Strike Matrix

by Aiden L Bailey

  Everyone dropped. Guns at the ready.

  “Anyone hit?” Peri asked.

  Everyone said they weren’t.

  “See the attacker?” Simon whispered. He was ready with his Steyr and coiled like a spring ready to leap into action.

  Peri shook her head. She made hand signals showing she was about to peer over the fallen trunk to identify the threat. Simon nodded, signaled that he was ready to cover her.

  No sooner was Peri’s head raised than another spray of bullets slammed into the fallen trunk around her.

  Peri ducked back just fast enough to avoid taking a hit, but not before she saw what attacked them.

  “Three o’clock,” she yelled, “hostile moving in an anti-clockwise direction. Will be on us in seconds.”

  “What will be on us?” Casey demanded.

  As Peri hoped, Simon didn’t ask and raised his weapon over the trunk, aimed in the direction she had showed and squeezed the progressive trigger. A full burst rained from the muzzle. Even over the blasts of the bullets, Peri heard metal impacting on metal.

  “Oh, shit!” Simon exclaimed as he ducked down, ejected his spent translucent magazine, fitted another and pulled back on the charging handle to ready the first round. “I saw what that was.”

  “A robotic killer dog?” Peri asked.

  Simon nodded before raising himself up to fire another burst.

  The chrome dog was almost upon them, ducking and dodging faster than Simon or Peri could get a bead on it.

  The mechanical monster was about the same size as a Rottweiler with a miniature machine gun mounted on its back. Perhaps there was no more ammunition, or the weapon had sustained damage, because it didn’t fire at them. Instead, a sharp blade sprung from its front paw. The glistening steel blade jabbing as it pounded over the trunk and went straight for Peri.

  Before it could impale her, the former Secret Service agent grabbed the dog’s front paws in a stranglehold, barely holding it back.

  The blade stabbed again and again, but it couldn’t quiet reach her.

  Its powerful rear legs kicked Peri knocking the wind from her, bruising her chest and stomach. Yet the five-inch blade never let up, kept stabbing towards her face.

  “Help me!” Peri screamed.

  The blade got close enough to nick her skin, drawing blood. She wrestled with the chrome dog. Its single camera lens watched her like a malevolent surveillance camera. Peri saw her fear reflected in its single dark eye.

  Casey came into view, grabbed the back legs of robot, pulled it away and smashed it camera head against the fallen trunk.

  Not before the knife slashed Peri’s face, opening a long wound along her cheek.

  Simon stepped in, pressed the Steyr against the robotic body and fired a burst into its center of mass. At point blank range, the bullets went straight through it, catapulting the manic machine over the fallen trunk and through the air.

  Peri stumbled to her feet as she pulled her Glock from its holster.

  Simon was already advancing on the robotic beast, leaped over the trunk and jumped down next to it.

  Not yet defeated, the robotic dog limped, crawled towards Simon with its knife paw stabbing the air. Wounded, it wasn’t moving fast. Simon loaded another magazine and fired it point blank into its camera lens. The head of machine shattered sending shards of jagged metal and glass in every direction.

  Only then did it stop moving.

  No one said a word for nearly a minute.

  “It’s happening so fast,” Casey exclaimed between deep labored breaths.

  “What is?” Simon asked also catching his breath. His skin was pale and his eyes fatigued.

  “Technological advancements.” Casey pointed to the dead monstrous machine. “Look what Shatterhand created in just a few weeks. What will it create in a few months?”

  Peri scrambled to her feet, angry and afraid in equal measures. She touched the long gash along her check. Blood flowed, but it wasn’t seeping fast. She’d have a scar to remember this day if she survived through it, but that was all. “We’ve got to get inside, fast. More will come.”

  “Where’s Conner?” Simon asked.

  Three heads darted in every direction searching for the Irishman.

