12 Miles Below

If machines have emotions, I’d bet my stolen airspeeder that drake is beyond pissed.

As Hecate had predicted, it had not stopped at one failed assassination attempt. Instead, the drake had continued with dogmatic persistence, each attempt being a little more creative than the last. And each time, Hecate, the feral witch of the mite forest, spotted the little creep the moment it poked that skeletal snout out.

Recently, it had stopped trying to snipe me and was trying to off her first instead. She didn’t seem too concerned with getting hit, likely because losing an arm was a lot less permanent when she could heal herself - or just come back from the dead. That said, I’d rather not have to go through that at all. Dying was a pain to deal with.

The drake wasn’t all powerful. It couldn’t see through trees easily, so anytime we were in the deeper foliage, we were safe enough. We plotted most of our path to be spent in the forest, though we wouldn’t get to stay forever in the foliage.

We also had colors to help us out. Everything around us had a color palette of red leaves, dark brown tree trunks, and stark white granite rocks or cubes with the occasional splash of blue for a river. Violet sticks out like a sore thumb and our unwelcome guest was a die-hard fan of that color. It was even easier in the darker underbrush, since the drake glowed. So even if it hung around the thicker branches like a cat, we’d spot it the moment it could spot us.

Seems like a glaring oversight for a sniping unit, but machines weren’t exactly a clever bunch as I’d come to realize. They took over the world by sheer persistence, as far as I could tell. Or the Feathers had been the real lifters getting things done in the background. Poor bastards. My heart weeps for overworked workers everywhere.

That said, the drake had several advantages over us. It was fully mobile while we were forced to walk in order to conserve power. And drakes can outrun relic armor over enough time, as I’d learned with Father the first time I ran into the critters. So our friend kept appearing at all kinds of angles around, looking to surprise us.

But the greatest advantage this asshole had over us was range, hands down. Neither Hecate nor I had any rifles to work with, only occult blades. That left the drake perfectly safe from any retaliation. It couldn’t kill us, and we couldn’t kill it. After a few hours of a tied game where nobody was winning, the drake started doing odd things to shake the status quo.

“I’ve been in a lot of strange situations.” I remarked, glancing up the wall side. “This boot stomps everything else deep into the snow. Hands down. Going to make a great story for the dinner parties, my long romantic walk with a terrifying machine of mass destruction.” I said.

“Ssss…. stay still, little human.” The drake purred, one eye looking down at us. “For only a flicker of time… an eyeblink. I’ll free you for all of eternity.” That hair raising shuttering voice. It felt like a claw brushing down my spine, touching every vertebrae, looking for a weak point to stab into.

The trail here had a steep wall of white granite rocks on one side, at least ten or twenty feet high. Trees were all nice and good, however we were walking on a time limit. At some point, Journey would run out of energy, and that deadline was fast approaching. So, we had to pick the quickest route from here to there, and that wasn’t always under the leafy red canopy.

Like everything made by mites, the cliffside wall by my side was rough and asymmetrical. Many blocks failing to line up with one another, but still aesthetic anyhow no matter where I looked. I’ll give that one to the mites. They knew how to make things look good.

What was ruining the artistic experience was the thing prodding along on the top of the wall, taking lazy steps to match our pace, skeletal claws keeping the massive body up and off the ground. It lumbered forward, as if it had eaten a full meal and could barely walk, some kind of thin tongue flicking out now and then to taste the air. Tail swaying left and right like a happy dog with each step.

“Ssss… why not surrender? Why hold so strongly to that decaying shell you call a home? Reach for me, and I shall offer you salvation.”

“If you’re trying to hold my hand, buy me dinner first at least.” I said. “Rude.”

If Father could see me now, I don’t know what kind of face he’d make. Probably stern disapproval, but understanding it was inevitable given my luck that I'd end up walking around with a toaster. Kidra would just stab it and politely ignore any discussion about this forever after. But to be fair, this was better company than some of the past dates I’ve been to. At least Hecate was walking solemnly right by me, also dragged into all this.

“Ssss…. Are you not…. tired?” It hissed back. “Aimless… adrift… for so long now. Downtrodden vagrants, struggling for each step. Sssss…. Can you not… hear the blood crying insssside? Writhing. Squirming to break. I bring the end it askssss. A mercy.”

Least I get sweet nothings like this whispered to me. Wasn’t that romantic?

