by C. Gockel
“What is happening out there?” James asked.
Volka turned to the blind. “All the remaining birds are leaving,” she whispered.
They’d withdrawn from the cave and were flying in a twisting formation, sweeping down the slope toward the valley like a living tornado, but veering in the opposite direction of the impact.
“It’s ordered them to retreat in that formation,” said Carl.
“I don’t like this,” said Ben.
The twisting flock of birds swarmed at a point just over the horizon. More birds joined them from over the other side of the far mountains, flowing into the flock like a river to a sea, and the sea of birds in the air became too thick to see through. Hale hadn’t bought them that much time—their enemy seemed limitless.
“I’m getting a strange heat signature,” said one of the Marines.
Volka swore she could hear everyone holding their breath. And then the birds flew off in every direction, revealing a shuttle landing in the distance just at the edge of the horizon. Peering through a scope, Volka could see it had wings like an airplane and time bands along its sides. From the glow beneath it, she knew it was using hovers to land. A second after she made that observation, it vanished, hidden by the planet’s curve.
“That’s my last shuttle,” Trina declared, and Volka started. Trina had been below with John, Lang, and Isaacs, helping protect the secondary entrance. John was with her now, just a step behind, his right hand out, her left hand back as though they’d just been holding hands. Volka’s eyes went to John. She couldn’t see his expression in his suit or smell him, but…
Carl’s voice whispered in Volka’s mind. “Let yourself feel, Volka. Turn off your doubts.”
Volka took a sharp breath. She felt a flutter of pterys in her stomach, and her heart felt light. “He loves her.”
Carl spoke to her heart. “Yes.”
Volka blinked. It had happened so fast.
Carl spoke into her mind again. “Not fast at all in human time. She’s been with him for years across the stars, just in another form.”
“Can’t see it but based on its last trajectory, it’s about 5.5 kilometers away,” said one of the men with the huge guns that looked like shoulder mounted cannons.
A single light began flashing from the point where the shuttle had vanished. Jerome, the man who controlled the “local ether hotspot,” said, “It’s Morse code. They’re asking to talk. They want to send someone out to reassure us that they are well.”
“They could have done that without attacking,” said Sixty.
“They want to take us alive,” said Young. “And realize that we’ll die before surrendering, so now they’re going to try and talk us into it.”
A gull let loose a raucous laugh too close by.
Volka had been thinking that she would die before being infected, but it was still a shock to hear it said aloud with such calm certainty.
“I believe Mr. Young is right,” said Trina. “It’s switching tactics because it needs—or at least wants—you. If you came aboard, I’d be repaired faster. Especially if it controlled John. He has been working on me for a decade and knows me better than any human.”
“Should I fire a warning shot?” said the man with the cannon.
Young shifted on his feet.
6T9 took a step toward the barrier and glanced back once at Volka. “Could we take the shuttle?”
Young nodded at 6T9. “We should try.”
Trina piped up. “The shuttle was the only time gate stable vessel aboard me!”
Volka’s brow furrowed. Without the shuttle, the Darkness wouldn’t be able to spread. At least not as quickly. She suspected a pod could be made to be time gate stable with time. She met 6T9’s eyes.
James said, “We should destroy it.”
Sixty gulped so loudly Volka could hear it through his helmet and hers. Turning to Young, Sixty said, “If we could steal the shuttle, it wouldn’t get us back to the Republic, but it probably has medical supplies, water filtration, and food. Once we decontaminated it, it could keep you safe from infection. And birds. Trina must have the access codes—”
“I did have them,” Trina said. “But since the humans aboard my gate have been inhabited, they haven’t used the ethernet and may have changed them.”
Dr. Bower—John—said, “That’s one way we knew something was wrong. They stopped using the ether for anything but work.”
James said, “Stealing the shuttle would be the best hope of survival. We should try it.”
Sixty exhaled audibly beside Volka.
“To get down there, we’d need to use our flamethrower setting on our rifles,” Young replied. “It’s a power drain—we’d need our weapons to be fully charged.”
