Exterminator : The Dark Beneath

“There are few things more horrifying then finding yourself alone, trapped in the darkness without another soul around you, the incalculable weight of rock above. It dose strange things to you head that loneliness, and it takes a strong man to keep his wits about him”

-Adam Trent, survivor of the Western reaches mine collapse, Ares colony 2072

05:37 ,14 September, Geoplant station

A dull beeping slowly echoed through the blackness, gradually building in intensity. The low throb of pain followed, shifting and mercurial, like fog, without form or context. Slowly feeling returned beyond the pain, bringing with it the awareness of a body, spreading among the limbs before flowing into the chest and running up a spine like a electric shock.

Jack gasped as he woke, his eyes snapping open even as his lungs immediately seized, reducing him to a fit of coughing. He could taste copper in his mouth and spikes of agony stabbed through his chest as he breathed. His body ached and for a moment he wondered what was going on. Why was he lying face down in the darkness?

Suddenly it all flooded back, the plant, the explosion. The things. He tried to move his body, but realized something heavy was lying across his back, pinning him in place. He struggled, arms flailing for purchase, finding rubble under his grip but no traction. Finally, he stopped and panted, heart beating in his chest like a racing horse. The alarm continued and reflectively he focused to still it as he had done a hundred times before. Suddenly he could think again.

“SAM?” he croaked, hoping against hope the Exosuit’s AI was still intact.

His HUD flickered to life, gauges and outputs reading air supply, power reserves, but he focused on his left screen as small diagram of the suit sprung to life, yellow flashing warning lights covering its surface, causing him to sigh in relief. Yellow was OK, merely light damage, Red would have meant a major breach in the suits’ seal, exposing him to the mines atmosphere, not immediately deadly but if he’s been unconscious at the time..

“Jack, “SAM answered, her artificial voice sounding almost concerned, ”the suit has sustained damage but remains at 78% working efficiency. Environmental seals are holding, but I am detecting multiple light fractures, strains, abrasions, and a minor concussion.”

Jack nodded to himself as he tried to peer out of his faceplate but seeing only the faint reflection of his face, illuminated by the glow of his HUD wondering at first if it was locked to opaque, before realizing he could faintly make out grit. He must be face down in a pile of rubble. He tried to turn on his headlights but couldn’t see any difference as the loose rock was pressed over the lenses. Panic swelled again, what if he was trapped? What if he couldn’t get free, doomed to lie here until his suit systems failed and he suffocated, or worse, those things found him.

He breathed in and out a few times, trying to fight back the panic, and focused on slowly working his arms free before moving them under his chest. Once there he tensed his fore arms and pushed, man and machine straining against the weight on his back, like he was trying to lift the world.

Slowly he felt the weight shift off his shoulders, and heard the groan of metal and rattling as small rocks shifted against his armoured form. With a final gasp of effort, he dislodged the weight, light bursting into his helmet as he cleared the debris and rolled onto his side. The tunnel around him was a mess; fallen rock and support beams littered the area, lit by small fires doting the area.

He frowned for a moment, wondering how they could still be burning in the CO2 heavy atmosphere, before he realized with horror the source, the breather packs the workers had been wearing. Each flame came from a body, like macabre will-o-the -wisps dancing atop the fallen men.

He scrambled to free his legs of the rock and debris, ignoring his aching body as he crawled over to the nearest figure and turning the man over. He recoiled at the state of the man’s head, the front of his face burnt and crushed by the explosion. Jack looked around in despair.

“SAM, is the radar picking up any movement around me. Anything that could be a living person?”

“I am detecting several points of movement, most likely shifting debris, but nothing that suggests a living person. I’m sorry Jack”

He hung his head, carefully rolling the worker back over to hide his face. After a moment he looked up to study his surroundings.

He was in the old rail tunnel, with the way to the station to his right. A pile of rubble and support beams filled the tunnel from top to bottom, blocking both the tunnel itself and access to the maintenance route into the station, although at this point that might be a blessing, Jack shuddered to think what might have happened if it were open. The creatures, whatever they were, obviously saw humans as food, and the dead workers around him would have been a bounty. Hell, after seeing what they did to Andrews’ suit, Jack himself would have been easy pickings given time.

