Chapter 11 Fracture
Roxi finds the remaining dead and decommissioned, scans their bodies, searches them, and then nods for one of us to take them until we’ve finally cleared the facility.
Paradox takes it upon himself to carry our Brothers.
They are the heaviest, most durable units I’ve ever seen, apart from CyberGuards.
She leads us into the various storage and parts areas and points out the crates of materials, the accesses, and the best ways to get the cargo out. Once she determines orbit is clear, she calls in the fleet and opens up the facility hangars.
Our teams begin transferring the most critical assets first: nanotechnology equipment and parts, hibernation support supplies, and Titan creation systems. The base becomes a hive of activity as Brothers, Rebels, and even Poppy, our one female pilot without a ship, carry crates and chambers and computer systems out the access doors into the below-ground hangars now open to the sky.
I stay close to Roxi, helping her sort items and coordinate teams to keep related things together. Once we’ve prepped teams on the sixth floor, Roxi shifts off to the side and watches everyone work.
“You okay?” I ask.
She hugs herself. “It’s the opposite of the first day we moved in.
I can’t tell you how nice it is to see this place filled with life again, but the reason is eating at me.
I’ll never know why Garett did it, unless he hid a file on his computer.
I’m just more curious about how he got the communication out from under my nose. ”
Roxi, who has opened her helmet now that the oxygen is back online, rubs the space between her brows.
“I cannot express how much deep shame I feel for this. It happened on my watch. It wasn’t all on me, because of our teams, but then it was when I became the last. I just don’t know how to overcome the past unless I dig deep enough that I find some explanation buried in someone’s mind or I can wreck this SIP program that makes idiots like Garett think they have an in.
Fucking Solcrue Integrationists. Fuck you, Garett. ”
Vandal, who’s carrying a nanotoner repair machine, stops beside us. “Want me to torch his body? It would delight me.”
“Maybe check his personal tablet first?” Supercharge hands it to me.
Roxi is eager to get her hands on it and opens up Garett’s files. The expression of horrified disgust that warps her beautiful face is unexpected. “Ew. Yeah. Do whatever you want.”
“Really?” Vandal’s green eyes light up.
She shows us the message she’s decrypted. Garett wanted a female Solcrue as a mate and has tons of Solcrue porn on his device.
“Sent the request when he was off-world. That’s why I didn’t know. Solcrue only accept purebred offspring. I'm sure that’s why they didn’t spare him. They just used him,” she says.
“So everyone here died because he wanted to fuck a snake?” Vandal asks. “That’s messed up, even to me.”
“Yeah.” Roxi massages her temples and shakes her head. “I don’t want to know about it. Just…do what you’re going to do, Vandal.”
Vandal grins with malice in his eyes, pumps a fist in triumph, and hustles toward the hangars. “Garett is mine!”
Roxi shuffles to a door labeled Sub Six like all of her energy is suddenly gone.
She draws in a deep breath and looks up at me as I follow her.
“I don’t know what to expect beyond this door.
I’m not sure if I implemented the lockdown correctly.
I’m not a biological technician. The commands are different.
I don’t know the difference between cryostasis and hibernation.
But man, if I fucked this up because Garett had a Solcrue fetish, I am going to be pissed. ”
“At least you tried even when you were being shot at. I saw the recordings on the security desk screens,” I offer.
Roxi’s face screws up with anger, then collapses into pain. She punches in her code. The scanner spins over her face.
Voice Command Required appears onscreen.
“Roxi, Unit 999.”
“Unit?” I ask.
“Augment, remember?”
The doors clunk and hum. Then again and again until we’re walking through a series of twenty barricades between us and the rocky basement chamber below Level Six. It’s a partially unfinished level and houses many more hibernation cells than I thought would fit down here.
I stop at the first when I see his face. “Roxi?”
When she doesn’t respond, I look over at her to see her walking to a bare rock wall with nothing on it.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Atomizer asks. “Oh, wow. That’s a lot of hibernating Titans.”
“They’re not operational,” Roxi mumbles. “Need parts.”
I leave him to gawk as I chase after Roxi. She runs a hand over the wall, trailing a pulsing energy to the beat of her heart across the rock. As she does, a cloak ripples and fades, exposing a row of partially filled hibernation cells, buried in the rock, Relic Drillbit style.
She walks between them, inspecting the occupied ones carefully. Roxi smiles at me with tears in her eyes. “They’re all stable. But I’m glad we came when we did. They only have about a month left of nutrient supply here.”
“Tor?” Roxi calls over our expert wiring Titan. Castor joins him as she speaks about an emergency hibernation support system for Aegis. I wish she wanted me. But I don’t have much skill in that department.
“Yeah, we’ve got plenty of material now,” Tor says, the pink stripes on his arms pulsing like idling motors.
