43 Days to Oblivion

by J. D. Oppenheim

  It slowly stumbled back towards the edge of the roof. Jolo joined in and finally it fell off the side and crashed down onto the rubble eighteen levels below, one of its long metal legs snapping off at the knee. It lay unmoving as the rain continued to fall.

  Greeley carried Barthelme into the Argossy and headed straight for the med bay. Katy held the big ship steady a meter off the roof without putting the landing pads down.

  “Jolo, come now! We got BG boats inbound!” she screamed into the comm.

  Jolo touched his earpiece. “Pick me up at the bottom. I’ve got to get a few more. Go without me if you have to. Save Barth.” He started for the stairs then changed course and thinking to save time, jumped off the top of the harvester all the way down to the ice below. He’d covered distances greater than this, but worried about the landing surface. The cold wind rushed up, biting his face, and for a moment he though he might land on the tangled mess of black metal laying beneath him, the dead Lord, but nearing the bottom he realized the unmoving mech was thirty yards back. Both feel sunk into the mush at the rear of the harvester and he sprinted for the lower level door.

  Jolo slipped inside the big machine, still moving across the ice, and scanned for the blond girls with the red blades. A sharp pain stabbed at his left side if he took a deep breath, his hand instinctively reaching around to support his ribs. He jumped onto the ground, careful to stay moving with the harvester lest he get run over by the rear track wheels. He jogged to the right side and there was the girl, running along with the harvester as always.

  “Come with me,” Jolo yelled over the sound of the machinery.

  She didn’t respond. Didn’t even look his way.

  Jolo looked around and saw two men, the rock humpers, sitting on the edge of the platform.

  “Come with me if you want to live,” Jolo said.

  “They’ll kill us,” one man said in a shakey, fearful voice.

  “Most of them are dead.”

  Both men looked at each other and then gave Jolo a nod.

  “She don’t speak,” one of the men said.

  “I’ll be back,” said Jolo. Then he ran up to level 5. Four of the men were still alive, two claimed they could walk, so Jolo carried one, ordered the Med bot to carry the other one, and they made their way down to the bottom. Jolo grabbed the girl and the two men followed him out onto the cold, wet rubble.

  Jolo, the girl, and the six ragged men watched as the harvester slowly moved away from them, still grinding away at the earth, as the Argossy came down to take them home.

  Misha

  Duval

  24 days left

  Jolo sat on the exam table in the med bay at Marco’s house. His shirt was off and his ribs and shoulders were covered in a patchwork of black and blue bruises. Each dark spot a gift from the Jaylens on the ice harvester. Merthon’s suit had done its job and the Jaylen’s knives couldn’t penetrate, except for the gash on the side of his face that Merthon had stitched up.

  Marco’s and the Argossy’s med bots both tended to the survivors, each laying in a cot nearby, IV lines nourishing their bodies, and soft music in the background, which was Katy’s idea, to help ease them back. Even Jolo could tell they all looked better. Barthelme’s color was returning, but it was still difficult to imagine this frail creature so close to death only a day before, was the same large, loud, strong man who’d kept the Jessica in one piece long ago when he was fully human, and who’d rescued him from jail and given him his gun. Had given him his life.

  Katy walked in, her smile turning sour when she saw Jolo. “What happened to you?” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder and he winced in pain, but he still enjoyed her soft touch. He sat up a little taller, but another sharp pain pierced his side.

  “Do not touch my patient,” said Merthon, torn from his lab work to help take care of the survivors.

  “I’m fine,” said Jolo, pretending to be annoyed, though happy to have Katy concerned about him.

  “You’ve got a few cracked ribs, a facial laceration which will undoubtedly win you some points with the pirate contingent, and a few deep bruises,” said Merthon. “Otherwise you came through nicely. I’ve given you a pain killer and—” but then Katy cut him off.