John said, “We have a generator below for Lang’s equipment. It’s slow, but it will do the job.”
6T9 turned to Young. “Let’s stall for time.”
“Right,” said Young. To Jerome, he said, “Tell him we’d like to talk.”
Jerome nodded. He lifted his palm, and Volka saw rapid flashes of light emit from it. There were answering flashes, and Jerome said, “They’re sending out a representative.”
He turned to Young. “Who will we send?”
Volka had a sudden very uncomfortable hunch she knew the answer.
Static flared beneath 6T9’s skin as he marched toward the valley and the single human “representative” of...well, whatever it was. He was not alone, and it was making his circuits flash madly. “I don’t understand why you have to come. I can’t get infected. You can.”
From within Volka’s helmet came a growl. “If this representative tries anything funny, will you be able to fight him?”
“I very savagely dispatched birds with a spike gun!” 6T9 protested.
“They were just flying rats,” Volka replied. “Carl was telling me something about how your programming allows you to kill rats. You thought he was a rat back before you had a Q-comm and—”
His faux skin flushed. “Yes, yes, we all know that story.”
“I didn’t until Carl told me,” Volka said.
“Carl has a big mouth,” 6T9 replied.
“It’s actually quite small,” Volka said.
For a moment, 6T9 felt like his Q-comm had gone offline. “Are you making a joke at a time like this? Because it isn’t funny,” 6T9 replied.
Swinging the large branch she was using as a “walking stick,” she laughed softly. “No, it wasn’t funny. But I was trying. I think the certainty of impending death is making me slap-happy. Or slap-sad.”
Static flared beneath his skin. She knew the likelihood of her own death if the team decided to fight the Darkness rather than submit, and yet was going to bring that death on earlier than was absolutely necessary. Humans were so illogical. “You could have stayed back in the cave.”
“The Marines all seem very nice, but I don’t want to die with strangers,” Volka said.
6T9 felt like his Q-comm had gone briefly offline, and then it hummed in understanding. Volka was saying she’d prefer to be with him at what could be one of the most momentous occasions in her life.
He couldn’t muse on that, because his hardware started to malfunction—or rather, started to perform its primary function. He needed to reboot, or at least run a system check. Having no time for that, he just vividly imagined being on this isolated barren world if all the humans died, and he was left with only James. James could make a glacier seem warm.
The visualization worked, and his hardware malfunction resolved itself. They were now within 702 meters of their rendezvous and the human male formerly named Dr. Dennis Khan, a xenobotanist. Zooming in on his features, 6T9 noted his face was stretched in a smile that lasted too long and there was a conspicuous lack of crinkles around the eyes. 6T9 heard the stones crumble beneath his feet and noticed the absence of conversation from Volka. She’d been trying to joke. So he tried to do the same. She’d said she didn’t consider him a stranger, so he sai
d, “I always thought you considered me strange.”
Volka huffed. “If I wasn’t trying to look fearsome, I’d elbow you.”
Volka was only 160.2 centimeters tall in her boots. Most likely, Dr. Dennis Khan, or who or whatever he was, mistook her for a child and not fearsome at all. Better not to say that aloud. “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
“What?” said Volka.
Had he said that aloud? He did need a reboot. “Erm…I have that idiom wrong,” he lied. “‘Must put on a valorous face.’ That’s what I meant.”
“A brave face?” Volka suggested.
“Yep, that’s it,” 6T9 said.
“It’s hard,” Volka confessed. “Even from here, the man we’re meeting makes every inch of my skin crawl. I can’t smell anything in this suit except myself and plastic but looking at him, I imagine the scents of stagnant water and decay.”
“He just looks like a man to me,” 6T9 admitted. He squinted and studied the approaching figure. Khan was a little on the lean side, but healthy. He probably wouldn’t expire from a heart attack during the act, however...“I note that he isn’t looking at either of us with any sort of lustful appraisal—”
“You’re thinking about that right now?” Volka whispered.
“An application analyzing that is always running in the background,” 6T9 responded.
