Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) (3 page)

Refusing to struggle against the tentacles wrapped around the rest of his body, he focused on his iron sights and the dim flash of the machine gun muzzle as he continued to fire. His clip went dry moments before more tentacles wrapped around his gun and wrenched it from his hands. The marine was very thankful in that moment, that command had deemed it allowable for those Reapers who wished to do so to carry their boarding knives.

Although meant for the close confines of shipboard combat, Samuel and many of the other marines had found them incredibly useful in downspire. Samuel slid his blade from the sheath on his forearm
and began slashing wildly at the tentacles as they wrenched pieces of his armor loose from his body and began to ravage the thin body glove and flesh beneath.

Standard issue Reaper battle armor was cheap and overall considered low-tech when compared to the power suits of the Grotto Storm Troopers or elite mercenaries, though what it lacked in sophistication it made up for in overall stoutness.

When it came to small arms fire the armor would deflect all but the most precise or direct shots, however, no Grotto engineer had ever intended to protect the soldiers from an enemy attempting to tear the armor away. Samuel felt as if he were some crustacean being assaulted by the most macabre of cephalopods. In this case, reality was much more horrifying than anything his imagination could have conjured. 

Now that the gun above wasn’t providing even temporary illumination, Samuel was unable to see much of anything. Even if he’d been able to get a light-stick ignited all he would have seen would be the billowing clouds of the creature’s yellow blood mixing with smaller clouds of his own red blood as he and the creature tore into each other.

Samuel was unsure how long he’d been unconscious, though he knew it could only have been a few seconds. He was in pitch darkness and could still feel that he was underwater through the holes in his suit. It was the thought of what nasty microbes and toxic materials that might be seeping into his body that galvanized him to action. The marine ignited several light-sticks one after the other and let them fall around him to illuminate several meters of submerged chamber.

At his feet Samuel could see the body of the ganger he’d shot slowly being sucked down into the thick muck that covered the chamber floor. There were chunks of tentacle everywhere, all slowly sinking down to join the ganger. Whether he’d killed the creature or not, Samuel couldn’t tell, but it had to be one tough monster to survive all the bullets and severed tentacles. He hoped it had crawled back to whatever hellhole it called home and died of its wounds. He couldn’t move much and was relieved when he saw the wake and shadow of a skiff making its way over to him from the grating area where the machine gun used to be.

Someone from the skiff lowered a gaff pole into the liquid and friend or foe, Samuel decided he’d rather be out of this murky mess than in it, regardless of who might be hauling him up.

“Prybar, you are one unkillable son of a bitch!” shouted Patrick as he hefted the marine’s armored bulk onto the small skiff.

Samuel struggled to find a witty response, though was simply too spent to vocalize much beyond a weak smile and a groan as his fellow marine helped him take off his helmet. Samuel’s armor was pitted and slimy from the toxic water, and the marine could already see the flesh of his wounds turning a sickly shade of white and green. Patrick followed his gaze and nodded as the skiff pilot; a marine recruit that Samuel seemed to recall was named Holland, cranked the motor and headed back to the shattered dock.

“We got lucky, old pal, if you hadn’t knocked out that shooter’s nest we would have been fragged,” Patrick said as he opened the squad med-kit and began dosing Samuel with vial after vial of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and a few painkillers, “Those gangers with the big gun and those wall crawlers had us so busy we didn’t notice their backup.”

“There were four small access tunnels that they’d covered up with canvas painted to look like the walls,” explained Holland as he moved them closer to shore, taking care not to move too quickly to avoid hitting any partially submerged scrap metal. “Before we knew it, dozens of those hive scum are charging at us with everything from axes to clubs.”

“The others?” asked Samuel in a voice thick with painkillers as he struggled to maintain consciousness, “Are they…”

“Kade did just fine. Takeda got clipped early in the shootout, but we held our own, and no fatalities.” Patrick grinned as he patted Samuel’s shoulder before his face turned sour and he looked back at the oncoming docks, “Cor-sec got chewed to pieces though, sixty-percent casualties. Between us three, I don’t think cor-sec had any business being down here.”

“Agreed. It’s like they’re just everyday civilians who happen to have a gun and a badge and think that makes them hardcore enough for this kind of stuff,” grumbled Holland as the skiff reached the last section of the dock that was useable as a mooring. “They’re good at pushing around working stiffs, but these downspire gangers are out of their league.”

“Cor-sec is bringing up reinforcements to fortify this area so they can prep it as a salvage hub,” Patrick observed as he and Holland helped Samuel stagger off of the skiff and across the dock towards the beachhead.

“So, we’ll be moving on down the line, eh?” mumbled Samuel as his comrades lay him down on a stretcher next to Ben, who sat upright against a bullet-riddled flak board with his left arm in a pressure sleeve.

“Yeah, we’re getting rotated to that FOB we built in the metro hub two levels up for a few days of R & R while command decides which pit of hell they want us to clean out next,” laughed Ben as he looked over Samuel’s various wounds, “But I’m thinking you’re probably going to sleep through most of that.”

