Aliens Omnibus 4

by Yvonne Navarro

  “Yes, sir. All systems operative, IVs primed and ready.”

  “Good! Remember, son—if Max don’t fire we’re all down the pan; get him mobile.” Pop sounded uncharacteristically friendly in a bluff and overhearty manner. Ellis was surprised for a few seconds until he got it; all part of the show for Sturges. A fine and encouraging leader, Pop Izzard, as long as the Company was present.

  He took a deep breath and stood up, trying to forget that he was being watched. It wasn’t easy; as he stepped into the cold white room where Max lay sleeping, he could hear Pop and Sturges over the open ’com.

  “Is that the robot?”

  “Berserker,” said Pop. “Mobile Assault Exo-Warrior, more commonly known as a Max. Human intelligence locked into almost ten metric tons of heavily armed and armored exoskeleton.”

  There was a silence as Sturges probably digested what Pop had said; sometimes it took a minute for those that weren’t up on anti-XT technology.

  Ellis walked to the table and hit the hydraulics, the massive pistons hissing and thrumming to life. The slab slowly raised the Max into an incline, reinforced beams sliding into place to support the massive upper body. The Berserker’s giant legs were locked, its “feet” resting against welded block steel to prevent slippage. Heavy treads lowered from beneath the table and thunked to the floor.

  For just a second, Ellis could see Max as he’d first seen it, back in the program—when the tech had sat it up, Ellis had been struck by how much it looked like a child’s toy, a child’s imagination of the ultimate he-man monster. Massive arms, the left tipped with a revolving liquid-propulsion grenade launcher and pulse rifle, the right a tricapacity M210 flamethrower; its neckless head was almost insectile, twin full-scan sensors set into the deeply hollowed eye socks like a wasp’s eyes. Three meters high and nearly a meter across at its widest, its plated upper torso was swollen with banks of synth and medical equipment, giving it the appearance of huge pectorals. The primary color was a dull burnt orange, pocked with the slight hue changes of a million surface repair jobs. It had looked like one of those toys he’d had as a kid that could turn from a robot into a dump truck and then back again.

  Except Max only sleeps or kills…

  Sturges’s voice was a stage whisper over the ’com. “There’s a man in there?”

  “Used to be. Don’t know what you’d call him now.” Pop sounded amused. “Only complete antisocials volunteer for Max.”

  Ellis mused that over as he lifted the cabled control box that would lead Max’s “bed” to the APC; he’d given a lot of thought to who the Max really was in his first few weeks, who this Max was. Company techs assembled and sealed the Berserkers at private corporate labs, carefully guarding their trade secrets. Even Ellis had been trained only to run Max, not to jeopardize the integrity of the suit unless in an extreme emergency; he’d never know the person that lived inside, seated in the lower belly like a fetus.

  The training program had barely touched on the volunteers, stating only that they were predatory criminals convicted on multiple violent offenses, life plus. Doing a Max meant they’d get a chance for transfer to a lighter security institution, better facilities, something like that— provided that a panel of psychiatrists agreed they had rehabilitated themselves somewhere along the way. Ellis wondered how the felons managed to accomplish this; there was no contact between the human volunteer and the outside world, his or her only expressions through computer reads and sensor pickup and body chemistry.

  He flipped a row of switches and followed along as the Max moved heavily out of the lab and into the hall. It was a he, Ellis knew that from the medical reads. They also told him that the volunteer was in his mid-thirties, weighed barely forty-eight kilos, had blood type A pos—a long list of chemical and bio and robotics reads that told him nothing about the who it—who he was. The closest thing to personal history (at least that Ellis had access to) was that he had performed in nine missions and was slated for three more before an overhaul.

  He stopped Max in front of the lock to the boarding area, where the APC and the ground team waited. He heard Pop’s voice echoing through the large chamber, explaining the Berserker to Sturges as they surely watched he and Max over the monitors.

  “…carries its own IV banks, and we use sedatives to maintain him in a dreamless coma state until required— then bring him up to fighting speed with doses of synthetic adrenaline. When that kicks in, anything—anything between him and his target will be annihilated.”

