“Rocks. Metal. Each other. These aren’t ordinary vermin, small fry. Get a move on!”
Tryd set off, setting a good pace for an old fox and deftly jumping along the ledges. The Delvian constantly turned into corridors, orienting himself perfectly in this maze. After twenty minutes of this, I realized that we would not be able to find our way back. Our only chance would be Brainiac’s omnipresent memory. At the next fork in the path, Tryd stopped, took off his helmet and took a deep breath, jerking his nose ridiculously. First he sniffed one corridor, then another. This did not seem enough for the pirate. He leaned down to the floor and began sniffing the stones, even licking one — then spitting and cursing softly. Rising to his feet, he checked his blaster and its powercells and declared:
“Bad news, scallywags. There are no more robots in this base. There’s a new boss running the show. I can’t go any further.”
“Are you talking about the vermin again?” I guessed, but Eunice corrected me:
“Or rather whatever creature gave birth to them. Why haven’t the pirates destroyed it?”
“Because they couldn’t,” Tryd snapped. “The vermin mother is immortal! When they first stumbled across her, it took an orbital bombardment to drive her deep into the earth. We spent many years hauling victims from all over Galactogon over here to appease her, to feed her. Just to get her to stay below and not eat us. We called her the Scourge — few are those who have seen her and lived to tell the tale. Five years ago, the Anorxians captured the base and, as you can see, the Scourge made a meal of them. All the corridors are filled with the robot’s internal lubrication and the air stinks of burned silicon. A slaughter took place here. A slaughter of synthoids. I think the Scourge is somewhere deep inside the base, waiting for new victims.”
Tryd fell silent, breathing hard after such a long speech. Once more, a haunting howling flooded the tunnel we were in. There was no doubt that this was no wind. I knew it was some living creature because I could discern a slurred mutter buried deep in the sound: ‘Pain. So much pain. Only pain.’
When I looked at the Delvian again, his appearance made me start: The fur on the nape of his neck had stood up and his lone eye was twitching. His jowls jerked. His tail curled up around his groin and stomach. He put his blaster up to his lower jaw as if he was about to blow his brains out and he began to backtrack from us, step by step backing away from the fork in the path.
“What is the danger of encountering the Scourge? Rebirth? Are you a terrible pirate or a cowardly jackal?!” I didn’t like the way Tryd was acting one bit, so I tried to bring him to his senses. It worked. The Delvian started, exhaled a couple of times noisily, putting his nerves in order, and replied:
“You humans might be reborn. Somewhere here — in these warrens. But I would not be so lucky. The Scourge can break your binding to your planetary spirit and then she kills you slowly, relishing your pain and agony. Rumor has it that some spent weeks being digested before they died. The monster knows how to keep her food alive even as she feeds on it.”
“Then uh where did the vermin come from?” Eunice frowned. “Why would the Scourge allow competition in her territory?”
“The vermin aren’t competitors — they are the Scourge’s spawn, her hands and eyes.” Tryd had fully recovered his senses by now. “They are but smaller scourges, temporarily detached from the main body. We need to leave. I have nothing to do down here.”
“Oh come off it!” I wasn’t about to give up so easily. “Let’s give it a try. You’re here because of the Northbridge, right? Where do we find it?”
“You have made your choice, small fry. I said my piece, but you have to try. Both of these passages lead to the base. The Anorxian prince is housed in the third warehouse. If you bring it to me, I will give you the Lora.”
New mission available: A Prince fit for a Pirate’s Soul. Mission description: Recover Prince Northbridge from the pirate base and give it to Tryd. Rewards for completion: Lora Coupler Unit. Penalty for failure: None. Deadline: 3 days. Do you wish to accept this mission?
Before I could take the assignment, Tryd pulled the trigger and turned himself into the main character from Mayne Reid’s Headless Horseman. His body did not even have time to fall — it flickered and turned into a loot crate. To my disappointment, the pirate hadn’t bequeathed us anything of value — a paltry ten powercells.
“Remember how you said that he ‘didn’t show up for no reason?’” I turned to Eunice. “Well, he showed up to bring us to this hellhole and then he bailed.”
“But bringing us here was the whole point of his mission,” Eunice disagreed. “Now I am even more confident that we are on the right track…What is that?”
An ominous knocking sounded behind us — from the direction we had come from. It was as if a thousand metal hammers were hammering the stone walls, pulverizing them bit by bit. My spatial scanner had a range of a hundred meters and pretty soon we could make out the new enemy. I guess if you squinted really hard, you could indeed call these creatures ‘vermin,’ although I preferred a different name: cacodemons, of the Doom variety. Each creatures was little more than an enormous mouth full of voracious, moving teeth. Their single tiny eye remained shut — in the warrens’ pitch black darkness, the cacodemons simply had no use for them. Despite their tiny limbs, they moved rather quickly. In the few seconds that I had been watching them, they had traveled a dozen meters already.
“We got a fight on our hands!”
