by Isaac Hooke
The fuel canisters found on the jetpacks of mechs and jumpsuits were designed not to explode when struck by bullets. The tanks found on booster rockets, however, offered no such guarantee.
Thus, when the stream of Gatling fire from my mech struck, the booster’s large fuel tanks ignited. Spectacularly so.
All five mechs nearby, including my own, were sent hurtling backward by the ensuing fireball.
“Just what the hell are you doing?” Bender sent.
“I’m not in control.”
Somewhere along the way, one of the Phants had entered my ATLAS 5 without my knowledge, biding its time. I don’t know why it waited. Maybe at first it had wanted to board our ship via the mech—a Phant had attempted something similar back on Geronimo. But then with all of us close to the booster just now, maybe it thought it wouldn’t ever get a better opportunity to take down so many mechs at once, and it decided instead to attack. Who knows? This was an alien entity, and its thinking was completely alien to our own.
Dragonfly started to rise from where it had fallen.
I had to stop it.
I activated the cockpit release, and the inner shell folded away as the hatch fell open. I drew the pistol from my belt, and aimed into the small crack beneath the cockpit, between the hatch and chest piece. In my gun sights I could discern the mech’s brain case. It was slathered in glowing condensation.
Before I could fire, Dragonfly reached inside and wrapped its fingers around my arm. My jumpsuit was useless—those colossal digits easily crushed the exoskeleton, not to mention my muscle and bone underneath. I felt tendons rip and fasciae tear and bones splinter. The whole arm felt like it had been caught in a meat grinder, and pain worse than any I had ever felt before flashed through my being.
Dragonfly tore me out of the cockpit and flung me aside like a rag doll.
I landed several meters away, and blacked out.
I must have been under only a few seconds, because when I came to, the battle space hadn’t changed all that much around me, according to my HUD.
I started to sit up.
That’s when I realized I couldn’t use my right arm.
The whole limb was a mangled mess, barely connected to my shoulder socket via a piece of skin and loose jumpsuit. Blood poured out of the empty shoulder joint like a geyser, in bursts timed to my beating heart.
I vomited. Twice.
Feeling incredibly nauseated, I reached into the left cargo pocket of my jumpsuit leg assembly with my good hand, and retrieved the suitrep kit. I was vaguely aware of Gatling fire erupting close by as blood slowly pumped from my wound.
I fumbled three skin seals out of the kit. I shoved my arm back into its socket and braced the glove against the ground, so that the torn limb stayed in place. Since the jumpsuit was ripped open, I was able to numbly slide the skin seals over the exposed flesh of my shoulder area, one by one. The seals activated, instantly suturing the wound and halting the blood loss. I tentatively sat back, lifting the near-severed limb from the ground. My arm remained in place, thanks to the sutures. Couldn’t move it though.
I didn’t feel any pain, surprisingly. Just an incredible lethargy.
I was in shock.
I tried to stand.
Unfortunately, I’d lost a lot of blood. Stars filled my vision. Hydrostatic pressure was at an all-time low in my veins, and I nearly blacked out again.
Plunking myself back down, I retched.
I blinked the stars away, trying to get my wits about me.
All suitrep kits came standard with one IV, filled with a plasma volume expander. Using my teeth to hold the IV tube, I managed to hook the tube into the injection slot of the glove on my good hand. Then I connected the bag of plasma volume expander to the tube.
Inside my glove, a needle extended directly into the dorsal venous network of my hand, and started pumping the much-needed volume expander into my body.
Still using just the one hand, I secured the fluid bag to my belt with tape. The pain started to come then, so I quickly slotted some morphine into the glove, and let it inject.
I felt better immediately.
I stared at my mangled arm. I felt distant, almost disconnected from myself. There was no vomit this time. Just . . . curiosity.
First I’d lost the arm of my ATLAS mech.
Now I’d gone and basically lost my arm for real.
I almost couldn’t believe it.
A part of me noticed that the nearby Gatling fire had ceased.
Two mechs rushed toward me. Bender’s and Dyson’s. From the stooped posture of Dyson’s ATLAS, I thought he was injured somehow. Might’ve been mere external damage, though.
“Wait while I load Rage,” Bender said to Dyson. “Then I’ll take you to the next booster.”
“I’m fine.” Dyson sounded winded. “Don’t need an escort.”
“You’re not fine.”
“See you in orbit.” Dyson sprinted off in his ATLAS 5.
“Wait! Bitch.”
Bender’s mech, “Rocketman,” carefully plucked me from the shale and lowered me behind its head, just above the jetpack, into the seat specifically provided for a passenger. I sat back, facing Bender’s six, and weakly buckled the seat belt with one hand.
“Rage, you gotta patch your suit before we launch,” Bender said. “Rage?”
“I’m on it.”
Bender hurried after Dyson, but the other ATLAS already had a good lead on him. “Dumb ass thinks he doesn’t need my help.”
As Bender ran, I groggily worked on repairing the huge gap that had been torn into the shoulder area of the jumpsuit. Like Bender said, I had to do it before we launched, because otherwise I’d be pinned by G forces and before I knew it I’d be surrounded by the void of space.
