This month's poll result was 'author's choice', so with that I decided to continue some more Dust. We pick up right where we left off, with an angry Captain D'Antonio confronting Nicholas and the Alliance troops. Enjoy!
~
Chapter 26:
D’Antonio’s eyes, cold and furious, held Nicholas’s gaze as he read from the letter he held, never even looking at the page, the paragraphs already burnt into his mind. “I’m leaving this message in the hope that someone will find it,” he began, reciting a dead man’s final words. “There’s one chance for you. Just one. There’s a personnel transport in the Alliance base at the Gatekeeper Mountains. It was meant as a last-ditch escape vessel for when the colony was only a thousand or two. That facility was abandoned more than a decade ago when this base was built, but the ship is still there. The people we sent to investigate after A-Day never reached the mountains, so I don’t know what condition it’s in, but it wasn’t moved and it hasn’t been launched.
“None of us are getting out of this place alive, but you have a chance. It’s the only one left. Godspeed, and if you can... forgive us.
“Forgive me.
“Colonel Daniel Potter.”
“So,” D’Antonio said, folding the letter back into his jacket pocket. “When, exactly, were you going to tell us about this?”
Nicholas was silent for a moment, looking at the Conglomerate soldiers. Five of them had died in the failed effort to summon help. None of them appeared understanding or even forgiving. “I don’t suppose,” he began, “that you’d believe that I was just coming to tell you?”
D’Antonio’s expression, already carved from cold granite, hardened even more. “No,” Kawalsky sighed. “I didn’t think so. I probably wouldn’t either.”
“Captain?” Andrea called from inside the bunkroom, noticing the confrontation outside the doorway. She couldn’t see much beyond Kawalsky, but he caught the note of concern in her voice. She knew something was wrong.
Without turning away from the Conglomerate captain, he waved her back. The door was a chokepoint. If they started shooting at each other, his people would be massacred. “It’s all right, corporal,” he called. “Just having a discussion with Captain D’Antonio.”
“You have a ship,” the other captain spat. He didn’t bother trying to play along, his anger overriding nearly ever other impulse, but even then it was a cold anger, contained and directed squarely at the man standing in front of him.
“A potential ship,” Nicholas corrected. “Potter even says he doesn’t know if it’s operational. It’s a little early to be killing each other over a ship that might not even work don’t you think?”
“You knew there was a way off this planet and you didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Nicholas replied, “because we were in the comm center. If the messages had gotten through, we wouldn’t have needed it.” Though it was true, that assertion, like the claim he’d been on his way to see D’Antonio, felt as hollow to him saying it as it must have to the man hearing it.
He wasn’t even sure if that was the full reason. He wanted to think he would have gone to see the captain without realizing the paper was missing. He wanted to think that he was that kind of man, but he was also a Mercantor-Opal Corporal Alliance captain. His first duty was to his fellow soldiers and the civilians cowering in the hives.
He didn’t know how many Conglomerate citizens were still alive, but the ship was Alliance and the message had been left by an Alliance officer for other Alliance personnel. Alliance civilians had to have first priority.
And that was a decision that D’Antonio, just like Nicholas if their positions were reversed, could never accept. It didn’t matter when he did or didn’t reveal it. As soon as it became known, their fragile alliance would have crumbled, just like it already had. That ship was salvation, and the Connies wanted it for them and their people. “So what now?” Nicholas asked. “Do you even know where to go?”
“More than you might think,” D’Antonio answered. “A few weeks before you sicced the cutters on us, APF Intel discovered the location of an inactive Alliance base in the Gatekeeper Mountains. We thought it was abandoned, so it was a low priority for recon. We got a little busy after that,” his tone became acidic enough that it could have melted steel, “but we know it’s there.”
“Then I guess you’ve got everything planned out,” Nicholas said. “And how do we fit in, then?”
D’Antonio briefly glanced at his sergeant. In that moment, Nicholas knew the topic of killing them all had come up. “You’re going to turn around and walk back into that room,” the Conglomerate officer said. “We’re going to lock it. By the time you get out, we’ll be long gone. We’ll leave behind some food and water.”
“It’s more than you deserve,” one of the Connie soldiers snapped, falling silent when D’Antonio held up a hand.
“We’re not monsters,” the captain continued. “But we’re taking that ship. You’re staying here. You created this mess, so you can clean it up.”
“I seem to recall,” Nicholas answered icily. “That both of us had a hand in creating this mess.”
