Shades

by Eric Dallaire

  As we approached another T-shaped junction, I maneuvered to pass Spenner and force him into the chute’s eastern pathway. A moment before we reached the split, he pulled ahead with a burst of speed and cut a hard left. With my vessel's nose aiming the other way, I swung my hands fast to follow. The craft made the turn, but it slammed into the chute upside down. The impact sent my pod into a tumble. Spenner laughed through my speaker, and accelerated toward a terminus station on the horizon.

  My view twirled round-and-round until a jarring bounce knocked the pod back onto the magnetic rail. Back on course and resuming pursuit, I took a moment to evaluate any damage. A quick diagnostic showed that all systems still functioned, but a miniscule chip on the canopy's glass worsened into a growing hairline crack. At its rate of expansion, I had three, maybe four minutes before the integrity of the shield broke apart. Checking the moon roadway map on the glass display, I weighed the good news and bad.

  The good? No other chutes connected to the station ahead, Terminus Bastion. Spenner chose a dead end. The bad? My pod's guidance system estimated my arrival at five minutes. That last minute would be excruciating. Either the canopy would hold, or a suffocating death awaited in cold space. A calm came over me, and somehow that worry ceased to bother me.

  “Dead end for you,” I taunted, channeling my fear back toward him. “I'm coming.”

  “I wouldn't have it any other way,” he hissed back.

  The crack split into two lines with a disheartening clink. I held the vehicle steady, passing a straight expanse of charcoal-colored plains along the Mare Frigoris. Hundreds of shades, all connected to silvery tethers, moved along the moon's surface for their chute-paving duties. Another minute ticked by and the crack split off a third line. The other two lines forked upward, moving faster toward the top of the transparent canopy.

  “I plotted the time remaining on the glass. Would you like to know?” Sasha asked.

  “No. Yes. Wait, no, I really don't.”

  The cracked glass measured my remaining time like a lit oil-wick burning toward its inevitable end. A few miles ahead, Spenner slowed his craft to dock at the terminal. Given the damage to my craft, I knew I had to keep my speed up until the last moment, and risk a red-hot entry. The station's circular airlock seal split open to accept Spenner's pod, and then closed behind him.

  “Structural integrity compromised. Breach imminent. Assume emergency positions,” warned the onboard computer's mechanical voice.

  “Strange. What position would increase any survival probabilities for that event?” Sasha inquired in her curious and comical tone.

  “I think it's telling me to bend over and kiss my ass goodbye,” I joked back. Sasha laughed, a sound I cherished, until the glass clinked again. The fracture now stretched all across the canopy. Twenty more seconds of holding my breath passed. When the station's outer door opened, I exhaled. We streaked inside, and I pushed the guidance control pads hard to slow down. Inside the airlock, the partial atmosphere allowed me to hear the screeching sound of our magnetic brakes igniting to control our entry. Before we struck the next gate, the secondary airlock parted to reveal the gleaming white interior of Terminus Bastion. We whizzed by a worrisome sign that proclaimed the station to be property of Goliath Corporation.

  My pod started to rattle and shake, bouncing along the transparent chute as the backup speed dampeners activated. Hurricane-strength cushions of air rushed into the tube to slow the craft down further. Overwhelmed by my pod’s inertia, the landing system shorted out with cascading explosions. Smashing through the landing bay supports, my vehicle skidded across the hangar's steel floor. Sparks flew under the pod as it screeched across a raised access ramp, launching it twirling in the air. Upside down, I held onto the side handles as the pod crashed into a series of control terminals, destroying the local v-cast generator array.

  After my pod came to rest, I spotted Spenner running and taking cover behind the base of the bulky catapult-like sling-machine. I pulled my grav-gun, and fired two miracle longshots through the cracked glass. While I missed him by a wide margin, the canopy shattered, opening a quick exit. Then I jumped through the hole where the glass once shielded me. While reloading my gun, I ran past twenty-five shade workers carrying boxes, and dove behind the solid cover of a slingbox shipping container.

