“Shall I have a look?” offered Taribo from underneath the canopy of leaves, a cascade of water a couple feet in front of him.
Alistair shook his head. “Stay here.”
Leaving the verdant umbrella, he stepped into the downpour and, dropping to all fours, clambered up the side of a sand dune, perhaps ten feet in height, finally dropping down to his belly when he reached the top. After a moment spent scanning, he signaled with a wave that they were to follow. When all four were lying on the summit and the ocean, with its furious waves and jagged white caps, was visible, Alistair pointed to the west. There, not half a mile away, was the unmoving silver form of the hovercraft, perhaps sixty yards from the shore, its blue lights dimmed.
“You brought us almost right to it,” commented Taribo. The West African coughed, having inhaled some of the rain as it splashed on the sand only inches from his face.
“Do you think it is…” Santiago struggled to find the right word, “… alerted to our presence? Is it on guard?”
“If it is, this is going to be a very short operation,” said Alistair.
“You have a plan, right?” prompted Miklos.
“We’re going to swim out a ways and circle around behind it. If they have a computer system monitoring the area it won’t matter where we come from, but if they don’t, they’ll probably be facing the island. We’ll sneak on board…” He did not feel the need to finish the rest.
“They are complacent,” said Taribo with confidence. “They have settled in for a long wait. They surveyed the island, they know how big it is, they know how many live here… They have come ready to spend three or four days. They’re probably watching threedies right now.”
“Gaians aren’t supposed to watch threedies,” said Miklos.
“They’re not supposed to operate hovercrafts either,” Alistair pointed out. “These are not orthodox Gaians.”
“I don’t see any windows,” said Santiago, anxious to get back to the task at hand. “If they can’t see us, we can save a lot of time by just walking up to it.”
“If they made it with vidrilium we won’t be able to tell if they have windows or not,” said Taribo.
“When we circle around,” said Alistair, “don’t let anything more than your heads come above water. And no chatter.”
He got to his feet and, crouched over, traversed the width of the beach. Dipping into valleys and rising over the peaks of dunes of wet, packed sand, Santiago, Taribo and Miklos followed close behind, finally gaining the flat expanse at the edge of the sea before splashing into the water.
***
Gregory’s first urge, upon hearing of the impending threat, was to alert the other citizens of Odin’s Island. To this end he set out after packing a small lunch, a task he accomplished within a minute of Alistair’s departure. Layla and Giselle were eager to accompany him once they learned what his intention was, and the trio hustled over the soggy ground to the various nearby hamlets. In two of them they recruited another to head in a different direction to spread the news, though most were reluctant to venture out with a torrential downpour and a dreadbot to contend with, and they furrowed their brows and grimaced at Greg with the hard, angry stare a man learns from time in a penal system.
They were approaching the another hamlet which sat at the peak of a steep hill, and lost sight of it when they reached the slopes of the hill. A group of three men and a woman burst into view, descending the hill, one of them losing his footing on the wet grass and tumbling for a few feet before collecting himself and getting back up. When this other group saw the trio, they waved them away.
“There’s a robot here!” screamed the woman, nearly falling. “It’s attacking! Stay away, stay away!”
Gregory cupped his hands over his mouth and called out, “How many people are left?”
They either did not hear or did not care to answer, as they continued to hustle down the side of the hill as fast as the treacherous footing would allow.
“We have to help out,” Gregory insisted, and he pressed upward.
The summit was similar to the Great Hill, with a reasonably flat expanse of ground dotted with trees and bushes. There were about a dozen dwellings, most little more than a lean-to, and three were broken into kindling and scattered on the ground. A few individuals were running about in panic while a figure in white, its form vaguely female with the faintest hint of facial features, was leveling thunderous blows at the support beams of a one room cabin. Each blow snapped a piece of timber in two, sending chips and splinters of wood flying. Gregory stopped as if he had run into a wall, his mouth agape as he watched the thing destroy the structure in a matter of moments.
