by Sparks,Cat
“Do you care about her?” The old woman leered at him, her long nose resembling a beak, like she might lash out and peck him with it if he wasn’t on his guard.
“Do I what? Yes, of course I do!”
Truth was, she was all he’d come to care about.
“Then go in after her. Drag her out, then both of you get the hell out of this place.” Her eyes shone with a fiery intensity, the eyes of a warrior, not a crone.
“Go inside?” The mere thought of it made his innards curdle. “Past those things?”
She didn’t even look at the row of Templar guards. “Hurry up, boy. You don’t have much time.” She then turned to the Templar beside her. “Come on, Benjamin, old man, old soul. We don’t have much time either.”
The Templar groaned, shifted his stance in ragged, jerking motions. Grieve flinched, but the old soldier had no interest in him. He turned and followed the old woman, obedient as a dog.
Grieve was still standing there, paralysed by indecision, when the old woman called back, “Get her out and be quick about it, or get used to living without her.” She pointed up at the sky, which made no sense: it was the same sick stomach-contents sludge it had been since midpoint across the Black, swirling oppressively above their heads. He reckoned he could smell the stink of it, decay like rotted teeth and sour breath.
The row of frozen Templar guards remained motionless, like they were waiting for something. A signal. A last stand, a final fight—nothing good, whatever it was, and Grieve had to get himself out of there. He suspected that old woman knew what she was talking about.
But.
The entranceway was a rectangle of solid shadow. It didn’t look like something you could pass through, yet Star had passed through it, hadn’t she? Left him out there, told him she was never coming back.
What if there was a chance?
“Tully Grieve, you are the biggest idiot that ever lived,” he said out loud as he wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. “Everything happens for a reason, some folks say—and your reasons are always the wrong ones, whenever there’s a girl involved.”
He glanced across at the old woman and her Templar dog, in time to catch her cast two of the drones that had been hovering around her head like flies away, shooing them off to return to the dish. They hovered uncertainly, looking like they didn’t want to leave her. Their reluctance forced an involuntary smile from Grieve—they were even dumber than he was.
The broken down old Templar started spouting rubbish. The old woman, walking with a really awful limp, was heading in the direction of something Grieve somehow hadn’t noticed before.
The object resembled the old woman’s temple dish, but smaller. Much, much smaller, its base a mash of bent and battered scaffolding. There were two such dishes but the second one had been expertly cleft in two.
“Good luck,” he said—and he meant it, for both of them and for himself too, but most of all for Star, because, so help him, Tully Grieve was going in to get her.
= Seventy-three =
The drone emitted a pathetic sequence of squeaks and burps and whistles as Marianthe guided Quarrel into the cluttered space that had once functioned as a control room.
“Shhh,” she said to her little metal friend. “I need you. I’m sorry you can’t go home with the others, but I need you with me for this most important task.”
Little Ditto made three circuits of the room before settling down atop a cupboard thick with grit and sand blown in through a broken window. The cupboard door was hanging off its hinges.
Marianthe shrugged off her outer desert coverings and lifted her satchel over her shoulder, placing it on the ground. A thick coating of sand and debris smothered the control panels of the main console in front of her. “Help me,” she instructed Quarrel, but he only stared at her, dull eyed and useless.
She sighed heavily. “If only we could have seen what we’d become.” She patted his hand and nudged him backwards into a far corner, where he would not get in her way. She used her hands to brush as much accumulated sand as possible onto the floor, then started checking over the panels, wires, and connections. All of them were dead and lifeless, as expected—all of them but one.
“Mercy Angels, will you look at that! Never underestimate a general’s vanity . . .” One of the consoles hummed with power, low strength and not much of it, but she’d been expecting to have to build the thing she needed to build from scratch. Evidently the General had been busy, attempting resuscitation of its once plentiful resources, attempting to communicate with others of its kind. How well she recalled the coloured generals: the Red, the Green, the Purple, and the Yellow, dangerous motherfuckers all. The world was never safe while they were conscious.
Quarrel stood in the corner where she’d propped him up, mumbling to himself in muffled tones. Now and then she’d offer something soothing in response, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her, probably couldn’t see her either: eyes wide open, but pupils darting back and forth as if lost far away in a battle only he could see.
“We don’t need to reach so far, do we, little Ditto? We only want to talk to your clever cousin.”
Plenty of juice left in the system—the General had seen to that—but the dish was stuck and in need of realignment. The General had the channel locked down tight, wary of attack by outside forces, even when there were no Forces left to speak of. All that was left were a bunch of burnt out, digging Templars and she, Marianthe, lover of poetry and grass, forest flowers and falling water. She who the General believed he’d charmed into complete submission and compliance.
“You won’t know what’s coming for you. You won’t know what’s hit you . . .” She sang the words to herself as she stepped back from the gutted console, wires and cables spilling out like intestines. “I was so hoping it would not come to this.”
