She finishes with a flourish of words, looking winded for a moment. I catch her by the arm and ask, “You okay?”
“Fine,” she says. “Just takes a little out of me.”
The sound of wrenching metal pulls my attention back to the robot golem. It swings its arm through the mob of zombies, dragging a massive chain with a wrecking ball at the end. Dozens of zombies are crushed under the strike. Then it turns on the other zombies around it without any direction from Fiona. She’s given it life, and set it free.
That takes care of one street, but we’re at the center of a four way intersection, and the undead army is still approaching from three sides. Rook and Cowboy unload on opposite streets full of dead, while I ping 9mm rounds off the heads and bodies of metal monsters. Some of my bullets manage to strike rusted or cracked skulls, punching through to destroy whatever these things have for a brain. But most do nothing more than remind these things who they want to eat. Or at least chew. Robots can’t eat, obviously.
Thankfully, I’ve still got Fiona by my side, and while I play pin-the-bullet-on-the-undead, she starts doing her thing. Every time I drop a zombie, she brings it back to fight for us. But her growing army of the reanimated can’t compete with the incoming hordes.
“Two mags left,” Rook calls out. “Time to hump it out of here.”
“I’m low, too,” Cowboy says. “Retreat to Bell.”
Without taking our eyes off the incoming hordes, I backtrack with Fiona. We could turn and run, but some of these bastards are fast. Turning our backs on them could prove deadly.
“Hudson, look out!” David shouts.
A quick scan of the area reveals nothing to get worked up about, other than the hundreds of robot undead. But I already knew about them.
Then he adds, “Above you!”
“Shit!” I shout, diving away from the shadow shrinking around me. Whatever it is, it’s airborne. I roll out of my dive, aim up and fire my last two rounds...into a stop sign.
The makeshift shield moves to the side, revealing a man, dressed in what looks like futuristic motorcycle garb, orange stripes and all. He lands with a metallic gong, revealing incredible strength. Then he’s up and smiling at me the way a kid does the first time they see an elephant. He looks me up and down.
“You...you’re human.”
“And you’re not,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I am human, too. Just...evolved.”
“A cyborg,” I say. “A robot.”
He shakes his head again. “Hu-man.” He enunciates it like I’m a dolt.
“How about we argue the definition of human later on,” I say, and I point over his shoulder.
“Understood,” he says, and he whips around with the stop sign, wielding it like a Viking battle axe. In the flash of an eye, he decapitates dozens of undead, then whips the stop sign down the street. The spinning projectile clears a long path and buys us some time.
I’ve seen some inhuman shit in the past few years, but nothing like this. Not only is he strong and fast, but he operates with a kind of fluid efficiency that can only be achieved by a quantum computer capable of thinking faster than any human ever to have lived. Which supports my claim that this dude isn’t human, even if he looks like Ewan McGregor.
When he’s done with the stop sign, he pulls a futuristic looking weapon from his back and strolls up beside Rook. “Hello, human.”
“Right back at you, buddy,” Rook says.
“Freeman,” the man says. “My name is not Buddy.”
“Lower case B,” Rook says, firing a shot that snaps back his weapon’s slide. “I’m out!”
“Buddy,” Freeman says. “A comrade or chum. A companion, friendly or on intimate terms.”
“Keep it in your pants, man,” Rook says, pointing at Freeman’s weapon. “That pea shooter going to be any help?”
Freeman offers an enthusiastic grin. His joy, despite the circumstances, is palpable, as is his innocence. Unlike David, who understands the ways of the world and chooses to see it through the conservative lens of religion, Freeman seems to absorb every experience like it was his first. And it’s not the zombies, or destroying them, that he’s enjoying, it’s being with us. With people.
Is he alone?
When Freeman fires his weapon, even Rook flinches. The loud twang is followed by a line of bursting zombies for as far as I can see. He repeats the process a few times, thinning out the ranks. In the distance, a tall building shakes, and then topples to the side.
Freeman turns to Rook and says, “It fires electromagnetically propelled projectiles, not pees.”
“Well slap my ass and call me Susan,” Rook says, and then leaps away when Freeman slaps his butt.
“Okay, Susan,” Freeman says, and I want to laugh so badly, but Cowboy hurries around the Bell, zombies at his back.
“Freeman,” he says to the robo-man. “My name is Cowboy. We need your help.”
“You are all humans?” Freeman asks, looking us over, like he can see inside our bodies—and maybe he can.
Cowboy takes Freeman by the shoulders. “We are all human. And we need your help. Now.”
Freeman smiles and fires two railgun rounds into the zombies closing in. “I will save you from the undead. That’s not a pro—”
“Not the undead,” I tell him. “Something worse.”
He looks around the city, not comprehending. Rather than try explaining the situation to him, I take advantage of his naiveté. “Just put your hand on this, and everything will make sense.”
The others see where I’m going with this, and as the zombies close in on all sides, overwhelming even Fiona’s robot golem, they all place their hands on the Bell.
“Back to the present,” Cowboy says to David, who quickly adjusts his watch, and is the last to place his hand on the smooth metal surface.
“I don’t understand,” Freeman says, looking confused, while taking aim at an incoming zombie.
