Protectors of Earth

by Felix R. Savage

  “Can’t you hack it?” Patrick yelps. I don’t bother to answer. Dr. Joy is definitely smart enough to install two-factor authentication on his mecha. And if he’s in league with the Offense, they wouldn’t have borked his stuff the way they do to our regular military systems. Anyway, I’m busy climbing for my life. But the question reminds me of my phone. I drag it out of my pocket and hold it up as a flashlight, just in time—Patrick was about to go right through a hole in the translucent deck. He veers to the stairs.

  As I follow, I see a notification on my screen, and my thumb automatically taps it. It’s a message from Aardie. She’s found more traces of ringwoodite. Oh, that’s really helpful, Aardie.

  I’m only looking at the phone for a split second but that is long enough for me to miss my footing on the stairs and fall headlong into the twisted wreckage of the power plant.

  I smash through minimal resistance. Dust stings my eyes and nose. My shoulder hits the floor before my head does. Sometimes I think I really do have a guardian angel looking out for me. I should be dead but I’m sitting up, winded, listening to Patrick clamber through the hole we got in by. “Scatter? Scatter! Wait!” he shouts from within the tank. He thinks I got out ahead of him, and I’m too winded to make a sound. As I gasp for breath, the crab mecha skitters down the stairs and heads for the hole. It didn’t see me fall into the power plant. It’s chasing Patrick.

  I inhale, trying to steady my racing pulse, and grope around. My hands encounter what feels like cardboard, but it crumbles when I grasp it, and more dust finds its way into my wide-open, unseeing eyes. There’s that weird smell again, like incense.

  I fell into the power plant … and through it.

  It looked like a scary tangle of twisted metal, but the metal is so embrittled by whatever happened to this ship, it’s now no stronger than cardboard. I feel the prick of curiosity. I could at least take pictures …

  Nopey nopey no. I’m getting out of here.

  I blunder towards the holed fuel tank.

  At least, that is where I think I’m blundering to, but I’m still in the dark, and I’m all turned around. in every direction my fingers brush these walls of crumbly post-apocalyptic cardboard. Like a sheep, I follow the path of least resistance between the walls, keeping my left hand on the cardboard. Then it goes away. I’m in an open space.

  That prickling sensation is back, stronger than ever. The feeling of something looking at me, calmly considering me in terms of nutrition.

  It’s just my imagination, just—

  Uuhhhhrrrr.

  A trickle of sound, throaty and palpably evil.

  I lose my nerve. Phone in hand, I dash a weak beam of light over ribbed black walls, curved like the inside of a giant bottle. I’m in the freaking combustion chamber, where temperatures as hot as stellar cores once reigned. Now frost coats the walls. They narrow ahead of me to a bottleneck, the nozzle out of which the plasma exhaust would have roared, but something’s blocking the nozzle, something gleamy and lumpy—

  —with eyes, which blink and go slitty in the light.

  Uuhhhhrrrr.

  This time, I realize the sound isn’t in my ears. It’s in my head.

  It is the voice of pure evil, the voice of a thing that eats spaceships and would like to eat stars.

  And I recognize it.

  Aghast, I stare at the glistening lump which used to be my Tancred.

  What is he doing here? I don’t even think to wonder. I’m paralyzed with sadness and an overwhelming premonition of doom that—I retain just enough self-awareness to realize—comes not from me, but from him.

  Then I scream and do what I should have done straight away. I kick a hole in the wall of the combustion chamber and run like hell, trampling through the embrittled husk of the drive.

  Bursting free, I slam into Dr. Joy. He’s still got his suitcase. No words are exchanged. My terror infects him. We practically step on each other’s heads to get into the empty fuel tank. Cavalrymen in the moat are shining high-powered torches into the hole in the hull. I pop out into the midst of them. No sign of Patrick. I shove between them and keep running and they don’t follow me, because Dr. Joy is not tall enough or skinny enough to get out of that hole without help. By the time I reach the top of the moat, the cavalrymen have extricated him. I can hear him yelling about sabotage and spies and treachery—what a freaking nerve he’s got.

  But he’s not wrong, is he? I was a traitor to humanity when I kept Tancred’s egg. I sabotaged our war effort and perhaps the survival of the human race. I’m not an Offense spy but that hardly seems worth mentioning in comparison.

