Born in Darkness

by Thomas Farmer

  Pallasophia's eyes remained fixed on the wall in front of her. She saw each death depicted here in her mind's eye. To Stavros, she replied informally, “yes. I'm afraid I do. It means everything we thought about their intelligence level might just be wrong.”

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “Lochias Photeos!” she barked, shifting back into formal speech. “I am officially taking command of this expedition as of now. Detail two additional guards for this room. The rest will accompany us into the facility. Pull the team from the outer doors in as well. This is the only way in or out and it will be protected.”

  “As you say, Lochagos.”

  “Assign a team to remove the elite's artwork. I want it intact and taken to my suite as soon as possible.”

  Photeos gestures to two of his soldiers, who immediately moved toward the wall.

  Pallasophia continued, “the contents of this room and the existence of those artworks are to be considered classified. You will not speak of what you have seen here to anyone. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Second Lord Lochagos!” came the immediate reply.

  A tense few moment passed as the two assigned to the wall began to work. Then, Eleni spoke up. “Lochagos?”

  “Yes, Dekaneas?” she replied formally.

  “Did you see this part?” She pushed aside some pieces of debris, revealing an inscription carved into the tile a few meters away from the pictographs. A knife lay on the floor at the base.

  “A message from One Hundred?” Photeos asked.

  Pallasophia shook her head, feeling a lump rising in her throat. Frustration raged under her skin, but she dared not let it out. “No,” she replied, “this is Lexeis Archeio. One Hundred would not know Lexeis Archeio.”

  “The Archive language?” Photeos asked. Awe crept into his voice.

  Pallasophia nodded. “The same.”

  “I can read it,” Eleni offered.

  “As can I,” Pallasophia said. She stared at the inscription, momentarily blocking out everything but those words. Her voice grew less steady as she went. “I have been sealed in here. A door I cannot unlock closed behind me, and debris blocks my exit in the other direction. The Singer comforts me from beyond the locked door, saying that only the strongest and best will come to face me. Yet I remain discontent. I desire freedom, not this cage. I would fight under the open sky, not in this pit. If I am to be trapped here, I will kill all of the...” Pallasophia's hand flew to her mouth as her eyes went wide and her face drained of all color.

  “What does it say?” Photeos asked.

  “The last word,” Pallasophia replied, “is 'Creators.'”

  Chapter 7

  Second Lord Nikos raised his armored forearm, warding off the blow from the gigas. The mastigas giant teetered, not expecting its target to simply block its fist like that. A mix of emotions crossed its pale face, iridescent green eyes going wide first with surprise then with anger.

  The gigas bellowed incoherently. Nikos allowed it the small threat display, then strode forward to deliver a punch of his own.

  Nikos's armored fist connected with the gigas's shoulder. Through the multiple layers of metal and polymer, Nikos had no real feedback from the strike. Even the usual feeling of impact was missing, replaced by a note of resistance where his attempts to finish the full extension of his suit's arm stalled. Instead, a targeting suite projected on the inside of the armor's faceplate displayed his impact point and probable damage.

  He nodded in satisfaction, barely seeing the data. It showed things in convenient, bright colors with high contrast. Even if Nikos never read the detailed report, the sudden orange flash on the gigas's silhouette told him enough.

  Recentering, Nikos strode forward again and delivered another punch with his other hand, aimed at the same spot on the gigas's shoulder. The giant swatted his armored fist aside with a hateful bellow and lashed out with its fists.

  First one, then two strikes landed on Nikos's armored head. Like the impact of his punch, he did not feel the monster's strikes at all. Instead, what he felt was the sudden jolt to the entire suit as the impossibly strong gigas knocked him sideways and off balance.

  Nikos fell to the floor, but as he did so, he grabbed the gigas's wrists. The only thing in that room stronger than the massive mastigas was Nikos himself, thanks to his powered armor, and the the gigas found itself unable to break free as its human opponent dropped to the ground. Nikos reached out with one foot, planting it in the soft part of the gigas's stomach, pushing with his leg at the same time as he pulled with his hands.

