She followed him, of course. They expected her to help repair such missiles.
“How can he expect buried missiles to be intact?”
She’d said it almost to herself but JI answered. He’d been clanking along at her right shoulder but she was used to the sounds and had barely noticed.
“Apparently, your people scavenged some of our Mekker missiles and replaced the insides with something new that targets a swathe far better. No one seems to know what was inside them. I have seen a DRAC myself—”
“What?” Sawyer spoke from behind her and she jerked. Her heart stuttered.
“Where did you come from?” She spun. She’d thought him gone ahead and had perhaps been too busy trying to decipher shadows in case they hid evil things.
“Here,” he said, absentmindedly. “I was watching your ass. JI...you saw a DRAC? When? How?”
“Mako used it to blow up my true JI-mech 34 body to mislead the Mekkers into thinking I was destroyed. The radiation disrupted me for a short while, but I was quite distant from the blast. How far? I can’t remember...sorry.”
“So you have no new info?”
“I do recall it looking remarkably shiny for its age. This supports what Osta proposed – Mekker casing, at least. Which means they might have survived, if not in direct contact with soil and water.”
She wouldn’t be good at repairing the internals of a Mekker construct, would she? Brains were different. They’d make her try.
This landing bay was enormous.
Enough dirt had blown in, enough droppings and leaves were on this floor, that plants grew from mounds of debris. Vines had also crept in through the bay door, sneaking across the walls and ceiling. They wrestled with the lights and ducts up above. Animals had made homes here too. She spotted dung and small bones, hair, even a few paw prints.
The pungent smells encountered, as the party crept and stalked through the long-abandoned corridors, said creatures had died here recently. Perhaps it was from old age. She hoped.
The corridors went on and on. The device led them toward the front of the ship.
“No one’s been here for a long, long time,” Dayne ventured, as they turned a corner.
The blue from the pole-lights showed they’d found a large open space.
“A park? A factory? A warehouse?” Sawyer said.
They fanned out, spreading the light, revealing...
Sassik and Dayne came up on her left shoulder just as Osta stepped out. The man with him carried a light-stick and the blue flooded the floor, revealing a multitude of low mounds and scattered objects.
Bones. Bones and covered skeletons and skulls that rolled when Osta brushed one with his boot.
“A place for the dead,” murmured Sassik, scratching at his curly locks. “I pity them. Long dead but I feel their sorrow.”
She sucked in a shaky breath. Many of these people had died in rows on low beds. Some of the skeletons were small. Children, these were children. Machinery beside the beds suggested they were being treated? Or examined after death. “Was this a hospital?”
Sassik said, “Either way we are here long after any of this, so it can’t be infectious.”
“When Mekkers stop moving, they die.” That was Dayne, lean, mean, and practical. “Mother Aerthe got them. Bastards.”
“Come!” Osta waved. “Our instrument says the missile is close and forward of here!”
They found the site where a missile had struck. The rift in the ship’s hull was small, considering the entire ship had been halted. This was at the bow, and the destruction had started low then had blown upward, obliterating the floors above where they stood, peeling open a broad triangle of the ship all the way to sky. It’d come up through the belly.
“Definitely a trap missile,” the tech told Osta, tapping his teeth and kneeling at the edge of the primary hole in the floor. “The particles of leftover explosive are scattered all through here.”
“Should we be here then, if it’s still active?” someone asked. “Sir?”
Osta replied. “The manuals say this is a short-lived anti-Mekker radiation. What is detected is inactive and unexploded material. We are immune to this radiation, in any case. I am sorry, I should have told you all that. I apologize if it was worrying anyone.”
The man cared for his people? He was a puzzle.
It is all through here. Ari turned. She could see no pieces of any missile. Here was like the landing bay, big – except more overgrown with jungle.
Greenness abounded. A few trees had grown. Birds flew in circles hissing and calling. Two shredded floors above her, where the sun could reach, large yellow flowers drooped from the vines, decorating the wound in the ship. Destruction made pretty.
Something leaped from a nearby hillock of leaf mulch and curled and torn ancient metal, to drag a man away by his leg, screaming. The lightstick he’d carried rolled off, casting a shuddering light until it ceased to move.
The warriors had barely raised their weapons when Martha leaped on the predator and gulped it down in two bites. The legs she’d snapped off twitched on the floor. Arthur scoffed them down.
“Physician!” someone yelled.
Sawyer ran toward the commotion and that...was when she noticed JI was missing.
Where was he?
At the very back, where they’d entered this area, she glimpsed him, red sensors glowing. He paused, head up, as if he sniffed some tantalizing smell. His head wobbled rapidly in that spasm that’d been afflicting him more and more. He paused again. Then he slipped away through the door.
Perhaps he was glitching badly.
She jogged over to the light-stick the wounded man had dropped and picked it up then turned and jogged toward where she’d seen JI.
She might not have followed him...
If she hadn’t been worried...
If Martha hadn’t tagged along, and if anyone had noticed her walking away, but the screaming distracted them.
She might not have followed, if Arthur hadn’t arrived at her right side, meaning Sawyer followed also.
