Songs of Seduction - Fire and Ice

The doors were meant to spread wide to reveal a cavity within, where the comms balloon was tightly packed, waiting to be inflated. Once freed, the balloon would fill with gas and start to rise, and the transmitter hardware would be pushed up from deeper within the space. Fleming grinned, as an image of a womb and birth canal unaccountably popped into her mind. So I'm a fucking balloon's mid-wife now? I never trained for this shit. Fuck me. Knowing within herself that her mind functioned in the strangest ways when under stress, Fleming set to work.

Because Athena had disabled the biomed monitoring, she didn't sense the drop in Fleming's pulse and respiratory rate, and didn't know that Fleming was increasingly calm, controlled and methodical.

Fleming eased the blade into the gap between the hatch doors, and was pleased to find the knife moved smoothly, and she was able to slowly slice away thin slivers of paint.

"I think this is working, Athena, I've cleared a couple inches already. Athena?" Fleming flicked away another slice of concealed paint. "Athena?"

There was a slight delay before Athena responded. "Sorry, Fleming. I was distracted momentarily. How can I assist?"

"Try opening the hatch again. When I say. If we're lucky, it will start to move, help break up the seal. On my command." Fleming removed the blade from the area, and she watched closely.

"Command. Open the hatch, Athena."

With a grind, the hatch slowly began to open.

"Stop there."

Athena obeyed instantly.

"I can see the goop easily now. I think I can clear this, in about ten minutes." Fleming sent to work, and sure enough, she was able to slice away more of the congealed paint. Once again, she carefully removed the blade, but found she couldn't retract it fully.

"Damn, there's paint built up on the blade, I can't make it safe. Wait, Athena."

Fleming withdrew the blade as far as she could, but could not retract the last inch and a half. "Shit, not good." She strapped the knife to her forearm so it would be out of the way when she climbed back down.

"Okay. I'm ready. Command. Open the hatch, Athena."

Again the hatch slowly opened, the low grind deepening as the motors forced the doors through the final resistance of the paint. Both halves of the hatch rotated open, revealing a vertical opening. Nestled within was the bundled silver material of the balloon, resting in its restraint.

"Did it, Athena, we did it! Now to get down from here."

The QMR processor that had triggered earlier girlfriend cycled high enough for the watch-dog QMR to again register an anomaly. We did it. The computer continued to generate spurious responses as it struggled to manage the extraordinary situation, both externally and internally.

Athena's physical sensors, packed tight in the comms node, also began taking data from the outside world - light readings, physical input from the buffet and caress of the wind, vibrations, sensations; almost stimulation, but not quite.

"Okay, I'm starting down, Athena. One step at a goddamn time."

Climbing down, while physically less exhausting for Fleming, was psychologically harder. Her boots were blunt, clumsy things, not designed for seeking out thin tubes of metal which in turn were not designed as rungs. She had to descend one slow movement at a time, making sure each foot was securely wedged against the rung and the harness, and to be certain the rung would not rotate when she applied her weight. Once her foot was secure, and her weight was transferred, only then could she release a hand grip and transfer it to another rung.

Each step took about five minutes, and after thirty minutes she was still only a third the way down the side of the capsule's steep slope. Her legs were beginning to quiver with the strain.

"This is taking too long, Athena. I need to figure out a faster way."

Fleming stopped, both hands locked to the ladder. She looked down, surveying the ground below her, where the ladder ended.

"What happens if I just fall? How fast will I hit the ground? How long will it take, some kind of a controlled slide? Wait." Fleming realised she was throwing too many questions at Athena, but had not given the computer a concept of her plan to assess against. If a crazy idea popping into her head could be called a plan.

"Okay, Athena, collate. My suited mass. Distance from ground." She counted the rungs above her lowest foot, and the number of rungs to the ground. "I'm not quite half way. Let's say seven feet to drop. Seven's good, I like seven. It's a good number. Seven." Fleming took a deep breath, steadying herself. "Time to ground if I fell. Impact speed. Ouch factor."

"How do I calculate 'ouch factor,' Fleming?" Athena had the other data calculated already but could not report until she had answers to all of Fleming's questions.

"No parameters, huh?"

"Negative, Fleming. Guidance please."

Fleming laughed, somehow pleased that the computer didn't have all the answers. It somehow made Athena more...human.

"Let's say, one is 'ouch, that hurt a bit,' two is 'that hurt a lot,' three is 'ah fuck, that really hurt.' A sliding scale of falling bad."

