Hell's Reach (Galactic Liberation Series Book 6)

by B. V. Larson

  The golem laughed gently. “It’s more important for one Derek Straker to do good, than for a million copies to destroy evil. I know that. We know that. That’s why we accept our fate. That’s why we know this is only temporary—and it should never be repeated.”

  “It won’t be.”

  “You say that now, but I know you’re tempted. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Look where we ended up, eh?” The golem glanced over at him with an enigmatic gaze, as if he knew something Straker didn’t.

  But as he was made from Straker, that was impossible, wasn’t it?

  “Where are we going?” Straker asked suddenly. “Aren’t we heading to finish off the Korven?”

  “Like I said, they’re done. It’s just a matter of grinding them to dust over the next few hours. That’s not our job. You and I need to find Carla and the other Breaker women.”

  “Right.” Straker wasn’t used to taking orders, to letting someone else lead—but the golem was him, after all, and the man’s certainty and determination was contagious.

  Was this what others felt in Straker’s presence?

  The composition of the creatures pinned to the racks was trending humanoid. No doubt the Axis of Predators used some kind of classification system similar to Crossroads, where they put similar environments next to each other and changed them gradually, section by section. And, it appeared they were mostly using creatures who lived in oxygen-nitrogen atmospheres, which were by far the most common type to sustain sentient life.

  Straker followed along the lines of humanoids, feeling sick, so sick he could barely hold back from vomiting. The machinery that hung them in place like slabs of meat was connected to them, to their bodies in every orifice, feeding them, servicing them like bizarre organisms rather than people. Fortunately this section was undamaged, not traumatized by the battle. No hatchlings scampered around leaving bloody paw-prints. No babies lay dead from premature birthing.

  Of those conscious, a few of the humanoids’ faces were twisted with horror and recognition, but most were vacant, their humanity expunged, wrung out like dirty dishrags. Straker couldn’t imagine... refused to imagine what they’d gone through. His mind shied away from it. He told himself Carla had only been there a few days. She hadn’t had time to gestate a baby, and wouldn’t have been implanted by a Korven.

  These were his greatest fears, but he kept the possibilities firmly in the denial zone.

  It hadn’t happened. She could still be saved, could still be rescued, could be restored by Mara’s machinery the way she’d been after Vic had held her hostage.

  If necessary, her memories of the trauma could be wiped.

  That’s what he told himself, in order to preserve his hope.

  There were thousands of people, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in this vast underground warehouse, this factory. The horror struck him anew, because the victims here were standard Earthan humans. Somehow, that made it ten times worse.

  His mind reeled, shutting down, compartmentalizing. That was the only way he could deal with the loathsome stomach-turning worry he felt now. Any lingering mercy he’d ever felt toward those who’d done this drained out of him and dried like a lakebed in a hot desert wind. It left nothing but bitter, burning salt crusted over his desiccated soul.

  The next section was of men and boys, immobilized, implanted, and in various stages of parasite development. The eyes of a tiny fraction followed him. One man with a swollen belly mouthed words he couldn’t understand. Straker raised his blaster to put the host out of his misery, but he couldn’t pull the trigger. Who was he to play God? Maybe he could be saved.

  It was a weak lie he told himself, but he tried to believe it anyway.

  Impulsively, he shot the machine connected to the tubes and wires. That turned out to be a mistake. Unlike the bull earlier, this man began to thrash and scream in agony as the clawed thing inside him writhed.

  So he shot the man after all, a mercy killing.

  The scene seemed to recede from him, as if he looked through a faceplate, or a backup HUD, just a glass display, a vidset that could detach him from the actuality around him.

  He turned away. Only his biotech kept him on his feet.

  The golem grabbed his elbow, supporting him. “Come on. Keep it together, man. We need to find Carla!”

  Unnoticed until now, a squad of four more golems had joined them. When they reached the next area, full of human women, they spread out searching for the Breakers. When they found conscious women who could speak coherently, those who yelled piteously at them for rescue, they detached them from the machines and slapped med-packs on them. Those unconscious, they left as they were. The freed ones would have to tend any who woke... if they survived.

