Apex (21 page)

Worse yet, if someone did obtain Human tech
and
figured out how it worked, he'd have to hunt them down and ‘retrieve' the knowledge, meaning removing the tech, schematics, and wiping the memories of any involved. The Empire had done such before, and he knew it was a long, tiring process tracking down all the leaks and frankly it was a task he didn't currently have the resources to carry out.

As much as he didn't like the Vespa in general, he could at least trust them to be themselves, even if this one had gone militant. He wasn't concerned with her mercs becoming a threat so long as she held their leash. How close she'd guard the technology she'd recovered was another matter, but at this point he had little choice short of destroying the facility, which would mean using his Redonvan to overload the reactor.

He wasn't about to waste the precious fuel, nor use any of the ordnance he'd recovered from base storage, which he wasn't going to leave around for the mercs to claim. Even if those hadn't been concerns, the Empire didn't kill indiscriminately and there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of macroscopic lifeforms in the jungle that would be within even the minimum blast radius. That would be sloppy, and one thing the Empire wasn't was sloppy.

After thoroughly cleaning out the explosives armory he moved on to its personal weapons counterpart, making sure that none had yet been removed and that none were left behind. One Human pistol had enough firepower to equal another race's heavy cannon, which was why all Human tech had genetic locking protocols, ensuring that only they could use their impressive weapons. The idea of their enemies turning their own tech against them was one of the Empire's recurring nightmares.

With a few more large scale items retrieved, the last item on Riax's agenda awaited him in the kelzat bay, but first he gladly abandoned his clothing and changed into a grey/white Human bodysuit. He'd sent several other pieces of clothing on ahead, but this was the first chance he'd had to actually get into any of them. The long right sleeve hung dangling off his elbow stub, but otherwise the synthetic garment clung perfectly to his form, flexible yet rigid where desired.

As with all Human clothing, matching footwear was included and blended seamlessly into the design, which appeared as paneled granite, giving it almost an urban camouflage feel given his current surroundings. Indeed, the design did match the interior of the outpost, and was one of only a few pieces in storage that hadn't been resplendent in Gamma color schemes.

After changing, Riax took a moment to cut his overly long hair back down to its two centimeter norm. A small grooming device ate up the hair pieces as it used a force field guide to keep the length accurate. Riax checked his reflection several times to ensure that he'd gotten it all the proper length, then went back and trimmed the sides down to half a centimeter, giving him a more sleek look that he often used when entering a Trial.

His smooth, hairless face, now properly framed by his fresh haircut, made him feel a bit more normal. Up until now he'd been pushing his mental restraints pretty hard to keep it all together. Losing his arm had been more traumatic than he'd expected, and still he felt off balance, more than the actual physics of movement could account for. He was, frankly, not himself, and for the first time since he'd been revived from the pod in the cargo hold did he actually recognized his own reflection.

Riax blew out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and glanced down at his feet, seeing the familiar glossy shoes that all Humans wore and felt himself tear up. He kept most of the emotion in check, but it was time to let a little bleed off and he really didn't feel like fighting to hold it back anymore.

He stood there, staring at the floor and let the tears flow, dripping onto the ground between his feet and forming a little puddle without making so much as a sound. 12,000 years of experience had taught him many things, one of which was how to channel his emotions so they didn't overwhelm him. And as with most Humans, he never sobbed, merely letting the tears and the emotions flow out while remaining still and introspective.

How could they all be gone?
he thought when his mind was ready to start tackling the problem. Was he really the last Human? And how in the world had the Empire got its ass kicked that badly?

Even with all the records he'd obtained, he knew there wasn't going to be a lot of answers contained within them, not that he'd had much time to look. The fact that the Empire had been destroyed meant they hadn't figured everything out either, and now it may very well be that
everything
was on his shoulders now.

He could accept that. His training and basic nature had him responding to challenges automatically, and the bigger the better. No Human would ever surrender to a challenge, they'd keep at it from multiple angles until they'd found a way to win, and that was exactly what he faced now . . . multiplied by about a trillion. The might of the Empire hadn't been enough at the time, so he not only had to find an alternative way to combat the enemy, he had to do it from scratch.

Riax didn't question the mission, or his ability to combat it, and he knew better than to make predictions as to his chances. The future wasn't predetermined, and every action he took would alter the odds, so there was little point in attempting to calculate them. No, there was something else eating at Riax, and he needed to isolate it.

