by Dean M. Cole
Necks stood atop every horizontal surface within the camera’s field of view. None of them were moving. They all seemed transfixed.
Then one of them leaped high into the air, startling a shout from Bill. “Geezus Christ!”
The robot flew in a high, arcing trajectory. Then it slammed down onto the top of the sphere, not stopping until it was knee-deep in the now churning mercurial orb.
As Vaughn watched in shocked silence, the Neck slowly subsided into the wormhole. Just as the last part of the robot passed out of sight, a brilliant flash of white light washed out the image. When the video recovered, it revealed another Neck flying through the air. Then it, too, disappeared into the wormhole.
Vaughn’s jaw worked silently for a moment. Then he finally found his voice. “Where…? Where are they going?”
Behind them, Teddy spoke up. “Da, Command-Oh, why are they leaving?”
“Ha!” Bill shouted triumphantly. “I’ll tell you why, because we kicked their asses, that’s why. The bastards are running for the hills.”
Angela was slowly shaking her head. “I … I don’t think so.” She turned and looked at Vaughn, her face ash-white. When she spoke, her voice sounded reed-thin. “They’re falling back so they can do it again.” She bent over the keyboard, and her fingers became a blur of activity.
“Do what again, Command-Oh?”
“Yeah, Angela. What are you talking about?” Bill asked.
Vaughn felt his guts begin to churn.
This is what he had been missing.
It all fit with Angela’s theory about the Necks not being able to send the light wave through when they were on this side of the wormhole.
A white flash announced the passage of another Neck.
Vaughn looked at Bill and Teddy. “It means they’re going to send the light through again.”
Still typing, Angela nodded. “Exactly. It’s only a temporary retreat. They’ll be back as soon as they finish wiping the planet.”
The two men stared at her wordlessly. In the ensuing silence, the failing machinery in the basement neared the finish of its unscheduled self-destruction. Then Vaughn’s eyes flew wide as the vibrations traveling through the floor rapidly crescendoed into bone-jarring waves.
“What the hell?!”
The tiles between himself and the two men heaved upward. An instant later, the chewing and gnashing maw of a massive, mechanical monstrosity burst through the floor.
Vaughn stepped back. “Caterpillar bot!”
Teddy stumbled backward and slammed into the wall.
Bill Peterson’s eyes went round. “Oh, hell no!”
Realizing that he and Angela were about to be cut off from the exit, Vaughn turned around, intending to grab her, but she was already up and backpedaling.
Beyond the computer terminal she’d been working, two more of the insectile machines were clawing their way through the floor. Concrete and tiles spilled outward from them. Desks and terminals tipped over.
Vaughn grabbed Angela’s arm and turned her to face him. “Did you start the overload?!”
Eyes wide with panic, she shook her head. “I was almost done! Just a few more keystrokes to go.”
They turned back toward the terminal.
Angela reached out for the keyboard.
Then dust shot into the air, and the entire workstation dropped into a new hole and fell from sight.
“Shit!” Still holding her arm, Vaughn pulled Angela toward the exit. “Come on. We gotta go!”
The floor bucked beneath their churning boots.
Vaughn cursed with each unsteady footfall. “Shit! … Shit! … Shi—!”
Air burst from him as he and Angela slammed into each other painfully as another pair of caterpillar bots burst through the foundation to either side of the double doors.
The safety glass shattered and fell to the heaving floor.
Angela tugged desperately at his sleeve. “Vaughn! We need to run!”
“Ya think?!”
Chapter 47
Bill and Teddy crashed through the double doors at the end of the hallway.
The floor lurched behind them.
Angela screamed and launched herself over the rising tiles.
Running alongside her, Vaughn also jumped. An open, metallic mouth emerged beneath him and snapped at his boots. He pulled his knees to his chest, throwing off his balance and causing him to land awkwardly and tumble.
Rolling to his feet, he jumped up and followed Angela through the double doors.
