Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro

by Roman Durkan

Based in London, UK, Roman is an up and coming writer who always strives for variety in his work, be it serious speculative dramas to, as others had put it, the ‘totally gonzo’. Stories from both categories can be found in anthologies like Wandering Wave’s ‘Tumbled Tales’ anthology to ‘S for Slasher’ from Red Cape Publishing. He also dabbles in film reviewing as a hobby as well as other arts-related pursuits.

 

Peacekeeper Corporal Mia Rebelo

The sun is settling in towards the horizon. The light casts an aura of orange and yellow upon the vast rising peak of white and black that beckons to us ahead.

It is our home. Our sanctuary. Our hope we must defend. It is Kilimanjaro. And for it, we will sacrifice all.

Between us and our destination, is the savannah—a patchwork of yellows, browns, and greens, broken by clusters of acacia trees and the great metal fragments that came down from the sky a lifetime ago. Panels of blue glass shattered and cracked, now grown over with whatever vines can find purchase. We heard stories of what cast them down—though none of those matter at this moment.

What does matter is the half-dozen white Renault Sherpa armored transports moving their way over the dirt track we have carved through the grasslands. I do not know what a Renault or a Sherpa is, nor do I care. I care that these are the last working vehicles of their kind we have. I do know they carry what salvation we may have left for those that dwell on the slopes in the distance.

These craft still bear the emblems of our order. The Peacekeepers, the scions of the United Nations. Only one of us here remembers what such ‘nations’ signify. But its creeds of protection, its sigils, these are the bonds we must treasure. Some of us question why we call ourselves keepers of peace when we have never known that. When we see all that we have left, when we lay eyes on that which we must fight, it becomes evident enough that peace must be what we strive for regardless.

Three of us stand atop these Sherpas as they make their way, powered by hydrogen cells we scarcely know how to keep maintained. We are clad in our armor, tuned to the best of our ability, laid over our bodies in their exoskeletal form, built as they were by the disciples of Darpa. Who Darpa was, we also do not care. That they sculpted the elegant and compact piston-like segments that line our limbs suffices here.

We hold in our augmented arms sharpened osmium glaives, each twice as long as we are tall, fashioned as one solid form. Within the vehicles are the projectile weapons we were once trained on when we were young—but even the chemicals that form the propellants within each bullet are becoming beyond our ability to attain. Each grenade, each round, is precious, and can only be used should our engagements become most dire.

But there are more important things than just our capacity as fighters. Who we ultimately fight for are the people clustered in those hovels and structures as high up on the Kilimanjaro slope as is liveable. We farm what we can on volcanic soil, we make what we can from the minerals we can scrounge, we tend to what our fathers and mothers bought a generation ago. But it is not enough. Our home can only yield so much. Sickness and disease will follow in such a tight space. That which was bought a long time ago can only last so much, can only be made anew so many times.

We have ventured out. Beyond what we would nominally consider safe, toward the distant shores of Lake Victoria, investing and risking so much. To recover supplies from ruins of a world before, as was directed to us by the eldest here.

The Androphagi have surely caught our scent by now. It is impossible that they have not been aware of us.

My glaive is ready and my exoskeleton is fastened tight. I am ready for them.

**

Peacekeeper Lance Corporal Ananias Safiri

I lift my visor to feel the cool winds on my face. I turn to the sky, now streaked with rows of purple and red. The view offers a calming serenity I know I must discard to maintain the focus needed for survival.

To the east, I can see the cylindrical remains of a flying vehicle now overtaken by the vegetation of the savannah. Some can call the sight beautiful—but I know what it signifies. This, so the oldest have told us, is from the earliest attacks of the Androphagi.

We had greater weapons, so they say, that cast down these sky machines with weaponized light itself. The batteries for these devices were drained long ago, and even their material cannot hold charge now. But in seeing this wreckage—in spotting the shattered wings and pieces that lie beyond it for miles—I take satisfaction in knowing we have held for this long.

These abominations have thrown their vile forms against us time and time again. I have seen the children widen their eyes with fear when we must tell them but a fraction of what we must face out here. Even when I speak to my beloved, my dear Almasi…even when I looked upon all I know I must protect, I cannot tell her the full truth. The anxiety she would feel of knowing what I must face would surely drive her mad.

I have no pity for this plague. They seek what we worked to build here, as the last bastion of a broken world. They seek to plunder that which they surely cannot understand. While we have given so much to preserve what little was bought here, they would simply take it all for lacking any concept of such effort.

