Domus Read online

  They all nod at their orders.

  I enter my quarters and leave the door open. “CETI?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Turn off the smoke alarms.”

  I remove the packet of cigarettes from my top drawer. They are still in the air-tight cellophane wrapper from twenty years ago. I unwrap the box and pull a single cigarette from the pack.

  There is a knock at the door. “Captain, it’s me, Evangeline.”

  “Come in, Doctor Nikosa.” I place the cigarette between my lips and light it with the metal paraffin lighter that I always keep in my pocket. It was a gift from my friend back home. He had it engraved with the words Ex Nihilis. The cigarette lights first time.

  I feel the smoke sting the back of my throat. It has been a long time. The nicotine rushes my head and lightens it, but it does nothing for the pain, and the smoke stings my only working eye.

  Evangeline opens the door and closes it behind her. “What are you doing, Captain?”

  “I’m enjoying a perk from the lost world, Doctor Nikosa. I bought this pack of cigarettes the day before our launch to calm my nerves, but when the time came, I never needed them.”

  “And has the time come now, Captain?”

  “The time has come to take this planet or run. It is a time to be nervous, Evangeline.”

  She unpacks her kit and begins to look at my face. I keep the cigarette perched on my lip, and I can see her discomfort in the second hand smoke. Still, I need this pleasure right now. She will just have to make do.

  “The scratches down your face,” she says, “can be stitched. Nothing more than a single scar will remain where one is deep.”

  “And the eye?”

  “The eye…I will need to perform an enucleation. What is left of the eye will need to come out and the wound will scar over. I’m sorry, Cap but it is shredded to ribbons. It is usually performed under general anaesthesia, although it can be done under local anaesthesia. I am sure that CETI’s med-bay would do a better job than me.”

  “I want to be awake, Doctor Nikosa, and I want you to do it. I do not want the others to see.”

  “Very well. I will begin by numbing the entire eye and socket tissues prior to the surgery. Immediately after the eyeball has been removed I will fit an orbital implant deep in the socket. The eye muscles will be attached to the implant to improve motility, and I can seal the wound with the pink surface tissue that lines your eyelids. The result is a surface area that will be similar to the inner lining of the mouth.”

  “I will wear a patch. I don’t want to scare the children when they come.”

  “Captain, no one will think less of you if you order the retreat to the Marauder.”

  “All is lost on the Marauder. If we are going to lose it all anyway, then I want it to be by the roll of a dice. We take our chances here. We decide our fate, not Domus, not CETI, but us Humans. Ex Materia; we are born onto the world, not part of it. Fight not flight.

  “Begin the operation.”

  “Here?”

  “Can you do it here?”

  “Yes but—”

  “Then do it here. Please, bring me a bottle of scotch from the chiller.”

  It is a strange feeling. I can see Evangeline prodding and poking and pulling out the fragments of my eyeball, but I feel nothing. The anaesthetic, scotch and adrenaline combination has worked better than I could have thought.

  Ninety minutes later, and I am done.

  “Do you want to see?” asks Evangeline.

  “No. Just patch it up.”

  The other Seekers have gathered by the time I leave the room. Doctor Yun and Doctor Barros have finished the clean-up. They wear clean clothes, but I can see how dirty that job was; it is written all over their faces. Sarah looks tired and heartbroken, and my operation has taken it out of Evangeline. I offer each of the group a cigarette, but they all decline.

  “Seekers”, I begin, “the sun is rising. This morning we will bury our dead and burn what is left of our enemies. And then we take the fight to them. We will triangulate the new beacons further afield as Racker suggested. We will ready a defensive perimeter and man it every day to protect our new home. We do not need take this entire continent or this whole planet, just a part of it will do to call home.”

  There is no fight in them. I will do it alone if I have to.

  I ask Sarah for the keys to the quad, and she throws them without question. I will do this. I have no problem doing this. I head towards the Dweller door, and Doctor Barros grabs my arm. “Where are you going?” she asks. “You have just had an operation to remove an ojo, I mean, an eye.”

