Exterminator : The Dark Beneath

“The ARC is a complex array of inter-cooperating departments, each trying to do their jobs while jockeying for resources and people. This interplay keeps efficiency high as the groups strive to out compete each other, but it can lead to friction. And sometimes fur can fly”

-Anonymous statement given to reporter from a Gentech Executive

06:45,13th September, Jack’s Quarters

Jack stared at the poster over his bed, studying the ancient piece of paper, ink and plastic as if looking for some hidden truth, some ancient message that could pull him out of the whirlpool of memories and feelings that had haunted him since he left the monorail station. Unfortunately, his mother’s pristinely preserved original pressing of the original Blade Runner promotional poster didn’t tell him anything new, although she would have gotten a kick out of him living in a pyramidal Archaeology pretty similar to the one depicted in the famous flyover scene of fictional LA.

He glanced over at the wall and stared at his alarm, but the time had barely changed, 6:23 stared back at him. He’d hardly slept all night, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of the slight headache that had followed him since seeing the Doc yesterday, or from the emotions that seeing Juliet and April had stirred up.

With a sigh he threw back his covers, rolled off the side of his bunk, landing on his feet with a sleigh knee bend, before beginning his morning routine, trying to let the familiarity soothe him. Drinking his coffee whilst drying oh his hair, he glanced over his emails and spotted a work order from Stevens and began reading.

Exterminator Hunt, you’ve been ordered to assist Dr Branson’s newly arrived scientific team ....He just about avoided spraying his coffee over the tablet.

An hour later he finished putting on the protective under-suit and slammed his locker shut in frustration, causing the other lockers to rattle. He’d tried to convince Stevens to send him on a different run, but the supervisor had picked an unfortunate time so show some backbone and had insisted.

“Andrews and Adams are in the under works and Martinez hasn’t been cleared by medical for suit duty yet, so it’s just you. Someone high up wants the new scientist’s experiments up and running, so retrieving their equipment is a priority!” So now he had to head all the way to the shuttle port to clear out some Rats from a storage area, so his one-time friends, who he had sworn to avoid above all else, could get back to work. Probably doing revolutionary research in a field he could never work in again.

“Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!” he growled, punctuating each word with a kick that began to dent the front of his locker.

“You OK Jack?” Martinez asked softly from behind him, his English carrying a hint of his Hispanic roots. ”I’m sorry I can’t take the run for you but..”

“It’s OK, man” Jack sighed, turning to look at his colleague. “It’s not your fault. How’s the leg?”

The older man stood on one foot and gently swung the other, wincing slightly. His coppery skin and Hispanic features fitted his name perfectly. Even thought he had left his native Mexico as a child he still referred to it as home.

“It’s still pretty stiff. I mean, the suit could compensate for the weight and all, but you know the regs.”

Jack nodded sadly. Martinez had injured his leg out of armour, but Exterminator regulations forbade him returning to active duty with a potentially debilitating injury.

“Who would have thought it, ha?“ Martinez said with a slight grin. ”I walk though miles and miles of tunnels everyday for years with hardly a scratch and one afternoon at the park with my grandchildren and I get a injury. Pretty stupid, eh?”

Jack snorted and gave his friend a slight grin. The two of them weren’t particularly close, they didn’t have any shared interests or and as far as he knew the only thing they shared background wise was prison time, but somehow they got along fairly well, both recognizing the other the other as a decent person and a hardworking colleague in a profession that had a decided lack of both. Something of a rarity in their line of work. Jack knew the other man had been in prison before, but had never asked for what, but the fact that his daughter had gotten a job on Ares to be close to him led Jack to believe whatever he’d done couldn’t have been that horrific.

“Look on the bright side, man, at least you don’t have to wear the under-suit. The plumbing is bloody unpleasant every time”

Martinez winced in sympathy. Since Exterminators might have to spend days sealed in the environmental protection of the Exosuit, they had environmental suits with plumbing connections for their waste, and the attachment process was...unpleasant. They also had to run stints into their wrist ports so the suit could both monitor their blood and vitals, but also initiate medical intervention if necessary.

