And they needed Holly to deal with another AI. They couldn’t have saved the people from Cygnus VI without him. How much would they have missed without Holly? They wouldn’t have known about the RV Traveler at all. They wouldn’t have had blasters. Micah had hers, but it wasn’t charged until they met the AI. That meant they wouldn’t have survived the Bat-Ravens. Without Holly, they’d be dead five times over. And they wouldn’t have met their friends, the Wolfoids, the Rabbits, or the Lizard Man called Pik Ha’ar.
Braden and Micah were both thinking the same thing. Holly would have to save them again.
‘Kill the Security Bot. Two of you can do it if you catch it by surprise. They don’t use their shields down here for some reason, so kill it. Once the Security Bots are dead, then we can get in touch with Holly,’ Braden said, changing their tactics.
‘If I see it, I will take care of it,’ Aadi said.
‘We can’t ask you to do that,’ Micah replied.
‘We do as we must, for the good of all,’ Aadi added in a tired voice.
Braden had stopped listening and focused completely on where they were and what they were doing. Bounder was standing next to a bed and G-War had jumped onto the sheet covering someone attached to the equipment. A Med Bot hovered nearby, but Bounder held it at bay by jabbing it with his spear.
As Braden joined the others, he looked, knowing who it was going to be. The old man lying there, hooked up to the equipment, was Caleb.
Fight!
Aadi had a hard time getting the door open to the small building where they’d left him. He could get his mouth on it, but twisting and pulling were more difficult. Since he floated, he had little leverage. After a number of attempts, he finally managed, then swam outside.
When they left the tunnel, they went one street over, but had returned through the alley. This was the direct route from the park to the main building where Braden and the others were. Aadi turned and saw the Security Bot coming quickly toward him. The Tortoid swam into the street and dropped to the ground, where he did not have to wait long. The Security Bot was racing down the center of the road, oblivious to everything around it. As it passed, Aadi gave it everything he had.
The Security Bot bounced into the air, then fired its weapons in all directions, not knowing where the sonic blast had come from. It slowed, and Aadi closed his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, my babies. You won’t have a chance to know life because I failed you,’ he said to the six living Tortoids still in the eggs inside his body.
Aadi waited, but the end didn’t come. He opened one eye. The Security Bot was no longer hovering or firing. It sat on the street with a thin line of smoke trailing from its top. Aadi couldn’t tell if there were any lights active on it or not. He was so tired. He lay on the ground and closed his eyes.
‘It is done,’ he told the others as sleep of the exhausted claimed him.
Micah had walked outside, but went back in. ‘Skirill. We still have at least the one that went past you. Do you see anything?’
‘No, Master Micah. I will find it for you and you will kill it. Then we will save Caleb and leave this place,’ Skirill said firmly. He jumped from his perch atop the main building and flew upward to the edge of the dome, the ocean’s waters so close above him, before he followed the radial outward to the road that the Bot had taken after chasing Braden and the others inside.
The sirens sounded again. Good, Skirill thought as he flew. That will get the innocent people out of the way, leaving only the Bots and us.
He flew the length of the street, descending with the dome until he was at rooftop level on the outer edge. He landed on the branches of a tree in an alley as he got his bearings, then he flew off again, the next street and the next. Zyena joined in the search for the Security Bot.
The laser beam was narrow and barely missed Zyena. She hadn’t seen it. If it hadn’t been for Skirill’s warning, she wouldn’t have dodged to avoid the next one, which disappeared through the clear of the dome and into the sea. She dove to the side, putting a building between her and the Bot.
‘Is that the Bot we’re looking for?’ she asked Skirill.
‘It’s one of them, but I can’t tell them apart. I’m going to fly past and draw it toward Micah and Pik.’
Pik had put his skin suit back on and stood behind the tree with his lighting spear ready. Micah was outside the building again, on a corner, hoping she was on the right road. She didn’t have much cover and if the Bot got past her, she’d be skylined against the building. She’d have to count on Pik’s aim to kill the Bot before it fired at her. Then it would be up to her to finish it.
