Eclipse Phase- After the Fall

by Jaym Gates

  [Working on it. Fuck. Fuck. Shit.] Sarlo’s childish voice sounded petulant.

  [Work faster. If these bots have heavy ordnance, we’re screwed.] Sava and Berk both unloaded suppression fire down their respective stretches of corridor before the bots even made it to the corners. The bots halted their approach momentarily, taking cover just around the bend. More bots began to appear on the radar, moving towards the position of the first responders.

  [We’re running out of time, Sar! More bots gathering!] Sava unloaded another round of suppression at the bend. Berk kept her weapon quiet, waiting for a bot to make a move into the corridor before lighting it up, but the bots remained put. More gathered, and even more appeared on radar, moving to the same position.

  [They’re gonna be all over us any second now!]

  [Consider this a gift, ladies and gents…] And with a final operation, Sarlo seized control of the station’s entire security system.

  Suddenly, one of the bots turned on the others. Another soon joined it. In a matter of seconds, fumes and debris came drifting down the corridor as all-out warfare broke out between the bots. Sava and Berk lowered their weapons and admired the sounds of Sarlo’s handiwork.

  [Damn, Sar! I guess that is why you are one of the best hackers in the system!]

  [Applause, applause, ya waify freak!]

  [When you’ve got cutting edge-exploits courtesy of the leet coding AGIs on Extropia, there’s not a whole lot you can’t do.] Sarlo delivered the line with a calm harmonic, but Sava was watching his kinesics, and they were off the charts. The neotenic’s little heart was beating like a drum roll. Sava opted not to bust his furless balls about it, and instead let Sarlo have his moment in the sun. This had been a “close one,” and another close one might not end up in their favor.

  Sava allowed a few seconds of relieved silence before getting the team back to business. [Sarlo. How soon till the elevator is active?]

  —

  Pivo stuck to the portal, watching as they descended below the soot-filled layer of clouds and the Earth below came into view. They were in the atmosphere now, descending on a taut beanstalk stretched between the Earth and station above, a massive feat of engineering built from carbon nanotubes. The shuttle car crawled down the elevator cable, bringing them closer and closer to the ruined planet.

  Earth’s atmosphere was now choked with a thick dust, the color of rust. The winds whipped over the planet’s surface with breakneck velocity, swirling dangerously in certain pockets. The world’s weather systems had been irretrievably ravaged by the Fall, when transhumanity had seemingly gone to war with a group of rogue AIs known as the TITANs. Bombs, raging fires, chemical attacks, biowar plagues, voracious nanoswarms—even nukes—had taken their toll. It was now an inhospitable place, gripped by nuclear winter. Some of the clouds were formed into unusual shapes, defying the high winds, even seeming to writhe as they moved—the thriving descendants of self-replicating airborne nanoswarms, Pivo suspected. Who knew what other monstrosities waited for them below, evolved from the remnants of AI war machines?

  The Earth was off-limits now. Abandoned to the enemy. Though the TITANs were presumed to be long gone, escaping the solar system via secretly-constructed wormhole gates, taking millions of forcibly uploaded transhuman minds with them—they had left many of their tools and weapons behind. Likewise, some of the weapons transhumanity had unleashed on the AIs—and, quite often, themselves—had taken on a life of their own. So Earth had been abandoned and interdicted, with hypercorp killsats laced into orbit to shoot down anything that attempted to leave or land on the planet’s surface.

  As a reclaimer, Pivo was part of a small but vocal faction that advocated a return to Earth. There was still hope for the planet, they believed. It had always persevered, and this was no time to give up on it. Earth needed to be cleansed and terraformed, resuscitating transhumanity’s home. But the reclaimers were a minority. To most survivors of the Fall, the Earth held too many horrible memories. Lives ruined. Loved ones lost. Their own deaths. It was a monument to transhumanity’s arrogance and mistakes, a grim reminder that they were not above destroying themselves despite all of their advances and technology, or perhaps because of them.

  This didn’t prevent some from trying, of course. Scavengers still raided the planet’s ruins, retrieving long-lost treasures, cultural artifacts, or even the preserved mind-states of those who failed to escape. Some reclaimers had initiated their own secret missions, intending to establish a basecamp from which they would begin operating their own reclamation projects. Most were never heard from again.