Made of a laminated Kevlar weave, patched with heating and cooling elements and covered in attachment points for the armour, it acted as a second line of defence. With the seals in proper order and hood up whilst wearing a face-mask, the under suit on its own was rated up to hard vacuum for a short while, and acted to moderate the user’s bodily functions. In conjunction with the suit it did even more.

Martinez opened his locker and pulled out his under suit, causing Jack to look at him in surprise.

“What are you doing man? You don’t have to suit up for this one!”

“True my friend, but I can act as our representative out there. I’ll just stand with the nerds and talk to them so you can get on with the job. Besides I’ll get my MUTT to carry over the hand lance, just in case I need to do a little onside pest control”

Jack was actually kind of touched, and gently slapped Martinez and the back in thanks, before heading into the armour room and keying open his pod. The door hissed back, revealing his suit in all its glory, the new sleek RX5-Omega chest plate a sharp contrast with the worn, yet well maintained, surface of the rest of the suit.

He signalled the suit using his DNI and it slid open, the front of the chest separating and raising upwards, the legs and arms splitting along the sides and the helmet peeling back. He could see the internal skeleton of the suit, along with the padded sections that helped support the weight whilst allowing him to move freely.

He turned and stepped back into the boots, shifting in the thin soles of the under suit until he was comfortable and then leaning back. He aligned his arms into the correct positions and shifted his torso around against the back plate before triggering the suit to close.

The chest piece lowered over his head, clicking into place before a whirring noise announced the bolts tightening it in place. The Greaves protecting his lower leg folded shut, followed by the thigh armour and pelvic section. He winced slightly as the suit passed link-ace bolts through ports in the under-suit to anchor into thee implanted hard points that connected along the key weight bearing bones, further linking his body to the suit , enhancing his movement and keeping his body and the suit moving as one.

The arms closed next, forcing his wrists into position so the suits injection systems in his forearm vambraces could interface with his wrist ports. Each vambreace contained iv lines running along the arms and into his bulky back armour, where a small but potent medical device could administer a variety of drugs to aid him if injured. It also had cannulas into ports along his spine to allow medical aid to be administered even if his arms were damaged. The whole array was controlled by SAM, the AI tailoring each dose to his biometrics and needs.

Finally, he felt a pinch at the back of his skull as the suit’s interface needle lined up with his DNI, and winced in anticipation before a stab of cold pain flared in the back of his skull. His vision blurred and his limbs shuddered and tingled, as if his whole body had pins and needles as the suit and DNI connected.

The pain stopped almost as abruptly as it began, and Jack took a huge breath, his mind suddenly flooded with sensation as the suit fed him data it was gathering on the immediate environment, as if he were breathing in the world around him. He let the sensation flow over through his mind for a moment to give himself time to normalize, before sending a neural command for the pod the release the armour.

There was a slight ‘thunk’ behind him as the locks disengaged, and he felt the suit settle as it finally supported its own 200kg weight. He carefully stepped over the lip of the pod, before running through test exercises to make sure his suit was echoing his motions correctly, squatting down low to the floor, twisting his torso this way and that. He rolled his shoulders, raising the pauldrons and hearing the faint whine of the servos , feeling the armour plates smoothly shift to allow the motion. He hopped a few feet in the air before landing with a thump that shook the room and had Stevens lean out of his office door.

“You all set, Jack?” the man asked, trying to sound confident, but his face betraying a hint of wariness after Jack’s recent anger.

“Sure boss, ready to go! “ Jack replied cheerily, the suit putting him in a good mood despite himself.

The other Exterminators often complained about it, saying that it felt like being in a walking coffin, but Jack loved it. Something about wearing the Exosuit appealed to him. He flexed his metal clad hands, feeling the power of the servos enhance his strength, the reissuing weight of the suit protecting him, and the secure feeling of its bulk. Some Exterminators wore the suit with dull acceptance, whilst Andrews liked it for the power it gave him.

Jack, He felt like he was born to wear it.

