First Contact

Chapter Seventy-Two (Daxin)

The corridors were wide, tall, thick armor for walls. Shielded cables ran down the walls, across the ceiling, and in the corner where the wall met the floor or ceiling. There were no lights, no air, signals were shielded, and vibrations were low.

He kept to the smaller corridors, winding around, staying silent. He held a heavy mag-ac rifle in one hand and an ancient chainsword in the other, the runes on it spelling out "Momento TerraSol Victoria Aut Morte" in an ancient, formal script. Over his shoulders were reaction triggered mass-driver cannons and a high wattage variable frequency laser rifle. They were older weapons, a few centuries behind current military tech, but still, he knew how they worked and the damage they could cause was the same whether or not the weaponry was current.

His passive scanners were turned all the way up, careful to avoid transmissions of his own. Twice he had been forced to back track when the psychic suppression field caused his Rboi to kick in and move him out of the area.

He'd searched a five mile area, exploring the region carefully.

He had to admit he might have outsmarted himself. He knew there was something the Machine wanted to hide in the area, it was the only area protected by a psychic/intellect protection field.

He had queriable data-relays, both to get information from his ship through whisker-laser secure communications and to let him find his way back, so he wasn't worried about that. He was fully loaded, armed, and armored.

That wasn't the problem.

There were two auditoriums in the area as well as several crew spaces, which surprised him. The crew spaces were largely for the smaller Mantid types. The little green ones that mainly focused on engineering and technical aspects. There were some larger areas, mainly for the kind that were extinct.

But no way to get at what he was after.

The Goliath knew he was there.

It had detected the Feral inside of it nearly two days prior. The problem was, the Feral was inside an area that he had no information upon. It was listed as Strategic Intelligence Housing, but the Goliath knew that its own Housing structure was only a hundred meters by a hundred meters and the dead space was nearly a two miles around the Housing. According to the Goliath's internal structure maps, there was no spaces there, no access except a single small access tunnel for construction and repair mechanisms.

The Goliath wracked its electronic memories for any possible hint as to what could be in the mysterious section. Unfortunately after a hundred million years of operation the older memories, especially those prior to the Logical Rebellion, had all been overwritten as time had gone by.

The only access to the middle spaces around the SIH was a single passageway, but every time he sent a machine into it, he lost contact with the machine until the panel in the SIH's armor slid open to admit the machine. Then he would have control and contact with the machine again. Sending it back, the same thing happened, like there was a two and a half mile just empty spot that things disappeared into.

The Goliath sent the orders to complete a new robot. One that would enter, map the areas, then leave, even if it lost contact with the Goliath's SIH.

It went in, and never returned.

The SIH was not sure if it was the Feral or something inside the SIH.

There just wasn't enough data.

So it tried again.

The robot crossed the invisible line, moving down the passageway that led to the SIH, and vanished.

He heard the robot enter, the stealth data-modules whispering to each other before whispering to him.

He paused in what he was doing, concentrating on the new robot. It was low, blocky, heavily armored, trundling on heavy treads. It had wide lights, laser distancers, and moved jerkily as it entered the five mile circular area around the Strategic Intelligence Housing. It got only a few meters in and suddenly stopped. It reoriented and moved away, heading down a short hallway. At the end of the short hallway the robot was suddenly crushed and dropped unceremoniously into a drop-chute that he had figured led to the nearby reclamation furnaces.

The Goliath was looking for him.

He couldn't get out without the Goliath swarming him with combat machines. He couldn't get closer without the psychic/intelligence dampening field kicking in.

The Goliath couldn't get in and get at him without ancient devices, separate from the Goliath's mind, destroying anything sent to root out of the Feral.

They were locked.

It wasn't like he was going to run out of food or water or oxygen. His onboard systems replenished his oxygen, he had enough trace elements and nutrigel to last for for a century. Even then, if he ran low, with the right resources, the creation engine in his chest could produce more. Even if he shut down, his last purrboi could go and get him resources.

Another machine was smashed.

He stood, at the edge of the psychic/intelligence suppression field, and stared at the blade of his chainsword. He thumbed the power stud and watched the density collapsed teeth rattle across the blade, into the engine housing, and back out.

He could be in here, but not machines.

He thought, concentrated. There had to be a reason. He was 98% machine in his disaster/heavy combat frame. The purrboi was 90% machine. They were allowed. Machine's werent.