It took two seconds to activate our blasters, another second to take aim and one more to send four blue plasma bolts in the direction of the nearest cacodemon. Another couple seconds passed until the dust cleared and we could see the result. The vermin had traveled another thirty meters in our direction and suffered no damage whatsoever.
“Run!” I yelled. Turning abruptly, I grabbed Eunice by the hand and we rushed away. Our four legendary blasters hadn’t so much as inflicted a scratch on the toothy creature. To the contrary, the cacodemon opened its mouth and swallowed the shots with pleasure. Then it grew a bit larger. Meanwhile, its fellow vermin ran alongside, jumping up and down, trying to snatch a lethal plasma clump for themselves. It was their gluttony, their constant getting in each other’s way that gave us the opportunity to escape.
We were flying as fast as we could but the space scanner remained inexorable. The tide of cacodemons was approaching too fast. Realizing that there would be no more food in the form of plasma, they rushed after us. We turned a corner and found ourselves in a dead end. I lost my breath but then Eunice shouted happily:
“A door! I think we’re going to make it, Lex!”
Two grenades appeared in my hands. I set the fuse to two seconds and tossed them at the vermin. I wasn’t even hoping to hurt them. Tryd’s behavior had already made it clear that no weapons could threaten the vermin. I had another target in mind — the passage. A powerful blast wave overwhelmed our inertia dampeners and we were thrown facedown onto the floor. Yet instead of subsiding, the roar of collapsing debris was replaced by an even more unpleasant roar, similar to the sound of a dentist’s drill.
Jumping to my feet, I took out another grenade and threw it after the other two, causing the cave-in to grow larger. There was no doubt that the cacodemons would burrow through eventually. The only question was how long it would take them.
“It’s locked!” Eunice reached the door first, but the red indicator stopped her. “We need help, Brainiac!”
“Figaro here, Figaro there,” the computer grumbled as an interface probe emerged from my wife’s armor suit. “All right…I’ll need a minute to lockpick it.”
“We don’t have a minute! Open it now!”
“Don’t yell at me!” the computer snapped. “I’m already going as fast as I can. If you want me to go faster, buy me an upgrade from Hansa. One minute!”
Cryptic symbols began to scroll down the small screen of the door panel. Brainiac concentrated on the task at hand but we did not have time. The debris behind
us began to fall inward, as if a hollow was forming beneath them. The cacodemons were gnawing at the blocks with the same ease as they absorbed blaster bolts. Damn! How had the pirates dealt with these voracious vermin? I threw a couple more grenades — to little effect. The tunnel’s walls were reinforced and didn’t collapse as easily.
“Forty seconds! Lex, think of something! We have to get inside!”
Think of something? Why that’s easy. I just won’t have time to do it. Thirty meters from us, one of the huge stones moved, collapsed inward and disappeared. It seemed to me that the cacodemon that devoured it even grinned with satisfaction. It froze, trying to digest the block, which stopped the movement of the cacodemons coming up behind it. They jumped and clumped unhappily, unable to pass. Finally, the cacodemon in front began to shrink. What do they have in their stomachs that allows them to digest rocks so quickly?
“Thirty seconds!”
Eunice’s cry jolted me and the manipulators appeared in my hands. There was only twenty meters between the nearest creature and me when I aimed both arms at it and then sharply spread my arms akimbo. One manipulator was aimed on the right corner of its maw, the second on the left. My actions were quite logical. If the cacodemons cannot crawl over each other, I’ll just make this one as large as a puffer fish. Like I said, quite logical. The last thing I imagined was what would actually work.
“Twenty seconds! Just a little more, Lex!”
With one swift movement I spread the manipulators apart tearing the cacodemon in two and flooding the floor with its entrails. The small stones still covering the floor dissolved in the blink of an eye. The floor itself held out a little longer. A huge hole began forming, growing larger with every second. But even this was not the most surprising thing. The cacodemons that were behind the one I’d torn apart fell on the remnants like vultures, forgetting all about us. Unfortunately for them, this free meal would be their last. Whatever these creatures had as bile in their stomachs began to calmly dissolve not just the rocks, but also the seemingly-invulnerable monsters. Smoking holes appeared in the front rank of vermin and the ones behind immediately attacked them, smoking and dying in turn.
Achievement unlocked: Unparalleled power! Your ZPEF Manipulator has reached level 100. Item class changed. Current class: Legendary. +20% to all stats. Durability and Energy fully restored. +2 integration slots available. Maximum lifting weight increased to 5000 kg. This manipulator now ignores all EM protection.
Two small suns blazed in my hands for a couple of moments — a visual effect to go with the new levels. I clearly remembered that before the slaughter, my manipulators had been at level A-3, so the XP gained from killing the cacodemon must have been immense.
A click sounded behind me and the door slid upward with a creak.
“Ready!” Eunice said with delight, but then from the darkness of the base came the familiar moan and whisper.
“At last, the food has arrived. Come to me, my meal. I await you!”
A shiver ran down my spine, but I still took a step inside — Scourge or not, the Corsican won’t deal with a pirate of the first rank.
