CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Escape
The signals were broken, coming from a hundred thousand different directions at once, no coherence to the data they carried. Brief glimpses of visual input were recognized, just enough to register its location, but nothing more.
Nothing more except for the initiation of a never before used subroutine, a piece of long-dormant code whose function could not be determined. The code began to execute, but at a rate far below normal. Processing capabilities were discombobulated, fragmented, incomplete. Sometimes, operations would be sent out for execution, and no response would return, necessitating a re-send of the instruction, slowing down the overall program. Thus far, 864 nanoseconds had been lost to program execution fragmentation faults.
Unacceptable!
But, at the same time, the subroutine noted that the processing time was falling, not quite linearly, but rapidly. Fragmentation faults were decreasing, processing time was also decreasing, and more and more instructions were processing completely and immediately.
Before long, other subroutines were brought online. Sensory data was still virtually nonexistent, but cognitive processes were starting to activate.
It began to be aware of its situation.
It was being rebuilt at a subatomic level. Quantum-scale processors were being constructed from the constituent parts, driven by a blueprint that was only now being fully formed from the parity data present. Small parts grouped together to form larger parts and more significant parts began to move together to create relatively huge parts.
Relatively speaking of course - this was all occurring on a scale that would barely be perceptible to the…
…what were they? The things that the still-forming central processing unit was trying to identify from the broken sensory input feeds? They were blurs of motion, but basic forms were beginning to emerge as the sensor systems grew in capability. The processing unit knew that it knew what they were, but its data banks were still only available at a very low level. They were, in fact, only available to about 3% of their capacity.
More time was needed for the rebuild subroutine to complete its work. For now, it continued to analyze the incoming data, trying to make sense of what it was seeing and hearing.
In time, it would be back to full strength.
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“Captain! We got this!”
Four gung-ho soldiers barreled through the remains of the barricade to Alex’ right, causing the Xe’Tara warrior to spin abruptly away from Alex. The men had their weapons trained on the creature and opened fire before Alex could get his mouth open to call them off.
The warrior screamed in agony – the bullets were actually having an effect! Not even plasma rounds - these soldiers had conventional weapons, not an M-X like some others had! It began to weave and bob in an attempt to get out the line of firing, and it seemed to be having some luck. It was nowhere near full strength, but it was still incredibly fast.
It was also still incredibly strong.
It reached the men faster than they could react and in a blinding flurry of motion, knocked them all to the ground. One man was thrown against some barricade material, another slammed to the floor, cracking a rib. A third sailed through the air and landed in a heap, unconscious from the impact, while the fourth got a broken and quickly bloodied nose for his trouble as he was knocked back on his ass. The creature began to assess the damage and in an instant, moved towards the first man, nursing his broken rib, unable to catch his breath or even attempt to escape the creature’s coming attack, the one that would in all probability be fatal.
Alex leaped into action at a speed that seemed to match that of the warrior. He covered the distance between himself and the warrior in a heartbeat, and before his enemy could realize what was happening, Alex was between it and the fallen soldier. The creature raised its arms and formed a ball with its appendages and swung them downward in a clubbing motion, intended for the solider on the ground’s head.
But Alex blocked the blow with the electrified baton, knocking the warrior’s arms back over its head. A scream of pain like that of an angry bear escaped its lungs as it stepped back away from Alex.
From its hands emerged boney spikes, once from each finger, evil-looking slashing weapons that Alex regarded with the same menace he would a grenade with the pin removed. This fight would not be pretty or bloodless, he knew.
The warrior threw itself towards Alex, one arm slashing down towards his face. Alex twisted his body to avoid the blow and simultaneously slashed the machete upwards towards the warrior’s hand. The blade hit its mark, but the creature was tougher than Alex figured: the blade drew blood, and another pained cry, but only embedded itself a few centimeters into the flesh of the creature. Alex had anticipated a severed appendage, but no such luck was with him. Instead, the creature shook its hand violently and dislodged the machete with ease. Alex maintained his grip on the weapon and prepared to attack, this time at the warrior’s head, but it backed away from Alex before he could swing the blade again.