A rock tumbled down from a pile across from him, and Jack swivelled his head to play his lights over it. He stayed perfectly still, half expecting to see black shapes creep over the pile when a faint series of beeps and warbles come from under the pile. Cursing his stupidity Jack turned switched his HUD to communications and MUTT’s signal started pinging through, appearing in his HUD map as a small red dot coming from the direction of the pile.

He stood and limped over to the rubble, stepping around the pile to find a girder leaning across it, fallen from the now partially collapsed tunnel roof. The pile shifted again, dislodging a few loose rocks to reveal a battered looking mechanical leg scrabbling for purchase futilely on the debris. Jack carefully knelt and began to remove the rubble, eying the roof overhead and pausing every time the mass shifted. The tunnel had taken such damage that he was worried about a further collapse, but working slowly and carefully he finally exposed the MUTT’s front leg and torso. The Drone was a mess, its armour bent and buckled, and Jack could see several of its external storage compartments had been ripped free. The drone had retracted its sensor to sit snugly on its chest, and as he brushed the dust from it, the drone slowly extended it, turning to look at him and giving a week and stilted series of beeps and warbles, sounding oddly like a wounded animal. Jack winced as he noticed the right side optics had been shattered or sheared off.

“OK boy” he said gently, its damaged state somehow putting him in mind of a wounded dog, “let’s get you out of there.”

Jack slowly excavated the drone, taking his time whilst keeping an eye on the beam. Eventually he managed to free the majority of the MUTTS limbs and torso, with just the large metal beam resting on the concertinaed rubber protection that covered the articulated section between its front and back segments. Jack looked around for something to inset under the beam to hold it steady, finally locating a length of solid looking pipe. With some wiggling and a few choice swear words he managed to wedge one end into a crater in the concrete floor, and the other into a large chip in the beam.

“OK SAM, I need you to carefully plot a course for the MUTT to more out from under the beam without hitting the support. I’ll stick nearby to help if needs be, but I’d prefer not to have the ceiling fall on my head ..again.”

The SAM had the MUTT slowly rotate its front torso to give its powerful upper legs a grip on the concrete floor, and began to carefully pull the drone forward, its smaller rear legs kicking feebly. Jack was just worrying that its rear motor processes where damaged when the pile suddenly shifted, shifting the weight of the heavy beam full onto his makeshift support. The metal groaned under the height alarmingly, and Jack swiftly ran his headlights up to its length, noticing an alarming bend start to appear. Instinctively Jack leapt forward, rock crunching under his boots and he landed in a squat. He grabbed the hand holds on the MUTTS front shielding and heaved, extending his legs with all his might to send him and the Drone flying out from under the beam as the support finally gave out with a shriek of tortured metal. The beam dropped with a boom, accompanied with huge chunks of rock from the ceiling, sending a wave of dust billowing down the tunnel.

Jack instinctively curled his body into as smaller shape as he could manage with the suit’s bulk and waited until the echoes settled down. He gingerly raised his head, the dust still hanging thick in the air highlighted by his suit lights. The MUTT staggered to its feet next to him, slowly stretching its limbs and body. It looked a bit like a cat or dog stretching after a nap but in reality its programming was assessing the level of mobility and damage.

Jack was just about to ask SAM for a update on the drones condition when he became aware of a odd sound, like the scrape of something hard on stone. He moved slowly over to the caved in tunnel entrance, playing his headlights over the pile of rubble and metal stretching from the floor to ceiling. The sound was definitely coming from beyond it. A few small stones rattled down from his right and he moved over to investigate them, noting that a large section of the metal ducts that used to hold and protect various electrics had fallen from the ceiling and been buried. The foot square piece of metal had apparently survived the fall and receded into the pile, and as Jack approached it the sound intensified.

He knelt and peered inside, his lights showing that for several meters the square duct appeared to be relatively straight and undamaged, but towards the end it had buckled somewhat, narrowing the gap to a few inches, through which Jack could see something shifting. For a moment he starred down the pipe, his mind trying to piece together what was going on when suddenly the movement stooped and a red eye appeared, Jack’s light shining of the back of its retina to make it glow eerily.

