Command Code Page 10

  “What? I don’t understand,” Kol muttered. “Why go to all the trouble of creating some new species, only to torture it?”

  “Just like they played games with humanity? Sending the probe, changing the Earth, fooling us into believing that they were trying to gift us with their advanced technology?” Solomon whispered back.

  “Look! Something’s happening,” Mariad indicated.

  The two columns were slowly moving closer to the monster, and from their sides started to extend what could only be called utensils. Solomon saw the gleam of sharp bits of metal, and others with attachments that whirred and rotated.

  “I can’t watch.” Rhossily buried her face in her hands. Not out of any sympathy for the creature, Solomon was sure, but just the sheer grossness of the situation in front of them.

  With sudden speed, the utensils darted forward and back from the creature’s body, and the columns themselves started to move, rotating around the lift platform slowly at first, but getting faster and faster as the devices plunged in and out of the creature ahead of them.

  “SKRARGH!” The thing roared in clearly apparent agony, but it didn’t die. And now the columns were slowing a little, but still sweeping around the creature in measured rotations. It retracted the torturous implements, and other devices started to extend from the machinery. Solomon saw shapes like molded forms of metal, as well as vice grips holding smaller items.

  Hang on a minute… Solomon’s subconscious finally started to make sense of what they were watching.

  Up and down the columns were extending more strangely twisted shapes of metal. Some of them long, some of them wide, others just curious scoops. Like mechanical parts.

  “Like cyborg parts,” Solomon whispered.

  “What!?” Mariad said.

  “Look.” Solomon saw the utensils move forward again, still lightning fast, punching their nodules and modules, their devices and strange metallic organs, into the incisions already made on the creature’s body.

  “We’re not looking at the thing getting tortured. We’re watching it being operated upon,” Solomon breathed. “This is the final stage of its evolution…”

  The creature shook and trembled underneath the onslaught of metal, but it no longer roared in agony, making the Outcast commander think that at least one of those implants must have been some kind of pain reliever.

  Instead, with every second that passed, more of the creatures’ body was left a gleaming silver or a dull bronze. After only a few moments, the thing’s legs were now entirely inlaid with lines of metal, to then be covered by sheath-like plates.

  Solomon watched in a sort of sick fascination as the creature’s flesh became a canvas for its new skin, a metal skin, one that didn’t cover its alien flesh completely. Just like the NeuroTech cyborgs, it had exposed areas of skin surrounded by metal plate.

  It didn’t even flinch when into the thing’s hips were driven what looked like metal rods to form the support for an external harness very much like the sort that created the superstructure of any power armor or full tactical suit. By the time the columns had finished their ghastly work, the creature had assisted joints with external rods and pistons that would probably turn the already impressive creature into something with superhuman capabilities.

  Its shoulders were built up, both with layers of metal as well as a tough exo-skeleton, capped by more armor. The thing lost its neck, and instead its comparatively small head ended up sitting inside a cowl of metal, the same way that Malady’s faceplate was in the center of a mound of metal that stretched from shoulder-tip all the way around his head.

  “They’re taking clues from us,” Solomon thought. Wasn’t that what Tavin had originally said about the cyborgs? That even if they were functionally stupid, their machine-learning and strategy-awareness circuits were unlike anything that anyone had ever seen. The human cyborgs, controlled by the Ru’at, could learn. They could study and analyze the battle moves and defenses of their opponents, the better to outmatch them the next time.

  What Solomon thought he was looking at here was the pinnacle of all the experience that the Ru’at must have had from fighting the Confederate Marines. No, fighting MY marines, he corrected. The Outcasts. My company. They were the only group of marines who had consistently and repeatedly engaged with the Ru’at forces in any and all of their diverse forms.

  There were elements to the creature’s construction that reminded Solomon of power armor—the way that the harness was built around the hips and lower back, forming an external support cage for the layers of armor.

  But unlike power or light tactical armor, this stuff was bonded and implanted directly to the thing’s body. A bit like the bio-chemical bonding that Malady has in his full tactical. As if the Ru’at had taken all the best bits of Marine Corps technology and was about to use it against them.

  And then, finally, came the last adjustment.

  The creature was now standing inside its own heavy, articulated suit of silver and bronze, looking like something out of a myth, or a nightmare. Solomon could see the thing’s metal chest plate rising and falling as it panted. And still, it no longer roared in pain. Solomon wondered if the thing could even feel pain anymore, or maybe the mysterious Ru’at had taken that ability from it.

  The two columns drew back, slowing in their cycle to a complete standstill as if admiring their handiwork.

  Ker-thunk! There was another heavy industrial sound from the dark of the cavern ceiling far above, and the sound of turning gears.

  Out of the darkness, and into the glare of the strip lights, came a final column of metal instrumentation, this one gleaming white and touched with the brightness of stars. In the column’s center glowed a very pure, bright blue light, the same sort of radiance that had come from the ruined Ru’at orb that Solomon still had in the pocket of his General Luna Assistant service suit.

  This final application descended straight down toward the creature, over the middle of the platform lift itself. Solomon watched as it stopped just a hand’s-breadth above the thing’s bony, silver cranium and got to work.

