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The Last Human IV - 45 - Scavengers
🕑 Added 2024-08-05 18:23:13 +0000 UTC< First | < Prev | Next >
Asphalt and concrete prevented the rain from soaking into the ground. So, it gathered at the bottom of the valley, rushing along in shallow rivers, taking granules of asphalt with it and piling them up against sheets of corroded metal. Rebar stuck up from the brown water like swamp trees, dead and flaking and refusing to tip over. Rust spread like orange moss up the sides of skeletal structures. Slopes of plastic rose out of the mud, pierced through with nettles of steel mesh and gnarled tangles of steel rods. Using her liquid arm like an axe, Agraneia hacked her way through the tangles, blazing a trail through the metal and mire.
Were it not for her armored suit, the plated boots and ankle-guards, the mechanical greaves and hydraulic cuisses that covered her thighs, she would’ve lost a lot of blood. As it was, she merely sank into the mud, though her suit did get scraped to all hells. Once, she found herself buried to the waist in mud and wet concrete dust, and her suit’s servos whined as she grunted and fought to pull herself out.
Laykis leaned over the mud, and offered her a metal rod. “Hold on tight.”
“What if you fall in with me?” Agraneia asked. Her suit must’ve weighed two hundred pounds alone. But the android set her feet, and used her whole body to heave Agraneia out. The cyran came loose with a rude squelch, and her legs were free to move again.
“Huh,” Agraneia said, slicking the mud off her legs, and testing her movement again. “You are strong, construct.”
“Laykis.”
“What?”
“You may call me Laykis.”
Agraneia frowned at her.
“You must call me by my name,” Laykis explained, “And I will call you Agraneia. Is this not what sisters do?”
Sisters? A throaty chuckle echoed through her thoughts. With a construct?
I mean, we both knew you were mad. But this?
Like swatting at a fly, Agraneia tried to wave the voice away. But it only descended, laughing, into the whispering laughter of all the others.
They wandered through shallows, through a forest of rebar. The water was nearly orange with rust. No sounds at all, except the water lapping at the metal trees. No amphibians. No insects. No life at all. Even the endless armadas of the Swarm had dried up, and the rain, too. They trudged through the marshland, water curling into vapor as the sun heated the surface. Chunks of concrete dotted the waters, boulders sitting up in the shimmering flat.
Laykis stopped suddenly, and pointed excitedly at one of the boulders. “Agraneia, look!”
On alert, Agraneia readied her rifle, and the missile flaps on her shoulders lifted, her helmet scanning for targets. But the android had already run ahead, and was crouched low over a slanted slab. “It’s moss,” Laykis clicked.
Agraneia let her gun fall.
“A living plant,” Laykis gently prodded the fuzzy growth with one finger, “Here. On this dead planet.”
“Moss,” Agraneia repeated.
“Toxified air. Soil, drenched with heavy metals. Oceans of acid. And yet, even after death, there is still hope for life.”
It’s just moss, Eolh croaked. Maybe she’s the mad one. Maybe you are all alone out here…
“Shut up,” Agraneia grunted under her breath. Not intending for Laykis to hear her, but the android cocked her head.
Maybe she’ll leave you behind like she did all those other xenos—
“Shut up.”
“Did I say something wrong?” Laykis asked.
“I wasn’t talking to—”
Wait, Eolh whispered. It sounded like he was standing right behind her. Her head turned automatically to regard him, but he wasn’t there. None of them were. Just her, and Laykis.
What’s that?
A distant, hollow warbling. Like the ringing of a glass bell.
“Do you hear that?”
“My sensors aren’t picking up anything. Is it, ah, one of your voices?”
Agraneia cupped a liquid hand to her ear. It was getting louder.
Agraneia grabbed Laykis hand, and jerked her into a run.
“Agraneia—”
“The hills,” she barked, “Now!”
A metal crack exploded behind them, and Laykis went sprawling forward. A dagger-sized drone had collided with Laykis’s leg. Its body was alight with glowing repulsors, and it wriggled as it tried to burrow its drill-bit head into Laykis’s calf. Agraneia unfurled her liquid arm, and sliced the drone in half. The head was still embedded in Laykis’s armor.
A vicious, humming moan filled the valley and clapped against the craggy hills ahead, showering them in the echoing cry of a thousand banshees.
Behind, a living cloud poured over the lowlands. Too many drones to count. They moved as one body, reaching spear-like fingers through the rebar forest and skating above the orange waters and blotting out the sun. Twin shepherds hovered high above—two machines with bands of slow, graceful, rotating blades ushered the flock onward.
Agraneia and Laykis splashed through the shallows, and stumbled into the crags. Drones flew like knives ahead of hte flock, leaping out and stabbing at them. Latching on with circular teeth or spinning their heads as they tried to burrow into their armor. They rattled against the back of Agraneia’s legs and up her back and slammed, ringing, into her helmet. One of them got stuck on the underside of her boot and crushed when she brought it down.
Agraneia tripped, and Laykis was there to get her up again. Then, the cloud engulfed them. Rolling and thundering and rattling against their armor and the craggy stones, thousands of wingless bodies blocking out the hills and the sky beyond.
One of the drones bit a hole through her suit’s shoulder joint. Agraneia choked as her suit started to fill up with the wrong kind of gas. She tried to rip the drone off her, but when she turned around, a dozen more slammed into her front. She threw herself to the ground with a mighty thud, and rolled against the stones, trying to crush as many of their bodies as she could. Her liquid arm did not ask for permission. It acted, now, on instinct. On Agraneia’s instinct.
It stretched itself into a spear, which split into dozens of spears, as thin as needles. Without detaching, they shot from her arm, harpooning the nearest drones. Then, the spears retracted, and pulsed out again. And again. And again, until Agraneia roared and picked herself up and threw her liquid arm up, lashing at the sky. It acted on her impulse in an instant, extending like a hose full of pressurized water. More spears shot out, clearing swathes of the sky, until the drones pulled back.
