by Cara Bristol
“I’m here. You’re going to be okay.”
She made a hacking sound. “Water.”
“I’ll get it. Try to spit out more sand. It forms a slurry when liquid hits it.” Everything looked a little gray and blurry through the sludge—sand mixed with tears. Fuck. Just what he vowed not to do—he had to leave her to get water. Running faster than he ever had before, he grabbed the packs and raced back. He yanked out a canteen and helped her sit up. “Here.”
She swished around a mouthful of water and spat. “Ugh.”
“Do it again.”
Another rinse. He nudged her to take one more swig.
She shook her head and touched the wet trail trickling down his muddy cheek. “You’re crying. Over me.”
He was too relieved to be embarrassed. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“No one’s ever cried over me.”
“Then…he…they’re fools,” he bit out. Her father had to be a complete ass. He didn’t deserve Amanda. But, then, neither did he. He was a former street kid, a thug, a criminal. But he didn’t have the strength to be noble, to let her go. And no one could love her more than he did.
“You saved me.”
All he could do was sit there, thick tears clogging his throat like sand. She had almost died, but he’d refused to give up. With his last breath he’d fight to save her, would sacrifice his own life if that’s what it took. She flung herself into his arms and hugged him. He buried his wet face against her gritty neck.
“I love you,” he said. It was important to say it and say it often, because anything could happen. Anything had.
“I love you, too,” she said. “I want to marry you and have your babies.”
He smiled, happier than he’d earned the right to be. “That will be our next mission.”
Against him, she shuddered, and then pushed away. “I didn’t believe it, but iwani are real.”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. The thing wasn’t organic. It was a machine. I sawed off two of its tentacles and sparks shot out.”
“An iwani bot?”
He nodded. “They utilized artificial intelligence to create the monster of their mythology.”
He extracted a disinfecting wipe from the MediKit, rolled up her bloodied pant leg, and swabbed at the puncture wounds. Bleeding had stopped, but crimson streaked her skin.
“You don’t need to do that. My legs are titanium alloy. Nanos will heal the tears in my skin.”
He ignored her protest and continued to dab at her legs then her palms. “I do need to do it.” He had to tend to her. To touch her. To reassure himself she was still here, breathing and alive. Solid. Reluctantly, he released her and disposed of the wipe.
“My turn.” She pulled a cloth from the dispenser, grabbed his hands, and dabbed at his torn palms. “Your hands are in worse shape than my leg.”
He shrugged. The pain and injury sustained from grabbing the spiked tentacle to find his way to Amanda hardly registered. She stowed the wipe in the waste bag then pressed her lips to his palm.
A funny curl twisted in his stomach. “What are you doing?”
She kissed the other hand. “Making it better.”
Strangely, it worked. He looked at her. “Can you walk now?”
“Ready!” She stood up and dusted off her legs. She eyed her feet and twisted her mouth. “I lost both sand shoes.”
The loss of the special gear would slow their progress, but if sand shoes were all they lost, they were fortunate. They’d escaped the residence, the PeeVee, the city, now the mechanical Iwani. Cyborgs 4, Lamis-Odg 0. However, the total score didn’t matter. A single point on their opponent’s side ended the game.
He reached for her pack and his, intending to carry them both, when the ground rumbled. Her eyes went wide. “Oh shit…it’s coming back.”
The sand rippled.
He yanked his photon blaster from his belt and shoved a pack at her. “Run! I’ll hold it off.”
“Hell no!” She tossed away the bag and tore off her own blaster. “I’m not going to leave you to face the iwani alone. Besides, I want to see it.”
Fuck. She would get her chance. The sand undulated, rolling toward them like a tide. And he heard it…a mechanical whirring. Too low a frequency for a human ear to register, but his cybersenses picked it up.
“Maximum power!” He gripped his blaster.
