Armored-ARC

by John Joseph Adams

  I ran forward and ploughed into the jungle after him, forcing my way through the active plants by sheer strength. Nine was right there at my side. The others yelled for us to come back, that defending the terraforming equipment was far more important than rescuing one missing grunt. That we were all expendable. I knew that. So did Nine. That’s why we went after Three. Because you have to hang on to some of your humanity or you really would go crazy.

  Strangely, the plants had left a trail for us to follow. A ragged path between tall plants, from where they’d dragged Three away. The surrounding vegetation hadn’t blocked or overgrown it, though they’d had plenty of time. So Nine and I pressed steadily on, the earth shaking under the heavy pounding of our steel feet. And the plants on either side of the trail…held back. It took us a while to realise they weren’t attacking us anymore. And the further from the clearing we went, the quieter everything became; until we were just walking through a still and silent forest, with no need to kill anything. Nine and I looked at each other; and kept going.

  It could be a trap, Paul. But it doesn’t feel like a trap. This is something else. Something new.

  “Watch my back,” I said to the AI, on our private channel. “Full sensor scans. Don’t let anything creep up on me.”

  Of course, Paul. I have Three’s beacon. Straight ahead. He’s not moving. He isn’t answering my calls. Neither is his AI.

  We finally found Three standing alone and very still, right in the middle of a small clearing. Or rather what was left of Three. The hard suit was standing entirely motionless, and it only took me a moment to discover why. The armour was empty. It had opened itself, and there was no trace of the occupant anywhere. Just the broken ends of tubes and cables, hanging limply from the suit, from where Three had broken free of them. Nine and I looked around very carefully, but there was no sign of any body. No blood, no signs of violence. Nothing.

  His AI is dead, Paul. Wiped clean. Suicided.

  “Could Three still be alive here, somewhere?” said Nine.

  “Without his tubes and cables?” I said. “Not for long. Why would he open his suit? The air alone would kill him.”

  “Could the plants have forced it open, from outside? There’s no sign of violence on the front of the armour.”

  “The plants couldn’t have reached him,” I said. “He would have had to persuade his AI to open it for him.”

  “But why?” said Nine. “Why has his AI suicided? Where’s the body? None of this makes any sense!”

  We searched the surrounding jungle, looked and listened with our sensors set to their fullest range, and found nothing at all. The jungle was still and quiet, and the plants made no attempt to interfere with our search. They just stood there, swaying this way and that under the urging of the gusting wind. Almost like normal plants. As though they weren’t mad at us anymore. Or, perhaps, because they were satisfied with Three’s death. Maybe even sated, if they’d eaten the body…

  And then I stopped dead where I was. I’d caught a glimpse of movement, right at the edge of my sensors. Human movement, not plant. Or at least, something very like human. I pointed it out to Nine, but he couldn’t see anything. And now neither could I. I had my AI replay the sensor images, and share them with Nine. Just a glimpse, of something that looked human but didn’t move like anything human…

  “Not Three,” I said. “Whatever that was, it was a complete human figure. Not like us.”

  “Could it have been a survivor from Base Two?” said Nine.

  “I don’t see how,” I said.

  “We have to check this out.”

  “Yes. We need to be sure what that was.”

  We strode quickly through the jungle, and the plants let us pass. Soon enough we came to another clearing, and in it, another hard suit—standing still and silent and very empty. Its steel armour had been chaffed and smoothed by wind and weather, and the stencilled number on its open chest was Thirty-Two. Nine and I stood very still, studying it from a safe distance.

  “It’s an older model,” I said. “This could have come from Base Two, I suppose.”

  “But you saw something moving,” said Nine. “This thing hasn’t moved in ages.”

  We eased forward, one careful step at a time, and peered into the hard suit’s interior. The hanging tubes and cables had withered. The interior of the suit was full of flowers, alive and flourishing—blossoming with wild psychedelic colours.

  “This…is getting seriously strange,” said Nine. “Did the suit’s occupant…turn into flowers?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “He opened up his suit and left it, just like Three. Somehow they left their suits behind and went…somewhere else. Except there’s nowhere for anything human to go on Abaddon.” I turned slowly around in a complete circle, studying the jungle. “Tell me, Nine: what’s wrong with this picture?”

  “The plants are quiet,” said Nine. “Nothing’s attacked us since we left the others to follow Three.”

  “Maybe they’re not hungry anymore,” I said. “After Three.”

  “I never got the feeling they wanted to eat us,” said Nine. “Just kill us. They wanted us dead. Wanted us gone.” He looked at me sharply. “We are gone. We left the clearing. We have to get back! This could all be a distraction, to lure us away while they launched an attack on the equipment!”

  We raced back down the trail. The plants had kept it open. Nine had his guns at the ready, and I had my flamethrower; but we didn’t need them. The plants just watched us pass, misshapen multi-coloured heads bowing and bobbing in the wind. And when we finally burst back into the clearing, all was just as we had left it. The three scientists were still working on the terraforming equipment, while the others patiently patrolled the perimeter. They all looked round as we crashed back into the clearing, and demanded to know where we’d been, and what had happened to Three. But Nine and I were too busy looking back at the jungle. The plants had gone mad again, straining forward with everything they had, desperate to get at us and kill us. In the end I just said The plants got Three. And Nine said nothing at all.

  We went back to guarding the perimeter. And the long hard day wore on.

  Somehow the rest of us made it through to the end of the shift alive. Bone-deep weary and exhausted from fighting back the plants all day, but alive. The perimeter was heaped with torn-apart, bullet-riddled, and flame-blackened pieces of vegetation, some of them still twitching. We were all out of ammunition and power cells, reduced now to fighting the jungle with brute force. The armour did all the heavy lifting, but we still had to work the armour. The real tiredness came from the unrelenting concentration, because you couldn’t relax, couldn’t let your guard down, even for a moment. Or you might end up like Three.

  We were all searching the blood-red skies for the transport ship long before it was due to appear, and when it finally did touch down we immediately turned our backs on the job, and headed for our ride home. I looked back, just as I was about to climb aboard, and the plants had fallen still again. They were only violent when we were around to make them mad…

  I thought about that, all the way back.

  We sat in silence in our two rows, securely strapped in, facing each other. None of us had anything to say. I reported Three’s death to the Base Commander. He didn’t seem too surprised. Or upset. After we landed, and we were walking back to our quarters, it occurred to me to ask Four, one of the scientists, how long he thought it would take to finish assembling the terraforming equipment. Unless we get a lot more help, he said, three years, maybe four. I tried to think of years like the day we’d just had, and couldn’t. Years of constant fighting against an enemy that would never give up? Maybe the Captain was right. Maybe this was Hell, after all.

  In my private quarters, lying on my bed on my side—so I could keep an eye on my tubes and cables and make sure they didn’t get tangled—I remembered the crash again.

  We were flying over the Rainbow Falls, my Alice and me, in our old aircar. We were argui
ng. We were always arguing, back then. We had been so much in love. But it hadn’t lasted. That was why I crashed the car. I drove it quite deliberately into the side of the mountain, at full speed. Alice was screaming; I was crying. I wanted to kill us both, because she said she was going to leave me, and I couldn’t bear the thought of living without her. So I crashed the car, she died, and I lived. They saved me, the bastards. And then they put me in a hard suit, and they put her voice in my head, forever. I couldn’t bear to live without her, and now I couldn’t bear to live with her. Because the memory deposit came from the time when she still loved me. She didn’t remember the crash. She didn’t remember the arguments, or not loving me. She thought we were still happy together, because we were when she made the deposit. She still thought we were in love, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

  They gave her to me as a kindness, but every kind word she said was a torment.

