Love and Other Metals

by K. P. Redmond

  I shake my head at the sight. My heart is heavy—I’ve brought all this destruction to a peaceful traveler from a strange and faraway world. It’s suffering to protect me. And then I wonder: how much of the materia does it take to support Sophia? She said there has to be a certain amount of the stuff for her to live. But how much? If enough of the materia is destroyed, will she…die? Or will she lose her mind? Grim thoughts. I look back again and see other men joining in the fight, riding in a powerful rover from the Kestrel, with tall spidery wheels that grip the rock, and a much bigger laser mounted on its upper deck. They’re sweeping back and forth with its beam, destroying the materia in wide swaths, sending up tremendous clouds of billowing smoke.

  I feel a tremor in my feet and hands. The ground is moving under me. Can’t stop—gotta keep climbing. I’m in bright daylight now, sweating inside my suit, pushing the cooling system to its limits. I hear the sounds of my breathing, the sounds of my heartbeat, the shouts of the Kestrel crew below. Their cries of victory hurt my heart, but they also push me faster and further up the cliff.

  Finally, I summit the rock and stand up onto a plateau. I re-engage the grippers but once again, the ground beneath me feels unstable, jolting and vibrating. I nearly lose my footing. Is it a stroid equivalent of an earthquake? I pause to look at the battle below. The rover’s beam and their guns can reach me here, although I’m not sure they can see me. They’re still burning the materia, as waves of it sweep up from the interior of the stroid to join the fight. The haze is so thick that it is almost opaque. The cloud is lingers close to the ground but random fingers of it reach up into space. I am above most of it here.

  Then, I watch in amazement as a tremendous spire of red matter rises up out of the fog. It gets taller and taller, the peak growing taller than the plateau where I’m standing. The tower is narrow at the top, broad at the base, and soon so tall that I have to lean back to see the top of it. What the heck?

  I hear the Kestrel men calling to each other and I look down again, squinting to see them through the haze. They see the spire too, although I doubt they can see the entirety of it in from within their self-made cloud. The materia is keeping them away, fighting to draw them away from the spire. I don’t have much time; I’ve got to keep going. I can see the CM in the distance, and the Kestrel still parked close by. The yellowish fog has lifted somewhat since mining operations stopped. The mining bots are still sitting in place on their rails, idle, right where they were when I left. I look up and see the long cargo section of the Allgood still faithfully keeping its station out beyond the horizon. Her stainless steel cargo boxes gleam brightly with reflected sunlight. My boots are working good now, at least when the ground holds still; I stride along the rocky path at a good clip. I take a last look up at the top of the spire. A finger of red dust floats near the tip of the spire—that’s when I see something I don’t understand.

  It’s a beam. An invisible, narrow, focused beam, revealed only by its dappled red reflection in the dust. It’s coming from the top of the spire. What is going on? Is Structure shooting at something? Is it shooting at the Kestrel in retaliation for what it’s crew is doing to him now? But no, that can’t be, the beam is aimed much too high. The line of the beam leads to the sky. What is it that the beam it aimed at? I crane my neck to follow the path to its destination. It ain’t pointed at any spacecraft. All I can see in that direction is faraway Earth, shining like a bright blue star, and nearby its smaller and dimmer neighbor, Luna. Seems like the beam is aimed that way.

  Step by step I travel, rock by rock, staying low and watching my back. My feet hurt and my calves are cramping but every second I spend out here is another second that Louis, Katya, and the captain are under the thumb of Nifty Jim’s thugs. The mining drones are scattered, dusty and idle on the wide, flat plan that stretches below me. A mountain of waste gravel is off to my right side. I’m climbing down from the rocky passage, using the angles to keep obstacles between me and the two spaceships moored on the other side. The quakes in the ground are coming more frequently now, but I’ll make it. Once I’m down, I’ll linger behind the tailings, then when night comes I’ll keep close to the line of rocks and ditches that surround the periphery of the flat plane and approach in darkness. That’ll get me close, at least.

