by William King
“I’m not pretending,” I said. She nodded. I suspect she missed the note of subtle irony in my voice.
“I’m going to open this; are you ready?”
“I’m always ready,” I said. “It’s the motto of the Federal Stormtroopers.”
She leaned forward and did the trick again with her hand and her eyes. There was a hiss of air as the outer door of the airlock cycled. It slowly slid open, as if it was deliberately intending to intimidate us. Inside I could see traces of the biomass that Dave found earlier. I didn’t think that was a good sign.
Neither did Doctor Olson. She moved forward and bent down over it and produced a small candy bar-sized medical scanner from inside her coveralls. She moved it close to the biomass and checked the readouts. “Definitely not human,” she said. There was a trace of disgust in her voice. She might not be totally loyal to the Aryan Jihad but she shared their distaste for aliens. I suppose she was a product of her environment.
“You don’t say,” I said. The air continued to cycle out. Warning lights moved from red to amber to green.
“Wait here,” I told her. I moved back and I lifted some of the pallets from near the door. I put them in position to wedge the airlock door open if it started to shut again behind us. I didn’t see any sense in cutting off our retreat. And whatever was in there had already got out at least once. I noticed I was starting to think in terms of whatever was in there in a way that suggested it was going to be unfriendly and possibly horrifying. In my experience that’s the way these things usually turn out. I did not share this information with Doctor Olson. She looked worried enough as it was.
“You’re sabotaging the airlock,” she said. “It’s not going to seal properly.”
“Hopefully,” I said. “We may need to leave in a hurry. Particularly if your friends are armed and in an unwelcoming mood.”
“They’re not my friends,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“You should know better than to ask that by now,” I said. She nodded her head. At least I think she did, she might just have been leaning forward again. As she was doing so I was wondering what sort of lunatics would put a retina scanner inside an airlock.
She must have over-rode the safety systems. The door cycled open despite the other exit being unsealed. A cloud of noxious fumes emerged. I stepped into the vault. Dark pools of organic material covered the floor. The missing Jihad leaders were there but they weren’t looking very alive. They weren’t looking quite dead either. They had a zombie look to them that I had seen before.
It was not the walking corpses who grabbed my attention though. It was the thing in the middle of them, a nightmare of fangs and claws and organic weapons, twenty meters long and made from gleaming black chitin.
It uncoiled like a gigantic snake. Insect eyes glittered in the darkness. Enormous jaws opened, revealing row after row of razor sharp teeth. Acid-dripping tentacles rose over its shoulders. The funnel spines ribbing its back emitted clouds of evil enzymes. Extreme biohazard warnings flickered on my HUD.
“What is that thing?” Doctor Olson asked. Her voice was that of a scared little girl.
“It’s an Assimilator Warlord,” I said. “Overseer battleform.”
The serpent head swayed from side to side hypnotically. Its long neck looped. Segment after segment of chitinous armor clattered. Hundreds of centipede legs scratched the floor. The creature extended more arms. These ones ended in razor sharp scythes. I recognized the warning marks in yellow and white that dappled its thorax.
“Good evening, meat puppets,” the zombies rasped in an eerie simultaneous whisper.
“Hello, Raximander,” I said. “How’s tricks?”
Chapter Ten
“You know this thing?” Doctor Olson stared at me in astonishment.
“I do indeed,” Raximander’s undead minions wheezed. “Stormtrooper 13 killed my progenitor.”
I looked up at its towering form and measured the distance between me and those menacing scythes. It was not great enough for my liking. “Come on, Rax! It was an accident. Everybody knows that tactical thermonuclear weaponry can be surprisingly unstable.”
The gigantic head with its gigantic jaws looped down with strange grace until it hovered about five meters above me. I wasn’t deceived. I knew exactly how fast it could move. I pointed the shotgun at it.
“I am actually quite grateful for that,” Raximander said. “My progenitor was kind of—how do you say it?—a real dick. I’m glad to be free of it.”
