“Considering the tone of the conversation you had with him Ayan, I decided it was more prudent to allow you to take whatever survivors were willing to see sense in another direction. Do you have any bots with you? I can't tell while you're in the tunnel.”
“No, they all sided with Yves.”
“All the better then. I am sorry for the loss of life, but their decisions have sealed their fates.”
Oz looked at Jason and Ayan in turn, they both looked ashen in the dim blue light emitted by Jason's comm unit. “Dementia, is the virus changing enough to affect you?”
“As I've integrated the virus code in my core program and am evolving with it I am immune. I've also been able to maintain a connection with the few bots who are working to replace my Xetima fuelled systems with a more practical form of micro fusion propulsion. I should be ready by the time you arrive. I have devised a plan involving my own cloaking device to get you and many more people off the planet. I have cleared out all non-essential components in order to accommodate as many people as I can.”
The trio looked at each other for a moment before Ayan replied; “I assume you have a way for us to get to you?”
“You will be coming up on a junction with access to lower transit tunnels,” replied Dementia as a small holographic map appeared, projected by Jason's comm unit.
“We'll meet up with Jake and Alaka then head down. Thank you Dementia. Just do one more thing for me, okay?”
“What's that?”
“Don't count us out of any decisions in the future. I'd rather know what sacrifices we're making before we're forced into carrying them out,” Ayan said gently but firmly.
“All right Ayan, I look forward to seeing all of you. Alice has told me so much about you.”
“Us too.”
Oz shook his head and cleared his throat before shouting; “all right, let's keep moving!” to everyone who was waiting behind.
Underground
The sounds of distant digging echoed in the near complete darkness of the subway side passage. There were numerous makeshift beds set up, and when Iloona recommended that he get some rest he couldn't help but admit that he was exhausted. Ayan, Oz and Jason were getting some rest while they could as well. They had repelled another rush of West Keeper soldiers and the resistance fighters were keeping watch. Sleep came on quickly despite his uncertain surroundings. Scant hours later he was wide awake, however, and he lay there thinking about Ayan, Oz, Jason and Minh. Just as he was about to stand up to go see if there was anything more he could do, he heard a voice from the cot beside him; “God I wish I was home again,” said the tall, thin man from the cot beside Jake's.
He looked at the bare headed fellow and reached across the empty air between them to shake his hand. “I am Dindamen, they've come to call me Din.”
“Jake.”
“Yes, everyone here knows. A few Regent Galactic soldiers who couldn't stand what was going on in Damshir defected shortly before we had to leave the mountain and they spoke of you. There are also a few here who say they saw you destroy machines that were corralling them into a troop carrier to be taken off world. Many of them found their way into tunnels and joined us when we arrived.”
“Ah,” was all Jake could manage, glad to hear that at least some of the slaves he'd been able to liberate had gotten away.
“I sensed you weren't sleeping and wondered if you could answer a question for me.”
“Sure, not much chance of me getting any more sleep anyway. I think I've slept through the regeneration hangover.”
“Perhaps you're becoming issyrian in a way, interesting. I was wondering; why did you kill so many? The soldiers who spoke of you called you a shadow, a murderer.”
“It was when I saw people being loaded into troop carriers to be taken off world. They were filthy, broken, restrained and the bots and soldiers moved them along like cattle, using stun rods and waving their guns. I was only able to disrupt two loading sites. The other site I broke up was filled with bots who were loading bodies into a mass converter.”
“They were converting the corpses into energy?”
“I wondered where the bodies were being taken until I saw the bots loading them into the converters like waste. I couldn't stand it so I used all the explosives and power cells I had to end it. Now that I think about it the most important thing about that is the forensic and holographic evidence I recorded on my comm unit. I started recording everything a few hours after I landed,” Jake said, staring at the pipes and cables hanging from the concrete ceiling.
“You are right, the recordings could be important. I never understood the attachment your people have to your bodies after death, humans don't have a use for them.”
“It doesn't make much sense, you're right. I was so angry at the waste of life. There were hundreds of bodies. The machines could barely keep up. Funny thing, the bots didn't care that I had snuck in and killed their human commanders. They only started fighting back when the first of the EMP bombs went off.”
The issyrian rolled over to face Jacob. He was in human form, disguised as a long faced older gentleman, the deep wrinkles were visible even in the faint light. “I have to commend your bravery. It couldn't have been easy to take on so much alone.”
“No one was watching for someone going towards the mountain and I spent most of my time going around watch posts. I only killed when I had to.”
“Or when you saw something you couldn't abide,” added Din. “I commend you.”
“Do you think Pandem can be saved?” Jake asked quietly.
“I don't know about the world, there are some naturalist islands that may be safer, there are no complex machines there. This island may never be the same though. I have visited Damshir many times and watched the turning of the bots happen. I look out to the city and already the place I knew is gone. The great stair on the side of the mountain is collapsing thanks to the explosion, the taller buildings burn or have taken too much damage and my favourite courtyard market was used for taking survivors away for slavery.”
“How many people do you think were taken?”
“In the beginning the bots went mad and millions were killed. After the first few hours the first soldiers arrived and began rounding up large groups of survivors, loading them into the troop carriers they arrived in just as you witnessed. The machines only searched for anyone who hid after that. At least half the people of Damshir were transported off world. Now the bots are beginning to rebuild. In two months, maybe less, this city will shine again, but there will be prefabricated buildings, tall Regent Galactic military installations and other objects that I've seen duplicates of on every Regent world I've seen.”
“I'm sorry, it sounds like you liked Damshir.” Jake replied, remembering St. Kitts, the port he had seen burn behind him thanks to Regent Galactic.
“I did. I had many friends here. I was a courier for the Carthans, taking news from their outlying territories into my home cluster of systems. Very good work if you had a fast ship. I was stopping in to visit a friend here and she had to go to the main precinct office inside the mountain so I accompanied her. A police android killed her shortly after we arrived.”
“I'm sorry.”
“It happened quickly, I can't forget it. There were times in the tunnel fighting that I wished to be among the fallen, thankfully they were fleeting moments,” Dindamen said with a sigh. “Now I only wish to go home, back to my family clutch.”
“I've had a couple issyrians on my crew and I've only heard of the clutch once.”
“Oh, it's not something we speak of often. Some of your hibernation technology is based on the clutch, it was part of the technology our people traded when we met the humans. My family's clutch normally has thirty young at any time, we have many caretakers. When an issyrian house is formed, normally on a new world or when a house is too large or disharmonious some of us find a safe place to create a clutch; a collection of all of our eggs. If they are cared for properly and the environment is in balance they grow together and eventually it is large enough for us to return to. The eggs grow together as the children mature and when they leave the clutch remains. If the clutch is maintained and eggs are added regularly it continues to grow, becoming the center of the house. Trusted family members who have cleansed their bodies of most accumulated impurities are allowed to return and assist the very young in early growth from the inside. Many of us return to the clutch when we are ready to have children. Instead of laying our eggs in the cold of the active world we go into the clutch ourselves and when we're ready we release our eggs inside. When our young are ready to hatch we can spend as much time as we like there with them where we can maintain a wordless bond for weeks, months, or even years in rare cases.”