  Ellis could hear the pride in the commander’s voice as he opened the first door to the lock and maneuvered Max into the inactive pressure chamber, pressing the directional pad. Pop acted like he personally was responsible for Max’s behavior.

  “That doesn’t seem—to keep a man in that condition—” Sturges sounded sickened.

  “They’re volunteers, remember? And a necessary precaution, believe me. The man in there is interfaced with the Max to kill. If you’ve seen a Berserker go critical—you don’t want that to happen when you’re around.”

  Lara’s voice broke in. “Switching to remote monitors.”

  They’d be getting pictures from the team now, focused on their tasks as they readied the APC and themselves for combat. Ellis took a deep breath as the second lock clicked open; his first mission, his work that these men would depend on…

  “Yo, Ellis!” Martin Jess started over to him, smile white against his dark brown skin. Jess would load the Max into the armored vehicle and take him into Deep 4 while Ellis ran the IVs from Nemesis.

  Jess called out to the other two, still smiling. “Looks like we got a complete team, boys! No getting out of it now!”

  Pulaski swaggered over and nodded at Ellis, his massive build dwarfed by the Max’s. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a half-eaten candy bar, offering it to Ellis. Ellis smiled and shook his head.

  “Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to get too psyched and push the wrong button.”

  Pulaski guffawed and slapped a meaty hand across Ellis’s thin shoulders. “Yeah, I hear that! Good that you’re thinkin’, right? Kick some ass there, new boy!”

  He laughed again as Teape joined them, looping a cable into neat coils over one arm.

  “So it’s ready?” Teape was pale but seemed calm, together.

  “Hundred percent,” said Ellis. He met Teape’s dark gaze with his own, expression serious and (he hoped) confident. “He’s ready and so am I.”

  Teape nodded, then smiled lopsidedly. “I guess if you’re not I’ll have to come back and haunt you or something.”

  Ellis smiled back hesitantly, surprised that Teape could joke about it. There was silence for a few seconds, and Ellis could suddenly feel the high tension that suffused the huge room.

  Jess apparently felt it, too. “All right, get back to it, grunts.”

  “Grunt this,” smirked Pulaski, grabbing at his crotch. Teape laughed, a high and reedy sound, but both men turned back to their work, the APC already poised atop the wide ramp.

  Jess took the cabled box from Ellis gently. “I got it from here, Ellis. You jus’ stay cool, all right?”

  Ellis nodded. As he turned to leave the bay, his heart thumped gladly in shared excitement and a feeling that he belonged here; the men had included him as one of their own, accepted him as a vital member of their team. He didn’t know what their crimes had been, but he’d gotten used to their big talk and stupid jokes—and he believed that they were brave and decent men beneath their rough exteriors, not the low-life felons he’d expected.

  Ellis stepped into the lock and exhaled sharply, ready to do his job. It felt good to be a part of something. He wouldn’t let them down.

  * * *

  Lara lowered the main cargo bay ramp and watched on remote as the APC lurched clunkily into action, then smoothed out and left the Nemesis behind in a churn of dust. The flat plains of Traon spun into view, the transport headed for the infested mine’s covered entrance several hundred meters away.


  They were in ops, Pop sitting behind her at his own console. Sturges was just outside the door, talking softly into a Deep 4 remote. Although she couldn’t hear the words, the sounds were hurried and anxious; he’d be sending the remaining techs to safe areas, trying to secure his crumbling operation. Lara felt sorry for him but had learned to keep a distance from the targeted colonies she’d been to; this job took enough of a toll as it was.

  “ETA one minute thirty,” said Lara.

  “You ready down there, Ellis?” Pop’s voice seemed overly loud in the small space.

  “Yes, sir,” He sounded nervous.

  Lara looked up at the lab monitor and saw only a still face, Ellis’s attention concentrated on his reads and stats. Good; as long as he stayed focused, there’d be no problem. She’d run Max on the Nemesis’s previous missions, and three of her first five runs with the Strike’s team; it wasn’t hard, but there were a lot of details to see to.

