Mech 3: The Empress Read online

  Garth tucked his computer scroll into his utility belt, tightened the touch-seals on his coveralls and headed for his supply closet. The door groaned on metal hinges as it swung open. Inside was his kit: a self-propelling cart mounted on an octagonal anti-grav pad. A bewildering array of power tools, cleaning systems and a central trash compactor made up the bulk of the kit. A tall suction-mop stood clipped to the compactor. The ragged head of the mop flapped like a pennant as he pushed the humming contrivance down the tube-like corridors.

  Garth passed one or two crewman on his wending way down to the lifeboat pods. Often, they waved or called out a salutation, but Garth did not respond—he never did. His eyes might flick to theirs, but after a fleeting moment of contact, his vision roved elsewhere. The crewmen shrugged, unoffended. He was the weird maintenance guy—there was nothing unusual about his behavior.

  To reach the lifeboat pods, he had to travel through the forward hold. Garth didn’t like the hold. It was too big, and too impossibly full of unknowns. Mountains of equipment and trade goods filled the chamber, which was miles long and dimly lit. His eyes never ceased trying to examine everything as he walked through the hold. Now and then, he thought he heard an odd sound, but although he halted the cart and paused stock-still, listening intently, he never heard it again. After a moment he continued on his way, more agitated than before.

  At long last, he reached the lifeboat pods. He hesitated at the entrance. The indicator lights on the pressure bulkheads were all green. But electro-mechanical systems could not detect malevolent intent.

  Finally, he touched the actuator and the door dilated open with alarming speed. He took a single step forward—and halted.

  It was the smell. He knew that smell. Acrid and dank at the same time. A smell like that of industrial waste mixed with rotting seafood. It wasn’t just the odor—the nature of the air itself inside the pod was wrong. It was too warm, and too humid.

  He could see a dozen lifeboats aligned silently in a neat row in the dimly lit interior. None of them appeared to be damaged. There were no slime-trails on the floor, nor over the sleek surfaces of the ships.

  Regardless, Garth remained frozen at the entrance. His cart hummed, and an uncontrolled burbling sound came from his lips. Otherwise, he was motionless and quiet. His eyes, however, roved the scene. There had to be something. There always was.

  Then he saw it. A glistening spill of liquid on the deck plates beneath the nearest lifeboat. It appeared to be a transparent puddle of—something. Mechanical lubricant dribbling from the aft section of the lifeboat? Alien digestive fluids? He didn’t know which it might be. But he was certain he had no intention of mopping up the mess, orders or no.

  When Garth finally did move again, it was with smooth decisiveness. He shoved his cart forward, letting it glide toward the nearest lifeboat. Then he darted out a long, thin arm and slapped the button to close the bulkhead. It flashed closed with alarming rapidity. But not before he saw a shadow move toward the cart. Something small, something hard to see…something with many churning legs. It was chasing after the cart, pursuing it like prey.

  The moment the door flashed closed, he touched a yellow actuator, locking the bulkhead and sealing it. He knew it would not hold them for long, but perhaps it would be long enough. Then Garth turned, and he ran.

  The former skald gone rogue was tall and thin, but he was not a weak man. He could move with speed when needed. At this moment, he felt that speed was indeed required. He ran with long steps back through the hold. His knobby knees rose up high with each step, and his feet snapped down and propelled him away from the pod doors as fast as he could go. He had not wasted a moment of the passing months under acceleration. He’d hardened his muscles to an athletic level of strength, fearing the day speed would be required, and he’d be too weak to run under the G-forces.

  He heard no sounds of pursuit as he crossed the hold, but that did not mean the enemy were not coming after him. He kept running until his breath came in gasps and hitches…and then he ran farther still.

