The City Builders

By Sean Monaghan

Desra Parker loves investigating strange planets. But when missiles shoot down her ship over Mackelle, Desra and her crew find themselves in a desperate race for survival. Battling the elements and relentless building-sized robots, Desra needs to unravel the mysteries of Mackelle's endless city if she's going to keep anyone alive.

And figure out a way to get home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Jul 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9798224020454

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

S even builders, from the looks, Max said, slipping down the slick seven-foot basalt wall. His leather-soled boots slapped on the tiles at the base. Shallow water puddles from the day’s misty rain still lay in the shadow of the wall.

That’s what I make it too, Desra said. Seven. She stayed with her elbows awkwardly across the wall’s upper surface. Through the rusted and beaten-up binoculars she could see the seven tall creeping robots.

Shaped like the little jumping spiders that she sometimes saw in crooks and crevices, the robots were anything but little. They looked more whale-sized. Big, blocky cylindrical heads with arrays of bulbous eyes. Antennas the size of small trees sprouting from the edges.

Huge legs with multiple articulations. Narrow thoraxes joined the heads to the powerplants in the abdomens. The machines moved through a cross-street. One after the other.

Des, Max called from the bottom of the wall. Get down here. They’ll spot you.

Desra kept watching.

This section of the dead city had a lot of low-rise buildings. One and two stories. Single-pitch roofs, painted gray or deep blue. A few taller office-block type constructions interspersed. And some open plazas.

It made it easy to see the striding builders as they progressed.

You’re going to get us into trouble with Andrews, Max said.

Gaile Andrews. Head of the small group. Desra figured Andrews could use some time in a spa.

Well, they all could.

Andrews had taken over when the captain died. Ranking officer and all. But Andrews didn’t present as a natural leader. Not by a long shot.

We need data, Desra said. Lots of data.

We’ve got plenty. We’re in the clear here. We should get back to camp.

Just a moment.

Despite their age, the binoculars still took pretty good imagery. The group had enough salvaged materials from the ship to be able to read through the datacards. And make interpretations.

Nothing looked rosy so far.

Des.

This is different behavior, Desra said. We need as much intel as we can gather. Sally will have some ideas. Maybe something we can use to get out of here.

We’re never getting out of here, Max said.

The seven builders clambered over the constructions. Some smaller robots scrambled out of their way. Desra saw one of the big feet on the lead builder crush a tiny bot.

Others would come out later. Gather up the fragments and recycle them into something new.

Des. Max sounded urgent now.

But the builders moved with a purpose. Heading somewhere. She could hear the squeaks and grindings of their leg bearings. She could smell their oily, metallic scent. It reminded her of the comfort of the ship. Back when the ship still flew. When it was actually habitable.

The builders moved south west. In a train. Single file. The first picked out the way. The others all stepping in exactly the same spots.

They’re going to come close to the camp, Desra said. We might need explosives again.

We’re pretty low on those. Come on down.

Desra watched for a moment longer.

The sky hung gray and heavy. The rain would return. Soon. Actually, she realized, the light was fading.

To the north stood the rows of towers. Many still under construction. To the south, the snow-capped mountains rose, brooding. Another wall.

Why are they in a group? she said.

Some problem with the buildings? Max said. That’s usually why they congregate.

Sure. But in a line?

A line?

She explained about the train. It’s as if they’re all coming from the same place, and going to the same other place.

Right. And usually they come from various locations? Max sounded unsure.

Exactly. Desra kept taking images. The binoculars compensated for the diminishing light.

Reaching down, Desra stowed the binoculars in her thigh pouch.

Andrews needed to know about these builders. The group might need to relocate again.

Desra pushed back and dropped to the tiles next to Max.

Well? he said.

We need to let Andrews and the others know.

I tried. No response. Max held up his wristpad. We might be in a dead spot here. Bad line of sight.

Communications were sporadic. None of them were used to it. Everyone had grown up in places with relays and satellites. For a while being without communications felt like being without a foot.

Now, Desra practically expected the silence.