He reached up and grabbed his helmet, turning it over to check the visor was clear, before walking over to the elevator and unlocking his MUTT from the storage bay, a robotic arm sliding outwards griping the drone before placing it in the floor. It sat there for a moment in standby mode, its legs folded flat to its sides and its articulated sections retracted to make it into a half meter cube. It slowly began to unfold into its travel configuration, legs extending and armour shifting as it rose to its rubber tracked feet.

As he moved back to give the drone room he suddenly felt a moment of nausea, his skin felt momentarily clammy and his vision blurred, but it stopped as suddenly as it started.

“Hey SAM” he whispered, keeping a eye on Stevens and Martinez as they chatted in the locker room, “run a quick health check for me will you? I’ve been feeling a bit off today”

“Of course Jack,“ SAM gently replied through his DNI, “beginning analysis of blood sample and biorhythms now. I am detecting a slightly raised temperature and stress hormones. Do I need to request a suspension of the mission for medical leave?”

“No SAM, It’s probably just a cold, but if you find anything I’ll check in with medical after this run.”

“Understood Jack, would you like me to test my personality mods by telling you a humorous anecdote about a doctor’s office?”

“Umm” he muttered, slight nonplussed by the change in topic,” maybe later” Maybe he needed to look at the humour programs he’d installed again.

Stevens was waving him over to the big clear-screen in the workroom so Jack walked over to join him, carefully so as to allow for his larger size as he moved past the workbenches. Martinez was standing next to the supervisor as Jack approached, and both were studying a 3D schematic of the shuttle port.

“Alright Jack, have a look at the schematic, particularly the layout of the cold storage bay the Rats are reported to be in. At first we figured they must have stowed away in some cargo being moved from the ARC to another settlement, perhaps in a return container to Yorktown, but Martinez spotted another possibility.”

Martinez lent forward and tapped the screen, zooming in on part of the cold bay, to highlight what appeared to be a shaft set in the wall behind it, running through one of the support columns and into the ground beneath.

“This is one of the port’s old elevators. It used to carry materials up from the mine to the port for loading without having to go outside, but they were closed off when the mining stopped. I reckon the Rats got up through here and then gnawed their way through the cooling pipes into the bay.”

Jack followed the old lift shaft up from the ground to the port and noted its proximity to the cold bay. From the schematic, it looked like Martinez’s theory could well be right, and it could explain why Rats hadn’t been seen in other areas of the shuttle-port, as the lift sat in a small recess of its own behind a pressure door, sharing a wall with the cool bay. Stevens continued talking as he studied the section.

“All right, so it seems the best course of action is to have you enter the lift shaft at a surface access point, below the port. The first job will be to check on the shaft to ascertain if it has been opened, in which case you’ll have to block it with a temporary patch until I can get maintenance down there. If you find evidence of Rats you’ll move up the shaft and clear them out, before entering into the bay and heading to the cold store to clear that.”

“You can get into the cold bay from the back via this access hatch,” Martinez joined in, pointing to a small symbol on the back of the bay, next to the lift.” Hell. If it’s thin it might even be how the rats got inside”

Jack nodded and opened a nearby equipment locker, retrieving an attachable climbing rig for the suit, as it was unlikely any of the lifts access ladders remained near his entry point. Using automated screws it would bolt itself to hard points on the Exosuits exterior, allowing him to deploy high tensile carbon fibre via several small but powerful winches. It had two smaller winches to let him anchor himself to objects for safety, whilst a larger winch located near his chest piece that could was powerful enough to lift him the suit if necessary.

Stevens walked over to join him.“Martinez will drive you in a buggy to the access point and then head up to the shuttle port and watch the internal doors. Sorry he can’t back you up in a suit but, you know”

Jack nodded and carried his gear over to MUTT, the drone waiting for instructions after having finished its start-up cycle. He secured it and unclipped his helmet from his hip before sliding it over his head. For a moment his world shrank in the close confines, but as the suit interfaced his HUD came alive, projecting a running stream of data on the corners of his visor. He took his lance from the rack, checked its fuel levels and then turned to Martinez with a grin.

“Come on then, let’s go hunting!”