I have no shame in loathing them. Captain Solie would have us maintain supreme discipline in combat, and so we do. My hate fuels my focus, and banishes the fear those more innocent than us would surely be overtaken by. Perhaps the others, deep within, feel the same way.

I certainly hope so. Against such an enemy, fear and hate can surely be the only natural responses. Therefore, let us embrace the one that lends us strength in our battles.

**

Peacekeeper Captain Erlend Solie

Unlike the younger peacekeepers watching our convoy, I wear a smile on my face. They are accustomed to it enough by now that they do not question it. Still, it is their tenseness, their visages of upmost seriousness, that cannot fail in being—how should I put this—funny as all hell.

Oh, I understand why. This is all they know. The people on that mountain, the folks growing what they can from the farming patches on its foothills, the children playing, the others trying to maintain what they have left…these are the ones they have grown up with, known to love, known to care for.

I’m the only one here to remember—even if vaguely—what came before. Even if it’s blurred images, the old world and what lead to all this still lingers for me.

I’m the only one who sees the absurdity of their sternness. The absurdity of it all. And I know, even if they do not, the irony of what we stand vigil over at this moment.

Irony enough that it would crush the souls of some here.

My father was an official in what the United Nations used to be—before it was reduced to our colony atop a mountainside. I remember, vaguely, the spires of glass and steel that once surrounded that central citadel of our order. It’s all so dim now, but I can just about yet taste the smoke and noise that coiled around the monuments humanity then had made to its pride.

I remember the fire, the waters, the fear, all of which set it undone. Metal came from the sky, and inferno followed. Waves rose. Disease, unchecked and birthed now by man’s proliferating tools of science, was rampant.

Many details have been lost. My father tried to hide as much as possible from me, and it was only later that I gleaned some—even if that was enough. What people we could salvage would be transported here, to Kilimanjaro. Why precisely I’m not sure, but it seems to have been a combination of things—fertile land that was, for whatever reason, spared the worst of the ravaging. A defensible position, occupying the high grounds of a mighty slope. And, this much I have discerned directly, there was a sense of poetry to it—that on those same slopes, overlooking the plains where humanity supposedly first arose, it could rise again.

Let it not be said that my father deep down lacked a sense of sentiment, even when making the decisions that have lead us all here.

Like, for instance, deploying the ‘Dead Hand’ laser system that scoured the sky of the first arrival of what we call the Androphagi. We only had limited supplies, he said. There were too many coming, carrying the diseases we were trying to get away from. We could only spare what we could for the minds and bodies working diligently to settle Kilimanjaro.

And now the Dead Hand lies truly lifeless, as we see of the flora-claimed emitters standing still on the savannah. And now many of our supplies have trickled to near nothing—most crucially, that of our medical caches. We’ve not even the compounds to replenish them, though we’ve done our best to scavenge and replicate anything we could over the years.

My own leads took us towards Lake Victoria. Beyond a certain distance, everything is considered dark, unknowable territory lost to the Androphagi or the ravages beyond. The Tsavo forests, the ruins of Arusha, the foreboding plains of Serengeti…from these places, I had already picked up the clues we needed to make this dangerous venture.

And so we recovered what we needed, but over such distance, with what we have taken, it was impossible not to draw angered eyes. I can tell we have been followed. As do the young Peacekeepers…

Well, wouldn’t you know. Already, I can see the tall grass on our right flank suddenly sway against the wind.

I smile wider. Here it comes. Battle will soon be met. The young ones will fight to the end to protect home, to protect what they love, what they know, what they find beautiful.

Me, I’ll ask only absolution when this is done…

**

Peacekeeper Corporal Mia Rebelo

And now the abominations finally make their move. I have already assumed a defensive stance atop my vehicle. I permit the sagely algorithms encoded into my exoskeleton to begin predicting likely approaches from our detections, and let them where necessary guide my own body and strikes.

Some of us will let anger direct them. I seek only serenity in the face of aberration. I embrace the machine and its thinking as an extension of myself, and as one, we shall focus only on survival of ourselves and the others.

Erupting out of the savannah grass comes the first wave. Rodent-like forms with clawed forelimbs, long limbs for pouncing, and quills across their backs to camouflage in these plains—scouting forms. Snouted faces are covered in eyes and olfactory clusters. I have seen their kind before.

In concert with exoskeleton and machine-mind, I slash my unbreakable glaive through the air. I have seen their blood fly through the air before, like sap-coated leaves on a breeze, and now I do so again.