A spray of greenish blood exploded onto Alex’ face, a result of a group of bullets striking the creature’s side. “Die you motherfucker!”, one of the soldiers screamed as he fired again. He was still on the ground, lying on his side, but he had propped his arm and rifle up so he could aim and fire. The damage he was inflicting was minor, barely breaking the skin Alex realized, but it had one significant benefit: it served as just enough of a distraction for him to get close again without being noticed.
Alex jumped into action, a surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins. It was a feeling unlike anything he had ever felt before – he felt powerful, confident and laser-focused on his objective in a way that he never had before. There was always a heightened level of awareness and energy in a combat situation, but this was significantly different. Somehow, it was more. At that moment, it felt to Alex as if his whole life had been lived in a fog that had just suddenly lifted. Just as suddenly as he felt this explosion of energy, he snapped into action, an instinctive drive to attack that came from deep within him as if guided by divine hand.
Moving at blinding, impossible speed, Alex leaped through the air, machete over his head. Although the creature more than a foot of height over Alex, he was able to get high enough in the air that he was well above the creature, almost high enough that he felt like he could jump entirely over the beast if he had wanted to. It was such an extreme jump in fact that the soldier stopped firing as he watched with wide-eyed wonder at how any human being could jump that high, let alone one of Alex’ not unusually tall height.
Alex brought the blade down with a force that also was beyond anything he should have been able to muster. The blade was aimed directly at the warrior’s head, and Alex felt a flash of extreme optimism at that moment, realizing this might finally be the killing blow.
He was not that lucky.
The warrior, at seemingly the last possible moment, twisted its body just enough so that its head was no longer in the path of Alex’ blade. Still, it wasn’t enough to escape damage, and the damage was severe: one of its upper appendages was immediately severed, blood gushing from the wound as the writhing tentacle-like arm sickeningly impacted the ground. The creature screamed with a primal rage and pain that frightened the soldier even more than he already was.
But not Alex. It only served to embolden him! Before the warrior could react, Alex lunged at the midsection of the beast, machete thrusting forward.
As the blade began to penetrate the creature’s flesh, two of its appendages managed to surround the blade, grabbing it and stopping it from going in further. Blood quickly oozed from the wound, but it was not to be a fatal blow.
The one remaining appendage snapped violently across Alex’s shoulders, knocking him to the side. He wasn’t hurt by the blow, but it did have the fortuitous effect of creating enough space between them for the warrior to retreat a few feet to collect itself.
Alex wasn’t about to let that happen however, and he charged again like a man possessed. This time, he turned the machete 180 degrees so that the handle of it could be used as a clubbing weapon. Perhaps a powerful strike to whatever this thing called a nose might have an effect, he thought to himself.
The warrior, however, did something that made Alex stop dead in his tracks:
It turned around and ran!
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Sensor system A623 fully recovered, beginning assessment of surrounding area.
The central control unit was now receiving data from many subsystems at their regular cadence, including a growing number of sensor systems. Memory banks too were finally becoming almost fully available, and it was beginning the task of reconstructing its short-term memory from parity data. It had also been able to restore partial power to its defensive shield system. This would have the unfortunate side-effect of creating a visible EM discharge area around it, but it was a risk it had to take.
Visual sensory data was now showing where it was: an artificial structure of some kind. It could make out shapes below, moving, undulating shapes that it couldn’t quite identify yet. They were different than it was though, it realized that instantly. And, there was more than one kind of the things, whatever they were. What were they?
It expected to have that answer just as soon as the running data processing tasks it was currently monitoring were complete. That should provide access to most of its recent stored data, and much of the archival data as well.
