Drifter Prime: Dark Galaxy, #4

Chapter 1

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Princess Thagora was becoming ever so slightly fatigued from her morning swim, and the fitness tracking capability in the cybernetics implanted beneath the skin agreed. It whispered in her ear to tell her she could take a break for a well earned rest, should she so desire. She started to tread water, and look round for a pleasant spot to wait for her heart rate to come down to a level the fitness system was happy with. Her eyes were drawn to one of her favorite stretches of lakeside, the area below her temple. She was proud of her temple, when she remembered it existed at all, specially because of the costs involved in moving it to its present location from a remote planet at the edge of her territories, simply to make her lake look more attractive.

She smiled and started swimming slowly toward it, gazing appreciatively at it as she approached. It was the kind of folly that, according to the xenoarchaeologist who sold it to her, symbolized unknown alien virtues that could only be guessed at by human minds. The temple was deserted, of course, after all, the whole planet was deserted apart from her and the robot servants who tended to her every whim. The location she had picked out for it was just perfect. It was part of the lake, but also part of the land, a kind of visual bridge between the two. The fragrance of incense from the surrounding trees was heavy on the air and the sound of the chimes woven into their branches added to the calming atmosphere. It was, she suddenly and impulsively decided, perhaps her favorite spot on the entire planet.

She came to a flight of half-submerged steps where she could stop swimming and plant her feet. The stone steps were almost vertical, leading the eye up to a soaring building on a platform of jade and sandstone. It was a pyramid with six levels, with six towers projecting on upwards from the building’s main mass. She got comfortable in a position where she could admire her temple and also look out across the impeccable landscaping of her lake.

As she lay on the steps, the lower half of her body immersed in the cooling waters of the lake while her upper body was warmed by the planet’s blue sky, she felt a bead of sweat appear on her forehead. The sun was a little too warm, she decided, frowning slightly as she called over to a glittering robot servant that was standing at the edge of the lake.

We need a little more cloud cover, don’t you think? she said to the robot.

I agree, Highness, the robot said in reply, and I will see to it immediately. The robot nodded submissively and soon large gravitic barges appeared above her and started seeding long streaks of cloud to shade the lake. Her frown eased as the hot embrace of the sun’s rays was replaced by the planet’s comfortable ambient warmth.

Then the princess suddenly heard a noise, coming from within her folly, from somewhere deep within the temple. It was just the faintest whisper of a noise, hardly audible over the twittering of the small birds in the trees and the humming of bejeweled insects. The princess propped herself up on an elbow and stared at the temple door, suddenly very slightly unsure of whether transferring an alien temple to the world she used for relaxation was such a good idea after all. She dismissed the thought a second later, after all the xenoarchaeologist had certified the structure as entirely safe.

She raised herself to her feet and climbed the steps that led up to the temple entrance. Tiny fish darted out of the way of her feet with every step, until she had emerged from the lake completely. There were still many steps to climb before she would reach the door of the folly, and she paused, unsure if she should carry on. She looked round uncertainly and was pleased to see two robots not far away, both strikingly beautiful creations, a pair of sculptures in jade and gold.

You, she said, pointing at the nearest of them, go in there and tell me what you see.

Certainly, Highness, the robot said. It unhurriedly climbed the steps and went through the door into the temple. The princess watched it ascend, then turned to the second robot.

Can you see through the other robot’s eyes? she asked it.

I can, Highness, the robot told her.

Then tell me what it sees, you dolt, she yelled at it.

It sees the inside of a temple, the robot said, hesitantly, as if this were some kind of trick question it hadn’t managed to see through.

Only that? the princess asked, already a little relieved. She’d obviously imagined the noise. It was silly to allow such things to give her the heebie jeebies. It happened sometimes, of course, alone on a pleasure planet with just a few robots for company, a person’s imagination could run riot. It was possible to imagine assassins had somehow penetrated the planet’s space defenses and made it down to the surface, that she was actually at risk of harm. But the royal family would never allow that. She was seventeenth in line to the provincial throne and her life would never knowingly be allowed to be put at risk. It’s just a silly old ruin, isn’t it? she said, with a smile.

Exactly, Highness, the robot graciously agreed.

Well then, the princess said, have your friend come back out and we can decide how I am next to be entertained.

