Watching Yute (28 page)

As Cipriana headed for the north door,
she saw other guards. Some were standing around. They hadn’t quite
broken down like the first one she saw, but they were not at ease.
Similar, short-lived expressions of relief greeted her as they
stepped out of the way. She could hear sobbing up ahead, and her
stomach dropped. She could tell who it was.

When she got to the top of the stairs,
her worst fears were confirmed. There lay Marcus, still and
lifeless. Next to him sat one of the guards. He looked at Cipriana
and pointed at her first aid kit. “Much too late for that. I don’t
think he had a chance.”

A few metres away was Cheryl, just as
motionless, except that Cassidy was crumpled up by her side,
sobbing against Cheryl’s shoulder.

“
I told her to leave
Cheryl's body alone,” the guard sitting by Marcus morosely said,
“for evidence and stuff... you know. But she wasn’t about to listen
to me.”

Both Marcus and Cheryl had terrible
abdominal wounds, and there was considerable amounts of blood on
the stone floor. Some on Cassidy, too.

Cipriana lowered herself onto her
knees, before her knees decided to do that for her. She found her
hands were shaking. She closed her eyes. Evidently now in charge,
she tried to think. Speaking to no one in particular, she asked.
“Who did this?”

“
Some guy who came with the
storm. Had a knife. Left with the storm. It didn’t seem to slow him
much. Cassidy and Jim chased him, but the storm wouldn’t let them
get too far.”

Cipriana sighed deeply, and slowly made
her way over to Marcus. “Jim and Maxine went to base to call for
some kind of backup. Please go and make sure they call Colonel
Calvert and the Grand Elder.” “Yes Sir.” Cipriana stared at Marcus
as the sound of boots on sandy stone ran off to follow her
orders.

Cipriana got closer to Marcus, and
looked at him for a bit. Either he died with his eyes closed, or
someone had closed them for him out of respect. He looked more
troubled that she had ever seen him in life, which was
understandable. Even still, being closer to him helped her hands
shake less. Wake up, you crazy bastard. Open your eyes, walk it
off, then make some charmingly folksy comment about it all, and
make it alright.

It didn’t happen. Cipriana leaned in
closer. “Sir.” She whispered, then gave the tip of his nose a
gentle, slow little kiss.

:::Core Nanite Colony Log:::

:::Heat differential detected. Possible
potential host.

:::Confirmed potential host.

:::Satellite nanite colony detected in
potential host

:::Dispatch Core colony command
information.

:::Core colony command information
successfully sent.

:::Deactivating deceased host nanites
for self disassembly.

~~~

Maxine had just gotten off the radio.
Jim had helped her get the relevant information, but it didn’t seem
real.

Everyone at the base was now concerned,
many going to the temple to provide any support they
could.

Maxine saw a lot of eyes on her. If
Cipriana was now the acting C.O., maybe that made Maxine the acting
den mother. She gathered her calm. “Wanda, stay with Jim for a
while. I’m going to wait at the helipad.” It seemed more helpful
than sitting in the base, and she didn’t really want to go to the
temple. “If anyone needs me, that’s where I’ll be until backup
lands.”

“
I’m coming with-” came the
voice of someone else.

“
No. Stay here.” She needed
some space. A little quiet. Who would get to the helipad first, her
or the incoming backup?

~~~

Cipriana sat kneeling by Cheryl and
Cassidy for a while. Cassidy had stopped sobbing more or less,
still breathing heavily, face hidden. What the hell do you say?
Cipriana just put her hand on Cassidy’s shoulder.

Cassidy jerked her shoulder free with
an unintelligible moan. “Go away!” Her sobbing made another
surge.

Cipriana gave another deep sigh, and
wiped another tear off her face. She kind of wished she had been
here for the attack, as if maybe she could have made a difference.
Maybe they should have been carrying guns after the previous
attack, even if they had to be outside the temple. She looked over
to Marcus. He probably never would have gone for that. Him and his
damned ghost.