Fighting the drowsiness caused by the blood loss and morphine, I ended up wrapping all four suit seals around the shoulder area. The suit was only slightly damaged below that point, as far as I could tell.
To confirm that I hadn’t missed a spot, I shut my face mask and initiated internal pressurization and oxygenation.
“Suit integrity one hundred percent,” the friendly female voice intoned from the speakers in my helmet.
I still couldn’t use my mangled arm, but at least I was space-ready.
In theory I needed to wait an hour before entering a zero-g environment to prevent risk of decompression sickness, but obviously I had more important things to worry about.
In the distance behind us, I watched the possessed Equestrians and ATLAS mechs break away from the enemy front; they were trying to hunt down the laggards among us before we all escaped.
“And there he goes,” Bender said. “Guess the bitch is fine after all.”
On the HUD map I saw Dyson’s dot blink repeatedly, indicating liftoff.
Soon Bender reached a booster, and began the hook up.
“You ready Rage?” Bender said.
“Yes.”
“How’s your suit integrity?”
“One hundred percent,” I said.
He paused, and I knew he was confirming my status on his aReal.
Incoming gunfire started to come in on us.
“Damn it. Piss off!” Bender initiated liftoff.
I watched the landscape fall away below, along with the half circle of possessed ATLAS 5s and Equestrians, and the robots, crabs, and slugs beyond them. It was a good thing we’d retreated when we had, because the numbers were just insane down there.
I felt the Gs then. I was positioned so that most of the force bore down on my lower back, but I hardly felt a thing.
Gotta love morphine.
In fact, I was barely awake by that point.
“How are you back there, Rage?” Bender said.
“Heavenly,” I murmured. I had a sudden, urgent thought. “Ch
eck the brain case. Gotta check the brain case.” I wanted to make sure no Phants sneaked on board via the ATLAS 5s or any other machines after we docked.
“Sure thing, Rage,” Bender said.
I don’t think Bender understood me, but I didn’t have the energy or clearheadedness to explain it to him.
I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew, we were floating in high orbit above the curved horizon of the moon. The beautiful blue clouds of the gas giant swallowed the heavens beyond. Everything was dead quiet.
My suit integrity remained stable at one hundred percent.
The rockets let off one final burn, and then the boosters broke away from the mech.
Bender fired the ATLAS 5’s jetpack in controlled bursts.
On my HUD map, I observed a distant green dot ahead of our position, labeled Gerald R. Ford.
I shifted slightly, feeling a different kind of nausea now, caused by the disorientation of space, where there was no up and no down, no left and no right.
“Rage, you okay back there?” Bender said.
“Never better, bro.” To the AI in my helmet, I added softly, “Deploy barf bag.”
I threw up into the flutter valve of the bag.
CHAPTER SIX
Shaw
At my request, Fan carried my rifle-scythe slung over his back. I kept his loaded weapon to myself, along with his last three cartridges. I was a little surprised his ammunition had held out for as long as it did. Either he had a brilliant danger sense or he had a huge stock of supplies at his camp.
I had let Fan clean one carcass before we left the fallen pack. There wasn’t really time to carve up any more of the things, not unless we wanted to fight off other hybear scavengers.
I brought up the rear, while Queequeg trailed Fan, nipping at the heels of the SK. They made an odd pair. Queequeg, a cross between a hyena and a bear, and Fan, a human in a jumpsuit with black shale glued all over it.
We’d been marching for almost five and a half hours, and Fan had barely said a word. I seemed to recall a certain SK notion regarding good manners, where custom dictated that the guest remain silent until the host initiated conversation. I supposed I was the host in this case, and I could certainly use some conversation right about now. Light, superficial conversation—I didn’t want to get to know Fan overly well. I didn’t want to get attached to him, not on this planet where it was so easy to die. Especially when he was basically the enemy.
“How in the world is the radiation not affecting you?” I said. That was relatively superficial.
“Mmm?” Fan glanced over his shoulder, slowing. Queequeg gave him a good nip and he increased his pace again.
“You have Geronium rocks plastered to your suit. And you’ve been walking on a planet made of it every day. You should be dead.”
“If it pleases you, I have subdermal medications for that.”
I nodded. “But how long is your medication supposed to last?”
He laughed. “All right, I admit it. The medications have expired. I have had radiation sickness for months. It gets worse every day.”
“Oh.”
“What about you, Shaw Chopra? You are protected?”
“I have subdermals, yes. And they’re still active.” I wasn’t about to tell him my own were nearly exhausted. Another reason I wanted to find the ATLAS 5: better rad shielding. “What happened to the other Forma techs? You weren’t the only one, were you?”
“Oh no, no, no. There were five others. I was out surveying when the recall shuttle came. They were in a hurry. They did not wait for me.”
“Nice of them.”
“Yes.”
“You know, where I come from, we have a slogan. No one is left behind.” I didn’t know why I was telling him that. I wanted to show him how much better the people of the UC treated each other, I supposed.
“Good slogan. But then, why are you here Shaw Chopra?”
I chuckled. “Touché.”