With a cry Jack stumbled backwards, his boot slipping to drop him on his ass but he just used his hands and legs to keep scrabbling backwards in fear.

“SHIT” he cursed as his back suddenly struck something solid, jolting him from his panic as he realized he’d hit a wall. He knew now what the sound was! The creatures were digging through the collapsed tunnel to reach him.

“SAM!“ he shouted on the verge of panic “ We need to move now! Is the MUTT mobile?”

“Yes Jack,“ his suit AI replied, the artificial calm of her voice unchanged by the circumstances, ”the Unit is not functioning at optimum capacity due to damage but it is mobile. Its exterior storage is destroyed and several built in storage containers are compromised but there are still several day’s worth of rations and supplies on board.”

“OK SAM, we need to start moving now, I don’t know how long it will take those things to get through the collapse. Besides,” he said with a sudden realization, “sooner or later they’ll find a side tunnel or access duct to move through.”

Jack started walking up the track away from the collapse, for the moment his focus on putting as much distance between him and the creatures as he could manage. He headed up the tunnel for about twenty minutes, the odd bit of fallen rock or debris caused by the explosion diminishing as he continued. The MUTT juddered along behind him, its back right leg creaking slightly as it moved and giving the occasional wobble but managing a good pace.

“SAM, bring up a image of the..things , that attacked us”

The suits AI brought up a recording of the attack, and Jack swiftly sped through it until he found a relatively clear shot of a creature as it bit down on his elbow guard. He shivered slightly as he looked at it in detail for the first time since the panicked frenzy of the attack on the Geoplant.

Its head was similar to a Rats’, but bigger and broader, with a more developed jaw and a jagged maw of sharp teeth. In the picture he could actually make out the signs of his elbow armour collapsing under the bite, demonstrating the strength that the creature possessed. The elbow armour was a weakness, as was any joint in the suit, seeing as it had to be thin enough to allow for mobility, but even so it was solid enough to stop most bullets at reasonable range, let alone a blade. From his memories of bio-mechanics he did a rough estimation of its bite strength and came up with at least 800 to 1000 Newton’s, which was insane considering their size. A creature’s bite force quotient was the power of its bite divided by its weight in kilograms. From what he remembered a lion or a tiger were around 150-130, the jaguar, with the strongest bite for any big cat for its mass was 137. But as the creatures seemed to range in size from a small dog up to a medium one, their bite quotient would be huge, even though they seemed to be built of dense muscle and bone. Their bite quotient must be in the 200s or higher, larger than any terrestrial creature. Also its teeth had to be incredibly strong and hard not to shatter under the pressure against the ceramic armour.

Their resemblance to the Rats was marked, but the increase in size and ferocity were terrifying. The black tinged scales apparently acted as natural armour. Their claws were vicious, as were their teeth, so much so that they could even pierce the weaker parts of a Exosuit!

The eyes though…..His attention kept returning to the eyes, wide and staring, bright red like arterial blood, with darker vessels worming through it. He couldn’t verify it, and the scientist in him objected, but as he looked into the creature’s eyes he felt its hunger, its pain, its madness. He cycled thought the pictures and studied other creatures, noting that although they all bore the same general characteristics, black scales, six clawed limbs, and red eyes, many bore signs of apparent mutations; under formed scales, or ones so overdeveloped that they reminded him of a scaled anteater, with deformed limbs, or over developed claws, mouths so filled with teeth the creatures seemed hardly able to open or close them.

Whatever they were, they seemed to have evolved from the Rats, most likely from exposure to some kind of mutagen. But what? And, why appear now.

He tripped over a rail and staggered slight, cursing as he realized he’s let his mind wander. Whatever the creature’s nature was or where they came from seemed less important right now than reaching the surface to warn the ARC. He glanced around and realized that in his panic he hadn’t thought about how he was going to get out of the mines.

“Stupid Jack!” he berated himself, “what is it that every survival program you’ve ever watched said. Always think about your objectives and have a plan. SAM, pull up a map of the mines will you, and give me our exact location.”