  The gigas went end over end, sailing through the air to land a good two meters away in an impact that made the floor shudder. With some measure of satisfaction, Nikos noted the fine shower of dust from the lights and rafters overhead, knocked free by the impact of the massive creature as it hit the floor.

  Nikos rose to his feet, shaking his head inside the suit's helmet. He might not have felt the impacts of the gigas's fists, but getting knocked around like that made his head swim. The suit corrected for his sudden loss of balance automatically, which presented a simultaneous solution and a new problem. The good news was that Nikos remained on his feet as the suit was not subject to the whims of his inner ear. The bad news was that a lifetime of human reflexes taught Nikos that he was falling in that moment, and he froze.

  The gigas crashed into him like an ocean wave, going from prone on the floor to charging in a single terrifyingly fluid movement.

  This time, Nikos did hit the floor, and the gigas was on him in a moment. Without a higher intelligence to instruct it, the monster lacked any sort of real combat training. Nikos's mind flashed through a dozen different things that an experienced grappler could have done in that moment, and the gigas did none of them. Instead, it simply punched him in the face once, then again.

  It roared, giving Nikos a moment between strikes to act. When the gigas's next punch came down, Nikos reached out with both powered hands and seized it by the wrist and elbow. The gigas never bothered to pin or control Nikos after he fell, a fact for which he was very grateful.

  Nikos kicked his legs in the air, using their momentum to power his upper body. Assisted by the armor, he wrenched sideways, throwing the gigas away from him and allowing him to rise to his feet once again.

  His head continued to swim. After this trial was over, he would speak with First Lord Enyalios about adjustments to the inertial systems. It did him absolutely no good to be able to “feel” the world around him if it also meant he suffered the same problems as a normal human when they got punched in the face over and over again.

  The gigas rushed him again, but Nikos was more ready this time. Assisted by powered servos in the suit's legs, he was able to outpace the massive creature's speed. The gigas pivoted on one foot, changing direction midstride in a display of the sort of reflexive skill that most people forgot the giants possessed.

  Inside the suit, as he dodged again, bringing his hands up to block the followup shot, Nikos grimaced. Even though he knew exactly how fast these gigas were, their bulk still threw him off. His every instinct told him the big, ponderous-looking mastigas ought to have been slow, plodding creatures. Instead, they could bend every ounce of their strength toward speed as well, making them terrifying in close quarters.

  What they lacked, however, was the exact realm in which Nikos excelled: finesse. He sidestepped again, snapping out a series on punches that all connected with the side of the monster's skull.

  It roared and lashed out, but Nikos stopped the blow by interposing both forearms. In the same moment, he stepped forward and drove the suit's knee into the gigas's stomach. It bent double and Nikos brought both fists down on its skull.

  The gigas crumpled downward, grabbing at Nikos's waist as it went. The suit started to unbalance, but Nikos sprawled backward, pressing the gigas to the floor. He pinned it in a hold that would have held a human, but the gigas's titanic strength came into play again and the monster simpl
y rolled in place, reversing the pin.

  Nikos cursed. Even gigas could learn, he reminded himself. This time it pinned him much more effectively. Sitting on his hips, the gigas gripped both of Nikos's arms at the elbows, effectively taking them out of the equation.

  It bellowed again, displaying its sharp, predator's teeth. Those same teeth descended towards his throat a moment later. Nikos knew it would not get through without breaking multiple teeth, but he also knew exactly how little the gigas was going to care about something like that in the heat of the moment.

  Worse, it would get through. To give him more freedom of movement, the neck of the suit was softer, less armored. Nikos amended his previous note about improvements. In addition to equilibrium adjustments, the neck needed to be reinforced as well.

