by Gun Brooke
“Their blue rays can cut through almost anything. I’ve seen it,” Emeron said. “Let’s hope you’re right, though.”
“Yes.” She also hoped that Rae had reached Oches’s tent and the communication center. The bots were impossible to see when they weren’t firing, and she guessed that once they did and revealed their position, they immediately moved to another location and began blasting again. Blue, yellow, and green beams pierced the morning air, and together with the mist rising from the damp undergrowth, they blinded her as she tried to pinpoint their origin.
“Here.” Emeron tossed her a scanner, which Kellen gratefully accepted. She worked it in a circle around her. “We’re definitely surrounded. I read sixteen bots, and they’re constantly shifting positions.”
“So they actually outnumber us.” Emeron reached into the back of her jacket and pulled out a second sidearm. “Not very good odds, but I’ve seen worse.”
“Me too.” Kellen recognized some of her own steely resolve in the way Emeron allowed an emotional visor to slide into place. “And I have a way to deal with them all at once.”
Emeron eyed her with doubt. “Really?”
“Yes. I have to get to Commander Grey’s tent. This may damage some of our gear, but I can’t see any other way out.”
“All right. Come on.” Emeron proved again to be a woman of action and few words as she started to run, stopping only to duck when bots hovered closer and scorched the ground around them.
Kellen felt a searing pain in her left calf, but clenched her teeth to stop her moan. Aware that the bots probably had both heat and motion sensors, she kept going. If she stayed near the warm ground her body signature wouldn’t be as easy to detect. Kellen didn’t think she was bleeding, since the beam from the bot had probably cauterized the wound. Some grass straws were laser-knife sharp as they whipped at her face. She hadn’t had time to pull on her gloves, which she regretted now, as perspiration made her lose her grip on her weapon.
“Emeron. Are you all right?”
“Dwyn. Stay down and take cover inside the tent.” Emeron suddenly sounded frantic, not the impersonal soldier at all.
“I can’t. Some of the beams are getting through it. My bedroll is destroyed.”
“Are you hurt?” Emeron began to crawl faster, getting up on hands and knees. Kellen pulled her down next to her.
“Don’t. You’ll reveal your position.”
“I’m all right,” Dwyn said, and now they could see her, huddled by the entrance to her tent. Though tousled and her face smudged with dirt, she looked unharmed.
“Kellen, what the hell are these things?” Owena joined them, pressed to the ground too.
“Spy bots. We need to emit a pulse.” She wasted no words.
“They just pierced through the tent and took out our communication center. I hope yours is intact,” Owena said, looking at Emeron.
“Me too,” Emeron replied through clenched teeth.
“That isn’t good.” She pointed up. “At least sixteen bots are circling the camp.”
“Fourteen. I just took out two.”
“Good.” In fact it was incredible that Owena had managed to get a lock on the elusive devices. “We should get back to your tent. We need to inform Rae about the communication center.”
“What’ll this pulse do?” Emeron asked as they crawled back.
“It’ll destroy any unprotected electronic equipment and weaponry within a two-hundred-meter radius,” Owena explained. “Even gear that’s been outfitted to withstand regular electromagnetic pulse. Our weapons have shields against this, and of course there’s a remote risk that the bots have similar defense. However, this is newly developed, so I doubt it.”
“Our gear doesn’t have that protection either.”
“Your government sent you on a mission with inferior equipment?” Kellen asked, nonplussed.
“This was never meant to be a high-profile search-and-rescue mission.” Emeron glared at her. “Merely a routine security-detail assignment in a low-tech area.”
“Low tech?” Owena gazed up, her face lit by a green beam piercing the dissipating mist. Soon they would be more visible to the bots’ ocular sensors.
“We have to share the protected weapons.” She was determined. “We don’t have a choice.”
“I agree.” Rae spoke quietly from Kellen’s right.
Kellen quickly explained the situation regarding their communication center.
“Damn it,” Rae said. “But go ahead with the plan, Commander O’Dal.”
Dwyn interrupted. “Have you considered that we won’t have any communications?”