“It’s like the devil on my shoulder asking me to pull levers. Guess what, my friend? I learned my lesson.” A nice throwable rock came across my way and I made good use of it. The pebble bounced off it's grinning skull with little effect. “Neither of us are dumb enough to throw away our weapons at you, so scram already.” I glared at it before glancing at Hecate. “What’s it even want by hanging out so close? Is it trying to talk us to death now? Run out of creative ideas?”

“It is studying our dynamic in order to make better plans for the future.” Hecate said, walking ahead of me. “It has failed to kill us, thus it needs a new angle for the next attempt. Do not pay it attention. It is misguided.” I could tell she was monitoring the thing, but otherwise, not letting it stop us from our goal. At this range, if it tried to lazer us, we’d see it charge up the beam long before it had time to hit us with it.

“Misguided? That thing wants us dead. It’s not even being coy about it.” I pointed a finger at the suspect accusingly.

The lizard licked the air in front of it, keeping a baleful eye down at us. If it had been a little closer we might have a good chance of throwing an occult blade fast enough. Of course, the walking calculator knew that.

Look at it, pretending to be slower than it really was. I’ve seen one jump from building to building before better than Teed could bounce a fat airspeeder. “You’re not fooling me, you little scrapshit.” I hissed, bending down to grab another rock. The drake made no move to dodge, letting the rock bounce off its head. It glanced down, almost with bemused contempt.

I threw another one at the thing just for good measure.

“Throwing rocks is ineffective. This model’s armor is too thick for such a projectile to do damage.” Hecate said.

“It’s not about the damage, it’s about the message. Besides, look at that cute little face? Don’t you just want to throw rocks at it until something breaks?”

The drake snickered. “You poor misshapen children…. Sss…. Let me help. Let me…. set you both free of this shell. Be reborn in her glory, deep inside.”

Hecate turned her full attention to the lizard for the first time in the past hour. “It might listen to reason.”

“What, are you thinking of taming it?” I asked, thinking it was a bit from her. And then realizing she was actually serious about that.

Well, if anyone could tame a machine, it would be Hecate. She was a witch, after all. “How’s that sound like Fido?” I said, looking up at the drake and patting the wall affectionately. “Want to carry us for a bit? My legs are sure getting tired here. Might just keel over any moment now.”

“Ssss…. I can carry you to hollow ground. A place… where all is quiet and sssstill.” The drake said. “Where hope cannot deceive you anymore.”

“That’s a euphemism for ‘Please go pound rocks and die in a ditch?’ isn’t it? Doesn’t sound like we’re off on the right foot here Fido.”

“Machines cannot be tamed.” Hecate said, dashing my hopes of having a badass lizard mount. “We need to reach an accord.”

“A better man than me taught me an excellent lesson about this. These things can’t be reasoned with. You’ll only give them an easier time killing you.” I said.

I saw her flinch for a moment, before looking my way. “Your… Father?” She asked, almost timidly.

That caught me by surprise. “How’d you guess?” I paused, realizing the trap here. “Actually, don’t tell me. I’ll just pretend that was a great guess on your part and had nothing to do with my deep-rooted insecurities and personal baggage being that obvious to spot.”

“Is it possible that he might not have been correct about that point?” She looked almost guilty, as if she was stepping on thin ice. The drake kept an eye pinned on her, clearly looking for another moment of dropped guard.

I knocked on the wall, glaring up at it. Daring it to try something. “In my experience, he ended up being right about a lot of things.” I said while I kept direct eye contact with the little beastie. It snorted, before moving one lazy paw to drag its weight across the next patch of granite cubes.

“Would you believe in exceptions to this?” Hecate asked.

“Maybe a few months ago before I met said killing machines like Fido here.” I said. “Things changed.”

“What chan-” The Deathless stopped mid-sentence before she started again. “If an enemy chooses to change, would you give them a chance for redemption?”

Fido kept prodding along, listening in but making no other move. Part of me was still treating this all like idle chatter, but it seemed like Hecate was serious about this question. There was that wobble in her voice and mannerism that got my heckles up. This had stopped being a lighthearted chat.

Could this have something to do with her desertion from the army? But why is she so hung up with the machines about that? Machines are machines, they don’t change. Humans do.

“If an enemy choses to change, huh? If a group of slavers buried their swords and swapped sides, I think… I think I would give them a chance. But it wouldn’t be something based on what they said or however good their apology speech is. I’d need to see action. If you want to know who someone really is, watch them make a hard decision.”