“Don’t resist it!” he cried out when a hapless man, hefting a simple log, moved to attack.
With a speed surpassed by lightning and little else, the right hand of the dreadbot swept in an arc that intercepted the log and sent it flying from the man’s hands. Before an eye could blink, the left hand snapped in an equal and opposite arc and struck the man in the head with such force, the poor fellow was lifted off his feet and sent flying several yards to the side, his heels sailing high over his head. The sickening thud of the blow reverberated in Gregory’s mind as the man landed in a disorderly pile and never moved again.
“Don’t anyone resist it!” he called out again over the screams and yells of those who witnessed the atrocity. “It’s here to raze the buildings. Don’t resist and it won’t harm you!”
Having given this instruction, he moved in a circle around the dreadbot, stopping at the crumpled man in the mud. As another man, standing on the outskirts of the hamlet, screamed his frustration at the machine, Gregory felt for a pulse, though he knew it was in vain before he tried it. The part of the man’s skull he could see from underneath his torso suggested a neck bent at an unnatural angle, and that part of the skull was fractured and bashed inward, leaking what it had formerly contained and protected.
Hearing a gasp, he turned and looked up to see Layla covering her face and turning away. Giselle grabbed hold of her and buried the terrified girl’s face in her neck, though she herself was pale. Standing up, Gregory was about to put his arms around Layla when he spotted Mordecai standing at the edge of the hill and holding a large bow to which he was affixing an arrow.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Gregory yelled.
Mordecai drew back the string and let the arrow slice through the rain until it struck its target, hitting the dreadbot in its back, just below where the right shoulder blade would be in a human. The arrow, giving a low thud on impact, rebounded several feet, its shaft shattered, and fell harmlessly to the ground. The dreadbot did not respond; a man bitten by a mosquito would take more notice.
With the speed of a whip, another arm flew out, and the sound of the impact with the timber produced another thud and crack. Another blow did the same, and a third, and then another cabin was tumbling to the ground where the dreadbot, despite two more bolts Mordecai shot at its back, stamped them into chips and pieces with an almost comical rapidity, like some macabre dance at twice regular speed.
When it was finished, without an instant’s pause to consider, the dreadbot turned to Mordecai. One moment it was stamping out wood chips, the next, as if a switch were thrown, it was advancing on the former Issicrojan slave, who faced the frighteningly swift and smooth progress with cool impassivity. Dropping the bow on the ground, Mordecai hefted a great hammer and readied it to strike a blow.
“He’s mad,” said Giselle, and Layla, still embraced in Giselle’s arms, peaked over her shoulder to stare at what was about to occur.
“He’s dead,” said Gregory with grim finality.
When the dreadbot drew close, Mordecai squatted down and grabbed hold of a rope before plunging backwards as if into a swimming pool. The rope pulled taut as a lasso caught hold of the dreadbot’s ankle, and the machine had its leg swept out from underneath it. It fell to the ground with a thud and slid towards the lip of the hill. As it passed over
, two men, theretofore concealed on the downslope, stood up and, raising their axes high, brought the ponderous weapons down and struck terrible blows to the midsection and neck. The axes rebounded as the arrows had, almost carrying the men over backwards with the momentum.
Gregory, Giselle and Layla found themselves in a group of a score or so who were peering over the edge of the hill, watching Mordecai, lying with his back on a flat board, slide down the slick hillside while a white humanoid tumbled along, unable to arrest its descent.
“Who the hell was that?” demanded a man, breathless with excitement.
“It was Mordecai,” answered another, his tone bestowing reverence on the name.
“That crazy sonofabitch!” exclaimed a third in what was fully a compliment.
Near the bottom of the hill a group of perhaps a dozen men waited at the edge of a pond. When Mordecai sped by them he released his grip on the rope, and before the dreadbot came to a halt the men charged it, some with mallets and axes, others with nets weighted with stones. The machine was soon entangled in a mass of twine wrapping around it tighter and tighter, and every time it managed to tear one bit of rope, another replaced it, and all the while blows from heavy weapons rained down on what came to look like a spool of thread. When it was thoroughly enmeshed in netting, its movements hampered like a fly wrapped in a spider’s webbing, two men carrying part of a tree trunk between them and wielding it like a battering ram rushed the dreadbot and knocked it off its feet and back several yards.
