Lu Bu looked around, feeling a sense of vertigo as she did so due to the bizarre VR interface the goggles produced. When she moved her head, the goggles created a fractional lag effect as they tracked with her line of sight. After casting about for a few seconds, she finally found the facility—and it was every bit as impressive as she had expected it to be.
Its shape reminded her of a jellyfish: the top was a large, bulbous dome and the bottom was comprised of dozens of small, tentacle-like shafts which extended hundreds of feet below the main body of the facility. The dome itself measured some two hundred meters across and fully half as high, and there were eight small, flat spheres suspended from equidistant points along its edge.
“The Nautilus,” Largent said tightly, “never thought I’d lay eyes on it again.”
“I suspected you had already come here,” she said sourly as Largent deftly maneuvered the pod to rendezvous with the facility. “Why lie about the source of your intel?”
“I didn’t lie,” he said measuredly as he lined up their descent perfectly. Their target was a docking collar which, according to Lynch’s information, would enable them to gain entry to the facility undetected after they introduced a remote access code. “I just didn’t include more information in my answers than necessary. I’ve found that practice keeps me alive.”
“Why did you come here before?”
“…let’s just say it was a competition between rivals,” he said hesitantly as the pod drifted on course for the insertion point.
“Who won the competition?” Lu Bu asked as they gently glided toward what passed for a docking port on this bizarre underwater facility.
“Nobody,” Largent said grimly as the pod gently floated into position as he sent the virtual access key buried in Lynch’s data files. A long pipe extended toward them with what looked like a lamprey’s mouth on the end, and that ‘mouth’ latched onto the pod with a jolt. Largent and Lu Bu unstrapped themselves from the pod and prepared to board the undersea fortress. “Nobody won,” Largent reiterated, “and I’m here to change that.”
“My mission comes first,” Lu Bu said, grabbing him by the shoulder and making authoritative eye contact.
He snickered, “I’ll keep up my end—just make sure you do the same.”
A few minutes later they were softly padding down a dark corridor, and Lu Bu could not help but feel like they were walking into a trap. “How is this place deserted?” she whispered. “It must be much more advanced and expensive than a space station.”
“It is,” he agreed, adjusting his grip on the high-end sonic rifle he had selected for the mission. Lu had opted for her pike, which was extended and at the ready, in addition to a handful of high-powered sonic grenades. The last thing anyone aboard this station wanted was a hull breach, so they had not brought high-powered weapon platforms for this particular assignment. “But that’s why it’s so lightly-guarded.”
“Did the Empire build this?” she asked after peering left and right at an intersection and finding nothing noteworthy.
“No, this was a private build all the way. Only about six people initially knew of its construction—and five of those died within a month of it going online.”
“How can they keep it secret from the Empire?” she asked, still unconvinced by his previous answers on the subject.
“Everyone in the Empire is susceptible to the same data obfuscation techniques,” he said casually. “It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with everymen or Triumvirs—though, admittedly, Triumvirs have a lot more resources at their disposal—since we’re all human. Our psychological makeup makes us vulnerable to all kinds of things—like confirmation bias. If you want to believe that you know everything there is to know about something, it doesn’t take much encouragement—or sophistry—to make you think you know everything. A few key deletions in the astrometric databases, followed by casting a wide net of data corruption algorithms to prevent automated astrometric arrays from ‘discovering’ a place like this, sprinkled with some good ol’ fashioned human arrogance, and voila!” he gestured to the corridor’s bulkheads with the barrel of his high-powered sonic rifle—which looked almost big enough to be a crew-served weapon. “One ultra-secret planet vanishes into the ether, and makes the perfect hiding place for someone whose primary desire is seclusion.”
“I still do not understand how we breached the interior so easily,” she said warily.
“Every now and then the station sends out pressure-resistant drones to go scour the seas for single-cell life forms—sometimes algae or plankton—and when it comes back loaded the cargo has to get offloaded somewhere,” he shrugged.
