by Jacob Holo
“The Feddies must really like their irradiated hangars,” Ryu said. “That’s a lot of troops.”
Federacy regulars had welded barricades into place and formed two defensive lines, one on the floor and one on the ceiling. In front of them, the corridor widened into a circular killing ground with the Feddies blocking the only way out. The machines couldn’t flank them. Doors lined the circular longue, but the map showed they all led to storage rooms or dormitory dead ends.
The machines and Feddies traded fire. Regulars on tripod Gatlings bathed the machines with bullet torrents, forcing them to hunker down at the narrow entrance to the lounge.
Two small shapes detached from the tank-spider and crawled into the lounge. The Feddies couldn’t see them because of their slow speed and intact smartskin illusions. The shapes resembled worms with medical drills at either end. They began rounding the lounge in opposite directions, and disappeared from view.
“Chest-devils,” Ryu whispered.
Gun-spiders broke cover and fired on the Feddies, keeping attention focused on the narrow entrance. When the chest-devils came back into view, they were almost to the Feddie barricade. Ryu could barely make out their outlines against the stark white walls.
Once close enough, the chest-devils leaped from the walls and dove at separate targets. The first struck a Feddie in the throat and drilled through. It squirmed down the man esophagus. Blood gushed out of the man’s neck, obscuring the mechanical creature. He fell back, clutching his throat.
The second chest-devil latched onto a man’s stomach and drilled into his abdomen. Its tail whipped about then vanished into his stomach in a splash of gore.
Once inside, Ryu suspected the chest-devils would open their heads and begin inserting control devices into each man’s spinal cord. The process took less than a minute. Medics rushed to the men’s sides, shot them with nanomedic boosters, and pulled out their meditrackers. But it was already too late. The new thralls grabbed their carbines and shot the medics. They stood up and opened fire, cutting the Federacy formation apart from the inside.
With the barricade disrupted, the machines charged in and overwhelmed the Feddie position. They struck with surgical precision, almost always going for the head. When it was over, the gun-spiders brought the fresh corpses before the tank-spider.
“Imagine if this thing got loose in a city,” Naomi said. “How long would it take to amass an army?”
“At least it took care of the barricade for us,” Ryu said. “How many turbo-devastators do you have left?”
“One.”
“That’s it?”
“I wasn’t expecting heavy armor!” Naomi said. “Be glad I brought any!”
“I’m just glad you planned on fighting at all.”
“Oh, shut up!” Naomi said, unfolding her rifle and locking it into sniper-mode. She pulled a turbo-devastator out of her breast pouch and loaded it.
“Ryu, this is Cat.”
“Go ahead.”
“You and Naomi have to get out of there. I’m showing a large group of crusaders approaching from behind. There’s also another group of thralls moving up from a few decks below.”
“There’s a tank-spider in our way. Can we go around?”
“Negative,” Cat said. “This is the only way in.”
“Oh, that’s just great.”
“You need to get to the corridor on the far side of that lounge the tank-spider is in,” Cat said. “I’ll open the door once you’re close. It leads to an inspection corridor with a few turrets, which I’ve taken control of. Toshi is heading towards your position to back you up. I’m sorry, but I need to work with Matriarch on the test ship.”
“Understood.” Ryu turned to Naomi. “You ready for this?”
“Sure. Why not?” Naomi said.
“Maximum stealth,” Ryu said. “Fire only if you have to.”
“Got it.”
Ryu took one last look through his tubule, retracted it, and crept into view. The tank-spider busied itself with animating the Federacy corpses. The two dragons made their way into the lounge, crouched along the wall, and moved clockwise around the perimeter.
Ryu kept his eyes on the machines crowding the center of the lounge. A gun-spider crawled onto the tank-spider’s back and bent a warped armor plate back into place. It welded the seam shut and applied a strip of smartskin.
Ryu had almost reached the barricade when the tank-spider spun around and opened fire. Adrenalmax surged through his system, and he dove behind the barricade. The tank-spider’s heavy railguns blew through a thrall standing in the wrong spot and pounded the walls where Ryu had been.
