He was gratified to see another bot fall, its head a molten ruin. Two of the four remaining bots broke off and went running down an aisle just ahead of the one where he was hiding, while the other two stopped where they were and returned fire. Lucien ducked back into cover just as one of their shots hit home, hissing off his failing shields. He checked the status of those shields via his ARCs and found they were down to just eleven percent. It wouldn’t be enough to shield him from even one more shot.
Lasers pounded into the data stacks beside him, spraying bright orange globules of molten metal in all directions. Lucien cringed away from the super-heated shrapnel and waited for a lull in the bots’ fire. This time they didn’t let up, and with his shields almost depleted, Lucien couldn’t risk peeking out for another shot. He glanced behind him, down to the end of the aisle, wondering if he could make a run for it.
An echoing boom sounded nearby, drawing his eyes up. He saw the two bots who’d broken off standing on top of the data storage units in the aisle just ahead of his. As he watched, their legs bent and they leapt across the aisle, landing with another boom on top of the stacks that Lucien was hiding behind.
He pressed himself flat against the storage units to avoid the bots’ tracking weapons, and gripped his pistol tighter, waiting for them to jump down into the aisle with him. He wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” a booming voice said. “This is Marine Sergeant Garek Helios. Override, alpha, charlie, juliet, sixteen! Acknowledge!”
“Acknowledged,” one of the bots replied, and lasers stopped slamming into the stacks.
The tension bled out of Lucien’s muscles, leaving them trembling and weak. He belatedly recognized the sergeant’s name and called out, “Garek! It’s Lucien Ortane! Remember me? We signed up for the expeditionary forces together!”
“I remember,” Garek replied in an amplified voice. “Drop your weapons and come out with your hands up.”
Lucien risked peeking around the corner, checking to make sure this wasn’t some kind of trick. But the pair of security bots who’d been firing on him had dropped their arms and integrated weapons back to their sides, and they stood idly waiting for their next command.
Lucien dropped both his pistols and crept out of cover with his hands up. “I’m unarmed,” he said.
“We’ll be there in a minute. Where are the others?”
“Joe? Are you still there?” Lucien asked over an open comms channel.
“How do we know we can trust this guy?” Joe replied.
“Because I just saved your asses, that’s why,” Garek replied.
“Sorry, not good enough. Get the film crews in here like we asked or we’ll blow this place. No more frekking around.”
“They’ll be here,” Garek replied. “Where’s Director Helios? I was told she came in with security.”
Garek Helios, Director Helios... Lucien made the connection, but Joe was the first to mention it—
“She some kind of relative of yours?”
“That’s none of your business,” Garek replied.
“I’m here!” a woman said. “These people are dangerous. You can’t trust them! You need to leave!”
“Where are you?” Garek asked.
“She’s at the terminal with me,” Fizk said. “And she’s got a gun... I think she’s going to try to erase the evidence.”
“Stand down, Nora!” Garek said.
“Fizzy, you just gonna stand there and watch?” Joe demanded. “Do something!”
“Easy for you to say! You ain’t the one with a gun in his face!”
Lucien turned and ran back down the aisle to the records terminal. He saw Director Helios there, one arm busy with a holographic keypad, the other aiming a gun at Fizk’s head.
Lucien arrived at the terminal, breathless. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.
The director flashed a smile at him. “That’s none of your concern.”
Lucien took a quick step toward her, and her aim shifted to him. Fizk took his chance and lunged for her weapon, but she was too fast. She shot him in the chest just before he could grab her arm. Blue fire raced over him, and he collapsed in a pile of jittering limbs.
Lucien body-checked her, knocking the gun out of her hand before she could aim at him again. The director fell over backward with him on top of her. She kicked him in the groin, and Lucien squeezed both her wrists until he felt the bones grinding together. “Not smart,” he gritted out.
The director screamed in pain and yelled, “Help!”
“Get off her, and put your hands behind your head!” Garek roared.
Lucien turned to three full squads of Marine bots running down the aisle toward them. He did as he was told. “She was trying to erase evidence from the terminal,” he explained. “And she shot him,” he added, jerking his chin to Fizk.
“So the dead man’s switch was a lie,” Garek said.
“No, we disabled it when we realized the director didn’t care if the bomb went off and got us all killed.”
Garek’s gaze swept to her, watching as she climbed to her feet. His eyes were thoughtfully narrowed behind his helmet.
“There’s no bomb,” the director said, rubbing her wrists and wincing.
“Yes there is,” Joe said. All eyes turned to see him and Bob approaching from the far side. Both the gangster and his android had their weapons drawn and raised.
Garek shifted his aim to them, as did the other sergeants and fully half of the Marines bots. “Drop your weapons!” he demanded.
“I don’t think so. Get my film crews in here or I’ll blow this place.”
“You’d be killing yourself,” Garek said.
“You sure about that? Seems a guy like me could benefit from having his own resurrection center tucked away somewhere.”
“I don’t see a bomb,” Garek added.
“It’s inside him,” Joe said as they drew near. He nodded sideways to indicate Bob. “Show them, Bobby-boy.”
