by S. A. Lusher
It didn’t feel right.
According to the map, the single strange life sign was coming from a separated section of the base. He’d seen it earlier, when he was looking up at the installation. There was a room that was set out about fifty meters from the base, connected only by a long tunnel. He’d been slightly uncomfortable when he’d seen it, wondering what it was for and why it was there. You didn’t keep a room separate from everything else unless there was something dangerous in it. Sometimes he thought he was being paranoid but honestly, Drake was depressed by how often his paranoia turned out to be true. Just once, he’d enjoy being wrong.
That wasn’t the only thing they were debating, though.
Also on the map, Porter had noted what she referred to as very likely being a central data nexus, and it was the most likely place Erebus would have stored itself. It was in the core of the facility. It seemed like an important location.
“So how are we going to do this?” Stacker asked.
Drake suppressed a sigh. He’d been debating too long. They needed to get a move on. Eric had just reported that he’d seen Weller off and was moving back into the base now. “Porter, I want you to go meet up with Eric and check out that rogue signal. Find out if it’s Allan or not. Stacker, you’re coming with me. We’re going to check out this data nexus and see if we can put Erebus down once and for all,” he said.
“And if it’s not Allan?” Porter asked.
“Then we have nothing to go off of and either he’s dead or at the other facility...or somewhere else entirely,” Drake replied. He heaved a sigh and popped his neck. “Unfortunately, our primary priority here is to take Erebus out of commission. It’s an insane artificial intelligence and dangerous as hell. It needs to be eliminated.”
The other two nodded slowly, Stacker more readily than Porter. He hadn’t been around as long as she or Drake had. He didn’t really know Allan. Which probably made him better at this job. Attachment tended to cause problems. Drake knew all too well about that. He activated the radio as he moved over to the door. Opening it up, he checked out the area beyond, making sure that they were still alone, then called up Eric.
“Eric, Porter is coming to meet you. She’ll update you on your mission.”
“Affirmative.”
Sighing, Drake stepped back out into the corridor. Once more into the breach.
* * * * *
Everything had gone dark there for a while, but it seemed like the pain had remained, an unbroken, crimson thread that stitched him together with reality.
Allan opened his eyes.
His throat was raw, burning almost, and his legs…
It felt like someone had lit them on fire. Staring up at the reflective ceiling, Allan let out a long, sick moan of horror and agony. His legs had been sawed off and Erebus had attached metal versions of them. He was covered in his own blood as apparently Erebus had made no move to clean him up. He could see the awful, wretched thing nearby.
“What have you done!?” Allan heard himself scream, absolute fury igniting within him.
“What? Oh. You’re awake. Well, Allan, I told you exactly what I’ve done. I mean, I told you about it in advance. You passed out during the procedure. I have to admit, you have a remarkably high pain tolerance. It’s very impressive. Do you have any idea how many humans I’ve experimented on like this? Hell, some of them don’t even survive the procedures. Though I’ve gotten better about that. Now, I’m afraid that events beyond these walls haven’t been proceeding as smoothly as I had hoped. I’m afraid we must move up the timetable.”
“What the fuck does that mean?!” Allan demanded.
Erebus turned around, holding up a strangely curved scalpel. “I’m afraid it means that I’m going to have to continue with the procedures. Don’t worry, this time I’ll be sedating you. Pain-induced stress cardiomyopathy could stop your heart, I’m afraid. This time, I’m going to need your eyes. And to implant your brain.”
Allan began struggling violently then, but only in his mind.
He still couldn’t move.
Something pierced his neck and the world began to go dark again.
CHAPTER 10
–Complications–
“Tell me you’ve got something,” Mertz said.
“I’ve got something,” Greg replied, but he wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet. He did understand the medic’s anxiety though. They’d lingered here for what felt like far too long now and still nothing had shown up. Something had to be on its way, Erebus knew where they were and seemed all too happy to send a lot of horrific hostiles their way. He’d found out a few pertinent facts and he thought that they had enough to go off of, to throw a loose plan together, but he wanted more information, and there seemed to be a lot here.
