by Todd McAulty
“How would they know about it? Even if Colonel Perez passed my report along immediately, they couldn’t have reached the tunnels before us.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t bet on Hayduk being ignorant of anything for long.”
“How do you know so damn much about the colonel?” she said, her voice suddenly suspicious. “I thought you’d never met him.”
“We’re part of the same bridge club,” I said.
“I bet you are.”
If there was a new interloper in these tunnels, Hayduk’s agents were my prime suspect. I’d seen up close just how resourceful he could be . . . and what kind of machines he had at his disposal.
I decided that I didn’t want to be in these tunnels a minute longer than necessary. “All right, let’s move,” I said, leading us north.
XXV
Wednesday, March 17th, 2083
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Less than three minutes later, we found the remains of the Orbit Pebble.
It was scattered in hundreds of pieces across the floor. Some of them were still on fire, tiny blue flames licking at the shattered remnants of the once-great war machine. We walked through the wreckage carefully. The stench of smoke and pyropak was pervasive.
“Holy shit,” said Van de Velde. “What is all this?”
“Looks like the Orbit Pebble lost,” I said.
Evidence of a prolonged battle was all around us. There were numerous craters, small and large, and the glint of shell casings was everywhere. A little farther down the ceiling had collapsed, likely brought down by an explosion or missile impact, nearly choking off the passageway.
We had to climb a fairly steep incline of earth and overturned brick to get past the choke point. Just beyond it was the massive torso of the Orbit Pebble, half buried in the earth.
“Stay here,” I said.
I climbed on top of the robot, careful of hot spots. The footing was treacherous. Behind me, Van de Velde switched on a flashlight, bathing the robot carcass in enough light to allow me to navigate with a little more care.
“What are you doing?” she called.
I returned after just a few moments, empty-handed. “Its computational core is missing,” I said.
“What?”
“Someone—or something—harvested its entire data record. Very shortly after it was destroyed.”
“The robot colony?”
“I don’t think so. They didn’t have anything capable of destroying the Orbit Pebble—not that I saw anyway. And why would they need to harvest the core? Its sensory hub held far more valuable components for them, like high-capacity memory, and none of that is missing.”
“So there’s something else down here. Something worse than the Orbit Pebble.”
“That’s what it looks like, yeah.”
Van de Velde considered for a few seconds. “We should head back,” she said.
I was tempted to agree with her. But I’d already thought this through.
“What will Leon do when we return empty-handed?” I asked.
“He’ll want a briefing. He’ll want to know everything we saw—”
“And then what will he do?” I asked impatiently.
Van de Velde chewed her lip. “He’ll send a sizable force down here.”
“Exactly. He’ll send a bunch of eighteen-year-old Venezuelan draftees who have no idea what they’re up against into the tunnels. To engage an enemy that fires MX-313 rocket grenades and stood up to everything the Orbit Pebble could throw at it.”
“They’ll be massacred,” she said, her voice cold.
“I think that’s a fair assessment,” I said.
“Our chances aren’t any better.”
“No, but we’re almost at the site. And we haven’t been noticed so far. We have the advantage of stealth. We could make it, retrieve the bodies, and get the hell out of here in the next ten minutes.”
She made her decision quickly. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get it done.”
We started moving again, with me in front. I was getting tired, holding the heavy stretcher with one hand and my flashlight with the other. We’d gone another two hundred feet when Van de Velde asked, “Why are you doing this?”
I was holding the flashlight in my mouth to give my arms a break and had to switch it back to my left hand to answer. “Your capitán asked me the same question.”
“I know. You said you didn’t want to see your friends get killed. Is that true?”
“I suppose. Partly I was doing it to keep the colony from being intruded upon. They trusted me, took me in, and let me pass through the heart of their community. I thought it would be better for everyone if I did this, rather than a trigger-happy squad of soldiers.”
“That makes sense. Is it the only reason?”
“No. I did it for you, too.”
“Me? You don’t owe me anything.”
“It’s not a matter of owing you. You already blamed me for Corporal Maldonado’s death. I just . . . I feel partly responsible for the deaths of your two men. I didn’t want you blaming me for this, too.”
“I don’t blame you for Maldonado,” she said after a moment.
“You don’t?”
“The colonel is right. I overreacted when I found my man dying on the ground and you next to him. I shouldn’t have arrested you. I’m sorry.”
I felt a strange tightness loosen in my chest. “Thank you.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Go back.”
“What?”
“Back up. Here, this way.”
She led me backward several paces. I shone my light in the direction she indicated.