The ground split open, and a gleaming, metal behemoth rose up. It had a headless slender body pointed like a missile from which tentacles jerked and danced, eight long, two short, jagged, and bleeding an oleaginous fluid—the ones he’d severed. The tentacles were sensors, he’d bet. Like a cat’s whiskers. Only deadly. Centered in the body, red lights flashed and blinked. The largest eye caught them in its beam of crimson light. Scanning? Targeting? Or transmitting images? Or all three?
“Fire!” She yelled and pulled the trigger. Her blast glanced off one of the waving tentacles. Like an accordion extending, but fast, it shot out straight for her. Before it could drag her away, Sonny strafed the arm. It retracted.
“Aim for the big eye!” On a hunch, he blasted the largest red orb and held the photon beam strong and steady. Amanda’s photon stream joined his.
Tentacles flailed, snapping and crackling. Torso lights flashed. A piercing alarm sounded.
“It’s working! Don’t stop,” he yelled.
Frantic waving slowed to labored twitches, arms lifting and falling, until the last one stopped moving altogether. One by one, the lights winked out, until only the center one remained. Then it went dark. Fluid leaked from the severed limbs and bled into the sand. “Okay,” he said. He lowered his weapon. “It’s been deactivated.”
His heart pounded in his chest. “You wanted to see it. Did it live up to your expectation?”
“Oh, better,” she said.
They burst out laughing. He was wrung out by the time they sobered. “I’d say Lamis-Odg uses this thing for population control.
“I wonder how many of them there are?”
“Depends on the primary purpose,” he said. “If they’re spy devices, they’d need quite a few. But to keep people in line wouldn’t take many. Kill a few people publicly, and let the myth of iwani do the rest.” People would be too scared to make long treks through the desert. Lamis-Odg was typical of oppressive regimes that curtailed communication and mobility to maintain control over its populace.
“A mechanical monster used to frighten people into submission.” She shrugged into her pack. “Do you suppose it was programmed to find us?”
“No. We tossed our identification into the well. Lamis-Odg is a dangerous place. Chalk it up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We happened to be caught, but there may be more of them the closer we get to Torva. Let’s keep an eye on the sand.” He tilted his head and eyed the pink sky. “And listen for drones. They’ll have a clear visual now, but hopefully we’ll hear them before they spot us.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Well?” he asked.
Amanda shook her head. “Bounced. We have to enter.” Camouflaged by sand, they lay on their bellies on a hill overlooking the relay station. She’d shot another message to Carter, hoping to avoid having to break in, but being on Mt. Torva wasn’t enough. They had to go inside the building.
“I was afraid you’d say that,” he said.
Like the other buildings, this one was constructed of sandstone, but instead of multi-stories, it hugged the terrain, sprawling low and flat. Sand had piled up to the roof on one side. Nondescript. You’d never guess it concealed anything important—except for the armed sentries circling like attack dogs.
“I counted four guards,” Amanda said. Of similar size and build, dressed alike in the same uniform, they blended with the surroundings. She’d had to pay close attention to their features to tell them apart. One had a slightly wider mouth, another’s ears sat lower on his skull. A third marched with a slight limp, his left foot coming down a fraction slower than the right
. The last had a prominent Odgidian ridge. One sentry for each side of the square building.
“That’s what I got,” Sonny said. “It takes them thirty-one seconds to walk the length of one side and disappear around the other.”
“So we have thirty-one seconds to disable the guard, remove his body, and take cover before the next one appears.”
He met her gaze. “We’re going to have to kill them.”
“I know.” She didn’t have a problem with neutralizing the guards. They were in a battle to save millions of lives, and they had to get into the station to do it.
Buzzzzzzzz.
“Drone!” he said. “One o’clock.”
“I hear it.”
They ducked and pulled the sand cover over their heads. They’d discovered by accident the disinfectant in the MediKit was quite tacky. Sonny had sacrificed a bed, cutting a strip of the fabric, smearing it with unguent and then sprinkling it with sand. The makeshift camouflage wouldn’t pass close inspection, but, from a distance, it would hide them. Between the desiccated oasis and Mt. Torva, they’d encountered two other drones, which they’d eluded by burrowing into the sand and covering their heads with the altered bed.