  The suit's helmet suffered none of the weaknesses of its neck however, and Nikos defaulted to one of the oldest techniques in the proverbial book. He waited until the gigas was close, then drove his head forward and into the monster's nose. It broke, spraying the faceplate of his suit with inhumanly bright blood.

  More important, however, the sudden broken nose weakened the gigas's hold, allowing Nikos to break free and once again rise to his feet.

  This time, he did not wait for the gigas to attack. It was wounded and its attacks now would be both less controlled and stronger. Nikos was not about to allow himself to be struck again, powered armor or no.

  When the gigas punched again, Nikos leaned and stepped lightly to the side, inside of the striking arm. He raised his up arm, deflecting the punch the rest of the way and allowing his momentum and the gigas's own forward momentum to carry his fist into the monster's face. The impact flashed red on his heads-up-display, indicating what his suit's computer believed to be “critical damage.”

  Nikos did not see the gigas's other fist coming. It smashed into what would have been his ribs had he not been encased in a suit of powered armor. As it was, the blow was enough to knock him completely off his feet and onto his back.

  Its face might have been a mangled mass of blood and torn flesh, but the gigas continued to pursue him. Rather than rise to his feet, Nikos pivoted on the ground, tripping the gigas with his legs. Then he rose just enough to cross the short distance between them, pin the mastigas, and snap its neck.

  Finally, Nikos rose and allowed himself to feel tired. No matter how much the powered armor helped, it still relied on his own body for direction. That in turn still required strength and, perhaps more important, endurance and energy. For the first time since the fight began, he became aware of just how fast his heart was beating and of the ragged, oxygen starved feeling in his lungs.

  In his ear, the voice of Second Lord Kyveli spoke. She had a way of telling him he was not yet finished that made Nikos want to press on rather than demand a rest. “Excellently done, Nikos. We will proceed with the second part of today's trials at your pace. Please activate the switch on the wall when you are ready.”

  “Understood, Titan Control.”

  “In the meantime,” she continued, “I overheard you say that you needed to tell the Hexarch something?”

  “It can wait until I finish.”

  “Of course, Nikos. However, First Lord Enyalios is here, now.”

  “I see. How much did he overhear?”

  A gruff, older male voice came into the conversation. If Nikos had never met Enyalios, he would have assumed that gravely voice belonged to an aging singer. “Your microphone was active the entire time, Second Lord.”

  At that comment, Nikos's pulse did its best efforts to undo the last minute's calm. “My apologies, First Lord. I did not mean...”

  Enyalios laughed. “Nikos, please. I was a soldier in my day as well. If I had a credit for every time I cursed my own superiors, I would be richer than Hyperion!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “On the other hand, Second Lord. Some of those things were simply anatomically impossible. In the future, if you're going to insult me, please do so more creatively.”

  Despite his fatigue, Nikos laughed. “Understood, First Lord.”

  In the silence that fell afterward, Nikos took a moment to drink from the tube connected to his suit's internal water reserves. He preferred not to dwell on where that water would come from when the suit was under long-term use. Those filters had been tested and relied on technology long proven to be effective. Still, he thought, some things were best put out of mind unless he absolutely had to worry about them.

  With his pulse and breathing under control, Nikos strode across the room to the corpse of the gigas. He knelt, grabbing the mastigas's arms and unceremoniously hoisted it onto his suit's shoulders. Even with the power assist, the gigas was massive and carrying it across the room to the disposal hatch took a minute.

  Now, Nikos thought, he could get on with the second phase. He went to the wall where the switch Second Lord Kyveli mentioned waited. Mentally shifting gears to a more contemplative, patient mindset, Nikos reached out with his suit's armored hand and pressed the oversized switch.

  The wall next to where he stood slid open, revealing a long, narrow hall. The far end was at least a kilometer away, but the sides of the hall were only ten meters or so apart. Two meters past where the wall once stood was a bench sized to his frame inside the powered armor. On the bench rested three firearms, all scaled similarly.

