by Jaxon Reed
A couple of the others made some motions to try and help it up.
The last GP approached, and the others parted to let him see the fallen bot. The visor over his face retracted as he bent down to examine the damaged unit.
“Obviously, that’s the human,” I said.
He had a light brown face, with typical dark hair. I suspected his dominate ethnicity must be Asian. The races have mixed so much over the centuries, it’s kind of pointless to guess sometimes. He could just as easily have been a mix of African, European, and South American ancestry.
He stood up and noticed my cam, pointing right at him at the moment. He stretched out his hand and shot out an energy bolt from the gun attached to the armor under his forearm. The screen fuzzed out. I switched to another one.
“Take out all the cams so they can’t see us.”
The bots immediately complied, shooting several other cams in the hall.
I held my breath as I switched over to the one of the hidden cams. It still worked! I breathed a silent prayer of thanks for the old Agents of the State and their exhaustive electronic spy network installed through Redwood City.
“Never thought I’d appreciate those jerks who monitored us all the time,” I said to Dee Dee, giving her a lopsided grin.
She smiled back.
We returned our attention to the GP bots. One of them trotted up to the human.
“We’ve tracked several enemy combatants down adjacent hallways, Commander Phang. Shall we pursue and exterminate?”
He shook his head.
“No. We need to make our way to the cube’s core so we can gain control of the whole city. There should be a central elevator shaft near the middle. Continue down this hallway until you locate it.”
The bot gave him a salute, gathered up the others and they began marching down the hall again, two abreast.
I watched them move out, then quickly flipped through the feeds again. Farther up, I found Jacob and Andrea stringing a tripwire in an intersection with another hallway.
Jacob finished tying off the line and looked up at Andrea.
“Are you sure this will work?”
“We do it all the time in SCA. It should take out at least two of them. Of course, they’ll keep an eye out for booby traps from this point forward, but we need to reduce their numbers as fast as possible.”
I recalled Saturday “Capture the Flag” battles with other members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, many of whom were also part of the Corps of Cadets, and realized they had been practicing guerilla warfare all that time. It certainly came in handy, now.
Jacob connected the end of the twine to a detonator switch, then pressed it into a clay brick and gave it to Andrea. She hid it in a planter pot at the corner of the two hallways. The sounds of the bots’ steps grew closer.
“Let’s go!”
They ran down the adjoining hall, ducked into a doorway, then peeked out to watch.
The bots marched into view moments later. The two in front hit the wire, and the brick exploded.
KABLUMPF!
The line came to a halt. Several bots were knocked down. Phang hurried to the head of the line to inspect the two closest to the explosion.
He bent to examine them. I heard him curse softly under his breath.
“Leave them. Be on the alert for lines, tripwires, and improvised explosives. Do not move forward if something is sensed. Carefully proceed toward the elevators at maximum alert.”
The remaining bots reassembled in a group and continued marching down the hall, a little slower now. The two new units in front constantly swiveled their heads, keeping an eye out for threats.
“They’re going to make it to the elevator shaft,” Dee Dee said.
I nodded.
“Looks like the Joneses and the Major have one more surprise for them, though.”
The GPs reached the main lobby for the elevators, a wide open space with several passageways emptying into it, near the center of the city.
The bots turned and fanned out in front of the doors to the elevators on high alert. They formed a perimeter, keeping watch on all approaches. Phang reached down and palmed the pad.
I switched over to one of the nearby hallways that had a bend in it, and found the Rangers, the Major, and a couple cadets.
“We’ve got two bricks left,” Moore said. “I’m going to set the timer for twenty seconds and throw both at them.”
“I’ll take it.”
One of the cadets reached his hands out, a brown skinned, dark haired young man I recognized from SCA and battles on the Atkinson Archipelago.
“Thanks, Rodriguez, but I didn’t ask for volunteers.”
“Begging your pardon, ma’am. I was one of the better running backs on our team back home. I’ll take it.”
Moore took a deep breath as if to argue the point, then stopped when she noticed the look in his eyes. She released her breath and handed him the makeshift bombs.
“Make it count.”
He nodded, pressed a button to start the timer, then ran around the corner and down the hall toward the elevators.
They say the Aggie “whoop” is derived from a battle cry. Men, facing certain death, scream at the top of their lungs in a blood-curdling high-pitched yell to strike fear in the hearts of the enemy.
Allied soldiers screamed it going over the top of their trenches into no man’s land facing German machine guns. Rebels and American Indians screamed it while attacking Union troops. Tribes across Europe screamed it while attacking Roman soldiers.
The Aggies scream it at ballgames.
But as that cadet rounded the corner, running full tilt toward the GP bots with two bricks of explosives, his Aggie “whoop” became a battle cry.
He burst into the lobby and threw both bricks at the bots. They cut him down instantly with energy bolts.
Thoop! Thoop! Thoop!