  “I’m going to bury our friend and to deploy those beacons. You are in charge while I am away, Ximena. Be careful everyone. We haven’t seen what created the larger heat spots on the land yet. Keep a weapon with you at all times. Now, let us bury Simon before I leave.”

  We line up at the grave Ximena has dug about six feet down into the ground. The hole is near the forest line, and hopefully far enough away from the Dweller when the scavengers come sniffing. I want to offer the floor to the Seekers to say a few words, but I cannot risk them fighting over this. We need to be together as a group, now more than ever.

  With Simon gone, it is left to Racker and me to impregnate the four females. It leaves two women for each of us. It is not ideal. There will be defects further down the genetic line that we may have to deal with. Only pure children will live on Domus, I will see to that.

  I throw down a handful of soil. Evangeline had patched up Simon’s body as best as she could, but she is no undertaker. His body is crudely stitched but hidden by a fresh Seeker uniform we dressed him in, proudly displaying his name badge: S. Farrell. His face is a train track of scars, and what is left of his arm just rests on his chest.

  I throw down another handful of soil. “I commit you to your next life. I relieve you of your contract which you had been fulfilling dutifully. The time of your work is over, Seeker. We will see you on the other side, but only after keeping your name alive for the duration of us and those that follow us.”

  The others are crying. Well, all except Ximena, who will not let her tough Hispanic defence slip. I task her to fill the rest of the hole. God bless, Simon.

  It is time for the other bodies. Evangeline has piled them on a sea front corner where the breeze is minimal and blowing away from the peninsula to try and deter any predators arriving for the barbeque from further inland. Doctor Yun, although visibly distressed, has already coated the bodies in liquid paraffin and added some sticks from the forest line for kindling.

  No words are said for them. I drop a lit stick into the pile, and we all walk away.

  The quad is prepped and ready. Sarah has added a week’s worth of rations, a small tent, a small shovel and survival kit, a distress flare gun, a machete, and a winch system and anchor. All that is left is to retrieve Ex Materia from the armoury where she has been charging since her good work in the med-bay.

  “Captain, can you hear me? It’s Racker.”

  “Go ahead Racker.”

  “Cap, what are you doing? This is crazy.”

  “This was your idea, James!”

  “When Simon was alive! Cap, you going out there alone is suicide. There are too many, even for Ex Materia. You have to pull out of this. There is no shame in admitting that Domus just isn’t the one.”

  “It is the one, Racker. I can feel it. This will be the new home for mankind. We just have to shape her to our will first. I need you with me on this. I need you to be my eyes once those beacons light up.”

  “If you survive, Cap, I will be whatever you want me to be. Remember, the beacons have to form an equilateral triangle to relay back to me. The two new beacons must form a triangle with the sea beacon, and I will not see any further until they are in place and calibrated.

  “And don’t you worry about the Dweller, Cap. I will set the girls to making those barriers the moment leave. If this peninsula can be secured, then we w
ill secure it. The Seeker Project was made to find, but it has a little fight too. I will make sure they all play nice. Racker, out.”

  I lift Ex Materia from the shelf.

  My empty eye socket throbs, and I keep getting a phantom movement; it feels like the eyeball is still there even when I know it is rolling around in the bin in my quarters. I take another swig of scotch from my hipflask to numb the pain.

  Along with my weapon, I also take six light-grenades and a foldaway gun turret. The light-grenades are the same tech that the guns use, showering pure energy in a blast radius. The turret is old tech. It is a motion sensing device which feeds a small machine gun with a belt of two hundred bullets. It’s limited, but it’s the only protection I will have when I’m asleep out there, and I would rather have it than nothing.

  I clip the grenades to my belt and thread my arms through the backpack that holds the turret. Ex Materia is slung over my shoulder with a strap. I leave the armoury, hopefully not for the last time.