On a small mound of earth, nearly hidden in the thick shadows, was the crumpled body of a soldier.
“It’s López,” she said.
We set down the stretcher. I illuminated the body with my flashlight.
He was lying in an unnatural position, his limbs twisted like a rag doll. His eyes were open. Blood—a lot of blood—had soaked the earth all around him. Van de Velde had her hand to her mouth, staring, and abruptly she turned away, taking four quick paces into the darkness.
I left her alone to her grief. I pulled a body bag off the stretcher, started unrolling it. There was a digital tag dangling on the side and a stylus to write López’s name.
Van de Velde was abruptly back at my side. “No. Let me do it,” she said brusquely.
“Are you sure?”
Instead of responding she squatted down next to me, taking the bag. Her eyes were wet, but her jaw was set, and she looked very determined.
I backed up, giving her space. Once she had the body bag unrolled, she reached inside a package on the stretcher, pulling out a lantern. In a minute the area around us was illuminated with a bright blue glow.
Next she pulled out a small bundle. She unwrapped it. It was a small drone. She unfolded it and touched a button on its side. Its rotors started to spin, and it rose up out of her hands, scanning the ground around us. It located the body quickly, hovering over it. It began to take pictures.
Van de Velde watched the drone work. “He was the first to open fire,” she said.
Suddenly her face twisted in anger. “López, you stupid shit, why didn’t you listen to me? I told you, a dozen times I told you, wait until I give the order. You panicked, just like on the gun range—”
She broke off. I put my hand on her shoulder. “This isn’t your fault,” I said.
She shook off my hand. The drone had done its work, and she stepped forward to slip the body into the bag. She moved with quick, economical motions. I was ready to assist, but she seemed to have everything under control.
I kneeled down beside her. “How can I help?”
&nbs
p; “Go find the other one,” she said without looking at me.
It took a while to find the other body. It wasn’t where I remembered it would be. The battle had happened so quickly—and it had been so dark—that nothing was where I remembered it.
But I found him eventually. It wasn’t pretty. He’d been kneeling down, shooting at the Orbit Pebble with his rifle, when a concentrated burst of fire from the Pebble had literally cut him in half at the waist.
I returned, grabbed the second body bag from the stretcher. “Did you find him?” asked Van de Velde.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bag him. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I didn’t argue with her. I just returned to the body and started unrolling the bag.
There was a whirring over my left shoulder. The photo-drone. It lowered itself over the body, sticking its nose practically in my face. I had to lean back so it wouldn’t shave my damn eyebrows off. It took its gruesome pictures, then hovered away.
I slid both halves of the body into the bag. I was just finishing when Van de Velde arrived.
“I said I’d do it,” she said, standing over me.
“I know,” I said. “But I thought you could use a little help with this one.”
She stood over me without saying a word. I finished sealing the bag, found the stylus, and pulled out the digital tag.
“What was his name?” I said.
“Asis,” she said. “Roberto.”
I wrote out the name with the stylus. It flashed on the tag.
“Stand up,” she said.
I stood up. She reached out and grabbed my wrists, lifting them so that my hands were in front of her, palms up.
“You’re covered in blood,” she said.
She reached to her belt, pulled out a water bottle. “There were gloves on the stretcher.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know.”
She poured water on my hands. She pulled a rag from somewhere. I stood quietly while she scrubbed all the blood off of them, then gave my hands a final rubdown with a thin medical wipe.
She tucked the wipe into my left hand and folded my fingers closed. Her hands rested on mine for a moment. They were clean and warm.
“Thank you for your help,” she said at last. “All of it.”
Then she turned away, walking back toward the lantern and the other body bag. If there was any part of her that blamed me for the death of her men at this moment, she didn’t show it.
We picked up our gear, but left the lantern. The photo-drone powered down and dropped to the ground beside the stretcher, and Van de Velde packed it away.
“There’s only one stretcher,” I said. “We’ll have to make two trips.”
“López first,” she said.
I helped her strap López to the stretcher. We had to pack the drone and the last of the gear around the body. The stretcher was much heavier now; carrying it over the uneven flooring was not going to be easy.
“Just get him to the escalator,” said Van de Velde behind me. “And then we’ll come back for Asis. We can have the soldiers retrieve the bodies from there.” That sounded fine to me.
I had to stop a few times to rest. My hands got tired easily. Van de Velde never asked for a rest, but she didn’t complain when I lowered the body and took a minute to rub my hands, either.
