The Madness Engine Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE MADNESS ENGINE

  An Asura Press Book

  PRINTING HISTORY

  First Edition Kindle / 2015

  Copyright © 2015 by Paul B. Spence

  Cover Art by: Jereme J. Peabody

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  ISBN: 978-1-929928-28-6

  www.paulbspence.com

  [email protected]

  For my parents – who taught me science is full of wonders

  Lo! ’t is a gala night

  Within the lonesome latter years!

  An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

  In veils, and drowned in tears,

  Sit in a theatre, to see

  A play of hopes and fears,

  While the orchestra breathes fitfully

  The music of the spheres.

  Mimes, in the form of God on high,

  Mutter and mumble low,

  And hither and thither fly—

  Mere puppets they, who come and go

  At bidding of vast formless things

  That shift the scenery to and fro,

  Flapping from out their Condor wings

  Invisible Wo!

  That motley drama—oh, be sure

  It shall not be forgot!

  With its Phantom chased for evermore

  By a crowd that seize it not,

  Through a circle that ever returneth in

  To the self-same spot,

  And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

  And Horror the soul of the plot.

  But see, amid the mimic rout,

  A crawling shape intrude!

  A blood-red thing that writhes from out

  The scenic solitude!

  It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

  The mimes become its food,

  And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

  In human gore imbued.

  Out—out are the lights—out all!

  And, over each quivering form,

  The curtain, a funeral pall,

  Comes down with the rush of a storm,

  While the angels, all pallid and wan,

  Uprising, unveiling, affirm

  That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

  And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

  "The Conqueror Worm"

  by Edgar Allan Poe

  Chapter One

  Commander Hrothgar Tebrey stumbled in the corridor as the Federation marine shoved him forward. He strained against the cuffs again. The lock was secure and the metal strong. He was capable of great feats of strength, but not ones enough to break the cuffs. His head ached from where he had been struck earlier, and blood ran steadily into his eyes from the shallow cut, obscuring his vision. He leaned against the bulkhead to rest until the marine jabbed him in the kidney with his rifle, and pain forced him forward again.

  He didn't give them the satisfaction of crying out, but he knew that if they wanted to make him scream, he would scream. Tebrey was far too familiar with Federation interrogation techniques to be complacent as their captive. If they wanted to break him, they would. They would scoop his brain out of his skull and dissect him neuron by neuron while he was still alive, stimulating the pain center of his brain the whole time. He'd seen it happen to prisoners during his service with the Federation. That he had stood by and not said a word was just another sin added to the list of things he would have to atone for one day.

  He didn't think it would come to that, though. They wanted him for something else. What they wanted him for, he could only guess. Not that his guesses brought him any comfort.

  For the last two days, he had been transferred from one ship to the next until he wasn't entirely sure where he was anymore. He thought from the feel of the decking under his feet and the general layout that he was on some station, but he wasn't certain. Given the short travel times, he couldn't be far from where they had captured him.

  The guards escorted him through a series of checkpoints and then into a small room with only one other occupant. Although Tebrey didn't recognize the man on the other side of the table, he recognized the uniform. The man was Special Operations, as Tebrey had been, probably a psion trained in interrogation. Tebrey grinned. They should know it wouldn't work on him.

  The last psion who had tried to get into Tebrey's mind had died hard. He remembered his feelings of rage and despair, back on Prism. Fleet intelligence had thought they could use a telepath against him then, and they thought so now, but it wasn't going work out any better this time. If this man opened his mind for even a moment, Tebrey would strip him bare. If he wanted to know what Tebrey had been doing, Tebrey would show him. Let him contemplate mental images of Thetas for a while.

  The guards forced Tebrey down into a harness, which locked around his arms and legs and kept his back bent at an uncomfortable angle. At a gesture, Tebrey's head was shoved to the side, and he was given an injection of something that burned like fire in his veins. The man across the table didn't speak until the guards had left the room and the door was sealed.

  "You are very lively for a dead man, Hrothgar Tebrey."

  "I get that a lot. Unlock me, and I'll show you just how lively I can be."

  "I don't think I'll do that, and even if I did, I don't think it would go as you plan."

  "Who are you?" The injection had hurt, and thinking was becoming difficult. Tebrey couldn't sense anything from the other man. He couldn't sense anything at all beyond his five physical senses. The room suddenly seemed too small.

  "I don't think you need my name right now. If you are wondering about the injection, it is just a little something for our safety. A special cocktail designed to shut down your physical and psionic abilities."

  "You don't think my detox implant will clear it?" Tebrey asked. He was unnerved by how slurred his voice sounded. He tried to read the other man again, but the effort just made his head throb.

  "Not in this case. It takes advantage of an exploit that we left in your implant for this very reason."

  "So the Federation always planned to betray me?"

  "It would be more accurate to say that we never fully trusted you."