A wire-frame model of the major mine-works sprang up in his HUD, showing the vast tangled spread of tunnels, rooms, and facilities burrowed through the rock, with the ARC overhead. SAM swiftly zoomed in to the rail tunnel, the rest of the map fading as she narrowed its focus”

“I cannot connect to the ARC net or any other signal so am unable to accurately ascertain our location, but I have identified the general location.”

The map narrowed until he could make out the rail tunnel he was in, denoted with yellow lines. A section was highlighted to give his rough location, a 1 km stretch of tunnel. Around it lay a maze of access tunnels, abandoned lift shafts to deeper levels, and maintenance rooms. The majority of them bore a small no-access symbol, meaning they where most likely sealed off to prevent gas leaks or movement by Rats or psuedoscorpions, although somehow Jack didn’t think there were many left now, seeing how ferociously the “creatures” searched for food.

Jack ran his eyes across the map, looking for any access route that would lead him towards the ARC without nearing the Geoplant, but after 5 minutes he still couldn’t identify an open route nearby. His best bet was probably to try and head up and away from the ARC, hopefully joining onto one of the subsurface access roads that used to run all over the valley.

Jack started walking again, taking a sip from his helmets water tube, sighing with pleasure as the plastic tasting water, his thirst making it taste like the purest spring water. As he walked he kept playing his light around the tunnel, looking for some indication of where he was. If he could find one of the many maintenance routes off it, it should be numbered for location, giving him a better idea of where he was. The tracks in front of him where still in good condition, the heavy alloy metal of the rails and concrete sleepers standing up well to the damp and decay, unlike the lighter or more “advanced“ materials of the power systems. Apparently Gentech had considered pulling up the rails to recycle them, but it was decided that this wasn’t cost efficient and, who knew if the mines might be reopened one day?

Finally, after almost half a hour of walking his helmet light caught the glint of a reflective panel on the side of the tunnel ahead of him. Hurrying slightly, he approached and grinned as he saw a partially exposed maintenance hatch, a badly stained sign sticking out of the wall proclaiming to be hatch CD-83.

“OK SAM, I’m by CD-83, it this and tell me where we are”

The map shifted slightly and a glowing red dot appeared giving his location. By the map heading he was about 2 km southeast of the ARC and 3 deep, putting him out under the ARC valley floor. Ideally he needed to head upwards as soon as possible and start heading north. If he kept following the rail tunnel it would lead him further from the ARC, its end terminus being a smelting plant 50km to the south. From the map he calculated that his best bet was to follow the tunnel another half km to the next station and then hopefully use a maintenance shaft to reach the levels above. It was a bit risky, the decay in the area might mean the access ladders where gone, but it was his best choice.

He was just about to head off when he noticed a scuffmark in the dust by the door. He leaned down, realizing that on closer inspection that the seams of the door were free of filth, as if it had been opened recently. Cautiously opening the hatch, he saw a narrow corridor stretching away from him into the darkness, and in the dust on the floor the clear tread of fresh boot prints, the same make worn by the plant workers.

“Someone else made it!“He whispered in shock. He’d assumed that the other workers who survived the creatures’ attack had been killed in the explosion, but some must have made it out. They probably woke before him and assumed he was dead. He excitedly knelt by the tracks, trying to estimate their numbers, but he wasn’t exactly a trained tracker. His best guess was that there where at least two or three different boot prints, along with the odd drag mark, probably from someone’s injured leg.

He stood and was about to head after the tracks when he paused. The best way back to the ARC was through the station ahead, so he should really head that way. The workers were probably trying to find a hatch nearby, but without his suits map system and SAM’s help, they had no way of knowing the route ahead was likely blocked.

He fretted for a second before sighing. Leaving other survivors down here wasn’t something he could bring himself to do; they’d most likely die without him. Not only did his suit give them the best chance of finding a safe route to the surface, it also offered the only chance of them surviving if the creatures found them.

Resigned he started moving along the corridor, awkwardly shuffling to keep his helmet and shoulders from scraping the carved rock and plated metal.