“Why did I even ask?” Volka whispered.
“Even if he wasn’t interested in me, I’d hope he would be interested in you, so that I could watch, but by the looks of it—”
“Sixty!” Volka exclaimed.
“What?” he asked, and then he realized what he’d just said. Aloud. To a Luddeccean. He needed to reboot.
To his surprise, Volka laughed softly. “I can barely see you in there, and I can’t smell you. It’s…disquieting…but your mouth leaves no doubt it’s really you.”
6T9 smirked. “There are other things I can do with my mouth that would leave no dou—”
“You’re a android!” Dr. Khan shouted.
Circuits firing, 6T9’s attention snapped to the doctor, only ten meters away. Had he recognized him as an android because of some sensor or telepathy? Or because another member of his crew had a 6T9 unit on Time Gate 33?
“I am,” he replied.
“We don’t want androids,” Khan said, his lip curling. “You cannot be part of us.”
“I guess I won’t be having sex with the infected,” 6T9 muttered.
Khan spat, “We do not need procreation activities. Procreation keeps us from our higher form.”
6T9 gaped, horrified. “Really?”
“I don’t think that is the most important issue, Sixty,” Volka whispered.
“Well, you’re wrong,” 6T9 said.
Clearing her throat, Volka said, “What do you need, Dr. Khan?” Which was when 6T9 remembered that he was supposed to be doing the talking and Volka was supposed to be doing the protecting.
Khan smiled at Volka too long. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow. “We don’t want conflict. We can end all conflict.”
“Umm…” said Volka. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Sounds lovely,” said 6T9. “Personally, the only conflict I prefer is—”
Khan hissed and faced 6T9, his lip curling. “You are not part of it. You can never be part of it.” His smile returned. “You will be eliminated.” He took a step toward 6T9, but Volka’s stick was on his chest an instant later. She gave a thrust, pushed him back, and wound up to strike again.
Frowning sadly, Khan said, “You always protest our advance. And why, when you can live forever with us in peace?” As she pulled her stick back, he shook his head. “Always, always, we don’t understand your fear or your resistance. We are peace of mind, body, and spirit. We are absolute harmony. We are eternal. Those of you who avoid us always die.”
Us? Always die?
Volka started to growl. She lunged and knocked Khan backward with her stick. Khan’s eyebrows hiked, and he looked down at the weapon as though confused.
Pulling her back, 6T9 said, “So, we’ll need a bit to relay that message to the rest of our team.”
“Grrrrrrrr…” said Volka.
To stall for time, 6T9 ad-libbed. “Do you have any specifics for when and how this oneness should be achieved? A place to meet? A time? Appropriate attire? Or is clothing optional? I don’t mean that in a sexy way, just in a maybe easier to infect sort of way.”
Putting a hand to his chin, Khan regarded Volka. “You’ve become more primitive.”
Volka swung the stick back to hit him, and 6T9 pulled her back before she could knock Khan over the head.
“Could you answer my questions before she cracks your skull?”
Blinking up at 6T9, Khan said, “You are not invited.”
Smiling thinly, 6T9 said, “I got that, thanks. I’m asking for my human friends.”
“Have them meet me here. No envirosuits.” He scowled. “If they don’t appear, we will resume our onslaught and the process will be much more painful. That would be unfortunate. We wouldn’t wish that. We never wish to do that to you. Why must you always resist? We thought we had resolved this over a million years ago.” He shook his head.
Volka growled. Drawing her backward, 6T9 said, “I will relay all of that. I’m sure they’ll be reasonable,” he said, thankful that he was fairly certain that the chances of Marines embracing lives of celibacy were slim to none. His Q-comm sparked over other mysteries…Resolved over a million years ago? What sort of madness was the doctor talking about?
Volka held Carl Sagan, still in his “sausage suit,” as 6T9 relayed every detail of the encounter with Khan to James and Young. The other Marines were listening, but also getting ready. They were charging their phaser rifles and bundling Dr. Lang on her stretcher. She’d woken up briefly but hadn’t been coherent. Dr. Walker feared serious brain injury that only nanos could repair.
