Ex Lacrima Remnant

Track #50 – Lifeline

“Bring that box out, and that one too! Quick!”

“Yes, Captain!”

Calendula dragged the massive crate on the floor, slowly trying to get it out of the door to the Grove. Stashes of boxes were laying in the courtyard out of the main gate, looking like an impromptu barricade more and more. What was this barricade good for, she couldn’t understand. Yet, the order of her savior, of her leader, couldn’t be questioned. Lily had done her best for all of them till then. Whatever her idea was, it had to work. It had to offer them a chance, albeit slim, to survive that ordeal. Unless, of course, she had resigned herself to her fate and was bringing all of them down with her. That thought, chilling as it might be, glided on her skin like spring water on a plastic veil, leaving no lasting impression. So, she kept stashing and stashing heavy boxes outside, right as Ginestra and half a dozen other rhizomes were doing the same. In their midst, Oleander was connecting cables, aided by the everpresent Dandelion. Not even one hour had passed since their close encounter with a Seraph patrol and the subsequent lymph blackout. Still, she was already on the frontlines, despite being ordered to rest. Calendula couldn’t help but wonder where that Spear-class found residual energies to stand up every time, since her reserves were all but depleted.

As if I’m one to talk.

Self-introspection. Something Calendula wasn’t really keen on doing regularly. For all intents and purposes, Dandelion and she weren’t that much different. Even after taking a Raphael missile head on, Calendula was also doing her best to give her race a chance of survival, a chance not to be annihilated by a swarm of machines too eager to taste plant blood. A spark of pain spread through her leg, the wounds not healed completely yet. She was lucky that Captain Commander Lily shared some of her lymph with them, accelerating the regeneration process. It felt weird drinking canned lymph of another rhizome, especially if said rhizome was her superior officer, but her body felt relieved by being able to rely on it. The curse of rhizomes – too few lymph and they became non-functional. Too much lymph and they turned into full on plant abominations. Managing their lymph levels was an art, an art too many of them had no real experience with. Lily, on the contrary, had always enough lymph. Never too much. Never too little. Calendula felt something akin to jealousy. Despite her best intentions and training, she was still that bad at managing her reserves, always exhausting them when it actually mattered the most. Was it true that having a partner was the secret ingredient that was missing from her recipe? She bit her lip, shook her head. If there were a moment to think about lymph reserves, it definitely wasn’t that.

“Lea, report! What’s the status of the power lines? Are they working already?”

Lily’s voice thundered from the courtyard, tainted by something resembling anxiety. Her usual composure, her mask of perfection, had been shattered. She even forewent the formal ranks and names, defaulting to her comfort zone. Lea. That’s how she called Oleander, when the two were alone? Calendula felt a little intrigued. Nicknames sounded cute, the basis for a good romance. Then, did that mean that when Dee called her Callie… she shook her head again. She couldn’t see romance everywhere, her rose-tinted glasses had to remain stashed in the corner of her mind. It was about their survival now. All about that. Romance could wait. Musings about romance could wait.

“Most of the devices are live, Li! I’m extracting the files, but I’m not sure how many of them can play this frequency! It’s too high!”

“Well, good thing we’re chock full of crates of bloody loudspeakers, then! Just make sure they’re all connected! If the grid overloads, unplug everything else!”

Calendula kept dragging the crates, kept unpacking their contents. Audio devices. In all shapes and forms. With conspicuous labels, marking their model names, prices and general usage information. She remembered some of them too – they were all from the time they started to shape up their little independence dream. Watching parasite plant cores explode like fireworks when the right frequency was sent to them was the highlight of those days, days that felt long gone. Dee was watching them too, with Ginestra and her. Calendula shook her head again, somewhat more vigorously. Focus. Focus on the task.

“I’ve switched on the auxiliary generators too, but they’re burning gasoline like crazy!”

“As they should! Let them go, we need all the electricity we can have, and to hell with spares! We’ve got enough oil for a year!”