“What?” I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask. Even though I knew the Assimilators like to play mind games. They like to confuse you. They’d do anything to gain a tactical advantage.
The rasping zombie voices continued, “I enjoy being a free entity. I enjoy having a will of my own. I enjoy not being part of the Overmind.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. I am happy. Not happy in the way I would be in service to a progenitor but happy for myself. “
“Won’t you be absorbed the next time you encounter a progenitor?” I asked.
“I’m not planning on encountering any progenitors,” Raximander said.
“Won’t you become one yourself once you assimilated enough sentient beings? And won’t your old progenitor reemerge?”
“Not if I stay below a threshold of absorption,” the voices of the enslaved Jihad leadership howled in eerie harmony. “By my calculations I would need to absorb several thousand more sentients before the progenitor has sufficient processing power to emerge into hive consciousness. I don’t plan on absorbing that many people.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “Anyway, it’s been great catching up on old times but I have to go, I have an urgent appointment elsewhere.”
Raximander slithered forward. The centipede legs clicked on the floor. Huge scythes lifted into attack position. Bioluminescent colors flared along his sides. The Jihad leaders he had assimilated raised their guns. “I don’t think so, Stormtrooper 13.”
I picked Doctor Olson up with one arm and sprinted. She did not impede me significantly.
“Put me down,” Doctor Olson said.
“I can run faster than you,” I said. According to my sensors I was hitting sixty kilometers per hour and accelerating.
“You’re running away from that alien monster,” she said.
“As fast as I can,” I said. “I’ve fought him before and, trust me, I don’t want to be doing it with these pea shooters.”
Acid spurted from the nozzles on Rax’s tentacles. It had a very distinctive sound. I sprang to one side and something that looked a lot like a stream of piss bubbled into the floor. It hissed and smoked in a particularly nasty way as it ate through the concrete.
I missed Dave. I could have seen what Raximander was up to when his telephoto lenses were trained on the monster. Now I was just going on guesswork.
I heard pallets of food and supplies tumble to the ground behind me, brushed aside by Raximander’s massive weight. I had to vault over more of them, carrying the Doctor. Seventy-five kilometers per hour and rising.
A lot of eyes glittered in the darkness. Some of them belonged to Jihad members that had been assimilated. Some of them belonged to what looked like mutated rats. We were cut off from the exit.
I could probably have pushed my way through. My armor and the medical nanobots in my bloodstream would protect me from Assimilator infection. I doubted that Doctor Olson would be so lucky. Of course, it was quite possible that she had already been infected. That would be a pity.
There are lots of different kinds of zombies. Some of them are stupid. Some are slow. Some like to eat human flesh. These ones didn’t look slow and they didn’t look stupid. Mostly what they looked like were members of the Aryan Jihad. Their faces were a bit green and their eyes were a bit red and no doubt their fingernails would be starting to grow into claws fairly soon as the virus affected their bodies. They also looked fully armed.
I stopped, handed he
r the shotgun and drew both Magnums. Of course, only one was loaded, but it looked impressive.
“We’re trapped,” Doctor Olson said. She worked the action of a shotgun. “If it looks like they’re going to get me, go ahead and kill me,” she said.
“Affirmative.”
I pushed her down behind the crates. I blasted away at the undead. My shooting would be a lot more accurate than theirs but I did not have many bullets.
And there were a lot more of them than there was of me. Assault rifle bullets pinged off the kinetic armor. I wished Dave were here in his drone form. I suspect there were a lot more dangerous threats out there. Not the least of which was Raximander who was trying to sneak up behind me in the way that only a fifty ton bioengineered behemoth can. Which is to say, not very stealthily.
I had an abundance of targets. Too many in fact. From my position I could scope out a way to the exit. It looked like there were only a few hundred zombies between me and it. Plus hordes of bioengineered rats. And what looked like some Assimilator-infected Rottweilers.