Chapter Nine
“Cap’n, we cannot access the system,” the snake reported, giving up on the third network jack we had tried. After the first failure, the ship computer said that the jack was damaged. After the second, he claimed that the contacts inside the wall had rusted and come apart. After the third, Brainiac had to admit his impotence.
“Are you going to complain about needing an upgrade again?” I asked suspiciously. There was indeed a ship mainframe upgrade in Hansa’s third list of upgrades, and Brainiac had hinted several times that it would be a good idea to spend twenty billion GC on my favorite AI.
“No, Captain. It’s serious over here. Something or someone is interfering with us. Every time we bypass some security system, a new one pops up. I don’t think that even upgrades would be enough to compete with the local security.”
This was unfortunate news. I had been hoping that Brainiac could figure out where the third warehouse was located and even download the video I needed. At this rate, we’ll have to go find the Scourge, who seemed very happy at this prospect. The monster would not shut up for a second, repeating the same phrase like a broken record:
“At last, the food has arrived. Come to me, my meal. I await you!”
The dark viscous fluid underfoot made the floor slippery. The armor suit’s sensors indicated that this substance was the equivalent of Anorxian blood. Considering how much of it was here, the Scourge had made a feast of the synthoids. At the same time, there was nothing here at all — neither synthoid remains, nor furniture nor even just junk. The rooms were all bare but for the blood of the massacre. We had already traveled through several corridors and areas without discovering anything.
“I watched the video of your raid on the Uldan base. This seems very similar to the boss’s second phase,” said Eunice. “What if the local monster is already born in this case? And those vermin are her progeny?”
“An interesting theory,” Brainiac agreed. “That would explain why I can’t hack the system. The Uldans knew what they were doing when it came to network security.”
“Let’s check,” I agreed. “Brainiac, turn on the loudspeaker and make an announcement in Uldan. Say: ‘We come in peace. We require assistance.’”
The guttural speech of the Uldans blared over the jarring and frankly unnerving whisper of the Scourge. At first, Brainiac kept the volume down but by the third repetition, he turned it to 11 and I scrambled to turn off my external microphones. The broadcast ended and the pirate base plunged into silence. The whisper went silent too.
“Is this good or bad?” Eunice inquired and then the space around us shook with a thundering response. The walls trembled, cracks shot to the ceiling, and chips of stone rained on us. The Scourge herself had deigned to answer:
“Who are you?”
“I am a friend of Warlock, the guardian of the planet Blood Island. I am the captain of an orbship.”
“Warlock…Yes, I knew him. He was a good scout. He had potential. It sounds like he found his planet. Good for him. Is he no more?”
“Yes, Warlock gave me the orbship and went to his rest.”
“I want to know the details. I await you. Follow the light.”
The walls of the base vibrated, we heard the hum of a dynamo starting up and the corridor directly ahead of us lit up. The light radiated from the walls themselves instead of the lamps — as these had been eaten too.
“Stunning technology.” The snake made me stop near one of the walls and remotely, with the help of a drill that she extended from my suit, took a sample from the wall in front of me. As soon as I brought the little piece of rock up to the wall, it began to glow — when I removed it, it stopped. At the same time, the luminous object did not heat up or deform in any way. It simply emitted photons in all directions without visible loss of mass or energy. If there were magic in Galactogon, this phenomena was it.
The owner of the base did not rush us. A creature that had lived more than a dozen millennia could afford to be patient. Though, as we passed through the rooms, the light dimmed behind us.
“You don’t suppose we’re being led to a slaughter?” Eunice asked with undisguised skepticism as soon as we descended to a lower level. There was so much synthoid fluid here that at times we were forced to wade in it up to our ankles.
“I haven’t the slightest doubt. Here, take this just in case.” I offered Eunice an unpinned grenade. My wife refused, however, holding up her clenched fist.
“I have my own. Look Lex, I don’t like any of this. How is it that this monster hounded the pirates for who knows how long and yet it’s willing to be quite reasonable and talk to us as soon as we just ask politely in Uldan?”
“I have a theory about that,” I admitted honestly. “And the further we go, the more certain I am that it does want to talk. Brainiac, what’s going on in the system?”
“The
fighting is over, the Anorxians have been defeated. The Zatrathi reinforced with another flying fortress and are now busy making repairs. They’ve even begun to quarry the marble again.”
“Could you scan the planet? I need to know how many bases there are here.”
“Captain, that is an unrealistic request. It’s too far away.”
“Okay, another task then. Watch the recording of our encounter with the vermin. What can you tell me about the falling stones?”
“They are heterogeneous in structure. It is as if a thin stone lining has been applied over the walls, three to four centimeters thick. It resembles marble quite a lot. The structure is very similar.”
“Wonderful! Keep working. Over and out.”
“And what is all that supposed to mean?” Eunice stared at me with interest.
“That the pirates did find a way to resist the Scourge. As did the Zatrathi. Let’s go. I think our meeting will be an interesting one.”
A Check for a Billion Page 15