  Fifty-foot-tall mountains of stacked containers, all filled with lunar ore, ringed the spacious warehouse. Since I saw no guards, I guessed the station operated unmanned, except for an occasional supervisor visit.

  At the other side of the station, Spenner took cover behind the massive suborbital-sling. Its cocked and readied arm held a half-empty titanium container. As part of their work, the shades gathered minerals and filled the slingbox. Once the box became full, a foreman would materialize using the v-cast generator, set the appropriate coordinates, and launch the cargo with the catapult.

  On the western end of the warehouse, another airlock opened, allowing a crowd of ore-bearing shades to shamble inside. Over one hundred workers walked toward the open slingbox to deliver their burdens. As the procession passed by me, I noticed that these shades appeared larger than average. Similar to Jebediah in Dr. Okono's lab, these unfortunate souls appeared altered by the serum-hack. All of their muscles bulged, and the veins along their bodies glowed with a yellowish-green bioluminescence. Then Spenner emerged from the cover of a rack of spare transport pods along the eastern side of the warehouse.

  “We would have been a great team,” he yelled across the space between us. “You're an asshole, but few partners kept up with me like you did. According to my intel, you would owe two and half years of service if you died right now. It's a good thing I'll be here to reap you, don't you think, Jonah?”

  I answered with a gunshot that whisked by Spenner's left temple, almost matching the scar on his right temple. “I plan to outlive my debts,” I growled back. “When this is over, there won't be enough of you to make a proper shade.”

  He sprinted across the open floor to hide behind a rusted lunar rover. The vehicle hovered four inches above the ground, suspended by a floating electro-magnetic service rack. The narrow gap from the floor to the undercarriage revealed Spenner's legs. I took the tough shot, unloading a whole clip of bullets. He dodged the volley, so I ducked back down to reload.

  Sensing his opportunity, Spenner rushed toward my position. When I peeked over the lip of my cover, he had halved the distance between us. I steadied my gun at him a second before he fired his glowing rifle. Then the whole warehouse exploded with a piercing noise, one that I recognized from the mission in the Louisiana swamp. It was almost a mercy that his squealer rifle's attack burst my eardrums, replacing that awful screeching with a ringing sound. It took all of my strength to stay upright and hold onto my gun.

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  Knowing that he would follow up with another attack, I stood up and returned fire. With my equilibrium affected, my bullets missed and bounced off a metal canister. Protected behind cover, Spenner spoke some words and pointed in my direction. With the squealer's damage still deafening me, I could not make out what he said. Then I felt the familiar feeling of the ShadeOS interface activating within my mind. A small inner sight display interface appeared over my eyes.

  << Tau Kappa Network activated. Authorization: Spenner.>>

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  How could Spenner have accessed the TauK Network? He must have deciphered Dr. Okono's research, or beat it out of him, but right now the how did not matter. I dared not take my hands from my gun to wipe the blood away. One of the three bullets I fired found its mark, and Spenner's left kneecap exploded with a shower of red.

  As he fell, all of the shades in the warehouse, over two hundred workers, dropped their rock loads. They turned to me, their faces contorted with pure rage. The collective burning green glow from their veins lit th
e whole warehouse with an eerie light. Spenner's trap sprung all around me. He had lured me to a location filled with augmented feral shades, under his command, through his own secret access to the TauK Network.

  Without my sense of hearing, it looked like the shades ran toward me in slow motion, but in fact they sprinted faster than the swiftest human. With only seconds before the first dozen shades tore me apart, I considered my options. My gun pinpointed the vital spot of the first shade in the advancing crowd. It would take one, maybe two bullets to drop it to the ground. However, the one hundred and ninety nine remaining shades presented a problem much greater than my skill with the grav-gun could overcome. A quick glance to the nearest operational travel pod, forty feet away, told me that the shades would intercept me before reaching half the distance. Helplessness gripped me and froze me in place. In desperation, my mind's inner sight looked to the TauK interface element hovering in my peripheral vision. The display filled with the sinusoidal waves of multiple dialogues, the hate-filled chatter from the shades intent on fulfilling their master's order. Instead of attacking or running, I focused all of my will. Angry utterances and guttural phrases filled the channel with their broken language. In that moment of trying to understand them, I heard Spenner's sinister transmission.

