Earth Force (Relict Legacy Book 1) Page 14

  “What can we do?” Diamond looked at Nori intently. “You said that alien weapons can harm them, right? Any chance to get more of them?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Nori said. “We have a plan. Sort of. Show him the ammo.”

  Bulco took out one of the alien-made cartridges he had made.

  Diamond frowned. “Warped Buster? Sounds like it was named by a bad sci-fi author.”

  “Hey, I came up with that name!” Bulco put his hands on his waist in annoyance.

  The shelter leader shook his head. “Stick at busting heads and fixing cars. You suck at naming things.”

  “A ... anyway,” Nori stuttered. “We need to test this ammo. It’s compatible with Earth guns, and the twenty-twos should be usable even by level zero people. “

  “So that’s why you came to see me,” Diamond said, settling back in his chair. He shook his head. “Even if the ammunition works as you hope, there’s no way for you to make enough to make any real difference.”

  “That’s half right, man,” Bulco said. “I only made a few, but that guy up in space promised to help us make more. We just need to test them out first. If all works out, we’ll get back with a shuttle full of ammo, then we can all pay a visit to Lou’s Yard and wipe those motherfuckers off the face of the Earth.” He paused, giving the other man a few moments to digest the information. “So, are you with us?”

  Diamond nodded slowly. “It all sounds like a badly written sci-fi script to me.” He looked pointedly at the Engineer. “That’s mostly your fault for coming up with that stupid name. But if even half of what you told me is true, I have no choice. I’ll help you with whatever I can. There’s only one problem.”

  Nori and Bulco exchanged glances. “What’s that?” the woman asked.

  “The people here are too afraid to go out of the shelter. We haven't spotted any Warped lately, which corroborates your story, but there used to be at least five sightings a day before that. Everyone is terrified of being caught out in the open.”

  “We brought three fully loaded rifles,” Nori said. “Are you telling me you can’t find three people willing to risk their neck for the chance to save everyone?”

  Diamond shrugged. “Well, you have me. As for the other two, you’ll have to recruit them yourself.”

  “Get your pansy-ass guards together, and I’ll beat some sense into them,” Bulco growled.

  “I’ll call them, but I need a favor: don’t tell them about Lou’s Yard and the presence of the Warped-mother. There’ll be panic and chaos if people think they’re not safe. I can’t have that—we’re barely holding on as it is.”

  Bulco nodded slowly. “Alright, we’ll keep our mouths shut.”

  They waded back through the maze of impromptu huts. Twenty guards were waiting for them at the shelter’s exit, exchanging nervous glances.

  “We’re going out to hunt us a few Warped,” Bulco declared in his booming voice. “I got alien-augmented rifles for the first three volunteers, who’s with me?”

  Diamond stepped forward smoothly. “Count me in. I’m ready to do a little monster-dicing.”

  Bulco nodded. “Anyone else?”

  The guards looked at each other with uncertainty, then looked away.

  “Really? No one else?” Bulco’s voice was full of contempt.

  No one dared to look him in the eyes.

  “Then volunteering time is over. Time for the mandatory draft. Who was the racist asshole that fired on our shuttle?”

  Nori put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re going at it the wrong way,” she said softly. “They’re scared and need reassurance, not more violence.”

  “We can’t have people refuse to fight when they are offered a chance,” he said loudly, staring coldly at the fidgeting guards. “In case you haven't noticed, Earth’s gone to shit. I refuse to believe only the cowards survived. It was bad enough when they allowed the gangs to push them around, but now they won’t fight even when faced with annihilation?” He spat. “Why are we risking our neck for them again?”

  “What do you mean ‘faced with annihilation’?” One of the women stepped forward. “We’re safe as long as we stay inside the shelter.”

  Bulco snorted and looked at Diamond. The older man shot him a warning look.

  Nori moved smoothly to face the other woman. “I’ll show you why. Open the gate.”

