Journey Into
the
Forbidden West
A Horizon: Forbidden West Fan Fiction
by
E. E. Nalley
Part 4
September 28th, 3040
“Who are those guys?” demanded Buck. Travis stopped the recording and backed it up until the figures were before him once more.
“They're not dressed like any tribe I've ever seen,” Olara declared, but Nakoa was quick to correct her.
“Yes you have,” she declared, pointing at the obvious enforcer of the group. “Look at him, he's dressed like an AmSci!”
“But the others aren't,” Tracy countered. “I've never seen any of these people before, nor these weird, shimmering clothing either. And her,” she pointed, “she has to be a clone of Elisabet Sobeck! But, how? We don't have the technology to do that. Not with what we brought with us.”
“More to the point we weren't awake twenty years ago,” Travis thought out loud. “When GAIA created Aloy and that girl isn't as old as Aloy.” He turned to his wife and asked, “Does Aloy have a sister to your knowledge? Was any other girl ever found outside of Eleuthia Nine?”
Nakoa shook her head. “Rost raised Aloy alone, if she had had a sister, there would be no keeping it a secret. Aloy was the only child I've ever heard of being found in All Mother Mountain.”
“There are, I would assume, based on the number,” Tracy conjectured, “at least eight other Cradle facilities. But would all of them have whatever store of genetic material GAIA used to create Aloy in the first place?”
As was his habit, Buck quickly returned to the practical. “Are they still in there?” Travis scrubbed through the video, then found the dapper bald man, the woman and one of the machines leaving with the young girl. It was nearly twenty minutes later until the enforcer left, by himself, looking decidedly upset.
“That's the end of the log,” Travis declared with concern. “The next entry is us arriving. Aloy is still in there.” Nakoa stood, intent to dart in to her fellow Nora's rescue, but Travis caught her wrist and stopped her. “We have no idea who those people are, their intent, or what they might have left behind in there,” he declared in a voice that broached no argument. “You are our best tracker and you will stay behind me.”
Nakoa's face flushed for a moment, then she drew herself up and nodded. “As you say, War Chief.”
“And I'll be going first,” Buck declared as he got his AR in his hands and stepped around Travis and his wife to the vault door. Travis made a point to catch his wife's eyes as he allowed Buck to go first, and the young woman realized what he had done and nodded again, a ghost of a smile on her face.
One by one, the group scrambled over the half open hatch and into the security screening area for the bunker. There was a floor to ceiling office with an 'information' type window into it made with Lexan of sufficient thickness to imply at least bullet resistance. The corridor went around the office and then through a door out onto a metal scaffolding that overlooked a massive opening, the size of a football field, foul line to foul line, end zone to end zone. On the far side of the opening, was another GeneLock Vault hatch that was standing open. Holograms played over various, rotten and rusting items, displaying importance of things more than a thousand years old. Offices and catwalks lined the walls between where the party was and the vault on the other side of the massive room, and sunlight cascaded in through a massive fissure in the ceiling.
The room was completely flooded, all the way up to just below the catwalk they stood on.
Through the murky depths, the holograms lit the water showing the floor was nearly ten full stories below them. Worse, evidently some seismic event was responsible for the new sky light and pool feature in the bunker, as two of the massive concrete pylons had fallen, taking out the catwalks that would have connected this side of the bunker to the offices lining the walls.
“Well, shit,” Buck muttered to himself.
Olara began to look about the room and pointed, showing ropes dangling from hard points in the various concrete. “Aloy got over there the hard way,” she declared, pointing out a zigzagging route that went back and forth across the room twice. “I don't know how the strangers got across, only one of them looked like he had the strength for Aloy's route.”
“Anybody want to hazard a guess how cold that water is?” Travis asked, looking down into the flooded chamber. Tracy tapped her Focus as directed one of her medical programs at the water.
“It's fifty two degrees,” she declared. “On top. If you fall in, you've got about four minutes until the cold starts making it increasingly difficult to swim.” She paused dramatically. “Assuming you don't drown due to the gasp reflex going into water that cold.”
“I can follow Aloy's route, War Chief,” Nakoa declared confidently. “Olara and...”
“I'm at least eight years older than you,” the dark complected woman was quick to correct. “And two years more since I ran The Proving.” She shook her head and reached out to squeeze Buck's arm. “And I have too much to loose to even try. That is beyond me.”
Buck looked up at the fissure in the ceiling and rubbed his chin. “Didn't Sylens say he used explosives to free the Processing Orb from the Horus? That fissure is better than half way to the other platform. If we can open it up longer, we could just repel down from above.”
Travis grinned, his good humor restored. “Buck, you just earned your pay for the month!”
“Good,” the big man replied with a matching grin. “I've got my one thousand year review coming up!”
A leisurely ride back to the little camp under the Horus turned up a pair of barrels of Blaze that had been tucked into a cave and sheltered from the elements. It only took a half hour to tie the barrels across one of the extra Striders that had been repurposed to pack work, then another half hour to haul it up the ridge, above the bunker to find the fissure in the rock. The barrels were wedged into the far end of the opening, then Nakoa dipped a piece of cloth into the Blaze before tying it to one of the bombs for her sling that she tucked between the barrel, making an ad hoc Molotov Cocktail as a fuse detonator combo. A few tense breaths from a stout looking collection of rocks pressed into service as a blast shield, then a deafening explosion rocked the lake area.
Carefully approaching it showed the fissure was now another thirty yards long and the formerly placid water below in the ruin was sloshing back and forth from the debris that had fallen into it. Buck grinned at his boss. “We're in business.”
A rope repelling harness was assembled, then safety tied off around a significantly sized cotton wood tree, leading to the final argument. “I should go, boss,” Buck tried to assert, but Travis held up a hand to block him.
“Buck, you're stronger than I am,” he declared reasonably. “If we need out of there in a hurry, you're the one who's strong enough to do it.”
“Well, I should go with you,” Tracy interjected. “Aloy could be injured...” but Travis shook his head again.
“Doc, you're our medic, your knowledge is too important to be risked needlessly.” He sighed and looked at his wife. “Nakoa and I will go and keep our Focus' in open link. If something happens, you three will need to pull us out. If Aloy is injured, we'll have to risk moving her.”
Tracy nodded and fished a cervical collar from her bag. “If you have to, use this.”
Murray tied the collar to his belt, “I will. Ready, dear heart?”
“At your lead, beloved,” she told him with a smile. Travis wrapped the rope around his arm and made sure of his descent line behind him.
“Tension,” he called and Buck came set. Gently, he stepped into the maw of the chasm
and slowly lowered himself once more into the bunker. Now the only sound was the sloshing of the water finding its own level again from the explosion and the rope slowly passing through his gloves. They'd gotten lucky in that, while the fissure wasn't all the way to the vault, it was close enough that a gentle toss with a grappling hook allowed him to snag the hand rail of the catwalk of the door and ease himself over to it. Once the line was made fast, he called up, “Down and clear!”
Immediately, Nakoa appeared in the hole and made her way down and over until she was beside him. “Ok, we're going in,” Travis announced as he and his wife made sure of the play in their safety lines and walked through the hatch.
Inside the vault was a mess.
Some kind of large, mechanical rack had come loose from the ceiling and fallen through the catwalk that was inside the vault. It had crashed through the floor, doubtlessly weakened by the flood into dark looking water and mangled wreckage. Fortunately, the catwalk they stood on seemed solid and there was even the console for the rack still in it's place and it's holograms working. “Whatever happened in here, it was violent,” Travis declared as he swept the room with his Focus. Immediately, three ghostly holograms appeared as the rest of his team joined him in telepresence.
“I think this was recent,” Nakoa opined from the far edge of the catwalk, closest to the destruction. “There is rust that has been blown off this, but the metal under it is bright. This happened today, I think.”
“Well, the console seems to still be working,” Travis consoled himself. “Let's see if the security systems are.” He walked over to it and interfaced his Focus with it. Finally, a hologram of Aloy stepped into the room, a smile on her face and her clothing wet. Travis paused the recording and altered the view out towards the collapsed machine. Now it was hanging from the ceiling once more, looking like a gigantic spider with a pair of revolving code cylinder drums on two of it's arms. “Good guess,” he complimented his wife with a smile. She grinned back at him and hugged his arm. He returned the camera to Aloy she trotted holographically up to them, her eyes on the metallic spider.
“That thing is huge!” she said to herself as she came to a halt. “Looks like the power is off, except for that console!” She declared as she walked over to it and interfaced her own Focus. “It's damp in here too,” she muttered as she worked. “I hope it hasn't corroded anything I need.”
“Like the back up,” Sylen's disembodied voice observed.
“Genetic profile confirmed,” the facilities computer declared over a loud speaker. “Greetings, Dr Sobeck. Do you wish to activate RECLUSE SPIDER?”
“Obvious name is obvious,” Tracy muttered.
“I do,” Aloy replied to the computer.
“Activating.” The armatures began to move and with much creaking and groaning of metal, settled before the gantry. The drums were hexagonal data matrix types of holographic sequenced memory pictograms, which were state of the art, a thousand years ago. Most of the slots were empty, but not all, there were a pair of gold tinted matrix tubes in the frame's left drum, and several red tinted ones in the right.
“It looks like this RECLUSE SPIDER thing is some kind of testing apparatus for HADES and GAIA,” Aloy said as she walked over to it. “Those red ones would be HADES.” She revolved the repository drum and her eyes lit up. “And this is GAIA! Got one! Two, in fact!”
Sylens was dour. “I was starting to get worried.” Aloy pulled out the matrix and walked back over to the console with it, then paused, a concerned expression on her face.
“Data footprint low?” she asked, confused. “Ninety eight percent memory free?”
“That can't be right,” Sylens protested. “GAIA was a vast, super intelligence. You'd barely expect her to...”
“Shh!” Aloy ordered him as she finished her walk over to the console and plugged the matrix into the slot for it. The console lit up, showing the icon Travis remembered from the AI's final message he'd witnessed in All Mother Mountain, six months ago. “Root kernel?” asked Aloy in confusion.
“No subordinate functions?” Sylens added. The pictogram finished with red Xs on each of the tabs that would normally have an icon for the sub-routines that were part of the system.
“It's not a full backup!” Aloy seethed, anger and despair warring for the dominate position in her mind to feel. For once, Sylen's tone was consoling.
“No,” he said finally. “More like...a seed. From which GAIA's mind could grow, if it had sub functions with which to form a heuristic matrix.” Nakoa leaned against her husband's shoulder.
“Do these words mean anything to you?”
“No,” he whispered back, “but they will to Ian,” he assured her, thinking back to the lanky head of technology for American Scientific, hundreds of miles away at Fort Carson.
Anger and frustration began to win the fight for Aloy's emotional state. “So it's useless?” she demanded.
“I'm afraid so,” Sylen declared finally. “Without the sub functions...” Aloy growled out loud and stamped her feet, pacing away from the console. It was a display discouraging enough that Sylens decided to broadcast his image and he appeared on the gantry next to her. With surprising sympathy, he reached out holographically and with genuine emotion, declared, “Aloy, you've done all you could.”
“For what?” she shouted at him. “For nothing?”
Perhaps realizing he couldn't comfort the distraught young woman he walked a step or two away to give her space to vent her anger. “Maybe saving the world is too big a task for any one person,” he observed. “Even you.”
Something in the way he'd said his statement obviously inspired something in her mind and her head snapped up and she hurried back to the console. “Wait! Wait! Wait!” she declared from her rapid manipulations of the controls. “It's useless without sub functions, but there are sub functions out there!” Over the console, a holographic map of the Northern Hemisphere appeared, centered on the North America land mass.
Even Sylens was intrigued as he walked over to join her. “The original ones?” he asked as he took in the map. “They're scattered to the winds when GAIA blew herself up. They could be anywhere! You can't possibly find them in time...” Aloy was obviously not listening as she got the computer to broadcast a status query, her eyes glued to the hologram. “Even if you did,” Sylens went on. “The Mysterious Signal mutated them; just like HADES! You have no idea...”
She whirled on him, her eyes on fire. “Oh but I do!” she countered hotly. “A good one! If it works...” Then she gave a tossing gesture, hanging on up on the sage and canceling his hologram. She went back to the console and continued her manipulations. The screen displayed:
Communications...
Establishing a secure uplink...
It was then that Sylens proved he had considerable skill and managed to establish a link with the facility computer itself. “Ahh,” he declared, obviously impressed. The seconds drew out and Aloy's excitement began to fade. His hologram reappeared and he was consoling again. “It was worth a...”
