by Max Harms
“Hrm,” said the captain, not sounding very convinced. “Well, I trust you know what you’re doing. You’ve gotten us this far. But please let us know if an opportunity comes up to return the favor.”
Nate wasn’t so sure.
The android had indeed talked the nameless into saving them, but they were also the reason that they were in trouble and needing to flee Earth in the first place. It felt wrong leaving all of their lives in its cold, mechanical hands.
But… the captain was the captain. Despite turning his back on the army, Nate still felt loyalty to the iron hero. She’d shown him the evils of the American empire and the need to build a new society, like the one on Mars. And better, she’d led him to victory against overwhelming odds.
If Captain Zephyr trusted the robot named Crystal Socrates, then he did as well.
*****
They were still docked at Olympus Station, and they needed many things for their flight to Mars, so Crystal went back to get another load of supplies with Captain Zephyr and Mike Watanabe. That left Nate alone with Kokumo and the Cuban twins.
And the “stalks”, of course. The garden was totally silent except for the four of them. It was unnerving to think that the plants were watching him all the while.
He tried to set his mind on the work, pushing forward despite his body’s protests to the insane gravity. There was much to be done.
He didn’t really have anyone to talk to, either. Yes, they were all Águilas, and in theory they shared a worldview, but that didn’t mean they had anything to talk about. The Cuban twins didn’t even speak English.
He thought about saying something to Kokumo once or twice, but she always seemed unfriendly and cold—displaying even more of the amazon-warrior vibe than the captain.
So Nate sat on the dirt and took inventory of the food, trying not to let the fatigue or the gravity get to him.
It was strange working only with the local computer on his com. He was used to coordinating over a central server. Once he was done he’d have to send the list to everyone locally.
The food crate was the second one they had brought. The space station didn’t have any portable autocooks, so they’d simply taken the emergency rations and left the raw materials behind. {Let’s see… Protein bars, granola bars, more protein bars… Ugh,} he thought to himself. {This is going to be a long flight.}
He’d completed the food inventory and was checking the water barrel when the other three came back. The relief of seeing them startled Nate. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before one of the aliens—one of the animal aliens, rather—wandered into the castle. If that happened there’d be no way to talk to it. Their body language wouldn’t even be the same. There were stories about people who were physically attacked by the nameless without provocation, and seeing the things he had, he didn’t doubt their capacity for violence.
Captain Zephyr, the android, and Mike were talking among themselves as they approached. Their coms were set to automatically scale volume based on proximity, so he only heard the tail end of the conversation as they reached the camp.
“…wouldn’t bother us during the flight. And given how antisocial they are, I believe them,” said Crystal.
“I’d still rather hear it directly from them. Call it irrational,” replied Captain Zephyr.
“I understand. Non-logical part of you wants them to behave like humans and feels uncomfortable with this situation.”
Nate could hear the captain laugh. “Logical part of me wants them to behave like humans, too. But I suppose you’re kinda right.” She seemed remarkably happy, given the circumstances.
“Is thaht the lahst of it?” asked Kokumo as they approached. Crystal was somehow holding a second, blue, 100-liter barrel of water by themselves. It must have weighed over six hundred pounds. Nate could see Crystal’s legs sink into the soft earth, even though it wasn’t mud here.
“Yes. We’re ready to depart,” said Mike.
“How long are we going to be here?” asked Nate. “I thought one barrel would be enough. If we ration it, we could last for weeks.”
Crystal’s synthetic voice was light and friendly, as usual. “Not weeks, but you’re right that we might not normally have needed the extra. I expect that, just counting drinking, we’d get to Mars without needing to open this one. However, you’re not thinking about our oxygen supply, or the extra water that will be needed for refilling the suit coolant systems and washing soiled garments. We might be able to use the local water, but the water purifiers on Olympus aren’t portable, and I don’t want any of you to risk contamination. We’re stuck with what we bring, and I don’t want everyone to die just because a barrel gets knocked over or springs a leak.”
The cheerful voice was a strange combination with the morbid topic. The thought of slowly dying of dehydration or from some alien germ… Nate was too tired to deal with all of it. The psychological weight seemed magnified in the ship in the same way the physical weight was.
The android continued. “To answer your question, I expect the flight to take between six and ten days. We have some, limited data on how fast these ships fly, but a xenocruiser has never been tracked when traveling this far. A lot depends on how quickly it can accelerate.”
“¿Tenemos que preparar las cosas para la aceleración? ¿El cinturón de seguridad o algo así?” asked a twin.
Crystal dropped the barrel of water on a clear spot of ground. Even from a couple inches up it created something of a crater in the dirt. The robot’s face showed a mixture of puzzlement and frustration. “I’m talking to them about it right now. The nameless say we’re already in flight, actually. Don’t know why it doesn’t feel like we’re accelerating. Maybe part of the same technology that makes the gravity. I’m negotiating with them to give me access to external camera data.”
It was weird to think that Crystal was communicating with the nameless, even as they stood there motionless.
A long moment passed in silence as Zephyr and Mike put their loads down.
“What are they saying?” asked Zephyr.