  The team of four rested and prepared equipment in the shuttle’s large open lounge, Sava and Sarlo in a cramped inflatable survival bubble so the biomorphs could escape the confines of their vacsuits for a while. Pivo elected to remain outside the bubble and in the vacsuit. Close confines with Sava during the descent did not sound pleasant to him. The walls of the lounge were smeared with decades-old blood, now frozen into a crystalline brown in the depressurized cabin. Whoever the last passengers were to ride this shuttle, fleeing the doomed Earth, must have set violently upon each other, fueled by madness or despair.

  [I wonder what it was like.] Sarlo tossed the thought out to the group.

  [What?] Pivo replied.

  Sava quickly jumped in and put an end to the discussion Sarlo was yearning to start. [Quit with the philosophizing and the dramatizing. You know I cannot stand that shit.] Sava tried desperately to maintain order and an air of gruff detachment. It was too easy to let the brain wander off into the past and the fate of the millions who perished during the Fall. To counter this, Sava always resorted to the diatribe. [Listen. We all know the mission specs. We’re locating someone. A courier. Most likely a corpse. Last known position while alive was the base station we will drop into when this ride stops. Mount Kilimanjaro. Which, according to quite reliable sources, was once overrun by killbots, which are most likely still in the vicinity.] Sava paused for dramatic effect before continuing. [We retrieve something from the courier. What, we don’t fucking know. Only that it is quite valuable to the org. We stick to what we know. I don’t want to hear any more bullshit “what ifs” and “I wonders.” If your thoughts are anywhere other than the mission, keep them to yourself. I don’t want to hear them.] And with that declaration, the rest of the journey to the Kilimanjaro station was in silence, each confined to their own thoughts, not a single ping between them.

  —

  The shuttle rattled to a stop inside the dark cavernous hangar. At one time, the Kilimanjaro hangar was the busiest Earth-to-space station port in the world, servicing millions of customers annually. Now, as Pivo clung to a shuttle window and stared out into the black emptiness of the hangar, it seemed as if the place was a soulless vacuum.

  [Ready when you are.] Sarlo pinged Sava, poised to hack open the shuttle door and allow the stale dust-choked air of Earth to waft over the team. Sava nodded to Sarlo and the shuttle door slid open with a rush of decompression. A blinding red-gray dust blasted into the shuttle from the hangar and coated the shuttle interior almost immediately.

  Sava’s first step into the Kilimanjaro hangar landed firmly onto the brittle ribcage of a child’s skeleton. The bones snapped into splinters and powder with a crunch. The floor surrounding the shuttle airlock was carpeted with skeletons entangled in a mass of tattered clothing. There was no way to avoid stepping upon them. One by one, the others stepped from the airlock.

  [This place is a tomb,] Berk beamed to the group.

  [This whole planet is a tomb,] Sava replied, with an extra echo harmonic allowing the word tomb to continue on well after the phrase was transmitted, added specifically to annoy Pivo, who immediately shut down the echo in his head with a countermeasure from his muse.

  Sava took a few more crunching steps forward, then stopped. The rest of the team followed suit.

  [Something is not right here
.] Sava kicked at one of the skeletons. The bones rattled and cracked. [I don’t see any skulls.]

  [Forced uploading,] Sarlo transmitted. [TITAN machines harvested the heads of the dead for scanning.] He shrugged. [That’s my guess, anyway.]

  [Shut up!] Sava signaled the team to silence. [Who else hears that?]

  A low mechanical whir reverberated nearby. [I’m picking it up.] Pivo replied. [Up a bit to the north. About 30 meters.] As if in response to Pivo’s observation, another whir began, this one behind the team, from the south end of the hangar. Another whir from the east joined in the chorus. The sounds were coming closer, becoming more distinct, more aggressive.

  [No visual, yet. This fucking place is so deep and thick with this dust shit, seems to act like chaff too. Infrared is giving me only about twenty feet!] Sava motioned for the team to move to the right. [Stay close, we move slow and keep the triggers itchy. The passenger lounges are just east of us. We start the search there.] The whirs were now all around them, hovering just outside visual range.

