First Contact

Chapter 951: The Setting Sun

He walked forward, swinging the bar with one hand, as he advanced on the robot that only came up to his knee. The robot skittered again, this time slightly side to side, and even backed up slightly as he kept moving forward.

His grin got wider, the muscles in his face aching slightly as he made an expression that his people never made and that his face wasn't really designed to make.

He stopped, nudging the stall door on his right to make it open slightly, checking to see if it had autolocked or otherwise was impinged. He could see the toilet bowl, made of nearly frictionless ceramic, designed to keep fecal remnants from attaching to the bowl.

The robot danced forward and back and he knew, because he'd been here before, that the robot was slightly confused by his aggressive forward movement.

YOU BELONG TO US! it screamed.

"Then come and take it," he repeated.

The robot's back legs flexed, dipping the back.

He found his brain automatically predicting the only things it could do with that pose. How the pistons in the legs and the joints would propel it.

Part of him was incredulous at how much information was flowing into his brain. Information that was normally ignored or blocked out so he did not have to concentrate on it. It was like there was three parts of his mind now, maybe more. The autonomous systems, like his heartbeat and breathing, which he was actually aware of. His subconscious, which was tracking his balance, what was beneath his feet, his distance from the sinks and the stall doors, the taste of the air, the sounds around him. His conscious, which was focused on the robot. Finally, a blending of conscious and subconscious, a weird track of awareness that he'd never felt before.

He knew what the robot would do before it did it, had prepared, had predicted what it would do, and had formulated multiple responses, settling on what was the preferred one.

All in less than a second.

He couldn't believe it. He was partially separated from his own mind, yet it was running at high speed, multiple tracks, perfectly calm inside a fiery pit of rage.

The robot jumped, propelling at his face, two graspers reaching out, two circular saw blades cocking back.

He was already stepping to the side, spinning the bar in his hands, smacking one end against the stall door to force it open again, then swinging before the robot had even reached him.

The bar hit the robot square, throwing it through the open door to bounce off the wall and land in the toilet. The robot scrabbled, trying to find purchase for the points of its legs, the frictionless surface ignoring the robot's struggles to get out of the toilet bowl.

That only was noticed by one part of his mind, the curious blending of conscious and subconscious.

The rest of him was involved in exploding forward, pushing off hard enough that he knew his tendons and muscles would be sore. He threw himself through the doorway, bouncing off the wall, using it to spin in a quick circle. He flexed one knee, reaching down with one open hand to use his fingertips to bleed off the energy into the floor. His fingertips heated slightly but he ignored it.

There were robots ripping apart two security guards on his left, robots ripping apart two technicians that he knew but he refused to recognize consciously.

He could recongize them later, in his nightmares.

He knew this.

He'd been here before.

He stared from the back of his head as he broke into a run, throwing the chrome bar to bounce off of one of the robot's crystalline dome. He was suddenly sliding across the blood slicked floor, reaching out and grabbing the force rifle and spinning it in his hands as friction increased and he slowed.

His hands seemed to know what to do as he leveled the weapon and yanked the trigger back, his opposite forearm laid over the barrel, pressing down. The weird firing method controlled the recoil as his fire raked all four of the robots. They were knocked back, spun around, but the force packets shattered on their crude metallic chassis.

It didn't matter. He was on his feet, moving. He kicked one over, fired twice into the exposed belly, then kicked the suddenly destroyed robot into the path of another jumping at him. He used the butt of the weapon to slap the other away, spinning the weapon around and shooting into the bottom of it. The third and fourth advanced quickly but he kicked one and sidestepped the other, putting the end of the barrel of the force rifle into a small gap and triggering it. That one exploded as the kicked one flailed its feet to try to right itself.

Two shots into the underside and it went still.

He was moving again, his subconsious having taken all of his time living and walking within the enviro-dome and using it to build a map. He was shocked at how accurate it was, the hallways measured by his footsteps and the length of his stride, converted into standard distance measurements.

And another set of measurements. Two of them. They were alike, but different, and switching back and forth, converting from one to the other, was effortless, almost instinctive.

Two corners and into the break room where the snack machines were. A burst of force packets into the macroplas covering. Yank out the food packets. Strip the aluminum foil from them, quickly crinkle them into a hat, slap the hat on his head. Shove foods high in nutrients, sugars, carbs, calories, sugars, vitamins, sugars, and, oh yeah, sugars, into his mouth, swilling them down with drinks full of sugars, uncaring if he spilled food or drink from his mouth as he just ate like he was starving.

He dropped the last package, feeling strength flood his body.

The unnatural expression, the grin, grew wider.

He'd been here before with less.

His thoughts were clear, he could feel instinct burn into his brain, unused grey matter, long dormant in his species as cooperation left behind competition, suddenly coming to life and the injection impressing itself on the unused neural tissue.

Part of him was horrified by how clear his thoughts were as he was involved in mayhem. Flight chemicals were flooding his system, but only some of them. Chemicals that normally were only involved in drifting off in a haze of chemicals were seeping into his bloodstream, letting him ignore strained muscles, tendons, and ligaments.

Whatever it was he had injected had overwritten parts of his brain, seized control of his endocrine system, taken control of his autonomic functions, and made connections in his brain that hadn't existed before the injection.

He felt... good as he charged down the hallway in barely controlled action that was more controlled falling forward than how he was used to running.

