Ember's Echo (The Nimbus Collection Book 2)

by D. C. Clemens

  With the active convergence of two high-powered rifles on its embattled body, the furtive machine had no chance at escape. Its pristine, pearly form was rapidly inundated with hundreds of black holes, and there was no question of its demolition, its bulk soon collapsing into a pile of smoking debris. Within a second of the machine’s demise, the enemy gunfire had terminated, followed soon after by those of my comrades. Even more telling, connecting to the captain’s sight showed that the imps had ceased charging the shore and were instead standing still or aimlessly roaming about their horde. Happenstance or not, I also believed the sandstorm had diminished in strength.

  “I really hope this is the last time I ask this,” began Emory, “but what just happened?”

  “It can’t be a coincidence that dispatching the machine stopped the attack,” said Vasilissa. “It must have been the S.I or A.I controlling the hacked security team and local creatures. My compliments for feeling that, rookie.”

  “Emory and I will permanently take care of the rest of these things,” said the captain. “The rest of you see what you can make out of our new friend.”

  With the intermittent pops of the guns going off above us, Briannika and I were staring at the faceless face of the curious contraption by our feet, the dark cracks from a few bullet holes uniting to create one long fissure that ran across its equator.

  “What do you make of it?” I asked my companion, who was born into a culture that prided itself in being able to code almost any machine before they could walk or talk. Combined with the fact that their original homeworld had little valuable resources, these strict constraints forced them to become more creative and technologically minded than most species in Parliament. Consequently, Briannika and her kind were usually the ones to defer to when it came to assessing new technology, making her next words an unheard of event.

  “Never seen anything like it,” she said. She crouched to begin a scan of the unnatural apparatus’s head, going down from there.

  Being this close to the contraption gave me an uneasy sensation, which became only more disconcerting when I realized that the impression matched what I felt whenever I warped anything outside the island. But how could a broken machine give me a feeling of veniality?

  “This is… interesting,” said Briannika on the party line. “This thing’s skin is mostly made up of a type of meta-plastic, but the scanner also picks up an unknown metal alloy mixed in, though it’s not very strong. It’s undoubtedly made more for its stealth feature than for protection. Moreover, I’m picking up micro-level activity. It may be attempting to repair itself using nanobots.”

  “Will it succeed?” asked Vasilissa, looking down at us through the window. “I believed we had satisfactorily incapacitated it.”

  “I agree,” replied Briannika. “Still, once I’m done examining this thing, I recommend slugging and burning the shit of it, and have the rookie bury it a few thousand feet or so for good measure.”

  Voicing my confusion, I asked, “If this thing was really in control of the attack, then why risk coming to the island? What was it trying to do? It doesn’t look like much of a weapon.”

  “Maybe it was trying to hack somebody else?” demurely replied the mechanic. “This could’ve been the thing that infected Brent when he was taken underground. It must need to physically interact with someone to infect them with some type of nanotech, possibly using these tentacle things.”

  Between the ringing of the gunshots, the captain asked, “Can you distinguish if it’s advok tech?”

  “No, sir. We’d need a more systematic examination to determine anything concrete. If the advok are testing a new method of warfare, they’re really thinking outside the box with this. Permission to take it apart?”

  The shooting stopped completely. “Go ahead. We’re done up here. Keep watch, Emory.”

  Using a small torch attached to her suit’s left gauntlet, Briannika began to cut through the unguarded right shoulder joint, which was a simple looking metallic cable that linked the bleached arm to the snowy body. Up close I could see that the arm itself was shaped like a narrow cannon, its long tendrils stemming from the cavity at the end, appearing as if they could retract inside the arm if the machine chose to do so. Kiran joined us to observe the disassembling himself. Visibility was improving by this point, giving the untarnished parts of the machine a delicately yellowish glow. I watched the dissection with anticipation, but I knew not what to anticipate with our inadequate tools guiding us. With masterful precision and composure, the talorian continued cutting up pieces of the arm and scanning them, confirming that more of the lengthy tendrils were amassed inside the arm. It was when she carved through these tendrils to get to the center of the arm did we find something striking. Nestled underneath all the machinery was an incredibly slim, dark purple rod no thicker than the thinnest guitar string. When it was exposed, a slow electric itch crawled up my legs, nearly inducing me to take a step back. I was sure everyone seeing it felt the same.

  “What do you think that is?” asked Vasilissa from her perch.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t want to touch it,” said Briannika. “According to the scanner, this bit is most comparable to blood, but it’s not exactly that either.”

  “Blood?” said the doctor, not bold enough to do anything but observe through our link. “What could a machine possibly do with blood?”

  “Like I said, it’s not exactly blood, but yeah, this is creepy. Magnification shows that the tendrils are microscopically connected with it. Damn, I would love to take this back with us for further study.”

  “Wonder how many more of these thing there are?” I wondered.

  “We can’t count on just a few,” responded the captain. “It likely takes several to control all those we’ve seen hacked, if that is indeed one of its functions. Plus, this thing had a good enough cloaking device to almost ambush us, so everyone keep vigilant for Sacred’s sake.”

