This is the first installment of a 10-part microfiction, which I am sure will be a somewhat rough and strange piece. I'll be adding all the subsequent pieces in this post so feel free to comment below if you're interested as the story develops.
Part 1: We're here.
In the mountains it was quiet. There were few voices and they all whispered. They were a minute chorus: the wind, the snow and the footsteps of a warrior.
The silhouette moved through the snow, slowly making its away across the slope. The warrior’s path trailed back behind her like an ancient scar. She struggled on beneath the mottled sky, shifting from two legs to four as she stumbled over the rocks under the drifts.
She looked upward and saw the smoke that mixed with the clouds, adding poison to their flakes. Taking a breath she surged forward and away from the smoldering beacon behind her. It had delivered her safely to this world but now the black column that grew from it would lead to her swift death.
The warrior’s muscles told her she moved for days, though really it was brief hours. Her eyelids fought against her, continuously collapsing. Then suddenly they were wide open. A soft whine filled the air as her eyes darted across sky.
They saw nothing. She heard a harmony in the whine. It grew louder.
She turned and charged for the shelter left by the detritus of an avalanche. The whine was suddenly un-muffled as she rolled beneath two rocks that rested together.
A shape moved into her vision, cruising between the mountain peaks. A beam of light came from its nose and pierced the night. Though it was bright at the source the thick flakes broke the beam as it touched the mountainside. The warrior held her breath and the beam passed above her.
The shape and its light disappeared amongst the peaks. She exhaled; she allowed the tiniest release of tension. Then she slept.
Part 2: Recall
After the quiet came the stillness. And then gradually she became aware of a brightness, gathering at the corners of her sight. There was a milky glow surrounding the blackness that she saw. Her eyes burst open.
Before her was a dream world. An odd twilight that did not display whether it was dusk or dawn. She flexed her fingers, her toes. She bent at elbows and knees and rolled her head. Still all there, still all operable.
Sitting up she looked about her and tried to put together a timeline leading up to her slumber. She was on a mission, as she had been on many before this. But something was different this time. What was it?
Her gaze looked out on the formless world ahead of her. On an impulse she hummed a pair of notes and information washed into her view. The angle of the slope was now defined with a blue outline. She could see other wireframe forms sticking out of the mountain below her.
In the upper right hand corner of her vision there was writing. Kitano, Yumiko it said at the top. Below was her heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. Her face set as she came back to herself.
She looked down and reached for her gun. Words tingled in her mind. It is easy to wield weapons, easy to kill. The warrior does not wield, she possesses the weapon. The warrior does not kill, she distributes death wisely.
The warrior got to her feet and attached the tool to the magnetic holster in the center of her back. Examining the ground around her she saw no boot prints, her trail had been neatly erased by the weather. She hummed another pair of notes and a map blinked onto her display.
Yumiko growled.
Part 3: Move it
Five kilometers. Five thousand meters. She could run that in 13 minutes on a good day. Today was not a good day.
Yumiko’s map showed her that she’d traveled eleven kilometers through the mountains the previous night. Six of them in the wrong direction. She marked her objective with a waypoint on her display. She looked around her once and moved from her tiny temporary home.
Fists clenched and unclenched, the blood needed to flow. She needed every bit of her half-frozen body working for her again. She covered ground at an inexorable creep.
Nothing fell from the sky above her, now like a great stone dome that marbled where the sun sought to puncture through. From afar her armored form would have appeared like a droplet, a camouflaged teardrop that slid down the mountain. She could see nothing by sky and ground and peaks.
Acceleration warmed her. Warmth accelerated her.
She now moved with speed, her legs and arms reflecting her off outcroppings and small gullies. After a time the trough of the two mountains was reached. She let herself lean back on a boulder and turned her view upwards. The summit in front of her was obscured by thick white clouds.
One breath.
The sky was momentarily cloven by a blue-white flash.
One breath.
Yumiko did not have the time.
One breath.
Her ascent began.
The movements were less chaotic now. Controlled tension gripped tiny towers sticking out from the snow. The tension broke and she hauled herself another meter higher, farther.
The wind swirled up from below her as she climbed. It gusted and thumped her against the mountainside. Each time she listened for a crack and hiss. The dreaded sounds that would steal the little heat from between her skin and armor. But each time there was only the wind, her lungs, and the mountain.
She climbed onward.
