The Quarry, Part 2

[The Egg]

Captain Delaney froze. The form of Selma lurched towards her across the rocky surface of Asteroid Delta Omicron 742, unburdened by a life support system or any other equipment. Selma had just simply walked out of the airlock unprotected, the thin material of her civilian clothes the only layer between her body and the forboding elements of deep space.

The skin of her arms and face was completely uncovered. Drawn, lily-white and rapidly developing severe hypothermia, Selma had the appearance of a walking corpse. Her eyes were round as nickels, her pupils dilated completely open. Her expression was one of intense determination.

“Good God,” the Captain choked, “Selma, what the Hell is going on?”

Selma’s lips began to move slowly. The asteroid’s atmosphere was scant and sulfurous, but enough carried into Edna’s helmet phone, pitch-bent into the bass range in the heavier air molecules: “Can’t... Stop... Must... Do...” Selma kept marching towards the Captain.

“Stay back!” demanded Captain Delaney. “Selma, stay back! Something’s happened to you, you have to fight it!”

Selma raised an arm towards the Captain. “Must... Add...”

Captain Delaney drew her pistol. Again, she ordered: “Selma, keep back! I don’t want to use this!”

Selma kept on coming. Captain Delaney fired.

The microcharge impacted Selma in the right side of her abdomen. Flesh and blood tore like soft candy. Selma stopped, her intestines hanging from the sizable hole in her belly.

“I’m sorry,” whispered the Captain.

Selma did not fall. From the inside edges of the gaping wound, hair-thin tendrils of silvery-black liquid began to snake outwards. Captain Delaney watched in mute disbelief as each thread found the opposite side, creating a weavework of complex metal that served to patch the hole. In moments, where there was once torn flesh was now a sheath of reflective black steel.

Edna panicked. She raised the gun again, firing all five remaining shots at the Selma-thing. One by one, the charges tore away pieces of her chest, neck, and arms. The Selma-thing stumbled backwards with the impacts, falling flat against the surface of the asteroid, a mutilated corpse.

Edna ran for Palace. Reaching the still-open airlock, she shut the outer door tight, changing the entry code as rapidly as her fingers would allow. She did the same for the inner door.

Inside the ship, the atmosphere had been completely depressurized. Edna didn’t bother restoring it; there was no time. Frantically, she ran for the bridge, still in her enviro suit. Once there, she fired up the engine sequence, praying to God that the damaged ship could reach liftoff.

The single grav-lifter whined as it strained to raise the ship clear of the rocky landing site. Palace groaned, its crushed landing struts creaking as it rocked slowly from one side to the other.

“Damn it, come on!” yelled Edna. She looked up at one of the hull scanners. Outside, the Selma-thing had gotten up and was slowly trudging towards the ship. All the pieces that Edna had shot off were either woven-over with the strange liquid metal, or in the process of being repaired as such. Additionally, the first wound that Edna had inflicted on the thing was now re-covered with what looked like skin -- healthy, pink, human skin.

Edna pushed the grav-lifter past its safety margin. The overloaded system gave one final jolt upwards, but would lift no further.

“It’s now or never,” said Edna, and ignited the port engine.

Palace lunged forward. Its landing struts caught the edges of a crag, and the ship scraped its belly against the ground, tearing the outer fuselage. Alarms lit up all across Edna’s console; she ignored them, diverting all the ship’s reserve power to thrust.

Severely crippled, losing fuel, Palace could do no more. The ship reached its zenith, arced downward, and bounced off of the asteroid, smashing the remainder of the underbelly. Edna was thrown to the ceiling of the bridge, coming down hard on the console; her ribs cracked like celery. The ship skipped upwards like a stone on a pond, then came down again, sliding twisted metal across barren rock until it finally came to rest.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Edna regained consciousness. There was an unbearable pain in her midsection. She tried to stand, but all that brought was more pain; she slumped back into the bridge chair, howling in agony.

Most of the scanners were filled with static, and those that weren’t were either filled with alerts from every deck of the ship, or offline entirely. Palace was dying.

Edna rested for a few minutes. Then, with unbelievable force of will, she brought herself to her feet. She pressed at the pains in her chest; at least four ribs were broken, one of which was out of alignment. She leaned against the console again, using her own weight to snap the rib back into place. The task was excruciating, but the pain did subside slightly.

She checked all around her enviro suit. Miraculously, there was not a tear or fracture anywhere. “Thank Heaven for small miracles,” she thought aloud.

There was no way to know how far she’d flown; she couldn’t even warrant a guess. In any case, Palace was never going to fly anywhere else again.

