by Jacob Holo
1: You can always just destroy it.
2: And what would your dragons do then?
1: I would order them to launch a nuclear attack on Earth using Apocalypse. I would have them carry it out by any means necessary.
2: As I thought. I won’t give you the star drive, but I won’t destroy it either. Let’s see how your dragons fare against both the crusaders and my own forces.
1: An interesting choice.
2: You are not the only one who can adjust plans on the fly. My forces have already taken actions to mask my involvement.
1: You mean killing your allies.
2: They are necessary losses to mask my presence and shift blame to you.
1: You haven’t changed these past ten years. Your machines are as cruel as ever.
2: Such a pointless sentiment, Sakura. They are efficient, not cruel. Torture for sport is cruel. My machines kill with precision and make use of the leftovers.
1: They demoralize and terrorize.
2: I strike at the basic human weakness of fear, using it to my advantage. That is not the same as being cruel.
1: This sickening display will not go unnoticed.
2: True, but the Federacy will believe they are your machines, Sakura. No matter what happens next, Europa is dead.
... link severed at source ...
Two phantoms went offline in Ryu’s overlay. Their kill-cams showed an unusually tall crusader opening fire.
“Nice try, but that wasn’t me,” Ryu said, hugging the wall of a spherical cargo junction. He extruded a tubule from his glove and checked the inspection corridor leading to the launch center. Two crusades piled debris on their side of the corridor while a third welded it into a make-shift barricade. Parts of the corridor still smoked from the firefight between the crusaders and the retreating tank-spider.
“That tank-spider is around here somewhere,” Naomi said.
“I know,” Ryu said. “This place has gone insane. What the hell is going on?”
“Whatever it is, we can still shoot our way out.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Naomi loaded three anti-tank grenades into her rifle’s launcher. “So what now?”
Ryu contacted Matriarch through his TangleNet link.
“We’re close to the launch center,” Ryu said. “But I don’t see us getting inside. Another eight crusaders just showed up. That makes nineteen.”
“The launch center is no longer your target,” Matriarch said. “Continue to draw attention away from Cat and Toshi, but make your way to their location.”
“Just what exactly is going on here?”
“I ... cannot explain.”
“You what?”
“I am sorry, Ryu. Please focus on your mission.”
“Focus on my mission? That tank-spider is using smartskin!”
“I know. I have modified your smartsuit cheats to make detecting the machines easier.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Ryu said. “How did someone else get smartskin?”
“The machines you face are your enemies. That is all you need to know.”
“All I need to know? Who’s controlling it?”
“It is ... I cannot say.”
“You can’t say?”
“Please be understanding,” Matriarch said.
“Understand what? This place suddenly turned into Bunker Zero! I’m looking for answers and you’re dodging all over the place!”
“Please carry out your mission. So many lives depend on it.”
“But—”
Matriarch severed the link.
“Shit!” Ryu shouted.
“That didn’t sound good,” Naomi said.
“Fucking shit!”
“What do we do?”
Ryu pulled up Cat’s location on his overlay and plotted an intercept on his map.
“We’re getting out of here,” he said.
“Works for me.”
A cargo tunnel ran vertically through the spherical junction. Ryu walked along the sloping walls and proceeded down the cargo tunnel. The tunnel ran several dozen stories straight down. Boxy containers clogged the view. The rail system was motionless with most containers locked in position.
A few levels down, the walls changed to yellow-and-red diagonals, then yellow-and-white.
“You hear that?” Naomi asked.
“Yeah,” Ryu said, activating a sonic cheat. “Small arms fire and the occasional scream.”
“It’s coming from ahead.”
The gunfire grew louder. Several containers blocked line of sight to the skirmish.
Ryu rounded a box bigger than his apartment. The labels said it was loaded with spare electrical parts. He froze in place when he saw the junction. Over a dozen Federacy regulars traded fire with four gun-spiders and a large group of thralls. Both sides were heavily entrenched behind cargo containers. Most of the gun-spiders had damaged smartskin, but their small size and maneuverability helped offset that.
A gun-spider with a fully functional illusion crawled along the wall, slowly flanking the regulars.
“Should we intervene?” Naomi asked.
“Not yet.”
The hidden gun-spider stopped within a few meters of the Feddies. Four small devices detached from its back, also concealed by smartskin. The stiletto-shaped devices floated away from the gun-spider, unfurled transparent wings, and flew towards the regulars.
“What are those things?” Naomi asked.
“Needle-wasps,” Ryu said.
The regulars had formed a line behind a bullet-riddled cargo container. The first needle-wasp swooped in from the side and struck the closest regular in the neck. Its abdomen contracted, delivering a payload of unknown fluids into the man’s circulatory system. The other three found their marks with equal ease. Four of the regulars went limp. Only their friction boots prevented them from floating out of cover.
The gun-spiders and thralls charged into the open. They jetted across the junction or pushed off their wall, firing with everything they had. The gun-spider on the wall moved in and opened fire with its railgun, cutting through the unsuspecting regulars from the side.
Ryu checked his map. “Going around this will take too long. We’ll cut through.”
