Salvage Merc One: The Daedalus System Read online

  “I’ll shut up, sir,” Mgurn said quietly.

  “Hey, Mgurn?” I said as I felt a tingling in the tips of my fingers. “Just patch me over and let me talk to him. I have a funky feeling going on right now, and I’m guessing we may want to hurry.”

  Mgurn relayed what I said then requested that my com be patched into the conversation.

  “Salvage Merc One,” Boss Two said in my ear. “I need you to stay very still. Do not move from your seat, are we understood?”

  “Loud and clear,” I said and lifted the pint to my lips.

  “NO! I said stay still!” Boss Two shouted. “Don’t move at all!

  Then it all went to crud.

  Two

  Yeah, well, huh…

  I wasn’t in the Kansas System anymore.

  That’s a joke. There’s no Kansas System. It was swallowed up by a black hole a few centuries ago.

  The place I found myself in sure wasn’t the SMC headquarters, though.

  I looked out at the broad landscape that lay before me and couldn’t make out anything. It was like all details were covered in a fog. The planet I was on was fuzzy. I didn’t know if it was a desert planet or jungle or a mutant wasteland like Earth. It could have been a holo projection, full sensory input, but it didn’t feel like it. It didn’t feel real either, but something in my gut told me it was.

  I stood on a ledge made of pink rock. It looked like rose quartz, but there was a constant shimmer to it that told me it wasn’t even close to that type of rock. That and the fact there were people enclosed in the rock, frozen there with their mouths wide open in permanent screams. Their eyes were filled with fear or pain, probably both. Their hands were pressed up against the surface, right where my feet were.

  Oh, yeah, I was naked. So there’s that.

  I jumped back when I realized I was standing right on top of a woman’s face. I kept moving backwards, horrified by the scene beneath me. So many tortured souls stuck in pink rock. It was not cool.

  My back bumped up against something cold and solid, and I spun around. A door. A massive, massive door that was made of iron with gold and silver inlays covering it. The gold and silver were tarnished and the iron was rusted and pocked by corrosion. It was a foing old door, no doubt about that. Did I mention massive? Yeah, like fly a ship through it massive. Huge.

  So, a huge iron door before me, a fuzzy world behind me, frozen scary folk beneath me, and I was naked as a Nemorian during Mardi Gras. I really only had one choice. I knocked.

  The sound was small, swallowed up by the enormity of the door. I stared up and had to squint to make out the top of the door. It was set into the side of a mountain, but there was no way I could say what the mountain was made of. It was a really, really big mountain. Far, far above, there was the hint of clouds, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was just more fogged over scenery like the fuzzy world behind me.

  The lack of discernible detail was starting to bug me.

  Then lightning flashed, and I nearly choked on a scream. Nearly choked. The scream may have escaped my lips and sounded like someone stepped on a gump. Above me, in the clouds, I saw a face. I couldn’t really say what it looked like except it had a huge beard made of ringlets and the eyes were pure fire. More lightning flashed, and it was gone, leaving only churning, black grey clouds that started spitting a misty rain.

  I knocked again. The sound was louder, and that time, I got some results. The massive door began to swing open inwards, and a powerful wind came billowing out, pushing me back across the pink stone towards the edge. I tried to dig my heels in, but bare feet on smooth stone is a losing combination.

  I had no idea what was below the ledge, and I didn’t want to find out, so I mustered all of my strength and fought the wind, taking slow, deliberate steps, one at a time, until I was close to the door again. I lunged at the door jamb and was able to hook my fingers into a gouge in the rock. Not a nook, not a cranny, but a gouge. It had obviously been made by something large and something sharp. I hoped that the large and sharp thing wasn’t on the other side of the door, but I wasn’t holding my breath on that one.

  Every ounce of strength. That’s what it took to pull myself inside and through the doorway. Once over the threshold, the wind stopped abruptly, and I collapsed forward, almost breaking my nose as my momentum propelled me a few meters. My hands became a bloody mess as I threw them out to stop my fall, and they collided with the detritus of some long gone battle.

