Chapter 9
27R0N
DATE:
7088.03.07,
RECON
ERA
HAZARD 4 - Severed Wreck
Oort Cloud, Gryanke System
Forty-Five was running, and I was floating behind
him.
Holding his hand, my bulky knapsack secured on my
back
He didn’t even stop or pause at intersections,
each turn throwing me wide and forcing me to push off the walls to
avoid getting tenderised. He barrelled down each corridor, winding us
back to the entrance.
Another twitchy droid was crawling along the floor
in front of us.
The static-filled voice louder in my helmet.
“
“What’s Oh-One?” I couldn’t help but
mutter to myself, my curiosity feeding off my fear. I only just
registered that Forty-Five let go of my hand, my momentum carrying me
forward.
I cried out, trying to change my trajectory with
swinging arms but I had nothing to push off against.
Forty-Five kicked the droid into the wall,
following through with a punch straight into its carapace.
My body reached him and without looking back, he
snatched my flailing arm and continued his trajectory, almost pulling
my limb out of the socket.
“GIVE ME A WARNING NEXT TIME!” I shouted into
the comms.
“Taken under advisement,” came the calm,
albeit breathless, reply.
...breathless?
We rounded another corner. The end was near, the
stack of crates still waiting patiently at the end of the hallway.
The Reckless’ airlock visible beyond the opening I had made.
“Throw the crates straight in-” I started
ordering, a smile back on my face, when I felt something yank my leg
back painfully.
I yelled out in pain, my hand slipped out of
Forty-Five’s.
I looked down, a larger droid, a female form with
glitching lights along her seams was pulling me towards her. Her
large hand was clawed the wall, anchoring her. Her lower
half was missing.
“
A
static-laden hiss.
Her speech was… more eloquent than the others.
But the message remained the same.
Cursive script was etched across the side of her
face, the flourishing lines decoratively continuing across her body.
27R0N
She had me pinned. She tore her anchoring hand out
of the wall, rearing back, her fingers curled into a cruel loose
fist. I noticed, with widening eyes, that she left the exact same
claw marks as near the bridge door.
Another black, robotic hand appeared above my
head, grasping her face. Pushing her off me.
Forty-Five appeared, using his momentum and her
lack of anchors to slam her into the wall.
I twisted so my feet were near the floor, putting
my magnetic soles on full blast. I was finally anchored.
“Twenty-Seven…” Forty-Five said quietly,
regretfully.
The robot screamed, “TRAITOR!
FORTY-FIVE!”
Her hands started scrabbling at the sentinel, who
was smaller but seemingly stronger. I watched the scuffle. The robot
was sheared off at the waist, the lines jagged and violent.
And I saw Forty-Five hesitate. His fist rearing
back like before, but it paused.
She managed to get her large hand over his face,
engulfing it. The fingers contracted. Forty-Five grasped her wrist,
letting out a pained static-laden cry.
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“SUBMIT! SUBMIT TO OH-ONE! !”
I didn’t think. I acted.
“Shit!” I ran forward, slipping my arms out of
my knapsack and letting it float. I slammed myself into the wall
until I was below her cavity, which was open from the bottom.
I could see her insides.
Pulsating red lights illuminated the components.
Memory banks, in the form of crystal data cubes.
Hydraulic tubing, ends open and long since emptied
of their contents.
And I saw the sphere that represented a Ron power
source. Right near the top.
I jammed my hand upward into her exposed chassis,
my entire arm almost disappearing into her cavity. Reaching past the
memory banks and tubing, brushing past processor cores that would
have continued into her head, I wrapped my hand around the
grapefruit-sized sphere.
I didn’t wait. I didn’t hesitate. I twisted
and pulled.
“
The HUD
voice alert
ominously read out the text
warning. The spacesuit
punctured at the shoulder. The jagged edges of the robot’s body had
cut into the outer layer.
The hiss of oxygen escaping
filled my helmet, drowning almost everything. My shoulder growing
cold.
“Melissa?”
A
voice said
my name. Low, resonant, and terrifyingly clear. It had a digital
edge, but the cadence was undeniably organic.
It
stopped
me from
trying to uselessly stem the vent.
Forty-Five rushed forward, shoving Twenty-Seven
away from me.
He gripped my arm before reaching backwards and
pulling out… suit patches. He ripped off the packaging.
I slowly exhaled, resisting the urge to take one
deep breath before all the oxygen was gone, remembering my father’s
story of when he was in my position.
“māreikura.