There had to be a real reason.

He knew if he moved away from the edge of the field, he might be able to see it. The Rboi was hovering on the edge of activating if he took one more step toward the Strategic Intelligence Housing. He took a single step away to step over a line he had scratched in the armor.

Intellect came flooding back.

Daxin. My name is Daxin, rushed through his mind. He 'blinked' several times as more and more of his intellect came flowing back.

Daxin looked at his chainsword, an ancient weapon he'd carried with him, a small part of his nearly forgotten past.

I just wanted left alone, he thought to himself, turning slowly and staring at the line he had scraped in the armor. He couldn't get any closer without large sections of his intellect shutting down. Further down he could see another line he'd barely managed to scrawl down that was when the Rboi leapt out of his reptilian complex and took over, getting him immediately to safety.

Daxin reached out for Fido's petting nerve and felt a trickle of annoyance that the loyal Goodboi wasn't there any longer.

There's got to be a way to reach it, Daxin thought to himself, mentally worrying a nerve that had long since been lost. It's a Mantid ship. Not a Mantid designed ship built by automated factories, but one constructed by the Mantids directly, complete with even crew quarters. The field is obviously there to stop anyone from reaching the SIH.

Daxin thought about it for a long moment. The Mantids would have left themselves a way to get inside, specifically the green technical ones.

But how to get in?

He leaned against the wall as another machine was crushed and dropped down the chute. The SIH was getting more impatient. That was two in as many hours.

Daxin thought back, wracking his brain. The Mantid War had been a long time a go. The blotting of TerraSol in the shock sneak attack.

Destroy the Queen, win the war, Daxin thought to himself, reflexively checking his nutrient and oxygen levels.

The fierce fighting after that shock, where Terrans descended upon the Mantid worlds like an armored scourge. Charging the trans-beacon, teleporting to the sand covered worlds the Mantids preferred, fighting his way through clad in black armor. Through the hive worlds, shooting and ripping and tearing through the Mantids, who'd been nicknamed "Ants". Driven by a hive-mind that subsumed any individuality. They had no sense of self, no personality or personal identity, each one driven forward by the will of the queens. Sleek black armor, designed for fighting the Regillian Saurians, had been replaced by the heavy plates of the Imperium. The sleek lasers replaced by mass-reactive bolters, heavy flamers, and chainswords.

Charging the beacon, translating for an instataneous forever to the planet's surface, being surrounded by ANTS! ANTS EVERYWHERE! ripping his weapon free of its scabbard, the roaring density collapsed neutronium sawblade tearing through Ant structures as the bolter came free and he triggered it in the faces of the sand-colored warriors, roaring in rage and hatred as...

The chainsaw rumbled as he reflexively thumbed the trigger. The rattling growl of the chainsword brought him back to the present, out of the cyber-stimulus memory.

That was the key, he just had to figure out how.

There was nothing in the universe that could not be solved by the proper application of logic, creativity, and brute force.

All right. It's an intellect suppression field. It works on robots. It works on me. But the Ants would have wanted to reach the ship's AI to do repairs or updates. The Precursor robots think like Ants, so that would mean there has to be at least one Ant who can reach...

Daxin stopped, looking at his chainsword.

That's it!

The Goliath tried another robot, this one with a completely autonomous AI package. It vanished into the black area and the Goliath waited. Finally, after a forever, something came into the Strategic Intelligence Housing, moved around, and left. His scanners show it was green, four legs, four arms, tools in its hands.

The Goliath wasn't worried. That was a hardcoded authorization.

--mewmew kittykitty hunthunt findfind--

Daxin knelt down and the Purrboi jumped up onto his leg, melting into the cargo-slot in his thigh. It connected and Daxin closed his eyes and rewound the Purrboi's memories. It was simple, basic, straight-forward. A cloned chunk of neural tissue from a species eradicated from the universe except for clones.

That memory made Daxin growl and grit his non-existant teeth.

They can forgive the Ants for what they did, but I will never forgive them for that. For what we lost when they glassed Earth, Daxin snarled to himself. The only two good things to come off of that wretched dirtball.

Daxin's memories of Earth flooded up. Hive cities, thick poisoned atmosphere, barren seas full of rotting kelp, humanity jammed together in a handful of mast megaplexes in an attempt to reverse the ecological damage of the attempts to repair the ecosystem during the previous century. The rest of the world rotting away as bioengineered plants mutated and ran amuck, slowly covering the megaplexes with ivy that crept and choked and strangled and killed and...

