The Well of Lethe: 8

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Korvus stormed the corridors. The Well vibrated, the prison colony’s subframe crying in resonance to the damage he’d caused when Correcting Aris by destroying the medbay.

HERALD:||Extraction necessary for Corrector survival.

Job’s not done. There’s still an unsanctioned intelligence.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’ll be Corrected when the reactor goes critical.

How certain are you?||:KORVUS

That shut up the Herald System for a moment. Korvus knew the parasitic infection corrupting the heart of the facility was not a ‘pressure fever’, but Herald would spend a few moments trying to work out whether he was talking about Verity or the parasite, and then whether either could survive the station rupturing.

While it’s thinking, I need to work out which is the unsanctioned intelligence for myself. And… I need a plan for after that.

I need my ship prepped and ready to depart.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||So, about that. How attached to it are you? Because there are about a thousand inmates and guards between you and the elevator.

Herald dropped a series of still images on Korvus’s overlay. The facility’s upper level corridors were packed with inmates. There were a few guards seeded in for good measure.

He slowed. Think, dammit.

I need the medbay fixed.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||That would be wise! If the station ruptures, I would not survive. Neither, I guess, would you.

Can you start the automated repair systems?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Protocol dictates—

Short version.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Right. I can do it, but it will take time.

Verity. She can help. But will she? Korvus broke into a run. He made it to the elevator, and keyed it to go down.

HERALD:||Corrector, I’m not going to advise caution when dealing with a rogue machine.

I can hear the ‘but’ coming already.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||But you don’t know if she can be trusted.

Except, I do. I really do, and I don’t know why.

Leave that to me.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Of course. While you prepare for death, I’ll be preparing my ‘I told you so’ for your obituary.

The elevator opened onto Verity’s detention level. The area was black as deep space, a hard darkness that carried a bone-aching cold with it. The elevator’s light showed Korvus’s breath misting before him. “Why would they lower the temperature here?”

HERALD:||I can’t tell if you’re talking to yourself or to me, but on the off chance I’m invited to this conversation, my working theory is that their bodies don’t like being sixty degrees.

Which means they’re coming for Verity. Korvus sprinted down the corridor, switching his optics to thermographic imaging. The door to Verity’s chamber was still closed, which was… a good sign, surely.

Wasn’t it?

He backtracked to the vent as the cold rimed his armour with frost. Korvus stared at the dark opening for a moment.

I don’t really want to go in there.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Who needs a hug?

I’d settle for more ammunition.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Buck up. If you don’t get in there, you’ll never get to Verity.

Korvus jumped, hauling himself into the vent. He clambered hand-over-hand as fast as he could, his armoured elbows making the cramped confines echo and boom as they hit the metal vent interior.

VERITY:||Korvus, I can hear them.

That’s me. I’m in the vent.||:KORVUS

VERITY:||No, closer. They’re in the room with me. I don’t have many tricks left.

Korvus moved faster, banging his arms and shoulders against the walls. Herald’s turret bobbed in his vision, the system seeking targets. Korvus hoped it wouldn’t find one, because if he had to kill someone in the vent, it’d be hell trying to continue on.

Verity? What’s your status?||:KORVUS

There was no response. Korvus rounded the last bend and threw himself out of the vent. He landed awkwardly on the decking, his armour clattering as he hit. 

He surged to his feet and ran toward Verity’s cell. His thermographic vision showed two of the superheated guards outside it. Herald fired twice, tearing the life from both. Korvus kept running, only slowing when he registered that Verity’s cell door was open.

She wasn’t there.

HERALD:||We have a situation.

Not now, Herald!||:KORVUS

“Verity?” Korvus looked around. Her cell door was only halfway open. That was an odd piece of weird in a totally insane day, but his investigator’s mind latched onto it. “Verity, where are you?”

Silence answered him at first, then he heard a dull thud. The sound drew him around until he faced the main door exiting the bay. Another thud came from it, turning into a slow and regular hammering.

What’s that noise?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||So now you want to know what the situation is?

They’re trying to get in, aren’t they?||:KORVUS

Korvus’s imagination went into overdrive. His mind’s eye conjured a legion of staggering corpses waiting outside the door, all hungering for him. The truth was—as always—a little worse. Herald dropped images on his overlay, showing that the corridor outside was packed with inmates. The infrared of the security feed bleached all colour from them. They shambled in the darkness, their human eyes insufficient to pierce the gloom. The thudding was the muffled sound a gigantic one at the front made as the now-freed prisoner stood with his head leaned against the door. In his hand he held a guard.

