Aramus (4 page)

Aramus turned to glare at his compatriot.

Kentry lifted his hands in an ‘oops’ gesture meant to placate. Aramus growled. Using the zip ties they’d brought along, he bound the hands and ankles of their first two victims—one hundred percent human, not alien much to Kentry’s disappointment—while Xylo and Kentry checked the kitchen area for more staff. They emerged with two bodies slung over their shoulders and sported looks of disgust.

“What’s wrong?
” Aramus whispered. “Did they give you trouble or sound an alarm?”

“These fucking shits over here had these two women chained to the fucking counter like animals,”
Xylo snarled. “And, no, they didn’t scream. They can’t. The bastards rendered them mute.”

Sure enough, when
Kentry and Xylo gently placed their burdens down, the faces of the women, even in repose, wore lines of fear and anxiety. And no wonder. Aramus could see the scars on their throats, two tiny slits that incapacitated their voice boxes. He also noted the bruising on their legs, arms, and faces. Victims of the bastards in charge. To think humans called cyborgs brutes.

“I stunned them because I wasn’t sure what to do,”
Kentry explained almost apologetically. “I don’t think they would have sounded an alarm, but then again, we are big, bad cyborgs.”

Big and bad indeed. Even though they kept their killing to
the military, the company, and those attacking them while leaving civilians, women, and children alone, humans preferred to believe the false media reports that portrayed them as out-of-control killers. Aramus especially enjoyed the documentary that claimed they kidnapped healthy humans to use for spare parts. As if they’d taint their enhanced bodies with substandard fleshy issue.

“Do we tie them up
like the others?” Kentry asked.

It seemed cruel even to him to subject these undernourished females to the same treatment as their abusers, yet he knew from experience that even victims could cause trouble if not properly subdued. “
Until we have the place secured, no one, not even prisoners, can be allowed free rein.”

Appearing unhappy about it, but ever an obedient soldier,
Kentry knelt and did as told before they went on their way.

Their next encounter
occurred in a dorm, a large room with about a dozen bunks, only a handful of which were occupied. Taking out the groggy mercs—who were too hung over to respond to the alarm asking all hands to report for duty—proved easy. Knocking out the female they discovered there, who fell to her knees before them with tears streaming down dirty cheeks, was much harder. Whether she was human or not, Aramus couldn’t help but feel pity for her. He didn’t like it one bit.

The next group they came across, actual guards armed with weapons
, didn’t get the same mercy as those they’d already found. Aramus justified their deaths with the fact they aimed their weapons. That it gave him satisfaction to terminate some of those involved in the torture of the females didn’t factor into the equation at all.

“Shall we see what these two were guarding?” he asked before blowing the lock off the door.

What he found almost put him on his knees and exploded his already simmering temper.

“Holy fuck, it’s Avion.”
Kentry whispered his observation.

“I thought he died in that asteroid attack months ago.”
Even the usually loud Xylo kept his voice hushed.

Aramus tuned his comrades out as he stared at the cyborg chained to the rock wall, a cyborg he knew well. A cyborg they’d all thought dead. A friend who’d instead been tortured and experimented on to the point he appeared as only a shadow of himself.
Gaunt didn’t come close to describing this formerly virile unit. Avion’s muscles appeared atrophied, his skin brittle, his hair tangled and dirty. Aramus couldn’t help but feel pity at his emaciated appearance.

What happened to him?

Cyborgs could handle a lot of punishment. Their ability to turn their pain receptors on or off helped with that. They could also derive nourishment from just about any situation, their skin absorbing nutrients and metals from their surroundings, meaning they should never starve. But not so in Avion’s case. What had they done to this once strong cyborg?

Tucking his gun in his waistband, Aramus approached Avion, who flinched when he laid his hands on him. “Brother. We’ve come to liberate you.”

Raising his head slowly, hanks of stringy unwashed and uncombed hair covering parts of his face, Avion faced him, and Aramus held in a shudder because even he, who’d seen so much, was shocked. His poor friend.

