Chasing Solace

by Karl Drinkwater

  Luckily there was no cold. No yellow void. But in its place was noise – disconcerting grunting, whimpering, screeching and crying, like a mass of beings in agony and fear. As the door rose further the volume increased and the environmental indicators in her HUD – normally fairly constant throughout the Lost Ship – changed rapidly. Temperature from the room beyond was eleven degrees higher than background; humidity also far higher, at seventy-six per cent; atmospheric composition included ammonia, hydrogen sulphide, and methane compounds in an acidic concentration that would blister exposed skin.

  Opal’s heart raced at the distressing sounds which seemed to echo up from below. All her body interpreted it as danger, warnings, suffering. The door clunked into the fully open position and she looked around the thick frame to see what awaited her.

  Processing

  < 18 >

  ANOTHER WALKWAY, STRUNG to the ceiling by steel cables and running high across a massive metallic chamber. On the other side was an open doorway. A straight way to the exit. All she had to do was walk forward and not look down, not pay attention to the terrible sounds coming from below, not peer over the narrow walkway’s edge at whatever was down there.

  She did glance, of course, careful not to overbalance. She was sure there should be safety railings of some sort, to prevent one slip leading to death, but this place was always on the edge of danger, maybe it was just an overt acknowledgement of that fact. She gripped one of the taut vertical cables instead as she stared, the automatic range finder that tracked her gaze showing it to be a drop of twenty-eight metres.

  It was one of the Gigatoir’s immense animal pens. And it wasn’t empty like the rest of the ship. A multitude of chattle squirmed at the bottom of the funnel-shaped room, so many that some were on top of others, and the feeding troughs at the edges were hardly visible as the creatures all fought upwards for space and to avoid being crushed beneath the mass of bodies. And they were massive, larger than any Opal had ever seen, larger than even low gravity normally allowed. Their heads had a different shape to normal chattle, mouths larger, extending from stubby necks that rippled with fat overlaying the muscle. Those struggling below the others, crushed and apparently suffocating, obviously resorted to biting. There were scars and red stains on lips and flanks, jaws somehow extending as they chomped into their companions in panic and madness that had no escape.

  “How are they even alive?” asked Opal, horrified. “Is someone still feeding them? Breeding more?”

  “They may look similar to normal chattle, but markers indicate these are as alien as everything else we encounter. They would not be able to breathe at all if they were human-bred resources.”

  The reinforced nature of the room made sense now. No creatures could escape, whether through the thick metal walls or up them; and neither could sounds or odours escape, except via the spiked air vents up on the ceiling.

  “I guess it smells pretty bad,” said Opal.

  “Would you like me to synthesise an equivalent in your suit? I could match the external olfactory triggers and extreme humidity.”

  “No.” Opal could well imagine the stink, the way it would make her retch. The screams from below tore memories to the surface, sickening thoughts of the abattoir she’d been sent to, the moist heat from sweating bodies and high-pressure water jets, the palpable fear chemicals in the air, the visceral cries of fear and pain that ripped at your guts like a buzz saw.

  “This, here ... on normal ships, on planets ... it turns my stomach.” Even as Opal spoke she could hear the terrible lowing in the background.

  The suit’s tone was soft when it said, “I know how upset you are. Our shared feelings mean I also find both the theory and reality of de-individualised mechanisation to be distressing. I should attempt to distract you, to alleviate distress, and yet –”

  “Some things are bad enough that you’re meant to feel them.” Which was why Opal didn’t ask the suit to filter out the sounds of suffering from below, which echoed up and reverberated, amplified all around her, until it felt like it was screaming in her head too. “Sometimes we have to bear witness.”

  “Noted.”

  Opal took deep breaths and looked ahead. The platform was narrow and swayed as she moved, even more as she approached the middle, but not enough to throw her if she kept her cool. She held her hands out to her sides as she walked.