The android lifted his shirt and dug his nails through his skin, revealing shiny metal. Then he opened a panel in his stomach and revealed three cylinders filled with red and blue compounds—another binary liquid explosive, just like the one Lucien had seen in the briefcase.
“That’s not five kilotons,” Garek said.
Joe shrugged. “It’s still enough to decimate this place. You want to take the risk that your data gets atomized along with you?”
Lucien frowned. If Bob was carrying the bomb, then what had he seen in Fizk’s briefcase?
Joe kept walking until he reached the records terminal.
“Get away from there!” Garek snapped.
“Relax, I’m just checking that Fizzy here is still breathing!” Joe bent down to check Fizk’s pulse. But when he straightened again, he was holding the briefcase.
“Drop the case!” Garek said.
“You don’t want me to do that,” Joe said, and popped it open to reveal the bomb Lucien had seen earlier, with at least ten times the volume as the one inside of Bob.
The android sealed the compartment in his stomach and pulled his shirt back down.
“Oops. Looks like I have two bombs,” Joe said, with his finger hovering over the detonator switch of the one inside the case. “Get the film crews in here like I asked.”
“We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Garek said.
“So make an exception. Don’t you want to know if your wife here is really an alien in disguise?”
Garek glanced at Nora, and shook his head. “She’s not my wife.”
“Your daughter, then...?” Joe suggested. Garek said nothing to that, and Joe smiled. “Well? What’s it gonna be?”
Garek turned to one of the other sergeants. “Send for the crews. Tell them the fighting is over and it’s safe to come in.”
“Safe?” Director Helios snorted. “They’re threatening to detonate no less than two different bombs, and they’re still armed!”
&n
bsp; “Yes, sir,” the sergeant that Garek had spoken to replied, ignoring the director’s objections. He hurried off with his squad of bots running behind him.
“Big mistake,” the director said.
Garek just looked at her. “What are you so afraid they’ll find?”
She shook her head, saying nothing this time.
They waited for what felt like a lifetime before the sergeant who’d left came back. He marched down the aisle to the data terminal with a legion of reporters and hovering holocorders trailing behind him.
The news crews arrived and reporters all began speaking at once in front of hovering spotlights and holocorders.
Garek nodded to Lucien. “Show us what you found.”
Lucien sat at the terminal and searched for Chief Ellis’s records. He found the ones he’d flagged earlier and played them back with all the camera crews filming. Silence fell as they recorded Ellis’s private memories and thoughts. Subtitles gave voice to his thoughts, revealing all the machinations he’d gone through with the help of Director Helios and General Graves to make contact with someone named Katawa. The actual conversation was confusing at best—something about a lost fleet and the humans they’d used to find it—but there was no confusing the way Ellis identified himself as Abaddon.
“Proof enough?” Lucien asked, turning to the film crews with eyebrows raised.
Before anyone could say anything, Director Helios lunged for the briefcase bomb.
Joe whirled it out of reach and Bob shot her in the face.
“Nora!” Garek roared.
She collapsed on the deck and Garek dropped to one knee beside her, checking her pulse.
“She’s dead,” he said, and glared up at Joe.
“She almost blew us all up!” Joe replied. “Besides, she’s not your daughter. At this point it should be clear what she really is.”
Garek rose to his feet and aimed his rifle at Joe’s chest, his fingers toying restlessly with the trigger.
Joe arched an eyebrow at him and clutched the briefcase bomb to his chest like a shield. “You shoot me, and the bomb goes off.”
“Stand down, sir,” one of the other sergeants said, with a hand on Garek’s arm. “We’ll bring Nora back when this is all over.”
“Exactly,” Joe said. He nodded to Lucien. “What about the others? The admiral and the general?”
Lucien nodded and pulled up their records next. Their thoughts proved to be equally incriminating. By this point they had more than enough evidence. Lucien heard the reporters summarizing the shocking news for viewers all over Astralis.
“We need to get those reporters out of here,” Joe said.
“What’s wrong?” Lucien asked.
“The comms are still being jammed. None of this has reached the public yet.”
Garek nodded soberly. “And it isn’t going to.”
Before anyone could stop him, he raised his rifle to his shoulder and opened fire on the briefcase bomb.
Chapter 48
Astralis
Time seemed to freeze. A bright stream of crimson lasers stuttered out from Garek’s pulse rifle.
A few shots went wide, and Joe flinched, his body shuddering as lasers burned through the open top of the briefcase and into his chest. His shield must have been depleted by the firefight.
Joe took the briefcase down with him as he fell, but somehow he managed to keep it from flying out of his hands. The news crews turned and ran away at top speed, as did one of the Marine sergeants, but the other one stayed and gunned Garek down. His shield overloaded with a loud pop, and he fell over with a dozen different holes in his armor.
A moment of ringing silence followed, then Lucien snapped out of it and went to check the bomb. At least half the canisters were shattered, with viscous blue and red fluids leaking inside the case and mixing freely.
Confusion swirled in Lucien’s head. “How are we still alive?”
“Speak for yourself,” Joe groaned.