  Everywhere around me were skeletons clad in ancient armor. Rusted weapons lay on the floor and stuck out from brittle rib cages. My hands plunged through one of those rib cages, and I cried out as shards of bone dug into my palms. Bone dust filled my nose, and I sneezed over and over as I thrashed free of the rib cage and shoved up onto my feet.

  That’s when things got really weird.

  I’d lost my real legs during the War when I fell into a B’clo’no mating trap. They ate my gams right off, those slimy bastards. But the thing was, as I stood there in the gigantic hallway that was on the other side of the gigantic door, my replacement legs were gone. What held me upright was flesh and blood. It’s not hard to know the difference.

  I ran my hands over the exposed flesh of my legs and nearly cried. I’d forgotten what it felt like to have real limbs again. Yes, my battle legs made me faster and stronger, and they didn’t tire out like the legs I’d been born with, but they weren’t me. They were no different than the KL09 pistols I used or my H16 plasma carbine multi-weapon or even the ship I flew or, hell, the pint glasses I drank from. My replacement legs were tools, nothing more.

  It was at that point that maybe, just maybe, I started to freak out a little.

  “Hey!” I yelled and my voice was swallowed up by the vastness of the inky black that lay beyond the entryway I was in, if you could call it that.

  I saw the remains of the ancient battle, but I couldn’t see anything else beyond a few meters. I wasn’t even sure how I could see that. There was no light source. Even I wasn’t glowing anymore. My skin was normal Joe skin, no more blindingly white light coming out of my pores.

  “Hello? Is anyone alive around here?” I called out. “Hey! Can someone tell me what the fo is going on?”

  “Yes and no,” a voice replied from the black.

  A woman’s voice. Soft, but steady and confident. She didn’t sound like a threat at all. Even still, my Joe junk may have shrunk a tad, which I didn’t blame it for doing.

  “Okay, uh, can we start with the yes part of the what the fo is going on?” I asked.

  “You, Salvage Merc One, are exactly where you are supposed to be,” the voice said. I thought I could make out a shape, but wasn’t sure. “You haven’t moved a centimeter, yet you are all the way across the galaxy.”

  “Riddles. Awesome,” I sighed. “Listen, ma’am, you sound nice and all, but I’m standing in a freaky entryway with a bunch of skeletons around me and my bits and pieces are hanging out for all to see, so maybe you could get a little more specific.”

  “It is not for me to explain the specifics to you, Salvage Merc One,” the woman replied. “It is for me to prepare you for your trial. You have a long and dangerous quest ahead of you, and my wisdom may be the only way you come out of it alive.”

  “Does your wisdom include where I can find a pair of pants?” I asked. “Nothing fancy, just maybe some jeans or even pajama bottoms. I’ll take a pair of cutoffs, if you have them. But not the kind with the pockets hanging out. Those are just tacky.”

  “You must bare all to make it through your trial, Salvage Merc One,” she said.

  “Joe. Call me Joe,” I said. “And you are?”

  “My name is infinite,” the woman said. More movement in the black, but still no idea what she looked like. “My name is all and everything, but nothing to you.”

  “Can I call you Betty?” I asked. “I like the name Betty, and you sound like a Betty.”

  There was a rustling, like scales on stone and a quiet hiss.
Joe junk made every attempt possible to get all up inside me. Cowards.

  “So…no Betty then,” I said as I squinted into the black, hoping to get some idea of what I was up against.

  And I knew it was a “what” more than a she.

  “You stopped being Joe Laribeau when you took the sacrament of the artifact,” she said. “You are now Salvage Merc One, and that is who we seek.”

  “Is that the royal we or are there more of you?” I asked.

  “Stop with the questions, Salvage Merc One,” she snapped. More rustling of scales, more quiet hissing. “Listen.”

  “I’m not much of a listener, really,” I said.