“Not the cutters,” D’Antonio shot back. “They’re why nobody is coming. You’re why Alcatar got thrown to the wolves, so you can enjoy their company. My men and I are getting out of here and we’re taking whatever people your fucking machines have left alive with us. We’ll pass word that you’re still alive. Like I said, we’re not monsters. You can go back to your hive and stay nice and safe. Not all of us have had that option.”
“And what about me?” Lorelai said. She’d come up behind Nicholas without making a sound. Even the Connies, who’d been looking right at him, seemed surprised at her arrival. “I’m not an Alliance soldier. I didn’t do anything to create this mess. Do I get thrown to the wolves too?”
D’Antonio’s jaw worked. This was a conversation he’d wanted to avoid so that he could pretend that the only other people here were the Alliance soldiers. Some of his men had argued that the duster woman was effectively Alliance already and should have been given the same consideration. “You didn’t say anything, either,” he said.
“If you were in my position, would you?”
The captain was quiet for a few seconds. He couldn’t argue the point, so he didn’t try. “Perhaps not,” he granted grudgingly.
Nicholas looked at Lorelai, she looked back at him like he was a stranger. “I’m a civilian,” she said, as much to him as to the Conglomerate personnel. “Not a soldier. I signed up to be a colonist, not to fight a war. My home is gone, my friends are gone. All that’s left is wondering if each day is going to be the one where I die. Maybe I’ll get gunned down by another duster who wants what I have. Maybe I’ll be too slow and an SV will gut me. I have to live with that fear every day and it’s... it’s not fair.” She shook her head, unable to meet Nicholas’s eyes any longer. “It’s not fair,” she repeated. “I shouldn’t have live like this. I didn’t do anything. You found out that your people abandoned this place and both of you still argue about who did what. Neither side wants to let go and we’re the ones that pay for it. That’s not fair. It’s not. I shouldn’t have to die for your war. None of us should, but we are. Over and over again.”
D’Antonio was silent for a moment. He looked at his sergeant. She looked at trooper Dekin, then back to her captain and nodded. His lips thinned. “We can use a scout,” he offered at last. “If you help us, there’ll be a place on that ship for you.”
“Lorelai-” Nicholas said as she pushed past him. His head was reeling, thoughts racing three different directions at once as he tried to process what she was doing and coming up empty.
“I’m sorry, captain,” she said as she picked up her rucksack and slipped out under his arm, joining the Conglomerate ranks. “You’ve been good to me... but I don’t want to die here. I just want to go home. I hope you understand that.”
Nicholas couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He stood mute as one of the Connies stepped forward, ushering him back into the bunkroom with the rest of his troops.
Just before the door closed, Nicholas looked at Lorelai. Her expression never changed, but as their eyes met, she gave him a wink. It was so fast that he wondered if he’d even seen it. Then the door closed and they were separated, the heavy lock thunking into place and sealing the Alliance troops inside.
“Captain?” Danny Mitchum asked, his voice uncertain. “What just happened?”
It took Nicholas a moment to answer. “I don’t know.” He took a breath, hiding all trace of his own uncertainty and becoming a focal point to his people again. No matter what happened, he had to be the one they could all look up to reassurance. “We’re going to wait ten minutes,” he said. “And then I want that fucking door down.”
~
It actually took close to three hours to break down the door. They didn’t have any cutting tools or explosives, so it required good, old-fashioned elbow grease. Doors to a simple storage area weren’t like the reinforced double doors outside the comm array or even the ones where they’d found the wrecked SV, but they were sturdy enough to be a problem for anyone on the wrong side of them.
Nicholas had to stop himself from pacing. Every minute that passed, the Conglomerate troops’ head start got larger. He supposed he should be grateful, though. Three hours wasn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things. It could have been a lot worse. They could have shot him and all his people. They could have welded the doors shut. They could have started a fire and let smoke fill the facility. They could have done a lot more than this.
No, they weren’t monsters... but he wasn’t all that kindly disposed towards D’Antonio and his people right now, either. He probably would have done the same, but acknowledging that hypocrisy didn’t make him feel any better. There was a ship out there, a chance to save hundreds of lives and every second of delay meant it slipped further out of their reach.
Nicholas’s thoughts were still racing. He tried to focus on the mission. They had to beat the Connies to the Gatekeeper facility. That was the primary goal now, but his mind kept turning to Lorelai. The emotional part of him wanted to call this a betrayal, but what was she betraying him for? What could she get out of this?
