“You ever rappelled before?” I asked Warden, as she was standing nearby pretending to look useful.
“Have you?” she asked, instantly getting on the defensive.
“Once or twice.” I tied the rope into the standard star pilot’s hitch, optimized for pulling cargo around in zero gravity. “Always from ships, though.” I pulled the last loop tight with a flourish and gave her a smile.
It wasn’t returned. “You’re really enjoying being the most qualified person for this situation, aren’t you.”
“Only now that I can see it’s bothering you,” I said, passing the rope through my belt loops and feeding the rope down the cliff. I could see a sentry in a position to spot us once we were low enough, but it wouldn’t be a problem if we timed our descent to match the moments when it turned its back. “Okay. Hold the free end of the rope behind your back, like this. Keep your legs spread apart on the way down. Although I have a feeling you’ll have difficulty with that part.”
She followed my directions resentfully, and the two of us carefully backed off the ledge. The hard part is always the requisite moment of terror when you learn whether or not the rope is going to take your weight, but after that, it was simple enough, even with only ten minutes of training.
About a third of the way down, I cast a look over my shoulder at the village below. “Okay, stop a second,” I called.
Warden did so awkwardly, her sensible shoes scratching upon the rock. But I had to admit, she was doing pretty well for someone in office attire. “What is it?”
I cocked my head. “Lookout on the roof of the two story building.” I presumed it was some Ruggel equivalent of a town hall. “We go much lower, he’ll spot us. We wait till his patrol turns around.”
“Fair enough,” said Warden.
The ropes went slack.
We were in freefall for a bloodcurdling couple of feet before we stopped sharply. The pair of us bounced freely on the ropes like a pair of rubber spiders before securing our feet on the rock wall again.
“What the hell happened?” I hissed, sweat dripping into my eyes.
Warden was looking up. “I suspect the tall rock you chose as our anchor just toppled onto its side,” she said, in a small voice.
“You sure?”
“Fairly.”
I followed her gaze. The morning sun was moving overhead, and the cliff we had descended so far was a sheet of black, silhouetted against the brightening sky. And at some point since the last time I’d looked at it, the mass of black appeared to have grown a nose. Our two ropes dangled down from it like lengthy snot trails.
“Uh—” was as far as I got before I noticed that the nose was growing longer, and that I was still moving slowly downward as it did so.
“Our weight is pulling the rock off the cliff,” said Warden flatly.
“Plying porous rocks!” I said, kicking off the wall for a big jump down. “New plan! Get down now quick smart like!”
The two of us started bouncing our way down the wall with all consideration of stealth forgotten. My feet slammed into the cliff again and again, jarring my ankles and sending little bursts of dust and sand sprinkling down upon the courtyard below. The friction from the rope burned the skin from my palms.
When I was about three-quarters of the way down, I risked a look up. The rock looked like it was more than half over the edge, and I could see it being pulled left and right in time with the hops of Warden and me.
Ply it, I thought. This is the kind of thing we keep ourselves in good health for.
I let go of the rope and spread my arms wide. The rope whizzed through my belt loops, sending me into a spin and whipping painfully against my stomach, but I forced myself not to panic. I went limp, closed my eyes, and recited something familiar and comforting in my head. I opted for the standard preflight checklist from the old Speedstar employee manual.
I’d only gotten as far as ensure that all tray tables and footrests are stowed when I hit the ground. My spread-eagled body thudded onto the sand like a flipped pancake landing back in the pan, with an involuntary grunt from my lungs taking the place of the appetizing sizzle.
Flat on my back, I watched Warden daintily make her way down the rest of the wall with considerably less concern, now that the anchor was relieved of my weight. I passed the time by flexing each of my muscles one by one, testing for broken bones.
By the time I’d gotten as far as the feet, she was standing over me. “Are you all right?”
“One more sec.” I rolled my ankles and went down the toes, curling each one in turn. “Seems like it.”
Against expectations, she offered a hand to help me up. “Gratifying to know that chivalry still exists.”
I rubbed at my bruises, which took a bit of work, because it felt like my entire body had been bruised simultaneously. “It would only count as chivalry,” I said in a strained voice, “if you were a woman.”
I turned, then made immediate eye contact with a six-foot-five, armor-plated cyborg warrior.
It was directly between us and the narrow passage that was the only way out of the courtyard. It froze when I noticed it, perhaps to send an update on the situation back to the central core and wait for new orders, before outstretching its arms and lurching forward. Its one uncovered eye was wide with frozen hatred.
I felt rock behind me. With no input on the part of my conscious mind, I had apparently backed up against the cliff. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Warden dangling from her rope again.
“McKeown,” she said. “Pull.”
I got the idea, grabbed the trailing rope I had recently fallen from, and swung off it as the raw skin on my palms screamed in protest. As the two of us pulled and dangled like bell ringers, and the cyborg drew ever closer, I became certain that the rock was going to turn out to be completely secure, just to make this as wantonly cruel as possible.
Then the sudden slackening of the rope sent me into the dust again, with Warden joining me for the second round. A moment later, a viciously heavy thud launched us both about six inches off the ground. There was now a very large rock in the courtyard instead of a murderous cyberserker.
“Oh, calculus. It saw us. Now the whole collective knows we’re here.”
“It knows that we are at this position,” said Warden, dusting herself down primly. “Therefore, we endeavor to be in another position.”
“There’s only one way to go!” I said, indicating the narrow alleyway, whose far end my imagination was already furnishing with hordes of approaching cyborgs.
“We can climb onto the ship.” Warden made for Alice’s shuttle, pushing aside part of the protective sheet to reveal the maintenance rungs going up the side.
“Good call,” I admitted, making to follow. The top of the ship was only about four feet lower than the roof of the nearest house, and a rooftop traversal was probably the smart approach. When we were both carefully crouched on the smoothly curved roof of the ship, I could see that the cyborg sentry was no longer on the town hall roof. It may even have been the same one that was now twitching under a huge porous rock.
I made to clamber onto the next roof, but Warden stopped me with an outstretched hand. “Hold.”
“What?”
“Examine the ship as best you can from here and see if it remains entirely consistent with Alice’s story.”
I screwed my eyes shut, then opened them as wide as I could, a massively exaggerated blink. “What is wrong with you? Have I built up enough chivalry points that I can give you a little smack?”
“Doesn’t it seem rather small for a three-person family embarking on a scientific expedition?”
I eyeballed the ship. Not that I wanted to give her the satisfaction, but it did seem a little on the poky side. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t much more than a runabout, the kind of thing mainly used for transferring people and cargo from orbiting ships to planet surfaces. It had, however, been modified for interstellar travel.
“I think they must hav
e been working from a larger science ship,” I speculated.
“That immediately forgot about them after they went missing?”
“Well? It’s a big universe, these things happen.” I made to climb onto the next roof and leave the issue behind. “Hell, my graduating class at flight school had two missing persons by the end of the field training course. There was a policy against sending anyone to look for them, you see. Apparently they once lost a whole class that way when a black hole wandered onto the course.”
I opted to stay low, and lay on my stomach at the edge of the building’s roof, scouting the village center below. The maintenance cylinder wasn’t far, but then, there was nothing in the village that was particularly far from anything else. A hop down to ground level, then about twenty yards of open ground to the edge of the watering hole where the cylinder had been set up.
Easy enough if there hadn’t been so many murder cyborgs around, remaining stubbornly in their patrols. I’d been hoping that we’d drawn enough attention by being spotted in the courtyard that the way would be clear, but I should have realized the Malmind were too smart for that. Actually, to look at it, none of the cyborgs were distracted at all.
“Hm,” I said. “Why aren’t any of them investigating the courtyard?”
“Perhaps they put it down to a freak rockfall,” suggested Warden, crouching awkwardly next to me out of refusal to go fully prone. “Or they know we’re here but don’t see us as a threat.”
“I can tell you right now that they don’t see us as a threat, but they should see us as nice, fresh materials for them to get their claws all over. I don’t get it.” I made an attempt to shrug from a prone position. “But I’m not about to ask them to explain themselves.”
“So what now?”
I held up a finger and watched the patrolling cyborgs carefully for about a full minute, before lowering the finger ceremoniously. “I’m pretty sure there’s a window in the patrols. Not a long one—we’ll have to sprint to the cylinder, but we just have to get between it and the lake. There should be a blind spot there.”
“I might prefer that we stake our lives on more than just should, McKeown.”
“All right then, there is a blind spot,” I said, trying to sound confident. “None of them are watching the lake. I doubt they’re expecting the Ruggels to come retake their village in plying submarines.”
“On your mark, then.”
I waited for the opportune moment, then swung my legs off the roof and dropped the short distance to the ground. The stone floor was more loose than I’d anticipated, and I threw up a noisy skitter of gravel as I landed, but I couldn’t let myself dwell. I kept the silver pillar in the center of my vision and ran, not looking around or checking to see if Warden was following.
When I arrived at the cylinder unmolested, two things immediately became clear—firstly that Warden was indeed following closely behind, and that the blind spot between the cylinder and the lake was not going to be big enough to fit two people. I stood with my back pressed tightly against the metal, and Warden appeared in front of me, flustered from the run. I think we both realized at that point that the only way both of us would be totally hidden from sight would be if she crushed her body against mine and we started sloppily making out.
We met each other’s gaze, and the silence drew on, dangerously close to the point where a cyborg might turn around and spot her, if it hadn’t already passed.
“Kneel,” she instructed.
This was unexpected. “No,” I replied, sweating.
“I need to stand on your shoulders.”
“Ohhh. That makes more sense.” I dropped into a squat, and Warden swiftly stepped on, first the right foot, then the left. She was not a heavy woman, but she was still wearing tight and pointy dress shoes (presumably to match her personality), so as I laboriously pushed myself upright again, my shoulder muscles gained new appreciation for the plight of cocktail olives.
“Something is approaching,” advised Warden from her new vantage point.
“Nghap,” I said in acknowledgement, gritting my teeth.
Her voice lowered. “A cyborg is heading straight toward the cylinder.”
I couldn’t move around the cylinder to see it, and even if I could, my peripheral vision was blocked on both sides by a combination of Warden’s shins and the growing number of spots before my eyes. Instead, I just closed my eyes and attempted to will myself thinner.
From the opposite side of the pillar, I heard heavy footfalls approaching with the terrifying perfect rhythm of a cyberserker, scattering gravel with every creaking thump. They stopped mere feet away from our position.
I held my breath and went back to the Speedstar preflight checklist. Ensure docking bay is clear. Activate hazard lights. Verify presence of copilot. Verify consciousness of copilot. Verify sobriety of copilot—
From inside the workings of the column I heard the gurgling of liquids moving around, followed by a series of greedy gulps from the cyborg. A few drops of viscous nutrient fluid landed in the dirt. Then I heard an armored foot turning on its heel, and the cyborg stomped away.
Above me, Warden released a held breath. “I wasn’t noticed.”
“You plying were by me,” I spat, attempting to push her feet up with my hands to alleviate the weight and almost succeeding in giving myself stigmata. “Can you access the signal booster up there?”
“Ah, yes. It seems like this whole top part lifts up.”
“Well plying do be burgy dur,” I said. Then I concentrated, blocked out the pain, and tried again. “Well plying see if you can do your hacking thing before you plying nail me to the ground!”
I heard a click, and a squeak of hinges, and felt numerous spikes and lifts of pain as she shifted her weight around, working. By then, I’d discovered that some alleviation could be found by digging my feet into the sandy bank of the watering hole and pushing against the cylinder as hard as I could, and soon I’d dug an impressive pair of furrows.
By that time, a minute had passed. “You having trouble finding the port?” I inquired.
“No, not exactly,” she replied, her voice muffled and echoing. “McKeown, what is this signal booster supposed to look like?”
I thought back to my war days. I’d seen them a few times, but only ever scorched and mangled and lying in the wreckage of a bombed-out Malmind stronghold. “I think it’ll be a sort of boxy thing with a bunch of spiked aerials coming off, connected to a power source by wire.”
“Right,” said Warden. A long pause followed. “Is there any other appearance they can take?”
“Well, what are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
“I can see the top of something that I believe to be the nutrient tank.” There were two reverberating taps that I assumed were her knuckle against the tank. “But nothing else. The entire top part of this cylinder is hollow.”
I let the cogwheels in my mind turn for a few seconds, then I dug my feet in harder and pushed upward with all my remaining strength. Warden gave a little yell and fell head-first into the cylinder’s interior, kicking her legs madly. Relieved of the burden, I spun and looked around the tube.
“Trac,” I said, then I said it a few more times with increased volume. “It’s a plying traccing decoy!”
The Malmind had come out in force. The entire street (for want of a better word) was now packed with cyborgs, in both humanoid and Ruggel flavors, a dense forest of sunburned flesh, lusterless fur and black synthetics. And every single one was staring directly at me.
I popped back into the blind spot more for my own comfort than anything else, thought quickly, then jumped. My fingers fastened around the lip of the open compartment beside Warden’s struggling form. My body was about as past its prime as a packet of sandwich ham two weeks after opening, but I could at least manage one pull-up, if I used one of the feeding pipes as a foothold.
The space above the nutrient tank was, indeed, hollow??
?or at least had been before I’d shoved Warden’s upper body into it—and was just about large enough for me to fit my legs in. So that left me and Warden’s legs perched visibly on top of a minuscule siege tower, surrounded by the horde.
No member of said horde had moved. Neither were they looking at us. I knew that they tended not to look up, but one of them must have seen where we were.
“McKeown!” cried Warden, still trying to correct herself. I dropped and gently but firmly filled her mouth with my knee. I met her furious gaze as she sank her teeth into my jeans, then put a finger to my lips.
The Malmind horde was starting to move. They were shuffling slowly around each other in a mystifyingly complicated pattern, like a choreographed dance production at a home for the elderly. When all of them had shuffled into place, they had taken the form of a rectangular block, transforming from a mob into a regiment.
Then they began to move directly toward us, the two different body sizes marching with two different beats. The smaller feet of the converted Ruggels were a quick, skittering cymbal tap to underline the slower snare drum of the humanoids.
Unconsciously, I had already drawn my blaster from inside my jacket. I still had enough charge to score lethal hits on maybe four or five cyborgs, assuming perfect shots to the heads or crotch reactors. Less if I wanted to hold back two shots to avoid being taken alive. I looked back down into Warden’s unhappy eyes, and consoled myself that at least my penultimate act in life would be an immensely satisfying one.
The Malmind stopped. The rank of cyborgs was inches from the cylinder. I could look down and see the bald spot in between the cranial implants of the topmost soldier. I took careful aim at it, waiting for the first attempt to topple our perch.
Then the horde divided itself neatly into two, and both halves turned smartly and marched off in opposite directions, away from us and along the banks of the watering hole. Within moments, we were alone, but I waited until I’d watched the entire army meet each other on the far side of the water and stomp toward the valley, out of the village. Only then did I untense myself and withdraw my knee from Warden’s mouth.