First Contact

Chapter 823: Ultimis Diebus Hominum

Yah, they're dead, they're all fucked up. Just pop 'em in the head an' they stay down. Just don't let 'em mob ya, reload when ya get the chance, an' don't try wrasslin' 'em 'round none, an' y'll be fine. - Deputy Cahill, Burgerland Rural Law Enforcement Office, Second Zombie War, Pre-Glassing

The walls were a cream colored painted ferrocrete. The texture was slightly bumpy, pleasingly rough to the touch for J'Keth as he walked down the corridor. The lights were dim in front and behind him, the automatic systems lighting and some kind of computer system turning the lights up as he approached and then down as Oltrit (named after a kind of lunch veggi patty popular in the warrens) passed them.

There was some kind of light tune playing over hidden speakers and rather than annoy him, J'Keth kind of liked the tune. It kept changing beat, even the singers seemed to change. Once in a while someone came on and said stuff in lemurese, but he couldn't understand it so he pretty much ignored the voice.

Plus, it just had that feeling of someone telling you something you probably didn't care about.

The drones had flown around during the twelve hours they'd needed to sleep, fully mapping the lemur building.

J'Keth had to admit, it was massive. It had the main corridor that ran east to west with four intersecting corridors that ran north and south. The main corridor was six stories high, the outer n/s corridors were two stories high, the inner n/s ones were four stories high.

It kind of made sense to him.

The main corridor had what looked like a big courtyard surrounded by cooking establishments. There were even three large lemur vehicles on slowly rotating platforms. One was a big blue wheeled vehicle with an air-foil on the back and a white stripe up the middle, with double runes on each door.

Vrod really liked that one.

J'Keth liked the gray ground vehicle with the upraised back hatch over the cargo area. It just looked kind of nifty to him.

Nopridum liked the big one, with the wheels that were twice his size, with all kinds of chromed parts outside the top of the front of it.

They'd discussed those vehicles while eating.

Was it really stealing if all the lemurs were dead? Was it really stealing when the lemurs were the enemy?

Stealing was wrong. They knew that.

But was it stealing if they took those vehicles and maybe drove them around?

Just a little bit?

Just for fun?

J'Keth shook his head, banishing the kinda-fantasy of driving across a big field in the gray car, the back open, with maybe two or three of the others sitting in the back, their legs hanging out the back, drinking those delicious and bubbly drinks the machine gave out just for pointing a weapon at it.

Just drive away into the sunset. Never put up with Masters, lemurs, or Inheritors ever again.

He took the stairs quickly, once again glad that his suit had such long legs that he could take two steps at a time instead of the steps coming up to between his hock and knee. At the top was a locked door.

Amgil was standing next to the door. He'd managed to pop open the lock and glance inside.

"It's a control center of some type," Amgil said softly. "There's four lemurs inside, two wearing armor, one naked and shackled to the wall, another wearing an armored torso covering but no pants."

J'Keth nodded. "Ready, brothers?"

They all nodded or gave tight replies. Amgil reached out and put his hand on the door latch. Norpidum put his left hand on J'Keth's left shoulder, Oltrit doing the same.

"Do it," J'Keth said.

Amgil opened the doora and J'Keth rushed in. Norpidum turned right, lifting his rifle, Oltrit used one tentacle to hold the door open as he went left. Amgil came after, checking the far right corner.

J'Keth aimed and fired, the crystal hitting the torso armor and exploding against the back plates.

And just leaving behind dents.

The three lemurs slowly shuffled, turning around to face the four servitors. The one shackled to the wall by their wrists snapped and snarled, twisting against their bindings.

"Go hyper..." Norpidum started to say.

"GO BLADES!" J'Keth shouted, unwinding the tentacles off his back and extending the blades.

Training said to wrap the legs and squeeze, wrap the torso, getting the arms if possible, then use the other four to stab.

The blades skittered off the helmets.

Norpidum used the 'wringing' method on the pantless lemur, twisting the lower body away. The internal organs fell on the floor as he threw the legs away, but the lemur kept snarling inside the helmet.

Amgil's blade punched through the face shield. The lemur dropped.

J'Keth had managed to hold one tight and followed Amgil's example.

Oltrit stabbed the one manacled to the wall through the forehead and it went limp.

J'Keth stabbed the one Norpidum was wrestling with and that one went limp.

"Take them up to the roof, toss them off," J'Keth said.

When Oltrit turned away J'Keth saw an odd discoloration on the back of the armor.

"Hold, Oltrit," he said. The other servitor stopped and J'Keth looked closely. He unfolded his armor slightly so he could poke at the strange discolored patch on the armor.

There was a hole. The chitin was torn away and a hole in the biomechanical structure underneath. His fingers came away smeared with pus and blackened tissue.

"Run a function check on your armor," J'Keth said. He waved at the other two. "Use your tentacles, take them and throw them off the roof."

The other two nodded, Amgil using the tentacles to rip the manacles from the wall where they had been attached with the opposite end.

After a second Oltrit tightened the tentacles out of reflex.

"Armor degradation in six places. It's spreading from each point along the coolant and tissue support lines. The biocoolant isn't filtering right either. My suits starting to run hot," he said.

"The lemur's bites, they somehow damaged the suit," J'Keth said. He furrowed up his brow, rubbing his temples as they started to ache. "Lemurs bit each other. Bitten lemurs died and then got back up. A lemur bit your armor and got through the chitin to the tissue."

J'Keth suddenly looked up.

"Get out of your armor!" he said. He checked the functions of his own.

Four damaged areas that were spreading slowly.

He squirmed out of his armor.

"Where's the brainstem on the armor, Oltrit?" he asked. The other servitor stared at the armor, his eyes wide.

"Oltrit? Oltrit!" he reached out and thumped the other servitor on the shoulder.