  Another platform hung nearby, from a frame attached to the ceiling. A glance at the mechanism suggested it could be moved around, and also lowered and raised from a control panel in its centre. At the edges of the mobile platform dangled a number of limp devices on segmented cables: drills, saws, and long-fingered grabbers. Also pipes that dripped liquids, maybe used for refilling the feeding troughs below. Presumably a crew could then work in safety above the chattle, performing perfunctory maintenance, selecting and killing targets, then lifting them and manoeuvring them to the large chutes halfway up the walls, big enough for dropping whole chattle into. Opal guessed that the chutes led to the rendering floors where the beast would be processed into constituent parts. The mobile platform was parked out of reach of the walkway.

  “There’s a terrible efficiency to all this,” said Opal, just to hear a voice over the screaming din from below.

  “Actually, although I don’t like being contradictory, you are completely wrong,” replied the suit. “Systems like this are inherently inefficient.”

  “But it’s all mechanised for maximum production. The kind of thing a machine might design. No offence.”

  “None taken. These have a flowline that can design, breed, slaughter, process, store, and ship out end product, with any remaining waste ground up and fed to the next generation of modified creatures in forced anthropophage. In principle it is fairly organised – not that I can’t see more efficient ways of processing organic matter.”

  Opal shuddered at the thought of what an AI could do if it wasn’t on her side.

  “The inefficiency is a function of biology, not process,” the suit continued. “No biological beings are very efficient, and much of their consumed nutrition is wasted on emissions, excretion, growth of inedible parts. Even at their most efficient it takes around five units of input protein to produce one unit of animal protein: which means these places are actually reverse protein factories, with four units lost for every unit of output. To try and minimise costs, the system requires brutal intensification. It makes no sense to me that humans feed edible proteins to other creatures at a functional loss.”

  “My species has a hard time breaking habits.”

  “Organic cultures must have a lot of weight and momentum when even logic cannot redirect them. No offence.”

  “None taken. Looking at this place, it makes me glad that people like me only get repro foods.”

  “Exactly. I am glad we have this common feeling. It creates a closeness between us which I never expected to experience.”

  As Opal focussed on the walls rather than what moved below, she had one of those strange twists of perception, like when psych teams test you with ambiguous words and images to see what your primary interpretation is, but once they point out the alternative, it pings into focus, akin to the old-fashioned versions that served as retro adornments to clothing during one trend when Opal was growing up. Face profiles or candlesticks? Old man’s face or a mermaid? For a while those motifs were everywhere, always in two colours, frivolous things reduced to being this or that.

  And now as Opal looked at the riveted metal panels that formed the surfaces of the walls and ceiling she spotted the rust-like liquids that leaked down from the rivets in the high humidity, and in a second they switched to looking more like weeping scabs, rivulets of red as if beyond the huge panels it was not a starship but flesh, the metal plates of the room riveted to masses of it as if to stem a chaotic tide of reproducing cells, or as punishments for a living thing that refused to conform to the shape demanded of it. And the moaning from below could have been coming from the walls themsel
ves, the ship, and pains from the present crossed with pains from the past and pains from the future. So much came down to suffering. So much came down to restrictions. It wasn’t clear if there’d ever be a future free from them.

  She walked on anyway. And the door shuddered closed behind her.

  FOCUS AHEAD. NOT UP. Not left, or right, or back. Certainly not down. No deviation from your course allowed or desired. Handy rules for success, and for keeping yourself from vomiting in places like this.

  And that’s why Opal saw the assassin immediately as Xandrie entered through the open doorway ahead, where she’d obviously been hiding just out of sight in the darkness of the next room. Without taking her eyes off Opal she reached up and thumped a button. The door lowered with a grinding rumble.

  Opal activated the arm gun but as she raised it, Xandrie turned and faced the door, withdrawing something from her utility belt.

  Opal kept the gun aimed at Xandrie’s back. She squeezed her fist, fingers curling inwards to create action, destruction, annihilation. Such small movements with such large consequences. As simple as pressing a button that starts a war. As simple as signing a decree that forces a new future on children. So easy.

