Requiem (71 page)

Two of the
sentinel's thrusters had been disabled before take off but still
the blackness was encroaching around Seline's eyes, throbbing at
the edges, trying to engulf her.

About fifteen
minutes passed before the sentinel cut its thrust and drifted along
its path towards the gate with the trojan crew inside.

'Where do you
think we are?' whispered Seline.

Sear projected
a small holographic display from his forearm. It showed a three
dimensional image of Icarus. He pointed with his finger to where a
single red dot was glowing just outside the exterior layer of the
model of Icarus.

'This is us,'
said Sear. 'We're almost at Icarus now. By the looks of this,
Icarus has only just emerged from the gate. We should be starting
to decelerate any m-'

Seline's arm
shot up to brace herself as the sentinel slowed. The five of them
kept their eyes on the tiny red dot as it approached the larger
blue dot. Closer and closer until the red passed into the blue. The
sentinel was no longer slowing down but moving at a constant
pace.

Sear shuffled
into place. He pulled a small blade from the compartment on his
wrist and traced it along the sealant running along the edges of
the panel. He put the blade back in its place and placed both feet
on the panel. Kicked once, twice, a third time, and the panel gave
way, flung out into the darkness. Sear looked out from the hole. He
turned to face Seline, the blackness welling in his eyes like it
would pour forth from him at any moment. He said nothing, only
motioned with his head through the hole where the panel had been
and gently pushed himself from out of the vessel. Mercer
immediately followed, then Carex, Seline, and Therin.

They were clear
of the dead sentinel and now floating in a vast open space.
Seline's eyes slowly adjusted to the depth of the surrounding
shadows. In the distance, further towards the centre of Icarus, a
purple glow offered a quiet light. In the other direction, towards
the open vacuum of space, an enormous door was closing. The light
from the sun, bleeding through tiny, transient spaces between the
swarming sentinels. Seline stared out the closing gap. The urge to
escape almost overwhelmed her before the door could close.

There was a
shadow in the corner of her eyes. Sear was right next to her. He
placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him.

'No going back
now,' he said.

'We lost that
option a long time ago,' she said.

Sear nodded,
turned and moved past the others, following the Trojan sentinel
towards the source of the purple light.

There was too
much to lose – far too much. It was a mistake her coming here, she
thought.

'No going back
now'. Is that what Sear meant?

They would be
too late to save everyone. Maybe they could save just a few. Would
it be worth it?

Does losing
all but a few brain cells count as survival?

Seline looked
around the internals of the planet, the space station, the machine,
the animal. Huge towers and rods of metal, some kilometres long and
others kilometres wide, jutted towards her from the looming walls.
They hung from above and below, encasing the inner walls of Icarus
like an inverted city, conducting silent storms like synaptic
flashes.

Seline heard
Sear repeat her name over the comm. Her thrusters gave a small kick
and she followed the others.

They stayed
close to the drifting corpse of the sentinel. The haze of violet
grew thicker. It swayed and pulsed with a cold luminescence,
obscuring the surrounding shapes.

There was
movement overhead. Everyone came to stop. The sentinel floated
onward before a large, mechanical limb shifted into place above it.
The purple shadows passed over the limb and its numerous, bulky
joints, splitting into hundreds of tiny, convoluted shapes as it
descended on the sentinel. Each tiny limb touched upon the
sentinel, fitting into its rightful place atop its crown as they
made contact. The sentinel was pulled up towards a dark, sightless
opening where it disappeared from view.

'Where do you
think it's going?' asked Seline.

'Repair. Maybe
scrap. Who knows,' said Therin.

The group
continued onward towards the centre of Icarus.

They were all
looking about themselves for something to appear out of the blanket
of purple but there was nothing. No elusive shadow or distant
motion, just an uncomfortable silence pressing down upon them.

Seline
constantly looked at the time displayed on her optics. She could
feel it within herself, the war of time, torn between the fear of
their journey into their enemy's heart and the knowledge that with
every passing second, the civilization of her companions, and now
herself, suffered.

With a motion
of her hand she removed the time display panel from her optics. She
looked around nervously, wondering if her heart would be able to
stand much more. She remembered what Belameir had once told her.
That each person's heart has a certain number of beats in it before
it dies and if you spend your time worrying your whole life then
your heart will use up all its beats and run itself to death. The
more she thought about it the more obscene the thought became, like
some urban legend every mother was supposed to tell their children
at a certain age. Still, she slowed her breathing and relaxed her
muscles as best she could.

'This place
seems barren. I was expecting there to be more to it,' she
said.

'Like what?'
said Therin.

'I dunno. Like
a pulse or something. Some kind of indication of life.'

'It's a
machine. It doesn't have a heart so why would it have a pulse?'

Therin examined
one of the small screens displaying on her arm. 'There's a change
in density up ahead. I think we might be approaching the edge of
the cloud.'

'Any indication
of solid structures?' asked Sear.

'Not yet.'

The purple haze
began to thin and be replaced by darkness. The others disappeared
before her as if swallowed within the shadows. There was a voice
over the comm but she couldn't hear it. She reached her hand out
and could've sworn she could feel that darkness, thick, elusive,
and squirming between her fingers.

Seline fumbled
with the side of her helmet for the switch, found it. The blackness
fizzled into life, replaced with a watery green film. She could see
far in the distance, beams crossed every which way, a thick netting
of metal and woven fibres. Sear and the others were ahead of her
again. She turned to see where she'd come from. The purple haze was
too bright to look at through the night-vision, it hurt her eyes so
she turned back to where the darkness was.

'We have to
keep moving, Seline,' came Sear's voice in her ear.

She breathed
out, thrust forward again.