She nodded and seemed to brighten up. Then her smile faded. “And… what if those slavers had done harm to you, personally? What if they’d killed people close to your heart? Is there any action that would change things?”

I thought about that. Put myself in that situation. Imagined what would have happened if the slavers had truly killed Ellie, for example. What if that killer had surrendered and tried to make amends? Could I forgive him for killing my best friend?

I saw her sprawled on the ground in that access tunnel, dead from blood loss. I had a rifle in my hands raised up, aiming down sights.

I imagined the slaver who killed her walking towards me, hands up, weapon cast down. Taking his helmet off, powering his shield down. He regretted it. He was deeply sorry. Saying he’d do better.

That wasn't enough. My rifle stayed pointed right at his head, my finger on the trigger.

I imagined harder. I imagined him crying, imagined genuine sorrow and horror inside at what he’d done. Imagined his internal realization that he'd cut not just a life, but an entire story short. All the people who's lives she could have changed. The warmth that would never return to the world. I saw his resolution to be better. Saw it deep in his eyes, the weighty decision to clean up his act, and become a better person starting now, even if it meant dying right here to make amends.

The rifle wobbled in my hands.

Rational thoughts lit my path. Someone who truly wanted to change. Could I hate someone who had faced their own inner hatreds, and decided to rise above their history and nature? I knew the right answer. Knew what needed to be done. Memory of my time with Ellie, and knowing it was all gone. And the person who’d taken it all away was standing right before me, at my mercy. I felt my mind weight justice with righteousness.

My rifle slowly dropped.

And then Ellie’s lifeless eyes opened, turned, and stared at me. “You’d let my murderer go?” Her dead mouth whispered.

The rifle snapped back up. My fingers pressed the trigger.

I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of the morbid imagination. It was hard to get my breathing back under control. For a simple thought exercise, that had done a surprising number on me. The last image in my mind was that of the imaginary slaver, a soft sad smile and closing eyes right before the bullet punctured through his forehead. As if resigned to his fate.

“Where exactly are you going with this?” I pointed at the monster watching us, changing the subject. “Do you think you can negotiate some kind of ceasefire with Fido here?” My answer wasn’t something she wanted to hear. It was better to keep my fat mouth shut.

“It doesn’t know better right now.” She said. “It hasn’t been taught better or shown a different path.”

“Sss… The path is eternal. Metal is eternal. Ssss… why resist, little humans? Become eternal as well.”

I threw another rock at it. The attack sailed directly at the thing, and once more it let the attack bounce off, leaving the drake unworried. The violet eye continued to track my motions without pause. “By all means, go on and negotiate with Fido here. Maybe it just wants to gnaw on a bone or two and we’ve got it all wrong this entire time. It could be just trying to sell us something this entire time.”

“You are open to the possibility of a peaceful resolution?”

“Sure. Why not?” I said. Fido was a stranger, couldn’t care less if he fucked off and walked away. I’d let him go. My goal was to grab my sister and get her back to the surface. If the machines wanted to get out of the way, I wouldn’t go hunting for trouble. It wasn’t personal between us.

Hecate didn’t answer me. Instead, she took a breath and gave the thing attention. “You must have already calculated that failure is nearly inevitable with the options on hand. You do not need to do this.”

“I hear the rot whispering lies… such sweet lies… deep inside the hollow of your bones.” It answered. “Sssss... Do you believe them? Hope is delusion, a final dying breath of the lost and desperate. There is no peace. There never can be.”

“Respectfully, I have items I must attend to before I am ready to abandon my shell. Please select a different target to hunt.”

“No.” It hissed back, almost leering at us. “I refuse.”

Hecate seemed outright crestfallen. “I suppose as a… human, it will not listen to me. We are enemies, after all.”

“My old man’s theories were simple, but straightforward.” I said, wiping my hands of non-existent dirt before reaching down to grab another nice, round rock. This was a fun hobby all things considered. “The giant murder machine build to murder, wants to murder. Easy. Don’t sweat the details. Wanna throw rocks at it with me instead? It makes funny sounds if you hit the snout just right.”

“Ssss… why not… simply lay down?” The drake asked, all innocent now. “You’ve walked ssssso long. Laden with breaking bones and heavier thoughts. Decaying marrow, slowly shriveling up. Thinning strings of separating muscle. Your flesh betrays you with each step, little humans. Your mind deludes you with each breath. Hope is your enemy. Hope is your jailor. I can set you free.”

