Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) (8 page)

Over the sound of the chain gun there was a keening sound that made Samuel sick to his stomach. As the sound moved up and down the octave scale the marine realized that it was an artificial sound. He could see that, as insane as it seemed, the worms seemed to move and undulate in time to the keening sound.

There was little doubt in his mind that there were Stalkers somewhere back there, just behind the light, driving and guiding the herd of frenzied worms.

Harold and his chain gun were positioned perhaps twenty inches above the chamber, thanks to the spillway architecture compared to the flood chamber, and that provided him with just enough elevation to fire his weapon over the heads the fleeing marines and into the mass of attacking worms.  

"Patrick, you're with me! That gate has to close before the worms break through or everyone dies!" ordered Boss Aiken as he hefted his service pistol and rushed out from behind the gun nest. "Hyst and Kade, I want you across the way, when Harold's line of fire is impeded by the door I want you to provide cover fire and pull our people through if they reach us in time!"

 "Boss, this chain gun won't last long without a jam if I don't have a loader to keep it clear!" Harold yelled in between deafening bursts of the weapon, sending barrages of high velocity rounds tearing through the writhing mass of deadly worms as they gained more and more ground on the weary marines who ran before them.

 "You won't have much time, anyway!" Boss Aiken snapped and with that he and Patrick sprinted towards the gate to begin closing it while Samuel and Bianca backed out of the nest and made for the other side.

 Harold snarled in frustration as he continued to burst fire and tear apart the hostile creatures that pressed onwards heedless of the grievous damage he was doing to them.

Boss Aiken and Patrick positioned themselves next to the door and waited, giving the fleeing marines as much time as they could to reach the other side of the gate. Samuel dared not lean in too far for fear of friendly fire from the chain gun. He could tell that they were drawing near as he began to hear the desperate splashing as the escaping marines struggled through a foot and a half of water.

Samuel could also hear the inhuman grating noise of the worms as they slammed their heads into the tunnel floor, presumably only narrowly missing their prey. Seconds later Harold's chain gun jammed and the big marine cursed as he stepped back and kicked the gun in an attempt to clear the action.

Boss Aiken nodded gravely and he and Samuel began pushing against the door with all of his might. The door began inching closed, groaning as the rusted hinges fought against their combined strength. Without Harold's fire as a risk, both Samuel and Bianca turned the corner and pointed their sidearms down the tunnel. The worms were closing in on the marines as they struggled through the water. Samuel watched with dread as a worm attempted to impale Boss Ulanti with its armored head, only narrowly missing the squad leader and burying its head in the metal tunnel wall.

Samuel and Bianca opened fire, their bullets whizzing over the heads of Boss Marsters and Ulanti and into the tangle of worms that had all but plugged the tunnel from top to bottom. Boss Marsters slipped through the gate and was followed by Boss Ulanti. Samuel emptied his sidearm and as Bianca fired her last round the marine grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back on top of him as they fell away from the closing gate.

Boss Aiken and Patrick slammed the door against the mass of worms trying to force their way through, one of them even managing to get its head through the gap. Harold slammed himself against the door, the force of his impact decapitating the worm and giving Patrick a chance to crank the wheel which locked the gate in place.  

With the gate firmly shut and the worms held at bay, at least for the time being, Samuel risked a glance at Boss Marsters and the other marines realizing belatedly, that the rescue had not been without sacrifice.

Glaringly absent were George Tuck and Vol, and worse still, to Samuel’s horrified gaze was the mangled and corroded mess that was the front of Ben’s helmet, a gaping crater where his lower jaw should have been.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

When the bombs planted in deepspire detonated, Samuel and Jada could feel the rumble as the pylons were blown out even from the high rise balcony of the medical center. The two marines watched as the great FORGE ALPHA shook violently and then suddenly collapsed into the sinkhole that formed at the edges of the complex and rapidly swallowed the entire quadrant of upspire.

Buildings that had been stripped down to bare concrete collapsed inwards upon themselves and the weight piled on as more and more of the superstructure came apart. It was an awe inspiring display of demolition skill by the engineer corps, to so expertly calculate the pyro loads, angles of descent, and relative weight of the area to be collapsed. Not a single building that wasn’t on the demo list was harmed. Once the site was given a full day and night cycle to settle, the support crews, with Reaper foremen and security details, would bring in the giant salvage cranes.