  Daylight never lasts long here: the sun is already low on the horizon, elongating the shadows cast by the tailings and machines into long and sinister shapes striping the stony ground. I am pushing myself to time this right. I’ve been hiking in the sun for a half an hour now and I am wet with sweat. The suit tries hard to compensate by sucking the moisture into its ventilation system but I’m pushing it beyond its specs. And soon, soaked as I am, with night coming on instead of baking I’ll be freezing. To make matters worse, the mechanical prongs on my boots are wore out. The last quake bent a few of the blades and some of the gripping fibers are torn. The boots have covered more kilometers and subjected to more stress than they were designed for. Structure is compensating best he can but he can only do so much. My right boot is especially bad. It slips sometimes.

  I’m down at the level of the spaceships now. I peek out from behind the tailings and see the CM. Her external lights have come on automatically. As I’m watching, the Kestrel’s floods click on also, illuminating the area around her malevolent hull. There are three men with guns patrolling the area, sticking closer to Kestrel than Allgood. With their comrades still battling the materia, they are stationed defensively around their base, crouched and chattering about the shaking ground beneath them. The low haze surrounding the ships will surely compromise any infrared camera imaging. Just to be safe, I kneel down and scoop up fistfuls of regolith. I smear it over my suit as thermal camouflage: arms, legs, trunk. The very thing that Katya tried to prevent, I’m now doing intentionally. Dust is my friend.

  The black line of Hrothgar’s shadow overtakes me as the sun dips below the jagged horizon. I am now in night. My visor lights up, showing me the path ahead. I crouch down and start at a fast walk, hoping that the Kestrel’s cameras don’t spot me. I make it through the line of boulders, staying low. keeping waste rock between me and the two ships until the last minute. The ground jerks again and a large boulder comes loose from a tall rock on my right—I jog to my left to miss it.

  Now I’m crouched behind the last big rock, as close to the CM as I’m going to get. The last bit of the walk is on exposed ground. The CM’s decontamination tent and airlock are facing me, lit up by her floodlights. The thing is, I’m not sure what to do now. I’ve been thinking about it, turning it over and over in my head, but without a small army or at least some kind of weapon, there ain’t no way I can turn this situation around and rescue Katya, Louis, and the captain—if they’re even still alive. I could just run out there, onto the floodlit field, try to find a way in, and hope for the best. But it ain’t in my nature to hope for the best. This is experience talking. Luck just don’t happen for me. Except for Sophia—meeting her was pretty lucky. Don’t get distracted, I think to myself.

  Running to the airlock would just get me killed. I’d also be dooming my crewmates. I curse quietly in my frustration, even though I know ain’t nobody can hear me. After coming all this way, blundering into the center of the stroid, meeting an alien, and getting past the two Kestrel gangsters, I don’t know what to do next. I’m all kinds of exasperated. So I squat here behind this boulder, watching the men patrolling between and around the two ships and ponder the thing. The ground shakes again; this time more violently. I look around warily at the rocks above me, but they’re staying put. That’s when I notice a dim flash coming from the distance, then another flash, then I pick out a quick series of flashes, following the line of rocks.

  Thrusters. It’s another damn drone, flying in the dark. How many of those things do they got? An infrared searchlight is shining from a turret on the drone’s bottom and sweeping back and forth as the machine patrols the rocks. It’s headed my way. Now what? I crawl back along the line of rock
s until I find a sheltered spot, bounded on three sides by boulders, and I move into that. I shovel regolith frantically onto my legs and arms; even my helmet, although I know the stuff won’t stick to its slick surface. Then I wait. I keep my head down, knowing that my visor is the hottest part of my infrared signature. And then I hope for the best. Yea, right.

  I can see the drone inside my helmet by watching its tiny orange avatar floating above the virtual boulders, flitting this way and that, checking out the myriad odd shapes that it is encountering against some internal database. It’s looking for me. They know that I have to come back here. The drone approaches, closer and closer. I am helpless to stop it. I can’t run. I hold a rock in each glove to throw at it, but even if I hit it, a rock would probably not even dent its steel skin. In my visor, the drone’s avatar is right on top of my symbol. I see the infrared light illuminating the area around me. The jig is up. I explode out of my hidey hole and fling both rocks at the hovering drone in rapid succession. One rock flies off uselessly into the night, but the other hits. As expected, it just bounces off. The drone flinches, then recovers and aims its laser at my head. “Drone has found something,” says a radio voice in my headset.