  He wasn’t far. He’d crawled from the attack and now lay face down in the grass. He could have been dead for all his lack of movement. Simon brushed aside the flies attracted to the moisture on Conner’s skin and turned the man over. The journalist stirred. He wasn’t unconscious, but he didn’t look lucid either.

  “Hey mate,” Conner said with a grin as he opened his eyes. “Is it time for that beer now?”

  “Let us help you,” Casey came to Conner. Together she and Simon lifted the Irishman and put an arm each over their respective shoulders. With only one arm free, Simon slung his Steyr across his back and readied his Glock semi-automatic pistol should he need to use it in a hurry.

  Peri noted this and raised her Steyr, stared down its sight and scanned the bush. “There will be more. Get to that entrance. I’ll cover us.”

  Casey and Simon dragged Conner to the door. They lay him down as Simon readied his Steyr offering additional cover. Only then did he nod that Peri should join them.

  Casey meanwhile keyed in the codes Peri had taught her. By the time Peri reached them, the first metal door slid open. They dragged Conner into the dark as the door closed again.

  They were inside the Fortress.

  None of them said it, but they all knew it, there was no turning back now.

  CHAPTER 47

  Lights flicked on dismissing away all shadows. The four were inside an outer extent of one of the Fortress’s asterisk points. There was nothing to see except a hundred-meter-long corridor that ended at another door identical to the one they had entered. All surfaces were clean, beveled and smooth. There were no windows and no natural light. It reminded Peri of the interior of slick Hollywood starships seen in movies. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. What was the purpose of such a long corridor? She couldn’t think of anything good.

  “This feels like an Indiana Jones movie,” Casey offered wiping sweat from her brow. It was hot outside, about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The interior temperature was closer to a comfortable seventy.

  Simon grit his teeth and said, “I wish you hadn’t said that, Casey.”

  Peri understood Casey’s meaning. This complex was far more than a physical structure housing Shatterhand’s ‘brain’. It was a matrix of traps to deter and strike down any threat entering its inner sanctum. Otherwise why build a long corridor with nothing in it? The drones, missiles and chrome dogs were its outer defenses. There was no doubt the inner defenses would be even more complex and deadly.

  “A long empty corridor,” Peri said between labored breaths. She was panting not from exertion, but fear. “My guess is we’ll only discover its trap when we are halfway down. Where there is nowhere to run.”

  “No point risking us all,” Simon said. “I’ll go.”

  “No!” Casey exclaimed as she grabbed Simon’s arm. “Let me?”

  “Not you Casey,” Peri was firm. “You are the only one who isn’t expendable. Only you can ‘observe’ Shatterhand out of existence.” Peri considered for a moment that Shatterhand was likely listening to everything they said. Not that it mattered now. The AI must already have guessed what they were up to. It would throw every weapon it could against them to ensure they failed.

  Casey ran her fingers through Simon’s hair and stared into his eyes. She was teary, willing herself not to sob. Peri saw that Casey adored Simon, her knight in shining armor. She needed him by her side, to give her courage to see this adventure through to its bitter end. There was no benefit separating the two unless it became necessary to do so.

  On the unlikely chance Conner’s health was improving Peri turned to the man. Conner slumped against a wall was close to unconsciousness. The man was dying. There was no doubt about that anymore. Conner couldn’t volunteer t
o do anything.

  “It has to be me,” Peri said with determination, drawing Casey’s and Simon’s stares away from each other and back to her.

  It had all started with Peri, with the President’s assassination in Afghanistan and his replacement with the imposter which she now knew as Shatterhand. Peri had made a promise then that if she could not save the man, she would save his honor. She was not about to break that promise now.

  Simon was about to protest when Peri said, “No argument. I’m doing this.”

  Simon opened his mouth to speak, then paused for a few seconds before he said, “You’re right.”

  Peri turned ready to do this. She felt his strong hand on her shoulder. She flinched, not used to human contact, turned and looked at Simon who had touched her uninvited.

  “Peri?”

