The Coded World

TWO

DEEP DIVE

Purity’s blue-black depths lay below us. The tanned light at my back didn’t project all that far down the hole, letting dark swallow the passage until the neon cerulean outlined skeletal steel walkways. Any hints at the water were few, a shadow at twilight. Next to me, Alvie commented on the view with a worried whine.

You get to stay up here, I said. If I get into trouble, you run back up and get help, all right?

Alvie tilted his head, gave me some side-eye.

Don’t be like Kaydee, I replied. I can handle myself.

The dog chuffed twice.

You know what? I picked myself up, put the gun down on the ground. I planned for a swim and Leo told me the weapon wouldn’t work after a bath. I could use some more support here.

I must’ve summoned up enough pity, because Alvie gave me one light headbutt to the shin, about as close as the dog could come to straight-on affection. Those metal claws and jagged edges made the robo-hound a decidedly poor cuddle buddy.

With the goodbye stated and orders established, I double-checked my jump to confirm I wouldn’t be leaping headlong onto a walkway, then went for it. A glorious three-step run-up and a leap into open air. Humans in their movies tended to shout at moments like these, battle-cries or delighted whoops.

Kaydee would’ve wanted one, but I kept my mouth shut: someone might be listening.

Someone, definitely, was watching.

The arms shot out as I plunged into the black gap between levels. I caught a silvery blur, the metal coat mingling with Purity’s light. They caught my feet in a vice, my fall suddenly changing from pencil dive to face-first plunge, only I wasn’t falling anymore but dangling over Starship’s watery garbage disposal.

Biological bones might’ve snapped, but my hardy exoskeleton withstood the force, giving me a chance to curl up and see what’d decided to interrupt my rescue. Through a walkway’s black lattice, I saw the limber frame of Alpha’s newer creations: flexi-mechs, as I called’em.

This version matched the humans limb for limb, trading extra arms for stiffer construction, these flexi-mechs took the bipedal arrangement to sinister lengths. Ten pointed fingers dotted each hand, forming almost a circle, while their arms and legs stretched further than their living inspiration, which is how this one held me over the drink, yet kept me from grappling range: my own arms swung useless in space.

Let me go, I said to the flexi-mech, whose cubed head, perched neckless on a thin spine, shone its red light at me.

No, the flexi-mech replied, in a posh woman’s voice. I don’t think so.

I froze. Never before had a flexi-mech talked back to us, and we’d already fought a couple dozen of the things. They’d not had any personality either, just straight up fight-to-kill commands. This one talked. This one might offer a chance at negotiation.

You have a personality? I asked.

I have orders, the flexi-mech replied. We are to destroy you.

Ah. So much for diplomacy.

We? I asked, trying to stall and figure out a plan.

New lights hit my face, although their distance kept it from being blinding. All red, and all scattered about Purity’s basement. I counted at least eight in a quick swivel, all flexi-mechs and all watching me. They stood on the other walkways and along the hard platform at Purity’s rim, as if I’d crashed some musical mid-number.

Well then, I said, and the flexi-mech yanked me up, holding my face before its own.

Goodbye. The flexi-mech cocked its right arm back, seemingly ready to pull some heart-ripping maneuver.

I brought my hands together as the flexi-mech punched, catching the machine’s wrist a few centimeters before my chest. The flexi-mech’s hand spun, those ten fingers zipping around like a drill, giving a very clear idea of what would’ve happened if it made contact.

Now look at us, I said. All tied up.

Irregular, the flexi-mech replied.

When the machine pulled back its hand, I came along for the ride, yanking down with my trapped leg. We formed an awkward lever, the flexi-mech and I, with the former bashing into the walkway’s railing as my force and weight reversed its retreat. The grinding bang made a fine echo around the area as the mech’s poor drilling arm caught its joint on the railing and snapped with the pressure. The sudden release threw our whole thing off balance, and now I did let out one of Kaydee’s shouts as I fell straight down with the mech into Purity’s waters.

The icy chill seeped through my synthetic skin, activating my thermal controls and splashing a little meter over my eyes. The high power draw meant I’d turn into a useless hulk when that meter ran to zero, and while I’d have plenty of time before that happened, any clock meant stress when you were dealing with flexi-mechs.

The one who’d fallen with me still held my foot, even as we both sank. More dove into the sea, bubbles and splashing announcing their entry into the arena. And what an arena it was: Purity’s sapphire lighting cast rays through the water, highlighting the metal mechs swimming towards me. Spreading up and around us like some sunken forest were the Chancellor’s long arms. Already pitted by Purity’s feasting recycling system, the towering stalks rose up around us, gray and still.

Beta had been pierced by one before the fall, and Delta knocked down after her, but I saw neither of my vessel friends, my reason for coming down here, right away. Understandable, seeing as I was more preoccupied with freeing myself from the pesky flexi-mech.

The water gave me the fluidity to curl up my clung-to leg, enough so I could reach down and grab the flexi-mech’s remaining holding hand. I didn’t have as much power beneath the water, but the flexi-mech’s wrists weren’t made to hold against my strength. I pushed down and, coupled with the water, the flexi-mech’s hand slid off my ankle.

Not that the mech cared: as soon as I freed myself, the flexi-mech kicked forward, its remaining hand spinning up into that drill again and coming right for my face.

So I dropped. Kicked and swam deeper into the dark, the red lights trailing after me. Purity’s bottom came up quick, a pocked place, almost like an insect’s eye. Fine-filtering nets stretched over various pipes to handle waste and weed out water to send back into Starship’s closed ecosystem. Their borders twinkled, reflective coating giving me a guideline, letting me find the right path.

Laying amongst those glittering nets were three humanoid shapes. Two I wanted, the third I loathed. Delta drifted off to the right, her shorter hair frizzing out behind her head, a dark line near her marking her blade. To the left and closer together sat Beta and the Chancellor. My friend and fellow vessel had a Chancellor’s arm still sloping down and piercing through her chest, a wince-inducing sight. The Chancellor, at least, looked as dead as my friends, and with any luck would stay that way.

A flick back gauged my distance: my flexi-mech friend came closest, but with only a single arm, the mech hadn’t kept up with me. Its friends were further back, their swimming strokes random and ungainly: not too surprising they didn’t have logic for moving through water.

Thankfully, Leo thought to teach his vessels how to swim.

I pushed towards Delta first, as much going for the blade as for the vessel. My hands found the jagged hilt there on the grim gray base, the weapon’s bulk easy, if slow, to move in the deep. As I pointed the edge towards the closest net, I felt the first telltale prick along my synthetic skin: Purity’s solid-destroying recyclers.

The little monsters had already dealt damage to Delta’s blade, pitting it throughout. Delta herself looked nibbled around her edges, the synthetic skin regenerating enough to keep her core protected while her clothes, her hair, her shoes already were little more than scraps. Eventually those microbes would find a way past the vessel’s skin and into more vulnerable wires, chips, memory.

Hopefully I’d be fast enough.

Kicking towards the near net, I led with the blade. The edge poked into the thin fibers, meant to stop rogue debris from entering the pipes, and sliced them apart with a gentle glide. Like shredding a spider’s web, built to withstand impact but not a cross-wise cut. With a second slice, the net cleared off altogether, vanishing down the meter-wide pipe.

I whirled, as fast as one could whirl in water, looking to get Delta. Instead I found my flexi-mech foe gurgling down at me, drilling hand spinning up froth. Before, in my dangling moment, I didn’t have a weapon.

Circumstances had changed.

I swatted the blade across my body, a sludgy motion in the water, but fast enough to intersect with the mech. The spinning hand hit the blade and went to work on itself, the motor’s force enough to slice through the mech’s fingers in an instant, the spinning palm shortly thereafter. I figured the mech would keep on coming, hoping to bludgeon me with its stump in single-minded rage, but Purity prevented that: its circuits exposed to water, the mech twitched as its body shorted out.

Dead, the mech’s momentum carried the thing past me into a thud against the basin’s bottom.

With more mechs lurching my way, I didn’t have time to pity the poor machine. Keeping Delta’s blade in my left hand, I kicked towards the downed vessel. Like the flexi-mech before me, I went for Delta’s ankle, gripped it with my right hand and pulled, kicking my feet hard to get some momentum on my side. Delta shifted, sliding off the bottom and coming with me towards the open pipe.

I didn’t have time to carefully drop Delta in, instead opting for a swinging pull to throw Delta towards the pipe’s entrance. For a human, the move might’ve relied on luck. For me, once I told my systems what to do, my right hand swung Delta with the perfect force, released at the perfect time. The vessel floated towards the pipe and in, flawless placement.

Take that, humans.

Beta wouldn’t be quite so simple: four flexi-mechs floundered between me and my vessel friend. Two had the shrapnel knives so often equipped by Alpha’s mechs, haphazard weaponry deployed by a haphazard army. The other two had those whirling hands, though every time they spun those ten fingers up, the whirls acted like motors, pushing the mechs around in wild loops.

Nonetheless, with the pinpricks growing as more Purity protectors found my soft skin, a single bad blow down here would be fatal. Even if Alvie went up to get Leo and Val and they bothered to send help down, all they’d likely find would be half-eaten remnants. If that.

Faced with little time and poor odds, I decided to pull a Delta.

Kicking hard right towards Beta, I hugged the basin’s bottom. With Delta’s blade still in hand, sticking close to the ground let my feet move me along at speed. The flexi-mechs tried to intercept, scrambling down at me, limbs akimbo. Their red eyes lingered in the dark, reflecting off their knives, their metal bodies. Like being pursued by shimmering phantoms.

Mortal ones.

The first flexi-mech hit me two meters out from Beta. The mech lunged in with a stabbing point, angling towards my back. The thing’s eye-glow gave it away and I rolled, facing up and bringing Delta’s blade back across my body for the intercept. Underwater, the collision lacked impact, a flimsy clang. My blade’s bigger body swept the knife out wide, the force spinning the mech so its side faced me. Pulling the sword back, I jabbed it forward, aiming for a skewer. My own momentum, drifting me towards Beta, meant I didn’t achieve the devastating blow I’d hoped for, but only nicked the mech’s mid-section.

Again, the water made the small slice enough. A white crackle blew from the cut, followed by a sharp spasm across the flexi-mech’s lanky limbs. Like its brother, the machine stopped flailing and sank, dead, to the floor.

Two down, three to go.

The remainder weren’t total morons either. Despite their crappy swimming the three moved to encircle me, the drill-handers coming to good grips with their makeshift motors to scoot towards Beta and beat me to her, while the other knife-wielder swept in at my feet.

Surrounded and alone amid the Chancellor’s looming arms, I steadied the grip on Delta’s sword and kicked off again, going the last distance towards Beta. I could’ve run, could’ve taken Delta as my prize and left.

A coward’s play, Kaydee would’ve said, and I was no coward.

Not anymore.