  Timeless minutes later, they found Carla and called Straker over.

  Numb, his mind floating with shock, he dropped to his knees in front of her, staring at her face, that face he knew so well, the mother of his children...

  Slack now with all the life drained out of it.

  The locations where the organic tentacles connected to her were black and gangrenous. Nacreous fluids mixed with blood and dripped onto the floor. The machine that should have kept her alive beeped with alarm tones and flashed error messages.

  There was no life in her. That much was clear. She’d been dead for hours—maybe days. The other five Breaker women were also dead, in the same state.

  Yet all around them, most of the humans were alive. What was it? Their biotech? Had the Breaker Bug tried to defend them against the biological machines invading them? Had the interaction killed them instead of saving them?

  Straker found himself sobbing, dragging himself to his feet and reached out to touch her cold, lifeless face with his bare fingers.

  Carla, my love, my all. I failed you. I’m so sorry.

  Straker felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned his head to see golem 23. “I’m sorry, Derek,” the artificial man said with eyes full of compassion. “She’s gone, but she will never be forgotten.”

  “What good is that?” He tried to bat the hand away, but that was like striking iron.

  The golem gripped his shoulder in sympathy. “Everybody dies. Me, in a couple of days. You, who knows? It’s what heroes do. We live and we die, to protect our loved ones.”

  “But we didn’t protect them. We failed. I failed.”

  “Mara told me to promise you this: your children will have a father and a mother. Derek and Carla Straker will raise them. Derek and Carla Straker will continue to lead and guide the Breakers, and the Breakers will fulfill their destiny. Derek and Carla Straker will return one day to free mankind.”

  “What?” In a daze, Straker swiveled his face from Carla’s to the golem’s and back. “That makes no sense. What does that even mean? She’s dead. Gone.”

  When he felt the muzzle of the golem’s blaster against the back of his head, his surprise was so complete he couldn’t react. Even if he had, it would have been too late, for the hand that held the blaster was the hand of an artificial construct. It was just as fast and deadly as he was.

  He found he welcomed what he knew would come next. He was glad of it.

  The pain would end.

  Someone else could carry it.

  The click of the trigger was the last thing he heard.

  Chapter 33

  Hell’s Reach. SBS Trollheim.

  When Straker opened his eyes, he smelled the familiar hospital smell of a rejuvenation tank. Outside the clear canopy, though, he didn’t see the infirmary. Instead, he found himself in a largish room containing at least twenty more operating rejuvenation tanks. Those were dark inside, with hints of occupants, barely seen.

  He slapped the release, sat up, and saw Mara staring contemplatively at him. She looked haggard and weary, and her eyes red-rimmed and crusty.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  He checked his chrono to see if the five minutes for the Breaker Bug boost were up. Instead, it sho
wed more than twenty-four hours had passed. His mind reeled, and he tried to adjust.

  “The battle’s over, Derek. We won. You won. You and the golems and the troops. You saved millions of captives, but lost millions more. Those were unsavable, but we did what we could. My medical staff and I… we also did what we could... ” She shook her head. “It wasn’t enough.”

  “What do you mean I won? You said to hop in the tank for a Breaker Bug boost, and now I wake up here... ”

  Suspicion seized him by the scruff of the neck. He examined his hands, the left hand he’d known since childhood, the right one new and pink with regeneration after the fusing with Roentgen. “Am I me?”

  Mara stiffened. “Stupid question. Examine yourself. Do you know who you are?”

  “Why stupid?” He swung his legs down and stood in his uniform, the same uniform he’d been wearing when he went into the tank.

  She crossed her arms and glared. “Because the answer is either obvious, or irrelevant.”

  “I feel like me. I’m in my uniform, I have my chrono, and it’s my body... but you said I already won. But I didn’t go.”

  “You did... and you didn’t.”

