by Joseph Rhea
He glanced back in the direction of the tunnel opening and wondered when Alek and Maya would be returning. Although his newly made team was fighting admirably, the situation could change in a moment. Two more fighters would be welcomed.
A movement near the tunnel opening caught his attention. He checked his scanner but it showed nothing in the area. Could one of the machine creatures have evolved the ability to mask their energy signatures? If so, he would have to destroy it before it passed its coding onto later generations.
The thought of later generations brought back an image of Elsala, his former mate. He had managed to block all memories of her since the explosion that had taken her from him.
These invaders were responsible, he reminded himself as he turned away from the battle and headed toward the tunnel mouth at full speed. When he reached the area, he blasted open the small opening and dropped his Tracer into the hole. A few minutes later, saw a translucent object pass into the Watchport beam ahead and disappear.
Thoughts of a new form of invisible creature attacking Alek inside the simulation filled his head. He slowed to a stop in front of the beam and wondered if he was making the correct decision. He was a Sentinel, after all. He was reformatted specifically to exist inside HomeSpace, and he expected to live and die there without ever seeing Earth again.
However, this was a special situation, he reminded himself. The fate of Cyberdrome might just rest on the fate of Alek Grey. He had to act so that he could protect and serve the system. With that thought clear in his mind, he moved his Tracer into the beam opening and disappeared.
When the blue light faded, he was plunged into darkness and his Tracer began to buckle and twist. He realized after a moment that he was in free fall. The Watchport beam had released him somewhere high above the planet surface. He was in serious trouble.
He saw lights in the distance, and used them to estimate his altitude. Less than thirty seconds to impact. He closed his eyes and let his mind take charge of the Tracer’s main drive system. Timing would be critical, he knew, and he would get only one chance to get it right.
Twelve point five seconds to impact, he calculated. Not just yet. Need to get the ship’s bow facing in just the right direction. At six point three seconds to impact, the tumbling ship briefly faced straight up. He allowed it to roll twenty more degrees then hit full thrusters and braced for impact.
He saw the math in his head. In those last few seconds, his ship decreased its velocity by half, decreasing its built-up kinetic energy also by half. The sideways thrust transferred a quarter of the remaining energy horizontally.
He still hit the sand hard, shaving off the top of a dune, and cracking open his Tracer’s cabin. The impact ejected him from his seat and he rolled as he hit the desert floor. When he sat up and brushed the sand off, the darkness surprised him. Then he remembered the rotational cycles of Earth, and realized that he had simply entered into the night side of the planet.
The air was warm and humid and strange smells filled his nose. He breathed in deeply and then coughed. Nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, he remembered, with oxygen being the lesser element. HomeSpace had something like air, but it was pure and carried no smells at all.
He took a step forward. The gravity was similar to that of HomeSpace, but it too felt wrong. He could feel subtle abnormalities in the gravitational field, most likely caused by the spinning, molten-hot core of the planet. He wondered how Tans could stand living there.
I lived here once, he said to himself. Not this planet, of course, but one very similar to it.
A warm gust of wind blew microscopic stones into his face and eyes. Sand, he reminded himself. He increased the size of his irises and saw a star-lit desert stretching in all directions. He looked at the sand all around him but saw no trace of Alek or Maya’s footprints. The blowing sand had covered them.
He changed his vision to detect infrared wavelengths and saw a heat source far in the distance. He focused on the location and saw movement within the heat. A village perhaps. Alek would have gone there, he decided. Then he remembered the translucent being, and realized that the heat source might have attracted it as well.
He began to run at full speed, but then calculated the distance to the village and adjusted his pace accordingly. He needed to be in top form when he reached the location. There was no way to predict the events unfolding there, so he had to prepare himself for anything.
The heat source in the distance grew brighter. Flames, he realized. Something large was burning. “Where Alek goes, chaos seems to follow,” he said with a sigh as he doubled his pace.
A short time later, he came upon a large fortified wall that was damaged in several places. Javid slowed to a walk less than a hundred meters from a large break in the outer wall.
He walked silently up to the opening and observed six individuals fighting just inside. Two of them were attackers, as evident by the fact that they were attempting to enter the fortified village. The other four were defenders, as evident by the fact that they were trying to keep the attackers out.
He decided to help the defenders, since by the logic of Game Theory—defenders were always at a disadvantage. A defender must guard against all possibilities of attack, and in doing so, defends none of them very well. Conversely, an attacker has to choose only one line of assault, and therefore, can do it extremely well.
He stepped up behind the attackers and wrapped his arms around both of their necks. They were large individuals and struggled against his tight grip, but within moments, they both passed out from lack of oxygen to their lungs.
As he released his grip and let them fall to the ground, he saw the faces of the four defenders. They looked terrified.
“They are merely unconscious,” he told them. “I suggest that you bind their legs and arms quickly.”
The four stood there, unmoving—their mouths stretched open as if in a silent scream.
