Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1)

by Jae Hill

  That was horrible news. Almost a quarter had used their three robots.

  “Operator, send everything down on this position. And where’s that air support?”

  “Commander, fast-movers are in bound with time-on-target of 1541 Zulu. That is in zero-two minutes. They can be reached on channel ‘Air Ops.”

  “Thanks, out,” I said, followed by, “Air Ops’.”

  “Air Ops,” the gruff voice replied. “Fast-movers are one minute to target. Anything below the crest of the hill is open season.”

  “Affirmative, Air Ops.”

  Almost on cue, I heard the electric sizzling of the faraway fighter-bombers approaching. They were smaller and more angular than the extraction dropships, and they were specifically designed to get in, drop ordinance, and get out. There was only one squadron of these in the whole of the Republic. Few non-Fleet individuals had ever even seen them, as they stayed almost exclusively docked aboard Flamberge, which acted as a sort of carrier. I heard once they dropped ordinance against a volcano on the planet Threshold to make it erupt the opposite direction…but I didn’t know more than that.

  After just a moment, the black shapes flared into view, silhouetted by the rising sun. They streaked low and fast across the horde scrambling up the hill. Huge fireballs ripped into the sky. Dust clouded the view frame on my display, then as it settled, I saw the horde continuing unabated across the craters. The fast-movers circled around, arced high into the sky, then swooped in low and let loose another salvo. This continued again and again for ten minutes. Swoop. Boom. Swoop. Boom. The ground fighting slowed around my group as the last of the zombies surrounding us was wiped out, but we could see the rest of the horde in the distance, still approaching like an angry swarm of ants.

  “Ground Actual,” came a tinny voice on my comm channel.

  “Go for Ground Actual,” I said.

  “This is Flight Lead. We are bingo on fuel and ammo, headed back to the nest for resupply. You’ve got two on CAP for another ten minutes with limited guns only, and then you’re on your own for another thirty minutes till we get back.”

  “Affirmative, Flight Lead,” I said, my heart almost breaking.

  Atmospheric flight took a lot out of the microreactors or fuel cells that powered these craft, and their presence gave us nothing more than a scant few minutes to regroup.

  The readout on my display showed that Alpha had only 15 active soldiers left. They were almost wiped out. Bravo’s 23, Charlie’s 16, Delta’s 42, and Echo’s 4 were all that were left.

  “Operator,” I yelled, stretching my robotic arms to make sure everything was still working.

  “Combat control,” came the reply.

  “I need to know how many drones we still have aboard the ships.”

  “There are only thirty-four drones left, Commander,” came the gut-wrenching reply. “They belong to a few soldiers who still have not used their second or third lives.”

  “We still have people in their first ‘bot?” I asked incredulously.

  “Indeed,” the man replied. “Three.”

  I shook my head, instinctively, and my drone did the same.

  “I need the last thirty-four people to tap out to be reinserted. We need every available set of armor down here, now.”

  “Copy, Commander. Two minutes to reinsertion.”

  I added the numbers in my head. There were only 134 drones and Vanguard regulars left. And the horde was closing in again, climbing across the craters. It was a sea of death that just wouldn’t end.

  “Marshal,” I called into the comm, as I ran a final weapons check before reengaging in the fray.

  “Go ahead,” the marshal said.

  “Get those dropships ready,” I said. “We’re going to head into the tunnel to relieve Alpha Company and get them out of there.”

  “Negative,” the marshal said. “Alpha has still not gained access to the facility. Despite their best efforts, the AI has got them locked out, and they’re surrounded. Pinned down. If you enter the tunnel, you’re not going to keep the extraction zone clear. If they can’t fight their way out….”

  He trailed off.

  “Affirmative,” I said, sadly. “Orders, sir?”

  “Fight them till you can’t,” he said softly. “If we lose Alpha Company entirely, we’re ripping that mountain open with the MAC.”

  “Roger, sir. Reengaging.”

