Rougneck

The wind picked up again but Synthia ignored it. She hoped a storm wasn't coming. That would be just what she needed, stranded, alone, hunted by giant killed insects, and soaked. Maybe toss some lightning in too... that would be amazing.

A flash of red made from her left Synthia jump back. She stumbled and fell, tripping over the her own feet and losing her balance. She hit the soft ground with a dull thud and scrambled back as quick as she could. She looked around as she scuttled and rolled to the next tree. She clung to it as though it could provide security for her. A tree. Like it would protect her from the monstrous insects that would probably bite her into pieces and carry her back to be eaten by larva the size of her thigh.

The flare of red was there, on the tree she'd been leaning against. It hovered on the side, impossibly bright and glaring. A dot against the bark that was a mix of brown and blue and green.

"What the fuck," Synthia whispered. The act of speaking reminded her to breathe. She sucked in a quick breath and winced when she heard how loud she sounded.

The red dot moved. It crawled down the tree, moving over the bumps and ridges of the bark as though it was alive. She shook her head at the impossibilitiy. It couldn't be alive, it was too bright! She'd seen bioluminescent lights before, mostly from insects and vegetation, and they were nothing like this. It was too small. Too sharp a point.

The red light hit the ground and moved toward her. It disappeared briefly behind fallen leaves and sticks, but always crawled over them and moved toward her. Synthia whimpered and begin to glance around. She needed another tree to hide behind. Another place to hide.

If it was an insect, was it part of the same hive as the others? This was tiny, so it couldn't possibly be a threat to her... unless it was poisonous. Or was it venomous? It didn't matter! Either it would hurt her or, maybe, it would go and tell the others where she was. She couldn't let that happen!

Thoughts of running collapsed. She had to kill it. Had to make sure whatever this little fucker was didn't get back to tell big brother about her. Or its mommy or whatever the hell was out there waiting to kill her.

Synthia got her legs under her and stayed in a crouch. Once it got close enough she would... just a little closer... and NOW!

She jumped forward and landed on the bug heel first. She drove her boot into the soft ground and twisted it, only to see the little fucker had slipped up the side of her boot instead of under it. She lifted her foot and shook it, kicking it free somewhere.

"Wait a fucking minute... am I really that stupid?" Synthia asked the silent trees around her. They didn't answer.

She spun in place, staring into the forest to her left and then finding the "bug" on the ground in front of her. She glared at it and then turned and looked to her left again. The bug started crawling, but it had no legs. This close she was certain, it was just a light. A red dot sighting laser the likes of which hadn't been seen in hundreds of years. She shook her head and watched it until it stopped. It jumped toward her and then started sliding away again more slowly.

Synthia sighed and followed it, shaking her head while trying to pick out where it was coming from. Were there humans here after all? Maybe some other alien species that was hundreds of years behind the rest of the universe? She tried to imagine what sort of species could coexist with the bugs she'd seen and shuddered as a few terrifying images come to mind. An intelligent bug that could make and use technology?

The red dot stopped under a tree. She'd lost count of her steps but guessed she'd taken sixty of seventy. Maybe more? She looked around and then, as the wind picked up enough to actually whistle through the branches she looked up.

There was a person three levels of branches up in the tree. Not just a person, but a large person. Synthia gasped and then did a double take. It wasn't just a person, it was one of the mech-ops team!

"Holy shit," Synthia breathed.

"Can you climb up here?" the woman in the tree asked.

"I... I think so," Synthia said. She couldn't quite make out who was in the tree. There were two mech-ops women, Champion, she was the second in command, and then the other woman... Murphy.

Synthia focused on the tree and jumped up to grab one of the lowest branches. She managed to get her other hand on it and straddled the tree with her thighs. She pulled and pushed, working herself up and then finally managing to swing a leg over another branch and then getting up in to the tree. By the time she climbed up even with the other woman she was panting and dripping sweat.

"Hi Murphy," Synthia said between gasps. "Sorry, I couldn't see from down there."

"Murray. Alexis Murray," the cyborg said.

"Oh shit, I'm sorry," Synthia mumbled. "I... shit. I'm an asshole."

Murray shook her head. "We never talked, don't worry about it."

"Thanks," Synthia said and looked away from the tree at the forest. She looked anywhere, really, as long as she didn't have to look at Alexis and be reminded how stupid she'd been.

