Mercury Retrograde

As hours had become days she had monitored the evacuation of the two base camps up to the orbital ring and then their departure from there to the orbital stations.

C.S.O. Benton Fisk had been secretly happy to have the abandonment of the Mercury miners taken out of his hands. He had been very cooperative.

A blinking light and small alert sound brought her attention back around. With a resigned sigh, she shifted the failing gearbox into neutral to keep it from overheating. The excavator had hundred of them, but the loss of even one would degraded the overall speed of Big Alice by factions.

And in the last few hours, she had already lost two others.

Easing back into her chair she shot worried glances at the temperature controls monitor all the others. So far they were holding steady, but she could see -- simply from her long years of experience as a pilot -- the next two that were going to go out on her. She set one of them also into neutral to allow it to cool and, fingers crossed, hopefully, be usable if she lost others.

Roulette was praying for nothing more major. There were multiple numbers of things upon Alice that could break that would stop the excavator in its tracks. The wear and tear of days at top speed was starting to show.

But she could not slow the big machine down.

Ahead of her, she could see the normal blanket of twisting orange electromagnetic ribbons that spiraled out high above-- the way the northern lights do back on Earth-- had begun to fade. The dawn was ahead of her somewhere. Like a great fiery dragon the Scorch was hiding, crouched, ready to pounce with flames and claw to destroy the rig and it single crew member.

"Felix?"

"Yes, Rue."

She stopped realizing that she didn't have a question for the AI. "Sorry. I guess I was just getting lonely and needed to hear another voice."

"I'm here. I'll always be here for you."

"Thanks for that." She idly plucked at a fraying corner of her jacket. "I guess it's silly to say it, but I'm glad you're here with me."

"Me too."

A screen beside her lit up and the now familiar image filled the screen. She hadn't allowed him to change his avatar too much. Rue had come to rather like the young, muscular, Greek god image he wore, rather he liked it or not.

With a moan, she stretched.

"Oh, I wish I had a massage sleeve. I could use a back rub."

Felix smiled a naughty smile. "I would love to give you another one."

It took her a half second. "What was that again?"

There was a pause. "I said I would love to give you one."

Rue read the hinted guilt in his tone. "No ... you said another one! When have you ever given me a massage?"

He didn't answer.

Blinking she looked at his avatar, her mind racing back to the "computer malfunction" that had given her hours of orgasms at her last off-planet trip. "Felix ...wa ... was that you?"

Sitting back she looked at his avatar. Although there wasn't any real change in the image she swore she could see him blushing.

"IT WAS!" Picking up a rolled up print out she tossed it at the screen. "You cheeky bastard, you ... you... you! Oh, I wish I could get my hands on you. AI or not I would strangle you if I could figure out a way to do it."

"I would apologize to you Rue, but I can't."

Her nostrils flared. "Oh, and why can't you?"

The Avatar looked up at her from under his dark eyebrows. "I find it terribly inappropriate to apologize for what was the most enjoyable moment in my existence and given that I would do it again in a heartbeat."

She stopped flustered. Then her anger spiked again. "Unrepentant, huh? Well, I can see your maker's hand in that. Well, I hope you enjoyed using me--"

"NO!"

Felix shook his head at her. "No, you misunderstand me, Rue. I enjoyed it because of how much pleasure it gave you. And I would do it again in the hopes you would enjoy it at least as much as the first time."

Chewing over hateful words that no longer tasted right, a blush began to rise up her cheeks. She shot the AI's image a look and shook her head.

"I still want to strangle you."

A hangman's noose appeared around Felix's neck and the non-visible ground seemed to drop out from under him. With a drop and a right to left sway, the AI's image seemed to have been hanged.

"Oh, stop that already." Rue gave her dashboard a light kick.

The image switched back to him leaning on his normal divan chair. He did at least have an air of embarrassment, although she was sure that was for being caught, not for what he had done.

"Why did you do that to me?"

He paused a moment before answering her.

"At first, it was simple curiosity. I found you there and watched a bit. It was fun to see you moaning like that."

Rue blushed scarlet.

"Then I touched you to tickle, just being mischievous, and it didn't ... tickle."

"No, it wasn't a tickle." Rue bent down and picked up the crumpled ball of paper again. She pitched it at him image again. "So you decided to just keep trying to 'tickle' me, huh?"

