Chapter 415 (2/2)
”No. Just us, sir,” Casey said. He clenched his fist around the piece of warsteel as Vuxten cranked his internal psychic shielding up to almost 140%, the max he could handle before he started getting tunnel vision.
Casey squeezed the warsteel and Vuxten watched as muscle spasms made the muscles along the side of Casey's jaw ripple. Vuxten suddenly smelled dry dusty air, a hint of stale sour human body odor, scorched molycircs and warsteel. His reactor level twitched and he saw his psychic shielding suddenly go amber. Casey was whispering something to himself in a language that Vuxten didn't understand and that his suit's VI didn't translate. It felt like heat was emenating off of Casey, an almost physical pressure against Vuxten that seemed to push through his armor to press against his skin.
WARNING! PSYCHIC DANGER! WARNING!
flashed on his visor, in his cybereye, was announced in his ear.
Casey opened his eye and Vuxten tried to resist stepping back but was unable.
Casey's eye was glowing a bright steady crimson, bright enough to illuminate the eye socket. More, there was a dull red shining from behind the patch. Casey transferred the piece of warsteel to the frame for his minigun and picked up another, squeezing it and then repeating the whole thing twice more.
Vuxten watched as Casey closed his eye, took several deep breaths, and relaxed.
The bar for his psychic shielding's load dropped from reddish amber to yellow to green to blue.
”Everyone OK?” Casey asked, slowly standing up.
”What was that?” Vuxten asked.
”Just bad old memories,” Casey said dismissively. ”Nothing major, nothing important.”
”Oh,” Vuxten felt completely out of his element.
”Just don't tell the Colonel you saw me do that, it freaks her out,” Casey grinned.
It freaked me out too, Vuxten thought to himself but kept the thought to himself. ”So what is that for?”
Casey flipped his face shield back down. ”Imprinting a piece of warsteel,” he said. He opened his hand and Vuxten saw that it was squeezed like a piece of taffy. ”This is going to convince the Mantid big boys not to fight us.”
”How?” Vuxten asked.
”So, warsteel can be imprinted by intense exposure to anger, love, fear, other intense basic emotions,” Casey said. ”So, I just imprinted it with battle fury.”
”You're going to have your meme warn them if they fight you'll rip them in half, provide the piece of warsteel as psychic proof, to convince them to go into cold sleep till we can get them somewhere they can be unthawed,” Vuxten said. putting it all together.
”You're quick, sir,” Casey said. ”I don't want to fight these guys, I don't think they want to fight, but getting them to the surface has problems.”
Vuxten nodded. ”Close quarters in one of the mining machines to travel to the surface. Who knows how they'll react to our battle buddies, you and Addox, not to mention all of us Telkan.”
”Exactly, sir,” Casey said. He moved over to the little robots he had built. He put a piece of warsteel in each of the robots, putting the warsteel in a grasper claw.
”All right. The pictogram basically says that me and Addox are dangers. We aren't mentioning you or the battle buddies. That we don't want him to get hurt,” Casey started.
Vuxten listened to the rest of the plan.
”Sounds good, Sergeant,” Vuxten said. ”Let's hope it works.”
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Cordexen stood under the air vent, eyes closed, fantasizing about standing in the long waving grain of where he had grown to maturity in the service of the queens. About the warmth of the sun on his carapace. How the wind smelled of ripening grain tended to by the russet and golden mantid of the servitor castes.
In the long forever he had been trapped in the facility he had admitted that given what he now knew, he would have preferred to have become a crop tender, overseeing the gold and russet mantids working the fields to provide grain for the herds.
The little robot rolled back in, beeping.
Cordexen looked up, happy to have his thought interrupted.
The hologram appeared and it took Cordexen a moment to take it all in.
It showed Cordexen next to a cryostasis tube. Then it split in two. One side showed Cordexen refusing. A bipedal primate came in, trying to be friendly. Radiation, marking psychic danger, radiated from the biped's head and Cordexen exploded. On the other side Cordexen got inside. It then showed the primate carrying the cryopod up to the surface where it opened and Cordexen got out to eat turkey in the sunshine.
Cordexen scoffed slightly. After all, he was the premier psychic predator in the galaxy?
The robot beeped and a robotic clamp raised up.
Cordexen recognized it as Substance W.
He reached out with one bladearm and tapped it.