  “What Simon?”

  “You can do this.”

  She nodded, realizing he was only offering encouragement. “Thank you.”

  Peri turned wishing for a moment alone and stared down the long sinister corridor. She took several deep breaths to prepare herself. At three hundred feet, this would be a long walk. If they had come with explosives, artillery or rockets they could have just blown a hole in the wall and avoided any hidden traps. But there had been no time and no easy means to gain such an arsenal.

  Peri took her first step, then her second. Half a minute passed, and she had covered thirty feet. A tenth of the distance.

  She turned and caught Simon’s eye. He smiled, his Steyr assault rifle ready to shoot anything that threatened her. The problem was the corridor wasn’t that wide, less than six feet across and ten feet high. If he fired, he’d likely shoot her. But it comforted her he was looking out for her.

  Casey meanwhile nursed Conner’s head in her lap, stroked his hair and whispered encouraging words. The scene reminded Peri of her good luck so far. She wasn’t dying like Conner or beaten and bloody like Simon.

  She stepped further forward, careful where she placed her feet. Her eyes looked everywhere. She was half expecting doors to seal both in front and behind her, and then for the evacuation of the air to suffocate her. She visualized the chrome dogs coming later, to drag her corpse outside and clean the mess readying this trap for the next round of intruders.

  Sixty feet.

  Ninety feet.

  Peri knew one hundred and fifty feet was the halfway point. This was the most obvious place to spring a trap, and still nothing happened.

  Perhaps there were no traps, and they were just being paranoid?

  She noticed on the door ahead another keypad for the next set of codes. Peri asked herself, why would an AI need keypads? That was a human feature of this Fortress? But so were corridors and doors, and even the lighting.

  Soon she had stepped well past the one hundred and fifty feet mark.

  She had made it more than halfway.

  That was when she heard a noise like ball-bearings running on a rail.

  Peri couldn’t see anything but sensed air rushing towards her, fast!

  She raised her Steyr out in front as a shield.

  An invisible force hit it, cut her weapon almost in half before she spied a tense, razor-edged wire as the culprit. The wire disengaged from the weapon and sped back to the far door. She dropped the now useless weapon as she struggled to remain upright.

  Only then did she notice thin indented lines in the wall, at waist, ankle and neck height.

  She gasped realizing these were for the tense razor-sharp wires that ran the length of the corridor except for the last ten feet at each end, cutting like a hot blade through butter.

  She heard the rushing again.

  Terrified, she listened, tried to work out where the noise came from.

  Down low? Or up high?

  Just in time, she jumped and somersaulted over the ankle height wire.

  Not believing what was happening, she crouched low suspecting the next wire would come at either waist or neck height.

  Whatever level was coming for her, it moved quicker than she would have liked. She pulled her Glock and fired bullets into the ankle length slide, emptied the clip until the metal buckled and warped. A wire caught in the mangled mess and snapped.

  She heard another wire rushing at her from up high, and it was coming fast.

  She ducked low, slipping as she did and falling on her bottom. Her left arm slipped upwards to give balance. Too late, Peri watched in horror as her hand came away from her wrist, tumbled away like a ball thrown in the air.

  Then she felt the pain, screamed as blood gushed from the stump in her left wrist.

  “What’s happening?” Simon called to her.

  “Stay where you are!” she cried back.

  Drawing the belt from her cargo pants, she wrapped it around the stump and pulled it tight, slowing the flow of blood. Sweating, her face hot, the pain was like nothing she had ever experienced.

  And yet, she felt determined. She had to stop this.

  The wires at head and waist height raced back and forth at high speeds, ready to decapitate and render in two. With great effort, Peri ejected the spent magazine of her pistol, fitted another and using the crook of her left elbow to hold the weapon in place. Peri pulled back on the slide loading the first round. She fired every bullet into the middle railing until it too buckled and the mid-level wire caught and snapped. She felt the air rush over her head as the deadly wire flung loose.