“She’s right,” Emeron said.
“Damn,” Rae said softly. “Ideas, anyone?”
Kellen cursed inwardly at the bots for hitting their communication center. There had to be a way to keep the Cormanians’ comm system safe from the pulse.
“Admiral?” Dwyn said, and crawled to Rae. “When I was on a mission on the Beranta asteroids, they protected their gear from a natural phenomenon that wasn’t exactly an electromagnetic pulse, but nonetheless destroyed all their electrical circuits.”
“Really?” Rae said. “You paying attention, Owena?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Dwyn had opened her mouth to continue when a multicolored beam hit the ground in front of her and Rae, sending up dirt, grass, and sparks. Rae rolled to her left, covering Dwyn with her body. “Get down,” she hissed. “I’ll be damned if a gang of tin cans will kill me.”
Kellen fought a sudden urge to giggle at her angry words, but she felt the same way. She hadn’t survived situations more dangerous than this to die here, killed by unknown adversaries hiding behind cowardly technology. There was no honor in such an end.
“Go on,” Rae urged Dwyn as she rolled off her.
“Well, it was simple, really. They used a fine metal mesh, not sure which alloy, but they had constructed entire rooms lined with this mesh, even the door system.”
“So, a metal mesh?” Kellen tried to think of what they had that could function as a shield against the pulse.
“Like the one that lines the outside of our bedrolls, Commander?” Emeron slid into the closest tent and returned with a bedroll. “This is a fine metal mesh. Look.”
She examined it, then turned to Dwyn. “What do you think?”
“Yes, that looks like it could work. I don’t think we have anything that would do better.”
Rae issued the orders rapidly. “Wrap three of them around the communication center and as many of your unprotected weapons and medical instruments as you can fit in there. In the meantime, get the pulsator ready.”
“Aye, ma’am.” Owena crawled back to her tent.
“I’ll sweep the perimeter and make sure Noor and the rest of my unit are all right.” As Emeron turned to leave, her coveralls’ leg rode up and Kellen saw a deep, blackened cavity on her calf. “You’re injured. Let your…Dwyn clean your wound and I’ll scout the perimeter.”
“Ma’am…Protector, I’m fine—”
“Get it taken care of. You should know better than any of us what can happen to a wound like that in this humid environment.”
“All right,” Emeron responded, and crawled toward Dwyn. She tore a med-kit package from her pocket and threw it at Dwyn, who deftly caught it and went to work.
Kellen began to worm herself around the line of tents.
“Aw, come on, Emeron. Hold still…” was the last thing she heard before she was surrounded by bots firing a multitude of beams at her. Knowing that she had been detected, probably because of the lifting morning mist, she jumped to her feet and ran, doubled over, to the nearest tent. She threw herself inside and nearly floored Ensign Oches.
“I got one of them, ma’am,” he yelled above the loud hissing noise. “There’s so many of them this time.”
“I know. We’re dealing with it. Get down.” She pulled him back with her as a bot passed only centimeters from the ground, then raised h
er sidearm and aimed. Firing, she hit the bot and watched it twirl and begin a crazy dance, bouncing on the ground. It flipped over and its small antennas, which resembled undersized wings, twirled like they were searching for the one audacious enough to harm it.
Frowning at how she had nearly thought of the bot as a living entity, Kellen fired at it again, sending it into a new spin. This time it bounced against a small rock, which propelled it in their direction.
“Move!” She pushed at Oches, who scrambled backward, trying to get away from the thing. She moved even faster, throwing herself sideways. She had no idea what would happen if the bot exploded on top of them, but she was sure it wouldn’t be pretty.
“Ma’am,” Oches called, his tone high and shrill. “You have to get out of here.”
She stared. The bot had rolled in and wedged itself between Oches and a tree trunk outside the tent. Smoke was billowing from one of the antennas, and, like Oches, she realized that any minute it would explode and kill him in the process.
“I’m not leaving you,” she assured the pale ensign, who was sweating profusely. “Lie very still. Let me scan it.”
