Inside, she found antibiotic creams long dried in their tubes, but the adhesive tape was, for a wonder, barely adequate to adhere a sterile gauze pad to a cut on her face she’d picked up somewhere. She pocketed what she thought she could use and proceeded to systematically search the bridge from one end to the other to see if anything useful, anything at all, had been overlooked. Behind a panel and some wiring she found a dented helmet. In a locker, she found a rotted backpack filled with what looked like the remains of some civilian clothes and effects, a yellowed and dog-eared paperback book, and two foil-wrapped bars of U.S. Army iron rations circa 2004. Examination showed that one of the wrappers had been torn, the ration covered, startlingly, by a fungal rind like the one that formed on the outside of cheeses. This was startling because she wouldn’t have thought any self-respecting fungus would touch Postie-war-era Army iron rats. The packing on the other bar was still intact. Well, maybe. She couldn’t decide whether to wish it was or hope it wasn’t.
She looked around at the inside of the mammoth tank, curious. She’d never been inside one before. It was the largest armored, tracked vehicle ever deployed in combat on Earth. The size of a mountaintop, the huge tank had been powered by nuclear fission via its pebble-bed reactor. The main gun had been capable of engaging B-Decs or C-Decs and living to tell the tale. It was the single most impressive cavalry vehicle in the history of war, ever. She knew this because her step-uncle Billy, who was more like a step-brother, had told her about it at eye-glazing length the summer he built a scale model of one out of toothpicks and smooshed oyster shells. This bordered on bizarre since Billy had gone mute in the war from seeing too much, too young. Scratch the young part, it was too much for anyone. Here in Fredericksburg, it was, too. A couple of years after the war he had gotten massively talkative with her, just with her, and had never stopped. He spoke to others, but not enough so you’d notice. Functional, but now a quiet old guy who had settled with a plump, pretty wife to raise four kids in Topeka. They still exchanged Christmas cards under one of her identities.
The round trip back outside to pack the helmet with snow really sucked. Getting enough clean snow to fill it wasn’t a problem. The stuff was piling up at an obnoxious rate. The nasty reek of rust and old, funky smoke was starting to be unpleasant enough to overcome her thankfulness for not being so damned cold. She wedged the helmet so that it wouldn’t tip over and left the packed snow to start melting. When she checked, the buckley’s diagnostic was hung. A partial report showed she should be able to restore limited functionality by raising the AI emulation level, giving the AI access to search some of the damaged areas with the capabilities usually denied it. She set the emulation to the recommended level eight, wincing.
“Buckley?” she said.
“Oh, God, my aching head. Holy shit, what the hell happ — I’m a what?” The glum voice rose on a note of incredulity and near-hysteria. “I just know this is going to end badly.”
“Buckley — please just wait a second. I need you, buckley. I need your help very, very badly,” she said.
“Cally — you’re Cally O’Neal. And I, I can see you. I see you, and I’m a machine,” he said. “Well, doesn’t that just suck.”
“Yeah, buckley, it does. It sucks. A lot of things suck, and not just for you. I’m stuck in the belly of a dead SheVa, in a snowstorm, in hostile territory, they’re looking for me, I’m out of contact, and you’re damaged.”
“It’s that last bit that really bugs me. I could have warned you about the rest. Never heard of a plan where so many things could go wrong, except for the time—”
“Buckley! Can you please look and see if there’s anything you can reroute to get me a working transmitter?”
“I’m sure I could, with the right repair components. Do you have an XJ431P39 integrated molychip? Didn’t think so.”
“You didn’t even give me time to answer!”
“And?”
“Well, okay, I don’t. But you could have at least let me say so.”
“Right.”
“Is there any way to improvise a transmitter with some of this stuff?” She swept a hand around the bridge area.
“You have some kind of power source?”
“Well, no, I don’t. I don’t think I do, anyway.”
“I hope you’re equipped with body nannites. It’s hot in here.”
“The reactor. Great. Yeah, I am. Should I brave the cold, or stay in here?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re gonna die either way, sooner or later. Shall I list the most likely possibilities?”
“Please don’t.”
“You do want full information, don’t you?”
“I’d much rather get help building a transmitter, if possible.”
“There’s not much point in it.”
“Buckley, can you put the pessimism on hold for awhile? I’m depressed enough already.”
“Good — at least you’re rational. And no, I mean there’s not much point in it. You’re maybe five miles from the river. That and the landing zone are the two most logical points for them to look for you. You’re far better off to get the best night’s sleep you can and make for the river in the morning. You’re also better off sleeping in here, if you get Galactic-level medical treatment within thirty-six hours. I’d recommend an early start. You don’t want to stay here longer than that. If you found anything to eat — don’t. Scare or not, I don’t think they got all the hot rocks out of this thing.”
“You’re being very helpful, Buckley.” Cally lay down in the reclined operator’s chair, setting the PDA on the floor beside her. The bare metal was hard and uncomfortable, but she’d endured worse. There had been worse as part of her training at school, with the nuns, and far worse in the field doing her job.
“You’re about to die a horrible death alone in the wilderness. I can sympathize. And me, I’ll rust away slowly, slowly falling more and more apart as my battery runs down and down and—”
“Buckley? Please shut up.”
“Right.” He sounded satisfied, as if something about the end of the exchange had made all right with his world, at least for a few seconds.
She was strapped to the metal table on Titan Base. The bastards were on top of her again, and her head swam watching the unblinking, alien eyes through the imperfectly one-way glass above her. The face of the man on her wavered between Pryce and George and back again, only Pryce was Stewart and his ship was blowing up. They had tilted the table and were making her watch. Over and over and over again. A lifepod ejected from the shuttle and spouted wings, flying back towards the base as the ship and the table pulled her away, away, away. She was up to her elbows in blood, freezing and congealing on the icy metal table as the man slapped her over and over again. If she’d only been a good little girl and killed more Posleen, Daddy wouldn’t have had to nuke her again. Herman started talking to her, telling her she had to go swim with the dolphins, but she couldn’t go. Doctor Vitapetroni was holding her down, injecting her with something that stung so bad and telling her she had to stay on the table until she could wipe the blood off, but she couldn’t because she didn’t have a towel, and besides, she was strapped down anyway and couldn’t dance anymore. She started to cry.
Cally woke, sobbing, her throat raw. The dream must have been another screamer. She remembered it and shuddered, wiping the tears away angrily.
“Good morning. I have cataloged five thousand, four hundred and thirty-two ways we can die horribly today. Continuing to process. Would you like me to… begin… the… list?” The buckley sounded tinny and maniacal. Dammit, she’d left it on overnight. Not that she’d had a choice. In its condition, she didn’t think the PDA could reboot. At least, expecting it to come back up would be expecting a damned miracle. From the diagnostics, it was a miracle it had booted even once.