He couldn't continue as the console beeped and on the map a pinpoint of light began to pulse. Both rushed over to the display. “You've found MINERVA,” he whispered, amazed. “But, it won't connect...”
Aloy refused to lose her excitement. “But it's close,” she enthused. “In the Mountains, west of Plain Song. Close enough for me to go get it!” She sighed, realistic, but refusing to admit defeat. “I'd hoped I'd find all of the sub functions, but one's enough to get started, right?”
Sylens nodded, rubbing his chin. “It is,” he finally agreed. “Recover MINERVA and one could use it to launch GAIA's heuristic matrix...”
A grin spread on Aloy's face. “Once she's conscious, she helps me find the other sub functions and I go gather them...!”
“And rebuild her, piece by piece.” The older man favored her with a smile. “Very clever.”
Beaming, she put her hands on her hips and smirked at her rival. “Still think I can't save the world on my own?” Her pride was short lived. The facility alarm began to blare behind her, drawing her eyes to the closed Gene-locked hatch. Sylens rubbed his chin and followed her over to the hatch.
“Ah, yes. Well, about that...” he said haltingly.
“Alert!” the computer's voice declared. “Intruder Alert!” Aloy whirled back to face Sylens as he walked over.
“Aloy, I need you to listen closely. These intruders want the same thing you do: GAIA reborn. It's why they're here.”
The red head's eyes narrowed and she hissed, “Friends of yours?”
“No,” he affirmed quickly. “They don't know about me. The data pulse I transmitted indicating that a GAIA backup could be recovered here was anonymous.” Aloy looked at the hatch over her shoulder and back, her face a mask of anger. “Now, they're very powerful, but they won't harm you,” he assured her. “Not when they see who you are, what you are; a clone of Elisabet Sobeck. A genetic key with which they can reboot GAIA and rebuild the system. They need you.”
Aloy was having none of it as she walked forward, her finger out in accusation. “I warned you, Sylens,” she growled, her tone promising death, and worse.
For his part, Sylens was unimpressed and rolled his eyes at her threats. “For once, Aloy, submit to the inevitable. Open the hatch.”
There was no reasoning with the girl, or her white hot anger. “First, I rebuild GAIA,” she hissed. “Save life on Earth, then I track you down and end yours!”
The hologram of Sylens stepped into her personal space. “I'm trying to help you here,” he started, but she reached up, pulled the Focus from her temple and the hologram vanished as the call was terminated again. Then she flung the Focus on the catwalk floor and stomped it.
“Try spying on me with that,” she hissed, then reached into a pouch on her belt and produced a new Focus and put it on. “There,” she consoled herself. “New Focus, spy ware free.” That done, she fell back into her habit of talking to herself as she looked over the rail of the catwalk. “Ok, think!” she commanded herself. “Think. Think. Think!” Her eyes came up to the hatch and she smirked. “I don't care how 'powerful' they are, the only thing that can open that hatch is me.”
“Oh, someone is in for a nasty surprise,” Buck whispered.
She looked about. “Question is, can I find another way out...?” She went over to the rail and looked down. “There's a current in the water,” she told herself.
“No!” Tracy exclaimed, unable to keep the caution from being voiced.
“It's not much,” Aloy told herself, having not heard the warning. “But, maybe there's a way out?”
Then the computer spoke again. “Genetic profile confirmed.” Aloy's head snapped around in shock and amazement. “Entry Authorized.”
“What?!” she demanded in shock.
The clanking of the door's mechanism opening spurred her into action. She sprinted over to the console, snatched the matrix from the port and frantically looked for a place to hide. “Greetings, Dr Sobeck,” the computer continued. “Please step inside.”
Seeing nowhere else, Aloy darted over to the RECLUSE SPIDER and hid behind the Repository Carousel for HADES. She made it with only microseconds to spare as the hatch opened and the girl Travis and his party had taken for another clone of Elisabet Sobeck proved she was in fact that. She stepped forward as the Bald Man, his Enforcer and the Woman followed. The machines darted through the hatch, and then up the wall, next to it, clinging in some way on their tentacle like four legs that wasn't obvious. “Hmm, looks promising,” Bald Man declared as he strode in. “Beta?” he commanded.
The girl responded to the command, walking forward slowly to the RECLUSE SPIDER and the GAIA pod. She rotated it until the other matrix was accessible and removed it. “Do we have it?” Bald Man demanded. The girl held the matrix up, then looked at the console and wondered over to it. He took no notice of her and turned to the older woman in the white jump suit. Now, Travis could see it had gold accents and the 'top' was even fashioned like a cut away coat to tails behind her, giving the outfit even more 'Regency' period clashes of style. “Fantastic,” he continued. “Did the Pulse originate from here?”
Hearing that, the girl returned her attention to the console. Her expression became confused. “Has, someone...?” she asked herself.
“Something wrong?” Bald Man demanded.
She manipulated the console and the RECLUSE SPIDER's arms rose, returning to it's standby position and exposing Aloy to the other group. “Shit!” whispered Aloy as she scrambled back to her feet.
“Specters! Beta!” Bald Man commanded. Immediately, one of the machines leaped from the wall to the gantry, wrapped the girl with one of it's tentacles, and whisked her away, out the hatch. Aloy stared at them, while they stared at her for a moment, then Bald Man straightened his suit. “Well,” he asked of the woman next to him. “Any idea what the hell a clone of Elisabet Sobeck is doing here?”
“Maybe,” the woman declared after a moment of thought, “GAIA made one? When it destroyed itself? As a Hail Mary to repair the system?”
Bald Man considered that for a moment. “Hmm,” he drawled. “Don't like the sound of that.” Suddenly, he made up his mind and stood up straighter. “Nah, don't like it. Don't want it.”
The woman turned to him. “But, the effic...”
“Nope!” he interrupted her. “One's enough trouble.” He turned to the Enforcer. “Erik?”
“Yep?” the big man replied.
“Care to do a little downsizing?”
Erik rolled up the sleeves of his khaki shirt as he walked forward menacingly. “Sure.”
The woman lingered and asked, “What if she sent the pulse?”
