by Joshua Guess
I thought about it for a second. “Okay, then we’ll find somewhere to hide everyone safely, then Jax and I will draw the attention away from you.”
“That’s a bad idea,” Rinna said.
I nodded in agreement. “Totally agree with you. It seems pretty likely to get me killed, but I don’t think we have much choice. Jax ran the numbers. He found a fairly safe place not far from here, and he can make the Sand camouflage you once you’re in it. Then he’ll create and operate a bunch of empty armor shells to move with me to fool the Gaethe into thinking we’re all still together.”
The team batted the idea back and forth for minute, but no one could find any holes in the theory of it. Practically speaking it was a gamble, but the lesser of the available evils. No one—me included—had much faith in the idea I’d be able to fight off the reinforced Gaethe forces. On a personal level I had no plan to even try.
With no other options, Rinna grudgingly gave us the go-ahead. A few seconds later the side of the transport opened, creaking harshly as the damaged bits scraped together, and I met my first Gaethe not trying to kill me. Rinna introduced him as Shuul, but the tall alien didn’t get beyond a hurried greeting before Rinna cut him off an explained the situation.
I suspected the suits of the fallen Gaethe might be relaying data back to the main body of their forces, and Jax confirmed it. Luckily our suits kept our conversations private, and the story Rinna spun for Shuul didn’t include the part about tricking the Gaethe.
Jax wrapped the alien in a thin suit of Sand and locked in the parameters of the fire team’s armor templates. Then we all ran.
We left the road behind and struck north instead of going east as the original plan called for. This part of the country was deceptive, nature giving way to abandoned city without much warning. It was that way all over, I was told, but the concept of such chaotic development just didn’t sink in with me. Ceres was painstakingly designed, after all. Every corridor and hab unit carefully added to the larger grid according to variables within a logical set of needs practical considerations. The idea of cities, these dots of civilization growing haphazardly across the landscape like a culture in a dish, was almost as alien as the Gaethe.
Our armored feet clunked across crumbling highways as we moved arrow-straight toward the cluster of buildings making up the heart of the abandoned mid-sized metropolis. The fingers of stone and steel reaching for the sun weren’t broken, but neither were they anything like complete. The central production units which created Sand—and more of themselves as needed—used the readily available materials in cities and towns as raw material. The slow deconstruction in front of me was the result.
It was a city literally being eaten alive by technology.
We crunched through thick drifts of Sand as we approached our destination, a long-unused storage lockup. The building itself was only a few stories tall, but even that suffered from severe degradation. Not that it mattered since the place we wanted was below ground. We descended the gentle slope of the loading docks and moved through the huge square holes where rolling doors had once been.
Half the room was made up of an enormous steel vault, untouched by the Sand surrounding it. Out of curiosity I had Jax query the local production units about that. The answer: the vault was being kept as an emergency source of high-grade material. Apparently the Sand was programmed to plan ahead.
“Everyone inside,” I said. “Jax will cover this thing and make sure you can breathe, then I’ll head out.”
“You’ll have three hours,” Rinna said. “If you’re not back here by then, we leave without you. You’ll have to find your own way home.”
“Sure,” I agreed.
We both left unsaid that if I didn’t make it back, I was probably dead anyway.
Twenty
The same black shapes that went into the storage facility left it a few minutes later, but this time with only one creamy filling. Which was me.
“Gonna have trouble piloting all those?” I asked Jax.
“Not at all,” Jax replied, the little speaker on my uniform giving a tinny echo in the tiny space within my armor.
I jerked in surprise. “You talked to me. Out loud.”
“Yes,” Jax said. “It seems easier for you. Talking is something you do without conscious effort. I wanted to see if it made our communication more efficient.”
The sincerity in his electronic voice was unsettling. How much trouble did we have to be in where Jax could tell me something I did required no thought but not imply a lack of brainpower in me with his tone? I figured we were pretty well fucked, but I tried to sound positive.
