Fortress Purgatory (Helltroopers Book 2)
Page 5
“You weren’t made the same way other androids are built, where you?” Kris asked. “Most of them are clones of people who donated the cells. You are not a clone. You don’t resemble any I’ve seen. There are things you can do I wouldn’t expect a designer to implant in an artificial human.” She stared at Barbara Ann and didn’t move.
“What we are trying to say,” Jack clarified, “is that we want to know more about you before we go further. Ash doesn’t have any issue with you, but the rest of us would like to know the real story. Thank you can clue us in on your origins? If your memory was unblocked before we arrived here, I think you should be able to let us in on the secret.”
“It’s on everyone’s mind,” Makulah agreed, cradling his rifle.
Barbara Ann stopped and looked down the corridor into the distance at the next level exit. She seemed to be weighing something in her mind. If she truly knew who she was at this point, it wasn’t obvious. There were times when her eyes would turn pale blue, but right now, they were a strange emerald green. She had large eyes, not so large as to make her seem abnormal, but big eyes that showed an interest in whatever you were saying. Right now, she turned those eyes on the team and looked at them deeply. It was as if she wanted to share a deep secret that was inside her, one that lay in her from the time she was transported from the pirate ship to gunship Thelema.
“I am not an android as you would understand it,” she told them. “I know you have evidence of my creation in a laboratory. Yes, I was not birthed by a normal human mother, my issue was from another source, but it was not done by a scientific method and you will not find me registered anywhere you would expect to find a created human.”
“Then what are you?” Ash demanded of her. “Why the cryptic speech? We really need to know before we go further in this place. We’ve been very accomodating up to this point, all things considered,” He stood with his crew and looked at her.
It didn’t help that Barbara Ann was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. He needed to know what she really was. Everyone demanded to know before they would continue with the mission, huge bounty or not.
Barbara Ann turned slowly to them and let her skirts swirl around her lithe body. She sighed and told them.
“I am a homunculus,” she said. “I was grown according to alchemical instructions and made from the seed of humans long dead. My father was an executed criminal and my mother a base woman who was insane. The alchemist collected what he needed and cooked it all with a mandrake root in a pelican generator until I was ready. He took me out and made sure I was sedated. Then I was sent, a blank slate, to a school that the corporation created for ones such as me to be charged with my current mission.”
“Look upon me and despair. I am only two years old. One of those years was spent generating in a chamber, the other given a mission and background the corporation needed. I am not human, nor am I anything else. I lack a human soul, but I have my own agency. I discovered my nature soon after we came into sight of this base. I have no morality, but I am a moral person. A synth made as much of alchemy as human tissue maps. Do you understand what I am and what I can do?”
Ash and the rest of the crew starred at her for a few minutes. He didn’t know what to say.
“You wanted to know,” she told them. “Now you do. Shall we continue to our next destination?” Barbara Ann seemed to glow after she told them the story.
“I want to say that is the most asinine thing I have ever had anyone tell me,” Makulah responded through his speaker. “Really, it’s crazy. You just told us you are the product of black magic. How are we supposed to believe it?”
“Not black magic,” Barbara Ann corrected. “Alchemy. There is a difference.”
“Chemistry?” Kris asked her.
“No, I said alchemy,” she responded again. “There is a difference in that too.” Once again, her eyes seemed to glow.
“Alchemical androids. Mecha-Satan. Toxic abandoned bases on Mercury in pursuit of a guy who believes in Enochian magic. Nothing surprised me at this point,” Ash told the group, “We need to get Haddo and get out of this place. Look, it doesn’t make any difference to me how you were created. You are here, you have some implanted abilities, we need to get our objective and leave this place. I asked you why and you told me how, which was a fine dodge. We’ll deal with all these issues later. Right now we need to get out of this poison hell before someone has a suit breech and dies.” He turned and walked to the next level exit door.
The rest of Team Omega followed him, including Barbara Ann. Ash didn’t understand what she was trying to tell him, all he knew was that she was a created human, android or homunculus; it was all a set of terminology to him. Get Haddo, get the bounty, and make those bastards at the corporate level pay for what he’d discovered on Inferno.
The vestibule was on their side of the door this time. Ash entered it with the crew. Barbara Ann as usual was the last one in and shut the door behind them. This time the vestibule was a decontamination chamber before the next level. Why they didn’t have one the other side, Ash couldn’t understand. Once everyone was inside the light overhead flashed red and the decontamination procedure began.
A mist emerged from the ceiling, which washed down their suits and drained the residue to the floor. Barbara Ann stood still and was soaked by the airborne mist that cleaned everyone. After the contaminants were flushed through the bottom of the floor filters, a dry wind removed the last traces of moisture from their exteriors. The process continued three times until the decontamination system was satisfied nothing deadly remained on their suits. Finally, the light turned green and they walked through the next door and down the staircase to the next level.