Of course, Highness, the robot said, though there is one thing.

What is it? the princess asked. Well, out with it, what is it you want to say?

The interior of the temple seems to have been redesigned since my colleague was provided with its plans, the robot said, its voice a mixture of confusion and disappointment. This is not the order of things. We surface robots should be given up-to-date plans of all surface structures, both their interior and exter-

What are you blithering about? the princess said, sharply. The whole point of this folly is that it is a long dead lump of alien architecture. Nobody has redesigned the interior.

I beg to differ, Highness, the robot said, humbly, and raising its hands in a gesture of supplication. When schematics of this structure were provided to me, there were four interior spaces joined together by one circular connecting corridor.

Yes, the princess nodded, I remember from when I picked it out, a most pleasing arrangement. Well worth the cost involved in bringing it here to add interest to these gardens.

But now, the robot said, offering no opinion on whether the billions spent in relocating the ancient structure were well spent, there is only a single interior space and a single corridor going deeper into the structure.

***

On patrol in the deserts of yet another backwater planet where the ‘independent’ colonists needed imperial help to pull their fat out of the fire, Vella saw one of the biomechanical creatures. It was half a kilometer away, and it wasn’t alone. There were five of them scuttling among the dunes of the endless sand sea, where they had no business being. She activated her communicator with a sharp jab of her finger.

Coordinator, she growled, I have more buzzer contacts. Five of them, no wait... six. That’s a whole squad of them, and they’re all warriors. Who designated this quadrant as pacified?

Nobody gives information like that to lowly slugs like me, her sector coordinator, Gartan, said. Just deal with them, okay? Sand mining operations are starting any day now.

While she was talking to Gartan, Vella’s view screen was showing her a closeup of the nearest buzzer. It was a gruesome creature, as big as a horse and covered in a chitinous shell that was half metal, half some organic substance. It had four legs underneath its huge, insectile body and four arms near the front. At her command, the view widened to encompass the entire squad of buzzers, revealing that they were carrying various combinations of weapons and equipment. The nearest one to Vella’s position had a huge mass driver in one of its clawed hands and a wicked, laser-sharp blade in another. Atop all this was the head, the vicious, alien head. It was a blank mask of metal with two deep pits where the eyes should have been, but buzzers didn’t have eyes, just two dark sensor pits.

The creatures were an entirely alien life form, and their blank faces made them seem almost impossibly unknowable. One thing was for sure though, they were belligerent and had advanced military technology. A lot of the technology was actually grafted into their bodies, including huge capacitors to power it. This was how they had come by the name buzzers. You could hear an electronic whine or buzz in the air if you were ever unlucky enough to be actually standing near one, generated by all the cybernetic systems implanted into their bodies.

Vella killed the communicator. Talking to Gartan was a waste of energy at the best of times, and with so many buzzers scuttling around it could be a deadly distraction. She needed to concentrate and get her job done. She had ten drones, and theoretically that should be plenty to deal with even six buzzers. Her drones were Scorpion class, not the best drones ever built - the men and women of the scattered Tarazet Colonist Assist Fleet were never given the best equipment - but the Scorpion-class unstable terrain drone wasn’t bad either. They were the most intelligent drones she’d ever controlled, that was for sure.

The leader of the pack was designated scorpion one, S1 in her tactical displays, and it was already suggesting attack patterns. Most of them were rated by her tactical systems as likely to bring victory, and two of them were predicted to bring victory with no loss of her own units. One predicted an encounter lasting four minutes, while the other predicted an encounter of just two minutes before victory.

No-brainer, Vella muttered, as she selected the two minute option, and battle was joined.

Two scorpions, S4 and S9, charged at one of the buzzers, ganging up on it, and she smiled. Her scorpions looked magnificent in her viewer, which was showing a video feed provided by S6. Her drones, as their name suggested, were designed to look like scorpions, one of the most ubiquitous forms of life in the galaxy, after humans and rats. Wherever humans went, scorpions somehow hitched a ride and went with them. Each drone was covered in thick plates of armor, painted in a desert camouflage pattern, and each had a blaster mounted in a flexible tail, along with two claws for physical combat.

