Mech 2 Read online

  Boldo’s face was full of madness. His black eyes rolled in the sockets. His lips had pulled back from his teeth. He was not enraged, however. It seemed to Nicu that Boldo barely saw him.

  Nicu tried with renewed effort to force the knife downward. It whined. Boldo’s thick arms held him aloft, holding up the knife and Nicu’s entire weight as if he were nothing.

  “Just die you devil,” hissed Nicu.

  “Yes,” Boldo whispered.

  “Yes—what?”

  “Yes, that’s what it was. It was a devil. You are right. You have seen it?”

  Panting, Nicu eased off and stood up. Boldo held his knife now, and it whirred in his hands, forgotten.

  “Tell Mala,” said Boldo.

  Nicu stared at him. “I will.”

  Then, the light of madness went out of Boldo’s eyes. Life went with it. He died there, still holding onto Nicu’s whirring knife.

  Nicu reached down, snapped off the knife, and put it back onto his belt. He barely had it secured when Mala and her team arrived.

  They trotted close and encircled the two men.

  Nicu looked down, heaved a sigh, and shook his head. He did not have to fake panting with exertion. His face was red and sweat stood out upon his forehead in shiny droplets. His lips were pressed together tightly. He wore an expression of sad regret.

  “I’m sorry. I did everything. I just couldn’t save him.”

  #

  “It was some kind of... I don’t know. It didn’t seem to have a suit on. Maybe it was a mech. Or a robot. Maybe the Nexus sent something new out here to spy on us.”

  Mala had listened to his story with interest. The rest of her team rolled their eyes, leaned against bulkheads and snorted softly with amusement.

  They didn’t believe him. None of them. They laughed, they raged, they threatened him. They searched Boldo’s body, and asked how he had managed to kill such a fine man. How he had, through base treachery, caused the death of one of their best?

  Only Mala watched him coldly. Her face didn’t betray what she was thinking. Only her lack of decision, as their leader, kept them from spacing him right then and there.

  “Let Nicu’s robot eat him. Let it feast on his frosty corpse,” said Zindelo.

  “Zindelo is right, mother,” said Kizzy seriously. “He should not be allowed to live if he caused this thing.”

  Nicu stared at Kizzy, mildly hurt. He thought of all the hours he had spent dreaming about her. How could she repay his worship so unfairly? But mostly, he focused on Mala. Her decision would stand. The others would follow her.

  The others focused on the evidence. They complained about the frozen foot, which had obviously occurred outside. They puzzled over Boldo’s electronics, which were apparently fried. It was a wonder, they said, that he had managed to get off even a weak distress call. Only his manual overrides had kept his suit functioning as he hobbled on one hard-frozen foot back toward the base.

  “How could the suit have reconfigured and stopped the pressure from leaking if the electronics were damaged?” asked Zindelo.

  Kizzy explained the two events must have happened sequentially. The boot must have been ripped off, and then the electronics were damaged.

  “But that makes no sense. If his electronics were working until some point after he ripped off his boot, then he should have called us directly with his com-link.”

  Everyone looked thoughtful at that. No one had an answer. Except for Zindelo. He jumped to his feet and accused Nicu of some horrible crime. It wasn’t clear what he thought Nicu had done, but he believed Nicu had caused all of this, somehow.

  Mala watched them all, frowning. When she finally spoke, everyone fell quiet. It was said she had wisdom, a way of seeing things that others did not possess. As was ancient tradition with the Vlax Romani, all the way back to their roots on Old Earth, they believed and respected such insight.

  “Something is very wrong here,” she said. “Look at me, Nicu. What did you see outside?”

  Nicu opened his mouth with a lie on his tongue. He fully meant to tell her about a robot. That was the most believable thing. Whether to save himself or to save everyone, they had to believe there was something out there. Something unknown and dangerous.

  But when he finally did speak, he did not lie. It was a strange experience for Nicu. “I—I don’t really know what it was. It wasn’t human. It was a thing. A creature with one huge claw.”

