The No Names

by Frank Albelo

  Good plan.

  The trip took an hour like usual, but I noted that the girls were not getting nearly as winded and by the time we reached the surface my body was almost completely restored. I pushed out my mind, brushing up against Koma who replied with a simple, Good. As I pushed my mind out a headache crept in behind my eyes and I pulled myself back into the present, the now ever-present whisper updating me.

 

  “Really need to practice that more,” I mumbled to myself.

  “What’s that?” asked Gamma.

  “Oh nothing, just thinking about what we need to get done. I have some plans for when we return, but food is my biggest concern.”

  “Yeah, if we want to meet the others it will also be important,” added Zeta.

  After that we all were lost in our thoughts, the hike through the moraine turned mechanical. I didn’t expect Marvin would be much for conversation, but I checked on his status and only yellow damage showed. Its power reserves were also at about seven days, which was the highest they had been thanks to all the fighting. I had an idea for increasing his energy capacity, which topped at fifteen days worth after a bit of math, but before I could think much more on that we exited the moraine.

  What I now knew was sunlight shone on the icy moon and we were all forced to equip our helmets to shade our eyes. It only took another hour to arrive at our usual snow drift. Beta had found that there was a rock just below the snow so the snow always seemed to pile up in the same spot. We plopped down on the ground for a brief rest.

  “Umm.. Alpha?” I heard Gamma ask shyly.

  “Yes?” I had an idea of what she was going to ask, but I let her speak her mind anyway.

  “You aren’t going to try to fight the robots again, right? Even though I think you are cool and super strong, I think they are a bit much for just you,” she said. Her face was flushed from both the cold and the embarrassment she must have felt trying to tell me what to do. In an attempt to diffuse her concerns I forced a chuckle.

  “Don’t worry missy, there are more important things going on than my anger.” I did my best to smile and reassure her, as well as myself. I had had trouble controlling myself before being truly mutated; now that I was in the full blown process I was in trouble.

  While I wasn’t convinced, my words made Gamma smile and she began to recount my fight with the mechs for Zeta.

  A few minutes later, we headed from the snow drift, arriving at the bottom of the base. Starden was standing inside the holding area like always, but there were four ATCs around him this time, two of the bulky variety and two of the speedy ones.

  “Feeling a bit insecure, eh, Starden?” I shouted over the howling wind cutting against the base.

  “Hilarious, 36589900. Let’s get this over with.” His usual shit eating grin was present, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth told me our last meeting had left a seedling of fear in the man.

  I moved forward and dumped the dog corpse to a scoff from Starden. When I instructed Marvin to dump the half torn ape on the snow, specks of congealed blood dropping to the ground, Starden rushed forward to the fence.

  “How…” I heard the question linger in the air. The man was staring holes into the ape body and it took me clapping my armored hands together for him to focus.

  “What are these things, Starden? That is my question.” I kept my eye on the man. Prior to reaching the base, I had told Zeta and Gamma to keep an eye on the surrounding snow and different parts of the base. I did not trust Starden as far as I could throw him and, while that was much more as a mutant, I didn’t forget who made me that way.

  “Starden! The question!” I saw the man flinch when I shouted my demand. I’d never seen Starden hesitate or falter in his swagger, even after all the fucked up shit he had put us through.

  “They… were failures,” he paused before turning to look me in the eye, “That is all you are going to get. Here are your fucking supplies.”

  Starden motioned his hand in the air and the speedy ATCs repulsor jumped to the main building of the base. When they returned each held a metallic crate, one like the other two we had received and the other smaller but longer. During the end of the exchange I was struggling to contain my anger. It had been mere moments since I had laid eyes on Starden that my muscles rippled under my armor, ready to pounce and tear him to shreds. It seemed that containing my Hyperburn was also part of another Mastery since I heard,

 

  When the ATCs dropped off the crates, Starden and his posse left together across the gangplank. As he took up the rear, he used the loudspeaker system of the holding area to tell us that he would no longer meet with us; dropping bodies would prompt an unseen ATC to provide our rations. I was positively seething, but my anger diffused when Gamma put her hand on my shaking arms.

  “This might be for the better.” Followed up Zeta from behind me. “He is causing you too much stre—”

  “Stress! We’re on a frozen moon, far from even our shit home!” I snapped back at the woman.

  I bit my lip, blood running down my chin. The pain helped me finish shrugging off the anger Starden incited in me.

  “I’m sorry, Zeta. I know you are just trying to hel—” I was quickly and deftly slapped across the face.

  “No problem, Alpha. Just remember, you are not alone in dealing with this place. We are all on this frozen moon, together. This is why we need to find those survivors.”

  Her slap hadn’t hurt much at all, what with the intense cold and recent beatings I had received, but her words cut me deeply. She wasn’t wrong. I was trying to fight every threat on Dun Lund and it was tearing us apart. I breathed deeply and nodded at the woman, taking note of the unshed tears in her eyes.