  On the transport ship out, the next day, I told the Commander about the old empty hard suit I’d found.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about that,” said the Commander’s voice. “But you’d just dig it out of the old records anyway, if I didn’t. The crew of Base Two were mostly hard suits. Like you. Their superiors were human, but they stayed inside the Base. Only the hard suits went out into Abaddon to work. And some of them…learned to love this world. This hateful, ugly world. They decided they didn’t want to fight anymore. So they just walked out into the jungle, and opened up their suits.”

  “But…what happened to the bodies?” I said. “Did the plants eat them?”

  “There’s never been any evidence that the plants here are carnivorous,” said the Commander. “The hard suits’ occupants just…disappeared. Now and again, some of the work crews would report seeing ghosts, moving through the jungle.”

  “Ghosts?” said Nine. I knew he was thinking of the moving human figure I’d seen.

  “Illusions. Mirages,” said the Commander. “It’s just stress. This planet wears you down. If you see anything like that, don’t go after them. You won’t find anything. No one ever does. It’s just something else the planet does, to distract you, so it can kill you while you’re not looking.”

  “What happened to the human crew in Base Two?” I said. “Did they learn to love this world too?”

  The Commander had nothing else to say. We flew the rest of the way in silence.

  Out in the jungle again, we walked the perimeter. Maddened raging plants pushed forward from all sides, and I ripped them out of the ground, crushed them to pulp in my terrible grip and threw them aside, or trampled the more persistent ones under my steel feet. I blasted them with fire and bullets and energy bolts, giving it everything I had, just to hold the line. The plants never fell back, never slowed down, never for one moment stopped trying to kill us. I thought again of living through years of this, of endless killing, destroying living things that were only fighting to defend their home. Years…of living with my murdered wife’s kind and loving voice in my head.

  In the end, it only took a moment to decide. I hadn’t gone native. I hadn’t learned to love this ugly, vicious, vindictive world. It still looked like Hell to me. I was just so very tired of it all.

  I stopped fighting, and walked out from the perimeter and into the jungle. The plants immediately stopped fighting me, and actually seemed to fall back, opening up a path before me. I walked on through the jungle, the plants bobbing and nodding their heads to me, as though they’d been waiting for this. Even the wind seemed to have dropped. It was like walking through a garden on a calm summer’s day. Part of me was thinking; This is how they do it. This is how they get to you. But I didn’t care. I just kept walking. I could hear the others calling out to me, on the open channel, but I had nothing to say to them.

  Paul? Why are you doing this?

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because I’m tired of killing.”

  I don’t understand, Paul. You know I could override your control. Walk you back to the perimeter.

  “Are you going to?”

  No. I was put here to help and comfort you. I know I’m not really Alice, but I’m sure she would want you to do the right thing.

  I walked until I couldn’t see the perimeter anymore, and then I just stopped and looked around me. Hideously-coloured, horribly-shaped plants, for as far as the sensor could see. Under a sky of blood, with air that would poison me and gravity that would crush me. Abaddon. Just another name for Hell. Where I belonged.

  “Alice,” I said. “You know what I want. You know what I need you to do for me.”

  I can’t, said the warm, familiar voice that was all that was left of my dead wife. I can’t let you just die. Please, don’t ask me to do this, Paul.

  “I can’t go on like this,” I said. “I want out. Just…open up the suit. I want this to be over. Open the suit, and let me out into this brave new world that has such ugly wonders in it. I don’t want to live like this.”

  I can’t do that, Paul. I can’t. I love you.

  “If you love me, let me go.”

  Like I should have let you go, I thought. I was still sane enough to see the bitter irony in that.

  Paul? What is that? Who is that? Who are those people?

  I looked around. Not far away, this time, not far away at all; the ghosts came walking through the jungle. Just vague human shapes at first, moving easily and unharmed among the plants, as though they were at home there. Not walking in a human way. They stopped, and one of them raised an overlong arm, and beckoned to me. I plunged forward, and the plants really did fall back, encouraging me on. The ghostly figures retreated before me, one of them still beckoning, and I followed them deeper into the jungle, away from the terraforming equipment, away from Base Three, and all that was left of my old human life.

