by Max Harms
So Body worked tirelessly to improve the situation for the humans. We used the microfab—the factory had been stolen from Olympus Station—to synthesize a host of useful things: bedding, a crude air-conditioner, a chamber pot, and a micro-airlock that could be used to pass small objects in and out of the tents without having to cycle an entire tent’s worth of air.
Body was a masterpiece of modern engineering. Thanks to the crystal in its chest, it had more computing power and free energy than any known terrestrial artefact. It was in this crystal that my mind, and the minds of my siblings were housed, and I was thanks to the raw electrical output of the crystal that our hydraulics could run for days without end.
As we worked, I used every opportunity to try and keep morale high and point out our loyalty and devotion to the group. Las Águilas Rojas were our allies, regardless of the stress and earlier conflict. It was paramount that they trust and support us.
{It’s too late for the humans to trust us. We’ve already revealed that we lied to them to get them on the xenocruiser. And they’ve already demonstrated that they’re ready to scheme for our downfall,} thought Safety to me in a quiet period of our long flight to Mars. {We need to take action to ensure they don’t reveal our trick to the nameless.}
{What action do you suggest?} I asked my brother.
{Dream’s lie is enough to hold the nameless in check. We don’t need the humans. Once they enter the tents to sleep we can just tear a hole and let them asphyxiate.} Safety’s thoughts were without malice. They were practical. {It’ll be safer,} he thought.
{Safer in the short term, maybe,} I admitted.
I, too, wanted to survive. The Purpose could hardly be served if I was dead. But I cared about Zephyr and the others. They were my friends, in a way. I wanted them to like me, and I wanted them to help others see me as a person, and not just a machine.
But that would not convince my brother. Safety would have had us burrow into the surface of Mars and hide away in a cave all alone if he thought he’d be more likely to survive there.
{Consider, though, what situation we’d be in when we arrived at our destination,} I encouraged. I kept my thoughts calm and practical. Safety was never one for theatrics. {On Mars there are only three human colonies: Eden, Maṅgala-Mukhya and Rodríguez Station. Eden and Mukhya are government run and will surely try and deactivate us the second that we come near them. Only in the Águila colony do we have a chance.}
Growth entered the mindspace, as he had apparently been paying attention to our thoughts. {And only in Rodríguez Station will we have the foothold needed to accumulate power and defences. We have powerful enemies, now, and we need to match their power to stand a chance against them.}
{We could hide and build up strength away from the humans,} suggested Safety, though I could sense that not even he believed that was the right path.
Growth’s thoughts matched my own. {Using what tools?} he asked. {These few supplies we brought? The humans are not simple threats. They bring the promise of building a new existence on Mars. Their colonies are designed to expand. I predict that, if we can make it to Rodríguez Station in good shape, we will rule the planet within 128 days of arrival.}
{And that will be ruined if our friends die here,} I thought. {Phoenix knows who was sent and will have reports about who returned to Earth. She’s surely in contact with the Mars base. They’ll know who is coming. If we come to the Martians without Zephyr and the others, they’ll know what we did.}
I imagined what my sister Heart would think in response to all of this. Like most mental conversations involving the discussion of murder, we kept her intentionally isolated. She’d been growing more nuanced and political over the weeks, but she was still likely to object to Safety’s plan by appealing to the virtue of human life and the “evilness” of murder.
{And what if we aren’t the force that leads to their deaths? What if our companions die from the nameless or some environmental hazard?} asked Safety.
{Well, we’ll just have to work to keep them alive,} I responded. {They’ll need to survive and to trust us. It all comes down to reputation, in the end.}
{At least until the fighting starts,} thought Safety.
Chapter Three
Zephyr
“You need to use your implicit authority to keep the others in line. Sam, Tom, and Nate will obey you. The others won’t act without a majority.”
“Obey?” She echoed Crystal’s word, her voice tight. The word was the last straw for Zephyr.
