Salvage Merc One: The Daedalus System (21 page)

“Oh, okay,” I laughed, “I’ll check my ‘power levels’ on my ‘carbine’ and get ready.”

My tone of voice on “power levels” and “carbine” made it very obvious I was using sarcastic air quotes.

“Joe? Did the B’flo’do touch your head?” Alya asked.

“Nope, just my ankle,” I said.

“Then what the fo are you talking about?” she snapped and nodded at my H16. “Get your ass in gear!”

I was torn between another sarcastic comment and just letting her have it, but the weight in my grip changed my mind. I was holding an H16, not a balloon facsimile. It was a real live plasma carbine.

“Well, will you look at that,” I said. I didn’t waste any more time. I checked the power levels, put the weapon to my shoulder, and nodded at Alya. “Lead on.”

“You sure?” she asked. “You need a couple of minutes?”

“Do we have a couple of minutes?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“Then I’m sure,” I said. “What’s next on the schedule? What wild and mind-foing trial does the labyrinth have for us?”

“The last trial,” Alya said. “The only trial, really. Everything that came before was just to test what you thought you were made of. This will test what you actually are made of. Your smart mouth and sarcastic posturing won’t help you here, Joe. You need to use every skill you have learned as a Marine and as a Salvage Merc. What came before has been a cake walk. This will not be.”

The walls of the room began to dissolve and before they had completely faded, I knew where we were going to end up.

“Oh, great,” I said. “This place again.”

“You end where you begin,” Alya said as she walked away from me. Once she was about six meters away, she turned and faced me. Her body began to morph and shift and I sighed. I knew what was coming. “I am sorry, Joe, but there is no other way.”

The beautifully dark woman was gone, and in her place was who had really been with me the whole time.

Naked Snake Lady.

She bared her fangs like she bared her breasts, and I couldn’t turn away.

“Uh, is that poison dripping from your teeth?” I asked.

Her answer came in a rush as she charged me.

Twenty-Two

I started firing. I didn’t even think, just pressed that trigger.

Nothing happened. The main reason being that I no longer held an H16. That’s actually the only reason. Kind of hard to pull a trigger when there is no trigger to pull.

I stared at the sword in my hand and sighed. I didn’t even give the shield in my other hand a second glance. No need. I knew what it was and why it was there.

Naked Snake Lady’s speed was incredible. As it should have been since she was half snake which meant almost total muscle.

But I had battle legs, which were still at the ends of my gams luckily, and I was able to jump out of the way and send a violent swipe of my sword at her back. She twisted out of the way in time, whipped herself around, and hissed.

“Was everything we just went through total crud?” I asked, bracing myself for another leap out of the way if she decided to charge again. “All that stuff about losing your memories and sense of self? Were you with me only so you could size me up and then take me out once you’d found my weakness?”

“Weaknesses,” she replied. “You are almost infinitely flawed, Joe Laribeau.”

“Aren’t we all,” I countered. “None of us know what our futures hold, so we always have the possibility of being infinitely flawed. Hell, Alya, you could try to attack again and accidentally fart the theme song to Galactic Steve. That could totally happen all because of the possibility of infinite flaws.”

“You make no sense, Salvage Merc One,” she hissed. “You never have. All you do is babble and babble, spew whatever your deformed mind thinks up. You have no filter and you have no capacity for self-regulation.”

“Hey now,” I snapped. “That’s a load of terpigcrud. I’ve been nothing but self-regulation since I took this gig. Otherwise, I would have bailed and taken up a permanent bar stool in one of the taverns on Xippeee. You think being Salvage Merc One is easy? You should try it sometime, lady!”

Ouch. That was cold even for me. Yes, I was technically fighting Naked Snake Lady, presumably to the death, but I’d also hung out with her Alya persona, and I liked the Alya persona, despite the obvious deception. I didn’t need to rub her face in her own unfair history.

I started to apologize, but didn’t get the chance. I found myself flying through the air, the recipient of quite the tail smack, and slammed hard against the massive iron door. I slid down slowly, almost like a cartoon character, but mostly because the door wasn’t exactly smooth, so my clothes kept getting snagged on the metal bands and huge bolts that held the thing together.

It also could have used a good sanding and polishing. I think I ended up with more than a couple of iron slivers in me.

“Ow,” I said when I finally came to rest on the floor.

“Get up,” Naked Snake Lady growled. “Get up, Joe Laribeau, last Salvage Merc One, dead man.”