Cipriana stood, and wandered over
towards the statue, and looked the giant stone dog in the face.
Well? Do you have any bright ideas? Any great folksy wisdom that
you’d whisper to Marcus?

Didn’t think so.

~~~

Maxine hadn’t been at the helipad very
long before Grand Elder Armil’s airlimb approached, and landed.
When the side door opened, the black-suited G.E.G. Storm soldiers
poured out with their usual speedy grace, but in larger numbers,
flowing around Armil like a river around a boulder. The female
Colonel assumed position a few paces behind Armil.

The solders made a sizable formation,
two blocks of roughly fifty on either side of the doorway as Armil
walked forward to Maxine, with a worried expression.

“
I have more soldiers
searching the area,” Armil said, cutting right to business, “and
Colonel Calvert has many of his own men in on the effort in the
region. I was gong to send half of my fellows to the temple, and
the rest around the base.”

Maxine wasn’t really hearing any of it.
Seeing the mass of troops and Armil suddenly made it a little more
real. She felt her body tremble, and without really realizing it,
she slumped to her knees. She put her hand over her mouth, as if it
would help her maintain her calm.

Armil knelt in front of Maxine, and put
his arms around her, with those long traditional sleeves. Maxine
couldn't hold it back anymore, and started crying. “Why? How? I
don’t…” Armil just squeezed her, gesturing to the troops to go on
ahead.

Once the troops were gone, Maxine
calmed down enough that she heard another person, and raised her
head from Armil’s shoulder to see a thin man in his late thirties,
with a couple knee-height metal cases beside him.

“
Oh. Uhm. Hello.” He said.
“I’m Doctor Andrew Brock. The ah..”

Armil stood with Maxine. “I’m borrowing
him from Colonel Calvert. He’s going to run a few tests, just in
case.”

Maxine tried to collect herself.
Amazing what a nice hug from the world leader of your people can do
for you. She looked at ‘Brock’. “Oh. Hi. Sorry, I’m Maxine. I’m
sorry about”

Brock interrupted. “No need to
apologize. I understand.”

“
What kind of
tests?”

The female Colonel spoke up. “There was
some intelligence suggesting some nanite-related technologies were
operating without any sort of clearance.”

Brock chimed in again. “My speciality
in recent years has become just that. Colonel Calvert has had me
very busy looking for any signs of them.”

Nanites. Brock. A light went off in
Maxine's head. “Oh, you! Doc Brock! You were involved with the
whole Erebus mess!”

Doc Brock held back a smirk. The little
bit of fame he had gained since then always amused him. “Yes. It
doesn’t look like anything quite as nasty is happening here, but
given today’s events, it was decided I may as well come here
sooner, rather than later.”

Nanites. Well, Maxine certainly hadn’t
seen any microscopic robots, but that’s the point, isn’t it? She
certainly hadn’t seen anything like what had happened in Autar. “So
what now?” she asked the three of them- Doc Brock, the female
Colonel, and Armil.

Armil looked down the path to the
outpost. “I suppose I should talk to Cipriana, I assume she’s in
charge now?”

Maxine nodded “That’s
right.”

“
And we can leave Doctor
Brock to his testing.”

Brock nodded, and looked at his bulky
cases. “should have kept a couple soldiers to help me with
these.”

Maxine stepped up to the cases before
the Colonel ha a chance, and picked the cases up by the handles on
top. “I have them, Colonel… I never got your name, if I may ask,
Sir?”

The middle aged Colonel smiled slightly
with a nod. “Colonel Judith Nafim. Very well, soldier.”

Brock smirked. “Well, if anyone tells
me non-coms are wimps, I can now tell them otherwise with
authority.”

It was then that the wind decided to
pick up a little, providing them with the usual ‘dusting’ that
arrivals usually got.

“
It’s a bit late.” Maxine
said. Almost immediately, something in one of the cases started
beeping.

“
Put it down!” Brock said
with quiet urgency. As if it were a bomb, Maxine put both cases
down quickly, and stepped back. Brock opened the beeping one, and
pushed some buttons, and read a display inside. “There we are.
We’re covered in the little suckers now!” He stood and dusted the
sand off of him. “You said it was ‘a bit late’?”

Maxine replied quietly. “Any time
someone lands and visits, a tiny dust storm like that…” Colonel
Nafim dusted off her clothes, as if that might be enough to at
least get some of the nanites off of her.

“
And that never struck you
as odd?!”

Maxine stared into the ground, feeling
scolded. Sure, if you put it that way, it was quite odd. She
started to realize that a lot of things were odd around here.
“You’re saying... somehow nanites are...”

Brock fiddled with the equipment in his
case more. “It would seem so. The ones we just got coated in… I
don’t know what they do yet... but it seems I have my work cut out
for me.”

