Chapter 132: (Nightmare)

Falmo'o shook his head. "Yes, we've learned that about you Terrans. That's why we shoot you in the back of the skull."

Taynee laughed. "Nobody has one of those any more. Not since The Glassing. I told you that, and your crew that, before," she turned around, lifting her hair off the back of her neck. All she had was a gear, made of black ink with thick lines. There was a symbol in the middle that somehow Falmo'o knew was her Imperium Codex Number.

Falmo'o noted that some cargo nets had been arranged into a system that would be comfortable. He trotted over and settled into it. Looking around, he saw there were five other cradles. He snorted, the one he was in was uncomfortable.

"That one's Dulmo'ok's bunk," The Terran female said. She pointed at another one. "That one's yours."

Glaring at her with his side 3 eyes he moved over to the one she had pointed out and settled down.

It felt just right.

The Terran female was grinning. He knew it annoyed him when she did that but he didn't know why. He looked over and saw that his entire team's names were there. They all had line markers above them. Four lines and a diagonal line through the four. Kruto'o's name had four sets and three uncrossed lines.

His own name had none.

"Gonna hafta update your count, Falmy," the human said. She took a deep inhale off the tube and held her breath for a long moment before exhaling slowly.

He picked up the red paint marker and slowly marked a single line. Afterwards he looked at the Terran female. "How many for you?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. I stopped counting."

"May I ask you questions?" Falmo'o asked. If the atomic mine really hadn't worked then perhaps she might tell him how to get off the station with any useful information and return home.

She sighed. "Go ahead. After so many times with the others, even the ones before you, I'm pretty much used to being an information kiosk."

"What is this place?" he asked.

"The official name or what we call it now?" Taynee laughed. "We call it Hell now. Back when we first got here? Back when we built the place?" she sighed. "Dark Reach. We called Dark Research, even though it was actually called the Imperium Dark Neutron Research Facility."

She slowly shuffled her bare feet back and forth. "It was part of Overproject Whisper."

Falmo'o frowned. "Imperium? Is that part of the Confederacy?"

She laughed at that, choking and coughing on the smoke for a moment before she wiped her eyes and looked at him. "Before you four legged four armed centaurs got here, we'd never heard of the Confederacy. I doubt they've heard of us."

Falmo'o frowned. "But you're a Terran?"

Taynee shook her head. "Like I told you and keep telling all of you who keep dying: I'm Terran Descent. I was born on Tucker-338, the Dancing Wind Dome. Terra got glassed and we're going to glass the bugs back."

Falmo'o stared at her. The war between the Terrans and the Mantid had been eight thousand years ago.

"You cannot expect me to believe you are over 8,000 years old," he sneered.

She shook her head. "I don't know. Days, weeks, months, they blur together. I've been killed a few times," she blew smoke out. "You executed me twice, by the way. Thanks for that."

Falmo'o just stared at her as she lifted up the neural pistol. "You put this right against the base of my skull and pulled the trigger. The second time you killed me when you panicked and knocked me down Grav Lift Seven."

"If I killed..."

"I told you, we don't stay dead," Taynee laughed. "I know, you lost time. Hell, you haven't gotten to the weird part yet. But you will," she blew smoke out and stared at him. "You will, Falmy, you will find out what it is like here. What your men learned."

There was a thumping on the door.

Falmo'o got up. "A member of my team, perhaps?"

Taynee waved her stick, trailing smoke. "Sure, Falmy, go check. I'm sure it couldn't hurt."

Falmo'o snorted at her, moving off the cradle, and moved over to the door. He pressed the intercom button.

"Identify yourself," Falmo'o snapped.

"Dru'ulgot," the voice was gurgly, but definitely identifiable. "Open the door."

He spun the wheel and started to pull.

"Next time, after you wake up, use the video intercom first," Taynee said.

The door opened all the way.

A massive suit of powered armor, the plates thicker than Falmo'o's hand, taller even than the humans he had seen, was on the other side of the door. The plates were red, with white edging, cratered with hits from kinetic weapons, slag running down from pockmarks from energy weapons.

Falmo'o looked up, to see the face of the biped in the armor who had imitated Dru'ulgot, pilot of the ship they had taken to the Demand Answers, and stepped back as horror filled him, his crests inflating defensively around his neck and on his back.

Dru'ulgot's face had been stripped to the bone, the eyes still in the socket but pierced by explosive bolts, his teeth replaced with the duralloy teeth from a chainsword. He had great horns made of black durachrome screwed into his head and flesh bulged out of the collar of the power armor.

"Open the door," Dru'ulgot groaned, his breath smelled of torn meat, ruptured bowel, and rotting blood.

His hand came up, the armor hissing and whining, the massive gauntlet wrapping around Falmo'o's neck. It lifted him up, off the ground.

The fist tightened, Falmo'o felt the blood hammer in his temples for a moment. Then, crazily, everything tilted to the side. He fell next to his own body. Crazily around, he could see the severed, crushed stump of his own neck pumping out blood onto the floor.

"Never answer a door you can't see the other side of," Taynee said, her voice sounding resigned. "At least he won't throw us out the airlock. He'll just stomp us into gobbets."

Everything went black.

"Well, come get some."

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Falmo'o coughed, on his hands and knees, retching and choking, his upper torso bent forward so he could brace himself on the durachrome floor. Someone was hammering on his back, helping him cough up the clotted blood and cold bile.

"Get it out," a male voice said. "Damn, Falmy, someone did a number on you."

