David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

The pathoton rushed Becca into the Titan grounds. They raced past dilapidated sheds and rusted M939 6x6’s — old pre-virus military transports, carted into the museum from another era. The surface had the look of staged antiquity. They passed by massive steel silo doors set into the earth and approached a large corrugated building, well preserved and set aside from the rest of the complex. It was the gift shop. A tattered American flag flew at full mast. They entered through the steel doors at the front and the pathoton turned back to the door, bolting it from inside, then gently lowered Becca to the ground. She looked around inside the building. As the pathoton turned, its center lamps lit the interior in a sweeping motion. The walls were painted marine green and bedecked with black and white photos of people Becca couldn’t recognize. A pile of flash drives, unblinking, was stacked on the reception desk next to a dusty pile of letters in child handwriting. Becca clutched at the book in her arms. She ran her hands threw her hair, squeezing out the rain upon the concrete floor. The pathoton looked down at her, lowering its illumination, and addressing her in its fractured, metallic voice:

“Follow me closely.”

It led her to an unadorned, steel vault door that swung open, wide, with a swipe of its coiled hand across a small sensor. The pathoton’s dimmed lights reflected the musty interior of a winding, steel ramp leading downward, into the earth. The gradient lit up with a succession of incandescent lights and the pathoton raced ahead, descending into the depths. Becca followed, sprinting down the ramp as fast as she could, gripping at the rails as she pinballed into the netherworld. Her thoughts careened from one question to the next, unanswered. Her soggy footsteps trailed after the whirring tires of the pathoton as they wound down the ramp.

They stopped at a landing connected on opposite sides with a reinforced cableway stretching from one direction to the next. The long, industrial passage began to rattle and plumes of oxygen and steam erupted from ventilation shafts running along the tunnel. Long fluorescent lamps lit up overhead. The pathoton led Becca down the clanking cableway before finally coming to the forward silo landing. The main antechamber loomed before them, shrouded in darkness. From several floors below, a series of orange lights sparked in a serpentine crawl, igniting the gigantic vault in a soft glow. The payload came into view. It was no missile — the silo housed a towering, three-stage carrier rocket. A heavy-lift launch vehicle. The floodlight above the landing lit the upper fairing and military serial stretching around the cylindrical wall. The model designation was emblazoned down the center body in block, vertical letters:

The pathoton reached out to an access panel on the wall beside them and flipped a switch. A connecting platform began to slowly extend underneath the landing, locking into the fairing. A series of small, oval windows went around the payload and a light clicked inside, illuminating the inside of the rocket. A face peered out from within. Becca’s eyes locked on a Latino boy who was looking out. He pressed his hand against the small window. The pathoton led Becca across the walkway and opened the fairing access door. Inside the payload, four children, about Becca’s age, were snugly fastened into seats circling the inside payload walls. An empty seat was directly across from Becca as she approached the access door. She looked around at the other passengers. They were terrified. The boy Becca saw looked at her and pleaded:

“Oye! Ayudame! Me siento tanto miedo. Por favor, por favor. Necesitamos a salir!”

The boy broke down sobbing and the other kids began to cry as well. The pathoton looked down at Becca and pointed at the seat, commanding her in its broken vocoder:

“Sit down and buckle up.”

Becca crossed into the payload, crossing over a tangle of wrapped cables in the floor of the module and found her open seat. As she buckled in, she looked back at the pathoton, which was already back at the access panel and punching in a series of commands on the vertical keypad. Becca and her fellow passengers heard a low, grinding screech coming from the upper levels of the silo. Once again, Becca smelled the sweet vapor of creosote and rain wafting over the air. Just outside the access door, a series of raindrops fell on the walkway. The massive closure doors were opening above them. The pathoton wheeled back over to the access panel, clasping its hands around the thick, titanium door, looking back inside at the passengers. Becca fidgeted with her seatbelt, pulling it taught, before looking out at the machine on the walkway — its headless torso leaned in to the shuttle pod, arachnid sensors twisting around, scanning the inside. It gently pulled out of the payload but then jerked suddenly, tilting its body upwards at the closure doors, startled by something in the loft. In the low din of the storm raging outside, and light patter of raindrops in the jetway, Becca could hear them once more — the revins were gathered at the top of the silo, screaming into the cavernous depths of the cold, dim vault below. They crawled over the exhaust vanes and paced nervously near the edge of the silo doors, peering down at the walkway where the pathoton stood. They breathed in deeply, smelling the air. They pointed down at the landing, growing more animated. Others were gathering behind them. The mob swelled. They pushed at each other, elbowing closer, before finally one fell, careening off the nose and tumbling end over end, past the pathoton on the walkway and into the abyss below. The pathoton rushed back over to the access panel and furiously punched in a series of commands on the keypad. Becca looked outside the module, into the silo landing. A series of loud crashes were echoing off the walls of the rocket, screams zipping outside her window on the opposite side. A revin fell directly on the walkway outside, writhing in pain on the floor. It rolled back and forth, shouting out some gurgled pain, its lungs filling with blood. It spit out a clump of sputum on the walkway and looked straight ahead at Becca — its broken jaw opening wide, teeth and blood drooling out of its mouth, smiling madly. As it rose, a fractured rib plunged out of its malnourished chest, white bone, like a horn, piercing the air. It took a pained step forward towards the children but managed only the one foot down before the pathoton sunk its hand around the revins neck, crushing its esophagus — the revins broken body wriggling like a clump of earthworms in a child’s hand. The pathoton tossed the emaciated revin over the edge, one-handed, and leaned back into the passengers, looking straight at Becca and imploring her:

“You will be okay.”

It tossed Becca the blinking flash drive and she caught it, nodded knowingly, and the pathoton leaned back out of the module, backing away from the fairing as the access door began to close. Revin bodies were dropping into the silo — a chorus of shouts screaming past the small viewing panes, falling into the dim, orange ether of the lower depths. Bodies racing past as if the still rocket was splitting through limbo. A large, muscular revin crashed feet first on the shoulders of the pathoton, sending it barreling into the rail of the walkway, bending in the heavy safety rail and mangling the sensor array on its shoulder. Sparks flew out from stripped coils around the pathoton’s upper frame and it flailed at the herculean creature on its shoulders. The pathoton thrashed its arms wildly, standing upright and crashing backwards into the cableway wall, pinning the revin against a steel truss along the tunnel in a thunderous crack. The mammoth revin gasped, the wind knocked out of its lungs, and collapsed along the plank. As it looked up, the pathoton was swinging one fist down towards its skull. The revin rolled backwards and knocked the mechanical pummel to the side. The pathoton rattled, lurched forward then back, struggling to stay upright. Its gyroscopic servo and sensor array were badly damaged. It listed on the diamond plate, shaking convulsively before the revin, which stood up to face the machine. The pathoton was malfunctioning. It bellowed out into the passage: