E-Day

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

The Engines swooped back down to the ground and took off running, bolting for the shadows that once had allowed them to hunt.

  Now the shadows were the only place for Shadow Squad to hide from the Canebrakes.

  ***

  Murmur and Shana, the two Piston guards, had closed the doors hours ago, telling everyone to stay put. They still hadn’t returned, and Ronin had no idea what was happening topside other than Hros-1 was ten hours out now.

  Emergency lights spread a weak glow over the sprawling barracks where the frightened civilians sheltered. No one else seemed to be packing up their things.

  “You ready?” Kai asked.

  “Yes,” Lise said. She had laid their bags out neatly on the beds.

  “Good.”

  Zachary had the Warrior Codex tucked away in his bag and secured on his back. Ronin and Elan were also both ready to go.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Kai said. “Stay here.”

  He crossed the room to Jared, who stood with his Rottweiler droid. The doors were locked, but Jared was crouched trying to get them open. A moment later, he stood and tried the handle.

  As soon as Jared opened the door, a chattering resonated from the hallway.

  Ronin stood, listening to the echo in disbelief.

  “Is that gunfire?” Zachary asked.

  What, Elan signed. What’s wrong?

  The noise came from somewhere above them.

  Other people heard it too and started backing toward the doors. The woman with the baby clutched it to her chest, trying to comfort the crying child.

  “Dad, is that gunfire?” Zachary called out, his eyes wide with something Ronin had not seen in his older brother for years—fear.

  Ronin felt a tug on his shoulder.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Elan said in his monotone. The fact that he wasn’t signing told Ronin just how scared his twin was, too.

  “That’s definitely gunfire!” someone shouted.

  Panicked voices broke out around Ronin as he tried to process what was going on, and what to tell Elan. He decided on the truth.

  There’s gunfire in the base, Ronin signed.

  Who is shooting? Elan signed back.

  Jared rushed back into the room. “We have to go. The base is under attack.”

  “But those Pistons said we’ll be safer here,” said the young mother clutching her wailing baby.

  “Stay here then, but for those coming, we need to go now,” Jared said firmly. He pulled an energy knife out of a sheath and activated the superheated blade.

  Kai ran over. “Let’s go. Stay behind me.”

  Ronin signed to Elan, and they set off across the room.

  Lise convinced the woman with the baby to come with them. “You’ll be safer with us. Don’t be afraid.”

  Half of the civilians fled into the hallway, while the others remained inside. Ronin heard the door click shut and lock from the inside. There was no turning back now.

  Jared and Kai led the way down the dark corridor, guided by the red emergency lights. They checked the next corner, then waved for the group to continue.

  Ronin heard the clank of armor and shouts in the distance, and Kai and Jared motioned for everyone to get back.

  Lights bobbed up and down at the end of the hallway.

  Raising his knife, Jared moved with Kai, ducking just shy of the junction. Ronin wanted to call out for his dad to be careful, but he remained quiet and knelt with his mom and brothers.

  Two figures suddenly emerged around the corner, shining their rifle lights down the hallway.

  “Hey!” shouted a female voice.

  Jared put his knife to her throat, and Kai grabbed the man, pulling him to the ground. The dog barked viciously. Ronin held it back as his dad wrestled with an armored soldier. It wasn’t until they rolled into the glow of a red light that Ronin saw it was the two Piston guards.

  “Stop!” Zachary yelled.

  Jared pulled his knife away from Shana’s throat. She punched him in the jaw, knocking him to the ground before grabbing her rifle and aiming it at Kai.

  “Let him go!” she shouted.

  Kai rolled off Murmur and held his hands up. “Easy,” he said. “We thought—”

  Murmur pushed himself up with a grunt, his chest heaving. “I told you to stay put!”

  “We heard gunfire,” Kai said.

  The two Pistons directed their rifles back at the crowd, their tactical lights hitting the ashen faces of the frightened civilians.

  “Where’s the rest of ’em?” Murmur asked.

  “They stayed put, like you said,” Kai said. Zachary helped him to his feet.

