“They’re going to eat me.”
“Euclid, we’ve been over this. They’re not going to eat you.”
“No, no, the kid’s got a point. There is a solid chance that they are going to eat him.”
“You’re not helping, Cyrus.”
“Guys, I’m trying to hyperventilate here. Can I have some quiet please?”
“I thought you were supposed to have the moment of silence after a person died?”
“Cyrus!”
The disapproval in Ai’s voice was the closest thing I’d ever heard to a real emotion. It was kind of touching. I might even have said something about it if I hadn’t been on the verge of absolute panic.
The scene at the bottom of the ridge below me was straight out of a nightmare. I’d never heard of an AI nest before and I fervently wished I could go back to those days of innocence and ignorance. The place Cyrus had led me to was a sharp contrast to the white snow that was the vast majority of the scenery on Persephone.
A pit, roughly five hundred meters wide and a hundred deep at its lowest point was sunk into the ground. The surface of the pit was all gleaming, silvery metal. And there were monsters roaming over it.
The things I saw down in that pit were nightmares of flesh and steel. I thought they must have been ordinary animals once but they’d been transformed. They, like the ground beneath them, were covered in shiny perfectly smooth metal. It wasn’t like armor, it was like some horrible magic had turned most of their skin into metal that moved. The ones with faces or parts of faces that hadn’t turned were the hardest to look at. The pain written there was something I would never be able to forget.
And around all of them, like clouds of flies around a corpse were fine twinkling mists, that swirled and moved the way that schools of fish did. The pitiful creatures breathed the clouds in and exhaled them back out. They mingled and left the whole pit in a terrifying, beautiful, sparkling haze.
If that had been all, I could have called it a day, left, and gone home with my souvenir nightmares. But that wasn’t all. Of course.
At the center of the pit, or maybe I should have called it a crater, there was the remains of a ship. I had seen more than my fair share of crashed spaceships. They littered the entirety of Persephone-4 and had been my main source of power, entertainment, work and basically everything else. This ship should have been in particularly bad shape based on what Ai had told me and what I could see.
It had presumably caused the crater and given the size of the hole it had probably come in fairly fast. But not as fast as it potentially could have. I’d seen holes left by ships crashing that were miles across.
But that only highlighted the weirdest thing about this particular crashed ship.
It was, despite the impact crater, completely intact. It looked brand new, in fact.
I hadn’t ever gone to school. Almost everything I knew about technology came from working in the grease pits of a starship that would have fit better in a museum than sailing between the stars. But even I knew what nanobots were.
I knew for the same reason that I knew what a nuclear bomb was and how to recognize the symbol for radiation. These things were dangerous on a scale that made that tribe of yetis look like what they were. Primitives with sticks. And I didn’t even have a stick.
“Ai, if I go down there, how long will my suit be able to protect me?”
It took the AI a few moments to answer as she presumably ran through calculations of some kind.
“It is difficult to say with any certainty without more information. However, based on your suit’s model, it seems most like that it would be somewhere between one and three minutes.”
“Plenty of time. That suit makes you fast enough to clear that entire field in thirty seconds,” Cyrus said, easy confidence in his voice. I wanted to believe in what he said, wanted to believe in myself by extension. But looking down into that silver bowl of monsters didn’t make it easy.
“Euclid, there has to be another way. If this is too dangerous we’ll find it.”
Cyrus snorted.
“Yeah, good luck with that. By my scans this is the only significant source of power for a hundred miles. All the little ones besides this would take years to gather up. Have fun with that. I won’t be around for it.”
“He’s right,” I said, my mouth working without checking in with my brain. “I have to do this.”
“Cool. Remember kid. All you have to do is get in there. Once you’re inside, you should be fine. All you have to do is find a little badge that looks like this,” An image flashed up on my HUD. It was flat, matte black, and had what appeared to be wires sticking out of the back.
“Yeah. That’s all,” I said, trying not to count the dozens of monsters mindlessly wandering inside the bowl. “Alright. Let’s do this before I wise up.”
Despite saying that it still took me several seconds to move. And when I did, it was away from the ledge. But I had to get up enough speed to throw myself into the bowl before the suit could recognize the danger and stop me. I took a deep breath and crouched down into a position like a runner in a sprint. I checked my footing. I took another deep breath. I told myself to stop stalling. I told myself I wasn’t going to die.
And then there was a frozen crystalline moment of choice that seemed to stretch out, impossibly long. It shattered when I finally, truly made my choice.
The stone, swept clean of snow by the harsh wind gave me solid footing for that first step. The suit, sensed my intention to run and gave me strength and speed beyond that of any human. I sprang forward like a gazelle and on the last step, at the edge of the ridge I leapt.
Through the terror at what I was doing, there was a moment of pure, weightless joy. It seemed like I might escape gravity’s pull altogether and sail away into the sky. But reality was not so kind and it yanked me down out of the sky.