Landing on its back, the dreadbot, in the way it shook its limbs, gave the impression of a turtle overturned. It was quickly surrounded by its assailants who proceeded to bind its already bound form to the battering ram. This entire bundle was lifted with a supreme effort and hurled over the pond, but before it plunged into the water, the dreadbot, with what little maneuverability was left to it, reached out its hand and grabbed a hold of one man’s long hair. The unfortunate pitched forward and the two figures splashed into the water together. This produced a cry of dismay from the watchers on the hill, until then on the edge of euphoria. Four men immediately dove into the water, but only three reemerged a minute later. There was nothing left for them to do. They grabbed what gear they had and quickly made their escape, descending into a ravine, popping back up on the other side, scaling a hill and finally disappearing over the crest, Mordecai, still bearing his makeshift sled on his back, at their head.
“Water doesn’t hurt a dreadbot,” said a voice from the crowd on the hill.
Gregory heard someone, in Arabic, invoke the name of Allah. Following suit, a Christian asked God to bless the fallen, and another, in Russian, appealed to Gaia.
The first voice spoke again. “We better be gettin’ a move on,” he said. “Sooner or later that thing’ll untangle itself and… we don’t wanna be nowheres near it.”
This advice was promptly followed by most. Gregory remained where he was, his features couched in a deep despondency as he stared at the pond far below.
“That was pointless,” he muttered, knowing only Giselle and Layla could hear him. “Two men are dead, and the houses on this hill are going to be destroyed anyway.”
Layla sidled up next to Gregory and held his left hand in both of hers, resting her chin on his shoulder. Giselle laid a hand on his right shoulder.
“They made a choice to fight,” said Giselle. “Some prefer to die standing rather than live on their knees. They knew what they risked.”
Gregory gave no response, and when Giselle peered at his face, she saw his eyes were closed and his lips moved in silent prayer. Feeling intrusive, she removed her hand from his shoulder and stepped back, bowing her head in sympathy. When the doctor finished, he indicated with a nod that they should go. No one was left to watch by the time two bodies broke the surface and, unmoving floated. Moments later, the white figure surfaced and clambered out of the pond.
***
The swirling winds stirred the sea, the waves they created crisscrossing each other and forming transitory peaks and valleys that closed with a clap and a splash, each one pockmarked by the multitude of momentary craters made by the rain. Normally deep enough only to reach a man’s midriff, the water now rose high enough to cover even Alistair’s face and then plummeted down to his knees while water from the heavens poured down and water from the sea’s surface, struck by the hurtling drops, was ejected upward and then, caught by the wind, slung sideways. It was a tumult such as he imagined existed in the center of a star, or perhaps within an atom, unpredictable, kinetic, unrelenting and frenzied.
The hovercraft was in front of them, silver and sleek with water running down its sides in a series of miniature waterfalls pouring diagonally into the ocean. The vehicle had the vague shape of a shoe and was twelve feet high from its flat ovular base to its deck at the top, ringed by a guardrail. Front to back it measured twenty feet, and another ten from side to side. The seamless sides rose up gently at first, then became steeper before reaching the deck, which measured twelve feet front to back and seven side to side.
If there was any crew that spotted them, there was no sign of it. The four men approached until they stood at the edge of the craft hovering above the water, high enough that the highest waves could not quite disturb it, leaving its bottom edge mere inches above their heads. As the wind whipped water into their faces from above and below, Alistair considered the sleek sides of the vehicle. He turned to Miklos.
“If you can lift me—”
He pitched forward and his words were choked off by a wave as it passed over his head. He resurfaced spluttering and gasping for breath, which the next two waves made more difficult. Finally having cleared his lungs of salt water, he roared over the noise of the storm.
