Subterranean Facility, Old V’Straki Colony, Affrag
*Adrian Saunders *
“I can’t help but remember this was much easier the last time we did it,” Adrian grumbled as they descended the elevator shaft by rope, trying not to think about how ‘down’ was usually the least challenging direction. Last time they’d had an Abrogator to use as a platform, because the elevator itself was well and truly a thing of the past, but they’d left the suborned robot back in the anomaly and didn’t have much in the way of alternatives.
It wasn’t even as though they even had proper rope for the climb, he’d been forced to make do with the strongest cabling he kept on hand for repairs, and that in itself brought back unpleasant memories of nearly plummeting down a corridor on the Celzi warship he’d then crashed into Cimbrean. “This had better be fucking worth it, mate.”
“It will be worth it,” Xayn assured him from below. “Provided there’s enough power remaining.”
Adrian paused and looked down at his V’Straki companion, frowning most expressively so that Xayn would know exactly how he was feeling right now. “You didn’t mention that bit before.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Xayn replied, the effort making him grunt between his words, “we’re descending on energy conduits, and your vessel is vastly overpowered. I will just have additional work to do if we need to rely on that.”
They made the rest of their journey without further conversation, each of them focused on putting one hand after the other, and eventually made it down to the rusted pile of debris that had once been the elevator. Small clouds of dust rose when each of them dropped down onto it, though far more was permanently caked on by time.
Adrian coughed once, and waved the dust aside. “Place needs a good vacuum.”
“I prefer having atmosphere,” Xayn replied, edging forward. He had his gun out, just in case they weren’t as alone down here as they’d been expecting, and Adrian followed close behind with his shotgun unslung.
They’d made the descent dimly illuminated by a torch hung from Adrian’s belt, and Xayn made no move to activate the glaring lights of the facility. Instead they turned the torch off.
With his thermal vision Adrian could see in darkness, and provided he was wearing his combat goggles, so could Xayn. A robot might manage the same, but they ran quite hot and would be a lot more obvious against the cool environment.
There was, as expected, nothing to be concerned about; the place remained as abandoned as it had been when they’d left it. They did a quick second sweep before they were satisfied, and only then did Xayn turn the lights on.
“Like you’d never left,” Adrian observed dryly. It had been a lived-in mess of spare and broken parts, open packages containing the desiccated remnants of leftover food, and a scattering of tools. The damage from their initial exchange of weapons-fire could easily go unnoticed in this kind of environment. Now that he thought about it, this was exactly the sort of place you’d expect a bachelor technician to end up living in. Hell, he’d had a workshop of his own back on Earth, and there was more than a little resemblance.
Xayn ignored the comment, or more likely simply didn’t understand the underlying jibe, and proceeded to the master terminal to check everything was in order. The growl he made shortly thereafter proved that it wasn’t.
“Problem?” Adrian asked, stepping up next to him and looking at the V’Straki display. He could read it, if he took his time – he’d been able to read that language ever since the Zhadersil had dropped a data-dump into his head when it made him Shiplord – but it was faster to just ask Xayn for the short version.
Xayn glanced up at him, then returned to the display with a studious eye. “Power levels are well below what they should be!”
The main problem with the colony power supply, Xayn had earlier explained, was that there simply wasn’t enough of it. They had limited storage, and an even more limited reactor, to the point that they had needed to budget power for any work they did do. Once they’d done all they could do, they’d return to stasis and let the storage slowly recharge. If it was already drained, and if Adrian hadn’t made a habit of carrying around an unreasonable amount of spare energy conduit, they would have been shit out of luck.
“Something we did in this other timeline?” Adrian asked.
“Yes,” Xayn confirmed after a moment longer. “Power logs show we already expended much energy in the lathe. I suspect we’ve already done what we came here to do.”
“Doesn’t help us much now, though,” said Adrian. “Not unless they left this ‘battle suit’ behind, and what do you reckon the chances of that are?”
“Not good.”
A cursory check revealed that they had not indeed left themselves any gifts, though Adrian had no idea why they might have fabricated them in this timeline when Xayn hadn’t made any such offer in theirs.