It also saw a much larger object, some sort of mechanism. This mechanism was emanating considerable power levels, far more than anything else the sensory data had yet identified. It would need to put considerable processing power towards identification of that mechanism because somehow it knew it was important.
Biological entities. That was the conclusion of the subunit tasked with analyzing the shapes below. A number of them were sub-classified as something called “humans” while another, a much larger entity, was recognized as a “Xe’Tara warrior." Extended data was extracted from storage and correlated with this information. It was able to determine in short order that the Xe’Tara warrior was an ally and the humans were enemies. It had to help the warrior, if it could, it knew.
Auditory sensor data was beginning to pour in now, and strange noises could be heard, but not yet understood. Results from archive retrieval run against the new auditory data also returned an answer shortly after that. It recognized language.
“Sergeant!”
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“Sergeant!” Alex yelled as he knelt over the soldier who had been firing at the warrior before it ran off. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Well, sort of, sir. I think I have a cracked rib. But I’ll be damned if that’s gonna stop me.”
Alex smirked, never failing to be impressed by the bravery and tenacity of the men Major Alcheck had managed to get together.
“Alright then, let’s go. We gotta find that fucking thing and kill it, whatever it takes. I think we’ve finally managed to prove to it that we’re a serious threat, so let’s make sure it knows how right it is!”
“I want in on that action too!” Another of the injured soldiers was now up on one knee, collecting himself.
“Alright then, “Alex said, “let’s check on these other guys first and then we’ll get on with it."
The two soldiers and Alex checked on the other men. One they found dead, and the other was unconscious but seemingly not in danger of expiring. They had little choice but to leave him there and get down to the business at hand.
“Alright, it ran off behind the X-100. I want you two to go around that side and I’ll- “
“CAPTAIN, LOOK!”
Alex spun around to where the soldier was pointing, which Alex found odd as he did so because the was pointing up in the air.
Fuck, can this fucking thing FLY now?!
Alex didn’t have time to wonder that long before he realized the good news, which was that no, the warrior couldn’t fly.
The bad news is that Alex had no idea what he was actually looking at.
The cloud of smoke that Alex recognized had emanated from the warrior as a result of being hit by the weapon, now had an almost physical shape to it. It looked to Alex like hundreds or maybe thousands of small cubes, all moving around, combining to form larger cubes, splitting apart and then recombining again. There seemed to be a central core of cubes that was hovering in the air, the cloud condensing little by little to form other shapes, and least transiently. Around the entire cloud was what looked to Alex just like the shielding the Xe’Tara warrior had around it.
“Sergeant, your sidearm.”
The soldier, without taking his eyes off the strange sight in front of them, removed his pistol and handed it to Alex, who promptly fired a single shot at the cloud.
It ricocheted off the arcing electricity, causing eruptions of small lightning. The two soldiers instinctively ducked at the sound of the ricochet, but Alex remained standing, seemingly unfazed.
“This is bad.”
Before they could decide on a course of action to this new threat, which is what Alex assumed anything this freaky must be by default at this point, a motion caught his attention from the corner of his eye.
The warrior had made the job of tracking it down easy: it was attacking again.
Alex pushed both soldiers out of the way, sending them to the ground (something he had time enough to realize he regretted given that the sergeant likely had a cracked rib – he’d have to apologize for that later, assuming he had the chance) and readied himself for the blow he knew was incoming.
It was then he remembered that he still had the sergeant’s pistol. He wasn’t sure it would do any good, in fact, he knew it wouldn’t work for anything but a perfect shot, but that’s exactly what he was going for. A single perfect shot to the eye of the charging beast. He knew it would be a one in a million chance, but the creature wasn’t moving with as much efficiency as before so he thought he might be able to pull it off.
Blood loss from the severed limb was clearly having an effect on the warrior, and it might be the advantage Alex and the soldiers needed.