  My horse is still waiting for me, out of sight behind the berms of frozen soil. Thanks, unknown person in Moldavia who sold me that rootkit. I scramble on and gallop across the impact zone, away from the 44th’s camp. Every instant I expect to hear Tancred’s wings flapping behind me, and to be burnt to a cinder for my temerity in supposing that I, that we, were different, somehow, from all the lessons taught by history.

  *

  I reach the false refuge of the forest and keep on riding, hunched low so I don’t get my head taken off by branches. I’ve told the horse to retrace our route and that is what it faithfully does, going the long way around, just as Patrick and I did on our fake patrol. I catch up with him before we reach the site of our hide.

  “I thought you were ahead of me,” he exclaims, appalled.

  He doesn’t know about Tancred. He’s horrified because he thinks he left me behind.

  Now is the time for me to tell him that Tancred is hiding in the Terrorflop. That he is very likely responsible for the hole in its hull and the total destruction of the power plant. That he has grown bigger. I only saw him for a moment but he was at least the size of a collie.

  That he spoke no words to me, and our weird mind-meld has thinned to a one-way trickle of hate.

  I say, “What’s that?”

  My horse’s eyelights reveal a tangle of metal legs hanging across the withers of Patrick’s horse. It rattles like cutlery as he rides.

  “Oh, it’s Clappy Clappy’s porter mecha. I thought maybe you could fix it. It might know what he was up to.”

  “It’ll need a lot of fixing.” Its headpiece is mangled. “What happened to it?” I urge my horse forward so we’re riding side by side, knees almost brushing. I’m trying to draw companionship around me like a blanket to keep the world out. If I pretend nothing happened, maybe nothing will happen.

  Patrick taps the pocket of his stolen bumfreezer jacket. “I shot it.”

  Patrick has a gun?!

  Of course he does. The cavalrymen we took these uniforms off had guns. I didn’t take one, but clearly Patrick did.

  “I had to,” he says defensively. “It was trying to tase me.”

  That pop-zing was just a taser?

  “But that stirred up the cavalry, so then I had to ride for it.” He knuckles his forehead. “I thought you were ahead of me!”

  No, he couldn’t have thought that. He’d have seen my horse still standing there.

  “You’re a fucking lunatic, Scatter!”

  He fled without me. Tough, fearless Patrick ran for it and left me in the lurch, and now he feels terrible about it, and is taking it out on me. That’s not fair.

  “Why’d you go into the ship in the first place?” he demands, almost tearfully.

  “It was your idea!” I say.

  “Why didn’t you try to stop me?”

  “I did!”

  “No, you didn’t!”

  He is right. I didn’t. I’ve just been bouncing after him from one bad idea to the next, all the way from Amsterdam.

  Just as I am thinking of something really mean to say to him, I see movement in the trees ahead. Is it Francie, after all? Or the others?

  No, it is not. It’s a cavalryman wearing my parka and snowpants, running like hell.

  We kick the pressure plates in our horses’s sides and ride after him, but the horses can’t go as fast as a
man on foot among the trees. We give up the chase and rein in at the hide. Cyborg Eye is still there, rolling around in the snow, trying to get the luggage cords off his ankles. The other guy just ran off and left him. There isn’t much loyalty in Voorst Bos tonight.

  Patrick jumps off his horse and pounces on Cyborg Eye. They wrestle, kicking snow. I don’t know if Patrick is trying to free him or kill him, and Cyborg Eye doesn’t know either. He’s struggling and yelling—

  “Mine! It’s MINE!”

  “MINE!” Patrick responds.

  Aardie wriggles clear of the fight. She lollops up to me, holding a dirty stone in her robot arm, which was impersonating an aardvark’s snout, although now the fur is hanging in bedraggled strips. My phone vibrates. I don’t need to look at it. In a trance, I slide off my horse, take the object, and rub it cleanish on my coat.

  I am holding a Void Dragon egg.

  It’s a deep, beautiful turquoise, with paler streaks that shade into white veining.

  I thought I was sitting on something hard when we were in the hide.

  “That’s mine!” Cyborg Eye yells. “I found it!”