“Evidently you have never seen a Sentinel before,” he said. The four turned and fled the area, tripping over each other as they ran.
“You should not leave this opening undefended,” he called after them, which only succeeded in making them run even faster.
Tans are such frail creatures, he thought as he surveyed the area. Since most of the fighting seemed to be occurring near the walls, he headed toward the center of the village where it was quieter.
Near the center, he found a large air vehicle. It had short bird-like wings with jet engines mounted horizontally on either side. Vents fore and aft could be opened to deflect the super-heated air downwards, allowing for vertical takeoff, and landing. He recorded the position, then rounded a corner and saw a large building on fire and surrounded by a dozen attackers. He looked around the village but could see no other buildings under attack in this manner. What was so special about this particular building? He decided to stay and find out.
FOURTEEN
Alek turned and grabbed hold of Herschel’s shoulders. “Is there any other way out of this room?”
Herschel seemed to shrink in Alek’s hands. “This is a safe room—one way in and one way out. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t get us anywhere,” Alek yelled as he pushed Herschel backward and turned around to face Maya. “Any ideas?”
Maya looked first at Herschel and then at Alek. “This is not his fault,” she said, “Don’t blame him for this.”
“Then whose fault is it?” he yelled. “It wasn’t my idea to enter this simulation.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, so now it’s my fault?”
He shook his head and took a deep breath, but then coughed from the building smoke. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I just don’t want to burn to death in here.” He looked at the door and then back at Maya. “Damn, I just thought of something.”
“What?” Maya asked.
“Do you remember my childhood fear? What I was afraid of dying from?”
Maya nodded. “You said were afraid of dying by one of the classical Greek
elements: earth, air, fire, or water.”
“Well, I just realized that if you replace air with metal, which is a Chinese version of the elements, I have already faced death by earth and metal. Earth being whatever Leconte did to me back in the real world and metal being the machine bugs I fought when I first entered Cyberdrome.”
Maya coughed hard. “Well, I hope your winning streak continues, because I don’t want to burn to death in here either.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he moved closer to her. “Sometimes I ramble when I’m—” He froze when he saw a green woman with copper-colored hair standing against the far wall. Actually, she seemed to be standing inside the wall.
“It’s her,” Maya gasped.
Alek took a step backward. “Do you know this—person?”
“It’s a long story,” Maya said, bending down on one knee. “Don’t be afraid,” she said to the woman.
“She’s an angel,” Herschel said, moving to stand beside Alek.
The green woman stepped into the room and became solid. Alek and the others took a step backward in unison. “What do you want?” Alek asked. He had enough to deal with, without some sort of digital ghost haunting him.
The woman turned her head and spoke to the empty space beside her, “I know my purpose,” she said in a voice that sounded to Alek like flutes playing. Then she closed her eyes and covered her ears. “Not all at once,” she cried. “You must not all speak at once.”
“We are not saying anything,” Maya said.
The woman looked back up and pointed a delicate finger at Alek. “You carry the Gift,” she said. “I am here to protect the Gift.” She swept her hands around the room, and then added, “It will save us all.”
“That’s the same thing she told me,” Maya said, and then coughed. “I met her back in the Survey Vessel after I escaped from those carbon-eating nanobots. She told me that I carried some sort of gift, but then changed her mind.” The room was now beginning to fill with smoke.
“Can she get us out of here?” Alek asked, and then realized that he was asking the wrong person. He took a step toward the strange woman. “You said that you want to protect the gift. Can you show us a way out of here?”
The woman pointed toward the door. Smoke was now billowing in from all sides.
“No,” Alek said, coughing. “We can’t go that way. We would burn to death.” She didn’t seem to understand him, so he added. “We will die. The gift will be destroyed.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes, it will,” Alek said, taking another step closer to the woman. Even through the building smoke, he could see that she was beautiful. She was completely naked and her skin was translucent with embedded patterns similar to Javid’s. She couldn’t be real, he thought. Maybe she really was an angel.
She reached up with both hands and grabbed his head, then kissed him. Startled, he tried to pull away, but her grip on his head was unusually strong.
“Hey,” he heard Maya yell.
Suddenly, the woman was gone. Alek spun around but she was nowhere in the room.
“What the hell was that all about?” Maya asked, and then began coughing uncontrollably.
Alek grabbed her and pulled her down to the floor. “Everyone keep low. The smoke isn’t as thick down here.”
“What are we going to do?” Maya asked when she stopped coughing.
Then it came to him. “She showed me the way out,” he said.
Maya lifted her blouse up to cover her mouth. “What?”
“I can’t really explain it, but during that kiss, she showed me how we can get out of here.”
Herschel coughed loudly and leaned closer to Alek. “I had this room built especially for me. There’s no way out, except through the door.”
“And that’s the way we are leaving,” Alek said. “Right through that door.”
“You’re not thinking straight, Alek,” Maya said. “We’ll be burned alive. We’ll all die.”