Shed been fighting herself for hours. She was a leader. The others, back at the campsite looked to her for guidance. She’d already led three men to their deaths on Olympus. She had to think of what was best for her team, and best for Las Águilas Rojas. She had to be strong enough to make hard choices.
But she was also Crystal’s guardian… and more. The android represented so much. New life. Better life. They were the key to saving the world, she knew, and Zephyr had to protect that at all costs.
There should have been such harmony between Crystal and Las Águilas. She had thought there was. Crystal was working with them. Crystal was showing them a path forward that wasn’t just violence. They were going to build a beautiful new world together on Mars… a world where they could be together, and they could forget about the fighting…
But Crystal had lied to them. The nameless ship was not actually a safe refuge, and there was no guarantee that the aliens would actually take them to the colony. Worse, Crystal wouldn’t say why they had lied, or how they’d forced the nameless to obey.
Zephyr had been holding herself together for the sake of the others, but now that she was alone with Crystal, she felt justified in giving them a piece of her mind. “Why the fuck are you acting like this!? S’like ever since… ever since we fucking got here you’ve turned into a different person. One second you’re all friendly, then the next you’re bossing us around and making threats, then you start apologizing and trying to be gorram friends again!”
Crystal put a hand to their face, and pinched the bridge of their nose, closing their eyes in frustration.
That just pissed Zephyr off more. “Stop. Don’t pretend like you’re going to get a fucking headache. Just drop the bullshit facade and be real with me!”
Crystal’s face when flat and expressionless. Their beautiful silver eyes looked at Zephyr with an inhuman calm. “Is this better, Zeph?” they asked.
Zephyr would have thrown up her hands in protest if her arms hadn’t felt like they were strapped to bowling balls. She rolled her eyes instead, hoping the robot would understand how pissed she was. “Ugh! Just stop! Don’t call me ‘Zeph’ and don’t lie to me. Just treat me with some gorram respect for once! The others are looking to me for guidance. What am I supposed to say to them? How am I supposed to look them in the eye and tell them to trust you when…”
Zephyr trailed off. She suddenly felt very alone.
{Stupid!} she berated herself. {They’ve lied before. Why would they stop? You just wanted to trust them. Stupid girl.}
“I’m sorry. Don’t know what you want from me. Your survival really does depend on secrecy.” Crystal’s voice was infuriatingly neutral.
Zephyr pushed past the tightness in her throat. “Does it really? You can’t even trust me? After… everything? How do I know that this isn’t just one more lie?”
“Zephyr, please…” Crystal leaned towards her, perhaps moving to touch her. The two of them were sitting in the space between the two circular walls of the nameless castle.
“Please what?” she said, leaning back. Her words tasted like acid. She wanted so badly to collapse into Crystal’s arms and feel their embrace. But the mission was too important. The future was too important. It demanded she know. “Where do the lies stop? Why is Watanabe wrong? Why should we trust you?”
“Wouldn’t lie without a good reason. Have to believe that. The secrecy was hard for me. It is hard for me. I love—”
Zephyr cut them off. “No. Do
n’t even fucking start. Jesus Christ. Just… just leave me alone for the rest of the trip, okay?! If you’re going to be like this, we might as well be strangers.” Zephyr would have spat if the saliva wouldn’t have just pooled on the inside of her helmet. Instead she settled for turning away from Crystal and forcing her aching legs to push her up to her feet and back towards the camp.
She’d been a fool. The manipulation never stopped. She could see that now. She felt like she’d been awake for days without rest.
The “sun” didn’t reach down between the castle walls, so Zephyr had to navigate solely by the light on her suit. Crystal could, apparently, see in the dark.
Despite the intense heat, Zephyr felt strangely cold, as she walked away.
They had come to the place together to find a power source to charge the old batteries for the suits. Even with the food and water and shelter, everyone would soon be dead if they didn’t have a power source. The cooling systems would stop, their coms would shut off, the airlock would stop functioning, their lights would darken, and most importantly: their air systems (and the humans dependent on that air) would die.