To add to the beauty of the tableau, the planet’s big sun was on the horizon, casting long shadows and rimming the mechanical combatants in outlines of gold, leaving only the small, secondary sun high in the sky to fill in the details of the scene with its milky ocher. When the main star dipped below the horizon, the temperatures would drop to something a human might find tolerable, but right now the atmosphere was still shimmering with unbearable heat. The drones, of course, didn’t really care what temperature it was.

The buzzer being ganged up on opened fire on S4, which was a little closer to it. The rods fired from its mass driver flew at S4 at relativistic speed, accelerated by a magnetic coil before being launched from the muzzle. The scorpion’s shields, generated by compact tangles of machinery in its belly weren’t able to deflect them, just slow them down. So ablative armor was sent fountaining into the air from its back.

It scuttled forward, unperturbed, across the sand, ignoring the fearsome wound that had been opened in its back, eager to bring its claws into contact with the buzzer’s armor. Its tail-mounted blaster fired as it advanced, the gun eerily steady as the drone scuttled and jumped through the dunes. The blaster projected packets of energy at the buzzer that glowed like fireflies, but the monster had shields too, projected by machinery buried somewhere beneath its carapace, and it deflected them.

And then S4 was on the alien biomechanoid, its claws stabbing and clasping at the monster’s armor. The buzzer defended itself, slicing off one of the scorpion-class drone’s legs with its wicked blade, but the scorpions were indomitable, especially in close combat. The other drone, S9 fired off a couple of shots with its blaster, when it was sure it wouldn’t hit S6, and things were starting to look bad for the buzzer.

And then the sand behind S6 moved.

Powers, Vella cursed. Two more buzzers were emerging from the sand, and launching a surprise attack on S6, from behind. Vella checked her tactical display and the likelihood of victory predicted by her tactical computers was dropping quickly. Sneaky, little... Vella’s invective died on her lips as she saw that S1 was already suggesting a new attack formation.

Scorpion one, she noticed was in combat itself. It had one buzzer by the neck, held tight in its claw, while it was forcing another to keep its head down with suppressing fire from its tail blaster. But it still had processing power enough to constantly be suggesting changes that would raise their chance of victory. Vella reluctantly agreed, even more reluctantly because she saw that the new plan required her to get involved in the action. Up until now she had been sitting back, overseeing the drones as they did their work, but now she was going to have to mix it up with the drones and buzzers, like some damn-fool infantry slug.

She slipped her hands into feedback gauntlets and pressed a button to fold away her command chair, as she stood up and took a step. Her body remained in place, held above a circular plate by gravitic forces. But the robot power armor she was inside, Gladiator-class battle armor, moved a step forward. Giant mechanical knee, hip and ankle joints whined and grumbled as her foot was lifted in the air, then came smashing down. Then she took another step and another. Theoretically the robot she was piloting could run, but shifting sands were not the terrain to give that maneuver a try.

She walked steady toward where S1 had requested her to be, and she arrived just in time to make the difference. Her robot armor had four blasters mounted in the chest, that all targeted one location. She designated her first target, a buzzer that was in the process of cutting one of her scorpion drones in half, and started firing. Even suspended above the grav plate, she felt the recoil of the blasters as they summoned huge energies from the armor’s capacitors, formed them into packets of destruction, and hurled them at the buzzer. Gratifyingly, its shields were overloaded and it was blasted apart. The scorpion it had been hacking away at was badly damaged, dragging itself across the sand and leaving a trail of vital fluids, but it was still functioning, for now, and that meant it was still firing. Vella allowed herself a small smile as the likelihood of victory climbed back towards a certainty. Her drones continued blasting and ripping apart the buzzers, one by one.

Then her tactical computer chimed for her attention, momentarily lowering the sound of battle coming through the speakers in the cockpit of the robot armor to make sure she didn’t miss the signal. Her robot armor’s sensors were telling her that a buzzer was emerging from a sand dune. She couldn’t see it because of all the sand hanging in the air, kicked up by the feet and blasts of both her drones and the buzzers, but the detection looked good. It didn’t look like a false positive to her, so she trusted her sensors and started firing. Blaster bolt after blaster bolt pounded the dune, sending even more sand hurtling into the air, accompanied by shards of glass, caused by her blasters heating the sand.

