Syberian Sunrise (6 page)

It made him sick.

He continued staring at it in fascinated revulsion, trying to determine just what the hell it was, when he was finally given his answer. The mass began to twitch in one particular section. Taking a step back, he brought the pistol up. A useless gesture, given the emptied state of the weapon. The mass continued twitching until something came out of it. A Slug. It slithered from the aperture it'd made and dropped onto the ground.

In a moment of disgusted revelation, he realized what it was.

A nest.

This was how these things
bred
. Enzo felt his stomach twitch as he did what needed doing. Before it could go anywhere, he stomped on the Slug. For a moment, he considered how to handle this. He couldn't very well leave this horrible thing alive to just keep breeding the Slugs...but how to destroy it? His eyes scanned the room he was in. Surely there was something in here he could use. Enzo began hunting through the various crates and shelves.

After a little bit, he finally had his solution.

A power cell and jumper cables. They were meant to be used as sort of a last resort kind of situation, when all else failed, to jump-start failing equipment. Almost no one used them, but they were standard equipment even among the more prestigious bases. Grinning darkly, he stubbed one end of the jumper cables into the nest, disgusted by the squelching noises it made, and hooked the other end up to the power cell.

Before turning it on, he hunted down and found all the supplies and tools he'd need, because he didn't want to be in here anymore. Enzo waited a moment, relishing the experiencing, and then flipped on the power cell. There was a jolt of raw energy as it hit the nest. Sparks and arcs jumped and dance along its glistening surface. Enzo fell back, already coughing from the reek of burning flesh. He watched it burst into flame before leaving.

As he stepped back out into the main bay, closing the door behind him, his eyes fell on the thing that had tried to kill him. It all fell into place. If that was a nest, then that would make this thing some kind of protector, some kind of...Guardian. His brain assigned the name to the creature, as he was sure to encounter more of these horrors. There was a clear ecosystem at work here, with different niches, different levels and roles.

Enzo pushed all this aside for the moment.

He wanted to see that space ship.

Retreating back to the relay room, he made the appropriate repairs and tried to get into touch with Eve, but she was still offline. He frowned, double-checked his work and then tried once more. Still nothing. Shrugging, Enzo located the next elevator and headed up.

Chapter 05

–
Aftermath
–

Level Seven now.

Enzo felt like he was making progress. He began pacing as he rode the elevator up, knife in hand since the pistol was depleted. There was an anger building up inside of him. Enzo had a long, long career of being a mercenary. For quite a long while now, his life had been lengthy bouts nomadic exploration, drifting across the galaxy from system to system as jobs or his own personal needs and wants had dictated, punctuated with long periods of inactivity whenever he found a place he particularly liked.

He'd never been held prisoner.

Sure, he tangled with the local law enforcement or rival mercenary groups from time to time, but by the time the men with badges and sunglasses showed up looking for him, he was already long gone, catching a flight out of the local starport to wherever. In fact, it was what he'd been doing before this. Before the prison transport, he'd been on Williamson Station. It was closer to the inner ring of galactic society, a place where they ran a tight ship and all your digital papers had to be in order if you wanted to get in and do anything.

Not exactly his kind of place, but he'd been tired of hanging out in the seedy, nasty underworld of the criminal ecology that grew at the edge of civilized space in what some men called the Far Reach. He wanted something nice, a place where there was real sun and the wine was good and the women you could buy were just the right level of trashy. Williamson Station was where he'd planned to stop and crash for a few days before to the planet below its orbit, Mezzanine, and burning through all the credits he'd accumulated.

Unfortunately, it had all gone to shit. Enzo had run afoul with the local law enforcement. Some jackass had wanted to pretend he was tough in the bar during Enzo's third night there and tried to pick a fight with him. Obviously, he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him. How was it Enzo's fault that he was skilled at hand-to-hand combat? In retrospect, Enzo suspected that he probably could have delivered less of a beating, but it was a bad night. His shoulder was really burning and he was pretty drunk. On top of that, the guy was
really
asking for it.

So they wanted to throw him in a cell overnight. Obviously that was unacceptable. Enzo tried to explain this, but the cops just wouldn't hear it. So he had to beat
them
up, too. If there was any sense of justice in the universe, he'd have been able to claim self-defense against the officers that had come for him. They'd been hassling him his whole time on the station, just because he didn't come from what they liked to call 'decent folk'.

So they deserved it, too.

The whole thing had amounted to him having to stow away aboard a cargo freighter bound for the Far Reach, then having to hitchhiker aboard a prison transport. And now, here he was, deep beneath the surface of a frozen world, all his credits, his gear...gone. Enzo was glad he had no personal effects, nothing he kept near and dear to his heart, or he'd probably be losing his shit right now. He was fine traveling light.

Just him and his arm and his pain.

The lift rose to its nest. Enzo wondered what was waiting for him as he slid into place like before, hiding to the right of the door. The higher up he went, the worse this seemed to get. What had Eve said? The ship was two levels above him? If he had to guess, Enzo would say that this level was either a research lab for the vessel and the creatures they'd apparently pulled from it or just more of the same he'd seen below.

The lack of security seemed to indicate more of the same. Initially, he'd had the thought to just ride the elevator higher. Unfortunately, likely for security reasons, these lifts were only built for level-to-level transport. They only went up to the next section of the base. The doors opened. Enzo peered out. Nothing waited for him but blood and death. He frowned, stepping out cautiously. The amount of blood was definitely of a higher volume than below. The lobby looked like it had been subjected to a brutal firefight. Bullet holes stitched into the walls in erratic patterns, an immense pool of old blood in the middle of the room, but...