  “Son of a bitch,” Murmur said. “Shana, I’ll go get the others. You take this group to the hangar.”

  “Hangar?” Kai asked.

  “Yes,” Murmur said. “Now go!”

  He took off running the way they had just come.

  “Why are we going to the hangar?” Jared asked.

  Before Shana could respond, a thud vibrated through the facility, and dust rained down on the group. Cries of surprise and panic burst from the civilians.

  “Quiet,” Shana said. She trained her rifle down the hallway.

  “Private, why are we going to the hangar?” Jared entreated.

  She hesitated a moment. “War Commander Contos has given the order to evacuate the civilians.”

  “I thought we were safe…” came a scared female voice.

  Ronin turned to see it was the young woman with the baby.

  Kai turned toward the crowd. “Everyone stay calm, and quiet,” he said. “Keep close to us and we’ll get you out of here safely.”

  Ronin grabbed Elan’s hand.

  Emergency lights guided them down the corridors. On point, Shana cleared each junction, moving with precision.

  “The elevators aren’t far,” she said.

  Somewhere in the massive underground base, a siren went off, the whine echoing down the passages. In the respite, Ronin heard a rattling noise that echoed off the walls.

  Shana pressed her rifle to her shoulder and proceeded. As her light flitted over the hall, the beam fell on the upper half of a helmetless Piston at the next intersection.

  The group slowly advanced but halted when Shana raised a fist in response to a long scratching sound.

  At the end of the hall, the man was suddenly dragged away.

  Shana paused a few seconds, then said, “Stay here.”

  She ran the hall and slowly turned at the corner. Whatever she saw caused her to move back and turn off her light.

  Jared and Kai rushed over to her, and she whispered something to them that Ronin couldn’t hear. He knew it wasn’t good by the way Jared and Kai looked at one another.

  Kai rejoined the civilians. “Everyone stay here until we tell you to move,” he said.

  “Why? What’s down there?” Ronin asked.

  “Stay here,” Kai repeated.

  He went back to Jared and Shana. She unholstered her plasma pistol and handed it to Kai.

  “I’ll provide cover fire,” she said. “Take a right, and you’ll hit the elevators. If they’re sealed, the stairs are at the end of the hallway. Take them to the hangar.”

  Jared reached out for the gun Shana had given Kai. “You go with your family,” he said to Kai. “I’ll stay here and help her.”

  Shrieking metal came around the corner, followed by the same rattling noise, and a clicking almost like an electronic hiss.

  Shana raised her rifle, took in a breath, and peered around the corner. Blue arrows of light flashed by, and her face vanished in a spray of bone and blood.

  Ronin crouched as screams and ferocious barking broke out with the sound of gunfire.

  Kai grabbed the woman and pulled her back around the corner, leaving a streak of gore. He unclipped the rifle hanging from her neck.

  Zachary bent down and pulled the energy sword out of its sheat
h on her back. He gripped the handle, the blade burning red.

  “I’ll lay down suppressing fire,” Jared said. He stepped out and started firing his pistol down the hallway, his droid dog barking by his side.

  “Go!” Kai screamed. He turned the corner and squeezed off shots.

  Zachary ran ahead with the energy sword, motioning for everyone to follow. The group of panicked civilians ran after him.

  Ronin latched onto Elan and Lise and pulled them after his older brother. As he rounded the corner, he saw what had killed Shana at the end of the hall.

  A Canebrake bolted away on four legs.

  The shocking sight of the mechanical monster made Ronin run faster. He didn’t stop until they reached the elevators. All four were sealed off.

  “This way,” Zachary said.

  Ronin looked over his shoulder to see Kai and Jared following.

  “Keep going!” Kai yelled.

  Zachary opened the door to the stairs and started up, waving the sword back and forth to see up the dark passage.

  The group squeezed past him, pushing and shoving. The woman with the baby almost fell, but Elan let go of Ronin to help her up the stairs. He remained behind with his family on the first landing, waiting for Kai, Jared, and the dog to catch up.

