Steel World

by Larson, B. V.

  “Fry you?” Carlos echoed. “She’s kidding…right, Veteran?”

  “For you, Carlos, the door will make an exception,” Harris said. “It will strike you as dead as a cooked hamburger if you’re one second late.” He laughed then, and it was a rough, unpleasant sound. “You just have to try again,” he explained at last, “but it will warn the occupants and after three tries, if you keep screwing up, it will shut down for a few minutes, alerting security to come investigate.”

  “What’s inside, Veteran?” I asked.

  He smiled at me. “Nothing, right now. But later on this vault will have our most prized possession.”

  We all looked at him quizzically.

  “If you haven’t guessed by now, this is where the revival unit is being deployed.”

  “What?” Carlos demanded. “Are you telling me that there isn’t one on site yet?”

  Veteran Harris frowned at him. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I just told you, Recruit. The unit the heavies had went up with them. Yours is an older model. It will be sent down soon.”

  Older model…those words rolled around in my head and seemed to echo. Could that be why they had trouble and “bad grows”? They gave light troops the worst of everything.

  I raised my hand, and Harris jabbed his finger at me. “What?”

  “Why are we here now, Veteran? Ahead of the machine?”

  “Because you’re going to help carry and deploy it,” he said. “It weighs abouta thousand pounds—and it’s a little gross when you have to move it.”

  Everyone turned and craned their necks, looking back up the tunnel and the long, steep stairway.

  “This just keeps getting better and better,” Carlos muttered.

  “Gag yourself, Ortiz, before I do it for you.”

  I could see Carlos had a rude retort in his mind, but he held it back with difficulty. Harris was known for cuffing recruits who mouthed off too much, and Carlos was one of the supreme mouths in the unit.

  “What do we do in the meantime?” Natasha asked.

  “Wait here, or look around. Guard and secure. It shouldn’t be long. The lifter that brought you brought all your gear, too. I’ll call you back together when they’re ready to slide the machine down that stairway.”

  He left, and we all looked at one another in disgust.

  “Typical,” Carlos said. “Absolutely typical. Nobody gives a shit about recruits in Legion Varus. We climb walls, fall over cliffs and die like lemmings for the cause, you would think—”

  “Shut up, Carlos,” Kivi said, kicking him in the rump.

  The two jostled for a moment, and I lost interest. I walked to the door with the lock on it. I could see it had been cut very recently. The door was old, but the lock and bolt were new. I tugged, then had to heave. The door was very heavy and creaked the way only thick steel can when I opened it.

  A few of the others nosed close behind me. Natasha was first in line. I wasn’t surprised by this. She was kicking around to become a tech, which took special training and legion investment. She had to display an interest in anything the real techs and bios did. In her case, however, I figured the curiosity was real.

  “Look at that stuff on the floor!”

  Our suit lights played around the chamber as we walked in. It was obvious the heavy cohort had kept their revival unit down here. The walls were stained with colorful gore. The floor was—puddled.

  “Is that blood?” Carlos asked from the back.

  “Not just blood,” Natasha said, “looks like lymph and other stuff. Gross.”

  They’d pulled out in a hurry. I had to wonder what kind of special horrors this room had seen over the last few days. There had been deaths among the heavies, but not too many of them.

  “I would guess that they revived some of the light troops down here, after they set up. They died assaulting the walls, and our own units were overwhelmed. They had to use every revival machine in the legion to get us all back on our feet.”

  “Yeah,” said Kivi, looking around. “I came back to life in here.”

  We looked at her, and she shuddered, remembering. “I didn’t remember it until just now. Seeing this place—it’s like finding something you thought only existed in a dream. A bad dream.”

  Besides the biotic waste, there was a pair of large generators and a few barrels of raw materials. Protoplasm, tanks of pre-grown skin and the like.

  The call came in from Harris a few minutes later, and we all jumped. The buzzing in our helmets startled everyone.

  “Get up here, team. We’re at the top of the stairs.”

  We were glad to rush out of the place—but we shouldn’t have been. I recalled watching an ancient comedy about two men taking a piano up a steep staircase, and I soon commiserated with them.

  The machine was huge. It barely fit in the tunnel. Carlos, as usual, was the first to complain.

  “Vet?” he called. “How the hell are we getting this thing through the doorway?”

  “It disassembles, mouth,” he said. “Now, I want all of you grunts down under it on the stairway. You’re here to break this thing’s rapid descent. Let it crush your bones before you let it slide to the bottom. You hear me? We can replace you—but not this monster.”

  “If it disassembles, why don’t we—”

  “Shut up and start braking the fall!” Harris roared.

  We jockeyed into position, but Harris didn’t join us. It was soon clear what his job was: he was going to be up on top, pushing.

  The revival unit was big, about as big as a pickup truck. It was covered in metal, but I knew from experience that it was fleshy inside. When it began rolling down toward us, I honestly calculated that it had to weigh more than a pickup. It had wheels, but they were small steel circles with a rubber coating. They reminded me of larger versions of the wheels on a shopping cart. They were inadequate when it came to traversing a steep stairway.

