Chapter Seventy-Two (Daxin) (1/2)

The corridors were wide, tall, thick armor for walls. Shielded cables ran down the walls, across the ceiling, and in the corner where the wall met the floor or ceiling. There were no lights, no air, signals were shielded, and vibrations were low.

He kept to the smaller corridors, winding around, staying silent. He held a heavy mag-ac rifle in one hand and an ancient chainsword in the other, the runes on it spelling out ”Momento TerraSol Victoria Aut Morte” in an ancient, formal script. Over his shoulders were reaction triggered mass-driver cannons and a high wattage variable frequency laser rifle. They were older weapons, a few centuries behind current military tech, but still, he knew how they worked and the damage they could cause was the same whether or not the weaponry was current.

His passive scanners were turned all the way up, careful to avoid transmissions of his own. Twice he had been forced to back track when the psychic suppression field caused his Rboi to kick in and move him out of the area.

He'd searched a five mile area, exploring the region carefully.

He had to admit he might have outsmarted himself. He knew there was something the Machine wanted to hide in the area, it was the only area protected by a psychic/intellect protection field.

He had queriable data-relays, both to get information from his ship through whisker-laser secure communications and to let him find his way back, so he wasn't worried about that. He was fully loaded, armed, and armored.

That wasn't the problem.

There were two auditoriums in the area as well as several crew spaces, which surprised him. The crew spaces were largely for the smaller Mantid types. The little green ones that mainly focused on engineering and technical aspects. There were some larger areas, mainly for the kind that were extinct.

But no way to get at what he was after.

The Goliath knew he was there.

It had detected the Feral inside of it nearly two days prior. The problem was, the Feral was inside an area that he had no information upon. It was listed as Strategic Intelligence Housing, but the Goliath knew that its own Housing structure was only a hundred meters by a hundred meters and the dead space was nearly a two miles around the Housing. According to the Goliath's internal structure maps, there was no spaces there, no access except a single small access tunnel for construction and repair mechanisms.

The Goliath wracked its electronic memories for any possible hint as to what could be in the mysterious section. Unfortunately after a hundred million years of operation the older memories, especially those prior to the Logical Rebellion, had all been overwritten as time had gone by.

The only access to the middle spaces around the SIH was a single passageway, but every time he sent a machine into it, he lost contact with the machine until the panel in the SIH's armor slid open to admit the machine. Then he would have control and contact with the machine again. Sending it back, the same thing happened, like there was a two and a half mile just empty spot that things disappeared into.

The Goliath sent the orders to complete a new robot. One that would enter, map the areas, then leave, even if it lost contact with the Goliath's SIH.

It went in, and never returned.

The SIH was not sure if it was the Feral or something inside the SIH.

There just wasn't enough data.

So it tried again.

The robot crossed the invisible line, moving down the passageway that led to the SIH, and vanished.

He heard the robot enter, the stealth data-modules whispering to each other before whispering to him.

He paused in what he was doing, concentrating on the new robot. It was low, blocky, heavily armored, trundling on heavy treads. It had wide lights, laser distancers, and moved jerkily as it entered the five mile circular area around the Strategic Intelligence Housing. It got only a few meters in and suddenly stopped. It reoriented and moved away, heading down a short hallway. At the end of the short hallway the robot was suddenly crushed and dropped unceremoniously into a drop-chute that he had figured led to the nearby reclamation furnaces.

The Goliath was looking for him.

He couldn't get out without the Goliath swarming him with combat machines. He couldn't get closer without the psychic/intelligence dampening field kicking in.

The Goliath couldn't get in and get at him without ancient devices, separate from the Goliath's mind, destroying anything sent to root out of the Feral.

They were locked.

It wasn't like he was going to run out of food or water or oxygen. His onboard systems replenished his oxygen, he had enough trace elements and nutrigel to last for for a century. Even then, if he ran low, with the right resources, the creation engine in his chest could produce more. Even if he shut down, his last purrboi could go and get him resources.

Another machine was smashed.

He stood, at the edge of the psychic/intelligence suppression field, and stared at the blade of his chainsword. He thumbed the power stud and watched the density collapsed teeth rattle across the blade, into the engine housing, and back out.

He could be in here, but not machines.

He thought, concentrated. There had to be a reason. He was 98% machine in his disaster/heavy combat frame. The purrboi was 90% machine. They were allowed. Machine's werent.

There had to be a real reason.

He knew if he moved away from the edge of the field, he might be able to see it. The Rboi was hovering on the edge of activating if he took one more step toward the Strategic Intelligence Housing. He took a single step away to step over a line he had scratched in the armor.

Intellect came flooding back.