  “I advise you to shoot,” said the suit AI.

  Opal recognised the item in Xandrie’s hand. It was Opal’s portable flash welder. Xandrie was using it to apply glowing spots to the door frame, preventing it from being opened again in a hurry.

  “It is obvious why the assassin chose this place for a confrontation. As well as the dangerous environment and the need for you to face her rather than run, she has no doubt realised that hi-res signals are blocked here. You won’t have the benefit of my mother Athene, only myself, a poor replacement. I do not have the power to predict and flow with your actions one-to-one, so in battle I may be as much of a hindrance to instinctive reactions as a help. It equalises things now that VigMAX is no longer on her side and she is alone.”

  Xandrie applied the last welding spots, yet Opal’s fingers were still frozen as she stared at that vulnerable back.

  Opal should shoot her now. Kill her while she could. Ignore the implicit trust, and equally implicit challenge, of Xandrie’s vulnerability. It was common sense to break the rules of honour, just as Opal broke other rules.

  And yet ... breaking rules had led to punishments, so often. Which brought to mind the year-long mystery of Xandrie’s residence in the Genitor base Paratory Droxious. What had she done? What had been done to her? And was there anything left of the person she’d been?

  “The assassin would not show you mercy,” said the suit. “Please fire now, or allow me to take over and execute affirmative actions.”

  “Don’t interfere,” said Opal. “That’s an order. I know Athene can ignore me, but I don’t think you can.”

  No reply.

  Xandrie put the flash welder on the floor, then stepped away from it and faced Opal. Xandrie’s visor was opaque, features hidden. The prize was escape, the implication that only one of them could take it.

  “You have lost your advantage,” grumbled the suit. “It is just as Athene warned me: your desire to do things the hard way is infuriating.”

  “I don’t choose to do it the hard way. Just to do it my way. No-one else’s. That’s always hard when the whole damn universe tries to bend you into something else. Loud speaker.” Opal took a breath, then said, “Xandrie, we don’t have to fight.” Her voice had to be amplified to be heard over the cacophony of frenzied wailing from the pit below. “I don’t want to kill you.”

  Xandrie did not move or show any signs of having heard Opal for the first few seconds. Then she started sprinting towards Opal to close the gap, jagged wrist blades extending from the slots that housed them.

  Why did no-one ever back down when Opal told them to? If only people would take her more seriously there wouldn’t be so much pain. Just once, couldn’t someone take the easy road? That was all she asked.

  Just one freaking time.

  Fighting

  < 17 >

  OPAL AIMED AT XANDRIE and fired, an easy target. Except nothing about fighting Xandrie was easy. Only a few flechettes pinged off her armour before the glowing shield blossomed from her left arm, deflecting most of the darts which would have otherwise struck her hunched-over but rapidly-closing body.

  One of the platform support cables nearby snapped with a high-tension twang, tilting the platform at an angle and throwing her aim off as she tried to keep her balance on the swinging walkway. Xandrie had deflected the fire at a line of cables near Opal, shredding them – oh so clever, and Opal had fallen for her opening move.

  Any more cables snapping could spill both of them into the pit below. Plus Xandrie was almost upon her and close enough to glue up this gun with a spray of the purple explosive goo as well (the other was still out of action) so Opal retracted the barrels to keep them safe and extended her nanoblades. Ranged weapons in these conditions were clumsy and imprecise anyway. She needed to be up close.

  Opal adopted a side-on stance, good for minimising target areas and holding one nanoblade back for advancing lunges and retreating blocks. She tried to keep Xandrie at a distance with fencing moves but her strikes were met with sparks as they were deflected by Xandrie’s shield or deftly parried by her shorter wrist blades.

  Opal was forced to retreat to keep appropriate distance for her longer weapons, since if she got too close lengthier blades became a handicap, and Xandrie’s wicked wrist knives would make mincemeat of Opal’s guts once they were inside her guard.