  The Seekers have gathered at the quad to say goodbye. I keep it short and sweet so that none have the time to talk me out of it. “Seekers, I will be back. Programme CETI’s auto-doc arms to build rather than stitch. Have it work all day and night, for those barriers must be ready when I return.

  “And then we all go hunting.”

  I switch the ignition on the quad, and it roars into life. Sarah has been busy with this little beauty. I pull the throttle back just slightly and can feel all four wheels biting the ground. This is it.

  It’s time to take Domus by force.

  Sarah Moore

  I can hear Doctors Barros and Yun arguing in Yun’s living quarters, something about painkillers and morphine and sins. Simon is dead, and all those two seem to care about is fighting each other and having their petty squabbles.

  At least his death seems to have brought Evangeline and me closer, something I never thought could happen. Without a man to fight over I am beginning to see how much alike we really are. I have apologised for the comments I first made, and she said sorry for the way she went after Simon. We both admit that the chosen one programme didn’t work, for us anyway.

  Besides, we could both have to be impregnated by Racker now. Our children would be half siblings, and that is a scary thought.

  As the lead engineer, now the only engineer, I have taken control of the project. The outer sea perimeter needs to be strong enough to deflect giant, long-necked dinosaurs and giant crocodiles, whilst have enough gaps and holes for smaller fish to swim through. We need to create our own lagoon where smaller prey can still be fished safely for food.

  The outer forest wall needs to be strong and sturdy. Ximena and Yun had first warned about “big” life down here, and Racker has witnessed it on the monitors too. That Apatosaurus could have trampled anything our size with ease. We need a barrier that could survive a bulldozer, and we need it to be ready as soon as possible.

  The third design I have drawn is submitted to CETI’s database. I propose splitting the forest and pulling down a line of trees right through the middle. These timbers can be manipulated and attached to the new, outer line to form a barrier bolstered by the remaining trees themselves. It also allows for eventual construction of a platform behind that we can keep a watch from.

  “Processing,” buzzes CETI, “calculating total resistance and force resistance… calculating hypothetic strength of a Domus organism… the results are positive. The trees will anchor the barrier, and this model also allows for easier, local repairs. This is a successful proposition, Sarah; well done.”

  “Thank you, CETI. Can you please process the quickest, most efficient way of building the whole perimeter.”

  “With pleasure, Sarah. Widower and the other weapons can have their beams set to laser; a finer energy than the bolts, but with only an effective range of a few feet. It will drain more power, so use sparingly.

  “The laser will fell the trees which can then be loaded onto the forklift and taken to the garage. Here, the auto-fix can be programmed to chop and manipulate the wood before transferring it to the med-bay next door where I will re-programme the auto-doc to start nailing and welding the panels for the barriers. The barrier panels will be solid for the forest wall and pocked with holes for the sea wall. Your thoughts please, Sarah?”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Having something to do is taking my mind off Simon. Evangeline decides to be a cutter, while I am the only one that can use the forklift. After telling Ximena and Yun to stop arguing, they agree to come and help. Yun will also be a cutter, and Ximena will keep a watch over all of us along with our eye in the sky.

  We gather at the forest line. “How is it looking out there, Racker?”

  “It is pretty quiet for the small distance I can see past the beacons and into the forest. Cap has just passed through the mile view I have, and the quad seems to have scared the wildlife. I suggest you don’t make your line too far out, or I won’t be able to see anything approaching. But you also want to save some forest habitat to use for future food and wood resources. I must tell you that your eyes on the floor will see more than mine up here.”

  “Okay. Keep us up-to-date of any movement you see no matter how small or insignificant it may seem.”

  “Affirmative. Good luck out there, Seekers.”

  This is it.

  We move out through the red-barked trunks, the others on foot and me in the forklift snaking through the trees. They tower over us as we move between them. The ground flora is mainly small shrubs and bushes. Nothing here really flowers, and the berry-bearing plants are few and far between. Huge cobwebs hang from the middle of the tree line, and prehistoric birds caw overhead.