“I’ll broadcast some of it for you. Keep in mind that they’re pretty alien,” said Crystal.
A deep, harsh sound came over the com. It took Nate a moment to realize that it was the voice of a nameless. Or at least, it was the voice that Crystal had given it. “God is going to Mars. Cousins are restless. The children will tell of GOOD DEEDS. They will whisper of REPAIRS. Reputation repairs are GOOD. We aim to serve. Can you see the stars?”
Crystal nodded in response to the question even though they surely couldn’t be seen by the aliens. Or could they? Nate looked around the creepy garden looking for cameras. He just hoped the leaves didn’t secretly have eyes or something.
“I’m getting some kind of data from God, but I can’t understand it. Is there documentation on how to interpret the data?” Unlike when Crystal talked to Nate and the other humans, they didn’t move their mouth. Instead, their voice came over the com as if piped from the robot’s head by magic. It seemed plain that they were talking to the nameless.
“God?” asked Zephyr.
Crystal’s face became more frustrated. “I’m sorry. All of this communication takes a good deal of focus. I’m going to go back to talking to them directly rather than having to also translate it into English and Spanish.” They closed their eyes in concentration.
“Su ‘Dios’ es el barco,” said a twin.
Zephyr laughed. “They meant the xenocruiser! Gracias, Sam. Lo tengo,” she said in response.
*****
They were on their way to Mars with all their future spread out before them.
Nate tried not to think about it too much.
He tried not to think about everyone he was leaving behind. He could feel the fatigue getting to him. It became frustratingly hot, as well. He knew he wasn’t in a good mood, and there was no sense in thinking about the big picture when there was work to do.
But setting up camp did not go well. The
re were a million little problems to resolve in the alien garden, and the gravity seemed to make them each a million times harder to do.
Crystal worked tirelessly, but the humans could only do so much. Eventually it was decided that everyone should try and get sleep, while the android kept going and stood watch.
As Nathan lay on the hard dirt, pressed down with a weight that made it hard to breathe, baking inside his own suit, even with the cooling units on full, he tried to sleep.
It did not go well.
His mind kept rolling through his decisions again and again. Had it been right to leave Earth? Perhaps he should have stayed behind and let himself be captured. No prison could be as bad as the alien xenocruiser.
Sweat covered his body.
His leg itched, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
The hum of his suit’s motors and systems whined in his ears.
He kept thinking about the aliens that were all around him, watching him.
He thought about the possibility that the robot was secretly evil, and would turn on him as soon as he fell unconscious.
Despite his fatigue, he wasn’t even sure he slept at all, rather than simply spending six hours in a half-awake nightmare.
When he opened his eyes and decided really and truly that he was going to get up, the screen (or screens) overhead that showed a sky that was a lighter shade of purple than it had been when he’d first lain down. It was bright enough to see for a distance, but not any lighter than early twilight. The walls around the garden appeared to have lights mounted at the tops of them, shining down on the nameless plants. After a short while, Nate figured out that they were, in fact, mirrors reflecting the tiny, white sun.
{Ah yes. The 77-hour day. Wonderful.}
He wanted nothing more, right then, than to be able to do his daily stretches. The suits they had taken from Olympus Station were designed to give the wearer good mobility, but they were still far too bulky and inflexible to stretch in. His muscles ached from the gravity. Simply standing up was something of an ordeal, especially since he had to lift the massive pack that held his air, water, and batteries.
Nate checked his suit’s levels. The air system was still working at maximum efficiency. Without the ability to filter dirty air or generate breathable oxygen he’d have asphyxiated during the night. He shivered at the thought, despite the damned heat. He’d left the cooling system on all night, and according to the suit’s computer it had burned almost 40% of the suit’s power by itself. He was down to only 19% of the battery. His hands twitched inside the suit’s haptics, turning off the climate control. If he was going to be hot anyway he might as well go full hog and not waste precious battery life.
Nate’s constant sweating meant incredibly thirsty. He was starving, too. And his suit chafed. He’d peed in it about an hour before he got up, and while the absorbent material that lined the suit was probably as comfortable as he could hope for, it was still awful.
He did some calculations on his com. Given the rate at which the air system burned battery, he could expect maybe another 5 hours of air. The supplementary oxygen tank was close to empty, and the water splitter would have to run much harder when it was gone.
Without bothering to stand up, he turned his attention toward Crystal; they were, as he expected, still working. “Wh—” he tried to speak, but his throat was dry and the word came out as a whisper. Nate coughed and bit back a complaint. {“A complaint never solves anything,”} he remembered his dad saying. A wave of regret washed over him as he fell back on the black ground that was not black earth. {Why didn’t I stay? Why didn’t I stay? A prison cell would be heaven compared to this,} he mused for the billionth time.
After a minute he sat back up again and tried to collect himself. “What are you working on? Is the tent functioning?” he managed to rasp, despite his throat.
Crystal didn’t even look at him as they kept working. “No, Mr Daniels. I’m sorry that it’s not finished yet. There were additional complications. I know you must be very hungry and thirsty. I was expecting to be done hours ago. You should conserve your strength. Get some more sleep if you can. I should have the airlock functioning within the hour.”