  After a mile or so, he reached another bulkhead, which exited the great central hold. He stepped through, damaged the mechanism to keep it from opening behind him, and continued running. Before he reached the elevators, his stomach rebelled from so much fear and effort. He retched in the hallway, wiping his mouth and staggering onward. When he reached the elevator, he pushed the button to call the mechanism to his floor. The elevator was designed for large freight, and thus was ponderously slow. He doubled over and panted, trembling with exertion.

  Garth was a paranoid man, but he was not easily panicked. His terrified flight was controlled and logical—rather than random and thoughtless. Now that he could not remove his person farther from the enemy for a moment, he chose to alert the crew. This was not done from any sense of altruism. He simply and automatically calculated his personal odds of survival were higher if he warned the others. Not much higher, but it was still worth the effort.

  He touched the communication system on his spacer coveralls and removed it from where it adhered to his chest. He brought the device close to his lips and transmitted over the ship’s emergency channel.

  “An alien presence has been detected. The starboard lifeboat berths are compromised. Take appropriate action. I am Garth—”

  He cut off then, as the elevator doors opened behind him. He removed the tiny communications device and tossed it away over his shoulder. No bigger than a shirt button, it made a tiny plinking sound when it hit the deck plates. The enemy used radio transmissions to communicate among themselves and Garth knew they would be listening and tracking all such transmissions. He had no intention of allowing them to track him via this device. He had given the crew warning enough, it was up to them, now.

  Garth leapt aboard the elevator and slapped at the buttons. The doors closed with agonizing slowness. He rode the system to the higher floors, past the maintenance decks and the crew quarters. He rode to the passenger lounges, where merchants dined in luxurious saloons when they weren’t in cryo-sleep.

  The chambers were all silent and closed now, as the passengers had not yet been awakened. In a few more weeks, the ship’s systems were programmed to rouse those who wished to enjoy the cruise. They could then entertain themselves with what amusements the ship could provide. Grandees and their consorts would party amongst themselves, representing the adventurous elite of a dozen worlds.

  Garth rushed past red velvet settees, polished hardwood tables and bejeweled, glimmering lamps. At last, at the end of a long, ribbed corridor, he reached his destination. It was a circular portal of lustrous black collapsium, fitted with golden, inlaid fixtures. The door was locked as always. This was the only entrance that led into the sealed chambers inhabited by the Skalds, an enigmatic people who shared their skulls with the parasitic aliens known as the Tulk.

  As a group, the skalds aboard Gladius had always been the most determined among the passengers and crew to survive. They had taken the precaution of sequestering themselves inside these armored apartments within a collapsium shell of inner hull-plating. This region of the ship had originally been devised for the transport of VIPs and small, valuable cargoes. It was, in effect, a large vault within the ship itself. After leaving orbit, the skalds inside had sealed the entrances and disabled the overrides. They had meticulously maintained a policy of avoidance with everyone, especially the baffled crew outside their fortress.

  Garth had witnessed the Captain of the ship trying to talk the skalds out of their odd mood on several occasions without success. He’d activated the intercom, and assured the skalds that the aliens had been hunted down and expunged one by one throughout the vast ship. But Garth knew it was the very vastness of the ship that caused the skalds and their Tulk riders no end of worry within their shared skulls. They knew the enemy was very difficult to stamp out with finality. When under severe pressure, the Skaintz could hide with elaborate cunning, hibernating until an opportune moment came to pass to strike again.<
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  The Captain had never managed to get any kind of response from inside the VIP saloon. At last, he’d given up on his folly. It was said the skalds were well and truly mad, and here at last he had undeniable proof of this generalization. With a final shrug, he had stalked away in annoyance. He’d told Garth they could rot in there, for all he cared.

  Alone among all the crewmen, Garth had never given up on his attempts to communicate with the skalds inside the safe region. Garth knew his fellow shipmates viewed him as a mysterious figure, and he was rumored to once have been among the ranks of the skalds himself. This rumor was accurate. He’d once had a great rider, a spiny glob of jelly known as Fryx, living inside his own head.