Part 4: Portal
The helmet’s visor urged her onward. It dangled her goal in front of her, silently counting down the meters. There had first been four digits, then three, now there were only two. When there were less than fifty meters to go she took another moment to recover herself.
Below the mountain fell away and she did not remember how she had maneuvered amongst those stones, climbed this cliff, or avoided that avalanche. Yumiko shifted to begin her climb again.
Suddenly the air and her ears were filled with a high-pitched roaring. It was like the sound of the patrolling ship the night before, but more powerful.
She pressed herself tight against the mountain, vision outward to identify the threat. The whine-roar suddenly magnified once more and the sky above was pierced by a vessel. Its rounded nose passed over the top of the mountain, a cutout figure against the winter firmament.
Like some great prehistoric fish passing beneath the waves it cruised over Yumiko. She could see plasma weapons along its hull, primed to fire. The icthy-thing’s body ballooned out behind its neck. A distended belly that held the enemies of Yumiko’s people.
Yumiko eyed the ship as it passed above her. Was it shrinking as it went? No. she thought Its heading into orbit. Its probably taking its troops with it too. Fighting hundreds instead of thousands. At least the miracle I need isn’t quite so big anymore.
The enemy craft flew upwards and faded into the atmosphere.
Continuing, she covered the last bit of distance to her waypoint in minutes. She pulled herself over a lip of rock as the distance dropped from five meters to four. She rolled onto her back, and took several deep breaths. Blinking slowly, she turned over and pushed herself onto one knee.
Ahead of her was the only artificial feature she’d seen amongst these soaring pyramids of the earth. A great blue-gray façade set flush into the mountain. Smooth at its outermost, but with indentations closer to the center.
She stood and took several paces towards the wall. She became aware of a faint glow that became clearer with each step. At two paces she raised her hands towards the circle emitting the illumination.
Part 5: Down to Business
Yumiko extended her arms out and took another step forward. Her hands stretched towards the circle of light ahead. Gloved fingertips brushed the wall. The glowing diminished and she was again faced with a blank slab.
She stepped back and ran her gaze across the strange surface, searching for any kind of reaction. A moment passed, then another.
A seam appeared. It extended from her right to where the illuminated circle had been. Another seam drew down from the top, and one from the ground and then to her left. They jumped open several centimeters and cast faint blue light.
The wall shed its door like an age’d carapace. She looked down a long hallway, lit only by the thin light from the outside. The smell of a place with an old history gently wafted and was filtered through her respirator.
The wind whistled in quickly, reveling in the exploration of space so different than the crags it normally swept.
Nothing chased the wind back out of the chamber, no sound tried to push its way into the freezing outdoors.
Yumiko knelt on one knee, she removed a tiny device and placed it at the entrance. She depressed the button at the top of the little pyramid and four lights blinked on its faces. First green, then twice red, then green once again.
The warrior reached behind her and took her weapon into her hands. Breathing deeply she got to her feet. She pulled the weapon from her back and swept the barrel back and forth across the hall.
She breathed slowly and relaxed into the combat meditation her master had taught her. The warrior took one look back out at the few flakes that danced on the back of the wind. Then she turned back to the opening and dashed inside.
Part 6: Other
She was alone.
Time passed with its quiet thunder, shuddering by in whatever measure she chose. Whatever she counted, there were many of them. Wrapped in cold inside the mountain, she was alone. For a time.
She did not notice the portal had opened for two seconds.
Portal open. Something is inside. Someone.
It was long since she had gone into hibernation, even her near-endless will could not fill the void of so many circuits around this star. It would take more than moments to return to full strength.
She needed to know who had entered her home. How did she not detect them?
She opened a few of her eyes and saw them, clumsy things with squat bodies and lithe predators behind them. She wondered if they were other Children, her brothers and sisters.
One of her eyes went blind. She could no longer see them.
Her heart beat. She felt strength returning to her. But there was something else, a pressure on her mind.
She frantically looked for the intruders. She had many blind eyes now. The pressure on her mind grew stronger; distracting and confusing. Her ears returned to her and she saw the toolkit take shape.
She felt her optic nerves cut. Her ears rang and went silent.
She was alone.
Part 7: Considered Action
Even alone, in the quiet blindness that now took her she felt them. The impact of their feet and their breaching of her bulkheads told her of their progress. So little data, still it must be analyzed. Conclusions must be made, potential courses of action considered. She thought for a thirty-second eternity.
