Mourning War Machines

It was the last day of her employment, and she couldn’t wait to die.

She just wanted to go to college. She joined the army and ended up on this ship on the edge of two territories because she just wanted to pay for her college.

This was supposed to be her last day before the ship docked on a planet at the edge of the galaxy, where she would dismount, and then she could do anything she wanted in her life; all she had to do was carve the path.

She could practically taste the freedom.

She was sick of these leaders who could look at the entire universe and decide that it was their game of chess. She was sick of the people who wanted to use the entire ordeal as a power play.

But she wasn’t a fighter. She trembled when she held her pistol. She didn’t understand the "quiet nothingness" that soldiers talked about, the empty humming quiet, the pause, that always came to them before the gunshot and the death rattle sounded.

She could never go there; she was just a kid.

Her ship was floating around in the vast emptiness of space. The ship felt like a forgotten toy cast aside in a messy room, knocked out of its orbit and slowly rotating out of its path of patrol. The galaxy stretched endlessly around her, a giant maw that was attempting to swallow her whole, twinkling teeth out in the abyss that were threatening to bite down. She was ultimately going to become a thought, weightless and unwanted; a dog in a crate that everyone walked by and ignored.

There was a sort of peace that came with… this, the quiet whirring of the engines behind her, the easy beeping of lights. It was familiar, like hearing the wind rustling through leaves on the trees. The ambience was a soft mechanical lullaby that once made her want to put a pillow over her ears whenever she tried to sleep, but now was something that she could tune out. Lights were blinking on the panels like slow, dying heartbeats. There was the faint sigh of the air recyclers, the occasional creaking of the heating systems. The overhead lights were off, leaving only the lights of the console and stars to illuminate the world around her. The console lights cast faint, fuzzy beams up the walls, eventually fading to near pitch blackness.

There used to be voices here- arguments over the comms, music leaking from private quarters down the hall, the pilot humming under his breath. But the pilot was gutted in the hall with his intestines out halfway down the hall and the ship was now silent. Sterile.

No voices. No footsteps. No laughter. The silence was wrapping around her like a second skin, the ricocheting noise from the screams having long since faded, leaving nothing but near-silence. The noise used to drive her mad, but now she missed it like air.

How quickly they ripped each other to shreds… It started with a whisper and then a scream, and then it didn’t really matter what happened or what triggered it; all that mattered was that everyone was trying to kill each other.

She thought it was something in the water.

The blood was everywhere.

It was slick and spilled onto her hands, soaking through her jumpsuit, warm and thick from the tear in the cloth. It covered her face, smearing like war paint. It was everywhere on the floors. Bloodied fingerprints dragged across the console. It covered her boots. The same boots she had worn for years- scuffed and scratched, the soles worn down to the point they had since vanished. Her Captain always told her she needed to replace them.

Her Captain was now dead.

He was lying on the floor next to the pilot seat from where she was slumped, the whites of his eyes showing, his mouth agape, blood spilling out of his mouth into a puddle underneath his head. It reminded her of drool.

She let out a dark laugh at the thought — this choked-up thing that sent her into a coughing fit. It sounded wet. Terrible.

She never knew how to handle death.

Distantly, like a flickering candle, she remembered when some of her family members had died. People she didn’t speak to. Faceless people who were fretting over her and asking:

“Are you okay?!?”

“Are you feeling!?”

“You just look sad all the time…”

And really she just felt numb. She wouldn’t call it apathy, but there also wasn’t that invisible hand clutching her chest and her heart and pulling, her throat didn’t feel scratchy, her mouth didn’t turn into sandpaper. She never felt short of breath. If anything, the guilt would burrow itself in her belly, touch the tips of her fingers like electricity, and she simply felt bad that she didn’t feel grief for the death of these people at all.

People often told her how she was supposed to feel and act. She was really used to that. And so she was used to people yelling at her whenever she was acting wrong.

But this-

Seeing her Captain on the floor, it broke something in her.

There was a feral noise that burrowed itself into her throat. She. She started crying, choked up noises, like bubbles slowly popping up due to someone drowning underneath the water, that caused more blood to spill out from the wound in her side. She could feel her pulse rushing through her blood, could feel the sweaty clamminess in her palms. She felt pain crawling up her ribs.

“Oh, Oh, my fucking god…”

He was the only one who looked at her. Never demanded some kind of performance because she wasn’t being enthusiastic enough.

His eyes were open. Still. Unblinking.

It certainly felt like he was looking through her now

Static flickered through the transmission system. It broke out into a crescendoing crackle before evening out like a dial tone.

“Hello? This is Battlecarrier Resolution. We have received a distress signal from Battlecarrier Thunderbird. Is anyone on this frequency, over?”

The whole universe seemed to still. The stars stopped twinkling; the darkness no longer felt so dark. Her breath hitched in her throat, her dying sobs shuddering and breaking to a stop. All that was left was the clicking of the ship.

