by C. Gockel
“Yes, right!” he said, running a hand down his face, turning and stumbling toward the trees. “This way.” Two Marines took off after him, but John paused and looked back at Trina.
“I have to talk to 6T9 a moment,” she said curtly.
John nodded dazedly and didn’t resist the Marines when one put a hand under his elbow to steady him. 6T9 overheard him say, “One of the others is injured—”
“Why was he reassured by you but not by me?” Trina demanded when they were barely out of earshot.
“Pardon?” said 6T9, his processors whirring.
“Explain,” she ordered, nostrils flaring. She took a step toward him.
His Q-comm produced a not-elegant-at-all reply. “Errrrmmmmm…” said 6T9.
Volka materialized at Trina’s side, her helmet off. Putting a hand on Trina’s arm, she said softly, “John could never trust his judgment when it came to deciding if you were part of the…the…thing.”
“Why not?” Trina said.
“You’re his friend,” Volka answered gently. “He’d want too much for you to be real to trust his judgment. With 6T9, he could be detached and logical.”
“Oh,” said Trina. Her head bowed. “I had not considered that.”
“You should go to him now,” Volka said. “Those Marines should really be focused and ready for the Dark, not on taking care of John.”
Trina’s eyes got wide, and she jogged off to catch up with the rest of the team.
6T9 glanced down at Volka. “Thank you,” he said.
Watching Trina retreat, Volka exhaled audibly. “I hope they really are friends. For a minute there, I thought she might punch you.”
6T9’s Q-comm sparked, and his eyes followed Trina’s voluptuous form, jogging through the trees. “Being punched by Trina might have led to wrestling with Trina. Usually, I prefer humans, but wrestling with Trina…”
Volka sighed. Loudly.
Lips pursing, 6T9 reviewed his systems. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I might need a reboot.”
“When do you ever not need a reboot?” James asked. James had been standing back, but he came forward then, an arm outstretched. “6T9, why don’t you give me the pack with your pet?”
“Hey!” shouted Carl from 6T9’s backpack. “Who’s calling who a pet?”
James continued, “You should go, too, Sixty. Your medical expertise may be necessary. Volka and Carl should stay with me outside the cave to monitor for…” His brow furrowed. “...the thing.”
The thing. 6T9 hated the imprecision of the name.
“The Darkness,” Carl said—which did nothing to clarify what the thing, or Darkness, was. Carl added, “He’s right, 6T9. Hand me over.”
6T9 took the pack off, but as he did so, he found his eyes on Volka. Her ears were perked, she’d raised her delicate nose, and she was sniffing the air. Her nose was human in appearance, but her sense of smell was more-than-human. Her stature was…well, she was the smallest hominid on the team and the weakest.
He handed the pack and Carl over to James and caught the other android regarding him with a raised eyebrow.
“What?” Sixty asked.
James smirked. Sixty’s Q-comm sparked, and he squinted, trying to understand what was on the other android’s mind.
“Get going, Sixty!” Carl said. “We’ll be fine.”
6T9 took off at a jog, but not before reassuring himself that Volka was carrying a phaser and that she knew how to use it.
Walking beside James, Volka watched Sixty jog off. He was heavier than a human, but stronger, and his pace was easy, although his footprints were deeper than the Marines’ in the sandy orange soil. His movements and body were those of a seasoned athlete, although she had never seen him exercise. He reached a shadowy outcropping where four Marines were already standing guard with huge weapons that looked to Volka like small cannons. Sixty slipped between them and out of view.
She glanced shyly at James. His expression was still hard and unreadable, exactly as she’d been taught machines were supposed to be. He didn’t ask her questions and, intimidated, she didn’t ask him any. A few moments later, they stood next to the Marines beneath the overhang, backs to the cave proper. Without her helmet on, Volka could feel the day’s warmth and smell the sandy soil and purple pines. She sniffed, and her lips turned up at a scent not unlike lemon and maple. She heard insects, though she hadn’t seen or smelled anything that made her suspect animals or birds.