“We will be burned, but we won’t die,” he said. “All we have to do is make it back to the Watchport opening. The beam will restore us. Don’t you remember how it repaired that cut on your face?”
“The opening’s up in the sky—can’t reach it without some sort of aircraft—something like one of our Dragons.”
“The green woman showed me where one’s located—it’s here inside this fort. We can fly it up to the opening and get out of here.”
“Even if you’re right,” Maya said, “even if we could run through a burning building and make it outside, we would have third-degree burns all over our bodies. Our clothing would be on fire, our hair would be on fire, our skin would be boiling off of us.” She coughed twice, and then continued. “The pain would be unbearable. There’s no way we could fly a Dragon in that condition.”
“We’ll make it,” Alek said. The smoke was so thick he could hardly see her anymore. “You have to trust me.”
Maya’s head dropped and he realized that she was on the verge of passing out from smoke inhalation. He looked at Herschel who didn’t look much better. There was no time left to explain any more of what the green woman had shown him in that brief moment. They wouldn’t believe him anyway.
He crawled across the floor and dug around through Herschel’s provisions until he found three cloth shirts. He then crawled back, wrapped one of the shirts around Maya’s face and head, and tied it snuggly around her neck. It wouldn’t last long in the fire, but it would keep her face and eyes from burning too badly. Herschel was nearly unconscious as well, so it wasn’t difficult to cover his head as well.
Before he pulled the final shirt over his own head, he closed his eyes to make sure the image was still there. It was—a perfect 3-dimensional view of the inside of the building. He had tried to memorize it as they were running from the Medari, but now it was clearer than he could imagine—a gift from the green woman.
Keeping his eyes closed, he pulled the shirt over his head and tied it around his neck. He then stood and unlocked the metal door. He flinched when he felt the metal burning his hands, but fought the fear building in him. The pain outside the door would be much worse, he reminded himself, but it wasn’t real. He began chanting, “This isn’t real. I’m not here. This isn’t real. I’m not here.”
He swung the door open and felt a blast of heat against his body. He realized that his clothing was already on fire. He heard Maya scream behind him, reached back, and grabbed her arm as well as Herschel’s. They both fought back but he held on tight. We will all make it out, he said to himself as he pulled them both close and bolted through the door.
The pain was far worse than he had imagined. His eyes were shut but he could almost see his own flesh searing like a slab of steak on a barbeque grill. He wanted to scream but knew that breathing would suck scalding hot smoke into his lungs and kill him instantly.
He could feel Maya and Herschel struggling in his hands, trying to break free from his grip, which only made him hold on more tightly and push forward. Luckily, the image in his head held firm and within a few agonizing seconds, they were outside.
He released his grip on the others and dropped to the ground. He quickly rolled back and forth in the dirt, hoping to put out whatever fire was still burning his body. Then he clawed at the cloth shirt covering his head and sucked in a lung-full of air. He looked down at his arms and saw that the sleeves of his tunic were gone and his skin was blistered and red.
He looked around for Maya, and found her curled up in a fetal position. Her arms looked worse than his did, and her hair was singed and smoking—the shirt covering her head had burned completely away. He crawled over to her but then realized that he couldn’t touch her because her skin was peeling and falling off in patches. Touching her would only increase the pain.
Someone ran past him and he looked up and saw chaos all around him. There were dead bodies all over the place. He saw men with long rifles shooting at the shadows, but heard no gunshots. The view felt like a silent night
mare, until he realized that he was deaf. He carefully put a hand to his ears but felt only charred stumps. Why didn’t they hurt?
Then he realized that all of the pain was beginning to leave his body. Endorphins, his mind told him. His body was releasing natural painkillers, which meant that he was going into shock. He was going to die here. More importantly, Maya was going to die as well, and there was nothing he could do to help her.
He fought the urge to just relax and let death take him. He had to get to the Dragon in order to reach the Watchport beam. It would reformat them completely, but there was no way to reach it in time.
He looked over and saw Herschel staring back at him. His face was black from the smoke but his eyes were as large and white as saucers. He reached out a charred finger toward Alek and pointed over his head.
Alek tried to turn around but his body refused to move. In a building haze, he saw a man run past him and pick up Maya. Must stop him, his mind said. She needs help. The man then returned and picked up Herschel and carried him off. He was strong, whoever this person was. Where was he taking them?
Then he felt himself being lifted off the ground. He tried to resist but his body felt like dead weight. He was placed inside a small room next to Maya and Herschel. A moment later, he saw the buildings outside the open door begin to move.
This is a Rover, he thought. How did they get back inside the Rover and who was driving? Was he dreaming all of this?
When they crashed through the front gate and headed out into the desert night, he realized that he wasn’t dreaming. A while later, the Rover lurched to a halt and a man leaned down and brushed Maya’s hair out of her disfigured face.
“Leave her alone,” Alek called out, not sure if he was actually speaking. The man moved closer and touched Alek’s chest. Alek looked up and saw a familiar face—it was Roy Cloudhopper.