Her tactical computer hadn’t gotten its predictions exactly on the nose, unfortunately, and she saw the buzzer emerge from the sand a few feet to the left of where she had been firing. It raised its mass driver to shoot back at her.

Damn sensors, she cursed, as she glanced at a head-up display, looking for the readout that would tell her the state of her shields. They were still at a hundred percent, so there was no chance of a buzzer with a mass driver being able to take her out, at least very little chance.

The alien biomechanoid was a good shot, and the armored glass across the front of her robot’s head was cracked and pockmarked by its rapid-fire shots, while one of her shield generators overheated and went offline with the effort of keeping the robot’s head from being blown off completely. She glanced at the tactical computer’s prediction of her victory chances. They were still hovering in the high seventies, but her chances of winning without losing a drone had dropped to zero. By the end of the combat, she had lost three drones and her armor suit was badly damaged. The buzzers had been very cunning with their ambush, and had very nearly taken her and her drones out. She switched on her communicator again, mentally formulating some salty language to use on Gartan.

***

Vella was sent back out on patrol the very next day, despite regulations mandating a day off after an encounter with buzzers. She hadn’t been expecting it, Gartan wasn’t one for rules, not ones that made his duty rosters harder to draw up, anyway. As her giant robot armor took step after step, she realized she was starting to hate the planet she was currently stationed on. It was a mud ball, but that wasn’t the problem. Something else was eating at her, something she couldn’t put into words. The planet was mostly a hellscape of dunes and heat, but interspersed here and there was marshland and open water. Her towering robot armor was equally at home in the shallow waters of the marshes as it was in the dunes, but her scorpion drones didn’t perform well in an aquatic environment. Instead she was wrangling a small flotilla of submersible drones, each armed with a mass driver turret. They were called Wave Slicers, and Vella hated them with a passion. They were so much stupider than the Scorpions she was given for desert patrols that she had to work hard just to stop them shooting at each other. The Wave Slicers were a pain in the neck, but that wasn’t it either. There was some other reason she was starting to hate this planet.

She was now where the water of the marshes was deepest. It came up to just below the chest of the giant robot she was piloting. The reeds projected two to three meters higher still, and so only the head of her robot was visible as she strode through the water. She glanced at the reeds, registering their beauty on an intellectual level, but not feeling it viscerally any longer, after spending too damn long on the planet. Unlike the planet of her birth, where the reeds were a monochrome blue, the reeds on this planet had evolved - for some reason only a biologist would be able to explain - with a beautiful pattern of alternating stripes of green and yellow traveling up their shafts. It made the view through the transparent armor in front of her a shimmering vista. The armor was still cracked, from where that buzzer had hit her with mass driver fire the day before, but the damage was cosmetic and didn’t impede her view of the beauty of the marshes.

There was danger here too, obviously, or she wouldn’t be stationed here pacifying the place for the mining company that had bought it. The buzzers, the few that remained on planet, were just as at home among the reeds of the marshland as they were among the dunes of the deserts. But it wasn’t the buzzers that were getting to her, at least not exactly. They were part of it, their strange, alien presence palpable on the planet’s air, but it was more than that. She had a feeling of impending doom.

She saw the surface of the water break up ahead of her as a particularly impressive example of the planet’s megafauna broke the surface and stared at Vella. The air was suddenly full of the warning cries of animals hidden in the reeds, alarmed at the appearance of the monster. And it was quite a sight. She could only see its head, basically a large mouth on the end of a stubby but flexible neck. Its face was covered in a red and black pattern of interlocking and elongated scales that made it look evil and intelligent. The armor’s computer identified it with a little arrow and text window in her head-up display, including a fanciful scientific name, and assigned it a threat level of low. Among the text accompanying the identification she noticed an extract from the planet’s development plan that said the creature was earmarked to be hunted to extinction within the first two years of the planet coming online for full resources production.

The beast lost interest in her and descended below the surface again. She felt sorry for the alien thing. It had absolutely no idea of the fate awaiting it. It had been earmarked for extermination by the Tarazet Star Empire, and there wasn’t a damn thing the dumb beast could do to avoid this fate, even if it had been capable of understanding it. Its doom had been sealed. 

