When they found the first bodies, it was a blessing and a curse. Curse, because they were people wrapped up by the Ezeroc, feeding pipes extending from their mouths, disappearing under the water’s surface. Blessing, because Ebony stopped talking for about three seconds, which left Kohl with some space inside his head for a stray thought.
Instead of one thought, he got two.
The first was, There’s a lot of people here. More than I’d expect for the station being overrun from the top down. More like bottom up.
Chasing that was the less comfortable second thought, which was, The roaches have been playing us. He didn’t know what they were playing or why, but they’d made it seem like they were taking the station from the top rather than the bottom. Clever, as it let ‘em do some kind of pincer, or sandwich, or other metaphorical action Kohl was too tired to come up with.
“This is horrible,” said Ebony.
And so it starts again. “Yeah, kinda,” agreed Kohl. “You never seen this before? I mean, I guess not. Not too many folks have and lived to tell.”
“You’ve … seen this before?” Her eyes were wide in the gloom, wet hair plastered against her head. “They’re monsters.”
“Kinda, sure,” said Kohl. “I mean, they’re not dragons or whatever, but dragons ain’t real. The roaches are as real as ceramicrete and radiation.”
Ebony leaned forward, a hand reaching for one of the feeding tubes extended from a man’s body. Water lapped up his chest. Kohl reached an armored hand out, stopping her. “You don’t want to do that,” he said.
“We’ve got to help them.”
“We’re helping ‘em,” said Kohl. “Only, not that way. It’ll kill him for sure. Need to find the Queen first.” Right on cue, a hissing came from further down in the darkness. Ebony spun, water sloshing around her legs. “Outstanding,” said Kohl. “Let’s go.”
He pushed off through the water, small pieces of debris stirred in his wake. Below the surface, Ezeroc eggs shone where the lamplight caught them. Kohl took special care to stomp on as many as he could as they walked, his armor making satisfying crunches as the boots impacted below the surface. In his wake, an Ezeroc stew simmered, pieces of dead larvae floating to the surface.
“What I don’t understand is how they can use us so effectively,” said Ebony.
“Ain’t nothing personal,” said Kohl. “They’ve wiped out about a million other species.”
“They have?”
“Sure,” said Kohl. He paused, squinting into the gloom. He thought he’d seen movement, but it must have been his imagination. “Went to their homeworld. Thousands of ships in orbit, just drifting. Past civilizations, all wiped out. Like spiders, in the center of a big web of stars.” Kohl was proud of that metaphor. “Space junk, all of it, but evidence of a series of fights no one won. Not until us. Ebony?” He swiveled to found Ebony missing. “Huh,” he said. “That’ll be why she wasn’t talking for once.”
He turned in the corridor, liquid lapping at his armor. Further down was Roach HQ, but back the way he came, Ebony was being cocooned or some such bullshit. He figured it was just her time. Kohl had warned her. Taken the time to point out the risks, made sure she knew what was going on.
But then he’d given her his second favorite backup weapon. “Fuckit,” said Kohl, and turned back the way he’d come. He slipped his helmet closed, pulling up the HUD. He’d left it off until now, as it would have made speaking to Ebony difficult. Kohl took a small moment to consider how the last twenty minutes would have been more peaceful, then shrugged. Bygones. The visor fogged up, then cleared as the armor circulated air. Great. Now you’re cold. Whatever. He got the armor to pull up an environment map. An overlay of his position on the HUD’s automap showed there was just one path forward, one path back. Ebony, unless she turned into air, should have been here. Or pieces of her, anyway.
Kohl wondered for a moment what would have shut her up. Death, for sure. He looked at the water lapping at his feet. “Motherfucker,” he said. The roaches must have dragged her under. Kohl stamped on the decking, looking for a hatch, an escape vent, anything. He didn’t find one, but about five seconds later, Ezeroc erupted from the water around him. He turned one into spare atoms and water vapor with his plasma cannon, but the other three toppled him backward into the water.
Kohl went down with a splash, water sluicing over him, fouling his vision. The floor shifted below him, and he was dragged down, down, into water deep and dark.
