by A. R. Knight
“What are you doing?” I shout at the Ooblot even as I step into another swing, this one aiming higher.
The Flaum, though, ducks the move and dives at me. Gets beneath my swipe and hits my waist. Knocks us both to the ground. T’Oli thinks fast and slimes from my hand up and around the Flaum’s left claw, then drips to the floor before the Flaum can shake the Ooblot off. T’Oli hardens as I squeeze out from under the creature, sealing the Flaum to the ground.
“Stop.” Viera’s voice hits loud and hard. “I hate the smell, but move and I’m torching your fur.”
The Lunare stands next to us, a miner in her hand and pointing at my Flaum. The one tussling with Malo stops too, with Malo gripping both its forearms in what looks like a stalemate. That one still has its miner holstered, but mine is missing its weapon.
Viera’s threat gives me the time I need to walk over to Malo’s Flaum and yank its miner away. From there it’s a threaten-and-move situation to get the pair of Flaum guards to walk back into our former prison. We head outside, T’Oli back on my shoulders, and Malo taps the panel to slide the door shut.
“Is it cruel to leave them in there?” Viera asks.
“They did it to us,” I reply. “Fair trade.”
The Chorus ring is deserted. The alarms have, thankfully, gone quiet. All the terminals now have a blaze red EVACUATION banner glowing across the bottom, followed by a strict sentence declaring said evacuation is only for Amigga and their guards. All other Chorus personnel, apparently, must fight for their fleeing masters.
“What would Damantum have done if the Emperor had fled the city and left the rest to die?” I ask Malo as we walk by the screens.
“They would have obeyed,” Malo replies. “The Emperor had divine right. Some may have fled eventually, when the end was clear. But most? They would have stayed.”
I take his words to mean we’ll still find plenty of resistance here. The terminals showing the fighting taking place in the Meridia sport level numbers in the corners, and while there aren’t signs saying what level we’re on, I’m willing to bet it’s a lot higher than the thirty-second floor I’m seeing on the terminals showing the constant battle.
Any Amigga, Flaum, or other Chorus troops that haven’t made the long descent will still be here. Whether they’ll take our escape as an assault or ignore us, I’m not sure.
“So do we descend?” T’Oli asks. “Try to meet up with the fighters?”
I want the Chorus to fall, I want to help Bas, but at the same time, Malo, Viera and I have two small miners to our names. We’re far from some rescuing force blitzing to the rescue, and I’d rather not get caught in a firefight when neither force knows whose side we’re on.
“No,” I say as we continue along the ring. “We’re not going all the way down yet. First, I want to learn about us.”
“Us?” T’Oli asks.
“She means humans,” Viera says. “I’m interested in weapons, if that counts. We find any, I get first choice.”
“All yours,” I say. “T’Oli, you said you think you know where the Chorus is keeping our history?”
T’Oli affirms it found a strange level not far below this one: a space with a spotty description that hinted at secrets I’d dearly love to know.
Back on Earth, I’d learned a little about the Amigga that designed us. It failed many times, and left its failures for us to find beneath the ash and wreck of an attempted Vincere extermination. But it was also clear that Amigga, that Ignos saved us. Took a shuttle and flew us away to the other side of the planet and let us thrive. What I want to find out is why? Why us? Why make humans when the Amigga have Oratus, when they have hordes of Flaum waiting to obey their every order?
“Something’s coming,” Malo, whose a half-step ahead of me, snaps. “Fight or run?”
From the growing clatter of boots on the ground, a fight is going to end with all of us dead or imprisoned. So I make the call and we cast around for a place to run to. Going back around the ring seems doable, but they might keep on going after us. If there’s one place I don’t want to fight someone, it’s outside our old safe room, where a couple of angry Flaum reinforcements are a door panel away.
There’s a dark entrance to the Chorus chamber to my left, but if there’s any part of the Meridia under constant watch, I’m guessing it’s there. So when Viera breaks for a small door slotted opposite the section entrance, I go with her.