Okay, she said. Let’s hotfoot it back. Their latest camp wasn’t that far away. Safely tucked in a little plaza.

Let’s go, Max said. You know the way.

There’s been building activity since we came out. We might have to eyeball it. Might have to find a new route.

I trust you to do that.

They’d been on Mackelle for three months now. Sixty light years from the nearest officially inhabited planet. Andrea II. Desra’s home.

Ship busted. Unrepairable.

Technically that would usually be no big problem. All deep space explorer vessels carried sufficient supplies for years. Almost-unpalatable foodstuffs, and scratchy clothes, but enough to keep the crew alive and warm.

Combine that with FTL buoys that could be programmed, and marooning for too long of a period should be impossible.

Send the buoy out to the nearest inhabited planet with the SOS message. Someone in the Authority would find the buoy, get the urgent message and send out a rescue ship.

Unless of course all the buoys failed.

A technical impossibility. Thirty buoys. Distributed around the vessel. The only way for them all to fail would be the total destruction of the ship. In which case no one needed rescuing anyway.

Still, Leuwenhok’s, hadn’t launched. And there had been survivors.

Better that way around, Desra figured.

Max started along the tiled walkway. Desra kept up. As they hurried along, the light continued fading.

Hard to tell where the sun was behind the overcast. It had been afternoon when they’d headed out to get a read on the builders.

We lost track of time? Desra said.

Yeah. I still get thrown by these short days.

Mackelle rotated on its axis in a shade under twenty hours. It pushed things for human biology. Desra either found herself overtired, or unable to sleep. There seemed to be hardly any middle ground.

They’d calibrated their wristpads to keep track of sleep and wake periods. To track the sun.

Mackelle’s star fitted right into the useful category. A G2iv. Similar to Earth’s sun, but not as bright. Mackelle orbited within the Goldilocks zone.

Hence the terraforming. Even if it had gotten screwed-up.

The light faded quickly. Max lit his wristpad’s flashlight, shining it ahead.

We’re going to be spotted, he said. I wish you’d come when I’d said.

They’d been moving fast for fifteen minutes already. Probably less than a kilometer from the camp. After her time in bootcamp, Desra knew she should be used to this kind of thing.

Trapped on a deserted planet. No part of bootcamp or reserve training could prepare her for this.

I don’t like this, Max said.

We’re fine. We know the way. Even if we have to track around stray building fragments.

When they’d first come down, Desra, like everyone, had been terrified of the robots running amok. As the crew gradually realized that the robots were simply going about their business, it mattered less. However messed up the robots’ activities.

The crew could batten down and figure out their next move. Figure out who had shot them down.

We need to call in, Desra said. Let them know what we’ve seen. She tapped her little wristpad. The functionality of their devices had decreased hugely with the loss of the ship’s comms systems. Still, she could tap at the wristpad’s face and call up data, talk to the others, and call on a few other functions. It was very different from being able to access everything all the time.

Her wristpad had been wrecked in the crash. The one she had now was a second-rate replacement from stores. Better than nothing, but sometimes she wondered.

Good, Max said. Call it in.

Desra touched, but the comms were out. Must be in a comms shadow here.

It’s all right, he said. We’ll be back soon.

Yeah. Desra tried again. Still got no response. The screen froze on her. Well, that’s great.

Hear that? Max said.

I hear rain? Desra said.

Coming in from the north. The gradually increasing sound of the approaching rain’s leading wall.

Something else. Max stopped. He shut off his flashlight.

Desra felt plunged into darkness. She shivered in the cold air. Her original thermals felt threadbare. Fibers from the emergency jacket prickled through against her arms and neck.

She heard it.

A regular snick, snick, snick. It reminded her of scissors. Back in elementary school. Making cardboard cutouts. Cut, cut, cut.

Robot? she said.

Hush. Nearby.

The sound grew with the rain. And an overlaying sound mixed with the snicking. A deeper, engine sound.

Something’s coming, Desra said.

She felt Max’s hand grab hers in the darkness.

He squeezed. She squeezed back.

Wait five, he said. Max let go of her hand. She heard him moving away.

Wait, she said. Desra started to follow.

The rain enveloped her. The sound of it masked Max’s footsteps.

Desra stopped. The raindrops pounded her hat

Like Max, she wore a standard wide-brimmed sunhat. Mackelle’s atmosphere lacked the volumes of UV-absorbing ozone of Earth and other terraformed, occupied planets. She and the others had to be cautious of the sun. And the hats kept the rain at bay. To a certain extent.

They both had the thin, close-fitting black ship’s overalls they’d been wearing when Leuwenhok had come down. There were some spares in the supplies. Mostly they washed the overalls out every couple of days.

She was glad she’d had ground boots on and not zero-gravity slippers. Those wouldn’t have lasted a week.

Desra crouched. She listened.

There. To her left. Ahead.

She took a couple more steps.

Max? she loud-whispered.

Just the sound of rain.

Desra shivered.

They’d been stuck here long enough to know better than to separate. Sometimes it would be preferable to just find a nook somewhere in the complex and hunker down for the night.

Desra had done it twice before.

Max, she called again.

No reply.

Desra took a breath. She turned. Moved along. Following his direction.

She could only just see. The dull background gray of the air continued its progression toward black. With the cloud cover hiding the stars, night would be very dark.

Desra heard the snicking again.

Close by. Right behind the wall.

Then, a voice. Quiet. Breathing.

Max? she said.

Go... Des... get out. Run. It’s—

Cut off. With a louder snick.

Desra froze.

She stood. Stuck in place.

Just for a moment.

Then she lit her wristpad flashlight.

Right there. No more than a few feet away.

One of the robots. Lion-sized.

Max dangled from its maw.

CHAPTER TWO

W e screwed up the insertion, Jack Walden said, looking at the readouts. Bernal’s main console screen, three feet wide, with layers of colors from dark blue and orange through to bright pink, showed how the ship had missed its orbital trajectory.

Too low. Too fast.

And off-center. A nice ellipse if a ship was setting itself up for a slingshot.

They would have to spend the next three days working to get back on track.

Cindy Chandra pressed up next to him. In the narrow confines of Bernal’s bridge it was difficult to avoid pressing up against each other. Even in zero gravity.

Cindy smelled good. She’d showered in the last day or so.

Jack felt conscious of his own odor. He’d been on shift at the helm for six hours with just two bathroom breaks and ten minutes to squeeze down a nutrition tube. Chicken. Not the worst, but the running joke among the crew was that everything tasted like chicken anyway. A running joke that did not stand the test of time, Jack thought.

We’re too low and too fast, Cindy said. Like him, she wore standard dark blue ship overalls. Jack noticed that she’d used black marker to draw a fang-toothed unicorn below her embroidered name at her breast. He didn’t mention the addition. He was used to her quirkiness.

She wore her hair black and short today.

Yeah, he said.

Did we spot the crash site yet?

Bernal’s rescue mission came about from an errant SOS buoy. Tracked back to Mackelle.

Still scanning, Jack said. We’re getting some odd readings from the surface, but most of the ship’s resources are going on getting our orbit sorted. This high-low ellipse makes the processor’s work pretty tough.

"I get it. Bernal’s a solid vessel but she’s not cut out for this kind of rescue operation."

Bernal had been refurbished at least three times in her forty-year life. Eighty meters long, with a crew complement of five, the little ship had been home for them both for the last few years.

Mostly they’d been flying executives on FTL skips from

Holm to Andrea II. A six light-year traverse. Three weeks out, three weeks back. More or less.

It always stunned Jack that vessels could skip between stars faster than light itself. He knew people out there were working on ways to make it even faster. Tweaking physics in ways that they could barely make sense of themselves. FTL on steroids.

How long until we get this orbit right? Cindy said.

A few burns, Jack said. Need to watch the fuel. And keep the engines pristine.

You and the engines, Cindy said. You need to get into the pipes yourself sometime. See how gritty it really is down there.