When he pulls the trigger, we’re no longer in his world. The loud twang is followed by a thunderous clap of destruction. A stone tower in the distance shudders and crumbles. Given the amount of destruction the round causes, the lush jungle surroundings that match Cowboy’s description of Antarktos and the wind picking up around us, I think we’re about to get spanked by the king of this world, the man who Cowboy said held the power to face an army, or a kaiju, all on his own. “He’s coming, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Cowboy says.
“Who is coming?” Rook asks.
Cowboy sighs, shaking his head at Freeman, who seems taken aback by the sudden change in location. “Solomon.”
13
MAIGO
“Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.” Maigo knew Nemesis couldn’t hear her, but she hoped their old connection was still potent enough that the kaiju wouldn’t react violently to being abducted, transported across the country and dumped in the desert beneath an alien invader the size of a small city.
Teleporting twice, in rapid succession, with a very large passenger had worked, but it had also left Hyperion completely shut down. At the moment, Maigo couldn’t even hear the ancient robot’s AI. While she wasn’t connected to the logic-based computer system on an emotional level, its silence was still disconcerting. All she could really do was watch, and hope that Nemesis didn’t project her wrath at the wrong enemy.
“Remember Portland,” Maigo said to no one, as Nemesis sprang to her feet, kicking up a plume of dry desert earth. “We fought together. You’re not the same Nemesis that Hyperion killed.”
From her time as Nemesis’s Voice, she knew the ancient beast remembered her predecessor’s death as her own. Maigo remembered it, too. And she knew the passion those memories evoked in Nemesis. As a Mashintorum, Hyperion had been created for the sole purpose of protecting Atlantis and slaying that old world Gestoromque. While Nemesis Prime was defeated, Atlantis had also been destroyed. Hyperion had sat, unused, for thousands of years before Maigo and Lilly uncovered it.
Or did she?
The mighty beast cocked its head to the side, her glowing orange, rage-filled eyes flickering away to almost human brown eyes.
Endo, Maigo thought.
They had witnessed a number of changes in Nemesis’s behavior and combat capabilities since her father’s long time frenemy had become the kaiju’s Voice. While Maigo’s and Nemesis’s psyches had almost fully fused because of their shared desire for vengeance, Endo appeared to be taming the beast. Or at the very least, directing its wrath toward those who truly deserved it.
And at the moment, that didn’t include her, or Hyperion.
Stage One power restored. Shall I charge weapon systems?
“No,” Maigo said. “We need to move.”
Confirmed, the voice replied, and Maigo felt the robot’s rigid body gain mobility once more. She stood with slow deliberate movements, doing nothing that would suggest impending violence. Nemesis just watched her rise.
Full power in three minutes, the AI said.
Three minutes with an angry Nemesis would have meant her death.
“We need to make sure she gets the message,” Maigo said.
What message would you like to convey?
“That we’re on the same team.” Maigo looked Nemesis in the eyes, seeing through the big robotic face that Nemesis only knew from the battle of Portland and far earlier, from the battle of Atlantis. “Let’s show her a familiar face,” Maigo said, and then she focused her thoughts on Hyperion’s face opening up.
The AI resisted. I strongly recommend aborting your intended course of action.
“I didn’t ask,” Maigo replied, and she doubled her mental effort. The AI, which occasionally put up a fuss when she tried something it deemed risky, didn’t interfere a second time.
Maigo’s view of the world shifted from the digital feed of Hyperion’s robot eyes, to her own flesh-and-blood eyes. After a momentary darkness, sunlight struck her body, and with it, Arizona’s dry heat. The afternoon sun blazed against her black uniform as the tangle of tendrils connecting her to Hyperion’s system lifted her up. She went through the same process every time she entered or exited the giant mech, but usually in a hangar, and not within tail’s reach of Nemesis.
Fully exposed and vulnerable, Maigo looked into the eyes of the monster she had once been. This close to the monster, she felt as far from the creature as she had once felt connected. It gave her hope, and then consternation. If she felt distance from the beast, Nemesis might feel the same way about her.
But her fears were dispelled a moment later, when Nemesis closed her massive eyes and lowered her head, as though bowing.
Is that Endo? Maigo wondered.
While Endo was Japanese, where the tradition of bowing was as customary as gravy in the Southern U.S., it seemed an odd gesture to have Nemesis perform. Is he seriously bowing?
When the base of Nemesis’s head was exposed, the skin began to bulge. A moment later, the flesh split and opened like the petals of a flower. A glob of black, like a kaiju-sized blackhead, rose up out of the body.
Maigo’s confusion dissipated when the rising object opened its arms. Black fluid oozed away, as tendrils resembling those connecting Maigo to Hyperion, wriggled around the body.
It was Endo.
But not.
Not as she remembered him. His black hair was gone. His flesh was pale, and the chiseled body of the warrior he once was, had diminished into something like a bed-ridden cancer patient with days left to live. If that wasn’t strange enough, he had no body from the waist down.
They’re merging, Maigo realized. Not just mentally, but physically. They were becoming one in every way. The man named Endo was no longer just a man. But from what Maigo knew of him, he wasn’t to be pitied for this fate. It’s exactly what he wanted.