  “Hurry, Dad, come on,” Zachary said. Footsteps pounded the hallway, and he readied the sword. He almost reminded Ronin of Uncle Akira, the way he stood there wielding the blade. “Get behind me.”

  Ronin stared into the darkness while the tap of boots and distant clack of metal grew louder.

  “Come on, Dad,” he whispered.

  A figure bounded around the corner, and Ronin tensed until he saw his father limping toward them.

  “What are you doing?” Kai said. “Go, get up to the hangar!”

  “We’re waiting for you,” Zachary said. “We’re not leaving—”

  “No, you go.” Kai glared up at his eldest. “I’ll stay here with Jared and hold that thing back.”

  “What?” Lise cried. “No, you’re coming with us.”

  Jared back-pedaled toward them, still aiming in the opposite direction.

  “We’ll catch up,” Kai said.

  “But Kai!” Lise said.

  “There’s no time, you have to go.”

  Ronin shook as he watched his parents argue an impossible decision.

  “Dad, please, you have to come with us,” Zachary said.

  A mechanical shriek roared in the next passage.

  “It’s almost here,” Jared said. “Get going, now!”

  Kai reached out and pushed Ronin hard enough to get him into the stairwell.

  “No, please don’t do this,” Lise said.

  “We can all make it, come on,” Zachary said.

  Kai looked at them all in turn. “I love you all. I’ll be right behind you. Zachary, get them to the hangar.”

  Then he pulled the door shut.

  “No!” Lise yelled.

  Zachary pulled her away and screamed for Ronin to grab Elan. He gripped Elan’s hand tight, trying to help reassure his brother that they were going to be okay. But as they hobbled up the stairs in the black, listening to the cries of children and a baby above them, everything took on a surreal feeling.

  Ronin realized his brain wasn’t working the way it normally did. He hadn’t even stopped to think about why the Canebrakes were attacking them. His body had taken over, like it did when he was training for Droid Raiding, every movement and action coming from instinct. Zachary, too, was moving like a soldier. He kept his sword up in a defensive position as he carefully made his way around the civilians bottlenecked under the next landing.

  “Move, move,” he said.

  “It’s locked!” someone yelled.

  “Be quiet, man,” Zachary bellowed.

  A clicking filled the silence, followed by the clanking of metal feet. Ronin gripped his brother’s and mother’s hands tighter, fearing that they were cornered.

  “Zachary, be careful,” Lise whispered.

  Ronin heard the door click.

  Lights suddenly flashed onto the landing above, then came muffled voices.

  “Keep moving.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Don’t push.”

  Two Pistons escorted the group into a massive room that had to be a mile wide, with a ceiling that looked one hundred feet tall. Aircraft sat idly in front of sealed overhead blast doors. In the center of the hangar, two black Stingray VTOL military corvettes were angled toward open launch tunnels overhead. Technicians and engineers worked on scaffolds built around the Stingray shuttles.

  At the far end, Ronin could see what looked like one hundred or more Pistons. Ten Juggernauts were among them, the mech suits towering six feet over the soldiers. Every weapon was trained on the blast doors.

  Sparks showered down the side as red-hot blades cut through the thick metal.

  “It’s not going to hold!” someone shouted.

  The Juggernauts advanced to the front of the line, hydraulics hissing. The pilots in the cockpits reached back with their robotic arms to draw energy swords.

  Ronin followed the two Piston escorts around a fort of tall, long storage containers. On the other side was a group of Royal Pistons holding sentry near a towering figure in golden armor, who watched from the saddle of a droid horse.

  At first, Ronin thought it was his Uncle Akira, but it wasn’t the captain. It was War Commander Contos.

  “War Commander, we found more civilians,” said the Piston in front of Ronin.

  The massive golden commander turned, holding a glowing energy sword the length of a child. Contos scanned the group and in a booming voice asked, “Where is Master Sergeant Kai Hayashi?”

  “My dad stayed behind to hold back the machines,” Ronin said.

  Contos looked down at Ronin, then over to a Royal Piston. “Go find him.”