  The thunderclaps above let me know the last of our troops were on the way down. Some of the troops had reformed a semi-circle across the mouth of the canyon behind us, leading to the tunnel entrance. A few had taken up positions on the mountainsides around it. We weren’t going to last long. The fighters strafed the onslaught of zombies a few more times and then headed skyward.

  “Alright cadets,” I said, turning to face the crowd. “We gave them hell. We did our best. You should be proud. We need to hold this ground right here until Alpha Company comes out of that tunnel.”

  The last thirty-four of the reserve drones landed around me.

  “Alright those of you who just dropped in, you’re with me. We’re going in for Alpha.”

  The zombies had picked across the craters and heaps of their dead and were charging across the field. I lobbed all of my grenades into the mass and then ran toward the tunnel at lightning speed, the other thirty-four drones behind me.

  We all flicked on our headlamps as we entered the tunnel. Our sensors could replicate smell, but thankfully they muted it, because it reeked bad enough on low intensity. It smelled like rotted death. There were heaps of dead zombies thrown against the walls from when Alpha fought their way in. A river of black zombie blood trickled out of the tunnel at our feet. We slowed to a walk, picking our way around or over the piles of dead. Countless numbers of zombies. Once human, now…nothing.

  We could hear the sounds of fighting ahead. No explosions. Just clanking and snarling. Endless snarling. By the time the battle came into view, it was just five remaining Vanguard troops, surrounded by piles of their own fallen comrades, using their plasma-cutters to hack and slash at the trickle of zombies still oozing from the giant metal blast doors of the mountain fortress. Clearly the undead had been inside and were fighting their way out, while the Vanguard had been unable to fight their way in.

  My team advanced and started hacking and slashing, pushing the zombies back into the opening, but we could see the mass of them inside the halls of the complex behind.

  “Local channel,” I said to activate the comm. “Where’s Major Walling?”

  “Dead,” replied one of the Vanguard soldiers, stoically. “Over there, somewhere,” he said, pointing at a heap of shiny robot pieces.

  “Who’s in charge here, then?” I asked.

  “I am, Commander,” said one of the warrior forms. “Ensign Grunholm.”

  “We’re here to help get you out. We’ll hold the lines and you get to the tunnel.”

  “Negative,” he replied. “Our orders come from the marshal directly. We are to obtain access to this facility, cut the hardline, and secure the rampant AI. Anything else is mission failure.”

  “You’re not going to get in there, Ensign. They were waiting for us. It’s over. We can cover your retreat. The dropships are holding, waiting for evac.”

  The shiny-faced robot stared ahead for a moment. One of my teammates was overcome with drudges and pinned to the ground before it was smashed into pieces by the dozen raging zombies. The rest of the team accelerated their fire. The process repeated itself. We were losing by attrition, which was apparently all we could have ever hoped for.

  “You’re going to die in this tunnel,” I said angrily, pointing at my feet. “Not that one,” pointing through the opening.

  “Roger that, sir,” he said unemotionally.

  I started leading the five Vanguard solders back out of the tunnel. The sounds of the gunfire slowed, and the snarling and hissing grew behind us. I knew we were losing.

  As we reached the portal of the tunnel, the snarl
ing and hissing grew even louder than that behind us.

  There were only a dozen drones left, pinned to the entrance of the tunnel and using the chokepoint as their only way to ensure not getting flanked. The horde outside was pouring in, over the tops of the dead robots and zombies, like a waterfall.

  “Air Ops,” I shouted. “We need extraction.”

  I heard a humming noise like an incoming transmission.

  And then suddenly everything stopped. I couldn’t move my arms. I couldn’t fire my weapons. I could still see the live video feed. Could still see the stats of how many troops we had and where they were on the minimap. Could only watch as the zombies ripped apart the rest of the drones, then the five vanguard troops, and then me.

  I couldn’t do anything. No one could.

  I went offline and sat there in the blackness of my sensory deprivation tube. No one came to let me out.