  [What the fuck is that?] A flying insectoid bot with six articulated arms ending in small buzzsaws lunged from the dusty darkness at Berk, who dropped to the floor and unleashed plasma fire into it. The bot slammed into a pile of bones and rags and set it alight. The fire spread quickly, leaping from dry cloth to dry cloth. The blazing hangar floor now illuminated the area in the hot orange glow of flame. At least a dozen insectoid bots hovered in a perimeter around the team, awaiting an opportunity to strike. Another bot dove at Berk, its buzzsaw arms slashing wildly. Berk fired, but missed. The bot slammed into Berk’s head and the buzzsaws ground into her neck. Sparks flew in all directions as metal met metal. She dropped her rifle and pushed against the body of the bot till the saws were off her neck. [Fucking run you idiots! I’ve got this!]

  Sava fired and dropped a bot, then dashed east, leaping over spreading waist-high flames. [Make for the lounge!]

  Pivo elevated onto two arms and ran behind Sava, his five remaining arms flopping wildly above his head. [Out of the way, ya poke!] Sarlo outpaced the slower octomorph, running through the flames towards the lounge.

  Berk flung the frenzied bot into a flaming pile of bones, scrambled to her feet, and followed after the group, covered in bone bits and dust, the bot swarm in whirring pursuit.

  Sava reached the lounge first and the portal was open. Turning with rifle raised, Sava took cover against the door frame. Sarlo and Pivo were past the flames and Berk was closing the gap, as were the bots. Sava unloaded cover fire that sizzled over Sarlo’s head, knocking another bot out, but the rest of the swarm remained unfazed. They just kept coming. Suddenly, more bots appeared out of the shrinking darkness near the lounge.

  [There’s more! They’re flanking!] Sava blasted at the new bots to try and slow down their gambit. Sarlo was only thirty feet from the portal when he tripped on a tangle of bones. His boyish body collapsed face first into the dust and human remains. Pivo made an awkward leap over him, skidded across the floor, and squished into the outer lounge wall right near the door. Sava reached out, snagged the octomorph by a arm, and dragged him into the safety of the lounge. Berk tried to stop and help Sarlo up, but her momentum was too much and her footing upon the dusty floor too unstable. She tumbled forward in a roll of dust cloud, chipped bone, and tattered rags, finally slamming into Sava in the doorway.

  The three team members within the lounge gathered themselves just in time to witness a bot latch onto Sarlo’s head from above as he stood up. The machine stretched two arms out to the side, then plunged their spinning blades into Sarlo’s neck. Sarlo’s eyes went wide and his body tensed as the saw blades ground through flesh and bone, working through his neck in seconds. The instant his head was severed from the torso, the bot swooped around and zipped off over the flames, into the dark oblivion of the far end of the hangar.

  Sarlo’s headless body wavered for a second, then collapsed, spurting blood in long, lazy arcs.

  —

  Pivo, Sava, and Berk sat in silence. They had managed to seal the portal into the lounge, locking out the horrors of the hangar. The headhunter bots could still be heard hovering outside the portal, occasionally clanging and grinding their blades against the sealed door.

  Berk finally broke the silence. [I’m trying very hard not to think about what they’re going to do with him.]

  [Try harder. Sarlo knew the odds of survival were slim when he signed on. We all did.] Sava stood up.

  [Should we tell him? When he resleeves?] Pivo knew this was going to set Sava off, but he blurted it anyway.

  [Would that be kindness or cruelty, Pivo? And besides, there is no guarantee that any of us will survive. So who gives a shit? Whenever your last backup was, I sure hope you’re not gonna miss anything since. Let’s get moving.]

  —

  With Sarlo gone, Pivo took over the navigation duties. They were nearing the corporate VIP lounge, the last known location of the courier.

  The team moved through dark corridors filled with headless skeletons and mummified remains. Years ago, the corporate forces defending the structure had been overrun by AI war machines, which mercilessly slaughtered everyone inside. The walls were scarred from battle, covered in dried blood. Destroyed remnants of the AI war machines littered the halls as well, haunting monuments to the few victories humanity had in their losing battle. Even as piles of scrap, the machines had a menacing presence.

  [Too bad this isn’t a salvage op,] Berk commented. [The autonomists could use a look at this tech. At the very least, figure out what the hypercorps might try to do with it.]

