by Frank Albelo
One look from my unhelmeted eyes told them that being hesitant with their food would be unacceptable.
While I’d kept to my own thoughts while we walked, I had listened to some of the other survivor’s conversations. Digits had far from luxurious lives; what with all the harsh work conditions and food regulations, but the others in the group had been part of the more ‘posh’ jobs. While Delta had worked in different factories, the women had all been some form of seamstress, farmer or home caretakers. Their jobs allowed them to stay out of the equivalents of the Compound in their cities.
As we all grumbled our way through out rations, the ATC moved to stand behind me again. Before it could reach me, the snow began to vibrate and shift in sheets. The relatively smooth snow fields we had been crossing suddenly jerked violently. Spires of ice and rock began to break through the surface, making their way to our group. I sprung to action and hauled Beta to his feet.
“We need to go! We need to move away from the crevasse that's forming!” I shouted as I pulled the boy behind me at a jog.
“ATC, stay close!” I screamed as the ground right below the women shifted.
I let go of Beta’s hand and noticed Delta running towards the women. The vibrations intensified, making it difficult to move and the women were unable to stay standing for more than a couple of seconds. I used the pointed side of the pipe wrench to stabilize myself as we made our way to the women.
Just as we were reaching the women, a massive crack caused Delta and I to jerk down. The panel of ice we had been standing on tilted about thirty degrees towards the women. We slid forward without much control and crashed into the women. I was a bit jarred when I collided head first with one of the armored boots of one of the women and could barely hear Beta shouting into the comms.
Epsilon and him were waving their hands frantically in the air. I heard the words ‘carrier’ and ‘jump’ before my brain put together what Epsilon and Beta were saying. I glanced at my HUD and noticed that one of the ATC’s arms was highlighted in orange, but the rest was in green.
“ATC, convert into a cart, we need to jump like at the holding area!” I muttered the words into the comms to a plain “Confirmed” reply from the mech. As I used the pipe wrench to haul myself to my feet I spotted the women already piling on top of the robot. Delta had also crashed into the women’s feet and was still struggling with standing through the vibrations, mumbling something about “blasted slag turds”. I hauled him to his feet and we both plopped onto the ATC.
“GO!” I shouted as I tapped the side of the mech.
The section of ice that had caused us to slide began to heave up and was starting to tip in our direction. The repulsors whirled loudly and the ATC flew through the air, clipping the tip of the falling ice. One of the women lost her grip on the ATC, but I managed to extend the pipe wrench enough to snag her armor on the teeth of the clamp. The screaming in the comms was drowned by the grinding of the ice as it continued on its decent.
Seconds later the ATC was skidding loudly on the ice with all of us holding on for dear life. The repulsors were working double time to try and stop our momentum, but the ice continued to split and crack adding drops and jumps to our sliding. My arms felt as if they were going to tear off while I hugged the ATC with one and the wrench with the other. The woman that I had managed to snag was now struggling to grab hold of the ATC as her body was dragged away from the forming crevasse.
“Delta! Someone! Get her!” I tried to mutter on the comms through gritted teeth. I didn’t know how long I could hold the woman or if the wrench would stay snagged on her armor plates. I trusted the whisper had something with the trickle of strength that kept me holding on.
That was when disaster struck. Again.
Chapter 3: The First Return
The tilted ice and all our forward progress since activating the tinted visors had gotten us much closer to our destination. Even having slowed down our slide, the ATC hadn’t been able to stop us from flying off the lip of the drop.
The drop we had seen from afar was a kind of moraine, sediments and jagged rocks littering the ground beneath. The ice sheets of the plains must have cracked and slid a long time ago, causing the physical erosion. The moment we became airborne, the woman came off the pipe wrench, the sudden shift in weight causing me to overcompensate and my arm came off the ATC. Windmilling with my arms and wrench, I collided against one of the larger rocks. I felt my armor plating grind against the rock, but I managed to catch myself with the pipe wrench. As much as I hated Captain Starden, his ridiculous gift had already saved me more times than I could count.
I had managed to hold on to a rock shelf on one of the bigger boulders in the moraine. Looking around I noticed the almost thirty foot sheer drop from the snow field we had been walking on.
Scanning the area, the crevasse that had send us snow sledding burst through the moraine ridge.
Ice and stone ejected into the opening and I reflexively put my arms up. Almost none of the fast moving shards reached me but I heard several painful yelps through the comms. I couldn’t see where the ATC with the others was or where the woman who had gone flying had landed. I carefully used the wrench and the jagged edges of the boulder as handholds to climb my way down.
It took a good five minutes of shuffling and stopping to get to the bottom of the moraine. I retracted my helmet.
