Warrior- Integration Read online

  Warrior: Integration

  Book One of The Singularity War

  by

  David Hallquist

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2020 David Hallquist

  All Rights Reserved

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  Get the free Four Horsemen prelude story “Shattered Crucible”

  and discover other titles by Chris Kennedy at:

  http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

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  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  Cover by J Caleb Design

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  Contents

  Part One: The Cave

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two: The Laboratory

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part Three: Labyrinth

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part Four: The Deep

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Five: Hades

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Part Six: Ascent

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Part Seven: Glass Castles

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Part Eight: The Mountains of Light

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Part Nine: Singularity

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Part Ten: Hard Moon

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Part Eleven: Descent

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Part Twelve: The Core

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Part Thirteen: Tartarus

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Part Fourteen: Exile

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Epilogue: Falling

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy

  Excerpt from Book One of The Progenitors’ War

  Excerpt from Devil Calls the Tune

  * * * * *

  Part One: The Cave

  Chapter 1

  Coming back to life hurts. Maybe more than dying, not that I knew what had killed me. Still, not many men get another chance. If I could only stay alive.

  My nerves re-ignite and scream for oxygen as my blood turns acidic and burns. I feel the fire in my veins, and the stabbing pain as I force my heart to beat again by sheer will to live. I try to breathe and only cough and choke on fluid. Desperate for oxygen, my blood rushes to my lungs, trying to grab air that is not there, dumping what little oxygen I have left. I tell my blood to stop that, and it does, carefully hoarding whatever is left as I begin to die again.

  I fight my next death with everything I have, reaching for something, anything, that will save me. Something happens, something inside me moves, changes.

  Strange new chemicals enter my bloodstream, some kind of witch’s brew that lets me live without oxygen, at least for a while. My thoughts get slow and fuzzy, and all that is left is the most primitive part of the brain, the part that will do anything to survive.

  Opening my eyes, I see only darkness and feel the stinging fluid I bathe in. Struggling, I find I’m wrapped in something, it yields a little, but won’t release me. Thrashing desperately, it only tightens around me. I choke on the fluid, trying to breathe it; I so want to breathe again.

  No.

  I force myself to think again, to slow down as my blood burns. Slowly, carefully, I feel around in the blackness for an edge to the material and find it is a sheet of something I’m wrapped in. I pull it away until I have enough freedom to swim up.

  I hit my head on something hard, and the dark world flashes white in pain. Wrong way. I force myself to exhale the last of the air in my lungs and feel which way up is. I feel the bubbles go past me, and I swim after.

  The wrapping trails after me, dragging me down, slowing me as I pull desperately at the fluid. I want air so badly, everything else leaves the world.

  I break the surface in perfect darkness and gasp for air. I cough and gag on the fluid in my lungs. Thrashing and flailing, I try to find land while lights flash and flare in my vision. That would be my brain getting ready to say good-bye again.

  I reach a hard, rocky shore and desperately pull myself out of the chemical brew. I cough up a great lungful of water that never seems to end, never stopping for that one glorious breath of air I so need. Finally, I take a pull of the cold, hard, painful air that burns all the way down.

  I scream from the pain and the greatness of being alive again. It’s agony; it’s glorious. Must be why all babies yowl with their first breath.

  Gasping, I roll over, the sheets of material still wrapped about me. The darkness is perfect, absolute, immaculate
. Had this place ever known light? All around me I can hear drips of water and echoes off of distant walls.

  I’m cold. I can imagine the steam of the water rising off of me, stealing away my warmth and life. The wrapping helps keep me warm as I begin to shudder and shake. Already, I cannot feel my feet, bad news.

  I want to warm up desperately, then I do. I can feel my veins and arteries open up, bringing heat back to my extremities and skin. My temperature rises to a fever level, and I stop shaking. Is it hypothermia? It can make you feel hot as you freeze to death. I feel warm and comfortable, and the hard stone under my head is as soft as a down pillow. Sleep claws at me, trying to pull me under again.

  No. I fight it. I’ll die of exposure here, wherever this is. I don’t know what threats are out there, where I am, who or what did this to me…I don’t even remember who I am.