Wasn’t much in this ill-omened, derelict place that’d make the jaggs hesitate to eat them.
Though the walls might fall in on her.
Okay, she was still scared, her heart was speeding, but JI had become a friend, again. They’d been having what he called agony aunt talks. They soothed her. They made her think about this situation and JI...and Sawyer. Also they talked about life, death, and cocks.
Crazy funny how he obsessed about those.
Failing him again would be a sad indictment of her bravery.
She wouldn’t stop for Sawyer, but she appreciated his presence. Perhaps he thought she was running away again? Here? She almost laughed.
Fuck this place was frightening.
“JI!” she yelled, as she walked through the doorway. Nothing, just the clanking and clicking sounds of his feet on the floor. Just the blue wash of her light making creepy shadows. He was moving rapidly. But, she had back up and she had...Ari flicked aside her coat and checked the knife at her waist then broke into a jog.
She had a big knife.
Stupid mech.
Chapter 34
Something wicked this way comes.
JI remembered that one. He could feel something above, in the faraway floors. Something wicked, something mechling. This wasn’t like what Emery or Sawyer did inside his head – a cool, clear, line of communication. This was simply a presence.
His curiosity lured him.
Ever, ever curious. Ask the questions, feed the brain, gather the data. Learn. Learn about people, about humans, about mechlings. Learn even, about DRAC missiles.
He liked life, not death. Liked truth, not lies. Liked helping people, not betrayal.
He wondered if this thing could truly be wicked. Was wicked equal to evil? Could anything be pure good or bad? He doubted this. The universe was chaos and chaos begat irregularity and that mixed everything up. Things changed. He’d liked Ari then ha
d hated her and been sad, now he liked her again.
His sensors scanned and showed him the path ahead.
The way.
He was a prophet ascending to the heavens. An explorer discovering the hidden and the lost.
Imagination, that was what made him different. And his reasoning powers.
A pity he died soon.
Up, up, up, he rose, finding the backways built by the Mekkers. Their mechanized lifts no longer functioned. Sometimes he had to duck low in the cramped corridors. Once, he crawled to avoid a barrier created when a ceiling collapsed.
At last he reached the very top floor of the landship, opened two golden doors, and beheld...
Paradise?
Chapter 35
People might think this paradise? JI scanned the large room. Above bulged an almost room-wide dome of transparent material, divided by thick supporting spokes. Weather and whatever had been blown in by the wind had deposited dirt and leaves up there. A few vines had wriggled across. The leaves might be from them. Remarkably, after more than a hundred years, there was not a single crack in the dome. Despite a rim of heavy black clouds above, sunlight shone through and illuminated this room.
A bed with a dark covering dominated. Storage closets and cupboards and old chairs stood here and there.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
JI stepped in. Nothing dead in here. This was good. Nothing alive either. The wickedness was not here. Another set of golden doors waited at the opposite wall. It must be there. It was close. He could feel it breathing, waiting. A thing that preyed on others. It knew him also.
He was sure it would not find him tasty. He walked to the doors, slowly, wary of weak spots in the old floor, but there were none. He flung open the doors.
“Behold. I am here!” Shakespeare eat your heart out.
A still pool of green water stretched before him. He recalled that people liked to swim, so this must have been for leisure.
Another dome lit this room. Alas, it was cracked, though only one section was affected. The water filling the pool must be due to the missing pane and the heavy rains the region suffered.
The pool moved not, though vines grew here and had dipped into the pool, leaves popping above the surface as if they peeked at him. Seeds, he surmised. Seeds must come in through the dome. A few other plants flourished around the periphery of the pool.
He completed his survey and beamed at the creature at the far end, across the green water. It waited so patiently.
Such a clever, wicked thing. A mechling metal skull sat glued atop the skull of an organic creature. JI rifled through his defunct memories of the creatures of Aerthe and found nothing suitable. Gaps, so many gaps in his memories.
Sloped nose, white fur, teeth along the sides, four pairs of legs. A wolf? A Shakespearean Earth word but he loved it. “Shall I call you wolf? Or spider?”
The number of legs would confuse a Shakespeare. This thing had eight.
It growled in his mind, and he saw the dichotomy, the split, and the way it might have been done. Whatever intelligence the mechling had once attained, it had sunk beneath the animal veil of thoughts.
Like the vine in the pool.
Glub. Glub.
His head chose that moment to schizz, as he termed it. The world shook abruptly, blurred.
He recovered.
JI took a step or three to the left, planning to meet this thing. It couldn’t bite him. He was metal.
It fed upon the local animals and somehow it had stayed alive over the many years. It adopted. It adapted. The bodies? How?
But as he stepped, he stepped on metal, and he saw the bodies. Not animal. Mechling. Split and gutted. The insides open. This mechling wolf-spider had eaten mechlings? How?
If it ate mechlings, could it eat him?
Insufficient data. Then JI looked at this as a human might. Maybe it could.
The mech spider-wolf was gathering its legs as if to leap. Trajectory, assuming X strength and angle Y and V velocity from muscle mass...therefore...
Perhaps he should run.
He turned and ran, and found Ari standing behind him.