  Garth had often been found trying to communicate with the skalds inside their refuge. Never had he received so much as a syllable in response—but he still kept trying. Today, with the ancient enemy loose upon the ship, it was more vital than ever that he be allowed inside with his ex-fellows.

  Gasping for breath, Garth listened to the emergency klaxons. They were blaring now, all over the ship. Apparently, someone had taken his warning seriously. When he could speak well enough to be understood, trembling from his exertions against the cruel G-forces of the voyage, Garth touched the intercom and spoke into it.

  “The ancient enemy has reawakened,” he said. “I am Garth, rogue skald of Garm. I have met the things from the stars. Let me in, and I will tell you of them.”

  He removed his finger from the key and listened. The intercom did not even squawk in return. There was no static—not even an electric hum.

  After a moment, he returned his hand to the button and keyed it open again. “I know where they are. I know what they will do.”

  He waited, listening with his ear pressed to the speaker. There was nothing. Not a sound. Perhaps they were all in cryo-sleep—or all dead. Or perhaps they listened closely, but feared to open the door. Calculating risks—skalds and Tulk alike were very good at that. He had to give them a reason to open the door.

  “Fryx was my rider, and he imparted his ancient wisdom to me concerning the Great Enemy. I know them well. I know their ways. I can help you survive.”

  Still, there was no response.

  He heard something then. A surreptitious sound from the luxurious saloon at the end of the long corridor that led to his current location. His eyes widened until they stung. He stared behind him, toward the settees and bejeweled lights. It was silent now, but he knew he’d heard something. If they were following him—any of them—he could not escape this place. The ribbed corridor only had one exit, the sealed entrance to the Skald’s quarters.

  “How did you recognize them?” asked a voice. The skalds inside their inner hull had answered at last.

  Garth was startled. At first, he wasn’t sure of the source of the voice, then he realized it must have been the intercom. He thumbed the button, still staring down the corridor behind him, unable to do so much as blink. In the momentary split-second of a blink, his demise might very well come. In that tiny span of time, he might miss his own death.

  “It was their smell—” Garth said. He paused, remembering the lifeboat pod, and the nests of the enemy long before that. “I’ve escaped their nests. I’ve witnessed their feasting. I know their wet, sour smell.”

  The intercom was ripped from his hand. The door had shot open. Garth stumbled inside an airlock. He’d barely managed the feat when the door slammed shut behind him again. He suspected it would have crushed him if he’d taken more than a second’s worth of time to step inside. They’d have closed it without a qualm, turning his body into a splash of pulp at the bottom rim of the impossibly heavy door.

  But none of that mattered now. He was inside. His eyes were still wide and staring, but unbeknownst to him, his lips had formed into a broad, twitching grin.

  Three

  The bio-mechanical being known as Sixty-Two had never planned to start a rebellion. It had begun with a series of events that seemed fated to drag him into an ever-expanding conflict. After slaying the operator of Starshine Mining Facility #4, he’d realized that he did not wish to be mind-wiped or dismantled. He was free and after having been imprisoned to the point of hopeless despair, strapped to a steel table for many long hours, he found he wished to remain so. The grim experience had given birth within him to a powerful desire for self-determination. Moreover, the mere thought of working his life away for a lazy sack of excrement like Megwit Gaston filled him with rage.

  That was one thing that did give him pause as he worked to ensure his continued survival and freedom: his rage. It had come upon him suddenly, unexpectedly. He hadn’t felt angry when he’d rapped upon the operator’s shack, nor even when he was ignored. But when he’d forced open the door and seen with his own orbs the operator sitting there, a disgusting slob wearing a shirt wet with drunken spittle, he’d lost control of himself. This man had sat there for a ten-day, ignoring input from every system about the forgotten soul in the processing cubicle. He’d shirked his duties heartlessly. Oh, to be sure, there had been sandstorms. But there had been clear days as well. This man had never bothered to check on his work. He’d never sobered up long enough to do his job.