  Tools and vice grips and what appeared to be glowing laser scalpels emerged and descended to the top of the thing’s head.

  This time, it really did howl.

  “SsskraARGHH!” It shook, and its entire body trembled as it was operated upon, and the tools withdrew once more—

  —to be replaced by the blue light emanating from the metal orb that slowly lowered itself into the void created by the machines.

  It was an orb that looked exactly like the Ru’at ‘seed-spore’ drone that had interrogated Solomon in the judgement chamber somewhere above them, and whose ruins he now held in his hand.

  Another flurry of alien medical equipment and all trace of the thing’s blood and gore from its head was gone, replaced by a sleek silver module like a third eye that glowed a startling cerulean blue from the light emitted by the Ru’at drone inside.

  And the creature’s screaming, howling, and shaking suddenly stilled.

  One by one, the cables holding the thing’s joints restrained broke off with tiny puffs of gas, and the creature stood tall and defiant, looking as though it had always worn that strange metal, cybernetic carapace suit.

  “You know what?” Solomon murmured, as much to himself as anyone else. “I think we’ve just seen the birth not just of some clone, or a monster…” he said in horror.

  The Ru’at had made this place. They had been developing and growing this spore culture for perhaps hundreds of years. They had waited for a time when the humans could get here, could colonize Mars, and then it had seeded humanity with its next stage: cybernetic evolution.

  And now, finally, all the bio-genetic development and cybernetic technology is ready, Solomon thought as he looked at the steady, unblinking blue eye in the middle of the creature’s forehead. Like the way you can’t get an ancient computer to run modern applications. The Ru’at had needed to wait until humanity had caught up. The aliens had
needed to nudge and push humanity into the technical evolution it wanted.

  “I think we just watched the rebirth of the Ru’at themselves,” Solomon breathed.

  14

  Tactical Distraction

  “How’s it coming with that oxygen?” Jezzy stood back with a groan from the control panel she had been working at. The lights overhead flickered intermittently as the reserve power on board the Invincible glitched.

  How much power you got left in you, girl? Jezzy thought, looking at the computer controls she had—barely—managed to hack into. It was all thanks to General Asquew’s command codes, of course. Jezzy knew full well that she wouldn’t have had a hope of doing any of this, if it was left to her own skills.

  I’m not like Ratko, or Kol before her, Jezzy thought glumly. She had never particularly minded before that she was not a technical specialist. But with every passing encounter, it seemed that the problems and challenges they faced required ever more complicated, convoluted technical answers.

  What good is being able to simultaneously attack three opponents at once?

  But despite her lack of skills, she had done it. She thought. She hoped.

  Munitions>>>Priority 1 Weapons>>>Thermonuclear Warheads…

  Ultra-Black Command Code Accepted.

  Authorizing signature…

  Timer Allocated…

  Auto-destruct Sequence Activated…

  ERROR!

  “Damn it!” What now? Jezzy groaned. She felt as if she had already navigated through a sea of complicated code-trees and directories just to find the right functions to enable or deactivate.

  But clearly, she must have done something wrong.

  “I think we’re almost there,” Jezzy heard Ratko say over the squad channel.

  “Huh?” Jezzy said, before remembering. “Oh yeah. The oxygen.” She turned around where she had found the prime engineering command console—which had access to the rest of the ship’s mainframe—to survey the work of her colleagues.

  The Mid-Level Engineering room was a mess of parts and workshop bays, still with stacks of equipment and spare parts dotted everywhere. But Corporals Malady and Ratko could clearly be seen, now standing in front of one of the large airlock doors with what looked to be a large mound of oxygen cylinders attached by cables. Each cylinder was almost half of Jezzy’s height and filled with precious liquid oxygen concentrate, which she knew she would only be able to heft thanks to the augmented support of the power suit she wore.

  No such limitations for the man-golem Malady, however, as she watched him carrying another stack of oxygen cylinders—the entire seven- or eight-story stacks enclosed in its own metal trolley—up to the airlock ramp.

  “Once I’ve checked all the lines and seals to make sure we won’t be in danger of a leak, then we’re good to go,” Ratko said proudly.

  Not quite, Jezzy thought, reflecting on the large, blinking ERROR message in front of her. “Wait for my command,” she settled for telling them, then turned back to the console.

  At Jezzy’s feet were a stack of tools that she had picked up along her search for this command console. There was a standard Marine Corps service rifle, capable of burst and multi-shot as well as single shot, but it was half the width and size of the Jackhammers, and she was worried that it would only be like a bee-sting to an unstoppable, unfeeling cyborg.

  Added to her salvage was a heavy iron crowbar a shade longer than her forearm—her Yakuza training had always taught her the simplest weapons were often the best—as well as a small, handheld arc welder.

  Better than nothing, she thought, sighing heavily as she found a way to pull up more information on this latest error code.

  ERROR! Auto-Destruct of a Primary Weapon is Disabled While Primary Weapon is Awaiting Deployment.

  “What does THAT even mean?” Jezzy grumbled. Awaiting deployment. That has to be a saccharine way of saying ‘fired at an unsuspecting planet,’ right?

