by Richard Fox
“That’s insane,” Nunez whispered.
A small panel on the side of the capsule displayed their current route to their destination. Their capsule followed a blue line that traced a course through the expansive network, arriving at the capital on the far side of the planet.
“Now,” Jena said, turning to Carson, “when we arrive at the palace, there are certain protocols you must follow in order for our audience to be successful.”
Carson nodded, hoping the protocols weren’t as ridiculous as they had been with the Regulos. “Of course.”
“Your weapons will not be allowed in the Conclave.” Jena held up a hand, stopping Carson’s protest. “There is no other way. The Clerics will not admit you armed. Benit and his team will ensure they are secured and safe.”
Carson worked her jaw, trying to stem her frustration. “Sergeant Nunez and Voidman Hale will remain behind as well.”
Jena nodded. “I think that would be fine. Now, after we make it through security, you will be presented to the Conclave. They will hear your request, then dismiss you to confer among themselves and with the Crown before rendering judgment. If they decide your request has merit, they will permit you an audience with the King.”
And the bureaucracy continues, Carson thought.
“Everyone out here sure does love their red tape,” West said, as if reading Carson’s mind.
Jena frowned. “I don’t understand.”
West shook his head. “An old Earth expression. Means things aren’t simple when they should be.”
“Ah, yes, well, our leadership do love their protocol.”
“Seems to be the trend,” Carson said. “Almost like the Regulos infected every—”
An alarm blared through the capsule, drowning out Carson’s words. Red and yellow lights flashed, and magnetic brakes screamed. Carson’s harness dug into her shoulders, pinning her to the seat as she reached for her helmet, snatching it out of midair just before it went spinning into West.
Ahead, the hyperloop tube exploded, sending trails of debris streaking into the air. Glass and metal ripped away as the transport tube shook violently. Carson smacked her head against the glass, blurring her vision.
“Hold on!” Jena shouted, pressing her hands against the glass as they rocketed toward the gaping rent in the tube.
The capsule shot out of the hole like a bullet from a gun, immediately plummeting toward the lush green canopy of leaves below. Carson gritted her teeth as her world turned upside down. Warning icons flashed on her HUD, though she couldn’t remember putting her helmet on. She caught a glimpse of canopy, then it was gone as the capsule continued to spin, rocking Carson against her harness.
She jerked forward, gasping as the capsule smashed through the canopy, plunging them into darkness. Carson thought she heard a hissing over the cacophony of capsule and suit alarms, then saw flecks of white foam spraying through the cabin.
“What the hell’s going on?” Carson shouted, trying to wipe the foam from her visor. But with every swipe of her hand, more foam sprayed over her.
Within seconds, her legs felt like they’d sunk into a mud hole; she could barely move them. Another second later, she couldn’t move her arms, then the foam completely covered her visor, blinding her to the outside world. Her breath echoed in her helmet as all the sound outside became muted.
The capsule continued to bounce and roll, and Carson lost all concept of up or down. “Jena? West?”
“I’m here!” West answered, his voice sounding like he was a mile away.
“What—”
The capsule jerked again, pulling Carson hard against the harness despite the foam. She gritted her teeth, getting the impression they were rolling. We must have hit the ground, she thought.
A minute later, they bumped into something and the capsule sat still. Almost immediately, there was a hiss of air and the foam began blowing away, unpinning her arms and legs. She wiped the foam covering her visor.
The pod had come to rest on its side and she was partly hanging from her harness straps. Slick gloved fingers pried the harness release and she dropped, landing on the capsule’s glass wall. Even through her suit, Carson could feel the foam’s wetness as it broke down.
Someone dropped next to her and she turned to see Jena standing, foam covering her entire body. Her red hair was filled with the stuff, her bronze skin glistening. She did a halfhearted job of wiping it from her face.
“Everyone OK?” Carson asked, still trying to clear her visor.
A chorus of affirmatives came back from her team.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nunez said, running his hands through his hair.
Clumps of foam covered his face and head and puddled in his suit’s small neck collar. Apparently, he hadn’t been able to don his helmet in time. He grimaced with every step he took, lifting his legs in exaggerated movements.
“Oh, man, it’s everywhere! It’s so cold!”
Several emergency hatches had blown clear, opening the capsule up in several places, allowing the foam to disperse quickly. Carson ducked through one of the openings, careful not to slip on the wet ground. She could just make out the path the capsule had taken through the trees on its way down but couldn’t see the hypertube above the canopy.
The noises of the jungle echoed around them—birds screeching in the distance, insects chirping around them, unseen. Huge trees, their trunks charcoal-gray, surrounded them, and a warm breeze cut through the dense jungle around them. A few meters away, a wide stream weaved its way through the trees, flanked on both sides by moss-covered rocks and pebble-covered banks. Long, finger-like roots from some of the trees lining the bank had grown between the larger stones, reaching down into the water.
“Great, just great,” Jerry said, shaking foam from his helmet. Like Nunez, he hadn’t gotten his helmet on in time either.
“Damn,” Nunez said, pulling his boots off. “This is going to be a bitch to clean.”
