Chapter 402 (2/2)
Three green servitors moved in, repairing the damage time had done to the consoles.
Klakeka watched them move, how they were slightly jerky from cryo-sleep. How they worked together, touching one another, sometimes touching antenna.
Oh, to be you. No thought, just purpose, Klakeka thought.
”System, unlock doors of command center,” they tried. Again, the compute refused to comply.
Klakeka lifted one bladearm. Thick, long, razor sharp, serrated. Capable of ripping through Lanaktallan armor or Atrekna psychic shielding with ease. Capable of tearing through the armor and defenses of any living thing the massive Klakeka encountered.
For moment it started to remember the way his bladearms had slid past thick chitin armor, deep into organ spaces.
It pushed the memory away, but not before the bladearm was wreathed in the silvery purple nimbus of psychic energy.
The void is preferable to being woken again, it thought.
It touched under its jaws with the tip of the psychic blade. The psychic energy tingled, peeled away a small slice of chitin.
It only took a shove.
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The VI saw the high level supervisor's vitals go critical. It quickly pulled the command chair into the system, moving the high level supervisor to medical systems. The supervisor's brain was damaged, but not irreparably so.
Medical systems opened up the chitin head, the thick nerve mat around the brain, and began repairing the damage to the brain itself.
Within minutes, the damage had been repaired and the medical systems began putting the high level supervisor's head back together. The damage had been life threatening, but in reality it was fairly minor and easy to repair.
The VI sent the high level supervisor back to the command chair, moving the command chair to the command station.
It sent the wakeup commands.
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Klakeka woke, its head aching.
No. Not again.
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Abriketa unfolded itself from where it had huddled up on the command chair. Monitors glowed with dull light, displaying the facility's data. The screen next to it had a paused video that showed waving grass and trees.
Abriketa had been staring at that screen for hours.
To feel grass against my footpads, to feel the sun upon my chitin, it thought to itself.
”Lights,” it tried.
”Cannot comply. Facility commander lockout. Message is as follows:” the VI answered.
Abriketa turned and looked at the grass again. It remembered being young, running through the grass, chasing food, with the others of it caste.
That fear they felt as I pursued them. That deep resignation when I caught them. Was it like what I feel now? No slavering jaws, no glittering bladearms, no, not for me. Just this. Darkness. Eternal, unending, it thought.
Inside, where there was normally purpose and the warmth of the hive mind, there was only silence and darkness. A cold feeling that it had tried to remove with bladearms, cutting tools, and once a blaster rifle.
My carapace is not even marred, it thought. It could remember putting the barrel of the blaster rifle against its chest, using the tip of a bladearm to press the firing stud. The high pitched screech of the blaster rifle, the THWAK of the impact, the feeling of pressure released.
And waking back up in the command cradle as if nothing had happened, his carapace unmarked.
Except, I am no longer armed. What happened to my trusty rifle that took the lives of so many Lanaktallan and Atrekna? Was it dumped in the reclaimer? Hidden in a storeroom? Thrown into a volcano? it wondered.
”There are priority logs to be reviewed. Would you like to continue viewing them? The VI asked.
”Kill me,” Abriketa ordered.
”Cannot comply. Message is as follows,” the VI said.
Abriketa curled back into a ball of misery.
”There are priority logs remaining to be reviewed. Would you like to continue to review them?”
A small green servitor moved along the tiny catwalk and Abriketa watched it.
Please talk to me.
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Cordexen watched the logs as they played through. The deep mining machine had been on the surface for nearly an hour before diving into the planet's bedrock again. He paused the recording repeatedly, examining them.
Enemy tanks, driven by the Lanaktallan, were easily spotted.
There were different ones. They did not use plasma or particle projection weapons. Instead, they fired kinetic munitions, focused nuclear detonations, missiles, rockets, mortars. The mining machine's sensors were crude, calibrated to move beneath the surface of a planet, so did no have clear data.
But Cordexen could see that the unusual tanks fielded battlescreens that were so thick that they belonged on combat spacecraft.
It paused on the power armors. It had found two, both types piloted by bipeds.
Do you think? Do you talk to one another? Do you touch each other? Cordexen wondered, feeling the dark silence inside of him keenly. Do you stand in the sun and lift your face so that you can feel the warmth?
I would willingly die at your hands to hear you cry out a battle cry as you did so, Cordexen thought to itself. I would gladly submit even if you only touched me long enough to rend my apart with your bare manipulators.
”System,” Cordexen stated.
