by Morgan Cole
The familiar black swarm issued from the knee of my armor and flowed into the hatch. Seconds later, a sliver of tier 3 metal fell away.
I slapped my palm on the hatch and activated the gecko pad. It still wouldn't move.
"Shit," I muttered. I wished I'd thought to bring a Holemaker.
"Jake, I hate to rush you but things are getting hairy here. I don't have anything to seal up the hole they're attacking through and they're not giving me enough time to recharge my Tempest. I'm going to be punching them to death soon."
Regar sounded like he was out for a relaxing walk in the woods.
"Yeah, I'm close. Stand by. Time for a more direct solution to my problem."
I didn't even know if this thing was a hatch. I was assuming it was because it looked like it might be one. For all I knew it was some kind of transmitter, or a heatsink or something. I had a way to test my hypothesis that it was, however.
I pulled Excalibur free, holding the hook in my left hand while gripping the shaft with my right.
"Time to put you to work," I said.
Channeling power to the chisel tip, it lit up a bright blue as the Voidcutter edges lit up. Swiveling my hips and throwing all my strength behind it, I drove the point into the center of the hatch in front of me.
Excalibur bit and then plunged through the surface, stopping when my right hand would allow it to travel no further.
"Yes!" I yelled, and attacked the hatch with the Excalibur's point.
One more minute and I reached my gauntleted hand through and bent the thin metal of the hatch out of the way. I didn't have time to cut all the way around.
The space beyond was unlit and quiet, a simple rectangular corridor leading into the center of the Spike. I crawled inside.
Chapter Three: To the Rescue
THE CORRIDOR WASN'T made for humans; that was obvious. It was barely five feet high and three feet wide, and I had to crouch over and shuffle. If I have to fight in here, this will be bad.
I pushed myself as fast as I could, moving toward the blue dot labeled Regar.
"Regar, I'm in the Spike and nearby. Making my way toward you."
There was no reply. I could only assume he was too busy. The blue dot didn't waver. I hoped that meant that he was still alive; otherwise, Brick would have lost his position feed. I pushed myself to move faster and sent the scout drone ahead.
The corridor wasn't long. It ended just ahead of me, opening into a massive vertical space, a cylinder five hundred feet across.
"This must be the railgun," I said as I looked up the shaft toward a tiny circle of dark purple far above.
Regar's blue dot was on the other side of the shaft, slightly up from me. I looked over there, trying to find a corridor exit matching the one I was in. There was nothing.
"I'm still alive, but that was close," Regar said, replying at last. "I'm patching myself up. Still, sooner would be better, Jake."
"Working on it. Trying to cross the shaft."
"What in the void are you doing in—? Never mind. Here they come again. Just get here. Quickly."
I slammed my hand into the corridor wall beside me. There was nothing on the opposite wall. It was essentially a smooth surface, unlike the outside of the Spike. This corridor I was in was apparently something of an anomaly. I sent the scout up and down the shaft, and it saw nothing I could use.
Then things began to move. Sections of the shaft wall, thirty-foot-long blocks, slid smoothly out of the walls in a wave traveling up the shaft. There were six lines of these blocks, all around the circumference of the shaft. I could see a hollow space behind the one directly opposite and with a thought I directed the scout drone in there. The hollow space led farther into the other side.
"Got you! On the way, Regar," I yelled, stepping to the edge.
Sheer luck saved me from being splattered. The Shard fired something up the Spike right at that moment. It was round, black, and about a hundred feet across. That was all I noticed as it flashed past in front of me, faster than thought. There was a deafening crack of air as it passed my perch, moving much faster than the speed of sound. The buffeting of the air would have knocked me into the shaft if it weren't for the reflexive way I grabbed the floor with the gecko pads on my feet.
Below, as quickly as they'd opened, the mysterious blocks began to merge back into the walls of the shaft, in a reverse of the previous wave action.
"Shit!"
