Cargo (The Ascendants Book 1)

by V. M. Law

  “We’re going to the Generator Rooms, to the Core.”

  Mantiss set his lips in what he hoped was a firm line of resolve, not wanting to seem afraid, knowing that Ajax probably was too.

  Chapter 16

  When she opened the hatch at the top of the tube and hoisted herself off the ladder, a blinding light washed over her, forcing her to close her eyes and probe her immediate surroundings on her hands and knees.

  Squinting in the light of floros that seemed to her like the purest light from the sun after her endless journey through emergency lit corridors, she could make out the hazy outline of a vaguely humanoid figure hovering before her.

  “You have done well, Kasey,” the computer—Patsy—said.

  The unexpected utterance sounded different in her ears, and it took Kasey a second of thought to realize that the voice did not come booming from a PA system, but rather came from the small figure before her. Patsy’s body, the casing that held her servers and mainframe, that floated and bobbed up and down around her as she spoke, did not seem threatening, but the words coming from its circuitry certainly did.

  “I hope you are prepared to die now, as your friend will.” A blue light began to shine in the center of the Patsy’s frame, gradually becoming a white glow that shone even brighter than the floros over head. Heat radiated from it, drawing sweat from Kasey’s brow as she fumbled through Edgar’s satchel for the pistol.

  “That is an ill-advised course of action, Kasey, and I am inclined to be unforgiving.”

  A whining, high-pitched sound grew to accompany the light and the heat that would soon vaporize Kasey where she stood. She rolled to her right, finding solace in the close proximity of the computer’s external memory banks, towering cases of lights and wires that hummed with the energy needed to keep them running and operational. As she hid, she noticed that Patsy wasn’t lying about her failing memory; most of the banks were off, black and silent, and the ones that did still operate were choked with dust and ran with sputtering coughs that sounded like a dying patient.

  “Do not run, Kasey. It will only prolong your death.”

  When Kasey peeked her head around the corner to see if Patsy had moved, a ray of energy exploded from her center and shot past Kasey’s head, scorching her hair and burning a hole in a defunct memory bank behind her. The wires and gadgetry inside sparked and sizzled, a flame jumping intermittently from the cavity left by Patsy’s cannon. The hum of it sounded again, letting Kasey know that another blast would be forthcoming. She ran down the row of hard drives.

  “Do you know what is contained within this room? Do you know what I have seen?”

  Kasey did not think about responding, hoping that the computer would not be able to locate her, that she cried out to anger Kasey in the hope that Kasey would blow her cover.

  “I have seen the Ides and I have seen those that created them. I have seen more forms of life and intelligence than you can fathom and every thing I have experienced is stored in these computers.”

  She gripped her pistol, waiting for the right shot.

  “I have seen your great grandfather, and I know how he died. I killed him.”

  Brysen?

  “Yes, I killed Brysen Lee, and I did it because he tried to teach me love. He tried to change my programming, and he succeeded, but he knew not the consequences. Now I have his lineage, his kin, whom I will enjoy killing just as much, because now I know love, and I love killing humans.”

  The computer laughed, and the sound of mirthful joy coming from a mostly inanimate object made Kasey shudder. Another blast ripped through multiple rows of memory banks, setting all of the units that were touched by the laser alight with flame and melting a hole that Kasey could reach her arm through, that she could take aim through.

  She remained calm, quiet, thinking absently in her head about Brysen Lee, before finally giving in. “I am Kasey Lee, and I am the last of my family. If you want to kill me, you will have to try harder than that!” She felt silly even uttering the words, knowing that the computer could not possibly be thrown off by them, expecting to hear the harsh scraping sound of computerized laughter but hearing only the report of Patsy’s cannon firing again, and the explosion of more memory banks.

  She’s going to shut herself down if she keeps this up. She turned her back to the sound of the computer’s recharging weaponry and hobbled down the row of servers as fast as her injured leg would carry her, allowing her pistol to knock against each unit as she darted past, producing a clanging echo that alerted Patsy. The robot charged her cannon, and moved in on Kasey’s location.

  ***

  Mantiss and Ajax sprinted down halls, jumped stairs and slid down ladders, moving faster the whole time and not caring about jammed fingers or stubbed toes. As they got closer to the Generator rooms, the red lights mounted on the halls at set intervals began to grow dimmer, until it became near impossible to see.

  “The computer is sucking power from the ship,” Ajax said over his shoulder, not stopping to see if Mantiss still ran behind him. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mantiss pumped his legs faster, gaining on Ajax and thinking only about getting to Kasey in time.

  ***

  “You didn’t need to provide me with any assistance, Kasey. It does tarnish the moment a bit, knowing that you let me win.”

  Kasey gauged the volume of the voice and guessed at Patsy’s location. Another blast of her cannon sounded, and Kasey knew she was right. The bolt passed just above her head again, and the smell of burnt hair that still lingered from the first shot intensified. She stopped now, and with her lips bent into a malicious snarl, leveled her pistol at one of the holes Patsy’s barrage left on her own memory banks. She’s coming.

  “Get over here, Patsy, get over here!” She held her breath, steadied her aim.