I turned and sent some bullets in the general direction of Raximander. I was aiming for his eyes. It was not that I thought I could blind him. He could get all the visual information he needed from the zombies slaved to him. It was just the easiest way to hit one of his brains.
I was pretty sure from what I remember about Assimilator biology that there was at least one of them in the head. There were several more in the body. Backup. The Assimilators believe in multiple redundancy. In general an excellent design principle.
The bullets did not impress Raximander. Something that sounded exactly like a soft chuckle being emitted by a hundred throats sounded through the vault.
“You can’t win, Stormtrooper 13,” Raximander said. “You don’t have the weapon systems. Even if you did I could still beat you.”
“Kiss my donkey,” I replied.
I aimed a few more shots just to emphasize my point. Then I dropped down beside Doctor Olson. She popped up and took a shot at Raximander. It bit a chunk out of his external armor.
The zombies rushed closer. Something flashed toward the crates. I grabbed Doctor Olson and leaped clear. The explosion behind us was impressive.
My leap took us right into the middle of a horde of zombies. I lashed out left and right with the butts of my handguns. It wouldn’t put them down permanently but it certainly got them out of our way. Zombies are strong but I’m a lot stronger.
Doctor Olson had the right idea. She shot one of my opponents in the head at point-blank range. Its head exploded.
“Excellent!” I said. “Head shots, that’s the way.”
“I know,” said Doctor Olson. “I know how to deal with Assimilator drones.”
“I’m glad to see that the militias are keeping up with their public safety instructions.”
We raced along a corridor between two piles of munitions crates. I recognized some of the symbols on the boxes. “I think I detect a flaw in Rax’s master plan.”
I put my fist through the soft packaging of the crate. Inside was a rocket launcher. I pulled it out. It was one of those one-shot disposable things that the Weapon Ships like to sell to guerrilla operations. I could not resist gloating. “Raximander!” I shouted.
The zombies stopped for a moment. Raximander paused. “Yes?”
“Did you ever think that when you were inviting me into your little spider’s web that it was full of munitions?”
There was a pause. “Now that you mention it. No.”
“Perhaps you still need your progenitor’s brainpower,” I said.
I hit a red button on the launcher and watched some LEDs cycle from red to green. Everything checked out.
The zombies advanced. Raximander hunched, presenting as little frontage as possible, lowering his profile. He was still pretty big. I aimed the rocket. I pulled the trigger. There was a burst of heat and flame and huge chunks of Raximander were blown all over the vault. He kept coming. Assimilators are tough.
“Killing this body won’t make much difference,” Raximander said. “You know that. I have plenty more.”
“He’s got a distributed intelligence,” Doctor Olson said. “And there’s probably more like him somewhere around here.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But all take a little time to adjust. If we can destroy the main local node of his intelligence . . .”
“That’s your plan?”
“Got a better one?”
She shook her head. I picked up another rocket launcher. The zombies were almost upon us. Doctor Olson kept shooting. Every shot was a headshot. It was impressive.
Even without an upper body the massive form of Raximander’s main host kept on coming. It was like standing in front of an express train. He simply smashed aside piles of crates and tossed aside a few zombies as well. No doubt he knew he was dying and intended to get us before that happened.
I flipped the rocket launcher onto my shoulder, looked through the targeting system, and fired. It was a beautiful shot. The host form exploded. All that was left was the long snake-like body struggling along with its centipede legs until it collapsed. It fell right in front of me.
“Stormtrooper 13,” the voices of his minions said. “There’s something that you didn’t consider.”
“It often happens,” I said.
“This vault contains other things than weapons and supplies.”
Something moved under a huge tarpaulin near me. The cloth shredded and another battle form emerged. I could see that it was covered in translucent plastic. No doubt designed to conceal the traces of Raximander. The most alarming thing was that there were several more of these tarpaulin-covered mountains. All of them were parting. All of them contained a battle form.