As the other men pried the door back inch by inch, Rashid and Andrea came to talk to him. They didn’t know Lorelai was well as he did, but her actions didn’t make any sense to them, either. The rest of the troops just saw it as a duster taking the better deal. A few of the men were angry at her, but some of the others understood. The civilians on Alcatar hadn’t signed up for a war. They hadn’t had any say in the corporations’ tactics. They’d been ground zero for years of hostilities, they’d been bombed and blasted and finally had the SVs set loose on them. If there was a way off-world, who could blame any one of them for taking it, regardless of which side they were supposed to be on?
“You think she’s going to kill them?” Khatri wondered, stroking his short beard. He kept his voice pitched low so that only Cooper and Kawalsky could hear him. “Wait until they’re a day or two out from the base, then when everyone’s asleep...” he curled his left fingers into claws and made a short, sharp cutting motion. “She could wander back, tell us all about how they walked into a nest of SVs and she’s the only one that made it out?”
“Maybe,” Nicholas replied, scratching his chin. That didn’t feel like something she’d do. Then again, he was often reminded – and not always in a good way – that Lorelai wasn’t human. She didn’t think like a human. She had the impetus to kill, but as she so often said herself, she ‘thought different’. She hadn’t even killed the duster that planned to rape her until Nicholas said she could. Massacring a camp full of humans, even if they were Conglomerate soldiers, wasn’t her style. “But I don’t think so.”
So what is she doing, then?
As if she could read his mind, Andrea spoke next. “So what’s she doing then, captain? Why’d she jump ship?”
Nicholas shook his head. He was no closer to an answer now than he’d been three hours ago. Maybe Lorelai planned to lead the Connie troops astray? But they had their own scouts, and D’Antonio knew where they were going. He’d figure out quickly if they were off course. Besides, there’d be no way that they’d let her guide them. Even if she wasn’t an opportunistic defector, the Connies had been working together for weeks if not months. They had a system, their people knew and trusted each other. No way an unknown variable like a duster would be allowed to take point. Not until they knew they could trust her.
Like you trusted her?
Shut up.
“I don’t know,” he answered. It was the fourth time he’d said it, but it was the only response he could give. Part of him wondered though... Lorelai was a machine. She didn’t have emotions, not really. She didn’t feel. You could even argue that she didn’t even think. Nicholas wasn’t sure that he believed that, but you could argue it. The original SVs and the first post A-day designs certainly weren’t anything more than machines running on programming. He didn’t know where in the production queue that that changed or even if it did. At what point was an animal a sapient creature? At what point did a machine cross that same threshold?
Even if Lorelai was sapient like Nicholas believed she was, she could have made a different set of calculations. Maybe he wasn’t useful to her any longer, but for the Connies to be useful... they didn’t know what she was. Whatever safeguards they put up would be based on the assumption that Lorelai was human.
They’d take her to their civilians. God, they’d let her off-planet, wouldn’t they?
Was that something Lorelai even cared about? In all the time he’d known her, she’d never tried to get into Hive 004, nor mentioned anything about getting off of Alcatar. Maybe she’d known she’d never have a chance and decided not to waste goodwill on pressing the issue. Maybe in the Connies she saw an opportunity that she’d never have with Nicholas. Maybe that had been her plan all along. Maybe that wink was just to throw him off and make him think she was still on his side so he’d take her back if that plan failed. She was smart enough to do that. Maybe.
Maybe, maybe and fucking God-damned maybe again.
“I don’t know,” Nicholas said for the fifth time now. The words got heavier each time. “But,” he added. “I trust her.” That admission pushed through the fog of cold, damp pessimism. “We’ve been through a lot together.” They had, hadn’t they? From the moment she’d found him trapped and helpless they’d had something no one else on this Godforsaken planet had. “I don’t see her throwing all that away on a dime.”
But she’s still one of them. An SV. Built and programmed to kill.
“With all due respect sir,” Andrea asked him. “Do you believe that means shit to her? She’s a machine.”
It was like she was sitting on his shoulder wearing a devil costume. “If I believed,” Kawalsky told her. “Then I wouldn’t have to trust, would I?”
She opened her mouth, closed it and then awkwardly nodded. “I suppose not, sir.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I believe we’re going to get out of this room. I believe we’re going to beat the Connies to that ship... and I trust Lorelai.”
“That makes one of us, sir,” Rashid put in. “She hasn’t stabbed us in the back yet, but she’s still an SV. But,” he amended with a sigh. “You’ve been right about her so far. What’s a little more misplaced faith after all that?”
“As hopeful as ever, eh Lieutenant?”
“Just a realist, sir. Someone has to temper your optimistic mania.”