  A lieutenant ran over, armor rattling as his chest heaved.

  “War Commander, we need to get you to the other shuttle,” he said between gasps. “We can’t hold them back much longer.”

  “I’m not leaving this base until the civilians are evacuated,” Contos said.

  The civilians stared up at the living legend towering above them.

  “We don’t have much time to get you all to that corvette,” he said. “When I tell you to follow me, you do it, and don’t look back.”

  — 30 —

  Jason was in a dream-like state, watching Shadow Squad fleeing from a pack of Canebrakes outside of Megacity Tokyo. The machines had been deployed to hunt down the Red Wolves hiding underground after the gas attacks. The terrorist supporters of Dr. Cross were all dead now, their mangled and dismembered bodies littering the platform of a subway outside of the megacity, where they had launched an attack on the civilians.

  But in his dream, the machines hadn’t stopped. They had slaughtered hundreds of Pistons, blasting them from the sky and killing them on the ground. The images bled into darkness, replaced by the sound of screams, the same agonizing screams Jason remembered from Petra suffering during the final days of her battle with SANDs.

  Flashes of red streaked through the darkness, illuminating a Hummer Droid inside of the Nova One command center. Three Canebrakes surrounded it, their limbs wrapped around the body and their serrated blades striking.

  “I cannot hold them much longer!” Apeiron shouted.

  The voice sounded just like his sister.

  The dream shifted: Petra, just twenty-five years old, beautiful, intelligent, strong…

  “Petra!” Jason yelled. “Petra, run!”

  Now she was Apeiron again, cutting into a Canebrake, hacking through its titanium helmet.

  “We have to stop Doctor Cross!” she yelled. “You have to wake up!”

  Jason tried to, but the dream transported him to a burning city. Dreads rode mechanical horses, patrolling the streets. Canebrakes climbed mountains
of rubble, scanning for targets with their black eyes. A man in ragged brown clothes and a gas mask darted across a street. The closest Dread launched a spear, puncturing the man through the back. Plasma bolts flashed out of a skeletal tower, hitting the Dread and knocking him off the saddle. The horse lifted up its front legs, kicking the air before taking off down the road.

  The thrumming of thrusters roared overhead from a hovering Praying Mantis fighter. In the cockpit, a Canebrake operated the mounted plasma turrets that fired at the windows, flames bursting out.

  Jason fought to free his mind of the nightmare, but instead he found himself inside a Life Ark, where groups of civilians sat in a communal atrium, watching dark holo-screens. A cry of fear echoed through the vaulted chamber, and the crowd suddenly fled.

  In the chaos, Jason saw one of the faces perfectly. It was his daughter Nina, cowering behind a park bench, while Betsy screamed for Autumn.

  The rattle of a Canebrake finally snapped Jason into another dream.

  He was in the Nova One command center, watching a Canebrake impale a female officer through her stomach with a superheated blade. It withdrew the glowing knife, and the woman fell to her knees, holding her own guts as they gushed out into her hands.

  Jason could smell the burning flesh.

  This is just a dream, he thought. Just another nightmare.

  He scrambled behind a row of stations, where another female officer crouched with General Chase.

  “Shut them down, Doctor,” Chase whispered. There was panic and fear in the hardened man’s eyes.

  Jason tried to connect to INN, but all he saw was darkness.

  “Apeiron,” he said quietly. “Apeiron, where are you?”

  A scream rang out, drawing his attention to an adjacent station.

  Jason peered around over the desk at a Canebrake with black eyes, just like in his dream. A sickening truth passed over him: his dreams had become reality. The Canebrakes had turned on them.

  Plasma bolts streaked across the room. An officer got up and ran for new cover, toppling as a blade whooshed and thunked through flesh and bone. The man hit the ground, his head tumbling away from his neck.

  A Canebrake jumped up to the station, the glass of the command module shattering under its weight. Strobing red light illuminated the gruesome scene. Bodies of AAS staff and officers lay in crumpled messes, blood and gore painting the hulls and deck.