Text popped up in my HUD. Controlled fall state initiated. All I could see past the letters was the grey sky and the silver bowl below. The suit spread my arms and legs spread eagle and, based on the diagram that popped up it spread some of the suit’s material between my arms and legs. I tried to relax and breathe and let the suit do it’s work but I wasn’t very good at it. The best I could do was clench my jaw so I wouldn’t bite my tongue when I landed. The suit jerked me suddenly into a new position and there was a dizzy moment of disorientation and then impact.
It was surprisingly cushy. I’d been expecting a bone jarring crash. Instead I just sort of popped down and then bounced up and then landed one more time. I had no idea how the suit managed that but I was momentarily stunned by the lack of expected pain.
And then I remembered where I was and looked up. The nano-beasts all around me were staring at me, steel unmoving as statues, flesh still writhing. No sense letting them get to start the party a manic little voice in my head said. I ran.
A lot of people do a lot of running when they’re young. Some do it because they’re playing sports, some do it playing with friends, and others do it because they want the exercise. Not many do it because they were running for their lives. But if there was anything I was good at, it was running for my life.
Granted, I’d never run towards a threat to save my own life but everything was insane on Persephone.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The suit flung me into motion and I went with it. A creature like a lion let out a tinny roar and leapt at me. I jumped as well, trying to go over it. The suit stuck my feet out and I felt myself bounce off the nano-lion and rise higher.
I hit the ground and rolled trying to keep as much of my momentum as possible. That took me nearly into the snapping jaws of a shelled creature like a giant turtle. I screamed and bounced back a foot or so. The turtle’s jaws tore a hole in the metallic ground like it was made of pudding. I rolled to the left and flung myself around it before it could turn to get me.
I should have rolled right. The tentacles of a gigantic creature that was like a hedgehog with boneless, flailing limbs where the spikes should be shot towards me. Thanks to the suit I dodged most of them. But most isn’t all, and it only took one to catch me by the ankle.
“No no no!” I shouted, the last oh sound elongating into a scream as the tentacle began to spin me in a tight spiral that lifted me higher and higher into the air. Then, when it had imparted all the speed it could to me, it released me and for the second time in under a minute, I flew.
I hit the ground at an angle, bounced once, twice, and then skidded along the ground. The suit had my feet under me almost before I realized I had stopped sliding. I had an instant to look down at the chest of the suit and a bolt of pure horror shot through me. The sparkles in the air were swarming over me. Pock marks covered the suit as the tiny machines tore the suit from my body bite by microscopic bite.
A hideous roar from what looked like a gorilla with an extra set of arms reminded me that I couldn’t freeze to death if the nano-beasts beat me to death. It charged and in my panic, I did the same. It swung both of its right arms at me, a pair of haymakers that could have left a dent in a steel wall. The suit slammed a foot down just as the beast swung, executing a perfect pirouette that stopped my forward momentum just long enough for the arms to swing harmlessly by me. I finished the spin and after a few steps to course correct, there was nothing between me and the door to the ship.
This is going to work, I thought joyfully.
I sprinted the remaining yards between me and the door to the ship. The roars and screams behind me faded just enough to let me know I was going to make it. I slammed into the door at near full speed, trusting the suit to protect me and activated the door.
It slid open and a cloud of nanobots erupted out of the ship. The wave was so thick it pushed me back like I was being hit with a giant’s firehose. I screamed in panic as they swarmed me, blocking out my vision with their millions or billions of tiny bodies.
“Euclid! Your suit won’t hold out under this!” Ai screamed.
“Go kid! You’re right there!” Cyrus yelled. I could feel the nanobots tearing my suit apart like every part of my body was being rubbed with sandpaper. There was nothing for it. It was get in the ship or die there and I could hear the nano-beasts roaring behind me. I dove inside swiping at my face to clear my vision. It didn’t work well. It only gave me a glimpse of the room. Nothing. I stumbled forward turning this way and that as I waved my hands through the robotic mist.
On the fifth or sixth time, I caught a glimpse of a work table with tools and what I thought was a black badge on it. It was obscured a second later, not by the nanobots but by a warning blaring in my face that the suit’s outer layer had been reduced by fifty percent and the number was climbing rapidly. I almost punched myself in the face in my frustration at the screen.
I flung myself in the direction of the table and nearly missed it in the process. I only found it when my hip slammed against it and almost knocked it over. Through the loud warning beeps I heard things clattering to the floor but I was too busy feeling around on the table trying to find a badge. The sensory feedback in the suit wasn’t great. I knew when I had touched something through a sense of pressure on my fingers but it couldn’t give me texture. I picked up tool after tool, and flung them aside as soon as I could see what they were through the warning telling me that my suit’s outer layer was eighty percent gone.
Then I felt something wrap around my ankle again. The tentacled nano-beast yanked my feet out from under me. I grabbed at whatever I could to try and hold my place but nothing that my hands wrapped around could stop the nano-beast’s tremendous strength.
It dragged me out of the ship and flung me through the air for a second time. I slammed into the ground hard, the suit’s mechanisms not able to effectively soften the fall when they were so badly damaged. Ai and Cyrus were yelling for me to do something, to get up, to run but it was all pointless. I couldn’t escape the nanobots or the monsters. All I could do was curl in on myself and hope it wouldn’t be too painful.