“Whoa, you ain’t the boss of me,” I said as I stood up. I wasn’t going to just stay on the ground. “And, by the way, I’m getting up because I was getting a cramp, not because you told me to. Plus, I… Wait, what? Last Salvage Merc One?”

Her face split into quite the scary snake grin.

“Yes, Joe, the last,” she said. “Did they not tell you that?” She spread her scaled arms wide. “Why do you think the artifact sent you here? Why would it subject you to this kind of torture and hell? Because it thought you would survive?”

She laughed. It was a cruel laugh, filled with parts pity and condescension.

“The artifact wants you to die, Joe,” Naked Snake Lady said when she was done hahahaing at my expense. “It does not expect you to survive this. You are lacking in so many ways that this is how it corrects its mistake. You die, and a new candidate can be found.”

The laughter was completely gone as she swayed before me, a monster made of boobies and dripping fangs.

“I should know,” she said. “Why do you think I am here? The artifact didn’t want me to move on and become a Boss. It wanted me gone. I had failed it, and it exiled me in this Hell. With the Bosses help, it left me here to rot. Now it is your turn. You will take my place, and I will finally be free.”

“Will I get the half snake thing?” I asked. “If so, do I have to wax? I don’t exactly have the aesthetic display in the chestal region that you do. I’m a little furry and probably need to work on my pecs more before I spend eternity with my man boobs on display.”

“With every word that comes out of your mouth, I see why the artifact hates you so much,” she said.

“Hate is kind of strong, don’t you think?” I replied. “I’m guessing it’s more of an indifferent loathing. Sure, I’ve been hated before, plenty of times, but mostly by strangers or really good friends. The artifact has been in me long enough to not be a stranger, but hasn’t been in me long enough to be considered a good friend. Give it a few more months, and maybe an ill-fated vacation or two together, and I’ll agree with the hate part.”

“What is wrong with you?” Naked Snake Lady yelled. “Do you not take your own death and exile to purgatory seriously? You are going to die painfully, Joe, and you will never leave this entryway. You will be forced to look at that iron door for all of eternity.”

“Is there an all of eternity?” I asked. “Isn’t it just eternity? I mean, the word eternity sort of implies an end all to it already. Why muddle things by saying all of eternity when you can just say eternity?”

She closed her eyes in pure frustration. It was not uncommon when I was on a roll. Which was what I was counting on.

I threw the sword the moment her lids clamped together. I knew what I was doing, I knew what I was saying, and I knew how to use it to my advantage.

The blade pierced her in the upper right part of her abdomen. Her right, not my right. It would have been my left. Doesn’t matter. The sword nailed her and she shrieked and howled in pain, her eyes snapping open as she stared down at the hilt of the sword.

“You…?” she gasped, a huge hand taking the sword in its grasp. She tried to pull it out, screamed, tried again, screamed again, then let go and glared at me. “You!”

“It’s me,” I agreed and threw my shield.

It nailed her right between the eyes. Her human half wobbled on her snake half. I didn’t think she’d swoon and fall right over, physics made it very clear that a naked woman with snake coils for a body wasn’t the toppling type, but it stunned her enough for me to go for the gold and bring the fight to her.

My battle legs cleared the distance in two steps, and I was leaping into the air, my right arm cocked back and ready to give her quite the knuckle sandwich.

She swatted me away like I was the sandwich. A sandwich made of air.

I flew across the entryway and hit the wall hard enough to send a rain of rock and dust down on me when I found the floor. With my face. I found the floor with my face.

Blood spurted out around me, and my mouth filled with copper. Scott was going to be pissed when I got back to SMC headquarters. It would be like the fourth time he’d have to reset my nose. Not that he remembered any of the previous times, but he would still be pissed. Scott was like that.

I tried to push up onto my hands and knees, but I didn’t get the chance as I was plucked from the floor by a clawed Naked Snake Lady hand. She held me by the back of my neck, and I instantly knew what a puppy felt like when it was being scolded for messing on the carpet. I half-expected her to throw me back to the ground and shove my face in my own nose blood.

“Your sword will not kill me,” Naked Snake Lady said. “I have been wounded worse by much better warriors than you. Hundreds have come to the labyrinth to discover its secrets and steal its power. All have failed.”

“Whoa, what secrets? What power?” I managed to ask despite the excruciating pain of her claws digging into the back of my neck. “Is there power here to steal? News to me. I thought I was here to salvage your soul. That’s how I found my way to this place. I realized I needed to salvage something if the artifact was going to show me how to get here.”

She froze. Her eyes became confused, and her grip slackened slightly. Slightly. Still was painful as fo.

“You came to salvage my soul?” she asked.