"Did you see the Roughneck?" Alexis asked.

"Yes," Synthia said. "I was outside when... when it happened. Testing some weapon changes, or about to. Then the, uh, the ground just swallowed it. The ship, I mean. The Roughneck dropped into the ground and crashed and...and... and then I saw them. Well, one of them. It was--"

"A bug," Murray said. "A giant fucking bug. Like an ant, but with eight legs."

"Shit... eight? That's like a spider!"

"These aren't spiders, they... they're something else," Murray said. "I don't know what, but I watched them tear apart four walkers and three mechanized operators."

Synthia gasped. "The... the bugs did that? They... could take out the walkers?"

"Yeah. Chewed through the armor. Never seen anything like it."

"Didn't the walkers fight back? They've got weapons... powerful weapons!"

"There were too many. The walkers never got a shot off. Commander Honaka told them to run so they did... and they were torn apart because the bugs were faster. My squad fought a couple of them, but it wasn't enough. Sarge got two or three and I got two before I had to bug out."

"Bug out, really?" Synthia asked.

Murray winced. "Yeah, sorry. Bad choice of words."

Synthia sighed and stared at the forest floor around them. Corporal Murray had picked a great spot to hide, they had excellent visibility. "If we're alive, some of them might be too."

"Fucking bugs tore them apart," Murray said.

"No, I mean at the Roughneck. It fell into the ground, but it was sealed up, other than the walker bay. There might be people trapped inside. I was going to check on them when... um, when I saw your light."

Murray smiled. "You didn't know it was a light, did you?"

"Oh my god, no! Not at first," Synthia admitted. "I thought I was another one of these stupid creatures... but a tiny one, you know? I haven't seen a red dot sight in years!"

"We've still got them in case the optics in our helmets get ruined or we don't have them on," Murray said.

Synthia glanced at her. "I didn't know you could take your helmets off."

"We can... well, I can. The others can't do anything now."

Synthia grimaced. "That's harsh."

"Neither can the people on the Roughneck," Murray said. "It's gone, Synthia. The bugs cut their way through the hull and... well, they're still eating it."

"Eating it?"

"Maybe not eating it, but they're tearing it apart and taking it back to their hive."

Synthia stared at her. "You're kidding me. Seriously? They're tearing it apart and... why?"

Her massive metal shoulders shrugged. "I don't know. I came back to the Roughneck but went around and approached from the forest because they had the flying ones in the sky. I saw what they were doing. The upper hull and floors had already been torn apart and it was below the surface of the ground."

"No fucking way!"

Alexis nodded. "So I fell back to the woods and then I saw your tracks. I followed them a little and then figured you'd come back. I turned my sensors on and picked up your life signs and I knew you'd come back."

"How?"

"Where else are you going to go?" Alexis said. "We're the only humans on this planet. Probably the only intelligent species."

"I'm not so sure about that," Synthia said as she stared at the distant edge of the forest.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the fucking bugs laid a trap for us. I don't know if they expected the walkers or not, but they attacked the Roughneck before you guys went to their hive. Think about it, digging out that much ground under the ship had to take... I don't know, I'd say days but we'd only been on the ground for eight hours."

Alexis considered Synthia's points and nodded. "You're right. So they are intelligent. At least to some extent. Or the one in charge of them is."

Synthia shuddered. "What, like some kind of brain bug?"

"I don't know. Their queen, maybe."

"Yeah, probably. Maybe," Synthia conceded. "So now what?"

"Well, either we wait for them to finish and go see what's left, or we get away now."

"And go where?"

"Somewhere with less bugs. Somewhere with better ground so I can get a signal out of the atmosphere," Alexis said.

"You can do that?"

"Until my power supplies run out."

"Oh... shit, how long can you go?"

"Depends on how much charge I use. Worst case a couple of weeks with what I've got left. If I'm not fighting, probably several months."

Synthia let out the breath she'd been holding. "Months is good! How do we charge you back up?"

"I've got a small generator. It can use solar or internal combustion. It's not quick though. My power cells take a lot of juice."

"We'll make it work. I can help," Synthia said. "I may be just a weapons tech, but I can figure out just about anything mechanical."

"You're not just a weapons tech, Synthia," Alexis said. "You're the best damn weapons tech the company has."