  Gamma was mute as we made our way back to the moraine, but when we started the haul back through the boulders she suddenly started on her life.

  “My parents weren’t really Digits. My father was an Official who had an affair with one of the supervisor Digits at the farms of Clearmon, my hometown.” Zeta and I listened intently. Based on Zeta’s look this was probably the first she had spoken about her past.

  “He was good to her. He even called her ‘love’, which always made my mama smile. This didn’t last long though. When the other supervising Digits found out who my father was they started asking my mama for favors, always pushing.” The girl’s slight smile turned into a grim line.

  “My father did nothing. The bullies came in droves, giving work to my mama that they didn’t want to do because they said she had it easy. She endured it; she always worked with a smile, but I could tell it was rough for her. One day I had enough. I went to each of the supervisor’s stations and wrecked the computers there.”

  “They were not happy about that. They beat me, claiming insubordination, and brought me to my father. You can guess, but he gave me no pardon, and here is where I ended up.” The youth gestured with her armored arms at the stone shelf and snow that covered the ground around us.

  “Alpha, you have been treating me more like a daughter than my father ever did. I know it has only been a short while, but you have taken care of us with your life. Please, don’t end up like my mama, we are here to help you with the burdens.” We had all stopped moving when Gamma started her story.

  Without realizing I had started crying, tears dampened the inside of my helmet and I had to retract it to clear them. One look at Zeta told me she was even worse off than me, especially after becoming so close to Gamma over the last few days. I rarely cried, but I wasn’t sure if it had been due to the girl’s words or my own heightened emotions since mutating.

  After seeing our response, Gamma pulled both of us into an awkward hug and squeeze. It was a clunky thing considering the armor plating making our bodies wider than usual but I smiled genuinely. I felt an unknown weight fall from my shoulders.

  I had no family, just another gifted Digit orphan that had been given a
profession early in life. Throughout my life I had attempted to connect with people, making friends where possible, but no connection felt real enough even when I cared for the well-being of my friends. I realized early on that it wasn’t the fault of the people themselves, but the oppression and strain we all lived under. I was the odd one. At that moment I realized that the survivors were my family, not because of blood but because of our commitment to one another.

  “We’ll get out of here, Gamma. I will make sure they pay. All of them.” I set my jaw and resolve for the future.

  From then, we pushed deeper into the moraine making record time. It looked to be about midday by the time we reached the passage. After our long walk we took a quick break at our surface camp, hoping to make even better time down into the city.

  Based on my lack of space lag since arriving on Dun Lund the moon must have had a similar rotation speed to Earth. I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that the moon and planet were actually part of our solar system, the one that had been thoroughly studied in the process of colonizing Mars, but considering I was now part mutant and there were aliens out in the universe anything was possible.

  Zeta broke me from my thoughts and we headed down. The new determination evident in our steps and lack of chitchatter. Starden was scared. Building up our strength to sever our need of the USG would be the first step to growing stronger and that meant capitalizing on the resources we had currently.

  In the blink of an eye we made it to the underground city. I paused at the ledge when I noticed bobbing lights along one of the buildings. Assuming the worst, even though I was not sure what the worst actually entailed, I high tailed it down the slope. I left Marvin with the girls and told them to hurry as much as they could. I felt the muscles in my legs swell and I picked up speed inhumanly fast.

  I realized almost too late that I would not be able to slow enough to turn from the slope, otherwise I would hit the huge cavern’s side. Looking out to the stone lip I leapt. I was ten feet off the ground and skidded another ten before my armored boots were able to get enough grip to change direction. I pumped my legs to a speed I felt was manageable, pushing off B1 into the main street we had been using in the city.

  In my haste to reach the others, I hadn’t noticed them approaching out direction and almost crashed straight into Beta. Picking up on my surface thoughts, Koma pulled the youth out of the way and I did a short power slide to stop my forward momentum. When I turned around, I noticed that the part of our group that had remain in the city were the ones responsible for the lights we had seen. Before I could process their appearance, the Overmind whispered.

 

 

  There were rough-looking torches for each of the Digits present. As I got to my feet, and the others recovered from the shock of my flying around the corner, I took note of the torches. They were made from the longer wooden sticks we had collected and something on the top was causing fire and drifting ash to move with the underground’s breeze.

  “How are you guys doing?” I tried to play off the encounter, but I could see a smirk on Koma’s face. I realized I should have used our Calforn connection to check up on the group, but had instead rushed in blindly.

  The others were equally unimpressed, and so they all laughed. Beta joined in a second after, once his panting turned to normal breaths. I retracted my helmet and took the jeering as I greeted everyone. About a minute later Marvin and the girls turned the corner and almost repeated my comical entrance. Thankfully, we had all been standing just inside the threshold of B1 and they just ran on by.