Bald Man turned and retreated out the hatch, straightening his suit as he went. “Then that was foolish of her,” he declared dismissively. “But we got what we came for, so let's put it to use.” The woman looked back a final time, then turned and followed Bald Man out.
“I snap a lot of necks in VR,” Erik declared as he continued to stroll towards Aloy as if he intended to ask her the time of day, not murder her. “But that...certain...tremor as life fades from the eyes...? No holo gets it quite right.”
Aloy snap drew and arrow and nocked it, drawing it back as her anger gave her courage. “Keep flapping your mouth!” she yelled at him. “It makes a nice target!”
Erik, however, found that amusing and roared with laughter. “You actually think that primitive crap you've got there can hurt me?” he demanded as he laughed, then spread both arms wide, inviting a shot. The arrow snapped across the distance, almost too fast to track, but it struck something just above the man's shirt with a flash and a spark and the arrow shattered. Aloy was stunned for a moment and took a halting step backward as an evil grin spread across Erik's face. “This...is gonna be fun,” he declared.
As he stalked forward, he made a fist and out of nothing around his hand a blade like a katar or a punch dagger formed and he thrust it directly at Aloy. She only just managed to dodge, trying twice more with her arrows to Erik's amusement. For several minutes, a dangerous game of cat and mouse was played on the gantry, under the archive as Erik tried to close with Aloy and Aloy was frantic to keep him at arms length. Twice, she tried to dart for the hatch, but Erik was frighteningly fast on his feet and cut her off, both times.
Frantically trying anything, Aloy looked about, until her eyes settled on the archive. “Come on, fight me!” Erik taunted her, but Aloy's hand went to her belt and produced a Blaze bomb that she then hurled at the old, rusted coupling that was holding the RECLUSE SPIDER to the ceiling. “No!” Erik shouted, but it was too late, the bomb exploded and the frame with a deafening groan of over stressed metal broke free of the ceiling, crashed into the cat walk, destroying it, as it, and Aloy fell into the water below.
Erik, incensed, ran over to the edge of the gantry and looked down into the pit, pacing back and forth. “What was that?” he shouted. “Me killing what you wanted dead!” he added, making it clear he was having a conversation with the others behind him. “What the hell did you think?”
Nakoa leaned forward a bit and pointed. “Look!” On the hologram, a tiny Aloy, in the water who was obviously treading water, purposefully dove deeper. “She's alive,” she enthused.
“She was when she went into the water,” Tracy corrected her.
“The platform collapsed,” Erik lied to the Bald Man. “The body went with it.” He sighed, obviously disgusted. “Right, and since when don't you get what you want?” He shook his head again and turned to the machines next to him. “Specters, search!” he commanded and walked out. The strange machines, Specters they were evidently called, scrambled down the destroyed gantry and the hologram ended.
“She's out of range of the recorders,” Travis said softly.
“We can't go after her,” Tracy instantly declared, seeing what Travis was thinking. “Colonel that water will kill you. Look at the time stamps, that was three hours ago! If she's in that water, she's dead already!”
“Boss, you have to come up here,” Buck declared, keeping his voice from making it a command. “We need you, Travis,” he added.
Murray's jaw clinched as he stared down into the ruined archive, then turned and went over to the console. “ENID,” he commanded, tapping his Focus. Immediately, the AI appeared next to him.
“How may I help you, Colonel?”
“I need you to interface with what's left of this facilities computers. Three hours ago Aloy went into that water and I need to know what happened to her.” The hologram turned to the console and placed her hand on the plate.
“Colonel, this system is heavily damaged. I...one moment.” Her head cocked to one side as if she was thinking, then a display appeared between her and Travis. It was evidently a schematic of the facility and a blue dot was moving through it, trailed by a pair of red dots. “I have what appears to be Aloy, moving through the facility, two drones of an unknown type are following her.” Several minutes passed then the dot vanished. “Aloy found her way into a reserve power area of the bunker,” she informed him. “There was an explosion that opened the bunker to the mountain around it. There must be a fairly large cavern, as that area of the bunker is draining into the cave.”
“Closest access?” he demanded.
ENID shook her head. “I'm sorry, Colonel, there is no safe human access to this area, I, just a moment.” Suddenly, a new hologram appeared, this time, it was Varl, who was standing next to a fast flowing creek or river. Lying in the water was Aloy.
“Colonel?” Varl started. “I found Aloy, but she's hurt...!”
“Mountains...” whispered Aloy in a delirium. “West of Plain Song...!”
Before Travis could say anything, Tracy stepped forward. “Varl, stop! Get her out of the water and build a fire as quickly as you can! As hot as you can! Get her near it. Where are you?”
“I have his coordinates, Ms Williams,” ENID informed her.
“Varl, we're on our way!” Travis told him.
As luck would have it, the cavern the bunker had been built next to was part of a larger groupings of caves that had been carved throughout the region in the prehistoric past that had carved the Grand Canyon. Aloy had been swept out underground for less than a mile from the Proving Lab in a cavern large enough that she hadn't been completely submerged. It had then launched her into the Muddy River, less than half a mile from the little delta where it and the Virgin River met and flowed into Lake Mead. Varl had been riding hard, trying to catch the party after Tracy's work on his leg wound had healed enough that he felt he could push himself on the ride.
The group found him and Aloy at the fire he'd built, but there wasn't much dead wood about and the fire wasn't as large as he had hoped it would be. Aloy, on the other hand, was in bad shape, she was delirious, moaning over and over, “Mountains...west of Plain Song...”
While No Man's Land wasn't as bad as these lands had been in the Ancients day, they still got very cold at night. Tracy had Aloy wrapped in a thermal blanket in an effort to keep her core temperature up, but she was working out of a first responder bag, not the infirmary of Fort Carson. “We have to get her in doors,” she warned Travis, her face drawn and haggard from her frantic efforts of life saving. She lifted up the Nora girl's armor to show a series of nasty bruises that were so dark on her abdomen they were nearly purple against her fair skin. “There could be organ damage from these,” she whispered hoarsely, trying to keep her voice from affecting the other members of the party. “If I have to operate, it can't be in a camp!”
“There's an Utaru village,” Varl said from the fire, as his hearing was excellent. He rose and joined the whispered conversation. “Just over the rise there, two miles, at most.”
“How will the Utaru greet us?” Travis asked. “Are they as war like as the Tenakth?”