  As they entered a long concourse, the remains and debris abruptly disappeared, as if cleared out.

  [I’m getting some strange thermal readings here. Patterns that don’t make sense,] transmitted Pivo.

  [What is that supposed to mean?] Sava beamed back.

  Before Pivo could give thought to “I don’t know,” his muse issued a chilling warning: [My nanosensors register the presence of unknown nanobots in large numbers of a highly sophisticated design, suggesting a TITAN manufacture. Countermeasures have been initiated.]

  [Nanoswarm. Move! Move!] Pivo broadcasted in a panic as he launched into a full two-armed sprint. Sava and Berk followed Pivo’s lead without question. They all knew the dangers of a TITAN nanoswarm. Unlike the nanobots Pivo often made, which were manufactured with particular purposes in mind, and which were neither self-sustaining or intelligent, this particular nanoswarm was autonomous, self-replicating, adaptive, and capable of making almost anything it needed. Even as they fled, individual nanosensors were measuring up the three agents, transmitting details on their morphs and gear to the rest of the swarm.

  A junction came into view ahead, the pathway narrowing into a smaller tunnel. Suddenly, Pivo stopped, just a meter before the tunnel. [Do not move forward!] The others crashed to a halt.

  [What the fuck Pivo!?] Sava looked back down the hall. [Fucking swarm could be finishing us as we speak!]

  [My muse picked up a burst of thermal energy here. The swarm is up to something,] Pivo warned.

  [But there’s nothing here,] Berk replied, as she waved her hand across the tunnel entrance. Her metal hand suddenly clanged to the floor, separated from her wrist.

  [Monomolecular wire.] Even though the situation grew more dire by the minute, Pivo was impressed and fascinated with the inventiveness of the alien nanotech. [It laced the door with it. Cuts through anything. Weak tensile strength though—you probably snapped it.]

  [We’re fucked. Let’s face it.] Berk picked her severed hand off the floor. Down the hall, the nanoswarm began to take a visible shape as the nanobots accreted. The swarm was congealing into a fog, creeping closer. Berk continued, [The entirety of this port is probably filled with this shit. I’m useless at this point. These things are already all over my systems, my diagnostics are going crazy.]

  [So wh
at are you saying, Berk? You done?] Sava transmitted.

  [Yeah. I’m done.] Berk shook her head in disgust. [Who knows what these little bastards have infected me with. I don’t want to risk it. I’d rather resort to a clean back up. Forget this shit ever happened. You keep running if you want. I’ll try to buy you some time.] Berk turned and ran directly into the fog. The nanoswarm sucked in around her immediately and the disassembly began. Berk’s metal frame began to dissolve as she ran further and further away from Pivo and Sava, leaving a wispy trail of nanoswarm behind her.

  [Get fucking moving fools! This isn’t for my amusement! I’ll see ya the next time around.] A few minutes later, Berk’s signal went dead.

  —

  Sava and Pivo entered the VIP lounge. When the spaceport was overrun so many years ago, this was the site of the humans’ last stand. Piles of security personnel skeletons littered the floor just inside the doorway. The charred remnants of a hopeless barricade were scattered beside the mounds of bone. Skeletons draped in torn, singed civilian garb were clustered around the walls and corners, sometimes three or four deep, as if they had all scrambled as far as possible from some avatar of death in the middle of the room.

  Pivo started an operation to locate the RFID tag the courier was supposedly chipped with in his left shoulder blade. The code triggered a ping within three meters. Pivo pointed a lengthy arm at a small bone pile. [He’s in there somewhere.]

  Sava stepped over to the pile of three skeletons and began rummaging through the bones, yanking out or snapping off all the femurs. [Goddamnit I want a cigarette. This morph has me so tweaked. Haven’t I made it clear I don’t smoke? Yet, every time, they sleeve me in a morph nailed with the habit.] Sava handed the bundle of bones to Pivo.

  [Must be a fury thing. Should just take a few minutes to scan these for the nanoscale etching.] Pivo got to work. [Enough time for a smoke, if you want.]

  [Yeah. Real funny. How about I grind you up into dust and smoke you?] Sava sat down on the floor as Pivo sent out a chuckle.