The maintenance corridor stretched back 50 meters into the rock before branching off to left and right, but Jack simply followed the scuffed marks in the dust. He began to worry slightly as the route started to lead them further from the Arc, guessing that the survivors were trying to put as much distance between them and any pursuers as possible. The monotony of the tunnel was occasionally broken by junctions, some leading into small utility rooms, space filled with the gutted frames of power relays or pumping stations, others leading down other tunnels. By this point he was only two hundred meters from the rail station in a straight line, but his suit pedometer read him having walked almost 2 km due to the tortuous nature of the route.

As Jack turned yet another 4-way crossroads he could see a faint glimpse of light coming under the door of a side room, and as he approached it the tracks seemed to diverge, a faint set moving into the room whilst two other’s spread out in either direction from it. He cautiously opened the door when a sudden bang echoed around the room as something struck his leg, pinging of to embed itself it the rock of the wall.

“What the shit!“ he shouted, pushing the door fully open to see a worker sprawled on a workbench at the back of the small room, one hand raised to point a bolt gun at him.

“Oh fuck!“ the worker gasped, letting his arm drop to lower the gun, “Sorry man. I thought you where one of those... things!”

“OK!” Jack said, cautiously moving into the room, “Just don’t shoot me again.” The chance of the bolt gun actually piercing the suit was minimal, but it would be just Jack’s luck if the bolt ricocheted off him to hit the worker.

The room appeared to have once some kind of workroom, rows of wide metal shelves ran along either wall, whilst the back wall was lined with two workbenches along with what appeared to be a partially dismantled fabricator, its manipulating arms and cutting unit covered in dust. The worker lay on one of the benches, his orange and yellow overalls stained with dust filth. His dark skin was grey from dust and blood loss and his dread-locked hair was singed. A bloodied pressure bandage had been hastily wrapped around his chest and side, and from the blood seeping past its edge, not well.

Jack moved into the room, letting MUTT limp in after him before closing the metal door. He made his way over to the worker, eyeing the bloodied bandage.

“That looks pretty bad, mind if I take a look?”

“Go ahead brother,“ the man replied in a soft Caribbean accent, wearily letting his head sink back on the bench, “ Ma friends bandaged it before they headed out, but we don’t really have any medical stuff on us,” the worker broke off to cough weakly into his mask before continuing, ”they should be back any time now”

Jack had SAM scan the wound, the suits’ cameras and a careful application of its radar on the man’s chest showed him a deep laceration and several broken ribs, but likely the thoracic wall was intact and no major arteries had been hit.

“OK mate, this is your lucky day,” he said, kneeling by the battered MUTT and opening one of its side storage compartments, “of the few things that survived the collapse, one was the medical store, so I should be able to patch you up some more and make your breathing a bit easier”

Standing Jack placed the medipack on the bench and started to open it, but reconsidered as he looked at his battered and filthy gauntlets. Trying to do any medical work with them would most likely expose the wound to a rather unpleasant mix of dust, blood and filth.

“Ok SAM,” he said into his helmet mike, “I’m going to exit the suit so I can use my actual hands. Start the nano-bots repairing the more important components and keep the radar going. If you sense anything tell me immediately!”

He stepped backwards a bit and triggered the opening sequence. The armour creaked slightly as it opened, plates that had warped or buckled slightly in the collapse grinding as they opened. Jack kept the helmet on so he could use its internal air filter and vision modes.

Stepping out in his under-suit he shivered slightly, not so much from the cold, as his clothing was designed to protect from a range of extreme temperatures, but from the sudden feeling of vulnerability being outside the protective shell of the Exosuit.

The worker coughed again, causing Jack to shake off his apprehension and move back to the bench. Opening the kit he removed a hypo syringe and primed it with a mild painkiller and general antibiotic, before triggering it on the man’s neck, the applicator puffing as a small burst of nitrogen propelled it into the workers bloodstream.