Samuel didn’t answer, the painkillers finally wrapping him in their warm embrace and ferrying him into a blank numbness, far from any tentacles or foul lakes.

FOB SPECTER

District 12 was one of the many uniform hab-blocks that circled the outer ring of the Vorhold spire city, which provided housing for commuters who worked at the various industrial complexes that comprised the inner circle of the spire.

Vorhold, like most other spire cities, was constructed like a giant teardrop, frozen upon impact with solid ground. The base of it was circular, made up of four concentric urban circles, with the buildings of each circle rising higher and higher towards the center. At the exact apex of the city was a gigantic spire, hence the name of the urban planning style across mapped space, where management and the elites worked and played. Most spire cities in mapped space were exceptionally old, and generally considered an archaic way of designing cities, as it created a physical and ever-present reminder for anyone in the city as to who held the power and who did not.

Spire cities were relics of a more brutal age, when the mega-corporations were still struggling to dominate their citizenry in a somewhat overt manner.

The general idea was that by witnessing the lavish lifestyles of the elites and living in the looming shadow of their mighty spires, the common citizenry would keep their heads down, keep their mouths shut, and work harder to achieve that distant dream.

While there were plenty of corporate worlds that contained spire cities, most of them, like Vorhold, were shadows of what they once were. They had been allowed to slowly degrade as more and more elites simply moved off world to distant resort planets or paradise ships, allowing their spires to be bought up by what passed for the middle class in their respective corporate cultures.

Most corporations in the modern age had realized that flaunting the wealth and power of the elites generated more resentment and dissent than it inspired compliance and increased productivity. The elites lived a life generally removed from the common citizenry, who now labored towards simpler goals.

Vorhold had been one of the last true spire cities. The elites of Vorhold Ventures had gambled the majority of their vast fortunes on a number of faulty investments and speculations, rapidly finding themselves with tremendous debts. Vorhold corporate culture was no different, in one respect, from the rest of the mega-corps. Common citizens were prevented by regulation and taxation from owning much in the way of private property. Their homes, vehicles, devices, services, and medical devices were all leased from their feudal corporate masters. Everything, even the grimy depths of downspire and the abyss of deepspire, were owned, according to the documentation, by Vorhold Ventures.

When the Vorhold elites began to fall behind on their debt repayments, many of the creditor corporations formed an alliance and waged a devastating economic war against Vorhold Ventures. Battle fleets created pickets to police the shipping lanes and enforce severe trade embargoes while they covertly encouraged and perhaps, even bribed Red List pirate ships to prey upon the handful of relief ships and smugglers who attempted to use the alternate routes.

It did not take long for Vorhold Ventures to accept defeat and begin selling off assets to cover the debts. The grim truth behind corporate culture was revealed as the elites bailed themselves out at the expense of the common citizens upon whose shoulders they had risen in the first place.

Grotto Corporation’s voracious appetite for raw materials was notorious throughout mapped space and they seized the opportunity Vorhold presented with savage intensity. Grotto Corporation was not a company that thrived on innovation, or speculation, but upon hard assets. This meant that Grotto rarely had the kind of liquid assets that many of the other mega- corporations held, though it was by far one of the most robust companies in existence.

Payment by Grotto to the elites of Vorhold was in the form of money, ships, and properties off world. The elites then turned and liquidated all of those hard assets in a matter of months, which allowed them to pay off their debts and leave Vorhold to its new master, Grotto Corporation.

With little more than a few boardroom meetings and some signatures, the entire future of the spire city and its entire population was sold off. The elites abandoned the city to take early retirement elsewhere while the common people and even the militant cor-sec awaited their fate.

Grotto Corporation now owned everything in the spire city, from the tallest building to the lowest sewage tunnel, and it meant to get a return on its investment. The entire city was to be depopulated, demolished, and what did not get re-used elsewhere in the Grotto empire would be sold as scrap.

The forward operations base was by no means comfortable, though when compared to the rotten shadows of the downspire sprawl that surrounded it, most of the soldiers stationed there had come to consider it rather pleasant. In the ledgers of Reaper Command, which led the joint action between the former cor-sec troops and the salvage marines, the FOB was logged as FOB D12/2. However, for the locals to whom this was now a home away from home, it was Specter.

Once the joint forces cleared the metro hub beneath District 12 they had found themselves inundated with refugees from downspire. All but the most ferocious and stubborn of the gangers and clansmen had been making their way upwards since news of the city’s takeover. Though cor-sec had warned Reaper Command that the population of downspire was unknown, no one was ready for just how many thousands had come streaming up from the depths all over the spire city.

They were the shadow population of the spire. Castaways from the corporate society that had, one way or the other, left them so desperate that they sought the underworld. To the Reapers, the refugees had seemed like ghosts, mere hollowed out shells of who they had once been. Life in downspire was hard, violent, and usually short.

Perhaps, thought Samuel, as he looked up from his drink to take in the crowded squalor of the base, this was why the slang name for the base had come so naturally. To walk the streets of District 12 one would never notice that just a few clicks downwards there was another world rotting beneath one’s feet.