  With the threat neutralized, at least at ankle and waist levels, she gave into her pain and sobbed. This was worse than the malaria infection. Severed nerves responded like her absent hand remained attached and was being dipped in hot coals.

  Peri spied her mangled appendage on the floor, blood seeping from it as it turned purple. There would be no time to save it, no chance of reattaching through surgery. Not with how far they were from a hospital and how desperate their predicament was.

  She looked to Simon and Casey who looked back with terror and pity in their eyes.

  “Keep your head low,” Peri called back. She described the wires running back and forth, and how it was still dangerous at neck level.

  Crouching low, Simon came to her.

  Peri hugged her hand tight. The pain would not stop and they had nothing to give her to dull her searing, severed nerves.

  “Shoot it!” she commanded when Simon was at her side.

  Simon looked up. He almost didn’t register the wire running fast back and forth along the railing. To his credit, he didn’t question her and fired down the direction they were traveling to ensure no bullets bounced off the metal and hit Casey or Conner. His actions took out the top wire railing, about five meters inwards from where Peri lay. When the wire hit the mangling, it buckled and snapped.

  Then, the motors operating the deathtrap powered down.

  CHAPTER 48

  Simon supported Conner. Casey supported Peri. Together they stumbled to the corridor’s end without further incident. Peri relayed to Casey more of her memorized alphanumeric codes. Casey punched them into the keypad until one opened the next door taking them further inside this complex of death.

  Lights flicked on and a new chamber awaited. Simon propped Peri up against a wall while Casey lay Conner in Peri’s lap. After the strain of the long walk the journalist slipped again into unconscious. Simon tore off the sleeve of his shirt leaving one arm bare and used it to knot a tighter, more secure tourniquet around Peri’s ruined wrist.

  “I can’t go on,” Peri said through gritted teeth. Her breathing was fast and shallow. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Give me a gun, Simon. If anything comes for us, I’ll hold them off for as long as I can.”

  Simon nodded. They had one operational Steyr remaining, and he suspected he would need it to protect Casey. Besides, neither Conner nor Peri could operate a two-handed weapon with their injuries. He instead checked over Conner’s and Peri’s semi-automatic pistols, ensured each weapon had fresh clips and spares. />
  “You want water?” Casey asked.

  Peri nodded and Casey helped her drink. Peri pulled away when she had enough.

  This new chamber was donut shaped and central to the complex’s asterisk layout. Six outward doors led to six corridors, each likely featuring the same trap or something as equally horrific to keep humans out. Simon had no intension of finding out what those other five deathtraps were. They would leave the way they came in.

  Central to the donut chamber was an elevator shaft. Going up would lead to the missile launch turret that had taken out their Cessna. They knew from Conner’s plans that the Fortress featured underground levels that held Shatterhand’s core memories and processing units. The elevator was how they would access those lower levels.

  Peri caught Simon’s stare and asked through gritted teeth, “Why design this place so humans can get around?”

  Simon nodded understanding her question. “Shatterhand would have relied on humans to build the Fortress. Robots are a recent creation, I’m sure, and not yet sophisticated enough to do the job. But I wonder if anyone involved in the design or construction is still around to talk about it?”

  “What about power?” Casey asked. “We’re nowhere near the power grid and I saw no solar cells?”

  “Fusion technology,” Conner mumbled without opening his eyes, surprising them that he was lucid enough to follow their conversation. “This mad AI thought of… every…”

  They waited for him to say more, but he had already slipped back into unconsciousness.

  “Leave him with me,” Peri panted. Blood still seeped from her wound. “Simon. You look after Casey, you hear? Only she matters.”

  Casey became teary when she realized they were about to separate in this awful place. She hugged Peri tight. “We’ll come back for you Peri. We promise.”

  Peri hugged Casey, then pushed her away. “Go. Every minute you delay, Shattterhand invents another technological tool he can use against us.”