Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #49 – Plaguespreader

The Seraph tumbled on the landing strip, fell on its side, sliding on the ground, causing a thick cloud of dust to burst all around the impact site. Before going silent. Before all lights turned off. The camo paint and the Niteowls logo were still proudly intact, a symbol of might that wasn’t bending to the will of gravity. Yet, the carcass of the once powerful mech was stranded, like a dolphin on the beach, gasping for air. Steps. Sound of steps. A cadre of technicians running to the landing point, machines with them – heavy machines. Hazmat suits too, scanners, every possible trick in the book to guarantee safety after a deep dive into the ashen fields. A hissing noise erupted from the core of the dawned mech. The hatch popped open thanks to a manual hydraulic release. A helmet peeked out of it, a helmet with a black visor, followed by a blue Pangean pilot suit. The technicians, the ground personnel stopped in their tracks, waited for the human at the core of the Seraph to have their way out. First one leg. Then, the other. Uncertain. Trembling. Before falling to the ground. Raising up again. Falling one more time.

Their hands went to the helmet lock, unfastened it, raised the visor. Air. Fresh air. Lenarea Mariakidis was finally breathing, after her disasterful landing. All while she lost all contacts with Captain Gravess, with what remained of her squad. Group three and four were due landing at base twelve, since their mechs were mostly intact, but hers? Base fifteen. After being consumed by nanos, there was no way she’d be allowed to cross the border with her homeland. Even if Captain Gravess’ decisive blade strike severed the infected limbs. Even after that, there was no way her damaged Seraph could fly such a long distance without constant attitude adjustment to compensate for the missing weight and asymmetric load. She already head to keep it running for more than two hundred fifty kilometers, spent a good hour making sure she wasn’t going kamikaze on the ground. Still, the closest Pangea inner base was twice that distance. Group three and four were surely headed there first, as that was originally planned. But she? She didn’t have that luxury.

She raised her thumb up, almost as if she wanted to tell the technicians that everything was fine.

Well, nothing was fine. Of the sixteen Niteowls, one was KIA, eight didn’t make it to the gate before it closed, six went inside and lost contact. All but two Aquilas had been shot down too. Not exactly the numbers they hoped. Luck had it that the Kaitos wasn’t deployed for that operation, otherwise they would have lost it too, much to the chagrin of high command. Not that it would have helped anyway, though: Kaitos was nothing but a waste of resources, so losing it might have actually been a boon, in hindsight.

“Deputy Captain Mariakidis? Walk slowly in our direction, alright? Slowly. Slowly.”

Lenarea couldn’t help but smile. Her language, words of her people. Not that shambling corpse of the exchange idiom, with its unspeakable pronunciation rules. That small, inconsequential detail made her heart warmer. A full squadron of technicians and paramedics was waiting for her, lining up every detector known to man. So, Lenarea walked, stepped forward little by little, trying not to think about Captain Gravess, about the fate of the advance team. As long as one of them, any of them, was alive, the Niteowls could be rebuilt. Such was their design. Always sixteen Niteowls, not one irreplaceable. Even if she were the last, the owls would still soar.

A paramedic raised his hand, wrapped in that oversized anti-contamination suit that looked too much like something out of a PV show. She hadn’t seen many of them in real life, before that day. Now, she was surrounded by them. Many of them. So many of them.

“Please, Deputy Captain, enter the quarantine trailer. You’ll need to go through a full decontamination bath – UV, germicides and all, before you are allowed out. We’ll have to burn your gear too. There’s a closed room inside the unit, use that to dispose of all the items you are wearing.”

Lenarea nodded weakly, crawled on the tarmac, slowly reaching for the temporary installation marked with warning signs. She passed through the gate, grasped the edge of a bench, sat on top of it. The door closed behind her, locked and sealed. The air filters booted up, a constant humming surrounding her, as the lights switched off, leaving room for a shining, brand-new UV lamp. A raspy voice echoed from the shadows, monotone, clearly synthetic.

“>Please, close your eyes.”

The blue-ish halo that accompanied it served as a marker of where the invisible cleaning lights were pointed at, moving around her pilot suit, her gear, her skin. One minute. Two minutes.

“>You can now reopen your eyes.”

