Chapter Eighteen

  Revelations

  “How is this even possible?” Sparks backed away from Cheape. “You said you didn’t have nanites!”

  “I don’t,” Cheape got gingerly to her feet. “My people just have a bit of a quirk to them.”

  “A bit of a quirk?” Gas Tank asked, looming over Cheape in his metal suit.

  “Yeah, it was news to me as well,” Cheape rubbed her aching head. It felt like she had a migraine coming on. “We are conditioned to suppress the memories, apparently.”

  “How?” Gas Tank asked suspiciously.

  “Pain mostly,” Cheape grimaced at the memories of the beatings, and worse, that the children were put through. “I think… I think I want to stab my parents a little bit.” She stumbled as her legs went, shock starting to set in now that the initial wave of memories had settled.

  Gas Tank reached out, catching Cheape before she could fall to the floor.

  “Easy, Boss,” Gas Tank said gently. “You just got… well, I have no idea what just happened, but it looked nasty.”

  “It’s still glowing,” Andy offered, crouched over the pool of liquid.

  “DON’T TOUCH!” Everyone seemed to yell at once.

  “Jeeze, okay!” Andy backed away, hands in the air and looking hurt. “I wasn’t going to!”

  “Everybody, erase the recordings of the last few minutes. Leave them off until we have cleared the room.” Cheape was thinking fast. Her people had a lot to answer for, but that was for later. For now, she just had to consider her own future. A future that Cheape did not want to include ending up on the wrong end of Paren’s interest.

  The Queens might buy her new ‘adult’ attitude, but Cheape sure as hell didn’t.

  “I take it we are not going to be telling the Imperium about this?” Sparks was grinning.

  “Or never telling anyone?” Gas Tank guessed.

  “Haven people only,” Cheape confirmed. “Only ones we trust.”

  “Yes, Boss!” Sparks was grinning even wider now.

  “Uh, we might want to learn how—” Andy started.

  “Tee can help me figure it out,” Cheape nodded.

  “Oh, yeah?” Andy gave an innocent smile. “Want him to examine you really closely?”

  “Nothing like a really good, thorough physical examination,” Sparks said with a dirty chuckle. “Right. Boss?”

  “Pack it in,” Cheape sighed, feeling the blush creeping up her face despite her best efforts.

  “Hey, one thing,” Gas Tank sounded thoughtful. “How come you can enter this place if your people are all… different?”

  Cheape blinked. She hadn’t even thought about that part of it yet, but now that she did, Gas Tank had a point.

  “Either they didn’t have the tech to block it, or they had it already by the time the first segment was based on.” Sparks shrugged. “No way to tell, right?”

  “Right,” Cheape said blandly. Personally, she wasn’t satisfied with either theory, but there was nothing she could do about it right now. Her team still had a lot to do, and they were now down one Suit as well as a Rig. “Let’s forget that for now and focus on why we are here. That room still needs clearing.”

  “How much can you actually heal?” Andy whispered.

  “No idea. Why?” Cheape looked around to see the woman looking curiously between the door to the guard station and Cheape.

  “So I won’t feel bad if I duck behind you as we go in there,” Andy smirked.

  Of course, Cheape and Andy both had to stay back in the Bar as the team cleared the room. It was a weird kind of torture to stand back and listen to the battle taking place inside, with nothing to do but wait and hope.

  Idly, Cheape found herself wondering if this was how Queen Nellie felt watching everything happen from the Atrium. It was not something she wanted to do for the rest of this segment, but she just didn’t see another option right now.

  Five minutes after the fight started, Gas Tank beckoned them into the now safe room.

  Looking around as she entered, Cheape saw the wreckage of several turrets, a couple of large cannons, and the remains of a couple of Leapers.

  “Those little buggers are almost as dangerous in tight spaces as they are out in the open,” Sparks complained, kicking one of them bitterly.

  “Get your lights up to max,” Cheape said, rubbing her hands together. “I want to find anything still intact for us to use.”

  That set the tone for the rest of the ground floor. Her team cleared a room and then moved on while Andy and Cheape searched for anything useful. There were slim pickings in most places simply due to the damage the team had caused. It was clear that they never intended the place to have several full Rigs stomping about. Cheape sighed as she picked over the remains of some piece of tech. There was about a third of it remaining; the rest had been crushed by a clomping metal foot.

  Things would be even worse on the second floor, where the Rigs would only just fit in the corridors one at a time.

  Above there, it would be down to the two remaining Suits, and everyone else would be in Exos until they were done in here.

  The final room they cleared, and very carefully, was the Repair Shop.

  Watching Gas Tank in there was like seeing a kid in a candy store.

