Red Mae wasn’t the other experimental splinter. She couldn’t think of herself that way. She thought of herself as complete, as Mae Prime, with all the same memories, only a different body. Despite the strangeness, these splinters allowed for greater flexibility. Unlike humans, a synthetic could be in two places at one time.
The concern would come later. She might find it complicated to integrate with the Mae that remained on the station, especially since she’d never splintered twice before.
Still, it was a problem for another time, and one that Mae preferred having rather than being separated from her mother. Also, as always with the Jackals, she might not have to worry about reintegrating. They might not return to the station. Like with every mission, there remained a statistical chance of that happening.
She wondered if this was how Davis felt when he took so many forms and left echoes of himself in so many places. Though she’d been mostly glad to be making her own decisions, in this instance Mae would have welcomed her father’s voice back into her head.
Red Mae was alone. She’d taken the designation of R1 in the first synthetic squad attached to the team headed down to the surface. Unlike Blue and Green Team, in Red Team, the colonel took down two combat synthetic squads, one to accompany each of the genetic human squads.
Mae took lead of the first synth squad. While firewalling off her personality core from the network took a careful touch, she’d also drawn a smudge on her face. This way her mother could tell her apart from all the similar combat android bodies if necessary.
They rallied on the space elevator platform on D deck of the station. Apart from the carefully positioned smudge, she was simply one of the units. Their programming made the synths obey senior officers without question, and if they fell in combat, any other living human. Mae certainly hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The human Jackal units stood nearby in a similar formation, though less silently. The dim lighting in the station lobby seemed to keep the humans on their toes, examining every shadow, but nothing moved.
Their human jibes and back and forth rumbled through the unit. Adrenaline and comradery hyped up the genetic human Jackals. Thanks to Green Team, the platform was locked down and clear of Minos employees. The Jackals now claimed this part of the station as their own. The Sunspot Good Boys took their places at the rear. Their dark quadrupedal forms only resembled large dogs in the human minds. In reality, they were efficient battlefield units, ready to deliver acoustic attacks.
The crawler’s design was sectioned off into two parts, one on each side of the tether to provide balance. Meant to move large objects down onto the planet, the crawler could easily accommodate four Jackal squads and their accompanying Good Boys. This was a relief, since her mother did not like to have her squads separated.
Colonel Hendricks stood in full armor by the large, closed door to the crawler. She intently watched her wrist-pd for the comms channel to light up with the confirmation from Green Team. Red Team couldn’t move until they secured the command center. Until then, they maintained radio silence.
Everyone waited for the signal, and all eyes remained on their commander. Mae monitored her calm breaths closely, but she detected not even a hitch as Zula nodded. She turned with a thin-lipped smile. “Green Team is in smooth. They have control of all station comms. They are holding position, but we have a limited timeframe before shift change. We need to make some hustle.”
Mae tapped into the combat synthetic network, reading the stream of confirmations from her peers in the Red Team network. It would have been good to reach the Green and Blue synthetics, but that would mean opening their network to the station. No one could be sure if that wouldn’t trigger a subroutine in Kaspar.
Captain Shipp’s voice came out calm, but tense. “Have they confirmed that they have control of the crawlers?”
“They’re bringing one up now. Looks like they can override the safety protocols for quick insertion. It’ll be a bumpy ride.” Zula turned to examine the fireteams, lined up and ready to move out. “Lieutenant Keith will give us all the time he can. Whatever they are hiding planet-side, I don’t think they’re going to be happy about us poking our noses into it. So we need to go in hot and ready.”
She checked her weapons—pulse rifle and pistol—one last time. The ease with which she did this didn’t tell the full story; it was some time since Zula Hendricks had gone into combat directly. It was not a choice that Mae welcomed, but she couldn’t change her mother’s mind on this now. Watching the destruction of Shānmén from the Fury marked her in ways so much other death and destruction could not. She blamed herself for every loss of life on that planet.