“Understood,” Naomi said. She shouldered her rifle.
“Ready ...” Ryu said, tagging their targets. The gun-spiders and thralls quickly overran the Feddie position, but it also left them exposed. “Now!”
Naomi fired four shots from her rifle, catching each gun-spider in the abdomen. The heavy rounds exploded within their bodies and blew them apart.
Ryu unloaded a full clip into the thralls, cutting through their already damaged armor. Each shatterback that struck home erupted in a small ring of splinters that mutilated internal organs. Expanding clouds of intestines and shattered bone clogged the junction.
Ryu ejected his spent clip, swung his aim to the last five thralls, and fired a needle grenade into the group. The grenade detonated into a cone of diamond needles that blew traumatic holes through their bodies.
Two needle-wasps flew at them.
Ryu slammed in a fresh clip. His rifle made microscopic adjustments to the position of the clip and cycled up the first round. He fired two shots, shattering the needle-wasps and breaching their abdomens. Black fluid rained towards him.
“Move!” Ryu shouted. He and Naomi dove out of the way just before the fluid splashed against the wall. Ryu adjusted the friction on his palm and slapped the wall to halt his dive.
“That stuff could be anything,” Ryu said. “Don’t let it touch you.”
“Yeah,” Naomi said.
“We’ll take the door the regulars were guarding,” Ryu said. He touched his boots to the wall and walked towards the door.
A lone Feddie had somehow survived the battle. He put his back against the door and swung his carbine around wildly. Blood covered half his visor. Panting and sweating, he wiped the visor with his forearm but only succeeded i
n smearing it. Someone’s leg floated by. The Feddie opened fire, riddling the leg with bullets.
Ryu shot the Feddie in the head, pushed his corpse out of the way, and hacked the door. He and Naomi stepped into a long yellow-and-white corridor unblemished by gunfire. Distant explosions rocked the station. Behind the walls, heavy support struts groaned from the sudden stress.
“Cat, we’re heading towards you,” Ryu said over the squad channel. “What’s your status?”
“We’re close to the test ship,” Cat said. “I’ve tagged the location on your map. The fighting hasn’t spread this far, so we’ve been able to avoid detection.”
“Good,” Ryu said, walking down the corridor. He paused to let a Feddie patrol by. “Any idea what we’re up against?”
“Not a clue,” Cat said. “These machines took the Federacy by complete surprise. The station’s army regiment has already taken massive casualties. They’re setting up perimeters to try to contain the machines.”
“I think we just passed one. They’re not working too well.”
“That’s what it sounds like,” Cat said. “It’s a big station, so the regiment is spread thin, but there are over five thousand regulars on board. As deadly as these machines are, there’s only so much they can do against numbers like that.”
“What about the crusaders?”
“About three hundred fifty are on the station with more coming. Most are engaging the machines. They’re taking heavy casualties, but are doing a lot of damage in the process. One of the three crash points has been neutralized.”
“Let’s hope they stay busy fighting each other,” Ryu said.
“About thirty crusaders have fortified the launch center,” Cat said. “And I think a group of ten or twelve may be tailing you.”
“We’ll keep that in mind. Just get to the test ship. We’re going to need it to get out. We don’t have any other options.”
“Understood.”
Ryu hacked the next door and stepped into a chamber with dozens of huge red silos, each packed tightly against its neighbor. The closest read WEAPON 21,207 in white letters. Additional weapons were visible above and below through the catwalks ringing the silos. Four regulars with jetpacks descended through the chamber a few silos to Ryu’s right. Something massive crept around the silo next to the regulars.
“Tank-spider,” Naomi said. “I think it’s the same one from before.”
“I can barely see it.”
The tank-spider opened fire, blowing three of the regulars’ heads off. It leaped off the silo and grabbed the fourth Feddie with a pair of articulating three-pronged claws. The massive machine crashed into the catwalk close to Ryu. The two dragons backed away slowly.
The Feddie screamed and fired his carbine. The tank-spider ripped his arm out of its socket and grabbed him by the head. It extended a drill from the center of its claw and bored through the Feddie’s visor and into his eye socket. The man twitched wildly, then went limp.
“What the hell is it doing?” Naomi whispered.
Several gun-spiders crawled around the silos and leaped to the tank-spider like children rejoining their mother. Some of them grabbed the three Feddie corpses and brought them over.
“Should we engage?” Naomi asked.
“No,” Ryu said. “We’ll slip by once we see where it’s going.”
Two gun-spiders crawled over the tank-spider and applied fresh patches of smartskin. Another crept underneath and detached a ruined railgun. The gun-spider tossed the weapon aside, removed its own railgun, and mounted it on the tank-spider’s underbelly.
The tank-spider set the first dead Feddie aside and picked up another. It cauterized the bleeding at the neck, then drilled into the man’s spine. A tube snaked out of the other claw and injected something directly into the man’s heart.
The first dead Feddie twitched back to life and looked around. He jetted over to his severed limb and grabbed the carbine with his remaining arm. The new thrall landed next to the tank-spider and waited with the patience of a statue.
