Iron Legion Battlebox

by David Ryker

  I pulled my feet off the throttles and let the engine settle to idle. “Sal, would you be a doll and route the audio to the external speakers?”

  “Sure thing, James,” she said softly as I got out my my chair and stretched my neck.

  I stared at it for a second, the cracked veneer, the sponge sticking out of the tears, the word ‘FUCK’ unceremoniously carved into the headrest by one of the previous owners. Guess even his manners ran out at some point. Or maybe it was because of behaviour like that that Sal developed her authoritative air. I couldn’t say. It was against policy to discuss former employees. I’d asked what had happened to him when I’d first climbed into Sal, but she’d told me straight that she couldn’t talk about it, and we’d just sort of gone on from there. I’d be lying if I said she hadn’t softened some since. I curled my lips down, looking at it. Fuck what, exactly? Was it an exclamation of anger? FUCK! Or maybe a statement of hopelessness. Fuck. Or was it more an act of rebellion? Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck everything. I couldn’t say for sure, but whatever they were trying to get across, I’m pretty sure I got it.

  I pulled on my walker suit and slammed the helmet down, listening to it seal with a hiss. The hatch that led outside was accessed through a chute that doubled as the decon’ shower — a glass screen that slid out of the wall to seal off the cabin, and then opened into the air above. I hit the release button and felt the dust and sand swirl around me. I wasn’t an engineer by any stretch, but this job was easy money. I took the ladder in hand and climbed out, looking around at the endless sea of pale orange dust streaked with green and brown veins of algae. The beginnings of oxygenation. But there was still a long way to go — another half a dozen centuries before anyone would take their first rancid, stinking, sulfur heavy breath of surface air.

  One of the food places back in Ninety-Three, the bubble-domed excuse for a town I called home, had a landscape almost like this painted on one their walls. I asked the owner about it once. He told me it was called a prairie. It had come in a pre-rendered pack from the Federation. He’d never been to Earth himself — no one ever had. It was a thousand light years away.

  He’d said that ‘Earthscapes’ were reproduced from datafiles and shipped all over the universe to wherever humans were. For some reason there seemed to be a focus on that. On remembering ‘home’ like it was some fairytale land to travel back to one day. From what I’d heard it was a wasteland. There was nothing much left to visit except ash and sludge. But then there were people who said it was everything but. They were all rumors anyway, millenia old, drifting across the universe. So which was right? Maybe both were true in different times. Either way, I’d never know unless I saw for myself, and I didn’t think that would ever happen, so what was the point in giving a shit? It was a pretty picture, so what did it matter?

  I clenched my fists inside my rubbery gloves and let myself down the external ladder into the shadow of Sally’s square body. It was long and black in the sinking sun, red and tired on the horizon. I went to a storage hatch on the dark side and got out my tool bag.

  I circled her, knocking on the chest-high treads with a spanner, drumming to the beat of the song blasting in the thick air. I wondered what sort of fun and games they had in the jungle, and what exactly a jungle looked like.

  The dust hammered my walking suit as I approached the exchange, a half-buried metal box that regulated cable current across the surface. The steel had already started corroding and the door was hanging half open. I stared at it, wondering how in the hell they thought it’d last for another seven hundred years. I grimaced, realising that they knew it would last because they had chumps like me to come and fix it every time it broke down. I repaired the door first, the source of the problem. Without it, the wires inside were exposed. The wind and dust had already started eating through the rubber and into the metal. I did what I could. It really needed replacing, and I put that in as a note, but I knew it’d just stay like it was until it needed repairing again so I put it out of my mind, shut the door and got up.

  It was dark by then and the stars were glittering overhead. I looked up at them and paused. One was big. Really big. And growing, fast. I narrowed my eyes, watching it. A freighter coming in for a slingshot? No, wrong angle. Satellite falling out of orbit? No, too small.