Using powerful magnets they would pull up the scrap metal and prep it for transport. The prize pieces were, in fact, the support pylons. They were so large that the pylons would be carefully lifted from the rubble and cut while still protruding from the sinkhole. As each pylon was cut into manageable sections they would be hauled to a staging area for holding. It would take several trips with more than one scrap barge to move all of the material off world.

There would be enough raw metal from just one of the pylons salvaged from underneath FORGE ALPHA to build several ships the size of the lumbering Reaper tug. The fact that the forge had been supported by four of them meant that just the salvaged pylons would be enough metal to build an entire fleet of ships.

There was not a doubt in Samuel's mind that Grotto would reconcile as an acceptable expenditure, the cost of the lives and bullets of the handful of Reapers and several score cor-sec troopers that were spent in penetrating the Basin to cut the pylons and prep them for salvage.

There were hundreds of other, smaller pylons spread throughout the city, and in due time all of those would be taken as well. Reaper Command had deemed it prudent to salvage the city one quadrant at a time once the surface had been stripped and it was time to collapse the hollowed out upspire.

Much of this, Samuel suspected, had to do with the intel Tango Platoon had gathered with regards to the presence of the bone worms and Stalkers. Despite the detonations and subsequent collapse, it was highly likely that some Stalkers and worms survived, so Reaper security details, with cor-sec support, were on duty at all hours while the looting of Vorhold continued.  

"There's no way the collapse wiped out those monsters," said Jada in a small voice as she stared unblinking at the gigantic hole in the ground. "We'll be fighting them tooth and nail until Grotto finally decides to abandon the site. They'll be here haunting the ruins long after we've run out of things to salvage." 

"Plenty of Vorhold people who chose the red list over the life-bond will also be here," agreed Samuel.  He folded his arms in front of himself and watched the first of the cranes approach the new work site. "And eventually pirates, smugglers, pioneers, and every other kind of red list scavenger will find their way here. Maybe now that there's nothing valuable remaining, this planet will be abandoned by the corporations and re-settled by the red list."

 "At least until they discover some other kind of resource that's buried here, like back on Tetra Prime," said Jada as she continued to stare at the growing plume of dust and smoke from the collapse. "Even if it’s a decade or a century from now, eventually someone like us will be back to pick the bones clean one more time, and when they dig up that hole they'll get what they deserve." 

"Jada, before the Boss found you, what happened down there? What did you see?" asked Samuel in a quiet tone as he laid his hand gently on her shoulder, only to have it shrugged off as she turned away from both Samuel and the window so that she would walk over to Ben's unconscious form. 

"It was the bottom of the world, Prybar," Jada whispered as she looked down at the wounded marine, "Where the sins from our way of life sink down to pool and fester." 

Samuel remained silent and watched as Jada moved her hands delicately over the outlines of Ben's new face.

The marine had sustained a grievous wound, though Boss Marsters had not witnessed exactly how it had happened. From what the field surgeons had told Samuel it seemed as if Ben's jaw had been sheared from his body with a semi-sharp blade and a tremendous amount of force, which lined up with what Samuel had seen the bone worms capable of doing.

Despite the gore and mess, it was the force of the blow that had made the cut somewhat clean and prevented any tearing of Ben's windpipe. With Boss Marster's approval, the surgeons had cleaned the marine up provided Ben Takeda with an apparatus that most marines called 'the grim'.

It was a small miracle that the grim was covered by the standard Reaper health plan, and Boss Marsters had opted not to upgrade the device with anything out of the plan. Now, Ben's face had a molded ceramic face mask, with armor plating on the cheeks, chin, and forehead, covering his head from his brow to the base of his neck. The eye holes allowed Ben to use his unaltered sight, and the apparatus was small enough that it still fit inside the standard issue Reaper combat helmet. Once in place, the grim looked like a black skull face grafted to the flesh of his best friend, and more than anything he looked like the Grim Reaper himself, hence the name for the mask.

