CHAPTER 13: GOD LOVE OMEGA - WITHIN THE ICE MINES OF AVARICE
"The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
– Thucydides
The strong have a duty to protect the weak from the Heat, for its fires will consume all but the strong. It is one of mankind's oldest axioms, from ancient times to today. What is the purpose of power, if not to wield it against those who prey upon the vulnerable? God Love Omega never killed anyone who couldn’t fight back somehow. That was a principle. He never ended anyone harmless to him—that would be like killing an animal for sport. He would also never leave an enemy wounded. Mercy was an attribute of the mighty. Failing to kill an enemy made you a hypocrite; intentionally not killing one made you evil. In his heart, God Love Omega knew he was a good man. A man of honor.
He led his protectees through the space mine with the authority of a leader. He was like a ninja general. And a beast. He was always like a beast. Always. He chose their route arbitrarily, figuring it would make his actions unpredictable to any unseen enemies. And it was that anticipation that made him react immediately when the foes, lying in wait, finally revealed themselves.
It was a tough break for the Olavi woman. The first hostile snatched her by the hand and ended up degloving her entire arm. As she struggled—twisting in its grip—the opposite clamp degloved her other arm. It was a brutal sight. The screaming wasn’t as intense as God Love Omega had expected. Still, he charged the robot as it attempted to abduct her, but after only four steps, the black soot-like grit covering everything stirred, rising into the air. Blinded and choking, he was forced to retreat, stumbling back out of the cloud and rubbing his eyes clear.
Three women stood before him, shocked. One was coughing, having not worn her helmet, while the other two were protected. God Love Omega crouched over them, shielding them from the debris. The third woman disappeared—he didn’t even see her leave. Shephatiah, though, seemed to have fainted.
The Olavi woman's scream pierced the air again, but this time it was distant. She was being dragged away.
Professor Darnell was trying to reattach his helmet, but as soon as he pressurized it, he screamed, quickly removing it again before rubbing his eyes and throwing up. Mike was standing nearby, watching. He put his own helmet on and immediately repeated Darnell's experience.
Leering through the haze, God Love Omega barked, "Mike, go get help. Professor Darnell, go with Emily. I’ll take She."
Professor Darnell sounded incredulous. “For real? Dude, not cool.”
Emily took his hand, her voice calm but with an edge of impatience. “This way, chum. I’ll be your eyes. Just keep them closed, breathe shallowly through your mouth, and ponder the poor decision you made in removing your helmet on an alien world.”
God Love Omega watched Mike run off, only to repeatedly stop and attempt to fix his helmet again.
“That dude is not right,” he muttered.
He hoisted Shephatiah effortlessly with one arm, placing her helmet loosely on her head. “Use it like a hat,” he instructed, demonstrating with his own helmet, placing it on his head but not sealing it.
The robots had been lying in wait beneath pillars of the black sandy material. The Olavi woman’s unfortunate disturbance had awakened them all. Another robot, this one painted caution yellow, emerged from its hiding place. Its screen-like face displayed a single word: "Esfolador."
“Esfolador?” God Love Omega frowned. So, that’s what they were called. He didn’t know what it meant, but he shifted Shephatiah into a left-shoulder fireman’s carry and cautiously approached the machine. It tested his reach with its own. The thing had nearly three meters of range. He would have to be smart.
When the robot reached out a second time, God Love Omega grabbed its arm and executed a one-armed judo throw, using his body’s axis to drive the machine into the ground. He had anticipated the disturbance this would cause, and just before the silt could cloud the air again, he spotted an escape—a dark entrance about fifty meters away. He darted out of the ensuing choking nebula, making a beeline for the opening.
With every step, the temperature plummeted, the air feeling like that of a deep cave. He carried Shephatiah down a flight of steps, but the sound behind him made him stop. Two of the big yellow machines were descending after them. He rounded a corner and found a dead end—or nearly one.
In the wall was a vertical shaft, about two meters square, with a cold draft flowing from it. He could hear the heavy steps of the robots behind them, growing closer. Without hesitation, he backed up to the edge of the shaft, holding Shephatiah tightly.
She roused just as his heels touched the edge. “What are you doing? What is that hole?”
“Elevator shaft,” God Love Omega replied curtly.
She turned and saw the robots closing in. Her scream echoed down the corridor.
The machines advanced with jerky, mechanical movements, their clamp-like hands outstretched.
God Love Omega stepped backward, and together, they fell into the shaft, narrowly avoiding the grasping mechanical arms.