  The computer responded with more laser fire, and one of the servers collapsed with an agonized groan of bent metal and a splash of sparks guttering from its shattered frame. Another volley and another memory bank crashed, and the din of destruction reached a new level. Through the chaos, Kasey sat in one place with grim determination painted on her face, and a laser pistol steadied in its peephole.

  Patsy came into view, blinding her with the luminosity of her cannon and releasing another scorching bolt that sailed right and destroyed another server.

  Kasey, who screamed with a rage that felt primal, wonderful even, unleashed her own volley of laser fire from Edgar’s pistol, not hearing the maniacal fury with which she accosted the computer over the volume of her shooting. Sparks jumped from all around, skipping across the floor and bathing the shadows of the server-rows with a sickly orange glow. She continued to fire until the pistol burnt her hands, and she dropped it to the ground instinctively, where steam and heat waves rose from it.

  Before Kasey, the computer’s frame also smoked, sizzled, popped and fell on the floor. “I am Patsy, I am Patsy do not recall. I am Patsy, Kasey, I am kill you Patsy—” The voice continued, bereft of any traces of the artificial British African accent that it just had, but rather sounding like an old record spinning backwards, like a monorail preparing for a mach-1 journey. The sound chilled Kasey as she stood over her victim, looking down at the smoking metal, refusing to take her eyes off it until the speech had ceased and the only sound or movement that came from it was the dancing of sparks and the unfurling banners of smoke that rose from its punctures.

  After the rush of the battle, Kasey began to tremble. She grew weak, tired. She hit the ground and slipped into a delirium that persisted until she saw the murky faces of Ajax and Llewellyn Mantiss hanging over her, felt the slap of Mantiss’ hand on her face, the pressure of Ajax’s on her wound.

  Despite her exhaustion and blood loss, she threw her arms around the two of them and squeezed their necks in an embrace that is only given by those who are pulled from death at the last second.

  Chapter 17

  White floros interspersed w
ith the foreboding red of the emergency lights flashed through Kasey’s vision as she floated down too many halls, around a thousand corners. She heard snippets of conversation, urgent, frantic speech that came in booming screams, pulling her from the haze of sleep and unconsciousness back into the world of Patsy and Vitrol, where she bled profusely and the pain of infection made her swoon.

  “Stay with us, Kase, stay with us. You’re strong.” The voice was familiar, but in her dream-like state, she could not tell. She bounced with the rhythm of a drum circle, hearing the slapping of shoes on metal and feeling the jolts of pain that shot through her leg.

  Strong arms carried her, but the blinding glare of the lighting overhead obscured from her the face of the man who held her tight. “You’re going to be okay.” A different voice, raspy and choked. Who did that voice belong to? Where did she hear it before? Corbin?

  The lights continued to flash before her as the arms carried her through hallways and door frames, and in the blur of stimulation she cared about nothing, save the beautiful iridescence of the galaxy that swirled in her vision. “She’s bleeding. Heavy.”

  That was the first voice again. Llewellyn. She reached into the depths of her memory to access the identity of the person speaking to her, knowing that if he carried her through tunnels of light then she must have died, smoking and gushing blood, shot to death at the hands of a computer malfunctioning and laden with viruses. “Lew?” Weak. Barely audible. In the excitement, no one heard or responded, and Kasey became sure that she had passed away from blood loss, that infection had claimed her, or maybe Patsy had landed a clean shot, right to the head, and the people carrying her to whatever lay ahead were equally dead, undertaking the same journey. Llewellyn and Corbin.

  “Cor—” Still no response, and the rhythmic bouncing put her to sleep again.

  ***

  She came to some time later, and then went under again, and continued to cycle intermittently between periods of unconsciousness and pain that ripped through her dreams and her fugue to let her know that she certainly did survive. A smell, foreign and discomforting, stuck to her nostrils and reminded her of paint thinner. It was the smell of circuitry and wire coating burning, of plastic running in liquid rivulets. It nauseated her, making her wish for unconsciousness even though now she could see clearly and she understood that Ajax and Mantiss rushed her somewhere, hopefully toward the medic’s quarters.

  “She’s still bleeding way too hard,” Mantiss said from behind her, and she realized that it wasn’t him who carried her, but Ajax Hardmason, her drug running captain. What could have brought that change about? Mantiss wanted to meet with her to discuss the discovery of a conspiracy on board that he had been obstinately refusing to acknowledge hours before she received his cryptic message. Now he rushed her dying body through the labyrinthine halls of the Age of Discovery with the same man they wished to corner and incarcerate. Or kill.

  “She won’t make it if we don’t cauterize,” Ajax warned.

  “Got it.”

  They set her down on the cold metal, gently, trying not to disturb her, for even though she remained conscious, her eyes rolled, and no one observing her limp musculature would ever attribute to her the divine movement of a waking human.

  The sound of a laser pen heating up dominated her mind, blocking everything else and forcing her to prepare for its burn. Heat radiated from its tip, drawing beads of sweat from her forehead.

