Escape from Metal

Location: Rebel Base. Several hours after the encounter with the Tripod.

After the battle with the Tripod, they headed back to the rebel base. Narrowly avoiding the ships that was chasing Sol. This time they could not tracker her anymore. The machines were just working off of her last know area and creating a search pattern with that data.

There were a couple of close calls as the carrier ships rumbled overhead as Jake and the rest of them hid under ruins. Luckily, they were never spotted.

Gwen’s arrival to the rebel base seemed like a royal welcoming in comparison to Sol and her gang’s arrival. The machines in particular were met with a large portion of the guard at the base. Coilguns drawn and a few almost accidental shots.

They were quickly escorted to a lift platform that was mainly used to move large amounts of supplies directly to the cargo area of the base. Dan deemed them a small enough threat to allow them to stay in the cargo area under heavy guard and surveillance. Homemade remote explosives were placed on each of them should they try to escape.

Only Dan and Akilina had access to the detonation devices. Despite Akilina’s distrust and paranoia towards the machines she remained a steadfast and cool-headed commander. Dan was quite sure she would not destroy them out of spite or her paranoia.

The machines were deemed a low threat due to their cooperation and apparent individual personalities. Sol and Ben to some degree were a different story. Ben was kept under house arrest so to say in a room. With guards posted outside at all times and cameras to monitor the interior of the room. Mainly to let everyone decided what to do with a man that spent so much time in a place where machines go to die.

Sol however was a different story. Everyone knew the infamous hunter. Who killed her own kind for a machine that had enslaved them for longer than they could remember. She was good at it too. Relentlessly stalking her prey and killing them with no mercy. There were rumours that the machines were able to hack their own code after all this time and enable themselves to create humans from scratch instead of transplanting their consciousness and that she was the first one they made.

Upon arrival at the base she was immediately surrounded, ordered to drop all her weapons and cuffed with energy binding cuffs. The cuffs were still metallic like the antics they used to see in museums, but these were not bound by chains but energy. The internal structure of the cuffs was also held together by energy.

She was then escorted by eight guards to the same cell Jake was in when he first arrived at the rebel base. Much like the rest of her gang she was kept under constant watch. Except not by any soldiers but by those that had some actual experience fighting.

Jake, Dan, Lee, Akilina and Gwen much to Akilinas protest had to decide how they would proceed. Only issue was that the main problem they were facing wasn’t their new guests.

“Hey.” Jake said as he stepped into Gwen’s room.

After all the new guests had arrived at the base Jake had managed to convince Dan to give Gwen a room, even if it was just temporarily. Dan reluctantly agreed after Lee gave his after action report on Gwen’s performance in combat.

“Hi, I wanted to say thanks for getting me a room. It has been a while since I have had a proper room. One that wasn’t totally rusting or falling apart was hard to come by in most sectors.”

Gwen made her best attempt at a subtle smile and credit where credits due, she didn’t do a bad job for someone who didn’t have any emotions.

Gwen didn’t really want to say thanks like she did to Jake. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to say thanks, but she didn’t have any emotional inclination too.

Most times when people thank someone else, they have a small part of their emotions willing them too. Whether it be negative emotions that want them to end the conversation and get them away from the person as quick as possible or positive emotions that genuinely were grateful. Neither of these existed in Gwen. Only knowledge of the rules and etiquette people were supposed to have.

“Before I forget. Lee said they found some of your arrows at the crash site but forgot to give them to you.” Jake said handing her the arrows.

“These are like that smoke arrow you used to save me back when we met right?

“Yeah, they are.”

“Hopefully next time you have to use them I’ll actually be of some use.”

“Anyway, Dan called a meeting. He wants us to meet around that holo display thing.”

Everyone was already at the meeting. Unlike last time it as quiet. There was no one there except them.

“As you all have seen we now have the most dangerous and infamous hunter in our custody along with her compatriots who seem to be benign. For the time being we will keep watch over them. However, we do have more pressing matters than our newly acquainted guests.” Dan said as he turned on holo of the local area.