Scream it out. If you hold it, the vacuum will pop your lungs like
balloons. And always
have a hoa
“What the hell were you thinking?” The voice
growled low in my ear, the audio clipping slightly. I didn’t know
where it was coming from, but I had other things to worry about. A
deep, aching cold started spreading in my chest, my artificial lung
cooling fast. I felt a where I knew my lung was attached
to my oesophagus.
Forty-Five slapped the patches on, bruising my
shoulder.
My chest were
burning. My body was
craving to take a breath in.
“Alert. Oxygen level stabilising. 19% Oxygen
remaining. Urgent action required.”
The suit spoke to me again, the HUD showing me the
oxygen levels and damaged areas.
I finally gasped for air. My feet were still
magnetised to the floor, but I didn’t have the strength to pull
myself upright. A painful block of ice in my torso.
A strong, metal hand helped me.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Forty-Five,
looking around both ends of the corridor. “Someone said my name.
And then…” I looked up at him.
His lights cycled frantically from red to orange
to yellow and back to red. “Warning. Vacate immediately. Ship
proximity alarms active.”
Robotic. Monotone. Stuttered. Forty-Five’s
voice.
“What?” I
looked back towards the exit, Twenty-Seven
blocking the view. I grabbed the
floating
knapsack I
had let
slip in my rush, and
moved forward.
“Do we know what it is?”
Forty-Five stopped a moment, looking around as if
he could see outside the ship. When he glanced over his shoulder, he
did a double take. His entire body locking up before twisting around.
“MOVE! De-deactivate your soles, now!”
Forty-Five’s voice was… still robotic but it
wasn’t monotone and the stutter had completely disappeared. Except
for a slight… hitch.
I whipped
my head around before doing
as the voice
said. My feet lifted
off the floor once more.
He pushed me.
I bumped into
Twenty-Seven
and we were both sent barrelling down the corridor.
“She’s not going to fit through the exit!” I
said, panicked. “She’ll block it!”
“You’ve got fi-five seconds to make her
fi-fit.”
The challenge rang in my ears.
I
tightened the straps on my knapsack, reaching up and activating the
HUD overlay. Forty-Five
pushed us, and I braced my
boots against Twenty-Seven’s carapace, turning the corpse into a
makeshift sled. Every time friction threatened to topple us, I
shifted my weight, riding the momentum.
My hand
automatically went to my tool belt, my eyes racking over the droid’s
body.
Forcing the HUD to overlay a
wire-frame over the seams of her construction,
any indents that I couldn’t quite see from the low light.
One.
Her shoulders.
I grabbed my pry-bar, discarding any form of
subtlety, and reached up. I ignored the reinforced casing and jammed
my pry-bar directly into the rotator cuff servo.
Two.
I torqued the
bar. Metal shards flew
as the primary coupling pin snapped, I
could almost hear it in the vacuum.
I wasn't disassembling her; I was amputating her. My
heart screamed at the damage. At the imagined pain she would be going
through, even will
deactivated.
Three.
I was halfway
through breaking the second joint when the
ship around us shuddered, my
eyes burning with unshed tears.
Four.
“What was that?” My hands still working while
my eyes racked over the tunnel, the exit giving us a view of the
stars beyond. My ship was gone.
“Forty-Five. The ship’s gone.”
“No, cl-clamps dislodged.” Forty-Five’s
glitchy stutter was getting worse. “We’ll ne-need to re-redirect
exit.”
My hand was still prying Twenty-Seven’s shoulder
off, getting increasingly concerned by the static in Forty-Five’s
voice.
“Get me on the ship, and throw everything out
the exit. I can scoop it all up.”
“M-Melissa, it’s n-not worth it-it!”
“It is,” I said firmly, but still with a
waver. “It is to me.”
I got the arm free. And with one final push,
Twenty-Seven and I broke free of the wreck. But before I could even
panic about being ejected and floating into the black, I was yanked
by the leg and redirected ‘down’.
I saw the Reckless. My beautiful ship. Staying
still as the whole wreck was being moved.
“D-Don’t. L-Look. B-Back,” said Forty-Five,
the static almost muffling his words. He seemed…resigned.
He shoved me hard, and I pulled my limbs in,
forming into a tight ball like my father taught me. I barreled into
the open maw of my airlock.
Extending my legs out, my feet magnetised to the
deck and I spun around, looking back up through the open hatch. A
giant asteroid was encroaching on the wreck. One of the smaller rocky
bodies had glanced off the freighter, knocking it off kilter.
I watched in horror as another rock shot straight
through the corridor we had just vacated, obliterating it in a silent
explosion of dust and metal. The crates still locked in the trolley
scattered with Twenty-Seven’s body parts.
The space where Forty-Five had been was empty.
“
hoa - companion/partner
