Predator - Chapter 26

Bruce swirled his drink.  Underneath him, his rope hammock creaked precariously.  He leaned forward slightly, careful not to upset the delicate balance as he tried to grab hold of the straw with only his lips.

It bounced off, turning to the side slightly and forcing Bruce to shift his weight dangerously in order to raise his back and bring the drink closer to his mouth.  Finally, despite a worrying amount of sway, he was successful, capturing the straw and taking a long slurping drag from the drink.

There was a hint of pineapple and rum, but mostly it was just cold, a disappointing slurry of ice water and the last diluted sips of his actual drink.  He sighed.

Over on the beach, Kassar was trying once again to get a handle on the intricacies of shuffleboard.  Yet another stone skidded along the table with blinding speed, hitting the sand with enough speed to leave a small crater.

Bruce set his drink on the sand, rolling to the other side only to spill out of the hammock into an undignified heap.  He popped to his feet brushing the dust and grit from his clothes.  Already the drink had disappeared back into his memory, dismissed with just a thought.

“Kassar,” he called out, walking toward the silvery ape-like alien.  “How is it that I’ve managed to drink the entirety of that sugary monstrosity without even a slight buzz.  It tasted fine, but it hit me about as hard as drinking a soda.”

The alien shrugged.  “We’re in a world of imagination created from your memory.  If you want to get drunk, just focus on those memories and the sensations will follow.  The drinks are mostly just a prop to get you into the mood.

“That makes sense,” Bruce replied.  “It would be awfully disappointing to just snap my fingers and make myself drunk.  Half the fun is downing a couple beers while waiting for the hot dogs to cook or sneaking a bottle through a checkpoint so that you can drink on base without a commanding officer knowing.”

“From searching your memory, you spent a fair amount of your time getting disciplined for misbehavior while serving as a warrior,” Kassar said, lowering his head so that it was flush with the shuffleboard table, as if the changed angle would fix his lack of control.  “It seems like your life would have been much easier if you simply followed the rules laid out for you by your superiors.”

“I was young and an idiot,” Bruce responded, watching as Kassar gently pushed a shuffleboard stone across the board.  It stopped, barely past the halfway point, well short of the scoring zone.  “Still, half the fun of being a young idiot is making mistakes and friends.  Half the time, both of them were the same person.  I just made sure not to cross any lines, and I did what I needed to when I needed to and it all worked out in the end, more or less.”

“I was like you when I first became a warrior,” Kassar replied, standing up and looking at the game table with dissatisfaction.  “And I grew to hate people like you when I was made a junior officer.  If you continue growing at this pace, I suspect you’ll be right where I was before long, groaning your way through stacks of paperwork as the warriors under your command drink, gamble and seek mates when they are supposed to be drilling and gaining EXP.”

“Thanks?”  Bruce said, unsure of himself.  “I kinda went into space to have one last adventure before I retired filthy rich on the absurd salary the company was paying us, so I was never aiming for a command position.  I guess that’s changed now that we’ve met.  I’m not the biggest fan of getting drafted into a cosmic war that ended a dozen centuries before I was born.”

“But a promise is a promise,” he responded with a shrug.  “I’m sure following in your footsteps will be interesting at the very least.  Plus, the way you told the story, we were about to get colonized by these borelite things and their Rigellian friends.  Hard to spend the next forty years of my life fishing on a lake in the middle of nowhere if I know that’s the sort of thing coming down the pipe.”

“Good,” Kassar said soberly.  “I like to relax as well.  After millennia of fighting, I certainly deserve it, but in the face of Rigel’s duplicity, there is no choice but to train and fight.  More importantly, that brings us to a delicate topic.”

The giant hairy alien turned, a serious expression on his face as he crossed his muscular, scarred arms in front of the ridiculous Hawaiian shirt that he insisted on wearing.

“Bruce, we are on the third floor of the Great Labyrinth.  It is not suited to your style of hunting, so the first thing we should do once you are healed is ascend to the second.”

He nodded back at Kassar.  It made sense.  Even if Bruce managed to learn Shockwave I, there was no way that fighting the endless swarms of mites was a good idea.  A team with ranged and area effect patterns might thrive here, but it was a death trap for him.

“Once you’re on the second floor,” Kassar continued, “you can train a bit more.  At this point I don’t expect shades to be much of a threat to you, and unless you can ambush an entire colony, I doubt that they will provide enough EXP to make them worth your while.  You’ve said that you will need to earn patterns that will let you survive without oxygen and that will let you speak via radio waves.  Neither of those are terribly expensive, but the important question after that is ‘what’s next?”

“We return to the first floor where we might meet your friend and the borelite that tricked the two of you.”  Disgust dripped from every one of Kassar’s words.  “That would probably be for the best, but you have to prepare yourself to fight him.”

“What?” Bruce asked, forehead furrowing.  “Why would I fight Maddox?  He’s my direct superior and both of us are pretty good friends.  I mean, there aren’t a lot of people to hang out with after hours at Eagle Base so I don’t know that either of us had a whole lot of options but-”

“Think Bruce,” Kassar said sternly, his usual inebriated joviality nowhere to be seen.  “He is working directly with a borelite.  They are lying filthy beings.  The odds that it promised him wealth and power if he made a pact with it are high.”

Bruce shook his head.  “Maddox would never-”

“And what if they told him that your company was at risk if he didn’t make a deal?”  Kassar pressed.  “What if they claimed your whole planet was at risk?  Would your friend capitulate then?  Remember, he has had no one to talk to for days but the lying squirrel.  All he’d have to do is convince your companion to send more humans into the Great Labyrinth to gain powers.  That would allow him to summon a swarm of borelite clones to serve as guides for them.  Before long, your entire civilization would be burdened with their taint and forced into servility.”