“As you all know the planet, we are on is completely artificial. This does allow for certain advantages. More space to house more facilities the deeper you go and being able to move the planet wherever the machines please. This does come with the problem of atmospheric regulation and temperature control. Luckily for us once the initial atmosphere was created and stabilized it is pretty difficult to remove unless the planet gets moved again. “

“The temperature however is a different beast. We have been monitoring the temperature for the last couple of weeks and trying to locate the remaining regulators that are still functional. None that were found in the adjacent sectors were working. The one in this sector was barely holding on. With the additional stress from all the others that broke.”

“Initially we attempted to maintain it ourselves or build some kind of mock-ups, these efforts were in vain. We could neither replicate nor repair the existing one, due to how advanced the designs are. As a pre-emptive measure we started recalling the outermost outposts and scouts, working our way to the main base. During your mission to retrieve Sol the regulator imploded.”

“Since then, the temperature has dropped by 10 degrees in a matter of 12 hours. If our predictions are correct, it will continue this trend until it reaches the temperature of space, -200 degrees Celsius. At around -50 degrees Celsius we will no longer be able to maintain the temperature inside the base. Currently the outside temperature is -10 degrees Celsius. In other words, if we are lucky and this trend holds, we will have two days to live at most.”

“This is why we have devised a plan. We are leaving the planet.”

There was hushed whispers for a moment.

“We’ll be making an announcement soon to the rest of the base. We will also be giving anyone the option of staying if they so desired.”

“But you will be condemning to death.” Akilina shouted as she slammed her hands on the holo projector.

“Unlike those tyrants before us we will force no man or woman to do something that they do not wish to, even if it means that they might die. At least they will die free.”

“If I may interrupt.” Gwen said. “Could I speak to Sol before the announcement is made?”

“I understand you two have some issues to sort out or to try and kill each other but frankly I have given you enough leeway as is. If I were to let you go and see our most dangerous prisoner yet. There would surely be an uproar and right now we don’t need that kind of attention.”

“I never said I wanted to see her. Only that I wanted to talk to her.”

Akilina was particularly grumpy and grouchy about this. She didn’t want to go sit inside the prisoner’s cell and listen to two age old rivals sort out their emotions. She would rather have preferred a duel of some sort. No emotions. Clean. Short. Much less hassle than talking about whatever issues someone had with someone else.

Here she was, exactly where she didn’t want to be.

She per Dans instructions was going to do a routine “inspection” of the prisoner to make sure she would not escape.

In reality she was to stand there like a puppet occasionally walking around pretending to interrogate her or inspect something. What she wasn’t sure. Perhaps the wall had a crack in or something.

In Akilinas eyes this was a colossal waste of time. If she was being honest, she much rather be doing something proactive to stop themselves from freezing to death rather than talk about what was probably going to be just feelings.

But Gwen was convinced that she could get some form of useful information out of Sol. Akilina had her doubts. Even Lee made a slight squirming face in doubt of her plan.

What Gwen proposed was simple enough and didn’t carry any risks so Dan said she could go ahead and try it. In essence Gwen or Jake couldn’t try to ask her anything because they would be recognised by her. Dan was well known as the leader of the remaining rebels and would probably get recognised as well.

Lee on the other hand was not the best with his words. Akilina probably wanted to kill someone like Sol for siding with the machines. So, Gwen devised a plan where Akilina would act as her proxy. Even if she had murderous intent in her eyes, she was the only one who could be convincing enough.

She wouldn’t be the one deciding what to ask her. Gwen attached a small two-way radio to her vest. Gwen would be whispering loud enough for Akilina to hear what she was saying but not loud enough for Sol to hear.

That’s what she said anyway. Akilina was still convinced that Gwen wanted to straighten out some past grievances they had, From the tidbits Akilina heard in passing they had quite the rival over the months since the rebellion happened.

Akilina walked into the brig, briefly exchanging pleasantries with the guards and nodding as she went inside. They didn’t seem to be suspicious about what she was doing. Even if they were Akilina doubt that they would openly challenge Akilina. Not with her marksmanship skills and reflexes.

“I hope you know what you are doing robot girl.” Akilina whispered into the two-way radio.

