Ted was before the door, communing with his AI. He had no idea what was going on behind him.
Bundin fired his two railguns into the air. “You need to stop pushing,” he told the crowd.
“What are you going to do? What?” Cory shouted angrily.
“We… We…” the first woman stuttered.
“We’ve never seen a man.”
“Now you have. Go back to your homes and wait,” she told them. No one moved. Dokken started barking again, nipping at the women.
They slowly backed away.
Cory jumped when Ted kicked the door in. He strolled inside, cradling Plato in his arms. Joseph hurried in after him, with Petricia close behind. Bundin looked at the doorway.
“Far too narrow for me,” he told Cory. “Go ahead. I’ll hold the masses at bay.”
“You mean you’re going to block the doorway with your shell?”
“Pretty much. Go on.” Bundin waited for Cory and Dokken to get by him before he wedged himself into the space. No one else was going in, but no one was getting out either, at least not quickly.
Cory’s enhanced eyes adjusted quickly. She stood out in the interior’s darkness because of the blue glow.
Within the room, there was a single feature. The rectangular shape of an elevator. Ted walked up to it and the doors opened. A dim glow lit the interior.
“You most assuredly are not taking the elevator,” Joseph cautioned, grabbing Ted’s arm to keep him from going inside.
“There’s no other way down.”
Joseph blocked the door with his body as he scanned the inside. No buttons or mechanical means to tell the elevator where to go. Joseph stepped back, aimed his railgun, and blew the floor out of the elevator. It dropped into the darkness below. The door started to close, and Ted stopped it with his hand.
He looked angry, but knew the vampire was right.
“You can do what you need to do from up here,” Joseph reassured him. Cory and Petricia had no idea what needed to be accomplished beside something with the AIs duking it out.
Ted sat cross-legged in the elevator opening, hugging the box with Plato as he closed his eyes and together, they reached out with their minds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The team from drop ships 5 and 6
Cap’s armored foot exploded the door off its hinges. It twisted and fell inward. He rushed through, hesitating once on the other side. The other mechs ducked through and fanned out to either side of him. There was grass and a fountain, flowers and shrubs, small cabins nestled within decorative vines. His IR sensors showed two people in one bed in each building.
In the center of the compound was a multi-story building, but Cap’s sensors suggested the majority of it was underground, which made it the largest building on Home World. He wondered why Christina hadn’t been sent here.
To Capples, this seemed like the primary objective.
People stirred and rose. A quick check of the sky showed that it was still the middle of the night. He suspected ripping the door off its hinges had something to do with rousing people used to the quiet.
A man and a woman appeared from one of the buildings.
“Go back inside,” Capples ordered.
The man looked into the darkness behind the mechs. He pointed. “The door is open! Can we leave?”
“Go back inside,” Cap repeated.
The two did not move. They looked different from the Harborians, but not by much. They had more color to their skin and seemed to be in better shape.
Breeders.
“Why do you want to leave? Have you seen the rest of the planet? This is the nicest place there is.”
“I’m tired of the sex. I can’t take it anymore!” the man cried.
The team from drop ships 3 and 4
Christina waved the others back. She dialed the JDS up to ten and took aim. She hesitated, then walked to the door and pulled on the handle. It opened. She walked inside, the JDS aimed wherever her eyes looked. She thumbed it back to three, so she didn’t blow the building up while she was inside. It was empty except for the structure in the middle.
An elevator. She stepped in front of it, and the doors opened. She vaulted backwards, accidentally pulling the trigger. The pistol sent a projectile into the elevator, exploding it. Something from inside fell. It screeched and bumped as it fell. It was a long time before it hit bottom. The mechs rushed in, filling the space around her.
“Give me your explosives, all you’ve got.” Christina’s lip curled as she looked past the blasted elevator enclosure and down the shaft.
The team from drop ships 1 and 2
“There’s a chamber up ahead. Looks like we’ve reached the bottom.”
Terry clenched his teeth and gripped the JDS tightly. Char slowed to let Terry get in front. Her nine millimeter pistols were no match for the firepower in her husband’s hand. Add that to what the mechs carried and she was simply along for the ride.
She kept her pistols at the ready, just in case, because sometimes a single well-aimed round could mean the difference between victory and failure.
“We have computers up here, but they look dead,” Kim reported. The mech warriors behind her slowed and fanned out, assuming positions to provide covering fire if needed while Kim searched the space.
Terry and Char stopped and waited, as much as it chapped Terry’s ass. He’d had enough of rushing into traps. His abilities had saved him in the past, and often, it had been necessary to run through a killing zone to achieve the mission objective. But not this time. It was a dead end. He could feel it in his bones.
“Give me your pack,” Terry said. Char turned around and TH removed the explosives. He reciprocated and when they added the two piles together, they were ready to go. “Detonators.” From a pouch on the outside of their ballistic protection vests, they pulled a small case with the volatile detonators. Terry stuffed four of them into the clay-like substance before connecting a mechanical timer with a backup electronic trigger.
Kim continued her sweep, using the suit’s sensors to look for a hidden passage or secondary location where the real Ten’s computer might be located.