I dove into the shaft and rocketed toward the other side, toward the gap that would be closing any moment. I pushed my propulsion as much as I dared and made it through the gap just as it was closing, my drones following closely. Unable to kill my momentum fast enough, I slammed hard into a solid wall just past the area the block filled. The unforgiving material bounced me back to the floor.
The armor had soaked up most of the impact, but I still felt like someone had rung my bell. I shook it off, my Transcendent Flesh repairing the damage I had probably done to my brain.
My needler and particle beam drones had made it into the gap with me, but the scout drone wasn't with us. It was offline, in fact. It had been in the shaft when the Shard had fired the railgun. It had probably been smeared onto whatever it was that the Shard had sent into orbit.
Regar's dot was above me, but close. I needed to get to him before he was overwhelmed.
The area I was in was mostly open. A forest of support structure held things together, and power runs fed the blocks in the shaft. It was clear now that they were the acceleration mechanism. Not far above there was a ring around the outside of the Spike, a hundred feet wide. It was in that ring of solid material that Regar's blue dot was glowing.
Regar's trail was clear as well. The broken remains of many different types of Ferals were scattered below, draped over support beams. I couldn't tell what they had been, and I didn't have time to loot. I triggered my grav plates and flew upwards, dodging support beams. I stopped in midair, hovering, as I reached the ring level.
The ring was taken up mostly by rooms around the perimeter, open doorways spaced every fifty feet or so. Their purpose was still a mystery to me. Everything was pristine, except for the section directly ahead. Something had caused two of the rooms to shatter and then collapse, the rubble forming a barrier. One that up until recently Regar had been safe behind.
Four Ferals swarmed a three-foot hole in the rubble, a mass of snake-like coils. Each of the hideous creatures was twenty feet long, their snake bodies a fleshy, shiny green color. Where on a snake there would be a head, though, there was something else. A humanoid torso, made of a dingy grey metal. They didn't have arms, and none of them currently saw me.
The Interface labeled one of the monstrosities for me.
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Nagite Soldier, Threat Level: 11
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I palmed a plasma grenade in each hand, using a quick thought to set both of them to detonate a quarter-second after impact.
One of the grenades clinked off the metallic torso of a Nagite, and it turned, quicker than I thought possible. The torso was familiar—it was that of Vassago's Soldiers, but without arms. The same head, the same sensor strip. What was different was the yawning mouth covering most of the thing's broad chest. The teeth were triangular metal nightmares the size of a playing card. Each tooth had a faint red glow to it.
A quarter-second later, the plasma grenades detonated and wiped it away. The blooming flash of the plasma cloud disintegrated all but one of the Nagites entirely. That one had been squirming into the hole, and the explosion had removed the lower two-thirds of its body.
I charged in, Excalibur leaping into my hand. The Nagite was still alive, still attempting to get to Regar. I raised Excalibur and charged the hook end, preparing to smash it into the Nagite. Firing the Gazer into that hole was far too risky.
The clang of metal striking metal was loud, and fast. It sounded like a very angry blacksmith punishing a very naughty anvil. I stepped aside just in time, as th
e Nagite flew backward out of the hole, landing with a squirt of black ichor from the stump of snake body still left to it.
The monstrous creature was still alive, fist-sized dents covering the metal torso. I brought Excalibur's hook down hard, the charged Voidcutter points digging deep into the Nagite's machine internals. It struggled weakly, but two more blows and it was done. The red light faded from its teeth as it died.
Reflexively I bent over and harvested the Nanite Clusters from it. A small flood of small, grey marbles poured from the corpse, adding twenty clusters to my total.
"Just like Matty. He'd never forget to loot either," said a voice from the hole.
I turned, spotting Regar at the bottom. He sat down heavily.
Regar was wearing the same red armor I'd seen him in during the message he'd left for Grandpa. The armor was looking a lot the worse for wear. His right arm was shredded and bled heavily. Whatever had been empowering the Soldier's teeth, it had been effective.
