Mech 2 Read online

  One optic stayed on Droad, the other zoomed in on the sword in Aldo’s hand.

  “Is difficult,” said Rem-9. The voice warbled oddly.

  “So, you are in there,” said Droad, crossing his arms and taking a deep breath. “Are you going to fight for us, or what?”

  “I wish to exit this ship,” said Rem-9, each word spat out separately.

  “Yeah, we all do. But we have to kill all the aliens to do that. The ship is dying. So far as I know, you are the last mech around, and that makes you important to our forces. I’m leading a force down to the reactors. Will you fight at my side, Tulk?”

  “No.”

  “Your people once fought and defeated the Skaintz. Have you no pride, creature?”

  “Those that did not fight... survived.”

  “Ah, so you have become a race of cowards? Fine,” said Droad walking out. He turned to Aldo. “I’m pulling out of here. We’re going to fight our way down to the reactors. But Beauchamp asked me to send someone down to see how Zeist is doing. Do you want the job?”

  Aldo nodded seriously. “No. But I’ll do it. What about Rem-9?”

  “He’s all yours. Take him, leave him, I don’t care. I don’t think we have the time or equipment to dig the Tulk out of his braincase right now. I’m sure he’ll use his grippers to stop that, if nothing else.”

  Aldo clasped his arm. “I hope this assignment is not something meant to remove me from the—situation.”

  Droad looked at him seriously. “Not at all. I hadn’t even thought of it. All I want is for this ship and every human aboard to survive. We can’t let the aliens take the Zürich. They would lay waste to Neu Schweitz. If we fail, the entire Kale system is lost.”

  Aldo studied his eyes for a moment, then nodded.

  #

  After Droad and his ragtag army of crewmen left, Aldo listened to the ship for a minute or so. It had become strangely quiet. The thruster engines were barely operating, slowly pushing them farther out into space. He wondered if anyone was steering. Maybe they were losing the bridge right now. Perhaps they were close to crashing into a moon. Most of the crew was dead. Their bodies lay strewn everywhere, mixed with the strange bodies of the alien troops.

  Sarah, Bili—everyone had left with Droad. This did not bother Aldo much. He was completely at home with a big quiet space. He had always been a lone wolf, a shadow moving in a forest or a city.

  He thought about the big, cowardly mech sitting in the pantry. After a moment, he had an idea.

  Aldo leaned his head into the pantry. “All clear!” he shouted. “Everyone’s pulled out, we’ll leave this section to the aliens, then. Full retreat to the lower decks.”

  Then he walked out into corridor and leaned against a wall in a pool of deep shadow. He held very still, and waited.

  The ship was very quiet. In less than a minute, he heard boxes moving about. A head poked out into the corridor, optics swiveling in every direction.

  Without addressing the mech, he simply began walking down a corridor. After a few moments, he heard clanking footsteps behind him. He smiled.

  Most creatures didn’t like to be left alone in the dark.

  #

  Zuna watched the marines perform a flawless tactical approach to the portal. She gripped and regripped her axe handle, telling herself to be careful not to squeeze too hard in her excitement. She had broken far too many axes. She counted less than seven left. With so many vulnerable human backs facing her, however, it was hard to control herself.

  The marines threw in grenades, ran up to each side of the damaged opening and then charged in, firing into the smoky interior. Answering fire erupted.

  Zuna waited until she heard the unmistakable sounds of aliens and humans in combat, dying. Then she charged in, bringing up the rear.

  Inside the contractor’s quarters, things were wild, confusing, smoke-filled. Red lights dimly lit the interior. She had good night vision, but not true infrared. When something came at her, she chopped it down. Three were aliens, but the fourth, she could tell by the way the skull crunched under the helmet, was a man. Perhaps he had come to her for aid. She swept her optics, but no one seemed to have noticed. They were all too busy firing at aliens in every direction.

  A swarm of them came in now. Huge things. She’d not seen this type before, and had no idea they were called juggers. Like the dinosaurs she vaguely recalled having seen in pictures from zoos on Old Earth, these monsters stooped to crush men with their massive jaws. They had horns, too, on their heads. They gored men, crushed them down. It took dozens of snapping laser bolts to bring one down.