He glanced back at his reflection again, seeing his trimmed hair and smooth face . . . and it suddenly hit him. He wasn't afraid of dying, he was worried about losing himself and everything it meant to be Human, now that the others were gone and the galaxy had grown wild without their caretaking.

Riax rubbed his chin, detecting no shave stubble. He'd deactivated his facial and body hairs long ago, leaving only his head hair and eyebrows active, the latter of which grew out to a predetermined length anyway. Only his dark head hair needed to be maintained, and the fact that it had gotten scruffy in the past weeks had been symbolic of everything else that had gone wrong.

His mind began flashing back to his early lessons in the maturia, about what it meant to be Human, what it meant to be alive. He'd been told that life wasn't automatic, one must train in order to advance and maintain oneself. Remaining static meant stagnation, and stagnation meant death. In order to remain the ‘same' one must continually be on the move. Like his hair, the only way to keep it the same was by constant maintenance . . . or by preprogramming the length, which Riax had never done.

“Training,” he said to himself. He hadn't had a single workout since he'd lost his arm, and had been waiting to begin again until it fully regrew. Now he realized that was a mistake. He needed to center and realign the rest of himself before his arm was regrown, not after. He looked at himself in the reflection again and shook his head.

“Everyone disappears for a while and you go to pieces,” he admonished himself. “It's not like you've never been alone before. You've trained for this. You've prepared for the lone warrior scenario, now get to it. So long as one remains, the Empire still lives. You are the seed . . . now start regrowing.”

Frustration boiling over in a mix of memories and emotions, Riax stepped back from the reflective surface and took a knee on the ground, concentrating hard with a grimace forming on his face. He let out a yell as his elbow hyper-­regrew another centimeter, fully completing his upper arm and giving him a bit of joint. He felt the strength and biomass leaving the rest of his body and held his focus, pushing harder.

Another half centimeter regrew, then he released the effort, catching his chest on his raised knee as he nearly fainted. He'd need to replenish his reserves soon, now very dehydrated and hungry, but the pain of forced regeneration cleared his mind, giving his anger and frustration an outlet. He was a fighter, like all Humans, and a fighter needed to fight
something
or they'd lose their internal balance.

He stood up and pushed the unstable emotions aside, bleeding off some and burying the rest to deal with later. He left the personnel quarters and headed for the kelzat bay . . . his last stop before returning to the
Resolute
.

 

Chapter 23

R
IAX
ENTERED
THE
kelzat bay with a large rectangular container of water in hand, now half empty and draining fast. He took another long swig then set it down on the cluttered worktable as he passed, moving on to the nearest kelzat. The others were still powered down in their berths, but this one stood erect and active . . . with a large hole in its head.

That wouldn't do, so Riax powered up the repair equipment in the bay and began the fifteen minute long process of replacing two of the armor panels on the walker with prefab spares, thus undoing the damage that the Vespa must have taken months to inflict with her primitive hand tools. He left the damaged panels on the floor and opened the dorsal access port on the walker's head, extending his hand back towards the worktable. His water container telekinetically floated up to him before he slid down inside the cockpit.

Riax took another swig and set it to the side in a wall niche as he stepped inside the silver circle on the floor of the empty cockpit. He had just enough room to reach his arm out horizontal to the floor and spin about without touching anything. Had he needed to, he could have accommodated another person or two in the cockpit under emergency conditions, but it had been designed for only one pilot.

He squared himself on the center circle and telepathically connected with the kelzat, powering it up fully.

A containment field formed around him, holding his torso in place in lieu of any physical restraints. The cockpit had inertial dampening, which meant any movement by the walker wouldn't be transitioned to the pilot, but combat conditions required full concentration that remaining standing would have slightly negated, thus his body was being held in a standing position as his mind became one with the machine.

Riax was listed as a C-­8, L-­3, X-­3, meaning he'd qualified and advanced his level in three of the Empire's classes. Kelzat piloting had a ‘D' moniker, which his name lacked because he'd never made a serious attempt at qualifying. All trainees, however, were required to undergo basic training in all the classes in their first forty five years that were spent in the maturia.

Riax had shown promise in several areas, kelzats included, but had focused his post-­maturia training on naval combat, for which he'd attained the rank of Colonel. In his spare time he'd also added the commando and tech classes to his acumen, but hadn't spent any time with kelzats. That said, the basic training was rigorous and thorough, so even though the neural interface was a bit odd to use he was more than capable of piloting the device.

Fighting with it in any proficient manner was another matter.

