Wrath of the Gods Page 4

  Electromagnets in the hands and feet of each cyborg warrior in the unit activated as they drew within a few meters of the hull of a seemingly derelict Coalition battleship. It had been badly damaged and fully half of it was missing. Great wounds surrounded by scorch marks and strange rippling in the metal of the hull, as if it had liquefied under intense heat, showed where it had been struck. It was likely that the missing half of the ship made up a good portion of the debris field close to their position.

  The magnets pulled each man to the hull, where they removed their drop packs and secured them near their entry point for an emergency exit plan if their mission failed. But that was only a contingency plan. In the entire length of their time together, Unite 13 had never failed. And they were not about to begin.

  A tiny heat lance concealed within the palm of one warrior’s hand began cutting through the thick plates of the hull. If the target was here, then the section they were entering would be the perfect place to stage their assault from. There was a chance that they would give away their position with this entry method, but the time gained would be worth it.

  The edges of the section being cut glowed red hot before the panel was pulled away and the five cyborg warriors clamored through the opening one by one against the rush of air escaping into the void. That the section was pressurized was a good sign. The last man through pulled the cut section of the hull and held it in place, giving it a rudimentary tracing along the edges with a heat lance torch. He held it as the others fanned out into the dark corridor, unslinging weapons as they went. Silent. Far quieter than machines ought to be, Oro thought. Each moving part of their advanced bodies carefully shielded against producing unwanted noise. The others took up firing positions, waiting for the hot metal to cool and form a weak seal.

  When it was back in place, the plate would prevent air from escaping. Air was a precious commodity in orbit, even for men who didn’t need to breathe. Furthermore, it would allow them a surprise exit point if needed. A stiff punch would send the panel flying away and the men of Unit 13 could follow it out of the ship in an emergency. An emergency like a Titan unit bearing down on them.

  Five armored figures took up firing positions in the darkened corridor and then began advancing almost silently towards their goal. Oro’s optical sensors peeled back the darkness ahead of him layer by layer, revealing the lengthy hallway to him in intimate detail.

  Somewhere ahead of him, they would find their target. The traitor General that had come to this distant world to try and deny it to the UN. The same they had faced on battlefields ranging across the whole of human occupied space.

  Mordechai.

  Ending his life would effectively end Coalition operations in this theater, and bring Unit 13 one step closer to their goal. Avenging the fallen War God Anhur, and forcing what remained of Veldt and its people into line.

  Mordechai deserved far worse than the death that awaited him at the hands of Oro’s warriors. It would be too quick. Possibly even painless, Oro regretted. An eternity of torture for his part in the ongoing war was the only fitting reward for the traitor General, but out of necessity the man would be dead within an hour. Once he was dead, the UN warriors would take this crippled battleship as their new home.

  Such a thing was insulting. Using his enemy’s refuse as if it were something valuable. Given any other option, Oro would have ordered the ship’s reactor melted down in order to slag the whole thing and put an end to this pitiful pile or wreckage out of spite. But need dictated otherwise.

  Oro’s steel hands gripped his rifle hard as he mulled over his thoughts. The assault rifle had been modeled after the automatic infantry railguns deployed by Veldt forces during the war. Like a good deal of his body, it was a prototype. Far more advanced than its predecessor.

  It had been extremely difficult for the UN scientists to re-engineer the weapons with limited resources and manpower, but their efforts proved to be good enough. The weapon they had produced was inferior to the original, Oro admitted grudgingly, but it was far better than anything else fielded by UN forces.

  With the possible exception of the antimatter rifles. They could literally destroy anything if it was shot with enough rounds. But the cost had been… prohibitive… to say the least. The weapon had been very popular when it was deployed among the Spec Ops teams. “Black beams” they called them, based on the warping of visible light caused by the weapon being fired.

  A magnetic bottle and accelerator fired a hard round that housed the antimatter like a warhead housed in a missile. The hard round would deliver the antimatter to the target where it would react with the target and typically disintegrate a square meter or so of material with explosive side effects.

  Oro had never gotten to carry one into battle. A fact which he greatly lamented. The only in theater rifle he knew of had been lost along with Anhur. It would likely remain just a dream for the foreseeable future. Perhaps someday, when he ruled Veldt like the God that he was, he would be able to have slave engineers produce a working prototype for him based on the plans he could access from the remains of the UN fleet. Of course, he would have to immediately kill anyone who could produce as much. They would be too much of a threat to allow them to live.

  But until that day came, the assault rifle he clutched was as good as it was going to get.

  Sensory feedback told him that his left index finger had found the activation button for the underslung rocket launcher he carried with his weapon. Capable of firing a small armor-piercing rocket with a payload equal in destructive power to that of most shoulder mounted weapons, it was a valuable addition to his arsenal. Enemy heavy armor would be unbothered by such a weapon, but anything less put itself at serious risk by facing it.

  Of course, the button was completely unnecessary for a precisely engineered war machine like what Oro had become. The weapon could be activated with a mere thought. The button remained there so that the weapon could be used by one of the Uninitiated.