With Skirill’s help, she discovered that she was one street off. She ran as fast as she could to the next corner, arriving at the same time as the Security Bot, which was moving almost as fast as the Hawkoid as it fired a narrow laser repeatedly into the air. Skirill dodged and danced, frantically avoiding the beams.
The Bot raced past her, barely an arm’s-length away. She ducked and snap-fired into the thing, then took a knee to aim and keep firing. Pik’s lightning bolt missed on the first shot, but hit the Security Bot with the second. A crackling electrical bolt shot out from the Bot’s tentacle, enveloping Micah and shocking her senseless. Pik kept firing until the Bot exploded.
‘The Bot’s dead, but Micah’s down. I’m going to her now,’ Pik said over the mindlink. Braden didn’t respond as he didn’t know what to say. Pik would tell them how she was as he was hopelessly honest. And that’s what Braden always wanted. Don’t make him guess at the real situation.
“We’re taking you with us,” he said to Caleb. Braden turned and grabbed the Med Bot. “Unhook him, now!”
He nodded for Bounder to step back. The Med Bot moved close to the instruments, adjusted a few things, then departed toward the next bed. Braden had had enough. He raised his blaster and fired two short bursts into the Bot’s back. It sparked and crashed to the floor, upsetting a tray of instruments two beds down.
Braden ripped the sheet off. There was a tube going through his abdomen and probably into his stomach. There were tubes for waste and then there was one in each leg. These were clear and carried blood. There were numerous scars on Caleb’s naked body where the Professor had cut into him, taken something. Braden was disgusted afresh.
“I can’t leave you like this, Caleb. We take these out and either you live free or you die.” Braden’s eyes teared as he looked at Micah’s father. “Here’s to life, my friend,” Braden said as he pulled the first tube from Caleb’s leg. Blood gushed from the wound and he put pressure on it. He looked at the tray nearby. Had he not been in the Med Lab of New Sanctuary, he would have had no idea what things were for, but he saw gauze and a wrap. He asked Bounder to move the tray closer.
He put gauze on the wound, then wrapped the other material around Caleb’s leg to hold the gauze tightly down. Then he removed the second leg tube, doing the same thing. He apologized as he removed the waste tubes and cast them away. The stomach tube bothered him. It looked like the size of an arrow. If he’d been shot in the stomach, he wouldn’t survive long. Braden took out his small knife and cut the tube in the middle. He pinched it in half and wrapped the bandage around Caleb’s body to strap the tube down. If the Med Lab on the Warden couldn’t fix it, then they’d enlist Holly’s aid at New Sanctuary.
Braden’s first responsibility was to get Caleb out of there. He carefully removed the tube from Caleb’s mouth, aghast at how much of it there was. When it was out, he couldn’t tell if Caleb was breathing or not. Braden put his ear to the old man’s lips and listened. He heard air moving and sighed with relief. Braden’s last act was to rip off the sensors taped to Caleb’s head.
With that, Caleb was free, but still unconscious. Braden checked the area to make sure no one was coming their way. The rest of the Med Bots went about their duties, oblivious to the fact that Braden had killed one of their own. He didn’t count on that lasting.
Med Bots Unite
C
aleb was bigger than Braden, but he didn’t care. He would carry the old fisherman out of that place.
‘Micah is unconscious. I will take her to Aadi,’ the Lizard Man said over the mindlink.
‘You don’t know how happy that makes me, Pik. Thank you for watching over her. We have Caleb and we’re coming out. We’ll join you shortly,’ Braden answered, relieved. Together, they sat Caleb upright and Braden draped the large man over his shoulder, careful not to put pressure on the tube protruding from Caleb’s stomach.
He was heavy, too. Braden could walk, but it was a challenge. Bounder led the way, back down the aisle toward the front door. The ‘cats circled them, watching. G-War was on edge, which made the other two anxious. The Golden Warrior couldn’t sense the Bots, and that talent, more than anything else, was what he relied on. He was afraid of Bots and Androids, but wouldn’t share that with anyone. He also counted on his ability to foresee imminent danger.
Like now, when he saw the Med Bots descend on Braden, taking him down through the press of numbers. ‘They come, the Med Bots will try to kill you,’ G-War told Braden.