  Zindelo roared and shoved his face into Nicu’s. His neck was dark with pounding blood and spittle flew as he shouted. “You lying rat! You are low. There is nothing lower than you. Boldo is dead because of you. He is dead because he did not kill you fast enough. I will find out how you did this, and then you will die. You will have no boots on when I kick your arse out of this lock!”

  Zindelo kneed him then, by surprise. Nicu gasped like a fish. Why hadn’t his nanocloth suit hardened to protect his groin? Zindelo or Mala must have overridden his suit and turned off the reactive software. It was a dirty trick, but Zindelo was not yet done. He grabbed Nicu and popped his faceplate open. Nicu threw his hands up, but as he was still stunned from the sudden explosion of sick pain in his crotch, he didn’t move fast enough. He knew what was coming next, but it was too late. A gloved fist hammered into his open helmet. A crunching noise followed and a white flash went off in his head. His nose had been broken. He was familiar with the process, this was not the first time he had endured it.

  Mala put up her hand. Her gray hair floated around her head as she pulled her helmet off and eyed the two men. She did not seem perturbed by Zindelo’s outburst.

  “Nicu, if you lie, it will be as Zindelo has described.”

  “Ha!” shouted Zindelo with an unpleasant yellow light in his eyes. He let Nicu slump down into a panting, bleeding heap.

  “How do we find this...this monster, Nicu?” said Mala.

  There, thought Nicu, someone had finally used the word. The right word. For it truly had been a monster. But no one, least of all him, had had the guts to call it that.

  He pointed out the tiny triangular window into the cold darkness.

  “How do we find it?” she asked him again, calmly.

  “It was close by,” Nicu said. His ruined nose made his voice sound odd. He fought to think past the pain. It should be simple enough. “Just follow my tracks out, less than one hundred meters.”

  They gazed out uncertainly for a moment.

  “There are many tracks out there,” said Zindelo doubtfully. “They will all stay for a thousand years. There is no wind, no rain to wash them away. How can we tell one from another?”

  “I dragged Boldo. Just look for the long line in the dust.”

  “And if we can’t find the spot?”

  “Then you can get lost and die for all I care.”

  Zindelo kicked him. Mala lifted her hand again. “Just tell us, Nicu.”

  “You will find the tracks of the thing,” said Nicu. “It could not make tracks like a man. It had many feet like spikes.”

  Zindelo gave a bark of laughter. “He just wants us to wander out there,” he said. “Then he will seal all the doors somehow. Perhaps he has set some trap to crush our feet, as he did to poor Boldo.”

  “We will not all go,” said Mala. “You will go, Zindelo.”

  Zindelo looked startled.

  “Why me?”

  “You do not believe in this monster,” said Mala. “There cannot be anything to fear. Right?”

  Zindelo nodded. “Very well. You are right. I will not be afraid of some story.”

  They pulled Boldo’s corpse into the passageway.

  “Kizzy, go with Zindelo. Two people are safer than one.”

  “No!” said Nicu reaching up with his arm. Everyone looked startled.

  “Why not?”

  “I—I don’t want you hurt,” said Nicu.

  “She is my woman, so she comes with me,” said Zindelo, growing angry again.

  In the end, both Kizzy and Zi
ndelo went out. Nicu was sick with worry. He gazed out the window nervously.

  Mala watched him closely. “You really do fear. This is not an act.”

  “I wish that it were,” said Nicu.

  Nicu heard a hiss and a click. It was Mala’s helmet. He looked at her. She tightened her suit, making professional adjustments.

  “Don’t go out,” he said.

  “I will stand just outside the door. I will simply help them back... if there is trouble. If this thing is as you say, I must see it for myself. Will you come?”

  Nicu shook his head with fast, small shakes.

  “Do not think you can lock us out,” she told him. “I have all the codes. I will get back in.”

  She left him then. The heavy door closed behind her. He watched, standing inside the airlock. For a long time, he could see figures moving about in the darkness. He even came to relax a bit. Perhaps, he thought to himself, whatever it had been, it had gone away.

  Then there was a sound. He heard it clearly. It was on top of the airlock module. Directly above his head.

  He gave a tiny scream and looked up, but saw only interior of the tube. The segmented metal ceiling was hung with endless equipment. Lights flashed quietly.