He didn’t say anything in response.  How could he?  If Treekipp could convince Maddox that all of humanity was at stake, he could probably convince the man to side with the aliens.  Heck, even if he could convince Maddox that the company would stand to benefit from the alliance, there was a good chance that it could sway him.

The Chinese were a step behind American development on Mars, but there were enough missing patrols and reports of brief clashes from both sides that it was clear that it would be hard for the two organizations to co-exist.  If Maddox didn’t know about the threat posed by the borelites, he would probably jump at a chance to make the soldiers under his command stronger and more capable of surviving one of the low intensity clashes that occasionally took place while prospecting for more mining sites.

They’d both lost friends to enemy bullets and Mars’ harsh environment.  Drank toasts to the empty lockers in the armory.  If Maddox didn’t know the full story, he’d be stupid to ignore the opportunity Treekipp represented.

Still, it shouldn’t come to blows.  Maddox would stop and listen to him.  Once Bruce explained the threat that the squirrel represented, they would work together to fix the damage caused by-

“Worse,” Kassar continued.  “What happens if your friend isn’t on the first or second floor?  What if he has already left the bowels of the great predator and returned to your society with the borelite’s lies in his ears?  Even if he would listen to you, can you say the same about your superiors?  Their superiors?  Soldiers you haven’t worked with before?”

Bruce froze.

“Do you think that these outsiders would stop to listen to your story?”  The alien shook his head.  “I’ve looked through your memory.  They aren’t cruel people, but they are callous.  This company you are a part of does not fight for brotherhood or honor, just money and power.  The borelites offer them both of these things.”

“Crap,” Bruce said heavily.  “You’re right.  I might not be able to convince them to give up on the greedy little squirrel.”

Kassar extended a hand toward him.  A clear drink filled with ice and crushed mint leaves filling a fist that had been empty only a second beforehand.  Bruce took the mojito gingerly.

“You looked like you could use a drink to steady you,” the alien said, nodding toward the glass in Bruce’s hands.  “But for now we should think about next steps.  You can more or less safely hunt on the second floor, and that means rounding out your skill set while we prepare for you to rejoin your people.  How long we spend on the second floor is a bit of a gamble.  The longer you are there, the more powerful you can grow, but at the same time, a delay increases the chances that your friend escapes the labyrinth before you can explain the situation to him.”

“What if he doesn’t make it out at all?”  Bruce asked darkly.  “Maddox was focusing on ranged skills while I handled the monsters face to face.  He might be able to handle on or two at a distance before he ran out of power, but if there were too many, he’s almost sure to get overrun.  He could be dead right now.”

There was a long pause, before Kassar spoke up, his voice grim.

“And that would probably be for the best.  Having to kill your companions is dirty business.  Even if you know they’re traitors or that your actions are in the unit’s best interest, it’s never pleasant.”

Bruce hissed, face tightening.

“It’s harsh to say it Bruce,” Kassar continued.  “But the best case scenario is you reporting back to your government alone.  The rigellians tried to exterminate our civilization once, and I doubt that they would hold much love for the remnants we left behind.  The borelites know this, and they are masters of deception.  Even if you manage to warn your company in time, the borelites will likely scurry back.  Unless you can ensure that this Treekipp is dead, now that the clone is summoned it will head to the nearest borelite hub and summon reinforcements.”

The alien ghost crossed his arms, face grim.

“Before long your people will be swarmed by vendors selling patterns, alien food, and cheap trade goods at heavily inflated prices.  Even if you have the strength of arms to defeat the borelites, they will sink their tiny claws into your culture and economy.  Before your people even awaken to the danger, it will all be too late.”

Bruce closed his eyes, steadying his mind.  He could feel Kassar’s gruffly sympathetic gaze on him, but he let it slip past him.  Ultimately, he was going to be the one responsible for his own actions.  There would likely be tough decisions in his future, but in the end it would be Bruce steeling himself and taking action, not the alien.

He opened his eyes again and met Kassar’s gaze.  The ghost watched him for a second before nodding, satisfied.

“What’s the plan then?”  Bruce asked.  “I’ll need to leave the second floor as soon as possible, but what abilities should I be aiming for before I leave?  You have a better idea of how much EXP I’ll need.”

Kassar furrowed his brow, lips moving soundlessly as he thought through the question.

“Two hundred EXP,” he said finally, balling up one hand into a fist and smacking his other open palm.  “That will probably take you the better part of a week, but it should be enough for you to acquire patterns to raise your body and agility attributes by one point, and your willpower by two.  Your will is starting to lag a bit behind, and we saw what would happens when you don’t have enough mental energy in your fight against the energy mites.  After that, you’ll have enough to purchase Shockwave I, Voidwalker, and Lightspeak.  They won’t solve all of your problems, you’ll still grow hungry outside of the Labyrinth after all, but you should be able to walk around the surface and hold your own long enough to find help.”

“I’m at sixty eight now, so that means about a hundred and thirty more,” Bruce replied, clapping his hands together.  “That shouldn’t take too long, but it’ll give me enough time to think about how I’m going to handle Maddox and Treekipp.”

“Sorry Bruce,” Kassar apologized with a sheepish shrug.  “I meant two hundred more.  Patterns grow more expensive the more powerful they are.  Before long, you’re going to need to avoid safe hunting levels like the second floor to make sure you can collect enough EXP.”

“But for now,” he continued hopefully, picking up one of the shuffleboard stones, “your body isn’t completely healed and your energy isn’t recovered.  It seems like we have time for a game.”

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