“No way “the burly head mechanic stated, his overalls stained with the clear oil used by the array of rovers around them. “Uh uh. There is no way you’re getting a rover. Not now. We have way too much work to do before the storm”

Jack was stood slightly behind Martinez, letting the other man argue to obtain transportation to the shuttle port. The garage around them was a frantic hub of activity, mechanics bustling around the parked rovers housed in the Ark, from the small two man patrollers designed to get emergency maintenance crews out to the distant radio towers, to six wheeled monstrosities for hauling cargo. Jack could even see the grey and silver ovoid of the turtle, a armoured dome of reinforced composite and radiation shielding which was designed to trundle through the worst dust and radiation storms the planet could conjure, parked in a bay of the side. The huge machine barely fitted into its bay, it being twenty metres wide and ten tall

“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a massive solar flare coming in just over a day, at which point we’ll be unable to send most of these vehicles outside for weeks. Any maintenance jobs requiring them need to be done now, which is why my crew have barely left this place in days, so no, you can’t have a six man crawler to go on a jaunt to the port. Now,“ the man finished, turning back to a partially stripped electric motor on the nearby workbench, “Fuck off!”

Jack sighed in frustration as Martinez tried to show the man the work order. Technically the Exterminators were a department falling under the same umbrella as the maintenance crew, but had priority access to equipment in certain situations. But the department’s that didn’t often need to call on the Exterminators to deal with pests, such as the Vehicle Department or External Systems Maintenance, treated them as pariahs, dragging their feet over shared resources, and generally being obstructive whilst staying just this side of disciplinary action.

To be honest, Jack could slightly appreciate the man’s reluctance. The majority of the vehicles used by the ARC were shielded against the background radiation and electromagnetic rays that bombarded the surface, but the solar storms pumped out more EM rays then they were rated for. Anyone caught out in the height of the storm would cook and the vehicle’s electronics would burn out. The only thing in the bay that could withstand the height of the Storm was the Turtle, and the heavily protected behemoth was one of a kind, designed to transport a work crew across the surface only in the direst of emergencies. If any work outside the ARC needed doing via vehicle, such as checking the external ports, sub buildings or any task too complicated for drones, it had to be done now, and out of the blue they were asking for one of the vehicles in highest demand.

Intellectually Jack knew all this but it didn’t stop his annoyance build into actual anger as the mechanic continued to stonewall them. As he stared at the man he visualized picking him up by the stained overall and shaking him until his head wobbled like a bobble head doll. Or maybe give him a flat palm strike to the chest, not to kill him, but just enough to break a few bones. Jack grinned behind his faceplate, before the realization of what he just thought struck him with a start.

He was into a bit of dark humour sure, but that little daydream was a bit heavy. Perhaps his frustration over the new arrivals had him more riled up then he thought, or maybe he was a bit off because of whatever bug he seemed to be suffering under. Either way violence was not the option. They did need to leave soon though; otherwise Stevens would be getting more calls from Sci-division. He considered for a moment, then grinned.

“SAM,” he said into his helmet mike, unnoticed by the arguing men next to him without his helmet speakers triggered.“Technically we’re able to just commandeer the vehicle right? Under the regs couldn’t we just take it?”

“Yes Jack, although you would require codes for the vehicle and airlock.”

“Ok SAM, you work on the access codes, I’ll get into the vehicle.”

He turned away from the arguing men and started across the bay towards a currently unattended hauler, confident that his improvements to SAM’s programming would let her into the airlock fairly easily. After all, he had revamped and improved on what was a former military AI, albeit a simple one.

He passed by mechanics working on other vehicles, uncaring of the sparks raining down on his armour, or the dirty looks and comments of the workers. Most of the work going on in the hanger wouldn’t have be alien to a old earth mechanic, with parts being reshaped or replaced, often with welders or grinders. the materials and tools might have improved, but at ascertain point fixing a broken parts or vehicle all relied on the same core skills.

The hauler he’d picked stood on 6 massive tyres, each almost as tall as him and at least a metre and a half wide. The haulers body was low-slung between the wheels, its boxy body four meters tall and wide, and stretching back ten meters including the cockpit. It was capable of raising and lowering its body relative to the ground via rugged suspension to aid movement over uneven terrain.