Unlike our safe room, this door opens at our approach. No panel required. It’s easy to see why - a store room. We rush in, crowd among the boxes and metal shelves holding all manner of supplies. No weapons that I can see. Only tools, slice of life stuff like solutions labeled for cleaning, repairs, or more. Powered-down robots linger in the corners and hang from hooks in the rafters.
As we pile in, the door closes behind us, leaving only a greenish glow from lights ringing the crease around the sides of the ceiling. It’s enough to see, enough to make out that there’s something else in the back of this large storeroom. The bright white-blue light of a terminal screen halos its circular silhouette. Malo holds up a hand to us in the universal signal for quiet and advances. As he goes, Malo’s left hand slips onto a shelf and slides off what looks like a thick metal bar with a curved end. The motion doesn’t make any noise, and Malo slips the weapon into a two-handed grip as he gets closer. Viera and I watch, miners raised, and T’Oli forms its customary armor over my chest.
“If you’re looking for the intruders, they aren’t here,” a gruff, robotic voice sounds. “You should know better than to think they’d make it this far.”
Malo pauses, throws a glance back my way.
“You’re not a bunch of mutes, are you?” the voice continues. “I thought that gene line died out some time ago. Turns out you Flaum go insane if you can’t talk to each other.”
Flaum? I’m almost insulted. Malo’s confused now, and Viera’s looking at me with a narrow-eyed, tight-lipped stare that’s begging permission to roast this thing, but I’m a curious person, and I can’t help but ask.
“You think we’re Flaum?” I say, gesturing for Malo to move to the side and give Viera a clear shot.
The creature shudders for a second, and then there’s a whir of a machine spooling up. With a grind of creaky metal, the Amigga turns around to face us. It’s not too distinct with the terminal’s light washing out its skin, but it’s easy to pick out the thick, rudimentary metal legs and bars forming a cradle for the creature. Compared to what I’ve seen with Ferrolite, much less the First Chair, this Amigga’s equipment is so basic that I have to repress a laugh.
“Humans?” Now the Amigga sounds surprised. “You’re not supposed to exist.”
“Yeah, we know,” Viera says. “You and the Sevora both tried to make sure of that. And both of you failed.”
“No, no,” the Amigga replies. “Not like that. There was always something wrong with your make-up. Your species could never live long enough to be viable. That’s why the experiment was scrapped. Such a shame we had to waste a great planet on your species.”
“You didn’t waste it,” I say. “It’s our home.”
“Is it?” the Amigga laughs. “Of course Ignos would pull a move like that. It always was bullheaded. Never wanted to give up even when its projects failed.”
Part of me wants to hear what the Amigga has to say, another part of me is getting annoyed at the Amigga’s constant barrage of insults.
“Why do—” I start to say.
“Be good little failures,” the Amigga interrupts. “And leave me now. The First Chair calls for an evacuation and I finally have a moment of peace to myself. Can’t have mistakes like you ruining it.”
“Call me a mistake one more time,” Viera says.
“Are you upset by the truth, failure?” the Amigga says.
Before another word leaves its speakers, there’s a series of bright red flashes tracing from Viera’s miner to the Amigga. Each hit sparks a tiny flame, and at the third, a garbled groan come
s from the creature. Then Malo’s filling the space, striking hard and fast with his stolen tool. He breaks anything he can find on the Amigga’s machine, then cracks apart the terminal’s screen too.
“I don’t know what’s going to shoot us in here,” Malo says to my raised eyebrow when the warrior’s done flailing around.
“Agreed,” Viera says.
“It could have told us something,” I say, going up closer and looking at the Amigga. “It knew about us.”
“What it knew,” Malo says. “Isn’t us. We’re not some failed experiment, Kaishi. We’re the only ones who get to decide what we are.”
The Amigga’s body is burned and crumpled. Whatever secrets it held, I’m not going to hear them now. So I stand, turn around to my fellow failures, and nod towards the door.
“Malo, you’re starting to think like me,” Viera says. “I don’t like it.”
“Me neither,” Malo replies.
