Opal glanced at the control to launch the EMP grenade. Point blank range for both of them. She double-blinked.
A blinding flash and smell of shorting circuits; her suit visor’s HUD flickered and went out, emergency-shifting to transparent so she could see what she was doing directly, without the filtered camera view of the world. Except, in the darkness, she could see nothing. The pressure was off her arm and Opal rolled to the side, slashing out at random as she did so and succeeding in hitting the assassin hard enough to embed the blade in its armour so that they tumbled across the ground together. Without her suit’s power she had to shift its bulk with only her own strength, so every movement of the heavy armour was like being in deep water, resistance where before there had been speed and power. But it would be the same for the assassin.
Suddenly a ghostly greenish radiance lit up a section of wall where the assassin had flung an adhesive glow stick. Her adversary’s stealth-optics had temporarily shorted out revealing the sleek black armoured suit without distortion as they struggled. Within the clear visor a blue-haired woman stared back at Opal with eyes that seemed more angry than alarmed, and wide black pupils that confirmed Opal’s combat drug hypothesis. The assassin grimaced as she fought to free herself of Opal, facing the same resistance, the same issue of being temporarily thrown back on her own resources, and her milk-white face trembled with the strain.
They were too closely locked for Opal’s extended nanoblade to be swung, but that didn’t matter. Opal used that hand to snatch the flash welder from her waist, flick it on with her thumb and aim the full burner into the assassin’s visor. It blackened and began to melt, forcing the assassin to jerk away with enough force to break clear of the blade that had been embedded in her side. No air gushed out so it hadn’t been deep enough to penetrate the inner layers, only the exterior shell.
The assassin kicked out, scrabbled away, unable to see through the visor any more. Opal scrambled after her, trying to push the welder’s super-hot flame against her enemy’s suit in a single place long enough to burn through it, but she kept getting swatted aside, leaving glowing lines across the armour rather than a clean multi-level burn. Then a lucky kick struck her hand and sent the flash welder flying. No bother. Opal was winning now, and could start stabbing with her blades, finish this ... but the assassin had drawn some kind of display pad and held it out, an image on it, an image of a woman who looked a bit like Opal, same dark skin but long hair, the curls straightened out to look corporate, wearing a suit and a serious expression, and the picture was thrown towards Opal so she snatched it and stared at the image, a doppelganger that could have been her in a different life, so similar it could even be a younger sister: she stared for a fatal second more and then it exploded in her hand.
Escaping
< 35 >
STINGING PAIN IN HER fingers, staggering to the side in the after-burn of the blast, amazed to see her hand was still there, though the suit’s gauntlet was damaged and she couldn’t make a fist. She’d hardly registered that before something stabbed her in the shoulder. Agony tore through her, more than she’d expect with a simple suit penetration. Air sputtered out around a stiletto dagger handle, and the suit sparked there, while beyond her the assassin was using the wall to stand up.
Opal’s HUD flickered as the suit kept trying to reboot and re-establish systems following the EMP blast. That meant the assassin’s would be doing the same, and even though her visor might be burnt, once her software was up and running she’d use the external cameras again and have perfect vision, Opal’s temporary visibility advantage lost. Whereas Opal felt like she was halfway to being dead. Even another thirty seconds facing this opponent would be enough to finish Opal off in her current state.
She held the walkway barrier and flipped over it, landing on her back and sliding down the curve for a few metres towards the grinder. She was desperate. Every movement was torture, her joints aching.
Part of her display was now back up. She scrambled further down the drain’s slope, away from the clang to her rear as the assassin climbed over the barrier too.
“Opal, this is your suit AI, a minimal backup of Athene for emergency situations. I cannot yet gain contact with my main persona so will act to keep you alive in the interim.” The voice was similar to Athene’s, but with less emotion and life to it.
“Good. I need that,” Opal said through gritted teeth. The pain when she moved prevented her from standing: it was all she could do to crawl and tumble down the steeper parts of the slope towards the grinder’s teeth and blades.