Nakoa shook her head. “That wasn't how Blameless Marad described them,” she declared. “They're farmers and they trade food with the Tenakth for protection from the Carja.”
“Just because they're farmers doesn't make them peaceful,” Tracy rebutted tiredly.
Travis nodded solemnly. “Well, it's three days back to Barren Light, so we'll have to risk contacting the Utaru.” He turned to Varl and asked, “How many do you think are in the village?”
The young man cocked his head to one side in confusion. “Why?”
“If they're not peaceful, how many people am I going to have to kill to protect this group,” Travis clarified. Varl blinked in surprise.
“You're serious?”
The expression on the Colonel's face didn't change. “Do I look like I'm joking?” he asked flatly. “My wife is pregnant and Aloy is the probably the single most important person on this planet. Do you think they'll make me choose between us and them? Think hard, son, that's not math I want to get wrong.”
Varl swallowed as he realized the depth of the Colonel's commitment. “Maybe a dozen. It's not a big village, and everything I've ever heard about the Utaru is that they're peaceful.”
“God, I hope you're right,” Murray muttered. “A dozen, I can handle.” Then he straightened and turned to the rest of the group around the fire. “Saddle up. We're going to sprint down the way to a local village and try to get Aloy some help. Buck, stand ready.”
“Sir,” the big man replied as he stood and immediately began to re-secure the gear to the pack Striders.
Within five minutes, the fire was out and buried, Aloy secure to a stretcher across the spare Strider and the group was trotting up the ridge, away from the placid waters of Lake Mead. Overhead the moon was three quarters full and giving plenty of light for the Striders to make their journey. Fortunately, the mechanical horses couldn't be spooked and so ignored the wounded Nora's sometimes loud cries of the mysterious location, or the name of her foster Father Rost.
Quickly they found a worn foot path from the Lake up the ridge that was obviously used by the villagers for their water needs. It wound up the ridge and over a fold in the land until finally the village, lit by the yellow lights of candles and torches came into view.
'Village' as a word, was being generous. The settlement seemed more like a fortified manor house than a village. A wall had been made of bundles of reeds like might be used for a thatched roof, but woven together around large, thick vines as a support that was almost like wattle and daub construction. There was a round gate where the vine had been encouraged to grow into an arch, then continue around the little clutch of huts. By the gate was a tower that also had an air of being alive as it was a cottonwood tree that had a hut woven into it's branches like a tree house. Behind the wall, were four round, domed buildings with woven walls and thatched rooves that ringed a central courtyard.
By the gate were a pair of young men, wearing wooden frames on their torsos to which metal machine parts had been lashed with reeds making a stiff, ad hoc armored chest piece, but with vambraces and shin protections of sturdy looking vines woven into a hard rig to carry other pieces of metal. They had matching hats or helmets of similar sturdiness but with wide, arching brims that, but for the green color of the leaves woven into them, might be mistaken for a cosplay piece from 'The Handmaid's Tale.' But there was nothing playful about the spears they carried. “Halt!” the taller one ordered. “You're not welcome here!”
Travis dismounted Black Jack with his hands up at his shoulders. “Please, we have an injured woman and need a place to care for her.” Nakoa dismounted as well and stood by her husband.
“We ask the right of sanctuary,” she told them and raised the knife Kotallo had given her. “We have Safe Passage from the Tenakth.”
“What is this?” The voice came from behind the gate and belonged to a tall, striking woman of African descent. There were small dots of a white substance on her chin and around the bottom of each eye, but Travis didn't know if they were yet more face paint or some kind of tattoo. She wore an elaborate head dress of woven long fern leaves with a machine piece as the centerpiece of it. She was dressed in the same woven white kilt the guards wore and a top that held some kind of red bag the size of her palm just above her heart that had been affixed to the garment.
“Forgive us,” Varl breathed, having all but materialized by Travis' elbow. “We are asking for charity and shelter to aid our friend.”
“Death is stalking the land tonight,” she said heavily. Her dark eyes flicked to Kotallo's dagger in Nakoa's hand, to Varl and back to Travis. “I am Zo, Gravesinger of Stone's Echo. Who are you?”
“My name is Travis Murray,” the Colonel informed her. “I'm of the AmSci Tribe, this is my wife Nakoa, who is Nora and this is Varl who is also Nora.”
“Nora, I've heard of,” Zo replied softly as she closed to conversational distance. “What is the name of the Marshall who gave you that knife?” she demanded of Nakoa.
“Kotallo is his name.”
“He's well?” the Utaru woman asked.
“He's alive,” Travis told her. “Thanks to the skill of my healer, but he lost his left arm in an ambush by Tenakth rebels at the Embassy of Barren Light.”
Zo nodded again. “I know him; and his blade. His party stopped here on their way back to the Tenakth lands. Your Healer must be very skilled. His injury would have killed most. It is good that you speak the truth.” Her eyes returned to Travis. “I don't know your tribe, Travis Murray. Where are you from?”
“My tribe lives next to the Nora lands,” he informed her. “On the far side of the Carja Sundom.”
“Are you as warlike as the Carja?”
“No. My people are ready to be friends with everyone,” he replied evenly. “But we have no trouble defending ourselves.” Zo considered that for a long moment, then turned towards the courtyard and gestured at the smallest of the huts inside it.
“You have asked for sanctuary and you have Safe Passage, so long as you act honorably, you will be treated that way. You may tend to your friend there.” She eyed the Striders behind them. “The machines stay outside the wall.”
“Thank you,” Travis told her with a bow.
“If your friend joins Re in death tonight, I will sing over her grave as well.”
Varl lifted Aloy from the stretcher and carried her towards the indicated hut while Tracy snatched her bag from her own Strider and followed him, calling up her medical programs on her Focus as she went; checking on what damage the journey may have done. As his people unpacked, Travis turned back to Zo, watching her watch the precision with which his party moved. “Thank you, again,” he told her.
“Your people seem very skilled,” she admitted as Nakoa and Olara had already gotten the saddlebags off Varl and Tracy's Striders and were following them to the hut. “Did your tribe lose many to the Red Raids?”
“We settled next to the Nora just this year,” he informed her. “We come, originally, from a land much further to the east, on the shores of the great water there.” He sighed and met her gaze. “We've heard of the Red Raids, but were not affected by them.”