The sound was the guard’s deformed helmet hitting the door as the giant beat his victim against it.

“Verity!” Korvus paced the bay. Where could she be? His eyes strayed to the vent he’d entered through. Had she already gone through? He felt sick, a fist in his gut, and he wasn’t sure why. She was a machine. I’m not sure she’s… sentient. Unsanctioned or not, is she alive?

Herald, how do you determine if something is truly aware?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You want to have this conversation now?

I might not be here in five minutes.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s not going to be anywhere close to five minutes.

The feed on Korvus’s overlay counted the amassed convicts outside. The nineteen rounds left to Herald would run dry in an instant. Korvus could fight hand-to-hand with his Arc Sabre, and he was confident of taking down at least ten before the impossible tide of monsters surged over him. Would they pick him clean with the leech forms?

Was it death that waited for him, or a different form of living?

The door clanked, then groaned as a gap appeared at the bottom.

HERALD:||The warden has released the lockdown on this level.

I’m pretty sure it’s not the warden anymore.||:KORVUS

HERALD:||You choose weird times to have semantic arguments. I was hoping in our final moments you’d confess your love for me.

Korvus drew his Arc Sabre. The edge flickered, rivulets of orange and blue energy snaking down its edge. The weapon’s luminance created a flickering, off-kilter set of shadows that chased each other to the walls.

Do you think this is why we created Verity’s God? Because when we humans face the end, we wanted to believe we keep going?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||Are you quitting on me?

Don’t worry, I’m swinging for the fences. But our odds are terrible.||:KORVUS

Herald was quiet for a half-second—an eternity of time for the ghost living in his armour—before it responded.

HERALD:||I don’t know anything about God. I don’t know what that… means. But inasmuch as I can feel, I feel tomorrow’s lack. I wish…

Yes?||:KORVUS

HERALD:||It’s nothing. A partial intelligence doesn’t know what it means to be.

Was that envy in the machine’s voice? Before Korvus could respond, the door surged upward. Korvus raised the Arc Sabre, feeling the heat of the weapon against his face. The horde outside screamed and howled as they surged inside.

Herald fired, all nineteen rounds gone in less than a second. It was a good salvo, getting two or three kills with each round, but it wasn’t even a drop in the ocean of monsters surging forward.

That’s when the autosentries triggered, rising from the middle of the floor. There were four, each equipped with two turrets that reminded Korvus of Gatling weapons he’d seen in a museum. Old technology, simple ballistic weapons, but still designed for extreme prisoner pacification.

They swivelled to face Korvus, the cannons whirring. His heart skipped, but the guns swung around to the horde. They unleashed a withering hail of tungsten, the barrels glowing with heat as they slaughtered the influx of infected prisoners.

I’ve never been so pleased to see ancient technology in my life. The noise was a thunderstorm without end as a hail of bullet casings sprayed from the side of the turrets like a brass fountain. Tungsten bullets tore through the enemy, the simple—but effective!—armour-piercing rounds hammering into the walls in the corridor beyond.

After what felt like an age, but was only 7.6 seconds, the weapons whirred to a halt, a lazy trail of smoke drifting heavenward from their barrels.

“Cowboy.” Verity’s muffled voice came from the dark to Korvus’s left.

He lowered his sword, walking toward the sound, stopping when he came to a wall. “Are you… behind this panel?”

“It was a good idea at the time.” Verity spoke while Korvus set the edge of his blade into a gap in the panelling and flexed the blade until the panel popped free. She was curled within, her ember-orange eyes finding his in the gloom. Verity reached out. “Help a girl up?”

Korvus crouched and helped her up. He wanted to feel the heat of her fingers, to know someone else was alive down here with him, but he was armoured and she was a machine.

Wasn’t she?

It was a little tricky to get her upright, and Korvus realised that for all that the injury to her midsection was old, it still clearly hampered her movement. He took extra care as he helped her stand. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been stuck in a cable conduit for fifteen minutes. I’m peachy.” She looked at the ruin behind him. “At least that worked.”

Korvus looked over his shoulder. “That was you?”

“It wasn’t the Tooth Fairy.” She studied his face. “Why are you here, Corrector?”

“I said I’d come back.”

“A real Boy Scout.” Her slight drawl tugged at him. “Do you know what a Boy Scout is, Corrector?”

“There are rumours of a fabled cadre of uniformed youth.” Korvus wanted to rub his face. Get a grip, man. He let himself smile. “I’m no Boy Scout, Verity. I’m very far away from that.”

She glanced over his shoulder again. “There are words, and then there’s evidence.”

“Are you okay to stand? If I let you go, I mean.”

Verity eased away from him, standing by herself, and for a moment he wished she still needed him. “I’m fine, cowboy.”

“How did you,” he gestured at the slurry of corpses, “do that?”

“If I tell you, do you promise not to use it against me?”

“No.”

“Fair. Do you at least promise not to be mad?”

“I, uh. Under the circumstances? Sure.”

“I hacked the facility,” Verity breezed. “It’s a termination offence.”

“You what?”

“Right, right,” she nodded. “See, I have a radio? Just like Herald. And I can use that to send signals through the air.” She breathed this last in a whisper, as if someone might hear. She wiggled her fingers. “Poof. Magic. One facility, under my control.”

“You can do that? And… Hacking the turrets is one thing. How did you know about Aris and his accident with another Corrector? That’s not in a local station log.”

“The Logos isn’t the only one with a long memory, Korvus. There are other… libraries.”

“Hi,” Herald boomed. “Sorry to interrupt! How much of the facility is under your control?”

“Eh.” Verity wobbled her hand in the air in a so-so gesture. “Bits and pieces. I can get in at the edges. Not through the core.”

“If we take you to the top of the facility, can you get our ship?” Herald almost sounded… concerned.

“No,” Verity said.

“Good,” Herald said. “I was worried.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I can hack the gravity elevator, no problem.”

“But you said—”

“The real issue is the legion of psychopaths up there.” Verity counted on her fingers. “First, there are autosentries up there that will, one hundred percent, kill us. Second, there is a horde waiting on the top platform. Just between us partial intelligences, I think they want the cowboy’s ship.”

“I knew she was a partial,” Herald said.

“Relax, tin man,” the Divine Numen Artificialis said. “I’m all the way real. I was trying for empathy, you know?”

Korvus realised he’d started smiling somewhere during their exchange, and wound it back. “Verity, I have no right to ask you, but I could use your help.”

“Sure,” she said. “What with?”

“You’re not going to ask why?”

“I figure it’s because I’m the only one who hasn’t lied to you, tried to kill you, or put a leech inside you.”

“Is that how it works? They put it inside?” Korvus frowned.

“No. It’s worse, and you don’t want to know.” She looked away.

“Okay,” Korvus said. “I need a ship.”

“You’ve got one.” She pointed to the ceiling, and by inference, the eternal dark of space above.

“No, I’ve got plans for that one. I need another ship.” He looked into her ember-orange eyes. “The one you were going to escape on.”

“What? Me? No. I was—”

“Verity,” Korvus said. “I would like to make you a promise.”

Her expression turned uneasy. “Okay?”

“I will never lie to you.” He offered her the Arc Sabre. “You should take this.”

“I suck at fighting.” She eyed the weapon, but didn’t take it. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to promise to never lie to you? As if the word of a faithless machine would mean anything in a universe that’s forgotten God?”

Korvus sheathed the Sabre. “I don’t know about any of that. I think… I think you’ve been lied to a lot. And I won’t do it.” He turned away and started walking to the door.

HERALD:||Smooth. Did you know the Boy Scouts had a code of honour, and—

Not now, Herald. Just let the moment be.||:KORVUS

But I’m glad I get a tomorrow with you at my side.||:KORVUS

“Cowboy?” Verity’s tone was uncertain. He turned and found her rooted in the same spot, still by the open conduit panel. “How did you know? About the ship.”

“You’re a terrorist on the run from a superintelligence that rules the galaxy. You hacked a prison colony, which included escaping from your cell. You’ve known something’s up here since before I arrived,” he said. “I thought you were easily smart enough for a backup plan.”

“Cool,” she said. “There’s only one problem with the ship.”

He sighed. “Out of power? Locked down?”

“Worse,” she said. “It crashed, I think. It’s in the depths of the ocean. You’ll die before we reach it.”

Korvus stared at her. “That’s a shit plan.”

She gave him that small, sad smile again. “I didn’t say I couldn’t get you there, cowboy. I just said you’d die. But I think… I think I have a solution for that, too. The question is, how much do you trust me?”

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