From their observation point below the overhang, she could just see Sundancer through a thin strand of trees. The wind turned…she sniffed, and her mouth watered.
There was a click from the backpack, and the faceplate of Carl’s hazmat helmet slid up. “Oh, I smell it too!” Carl announced.
“Smell what?” James asked.
“Something delicious,” Volka said, and then remembered she was on an alien planet. Her ears drooped. “I wouldn’t really eat it. It might be poisonous.”
Pulling his head and first paw pairs out of his suit, Carl purred. “Nope, nope, nope, we can eat it. Oh, it’s a fat thing, too.”
Volka licked her lips and then flushed. Did she and Carl seem incredibly barbaric to James?
Carl squeaked and answered her unspoken thought aloud. “Nah, James is not like 6T9. He has no qualms with killing and will eat anything. He eats like a horse—an omnivorous horse. Now, his other physical appetites aren’t as—” James snapped his hand around Carl’s neck. The android pulled the werfle, still half in his suit out of the backpack, and aggressively scratched him behind the ears. Carl squeaked and the necklace crackled. “Um, you’re being a little rough with the affection there.”
Blue eyes scanning the trees, not pausing his rough “affection,” James spoke in a tone that was almost a purr. “You’re right, Carl, I have no qualms with killing.” There was no missing the threat in his words.
Carl chittered. “I just mean it as a scientific observation about the diversity in your species—”
“Speak too much about the observations you had as Noa’s and my pet and I’ll observe if I can tie you in a knot,” James said.
Volka’s eyes went wide, suddenly realizing the direction Carl’s observations had been about to take.
“You would never—” Carl hissed.
“Is there anything in the last hundred years of your observations that assures you that I wouldn’t?” James asked in an eerily calm voice.
Carl’s ears went back. He jerked out of James’s grip and his head and first paw pairs retreated into the suit. “Some people are so touchy.”
Volka found herself getting irritated on Noa’s, and even the obviously dangerous James’s, behalf. Some things were supposed to be private. She prepared to focus her mind—to give Carl a telepathic piece of her mind—when every hair on her head stood on end. “Something’s wrong,” she whispered. The Marines, up until that point, still, silent sentries, raised their enormous weapons to their shoulders and began scanning the forest. Darkness gathered at the edges of Volka’s vision. Recognizing Sundancer’s fear, Volka focused on the Marines. Their weapons were at the ready, the enormous stocks beginning to glow—recoil dampeners, she realized. They were small cannons.
Putting every ounce of feeling she could into her words, Volka said, “We don’t give in to fear, Sundancer, we fight.” The darkness turned to brightness so fast, Volka almost reeled.
“I don’t see anything,” said one of the Marines, the man with the orange eyes. Volka raised her rifle and began peering through the scope. “I don’t either, but I feel it.” Whatever had made her hair stand on end now felt like it was rubbing it the wrong way.
“Carl?” Volka asked.
“Meep,” said the werfle.
“Should I radio below?” one of the Marines asked.
“No, we don’t know if they’ve seen us, and they may be scanning for signals,” James said. Almost under his breath, he added, “The team should be out by now. Run down and tell them we have to get ou
t of here.”
The Marine took off into the cave.
“Carl, can you tell us where it is?” Volka asked.
“It’s getting closer,” said Carl.
“Can you be more specific?” Volka whispered. In the trees nothing moved, and the insects still trilled.
“Nothing in the air but a bird,” said one of the Marines.
Carl squeaked fearfully. “It’s getting closer.”
Volka scanned the forest through her scope, doing a full 180-degree sweep. “Could it be coming up behind the outcropping?” she whispered.
“I can go look,” said James, dropping to a crouch.
“Strange, it looks like a seagull,” said the Marine.
Volka reached out and caught James’s upper arm without her conscious thought.
“What?” he asked.
“I don’t…” She didn’t know what had made her do it, and she suddenly felt afraid. James didn’t suffer foolishness. But James didn’t move—or yell at her like she thought Young might have. Her fear of James evaporated.
She heard Young’s voice echoing from the cave. “A feeling? No visual?”