  His mind cruised down the logical track. “Another me went in my place? A golem you created, except not a battle-optimized one? A copy of me, a disposable mechsuiter, because you thought I’d die?”

  She glanced at the floor and didn’t answer him.

  “You tricked me into getting into the tank,” he said. “You sedated me, and you sent a copy in my place.”

  “So what if I did?”

  “So what? How can you say so what?”

  “If I made a perfect copy, does it matter that he was a copy? If the copy was perfect? If it was disposable?”

  “That’s... ” Straker couldn’t articulate his thoughts. “Insane.”

  “Not insane, just hard to process. You had trouble with the Roentgens too, but it’s not that different. He fissioned, making two perfect copies. One happily goes off, maybe to die, as is his duty. The other stays back as insurance, to carry on. He fissions again, and again. Each time, a copy heads into dangers bordering on crazy—knowing that if he dies, he’s still alive elsewhere. It’s the best of both worlds. It’s brilliant, Derek, and it saved your life. And Carla’s. That’s all that matters to me.”

  “Carla? I—the other me—he got her back?”

  Mara glanced to the side. “She’s here.”

  Straker thought he detected a hesitation, a hitch in Mara’s voice, but he let it pass, suddenly desperate to see Carla. “Where is she?”

  Mara laid a hand on a closed tank, brushing it lightly. “She won’t have any memories of the last few days. Nothing after leaving on the trading run. It’s best that way.”

  “Did you wipe her memory? Or was it physical damage?”

  Mara shuddered. “You should be glad you never saw what they did down there. This you, anyway, never saw it. Not with your own eyes. The other Strakers... the golems—they saw. They wanted to pass something on to you before they expired.”

  “Expired? You mean died.”

  “If you insist.”

  He lowered his head as a sense of sorrow and loss came over him. “What did they say?”

  “They said to thank you for their lives, however short. Because those lives were triumphant and meaningful. Because they accomplished something significant. They fought and won. They completed the mission. They got Carla back, and many more. They freed millions, and saved billions in the future. If you were them, you’d feel the same, Derek, because you have the same sense of duty and honor.”

  That sounded like a prepared speech, designed to elicit a certain response from him. Mara was a pretty good actor, but she was still a brainiac, and the whole thing rang false.

  Straker glared at her, feeling his rage rising. When he spoke, he made each word a complete sentence.

  “You. Manipulative. Bitch.”

  His words didn’t faze her, didn’t slap her in the face the way he’d intended. She simply continued talking. “All of us brainiacs are manipulative, Derek. Me, Zaxby, Sinden, Murdock, every one of us. It’s how we’re made. You always knew it. You could’ve exiled me or killed me or locked me up any time, though, and you didn’t, so don’t blame me for who I am.”

  “I don’t. I blame myself.”

  “Because that’s who you are.” Mara patted the tank again. “But because of this manipulative bitch, you’re here, and Carla’s here. Would you rather be dead? Or she was? Would you rather the Breakers were leaderless, or that Katrine and Johnny lost their parents?”

  “The ends don’t always justify the means, Mara.”

  “Hell yes they do. When the ends are important enough. For survival, or to destroy a greater evil, quite a lot is justified. That’s the very nature of war. You proved it when you committed treason against the Hundred Worlds government. Then again when you broke a childlike, innocent AI’s ethics and transformed her into a killer. Those are just a few instances that come to mind right off.”

  Straker deflated. “I... Yeah, you’re right. I’m no better than you are.”

  “And no worse. We all try to do good, but we all do what we have to do. Stop beating yourself up over it. Come on, Derek. Carla’s waiting.” She keyed in the opening code, and the tank hissed with equalizing pressure.

  Slowly, the canopy rose. Straker leaned over and his heart ached as he gazed into Carla’s face. The feeling of love and joy washed away all the anger he felt toward Mara, leaving nothing but relief at his wife’s rescue.

  Her eyes opened. “Derek?”

  “Carla…” He kissed her gently.

  “What’s going on?”