  DIGITAL PLAGUE

  I was in the darkness forever. I wasn’t in another body. I was back in my own, inside the dark metal coffin of the BRF’s interface. I couldn’t hear anything: that was the point of the deprivation chambers. I started to feel claustrophobic. Panicky.

  Then the chamber cracked open slightly, and finally swung wide. The light hurt my eyes. It burned. I had been in the chamber for hours, “seeing” with images beamed into my brain instead of using my eyes. I squinted.

  “Pax!” I heard Rebekah shout, and my eyes slowly focused on her.

  As things became clear, I saw her standing there, with red eyes and wet cheeks.

  “Oh my Lord, I was so scared,” she sniffed.

  “Why?” I asked.

  She pointed over her shoulder. The two technicians were standing there in awkward positions: one was mid-stride, the other was bent over a panel looking at a screen. Their eyes were fixed. They were motionless.

  “What happened?” I asked, as if still waking from the bizarre dream.

  “They just…just stopped.” She poked at the one that was standing.

  I was still pinned down with straps, wires, catheters, and a myriad of other tubes and devices.

  “You need to release me,” I said gently. “Remove all these straps and wires. Then we need to get the others out of their tubes.”

  Rebekah tugged at my neurointerface cables, ripping some of the sticky electrical contacts from my skin and yanking my hair with a Velcro sound. She tried pulling at my urinary catheter and I stopped her, just asking her to release the bindings and leaving the more delicate equipment for me to remove.

  After a few more painful moments, I was free, wearing nothing but the white trunk briefs that we were allowed to have in the chamber. I quickly went to the next chamber, and the next, and the next, until all the people in our room were out.

  One of the girls we released, Morgana Dell, sat there staring at the technicians.

  “What do you think caused that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m really worried about what we’re going to see when we get out of this room.”

  My worst fears were confirmed as we strode into the hallway. The other enhanced-form adults—the technicians, military folks, everyone with a robotic body—were all stopped dead in their tracks. Unmoving. Unspeaking.

  The kids behind me were generally panicked now.

  “Listen,” I said. “We don’t know what happened, but you need to start getting people out of their chambers. Everyone meets back up at the Auditorium as soon as everyone’s out.”

  There were nods, and the kids all split up. Rebekah stood next to me, handing me my digibook.

  “I was playing that 4D minesweeper game while you were in there,” she said sheepishly. “I got a new high score.”

  I almost smiled. But I grabbed the digibook from her hands and punched up the marshal’s contact information. I instantly saw his face on the screen. It looked worried in a way I’d never seen the waxy robotic faces look.

  “Commander,” he said, hurriedly, “is everything okay down there?”

  “No, it’s not,” I replied. “All of the enhanced forms—every last one of them—they’re all shut down.”

  “I know,” came his softened response. “A virus was sent through the neural web to every enhanced form and warrior form on the Earth network. It locked up their servo motors. They’re all still alive, but their bodies are frozen in place. They’ll be okay for a few days, tops, because the maintenance fluids are designed to flow via diffusion and osmosis as a backup safeguard. But if we don’t unlock their bodies, soon, we’ll lose all of them.”

  “Why didn’t it affect you?” I asked.

  “We’re on the local star-system tactical net, and there are firewalls between each network. She only broke through the Earth Regional Neural Web firewall. Sent a fake telephony call to every adult on the planet simultaneously, and almost every single one answered it, which downloaded the virus.”

  I caught his words. “She? You think that Valkyrie is behind this?”

  He nodded on the screen. “She’s calling herself Persephone now. Goddess of the underworld. She’s out of her mind. She sent a message right after the virus, but before the system went down. I’ll send it now.”

  There was a pause, then a blip as the vid message popped up on my screen. The blonde was there, hair pulled up in a ponytail. Bits of the synthetic skin on her face were torn away, revealing the shiny alloys underneath.