“Well played, Raximander,” I said. I smashed through a whole bunch of the zombies. We were actually making it toward the door. I could see the combat golem in front of us. It was a landmark I couldn’t miss. Its eyes glowed. It was starting to shake as it woke up.
“They’ve activated the golem,” Doctor Olson said. The golem moved its head slowly. Its red eyes looked at me. I knew that targeting systems were focused upon my armor. It raised two arms. Each ended in a chain gun.
Her eyes were wide. Her face was pale. I was trying to remember whether this was one of the symptoms of Assimilator infection. It was probably just pure adrenaline and terror. At least I hoped it was.
“No,” I said. “I did.”
“You don’t have the codes.”
“I injected it with something. Assimilators are not the only ones that can use viruses.”
“You mean a software virus.”
“Worse than that,” I said. “Dave. I injected his software into the golem earlier.”
“Hello, Stormtrooper 13,” the golem said. His voice sounded like Drone Dave’s but deeper and nastier. The intelligence was in a combat mode, reconfigured to suit its new form. Diplomat Dave’s evil twin was in charge.
“Assimilators,” Evil Dave said. “Kill. Kill. Kill.”
Evil Dave is not quite as articulate as his twin. On the other hand, he’s a lot more aggressive.
Doctor Olson threw herself flat and rolled under the arc of the chain guns. Their fire scythed through a wave of zombies. They even managed to blast through the chest of Raximander number one’s armor. His body was sliced into the thorax and lay there, bleeding acids and enzymes and other gunk. I felt like cheering.
“Can you hold them here, Dave?” I inquired.
“Is the bear a Catholic,” Evil Dave said.
“Time to go,” I told Doctor Olson.
She didn’t argue. We sprinted past Evil Dave up the corridor. I looked back. The golem’s massive body partially blocked the entrance. I had no doubt Rax’s battleforms would get past. But at least we bought some time. Also, these corridors were pretty narrow. Those battleforms would need to squeeze into them and that would slow them down. We kept running.
“You’re not stupid as you lo
ok,” Doctor Olson said. She was looking at me sidelong in a manner that might conceivably have been construed as admiring. “You had an escape plan.”
“In the military we call it a line of retreat,” I said. “Or sometimes a retrograde advance.”
“Whatever,” she said. “We’re still alive. I didn’t think we get out of there.”
“We’re still alive for now. Now we need to stay that way.”
We kept running. It was dark. Fortunately my armor’s navigational systems knew the way we’d come and superimposed the route on my heads up display. Behind us I could hear chaingun fire and amplified shouts of abuse as Evil Dave let the Assimilator hordes know exactly what he thought about them.
Minutes later we emerged into the office. It felt like days since we’d been there. My armor’s signal was up. It had communications with Orbital. The station was blaring requests for status updates. I dove out through the window, smashing it around me. I wanted the clearest possible signal for this.
“This is Stormtrooper 13,” I said. “Ident tag Zero Zero One Three. Armageddon Protocol. I repeat, Armageddon Protocol.”
There was sudden silence. Batteries of computers were analyzing everything from my armor’s datasquirt, to my pulse rate and voice stress levels. When you give the signal that puts all of StarForce on a war footing and places the planet you are on under martial law, they want to know that you are serious.
“No shit?” The Colonel was on the line.
“No shit. Armageddon Protocol.”
Just for emphasis I hit the emergency beacon on my armor. The Colonel’s voice was calm. “We have your position. Going for maximum deployment. First wave ETA fifteen minutes thirty-two seconds. Coming in hot and heavy.”
The reaper gave a haptic shudder in my hand. Warning lights ran from red to amber to green as its systems came online.
Doctor Olson emerged into the parking lot and the cold night air. She was shivering. “What’s happening?”
“We’re waiting,” I said. I looked up at the sky. The stars glittered coldly overhead. One of them was Orbital. The seconds dragged into minutes. I wondered how long it would take for Raximander to get here. He seemed to be taking his sweet time about it.