by Dean M. Cole
Freeing a hand, Angela pointed at the giant, stadium-sized vat. “They’ve just about completed the cauldron.”
“Yeah, I can see the foundry machinery beneath it. Looks like they’re still working on that stuff.”
Angela shifted the aim of her goggles and saw the indicated equipment. It lay in various states of assembly. Every surface within the massive machinery appeared to be moving. She swallowed hard. “A lot of activity there. Looks like someone kicked over a damned ant bed.”
Her scan faltered as a recognizable structure panned into view to the right of the construction site: a brown, dome-shaped building. She knew that, up close, it would look more like a partially embedded brown marble formed from horizontal slats. “I … I see something!”
“What? One of the emergency escape shafts?”
“No. It’s … It’s CERN’s Globe of Science and Innovation, their exposition center.”
“Where?!”
Extending an arm, she pointed. “There, in the shadow of all the construction. It’s just to the right of the cauldron. That’s why I didn’t see it before. The city builder was blocking it from view when we were on the cliff.”
Beside her, Vaughn fumbled with his NVGs. “What am I looking for? What’s it look like?”
“It’s that dome-shaped structure. Looks like a big sphere with its bottom third embedded in the ground.”
“Yeah! … Yeah, I see it!”
As she stared at it, Angela shook her head. “I can’t believe it’s still standing. It should’ve burned up with everything else. The thing is like a hundred feet tall and half a football field wide, and its entire exterior is made from thick, horizontal, wood planks.”
Vaughn adjusted the magnification and zoomed in. “That’s made of wood?”
“Yeah, there’s a gap between each board, like the slats on Venetian blinds. They enable the globe to act as a natural carbon sink.” She shook her head. “No idea how it survived the fires.”
“Would there be a HiLumi-networked computer terminal in there?”
Angela nodded excitedly. “The Research Area exhibit displays live collisions. It’s like a mini-control room. It uses the HiLumi network feed to display real-time data. It’s tied directly into ATLAS. Gets both its power and its data from the main experiment.”
Vaughn zoomed in further. His shoulders slumped. “Ah, shit.” Rolling onto his side, he flipped up his goggles and looked at Angela. “A lot of good that does us.” He hitched a thumb toward CERN. “The place is crawling with caterpillar bots.”
Still staring at the scene, Angela adjusted the magnification of her goggles to max. The ground around the structure looked like it was moving. “Shit!” she said, drawing out the word. “It sure the hell is.”
Vaughn chuckled. “I doubt we’ll ever convince Bill to head into that.”
Angela smiled wryly and dropped her voice an octave. “Nope! Nope! Nope! I ain’t fucking with no army of ten-foot-long caterpillar monsters.”
“That’s not exactly what he said.”
“Close enough.” Angela raised her eyebrows. “Besides, I’m kinda with him on that sentiment.”
Rolling back onto his stomach, Vaughn flipped his night-vision goggles back into position and continued his scan. “I still don’t see any of your cinder block cubes.”
“Me neither. There’s a lot of debris blocking our view, though.” Shifting her gaze right, Angela studied the area that lay between them and the city builder. Then she raised an arm and traced an imaginary arc toward ATLAS. “On the bright side, I don’t see anything moving along the path we need to search. What about you, BOb? Do you see anything moving along the line we plotted?”
“Negative, Commander Brown. The only movement I detect along that path is immediately around and within the enemy construction site.”
Angela gestured ahead, indicating an east-west thoroughfare. “That main road roughly follows the line of the collider. If we’re lucky, we’ll spot a cube along it somewhere.”
“That’s what I was thinking, but I don’t know.” He raised an arm and pointed to the left of the street. “I see a shit-ton of scavenger bots moving around in that neighborhood.
Angela looked in the indicated direction and then nodded. “The one that skirts the south side of the road?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“We don’t have to go that far south.” Angela patted Vaughn’s shoulder and gestured at the leveled cityscape that skirted the right side of the street. “We can hang a couple of blocks north and run parallel to it.” She traced a finger left and right, gesturing at the narrow north-south streets that intersected the main road. “These are so choked with debris we shouldn’t have any problem staying out of sight. The bots working in the southern neighborhood won’t even be able to see us.”
Full darkness descended over them as the moon finally lost its battle with the advancing storm front.
They both flinched as a bolt of lightning hammered into the ground some distance to their right. A few moments later, thunder shook the earth once more.
Fat droplets of rain began to pelt them, first in ones and twos and then quickly crescendoing into a torrential downpour.
Vaughn rolled onto his side and looked at her. “Wonderful.”
Blinking against the spray, Angela shrugged. “The rain should make it harder for them to see us.”
A long breath hissed through his teeth. “Yeah, it’ll make it harder for us to see them, too.”
Chapter 45
Having circumnavigated around to the decimated park’s west side, Vaughn led the group behind the remnants of another building and ducked into cover.
They still hadn’t seen any bots, but he knew that didn’t mean a lot at the moment. He pulled the rest of the group close and whispered, “The primary objective, for now, is not to be seen. The Necks don’t know we’re back. If we encounter anything, get behind cover, let BOb take care of it, especially if it’s a solitary scavenger bot. He can beam it to Hell in relative silence.”