“OK, I’m going to pull back the bandage and clean the wound before binding it again. The painkiller should cut down on any discomfort but you might want to look away”

The worker nodded, turning his eyes to the ceiling as Jack carefully cut through the treated fibre of the bandage and peeled it back. The right side of the worker’s chest had several deep cuts, starting a few inches under his armpit and running down and across his chest under the pectoral to stop above the lower ribs. Jack could see a few white fragments in the wound, and as he looked he realized they were chips of bone from the worker’s ribcage.

He quickly sprayed a mild coagulant over the wounds to stop the sluggish blood seeping from the torn muscles, as the local atmospheric gas concentrations didn’t lend to natural clotting, low O2and highCO2and N2 hindering the clotting process. Jack’s left wrist felt stiff so he rolled it a few times to ease the joint, wincing slightly as it irritated the bite mark. He still couldn’t believe that the creature had bitten through his armour. Having worked some more mobility into his arm he turned back to the job at hand.

“So, what’s our name mate?“ Jack asked as he used a sterile wipe to clean the blood and dirt from around the wound, ”Seems like I should know your name, You know, seeing as I’m busy patching you up and all.”

“ Amani, ma names Amani. Got myself clawed up real bad by those ’tings out there.” the man said giving Jack a weak grin.

“Well mate, I’m Jack. When we get back to the ARC I think you’ll probably owe me a drink or too for patching you up. I accept anything imported!” Jack joked as he finished cleaning out the cuts, more concerned with distracting Amani from the pain then the quality of his conversation. He took a few butterfly stitches from the pack and used them to pull the cuts closed, Amani groaning as the pain seeped through the anaesthetic. Once the wounds were pulled shut Jack sprayed synth-skin over the area to seal it.

“Not to rush you or anything,“ Amani stuttered” but it’s real cold down here and the atmo’ feels pretty bad against my skin”.

“Not too much longer now “ Jack assured him, taking some bandages from the pack” now I’ve got to wrap the smart bandages around your torso so I’m going to have to sit you up for a moment so this will hurt”

Amani groaned as Jack sat him up and quickly wrapped the wide strips of sealed plastic around his chest, before gently lowering him back down as the smart bandage adhered to his skin to create a seal as its treated inner surface analysed Amani’s skin before it secreted a tailored cocktail of chemicals to aid repair and fight infection.

“Look on the bright side Amani, If we were a few levels further down the air would be bleaching your clothes and skin right now with all the sulphur dioxide in the air!”

“Really?” Amani replied weakly, giving Jack a questioning look,” Atmo’ that bad down there?”

“Worse!” Jack replied bluntly as he packed up the kit. “Why do you think we wear the Exosuit down ARC? In the lower levels even this environmental suit would degrade in a matter of hours. The alloys and ceramics of the suit are designed to resist corrosion so they hold up fine. Speaking of which, I need to take a look at it. You try and relax for the moment.”

Leaving Amani, Jack headed back over to his suit to inspect it, slowly walking around it to note the extent of the damage. The heavy plates that covered the majority of the suit were fine, eight centimetres of hardened battle ceramic and tungsten alloy, apparently strong enough to resist the creatures’ teeth, although as he looked at the scoring of the surface Jack wasn’t sure how long it would hold up to sustained attack on one area, given time the creatures might be able to dig their way through.

The problem was the joints. Like every suit of plate armour since the dawn of time the suit had to trade defence for mobility around moving parts, creating weaknesses at the joints where the material had to be thinner to allow mobility. The Exosuit used specialized polyaramide material to cover the moving parts, with thinner ceramic and alloy plates attached to them. On the knees two curved segments could slide over each other to give mobility and protection. His left knee joint had taken a beating; several holes had been punched through the 2 cm plating and into the material below, only luck had made them miss damaging the series of servos that articulated the joint.

Other areas had also sustained damage. His right shoulder and forearm had been pierced several times, as well as the overlapping plates around his torso that permitted him to rotate his upper body whilst still providing protection. The worst damage was to his left forearm, where the creature had bitten through the wrist armour, the under-suit beneath it and into his arm.

His under-suit had self-sealed the breach quickly, preventing further contamination, but Jack just had to hope that the series of antibiotics and nanobots SAM had administered would be enough to kill off anything pathogenic the bite had infected him with. The wrist was sore and painful, but seemed to be usable with a reasonable degree of dexterity and strength.