“Don’t, ma’am,” he implored. “You don’t know what will set it off, now that it’s injured and unstable.”
She noticed that Oches said “injured” and realized that he, like her only moments ago, looked upon these bots as entities. “I won’t do anything to destabilize it. I promise. Lie still.”
“No problem. Be quick, please, ma’am.”
Kellen adjusted the parameters on her scanner to their lowest settings. Running it over the bot at what she hoped was a safe distance, she tried to make sense of the readings. On the one hand, it looked as if their blasts had neutralized the bot, but she was afraid it would explode soon. She was sure that would happen even faster if they tried to roll it off Ensign Oches.
“It’s not looking good, ma’am, is it?” Oches tried to smile, but only managed a faint tremor in his lips. “Damn, I never expected to go down like this.”
“Don’t you dare give up, Ensign. That’s an order.”
“All right.” Oches’s tone wasn’t convincing. He relaxed against the trunk now and wasn’t even looking at the bot.
“Let’s see if this can’t buy us some time.” She reached into her breast pocket and pulled out the small canister that she’d picked up from the ground after Dwyn Izontro’s collapse. “This is Izontro’s medication. It’s an aerosol, with a potent cooling agent in it.”
“You’re going to spray it with medication?” The look on Oches’s face would have been humorous if his situation hadn’t been so dangerous.
“Yes.”
“How cool can it be, since it’s supposed to be inhaled?”
“Not very, but enough, combined with the miniscule aerosol drops, to keep the bot’s circuits in contact with each other. This way it’ll think it’s not so broken after all and won’t self-destruct quite yet.”
“Ah. Clever.” He closed his eyes as she scanned one more time before she administered the aerosol. “There.”
“Is it working?”
“You’re still here.”
He smiled faintly. “I sure am.”
Suddenly the bot gave a soft beep and wound down at the same time. Kellen took a sharp breath, expecting it to self-destruct in a deadly blast.
Instead, nothing. The bot lay there, snug against Oches, and appeared lifeless.
“Everybody all right in here?” Rae poked her head in between the tent flaps. She blanched at the sight of the bot. “Stars and skies, what happened here?”
“It…eh…chased us in here, ma’am,” Oches said, a half-grin on his face. He gently nudged the bot off him and edged over to Kellen. “If the protector hadn’t given it Ms. Izontro’s medication, I’d be dead, most likely.”
“Medication?” Rae blinked. “You gave the bot medicine?”
“Yes. Healing it so it lives until we kill it permanently, you could say.”
Rae shook her head. “You’re going to have to explain that to me later. We need to head out now. This adventure delayed us.”
They left the tent and Kellen turned and fired on the bot, just to be safe. It went out with a small puff of smoke. She looked at downed bots littering the clearing. “Casualties?”
“Ensign Noor, Commander D’Artansis—Emeron, I mean—and one of the junior officers in D’Artansis’s team. Apart from your injury, only minor cuts and bruises. No fatalities. The Disian youngsters stayed low and aren’t harmed.” Rae stopped in the center of the clearing. “To think this can be such an idyllic, beautiful place one minute and a living hell the next.”
“I know.” Relieved that nobody was hurt badly, Kellen wrapped her arm around Rae. “I’m grateful you’re all right.”
Rae’s features softened and she melted into the touch for a few moments. Resuming her professional stance, she dragged both hands through her short hair and drew a deep breath. “Let’s go find out how much of the Cormanian equipment we managed to kill. I hope we still have communication capabilities.”
She spoke with irony, but Kellen knew that if they couldn’t communicate, they might be too late to save Dahlia.
Chapter Twenty
Dahlia woke, cold yet clammy, shivering as the morning mist seeped inside her clothes. She had worn the same outfit for almost eight days, and she frowned at it. Dirt, smoke, and blood created new, ugly patterns on her former off-white caftan, and she’d stepped on the hem of her pants so many times, they looked like tattered lace around her ankles. Insects, particularly mosquitoes, had bit her exposed skin and drunk her blood. She shuddered at the thought of what biological hazard they might transfer to her. It wasn’t like Weiss Kyakh had a state-of-the-art med-kit box with her to tend to her prisoners.