“Maigo,” Endo said, his voice frail, but audible despite the distance between them. “You look well.”
“Uh, you too,” she said.
Endo smiled, looking down at his emaciated half-self. “You have nothing to fear from us. We are united.”
Maigo wasn’t sure if he meant him and Nemesis, or the both of them with her and the rest of the FC-P. She decided it didn’t matter. Given Endo’s allegiances, either meaning’s path reached the same terminus: Nemesis was one of the good guys now.
“Glad to hear it,” she said, feeling uncomfortable.
Endo glanced back and forth, seeing the Arizona desert with his own eyes. “Now...why are we here?”
Maigo lifted her gloved hand and pointed behind Endo. He turned around, his body twisting an unnatural amount, like his spine no longer existed. The massive gas bag creature floated on the horizon, its huge form slowly descending toward Tucson.
Endo faced her again. “The Aeros.”
He spoke the word with such contempt that she had no doubt he fully recalled the tortures wrought on Nemesis Prime, that turned her and Nemesis into goddesses of wrath. If there was one force in the universe Nemesis hated more than the Atlantide she’d been conditioned to hate, it was the ones who had done the conditioning.
“Where is Jon?” Endo asked.
“Getting help.”
“What kind of help?”
“The weird and powerful kind.”
Endo pointed at the distant kaiju, his arm shaking from the effort. “This is just the beginning.”
“We know,” Maigo said. “Now, will you fight?”
Endo’s only response was a grin so fiendish, Maigo couldn’t help but return it. Endo slid back inside Nemesis without another word.
Maigo leaned back, letting the tendrils pull her back inside the far less grotesque interior of Hyperion. A moment later, she was looking through the Machintorum’s eyes again, wielding its considerable power.
Full power restored, the AI announced.
Nemesis rose up to her full height again and turned toward the alien kaiju. Then, with a rage Maigo had not heard before, Nemesis bellowed a roar that shook the earth beneath her feet.
Battle cry complete, the two giant warriors charged toward the Aeros creature.
Nemesis took the lead, surprising Maigo with a long leap forward that transformed her upright, running stride into something more closely resembling a cheetah, each shove forward increasing her speed.
“Give me some options,” Maigo said to the AI. “Can we blow that thing out of the sky?”
Affirmative. Level Three weaponry is available.
The most powerful weapon in Hyperion’s arsenal was what Hudson liked to call ‘Gunhead Mode’. A massive energy weapon would rise from the robot’s back, attaching to its head. She aimed it simply by looking at her target, which meant that from this distance, she could also punch a hole through the giant gas bag, keeping the kaiju airborne. A sustained blast would drain Hyperion’s power for a short time, but she suspected it wouldn’t take much to cut through the stretched-thin flesh, which looked ready to burst.
The problem was, the creature currently floated above a city full of people. They needed to lure it away before that could happen. But she couldn’t find its face, if it had one. It might not even be able to see them, and if it could, it might simply stay out of range, hovering a mile above the city, doing who knew what. Nothing good.
“Maigo, come in.” It was Collins.
“I don’t suppose you have any ideas?” Maigo asked. Hyperion streamed the view from its eyes back to the Mountain. They knew the situation, though they wouldn’t have seen her interaction with Endo.
“You need to get it away from the city,” Collins said.
“Duh,” Maigo snapped. “Easier said than done, though. Doesn’t have eyes, and if I burst that bubble, it�
�s going to come down.”
“Have you considered wounding it?” Collins asked. “You know, not on the bubble?”
Damnit, Maigo thought. She hated looking like an amateur, but when it came to strategic thinking, she was still learning. If not for her inhuman abilities, and her connection with the giant robot, her role in this fight would probably be diminished to an advisory role—and even then, only about Nemesis. “I’m on it.”
While Nemesis charged ahead, preparing to do who knew what, Hyperion skidded to a stop, its massive feet digging ten foot deep gouges in the parched earth. Rather than switch to Gunhead Mode, and risk cutting the thing in half, or worse—exploding it—Maigo raised the robot’s arms. The forearms twisted, switching through weapon systems like a multi-color pen. Then slots opened, revealing three laser cannons on each arm. The cannons, each far less powerful than the Gunhead, still packed a punch when used in unison. And they could be utilized in a far more precise way.
Looking through Hyperion’s advanced aiming system, Maigo zoomed in on the target. “We have a name for these things yet?”
“Your Dad isn’t exactly around to supply one,” Collins replied. While Hudson usually took the honor of naming new creatures, she and Lilly had stolen his thunder on more than one occasion. Why not one more time?
“We’ll call it GUS.” Maigo searched the creature’s base for any signs of apparent weakness, but the mass of hanging flesh simply looked revolting. She picked an area near its core and locked on the laser system. No matter where the creature moved, the system would keep the weapons on target, and when they struck, it would be at the speed of light.
“Gus?” Collins asked.
“It’s an acronym. Gasbag of Unusual Size.”
Collins chuckled, but Maigo could tell she was trying to hide it. “Probably not something he would have picked, but I like the source material. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, kick its ass.”
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 8