YOU CAN NOT STOP ME! NOTHING CAN STOP ME! YOU CAN'T KILL THIS MOTHERFUCKER! NOBODY CAN SAVE YOU FROM ME! MY HATE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES THAT YOUR ILK CAN FLEE BEYOND! YOU CAN NOT STOP ME! MY WRATH, MY RAGE, WILL NEVER EVER STOP!
Cordexen was almost overwhelmed by the images that slammed into his mind and threatened to tear him apart like cardboard trying to hold back an atomic explosion.
Ruined cities burning, blasted landscape, scorched skies. The sound of millions screaming in terror and agony. The terrible silence of being the only living thing.
He was wrapped in Substance W, in strength enhanced armor, wading into his foes. Screeching things, warped things, that his fists crushed, his hands tore asunder, that his guns shattered. Their jaws snapped at him, their caustic drool flooded from their jaws, poison billowed around him, fire surrounded him.
He was surrounded, overwhelmed, cut off, alone, by twisted mockeries of life that gibbered and howled and capered and danced even as they killed and destroyed.
But that wasn’t the worst to Cordexen’s senses.
The rage that filled him. The all consuming fury. A need to destroy, to smash, to hammer the enemy into nothing more than carbon paste that would drip from his fists. To howl and bellow his rage and fury at an uncaring universe even as he thirsted for carnage and mayhem.
His thoughts were charged with it, buoyed by it, flooded with it. Images of men and women and children being slaughtered did nothing more than fill him with even more rage, more anger, more fury, stoking into an all consuming fire that burned hotter than the atomic explosions that roared to life around him.
Nothing could quench that all consuming fury, that need to destroy.
It needed fed.
Cordexen slammed back, against the wall, panting. His abdomen heaved with each breath he took and he was aware that he was rubbing his vestigial wings together in anxiety as he stared in horror at the piece of Substance W as it slowly lowered down into the robot.
The front of the robot opened to show more turkey.
He moved forward, picking up the turkey, and went to sit on his command couch.
The robot turned and moved away, taking that piece of unbridled fury with it.
He suddenly found that he did care if he lived or died.
When asked, he would allow himself to be put in cryostasis.
Anything to avoid the creature that had touched that piece of Substance W, infusing it with more than wrath.
Cordexen knew he had tasted another being’s hate.
He did not wish to taste it again.
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Vuxten looked at Addox, who had just finished putting the last little green mantid on the grav-dolly, setting it gently on the warming pad. Two privates were covering the little greenies with another warming pad.
“They’re in cryostorage pods and being loaded onto Gobbler,” Vuxten said. “The rest of the pods are already loaded.”
“We’ll load these guys up then,” Addox said. “How long till we get to the surface?”
“Four hours,” Vuxten said. He looked around at the computer and control center. “The computer system will shut this facility down into standby mode in six hours, in case we have to come back.”
Addox nodded. “I’ll just be glad to get out of here.”
“Me too, Sergeant, me too,” Vuxten agreed.
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General No’Drak had just returned from the latrine when the icon started flashing.
“Sir, Adder-One has made surface. They’re requesting mantid capable medical services and evac,” one of his aides said.
No’Drak felt a wave of relief fill him knowing the mountain was going to stay intact.
“May I ask a question?” Ge’ermo’o asked the Treana’ad general.
“Go ahead,” No’Drak said.
“Does it bother you that it seems anti-climatic?” Ge’ermo’o asked. “I have spent the past several days nervously awaiting an explosion that would turn the central mountain range hub into a fiery pit of doom but yet nothing happened.”
No’Drak gave the Treana’ad equivalent of a smile. “Yeah. It’s almost disappointing, isn’t it?”
Ge’ermo’o nodded. “Indeed.”
“Well, let’s find out what they found down there,” No’Drak said. He turned back to his aide. “Get medical teams in there. I want a full debrief as soon as possible,” he said. He turned back to Ge’ermo’o. “Why don’t you accompany me.”
“I would like that,” Ge’ermo’o said.
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Casey stood next to Vuxten, watching the medical personnel unload the cryostasis pods from the massive mining machine. Glory was sitting behind them, mechanics going over her left leg and hip.
“You know, I thought we were going to end up shooting our way out, not bribing them,” Vuxten said.
“Shooting our way out would have been the easy way,” Casey shrugged. “We were ready for that. We got lucky.”
“How so?” Vuxten asked.
Casey looked down at the Telkan officer. “We had an arrangement of skillsets and knowledge that normally isn’t available without prior preparation. Between all of us we had the skills necessary to get out of a jam without having to resort to combat. That’s rare.”
Vuxten nodded and filed the information away.
Next time I might not be so lucky.