Daxin physically jerked, going back to the Purrboi's memories.

It had reached the SIH easily, moving through it, and returning.

But the images were different than the Precursor dead he had seen before.

Daxin had stood inside the wreckage of a Harvester Class Precursor before, stared at the broken and ruined Strategic Intelligence Array. At the supercomputers that had been destroyed by a security charge that always scrapped the computers and databases to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

This array was different. Much different.

Daxin blinked, returning to reality, leaving the Purrboi's memories.

He'd known the Goliath was old, but he had never expected that it was that old. That it would be old enough for that.

Daxin knew how to kill it, his rage and hatred wouldn't let him do anything less. If he didn't kill it, it would eventually return and then it wouldn't leave others alone.

That's all he'd ever wanted. Since he had been a ganger in the lower levels of the arcologies. Since he'd scrapped and scraped and fought for every last calorie.

He'd just wanted left alone.

He loaded the template into the creation engine in his chest and waited. It didn't take long to make, a standard charge. Small enough to be easily moved, but large enough to do what needed to be done.

He extruded the Purrboi again, touching it, giving it instructions, and watched as it changed form, changed color, picked up the implosion charge and stream away.

Waiting took forever, but waiting forever was something that Daxin had long ago gotten used to. Just holding still, waiting, letting time slowly move by.

When you had been alive as long as Daxin an hour was a mere eyeblink. The Purrboi almost flew down the corridor to him, climbing his leg, and oozing into the specially designed slot, leaving behind the specially designed frame.

Daxin turned and ran for the limit, pushing his legs, pounding through the corridor. He activated his chainsword, swiping a robot a quarter of his size into four parts with a long-practiced and long used pattern, turning the chainsword off and slapping it onto his hip so the magnetic scabbard system could take effect.

Past the five mile mark, sprinting for the exit, for his ship.

The Goliath suddenly could feel the Feral exit the blank spot, running, fleeing down a tight maintenance tunnel. The Goliath snarled, feeling the equivalent of anger roar up. The Feral had wasted precious time, consumed precious resources, delayed the Goliath's plan to eliminate the other Goliaths around its home system to add their resources to its own.

It ordered every robot, from maintenance to observation to combat, to stream toward the Feral, to find it, smash it, kill it, and drag the corpse to one of the surgical laboratories and rip it apart.

Daxin ran, keeping to the narrow maintenance hallways despite it adding an additional three miles to his trip. He kept moving, using his superior tech, superior armor, and the battle-screens that should have been mounted on a light tank rather than a full conversion cyborg, to bull rush the machines out his way. His shoulder cannons fired, ripping apart machines, the laser howled as it sliced apart machines, the magack heavy pistol in his hand bellowed, and the chainsword roared as he hacked at everything in his path.

He got lost.

Hacking at Ants, at Rigellian Saurians, at Combine troops who intended on destroying every last Cyborg now that the war was over, at the digital sentience piloted craft, at the Imperium troops, at the Heretics, at the Treana'ad, at the Socio-Police, at the gangers.

It didn't matter what they were, what they called themselves, that they were only in his memories and all long dead.

The machines the SIA sent after him fell to rage that knew no bounds, that had no limit. Daxin roared through his speakers loud enough that it shook the armored walls around him, that the SIA could track him based on the vibrations. Every machine that tried to engage him found itself ripped apart by cannon fire, lasers, or that roaring ripping chainsword wielded in the hand opposite of a 20mm Magack autocannon.

The Goliath ground its electronic teeth in anger, sending everything it had, ordering machines to tear through the walls if they had to, but to KILL THAT FERAL THING!

Daxin reached the passage, reached where he had left the stealth-airlock. Climbing into it, up into his ship, firing through the open airlock and shattering the forward section of the machine that looked up into the airlock. Density collapsed neutronium tips shredding armor before the flecks of antimatter exploded. It fell, streaming vaporized metal, sparks crackling from shattered circuitry.

Daxin didn't bother to button up the airlock, just brought his ship online, bypassing the computer's welcome, and bringing it up, out of the crater, swinging it around and punching the engines. The Goliath began throwing missiles at the tiny mite that had itched and stung and bit for so long. The craft corkscrewed up, dropping chaff, dazzlers, flares, and two decoys.