  In the perfect darkness and numbing cold, sleep and reality war for control. Dreams and images dance across the darkness, anything to fill the emptiness with meaning. I fight to stay awake. Sleep means hypothermia and death. Staring up at the immaculate darkness, I don’t even see when my eyes close, and night rolls over me at last.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  God, I hope this is a dream.

  “Test Room 12” comes in and out of focus above me. Bright overhead lights and agony wash out any detail.

  I struggle and convulse against the restraints and the hard bench I’m fixed to. I try to speak, to scream, but all that comes out is a thin wheeze through my ruined throat. My heart is racing, each beat is agony, and I struggle to breathe with all the tubes in my throat.

  Above me, the people in white sterile spacesuits simply watch and record. “The subject is failing to adapt to the symbiont,” one says calmly.

  I look down at myself. Big mistake. Tubes run in and out of every part of me in ways nature never intended. I see darkness crawling up my veins, carrying burning agony to every part of my body. I can feel something spiraling along my nerves, setting them afire.

  A monster is growing inside me, eating me alive from the inside, and I cannot stop it. It doesn’t stop with my blood and nerves; it tears through my muscles, breaking through my bones and drilling into my vital organs. It wants all of me; it’ll eat me alive.

  Things get even crazier when it reaches my brain. My vision shatters into a million different views, and sounds take on colors and scents. I can feel the strange, alien thoughts of the thing; a monstrous hunger and desire to survive.

  Mercifully, all goes dark, and I feel no more.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  I wake again, surprised to find I am still alive. All around me is the impenetrable darkness with only the memory of light.

  I don’t want to move. A cliff, a wall, or any kind of hazard could be hidden in the black. I feel around. The ground is some kind of rough rock, and loose rubble slides across my fingers. The ground is colder than the chill air, but I’m still staying warm somehow.

  Where am I? Who am I? Who did this to me? Am I still in danger? How do I get out? Questions pile up, and I go back to the basics. I don’t remember anything, but I remember how to survive.

  I have air. It’s cold, but something is keeping me warm, at least for the moment. There is a faint movement to the air, so it isn’t going to get stale too quickly, and most gases would have lurked near the floor and killed me in my sleep. I can hear water, so that will probably help me last longer, as long as it isn’t poisonous.

  I pick up one of the pebbles and drop it, listening for the impact echoing off the walls. About 1.6 meters per second, squared. Luna then. Thank God, I’m not stuck on Earth. My Terran physique will give me an edge on a world of lightweights.

  I’m going to have to watch it, though. Lunars like to keep the air thin; the lower pressure is easier on the habitats. I could get exhausted quickly in the thin air, I’ll have to pace myself. So far, no signs of trouble though. I’m not light-headed, breathing quickly, or having any headaches. I’ll have to see what happens.

  I inhale the stale air deeply through my nose. It’s hard to smell anything past the sharp chemical tang of the nearby fluid and the scent of old death. The sharp gunpowder scent of new Lunar rock is missing, so this is an old cave, the volatiles oxidized long ago. If there had been a pocket of methane, ammonia, or hydrogen sulfide, I’d already be dead anyway.

  The cave rock and air are above freezing, so heat must be leaking in from a habitat somewhere. Maybe that Hell-lab place.

  So I’m not going to die right away. Check.

  I dare to move again and carefully check myself for injuries. Nothing hurts, no bruising, not even any sense of fatigue. All my hair is gone though, everything, even my eyelashes. I find no trace of injuries from the tangle of tubes from my dream, not even a single scar. Was it only a dream?

  I’m real hungry, though. Soon, I’m going to need to find food and water, as well as someplace warmer than this chill cave.

  I don’t dare move around carelessly. There could be anything down here, including the people who threw me into this pit.

  Why did they throw me down here? Even if they thought I was dead, you don’t waste biomass. Water, carbon, nitrogen; a body has everything a body needs. You only throw away biomass on Earth. Am I infected with something so horrible this is the only place to dump my body?