Teddy scoffed and then matched Vaughn’s whisper. “You did hear that thing in the tunnel, right?”
“Yeah, I did, but that was in small confines. It won’t be as loud here, and it sure as hell won’t be as distinctive as an explosion or gunfire. If one of us opens up, the entire goddamn alien army will know we’re here.”
Eyebrows raising with sudden realization, Vaughn paused and looked at the robot. “BOb, have you changed the destination coordinates to Hell?”
“No, Captain, I have not,” BOb said in a barely audible whisper. “Would you like me to do so now?”
“Uh, yeah. Let’s do that.”
Shaking his head, Vaughn looked into the rain. “Should have thought of that sooner.” He felt his face flush as he looked at Angela. “If BOb had beamed out an enemy bot, the damn thing would’ve just ended up back at the airport, free to alert its robotic alien overlords.”
She shrugged. “Better late than never.”
Vaughn rocked his head equivocally and then peered around the corner. He scanned the intersection to their south. Zooming in with his night-vision goggles, he glassed the main thoroughfare. Nothing was moving, and there wasn’t a cube-shaped building in sight.
He ducked back behind the corner.
Teddy gave him a crooked grin. “See any ten-foot-long monster caterpillar bots, El Capitan?”
Bill’s eyes narrowed, and he gave the man a hard look. “Shut. The hell. Up! That shit is not funny.”
Vaughn winced and raised a hand. “Jesus Christ! Keep it down.” He flipped up his NVGs and shook his head at Teddy. “Focus, guys. This is not the time to be whistling past the graveyard.”
Bill and the cosmonaut exchanged looks and then nodded.
“Outstanding. I want you to cover the three of us while we advance, and then we’ll cover you. We’ll work our way block-to-block that way. Just like last time: move then cover, move then cover.” Pausing, he leaned out and signaled their direction. “S
tay low. We’ll stop at every intersection, see if we can spot one of Angela’s buildings. Any questions?”
None came.
Lowering his goggles, Vaughn glanced around the corner one more time and then, pointing a bladed hand, mouthed, “Let’s go.”
Sometime later, they crossed another of the many intersections that spanned the gap between the airport and the ATLAS experiment.
As planned, they had held back a block, sometimes two, from the main road to stay out of sight.
Vaughn chewed his lip as he peered out from behind cover. Scanning the visible portion of the major thoroughfare they’d been tracking, he saw yet another intersection with nothing approximating Angela’s buildings. The things were starting to take on the feel of vaporware: something promised but never delivered.
The five of them were getting damned close to CERN, and they still hadn’t found a way into the collider. Additionally, they had seen no sign of the other team’s passage, not so much as an out of place scuff mark or disturbed dust.
That and the fact that he and his team were still firmly rooted within this timeline made him wonder all the more about what had happened to the other team.
All along, Vaughn had held out hope that he’d suddenly find himself falling through the ether of another reset, one initiated by the other team.
That hope was waning rapidly.
Where were they?
Had he lost Mark, his one true friend, again?
Was it his own fault? Had he rushed them into action?
Vaughn shook the thoughts from his head.
Angela looked at him and whispered, “Everything okay?”
He sighed and then nodded.
Glancing around the corner, he eyed the next block.
As they’d drawn closer to ATLAS, the noise generated by the alien construction site had reached them. The racket had risen in volume with each block they’d advanced.
The din now sounded like a nearing freight train clawing its way down a track riddled with failing foundations.
Looking around, Vaughn saw the other members of the team scanning the surrounding cityscape. “See anything?”
They looked at him, but before anyone could answer, they all flinched as a metallic clang rang out.
The five of them turned as one toward the source of the clatter.
The twisted frame of a metal table sat crumpled in the street ten feet from where they crouched in hiding. It hadn’t been there a moment before. As they watched, a dark object flew out of the structure that stood across the street from them. The item hit the pavement, loosing another loud, metallic keen. It bounced loudly and then rolled twice before finally coming to rest.
Looking at the green rendering generated by the NVGs, Vaughn thought the thing had been a metal television stand or an entertainment center. He imagined it had once been a modern assembly, probably from Ikea.
The sound of metallic feet scraping across a concrete floor confirmed Vaughn’s suspicions: a scavenger bot was working inside the building.
Gesturing silently, he pointed northeast, signaling for the group to fall back. They’d move a few blocks farther away from the main road and then head west again.
Everyone nodded their understanding.
Vaughn gestured at BOb and pointed for him to lead the way.
The battle operations bot looked left and right and then darted across the street. The team followed close on its heels.
After they’d advanced one block to the north, they turned ninety degrees, intending to head west. However, Vaughn ran straight into BOb’s nuke-filled backpack.
The battlebot had lurched to a stop in the middle of the intersection.
As Vaughn bounced backward, BOb raised the modified cannon, aiming it at an obviously startled scavenger bot. The thing stood next to a pile of metallic refuse.
Before the machine could raise an arm or sound an alarm, blue-white light flared from the emitter.