BOb still stood guard at the front. He looked back with evident surprise. “What is happening, Captain Asshole?”
Vaughn ran across the large room. “We’ve got company!”
BOb turned and kicked open the exterior doors with extreme prejudice. Knocked from their hinges, both of the heavy steel panels flew out and disappeared into the night. Then the battlebot stepped aside and raised both its weapons, aiming behind the running humans.
The floor heaved beneath Angela and Vaughn, launching both of them into the air. They stumbled forward but somehow managed to stay on their feet.
Glancing back, Vaughn saw another caterpillar bot climbing up through the floor.
BOb slewed the BFG and beamed away the massive machine.
Following Bill, Teddy, and Angela through the exit, Vaughn waved for BOb to follow. “Cover our retreat. If anything gets too close, beam it out. Otherwise, hold your fire.”
The robot gave a quick nod and then followed Vaughn out of the building.
As they sprinted across the lawn, the sound of wrenching concrete and cracking timbers filled the previously quiet night.
After they had run about a hundred meters across the overgrown field, everyone stopped and looked back.
Nothing had followed them out of the exposition center.
Transfixed, they watched as the massive, spherical structure collapsed inward. Then the entire building fell from sight, launching a cloud of dust into the night.
After a moment, Bill Peterson looked at Vaughn. “I told you I wasn’t fucking with these things.” He shook his head. “Nope! Nope! Nope! Not doing it.” The man turned and started to run toward the south.
Blinking against the dust, Vaughn ran after the major. Angela and Teddy exchanged nervous glances and then followed.
Bill was heading toward a long strip of cleared, completely flat land. The smooth expanse extended south to the limit of Vaughn’s vision. It was the strip they’d seen from Mont Salève, the one that appeared to follow the subway line.
“Where the hell are you going, Bill?”
“Away from here.”
“Hang on! We need to—”
Vaughn saw movement beyond the major. “Bill! Wait!”
“Nope!”
The man kept running.
Vaughn flipped down his NVGs and zoomed in on the movement. His eyes went wide.
Peterson slid to a stop and started backpedaling. “Ah, man! Come on! Really?”
Beyond the major, a swarm of caterpillars was climbing from a hole in the ground.
Vaughn realized they were coming from one of the shafts they’d seen from the Balcony of Geneva.
Bill shook his head as he stared at the swarm. “That’s a whole fuck-load of Nope!” He turned to sprint back to the group, but then Bill froze again. “Ah, shit!”
Angela and Teddy looked behind Vaughn and flinched.
Vaughn’s blood ran cold.
Turning, he saw another swarm of caterpillar bots streaming from the hole left where the exposition center had stood a minute earlier. They emerged from the spreading dust cloud and quickly fanned out to encircle his team.
Vaughn looked around, frantically searching for a way out. Their options were diminishing quickly. The caterpillar bots were trying to flank them.
He pointed east, back in the direction from which they had come. “Fall back!”
Pulled from their paralysis, Bill, Teddy, and Angela ran for their lives, heading back dow
n the thoroughfare.
Vaughn turned and looked at BOb. The bot was aiming the BFG at the swarm, but none of the caterpillars had closed to within its range. The machines were holding back. It looked like they were intentionally staying outside its reach.
Waving, Vaughn shouted, “BOb! Come on!”
The robot disengaged and started running behind Vaughn.
The shrieking squeal of thousands of mechanical actuators echoed from every surface within the broken city, seeming to come from all directions simultaneously.
Looking past his running comrades, Vaughn narrowed his eyes as he studied the street ahead through his NVGs. The road appeared to be moving. Then the moon slid out from behind a cloud, bathing the scene in its pale light. “Ah, you have got to be shitting me!”
Vaughn slid to a stop.
Ahead, Bill seized, nearly falling as he bounced to a stuttering halt. His shoulders slumped. “Ah, come on! Shit!”
Teddy and Angela pulled up next to them and silently stared down the street.