She followed the instructions, gazed at her surroundings. A small shower in the corner. A bin close to it.

“>Please, dispose of your gear and enter the decontamination shower.”

Lenarea nodded, once again followed the will of the synthetic voice. She threw her stuff into the marked bin, before setting foot inside the shower. A jet of cold water grazed her skin, as the smell of disinfectant and chlorine filled the cabin. A timer counted down from one minute, all while the shower head moved on top of the cabin automatically, turning around and tilting at regular intervals.

The timer reached zero.

Jets of hot air blasted through the cabin, all around her body, drying her up in seconds.

“>Please, wear the sterilized outfit you’ll find in the cupboard.”

She stepped out of the shower, found an open box, a folded white suit occupying it. Adaptive, universal size. Donning it felt simple enough, zippers and all. White boots and gloves completed the picture. A display in the corner turned green.

“>Full body scan complete. No contaminants detected. You will be monitored for ten minutes before being cleared for release.”

Lenarea sat on the short bench. Ten minutes were an impossibly long time, when one had nothing to do. She glanced at the small mirror encased in the metallic wall. Her first white strands were finally catching up to her, sullying her previously perfectly brown, shoulder length mane. She caressed the scar on her left cheek, the one on her forehead, then that on her neck. All medals of honor, at least according to Captain Gravess. She wondered whether he was still alive, inside the belly of the seedship. According to the info she received via radio, the gate closed behind him and the other members of group one and two as soon as they crossed the threshold. Several minutes have passed since then, but the silence had been deafening.

“>Eight minutes to release.”

She played with her hair, glanced at her own gray eyes, at her olive complexion. Pangea had been her home since she had memories. Now, her home was under attack from an invisible enemy, one that couldn’t be talked with, couldn’t be bargained with, couldn’t be pleaded with. An emotionless machine that consumed everything in its wake, devouring and reshaping whatever mankind made, turning it into an endless field of ash. One meter per second didn’t sound much. It was less than four kilometers per hour, a distance a healthy human would cover without worries. Still, it was a constant grind, turning more and more of what once was a country into a vast expanse of nothing. A growl escaped her lips. She needed some distraction. Some way to kill the remaining time. So, she bent on the floor, planted her hands on it, started performing a series of push-ups.

Two.

Five.

Ten.

Slowly. Without stopping. One every three seconds, keeping a constant rhythm. Push-ups were good for her brain. They’d clean it from all the cruft, all her useless worries. The state of the world didn’t fall on her shoulders. She did everything she could. She couldn’t hold herself responsible for that catastrophe. Captain Gravess was clear – they were there as cleaners, trying to fix the mess those bloody Neodutch people caused.

A deep breath. She sat down, wiped her sweat. Fifty push-ups was her limit. Her body wasn’t listening to her needs, just reminding her that she wasn’t in peak condition. She gritted her teeth, inhaled, exhaled, several times in a row. She glanced around once again. They could have left a book in the quarantine trailer, any cheap novel would have worked or – heck – even the instruction manual of a Seraph. Anything, really, to kill the remaining time.

“>Three minutes to release.”

One hundred bloody eighty seconds. Finally. The first good news since she landed.

Still, something was amiss.

Noise.

From the outside.

A male voice, high-pitched, shouting.

She instinctively looked towards the entrance door, where the voice was coming from, walked to it, pressed her ear on the wall.

“Hands off me, filthy savages! I have rights, you know? RIGHTS!”

The language of exchange. That guy wasn’t Pangean at all. If anything, his accent sounded Neodutch. She kept eavesdropping, nervously trying to parse the words of that foreigner.

“P… please, let me go! I haven’t done anything illegal! And… and the swarm is coming! I can’t… I don’t want…”

Passionate words, energy poured into them. Whoever they were, they truly believed what they were saying.

“>Release initiated. Please stand by.”

A clack, the door of the trailer opened all of a sudden. Lenarea felt the outside breeze on her skin once more, as she immediately stepped out on the dirt that surrounded base fifteen, wanting to leave the trailer behind. She glanced around, trying to find the origin of the chaotic discussion she overheard fragments of. The first thing that occupied her field of vision, though, was her Seraph – what remained of it – completely sealed inside a transparent plastic cage, one that was being gassed and UV-lighted the same way she was. Standard procedure, she took it, only missing the electromagnetic full scan. Still, a technician was already bringing the machine for that, pushing it slowly through the dirt.