Ash continued to puzzle over what Barbara Ann had told him. It was crazy, who believed in such things these days? Surely, she’d told them her story in an elaborate tale that represented something else. He shook his head inside the helm and tried to forget the way she’d looked at them while telling it. It didn’t make any sense and he wanted to forget it.
7
The team made it down to the next level without further incident. Barbara Ann was in the rear as usual, but they viewed her in a completely new light after her revelations. Ash still couldn’t understand what the issue was about her creation. It made no difference to him, but some of the others seemed to understand what she’d spoken about on their way down.
Kris knew. Her family went back to the mystical arts a few generations and it was never hidden from her as a child. Some children had parents who consulted the weather reports about what to do each day, her mother used tarot cards. The entire town where she came of age was built around some bohemians who relocated to the seashore and set up their own community hundreds of years ago. Whereas most such places didn’t last very long, due to the incompatibility of the people involved, her town managed to thrive and was even a popular tourist attraction. She didn’t find what Barbara Ann told her the least bit strange. If she told the truth, the entire mission took on a completely new meaning.
It was something she’d put aside over the years she worked in the outside world. The Enochian letters she heard Barbara Ann speak about triggered a few memories, but she said nothing because Kris couldn’t remember where she’d heard those words before.
The vestibule to the next room was built with an airlock of its own. Ash decided it had to do with what was over the top of them. The builders of the original fortress didn’t want anyone walking down into the lower levels that might be contaminated. They entered it and waited for the room’s monitors to check them for toxins. The lights in the room flashed green. Ash opened the door into the next level and led the team into it.
“Air in here is normal for a change,” Char told them as he swung from Theo’s belt. “Nothing I can find. Might be a good moment to conserve breathables.”
Ash popped his and smelled the air. Nothing strange, although what would kill you in the air wasn’t always identifiable from its odor.
He looked in the distance and saw rows and rows of tables with chairs around them. Light once more came down from the ceiling.
Around each of the tables there where young men seated and involved in something spread across to the front of them. They didn’t appear to notice Team Omega as they entered the lit part of the room. Even the combined sounds of boots thudding on the floor didn’t attract their attention.
Ash could barely hear them as he approached. At first, he thought they might be involved in the study of a map, but soon it became obvious they each were playing some kind of game. He heard the sound of dice as it rolled across the table when he walked up to the first group.
“Looks like I’ll need to roll for affirmation,” the nearest young man said to him.
“Only if your character has enough hit value,” the other young man said to him. “Because if he doesn’t there is a limit to what you can do with it.”
“That only holds if you have the initiative,” another man said who sat in the corner across. “It’s in the latest codex.” He had a large leather bound book next to him.
“Which codex are you using?” the one who spoke first asked. He had a small notebook at his elbow.
“I’ve got the September edition,” he replied.
“Well, that explains things. You aren’t using the current one. How do you expect to know what we can do if you don’t have it?”
“Excuse me,” Ash asked the table, expecting only insanity as their response and yet knowing that he must press onwards in spite of this, at least they hadn’t have to blast their way through these levels so far. “We are trying to find a man named Haddo. Do any of you know him?”
The men at the table turned and looked up at Ash. They slowly looked over the rest of team with him. All of Team Omega wore the same kind of environmental suit with body armor on the outside.
“Nice garb,” one of the men said to them. “Where did you get it? I’ve seen some guys selling Space Attack armor down by the vendor area, but nothing that sharp. Well, it’s a little dirty, maybe next time have them clean if for you first. Real Space Attack troopers wouldn’t allow their armor to look dirty.”
“Yes they would,” a man across from them spoke.
“What are you talking about?” the man snapped. “I’ve read every novel and saw the movies. Nowhere does it say they were ever filthy!” He seemed very irritated.”
“You have to consider the kind of environment where they work,” the man who interrupted them pointed out. “How could they keep all that armor clean and still rush through those burnt-out cities?”
“You show me where it says anything in the books about dirt on their armor! I don’t even see it mentioned in the rules!”
Ash sighed and turned away from the table. He took the rest of the team with him to the edge of the light in the room and looked it over. It was hard to tell how big this one might be since there were many doors that led from the main room to other places.
“They barely registered our presence,” he sighed to the other members of the team. “Doesn’t appear they’ll be of much help in finding Haddo.”
“They are fixated on the game they play,” Barbara Ann mentioned. “The men you see here have played it a long time. Their fathers played it before them and their own children will continue it after they are gone. This was a strategic focus group, generations of clones moving through the same patterns.”
“You know something?” Ash told Barbara Ann. “I don’t understand all this ‘homunculus’ talk and we never did get a good explanation about it.” He was tired of all the talk and the frustration of this room amplified it.
“I explained it to you,” she responded.
“Not in detail,” he told her. “There is too much that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” He was a little fed-up with her cryptic talk and wanted to get to the truth.