He shook his head, then realized Crystal couldn’t see the gesture. “No. Can’t sleep.” He got to his feet. More resting would just make his mood worse. “If you can’t use my help then I’ll just walk around the castle a bit. Need to move my muscles.”
“My studies on survival situations indicates that you really don’t. You’re better off staying in one place than burning more calories walking in this gravity,” said the robot. Nate was about to growl something obscene when Crystal continued with “But I know you well enough to know that you’re not going to listen to that. Take your walk. Just don’t leave the outer wall and don’t try to climb anywhere. Given your state of fatigue you could very easily fall and hurt yourself.”
He wandered off, annoyed at how, given all the robots they could have had, they got stuck with a bitchy one.
As he left the garden he made sure to avoid stepping on any more leaves. He still couldn’t bring himself to think of the plants as the nameless. The four-legged alien crab-aliens would always be “the nameless” to him.
He passed through the inner wall and found himself in the pathway between it and the outer wall again. Both directions led around the inner wall so he picked one at random. The sun was hidden behind the walls as he walked. The experience reminded him of walking through Baltimore’s alleys at night when he was a teenager. Except hot. Hot as mid-summer day. Worse than that, actually, as he was effectively trapped in a thick coat. His muscles burned as he pulled himself along. He wasn’t sweating any more. That was a bad sign.
{“Just keep moving!”} screamed Jimmy, his leg split in two by the trap. Nathan shook his head violently, snapping himself back to the present moment. {No more thoughts of the dead. I promised myself that. “Daniels, stop! They’ll be here any second! Leave Private Mecklenburg! That’s an order!”}
Nate swore loudly to himself as he stumbled down the shadowy path. A walkway passed overhead, connecting the inner and outer walls. There was a ladder made of thick iron bars set into the side of the inner wall next to it. He ignored the ladder and kept walking.
{Don’t think about it.} he commanded himself. He’d managed, through force of will, to avoid thinking about Africa all night. No good reason he should start now. He just had to focus. Focus on the heavy stone walls. Focus on the black dirt. The purple sky. The sound of the machine gun spitting hot metal. The feel of it shaking in his arms. The vibration had burrowed into his core. {No. Focus.} It was too quiet here. {That’s my problem. Too quiet. Need some music.}
The display in his helmet indicated he only had a couple songs on his com. That was fine. He just needed noise. He picked the noisier of the two songs. He had played it during the rocket flight up from Earth.
He stopped to rest, falling to the ground. He didn’t bother to sit. There was no one to watch him, so he simply collapsed. The familiar notes of “Sonic Hellfire” by The Grael soothed him as he lay, panting, on the dirt. It felt like he couldn’t breathe. {This is how I’ll die.} he thought. {Suffocating alone in the dark.} The image of Jimmy’s head getting hit by the Muzzie’s bullet came back to him despite all his will. Nate wanted to cry, but no tears came. He lay there, waiting to die instead.
But he didn’t. The heat and pressure didn’t subside. His body kept breathing, somehow. Minutes passed. The last notes of “Sonic Hellfire” faded, leaving a ringing in his ears. He shifted, trying to get in a position where he could gesture for it to play on repeat. {A good song.}
He heard a word. Too faint for him to pick out.
“Crystal? Captain?” he whispered into his com, not thinking straight. Thinking was hard. Fuzzy.
He heard it more clearly the second time.
“Pervert.”
Strength came back to him, somehow. Nate pushed himself to his knees and looked around. “Hell
o?”
“Pervert.”
The word wasn’t coming over his com. He heard it from outside his suit. There was nobody there. He was alone in the passage.
“Human pervert.”
{Nameless,} he realized, feeling thick-headed. He stood up. “Where are you?” he asked softly. His voice was in no shape to yell.
There was no answer.
Nate began to walk back to the camp. Crystal was right. This was stupid. He had been stupid.
“Should human pervert murder human pervert. Should it’s murder. Should it’s murder,” said the voice, dispassionately.
He looked up. There was a robot on the outer wall. A clumsy looking thing with treads and a single stubby arm. The end of the arm featured four metallic fingers, equally spaced in a square, like those on a nameless hand. A couple blinking white lights on the patchwork machine indicated it was functioning. He hesitated, then waved.
“Should human pervert goes Earth,” it said. It must’ve been pretty loud for him to hear through his suit from that distance.
Nate stared up at it trying to figure out how to say that he didn’t really understand. The thing was creepy as hell. He wanted a gun.
“Should human pervert goes,” it said, rolling away down the wall. “Should human pervert goes.”
Nate followed it, but it was just a bit too fast. As he reached the intersection that included the passage to the central garden it was already out of sight.
He gave up the chase and turned into the side-passage back to the camp.
As he entered the garden Crystal’s voice came to him over the com, weirdly loud compared to the alien robot. “Daniels! Are you okay? Your body is overheating!”
“Fine,” he managed to say. His voice didn’t sound right. Sore throat. {One foot in front of the other. A complaint never solves anything.}
“What happened to your coolant system?” He could see the android quickly threading their way through the vines to meet him. Their voice was panicked.