“Hello? This is Battlecarrier Resolu-”

She reached for the response button and slammed it so fast that she thought she was going to break it. Her body unfurled, nerves firing, sensation suddenly snapping back into place, causing a buzz to hum throughout her body, as though she was drinking. The way she lurched forward was abrupt and jerky; like a car crashing into a wall, snapping tendons, breaking bones, blood vessels bursting.

“Hi- hi- uh- yeah. This is the Battlecarrier Thunderbird. I’m the only one left. Uh… who am I speaking to?”

The voice echoed through her communications system, ringing like whale song. “My name is Ares.”

Silence over the comms array. Then there’s the crackling again, as though Ares is taking a breath, and they respond: “I have been given permission from my admiral for you to dock your ship.”

The girl let out a choked-up, relieved noise. Her voice hitched with a shaking inhale, and with the exhale came out a shaking, borderline hysterical laugh. She presses down on the communications button, blood smearing on it like a macabre painting.

Ares speaks again: “Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” She doesn’t remove her hand from the button. Her voice sounded raw. “I’m here. Tell your admiral that I said thank you, Ares.”

“You can dock in Hangar Bay 2.”

She didn’t move right away… when she did, she felt like an old woman, her bones slowly popping as she reached, achingly, for the ship controls… pushing forward.

Resolution was a towering thing, like a city suspended, too large to comprehend all at once. It was covered in steel bones, blinking lights out in the abyss flickering faster than the stars. Resolution felt like a celebrity, something you couldn’t possibly approach. It reminded her of a bug, a beetle, with metal sheets over metal sheets, interlocking struts, shining slightly like an oil spill from what little light hit it in the dark. It reminded her of a beetle crushed, reinforced with thick armor. The hull gave this effect where it rippled.

Thunderbird was small and personal. One could feel the engines in your chest. The Resolution felt so stupidly big that it was incomprehensible.

She urged the ship forward.

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The ship docked, shuddered underneath her feet like an earthquake, and the airlocks made a series of clicks sounding like fuses popping as it slowly eased itself into the allotted space like a boat cruising to shore. She heard the rails click into place.

When she stepped off of Thunderbird she realized that Resolution was filled with light. It hit her like a solar flare. Too bright, too raw, like being blinded as light bounced off white bricks. Every light created a stark shadow, sharp, linear, too dark lines. The hangar bay was, shockingly, empty. There were spaces where ships were supposed to go, but the only thing parked there was a fine layer of dust.

The hangar bay was domed, the entire room shaped like a semi-circle, with metal arches starting on the walls and starting to arch over her head. The ground underneath her feet was grey, gouged in some places from where ships hit it, leaving markings that looked like scars. Bright, aggressively yellow markings were on the hangar deck in precise, straight lines.

There are the sounds of footsteps, rubber soles starting to echo on the ground. An android walks into the hangar bay, military posture pristine, hands clasped behind their back. Their eyes were unnerving, big black holes surrounded by clicking faceplates. Their hair was blonde and cropped short. Their eyes were this uncanny, cobalt blue… well, cobalt blue if it was set under a blacklight. The most notable thing was the military jacket, a bright purple thing adorned with no metals, only a patch on the sleeve labeled Resolution in boring, sans serif, lettering.

The same whalesong voice bounces off of the empty hangar bay in an echo. “My admiral is currently preoccupied, I have come to greet you. It is currently 17:17 in this territory's time, which means that the dining hall will open in forty minutes, I will escort you to the med bay on floor two-hundred-thirty-three so that our medics may patch you, are you able to follow me, or are the wounds too…” there’s an odd, too human pause, “Dire.”

“I can walk.” She said, her voice thinning. “Just don’t go too fast.”

Ares, because it was Ares, inclined their head. The faceplates click together so that their face contorts into a slight frown. “Understood.”

They turn crisply and begin to walk, the boots striking the fall in a sharp, hollow rhythm, the only sound in the halls. Her own steps were uneven, her boots scraping against the ground as she stumbled. Every breath rasped in her throat, slow exhales that made it sound like she was smoking. Her jumpsuit was clinging to her, making this sticky squelching sound with every agonizing movement.

Blood followed her. It smeared with each step, her footprints disturbing it like blurred fingerprints in an old photograph.

“Where is everyone?” She asked after a moment, her voice bouncing back at her. She looked up to the curvature of the ceiling, the way the metal beams arched above her.

Ares looked back at her, stopping their movement and staring at her with those very blue eyes. “Resolution is currently operating on a ghost crew in order to reduce the expenditure of resources. You will be safe here, do not worry.” Their voice almost wavered.