  “Hell with that,” Patrick says. “It’s mine, I mean ours.” He holds out his hand.

  But I’m mad at Patrick. And anyway, he doesn’t know what he’s asking for. A Void Dragon egg is not a treasure. Francie was right about that. It’s a weapon of mass destruction. The smart thing to do with this egg would be to give it to Dr. Joy so he can—

  —give it to the Offense?

  Things can hardly get any worse at this point, so I walk past Patrick and shove the egg at Cyborg Eye. “Yup, you found it.” While he’s cradling it, I instruct Aardie to snip the luggage cords around his ankles. “Put those clothes on.”

  “I’m not cold,” he says. “It was keeping me warm. It was, like, radiating through the snow.”

  It didn’t do that for me and Patrick, which suggests I made the right call. It belongs to Cyborg Eye. Poor bastard. I have just written The End underneath his life, but he doesn’t know that. He can hardly let go of the egg long enough to put his clothes—that is, Patrick’s clothes—on.

  Beams of light shine through the trees. I hear horses crashing through the snowy undergrowth, bellowing in their deep robotic voices, and something that might be a cracking branch, but sounds a whole lot like a gunshot.

  They’re coming for us.

  10

  Our Lord and Savior saves us. Or rather, Christmas Eve does. I forgot it was the 24th. Even sleepy little Oekel, it turns out, pushes the boat out for Jesus’s birthday. The building next to the café is a church. The doors spill golden light. People throng the single street, herding a shaggy cold-tolerant cow and a bemused donkey towards the church for Midnight Mass. The café lady has a table outside where she’s giving away hot wine and Christmas cookies. I grab a cookie as we sidle past, but it almost chokes me. These poor people have no idea that a few klicks away, a Void Dragon is waiting, preparing to burn Oekel to the ground, and move on.

  They’re not completely oblivious to the goings-on in Voorst Bos, however. The cavalry detachment chasing us runs into a roadblock of amiable Dutch revelry. The lads are pulled from their horses, wine cups thrust into their hands, and Santa hats balanced on their bearskins, while children are set on their steeds for fun. Komaan, kerels, it’s Christmas! If I didn’t know better I would think they were helping us to get away.

  I see all this from the window of the 22:07 mag-lev for Brussels as it pulls out of the station.

  We’ve done it, we’ve escaped. But I feel no relief at all. No place in the solar system is safe anymore.

  The 22:07 is a party train. Apparently this is a tradition. These revellers will travel by rail all over Europe, celebrating Christmas in as many countries as possible within 24 hours, while getting shitfaced. They are already well on their way and no one pays much mind to a pair of very muddy cavalrymen keeping close watch on a guy who sits on the floor, gloating into the cave of his half-zipped parka. Cyborg Eye is really doo-lally over his egg. His actual name is Jeremy Delacroix. I feel sorry for him. He’s got it worse than I ever did (and Francie hardly has it at all).

  Gliding back into Brussels, I have an end-of-days feeling. Everyone in our carriage is braying “Silent Night” in Dutch. They’re unknowingly participating in humanity’s last sing-along before the end of the world. I recognize the same choking sense of doom I had inside the Terrorflop, and glance up in a panic, but all I see is the paper chains strung along the overhead luggage racks.

  The awful feeling follows me back to Brussels Sprouts. Patrick does not ask me why I’m so quiet. He’s equally quiet himself, his face like freshly poured concrete. Jeremy is the only one talking, and he’s talking to his egg. “Awww you gorgeous thing … aren’t you shiny … lemme polish you a bit more …”

  “Shut up,” Patrick snarls.

  We descend the stairs to the 19th century.

  It’s noisier than usual, and as we slink past the kitchen, I see why. The Brussels Sprouts Christmas pageant is in full swing.

  “Is that Paul?”

  He’s on the DIY stage, playing second violin in a string quartet.

  Patrick’s concrete grill cracks. “Ha ha, that lunatic.” He cups his hands to his mouth and shouts, during a soulful diminuendo passage, “Y’ALL NEED MORE PRACTICE!”

