Scavenger: Evolution: (Sand Divers, Book One)

by Timothy C. Ward

  Rush’s steps hitched. Star. His soul hollowed at the thought of letting her die down here. “No.” His first thought was of plasma. “Not yet, at least.” He lifted Avery to Nedzad. “Take him. I’m going back.”

  Nedzad’s face soured. “Drop him there for all I care. He shot me. Left me for dead. He’s working with Warren. Probably led him here.”

  How would he have done that?

  “If he dies it won’t be soon enough,” Nedzad said.

  Even in Rush’s buzzed-high state, his hold on Avery weakened. His suspicion had been right. He thought back to their time running from the dogs, how his plan was supposed to have been for their benefit, and finally his final word, sorry.

  Rush didn’t have long to debate. He went with his gut. “We don’t know what happened for sure, but even if it’s as you say, we’ve all done terrible things. Blood and life. If it comes to sand and death for him, it’ll be because I failed him,” like Fish, he thought, “and I’m far from letting that happen again.”

  Nedzad’s chest heaved as he walked toward Rush, still catching his breath. “We don’t have time to argue.” He clipped his bolter into a fitted slot on Singer’s left forearm, then opened his arms for the transfer of Avery’s weight.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “I found it. Another sentry has been here recently. She’s dead, though.”

  The strangeness of the kitchen came to mind, but he didn’t have the same mistrust for Nedzad as he did for Avery. “Is that why the kitchen had rotten food?”

  “Maybe. Just take the bolter and save your wife, if you can.”

  “Thank you. Feel free to knock sense into him if need be. He’s stiff-necked, but has enough good in him to keep around.”

  “Sure.” Nedzad squinted at Singer’s neck. “P-39. Frontal map display.”

  “What?” Light glowed from the chest panel on Singer. Rush looked down to a map of the base on his chest.

  Nedzad shifted Avery over his left shoulder, then pointed at a place on the map. “We’ll be here.” He touched the doorway Rush remembered as the entrance to Denver Ave., where he’d sent the rest of his party. He looked Rush in the eye. “The base is already activated to collapse and contain. If the M-MANs reach any of the outer walls…boom.”

  Rush left Nedzad and his footsteps heading farther away. Even though he felt physically great, Singer was at six percent power. He had a bolter, but going into The Depository like a bandit with a full mag in his AK wasn’t a good plan. Star had recharged on plasma, surely on more than he had, so he had to expect a thinking-man’s fight.

  He slowed before approaching the door and hall where Nedzad had neutralized the hounds. He could use more time to read Nedzad’s book.

  The door opened before he arrived. On the other side, the hall was empty. No hound remains. In the distance, he made out the scorch mark still on the wall from Nedzad’s bolter. Rush unclipped it and held it in his right hand, thumb ready to turn it on.

  ACCESS HAS BEEN GRANTED TO DEPOSITORY MAINFRAME. TITLE OF MESSAGE, OPEN, RUSH. LET’S TALK.

  “Is there any risk to opening her message, Singer? Something must be keeping her out of your system if she has to ask.”

  THERE IS.

  “Is there a risk in sending her a message?”

  Singer’s response delayed a second, with Rush waiting before the open doorway. He switched to dive view to see the walls filled with glowing green.

  NO. AN INSTANT MESSAGE CAN’T CONTAIN A VIRUS.

  “A virus? She could make me sick through a message?”

  A COMPUTER VIRUS. A PROGRAM THAT WORKS THROUGH HIDDEN CHANNELS TO AFFECT MY MAINFRAME.

  “Can you scan to see if the message has one?”

  ONE MOMENT.

  “While you’re doing that, set up an instant message channel.”

  READY.

  “I’ll come and talk in person,” Rush sent over IM. “Shut off the M-MANs.”

  The green tint and brightness remained in the walls. “It doesn’t work like that,” Star sent back.

  “Will they attack you?”

  “They tried. You and I are different. Come down. I’ll show you.”

  Rush had the bomb card to play, but it didn’t feel like the right time. Star’s current patience could be used against her. Scare her with a threat and he might not have time to reason her out of this place.

  “If I come down, will they try and attack me again?”

