by M. ORENDA
“How can that be evolution? What advantage is there in developing complex intelligence in an isolated cave environment? What’s the point? What the hell does this thing have to think about?”
“Ho, look at him go,” Neilson quips. “Like we’ve been observing it for three decades, and we’ve never thought of asking that question? We have asked that question, Corporal, and Niri is the answer. She was designed to host it, communicate with it. She’s already sharing DNA with it. We built her to be the bridge. She can go where we can’t. She can understand what we can’t. What does it have to think about? Why do you think you’re here, sport?”
Logan grimaces, glances at the surrounding desks. There are few technicians sitting behind holo screens, but they’re focused on the scrolling boxes of data, watching chemical signals flow, searching for alien dreams. No one seems to be listening to Nielson’s tirade of ego. There are no sympathetic glances, no understanding looks. This is normal.
Nielson leans in closer. “This is history being made, right now. You’re one of the lucky ones. You’re a part of it. When you take her to exterior module, you’ll be the first---”
“The what module?”
The director raises two fingers, points them toward the clear airlock on the lower deck. Behind it, Logan can see the framework of an antechamber stocked with contamination suits, and bright yellow air bottles. Beyond it, a silvery corridor stretches out into the cave, a transparent hallway leading to a detached structure built out on the rock.
“The exterior module,” Neilson says. “That’s where it all happens.”
The detached structure sits in the semi-darkness outside, a fanciful, pagoda-like habitat of metal and glass, with two levels, and a curving roof, the morphing colors of the cave reflected in its windows.
Logan scowls. “You’re putting her out there?”
“It’s perfect, designed for everything she needs. The airlock opens to provide direct exposure to the cave and its microbial world. We call it the tea house, because it kind of looks like, well… it’s really very nice inside, and we can be with her all the time. You can’t see it from here, but it’s quite luxurious, like the temples where they’re trained. Meant to have that look.”
“It looks like what it is.”
“Oh c’mon,” Neilson says. “You’re taking this disturbed hero thing a bit far. It’s a palace compared to what she had Earthbound, and it’s far better quarters that what you’ve got, I’ll guarantee you that.”
“For how long?”
“What?”
“How long is she supposed to be out there?”
Neilson shrugs, like he knows, but he’s not going to say. “As long as she wants. We’ll see. We can bring her back in at any time. We did that with the others after we had discovered none were as compatible as we hoped. They were all re-tasked for their natural skill set, and most are still here, contributing to the scientific effort as engineers and such. Some of them can ‘hear’ a little, as we say. It’s not actually hearing, of course, but that’s the term for the extra sense they have, the chemical, sensory awareness of the colony’s communication. Niri may become like them, hearing a limited spectrum, or she may be the one who hears everything.”
“In which case…”
“She becomes the first true link between BIO227 and us.”
“Brilliant,” Logan mutters. “And I go out to the module with her?”
“If that’s what she wants.”
“Meaning yes.”
“I’ll get you a suit.”
“Why do I need a suit if BIO227 can’t infect unmodified humans?”
“You can’t breathe the air in the cave, corporal. Too much carbon dioxide, which flushes through from tiny crevice vents which open up in the warmth, and freeze shut in the cold, as if the whole thing is breathing. BIO227 consumes it, and there’s more oxygen and nitrogen here than on the surface, because some of the enzymes used by the colony do create those gases, but it’s still not in the right proportions. You’ll pass out.”
“But Niri?”
“She can go for longer than you. She can spend as much as two hours in the cave with unassisted breathing. The air mixture in the module is kept close to Earth’s when all the seals are closed. Technically, you won’t need a suit during those times, but someone goes and opens a vent… well, it’s iffy.”
“How can she go for hours out there?”