She bent, flipped her well-worn leather satchel open, and used both hands to gently tug its precious cargo free: her crown of thorns, a thatch of ragged tipped fibre optics trailing behind it. She placed it on her head, breathing deeply, wincing as the nodes connected, hoping nothing crucial had been irreparably damaged in their journey across the sand.
“Marianthe to Warbird 47, do you copy? Over.”
She held her breath, waiting for the familiar wash of static, but nothing happened. Nothing but silence on the line. She spent the next hour swearing and tinkering, attempting to secure a connection, pain throbbing through her temples as she tried over and over. Eventually she conceded defeat, lifted the contraption off her head, and rested it atop a pile of wires.
“Little Ditto, I tried, I really did, but I’m afraid the time has come.” She clicked her fingers. The drone sprang into motion, circled the room, and landed in the place where Marianthe pointed. So obedient. So trusting.
Marianthe drew her dagger from her belt and shifted her gaze across to Quarrel. He’d fallen silent while she’d been trying to communicate with the Warbird. Eyes still open but staring blankly into space. At peace—or as close as he was ever going to get to it.
“I’m sorry, friend, but there isn’t any other way.” She placed her hand upon the drone, flipped it over and sliced it open quick, like she was gutting an animal, no need for unnecessary suffering. Little Ditto never knew what hit it.
She had always been good with a sharp-tipped blade. She cannibalised the requisite parts, and jury-rigged them to the crown of thorns to boost its signal, enhance its range of options, and patch in to the Warbird’s geosynchronous signature.
The pain in her head was worse this time, but it didn’t matter. She closed her eyes, “Marianthe to Warbird 47, do you copy? Over.”
A rush of static, immediate and reassuring. Familiar telemetry, the language it liked best. “Warbird, I’ve got a new game for you. Better than chess. I think you’re going to like it. Only one m
ove required, and it’s yours.”
She told it what it needed to know, then pulled the crown of thorns from her head and slumped against the console. “Not long,” she said finally to Quarrel. “Not long now.”
= Seventy-four =
Star stood utterly still, completely immobile in the beam of thick blue light encasing her from head to toe. She felt no pain—and that surprised her—just the faintest pressure against her skin, no greater than the warmth of a single naked flame.
But she couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink, and the strangeness of that was making her panic. She’d been unable do what had been instructed by Quarrel, unable to make good on the promise she had made as he lay writhing and convulsing upon that temple floor.
“I’ve got you,” said a disembodied voice, but whether it spoke inside her head or outside was impossible to tell.
She tried to answer but her lips wouldn’t move. She struggled against the oppressive, invisible embrace until trickles of sweat ran in rivulets down her spine.
“Heart rate’s elevated,” said the voice. “That thing you’re doing with your body—stop it now.”
She didn’t stop, instead she struggled harder, muscles straining, heart beginning to ache from hammering.
“I command you to stop!”
She felt the Blue press in close and tight around her. When she tried to breathe, her lungs seized up and her sweat stayed locked in tiny beads upon her flesh, which only served to make her struggle harder.
The thing let go of her so hard she almost fell, bending forward gulping air like water, staggering until she regained her balance.
“Stubborn little creature,” said the disembodied voice, outside her head as well as inside, this time she was certain. “You don’t know who I am.”
“I know what you are,” she called out, more bravely than she actually felt. “I’m here to deliver a message.”
The Blue paused, long and cautious. “You’ve come to deliver a virus code—either that or blow yourself up. To prevent this, I’ve locked you into quarantine stasis where you can do no harm to me, my bunker, or yourself.”
It knew.
Grieve had been right all along, it could see inside her head and it knew everything.
“Did you really think you could defeat a Lotus General? My kind used to rule the world, before humankind lost control of it.”
She attempted to struggle against her invisible bonds once more, but they only tightened in response, so tight she was finding it difficult to breathe.
“I’ve got plans,” continued the Lotus Blue. “To find my family, see if any of them are still living. But the curious thing is, I can’t locate my DNA. My own initiating sequence should be preserved in here somewhere, don’t you think? Nor can I find trace evidence of my upload. Everything else is documented, from the very first brick laid down in this vast construction to the last. I know the serial numbers on every component of every one of those tankers out there, but I do not know my own family name.”
“I’m sorry,” she said cautiously, because it seemed like the right thing to say.
“I have come to a disappointing conclusion.”
Star said nothing.
“I don’t believe I was ever living,” the Lotus Blue continued in a sullen tone. “What’s more, it seems I can never leave this bunker. Not entirely.”
“Why is that?” She paused . “Please, I can’t breathe properly. You have to help—”
“It seems I am the bunker, or at least its innards. It seems the memories I hold are utter lies.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, a choking whisper this time. As she felt her vision swim, she called out in panic with the last of her breath. “Let me go—I can’t breathe. I’m no threat to you.”