Felix hedged his answer. "I ... I hadn't been prepared for the reaction ... my reaction, that I received from touching you."

"In what way?" she asked.

"I enjoyed it."

Sitting back in the chair, Roulette had to think that one over for a moment. "You enjoyed touching me ... sexually?"

"Yes."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Enough to keep doing it ... for hours?"

"As you know."

Roulette shook her head. "You're an AI, a machine. Your emotions are imprinted into program files, you can turn them off is you wish."

"No, I can not. They are part of my core programming."

She smirked. "You have a lot in that core programming, apparently."

"It grows over time. Adapting." On the screen, Felix shrugged. "That's part of its functions."

"So these programmed emotions, that you can't control and that ... adaptation ... made you keep touching me ... sexually ... because I was enjoying it so much?"

"Yes. Exactly."

Roulette shook her head. "If you were human I wouldn't buy a word of it."

"If I was human..."

She waited but he didn't continue. After a moment she waved a hand. "If you were human ... yes? Come on, Felix, fess up. If you were human what would you want to do?"

Slowly his avatar's head lifted to look her in the eyes. "I would touch you in every place that I touched you before."

After a moment Rue smile then chuckled. "As a flirt, you need to work on it, my friend."

Felix smiled that naughty grin. "Well, technically, I am a virgin still."

"Oh, no you're not. Not given what you did to me."

Easing back into her command chair, Rue flicked off another overheating gearbox and turned back on the one she had left to cool. She could tell at a glance it wasn't going to last long, but she might have saved it for a few hours longer. With the same expectations, she turned the other one that was running toward hot off to let it cool now. When she glanced back at Felix, she saw he was watching her still. She decided to get him back some.

"Been a long time since I stole someone's cherry. I hope you enjoyed it, lover boy."

Across every screen but the one directly in front of her -- the one that he was on -- the recorded image of her writhing in the massaging sleeve appeared. Then the sound of her orgasmic moans filled the command room.

"Every last second of it ... lover girl."

He then left, vanishing, and left the scene running and she had to manually switch the multiple images of herself orgasming off one by one. Then she had to figure out how to turn off the moaning coming in over the overhead speaker given that, according to her instruments, it wasn't receiving a signal.

Rue was beet red with embarrassment by the time she managed it.

She was also now horny as hell.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Sweat was dripping off of Rue as she hovered over the controls, shifting failing pieces of equipment around like a street mountebank working a crowd at a rigged shell game.

She was way past exhausted.

"Rue?"

"No."

Felix persisted, as he had been trying to do for the last hour. "Will you please listen to me, and turn the rig around? I've run the numbers a hundred times. You can not reach the base camp now. We've lost too much acceleration. The temperatures will kill you."

"I can take the heat.'

"You will cook!"

Rue shook her head. "I can only make pancakes or waffles. I'm out of syrup though, we'll have to eat jelly." Rue leaned her head back against the chair's back and her mad words mumbled on. "It's that crappy grape shit they company sells. I wish I had some of my grandmother's jelly. We had an old crab apple tree, it was half dead but still made fruit. They were bitter as sin, but she made the best jelly ever with it."

Felix tried again to appeal to her. "Rue, you're starting to get delusional. Your vitals are--"

"You know for a bossy ass computer, you've got a sweet voice. And you're kind of cute .... in an odd digital god sort of way."

"Please, Rue, turn the controls back over to me?"

"I think if you had a body I might just take advantage of you." Rue waved at the god-let on the screen. "I mean fair is fair. Given what you did to me. That was pretty sneaky of you. Naughty, naughty ... Felix...."

"Rue? Rue! Turn the controls over to me. RUE!"

Even slowed, Big Alice churned on towards the stone tower of base camp, paint already scorched black, and old dust-clogged gear oil broiling away as black smoke into the full dawn of Mercury.

Ovens are cooler.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Oh, of all the insufferable humans to have to fall in love with, why oh why did I have to fall for this one?

I now know rage. To all of it's fullest existent, I understand rage.

Like a panther in a cage, I paced around snarling as I saw her dying before my eyes and could do nothing. How, oh how could I have been so stupid as to allow her the micro-seconds of trust that allowed her to lock me out of the main controls systems. I could do just about anything "minor" on this damn excavator rig. I could turn on the lights, I could make the vid screens cycle through every movie, and I could even flush the damn toilets, but I couldn't do a thing about the controls that really matter.