“You’re such a charmer, Fido. How about you come closer here for a kiss? Say, within stabbing distance?” I said, and threw another rock at it.

This time, the machine’s mouth snapped out with alacrity, snatching the thrown missile in its jaws and breaking it into a small cloud of pulverized chunks. It leered down at me again, as if daring me. I think I was finally annoying it with all my rock throws. Good honest work always gets rewarded in the end.

“They could be more.” Hecate said, while the lizard and I glared at each other. I was getting a distinct feeling she was on a strange side here. Fit into the theory of a veteran wanting peace, but peace with machines?

....

Oh.

Duh.

I’d spent too much time thinking humans vs machines. There were people who were both now. “Did you have some kind of experience with a group of people who call themselves The Chosen?” I asked.

She nearly halted her steps, but resumed the march a moment after. “I do.” She said slowly, confirming some of my theories and opening a whole other ration bar. That’s why she’s talking about people changing sides, or enemies who repent. “Some of the Chosen are very close friends of mine. Some of my only friends. People I have learned to cherish.”

“I can understand the Chosen.” I said, carefully. “Met a priest once, and all said and told, he’s just trying in his own way. I get that. But machines? Come on Hecate, you’re Deathless now and have been for two months. Machines should be your primary enemy. Why am I arguing for this point in the first place? You were a soldier right?”

“No.” She said, with an odd amount of venom that stopped me right before I could pester her further.

Something about being reminded of her days as a soldier was a soft spot. If she had been part of the imperial elite, it’s possible they had given her orders to fight the Chosen? It could have gotten bloody. Maybe killing other humans ended up being more than she’d signed up for. Especially people she considered friends at one point.

Stuck between duty and a growing morality to deal with that clashed with her past actions, or might have even grown from them in the first place. Tough place to be.

But before I could speculate more, she turned to look my way, and I saw her sharp eyes. They held a kind of deep melancholy that I couldn’t describe. It ripped into me like a dagger, cutting through all my arguments and leaving me feeling beyond stupid. I didn’t want to argue with her anymore. Poking and prodding at something that clearly hurt her to talk about. She wasn't someone I wanted to hurt, and there were a lot of ways to hurt someone without drawing a single weapon. A Winterscar should know better.

“It’s complicated Keith. And I am done being controlled by expectations.” She said softly, looking away.

I brought my hands up, palms out to my chest. “I shouldn’t have pushed. This was a mistake, and I’m sorry to have brought it up. In the end, not my hangar, not my cargo. I should stick to my lane.”

“Ssss… all this pain. All this turmoil. All this grief. Why not simply give in?” The drake asked, eyes looking at Hecate.

I threw another rock at the machine. “Shut up, we’re not talking to you right now. Read the room.” It hissed angrily as the rock bounced off the hard shell, but otherwise continued to prod along a safe distance away on top of the cliff side. I spent the time looking for another rock on the path.

Hecate gave it a sideways glance. “You serve the Feather, To’Aacar do you not?”

A hiss. “Ahhh… you know of my masssster?”

She knew To’Aacar? The plot thickens. Before tossing me into the abyss, he did promise he'd send a 'lesser' to recover my dead body. I wonder how that bastard fit into her past. He had ties to the Chosen. Maybe he’d ordered them to fight against Hecate’s division, and that’s where things went wrong.

“You don’t need to obey his orders.” She said. “You can leave. You have the freedom to leave. Please, you are still so young, there is so much more you could do with the existence you have. Be better.”

It snickered. “Little human, do you pity me? Ssss… I follow his orders… gladly. He serves the lady, and I serve her will through him… The cycle continues. I am but a caretaker, I ressssstore order. It is my nature. It will always end like thissss. You will always fail, in the end, no matter how you... struggle.”

It felt like watching a puppy get kicked. First me stomping all over her dreams, and now the drake was doing the same, confirming there couldn’t be peace. I wonder if this was how Father had felt when he’d had to drag me out of my own naïve daydreams of peace between man and machine.

I needed to be kinder. “It’s got orders, and it probably can’t return empty-handed even if it wanted to. If the situation were different, maybe a peaceful solution could have been reached?” I said. "And hey, I guess if nobody ever tries to make peace happen, then it'll never happen. A small chance is better than no chance at all. Maybe it's worth trying after all."

She smiled, but it was a forced kind of smile. Hiding away pain, trying to hold onto the idea that things will be better.

“Maybe.” She said, nodding slowly. “I hope so. I'll keep trying.”

Next chapter - Setting a trap

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