Salvage Merc One: The Daedalus System

by Jake Bible

  I was in the labyrinth. On a quest. This was a trial. I wasn’t Sergeant Joe Laribeau with the Galactic Fleet Marines. I was Salvage Merc One, and I was in some deep crud.

  “Alya!” I shouted as I stood up.

  The air smelled of death, tasted of death. I knew the corpses weren’t real, but I also knew they were completely real. All around me was an authentic illusion of the senseless slaughter I had witnessed, and participated in, years before.

  “Alya!” I shouted again.

  When there was no response, I bent down and picked up my H16, gave my helmet a quick kick since the readings it showed me were terpigcrud anyway, and started walking. The direction didn’t matter. My gut told me that no matter which way I went, I’d end up right where I was supposed to end up.

  I patted at my belt and found a micro-canteen of water. A quick flick of the top and it activated the molecular generator, letting a cold, clear stream of water pour from the mouth for about two seconds. I gulped it down and clipped the canteen back to my belt as I wound through the never-ending carpet of death.

  An hour later, maybe longer, and I had reached a ridge. I steeled myself for what I would see and wasn’t disappointed when I crested the ridge and stared down into a shallow valley filled with dead Marines.

  Of course.

  I looked back over my shoulder at the dead Skrangs then turned back to my dead comrades. Or dead comrade. Just like with the Skrang corpses, the Marines below were all the same person. I didn’t need my helmet to tell me that. I recognized the patch on the battle armor instantly. A bloody skull with crossed carbines.

  I’d put that patch on myself during my second tour.

  The bodies below were me. Every single one of them.

  “Nice,” I muttered as I started down the narrow trail that lay at my feet. “Real nice. Subtle even.”

  I sighed, sick of the games.

  “What is this supposed to represent?” I shouted up at the sky. A black, starless sky. The labyrinth wasn’t even trying. “What in the Eight Million Gods’ names are you trying to tell me? Huh?”

  There was no answer. I didn’t expect one.

  I reached my first corpse and knelt. I yanked off the helmet, confirmed I was staring at my own face, laughed, then stood up and kept walking. I ignored the rest of me that lay there. When you’ve seen one of your own corpse, you’ve seen them all.

  “Alya!” I cried. “Where the fo are you?”

  “Here,” Alya said, suddenly appearing close to my side. She spun about, her H16 up and ready, her eyes taking in the identical bodies. “What the fo?”

  I put a hand on her carbine and lowered it.

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “None of this is real.”

  “I know that, Joe,” she said. “I’ve been stuck in this labyrinth for a long time. It doesn’t mean things can’t hurt you. It may not be real, but it is always very real. Remember the dogs?”

  A flash of fur and teeth raced through my mind. I looked at my H16 then down at my battle armor.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Where’s the sword and shield?”

  “That is the sword and shield,” Alya said and patted her H16. “This is the knife I took off that mutt. We stepped into the next trial and things went from there.”

  “Sure, why not?” I replied. I shook my H16. “I wonder what this thing will become in the next trial.”

  “We have to get there to find out,” Alya said. “But first, we have to finish this one.”

  “Any thoughts on how to do that?” I asked. “So far I’ve experienced a little PTSD, was forced to kill an innocent Ferg, then wandered my way to the valley of the Joe clones. No clue what comes next or how we get through this.”

  I stared at her for a second.

  “Where’d you go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I know I was gone, but honestly, I went from our last position to here without a lag in time. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I have no guess,” I said. “Let’s just keep walking. See what’s on the other side of this valley.”

  We did just that. We walked and walked then finally reached the far ridge, climbed to the top, and both groaned with frustration.

  I looked back over my shoulder, shook my head, faced front again, shook my head some more, then lifted my H16.

  “Fully charged,” I said. “Even though I shot that Ferg. I’m guessing it won’t ever lose its charge. Not until the job is done.”

  The Joe’s that littered the valley in front of us began to rise. They stood on shaky legs and shuffled our direction. A quick look behind, and I could see that the other Joes were doing the same thing.

  “I think the third trial has started,” Alya said. “Let’s get back to back. We fire until we can’t anymore.”

  “Agreed,” I said and we pressed our backs together. She faced the valley we just left, I faced the valley in front. “I do have a question, though. If this is the third trial then what was the second trial?”

  “You realizing this is all crud,” she said.

  “Then what was shooting the Ferg about?” I asked.

  “No clue,” Alya said. “Don’t really care right now. We’ll figure that out later. For now, we shoot. When we’re done shooting then we think.”

  “Works for me,” I said and opened fire.

  Eighteen

  My hunch about the H16 having infinite plasma proved to be right fairly quickly. I sent bolt after bolt down into the valley until well after my H16 should have powered down. But it didn’t. It kept firing with every trigger pull.

  It didn’t even overheat, which H16s were notorious for doing mid-battle if you’d been using it too long. After the fourth or fifth charge magazine, the barrel would start to glow and warnings would blare. Back when I was officially a Marine, not the faux kind I was at that point, I learned to switch to my KL09, or whatever backup weapon I had, until my H16 cooled down, and I could resume sending Skrangs to hell.