• • •
This wasn’t as bad as it could be. Thing was, Kohl would eventually find where the roaches were holed up, and this way, they were carrying him. They dragged him through a cavernous space filled with water. Kohl, not unfamiliar with starship design, figured this for a cargo hold, then refactored that as red and green lights blinked into view. He glimpsed the trefoil ionizing radiation symbol, red and black, as the roaches dragged him further into the depths.
Unless labeling had changed a whole bunch over the years, he’d just been dragged past a reactor. You put those in Engineering. Perfect. It meant he was in the right place.
The Ezeroc continued to tow him along, oblivious as to what was about to happen to them. The entire trip felt fast, only forty-five seconds passing before they pulled him through an airlock, cycling it. Water drained away, leaving Kohl inside the lock with three Ezeroc drones, chittering in the gloom. He reached out, grabbing one, and tore its forelimbs off with the strength of his power armor. Another lunged at him, and he let it, using the bayonet mounted on his arm, driving it through the center of the creature. The third Ezeroc reared up, forelimbs ready to strike, which was about all the time Kohl’s armor needed to put his plasma cannon in his hands. He fired, spraying the interior of the airlock with pieces of dead roach.
Kohl let the cannon go, the armor racking it on his back again, then he went around stamping on the Ezeroc corpses. Never hurt to be sure.
His armor’s HUD said the air in the lock was breathable, which was a special bonus. It didn’t make Kohl feel like dragging his visor down, but it suggested if Ebony was here, she’d be breathing. Maybe. If she didn’t drown on the way. Her armor looked about as good as wearing tissue paper as far as swimming went. If Ebony was dead? Kohl would carve a few trophies on her behalf.
Hell. He’d carve a few trophies regardless.
Water. What’s special about water?
The fucking roaches had worked out how to use human airlocks. They’d flooded an entire Engineering compartment as a what, some kind of fucking moat, and then created a human battery location in a dry area. That was some next level thinking based on his last encounter with them. On their own homeworld, there was sand as far as the eye could see. On Earth, or on Earth’s moon, they’d burrowed into rock. No airlocks. So, Kohl was dealing with some leveled-up motherfuckers here.
What if they’d worked out how to use plasma weapons? Sure, they could use those when piloting a human, but in drone form, they’d tended towards stabbing.
Fucking fuck.
Kohl clanked to the inner airlock door, pausing before opening it. Best solution for the enemy using plasma weapons was a plasma weapon of your own. He triggered his armor’s mount, the cannon unracking itself. He closed armored hands on the grips, all charge lights in the green, and smiled. Using his elbow, he triggered the inner airlock controls.
It slid wide, streams of trailing water like a brief waterfall across the opening. Through the doorway was a dry area, just another Engineering compartment like the last one, but without all the water. There were people strewn around the interior, all with their heads lolling, feeding tubes exiting their mouths. He followed the general flow of feeding lines as they wound across the floor, under racks, around cabinets, and over the top of reactors. Toward the back of the chamber.
Be a Queen back there. Fun times.
No movement. Not a scuttle of shadowy figures. No roaches ready to pounce. Just humans, looking pretty much fucked, and feeding tubes. He set his armor
to look for targets anyway, because nothing said you do not know with whom you fuck like a plasma cannon with a firing solution locked and loaded. The armor chirped, then combed the area with green laser light. A 3D environmental map built in the corner of his HUD, showing the size and shape of the room. It highlighted dots — many, many dots — where it found what it thought were people. The armor was a little confused, no doubt on account of the trailing feeding tubes, but whatever, it was a start.
Now, where the hell was Ebony?
He walked past a bunch of people, deeper into Engineering, sometimes ducking under support beams, or stepping over fallen equipment. His armor continued to paint the room around him with green, clanking as he walked deeper into Engineering.
“Yo. Ebony,” said Kohl. His armor’s speakers played his voice into the chamber, the noise swallowed by the size of the place, or soaked up by the feeding tubes. That shit just couldn’t be allowed to ride, so Kohl cranked up the volume. “YO. EBONY.”
Kohl paused, waiting. His armor thought it heard something from over there, so he swiveled, crunched through a discarded piece of chitin, and went towards the noise. After three steps, he turned back.