  “Make it hold. Let’s get over there,” comes a reply.

  So there I crouch, covered in dust as the ground vibration frees pebbles from the tall rocks around me—they ping and clatter against my helmet as they hit. There’s the big, armed drone not a meter away. The machine has got me pinned down, with barriers on three sides and it’s covering the only opening—not that I could outrun it anyway. In my visor I can see the avatars of two Kestrel thugs coming my way with slow, deliberate steps. They’ll be here in minutes. The drone turns on its twin white floodlights to get a better look at me. They are blinding. I stretch my left arm out to shield my eyes from the light.

  I feel the materia leap from my arm. It has jumped from my wristy onto the drone. The goo forms into an octopus’s shape, grasping the drone with its tentacles. The drone doesn’t react—not something it’s programmed for. Soon one of the drone’s floodlights is covered with the stuff and for a moment the beam shines through the translucent red mass. But within seconds the octopus morphs into something flatter; it squirms around the hull of the drone and finds a gap. Quick as anything, it seeps through the crack and disappears into the machine.

  At first the drone just hovers there, as malevolently as before. Then it starts listing to the left. Then it starts wobbling. The wobble becomes more and more violent, until with a jerk the machine goes dark. The machine’s thrusters go cold and it tumbles gently to the ground. I approach the dead machine. I stomp it with my boot. “Take that you evil piece of trash,” I say. A red amoeba emerges from the top of its hull. The materia squishes into a thumb with two crystalline eyes. It looks up and me and blinks. “Good job,” I say. I hold out my arm and the little blob leaps back to its place, once again becoming my wristy.

  “The drone has got some kind of fault, over” says a voice in my headset. I freeze, not sure if I should run or what.

  “What kind of fault, over?”

  “Eh…dunno. Thought it had found something, I told it to hold position, then telemetry just stopped.”

  “Damn. That’s the second drone today. Them things ain’t cheap. Gonna be hell to pay when we get back, over.”

  “If we get back.”

  “Roger that. Let’s go find the carcass if we can.”

  But even as I listen to their conversation, to my horror the running lights on the drone snap back on. I step out of the cluster of boulders that had entrapped me, tip-toing around the machine as its thrusters blaze to life. The big cube swoops up from the ground and hovers right in front of me, its laser turret pointed at my eyes. This is it. I’m out in the open. If I run, it will blast me. If I stay, the Kestrel men will catch me. But then I see that the laser isn’t pointing at me at all—it’s off to the right a bit, not aimed at anything in particular. The drone just hovers there, atop the smoky plumes of its spitting thrusters, then swivels around to its right, and goes on busily with its patrol pattern as if nothing had happened.

  “Ah, it’s back, over.”

  “Really? The drone came back up, over?”

  “Roger that. Guess it had some kind of proton hit or something. I don’t know much about how those things work.”

  “Me neither. Does it still have its target, over?”

  “Na. Mischaracterization it says. Just a rock that looked like man. Stupid machine, over.”

  “Oh, good. Probably the ground vibrations confused it. I didn’t really want to go on a chase no ways. Our shift is almost over. Let Ned and Gary take it up, over.”

  “Roger that. Vodka time. I’m ready for this whole damn mission to be over. It’s been a disaster. Plus this stroid is coming apart and you-know-who is chafing my ass.”

  “Careful, over.”

  “Roger that.”

  I peek up over the boulders and see the two men, not far away, standing idle, butting helmets. They’ve gone off the air. Another private conversation. The drone is to my left, scudding along the line of rocks. I still don’t have a path to the airlock without exposing myself to the floodlights.

  “I need the lights near the airlock to go dark,” I whisper, hopefully.

  Immediately, the drone deviates from the line of rocks and rockets towards the Allgood. It collides with the thick hull of the spaceship. One of the drone’s metal corners hits and shatters a flood lamp. The lamp flares and goes dark in the hazy mist. The drone turns and tumbles chaotically, spinning over and over, around the airlock and colliding with a second lamp, which also flashes and goes black. “What the hell is going on with the damn drone, over?” demands a voice. With that, the drone stabilizes and floats serenely back to the line of rocks and dutifully resumes its patrol.