Naomi dove, aimed her rifle, and shot. The turbo-devastator punched through the center of the tank and exploded within its abdomen. Fire and white-hot debris blew out the tank-spider’s back, vaporizing two thralls floating too close and cutting down another six. The tank-spider’s smartskin illusion crashed, revealing a six-legged, two-armed monstrosity covered in black hexagons. Smoke poured from its ruined abdomen.
The tank-spider staggered back up, anchored itself, and took aim. It opened fire, blowing huge dents in the thick Federacy barricade.
“Damn thing’s tough!” Naomi shouted, pulling her legs in behind the barricade. She folded her rifle and loaded a standard clip.
“Toshi!” Ryu shouted.
“Almost there, boss!”
Two gun-spiders leaped onto the ceiling and scurried across, trying to get an angled shot against the pinned dragons. Ryu programmed his grenades for an intercept and fired all three over the barricade. They lit their engines and screamed into the gun-spiders. The grenades blasted them apart and blew out a section of the ceiling.
Ryu shoved grenades into his rifle.
The door to the inspection corridor rose. Toshi opened fire. Three grenades and a full clip of shatterbacks shot overhead and exploded amongst the machines. Security turrets to Toshi’s right and left cut loose with heavy railguns. Naomi and Ryu dove into the corridor.
Still in the air, Naomi turned, aimed for the gaping hole in the tank-spider’s front armor and fired two shots. They would have struck home, but the machine snapped its arm up to block the attack. The two heavy rounds blew the arm off its ball joint.
The security door slammed shut. The tank-spider punched the far side and bent it inward.
“Run!” Toshi shouted.
Ryu sprang to his feet, adjusted his soles for maximum running speed, and dashed down the black corridor. Behind them, the security door groaned as the tank-spider bent it aside.
The three dragons ran through the thickest security door Ryu had ever seen. It lumbered closed behind them as the robots broke into the security corridor. The automated turrets opened fire, but wouldn’t delay the robots for long. With several loud clangs, the security door locked in place.
“Over here!” Cat shouted.
Ryu turned from the security door. For being an unused hangar undergoing radiation scrubbing, it looked immaculate. The chamber was shaped like a weapon silo on its side, but wider and with machines lining the walls. Ryu had no idea what most of them did. Some had labels like “Hard-Matter Mutator” and “Tachyon Scope,” but the real star was the test ship.
The Needle of Destiny lived up to its name. Its sharply tapered hull ran the whole length of the hangar, ending in a cockpit that could hold two people comfortably or four if they knew each other very well. The hull shone like burnished gold. Maybe it was. Gold had a lot of useful properties besides being pretty. Except for the open cockpit hatch, the exterior was seamless.
Ryu kicked off the wall and floated to Cat. She hung onto the open hatch leading to the test ship’s cockpit. A few bodies in white jumpsuits floated behind her. Blood dribbled from the knife slashes at their necks.
“Status?” Ryu asked.
“Could be better,” Cat said. “I’ve started the test ship’s systems, but the star drive needs to be configured. Matriarch is handling that.”
The tank-spid
er smashed against the door. The center bulged slightly.
Toshi pushed off the door. “It’s holding, but not for long.”
“Once the drive is configured,” Cat said. “We can use it to get out of here.”
“What about the fleet outside?” Ryu asked.
“No need to go outside,” Cat said. “The test ship doesn’t actually move. It’s more like teleporting.”
“Besides, we sabotaged the hangar iris,” Toshi said. He loaded grenades into his rifle. “No reason to give them another entry point.”
Robots scraped at the door. Cutting torches ignited.
“How long?” Ryu asked.
“The math is pretty intense,” Cat said. “About ten minutes.”
“She needs ten minutes to handle a math problem?” Ryu asked.
“For something like this, yes,” Cat said.
“Just be glad she’s on our side,” Toshi said. “Otherwise we’d never get this thing moving.”
“All right, we need to set up,” Ryu said. He tagged four locations. “We’ll use the machines on the wall for cover and catch anything coming through in a cross fire.”
“You hear that?” Naomi asked. She looked around.
“You mean besides the door?” Toshi asked. A spot near the center turned red.
