"Hello again, Beatrice," Maria said.
My brow furrowed. "How do you know my name?"
"I know a lot of things," Maria said, grinning. "How’s David doing?"
"Who the fuck are you talking about?" I asked – the name crawling through the back of my mind. It had to mean something. Beatrice - me - we had known a David, that had to be it. The two Brood hissed, distracting me from my reflection. The 'normal' Brood had longer claws, so I decided to call him a Warrior Brood. The one who had transformed the woman from human being to fucking monstrosity...well...I figured if they could do that the only good name would be a Worker Brood. His claws did seem to be smaller.
"Lucas knows," Maria purred. "Though, I have a question for you..."
I resisted the urge to cock the shotcannon. I had already cocked it.
"How many bullets does your pistol have?" Maria asked, her tongue elongating as she licked her lips - sliding down to lick each of her hard nipples, leaving them glistening.
I smirked, slightly. "Enough."
The Warrior Brood leaped at me. I shot it in the head. The head painted the wall with bits of brain and blood and the Worker Brood hopped onto his creation's back, like she was a horse. The hybrid snarled at me, then drove forward. Her body smashed into the wall separating this brothel room from another and the wall exploded inwards, metal screeching, sparks spraying from the torn and ripped cabling that had once provided power between the rooms. The next room over had five corpses, each one of them laid in a circle.
Each one had fucked the other to death. Literally. Five men, each with their cock in another man's eye, their bodies forming a perfect circle - disturbed only by the hybrid running away from me. The Worker on the back looked back at me. But before I could draw a bead, Maria leaped onto me. Her hand closed around my throat, touching my collar. Her finger pressed the button curiously. I had once spared her.
But that was while she had been asleep. Knocked out cold. Helpless.
There was trying to stay human.
Then there was being a fucking idiot.
The shotcannon pressed to her belly and I growled. "Bye Maria," I hissed.
The shotcannon blast took her and threw her against the wall, her hand releasing my neck. I hit the ground and gasped as Maria started to push herself to her feet, blood dribbling from a dozen puncture wounds in her belly. She shirked.
"Nooo!" She clutched at her belly. "My baby !"
"Eh," I said, clenching my fist. Lightning began to crackle around my palm - my shotcannon was still recharging. "Take it up with the Telapath."
I flung out my fist and a bolt of lightning flew from my palm and slammed into her mouth. Her eyes flared with a golden inner light and then the back of her head exploded apart into a wild spray of bone and hissing, cooked brain. My Psi meter dropped from 30 to 29 and I shook my head a bit. The roar of the thunderbolt had left my ears ringing. I stepped slowly away as Maria’s corpse corpse sprawled on the ground, still hissing, still twitching.
I felt a curious mixture of detached relief and...deep sorrow.
"Fuck," I hissed. "I wanted to save her."
My eyes blurred.
"There t'aint much left to save," Lucas said. “And-”
“Don’t even fucking mention fucking cyber-modules right now!” I snapped.
Tick tick tick.
Over the sparking, over the distant clatter of the hybrid, over my own pounding heart and aching soul, I could hear that tick tick tick . That sound of the Telepath drawing closer. I tapped my collar and started towards the hole. I paused, for a moment, Maria's words buzzing in my brain. I was tempted to close my eyes, to check my inventory, to check on the pistol. To see what she might have meant. I shook my head. Not the time.
Then I felt it. The hideous presence of hte Telepath, sliding into my body like a wave of ice. My muscles locked and my eyes went unfocused as the Telepath made me drop the shotcannon to the ground. It clattered and clunked and my legs moved mechanically. I started counting the seconds in my head as I walked out and into the opening. The Worker Breed and the Hybrid it had created were standing in the open plaza. The ticking sound that I heard came from above me. I didn't try to fight - and so felt light as a breeze as I was puppeteered towards the two.
"Y-You killed her," the new hybrid hissed.