  The guards looked at each other, but none of them moved.

  “Do as she says,” Diamond ordered.

  Reluctantly the guards moved to the gate. They lifted the heavy meal beam and slowly swung the gate open. Nori stepped outside and looked around, searching. She put her hands to her face and shouted: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  As if answering her wishes, a single Warped rose between the parked cars and howled to the air.

  Warped, level 3

  The guards behind her stirred in panic. “Close the gate! Hurry, before it gets inside.”

  Three men jumped and started pushing it closed. Bulco moved to intercept and easily held it open with one hand.

  “What are you doing?” the woman who spoke earlier shrieked at him. “You’ll get us all killed!”

  “Just shut up and watch,” he replied gruffly.

  The Warped, a mostly human-looking one that walked on all fours, charged Nori. It jumped from car to car until it reached the last one, then it leaped, covering the distance between itself and Nori with a single jump.

  Nori waited until the last possible second. When the monster was almost on top of her, she raised her arm nonchalantly and launched a single dart from her bracer. It caught the Warped midair and the mutated creature exploded into chunks of meat and metal. She kicked the remains once, extracting its Tec, then she turned around and calmly stepped back through the gate.

  She looked at the awe-struck guards. “Why risk fighting, you ask? I’ll tell you why. The Warped aren’t the ones who are in control. It’s us humans who stand on top of the food chain, and it's time to teach those ugly fuckers that lesson the hard way!”

  10 - Space Trade

  “Damn, girl, color me impressed,” Bulco said to Nori after they returned to the shuttle from their hunting trip. “That was one hell of a speech you gave them.”

  After Nori’s flamboyant display, nearly every one of the guards had wanted to join the hunt. Nori had insisted on selecting two, aside from Diamond, who had prior combat experience and knew how to handle a gun.

  The hunt had taken several hours as the Warped were hard to find, but they had eventually located and killed three using the modified ammo. The smaller caliber cartridges performed well, killing a couple of level two monsters with a few short bursts, but were less effective against the level four creature they encountered. Bulco’s Warped Buster came into play at that point and the first bullet took the monster’s head off, bursting it apart like a piñata.

  Diamond absorbed the Tec from the higher level Warped and became a level three Diplomat. The two other guards both achieved level two. Noah, a sandy-haired young man with a positive personality, became a Gunner while Nicolas, a grim man in his thirties, took the Gunslinger Path.

  Nori barely registered Bulco’s compliment, her hands were already a blur over her light console. “It was nothing. The important part is that the ammunition worked. The twenty-twos might not do a lot of damage, but with enough of them, at full automatic, we can mow down Warped like a bunch of chickens.”

  Lana chuckled nervously. “I haven’t seen a Warped chicken yet and I really prefer not to. I’m sure seeing something so harmless transferred into a flesh-eating monster would haunt my dreams … more than they are now, I mean.”

  “I think we’ve accomplished what we set out to do,” Nori continued. “And we’ve earned a bunch of piTec in the process. There’s no sense in delaying any longer, we should take the blueprints straight to the space station.”

  “How are we looking on power?” Bulco asked.

  “Fifty-five percent,” Nori said, l
ooking concerned. “The last flight up there depleted twenty percent of the cells, and the damage we took to the thrusters causes us to spend faster than normal. After this visit, we’ll only have one more chance to go up there, assuming we don’t waste too much in the meantime.”

  Bulco nodded. “No point in wasting any more power, let’s head up there.”

  “On it.”

  The monitors’ view of the ground zoomed out until the plane’s circumference was visible. As before, the inertial dampener prevented them from feeling the press of the rapid acceleration.

  Several minutes later they broke away from Earth’s gravitational pull and soared weightlessly through space. Nori poured over the console, aligning the shuttle’s trajectory using the space station’s homing beacon.

  Several minutes later, the bong-shaped station came into view. Now with experience to guide her, Nori confidently maneuvered the shuttle into the docking hangar.