Eyeless sockets faced him, while cuts, open and unhealed, crisscrossed
a face mottled with bruises.

“Aramus?”
Avion croaked.

“Yes
, it’s me. I’m going to get you out of here. Hold on while I take care of your tethers.”

“Electric,” Avion gasped.

The warning came too late. Aramus had already gripped a wrist restraint, and as soon as he made contact with the metal, the energy coursing through it jumped into his body, volts and volts of it. Hands tugged him free of the circuit.

Having conditioned himself to withstand current
—a conditioning that had taken him months as he shocked himself over and over—he didn’t fall. But neither was Aramus completely unaffected. He shook his head and wavered on his feet as his nanobots went to work repairing the damage to his neural system as quickly as they could.

“Holy fuck. No wonder he can’t break free. They’ve got enough juice running through him to kill him.”

“Not kill. Experiment,” Avion whispered. “Always testing.”

“Testing for what?” But his friend didn’t answer. Avion’s chin hit his chest as he lost consciousness or rebooted.
Either way, he didn’t suffer at the moment. “Kentry, find the switch and turn the electricity off. I think we’ve just found what we were looking for.”

“Don’t be so sure,”
Xylo announced from the hall. He poked his head in. “I saw a screen in the hall and pulled up a map of the installation. According to the schematic and the work roster, there’s about fifteen other guarded cells.”

“With cyborgs
inside?”

“
I don’t know. I couldn’t get past their firewall into the good stuff.”

A low hum he’d barely noticed before stopped
, and Kentry turned from where he fiddled at the door. “I got it shut down.”

“
Cut Avion loose.”

“Then what?”
Kentry asked as he aimed his laser at the manacles.

“
Find a hiding spot by the loading bay and bunk down with Avion until we can safely get him out of here.”

“But what about the other cells
?”

“
Xylo and I will check them out. Avion will be a detriment in his current state and hold us back if we need to exit quickly or engage in battle.”

“Aye, sir.
” Kentry hoisted Avion’s sagging frame onto his shoulder. “Should we send new instructions to the crew of the ship?”

“Yes. It’s time they came knocking at the front door. I have a feeling
, by the time we’re done, we’re going to need a rapid getaway.” And quick access to their medical bay.

“
Do you think they outnumber us?”

“
Yes, but as we know, that’s never a problem when it comes to humans.” One cyborg could handle a dozen humans.

“
If you’re not worried about resistance, then why do we need Aphelion and the ship?”

“Because
now I’m pissed.” And when Aramus got mad, things had a tendency of blowing up.

Aramus and X
ylo hit two more guarded cells, guns no longer set to stun. Who needed prisoners when they had Avion to answer their questions? Besides, now it wasn’t just a rescue mission, but a vengeance one. No one hurt their kind and lived to tell about it. Not with Aramus in charge.

Cell by cell, they explored.
Unfortunately, the occupants of those rooms didn’t have much left to them. They didn’t rouse at all during their rescue, nor were they cyborg. It seemed the humans weren’t adverse to experimenting and torturing their own kind, but with what, they couldn’t at first discern until they came to the fourth cell. More heavily guarded than the last few, this one had an alarm blare to life when they breached it. The seal on the room broken, gaseous air, high in carbon dioxide, whistled out. Aramus only vaguely wondered at the odd presence of the gas for a moment before he beheld the reason why.

A gray
-skinned being lay strapped to a gurney within the room, which had been setup as some sort of medical bay. Machines beeped and whirred while tubes, some dripping fluid, others siphoning blood, entered the body from several points.

“Holy fuck
, is that a goddamned ET?” Xylo queried.

His first impulse was
to say yes, but the more Aramus stared at the humanoid creature, the more he wondered. What were the chances alien life would so closely resemble their own? “I don’t know what it is.” Whatever it was, Joe and the others back home would want to know about it.