She now realized why the pipe they had crawled through had smelled so terrible. “Better than entering from the other end,” she muttered, recalling her recent foray into—and through—the septic system.
“You’ve got that right,” he agreed as they came to a seemingly nondescript patch of corridor. But Largent stopped and knelt, gesturing for Lu Bu to do likewise. “This is where Dorian got hit,” he said casually, and through her goggles’ high-powered optics she did see a trace of very old human blood on the deck plate. “He didn’t make it five steps after the assault droid got him,” Largent sighed, “poor kid. He was good…but not good enough.”
“We should move,” she urged after he failed to stand and resume their trek.
“You’re right,” he nodded, standing and gesturing to the leftward corridor, “twenty meters this way is the lab. That’s where we’ll find what we’re after.”
They moved down the corridor and arrived at the door described in Lynch’s diagrams. Lu Bu still had difficulty believing that Lynch could compile all of this information prior to his death, but here they were facing a door which perfectly matched the description in the file.
She produced a compact data link and swiped it across the door’s control panel, but was rewarded with a rejecting buzz.
“Stand back,” Largent urged, and Lu Bu stepped aside while the man produced a similar data link—one which she had not been aware of—and swiped it across the panel.
This time, the door slowly slid open and Largent shouldered his rifle, making brief eye contact as he said, “When it starts to go down, I’ll go high and you’ll go low. Try to maneuver him up against the big cylindrical tank-looking thing in the back left corner of the room.”
Before she could protest, the door was open and Largent stepped into the dimly lit room beyond with Lu Bu close behind.
Chapter XXI: The Heist—Showdown
“Time’s up, Daisy,” Largent declared as the door—which appeared to be at least a foot thick—slowly slid shut behind them. “Playtime’s over and it’s time to pay the bill.”
“Perry…” a chilling voice came from the poorly-lit chamber, “you came back for me. I'm touched.”
“Didn’t think I’d forget about you, didja?” Largent quipped as he and Lu Bu moved further into the chamber.
“Some wounds are harder to ignore than others,” the androgynous, tinny voice said bemusedly. “Pity I was unable to end your suffering entirely—as I did with Dorian. I promise you that I never wanted your pain to be anything but fleeting.”
“Cut with the head games, Bertha,” Largent said tightly, his eyes flicking around the room as he and Lu Bu instinctively spread out when the room widened to reveal what could only be a laboratory of some kind. “You called down the thunder the day you stabbed me in the back, and now,” he audibly racked a sonic grenade into the under-barrel of his high-powered sonic rifle, “lightning’s about to strike the same place twice.”
“Who is your friend, Perry?” the cold, bemused voice asked. “Is she for me?”
“Trust me, Sally,” Largent smirked, using the third name in as many addresses, “you’d be better off with yours truly—at least I’d make you feel like you did your best. She’d send you to oblivion with a boot-print across your as—“
A bolt of motion flew across Lu Bu’s field of vision, prom
pting her to duck as a glowing thread crackled through the air where her head had been a moment earlier. She barely registered the fact that Largent—or Perry, or whatever his name really was—had launched a sonic grenade high into the dome-shaped ceiling where it went off with a deafening crack. The ear protection she and Largent had worn for the occasion blocked out the otherwise-deafening roar, but even with its benefit there was a loud ringing in her ears.
She felt the concussion from the follow-up sonic rifle discharges, one of which struck dangerously near her own position, and for an instant she saw their quarry—and it was decidedly not human.
Floating on a quartet of anti-grav repulsors, like the ones used in grav-carts, was what she could only describe as a metal octopus with a human torso where the bulbous ‘head’ should have been. But even the ‘human’ part looked like a grotesque mockery, with greyish-green skin and eyes that seemed like bottomless, black pools.
“Oh, Perry…” the thing cackled as the lights went out and it melted into the darkness, “I always did enjoy our little games.”