  No dinosaurs stir. It still sounds odd to say their name, but that is what they are.

  We push through the forest, the others hacking a path for me with their machetes. The hum of the forklift fills me with hope—hope that the noise deters anything from coming too close. We continue on our path, weaving around the trees where the forklift could not fit, snaking through the forest in a zigzag.

  “That will do you,” fuzzes Racker’s voice. “You are in enough to save forest for our home, but not too far so that I cannot see any further ahead of you. Good luck, lumberjacks.”

  I dismount from the forklift, but I leave the engine on. The rumble and thrum of her engine comforts me somewhat. “Okay, ladies. We are far enough in. I will mark the trees for Doctor Yun and Evangeline. Cut them how we were shown in our training, and fell them north east so I can load them all the same way.”

  I have brought the second winch and anchor kit from the garage. It is a piece of kit Simon developed himself. The anchor digs right down into the ground hydraulically and locks in with multiple barbs and hooks. These babies can winch over ten tonnes.

  I climb back to the forklift and wait for the first tree to fall. Yun has the honour. We decided to just try one first to test the consequences.

  She turns on her light rifle, and I hear it begin to vibrate. A dial on top of the stock is turned to ‘laser.’ Ximena turns on her own rifle and aims out deeper into the forest, and I turn Widower on too, just in case.

  “Ready,” I say.

  “Ready,” confirms Racker.

  “Ready,” says Yun. “Here we go.”

  A straight beam of white light leaves the end of Yun’s weapon. It is so bright that I cannot look directly into the stream. Yun cuts in sideways, just a notch on the felling side, the north east side. She then switches sides and begins to cut in from the opposite side towards her notch. The smell of burnt bark and wood is pleasant in my nose.

  A few seconds later the tree is falling northeast as planned.

  The air cracks. The branches from this tree and the others around snap under the weight of the falling trunk, and the noise whips the air. The huge trunk hits the floor and rattles the forks on the forklift.

  We all wait.

  Yun flicks the dial on her light rifle back to ‘bolts.’ I take aim
with Widower, and Ximena and Evangeline are tracing their rifles out of the forest in all directions. I hold my breath. I can hear the frantic flapping of bird wings above and the chirp of insects and the rustle of leaves on the breeze.

  I release my breath. “Racker, do you see anything?”

  “Negative, Sarah. It all looks good from here. Get chopping, and I will alert you of any danger I see. If I give the word, then you drop tools and get out of there. You leave the forklift where it is; it is too slow for an escape. Racker, out.”

  “Okay, girls, let’s get chopping. Ximena, keep a perimeter.”

  I had brought the second of three mobile turrets with us. Old tech, but still sophisticated enough so that it can be programmed to shoot at anything bigger than a rabbit that wasn’t human. I set it up just past our logging site, just beyond Ximena’s field of vision.

  Tree, after tree, after tree falls. They cut, and I load with the winch. I have made three successful trips back to the garage already, and CETI’s auto-fix was working and sawing and chipping the logs. On my third trip, the auto-doc had already weaved a panel that stood fifty by fifty feet. This can be slotted between trees and bolstered from our side.

  We will make this our home. I’m doing it for Simon. The thought of him brings tears to my eyes. I haven’t grieved yet; there isn’t time to.

  Back out in the forest we have created a bare circle in the middle of what Racker says he can see. Our work is even visible to him if he changes the Marauder’s cameras to satellite mode. The project is going well, but it’s thirsty work. I pull a bottle of water from my pack and unscrew the lid.

  The floor suddenly rumbles, and the tension on the water ripples.

  I look up to see the tree we have just felled, but there isn’t one. Yun and Ximena are grabbing a breather too. The thud comes again, and the water almost bounces out of my bottle.

  “Racker,” I whisper,” what the hell is that?”

  “What is what, Sarah? I got nothing on the signature map.”