“Nothing,” she reported. She clumped back into the tunnel and cleared her visor so her parents could see her face. “This isn’t it.”
“Time to turn it into trash just in case some of it is hiding in there. Get them back up the tunnel. Quick as you can. If Ten isn’t here, then it’s somewhere else. We need to get there.”
The rear guard turned and ran up the tunnel. Char took off after them, and then the next four. Kim looked at her father. “After you, Dad.”
“Fine,” Terry replied with a smile. He set the timers for five minutes, then dialed them back to three and tossed the bag in. He sprinted up the tunnel, accelerating as only an enhanced human could. Kimber was right behind him, keeping her arms spread to the side to limit how much of the explosion might get by her.
When the timer hit three minutes, Terry realized that he’d cut it too close. There was nowhere for the concussive force to go. Even though he was almost out of the tunnel, the fireball and shock wave tossed Kim and her powered armored suit into him. The two flew ahead, ending in a heap by the original entrance.
The War Axe
“Main engines are back online,” Clifton reported.
“Commander Suresha? Commander Wirth? Oscar, can you hear me?” Micky tried once again over the ship-wide broadcast.
“Do you want me to move the ship from the minefield?” Clifton asked.
“No. We’ll stay right here. Have an emergency egress plotted in case the fleet comes back to life or something else appears. We’ll be here to recover the drop ships if nothing else goes awry.”
“Clodagh?” the captain asked, linking directly with engineering. “How did that mine get inside our shields?”
“I don’t have an answer,” Clodagh replied. “It could relate to the cloaking technology, that the shields didn’t see it to repel it, but the thr
usters were able to push one away from the ship. It’s odd. Smedley and Ankh could probably answer it, but I haven’t heard from either of them.”
“Gefelton, are you at the CIC yet?” the captain added the man into the conversation.
“Almost there, Captain.”
“Tony? I’m so glad to hear that you’re okay.”
“Great to hear your voice, Clodagh. I can’t wait to see you again.”
“You, too,” she replied.
“Get a grip, people. We’re still fighting a battle and the enemy has weapons we didn’t see coming. What else do they have that we haven’t seen yet?”
“Opening the CIC now,” Private Gefelton reported. “Ankh is on the deck. There’s a gash in his head and lots of blood. I’ll get back to you when I know more.”
The captain frowned. “We need to wrap a helmet around that big head of his. Smedley, add that to my list of projects.” When there was no reply, Micky was reminded that the ship was hanging on by a thread, only the quality of the crew keeping things together. They’d lost the advantage of their AI.
The team from drop ships 3 and 4
Christina nodded toward the entrance to the building. The mechs headed out. When she was alone, she tossed a piece of twisted metal into the hole and timed it until it hit the bottom. She set the backup fuse for that amount of time, plus one second. She added two extra detonators that would trigger on impact. A primary and a backup. She aimed the loaded backpack toward the hole and tossed it in.
She turned and bolted out the door, running toward the pathway that brought them to the center of the compound. The mechs lined up behind her.
A rumble deep below them signaled the start of the explosion. The ground rippled as the shockwave passed. A pillar of flame erupted through the top of the building, sending debris skyward.
What goes up must come down.
Christina covered her head with an arm and kept running. The area was peppered by chunks of concrete and twisted steel. One of the mechs grabbed Christina and tucked her beneath him as the debris rained down. In a few moments, it was over. She thanked him and walked away.
“Colonel Christina Lowell reporting in. Objective destroyed. No human injuries. I say again, no human injuries,” she said proudly. The smile on her face slowly disappeared when no one replied to her report. “Smedley?”
The team from drop ships 1 and 2
Kimber picked herself up before lifting her father to his feet.
He groaned. “That sucked.” He rotated his neck and shoulders. “Nothing broken, or broken too badly, anyway.”
“We still have no idea where Ten is,” Kim said.
“And that’s how you make it suck worse.” Terry slapped the mech’s mid-section as he limped past. “We have work to do,” he growled, heading for the alternate tunnel.
“Barrier is down.” Kim pointed to the original main door.
“Still covered with snow,” he replied and kept walking.
Char was waiting for him inside the tunnel. “You almost made it, lover. Must be slowing down in your old age.”
“The indignity of being outrun by a two-hundred-year-old. I’ll never live it down.” He was okay with wrapping an arm over her shoulder to help him over the rocks and into the open. Kimber followed them out, took a head count visually, confirmed it by the electronic means displayed on her HUD, and gave the thumbs up.
Terry nodded and twirled a finger in the air. The teams boarded their shuttles and buttoned up.
“Where to?” Terry asked. “Smedley?”
When there was no answer, Terry accessed the comm screen directly, tapped commands, and then started over. “Colonel Walton to the War Axe, please respond.”
“Captain San Marino. How’s it going down there?” he asked abruptly.
“We blew our target, but we don’t think Ten was in there. Where’s Smedley?”
“Missing in action, TH. We hit a cloaked mine. We’re in the middle of the minefield right now, but we have a way to see them. We shouldn’t hit any more. Ever since the explosion, Smedley has not responded.”