  The Company had decided to add synthetics-tech specialists to their Berserker teams a few months back, and Ellis was their first assigned. The stated reason for the addition was to keep Max in prime operating condition at all times, but Lara wasn’t so sure. A rumor had been circulating through the stations that a Berserker had wiped out a crew somewhere due to mismanagement.

  By the slight movement of his cam, Pulaski was chewing on another candy bar and watching as Teape put on his additionals. All of the men wore acid-resistant plate over high-degree reflection undershirts and leggings, but Teape also had a full mask and hood, now pooled around his neck. He’d pull it up when they hit contact. Teape’s helmet was beside him on the bench, the screen showing a fixed shot of the weapons rack and part of Pulaski’s beefy arm.

  Jess’s voice came in clear and smooth as his remote showed the shaft entrance just ahead. The APC’s cam gave a wider-angle picture; it looked like a giant steel plate laid into Traon’s surface, dotted with long, low storage units and flexed piping. Deserted and cold in the meager afternoon light.

  “Getting pictures back there, Nemesis? Uh, over.”

  “Affirmative, Jess. The equipment ramp’s at…” She translated the reads in front of her quickly “…ten o’clock. Oh, and check your screen for layout—looks like no door-to-door, over.”

  “Copy that. Oh, over.”

  Lara smiled. Jess had been a marine years before but had been discharged for general inability to follow procedure; that, and beating up an officer.

  “Something funny?” Pop laid one warm hand on her shoulder, his voice soft and friendly. Sturges was still outside the small room.

  Lara felt a momentary confusion; she’d made it clear only a few days ago that she wasn’t interested in continuing their… affair, for lack of a better word. A few nights in his cabin, a few in hers—technically very satisfying, but ultimately not a relationship she wanted to keep. Eric was a lot less satisfying when it came to things like communication, but she thought he had accepted it well…

  “Oh. No. Something Jess said.” Lara wondered if she should tell him to remove his hand, then decided against it. She didn’t want to blow things out of proportion or get into a debate, not with a mission running.

  Sturges finally finished his call and walked back into the room, solving the problem for her—for now, at least. Pop went back to his station and picked up his headset.

  Lara adjusted her own and checked stats from the ground team. Teape’s heart rate was already up, as was Pulaski’s. Jess was usually the coolest of the three, still in the eighties as he stopped the APC on top of shaft One’s heavy-equipment ramp. The ramp bottomed right at the massive blast barrier, not enough room to turn the APC around without opening the door first; they’d have to take Max in from where they were.

  Pop walked back over to watch at her console; the monitors were bigger. Sturges joined him.

  The ground team was in fine form, Jess quickly unloading Max and Teape leading the small but sturdy cart that carried the fail-safe; they moved down the ramp, Pulaski jogging ahead to find the manual barrier lock.

  “Got us a bughunt,” he said under his breath, then cackled to himself, seeming to forget that his helmet picked up everything; the Candyman was not the brightest of volunteers Lara had run across. He found the lock, a heavy wheel set into plasticrete to one side of the plated doors.

  Jess and Teape moved toward the door, rifles drawn. At a signal from Jess, Pulaski turned the manual. The thick metal shield split into two interlocking panels and slid apart, opening into darkness.

  Leaving Max and the nuclear device behind for the moment, the team slipped inside, one at a time.

  5

  Jess took low and inside, Teape right behind him with the motion sensor activated. A few tight seconds, and Teape visibly relaxed.

  “Nothing. Deadville.” His tense voice echoed hollowly in the open space.

  The Candyman walked in and scowled, lowering his rifle. “Figures.”

  Jess took a few steps in, turning his head slowly from left to right to give ops a clear picture. Traon’s dim light cast their long shadows across the bare lift floor, an elevator room surrounded by steel mesh perhaps nine meters by ten; the surface hoist, according to Sturges, built to carry hundreds of tons of mining equipment to the levels beneath. There were catwalks and ladders on either side and several panels of buttons and softly banking lights. It smelled faintly of dirt and grease and work, as it should; the bugs hadn’t made it up this far yet.