“And I always hated the sound of your voice, Ronda,” Largent growled, firing off another pair of sonic blasts as he racked another grenade into the oversized weapon’s chamber.
Another flicker of motion caught her eye, and this time she instinctively parried the incoming thread of faintly-glowing wire-like material. It wrapped around the end of her pike, like a serpent coiling around its prey, and the thread wrenched violently against her grip.
She nearly lost hold of the weapon, but managed to move her body with it—feeling decidedly like a fisherman with an exceptionally large specimen on the line, except in this case it seemed that she was the fish and the floating monstrosity the fisherman. Largent fired off another sonic grenade, which went off in mid-air and somehow prompted the glowing wire to release its grip on Lu Bu’s pike.
“No fair, Perry,” the thing seemed to pout in its tinny voice.
“Whine, whine, whine,” Largent deadpanned as he fired another two round burst into the darkness. Lu Bu’s goggles, which had afforded her perfect vision back in the pod, were clearly being interfered with as she only got the occasional glimpse of movement through them. Still, they were better than nothing and she used their sparse feedback to guide her as she circled around to flank the floating thing. “That’s all you ever did, Lyza—“
Another faintly-glowing thread snapped out toward Largent, narrowly missing as his superb reflexes spared him contact with the insidious weapon. Lu Bu used the angle of that thread to guess at the floating creature’s position. It looked like it was fifteen feet in the air—roughly halfway between the floor and ceiling—and she remembered what Largent had said about him going ‘high’ and her going ‘low.’
Lu Bu gauged where she thought the thing was and leapt high with her pike poised, easily getting five feet off the ground with a short running start, and the tip of her pike grazed the bottom of one of the grav repulsors keeping it aloft.
A flicker of light above her seemed to suggest she had damaged the anti-grav system, and another flicker of light prompted her to dive head-first into a nearby bulkhead.
The impact of her skull against the metal was almost certainly less painful—and decidedly less lethal—than the crackling thread-like weapon's caress as it passed across the back of her calf.
Initially she felt no pain, but then her calf muscle spasmed and she concluded they were up against some sort of monomolecular whip. Rolling off into cover, she heard Largent fire off another sonic round into the air and this time it impacted against the underside of the floating monstrosity’s chassis.
A howl that sounded equal parts delight and agony issued from their enemy’s throat—or whatever it was that emitted its voice—and Lu Bu blindly leapt out to see if she could sight in on their wounded quarry.
Her goggles seemed to at least temporarily have regained their clarity, and they showed her the floating figure as it careened into a nearby bulkhead—a bulkhead right next to the tank which Largent had told her to drive the blasted thing.
She had a clear line of attack on the monster’s near side, but to take that attack would drive it further away from the tank rather than closer to it. Crossing over to the thing’s far side would open her to an attack by the monomolecular whip, but she knew that if this thing stayed up much longer then it would eventually score a decisive hit with its incredibly deadly weapon.
So she sprinted across the thing’s backside, prompting the multi-tentacled mash-up of meat and metal to lash out with its glowing wire. She narrowly interposed her pike in the filament’s path—which would have decapitated her had she failed to block it—and once again the thing tried to wrest her weapon from her grip.
Then she realized how she could get the thing precisely where Largent wanted it.
She tightened her grip and swung her body as far to the left as she could, making an obvious show of trying to pull her pike free with every ounce of strength she possessed. Naturally, the grav repulsors were far stronger than she was, but she managed to pull herself far enough across the thing’s body during the tug-of-war that she lined it up perfectly with the tank Largent had indicated.
“Silly girl,” the horrifying creature cackled, its lips peeling back in a feral grin which revealed not a throat, but a jumble of wires and crystal wafers where its tongue and teeth should have been, “you can’t win—“
She released her grip on the pike, sending the Demon-blasted thing crashing into the tank some five meters behind it. “Now!” she screamed, rolling toward the nearest cover as she did so.