  “Nicely? He looks like he was whacked with a hammer a hundred times. I thought the suit was gonna protect him,” she said in an icy, accusing voice. And now Merthon, the greatest creator the galaxy had ever know, last of his kind, felt the wrath of the former trash hauler pilot. Jolo couldn’t help it--a big grin broke out on his face.

  Merthon took a deep breath and tilted his head, staring down at the girl. “It did,” he said, and walked out.

  Jolo started laughing and suddenly sharp stabs of pain shot through his side. And then he was sort of crying and laughing all at once and it came out like a strange howl. “Merthon,” Katy yelled down the hall. “Is he okay?” But the Vellosian kept walking away, his back to them both. He waved his hand and continued towards his lab on the lower level.

  “So you were worried about me?” said Jolo.

  “Of course. I care about you,” said Katy.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” She stared at him and her smile faded.

  He shrugged and stared down at the dirty floor.

  “When you gonna learn?” she said. “I don’t care what anyone says. I know you are a good person. I know what’s in here.” And she tapped on his chest right on a bruise. He took a deep breath and another sharp jolt to his side and he grimaced, hoping Katy would go back to being worried about him, but her expression, kind of sad and concerned all at once, didn’t change. “You’re gonna have to grow up, Little Boy, and let somebody in at some point,” she said, and walked out.

  Jolo sat on the table alone, the med bots tending to the other patients, trying not to breathe too deeply.

  “You never did know how to talk to a woman,” said a soft, raspy voice. Jolo started to turn and look behind him, yelled out in pain, then eased off the table and gingerly walked over to Barthelme’s bed. He stared down at the old man and for the first time since the harvester, the one-armed man looked like the engineer he once knew, the man who found him in the dirt on Duval almost a year earlier. Though it seemed like ten years.

  “You look like you,” said Jolo.

  “I suppose that’s a good thing, Captain.”

  “I ain’t your captain. I’m not the man you knew.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I’m sorry you saved me,” Jolo said, and suddenly he couldn’t look Barth in the eyes. “I have no idea what you thought to gain. But I’m so sorry you lost your family. Just to save me.” Jolo stopped, looked back at the door to make sure no one was there, and continued in a whisper. “I’m not even the Jolo you knew. I’m just a synth, or at least half a synth. Only part of the Jolo you knew is left. I have a computer chip in my head. And now I’m just a pirate stealing Fed rations and ship parts.”

  “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for the Federation.” Jolo shook his head. Barth put his hand on top of Jolo’s and squeezed it. “Did you find the girl,” he said. Jolo nodded, yes. Barth took a deep breath and smiled, then started coughing. The med bot came over to monitor his vitals. “There were four, in the beginning. She used to speak then, used to smile occasionally.”

  “I got her. But I don’t know her name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Get some rest,” said Jolo. “I’m glad you are back. We need you.” The med bot came over to check on the old man and Jolo put his shirt on.

  “Misha,” said Barth. “Her name is Misha.”

  Jolo stood over her bed and watched her breathe. She’d been given a bath and suddenly had changed from a dirty trackhead on a BG harvester to a beautiful little girl with dark hair. She looked even smaller somehow laying in the med bay. Jolo wondered how old she was. Seven? Eight? How had it come to this? Without the grime and track wheel grease, Jolo could see she had the smooth, perfect skin
of a child. Her body would recover, he thought. But he hoped she would eventually talk and play like other kids.

  On Merthon’s orders, Jolo went to bed, but he couldn’t sleep. He just stared at the big picture frame on the wall that showed a rotating video of the topside landscape right above Marco’s. Usually it was just a wide swath of orange earth then blue sky above, but all day small boats shuttled back and forth: the tower busters resupplying.

  Jolo didn’t know what to do with down time, especially when the planet was going BOOM in a little over three weeks. Finally, after watching the umpteenth hover craft, weighed down with heavy charges and riding low, racing across the flat, Duval landscape, across his picture frame, he put on his clothes and went up to the staging area. His head was pounding and his mouth was dry. George was there with a thin screen in his hand keeping tabs on the inventory of charges, magna hooks, and energy rifles. He was shouting something to a tower buster crew as they left. He saw Jolo and frowned.

