Steel World

by Larson, B. V.

  “Shut up and get going. They could be gone already. I’m giving you one hour then I’m sealing this hole with hot steel. They won’t even be able to drill through.”

  I stepped toward the hole, and Carlos followed, complaining all the way.

  Then another figure loomed up behind us. It was none other than Weaponeer Sargon. I grinned when I saw him.

  “Did Leeson order you onto this death-hunt?” Carlos asked. “That prick. One day you should miss with that big cannon of yours and nail him.”

  “No, fool,” Sargon said. “I wanted to come. I didn’t like the idea of McGill getting all the glory.”

  We stepped through the ragged hole one at a time, with me leading and Sargon bringing up the rear.

  “Glory?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I used to be known as the craziest guy in this unit. Now, I’m like some kind of accountant or something. ‘No one tries harder to get himself permed than James McGill’—that’s what I hear all the time now. The worst part is: it’s true.”

  “Permed?” Carlos asked. “Who said anything about getting permed? I thought our data was transferred up to the Corvus.”

  Sargon laughed roughly. “Yeah, sure. But without a confirmed death, they can’t legally revive any of us. You know that.”

  Carlos cursed quietly for a long time as we made our way down into the tunnel. Behind us, the big door to the vault clanged shut. I knew they’d wait to burn the mouth of the tunnel closed—but only for an hour.

  -26-

  “Do you even frigging know what the data component looks like on a revival unit?” Carlos demanded.

  It was the second or third time he’d asked, so I figured I might as well answer. He wasn’t going to shut up no matter what I did.

  “No, I don’t, but it should be in the main panel. If we can get the copy back, then they can reconstruct everyone whose signature is on it.”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s how this is going to work. Do you even have a computer at home? I mean, if you ripped part of it out, it may or may not be readable. Damaged data means a damaged grow, and it’s all over.”

  “What’s all over?” Sargon said.

  “They are. The people we are risking our necks to save. My point is, we don’t know if this mission can be completed even if we do everything right.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sargon said. “You want to go back and hide in the complex, don’t you? Let me tell you, those walls won’t be any fun in an hour or two. The lizards are deploying all around us. They’re going to march right in and take us out, down to the last man.”

  “If they do that, they won’t win the contract,” I said. “Using a million troops against a few thousand doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I don’t even think they care about that anymore,” Sargon said. “They haven’t used air yet, but they are pouring it on otherwise. This is about pride and honor now. We’ve embarrassed them, and they have to save face.”

  I had to admit he had a point.

  “Wait a minute,” Carlos said, halting.

  Sargon bumped into him and made a sound of disgust.

  We were pretty far down the tunnel now but hadn’t found anything—not even a fork in the road. The tunnel gently twisted and curved but didn’t seem to lead anywhere in particular. I’d begun to think they’d dug it recently, after all: maybe when we’d started the attack on the terminal. It might have been drilled originally as an escape tunnel, but after we’d taken the building, they’d decided to use it as a secret method of attack instead.

  “Wait just one minute,” Carlos said, as if getting an idea he didn’t like.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “The data might be stored organically. Did you think of that? We don’t know squat about this machine. Absolute zero. But we do know it is alien and organic. If the data is stored inside some kind of ten-pound hind-brain, we are righteously screwed. We’ll never retrieve it, and we’ll never be able to read it if we do.”

  “Carlos,” I said, “you’re right. This might not work, but I think it’s worth a try. We’re talking about Natasha, the bio, Graves and maybe Kivi, too. You like Kivi, don’t you?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. Every guy in the unit does.”

  “Well, then, I’ll lie and tell her that you demanded we go in and save her—just her.”

  Carlos brightened. “You’d do that?”

  “Yes, I sure would.”

  A heavy hand reached down from the shadows and slapped Carlos’ helmet.

  “I’ll back up that lie,” Sargon said, “if you’ll shut the hell up.”