In his years with the fleet Samuel had only seen one other person wearing a grim, Gannet, from Epsilon Platoon, and Samuel knew it was going to take some getting used to. The grim would assist Ben in breathing and was retro-fitted to allow for a liquid diet, which Ben would be on for the rest of his life.

 "I didn't see George die," said Jada suddenly, "Boss Lucinda was already carrying me by then, but I could hear him, roaring as loud as his flamer before they killed him. He was gasping, and then nothing."

"And Vol?" asked Samuel, careful to keep his tone gentle, as if speaking too strongly would spook his comrade and close her back down.  

"He found us. Killed the ones who..." Jada whispered before she paused for a moment, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, looking once again like the fierce marine that Samuel knew. "He took the fight to them, gave us a chance to make a run for it." 

Jada looked as if she wanted to say more. She opened her mouth, closing it again as the duty light on Samuel's belt buzzed and started to flash green. The marine depressed the acknowledgement stud and the light ceased to blink. Jada, still in hospital scrubs, walked over to the marine and gave him a swift hug before stepping back and sitting on the stool next to Ben's bed.  

"Duty calls," said Jada as she made herself comfortable and flashed Samuel a weak smile.  

"You'd think after the downspire campaign Vorhold could do without Tango Platoon for at least another day," grumbled Samuel, though he half-smiled as he said it. The smile faded as he took one last look at Ben's grim new face. "If I'm not here when he wakes up..." 

"I got this, Prybar. Don't worry, I'll ease him into it," Jada said as she brushed her hair out of her face, inadvertently revealing the scarred claw marks on the left side of her face,  "This is the job." 

Samuel nodded."This is the job."

THE ELLISIAN LINE

Samuel was in the briefing auditorium of the Reaper tug, listening to the shift manager make the initial informational reports to accompany the data presented in the briefing packet that had been passed to every marine in attendance. Samuel had already read through the concise information. His mind had wandered back to the near month he’d been able to spend back home after the grueling tour on Vorhold.

The Reaper fleet had been sent back to Baen 6 for a rest and refit period of thirty-five days, which marked only the fifteenth time he had been able to see his family since becoming a Reaper so many years ago.

Sura had been distant, over the years they could not help but grow apart in small ways, though he could tell she was trying her best to make him feel welcome and loved. His son Orion was growing up so fast and the marine did his best to forget his troubles in the warm embrace of his family. However, that warmth soon faded; as such things did, when he and Sura had to face the hard reality of their situation.

Thanks to the extended hazard deployment on Vorhold, Samuel had banked enough of his Reaper pay and hazard bonuses to buy off Sura’s life-bond and as well as his own, which he’d been chipping away at ever since first shipping out. For several days all of their options looked grim, in that it was simply more of the same.

More soldiering for Samuel in the cold dark of space, more time for Sura and Orion alone on Baen 6; both of them knowing the longer Samuel stayed a Reaper the more his chances of survival dwindled. They had learned over the years that there were very few retired Reapers, as nearly ninety percent of them remained trapped in the debt cycle, or simply could find no better work planetside and died on the job.

The Reaper death benefit program, in its own strange and brutal way, provided the marines with an assurance that if they died on the job they left their families, or whomever they chose, with a sizeable lump sum. It was common for marines to think of the benefit as their final sacrifice for those they left planetside, which worked well for Grotto as the hardened veterans represented much in the way of a return on investment.

Apparently Grotto Corporation had heard their prayers for another combat deployment mission as one became available to Reapers across Grotto space who had achieved enough hazard service hours. The Baen 6 fleet had seen more combat since it’s founding than most Reaper fleets by a modest margin, and it had been tapped as the flagship for the operation.

Each Reaper who qualified was invited to attend on a first come first aboard basis until the full complement of one thousand marines were mustered. The list filled up within hours, as the hazard pay was doubled, with an unprecedented bonus award easily the size of a full death benefit upon mission completion. The threat level was Alpha Class, and beyond the skirmish with the Helion elites on Tetra Prime the Reapers of Tango Platoon had not faced a threat so aggressively classified.