  He looked out the window again. A huge claw descended into view. Mala, who stood just in front of the airlock, was snatched upward. This time the monster didn’t go for a foot. It took her by the head. It snipped off the helmet and the head altogether. The body slumped back down, blood smoking and turning to frozen vapor. Dust puffed up in a gray cloud.

  The others ran back toward the airlock, he saw them coming. Perhaps they thought they could help Mala. They had their hand-cannons out. They fired, the recoil in the light gravity jolting their bodies backward. The guns were spacer’s weapons, built with metals that could withstand the bitter cold and not turn brittle and explode under the stress of firing. The sealed cartridges full of cordite had enough oxidizer to fire in vacuum. In response, the monster charged them, claw upraised. Nicu didn’t think the spray of pellets from the hand-cannons had affected it much. Maybe when they got into close range....

  It was horrible. Nicu backed away from the airlock module. His feet carried him without a conscious command. He kept backing away from that triangular window and the horrors that were going on outside. He could hear panting and gasping and cries for help over the intercom in his helmet. They could not get back inside. The thing was between them and the airlock.

  He went to his locker. He climbed in. He shut the door and turned off his headset. He overrode his suit’s programming so he couldn’t hear anything else. No more distress calls. No more shrieks.

  A long while later he removed his goggles and opened his eyes. He watched the light that came through the vents into the locker. Something moved by him, casting its shadow over his locker vent. Something that was bigger than a man. Something squat and oddly-shaped. Had it found Mala’s codekeys and used them to get inside? He had not thought of the thing as intelligent up until that moment. His suspicion that it was a thinking monster made it even more terrifying.

  Nicu clutched his knife with one hand and dialed up Kizzy’s shower, clip 41, with the other. A pair of tears ran down his face, one from each eye. They felt warm on his cheeks, like the shower’s endless, silver spray.

  Seven

  The Gladius braked hard in interstellar space, slowing the giant ship enough to allow entry into the Kale system without shooting past the orange star and out into the void again. Weeks from now it would begin its final approach to Neu Schweitz, the small, emerald-green world that was its final destination. Only then would it awaken Lucas Droad and a thousand other passengers. They were in cyro-sleep, safely shielded from the grim gee-forces required to decelerate the ship and allow it to slide into the Kale system.

  Events upon Neu Schweitz proceeded at a natural pace while the Gladius approached. The planet was the third in line from the star Kale, the same position as was held by Old Earth in the Sol system. It was, however, a smaller world than Old Earth and heavily-cratered. Due to natural biomass growth and heavy erosion from frequent storms, these craters took the form of thousands of sharp, striking mountains intermixed with vibrantly green, circularly-shaped valleys. There were many cold, black lakes between the towering peaks, often as deep and dark as they were wide.

  The equator of the planet was decorated by a narrow belt of oceans. Since less than twenty percent of the planetary surface was covered in water, oceans were occasional rather than common on Neu Schweitz. The relatively few expanses of sea water were small, stormy affairs. The tidal forces caused by the seventeen moons that circled the planet caused unpredictable surges of fifty meters or more in the depth of the equatorial belt of oceans. The many moons ripped at the frothing stripe of oceans, creating regular tsunamis and whipping hurricanes. As a result, few dared to travel the seas in surface vessels. Air transport, submarines as big as tankers and tunnels beneath the sea floor were the preferred methods of moving freight.

  Far south of the central seas existed a town known as Visp in one of the southern-hemisphere cantons. Outside of Visp, in a crescent-shaped valley between six looming mountains, a group of people had gathered. Hushed and serious, the group stood solemnly in a vibrantly green meadow at the foot of a cliff of salt-and-pepper granite.

  A flock of giant rooks, an indigenous species, stared at the gathered humans seriously from their perches in the whip-pines that surrounded the meadow. Although the natives of the cantons called them rooks—and they were black-feathered birds—they were not the same species that flew upon Old Earth. They were far larger, being nearly a meter tall in some cases. They were quiet birds, as well. They did not twitter and squawk. Instead—they stared.

  The rooks of Neu Schweitz often gathered where blood was about to be spilled. Somehow, natives maintained, they knew. They were nut-eaters, not predators or carrion-eaters—but in some instinctual fashion, the birds were drawn to watch the struggles of other creatures while safely roosting on their high perches. With lidless, reptilian eyes, the birds quietly encircled the group of humans like black-feathered snakes. They sat in the swaying, whip-pine branches... and they stared.

  Aldo Moreno stepped forward into the center of the circle of humans. He raised his sword and slid it down the length of his opponent’s blade. It was a ceremonial motion, the customary salute that two combatants provided one another before dueling with plasma-rapiers. Both swords loosed a spray of lavender sparks in response to the contact. The sparks showered the hard-eyed contestants. They barely blinked.

  “Step back two paces,” said the arbiter.

  Both Aldo and his opponent, Commander Werner Goll, obeyed the arbiter. Their eyes stayed locked as they performed the maneuver, each stepping backward two strides. Werner Goll’s expression was grim. Aldo was serious, but there was no rage in his face. Instead, his prominent nose rode high and his attitude was that of a professional performing at the top of his deadly game.

  Both swords were fine steel and deadly in their own right. In addition to a precise mono-molecular point which could pierce hard metal, the rapiers ran with shimmering emanations of kinetic force. The slightest touch would deliver a serious jolt in addition to laying open the flesh.

  “Check settings. Both parties have agreed to level four, crippling force.”

  Each man flicked his eyes to the studs at the pommel of their respective weapons. Neither had to make an adjustment.

  “Being a matter of honor concerning a disputed debt, schlag rules shall apply,” continued the arbiter. “Honor shall be served by death, incapacitation, or the agreement of both parties.”

  Both men gave imperceptible nods.

  Aldo Moreno could trace his ancestry to the original families of colonists on every side. He was from the southern cantons, the Swiss who had been of Italian descent many generations earlier. He, like practically every citizen, felt a fierce pride in his heritage. The people of Neu Schweitz, unlike most colonists who ha
d journeyed out to new worlds, had come here to save their own culture rather than to escape it. Therefore, they clung to old values in any manner they could. They had romanticized the past and rejected what elements of the present they found dispensable.

  After nearly two centuries of hard work, the Swiss had built up a thriving colony on this chilly, beautiful planet. They had also developed some unique customs, such as the bearing of public arms. In most cantons, publicly displayed guns had been eventually outlawed due to an overabundance of young deaths in duels. Local governments however, particularly of the southern cantons, had left out specifics concerning other forms of weaponry. And dueling, while still frowned upon, was understood by the law. People must have a way to blow off steam, it was commonly argued. And so the guns were left at home, but many men wore swords and were considered fashionable. Over time, the simple metal weapons of the past had been improved upon. An industry had sprung up, serving the needs of the prideful gentleman and the swaggering rogue alike. Their rapiers had grown steadily more deadly, more technically proficient.

  Aldo Moreno was a traditionalist who had embraced this element of his native culture. He was, in fact, a professional duelist.

  The customary silver flute warbled. Both men raised their guards, saluted one another and advanced. Commander Goll attacked first, his lunge aiming high. Aldo parried in quinte, then smoothly riposted, and was parried in turn.

  Goll did not retreat. He beat at Aldo’s blade. Sparks showered the ground at their feet. Black spots appeared where the plasma burnt the wet grasses.

  Aldo fell back before the assault, which was competent and quick, but not inspired. Almost immediately, Aldo took measure of his opponent. He was good, but Aldo knew he was better. His confident smile grew fractionally.

  Aldo let Commander Goll come in, attempting lunges, blade-beating attacks and circular disengages followed by sudden darting thrusts. He parried every attack, and when there was an opening, he threw himself into a counterattack. His onslaught wasn’t a wild series of random moves, but rather a deceptively simply set of un-deux attacks. Commander Goll gave ground steadily in turn, parrying and riposting enough to keep Aldo honest. Goll was in shape, Aldo could say that for the man. His breathing was even, and he looked as if he wouldn’t tire for a long time.