Escape from Fort Congo
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Miles observed the compelled yakuza he had escaped WarTech androids with. “Fate?” he asked again, pleased but puzzled. “Whatcha doing here?”
The woman raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. With a pout, she answered: “I did wonder the same thing when you ended up on my operating table, Miles. Dressed in an old Soviet space suit over your separatist officer jacket! A fancy cocktail, if you were speedrunning for the gallows!”
The pilot reflexively unfurled his sleeve, then examined his friend up and down. “Your operating table?” he said once his synapses awakened by the whine of the elevator doors she held open. “Since when you’re a military surgeon?”
“Since when have you been a marauding rebel?”
A tuft of blonde hair burst into Miles’ field of vision. Tatyana—done looting the protein dispenser—hopped between the two adults, trying to join in the conversation: “So you two know each other? That’s a riot!” she uttered. Mid-air, she tore into a military ration with one bite. “Wait. Your name isn’t Slim Jim? Well, saying it out loud sure makes it smell like it was an obvious fib…”
“There is nothing ‘riot’ about the whole situation, Miss Zelenski!” Fate snarled as she glared down the corridors, stretching out on either side. Several robots passed in the distance, and she pulled her companions in. “Tell me. Did you hack the security of the maintenance bay already? The one in Sector Doubleday?”
“Nah! Need closer access. Plus, we gotta get through the Blood Pool now.”
Another jolt caused the doors to close and the safety LEDs to come on. “The Pool?” the angered surgeon exclaimed. “We do not have time for such a detour!” She vigorously tapped on the lighted keys made crazy by a short circuit. The only one answering her call had faded markings and a blood infusion symbol.
Satisfied, Tatyana tucked her hacking cable back into her laptop. “Of course we do!”
“It’s for Pierre,” Miles interjected. The elevator began to move. “My copilot. The Cajun man who was with me.”
Fate leaned against the opposite wall before eyeing at her watch. Miles noticed several chrome spots around her wrists. Her obscure condition has worsened since the last time they met on Mimas. “Pierre? Look, Miles… if this Pierre was despatched to the Blood Pool it means he is a lost cause.”
The tactlessness that also still characterized Fate made Miles cringe. “But what is this, your Blood Pool?”
A tremor shook the cage. It was not due to a missile or an asteroid grazing the hull, but to the unlocking of the doors revealing a half-floor plunged into darkness. From the map on the CRT above the newly functional console, they had descended twelve decks, yet also traversed two of them horizontally.
“Behold, the Blood Pool…” Tatyana mystically whispered as she turned on her kaleidoscopic flashlight.
Miles swore as an iron smell invaded his nostrils, causing him to feel nauseous and gagging. The landing stank of blood; and for good reason. As soon as he passed through the security gate with a badge crafted on the spot by a strange Mr. Spock who had just entered her teens, he faced numerous rows of clothes racks—like a StarMart in orbit of Jupiter. From hangers suspended on long beams dangled purple plastic bags. All were connected to noisy pumps in the ceiling by sinuous transparent tubes.
“We are in the central organic bank of the T.M.S. Congo,” Fate whispered as she joined them. “Like a huge cardiovascular system. It stores the doomed wounded still able to produce natural platelets or plasma through their bone marrow. Organs and limbs can also be harvested.”
“Doomed wounded?” Miles choked.
She immediately put a must on his lips.
Meanwhile, Tatyana aimed her beam of light at the nearest reddish pouches. Through their transparent surface appeared curled up bodies. Each bag contained an individual impaled by suction syringes. “The ones who statistically wouldn’t make it through the OR. Recycling is far less hazardous than using synthetic blood or implants… I still prefer a good ol’ mechanical hand than a second-hand hand.” She stopped, pondering. “Second-hand hand?”
“Is this for real? Where’s Pierre?” Miles insisted, taking a step forward towards the front row. Making Fate gestures intended to calm him, he had raised his voice, breaking the solemnity of this zombie morgue. “What?”
“Will you hush!” she snapped through her teeth. “I already told you your friend was buggered! Do not make us end up in the pouches too!”
He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
A shadow cast over the chrome-haired surgeon as she faced him. Her red orbs widened at the coming of a hovering threat. She groaned silently—unlike Miles. The latter had turned around, and let out an expletive as loud as when he crashed his F-XIV on Black Comet.
The Blood Pool did hold many surprises. Above the rows of the bank, an android resembling a gigantic spider with long legs had advanced to meet them with the greatest discretion. Leaning over, its iron-plated backbone unwinding, it brought a slender, anteater-like head close to the pilot’s nose. Its endless, tubular tongue rose from its snake jaws, and came to clean the few cobwebs covering its twelve pairs of spinning optics.
“Fate…” Miles squeaked, raising his arms in the air.
“Don’t worry, buddy!” Tatyana intervened. She sat on the floor and leaned against an electrical transformer a few feet away from her companions. “That’s Mr. Salvador. He’s a friend.”
“A friend?”
The robot flinched. Half of its optics turned sharply towards Miles. The others took in the smile of the young nurse holding out a protein bar.
“When did you find the time to fool around with the Vampyr system?” Fate heaved. “And why are you giving it high-proteid rations?”
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“Don’t tell me that this—this thing eats?” Miles begged.
“AIs, you just have to talk to them calmly. And listen to them. They have a lot to say,” Tatyana explained as she stroked the monster, which gulped down its food. “Mr. Salvador’s a curious robot that needs nutrients. I didn’t quite understand. He told me about a modified orgatronic unit. Never heard of that—despite my extended knowledge on numerous unrelated subjects.”
“Orgatronic units?” Miles responded. Lowering his arms, he turned to his friend.
The latter eyed her watch. “Remember that Mars is years ahead of the Rings in terms of scientific advancement.”