  As she watched, Marine Commander Zeist was chomped upon, lifted up in the mouth of a giant. The monster threw up its head as if to swallow the man whole, but then its head blew apart. Zeist must have released a grenade in his final moments, killing the jugger and himself.

  Zuna held back, excited, as a jugger cornered a group of men, advanced. She charged when its back was turned. It took a dozen blows and she broke her axe, but she brought the jugger down, clinging to its back, riding it. After it fell, she kept squeezing with her grippers in a frenzy, severing the spinal cord. The thrashing monster stilled.

  Zuna looked around for fresh game, but all the others aliens appeared to be dead. And the humans were facing her.

  “Thanks, Zuna,” said one of the surviving marines.

  She clattered her dripping grippers at them. “Any time,” she said.

  They looked at one another. Zuna ignored them, fishing a fresh red axe out of her bag.

  Zuna waited, without speaking. Soon, the last knot of marines, marshaled by a sergeant, advanced into the next chamber. There were things in that room that none of them had ever imagined.

  Dozens of bloated creatures lay like swollen blisters on the deck plates. Zuna realized after a few seconds of scrutiny they were human women, blown up like balloons of skin. Small aliens were everywhere, squirming like white worms.

  Getting over their initial shock, the marines began firing. The Sergeant tried to communicate with the women who hissed in return.

  “Kill them all,” he said in grim disgust. “Kill everything.”

  Zuna had never heard sweeter words. She went wild, chopping with abandon. Things fled from her in every direction, but she ran them down. The marines walked among the alien breeding creatures and shot them point-blank. It was obvious to any observer they were no longer human.

  The worm-like, segmented young managed to overwhelm one man. His comrades rushed to his defense, but were unable to fire into the wriggling pile of white bodies for fear of hitting the thrashing, screaming marine. They kicked at the pile of hungry larvae, grabbed them, wrestled with them. When the first marine stopped struggling, the pile of larvae moved onto the next man.

  Suddenly, Zuna was in the middle of the melee. She chopped wildly and made an odd, whooping sound as she did so. Men and aliens fell. The axe head bit into helmets and flesh, mixing human and alien gore in fountains.

  “Stop, stop, STOP!” shouted the Marine Sergeant, raising his laser carbine to sight upon Zuna.

  She finally stopped chopping. A pile of flesh, over a meter high, surrounded her splattered legs. A few of the bodies around her still flopped and heaved.

  “Sorry,” she said, rotating to face the sergeant. “Did I get carried away?”

  “She killed Rizzo. And Degrace, too, I think.”

  The last marines stared up at her.

  “Whose side are you on?” asked the Marine Sergeant.

  “It was an accident. The bodies were stacked up—I thought I was hitting aliens. I told you, I’m not a combat mech.”

  The Marine Sergeant lowered his weapon. “Well, you did kill a ton of them. Only swing at aliens from now on, okay? We can’t take any more casualties. I’m down to a squad, here.”

  “Of course. There will not be any more mistakes. I’ll stay right behind you.”

  #

  Droad reached the reactors and met with relat
ively light resistance. He found this both encouraging and worrisome. Working with the techs among his band of crewmen, they managed to get the liquid-fusion reactors gurgling back into life. The dark ship lit up in many regions. Oxygen began to flow again.

  Searching the area, they found evidence of strange occurrences. Murdered personnel stuffed into lockers. Axe heads were stuck in some of the bodies, wedged into spines and femurs. Someone or something had chopped them in half. Droad viewed the gory evidence with concern. Had the aliens planted a traitor among the crew? He recalled the talk of sabotage before the ship had even lifted off. What was going on?

  Droad reviewed the situation. Aliens, even if they had killed all these crewmen down here with axes for some reason, would not have bothered to hide the evidence. They would have eaten the people or dragged them to their nest or just left them where they lie. Why bother hiding bodies? This was a fight between two species, everyone knew which side was which... Or did they?