  As I was trying to figure what the fuck it was, it burst into flames, hitting the atmosphere. The shockwave staggered me and I stumbled backward, dropping my tools with a clang. “What the fuck?” I mouthed in my suit. I reached for the comm on my helmet and touched it. “Sally, sitrep — what the hell’s going on?” I dragged my eyes away from the swirl of fire around the object and made for the Blower. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was coming in fast. My heart was hammering in my chest, my breathing suddenly tight. My vitals blinked furiously at me in the corner of my visor. “I detect a large incoming craft. It appears to be a Federation vessel.” Her voice was as calm and sweet as usual, but it didn’t do anything to dispel the adrenaline surging in me.

  I made it halfway back to the Blower, kicking dust up behind me in a thick cloud, before the noise hit me like a wave and nearly threw me over. The ground started to rumble, and my insides coiled up like a snake. I staggered sideways and plunged onto my knees, skidding in the red earth, my breath fogging on my visor. I twisted around just in time to see it, white hot and smoking, sailing over the desert like a huge torpedo. The air split around me and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I swallowed hard to pop my ears, but they wouldn’t listen. My eyes tingled and my teeth felt furry. My brain stammered and a high pitched whine sang in my ears. Electromagnetic repulsors. It had to be. That was the only thing that had effects like that. My comm faded to static and crackled in my ear.

  Repulsors were used on the biggest Federation sub-orbital vessels to stop them destroying half the planet on entry. And they only used them when they were coming in for a landing. But we weren’t expecting a delivery, and especially not from something that size — so what the hell was it doing here? I scrambled forward. I had to. If I couldn’t make it back to Sally before it passed overhead, the jets would rip me in two.

  I got no more than ten feet before I felt them crushing down on me, and then sucking me backward into the air. My feet left the ground and there was nothing I could do. Ahead, the Blower reared onto its hindquarters and somersaulted backward like a toy truck. I tumbled forward and over, catching sight of the huge black underbelly of the ship above, broken by blue jets. The heat sent the sensors in my suit wild and my visor lit up in red and white, flashing madly as I swirled through the air, screaming in my own ears. All I could register was heat. My skin felt like it was peeling off, sizzling like seared meat.

  It burned inside the suit, threatening to blister and bubble, and everything else went numb in the haze of pain. My teeth clattered together and my eyes stung. My brain fizzled and stuttered and the ground and sky flashed in turn as I was dragged through the jet wash, a leaf on the wind. The engines howled above me and every bone in my body shook and jostled against the others.

  I sucked red hot air into my lungs and felt my eyes glue shut. My stomach lurched in the force and I spewed sickly bile into my helmet. It washed up the glass and gummed in my hair. I retched hard, choking on the smell and liquid. I kept my eyes closed and the inside of my face exploded in a plume of pain as acid rose into my sinuses.

  My ears rang like bells, and then there was silence. Weightlessness. Impact. Screaming. Pain. Crying. My heart beating in the darkness, hard and fast like drums.

  And then, nothing.

  2

  When my eyes opened, all I could see was darkness. I pulled my face back from the visor and felt my face peel from the acrid bile dried on it. The HUD readouts glowed in the darkness, bright against the sand, speckled and cold beyond the glass. I moved my hands and felt the sand around me shift. The slow pulsing of blood in my ears died away and I became aware of the pain in my joints and back. I thought about my chair in my cockpit, wh
erever the hell it was, and the word carved into the headrest. I sighed and made a mewling noise, understanding it now more than ever.

  Fuck.

  I pushed myself out of the sand on shaking arms and onto my knees, feeling it drain off my back and pool around my heels. My throat was razor blades and my head felt like it’d been hacked in two. I swallowed painfully and sat back, breathing hard, the gravity of the situation sinking in. My heart was hammering again and my HUD told me that my oxygen was below fifteen percent. It flashed in red and yellow, burning against the endless ocean of sand around me. I tried not to look at it. A huge gorge had formed in the sand and a canyon ran into the distance toward Ninety-Three. The glow of the two moons that hung over Genesis-526 played softly on the ridges of churned earth. It was the trail left by the Federation dropship that had tossed me like a ragdoll. I stared into the abyss, wondering how the hell I was going to get out of it. I reached up and pressed the comm link on the side of my helmet. It clicked uselessly in my ear. The electromagnetic field must have fried the circuits. My breath sounded shaky and my eyes stung. There was no sign of my Blower, no sign of anything. My fists curled at my sides so hard the rubber of my gloves groaned and twisted.