  “I am Persephone, and everything that has occurred today has happened by my design,” she spoke coldly. “You are to evacuate the planet immediately. Take all of your biologic children and never, ever come back. Your president, your senate, and all of your leaders of science and industry are all going to die…and unless you follow my instructions, your children will suffer as well. You have two days, and then we’re on the move for the capital. Unless the sun rises in the west or the stars go out, you have no chance to stop me. We will lay waste to all that you are, and all that you hold dear. ”

  The transmission cut off abruptly.

  “This,” the marshal announced, “is where we MAC’d the mountain and it destroyed the relays, ending the signal. I still doubt, however, that we got her. She’s too smart. Dangerously smart. We probably didn’t get the Reverend either.”

  I almost didn’t want to know the answer to this last question. “How did we do in the battle?”

  “Well, I probably don’t need to tell you that it was a total loss. After the virus shut down the drones and the enhanced forms, everything on the ground was compromised. We had no choice but to hit the site. The mountain is fully gone…nothing but a crater, and with it, all of our planetside AI support, tachyon-messaging capability, and our last full company of Vanguard troops in the system. There are now only enough warriors left in the Vanguard, on special assignments around the galaxy, to pull together about three companies of troops. Three hundred. That’s it. Anywhere. They’re being recalled to Mars. The effective capital is being relocated temporarily to Tharsis City. The government will be reconstituted there.”

  “Retreat?” I asked incredulously. “We’re abandoning the planet?”

  “You heard her, and frankly she just wiped out our Earthly adult population in one fell swoop. If we don’t act quickly, we’ll lose the children too. Every single biological child is going to be removed from Earth, in stasis, and sent to the university dormitories at Olympus Mons.”

  “What about the adults?” I paused for a moment and then felt like I was going to hurl. “What about my parents? What about President Sandstorm?”

  “Software engineers at the Luna Naval Shipyard are busy trying to isolate the worm that Valkyrie, er, Persephone uploaded. They’ll deconstruct it and get everyone back online. They only have three days before the passive recirculation systems aren’t effective due to decreased osmolality.”

  I gritted my teeth. If the engineers couldn’t bring the adults back online in less than three days, they would start dying, for real.

  Including my parents.

&n
bsp; I ran back into the dressing area in front of the interface chamber and threw on my blue Fleet uniform, grabbed Rebekah’s hand, and ran out of the building, into the street.

  GLITCHES

  The automated car drove itself at the assigned speed limits, but that wasn’t fast enough, so I engaged the override and was blasting along the coast highway. Cars were still driving on the road from the capital to Valhalla with their frozen occupants inside. I was in a police car that I’d found on the side of the road, the officer frozen in space standing next to it. Rebekah sat clutching the handrail above her head as I whipped the car back and forth around the other vehicles.

  I slammed on the brakes and the car screeched to a halt at Valhalla Harbor. I ran to the docks, hoping my dad was okay, but knowing he probably wasn’t. I ambled down the steps to the dock and raced to the boat. There was my father, bent over with a coil of steel cable.

  “Dad!”

  I raced to his side, Rebekah a few paces behind me.

  “Dad!” I shouted again next to him.

  He didn’t move.

  “Dad, can you hear me?”

  Still no response.

  “Please, Dad,” I begged.

  Rebekah came and put her hands on me and I shrugged them off. I shouldn’t have. I wanted a hug. But I needed it from my father.

  I started crying. Rage swelled up inside me and I screamed. A loud animalistic cry. Rebekah backed up slightly, but then placed her hand on my shoulder as I cried again.

  “I’m going to find a way to save you, Dad,” I sobbed. “It’s a virus that was uploaded to the neural web. It locked down all your servos. Fleet is working on fixing it. It might be a few days, but they’ll fix it.”

  I stared at his unmoving body for a moment. It was still warm to the touch, which was good. The nutrients had to stay at a certain temperature, I remember reading, so the heater was still going but the circulator pumps were locked. I wondered if there was some way to get inside and manually spin the pumps.

  “Dad, I’m going to go check on Mom,” I said looking directly into his unmoving eyes. I knew he was in there. I wish he could have spoken back. I wondered for a second what he thought of his son wearing a Fleet uniform.