Kawalsky chuckled. He hadn’t been ‘optimistic’ since the bombs fell, but there was a grain of truth in Khatri’s comment. He’d looked forward to seeing Lorelai on each recon mission. She’d become part of his life, something that made the grinding, grey days on this blasted Hell a little brighter. He’d taught her how to be more human. He’d heard her laugh, seen her smile. He’d fallen asleep as she stood over him in perpetual watch, completely confident that he wouldn’t die during the night.
Maybe it was more than trust. Maybe he actually believed in her. More maybes, more possibilities that grew out from that one moment so many months ago like cracks spiderwebbing across glass.
With a final groan of warped hinges and damaged metal, the door gave way. The Alliance troops filtered out into the complex, but only the hum of the lights greeted them. D’Antonio and the Conglomerates had kept their word and made good their escape hours before.
Also true to Captain D’Antonio’s word, they’d left behind rations for the Alliance troops. It worked out to about a week’s worth of food and drink, or two weeks if they stretched it. Enough to get back to the hive, but with no wiggle room. That was as pointed a message as Nicholas could imagine, underscoring what the captain had already told him. Go back to your hive. Don’t follow us.
“We’re going after them,” he told his troops. He got a series of approving nods and anxious acceptance. They weren’t going to be able to talk this out or come to some kind of agreement. Only one side could get that ship. and going after the Connies meant fighting them, and unlike SVs, the Connies would shoot back. That wasn’t anything new to any of them, but it was just another complication.
D’Antonio would be expecting them. He wouldn’t have given up in Nicholas’s position and the Alliance captain wasn’t going to do it either. Earth had abandoned them. The galaxy had written them off. If they were going to escape this planet, then they had to do it themselves. There was no time to contact the major, no way for reinforcements get here in any reasonable time. It was up to him and his people. They were up to the task. They had to be.
Nicholas set his troops to scavenging. This would probably be their only chance for a resupply and they had to make it count. All the activity helped drown out one more maybe lurking the back of the captain’s head, one that he couldn’t let himself think too much about.
Maybe Lorelai had been his friend.
He didn’t want to confront that right now, either for what it said about him or for what it meant about her. Focusing on the Connies was easier, safer. Better. As his people loaded up with the few supplies that had been left to them, he saw their faces. They were tired. Angry too, but in their eyes was something more than either of those emotions: determination. They hadn’t given up before this moment and they weren’t giving up now. They were going to get out here. They were going to get to the Gatekeeper mountains. They were going to get that ship, and if the Connies tried to stand in their way, then they would go through them.
He didn’t need to trust in that. He believed it.
The troops had mustered, all the supplies stocked and packed. They were just about ready. Then, the lights went out. No flickering like from dying bulbs or the dimming of power being drawn down. One moment they were on, the next Nicholas and his people were standing in darkness. Emergency lights snapped on almost immediately, bathing the entire area in a soft orange glow.
“What the fuck is that?” Krieger asked, her voice cracking.
“Power’s out,” Cortez told her.
“Did we blow a fuse?” someone else asked. It sounded like Shei. It sounded like hope for an answer he knew he wasn’t going to get.
“No,” Kawalsky said. “They cut the power.” It was the comms deck all over again.
The rest of his soldiers fell silent. In that moment, pregnant with realization, came confirmation. From the lowest levels of the safe area the Conglomerate troops had made here, a voice drifted up. It was frail and frightened, with just the right tinge of desperation in its plea for help, but every man and woman here had heard it many times before, most recently just a few hours ago.
“Is anyone there?”
In the breathless silence that followed, there was another voice. Younger, stronger. Excited. “I see you!” it called from the darkness below, infrared vision staring up at the humans while their eyes couldn’t reach it. And then another voice was added. And another.
They’d gotten out of the comm center. Something the soldiers had missed, something Kawalsky and D’Antonio had overlooked. Maybe they’d found the codes. Maybe they’d had them all along and just never bothered leaving the array until they had a reason to. None of those reasons mattered. They were out, and now they were here.
A faint flurry of tapping followed, the sound soft but unmistakable. Feet on metal. Many feet and they were all running, heading towards the stairs that would lead them up towards Kawalsky and the other survivors. No hesitation, no thought. Only the unshakable programmed desire to kill.
“Squad,” Kawalsky shouted. “Grab what you have. We’re going for the upper doors in N-7.”
“Sir,” Rashid put in hurriedly. “The Connies probably left that way. They’d have blocked it off to make sure we can’t follow them or they’ll have booby-trapped it.”
“I know,” Nicholas replied, “but it’s one of the few ways we have out of this section.” The others, like the route that led to the Back Door, were on the lower levels. To get to them, his squad would have to go down... and the SVs were coming up.
