Beyond the Rubicon

by John Peaseland

  Lilly, who’d sat down, back to the wall said, “We got to buy some time, I’ve got to get them packages into the airlocks. I think I can remote pilot the robots, but I don’t think the Sporo will wait.”

  “Thought the signal wasn’t strong enough!” Bram said.

  “It should be strong enough now, they’re standing right outside the door for God’s sake!”

  There was more thinking; Lilly was doing it. “I’ll bring them all to airlock three, this one, the one furthest away from where Sporo is now. The base will be vulnerable during the transference.” More thinking. “Also, San’s gonna need at least twelve hours to produce enough sodium hydroxide to kill it.”

  I groaned and turned onto my side. “We ain’t gonna last twelve minutes the ways things are going.” That was the last negative thing I said that day. Amphetamine, like all oral medicine, takes ten to twenty minutes to absorb into the gut and begin its miracle transformation about the blood stream and nervous system. My head suddenly felt twice its normal size and I felt euphoric, but I can't say it was in a pleasant way, more as if I was living in somebody else's body. Synapses began to shoot off in rapid disjointed directions and it took me all my willpower to get them back into order. Sporo’s constant attempt at dismantling the site didn’t help matters.

  Out of the blue, San said, “We've got some, or should I say three, ready and willing plasma rifles… we couldn't use them before… inside I mean, because they don't stop until all the energy is expended.”

  “What the fuck you on about San?” Bram asked, his face beginning to reanimate.

  “We were going to use them when the Sporo was inside the base, but then decided against it. If we didn’t hit the bastard in a hard part, like its heart or something, the pulses would have travelled past the target and blown a hole through the side of the base.” He stopped, and purposefully looked away from where I was beginning to rise from prone. “Maybe now that it’s outside, someone… you know, not for a long time or nothing… could give the fucker a blast or two? It might clear it off the roof long enough for us to achieve our twelve-hour breathing space.”

  I stared right at him. “So, who gets to stay in the base and who gets to go out and shoot up the Sporo, risking life and limb again; as if I didn’t know?”

  Bram on the verge of what looked like an amphetamine induced brain explosion, his eyes unblinking, orbs about to pop his skull, took charge. It was about time. “Paul, stop your fucking whinging why don’t you? Me and you go out, now let’s get suited up!”

  “Welcome back Bram,” I whinged.

  Bram’s mouth went into overdrive. “Lilly controls the robots, Clem and Pernio bring the supplies in, and San, you get cracking straightaway with that chemical production. How near completion of the equipment are you?”

  “It’s done… ready, the water’s in the tank, just need to add the salt. I’ve got the carbon rods and diodes ready for electrolysis. I can start skimming off the crystals soon as we begin.”

  “Good,” rasped Bram, in his best re-energised smoker’s voice, “because soon as you’ve got enough salt through, then we begin loading the trap. Clem, you and Pernio keep him supplied.” He offered me a hand up. I took it. “You and me better get going, I reckon six of them minutes have gone already.”

  Like Billy Whizz, Bram and I left off to get suited and booted. Well he did, I was already half dressed. Whilst getting sorted, San gave us the essentials relating to the operational use of plasma guns. He brought us three, as if we might want to choose the best, meanest looking. “When you fire it, make sure you hit the target and not the building… you’ll blow great holes through it. Apart from pulling the trigger and hitting the target, that’s all you need to know… really.”

  I was pulling on a new life support pack. “What about reloading?”

  “Well the plasma is essentially very hot and energetic matter. When it hits, there is a massive thermal transfer from one object to another. If it hits the Sporo then it will cause serious burns, melting and evaporating in a rippling effect. If it hits a secondary target, then it will cause catastrophic thermal damage… so don’t hit the base.”

  “Hang on, you just told us that. I asked about the reloading!”

  “Well, it uses up a lot of energy and takes about three minutes for the titanium battery to reload the charge. You have enough charge for one more shot after the first, and that’s it.”

  “So, let’s get this right, I shoot once and then dance the Tango for three minutes whilst waiting to use it again?”