“Then can we go?” Mertz asked.
“Yeah, in a minute,” Greg replied.
“We should go now.”
Greg hesitated and looked back at him. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, just a bad feeling.”
He took a quick look around, knowing it to be true. There was an oppressive tension on the air that had been mounting steadily over the past several minutes. He sighed and turned back to the console. “One more thing, then we’ll go,” he replied.
“Fine,” Mertz murmured, keeping watch.
There was something that Greg needed to hunt down. He’d found a reference to a heavy weapons armory somewhere in the facility and he needed to find out where the hell it was, because they could sure use some heavier weapons. As he continued his hunt, a strange thought occurred to him, and it sparked off another one. Why would Erebus have an armory? He supposed it might make enough sense, except that the AI didn’t arm its soldiers in the traditional sense. It surgically grafted the guns into them. But he supposed it had to store them somewhere. But that thought sparked the bigger one: what was wrong with this base.
It was too...human.
Why wasn’t the base more designed for machines? This facility was built, as far as he knew, by Erebus. Why put it underwater, for that matter? Why have these traditional corridors and rooms, built to human specifications? Why not make it more efficient? Design it for his creatures? It was so strange. A lot of things Erebus was doing was strange. Greg’s train of thought derailed as he finally found what he was looking for.
The armory wasn’t all that far from their present location. Perfect.
“Okay,” he said, turning, “let’s get the hell-”
He froze, looking first left, then right. He spied two midnight black beings with almost glowing silver swords sprouting from one of their wrists.
“Hostiles!” he screamed, aiming for one of them. Neither him nor Mertz had heard or seen them enter the room. They didn’t seem so much physical beings as things of shadow and darkness, save for the brilliant polished single silver blade each of them sported and the glowing yellow eyes. Silent as death, each of the assassins began to move towards their intended target. Greg grabbed for his rifle, which he’d set beside him, leaned up against the console. As he did, the dark assassin coming for him suddenly leaped forward.
Greg’s body reacted before his mind could and he dropped into a crouch, snagged his rifle and dove away from the assassin. As he landed on his back, he aimed up and fired. The three-round burst would have, should have, hit the dark figure but it had already moved and was making for him, polished silver blade aimed forward. Greg rolled to the side, barely avoiding the blade. He heard as much as saw a spark of metal on metal as the blade glanced off the deckplates. He adjusted his aim and fired once more.
Yet again, the assassin dodged out of the way with apparent ease. Cursing he kept up his rate of fire while digging in his heels to push himself backwards. It felt ridiculous but he had no time to get to his feet and from the glancing shots and cursing coming from across the room, it seemed that Mertz wasn’t having much luck either. Greg knew he had to end this quick. He kept firing, forcing the assassin to keep on the defensive, until h
e ran out of ammo. As that last three-round burst was fired, two of the shots actually connected.
The assassin stumbled and midnight black blood sprayed across the console behind it. This gave Greg enough of a chance to get back to his feet. He didn’t, unfortunately, have time to reload. What happened next seemed to happen both slowly and all at once. Greg dropped his rifle and yanked his pistol from its holster as the assassin recovered and began charging for him, blade extended, aimed right towards his heart.
Greg brought the pistol up between them and fired off three shots that went right into its strange, flat face. The back of its head exploded in a flurry of dark gore and blood. Unfortunately, although the trajectory of its blade was off, it wasn’t off by enough to miss him. And whatever it was made of, it penetrated his armor. He let out a cry of pain as a burning line of agony erupted along the side of his ribcage.