More alarms went off, monitoring systems that flashed red lights as the thing on the gurney twitched.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Aramus cursed as the thing gasped for breath, a breath it couldn’t find in the suddenly oxygen-rich environment.

“He’s dying,”
Xylo observed.

“I can see that!” he barked.
What to do? He couldn’t replace the seals on the door and he saw nothing to give the being the air it so desperately needed.

“Doctor,” whispered the pale thin lips of the creature. “Find
the doc—” The big orbs, with their large black pupils, blinked once, twice, then shut just as the chest stopped rising.

Damn
it! Joe would not be happy he’d let the weird being die. It didn’t matter he couldn’t have known what hid behind the door. He should have paid more attention. The heavy-duty seals should have warned him.

“What did the alien mean do you think
, when it said to find the doctor? Do you think it meant the doctor in charge of this place?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“What are we going to do about this?” Xylo waved his hand at the body.

“We’ll have to bring it. Even though it died, Einste
in and the others will want to see it.” See it, dissect it, and figure out what the fuck it was.

A boom rocked the installation. It seemed Aphelion
had gotten the message and was inviting himself in. Good. It would make transporting the corpse easier.

“
I want you to take the body to the ship. Place it in a stasis chamber.”

“What about you?”

“You heard the thing. I need to find a doctor.” And once they got some answers, teach this doctor a lesson, a painful one.

Aramus met up with the other half of the landing team outside the bay where the
SSBiteMe
’s exterior guns mowed down the small group of mercenaries that stood their ground. As if they could make a dent in his ship.

Kyle
had a body slung over his shoulder.

“Report.”

“We had to kill some humans, sir. They pulled weapons on us and began to fire.”

He waved their apology away. “Forget about stunning them. Things have changed.
Deadly force is to be used on the soldiers and mercs, but if you find any medical personal, bring them to me alive.”

“And if the
enemy surrenders?”

It stuck in his craw to say it, but he knew what Joe would do. “If any craven humans give themselves up, then take them prisoner
as well.”

“Aye, sir.”

“What did your team find?” Aramus asked.

Kyle’s face twisted.
“We discovered this place is fucked up. We located two cyborgs, sir. One died as we were escaping. Fluke head shot by a merc. The other we had to sedate as she went wild when we freed her.”

“She?”
Aramus queried.

“Yes
, sir. We located a female unit. She’s been badly damaged though.” Kyle indicated the limp body he carried.

“What the fuck were they up to?” Aramus mused aloud.

“Some seriously messed-up shit,” one of his crew muttered.

You knew it was bad when even cyborgs were rattled.
“Take the female to the ship and then return to continue your search. This place is woefully undermanned considering the extent of their operations, but full of surprises. Have Aphelion hook up our computer and download everything he can.”

“Yes, sir.”

Orders given, Aramus took a moment to pull up a map on a nearby computer panel, the blinking red lights showing the path of destruction he and his team had left behind them. Only two other branches left.

Aramus
stalked off, angry, not just at what he’d found but pissed at Seth too. How had he known about this place? What was this place? What were they doing? For once, Aramus wanted to know more than just who his next target was. He wanted to know why. He needed answers.

Come out, come out where
ver you are, Doctor. I want to talk with you.

The next group of soldiers
he ran across fired at him, and Aramus let them, the rip of bullets though his flesh feeding the blazing anger within. The blood they shed as he viciously tore into them soothed the burn but did not extinguish it.

No amount of blood or screaming could ever atone for what the humans kept doing. For the pain they kept causing.

Noting the seals on the door his latest mercenary victims had guarded, Aramus left the portal intact, guessing that it contained one of the gray-skinned experiments. He didn’t want to risk killing it.

The next two doors he broke down had neither soldiers nor seals to protect them, but anything with a lock merited a peek. Inside
, he found humans, medical workers by their white coats. A biologist according to the one who stuttered as he declared his profession. A chemist spat another, a feisty female who demanded he give her a communicator so she could contact her father, some kind of big shot back on earth. He gagged her before tying her up. He had little time or patience for a demanding human female.