  The hiss stopped being quiet and filled my ears, making me clap my hands against the sides of my head. She came out of the black then. Five meters tall, with the torso of a gorgeous woman, but the lower half of some giant constrictor. She wasn’t part of any alien race I knew. It was more like she was plucked from a nightmare. A nightmare with surprisingly perky breasts. Which is a cruddy thing for me to be thinking at that moment, but let’s see you try not thinking about it when you have half-meter-across boobies thrust towards you by some crazy snake lady horror.

  “QUIET!” she roared.

  I jumped back, slipped on a skull, and fell hard right on my ass. I landed on a pair of skeletal legs and was lucky I didn’t get a femur up my bum.

  “Sorry!” I shouted. “Sheezus. Sorry.”

  “The artifact has not been through the trials in nearly a hundred millennia,” she said as she slowly withdrew back into the darkness. By the time she finished her sentence, I couldn’t see even an outline of her, which was fine by me. “You have been given the honor of being the one to carry it through its destiny.”

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

  “You have nothing to say now?” she asked.

  “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know that was it,” I replied. “I was being quiet, like you asked. So, uh, when do these trials start? Have they started already? Can I request pants again?”

  “The trials have not started,” she said. “They will start when you arrive at the door.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “That door?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “The door I already walked through?” I asked.

  “You have not walked through it yet,” she answered.

  “Huh, I may disagree with you there,” I said. “No offense, but it sorta looks like I already went through the door.”

  “You are not here,” she said.

  “Uh…” I responded.

  “You have never been here,” she said.

  “Uh…” I responded again.

  “When you arrive, you will know it,” she said. “Until then, prepare yourself, Salvage Merc One! Prepare yourself for the trials that will define you and the universe!”

  “The universe, eh?” I said. “Those are quite the trials. Is the universe aware that I’m the one handling this? Because the universe may want to pick someone else. I’m sorta new at this Salvage Merc One thing. I haven’t had a chance to even come close to exploring what all the artifact can do. Plus, I just came off a relationship, and I’m not really my normal self. Things are hard for me right now. I have to say I’ve been drinking a lot, and maybe we could do this trial thing in the Fall. Would that be cool? Gives me time to get my head right and then I could—”

  “QUIET!” she roared again, but didn’t lunge at me. I went quiet. “Your emotional distress is what drew you to us. Only the wounded may attempt the trial. Only those that know the pain of the soul may walk the worlds and attune the artifact to its destiny.”

  “What about the Bosses?” I asked. “They didn’t have soul pain when they were each Salvage Merc One?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Slackers,” I replied. “So, will I get a heads up about when the trials start? I’d hate to be on the crapper and poof, here I am!”

  I laughed. She did not.

  “Okay, never mind,” I said. “But, if I have never been here and am not here now, then how do I get back to here? You know, the here where I currently am? That here.”

  “You will travel across the galaxy to find this door again,” she said. “You will endure horrors and dangers that no mortal can survive. You will be given a quest before you begin the trials. The trials are the quest. The quest is the trials.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said and held up my hands. “Back up to the horrors and dangers no mortal can survive thing. That doesn’t sound good. I’m mortal.” I patted my body and the sound of palms slapping flesh echoed everywhere. “See? Good old fashioned human mortal. You’re looking right at me, and I am obviously not hiding anything here.”

  “Have you been taught nothing about yourself?” she hissed. “Have the ones that came before you left you to struggle like a newly born calf that is abandoned by its mother in a field and left for the wolves to devour?”

  “Yikes, uh, no, I wouldn’t describe it like that,” I said. “The Bosses have been giving me my space, you know, because of the whole relationship thing and my drinking and all that, not that I have a drinking problem. But, it’s kind of been nice of them. They’re letting me work through my stuff at my own pace.”

  I heard her muttering to herself. It was in a language I didn’t understand, certainly not common, but I knew curse words when I heard them.

  “I am permitted to allow you a glimpse of what is in store for you, Salvage Merc One,” she said. “The Gods have allowed it due to the negligence of your predecessors.”