  Nikos went to the bench as a series of targets appeared at the far end of the range. He nodded, picking up the largest of the weapons. The order was always random, but his performance at long range was not up to the same standard as his short-range shooting. He expected these targets to be the first ones to appear and had prepared accordingly since the last shooting trial.

  Thanks to the powered armor, Nikos hoisted the massive rifle as easily as if it had been a lightweight antipersonnel weapon and not a two-hundred kilo anti-materiel weapon that fired three-thousand gram bullets. Carefully, he went through the procedures to check the weapon's functionality, starting with the simple things like the action and magazine and ending with the complex mechanism that served as the weapon's sound suppressor.

  Satisfied, he braced the weapon against his armored shoulder, settling it into specially-designed grooves. The suit sensed the presence of the heavy weapon and automatically shifted more than a dozen different balance subroutines to compensate for its weight and recoil.

  Peering through the weapon's scope brought the targets at the far end of the range into focus. Six targets waited for him, and Nikos tried very hard not to think of his previous performance on this test. He had not failed it in months, but neither was he particularly pleased with his scores.

  Carefully, he took aim at the first target and gently squeezed the trigger. His armor obliged and the weapon kicked hard enough that even the suit's systems could not completely cancel it out. The bullet made it to its target before the echoes from the gun's report faded. It struck the exact center of the target, setting off the little explosive charge inside it that shattered it completely.

  Pleased, he nodded inside his armor's helmet. It might have been only the first target, but a perfect score was a good way to start things.

  Unfortunately, that mood shattered exactly like the first target when his second shot went wide. Through the weapon's scope, he saw the crater it left in the shooting range's backstop. That wall was made of the same heavy, reinforced alloy that the Technocrat navies used for thier orbital warships. Not even his power armor's weapons could breach that material in a single shot. Repeated strikes to the same target or same general area would do the truck, but if Nikos found himself in single combat with a warship, then it was likely that things had already gone very wrong with his plans.

  Annoyed, he rushed the third shot. It hit the target, but did so off-center. Nikos would receive points for that shot, but not full points. Worse, at the end, he would be penalized for every miss as well.

  Taking a moment to breathe, he placed his fourth shot exactly in the center of the third target
. He hit the fourth and fifth targets, but did not hit the center of either. Nikos's aim faltered on the sixth target as fatigue suddenly set in, dragging his shoulders down. First one shot, then two missed. He cursed, breathed, and placed a third shot dead center.

  With a frustrated sigh, he dropped the long rifle back into the bench as as series of targets appeared in the middle of the range. These moved on tracks, primarily up and down or left and right, but some also slid closer or further away. Nikos watched their movement for a moment, waiting for a pattern.

  This part of the test he enjoyed much more than the long-range precision shooting section, at least.

  The second weapon on the table was much smaller, though still many times more massive than something carried or used by an unarmored human. For his armored scale, it would have been considered a small combat rifle. Next to it was a pistol likewise designed for use by his power armor. It waited in a holster, which he clipped to another special mounting point on the armor.

  There was no break between parts two and three of the test, and both were timed. The clock started the moment he put a hand on the medium-sized gun, and so Nikos took another moment to analyze the movement patterns of the targets. He would get no chance to do the same for the third set of targets, so efficiency in this part was his main concern.

  In a flash, he swiped the rifle from the bench. His hands went to their proper places with practiced ease. Four bullets went downrange in the first second, striking one of the moving targets and shattering a second. Nikos emptied the first magazine in thirty seconds, striking ten of the twenty-two targets and shattering another four. His score would be calculated based on the first bullet to strike each target, but the timer did not stop until he destroyed each one.

  Swapping out the magazine for a full one took moments, and Nikos said silent thanks to the designers who made the weapon specifically to be used by hands sheathed in powered and armored gloves. He might have said something out loud, but at the moment he was too focused on the task at hand to pay any real attention to what might or might not be coming out of his mouth.