  Jezzy reflected that she was really not cut out for command. The language and the bureaucracy alone were enough to drive her mad.

  “So…the nuke is still locked inside its loading bay, and I can’t set off the auto-destruct timer because…” she thought through what the console was trying to tell her.

  “Because no one wants a nuke to go off whilst it’s still in the belly of the Invincible?” Ratko said over her shoulder.

  “Sheesh!” Jezzy jumped. “When were you able to move so quietly?” she berated the corporal, who had apparently sauntered over as Jezzy was engrossed in trying to decipher the weapons controls of the singularly most devastating weapon in human history.

  “Well, I was going to ask you to hold one end of the daisy-chain of cylinders for me, but I see that what you are up to is far more interesting!” She nodded at the console screen in front of her. “You’re trying to arm and set off one of the Invincible nukes?” She whistled appreciatively. “Isn’t that, like, a little self-defeating? Y’know, considering that we’re still inside the Invincible and everything.”

  “Smart-ass,” Jezzy muttered before kicking the base of the console. “Well, if you’ve got a better idea how we can simultaneously distract and hopefully take out the Ru’at jump-ships out there, be my guest!”

  “You need to do a manual override on the auto-safety measures.” Ratko nodded sagely.

  “Huh?” Jezzy frowned. “I have no idea what you just said to me.”

  “Augh,” her corporal despaired vocally. “The nukes have automatic safety cutouts, in case some idiot decides to try and set them off while they’re still sitting around inside their launch tubes, right?” Ratko said.

  Does she even know that I count as her superior officer right now? Jezzy wondered. Probably. But Ratko doesn’t seem to care all the same.

  “So, if you want to set off the timer—which I see you already isolated, well done you…”

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence…”

  “Hey, it took me four years at technical engineering college to get where I am today,” Ratko pointed out, before grimacing to herself. “That was, of course, until there was the whole business about them thinking I stole their department’s funds, and so they shipped me off to Titan…”

  “When you were chosen for the Outcast program anyway,” Jezzy countered. “And did you? Steal the money, that is?”

  “Yeah, of course. But anyway,” Ratko continued. “If you want to get the nukes to go boom, then you need to manually break the safety overrides on them. They automatically decouple when the missile is launched anyway, thus making sure that any explosion at least happens outside the ship that fired it, not inside,” she explained.

  “Oh,” Jezzy said dourly. Well, there goes that idea, then…

  “And the nuke tubes are…” Ratko leaned over to run her hands over the holo controls of the command console. “Forward Tactical Section. Right up the top of the old bird.” She had brought up the design schematic of the Invincible and had managed to create a glowing red dot right near the apex of the pyramid, where the launch tubes had to be.

  “Alright then. Shall we get going?” Ratko nodded up to the ceiling of the Mid-Level Engineering Hold. “If we’re not using the elevators again, then we’re talking service shoots, and it’ll be quite a climb.”

  “What? No.” Jezzy shook her head. “You’re not coming. I need to be the one to do this,” Jezzy said seriously. “It’s way too dangerous out there anyway, with the place crawling with cyborgs.” And you’re not a combat specialist, Jezzy thought.

  “And you know your auto-safety cutoffs from your main power relays, do you?” Ratko looked at her obstinately.

  Damn.

  15

  Through Blood and Fire

  “I don’t know about you lot, but I’m not sticking around,” Kol hissed urgently as he started to move. For a man who had supposedly thrown away all trappings of his Marine Corps life, Solomon thought he was doing an excellent impression of one as he backwards crab-crawled past the mo
unds of Ru’at vegetation.

  But he’s right. Solomon spared a look back at the new cyborg creature, still flexing its new limbs and snuffling at the air. It made him shudder as he looked at the thing’s strange skin and animal-like joints.

  “Ambassador?” Solomon murmured to the woman at his side, who was still gazing at the creature they had seen created with apparent horror.

  Something had changed in her, Solomon could sense. Her face still held some of the brainwashed blankness that the Ru’at had given her, but now, instead of a fixed state of placidity and acceptance, she seemed to be consumed with worry.

  Maybe now is the time, Solomon thought, reaching up to touch her shoulder.

  Ochrie jumped, almost screeched, but caught her breath just in time.

  “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get out of this,” Solomon promised her. He felt as though their recent roles had been reversed. Where once it had been the ambassador who was in charge, imperiously or cynically dispatching orders, now she was like a child, infantilized by the Ru’at.

  “This is the Ru’at,” Solomon said slowly and carefully, nodding at the creature ahead of them. “That is the Ru’at. It is what they are. What they do.”

  “But— But…” Ochrie was shaking her head in confusion. “I thought they were our saviors. They said that they were going to make humanity better, to include us in the community of stars.” She repeated the same lies that the alien had given every brainwashed human.

  Solomon didn’t even know what to say to that. The evidence in front of them that the Ru’at were monsters—were predators—was astonishing. And I have no idea how to break someone out of hypnotism. He wondered if what he was doing would actually make the ambassador worse rather than better.

  “Trust me, Ambassador,” Solomon said.