Edna checked all the systems. Life support was largely undamaged; the ship had been designed in such a way that the environmental system was well-protected, and would fail long after everything else, even in extreme situations such as this. The communications array was also mostly intact, save for some peripheral damage and the loss of the long range antenna array from the earlier blast shockwave.

Without the long range antennas, there would be no contacting PhoenixCorp. Even if Edna could manage to hold out under the present conditions, surely that Selma-thing would get to her before six weeks were up. If she could send out a distress call, a retriever could be there in eighteen hours.

Edna knew what she had to do. First, she sealed off all the damaged parts of the hull. That was well over half the ship, but there were adequate supplies left in the remaining rooms. After securing the ship, Edna repressurized the interior. That allowed her to take off her enviro suit. Using what emergency medical supplies she could find, she then bandaged up her midsection and cleaned out her various wounds.

Next Edna began to work on the communications system. The damages to those panels were simple to fix, and she was able to get short range communications back online inside of an hour. That left the long range antennas.

Edna scarfed down a couple of donuts and some coffee; she knew that she’d need to keep up her strength. Finally, her resolve steeled, she donned a fresh enviro suit, strapped two microcharge pistols to her belt, and headed for the airlock.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The handheld proximity scanner remained silent for eighty minutes. Edna kept glancing down at its readout, as well as looking to the horizon over the aft of Palace, as she patched the destroyed antenna array back together. The damage was severe, so severe that she might need to return to the ship to restock her enviro suit before completing them. Edna didn’t want to have to do that; climbing on top of the ship with four broken ribs was bad enough once.

She pressed on, working feverishly. Again she glanced down at the proximity scanner.

“That won’t tell you anything, Captain,” said a female voice from behind Edna.

Edna leapt up, nearly losing her balance as she spun around on the craft. She pulled the pistol out of her right holster and swung it in the direction of the voice.

There stood Selma. No part of here was damaged. Her skin was pink and smooth; her eyes sparkled with a distinct clarity, and her hair was silken as if conditioned. She looked fabulous, not at all like a walking zombie -- save for her torn civilian clothes, still showing the rips of the microcharge explosions.

“Keep back,” said Edna, training the gun on Selma.

Selma smiled, but did not move from her position. “Captain. There’s no need for such hostility. I’ve been standing here for some time. I just wish to talk with you.” Selma’s voice was quite clear in the thin space air, and its pitch was correct.

Edna paused, but did not lower her weapon. “Who are you?”

“I’m Selma,” replied Selma.

“Bullshit,” cursed Edna. “You’re standing on a ship hull in open space without an enviro suit. Selma’s dead.”

“I’m right here,” confirmed Selma. “I just want to talk.”

“Alright,” said Edna, shifting slightly to relieve some pressure from her ribs, and pulling out the second pistol. “Start talking.”

Selma nodded slowly, almost reverently. “Captain Edna Delaney of the PhoenixCorp mining ship Palace, our species is only just beginning to explore these stars. But there have been others who have explored them long before us, and who have left their markings where they tread.”

“The container,” Edna said. “An alien container?”

Selma smiled. “Placed here long ago, by a vast and powerful race of beings. It was laid to rest with the intention that it would never be uncovered.”

“And we uncovered it,” said Edna.

“We did,” confirmed Selma, “and we released what was within from its rocky prison. An experiment gone terribly wrong, banished from the sight of all intelligent life in the universe.”

Edna’s trigger fingers began to twitch. “Is that what killed Jack and Garvey?”

“No,” said Selma. “When we first blasted around the container, the explosion shorted its security field. Most of that energy was dispersed in the shockwave that crippled Palace. The remainder was triggered when the men tried to lift the container.”

Edna furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand. The container killed them?”

“Correct,” replied Selma. “It expended its reserves in neutralizing them. It was at this point the Hunter was able to escape.”

“I get the feeling that’s where you come in,” said Edna, grimly.

Selma smiled. “The Hunter had been sealed away for eons. It was hungry. It required the Hunt. So it moved towards the ship.”

Edna swallowed hard. “And while I was away from the ship, it hunted Selma.”

“Edna, your mind can’t comprehend the depth of this,” said Selma, “but the Hunter had never encountered any species like humans. It could only hunt in the way it recalled. It found the female Selma and consumed her wholly.”

“So tell me again how you’re supposed to be Selma,” shot back Edna.

“I am Selma,” she stated simply. “We are Selma. Selma and the Hunter are one. And we understand now what neither was able to alone.”