The Marine sergeant who’d gunned down Garek came to examine the bomb. He shook his head and looked to Lucien. “Either we’re the luckiest people in history, or this isn’t really a bomb.” The sergeant carefully moved the briefcase off Joe’s chest, revealing glistening black holes where Garek’s shots had punched through.
The stench of burned flesh choked the air. Lucien fought back a wave of nausea.
Joe smirked and then winced. “It is a binary explosive... enough to fool sensors...” he trailed off with a ragged gasp.
“But?” Lucien prompted.
“It’s all X and no Y. Food coloring.”
The Marine sergeant nodded, smiling. “So the threat was a bluff.”
“We’re going to get you out of here,” Lucien said. “Come on.”
“Don’t bother.” Joe whispered, sounding desperately short of air.
“His lung’s collapsed,” the sergeant said.
Lucien looked to him. “Can’t you do something? Don’t you have a medic in your squad?”
He shook his head. “It’s easier to bring people back in new bodies than to save the old ones.”
Joe’s hands batted the air as if to fight off an unseen assailant, and his mouth opened and closed in airless gasps.
Bob appeared, gazing stoically down on his boss. Joe’s eyes bulged and tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. His hands grabbed Lucien’s shirt in white-knuckled fists. Lucien grabbed one of those hands and held on tight, weathering the gangster’s death throes until he grew still.
“So dies an uncommon patriot,” the sergeant said.
“He’ll be back. They all will,” Lucien replied, looking around at Garek and Director Helios.
“Let’s go,” the sergeant replied.
Lucien spotted Fizk, lying stunned behind the data terminal. “He’s still alive. Help me get him out of here.”
They carried him out between them with a dozen Marine bots clanking along to the fore and aft. Soon Lucien was panting from the exertion of carrying the demolitions expert, but the sergeant wasn’t even winded thanks to the augmented strength of his exosuit.
As soon as they were outside the center, reporters and film crews descended on them, all shouting at the same time—
“Was the bomb a fake?”
“Did Sergeant Helios miss?”
“Is he dead?”
“Where is Joe Coretti?”
“Where is the bomb now?”
As those questions rolled over them, Lucien thought to ask a question of his own—“Where’s Bob?” He stopped and turned to look behind them, but there was no sign of the android.
A rumbling roar came shivering through the ground, and an onrushing wall of light swelled behind the windows in the Resurrection Center.
“Get down!” Lucien said, dropping Fizk and himself at the same time.
The windows all exploded with a thunderous boom, and a deadly hail of shattered glass whipped through the crowd. Lucien heard shards of glass hissing off what was left of his shield. A gust of super-heated air rolled over him, and the shock wave roared like a furnace in his ears.
In an instant the noise was gone, and a dull ringing sound replaced the noise. A strong hand grabbed Lucien by the arm and pulled him to his feet. It was the Marine sergeant. His lips were moving behind his helmet, but Lucien couldn’t hear. He stood swaying on his feet, surveying a scene of utter chaos. Flaming debris cluttered the street, bodies strewn between them. Some were dragging themselves through the wreckage and moaning—others weren’t moving at all.
Just two reporters out of what had been nearly a dozen remained standing. They were cut and bleeding, but enduring their injuries to explain what had just happened for their viewers. Not that it needed any explaining.
Lucien turned back to look at the center. Fire gushed from open windows, a greedy inferno gobbling up three hundred million peoples’ claims to immortality—as well as Atara’s only hope of ever going back to normal. He stared in shock, struggling to comprehend what had just
happened. The bomb was a fake, so how had it gone off? And why now?
Then Lucien remembered the second bomb inside of Bob, and suddenly everything made sense. The two parts of the binary explosive had been separated from the start. All of one compound had been inside the briefcase, while all of the other had been inside of Bob. There’d never been any risk of them mixing—by means of a detonator or a dead man’s switch. Either Fizk had just been twiddling his thumbs and pretending to disable the switch, or he’d been equally oblivious to the deception.
Bob obviously had standing orders to follow, and he’d carried them out just as soon as he could, but in so doing he’d also killed his maker, Joe Coretti.
Why would Coretti want to kill himself?
Then Lucien remembered something Joe had said to Garek: a guy like me could benefit from having his own resurrection center.
“Motherfrekker!” Lucien roared, his voice sounding muffled to his ears.
“Are you okay, sir?” A pair of EMTs swept into view, looking him over.
Lucien turned to them in a daze. All of his suspicions came rushing back. Now he knew why Coretti’s plan had been ready to go on such short notice. “They planned this all along...” Lucien muttered, sinking to his knees in the rubble. Learning about Ellis and the others had added another objective to Joe’s operation, but as soon as he’d exposed them, he knew it was safe to execute his original plan—or rather, Bob did.
Taking his collapse as a sign of injury, the EMTs rushed in to steady him. They rattled off questions about where he was hurt and how bad the pain was.
But Lucien was too shocked to reply. This was Joe’s agenda from the start—blow the center and make us all mortals again. Except for Joe himself. Somehow, some way, he was busy coming back to life in his own private resurrection center.
Chapter 49
Astralis
Brak stood right behind General Graves, listening as he argued with the Marine sergeant guarding the stasis chambers.
“I can’t open these doors, sir.”
Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within Page 37