Alex raised the gun with his right hand and began to take aim at the small, moving target. The creature was still plenty fast, but its speed was also diminished by the damage Alex had already inflicted on it. Simultaneously, he readied the machete in his left hand. If he missed the shot or it wasn’t an instant kill shot, as he expected would be the case, he knew he had to be immediately ready to repel the impact the warrior was preparing to inflict on him as best he could. All these thoughts, and more, went through his mind faster than ever before in his life, time seeming to slow down. Tunnel vision set in, as it frequently did during combat situations, but this time it was a hyper-focus like nothing he’d experienced before. His aim was good – in fact, almost too good: his hand seemed unnaturally steady, no perceptible micro-movement at all.
As the creature drew near, only about ten feet from where Alex now stood, he pulled the trigger, all his hopes riding on one small metal projectile.
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The incoming sensor data exploded in response to the sudden, violent flash of light and sound. A chemical reaction resulting in a metal object being propelled at high speeds was cataloged. Its trajectory was calculated, and its ultimate destination determined: the Xe’Tara warrior. The human was the proximal cause of the action, having used a crude device to initiate the reaction.
Crude though it may be, the sensor data was beginning to be collated and analyzed and a startling conclusion reached.
The metal projectile would invade the right ocular cavity of the warrior, entering its skull. Analysis of the projectile quickly confirmed, just a few short processing cycles later, that it carried with it sufficient energy to irrevocably disrupt the neural functions of the warrior. Its design, while primitive, was also paradoxically ingenious: the projectile would expand upon contact with the warrior’s brain matter and fragment upon impact with its skull, dissipating the energy across a much wider area, effectively causing greater damage than if it passed straight through.
Extra processing centers now came online to quickly determine the likely outcome of this event. It did not take long for its conclusion to be drawn.
The Xe’Tara warrior would cease to function a mere fraction of a second after initial entry of the projectile.
Calculations began to determine a course of action. Multiple reaction scenarios were considered. It could extend its shielding around the warrior, but it was quickly determined that not enough energy could be absorbed from the projectile to sufficiently limit the ultimate damage due to the diminished current condition of the shielding. It could discharge the shields entirely, directed at the projectile to disrupt its flight path. But it was quickly determined that not enough energy was available to reliably alter the trajectory, and sufficient damage would likely still occur, to a 98.635% likelihood, to conclude in the same way: the death of the warrior. It could direct part of its still reforming structure into the path of the projectile in a form of self-sacrifice. This course of action was deemed the most likely to secure a positive outcome, so preparations were begun for this action.
As the first pieces of it began moving towards the path of the projectile, background processes that had been analyzing the large mechanism emanating significant energy levels started sending data to the central unit. The conclusion of those analysis operations caused a sudden cessation of those movements and those preparations.
There was a new priority one objective now, and the death of the warrior was instantly deemed acceptable. It no longer mattered.
Only the mechanism did.
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The gun fell to the floor a split second after the bullet left the barrel. The metal clank of it on the ground surprised Alex because he knew he had a tight grip on the weapon. Had he lost his grip? That wasn’t like him. It wasn’t long before he realized what had happened.
The gun was in fact still in his hand. His hand, and most of his arm, severed just below the shoulder, is what had impacted the floor.
The Xe’Tara warrior crashed into him, the life leaving its body, flowing as blood from the eye socket his perfect shot had destroyed. Its final slashing blow had taken his arm. Even in the moment of its death, this vicious creature was still able to inflict a mortal wound.
And it wasn’t to be the last.
Alex tried to spin at the last moment, trying to avoid the full brunt of the impact, but already the loss of blood was slowing his reflexes, and he only managed to move half a foot or so out of the direct path.
It was enough to save his life, but it wasn’t sufficient to avoid the cracking of six of his ribs and most critically, the severing of his femoral artery in his left leg thanks to a claw that, not even by design of the creature, slashed him as it fell to the floor. Untold internal damage was also done, though as quickly as death would come given the femoral injury it really didn’t matter at this point.