  “You’ve got it, friend! I know when I’ve said enough. No one has to tell me twice. I’ll—”

  I heard a thud and grunt. Carlos fell silent. I wasn’t sure what Weaponeer Sargon had done to him, but I was grinning anyway.

  We finally heard sounds in front of us. They were baffling at first—then I realized what they must be: sounds of metal scraping against metal.

  I whispered into my helmet, which was linked to the others. No one could hear us beyond our small team as these walls wouldn’t let anything through.

  “They’re ahead of us,” I said.

  Sargon immediately took command. I didn’t argue. He had the rank and the experience. He moved quietly for such a big man. In a crouch, he edged up next to me. We all squatted and peered around the next bend in the tunnel. We had our visors dialed for infrared, but we couldn’t see anything—not yet.

  “I’d love to take them all out with my cannon,” he said, hefting the tube on his shoulder, “but I can’t risk hitting the machine. Why the hell are they dragging it down here, anyway? They can’t use it, it’s calibrated for humans.”

  I’d thought about that myself. “Maybe they think we’ll die without it. Maybe that was their big plan.”

  “Yeah,” Sargon agreed. “They probably don’t know we can just transmit our data up to Corvus.”

  “How do they do that?” Carlos asked.

  I expected Sargon to bonk him again, but he didn’t. He turned and said: “The data in your cells is really pretty short, you know. The body is easy. It’s the mind that takes a lot of storage to get all the synapses right.”

  I decided I’d take his word for it. In truth, I didn’t like thinking about medical processes much—especially not when the process involved me dying first.

  “Uh...” I said. “Aren’t we going to attack, or something?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What are we waiting for, Specialist?”

  “A big, loud noise. I think they’re stuck right now, but they’ll get the machine moving again soon. It’s too quiet right now.”

  I glanced at him and nodded. I thought I knew what he was thinking.

  “What are we going to do when they make this loud noise?” Carlos asked.

  “We’re gonna charge in close and wipe them out—or die trying.”

  “Subtle,” Carlos remarked, “but it just might work.”

  Sargon turned to look at him quietly. I thought maybe Carlos had earned himself another kick. But Sargon turned back again to watch the tunnel ahead and to listen to the lizards.

  We listened for several minutes. Finally, we heard them moving again. The scratching sound of the machine being dragged over the roughly drilled floor of the tunnel was loud and painful to the ears. It squeaked, groaned and clanged.

  “Okay, we move on three,” said Sargon.

  We all rose up into a crouch. I’d been expecting some kind of complex battle plan, but I could tell I wasn’t going to get one. We were going to race up from behind them and kill them any way we could.

  “One,” said Sargon, hunching his shoulders and straightening his legs.

  At least, I thought, he’s not asking me to go first.

  “Two.”

  We were all up. I flexed my muscles, which had cramped slightly from crouching low for so long.

  “Three—GO!”

  Just like that, he was racing up the tunnel. I rus
hed after him, with Carlos bringing up the rear. We tried to run quietly, but that wasn’t really possible. We were wearing heavy boots and running over a rough floor with corkscrew-like gouges in it. I found it hard not to stumble. I had to look down often just to keep my footing.

  We almost reached them before they sensed us. Almost.

  At the last second, some alert saurian craned his long neck around and saw our charge. We didn’t have our lights on, but we could see their body heat. There was very little illumination. Saurians have excellent night vision, and they don’t need special gear to see in dark tunnels.

  The saurian made a raspy, croaking sound, and it was the last sound he ever made. Sargon stopped, leveled his tube and fired. I barely had time to throw myself against the wall of the tunnel.

  There was a flare of green light inside my helmet. Fortunately, the visor was built to automatically dampen extremely bright illumination so as not to blind me with the amplified input. Still, I winced from hitting the sharp tunnel walls and from the assault on my eyes.