Discarded piece of chitin.
That was unusual. He bent over, picking it up. It looked like a standard bit of Ezeroc armor plating. He turned it over in his hands, checking it out. No crisping. No holes. Nothing that suggested it was removed against the Ezeroc’s will. It was just lying here, like it was waiting for Kohl to find it.
He sighed, keying his comm. “Hope?”
Nothing but static answered him. Figures. He sniffed, thinking. Discarded chitin meant something, he was sure of it. He walked a couple paces in a different direction, finding another few pieces of chitin, and a broken tube that looked like it might have been from a leg. It was translucent, his armor’s lights shining through. What kind of creature got rid of its own skin? Hell, these things looked like they came from a normal drone. Kohl could almost imagine it, this piece a section of the abdominal plating, that piece a part of a leg. Over there, a stabbing claw sheath. All about the size he’d expect for a typical drone, except … no drone.
“Fuck it,” he said, and turned back to where his armor said the noise had come from. He had the sonic pickups on now, the sensitivity tuned down so it wouldn’t tell him about all the heartbeats. The armor said there was movement from that direction, in a non-specific way that made Kohl nervous. He didn’t like being nervous.
Rounding the side of a reactor, Kohl saw Ebony on the ground. Above her, two Ezeroc loomed. They were big. Not the crab ones, which were a huge pain in the ass, but standard drones. Except these ones were supersized, maybe four meters from deck to the tops of their ugly-ass faces. Or heads. Or whatever they called the horror story on the top. Ebony looked in good condition, no obvious holes, but her face was pale, hair wet. She wasn’t carrying his second favorite blaster anymore, which was a shame, and she’d lost her helmet somewhere in the swim to get here.
On the ground was an Ezeroc feeding tube, except it wasn’t stuck in a human. It had tendrils at the end, and those were dragging it towards Ebony. Her eyes were wide with shock, which in Kohl’s experience seemed a blessing at a time like this, because having an alien sucking tube walk its own way down your throat wasn’t a thing you wanted to be fully aware of.
The two massive Ezeroc drones turned toward Kohl. His armor continued to paint them with light, trying to work out what the hell was going on. “SO,” said Kohl, voice still amplified by the armor. “YOU FUCKERS COME HERE OFTEN?”
They hissed, lunging for him.
In the normal order of events, Kohl would have opened fire on them, but that feeding tube thing was getting real close to Ebony. He pointed his cannon at the tube, opening fire. It blew to pieces, solving a problem for Ebony, but leaving two problems, in the form of massive Ezeroc, for Kohl. The first of the Ezeroc was on him, a swing from its large front claws slamming into his armor. Kohl saw the ceiling of the room and the floor repeated in rapid succession, ceiling-floor-ceiling-floor, as he spun through the air. His armor clanged against a wall, whining in complaint as he fell sideways to the ground. His ears were ringing, but in Kohl’s view, that just meant he was still alive.
Kohl pushed himself to his feet, raising his weapon, and got just far enough as pointing it towards the Ezeroc as one of the fuckers reached him, slamming into him again. He spun across the Engineering compartment, this time hitting high against the wall, a longer three-meter drop to the deck awaiting the patient return of gravity. Return it did, and he slammed into the ground. Kohl thought he might have said motherfucker but he wasn’t sure, on account of his ears ringing louder. Also, he didn’t feel very connected to the rest of him. It felt like the time he’d been in a fight with Big Tony Trombone. Kohl had caught a punch to the side of his head, right next to his ear. It didn’t really hurt, not like you’d expect based on how he’d been knocked clear off his feet, but Kohl remembered an impression of raw sound and pressure.
Being knocked around this Engineering compartment by two Ezeroc with a hacky sack was like that fight with Big Tony Trombone.
He’d beat Tony by kicking the man in the balls, which was a dick move, but felt like the natural response. Ezeroc drones, near as Kohl knew, didn’t have balls. It left him low on solutions to his predicament.
One drone made it to him as he got to his feet, this time stabbing down with its forelimbs. Going in for the kill, or whatever they did. Kohl didn’t feel like having more Ezeroc larvae injected in him, and his body went into autopilot, ducking sideways. There was a screech as claws scudded off the surface of his armor, metal shavings curling away like potato skins under a peeler. Kohl was knocked backward a few steps, his plasma cannon leaving his hands for a few moments.