Seeing through its ‘eyes' and feeling its ‘limbs' was the most sensory intense interface the Empire possessed. Riax had used lesser versions in targeting shipboard weapons batteries and helm control on warships, but getting a machine to actually walk required a great deal more interlink and feedback, thus for newbies like him headaches were common.

The neural interface rid the last bits of drowsiness from his mind, bringing him fully awake and feeling truly ‘Human' despite the fact that he was, at the moment, a mechanical quadruped. It felt good, though, to be fully immersed in Human tech as Riax walked his kelzat out of its berth and down the double row of its twins toward the lift that connected to the main bay.

As the kelzat walked, the yellow/green armored panels altered their color to Beta blue, as did the tiny running lights and larger ‘eyes' on the war machine's blocky head.

M
AR
REN
WAS
STANDING
next to the portable shield generator, watching the drone workers finishing tidying up the dig site when he sensed a pair of minds approaching. They were on ground level and moving rapidly, heading on a line that looked like they were coming directly towards the base outlet. He couldn't be sure, for they were still a ways away, but he didn't wait to find out and took off running towards them.

He passed through the perimeter of the shield generator, which at the moment wasn't fully engaged. If he needed to, he could duck back inside and hit the switch, changing the energy barrier into a physical one, but he didn't want predators roaming around the perimeter when they started loading the ship, so that was the backup plan.

The Cres ran as far as he could before the pair of minds became more ‘visible' and close enough for him to access. He couldn't see them yet, for there were trees in between him and the pair, but he got the sense that they were at least his size or larger and had been attracted to the noise of the drones working.

Their high speed approach was really a lazy one, for he sensed they weren't in hunting mode yet and could be moving far faster if they liked. Marren was surprised by that, which only reinforced his assessment that fighting them was going to be a bad idea, for the sound of it would probably attract others.

The Cres suddenly slowed, taking a knee behind one of the big trees and concentrating. He reached out to their minds and input a phantom stimuli, simultaneously dimming the sounds coming from the dig site. He had to do both at the same time, which made it far more difficult, but after several seconds of reinforcement he felt the pair divert towards the north and pick up speed, chasing the prey Marren had told them was there.

He held the contact as long as he could, putting a lingering presence in their minds that would hopefully last another twenty or thirty seconds. Holding position a few heartbeats longer and monitoring their route despite them passing beyond his effective range, he confirmed that they'd taken the bait and breathed a sigh of relief before standing up and jogging back to base.

S
TEV
E
WAS
BUSY
emptying more of the cargo sleds that Ella and Wes were still loading up and sending to him when he heard faint echoing footsteps from far off somewhere. He gently set a long pole-­like device that he knew nothing about on the floor along with the other Human materials and sat back on his twin tails, raising his head up to maximum height and uttering an inquisitive yelp.

As if in response, a large section of the far wall began to retract up into the high ceiling and the footsteps grew loud and near. With his enhanced eyesight he saw something large moving out of the opening, yet partially hidden behind the parked Human ships in his line of sight.

Steve barked twice more, his race's version of shrugging shoulders, uncertain as to what was going on as the eleven meter tall, four-­legged kelzat walked around the edge of a parked ship and came fully into view. He watched it move to the center of the bay where it stopped and waited for a moment.

A loud cracking sound reverberated throughout the chamber as the overhead doors split apart and began to spiral retract out from the center point very, very slowly. When there was barely a hole visible they locked into place amidst a shower of dirt that fell on top of the kelzat and flowed off its curved physique onto the floor.

A muted whine manifested itself as the kelzat activated its small gravity drive and gently leapt upwards into the gap, head first. It passed through smoothly, while knocking a bit more dirt that was pooled on the containment shield just above the doors. Steve heard another bark from behind him as Wes returned and announced his awe and approval of the Human machine.

Steve echoed his sentiments as Ella walked by them both, following the last train of cargo sleds. She received a comm message from Marren and began reprogramming each sled one at a time as the two Kayna began to unload the remainder.

“No, leave those,” she told them. “I need one empty, the rest can be filled. We're going to use them to move the cargo to the surface.”

Steve huffed once, then began to reload the sled he'd been previously unloading. Wes took another empty sled and began loading it up as well while Ella slowly made her rounds. By the time she'd finished with them all the Kayna had the others loaded, with one left empty as per her instructions.

The Cres stepped up onto the empty sled and held onto the forward control pillar. Interlinking all of them to hers, she elevated it up above head height and moved to the center of the bay, gradually arcing up to the ceiling exit.

She carefully brought it to a stop underneath, then slowly lifted it out of the bay, passing through the atmospheric containment shield and up into the dugout shaft with tiny rivulets of dirt dropping down past her like mist.