~~~

Cassidy and Cipriana walked down the
temple steps side by side as Armil’s soldiers rushed around. Some
of them brought a couple rigid body canisters to load Cheryl and
Marcus into. The bottom halves of these canisters were often used
as stretchers, but when they had the lids with them, they were as
unmistakable as a black civilian body bag.

Cipriana looked over to Cassidy to see
if she had taken any notice. If she did, Cassidy wasn’t giving any
signs of it. She just kept staring at the ground in front of them
as they walked, eyes wide and arms crossed but
trembling.

Most of the others from the shift had
left a while ago, directly after answering some basic questions,
but it had still been extremely difficult to get Cassidy to leave
Cheryl.

Despite the occasional soldier running
by, the walk back to the base had a crushing silence about it. The
only sound that registered to Cipriana was the occasional trembling
breaths that would come from Cassidy when she had to try harder not
to sob outright.

About halfway back, Cassidy stopped,
and looked out at the horizon. Cipriana waited, and looked between
Cassidy, and whatever she was looking at.

Cassidy took a deep breath, and said in
a fragile voice, “I should get the stuff from the... from the
camp.”

Cipriana took Cassidy’s hand. “No. You
don’t need anything from there right now. In fact, you don’t need
to go there at all. I’ll get the things. But later. Not
now.”

“…
but… the camp…!
It…”

Cipriana grabbed Cassidy into a hug,
and squeezed. Cassidy responded by squeezing back, hard. She burst
into full sobbing, and would have fallen if Cipriana hadn’t been
helping her stand. Cipriana considered for a moment that being
there for Cassidy was easier than thinking about the deaths
directly. It was slightly less painful to help than to mourn.
Slightly. It was hard not to be swept up by Cassidy’s uncontrolled
sobs. She found herself again wishing she had something useful to
say.

They heard a couple soldiers jogging
closer. Cassidy let Cipriana go, and stepped back, trying hard to
contain herself. The soldiers were going to just jog by, but
looking at Cipriana and Cassidy, they stopped. “Are you two
alright?”

What a stupid question. “Yes, wh-” her
voice only now making her realize that she herself was still
trembling, Cipriana noticed where the soldiers were looking.
Cassidy had a lot of Cheryl’s blood on her, and Cipriana had smears
of blood from both her fallen friends. “It’s not our blood.
Go.”

“
Yes Sir.” The soldiers
continued on, but having her attention drawn to the blood sent
Cassidy to the ground on her knees with a weak little
scream.

Cipriana knelt down by her, and put her
arm around her. “We should get going. When we get back to the
outpost, we can… we can get cleaned up, and lie down.”

Cassidy’s trembling became somehow more
rigid. She leaned forward, away from Cipriana’s arm, and put her
hands on the ground, grabbing at it. Quietly, angrily, almost in a
hiss, she asked “Why bother?”

Cipriana could only re-assert the arm
around Cassidy’s shoulders and wait. They sat there for a while,
and Cipriana watched as one salty droplet after another impacted
the dusty ground.

Cassidy wiped her fingertips across her
abdomen, and brought a smear of Cheryl’s blood to her lips, and
gave it a small kiss. She clenched her fist, and let out a painful
sound. The sound was swallowed into the surrounding silence as if
it had never existed. Time continued for a while, ignorant of
anything else.