  Kiran went back inside and told me to hold my vigil over the curiously exuberant Briannika, who wanted to keep carving up the curious contraption. After half an hour of careful probing, the enemy apparatus was split neatly into seven separate segments. Once she had made all the deductions she could, she instructed me to prepare the disposal of the remains.

  As I arranged the entombment that I hoped would also conceal the bizarre aura the machine emanated, Briannika explained to the party line, “There are two more blood rods, one in the other arm and another in the torso, though the torso one is almost depleted, so it does use it for something. I’m also certain half of this thing’s mass is purely made up of nanobots. The amount of activity being picked up freaked me out at first, but I now believe the nanobots are in the process of disintegrating the machine, not repairing it. Whatever this thing is, someone doesn’t want us knowing more about it. I would hate to the think advok are creating an army of these. I have the rookie preparing to bury the bastard, and we’ll send down a thermal detonator to keep it company.”

  By the time Briannika finished her explication, I had exhumed eight feet of rock, which was deeper than I had originally estimated (had the entire island been warped here?), and was using some sand to move and drop the antagonistic pieces into the well. I did feel it was wrong to leave this machine on the island, as though I was defiling something I knew to be pure, but I had little choice. Briannika had the pleasure to toss the grenade into the pit. The concentrated explosion would make it a miracle for anyone to recognize one of its tendrils.

  When I was almost done refilling the well, a dimming of the sunlight compelled my attention upward, recognizing that the cloudless sky and mostly dissolved tempest could not have been the culprit for the fracturing light. Briannika had perceived the alteration as well and was looking up with me. Using the filter in our helmets and eyes to reduce the sun’s glare, it didn’t take us long to identify the soaring offenders. The diamond-shaped bats had returned. There weren’t as many as before, but the horde was still momentous. We rushed back in
side the lighthouse, resealing the door behind me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With my ability to sense vibrations improved the nearer I was to ground level, I was ordered to stay on the first floor, everyone else occupying the higher levels to better assess the situation. I warped open a small window to give my KAA-74 a place to exhale if I desired it to, but despite the disposition we felt the bats were flying in with, the captain did not command for us to open fire. Our ammo supply wasn’t yet dire, but depleting what we had on the swarm was unwise. In any case, we knew that the sturdy lighthouse could hold out against these beasts. We also judged that the congregate was a diversion to a more dangerous plan, much like the sandstorm had been. It was only a question of how the distraction was going to be used. When the mass was about half a mile above us, the entirety of the flock began to dive, but in lieu of aiming for us, they were directed over the part of the river that enclosed us. Soon, a wall comprised of alien bats three hundred feet high was circling the island, just as if we were in the placid eye of a living hurricane.

  “They’re creating a smokescreen so we can’t see the shores,” said Emory.

  “They’re a bit too close to the water, don’t you think, captain?” inferred Vasilissa.

  “Agreed,” replied Kiran.

  From my vantage point by the window, I saw the stirring water under the white-eyed bats begin to swirl counterclockwise, or what was the opposite direction of their spinning ring. In a split second that would have been missed in a lazy blink, the surface of the whirling water ruptured and leaped twenty feet into the air. In that same instant, the aerial liquid flash froze into a solid block of ice, netting a fair chunk of the lower swarm. Dozens encased in the thick frost and ice haplessly fell and splashed into the current. They were no longer a concern. The fissure created by the fallen bats was rapidly filled by more of their brethren, allowing Vasilissa to chip away using the same technique. I wasn’t sure who was employing it, but someone began launching a few of their rifle-fired grenades at the northern hunk of the flapping mob. Ember’s bats, however, defied the efforts at restoring our sight of the coast by incessantly swamping any formed cavities like a black cataract.

  In due course, the horde all at once collapsed on itself and began charging the lighthouse from all sides. They were garishly hasty, but they managed to keep their quiet self-possession. With a single order, the captain instructed for everyone to head for the first floor and for all the fortification’s openings to be sealed. All this was accomplished before the hushed multitude closed the distance in half. With the window tightly sealed with warped stone from the wall, the circular room was painted pitch black. To ease the doctor more than any other reason, the scout was told by Vasilissa to emit a low level light, which showed the captain, Emory, and Vasilissa gather what they could from the speeder. The muted swarm became less so when their frail bodies rammed the walls like a storm of bizarre hail, causing the doctor to involuntary recoil with every dampened bang. Of all times to think so, it was this civilian’s fear-induced reaction that actually made me feel better about breaking up with Sadie. It was an “I told you so” to myself.

  After retreating to the center of the room, Dr. Oleson asked, “What now?”

  The captain explained, “They aren’t using heavy weapons, but that could change at any time, which will entomb us in rubble if we stay and tempt fate.”

  “So, are we going to make a break for it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But we all can’t fit on the speeder.”

  “We aren’t going to use the speeder, ma’am” said Briannika. “Do your thing, rookie, only faster than usual this time.”