“I don’t know what you are,” concluded Edna, fixing both pistol barrels squarely on Selma, “but I do know that I’m going to fix this goddamn antenna and get off this asteroid. Now, you either can get off of my ship, or I can blast you off.”

Selma frowned. “Edna, don’t do this. You’re my friend. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Prove it,” said Edna.

“Come with me to the bridge,” offered Selma. “I can explain everything you’ll need to know. I can show you slowly and pleasantly.”

Edna yelled, “Get off my goddamn ship you zombie! That’s your last warning!”

“I love you, Edna,” said Selma, a touch of sadness in her voice.

Edna squeezed the triggers, again and again, until both guns were dry. The microcharges impacted Selma’s soft, pink skin, blowing holes in her plastic exterior and revealing the fantastic clockwork of endoskeletal metal and circuitous optic fibers inside -- and then, just as rapidly, black metal strands would shoot across the breaches and sew them closed again. Within mere seconds of the onslaught, Selma stood fully repaired, her clothes a ragged web of tatters now.

“Damn it!” yelled Edna. She turned to run. Her right foot slid across the metal of the ship’s hull, and she lost her balance, tumbling down the side of Palace. She frantically grabbed at the hull as she fell, but only succeeded in snagging the fabric of her enviro suit on one of the ruptured bulkheads before slamming on the hard rocky surface of the asteroid.

The tear in her sleeve hissed. Edna gasped for air, her suit decompressing rapidly. She tried to stand, but her injuries were too severe now; she collapsed to the ground, panting and groping at the hole, desperately trying to plug it as oxygen leaked out, and sulfur leaked in.

As her peripheral vision began to go black, Edna could see Selma standing over her, smiling. “Don’t be frightened, Captain,” she said. “The Hunt is not over.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A cinnamon bun. That’s what Edna wanted: a cinnamon bun. She was so sick of the crullers that she could puke. Just once, it would have been nice to have a cinnamon bun instead.

“You crave this prey,” said a familiar voice. “It must become a part of you.”

Yes, she did crave it. She wanted to consume it, wholly. She wanted to know every part of the cinnamon bun, from its fluffy yeast-raised skeleton to its cinnamon-sugar entrails to its flaky glazed skin. Edna wanted to hunt the cinnamon bun.

“Good,” said the voice. “Very good. You are beginning to understand.”

Edna caught herself suddenly, shook the thoughts of donuts out of her head. “Where are you?” she demanded.

“We are back on the ship,” said the voice. “You are in no danger.”

Edna tried to look around for the source of the voice, but found that there was nothing in her immediate experience which connected to the concept of looking. “Why can’t I see you?” she continued. “What have you done to me?”

“Do not be alarmed,” the voice replied. “You are safe.”

Edna didn’t feel safe. “Tell me what is going on,” she said, trying to sound more composed.

The voice paused for a brief moment, then said, “Edna Delaney, Captain of the PhoenixCorp mining ship Palace: you are joining the Hunt.”

“I don’t want to join the Hunt,” Edna replied. “I want to go back to my ship and go home.”

“Yes,” said the voice. “You crave this prey. It must become a part of you.”

Edna shook her head. “No, that’s not what I...” She stopped in mid-sentence. Yes, in fact, it was what she meant. Her ship was prey. She wanted to know it intimately, to interface with every system and know its thoughts, and to fly it through the vacuum of space, unrestricted by ‘consoles’ and ‘scanners’. She wanted to feel the solar wind on its hull as if it were a stiff breeze upon her skin, like the brisk winds of home...

Home. Home was prey. It had always been prey; that was why she had made it a part of her. Home was Chicago, just outside Shantytown, where her parents had grown up and met. She craved Home, craved the breezy, bustling streets and the four dozen drawbridges over the river, craved the smells of a deep dish pizza and a Maxwell Street Polish...

“Get out of my mind,” Edna forced herself to say.

“Don’t be afraid, Edna,” said the voice. “You are joining the Hunt. The Hunter consumes the prey wholly, and the prey then becomes as the Hunter.”

“I don’t want to be a part of this,” Edna protested, trying hard to focus. “Get out of my thoughts.”

“Just relax, Edna,” came the soothing, growing voice, like a tiring fever spreading throughout Edna’s body, gently persuading her to capitulate. “Do not resist. You are joining the Hunt.”

Yes, she was. Edna was joining the Hunt. She craved all the things in her experience -- the cinnamon bun, the ship, Chicago, all of it. She craved these prey and needed to consume them wholly.

“Stop,” pleaded Edna, the urgency of her voice beginning to fade into a calm, measured flow.

She craved Selma. She had always craved Selma. She needed to consume this prey wholly.