  But Xandrie was ferocious and fast, able to dodge and weave as well as deflect, and she was unrelenting in her attack. Sparks flew from Opal’s armour as the jagged blades scored it again and again, forcing her back metre by metre, her breathing hard as she struggled with the exertion and pain. It was all she could do to stay on her feet, trying to remain steady, the stability that acted as a grounding for everything else.

  Sometimes you have to use what you’ve got.

  Especially when what you’ve got is bigger.

  Opal threw her greater body and armour weight forward, slamming her shoulder into the centre of the assassin’s chest so that Xandrie staggered to the edge of the platform. She had to grab one of the steel support cables to prevent herself from falling. Although the walkway was made up of metal plates bolted together at the edges, so much motion twisted them that some of the interconnecting bolts had already snapped, making things even more unstable. Opal grabbed a cable too. There would only be a second’s respite, and the bulk smash trick was unlikely to work again.

  And yet, the tactics required were instinctively simple. In these kinds of battles, where you don’t have enough power to go through defences, then you have to go around them to win. Didn’t matter if it was a shield, a suit of armour, or a tank.

  Xandrie lunged forward, guarding her centre. Opal had already braced her foot against the taut steel cable behind her, kicking off in a high leap that her opponent obviously didn’t expect, so that Opal’s extended blades slammed down from above the shield. One of them punctured through armour plating and into flesh beneath, releasing a hiss of escaping air as they crashed together and struggled and finally broke apart, both clumsily adopting defensive postures, eyeing each other warily.

  And this time Xandrie didn’t rush forward again. Her posture was off. The injury was telling on her, would slow her down in the way that Opal’s did. And the blade cuts weren’t the only wounds showing on the assassin. Some of the exterior armour plates were partly ablated, with long searing burns that were likely from when Athene fired at her. The repair crusts implied the burns had got all the way through the armour and caused injuries to the woman within. Xandrie must be in as much of a world of hurt as Opal was. And did the assassin just sway wearily? Or was it caused by the rocking of the platform? Shit, things were even beginning to swim in Opal’s vision.

  “Your internal injuries are rupturing,” said the suit. “I need to apply stimulants an
d analgesics, otherwise you won’t be standing in a few moments.”

  “Do the minimum. I can’t risk losing my edge.”

  Warmth flooded her body and the pains numbed as a chemical cocktail infused her bloodstream. Keep her alive now, crash and suffer later.

  The stand-off was short-lived as the assassin pushed forward, swinging clumsily. It was easy to block the inept attack. Xandrie was ready to collapse, and this wouldn’t go on much longer. Then Xandrie stumbled on one of the platforms where a support cable had snapped, and Opal didn’t pause to think, just took advantage of that momentary weakness to lunge forward with one of her blades in a finishing move that would puncture the stealth suit’s armour.

  At which point she realised she’d fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book, as Xandrie caught the nanoblade between the dual prongs of her own wrist blades which could act as sword-breakers, suddenly in perfect balance after her faked stumble.

  Trickery. So much in combat came down to minds and psychology, not muscle.

  Before Opal could pull back, Xandrie was turning her, controlling her by the locked sword, kicking at Opal’s midriff again and again while she couldn’t retreat. Damage indicators appeared, warning of small punctures – some kind of hidden blade must have extended from Xandrie’s boots and it perforated Opal’s armour in a dozen places as she scrambled to stay upright, realised she was being manoeuvred to the edge of a platform, the trapped nanoblade now a liability. She tried to push back but Xandrie was ready for it, lowering her body and hips below Opal’s centre of gravity and turning it into a throw that sent Opal crashing heavily to the deck on her back, shaking the walkway so that even more interconnecting bolts snapped. Opal rolled to get some distance but her defence was a mess; by the time she stood awkwardly, Xandrie’s reverse roundhouse connected with Opal’s chest with staggering force. Opal’s stumbling momentum twisted her feet, she reached the edge of the lop-sided dangling walkway and her upper body tottered over it, only air and the squirming, braying mass of alien creatures below.