Lenny’s breath sounded far too loud in his ears. From what Mae had told him, the janitorial robot was moving past monsters. The tight confines inside it and the possibility of something horrific opening up his hidey-hole were anxiety-inducing. Now the wide yawn of the Long Dark he once hated seemed like bliss.
The robot bumped and rolled, not nearly fast enough for Lenny. Everything was both silent and too loud at the same time. Lenny closed his eyes and tried not to think about anything at all. He hoped the echoing footsteps he could hear were only wandering synthetics.
The noise of the robot’s wheels changed to a rattle, then a beep, and then there was the low grind of an opening door. Once its forward momentum stopped, he sat motionless for a moment.
“Nice to have a visitor, I suppose.” The voice didn’t sound like a monster’s.
Pressing his hands against the front panel, Lenny wriggled it back and forth until it popped open. He peered out. He’d snuck into the Guelph command center once when he was ten. This was very similar: view screens, flashing lights, and uncomfortable chairs. The difference was a scattering of guns lying randomly about, and deep gouges in the metalwork. Mae’s monsters were certainly not imaginary.
He slid his legs out of the now-silent janitorial robot.
“Two visitors.” Out in the open, the voice came out slurred. Was there a drunk survivor around here?
A human form lay slumped in the corner next to a toppled chair. Lenny worked his way over to it, glad of someone to talk to. It was a synthetic, but a badly damaged one. He recognized the unit as a Bishop model from Seegson. He’d never seen one so beat up and yet still functional. The face was intact, if patchworked. The damage seemed mostly from the waist down. White circulatory fluid had pooled and dried around him.
“Can I help?” The words slipped out of Lenny’s mouth.
The Bishop choked out a laugh. “At this point, I don’t think that’s an option.” His soft eyes focused on Lenny. “Are you with the Jackals? Do you know Zula or Mae?”
“I came with Mae.” Lenny crouched down next to him. “She’s looking for her mother and her soldiers. She sent me here to restart the space elevator and get it down to the planet.”
“I’m Rook.” The synth sat up a little straighter in his spot under the console, as if he’d found a semblance of pride again. “I was on our ship with Mae when it was attacked by—” he paused and changed his mind “—that’s need-to-know. Suffice to say a small armada of our enemies. We both ejected safely, but it took me a while to get back here.”
Examining him, Lenny didn’t see how he was still functional.
The synthetic must have been good at reading human expressions. His fingers fluttered over the ruin of his body. “I didn’t arrive in this condition.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three cycles of Minos.” He gestured down to his broken lower half. “This happened… elsewhere. You probably passed the transit tram I arrived in. Believe me, it took a long time to drag myself up here.”
“You should be in a repair facility. Why would you crawl here?”
Rook stared off into space, and for a moment, Lenny wondered if he’d finally failed. Then he spoke again. “I was waiting for Mae. I knew she’d come, eventually.”
Lenny wanted to comfort the synthetic somehow. “She’s gone down to the engine room. Her plan is to bring the station down on the planet.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “I’m augmented, so she created a network between us. You can join it and talk to her yourself.”
Rook smiled slightly at this admission. “And how is she?”
“Angry. She thinks her mother is still alive.”
“Then she’s right.” Rook gestured to the nearby chair. “Get me into that and I can connect your network to the signal that came through yesterday.”
Lenny flipped the chair upright and pulled the synthetic up into it. Someone had shot Rook’s legs and interior to hell, and he knew there was a story there, but it seemed rude to pry.
“Now give me the code to your network.”
Lenny dived in and extended permissions to Rook. Now, it contained the three of them within it.
Mae?
Rook? How did you manage—
No time for that. I’m patching you through to your mother’s frequency. Talk to her. I’ll help this young augmented man to move the crawler back down to the planet. It’s time to bring them home.
The network signal was patchy, and anything more than words was more than it could handle. Lenny disconnected, not wanting to spy on Mae’s reunion with her mother.
Rook smiled crookedly. “Colonel Zula Hendricks is a law unto herself. She apparently kept her team moving all this time, staying ahead of the Xenomorphs. Still, I’m not sure how many of her people she has left down there.”
“Then let’s get this space elevator working.” Lenny took another chair next to the dripping remains of the synth. “Where do we start?”
Rook pointed to the panel on the left. “That controls everything about the space elevator, but I’m afraid there is no power to it.”
Lenny slid under the desk to check the connections. Everything appeared to be correctly attached and functional. He got back up to his feet with a knot in his stomach. The station still had power. If the problem wasn’t here, then it must be a cable issue. That would mean venturing outside the command center.
Rook glanced up at him and shrugged. “I would love to assist, my new friend, but it would take too long, and I don’t think Colonel Hendricks and Mae can wait.”
Lenny swallowed hard, shoving down his own fears. “Where’s the junction box?”
“Down the corridor on the left. It’s beside the main elevator shaft.”
He picked up one of the loose pulse rifles. “Will it make any difference if I take one of these?”
The synthetic didn’t sugarcoat it. “They want warm bodies to host their young. That might give you a slight chance if you encounter one.”
