Gamma Nine (Book One) (11 page)

Christian did
not recognize half of the attachments, picking up a few to look at
them with surprised curiosity. “How many do I need?” he asked
Rivers.

“As many as you
can carry. When the crap hits the fan it’s better to have a few
options. This one,” Rivers paused to pick up a tube-like
attachment, but it had a smaller bore than any attachments in the
training manual, “launches titanium spikes, very handy when you
need to slow down a fast-moving beastie.”

Christian had
no idea what to make of them, randomly picking up a few, guessing
at what their function was. “What about this one?” he asked,
hefting up a bigger attachment with a flat barrel and a fat gas
tank below it.

“Ah yes, that
one, I was looking for that. It’s not ready yet, might just kill
you. If that happens I will have to explain to everyone why you
were firing untested and unsanctioned hardware.”

“Unsanctioned?”

“Yes, you think
these are all military design. No mate, these are my designs, all
of them are my babies.”

“Babies?”

“Well yes,
wouldn’t you love them like your own if you created them and
nurtured them like I do? Feed them beastie targets regularly, clean
them and give them a nice place to sleep.” Rivers held on to the
attachment Christian had held only a few moments earlier, he held
on to it like a father cradling his son for the first time.

“He probably
loves his gadgets more than his own children.” Xander had
approached from behind, fiddling with his plethora of explosives
again. He was chuckling to himself as he looked through a crate
with even more explosive devices.

“You haven’t
met my children. I definitely love my babies more than my own
offspring.”

That made
Christian laugh as well, the squad’s light-heartedness was
unsettling at first, but the more he was in contact with them the
better it made him feel.

“One week,”
Nathan said from the corner of the armoury, he was there the entire
time, stripping his own weapons, cleaning the parts with a dirty
cloth. “We have one week to train him, we should get to it.”

Everyone wore
their helmets. It was impossible to see their expressions behind
their mirror visors, the tone of their voices the only hints
Christian had to what the mood of the squad was. Nathan’s tone was
flat and lacked any emotion. They were so accustomed to being
inside their suits; it seemed that they never took them off.
Christian had to agree with that idea, keeping the suit on forever
would not be a bad thing, it felt like part of him already. But it
was probably not very good for his body to be strained for too
long. He wanted to ask how long each of them had been in their
suits, but he was cut off by Captain Locke entering the
armoury.

Locke’s helmet
was on as well. His voice however had enough authority behind it
that you did not need to see his face to follow his orders or know
what his expression was.

“Corporal,” he
nodded at Christian. “I see the artist didn’t have to paint little
pink flowers for you everywhere. Good, we might be able to get you
ready in time then.”

“No sir. What
am I in time for sir?” Christian asked Locke.

“Your first
mission, in one week you will see what it’s like to be a real
Titan. Where you will either pass or fail your trials.”

“I thought the
Labyrinth and everything before that were the trials?”

“They were, but
because your final trial was cut short we have to sharpen your
skills during active operations.”

“About the
Labyrinth,” Christian started to ask but was cut off by Locke’s
raised hand.

“Nothing about
it Corporal, the final trial is nothing but a survival exercise, a
sadistic one but one nonetheless.”

“What do you
mean sir?”

“There is no
real end to the Labyrinth. It was designed to disorient you while
you were attacked from all sides. The room my squad found you in
was it, there was nothing beyond it. The shifting pillars and
enemies were all there to make your survival difficult, had you
stayed longer, bigger and nastier enemies would be introduced every
hour, making survival even more difficult.”

“But, what
about the timer and the briefing said there were only a few
hostiles in the Labyrinth.”

“All a facade
Corporal, when the timer reached zero you would have been notified
to exit, if you were still alive that is. The last few hours in
there would have been very dangerous.” Locke walked over to the
weapon racks, unclipping a Kicker with many custom additions to it,
a giant Nova launcher attached underneath its non-standard long
barrel. “I myself survived only because I killed the big hostiles
first, once I ran out of ammo the smaller ones were easier to deal
with.”