The pilot looked back at the creature. He winced at his reflection on the optics, analyzing the slightest wrinkle on his face, tired from his recent adventures in the rings of Saturn. “Tatyana? Can Salvador help us?”
The young nurse tapped on her computer that she had just connected to the machine starting her second worm-treat. “Its program is fighting against its own directives. It won’t be long before it sounds the alarm against its will. But we have just enough time to find mustache-man. Mr. Salvador will draw him to the nearest drop-off. It’s at the end of the row.”
“Excellent. Can’t it bring him here?”
“And quickly…” growled Fate.
Tatyana replied, waving them off: “The drop point’s crucial to our escape. We’re going back to the original plan.”
“What do you mean?” Miles asked. Meanwhile, the Vampyre rose to his feet and took his distance over the vile rows of human bodies looted of their organic resources.
“That is still risky…” Fate noted before they started walking.
Tatyana insisted: “I cracked the sniffers. The corpse drop will be more discreet and faster than the cranky elevators!”
“Corpse drop, now…” Miles sighed as he felt his sense of smell would soon be put to the test again.
The number of bags stored must be close to a thousand. Miles could only guess the medical frigate’s titanic size. And so the firepower of the Technocratic Marine it accompanied. The incredible technology and new resources employed by the Martian war effort made a mockery of the pathetic rebellion.
“We’re here! And on time!” exclaimed Tatyana, leading from one of the beams like a tightrope walker. She seemed to be in her element, often waving at the flying maintenance droids while dodging cobwebs with dance steps.
The Vampyr appeared again, slipping between the low ceiling and an aisle of nefarious brown bags presumably intended for recyclable waste. Miles preferred to put aside his questions about the legality of the semi-orgatronic units and the blood drainage of his unfortunate comrades in battle. A notable exercise, especially when the robot picked up an end-of-row pouch, analyzed it like a farmer would judge an overripe apple, and tossed it into a bottomless gorge drawn on the ground while waking a cloud of flies as big as mice.
Tatyana jumped from her perch near the iron lips. Despite the joint efforts of drones with giant fly swats, the mutant insects returned less than three seconds later.
“They should arm them with an aerosol spray…” Fate remarked.
“They prefer swatters!” Tatyana exulted, waving at the Vampyr.
A row of bags clicked, and they slid into place like coats in an automatic laundry. Salvador waited patiently for a sack that hadn’t taken his eyes off and grabbed it to scan it. He then placed it at the feet of Miles and Tatyana, at the edge of the infernal precipice.
The young nurse unwrapped it by first pulling on a tab then on a thick zipper. A honey-like liquid—a mixture of blood and formaldehyde derivatives—spilled onto the floor. From the fluid emerged a comatose man masked by an artificial respirator. He opened his reddened eyes for a brief moment before being overcome by a violent spasm.
“Is that him?” Tatyana asked. She removed a syringe from his neck.
When Miles nodded, she closed the bag. “Hey! What are you doing?”
“The pouch will keep him alive, buddy. Wanted to carry him on your tiny shoulders up to the ship? Spoon-feed him all the way to a pirate astroport?”
“I didn’t think too much about it…”
“Classic, Slim Jim!” Fate mocked him.
And with a kick, she chucked him into the throat of death.
The pilot swore until his sick lungs burst. A sudden shock silenced him immediately. No sooner had the air returned to his alveoli than a heavy weight fell on his stomach, emptying him like a bellows.
“Pretty funny, right?” Tatyana exclaimed. Thrilled, she pulled him by the legs out of the drop point of Fate and Pierre’s body bag.
“Why the fuck…” Miles coughed once he stood.
“An alarm is on,” Fate replied, showing him her watch flashing red. “It is not a medical code. The security just went straight to the highest alert!”
“They are looking for us?”
“No. The Vampyr has remained silent. But the lunar battle is coming. We must not dally!”
“This way! Come one!” Tatyana guided as the doctor hoisted Pierre’s bag onto her friend’s shoulders.
The ambulance maintenance bay was deserted. According to Fate, most of the Techno-Marine stretcher bearers were checking their equipment on the deck above. The few military police guards aboard the T.M.S. Congo were probably securing the separatist officers’ quarters. However, within a few minutes, Miles’ absence should trigger a search of the upper levels; but fortunately far from the maintenance hangar.
Tatyana had chosen the closest ambulance to the control tower, from which she could hack into the computer. When she joined her companions in the ship, she found Miles in command. He appeared baffled.
“I doubt this ship has enough range to reach a neutral enclave,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter as long as it’s not a Techno base…” Tatyana explained.
“We were thinking of Hati,” Fate spoke. “It is owned by a tech-zaibatsu from Titan, and protected by a private militia if I recall.”
Miles grumbled as he activated the first cycle of the roaring Baltimore. “I’ve become allergic to corpos…”
“Then, what destination should I enter, buddy?”
“Pierre’s Moon. Its name’s Ballou.”
Fate looked over the nurse’s shoulder at the navigator station. “No world seems to be labeled Balou. What is its scientific designation?”
Tatyana selected the few globes highlighted. “The closest satellites are Saturn LVI, LXI… LXIII or Saturn LXIX!”
“Saturn LXIII,” replied Miles. “I remember!”
“Let’s go, then!”
“We won’t make it that far!” Fate warned.
“Things are only impossible until they’re not!” Tatyana quoted.
Taking advantage of the clouds of flares dispersed by the Techno-Marine, the small ambulance of the T.M.S. Congo followed a garbage trail left behind by a hyper-cruiser. They hide in a drifting intraweb node shielding them from radars like a Faraday cage. And waited.
Once far from the battle of Hyrrokkin, the escapees from the medical frigate immediately head for Saturn LXIII. Their oxygen level barely allowed them another day in space. Their survival appeared to be uncertain.