  The hangar lights were on this time as they exited the shuttle and Alzigo appeared before them.

  “Welcome back, valued customers!” He beamed, as much as a two-and-a-half-meter tall alien with two jaws could. “And so soon. I trust you found the Zappers to your liking?”

  “They worked really well, thank you,” Lana said warmly. She shot a warning look at the others and continued. “We’ve procured the blueprints for your Fabricator.”

  “Of course, of course.” His jaws parted into a gruesome smile. “I’ll take you there in a moment, but first. I noticed your shuttle has taken some damage, may I suggest you use the station’s automated repair system? You may also use the recharge banks if you desire.”

  “Wait, you can fix our shuttle?” Nori blinked at him in surprise.

  “Of course. I might not be able to do full retrofits, but it wouldn’t be much of a planetary station if I couldn’t offer that much, would it? Mind you, the automatic repair can’t fix complex issues, but it should be more than enough to handle the damage you have sustained. The power banks are standard throughout the known galaxy, so recharging cells is relatively cheap.”

  Lana smiled at him. “I’m glad to see you’re in a better mood since the last time we spoke.”

  He nodded, still keeping a positive outlook. “I have thought of that. I might not have actively chosen to be your ambassador to the enlightened universe, but that is the role fate has handed me, and I will strive to do my best to aid your entry to it. It might take longer, but I’m confident we can turn things around and work together toward mutually beneficial agreements.”

  “When life gives you lemons …”

  The tall alien tilted his head. “I do not understand. Are lemons some sort of bartering tool in human culture?”

  Lana chuckled. “No, it’s just an idiom, it’s not important. So you said you could fix our shuttle?”

  Alzigo still seemed baffled, but he nodded. “Yes. Please consult the control console for your docking bay.”

  Nori frowned and looked around the open and empty hangar. “What console?”

  The alien looked baffled for a second, then he brightened up. “Ah, I guess that would fall under my new capacity as your guide. Let me explain: one of the basic functions of all technology is a folding mechanism designed to efficiently store away integral parts of any system. Observe.”

  He walked a few meters away from the shuttle and held his arm out in front of him. A column rose from the floor to his hand level and its top unfolded to form a rectangular frame. An instant later, the frame flickered and was filled with a holographic screen.

  Alzigo walked back to the group. “There you are, your docking bay’s console. Go on, I don’t mind waiting. Galactic standard rates applied.”

  Lana stepped to the console and inspected it. The holographic display was divided into several screens that showed a rotating model of their shuttle, a bunch of statistics, and bits of information she had no clue how to decipher. The left part of the monitor was labeled ‘Docking Services’. Lana shrugged and touched it.

  The screen immediately changed and a loading bar with a ‘scanning’ message appeared.

  Scan results:

  Power cells at 45%. Charge: 1,100 piTec

  Minor hull fractures detected. Fix: 600 piTec

  Thrusters minor damage detected. Fix: 1,200 piTec.

  Bulco and Nori approached and examined the screen as well.

  “We should definitely charge up the cells and probably fix the thrusters,” The Engineer said. ”I’m pretty sure I can fix the hull back at the freighter, but this looks cheap and probably quicker.”

  Nori nodded. “We’ll buy it all. Including the thrusters. I’m not keen on flying this thing with a half-busted engine.”

  Lana nodded and selected the three options.

  Total sum: 2,900 piTec

  A small port above the monitor opened.

  “You may insert a piTec gem as payment, or use a global galactic account,” Alzigo said. “But you’ll first have to open one at one of the large settlements.”

  Nori nodded and took out the tear-shaped gem she kept and extracted the required amount. A second gem materialized in her hand and she deposited it inside the open port.

  Time Estimation: 12 minutes.

  Several robotic arms unfolded from the ceiling and started working on the hull, raising a shower of sparks as they patched the damaged metal. The floor beneath the shuttle glowed faintly and started sending pulses of light that were swallowed by the shuttle.