Humans were, Mae observed, fascinating and illogical creatures. She could scrutinize them until her mechanical parts seized up and still never quite be able to figure out all their idiosyncrasies.
Shipp briefed Sergeant Ackerman. He stood listening intently to her, his compact but muscular body seemingly at ease—despite the situation. He’d been one of the first Jackals brought on board when Zula created the force. The colonel picked him for Red Team because of his calm nature and reliability. Humans sometimes claimed ginger hair meant a trigger temper, but Mae never noticed that about Ackerman.
She listened in on the conversation, because as a synthetic, she couldn’t avoid it.
“I want those Good Boys released as soon as we hit dirt, and not a damn second later.” Shipp’s eyes narrowed. More than most of the crew, she liked dealing with the fallout from corporations’ efforts to weaponize Xenomorph biology. Mae ran through the entire team’s service and personal records. All of them were hardened veterans, and the best of the Jackals. Her mother understood that Red Team would hit the hardest, planet-side. She needed that hammer.
The second synthetic unit flanked either side of the door to the elevator crawler, keeping an eye out for any station security that might appear. Even though Green Team had taken the command center, it wouldn’t be long before someone discovered them.
If they got lucky, it wouldn’t happen until the next shift turned over. None of the Jackals were worried about station security beating them back, but suppressing them would take valuable time from their mission.
“You good, soldier?” Zula kept her gaze fixed on the corridor but glanced at her daughter.
Mae nodded. For a moment before the firestorm started, they were alone. Her mother dared to whisper under breath. “This splinter thing is new to me. I don’t like new with this situation we’re going into.”
“I’m just the same,” she assured her mother. “Mae Prime is secure, so don’t worry about me. I am here to assist and protect you.” Naturally it was in the flat monotone combat droids were equipped with, negating the emotion she wanted to convey. She’d brushed over the limitations of these droids when deciding to create the splinters, but it wasn’t her first time in one of these bodies. Shānmén had taught her a great deal about their capabilities.
Yet apparently a mother’s instincts didn’t include how to deal with the splinter situation. “I will not be foolish. I don’t want to upset any of the three of you.” Zula smiled slightly as she checked her pulse rifle one more time. “But I appreciate you being here.”
Mae didn’t point out it was the only way to obey her prime directive and an order at the same time.
The doors behind her pinged and rolled up. The Jackals moved to cover them, in case there were unexpected passengers. Both sides were empty of people or cargo. After checking they were clear, the squads moved into two groups. Each contained one genetic human and one synthetic human squad. Mae made sure that she joined the same side of the crawler as her mother.
“Let’s load up,” Zula ordered.
The human units took the rear position on each side of the crawler bays, with the synthetics and Good Boys filling out the front. It was a tight fit, and proximity alerts popped up in Mae’s awareness: too many chances of friendly fire. She cleared the alerts.
The human version of that discomfort was a few mutters in the ranks, but nothing that reached the colonel. The Jackals all understood they were sitting ducks in the crawlers. If Green Team didn’t maintain control of the command center, the Minos employees would take over the controls.
Being stuck was, however, perhaps the preferable option to being gunned down the minute the doors opened. Mae didn’t calculate the odds. Instead, she kept hold of her pulse rifle, knowing it was in good order.
Zula flicked open her wrist-pd to check if they were still in range of the other unit networks; they were not. “Keith, take us down at emergency speed,” she said.
“Express elevator?” Shipp said. “I recommend a solid crouch by the walls, everyone, and then maybe hold on to your asses as well.”
“I’d rather hold on to someone else’s ass,” Private Gorev said with a chuckle.
“You’re not getting any takers on that.” Private Zhany, the smart-gunner in Squad One, adjusted her weapon as laughs spread through the crawler.
They got no more time to lighten the mood.
Lieutenant Keith would have warning lights flashing on the control deck—Mae was certain of that. Within a second, he dropped the crawler at a speed fractionally below the level of Gs a human body could take before passing out. A display on the right of the doorway flashed a bright red arrow, blinking rapidly to match their descent.