Some of the convoy vehicles veer from side to side, perhaps in panic, perhaps in an attempt to divert the creatures. Our Darpa-made armor keeps us fully stabilized, hissing defiance with tightening servos, but the turbulence remains distracting—I do not hold ill will to the drivers, given the trek we have made. But the attack is only just commencing, and as assuagement, I take the end of my glaive sharply on the roof of my APC to assure the one within that I intend to stand.

More lunging shapes come through the grass—I am sensing more numbers than they would usually send in such a wave. We have evidently taken that which they find precious—as if they deserve it. To the rear, serpentine contours flick and dart across the dirt road—veiny simian arms emerge bulging beneath viscid carapace to pull them along, even as coiling bodies then send them disappearing back into the grass.

Likely a prelude to a flanking manoeuvre. Solie and Safiri will already have the information flashing upon their visors.

I do wonder why the next pouncing attack from their scout forms we saw moving in has not commenced.

Then, as a dozen screeching sounds worse than any sound our vehicles produce cuts through the air, a storm of teeth and claws sets upon us.

**

Peacekeeper Lance Corporal Ananias Safiri

Abominations. Atrocities against all that is pure and natural. Anathema to all that we love. This is all they are. Well—to me, despite their delusions otherwise, they are but prey.

From the sides, more of their scouts leap forward—behind them come their next attackers, sporting the limbs and musculature of the panthera apex predators we have seen before. Even if their visages are naught but slavering putrid pits of teeth and spines, even if their limbs unfurl glistening membranes that see them glide through the air with each bounce—they mock the delicate artistry of nature itself.

Up ahead are acacia trees clustered by the road—from those leap more Androphagi filth. These ones fly in on the wings of bats—but their faces are nothing but giant venom-sodden fangs of arachnids, twitching in spasming frenzy. They must’ve anticipated our route, moved ahead, and executed this ambush.

How amusing. How easily their desperation is revealed, if now of all times they resort to such tactics.

I leap into the air myself to meet their incoming horrors—my exoskeleton has already calculated the precise trajectory to land on the next vehicle. I stab, twist, and spin my glaive with speeds that paint the air with trailing streams of ichor, as I tear through muscle and bone. They bleed like us, but they have not our hearts.

With a thud of metal upon metal, I land on the next Sherpa, and immediately I turn to drive my blade into the serpentine thing that was trying to grasp onto this vehicle. My sensors had already picked it up as I landed—and it is with raw relish I plunge the glaive through distending jaws hanging below a twisted simian face bearing multiple sets of eyes. I have not a moment to return its hateful gaze, before I spin around with a turn that twists the rest of its mandibles apart in a red blossom of tearing sinew—and rend open another panthera trying to leap upon me.

How gratifying. How glorious. Not in a long time have we fought as this. My rage has given way to purest satisfaction, delighting in the crimson with which we brighten the colors of our own technology and the yellowed grass around us.

Something bites and lunges towards my ankle—I let my exoskeleton drive my glaive for me into another serpentine attempting to spin its way upon the truck, while a servo-mailed hand reaches down to grab another quilled rodent attempting to surprise me from underneath. I give it a moment to let it see my face through my visor, before I crush skin and bone with a burst of maximized strength delivered through microhydraulics and tensing nanofiber. In my hand, the skull cracks with all the ease and satisfaction of an eggshell. Wonderful.

There is a shout from the front of the convoy, even as Rebelo spins and slashes with all of her beautiful dancelike grace. I can see the foremost Sherpa veer and swerve alarmingly—the airborne arachnid-bats are concentrating upon it, to my chagrin. Solie, even as his boosted movements compensate for his age, seems to be struggling to counter all of them.

He is even reaching with his hand into a case atop the vehicle. Drawing out our last resort—to use the precious projectiles we still have.

I will not let them overcome that most crucial vehicle—or we are stuck out here. I let my exo-limbs charge, and I leap forward to aid him.

Something bursts from directly below me. Something that clasps around a foot, and pulls me down.

**

Peacekeeper Captain Erlend Solie

I can see the venom trickling from onyx chelicerae, hissing as it lands upon the white metal below us. I can see the sharpened talons ending bony limbs come toward me, as I let automatic movements counter them with my glaive. I’m kept steady as the driver seems to panic below me—good old DARPA, keeping us alive after all this time, even if the sorry bastards are long dead themselves now.

My other arm is trying to get to the relic stored away in the container behind me—the FN Evolys machinegun kept within. What is precious is not so much the weapon, but the complex explosive-tipped rounds it demands. We are not commanded to use it until those rules of engagement, now doctrine most sacred, dictate the situation is desperate enough.