My mouth opened and my eyes closed. I mentally focused on each of my items in my inventory - and each time I did, it brought up a sub-menu, including the option to drop . When my eyes snapped open, I felt the nanites on my back unfurling and snapping open, moving like a viscious mass of mini-tentacles, dropping every item I had collected. Then I was forced forward again - my movements jerky and twitching. The Telepath was being sloppy. I wondered if it was scared of getting shocked again, or if it was upset too. The thought made me feel a buzzing sense of joy . Yeah. Suffer. Suffer you fuckers . Suffer for what you did to Maria. To this girl. She had been on that robot for how long? Weeks? She had been raped and broken...then raped again.
I stopped. Knelt.
My hand closed around the pistol, fingers closing around the handle crudly.
"Make her explain," the Hybrid snarled. "Don't you know...don't you know what you are ?"
The control on my mouth slackened and I looked at her with pity. "I'm here to stop you."
The collar went off. Pain lanced through my body, but I ignored it, spinning around and spotting the Telepath instnatly. It was a hideous mash-up of skull-like faces and bulbous tissue, crammed together into a mass not unlike a tumor given tendrils and clicking spider-legs. Each leg was tipped with a curved blade. That was made that tick tick tick noise. My pistol leveled on it and it wailed in fear and confusion as I felt its control probing at me through the pain. I put three bullets through its body, painting the wall with blood. I spun around and fired another five shots into the Brood. As it fell, the hybrid reared backwards and the tentacle-cock emerged from the second head.
It shot towards my throat, the Hybrid screeching in fury.
I caught the tentacle with my off hand and sent every jolt of electrical power I could through her. Her backs arched and she screamed from both mouths, then toppled to the side, smoking softly. As she sprawled there, I let go of the tentacle, panting. My Psi had dropped to 28, though I noticed that my health had dropped from 100 to 99 from that tiny jolt. Fucking ow .
"I failed Maria..." I hissed around the pain. "I'm not fucking failing you ."
I took the collar and set the timer to an hour. Since, well, I didn't know when I'd run into another telepath. Then I knelt down, grabbed the groaning hybrid, and started to drag her along the ground - swearing every step of the way as she clattered, thumped and clunked.
“Now,” I panted.
“Now what?” Lucas asked. “Also, damn lassie. That was some fine shooting.”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning slowly. “That’s why I can hear about the cyber-mods now.”
“Oh! Uh,” he paused. “Do you want me to seperate...no, I’ll just...the telepath got you 15 mods in total.”
I was glad. I didn’t want to have to hear how many mods it had been worth to fail Maria.
***
"Oh god..." Tracy whispered, her voice ragged as she stood above the hybrid. "It's Danielle."
Jules and Marisa were working together to drag the corpses from the suicide pool to the morgue. Apparently, there was one on every level. That said a lot about TempleSoft. Nothing good. I sighed as I checked the restraints keeping the hybrid trussed up in case she woke up, looking up at Tracy.
"Did you use to work with her?"
"Yeah," Tracy said. "We both worked in corporate, handling the orbital transfers between the corporate resorts." Her voice took on the faint monotone of someone who was just talking to be heard. "We had one or two every few days. Big people. Rich people. They show up, they want to get here with minimum fuss and bother. You'd think that'd be a flip and burn, just straight there and there. But no, see, most of these pleasure yachts didn't have
major thrusters. Why ever accelerate harder than 0.1G? Cheaper and leaves more room for the fuckslaves."
"Did you meet me?" I asked, looking at her.
Tracy blinked. "I...don't..." She paused. "Wait, you said your name was Beatrice?"
I nodded.
"No, but Danielle did," she said, looking down at the hybrid.
"That was why she said she knew who I was, huh?" I asked, frowning.
Jules came back, puffing softly. "We’ve gotten the bodies into the recyclers," he said at my questioning look. "But Marisa and I heard...well...Brood." He frowned. "Not the big ones, the smaller ones. They're definitely congregating in the gardens."
I groaned. "That means Warriors are going to be coming out soon." I rubbed my face and then stood up, pulling out my pistol. "Before I go, tell me about the Tesc power source. I want to know if it's going to crap out on me before I go throw myself at five Broodmothers."