  Tebrey shrugged. It seemed like a matter of semantics to him, but he didn't have a lot of choice, considering the circumstances. He knew from what had happened on Prism that at least some people in the Federation military thought he was an alien. He knew now that they weren't entirely incorrect, although not in the way they thought.

  "I'm not the enemy, you know," Tebrey said quietly.

  The man shook his head. "We have a few questions for you, Tebrey. It would go easier on you if you didn't resist. We would then be forced to use more... invasive measures. I'm sure you don't want that."

  "I'm dead either way."

  "True, but the manner of your passing need not be so painful or drawn out. The harness you find yourself in now monitors your biometrics, among other things. So answer carefully."

  Tebrey looked away from the man's eyes. Even without his psionic abilities, he knew the man was lying. It didn't matter what he said; they were going to dissect him and see what made him different. They probably wouldn't even bother to kill him first. A person didn't have to be a Theta to be evil. People like the man across from him liked to hurt people. It was that simple.

  "Ask your questions," said Tebrey.

  "What is your full name?"

  "Hrothgar Tyrel Tebrey."

  "Where
is your companion?"

  "Dead."

  The man looked as if he wanted to say something about that, but instead he made a note on the screen in front of him after looking at the other monitor.

  "Your wife?"

  "Also dead," Tebrey spat. "In the unprovoked Federation attack on Dawn."

  "Is that why you turned traitor?"

  "I'm not a traitor."

  "You actually believe that?"

  "I am not a traitor."

  "Security records from the recent attack on the Federation base at Xi Bootis would suggest otherwise."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Without warning, an overwhelming electric current surged through the clamps on Tebrey's arms and legs, arching him against the backrest and forcing an involuntary scream from him.

  "I apologize for such crude methods," said the man across the table as the pain faded. "I may have forgotten to mention that if I feel you are lying, you will be punished."

  "I will kill you," Tebrey promised quietly.

  "Improbable. Now, would you like to revise your answer?"

  "Check your machine. Was I lying?"

  "Why were you at Xi Bootis?"

  "My last orders were to seek out and destroy Theta entities within the Federation by any means necessary. That's why I was there."

  "Theta entities?"

  "Creatures such as attacked me on the FSS Kirov."

  "The official report doesn't mention anything about a creature."

  Tebrey gave a bitter and tired laugh. "Really? You're going to play this game with me?"

  "I assure you that I'm not playing any games. Are you?"

  "You think I let myself be captured?" Tebrey asked. "You think I didn't know what you'd do to me?"

  The man sighed. "Personally? I'm not sure. Who gave you the orders you claim to be following?"

  "Admiral Kasimira Meleeka."

  "Why would she do that?"

  "Why would the person responsible for protecting the Federation from internal threats to its safety and security issue me orders to do just that? You tell me."

  This time the pain lasted longer, and Tebrey was gasping and sweating when it ended.

  "Why?"

  "Fuck you!"

  Tebrey mercifully blacked out before it ended. When consciousness returned, the display on his datalink told him he'd only been out for a few minutes.

  "Good, you're back. Why did the admiral issue you these orders?"

  "As a survivor of the attack on the Kirov," Tebrey said through gritted teeth, "I was best suited to find and destroy the enemy."

  "No, I mean, why did she issue you these orders?"

  "I just told you that."

  The pain surged through him yet again.

  "I told you!" Tebrey screamed.

  Blackness welled up, and his mind slipped away.

  Θ

  Lt. Commander Tonya Harris cried out as a primary beam tore through the length of her assault shuttle. One minute the shuttle had been full of marines in mesh-armored spacesuits; in the next, over twenty of them were just gone, vaporized along with half the shuttle.

  Tonya tumbled in the cloud of debris, toward the Federation ship that had been the target of the assault. She didn't see any sign of the other shuttles, which meant they had most likely been destroyed as well. Ghost, her neo-panther companion, was alive but injured. Ghost's pain came through like a knife slowly twisting in Tonya's guts, but she couldn't tell how bad Ghost's injury was.

  A brilliant flash overloaded her visual sensor. At least thirty megatons, a part of Tonya thought dispassionately. Directly ahead – must have been one of ours. It had to be a Concord directed-energy warhead aimed at the Federation ship; otherwise Tonya wouldn't have been alive to think about it.

  The proximity alarm screamed just as her sensors came back online. Tonya's suit thrusters fired belatedly, but she still hit the hull at a bone-crushing thirty meters per second. Only her powered armor kept her alive. She tumbled along the hull until she was able to grab a protruding sensor spine.

  Ghost fared a little better. The massive bio-engineered panther had a skeleton reinforced with beryllium steel. The talons on her spacesuit also gave the neo-panther an advantage. She clung with desperation to a spine not far from Tonya.