  The worst part was the bounce the thing took every time it dipped over one of those big, wide steps. Each time, I thought we were going to lose it and be crushed.

  We roared, heaved and sweated. Up on top, Harris laughed at our cursing and carrying on.

  At last, the steps ended and we were allowed the relative luxury of rolling the monster down the steel tunnel.

  “Fifty-six,” Carlos said, panting.

  “What?” Kivi asked him.

  “Fifty-six steps. I counted them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I figured at least one of us was going to die under it, so I thought the dead guy might want to know how far down they made it.”

  “That makes a lot of sense, Carlos,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I know, huh?”

  We rolled it to the end of the hall and found the doors locked. I frowned.

  “Veteran? Are these doors supposed to be locked? Cause, we didn’t close them.”

  “Are you sure?” he called from the far side of the machine. We couldn’t even see him back there.

  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  “I heard the tunnels were haunted. Now you’ve gone and proved it!” he guffawed, but no one found him funny.

  “Vet, I don’t think—”

  “Just open the damned thing, you idiots!” he roared suddenly. “They’re frigging security doors. If you leave them open too long they shut themselves.”

  Everyone looked at me, but I shook my head. I pointed to Natasha. “She’s the smart one,” I said.

  This seemed to please Natasha, who gave me a little smile. Kivi, however, rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  She walked up and pressed the start button. Letters and numbers flashed quickly. She hesitated afterward.

  “Come on, come on!” Carlos said. “You only have like five seconds.”

  She started tapping. I thought she had it right, but it beeped at her. The screen went blank again.

  Kivi cursed and kicked the door.

  “If you clowns can’t o
pen the door, so help me…” began Harris, his voice muffled by the hulking machine between us.

  “Natasha?” I asked.

  “You do it,” she said. “I don’t want to get security down here on my first shot.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should urge her to try again, or what. Then Carlos made a sound of disgust and approached the machine. Everyone reached out and pulled him back.

  “What? All of you think I’m some kind of moron, is that it? Uncool.”

  I sighed and put my hands on the pad. The trick, I thought, was to concentrate. It was only seven symbols. Just like memorizing a license plate. Somehow, that simple task seemed harder when everyone was staring at your back and you were sweating at the bottom of a slimy alien cellar. I couldn’t stop thinking about how bad it smelled in there.

  “Press the damned button, McGill!”

  I slapped my palm on the button, and the sequence flashed. I thought I had it. I began typing. I nearly panicked on the sixth symbol. V for Varus, I remembered. After that, it was easy to finish.

  People immediately began second guessing me.

  “Nothing’s happening.”

  “It took a second before.”

  “You forgot one. There were eight.”

  “No there weren’t.”

  Then there was a click, and the door popped open. I smiled. Everyone seemed happy, except for Carlos.

  “No one likes a show-off, McGill,” he said. “Nobody.”

  Next, we found out how the machine “disassembled”. Essentially, it came apart in two halves, the lower and the upper. This was not good, as it revealed some of the meaty parts in between.

  “What kind of sick alien dreamed this up?” Carlos asked.

  For once, I agreed with him. The machine was grotesque inside. It was like the inside of a giant stomach, or a toothless mouth. When we slid apart the two halves, we had to tip them onto their sides. No one wanted to touch the flesh parts, so we all tried to grip metal with our gloves.

  “What the—” Harris began when he saw what we were doing. “Get over here, Recruit!” Saying this, he grabbed and shoved an unfortunate into the middle of the fleshy section.

  The recruit looked back at us in horror. “There’s nothing to grab onto here.”

  “Yeah, there is. It has bones and ridges, kinda like shells. Stick your hands in there and find something hard. Don’t worry, you won’t damage it with your bare hands. It’s strong.”

  Looking like he was going to puke, the guy did as he was told. “I feel something.”

  “Don’t let it bite!” Harris said suddenly.

  The recruit jerked his hands out, and they came away slick with semi-clear liquids that dripped to the floor.

  Harris cuffed him, thumping a hand on the back of his helmet. “I was kidding…the teeth are in the other half.”

  He burst out laughing again, and we grumbled. Once we all had a firm grip, we heaved and dragged. The outer steel shell of the machine scraped and screeched on the floor. Sparks flew up in bright orange lines from the two metals rasping on one another.

  Finally, we had the bottom half in the room. The top half seemed to go more easily. I think it was the lighter of the two. Getting them both back together was a problem. They didn’t seem to want to match up.

  As we heaved, shouted, pinched fingers and sweated, two bio specialists showed up at the entrance. I turned and was surprised to recognize one of them: Anne Grant. I nodded to her, but she just stared for a second, then looked away.

  I decided not to make anything of it. She probably didn’t want anyone to know she’d helped fool the Galactics. A wise choice on her part, all things considered.

  But still, I couldn’t help but feel slightly put out. I liked her. She was pretty, experienced, tough—and she’d risked her life to help me.

  The two specialists began working on the revival units. They tsked and called us morons. We’d done everything wrong. Carlos pointed out they hadn’t been around to give us direction, and they were lucky it wasn’t upside down.

  This earned him some dark looks, but they stopped complaining and got to work fixing the monstrosity.