  “Another fault. This time with the guidance system. Telemetry says the drone fixed itself.”

  “Wha, another fault? Fixed itself my ass.”

  “Look, what can I say, the telemetry says it’s fine now. It’s the only drone we got left. You wanna try to fix it, do you? If you can, you’re a damn sight smarter than me. Over.”

  “Sheez. It’s a wild goose chase, over.”

  Another fine job by my devious and gloopy friend. Now the area around the decontamination tent is dark. I wait for the two disgruntled Kestrel men to make it back to their ship, then slink across the open field, favoring my defective right boot with a slight limp. I crouch in the tent. In my visor I can see that the Kestrel has had a changing of the guard; two men are crossing from the Kestrel to the Allgood. It looks like they’re carrying tools. They’re probably going to try to fix the flood lamps, which will bring them directly to me. “I gotta have a distraction,” I say. “I need the men coming from the Kestrel to find something else to do.”

  Immediately I hear a voice in my headset. “Target! Drone found the target! It’s the Yuuta kid!” Oh no, how did they find me? Panicked, cursing, I peak out of the tent. The drone is hovering over a rocky spot in the distance.

  “All right, it’s about time,” says another relieved voice.

  Must be Gary this time. Could be Ned but I’m calling him Gary. Ned and Gary are chasing the wild goose, as they say on Earth. Apparently that’s a thing there. The liberated drone should keep the boys in the busy for a while. I walk past the decontamination sprayer and the air shower. No way am I gonna stop and decontaminate now; no time, and it makes a racket. I step up the short ladder and pause with my hand on the airlock latch.

  And I think about Mr. Ickes back in the Shacktown hanger, and his chronic cough and the trickle of bloody spittle constantly dribbling from the corner of his mouth. I shrug: this one time won’t make a difference. Katya and her fastidious hatred of dust will yell at me if I come inside. Presently, I’m covered in the stuff. She’s going to be pissed, even if I rescue her. OK, OK, I stop and brush myself off, sweeping the stuff off of me so that it falls to the ground rather than make a c
loud. I make one pass through the air shower. That’s all I’m gonna do. I don’t care how much she complains.

  I check the indicators: the airlock is unoccupied and unpressurized. I pull open the outer door. Quietly. I close it behind me and open the valves to let in air. I adjust for a slow, hopefully quiet flow of gas. I wait for the pressure to come up, hoping like anything that I haven’t alerted anyone. I unlatch my helmet and lift it off my head. It’s usually liberating to take off my helmet but this time it makes me feel more vulnerable: I’m leaving behind Structure’s visor display and eavesdropping of suit-to-suit radios. Oh well, that stuff won’t help me in here anyway.

  I listen for a few seconds: nothing. I crack open the inner hatch. Nobody in the dressing room. I breathe a sigh of relief. The crowbar I had used for my escape is now lying on the floor at my feet. I take the hard steel bar up in my gloved hand. At least now I have a weapon. Won’t stand up against a gun, or against the mountain of Earth-meat freak Gristle, but at least it’s something, and in close quarters maybe I got a chance. My best guess is that, whoever is here, they are in the galley or on the flight deck. That’s where the food and the head is.

  I take the long way: the hatchway down to the lower deck. I slide down the ladder slowly, quietly, leaning in head first, so that if there is somebody down there I’ll hopefully see them before they see me. I maneuver the big crowbar carefully down the narrow passage so that it don’t clang against a wall. I sneak through the lower deck, walking on the sides of my feet to minimize noise. I walk past the avionics bay, electrical power closet, the cots, and storage areas.

  I hear a voice above me coming from the flight deck. It’s a man’s voice; I don’t recognize it, and I can’t make out the words. Crowbar firmly in my fist, I creep up the ladder to the upper hatch, which is closed but ain’t latched. At the top of the ladder, I wrap my crowbar arm around the railing to steady me and reach my other hand up the hatch above. I push gently, slowly, gritting my teeth and praying that the hinges don’t creek.