An ocean of gnashing black maws filled the thoroughfare. It looked as if the night had taken on a life of its own, becoming animated and hungry.
The five members of Team Two drew together.
Vaughn pointed north. “Go left!”
Teddy held out an arm. “No good, El Capitan.”
Turning, Vaughn watched caterpillar bots stream from every nook and cranny of the shattered apartment block that lined the left side of the street.
“Shit!” Vaughn growled as he stared at the alien horde. He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “South!”
They turned and started running toward the field that lined the right side of the road.
The bots that had swarmed from the shafts south of CERN were circling in from their right. The gap of empty earth between them and the army of caterpillar bots that choked the street to the team’s east closed before the five of them could even reach the far curb.
The team slid to a skipping stop.
Teddy released a string of Russian curse words.
Shocked into silence and backing up, Bill aimed his rifle at the encircling mass of machinery. He fingered the trigger of the M4’s integral grenade launcher. Beneath arched brows, the man’s mouth hung open in an unrealized scream.
Clutching Vaughn’s arm, Angela swallowed hard and looked up at him. “What do we do now?”
Vaughn could only shake his head as he, too, aimed his grenade launcher at the caterpillars.
BOb swept the BFG left and right threateningly.
Huddled together, weapons pointing outward, the five of them stood at the center of an ever-tightening circle of mechanical monstrosities.
Then the bots stopped drawing in.
The encircling mass rotated about them clockwise. They held back thirty or forty feet, well outside the range of the BFG’s light wave emitter. The caterpillars looked like a swarm of giant ants as they crawled over each other, hungrily stalking their prey, but reluctant to taste its defenses.
“Wh-What …?” Major Peterson stammered. “What are they doing? Why aren’t they attacking?”
Teddy pumped a fist at the bots. “They fear the BOb!”
Angela shook her head. Pointing her weapon at the churning mass, she said, “They’re just holding us at bay until the Necks finish their withdrawal.”
One of the bots ventured in.
Bill backed into Vaughn. “I think that one disagrees.” He fired a grenade into the caterpillar’s gnashing mouth. The front third of the machine disintegrated.
Teddy slapped the man’s shoulder. “Great shot, Bill!”
The major looked at the side of his M4. Curling the corners of his mouth down, he nodded appreciably. “Damn!”
A grin spread across Vaughn’s face. The machines were vulnerable to their grenades. Then he looked across the circling horde of enemy bots, and the smile dissolved.
He shook his head. “Dammit! We have to fall back.”
Angela’s head snapped toward Vaughn. “Why? You saw what Bill’s grenade did to the thing.”
Vaughn dipped his head toward the encircling bots. “We don’t have anything close to enough grenades to get through that. Not a chance. We have to retreat.”
Teddy looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. The cosmonaut pointed at the circling machines. “How on earth are we going to do that, El Capitan? We’re surrounded.”
Vaughn pointed at the battlebot. “BOb! Beam us to Mont Salève!”
Angela’s eyes went wide. She held her hand out toward the robot. “We can’t! If we leave, there will be nothing to stop the Necks from sending out the light again.”
Bill pointed at Vaughn. “I’m with him. If we stay here, we’ll be human giblets.”
A caterpillar broke from the formation and darted toward Vaughn. He fired a grenade and hit the thing center-of-mass, blowing it in half.
The enemy robots were becoming more aggressive.
“We don’t have time to discuss it.” Vaughn looked at the battlebot. “Beam us out now, BOb!”
“Wilco, Captain.”
The robot turned and held the BFG at the end of its long arm, aiming back at itself such that it would sweep across all of them.
Angela began to protest, but Vaughn wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into a huddle with the other two men. He looked at the robot and nodded. “Do it.”
BOb squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Then a series of red lights illuminated on the side of the BFG.
“BOb!” Bill Peterson said shakily. “You need to beam us the hell out of here right goddamn now!”