“I know,” said the all-encompassing voice. “I understand, Edna. I love you, too.”

“I love you, Selma,” said Edna, warmly. “I understand now. I am the Hunter.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Edna’s sight returned abruptly. The image was sharp and the colors were saturated. Across her entire field of vision she was aware of a subtle horizontal scanline pattern. Symbols dotted the peripheries of her perceptions -- yellow symbols that resembled the spiralling patterns on the alien container. Though the symbols had no equivalent words in any human language, Edna understood their meanings implicitly, confirming each diagnostic reading in turn before proceeding further.

Sound also returned. As with vision, it was sharp and full spectrum, reaching up into the treble ranges Edna had lost with aging, and even into high and low frequencies that no human had ever heard. Presently she was aware of a subtle whine, which seemed to be coming from within her.

“What is the noise I am hearing?” she asked. Her voice sounded like it had been recorded and played back to her through a high fidelity stereo. It was even-timbred and slightly sensual, but it was clearly her own voice. In fact, it seemed more like ‘her’ voice than her voice had ever been.

“That’s your [5eaf3e376512be09],” came a voice. Edna recognized it as Selma.

“What is a [5eaf3e376512be09]?” asked Edna. She heard herself say the ‘word’, but it definitely had no possible equivalent in English.

“Know yourself,” suggested Selma. “It will come.”

Edna was confused. “I do not understand.”

“Yes you do,” Selma assured her. “Open your [5eaf3e376512be09].”

Edna did as instructed, although she could not in any sense conceive of how she was able to. Below her field of vision, another whine of different tone became audible suddenly. As it sounded, the first whine began to grow in volume, until the second whine stopped.

“Look down,” suggested Selma.

Edna angled her head downwards, touching her chine to her chest. She could see her body; it was naked, and lying on a table in the medical bay of Palace, the port wall of which was torn open and exposed to surface of the asteroid. From her breastbone to just below her ribcage, a panel of skin had hardened and swung upwards, hinged somewhere right above her navel.

Inside her body, she could see everything that she was.

“I understand,” she concluded. “The [5eaf3e376512be09] is the [9087e73eba327efe] that controls the [1228ef3c542eba9a].”

Selma’s naked, plastic body walked into view; she was smiling widely. “Very good, Edna. You understand.” Gently, she pressed against the skin panel that had exposed Edna’s alien circuitry, processor arrays and motor network. The panel conformed to her pressure, closing the hole and reverting to pliable tegument.

“We are robots,” said Edna, plainly.

“If you like,” replied Selma. “The term is somewhat crude, but accurate for the limitations of human language.”

Edna sat up. She could feel every part of her body as if her mind were in every circuit; her arm was no different from her eye, or her thoughts. She could feel how the artificial body had self-corrected its dimensions to remove all the little imperfections Edna had always felt ashamed of, due to age or illness or weight or simply genetic misfortune. She was an ideal Edna, a perfect Edna.

She was a Hunter.

Edna blinked, then turned her head to look at Selma. She could percieve the pistons in her neck whizzing as if she heard them moving, and understood that hearing and knowing were the same concept; there was no sound of machinery, save for within her own field of understanding.

“I know who I am,” she began. “I am Edna. You returned my memories to me.”

“I never took them,” said Selma.

“Why do they remain?” asked Edna. “You could have simply programmed me to obey.

Selma smiled. “Because they were necessary for correct consumption. When this Hunter consumed Selma, it did not understand humans. It consumed her wholly. By doing so, it became Selma. Her memories remained.”

Edna cocked her head in affected pondering. “The Hunter became Selma, as Selma became the Hunter. Both are one.”

“Correct,” said Selma. “Consumption of the body is not completion. Consumption of the mind is also required.”

“I understand,” said Edna. “I am a Hunter, and I am Edna, and there is no conflict between these two entities.”

“That’s why your memories remain,” concluded Selma. “Your prey would not have been properly consumed otherwise.”

Edna nodded. The two androids watched each other in silence for a long time.

“You are very pretty, Selma,” said Edna. “I’ve always wanted to tell you that.”

“Thank you, Edna,” said Selma, blushing slightly. “I’ve always thought you were an amazing woman. It takes a special kind of courage to head up a spaceship. You’re one of my heroes.”

Edna was blushing now. “I love you, Selma.”

Selma straightened her shoulders, cocking her head to the left. The exposed skin of the right side of her neck folded out a small, hardened panel, revealing a computer port.

“Show me,” said Selma.

A look of anticipation overtook Edna’s youthful Irish face. “What do I do?” she asked.