The blade had sliced alongside his chest, in between it and his arm, and had cleaved into the armor, through it and his uniform and across his flesh. Cursing, Greg yanked the blade free and spun around, intent on killing the other one. It was coming for Mertz, who was desperately trying to reload. Greg raised his pistol and emptied the rest of the magazine into its back, shouting for Mertz to get out of the way. The combat medic barely managed to step aside as the bullets exploded out of the assassin’s chest and sent it stumbling forward, then crashing to the deckplates. Greg waited for a moment, looking around, grimacing in pain.
They were alone.
“Come on,” he said, “we’ve got places to be.” He began to head out of the auxiliary data core, trying to ignore the pain.
“Greg, you’re hurt, I need to look at that,” Mertz replied, hurrying after him and reloading.
“I’ll be fine,” Greg said through gritted teeth.
“We’re finding a place to take a short break and I’m patching you up,” Mertz replied firmly.
Greg sighed. He knew there was no point with arguing with him, and he was probably right. Didn’t want the wound to get any worse. “Fine,” he said.
As soon as they were far enough away from the auxiliary data core, he found a side room that was empty and looked easy to defend, then helped Mertz take off a portion of his armor. “So what’d you find?” he asked while he worked.
“A couple of important things,” Greg replied. “First, I tracked down two likely locations where Allan might be being kept. I also found the location of armory, what should be heavy weapons. I figured we should get there and check it out. I don’t know about you but I’m not exactly doing well for ammo right now.”
“Yeah, same,” Mertz murmured.
He’d gotten Greg’s chestpiece off and was examining the wound. “Well, it’s not too deep. Nothing important was hit. Lie on your side, lift your arm.” Sighing, Greg did as he was told. This time, he was prepared for the wave of stinging, burning pain. He kept quiet, grinding his teeth together while staring at a spot on the far wall, trying to maintain his vigilance. Now would be a spectacular time for an ambush. He thought back to those dark assassin things and resisted the urge to shudder in fear. Those things were fucking creepy.
A couple minutes later, Mertz finished up and they got his chestpiece back on. “There. Not the best of jobs but it’s a patch that’ll hold for the rest of the mission...probably.”
“Fantastic,” Greg muttered. “Let’s get a move on. I want to get to that armory.” He got back up, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Trying to ignore the various pains he was feeling now, he tucked his rifle to his shoulder and stepped out. The pair of them moved off down the corridor. As they did, Greg activated his radio.
“Callie, how are you doing?” he asked.
“We’re good. Making our way to the primary reactor core now,” she replied.
“Okay. Once you get finished there, I’ve found two likely locations for where Allan might be. I figured each team takes whichever is closest.”
“Sounds good. We’ll let you know when we’re finished,” Callie replied.
They were getting close. Greg could feel it. All they had to do was nail Erebus to the wall, find Allan and extract him. They’d be done with this miserable fucking planet. He could go home and sort through his feelings, which, admittedly he wasn’t looking forward to. Nor was he looking forward to his reunion with Eve again, as much as he did want to see her. He was afraid she’d turn him away. And then there was the whole problem of what the hell was he going to do with his life. Though he knew that Mertz had a point.
Regardless of how he felt about it, Anomalous Ops was the only thing that actually worked for him. The only thing that actually fulfilled him, the only thing that he could do very well and would feed his powerful addiction to danger. In a way, Anomalous Operations was tailor made for him. He could honestly see himself doing this until he wound up in the ground, six feet under. But then he came back to his fears and worries about encountering something like Ash, something like the Deathless. Becoming one of them.
Being forced to live in pain with no hope of relief or even of death...it was too much for him to contemplate.
But he was coming to realize that it was really just like all the other threats he faced down: he had to just take them as they came and find some way around them, find some way to make it all happen and come out the other side alive and roughly intact. He’d done pretty well so far. He supposed that was how you dealt with life. The only alternative was to give up and do something you hated or didn’t care about.
Which didn’t seem like much of an alternative.