“Perhaps you simply made a better first impression,” Xayn suggested when Adrian put the question to him, and it made sense that Xayn might not have wanted to open up the entirety of V’Straki technology to somebody he didn’t trust, regardless of the promises they made.
They spent a full day down there while Xayn designed and assembled a power converter that would allow them to power the colony with the power from Spot. It was work that would have taken an hour at most, had they the use of the lathe, but as it was Xayn had been forced to strip existing equipment for the parts required.
Eventually he was satisfied, and with Askit’s help on the surface they were able to run enough power that they could fully replenish the storage in less than two days. But they were on a schedule, and that would happen on its own time; Xayn redirected every last drop of that power to the lathe, the molecular fabricator that had allowed them to build and maintain this base without resupply.
“Why didn’t the Zhadersil have one of these?” Adrian asked, standing before the massive enclosure that housed the equipment. It was, from the outside, not all that dissimilar to an enormous microwave oven, but on the inside it had far more in common with the 3d Printers that were still an emerging technology back on Earth. He could only imagine how useful it would have been to have had access to something this powerful, rather than the basic workshop that he and Trix had needed to rely on.
“It did,” Xayn replied. “This is it. The crew disassembled it and brought it down here where it would be of more use.”
“Fucking great,” Adrian said without enthusiasm. “So this thing can make absolutely anything?”
“Within reason,” said Xayn. “It must be supplied with adequate materials. And yes, we still have adequate materials.”
Adequate materials turned out to be piles of carefully chosen scrap, all of which needed to be carted from various parts of the base to the Lathe for it to harvest. Another half-day of this, and Xayn finally announced that the machine was ready to start work.
Adrian had expected the process to take longer, but the whole of it was complete in under an hour. The result was a single, steely battlesuit that made an art-form of looking hideous; compared to this monstrosity he could even find beauty in the horrible brown, combat-reinforced vacuum suits that were favoured by the rest of the galaxy.
Technologically it wasn’t anything particularly miraculous; it was mostly just layers and layers of plate armour. It had fully articulate joints, thanks to a series of interlocking platelets, and was completely sealed against the environment. Inside it was padded for comfort and pressure, and an extensive network of shaped kinetics ensured that not only could it actually be moved but that it would do so with relative ease – though they weren’t powerful enough to make him any stronger – and it’d let him manoeuvre in microgravity if he ever again found himself drifting in space. It was also far bulkier than he had expected, and he reckoned he’d be half a foot bigger in every direction once he put it on.
“Holy fuck,” Adrian said, circling the monstrosity at a distance while Xayn described the technical elements in detail. He had been expecting something more like Iron Man, but this was god damned impressive even if it would make him look like the villain. “Are those… does it have fucking guns on its fucking arms?”
“Zheron cannons,” Xayn confirmed. “Like my weapon, but with far more power and a longer cool-down period. It’ll melt right through your flesh if you ignore it.”
“Think I’ll avoid doing that, then.”
“Both weapons are linked to the onboard combat sensor-suite,” Xayn went on. “The computer will identify targets, and assist with your aim. It also provides an augmented display that will allow you to see full-spectrum.”
Adrian whistled appreciatively. “That is fucking nice! Where’s yours?”
He might have asked the question as an afterthought, but even as it left his lips he found himself extremely interested in the answer. Xayn had not mentioned making one for himself, and from the looks of it they hadn’t bothered loading enough material for it either. Instead he looked very uncomfortable, like he was trying to pick his words with too much care.
“You don’t plan on making one, do you?” Adrian asked, directing a level gaze at the V’Straki. “Do your people actually use these things? Is there something fucking wrong with it that I should know about?”
“There is nothing wrong with it,” Xayn quickly replied. “But the suits were normally reserved for the dying, so that they could end their lives in glory.”
“End their lives in glory,” Adrian repeated, casting a suspicious eye across the battlesuit for anything that looked as though it might kill him in the process of using it. “Just what the fuck is this thing going to do to me?”