Braden didn’t hesitate, he turned and lumbered toward an area where all the beds were empty. He knew that he had thirty heartbeats before something that G-War had seen happened. He carefully rolled Caleb off his shoulder and onto an empty bed, then readied his blaster, narrow beam, short bursts only. They didn’t have a way to recharge it in Atlantis and there were a lot of Bots.
The Med Bots, as one, stopped what they were doing throughout the entire laboratory and made their way to the nearest aisle. Slowly and deliberately, they moved toward Braden and his companions.
Bounder snarled and barked his dismay, then took a position behind a bed on the other side of the aisle. ‘Can you look for another way out of here?’ Braden asked G-War. ‘I don’t know if we can stop them all.’
G-War, Fea, and Treetis darted between the beds and down the aisles, looking for the boundaries of the massive space. The Med Bots weren’t interested in the ‘cats, not then. Maybe later, unless the three could find another way out.
While Braden crouched, he discovered that the beds had wheels. There was a butterfly lever that he flipped and the wheel was free to spin. He wouldn’t have to carry him. They could roll Caleb out of there, if they got past the Med Bots.
He couldn’t ask Micah to contact Holly, see if he could stop them. Braden and Bounder were on their own.
“It’s you and me, my friend, fighting the enemies of a free world. We don’t want to do it. They’re making us fight them because they don’t have a Market Square and they really need one!” Braden quipped. He always found humor in the strangest places. If they survived, it would be a funny story to tell. But for the present, he saw more Med Bots than he could count.
Bounder took the first shot, blasting the lead Bot with his lightning spear. That held the others up for a heartbeat or two as they worked their way past. Then Braden fired, very short bursts at different spots on the Bots as he sought a weakness, the easiest way to kill them. They were round, blocky even, with tentacles instead of arms. They didn’t have something like a head to shoot off, so he shot various places on their body, hoping for something spectacular.
There wasn’t anything obvious. Two shots anywhere on their body seemed to kill them. If he hit a tentacle, that did nothing except take out the arm.
‘We need you to pick up the pace. I’m going to run out of juice before we run out of bad guys,’ Braden encouraged the ‘cats. He started firing at the Bots in order to build a wall of dead bodies to fill in spaces and make it more difficult for the others to pass.
They stopped coming and Braden relaxed for the moment, knowing that they had not given up. He checked the charge on his blaster. Less than half remained. That wasn’t enough to fight both Med Bots and Security Bots.
Bounder looked for the ‘cats. ‘Anything?’ the Wolfoid asked.
‘Still working on it,’ G-War snipped.
“Bronwyn!” Braden yelled. “I can’t believe I forgot about you.”
‘Bronwyn, are you there?’ Braden asked, ashamed and afraid.
‘Oh, yes. I’ve been listening to you all. I found something, and we have new friends, too,’ she said in her childlike thought voice.
‘Of course you did.’ Braden laughed out loud and Bounder chuckled, shaking his shaggy head. They were back to business when the pile of dead Bots started moving toward them. Something was pushing the pile from behind and there was nothing that Braden or Bounder could do about it.
‘We need to go,’ Bounder said.
“Which way, G? We have to go, now!”
‘Your left. Hurry, the opening won’t last long,’ G-War encouraged the two. Braden snapped the wheel releases and he and Bounder began pushing the table. They picked up speed, holding Caleb with one hand while pushing with the other, It was awkward, but faster than if Braden had been carrying the large man.
Treetis waited for them and as soon as they saw him, he turned tail and ran down an aisle that led back to the main door. G-War was right, there was a gap where the Med Bots had gone toward the back after the human and the others up front had not yet joined them. Braden and Bounder pushed Caleb, thankful that the aisle was straight.
Treetis ran ahead, tail held high. G-War and Fea were near the front door, waiting for the others to open it. They looked impatient and Braden understood why. The Bots had picked up on the plan and were trying to cut them off. G-War and Fea stood against the door together and it started to move. They pushed one side open, and G-War blocked it with his body, but after seeing Braden and Bounder coming at breakneck speed, he thought better of being in their way. He dodged beyond the door into the hallway as the table hit the other door, careened sideways and dumped Caleb unceremoniously onto the floor as both Bounder and Braden tumbled over top of both.