Still faced with a grinding slide into debt even after six years of battle and no closer to changing Orion’s future of life-bonded workforce servitude, there was little discussion of the matter between Sura and Samuel. They had to make a play, risk and reward, because the safety net had never been there in the first place, and they had finally seen the truth of that. Samuel and Sura agreed to a paper divorce, so that Samuel’s medical debt became his own. They used the remaining funds to pay Sura’s expatriation fee. Orion had not begun compulsory school so he had no pro-rated life debt.

After the expatriation of his now ex-wife, Samuel used what they had left to purchase a long term lease on an orbital space station just on the edge of the Baen system. It was a modest sized station that functioned primarily as a fueling point for ships moving in and out of the Baen system in addition to a secondary function as a trading post for the various smaller industries that moved goods through the handful of warehouses and retailers on the station’s main deck. There were several hab-block style compartment clusters that were mostly used as temporary housing for ship crew during docked repairs.

It would be a tough place for a single mother and her son, though Samuel had them set up with the funds they would need to survive while he was gone. If the mission was a success he could pay off his medical debt, cover his own expatriation fee, and have enough to set them up with a new life far from Grotto. As it was, Sura and Orion would keep a low profile and wait for him on the station.

They made love on that last night as if it would be the last time, which they did every time he left, though that night it had felt different. It had felt to Samuel, for the first time, like this time it could be true. He’d felt that certainty so powerfully that he’d gone into the Reaper financial benefits office and double-inspected his death benefit assignment just to be sure.

All Reapers who had served a minimum of two years were assigned a death benefit, which was to be paid to whomever the Reaper logged as his or her desired recipient. After those two years the benefit amount, which was modest, would slowly grow by miniscule daily increments.

If Samuel died on the mission he knew his death benefit would at least get Sura and Orion off the station with enough resources to provide for them while Sura pledged to a new corporation. There would be no homestead without his survival. At least Samuel knew that if he were to die, Sura would be able to take her time and find a corporation more suitable and less grindingly inhuman. One way or the other his family would be taken care of. That was a certainty he needed to combat the growing feeling of doom that had been building in his mind ever since waking up in the middle of the night several times while home. His nightmares of Tetra Prime were now joined by twisted visions of downspire. Decisions made, there was nothing more he could do and he committed himself to the mission at hand. 

The planet designated UK1326 was a small grey world, and had it possessed 0.2% less mass it would have been classified as a moon. As it was, the unique planet hung in a wide orbit between two dying stars.

Conventional planetary science estimated that within another few thousand years the increased gravitational pull of the two suns would rip the planet into pieces as the entire sector was slowly drawn into a black hole. Such natural phenomena were not uncommon in the deeper parts of necrospace, where the star systems were at their most ancient.

In their early education, children in the Grotto system, like those in most other corporate institutions throughout the universe, were taught that known space was shaped like three interconnected rings, each smaller one inside the borders of the larger one.

The largest was frontier space, the wild and untamed fringe of the universe containing the newest planets and the youngest of star systems, many of which were still molten balls of rock and swirling clouds of gases.

The central ring was generally referred to as mapped space, or more commonly, corporate space, and contained the bulk of human civilization, as many of the planets and star systems within were matured enough to sustain life.

The smallest ring was called necrospace, sharing the same designation as the forgotten and used up worlds of corporate space. Within necrospace the planets were ancient, the star systems decayed and dying, and any resource of value already stripped away. However, there were often anomalies of physics that puzzled scientists of the age, and many suspected that necrospace might actually comprise more area than any thought possible. It had proven difficult to create accurate mapping of necrospace beyond a certain point.

There were a multitude of planets and systems in necrospace that had been successfully mapped and exploited for what little wealth remained, but once ships reached a specific distance from corporate space it was as if the laws of physics became more fluid.

A scientist named Dorian Ellis pinpointed the border within necrospace, and thanks to his discovery, spent much of his life working there, funded by an Archon Industries grant, to discover what exactly was going on. Dorian died before he could draw any definitive conclusions. His funding had been pulled in the later years of his life due to failure to yield any profits, as apparently it had been seen as venture capital and not an actual grant.

