ICEHOUSE Read online

  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?"

  The ensign swallowed hard, sweat beading on his brow.

  "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

  Hub had automatically triggered a dozen different silent alerts. Security

  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