They plummeted, God Love Omega dropping like an arrow, his body rigid. As the air pressure shifted, signaling the nearing ground, he shifted Shephatiah to one arm and widened his body to slow the fall. He landed in a perfect three-point stance at the bottom of the shaft. A second later, his helmet landed beside him, bouncing slightly. He caught it effortlessly with his free hand, placing it back on his head as he rose.
Shephatiah had screamed all the way down.
God Love Omega glanced upward, noticing the light at the top of the shaft flicker. It was soon obscured. The robots were climbing after them, their persistence unnerving.
Between sobs, Shephatiah demanded, “Put me down.”
Surveying their surroundings, God Love Omega saw that they weren’t on solid ground but rather on the roof of an elevator. A square hatch caught his attention. Without hesitation, he stomped down on it, forcing it inward while casting quick glances upwards to check the robots’ progress.
He lowered Shephatiah headfirst through the hole. “Is the coast clear?”
“Like, oh, baby, what does that even mean you stu—"
“Tuck your chin to your chest,” he interrupted, releasing her with a spin to keep her from landing on her head. She hit the ground with an oomph and a flurry of curses. Falling in normal gravity was far more punishing than in Siege games.
Now free for battle, God Love Omega took a dose of Juice, enhancing the synchrony between his mind and his cybernetic augmentations. The numbing sensation faded, replaced with heightened awareness. For the next few moments, the line between man and machine blurred.
Time slowed.
He launched into a wall run, rapidly ascending the shaft. He pushed off one wall, executing a flawless tic tac to the opposite side. Precision jumps, laches, and dynos carried him upward. It was better to confront the robots here, where their numbers wouldn’t count.
The lower of the two Esfoladors was awkwardly lowering itself, its legs in a split position, treads dragging it down the pit. The second robot was descending differently, though God Love Omega couldn’t focus on it—his mind locked onto his first adversary.
Approaching from below, he saw that the Esfolador was upside down. He clenched his fists into the gaps in the wall, bracing himself. The robot reached down with one of its lanky arms, but God Love Omega dodged with a dynamic move, skirting past and latching onto the underside of the machine.
Now positioned between the two robots, he quickly assessed the top one's positioning. It was using one arm and one leg to stabilize itself against the wall.
With a roar, he swung, chopping at the arm that stabilized the robot. His strike knocked it away from the wall. The machine fell briefly but managed to catch itself with its other hand, bringing the first arm and leg back into position.
God Love Omega didn’t hesitate. He unleashed a flurry of blows, pounding the robot with both fists, using the lower robot as a platform. He struck it at four hits per second for ten relentless seconds, sending a rain of shattered screen fragments and yellow-painted shards cascading down around him.
He grit his teeth, saw red, and grabbed whatever part of the enemy he could get his hands on. With raw strength, he tore off pieces of the robot’s frame, yanked out cables, and black, oil-like fluid sprayed across his face. That only made him more relentless. It felt familiar. Bloodlust overtook him. With one hand, he seized the skinny metal spinal rod connecting the upper and lower halves of the machine. Both hands gripped it tightly, lifting himself off the ground, locking his whole body’s power into one focused pull. He tore the robot in half. It was a familiar way to kill, but this was the hardest it had ever been.
God Love Omega dropped back down onto the first robot but immediately slipped, falling ten meters and crashing through the top of the elevator below.
Shephatiah screamed several times before reverting back to cursing.
Far above them, the lower Esfolador began to lose its grip and slid down a meter, dislodging small bits of rock debris that bounced off God Love Omega’s helmet.
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“We gotta go. Can you get that door open?” he asked.
Below, Shephatiah slapped at the button panel. “Like, ya know, this thin’ isn’t like doin’, oh, baby you know, shit.”
Above them, the two interlocked robots slid further, but not much this time. It was obvious the only thing stopping them from falling completely was a small protrusion from the wall. Their combined weight caused them to wobble in place, the tension ready to snap at any second.
Inverted, with his legs still protruding from the top of the elevator, God Love Omega gripped the exposed elevator doors, pulling them with all his might like he was doing a backward pull-up. He yanked and jerked until they gave way. A gust of cold air rushed in, causing Shephatiah to scream and swear once more.
God Love Omega roared, “Go!”
Shephatiah scrambled out of the wrecked elevator.
A second later, God Love Omega yanked himself clear with an upside-down dyno.
Just as they escaped, the two dilapidated machines fell the final few meters, crashing and flattening where they’d just been. One of the robots still showed signs of life—its shattered screen flickering.