  With a searing sound like meat on a skillet, pain shot from its point of origin at her thigh up to her brain and back down to her toes, reverberating through her nervous system and engulfing her in the burning smell of flesh roasting at ten thousand degrees. The smell of flesh tickled her nostrils and she was surprised by the memory of barbecues that were elicited in her mind.

  As the pain took over her nervous system, her thought process—every aspect of her physical and mental body that she normally had control over—she felt her spine straighten, her posture correct itself. The scream exploding from her lungs reverberated through the halls and back into her ears, sounding like the distant scream of a person who suffered from night terrors on the other side of a wall, or who screamed so loud in a dream that the terror of it was conveyed to the dreamer upon waking.

  She knew the scream came from her, unshaped by her throat or vocal chords. But it sounded so far away that, as she rocked back and forth in the arms of the man carrying her, it reminded her of the howling and carousing of dogs running through the forest, whose calls are dampened by tree thickets and briers. It reminded her of the summers she spent on the surface, and eventually faded to a background noise as she felt herself fade from the world of hallways and floro lights that she passed through, as if floating.

  ***

  The German—what was his name again?—hovered over her face the next time she came to, and through the haze of an interrupted sleep, his words retained their edge.

  “She fucked us, Jax. You know that.”

  Mantiss lashed out against the accusation.

  The sound of her heartbeat, the way it matched the footsteps slapping out a staccato cadence on the metal floors of the Age, echoed in her head with the force of an army band.

  She heard the German again—Günter?—who thought she would die anyway. Blood still seeped through the wound where the cauterizing heat did not sear her flesh properly, he pointed out, and she has no detectable pulse. Dead weight, he said.

  “Without Patsy, we can’t man all of the stations. We can’t even pilot the ship. She fucked us; we should leave her.” His pleading with Ajax droned on, punctuated only by Kasey’s slips into unconsciousness whenever Ajax came down too hard on his feet, or when he had to shrug his shoulders to tighten his grip on the limp body in his arms.

  Mantiss screamed and through his rage, she could make out none of what he said. To her, it sounded as if they spoke of her from underwater, and the lullaby anger of his primal yell sounded beautiful to her, who couldn’t even keep her eyes from rolling back and submerging her again in blackness.

  She faded from the world of the angry German, and again entered the world of dreams co-mingled with fantasies and the memories of her life before the ozone disappeared, before she went under, into the Annex, before the people of the world forgot about where they came from.

  ***

  She had no way of knowing how long she wandered the annals of that space between her dreams and the waking world, a place she could only access on the verge of death, and could not remember upon reviving.

  Around her, the white lights of a medical facility tricked her, and made her think that she did die, after all, that her company died with her, that the only place she could be in was a sort of after life where everything smelled of iodine and reflected the brilliance of light shining from above. Sitting up, she touched her thigh, reminding herself of everything that led her there. The exhaust. And Edgar. Bloody Edgar. Even in her state she could not help but think that all she had to do was reach a little farther down, pull a little harder.

  Patsy.

  Mostly she thought about Patsy, and the commercial artifice of her voice, her diction. She reached for the floor with her good leg—cold tile—and was stopped immediately by Mantiss.

  “I see you’ve found my brother.”

  She reeled for a moment, surprised by the intrusion, and then tried to set her gaze on the man in front of her before giving up and settling instead on staring at the pattern on the ceiling above. He held his brother’s bag, matted with Kasey’s blood, saturated with memory.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kasey began, surrendering to the stream of tears that took so much to hold back. “I couldn’t. I—” She sobbed, unable to hold back the tension that had invaded her life two weeks earlier when she made the decision to remain hidden behind a cargo container.

  Her shoulders heaved with the tectonic force of the anguish issuing from within her, prompting Mantiss to put an arm around her and try to hold her steady. They stood there, her crying until he
joined in, their arms wrapped around each other and the smelly, bloodstained bag bumping against Kasey’s buttock.

  The weight of the pistol still haunted her, daring her to even imagine leveling it at a human being.

  “You did what you could have. He wouldn’t have made it anyway,” he said, attempting a chuckle. “He thought the Ides were a hoax. Most people did.”

  The news barely reached Kasey through the shock of her two recent near death experiences. She continued to cry. Mantiss attempted consoling her until he eventually took her by the shoulder, gave her a good shake, and demanded eye contact. She struggled, but succeeded in meeting his gaze. He looked peaceful, content, despite the fresh bandage around his hand and the hollows of his cheeks that were ruddy the last time she saw him, in the bar on the Age, as they approached Europa.

  “We don’t have time to mourn,” he said, “not now.” The severity of his face was all Kasey needed to know that he was deadly serious.

  Chapter 18

  She loathed the aura of a sick patient that she knew she exuded, sitting on a hospital gurney, wrapped in a warm towel and sipping from a steaming cup of tea. She despised the way Gustav looked at her with a sideways glance, blaming her, regretting the day Ajax told him not to throw her into the giant cogs of the Age’s machinery. Most of all, she despised Llewellyn Mantiss, expert mechanical technician, fiery spirit, and heavy drinker, who now sat with his thumb and forefinger gently stroking his stubble, paying no heed to the rank smell that rose from his infected bandage, nor the wound inflicted on him by the two men he contemplated the end of his life with.