  Didn’t have to worry about that at all as I killed myself over and over.

  I figured out fast that body shots were useless. The Joe clones all had armor on just like I did. They also didn’t seem to give a crud if the bolts made it through the armor and put a couple holes in their chests. They took the damage and kept on coming.

  “Headshots!” I called out to Alya.

  “I already figured that out!” she called back to me.

  H16’s aren’t loud weapons, but after close to an hour of constant firing, the whine of the bolts leaving the carbines starts to get to you. It becomes like a bug in your ear, working its way deeper and deeper until it has burrowed all the way into your brain. I tried to shake the feeling loose, but all I did was give myself a worse headache and end up dizzy.

  “Are you making any progress?” I asked.

  “Not much,” Alya said. “There’re too many. And I swear I’m killing the same ones again and again.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked. “They all look like me.”

  “I’m a professional, Joe,” Alya said. “I know what I shoot. Some of them are getting back up even with the headshots.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Maybe the third trial isn’t about mass killing. Maybe it’s something else.”

  “I’m beginning to think so,” she replied. “But what?”

  “Any hints you can give?” I asked. “Any insight into past trials? The labyrinth is a place of quests. I can’t be the only moron that has gotten sucked into this crudhole. What have you seen happen before?”

  “I don’t know,” Alya said.

  I felt her body shift, and I looked over my shoulder at her. She was staring right into my eyes.

  “I have to admit something, Joe,” Alya said. “I’m slowly losing a few of my memories.”

  “A few of your memories? How few?” I asked.

  “Most of them,” she said. “It’s like being around you is keeping me from remembering what I know about the labyrinth.”

  “Ha!” I laughed.
“Of course. Perfect. My guide is forgetting how to guide. Makes total sense. Why shouldn’t it?”

  “Don’t worry, Joe, I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “I’ll fight side by side with you the whole way then help you get out of here. I may be forgetting why, but my gut is saying that’s the right thing to do. When all else fails, trust your gut, right? Right, Joe?”

  “Yeah,” I said and turned back to my valley of Joe clones. “Trust your gut.”

  I lowered my H16, turning it back and forth in my hands. Then I let it fall to the ground.

  “Come on,” I said.

  “What?” Alya asked. “What are you doing? Pick up your carbine, Marine! We’ll be overrun in seconds!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You can’t fight yourself.”

  “I’m not fighting myself, I’m fighting you!” Alya protested.

  “Well, knock it off,” I said. “Fighting me has gotten no one anywhere good. Pretty sure that’s today’s lesson.”

  “I’m not one hundred percent sold on that,” Alya said.

  But she lowered her H16 and started following me down into the second valley. She didn’t drop the carbine, but slung it across her back. She also picked mine back up and handed it to me.

  “You’ll want this,” she said.

  “I told you I’m not fighting myself anymore,” I said, reluctant to grab the H16 from her hands.

  “Maybe not now, sure,” she said. “But you can’t leave your sword behind.”

  “My—Oh, right,” I said, and took the carbine. I slung it around my back and nodded. The strap was fixed. How convenient. “Thanks. I forgot this wasn’t really an H16.”

  “I’m sure the symbolic gesture of dropping it was noted,” she said. “Hopefully.”

  We reached the bottom and the first row of Joe clones. They lunged at us, but I just shoved them aside. A few staggered, most fell, some stopped where they were before I could even touch them.

  Alya stayed close to my side, her hand wrapped around my arm, gripping hard enough that it became a little uncomfortable even with the body armor. It made me chuckle that the woman that had been Naked Snake Lady seemed more wigged out with the trials than I did. This was supposed to be her territory, not mine, yet I was coasting through this part like it was nothing.

  Of course, the truth was she’d been more of prisoner over the years than anything else. So I guess it was reasonable for her to get freaked out a little. Especially if her memories were fading away.

  The Joe clones lost interest in us after a few minutes. One or two would make a play, but a stiff arm to the chest sent them tottering off in a different direction. The majority of Joes seemed bummed that I wasn’t fighting them. They looked at me briefly then hung their heads like I’d just told them the pony rides weren’t going to happen for their birthday party even though Mom had promised they would.

  It got kind of depressing. Even more depressing than shooting the Ferg. That had been a stranger. These were me. Or simulacrums of me.

  “Buck up, man,” I said to a Joe clone that looked about ready to cry when I didn’t put a hole in his head as I approached. “Just be happy to be alive. You got a lot going for you. One day you’ll become Salvage Merc One and have access to an artifact with infinite power.”

  “I wouldn’t say infinite,” Alya said. “No one knows what the artifact’s power really is. The Bosses assume it’s symbiotic, but it could be parasitic and be drawing its power from the host. Which would be you.”

  “You’re about as bad as Mgurn when it comes to bringing the mood down,” I said. “Maybe I should be telling you to buck up.”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  A Joe clone made like he was going to punch me then let his hand fall in defeat without striking a blow. He waved me off, and his shoulders slumped.