Oleander’s and Lily’s bickering kept going on in the background, giving Calendula’s brain a useful distraction, till she finally reached the designated place. That’s when jealousy hit her again. Oleander. Lily. They acted like a ‘married couple’, or at least like a ‘married couple’ was depicted in the novels she devoured weekly. That was unusual for rhizomes. They had no concept of ‘romance’. Everything was a simple transaction. Something for something else. But Oleander and Lily… they felt like they found another meaning in that. Was that really ‘romance’? Or just a way to mask a very utilitarian exchange of benefits? Yet, again, those considerations had to wait. Building up a loudspeaker on a telescopic support had higher priority, together with plugging it to the grid, making sure everything was in place. She pulled a small device out of the crate, fiddled with the buttons, checked the readings. Everything seemed fine. She reached for a big red button on the back of the speaker, pushed it. The button brightened up, right as a low-pitched bellow shook her to the roots. It worked. It definitely worked. Which meant ‘time to move to the next’. While dragging her legs towards the warehouse, she saw many of her sisters, like industrious ants, coming out of the gate of the Grove, each bringing a large new parcel with her. Calendula stopped for a second to wipe her forehead from the waste water that leaked out of it. There was still a lot to do. And their guests were closing in quickly.

Hungrier than ever.

**

When Lily heard that voice from the intercom, she almost couldn’t believe it. Yet, it sounded like hers, against all the odds.

“Agave? Is it really you?”

The voice of her sister. A voice that shouldn’t have been broadcast there, not now, not ever.

“Lily! Yes, yes, it’s me! I’m sorry, I gave away the Grove’s position, but it’s because…”

“Calm down. Are you still on Atropos?”

“…yes.”

“Are you alone?”

“…no. I’m… currently together with… well, almost everyone on board. They are listening to our call, and…”

Lily’s face turned dark, all of a sudden. The impulse of smashing the console was strong, kept at bay only by her residual self-control. Bad news after bad news after bad news. Still, the fact that Agave was alive despite the failure at the Turn was cause for a little celebration. A long breath. She inhaled. Exhaled. Then, she interrupted her sister, one more time.

“I’m… glad you’re safe.”

She inhaled. Exhaled. Almost bit her tongue. Felt wetness around her eye. Agave. Was safe. Despite everything and anything that happened, nobody hurt her. Nobody killed her. Despite being surrounded by humans. Despite being stuck in space. She was alive and well. Contrary to many of their sisters – tortured, burned, crucified, sacrificed. That wasn’t bad news, maybe. There was still some glimmer of hope, after all.

“Primula and Felce are safe too. The humans here have been… pretty supportive.”

“I see.”

No, she didn’t. She couldn’t believe that. They were probably using Agave for their goals. No way someone actually took the side of rhizomes. Humans couldn’t be trusted. They were all crooked bastards like their ‘father’, that Graham Zonta that now was a pile of ashes scattered to the wind.

“Listen, Lily… you must leave the Grove.”

“I know. We already had a visit from Eastcol Seraphs, not even ten minutes ago.”

“It’s not about the Seraphs! It’s… it’s the nanos. They are closer than you think, they’ll be there in two hours at latest!”

Everyone in the comm room gasped. Lily. Oleander. Calendula. Dandelion. Ginestra. All of them looking at each other, shaking their heads, blinking in disbelief. Oleander unrolled a map of New Netherlands, measured the distance from Lagash once, twice, before almost shouting.

“We are more than two hundred fifty kilometers south of the seedship, that doesn’t make…”

“Lea, that’s not it! Base fifteen, a small military outpost of the Pangean Union fourteen kilometers east of your position, has been infected by nanos… and has become a new spreader!”

Silence fell into the comm room. Fourteen kilometers. Just behind the corner. Agave’s voice poured out of the speakers, filled the air, loud and clear.

“After a failed raid on the seedship, one of the units that returned to the base carried some… delayed-activation nanos, which… which started devouring everything around twenty minutes after landing! Two Pangean bases have been hit, but the second is farther away from you. We’ve seen this in an emergency broadcast, we’re still receiving them up here, till the satellites last!”