The cockpit looked like a slightly tapered crystal, tall enough to stand in at the back but narrowing to a flat wedge at the front, and was made up of segments of toughened techglass supported by alloy beams, It joined onto the long flattened metal hexagon of its storage and transport compartment by a flexible cuff, allowing the cockpit to adjust so as to remain level during movement. The transport and cargo pod was formed of treated alloy struts holding its hull together, sharp angles and functional construction instead of the sleek angles and curved edges favoured by civilian vehicles. The rover was a powerful, hardy vehicle for a tough environment. Jack liked it instantly.

Checking around to see if anyone was paying attention he looked at the entry pad by the door ramp. It was a simple touch pad entry with a ID lock, out in the field it could be opened with a hand, a elbow, anything that pressed the surface, so that workmen with their hands full could open the hatch easily. The lock was just for inside the garage to ensure non-authorized personal didn’t go for a joyride.

Jack triggered a hatch on his thigh armour to open and removed a multi-tool and began prying of the pad cover, exposing the wiring behind. He quickly sorted through the array of wires, ignoring the locking system and door controls and heading to expose a small chip tucked away at the back of the pad. SAM called up a picture of the garage behind him, showing the chief mechanic storming over with two of his workers as Martinez hurried along behind.

“Hey! Get the fuck away from the rover before you break something!”

He triggered the multi tool to shift into a sparker and carefully zapped the chip. The vehicle suddenly whined to life, its body shifting as the suspension activated. The large lamps mounted around the cockpit sprang to life, causing workers in front of it to shout in alarm, and an automated message began to display on Jacks HUD, announcing the vehicle activation and asking for ID. He quickly sent through a recognition package as the chief reached him, his fists clenched in fury.

“What the FUCK did you do you shit! If you’ve fried the circuits I swear I’ll..”

“You’ll what?” Jack said sharply, the volume of his voice amplified by the suits speakers to such a extent that the mechanic jerked back with a wince, drawing the attention of the whole garage.“You’ll what? Report me for commandeering a vehicle it’s my job to use? For resetting its administering ID so that you can’t lock me out of it? Or maybe for kicking the shit out of your man over here“ he said , nodding his head to the side a worker sneaking up behind him “because if he tried to hit me with that wrench I’ll have him written up for assaulting a Corp employee in the course of performing his duties,” Jack leaned forwards slightly and grinned “ but only after I shove my hand so far up his ass I can use him like a ventriloquist’s dummy!”

The mechanic stepped back in shock and Jack stared until he looked away. Turning his gaze to the two men flanking him, Jack raised an eyebrow and waited, daring the men to act. The bigger man on the left gritted his teeth and began to step forward but his boss put a hand on his shoulder.

“Easy Dillon, this had gone far enough” He looked at Jack warily, with perhaps a smidgen or respect in his eyes “Let them take the rover. They only have to get to the port so they’ll have it back soon, Yes?”

He addressed the last part to Jack, who nodded, letting the man save some face. Jack turned without another word and hit the pad, causing part of the back hull to begin lowering down to the floor to forming a ramp up to the rovers airlock. He walked up the steps, the sturdy buggy hardly shifting under the weight of the Exosuit. Martinez hastily pinged the work order over to the man’s smart pad before hurrying up the ramp and into the airlock after Jack. His shoulders tense as it rose behind him, sealing off the hatch.

“What was that about Jack?” he demanded as the airlock vents hissed to equalize the internal pressure “Why did you do that? Antagonize the guy? And what did you do to this rover?” The airlock cycle ended and Martinez opened the second airlock door and moved through the cargo-bay slash seating area towards the cockpit. Jack followed behind, feeling a bit guilty about stressing his friend. But he was too wound up himself to deal with small minded bureaucracy and interdepartmental politics. He wanted to get this job done so he could get back and rest.