“The battlesuit is powered by a micro-reactor,” Xayn said, beginning his explanation circuitously. “They were built to strike hard, with the total destruction of the enemy as the highest priority. They were designed for victory alone – the reactor is purpose-built to detonate in death or mission failure.”
It was, in other words, a suicide suit. No doubt that seemed pertinent, even suitable given what Adrian was going up against, but the idea of leaping into combat with an unstable reactor strapped to his back didn’t exactly serve to excite.
Adrian gave the V’straki a hard look. “I’m going to be very clear about this mate: I don’t want to fucking explode.”
“It will only detonate if you die,” Xayn protested. “Why would it matter to you if you’re already dead?”
“It might matter to whoever’s fucking standing right next to me!” Adrian growled. This was, after all, a rescue mission, and he didn’t want to accidentally blow everyone up if he got himself killed. Hell, he didn’t want to blow up anything up at all, and he damned well didn’t want to run around wearing something that might explode just because it felt like it. “You need to fucking well disable that, mate.”
Xayn did so reluctantly – though he made a point of noting that only the software itself had been adjusted and that the reactor remained hard-wired – and only once he had finished, and with equal reluctance, did Adrian step into the suit.
It closed around him like a glove, the soft-padded interior pressing gently across his entire body, though from what Xayn had described it wasn’t simply for his comfort. Behind that padding were multiple layers of protection, and the kinetic technology intended to compensate for all of it. It wasn’t power armour, not like the movies imagined it, this was more like wearing his own personal tank, with the whole thing designed to just keep him alive and mobile long enough to really fuck the enemy up. He experimented with moving his arms, and found they shifted with as much ease as with any of the traditional armoured vacuum suits had allowed.
It didn’t offer any increase to his strength, either. He tested it on one of the crates they’d carried the scrap in, and found it just as heavy as it had been before. Then he punched it, and sent it tumbling across the room where it struck the wall and bent.
He turned to look at Xayn, noting the way the augmented display analysed and targeted the V’Straki and the weapon at his side, while an information stream in the top right provided a running report on environmental data and everything else it deemed of interest. The crate, for example, had a small display of its own where the sensor suite announced that it was no longer a threat.
“I thought,” said Adrian, pausing as the suit repeated his words in a deep, rumbling cadence that was definitely intended for psychological effect, “that this suit wasn’t supposed to make me stronger.”
“It does not,” Xayn replied, seemingly unfazed by the voice. “But it has significant mass, and you are fast and strike hard even without it. You should avoid carelessly touching things you do not wish to destroy.”
Force is the product of mass and acceleration; momentum of mass and velocity. He was fast, Xayn was right about that, and the Yoga and exercise was only making him faster, and while it seemed the kinetics were designed only to help him move naturally in the suit, it also seemed that the weight of a small car was behind every one of those movements.
That was easily more dangerous than it sounded, and Adrian made a mental note to be very careful when bringing this thing into Spot. One wrong move and he’d stumble through a wall, tear apart some piece of vital equipment, or accidentally crush the resident Corti. It was like being a bull in a China shop, except in this case the bull was an ancient, ultra-destructive combat suit and the shop was about half the stuff he still cared about.
“Are you confident in your movement?” Xayn asked after a moment longer, stepping around the battlesuit to inspect it, but remaining just out of reach. “We should venture back to the surface if you are; I will not allow you to test weapons down here!”
Adrian checked his movements again, and found the sensation strange but straightforward. “It seems easy enough,” he said, which he should have expected if the dying had been the most common to make use of it. “How do we get it up there?”
“You will need to go to the elevator and engage flight mode.”
Adrian frowned, cocking a puzzled eyebrow. “I thought you said that this can’t fly under full gravity?”
Xayn cleared his throat, purposefully making the gesture to convey his reluctance to make his next statement. “It cannot,” he admitted. “We will have to tie it to the conduit, and then lift it ourselves. The suit kinetics will negate much of the mass.”
“And just how much won’t they negate?” Adrian asked, his glare concealed by the helmet, but his voice carrying enough of the emotion behind it to make Xayn wince.