"Well, uh, quick version?" Jules asked, looking nervous. "The Tesc don't have time. That is, when we sent the probe into their dimension, it read that it was detecting temperatures at absolute zero and five thousand million degrees over the point where quarks stop being able to form. The Tesc don't have a tomorrow or a yesterday. Everything happens at the same time, constantly. Our artifacts sent into their dimension drag time with them - small amounts in the case of the probe. Large amounts when it comes to us." He sighed. "So, when-"
Something sparked in my mind. I closed my eyes and checked on the pistol in my inventory - and saw that it had seven bullets. Still. Despite me having fired it against the Telepath. And against Maria, earlier. “Fuck!” I hissed.
Jules blinked at me. “What?” he asked, sounding concerned. “What’s up?”
"This pistol has seven bullets," I said, frowning. "It had seven bullets when I pulled it out of the locker. It had seven bullets after I fought Maria for the first time. It has seven bullets right now." I looked at him, my jaw tightening slightly. "I...wait. You say that the Tesc universe, or dimension or whatever, doesn’t have time, right?”
“Yes,” Jules said, slowly. “It’s why we’re studying them in the first place. It’s a whole new field of physics, and very strange and-”
I held up the gun and then fired a bullet into the ceiling. It thudded home. I fired another bullet into the wall. The others gaped at me, and Jules jerked away from the report of the gunshot. Then I checked my interface - and just to be certain, I discharged the magazine physically to show the rest of the group. Seven bullets gleamed in the boxy metal container. I turned, and hurled the magazine as far away as I could. It hit the ground and skittered around the corner. Then, turning back at Jules, I held up the gun, then aimed it at the wall and pulled the trigger. Another bang . Another bullet hole.
"I-Its semi-automatic," he stammered, trying, groping desperately for an answer that wasn't what I knew it was. “T-Those, those hold a bullet in the chamber even after you take out the magazine.”
I pulled the trigger again. Another bullet.
The magazine was back in the pistol. It had never left. It could never leave. The gun had no time - it merely was , stuck forever at the point that it had been in when it...and everything else on the fucking station was dragged into the Tesc’s dimension.
I hadn't been looking at Earth at all when I had been on the exterior of the station.
I had been looking at their homeworld.
"What do we do?" Tracy asked.
"Lucas?" I asked.
"We're fucked, lass," he said - causing the rest of the group to jerk in surprise.
"Lucas, you son of a bitch!" Jules exclaimed. "You're alive!?"
“You can hear him?” I asked.
“We have head computers,” Tracy whispered.
"I'm stuck in a closet down in storage, but aye, I'm alive, Jules," Lucas said, sounding distracted. "Listen, all my readings say we're around Earth. But I think that they're just detecting leftover...I don't know...shite that was dragged in with us? Or the computers are fucked? Either way, if we're in the Tesc’s home dimension, we're fucked ."
"No we're not," Jules said, his voice firm. "We have the portal generators down in Physics Labs! And we have a fucking Tesc right here!" He kicked the hybrid, which grunted softly - her eyes were open and glittering. "We can open a portal, set the coordinates right at Earth, and waltz out and leave this station behind to rot ."
“Can we do that?” Tracy asked, looking nervous. As she spoke, a rattling sound announced Lucas’ finally routing some cyber-mods to into my area through the station’s battered pneumatic system. I snatched them from the delivery slot as the eggheads began to debate the plausability of Jules’ plan. As my palm glowed with the cyber-mods melting into my skin, I heard Jules say, at last.
“Even if it doesn’t work, it’s better than standing around and dying right?”
The others had no way to debate against that. In the muted silence, I closed my eyes and considered the expenditure of my 15 mods. But through the interface, I heard hissing. I heard clattering. And so, I spent fast .