“Delta! Gamma! Zeta! Eta! Where are you guys?” I felt ragged after holding on to the mech and going on an unwanted slide party. I made my way slowly through the rubble as the earth shaking stopped. I heard some shouting from a bit west of where I was and I did my best to pick up the pace.
After a few minutes of climbing up and down rocks I found the ATC. From the HUD in my visor I had seen that one of the ATC’s arms was red and one of the legs as well as the central chassis was yellow. One of the front legs of the cart ATC was torn off completely and there were severe dents and scrapes all along its underbody. Delta was propped against the ATC with his head in his hands. One of the women, Zeta, as I recognized her face without the helmet on, stood by his side. Gamma or Eta was looking through the rubble north of where the ATC had landed.
When I moved closer, Zeta noticed me and jumped up. She embraced me and whispered thank you's into my armor. I awkwardly patted her back as she cried her eyes out. I’d never been the most sensitive individual, but I had always been more attentive of my coworkers than most other people. While Dun Lund was not a mining rig or the cafeteria of the Nuclelectric plant, I’d already started to care for the survivors.
The other woman began shouting unintelligently as she pushed a rock down from the mound she was standing on. Zeta and I disengaged and even Delta shook himself off. We started digging with fervor where the woman indicated. As we dug, a pair of armored legs slowly became exposed.
The more we dug, the grimmer my expression became.
The rocks had snapped her legs at unnatural angles and the armor plating was heavily dented. As we uncovered more of her body, blood coated some of the rocks where they had punctured the armor and pierced her abdomen. At her chest, I told the others to stop. The amount of blood that covered the rocks after exposing her was already too much. I heard Zeta whisper quietly “Eta…”.
I motioned everyone to wait by the ATC. Fresh tears streamed down Delta's and Zeta’s faces. Gamma retracted her helmet to reveal a similar expression. I bit my lip as they made their way down the rock mound.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to break down and shout at the injustice of the Government. While I had killed to be sent to this frozen hellhole, the reason for it should have been more than justified. The Named trampled over everyone else. They did not need to fight one another for food, or struggle with work to eat or even learn a proper trade. The anger I held for the injustices of the Forgotten and the Digits strengthened my vow to tear the Government apart.
Stifling tears, I removed Eta’s battery pack and slung it over my shou
lder. While I wasn’t close to any of the people that had already died in Dun Lund, I knew I would avenge them. I moved some of the smaller stones and covered her body in an attempted burial. When I approached the group, they took notice of the bloody belt that hung fresh on my chest.
While a fresh round of tears passed the group, I moved to the ATC. It had been laying on its side and I tried to stand it up. The mech was deceptively heavy and I struggled to even move it at all. Delta noticed me struggling, regardless of the loss we had all experienced, wiped his face and helped me with the ATC. The machine was still heavy, even with Delta’s help, but I grit my teeth and pumped.
I propped up the machine as the whisper ran through my mind. The moment we balanced the ATC on its repulsors, it began to whirl loudly inside. “Status. Right adjustable limb lost during air impact. Minor to moderate exterior damage to overall frame. Status: Operational.” The robotic voice sounded even more robotic somehow as it ran a system check on itself.
The ATC underwent its transformation back into an upright mech, albeit missing an arm at its shoulder hinge. The exterior damage was even more noticeable as it stood on its repulsors and checked the range of motion of its limbs. After several rotation cycles, it stopped and turned slightly so its ‘front’ faced me.
I felt callous after having lost and looted Eta, but if we were to survive we needed to keep moving. There was time to mourn and to process the strange voice in my head later.
“ATC, can you move?” I addressed the machine.
“Affirmative. Movement speed has been reduced by approximately seven percent,” came the monotone response.
“Great. Do you think you can find Beta and Epsilon?” I said while looking at the cracked interface on the robot. If the mech was able to identify seismic activity, I felt it wasn’t too far of a stretch that it might have heat sensing or even tracking capabilities.
The reasoning behind giving a bunch of Digits access to the technology in the ATC seemed to contradict what I expected from the people at the base. Why did they not simply go through the planet with some kind of armed force or even a more advanced hovercraft. There was no clear reason for us to be turned into hunters when we had no real experience.
“Targets acquired. Codenames 'Beta’ and 'Epsilon’ are approximately two miles west of our current coordinates.” The whirling inside the ATC had died down after it had run it's diagnostic test and it stopped completely after it reported out companions’ location. I asked “ Are they coming in this direction?”
“Affirmative. They should arrive in approximately one and a half hours if they maintain their current pace.”
“We should move to meet them. The moraine provides us cover from the icy winds and it seems the only likely place we are to find more of those creatures.” I said turning to the others who had been paying attention to my conversation with the machine.
“We will go where you tell us.” Delta's rough smoker tones reminded me of my times working at the factory. While it had thankfully never done permanent damage to my voice, my time making Nuclelectric parts had left my voice sounding close to that on bad days.