***

Vella slumped down in her quarters, in the only chair, fixed to the floor alongside her small window. The window was about the size of a food tray and it looked out onto the newly terraformed world. She hadn’t bothered to switch on the illumination in her quartets, so the bright light of the planet’s suns lanced into the room like the beam of an ion cannon. Vella was watching motes of dust dance in the suns’ beams, little points of light that reminded her of numerous star maps she had seen in numerous tactical hologram projectors. She was roused from meditating on the beauty of the dust slowly whirling in the shaft of sun by her door chiming.

Who is it? she asked her room computer.

It is Romeena, the device told her.

Vella raised an eyebrow and looked at the door, wondering why one of the unit’s lone wolves was coming to pay a visit.

Let her in, Vella said.

Vella’s room was so small that Romeena was invading her personal space just by entering it. Romeena went and stood on the other side of the window from Vella.

Help yourself to a drink, Vella offered, pointing at a food and drink fabricator recessed into the wall next to her elbow. Romeena punched a couple of buttons and a beaker of some oily looking liquid was excreted from one of the unit’s nozzles.

What is that? Vella asked.

It’s a little recipe I picked up someplace or other, Romeena said, her voice a tortured and digitized rasp, thanks to some neck injury she had picked up somewhere. I seem to remember it’s called a slammer.

Sounds interesting, Vella said. Could you dial one of those up for me?

Sure, Romeena said. She punched the buttons for another slammer and handed the beaker to Vella once it had been extruded by the small economy-model food fabricator. As Romeena passed the drink across the short distance between them, it was caught for a moment by the beam of intense light coming through the room’s little window. It shone a warm amber, with swirling clouds of some darker substance within.

To the powers, Romeena said, raising her glass.

Sure, those bastards, Vella said, raising hers and bashing the plastic edge against Romeena’s with a dull clunk. They both took a sip, and Vella was pleasantly surprised. It was potent, burning a fiery trail across her tongue, but the taste was smooth without being sweet. She smiled approvingly and made a mental note to save the drink’s settings. What do you want, Romeena? Vella asked, pretty sure the woman wasn’t going to open her mouth unless invited to.

I need a teammate, she said.

Vella was vaguely aware that some of the other slugs had an informal gravball game going, and the base’s single grav dome was the scene of constant training, practice and games. But Romeena had never struck her as the type to be particularly interested in team sports.

I don’t play gravball, Vella said, with a dismissive gesture of the hand. Hunting buzzers is enough sport for me.

Romeena laughed, a short electronic snorting noise that was even more unsettling than her synthesized voice. She took another sip of her drink. How much surveillance crap is left in your room computer’s systems, she asked.

One of the first things Vella did whenever she moved into new quarters for anything more than a day or two was thoroughly strip the bloat out of any room computer present. The trick was to purge all the stuff used by the government to spy on you, but leave some crap so the system didn’t look too clean. It was a balancing act, but Vella thought she was at least as good at it as anyone else.

We can talk, she assured Romeena.

Okay, Romeena nodded, taking her word for it. I have an offer of employment.

How much does it pay?

Right now, you’re a slug, Romeena reminded her. Infantry. The lowest of the low, so whatever it pays, it’s going to be better than what you get now.

Infantry pay isn’t bad, Vella countered, compared to what I was getting back on Yabarith for climbing yen vines and cutting the fruit, nine times out of ten on a branch too twisted to use a harness, so it was as dangerous as the infantry, too.

It’s more, Romeena assured her, a lot more.

Exactly how much more?

Seven times more, Romeena told her, in an electronic whisper.

Vella spat out the sip of slammer that had been in her mouth, spraying it across the grubby floor of her room. Powers, she cursed, but I thought I just heard you say it was seven times more.

You heard right, Romeena said.

What the hell kind of job are you offering me? Vella asked. Are you promoting me to admiral?

Admirals get a shit load more than just seven times what a slug gets, Romeena said, with a smile. No it’s pretty standard for mercenary work. You’re tour is nearly up, and I need a partner for a job I have lined up. You can sign on for another year in the infantry, you can go home and cut yen nuts, or you can sign on with me.

They aren’t nuts, Vella said. It’s more a kind of squash... Romeena just narrowed her eyes. What would I need to do? Vella asked.

The exact same thing you do here, wrangle drones, do patrols, and shoot anything that the boss says needs shooting. Simple as that.

What kind of drones will we have?

"I can’t tell you