  Droad recalled Aldo having said something about the mechs having been killed with axes. He called him on his com link, which was working properly again now that power had been restored in much of the battleship.

  “Aldo? What do you have to report?”

  “A lot of dead marines, so far,” whispered Aldo in return. “I’m heading into the contractors’ quarters. Looks like a real bloodbath in there.”

  “Aldo, I’ve found a lot of dead people. With axe heads buried in their bodies. They were hit hard Aldo. Harder than a normal human could manage. Like those mechs in the hold, remember?”

  Aldo was quiet for a second. “Yes, I remember. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Just keep it in mind. We have an alien among us, I think. Something isn’t right.”

  “Thanks for the information. I’ll keep it in mind. I’m going offline now, turning off everything before I scout this slaughterhouse.”

  #

  Aldo crept up beside the blast-scarred portal that was the entrance to the biggest mess of body parts he’d ever seen. He’d never been a squeamish man, but he’d never been faced with quite the carnage he glided around now. Wet lumps of hair, ripped out organs and rubbery tubes of flesh slished under his feet as he went. It was hard to tell alien from human.

  He followed the darkest walls around the outer edge of the room. Who knew if any of these things were playing dead? He kept his blade up and ready.

  A clanking sound grew behind him. First a glinting griper, then a pair of wildly swiveling optics appeared at the portal. The optics scanned the mess on the floor with great interest.

  “Aldo?” said a warbling voice.

  Aldo waved at Fryx, wanting to shush him without making a sound.

  The optics kept swiveling about, taking it all in. The sound of the artificial muscles and clicking optics seemed loud in the deathly quiet chamber.

  “Aldo, I do not wish to enter this place.”

  “Then stay out,” Aldo hissed back at Fryx. “Just shut up.”

  Deciding his cover had been blown anyway, Aldo moved to the next portal and entered quickly. More death and destruction. Huge bodies, aliens like dinosaurs, lay blown apart on the decking. Aldo raised his brow, impressed by these. He wondered if he would have a chance against them. Maybe, if he side-stepped a charge and managed to take out a leg. But if they simply dipped those big heads down, he doubted he would survive. The monstrous jaws were too big, too thick. His sword might run through the brain, but he would still be crushed and chewed.

  Aldo kept going. Up ahead, he heard something. A clanking, that sounded like a mech moving around. He looked back over his shoulder, puzzled. There was Fryx, driving Rem-9 gingerly around the piled bodies.

  If Rem-9 was behind him, what mech could be up ahead?

  #

  Zuna killed the last of the marines in the service rooms. She was proud of her final deception. Claiming she’d seen survivors, she followed them into the laundry chambers. She had just come from there, but had spent her time knocking out lights, not finding survivors or aliens. If she had found either, she would have axed them to death as well.

  It took her two more axes, and a laser bolt to the hip region, but she finished the lot of them. The last was the Marine Sergeant, whose final expression of shock was priceless. She kept the image in her bio-ram for later review. She might even make a hard copy when she got home to Neu Schweitz. She’d have to hide it, of course. Perhaps she’d put it in the Senator’s closet full of cleaning products. No one ever looked in there except for Zuna herself.

  Zuna heard footsteps then, coming distantly down the corridors. The footsteps were quiet, as if the owner were trying to sneak closer. She looked around, and found an appropriate spot behind the doors, which had been torn off their hinges and lay on the grooved steel flooring of the laundry room. She waited there, with her axe held high.

  “Zuna, isn’t it?” said a voice.

  She startled. Someone stood at the far side of the room. There was a second door there, but she didn’t know where it led. Had this man somehow circled around?

  “Yes,” she said, lowering her axe. “I’m sorry. I thought perhaps you were an alien.”

  “No reason to apologize,” the man said, “understandable mistake. There are aliens everywhere. I’m Aldo, by the way.”

  Aldo was a shadowy figure. He had something in his hand. Was that a sword?

  “How did you know my name?” asked Zuna.

  “There are only so many mechs around. And you are a famous one.”