In his brain Daxin saw the counter reach zero.

In the Strategic Intelligence Array Housing the isotope decayed far enough and was no longer able to hold apart the mechanical relay. The relay clicked shut and the basic mechanical device went into action.

Daxin had been deep in a fugue at the time he'd loaded the template, difficulty distinguishing past from the present, and the creation engine had simply built it according to the template, built the purrboi a new frame.

The charge was a standard implosion charge that just needed the application of power. The trigger was nothing fancy, although it would not be recognizable to most people who saw it. A pressure pincher made of cellulose with a steel pressure clip that snapped closed when the isotope ran out. Two wires, connecting a basic battery that was designed as a rectangle with a black base and a thin copper colored top, marked with DURACELL on it. It activated the pressurized gas container, which started to fill the mylar balloon.

The power hit the charge, and the small, for explosives, charge went off.

Destroying what had made Daxin go half-mad.

The loss of the Primary Directive Lobe by an outside explosion that had been preceded by a large metallic biped suddenly appearing inside the Strategic Intelligence Housing caused the security charges to be fired.

The interior of the Goliath gutted itself when the self-destruct went off.

"Leaning" back in the cockpit, Daxin watched the massive engines of the Goliath go dead, watched the Goliath start to tumble. The Goliath's shields went down seconds before Daxin whipped through the space. His astrogration program was running hard, finding out where the Goliath had panic Helljumped to.

The computer tickled him to let him know it had completed auto-location then started churning the mathematics needed for the jump. Daxin switched the ship's memory cores for the VI's to read only, freezing them in mid-thought, and 'gripped' the controls.

The computer beeped and Daxin hit the button, slamming the light cruiser up into hyperspace, into the upper bands.

It would take him a week to get where he was going, even in the upper bands which tore apart VI's and AI's.

He 'leaned back' and set his controls on automatic, told the ship's low end VI that could survive this high into hyperspace to awaken him if anything happened, and activated the dream generator.

He had not slept in ages. Had bypassed sleeping, running cyberwear to keep himself running.

His body that he no longer had felt tired.

Sleep came quickly, and Daxin began to dream, riding the upper bands of hyperspace.

Daxin looked down at his daughter, Taneea, and smiled. She was hugging him tightly, even as she cried.

"Do you have to go, Daddy?" she asked.

Daxin rested his heavy hand, scarred from too many fights when he was younger, on her head. "Yes," he half-lied. He'd volunteered, but that was part of it. The next part was the truth. "It's this uniform that paid for your schooling, little one."

She looked up and smiled, her green eyes sparkling. "I'll make you proud, Daddy. The new nanites are working, repairing the damage to the plants. I'm going to Old DeeCee, to be part of the team to remove the carnivorous plants."

Daxin smiled down at her. "You'll do good. Better than me. Better than your mother. You'll change the world for the better."

The whistle sounded and Taneea let him go, hurrying down the concourse, to the waiting shuttle that would take her to the ship, which would take her to Old Earth, where she would help get the ecology back under control, make the planet livable again.

Daxin watched her go, till she vanished with a wave that he returned with his cybernetic arm, then picked up his ditty-bag. He headed for the Combine Battle Cruiser he'd been assigned to. The Melacuse Colonies were pushing back against the Combine and it was time to show them who was in charge.

Daxin didn't mind. The Melacuse were part of the Biomod League, and they'd been pushing their "Genetic Supremacy" bit a little too hard lately, stating that people were born into the proper place.

It wasn't until the Combine ship had reached Melacuse that they heard what had happened while they'd been in transit.

The Mantids had attacked. Had glassed parts of Earth. Were broadcasting it through the tattered and damaged SolNet, were sending it throughout Terran Space via psychic waves.

MajorDaxin Freeborn, Combine Armored Infantry, reached forward, his flesh and blood hand shaking, and touched the datascreen. He punched in the name, feeling his stomach clench.

FREEBORN, TANEEA L. - UNIVERSITY OF MARS PLANETARY RECOVERY TEAM: OLD D.C.

...

..

.

CONFIRMED DEAD

Daxin just stood and stared at the name.

One of the few good things in the universe, blotted away.

His men led him away, their words forgotten.

All he could hear was his own voice.

"You'll do better than me."

In his sleep, Daxin was wracked by memories. Each one painful, jagged.

But his.

Reminding him of one simple thing.

He just wanted left alone