“Weapons first,” West said, already clearing the foam from his CL1.
Carson turned to Jena. “What the hell happened?”
Jena straightened from wringing out her long red hair, pushing lines of white through her fingers. “I’m not sure. An explosive decompression like that shouldn’t have been possible. I’ll have to check the capsule’s computer. Hopefully, it’s not destroyed.”
Carson ejected the magazine from her gauss carbine and watched Jena crawl into the capsule and begin to work on the terminal screen, now above her. She wiped off the screen and began typing.
“Still works,” Jena said. “Should just take a minute to bring up the security routines.”
“You all right, Chief?”
Carson turned and found West giving her a concerned look. He nodded and pointed to her forehead. “You’re bleeding.”
Carson flipped her visor back and touched her scalp, flinching at the sudden flare of pain. She pulled away blood-covered fingers. “I’m fine. Just a flesh wound.”
“You should have Doc check you out.”
“No, it’s—”
“Moretti, have a look at the Chief, will you.”
“Roger that,” the medic said.
Carson glared at her senior non-comm but didn’t argue as the medic approached. She put her palm against the charcoal-gray trunk beside her, then brought her hand away, her gloved fingers now covered in a powder.
Moretti activated his medi-gauntlet, then held his open palm an inch from her face and waited as the device scanned her injury. Orange and red lines passed over her, and after several seconds, the device chimed.
“Superficial,” he said, dropping his gloved hand to his kit and pulling out a tube of sealing gel.
“I told you,” Carson said as Moretti applied the yellow cream. Within seconds, Carson felt the gel begin to harden.
“How’s your pain?”
“It’s fine.” She prodded the hardened sealant with her fingers. “Thanks.”
“Oh, come on!” Nunez sa
id, groaning. He held a hand full of goo. “You’re never going to guess where I pulled this out of!”
“You’re so gross,” Popov told him, moving up from the stream bank, wringing out her hair. “At least you don’t have the stuff clumped in your hair.”
Benit and Lenor, another one of Jena’s security people, stood in the stream behind her, wringing out their shirts and washing the remaining foam from their bodies.
Nunez tossed the clump of foam aside and made for the water. “No, I’ve just got to deal with it in other places.”
“Carson,” Jena called from inside the capsule.
Carson ducked inside, stepping carefully through the remaining foam. “Found something?”
Jena pointed to the display.
Carson had to crane her head to get a good look at the screen that displayed a frozen image of the capsule’s nose, the hyperloop tube a blur around it.
“Bottom-right corner,” Jena said, then hit a button, starting the recording.
The video ticked forward frame by frame for several seconds, then a gray mass appeared, a column of white smoke trailing out behind it. Jena froze the image.
“That’s a rocket,” Carson said.
Jena nodded, advancing the recording again. The rocket hit the tube and exploded, sending debris and streamers of flame into the air. The capsule slipped through the jagged opening, through a gray cloud of smoke, and the canopy of trees appeared beneath it.
“West,” Carson said without turning away from the video, “eyes up. We’ve got company.”
The senior Pathfinder’s response was quick, devoid of any uncertainty. “Birch, Moretti, observation posts, north and south, move.”
“Roger,” both men said in unison.
“Hale, Nunez, Popov, perimeter security, possible hostiles inbound.”
Like a switch had been thrown, the Pathfinders went into full operational mode, collecting their gear and heading off to their assigned positions. Even Jerry—the newest member of their team, who’d had only a few training sessions—fell right in line, following Popov into the jungle. Benit and West quickly discussed defensive plans and the two Zeis guardsmen filled in the gaps.
Carson checked her IR signal. The connection with the rest of the team was spotty. “Anyone having better luck with their comms?”
“Negative,” West said, adjusting his helmet. “Terrain is lousy. Signal strength is going to be shit for anything beyond short-range.”
“I might have something.” Jena moved to the back of the capsule and pried off a panel, exposing a compartment inside. She pulled out a gray, hard-plastic case, let it fall to the floor, then started popping off the locking tabs.
“First things first, Jena,” Carson said, slapping a magazine into her gauss carbine. “Who attacked us? I thought you said there wasn’t anyone out here.”
“There shouldn’t be,” Jena said, pulling a bulky computer from the case’s padded interior. “I’ve got to get a signal to my father.”
Carson put a hand on the Zeis woman’s shoulder. Jena shot her an angry glance and Carson asked again, “Who’s out there?”
Jena opened the computer and began working through its start-up routines. “The only people who’d have the resources to pull something like this off would be my family, the Clerics, or the Royal Family. I’m sure you can work it out.”
“The princess?”
Benit appeared in the capsule’s hatch, one hand on the side of the opening. “They would’ve had to know when we were departing to calculate when to fire that rocket. Which means we’ve got a mole within our organization.”
“Two problems,” Jena said. “One will have to wait.”
“Assassination, though,” Carson said, thinking aloud. “Isn’t that a little drastic?”