“Diagnostics show a strike with a pointed weapon,” said the suit. “It is poisoned and a neurotoxin is spreading through your system. I am analysing it and will try to counteract it, but the dagger is also creating electrical interference that is causing problems. I am injecting you with analgesics to numb any pain so that you can act temporarily. Please remove the dagger.”
Opal used her eye controls to retract the nanoblades, then she grabbed the dagger’s handle with her undamaged gauntlet and tore the weapon out, throwing it away with a clatter. She glanced back to see the assassin approaching, trying to stay upright on the slope – which thankfully meant that she was moving slower than Opal’s frantic tumbling.
A diagnostic screen popped up on the HUD showing suit repairs taking place, and another ran through blood analysis. All distractions. The pain eased slightly, from being a full thunderstorm sparking in her head to just a dense raincloud rusting her joints and wrapping her brain.
Opal needed to get away. To move quicker. The surface seemed like metal sheets. Probably the organic metal Athene had identified earlier. Opal vaguely remembered Athene saying it mostly reacted as inorganic metals would. Her suit had a minor ballistic repulsion field to deflect physical munitions. She was desperate and clutching at any idea that might let her survive a few more minutes. It couldn’t end like this.
“Put as much power as you can spare into the repulsion field,” she said.
Immediately the surface she moved over felt slick, as the repulsion field tried to separate itself from the metallic substance it was in contact with, and she slid quickly into the mouth of the grinder. The slope was steep enough to keep up her momentum. She crashed over jagged tearing edges, tried to jump over a ring of serrated blades but slipped and almost impaled herself as she tumbled down this horrible throat. She smacked into one of the huge teeth in one of a sequence of big interlocking gears, the ones that could rotate and crush things to paste: she skirted it in a half-panicked scramble to keep moving, keep descending, get as far as possible from her pursuer.
A glance back: she’d created a gap, the assassin was at the mouth of the tunnel, about to follow her in. No other exits. Opal’s only chance was speed and distance.
“Neurotoxin recognised, applying counter to it now.”
More circles of blades, then another five metres of toothed rings. And as Opal smacked into another obstacle she noticed that the gear’s teeth actually resembled organic teeth rather than being featureless trapezia. They were massive, greyed, and mineralised with decayed ridges on their surface, embedded in a hard rubber-like material that resembled gums. As she climbed over, her hand pushed into stringy organic matter stuck between the teeth. She dreaded them starting to rotate while she was within the depths of the mincer.
Maybe she was imagining them looking like teeth. Maybe they really did. Maybe it was part of a misinterpretation of what the grinder was for as Athene had suggested, a misunderstanding concerning different conceptions of the word “teeth”. Maybe it was even a bizarre alien gallows humour, or artistic licence.
As more systems came online the suit AI gave her a proximity indicator. The assassin showed up, further back, moving cautiously. Good. Opal’s recklessness was much faster.
Damage warnings flashed as she crashed over more serrated blades, sliding with ever-greater momentum further down.
Then the red dot representing the assassin disappeared off the scanner.
&nbs
p; “Has she retreated?” asked Opal. She tumbled head over heels, her silverlight spinning and adding to the disorientation that meant even short sentences were difficult.
“Negative. I think it just means her stealth systems are back online. Trajectory and speed suggested she was still approaching you at the moment the scans failed.”
Opal tried to right herself, to slide in a more controlled way, and then she was past all the grinding gears and blades. Although being among them had been terrifying, she now wished they would spring to hideous life, to get the assassin.
Never rely on wishes.
The angle was getting steeper. Opal hoped there would be an exit at the other end. Her lights also showed an increase in the grime and gore coating the walls, and what had been a trickle channel at the base of the tunnel was now a congealed stream of decomposing matter. It was easy to imagine the rotten stench if she’d been forced to breathe the outside air.