“Umm… because we designed her to?” Neilson rolls his eyes. “She’s different from you, at the cellular level. She processes oxygen far more efficiently, and doesn’t need as much as you to begin with. She can store what she needs, and filter out what she doesn’t. We built her to host a version of them. We started with the species, in particular, which was the most compatible. A modified strain lives inside her, not the same way they live out there, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion. Bottom line… she’s different. But you already knew that. You tested her blood, I heard.”
“Yes, but---”
The doors to the residential corridor slide apart, and suddenly it’s too late because Niri is standing there, her lips parted in wonder, her gaze set on the glow of light behind him. She steps forward, dressed in something that’s trying not to be a clinical gown, but somehow still is, a plain white dress, boxy and too large on her, with laces tied at the sides.
Her hair is braided, a shining black rope stretching nearly to her waist, her dark eyes filled with the cave’s iridescence.
Dr. Williams appears behind her, sealed in a loose yellow chemical suit with a square visor. She frowns at him, disappointed, as if she thought he might have left when he had the opportunity.
Niri finally sees him, and her expression brightens. She crosses the observation deck, ignoring Neilson, and grabs onto Logan’s hand, tugging at him in girlish excitement.
“You understand now,” she says, breathless. “You’ve seen it.”
“Niri---”
“I need you with me.”
He hesitates, the moment pressing down, and him unable to stop it. “I told you that you don’t have to do this.”
“It is even louder here. It is everything.”
“It’s not.”
“It is the divine music, the voices of the Devas.”
“No.”
“I will show you.”
Her smile leaves no room for argument, and he knows he’s done.
Whatever insanity this is, there’s no stopping it, no heroic argument that’s going to change her mind, nothing he can say that’s going to reverse decades of human engineering, or a lifetime of pseudo religious brainwashing.
So he nods, trying to hide his anger from her.
“Get a suit on,” Williams says, curt. “We’re going now.”
What are the memories of a lifetime? What are they made of? Niri walks behind Dr. Williams as the woman shuffles ahead in her protective suit, awkward and slow. Fluorescent light reflects in an arc along the suit’s plastic skin, crowning on its helmet and then slipping away down its back as they walk down the corridor, passing under the lamps. Seconds, minutes…
The journey is so close, and the singing in her blood is so strong, and so beautiful, as pure as a choir, casting all the things that have come and gone in its hallowed light. Even Earth, with its chaos and destruction… It also harbored so much beauty, small pockets of hope in every home, people who held each other through the worst, love extended in a look, in the glitter of tears.
Such an amazing species, humans… the temples they’ve built, monuments to a higher, unifying power, reaching for the wisdom, and detachment of the holy Devas, and lost without it.
They have come so far.
They must go farther.
Logan walks beside her, silent.
He is still angry. He doesn’t understand.
Touching him felt good. But it wasn’t real. It’s not who she is. Hearing the song here, where it so close, has reminded her, refocused her, as she knew it would. This is purpose. This i
s destiny.
He can’t see it, not yet.
You will see. You will understand. We need you. I need you… the only human I can trust, the hand that won’t let go… This is your journey too. This is your light too. I will help you, the way you helped me.
Two airlocks appear ahead, one to the outside, and one to the module they’ve said is hers. Logan’s boots tremor the thin floor of the corridor, a soft thudding along its braces. Beside his, her footsteps can’t be heard. Her slippers make no sound, have no presence, her movement a whisper compared to the slip and skim of plastic chemical suits.
Dr. Williams pauses by the first airlock, and presses numbers into a keypad with her gloved fingers. The doors to the module slide back, first one, then the other. “Here it is,” she says brightly, standing back.
Niri moves past her, walking through the antechamber without a glance, focused on the larger hallway ahead.
It’s a modern structure, with slender, curved supports, and walls of glass. Monitor panels blink. Holos wait for commands. All new technology. Yet, there are reminders of the ancient temple everywhere.
The main hallway ends in an arched overlook, with a round window set at its pinnacle, a perfect orb, separated into looping panes, depicting the symbol of the open lotus. The caverns shimmer from every direction, small pools of green water visible below, bright patterns undulating over the rock.
