Kejora steepled his fingers and watched the monitors. Dozens of recruits
fought for their lives
all over the Icehouse, while the staff hid away inside secret safe rooms.
The door to the Hub
was open to the main corridor, but that had been locked down long in
advance ofthis exercise,
inaccessible to both the recruits and the machines.
The inmates were beginning to emerge from the armories. Now lay the
start of the real test,
delivered by scores of predators with nothing to do but attack anything with
a pulse.
A monitor chimed as the recruits fanned out through the corridors. Feltz
showed up inside suit
RP17. That made forty men armed and ready to fight. A third of them
wandered solo; they
wouldn't last long after the next wave of robots. There were nastier things
than mechanical cats
to come.24
"Ain't no zerg here!"
Another machine creature, shaped like a hydralisk, reared up and flailed
two scythe-like limbs.
The Lisk fired at it,screaming like a child. He didn't stop even when the
thing toppled over and
clattered to pieces.
"No zerg! No zerg here!"
The others shrugged and carried on firing. No time to calm the Lisk down.
Too many damn fake
zerg to kil .
The initial breakout of the armory had gone well, but the machines had
readily replaced their
losses. No choice but to run, jump, dive, and shoot, blasting away at
anything that twitched.
Gabriel and his team left a trail of casings and scrapped parts behind them.
The robots were too slow, too clumsy, too amateur to stop them. Though
his body ached and
his lungs protested, Gabriel loved it al . Kejora hadn't been kidding about
the challenge. Tough,
but doable. Gabriel was going to make it through.
But there was something to do first. He started shooting at the ceiling.
Kejora stared at the suddenly dead screens. "What just happened?"
"Sensors went out all along a corridor. We're blind across section L4."
The warden swore. That was where Feltz was.25
"Sir, a group of suits has gone black."
Kejora looked at the information. One of the suits was RP17. "Dead?"
"Null info. No data at all."
"Well then, Ensign," Kejora said with deliberate patience, "can you tell me what the data said
before the suits went dark?"
"Elevated heart rate and blood pressure, substantial agitation… nothing
unusual."
For this exercise, anyway. Kejora shook his head.
"Any abnormalities in suit RP17 just before the outage?"
"No,sir, not really."
Kejora took a deep breath. "Not really? Care to elaborate?"
"Y-yes,sir. He reloaded his weapons prior to the outage, and his heart rate slowed slightly," the
technician said. "He was calm. I don't think they were ambushed—"
"Shh!" Kejora slashed the air with his hand. The technician went blessedly silent, and Kejora
stood up, listening intently. He could have sworn he'd heard a hiss outside
the entrance to the
Hub, a hiss that sounded like—26
—a stimpack.
Kejora kicked his desk onto its side and ducked behind it. "Get down!"
The roar of two gauss pistols fil ed the room, and the desk shuddered as
bullet hits stippled
across its surface. Technicians screamed and died as the smell of copper
and cordite clogged
the air.
Kejora drew his sidearm—only a small semi-automatic pistol, but it wasn't
nothing—and waited
until the din subsided. Lingering moans told him some of the techs were
stil alive, but they
would have to fend for themselves for the moment. He had a pretty good
idea who was outside
the door.
"Feltz?"
The recruit laughed, his voice manic from the adrenaline and the chemical
rush. "Yes,sir,
Warden,sir, reporting for duty,sir."
"Decent ambush, Feltz. Small deduction for giving away your position. The
chemical delivery
system is loud, even in combat. High marks overall." The effects of
stimpacks lasted only a few
seconds. If Kejora could stall him for just a little longer—
"That means a lot, coming from you." Another deafening volley of gunfire shook the Hub.
“Enemies must be confronted and destroyed with efficiency. Method
matters not. Use the
knife, or the gun, or the bomb, or the fist. Never hesitate.”—Icehouse
Precept #827
Kejora rode it out calmly. Through the chaos, he heard heavy footsteps;
Feltz was moving to
flank him. The warden blindly fired his pistol around the desk, not wil ing to
stick his head out
for a better shot.
The footsteps stopped next to a row of computers against the far wall.
Empty magazines
clattered on the floor.
"You missed, Warden."
"Guess so." Kejora reloaded his pistol. "Unhappy about something, Feltz?"
"Unhappy about my brother, sir."
The warden recalled their chatin the medical ward. "The one who went
missing. What about
him?"
"I didn't exactly tell you the truth, Warden," Feltz said. "My brother isn't missing. I know where
he is. Or rather, where he was."
"Really?" Kejora needed to string out the conversation as long as possible.