Lily looked around, looked at each and every one of her sisters, at their blank expressions, their tired faces.

“Two hours, you said.”

She gritted her teeth, her hands mere centimeters from slamming the desk, kept under control at the last second.

“…that’s barely enough time.”

**

Dandelion finished placing the third loudspeaker, fighting against the pain jolting all around her body. If it weren’t for Lily’s lymph, Calendula and she would have been stashed in the medbay, with all the rhizomes that lost limbs or were currently under heavy anesthetics. She blessed the simple fact that she was still able to help her leader, even if with a slower rhythm. Still, her current state made her livid. She wasted all of her lymph for just one attack, one that took out one enemy but left her wide open and forced Calendula to take the brunt of the attacks from the surviving units. That wasn’t acceptable, not for someone who made serving Lily her life mission. She glanced around, caught a glimpse on Callie on the other side of the courtyard, mounting her set of loudspeakers. Lily’s words echoed again in her mind. About how she had to learn to control her lymph levels. Dandelion felt a spark of grief. Her own incapability to do was a shame she couldn’t shake away. Still, for the moment, she decided to focus on her task first. There were still several loudspeakers that had to be placed, tested and activated and time was running out. Only a handful of rhizomes had remained there, after all. Most had taken the trucks and drove souther, under Ginestra’s lead – just as Lily ordered. Which left at most a dozen of them trying to do the impossible, while almost as many were sedated in the infirmary. If they failed, if everything was for nothing, at least they would have left that world without pain, without even realizing they were being eaten. A shiver down her spine. What did her sisters feel, when the nanos consumed them on the flight deck? So many of them perished there. So many. Giving their life away so that Lily could escape – like she would have done. Now, though? Lily was standing her ground. In the Grove. Among them. Ginestra had the task of keeping their species alive, if their gamble didn’t work. Logically speaking, Lily should have led the escaping rhizomes, as the only leader all of them recognized, but she decided to risk her life, in an act meant to make amends for opening the vault. Dandelion couldn’t help but feel proud of following such an inspiring leader.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of another marked spot on the ground, the spot where she had to install the fourth loudspeaker. She opened the carton box, dragged its content out, started unrolling the telescopic support. This model was once again very different from the others, with no guarantee that it would work.

Still, she decided to have faith.

If Lily had a plan, she would follow it.

No matter what it meant for her life.

**

“…”

“You recognized my voice, I take it.”

“Mimi.”

“It’s Kryzalid, for you.”

The atmosphere in the communication room had frozen solid. Lily was barely looking at the display, chewing words under her teeth. Mimi LeFou. The girl she used as a tool for testing her plan, the girl whose life she ruined, the girl whose aunt she killed. Was talking to her. From space.

Lily felt her rage accumulating, her lymph flowing faster. Mimi LeFou. Knew something. Something so important that not only it convinced Agave, but the rest of the crew too, including all the other rhizomes, the Peacekeepers and Station Commander Vettor Geiger himself. That very same Mimi she humiliated, she broke in half, she tortured in cold blood. Just because Lily felt repulsed by her sunny positive attitude, her love for rhizomes, a love that didn’t bring anything, a love that was just window dressing for lust. Not once in her previous life had Mimi considered rhizomes as equal – just as something that made her aroused. Objects. Not dissimilar to erotic performers. Now, that same Mimi – pardon, Kryzalid – was talking to her again, in a tone that was as detached as possible. A tone that had nothing to do with that sparking ray of sunshine she once was.

You’re my hero, Captain Commander Lily!

That Mimi was gone. The empty shell that took her place was standing on the other side of the communicator.

“Listen, I’ll cut the chase. I hate you. You ruined my life. I’d like nothing more than let you die devoured by one thousand hungry little nanomouths. But I’m not sadistic enough for that. Gavvy told me stuff. Told me how you’re sheltering many rhizomes. She went full panic mode, when we saw where base fifteen was on the map. She leaked water from her eyes for you. You know what it means for a rhizomes to cry, right? So, I can’t be that much of a bastard, since plant gals turn me on and having no plant gals around would be a huge miss.”