  I smiled, the silliness of our return lifting my spirits. “So, now that we’ve all had a laugh, what’s the deal with the torches?” I asked as our group gathered in the first floor, now much better illuminated thanks to their torches.

  “Delta and Epsilon made them! Well, with Koma’s help, but they had the idea for them!” Replied Beta excitedly, his torch waving in front of him. Scatterings of ash drifting to the ground.

  “Yeah, somebody wanted us to go through a bunch of dark buildings and they took the only light source!” Delta quipped.

  I winced slightly as I realized who that somebody was. Delta continued after a new hearty round of laughter. “It’s alright, I figured there was something we could do about our light situation. I was sick and tired of relying on poor Marvin’s screen, so I pulled our tinkerer Epsilon over there and we came up with these.”

  As he finished speaking, Delta pulled another torch, unlit, from behind his back. The long piece of wood had a hole about three inches deep carved into the top.

  “I knew that while all that wood rot would be no good as a weapon, it would still catch fire. Epsilon had out new mutant friend here carve the holes with his handy dandy claws and we stuffed them with the rot. A bit of spark from our armor plates and bam! Portable fire sticks.” The man looked immensely content with his explanation and I patted him on the back, but I was more curious about what this could mean for us in the future.

  I wasn’t sure how hot or long the rot torches could burn, but there was at least plenty of rot to burn. As I questioned Epsilon about the different properties, the others offloaded our supplies.

  The clearly ingenious man had studied wood and plant-based fuels as a hobby, amongst other things, when working for the transmission relay stations of New Dust. I was surprised about his origin, but I did not interrupt him as he explained that depending on the wood rot, it would burn almost as hot as the original wood but would produce a significantly stronger smell and more ash byproduct.

  I nodded at Epsilon’s explanation, the gears turning in my head. I turned to Zeta once she returned, “Can you and Gamma go fill our empty rations crate with as much rot as you can? I will leave Marvin with you all as extra protection. Delta, can you give the ladies your torch.”

  The Digit complied, coming closer once the girls were making their way up the stairs to collect the rot already within B1. “What’s the plan?” he asked, clearly unhappy I had him get rid of his main torch.

  “I think we can save power on our suits by heating the upper floor. We can use the rot as fuel and the roof exit to vent the fumes. Sure it will be smelly, but it will put us in a good position. It will also be the warmest we’ve been since the Pendett.” I explained.

  The realization on the others, and the surprise on Koma’s face, were perfect. “We just need to collect bigger rocks to use for the fire pit. They should also help with diverting the smoke up.”

  I didn’t have to say anything else; the entire group rushed off to collect the stones. I chuckled as I jogged after the others, easily catching up. As we moved around the alleys I shot looks at the congealed pools around the experiment Calforn. My mood soured.

  ● ● ●

  It took less than an hour for us to collect some smooth stones and enough rot to fill the ration box. Zeta and Gamma had actually done two trips and cleared the second tier of B1 of rot, piling it up on the top floor. Everyone gathered nervously as Beta and Delta set the stones in a small semicircle around the chute to the roof.

  Koma had also shredded some of the longer lengths of wood with his claws to use a kindling after the rot lit up. The tension in the room was almost palpable as Delta used Gamma’s broken armor piece to spark over his forearm armor. The orangy sparks flew through the air before dying when they touched the rot. No one said a word as the sparks struck and struck until a tiny ember formed. Delta let it be, holding his breath for a second as the rot caught fire. He quickly placed kindling on top and the small fire started to grow.

  Everyone cheered. I smiled, not wanting to spoil the good mood with a comment about using the lit torches to light the campfire, and cheered along with them. After only a few minutes of feeding the fire it was releasing enough heat for all of us to deactivate our heating system.

  The natural heating as oppose to the recycled one was oddly comforting. We had been using th
e recycled heating for almost a week now, the sweat filtered out only when we opened the suits to relieve ourselves. For the first time in several days, we peeled back the suits to our underlying clothes.

  The suits retracted to a series of overlapping plates along our thighs, shoulders and waist. The helmet and upper chest remained as an awkward collar, but none of us seemed to mind, I certainly didn’t. I had forgotten with all that had happened about my synthetic collar shirt and work jeans. There was a positively hellish scent coming off all our clothes, but everyone smelled so we just took a moment to feel the air on our own skin.

  I gathered everyone together after the smell dissipated a bit. I explained my plan for preparing before we left to find the survivors. The long crate we had gotten from Starden had six replacement batteries for our suits, meaning we had enough to replace everyone’s whenever they emptied again. I told them that I was planning on trying to install the batteries inside Marvin to potentially charge them while simultaneously giving the ATC more storage.