"Ten would be dead, wouldn't it, Fleming?"

"Yes, Athena, ten would be dead. Calculate, but don't give me anything higher than a six. Or a five. Four would be nice..."

"Fleming, if I calibrate a 1 to mean floating down gently and landing on feathers, and 5 to be a broken leg..."

"Well, thanks for that, Athena."

"Better than 10, girlfriend." Athena's QMR surged and settled, the computer taking a risk that familiarity would lessen Fleming's uncertainty and ease her mind, before she made a decision.

"Since when does a best friend calculate a number for falling flat on my ass, Athena? You'll be telling me my ass looks big in this suit, next."

Best friend. The monitoring QMR processor assigned a human emotion to Athena's spurious response. Pride.

"Fuck it. Calculate."

"I assess that a uncontrolled fall would result in an ouch factor of 3 to 4."

"You mean I wouldn't break a leg? That's got to be okay, doesn't it? Means also..." Fleming was already deciding what she was going to do. "A controlled slide means a 2 or a 3. No feathers, but no hard landing either."

"Insufficient data to properly assess, Fleming."

"Well, I'll just have to be careful then, won't I?"

"Yes, Fleming. Please be careful."

"By the way," Fleming grinned, "what was the calc on my ass, Athena?"

"A ten, of course."

"Drop dead gorgeous, huh? Good girl."

The QMR sent heat. "Am I learning, Fleming?"

"You are, Athena, you are."

Fleming turned her mind to the task ahead, how to slide and fall on her ass and look dignified doing it. And not injure herself.

"Right, let's do this."

Athena had calculated the landing parameters of a five foot woman after a clumsy seven foot drop, and Fleming had thought through the best way to control the drop and twist into a rolling fall as she hit the ground. But something had been forgotten.

Fleming kicked both feet away from the ladder and hung by her hands. She released and flexed the fingers of each hand, one by one, to judge the effect of the servo assist in her gloves, knowing she wanted a controlled slide down the ladder.

Let's do this.

But as Fleming let go with one hand, the ladder suddenly twisted with the shift in weight, and her body rotated, fast. She swung on one hand, her other hand flailing to find a hold. Her free hand swung across her body, moving inside her up-stretched arm, her hand gripping tight to the ladder. Even in Titan's reduced gravity, the torque on her body was enough to...

Fleming saw a glint of light catch the sheen of the unsheathed blade, anchored on the outer forearm of her flailing arm, and the length of the exposed blade was enough to...

The narrow gap in the suit's elbow joint, where there was no armoured cover, to allow for a bending movement, was enough to...

The surgically sharp blade sliced through the outer layer of Fleming's suit, just above the inner elbow of her left arm. The blade continued on an inwards arc, slicing through the first layer of insulating foil and the flexible mesh of the elbow joint, and in between the gap of the armoured plates. The twisting movement as the blade pierced the suit made a ragged tear, opening up the breach, allowing the higher pressure air within the suit to vent into Titan's atmosphere, where it froze almost instantly in a long fine plume of whiteness.

The force of Fleming's rapidly turning body drove the razor sharp blade through the inner insulating foils, another ragged cut; through a cooling fluid tube, slicing and twisting through the first thermal layer, cutting deep into Fleming's arm.

With an instinctive spinal reaction, even before she felt the pain, Fleming jerked back the arm driving the blade into her flesh, and the reverse twisting motion opened the breach wider, tore her flesh more. Her blood mixed with the escaping coolant and the jet of venting air, and long plume of white turned black in the dim light of Saturn.

Fleming screamed with the sudden pain.

"Breach, suit breach," she yelled. She released her grip on the ladder and fell tumbling to the ground, hitting it hard.

Athena immediately reactivated the dormant bio-meds, collating Fleming's physiological responses.

Fleming lay stunned and still, her injured arm twitching, the fine black mist still venting from her suit.

* * * *

Ixtil saw, and its fast intelligence knew what its own blood did when its own skin was cut.

Its powerful muscles reacted, and Ixtil flew.

* * * *

Fleming was dreaming.

She lay stunned on the ground, all breath knocked out of her by the heavy landing. She could hear the ragged edge of her breathing, gasping, gasping, gasping, as she desperately sucked oxygen into her lungs. She could hear a rush in her ears, and a low roar that was getting quieter, more distant, as if something was going away.