Samuel sat alone, as had been his custom for the last two weeks, sipping his one drink before retiring to his bunk for the evening sleep cycle. With no natural light present, the Reapers had to rely on their devices to give them any sense of time. The first week of R & R had been scheduled, and that had passed Samuel by in a blurred cycle of fever and medication as his body fought against the myriad of infections he’d picked up while fighting in the murky soup of the lake.

The second week came when the last of the Haggard Sons gangers overwhelmed a cor-sec defense unit and detonated a suicide bomb that collapsed a critical tunnel system nearby. The joint forces had intended to use those tunnels to transport all of the heavy equipment that would eventually be needed to cut into the multitudes of pylons that supported the massive spire city from far below.

The Reapers were pulled from the frontline and stationed at the forward operations base. Samuel knew that most of the Reapers didn’t mind, as they were still getting their hazard rates whether they were being shot at or not. For better or worse the marines had time to relax, though for Samuel that came with some difficulty given the situation in upspire. The marine sipped his drink and wondered just what sort of nightmare was unfolding above him.

“Hey, Prybar, you’ve got that far away look in your eyes,” said Harold joked as he slapped Samuel’s back and joined him at the makeshift bar, little more than a plank of wood nailed across two fifty gallon barrels covered with a tarp, “Thinking about home, eh?”

“Beats the alternative,” answered Samuel, as he nodded at a pair of children taking turns dipping their fingers into what looked to be the discarded remnants of an MRE package.

“I can’t watch that,” groaned Harold, turning away, “Me, Jada, and Virginia gave all our extras out when Boss Marsters wasn’t looking. I’m going hungry as it is.”

“A round for both my friends here!” shouted Ben to the withered old woman who tended the bar as he joined the pair of Reapers.

“You barter by the drink boy, this is downspire,” scoffed the old woman as she made little effort to show her hand fingering the stubby pistol holstered on her hip, “I don’t care if you’re Executive Lord Vorhold hisself.”

“Easy, lady, I didn’t come empty handed,” Ben smiled, undaunted by the woman’s hostility. “I brought two size beta charge bricks and a full toiletry kit that ought to buy us the whole damn bottle.”

“On the barrelhead and we’ll see,” she spit, but already her expression was softening, and soon it became a greedy smile as Ben laid the promised loot before her.

The barkeep poured out four shots of the amber liquid into cups of hammered metal and then passed one to each of the men.

Samuel had taken a liking to the local liquor, though he had specifically avoided asking what was in it or how it was made, as this was indeed downspire. Samuel had found it quite fascinating just how much ingenuity was on display in this subterranean world. They had a use for everything, a skilled scavenger was held in high esteem indeed.

“Drink up, Reapers, the night is young,” boasted Ben as he raised his drink in toast to the other two soldiers, each who met his cup with their own in a soft clunk.

“One for the Stalker in the Dark,” said the old woman in a quiet voice, surprising the marines by clinking her own drink against theirs before hurling the liquid over her shoulder. Ben and Harold looked at her with abject confusion at the waste of good booze.

“I’ve seen others here say the same thing before pushing tidbits of food away,” Samuel remarked, resting his elbows on the bar. He pointed at the two children, “Even starving kids do it. What does it mean?”

“It keeps…
them
… from getting too hungry or too thirsty,” growled the barkeep as she lined up three more rounds of the liquid, “Its bad luck to talk too much about it. Now drink your drinks and shut up.”

“Let it go, Samuel,” Ben insisted before he swallowed his drink. “We have one night cycle left before we have to put our boots on.”

“What did you hear?” Harold asked.

“Bianca and Patrick overheard Boss Aiken arguing with the quartermaster.” As if the thought of the Boss being angry somehow lightened his mood, Ben grinned.

“There are apparently welding crews coming over from our support cadre, they’ve been pulled from upspire salvage ops and re-tasked to accompany us further down.”

“Ah, they must have managed to find alternate routes into deepspire,” said Samuel after pondering it for a moment, taking a sip from his drink.

“Why can’t we just drill right through the base of the spire itself?” Harold argued, as if the other two soldiers were management. “We’ve been pushing through District 12’s downspire for weeks and I don’t see how that’s a better use of resources.”

“Likely the surveyors and engineers reviewed the architectural data and determined it to be more profitable to send Reapers the long way in on foot than to drill or blast down to deepspire,” Samuel replied as he finished his drink and stood up from the table, “It’s just like back on Tetra Prime, they’ll shove us through the meat grinder if that means the balance sheet looks better when the mission is done.”

“City demo is complicated stuff, could be that some of the structures down there are so old that nobody really remembers how or why upspire doesn’t just collapse, especially considering that all of the industry is concentrated right there at the base of the spire,” mused Ben.

“You guys talk shop even when we’re trying to get a load on,” grumbled Harold, as he shoved the pair of friends ahead of him and deeper into the refugee sprawl of FOB Specter’s makeshift red light district, “Let’s go find Vol and he’ll show us where the real party is.”