“No, Naomi’s right,” Ryu said. “It was like ... air moving but wrong. Any idea where it came from?”
“Maybe,” Naomi said. “I think—”
A small vent cover burst open next to Toshi. Twenty needle-wasps poured through.
“Toshi, behind you!” Ryu shouted.
Toshi turned in midair. He was still floating to the test ship and had no way to dodge. The needle-wasps spread out, but Toshi was so close to the vent that half a dozen would hit him. The other dragons opened fire, bursting the tiny machines. One needle-wasp shot at Toshi’s face. He blocked it with his palm.
The needle-wasp stabbed through his smartsuit’s ballistic underlay and contracted its abdomen. Thick fluid coursed into his body. Toshi stuck the barrel of his rifle to the needle-wasp and blew it apart. He pulled the needle out.
In Ryu’s overlay, Toshi’s palm turned yellow. The patch of yellow expanded to his fingers and forearm. The initial insertion turned red. It was expanding at a frightening rate.
“Damn it!” Toshi cried. “Ahhh!”
“Cat, help him!” Ryu said. He grabbed a grenade off his bandolier, set it for proximity detection, and threw it down the vent.
Cat pulled a meditracker from her belt and held it over Toshi’s hand.
“Microdestroyer infusion,” Cat said. “Very sophisticated. It’s expanding fast.”
“Gah! Do something!” Toshi screamed.
Cat grabbed a nanomedic booster from her belt and stabbed it into Toshi’s palm, then held her meditracker over the wound.
“Naomi, keep an eye out for more,” Ryu said.
“Right.”
“Cat, talk to me,” Ryu said.
“I think I just made it worse,” Cat said, moving the meditracker to Toshi’s elbow. “The microdestroyers are corrupting the nanomedics and using them to tear down Toshi’s biological defenses. His implants are releasing bio-attackers and painkillers, but they’re being defeated or repurposed as well. It’s happening too fast!”
Cat stuck another booster into Toshi’s elbow.
“Ahhh!” Toshi cried. “Fuck!”
“There, I think I slowed it down,” Cat said. “I had to freeze his arm with a cryo booster.”
“Where are they now?” Ryu asked.
“In his elbow,” Cat said. “If they reach his heart, he’s dead.”
“How much time do we have?”
“A minute. Maybe less.”
“Can you stop them?”
Cat shook her head. “Not a chance.”
“Fuck, I don’t want to die here!” Toshi cried.
“Cut it off,” Ryu said. “Sever the limb before it kills him.”
“Oh fuck me!” Toshi cried.
“It’s that or you die,” Ryu said.
“Okay ... umm ... ” Cat retrieved her ultrasonic knife and placed the blade against Toshi’s armpit, but hesitated.
“Cat?” Ryu asked.
“I ...” She thumbed the knife’s power trigger but didn’t press it.
“Just fucking do it!” Toshi cried.
Ryu pushed Cat aside and pulled out his own knife. He switched it on and cut into Toshi’s shoulder. The blade tore through ballistic armor and enhanced muscles, but ground against Toshi’s diamoplast artificial bones. Ryu gritted his teeth and sawed through the bones. Blood spurted everywhere, splashing against their smartsuits and scrambling their illusions.
With a grunt, Ryu severed Toshi’s arm. The limb floated away, leaving a trail of blood.
“Awh! Fucking hell!” Toshi cried, clutching his stump. Blood squirted through his fingers but quickly coagulated.
“I’m sorry,” Cat said. She pulled out another nanomedic booster and stuck it in Toshi’s stump.
“Gah!” Toshi gasped.
“I couldn’t,” Cat said. “I just couldn’t ...”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ryu said, sheathing his knife.
“Not the same fucking arm!” Toshi cried. “What do people have against my fucking right arm?”
“The robots are almost in!” Naomi shouted. A spot on the door glowed orange. Heat haze radiated off it.
“Positions!” Ryu said. His smartskin oscillated its outer surface, shaking the blood off and rebooting his illusion.