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  The loud message echoed over the cries of the shades. Spenner took advantage of their suffering, and used their raw emotions against me with effective results. They understood that my death would be their salvation. That thought terrified me, and presented my only chance for survival. With my hands clenched, and my eyes rolled back into my head, I communed with the TauK Network. I opened my mind fully. No defenses, no mental barriers filtered the noise, chatter, emotion, and the pain of the shades. Even though my ears roared from the sonic damage of the squealer, in my mind I heard a vibrant musical chorus of melancholy and suffering from the shades. A tidal wave of desperation washed over me. All of them possessed a single-minded thought, that my death would deliver them from the personal Gehenna burning their souls.

  “Spenner did this to you,” I said inside my head. All of my willpower and intention focused on sending this message. I said it again in my mind, watching my retinal interface for any recognition that my communication worked.

  With my eyes closed, my nose told me first that the shades reached me. Their musty stench filled my nostrils as five attackers leapt onto me. The first punched my face, while another clawed my left shoulder, leaving a deep bloody gash. My eyes opened, catching a glimpse of Spenner laughing while the shades knocked me to the floor and pummeled me with their long-nailed fists. The internal ShadeOS readout appeared to warn me about the plummeting energy levels. The serum worked overtime to heal the extensive damage, draining more precious energy reserves.

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  Dozens more of the shades caught up to me and started to pull my limbs in different directions. Given my penchant for hot dogs and soda, I always imagined my end as the mother-of-all-heart-attacks some time in my mid-60s, not drawn and quartered by a pack of feral shades on the worst lunar vacation imaginable. As the sinews in my legs stretched and popped, I gathered the resolve to keep living.

  A shade tried to bite my right foot; instead it took a kick to its face. I twisted my body to escape the grasp of the three shades pinning me to the ground and jumped to my feet. Once more, I made an appeal into the TauK Network, this time pouring all of my desperate emotion into the message.

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  I prepared myself for death, bracing for the moment that the shades flung my limbs to the four corners of the warehouse. I opened one eye first to peek at the scene and saw that the shades stopped their attack. Realizing I made a connection, I made a more compelling statement, a bold promise of salvation. I projected thoughts of rest, comfort, and an end of suffering. For the first time, I saw my thoughts manifest as new sine waves on the TauK Network.

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  That last message stirred the most dramatic effect among the shades. All of them stopped, looked at me, and then turned to run toward Spenner. My ears started to recover, since I heard their moans and cries mixed with scattered gunfire.

  “No, no!” screamed Spenner, firing his pistol. His bullets knocked down six shades, allowing ten more to leap over their fallen brethren for the chance to kill him.

  “Attack Jonah, not me!” he screamed with a shrill, frightened voice. Before the swarm overwhelmed him, he reached into his belt and tossed a cryo-grenade to the ground. It detonated and froze nine shades to the spot, giving him the chance to run toward the sling-machine. I raised my gun to try a shot, but too many shades blocked my aim.

  Relying on his good arm, Spenner punched and kicked a smaller wave of shades in his way. With each one he knocked away, two more came at him. It was a battle pitting perfect fighting techniques against an unfocused, but unyielding horde. Each time he looked overwhelmed, he emerged from a pile and fought on. Despite my loathing for him, I had to acknowledge that he made one hell of a last stand. With too many of them chasing him now, Spenner retreated, running the fastest fifty-yard-dash I had ever seen. When I realized where he attempted to take cover, I grinned. It was time to trap the tiger.