It’s perfect in all its details, a place to commune with the divine, to listen, and to be heard within the ancient song, the higher truth of the Ārūpyadhātu, Devas of the uppermost Heaven, who have been meditating in isolation from the universe, formless, and above the agonizing cycle of the Samsara.
Eternal.
What is a memory? What is a heartbeat?
She walks to the edge of the hallway, placing her hand on the airlock that opens to the glow outside, her fingers tinged blue in the half-light.
“Open it,” she murmurs.
“Niri,” Logan says, a reminder, a warning.
“Open it.”
Dr. Williams presses more keys.
The airlock to the cave slides back, and the heavy air from the caverns floods in. It’s wet and sugary, the colors hazing in it, mixing with a harmony of celestial tones, each lulling, and seductive. Warmth spreads, under her skin, through her veins, joy, desire, sensation. Home.
She steps out onto the metal terrace.
The pattern of light stops.
The cave drops into darkness.
Logan curses, clamping his hand around her arm. “What’s happening, Williams? Is this normal?”
“I don’t know,” the woman answers, startled. “It’s never---”
The glow returns, slowly filling the rock, although it now pulses rhythmically, not the dash of vibrant light like before, but waiting, its attention focused on the intruder. On her.
Niri feels it tingling, and her breathing slows, because it feels good, this slow exploration, a sparkling of light within her, the song layering with darker, possessive notes, calling her closer.
She walks forward, pulled by the urging in the song.
More. So much more than this.
“Niri,” Logan says again.
But she doesn’t stop. She negotiates a path down to the pools below, their green surfaces like glass, perfectly still.
She walks between them, and pauses at the water’s edge. She looks across the pool, and Logan is there, the ghost of own her reflection shimmering in his mask. He watches, never breaking eye contact though his expression changes, tightens as she kneels down, and slips into the water.
Immersed.
She sinks, and it washes over her, the light now blinding, the liquid, the air, singing in notes that can’t even be notes. They rise higher than she can go, and expanding, images forcing their way through the song, power streaming through every cell, sense coalescing from blood.
Her body convulses with it.
Once… and again. Her muscles jolt. A rejection.
The colors around her go black.
And Logan is in the pool, grabbing her roughly by the waist and dragging her out. She feels the violence of it, the terrible noise it causes in the song, and frenetic splash, his hands biting, lifting her back into the warm air.
“Niri!” he’s calling. “You’re okay. We’re getting you out.”
Out? Out of where?
“It’s over,” he says. “It’s over.”
No, she thinks, though the realization of it is somehow distant, as if she is no longer there to think it, no longer physically there at all.
It is beginning.
ATTACK
BIOSTAT STATION
HANGAR LEVEL
MARS DATE: DAY 25, MONTH 12/24, YEAR 2225
The hangar’s towering blast doors unlock in sections, each panel retracting in turn along a dark channel. The storm fills the view, a wall of chaos raging in the flood of exterior lights. Violent swaths of coppery dust whiplash against the atmosphere shielding, spraying sand particles that spark across the hot field like embers shot from a fire.
Voss watches the last panels slide back, focused on the valley he can’t see through the haze, threats spinning in the dry howl of air. The watchtowers appear as shadows, the crimson flare and ebb of warning beacons.
Behind him, the security chief is talking. “---can’t be responsible for this. Have you considered, I mean really considered, your liability? I have the utmost respect for Assaulters. You’re our heroes too. I mean, everyone here respects what you do. As a kid, I had a holo image of a team of Assaulters, I think one of them might have even been you, though that was a long time ago. It’s one where you’re in the water with the hats, and the guns, and there’s water dripping off the hats? I don’t know if you know this, but I did a tour above Earth. What a wasteland, right? I can only imagine what’s in that water.”
Voss ignores him.