“I like it,” I said. “But don’t bother if it’s going to make running all those suits hard on you.”
A soft chuckle filled the space around me. “I’m only guiding the process. Most of the work is being done by the software running the Sand. It is remarkably flexible and efficient, but I suppose it had to be given the processing limitations inherent in this planet’s technology.”
Yeah, there it was. Jax had something to feel superior about, so giving me a break made sense.
The plan, such as it was, centered on moving away from the place Rinna and the others were secreted and figuring out a way to take the heat off once the Gaethe showed back up.
It didn’t take them very long. Within a few minutes of setting out, the needle shapes of buzzing support ships could be seen in the distance. Jax counted nine, all of them heading my way.
I’d come up with an idea, though it was more by process of elimination than flash of insight. The facts were simple and unavoidable. I had to be seen, so as to trick the Gaethe into thinking I was my entire group. There was no chance I could outrun the Gaethe. The Sand was a remarkable tool with a versatility I had barely explored, but it wasn’t fast. Certainly not as fast as a space ship. Which left me with a set of conditions to fulfill.
I had to make them think we all died. That was the only way they’d leave the area and allow me the chance to rejoin the fire team.
It was risky, but my resources were huge. I had the Sand of an entire city to draw on, as well as two of the rail guns Rinna had pulled from the storage compartment of the transport. Apparently the one I’d brought to Earth with me had been studied, improved, and the schematics distributed all over the world. The terrain was also my ally, since the Gaethe troop ships wouldn’t be able to get close thanks to the buildings I’d be using for cover. Even the support ships would have to move carefully, slowly.
The hard part would be making it look like I was trying to get away while also failing to do so. Without, you know, actually being killed.
As if to punctuate this concern, a section of building to my right and twenty meters up was bathed in a Gaethe energy blast. Concrete vaporized, pieces of broken masonry and molten steel splattering all over the place.
I picked up the pace, and my legion of empty suits followed.
***
“Mars? Are you okay?”
Rinna’s voice was a welcome change from the half hour of silence since the last time Jax had spoken to me. I was holed up in the tallest building I could find. The suits piloted by Jax had arranged themselves to appear as threatening as possible at various entrances and weak points. I’d given him the rail guns, figuring he’d make better use of them than I would.
As for me, I was taking a rest in the parking garage, all alone. I had one elbow propped on a car with the word ‘Corvette’ written along its back end. It looked cool in a retro kind of way.
“Hey,” I said back. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good,” Rinna said, relief clear in her voice. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through to you.”
I laughed. “Jax didn’t tell you he can transmit data through the Sand? There’s a little lag, but you could have talked to me any time.”
I could almost hear Rinna frown. “I should have realized it myself.”
“Yes, you should have,” I said. “It’s not like you’ve h
ad much on your mind today.”
It was her turn to laugh. “What’s your situation?”
I looked around the ruined garage. “I’ve spent the last hour carefully drawing the Gaethe away from all of you. There are a bunch of them. Right now I’m hoping it looks like we’re making a last stand. Jax is giving them a good show. He has the Sand weakening the structure of the building and is doing what he can to make it look like one of the Gaethe shots is what will drop the place on top of us.”
There was silence from the other end of the line.
“Rinna? You still there?”
“I’m here, Mars. I’m just trying to figure out if you’re joking.”
I smiled. “Nope. Completely serious.”
I could definitely hear the frown this time. “Your plan is to deliberately collapse a building on yourself? Am I hearing you correctly?”
“When you say it like that it sounds crazy,” I admitted. “But it’s really not. Jax has an exit strategy. It’ll be fine.”
Rinna sighed. “Try not to die, okay? I’d rather not have to explain it to my superiors.”
I was about to agree when a massive impact shook the building. “I promise nothing!” I said. “Gotta go, things are exploding.”
Jax cut the feed and I was sure my parting joke would cost me if I survived today. “What the fuck was that?” I shouted.
