenge. He straightened and studied what little he could see of the cliff face. “Then I’m going down there. You can give me a wish too. For luck.” He held out his hand.
Sassik shook it. “Granted.”
Then he kneeled, turned and climbed over the edge, backward, clinging to every protrusion he could find.
“Man, you are not good at that.” Sassik had leaned over and was eyeing him. “I’ll fetch some rope. Now and then I use it for the poor souls like you who aim past their abilities. I’ll drop it over the side with a harness. Look for it. If you want to get back easier, strap in, grab it, and tug.”
“Sure.”
Assuming he didn’t descend past the length of this rope, and likely, he would.
Chapter 37
The rope came flying past him part-way down – the coil of it almost knocking him off the rock.
A minute later, after crawling down the face like a worm, he found her – curled on a ledge and in so precarious a position that if she rolled, she’d be truly gone into the abyss. Stars and gods above, he’d found her. Now he knew why people swore by gods. Sometimes there was no other way to express your astonishment, frustration, or anger.
JI hugged the cliff even tighter, now he had a reason to live, and slipped the last distance over rock, ripping the knees of his pants. He managed to land on the same ledge on which she lay.
She was so bloody. More of her blood than skin. Not gushing out, though – there was that to be thankful for. Most of it looked old and dry. He’d take off his shirt and dress her in it but that seemed a crazy task, when below was an even steeper section.
“Fern. I’m here. JI.” Kneeling, he placed a hand on her forehead, which was far too cold, then on her neck. Humanoids had a neck pulse, didn’t they? He checked his own neck. Yes, they did.
Then JI found hers at the same moment that she moaned softly. One of her hands was wrapped about a black crystal. A huge one, for her fingers did not meet. After a second’s thought, he stuffed it into his pants. Check it out later.
Exquisite Possession: A Dark Scifi Romance (The Machinery of Desire Book 4) Page 20