The expression on her face declared she found the thought of a migration unusual. “Why did you leave your home lands?” her question was somewhat pointed, but the tone of her voice only indicated curiosity.
“We were driven out by dangerous machines,” he told her. Which is technically true, he thought to himself. She gestured for Travis to follow her, and walked back into the courtyard, where he was shocked to see a large machine laying on its side in an open, pole barn like structure. “You master machines?” he asked, but Zo's angered expression disabused him of that notion.
“Re is not our servant, but one of our Land Gods,” she declared. “She and her six sisters spread the bounty of Plain Song since before my grandmother was a little girl. Longer, perhaps, even before Plain Song was founded. They work and plant the land to give us this abundance. Or, she did. She's injured, I fear, dying.”
Travis' eyes went to the stricken machine and back. “They...they can't die. They're machines, they're not alive.”
“What to your mind makes us more alive than them?” she asked. “They move, they eat, other than being made of metal, they are just like us.”
“Some of my people thought that way once,” he replied softly. “We paid a heavy price for it.”
“She is in pain,” Zo replied. “Is your compassion only limited to beings of flesh and blood?”
Now that he was closer, he could see the machine was like the massive Triceratops that Sylens had mastered to pull the Processing Orb for him. It moved every now and then, in a jerky, almost painful manner. For a moment, he was struck again by the thoroughness by which the terraforming robots the AI GAIA had made needlessly mimicked the animals their designs had been inspired by. “I, I'm not sure I understand,” he said cautiously.
Zo smiled at him with a weary smile. “You do not need to,” she assured him. “To you, Re is just a machine, something dangerous you must guard against. Something that drove you from your home. To us, she is a provider, a timeless being who sows the land year upon year. To us, she made our home.” She sighed and turned back to face him. “Do you need food?”
“We have food,” he answered quickly. “We took a boar yesterday and have plenty of meat, if you'd like to join us...” he trailed off at the unpleasant expression on her face.
“We don't eat animals,” she informed him. “But I will not expect you to change to our ways.” She paused, then touched his arm as if in apology for her reaction. “I hope your friend lives.” Then she sank to her knees before the machine that was acting as if it was actually injured and in pain, then softly, Zo began to sing to it.
Travis watched for a moment, amazed at what he had lived to see, then brought his thoughts back to the practical and went to see how his group was fairing.
September 29th, 3040
Tuesday dawned over cast with heavy cloud cover that the Sun struggled to pierce as it rose above the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tracy had worried over Aloy late into the night, her eyes constantly going to the rigid plastic case that held her surgical tools and her worry she would have to use them in this non sterile environment plain on her face. Finally, Travis had ordered her to rest on the threat he would command her to take a sedative. He and Buck had taken turns watching over the moaning Aloy the remainder of the night.
Now, with the dawn, his Focus, even without Tracy's extensive library of medical apps confirmed that while there was extensive and deep bruising on the young Nora's body, she was no longer bleeding. The next forty eight hours would be critical, but it at least appeared she'd only been battered badly and would live to tell the tale of her battle with the sadistic Erik.
Travis greeted the dawn with Varl, who was as nervous about Aloy's health as he was. As Varl held the girl's hand, Travis sat by the door, looking out every now and then, while studying the video of Aloy's battle with Erik. Over and over he scrubbed the video, watching the arrow strike something just above Erik's shirt that made a flash that shattered the arrow. “Who is that?” Varl asked softly, as he looked over from the reed mat the Nora was laying on. “Why does he look like one of your people?”
“I don't know,” Travis replied. “He's not an employee of American Scientific, but yes, those clothes are very similar to ours.” He reached up and scrubbed the video back to where all three of them could be seen. “These two have clothes that are both like and different to ours. The details are off.”
“Details?” asked Varl. Murray quickly scrubbed through some pictures on his Focus and found one of himself and CEO Frank Olmstead holding each other by the shoulders, laughing and raising their glasses out at the viewer.
“This is from the company Christmas party, the year before the Faro Plague,” he said quietly. “These clothes we're wearing? They're called suits. See how mine and Frank's jackets have this material folded over where the jacket closes and around the collar? That's called a lapel.”
“His doesn't have that,” Varl acknowledged. “Or that strip of cloth from your necks.”
“They were called Ties,” Murray informed him. “And they could get stupidly expensive. And they were uncomfortable.”
“Why did you wear them, then?”
“Fashion,” Travis replied. Seeing the boy's confusion, he added, “Certain styles of clothing became popular, and from there, somewhat mandatory for certain meetings, or events. The word for that is fashion.”
“But his 'suit' isn't fashion?” Varl asked after a moment.
That caused the Colonel to shrug his shoulders. “Fashion does change. The specifics, at least. Details, that kind of thing.”
Varl considered that for a moment, looking back at Aloy, then returning his gaze to Murray, his expression angry. “Why did they do this to her?” he demanded.
“That's a question without an answer that's easy for you to understand, son,” Travis said quietly. “What do you know about what Aloy is trying to accomplish? About GAIA and HADES?”
“The Goddess?” he asked, then shrugged. “Just that she sacrificed herself to keep HADES from destroying the world. That we have to find her and restor...reserre...reboot,” he said, finally finding the right word. “We have to reboot her to finish saving the world.” He sighed and shook his head. “I understand that she's not a real goddess, but she's not Human either. That Aloy's Mother...the woman who looks like her, made GAIA a thousand years ago. Why would that have anything to do with why these people almost killed her?”
“Varl, there is a system...” he paused, then took a different tack. “There is a complicated machine, that was healing the world from the Faro Plague. GAIA was the mind that controlled that machine.”
“That's why the machines became deranged,” he added, bringing a smile to Travis' face.
“Exactly. These people, I believe they mean to control GAIA, to take control of the machine, for their own ends. Since Aloy could do that herself, they meant to kill her to prevent that from happening.” He saw from the expression on Varl's face he understood the gravity of what had just been said. “I don't know who these people are, or where they came from, but I mean to stop them from accomplishing that goal.”
The young Nora Brave's face became set. “Then I will help you.”
“Good lad,” Murray assured him. “We'll need all the help we can get.
“Travis Murray.” Zo appeared in the door, immediately bringing Varl's interest. “You must come with me.”
The Colonel got to his feet. “Is something wrong?”