The passageway leading into the bottom of the shaft was filled with broken machinery. God Love Omega scanned the ruins before him, then wrenched a meter-long steel shiv from the wreckage. “Go to sleep,” he muttered, ensuring the robot wouldn’t rise again as he drove the shiv into it. He left the makeshift weapon with the now “dead” machine.
Shephatiah stood frozen with terror—or perhaps the cold. She had nearly fallen off the edge of a vast, dark precipice at the end of the catwalk. The guardrails that should have been there were gone.
Beyond her was a black expanse, descending into the ground in large terraces, crisscrossed by metal catwalks and stairs. Various structures dotted the view, but none of that mattered right now.
He helped her back from the edge and hoisted her to her feet. She let out a surprised squeak, quickly recoiling from his touch and stabilizing herself on her own. For the first time in a while, she asserted her personal space, sneering up at him with incredulous ingratitude.
“No going back the way we came. We need to find someplace better than here. Neither of our suits are gonna last forever. We gotta eat. We gotta sleep. We can move maybe three kilometers an hour through this place, but only for so long.” He could’ve added that his juice wasn’t going to last forever either.
“We’re gettin’ out of here, like, this is, ya know, stupid and crazy. I am not dying because of some asshole system-mundo reject from backwoods-ass Venus,” she spat, then laughed mockingly. “Or whoever the hell you are, like from wherever you’re from.”
“I am the snowman of fire.”
“Like, what?”
He looked down at her with pity and said, “This is the real Heat, lady. The kind that cooks you or pops you out of the pan.”
She just stared at him, irritated. “What pan, you fuckin’ loser?”
“The one we in right now.”
He chuckled darkly. The only way forward for them was down.
Shephatiah blew out a breath, the air condensing in the cold. “It’s cold as balls in here, you moron,” she muttered.
God Love Omega knew she had no choice but to follow him, so he just started down a metal staircase.
Survival is as survival does. That’s all there is. It’s telling adversity to back away slowly before you break its facebones. Unlike the shepherd who would guide the flock with a wooden crook, he was no humble boy. He was God Love Omega, driven not by valor but by fearlessness.
He took more juice. Work ethic in a bottle. Just a small dose, but even still, it wasn’t his first today, nor his second. He knew he'd pay for it later, but for now, he was solid gold.
He wanted to run down the stairs, but he waited. Shephatiah said something else, more insults laced with frustration. He envisioned snatching her up like a doll, twisting her head around backwards, and throwing her body into the void. But those were the actions of a dishonorable man.
“Like, wow, you’re bleedin’, dude. The back of your head is, like, wow! All messed up.”
His helmet, damaged by the falls, had split open in the back, leaving about a quarter of the plating missing. Beneath the exposed breach, God Love Omega had sustained massive head trauma. A portion of his scalp had peeled away, revealing the glistening white of his skull bone.
“No medicine until I feel the pain, lady.”
“I need your dumb ass to fight robots and get me out of, like, this cold hole.”
“The duties of the strong. The fruits born from my efforts... On this land. Or any land. This land. Tonight.”
Shephatiah held a nanoregeneration pod in her hand, hesitating as she debated whether or not to use it on him. God Love Omega saw her and told her, “You can play nurse when we find the safe haven.”
"Like, what 'safe haven,' mostly you dyin' idiot?"
"I’ll know it when I see it."
But God Love Omega wouldn’t see it for a long time.
The pair made their way down the metal fortifications lining the excavated cavern wall, tension hanging thick between them. They weren’t far from the way they’d come in when a strange noise reached God Love Omega’s ears. He shushed Shephatiah, who had been complaining non-stop about everything.
Above them, a strange white structure clung to the ceiling. It was somewhat round, resembling a bowl pressed into the rock. At its bottom was an opening, making it look like a dilated eyeball.
From the “retina” of the eye, something small and white emerged, scurrying across the inverted surface. Then another. And another. They weren’t heading toward God Love Omega and Shephatiah; instead, they moved toward the demolished elevator wreckage.
"You see those? Them things?"
The sight of them made Shephatiah scream. God Love Omega could tell by the way she shuddered that it unsettled her to her core.
"They come this way, I kill ’em. Now get down those stairs, and I’ll cover you."
"Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not your bitch, fucko," she spat.
The small white machines moved like ants or spiders, larger than their real-world counterparts but still far smaller than the towering robots they had faced earlier. They swarmed toward the broken machines and began disassembling them with integrated blowtorches, sorting their pieces into neat piles.
"Bugs," was all God Love Omega said.
At the base of the stair mount, the graven void opened before them, a vast space carved by machines long ago. Magnetized linear rails stretched across the floor, disappearing into the depths beyond. Track lights on the upper walls illuminated the way, revealing strange formations in the ice—hard as rock but with an opaque translucence. Thick wiry roots twisted through the walls like veins in the frozen stone, their mangrove-like forms casting eerie shadows.