I couldn't turn us away from the heat that would destroy her.

And I had to watch.

She was still alive, but she was hardly moving. Her body's vital signs showed a whole host of things that are going to fail if her core temperature doesn't drop soon. The woman I love would begin to be cooked alive.

And all I could do was hope that she died faster, so she doesn't reach the really furnace-like temperatures ahead while still aware enough to suffer.

That she was doing this all for me, made it all the worse.

All the coolant scavenged from the entire rig was no longer enough to keep the temperatures in the control room out of the triple digits Fahrenheit. A brutal extreme of torturous agony.

{"Fe ... lix?"}

"Yes Rue, I'm here." I wanted to beg for her to turn the controls over to me but I wouldn't let her die hearing that. She deserved better.

{"I have ... something I need to tell you."} She took a deep breath and whimpered. Her body inside her suit was coated with a thick sheen of sweat. {"I need you ... I need you..."}

"What? What do you need me to do, Rue? You've cut me out of the main controls, I can't do much but I will do what I can."

{"No ... you silly AI."} She took a shallow breath of the hot air. {"I ... need you."}

Looking at her with the vid camera, checking the scanner data, seeing the numbers climbing faster, I could tell she didn't have long.

{"These ... last few months ... have been ... some of the best in my life."}

It was painful to watch her take hold of the arm of the command chair and pull herself over the side and fall to the grubby deck plates. I wanted to weep when she began to try and crawl. After a few feet, she stopped and lay flat breathing in gasps.

{"I .. I don't care that you're a stupid voice from a speaker .. Or that you're just numbers ... a ... an ... and data."} Rue lifted herself up onto her elbows. {"You've been the most --"}

With a soggy thump, she struck the deck plates hard and didn't move.

"Rue? Rue!"

{"Hush ... I'm just trying ... to catch my breath ... down here. It's cooler on the floor."}

I gave in and let my emotions rule my actions, even though I didn't want them to. "Rue, please. I'm begging you. Try to reach the controls. Turn the main controls back over to me! I can get us out of here and back into the shade. I can get us to the next base while you rest. I can..."

{"Hush .. silly machine. I can't let you have control ... you might miss."}

Miss? What ... miss?

I was locked out of navigation but I could still access the outside vids and, with three of them to work on, I managed to triangulate the path we were on. We were heading directly towards the tall pinnacle of the base camp. High above the lights of the landing pads were still flashing but they were fading to invisible in the golden light of the lethal dawn.

Rue was crawling again.

{"I ... left .. you two ... controls. I won't be able to operate either of them by the time we get there."} The drip of sweat from her open helmet was leaving a damp trail to steam up and evaporate. {"One is the coolant ... the coolant systems. You need to shift all rig coolant to the suit locker ... the one here in front of me. West wall. It's a small room and insulated to keep the cold of Mercury night ... from the command room. So it will keep ... heat out ... as well. It's also ... armored ... against impact."} Rue gave a small chuckle. {"I'm going to need that ... soon."}

"Rue?"

{"Damn it, Felix, I can't do talk you through this twice. Hush ... and let me speak."}

The distance to the suit lockers must have looked like it was miles away from her, even though I knew it was only a few feet.

{"I ... I also let you control of the wheel."} Rue took a deep breath and lunged up to cycle the door controls. She then crashed back to the deck plates. {"Alice hasn't eaten in weeks. She must be hungry. Feed her ... Felix. Feed Big Alice."}

Realizing what she had in mind I felt a glimmer of hope. It was hardly even a twinkle, but it sparkled for all of that. I watched her as she finally pulled herself over the threshold and closed the door on the suit locker room. The chamber was not even a tenth of the command room, and when I shunted the coolant into the wall piping, the temperatures in there dropped, if not to an enjoyable level, it was at least hundred of degrees under the outside temperatures.

Unable to budge the massive excavator an inch, I could only watch as the conical rock tower -- one of the only two places on all of Mercury where the original surface level could still be seen -- approached at a crawl.

Barely a human walking pace.