It damn well is right now. Everything I’ve lived through, everything I’ve come to know, has dulled my soul to the fear others would be feeling right now—the fear of being torn apart by toxic teeth and enraged claws.

Hell of it is? I don’t even blame these winged bastards now trying to swarm me. If anything, even despite the noise, the sensors alerts flashing all over my visor HUD, I’ve only vague, fleeting pity.

Finally, I draw the Evolys from its container. I won’t think too hard about the magazine. We’re not going to need it, really, if we’re going to get through this.

The others would hardly be able to take it if I had to explain why.

Something takes off a piece of my ankle armor. Something else gouges out part of my kevlar-composite chest protection. Damage warnings picking up. They’re learning to lunge past my glaive parries. Even despite my pity…I still don’t want to die. Not to these things despite it all, not out here.

“Sorry…”

I have time to croak out a word I’m not even sure they can understand by now before I step back and lift the machinegun one-handed with a strain of my servos, and open fire.

“Wait!”

I can see Safiri running alongside the vehicles, through the brown haze of dust and dirt thrown up, exoskeleton straining as we try to accelerate. Single-mindedly he is coming to me, poor fanatical bastard. Behind us, at the rear, Rebelo is trying to cover the rest—and yet, we are losing a Sherpa. Corrosive tongues lash from newly arrived serpentines as they emerge from the grass—wheels go, before being torn off further by pantheras. As it loses traction, as it grinds into the dirt, it’ll be pulled into the grass, driver torn apart and cargo ransacked.

A shame. But we only need the majority to make it. This much I can register as I sense an eruption of black and red fluids before me, as the machinegun delivers the only absolution I really can for these bastards. Under the tungsten-jacketed response it chatters, stretched pallid skin and animal furs mingle together as their shreds cascade upon the vehicle hull.

Like I said. I don’t want to die. Even at my age. But much more than that, the years have sapped my ability to feel.

“No! Rules of engagement!”

Safiri cries out the doctrine that has unified us, that perhaps once made something different to my father, as he tries to both fight off the critters on the ground while reaching me.

The Evolys clicks. I find something airborne slam into me with full force of its wings—for a moment, perhaps, my algorithms failed to track that.

Always knew you couldn’t really trust those things as wholeheartedly as others could.

Stabilization fails as I fall upon my ass on the APC’s top. I let those same systems still lash with my glaive as I did into the side of the batlike thing trying to pin me—but another is already coming from the side.

Maybe I’ve been lying to myself. Maybe I do want to die, deep down, after all. Maybe it’s not just the guilt I’ve kept to myself of just what’s been done before, but what we’re also yet to do.

Safiri finally leaps in, slamming his boots into a mass of fangs with enough force to break open the toxin-covered black cartilage—his blade deals with another, as he roars out all the anger young people still call on.

Brave bastard. Oh, if only he knew what I do.

I can feel pain within me. Perhaps it is a drop of poison that seeped in through just the slightest cut in my armor. Biometrics aren’t picking up anything, but they’re not always so precise, and…

For the first time, I do suddenly feel a sense of shock. Safiri cries out. A fang has got him, finding its mark through those crucial tiny gaps between shoulder plates.

Poison, designed to attack our own nervous systems down to the minutest nerve ending, will be entering his flesh right now.

I rise up, and this time I let my glaive thrust in with full velocity as I draw in a breath. Crying out, losing that precious composure of hers for just a second, Rebelo comes leaping in. That will lose us the second last Sherpa, already on the verge of being overcome—but a comrade, a friend, that will always override everything else, it seems.

Safiri’s already dead. But he’s fighting still—body’s failing, but he lets the machine know his will is unyielding even in these last moments…

**

Peacekeeper Lance Corporal Ananias Safiri

I wish to cry for my loved one. Dearest Almasi, who has kept me strong all these years. My eyes will not be able to register my own sorrow in these last moments.

I wish to shout my thanks to my comrades, who still fight me for even now. I cannot summon strength to my voice as my breathing fails. Sensation vanishes from my form piece by piece, as if it simply never existed.

I wish to shout my rage to these monsters—but by crushed skulls and their ichor beautifully staining the savannah, they have already felt it.

Perhaps it was destiny that sends me to die here. To fall for our home, even as we come so close…it was something I knew was always a possibility. But, we have fought off enough of them that we should still get those crucial supplies through.

We shall survive. Our children will still grow. That is all that matters.

Our home will still prosper. It will still be pure. That is all that will ever matter.

My exoskeleton still moves, but once my thoughts cease, it will shut down. I want to smile to the others, even at the end, so they know there are no regrets, but my muscles will not move now.