Toshi grabbed his rifle. Cat helped maneuver him into position, then kicked off the wall and took her own place. The four dragons each had overlapping fields of fire on the door, two above and two below. No matter where the robots ran in the hangar, at least two dragons would have clear shots.
The sounds of cutting torches stopped.
“This is it, dragons,” Ryu said. “Don’t let anything through.”
The door exploded in. Thralls jetted through the gap. Some of them grabbed hold of the ragged, glowing edges of the door. Ryu heard their flesh sizzle.
The dragons opened fire, cutting them down. Shatterbacks found their marks and blew whole heads and limbs off. The thralls opened fire, spraying the walls at random.
Ryu hosed them down, ejected his clip and slammed in another. A second group of thralls clambered into the hangar, pushing aside body parts and entrails. They fired just as wildly as the first. Toshi launched a needle grenade into the lead thrall. The grenade exploded into a cone that blew through the first thrall and gutted four behind it.
Gun-spiders scurried in and opened fire with heavy weapons. One of them had a thermal lance. The white beam struck the “Neutronium Synthesizer” Ryu had been using for cover and ate through it. Ryu dodged out of the way and blasted the gun-spider with a grenade. He grabbed hold of the “Negative-Matter Grafting Spindle” and pulled himself into cover.
In the midst of the firefight, the test ship remained unblemished.
They must want it as much as we do, Ryu thought.
More thralls and more gun-spiders charged in, trying to overwhelm the dragons with sheer numbers. Body parts and twisted debris clogged the entrance. Blood and mechanical fluids coated the walls. Ryu’s smartsuit had trouble maintaining an illusion with all the particulate matter floating around.
The tank-spider charged through with another group of gun-spiders. It opened fire, but grenades from Toshi blew its weapons off. The hulking machine leaped off the wall and flew towards Ryu’s position.
Ryu cut loose with the rest of his clip, emptying over thirty shatterbacks into the hulking machine. Most only chipped away at its heavy armor, but some found cracks from previous engagements and exploded within its vulnerable insides.
The tank-spider landed next to him. Ryu dodged out of the way, but the tank-spider dashed forward and grabbed him by the head with its remaining claw. A smartskin iris opened in front of his face and a familiar drill extended. It
spun up and bored into his helmet.
Ryu shoved his rifle against the drill and fired, severing it. He could feel the drill bit touching his nose.
The tank-spider’s claw contracted around his head. His visor cracked. The ballistic armor in his helmet fractured and broke apart. The tank-spider had him by the head and squeezed down on his skull. Only his diamoplast skeleton prevented the tank-spider from popping his head like a pimple. One of the claws dug in underneath his jaw, crushing his teeth together.
Naomi fired two shots from her sniper rifle and severed the tank spider’s arm. Ryu kicked off the tank-spider and hit the wall with his back. He released the seals at his collar and struggled out of his ruined helmet. The tank-spider’s claw scraped against his skull, taking skin and hair with it.
With a scream, Ryu threw the claw and fragments of his helmet aside.
Naomi fired more two shots into the tank-spider. The machine crashed against the hangar wall and finally went limp. Silence fell over the hangar. Every other machine was dead.
Ryu walked up to the tank-spider. He hawked up a gob of saliva mixed with blood and spat at the smoking machine.
“Not so tough now!” Ryu shouted. He grabbed the rifle floating next to him. At some point during the fight, the barrel had been bent at a right angle. Ryu retrieved the grenades in its launcher and let the useless weapon float away.
“That group of crusaders is almost here,” Cat said. “About two minutes away. Matriarch is cutting it close.”
“Everyone all right?” Ryu asked.
“Same as before,” Toshi said.
“Damaged armor,” Naomi said. “Nothing major.”
“Okay dragons, trap the entrance with everything you have and then get into the test ship.”
Ryu received a message over his TangleNet link. He let it play over his sense of hearing.
“Please tell me some good news,” Ryu said. He wiped some blood off his mouth.
“Ryu, I have almost completed the star drive configuration,” Matriarch said.
“All right!”
“I have one more task for you. In the tank-spider you will find a small device. It is a cylinder about the size of a drinking glass. I’m sending you what I think it looks like. It is important you bring it back.”