  “Well you can use the other stuff, conventional pulse rifling, only that doesn’t work… we tried it. So, yeah that’s pretty much it.” San said this with a serious expression; I could have laughed if I hadn’t been close to tears.

  Ten minutes later me and Bram were at airlock three... again. The remains of the Sporo’s fingertip was glued to the ground in one corner, as if it had flicked itself there in search of escape. Blue and orange chemical burns washed up the angles of the walls that still dribbled with water. Clem, finding herself in a brief hiatus between jobs, had come to wish us well, and as she closed the inner airlock she waved a limp goodbye. Peering out of the exit porthole, I saw that Lilly had already moved robot three; if it had ever arrived here in the first place.

  The water gushed in and I was more prepared this time for the disorientating effects of the washing cycle. I held onto Bram and in turn, part of the padded safety rail that ran along the length of the inner-closure. We still got twisted and turned, and Bram took a little longer to readjust than I did, after the airlock had been totally flooded.

  I stepped out and had a bob-look upwards, poking my head quickly in and out in the same manner a person might peek-a-boo from his door, during a violent thunderstorm. I couldn’t see shit. The Sporo could be sitting above me and land on my head before I would know it was there. I motioned Bram and he followed me out thinking it safe. So much silt billowed around that planning a secure route was hopeless. It was a matter of trusting to God, if you believed in him, or luck if you didn’t. Human survival depends on our sense of smell, of our sight and hearing, of which we had none. I wondered if the Sporo had different senses to ours and could actually see through this murk. If it could, then it was adios amigos for me and Bram.

  We had walked a good distance before we cleared the billows of alluvium, created from the destructed hanger. It was now moving like a bank of capricious fog behind us, never settling on a direction it wanted travel. As we turned we saw the top of Blue Base, the dome.

  “Hey, the water’s gone down a bit.” It was the only part of Blue Base I could see, the rest enveloped in sediment.

  “That’s great news for long-term,” Bram replied, “but not much help right now.”

  There was the Sporo, sitting atop. At this distance it appeared like a purple toupee on the head of a cleric. Sporo was thumping and smashing at the structure holding several broken pieces of metal it had come by. It was my guess that it had evolved from hunter gatherer of its species, to that of Stone Age tool-maker.

  Bram and I were on channel 6, a talk-through with just ourselves for company. A separate channel was being used by base. Those back there were on channel 11, organising the collection and distribution of supplies. We’d decided this was best practise, to avert distraction and confusion between parties carrying out two very different tasks. The downside was that critical decisions had to be taken without consensus.

  “We cannot shoot it from here, we’ll destroy the base,” I said softly, somehow hoping Bram would say, “You’re right, let’s go home.” Instead he said, “I don’t fancy waving my arms at it either, what do you think?” Neither of us wanted to commit to an action that was, on the face of it, borderline insane, and most certainly suicidal.

  I turned to the weapon in my hand, trying to get a feel for it. Maybe it would help me make my decision. I found that if you held the gun-sights at an exact distance from the helmets visor, and closed one eye, you could use
the rangefinder to target. It was a much slower procedure than if working in a natural environment where you could just stick your eye up to the scope. “Jesus suffer the little children, I don’t know I can get a shot off.”

  Bram was of the same opinion. “Let’s find some cover at least, then we attract its attention. Get it closer. Maybe we can hide after shooting it.”

  “OK,” I agreed, “but let’s just take one shot at a time, then the other person can use his rifle as cover. Only shoot it if necessary, whilst the other recharges.” It was at this point that a very important oversight occurred to me; when it was far too late to do anything about it. “Why the fuck didn’t we bring the third gun?”

  We cautiously made our way over to what remained of Hanger 2. The majority of silt had moved away with the current, revealing a picture akin to an image I’d seen in a magazine; it had been called The End of Days. We’d thought – at the time - that nothing could look as bad as this, but we hadn’t seen this. There were some shapes you could recognise, like squares and rectangles that had survived the destruction, but everything else was a spaghetti of broken metal and machinery. Huge skeletal remains, half upright in the form of wind-beaten tents lay dotted about as if they’d been blown out of a mine-field. What complicated things was the razor-sharp edges strewn all around the place that would cut you to shreds as soon as look at you.