12 Worthless
Unfortunately, the opposite side of the level isn’t any better than where Sax came in from. A pair of lifts, both locked down with a glowing red panel, and without Kah’s now-severed hand, Sax isn’t getting out that way either. Instead, he has to jump and gouge off of the wall to dodge a series of strikes from the pursuing warbots. More than a dozen, now, rotate to watch Sax leap from the wall into another batch of still-dead warbots, using their cables to keep himself moving above the ground.
Running around in pointless circles isn’t going to keep him alive for long.
“We’ve found an exploit!” Nobaa’s yelling from the center terminal, the one voice that, as much as it bugs him, gives Sax a bit of hope. “Engee’s in the Meridia’s network, and all these warbots are hooked into—”
Sax misses the last part of that as the warbot he’s standing on activates and pops loose from its cable. His talons keep Sax gripped on top, and give the Oratus a chance to leap before the new warbot swings its sword through where Sax was standing. With his own powerless blade, Sax blocks the warbot’s second sword as the Oratus lands on the next warbot in line. He’d like to turn back and take the fight to one of these things, but several more are already swarming the position, their microjets floating them over deactivated machines and towards Sax. A sightless, implacable line of glowing swords and blue-metal orbs.
Back to the original lifts. Buying time. Buying space. But when Sax gets to those same doors, that same red panel, he stops. His vents push out air, and he hisses one long, low sound. Running isn’t what he’s meant for, isn’t what he does. If Sax is going to die, it won’t be with a sword to the back. It’ll be fighting and trying, however impossible it might be, to live.
Wheeling around, Sax expects to find the warbots coming towards him, ready to slice him into Oratus chunks. What he sees instead forces a blink, then another. A sorting of the sounds, the clashing and clanging that Sax thought was the warbots forcing their way through to him but is, instead, the battering cacophony of metal smashing metal. More warbots are activating, disengaging from the thick black-white cables holding them to the ceiling and settling into a fight with... each other. Swords swing, buzzing with energy, and empty miners bash against each other as metal limbs fly and sparks set fires to cables and wires scattered around the room as the machines destroy themselves.
Sax watches. Spends a thought thanking Nobaa, Engee. The terminal’s in the middle of that fiery robot struggle, and Sax figures it’s not going to survive. The two Teven must have found a way to do exactly what had been done to warbots countless times throughout their existence - turn them against their creators.
It’s good to have the reason for his existence confirmed.
Now Sax suppresses his own instincts. He wants to jump into the fight, to tear and bite and destroy along with the mechanical things, but Sax holds himself back. Focuses his swift-beating hearts and his twitchy eyes away from non-imminent death and towards the ceiling. Nobaa said his escape was up there, through the ceiling to another lift. One that could go higher, maybe all the way to the Priority Beam.
Sax takes another jump, scales the wall to the ceiling and digs in with his talons and foreclaws while his midclaws get to work tearing and shredding aside the tiles. Digging their way through the Meridia’s guts to carve a path upwards. There’s pipes and wires, unknown cabling and things that make noises as Sax tries to weave his way through them. An Oratus isn’t small, so while Sax tries to shove aside what he can, he leaves more than a few snapped and shattered things left in the annals between the two levels.
Sometimes those things shower Sax’s scales in sparks, sometimes in gasses or in disgusting fluids, but Sax doesn’t think about it. Forces himself past the moment and into the future, to where all of this pays off. To where there is no more Chorus and the only choice he’ll have to make is where, with Bas, they want to go. What things they want to hunt. The hope sticks with Sax and helps him grind his way through until he gets to the thicker flooring before the next level.
Scrunched between a thick black pipe that suggests terrible things if it’s broken and a knotted assemblage of cords, only some of which bear Sax’s slashing marks, the Oratus squishes up against the heavy tile. It’s cool, and red. Thick and smooth, even on the underside. What light Sax has filters up from the level below, where, going by the noise, the warbot brawl continues on. He can see, he can brace, and he can push, and when Sax does, the tile buckles and breaks free of its setting, sliding up and over its neighbors.