“It sounds crazy,” said Young. “A million years ago?”
Volka’s skin crawled. Crazy wasn’t exactly the right word.
Carl squeaked, and his necklace crackled. “To it, all life is the same, you see. It encountered the aliens and planets Sundancer took us to millions of years ago. It doesn’t distinguish between us and those people.”
Sundancer. Volka closed her eyes. She’d tried to warn them. And now she was gone, and most likely the entire team was going to die with her. All in vain. Volka’s nostrils flared, and she squeezed Carl tighter.
Carl squeaked. “Volka, I have learned so much from this encounter, and James and 6T9 are constantly being monitored by Time Gate 1. The rest of the galaxy already knows what happened here.”
“We may reach the shuttle,” Young said, and for a moment, Volka felt something like hope.
“I highly doubt it,” said Carl. “But you don’t have to worry about it being a meaningless death.”
“Wow, the weasel can really give a pep talk,” Ben said, his voice oddly boisterous, even happy. He winked at Volka, and oddly, his words and the wink lifted her.
“Flirting in the face of danger,” Sixty murmured, and then huffed softly. She looked up at him. His eyes were on Ben but met hers. He rarely touched Volka, but he put a hand on her shoulder. For a moment she froze. It suddenly struck her that watching her die—all of them die—would probably be a tremendous sacrifice on his part, but she also knew he wouldn’t leave her until the end. He started to pull his hand away, but she caught it with her own. She would take what comfort she could. Gazing at a patch of light emerging through the netting, her eyes narrowed. And she would wreak whatever devastation she could on the Darkness that animated Dr. Khan. Her jaw set. They’d take that shuttle, or they would destroy it. Any amount of pain she could inflict on the Darkness she would, for Sundancer’s sacrifice and for every independent living thing in the galaxy.
“We will have helped,” James said, “But if Time Gate 33’s ring is repaired, the pestilence will spread throughout the gala
xy. The main gates won’t allow a transport, but there are thousands of smaller gates that will.”
Trina, standing next to John in the back, spoke so quietly that Volka almost didn’t hear her. “I will stay with you as long as I can, John. But I won’t let that happen.”
“We’ll reach the shuttle,” John whispered.
“It’s time to go, Lieutenant,” Jerome said.
Trina fell silent. Young looked around. “We’ve succeeded in delivering invaluable information to the Republic. No matter how this turns out, we’ve already won this battle. You know the plan. Let’s give them Hell.”
The men gave cheers, but they were low pitched and angry. Without thinking, Volka found her voice joining theirs.
18
Hell Fire
The “plan” wasn’t very encouraging, in Sixty’s opinion. While he and Volka had been on their rendezvous, a few of the men had tried to creep up to the top of the outcropping to recover Hale’s rifle. They’d been immediately attacked by birds. A plan of sending out a diversionary force while a smaller group snuck around to liberate the shuttle had been abandoned. Now the plan consisted of, “Walk out in our suits. Wait to see how long before they realize we aren’t naked. Start firing then. Hope we’ve gained enough ground to make it to the shuttle.”
Not precisely sophisticated.
“I escaped Luddeccea only to die by deranged chickens,” Volka said beside him. All of the humans laughed as though it had been funny.
6T9’s eyes slid to Volka. His friend had a rifle now, but her trusty stick was tied to her back with some fabric cut from a sleeping bag. The team was moving briskly, at not quite a jog. The camouflage aspect of their suiting had been turned off, so they looked like they were wearing drab green uniforms instead of their hazmat suits, at least from the neck down. They had to wear helmets to protect them from the guano dust in the air. Their helmets should have given them away immediately, but Carl said, “The thing is relying on the birds for its intel. It sees what they see, but also what they understand. They don’t understand hats—neither do I a lot of the time, frankly. I suppose it’s because you’re so deficient in decent fur and plumage, so you make up for it every other which way. Anyway, if we leave our shelter before the human is actively watching, we’ll have a little time before they put it together that we’re not protected.”