“Where would I
have received more ammo? I never saw any of the caches.”

“There were no
caches, it is all a trick, the creator’s mechanism might have been
genius, but the true nature of it was evil. It was meant to trick
you in every way possible, lie to you, give you false hope, and
then try to kill you. That room, with all of the moving platforms,
there are many other traps throughout it. False floors, spike
traps, flame traps, crushing traps and even traps that would
release more hostiles.”

“What about the
first two I killed, are there bigger ones than those in the
Labyrinth?”

“Ah yes, those
two, we had never seen that before, they had somehow broken out of
the Labyrinth, the area you killed them in was nothing but an
abandoned medical wing. It was abandoned when the creator of that
facility acquired it to build his diabolical machine.” Locke
started loading his Kicker with bullets from a nearby ammunition
case. “So you see, when the timer reaches zero you would have
succeeded, or failed if you never saw the timer reach zero.”

“It was a lie,
to try and kill me?”

“Yes, and if it
didn’t then you would be a Titan. Now the situation has changed,
and other things will try and kill you during the rest of your
training.” Locke finished loading his Kicker, clipping it to his
back as he walked to the door leading to another part of the
Hyperion’s armoury. “First. Combat training against real opponents,
meaning...us.” He jabbed his armoured thumb into his chest,
disappearing through the door.

The rest of the
squad took that as a cue of some kind, all of them followed Locke,
brandishing their weapons as they walked past Christian.

Not good,
Christian thought, not good at all.

“Where’s
Pyoter?” Christian asked the squad as they walked down a corridor
towards another room in the bowels of the Hyperion. He was
obviously missing from the squad, his size making it difficult for
him to ever be a hide and seek champion.

“Warming up, we
will get to him later.” Xander replied over his shoulder, walking a
few paces in front of Christian.

They reached
the new room, Locke entering first, Christian last. Christian could
not believe his eyes at first, switching to his tactical sight with
a word. It was not a room, looking more like a gladiatorial pit
from old Earth than any training arena he had heard of.

Bare-metal
obstacles littered the centre of the pit, built at random angles
and random heights. Some were hip height, others as tall as two
Titans, their construction creating many different firing angles
and cover positions. The pit was as large as a civilian freighter’s
docking bay, with thirty foot tall solid metal walls surrounding
it. Viewing galleries looked down at the entire pit and all of its
obstacles.

Christian could
make out a few figures looking on from the galleries above them,
most of them probably there to see the Titans in action, others
just for the sport of it.

He could not
see their faces, nor hear their cheering. It made him feel like a
gladiator, a gladiator about to face the lions. Christian silently
wished for lions instead of his current opponents. Lions, or
creatures of the same ferocity, he could beat, the steel-clad
wolves he was about to face were a different kind of animal. Lost
in his own thoughts he almost missed Locke’s first few words.

“The first
exercise is very simple. Mark all of us before we take you down.”
Locke said, pulling back the slide of his rifle.

“Mark you?”
Christian asked.

“Yes, by any
means necessary, by bullet or blade.”

“You want me to
shoot you?”

“Well, you
might want to, seeing as we will be shooting at you.”

“To try and
kill me?”

“Of course, the
hostiles you will face out there in the galaxy,” Locke pointed to a
random side of the pit, pointing at some invisible foe beyond the
hull of the ship, “will definitely not ask you out for dinner.
Everything out there, even some humans, wants you dead. And you
learn better by doing, in this case, being hunted by the best.”

“What if I kill
one of you?”

That brought on
roaring laughter from the other three Wolves standing close by.

Rivers was the
one to answer his question. “Then you deserve to be here kid.”

“Now go,
Quinn.” Locke did not move. He just watched Christian, waiting for
him to comply with his order.