The scavenger bot vanished along with several pieces of metal and a divot of charred pavement.
The howling screech of the weapon’s discharge echoed loudly off the crumbled walls that surrounded them.
Vaughn stood transfixed for a moment, unsure of what to do. If they ran farther north, they might stumble into occupied territory.
Had the two bots simply been outliers?
He didn’t know, but one fact screamed inside his head: they’d been seen!
Looking back, he whispered harshly, “We need to get the hell away from this spot!”
Matching his volume, Angela said, “Yeah, but where? Where do we go from here?”
The others stared at him apprehensively.
Vaughn shook his head. “Retreat isn’t an option. There’s nothing back there for us.” He looked around, frantically searching for an exit path. “We’ve already checked everything to the east and south, and going farther north just takes us farther from the collider.”
Lightning strobed the night and the rain redoubled as its thunder shook the ground, momentarily eclipsing the cacophony coming from the construction site.
Vaughn growled in frustration. “Fuck it.” He jabbed a finger, pointing west. “Go now! We’ll regroup and reevaluate after a few blocks.”
As everyone broke into a run, he whispered urgently, “Keep your head on a swivel. Watch for one of the cube-shaped buildings.”
They had gone less than a block when an all-too-familiar noise rose above the sound of falling rain and the cacophony coming from the construction site.
The screaming wail of an onrushing Tater suddenly filled the night.
Vaughn shook his head. “Fuck!”
Then he saw it through his night-vision goggles. Glowing light green in the phosphorescent display, the onrushing ovoid rocketed straight at them from the direction of the ATLAS experiment. Water sprayed off its body as the thing raced over the broken walls of the city’s burned-out buildings.
BOb and the rest of the group slid to a stop. Darting sideways, they threw themselves against a half-crumpled wall.
The Tater came to a hover about a hundred feet away, stopping ten feet above the roadbed, outside the range of the modified EMP cannon.
Vaughn tapped BOb’s shoulder. “Hit the bastard as soon as it’s in range.”
The robot shook his head. “Unable, Captain.”
“Why the hell not?!”
“The device is rebooting. It experienced a BIT failure a moment ago.”
Bill growled and slammed the back of his helmet against the wall. “You gotta be shitting me!”
Looking around, Vaughn desperately sought a way out of their situation, but the Tater appeared to be staring right at them, its long axis pointing directly at their position.
The damned thing had them pinned.
Vaughn shook his head. “Fuck it. They already know we’re here.”
Switching to full auto, he pushed off the wall and stepped out.
He squeezed the trigger.
The rifle danced in his hands, spraying dozens of 5.56mm rounds at the Tater.
None of the bullets found their target. Strobing, blue-white light zapped each one mid-flight.
The rest of the team leaped out and launched a fusillade at the alien machine. Fire, bullets, and grenades belched from their weapons, dousing the surrounding structures in flickering yellow light.
The Tater darted left and then right, dodging some of their shots and zapping away the rest.
As the thing moved, Vaughn blinked in sudden recognition. Nothing had hit it yet, but two bullet holes already marred the left side of the machine.
It was the same Tater that had beamed him to Hell.
The ovoid jinked left and then instantly back to the right. Between movements, it rapidly advanced on their position.
Vaughn and his team members managed to keep its light beam emitter at bay, overloading it with incoming fire, but still, none found their mark.
BOb had been firing both bullets and grenades. Suddenly, the bat
tlebot stowed its rifle and drew the BFG.
Before Vaughn could ask whether the thing had finished its reboot, a wedge of white light shot out from the weapon.
Then the light vanished, taking the Tater with it.
Blinking, Vaughn stared at the spot and then looked up urgently. “We need to put some distance between ourselves and our last known position.” He jabbed a finger toward the west. “Go! Go! Go!”
Needing no further prodding, the group sprinted in the indicated direction.
Rain pelted them.
Lightning strobed the sky.
Thunder shook Vaughn’s chests and rocked the ground beneath his feet.
A few blocks later, he waved them to a stop. They took cover beneath the leeward side of a partially toppled structure. It blocked the team from view from all but one direction and sheltered them from the wind and the rain.
Breathing heavily, they exchanged frightened glances.
Finally, Vaughn found his voice. “Anyone see an entry point?”
They all shook their heads.
Still panting, Bill Peterson tilted his NVGs back and wiped water from his face. “Can’t see a damned thing through all this rain.”
The others nodded their agreement.
Thunder split the air again. As it rumbled across the city and faded, the rain began to taper.
Vaughn tilted his head, listening for the expected arrival of more Taters.
Something struck him as odd. “Do you hear that?”
He watched the others, including BOb, crane their necks out as they listened intently. After a moment, they each shook their heads.
“What is it?” Angela asked.
Vaughn shrugged. “I don’t know. Something sounds … different.”
Teddy’s eyes flew wide. “It’s too quiet!”
That was it. That’s what was wrong. Not only did he not hear the shriek of approaching Taters, but the rest of the background noise had also faded.
Angela looked at him, comprehension dawning on her face. “The noise from the Necks’ construction site … It’s gone. I … I don’t hear it anymore.”