Synthia blushed. "Thank you."

"Just saying what everybody knows. Now come on, let's go before they run out of ship to eat and decide to come looking for me."

"Just you? What about me?"

"They seem to like eating metal," Alexis said.

"Oh... oh! Um... right. Okay, do you need help?"

Murray scowled. It was odd only being able to see her lips and cheeks. Her neck was contained in the armor and the bottom of the face shield that ended just above her lips would extend down to connect to the armored frame that was attached to her lower jaw if she needed to seal herself off completely from the outside.

"Right, you're good," Synthia said. "Sorry... I'm kind of new at this stranded survivor thing."

Murray's expression softened. "No, you're right, we need to rely on each other. I can get down fine though, but thank you for offering, Synthia."

Synthia smiled. "Thank you."

"Why?" Alexis asked.

Synthia blushed. "For calling me Synthia."

"I've seen how you react when people call you Syn."

Synthia winced.

"Just like that," Alexis said.

Synthia nodded. "Yeah, I don't like it. So thank you. Wait, you've watched me?"

"I watch everyone. It's part of our-- my-- training."

Synthia grunted. "Oh, okay... well... are we ready?"

"Let's go. We'll head northeast."

"Okay, good... um, which way is that?"

* * * *

Alexis reached down and offered her hand to the exhausted woman. Synthia looked up, her face red and streaked with sweat. Her black hair was matted to her head on the side that wasn't shaved. "Take it," Alexis said.

Synthia adjusted her feet and risked letting go with one hand to grab her cold metal fingers. Okay, they weren't cold. They were warm, like everything else on the fucking planet.

Alexis tightened her grip enough to keep the woman's sweaty hand held firm without crushing her bones. She pulled up and let the woman climb up to the narrow shelf on the mountainside. Synthia rolled over onto the shelf and tucked herself against the cliff that rose up higher. Her shoulders rose and fell and her sides heaved with each deep breath she took.

"Are you all right?"

"Just. Fuckin. Great," Synthia gasped.

Alexis turned and stared into the setting sun. "We have forty minutes before dusk."

"Just wedge some rocks against me so I don't roll off," Synthia suggested.

"We need to get higher. The orbital mapping we did shows a habitable area and a water source. It's not much further... but I'd hoped we would have been there by now."

"I'm slow, sorry," Synthia said. She picked herself up enough to sit on the ledge with her knees bent so her feet were pulled up almost to her butt. "I wasn't ready to climb a mountain."

"Nobody's ready to climb a mountain," Alexis said.

"You're doing fine."

"I'm a machine," the cyborg said.

Synthia turned to face her. "Not all of you. There's still a human woman in there. You're just... armored."

Alexis smiled. "I barely feel human anymore."

Synthia frowned. "You still feel though, don't you? I mean, it's your mind in there, right? Your personality? Your emotions?"

Alexis offered Synthia her hand. "Come on, I'll tell you all about me."

Synthia sighed and took the offer for help. She climbed to her feet, wincing at the weakness in her thighs and soreness in her back and arms. "I hope it's not too much further."

"It's not, but we need to hurry and not get trapped in the dark on the side of the mountain."

"Yeah, that would suck," Synthia agreed.

Alexis moved over on the rocky ledge until she found a less than sheer section with ridges and handholds. "This looks good."

"If you say so," Synthia grumbled.

Alexis began to climb and spoke as she moved up the wall. "I'm still me, but I'm calmer. More... relaxed? No, more stable."

Synthia followed her up and grunted.

"I grew up on a New Horizons colony," Alexis explained. "I was... troubled. I had mood swings and a temper. I got in a lot of a trouble and caused a lot of problems."

Synthia looked up at the woman above her. If she fell down... Synthia fought the urge to look below her. She'd made that mistake earlier and spent a few minutes clinging to the cliff trying to convince her heart not to jump out of her chest.

"As soon as I was old enough, I wasn't looking at house arrest anymore. I was facing some serious time... or some alternative therapies."

Synthia grunted. She'd heard of them and wanted to ask more, but she was too busy trying to focus on keeping her body from giving in to the seductive pull of gravity.

"By then I'd burned most of my family and the friends I had weren't the kind of friends I should have had. They stayed away too... but then the company threw me a lifeline. The colony was still early enough that I owed them, both for living expenses and for the problems I caused. They'd wipe that and my record, they said, I just had to sign up for mechanized infantry."

