Eventually we came to a single-line tunnel, on which sat a small flatbed rail car, the kind used when a couple of service people need to travel with only light equipment. “We have a distance yet to go,” explained Ultrius. “This should be more comfortable than walking. Hop on!”
We clambered onto the old railcar and Ultrius caused it to move down the track at a modest pace, presumably through an act of will. This particular tunnel must have been for maintenance only. It was barely wide enough for the one car, and riding on it you did not dare to stand up straight or you would have hit your head on the ceiling. The walls of this tunnel were relatively boring, other than the occasional rusty set of electrical conduits bolted into the bare concrete walls. There were neither side passages nor stations.
After about two hours – and I estimated that we had travelled perhaps 100 kilometers – the rail line came to a dead end. We all climbed off the car.
“This is as far as I have dared to scout alone,” said Ultrius. “I can sense a great deal of organized activity farther on, but I cannot categorize it. If you will?”
Ultrius walks through a low arch, and we all follow him. At first it’s just the usual dirty stone and concrete corridors, but then the style of the tunnel changes. There are oddly curved arches, walls with tiles like the scales of a snake, branching cables draped around poles in ways that are disturbing for reasons that are hard to put a finger on. I’m getting a funny feeling about this, but keep my suspicions to myself.
We come to a circular door made of a green metal that appears oddly slick. There are no obvious handles or opening controls.
“Allow me,” says Scarlatti.
Ultrius starts to say “No, wait…” but before he could complete the sentence, Scarlatti had smashed the door down with his bare hands. Ultrius and Erebus are unaffected by the concussion, and my own audio sensors engage their auto-dampers, but Silhouette and Bisley cover their ears in pain.
“Do you think that you could possibly have made more noise?” asks Ultrius.
“I’m not sure,” says Scarlatti. “Should I have?”
The other side of the door opens onto a wide circular cavern, perhaps 50 meters across and the ceiling rises to nearly 25 meters in the center. It takes us all a while to register what is going on here.
The cavern is full of pipes and vats and cylinders of an odd style. These are attended by some form of worker drone that are vertical transparent cylinders about one-and-a half meters tall and 30 cm in diameter. Inside the cylinders are organic-looking things that could be brains fused with tree roots floating in liquid. The cylinders each ride on a small chassis with four wheels, and a variety of light manipulator arms stick out from the junction of the cylinder with the chassis. I’ve seen this style of drone before, back when I had been captured by the alien species we refer to as the Yllg, although this model appears to be smaller and unarmed. The drones ignore us as we wander through the cavern.
At one side of the cavern is a large rectangular vat, whose top is even with the level of the floor, and which is nearly full with naked human bodies and pieces of human bodies. As we watch the bodies settle a little; there must be a grinder at one end that is chewing them up for recycling.
But what really gets our attention is what lies in the center of the cavern. There is a glass bell jar, like the kind used to house specimens in old-style museums, except that this one is four meters across, five meters high, and in the middle is a naked human female that has been pinned in place with stainless steel rods driven into her bones. Her viscera have been removed and are arrayed around her in smaller containers – kidneys, liver, intestines, heart, even her lungs which are being rhythmically inflated and deflated with an air pump. They are connected to her vivisected body with tubes carrying blood and lymph and other fluids.
Her eyes are crazed with pain and, likely, she is no longer sane. She sees us through the glass bell jar and appears to scream, although outside the jar we can hear no sound. Scarlatti pounds on the transparent barrier, but it’s super-elastic; it deforms under his blows but does not break. Silhouette is suddenly inside the bell jar with the imprisoned woman. She disconnects the tubes from her heart, which squirts bright red blood onto the floor a few times and then the woman seems to just fade away and go to sleep.