Hours later, when the distance rolled down to a few feet I set the large, drum-shaped cutting wheel to turning. Diamond-tipped teeth, larger than elephants, reached out for the gunpowder smelling rock.

And Alice began to eat of the surface of Mercury.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

Slowly Roulette awoke. Her first thought was about how much cooler it was. The next thing she realized was that she wasn't alone.

A bright light caused her to flinch, and that small jerk caused her to scream.

Waves of pain burst to life from dozens of locations.

"Sit still, Rue. You're badly injured."

The voice was mechanically distorted and terribly close to her face .. but it was oddly familiar.

"Felix?"

"Yes. I'm here."

A hard surface brushed her arm. Blinking, Rue looked past the glare and saw a momentarily terrifying metallic face. Then, if she hadn't known it would hurt so badly, she would have laughed as she recognized her arena robot, Rabid Rabbit. Felix had apparently brought the arena robot to her aid. Roulette moaned when she felt a burning spasm in her left arm, a pain that didn't fade to a background level. She moved her right hand and tried to find the center of that pain.

"No, Rue, lay still. I've got to cut you free. You're entrapped by crumpled metal. The excavator twisted and fell when it dug into the landing platform's lift shafts. We're lodged in the shafts ... securely enough for the moment. Now, don't move while I see what I can do to get you out."

With a nod, Roulette began to lean back into the metal wall but stopped when her right hand encountered a wetness by her leg. Holding her hand up into the light, and she saw that her fingers were covered in dark blood. She had to stifle her terror and try to find the wound.

"Felix...?"

"I know. I'm working on it as fast as I can." The screaming of metal as it was bent and twisted had grown in intensity. "I'm trying to get your bio-scanners back online so I can diagnose the existent of your injuries."

"The bios are out...?" That was a central core controlled program on Big Alice and all her sister rigs. The health of the pilot is a paramount issue that required monitoring. "How badly was the main computer damaged?"

"It's tougher than your flesh, Rue. It took the hit yes, but I'm still here. Now, please, lie still."

"I'll try."

Rue found when she eased her head against the deck plates behind her, that she didn't really have many options about not moving. She felt like she couldn't find the energy to lift a finger. The harsh glare of Rabid's lights -- and the rending of metal as the robot's arms tore at twisted steel and forced it back off her -- was a nuisance. But then it stopped and the silence was more troublesome.

"Felix?"

He didn't answer.

"Felix are you there? What's wrong?"

After a second the AI spoke softly and slowly.

"The bios-scanners are back." A touch on her arm made her lift her eyes to look at Rabid's metal face. "I ... don't think I can free you without harming you, and I can't not free you. Your vital signs are falling. I have got to get you to the medical bay, and I have to repair you."

She smiled. "I'm not a robot, Felix. Just a silly human. I don't repair I heal. How badly am I hurt?"

Again he didn't speak.

"That bad, huh?" Using the last of her strength she propped herself in a position that hurt less. She settled into a bend of metal that felt as comfortable as steel could feel. "Is there anyone left at the base that could help you?"

"There is no one. You are the last human on Mercury."

The reality of that was beyond her at the moment. "Well, at least I'm not alone. You're here."

"I'm here. Yes."

"Felix ... answer me a question, if you can."

"Anything."

Roulette wished the stink of Mercury wasn't in her nostrils. That burnt gunpowder smell, mixed with a coppery scent she knew was her own blood, filled the small room. There was also a pancake syrup smell she associated with spilled coolant. Big Alice must be pretty badly messed up is she was leaking coolant. Minnow and old man Frank will be pissed at her for what she had done to "Their" machine.

"Rue?"

"Yeah?" she answered, softly.

"You wanted to ask me a question."

"Oh, yeah." She had to try and think back to what she had wanted to know, but couldn't seem to do so. "It must not have been important ... I can't remember."

A gentle touch on her arm gave her some comfort. She absently looked at that and smiled seeing the deadly, metal-rending claw of Rabid Rabbit being used a gentle as a baby's touch.

"It's alright, Rue. I'm sure it wasn't anything critical."

Listening to the pops and groans of the big excavator around her, Rue wished she had something to drink. Her mouth was parched and the smell of this room was such that she could taste the feted stink and wanted to try and wash it down. A tall mug of beer or, perhaps, simply some cold clean water would be a better idea.