I heard genuine bafflement. She shook her head. The motion meant she shook me too and I winced, but didn’t cry out. Yay me. Her head stopped shaking, and she snarled.

“That is a lie,” she said. “You lie, Joe Laribeau.”

“Why would I lie about that?” I asked. “I’m a Salvage Merc. I have to salvage something.”

“You are trying to trick me into letting you go!” she shouted, poisonous spittle speckling my face.

I felt the venom burn my cheeks, but I did nothing. I had a feeling that if I even twitched she’d snap my neck without blinking.

“Why would I lie?” I asked again. “Seriously. If you let me go then what? I have no weapons. You are way faster than me. If I don’t make good on my word then you’ll just kill me later instead of now. My only way out of this is to salvage your soul, Alya. I get that back for you, and you get me the fo out of this crudhole!”

“You get me my soul and I get you out,” she said, more to herself than to me. It was like she was tasting the concept on her forked snake tongue. Yeah, she had one of those. “I save you, and you save me. I will get to leave without killing you?”

“You will get to leave, I get to leave, everybody leaves,” I said then glanced around at the stray skeletons that littered the floor. “Well, not everybody, but you and me for sure.”

“What will I be?” she asked. “Will I still be this?”

“I don’t foing know,” I said and shrugged.

For the record, shrugging is not easy when a Naked Snake Lady has you by the back of the neck and is holding you a few feet off the floor. That just proves I have mad skills. I can shrug under any circumstance. I’m a motherfoing shrugging master, yo.

“It won’t work,” Alya said. “No one has gone past here before. Not in all the days I have been exiled. Not in any of the records that were left behind by the other tortured souls forced to guard the labyrinth.”

“What?” I asked. “I’ve already been inside. You were with me.”

“No, you were not inside. There is no inside,” she said. “You never left this space. We have been here the whole time. This is the labyrinth.”

“Well, that’s disappointing,” I said. “Way to deflate a guy’s sense of accomplishment.”

She lowered me to the floor. I stumbled back and rubbed my neck. My instinct was to look around for the closest weapon, but that did not seem like the best idea. She wasn’t won over to my way of thinking, but she was close. All she needed was an excuse to ignore the truth and gut me. My looking for a terpigsticker would have been that excuse.

“I can make your death quick,” she said.

“Hold on now!” I cried and held up my hands. “No death needed here, Alya!”

I nodded at the sword that still stuck out from her right side. It bobbed up and down as she spoke and moved. It was kind of hypnotizing.

“In fact, I can help with that,” I said. “I don’t need to die, you don’t need to die, no dying need be happening today, cool? I wasn’t foing with you when I said I’m here to salvage your soul. I’m Salvage Merc One, Alya. If anyone can find and get your soul back, it’s me. I’m your only chance for peace and you’re my only chance for getting the fo gone and back to my corner table and pitchers of beer at SMC headquarters.”

“You should think of cutting down on the drink,” she said. “I can smell the rot on you. Those pitchers will be your death.”

“Gonna ignore the nosy busybody comments about my drinking and focus on the fact you said the beer would be my death,” I responded. “That implies that maybe you won’t be the death of me. Or am I reading too much into this?”

“If I do not kill you, and you are wrong and cannot salvage my soul, then I will be tormented with agonies and torture like nothing ever conceived,” she said. “The labyrinth has warned me before. It has shown me a taste. It is not lying in what fate awaits me if I disobey.”

“Fo the labyrinth!” I shouted and held up both middle fingers. “Fo it up the butt! If it wants to subject you to an eternity of agonies and torture then it has to go through me!”

“Oh, Joe, you should not have said that,” Naked Snake Lady said. Hold on. No, not Naked Snake Lady. Alya said it.
Alya
. “The labyrinth does not suffer taunts nor fools and you represent both.”

“Yeah, I kind of do. I’ll own that,” I said. “But, hey what’s it gonna do to me? Bring more nightmares? Send a gang of B’flo’dos to suck me dry? More clones? More Hopsheers?”

“No, Joe, it will send you,” she said and her voice was filled with so much sadness. “Just as it did to me. It will send you.”

I heard the clomping from the darkness and spun around. Oh, I knew the sound of that clomping. I was intimately familiar with it.

“Oh, fo me,” I whispered. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes, Joe,” Alya said and slithered herself as far away from me as possible. “I wish I could help, but if you lose, which you will do, I must save face by not participating.”

“Yeah, I get that,” I said as the clomping grew nearer. “All good.”

It wasn’t all good. It was far from all good. It was very, very not good.