System of the Damned

  Chapter 11 - Roderick

  Is that Fortunate Son?

  For over a week I dazzled Thunder many times with my wonderful oral skills, though sadly she said I sounded like a dying animal when I sang. Xavier squeaked along to the songs as neither of us let the newbie choose the traveling music. Luckily the Warg hadn’t broken since we’d set out and none of the tires had grown eyes, so we didn’t have any stowaway mimics. For some reason the rock mimics had seemed to like to eat, and then take the place of tires. They must love the taste of synthetic rubber and meshing for some odd reason.

  There hadn’t even been a trail to follow as we’d taken the route that Xavier had helped get worked out for us. I simply had a tablet that had a very rough “best route” to follow, which meant that I was slowly but surely learning every curse in the Ca’zeze and Lo’Kar languages. Not my fault that she didn’t enjoy the pace that I set, or the fact that I occasionally took us airborne, my ears now seemed to never lose the ringing from her sonic squeaks. Thunder was doing better after a week of the hard pace I kept for us, keeping herself buckled in tight and wearing her helmet.

  Something I wasn’t expecting was for her to start singing to one of the industrial metal songs as we shot across a plain at nearly eighty miles an hour. I know the Federation took metric as standard, but I still think in old american terms. She sang in her mother’s language and turned the song haunting, even with the strong instrumentals. The power of her voice shook the air through the plain as the truck’s sound system blared the music. Think of a hard industrial beat, but the vocals are all done in what (to a human) sounded like sped up whale song. I have to admit that it gave the industrial metal a good goth sound, and scared me at the thought of her actually singing a goth song. It was like listening to a skinny fuzzy version of an opera, but with good music.

  The odd colored grasses and plants zipped by on either side of the truck as I looked up to see a drone flying high above. The unmanned aircraft was old tech for us aside from its caltunium power pack, which would keep it flying for damned near a month. My eyes came back down in time to steer us away from a pile of boulders in our path, not wanting to risk it being hungry mimics. The valley came down to a section of canyons and cragged ground where a river had carved through the land over the years. As I slowed to head into the canyon, Thunder pointed up at something rocketing through the air. The next second the drone exploded overhead. With the drone gone, we lost coms until a satellite came into view.

  Xavier was quickly inside his suit and standing it up, clamping the hands and feet onto grab bars to get himself into the open air bed. “We’ve come into hostile territory, I’m using your gun. Thunder, put the pads over your ears please.” Came through the truck’s speakers from his suit, the translator working rather well now.

  “As you wish…” Came from Thunder as she put some pads over her ears inside her helmet, then reached to pick up her laser rifle, propping it on the door and peaking through the scope we’d fixed to it and sighted a couple days ago. “It looks like a…” KABOOM! “BY THE GODDESS WHAT WAS THAT!” She shrieked and looked back as I heard Xavier rack the lever on my rifle.

  “My rifle...is it just a patrol of some prick of a farmer?” I asked curiously.

  “WHAT?” Thunder asked...in a shout and I sighed, tapping my ear to show her the com unit I had in.

  “Patrol, please come to a stop and get her com unit’s in...and more padding.” Xavier’s translator managed to convey his annoyance. “I wonder if we can eat them. They look like a mix between a crab and a lobster. They are rather fast for something so large.”

  I brought the truck around and to a stop on the backside of a rise, immediately reaching over and yanking off Thunder’s helmet. She stared at me as I hooked a com unit over either of her ears and packed more padding around them as I shoved her helmet back on. “Can you hear me now?”

  “YES!” She said far too loudly and I cringed. At least she wasn’t completely deaf, but this was going to be tough to sneak with her shouting everything. I just groaned thinking about it. “THAT THING IS LOUD.” She rubbed the sides of her helmet and made it rub the pads into her ears.

  “Yes it is. Your hearing will get back to normal, for now try and talk softly. What sounds like a whisper in your head will still be loud out of your mouth, but not as bad.” I said and Xavier shifted the rifle quickly, which made me grab Thunder and leap out of the truck. We landed and I curled around her as we rolled. KABOOM. There was a bright flash of fire from the end of the rifle and Xavier’s suit hand racked a new shell in before he shifted and my head connected with a rock.

