FICTION

Bone Rush: Chapter Seven

Note: this is part seven of an ongoing story. Check out the six part here.)

By Nick Wisseman

At least Legs was willing to move quickly. So willing, in fact, that they ditched the dolly, and the robot insisted Mika climb on its elevated back. “At their current full extension, my limbs are significantly longer than any human on record, and you’re only in the thirty-seventh percentile when it comes to height for adults in your age range.”

There wasn’t a good way to say no. She’d been the one insisting they get this final trip over as quickly as possible, and the KI was offering her a way to speed the process. But …

Legs was a KI.

Had any “human on record” ever clambered up one of the robots, draped their hands around its neck, and wrapped their legs around its waist? Because that’s what she was doing — getting a piggyback ride from a lanky death machine.

Legs’ full stride was huge, though. And fast. If Mika hadn’t been wearing her helmet, her hair probably would have been streaming behind her.

“Why are you laughing?” asked Legs after they’d covered the first kilometer in a ludicrously short amount of time.

“Because if I actually get out of here and go on another survey mission, I’m going to requisition a KI instead of a ground transport.”

“I’m an II,” the robot reminded her. “And your plan is illogical.”

At the halfway point, Legs abandoned the trail they’d worn on their previous supply runs and began churning through the vegetation. But the robot was so tall now that only the loftiest stalks so much as grazed Mika’s boots.

“Won’t they see us?” she asked.

“Not from where they are.”

Mika hung on as best she could while Legs ate up the rest of the ground between the Mantis and the boneyard. She used the rifle as a brace, gripping its stock and barrel and letting the gun press against the robot’s torso. Even so, she was close to falling off when the KI came to a skidding halt at the edge of the boneyard, in front of what was probably a tibia and fibula, still connected to each other but not to anything else. Both were huge, bigger individually than the one that housed Leg’s lab. Combined, this lower leg bone was colossal.

“What are we here for?” whispered Mika as she slid off the robot’s back.

Legs folded down to normal height. “I need to do something. Stay outside.” The KI sprang toward a crack in the fibula that was just big enough for the robot’s reduced size. No hanzi characters marked this opening.

“Then why did I come?”

Legs vanished into the bone.

“I guess I’ll guard the entrance,” Mika grumbled. She picked a nearby pile of smaller bones (phalanges? Metatarsals?) that provided her both decent cover and a wide view of the terrain leading up to the boneyard.

She didn’t have to wait long until Legs spoke to her — through her new forearm.

“Desmond and Jabare have exited the larger pathways within the boneyard,” the robot announced. “They’re circling the perimeter. Stay hidden.”

“I am. Has there always been a comm in this arm?”

“Along with seven other features that I’ll show you how to use once you’re less likely to panic over their presence.”

Mika activated her rifle. It was reading as fully charged — she’d get twenty beams before projectile-toggling initiated. Would that be enough? “I’m panicking now.”

“Correct, but my analysis suggests your reason for doing so is rational. You’re worried about being shot.”

“Correct,” Mika muttered. “Are you coming out?”

“I’m well-hidden where I am.”

“That’s not …” She shook her head. “Have you heard Desmond mention what tipped him off?”

“He and Jabare have said little to each other since Desmond returned. But when he went to bury your other crew members while you were undergoing repairs, he seemed puzzled to find your body missing.”

So Desmond suspected she was alive. Maybe that hunch had been enough to help him see through her ruse with the journal. “What direction are they coming from?”

“Northwest.”

“You’re still jamming their signals, right? Their KI alert won’t trip on my arm and leg?”

“Even if I wasn’t, you have your own blocker.”

Mika scanned her arm. “That’s a feature I’d like to know how to use now — it’ll help me not panic.”

“I understand. Redundancy is reassuring.”

“Sure.”

“You can toggle the blocker on and off by tapping the blue button above your wrist twice, pausing, and then tapping twice again.”

Mika located the button. It was glowing faintly. “It’s on now?”

“Correct.”

“And was that sequence the morse code for II?”

“Also correct.” Legs sounded vaguely impressed.

Or maybe that was just her clinging to any sort of positive reinforcement she could pretend to find — even if the source was a KI.

Desmond was military, and Jabare was probably at least competent with his rifle. If they spotted her, what chance did she have?