Martinez moved to sit in the cockpit, rapidly strapping himself in and running the start-up procedures. Jack contemplated sitting in the co-pilots seat but, on inspecting the chair, decided he didn’t trust it not to buckle under his weight so instead he sat in one of the heavy seats in the cargo section and looked through the door and over Martinez’ shoulder. His friend swiftly moved the rover out of its bay, the electric motors whining as they powered the machine along the marked roadway towards the vehicle airlock in the far wall, the vehicles heads up display tracking their rout and occasionally projecting orange boxes around potential hazards, such as the heavy lifting drones moving vehicle parts around the hanger.

They pulled up to the airlock and Martinez tapped a command into the console and the huge doors slowly peeled open, warning lights flashing and a low alarm sounding as they slid into the wall recesses. Martinez smoothly drove inside before triggering the inner doors to close. Jack heard the hiss as the pressure equalized outside the hauler, precious air being evacuated back into the Arc to be replaced with the thin CO2 heavy atmosphere of Ares. Once the pressure was equalised outer doors started to pull upwards, wisps of fine read dust allowing inside until it was fully open allowing them to motor out of the hanger and onto the sunken roadway ahead.

The dark grey surface of the road was almost obscured by red sand and dust that regularly blew in to cover it, as if the planet fought to reclaim its surface from the human interlopers. Behind them rose the cliff face the ARC rested upon, with the silvered glass and metal of the ARC itself just visible a hundred metres above them if Jack craned his neck. The garage exit was flanked by low cliffs on each side, which sheltered it from the worst of the planet’s dust storms, but also meant a lot of cleaning so it wasn’t buried.

Martinez gunned the engines, speeding the rover along the wide surface of the road, its edges so obscured by sand that he had to use the HUD’s projected wireframe outline and light poles set along its edges every twenty meters to stay centred. Peering through the doorway into the cockpit, Jack could just about see the end of the cliffs ahead, the road opening up as they moved into the valley floor. To their left ran the monorail, its mighty concrete stands holding the rail itself a hundred meters above the ground, its huge support columns marching alongside the road heading towards the domed bulk of the shuttle port 10 kilometres ahead of them.

Jack decided closed his eyes and tried to grab a few moments shut eye as they travelled, letting the rocking of the suspension lull him into a fitful nap, but all too soon he felt the rover slow.

“Ok Jack, one disused elevator shaft for you to climb. Head on out the airlock and I’ll deploy the MUTT”

Jack stood and folded back the sturdy seat, still a little impressed that it had held his weight, before heading into the airlock. He lessened to the hiss as the air was removed until a warning light blinked from red to green on the panel, before triggering the external door. It opened slowly, the lowering ramp momentarily limiting his view to the huge concrete and metal base of the Shuttle Port above him. There was a muffled thump as the MUTT jumped down after him and Jack could almost imagine it wiggling its body in simulated canine glee.

Ahead of his was one of the huge concrete pillars that held up the Port, and he could see a recessed doorway sunk into it.“Ok Amigo,” Martinez said over the coms the rover slowly turned around, “I’m going to take this back tithe ARC, then I’ll catch the monorail over to join you. It’ll take me a hour or so, but from the looks of things you have a lot of climbing to do!” He ended with a chuckle, causing Jack to give him a affectionate middle finger as the hauler drove off, leaving Jack standing in the desert alone.

“Just a man, his AI, and his robotic dog!” he murmured, walking to the doorway, ”I hope your winch is working boy, otherwise you’re going to have to walk back to the ARC!”

He stopped at the door and scraped the sand of a panel before swiping his right forearm over the door’s sand scored lock, allowing it to read his smart pad from where it sat in its protective housing. The door creaked and slowly opened upwards, showing him a dark void beyond. Triggering his lights, he leaned inside and looked around. There was indeed a medium sized cargo lift shaft hidden inside, but it had long since been gutted of the mechanisms and lift itself. He looked up to see the shaft stretching up into the blackness beyond the reach of his lights, every 5 meters or so there was a metal lip that ran around the perimeter, along with areas that might once have held access ladders. Unfortunately, they had been removed, meaning that Jack would have to use his grapple and climbing gear to ascend the shaft.

He stepped back out into the light and looked up at the bottom of the port a hundred meters above him.

“Well boy,” he said to the MUTT, ”this is going to suck!”