  “Mother Fu..” KABOOM! KABOOM! Damn! Ok, I had to admit, the rifle was going to need a suppressor of some sort. I let go of Thunder and she got up, checking her rifle and looking to see where Xavier was firing. When she moved toward the back and side of Xavier, keeping from his field of fire, it made me smile.

  “This rifle is working, but not as well as we’d hoped. If I cannot hit them in a soft point, it takes multiple shots to break their shells.” He looked over and down at where Thunder laid down in the grass, then back through the scope as I went to drag out my shield and sword. “And that laser rifle is really pretty, she’s also a fairly good shot.”

  “OF COURSE I AM A GOOD SHOT, I AM THE FIRST PULSAR!” She was so damned proud that she’d made it to the top of her field. Honestly it was like a banshee claiming she was the best shrieker.

  “Volume!” I snapped and set my shield down with my sword as I pulled an injector from my pants pocket, staring at it. I’d used one of these once, and that was just a test to make sure the serum worked. “Xavier...berserker protocol.” I said and brought the injector up, stabbing it into my neck, the serum jetting into the artery. I won’t call what happened next painful, that is the understatement of the millenium, it is the reason that people like me are called berserkers. Changes, especially those caused with serums, push past pain into something that should cause death. It felt like I’d injected acid into my veins and hopped into a puddle of napalm as my genetics and body shifted from one form to another.

  From what Albert had told me, my genetics weren’t really altering, it was switching from a set being dormant to active. Either way, getting shot, smashed, having bones broken, it felt nice compared to the change. My bones cracked, bent, and shifted into new places and hardened even stronger than before. Bits of dead flesh peeled from my skin with the thick fur that grew out of it, violet blood leaked a few drops from around my nails as they thickened and grew out into claws. There was no getting around the screaming that came with changing, jaws extending as my teeth shifted and lengthened. My vision lost the little bit of color I’d managed to keep, but that always happened when I turned from one form to another. Snaps came apart to let my pants and harness, triggering little devices hidden in the waistband of my pants. Caltunium power packs discharged into my back and waist, filling my body with energy, which helped keep my body from becoming weak or drained.

  My screams of pain finally took the turn into a roaring howl as my clawed toes dug into the dirt, my brain working differently now, but still in a somewhat human fashion. It always took time to think like a sane person after a change, even a change to human form. Clawed fingers curled around the thick grip of my sword while my fuzzy arm drove into the holding straps to clutch the handle of my shield.

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  “Smash the crabs! Smash the crabs!” Came from Xavier’s suit as he racked the lever action open and stuffed a shell into the breach. “Help us! Smash the crabs!” After a change, he’d practiced getting me to do things immediately, and had learned simple was best. Or kiss, keep it simple stupid.

  My confused and much more simple running brain listened to the words and focused on my friend and then my head snapped up and I roared. I remember hearing a squeak from beside the truck as I charged forward, poor Thunder had never seen me turn forms in our short time together. Her fear scent was tangy in the air as I charged forward with my shield up, finally catching sight of the enemy for the first time.

  Three of them were laying split open on the ground a few hundred yards away, the thick shells shattered in the center of the oddly crab-like creatures. Nearly a dozen more of them were charging and at about two hundred meters, charging at...me. Unlike terran crabs or lobsters, these had six thick legs instead of ten, along with two extra sets of arms. The main set of arms still led down into the slicing pinchers known to all terran crabs, while the other two sets had odd multiple smaller sets of pinchers like creepy fingers. Some of those creepy pincher and leg looking fingers were wrapped around weapons. Said weapons weren’t very accurate, but fired some sort of organic looking spines like a shotgun.

  The wind felt great on my fur and helped cool the burning heat flowing from my flesh caused by the change. The shield rang with pings and thuds as the alien monsters tried to make me look like a fluffy porcupine, and since I was now ten fucking feet tall, some of them hit. As we charged each other, I got a few ear piercings because canine ears stick upward. A couple sank into my bicep as they spread out. There was some form of poison or tranquilizer in the spines, because the burning made me snarl through my panting. A thunderous roar sounded from behind me and one of the armored heads split open, the alien crab tumbling in death and tripping one of its spine-gun wielding cohorts.