“No bodies,” Enzo murmured.

Where were the bodies?

His mind flashed back to the Nest and his stomach turned slightly. He headed out of the lobby, coming to a corridor that extended straight away from him for a little bit. His stolen boots squelched in the silence as he moved down the hallway. The door at the end revealed a low, dark room of catwalks and machinery. The only way across the was the catwalks made of dark metal. They were bridges across a sea of all manner of machinery and equipment set into the ground below. Enzo studied some of it as he passed over.

There were huge tubes, what looked like oxygen pumps placed in clusters and fat nodes of glistening technology, all hooked together in a mind-twisting confusion of a modern marvel. If he was right about the pumps, then this level was likely where they'd be keeping the atmospheric control and filtration system. Large stores of oxygen, carbon scrubbers and all the extra equipment necessary to make them run and keep the base swimming in an atmosphere that humans could survive in would make up this entire level.

He kept moving, crossing the catwalks, constantly scanning the area. It was a nightmare down here, he soon realized. An attack could come from anywhere. Below him, beside and above him was nothing but technology, a collection of dark niches, holes and vent shafts and shadows where anything could be hiding. Enzo hurried across the room, coming to the next door and passed through it without incident. He breathed a sigh of relief.

Next up was, of all things, a small office annex. It looked startlingly out of place amidst all the death and technology, but he supposed it would make enough sense to have people down here around the clock, maintaining everything, keeping a watchful eye on the intricate network of equipment that kept the base running. And it made more sense to give them the relative comfort of a modern office complex to do it from.

Enzo moved through the office annex, finding only eight rooms. Six offices, a break room and a bathroom. His first action, after making sure there was nothing actually in there with him, was to take another long drink of cool water from the sink. He spat several times, trying to get the lingering effects of the Slug aftertaste from his mouth. Despite the virtual tastelessness of the water, the sheer act of cleansing his mouth helped.

After he drank, he headed into the break room. The place was a mess, someone had flipped over and torn into the only couch, knocked over one of two arcade cabinets that'd been set up and smashed the screen of the second and it seemed as if someone might have killed themselves with a shotgun pointing directly up. There was a wicked nasty stain of blood and brain matter on the ceiling. Still no bodies though.

These things appeared to be thorough.

Enzo did, however, find a mini fridge. A grin split his face as he spied two cans of Vex soda and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in plastic. He took them all out, popped the top on the first can and downed the entire thing before doing anything else. He then tore into the sandwich, not realizing how absolutely ravenous he was until actually seeing the food. It was gone in less than a minute. Enzo then downed the second can, crumpled it in his fist and tossed it into the nearby wastebasket out of habit.

Time to get to business.

Enzo moved to the nearest office, which was little more than a closet with a chair and workstation built into it. He booted up the workstation and gained access to it a moment later. Thankfully there were no passwords to screw around with. Five minutes passed, then ten, the silence only broken occasionally by some distant noise of things moving in the darkness. Enzo finally sat back, frustrated. He had a map of the area, of course the 'area' meant only this level, which was nice, but there was nothing else worthwhile.

Nothing but a bunch of meaningless reports on all the technical crap down in the dungeon he was locked in. Enzo spent a few more minutes rummaging around through the desks until he finally came across an infopad. It had a little smiley face sticker stuck on it and looked a little worn. Enzo thought it was a personal infopad, not a professional one. He was about to activate it when his radio suddenly kicked to life.

“I need your help again, Enzo.”

He sighed and pocketed the infopad.

“Why is it you only call me when you want something?” he replied, already heading for the final door in the office annex. According to the map, it would take him to the rest of the area.

“We're kind of in a shit situation. There's literally no one down there but you and these aren't situations that can wait or be brushed off,”
Eve replied.

“Yeah, no one but these fucking Mutants,” Enzo muttered. “It sounds like you need me.”

Eve sighed.
“Yes, I need you. Everyone left alive in this facility needs you, including
you
! So will you get your ass in gear and help me?”

Enzo paused for a second, then grinned. “If you say please.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? If you don't do this,
you will die
!”

“So be it,” he replied stubbornly.

Eve let out a sharp shout of exasperation.
“Fine! Fucking please! Will you fucking
please
go fix the oxygen filtration system so that we all don't fucking
suffocate
!?”

“Yes. Was that so hard?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

She cut the link. Enzo laughed and replaced the radio. So their relationship was a little antagonistic. He could work with that. Stepping out of the office annex, he came to a broad, tall room not unlike the one he'd seen below. There were a dozen doors on the first and second floor, each one leading to different areas of the oxygen plant. The oxygen filtration system had two primary nodes, according to the map.

Luckily, they were side-by-side. The area at large was vacant, though several of the doors were open. Something about that fact made Enzo uncomfortable. He moved across the room, trying to keep his footsteps quiet. His boots seemed magnified in the vast underground chamber. It wasn't exactly quiet down here, a great deal of machinery was running, but it was little more than white noise, whispering in the background.

Before long he'd come to where he needed to be, at least he hoped. One of the primary hubs for the oxygen filtration system. He opened the door and peered in. Still nothing. The tension was beginning to get to him. He slipped in and began inspecting the equipment. Immediately, he could tell that there was a good chance he wasn't going to be able to fix this one...at least not all of it. Enzo stared at the ruined equipment. Someone seemed to have taken a machine gun to the thing in some areas, in others it looked like blunt force trauma.