  “They’ve had a taste. We’re not their type. Please hurry. We don’t have much time before they reach the outer walls and set off the containment sequence.”

  Crap. How did she know about that?

  “What containment sequence?”

  “Give me a break, Rush. I heard Nedzad. Do you think he’s going to let Avery live? He’s on his way to a secure cell to store your friend before he escapes.”

  That’s not true. “Singer, can you track Nedzad? Is Star’s last message accurate?”

  5% POWER REMAINING. 1.5% LOSS TO SEND EM PULSE THAT WIDE. PROCEED?

  Crap. “No.”

  “I smelled the vomit on your suit, Rush. Did you use it through power exhaustion? I could send a barrage of power sapping attacks. Interesting choice on swallowing the pellet instead of putting it in your Poseidon. I know the addiction well, and if you don’t walk through that door, you’ll never taste the Twin Suns’ rays again. Consider that I have let you stand this long.”

  She was right in too many ways, even if not in the most important one. What she was doing was wrong, but the only way he could help her was by drawing closer—not a tactic he’d used enough in their lives. “I’m coming.”

  SCAVENGER: Twin Suns

  Chapter 9

  The charge from the pellet’s plasma still soothed him with its vein-saturating buzz. If given a chance to save Star at the cost of losing the blue glory, he hoped he’d have the strength to choose her.

  The green walls let him pass as he walked past the doorway. Once convinced they wouldn’t attack, he jogged.

  Star remained as before, her small army of Poseidons standing at attention, with one propped up on a table beside her. He switched to dock view to look her in the eye from his vantage at the rail. She motioned to the second level behind her army. “If you don’t want to jump, there are stairs.”

  Rush didn’t want to waste the plasma’s strength. There was a stairwell on his left. He jogged toward it and exited a floor below to the Poseidons leaving their backs to him. The eight-foot tall metal skeletons created an imposing force. Star no doubt wanted to make them show fearlessness in his approach. The center columns stepped sideways and the rest tucked in to form a path through the middle, leading to Star and her Poseidon and host on display.

  Warren’s bright red face and thick frame became visible inside the reclined Poseidon. Tubes connected from a computer on wheels to sockets in his helmet, torso, and left arm.

  Rush stopped.

  Star waited with her hands calmly tucked behind her back. “It’s okay. He’s not conscious.”

  Rush walked through the columns of Poseidons, itching with anxiety that they could pounce on him at any moment.

  The monitor facing Star had graphs and numbers charting something, likely to do with Warren. “Why is he in the suit?”

  A swirl of blue passed through Star’s left eye and dipped under her pupil. She pulled out Avery’s phone and turned it to face Rush. “He told me to.”

  The Gov’s face appeared on the dark screen. “Don’t be shy, Sentry Stenson. You can have your wife and your friends, but only if you do exactly as I say.”

  Rush stepped closer, wishing he could yank the man from the phone and crush his nose under his boot. How’d she get the phone? Avery had it last…did he give it to Warren?

  “Good. Now.” Star turned the phone so she could see as well. She wore the admiration of a teenage girl day dreaming as she watched her heart throb woo her. It broke Rush’s heart to see her returned to being The Gov’s slave. “Star
is going to need you and your Poseidon to lie down over here.”

  A panel in the floor unfolded and a chair rose on Star’s right side, similar to the one that upheld Warren.

  Rush stopped, unsure what Singer might be able to do to put him back in control of the situation. When in doubt, stall. “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you think I’ll do if you don’t sit in that chair?” The Gov asked. “Because I guarantee what I have planned is worse than what you’re thinking.”

  “It looks to me like if you didn’t have some kind of mind control over my wife, you’d be the one taking orders from us. You know I was able to break free from Warren’s control? Thought I killed him. Tore down a ceiling without breaking a sweat. I haven’t broken the surface of what I can do with one of these.” Rush examined his Poseidon fingers as though they were knives on display. “And the plasma. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  Rush cupped one hand over a fist. “Want to be as smart and powerful as us? You’ve gone through a lot to get us to this point. What will you do to keep me from destroying it all?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Nedzad—”

  “Isn’t aware I’ve locked the containment sequence. Fort Pope isn’t going anywhere.”