  Jolo noticed something different in the synth, but couldn’t place it. And then Jolo’s headache got worse and he started to sway a little. His vision got dark around the edges, the darkness closing in until there was one tiny point of light. He came to again in his room and wondered if it’d been a dream. George was there.

  “How’d I get back here?” said Jolo.

  “I carried you,” said George.

  “How? You’ve only got one—” and then he saw it: George had two arms. He smiled.

  “A gift from Merthon. And you got a gift from the old frog, too.”

  “What?”

  “A tranquilizer shot.”

  Jolo reached up to touch George’s new arm, warm and muscular. “Very human,” said Jolo.

  “I know,” he said, grinning.

  “I don’t feel like I got shot,” said Jolo, and then the drug took effect and he slid off to sleep.

  A few days later Jolo was feeling better so everyone got together to hammer out a plan. It was nearly dark and there was a cool breeze so everyone met topside and sat down on the orange earth in a circle, the light of the portable holo display in the center illuminating their faces, the stars above just starting to show in the sky.

  George stood up, holding his data screen. “I’ll start with the good news: we’re much better at tower tippin’. That’s what we’re callin it. We’re taking out more and more each day. Three days ago:49, yesterday: 52, today so far: 54. Everyone is excited. But… Numbers aren’t good. The math says we still aren’t gonna make it.”

  “So can we start the evacuation?” said Jolo.

  “How far off are we?” said Barth, sipping on one of Merthon’s green energy drinks.

  “It’s close. We only have about three weeks left. The BG haven’t bothered us in a few days and Jolo and Katy’s tower busting method has spread to most sectors,” said George.

  “There is time to see if Captain Barthelme can bring the military to our side,” said Marco.

  “Okay. If we do this,” said Jolo, “it’s got to be done now. There’s no time to waste.”

  “Why don’t we talk to the President?” said George.

  “I don’t trust him,” said Jolo. “He gives the BG too much. We should target someone high enough up in the military to make a difference, but no too high up.”

  “Filcher?” said Barth. “He was with us on the Jessica,” he said to Jolo.

  “Can you find him?” said Jolo.

  “Yeah, unless they’ve relocated all my friends to BG work planets.” Jolo started to laugh, but then realized that might be exactly what had happened.

  “Okay,” said Jolo, “we go for Filcher. He was under me on the Jessica and he knows Barth. He’s moved up the chain so he’s got influence.”

  “How you gonna get close to him?” said Katy. “If you run up to a fleet of Fed ships and they know its us, they may shoot first.”

  “We need a clean, Fed military comms channel,” said Barth. “Jolo, can you steal a Fed ship? Maybe something small?”

  “I got a better idea,” said Jolo. “Marco, you still got the junkyard down in the basement?”

  “Yep. Ain’t got no Fed ships, though.”

  “Don’t need a whole ship, just the comms module.”

  “Ahh. That I may have.”

  That night Jolo went down to the lower levels to search for a Fed comms module in Marco’s junk pile. Marco was a tinkerer at heart and was always on the lookout for the raw materials to bring his creations to life. The Argossy, which he considered to be one of his greatest creations, was restored using components from a dozen other ships: the thrusters came off two Michiban Xlite space runners, the logic array was from a Fed privateer ship no longer made, the kicker he’d scavenged off a moth-balled Argossy from a fellow trader on Tichel. And on it went.

  Jolo walked through Merthon’s lab to make it down to the lowest level where the junk pile was. The old frog wasn’t there and the water tanks cast a blue glow on the walls, the sealed jars, and the glassware in the lab. Near the stairs he noticed a light on in a storage room. The door was bolt locked and reinforced with steel. He peered into the room and there on the floor was a blond girl. A Jaylen.