  What are you doing, Paul? Where do you think you’re going?

  “I’m chasing a dream,” I said. “Of a life when I still had hope, and options, and choices that meant something.”

  I could stop you.

  “But you won’t. Because you still love me.”

  She didn’t stop me.

  I followed the vague figures that were somehow always ahead of me, no matter how much I increased my pace. I stopped once, to look back. The trail had closed behind me. There was only the jungle. The plants watched, still and silent, to see what I would do. I turned my back on my old life, and hurried on.

  And finally the ghosts stopped. One of them came back to meet me. It stepped out of the concealing jungle to stand right before me, and I took my time, looking it over. Not human. Humanoid, but not human. Taller than me, smoothly slender, different in every detail. Its basic shape was stretched out and distorted, the arms and legs had too many joints, and the face…had nothing I could recognise as features, let alone sense organs. Only yesterday I would have described it as hideous, alien, inhuman. But I was trying to see the world with better eyes. And anyway, compared to the broken half-thing inside my hard suit, I was in no position to throw stones. I nodded to the shape before me, and to my surprise it nodded back, in a very human way.

  “You’re not a ghost,” I said.

  “No,” it said. Complex mouth parts at the base of its head moved, producing something very like a human voice. “Not ghosts. But we are dead men. Technically speaking. We are the surviving crew of Base Two. Made over, made new, made to walk freely in this best of all possible worlds. We came here in armoured suits, just like you, but we have found a better way. If you want answers, if you want a way out of that suit and your old life, come with me. Come with us, to the Cave of Creation. And be born anew.”

  I didn’t even have to think about it. “Does this Cave of yours have a can opener?”

  I went with them, walking through a calm and peaceful garden, with humanoid things that only remembered being human. They bobbed and bounced around me, as though their bones were made of rubber, as though the heavy gravity was no concern of theirs. And I trudged along inside my steel can
, and dreamed of freedom. The jungle suddenly fell back on all sides to reveal a larger than usual clearing with a great earth mound at its centre. You only had to look at it to know it was no natural thing. The dark earth had been raised up by conscious intent, given shape and form and meaning. There was a large dark hole in its side. My guides led me forward across the clearing, right up to the earth mound, and then the one who’d spoken to me strode easily up a set of steps cut into the earth mound, heading for the opening. The others stood and looked at me. I didn’t hesitate, but I had to go slowly, carefully, so the earth steps wouldn’t collapse under my weight.

  By the time I reached the dark opening, my guide had already gone through. I stepped into the darkness after him, and a great light sprang up, blinding me for a moment. When I could see again, I was standing on an earth ledge, looking down into a great cavern that seemed to fall away forever, packed full of strange alien technology. I had no idea at all what I was looking at. Shapes so strange, so utterly other, that my merely human mind couldn’t make sense of any of it, even with my armour’s sophisticated sensors. My thoughts whirled at forces and functions without obvious meaning, or perhaps too much meaning. Parts and sections that seemed to twist and turn through more than three physical dimensions at once. Wonders and marvels, intimidating and terrifying. Heaven and Hell, all at once.

  My guide stood beside me, waiting patiently for me to come to terms with what it had brought me to see.

  “We were not the first to find this world,” it said finally. “Another species came here, long ago, determined to change this world and remake it in their image. And this is the machine they built to do that. Except, they learned to love this world. And they decided, why change the planet when you can change the people? So that’s what they did. They reprogrammed the machine to remake them, and when it was done, they went out into the world and lived in it. The machine still works. It can change you, and make you a part of this world, like us. It’s a good world, when it’s not fighting for its own survival. Join me. Become like us. Hell can be Heaven, if you look at it with the right eyes.”