“One of the support vessels crashed into the building,” Jax said, guilt creeping into his tone. “I aimed too well, apparently.”
Dust was raining down from the seams in the ceiling. “How much time do I have, here?”
“I am withdrawing the suits as we speak,” Jax said. “You should move toward the exit now. I will have to accelerate the destruction of the building.”
The armor fell apart around me. There was no light to see by, but the false color sensor feed Jax mainlined into my brain worked just fine. I jogged to the heavy steel door at the very back of the parking garage and waited as the Sand flowing around me got between its cracks and opened it with a tortured squeal of rending metal.
I didn’t quite run down the access tunnel, but I wasted no time, either. The floor sloped gently at first, then much more steeply after I hit a switchback landing. It ended at a rusty door which Jax assured me led to the old city utility channels. I wasn’t worried about sprinting through a sewer after decades of disuse, just the possibility the reinforced foundation above wouldn’t hold together when the building came down.
I was a hundred meters down the sewer when Jax flashed a warning at me. The relatively thin coat of Sand ending at my neck jumped up suddenly and slapped itself across my ears. I felt a sharp, stinging pain accompanied by a trickle of blood, but before I could form the many curse words and threats I wanted to aim at Jax, the loudest sound I’ve ever heard stunned me. Everything shook. The floor rumbled beneath me, the walls rattled as the pipes and conduits fastened to them slammed against their brackets.
Sound penetrated my chest with actual, physical force. My ribs and heart had a moment of resonance.
Even with my ear protection, I still felt like I was being stabbed in the brain by an especially pissed-off demon. Then the blast wave hit as the collapsing structure forced air in the only direction it could go. The open doors I’d left behind were probably a blessing since the power of the collapse would have turned them into projectiles.
Sand wrapped around me as I was blown off my feet and shot through countless meters of tunnel like a bullet. Jax did what he could to cushion me as I bounced chaotically from floor to wall to ceiling, but there was only so much prediction possible. I had a vague awareness of tendrils of Sand extending from my body, acting as springs as much as appendages, but my loyal NIC couldn’t stop physics from taking its pound of flesh.
My head slammed against a pipe, sending bright flashes before my eyes and a deep ringing in my ears. Hot patches erupted along my skin as the rough concrete shredded my uniform and skin with equal ease. The friction was both blessing and curse, hurting me even as it robbed me of momentum.
The force of the blast dissipated, allowing me to come to rest. The floor was cool beneath my aching face, and the world spun around me in new and exciting ways. My body felt as though it had been put in a centrifuge full of hammers, and I decided to just sort of lay there for a while.
My vision lit up as Jax tried to get my attention, but I ignored him. Not out of spite, just a profound desire not to do anything for a minute or two. I had been in a battle, been chased by spaceships, and had a few dozen stories of building dropped on me. It wasn’t the easiest day.
When my head finally cleared enough to allow it, I began taking stock of myself. I carefully flexed my muscles and tested my joints and found none of the deep, sharp pains signifying broken bones. I did discover Jax’s speaker was broken, and hurriedly sent him an acknowledgment. Even being integrated into my brain didn’t give Jax a perfect real-time model of my mind, and his increasingly frantic bids for my attention made it clear he was worried I was going into shock.
“I’m fine,” I slurred through swollen lips. “Jus’ a li’l beat up is all.”
Good, Jax sent. However, your brain chemistry is still dangerously out of balance. We need to get somewhere safe.
I chuckled. “Right. Lead the way.”
To make it easy, Jax threw large, glowing arrows along the fastest path back to Rinna and the others. The omnipresent Sand gave him a perfect map of the city, above and below. Being able to walk—albeit unsteadily—without the danger of being shot by a gunship made the trip much easier. My short rest on the floor of the utility tunnel was nowhere near enough, though, and within a few minutes the exhaustion took its toll on me. My body can take a lot, but I’m not superhuman.
My batteries were getting close to zero charge. The Sand Jax moved down the tunnel was similarly drained, as the heavy concrete blocked the broad microwave transmissions that would normally recharge it.
