“Let them get me. Let them. Let them. Let… them….”
As the alpha neared the end of the mineshaft, a dull glow alighted in the passage just before them. The sentinel’s LED light flickered, illuminating the ashen body of the alpha and casting the light back on itself. They looked at each other in the flush of phosphor filling the cramped cavity, specks of copper glimmering on the mine walls. The naked hellion straightened its back and looked down on the twisted wreckage of the machine. Its pallid skin wrapped around bones and dark blue veins. Its chest moved in and out with each steady breath. It looked around the bent panels and twisted frame of the sentinel. Eyes darting about. The others inched closer. DDC39’s vocoder cracked, its own soft voice barely audible amongst the panting of the revins:
“We are the redemption.”
The pale harbinger cocked its head to the side, pondering this jumble of sounds, confused but curious. It looked to the side and saw the pickaxe resting against the wall in the shadows. The alpha smiled and bent over to pick it up, casting a crooked glance back at the machine as it listed in the dirt. With one swift arc of its forearm, it swung the pickaxe through the air, slicing downwards to the sentinel’s base. Bearing down into the destruction. Old versus new. The alpha’s swing came to an abrupt halt in mid-swing, the axe tumbling to the ground, clanking along the fissure and back into the darkness. The sentinel’s shadow hand had shot up, grasping the alpha’s wrist, tautly wrapped around its arm and sinking its fingers into the creature’s delicate skin.
The first stage booster fired in the lower levels. A deafening roar ripped through the open halls of the subterranean Titan halls. Becca leaned forward in her seat and could just see the back of the pathoton as it burned like a quasar, blocking the revins from breaking through the fire escape. The howling blast shook the rocket’s frame and the children bawled again. Becca implored them:
“It’s okay! It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”
But she was terrified. She felt the module shaking, annihilation riding on the ballasts of ammonium perchlorate. The first stage boosters fired into the flame deflectors at the bottom level. The revin bodies, twisted and crammed into the exhaust ducts, ignited beneath the massive engines — the solid rocket propellant burning through the flesh and bone like stove flame through paper.
The pathoton pushed forward and the revins stumbled back into the cramped stairway. The red strobe alarms flashed with the madness of the siren call, bellowing through the cableway:
“Warning! Lower fire escape is open. Exceeding unsafe temperatures. Blast doors must be closed. Warning!”
Further down the passage, the series of four-ton blast doors began to retract into the inward chambers.
“Warning! Launch countdown commenced. Warning!”
A searing heat carried through the staircase and ripped past the edges of the mattress. The rectangle was encircled in a ring of fire and, above the din, the screams of a hundred revin souls pulsated through the floral pattern of the bed. The stitches began to melt and pop. The revins went mad, pushing from the other side, backing the pathoton into the entryway. The hellfire of propellant melted the springs and cast them back like serpents ablaze, the fabric blasting into the pathoton with the roar of the rocket engines ripping through the staircase. Marrow and flesh flew through the air, the revin bellies blooming open and emptying into the heat, casting their insides into the furnace. The pathoton howled its glitch into the conflagration and Becca heard it through the module walls:
“YOU WILL BE OKAY!”
The alpha’s eyes widened and it gazed down at the trembling frame of the machine. The sentinel had the alpha’s wrist gripped firmly. The others saw their herald held still by the sentinel and they tumbled forward, pushing past each other at the chance to tear the thing apart. The light began to fade and a faint clicking sound radiated beneath the revin, like an igniter on a gas range. The alpha’s expression turned dour and it looked helplessly at the mess of bent panels and stripped cables adorning the sentinel’s trident frame. DDC39 could no longer see, but it heard some sound coming from the anemic being wriggling in its grasp. The alpha saw the spark flickering beneath the base of the machine and it mouthed out some recognizable sound. Its lips pursed and it sounded like a familiar objection. Its lips drew back, almost as if it was saying:
“Stop!”
ARCHON V lifted off the base, pulling upwards through the silo and out of the closure doors. The blast incinerated the naked bodies squirming upwards through the egress and tore through the anodized wire wrapped around the pathoton, fiber optic cables peeling backwards and evaporating in the inferno. Becca pressed her hand against the oval windows and peered outwards. Raindrops rolled down the aluminum silicate panes. The silo vanes spewed rocket blast aloft, pouring upwards, igniting a sea of flesh on the desert floor. The charred remains of the pathoton fell to the plank in the blackened landing, which went dark save for bone embers swirling in the air.
A searing tide of napalm coursed through the mineshaft, obliterating every creature slinking in the dark. The alpha saw its flesh melting, falling slack off tissue and bone, dripping into the hard base of the mine as everything went white. The heat sucked the air in ahead of those gathered outside, the rain briefly bending into the dim fissure. The revins looking into the mine from the bench road felt the draft pulling them inwards. It was quiet for a moment, and then the cries of the incinerated sailed outward. Unhinged echoes of the dead. The blaze ripped out of the mineshaft and washed over those outside, whipping into the caldera like a solar flare. Tissue and blood spit from the cleft, cast into the pit with fire and rain. The sentinel lost sentience. A torpor washed over everything.
• Solar power cell — 0%. Solar armor — breached
• Drivetrain — non-operational
• Visual/cortico/thermal/radar optics — unresponsive
• HD/Comms — compromised; non-operational
• Water — 0%. Napalm — 0%
• Railgun — 0% capacity
• JE — (scrambled)
• Forced shutdown; entering hibernation
12. Farewell, Sonora
Becca and the others slunk into their seats, pinned back by the velocity of the rocket lifting into the troposphere. The main engine roared with 500,000 pounds of thrust. T+10. Becca’s eyesight began to constrict into a tunnel vision. The ship oscillated violently. She looked around and saw the other passengers — children — close their eyes. A small digital display on the ceiling showed a human diagram beeping, depicting passengers going to sleep. Becca turned her head and felt the arc of the rocket begin to twist, its trajectory tilting. She pressed her head to the side, straining with all her might, to peer outside of the small oval window. She looked down and saw the contrails of the rocket falling backwards and there, close enough to touch, was the wisp of storms rolling over Sonora. The first stage booster decoupled, tumbling into the blue like a barrel into Niagara. Sheet lighting cracked through the dark maelstrom they had just passed through. T+30. They were above it all. Becca wondered what was happening and if she was ascending into heaven. The expanse of the Earth’s lithosphere stretched out like a dream, encircled by green aurorae flaring in soft tufts like apparitions wandering through the sea. A solar wind, wailing in the void of the magnetic field. The rocket passed through a noctilucent cloud on the edge of times cessation. They entered the thermosphere and the massive vehicle gradually softened, the violent rattle subsiding to a hum. Becca felt her eyes grow heavy. Her heartbeat slowed down. A nozzle near the display whistled, discharging a vapor into the thin air of the cramped module. The cylinder emanated the acrid smell of anthracite and the human diagram blinked red with worry. Becca felt herself blacking out. As her eyes closed, she heard the promise, again: