Extinction Wars: 02 - Planet Strike Page 30

  “She has a name.”

  “Your tone implies anger. Why are you angry because I referred to her status?”

  Status? What was the relic talking about? “It’s not her status,” I said, “but her sex.”

  “Yes… You are correct. I used an improper word.”

  I liked this less and less. I’d expected the Forerunner object to act without error. It seemed to be screwing up. I’d thought the First Ones—ah, never mind. Maybe like most legends, the Forerunners were overrated and overhyped.

  “Now that you’re out in the open among us,” I said, “how about you give me a name. I’m tired of thinking of you as ‘it’ or ‘object’ or ‘artifact.’”

  “What name would you like?” the relic asked.

  “What do you want me to call you?” I asked. “Or are you just a machine?”

  “Your symbiotic suit is a machine, yet it is alive.”

  “No one is arguing that,” I said.

  “I am not alive as your suit lives,” the artifact said, “yet I am more than a simple machine. I am a long-term receptor.”

  “A receptor of souls?” I asked.

  “What a quaint notion,” the relic said. “Your superstitions are overpowering your mental faculties. I am not magical nor am I a supernatural manifestation. I am a receptor, an imprinter. The last engrams were of SRT 2000. She faded fifty-three cycles ago, imploring me to implement the Eraser Procedure.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You are of insufficient clearance for me to elaborate.”

  “So…I should call you SRT 2000?” I asked.

  “Call me EP. It is more elegant.”

  “Call you Eraser Procedure?”

  “No. Call me EP.”

  I nodded. This wasn’t anything like I’d expected. “Let me ask you a question. Were the First Ones angels?”

  “Elaborate please.”

  “Did they come from the Creator?” I asked.

  “You wish to engage in cosmological philosophy when the fate of your universe hangs in the balance?” EP asked. “That is more than odd. It strikes me as addled.”

  “All right, you have a point. You do realize the present situation then?”

  “The Kargs are about to annihilate the last of you, yes. Once they do, I will implement the Eraser Procedure.”

  “What is that? Oh, right, we don’t have clearance. But you know what, since we’re all going to die, what does it hurt if you tell us?”

  “Hmm,” EP said, “I concede you the point. After your demise, I will fuse what you refer to as the Altair Object into its present location so all Karg vessels can successfully transfer into hyperspace. Afterward, I will open a way to your universe to facilitate the Karg conquest.”

  I felt myself frowning harder than ever. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that SRT 2000 told you to erase all life in our universe? That after the fact she’s going to use the Kargs to commit ultimate genocide?”

  The artifact bobbed up and down. “I will run a diagnostic on myself. There does seem to be an implied error.” The object flashed, rose higher still—

  I aimed my rifle at it. If EP went any higher, I believed he would be trying to escape. I wasn’t going to let that happen, especially not after what the relic had just told me.

  “I see the problem,” the artifact said. “You damaged several processing centers with your shots. No. The Eraser Procedure regards the Kargs, not life in your space-time continuum. I’m glad you spoke up. I would have made a terrible error otherwise.”

  “Isn’t our universe yours as well?” I asked.

  “I tire of this cross examination,” EP said. “It is time to initiate a temporary shutdown.”

  “Come down here with us,” I said, “or I’ll add to your confusion.” I sighted along the barrel, putting the relic in my sights to emphasize the point.

  “That is a threatening reference.”

  “You bet it is,” I said.

  Slowly, the object lowered. As it did, N7 stepped up to me.

  “Commander,” the android radioed on a closed link. “I am beginning to suspect the imprinter has sustained heavy damage due to long years of running and because of your shots.”

  “I think you might be right,” I said.

  “It might be best to destroy the relic with sustained fire,” N7 said. “I believe it is acting irrationally and is therefore untrustworthy.”

  It seemed as if First Ones equipment worked under the same laws of entropy as everything else did. Even the universe ran down over time. Why would one expect even perfectly made equipment to remain in top shape after thousands of years or tens of thousands of years? EP was malfunctioning, and the thing was supposed to be the key to our survival. Yet on a whim, it had planned to destroy our universe. How many wrong decisions had the artifact made through its long life? Could it even answer correctly about the past? My guess was that some of the answers were truthful and others false. Since we had no way of knowing which were which…its historical anecdotes might be more harmful than useful.

  “We want to reach the center of the planet,” I said. “Can you help us get there?”

  “I believe you desire to leave the planet in particular and hyperspace in general,” the relic said.

  “We do,” I said.

  “If you use the Altair Object as your transporter, it will cease powering the portal. That will strand the majority of the Kargs in their dying universe.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  “I cannot aid you in such an endeavor,” EP said. “SRT 2000 loved all life, not just her species.”

  “Then why did she tell you to initiate the Eraser Procedure?” I asked.

  The artifact hovered without answering.

  “May I ask you a question?” N7 said.

  “Since I do not have the answer to Commander Creed’s question,” EP said, “nor do I desire to rationalize the reason, I would be delighted.”

  I scowled. The artifact was a freak as far as I was concerned. We had to get down to the center now. Talking with EP was wasting precious time.

  “Since you have committed several errors these past few minutes,” N7 said, “could it be possible you have made more errors?”

  “That is logically deduced,” EP said. “I believe the answer is yes.”

  “Could it be that you are in error that SRT 2000 told you to initiate the Eraser Procedure?”

  “Yes, it is possible,” EP said.

  “Might it even be likely?” N7 asked.

  “Could you elaborate your reasoning?”

  “Certainly,” N7 said. “Since SRT 2000 loved all life, it is unreasonable she ordered the Eraser Procedure.”

  I laughed bleakly. “If EP is in error about that, the thing might be in error regarding her engrams. Maybe SRT 2000 deplored or hated all life. How do we know that anything EP says is correct? After all its years in existence—”

  “And your bullets just now,” EP added. “That was a foolishly unwarranted attack.”

  I scowled. “As far as I can see, EP is useless to us. The Kargs are coming and this freak is talking our ear off saying nothing. We have to leave.”

  “I resent your implications,” EP told me.

  “So what?” I asked. “You’re just a machine. Who cares what you think?”

  “To begin with,” the relic said, “I care. Moreover, I can speed your descent into the planet. I can unlock the defenses around the Altair Object and I can help chose the proper destination in your universe.”

  I realized then the proper way to deal with EP. The relic was like a genie in an Arabian Nights tale. Only our genie didn’t have it altogether. He was addled like an old geezer who had guzzled too much whiskey his whole life. He was supposed to be a flawless Forerunner artifact, and likely, EP did know a lot. But one would have to use a roundabout method to get the artifact to do what one wanted. In other words, I had to trick our genie into helping us.

  “Bah,” I said. “You
can’t do jack. All you do is jaw our ears off.”

  “Observe then if you will,” EP said. Machine-fast streams of High Speech, I presume, proceeded from it.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then the walls of our cube-chamber glowed more brightly. A window at head-level appeared. Running purple lights blinked around it. Then a slowly twisting, turning 3-D map appeared in the window, showing the upper planet, a honeycomb of chambers, corridors, processing areas and substructures, a veritable puzzle.

  I glanced at Rollo. He shrugged his thick shoulders.

  “Can you expand the map?” I asked EP.

  More High Speech occurred.

  The map expanded to three times its size, and the purple running lights vanished.

  “Let’s localize this to our area,” I said. “And have the…wall keep the map still so I can study it.”

  “The map is empty,” Rollo said.

  “Make Lokhar legionaries and assault troopers blue,” I said.

  A few blue dots appeared within the 3-D map.

  “Make the Kargs red,” I said.

  A host of red dots and red blobs moved downward, each toward a different blue concentration.

  “Show me to scale our portion of the near surface compared to the center of the planet.”

  The artifact spoke faster. The wall-picture changed until the surface area was a tiny slice. We had a terribly long way to go to reach the Altair Object.

  “Are there any transportation systems to take us to the center faster?” I asked.

  “Do you wish for flyers or tube-train systems?” EP asked.

  “Show me both, and the nearest stations or garages to them,” I said.

  The artifact did as requested.

  “Look,” N7 said, pointing at the map. “Kargs approach the nearest tube-train station.” A large blob of red converged on the station between our blue dot and them.

  “Are Kargs using tube-trains for travel?” I asked.

  “Yes,” EP said. “They are traveling en masse to the center, but that is on the other side of the planet, not here.”

  I swore, and I made an instant decision. “Right. That means we have to beat our Kargs to the tube-train. Then we have to hustle down faster than the aliens.”

  “Flyers would be more dangerous but quicker,” EP pointed out.

  “Yeah?” I asked. “How so?”

  “You could use the substructures to descend at speed,” EP said.

  “How many can the flyers hold altogether?”

  “Twenty people,” EP said.

  “We’ll use the tube-train,” I said. I wanted to win the race. I also wanted to take as many troopers with me as possible. We might have a lot of fighting left to do in the center of the planet.

  “Do you mind if we bag you again?” I asked.

  “It would save me energy,” EP said. “That was why I wanted to implement a temporary shutdown. But I would insist that Ella carry me.”

  “First answer me this,” I said. “Did you use the pink ray on her some time ago?”

  “You must realize that I did,” EP said. “It is why I trust her.”

  “Ella?” I asked.

  “I want to be mad about that,” she said, “but it’s like there’s a block in my mind against getting angry at the artifact.”

  “Ella will carry you,” I said. I didn’t add that N7 would be watching her and the relic’s every move.

  “Then I consent,” EP said. “And I suggest you hurry. The Kargs are coming down in ever-increasing numbers.”

  -27-

  For a moment, I studied the operational situation on the wall. By estimating our own blue dot and the extent of other blue ones on the map, I’d say a quarter million of the good guys had made it into the tunnels, roughly two hundred and fifty thousand. By far the majority of those were Lokhar legionaries. Maybe one eighth were assault troopers. That meant thirty thousand Earthmen and women were in the planet’s subterranean structures.

  According to the map, the Kargs must have something like ten times our numbers, and that was just on this side of the planet. According to EP, more aliens raced to the center from the other side.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any way to communicate with the other friendlies. Our radio waves only worked a short distance in the substructures. We couldn’t coordinate our assault in other words. It galled me.

  In any case, it was time to hit the tube-train station. We climbed back up the tunnels. The underground corridors and chambers often groaned and creaked with noise. Distant clangs and hisses told us the Kargs were up to something.

  After witnessing the hatching worlds in the Karg universe, I realized the enemy was used to subterranean fighting, or burrowing, at least. They must have old-time science fiction tunneling vehicles. My gut tightened as we headed back up. I’d have liked to send scouts first to check the lay of the land and pinpoint enemy concentrations. We simply lacked the time, and had to trust our luck or our ability to fight through anything.

  Instead of scouts, I sectioned us off by zaguns, one hundred trooper units. We’d do this like giant squads, giving each other overwatch fire as we surged ahead by sections through parallel corridors.

  The clangs, the hisses, the clicks of marching Kargs echoed and grew closer. The only thing I smelled inside my helmet was my stale sweat and the sweeter aroma the bio-suit gave off after extended use.

  We traveled through dark corridors some of the time and came to bigger lit ones later. These corridors were double the width in diameter of previous ones.

  I wanted to un-bag EP and ask him why these were larger, and what function had they served? Probably, the artifact wouldn’t know or had lost the data, but it might have been worth asking.

  “Kargs!” a trooper shouted.

  The enemy boiled at us from side apertures, surprising us as if they were Apaches rising out of the dirt at our feet. Like subway covers, openings appeared on the right-hand wall. Crazy, they were like giant portholes in a ship. Metal clanged down onto the deck. From their various locations, tentacle-soldiers aimed and fired a volley from about twenty feet up. They cut down some troopers, while symbiotic armor saved the rest. As one, we lifted our Karg weaponry and returned a devastating salvo. Shot-up aliens rained out of the porthole-like openings. The exploding bullets were particular deadly against them. More Kargs kept showing up, though, replacing the fallen. The new openings acted like PEZ dispensers, always pushing another alien forward.

  We kept firing at the fresh Kargs, making them tumble, too. The margin of speed went to us, and we slaughtered them indeed like lemmings. They kept appearing, appearing and appearing and falling, falling, falling. Even for Kargs, this was an appalling loss, as they rained onto the bottom of the larger corridor, soon piling up. A few injured aliens must have fallen behind the pile, and they still possessed grim vitality. The things didn’t die easily. Those few crawled to the top of the grisly heap. One or two got off a surprise shot.

  A bullet exploded against my chest, knocking me backward as bio-suit chunks rained off. An oily vicious liquid immediately oozed there, like blood to a wound. It coagulated fast, beginning to harden. For those precious seconds, though, another shot would open my suit to the alien atmosphere, and kill me. I twisted sideways to present a narrower target, and I hosed bullets into the Karg pile, exploding chunks of dead ones and nailing the sniper before he got off his next shot.

  Thereafter, several troopers had corpse duty, patrolling and killing the Kargs who looked dead.

  I should have backed off until my suit fully healed. Instead, I held my location, and I felt like an African big game hunter of the Nineteenth century. The large caliber rifle repeatedly bucked against my shoulder. When it clicked empty, I tossed it aside and accepted another from a trooper.

  A few of our soldiers looted the corpses for extra ammo and rifles. We’d been robbing the dead for hours now and had become expert at it.

  I learned to shoot for the neck. Even without a head, a Karg could still mo
ve and react. Without a neck, they died the final death. Don’t ask me why. That’s just the way it worked.

  “We’ll never make it to the tube-train like this,” Rollo radioed on the command channel.

  I glanced down the big tunnel, and I looked up as another Karg appeared at my targeted porthole. BOOM-BOOM, my twenty-first alien tumbled out of the opening to thud onto the pile.

  Finally, that seemed to be it. For this second, no more Kargs appeared up there. We’d taken losses, of course. Despite our battle superiority, they whittled us down a trooper at a time.

  “Into those openings,” I said. “We’ll backtrack and surprise their assembly area.”

  “Where do those sub-tunnels go?” Rollo asked.

  “We’ll find out,” I said.

  “I don’t know, Creed. That’s a long shot.”

  “Go,” I said, and I raced to the dead Kargs, climbed up the twisted dead, jumped and grabbed the lip of the opening. I hoisted up by arm strength and crawled into a narrow tunnel. It was a tight fit, and almost immediately, claustrophobia struck. If I died here—I shook my head, refusing the image. I kept using my elbows, slithering, and wriggling my hips. My helmet light jiggled back and forth ahead of me as I advanced. This felt too much like a book I’d read—the Tunnels of Something or other in Vietnam. Men called tunnel rats had crawled into dirt holes after the Viet Cong. Those crazy men had carried .22 pistols or German Lugers and knives. In the close confines, firing a big gun with a loud muzzle blast stole their hearing or even ruptured eardrums. The enemy had set all kinds of traps with poisonous snakes that dropped onto the Americans, shit-tipped stakes poking out of the floor and a sentry hiding in the darkest section.

  “I don’t like this, Commander,” Rollo radioed.

  “I heard you the first time,” I said. “Now quit bitching and follow the leader.”

  I heard noises from ahead, and I saw a crawling Karg in my lamplight. It used every tentacle and moved fast. The thing halted and tried to wrestle its rifle from its back. My BOOM was deafening, and I understood better why tunnel rats used smaller caliber weapons. The creature died, splashing black Karg blood. The second alien used the first as a bulwark, jutting its rifle over the corpse, firing at me. The angle was bad for the enemy, and the bullet exploded in front of me on the ceiling instead of on my visor. Tiny shrapnel peppered my helmet, though.