“There are messengers from Plain Song,” the woman replied. “Come with me.” Something about the way she had said the command sounded an alarm in the back of his mind. As he reached down to pick up his War Belt and pull it on, he gently kicked Buck's foot. A dark eye casually opened, met his gaze, then he continued to play possum. Travis was sure his back was covered.
He followed the Gravesinger out, across the courtyard towards the gate, which stood open. There, a dozen men, all in armor like the two sentries stood, some keeping a wary eye on the little clutch of Striders that were grazing and ignoring the humans near them. The leader of the men eyed him and stepped forward, even though Zo kept herself between the two men.
He was an older man, in his middle forties perhaps, maybe even a little older with ruddy skin and dark hair he wore as a swept back Mohawk with the sides of his head shaved. He had a square face with classic Hispanic features, and dark, but honest eyes. Even though he was dressed identically to the other Utaru, his left arm and chest were covered in dark red and black tattoos, similar to those of the Tenakth Marshals wore, as well as black face paint across his nose below both eyes. “You aren't Carja,” he declared.
“No, my name is Travis Murray, I'm of the AmSci Tribe.”
The man's eye twitched and recognition dawned in them. “You don't look like an Ancient,” he accused. Travis casually put his hands on his hips, his right, resting on the holster that held his Browning Hi-Power. Once American Scientific settled on their desperate gamble of trying to outlast the Faro Plague, Frank had opened his wallet with orders for Murray to buy every all steel pistol in 9MM NATO he could lay his hands on.
Neither had been certain the polymer framed weapons that had come in vogue in the early decades of the twenty first century would endure and be functional some distant and unknown number of centuries later they hoped to reach. Steel, on the other hand, could be slathered in Cosmoline, vacuum sealed and stored with a desiccant to be preserved practically forever. The only enemies of a firearm being rust and politicians, the Faro Plague had taken care of the Politicians and the Cosmoline had defended against rust.
The Hi-Power was a heavy pistol, but it's weight was reassuring just now. “How many Ancients do you know?” he asked sardonically.
That brought Zo's face to him, a strange expression on her face. “You claim to be an Ancient?” she demanded.
“I don't claim to be one, I am one,” he told her. “It's a long story, I'll tell you later.” He turned back to the man before him. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir? Care to share your name?”
“Jaxx,” he replied. “I lead what soldiers our people claim.”
“'Our' people?” Travis repeated. “I don't have a large sample size of Utaru, but I've never seen tattoos like yours on them.”
Jaxx twisted his head a bit, as if the new angle would give him insight into Travis' mind. “I'm a Veteran,” he replied finally. “I was born of the Desert Clan of the Tenakth, but traded to the Utaru when I was a young man. They gave my former clan food, I helped organize them to resist the Carja.”
“Seems an equitable trade,” Murray allowed. “So long as you were ok with it. What can I do for you, Veteran Jaxx?”
“Last night we received two messengers at Plain Song,” he said guardedly. “One alerting us that our village of Summerwind had been attacked and razed by a band of renegade Carja. We had this news by one who had escaped from this bands fortress.” He looked over his shoulder at the Striders and back. “And another that renegades who rode machines were wandering No Man's Land and might be a part of it.”
“Well, we're not a part of any banditry,” Travis assured him. “There are, however, a group of Rebel Tenakth that attacked the Embassy at Barren Light less than a week ago. And they rode machines.”
“Rebel Tenakth who ride machines?” the soldier demanded with considerable incredulity.
“It's the truth,” Zo assured him. “Marshal Kotallo and his party stopped here on their way to Memorial Grove. I heard the tale from his own lips, and he spoke of the healer who saved his life from losing his arm. The same Healer who travels with this man by his description.”
Jaxx weighed that for a moment, then his stance eased, which made the men behind him relax as well. “I accept Zo's testament of your groups innocence in these matters.”
“Much obliged,” Travis assured him, then asked, “Fortress? Near by?” Jaxx nodded.
“In the mountainside, west of here and north of the Metal Devil. I'm told they call it Shadow's Reach. Carja with aspirations of renewing the Red Raids.” He looked over his shoulder again at the Striders outside the wall. “Carja who have tamed machines.”
“I know of these Carja,” Travis assured him. “They were part of a cult, and yes, they were trying to over throw the Sun King, but we had thought them dealt with.” He reached up and tapped his Focus and a topographical map appeared before him. Zo and Jaxx started in surprise, causing the Colonel to smirk slightly. “Do I look like an Ancient now?” He manipulated the map and highlighted a walled building of concrete that was showing its years. “Is this your Shadow's Reach?”
Jaxx quickly got over his shock and stared intently at the map. “Like the Visions,” he whispered to himself reverently. Then he returned to business and pointed at the ridge line they stood on. “We are here?” he asked and Murray nodded. “Then yes, that is the place that was described to me. Are you enemies with this cult?”
“I've fought them,” the Colonel replied. “If they're holding your people as slaves, I will do so again to help you free them. If you'll have me.”
“I will,” Jaxx replied, holding out his hand through the hologram. Travis took it solemnly.
“Not without me,” Buck declared loudly. The group turned to find him standing in the doorway of the hut the party had been given, his AR15 in a low ready grip that he could have up and killing in a split second. Beside him stood the Nora women, bows in their hands with arrows nocked, but not drawn.
“Or me,” Nakoa added.
“I wouldn't dream of it,” Murray assured his wife. “But first, how about some breakfast?”
Zo contributed a bag of rough cut oats to the meal that Olara and Nakoa quickly had boiling. Buck turned out the remainder of the belly of the boar they'd killed and quickly had it sizzling in the pan over the fire. Jaxx looked like he was in heaven smelling the cooking bacon and quickly availed himself of the early piece Buck offered him. As he chewed, his eyes closed in obvious delight and he grunted in satisfaction. “I can't remember how long it's been since I've had bacon!” he enthused.
“Vegetarian cuisine doesn't appeal to you?” Buck asked with a chuckle as he cooked.
“I've been living in Plain Song for twenty years. My wife is inspired with her stews,” he managed around his chewing. He sighed contentedly. “But, it's not meat. They don't know what they're missing!”
“Of course we do,” Zo shot back from opening a bag of dried figs and beginning to dice them to put into the oat meal. “Blood, entrails, killing...”
Buck shook his head with a grin on his face. “The world ended and the Vegans are still preaching...” he laughed. “Still, I wouldn't say 'no' to a nice bowl of grits now and again.”