BODY
MIND
SOUL
Strength : 5
(+1) [N/A]
Endurance : 3
(+1) [4]
Perception : 3
+1 [4]
Smarts : 2
+1 [3]
Charisma : 5
+1 [N/A]
Psi : 3
+1 [6]
MARINE
NAVY
CADRE OMEGA
Kinetic : 1
+1 [1]
Energy : 3
+1 [4]
Hack : 2
+2 [2]
Repair : 0
+1 [1]
Seduction : 1
+1 [1]
Persuasion : 1
+1 [1]
Melee : 4
+1 [5]
Heavy : 1
+1 [1]
Modify : 1
+1 [1]
Maintain : 1
+1 [1]
Telepathy : 0
+1 [N/A]
PreCog : 0
+1 [N/A]
First Aid : 1
+1 [1]
Research : 0
+1 [1]
PsychoK : 3
+1 [3]
ParaPsy : 0
+1 [N/A]
I had a feeling that my shotcannon’s ammo and my Psi were both not going to be enough for what was coming . The sounds of clattering feet echoing down the corridors approaching our area. I frowned. "Everyone, get the hybrid to the elevator!" I said. "I'll hold them off."
"How, you're just one fucking girl!" Tracy howled - fear making her voice screech. I kicked into the side of the fountain with my heel - the impact powdering the cheap polystone that they used to make up the edge. Water poured over the chunk I took out of the lip, scudding across the floor, rushing towards the corridor leading from one lobby to this. Five Warriors came rushing out, screeching as they sprinted at us. I lashed out with my left palm and lightning slammed into the lead figure - then sparked along the water. Each one stood, their backs arching, their mouths wide in pain as lightning crackled along the water, surging and buzzing through their bodies. They all collapsed at nearly the same moment, a pile of corpses.
It had only cost me one Psi point - bringing me down to 27.
I turned back to Tracy.
"That's fucking how!" I snarled.
The four others gaped at me. Then they turned and ran, grabbing up the hybrid who howled at me. It took every one of them to even lift the centaur-creature, who writhed against her restraints.
"You're gonna fucking die, you bitch !"
"Yeah," I said. "I heard that before."
Then the Brood were in the room. They skirted around the puddle of water - fifteen of them, maybe twenty. And as I glared at them, I felt a slow, shuddering rage burn through me. They had abused women's corpses, perverted them in the most grotesque way, just to breed more monsters to break and hurt and ruin and maim and
kill. I trembled and snarled and felt my heart thunder faster and faster. Before I knew it, I was among the Brood. I leaped away from some slashing claws, grabbed one of their heads, and smashed it into the hard pavement that ringed the fountain. Their skull crumpled and I turned, then blasted one with lightning from my palm.
Another point. I gave a momentary thought to my limits - 27/30. Plenty of Psi.
The surge smashed into two of the creatures, sending them sprawling backwards. Then I felt claws slash along my back. I rolled with the impact thanks to my newly imparted melee skills, taking only a few points of health and armor damage, skidded between a pair of legs, and let the nanites slick themselves against the water. I fired once, twice, three times, pumping the shotcannon mechanically as I blew Brood in half - from the crotch to the head. As they hit the ground, I kicked out with one leg, sending a Brood staggering backwards to the ground. I put the shotcannon into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The kickback skidded me back against the wall, the wall slurping under me.
A Brood lashed at my face. I ducked and metal shavings flew out into the air as his claws dug into the wall. I shoulder checked it as I stood, sending it sprawling into three of its fellows. I pumped and fired into the mass, the thump of pellets tearing through flesh giving me an aching feeling between my thighs. I pumped and fired again, then smashed jaws apart with the butt of my shotcannon. Blood dripped from my face as I laughed, exalting in their deaths. There was no moral gray area here.
There was just ripping.
Tearing.
Snapping.
I stepped onto a half-dead Brood, my heel driving its head almost a hundred and eighty degrees, then ducked under another one's slash. The feeling of my speed, of my grace in the field of battle, it was a delight. I leaped upwards and fired a lightning blast right down. It surged through the water, and electrocuted another half dozen of the fuckers. As they spasmed, I landed and felt the buzz of the remaining electrical currents, fading quickly.
Mind Games Page 10