“Unable, Major.”
“What?! Why the hell not?”
The battlebot peeled away from the group. “The device is offline.” BOb stowed the BFG across his backpack and pulled out a second M4. “Switching to guns.”
Vaughn stared at the machine as it aimed both of its grenade launchers at the circling caterpillars. “I-I thought it reboots after a BIT failure!”
BOb dispatched an enemy robot. As the echoing thunder of the explosion dissipated, the battlebot shook its head. “Negative. This was not a built-in-test failure. The device shut down. I cannot bring it back online at the moment.”
Vaughn shook his head. “Shit, shit, shit … Shit!” They were trapped.
Pulling out of his grasp, Angela leveled her weapon on an approaching caterpillar. “We needed a better plan anyway.”
Eyes widening, Bill looked back at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
A bot scrambled toward the major. “Fuck!” Bill turned and blasted the thing.
Vaughn pointed at BOb. “Let me know the instant it comes back online!”
“Will do, Captain Asshole.”
A caterpillar on Vaughn’s side of the formation split off and made a beeline for him. He fired a grenade that caught the thing right in its open mouth. The head of the bot vanished behind a rapidly expanding cloud of shrapnel.
Another grenade launcher barked behind him, followed closely by a piercing detonation. Looking over his shoulder, he saw one of the insectile machines collapse into a heap of broken and shattered parts.
Angela pumped her fist. “What can Brown do for you?! Ha! That’s what, bitch!”
Vaughn reached back and slapped her on the arm. “Great shot!”
As she loaded another grenade, she shouted over her shoulder. “That felt damned good, but it won’t last. This is going to take more than a visit to Home Depot. We have to find another way, Vaughn.”
He knew she was right on the first part. There were significantly more robots than grenades—or even bullets, for that matter—and the latter of the two was useless against the machines. The slug he’d fired at the caterpillar in the tunnel had barely scratched the thing.
Moving with incredible speed, BOb darted in and out of the group, shoring up a side of the formation when it looked ready to collapse. Maneuvering with inhuman dexterity, the battle operations bot earn
ed its name, firing both grenade launchers over and over.
Between shots of his own, Vaughn watched as the bot blasted two caterpillars. In a smooth movement, BOb flipped over both rifles, grabbed the grenade breaches and ejected the spent shells. Then he tossed the weapons into the air. As the two assault rifles pinwheeled overhead, the bot’s arms blurred with speed, extracting two more grenades from the bandolier draped across its chest. Then it slid the rounds into the still open breaches mid-flip. Finally, it snatched the rifles out of the air.
Snapping the breaches shut, BOb fired the grenades into the next targets and then repeated the entire process, pouring a steady stream of explosive rounds into the encroaching caterpillars.
Each iteration took less than a second. Vaughn thought the speed-blurred actions would’ve been indiscernible if not for the time-dilating effect of combat.
Despite the bot’s incredible kill-count and those racked up by the rest of the team, the caterpillars continued to draw closer.
Vaughn didn’t think the machines would settle for holding them at bay much longer.
He needed a way out right now, or else …
Turning, he stared at the nuke bouncing on BOb’s back.
He shook his head.
Not yet.
Vaughn’s eyes widened as he remembered something from his last trip through Geneva.
He began to scan the ground. “Anyone see a manhole cover! They lead to the subway tunnels.”
“Manhole cover?” Bill said incredulously as he fired another grenade, taking out a caterpillar that was crowding his side of the formation. “You wanna go underground? Are you crazy?! That’s where all these bastards came fr—!”
Bill shrieked as two caterpillars darted toward him. He and Teddy quickly dispatched the pair.
“N-Never mind,” Peterson stuttered. “U-Underground is good.”
“Great idea!” Angela shouted after firing another grenade. “But you can’t call them that. They’re utility holes.”
Scanning the surrounding roadbed, Bill scoffed loudly. “Really, Commander? Now you wanna be PC?”