  “We could easily rip our suits hiding in this lot Paul,” Bram said, echoing my thoughts.

  I nodded agreement. “Over there then… look, where those barrels are.” It was the same rusted barrels Clem and I had seen - how long ago was that - underneath the floodlights, that by some miracle were still working.

  Shaking like a couple of shitting dogs we tucked ourselves behind a barrel of choice, and then gulping air rather than breathing it, we beat them with fury, our gun butts making dull donks on the bare metal. At first, Sporo didn’t react, but then as we continued, the shocks of disturbance, like those of a sound wave, must have reached its sensitive parts. Understanding rolled across its flesh to where its malevolent brain must lay. The thing didn’t exactly look in our direction, but it stopped and metaphorically sniffed the air. It unfurled off the dome. We lost sight of it as it went into the gloom of the debris field.

  “I’ll shoot first,” I said to Bram, my words trembling. “From this angle, when it emerges it won’t be in line with Blue Base.”

  “Your call! Good luck 303.”

  “You too, my friend.”

  When the Sporo came into view it approached with careful deliberation, not gung-ho bravado. We waited, fingers on triggers. It took the centre ground and stopped.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why doesn’t it come forward?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I trained my sites on the monster, the red crosshairs pulsing each time the weapon decided that the target was fully engaged. I was assuming the gun had an idea where the middle of the Sporo was, but I wanted to be closer when I took the shot. I moved slightly to the left, away from the drum and cover, trying to draw the thing nearer. It was also a tactical move, because I wasn’t absolutely certain that my previous aim didn’t compromise the bottom right-hand corner of Blue Base. It was hard to tell; I couldn’t see it. The movement beneath my feet disturbed pearly clouds, the kind you see in the Badlands beyond the farms on Earth, when a dust devil picks up what’s left of the desiccated soil and throws it skyward in swirls.

  “Is it burrowing?” Bram croaked in a lower pitch than was his norm. He followed up his question with an observation. “Look, it is it’s burrowing sideways, trying to outflank us.”

  Indeed, counter to the current, whirls of sand were being disturbed, and moving lumps were appearing on the ground where before there had been none. Worried by developments I took my shot, right where the crosshairs told me was best. Even in the cushion of water, the gun bucked with a release of massive kinetic energy. The bullet, or whatever you might call such a projectile, seemed unencumbered by the medium of liquid. It sped quicker than sound through the brine, without losing its pointed cone shape. It hit, and the Sporo rippled.

  “I got it, I got it,” I sang with glee. I turned to Bram to slap his hand and watched him taken off his feet. Something, a loose or broken cable maybe, had somehow wrapped itself around his middle. He was dragged, without a word of surprise, high speed, toward the debris cloud where the Sporo was rapidly seeking shelter.

  Bram came to life milliseconds later. He tried digging the butt of his gun into the sand to halt his progress, but apart from making deep plough marks, it made no difference to his onward charge. This unstoppable forward motion dragged him on and off his feet a couple of times, and then he hit something hard and tumbled over. I saw his head then heels, rise and fall, like a runaway wagon-wheel. The gun was thrown from his hands and floated to rest, almost relieved, that for it at least, the ordeal was over. Bram disappeared into the fog. I picked up his track half minute later and went in search of my friend, as quickly as I could hustle forward.

  Bram’s cries for help came to me clear, and in stereo. I entered the cloud, totally at the mercy of the injured Sporo; my humanity preventing me from leaving Bram to his awful fate. I would kill us both if I had to.

  Almost on my knees, I found the gouges of an intermittent dragging trail. Minutes must have passed before I came up behind Bram, who was by this time, moaning and incoherent. The middle of his torso was pinned at the entrance to some pipework about half a metre in diameter. The Sporo was pulling him, playing him in like a fish on a line. It could easily have finished the job, yet it wanted to torture him first it seemed. Half in, half out the pipe I tried to pull Bram clear. I grabbed his waist, and Bram, half sensing my presence turned his head, wanting to say something to my helmeted ear. Whatever it was I couldn’t make it out. Blood was beginning to swell and bubble in his mouth.