“It’s not up to me only. I’m only trying to survive like you all,” I replied.
“There is no need to be humble, Alpha. We would all probably be dead thrice over if not for you. Some of us because of that arm creature, some of us because of the cold and the rest of us… because of the quake…” Zeta said with emotion. I turned to look at the woman and noticed Gamma looking at the rock mound in the background. There was no doubt in my mind that to most people I came off as a morally righteous, callous prick, but I was sure it was exactly what was needed in Dun Lund.
I nodded, accepting their trust somewhat formally, and we headed west.
● ● ●
The walk was one of the most difficult treks I had ever done. There were few people that still hiked for fun since Halley's comet struck the Himalayas, revealing heavy metal deposits. I was among those not a fan of hiking. Most mountainous regions on Earth had been turned into literal gold mines for electronics, New Dust included.
There were few sections of the moraine that were flat, and we had to go around or over large boulders more than once. At least in the case of Delta and I, our factory work made us no slouches. Every time we had to go around or over a particularly challenging obstruction I would hear the voice in my head talking about ‘Advancement’, but I still had no clue what it meant.
Along the way I noticed strange marking on the ridge wall. I didn’t have time to stop and really look at the marks since I was prioritizing meeting up with the others. As we continued walking, the markings increased in frequency. When the ATC announced that we were only a couple hundred feet from the others we stopped to rest. I felt bad not meeting with Beta and Epsilon as close as we could, but the bruising and exhaustion from our slide had worn us down completely.
The system star light was starting to fade, and I imagined it would not be the smartest decision to continue in the dark.
After a couple of minutes of waiting, conversation sounded through our comms as the other two survivors got in range.
“Hey Beta.” I said tiredly through the comms. The young boy sounded excited in the comms and I could hear him and Epsilon pick up the pace by the rubble being disturbed near us. When the pair rounded a large boulder they retracted their helmets and beamed at us. It was only after they reached us and did a quick head count that they realized we were one person short.
“Where is Eta?” Epsilon asked. I looked away slightly. I didn't have the heart to tell them she had been crushed by the debris of the crevasse.
“She… is no longer with us.” It was Zeta who responded as the other's that had slid on the ATC rubbed at their eyes. It took a moment for the pair that joined us to process the information. I hated being the pragmatic one in the situation, but I waved everyone closer.
“What happened after we got caught up with the earthquake?” I asked Beta and Epsilon trying to redirect the conversation.
While Beta was still sniffling, Epsilon replied. “After you and Delta ran after the girls, the ground split right in front of us. We tried to get you to use the ATC, which you did, but then you all quickly slid away. We ran after you, but the shaking knocked us to the ground. Once we were able to move we followed the crack in the ice and found the incline we had spotted from the holding place.” Epsilon took a breath as he motioned to the ridge walls around us. “The drop was too tall and dangerous to climb down so we looked for an easier way down and made our way to the crack. There were only a few rocks further that way, but they got progressively bigger.” He continued.
It made sense that they had to backtrack. Even if Epsilon had been more athletic, which he wasn't considering his rounded proportions, it would have been dangerous. I was still amazed our armors had held up to essentially a two story building fall. As I nodded at their explanation I suggested that we move some of the rocks around to help with the wind and set up camp.
The ATC still had all of our rations and water. Even if we had only gotten one chance to eat the rations for the day, I felt that having the calories couldn’t hurt. As I distributed out the rations to the others, the somewhat carefree atmosphere that had existed after we had named each other was gone. There was no grumbling as we ate and thought about the unexpected extra food sitting untouched inside the mech.
As the light disappeared completely, twinkling stars shone in the sky. There was a faint outline of the atmosphere of the main planet visible from our circle stone in the moraine. As I activated my helmet, the metal casing covered my head and the HUD shut over my face. The others laid close together, hoping to share some heat with one another instead of taxing their suits.
I sat silently on a boulder as they all fell asleep.
It had been a long time since I had friends and within the span of a day I had already lost one. In an attempt to get my head out of the rut it was headed for
I questioned the ATC.
“Do you have a name?” I asked almost absentmindedly.
“I am an All-Terrain-Carrier,” was the simple reply I received.
“Yes, but would you like one? I guess it’s only fitting since we are only alive because of you.”
“I believe the other Digits would argue that assessment.”
“Well, I know what I believe… So? Any thoughts on that?” I turned to look at the ATC as it started whirling quietly.
It was long minutes without a response from the mech. I had begun to doze off to the slight whistling of the wind through the stone circle and the slight warmth coming from the armor when it did not have to work overtime to keep me alive. The machine sounds from the ATC stopped suddenly and it spoke. “Marvin is appropriate.” it replied in an unusually human tone.