"What? Oh, yeah, I'm Oltrit," the other one said. He giggled, a high pitched, brittle sound. "Um, right there, just below the nerve-spine that jabs into our spine."

J'Keth just had terrible visions of the suit sprouting a lemur inside of it, or maybe a lemur head, and chasing everyone while making that terrible screeching noise.

He leveled his rifle and pulled the trigger.

The suit shuddered and went limp.

J'Keth moved to Oltrit's suit and did the same thing.

"Why did you do that?" Oltrit asked.

J'Keth explained quickly, the theory that dead lemurs bit others and that made them into biting dead lemurs, and since the bite marks caused infection in the biomechanical tissue, then perhaps the bite would affect the armor somehow.

Oltrit rubbed his head. "You're the thinker, J'Keth," he said. "If you think so, I agree."

J'Keth nodded. "I do not like doing all the thinking."

"You liked puzzles when we were in the creche," Oltrit suddenly froze and looked around, his ears pressed flat against his head, his shoulders hunched.

J'Keth copied him. They looked at each other, their eyes wide with fear as they expected the Master's punishment for talking instead of using the psi-link.

Oltrit snickered.

J'Keth snickered.

They both burst out laughing as they straightened up.

"Old habit, brother," J'Keth said.

Oltrit just shook his head. He pointed at the screens. "Look, the lemurs had security watching everywhere in this place.

"Look, some lemurs are trapped in small cubicles and are not completely dressed," J'Keth said. "There are lots of clothing on the floor and on the bench seat."

"The lemurs are strange, even in death," Oltrit said.

J'Keth suddenly pointed at a screen showing a fountain. "Look! In the fountain!"

Oltrit leaned forward and suddenly burst out laughing.

One of the Masters was in the fountain, crawling/swimming/gliding through the water, just the top of its head, the slits of its nose, and its eyes above water as it kept circling around the statue in the middle of the fountain.

J'Keth suddenly stopped laughing, pointing at the bite marks that had torn through the Master's robe.

"If they bite our flesh, that will happen to us," he said.

Oltrit nodded. "Just like our armor."

J'Keth nodded slowly. "Just like that."

"It is scary that a dead lemur can get up and kill you," Oltrit said softly.

"What do you think caused it? That can't be normal. I mean, if a lemur died and then came back as a predator version that feels no pain and can only be stopped by damaging the brain, then the lemur race would have died out the first time some died and got back up before another lemur could crush its head with a rock," J'Keth said. "Something must have caused it to happen. Some kind of accident or attack?"

Oltrit shrugged. "I don't know. You're the thinky one."

J'Keth sighed and pushed away the thought. He looked at the controls.

"Robots," Oltrit said. The robots were rectangles, with a viewscreen on the upper third of one side, and flashing lights on each side of the top of the rectangle that alternated between red and blue. The viewscreen had runes and a picture on it, but J'Keth couldn't figure it out.

"What are they doing?" J'Keth asked, looking over all the buttons.

"Just going in circles. Not sure what they are doing," Oltrit said.

"Where are they?" J'Keth asked.

"Um... I don't know, I don't read lemur," Oltrit said.

J'Keth just nodded, still looking over the controls.

There was the crosshatching icon as well as another one that showed a key.

He pressed both buttons.

"Woah!" Oltrit said.

J'Keth looked up in time to see the metal grates lower over the windows and the doors slam shut. In several places the grate lowered and stopped just a few inches above a lemur's head. The lemur turned around and wandered off in one and the grate lowered.

"Perfect," J'Keth said.

"Robots are moving," Oltrit said.

They watched through different screens as the robots moved up to one of the lemurs that was standing in the way of the grate coming down. One of the robots reached out with a pressor/tractor beam and grabbed it.

Except the lemur tore in half when the robot lifted it from the floor.

Sparks shot out from the robot and it fell over backwards.

The other robots rushed off.

The dead lemur began pulling itself after the robots with its arms.

The gate slowly lowered.

"That was weird," J'Keth said.

The other two came back. "Done. Not as many lemurs out on the pavement," one said.

"Hey, why aren't you in your armor?" the other asked.

"Our armor got infected by lemur bites," Oltrit said.

J'Keth nodded. "Run a check on your suit. If its taken damage from the lemurs, take it off."

Neither one had.

"Let's head back. I'm hungry," J'Keth said.

The others nodded and together they all went back.

J'Keth explained his theory, the rest paying close attention.

Three other suits had bad bites, all of the bitten ones had infected and dead tissue around the bites.

The suits were removed, the brainstem that controlled the advanced suit functions was shot with a rifle or pistol, then the suits were taken up and thrown off the roof.

Everyone agreed that the idea of one of the suits growing a lemur head and chasing everyone would be a bad idea.

Afterwards, they ate, playing with the language teaching device.

When he laid down to go to sleep, J'Keth realized something terrible.

He felt more... more... more... somthing, than he had ever felt in his entire life.

Surrounded by dead lemurs and killer robots and a Master who kept swimming in circles in a fountain.

And he realized that he was completely, for the first time in his life, unafraid.

Ironically, that made him very afraid.

So he went and threatened the machine and it gave him some juice and J'Keth felt like it was... he struggled, trying to figure out what the machine was. Huffy? Was that a word? Like it was resentful but knew it couldn't show it.

He didn't know.

He sat in the dim light and looked at the others, sipping at the juice.

We don't even know that there are things we do not know, he thought. He looked at the teaching device, then picked it up, taking it off to the side.

He pressed the buttons.

"Apple" it said, showing the same kind of fruit that was on the bottle of the juice he was drinking.

"Apple," he said.

BING

"[Unknown] Good!" the device said.

He smiled, in the darkness.

And kept learning.