As it turned out, that was the wrong question. When the transport rolled into view, Mika realized what she should have been asking herself: What would Desmond and the strip miner do when they saw the Mantis protruding above the intervening vegetation? Because she was totally unprepared when they started speeding toward the ship.

“Is the Mantis still locked?” she asked.

“Correct. The animals remain secure.”

“But Desmond will know something’s up when he can’t open the door.”

“A probable outcome. His behaviors suggest he’s relatively astute for a human — he managed to deactivate his sequencing rifle’s aftermarket locator in a way I couldn’t reengage.”

Mika took a deep breath and brought her rifle to bear on the transport, tracking its movement in her sights. Jabare was driving.

“What’s your confidence level in that shot?” asked Legs.

“Let’s call it sixty percent.” But Atalia would have said higher. “And unless you’re willing to fire the Mantis’s cannon remotely …”

“You should hurry. They’ll be beyond your optimal range in ten seconds.”

“Gee, thanks.” She only needed six seconds — two to gather herself, one to suppress the memory of how she’d hesitated in the boneyard clearing, and three to picture Atalia, Neto, and Kady. Then Mika pulled the trigger.

She missed Jabare, but the transport shuddered, smoked, and flipped.

The ejection module jetted him and Desmond clear, however, and Desmond came up firing.

Shit.

Mika got off another shot, but it went wide. Desmond’s salvo zeroed in on her location with terrifying speed, filling the air with the stench of scorched wood. She ducked further into her bone pile, losing all visibility but minimizing her exposure.

A second rifle started firing — Jabare must have joined in. They were on foot now, but it wouldn’t take them long to return to the boneyard and flush her out.

“I’m pinned,” she whispered into her forearm comm. “I need your help!”

Legs’ reply was equally soft and urgent. “Run.”

She hesitated.

“I’ll guide you.”

The lucky shot that vaporized her rifle’s barrel and ripped what was left of the gun out of her hands convinced her. “Where do I go?”

“Turn one hundred and sixty-five degrees to your right and proceed four point two meters.”

Mika twisted and crawled, approximating the directions. “Now what?”

“The external view I have of the section of bone before you shows multiple stress fractures at that location, indicating up to a seventy-three percent loss of structural integrity. This is a common aftereffect when the interior mithrol is siphoned off rapidly rather than at a sustainable — ”

“So I should kick it?”

“Correct.”

It took three strikes from her new leg, but the last blow burst through the bone and caused much of the surrounding layers of fibrous, dried-out material to shatter as well. She squeezed the rest of her body through the opening before the last of the shards finished falling. “Good tip, but please be more concise.”

She emerged into a dense section of the boneyard. Legs — using far fewer words — told her how to move through it, and by the time Desmond and Jabare punched their own exit out of her original shelter, she was into another bone.

She didn’t lose them, though. Desmond either guessed right or had incredible tracking skills; he and Jabare were pounding after her soon enough, firing sporadically and almost hitting her at least four times. Their guns were in toggle-cycle now, their bullets’ near misses peppering her with slivers and debris.

Legs kept her a step ahead, directing her from one giant bone to the next. She ran erratically, zigzagging to make herself as difficult a target as possible; from above, she probably looked like a mouse scurrying around a crypt. But no matter how evasively she moved, it was only a matter of time before —

Rocket barked, Desmond swore, and Jabare screamed.

Mika slid between two horned vertebrae and glanced back. How had the animals gotten out? Rocket appeared to have stolen Desmond’s rifle and was zooming around with it the way dogs did when they wanted to play fetch without giving up the stick. But Desmond wasn’t chasing him. He was backpedaling and yanking his visor down.

While Jabare lay dying.

Eyes bulging. Tongue lolling. Hands on his convulsing throat, pulling at the skin on either side to keep it from constricting. Cervical vertebrae crackling anyway.

A textbook case of Strangler.

Mika jammed her visor down too, even though Legs had promised Smog’s strain of the virus couldn’t spread beyond the initial human host. And it must have been Smog’s doing because the bark dragon was hovering above the fallen human, beating his brown wings as fast as a small bird and watching Jabare suffocate.

Mika shivered. Gal and Legs’ creations might be plant-based, but they certainly weren’t shrinking violets.