  Jess motioned for the other two to bring in Max and the nuke, then walked to one of the steel gratings. “We’re in the shaft head, free and clear, no sign of alien activity. Goin’ on down. Over.”

  Lara’s voice was cool and calm in his ear. “Drop a relay, over.”

  Jess pulled a transmission relay out of his belt pack and held it against one of the barrier’s panels, tapping the magnetic activation. The relay locked tightly to the panel with a barely audible hum. A simple enough device, it still always made Jess feel like he was in an old sci-fi vid; when he was a kid, they’d used glue.

  “Check relay,” said Jess.

  Teape cleared his throat. “Check relay.”

  “Check!” Pulaski’s voice boomed through the hoist. He laughed at the echoes of himself, high on where they were headed; the Man definitely had a hard-on for killin’, no two ways about it.

  “Reading you loud and clear—”

  Pop’s gruff voice cut in. “Sturges says that we only got emergency lights down under. Break out the torches and let’s watch our asses, over.”

  “Copy that, over.”

  The three of them widened weapon-scope beams and activated their shoulder lamps. Jess studied the control panel in the bright light, frowning slightly. “CYA”; thanks, Pop. Jess supposed that Pop just wanted to feel involved, but sometimes he treated the team like they were dumbass kids. It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it—a kind of, “We’re all in this together, men” tone that Jess didn’t dig. What was all this “we” shit? Pop’s ass didn’t need covering, he wasn’t the one down here in the dark…

  The second set of switches were the ones that would seal the barrier and lower their hoist. Jess briefly checked his team over, making sure they were in good shape. Pulaski stood by the back mesh wall where the shadows were deepest, fingers tapping against his slung M41. He looked stem and watchful, almost appearing angry in his intensity.

  “You cool there, Candyman?”

  Pulaski nodded once; his broad face radiated impatience, but he would hold. Jess knew from experience that the big man could jump the gun if he wasn’t reminded to keep cool; once he’d blown up most of a boiler system in a clear zone because it had hissed at him—not because he was scared, but because it pissed him off.

  “Teape?” Jess was more worried about their baiter. He stood stiffly beside the inert mass of Max, scruffy face drawn and pasty in reflected light.

  “Yeah, okay.” Teape didn’t sound happy, but he looked straight at Jess as he spoke, a good sign
. In the brief prisoner’s H/K leadership program Jess had taken, they’d told him to watch for certain signals; inability to make eye contact was a red flag.

  Jess checked himself over as he reached for the controls that would take them down to the halfway point. He felt alert and cool, tensions laid back for another time; he’d always been able to do that, even back in the bad ol’ days— grace in the heat, keeping his shit tight in times of battle. His eyes, head, and muscles were in tune with each other and ready to move, to lead the boys into the fray.

  “Brace up, then,” he said lightly, and pushed the button.

  * * *

  God, they were cool; sitting alone at his console, Ellis was breathing deeply, palms moist and pulse racing. The lift jerked and then lowered the team into the darkness, the dull grind of the hoist’s gears the only sound in the small lab.

  He watched on a flat video screen that folded up from the console, a cheap setup that didn’t do justice to the clarity of Max’s camera. The adjustable infra wide-angle on the Berserker’s chest showed the team in sharp detail, in spite of the Company cutbacks. This screen would also give the sensory reads when Max was awake. The rear cam would activate on first dosage as well, although the Max slept soundly for now—Ellis wouldn’t cut off sedation until the nest had been infiltrated.

  He nervously wiped his hands on his shirt as he stared unblinking at the picture. Jess moved out of view and Ellis adjusted the lens with his thumb, rotating the small sensphere to widen the shot.

  The three men paced the meshed cage, their rifles’ lights aimed out and down; the shaft’s pipes and walls slid past them in circles of dusty brightness, sharp against the progressive darkness. Ellis tried to imagine what it was like to be there— the cold air, the deepening shadows; the knowledge that just below were perhaps dozens of alien drones, their glistening bodies hidden in corners and waiting to attack…

  As they neared the bottom, Teape’s beam flashed across a stain of some kind, then jerked back to illuminate it. A dark, weblike rope of something, strung against a pipe—