“Approximately (half a tonne).”
Half a tonne… Adrian found his body aching in anticipation of not only the effort required to get it up there, but the effort to get himself back up there first. If he’d known it was going to take this amount of muscle-power, he might have paid a quick trip to Cimbrean to borrow a fucking winch. He made a mental note to find one and install it on Spot at the earliest opportunity.
“You, mate,” Adrian said slowly and emphatically, “are a complete fucking arsehole.”
++++
++++
Amber Radiance, Perfection
Laphor Metmin
The local news had been covering the destruction in the capital for hours, and as the authorities seemed to be withholding the details of the cause behind it the reporters were all running wild with speculation. It seemed settled that a node on the power grid had caused a massive power surge, and every news program had its own expert giving their theory on just what might have been behind it. None of them were guessing ‘Chehnasho Psychopath’, so it seemed that the entire planet was not yet hunting Zripob down, or hiding away in their homes until he was either captured or gone.
Laphor had returned to the Amber Radiance once she’d finished her drink, and had proceeded to switch between news networks to see if anybody had anything new to say on the matter. Had the authorities been successful? Had Zripob been spotted somewhere? Did anybody have any idea what was damned well going on? The answer to all of these questions seemed to be a resounding ‘no’, and so she was not surprised when Zripob did eventually return, but was merely deeply disappointed.
When she’d decided to betray the Chehnasho mercenary, she’d hoped that the local authorities who’d failed so miserably when confronted by the Human Disaster might have at least managed taking on Six-Skulls Zripob when she’d told them what to expect. They should have gone at him in full force, they should have killed him if they couldn’t force him to surrender, and yet from the looks of things the best they had managed to do was hurt him badly and piss him off.
“We need to get out of here!” Zripob demanded as he stepped onto the command deck. He glowered at Laphor, but mainly out of his general anger rather than any particular suspicion. It was just as likely a façade to cover his pain; his left arm hung limply at his side, he oozed blood from several shallow wounds across his face and chest, and he walked with a pronounced limp. “Take us to the nearest Gaoian colony. There’s someone we need to see.”
Laphor indicated to her crew that they should follow the instruction, quietly pleased by the fact that they once again glanced her way for confirmation. “I take it you found Vakno?”
“I did,” Zripob replied curtly. “She was very informative.”
“Is she still alive?” Laphor asked, wondering if Zripob might have simply killed the information broker out of spite, once he’d gotten everything he needed from her.
“She was somewhat wounded during the conversation,” Zripob admitted, “but bones can be mended.”
Laphor nodded, and looked him up and down. “Speaking of which, you should see to your own injuries.”
Zripob glared at her, but he had no chance but to concede to her point. He nodded reluctantly, clearly annoyed that she now dared to speak so freely to him. “Then I shall make my way to the medical room. Is there anything else I should know before we depart?”
“Nothing I can think of,” Laphor replied, smiling innocently. She watched him leave in a huff and scowled at the door that closed behind him. The only reason she’d waited for that bastard was because if she’d left then Zripob would have known it was her who tipped them off. However angry he was now, that would have paled in comparison to the murderous rage he’d come after her with, and there was no way she was going to submit her crew to a nightmare of that magnitude.
There was also no chance she could make another attempt on the Gaoian colony, or likely anywhere until they finally reached whoever he was after now. It seemed that she had two options, to either complete Zripob’s increasingly crazed mission, or to sabotage him when he’d never see it coming. There was no need to decide right away, not when there was one last play.
Laphor connected to the planetary message board and added a single notice to the relationships forum. Something short, something anonymous, and something that would get the attention of a certain infuriated information broker. She had no doubt that with Vakno’s help they could both get what they wanted.
