He must determine a method for sending a signal. It would have to be a low-tech solution, and the signal could only be very basic. But Abel doesn’t need to send information to a human, doesn’t have to worry about the limitations of an organic brain. Any small pattern amid the chaos might attract the attention of another mech—and if it has a chance to investigate, its programming will compel it to do so.
Abel pushes against the wall to propel himself through the pod bay. After thirty years, he is all too familiar with the few pieces of equipment in here with him, not one of which can help him power up the ship, open the pod bay door, or communicate directly with another vessel. But that doesn’t mean they’re useless.
In one corner, suspended a few centimeters from the wall, is a simple flashlight.
Helps with repairs, Mansfield had explained, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled. Humans can’t rewire a spaceship with nothing but their memory of the schematics. Not like you, my boy. We need to see it. Abel remembered smiling back, proud that he could replace weaker humans and serve Mansfield better.
And yet he could never hold humanity in contempt, because Mansfield was human, too.
Grabbing the flashlight, Abel launches himself toward the window again. What message should he send?
No message. Only a signal. Someone is here; someone seeks contact. The rest can come later.
Abel holds the light to the window. He has not used it during the past decades, and it still holds sufficient charge. One flash. Then two, three, five, seven, eleven—and so on through the first ten primes. He plans to repeat the sequence until someone sees him.
Or until the battle ends, leaving him alone for many more years to come.
But maybe someone will see, Abel thinks.
He isn’t supposed to hope. Not like humans do. Yet during the past several years, his mind has been forced to deepen. With no new stimulation, he has reflected on every piece of information, every interaction, every single element of his existence before the abandonment of the Daedalus. Something within in his inner workings has changed, and probably not for the better.
Because hope can hurt, and yet Abel can’t stop looking out the window, wishing desperately for someone to see him, so he will no longer be alone.
3
CAPTAIN BAZ SHOUTS, “INCOMING!”
Noemi steers sharply downward, spiraling through the twisted metal remains of newly destroyed mechs. But the Damocles ships keep spitting out more and more of them—far too many for her squadron to handle. Only the Masada Run volunteers came out today, only to practice. They weren’t planning to fight a full mech assault, and by now it shows.
The mechs are everywhere, their oversize exoskeleton attack suits streaking through the battered ships of her squadron like a meteor shower raining fire. As they approach, the exosuits unfold from metal-beamed, sharp-edged pseudo-vessels into monstrous, metal-limbed creatures capable of smashing through the Genesis lines as if they were punching through paper.
Every once in a while, as one of them zooms past her ship, Noemi gets a glimpse of the mechs themselves—the machines within the machines. They look just like human beings, which sometimes makes it hard for newbies to shoot. She hesitated herself in her first firefight when she glimpsed what seemed to be a man in his mid-twenties, with deep tan skin and black hair much like her own; he could’ve been her brother, if Rafael had had the chance to grow up.
That very human hesitation nearly ended her life that day. Mechs don’t hesitate. They go for the kill every time.
Since then she’s seen that exact same face looking back at her dozens of times. It’s a Charlie model, she now knows. Standard male fighter, ruthless and relentless.
“There are twenty-five models in standard production,” Elder Darius Akide had said, the day he addressed her training class for the first time. “Each has a name beginning with a different letter of the alphabet, from Baker to Zebra. All but two of these models look completely human. And each one is stronger than any human can ever be. They’re programmed with only enough intelligence to perform their core responsibilities. For manual-labor models, that’s not much. But the fighters they send against us? They’re smart. Damned smart. Mansfield left out only the levels of higher intelligence that could allow them to have something like a conscience.”
Noemi’s eyes widen as her tactical screen lights up. Her hands tighten on her weapons controls, and she fires the instant the mech flies into range. For one split second she sees the thing’s face—Queen, standard female fighter model—before both exosuit and mech shatter. Nothing’s left but splinters of metal. Good.
Where’s Esther? They haven’t flown within visual range of each other for a couple of minutes now. Noemi would like to signal her, but she knows better than to use comms for a personal message in the middle of combat. So she can only look.
How am I supposed to find anyone in this? she asks herself as she swoops in over a few more of the mechs, blasting as fast as her weapons will work. Their return fire is so ferocious that black space momentarily turns brilliant white. The invasion forces keep getting larger. Earth keeps getting bolder. They’ll never let up, not ever.
The Masada Run really is our only hope.
She thinks about that scared kid shivering as the troops ran to their fighters. His call sign hasn’t appeared on her screen in a while either. Is he lost? Dead?
And Esther—scout ships are almost defenseless—
Finally the fighting around her breaks for a moment, and she has a chance to scan for Esther’s ship. When she finds it, she feels a moment of elation—it’s intact, Esther’s alive—but then Noemi frowns. Why is Esther all the way over there?
Then Noemi realizes what she’s looking at. Horror injects adrenaline into her veins.
One of the mechs has turned away from the battle. Just—left the fight. She’s never seen a mech do anything like that, and it’s heading toward the debris field near the fallen Gate. Is it malfunctioning? Doesn’t matter. For whatever reason, Esther decided to tail the stupid thing—probably to investigate what it was up to. But now she’s isolated from the Genesis troops who could protect her. If the mech finds what it’s looking for or receives an override from its Damocles, it will turn on Esther in an instant.