“Same wing shape as a gull, different coloring, though,” the Marine said.
Volka’s heart rate picked up. “A seagull…is it a type of ocean creature?”
“Yes,” he said. “I guess they’re not native to your home planet. Making lazy circles up there.”
“We’re nowhere near an ocean,” James said.
It had been exactly Volka’s thought. She swung her rifle up, peered through the scope, trying to see what the human saw. She saw nothing but sky; the scope’s field of vision was too narrow.
“It’s getting closer,” Carl said, slinking deeper into the bag. “I can’t quite get a feel for it.” Carl’s hazmat visor snicked shut.
James dropped his helmet face shield, too.
“I see it,” James said. “It’s not flying very fast.”
“It’s in the bird!” Carl declared. “We have to get out of here before it sees us.”
Volka gazed in the direction the men’s rifles were aimed. The sensation of wrongness she’d felt talking to the possessed human aboard Time Gate 33 came over her. Possessed…was that the word? She knew the people of the Republic didn’t like any description that suggested divine or demonic influence.
“Possessed works,” said Carl, hearing her thoughts again. “It’s not searching for us in particular, it’s just…searching.”
“Its flight path has changed. It sees us,” said the Marine.
“No, it sees Sundancer,” said Carl. Volka peeked at the werfle. Inside the helmet, his eyes were closed as though he were praying—or as they called it in the Republic, “meditating.”
“Visors down—and find out what’s taking so long,” James ordered a second Marine. The man took off into the cave.
“Hurry, Sixty,” she whispered, feeling it with all her heart, the way she would if she was talking heart-to-heart to Sundancer or to Carl. But Sixty didn’t have a heart.
The day was warm. Still, Volka shivered.
Inside the cave, Sixty kneeled, peered down into a dark crevasse, and turned on the lights in his eyes. Approximately 5.95 meters down a 15 percent grade he saw a human in a suit, lying on her back. There was a flex-cast on her leg from an older injury Dr. John Bower and Dr. Isaacs had described to them. “Found her,” Sixty said to the Marines.
“She’s not reacting to your lights. She’s unconscious,” said Dr. Walker.
“Less haste, more speed,” Sixty said, quoting a favorite idiom of Eliza’s. “Let’s figure out how we’ll—”
To the other Marines, Dr. Walker said, “Rig up a stretcher with the ropes.” Before they’d moved a muscle or 6T9 could say another word, the human doctor leaped into the crevasse and landed on her feet as lightly as a cat. She was obviously heavily augmented.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” 6T9 muttered and followed, landing by Dr. Lang’s feet.
“How long has she been down here?” Walker called up to the human researcher Isaacs.
“About twenty minutes,” he replied. “We were trying to think of a way to get her out when you arrived.”
“Too long to be a concussion,” Dr. Walker murmured.
“A stroke,” 6T9 suggested quietly, not wanting to upset Issacs. “Perhaps from a bit of bone from her previous injury.”
“That would be my guess,” Walker said. “Her neck doesn’t appear to be broken at least. Let’s get her out of here.”
Above their heads, a stretcher attached to ropes bumped down the grade.
Walker and 6T9 transferred the unconscious Dr. Lang to it and strapped her in. The job would have been easy if the drop had been straight, but as the men above tried to raise the stretcher, it bounced dangerously against the grade.
Seeing their fragile patient dangerously shaken, static flared along 6T9’s spine and he commanded, “Slow down—no stop!” To Walker, he said, “That isn’t going to work.”
Studying their patient, the doctor said, “Agreed.”
Above, 6T9 heard Young say, “A feeling? No visual?”
“Can we start pulling again?” one of the team asked from the top of the crevasse.
“No,” Walker replied.
“I have an idea,” Sixty said to the doctor. Calling up to the team, he said, “Lower her.”
Dr. Jae Isaacs, one of Time Gate 33’s engineers, called down to him. “Her kit is down there! We need her kit.”
Raising a hand in acknowledgment, 6T9 left Walker and began searching for the case.
“She’s down. Now what?” Walker asked.