++++
++++
The Dark One’s Lair
Jennifer Delaney
It had not been easy to move the laughing Abrogator-bomb to the nearest starship. There was not, for instance, any kind of trolley you might find in a warehouse back on Earth. The Abrogator, being the sort of alien thing that relied on only one means of movement, had no wheels, and was not yet complete enough to have had its kinetics installed. What this had necessitated was about three hours of slowly inching it along the corridor, wincing at the sound of metal scraping against metal, holding her breath at the creaking of buckling supports as she passed under them, and wishing the fucking thing had some kind of mute button. By the time she’d actually reached what was left of her starship she’d decided that if the Dark One had wanted to really piss her off, he’d certainly done a good job.
Jennifer Delaney would have the last laugh, though, of that she was determined. She didn’t know shit about alien technology, not like Adrian had, but from what she had picked up she’d learned that the pre-assembled stuff was what the I.T. world liked to call ‘plug-and-play’. In other words she just needed to park the Abrogator close enough, plug the right cable into it, and then let the magic happen.
Today, however, the Gods of technology were not with her. What cable existed was far too short to pull from the communications console, let alone plug it into a sub-space transmitter inside an Abrogator. Jen muttered a curse under her breath, then decided to hell with it and just shouted the word at the top of her lungs. The whole lair echoed with it, and she felt a little better.
“Think, idiot!” she told herself. This sort of thing was something she ought to be good at, after all. She’d been in I.T. for too fucking long not to be able to figure out a problem like this. The cable didn’t reach, so that meant either getting the two things closer together – which was impossible – or replacing or lengthening the cable itself.
It only took two minutes before she found an identical, albeit much longer cable from the useless navigations console. She held her breath as she worked the cord through those belonging to the bomb, and used a couple thin metal rods to help guide it into the data-port. The beep that followed nearly made her shit herself, until she realised it had come from the transmitter, and she fell back breathing heavy from that one moment of terror.
That her ship still had any kind of power was like a miracle, and she wasn’t sure why it was the case. Perhaps the Dark One simply wanted to mess with her by giving her a powered starship that couldn’t fly, next to an unpowered starship that possibly could. If it was a taunt, it was clear that he hadn’t expected Jen to be able to make any use of it, and for Jen that made her victory all the sweeter. The communications system was online, and all relevant systems checked out.
She activated the beacon, and then spoke clearly into the microphone to record her name, her request and her coordinates. And now, after all she’d gone through, she’d reached a point where she could do no more. The transmitter would broadcast until it broke or lost power, help would either arrive in time or it wouldn’t, and all she could do was watch the skies and wait. It seemed anti-climactic to have come this far only to depend on somebody else, but surely even Jen the ‘Chosen One’ couldn’t be expected to do everything?
What she wanted now, especially now that she’d done all she could, was to lay down and rest in the bunk still present towards the back of her ship. One night of sleep in an actual bed, she promised herself, and then she’d head back down to the Agwarens and face the coming threat alongside them.
Just one night.
++++
++++
Date Point: 3Y 9M 1W 3D AV
Swarm of the Brood That Stalks
Alpha of the Brood That Stalks
Despite the efforts of the Alpha-of-Alphas, the news that the Cursed Human, Adrian Saunders, had somehow managed to survive their last encounter had rippled through the Swarm of Swarms, the information trickling through each Swarm, each Brood, until only the most ignorant Hunter had not yet heard. It had shaken them, but it was clear that the human had simply had one last trick, and that the next time they encountered him they simply needed to strike more carefully.
That had at least been the idea at the time. Attempts to track the human had proven futile, he moved around too quickly for the Swarm to respond, and he did not trust easily enough that spies had any chance of getting close to him. It seemed like a lost cause, but not one that the Hunters, if they were to retain their pride, could simply abandon. The Alpha-of-Alphas had decided to bide its time, wait for the opportunity, and then seize it.
And the opportunity had come.
Somehow – the Alpha of the Brood That Stalks didn’t know how – their spies had learned where the Cursed Human was headed. It was a Deathworld in what the Prey called the Ilrayen Band, a place far removed from the homes of the Prey and therefore just as far from the normal hunting grounds. And the reason the Cursed Human was going there was to rescue another human, the Pirate Queen who had harried so many Hunter vessels in the Outer Reaches that they had been forced to hunt elsewhere.