Opal lowered the power of the ballistic repulsion field, stopped tumbling, and splashed through the liquids as quickly as she could. The suit had repaired the stiletto’s puncture wound, and negated the paralysing effect of the toxin before it took hold. But there was still no exit. Just a layer of gooey fluids that reached higher and higher. She could see that the grinder’s tunnel was completely immersed in it after a few more metres. The thought of the foul air in here was enough to make her gag.
“I’m going to have to go under, aren’t I?” she asked.
“There is no other way if you are to avoid your opponent. I have repaired many of my communication systems but still have no contact with Athene. I think we are too deep in the Lost Ship, and the thick walls of this grinder tunnel are a further interfering layer.”
“I don’t know how close the assassin is, but I’ve got to assume she isn’t far behind. Prepare a couple of proximity grenades. Release them once I am submerged in this ... stuff. I doubt they’ll kill the assassin but they will be a nasty surprise and make it more cautious. Anything that can slow it down further might be enough for me to get away.”
“Affirmative.”
Opal was now chest-deep in gore. She tried not to focus on the congealed lumps floating on the scummy surface. She couldn’t resist the primitive yet pointless urge to take a deep breath before submerging below it. Inhale, then down into the bloody belly of the beast.
Swimming
< 34 >
VISIBILITY WAS ALMOST zero in the liquids and chunks of partly processed matter that filled the grinder’s lower tunnel. The suit added extra power to the lights, and that helped give a visible range of about a metre. Other wavelength scans picked out more distant details of the tunnel and overlaid those shapes on the view.
“I hate this,” said Opal, now completely immersed as she walked through the viscous fluid. “And please, if you detect anything lunging towards me in this shit, let me know before it tears my legs off.”
“Of course. The tunnel opens into a flooded tank of some kind now.”
Opal stepped through the end of the grinder’s throat and into a submerged chamber. She immediately sank, hit by a feeling of panic and the sensation that a presence lurked in the depths below. No telling how deep it went.
“Up!” she said.
The suit adjusted its buoyancy so that she floated to the top of the chamber. It was entirely flooded, no air pockets, no ledges to climb onto. She rotated to face upwards and pulled herself through the sea of gore by gripping parts of the ceiling. She mostly used her left hand, because the right gauntlet was still not fully functional.
“I detect a number of small exits up here, and others further down. They may be filtration channels.”
“I want out, though I’d rather not have to dive deeper.” The ceiling of the submerged tank seemed rusted and cracked, as if the liquids were able to corrode whatever they came into contact with. Another reason to move quickly. “I’ll see where these top exits lead. You reckon I’m still being followed?”
“I am afraid I do not have the advanced stealth capabilities of your pursuer. They may be able to track your passage. But since there are multiple exits, there is a good chance that they will lose you. Regardless, you need to make haste. I’m sensing shapes in the liquid below you, and they are getting closer.”
“Shapes?” The nebulousness of the word, that could disguise a hundred horrors, was a spur to wriggle and pull herself across the top of the submerged chamber even faster than before.
“The silhouettes are indistinct, but make me think of squidworms. Something I didn’t imagine existed until now.”
Opal shuddered but continued to move as rapidly as she could. Then she reached one of those upper exits – an overflow pipe, though completely full of liquid. It was only a bit wider than her suit. She pulled herself into it and squirmed along, head first, hardly able to tell where she was going and just hoping it didn’t get tighter. There would be no turning around, even if she wasn’t being pursued by both an assassin and something more alien – and probably more dangerous.
“How do you think the assassin found me?” she asked, mostly to distract herself from the feelings of claustrophobia.
“If it was scanning on the silverlight wavelengths it will have seen your beams as brightly as you do. You would have been a beacon in the darkness.”
“That’s just great. If I have to rely on passive wavelengths I’ll be moving blind. Though I suppose it’s the same for her. Maybe she’s using a lower power light so that there’s not as much range. That will mean she spots me first, but it will also slow her down. For now I want distance, so keep the beams at high level, but be ready to dim them if we encounter the assassin again.”