“I… I don’t want to be here, when the nanos come. If… if you have to arrest me, p… please, bring me anywhere else, farther from the border!”

Those words made Lenarea turn around, finally seeing the guy causing the commotion. He was already wrapped in a sterile, post-decontamination white suit and kept at bay by no less than two soldiers, trying to stop him from attempting a futile escape. An average man, someone she would have forgotten in five minutes in any other circumstances. Yet, those were strange times and even an insignificant man could have meaning. So, she locked her eyes with one of the paramedics, pointed her finger at the unknown face.

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, that guy? We caught him trying to break through our blockade while riding a motorbike, a couple of hours ago. He was carrying a bunch of documents and memory units from New Netherlands. He made the mistake of crossing the border while we were setting up a new line of defense.”

Lenarea looked at the trespasser, at his excited motions, at his exaggerated gestures.

“What’s his name?”

“He doesn’t want to tell. We browsed through his stuff after making sure it wasn’t contaminated, but we found no real ID. Well, huh, except…”

The paramedic brought up a small plastic card, one with a name and a picture.

“…except this. He defended it as if his life depended on it. Sorakis there almost lost a finger –when he grabbed this card, the guy tried to bite his index off.”

The picture didn’t seem to depict that particular foreigner. The man portrayed in it had unkempt black hair, bushy sideburns, small round glasses. His was a face that everyone in the world that had access to a PV system had seen at least once. The face of the man who weaponized plants because of his kinks. The face of none other than the late Dr. Graham Zonta. Lenarea squinted her eyes. The Zonta in the picture was grinning as usual, challenging the viewer with his unquestionable annoying expression. She let out a grave bellow. How could a photo of a dead man cause so much resentment? She wondered whether it was just the effect of all the stress she had been subjected to or a natural reaction towards the egghead that engineered one of the deadliest race created by man. She gave the card back to the soldier, walked up to the unknown guy, crossed her arms, looked down upon him from her one meter eighty-seven height.

“What’s your damage, dude?”

Her exchange language was rusty, so her Pangean accent seeped through all its cracks. She had learned that idiom by watching action movies, which resulted in a weird and limited vocabulary, one that missed many common words. Still, the reaction of that Neodutch man was not what she expected.

“Oh, Lagash, yes.”

“Excuse you?”

“I… I mean, huh… I’m… I’m sorry, madam, but I, I…”

“Dude. Your name. Now.”

The man bent his head backwards to meet her eyes, barely managing to keep up with her above average height, with her well-toned muscles shaping her white suit. A chill ran down his spine. Surely, he would have approved of his reaction. He would have understood. He. His boss. The man could almost hear his voice in his ears. The voice of the dead, speaking to the living. A voice that simply repeated one sentence, over and over.

“Excellent. You’re chadder than I thought. Live your dream, now.”

True, that Pangean woman was too muscular for his mentor’s tastes – even if not to an exaggerate level – and didn’t share the same ethereal beauty of Captain Commander Lily, but her frame was truly impressive. Every fiber of his being tried to deny that he found himself agreeing with the doctor, but it was too late. He swallowed a lump of saliva, crossed his arms too, almost like mimicking the pose of the tall Pangean officer standing before him. New Netherlands was as good as dead, so honesty felt like the best way forward, even for someone like him.

“Okay, okay, I’ll talk. I’m… I was an assistant of Dr. Graham Zonta. I’ve been with him till the very end, right before… you know. I’ve made a run from New Babylon on a motorbike and stopped once on the way to retrieve some documents from a warehouse, as he… asked me to. It’s the files I have with me, plus a secured digital copy of our precinct’s database.”

“So, your name’s Assistant.”

“No, but.. you are free to call me that.”

“Fair enough, Assistant.”

Lenarea turned to the paramedics, to the military crew, started speaking in Pangean – knowing full well that their ‘guest’ couldn’t parse it.

“Sedate him and load him on a VTOL. Command will be happy to squeeze him like an orange.”