Bounder was up first and fired his lightning spear at the closest Bots. The sparking end of the spear crackled right above Braden’s head as the Free Trader struggled to drag Caleb far enough down the hallway so he could prop him up to throw him over his shoulder. Bounder blocked the doorway and fired again and again. Braden kneeled as he pulled Caleb upright, grunting with the effort.
“Come on, Bounder, time to go!” Braden yelled out the side of his mouth. He couldn’t turn as he kept his focus on moving forward.
‘There’s a Security Bot exiting the gate. It’s coming around to the front,’ Zyena told them as she dodged away to keep from getting shot.
Braden hesitated and Bounder bumped into him.
‘We can’t go back, my friend,’ Bounder said as he fired two more times into the mass of Med Bots squeezing into the hallway. Without pause, they pushed the wreckage in front of them, defeating Bounder’s attempts to block the hallway to give them more time to escape. ‘We have to go forward and soon.’
The people up front were standing, mouths agape, as they watched a sweating Braden hurry through the area while the Wolfoid fired his spear down behind them. When Braden reached the front door, he saw the Security Bot hovering outside, shimmering. Braden put Caleb on the floor, leaning against the wall as he joined Bounder and fired mercilessly into the Med Bots.
“No sense going out the front door. It has its shield active, and that means we can’t fight it. The tunnel is unguarded, but there’s no one left to go. And Brandt is in here somewhere, too!”
‘Don’t worry, my friends and I are coming. We’ll be there in just a few heartbeats,’ Bronwyn offered.
‘No!’ Braden countered. ‘Don’t come here, Bronwyn, please. Find your way to where Aadi and Pik are. Take Micah and go back to the island.’
Bronwyn ignored him as she walked into the street at the front of a mass of misfits, a shuffling, limping, screeching mass. She led them to stand between the Bot and the front door. The misfits pressed in on the Security Bot and it moved backward.
‘Come with us and we’ll get Brandt. My friends know where he is.’ The teenager waved at Braden to join
her. He repeated the process of picking up Caleb, wondering how the big fisherman was getting heavier each time. With one last shot, Bounder backed out the front door behind Braden. The Med Bots remained inside with the group of confused young people. Braden hid behind a misshapen creature that seemed to be a cross between a tree and a very tall man.
The Security Bot seemed surprised by the mob, but the Professor had centuries to build and reprogram these Bots, which were different from the ones at New Sanctuary. These were far smaller, pseudo-man-shaped, and seemed inclined toward capturing living creatures, not killing them, although it did go after the Hawkoids. It could kill, but chose not to.
Braden shuffled around the corner, staying behind his large protector while Bronwyn kept the mob going in one direction, kept them between Braden, the ‘cats, and the Wolfoid. The Bot stopped shimmering and surged forward, pushing into the mob. They stood against it, trying to hold it back, but it used its tentacle arm to push them out of the way. Bounder was against the wall, blocked in by Braden and the mob. He braced his spear and stood tall, showing his fangs and growling as the Bot cleared the misshapen creatures.
Bounder fired his lightning rod again and again. When Braden saw the Bot coming, he pulled his blaster and was as ready as he could be with Caleb balanced on his shoulder. He fired, too, not bothering to pace his shots. He held the trigger down and danced the narrow beam across the plates of the Bot, looking for a seam. This Bot didn’t go easily. It whipped its tentacle at Bounder, but its fine motor skills were already suffering from the withering attacks. Bounder used his spear to block the tentacle as Braden continued to fire. When the Security Bot exploded, the mob ran. With most of the explosion contained within the extra plating that this Bot had, those nearest were pummeled by the concussion from the blast, but not shrapnel. Bounder was slammed against the wall, fell, and was on his feet in a heartbeat. Braden had been thrown past the corner of the building and landed with a pile of misshapen bodies.
Free Trader Box Set - Books 4-6: Battle for the Amazon, Free the North!, Free Trader on the High Seas Page 62