  It was a goddamn miracle I was alive, and the fact that my back wasn’t snapped was pretty fucking astounding. Though it wouldn’t be worth shit if I suffocated to death in the middle of nowhere. No. I couldn’t think like that. I gritted my teeth and tried to shake off the feeling of hopelessness. It wouldn’t budge. I sucked in a hard lungful of vomit-stricken air and watched the number in front of me plunge to fourteen percent. The Blower. Where was the Blower? I had to find it. If I did, I wouldn’t suffocate. Then I could go from there. It was just one step at a time. Shit. I had to think. It couldn’t be too far — walking distance, at least — I hoped. I was near to it when we were tossed. It must have been close by, and close to the surface. If it wasn’t… I didn’t really want to think about that just then.

  The flicker of courage waned as quickly as it’d risen and I collapsed forward and swore, sucking in the putrid stench of vomit, trying not to think about it being splattered and smeared all up my face. I gritted my teeth and willed myself not to give up — not to accept death, no matter how heavy I could feel it on my back. I had to get up. I had to think.

  My comm was fried. Shit. That wasn’t good. But my HUD was still functional, sort of — and that meant that the EM field hadn’t fried my electronics. If it had, my respirator would have failed and I’d have asphyxiated before I even woke up.

  There was that, I supposed. Comms weren’t working because the antenna in my helmet only did short range, relaying off the Blower. It must have been the Blower’s antenna that was shot then — snapped off in the carnage, no doubt.

  I pulled up my hand and opened my wrist readout, a holographic display suspended over a projector on my glove. I moved through the screens, cursing the ancient equipment that the Federation gave us. Any halfway decent suit would have been built with long range transmission. Getting out of here would be as simple as sending out a distress call and getting picked up. This suit was a relic, though, and was about as advanced as a Gollaxian sea slug. I swiped until I came to the map and zoomed out. Seemed like the geolocator was still working on my suit. I was a tiny white blip in an undulating sea of gray. I breathed a sigh. It was something. The Federation Standard Issue Colony Surface Suit, or a Walker as most people called them, was the workhorse of the settling world. From mining colonies to settlements all across the known universe, these suits were in action. One of their base functions was a sonar pulse — usually used while on scouting missions to check for subterranean water sources, mineral deposits, or in my situation, a buried Federation Blower 400 named Sally.

  I selected the option and held my breath between my teeth. “Well, here goes nothing,” I muttered to myself. I pushed the button tentatively and watched a white ring ripple outward from the blip on my map. Nothing came up at first, but just as it started to fade, a faint white shape glowed to the east. I stared at it, watching it disappear back into nothingness. It was thin, but it was all I had. It was almost two hundred meters away, following the line of the canyon.

  I stared at my feet, buried in the soft sand, and swore. My oxygen had dropped to twelve percent. I didn’t know if it was enough. If I set off, it would dwindle faster. I’d be breathing harder, consuming more. If I stayed put, I could conserve it, but the chances of anyone finding me were slim to goddamn none. I turned my head, hoping to see some light on the horizon — a search party or passing ship. But there was nothing. Just an endless black canvas.

  I decided, and with a grunt, I rose out of the sand and set off, ignoring that the effort of doing that alone had reduced my O2 level to ten percent. I hit the sonar pulse every few seconds to make sure I was on track, trying desperately to keep my breathing steady. The soft sand torn up by the ship was making it harder. Every step had me sunk up to my knees, and every heavy gaited stride was burning precious airtime. My heartrate hadn’t dipped below a hundred and ten the entire time, and I could feel the beads of sweat trickling through the vomit clinging to my skin. I minimized the display and pushed on. I didn’t need to be reminded how close to suffocation I was. The thin air and the rattling of a near empty tank in my ears was enough.

  When a pulse told me I was right on top of it, I stopped. To my left was a drop-off of about twenty meters. It was sheer at first, and then flattened, leading to the canyon floor. I stood on the mount of churned earth, staring into it. I had no tools, nothing to dig with, and the sonar was telling me that the Blower was about ten meters down. And even as small as it was, the tiny display in my peripheral was clear as day. Single digits. I was out of time, and there was only one thing to do.

