Tantalus (The Hidden Book 1)

by Phil Maxey

Bell smiled. “Just as long as you remember our deal Babel, thirty percent of everything we find.”

  “Yes, yes.” He drew closer to the warden. “You might want to stay back here, things are going to get real bloody.”

  An IM walked up to him. “All the civilians are at the far end of the cell block.”

  “Good! And is the camera working again there?”

  “It is.”

  “And you and the others know what you have to do?”

  “If you are killed then we will kill the twenty-seven civilians.”

  “Yes!” Babel smiled, patting the machine on its solid looking arm. He turned to the IM behind. “Right, you and I need to have a little conversation.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Luke examined his GK plasma rifle. He was lying awkwardly with others on top of one of the containers looking down at the artificial kill zone ten meters below. “There’s a kind of justice in using Babel’s own weapons against him.”

  Aruna smirked. “How’s the stomach?”

  “Feels as if it was pounded on by an IM.”

  She smiled. “Once this is over, we will get you to the medical quarters, and get you fixed.”

  “You seem pretty confident we’re going to come out on top.”

  She looked at him smiling. “I’m always confident.”

  “Yeah, of all the syndicates, your ships were always the hardest to catch.”

  He looked through his rifles sight at the brightly lit entrance to the storage hold. Up where he was and all along the tops of the other containers there was only darkness, so Babel’s people wouldn’t even know what lay in wait above them.

  Evan’s voice came from his wrist screen. “There’s an IM approaching the storage entrance.”

  The sound of rifles being placed against shoulders and people readying themselves drifted through the cool air. “Get ready,” whispered Luke into his screen.

  He looked again down his sight, and almost immediately the double doors slid open revealing the metallic legs, arms, and torso of an IM in the doorway. It was holding a white flag and it walked forward into the clear area in front of the stacked containers.

  “What do we do?” A tinny voice came from Luke’s wrist screen.

  Before anyone could respond, the IM started talking in a voice that everyone recognized. “Hello everyone!”

  Aruna looked at Luke. “Is that Babel?”

  The IM continued. “I know, this is strange, right? Anyway, if you’re confused, I got this machine to record a message from me to all of you.” The IM held up the white sheet. “Oh, you thought this was me surrendering? No, no, this is for your surrender. But not straightaway. No that would be too simple. First a lot of you are going to have to die, then I want you to surrender.” The IM went to turn and walk away. “Oh, before I go, here’s a little present to get things started.”

  “Be ready for—” Before Luke could finish his sentence, there was a blinding flash combined with a deafening noise, then darkness.

  He opened his eyes, trying to dislodge the ringing that was invading all his senses. “Bom—” was all he could manage to say, but his mind knew what must have just happened, he just couldn’t understand how Babel managed to get his hands on any explosives. Trying to get to his knees he realized he wasn’t on top of the container anymore, instead he was lying on the one just behind. The blast was far enough away and the container made of strong enough material that he was shielded from most of it, but looking around it obvious he was one of the lucky ones.

  The ringing stopped but was replaced with screaming and groaning. Aruna was lying on his side, blood streaming from a head wound, but she seemed to be alive.

  Carefully he placed his hand on her shoulder. “Aruna?”

  Her eyes flittered open, and she looked up at him. “What happened?”

  “The IM must have had some kind of explosive. You got a head wound, is the rest of you okay?”

  Aruna quickly checked herself, finishing with a handprint full of blood from touching her forehead. “Yeah, I think so.” She got to her feet.

  Luke held his wrist device to his mouth. “What’s the damage, someone tell me how everyone is?”

  The air was full of smoke making it hard to see too far ahead, but as Luke stood up, he slowly moved around on top of the other containers trying to make sense of how many were injured. His wrist screen came to life with Evan’s voice. “It’s bad, I’ve counted sixty-one dead, and at least the same if not more seriously injured.”

  Luke quickly tried to do the math in his head, but either way it came out with not enough people left to defend the first line of defense they had carefully built up.