Sear was the
first to reach the enormous net. He was running his hand across one
of the thick beams. He disengaged his eyes and continued
onward.

'What is it?'
asked Therin.

'It's nothing.
I just thought I saw something moving inside the beam.'

The others,
including Seline looked at the beam Sear had touched, saw nothing
but the slightly reflective sheen of the lopsided column. As they
manoeuvred between the mechanical bramble, their progress faltered.
The beams had quickly become dense and difficult to move
through.

Sear constantly
scanned the area as they moved. She asked him if he was looking for
something in particular.

'I'm looking
for an easier way through,' he said. 'We're losing valuable time
fighting through this forest.'

'At least the
sentinels can't get in here,' said Seline.

'Good point,'
said Mercer. 'But those little insect things are beginning to creep
me out.'

Seline had just
finished squeezing between a gap in the columns when the words
registered.

'What insect
things?' she asked.

He looked back.
'Like the little thing next to your hand.'

She looked at
her left hand braced on one of the pillars. A small, pale shadow,
barely darker than the shade of the pillar itself was scuttling
towards her hand. She yanked her hand away.

'What the
hell!'

Mercer stifled
a laugh.

'Why didn't I
notice that before?' Seline asked, not letting the insect escape
her sight.

'Probably
because you were looking for something much bigger,' said
Carex.

The tiny
machine was about the size of her fingernail. It was running a
small roller back and forth over the column as if smoothing out
some microscopic crease. She looked at the others, they were
already moving onward. She looked back at the tiny steam roller but
it had hurried out of sight. Seline started after the others,
ducking beneath another beam and coming up next to Mercer. She
looked around. The insects were scurrying all around them. One
stopped above Seline's head. It tapped its legs against the column.
She reached her hand out to touch it. It shuffled to the side and
swiped one of its toothpick legs at her then scuttled away.

'They're
maintenance drones,' said Therin, watching Seline out the corner of
her eye.

Seline looked
at where the drone had been tapping. It looked strangely organic.
This, she realised, is what the others were looking at. She reached
out and ran her hand over the column. As soon she touched it, the
area directly under her hand darkened almost into blackness, it
hardened and turned incredibly rigid. She moved her hand across but
wherever she moved it, the rigidity and the blackness would follow.
It behaved as if the surface itself were alive, detecting the
pressure from her hand and hardening in response. She pulled her
hand away, the dark patch lightened again.

'What is it?'
she asked.

'Maybe it's a
nervous system... or something equivalent,' said Carex.

'These tubes
are absolutely massive,' said Mercer. 'They might even stretch
across the whole ship.'

'It seems
organic,' said Seline.

'There could be
anything inside there,' said Sear, 'lubricants, fuel...'

'People,' said
Seline.

Sear looked
across at Seline. 'Lets get moving, before our imaginations get too
carried away.'

Another hour
passed and they were still struggling through the forest. The only
words that had been exchanged concerned whether someone was stuck
or when they might finally see an end. Seline tried to measure
progress by the number of insects she'd seen but had lost count on
several occasions. She was about to start counting again when she
noticed the forest had begun to thin out.

Sear spoke
without stopping. 'Therin, Seline; you two are the fastest, scout
ahead with the scanners and see what you can find.'

Sear passed the
scanner to Therin and she moved ahead of the group, jumping from
column to column, pressing off one and using her thrusters to push
her along to the next. Seline followed directly after.

Seline could
only just keep up with Therin. She scrambled over and around the
columns, balancing the force of each thrust with each push of her
hands and feet. She watched Therin to see what path she was taking
so that she could follow or make her own corrections. It didn't
take long for the forest to open up. She checked her speed, looking
through the surrounding canopy for the eyes of any sentinels.
Therin, she noticed, was doing the same.

They could see
through the forest now. Seline had moved slightly ahead of Therin.
'It looks like a giant wall,' she said.

Therin said
nothing.

Seline clung to
the last column of the forest. She looked out at a massive rift
between the edge of the forest and the far wall. She could almost
feel herself falling into that empty space.

She crossed the
chasm with a push and throttle of her thrusters. She stopped on the
opposite side with Therin close behind.

'We're really
exposed here. This doesn't feel right,' said Therin.

Seline placed
her hand on the wall. After a moment, the warmth penetrated her
glove. She pulled her hand away. 'Have we reached the far side? I
mean, have we gone straight through Icarus?'

'It can't be.'
Therin looked up then across. 'Look at the curvature of the wall.
It's going away from us. This must be a second layer. An inner
shell of some kind.'

'That's a good
sign, right?' asked Seline.

'And why is
that?' asked Therin.

'It means we're
getting closer to something that it believes is worth
protecting.'

'It could just
be some structural necessity. It might not be protecting
anything.'

'Found
anything?' said Sear over the comm.

'Yeah, but
you're not going to like it,' said Therin.

'I'm almost at
the end of the forest. I can see you... and the wall.'

Seline looked
back at the three figures hovering on the other side of the chasm,
waiting just as she had done.

'You're right,'
said Sear. 'I don't like this, one bit.'

As Sear,
Mercer, and Carex crossed the chasm Seline moved across the face of
the wall, running her hand across it, curious what might lie
beneath. Sear and the others looked over the radar. Sear floated
next to Seline and asked her what she was looking at. She pointed
at the tiny woven patterns that repeated over and over across the
vast expanse of metal. Sear took a closer look at where her finger
touched the wall.

'You see that?'
he said. 'That looks like a joint.' He turned to the crew. 'Therin,
get the cutter. By the looks of things there's a joint running
right along here. You can see the break in the fibres and a faint
line on the radar at about the same place.'

The others
looked over the screen and the wall while Seline looked back
towards the metal forest, a sinking feeling in her stomach.