There was only one other exit that they could get to without running into the ascending machine; section N-14 and in their initial sitrep, D’Antonio had showed them the lift shaft that connected to it was blocked with wreckage. The Connies had never gotten around to clearing it, and the Alliance troops didn’t have time to do it now. “N-7’s the only chance we have.”
The lieutenant’s face twitched, pinching, but he nodded. It really was their only chance – unless the Connies had fucked them. “Copy that.”
The troops moved at speed. They’d grabbed everything they could carry, double-timing it off the level. The sounds of feet on metal grating were getting louder. Gerome slammed a door shut, driving a pipe through the wheel to jam it. A scream from the other side was cut off, muted by the sealed door. Moments later something large slammed against the barrier.
“Move, move, move!” Mallory bellowed at his troops as they ran, clearing discarded cargo boxes and upturned furniture. They ran even faster than they did at the comm center, though they were half-blind in the orange lighting. When they stumbled, another grabbed them. If they slipped, someone pulled them up. No one got left behind.
They reached the door. It was locked, the door codes scrambled by the Connies. “Krieger!” Nicholas shouted, pulling the software tech to the front. “Override it!” She was pale and shaking. She’d had to face skinjobs once already today. Twice might be too much. Nicholas grabbed her, putting his hands on her face. “Look at me, corporal. Look at me. You can do this. You have to do this. We’ll cover you. All right? We’re here. Just open the door. That’s it.”
She nodded, swallowing, turning back to the keypad and plugging in, started a decryption scan of the codes the Connies had put in. Metal screamed as a door two levels below gave way. “Corporal...” the sergeant said, his jaw clenched. Gun barrels were aimed down the corridor into the flashing orange shadows. Sweat beaded brows.
“Working,” Lucia replied breathlessly.
Furniture crashed. That was one level below. “I see you,” someone called again. The woman flinched like she’d been shocked, but she never looked up from her console, fingers flying over keys as she unwove the Conniess’ attempt to lock them in.
The screams started. They echoed up from below, bouncing across the walls like rabid rats in a cage. They came from everywhere and nowhere at once, shrill and inhuman, promising a brutal, bloody death and not until every last beating heart on the planet was silenced would they stop.
Krieger whimpered. She wanted to shut her eyes and cover her ears. Machines. Machines wearing human faces. Machines that split and burst as saws and knives and things erupted out of them. Machines covered in blood, letting it dribble from their mouths and hands...
The keypad pinged. “Got it!” she said, up and pulling the door open before Nicholas could stop her. She wanted out. She wanted out of that room, out of this facility and away from the nightmares...
The door swung inwards. Krieger, Nicholas and the soldiers next to them froze as they saw what was stuck to the inside panel: a high-ex grenade stared back at them like a single baleful black eye.
“Sergeant,” Nicholas ordered breathlessly. He pulled Krieger back, letting Mallory come to the fore. Malcolm had done a tour in EOD, but luckily this device didn’t require a veteran operator to handle. It was a basic and somewhat idiot-proof arrangement: a wire had been coiled around the base of the door handle with a taut tripwire running from there to the grenade, ready to ensure that anyone, such as a panicked corporal, who turned the door handle to open the door would pull on the wire, popping the pin and safety lever. Shortly thereafter, they and anyone else in the general vicinity would be be reduced to a bloody mist. These kinds of bombs were like baby’s first booby-trap and almost impossible to fuck up. It should have exploded. Instead, like a wild hair, the severed tripwire stuck out into space. When the door handled turned, there was no tension on the line and the grenade stayed inert.
As the sergeant carefully examined the grenade, checking to make sure it wasn’t actually primed, Nicholas spared a second to look at the tripwire. The cut was cleaner than any tool his people or the Connies had access to, and so close to the handle that anyone looking at the booby-trap wouldn’t notice it unless they paid very close attention.
It had, in fact, been done with machine-like precision.
“Move,” Nicholas answered, ushering his people through. The SVs were on the top floor now. He could hear them running. Seconds before contact. “Cortez,” he ordered as they pulled the door shut. “Fuse the wire together.”
“Yessir.” The other man pulled out his welder. It took only a second to reconnect the severed edges of the tripline. Maybe the weld would hold and give a nasty surprise to their pursuers, maybe it wouldn’t. More maybes, but as he and his people ran for their lives, Nicholas realized he had one less maybe to worry about.
His friend was out there and whatever else she was doing or thinking, she hadn’t abandoned him. He didn’t need to trust in that any longer; he believed it.