  “That’s a long story. A very long story. For right now, just let me look at you.”

  * * *

  Later, after he’d told the story to a wondering Carla, Straker called together his surviving troops—forty-three battlesuiters and four mechsuiters—for a private meal and conversation, for the unfiltered reports and war stories of troops when they were relaxed and had a few beers in them.

  What Straker learned disturbed him all over again.

  When he’d gotten his thoughts in order, he returned to the infirmary, and Mara’s office.

  “Take a seat, sis,” he said, his stare flat, his demeanor steely and cold.

  “What is it now, Derek?” she said with irritation as she threw herself into her chair.

  He shut the door and stood over her, silent. His hands worked with renewed, restrained anger.

  Mara eyed him. “Is this an interrogation? Are you still pissed that I saved Carla’s life?”

  “Did you?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I have people telling me Carla was dead. That they saw the golems carrying her bloated body away. That they saw the other Breaker women, just as dead, still hanging there.”

  “They must have misunderstood. The others were dead, but the golems got Carla back in time. I revived her. You know how amazing the rejuvenation tank is.”

  “No. I saw the helmet-vid. She was dead. Nobody looks like that and lives. And the others didn’t survive, so why would Carla?” He slammed his palm on the desk, leaving dents. “What the fuck did you do?”

  Mara sighed, fiddling with a stylus, not meeting his gaze. “I told her not to go,” she muttered.

  “Go where?”

  She raised her eyes, and her voice strengthened, rising as she stood and spoke, leaning forward, nose to nose. “I said, I told her not to go. That my sister-in-law, the commander of the fleet, didn’t need to go on trading runs and expose herself to danger. Or at least if she went, to command a cruiser as an escort, but no-o-o, that was inefficient and expensive and she was the boss and a grownup and she could judge the relative risk and she was sick and tired hanging around Utopia, and look what fucking happened!”

  “Mara—”

  Mara straightened, crossed her arms under her breasts. Her eyes held tears, tears of
shame and anger—and apology. “Do you blame me?”

  “I don’t know what I’m blaming you for, sis, but I need answers.”

  “You know the answers.”

  “Then I want to confirm them.”

  She put her hands over her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Go on. Say what you need to say.”

  “You copied Carla. Built a new one. Like a golem. Like you did with me.”

  “Yeah. I did. The best copies I could make, with long lifespans.”

  “And then you sent off the copy… and kept the original Carla in stasis? Just like you sent my copy off to battle and kept me here?”

  Mara jerked her head, her eyes narrowing before her face smoothed to blandness. She rubbed the tears out of her eyes. “Yeah, I admit it,” she said. “That’s what I did. You got me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before now? I was going crazy thinking about her.”

  “Sparing you emotional pain isn’t my job, Derek. I only cared about getting our people back.”

  “And you thought I wouldn’t try as hard if it was ‘merely’ some other Breakers taken?”

  Mara shook her head. “Of course not. But it did serve to keep you extremely focused.”

  This time, he spoke in a flat and weary voice. “You manipulative bitch.”

  “You said that already... and it is what it is. Take it or leave it.”

  Straker stared at her, wishing wholeheartedly he could do something—court-martial her, punish her somehow—except he owed her so much.

  He owed her Carla.

  “How’d you bring her here? And how’d you know you needed to?”

  Mara shrugged, sat, and idly rubbed at a spot on her desk. “I didn’t know, but I’m a Mental Special. I think ten moves ahead, plan for every contingency if I can. As you saw, I had a lot more rejuvenation tanks than anyone knew about. They can regenerate someone from the DNA up, as long as I have a download of their brainlinked mind in subquantum storage. Or I can keep a copy in stasis for years. When we sent off the message drone to call the fleet to Humbar, I added in special instructions to secretly load all the tanks onto Trollheim, keeping them powered at all times. Then, with Zaxby’s help and that of a few of his Ruxins sworn to secrecy, we requisitioned and prepped this hidden bay and deleted it from the ship’s schematics.”