Robbie awoke to the smell of salt and propane.
He was still in his crash corset, suspended upside-down in the pilot’s cavity of his Mantamech. Red LEDs lit the cramped ovoid space. All external camera views and telemetry screens were dark.
<ul>
<li>Eve?</li>
</ul>
But of course, there was no Eve now. Not in this reality.
Robbie tensed his abs and looked towards his feet. The effort made his ribs hurt like hell—at least one of them was broken. Crying out, he reached between his legs for the emergency release cord and pulled.
“Gah!”
He landed headfirst in a metre of salty-as-fuck water. He rolled to his feet and spat, the straps of the collapsed corset clinging to his jumpsuit like the mummy in that corny spherifilm he and Eve used to watch between training sessions: Pharaohs of Mars.
From the orientation of the part-flooded cavity, he deduced the Mantamech was belly-up; the undercarriage exit hatch somewhere above him. Wincing with pain, he climbed up onto the corset’s gimbal housing—still suspended by steel struts—and reached for the handle.
LOCK > UNLOCK > RELEASE
It wouldn’t budge.
Why?
Two possibilities.
One: the door had buckled and fused when the Priestess had crushed his Mantamech in her grip. If so, he could blow the ejection charges in the hatch frame to free himself.
Two: the Mantamech was already underwater. If he blew the charges, the cavity would flood or implode, killing him.
Eve’s brain would have been able to calculate the probability of each scenario. But all he had was his own stupid flyboy head. He punched the bulkhead in frustration.
Then closed his eyes. Remembered the calming exercises Psyche Officer Olivia had taught him. Breathed deeply. And thought in a logical voice that sounded almost like Eve’s.
<ul>
<li>The MMC science briefing said EXO19’s oceans are ‘dead and sterile’. Why? Extremely high salt content: a salinity of 48.9%. That should be keeping the mech afloat. </li>
</ul>
Followed by a darker thought:
<ul>
<li>If you do nothing, you’ll suffocate anyway.</li>
</ul>
Normally, the ejection sequence was triggered by a special combination of movements performed in the haptic straps of the crash corset. But with the corset collapsed, Robbie had to set the manual override.
LOCK > UNLOCK > RELEASE > PRIME <sup>[Warning: locking bolt detonation in T – 5 seconds once Prime Confirmed.] </sup>
> CONFIRM PRIME
Robbie leapt back into waist-high flood water and covered his head with his hands.
The blast was deafening in the small space. The air left the cavity, water rushed in…
…but it was just sea spray. He looked up and saw a ragged square of pale indigo sky.
Robbie climbed out of the ruined hatch and onto the belly of the Mantamech, blinking in the morning sunlight. The day was already brighter than any he had ever experienced on Mars, and it took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust.
The Mantamech was floating in an endless expanse of calm grey sea. The remains of the storm—and the mushroom cloud—could be seen on the horizon. The water for kilometres around was strewn with blacker-than-black objects—the shattered wreckage of the Priestess’s ?mech.
He allowed a hollow smirk to spread across his face. There was no way she could have survived this. Hell, it was a miracle he had. He remembered a science class assignment at the Red Moon refugee school in Helles Basin: the Egg Drop challenge. Using just ration packaging, they’d had to design a protective structure to protect a synthetic chiXen egg from a kilometre-high drone drop. Robbie’s had failed—he’d never been good at protecting things.
Yet this was what the Priestess had done for Robbie when she’d wrapped up his Mantamech in a death grip. He laughed at the irony, only to double over coughing as the salty air stung the back of his throat. EXO19’s oceans might be ‘dead and sterile’, but the salt could strip the lining from your gullet if you weren’t careful.
Robbie reached into the pouch of his jumpsuit, pulled out his osmosis mask— his ‘dental dam’ as they called it in the MMC barracks—and plastered the atom-thin graphene film over his nose and mouth.
Now all he had to do was wait to be rescued. He sat down on one of the Mantamech’s crumpled wings and stared into the distance. The largest bodies of water on Mars were the domed caldera lakes, which were impressive enough. But this ocean was vast, with no shoreline or caldera rim to limit the horizon.
The wormhole crossed the sky like a negative sun. Eve had said it would orbit once every ninety minutes, or eight times in one of EXO19’s twelve-hour days. As it approached the zenith, the water around the Mantamech started to get choppy.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
Then more than choppy.
Huge roiling waves began to fan out across the surface. One crashed over the titanium belly of the mech, washing more water into the cavity. Robbie gripped a buckled aileron as the craft pitched wildly. Walls of water rose up on all sides. It was as if the storm had returned, despite the fact the skies were clear except for the sun and that terrible moving gap of nothing.
Finally, the wormhole passed and the sea calmed.
“Fuck…one of those every hour and a half?!” He hoped Search & Rescue would locate his black box transponder before the next flyby. He stood up on the wing and once again looked to the horizon. As the waves settled, he saw…
Two vantablack ?s.
“Fuck…” he repeated. The ?mechs were in HOVA—Humanoid Overflight Vertical Alignment—mode several hundred metres out from Robbie’s position. He was well within their line of sight, and the diminishing waves provided little cover. He considered jumping back into the flooded cavity, but Eve’s phantom logic stopped him.