“
If I ever had to fight one of them, I
would piss myself before curling up into the fetal position.”
-Private McBride, Arkelis, Survivor

Christian
turned, showing his back to the squad, leaping over the nearest
obstacle. He sprinted away from his hunters, unclipping his rifle
from his back. In the short walk to the pit from the armoury he had
attached an unknown addition to the underside of his rifle. It
looked like an electromagnet, covered in spools of wire, there was
a half-moon trigger at the base of the attachment, and above it a
bar of green lights with the word charge below it.

Great, he
thought, I brought a taser to a gun fight.

It would have
to do, the radio was silent, and like true hunters they stalked him
without a sound. He kept running, waiting for the first of his
predators to show themselves.

Xander was the
first to, appearing out of thin air behind an obstacle ahead of
Christian. He was faster than Christian, covering the same distance
and having time to set a trap in the same time Christian had fled
from his hunters.

He saw the trip
wires in time, jumping over them without losing speed. But it was a
ruse, Xander’s second, and main trap was sprung the moment
Christian leapt over the wires. A motion mine hidden behind the
edge of an obstacle to Christian’s left armed and detonated the
same exact moment he had passed it. Xander hat calculated the speed
of the sprinting Titan perfectly.

The motion mine
was a custom design, it was not meant to kill, it was only meant to
scramble his suit OS with static interference. The explosion’s
bloom caused Christian to wince, static filling his ears and vision
for a split second as the suit OS tried to compensate for the burst
of interference. A deafening sound pierced his ears and he lost his
balance, staggering away from the mine’s detonation zone, shaking
his head to clear his disorientation.

He still held
on to his rifle, banging his left hand on the side of his helmet,
trying to help the suit OS with rebooting its systems. Christian
was aware of that fact that he was basically open to attack, he had
to hurry.

When his vision
returned he was staring at Xander’s pistol, pointed at him from a
few paces away. Xander shrugged, as if to say sorry for what was
about to happen, he fired without a word.

Christian side
stepped the first shot and charged at Xander, the explosives expert
fired again, the second bullet ricocheting from his right shoulder,
the third and fourth hitting him in the upper torso. The impact of
the bullets hitting his armour made him stumble, but it could not
stop his forward momentum.

In a clang of
metal meeting metal the two Titans collided, Christian’s left
shoulder hitting Xander in the middle of his chest. It was like
hitting a brick wall. In the Labyrinth the flesh of the enemies
gave way under impact, the Titan on the other hand, took the blow
and did not crumble under the weight of it.

Both of them
went to ground in a tangle of limbs and weapons. Christian had made
sure that he missed the explosives decorating the other Titan’s
armour. If he had missed his intended target, they would probably
have been in pieces all over the area.

They struggled
against one another’s strength, wrestling like drunken boxers, each
trying to get the upper hand. Xander was smaller than Christian,
but he had vast depths of strength to draw from, strength hidden
from what the eyes could see. He was smaller than the other Titans,
but his stocky ancestry made him powerful to grapple with.

Christian
guessed that his forefathers mated with gods at one point in the
past, it was the only explanation why Xander could be so strong. He
was straining against Xander’s mighty muscles, his Greek wrestler’s
bloodline overpowering him slowly.

He had to end
it now, before he was crushed in Xander’s grip. Christian let go of
him, instead he struggled to bring his rifle into the fight. It was
lodged tight between them, pointing down to their legs. Xander
tried to wrench the rifle away from him, but the rifle stayed put,
its barrel aiming at Xander’s thigh, he reached for it but his hand
was knocked aside, the distraction of switching focus between him
and his rifle giving Christian the time to pull the trigger.

A shot went
off, echoing between the two Titans.

Xander relaxed
almost instantly. “Well done Little Bear, I am marked.”

Christian
remained tense, worrying if he had shot his fellow squad member in
a vital area, taking a step back to scan the other Titan. He was
relieved to see no blood leaking from Xander.