Lily didn’t reply, let her do the talk. She could feel the restraint, feel that the woman on the other side was trying her best not to explode, not to scorch the radio with her words.

“So, all of you, please, listen to aunt Chris: we found a way to… confuse the nanos. It won’t work forever, maybe just for one, two days.”

“What would that be?”

“A whole lotta noise.”

Silence again. Lily squinted her eye, leaned on the console.

“Noise?”

“Ultrasounds, to be precise. The disassembler the nanos use to nom-nom everything generates a very specific frequency, when consuming something. It’s a byproduct of how it breaks down matter, or so we think – not something they do on purpose… but the swarm uses it anyway to avoid cannibalizing itself.”

“So, you’re saying… that if we play that exact frequency…?”

“Yes and no. We’ve got a gal up here who… has first hand experience with them things. That sound should just be a… sort of fallback, if there ain’t direct comms from Lagash. The nanos can’t store a precise map of what to destroy and what not to, unless the seedship sends it. Your Grove’s out of its effective range and…”

A long breath on the other side, as if Kryzalid needed a break, as if she were trying to put her thoughts together.

“…and, well, the Pangean bombing destroyed almost all of the relays that Lagash built. So, until they’re up again, the nanos are in auto mode, using only sound to decide where to go and what to eat. If you play that frequency loud enough, they’ll think you’re part of the swarm and just avoid getting their clicky-clacky hungry fangs on your ass.”

Lily looked down at the console, stood still, without saying a word, pondering on the story Kryzalid was trying to sell on to her. A story with one too many holes. Unbelievable from many points of view. First, why was Kryzalid free to move around Atropos? Was Station Commander Geiger so desperate that he gave her a permit? Or did she bribe him with her body? Geiger was an aging man and Kryzalid was a lascivious beast that wouldn’t have had moral qualms resorting to that, so that was surely a possibility. Secondly, how did she find out about the sound, while stashed in space? Third, who was this ‘gal with first hand experience’? The Turn happened after they were sent up there. There was no way any of them faced the nanos before. Unless…

Lily’s eye went wide open. Her brain gears turned, went back to their last encounter, to the ominous words etched in her mind. There was indeed a person that seemed to know more than what she should have. And that person was on Atropos too.

“…what’s the preacher’s role in this, Mimi?”

“The preacher?”

“The woman with the gas mask and that weird raygun. Is she the one that… hatched this plan?”

“…”

“Answer me.”

“…okay, it’s a long story, but she’s… huh, a survivor from a previous loop. It’s hard to believe, I know.”

“Not… that hard. That gun she had… her words about the Turn…”

Inhale. Exhale.

“Alright. What’s your price for the information? You gave us something, what do you want me to give you in return? My lymph? My body? My life?”

“Lagash take me, I don’t want anything from you! I have my house plant already! You can keep your bloody lymph!”

“…then, what’s your gain?”

“If the plan works, we know we have a chance to make it out alive of this. If it doesn’t, you and all of your companions die a gruesome death by disintegration. We can’t test our hunch from here, and thanks to Gavvy, we know that A) you have a shitload of loudspeakers and B) you can’t possibly move all of your sisters to safety in such a little time.”

Mimi stopped for an instant, a pause to catch her breath. Before starting to talk again, her voice turning bolder, more mischievous.

“I’m giving you an option, iron bitch, a chance to save them all. My gain is that either the nanos get rid of you or you get rid of the nanos. Either works for me, only one works for you. The uncertainty of the outcome… is more than enough payment.”

“…so, you are sadistic enough for this.”

“It’s all thanks to you, ‘hero’.”

Lily didn’t reply to that last provocation.

Unfortunately for her, Mimi was right.

It was her fault.

No ifs.

No buts.

Mimi had become Kryzalid because of her.

Reap what you sow, as the humans used to say.

And, now, her fate was in the hands of her most resentful enemy.

Hands that could have crushed her any time.