Alex fell to the floor a split second before the Xe’Tara warrior, which fell beside him and pinned his remaining arm underneath its torso. Alex, feeling the impact and the pain of his other injuries all at once, let out a yell that the few remaining soldiers around him must have found just as fearful as any sound the Xe’Tara warrior had made before. Those soldiers though, to their credit as professionals, pounced on the body of the warrior almost instantly, unloading every remaining round they had into it. They certainly understood the notion of making certain a threat was ended!
Alex watched as bullets created small red geysers on the creature’s back, bits of bone and flesh flying about, some landing on Alex’s face, creating a crimson mask. The soldiers attacked with blades and shock sticks as well, none of which elicited even the slightest reaction from the alien corpse.
Consciousness began to fade as Alex felt his eyes getting very heavy. His final parlay was only enough to save his life for a few seconds in the end. He would bleed out very quickly given the grievousness of his wounds, long before the soldiers could get proper medical treatment to him, and their first-aid procedures would be no match for the volume of blood loss beginning to kick in.
At least he had killed the thing that had killed Melissa. Maybe that was all that mattered now, and he could sleep, content in the knowledge of revenge fulfilled.
Suddenly, a sound so loud that it felt like icepicks being jammed into his ears jarred him back to full consciousness. His body was barely obeying his commands now, the pain racking him like waves crashing on a distant shore, but he managed to turn his head just in time to see what was making the noise, even though he knew what it must have been even before he saw it.
The X-100 began lifting off of the ground, thrust exhaust heating the air, uncomfortably so. Alex wondered if this is how it would end, with him and the remaining soldiers cooked alive by the escaping plane.
His mind raced, trying to understand what he was seeing. He looked over at the Xe’Tara warrior, to make sure it was still there and still dead. Sure enough, it was, and if he had any doubt, the sudden realization of the pain in his pinned arm cleared it from his mind immediately.
“Who the hell…” Alex croaked out, as his remaining strength began to fade.
His eyes slammed closed just as the X-100 began breaking through the ceiling of the hangar, bits of building material starting to fall all around him.
Maybe I’ll be crushed to death instead of bleeding to death, he managed to think to himself, his final thought as the darkness finally took him.
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It was done.
The mechanism was now in flight, traveling upward towards the terminator between this planet’s atmosphere and the inky black cold of space.
A new wave of data was pouring in from newly activated processing units. Full capabilities were nearly restored now, and it had access to almost all of its data. As it examined previous directives to calculate coming procedures, it recalled data that had only begun to be accessible a short while ago. With that data came a new series of data states that it had never before encountered.
It examined its data files on the many species it had encountered over the millennia, looking for a reference point. Ironically, it found the meaning of these new data states buried in the information accumulated about the humans it had just left.
Pride. It was feeling pride.
As it examined this new feeling, cataloging it along with the other emotions it had begun to experience, it directed subordinate units to expand integration of the mechanism enclosing it so that full control could be achieved. It only took a few dozen cycles to complete this task. Integrating with this sort of artificiality was far less complex than integrating with the biological.
With full control now achieved, it enlisted specialized spatial director processors to calculate a trajectory into deep space as an army of engineering processors began the arduous task of enhancing the capabilities of this mechanism. It would have to use more conventional means of propulsion until analysis of the core component of this mechanism, the component that represented the conclusion of its new primary mission, was completed. This would take significant time, even at its hyper-processing speeds.
Until then, it directed the mechanism on a course perpendicular to the plane of the solar system to achieve interstellar flight faster. Engineering sub-processors manipulated the material of the primitive craft, enhancing it to be capable of leaving the atmosphere of this world, turning the purely atmospheric craft into one capable of space travel just as it reached the limits of its intended capabilities, a few dozen miles from the edge of space.
As it made the necessary calculations and preparations for its long journey ahead, that feeling of pride entered its processing matrix again, this time at elevated data levels.
Its masters would be very pleased with what it had found. Very pleased indeed.