  “The fine control on this welding wand is the best I have ever seen!” Gas Tank crooned as he crouched over one of the smallest implements in the place. “I think I could make a seamless join with this on even Haven steel.”

  “It’s all in working order?” Cheape checked.

  “As far as I can tell,” Tank nodded decisively. “In fact, I would swear that there isn’t a non-functional item in this entire shop.”

  “Like the custom weapons factory?” Cheape asked, feeling her tension ratchet up another notch. “Do you think it’s another trap?”

  “No, I think the trap was outside, but you didn’t fall for it.” Gas Tank beamed. “So we got the place before we could get—” He stopped. “Has anyone looked outside?”

  “One sec, I’ll go check one of the slits,” Andy dashed away.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “You think we’re surrounded?” Cheape sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

  “I’d bet on it,” Tank nodded. “But the good news is—”

  There was a loud swearing that got closer until a pale-faced Andy sped into the room.

  “So many fucking Leapers! Plus, there are like these shuttle-type things as well.” Andy said, her face set in a grim expression. “It’s bad.”

  “As I was saying!” Gas Tank interrupted. “The good news is that this place is functional, so we can not only repair gear but make new stuff!”

  “Wait, what?” Cheape held up a hand to silence Andy and turned to the grinning engineer. “New stuff?”

  “I think so.” Gas Tank looked up. “Depending on what we find in the rest of the place.”

  “Were they moving?” Cheape turned back to Andy.

  “No, just kind of sitting there,” she said, “Or floating in the shuttle’s case.”

  “They aren’t shuttles,” Tank shook his head. “The restriction fields are too small. Must be another kind of drone.”

  “Big fucking drones,” Andy grumbled.

  “No one said they had to be small,” Tank shrugged.

  “They always have been before now!” Andy argued.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” Sparks chuckled.

  “Fuck off!” Andy snapped.

  “Enough!” Cheape ordered. “Right, we need to get this place cleared and make some new gear.”

  “You take my suit,” Tank nodded to it. “I better get started on things here.”

  “I’ll leave a Rig and Andy here to help you,” Cheape offered.

  “Leave me a Rig and Mace,” Tank shook his head. “Andy will just get in the way.”

  “You take Mace and have Andy run the Rig then,” Cheape said with a nod to the woman.

  “That’ll work.” Gas Tank nodded. “Good Luck, Ma’am.”

  /====<<<>>>====\

  The more they explored, the more it seemed this place was designed to either be the temptation in a trap or as a base for anyone attempting the segment to work out of. There just wasn’t enough of a defense inside the place to justify including it. As far as Cheape could reckon it out, the Outpost in here was the same as what they had found on Haven. Namely, it was a base used to explore.

  In short, it was suspiciously perfect for them.

  They even found a few pieces of tech. A Rig arm here, a knee joint there.

  The more they found, the more suspicious Cheape got.

  There was an old saying in the universe: If it looks too good to be true, it is.

  That was a very good description of this place.

  If they had the option, Cheape would already have abandoned the place just to be on the safe side, but they were well and truly hemmed in. Looking out one of the narrow slit windows in the final guard post on the second floor, Cheape marveled at the sheer number of enemies that had gathered outside.

  If the first segment had been tough, it had at least left like the enemies behaved realistically. They had patrols, and other than the horde of malfunctioning repair bots, they had been in manageable numbers. Looking out at the streets outside and seeing it crusted with eggs was chilling. Worse still were the hovering drones. They looked like oversized Rigs, but with no legs or arms. Instead, they had a pair of openings in the base and hung from three large umbrella-like structures that glowed with a faint light.

  There were no visible weapons, which somehow made them seem even more threatening. They hovered above the eggs like raptors waiting to pounce.

  In short, Cheape’s team was trapped until they came up with a plan.

  That plan was clearly not getting very far with what they found on the second floor, so they were headed to the third once they finished relaying the finds down to Gas Tank in the Repair Shop.

  One by one, her team traded out Rigs for armored Exo-suits.

  “Okay, everyone ready?” Cheape said, trying to ignore the thumping of her own heart. Being trapped in here was getting to her in a big way. “Good. Let’s get up there.”

  The third floor of these places was normally a storage of one kind or another. Maybe a couple of offices. Cheape was hoping for a few complete Rigs but would settle for a decent number of spares.

  As long as there was something, they would be okay.

  They cleared the stairs and moved up, finding not the hallway they expected at the top but a large open space that seemed like it took up the whole floor.

  Hung from the ceiling in the dead center of the space and surrounded by cables and equipment was the largest Rig any of them had ever seen.