We must have triggered a silent alarm. More round doors around the edge of the cavern open up and dozens of the robotic security troopers enter the room. I have just enough time to notice that all of their names begin with the letter “R” – Officers Raskolnikov, Rivera, Rakic, and so on – before they open fire with heavy stun guns. Scarlatti is immune to the stunners; he smashes the police with his hands one at a time. Bisley erects an electromagnetic barrier and sends bright retina-searing bolts of electric current into them. Their circuits fry and they fall over smoking. Ultrius waves his hands at a group of five of the officers – casually, as if he was just saying hello to some friends - and the officers all collapse into piles of metal and plastic fragments.
Erebus threw off his heavy robes, and at that moment I understand why he wore them. His oily pink skin glowed with unnatural health. Small red eyes were set deep in rolls of fat. Tentacles like dreadlocks hung from all over his body, some shaped like leeches, others like hagfish, or tapeworms capped with rosettes of hooked barbs. Lizard-quick his appendages snapped out to envelope one of the robotic special police officers. Erebus must have sucked the energy out of the robot, because in a moment it collapsed inert. Erebus appeared to move faster as he sought out another victim.
I dodge and pick off the robotic policemen with my revolvers. The police are tough, but two shots to the same place in the head puts them down. One of the special police hits me a grazing blow with his heavy stunner; it’s powerful, a direct hit on my bodies’ central core would likely disable it. I calculate angles and positions and cover. This is my kind of fight.
Eventually we get them all. I think that I have the second highest tally after Ultrius.
I believe that I know what is going here. We need to leave immediately before the real combat units show up.
“What?” says Scarlatti. “We’re just getting warmed up.”
I address Ultrius directly. I will explain later. We need to leave. Now.
I have to give Ultrius credit – he doesn’t waste time arguing with me. “All of us, back the way we came. Move it!”
Scarlatti grumbles, but complies. Silhouette rejoins us – her power, whatever it is, must not have been effective on the robotic police so she had disappeared during the combat. We are almost to the exit door when Erebus explodes into bloody disgusting fragments.
Ultrius reacts just in time to stop our attacker. It’s a Yllg Nephilim-class medium combat unit. It’s the size of a small school bus, moving on a dozen separately articulated wheels and mounting multiple weapons. Normally this weapon system would move to quickly for an unaugmented human to even see it. It tries to engage us, and for the first time I see Ultrius obviously strain with effort. The Nephilim is stronger, but not by much. It gradually makes headway against whatever force Ultrius is using to slow it down. It fires two plasma cannons at him; one he deflects and the other hits him full in the chest. Ultrius staggers back with a large smoking wound, but amazingly is still on his feet. I try taking shots at the Nephilim’s optics and sensors, it easily dodges or deflects something as slow as a chemically-powered pistol round but every little distraction is just that much more edge.
Bisley engages her electric power and I realize that previously she had been holding back. The electricity pours out of her body, her clothes catch fire then evaporate, and her hair sticks out straight in all directions from the static charge. The Nephilim is hit by multiple electrical strikes and staggers, Ultrius strains further and the Nephilim is crushed.
There will be more. Move.
This time there is no discussion and we run to the exit. Bisley stumbles – she must have exhausted her internal energy stores with her attack on the Nephilim – I scoop h
er up and we continue on. We make it to the old railcar. Ultrius is too tired to move it. Scarlatti pushes it by hand, he grumbles about being used as brute labor, but he does push it and we do make progress. Ultrius also doesn’t bother creating light, so I unpack a couple of the flashlights from our backpacks.
Ultrius seems to recover a little of his strength: he gestures back the way that we came and the tunnel collapses behind us.
I would suggest that you do not do that again. If we collapse the tunnel for its entire length seismic sensors will point directly at your base.
Ultrius nods and then passes out, his energy finally exhausted. I note that the deep wound in his chest is already starting to heal. I am impressed. Bisley is also unconscious, but stable. Silhouette is sitting on the side of the railcar, her legs dangling over the edge. “So what really just happened?” she asks.