  The saurian in armor fared much worse. He was taken out, blown apart by a direct hit. Sargon’s aim was excellent, but taking the shot wasn’t the best move I’d ever seen a weaponeer make. The plasma bolt tore through the saurian and caromed off the ceiling—bouncing down again right into the machine we were supposedly rescuing.

  “I can’t believe it,” Carlos said. “He frigging killed it!”

  “We don’t know that. Move up!” I shouted.

  “What’s the point? Let’s get out of here.”

  I didn’t listen to him. Maybe the data unit was still intact. I pressed forward, hammering my snap-rifle on full auto into the surprised lizards.

  We were lucky in one regard: the saurians were working hard to drag the machine, just as we had been a few hours ago. It was insanely heavy, bulky and unforgiving.

  They weren’t wearing helmets—maybe it was too hot for them—so I aimed for their heads. It wasn’t as hard as it sounds. When surprised, the dinos had a well-known behavioral tendency: they all perked up, lifting their heads high and twisting their long necks rather than their bodies. As a result, they were all arching and staring at us for a moment, trying to figure out what they were facing.

  Sargon was the first one to close with them. He rushed up, put his tube to his shoulder and took out a second lizard, this time one that was pretty far from the machine.

  My snap-rifle jumped in my hands, chattering. I could hear sliver-like bullets spraying out, ricocheting and sparking from the metal roof of the tunnel. I knew I had to be hitting them—right in the face—but they weren’t going down.

  The few seconds of surprise passed, and the lizards responded to our attack with deadly effectiveness. As Sargon was the closest, they turned on him like a pack of hungry wolves. They leapt, hind-claws leading, their tails making curved lines behind them.

  He never had a chance. He dropped his tube, got out his combat knife, and managed to sink it into the chest of the first saurian who reached him. But then the weight of those hind legs hit him, sending him sprawling. The saurian he’d knifed staggered, but the rest closed in, biting and tearing. I heard a screech that was probably human, and I saw a reptilian head lift up with a bloody trophy. I wasn’t even sure it was a limb—it could have been a ripped-loose strip of skin and flesh.

  “Don’t worry about hitting Sargon,” I said, “he’s gone.”

  “Concentrate on the closest one!” Carlos said, breathing over the microphone in his helmet in what sounded like panicky gasps. “He’s permed. I can’t believe it, we’re all going to be permed right here in this hole.”

  “Shut up, and keep firing.”

  We laid fire into the leader until he went down. The one Sargon had gutted was down as well. With the two he’d shot earlier, that left four of them out of the fight.

  The last two got smart and retreated behind the smoking hulk of the revival unit.

  “Are they running or getting guns?” Carlos asked.

  “It hardly matters which. We can’t break off. They’ll come after us, and they run a lot faster than we do. Let’s charge.”

  “Okay. You left, me right.”

  “Go!”

  We’d been hugging the ragged walls of the tunnel, but now we fully exposed ourselves and rushed forward. We ran to the machine, stumbling over dead bodies and uneven spiraling cuts in the steel floor. We each came around the sides of the tunnel—and met up with two armed lizards.

  They were picking up gear from a sled of sorts they had on the ground. I could tell right away it was some kind of air sled, a machine built to help carry heavy loads. I’d used them before, guiding them with tugs and nudges.

  One of the two was looking right at me when I came around the machine. He opened his mouth at me, but I didn’t hear him make any sound, not even a hiss. I don’t know if his yawning action was a challenge, a greeting or a laugh.

  We both fired at the same time, but Carlos slammed into the dino, spoiling his aim.

  I was stunned for a split-second. Carlos had not stopped his charge—he’d plowed right into the lizard that was going to shoot me. The other one hadn’t gotten his rifle up yet. Maybe he was loading it or configuring it—I had no idea.

  Two bullets found me in the crossfire. They bit into my right shoulder, punching through the fabric of my uniform like I was wearing a windbreaker instead of light infantry armor.