“Right, then.” His parents taught both Lenny and Morgan how to fire a rifle in the station-safe practice chamber. He’d never shot a live weapon, but then, he was doing a lot of things now he wasn’t used to. He grabbed a small satchel of tools and rifled through. It contained wire strippers, insulated screwdrivers, and different kinds of pliers. Lenny slid on the headlamp but didn’t turn it on. He wasn’t sure how these monsters found their prey, but he would try for some stealth.
Slinging the rifle across his front, he moved to the far door.
“Just remember, their blood is acid.” Rook shot him a small salute.
This was new information to Lenny, but there was no going back now.
Back in the corridor, it was scarier by far now that he knew what might be out there. Ducking low, and trying hard to keep his footfalls light, Lenny crept down towards the main elevator shaft on the left. The drop ceiling was collapsed and lay scattered about.
A rack of Mr. Browns still stood, waiting for commands from long-dead humans. The fallen ceiling had hit the two on the end, while the rest blinked at low charge.
It would have been nice to pass this repair task off to one of them. Instead, Lenny scrambled onwards until he reached the shaft. Here the drop ceiling was nonexistent, the air ducts tenuously hanging in their railings.
However, the panel was exactly where Rook had told him it would be. Part of him began to worry the synthetic might have lied to him. Keeping his breath as steady as possible, he began to remove the panel. The shriek of metal on metal made him jump. The panel had taken a hit, and it forced him to wrench it away.
He stood there for a few moments, his own heartbeat rattling in his head. Then he turned on his headlamp and peered into the box. Several breakers were blown; some kind of power surge must have hit it. He checked for voltage and found none. He only needed to flip it back on and he restored power to the command center.
A simple fix was exactly what he’d hoped for. Lenny closed the panel while letting out a slow breath.
Something uncoiled in the void above his head. In the flickering light, it was hard to make out. A long head moved sinuously, darkness shifting in darkness. Lenny forgot to breathe, but he understood standing there staring was no way to survive. Keeping his eyes fixed on the thing, he began backing away.
The monster moved slowly, like Lenny’s dad waking up after a long shift. It yawned, lips pulling back from long, sharp teeth. A second mouth stretched out, somehow attached within already terrifying jaws.
He kept creeping back down the corridor and fumbled for the rifle. Rook said the monster’s blood was acid, so he needed to be a good distance away from this thing before he started shooting.
It dropped elegantly from its resting place. It was tall, taller than Lenny. His brain tried to take it all in: the long tail with a horrifyingly sharp end, the claws on each of its six fingers, the curiously curved, domed head.
Time seemed to slow down. Lenny was not even four meters away from the thing. He had yet to spot any eyes, but even as he thought that, it turned its head towards him. It let out a godawful hiss, a noise that set every primitive instinct in his body alight.
Run, he told himself. Run, for fuck’s sake, you moron!
Lenny resisted the instinct. If he turned away from this thing now, he’d die. Its legs alone said it was faster than he was.
He needed to be far enough away now, and he couldn’t afford to let this monster close the distance. Raising the rifle, he aimed as best as the moment allowed and pulled the trigger. At first, nothing happened, since Lenny hadn’t flicked the safety switch off. He did so immediately and pulled the trigger again. The kick of the weapon caught him by surprise and the shots all flew wide. They pinged off the wall and disappeared into the ceiling cavity.
The monster bunched up, completely unharmed. The rifle counter flashed a zero. It would not help him anymore, but there were other options.
Lenny accessed his augment. The rack of Mr. Browns at his back were his only chance, and they had little juice left in them. He scrambled backwards, and the nightmare followed, hissing and snarling. Its claws screamed against the metal flooring. He connected to the Mr. Browns, and that was when he finally ran. Firing up the synthetics, he dodged past them as they moved towards the monster. Three Mr. Browns against the monster, but Lenny expected them to only slow it down.
He’d never run faster in his life. Bolting down the corridor, he leaped through the door to the command center, hoping to find another rifle nearby.
“Get down!”
The howl of the monster sounded at his back as it reached the door only a few moments after Lenny. The rattle of a pulse rifle in the enclosed space nearly deafened him. He covered his head and hoped not to die.
When it went quiet, he raised his head. Rook must have slid to the floor to grab a weapon. He lay propped up next to the crawler’s control panel, cradling a pulse rifle and grinning. Spots of white circulatory fluid dotted his face.
Daring a glance over his shoulder, Lenny spotted the remains of the monster. Its blood sizzled and ate through the floor just as the synthetic warned.
Lenny clambered to his feet and took several labored breaths before hustling over to help Rook back up into the chair. “Thanks. I forgot everything my mom taught me about shooting, right there.”
“The human body reacts poorly to stress. Most people need to be trained to override it, but that wasn’t bad… for an augmented human.” He shot Lenny a sharp glance. “Your parents must love you a lot. That’s a high-quality device in your head.”
Lenny tapped his skull. “Cost them their living, nearly. Okay, so how do we bring the space elevator back online?”
Rook ran his hands over the controls. “We’re going to have to work together on that.”
“The only way I know.” Lenny sat next to him. “Let’s get it done.”
The synthetic’s eyes met his. “It’s good to work with a human again.” He said that so lightly, but something more complicated lurked in those words. Lenny couldn’t wait to hear the story sometime, once they were both far away from this deadly station.