  I leaped through the air as one of the aliens got close and slammed my shield into one man sized claw, because I forgot to mention. These alien crab-lobster glow-shelled aliens were the size of a damned truck. Not that I’m small in human or my fluffier form, but each of these things was the size of a five ton truck. My heavy blade slammed through two of the smaller arms on one side, and I added in the best thing a werewolf can use. I bit it on the face, crunching the shell, and feeling one of its five eyes pop in my maw. It was like a crunchy fishy grape, not that I actually ate it, because I kept gnashing and biting its head. The gun that the crab still had, was firing wildly.

  A giant claw swatted me off of the crab that I was chewing on and right into the pulsing beam from Thunder’s gun. The light of the stupidly high powered laser was REALLY hot as it snapped across my lower back, setting my pants and harness on fire...and hitting the caltunium infused fur underneath. The impact actually hurt less than the feeling of a laser searing my flesh, though the crab that had hit me let out a screech when my fur acted like a disco ball and fired bits of laser light into its eyes. A claw raised to club me, only to have the base of the crustacean’s arm erupt from a bullet slamming into the joint. Ducking myself down as the alien raised up squealing in pain, I drove my shield into its armored body to shove it off balance.

  There was a sharp rush of pain across my back, causing me to spin and lash out with my sword at what’d attacked me. My blade cut into the oddly organic looking gun, driving it back into the crab’s face as I threw my weight into the attack. The blade dug into a plate joint and drove through, splashing me with its blood...which tasted much like mine did. I knew it would be violet in color as it splashed over me. Another of them slammed into me as the one I’d stabbed fell, making me let go of my sword in the rush.

  I tucked in my shield as I rolled away, feeling spines slam into the thickened flesh of my leg and up my side, energy coursing into my body from my smoldering harness. Chittering clicks rang out from a trio of crabs that rushed for me, and I answered them with a roar as I brought up my shield and charged. There was an earth rumbling and air shattering pulse of sound a second before a crab’s headless form crashed between me and the rushing trio, which caused them to stop. I didn’t stop, leaping over the carcass to slam my shield’s bladed edge through the shoulder joints along one side of an enemy, claws slashing at its eyes before a different booming noise sounded.

  A shuttle shot overhead, sound blasting from it other than the engines as shapes rolled out of the door to drop like great cannonballs into the grasslands. My pierced ears snapped up in time to catch a bit of the song. “Ooh, that red, white, and blue!” Was that Fortunate Son playing? A raven stood out painted on the cockpit section of the shuttle as the crabs fired their odd spine slinging shotguns at it. Except I lost track of the song after that, because a black seemingly liquid ball of rock with many mouths...used me for a springboard. More spines sank into the fuzzy flesh of my back, and then were ripped free as another mimic landed on me and started to yank them out.

  As the second mimic left me bleeding from a hundred slowly sealing wounds, I stared like a dumbstruck puppy. One of the mimics had taken a humanoid shape, which was bristling with spines, yet its arms seemed attached to two smaller boulder mimics. It lumbered forward and lashed its arms out, the boulders growing mouths as they slammed into the alien crabs, taking great chunks out of their charged shells. I groaned as the world seemed to spin, my brain calming enough to feel the burning that seemed to be flooding through my veins. Stumbling more each step until I crashed into the grass, barely seeing the streams of cannon fire flowing out from the nose of the shuttle toward the distant canyon. Then I passed out.