  He reached for his gun, but he didn’t have it with him. Then realized there was a five centimeter thick steel door between them. What could that skinny-armed synth do to him? he thought. And then he took a deep breath and pain shot through him, and suddenly he could feel every bruise. He touched the eighteen black stitches from his temple to his jaw line, the gash that burned and itched and wouldn’t let him sleep.

  The room was bare. Just a concrete floor and a water bowl. Like a dog, thought Jolo. She had on rags like they wore in the poor settlements. She looked up at him, at first angry and defiant. “I said I’m not eating your shite food,” she screamed. And then her face changed and she took a few steps toward the door. Jolo could see her chest rise and fall with each deep breath. They came more rapidly and her face turned red and her eyes began to water.

  Finally she took another step towards the door. “It’s you. I thought it was a dream.”

  “It was a dream,” said Jolo. “You were all synthetics.”

  “No. No! Not me! Can’t you see that?” she yelled. Her hair was filthy, almost brown, full of Duval dirt.

  This isn’t real, thought Jolo. She’s a synth, but all the Jaylens he’d ever come across had perfect, platinum blond hair. He wondered if he should just move on and go hunt down the comm box.

  “You said you’d never leave me. I thought you would come for me,” she said.

  “I did come.”

  “No. You came for the frog man, and you left me alone. You couldn’t tell us apart? You always were a little stiff, but I loved you and I thought you loved me.”

  She turned her back on him and put her head in the corner and cried, her shoulders jerking up and down.

  “You are a synth,” said Jolo and started to turn away, but she jumped up, her face red and wet. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. Then she banged her forehead on the concrete wall. She stumbled back, stunned, fell on the floor for a moment, her dirty hair covering her face. The she crawled to the door and stood up, inches from the glass. She pulled her hair back away from her face and there, on her forehead, was a gash. Blood streamed out and dripped down onto her face, her nose, into her mouth.

  “Synths don’t bleed, Jolo.”

  Jolo stepped back and stared at this girl through the window. “Jaylen?” he said.

  She looked up and smiled, and another round of sobbing started. “I’m tired,” she cried. “I can’t go on any longer.” Then she fell on the floor and blood continued to pour from the cut on her forehead. He face started to go white and Jolo banged on the door.

  “Jaylen! Get up!” he yelled. He had to help her. He slid the bolt lock open and put his hand on the door knob. He could open it from the outside.

  “Don’t open that you fool!” Merthon yelled.

  And Jolo stopped.

  “But she’s
hurt,” said Jolo.

  “And you are a fool.”

  Merthon quickly locked the door again.

  “What do you see?” he said.

  “I see Jaylen. The Jaylen.”

  “You see what she wants you to see.”

  “Do you believe its her, really her, the girl that was nothing more than an implanted dream in the mem chip in your head?”

  “She’s going to die.”

  Merthon sighed. “You have a good heart, Jolo. And that makes me so happy. I’ve never brought anyone back who was as far gone as you. Sometimes things don’t work out so well. Sometimes the person never comes back even though I can coax the body back. They look human but have lost their humanity. Not you.” And then he looked through the window at the girl. “But don’t let your humanness get you killed.”

  He pressed a button on the wall. “Take off her arm at the shoulder.”

  Suddenly a med bot came appeared and the girl jumped up and tried to defend herself. A red laser shot out of the small bot, burning a hole in the floor. Jolo started to push Merthon out of the way and go for the door, but was too late. The girl’s arm fell onto the floor. She didn’t scream or cry. She just sat against the wall, her breathing normal. The arm wasn’t bloody, and neither was the stump: hollow alacyte skeleton surrounded by synthetic flesh that had already started to repair itself.

  Jolo moved away from the door and sat down. Merthon put his hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. The damn creature had us all fooled. She’s not like the ones on the harvester. This one’s an infiltrator. The blood is just a trick. She’s an upgraded model. We caught her taking down towers out near Arkos! She was looking for you. They probably sent a number of these models to each of the fringe planets.”