FREE STORIES 2012(23)

He looked up at the elliptical compound and noticed chrome balloons floating around it. He was right. In the darkness of the canyon, the robots looked like mechanical jellyfish pulsating in a blood-colored abyss. It bothered Hersh that the robots paid him no mind; each one of those bags of hardware and gas were more intelligent than he was by a magnitude of a hundred. He felt like an ant on a factory floor. They drifted, doting on their inexplicable structure.

"We made it," Ameera purred, it came out more like a question.

His attention snapped away from the artificial man-o-war. He smiled at her. "Yeah, we had a great pilot." He found himself kissing her on the lips.

Ameera patted his cheek. "Hersh, don’t complicate things."

"I think we're well past complicated. I just wanted to say here and now with those uncaring intelligences overhead, that I love you, Ameera el-Ayeb."

"Hersh, we agreed to keep it light. My family would not approve."

"So what, you were just going to let me down easy when our tour was over?" He looked at the flashing med-alert on her uniform; she had suffered a concussion. He really shouldn't upset her.

"Weren't you?"

Wasn't he? Of course he was, but that was before he had almost lost her. Was he just emotionally raw from the accident? "Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I think so." Ameera blinked heavily. "So what’s the plan?"

"I think the harpies are evacuating Candor via the robot construct. If we can sneak into the emptying city we can call our ship and they’ll send in an extraction team to get us." It was a horrible plan, full of guess work and false hope, but it was all he could come up with.

"All right," she said and tried standing.

The fact that Ameera didn’t argue with him worried Hersh even more than the glowing med-alert. He had to keep her awake. He took her by the waist and they began to hobble toward the ruined transit tube. The extraterrestrial cold seeped in through their uniforms and into their bones. The lighter gravity made their staggering hike relatively quick and easy. That is, until they got to the wreck; then they both faltered.

"My God, Hersh, those are children!"

The terrible sight of the damaged tram hit them like a cluster bomb. Ameera’s knees buckled and he held her tight. "Don’t look, Ameera, it’s just harpy fledglings." But he looked.

He couldn’t help it. The smoking bodies were crumpled and littered among the debris. There were dozens of them. It was like his mind skipped over the lifeless adults and locked onto the juveniles. Their arms and heads covered in white, downy fluff, but their faces— their innocent, slack faces—were those of little kids. The rising smell of barbecued chicken turned his stomach and his body weakened. He fell forward in a puff of rusty sand and vomited. His hacking noises and Ameera’s sobbing echoed up the canyon walls.

Despite all his training screaming at him—ordering him to move—they remained emotionally compromised, shell-shocked. He picked up a long primary feather from the ground, like an obsidian blade. What had he done? The reality of the situation weighed heavily on him. This was nothing like the Flash Gordon RPGs he played as a kid. The battles against the virtual Hawkmen now seemed grossly sanitized compared to this stinking carnage.

A shrill beeping cut his self-pitying short—both their suits’ proximity sensors were picking up multiple bogies headed their way. Hersh instinctively pulled his laser gun from its holster and hauled his stunned and weeping pilot behind a charred tram car.

They hunkered down. He roughly grabbed her face and looked straight into her brown eyes. "Listen to me, Ameera, we’ve got a murder of crows headed this way and I can’t fend them off by myself. Can you fight?"

"Yeah—yes, I’m a soldier." She didn’t sound convinced, but she drew her sidearm.

"You’re damned right you are and we’re also the only two humans on this miserable planet. So let’s do Adam and Eve proud," he said, and braced himself against their adversaries.

They heard angry screeching reverberating through the canyon before they saw the black, winged forms soar into view. The enemy looked human enough, but he knew that was simply a vestigial trait; they were more maniraptora then men. A flock of about ten of them wheeled overhead, each wielding customized hand guns, like brass knuckles, on their dinosaurian wing-claws, raining electric blue fire on them.

Hersh and Ameera shot back at the attacking harpies. They were outnumbered, but not out for the count. The blazing remains of the tram provided ample cover and the harpies’ wide wingspan made them easy targets.

He noticed Ameera was trying really hard to miss every one of them. He didn’t say anything. She’d had her fill of death, and besides, her drowsy, scattered shots confused them and Hersh’s own strict shooting always hit the mark. He carefully picked off harpies until there was only one left. This one flew and wailed like a banshee. Then, all of the sudden, it dropped into the smoldering mess of the transit tube and disappeared.