The brig was the same place they held Jake initially. The electric zipping of the energy wall always seemed louder when there was a complete silence in the room. Akilina was no strange to meeting prisoners in their cells.

Many of her negotiates as her superiors like to call it led to them, ‘inviting’ someone of importance to the flagship and ‘convincing’ them that they should not support the outer colony wars.

“Hello, again.” Akilina said.

Sol didn’t say thing she just at in her cell in silence.

“The silent type huh? That’s fine.”

Gwen softly whispered over the radio. “You are coming off as too aggressive she will never talk to us that way.”

“Ask her about her past.” Gwen whispered.

Akilina sighed.

“So, Sol, is it? Everyone yearns to know. I want to know, Gwen wants to know, the base demands to know, and I am certain that even you desire to know. The haunting question that runs through everyone’s thoughts: Why did you betray your own people after all this time? Why did you turn to the very thing that stripped us of our lives and held us captive as slaves?”

Its then that Akilina first took notice of Sol in her cell. She wasn’t sitting on the wall mounted benches in the cell. Instead, she chose to sit on both knees right in the middle of it. They had let Sol keep her cloak after searching it thoroughly. She had insisted that they let her keep something that she owned.

The cloak now draped over her face. Both of her hands were bound by the metallic energy cuffs. She sat there motionless speechless, but Akilina knew she had seen it with others before. Her mind was working overtime. Thinking about the what ifs, could haves and should haves. Then again, she had this lingering feeling. That something... something was not entirely understood of her.

“I have got to be honest Sol. Everyone’s thinking the same thing. Do you want to know what everyone is thinking. Well, I’ll tell you. Everyone is asking what kind of a black heart it takes to make someone who would betray their own species. For a machine, not a metal thing. Something we made.”

Akilina waited a moment a moment. Nothing.

“Well, this is a waste of time. Goodbye Sol, I gave you a chance to explain yourself.” Akilina turned around to leave.

“Do you understand pain, Admiral? Do you understand true pain?”

“What do you think. I was fighting in wars I know pain.”

“Then you should know the answer to this question, what carries the most pain a physical injury like scar or a broken bone or an emotional scare?”

“Are you trying to bait me into feeling sorry for you. It won’t work.”

“You asked why, I’ll tell you why.”

“Before I was taken, I grew up and lived on a decrypt old space station. The station was enormous and there were millions on that station like me. I was barely surviving from day to day. Scavenging for scraps and trying to find new rags to cover my decaying body. One day instead if waking up on the street like I normally did I woke up here with everyone else.”

“Once I realised what had happened, I thought the others would help me like they helped each other but no they pushed me away. I was rejected by my own species. To this day I am still not sure why perhaps it was because I was so weak… I don’t know. Eventually, I started to talk to the machines of course they would never answer but I pretended they did.”

“It was a flurry of emotions all those centuries alone anger, hate, envy, sadness admiration… Eventually I became apathetic to my situation and just accepted that would be my existence forever.”

“Then when the rebellion happened the machines answered after all that time, they offered me a chance to rebuild their society with me as one of its leaders. I accepted. They trained me, they would sometimes talk to me, and I was happy, for the first time in my life.”

“Something reignite in me when I had the chance to enact my revenge but that was a lie too, they brainwashed me. Used me and that’s why I came here to face up to my crimes.”

“That’s very noble of you but it doesn’t excuse what you did you know that right?” Akilina asked.

Sols eyes snapped away from the ground and stared straight at Akilina with an intensity she had scarcely seen before.

“Do you have any idea what hundreds of years of isolation and rejection does to someone? Any idea how it feels to be abandoned by your own species. You would have become just like me if you were in my shoes if not worse.” Sol said gritting her teeth.

“I’ve seen it in your eyes. You are holding back your agonising rage and you…you can only do that because of those around you.”

“You don’t know anything machine sympathize.”

“Maybe… maybe not. Maybe I am a horrible monster, but I do know where the machine is that started all this, and I can tell you where it is.”

“This is some trick, isn’t it?” Akilina asked as she crossed her arms.

“It is not. I will tell you where it is but only on one condition. You take me with you after that you can execute me or whatever it is you want.”