  *************

  I rose with a start, but I wasn’t in the oddly colored plains, instead I was in the ruins of Washington, my ex wife’s home was only scorched rubble. Tina hadn’t been able to take the time apart and the distance between me and her, when I came home. The heat of the fires had melted metal and stone in places, no one had made it out alive. I looked down at my hands and watched the split flesh drip blood from digging through the rubble. There was no pain, no sorrow, no fear, simply hollowness. I had died inside when I’d found what was left of them. Cassandra and Thomas’s bones laying under their mother’s, ten and six...barely…

  I fell to my knees, my blood on the bones of my family, tears streaming from my eyes as I stared unblinking at their dark bones. Darkened and shrunken from the heat of flames meant to destroy tanks and fracture ceramic armor. I’d dug through a floor and a half of rubble to find their remains, a shiver flowing through me as I realized I was sobbing. But I felt nothing, I was hollow, yet I felt flames starting to burn through me. The flames I’d tried my entire life to keep stoked, but controlled in the depths of my being. Flames of rage, lust for murder, the want to break and cause pain, slow deaths. The monster I’d only let out in the depths of the harshest battles, when the beast was needed.

  -When are you coming home daddy?- Rang in my mind in my children’s voices and I heard screaming. -Be safe daddy- My lungs burned for some reason as I saw sky, my back hurting as it arched.

  -Don’t worry Rod, I’ll keep them safe. But they ask too many things when you come back and you still haven’t left the combat.- I choked and let out a wailing scream as I stood, not even noticing the barbs sinking into my back. The hollow was suddenly filled with pain as voltage surged through me, the pain filling the hollow with rage. I barely saw the uniforms and mp armbands as I charged, howling as the beast surged.

  -Daddy, your eyes look funny…-

  Suddenly I was sitting in heavy chains, alone in a room with a mirrored window. A metal table and chairs bolted to the floor, the buzz of a door being opened. -Dad, I passed the tests, I get to fly!- My eldest’s voice rang in my mind as I smelled her scent coming through the doorway.

  “Be careful...he’s gone insane Mam.” The voice of an mp, the one who’d shot me in the face with the beanbag round.

  The sharp crack of an open hand against a cheek. “My father is what YOU people made him!” Sounds of struggling and I was suddenly standing and straining against the chains that bound me. “Let go of me!” Came in a shout and I let out a wordless screaming howl as the hollow once again was filled with rage. MY DAUGHTER! Pain shot through my arm as my wrist broke, the bones in that hand compressing and shattering as the shackle came over them.

  -The kids always ask about you-

  I tasted blood in my mouth and heard gurgling. “Dad! Stop!” I felt strong hands pulling at me as I filled the hollow with rage. A snarl ripping from me as a beanbag missed me and hit Angela, my one remaining child. Screams tearing from me as I charged, chain slinging out from my one working wrist as I surged forward into muzzle flashes.

  -Daddy, do you have to kill people?-

  I was suddenly chained down to a table, my daughter’s bruised face close to mine as tears leaked onto my flesh. More tears leaked from my own eyes. “We need him! We invested too much money in him not to use him for the war!” Snarled a man and I felt Angela touch my cheek as she looked down through my eyes into my shattered soul.

  -You’re changing Roderick, it’s scaring me-

  “You’ve seen what the damned Chicom’s are taking into the field, he’s broken, what good is a damned berserker against that horde?” My eyes flicked to my daughter and I let out a huff, the hollow filling with worry as she stood and whirled on two men I couldn’t see.

  -Don’t worry daddy, we’re safe.-

  A snarl ripped from her throat. “This damned berserker is a Marine! A man! Don’t you dare speak of my father as if he’s some animal!” -I’m gonna be a pilot!-

  Chains slammed against the bottom of the table as I jerked my arm against them. “If you guarantee my daughter will remain safe....I will kill for you again. If you do not...if I lose my last child to you...I shall kill you…” My voice was so lifeless as my hollow eyes bore into an admiral’s, which looked as dead as my soul.

  -I love you daddy-

  An operating room with my daughter watching from a window above, tears in her eyes as she sat in uniform watching as the doctors hooked things to my ivs. “Now we’re going to use this serum to block out some of his memories, the ones that have left him broken until now. Once this is done, none may speak to him of this time or risk making him break the blocks. This machine will help us focus the serum into the proper places.” I heard the hum as the machine blocked out my view of Angela, of the reason I could force the beast back enough for this. Then the darkness came again.