The shaft was so long and wide that she had a hard time believing that only a few of the Human diggers had accomplished all this, but when her sled reached the surface there were the twelve drones waiting nearby with Marren, who directed her east towards where the
Resolute
's descender had penetrated the canopy.

Ella maneuvered the sled around the massive tree trunks, its cargo-­bearing twins following its path in a long train for about half a kilometer before the descender came into view. The long pylons disappeared up through the jungle canopy into a bright light, with the cargo ship completely out of view.

As Ella parked her sled just short of the rectangular plate and keyed in that location as ‘base,' a blur dropped from the canopy and landed directly in the center of the descender, kicking up a spray of dirt amidst a large gust of wind. To her shock, the Cres realized it was Riax that had fallen down through the treetops.

He stood up from his crouch and walked over to Ella as the other cargo sleds caught up and stopped behind her in a neat line.

“I was told as a child that Humans could fly,” she said through her helmet's amplifier. “I always thought that was a myth.”

“This one can't,” Riax said, reaching over her sled's pylon and rekeying the location as a waypoint instead of base. “You have to reach level 5 commando to get that upgrade. I'm only a level 3.”

Ella noticed his reprogramming but her curiosity took priority. “What did you just do then?”

“I used an energy matrix to cushion my fall. Have the sleds elevate up through the shaft into the ship, there's no reason to use the descender for the small pieces. Set the ‘base' point inside the cargo bay and the workers will unload the sleds and send them back along the same path automatically.”

Ella frowned and turned around just in time to see the walking drones arriving behind the loaded sleds. “You want me to take them up first?”

“I'll take them up on the descender and get them programmed. Toggle their waypoints like this one while you wait.”

Ella nodded as she stepped off the empty sled and walked back to the second in line as the taller workers passed her by and joined Riax on the large rectangular platform, then disappeared up into the canopy.

Where are you?
she asked Marren telepathically.

Her helmet's comm responded after a long pause. “I'm tracking a large predator in the vicinity opposite your direction from the outpost. It's minding its own business for the moment, but I may have to lead it away if it gets any closer.”

“How big?”

“Too big,” he answered, almost in a whisper. “And we can't keep the shield up while we're transferring cargo.”

“Just the one?”

“For the moment, but I can sense others farther off. Not all the same race.”

Ella glanced up over her head as a thought occurred to her. “Be careful, and call me if you need help.”

“I will,” Marren said, cutting off his comm.

Ella stretched out her senses into the thick canopy above. There were many lifeforms there, small and moving about, but there were also a few larger ones, not around the descender's corridor, but that could change quickly. She imagined that whatever these larger ones were, they could probably move from tree to tree with ease.

She also sensed Riax coming back down a moment before the descender pushed aside several small, flexible branches and came into view, followed by a bright shaft of light.

“You can send them up now,” he said, stepping off it and walking towards her. “Just set the ‘base' point near the workers and they'll do the rest.”

“Marren's tracking a large creature nearby, and I can sense some others in the treetops.”

“I know, I can feel them too,” he said, breathing in the dense air deeply as he adjusted to the oxygen rich zone again. “If you need backup let me know.”

“I can handle it,” she assured him. “I'm just worried about them knocking over one of the cargo sleds.”

“Keep them distracted if they come close,” Riax said, leaving her to the task and heading back along the train of sleds. He ran to the artificial crater and leapt up over the edge so that he landed in the open center and dropped down into the bay, passing through the invisible atmospheric containment field and feeling his ears pop from the transition.

He released a swelling blast of his concussive energy beneath him to slow his fall, coming down hard on his feet along with some bits of dirt that he'd dragged with him. His legs bent and he dropped to a knee, stopping just a ­couple centimeters from it touching the ground as his momentum was canceled out. Riax stood up slowly, then walked casually to the edge of the gigantic chamber where the vehicle bay connected.

With a series of telepathic commands he tied the speeders' navigational controls into the route being used by the cargo sleds and sent them out one by one. They moved to the first navigational point where the Kayna were waiting to load more cargo, then took a sharp left turn and headed up and out of the bay.

Confident in their autonavigation capability, Riax boarded one of the gunships and powered it up. Its onboard power cells had been recharged earlier, as had the speeders, cargo sleds, and kelzats. All Human small vehicles and starcraft operated off rechargeable cells rather than have onboard reactors. Those were reserved for larger, less expendable units, given the rarity of L-­type fuel elements and the efficiency and storage capacity of their power cells.