  What if it didn’t, but the Twin Suns did? Could he bury just them? There’d still be plasma, but that could be dumped.

  “You forget I’m the one with a brain powered by plasma,” Rush said. “There’s more going on up here than in any of the computers you have running at the moment.”

  “I’ve had enough. Star.” The Gov flicked an angry stare her way. She backed away as Poseidon joints hissed and whirred. The four nearest to Rush squeezed his arms and legs together and lifted him toward the chair. One of the Poseidons did something to remove Singer’s torso cover. Another of the Poseidons elbowed him in the chest so hard it broke the dive button on his suit.

  He coughed and a deep sore twisted the muscles between his ribs.

  They’re non-hosted. I have the advantage…but only if he could out think them. Their brute force locked him into their control and they pinned him to the chair. Straps slipped over his arms above and below his elbow, another over his waist and four more across his thighs and shins.

  Star watched them with her arms folded, safely distant from his reach. If he could grab her hand, her arm, her head, anywhere…maybe he could order a cleanse and Singer’s EM pulse could do what Charles’ clicker had to free him from Warren’s control.

  The straps cinched into place. Tingling spots spread from their tight pinch.

  The Poseidon on his right had a ‘7’ marked on the helmet, where the metal frame dipped into the transparent face shield. 7 stuck its finger into the groove where Singer’s pellet was stored. A rapid cycle whir revved near the tip of its finger. The lights went out on Singer’s visor dash.

  He had been a threat. Like Warren.

  Rush turned his head to see thin tubes filled with blood sucking from Warren’s arms, traveling into the Poseidon encased around him. What linked them were the nanobots of orange in their blood. Rush still had his. And a buzz that made his teeth itch from the plasma pellet in his stomach.

  7 handed Star the dim-blue pellet. She put it in the suit pouch. He noticed the DL packed in the slot on her hip. My DL…Rush remembered cutting it open for the pellet, and never picked it back up.

  9 took the bolter out of Rush’s hand and clicked it into a slot on its forearm. Then 7 and 9 pulled the tubes from Singer’s arms and positioned the needles to take Rush’s blood.

  A picture of Singer coming to life and retracting the needles posed the question of how? Power. From where? His suit’s dive button was broken. Could he even use Singer without that intermediary connection? He inhaled and already the pain was barely noticeable. Just like when the M-MANs regenerated the dogs, the nanobots were already at work restoring his injury.

  He didn’t have M-MANs in him, though, did he? He’d used the cleanse. But the chance of one getting through…

  Rush shook the thought from his mind. He had enough problems to worry about, but one possible solution.

  He spit a string of sticky mucus and blood down the center of his suit. Some spread into the crack of the dive button sewn into his chest. He turned his attention to Star as though he hadn’t aimed at the button, but had merely spit blood and didn’t care if he got dirty. “If you remove the nanobots, the plasma will kill me,” he said, hoping to give his regenerating nanobots time to work.

  Star glanced at 7 and 9. They stopped with their hands holding needles an inch from his veins.

  “Good guess,” the Gov said from the phone in Star’s hand, “but I have something else planned. If your heart were to stop beating, my nanobots would revive you before your brain dies.”

  So he’s putting his inside me. Like Star, he wants to control us.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Star,” The Gov continued. “Now I didn’t tell you to stall. 7 and 9, proceed.”

  They didn’t.

  “7. 9. Inject your prisoner.”

  They remained still.

  “Star!”

  She flinched, glanced at Rush—guilt? A cry for help?—and then back to 7 and 9. They jabbed the needles down. Rush flexed his arms. The needles broke, but cut red-line scratches that dripped blood.

  The Gov cursed. “Shove the tubes down his throat.”

  Rush closed his mouth, but Star stepped forward and plugged his nose. He held his breath until stars popped in the vision of his wife’s absent yet angry glare, and his lungs scorched with the need to breathe. He tried jerking his nose from her grip.

  He caught a glance down at his suit. The dive button had melded back together. With 9 leaned over him to jam the tube from Singer’s helmet into his throat, he arched his back and twisted the dive button into 9’s elbow. The suit hummed and released its power beetles across his skin. Acting on an impulse, he directed the charge into the visor prongs.