“I need new dressings,” M’Ekar moaned as he lay propped up against a tree trunk. “My bandages are oozing.”
Dahlia could care less, but she wasn’t going to stoop to the others’ callous actions. She looked at the bandages that White had wrapped haphazardly around his arms and legs, and also around his forehead. His head wasn’t too bad, but both his shins were in terrible shape.
“He’s right,” Dahlia said, raising her voice. “He may be contemptible, but he’s rotting away.”
“God, woman.” M’Ekar made a disgusted face. “No need to be crude.”
“It’s the truth.” She swatted at some flies that hovered around his bandages. “You’re nearly gangrenous.”
“Oh, damnation, I’m going to lose my legs, Kyakh, because of your incompetent assassin-turned-medic.”
“Calm down,” Weiss Kyakh said, and knelt next to them. “You’re making too much noise to be dying.”
“Joke all you want, but look at that,” Dahlia said, and pointed at the soggy bandages. “You need to make camp and tend to him and some of the others. That man over there,” she pointed, “has even worse-looking wounds. Even if you don’t give a damn about M’Ekar, and frankly who could blame you, your own crew member should be a high priority.”
Weiss glanced at her people, and her face still didn’t give away any emotions. “All right. White, the med kit.”
The small box, now looking as dirty as they did, magically appeared, and Weiss opened it with quick fingers. She stared into the box. “Where the hell’s the rest of the stuff?”
“I’ve used most of it,” White said expressionlessly. “This is our emergency kit. There wasn’t much in it to begin with.”
“She certainly didn’t use it on me,” M’Ekar complained. “If she had, I wouldn’t look like I had the Typperline Plague.”
“Never heard of it. Be quiet now.” Weiss rose and waved a young man over. He and she were the only ones unharmed. All the others suffered from burns, trauma, or smoke inhalation. “Take care of the ambassador’s wounds.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“No,” M’Ekar said, and pointed at Dahlia. “I want her to do it.”
The young man looked between Dahlia an
d Weiss. “Captain?”
“Fine with me.”
Tossing the med kit box into Dahlia’s lap, Weiss walked away with her crewman in tow. Dahlia opened the box and saw a few imbulizer ampoules and a portable disinfector almost without power. There were only five dressings left. “I’ll do what I can.” As she moved over to M’Ekar, sickened to have to be near the man responsible for killing so many people and hurting members of her own family, herself included, she shrugged. “I can’t imagine why you’d want me to help you.”
“You detest me, but you have a conscience.” He sounded tired and his hands trembled as he tried to brush some of the dirt off his coat. “Deplorable circumstances, but I’ll do anything to regain my freedom.”
“Even kill innocent people.”
“I didn’t know Weiss’s helmswoman was so incompetent.” He raised his voice.
“I’m not talking only about the Disian casualties.” Dahlia kept her temper in control as she began to unravel the bandage on his head. “I’m also talking about the people on Gantharat whom you threatened, tortured, and killed, and I’m talking about how you hurt my family.”
“And you, Madame, incarcerated me solely because you and that daughter of yours wanted custody of the prince.” He groaned as she ran the disinfector over his wound. “Damnation, that stings.”
“Just grin and bear it.” She worked slowly, since this was a great opportunity to find out more about his plans. “These are superficial flesh wounds, but if you don’t sit still and let me clean them, you’re in big trouble. I don’t have to tell you what happens if gangrene spreads.”
“No.” He paled further. “I’m grateful for the mildness of your touch, Madame.”
“You’re being awfully polite,” she said sardonically. “Usually you think of me as a royal bitch.”
“We’re in a serious situation. I didn’t think my escape would be like this.” He obviously tried to mimic her tone, but they were the same age, even considering that Onotharians’ life span was more than thirty years longer. Dahlia also realized that even without his serious flesh wounds he wasn’t in shape for this type of “adventure.”