The synthetic units already took a crouch, flexing into their knee joints, expertly adjusting to the forces the elevator applied. The Good Boys were also locked in a similar position. The humans, as always, displayed a variety of reactions.
Some whooped and hollered with delight as their nervous systems rushed with adrenaline. Others around Mae swayed on their feet, their faces turning shades of white or green. Even for those used to dropship scenarios, this was an unusual sensation. The chop experienced by a vessel entering the atmosphere was a combination of lateral and vertical force. The space elevator, at its greatest speed, was straight down.
It was the first contact Mae had with such a machine, and it was impressive. She couldn’t have said if it was enjoyable, but the effects on her colleagues were certainly worth the ride. The crawler reached the atmosphere, and the red arrow turned to green. Now the planetary gravity took ahold of the crawler, and a low hum filled the space. The builders designed the interior surface of the elevator to help slow the crawler down and avoid terminal velocity. The speed that Keith enabled must be straining the system, because it juddered and shook.
Mutters from a few Jackals suggested they were worried about expelling their rations on the floor of the crawler.
“Keep it tight,” Sergeant Akerman barked from the back, though his voice also came out slightly strangled.
Right at the moment when it seemed the elevator might best a few of the Jackals, the exterior brakes clamped in and they descended at a more comfortable rate.
The arrow blinked off, replaced by a racing countdown.
“Ten seconds. Get ready.” Zula’s voice echoed in the suddenly silent crawler. The Good Boys crouched, ready to obey their program.
The twin crawlers touched down with a bounce and a slight scream of metal. The doors slammed open a second after, and the Good Boys sprang out first. Behind them, Captain Shipp launched a fleet of six Pinpoint drones. They flew ahead, only about the size of a human fist. Their intel would give the squads longer range knowledge than even the combat synths and Good Boys were capable of.
They found no resistance in the blank gray room at the bottom of the elevator. It was a wide-open space, bare of anything human, or otherwise. It seemed purely utilitarian, designed to keep the weather off the elevator entrance and not damage the electronics that ran it.
The silence of this empty foyer descended once the Pinpoints’ faint buzzing faded away. The greenish light from the fading sunset streamed in through windows too high to reveal the landscape beyond. However, nothing lurked in the corners, no personnel awaiting their arrival. Mae, and presumably the rest of the Jackals, expected some company security forces or employees to be there with weapons drawn.
It was a pleasant surprise not to find them, but there should have been someone there. These crawler arrivals off the elevator usually contained supplies for the people on the surface. It made sense that personnel would be needed to move those supplies.
The Good Boys fanned out along the walls of the foyer, sweeping their sensors backward.
“No life signs within range.” Shipp raised her wrist-pd. “The Pinpoints are detecting heat signatures outside the arrivals area, however.”
Red Team took their positions. Two human squads were on each side in a V formation, while the combat synthetic units pushed forward in the middle. Mae’s combat programming ran in tandem with the rest of her peers. Her primary personality core, walled off from the network, processed their surroundings.
They’d descended as the planet’s long night began. Twice as long as Earth standard, the sunset made for an eerie arrival. The green light of the tether connection and the doorway filtered out into the half-light. Evening was closing in towards night, and even slivers of light seemed comforting. Up above, the station slipped into its dark rotation.
The elevator was anchored to a massive rocky plateau on one of the tallest mountain ranges on the surface. The silver curve of the construction at their back disappeared quickly into a thick cloud bank. Even this impressive human creation meant nothing. Winds buffeted the Jackals as they descended the ramp leading from the foyer in a loose formation. The temperature hovered a fraction above freezing, and the human soldiers’ breaths came out in faint vapor streams.
That was when Green Mae’s message hit Red Team. “Erynis and the Fury are compromised. Erynis’s hack failed, and the station AI countered. Kaspar has shut down the ship.”
Zula’s eyes narrowed as they went immediately to Shipp.