There is no pain. Nothing but oncoming blackness.

I have enough cognizance to feel relief, as my skull flops back, that my last sight shall be that of glorious Kilimanjaro, looming up ahead of us.

**

Peacekeeper Corporal Mia Rebelo

Safiri is gone. I move with ever greater precision and swiftness, darting and leaping from vehicle to vehicle, spearing and cutting from a dozen different angles with each arc. Just as the Androphagi attempted to overwhelm us from multiple different directions, I return unto them their own tactics, countering every lunge and pounce.

Even though sorrow and anger demand I let them through, I grasp upon the cold purity of composure, and let every blow instead avenge instead what we have lost.

Finally, the things seem to be moving away. Ahead, the road rises, onto the outer foothills of Kilimanjaro. Our guard posts will be coming into view soon. We can have reinforcements, if necessary. And the Androphagi have lost enough already.

First, their fast movers peel away. The last of their flyers, trying to resume their attack on the front, give up—enough were burst open like ripe fruit by the bullets Solie saw fit to discharge. If anyone would know when would be the time to spend precious projectile, then, it would be him.

Once the attacks stop, I assume another steeled defensive posture. Once my trackers pick up nothing more, I jump to the first vehicle, as Solie looks over Safiri’s body.

“It is done. We are almost home.” I utter, looking up to the peak rising up before us. “Time enough to save it. Time enough…to bury him…”

“Indeed.” Solie nods. “It’s…better for him this way…”

“What do you mean?” I utter. “We have…we have the supplies, you said were needed to keep us surviving…for our people…”

“We do. Yeah, we do.” Solie lets out an odd chuckle. The old man mystifies me, and not for the first time.

“Captain, what is it we have, precisely? You said…all that, about vital compounds…”

“Compounds, yeah, and more. It’ll all be alright…you’ll see…”

This time a laugh comes out, as he turns away to avert his gaze from my own.

I shake my head, before turning to bask in the view of Kilimanjaro before a disappearing sun. I can see, further atop, the glint of our rooftops nestled amid the trees and foliage growing upon our sacred slopes, of the agricultural strips fed by her ancient soil.

We can tell our own, now, that hope remains.

Unless, of course, Solie has something to say…

**

Peacekeeper Captain Erlend Solie

Our medicines are running out. Our weapons reduced, in practical terms, to blades of old. Our future, from matters logistical to breeding, very much in question.

And so I spoke to the others. I delved into the records of my father. I sought from what we gleaned of the old world to find our salvation. Though it was perhaps not the one many hoped for, that much I certainly did.

The Androphagi…that’s merely the name we gave to our assailants, to disassociate away from what my father’s generation had done. To preserve what he saw as the only salvation of mankind, where only what we had could be saved for a special few, he tried to make Kilimanjaro a sanctuary only for them.

I can’t say if he was right or not. Even this place can only support so many. But it does not matter now. The Dead Hand cast down those that came in the wake of that remnant contingent he lead, from a United Nations that unified no more nations. Survivors, refugees, the desperate and the dregs…those who had just been slower to reach the sanctuary he had staked out.

They did not give up. For all we can tell, this corner of what used to be called Africa represents all that remains liveable in this world. Yet, with so much lost and still on the brink, they still had to change themselves to survive. The same technologies that birthed the diseases that tore open the old world, the gene-splicing wrought of enzyme sequencing and palindromic repeats and other words I don’t understand, were used to change their forms. From the fauna around us, through their own reborn flesh, came the Androphagi.

Their bodies became unrecognizable, their minds—who knows. But vengeance…envy…perhaps, at the heart of it all, just desperation for a way to escape what they had to do to themselves…still remained. I don’t even know if, after so many generations birthed from the most unnatural of evolution, if they even still know what they do.

Regardless, they betrayed the orthodoxy of flesh—and that is reason enough for most of us to loathe them.

And, ultimately…it was our doing. But now we cannot realistically sustain ourselves the way things are. Wondering if I would hear the disbelieving laughter of my father in my dreams, I sought those enzyme sequences, the genetic serums, the old caches of that proliferating technology that lead to so much of our existence here.

We too, must now change to survive. This, the rest of our leaders reluctantly but ultimately unanimously decided on.

What that will look like for us? Hell if I know.

And, in the face of the irony, the absurdity of it all, I laugh, as Rebelo looks on in disbelief.

We continue to ascend Kilimanjaro, our home, our sanctuary.

And to keep our home…we truly will sacrifice all.