Dorian had become convinced that a civilization much older than humanity had populated the area of space that existed on the other side of what had become known as the Ellisian Line. He postulated that there must be a singularity at the center of the universe, drawing old space into itself even as frontier space expanded, which held with conventional astrophysics understanding of the age.

However, where Dorian’s theories became untenable within the corporate world was his adamant belief in this unnamed ancient civilization. He claimed to have been to a planet on the other side of the line that contained a dead city, filled with artifacts that had led him to believe that this ancient civilization had attempted to alter the singularity. He insisted that somehow they had broken the laws of physics, and that the very fabric of the universe had remained broken long after their passing.

Sadly, he was not able to provide an accurate location for the planet, and was professionally deposed. His numerous volumes of photographic evidence supporting his claims were later deemed fraudulent. Dorian had died in relative poverty and professional disgrace, though he was still credited with the discovery and subsequent establishment of the Ellisian Line.

Corporate ships did not cross the line; because the locations of planets or entire star systems would change, maps could not be trusted on the other side. The distance between one place and another would warp in transit.

In corporate culture it was considered unprofitable to venture beyond the Ellisian Line. Even pirates would not venture beyond it, much less the various squatter flotillas that wandered the universe; which was why Samuel found himself leaning forward in his seat with a sense of shocked curiosity as the shift manager displayed the first of several maps detailing the mission.

“You were all made aware of the Ellisian Line during your compulsory education, and from the looks on your faces I can tell that you realize this map details a small star system on the other side of the line.”  The shift manager looked out at the assembled marines, “I had the same look of shock on my face, but you’ll get over it.”

She zoomed in on the map, past the line, to reveal a more detailed photo image of UK1326. The surface of the planet swirled with dark clouds of grey and black, and what little ground they could see looked to be rock scrabble and vast expanses of barren earth.

“The information you are about to receive is classified, and I will remind you that any breach of the non-disclosure agreement you signed upon taking this mission will be treated with the upmost severity,” the shift manager warned as she gripped the edge of the podium and looked hard at the assembled marines. “We don’t know how or why, but UK1326 and its two suns appeared during a routine scanner sweep by a Grotto chartered prospecting ship. By happenstance the prospectors took the same route back to corporate space three months later and the scanner revealed the same star system, existing in space in the same coordinates. Thanks to the report, this system has been under observation for six months, and it has yet to disappear, making it anomalous compared to the other systems on the other side of the Ellisian Line.

Several probes have been sent to the planet and it has been determined that a derelict city, with no signs of life, exists on the planet surface, and Grotto has decided that the time has come to exploit the opportunity.”

The sound of several hundred marines breaking the silence with a mixture of whispers, groans, and exclamations of awe swept over the room. The shift manager allowed the moment to settle in, and then continued.

“The planet designated UK1326 and the two dying suns around which it orbits prevent the planet from having any discernible night or day cycle. It exists in a perpetual half-light, which when combined with the frequent and thick cloud cover creates an environment poorly suited to effective probe reconnaissance missions beyond broad stroke observation.” The shift manager activated another screen to reveal a multi-dimensional terrain map populated with various figures that Samuel took to indicate foot soldiers.

“Reapers are designated as militarized salvage operators. We do not have the sheer number of soldiers required to responsibly seize a city sized objective. However, given the unknown nature of the city and its apparent lack of a living population, there is no avenue within corporate protocol to requisition the use of elite troopers, and not enough revenue assurances to justify the presence of mercenary contractors.”

“Oh man, is she going to say what I think she’s going to say?” asked Ben as he leaned over to whisper to Samuel, who had still not gotten fully used his friend’s now completely digitized voice.

“I have a bad feeling that she is, poor bastards” grumbled Samuel as he gripped the sides of his seat, having realized who all of the figures were supposed to represent. “This mission is getting spookier by the second.”

“As some of you might have guessed, Grotto has authorized the founding of Penal Legion 223 for this mission.

A full legion of five thousand convicts from Gulag 223 completed their training while we were in transit to the mission site and they will be our vanguard.” As she spoke, the shift manager pressed an activation key to animate the figures, who moved through a monochrome cityscape in large groups.