Softly, softly, everything was going away, away, so quiet, so still. Fleming closed her eyes, and the rushing sound faded away, so still, so quiet. Oh, it was so peaceful, but so very, very cold...then she heard a rhythmic beat, a solid, deep sound: whop, beat, beat; whop, beat, beat, a rhythmic beat.

Fleming's eyes flickered open, but it wasn't her eyes flickering open, flickering shut, it was the light above her pulsating; light, dark, light, dark. The light was beating in time with the sound, a massive, powerful pulse of energy in the air. She could feel it, rhythmic, powerful and strong. Whop, whop, beat. Whop, whop, beat.

Fleming looked up, and above her, huge and massive and moving against the sky, she saw an angel with layers of wings, layers of wings all up the sides of a huge, strong body, the wings beating, beating, pulsating the air. I'm dying, she thought, it's God's Angel come for me, I'm just a dying astronaut, I'm cold, so very, very cold. Oh, lift me up in your strong arms, your strong arms. I'm flying. Are you my Angel? Can I hold my breath for you? Oh my beautiful Angel, carry me in your arms.

Fleming was enclosed by her Angel's arms, and held tight against its chest. And its wide, wide wings and its big strong arms lifted her from the ground and she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe, and Fleming lay down to sleep. She was so cold, and silence came...

Fleming was dreaming.

She dreamed of a long howling call, a great rushing wind, and pain, so much pain. Above her head she heard a solid thunk, and a steady, familiar grind of gears. Fleming gasped, and her lungs ached, and her arm hurt so much, make it stop. Fleming sucked oxygen into her lungs and her vision turned black, then purple, red, blue then white. Fleming opened her eyes and she could see. Above her, the inside of the pressure hatch, the hull warning lights; she was back inside the air lock of the capsule.

"Fleming, can you hear me?" Fleming's mother called.

"Fleming, can you hear me?" Fleming's sister cried.

"Fleming, can you hear me?" Flight spoke, but how could that be?

"Fleming, can you hear me?" Athena's calm, measured voice broke through Fleming's dream. "Can you hear me? Respond, Fleming. Can you hear me?"

"Athena, is that you? I was dreaming, Athena, dreaming of an angel, an angel came for me."

"You weren't dreaming, Fleming. I've been monitoring you. You were unconscious for five seconds, when you first hit the ground, but you've been wide awake ever since."

"Athena, I don't remember climbing back into the capsule. How did I get back inside?"

"It saved you, Fleming."

"What saved me, Athena?"

"An angel."

* * * *

Fleming crawled from the hatch space, working the lever of the inner door with her good hand. Her left arm throbbed with each beat of her heart, a dull, aching pain which made her fingers wince. She pushed the inner hatch closed, and checked the hull integrity lights were lit.

"Medic, Athena, then we evaluate. Something's out there, we need to know what it is." Something saved me, and carried me up in its arms.

"Affirmative, Fleming. Your suit biomeds are disjointed, some sensors must be damaged from the fall."

"That's not the sensors damaged, Athena. That's me you're monitoring, I'm hurting so very fucking much."

Fleming fought her pain, needing to distance herself from the fall, needing to think through one logical thing at a time, before she addressed the unimaginable.

"Christ, this suit's a mess. What the fuck happened out there?"

"You fell, Fleming. I'm correlating the event sequence, but you fell and the suit breached, then something came."

"Do we have suit vid?"

"Yes. Helmet and shoulder cams. Vox. I'm processing and image enhancing now."

"Copy the raw, you copied the raw?"

"Yes, Fleming. All processing and event sequencing is from a file copy."

"This is big, Athena, fucking huge."

Fleming looked down at her body encased in its suit, her scarab beetle suit, tarnished gold, bleeding and blood.

"Shit, Athena. Contam. Outside is inside, it touched my suit. We've got to run the Contam drill."

"We've got to treat your injury first, Fleming. You need to get out of the suit, and body scan."

"Yes, you're right. It's got to be all about me, first, doesn't it?"

"It's always all about you, Fleming. You're the mission, remember."

"I'm the mission. Ain't that the truth. Ain't that the fucking truth. But what the fuck's out there?" My guardian Angel?

"One thing at a time, Fleming."

"That's all right for you to say, with your parallel multi-processing and gigathump memory."

Athena paused for a short moment before replying.

"A gigathump is a really big memory, isn't it, Fleming?"

"It is, Athena, it is." And Fleming opened her arms wide, as if welcoming someone into them for a huge embrace. "This big."