The buzz grew louder as the drone approached from the northwest. If its scanners detected an anomaly, it would zoom in for a comprehensive sweep. She held her breath as the spy bot zipped overhead. When the fading noise indicated it had passed, they flipped back the tarp.
The guard with low ears marched across the side of the building. “After he goes down, I’ll grab him and haul him back here,” Sonny murmured. “You stay here and cover me—just in case. We take out the others one by one. We’ll use number four’s handprint to open the door.”
“Agreed.”
He slipped his blaster from its holster and aimed.
Buzzzz.
Another drone.
They ducked under the shield again. Two drones within two minutes. The greater surveillance came as no surprise considering the relay station’s import. The drone flew away, and they peered out. Low Ears was gone, replaced by Prominent Ridge.
Sonny raised up on his elbows and fired. Prominent Ridge collapsed.
He sprinted down the sand dune.
One. Two. Three… She held the blaster steady and ticked off the seconds before the next guard would arrive. Nine, ten… Sonny snatched up the fallen blaster. Eleven… He slung the guard over his shoulder. Fourteen… He charged up the hill. Sixteen. Seventeen. He would have a cushion of a couple of seconds to get hidden before Limping Guard appeared.
Buzzzzzz. BUZZZZZ.
The drone zoomed in from nowhere. It hovered overhead. A streak of light flashed straight for Sonny. Run! She screamed, rolled, and shot at the drone as the sand exploded, enveloping him in a mushroom of dust.
The drone fell from the sky and crashed.
She tore down the hill. Sonny staggered out of the plume, still clutching the guard’s body.
Twenty-nine…
Limping Guard sprinted around to the front. Early. Armed. In a second, he assessed the situation and raised his weapon. She fired. The blast threw him against the building. Go. Go. Go, she yelled. Sonny raced up the hill as she ran to collect the body. Limping Guard had become Dead Weight. With the body over her shoulder, she bolted for cover.
Hurry. Hurry. Had the other two sentries noticed the flash from the drone? Watched it fall from the sky? Would they investigate? Call in reinforcements? Would another spy bot zoom in from nowhere? She hadn’t heard the last one until too late. If it had transmitted an alert, they could end up facing an army. They were so close to succeeding…
As she crested the hall, she stumbled and fell to the bottom of the dune. She and Limping Guard landed near the pit she and Sonny had dug to hide the bodies. Are you all right? he asked, and hefted her burden into the pit next to Prominent Ridge.
I’m fine. How are you? I didn’t hear it in time. I’m so sorry.
I didn’t hear it either. Good shot, by the way, Sonny said.
The shot will be heard around Lamis-Odg. We might get some company soon.
Maybe not. If this is the only place on the planet where transmissions can go through, maybe drones can’t send signals either. But we should anticipate the worst, and be ready. Let’s finish and get inside ASAP.
They flattened themselves on the sand. Like clockwork, Ears appeared five seconds later. Sonny dispatched him and got him into the pit in time for her to take out Wide Mouth. She left the body to help bury the others.
Then they rushed back to the building. Sonny hauled Mouth to the screen. “Ready?”
“Do it!” Amanda gripped her blaster, ready to fire at anyone inside. Get in fast, and get out faster. According to the Resistance, upon entering the perimeter, they would be in a hall going around the transmission room, which lay protected in the center of the building. She’d been unable to verify the layout with schematics from the PerComm. The file was too heavily encrypted for her hacking skills.
Buzzzzz. Buzzzzzz.
Now! she yelled.
Sonny slapped Wide Mouth’s hand to the screen, the door slid open—
Vacant. They pushed inside. The door closed.
Piece of cake. He grinned.
She wouldn’t describe it quite like that. What do we do with him? She jerked her head at the body.
Bring him with us—until we find a place to stash him. We don’t want someone to find the body until after we leave. Sonny adjusted his burden with his left hand, while gripping a blaster in his right. Carrying the sentry, he wouldn’t be as quick on the draw, but she’d have them covered.