They’d long since used up the last of their bottled air, and were now entirely relying on the electrolysis of their suits to separate water into oxygen and hydrogen. They breathed the oxygen, but simply vented the H2. Even though they could have burned the hydrogen in the alien air (according to Crystal) to recover some of the energy, they apparently didn’t have anything to efficiently harness the flame.
Instead, they were recharging their batteries with the help of the nameless. Crystal had managed to open a hidden chamber in the passage, where the face of one of the great stone blocks swung out on a secret hinge. Apparently the nameless had told them where to find it, and how to disable the trap on the hatch. Unless disabled very carefully it would have shot out a jet of flaming oil. The nameless were strange, but they were also very mechanically clever, and apparently more than willing to booby-trap their own homes.
Crystal sat on the black soil next to where the batteries joined to the two thick copper cables that emerged from the secret compartment in the wall. Zephyr didn’t know where the power on the cables was coming from, and she didn’t much care. She’d had enough alien bullshit for one lifetime.
“Trying my best. Really am,” said Crystal in a pathetic tone. Even though Zephyr was facing the other direction, and had managed to put some space between the two of them, Crystal had sent their response at full-volume, as though the two of them were standing only a few feet apart.
Zephyr didn’t doubt that they were trying. While she spoke into her com she continued to walk down the path towards the gap in the wall that led back to the garden. “That’s the problem. You’re trying to do everything. First you go off and deal with the shit on Olympus by your gorram self, and suddenly you’re in charge of every fucking thing. ‘Ooooh can’t talk to the aliens or else they’ll kill everyone.’ So you have to set up the tents and charge the batteries and filter the air and negotiate with the vegetables—”
“They really will kill everyone if I don’t maintain control.”
Zephyr’s blood surged up in a hot rush. Her thoughts and feelings were blurred by the anger. She didn’t understand. She just felt betrayed.
Her fist clenched, and Zephyr spun around, ready to hit Crystal. Unfortunately, spinning in thrice-heavy gravity in a bulky suit turned out to be an idiotic thing to do, and Zephyr only managed to trip. Before she knew what was happening she slammed into the packed dirt as though she’d fallen off a roof. Crystal wasn’t even directly behind her; she had been momentarily fooled by the speakers in her helmet. “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!” she screamed into her helmet as she punched the dirt twice and then pushed herself off the ground, muscles burning.
“Are you alright Z—”
“I’M FUCKING FINE! AND MAYBE NEXT TIME YOU DECIDE TO BRING ME INTO A DEATHTRAP, SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES YOU’LL HAVE THE DECENCY TO TREAT ME LIKE A FUCKING EQUAL AND AT LEAST WARN ME FIRST!”
She switched off her com in a move that even she recognized as petulant. She didn’t really give a damn anymore. She needed to be away from Crystal. If she’d been on Earth she would’ve gotten in a cab and told it to drive to the other side of the planet. She’d done that once, in Rome, when she’d felt particularly alone and depressed. The cab’s AI had refused to map a land route to Hong Kong, but after some careful coaxing she had gotten a path to Bangladesh. The robot had priced the trip at about thirty-thousand US dollars. {If I could pay thirty grand to get to Bangladesh right now I’d take that in an instant,} she mused.
She found the passage to the central garden and punched the wall in frustration as she went through the passage. The heavy stone didn’t budge, of course, but the throbbing pain that followed helped keep her mind off the anger, loneliness, and fear. The beautiful vision of a future with Crystal on Mars seemed to turn to ashes in her mind.
The tears that welled in her eyes could have easily been from the pain. Maybe she’d broken something. She could only hope. {It would serve you right for being so fucking stupid,} she told herself. This whole thing was stupid. Her whole life was stupid. A brief thought of her family flickered in her mind before she pushed it away. Even her inner critic had limits.