We were in the equatorial valley I had nicknamed the Main Rift, a large canyon that ran halfway across the planet and put the Grand Canyon of Earth to shame. I scanned the edge of the gorge, searching for the series of defiles where the ATLAS 5 apparently resided. I double-checked my map. We would be reaching the area soon.
“You speak unusually good English for an SK,” I said.
“If it pleases you, I grew up in the United Countries.”
I noticed he was using the polite “if it pleases you” a lot more now. Speakers of Korean-Chinese prefixed it to the front of their sentences when addressing someone considered a superior, and since I was the one with the rifle . . .
“You’re a defector, then.”
“If it pleases you, no. I am but a poor immigrant who moved away before reaching the age of mandatory enlistment. I did not want to fight. If it pleases you—”
“Stop saying that!”
He seemed confused. “What?”
“If it pleases you.”
He hesitated, glancing back at my rifle. “If it ple—” He stopped, licking his lips. “Tell me, Shaw Chopra of the UC Navy, you have fought many of the Yaoguai?”
I increased my pace, walking forward so that I was by his side, two meters to his right. “You mean the crabs and slugs?”
“No. The Yaoguai. The mist demons.”
Yaoguai. That literally meant monster, in Korean-Chinese. “You believe they are demons?”
“Why else would they possess our robots? The bad spirit, taking over the good?”
I regarded him curiously. “You said you had two robots helping you, back at your camp. How many did you have to start with, before you were stranded?”
“Eight. The Yaoguai took the other six. It is lucky the robots were unarmed, or I would not be here now. So you have fought them? The Yaoguai?”
“I wouldn’t say fought is the operative word. Ran, more correctly. Why, you’ve found a way to beat them?”
He snickered. “No, no. But I had hoped you had. The only way to beat a Yaoguai that I know of is to run, as you say. If you do not, you lose.”
“Yup,” I said. “You definitely lose. Being burned to a crisp isn’t something I’d call winning.”
“It is a fate worse than death. I have seen the Yaoguai take the Chéngdān—the hybears. It is hideous. To have your body disintegrated, then your being, your essence, transported to a hell beyond imagining, where every day is an endless trial of tortures . . . it is unimaginable.”
“We all have our own versions of hell I suppose. But dead is dead.” I thought of Big Dog and Alejandro, who had died at the hands of the Phants. Rade had shown me the vid logs of their deaths. It wasn’t a very good way to go.
I think Fan sensed I didn’t want to talk more on the matter, because he changed the subject.
“When we find this ATLAS mech, you will give me my rifle back?” he said.
“I’ll consider it.”
“We will stay together?”
I pursed my lips. “We will. Until we get to the next Forma pipe and you make me another oxygen extractor, at least.” The O2 tanks on the mech wouldn’t last forever, after all.
“You like to be alone, Shaw Chopra?”
I had to smile at that. “I told you, I’m a lone wolf.”
“I do not understand,” Fan said. “What does being alone have to do with being a wolf?”
“Well, wolves usually travel in packs, right? So, I’m not like the other wolves. I don’t travel in a pack.”
Fan grinned widely in understanding. “Ah. So you are not like an ordinary wolf. You travel alone.”
“Yup. Just said that.”
“I am the same. Or have been. These past fifteen Stanmonths, I’ve—”
“Fifteen Stanmonths?” Standard Earth Months. “Is that how long you’ve been here?” I almost could
n’t believe it, but I supposed it made sense. The SKs had fled this system roughly fifteen to sixteen months ago. And I thought being here eight months alone was bad. I could only imagine what it must have been like to endure this world for double that time. And without a companion like Queequeg.
“You are the first human face I have seen since I was abandoned,” he said. “Other than my own. And yours is far prettier.”
I grinned. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“I hope so. Though I am not certain how we will consummate our relationship while trapped inside these cumbersome jumpsuits.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Not the sex thing again. If you ever bring up consummating again, I might have to get rough with you.”
“Maybe I like rough?”
I swung the rifle barrel slightly toward him. “You wouldn’t like my kind of rough.”
He blinked rapidly. “My apologies. As I said, I have been alone for more than a Stanyear. I have lost a few of my, how do you say . . . social niceties. Not that I had very many in the first place. Ha! It was only a joke, little one. A joke.”
“Don’t call me little one.”
He sighed profusely. “But you are little compared to me, at least in age, Shaw Chopra.” He said my name slowly, dragging out every syllable. “Shaw. An odd name for a woman. You really do not know who George Bernard Shaw is?”
“Nope.”
“He was a twentieth-century playwright and novelist. I remember his work from primary school, in the UC. Did you ever read ‘Androcles and the Lion’ in class?”
“I was homeschooled in France. Lived on a cider farm. Didn’t do any George Bernard Shaw.”
“Ah.” Fan clasped his gloved fingers. “Well, it is the story of Androcles, a Christian on his way to the great Colosseum of ancient Rome, where he was to be executed by a lion.”
I snickered. “Sounds like a wonderful story to teach children.”
“Yes. The lion spared him.”
I thoughtfully tapped the glass of my face mask with one hand. If I didn’t have a helmet, I’d be tapping my chin. “So let me guess. I’m the big, bad lion, and you’re the kind, gentle Androcles, and you’re hoping I’ll spare you.”