“I told you, Carson,” Jena said. “There are many people in the government that do not want to see us make allies with outsiders. Some are more extreme in their beliefs than others. Come on!” She slapped the side of the computer and the screen fuzzed slightly. “The signal isn’t strong enough. We’re not going to be able to get a signal out from here.”
“Our systems aren’t working either,” Carson said. “Can we make it back to your compound from here on foot?”
Jena shook her head. “That would take several days.”
“How much farther to the capital?”
Jena laughed. “Five times that.”
A feral roar echoed in the distance, standing Carson’s hair on end. The sound reminded her of a lion or tiger from Earth.
“Well, we can’t stay here,” Carson said. “Whoever fired that rocket is still out here. If they went to as much trouble as you say to take us out, they’re going to want to make sure they got the job done.”
“Paito!” Jena shouted, slamming the computer terminal shut.
“Jena,” Carson said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “we need to get moving.”
“What about the people who fired that rocket?” West said. Carson gave him a questioning look and he continued, “They’re not going to be out here without a way to get home, right? They’ve got to have a way to leave, right?”
“Predator shuttles,” Benit said. “Fast, agile. They’d be the only thing I’d trust against the caldryl.”
“We find the shuttles, we find a way out of here,” Carson said.
Jena looked up toward the invisible hyperloop tube above. “Except there’s no way of knowing where they are, and we don’t want to be wandering around the jungle any longer than we have to be.”
West nodded at the capsule. “We have a general location. Rocket came from that direction.”
“The relay stations,” Benit said.
“The what?” West asked.
“That’s it,” Jena said, her eyes lighting up. “Every few kilometers, there’s a relay station built into the track support pylons. It sends pod information along the track to the main control nodes around the world. If we can get to one, we might be able to hack into the signal and get a signal out.”
Carson considered the alien jungle around her for a moment, running through their options. For an instant, she wondered what Colonel Hale—no, Governor Hale—might do, but immediately dismissed the idea. No, she thought. You’re not him. Your ways are different.
“We’ll follow the track that way,” Carson said, indicating the direction West had pointed out. “Whoever’s out here hunting us isn’t going to stop, so instead of being prey, we’ll do something they probably won’t expect. We’ll hunt them.”
“Excuse me,” Nunez said, approaching the capsule. “You all are forgetting about the most important thing out here.”
Carson, Jena, West, and Benit all turned to face the approaching Pathfinder.
He held his arms out, as if saying, Don’t you know? “The man-eating pterodactyl dragon monsters. They’re out here, aren’t they? Prowling around, looking for helpless little morsels to dine on. I hate to break it to everyone, but we happen to be those helpless little morsels.” He raised his gauss carbine. “You think this is going to cut it against those things?”
Chapter 7
Network connection…zzzzt…unstable…We need to-to-to… CID said. Even…zzzzt…returning to…
“You’re glitching again,” MAC said.
I am-am most certainly-ly-ly-ly not.
“You are. Run internal diagnostics. We can’t afford for you to lose functionality right now and I’m definitely not making you primary with your systems being affected like this.”
Are you insinuating that I’m-I’m-I’m not fully operational? I can run-run-run circles around anything the Ultari maintain.
“I’m not having this argument with you right now, CID. For all your capabilities, you’d think the designers would’ve taken more care with your operational matrix.”
You should know. You-you-you programmed me.
“Coding your integration protocols with my communication subroutines doesn’t equate to programming you. Regardless, we can’t af
ford a link right now and we’re not leaving until we’ve accomplished out mission.”
Fine.
A group of droids emerged from a side street, moving quickly, watching over their shoulders as five Netherguard appeared, ushering them toward the arched bridge leading downtown. These Netherguard patrols were becoming more and more common, searching for off-line droids not connected to the main Network. CID directed one of the droids to close on the Netherguard, but as had happened in previous attempts, the biomechanical constructs disabled the drones before CID could get a reading.
In the three days since the Triumvirate’s arrival, everything but some basic services in the city had shut down. Speeches from the mysterious Herald, however, promised that life would soon return to normal, and it would be more prosperous than before. The armored messenger definitely wasn’t Ultari, but exactly who—or what—he was remained a mystery.
“For all must put faith in Kyrios!” the armored figure proclaimed on more than one occasion. His transmissions replayed on every screen and broadcast channel throughout the city. His messages were interspersed with scenes from the Triumvirate invasion of Diasore, replaying the nuclear explosions and resulting mushroom clouds over and over again.
During the confusion of the first day, MAC had lost track of Welsi and Gruldal and had not been able to reacquire them. After losing three drones to Netherguard interference, MAC resigned himself to keeping his drones out of service until he could shield them against their attacks. He’d been forced to physically scour the streets and alleys, and while he’d yet to spot the smugglers, he’d picked up several rumors of an Ultari rebellion forming in the shadows.
Another local node has-has-has gone dark, CID advised.
“Are the network nodes shutting down, or are they losing their connection?” MAC asked.
I am still receiving-receiving cluster information from the network…zzzzt, CID said. That indicates the nodes are still-still-still active but no longer relaying data.
“So that should benefit us, correct? If they aren’t connected to Central, it would stand to reason that any outside access of the nodes would go undetected.”