  “What’s wrong with this picture?” Sparks said drily.

  Cheape just frowned and moved into the room. The Rig was massive, easily eighteen feet from foot to top, and the bay was wide open. Sparks' comment was referring to the bay itself, which featured something none of their Rigs had.

  A space for a creature with three legs.

  The molded interior was clearly designed to fit snugly against its driver, but the shape didn’t match anything Cheape had ever seen running around the universe.

  “I want every scan we have on this thing right now!” Cheape ordered, pointing out the machines arranged around the Rig, “And find out what that lot does. I don’t want this thing, whatever it is, from activating while we are in here.”

  “Should I go get Tank?” Sparks asked.

  “Send someone else,” Cheape said, “I want every scanner we can get, and these Suits have great ones.” She nodded to one of the team and they rushed away.

  “Slow and careful, people,” Sparks called as they spread out around the alien Rig. “Take it from me, being torn in half hurts. I do not recommend the experience.”

  The measurements from her readings didn’t make any sense at all, so Cheape put them aside for the moment and focused on the interior bay. Her implant ran up measurements in moments, and they were almost as horrifying as the Rig itself. The pilot for this Rig must have been ten feet if they were a foot. That was without taking into account any differences in posture that might be hidden at the moment. For all Cheape knew, it walked hunched over.

  Walked, but not like a human. The three legs were arranged in a tripod-like setup, but the rear leg was substantially longer. How it actually moved was beyond her, but she would be perfectly happy never to see it in person. Most of the arms were still hidden in the depths of the Rig, but the head was wide and flat like the head of a hammer. As broad as the shoulders—which looked heavily muscled—the head put the eyes at least a meter and a half apart.

  Every instinct in Cheape’s body screamed that she was looking at the shape of a predator. An apex one.

  “Do your readings make sense?” Sparks asked.

  “None at all,” Cheape confirmed. “Any ideas?”

  “Only one,” Sparks shrugged. “Probably the same as yours.”

  “This thing isn’t from around here,” Cheape nodded. “When they said invaders? They meant from another place, right?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Sparks sighed. “Before I met Trevor, I wouldn’t have believed it… but…”

  “So there is more than one universe out there, and this thing came from one of them.” Cheape shook her head. “You know, life used to be a lot simpler before I joined the Imperium.”

  “Tell me about it,” Sparks huffed. “But personally, I prefer all this to farming turnips for the rest of my life.”

  “Not exactly high praise,” Cheape smirked.

  “You work with what you have,” Sparks shrugged.

  Before they could get any further, Gas Tank arrived at a run. He slid to a stop, mouth open as his eyes roved over the Rig, and then… he was all over it, head deep inside one second, then laying underneath the legs a moment later. He moved constantly.

  “Let’s give him a minute,” Sparks chuckled. “This is a special moment for the old man.”

  “Old?” Cheape asked.

  “What? He has to be forty at least!”

  Gas Tank reported only thirty minutes later, face sweaty and eyes bright. The machines arrayed around the outside of the alien Rig were all sensors, and he had managed to translate the readings.

  They had confirmed what Cheape and Sparks already thought.

  The aliens had come from another universe. Everything was just a little different there. It gave every component in the Rig a slightly different chemical and electrical signature than anything found in this universe. There could be no doubt about the alien origins. No matter how advanced the Builders got, there was no chance they had made this thing.

  The confirmation made Cheape feel a little better about things. For a moment, she had been inundated with visions of custom-made creatures that the Builders put together like vat-grown soldiers. Given the origins of her own people, the idea had made Cheape feel sick.

  Once that was out of her head, Cheape was able to share in Gas Tank’s joy at the sheer amount of new design ideas contained in the alien rig. Better still, Tank thought there was a good chance he could still use the metals and such within.

  The Queens might want this thing intact, but if Cheape needed the materials, she would not hesitate to order the Rig destroyed down to the last bolt.

  Her people’s lives came first.

  The final discovery Tank had made at least answered one question.

  The folded material techniques that the Imperium had gotten from the Clutch, who got them from the ruins of the First Interstellar Empire, had originally come from the invaders.

  The evidence was in every alloy and metal plate on the alien rig.

  “Well?” Tank prompted, but Cheape realized she had stopped listening.

  “Sorry, mind wandered there a little,” Cheape said awkwardly. “A lot of information is coming at me very fast here.”

  “I asked if I could take it apart,” Tank said, licking his lips. “I mean, I know that the Queens—”

  “Will understand,” Cheape nodded. “Do it.” Looking around, she saw the rest of the team relaxing around the room. It was too soon for that. “Everyone form up. We still have some floors to clear!”