The tank-spider set the second corpse aside and picked up the third. Each new thrall took about twenty seconds for the tank-spider to prepare, then less than a minute to animate. In the time it took the tank-spider to prepare all four corpses, the gun-spiders finished repairing its smartskin.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” Naomi said.
“The speed of the process is incredible,” Ryu said. “The thralls at Bunker Zero took hours to make.”
“What’s it injecting them with?”
“Don’t know. Maybe adrenalmax with a nanomedic booster? The corpses just need enough juice and repairs to move and shoot.”
“Three of them don’t have heads!”
“The tank-spider is probably installing a control device in their spines,” Ryu said. “It must relay commands using other sensors.”
“I’m not detecting any infostructure from the spiders,” Naomi said. “How does it control them?”
“They could be using entangled communications.”
“But we’re the only people who have that!”
“We’re the only people who have smartskin, too.”
The tank-spider and gun-spiders jumped from the catwalk to the nearest silo and disappeared into the array of nuclear weapons. The four new thralls pushed off the catwalk and jetted after them.
Ryu and Naomi crept along the catwalk circling the dense concentration of silos and headed for an exit on the far side. They had almost reached it when the tank-spider appeared again. It leaped off a silo and landed next to the door. With both claws, it punched through a corner of the thick security door and peeled it open. Gun-spiders scurried through the crack.
The tank-spider anchored itself against the wall and ripped the whole door free. One half tumbled over Ryu’s head. The thralls and the tank-spider hurried through the opening.
“Ryu, I think the machines are heading for the test ship,” Naomi said.
“You could be right,” Ryu said. “But earlier they were trying to break into the launch center. Who the hell is controlling these things?”
Ryu checked around the corner with a tubule. The next chamber was another group of weapon silos. The machines jumped to the nearest silo and scampered down its length. The thralls jetted after them.
“Looks like they’re heading down a level,” Ryu said. “Come on.” He stepped into the chamber and circled around the silos. When he reached the door, he hacked it with his glove. The heavy security door slid up. He checked the corridor with a tubule.
A group of Feddies opened fire, snipping the dot-cam off the tubule’s end. The rest retracted into his glove.
“Shit!” Ryu said.
“What are we dealing with?” Naomi asked. Bullets spewed through the open doorway and ricocheted off the nearest weapon silo.
Ryu sent her the tubule’s last image. “About a dozen Feddies in a defensive formation. They’ve got barricades and know where we’re coming. Plus it looks like they finally broke out the heavy weapons. One of them has a tripod M18 Gatling he’s friction-mated to the floor.”
“We should go around.”
“Agreed,” Ryu said. He plotted a course that took them down and around.
The two dragons were about to push off the catwalk when the shooting stopped.
“Sounds like a second group of Feddies approaching from behind the barricade,” Naomi said.
“Let’s listen in,” Ryu said.
“Hold your fire!” said the newcomers. “Friendlies inbound!”
“Cross!”
“What?”
“The sign is cross! What’s the counter sign?”
The newcomers opened fire.
Ryu extended another tubule and watched. A group of four thralls and several gun-spiders attacked the barricade from a side passage. The Feddie manning the turret tried to swing it around, but a gun-spider blew his head off. The machines and thralls slaughtered everyone.
Gun-spiders grabbed th
e corpses and gathered them in a floating mass. One weaponless gun-spider cut the M18 Gatling off its tripod and attached the gun to its back.
The tank-spider came into view just beyond the barricade. Ryu could only get a vague impression of something massive moving by. The tank-spider grabbed the nearest corpse and drilled into its skull.
“Still want to defect?” Ryu asked.
“What kind of stupid question is that?” Naomi asked.
“Just curious.”
“Well, don’t be.”
“I noticed you’re not stuttering,” Ryu said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“And you’re hands aren’t shaking.”
“So?”
“Just saying I’m glad you’re here.”
“I ... uhh ...”
“Makes me think we might live through this.”
“Umm ...”
“You’re welcome,” Ryu said.
The tank-spider released the last corpse, which floated into a cluster of limp bodies. One by one, they twitched active and reclaimed their carbines.
“The tank-spider is moving on,” Ryu said.
“They’re definitely heading for the test ship.”
“And gathering more forces along the way. Come on. Let’s follow them.”
“Is that wise?” Naomi asked.
“Probably not,” Ryu said. “It must know we’re close, even if it doesn’t know where we are. But what choice do we have? If we try to go around it’ll take too long.”
Ryu followed the tank-spider and its forces further into the station. They passed through an empty dormitory and a machine shop before entering a long set of corridors. His map showed they were approaching a small, abandoned hangar. Cat and Toshi were already inside.
“The map says the hangar ahead was irradiated in an accident nine years ago,” Ryu said. “The teams that go in are supposedly scrubbing it down for an overhaul in a few years. Not a bad cover. Lots of people and equipment going in and out, but no one else wants to go near it.”
“You’d think someone would ask why they’re taking so long.”
“Come on,” Ryu said. “These are government workers we’re talking about.”
Gunshots rang out from the junction ahead. The last few gun-spiders turned the corner and disappeared from view. Ryu hugged the corner and scouted the next area with a tubule.