  He stepped over a body and looked through a gap which looked like a hand had pierced through the carbonium frame of the container. Where the IM used to be was a smoldering jagged hole, with sparks jumping and snapping out of it. Two containers either side of the crater were almost completely destroyed, while the others closer to Luke, weren’t going to be much of a barrier to Babel’s human forces let alone his machines. So much for our wall.

  Others ran from the second row of containers. “We need to get all the wounded off these containers and further back,” Luke said. He held up his wrist device. “We need the IMs to rebuild the barricade as fast as they can, push other containers up against the destroyed ones, whatever it takes.”

  The captain ran forward helping the injured climb down and move further back. To Luke's left, Seth appeared through the smoke which was dissipating, clutching his left arm.

  “How bad is it?” said Luke pointing to Seth's arm.

  “I’ll be fine, we need to replace the injured on the wall, or we won’t be able to hold them back.”

  Evan’s voice came again from Luke’s wrist device. “I’m detecting multiple human heat signatures coming our way, looks like a few hundred.”

  Aruna looked at Luke. “If they have more explosives—”

  “We still got the advantage, there’s only one way in.” He talked into his device. “Anything that comes through the storage entrance, shoot it!”

  People ran and climbed back on top of the containers that were still stable, while the IMs frantically pushed and folded metal with tools, trying to patch the holes that now littered their barriers.

  The large double doors to the storage hold slid open once again and small canisters flew in landing roughly where the crater was. White smoke started spilling out filling the air.

  “They’re trying to block our line of sight!” shouted Luke. “I want intermittent fire towards the entrance, even if you can’t see what you’re firing at!’

  Plasma bolts started streaming from the defensive holes in the containers as well as from the tops of others towards the entrance. The blanket of thick smoke increased.

  “Someone shoot those damn containers,” shouted Seth, firing down towards the doors.

  Plasma bolts started flying back towards them from the entrance, hitting the containers, but missing their intended targets.

  “Looks like they have shields or something, our plasma is hitting something,” shouted a man on one of the containers.

  Plasma ripped through the air in both directions, turning the storage hold into a melee of red and green light. Babel's first line of attackers pushed forward, making it past the crater, to the destroyed containers.

  "They're almost through the first line!" shouted Seth, firing as best he could with using mostly one arm.

  "I need two IMs at each breach point, don't let them through!" shouted Luke into his device, while ducking the plasma bolts that flew past his head.

  Suddenly the plasma stopped appearing through the white smoke.

  Evan’s voice came from Luke’s wrist device. "I'm seeing twenty—no, thirty IMs heading towards us, there's also about forty of his people still around the doors, they have retreated.

  Luke spoke back into his device, but for everyone to hear. “This is the first real attack. Use the breaches in the containers as cho
ke points, destroy the IMs as they come through and watch for others trying to climb over the top.” He looked at Aruna next to him, half of her face covered in blood, with a makeshift bandage wrapped around her head. The painkillers Omar had given him were wearing off, and moving was becoming increasingly difficult.

  Streams of IMs poured through the open gap, running past a blackened floor, dividing into three groups. Two went in opposite directions heading through the destroyed containers where they were immediately met with a torrent of plasma fire and the third headed straight for the far wall of containers which was still mostly intact. Straight for Luke, Aruna and the others that were on top of it.

  Two IMs jumped forward clinging onto the sheer face of the container by digging their fingers into it, while the others fired upwards stopping Luke and the others from firing back. The fizzing sound of plasma sliced through the air combined with the clunk click of the IM’s limbs climbing up.

  Luke and the others tried to fire back but the IMs at ground level were too accurate. “Fall back!” he shouted to those around him just as carbonium fingers appeared over the top of the container he was climbing down from. The IM immediately raised its built-in plasma gun in Luke’s direction when IM 013 slammed into it, knocking it and itself back over the edge and tumbling to the floor below. It got to its feet and started desperately firing at the IMs around it, but was leapt upon by the nearby machines and torn apart.