  Really, in the end, it fixed itself. They connected thick cords to the generators, and it began to make slapping sounds inside—almost like it was chewing something. They flipped some switches, and the two shell-like halves—the top and bottom jaws, they called them—rolled and shivered until they’d aligned themselves.

  I couldn’t help thinking that the machine resembled a person adjusting and stretching after a long sleep. The “jaws” yawned slightly at times, and the joints rasped and clicked like cracking bones. We all took a step back, except for the bios. The machine stopped clicking and began to make more of those odd, slapping sounds.

  How the hell did this thing work? How did you plug flesh into electrical current and get it to come alive?

  I began to wonder what the aliens who dreamt it up looked like. I imagined freaks of dripping slime. I figured I probably didn’t want to meet them.

  -24-

  Veteran Harris got a call from Leeson, and he raced out the door. We looked after him and shrugged. Having no orders was just fine for any recruit. We all looked for a wall to put their backs against and took a break.

  We removed our helmets despite the stink, and I found the room sweaty and close.

  The bios specialists were still working on their machine, cursing and speaking in their own technical lingo. I took the time to watch Specialist Grant. Kivi was the first to notice this.

  “Quit staring, no girl likes that,” she told me in a loud whisper.

  I looked at her in surprise and gave her a half-smile. “Didn’t know you still cared.”

  She twisted her lips. “You’re pathetic,” she said and left me.

  I shook my head and looked back at Anne. She was working hard and frowning. Her forehead had a sheen of sweat already. I could tell the machine wasn’t in working order yet, and they were worried about it. That brought a frown to my face. What did the specialists know that I didn’t? I thought it was all quiet outside.

  I pushed off the wall I’d been leaning against and walked closer to the two bio specialists. The second one was a tall guy named Specialist Matis, who I didn’t know.

  “Can we help?” I asked Anne.

  Her eyes flicked up to meet mine, then she looked down again, as if flustered.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You recruits would just get in the way. You need a lot of training to work on one of these. This model is an old one—thousands of regrows on the gauge.”

  I looked and saw the gauge she was talking about. Strangely, it wasn’t digital. Instead, it had an analog look to it. Rather than a dial or a numeric readout, it had an instrument that looked more like a vertical temperature gauge. Shaped like an elongated racetrack, the instrument was dark at the bottom and white at the top. The dark part was larger than the light section.

  “Looks like you’ve got a quarter tank left, Specialist,” I said.

  She glanced at me again. “Yeah. Enough for a few thousand regrows, if we’re lucky.”

  “What happens after that?”

  She shrugged and began wiping her hands. They were sticky, and I saw she’d pulled them out of the machine. A drop of goo clung to each fingertip. The stuff was pinkish and looked like thick honey. I was certain, however, that it didn’t taste good.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “These machines vary. After the gauge is full, you run on borrowed time. Kind of like using an engine with barely any oil in it. Or a printer that says it’s out of ink, but keeps printing those last few pages.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t want to be the last guy out of this box. You might come out missing a limb or something.”

  “It happens,” she said. “How are you holding up?”

  I glanced at her, but saw she wasn’t looking at me. She was squatting and had her face up to the aperture in the front, where the two halves met. I squatted next to her
and peered inside.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “No noticeable side effects after the first few days.”

  “Good,” she said. “But I wouldn’t plan on living forever on this grow if I were you.”

  I laughed. “I can’t fix it. My body is my body. What might go wrong?”

  “Deafness, blindness, bone cancer. Lots of things…I’d give you two to five years.”

  I frowned. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting to hear. In fact, it gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I stopped talking and stood up again.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, sensing my mood change immediately.

  “Uh…nothing. It’s cool. I’m not dead, and I guess that’s good enough for now.”

  “What’s the big deal? Just fix it.”

  “How?”

  She stood up and took a look around, then came close, whispering her next words: “Just get yourself killed at some point doing during the next month or two. It’s no big deal. Should be pretty easy to do as a recruit. It will probably happen without you having to do anything, in fact. Dying will get you a fresh grow—problem solved.”

  She bent down again and returned to working on her alien contraption. A spill of dark liquid ran from the mouth section, and when she saw it she shoved her hands in there, cursing.

  I stood there for a second, staring at her and the machine in turns. The bios had such a strange way of thinking about life and death. Don’t like your body? Well, just throw it away and get a new copy…problem solved.

  “Well,” said a voice at my side. “I see you’re helping out the specialists. Can I join in, or is this a private party?”

  I looked down and saw it was Natasha. I felt a jolt of concern. I’d kind of forgotten about her. I know a few things about women, and one was that they hated to be ignored after a date.

  Worse, I could see how she’d probably been watching my conversation with Anne and figured I was hitting on her—or worse, that we were already involved. I hadn’t been helping out, after all, just talking. And from her angle, it had probably looked like I’d been studying Anne’s figure—which was looking good in her jumpsuit.

  “No, no,” I said. “You can help.”

  “No she can’t,” Anne said over her shoulder. “Neither one of you know a damned thing. Now, could you back up a bit? I have to get under this manifold.”