  With the shades no longer attacking me, I ran toward the operations booth that controlled the hulking sling-machine. At the same time, Spenner ran backwards into the only place that offered a defendable one-entrance position. Firing bullets with abandon, he back-pedaled into the interior of the nearby slingbox. He yelled at me, but the sounds of battle drowned out his curse. Then he disappeared into the container, with only the occasional bright flash of muzzle fire indicating he still lived. Over three dozen feral shades leapt, jumped, and crawled over each other to enter the box and resume their chase.

  With a gesture, I activated the control panel inside the operations booth. A simple interface appeared with the option to close the canopy of the slingbox. With no hesitation, I pressed it, and watched the thick metal door rise up from the floor. Before the hatch closed, another eight shades squeezed into the narrowing gap.

  When the slingbox door sealed, the control interface updated to request the destination. The previous launch setting showed a calculation that put the destination into a decaying sub-orbit bound for Terminus Noctus on the opposite side of the moon. I needed something more remote. With a wave of my hand, I dialed the launch angle to a seventy degree arc and set the sling's launch power to five hundred percent. The computer beeped, concerned that the trajectory pointed to deep space, and popped up a stern message to correct course.

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  “Oh, I'm quite sure, thank you,” I mumbled, bypassing the override. The sling pulled back its large metal arm and hurled the slingbox upward like a boy throwing a skipping stone into a black lake. I watched the container gain altitude and pass through the moon's orbit.

  The remaining shades shambled and gathered around me. All malice and fury disappeared from their yellow eyes, even the glowing green veins covering their bodies dimmed. They came to collect the debt I promised them. They came for their freedom. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes and ears to collect myself. I holstered my gun and touched the shoulder of a nearby female shade. This gesture made me aware of a soft, wordless hum in the TauK Network. Unlike the melancholy music I heard before, the notes sounded like a hymn. The music did not evoke any negative or positive emotions, but the notes felt charged with apprehension and hope, possibly gratitude. No translation appeared before my eyes, though I understood the message. Then my retinal TauK display changed to show my serum power reservoir.

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nbsp; What would happen when all of my energy depleted? I thought about running toward the nearest travel-pod to seek help. I could come back for the shades later…though they could be rounded up and redeployed somewhere else. The old me would not have hesitated to flee without a care for these shades. Now I felt a kinship. I needed to fulfill my promise.

  “You need to return to the Lunar Spire, sir, to seek aid,” Sasha cautioned. “You are slipping away.”

  Feeling woozy, I steadied myself against the upturned, smoking travel-pod I piloted earlier.

  “Soon,” I whispered. I looked at the first one, a male shade that appeared to have died and reaped far too young. Acceptance and gratitude met my stare, erasing any doubt about leaving. Leaning against the control panel for balance, I loaded my gun, and set about the grisly business of repaying my debt, one by one, for all of them.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Alpha and Omega

  “I wear this chain I forged in life…

  I made it link by link, and yard by yard;

  I girded it on my own free will,

  and of my own free will I wore it.”

  - Excerpt from “A Christmas Carol”, Charles Dickens

  Lucky to be alive needed to be a tattoo on my arm, I decided, after hearing it a tenth time in the last hour. I heard it most recently from a short nurse dressed in long white stockings and a red dress leaning over me. When I awoke, she offered a brief retelling of how my broken body reached the Lunar Spire Hospital. According to her, I managed to crawl into a travel-pod at Terminus Bastion, and arrived unconscious at Terminus Asechylus. A group of frightened tourists, alarmed by my gory appearance, had called emergency services.

  Waking up, I blinked away the grayness fogging my vision. A raging storm of a headache thundered in my head. Strength gushed back into my limbs, a hot warmth seared my blood, like I received a transfusion of liquid fire. I glanced over to my right, cognizant that a taped needle pricked my arm, delivering the contents of the intravenous bag suspended over my head. I looked around my surroundings and realized the sterile white walls and medical equipment meant I made it to a hospital bed. Despite the dim lighting in the room, the fuzzy radioactive-like yellow glow from the medicine allowed me to read the writing on the bag itself: