Above Carthage

“PRUMBLE,” SAM WHISPERED. It was hard to miss the big man’s outline.

And who else? she wondered. Almost as an afterthought, she went back to her work, the sense of urgency returned. Heightened. Her beam traced a glowing line around the inside edge of the window. Roughly circular. An artist she was not, but she thought it would get the job done. Eventually, her circuit completed, Sam winked the beam off. She reached down and pushed at the clear surface. It fell away without complaint, swallowed by the still-dark interior. The hole would be wide enough, she thought, and she turned just in time to be swept into a crushing embrace by Prumble. He clapped her on the back several times, and she could feel the joyous laughter that all but overwhelmed him. The next arrival landed beside Vaughn, taking his offered hand for balance. Sam saw the face through the visor: Tania. And then the third, Tim.

Part of her couldn’t help but feel disappointed. She thought she hid it pretty well, though.

“Good to see you,” Sam said to Prumble. “Why didn’t you tell us you were approaching?”

The big man shook his head and pointed at his ear. “No long-range comms,” he said. “Eve disabled them for some reason. Local is all we’ve got.”

Sam nodded, understanding the situation, but not the reasons behind it.

“Skyler? Vanessa?” Prumble asked, as if reading her mind. Hoping the same hope she’d held.

Sam could only shake her head. But at least now she could attribute that to a matter of distance, rather than assumptions about their fate. “Let’s get inside. We’re totally exposed out here.”

He offered no objection. Sam nodded at each of them in turn, then hopped feetfirst through the circular hole she’d carved. In the weak gravity of this altitude, her descent took several seconds.

Sam landed in darkness and took a step to one side before turning on her headlamp.

—

The only one among them with both hands free, Sam took the lead. Each of the others carried the small aura shards. She felt blessed at her lack of such a burden. They looked like toddlers carrying beloved teddy bears, a visual she decided it was best not to share. Something to tease Vaughn with later.

The hole she’d carved led to an airless length of hallway. A wide space, with two grooves of unknown purpose along the floor. She picked a direction at random and walked until they reached a bulkhead door. Sealed, she guessed, as an automatic precaution after the opening she’d made in the hull. Sam opened it to more of the same dull hall, let the others through, and closed it again behind her. Readouts concerning the air began to update on her screen. From vacuum to trace gases to breathable.

“Breathable?” Vaughn asked.

Always in lockstep with me, Sam mused. For better or worse. Another visual to keep to herself.

“Yes,” Tania said. “Not an ideal mix, the oxygen level is…minimal at best. What worries me is what else is drifting around in this air.” She waved one hand through the dusty air to hammer the point home. The particulate formed eddies behind her splayed fingers.

Prumble grunted. “How can these bastards live in this stuff?”

“They are masters of viral engineering. Such cells probably do everything for them,” Tim said. “Clean their bodies. Carry messages and data. Cure their ailments or infect those requiring punishment. Surveillance—”

“Okay, okay,” Sam said. “It’s nasty. We get it. So keep your aura shard close and your visor down, just in case. Unless we’re forced to, I vote no one breathes this air at all.”

“Our suits will help us there,” Tania noted. “Our air supply—”

Prumble giggled.

“—Our air supply is being replenished by scrubbers in the membranes. Mine was at forty percent, now it’s up to forty-eight.”

The others fell silent, no doubt checking their own status. Sam glanced at hers, ignoring the immature joke Prumble’s interface displayed. Fifty-six percent.

“Hmm.” It was Vaughn.

She glanced at him, an eyebrow arched.

“Thirteen percent,” he said. “Twelve.”

Sam went to him, turned him around, and took a knee. The light from her headlamp played through the particulate in the air. There, near the base of his spine, the virus cells were being blown by a leak. A pinprick hole in one of the bulging pockets hidden under the Builder armor. “Eve couldn’t throw in a roll of duct tape, eh?”

“Actually,” Prumble said, “she did.”

Everyone looked at him as he rummaged through his own pack. Eventually he produced a small gray container and held it out. “My visor indicates this is ‘repair paste.’ Worth a try.”

Sam took it and turned it about in her fingers. “I didn’t get one of these.” From the expressions of those around her, no one else had, either. More of Eve’s bizarre logic, she supposed. Still, Prumble was right, it was worth a try.

There were no instructions, so she did the natural thing and simply pressed the object against Vaughn’s suit, covering the hole. Almost instantly it began to vibrate in her hand, a hum not unlike a comm’s silent alert mode. After a few seconds, the vibration stopped. Sam pulled the container away. It left a shiny circular patch behind, slightly raised compared with the armor around it. As she stared at it, the shine dulled and then vanished completely. Some kind of hardening process.

“Air level is holding,” Vaughn said. “Just ticked up a percent.”

“Well,” Prumble said, “that’s handy.”

“Too bad we have only one,” Sam noted. She turned the container about in her hand again. It felt and looked smaller already. She guessed it would provide only half a dozen uses.

Samantha stood and met her lover’s gaze. His expression was questioning. “Relax,” she said. “Whatever penetrated your suit, it was small.”

Vaughn opened his mouth to reply.

“If you’re going for innuendo here,” Sam said, “think twice.”

He shut his mouth dutifully.

“Can we please get out of the open?” Tim asked.

—

Sam led them through the empty hallways until they reached a dead end, with another iris door that led into a room full of dusty, forgotten bits of machinery. She’d imagined many things about the Scipios, but never expected such first-order pack rats.

“Someone should stand guard,” Vaughn said. When no one objected, and Sam gave him a quick knowing look—You just volunteered, love—he remained in the hall and let the door hiss closed.

The others had arranged themselves in a loose circle in the entryway of the chamber. Sam decided to ignore them all for the moment, hopping lightly past them to survey the dark corners of the chamber. The place was filthy. It reminded her of the ramshackle storage shed behind her uncle’s vintage automobile repair shop, back in Australia, where weeds poked through the decaying remains of old combustion engines and battery packs. No weeds here, no recognizable parts, either. Just forgotten junk. Sam scanned the ground more than anything, looking for any signs of recent Scipio presence, but there was nothing. She went back to the others. “It’s empty. They haven’t been here in years, I’d guess.”

“Good,” Prumble said. “So, now what?”

Before Sam could reply, both Tania and Tim spoke over each other.

“Find the others,” Tania said.

Over her, Tim said, “Find a way out of here.”

The two options, laid out with absolute simplicity. Sam couldn’t help herself. She nodded toward Tim. “Leave? Just like that?”

The young man shifted uncomfortably, wilting under the intensity of Tania’s glare. Sam wanted to slap them both. This was no time for awkward romantic bullshit. Eventually he spoke. “We came here to help Eve, and she’s gone. We don’t have the supplies to survive here for more than a few days, at best.” Tim swallowed, confidence building. “We haven’t heard from the others.”

“Comms are locked to local only,” Tania noted.

Sam grunted at that. Both agreeing and bemused at why Eve would have done that. No doubt it made sense to the now-dead AI. Typical Builder crap.

Tim winced. “I know they are. But we all landed near each other. If the others are out there, they’ll have to come to us. We don’t have the supplies to do anything here other than find a way to leave. Not if we want to survive.”

“It’s a bit cold, though,” Prumble observed. “ ‘Fuck everyone and run.’ As plans go, that’s quite frigid, isn’t it?”

Tim chewed on his lower lip. “I’m just saying what we all know is true.”

“We came here on a mission,” Tania said.

Now Tim did look at her. “It ended when Eve blew up. We’ve done more than enough to try and help them but, let’s face it, her plan failed—”

“That was my plan, actually,” Tania shot back, not much more than a whisper.

“And it was a good one! The best we could come up with! But it didn’t work, Tania.”

“Didn’t it? We’re here, aren’t we? Farther than anyone else has made it.”

“Without supplies or guidance or even a clue as to where to go next. A good portion of our team is dead.”

Tania pointed at him. “We don’t know that.”

“We do,” Tim said. “Some of us are just in a better position to accept it.”

“Oy,” Sam said. “Enough. I agree helping the Builders is no longer the priority. Survival is. And by survival I mean getting away from this place. Tim’s right. Sorry, Tania, but he is, at least with the shit we’re in right now. Without a way out of here, nothing else makes sense.”

“What do you propose?” Prumble asked.

Sam bit her lip. She said, “I’m suddenly regretting blowing up their entire shipyard.”

The blank, astonished stares spoke volumes. Sam winced. “It was an accident.”

“Hang on,” Vaughn said via the local comm, from outside the door. “Sam, that was a scrapyard. They were dismantling those beasts.”

“Yeah? Your point?”

“If we found that, we can find the one where they’re storing the good ones. Or the factory they’re coming out of.”

“We didn’t find it, though,” Sam said. “We fucking crashed there.”

Prumble held up his hands. “Can I make a suggestion?”

The others quieted down.

He went on. “We’ve all seen that our visors can translate Scipio words.”

“Barely,” Sam noted.

“Well enough. So we do one of two things, whichever comes first.” He had their attention now. “We either find a map, via some terminal or something that can tell us what’s where.”

“Or?” Sam asked.

“Or,” Prumble said, “if you’ll pardon the crudeness of the idea, we capture a Scipio, and ever so politely beat it out of them.”