“Slip your arms through the rope loops,” 6T9 replied, finding a metal case on its side behind a rock. He grabbed it, and his eyes widened at how heavy it was. He could easily imagine it unbalancing an unaugmented human. Jogging back to Walker, he said, “You have augmented upper body strength, don’t you?”
“Augmented and almost as strong as you, General,” she said, trading his line of rope for the case. And then, looking up, she mused, “Maybe we could toss the kit up.”
“No!” shouted Isaacs. “She’s got samples in that.”
Walker made room for the case between Lang’s legs as 6T9 slipped the loops of rope that had been attached to the stretcher handles over his arms.
Above, one of the Marines said, “Sir, the enemy has been sighted.”
“Are they in the station shuttle?” he heard Young ask.
“No, sir. It appears to be some sort of local seagull,” the Marine responded.
6T9 swore he could hear Young’s jaw grinding.
Walker must have guessed 6T9’s plans, because she dropped to her heels, grabbed the stretcher handles on the end with the station doctor’s head, and quipped, “Well, seagulls are evil.”
6T9’s Q-comm buzzed at the word “evil.” The concept of evil was illogical, but it was also probably a figure of speech. He followed the Marine doctor’s movements, raising the end with Lang’s feet and the metal case and called up to the men above. “We’re ready! Start lifting.”
The ropes jerked, and Walker and 6T9 lurched up, their sides closest to the rock face grinding against the stone. 6T9’s sensors screamed for him to reposition himself, and he heard the outermost layer of his suit ripping on that side. Through the glass of her helmet, he saw Walker grimacing in pain, but they kept the stretcher steady between them, adjusting for the bounce of the grade with their arms.
And then from above came an explosion. There was the sound of falling rocks, and 6T9 plunged into the dark.
The explosion knocked Volka to the ground. Something hit the side of her helmet. James was over her a second later, and rocks showered down on them. She saw boots storming from the cave and heard a shout, “Can’t get a visual! It’s too high up!” There was the sort of roaring whoosh she associated with phaser blasts but louder. Trees between them and Sundancer started to fall. She didn’t see any flames, though. She automatically sni
ffed the air, but she’d put her visor back down and only smelled her suit.
And then she realized Sundancer was gone.
For a moment she was too shocked to feel anything, and then a shadow was above the cave entrance. She felt in her heart, I would not leave you, and Carl cried out, “She’s trying to protect us!”
As soon as he said it, the bombardment of whatever-it-was returned in their direction. From the cave came shouts of confusion, and then a scream ripped across the alien landscape right into Volka’s heart. It came from Sundancer.
The Marine with the orange eyes shouted, “They’re hurting the ship!” He ran from beneath Sundancer and fired up at the sky, and another man followed his lead. James scrambled after them, and Volka glanced up at Sundancer. Veins of gray were crawling across her hull, and thick, black water was dripping from her sides.
Volka’s eyes went wide. “It’s killing her.”
“The bombardment is killing the men in the cave,” Carl exclaimed.
A knot formed in Volka’s stomach and she felt Carl’s telepathic—or empathic—command to Sundancer. Sundancer run! You must run! She remembered the “bath” they’d taken in “lava” above the dead world, closed her eyes and tried to convey the image to Sundancer. Save yourself now. We will be fine.
The shadow that was Sundancer took off, rising tipsily in the air, black threads on her wings seemingly throwing her off balance. For a moment Volka saw white, and then orange, and enormous tendrils of molten material filled her mind. It took her a moment to put together what she was imagining—it was, based on the illustration on one of her paperbacks—the surface of a sun. “Go! Run, Sundancer! Go to the sun!” she shouted and at the same time felt the words in her heart. The vision of the sun’s surface disappeared, and Volka found herself staring at the ship soaring above the trees. There was a flash of white from the still-untouched region of Sundancer’s hull, and then she took off with a boom that reverberated through the forest. Volka’s heart fell. Sundancer didn’t usually create sonic booms…
A black, boxy ship swooped down from the clouds and pursued her, and the Marines began firing on it with their huge guns but the blasts fell short.