  I got a grip of his helmet rim and was considering removing it, give him a quick death when he snapped in two and was forcefully pulled into the pipe. His head and legs met in a macabre dance, spinning and twisting. His suit started to ripple and crumple. The pipe bulged with the poor man’s body, his legs still jigging. His anus was exposed, blood and faeces’ shot from the overstretched hole and he was gone. I was left standing in a state of shocked bewilderment.

  My animal brain took over. It ran me back to where Bram had dropped his plasma rifle and had me pick it up.

  I found my way back to airlock two which was the nearest to where I’d ended up. One of the massive robots was still outside and I vaguely wondered why the Sporo hadn’t attacked it. But then it was smart; after the first round, it probably didn’t feel inclined for a second. Just as I was searching the edges of the lock for a way in, the giant robot began to move off. I was lucky to get out of the way of its colossal boots as it walked. It then bent down, its paws neatly embracing the box of supplies and picked them up without bending its knees. The stupid fuck will end up with a bad back.

  The robot helped me remember to switch to channel 11, the main comms frequency for the base. I just had to ask my helmet.

  “Channel 11… channel 11. Emergency… come in! Come in… come in… come in… God dammit!”

  There was static and then Clem’s voice; “Receiving, go ahead Paul.”

  “Let me… let me in… in airlock two… right now.” I couldn’t have made the procedure myself, I was in such a stupor. All my head would compute was the old fairy tale about the big bad wolf that came a-knocking on the door of the three little pigs. If Clem had said, “No, not by the hairs on my chiny chin-chin, I will not let you in,” I wouldn’t have been much surprised. Instead I heard her say “Can you hide for two minutes or so while I get to you. Won’t the airlock open?”

  Was this a question or a command; “Just open the fucking door, quick, Bram is dead!”

  “Standby.”

  Does anybody know where the love of God goes, when the minutes they turn in
to hours? Whilst I waited, I mumbled the song, ‘Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream,’ for a second time that day. I must have been the designated ferryman. As I sang my tuneless ditty, my subconscious was making a mental note of how busy the Sporo must have been with our roof. Most of the satellite equipment was lying about the place. Roof panelling - some standing on edge like bizarre sculptures - and piping, all shapes and sizes, littered the surround as far as the soup would let me see. Thinking I might need a hard hat, I forced myself to come out of my daze. I was pretty sure the Sporo had received a good belt of the plasma, but it hadn’t been enough to kill it. At least it wasn’t attacking… for now.

  Then there was quiet. Bram was dead, David was dead, Jonti too. Patrick was dead, Henry, Bill, James, Conner, Neil - but he was no loss. Was it my turn next? Why me? Why did I have to be here?

  “Airlock two is ready. Activate any time.”

  Words which I will remember for the rest of my life. Rising from a stoop, I repeatedly banged the red touchpad embossed with black cross. It turned green and opened. Water filled the void and I stepped in.

  Chapter Nineteen. Sodium Hydroxide.

  Nobody greeted me once the chamber had finally rid itself of water and I’d entered Blue Base. I guess they were too busy. As I lay on the floor, peeling off the top half of the suit – with only half a care as to whether any cast-off Sporo was attached to it - Pernio and Clem rushed past me. They were pushing a trolley on wheels, full of medium sized boxes. They were sweating and ran over one of my boots in their hurry. Clem stopped, she was annoyed. “What happened, couldn’t you get in? It was all clear when I checked.” She paused, her eyes skittering all over the shop. She didn’t let me answer. “Is it dead… is the Sporo dead? It’s stopped banging.”

  “Injured, don’t know how badly. Bram is dead.”

  Lilly sucked hard. I thought she knew already. “Jeez what happened?... no tell me later, we haven’t time… have to assume it will be back, help us unload these sorbent cans. No, make sure you didn’t bring in any unwanted guests first.”