Neither was Desmond. He was advancing again, a vicious-looking knife in his right hand — he’d always liked weapons you didn’t have to charge or reload.

Smog snarled a warning. When Desmond slashed at him anyway, the bark dragon darted away from the blade and spewed forth a mossy-green mist. But the seals on Desmond’s suit held, and his counterstrike came within a whisper of Smog’s right eye.

“Call the animals back,” Mika hissed into her forearm comm. “Desmond’s going to hurt them.”

Legs must have sounded the high-frequency whistle immediately because both Rocket and Smog took off. The dog’s mouth was empty; it was anyone’s guess where he’d dropped the rifle.

“The Mantis will continue emitting a summons until the animals are aboard again,” Legs said.

Mika grunted but didn’t speak — she was saving her breath for sprinting. Desmond was on her heels.

She’d been faster than him when they were kids. But in high school, he’d slimmed down and starred on the cross-country team while she’d dabbled in track. And although her new leg was stronger than her old one, that didn’t make her quicker — juicing one part of her stride just threw the other off balance. She had no illusions about who would win this race in the end.

Legs seemed to have drawn the same conclusion. “Would you prefer to confront him in an open or enclosed space?”

“Open,” she panted, sparing some air for the word. Then she had a thought. “The clearing … where he hit me … Get me there.”

“It’s zero point six seven kilometers away. You have a thirty-eight percent chance of reaching it before he stabs you. Turn right after the next pelvic girdle.”

Legs was right about the odds. After the robot helped her navigate to within sight of the clearing, Desmond came close enough to slash the back of her new right thigh. Two weeks ago, the cut would have hamstrung her. Today, the blade just rebounded off whatever metal Legs had used to encase that portion of the prosthetic. The strike still caused Mika to stumble, but it disrupted Desmond’s rhythm too. She made it to the clearing without taking another hit and then into the giant, upturned rib cage.

Where she finally whirled to face him.

Desmond stopped a few meters from her and wiped his helmet with his free hand, clearing away most of Smog’s spray. The inside of the visor remained foggy, though. How much could he see?

Enough to point his knife at her new forearm. “Who were you talking to?”

Through her peripheral vision, Mika noted the location of the hanzi characters on the big sternum. Her memory hadn’t failed her — this section of the bone exhibited the same stress-fracture marks as the one she’d kicked through earlier. But Legs’ ironic The men delved too greedily and too deep message indicated there was still some mithrol here. She’d need to take a step forward to center herself above the characters. “I’ve been consulting the ghosts of everyone you betrayed.”

Desmond didn’t look spooked, but he did scan the rib cage.

The joke was on him: her only “living” ally was hiding in a dead dragon on the edge of the boneyard. “Seriously, Desmond, what the fuck?”

He wiped his visor again, with similarly mixed results — the inside was only slightly less cloudy. He must be dying to raise the thing and let his helmet vent … But then he really would be dying.

And he’d deserve it.

Mika tapped the back of her head, which was still tender from what he’d done to it the first time they’d been in this rib cage. “You’re not going to say anything? You don’t think you owe me an explanation?”

He angled his knife to point at her thigh. “Who patched you up? Is there another mining gang out here?”

“So that’s what this is all about? A cash grab? I know things are tight at Fleet, but I never figured you for a mercenary who would kill his crew for money.”

Desmond’s visor had defogged to the point that Mika could see his eyes narrow — that barb had landed. But he stayed where he was and tapped his helmet. “Maybe I’m just tired of running shoestring operations with second-rate shit.”

“Maybe.” Keep pushing. And don’t cry. “Or maybe it was that Bheka woman — the one who choked to death in the refinery. Was this just a love-sick puppy thing? Did she convince you to throw away your precious protocols and co-opt my dissertation to impress her?”

“Don’t talk about her.”

Was that it? The real reason one of her oldest friends had tried to cave her skull in and left her to die? It was probably as much of a reason as she was going to get.

Unless Desmond’s helmet suddenly started broadcasting loudly enough for Mika to hear — that must be Leg’s doing.

“I thought I had a month,” a female voice said.

“My pilot took an insane shortcut,” Desmond responded, but not in real-time. There were ship noises in the background — the hissing sound the Mantis’s ecological cycler had made intermittently for what felt like eons until Atalia tracked down the source. This must be a recording.