“Too late to go back,” the captain said. “We need that proof above all.”
“Agreed. Revert to suit-to-suit signals, don’t want to make it easy for them.” Zula gave the signal and Red Team immediately took defensive positions behind the scattering of cover available.
It was the expected heavy-lift machinery and stacks of supplies not yet moved on to whatever their final destination was. Mist rolled over the scene, and that would surely make the humans uncomfortable; anything could hide in the mist, outside the range of their vision. This was when the synthetics, both Good Boys and combat droids, filled in the gaps in human abilities. They detected nothing moving or breathing in the immediate area beyond the low heat signatures in the containers.
Shipp signaled the synthetic squads to the source of the heat signatures. A wall of large crates, which must have only recently been brought down on the crawlers, caught Mae’s attention. They bore no logo or any kind of designation, which was peculiar.
Nearby, smaller crates marked with the Weyland-Yutani logo were stacked in a pyramid shape. The stenciled words included RATIONS, INSTRUMENTS, and SECURITY. The white containers, though, remained a mystery apart from the low-level heat source.
The human squads took up defensive positions while the two synthetic squads moved into positions on each side of the first container. If Minos Station’s security forces turned up, they didn’t want to be caught, as Zula was so fond of saying, ‘with their asses hanging out.’
As the designated leader of the first synthetic squad, Mae holstered her pulse rifle and examined the locking system on the crate. Through the network, she ordered up R4, the tech-specific unit. Its designers specially insulated and firewalled the synthetic to prevent any systems from retaliating when probed. The combat droid opened the access panel and hard-wired into the lock.
A trained human could run a bypass in under sixty seconds, but a synthetic should have been able to do it in under five. When it took ten, Mae instructed the rest of the unit to step back from the crate. Explosions were always a possibility. The hacking synthetic didn’t blow up, and neither did the crate. However, something more interesting happened.
The lock clicked open, and a puff of gas surrounded them. Mae detected nitrous oxide mixed with isoflurane. She immediately sent instructions for the other squads to remain in position. They usually used this gaseous mixture for anaesthetic procedures. She and her synthetic comrades proceeded into the large crate.
Within lay stacks of human bodies—the source of the heat detected by the synthetics. The Minos employees had retrofitted industrial racks, used to store parts, to instead contain something else entirely. People hung on them, comatose but stable. Mae quickly counted thirty fully grown humans alive on the racks. They were being kept comatose by the gaseous atmosphere pumped into the crate.
She beamed what she saw back to her mother’s wrist-pd through the network.
Life signs are stable. Mae examined the nearest human. It was a young woman, in her early twenties by the condition of her skin. A perfectly fit individual. Do you want us to wake them?
Negative, Zula replied. Seal it and re-take your positions. Limit civvies until area is secure.
Mae and her squad obediently retraced their steps and closed the crate again, before they changed the atmosphere too much.
The colonel opened her helmet, giving up on suit-to-suit. Right now, Red Team needed their commander. “Push on. The Pinpoint drones have scanned the area. They found a large building down in the valley, about five clicks from the tether, but there’s a cluster of pre-fab units a click uphill with lots of security. Seems more like the facility we’re looking for.”
Not wanting to speak out in front of the others, Mae beamed her message directly to Zula’s wrist-pd. Should we leave a squad to protect the unconscious humans?
We’re spread thin. They’ll be safe. Let them sleep.
Sleeping humans, and that Kuebiko which Rook and Mae Prime found mention of, all pointed to a confirmed black site. When the firing started—and it would—then it was better not to have frightened and confused civilians running around. Mae grasped the logic of it, but some other strange emotion was composing itself in her. Empathy? Compassion? It was so hard to pin down.
She wondered what Mae Prime was finding up in the station laboratory. Open communications would not be a good idea unless absolutely necessary. They didn’t want planet-side security crawling all over them. Whatever began on Minos, this was where it culminated. The Jackals were on the verge of uncovering it all.