  Luke ran around the back of the containers to view one of the choke points. A pile of mangled robot limbs lay in a heap where the hole in the container used to be. He ran to the same point on the left, this side wasn’t holding as well, as a few IMs had managed to get through and were using nearby containers as shields to fire back from.

  “We need more people on the—” Two IMs leapt down from high above, landing close and instantly raising their guns. Instinctively Luke knelt as a plasma bolt soared through the air missing his head close enough for him to feel the burning hot ionized particles on his scalp. Firing back, he hit the first IM clear in its torso knocking it backwards, but the other ran forward and took a swipe at him. Just as the robots clenched fist was about to impact him a huge boot hit the robot in its side sending it spiraling to the ground. Yegor fired a volley of shots into the fallen IM rendering it lifeless. He helped Luke to his feet. “Remind me to buy you a drink,” said Luke trying to get his breath back. He raised his wrist device to his mouth. “We need more people on the left, the IMs have broken through!”

  Evan’s voice came as a reply. “We got more of Babel’s people coming, a lot more! Maybe five or six hundred people, and some more IMs.”

  Luke looked at the chaos around him and the bodies of both sides that laid strewn and tattered. We can’t keep this up for much longer. “Everyone back to the second line of defense!” he shouted into his device and to those around him.

  CHAPTER 30

  Elisa, Thiago, Casey, and Burnett crawled along the service tunnel as quietly as they could.

  “You sure you know which way you’re going?” said Thiago, his face lit by his wrist device.

  Elisa stopped, her pausing holding up everyone behind. “You want to come up here and lead?” Thiago mumbled something. “I thought not.” She continued moving forward on her hands and knees. Soon they were at a junction. She consulted her wrist screen, then moved right. “It shouldn’t be too far now.”

  They had been crawling for over an hour, and every further meter was becoming increasingly painful on their bruised knees and scraped red palms. Each of them had been chosen for not being claustrophobic, but even they were getting desperate to get out into a wider space.

  Elisa crawled into a tunnel, and immediately shushed the people behind her, while raising her hand. “The end of this tunnel leads us to the monitoring station, close to the male cell block. From there I should be able to override any firewalls they have put up and scan for Murlock. A noise came from beyond the grating in the distance and shadows blocked the light from the corridor, they all froze. Soon the light returned and they moved along the tunnel arriving quickly at the end. Elisa looked at her wrist device. “Okay, it’s all clear, Thiago help me get this grating off.”

  He moved forward and took out two tools from his belt handing one to Elisa. They both set to work unscrewing the rivets, until the grating loosened and Elisa grabbed it, lowering it gently to the floor in the corridor. She had a quick look both ways and crawled out onto the floor. The three others quickly followed, and soon they were all nervously standing, monitoring their wrist screens for any of Babel’s people.

  “Through that door.” Elisa ran to the closest door which slid open when she tapped the pad next to it. Inside was a moderate sized room with a large screen and a wall covered in a console with more screens. Elisa quickly ran inside and sat in one of the seats. “Tell me if anyone is moving in this direction,” she said, concentrating on the console screen in front of her. Her fingers furiously tapped and dragged on the screen while her frustration built. “Damn thing, I can’t get past the security they have,” she said, shaking her head.

  “We can’t stay here for too long! You need to find him!” said Thiago anxiously.

  “It’s no good, I need help.” She tapped on her wrist screen. Evan’s face appeared, bloodied and blackened, the sound of battle raged around him. For a moment Elisa was shocked, then her own situation flooded her mind. “Evan, I need your help, I can’t get past their firewalls.”

  “Hold on!” he shouted back. He moved to a different location. “Okay, I’ll piggyback off your wrist device to infiltrate the console there, just stay close to it!”

  “Okay,” said Elisa, looking back along the corridor they just came down.

  Casey and Burnett stood near the open door, with their guns swaying. “How’s it looking?” said Casey.