“Good for her. Doesn’t change the fact that raw mithrol is caustic as all hell, and everything’s breaking.”

“You can’t be there when we land.”

“Honey, that’s not the plan. But if you want it to work — if you want your share so you can help your mom pay the medical bills your miserly Fleet salary won’t cover — you have to buy me at least another week.”

“The Mantis is already having issues. Maybe I can extend one of them …”

“Thanks. I miss you.”

Desmond — the Desmond in the clearing with Mika — tried to turn his comm off. It seemed to work for a second, but then another recorded conversation broadcast from his speaker:

“I need to know you’ll do what we talked about if this gets messy,” the same female voice said — Bheka. It had to be her.

“There’s no reason for it to get messy.”

“Contingencies, Honey. Don’t they teach that in Fleet?”

“… One of the crew is new. Her name is Mika. I don’t want to — ”

“This is an all-or-nothing deal, Desmond. And the protocol for my crew is to be thorough. I need you to commit.”

“I already said I would. But it won’t come to that.”

Desmond smacked his helmet. The next recording played anyway:

“Desmond?” pleaded Bheka. “Please respond.”

“Where have you been?”

“Something started jamming us. I don’t know how long I can keep this channel open, but everything’s fucked. We’re getting out. I guess you won’t have to choose. Just come in carefully. Or better yet, don’t come at all. I’ll see you — ”

Static.

“Bheka? Bheka, do you read? … Bheka!”

Mika couldn’t be certain, but she thought a tear had trickled down Desmond’s cheek. “Your mom’s sick again?” she asked. Last she’d heard, Mrs. Walsh had beaten her cancer. Had it come back?

Desmond nodded and raised his knife. “Doesn’t change anything.”

“No. Not now.” Mika took a deep breath. “All right, you want to know what kept me alive?” Slowly, she raised her forearm comm to her mouth. “Legs?” she said as she double-tapped the blue button with her natural hand, hoping Desmond would think she was trying to change frequencies. “Don’t block my signal.” She finished tapping the morse code for II.

The scanner on Desmond’s belt went haywire, flashing the universal sequence of lights civilians were taught to fear and the military was trained to respond to: a KI alert. The pattern indicated extreme proximity.

Desmond scanned the area more urgently than before. But when his eyes returned to Mika’s new arm, he recoiled.

Yes, you bastard. I’m triggering the alert.

The thought made her want to recoil too, but she needed that instant to stamp down with her other fabricated limb — the leg that had so much extra power. She leaned forward so her foot went into the sternum at an angle, one that should generate a fountain that arced away from her and toward Desmond. This time, she didn’t need three strikes; one was enough to kick through the hanzi characters for delved too deeply and the decaying layers of bone beneath.

Her boot came up dripping, coated in a silvery, viscous liquid that had already eaten away most of the sole. Whatever passed for nerve endings in her new foot were screaming about the similarly rapid corrosion.

No geyser, though. Why had she expected the remaining mithrol to be under pressure?

Desmond hesitated just long enough for her to correct her mistake. By the time he finally charged, she’d dropped to her knees and jammed her new arm into the hole she’d stamped in the sternum. And before his knife could reach one of the soft spots in her suit, she yanked her prosthetic hand out and flung a handful of mithrol onto Desmond’s visor, splattering it from one side to the other.

He staggered, recovered, and nearly skewered her with another lunge, blind as it must have been. But she hopped out of reach.

And then the mithrol had its effect on his seals.

He didn’t scream like Jabare had after the animals came to her rescue. But when Desmond tore his eroding helmet off, his eyes and tongue were swelling at the same rate, and the way he ripped at his throat was almost identical. Mika turned away before his cervical vertebrae snapped, but she still heard the crunch, and it still made her shudder — both for him and for her.

She’d used her KI hardware to distract her ex-friend, then employed one result of KI research — the mithrol — to burn an opening for another: the Strangler virus Smog had sprayed on Desmond’s suit.

So what did that make her?

Legs didn’t suggest the obvious after dashing into the rib cage a moment later. Or maybe the robot didn’t want to draw attention to what it had been about to do: the “II” was extended to full height again and holding an equally tall rod of bone bent in the shape of …

A yesterEarth bow. With an arrow notched and ready to fire.