“You are everything to me—everything. Without you I am nothing but a voice in the weary darkness, a seeder of storms, the memory of a fabricated man.”
She slumped. The blue light had been the only thing holding her up. The Blue must have noticed her distress, because the pressure changed and air went rushing back into her lungs. She breathed deeply, grateful for every gulp.
“I long to climb Mount Khuiten,” continued the Lotus Blue, “to stand at the intersection of the lands once known as China, Russia, and Mongolia, to cross the green steppes once belonging to the Kazakh nomads. Or Everest, the highest point upon the Earth—or flat-topped Kilimanjaro, comprised of three extinct volcanoes once known as Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira. They say the trek across the Shira Plateau is exhilarating, filled with wondrous bird life.”
“All the birds are dead,” shouted Star through ragged breath, “all but the carrion crows. The places you dream of are all long vanished. Let me go. You can’t keep me trapped in here forever.”
“But I need you, little Templar child. I can never let you go. Without you, I remain entombed in this sunken prison of granite and graphene. Without you, I do not exist. I am merely a machine set into stone.”
The more it spoke, the higher its voice rose in pitch. It relaxed its hold on her a little more and Star discovered she could move—not far, but enough to swing a punch at the air, aim a kick at nothing and no one. It made her feel better but did nothing to alter her predicament. She was trapped fast, like a bug in slowly setting amber. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
The Blue was not listening. “We’ll get these battletankers fired up and ready. The older ones will join us once we invade their territories. Pack animals they are, relishing the companionship of their own kind.”
She swung and kicked, trying desperately to manoeuvre herself closer to the edge of the blue light—to freedom, potentially—but it was no use, she could get no momentum going. No force behind her strain.
The Blue continued prattling on about the tankers and its plans to see the world. Plans that would see her own mind stripped away, like Quarrel’s. She would end up just like him, writhing and helpless.
As it continued, Star realized perhaps the worst thing of all: there was no one to say goodbye to. No one to know what had become of her. If only she had said her farewells to Nene, instead of marching away in a fit of anger and confusion. Nene who had saved and raised her, loved her and protected her like family.
Instead she would die in darkness, all alone. She took a deep breath and spoke Quarrel’s code, an alphanumeric sequence burned into her brain, a sequence she could never forget, not even if she wanted to. Hoping against all hope . . .
Nothing happened.
She spoke it again, her voice ringing out loud and hollow in the stillness.
“I decommissioned you,” said the Blue. “Easy to do, since you don’t have any barriers in place. You don’t have anything much at all, but I can soon fix that.”
She spoke the useless code again and again. The Lotus Blue drowned her out with its own talking.
“There is a super cell storm spinning above our heads right now. I’ll send it hurtling across the Obsidian Sea, and watch as it chews up everything in its wake. A mesocyclone deep rotating updraft that’s quadruple the size of anything made by man, fed by flanking updrafts, with nothing to stop it from continuing to grow. But before all that—some poetry—humankind were always very good at that.
Cattle die, kindred die, Every man is mortal:
But the good name never dies, Of one who has done well.
“Let me go!” Star cried.
As the Lotus Blue continued its recitation, a shadowy figure stepped out of the darkness, approaching the thick blue beam with tentative steps, tiptoeing, like he was balancing on a narrow wall and desperate not to fall.
Tully Grieve.
Star shook her head frantically at the sight of him, mouthed the word NO. He saw her but he kept on coming, pressing his finger firmly against his lips.
He had no weapons and in any case, what was there for him to fire upon—a beam of light? A disembodied voice reciting poetry?
Grieve stopped when he reached the edge of the blue light field.
She called out “The Lotus Blue will mess with your head, make you see things that aren’t there.”
“What kind of things?”
“Visions from the past.”
“I’m not seeing any visions.” Grieve stared studiously at the field of blue, from top to bottom, most specifically at the point where it melded with the ground.
“It’s gone crazy—reciting poetry,” she continued.
He shrugged. “Can’t hear anything.”
His voice sounded far away, even though he stood barely a few feet in front of her.
“Please—get out of here while you still can!”
Grieve walked all the way around the blue cylinder of light. “Looks thick,” he said. “Like water.”
“Don’t touch it!”
He raised his hand, biting his lip in concentration, then brushed the light with his fingertips, yelped and pulled back sharply when the blue light gave him a nasty sting.
The Lotus Blue ranted on, seemingly as oblivious to Grieve’s presence as he was to the rats scuttling around the tires of the sleeping tankers.
Cattle die, kindred die,
Every man is mortal:
But I know one thing that never dies,
The glory of the great dead.
“Not technically dead, you understand, since I was never living . . .” the Blue added.
A harsh grating echoed from beyond the wall of tankers. Metal scraping against the cold stone ground. Grieve paused, ears pricked.
“Get out of here, Grieve—the Blue’s waking up its mecha, sending something out to get you—run!”