KABLUMPF! KABLUMPF!
When the smoke cleared, all the bots had been knocked down. Phang, too. I heard him reel off a long series of profanities.
He climbed to his feet.
“Everybody up.”
Three bots were not responsive. They were closest to the explosions and took the full brunt of the bomb bursts.
Phang cursed again.
Ding!
An elevator door opened.
“Everybody in. Stay on alert.”
The door closed.
We heard the Professor’s voice over the com link.
“Jones? What’s your status?”
“There’s ten bots remaining, plus the human leader. We lost at least three people. Maybe more, I haven’t checked yet.”
“Learn anything about the human?”
“His name is Commander Phang. He’s headed for the control center right now.
“That’s fine. He won’t find anything there.”
I switched over to a cam on the floor The Old Man’s rooms were on, and waited for the elevator door to open.
Ding!
The bots exited the elevator. They quickly spread out and formed a perimeter, clearly expecting an attack.
When none came, Phang walked out and looked around.
“Remain on high alert. Watch for tripwires and other booby traps. Proceed toward the city’s command center.”
The party made its way down the hallway, with Phang in the center. They soon stopped in front of a conspicuous door.
“This is the entry to headquarters, Commander.”
“Open it.”
The bot palmed the pad on the side of the door, and it slid open. Phang’s head snapped back. He seemed surprised to find it unlocked.
“Careful. Only one of you enter.”
The bot who opened the door stepped inside, cautiously. Phang and the others waited patiently in the hallway.
I heard its voice drift out from deep inside the room.
“The entire place has been blown up, Commander. There’s nothing usable here.”
Phang muttered
some expletives under his breath. He entered the room himself to check things out, and disappeared from view for a while.
When he came back out, he pointed at three of the bots.
“You, you, and you. Go find me someone. Anyone. Bring them back here alive for questioning. Stay together and watch out for trip wires and booby traps.”
The three bots saluted him and headed back toward the elevators.
“The rest of you come with me. I need to establish a headquarters somewhere.”
-+-
“What’s happening? We don’t have any eyes or ears.”
Dee Dee and I looked at each other when we heard the Professor’s voice over the com. We probably knew more about what was going on than he did at that point.
I clicked through several feeds looking for him while Jones replied.
“It’s unclear, Professor. We know they were headed for The Old Man’s headquarters. Everybody has evacuated that level. We’ll try to keep an eye on the elevator bank. Meanwhile, we’re going to investigate the units they left behind, and try to see if we can scavenge anything useful from them.”
I found myself wishing more than ever I had a way to communicate with them.
A few minutes later, Jones came back on the line with the Professor.
“Looks like an elevator is on the move.”
“Any idea where they’re going, Brad?”
“It stopped at Level 26. Who do we have up there?”
“Servants.”
I clicked over to the cams outside the elevators on Level 26. We watched the doors open and the three bots walk out.
They stayed together and tromped down a hallway toward the atrium for Park 7, which rose from Level 25 to Level 30. I followed them on the cams. The hall ended in a balcony overlooking the park, just as the halls above it on Levels 27 through 30, and the hall below it on Level 25.
Thankfully Phang wasn’t there to tell them to shoot out my electronic eyes and ears, and they evidently couldn’t think to do it themselves.
Before they reached the balcony, we heard a commotion up ahead. It sounded like people arguing. A door burst open and a man ran out in the hall toward the bots.
“Halt!”
All three raised their hands at him, ready to fire from the guns attached under their arms if he became threatening.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot! I’m loyal to the State!”
I zoomed in on his face and did a double take. It was Adams, the Head Servant.
He was in his mid-forties, light brown hair, medium height. In the past he always seemed to be frowning, but at the moment he held a rare smile on his face.
“Traitor!” Dee Dee said.
“Doesn’t surprise me much. Never cared for him, and he gave your father lots of trouble after the Revolution.”
I turned my attention back to the monitor.
“Are there others nearby?”
“Yes, yes! Several Servants are hiding in the room I just left.”
At that moment half a dozen young men broke from the room and scattered down the hall. One of them ran to the balcony and jumped over the railing.
“Halt!”
A bot fired a bolt at them, but it missed. I wondered if the output was variable, offering a stun mode and a kill mode. They were supposed to gather people up, not kill them. Then again, maybe the bot deliberately missed.
They performed a perfunctory exploration of the room before deciding it was truly vacant.
“This one will have to do.”
They marched Adams back to the elevator bank, his hands raised in the air the whole way.
Then a com link crackled, and we heard Jones’s voice come through, strained.
“Curt, we just lost three more people.”
“What happened?”
“The suits are tamper proof. We had a team examining the first one we took out. It vaporized, wiping out everybody nearby. There’s a hole in the hallway. No more walls or floor around it.”
“Who’d we lose?”
“They were all Aggies. Jacob was the only one from Redwood nearby. He was heading over to help take a look, but the explosion occurred before he got there. Knocked him off his feet, but he’s fine.”