A bubble formed between Agraneia and the vicious biting clouds, except for a writhing pile of drones on the ground. The android was nowhere in sight.
“Laykis!” Agraneia dove into the pile, liquid arm first. The drones rattled and scraped against each other horribly as they fought to devour the android underneath. Roaring, Agraneia stomped and swatted and ripped away armfuls of drones, and the liquid arm pulsed its spears until the android’s body was revealed. One of Laykis’ arms dangled at the wrong angle. Her chest was punctured in a hundred places, and her eyes were dark. No light at all. No. Agraneia sank to her knees.
A blue light flickered in the sky, and one of the shepherds let out a ringing moan. The other shepherd answered with its own glassy call. Then, one of Laykis’s eyes lit up, and her hands jerked as if to swipe away the drones that were no longer eating her.
Agraneia shouted a laugh. A drone slapped into the back of her helmet, making her head ring. Agraneia ripped the drone away with a growl. More of them started to test the waters, swooping close—but always out of reach.
“Find cover,” Laykis said from the ground, her voice clipping and broken. “Leave me—”
Agraneia grabbed Laykis and unceremoniously dragged the android across the slick pebbles and scree, charging for the nearest overhang among the crag. Her liquid arm formed into a drill with an absurdly long tip—as slender as a syringe. Agraneia punched the back of the crag over and over, driving the tip into the stone. Tiny cracks began to form, running up the overhang until it splintered open with a popping crunch. Agraneia piled the stones on Laykis, and on herself, until the two of them were mostly covered. Then, she impulsed the liquid armor to spread out between the gaps in the stones, stretching the living metal as thin as she dared.
The bird drones clicked off the rocks and rattled against the thin membrane of liquid metal, circular jaws trying to carve them open. Agraneia could feel the jolts of pain running up her liquid limb, and she wondered—not for the first time—at the magic of the old tech. The drones couldn’t gain purchase on the metal, and it found opportunities to spear them back, slowly whittling down their flock. The pelting rain of machine bodies began to slow.
Agraneia’s heart thundered in her ears. Her breath filled her helmet and the suit’s internal fans whirred as they tried to clear away the vapor on her visor.
I lost count, Eolh crowed, How many chances was that? Don’t you want to die?
“Go away,” Agraneia muttered.
“Who are you talking to?” Laykis’ voicebox wavered.
Laykis’s head was wedged under a rock, but she managed face Agraneia. Old scars ran up and down her mask, and new circular bites and gouges marred the metal. One of her eyes flickered. For a moment, Agraneia almost forgot that Laykis was not a hallucination, but a real person.
“I heard you talking to someone, earlier. Who?”
Go on, Eolh said. Lie to her. Lie, so she doesn't try to help you. This is all your fault. Yours, and yours alone...
“Eolh.”
Laykis stared so hard, her eye stopped flickering. “Eolh the Guardian?”
“Eolh the Dead.” Agraneia gritted her teeth, expecting some cackling response from the corvani. But he’d gone suspiciously silent. Him, and all the other voices.
“What does he say?” Laykis asked.
Agraneia tried to shrug, but there were too many rocks pressing down on her. “He torments me. He’s… very good at it.”
“That makes sense. He used to torment himself all the time.”
Agraneia snorted softly. As if she could ever forget his brooding. Of course, now that he was in her head, he’d never let her forget.
“It must be nice,” Laykis said. “To hear his voice again.”
“Mmm.”
They lay there in silence, waiting for the plinking of the drones to go quiet. Like rain drying up, the plinking stopped.
“What were those things?” Agraneia asked.
“Scrap collectors. Mindless drones, guided by other slightly less mindless drones. They seem to have passed us over.”
Agraneia cautiously split open a thin layer of liquid metal, and saw only fog curling up the rocky crags. And, of course, a lot of little machine bodies, lying still on the ground. Agraneia heaved, and the rocks tumbled away from their clustered hiding place. She brushed herself off, testing the gaps in her suit. Frigid air seeped into the armor, but she wiped some of the liquid metal there, and instructed it to keep her suit sealed. Good enough.
Laykis, however, could barely stand. She started to gain her balance, when her hip gave out, and the android tumbled with a heavy crash to the rocky ground. She tried to catch herself, but one of her arms hung lifelessly at her side. Agraneia leaped to her side and rolled her over.
“It seems,” Laykis said, “I may not return from this journey.”
“No. You are still alive.”
“Perhaps. But I cannot walk like this. And you cannot save the divine Maker if you insist on carrying me.”
Agraneia frowned hard at the ground, thinking. The android was right, of course. She would only slow them down. Khadam was the only objective, and if the android couldn’t walk…
“Go,” Laykis said. “Leave me. I will follow if I can, but you should not wait on me.”
Agraneia closed her eyes. Saw all those dagger-like drones, shivering as they piled on Laykis’s body. Tearing her armor to pieces.
Agraneia impulsed her liquid arm to its full length, summoning every spare drop of the near-sentient metal. With her organic hand, she pulled at her liquid palm, until a chrome sphere prized free.
“Can you use this? Fix your joints.”
She handed the sphere to Laykis, who whispered to it, and let it seep into her chest, and drip down to her legs. Slotting into the complicated components, and shoring up her hydraulics.
“Hmm,” Laykis hummed. “I may still useful after all. But what about your own strength? The gate is still there. Are you sure you want to be here?”
Her liquid arm still held its shape, but it was hollow—like a lattice sculpture made of chrome branches.
“I’ll keep going as long as you will.”
Laykis nodded, her eyes glowing with joy. “Then let us walk together to the very end.”