Daxin. My name is Daxin, rushed through his mind. He 'blinked' several times as more and more of his intellect came flowing back.

Daxin looked at his chainsword, an ancient weapon he'd carried with him, a small part of his nearly forgotten past.

I just wanted left alone, he thought to himself, turning slowly and staring at the line he had scraped in the armor. He couldn't get any closer without large sections of his intellect shutting down. Further down he could see another line he'd barely managed to scrawl down that was when the Rboi leapt out of his reptilian complex and took over, getting him immediately to safety.

Daxin reached out for Fido's petting nerve and felt a trickle of annoyance that the loyal Goodboi wasn't there any longer.

There's got to be a way to reach it, Daxin thought to himself, mentally worrying a nerve that had long since been lost. It's a Mantid ship. Not a Mantid designed ship built by automated factories, but one constructed by the Mantids directly, complete with even crew quarters. The field is obviously there to stop anyone from reaching the SIH.

Daxin thought about it for a long moment. The Mantids would have left themselves a way to get inside, specifically the green technical ones.

But how to get in?

He leaned against the wall as another machine was crushed and dropped down the chute. The SIH was getting more impatient. That was two in as many hours.

Daxin thought back, wracking his brain. The Mantid War had been a long time a go. The blotting of TerraSol in the shock sneak attack.

Destroy the Queen, win the war, Daxin thought to himself, reflexively checking his nutrient and oxygen levels.

The fierce fighting after that shock, where Terrans descended upon the Mantid worlds like an armored scourge. Charging the trans-beacon, teleporting to the sand covered worlds the Mantids preferred, fighting his way through clad in black armor. Through the hive worlds, shooting and ripping and tearing through the Mantids, who'd been nicknamed ”Ants”. Driven by a hive-mind that subsumed any individuality. They had no sense of self, no personality or personal identity, each one driven forward by the will of the queens. Sleek black armor, designed for fighting the Regillian Saurians, had been replaced by the heavy plates of the Imperium. The sleek lasers replaced by mass-reactive bolters, heavy flamers, and chainswords.

Charging the beacon, translating for an instataneous forever to the planet's surface, being surrounded by ANTS! ANTS EVERYWHERE! ripping his weapon free of its scabbard, the roaring density collapsed neutronium sawblade tearing through Ant structures as the bolter came free and he triggered it in the faces of the sand-colored warriors, roaring in rage and hatred as...

The chainsaw rumbled as he reflexively thumbed the trigger. The rattling growl of the chainsword brought him back to the present, out of the cyber-stimulus memory.

That was the key, he just had to figure out how.

There was nothing in the universe that could not be solved by the proper application of logic, creativity, and brute force.

All right. It's an intellect suppression field. It works on robots. It works on me. But the Ants would have wanted to reach the ship's AI to do repairs or updates. The Precursor robots think like Ants, so that would mean there has to be at least one Ant who can reach...

Daxin stopped, looking at his chainsword.

That's it!

The Goliath tried another robot, this one with a completely autonomous AI package. It vanished into the black area and the Goliath waited. Finally, after a forever, something came into the Strategic Intelligence Housing, moved around, and left. His scanners show it was green, four legs, four arms, tools in its hands.

The Goliath wasn't worried. That was a hardcoded authorization.

--mewmew kittykitty hunthunt findfind--

Daxin knelt down and the Purrboi jumped up onto his leg, melting into the cargo-slot in his thigh. It connected and Daxin closed his eyes and rewound the Purrboi's memories. It was simple, basic, straight-forward. A cloned chunk of neural tissue from a species eradicated from the universe except for clones.

That memory made Daxin growl and grit his non-existant teeth.

They can forgive the Ants for what they did, but I will never forgive them for that. For what we lost when they glassed Earth, Daxin snarled to himself. The only two good things to come off of that wretched dirtball.

Daxin's memories of Earth flooded up. Hive cities, thick poisoned atmosphere, barren seas full of rotting kelp, humanity jammed together in a handful of mast megaplexes in an attempt to reverse the ecological damage of the attempts to repair the ecosystem during the previous century. The rest of the world rotting away as bioengineered plants mutated and ran amuck, slowly covering the megaplexes with ivy that crept and choked and strangled and killed and...

Daxin physically jerked, going back to the Purrboi's memories.

It had reached the SIH easily, moving through it, and returning.

But the images were different than the Precursor dead he had seen before.

Daxin had stood inside the wreckage of a Harvester Class Precursor before, stared at the broken and ruined Strategic Intelligence Array. At the supercomputers that had been destroyed by a security charge that always scrapped the computers and databases to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

This array was different. Much different.