Falmo'o scrabbled to his feet, opening his eyes. He was in a mostly empty room, what looked like smashed glass coffins around him. The human was in a blue jumpsuit with a gear on its left breast and stepping back from Falmo'o. The Lanaktallan noted that the human was big, bigger than most humans, half again the height, twice as wide, and covered with corded muscle. The jumpsuit barely fit, stretched over the muscle. In one hand he held a massive submachinegun like other beings would hold a pistol.

"How many times?" The human asked.

Falmo'o coughed, spit on the sticky and stained durachrome floor. "How many times what?"

"Which death?" The human asked.

Falmo'o wracked his brain. "Um, twice now."

"It gets easier."

He spit again and looked at the human. He had what looked like metal cables slightly exposed where the skin had split over it on his neck. There was a massive scar and a visible metal plate on the side of his head. His face was scarred up and, with a tad bit of shock, Falmo'o realized the human male's eyes were real flesh.

"I know. Human's don't die. The device in the back of your neck," he said, hawking and spitting again. More clotted blood, more slightly warm bile.

"A SUDS? Nobody has those any more. The whole network's full of nothing but screaming," the human male said, looking around slowly. "The Mantids glassed Terra, no more SUDS."

Falmo'o shook his head. "That was thousands of years ago. You use them again."

The human chuckled. "I know, I know. By your standard I'm over 8,000 years old even though it hasn't been like that for me."

"Where, where am I?" Falmo'o asked. He remembered something.

Whisper?

"A research station. It has some fancy name, we just called it Dorkness Station," the human chuckled. It sounded like ice in a bucket.

"What was researched here?" Falmo'o asked.

"Ugh, this again. You've asked me a dozen times, every time you've woken up around me," the human chuckled.

"I've only died twice," Falmo'o protested.

"Not from my point of view. You've died like fifteen times," The Terran said.

"What was researched here?" Falmo'o asked. He noticed he was wearing a cloth jumpsuit, tailored for a Lanaktallan.

"That," the human said, waving his hand. "The neutron star. Whisperer in the Dark." The human started moving out of the room, stopping briefly to check a box on the wall.

It was empty except for a bloody handprint inside.

Falmo'o frowned. "Whisperer in the Dark?"

"Yeah, the neutron star. You can hear it when you're standing on the surface. A kind of crackling whisper. Like ten thousand people whispering to you," the human checked around the corner, then turned it, his weapon held up.

"You can't stand on a neutron star. It's thousands of degrees. Your skin would melt," Falmo'o said.

The human chuckled, stopping to listen at a hatch. After a moment he started spinning the wheel.

"You say that every time," the human said. "Whisperer in the Dark is a cold neutron star."

"The radiation would fry you," Falmo'o said.

"The radiation doesn't start until just over two miles from the surface," The human said. He pulled the door.

There was a rippling explosion sound and the human fell back, his massive chest erupting in blood that sprayed all over the hallway, all over Falmo'o, covering him in sticky, iron smelling primate blood.

A second before the mass reactive slugs found him, Falmo'o realized that the one firing the weapon...

...was him.

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Falmo'o jerked awake as the door to the tool shop opened.

Sighing, he picked up the paint stick and looked at the lines. He had one there. He painted another and then another.

"You're back," Taynee said. She limped in, dragging a bottle. "Got us some nutripaste. Only thing that really sucks is after you die, you're really hungry."

She saw the lines and shook her head. "Three in a row?"

"Yes," Falmo'o said.

She had been right. It was getting easier to remember. Not before, not before he'd come to this dark place, but easier to remember what had happened between deaths.

"I shot myself with a gun. A human gun," he said.

Taynee winced as she pulled the door shut. "Oof, I hate that. I got shanked by myself once. About a dozen times later I shanked myself."

"So it's all loops?" Falmo'o said.

Taynee sat down, opening the box and pulling out another white stick and lighting it with a torch. She inhaled and blew out smoke.

"No. See, when I got shanked by myself, I was wearing a pair of coveralls and the myself that shanked me was in an armored vac-suit. When I shanked myself I was wearing underwear and the one I shanked was wearing an armor onsie," she shrugged. "It's more than loops, Falmy."

"Oh," Falmo'o said. "I was with a really big human."

"Combine Marine. Guy was bad news. Nobody's seen any of them in, well, a long time," she shrugged. "You went backwards," Taynee answered. "You were back before the Discovery of Hate docked with us."

Falmo'o waved in the direction of the metal docking tentacles. "Out there?"

"No. They tried ramming the neutron star. Lucky them, they never came back," Taynee said.

Falmo'o got up, moving around till he found a water pack taken from a Lanaktallan combat vac-suit. He picked up a flask of water and sipped at it. "He said that he's seen me over a dozen times."

Taynee nodded. "Wouldn't surprise me."

"Is it true?" Falmo'o asked.

"Is what true?" Taynee answered, picking up a hose and attaching it to the nutri-paste tank.

"That the neutron star is called Whisperer in the Dark and that you can stand on the surface and hear whispering," Falmo'o said.

Taynee nodded, moving over to a computer. Falmo'o was surprised to see it was a mechanical keyboard with a LCD screen, not holographic. She tapped at it a few times.

"What do you think?" she asked.

From the speaker came sounds. It was static at first, then more and more sounds blended in then separated.

It sounded like whispering from a thousand voices.

"It a speaker on the facility down on the surface. You have to use mat-trans to get there and I don't go there," She said.

More voices joined the whispering.

She shut it off.

"The Whisperer in the Dark," Falmo'o said.