In his HUD, text was blinking. TARGETING SOLUTION ONLINE.
About damn time.
The armor brought the plasma cannon back to his waiting hands, and Kohl pressed the trigger. He let the armor do most of the work, the mounts shifting the cannon as it played plasma over the surface of the monster-sized Ezeroc in front of it. Fragments of chitin blew off, the insect staggering back under the fusillade of fire. The armor had highlighted what it figured as weak points, things like joints or where plates overlapped. Kohl followed the armor’s advice, the plasma cannon worrying away one stabbing limb, then another, both falling to the deck.
The second Ezeroc ran at Kohl from the side, but Kohl figured he knew this music by now. He lumbered out of the way, then swiveled, following the Ezeroc with a line of plasma fire to its back. It keened as shots found a sensitive section on its rear, the top half blowing away from its main body section. Its legs drummed against the deck as it died. Kohl turned back to the first one, which was trying to get upright, sections of it glowing and smoking, fire coming from the sockets where its stabbing claws used to sit. He held the trigger on his plasma cannon down until he blew the top of its body away, fire and burnt roach trailing off into Engineering.
The roaches had trampled a bunch of the people attached to feeding tubes, but Kohl couldn’t do anything about that. He wasn’t sure he could do anything about much except getting Ebony on her feet, and then getting back up top.
Wait. There was a mission, wasn’t there? Kohl slammed an armored hand against the side of his helmet. Clang, clang. Right, that’s it. Switch the thing? Or connect the thing? Something like that. Maybe Ebony would know.
Kohl took a couple steps back in her direction, his armor whining more than normal. A few errors came up on his HUD, something about damaged actuators, which might be serious, but nothing to be done now. He was unsteady as he walked, listing like a boat caught in a squall.
When Kohl found Ebony, she was just where he’d left her. Same expression on her face, which is to say, not much going on upstairs. He realized he was still holding his cannon, so he let it rack itself. It tried to slide behind him, then jammed on its rails. Whatever. He let it dangle to his side while he slid h
is visor open. Kohl crouched down in front of Ebony. “Hey. Ebony.”
No response.
“Where’d you drop my blaster?”
No response.
You’d figure for a person who spent so much time talking, getting some kind of answer would be easier, but no. Kohl turned his armor’s power assist off, then gave her a slap upside the head. That got a response, her eyes focusing on him. “They’re here!” she said.
“Yep,” said Kohl. “Or, I guess, they were.”
“Huge!”
“Yep,” said Kohl, again. “Never seen ‘em that size before. I mean, I guess it makes sense. They start real small. I’d assumed they used the crabs for bigger work.”
“Crabs?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Kohl. “Say. You seen any roaches using plasma weapons?”
“What?” said Ebony.
“It’s just, they seem to be getting smarter,” said Kohl. “Using our shit against us. I dunno. I figure if we see ‘em using plasma weapons we best run.”
“Okay,” said Ebony. After a moment, she said, “Why aren’t we running now?”
“Oh,” said Kohl. “Still got a job to do.”
“Turn the Endless Drives back on.”
“Or connect ‘em,” said Kohl. “I think we need to connect ‘em. But first, we need to flush the rest of Engineering.”
Ebony shuddered. “The water. I thought I would die.”
“I thought you would die too,” said Kohl. He frowned. Hope’d say you need to be more sensitive. Sensitive. Got it. “Look. You need another gun?”
“I need to get the fuck out of here!” Ebony screamed.
“Got it,” said Kohl. He pushed himself to his feet, looking around for a console. Some lights blinked further back in Engineering. “Wait here. I’ll go see if I can press a button or something.” Kohl walked off, armor wheezing as he moved, the plasma cannon trailing off his side like an extra arm. Damn uncomfortable to have it there, but not having it and encountering more roaches would be even less comfortable, so he let it be.
Tyche's Demons: A Space Opera Military Science Fiction Epic (Ezeroc Wars: Tyche's Progeny Book 1) Page 23