I walk up to a chamber and look down at the young woman. “I thought you were all older.”
“They got new bodies.” Roxi offers. “It was much easier to just transfer them all instead of training new minds. With the declining numbers, it was also a species preservation tactic. We gained a few new Techs and Creators over the years. A few got older, like Quris because he didn’t have the attention to detail.
He was impatient with his flash-cloning. ”
Roxi coordinates a plan to get them to Aegis, where Esthi, Rhee, and the medic Titans will hopefully be able to figure out how to care for them.
A control panel concealed in the rock unscrews each chamber one at a time.
She packs up tablets and equipment in crates from Scythe while we carry the hibernation pods to the platform.
I don’t like leaving her behind, but I think she’s in about the safest possible place she could be.
Flashbomb steps on the center of the platform. “Up, please.”
The platform rises. Atomizer and I steady the first hibernation pod between us. When the platform stops, we cart it onboard Scythe, which has hookups for this very situation. CSP was not always evil. They were once highly regarded protectors of Creators and their inventions.
Thyristor opens up a panel and pulls out a bundle of taped-off wiring.
“Fuckers.” He twists together some wires and connects to the pod as Atomizer and I secure it to the latches in the floor. Sarge, Savage, Paradox, and the others bring the rest, while Brothers continue loading hibernation equipment.
Just outside of Scythe, I see Drillbit at work. He carves out holes in the distant meadow and has Morbid laying the bodies inside.
Redline speeds by with other Titans as they load up the three additional ships we’ve brought to scavenge what we can. It feels like a crime to disassemble such a useful base, but Roxi is right. We have to keep moving.
Roxi stops at the bottom of Scythe’s ramp, her special gun steadied in her hands like she expects Solcrue to attack at any moment. “I want them on Aegis as fast as you can make it safely happen.” Paradox gives her a nod. “I will see to it.”
“We’ll join,” Thyristor says as Castor hikes up the ramp with more crates.
“In case there’s trouble on the way. Power supplies I can manage.
But the sooner we get them to Aegis, the sooner they’ll get the nutrient updates they need.
BlazeStar is taking on the additional Brothers, but they are an older ship and don’t have the capacity we do. ”
“That works.” Roxi pulls up a map of the planet as Eon walks up. “You requested food supplies. I have initiated the harvesters. They will be active for another fifteen minutes. Everything will load into containers and be stacked up by these boulders. Can you grab it?”
Eon nods. “I’ll send Raven out with the LightBlade to snatch them up with the grav beams.
“Perfect.” Roxi looks skyward.
“What?” I ask, looking up.
She shakes her head. Eon gives her a wary look, then speeds up his crews. Raven is out of the ship in under a minute with the LightBlade.
“Roxi,” I quietly call to her. “Tell me what you’re sensing.”
She grinds a hand into her chest. “We’re so open and exposed. I can’t explain what it is in my spine, but something is…humming like panic when I’m tired.”
“Probably because you are.” I brace her back and summon her eyes. “You have been going nonstop for a long time. You need recuperation.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Roxi.”
“I don’t want to sleep!” She backs away from me. “People die when I close my eyes! When I look the other way… I have to be on all the time!”
Lifting my hands, I try to show her that I mean her no harm. “Tell me what I can do to help.”
But she hurries back to the platform that’s already descending and jumps down as if the three-story fall doesn’t hurt her. I leap down and land beside her.
Roxi watches as Scythe takes off into the sky, fingers drumming her thigh. Ravenger III is barely visible in the distant blue abyss, on patrol. They’re staying close but isolated while they house the enemy.
“I’m sorry, Fracture. I know you’re just trying to help. But I have to do this. My body cannot fail me now. It needs to fucking work.”
She marches herself down to Level Six, the Creators’ level, and collects the last of the tablets and mobile lab equipment, handing a crate to me. She takes one last look at the empty sub-level. Even the vacant pods have been taken. We have gutted the facility in a matter of hours.
The heartbroken look on her face is difficult to endure. Roxi locks down the base one level at a time. Lights shut off. Life support shuts down. And bulkhead doors close.
When we get to Level Three, she stops by the place the Titan squad fell. She clenches her fists and forces them open again. Roxi stalks down the hallways to a residential room.
When she opens the door, I get a glimpse of her life before the chaos started.
There are faded posters of waterfalls and animals, old boxes of MREs, jars of outdated augments, journals, and a holo screen on the wall.
The blankets are simple recycled fabric, and there’s a fake window made of backlit glass with a view of the stars and a blue-green planet.
A single piece of red candy sits on the desk.
“My roommate and I had decided to share it by lightly smashing it and breaking it into pieces so we could give everyone a taste.” Roxi touches the candy, looks around, then walks out and closes the door. “Let’s go.”