Alexis paused her speech and looked down to make sure Synthia was still coming. She was, and she was making decent time. Alexis suppressed her smirk and kept climbing.

"So I did. They told me what it meant, told me what would happen to me, I mean. I didn't care. It got me off Tribdin and my body had done nothing but get me in trouble so far. Why not donate it to science and get a hold of myself in the process? It was a ten year service -- sooner with every merit I received -- and then I would be my own woman again. I had to give back the hardware, but they'd offer me prosthetic replacements or I could pay the difference to have bio-identical body parts grown and transplanted."

"Fuck," Synthia panted.

"I was young, stupid, and desperate," Alexis explained after checking to make sure the woman was still on the move. "I didn't know any better and, honestly, I think I made the right choice. I really was a mess.

"They control the chemical balances in my brain now... or my body does. My new body, I mean. Plus it monitors and even adapts, helping me stay calm and in control when bad things happen. Like the bugs tearing into the rest of my unit and the walkers. I used to get these stupid panic attacks. Those are gone. I used to get a lot of urges I don't have any more."

"Do. You. Miss. It?" Synthia managed to get out between breaths.

Alexis was quiet. "I don't think so. I can see what a wreck I was. I know I was going to end up in prison, dead, addicted to something, or force-treated by a genedoc to turn me into somebody I didn't want to be."

Alexis stopped talking for a moment as she considered what else to say. The conversation was working, she'd almost made it to the small plateau she'd been hoping for. Just a little further. "Or do you mean the meat? I was a skinny girl, no meat on my bones. Probably pretty easy for them to cut it off. If I get it back someday I can pay to get it custom designed the way I like it. It'll be like having a brand new body too and give me an extra ten or twenty years at least... or I could stay prosthetic and get it the way I want it and live even longer."

Synthia was breathing to hard and fast to even grunt. She fumbled with the next handhold, only to have her fingers slip off the rock. For a terrible micro-second she hung weightless. Gravity fought to claim her and her shoulder jerked and her wrist popped from the pressure squeezing it.

Synthia didn't know where to look first. She chose down and kicked her frantic feet back into the toe holds she'd found, taking some of the pressure off her wrist. When she finally looked up Alexis was there, squatted down on the edge of the cliff and reaching down to grab her.

Alexis straightened, pulling Synthia up with ease. Her wrist went from being numb to hurting and Synthia began to grimace and tried to stop her eyes from tearing up. The mechanical woman set her down on the ground and nudged her away from the edge of the cliff while Synthia grabbed her wrist and blinked tears down her cheeks.

"Sorry, I squeezed a little hard. I don't think I broke anything," Alexis said.

Synthia flexed her fingers and slowly rotated her wrist. It was sore and it popped a few times as the floating bones in the wrist settled themselves back into place. "Hurts," she said and took a moment to try and catch her breath. When she spoke it was louder than she meant to because she was struggling to hear herself over the roaring in her ears. "Not broke... I think. Thanks."

"You're welcome," Alexis said. "By the way, this is it."

"This-- what?" Synthia asked as she realized she was sitting in ankle deep grass. She turned and looked around. The grass was shorter and more moss-like the closer it got to the cliff's edge. On the other side it grew taller, rising to her knees and maybe even her waist before it stopped at the edge of a small pond at the base of another cliff that rose higher into the sky. The cliff was like the ones they'd already climbed, uneven and broken up by small ledges along the way, but the mountain rose easily a hundred meters or more. The water in the pond came from a small waterfall that fell down the side of the cliff.

"Snow melt," Alexis said. "My sensors say it's clean and safe to drink."

"Fresh water?" Synthia gasped. She staggered forward and would have fallen but Alexa grabbed her shoulder as gently as she could. She collected herself and offered a thankful smile to the woman before staring at the pond and waterfall again. She grunted in recognition of the waterfall's noise being the roaring she'd heard. She thought it was the blood rushing through her ears or something.

"Will this do?" Alexis asked.

"Do for what?" Synthia asked. "I never thought I'd be so happy to see water and soft ground! I can stay here for a night."

"How about several nights?"

Sythia took a careful step toward the pond and then turned back. "Wait, several?"