  I turned left and edged towards the precipice. “Fuck it.”

  I stepped off and plunged through the cool night air. My feet hit sand and I crumpled into the ground, somersaulting forward down the slope. I threw my arms and legs out and skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust, breathing hard. My oxygen was failing. I had to get up.

  I turned and scrambled up the slope on all fours, jabbing at the sonar continuously. Dirt ran in streams around my knees as I clawed my way upward. I hit the vertical wall and started digging. It was all I could do. My hands pulled at the earth and it came away in soft chunks. An overhang formed and then fell on me. It clattered on my helmet and back, but it didn’t matter. I had one option now, and that was dig. Dig. Digging was all I could do. The Blower was in there somewhere. I’d either find it, or die trying. My teeth ground together and my visor fogged with each ragged breath. The bead in my oxygen tank rattled on empty with each inhale, squeezing the last of the remaining gas into my tubes.

  The words ‘Critical Warning’ flashed on my visor and I watched through them as my fingers scraped and pulled at the bottomless wall of dirt. A thought crossed my mind and almost stopped me dead. What if it wasn’t the blower? What if it was a rock? Or something else? A chunk of clay or some crashed ship or machine from centuries back? What if I unearthed something completely useless? I thought about it, and wondered if I’d burst out laughing, or just burst into tears in my final moments before collapsing backwards, choking on my own vomit and hot, putrid breath. It was almost poetic, or maybe just the way that life goes.

  The Federation would have birthed me, and it only seemed fitting that they would kill me, too. James Alfred Maddox, age nineteen, presumed dead. Body never recovered. Another casualty in the crusade for universal domination. All people, one Federation. I scoffed and then sputtered, my lungs struggling to open. My fingers reached out meekly now and tore at the sand. My O2 hit zero and the words changed to ‘Oxygen Depleted.’ I gasped and sucked on the vacuum and my lungs started to crackle. My ears popped and squeezed like I was underwater and my eyes ached. My vision blurred in the negative pressure and I retched hard, the vacuum trying to fill itself with my insides. My fingers left the sand instinctively and I clawed at the seal on
my helmet. I sank back into the dirt and scrambled, kicking and swimming away from the impending suffocation. I flailed, searching frantically for the release. Blackness pulsed in time with my heart. It closed in like a tightening aperture. My head was pounding, diaphragm crumpled into a heap against the bottom of my empty lungs. My heels kicked dirt and it rained down on me, submerging me, drowning me. No. I couldn’t stop yet. The air. The air outside. It was toxic, but it was better than nothing. What was it at the last reading? Thirteen percent oxygen saturation? I couldn’t remember. It was almost half the safe threshold and even lower than the planetary target. It would hurt. Hell, it would kill me, but it might have been a few seconds more. I just had to get my fucking helmet off. Where was the latch? Left side. Right. I had to find the next seal. There. Good. My fingers moved along it frantically. No! Slow. Slow down, goddamnit. I had to keep my breath tight, not panic. My lungs clamped shut. I couldn’t breathe. The pain rushed up behind my nose like pins. Ignore it. Push through it.

  My eyes stung. I shut them, tight. I didn’t need to see. It was my fingers I needed, not my eyes. Where was the fucking latch? My eyes throbbed. I had to find it. There. Wait. No. Yes. There. My fingers closed around it and lifted. They were fat, heavy, useless. Lift it up. There, now push.

  It clicked and hissed and gas rushed in. I sucked a lungful of half oxygen half whatever else was flying around out there, but it didn’t matter. It was something. I clamped my mouth shut and threw off my helmet. It bounced and rolled down the slope. I blinked and my eyes burned in the atmosphere, scrabbling desperately to unearth myself and sit up. The stars glowed above, hazy in the methane thick air. My head was swimming, my blood filling with all the wrong gases. I tried to unbury myself, kicking at the earth. My feet churned uselessly. Come on. I wasn’t going to die in the sand like a worm. Come on!