  Tonya used her thrusters to move over to Ghost. A haze of reddish mist hung around the panther. Tonya quickly slapped sticky patches over the rents in her companion's spacesuit. There was nothing she could do for Ghost's internal injuries, but at least she wouldn't die from explosive decompression.

  Two hundred thousand kilometers away, the aft section of the CSS Sycamore exploded. Primary laser beams from three Federation ships raked the glowing wreckage and punched into the forward section despite the fact that the ship was no longer fighting. Secondary explosions sent debris spiraling in every direction.

  Tonya gritted her teeth in anger. There had been no thought of rescuing the hundreds of people who must have still been alive in that ship. The Federation was taking no prisoners, giving no quarter.

  The Sentient Concord had needed more information about the movement of Federation ships along the Frontier. The CSS Sycamore's part of the mission should have been simple. Unfortunately, the Sycamore had transited out of hyperspace right into a Federation destroyer squadron. They'd had no choice but to launch the assault teams and hope for a miracle. Tonya Harris had been part of an assault team ordered to take control of the Federation destroyer FSS Huron. In hindsight, it didn't seem like a very good plan. Especially for the two thousand crewman who had just died on the Sycamore. Tonya couldn't see how the other Concord ships were faring, but she doubted they were doing any better. If they had any sense at all, they were falling back.

  Leaving her and her companion stranded in enemy space with no hope of rescue.

  How are you doing, Ghost? Tonya thought.

  Still alive, came the faint reply.

  The telepathic link with her neo-panther was weaker than Tonya had ever experienced before, and she felt a shiver of fear. She was worried about her companion. The sticky patches seemed to be holding to the neo-panther's spacesuit, keeping the holes sealed, but that wouldn't help the internal bleeding. The cat's suit didn't have the sophisticated life-support systems that powered armor – such as Tonya herself wore – had to keep her alive. Shock was soon going to be a serious problem.

  Come on, Ghost, Tonya thought. We need to get you inside.

  How are you going to do that?

  I don't know yet. I'll let you know when I figure it out. For now, let's get out of sight. I'd hate for one of those other ships to see us and rake us with a defense laser.

  What? You don't want to get vaporized? We've never been vaporized before.

  Not today, Tonya replied pragmatically. There's a hull breach about sixteen meters forward of our position. Can you crawl?

  I'm holding on, so I still have strength. I can crawl.

  Tonya's own injuries were minor: mostly bruises and pulled muscles, maybe a few cracked ribs. The medical suite in her armor automatically provided pain relief and anti-inflammatory drugs.

  Reflected laser light pulsed along the hull, casting strange shadows. The destroyer's point-defense guns were clearing a path through the debris of her ship. Tonya had gotten lucky; the blast that tore the hole in the hull of the enemy destroyer had also disabled the point-defense systems along that section. If it hadn't, she would never have made it to the hull of the ship in the first place.

  Of course, if she had been truly lucky, the missile from the Sycamore would have hit the destroyer and knocked out the point defense in that section before her shuttle was hit. Tonya had never had that kind of luck. She always survived, but it was never easy.

  She had seen only one other survivor from the shuttle, but the poor bastard hadn't been able to grab hold of the hull. She didn't see what happened to him. She hoped that he'd been targeted and vaporized; it was preferable to asphyxiation.

  Chapter T
wo

  Geoffrey Meeks was miserable.

  The twelve weeks of intense neural bio-feedback training he'd received since coming to the Concord had left him mentally and physically exhausted. He knew more about killing than he had ever wanted to. He couldn't see how it was supposed to make him want to fight, though; he wanted anything but that.

  He'd taken to complaining about it to anyone who would listen during the infrequent times when he was wasn't in the simulation tank. Not that he ever spoke to that many people, mostly just the doctor who kept tabs on his health. He did admit, at least to himself, that the training had kept him from thinking about the loss of his home and family. At least, it kept him from thinking about that most of the time.

  The second month of his training had been the hardest for him. Those had been the weeks when the Concord had suppressed his knowledge that he was participating in a simulation. He had fought desperately, and died, over and over. The simulator was designed to accurately depict everything about battle, even dying. The medical virtual intelligence that watched over Geoffrey mercilessly revived him and reset the scenarios each time he failed.

  Failed meaning he'd died – again.

  It hadn't made Geoffrey feel any better when he had later learned that the simulator used data gleaned from biosensors worn in actual battles. He was experiencing the death of some nameless soldier every time he fucked up in the tank. It was creepy and disturbing.

  Fortunately, he was past the worst of it. He was currently working his way through the missions designed to teach him military history. This latest form of torture was a stint in the military during the Martian Rebellion of 2713. The unit to which Geoffrey was assigned had been cut off from retreat by the Martian rebels, and it was looking as if he had another interesting new death to experience soon, a toss-up between oxygen-starvation or asphyxiation and slow decompression. Mars had enough atmosphere in that era to keep a person from explosively decompressing, but it was nevertheless a slow and agonizing death.