Chapter Seventeen

  The Outpost

  Once they passed the guard posts and entered the Outpost proper, Cheape saw the first real change from what she had expected. The decor was much more spartan than what they had found on Haven. Although it was intact, it still looked less than even the remains they had seen.

  “Does this look more basic than you expected?” Sparks asked. “Like a different style or something?”

  “Yes,” Cheape confirmed. She wished Tee could see this. They all had their recorders running, so he would see it as soon as they regained contact with the outside, but even so. It wasn’t the same without him.

  Since he couldn’t be here himself, Cheape tried to do what Tee would have done, paying attention to the small details. Moving over to one of the tables showed a pattern not too dissimilar to one they had found before. It was just a much more simplistic version.

  Less refined.

  “I think the ruins represent a later version of the Outposts,” Cheape told the others. “From what I can see here anyway.”

  “Makes sense, right?” Gas Tank confirmed. “I mean, this place is only the second segment, so there must be a lot more history for us to see before we get to the earliest Haven find.”

  “Do you think the things in the murals were the invaders they mentioned in the posters?” Sparks was poking a chair experimentally. It rocked back and clattered against the floor. The metal-against-stone sound was loud in the enclosed room.

  “You want to just bang a gong and get it over with?” Andy snapped.

  “What, you think they missed the delicate sound of a bunch of Rigs stomping through the place?” Gas Tank laughed.

  “Some of us aren’t in a nice big Rig anymore,” Andy grumbled. She had been the one to sacrifice her gear for the Ramrod move. It was something they had discussed beforehand. The only real risk was if the Rig she was hitching a ride on got nailed as well.

  The first room in every Outpost was always a bar of some sort. You could call it a restaurant if you wanted, but they hadn’t found much evidence of food storage. Lots of bottles, however. Or the remains of them anyway.

  Cheape was more than a little gratified to see the bottles behind the counter that was definitely a bar. It seemed a spot of heavy drinking was part of Builder culture after all. That tracked with what she had seen on Haven as well. Originally, she had put it down to generations of being at others' mercy, but this suggested some kind of genetic predisposition to alcohol. That cooled her sense of triumph at being right about the place.

  It was something she might have to watch for as her planet developed further.

  Pushing aside those worries for later, she refocused on what was always arrayed around the central bar.

  On the left would be the rooms for people to rest in, while the right would be the repair shop, and the area directly behind would be the guard station.

  It was the guard station she had her mind on right now.

  They had never encountered one without signs of defensive emplacements and at least one bay for the Builder’s version of Rigs.

  In short, she was expecting another fight.

  The good news was that once they had secured this bottom floor, they could get control of the repair shop and, hopefully, some new tech to add to their own.

  That repair shop was one of the three rooms she really wanted to explore in this place.

  The Outpost would be the making of this Segment; she was sure of it. All they had to do was secure it.

  “Come on, let’s get moving,” Cheape ordered. “Breach and Clear formation.”

  “Breach and Clear!” Gas Tank echoed the order. “On me!”

  Just about every door in an Outpost was reinforced. More than that, every floor had at least three guard stations scattered about. At least, they assumed so. They had never found much remaining of the top few floors.

  On the ground floor, the biggest defenses were not at the entrance. They were behind the bar room. Cheape just wished they had any clue as to why that was. The buildings' defensive design suggested that they certainly expected to come under attack, so it would seem logical to have the greatest defenses at the main entrance.

  Logic aside, this place was clearly the same.

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  The moment they approached the rear doors in the bar turrets dropped from the roof, opening fire with those damn exploding crystals. She really hated these bloody things. She had already decided to ban them on Haven.

  Gas Tank had proven he could make something superior anyway, which she was self-aware enough to admit was an excuse. They just gave her the creeps.

  The Rigs opened fire on the turrets while Cheape and the other Suited team members acted as blockers against the crystals.

  It wasn’t the first time she had encountered a technology that gave her the ick. It had been the same when she first encountered the nanites that were so essential to the Imperium. Something about them just made her skin crawl. Cheape had an instinctual revulsion to them, no matter how much power she saw them grant people.

  The crystals were the same. It was clearly powerful technology, but some deep part of her rebelled at the very idea of being exposed to it.

  The turrets died in a hail of plasma and slugs, and they moved forward, forcing the doors open with practiced movements. By the time she remembered the track on the floors, which they had never figured out the purpose of, it was too late.

  A loud ratcheting noise sounded from within the darkened room, and a massive crystal in deep cobalt blue slammed forward and straight through her previously impervious Suit.

  “I hate this place,” Cheape gasped as something pierced through her stomach.

  Something was very wrong. Very, very wrong. Well, obviously, it was wrong because there was a large piece of crystal buried in her stomach deeply enough that she could feel it scraping against something. Cheape was very worried that it might be her spine.