  “Famous?” Zuna took a step forward. She stepped on the broken steel door and it creaked under her weight.

  “Yes. You are a famous murderess. I remember, you see. I remember you from the papers, years back. I think I was a boy still, when you killed everyone at your bed-and-breakfast.”

  Zuna took another step closer. “I think—I think I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Aldo was putting on a pair of black gloves. He fitted them carefully over each finger.

  “I think that you do. You are Zuna Bisch, or you once were, long ago. Instead of the death penalty, they sentenced you to be made into a mech. They scrubbed your mind. Don’t you remember? Senator Fouty must have taken you in, he was always a bleeding heart.”

  Zuna decided to stop lying. Clearly, this man was never going to turn his back to her.

  “I do remember! At least I remember the murders. It was the best night of my life.”

  “I’ve been counting, Zuna,” said Aldo. “And I think you must have killed more aliens than humans. A lot more.”

  “Well,” she said. “There were more of them about.”

  “Yes, any target of opportunity, is that it? Well, without your help, strangely enough, we might not have survived this far. For that, I’m going to offer you a fair death.”

  “What?”

  “It’s more than you deserve. En garde.”

  Aldo raised his sword with a flourish. He thumbed the power up to full and it blazed into sizzling lavender luminescence.

  Zuna charged him then, axe upraised, her off-gripper clacking loudly, excitedly. She crashed down the axe. The handle struck the man’s arm, but the head of the axe was off by that time, flying across the room. The man had slashed off the axe head with his flashing sword.

  Aldo deftly tossed his sword from his broken arm to his whole one, caught it, and slashed away Zuna’s gripper as it came for his throat.

  Zuna swung an optic down to look at the gripper, which clanked on the floor. She had barely seen the blade flicker. She reached for him again with her remaining gripper, swiveling up her optics to watch him. But her optics went dark. He had cut them both off.

  Then he proceeded, as she warbled and hummed loudly, to cut her body of metal and polymers apart. She stopped humming only when he sank that flashing sword into her braincase and she finally died.

  #

  “You can come out now,” said Aldo in a disgusted voice.

  Fryx drove Rem-9 into the
laundry room from the shadowy corridor.

  “She’s dead?” asked Fryx.

  “Yes. Now, let’s make sure all the aliens are. Then we can both get off this damned battleship.”

  Aldo cut strips of cloth to form a sling for his broken arm. Carrying his sword in his left and wincing, he walked out of the laundry room. Fryx drove his mech after him.

  After half an hour, Aldo was about to give up searching the area and leave this mess behind.

  Fryx stopped him, however.

  “I’ve found her,” said the Tulk.

  Aldo flashed him a look. “Found what?”

  Fryx drove the mech to a hidden spot. Up, underneath a row of heavy pipes, hidden in a recess that none would normally think to look, there was a bulbous growth. It was brown, with a mottled surface. Vaguely translucent, the blister-like object was perhaps the size of a child curled up into a ball.

  “It looks like some kind of tumor. Is it alive?”’

  “It is— a Savant. She has formed a cocoon, a blister to protect herself.”

  “From what?”

  “From decompression, I suspect.”

  Also looked at the mech in alarm. He flipped down his faceplate. He contacted Droad.

  The thing on the wall looked like a sac of liquid. Something moved inside there. Aldo held his sword up. Should he thrust and end this thing?

  Droad told him to wait. They wanted to study it. Unless it attacked, they should capture it.

  Aldo signaled Fryx. The Tulk reached up with his gripper and pulled the shivering egg-shaped sac of jelly from the wall. It came away with a sound like tape being ripped away from flesh.

  Then the battleship shook.

  “She’s transmitted a signal,” said Fryx.

  “Stop, or I kill you now!” Aldo threatened the creature.

  “It’s too late,” said Fryx.

  Then the ceiling opened up with a flash. Aldo, stunned, felt himself lift upward. The pressure had been ripped from the room. He was about to float out into space. He cursed himself, as he’d forgotten to turn on his magnetic boots.