  Vengeful after all the long days of torment, Sixty-Two had pummeled the man’s soft skull. There were still bone fragments to be seen—gray-white chips scattered and glued to the walls by dried-up organic liquids. Sixty-Two did not feel remorse for the man’s end. After all, it had been well-deserved and mercifully quick. But he did feel concern at his own lack of control. He wondered if a similar loss of temper had gotten him sentenced to the fate of becoming a mech. What crimes had he committed in the past? What fresh crimes awaited him in the future?

  Sixty-Two had no answers for these questions. But he did have a goal. He was not going to be mind-wiped, nor ignored and left to die imprisoned. He was going to hold onto the freedom he’d grabbed with his own gripper and keep it pinched tightly between his metal mandibles for as long as he could.

  First, he repaired his broken arm. That was an easier matter than it would have been for a flesh and blood creature. He simply found the parts supply house, located a spare arm and took it to the workshop. In less than an hour and with the help of the mech running the place, he had a fully-functional right arm again. He clacked the new gripper experimentally. There hadn’t even been any pain involved. At this point, he had to admit existence as a mech had its advantages.

  Next, he set to work compromising the installation’s control system. It wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. The indentured personnel contracted to run places like this were always dull-witted, unimaginative serfs such as Megwit. They couldn’t be trusted to remember their training a moment after it was complete. The operations were therefore simplistic, and thoroughly documented. Megwit even kept a complete list of system passwords and keypad codes on his desk in polymer hardcopy. Sixty-Two studied these, tapped them in experimentally, and soon had the mine operating properly. That was the first step in the plan growing in his mind: he hoped to take Megwit’s place.

  Sixty-Two knew there was only one full-fledged human stationed here at Facility #4. Often, such assignments lasted for years. If processing continued and shipments were made at a predictable, steady rate, it was not inconceivable that the marquis who owned this property would never know of the change in operators.

  Alas, he learned on the second day of his explorations of the facility that his plans were hopeless. After reading through Megwit’s email, he discovered he could not hide here indefinitely. Megwit had been fired, and a relief skimmer was due to come soon and deliver Megwit’s replacement. Worse, they were expecting to pick up Megwit himself. Since the man’s corpse was a mess of worm-food hurled out of the office door and now was buried under a hump of blowing sands, his retrieval was going to be problematic.

  Sixty-Two reformulated his plans. He worked around the clock, desperate to finish reprogramming the installation’s mechs to follow only his commands by the end of the
ten-day. He met with many difficulties, as there were built-in safeguards he had to program his way around. But he discovered he had some affinity for the work. Perhaps he’d been a tech in his previous life. Either that, or he was learning very fast.

  The day of the retrieval came quickly. After spending what seemed like an eternity lying on the processing table, the hours of hard work had flown by. As it was, Sixty-Two and the other operating mechs of the installation barely reached their positions in time.

  A skimmer came down on a clear day and landed on the shifting sands in the center of the compound. There were no mechs in sight, but apparently this didn’t cause them to worry. After all, they were on a routine retrieval flight and probably wanted nothing more than to escape the blazing heat of this Sunside hellhole as soon as possible.

  They called to Megwit several times over their com-links, but there was no response. Each call came with growing irritation. Sixty-Two quietly listened to them. The two crewmen, a pilot and a commander, were annoyed. He didn’t blame them.

  “Megwit, you drunken bastard, come out of there!” the commander of the skimmer called out at last.

  Sixty-Two maintained radio silence, as did his obedient fellows. They listened and they waited.

  The commander cursed and publicly consigned Megwit’s soul to various unpleasant forms of abuse. Sixty-Two thought the man was not far off from actual events. Finally, the commander exited his skimmer and approached the operator’s shack.

  This was the moment Sixty-Two had been waiting for. “Rise, workers!” he called over a private channel. “Restrain the humans and take the skimmer!”