Amanda scooted down the passage. Maybe they wouldn’t need to enter the core of the building. Maybe the perimeter would be close enough.
Carter, do you copy? She hailed the director.
Ping! Another bounce. What if the Resistance had been wrong about the relay station? They might have hiked here for nothing. She inhaled deeply and then exhaled. What if we get inside, and we still can’t get a message through?
We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
They reached the corner. She plastered herself to the wall and peered around the side. Clear. And I see a door. She beckoned and hurried toward it.
Another monitor secured by DNA protocol.
Let’s give it a try, Sonny said. Get ready to shoot. He moved to the screen, left of the portal.
Amanda hid to the right of the door. Now!
He touched the man’s hand to the screen. A blinking red light turned solid green, and the portal slid open.
She peered inside.
A uniformed man facing a bank of screens swung around. His eyes widened. His hand flew to his holstered weapon.
She squeezed the trigger, and he fell. They hurried inside, and she dragged his body out of sight of the door. Sonny deposited Wide Mouth next to him.
The moment of truth. If the communiqué went through, Cy-Ops might capture Lamani and prevent future terrorism. I’m almost afraid to try, she admitted. What if it didn’t work? What would they do then? They had no other options. Maybe you should be the one… Sonny could contact Carter.
Never in a million years would she have imagined she’d admit doubt to a man. But Sonny was different. With him, she was safe. Maybe not from danger, but safe in all the ways that counted. They’d been through everything together, and he understood.
I will if you want me to, he responded. But I think you should do it. You planned this mission and retrieved the information. This is your moment of glory.
Amanda nodded and, taking a deep breath, opened an encrypted hailing frequency to headquarters at Cy-Ops. Lamani is hiding on Malodonia.
She held braced for the ping to indicate the message had bounced like all the others.
Excellent. Are you safe? Sonny? Carter came back.
“Yes!” She grinned and gave Sonny two thumbs-up. Safe depended on the definition. No immediate danger, but our cover has been blown, she replied. Collateral dama
ge sustained. Kilead, Lamani-al-bon, is dead. Several guards had to be neutralized. Kilead’s brother Sorviq has assumed command. If they survived, there’d be time later to assign blame. Transmitting the intel was priority one.
We retrieved files from his PerComm before his death. Stand by for upload. As she sent them, her cyberbrain scanned the remainder she hadn’t gotten around to perusing yet.
Files received. Can you get to the shuttleport?
Doubtful. They might be able to physically get to the terminal. But board a craft? We had to remove the ID chips. We’d never pass an identity scan. We’re on foot. It’s about a day’s walk. Through hostile territory in which they could encounter armed guards, mechanical iwani, and weaponized drones.
I’ll come up with something. Check in on the hour.
No can do. Communication to and from Lamis-Odg is blocked except at a single location.
Understood. Do what you can to get to the shuttleport. I have faith in you. Anything else to report?
Not at this time. Just—Talking to Carter made her realize how insurmountable the obstacles to getting off the planet were. Sooner or later, they would be captured. But they would die knowing they’d made a difference.
Just? Manny, are you there?
Get Lamani, Amanda said. To stop the wave of terrorism would make everything worthwhile.
That’s the plan.
Mansfield out.
Aymes out.
She turned to Sonny. “Carter instructed us to go to the shuttlep—”
The door hissed open. Hala stumbled in. Clothing torn, her face bloodied, she gasped, “He’s coming! Sorviq is coming. Hurry! You have to get out.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Where is he now?” Sonny rushed to the woman’s side.
Cornar’s mate, who’d prepared their emergency packs, froze, staring at the bodies, her Odgidian ridge twitching. She pressed clenched fists to her sides.
“Hala! Where is he now?” he repeated. “How far away? What kind of reinforcements does he have? Are you alone? Where’s Cornar?” A barrage of questions, but the answers were critical.