<ul>
<li>Don’t. You’ll be trapped.</li>
</ul>
One of the ?mechs had disgorged a cluster of biomechanical tendrils from its left fist and was reeling something from the ocean…
“No…”
A human shape. Could the Priestess have survived? He watched as the broken-looking body was reeled into a stasis pouch nested in the ?mech’s belly. Then the other craft turned towards him, proton lance arm extended…
Robbie took a running dive off his Mantamech’s wing. He hit the water a split second before the world above bloomed orange. He twisted onto his back, paddling frantically to try and not surface, even as the oh-so-salty sea tried to buoy him towards the flames. He swam, and swam, and swam, arms straining, broken ribs grinding, as he tried to find the edge of the burning propane field. His lungs screamed for air.
Finally, he saw a patch that was more daylight than firelight and surfaced. He gasped, the graphene film of his osmosis mask flopping in an out of his mouth with each breath, protecting him from the smoke and fumes. He dived again and resurfaced further out. From here, he could see the slagged wreckage of his Mantamech in the distance.
There was no sign of the Christophites.
He lay on his back, exhausted. He must have passed out because he dreamed.
***
He stood at the edge of the diving board, gazing eagerly at the plunge pool 500 metres below. Eve was in an identical but separate chamber on the other side of a thick lead wall, trembling in her hydra suit, muttering numbers in their heads. Soon they would sync and dive as one/one.
He winked at the two-way mirror set into the chamber wall. The rest of his MMC cadet squad would be watching. He wondered which of them he’d sleep with tonight. He admired himself in the reflection—the way his toned abs flexed beneath his jumpsuit, the way his pretty-boy face fooled superiors, opponents and lovers into underestimating him.
<ul>
<li>SYNC.</li>
</ul>
Nothing happened.
<ul>
<li>SYNC!</li>
</ul>
The mental silence was deafening.
<ul>
<li>Eve?</li>
</ul>
“Come on, Cadet Cassidy, we don’t have all day. JUMP!”
If he jumped without Eve’s mathematical acuity, he’d hit the water at the wrong angle and break his neck.
<ul>
<li>Jump, Flyboy.</li>
</ul>
Someone shoved him over the edge.
***
“Gah!” Robbie was slammed awake as a wave sent him tumbling underwater. He struggled, not knowing up from down, before his head burst above the surface. The wormhole was directly overhead, eclipsing the midday sun.
Robbie wished he’d recovered the buoyancy aid from the Mantamech’s cavity. Even if this dead sea kept him afloat, he could still drown if he flipped over. He would have to try to stay awake.
The waves calmed as the wormhole passed in its relentless orbit. The sun now shone at full force and Robbie felt hot, despite being half-submerged in water. Drinking wasn’t a problem—he could suck sea water through his osmosis mask—but there was nothing to eat, and his energy faded with each tidal pummelling. This was a gruelling cosmic dojo fight, and he was losing.
Where was S&R? What was taking them so long?
Night fell. Alien constellations filled the sky. On Mars, the stars had always been filtered through a dust-coated dome, but here on EXO19 they were piercingly bright.
The wormhole came again, a dark satellite swallowing the stars. The seas rose in response. A vantablack piece of wreckage collided with Robbie’s head—K.O. in the cosmic dojo.
***
He was naked and falling. Someone was locked onto his bare back, arms and legs squeezing like a lover/killer as a pool of nothing rushed up to meet them…
***
Stars.
Ocean.
Day.
Night.
Repeat.
The taste of blood inside his osmosis mask.
Fighting to stay conscious…
***
He was in the nave of a cathedral. A figure stood in the centre of the aisle: naked and pale, lithe and feminine, with a tattoo of a ? on her lower back.
A knife appeared in his hand as he closed the distance between them. She spun and kicked out, but he got behind her, locked in a half-choke, held the blade to her throat.
<ul>
<li>You killed my wingmate.</li>
<li>You killed my clone.</li>
<li>Freak.</li>
<li>Infidel.</li>
<li>I should kill you where you stand.</li>
<li>You still think I’m afraid to be martyred? </li>
<li>I’m the one in control now.</li>
<li>You haven’t realised, have you?</li>
<li>Realised what?</li>
<li>We’re dreaming. Or at least, I am. You’re dead, Martian… </li>
</ul>
Confused, he tightened his grip. If he was dreaming, why did she feel so real? If he was dead, why did she feel so alive?
He could feel her pulse against his arm, slow and steady, like she was just waiting for her moment to strike. He could feel the backs of her powerful thighs against his, could feel himself hard against her ?atooed spine as his body betrayed him.
She was real and alive and dangerous. He wanted to fight her and fuck her, he wanted sex and death and…
***
A V-mech drifted above the ocean in HOVA mode, the eye symbol of MMC Search & Rescue emblazoned on its undercarriage. The night sky was alight with decoy flares.
“Whoa, we got a live one…” blared a god-like voice from an external parley speaker. “Robert Cassidy, in the flesh. Even saltier than usual, I’d bet.”
The voice belonged to Mech Lieutenant Trent Moreno, and Robbie knew his wingmate—Mech Lieutenant Najib Choudhury—would be nearby, recovering his black box.
“Hold tight, partner. You’re coming in…”
A net dropped from Trent’s fuselage. Robbie was hauled out of the waves and into the V-mech’s medevac bay, where a med tech he hazily recognised strapped him—a little too tightly—into a gurney rigged to an electromagnetic gimbal designed to stay level in flight. He attempted a weak smile.
“Hey Wendy. What took you so long?”
Wendy injected something into his arm and secured herself in the wall rigging. “You didn’t call.”
There was a series of clunks as the V-mech reconfigured to Aero Cruise Mode and a dual roar as Trent/Najib accelerated.
Robbie closed his eyes.