  Everyone turns around and shushes us furiously. Then Maxime spots me, and before I know what’s happening, I am waiting at the side of the stage with the next lot of performers. “You ‘ave lost your ‘arpsichord? Tant pis,” Maxime smirks. “But your aardvark can play ze role of dog. Real dog performer failed drug test. I ‘ave to fire her.”

  Taking in the costumes around me, I realize it is a Nativity skit. What’s more the Virgin Mary is being played by Huifang. “Francie was gonna be the dog,” she whispers under cover of the applause for the string quartet. “But she didn’t show up for rehearsal. Then Maxime says she failed that drug test. I dunno what the heck’s going on. What are you wearing?”

  “Long story,” I say, feeling faint. This cannot be happening. I’m about to take part in another last: the Nativity Play at the End of the World. We are herded onstage. The cow trips over the top of the stairs and comes in half. Laughter washes over me.

  “How did it go at Oekel?” Huifang whispers.

  She has no idea, absolutely no idea, and I can’t even begin to explain. Fortunately at that moment a shepherd shoves me to the back of the stage and tells me I’m a Roman legionary. I tap with trembling fingers on my phone, instructing Aardie to lie down near the cardboard-box manger.

  It’s a comic Nativity skit. Mary requests an epidural. Joseph (played by Badrick) calls 911. The Three Kings arrive dressed as paramedics.

  The audience are in stitches until, just as Mary is giving birth behind a carpet splattered with ketchup, Aardie rises to her feet.

  My phone buzzes.

  Aardie leaps off the stage and bounds through the audience, heading for the door.

  Huifang forgets that she’s meant to be in labor. She sits up, saying, “Hey, where’s she going?” It is thus that she catches sight of Jeremy, a.k.a. Cyborg Eye, who’s worked his way to the front of the audience, apparently wishing to give his egg (poorly concealed inside the edge of my parka) a better view. “Oh my God!” Huifang screeches. “That’s the guy who letched on me at the nudist club in Amsterdam!”

  Gusts of hilarity batter the stage—this is her best line yet. People nudge Jeremy, asking him if he’s the real father of Baby Jesus.

  I can’t take any more of this. I jump off the back of the stage and work my way around the edge of the crowd.

  Where’s Aardie gone? That stupid, stupid mecha. I wish I had never put her back together. All she’s brought me is grief. I should really cease having anything to do with other living creatures, be they biological or robotic.

  In the hall, I find Aardie tussling with Francie. She’s got her robot arm wrapped around one of Francie’s legs.
Francie is hopping on one foot and trying to kick her.

  “Down, Aardie,” I say tonelessly into my phone.

  “I came back for Pinkie Pie,” Francie says through gritted teeth. “Why’s your goddamn mecha attacking me?”

  “She’s detected traces of ringwoodite …” I consult my phone … “Perovskite, and forsterite … on your pants.” I also notice several previous notifications. Aardie tried a bunch of times to tell me about the egg that Jeremy was sitting on.

  “Get her off me.”

  Aardie releases her grip and retreats, obedient to my command.

  “Thanks.”

  Francie strides off down the hall. Aardie and I keep pace with her. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the States?”

  “I’m going tomorrow. The flight was delayed on account of some dumb airspace restriction order.”

  I think I know what that’s about, too. It’ll be the DoD landing a spaceplane in Voorst Bos to waft Dr. Joy back into space, when they should actually be arresting him.

  “So I figured I might as well come back for Pinkie Pie. I was planning on leaving her, but …” Francie shakes her head, doesn’t finish. Maybe she has got it, after all. The connection that doesn’t break, but breaks worlds. I should tell her to forget it, get on that plane. America would be as good a place as any to wait it out when the sun dies. But I selfishly want to be in her company for a few more minutes.

  Mooning over her profile, I notice that we’re heading for the fields. “Where did you leave Pinkie Pie? Not in your cell?”

  “I’m not that stupid.”

  The train platform lights up as we walk along it. The train isn’t running, so we jump off the end of the platform and plod through the zucchini fields. Sensor-activated ceiling lights—dim red-tinted ones, not the UV growlights—follow us. As the noise of the Christmas pageant fades behind us, it’s very quiet. Irrigation sprinklers hiss. Our boots squelch.

  Zucchinis.

  Butternut and acorn squashes.