"You got them all then?" he asked. "Good. I'll patch this up and we can get going."
A thick black swarm left his hand and entered the vicious wounds on his arm. Splinters of bloodied red armor pushed their way out and dropped to the floor. The bleeding stopped and he shook his arm to free the last few splinters of armor.
I ordered the drones to cover the area. Without the scout it was possible that something stealthy could sneak up on us, but with luck the drones would kill it before it could kill one of us.
Regar stood up and disappeared, walking further into the collapsed section. A moment later he handed through a thick-barreled weapon. It was about four feet long, bulky, and heavy. Mostly black, it was worn and covered with scratches in the finish. There was a forward grip on the left side of the weapon, and the rear grip had what looked like a mechanical trigger rather than a trigger stud like all the Union weapons I'd seen so far had.
"Take that. If you've got some extra juice, I'd appreciate it if you'd charge it up. It takes forever with only my internal Augment doing it."
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TDR-501 "Tempest" Dimensional Rift weapon
3% Charge
Control(s) Available: None
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This was the weapon he had mentioned, the Tempest. It wasn't like anything else I'd seen, though. It had no Interface controls, and there was no manufacturer listed. I triggered my Engineering visualization mode and looked at it. I was astonished.
There were components, but very few of them and most only around the center of the weapon, the bulkiest part directly above the grip and trigger. Studying them it was obvious what they were doing—it was a standard Union power draw mechanism, but it was feeding into something that wasn't Union tech. There were a few other things there, as well, including a couple of gecko patches.
"What is this?" I asked, turning the Tempest over in my hands. Unlike the Gazer and GN-75, there were actually external, physical controls. Switches and buttons. They were labeled with embossed letters in a language I couldn't read.
"Oh, you've noticed, have you?" Regar asked as he clambered out of the hole.
Cradled in his arms was a white, capsule-shaped pod about three feet long and a foot thick. There was something strange about the material the pod was made of. It didn't seem like it was actually there. Something about how it reflected light made me think of early Hollywood CGI. It looked fake. The Interface cleared it up for me by giving it a label.
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Stasis Pod Contains: Kiril, Faella-branch, Threat Level: unknown
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Regar followed my gaze. "Kiril. He'll be fine in there as long as the power keeps. To him it's like no time is passing at all. He's safer in there than we are here."
He stuck the stasis pod on his back, taking a moment to find a spot where it wouldn't interfere with his movement.
I had lots of questions, but most of them could wait. Regar's comment reminded me just what kind of situation we were in. With care, I stuck the Tempest to my thigh, making sure that the weapon's charging contacts were in the proper place. Regar nodded with approval.
"You're right, let's get out of here," I said. "If we can make it to the outside, I can fly us back to the outpost. I'll attach my safety line to you, and you won't even have to hang on."
"We can't leave yet," Regar said. "Kiril, Danner, and I fought our way up this Spike and we need to finish what we came here for. We're so close. If we leave now we might as well abandon the outpost. It'll be overrun in a month, even with the turret. Danner will have given his life for nothing, and I can't abide that."
The Interface flashed a warning at me.
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Warning: Extreme power draw.
╠═╦╬╧╪
The Tempest was taking every bit of spare power the armor's internal supply and my Augment were generating, drinking it down. If it had been the Gazer charging that fast, recharging would be complete in less than a second. The Tempest was still at 15% charge. No wonder he'd run out of juice if he was relying on an internal Augment to charge it.
"Alright, I'm game. What are we doing here?"
"Good man. We'll need to get closer to the top. The top five percent. Once we're there, we'll deploy the device Kiril made. It will block the barrel of the railgun. The next time the Shard fires, the explosion will destroy the Spike."
The theory was pretty clear. If you blocked the barrel of a gun near the firing chamber, the result wouldn't be nearly as catastrophic as if you blocked it at the muzzle. When the gun in question was a railgun accelerating a giant payload to escape velocity, you had a recipe for one hell of a bang. Too much.