As she moved along the tight tunnel on her back she noticed a change in the top of the pipe. It had become a grille, and didn’t look too strong. She pushed against it and it lifted; once she got enough room to bring her knees up she was able to kick it off completely, and sit up. Her top half emerged from the liquid, drenched.
She was in a pedestrian tunnel, similar to the ones earlier, where a grille covered a channel for liquids. She scrambled up and onto the firm surface, then replaced the grille where she’d climbed out. The suit dripped with sickening gore. She jogged onwards down the tube, trying to create as much distance from the assassin as possible. She hoped it had run into whatever beings swam further down in these disgusting waters, but hopes were too insubstantial to build plans on.
The suit superheated the exterior shell enough to cauterise away the organic fluids. Flakes of carbonised matter fell from the visor and carapace and floated to the floor, leaving the suit looking dull and marked, but at least not dripping with sticky fluids any more.
Opal examined her right hand as she walked. She was able to move her fingers again, though the gauntlet felt stiff with resistance.
“You are lucky,” said the suit. “If the blast had been a weapon-grade explosive there would be no hand. Or arm.”
It backed up what Opal suspected: it was just the assassin’s quick-thinking use of a corporate datapad’s automated confidentiality system, which would destroy the device and its contents if it went beyond a pre-defined proximity from the owner.
But what was that image on the datapad? The assassin had obviously had it ready for display. It certainly wasn’t a historical picture of Opal. A mock-up? Part of some aspirational promotion offer that would have been made to Opal if she surrendered Athene to the UFS?
Opal reached a service elevator. The cabin was on another floor. She hit the call button but, as expected, nothing happened. She pulled the emergency release, hooked her fingers under the heavy safety door, and heaved it up. The shaft beyond dropped down into blackness, though the elevator could be seen a few floors above. She didn’t like going into that shaft but she needed to keep moving and zigzagging if she wanted to throw pursuit, and she needed to keep ascending to get nearer to her goals.
The grapple rifle was sticky with repulsive fluids. She leaned into the shaft and fired it up
to the elevator cabin. It punctured the weak lattice floor then extended spikes, as well as using the other adhesive options. It was solid. She maintained a tight grip and stepped off into the blackness, dangling there above the shaft. A faint sound rose, as if wind moaned down there. She retracted the cable and zipped upwards. One floor. Two. Three. She was now level with the floor just below the elevator. She found a partial foothold and used one hand to open this door from the inside, keeping hold of the rifle with the other. Awkward, but there was no other option.
Once she’d made enough of a gap she stepped through it into a white-panelled corridor. Ceiling lights hung down, but they were dark and powerless. She retracted the grapple rifle. As she did so the moaning sounds in the shaft got louder. Or closer. She swung the rifle over her shoulder and heaved the door closed. She took a few steps backwards, watching it, but nothing happened. She turned and made her way briskly along the corridor.
The white panels reminded her of hospitals. An abandoned transportation cart blocked the way. It was heavy, normally pulled by a vehicle, but she dragged it to the side enough to squeeze past. Some odds and ends of thick green piping leaned against the wall.
“I am back in contact with Athene now,” said the suit. “I am handing you over to her. It was nice working with you.”
“My pleasure,” said Opal.
“Opal!” Athene’s voice, thick with relief. “I was so worried!”
“It’s no exaggeration to say I was, too. Good to hear your voice. Is this the right way?”
“Yes. Just keep going for now. And I have bad news. Well, probably bad. We’re not alone.”
Maybe the EMP blast had temporarily scrambled Athene’s short-term memory. “I know. It’s a UFS assassin. The question is, what’s she doing here? How the hell did she follow us? I thought we were in the clear.”
“I don’t mean the assassin. I was referring to the ship that’s out here with me. Remember that I was one of only two experimental depth level seven AI ships? Opal: I’m being hailed by the other one.”
Chasing Solace Page 9