But when I curled in I saw what I had clutched in my hand, what I had scrapped off the floor. A black badge.
A scream of panicked hope erupted from my throat and I slapped the badge to my chest where the wires could dig in. I didn’t know how to activate it but a message popped up on my screen, obscuring the flashing red ninety two percent that was taking up most of my vision. It read, Would you like to automatically activate the nano-immunizer?
“YES!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The badge beeped and slid its wires into my suit. And just like that, everything stopped.
Everything went silent. Completely, perfectly silent. The only thing filling my ears was my own, quick, deep, breaths. I didn’t want to move for fear that it would draw an attack. But I couldn’t stay there forever.
When I lifted my head, I thought I’d find myself surrounded by a cloud of nanobots and a circle of nano-beasts staring at me. Instead the beasts were milling about the bowl exactly as they had before I had jumped in. They paid me exactly zero interest. And the nanobots had returned to hovering in lazy clouds all around.
“I did it.” The words fell out of my mouth as my head flopped back to the ground.
“I am very glad that you are okay, Eu-” Ai started to say but she was interrupted by a triumphant yahoo from Cyrus.
“You did it kid! That was one in a million!”
I was about to respond when a gust of wind blew through the bowl, scattering the nanobot clouds. The cold literally ripped the words out of my mouth as it tore through my skin and muscles to get at my bones.
Suit outer layer compromised. Please seek shelter immediately.
“N-n-no s-shit.”
“Euclid, get back in the ship,” Ai said. “There should be something that could help protect you from the cold. If you attempt to return to the Ariel now, you’ll die of exposure before you make it halfway there.”
“The power is in there too, kid. We’re gonna get out of here thanks to you,” Cyrus chimed in.
I tried to answer but my teeth were chattering hard enough to chew up anything I wanted to say so I settled for an acknowledging grunt.
----------------------------------------
Dark was settling in when I finally pulled the air bike back into the Ariel’s hanger. I’d had to wrap myself in so many tarps and blankets that it was difficult to move and even with their added protection, I couldn’t fly very fast once I was back on the air bike. It made it harder to hold onto my wrappings and only increased the wind. Ai and Cyrus had tried to talk to me on the way back, trying to distract me from the wind and the cold but I didn’t respond much since it didn’t make it much easier.
I had rarely felt so exhausted in my life. I’d been shaking for a while before I finally made it back and my body was very nearly out of gas. I needed rest. I needed sleep. But that could wait just a little while longer because for the first time in months, I was going to be warm.
I fell off the bike more than jumped off but I made it to the ground. That was the important thing. I walked away from the air bike to the only other thing in the hangar. The thing under the tarp. The ship that Ai and I had built to carry us out of this place forever.
I grabbed the edge of the tarp and hauled with all the strength I had left. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it at all if not for the survival suit. The ship that it revealed was no beauty but she had it where it counted. And she was mine.
Ai and I had built my air bike from bits and pieces scavenged from the Ariel, but this ship had taken parts of other ships from all over the icy wasteland to build. That was another thing the survival suit had made possible. There was no way I’d have been able to lift the pieces into place without it.
The ship was ugly. It was blunt, lumpy and no two pieces really seemed to fit together. Mostly because they hadn’t been made to. The colors of the metal and ceramic were badly mismatched and scratched all to hell. Some parts of it had different coats of paint in a dozen different colors. But Ai and I weren’t terribly concerned with the cosmetics of it. The important thing was that it would fly. I just had to give it power.
Getting the power from the ship at the heart of the Ai nest had been nerve racking. The nanobots might not have been actively tearing my suit apart but I still had to wade through clouds of them to find the ship’s batteries. Then I’d had to sit there, shaking with the cold while my suit absorbed the ship’s battery power while the creepy little things crawled over every inch of my suit. I had phantom itches inside the suit the entire time and couldn’t scratch any of them.
But now I was back. I was safe. And it was time to turn on the heat.
I crawled up into the ship. It was tiny and cramped inside. Only two or three people would ever be able to be inside it. I ignored the cockpit at the front of the ship and moved to the back where the engine sat and plugged into the battery there.
“Alright, let's get this party started,” I murmured to myself as I flicked through menus on my HUD. Little icons of ancient batteries popped up on my screen, one with a little survival suit doing jumping jacks and the other with a tiny ship that, even in cartoon form, looked a lot nicer than my ship.
“Ai, do I need to do anything else to power up the ship?”
“No, Euclid. The process should be automatic. But it will take some time. You may want to get comfortable.”
I laughed to myself. I hadn’t been comfortable in months. Still, this was the quickest way to it.
“Get some rest, kid. You’ve earned it.”
Now that I could agree with. I couldn’t lay down and keep the suit’s cord connected. Instead I put my back against the wall and pulled up my legs to my chest. Then I laid my arms across my knees, my head on my arms, and closed my eyes. I couldn’t think of a moment where I’d been more relaxed.
I woke up with my vision full of red and alarms blaring in my ears.
“Euclid! You have to mo-“
That was all I heard before the explosion.