"Hold on, if we're anywhere nearby when that happens it will cook us," I said.
"Yes, it will. So let's make sure we aren't."
Chapter Four: Spiking the Spike
A MINUTE LATER THE Tempest was fully charged and I handed it back to Regar.
"Nice and fast. Glad to see that armor isn't just pretty."
"That's one thirsty weapon. It's not Union tech, so what is it?" I asked.
"Come on, let's get moving. We can talk while we climb," Regar said. He moved to the edge of the platform and leapt upward, landing nimbly on a crossbeam far above my head.
I floated after him, using the gravity plates to neutralize my weight and the propulsion plates to maneuver. It was becoming surprisingly intuitive. The perks of higher Mental stats.
"The Union is pretty new, relatively speaking. Before that the Galaxy was a chaotic mess of species, each of them fighting the other. When the AIs rose up, that all stopped. Mainly because most of them died out, and those that didn't banded together for survival.
"The Tempest is what we Seekers call an Artifact. That's just a mystical name for technology not based on Union tech, usually from one of the extinct species. This one is from the Murgas. I had an engineer friend modify this baby to integrate it with my Interface and let me charge it."
Regar and I reached another ring around the outside of the Spike. Nagite Soldiers swarmed out of the doorways, dozens of them.
"Crap!" I yelled.
I brought the Gazer up and fired. The bright beam cut deeply into the clashing teeth of the Nagite Soldier's torso mouth. The drones opened up as well, needles shredding the vulnerable snake bodies while a second particle beam dropped another. That made a small dent into the horde coming at us.
Regar calmly raised the Tempest and lined up his shot. I fired again and cut a Nagite into two pieces.
"What are you waiting for, Regar?" I yelled at him. The horde was nearly on us, bunching up into a wave of clashing metal teeth and writhing flesh.
Space visibly warped in front of the Tempest, a cylinder of distorted light covering the attacking Nagites. The effect was immediate—the horde smashed together as the distortion in space pulled them in. The ones in the center twisted strangely before exploding in torrents of black ichor and hunks of metal. The less fortunate Nagite
Soldiers swirled around the distortion like water down a drain, except this drain was tearing pieces off of them, the limbs and chunks of flesh disappearing into the nothingness in the center of the distortion.
The distortion disappeared a second or two later, and the swirling mass of what had once been an attacking force splashed to the ground, a soup of ground-up metal, flesh, and black blood.
Two stragglers in the rear had been missed by the Tempest's effect. Almost casually, the drones and I shot them dead.
"Wow, what the hell was that? How did the Murgas die if their tech could do that?"
"Like everything, it has limitations. Loot your kills and let's go."
I extracted the Nanite Clusters from my five kills, adding another one hundred to my total. My internal storage was almost full now. I hadn't planned to be farming.
I looked at the puddle of dead Nagites as I returned to where Regar was waiting.
"Don't bother," Regar said. "The rift destroys all the Nanites. There won't be any in that mess to extract."
"Limitations," I mused. Regar nodded.
We passed two more of the rings without incident when I saw another one of those limitations.
There was the boom of an explosion. I flew sideways, colliding hard with a horizontal crossbeam as something moving very fast hit me. My HUD flashed a warning.
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Countermeasures: Blades—active. Reserves: 85%
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I had no time to wonder what that meant. Three fast shapes flashed toward us, weaving between the beams. They looked like flying saucers about the size of a manhole cover, rotating so quickly I couldn't make out any details. One of them looked different from the others, like a bite had been taken out of it.
I ordered the drones to engage, raising my Gazer and firing. I tagged the one I was targeting but only for a millisecond before it dodged.
Regar fired his Tempest, catching two of them near the cylinder but not dead on. They swirled around the destruction, slowing briefly. That was just long enough for me and the particle beam drone to both shoot one of them. It exploded, metal parts getting sucked into the spatial distortion. The other one flew off, escaping the vortex.