  In a time I was trying to prove my worth, those words were taken as a galvanizing challenge during our frequent training drills, and they currently had much the same inciting effect on me. Not caring for the rotten floorboards in the way, I warped the ground beneath them, readily ripped them out, and proceeded to hollow out a four foot diameter hole. The first several feet of black stone and burnt orange soil I extracted was simply dumped on the lighthouse floor, but after I had made the well seven feet deep and had dropped myself in to fashion the horizontal segment of the tunnel, I could no longer use that method. Once I had whittled enough of a tunnel to fit them in, my comrades positioned themselves behind me. So, as an alternative, I was obliged to forcibly shove the excavated dirt and rock into the surrounding dirt and rock, a more draining practice on my vida supply.

  “We aren’t taking the lieutenant’s body with us?” Dr. Oleson suddenly asked through the thought-comm. Despite having the ability to “yell” using the telepathic connection, she still spoke in a murmur.

  “We normally would,” Emory replied, just as quietly. “But if he really is infected with some type of unknown technology, we can’t take the risk that his body could be tracked by the enemy.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Once we all could squeeze into the cramped tunnel, with the captain at the end of our procession, I looked back to focus on making the entry well collapse behind us. That done, I had a fleeting moment to contemplate about whether Kiran was currently thinking about an entirely new and cruder word for “constricted.” Then, once I had chiseled away nearly sixty feet while sweating my ass off, Vasilissa recommended that I stop.

  “The river is starting to push through,” she informed. “Warp a little slower and angle a bit deeper. We don’t want to be seen on the surface.”

  I did as counseled. When I had moved us a few feet deeper and farther, the already saturated soil was starting to spring some leaks. Not only did I see it, but I heard and sensed the flowing of the rumbling river all around me. With one final push, the solid wall gave way. Promptly replacing it was a wall of surging liquid, held back by the arcane efforts of the eldrick. The river was a little murky, but I could see its bottom another two feet down. With a two hundred foot gap left between us and the northern shore, I was given a respite from my burden, handing the bulky reins to Vasilissa and the captain. Vasilissa slipped by me to take point. She calmly strolled into the flow of the river, pushing away the water as she walked, eventually taking her first steps onto the squishy riverbed. The rest of us trailed her, with Kiran using a wall of compressed air to prevent the rushing water from overtaking our rear. We were all soon inside the river itself, our armor completely free from a drop of moisture and close enough to the surface to perceive the alien bat’s wrecked shadows wildly swooping over us. Though my respite was not long, it was long enough for me to catch my breath and for my suit to give me a cooling blast of fresh air to buff off the beads of sweat collecting in little pools.

  I restarted my excavation once we finished crossing the two hundred feet. Luckily, the softer soil on this shoreline was more apt to being warped, with the consequence of once again sensing that unsettling resistance. In what I considered to be record time for me, I had ploughed through about fifty feet of compacted Ember before I was allowed to collapse most of it, Vasilissa assuring me we were safe from being overtaken by the rolling water behind us. After a few minutes of skimming for vibrations and deducing what they meant, I burrowed us in a northwesterly direction for a hundred yards before stopping to rest my aching lungs.

  “Are we going to be able to wait this out down here?” asked Dr. Oleson, a timid tone of repressed hope escaping her.

  “It’s an option we’re going to employ for as long as we can,” answered Kiran, no tinge of optimism escaping him. “However, I wouldn’t expect this refuge to last long.”

  “Sorry, doctor,” I added, “but they’ll likely discover we’ve fled underground and start trying to pinpoint our location using the stone-type arcanists we know they have, and that’s not even including any of the security team that might be left. We’d be sitting ducks if they discover us with enough arcanists directly above us.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Oleson with a quailed sigh. “But then why head deeper into the city? Wouldn’t they be more concentrated there? South looked more de
serted.”

  “This planet looked pretty deserted at first, too,” said Briannika gruffly.

  Ignoring his subordinate’s comment, the captain illuminated the doctor on tactics, which he had always viewed as the only art form worth learning. “No matter what we do or where we go, we will always be outnumbered by those buggers. While the south may very well have fewer enemies, it also has considerably less cover, which is a very precarious position for a smaller force to find itself in.”

  “And since rescue squads are usually small,” began Vasilissa, “we’re better trained and equipped for urban fighting. If the enemy wants to clog themselves into a street or room, then all the better for our grenades.”

  Just as I recommenced our covert excursion, I was forced to chain my feet to the ground to judiciously gather what I was sensing.

  “What is it, rookie?” asked Emory. “Someone found us already?”

  “No,” I told my comrades. “There’s just a lot of movement close to the shore. I can’t really make out what’s happening, but it feels like a small army is doing it. The activity should help mask our own, however.”

  “Then go ahead and warp faster,” said the captain, not daring to miss the opportunity.

  I continued on. It wasn’t long before I began to clairvoyantly feel the borders of the bombing shelters, meaning we were now below some of the most stable and impressive of the skyscrapers in the archaic ruins; the part of the city that could provide some form of defense if we were going to be flushed out. It was only a matter of time before we were. All the while, the multitude of vibrations that could only originate from thousands of raucously marching feet began to pound closer to our position, despite scraping out the ground as fast as I could manage. Ultimately, I had to advise the captain against staying underground. He deferred to my experience as a stone arcanist and ordered me to find a way out.