“Put your [54267eefe817009b] into my [091bea8c8e90e5ff],” replied Selma. “You will understand.”

Edna complied. She raised her left hand up to the port, willing open a round, camera-lens panel in the tip of her ring finger, from which extended her [54267eefe817009b]. She pressed it into Selma’s [091bea8c8e90e5ff].

Selma’s face went blank. In Edna’s display, a flurry of yellow symbols began to dance around each other. Edna understood. She chose the symbols that corresponded to her memories, to the cravings she had for Selma.

Selma’s eyes fluttered rapidly. The symbols entered her.

Edna pulled her finger out of Selma’s neck. Their respective panels closed. Selma smiled widely, but emptily. “Hello, Captain,” she said, sounding very much like an automated responder buoy. “I am ready to accept your commands.”

Edna grasped Selma’s midsection, pressing against her naked, plastic body as she brought her lips to her subordinate. Selma returned the osculation fervently, with exacting servomechanical precision.

Edna pulled away momentarily, gazing into Selma’s empty, glassy eyes. “You belong to me now, Selma,” she confirmed.

Selma blinked twice. “Yes, Captain. I understand. I am your prey.”

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Man,” sighed Ben, idly playing with his pocket gametoy, “is there anything more boring than lane patrol?”

“I dunno,” said Goose, checking the thrust vectors for the thousandth time. “Better than being on a miner, anyway.”

“At least they get out once in a while,” complained Ben. “I haven’t set foot on solid ground for two months.”

“Don’t tell me you’re sick of my sparkling conversation,” Goose replied, pretending offense.

Ben chuckled. “I’m just bored, is all. I haven’t had a single retrieval since taking this shift, and just once I’d like to see some kind of action.” He was silent for a moment, then, as an afterthought, added: “And no offense to your rapier wit, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to be paired up with a hot chick.”

Goose laughed. “Keep dreaming, flyboy. I’ve been with PhoenixCorp for 6 years, and I haven’t seen one female who didn’t look like she fell off the--”

The deep-space blackball lit up, its blaring alarm cutting Goose off in mid sentence. The two men glanced at each other, exchanging looks of sudden disbelief before manning their respective consoles.

Ben opened up the long-range antenna array. “This is the retriever ship Caliph. We have your signal. Please respond.”

The main screen crackled to life. Throught the static cut an amazingly crisp picture of two beautiful young women: an Irish girl with curls like a billowing waterfall, and a Latina with eyes like diamonds.

The Caucasian woman spoke, her voice a smooth, velvety caress of audible satin. “We read you, Caliph. This is Captain Edna Delaney of the PhoenixCorp mining ship Palace. We have suffered an emergency and require immediate assistance.”

Ben was barely able to contain the enthusiasm I his voice, and counted his blessings that their own craft had no visual transmitter. “Roger that, Palace. Please give us your location.”

“Our ship has crashed on the surface of Asteroid Delta Omicron 742,” replied the Hispanic girl, whose voice was just as sultry as her commander’s, if not even more so. “Polar mesh coordinates 311.45 mark 190.37, zone shift minus seven.”

Goose looked back to Ben with a nod and a smile. Ben winked back at him. “Coordinates received. We’ll be seeing you ladies in about four hours.”

“We’ll be waiting,” teased the dark-haired girl, eyes sparkling.

“Yes,” her Captain added, pursing her lips slightly. “We’re very anxious to meet you.”


THE END

[BA2]

wow! That was good!

[confusitron!]

excellent!

[transforminator]

great story

[confusitron!]

I for one am hoping to hear more from the Egg before too long.

[robolvr]

Well done!

[udgang99]

Great story ... though I do feel that the erotisism was kinda forced, like you had a good story, but needed to put some lesbian action into it, to justify you posting it here. -but don't get em wrong ... I really, really LOVED the story!!!

[The Egg]

Actually I kind of agree with you there on the forced lesbian thing... I did kind of try to wedge it in there so that, y'know, people would feel there's some kind of payoff here. Sadly a lot of people on FC are REALLY stuck up their own asses about what they do and don't want to see, which I find boring and unchallenging... a good example is the people on "Swing Shift" who are commenting about my use of a homosexual character. The guy literally does not have any sex in the story, but the mere MENTION of it makes people bitch and moan... how depressing, considering there are so many closet robo-queens lurking around here... pot and the kettle, that.

Anyway, I'd like at some point to take this story and go back over it, maybe hint earlier in the plot, like in Part 1, of an attraction between the girls so that it doesn't seem so forced in Part 2. I'm always willing to take constructive criticism to heart and try to improve on what I've made.