The corridors were spotless, nothing like the dusty emptiness that was Hangar Bay 2. Everything was surgically clean, the strong tang of bleach and lemon scented cleaner filling her nostrils and starting to tighten the pressure in her head. She heard nothing.

The medbay was just as sterile. Cabinets were closed. Examination tables in rigid, straight lines. The counters on the right side of the room were completely empty, no gauze resting on the jade green counter tops, no water pooling near the sink, the sink spout perfectly silver and shining.

The robot gave an expression that seemed to read as… annoyance. Mechanical eyelids dropping slightly like curtains, turning their eyes sharp.

“The medics are supposed to be on duty right now, they were supposed to clock in at 13:00, I am unsure as to why they are not here. I would have known if they were off tending to another injury, because they are required to report it. Never fear, I am permitted to perform triage, can you please sit down right…” they point rigidly at one of the examination tables. “Sit there, please rest.”

The wounds weren’t as bad as they looked. The wound in her side was still gushing blood, but it wasn’t as deep as she thought. It was closer to a long, shallow slash than a true gash. It was like an accidental cut to the cuticle, blood pooling from the wound and down her skin in streams to the point it was excessive. It spread everywhere, like acrylic paint that hadn’t been mixed.

Ares began cleaning her wounds with precise, rigid movements. It was quick, abrupt, but they handled her almost gently; she was glass that was going to shatter if they pressed just a little too hard.

The next few hours started to blur.

At 18:00, they went into the cafeteria, at least a dozen long tables with seats attached stretching throughout the room. From somewhere beyond the prep counter, there was a hiss that screeched from inside, sounding like the airlocks unlocking from a ship. She could not see the cause of the cacophony.

Ares grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her, leading her to one of the tables and half-pushing her down to get her to sit on the bench. No guests come to join her. A digital calendar flashes on the wall “Dinner time, from 18:00 to 19:00. Wednesday Menu: Teriyaki chicken with rice.”

She watches as Ares moves around the room, grabbing trays from a window in the wall and placing down in certain seat placements, placing soda cans at others. The movement reminded her of being on the field, whenever the soldiers would move in a grid. Eventually, Ares comes back around to her spot, placing a tray in front of her. The overhead lights flickered overhead, buzzing, indicating that something in the panel was probably dying.

Ares’s voice came over the ship intercom in that same whale song voice. “Dinner is now served.”

No one responded. The voice simply echoed.

The chicken was coated in a sauce that looked like motor oil rather than anything edible. The chicken itself was too uniform, perfectly cubed and laid next to itself on the tray like a grid. Beside it sat slightly overcooked rice, and a packet of soy sauce that hung limply off of the side of the tray.

They sat across from her, their back rigid, and laced their fingers together, staring at her unblinking. Sometimes the light would catch the glass of their eyes just right and so their eyes would look like impossibly blue stars.

She poked at the chicken- slightly spongy- with a fork.

“Eat.”

So, she did. It tasted better than it looked.

At 19:15, Ares announced that they needed to visit the admiral, and so they left her in the empty ship.

Because that’s what it was. It was empty.

The ship was still running, the Ai still going through all of its motions despite it being empty. And the moment that Ares walked away, the emptiness felt painfully loud. It felt like the unsettling quiet of her ship again. The dozens of bodies with bullets in their heads and hearts spilling out. Her captain broken next to the pilot's seat.

She slowly rose from the cafeteria bench, the bandages around her stomach and arms feeling tight. She started to wander.

Past empty rooms with no chatter.

Occasionally, Ares’s voice would crackle over the comms.

“Could Captain Petrov please head to the front?”

“Reminder: Axillary Staff meeting in twenty minutes!”

“Please reallocate resources to Med Bay 7, we are running low.”

Long sterile corridors that stretch just beyond the reach of the lights, the walls the color of black bone.

The rooms feel almost identical. Pristine.

But not perfect.

It was as if people had existed in the spaces but suddenly up and left. Books that were resting on random tables, blankets draped over the side of chairs. She peaked into an office with a desk that was covered in papers and cups of coffee with mold starting to make the middle fuzzy.

She turns a corner, her head nearly ramming into a mechanical chest. Ares nearly startles- if you could call their reaction that- they sort of back up a few feet, putting an arms length between them, and blink a few times, a reaction that’s too human. Something like static bubbling in the bottom of their throat.

“You are not sanctioned to be--”

“Where is everyone, Ares?” “When was the last time that someone that was human came through here?”

They pause, long. A beat. And then another. Like a song abruptly coming to a halt.

“Seven-hundred and thirty-one days.” Their words felt like a bag of bricks to the head.

Silence.

Ares took another step back, their frame shaking slightly like a corrupted video file laced with static.

“I thought there was going to be someone here to help me.”

“I am… someone.” The words felt rehearsed.

“What happened here, Ares?” She asks.

Their voice is very quiet, echoes slightly. “I am still trying to determine that.”