Fine, Jack said with a smile at her. I’ll come down and swing a wrench a few times. No issue.

She smiled back. Punched his shoulder. Hard.

Hey!

Don’t try riling me about the ship. She rubbed his shoulder. Sorry, didn’t mean to smack you so hard.

Sure you did. And it’ll be a fat lot of good if we burn out the nacelles and run out of fuel just because we want a perfect orbit too quickly.

Besides, she said, mimicking his voice, it’s an ancient SOS. Probably nothing. Some ship that accidently dropped its buoy.

I never said that.

I know, Cindy returned to her regular voice. But you and I have gone on enough rescues to know that false alarms outnumber the real deal a hundred to one.

Maybe not by that much, but I get the principle.

What’s that? Cindy said. She swiped at his telemetry and brought up the imagery that had been sitting in the screen’s bottom right corner.

I need that data, Jack said. I need it to, you know, pilot the ship.

Great job you’ve been doing so far. Throwing us into an erratic ellipse.

It’s not ‘erratic’, he said. It’s perfectly formed. It’s just not the ellipse we wanted.

Right. And how long until you need to burn?

Jack went to swipe away the imagery to call up the time and tell her, but the ground still looked all wrong.

That’s not bare rock is it? he said. It looked like buildings. A huge mass of a dark city. Spreading out along narrow avenues. Mostly parallel, with a ninety-degree overlay, and occasional angled lines. He thought of Broadway, cutting through Manhattan’s neat grid.

He’d visited Earth a couple of times. The vast cities overwhelmed him. Not like the rustic pastoralism of under-populated Andrea II.

Nope, Cindy said. It’s not rock. Not ice. Not vegetation, or water, or soil. It’s artificial.

We need everyone to see this, Jack said, already unfastening his harness.

Captain’s asleep, Cindy said.

Jack pushed from the helm. She’ll want to be woken for this. He squeezed by Cindy and kicked into the companionway.

Course corrections could wait.

CHAPTER THREE

Desra darted back from the robot. She saw blood running down Max’s face. Mixing with the rain.

Oh, Max, she whispered.

The robot had its own headlamps lit now. Shining ahead. Leaving glittering streaks of rain.

The machine’s legs paddled backward. The head jerked. It let go of Max. Grabbed again.

Getting a better grip.

Max’s arms flailed around as if he were warning her away.

Desra ran. Blind for a moment. Sprinting.

She took a breath. Slowed.

Those medium-sized robots were the worst. Faster than the big ones. Heftier than the tiny ones.

But she’d never known any of them to kill before.

Desra sobbed. She had to get back. Stay out of the way. Easy as that, visually.

Had to warn the others. New behaviors were always bad.

They’d had their camp destroyed a few times over the months. Nothing malicious like this, though. Simply the march of the machines. Building. Always building.

And tearing down to make way for the new buildings.

The light from the robot diminished as she ran on. Desra took that as a good thing. It wasn’t following her.

She’d gotten turned around a bit. Off track.

But there were enough landmarks around that she could reorient quickly. Cone tower, like a giant inverted ice cream cone. The three blades of nearby Triple Point. Down a narrow alley, she saw the tower’s black silhouette standing out against the dark of the sky. Desra kept the tower to her left as she ran.

She tried not to think about Max. Nothing she could do for him now.

She had to protect the others. Get back as fast as she could.

A line of builders was one thing. But a robot killing someone was something else.

Their cautious existence would turn into something else.

Something desperate.

Desra hated to think of it.

Again she slowed. Looked back.

No sign of the thing. Not even its lights.

She didn’t find that reassuring. It could be stalking her now.

Desra listened. She remembered that snick, snick, snick sound.

Quiet now, save for the splashing of raindrops.

Desra ran on. Along a wide avenue of dark, blocky buildings. Quick tenements. Ten or twelve stories high. The builders could construct one in little more than a day. Three months ago the area had been covered in some large void warehouses. The builders had chewed up all the material to build the tenements.