  “Hey, this thing even has an upgrade menu,” Lana said excitedly. She continued sweeping through the offered options. “We can install a larger power cell … holy moly, that’s twelve thousand piTec. There’s also an option to add an armored layer that costs … oh … never mind.”

  “What about a mounted weapon like you suggested?” Nori asked.

  Lana sighed. “It’s the first thing I checked but the shuttle isn’t compatible with mounted weapons. I guess you were right all along.”

  Nori shook her head. “Wish I wasn’t. It would have saved us a lot of trouble. Too bad upgrades are so expensive, it would have been nice to fly around in an armored vehicle.”

  “I hope everything is to your satisfaction?” Alzigo asked, standing near the hangar’s exit.

  “Very,” Nori said. “I think we’re done here.”

  The tall alien nodded. “Right this way then, please.”

  He led them through the docking tube back to the main deck. They walked through the huge open space toward an elevator and descended what felt like a hundred meters.

  The elevator opened to reveal a clean white room. Metal tubes, half-embedded in the floor and walls, led up to a white, car-sized contraption sitting on a raised dais.

  “I present to you, the Fabricator,” Alzigo said proudly.

  “Wow.” Lana gaped at it. “How does it work?”

  “It manipulates the atomic structure of the given resource to fabricate the required molecules. It’s highly energy demanding, but given the proper base materials, it can create a wide variety of specialized matter, then assemble it together. He turned to Bulco. “Please input the blueprint to the device’s console.”

  Bulco stepped forward hesitantly and stopped a meter in front of the machine. He raised his arm, waving it as if afraid to bump into an invisible barrier. His eyes widened suddenly, then he confidently moved his arm to a specific point. A white pole rose to his arm and unfolded, revealing the standard light console. Bulco’s fingers thrummed over the keys and a moment later he stepped back and nodded. “It’s done. The blueprints are in the machine.”

  “Good.” Their alien host moved to the console, inspecting the data. “And the required resources?”

  “Ah …” Bulco shifted uncomfortably. “I brought with me around ten kilos of damaged components from the freighter. By my estimation, every kilo is enough for about a hundred small caliber cartridges, but that won’t produce the quantity we’re looking for. It’s basically just scrap metal, you must have plenty of
it lying around, right?”

  “I do not. Trinium is usually readily available and can easily be mined, so I don’t have much of it onboard - just enough for my own needs to maintain the station. Usually, trade in raw materials develops organically on newly formed stations and colonies, but …” he looked pointedly at the Engineer.

  “Alright, I get it. We’ll just head back down and load the shuttle with scrap metal. God knows we don’t have any shortage of that laying around on the streets.”

  Alzigo looked at him and his two jaws opened in such an obvious display of exasperation, Lana thought he was about to facepalm. Instead, he took hold of himself and spoke plainly. “Your blueprint design specifically calls for Trinium alloy. It’s a common resource in Tec-based components. Fabricators use it as a base for a wide range of components. I’m afraid there’s no alternative.”

  “Damn it!” Bulco gritted his teeth. “There’s always something in the way. So what are we supposed to do now? Go down and butcher the ship for raw materials?”

  “No, there has to be a better way,” Lana said and looked at the alien hesitantly. “Are … are you absolutely sure we can’t compel you to donate just a little raw material? You have so much of it … surely just a little bit won’t hurt.” She looked meaningfully at the station’s walls.

  The alien straightened and folded his arms. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

  “Come on!” Nori said in frustration. “Your sole purpose of coming here was to get into business with our species. If we don’t get the ammo we need, we’ll probably all die, then you’ll have no one to trade with. No one but us four has any idea you’re even up here. You’ll be stranded, sitting above a dead planet, is that what you want?”

  Alzigo didn’t twitch a muscle. “I understand your position, but it is not accurate that no one else knows of my presence.”