Gods & Legionnaires (Galaxy's Edge: Savage Wars Book 2) Read online

  Command and data feed with Maestro fritzed out. Something close at hand and running a powerful EM signature was jamming his connection. Radio silence for now. Maestro would do his best to reconnect when he could.

  Crometheus spotted the emergency hatch up ahead. Information tags highlighted its working mechanisms. Database entries from Maestro, developed from captured and studied Animal ships taken in combat, explained how to enter the enemy warship. Breach charges were no good. The armor was carrying six of them, but he’d save those for the propulsion systems so he could get his secondary objective kill bonus. Those were always worth a lot of achievement points.

  He swept his gauntlets along the beveled sides and found the function interface panel. He stared at it for a long moment despite the emergency lighting and the sudden tremors within the superstructure as direct hits were scored against critical systems. Beyond the outer hull the battle raged. The Coalition ships had probably closed to pulse and SSM range of the Id fleet.

  To Crometheus, an Uplifted elite who’d long ago shed the trappings of stifling human technology, the emergency hatch operating system was like an abacus. Abysmally useless as far as Uplifted standards were concerned. Little more than a quaint toy to be amused by.

  “Ah,” Crometheus muttered to himself. “They use eight-digit alphanumeric codes swapped out every twenty-four hours.”

  He pulled the panel off with a swift yank, his strength augmented by the armor for so long it felt like his own. He knew exactly the amount of pressure to use. Behind the panel, wiring lay exposed. He found the two wires he needed, and connected them.

  A second later, despite the Animals’ attempts to secure themselves with mere numbers and letters, all from one language no doubt—he laughed inwardly at this—he’d defeated their little barrier. The hatch slid open, exposing a small airlock below. He dropped down and found the operation terminal. Gravity decking restored a sense of place, and he worked at their terminal to close the hatch he’d just violated. A moment later he had the airlock controls ready to bend to his will.

  He blew the lock accessing the inner hatch by issuing a force command. A feature they’d put in by design for some insane reason, apparently believing that simple authorization from engineering or command would protect it. All of these security efforts were child’s play. His gauntlet ran a worm that showed him everything he could do within their laughable root command system.

  All the amok he could run.

  The door’s security bolts ruptured internally, and Crometheus stepped to one side. A moment later the hatch exploded past him as pressure from the ship’s onboard atmosphere sent it slamming like a bull into the opposite wall of the airlock.

  He detected oxygen flooding into the airlock from the ship. He didn’t need air. He had the armor. The Animals, on the other hand… did. Unless they’d gone to battle stations like the first warship crews in space had, and had enviro-suited up before battle.

  He accessed the terminal and opened the airlock’s outer hatch. Venting precious oxygen into the space between the hulls.

  Damage klaxons were going off, and emergency lighting was in operation. An automated Animal voice, sounding to him like it was talking in ponderous motion slowed down even further by being recorded underwater, took forever to tell him that a hull breach was in progress.

  Of course, he thought. I’m the one who breached it.

  The first crew person to be sucked out through the airlock was already bloody and most likely unconscious from having smashed into something along the way. The void of space would suck everything into it until blast doors could be lowered into place to seal the breach. This sudden surprise of violence would allow him to gain the advantage even though he was most likely outnumbered here within the enemy ship. Without comms he had no way of knowing how many of his clanmates might have already breached the vessel. Perhaps they’d already achieved the primary objective.

  That would be disappointing. But there were always secondary objectives.

  Like killing.

  He took the HK G-97 from its place on his shoulder. He’d start heavy. First impressions were important, he reminded himself.

  He was carrying three slug-throwing weapons.

  The G-97. Standard for all Pantheon Uplifted marines.

  An automatic shotgun currently loaded with dumb slugs. Identified by Pantheon gamers as The Shredder. A design based on the old M45 tactical shotgun, but upgraded with an under-barrel flechette launcher that absolutely ruined biological lifeforms.