He’d missed hearing her creep up, but he didn’t miss her body. She bounced off him as he barged and she landed in the pool with a splash, then she sank. Her eyes vanished though her thrashing hands still broke the surface. The water was ugly, JI decided.
A weight landed on his back. Teeth tore at his armored brain links that fed into his mechlings, going unerringly for his weakest place. Perhaps it had understood his thoughts more than he’d calculated?
In seconds, it would breach him there, and kill him? He knew its aim as the first piece of armor snapped away and a piece, a finger, a tentacle of mech-spider-wolf inveigled its way into him.
It wanted his brain, the dirty thing. Roaring, he spun. Saving Ari. Saving me. Which? JI almost froze.
Until he saw the flash and splash as Sawyer dove past and into the pool.
Now it was him versus the mad mech spider...and two jaggs.
Arthur and Martha joined the fight, chewing and ripping at his enemy’s legs.
Hah! Now he knew he’d win!
If only Ari would survive all would be well. Especially once he analyzed how this creepy creature had done what it did to brains.
Because, the one thing he’d seen as it leaped upon him was that it possessed a...cock. A wolf cock, but still it was cock.
Fun times ahead, once he figured this out. Surely he could do what a mere mechling could do?
How long could people survive beneath water?
It began to rain, water thundering against the glass, drips cascading to the pool to the floor, pattering off the creature as it flailed teeth and claw against him. He held the mech-spider wolf’s lower body away from him and the jaggs did what they did best – they killed and killed.
It had severed some brain strands and his neurosensory systems were screaming but...he
Could...
Do this.
I’m fine, he sent to Sawyer. I’m fine. And he staggered to the doors, trailing jaggs, leaking sensations, memories sliding.
He just needed somewhere...
Quiet.
He thought, as he walked through a veil of water.
Chapter 36
The water swallowed him. Sawyer struck out for where he’d seen her, praying he wasn’t too late.
The pool water was thick with whatever made it green – sludge, leaves, little green bits of stuff floated past his eyes. He kept them open since he had to if he wanted to find her.
His fingers touched flesh and he swam to the surface with her arm clutched in his hand.
It couldn’t be that deep, but it felt like forever in this almost silent zone.
Something grabbed, snagged, at his leg a few inches before his head broke the surface so he shoved her upwards. If she was unconscious, there was little he could do. He needed to get loose before he could do anything. He needed to be alive to help her.
A vine or something equally tough was knotted about his ankle. He reached down to untangle it and couldn’t get loose.
Air, he needed air.
Desperately he swam upward, and again he almost reached the surface, but no, he was held back, despite his hands grabbing at the water, shoving, stretching upward. His arms could go up there into the air, but he, his head, his mouth were submerged.
Then he saw her face above him, her mouth blurring as the water moved, and her hand splashed down into the water and his realm. He took her hand in his, wrapped his fingers through hers.
She pulled at him and still he stayed where he was, sunken, starving.
Oxygen was running low, his mind slowing, his lungs demanding he open his mouth and take a breath.
Blackness swept his vision, but he hung onto her hand. Air bubbled out of him – his last exhalation. He was going to have to breathe even though it’d fill his lungs with water.
Got to breathe.
Her lips hit his,
and she breathed into him, filling his chest.
Life. He found her eyes, stared. He couldn’t stay kissing her. He had to trust.
He broke contact, dived again, tugged at the vine. Still nothing gave.
Another reach for the surface and again she breathed air into him, then her hand fumbled for his and she gave him her knife.
Handle first, which was a plus.
He began sawing at the vine.
On the third try, he did it; he cut through the vine.
Leg freed, he thrust to the surface and dragged himself out, coughing, spitting out water. Then he rolled over onto his back and looked up at her, put the knife aside, and he dragged her down to him.
“You saved me,” he said, an inch from those full pouty lips – lips he’d seen her worry with teeth, these last days, and he’d not been able to kiss.
“Yes. Not sure why.” But, she smiled, fleetingly, then wiped water away from his face, as if that mattered.
He took this as a good omen, and he kissed her, trying to suck her soul into his...maybe.
Seconds only, but by the time she convinced him to stop because JI was in trouble, the mech was departing with the two jaggs in tow, their teeth worrying at some strange animal in JI’s hands.
I’m fine, JI thought at him. At the bedroom doors, JI freed a hand and waved, as if off to play.
Where he’d fought, there was blood and white fur.
Sawyer levered himself out from under Ari, off the slippery floor, staggered after JI.
The main doors to the outside had shut by the time he reached the bedroom. His discarded pack lay to one side. A trail of blood spatters marked the path of the mech.
“Well.” He turned. “Guess he’s fine. You, however...” He took a step toward her.
She’d followed him through into the bedroom, dripping, her feet treading in blood, smudging it, making pretty girl prints in red.
“Me?” Ari went into reverse, eyes flaring.
Her back hit the wall beside the bedroom-to-pool doorway.
Beyond, framed by the wide opening, water rattled down to floor, to pool, and onto the abandoned knife – plinking, pouring, gushing, as the storm strengthened. Light turned gray and cool. Dappling sunlight became a sift of dark.
Claimed Possession Page 23