“I think you and I should converse in private,” Barbara Ann told him. “Why don’t you send your team away for a while and we can talk?” She glanced at the other members of Team Omega who stood around and waited to see what Ash would do.
He turned and looked at his crew. “Why don’t the lot of you spread out, check doors and sweep this level?” he asked them. “Our friend here wants to have a word in private and I intend on clearing this up once and for all.” He gestured at the endless rows of tables, which were surrounded by young men who rolled dice.
“If you say so, boss,” Costa replied, using a moniker he knew Ash didn’t like, “but I don’t think that is a good idea.” He shifted his eyes at the android.
“Give us a half-hour,” Ash told him. “A minute longer and you have my permission to come in guns blazing.” He nodded back at Costa.
“Half-hour, we got you,” Costa replied. He walked away toward the tables with the rest of the crew, although it seemed to be a reluctant walk.
“So what did you want to see me about,” Ash asked Barbara Ann as they walked to the side of the large room. She seemed to know where she was headed, although there was no way possible Barbara Ann had ever been inside this place.
“You will see,” she told him as she took him down the rows of doors.
There was a line of doors on either side of the room; each spaced just far enough apart to lead to a different office or corridor. There were no windows that looked outside and into the main area, so it was obvious to Ash these were private rooms. What they could be for didn’t concern him, as he wanted to find out the truth behind Barbara Ann for the first time. This last revelation about the gamers was too much. She had too much information stored inside her head for an average created human. Barbara Ann was grown for a purpose that was yet to be defined. He intended to find out what it was right now.
She stopped at a particular door and stared at it. Ash couldn’t figure out what made it different from the others since there were no numbers or any other designations on them. Barbara Ann starred at it for a few seconds more and then dropped one slender hand to the handle. She turned it and walked inside, turning on a light behind her as she went. Ash followed her and closed the door behind him.
This wasn’t a room; it was boudoir.
The room was a good fifty feet across and the same in width. In the middle was a large round bed, large enough to accommodate twelve people. The bed had a red curtain that draped down from the ceiling, but it wasn’t the sort of curtain designed to hide things. It was a curtain to make whoever on the bed appear even more attractive than they were. The curtain was translucent and draped around the cushions. Large pillows encased with the same silk cover all were piled in the center of the bed.
Around it were a series of cabinets made of red lacquered wood. From the ceiling, hung a large sling, which could be adjusted for height. In one corner was a bench, padded, that had cuffs and chains attached to it.
Another door was open to the side and he peered at it to see a large sunken bathtub and shower combination with clean towels laid out. If this were a hotel room, it would’ve been in the honeymoon fantasy section with a ‘Do Not Ever Disturb” sign on the front.
Of course, the basic interior was brilliant red and lined with paintings from Indian erotica. The purpose of this room was apparent and obvious to him the minute he walked into it. The only question in his mind was why Barbara Ann wanted to take him into it.
After he’d taken it all in, Ash turned around to face Barbara Ann. He wanted to know the reason for her sudden desire to have a side chat and why this place. He could see that it matched her hair and complexion, but what other connection could there be?
Between the door and he stood Barbara Ann. Her green gown was gone, replaced by a thin red silk robe that flowed down her body. He could see by the outline of her large breasts and subtitle curves that she wore nothing beneath it. Barbara Ann smiled at him and traced one finger down her right breast, over its nipple, across her stomach and to the space between her legs.
With the other hand, she unclasped the silk. Ash watched it fall to the ground.
The last thing he thought about before she took him into her mouth was how he’d completely failed to interrogate her, or to stop long enough to question why she was doing this.
The rest of the crew was fed up with the lack of response from the other gamers around the tables. It seemed a little absurd to ask them the same question over and over again when they didn’t even want to talk. Every last one of them was pale, male, and locked in on the game boards in front of them. How they managed to survived down on this level below a toxic waste dump was a mystery. There had to be other ways around this old military fortress they didn’t know about.
Makulah wondered if they were under surveillance by the corporation. Given the nature of these games, it was possible that the whole operation was some kind of longitudal study to find out how people reacted when confronted with new data they didn’t understand. He’d watched them play. No two games were quite the same. It didn’t seem to matter to the men who played; they would obsess over strategy and try to find a way to make the rules work to their advantage no matter what.
“You go see what can be found down at the end of the room,” Costa told the rest of the crew. “I’m going to try and find out what is behind those doors on the wall. Probably storage or bedrooms, I doubt there is anything in them which matter to us, but I need to make some progress here while Ash and that android are busy.” He didn’t like it that Ash and Barbara Ann vanished quickly to have a word in private. He shuddered in recollection of what it had been like when it was just the two of them.
Costa walked over to the nearest door and looked at it. He hadn’t seen where Ash and Barbara Ann vanished. He and the crew walked away before she took Ash into the room. As it was, the door in front of him was right next to the room where Barbara Ann made use of Ash at the moment, but Costa didn’t have any way of knowing it. He opened the door and looked inside.