”Awaiting input,” the system said, as always.
”Is there surface data to review?” Cordexen asked.
”Negative. As per facility commander's orders, no surface contact was allowed prior to Mining Autonomous Machine 78462 being forced to the surface due to nearby atomic detonations,” the system told it.
”Open outside channel or camera,” Cordexen tried.
”Facility is on lockdown as per facility commander's orders. Message is as follows:” the VI dutifully repeated the message as it had for the endless past.
Cordexen went back to reviewing the messages.
It suddenly stopped.
The doors leading into the mining machine's command center, which had been fully automated at a point in the past, had been forced open. Once two point three hours after the machine submerged, another time only two hours ago.
”System, show me facility log for door access,” Cordexen said.
”Cannot comply. Data lockout for this station by order of the facility commander. Message is as follows,” the VI recited the message again.
They're inside. Not Lanaktallan.
The bipeds!
Cordexen looked at the door, the bead of the weld glittering in the dim light provided by the monitors.
It felt something it had not felt in an endless time.
Hope and anticipation.
Please come in and kill me.
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”Look at the door,” Addox said when the platoon came around a corner.
Vuxten stared. The doorframe was blackened, with shiny sections. The door itself had obviously been repaired and then welded shut. He checked his map. They had been forced to backtrack repeatedly, slowly working their way up and toward the center.
”Get it open,” Vuxten said. He activated the platoon command channel. ”Reflex triggers on, men. Anything faster than Casey or Tulmik gets a shot to the face.”
Private First Class Tulmik had reflexes so fast, even in armor, that many of the Telkan Marines felt that they bordered on supernatural.
Vuxten watched as Casey slowly cut open the control panel.
”Well, that's new,” Casey said, moving to the side.
Vuxten looked at the space past the cover plate. It should have contained simple wiring for a bladearm to rock a switch and open the door.
Instead, the internal casing was blackened and damaged, metal droplets where the metal had been turned to liquid and rehardened. Wires bypassed the controls.
”Cut it open?” Addox asked, looking at Vuxten.
Vuxten had been dreading this moment. They had been moving through the facility and using the door controls to open the doors. Cutting open the door meant that the facility would notice it immediately.
”Do it,” he ordered.
”Roger that, sir,” Casey said, setting to work with his fusion torch.
It took only a few minutes, the endosteel of the door cutting like soft butter before a hot knife. Addox used the suction pad Casey handed him to pull the door out of the way, leaning it against the wall
”Um, I don't think that's standard, sir,” Addox said when the platoon's shoulder lights illuminated the hallway beyond.
The wall panels were pitted, scored, cratered, blackened, and covered in beads where liquid metal had hardened after being splattered against the wall. There were multiple blast patterns on the floor.
”You think they all killed each other and this place is just running on automatic?” Lance Corporal Zevrek asked.
”Possibly,” Lieutenant Plunex said.
”No way. That little greenie leg we found smashed between those two pieces of equipment had only been there for a couple of centuries,” Addox said.
”There's computerized automatic, then there's Mantid automatic,” Casey said slowly.
The platoon moved slowly down the hallway, keeping their spacing up, looking at the walls and ceiling.
”Dead camera,” Addox said, pointing it out.
”Ichor stains according to my buddy,” Private Hekamet said, pointing at a discolored mark on the wall.
The hallway T-intersectioned at a larger one.
”Ideas?” Addox asked.
”Head toward the center,” Plunex said after glancing at Vuxten, who stayed silent.
”Wish we could use the mapping seeds,” Private Druten muttered.
The doors at the end of the hallway were missing, the hallway opening up into a massive space.
”Halt,” Vuxten ordered a good ten meters from the door. He thought for a moment. ”Casey, Druten, Vintra, five steps in. I want feed from your cameras to Lieutenant Plunex, Sergeant Addox, and myself.”
”Roger that, sir,” Druten said, moving up.
Vuxten didn't say anything as Casey reached down and grabbed the minigun, bringing it up and into play. The smart harness hissed softly, compensating for the weight of the gun, the ammo, and the creation engine.
Vuxten watched the three fields of view as the troops moved forward. They passed the doorway, kicking in their light enhancement.
The floor was covered with ancient debris, stains, craters, and blast marks.
Vuxten was watching Casey's feed as the human looked up.
”CHROMIUM SAINT PETER!” Vuxten yelled, his hands pulling his rifle into play as he slammed the platoon's psychic shielding to maximum.
Casey's minigun opened up.