They are not Children, but they are not the Enemy? Why are these ones not catalogued? Do they know that I am here or are they merely aware of my body?
She had no defenses inside, she was a shell. The Children were meant to find her, it was meant to be a gift to them. Once they had found her body her mind was supposed to be open like a lotus flower.
Withdraw, conceal, evade.
The beings were numerous, she counted several score inside. She inferred from their point of entry that they had come by air. If that was the case, there could be more. Their identity or origin must be within somewhere, in long untapped datawells. Searching her memories, digging deep within histories and texts she had read innumerous times and put to rest thousands of years ago.
Take time, make time.
She found a reference, a source document to a pair of similar species. A quick evolution! It was such an unusual phenomena to observe she was almost lost in the unknown territory this opened up. Keep focused on the priority.
Run a DNA analysis from keypad contacts. Was it really possible that they had come so far in this time? It was surely long enough for the Children to arrive, but these beings had been estimated to be far behind. Perhaps they still were...
Equations solved, algorithms executed: she had a treatment for this infestation. Now it was time to test it.
Part 8: Meet and Greet
Inside it was quiet. Not quiet as the slowly drifting snow had been, not quiet as the constant murmur of the wind, a new quiet. This was a quietness overwhelmed by the sound of Yumiko’s blood in her ears and her breath leaving her lungs.
And yet, outside of her there was some soft sound. A low tone that thrummed through the floor she strode upon, a vibration so subtle and constant it became a part of the landscape.
She had entered a long hallway, or a cavern, she couldn’t be sure. The vaulted ceiling hung more than a dozen meters above her head. The hind recess of the space was hidden in the darkness allowed by the weak blue lighting. On the right side enormous doors stood every ten meters. She moved forward along the wall, looking for the door that would lead her deeper inside.
Holding the barrel of her weapon at shoulder height she kept an eye on the hidden corners. Hum another set of notes and her visor began to search for seams in the walls.
Suddenly a circle of illumination, like the one on the outer portal appeared. This time the circle blinked twice before revealing its seams and pulling back to give access beyond. Yumiko was up against the adjacent wall as soon as the door had started to open. Stay calm, she’d be warned that something like this might happen. Trust it as far as she could, that was what they had told her.
She ducked around the corner to sweep and assess the new space. This room was full of equipment, series of stacked cylinders of different sizes looking like miniature rounded pyramids. From each of these stacks were sets of tubes that connected to the ceiling.
Moisture condensed and fell around the pipes, creating the smallest microclimates. Tiny alpine conduits.
She was pleased, her armor’s external thermometer gave her the data to know she was probably close to the core. At least based on the intel about the builder’s design formula.
She reached the end of the coldroom and was about to touch the door ahead of her when the circle appeared. Yumiko swung up her assault rifle, pressed herself against the wall and waited for the door to open.
A second passed and the door stood shut. Yumiko was about to reach out and touch the metal when the circle went from white to blink red three times. After the third flash of red the white circle appeared again.
As soon as the circle’s color changed Yumiko’s mind had begun racing again. By the time the third flash began she knew what to do.
Part 9: Matriarchy
Relief. The Child had understood her. Her makers had told her that the Children were not like her and she was worried the Child might not grasp her intent.
She had spent some time executing her plan to keep the intruders from where they should not be. She had managed to encourage them to split up in smaller groups. Each group she tried to fracture further, opening doors and shifting lighting that her route looked the most appealing.
After a dozen splits she managed to contain most of the intruders in secure labs and storage vaults. Many of them she had trapped in areas where there was full environmental control. She had frozen, broiled and suffocated a large number of them.
And then she had felt the touch on her skin. The delightful DNA of one of the Children was like water for a thirsty Bedouin. She exulted and flung the portal wide open for the Child.
She had an ally now, an arm with a hand to brush the intruders away. She began to lead the Child as she had led the intruders, though she allowed the Child to know she was a being.
The Child had picked up her communication quickly. Slowly, methodically, she showed the Child where to go. She coded her communication in colors so that the Child would know if there were clutches of intruders ahead.
She was impressed with the Child, it was strong and quick given how fast the motion of the intruders ceased once the doors were open. She was leading the Child in such a way to eliminate all the intruders, but that did not seem to be the Child’s goal. After she started to move the Child to the labs on the fringe she felt resistance.
The Child wanted to get to the core.