  “Gods? I heard the capital G there,” I said. “What Gods are we talking about exactly? Do you mean the Eight Million Gods? Those guys and gals?”

  “There are only the one Gods,” she said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, waving a hand in the air. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not like it’s all going to make sense even if you said yes or no.”

  “To you, no, it would not,” she said. “Are you ready for your glimpse?”

  “Do I have a choice?” I asked.

  “You always have a choice, Salvage Merc One,” she replied. “Destiny and free will are never mutually exclusive.”

  “The nuns that taught me in kindergarten might disagree,” I said.

  “They were wrong,” she said.

  “Good to know,” I replied. I took a deep breath and stood up. “Alrighty then, time to get my glimpse on.”

  I looked down at a rusty sword that lay at my feet.

  “Should I choose a weapon or something?” I asked. “Or is this a non-participation glimpse?”

  She may have muttered some more curses.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “Your readiness is irrelevant,” she said.

  “But I thought that was what the glimpse was for, so I could get ready,” I said.

  “Oh my Eight Million Gods!” she shouted. “What is wrong with you?”

  I didn’t have time to answer. The world around me blinked out, and I found myself standing in a ring of fire. Everything was black beyond the ring. No Naked Snake Lady or skeletons or giant door. Just more black.

  “Hello?” I called out as the meter-high flames flickered about me. “Will there be any context to the glimpse because a ring of fire doesn’t tell me much?”

  No one responded which was pretty much what I expected.

  “Fine. Whatever,” I said. “I’ll just figure it out my—”

  “—self,” I finished as the ring of fire blinked out, and I was suddenly standing on the shore of a boiling lake.

  A boiling lake of blood. Yeah. Blood. Boiling. Boiling lake of blood.

  “Holy foing crud!” I yelped and jumped back from the blood that lapped at the shore. “Sheezus!”

  Something writhed in the blood. A shape. A big shape. Very big shape. It never broke the surface, but it was easy to tell something was there.

  I continued to back away from the lake of boiling blood.

 
“You will drown,” a guttural voice mumbled behind me.

  I whirled around and came face to trunk with a dead tree. It was twisted and gnarled and had scorch marks all up and down its dry and crumbling bark. There was a slit right at eye level.

  “You will drown and there is nothing you can do to stop it,” the guttural voice said from the slit.

  “Great,” I replied. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

  “You will drown,” it said again.

  “Yeah, I know, you mentioned that,” I responded. “Twice now.”

  “You will drown,” it repeated.

  I glanced up at the sky and saw nothing. Literally nothing. It was like I’d closed my eyes, but there wasn’t even a view of the insides of my eyelids.

  “You stare into the void and drown,” the tree slit said.

  “Of course I do,” I said and turned to walk away.

  The lake of boiling blood was gone, and I stood in the middle of a desert nightscape. The air was warm and dry, and I could feel fine grains of sand between my toes. I spun in a complete circle, but there was nothing to see. From dark horizon to dark horizon was nothing but sand. No trees, not even talking dead ones, or cacti or hills or mesas or anything. Kilometers and kilometers of sand.

  Then the sand started to crawl up my legs.

  “Hey, stop that,” I said and shook one leg then the other to get the sand off.

  That’s when the biting kicked in.

  “Ow!” I yelled and swatted at my calves with both hands.

  The sand stuck to my palm, and I brought it up close to my face. It wasn’t sand. It was ants. Thousands of tiny, tiny ants that bit and pinched my skin with their tiny, tiny mandibles.

  “Fo me!” I yelled and shook my hands. But the ants were dead set on staying put.

  The pain grew worse on my legs, and I started dancing and bobbing, moving in ways I’d never moved before, to try to get rid of the little buggers. Nothing worked. They just hung on tighter which meant things got way more painful.

  “Not liking this glimpse!” I yelled up at the sky which was the same void as the lake of boiling blood place. “If this is helping then I say no thank you!”