  To get answers, to get out of here, I desperately need to see. I try to focus, and stare through the darkness through sheer will, hoping my senses will attune enough to give me some bearing, some hope of escape.

  I feel the monster inside come alive again. It begins to move and shift through me, spreading again. It wasn’t a dream after all. I feel it burn into my eyes and ears, and stitch through my skin with threads of fire. It’s everywhere and growing fast. Am I going to check out for good?

  No.

  I struggle against it, fighting to stay alive. Slowly, I master it and make it back down. The agony subsides to mere pain, and I lie back panting and sweating in the cold.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 4

  I see a flash of light. Then another. Soon a random series of flashes starts up. If it’s cosmic rays, then I’m being slow-roasted by the universe. Bad news. Or it could be a search party from the Hell-lab. More bad news.

  I wait a bit and notice a pattern building. The after-image of the flashes starts forming an image. I can make out the shapes around me in ghostly gray light. Each flash is a photon. This is impossible without augmentation. Do I have some kind of boosted vision?

  The image builds up slowly, and I have to be careful not to move my eyes and smear it. The rough outlines of the rock walls in the cave stretch away. The walls have the spiraling cut patterns from tunnel drillers all along the sides. The tunnel is about 3 meters across, and curves out of sight in both directions, with a cross tunnel not too far from where I lie. I can also make out the small pool of fluids I awoke in earlier. It looks like the water is filling the bottom of a vertical shaft intersecting this tunnel, because there’s a shaft in the ceiling right above it that continues upward, out of sight. This must be one of the older, abandoned tunnels in the depths of Luna, made back in the days before real shielding was available on the surface.

  Around me lie the dead. Heaps of ruined flesh bob in the fluid and lie scattered by the edges of the pool. I gag and choke it back down. Memories of smoking battlefields come back up, and I force them back down. Not now.

  Did anyone else escape that Hell-lab, or are they all dead?

  Remaining still, I listen. I can hear the drops of water falling from above and can pinpoint where the pools of water are. The faint sound of the moving air tells me a lot about the layout of these caves, and this maze seems to go on forever. This must have been one of the old mines, for water or other volatiles, maybe. I’ll need to watch out for gas in the lower levels. Distantly, I can hear the scurrying of roaches and the other insect life that we’ve brought to every planet.

  I can
smell them too. I find I can sort out the millions of scents around me, without any being overpowered by the strong chemical odor in the tunnels. I can smell the roaches, the decaying bodies, plastic and other refuse, and even the faintly salty tang of the rocks around me. I can tell that fresher air is up the tunnel above the pool, and that there is drinkable water down the tunnel that way. Scent becomes a three-dimensional sense, giving me a map of direction, distance, and motion, even in absolute darkness.

  I can feel the direction of the faintest breath of the breeze in the tunnel. It’s just a little warmer that way. The slope of the tunnel is almost imperceptible, but I can tell which way it slopes up. Faint vibrations in the rock indicate the machinery functioning scores of meters straight up, and the few people walking about even farther off in the distance. Soon, a complete map of the maze and the complex far above me forms in my brain.

  How can I sense all of this? What kind of augmentation do I have? Is this the monster or cybernetic boosting?

  I examine the plastic sheet I’m wrapped in by touch, running my fingers across it. There is writing stamped into the durable material. Feeling the slight impressions of the letters, I read it. “DISPOSE OF ALL MEDICAL WASTE PROPERLY.” It looks like someone didn’t read the instructions.

  Since I’m alone, for the moment, I stand up and pull the plastic about me, cinching it up to make crude clothing.

  Things are coming back, the feel and sense of how to move on Luna. My body remembers what my brain forgets. Like how not to move too quickly so I don’t hit my head and how to glide rather than walk or run in the low gravity.

  I glide back to the shaft. Newcomers to Luna try to walk, jump, skip, or do the “Moon Bounce.” Locals and others who’ve been here a while know better. You move on Luna with a controlled glide, pushing forward with one foot, but with no upward force, so you just drift over the ground in a low, slow-motion run. You use friction to control your movement, because gravity isn’t going to help you.