I’m not sure, exactly. But I think that I might have met up with a very old and very dangerous enemy. We will discuss that matter when all of us are awake and safe.
--------------------
Ultrius revives after about 15 minutes, he’s completely healed but his clothes are gone and he’s naked. Fortunately he had packed another set of shorts and sandals in his backpack. Bisley is still unconscious and she looks gray and charred. On careful inspection it’s nothing serious, just that the dead layers of surface skin carbonized when she used her power at maximum, she’s exhausted and asleep. She is also sans clothes, but I don’t want to disturb her so I make her a pillow from one of the backpacks and throw a blanket over her until we reach the base.
We make it back to the base, and as far as we can tell nothing follows us. There is a reception committee of sorts, and Ultrius reports in. People take the news of the death of Erebus with expressions of regret that seem a little pro-forma to me (personally I find this sad – the poor guy couldn’t have helped how he looked, he must not have had much in the way of real friends).
Eventually the team is showered and rested. We meet with the councilors of this little underground colony in a room with folding metal chairs, cheap plastic tables covered with worn white tablecloths, plastic cups, and jugs of water.
Ultrius begins the discussion by addressing me. “You seem to know something about what was going on back there. Perhaps you should explain.”
Of course. That was a laboratory performing advanced work on genetic engineering. Presumably that’s how the plusses were developed, by design and not natural mutations. You have encountered similar laboratories previously?
Ultrius nods. “Yes, we have. It’s why most of us have joined the resistance. Any government that would experiment on people like this simply cannot be tolerated.”
I agree with the sentiment, but I do not think that the problem lies with your government – at least, not to the extent that is your government. I believe that your government is a front for an alien civilization that we refer to as the ’Yllg.’
A councilor whose name I do not know – he’s short and a little fat and has thinning white hair – speaks up. “And who are these Yllg, and why would they be experimenting on humans?”
Excellent questions. For the first, we don’t really know who or what the Yllg are. Alien civilizations are, as a rule, careful about protecting their privacy. We think that to date we have only encountered their constructed mechanical and biological proxies. We don’t even know what they call themselves – or even if they call themselves anything – we just made up the name ”Yllg’ because it sounded alien and would not be confused with anything else. As to why? Alien motivations are always hard to fathom – they are, after all, alien. I suspect that one motivation may be to learn more about the human psyche.
“And why,” asked Bisley, “Would they be experimenting on humans by trying to give us special powers?”
Another excellent question. Perhaps they mean to develop you as shock troops, or maybe it’s just pure research, or a subtle joke, or some kind of performance art. You can never tell with aliens.
“Given that you have never met these Yllg aliens, how certain are you that they are really behind this? Couldn’t that have been faked?
True, but consider. I hold up one of my revolvers by the barrel. This is a simple piece of metallurgy, and any technological society could duplicate it exactly. Getting the precise crystal grain and duplicating the isotope ratios of the alloys would be a little trickier, but still not that hard. However, what I saw in the chamber was a fully functioning technological infrastructure. You would need hundreds of factories to make all the different parts and brackets and connectors, whole systems for maintenance and recycling. Yes, another set of aliens could have duplicated all of that, but it would have been a lot of effort. Also extremely dangerous: one of the few things that really pisses off most alien species is if they find that someone else is causing trouble in their name. I am almost certain that what we encountered were the Yllg.
“So how did a bunch of aliens end up running a human planet?” asks Scarlatti.
Hard to say. I suspect that they captured a colony ship, took it far away from human space, and settled it here. Your government would just be a cover for them, a way to avoid giving themselves away, but they still run everything of importance.
“There is another possibility,” said Silhoutte. “They could be planning on using us as a shield.”
A shield?
“A human shield. If these Yllg know that you were created by the humans, they may suspect that you have some sort of inbuilt programming that would prevent you from harming us. It could give them leverage over you.”
That is a disturbing possibility. We have no such programming, but we still like humans. The possibility of your being used as hostages is not something that I find pleasant.