The closest soldier nodded, pointed at something in the opposite direction, before answering in the same language.

“We’re revving up a chopper for that, Deputy Captain, and we’ve already loaded his stuff into the storage compartment. We’ve got priority orders to take you, the foreigner and his files to Kaitos as soon as both of you were cleared.”

Lenarea’s eyes turned wide open at those words, frustration mixed with utter disbelief.

“Wait, you said Kaitos? Did… did they really field it? How?”

“Oh, yes. It’s … it’s to keep the morale up, I guess. Showing that big thing take off after losing so many Aquilas and Seraphs is mostly a PR stunt, but…”

“No, no, I get it.”

What she didn’t get was whether wasting an amount of energy equal to the average daily consumption of a Shurayan island to keep that thing afloat in the air was actually a smart move. Still, she wasn’t the one calling the shots and, indeed, Kaitos looked good. That was all it was useful for – looking good. As efficiency went, let’s say that burning their uranium reserves to grill sausages would have probably been a smarter move than depleting them on that flying mess of a carrier. Lenarea shook her head, glanced at the Assistant, who was still watching her with eyes full of resentment, challenge even. She considered punching him out cold, but that would have probably broken a treaty on political prisoners or two. Maybe three.

“Good, then…”

“F… fuck!”

She turned around almost immediately, while hearing that utterance. One of the paramedics. Was pointing his finger at.

Her Seraph.

He stumbled, fell on his back, started running away.

Screaming like mad.

Lenarea looked too, looked at that damaged machine that had been hers for a while.

And saw it.

Its frame.

Being devoured.

Disassembled.

Deconstructed.

In real time.

Behind the transparent cage.

First slowly.

One centimeter, maybe less, per second.

One point five.

Two.

Four.

Ten.

And up.

Up.

Up.

Spreading on the cables.

On the scaffolding.

On the asphalt.

On the plastic shield.

On the dirt too.

She didn’t even think.

She didn’t have time to.

She simply grabbed the wrist of the Assistant. Of the soldier she was talking to. And ran.

Ran towards the VTOL which was readying itself for take off.

Saw her fellow soldiers waving hands, signaling for other choppers to be prepared.

Saw engines starting up, propellers turning.

Heard roars. Bellows.

Saw people running. Paramedics. Military personnel. Field technicians.

All running.

While the plague spread.

While the Seraph crumbled.

Turned to ash.

She reached for an empty VTOL, threw the Assistant inside, while the other soldier jumped in the cockpit, jacked his neck into the dashboard, started fiddling with the switches. She let two, three people more board it, before closing the sliding door. Before the swarm reached them.

The quarantine trailer was getting devoured.

That robotic voice that kept her company was now the meal of an insatiable, all-consuming enemy. One that was advancing faster and faster through base fifteen, breaking it down to atoms, deleting every trace the outpost ever existed.

The chopper lifted up, left the ground, one meter, two meters, five meters above. Right before the swarm arrived. Right before it could attach itself to its landing gear. Twenty. Fifty. One hundred meters above ground. Enough to be safe. Enough to stop worrying. The pilot connected to the external cameras, glanced at the landing strip.

“Oh, Lagash…”

One of the other VTOLs.

Didn’t make it in time.

And was now being disassembled in front of his eyes.

With all the people on board.

Turned into a mush of ashes and dust.

He disabled the lower cameras, retched, coughed, lifted his vehicle higher and higher. All while Lenarea Mariakidis was blinking blankly, staring at the void outside of the window, stuttering.

“D… delayed. They… they had a delayed activation…? How…?”

Base fifteen was lost.

And it was her fault.

Her Seraph was the trigger of the new outbreak.

It carried the nanos with it.

Maybe even just one.

And, at some point, it simply.

Activated.

Maybe, as soon as enough people were standing around it.

Maybe, there were other conditions.

But one thing was certain, at least in her mind.

That invisible enemy of theirs wasn’t going to make things easy.

No, it wouldn’t stop at anything until the entire planet was destroyed.

That thought made her shiver.

Suddenly, she felt envious of Captain Gravess.

Even if he were already dead, he went away without that knowledge.

A knowledge she never asked to partake of.