  Uninitiated. The name given by the machine-men of Unit 13 to non-conversion humans. Those pathetically weak things that broke so easily. That had to rely on simple things like buttons to operate a weapon. Thoughts of contempt dripped into Oro’s mind, growing stronger with each step he took.

  Truly they were less than he. Such weakness only existed so long as he tolerated it doing so.

  Scanners showed him nothing moving ahead of him or behind him save the rest of his unit. Nothing living or dead called the hallway and the side corridors branching from it home. Not even maintenance robots showed. It was unlikely that a hull breach had gone undetected. That no response came was telling. Either the traitor General was fully committed to the attempted ruse of his Flagship appearing dead and abandoned, or he was in a desperate situation.

  At the end of the lengthy corridor they found a data interface panel. Resheph stepped forward and held his hand a steady centimeter from the data ports on the panel. As he did so, the nanobot coating flowed over his hand, and shaped itself to the shape of a standard Coalition data plug. Another useful trick learned from warriors of the Veldt Planetary Defense Forces. One that had cost the UN dearly in the course of the war.

  Resheph’s report was almost instantaneous.

  Most of the ship was inactive, though pressurized. Artificial gravity was active over 90% of the remains of the battleship. The only current activity was coming from a medical bay located two decks below and on the opposite side of the ship. An intact shuttle that appeared to have been recently used was in a hangar near the medical bay.

  Such a setup was not uncommon even among UN battleships. Battlefield casualties evacuated by shuttle could be easily carted to a nearby medical facility. In the attempt to save worthless lives that probably weren’t worth saving, Resheph sent his thoughts along with his findings.

  Oro noted his approval of the warrior’s contempt for his enemies, and issued his orders as the door was breached and the group began moving again. As they progressed they encountered nothing. It was as if Mordechai had stripped the ship bare of anything of use and literally risked everything on the outcome of his assault on the UN battle station.

  Perhaps that was exactly what he’d done. If not for the interference of the men from below, striking in concert with the Coalition forces, Anhur might still be alive today. Then again he might have been slain at the hands of Mordechai’s minions and the traitor might sit upon the command throne of the Hall of Iron. Regardless of the outcome, the traitor’s wager seemed to have cost him dearly.

  Oro led his unit down unlit corridors flanked on either side with empty rooms. Large chambers that had served as munitions deployment areas to the battleship’s guns stood empty and silent as well as the bunks of what security forces had been stationed here before the ship’s destruction.

  Silently, they moved.

  Like ghosts from the nightmares of some prescient child. Muzzles of assault rifles pointed at likely vectors of enemy approach, but remained unused. A half dozen weapons hidden in Oro’s body repeatedly reported their readiness for deployment, but to no effect. There was simply nothing to use them against.

  For a fraction of a second, the leader of Unit 13 began to doubt his mission. What if this wasn’t the traitor General’s bastion? What if the computation engines that had traced the likely location of this vessel based on the approach of the Coalition boarding vessels had been wrong?

  He shook his head, an unconscious tick that he despised. Weak things made of flesh behaved in such a manner. Not the son of a God. Not a God of War.

  The computation engines were not wrong. The tomb that was the battleship might be silent now, but small traces of recent activity betrayed its appearance. Footprints in dust. Spilled fluids from some machine or even person that hadn’t turned to noth
ing more than a stain just quite yet.

  As he led his unit through the winding bowels of the crippled battleship the familiar need began to worm its way into his mind. The need to shed blood. To destroy. Crushing his enemies, real or perceived, was what made his life worth living. The longer he spent in a potential combat situation with nothing happening, the more it grew.

  Larger and larger and into the fore of his mind. He remembered in vivid detail the last time he killed a man in combat. He replayed the scene over and over in his mind’s eye. A short burst from a variable frequency laser rifle punching through the armor covering the chest and throat of a Coalition security soldier. The way the blood sizzled under the heat from the beam, the blossoming from the wound as the internal fluids were vaporized. He could see it, hear it, taste it.

  The need grew stronger as he watched the replay over and over in the blink of an eye, switching to the sensory input of the last time he had killed a man with his own hands. Tearing through armor and flesh with nothing more than his fingers and ripping the screaming soldier apart. Holding his victim aloft above his head and shaking the dying man as blood rained down on his face, ran into his mouth.

  He wanted to kill something. Anything. Yet here, there was nothing to kill. Warnings that he was targeting friendly units played across his vision as he locked on to the members of Unit 13 with his scanners. He held his weapon in front of him, at the ready, but was a fraction of a second away from turning it on them.

  The hissing of an automatic door as he approached snapped him out of it. For the time being.

  The turning tunnels running through the derelict ship seemed to have no end. Chronometers reported a scant ten minutes had passed since boarding the ship, but it seemed stretched to eternity. Ten minutes was more than enough time to board a ship, exterminate its entire crew and turns its weapons on its allies. As Oro had proven more than once during his fight against the Coalition.

  Now it was enough time to slog through a never ending series of tunnels looking for anything. Oro turned back to targeting his own men to pass time. He calculated repeatedly how many of them he would be able to kill before they were able to take him out. Four of them followed him. He determined that he would be able to get three, but the fourth would be his end.

  Various uses of the combination of his rifle and underslung rocket launcher ran through his mind. Rocket the first two and spray the third, turning towards the fourth with hard rounds. Draw blade and close to hand to hand. But by then he’d have taken a full magazine worth of armor piercing ammunition spread throughout his torso. That kind of attack would likely destroy his brain, killing him for real.

  And the men turned death-machine under his command wouldn’t hesitate to do so. The chain of command was respected, but loyalty ended there. A Special Forces commander who made bad decisions or turned on his men wouldn’t find his subordinates blubbering and waiting for better orders. He would find beams and hard rounds speeding his way in short order.

  As much as he wanted to kill, he wanted to live even more. Oro turned his attentions back to the path before him. Finally, something showed.

  The hangar bearing the shuttle seen earlier through the battleship’s systems. The medical facility would be close, and whatever was going on there would be revealed. And then extinguished.

  Unit 13 maintained their discipline, though each man ached for the coming battle as badly as Oro did. They had been dormant for close to a thousand years, but in their minds it meant that they hadn’t killed anything in a millennium. Fingers strained to not close on triggers and minds fought to stay in formation instead of running forward and kicking open every door in their path before emptying a magazine into whatever was on the other side.

  They approached the door to the medical facility and Oro was the first to detect it. A faint biological presence. Something on the other side of the door was living. At least for the next few seconds.

  Shaped breaching charges were placed around the edges of the door and the machine-men moved back a few paces. At Oro’s signal the charges were detonated, blowing the door inward into the room at high speed. He was right behind it, rifle held to his shoulder, scanning for targets.

  Nothing moved within the room.

  As the smoke from the door being blown in cleared, they could take in the facility. Stretching a good distance away from them to the other side, there was room for some 50 beds. At one point in time it had been a medical facility like countless others aboard Coalition ships.

  Now, though, it had clearly been repurposed. Oro lowered his weapon and stood straight as he glared his anger at the room around him, daring it to piss him off even a tiny bit more.

  Jars of what appeared to be human brains filled the shelves of a refrigeration unit. Scrap electronics were piled high on every available surface and several auto-chirurgi stood ready to work with surgical utensils still coated with a thick layer of grime and dried blood.

  Sensors reported back their findings as Oro realized what this place had become. This was where Mordechai, the traitor General of what remained of the Coalition forces, was producing his gray men. Short of actual soldiers, it was the only way the seditionist could put boots on the ground or guns in the field.

  Here, men from the world below were lobotomized and their brains replaced with computers. That the traitor would put something as valuable as the electronics used into something as fragile and weak as a human body spoke of his desperation.

  Set moved to the refrigeration unit and opened it. A chime sounded, but nothing came of it. He dragged his fingertips along the jars until his hand finally closed around one. He crushed the container holding the brain and lifted the organ in his fist. What little of it that wasn’t pulped, he shoved into his mouth and began chewing.

  The machine body would receive no sustenance from the act, but the taste sensors would allow him to enjoy his meal. The smell of scant traces of blood tickled Oro’s senses as Set greedily worked his razor filled jaw.

  Oro turned his head and saw what appeared to be a pair of feet sticking out from behind a cot. It was absurd that it had escaped his notice before. Perhaps someone was hiding there. Someone whom he would enjoy killing.

  He strode with purpose to the feet and grabbed them with a single hand closed around both ankles. With a powerful pull of his robotic arm, he yanked the body from its hiding place and held it aloft, upside down. Identification alarms sounded through his head as he raised his rifle with his other hand and poked at the man. Algorithms identified the man as their target.

  None other than the traitor General himself. Mordechai.

  Or what was left of him.

  For once, Oro’s perpetual skull grin reflected what he felt on the inside. He raised his prize high, so that he might mock him before killing him. He shook the man and noticed with some anger how limp the body was, a fraction of a second before he noticed that blood was rapidly dripping on his feet.

  His gaze shifted down, a silent alarm outlining the sidearm still strapped to the traitor’s hip, and there he saw what had happened. The top of the traitor’s head was gone. Not as if he had been shot off in combat, or even put a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. It had been surgically removed.

  In slow motion he began to throw the body away from him, the implications becoming more than clear, and he leapt back into a defensive position. His actions were mirrored by the rest of Unit 13, but it was too late.

  A monstrous roar of steel and flesh in torment tore through the air, assaulting their senses as the world around them burst with the grinding of ancient gears. The whole of the medical-facility-turned-cyborg-production-facility shattered around them as a massive armored form tore through it, bearing down on them like the fist of an angry God.

  A Titan. Unlike any Oro had the misfortune of seeing. And he had seen many. Huge armored shoulders easily three times as far across as his own, and four arms ending in various weapons. The towering beast scraped the ceiling and likely the stars beyond as it rushed towards them with unreal speed.

  Mordechai, with no other options left, had put his own brain into a Titan unit. On some level Oro appreciated the mind that would conceive of such a plan of action. Hell, he thought, if he had access to one, he’d have likely done the same. What took this asshole so long to do something this sensible? Did he enjoy being made of weak meat?