It was too good an opportunity to pass up.
But that had made the Alpha-of-Alphas suspicious. It might be a Deathworld, with all the challenges that posed, but even so it all seemed far too easy. It had seemed easy the last time as well, and that had turned to catastrophic defeat, so the Alpha of the Brood That Stalks had been tasked with the honour and the risk.
The Alpha clicked its maw, trepidation mixing with excitement. It knew the danger better than many, having been amongst the few survivors of the last encounter, and while many of its Broodlings chittered about the coming victory, like it was a certainty, those who’d been there with the Alpha remained similarly quiet. The coming Hunt was not to be the vibrant, joy-filled slaughter that was standard amongst Prey, and nor would it be the rapid, overpowering assault that had worked against other humans on the worlds that had kept them.
This Hunt was to be careful, planned and well-considered. The Cursed Human and the Pirate Queen were both far more resourceful, far more physically dangerous than other humans, and underestimating them would certainly prove costly. The Swarm would enter under stealth, it would observe, and then it would strike only when it made sense.
They approached the blue-grey world under full cloak, splitting into a thousand different orbital vectors that would give them full coverage of the planet. A probe was sent to test the atmosphere, registering it as Class 9. Not ideal, but nothing the Hunters could not handle. The biosphere was the most likely cause for the Deathworld classification, but the Alpha had equipped its Swarm with fusion blades that could strike down even a Deathworld creature, and plenty of Nervejam grenades. Those weapons were dangerous to its Brood as well, of course, but losing even a hundred Broodlings to one would be worth it if they could just bring down the Cursed Human.
It was a primitive world. Passive scans indicated only a single significant source of technology, an extensive complex located in a mountain range. They’d received the distress call from the Pirate Queen days ago, and it was from here that it was being broadcast.
The question, the Alpha reckoned, was whether it was a lure, or whether it was genuine, and there was no way to be sure without sending scouts down to investigate. It was impossible to proceed without being certain, and required only a handful of Broodlings.
It had to be done carefully; putting down a whole ship was simply too risky, even with all the precautions they’d taken it was still possible the Pirate Queen might steal it and make her escape.
Instead, the Alpha sent a handful of its most expendable. They could be retrieved if they found nothing, but it would be no great loss if the Pirate Queen tore them to pieces instead, and at least then they’d know where she was.
The mission was mounted, the Broodlings deployed, and the Alpha watched what was transmitted through their cybernetics.
The base was large, and empty, and filled with a raucous noise that seemed to emanate from inside a partially dismantled starship. What the point of all of it had been was anybody’s guess, but the place stood idle now. The scouts spread out in loose formation, careful to keep eyes on all angles as they approached the starship in question. Nothing moved, though it seemed that somebody had inhabited it recently; a quick genetic scan indicated that it had been a human.
The Alpha clicked its maw again, this time in mounting anticipation. If it could just confirm the human was still there… It saw the machine that stood by the communications console, and realised it was the source of the noise.
An alarm? Or was it a trap? Either way, turning it off would probably lure the human out of hiding, if she was there, and then the Alpha could mount a serious attempt to kill her.
Destroy that machine, it commanded the Broodlings, and they immediately obliged by slicing straight through it with a fusion blade. The metal melted away as the blade descended, carving a path from top to bottom and—
And then the transmission cut out, and a mountain range exploded. Shock ran though the fleet as reports flashed through, indicating that an anti-matter explosion had just made a major geographical alteration to the planet. The Scouts had been atomised on the spot – no great loss there – but that left the whereabouts of the human woman completely unknown.
Was she responsible for this? Was she even alive, or had somebody simply set a trap for the Hunters to walk right into? The Alpha let out a long, furious hiss of frustration.
There had to be something more than that. It directed the next command to half of the fleet, its mind clouded by anger. Descend, it ordered. Find something! Find everything!
Roughly five hundred Hunter ships broke from formation a moment later, dropping towards the planet below and switching off their cloaking systems in favour of their sensors.
They would eventually find anything worth finding.