One door left.
He almost turned away. He’d seen enough of the violence and misery hiding behind the portals. He might dislike humans on principle, but even he drew a line at torture. And that’s what it was. These weren’t the result of some conditioning exercises such as he and other cyborgs were exposed to. The things he’d seen, the scars and bruises, had nothing to do with making the recipients tougher or testing new hardware. It was done for pure, malicious pleasure.
I might be a violent son of a bitch, but I draw the line at torturing for fun.

So was it any wonder he hesitated for a fraction of a second before the last door in this tunnel? That he spent a moment wondering what fresh atrocity he might discover
?

Get a hold of yourself, soldier.
He gave himself a solid mental kick in the ass. Now was not the time to get in touch with his emotions. But, he made a note to deal later with his defective programming that was letting all these unwanted feelings seep out.

The locked door gave
easily under the brute force applied to it and swung open to reveal a small cell with a flickering light. As with the other rooms given to the incarcerated humans, it held a small cot, washbasin and toilet, and a single frightened occupant.

The huddled form peeked up, knees tucked to the chest under a stained white gown, a tangle of hair covering the dirty face. Big eyes stared at him
, and Aramus almost took a step back, not out of fear but because of the resignation in the eyes. She expected to die. The gun in his hand lowered. This abused human posed no danger to him.

“Who are you?” he barked.
Not cyborg, that was for sure. Of that he’d have wagered his right hand on. If wrong, he could always replace it with a new mechanical one sporting the latest in clip-on weaponry and projectile fingertips.

The recoil at his sharp question made him almost regret his tone. But humans, abused or not, didn’t deserve his pity.

“I’m—I’m—” The dulcet whisper placed her in the female category. The stutter placed her in his trying-my-patience one as well.

“I don’t have all day. Who are you?
”

“I’m Riley Carmichael.”

“What are you doing here? Are you a doctor?”

“I guess you would call me a doctor.”

“So you’re a doctor?”

“
Of sorts.”

But was she the one
the dead gray thing wanted him to find? This tiny slip of a human, this pathetic dirty thing, couldn’t be the cause of the torture he’d seen. But, then again, appearances could be deceiving. Except in his case. He looked like a big, bad motherfucker, and he was. Times ten. “Come with me.”

“
Are you here to rescue us?” Fear faded in the big blue eyes as hope brightened her gaze.

“You could say that.”

Standing, she barely reached his chin, and her wrists felt brittle when he gripped them to lash them behind her back with a zip tie.

“What are you doing?” She peered up at him, the sharp scent of her fear acrid and displeasing.

“Securing you.”

“But I thought you were here to rescue me and the others.”

“I’m here to rescue victims.”

“And you don’t consider me a victim?” She sounded astonished.

“You’re human. Other than a few bruises, and some dirt, you don’t seem abused.”

“They kept me locked in a cell. Beat me if I didn’t obey. Starved me half to death to keep me weak. How much more abused do you want me to be?”

“Are you able to speak? Are you chained to a wall? Did they experiment on you?” He bombarded her with questions, each one causing her to recoil as if slapped.

“
No, but only because they needed me.”

“Lucky for you, I also need you for the moment
, or you would be joining the other humans in death. Now shut up, or I will gag you as I did the other female.”

The threat clamped her lips shut
, and silent, she preceded him from the cell, her step hesitant, her head swinging from left to right as she took in the carnage outside her confinement. He heard her swallow hard as she stepped gingerly over a cooling puddle of blood.

Before he could contact his crew and get the latest update, a cadre of soldiers, military by their bearing and dress, came jogging around the corner. Aramus braced for the bullets sure to follow but quickly frowned as one of them yelled, “There she is. Shoot her.”

Her? Shouldn’t he be their target? How rude.