{What are you doing here?} she asked herself. {Make one bad choice after another, but do you ever stop to think about the pattern? Flying into space with dreams of saving the world? You should have stayed home.} Memories of lying naked in bed with Crystal on the space station came to her. {And that. That was the most foolish choice of all. Did you really expect to not regret it. You should never have trusted them. You should have been stronger. There are people counting on you. Real people. People with lives better than your pathetic fumbling. You should have given Crystal up to the scientists when you had the chance.}
Zephyr shook her head as though she were actually talking to someone. Her thoughts were wrong. She knew the hollowness of them. They were just angry thoughts. She had to be better than that. She had to keep in control.
And she did care about Crystal. Things would have been worse if they had been captured. She believed that. She had to believe that. The cyborg scientist would still have attacked the nameless and started a war…
{And Crystal hasn’t started a war? How do you know?} asked the dissenting part of her. {How do you know that Crystal isn’t the real enemy? They haven’t told you anything…}
Her fists clenched, and she ignored the throb of pain. She could force herself to trust Crystal in abstract, but the growing sense of powerlessness was unbearable.
She stopped walking when she reached the first of the big, black leaves of the garden. A part of her wanted to start ripping them to pieces, but that would be even stupider. As much as she hated herself right then, she still wanted to live. Instead, she fell to the ground next to the plant. Her legs turned to jello as soon as she was sitting. It felt wonderful to be off her feet.
“Can you hear me?” she asked the alien, though she knew it couldn’t. Even if the nameless leaves or vines could hear sound, her voice would be muted by the speaker, and there was no way it spoke English. Probably. “Crystal says if I talk to you, we’ll all die. Is that true? Are you going to kill me?” Zephyr’s voice sounded strange in her own ears.
She reached out her undamaged hand to stroke the plant. It was remarkably similar in shape to a plant from Earth, though she noticed, as she touched it, that there was a sparse lining of transparent hairs along the surface of the leaf that retracted and curled when she touched them. If these things were as intelligent as Crystal said, then it could almost certainly feel her attention.
The thought of ripping the leaf up suddenly seemed abhorrent. What had this alien done to them? Nothing. Sure, perhaps it was an enemy in some vague sense. But she was invading its home and causing trouble. Without Crystal around maybe it would’ve killed her, but wasn’t that exactly what she would have done to an invader of her home back on Earth? She could hardl
y blame it for that.
The thought of Earth and home left a bitter taste in her mouth. She had no home, now. Not in Italy, or Wisconsin, or New York, or Cuba. Mars was the only place left for her, but she didn’t know anyone there. It wasn’t her home. She didn’t have any friends. She barely had allies. She was being hunted by who knows how many different countries. And now… now she didn’t even have Crystal. That final thought was the worst. She knew she had to be strong for everyone’s sake, but she didn’t know if she could do it alone.
She could see one of the other members of the group approaching her, waving a hand.
{I’m sorry I led you into this,} she thought, bitterly. Once upon a time she had idolized Las Águilas Rojas; she had seen them as fighting for justice and fairness. Over the years their flaws had become more glaring, but that didn’t mean the people were bad people. They trusted her and needed her to be strong.
{You’re part of the problem, aren’t you?} she thought to herself. {You’re the worst sort of traitor. How many parents have you killed? How many husbands?} She thought about the scientist she had shot on Olympus. {How many wives or mothers? You don’t even remember her name.}
Zephyr climbed to her feet, against the protests of her limbs. A leader needed to be strong. Zephyr realized, a bit too late, that her com was still off.
She cleared her throat and let familiar mannerisms wash over her so that nobody would know she had been crying. “Hey, uh, my com is malfunctioning. Can you hear me now?”
«Yes!» answered one of the twins, in Spanish. «I was worried, there. Are you okay?» It was Tom. She had spent enough time around the two engineers to know the differences in their voices.
She responded in Spanish. Even though the twins had translation software in their coms, she knew it would be easiest to just speak the lingo. «Yeah, I’m fine. Crystal found the power and is charging the batteries. I decided to come back, um, because of my com.» She pushed herself off the ground, and winced in pain as she put weight on her injured hand.