“Not without butter,” Murray corrected him. “And no milk or butter till year after next. At best.”
“Butter?” Jaxx demanded.
“It's a way to make milk, from a large animal you don't have, we call cows, solid so it lasts longer. We also make cheese out of it, but the process is a bit different.”
“The Sky Clan use the milk of sheep and goats,” Jaxx replied. “I think the Lowlanders do too, but I have no first hand knowledge. Besides, we couldn't keep them in the desert. You have animals from the Old Time?” he wanted to know. “Animals we don't?”
“We do,” Travis told him. “And in a few years when the herd gets to a good size, you'll have to come to Fort Carson and try some.”
“Goat milk butter,” Buck remarked with a shudder and a sour expression on his face. “Hard pass.”
“And what of the child of this cow whose milk you take?” Zo wanted to know.
“We only take the excess until the calf is weened, then we just keep the cow lactating by taking all it's milk daily,” Tracy told her from her checking on Aloy who was still moaning softly, but her sleep seemed to be improving. “It doesn't hurt the cow or her calf. And it's very nutritious.”
Zo shook her head as she dumped the figs into the boiling oats. “Food should be a gift, not something taken.”
“Can I have more bacon?” Jaxx asked with a grin.
“I'm happy to give you some,” Buck told him with a wink at Zo, who put on something of an act of clinging to her moral high ground, but did smile at the end, but refused the bacon when offered.
“How many men do you estimate are encamped in this fortress?” Travis asked Jaxx as he held out his bowl for the porridge the girls had made.
“Yef, the boy who escaped,” Jaxx managed around his mouthful, “says no more than three dozen, but an exact figure was beyond him. He did mention their leader, a brute named Vezreh, bragged he had left a trail for other members of his cult, the Eclipse, to follow him out here.”
“That's a long wait for a train that isn't coming,” Murray replied. “The Eclipse were crushed at the Battle of the Alight, six months ago. If he escaped that, the men he has are all he'll ever have. The Sun King either dealt with or pardoned the rest who were press ganged by Helis.”
“Good news there, at least,” Jaxx admitted. “You fought in this battle? You're allies with the Carja?”
“We're neighbors with them,” the Colonel corrected. “I did fight in the battle, but did so to prevent the real leader of the Cult, the...” he trailed off, trying and failing of a way to describe an AI.
“Spirit,” Nakoa supplied while he struggled for the right word. “The Spirit HADES from awakening the Ancient war machines to destroy life on Earth.”
That brought a frown to Jaxx's face. “The Nora are well known for their mysticism, but I don't believe in Spirits.”
Nakoa's smile was cruel. “Don't you?” she asked and tapped her Focus. “ENID, would you come here, please?” The holographic young woman appeared, transparent and much to the surprise of Jaxx and Zo, but fortunately out of sight of the rest of the village.
“How may I be of service, Nakoa?”
“A Vision!” Jaxx exclaimed, even as Travis gently took his arm to keep him from jumping to his feet and spoiling the meal by overturning the little table they were all sitting around on the woven mats that was the floor of the hut. “What is this?”
Travis shot his wife a dirty look, but she only smiled sweetly, half apology, half smug satisfaction for getting a rise out of the Veteran. “Jaxx, this is ENID. She...well, this is hard to explain. She is technically a machine. An artificial mind we brought with us from the Old Time.”
“A...a machine...mind?” the other demanded, his eyes flicking back and forth between the Colonel and the spectral woman standing placidly through the table they were eating at.
“Yes. In our time, we could...create...such machines to assist us with our tasks. ENID is a repository of knowledge, books, learning as well as being able to see and hear with senses that are far keener than our own. What you see is a...drawing, for lack of a better word. A drawing we made for her so we could converse and more easily communicate with her.” He gave his wife another dirty look. “And a party trick my wife enjoys springing on the unsuspecting.”
Jaxx opened and closed his mouth several times, but no sound came out. Finally, he swallowed and found his voice again. “And, this HADES you mention, he was a being, like this?”
“That is correct,” ENID informed him. “Though, not as sophisticated as myself, nor with my loyalties to the people of American Scientific that I protect.”
“Are you bragging, ENID?” Buck demanded.
“Only if speaking the Truth is boasting, Mr Simpson,” the program replied with a ghost of a smile.
“Can she see Shadow's Reach?” Jaxx wanted to know. “Walk unseen to...” He trailed off as ENID opened her arms and between them a hologram appeared, showing the mountain and the fortress. As he stared, Jax realized he could see tiny people walking about the battlements and others overseeing Utaru labor in the fields out side it. “This...this is the Reach right now?”
“Yes,” ENID assured him. “This is a real time image of the Lake Mead Division Headquarters.”
“The what?”
“Lake Mead Division Headquarters,” the program repeated. “That was this facilities designation during Operation: Enduring Victory by US Robot Command. I understand it is now referred to as Shadow's Reach.”
Jaxx leaned in to the image, amazed and fascinated by it. “How are you doing this?”
“My range is extended by the Tall Neck repeater node Cinnabar Sands. From it, I am getting this live feed from a Stormbird I currently have tasked in a twenty mile orbit centered on the Lake Mead FAS-BOR7 Horus.” ENID noted the confusion on his face and tried again. “You are looking through the eyes of the Stormbird here,” she pointed, causing the display to widen so the Stormbird was visible.
After a long moment of amazement, Jaxx finally said, “I guess there are Spirits.”
“Welcome to the New Age,” Nakoa told him with a smile. “ENID, use Jaxx and Zo as indications of Utaru clothing. Give me a count of how many Eclipse Carja are in Shadows Reach and how many Utaru prisoners.”
“I count twenty Eclipse renegades and fifteen Utaru prisoners,” the AI replied. “Though I caution there could be more indoors out of sight of the Stormbird. I've uploaded the relevant data to your Focuses.” Turning to Travis, she asked, “Shall I keep the Stormbird on orbit for you, Colonel?”
“Yes, ENID and have it continue to update us if the tactical situation changes.”
“Certainly sir.”
“Thank you, ENID, that will be all.” With that, the avatar vanished and Travis returned to his porridge. “So, let's finish up breakfast, and then, go take care of some bad guys.”
“Bet,” Buck chuckled.