“Miklos, give me a lift on your shoulders and I can climb to the top.”
Miklos turned his back to allow Alistair to climb on. The Aldran handed his spear to Santiago and clambered up the back of the tattooed man until he was standing on his broad shoulders. Miklos grunted, and every now and then a wave would pass through and leave him spluttering. Santiago and Taribo held up a hand to shield their eyes from the rain pellets while they observed Alistair’s progress.
He was bent over, leaning into the side of the vehicle as he straightened his legs out. He lifted a leg, let it waver for one moment in the air between Miklos’ shoulder and the edge of the hovercraft, and then brought it down on the craft. He gave the slickness of the vehicle’s body the ultimate test by raising his other foot off of Miklos and putting all of his weight on one foot. In response, the craft almost imperceptibly dipped down but made the tiny correction required to right itself. He set his second foot down and clung to the slippery and wet side of the vehicle.
With utmost care, he slid up the side until it became too steep. As the treacherous streams of water poured down, brimming over from the deck above, he inched up until he was perhaps a foot above the bottom of the craft. His hands, were he to stretch them out above his head, would still have been a few feet short of the edge of the deck, so he reached behind his back, over his shoulder, and pulled the axe out of its sling and reached up as high as he could, just enough to slip the back blade, a thick piece of obsidian rock, over the edge of the deck, like it was a grappling hook.
From there it was a matter of climbing the axe, hand over hand, his feet doing little to assist. With his muscles bulging, he worked his way up until his left hand grasped the edge of the deck. The overflowing water ran down his arm in rivulets as he struggled to where he could grab one of the posts of the guardrail. Moments later he threw a leg over onto the deck. When he bent down to reclaim his axe, he saw Taribo was just leaving Miklos’ shoulders and stepping onto the side of the vehicle. He left the axe for his comrade who clambered up the side, getting a helping hand from Alistair for the last part.
The twelve by seven oval deck was an inch deep in water with a serrated metal floor to afford better footing. At the front there was a hatch, and next to it a computer terminal
set in the floor entirely submerged in water.
Buffeted by the elements, Alistair and Taribo sloshed through the water to the front of the deck and Alistair bent down, grabbed the handle of the hatch with both of his beefy hands, and pulled up. The hatch popped open with a slurp and the water poured down the hatchway. A surprised face appeared underneath the hatch. It was framed by long hair and a long, straggly beard, unkempt in the strict Gaian fashion, and its owner wore plain robes of green. The quizzical look had only a moment to turn to alarmed shock as Alistair’s axe hit his head. The Gaian was knocked unconscious and collapsed in a heap on the floor, hitting it only an instant before Alistair, who did not bother with the ladder.
The single room interior was also an oval, and most of it was lined with computer stations whose monitors and glowing buttons provided the only light in the dark interior. There were three chairs at the back affixed to the wall, and another green robed Gaian gave the appearance of having just jumped out of his. In a wide legged stance with his mouth wide open, the older man gave a cry when he saw the intruder and immediately rushed to a computer station nearby. Grabbing a handgun of some kind, he turned it on Alistair, but Alistair had not waited for him to complete his move. With all the considerable speed at his command, he charged and, just as the weapon was turned on him, ducked to the side. The gun went off, firing a concussive blast that did the fleet Alistair no harm but which hit the front computer, producing sparks and a cacophony of noises.
The craft pitched forward and Alistair and the Gaian came crashing into each other, a collision out of which Alistair emerged better off. A quick twisting of the Gaian’s wrist had the gun out of his hand, but a moment later, as the incline of the ship approached forty-five degrees, the two men were thrown forward and fell to the front. The impact of the fall caused Alistair to squeeze the trigger and another concussive blast was fired, this one hitting the storage bin above and causing some more sparks to jump. Then, the ship righted itself as the back end fell. Alistair was back on his feet before the Gaian, who had fallen on top of his comrade, recovered his senses.
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