The gunshots in the
teams would soon
converge from all corners of the Icehouse.
But they would be delayed, he realized. The ongoing final exam meant they
would have no
clear route to the Hub. They'd have to fight their way through the same
enemies the recruits
were facing.
Kejora doubted he could keep Feltz from kil ing him until they arrived. 28
"My brother was here, Warden. At the Icehouse, under your tender care."
Twin clicks echoed
through the room as Feltz chambered a round in each of his guns. "It took a lot of time and a lot
of money to get that information. A lot. You wouldn't believe."
"Can you get a refund? You're the first Feltz we've had in here."
The reaper's words cut through the distant thunder of combat. "Don't see
the family
resemblance? Not worth itto remember the ones who die in training? I'm
not surprised."
"I remember every inmate."
"Even the washouts? The ones who failed to be useful?"
"Especially them."
Feltz's voice turned to ice. "My brother's name was Dennis Staton."
Dennis Staton? He had died barely a week into training; batch seven hadn't
agreed with him,
and a few of his vital organs had become slush. It wasn'tmuch of a loss.
Dennis Staton had
been an unremarkable, useless recruit.
Kejora decided to gloss over the details. "I gave your brother a chance. The same one you had.
It simply didn't work out."
"My brother never had a chance," Feltz said. The stimpack had worn off.
The ch
emical crash
made his voice tremble, but his words retained al their venom. "Not from
you. Not from
anyone else."
"You're wrong."29
"I knew what I was getting into. I was ready.He wasn't." The whine of the reaper's jets
suddenly increased in pitch. Feltz was preparing to make his move. "And
neither are you. The
Grim Reaper has arrived. Time for payback."
"Payback? For what?" Kejora gripped his pistol tightly. "He was going to be executed, Feltz—"
"My name is Staton."
"Your brother was a criminal, Staton, and not a bright one. If he'd had an
ounce of your control,
he would have only spent a couple weeks locked up for petty theft," Kejora
said. "Instead he
kil ed two civilians for the handful of credits in their pockets and didn't even manage to get
three blocks before the law caught up with him."
"He was my brother. He deserved better than your personal hellhole."
"My personal hellhole works." Kejora scanned the room, looking for a way out. There were only
bad options, exposed paths. "Tell me it doesn't. Tell me that I didn't turn you into one of the
most efficient kil ers the galaxy has ever seen."
"Congrats on a job well done, Warden," Feltz said. The jets in his armor whined impossibly loud
in the tight quarters. "Here's a special token of my appreciation."
Kejora closed his eyes. The desk wouldn't protect him against much more
sustained gunfire.
There was no chance of fleeing without crossing Feltz's fields of fire.
No way out.30
The earsplitting sound of a gauss pistol fil ed the Hub, and the desk's
surface rattled and bent
under a stream of bullet impacts. A second P-45 opened fire.
Then a third. And a fourth.
What?
The noise died away, and Kejora heard an armored body tumble to the
ground.
He remained crouched.
"Warden?"
It was a different voice, a familiar voice. Kejora smiled. "Lords?"
Smoke wafted from the Lisk's two gauss pistols. "Yes,sir."
"Good work, recruit." Kejora stood.
Feltz—not Staton, he would always be Feltzin Kejora's memory—lay on his
side, bullet holes
punched through the back of his armor. Kejora knelt next to Feltz and
carefully removed the
recruit's headgear and mask. Bright-red arterial blood foamed with every
shallow, gasping
breath, each one weaker than the last.
Feltz's eyes showed shock and confusion. He tried to turn his head toward
the Lisk, and a
wordless question gurgled from his throat.
Kejora patted Feltz on the shoulder. Feltz had, in a way, utterly exceeded
all expectations for
the program when he defeated the Icehouse's lockdown—despite having
his mind addled with 31
drugs during a combat situation, no less. He had located and cornered his
target, outsmarting
innumerable security systems designed to prevent that very scenario.
It was proof the Icehouse worked with better recruits. If Kejora took the idea
directly up the
ladder to Emperor Mengsk himself, he could have a higher grade of
conscripts by next month.
The curriculum would require some adjustments, of course, but that was to
be expected.
The other reaper stared down at Feltz, a curious look on his face. "Why did I do that, sir? I think
he was my friend."
"You are a reaper, Lords," Kejora said.
The Lisk considered that silently and watched Feltz's eyes cloud over.
Finally, he nodded.
"I do what I must."
“There is no truth but in victory. Al else is dust, easily swept away”. —
Icehouse Precept #9