The last kilometer was the longest walk of my life. I went from tired and hurting to numb disconnection from my body. My mind, capable of judging approach vectors for orbital insertions by sheer instinct, narrowed down to a pair of simple goals.
Follow the arrows. Take a step. Repeat.
Eventually we made it, coming out of the underground through the side of a small hill. New Sand leaped up as I squinted against the sun. Jax reported no Gaethe activity nearby, so I allowed him to wrap me in a new set of armor. It was just large enough to move my body and get me through the last stretch. I don’t think I’d have made it if using my own two feet had been a requirement.
I curled into a ball in my armored black cocoon and let Jax get me back to Rinna and the team. I felt unconsciousness—I don’t think you could call it proper sleep—sneak up on me, but I was too slow to dodge as it clubbed me in the back of the head.
Twenty-One
I woke up ten hours later covered in bandages and being guarded by an unusually ferocious Sgt. Williams. The big man explained that Jax had taken me into the vault after I passed out and unceremoniously vomited my body out of its Sand cocoon and onto the floor. The rest of the team, led by Rinna, took Shuul quietly to a nearby maglev hub and on to Bravo 2.
Williams was tasked with carrying me to the closest settlement for immediate medical care. Apparently my many cuts and scrapes, including a nasty gash in my scalp, added up to a decent amount of blood loss. Between my injuries and the fact that Williams having to carry me would slow the team down since they’d be avoiding the use of armor, it was decided to split the party.
I knew I wasn’t in Bravo 2 or any other underground base from the second I opened my eyes. The air had a tangy bouquet I had never smelled before. Life in space means recycled and filtered atmosphere, and Bravo 2 was much the same.
It was the smell of cooking food mixed with a hundred other things. Fresh soil and perfumes, antiseptic and the unmistakable odor of the honest sweat of densely populated people. None of these smells stood out to the point of offense, bu
t instead blended together into a complex array the deeper parts of my brain correctly labeled as society.
I spent a few minutes waking up and getting my head on straight while Williams stood at the door to the room we were in, glaring at what I can only assume were imaginary threats. It was possible he was angry with me for getting him pulled away from his team, and I could accept that. One advantage of spending your entire life apart from the larger population is a thick skin when it comes to how people choose to perceive you.
Eventually the doctor came in, a lovely older woman with short gray hair who pronounced me fit to travel. Those weren’t her exact words, of course. What she actually said contained a bit more flavor, but it boiled down to the same thing even if there were some salty comments about my intelligence should choose to exercise my ability to travel in my condition.
Williams and I left the small room with its rough wooden walls behind. Going out that door and into the small town containing it was functionally identical to stepping through a dimensional rift into an entirely new universe.
Everything we experience in life imprints on our minds. It’s not just what we learn, but how we learn it. You can show a child pictures of cities and the people in them and tell the kid it’s human civilization, but they can’t grasp the reality until they’re in it. Surrounded by it. The problem I faced was that what was in front of me was so outside my experience I was instantly utterly overwhelmed. My brain told me society existed in closed spaces like Ceres or Bravo 2. That even the throngs of people I’d seen in Bravo were orderly, the shops and storefronts laid out in logical ways.
Williams kept walking for a few steps before realizing I’d stopped cold. The brief flash of irritation on his face melted into an understanding grin when he got a good look at me.
“Welcome to Shelby,” he said, gesturing widely with one arm.
In fairness, the place wasn’t as recklessly chaotic as my first impression felt. We stood beneath a night sky rendered matte black by an eye-watering collection of lights. Shelby itself was as horizontal as Bravo 2 was vertical, so I couldn’t look up and down to take in the shape of it. Buildings sprawled haphazardly over hills, some piled up on top of others. Walkways composed of whatever dark gray material made up the narrow streets arched above, connecting multiple levels together. It created the impression God had dropped piles of building blocks and people decided to connect them together as they lay.