A horrifying scream—which was neither wholly synthetic or organic, but some abominable fusion of the two—emitted from the tank's vicinity as blue-green pulses of light filled the chamber. The light was so bright she had to clench her eyes shut for a few seconds to let them adjust, and when she re-opened her eyes she saw that the floating tentacle thing had burst into flame—or at least its fleshy bits had—as arcs of electricity tore across both flesh and machine. That electricity was being emitted from the base of the tank which Largent had indicated, and she saw Largent himself stand and heft his massive sonic rifle before stepping toward the still-screaming mutant.
“Now that,” Largent smirked as he hefted the rifle one-handed, “is a sound I could listen to for the rest of my life.”
If it still possessed eyes—or the equivalent of them—Lu Bu could not make them out amid the smoking ruination of its flesh-wrapped torso. But it was clear that this thing had been almost entirely made of metal; even its head had only been wrapped with a thin layer of organic tissue, which was now almost entirely burned away to reveal a downright demonic visage beneath.
“Youuuu-uuu-uuu,” the thing somehow spoke—even managing to sound smug—as it screamed, “ccc-aaaaaaann-nnnn-nnnn’tt-t-tttt ddd-dddd-dd-ooooooo iitttttt-tt-tt, P-P-Perr—“
“Watch me,” Largent deadpanned, firing the massive rifle from the hip and sending an absurdly powerful sonic shock-wave into the miserable thing’s head.
A handful of metal crystalline fragments flew off its ‘skull’ with that first shot, and the three shots that followed tore the rest clean off its neck. Another five shots pulverized its torso into an unrecognizable, flattened sheet of scrap.
“And now for the coup de grace,” he grunted, sending a sidelong glance Lu Bu’s way as he racked another grenade into the chamber one-handed, “you might wanna duck, Princess.”
She did precisely that, and two seconds later a sonic grenade went off after she had reached cover. When she emerged, she saw that the thing had well and truly been obliterated—at least as far as she could see.
She made her way to Largent’s side, only then confirming that his left arm was missing from just above the elbow. She turned and looked at the pile of slag as the electricity finally ceased arcing across it. “You allowed yourself to be disarmed,” she said casually, reaching down and plucking his severed limb from the floor and proffering it to him.
“Ha. Ha. Ha,” he winced, dropping the sonic rifle and producing a syringe filled with a powerful cocktail of coagulants and other chemicals which, combined with his body’s impressive healing capacity, would keep him alive long enough to reattach the limb. “Well, I got mine,” he said after injecting the syringe’s contents into his arm, “now let’s see if we can get you yours—and then let’s send this place down to the bottom.”
“Do you want me to hold this in the meantime?” she asked, waving his arm emphatically.
“Would you?” he deadpanned before breaking out in a grin and shaking his head wryly, “You know what, Girly? You’re all right.”
“My style name is ‘Fengxian’,” she said flatly.
“That may be,” he retorted with that arrogant, insufferably smug smile, “but you’ll always be girly to me.”
“You are aware that I could beat you to death with your own arm right now,” she said matter-of-factly as she stooped to collect her thankfully undamaged pike.
He stopped and seemed to ponder the matter for a moment. “You could,” he agreed as he led her deeper into the dark room, “but you won’t.”
“Why?” she asked irritably. “Because I am too much of a girl?” she asked, miming his voice in the most irritating way she could manage
“Nah,” he shook his head, seeming to ignore her attempted barb, “girls are even more vicious than boys. Precious few of you ever learn the first thing about mercy—not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. The species wouldn’t have gotten where it is today if your sex hadn’t been as cutthroat as it is.”
“Then why would I not beat you to death with your own arm?” she demanded, feeling a growing urge to do precisely that.
“Because, like Fengxian from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you’ve got your own sense of honor,” he replied easily as they came to what could only be their reason for coming to this infernal place. “And that’s dangerous since your code is your own, but it means you’re not about to go beating up on people who are beneath you.”
A House United Page 17