  And the fifty-cal Automag sidearm. His personal favorite. A massive automatic pistol that dispensed large doses of fire and was ammo-fed by the armor’s magazines.

  “Time to clean,” he muttered, and watched as another Animal crewman, a woman, screamed wordlessly as she was sucked out past him into the cold void between hulls. Blast doors were lowering into place. Atmosphere was being restored. Automated emergency damage control procedures were in effect. Firearms were now effective.

  Gods: Chapter Six

  Crometheus murdered his way to the inner sanctum known as the PITT. At first there was little to no resistance. Animal crewmen, weak navy-based bots, simply shrieked in terror and tried to run from him and the G-97. Some drew blaster-type sidearms and fired ineffectively against his newly upgraded armor, others cried and whimpered as he shot them down. There was always the irrational “You don’t have to do this” plea. As though they didn’t, or couldn’t, believe that they were at war and facing the end of their existence as a civilization. As though they knew nothing about evolution and nature being writ in tooth and claw. As though they couldn’t believe what was real, was actually real.

  Threat assessment across the HUD was telling him their personal weapon systems needed a direct three-point-five-centimeter brain stem wound, or multiple hits on subsystems, to disable him. Barring that… he was invulnerable to their efforts. At first.

  Suddenly Crometheus noticed he was reconnected to Maestro. Relief washed across his being.

  “Beware, young godling,” announced Maestro calmly over the HUD’s internal comm as Crometheus ventilated three enemy crewmen trying to dog a blast hatch that gave way to the PITT’s combined sensory array and processing node. At the same time, the in-game announcer shrieked over Maestro’s warning: “Animal marines inbound on your position!”

  “The rest of Thunder Claw, or rather those that have survived, are proceeding toward their objectives. I’ve had to reassign several objectives due to casualties, so you will be operating alone for the foreseeable future. Continue to the PITT and complete the objectives for that location.”

  Maestro told him what he should do next to accomplish the mission amid a frenetic exchange of gunfire near the hatch. He closed with, “Dispatch the new threats before proceeding forward to complete your mission, Master Crometheus. Succeed and you shall receive a full upgrade including one night at the Olympus in Sin City with the sex-model-dancer-actress of your choosing… B category.”

  A sudden fan spray of glam shots from some very impressive beauties in their most seductive poses fell across Crometheus’s HUD as he shot down a wounded Animal who refused to die easily. The man was bleeding from three gaping wounds and fumbling to load a charge pack for his sidearm with blood-slick hands. None of the beauties were Holly Wood… but none of them were slouches, either. He was suddenly partial to a doe-eyed platinum-blond Asian with long legs wearing a rubber body suit and holding an old-school Xbox game controller in her hand. The image went live and she puckered her lips and blew him a kiss, thrust a hip to one side and pouted, saying “Game on, babycakes!” Crometheus was so distracted by her tempting come-on that he grazed the wounded Animal’s head with a badly aimed shot. Thankfully the powerful fifty-caliber slug did most of the work and destroyed a large section of the man’s skull anyway, painting the wall with blood and brain matter.

  The new threats, actual ground comb
at-trained military forces, were coming for him now along the enemy ship’s passages.

  Crometheus dialed in the Shooting Stars unlock he’d just been upgraded with and slipped through the half-shut hatch. Beyond this he found cool blue light and a tunnel of direct-access processors running status displays of the various ship’s systems. This wasn’t the full processing hub, but it was good enough to do some serious damage to the ship’s fire-control functions.

  Shooting Stars system online appeared in his HUD. But that wasn’t for now. That would come later.

  Instead he pulled the trigger on the G-97 and savaged the processors with an entire mag of micro-nine. Three hundred rounds of nano-expand nine-millimeter destroyed this section of the tunnel, penetrating the initial interfaces and ricocheting around inside the guts of hard-wired systems. Primary and secondary damage achieved as the micro-nine ruined the linked processors.