“The Home World fleet?”
“Staying where they were.”
“Is there any movement in the orbital planes?” Terry asked. Char raised an eyebrow as she watched him.
“What do you mean?”
“What if Ten isn’t on the planet? What if the AI is cloaked, like the mines in orbit? It might have lost its comm link because of the destroyed satellites. I doubt it would broadcast anything directly. Look for bots trying to restore a comm sat.”
“Will do. Have you heard from anyone else?”
“We have not, but we haven’t tried. If Ten’s down here, we’ll find it and destroy it. If not, we’ll destroy any place it can hide. Walton out.”
“Christina, come in,” Terry called.
“I wondered where everyone was,” came her reply. “We blew our objective into a billion pieces and no human casualties.”
“Good job. Walton out.”
“Wait!” Christina called before Terry cut the link. “We have a shitload of women here. We need to take them with us.”
“Define shitload.”
“Five thousand, give or take a few thousand,” Christina said softly.
Terry looked at the screen. He’d contemplated an evacuation of the planet, but expected he’d have Smedley’s help in taking over the Home World ships. Without that, they were stuck.
“We will look for solutions to that problem once Ten is eliminated. Carry on.” Terry signed off before Christina could ask another question that he wasn’t prepared to answer. “Welcome to being a colonel.”
Terry tapped the screen. “Ramses’ Chariot, this is Colonel Walton, please respond.”
He tried three more times without any luck before switching to check in with the final team.
“Sergeant Capples, this is Colonel Walton, please respond.”
“Cap here. We have a situation.”
“Explain.”
“We found the breeding grounds. It’s a mini-paradise with a major structure, a hospital, and nursery. We found couples, babies, and children. We can’t leave them here, and, Colonel…” Cap stopped speaking without completing the thought.
“Bad Company isn’t big enough to support a civil affairs branch. In the interim, we need to do the best we can with what we have.”
“That’s not it. The men. They’re tired of having sex all the time.”
Terry rolled his eyes before looking at the others in the shuttle. He couldn’t tell what the warriors in the mech suits were doing, but Char struggled to keep a straight face.
“Ten. We’re looking for Ten.”
“We’re in the hospital and childcare facility now. We’ve broken through a number of barriers that separated the groups from each other, but haven’t found anything that looks like a computer core.”
“Seize and hold the hospital. We will bring all our people there. Ten’s brainwashing starts there. It must have a presence.”
“Roger, out.”
Terry brought up the coordinates for Cap’s group and put it into the autopilot. The two shuttles rose into the air and flew toward the horizon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The team from Ramses’ Chariot
Ted screamed. Cory ran to him, kneeled, and tried to look into his eyes. He had them pinched shut as he gritted his teeth. She heard her dad’s call, but couldn’t take it. She held Ted’s head in her hands and tried to send her positive energy into him, helping in a way that was natural to her.
He calmed and rocked, his fingers gripping Plato’s box so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
“Joseph?” Cory gasped. He and Petricia sat next to her, adding their support as she added hers to Ted.
“We’re here,” Joseph soothed. He reached out and gripped Ted’s shoulder, ready to pull him back. The man was close to the elevator shaft. Too close, in the vampire’s mind.
***
Ted was oblivi
ous to it all. He had found the main uplink. Within this narrow stream, Ted and Plato battled Ten on the superhighway of data. Packets of energy raced up and down, threatening to burn them, slice bits of them away. Ted and Plato dodged, shielded, and dodged some more.
They generated their own energy and hurled it into the stream, expecting it to have no effect. The attacks on them continued relentlessly.
“How far?” Ted asked.
“Too far,” Plato replied. “The farther we extend our reach, the thinner the umbilical and easier it will be for Ten to cut.”
“A braided pair,” Ted suggested. The two consciousnesses began to braid themselves like a rope as they stretched upstream. The shield before them grew more robust as they added energy to their effort. The attacks slowed and then stopped. Ted and Plato inflated their beings and surged, side to side, filling the stream with only their essence. The data packets stopped flowing.
A great cry of pain sounded from behind them, like a child lost in the wilderness. Beneath them, they built an energy dam, cutting off the entity below from the one above.
Permanently. The cry turned to a wail, then faded to a whimper. With a final gasp, the sounds died away.
They turned their attention upward, starting their slow but inexorable climb toward Ten. The bombardment renewed and their shield strained.
“We won’t be able to make it,” Ted said, as a matter of fact, not conjecture. He made no judgment of failure. As a scientist, he accepted that this approach wouldn’t work and that they’d need a different way. “Calculate the physical location of the source.”
“Done,” Plato replied instantly. “And the terminus.”
Ted relaxed against Cory, his head and body drifting forward, exhausted from his efforts. Joseph dragged him backwards. Ted laid on the floor, chest heaving as if he’d just finished a marathon. Petricia balanced Plato, to keep the box from falling. Ted gripped it, but weakly. They helped him hold it together until he opened his eyes and returned to the conscious world.
“Ten’s in orbit,” Ted said. Joseph nodded to Cory. She stood and pulled her communication device from her pocket.
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