I felt awful about the cadets, but at the same time grateful that Jacob was still alive. I switched back to cams on Level 5, and quickly found one that showed the extent of the damage. There were no intact synthetics or human bodies or walls left. The self-destruct mechanism must have been highly effective, I thought.
Fixing all that damage would be difficult. A major chunk of the main hallway to the Customs Entry was simply gone, showing an empty span of about twenty feet. A giant hole gaped in the floor.
“Leave the rest of the downed units alone, Brad. I think that goes without saying.”
“Understood.”
Chapter Seven
Adams proved to be nauseatingly sycophantic of Phang from the moment they met.
“I have always supported the State! Always! I had no part in the uprising that occurred here.”
After several minutes of kowtowing, Phang looked convinced. He didn’t warm up to Adams as a friend, though. He seemed to regard the man as, at best, a potentially useful underling.
Adams invited him to his personal quarters, guiding Phang and the GP bots to his suites. There, he pointed out all the cams planted by Agents. He said he even knew where the hidden ones were, and the bots went around systematically disabled them.
“I was good friends with the Agents. They could always rely on me to let them know when anything was amiss with the Servants. They returned the favor and let me know about several details of their spy network in the city, including where the monitoring units are in my own quarters.”
Dee Dee and I exchanged a quick smile. They hadn’t told him where every unit was located, evidently, and we were able to continue listening to the conversation despite the synthetics’ best efforts.
“Agents of the State trusted nobody,” Dee Dee said.
I nodded in agreement before turning my attention back to the conversation.
“These quarters will suffice, for now. What I need immediately is schematics for the city, and any information you might have about vampire monkeys.”
A confused look crossed Adams’s face.
“Vampire monkeys? I don’t know what you’re talking about. All the monkeys on this planet are out in the woods near the middle of the continent. I read a bio report before taking my assignment here. There are no monkeys anywhere near the city.”
A smirk mixed with arrogance and exasperation crossed Phang’s face.
“Someone has moved the vampire monkeys from the forest. My units have scanned the area, and they are not there. I presume members of that illegal research team relocated them in order to hinder my objective.
“If you don’t know where they are, I will need to find someone else who does.”
Adams’s eyes grew wider at the implied threat.
“Yes sir, yes sir! Probably the lead Professor will know, Professor Cruz. He’s the one who was in charge of the team all those years. He’s been running this place ever since they forcibly took over.
“I had nothing to with that, you understand. I resisted Cruz and his people every step of the way!”
Dee Dee said, “Are you recording this?”
I nodded and pointed to the control board where a flashing red light indicated the conversation was being stored.
“Good. Because if we get out of this and he tries to weasel his way into Daddy’s good graces, I want to play this tape to him in front of everybody.”
Phang continued with Adams.
“Where is this Professor Cruz?”
Adams’s eyes grew big again and he gulped.
“I don’t know. But I’m sure we can find him.”
“How many people are in the city?”
“I’m not sure. Something like a thousand, I think, more or less.”
Phang frowned and some of the
smugness melted off his face as he mentally computed the chances of finding a thousand people hiding on fifty square kilometers of floor space.
His features smoothed out as he came to a decision.
“Very well. We will round up as many as we can until someone gives up the Professor. Then I can interrogate him and move forward with my mission.”
He held out his hand made and shooing motions with his fingers.
Adams opened his mouth as if to say something else, then decided better of it. He backed out of the room and left, crossing the hall and making his way toward Servant Quarters.
“Ten to one, he’ll simply take the next best apartment since Phang took his,” I said.
“We’ve got to get word to Daddy. That guy can never find him.”
“He can never find us, either. Remember, we’re the weak link in the chain here. Phang won’t need a monkey if he captures us.”
She nodded, and looked miserable. I could sense her hopelessness. I felt plenty of my own, too.
-+-
Two days passed. Phang sent out his bots in groups of three to scour the city for people, with Adams pointing out helpful suggestions of places to look.
The synthetics indeed had stun settings on the guns attached to their forearms, which helped them capture several guys.
When Phang had about three dozen people, mostly Servants and Engineers, he lined them up at Park 7 in a row. The bots stood guard, holding their arms out with guns ready.
Phang walked slowly down the row of men. Adams walked him behind and to the side, hands clasped behind his back, smirking.
“I need to know where Professor Curtis Cruz is. One of you will tell me.”
He stopped in the middle of the row and looked to his left then his right.
When nobody said anything he raised his arm and shot the Servant in front of him in the head. The young man collapsed in a pool of blood.
Everybody jumped back in alarm.
One of the other Servants said, “You should look in the farm on the top level. Lots of people are hiding out up there!”
Others began speaking up, all at once.
“There’s a secret closet on Level Thirty-nine. I can show you where!”
“I saw someone sneaking around on Level Seventeen!”