  No doubt the ship’s batteries were now experiencing some kind of “glitch” in their firing solutions software.

  “Excellent work! Major damage!” whooped the ecstatic in-game announcer over the general clan comm. “ Pantheon intel network assessing for damage…”

  A cash-register sound emitted over the comm, triumphantly ringing out its award. Old-school greenbacks showered down across the HUD.

  “Portside batteries targeting offline for Animal cruiser Fury. Great job, Crometheus! Sixty thousand to you! Big prizes!” The gusto and enthusiasm with which the in-game announcer said all this was laughable, but the truth was—Crometheus had to admit it to himself—it pumped you up to do more damage and commit more carnage. It was very motivational. And sometimes, on your own and outnumbered, motivation counted for a lot.

  I’m easy that way, he thought as he rapped a new mag of micro-nine for the G-97 against his helmet and then slapped it into the receiver. A half second later he was up and scanning for targets amid the smoke and ruin.

  Good money for that one, reflected Crometheus on the award. He and the Asian gamer girl could blow all that on a very good time in Sin City. But right now there was more to be earned, and of course there were also countless other ways to spend it once the game was over. The trick was to survive long enough to enjoy it. Game-overed was game-overed. Nothing mattered after that because there was nothing.

  Moving forward to wreak more havoc on the PITT, he checked the armor’s sensor scan one more time. All of this was chump change. If he could selfie inside the objective then the sky was the limit for him and Miss Gamer. Maybe he could even upgrade her. Pick something from the A-List.

  He was juiced and cruising on overkill when the Fury’s marine detachment came at him from a secure access well inside the processing node coolers.

  “Type 50 military-grade assault blaster capable of three-round bursts rated to damage level significant,” warned Maestro over the HUD. “These have teeth. And they do like to bite. Be careful.”

  Crometheus heeded Maestro’s warning and hugged wall behind a bulkhead as he observed the Animal marines moving forward in squads, covering the advance elements with an unidentified heavy weapon system in support. The shadowy silhouettes of the advance squad were obscuring his armor’s ability to tag and identify the weapon system, so he pushed the G-97 out from behind the bulkhead and dumped half a mag of micro-nine just to get their attention and force them down into the defensive, moving to cover positions.

  A second later he was tagging hits and hearing the Animals calling out that so-and-so and the other guy were hit. Their leader was identifying where the firing was coming from.

  Of course they were covering. Animals were ruled by fear. As he’d once been. Before he shed all those stupid petty little ways and started becoming.

  He stepped out into the passageway, and now he had a clear view of the heavy weapon system they’d brought in to deal with him. Down the corridor, beyond the first batch of Animal marines, was one of their kind kitted with a servo-assisted load-bearing equipment interface. The heavy weapon gunner needed not only that, but a support gunner who would manage the belt feed of micro-charge packs.

  The Pantheon had seen this weapon system before.

  “The T-42 heavy pulse rifle,” said Maestro in almost the same instant the distant gunner screamed some quaint expletive for bravado’s sake. “My word, they really don’t intend to change with the times. Terminate with extreme prejudice and cleanse the galaxy of this Animal filth, young Crometheus!”

  Maestro was right; the T-42 was old. But it was effective. Half of Crometheus’s squad on New Vega had been ripped to shreds by this very weapon during an attempted breach on the northern defenses of what the local Animals had called Triangle Square. On the brutal front line of that vicious battle, Crometheus had to commandeer a molten metal thrower just to cleanse the area of the Animal team and shut down the assault.

  That option was not viable now.

  Whereas the Animals didn’t, or couldn’t, upgrade their armor, systems, weapons, and defenses between battles… for the Pantheon this was a way of existence. And really… the why of existence.

  Upgrading.

  Evolution.

  Becoming what you will become. Constantly evolving to meet the new challenges presented.

  To the faithful of the Pantheon, and to almost every other Uplifted culture, or what the Animals called the Savages—yes, he was aware of the slur; he liked it, even took pride in it—to the Savages… change was everything.