  “I don’t know, not long I think.” It was a lie, she had no idea. She looked back at her console screen. Rows of computer code were scrolling upwards, with windows popping up and being closed in a blink of an eye. She looked back at Evan's face on her own screen, plasma bolts flashed over his head, making him duck, but he continued to type.

  “Okay, I found him. I’m sending you the coordinates to your devices, he will appear as a yellow dot. He’s not far from you.”

  “Thanks, stay—” before Elisa could finish, the feed to the battle ended. She switched the screen back to the map of the ship, with Babel’s people and now Murlock shown on it. “We need to move, there’s people coming this way. We need to get back to the service tunnel.”

  CHAPTER 31

  What was an almost constant wall of plasma fire started to slow, as the defender’s fusion batteries started to run out of power for their guns.

  “I’ve got maybe another few minutes of fire left!’ shouted Dower, laying on one of the containers which formed a half circle around the injured and dying. In front of her lay heaps of human and mechanical bodies alike.

  “How many are they going to throw at us!” shouted Evan, who was now also firing a plasma rifle at anything that moved.

  Most of Babel’s machines had now been expended, but Luke was keeping count of the fallen, and it was obvious there were still a small number that Babel wasn’t pushing into battle.

  Running along the back of the containers like a captain from the wars of the early twentieth century, Luke fired then knelt as the return fire inevitably came back his way, plugging gaps in their defense. It was then he saw it, far to his right. A dog darting left and right, dodging the attacking plasma bolts, running loose. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but then he saw a sight that was far worse. A little girl was running after the dog. Her slight size meant most of the plasma bolts where missing her, but it was only a matter of time. Luke started running towards her while raising his wrist device to his mouth. “There’s a little girl on our right flank, she’s running after a dog, I want an IM protecting her!” He looked up and one of their remaining twelve IMs sprang to its feet and leapt
after her but almost at its destination, it was struck by a volley of fire, that knocked it to the ground where it lay trying to get back up. Luke kept running, when he saw Captain Taylor appear from behind a container running as fast she could while dodging plasma bolts.

  “Give the captain covering fire!” shouted Luke now only twenty meters away.

  Taylor shouted to Dawn, who was now at the first wall of containers that was being used by the attackers to fire back from. “Dawn, leave her! Dawn!” shouted Taylor, scrambling between broken parts of IM and carbonium containers. The dog stopped and looked back at its owner, just as Dawn caught up with her.

  Almost with them thought Taylor.

  A number of defenders started to amass some distance behind Taylor, firing past her to cover her and Dawn, as the captain ran the last few steps picking up the girl in one sweep, turning and starting to run back. Luke watched as Taylor ran as fast she could, shifting left and right to try to be a harder target.

  Come on.

  Taylor fell, sending Dawn to the ground in the same motion. The young girl quickly swiveled around looking at the captain who laid motionless and started crying as more plasma streamed past her. Luke sprang forward, throwing himself past the girl and firing back at the attackers that were only meters away. “Get the girl!” he shouted as other hands grabbed Dawn, pulling her screaming backwards over dead bodies. Luke looked to his right at the wide-open eyes of Captain Kim Taylor. A photon bolt had hit her square in the middle of the back and had continued going, somehow missing the girl she was carrying. A wave of emotion consumed him and he got to his knees, firing and killing three of Babel’s people that were almost on him. He went to move forward, and noticed the only firing that was occurring was from the defenders. Babel’s people had stopped, and were slowly moving back through the first line of defense.

  “Cease fire!” Luke shouted into his wrist device. He stepped backwards, crouching next to the captain, and closed her eyes. He could already hear the ripple of consternation ripple through the people behind him as they became aware that Taylor was gone. Luke hesitated, not knowing whether to ignore what had happened or to confirm it to the people that were still clinging onto their freedom. He looked back towards the smashed and shattered containers where Babel’s people were attacking from and looked through his gun’s sight. There was no movement. He went to move forward, when he heard Babel’s voice.