Moving over to the MUTT, he retrieved a repair kit and took out a tube of repair paste. Basically a nanoparticle infused ceramic adhesive, he carefully squeezed it out into or over the various holes and scratches on his suit, blocking the gaps and strengthening the armour. The paste-like substance would rapidly heat up and then solidify, creating a hard seal over the damage. Although not as strong and far more brittle the armour itself it would nevertheless provide protection until he could repair it properly.

“Wait a moment,“ Jack muttered, “I can repair some of the damage here. SAM,” he called, raising his voice slightly “ are you using the new chest plates’ nanobots to repair the damage?”

“Yes Jack, although the progress had been slow as I have been rationing the use of nanites. The reservoirs of the suit are limited and I have calculated that the amount of nanobots required to fully repair the surface would compromise my ability to repair damaged systems or meet medical emergencies later. However, I have now tasked the bots with optimizing the distribution of the repair compound, which should aid its efficacy greatly!”

Jack started to relax when SAM continued, “However, during the repairs I have discovered damage that eluded my initial investigation. At some point during the attack an impact on the back plating stuck with sufficient force to rupture a segment of alloy protecting my CPU core”

“What!” Jack shouted, forgetting to mute his mike, causing Amani to jerk from his slumber, “your CPU housing is compromised?” Jack moved to the back of the suit and immediately noticed several small pieces of metal sticking out of the plating. As he leaned closer, he realized they were just the tips of spear like pieces of jagged of metal that had lodged right in the spinal groove, a long delve in the back plate that allowed the torso armour to flex slightly whilst providing protection for his spine.

“How the hell did we miss this, SAM?“ he whispered, light headed from the realization of how far the metal must have penetrated through his back plate to reach the core. It was recessed deep into the plating, almost next to his under suit, a reinforced repository in which the Exosuit’s main core CPU was housed. It contained the majority of the AI programming and memory that made up her personality matrix. If damaged, SAM could cease to function. The suit could continue to operate without its AI core, backup processors placed around its armour would kick in to control vital processes, but its effectiveness would be greatly hampered without AI directing its responses, but more importantly SAM would be gone. Sure Jack had backups of her programming, but they were all early versions, basic personality and vocal responses, not the complex interplay of data and memory that made what he could only think of as her mind, or maybe soul.

“I’m sorry Jack, the internal suit sensors are reading normal in that area, I can only assume at some point they also suffered damage, causing them to erroneously read as functioning normally. Fortunately, my core is still intact, but the plating covering it is greatly compromised, and removing the intruding metal without precision equipment could damage my systems.”

“So we have to leave it in there until we reach a decent workshop? Can’t the nanobots break down the metal and repair the damage?”

“Yes, given time, but due to the level of penetration and the extend of the repairs necessary, this would require several days and the majority of the reservoirs. Over time I can synthesis new nanites given raw materials, but I calculate that would take 127 hours not factoring without further usage of stock for repairs.”

Jack nodded glumly, still shaken at how close he had come to death. A few more inches of penetration and it wouldn’t have been just SAM who died, the metal would have pierced his T3 and T4 vertebra, paralyzing his legs, and any further penetration would have entered his chest cavity.

In all the time as an Exterminator he had only come so close to death once, but had never had his Exosuit been so badly damaged or compromised. His confidence was definitely shaken by this reminder of his own mortality.

He took a deep breath and tried to collect himself. No matter how damaged the suit was it was still mostly functional. He still needed to get out of the mines and back to the ARC, hopefully extracting Amani and the other survivors at the same time.

He headed back to the MUTT, retrieving a few undamaged self-cooking meals and took one over to Amani, breaking the seal on the foil wrapped package to start it heating. He cleared a space on the next bench and began eating his meal. He figured he’d take few minutes before re-entering the suit to go out and collect Adams friends, but for the moment he needed to refuel though, if he were totally honest with himself, he also needed a few minutes of calm before he could face the darkness of the tunnels, and the things that waited for him there.