The female in question didn’t dive back into the cell—which was the smartest move
—or freeze in place—which would have guaranteed her death. Nope, instead she showed a modicum of intelligence as she hid behind him with a squeaked, “Don’t just stand there. Kill them before they kill us!”

With pleasure.

Aramus let his knife fly, the blade hitting one of the soldiers preparing to fire in the neck. Blood spurted. Not an instant death, but a fatal blow nonetheless. The rest got to experience firsthand the accuracy of a cyborg trained to never miss. While their bullets sprayed all over the place, Aramus picked them off, barely flinching as the occasional lucky shot struck him. As for the guy who’d ordered the doctor’s death?

He stalked after him when he would have turned tail and run. Tripping over the bodies of his dead squad, the human blubbered for mercy.

“Don’t kill me. I was just following orders.”

“Whose orders?”

It seemed he wouldn’t find out as the soldier suddenly went rigid, his eyes rolling back in his head until only the whites appeared. As his body thrashed, foam began to spill from his mouth. Aramus dropped the body in disgust. It seemed the military didn’t want them getting their hands on their soldiers.

A
soft touch against his back had him whirling, ready to fire. He held back at the last moment as he realized the petite doctor had crept up to him. She peered around his frame and murmured. “Strychnine, or some variation of. Often the main ingredient of suicide pills.”

“Fucking fanatics.”

“At least he’s dead.”

“Without answering any questions. Why did they want to terminate you?”

“I’d say that was obvious. So I wouldn’t talk to you.”

“Are there many more soldiers?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I was kept locked up for the most part.”

“What do you know?”

“That I’m glad they’re dead. Thank you.”

He grunted in reply. He didn’t want her gratitude. “Why did you hide behind me instead of running away?”

“Run to where? If you ask me, sticking to you seems like the smartest way of getting out of here.”

Good point.
Would wonders never cease? He’d finally found a human with an ounce of common sense.

Aramus use
d his internal communicator to check in with his team.

Status report.

Only one room left to clear in the southwest corridor,
announced Kyle.
We are no longer encountering resistance. However, the remaining prison cells are either empty or have bodies. It seems the soldiers are executing the inhabitants, staff and prisoners, before deserting their posts.

Less deserted than fled,
Aphelion announced grimly.
My sensors picked up a vessel leaving the atmosphere.

And you didn’t give chase?
Aramus queried.

My calculations
, given their speed, vessel capabilities, and trajectory, put my chances of capturing them at less than seventeen percent, so I chose to remain here as an additional means of support.

It galled him to have lost some of the assholes running this place, but Aphelion
had made the right choice. Given the injured cyborgs they’d recovered and the fact they needed to sweep the base for clues before departing, or the humans arrived to clean it up—AKA via nuke—their current mission took precedence over a futile chase.
How many cyborgs did we liberate?

Two males, one female in total. Another
pair died during the raid, both of whom were female.

What about those gray beings? Other than the dead one, how many live ones are left?

All of the aliens have disappeared, including the dead one.

Aramus
didn’t bother correcting Aphelion about the alien comment. It seemed an apt description for the moment given they didn’t know who and what those gray-skinned beings were.

What do you mean disappeared?

When the units returned to those cells to recover the body and to see if there was a means of transporting the other two, we discovered all three rooms empty.

Fuck! I wanted to bring at least one of them back for Einstein to study.

The good news is we did recover a few humans before the soldiers could kill them. Hopefully, they will be able to fill in some of the blanks and let us know what was going on. The bad news is they were all civilians. The soldiers that were left tied up and unconscious are gone, or dead.

Suicide?
Not unheard of with fanatic troops, and he’d seen one resort to it already.

Not unless they managed bullet holes in their heads with their hands still tied.

Someone didn’t want to leave witnesses behind.
So what do we have in total for live bodies?

Five
humans in total. Two are mute, another is gravely injured, but the other two seem intact.

Make that six.
I’ve got one of the doctors with me,
Aramus added, frowning down at the little female who remained tucked close enough he’d need a pry bar to remove her.