  What was worse was that there was no pain, and that was never a good sign. If you got stabbed and it hurt, that was bad. If you got stabbed and it didn’t hurt, that meant you were likely to be measured for a bodybag soon enough.

  The worst thing was that her Suit seemed to be cracking, and she had no idea why. Nothing else had impacted it, but she could hear the metal screeching and cracking apart as the HUD flickered, and she was left in a dark metal coffin that didn’t seem to respond to her commands anymore.

  Another loud crack sounded, and light spilled in before a pair of metal hands ripped away the brittle metal.

  “Get that thing the fuck out of her!” Sparks' voice sounded tinny over the speakers. It wasn’t something Cheape noticed much anymore, but it suddenly seemed important, even if she wasn’t sure why.

  “No!” Gas Tank sounded pissed off. “She’ll bleed out if we remove it.”

  “At least let me cut it off the main—” Sparks screamed as a bright blue light flashed, and Cheape felt like burning needles were pushed into every inch of her body. A second later, the crystal seemed to turn to dust, and she tumbled out of the remains of her suit and to the floor.

  “FUCK!” Sparks’ Suit opened, and she scrambled out, metal legs pinging against the stone as she rushed over to Cheape. “Don’t be fucking dead! Please, please, don’t be fucking dead.”

  “Not dead,” Cheape sighed. “Why aren’t I dead?” Her body felt heavy and a bit tingly, but otherwise, she felt… fine? That couldn’t possibly be right.

  “Um, Gas Tank? What the fuck is this?” Sparks pointed down at the no-doubt bleeding hole in her stomach.

  “What’s wrong?” Cheape tried to sit up, screaming as her torn muscles protested loudly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!” Sparks said quickly, but she was pale and sweating, which was even more alarming when you considered she was mostly cybernetic now.

  “Tank, show me,” Cheape insisted.

  “Uh—” Gas Tank started to lean away.

  “Tank!” Cheape growled and accepted the connection from his Suit. “Oh, what the fuck?”

  Blue energy was pulsing through her veins like they were filled with plasma. It looked horrendously painful, but she felt nothing at all. As she watched, they seemed to fade from her face and hands, the glow seeming to be drawn back toward the wound in her stomach, where it concentrated into an even brighter light.

  “Get back!” Cheape gasped, closing her eyes and waiting for the explosion she was sure would end her life. A second later, she opened them again as glowing liquid oozed from the wound in her stomach and pooled on the floor, where it made the stone smoke and burn.

  “That’s weird,” Sparks said hollowly.

  “Someone get some sensors on me right fucking now,” Cheape insisted as she watched on in horror. That glowing liquid was burning the stone that even the lasers didn’t, but it rolled off her skin like warm water.

  “You’re not going to like this,” Gas Tank warned.

  “Just fucking show me,” Cheape groaned.

  The image appeared in her vision, and Tank was exactly right. She didn’t like it at all. It was showing her completely and utterly normal. As in, unblemished and unstabbed by a giant crystal. That could only mean that the crystal energy wasn’t something they could read on sensors.

  “That ain’t right,” Sparks hissed as she wiped the blood from Cheape’s stomach.

  Looking down, she saw the ugly wound seeming to knit together, her own muscle fibers stretching across the gap and connecting before pulling it shut. “I mean, I’m no doctor, but…”

  “If Paren did this, I swear I’ll kill her!” Cheape growled. She opened her mouth to swear bloody revenge in more detail, only to slam it closed again a second later as a flood of memories burst into her mind:

  She was a child back home, running along a path by the damn. Tripping, she fell, a sharp stone digging deep into her leg muscle. Blood poured out, and she yelped. A moment later, the stone was pushed clear as her leg knitted back together.

  She was fighting with Amanda. They were both punching and tearing at each other, nails digging deep into each other’s skin before breaking apart and circling. Both their wounds healed as they hurled insults at each other.

  The knife was lodged in her shoulder, and it was stopping her shoulderblade from—

  Cheape screamed as the repressed memories of a lifetime resurfaced. How many times had this cycle repeated? How many times had she remembered only to have the memories slip away?

  There would be no chance of that happening now. Her implant seized them and locked them in place. The knowledge her people took so much trouble to hide, the secret they scared the minds of children to protect, was laid bare.

  Her people were not even people. They were a discarded experiment. The greatest secret of her race was the forbidden mountain in the heart of the continent—a hidden door with a long faded sign over the top. The words above it faded and obscured by time. Only three letters remained. Now, at this moment, with her memories intact and her time in space having opened her eyes to the wider universe, Cheape could understand what they meant—just three letters, but enough to strike terror into her soul.

  I.E.S.