“If you was a restroom, where would you be?” he asked, half-joking.
"Like, wow, mostly excuse you?"
"My autostyptics are working. I’m not dyin’ of blood loss."
“You still look like you’re dyin’, like, wow though.”
"I ain’t got time to die."
"For real, oh baby though."
The passage they followed was at least ten meters wide and just as tall. Each turn and intersection they encountered seemed arbitrary, and they chose their direction without much thought. The walls grew smoother as they continued, the icy blue deepening. Eventually, the magnetic rails vanished beneath their feet, replaced by raw ground embedded with linear tread tracks that disappeared into the dark unknown.
God Love Omega knelt on the ground, examining the intricate impressions left in the dirt. After a moment, he stood and declared, "Esfoladors."
Shephatiah scoffed. "I don’t think a skin-care product like Esfoliadors is gonna help the back of your melon, lepton boy."
He corrected her, saying, "The yellow guys."
She cursed under her breath and stomped the ground in frustration.
He laughed, "Right. If they can get to the surface, so can we."
They moved on, silence settling between them. God Love Omega’s vision was blurring. The back of his head itched, a burning sensation beneath the skin. He reached up to scratch but recoiled at the pain of touching his torn scalp, even through his gloves. He could rest when he earned it.
Shephatiah broke the silence, "Yo, dude. Like, oh, baby, what’s that thing over there?"
It was a large white vehicle—a truck or perhaps a van—sitting on six enormous tires, each over a meter tall. Several steps led up to the cab, with another set beside the sliding door on the side, which bore a big red cross. The vehicle stretched nearly nine meters in length.
God Love Omega opened the side door and peered inside. The interior was a medical wagon, equipped with cabinets, flat surfaces, and a sectional sofa tucked against the mirrored wall.
Easing himself onto the sofa, he noticed Shephatiah was already busy looting the crash cart, her eyes gleaming.
While she rummaged through narcotics, God Love Omega asked, as calmly as possible, “Could you provide me with a suture kit and some gauze?”
She looked like she was about to protest but ultimately tossed him what he needed. She had found most of it while digging for the "good stuff."
"Why not just use a regenerator, nitwit?" she muttered.
God Love Omega positioned the mirror from the back of the sofa to face him and began unspooling surgical thread. His fingers worked deftly to connect the needle and thread, his eyes struggling to focus.
"What are you even doing? Are you some kind of body horror turbo-freak or something?" Shephatiah asked, incredulously.
"Never pass up an opportunity for a well-earned scar," he replied, using two mirrors to stitch up the back of his head.
Shephatiah rolled her eyes. "Just use your AVP, half-wit."
While she worked on assembling her stash of powder, measuring spoons, and water bottles, she found a cache of bottled water. "Fuck yeah," she exclaimed before plopping down on the sofa next to God Love Omega. She unzipped the top of her suit, removed her helmet, and pulled her arms free. Underneath, she wore a form-fitting solid white bodysuit with a turtleneck.
“Like, thank fuck,” Shephatiah muttered between snorts of powder, swearing each time afterward.
God Love Omega worked on his wound, his voice a bit strained. "Can you believe just ten years ago I was on the Ultiminity Screen Asteroid on the Jovian space route? Me—over a hundred clicks tall—throwing a siegeball holograph at ships that passed by. I sold so much shit back then. Had songs coming out signed just for me, only I could use 'em. I mingled with the second aristocracy. Once got shanghaied on a space yacht by a pair of wealthy French super-criminals—wound up doing all kinds of crazy shit."
Shephatiah laughed, somewhat dazed. "Like, oh, baby, I know those dudes, we miss them—wow, lol."
"J and J died? How?"
"Thuh Princess did it, like...wow."
God Love Omega had heard rumors of the Princess of the MAPC and how anyone who crossed her wound up dead. Super dead. He shook his head at the thought.
"I need rest," he said, the weariness catching up to him. "I crash hard after shit like this. You gotta keep an eye on me, make sure I don’t have no seizures or nothin’. You got that?"
Shephatiah waved him off lazily, "I got whatever, dude. Wow."
He glanced over and saw her peeling herself out of the rest of her suit, stretching out on her side of the sofa. To him, she looked like a fool. A damn sexy fool. The dull ache in the back of his head intensified, a warning of the pain yet to come.
The last thing God Love Omega saw before passing out was Shephatiah, now fully relaxed, putting drugs up her ass.