“I can see your boot, Fulson!” Wyatt calls to the recruits, a kid now proned out behind the SAW on the catwalk, his position covered by the layers of steel plate they’ve welded to the metal, a crude opening cut for the gun. “That boot is looking for a bullet.”
“Yes, first sergeant.”
Voss’s holo comm buzzes for Gojo, and the tech sergeant’s voice follows, talking on the open channel. “Colonel, we have radar contact, one large aircraft inbound, transport size. It came up over the canyon wall alone, and it’s descending fast. It’ll be within missile range in three minutes, within auto-gunner range in eight, though I’m getting some errors in the systems, like there’s a hack in progress. Petra’s locator came back up though, and she’s on that aircraft. There’s a read of vitals from the locator, with warnings indicated.”
“Buzz the locator,” Voss says. “Patch me through to her.”
“Roger that.”
The security chief wets his lips, glancing nervously toward the elevators. “Maybe I should go.”
Voss glares at him.
The comms unit on his wrist buzzes, and activates its small holo screen. The window glows with an animated connect graphic depicting signals spreading outward in concentric arcs.
He waits, urging her to appear, to answer, anything.
“C’mon Petra,” he murmurs. “C’mon.”
Petra startles awake, feeling her weight shift toward the darkness, the pull of awkward flight threatening to slide her off the bench. The transport’s banking, slipping through the fast grit with its wings tilted. She clasps onto the pipe though she’s got no strength to hold it.
“That’s it,” Kazak says beside her. “Come on, wake up. Wake up.”
She blinks, turning her head to catch him pulling a syringe out of her arm. Another dose of… something. He grimaces, not noticing---in his hurry---that her hand’s loose in the restraint.
His gaze darts to the men in the hold, then back to her face. He’s in full armor now, hair pulled loose like he’s rushed to put everything on, and he’s fighting to slow the adrenaline, teeth bared, eyes glitter
ing.
“Showtime,” he says, lifting her helmet from the deck. “We’re approaching BIOSTAT airspace, and we’ll be within manual rocket range any minute. Time for you do some convincing.”
Voss.
She presses her lips together, and nods.
Kazak holds the helmet above her and switches the visor to an external view. It boots up and projects an image of a holo window.
He turns on the external camera and she can see herself in the holo screen, her body laid out on the bench, bandages on her stomach soaked through with blood, and leg still wet under the tourniquet.
Indicators flash, sounding a connection alert. “Secure Connect, Voss.”
So he’s calling her.
“Connect, Voss,” she says, allowing for the verification of her voice.
The computer opens another luminous window, showing Voss staring down at the camera, looking pissed, of course. His gaze narrows through the bright ether. “Petra.”
“Fucked up.”
His expression darkens. “I’m here.”
“They want to talk trade.”
“Tell them to land, and we’ll talk.”
She shuts her eyes, wishing he’d have made it easy, made the decision he was supposed to make, which was to shoot them out of the sky.
“Petra,” he says, steady, cool.
She looks at him, and he is perfect. Tears come without permission. She hisses through her teeth. “Three aircraft total. Two hanging back for extract. Sixty men in this ship, and all of them are Earthbounders planning on outright killing you and nothing else. Got explosives to blow you to hell, so don’t draw this out. No choices here.”
Kazak growls, and grabs onto her wounded leg, digging his fingers into the skin. Pain eclipses thought, exploding in a hoarse, reflexive scream. Her body jolts to one side, trying to close in, protect itself.
She rasps for breath.
“Land,” Voss says, talking to Kazak, even though he can’t see him, has no idea of the kind of monster heading his way. “Now.”
Kazak lets her go and shatters the plastic helmet into the metal above her head. “Stupid bitch, you think it makes any difference? Think you’ve saved anyone?” He draws his pistol and presses it against her temple, forcing it against the bone and turning her head with it. “As soon as we get in there, Pretty Petra, and you’re no longer needed, you’re head’s going to be sprayed across a wall, same as his.”