  Bad Thought. Bad Thought. Bad Thought. Savages is unauthorized word creep from proximity to Animal infection. Reprioritize and use… Uplifted.

  Crometheus ignored the prompt. A certain amount of leeway was given with marines when engaged in combat operations. And especially during games. The fun of slang could be indulged as long as you were victorious and killed a lot of Animals.

  Of course his new armor upgrades within weeks after the Battle for New Vega were to be expected. To have not upgraded would have been… heresy. Blasphemy. Sin against the very philosophy of every known Uplifted culture.

  Bad Thought.

  Sin is good.

  Sin City for pleasure with Asian gamer girl.

  Sin is good.

  Sin frees us from who we were. Animals afraid of the dark.

  Crometheus micro-corrected these Bad Thoughts in the back of his mind as he released his Shooting Star combat engagement system against the Animal marine force coming at him.

  All these thoughts, all these reasonings, all this assessment, it was all done in micro-seconds that weren’t even fractionally measurable by the feeble Animal mind. That always amazed him. But to Crometheus, as he stepped out into the passageway, the Animal marine advance squad cowering against the bulkheads and ruined processors farther ahead, calling for fire support from their vaunted in-pulse-fire-we-trust weapon system, all this seemed as languid as a lazy day’s ruminations.

  Despite the incoming.

  Thinking was what separated the Uplifted from everyone else.

  There was a reason the Uplifted were destined to rule. Destined to be gods. They really thought. And that, along with many such things, made them better than everyone else. There was no hubris in that statement. It was just a fact.

  But it was still nice to be on the positive side of the statement. Of course.

  The T-42 gunner stepped out into the corridor to face Crometheus as he came down the tunnel. Like two ancient gunfighters on an early Western frontier on which only the fast and capable survived. Where all were organized into just two simple categories.

  The quick.

  And the dead.

  Like some religious ceremony that must play out time and time again without end.

  The Animal gunner was just hefting the weapon up, preparing to unleash a cone of hot blazing pulse-fire laden death thanks to copious numbers of charge packs.

  The things the dead do before they die, some dis
tant part of Crometheus’s mind thought as forty arm-length needles spat from the left gauntlet he’d extended down the corridor. Shooting stars. Relativistically launched from the upgraded micro-rail fire system in the blink of an eye before the steel needles rammed straight through both T-42 gunner and loader and came out the backs of their bodies as though their meat corpses had been the merest of warm butter under a thousand blazing hot knives.

  Bodies and weapon system, armor and helmets, heads, eyes, and spines were pierced straight through by the shockingly fast-moving needles. Those marines, certainly the gunner and the loader, but also any others who managed to be caught in the cone of the shooting stars engagement window, were dead now. Or screaming horribly as they died.

  And those who survived had nevertheless experienced the horror of witnessing the sudden blur of shining needles that looked like shooting stars appearing only to die in some forgotten planet’s atmosphere. The blazing massacre had successfully created the intended secondary effect on the attacking Animal marines.

  Shock. And awe.

  The enemy force collectively hesitated as the Uplifted marine they were facing surged forward, bringing up the HK G-97 and engaging at point-blank range with sharp brutal bursts of staccato gunfire, passing rapidly into their line of advance. Tearing bodies and armor to shreds from just meters away.

  There was no mercy.

  Some Animal cursed at him and managed to fire back as he came at them like a demon out of the nether of their childhood nightmares, but that one was dead first. Micro-nine ammunition did horrible things to the human body as it expanded and ricocheted off bone and into other vital organs. Ruining the entire corpse in several places in just seconds.

  Sad and pathetic as it was, ruminated Crometheus as he mauled them all in short automatic bursts of violence, working like an artist crafting some beautiful and consistently operating machinery of death, it was completely necessary. This was the end of their ignorance. And that would be a blessing they might never fully appreciate. Or understand.