They managed to make it to the armory without running into any more hostiles. Greg opened up the door and looked inside.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
There were rows upon rows of racked guns, ammo, grenades, explosives. Neither man spoke as they hurried into the room after making sure that it was empty of enemies. Greg immediately began hunting for more ammo. He grabbed some fragmentation and incendiary grenades, stuffing them into his pockets, then located a few EMP grenades. He made sure to grab all of them and give some to Mertz. They should help a lot. He managed to locate several magazines of armor-piercing ammo compatible with his rifle, and was just laying his hands on a compact but powerful looking rocket launcher when he heard something.
Heavy metal footfalls sounded as something stepped into the room.
“Fuck!” Mertz shouted.
Rocket launcher in hand, Greg spun around and saw that one of those elementals had wandered into the room. Judging by the ugly puke green coloring it had, he imagined it to be one of the ones that spat acid.
“Get back!” he shouted, raising the launcher. “Take the side exit!”
Mertz sprinted the length of the room, taking whatever he could get in passing and disappearing through the side door. As soon as he was gone, Greg hurried over to follow. The creature was raising both arms now, aiming wide-bore black barrels at him. He paused and turned around, half-in and half-out of the door, shouldered the launcher and fired. He threw himself through the door barely in time to avoid the concussion wave.
As soon as he was able, Greg tried to step back through the doorway, intending to gather more guns, ammo and killing tools, but stopped as he saw a heavy wave of something like steam coming out of it. Glancing cautiously in, he realized what had happened.
“Damn!” he snapped, taking a few steps back.
“What?” Mertz replied.
“Fucking thing blew up all over the armory and got its acid all over everything. It’s all fucking useless now,” he growled, turning and stalking off.
Mertz sighed heavily and followed after him. “Well, we at least got some more ammo and grenades. So that’s a plus.”
“Yeah,” Greg muttered. “Let’s just get going.”
* * * * *
Erebus was getting desperate.
Callie put down another pair of meat machines with shots to their craniums, spraying sparks and dark gore across the wall beside her, and frantically reloaded. B
etween the two of them, she and Keron must have put down fifty of these things since they’d left the secondary auxiliary chamber. It was slow going and she was getting antsy. Ever since Greg had updated her on one of the locations Allan could be, which wasn’t all that far from their present location, she’d been fighting the urge to just give up on their current objective and go after him.
But there was a chance that he wasn’t there, and even if he was, she had to cut Erebus off, because this was getting extremely dangerous. Even as she thought this, a bolt of ice sailed past her and she took aim at the ice elemental that had stepped into the corridor she and Keron were hurrying down. They each let off a volley of bullets that punched through the heavy metal of the elemental creature and sent it crashing down.
They could hear more coming.
There were always more coming, it seemed.
Callie and Keron finished hurrying down the corridor, which terminated in a door that would lead them to the primary reactor. Keron covered her while Callie tried to get it open. She tapped the open button, but it seemed that Erebus had finally gotten on top of the situation. It was locked up tightly. Sighing, she considered it. She wasn’t hacking it, that much was obvious. They could blow it...but they didn’t have any explosives.
That just left one option.
“Come on, we need tools,” Callie said, turning back around and heading off towards one of the various machine shops and conversion bays they’d passed coming here. She knew that among all the various tools of torture and horror that Erebus had among its collection, surely a cutting torch shouldn’t be out of the question. The corridor they’d been making their way down for the past several minutes had been lined with doors, most of them open and, mercifully, empty. Callie ran from one to the next and finally found what seemed to be a tool bay.
She hurried inside and Keron kept watch while she hastily sorted through the various tools available. Most of them were stained with old blood. Finally, she found what she was looking for: a cutting torch. Hopefully it would be enough to get through the door. Snagging it, she moved back to join Keron. As they stepped back out into the corridor, Callie ducked as a shot was thrown her way. Spinning, she spied a pair of bigger, more well-built technos coming her way. She and Keron fired on them, moving as quickly as they could as there was no real cover to speak of in the long, lengthy passageway.