  “Dude, chill,” I said. “Remember that time you and Crawford found that lagoon of Nemorians? No aqua tanks between us and those very sexy water nymphs. A lagoon of ladies all set and ready to get it on. Remember that?”

  A smile slowly spread across the Joe clone’s face.

  “Yeah, you remember that,” I said. I looked at another clone. “And you. Remember when you aced that surprise shooting range test? Bullseye with every shot. You’d never done that before.”

  “One of the first times my clarity kicked in,” the clone replied. “It was like I was the plasma bolts, and I just flew yourself right into that target.”

  “Exactly,” I said and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Oh, oh, remember when we got so drunk that we overloaded the personal waste filter in our environmental suit because we couldn’t stop peeing?” another cloned laughed. “Oh, man, the lieutenant was so ticked off! We had latrine duty for two weeks because of that.”

  “Still killed over our quota of Skrangs,” a Joe clone added. “Even with piss sloshing in our boots that day.”

  “How about when Crawford started a fight with those Urvein cubs?” one asked. “We were so high that we didn’t realize they were only kids. I mean, come on, Urveins are huge even when they’re like six years old.”

  “Two of them started crying and fell on the ground in heaps of tears,” a Joe clone said. “The others ran home to get their mother.”

  “Man, we learned you do not mess with a mama Urvein,” a Joe clone snickered. “I’d never seen Crawford run so fast in my life.”

  “That was when I got my first set of battle legs,” I said. “I left him in the dust until one of the servos in the left knee seized up and he had to help me hobble our way back to the base. I spent the last few days of R and R on a table with an annoyed tech jamming a screwdriver in my joint.”

  “He was annoyed because he was supposed to be leaving for R and R and you ruined it for him,” a Joe said. “Classic.”

  “Classic,” another echoed.

  “Classic,” one more said.

  “Classic.”

  “Classic.”

  “Totally classic.”

  “What a Joe move.”

  “Right? Always foing up.”

  “Always.”

  “Just classic.”

  “Always.”

  “Totally.”

  We laughed and chatted the rest of the way through the valley. By the time we reached the other side, the Joe clones were waving goodbye. Even the ones I thought I’d shot and killed. They’d gotten up when they heard the laughing and just couldn’t be left out. I totally get that. Joes hate being left out of a good time.

  “Well, that was fun,” I said as we climbed the side of the valley to reach the top of the next ridge. “It’s good to catch up with yourself once in a while.”

  I looked over at Alya, realizing she’d been quiet through the entire journey. Tears were streaming down her face and she looked away from me fast.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” I asked, taking her by the chin and turning her back to face me. “What did I say? Was it the story of the lieutenant’s butt plug and the gump we fed all those chilies too? I know that sounded cruel, but he had a good laugh once he was able to sit down again. The lieutenant. Not sure what happened to the gump.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said. “No. It is that. All of that. Every story you told reminded me that I can’t remember my days before being Salvage Merc One. I barely remember my days as Salvage Merc One. It’s like the memories are slipping away the further we venture into the labyrinth. They’re just leaving my head. I tried to think of my own good times, but all I can recall is being here. Waiting at the entrance of the labyrinth for suckers and idiots to show up.”

  “Hey, I’m one of those idiots,” I said.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “You don’t define yourself by being Salvage Merc One. You’re still Joe Laribeau in there. I can’t remember ever being Alya Horne.”

  She stopped suddenly and almost pulled me over since her hand was still gripped like a vice to my arm.

  “What?” I asked. I look
ed around fast. “You hear something? Do we need the carbines now?”

  We’d reached the top of the ridge and all I saw was an empty valley before us. No Joe clones. No dead Skrangs. No threats at all.

  “I can’t remember my birthday,” Alya stated. “It’s a blank spot in my head. I’m trying to come at it with association, but I can’t. Nothing leads me to that memory.”

  “It’s the labyrinth foing with you,” I said. “It’s trying to trip you up because you’re helping me. That’s all.”

  “That’s not all,” she said quietly then patted my arm. “But thank you for trying to help. That was nice.”

  I lifted my arms to the sky and closed my eyes. “I’m ready!” I called out.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, a little alarmed.

  “Someone called me nice,” I said. “It’s been a long time since anyone has used that word to describe me. I’ve been an ass for like ever. Even before the whole changing into a Minotaur thing. I assumed I’d passed the trials and the quest was over.”

  I let my arms fall.

  “Not gonna be that easy, is it?” I asked and smiled.

  “No, Joe, not that easy,” Alya replied. “But it might be progress. Look.”

  She pointed down into the valley. The valley that had been empty just a moment before, but now had a small house sitting in the center of it. It was a log cabin type thing. A fire was going inside. Easy to tell with the slight bit of white smoke that puffed out of the stone chimney.

  “Let’s see who’s home,” I said. “Or would that be a bad idea?”

  “I think it’s the only idea we have,” Alya said. “Let’s go.”

  Nineteen

  I knocked on the door and waited. I could hear someone moving around inside. I didn’t think they were alone, either. It sounded like a low conversation was going on.

  “Hello?” I called as I knocked again. “Anyone home?”

  “We know they’re home, Joe,” Alya said. “We can hear them.”