He could literally feel his bones flex as he bounced off a corner to keep running down the passageway.

He screamed, inside his own mind, as a large robotic snake, metal segments connected by a central flexible tube as thick as his leg, came around the corner. It raised up, its red eyes glowing.

you belong to us it hissed in his mind, but the hiss was far away and didn't evoke panic.

Instead of curling up in a ball or screaming, he ran straight at the serpent, bouncing and weaving between the walls.

The snake reared back, eyes clicking as it blinked.

He could see his own mind consider all of the ways the snake could attack, discarding the impossibilities or the improbable.

He'd fought these snakes before.

With less.

The snake's head suddenly ducked and he threw himself against the wall as the tail arced up and over, a humming blade extending from the end of the tail, intending on impaling him on it. He held out the rifle, the tail snapping off all but the last two inches of the barrel and the handguard.

It missed, but before the snake could do anything else he reached out with one arm, grabbing just behind the blade, looping his arm around the tail. It pulled him forward as he pushed the trunctuated end of barrel against the thick housing and pulled the trigger.

The tail came off in his grasp as he slid to a stop in front of the snake, which reared up, lifting its head to see the results of its attack.

He dropped the rifle, grabbing the end of the tail and spinning it.

Then driving it up under the snake's chin, impaling its head.

It's armor is impenetrable, its tail-blade can cut any armor. One of these is false, he heard the thought in his head, but it wasn't one of his own thoughts.

He'd already let go of the sword-tail, reaching down and grabbing the damaged force-rifle, ducking underneath the twist of the dying snake, throwing himself arms first in an arc that ended in a roll that had him up on both feet and running down the corridor.

Up ahead were three corpses. All of the soldiers that were now missing the tops of their heads.

They still had on protective gear.

He stopped, crouching down, setting the rifle down. His hands moved quickly and he was shocked at how fast he was able to figure out how to pull off the hardshell armor with the kinetic padding off of the corpses and pull it on.

Even though he screamed inside his own brain as the sticky feeling of blood soaked through his jumpsuit. One set of armor was bigger than the others and he strapped them on, layering them over the other plates.

He was breathing fast and heavy, oxygenating his blood, sweeping fatigue toxins from his muscles. Instinct that wasn't his own, that was the instinct of whatever it was he had injected into his body and that had taken control of him.

The pistols were easy to open and he found himself startled at how quickly he was able to infer what the various microswitches did and the two small slides. His fingers adjusted the settings and then put the casings back on.

weapons are weapons and war never changes

He stood up, holding a pistol in each hand.

He closed his eyes, visualizing the xeno-archeological dig. Inventorying how many robots there were.

autonomous war machines, biological harvesters, flyweight class went through his mind.

He couldn't believe that the planning changed. No longer running for the shuttle. No longer trying to get to orbit, get to the ship in orbit, and fleeing the system.

No. He was going to stop them here.

Oftr'kaj was horrified by what went through his mind as he hefted the pistols and began walking deliberately forward.

Victory or death.

Either is fine. - video archive evidence, Incident 917167HG812, Xeno-Archeology Division, 1,872 Current Era

The ship sat powerless, a dead stick, just floating. The lights were off, the reactors offline, the high electronic functions cold and dark. It wasn't floating, floating implies motionless in motion, implies not being settled in a definite space, implies buoyancy.

It was just was.

It collided with a stellar system. A binary stellar mass with fifteen orbital bodies, including three hypermassive gas giants and six gas giants.

The marble-sized stellar system glanced off the hullplates of the It Tastes Sweet with a KA-RACk that echoed through the ship.

As if it was a signal, incandescent lights lit up. Power flowed from simple chemical batteries and through copper wire wrapped in plastic, wrapped in foil, wrapped in more plastic, wrapped in mesh, wrapped in thick rubber. Vacuum tubes came alive, the filaments burning with an orange hatred. More systems began powering up. Metal over silicon chips went live, the chips the size of a small paperback book. LEDs came on, burning hatefully. More metal over silicon chips went live, more LEDs. Each successively smaller.

A reactor ignited. A fission reaction of base elements creating heat which boiled water into steam which drove a turbine of wrapped wires and magnets, which powered more systems.

The ship slowly came alive.

Nakteti found herself face down on the padded floor of the command deck. The air in the bridge tasted lifeless, dead, like it was a struggle to breathe and the air held no solace for the tightness of suffocation in her chest.

She looked up in time to see Magnus hold out his hand.

"Up on your feet, Captain," the Terran said.

Nakteti nodded, holding out a catching hand, and the Terran pulled her to her feet. He held out a cherry-plum.

"Eat this, it'll help," Magnus said.

"It is not good to be fruitless," Surscee smiled, her lips stained red from the cherry-plums juices.

It was sweet, but sharp, and the taste seemed to bring life back to her body. The air seemed to thin and sweeten, her blood no longer felt coagulated in her veins, and her thoughts slowly cleared.

She moved over to the scanning station and checked.

The protocols were ready. The scanners reconfigured. Three taps of the mechanical keyboard activated the macro which brought the systems all online.

She waited a few moments.

The console reported that it was ready to display data.

She turned on the main screen first.

There was nothing but purple around her.

She reached over and touched the upraised scar on the back of her gripping hand.

"Deadspace," she said.