--------------------
The conversation continued on like this for some time. I told them everything that I knew about the Yllg, about aliens in general, and our civilization. The reaction of the council members ranged from befuddlement to possible acceptance to outraged skepticism. After about three hours everyone was tired and we decided to take a break. I was politely, but firmly requested to give up my guns, which I did, but otherwise was allowed my freedom although I was given an escort. Wise of them, considering their ignorance.
My android body paced through the abandoned rail station watching the people, but mostly I was back in my main hull and running simulations and thinking. This is a sufficiently messy situation that even I decide that I need backup, and advice. I decide to hold station and dispatch more messenger drones back to my fellow cybertanks. If nothing else, the situation involves biological humans and honor demands that any decision that might affect them be made with the consent of as much of our peerage as is possible. A few humans may die horribly in Yllg experiments, but most seem to be doing all right. At least in the short term, a war would do more harm than good.
Unfortunately the Yllg decide to force things along. I am ushered back into the conference room where a video screen shows several large armored tanks assaulting an outlying city. The tanks smash through buildings and gun down fleeing civilians. The government has announced that these are the evil cybertanks, and that a state of emergency has been announced and that help is on the way.
“You,” says Ultrius gesturing at the screen, “is this your doing?”
No. It’s clearly a false-flag operation. To anyone who knows the finer points of modern armored warfare these mock-cybertanks are a joke: the armor shape and weapons placements are what a child would do. Also, no cybertank would ever fight like this. Advance en masse into a built-up urban area with neither scouts nor escort cover, shooting civilians in ones and twos with light hull-mounted weapons? Ridiculous.
“Then what is going on?” says Ultrius.
The aliens are trying to flush me out. They figure that I will have no choice but to intervene to stop the destruction of the humans. It’s obviously a trap for me.
“And your intentions are?”
Why
, I intend to step into the trap, of course! Deliberately stepping into a trap can give you the initiative. You know what your opponent has planned, but you can attack when and with whatever forces you desire. Besides, trap or not, I’m not going to just stand by and let you all be killed, not if I can help it.
Bisley is skeptical. “How can we be sure that you are not lying?”
You can’t. You don’t have the information or sensor networks. I suggest that you just wait it out and watch me do my thing. With luck the truth will become apparent, in time.
The mock-cybertanks are putting up a big show, but not causing that many casualties. I move my forces into low orbit. The mock cybertanks are easy prey, without covering forces I take them out with missile strikes. Then the Yllg unleash their true weapons and the real battle starts.
I envelope the planet with my forces. I have tens of thousands of sensors, missiles, probes, decoys, landing pods, you name it. The Yllg are a close match, but this is not a main military base for them, and, all by myself, I am winning! I am swept up in the intellectual rapture of invading an entire world.
If you have never successfully attacked and invaded a well-defended technologically advanced planet, you just don’t know what you are missing. You really should try it sometime, at least once.
Then the Yllg start to play dirty and it spoils my fun. They have some of the genetically enhanced humans fight on their side – they would be quite a challenge for a man with a 50-calibre machine gun, but tactically they are nothing to me. I try to stun them when I can, but more often than I care to, I have to kill them.
Then the Yllg try sending out heavy weapons with humans bolted onto the outside of their hulls – again, I don’t like it and I would avoid it if I could, but I will not be so blackmailed. I destroy them as readily as I destroy their units that don’t have human shields. But it really, really pisses me off.
Of course, while all of this combat stuff is happening I am trying my best to negotiate. Combat is fun (well except for the part about killing innocent humans), but the first law of warfare is to never fight for something that your enemy would be willing to give you freely. I wish that someone better at diplomacy were here – someone like lowercase, or Jesus Christ, or even Schadenfreude. Still, I do my best, but the Yllg refuse to answer any of my hails/suggestions/demands/requests/ pleas/enticements.
Confessions of a Sentient War Engine (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 4) Page 11