  A power icon lit in red. His suit was transferring power to the Poseidon. That must be how Avery squeezed enough juice into Singer to let us fall?

  Star punched Rush in the mouth, knocking him back to the present. In his shock he accidentally parted his teeth and she shoved the tube inside. Suction whisked saliva up his throat and then deeper, pulling at the warmth in his stomach, causing his throat to burn.

  He kept the EM pulse feeding Singer’s power through his visor prongs. The gage on his visor climbed to 20% in orange. He retracted the tube, shot a pulse from both arms, ripped free from the straps, and grabbed Star’s head as she tried to move back. He closed Singer’s large hands across her forehead, finger tip to thumb on her temples. “For you and Fish.” To Singer, “Cleanse.”

  A shock surged from forearm to fingertips and zapped her off the floor. Her shoulder hit 7 out of the way as she flew backwards. Rush swung a hook punch into 9’s jaw and knocked the empty skeleton onto a still unconscious Warren. The tube in Warren’s right arm ejected with a spout of blood onto 9’s metal arm. The other two Poseidon’s near him charged with hands outstretched. He charged an EM pulse in his feet, side kicked one, and spin kicked the other. They sprung backward and scraped the ground on their backs.

  “Warren, get up!” The Gov shouted from the phone that lay between Star and 7.

  The later righted its balance after Star’s fall had knocked it sideways. It rose, turned, and leapt at Rush. Rush unhooked an EMP spring under his backside and swung his legs over his head, backflipping out of the way as the chair below crunched and snapped under 7’s missed attack.

  Rush landed and righted his balance. Warren was up and reaching for the bolter from 9.

  “Rush?” Star clenched her head as she squinted at him and then Warren.

  Rush tightened an EM ball in his clawed hand, imagined it was a skinball and threw it at Warren’s left hand as he lifted the brightening bolter. The pulse hit the bolter out of Warren’s hand. A sharp blue light cut through the floor as i
t spun out of reach.

  “Pope Fleet, attack!” The Gov shouted from the phone.

  The rows of Poseidons lowered into a uniform crouch. Their heads locked on Rush as he tightened another EM ball. He threw it at Warren’s head. The man’s jaw snapped sideways and his body spiraled over the legs of the chair. Star staggered as she tried rising from her knee. Rush hurried over and caught her. The Gov saw him, angry. As he opened his mouth, Rush lifted his boot over the phone and smashed his heel into the screen, cutting The Gov off at “St—”.

  Star popped a glowing pellet into her mouth, noticed Rush seeing her do it, and swallowed. “We need this.” She produced another from her pocket and tossed it to him.

  The shining orb landed in his hand and found its way into his mouth before he could reason otherwise. He needed it to save her.

  Her pupils switched to something behind him.

  Rush turned to see Warren with his bolter aimed at Rush’s chest. No time to charge and throw, Rush focused his new pellet high into a central bubble that rose from his stomach. The bolter erupted and the spear of light smacked him hard in the chest. The light diverted into the upper space as he was thrown upside down. He slammed his back into the wall and fell stomach-first toward the floor. His ten foot drop jarred Singer’s torso-shielding.

  Star grunted. Rush lifted his head and pushed up. Between the legs of the charging army of Poseidons, he saw Star on the floor, twisting into one of her own. The closest one would crush him in a few more strides. Singer had 32% power.

  He took a deep breath, propped his body off the floor, squeezed a fist over his head and slammed an EM fist into the floor. A jagged line split the concrete. The nearest Poseidon reared back a fist of its own.

  Rush absorbed the width of the floor, focused his energy into his hands as he cuffed them at the thumbs, then swept an EM field like a crashing wave. The room shook. The floor buckled under. The Poseidon’s swing swept in front of him as it fell to its knees. The machines behind him lost balance and toppled over each other. Rush gathered EM into the head of an imagined sledgehammer, lifted the heavy tool, and thrust it down on the nearest Poseidon’s head. The metal form crumpled and the floor caved beneath it. He jumped back, lifted the hammer, and took two strides to the left. He threw down. Crack!