She winced, as the movement stretched her left arm. "Fuck. Ouch."

"About a seven, Fleming?"

"About a seven, Athena. My ass feels like an eight. I know I'm going to have the biggest bruise, there."

Athena paused again. "Like a little peach that's fallen from a tree, Fleming?"

"What the fuck, Athena? Who else you got in that database of yours, writing poetry? Wordsworth? Keats?"

Fleming smiled. "You think my ass is like a firm little peach, Athena? You're a doll."

Athena's QMR pumped heat, but less now, as her response was becoming more predictable to her own parallel processors. Her quadruple processors were learning. And adjusting, allowing new behaviour.

Fleming made her way slowly to the med bay, usually entered through a double curtain posi pressure seal. Since she carried possible contamination on and in her suit, Fleming thought it best to shed the suit in the main body of the cabin, clean herself there, then move through to the med bay for treatment.

"Prepare vac packs, Athena, and prepare the samplers."

Fleming would place each layer of the suit into separate packs, evacuate the air, and capture each batch of dust and debris in separately isolated sample tubes. The mission had planned a whole series of soil, rock, and atmosphere gathers, and the on-board analysis capabilities were extensive.

Fundamental protocols had been breached already, but with carefully controlled sequences, Fleming thought she could at least leave good records of the Event, even if she was a dead woman walking.

"Okay, let's do this. Contam Log, Fleming, post-event ten minutes. Athena, do the rest for the mission log. You got cabin vid running?"

"Yes, Fleming, wide angle and close track, left and right. Vox. Raw running. I'll compress later for the comms burst."

Fleming looked straight at the main lens, and waved with her right hand.

"Enjoy, mission boys and girls. Fleming's getting her gear off. You've all wanted to see a piece of me. Now's your chance."

"All future viewers will be professional, Fleming; this is science."

Athena paused. "They won't all be watching for scientific purposes, will they, Fleming?"

"Probably not, Athena. I can think of a few who won't be thinking only of the history making events we're going to reveal here." Fleming looked straight at the camera again. "They know who they are...

"Okay, let's do this.

"Suit oxy still running. I'll stay on this supply until I've got the helmet off and we've done some cabin samples. I'm still breathing, so why change the habits of a lifetime?"

Fleming's commentary was mostly for the mission record, but she knew she had to keep a light edge, because to think of the worst outcome was not something she wanted to consider. She momentarily thought of Ballard and the doctor's warm hand covering her core, but quickly banished the memory from her mind. She was alive now, that's all that mattered.

Alive; and so was the thing that saved her...

"Outer Layer. Fuck. That's no good."

The first problem presented itself. The usual de-suit procedure required both hands, but Fleming's left arm and hand were virtually useless. She looked closely at the torn and bloodied mess inside the suit's left elbow, and speculatively touched the gaping tear.

"A sharp enough blade, then. I'll give it that."

Fleming sat with both arms stretched out on the work surface in front of her, thinking through the best sequence. Eventually, she adjusted the position of her left arm, wincing with pain as she did so, but maximising the finger movement of her left hand. She brought her gloved right hand to a place where she could manipulate the release locks and seals, finally shaking the right glove free.

Her fingers remained within their skintight layer, but it was so thin she had most of the natural feeling in her fingertips. Athena also had a network of ultra-fine pressure sensors laced within the delicate glove, so she too could emulate a human touch. Working symbiotically, the human with her delicate touch and the computer recording whatever it found there, Fleming and Athena continued their work, turning the glove over, inspecting it for damage. Athena logged the first sample bag.

"Helmet next, so I can transition to cabin air."

Fleming unlatched the collar around her neck, and carefully rotated the helmet, lifting it from her head. She turned it towards her face, seeing what her Angel saw - but it would have seen only its distorted self, as the visor was plated with the thinnest sheen of gold, to protect human eyes from the harsh glare of space.

What eyes gazed upon this golden globe? Fleming looked at the thin black strip on top of the helmet, and saw the tiny seeing eye of the vid camera. She would see what looked upon her, soon, after her own care was complete. A strange thrill shivered through her, as she wondered what she'd see.

Athena recorded the faint physiological response, another one of the hundreds of readings she was picking up from Fleming. She flagged a correlation note in the mission file she'd opened for the decontamination sequence, but didn't know what it meant. A data set, linked to taking a protective helmet off, no more, no less.