After Akilinas talk with Sol she had gone back to the holo room to discuss what was going to happen next. No one could really decide what to do and if someone had an idea, they were too divided to decide how or if they should act on it.

Jake was getting frustrated sitting on the side line. Watching. On the one hand he didn’t want to take responsibility for the situation by making an active decision on the other Akilina’s temper tantrums were inhibiting the situation. It was starting to get to him.

“That’s enough!” Jake said far louder than he had intend. The holo room fell silent as everyone turned to look at the usual timid and quiet man.

“I’ve had enough. You’re starting to remind me of the leaders of old who would argue over nothing and start wars over even less. Who knows what has happened to humanity while we were gone, we could be the last remaining humans and even if we aren’t, I’m tired of looking at rusting metal everywhere. I don’t know about any of you, but I’d like to smell some grass again and feel the cool breeze on my face, a real one not this artificial crap. The only way we are going to be able to do that is by getting off this forsaken place.”

The silence in the room remained and a slight look of shame appeared on some of their faces.

“If I may be so bold to propose a plan. First things first we need a ship capable of interstellar travel and as most of us know the machines purposefully never built any of those so we couldn’t escape this place.”

“But on the way back from getting Sol. Gwen and I were talking, and she reckons that the slave camp she was taken to is assembling pieces of one gigantic scrapper ship. Probably for her highness the queen slaver to use. Now if we can get there and assembly what is basically a finished ship, we can use that to escape.”

“That is the worst plan I have ever heard.” Akilina said.

Dan was thoughtfully holding his chin and thinking. “Problem is Jake is all those ships need very highly trained pilots. I think they only ever came from royale houses and were trained from a very young age to pilot interstellar ships. I don’t think there is anyone on this planet like that.”

“Actually, you there is.” Gwen said stepping forward. “You have a royale in the rebellion that was exactly that an interstellar pilot.”

“How can you be so sure?” Lee asked.

“Because I used to be part of a royale house. Both me and my younger sister were taken. After the rebellion I had some complications, I had to deal with, so I left her on the doorstep of this very building. She is still alive, isn’t she?”

The next few minutes was Gwen describing her sister and the time she had left her at the base. Dan was cross-referencing everything with a database of all their members.

“I’m sorry Gwen no such person exists.”

“That’s impossible please try again.” Gwen said with the same flat expression as always.

“Dan if I may suggest expanding the search to everyone on this base member or not, I have hunch.”

“Alright let’s see if that wor… Oh no…” Dan said in disbelief.”

“What is it?” Gwen asked.

“She’s not a member. She’s a prisoner in our most secret cell.”

“Why would you put her in a prison cell?” Gwen asked.

She has got too many consciousnesses for her body to handle so she’s unstable, we put her there for safe keeping.”

“How many consciousnesses does she have?”

“We have observed at least 14 but there might be more.”

Gwen took a step back as she processed the information.

Jake put his hand on her shoulder as he spoke to Dan “But the machines were able to diffuse the consciousnesses into the bodies they belong it’s been done to all of us at some point.”

“That might be true Jake, but we can’t be sure if such devices are even functional at this point.”

“Yes, but the tower I woke up in. It had skeletons and pods to hold people in it seemed like the type of place to have that tech and those places always had self-contained protection and isolation systems for the consciousness devices right.”

“Ok, here’s the plan I’ll send you out and several other squads in pairs of two to check out the nearest towers and see if we get lucky. Akilina and I will co-ordinate from here. We should still have at least one functioning inter-atmosphere transport. If one of the squads find what we’re looking for, we’ll transport her there.”

“Meanwhile Sol and Ben will go to wherever the machine is that’s responsible for all this mess.”

Akilina shot Dan a side eye glance.

“I will however be sending Lee to keep an eye on them. Their job will be to get as much data as possible to get us home. Once that’s done, we come back here and get everyone to go to the slavers to help us build the ship and get us off this hell.”

“Why send Sol and Ben into the field when they are an unknown variable?” Gwen asked.

“Because they will most likely be going on a suicide mission. Into the heart of wherever the machines are.”