There’s one problem: the tile is small, and Sax is huge. He has to shift more, and do it before anything on this level decides to blast him to pieces. Sax works fast, kicking and pushing other tiles aside, expecting a blast to come through at any moment, but none does, and Sax gets himself out and standing without a single attack rendering him useless.
“Fascinating. I never expected to see myself here,” the words are soft, slow and methodical, as if each one comes as the result of deliberate effort.
The level is lit in dim crimson from a series of lamps over the lift doors on either side of the level. The first thing Sax notices, after tracking to the light, is that both banks have red-glowing panels in front of them. Locked beyond Sax’s ability to open them.
“You don’t need to worry,” the voice continues. “They drop the food down every now and then. Enough to keep you from starving.”
Sax looks back to the sound, the weakness of which led the Oratus to discount the noise until any possible escapes could be identified. Seeing as there are none of those, Sax affords the speaker his full, clawed attention. And recoils. Almost falls back through the hole he’s just made.
The voice comes from an Oratus, but it’s the oldest Oratus Sax has ever seen. Scales once a metallic green are chipped and fading, curling at the edges like a flower in the cold. Dark holes sit where his eyes should be, and of his claws, only the right foreclaw remains. All others have been grafted together, their ends pulled into harmless clubs. Teeth too, are gone, and the talons shriveled, translucent splinters.
“Age is a terrible thing,” the Oratus continues. “We’re not meant to grow old, you and I. Not made for it.”
“Who are you?”
“Me? I was someone once, a very long time ago, but now I am only a test. An experiment for the Chorus,” the Oratus glances upward with its eyeless face. “They watch me all the time. Looking for something, anything. They keep me alive, use me for what they need, and leave me here when they are done, to wait.”
Sax follows the look. Across the ceiling, shrouded in shadows due to the angle of those red-eyed lamps, camera nubs sprinkle across the tiles. So many of them for one subject, for one small area.
“But what are you, visitor?” the Oratus asks. “A new subject? Have the rules of the game changed?”
“The game is ending,” Sax hisses. He doesn’t have time for this, no matter how curious this Oratus and his story might be. “Do you know a way to call the lifts?”
The Oratus laughs, or wheezes, Sax can’t really te
ll what the old creature’s vents are doing. “You don’t call them. They do.” The one claw points up. “Everything here belongs to them, including you and I.”
Sax is about to go take a closer look at one of the lift banks, but the Oratus’ words deliver an angry cut. This creature is wrong, broken. An Oratus should never give up. Should fight to the last, and embrace a well-earned death. This one is everything that an Oratus should never be.
“Nothing owns me,” Sax replies, and instead of going to the lifts, he stomps towards the old Oratus, who is lying on the empty floor near a waste-water recycler. “The Chorus may have made me, but I am not their tool.”
On the battlefield, Sax would help a downed fighter. He would bring them to their feet, administer what aid he could and call for help so that he could resume his real mission. This isn’t a battlefield, and the old Oratus, aside from its age, appears unharmed. Maybe that’s why Sax is so compelled to force the Oratus to his talons, to get the creature standing. The old Oratus hisses in surprise when Sax suddenly grips its arms and lifts the creature up.
“Your name?” Sax says.
“Subject,” the Oratus hisses weakly, leaning on Sax. “That is what they call me.”
“I don’t care what they call you. What is your name?”
The Oratus lifts his head, a slow, creaking motion that has Sax wincing. It is wrong for an Oratus to be this weak.
“Rovel,” the Oratus finally says, the letters marching out one after another like an opening box.
Five letters, and not a combination Sax has heard before. Not a name for an Oratus bent to war, nor one for command. Rovel. The name’s surprising enough that Sax steps back - careful to keep his claws in position to catch Rovel should he topple forward - and considers the old Oratus again. The wounds, the deformations, but he can see a different frame on Rovel now. Standing, Rovel doesn’t assume a combat stance. He’s straight, his claws, aside from the midclaw bracing himself against the watering station, hang limp by his sides and Rovel’s eyes track towards the ground.