Syberian Sunrise by S. A. Lusher Read Free Book Online Page A

determine just what the hell it was, when he was finally given his answer. The mass began to twitch in one particular section. Taking a step back, he brought the pistol up. A useless gesture, given the emptied state of the weapon. The mass continued twitching until something came out of it. A Slug. It slithered from the aperture it'd made and dropped onto the ground.
    In a moment of disgusted revelation, he realized what it was.
    A nest.
    This was how these things bred . Enzo felt his stomach twitch as he did what needed doing. Before it could go anywhere, he stomped on the Slug. For a moment, he considered how to handle this. He couldn't very well leave this horrible thing alive to just keep breeding the Slugs...but how to destroy it? His eyes scanned the room he was in. Surely there was something in here he could use. Enzo began hunting through the various crates and shelves.
    After a little bit, he finally had his solution.
    A power cell and jumper cables. They were meant to be used as sort of a last resort kind of situation, when all else failed, to jump-start failing equipment. Almost no one used them, but they were standard equipment even among the more prestigious bases. Grinning darkly, he stubbed one end of the jumper cables into the nest, disgusted by the squelching noises it made, and hooked the other end up to the power cell.
    Before turning it on, he hunted down and found all the supplies and tools he'd need, because he didn't want to be in here anymore. Enzo waited a moment, relishing the experiencing, and then flipped on the power cell. There was a jolt of raw energy as it hit the nest. Sparks and arcs jumped and dance along its glistening surface. Enzo fell back, already coughing from the reek of burning flesh. He watched it burst into flame before leaving.
    As he stepped back out into the main bay, closing the door behind him, his eyes fell on the thing that had tried to kill him. It all fell into place. If that was a nest, then that would make this thing some kind of protector, some kind of...Guardian. His brain assigned the name to the creature, as he was sure to encounter more of these horrors. There was a clear ecosystem at work here, with different niches, different levels and roles.
    Enzo pushed all this aside for the moment.
    He wanted to see that space ship.
    Retreating back to the relay room, he made the appropriate repairs and tried to get into touch with Eve, but she was still offline. He frowned, double-checked his work and then tried once more. Still nothing. Shrugging, Enzo located the next elevator and headed up.

    Chapter 05
    – Aftermath –
     
     
    Level Seven now.
    Enzo felt like he was making progress. He began pacing as he rode the elevator up, knife in hand since the pistol was depleted. There was an anger building up inside of him. Enzo had a long, long career of being a mercenary. For quite a long while now, his life had been lengthy bouts nomadic exploration, drifting across the galaxy from system to system as jobs or his own personal needs and wants had dictated, punctuated with long periods of inactivity whenever he found a place he particularly liked.
    He'd never been held prisoner.
    Sure, he tangled with the local law enforcement or rival mercenary groups from time to time, but by the time the men with badges and sunglasses showed up looking for him, he was already long gone, catching a flight out of the local starport to wherever. In fact, it was what he'd been doing before this. Before the prison transport, he'd been on Williamson Station. It was closer to the inner ring of galactic society, a place where they ran a tight ship and all your digital papers had to be in order if you wanted to get in and do anything.
    Not exactly his kind of place, but he'd been tired of hanging out in the seedy, nasty underworld of the criminal ecology that grew at the edge of civilized space in what some men called the Far Reach. He wanted something nice, a place where there was real sun and the