  My right arm didn’t work quite right anymore, but I shot the lizard in the skull with a burst that caused visible damage. Even with the strange glare of night vision, I could tell most of his snout was missing.

  I turned my barrel in the direction of the second lizard, who was still working on his gun. Maybe it was jammed, I don’t know, but he never fired it. I killed him before he could get it into action.

  Then, I moved to Carlos and pulled him away from the dead saurian. The two were entangled. I saw a curved blade and a lot of blood. Carlos had been gutted.

  “You going to make it?” Carlos asked me with a strange, rattling voice.

  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  I was lying. My shoulder was on fire. I could feel the blood trickling down into my suit, dribbling with cooling runnels all the way to the tips of my gloves and the soles of my feet. The air conditioners chilled the blood as it ran over my skin, making a sticky, cold mess that was worse than sweat.

  “How about you?” I asked him.

  “No way,” he gasped. “I’m dead. But if you get the hell out of here now, Sargon and I—we won’t be permed. You can tell them.”

  “Is that why you did it?” I asked. “Is that why you hugged this lizard and got yourself killed?”

  “Partly, yeah,” he said. “But no matter what, I don’t owe you anything now, McGill. We’re even.”

  It took me a second to understand what he was talking about.

  “You’re still hung up on that first training exercise? Where Graves suffocated us—is that what you’re talking about?”

  “You know damn well—” he broke off to cough wetly. I didn’t have to look to know that the mess he was coughing up was dark with clotted blood. “You know what I’m saying. You came back for me, so I threw myself on a lizard for you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re even, but we’re not finished yet. I’ll see you around after some hot bio revives you.”

  He laughed and coughed. His head was moving, but the rest of him was deadly still. It was strange, almost as if he was paralyzed—which he wasn’t, as far as I could tell. His body was in shock, I guess: Already dead, but still functioning for a few minutes more.

  We talked a bit longer, quietly, until he died. It didn’t take more than two minutes. When I was sure, I let him down carefully, took pictures of the fallen in case there was any argument from the bios, and went to the machine.

  If I ran out right now, I knew I’d make it. Carlos, Sargon and I would live. But that wasn’t why I’d come down here. I’d come to save Graves, Natasha, Anne—all o
f them.

  I flipped on my suit lights and climbed all over the machine. I found the front panel and dug around on it. I didn’t see any obvious data ports or removable storage devices.

  I heaved a sigh. This was a lot of work for nothing. My shoulder was stinging and getting stiffer every minute. Soon, it would be hard to defend myself without a regrow.

  I got out my tapper and searched it, but there was precious little on alien tech. It was against Galactic Law to study and reverse-engineer an alien device like this. If you couldn’t do it on your own, you had to let the original builders keep their monopoly.

  As a last ditch effort, I engaged my helmet computer. It identified items I looked at—but most of us found that distracting. When you looked down at your gun, it told you all about the snap-rifle in your hands. If you lifted a fork, it told you fork in glowing letters with a command section that would honest-to-God look up the word fork and give the dictionary definition. Because these systems were annoying, we usually kept them flipped off. But right now, I needed all the help I could get.

  I turned it on and carefully eyed the machine. It needed time to recognize each component—if it could. That meant staring fixedly at each item for about ten seconds before the computer popped up its best guess at what the hell I was looking at.

  A few times, the results were hilarious. I wasn’t in any mood to laugh, but I had to when it saw the stiff, dead upraised claws of a saurian corpse and identified them as fingers.

  “Moron machine,” I said. “Scales, claws, wrong dimensions and shape. Hell, they don’t even have the same number of joints that we do.”

  The computer ignored me and went right on happily identifying things. Sometimes, the identifications shifted as my point of view and angle shifted. To get a full scan, I tried looking down on an object, then staring at it head on, and finally looking at it from below.

  During the last of these three steps, while I was looking at a keyboard-like device on the front panel, the identification system spit out an interesting classification on my screen: data slot.