We made it to the stairs, and then up to the pedestrian walkway. I had the flashlight in my right hand, aimed at the ground ahead of me, and I almost walked us straight into the collapsible metal fence. Once we kicked our way through, it was a short walk to the escalator.
We lifted López out of the stretcher, setting him down at the foot of the escalator.
“It doesn’t seem right to just leave him here,” said Van de Velde.
“Can you contact the soldiers, have them come and get him?”
She shook her head. “We’re too far underground.”
“Okay. Let’s just go get Asis and hurry back. It won’t take long.”
She nodded reluctantly. We picked up the stretcher again and headed back down.
When we climbed down the stairs and were about to enter the coal tunnels, I held up a hand. “Do you hear that?” I said.
She listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
I stood with my head cocked. “It’s gone now. But for a second, I heard . . .”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. A vibration, like a high-pitched whine.”
“Was it your robots?”
“I don’t think so. But it sounded close.”
Sound was tricky in the tunnels, so I couldn’t be sure what direction it had come from. Or what it was. It sounded almost like the Orbit Pebble’s targeting camera when it was trying to focus. But I couldn’t be certain.
The smoke hadn’t dissipated much. There was still enough to make me cough as we made our way back to the intersection. We stopped when we reached it, and I checked all four tunnels with my flashlight before going any farther.
All empty.
“Come on,” I said.
Some of the fires had gone out by the time we reached the Pebble. The few that were left were smaller and starting to smolder. It was hard to breathe in that section of tunnel.
“The Pebble couldn’t have been destroyed all that long ago,” said Van de Velde.
“I know.” Based just on how quickly the fires were dying down, my guess was it had been less than an hour.
We reached Asis about ten minutes later and had him loaded on the stretcher shortly after. “What about the lamp?” Van de Velde asked as we got ready to go.
The lamp was still burning, casting enough light to illuminate about fifty feet in both directions. “Leave it,” I said. There was no room for it on the stretcher, and I had no desire to carry it. “It’ll go out when the power cells die down.”
We had just reached the intersection when I heard the whine again.
“What the hell is that?” I said. “Do you hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s not just me.”
The sound faded after a few seconds. It was hard to pinpoint, but it sounded like it might be receding south.
We were making our way west, toward the stairs, when I spotted the hole in the earth.
It was sheltered by a stack of ancient rotting lumber to the west, which explains why we hadn’t spotted it earlier. There was a great pile of earth all around it, like a giant gopher hole. I signaled Van de Velde to lower the stretcher, and then I approached carefully, shining my light on the hole.
It was massive. It led into the earth at a steep angle, and plunged as deep as my flashlight could illuminate. There was no sign of support work or any kind of reinforcement. It was simply a raw tunnel, like something a giant earthworm would make, maybe seven feet wide at its most narrow point.
“What is this?” Van de Velde asked. She’d come up behind me and was peering down into the wound in the earth.
“It’s a new tunnel. The robot colony was excavating tunnels like this, farther back that way.” I nodded over my shoulder, back and to the north.
“Do you think they made this one?”
“I don’t know. It looks more like something dug its way out.” I shone my flashlight around the circumference of the hole, scanning the mounds of fresh earth, looking for tracks. But the earth was so churned up I couldn’t find anything.
An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Stone Cloud had been so trusting and forthcoming when I asked him about the robot colony, openly sharing details of their history with me. Had that naïveté gotten him into trouble?
Was this somehow my fault? It couldn’t be coincidence that the colony vanished the same day that I discovered them. Should I have warned Stone Cloud somehow?
Van de Velde broke me out of my reverie. “Let’s keep moving,” she said.
“Yeah.”
We were only forty feet farther down the passage when something popped out of the earth on my left.
&nb
sp; I couldn’t see it right away, but I could hear it. It gave off a high-pitched whine, like the one I’d been hearing for the past fifteen minutes. I hastily lowered the stretcher and aimed the flashlight to my left.
It was a mini drone, barely two feet in diameter. It was sleek and compact, smaller than Van de Velde’s photo-drone, and it looked much more solid. It was slowly rising out of the dirt. When I hit it with my light it twisted away, fast and nimble, darting into the shadows.
It took a second for me to find it again, hovering not three feet from Van de Velde’s left shoulder. She jumped when my light revealed it, skittering away from the thing.
“What the hell is it?” she said.
“It’s a spy drone,” I said. “These tunnels are probably filled with them.”
“A spy drone? Whose?”
I had my suspicions, but right now we had to move. I grabbed Van de Velde’s arm, pulling her west down the tunnel. “Come on,” I said. “Stay close.”
She resisted. “What about Asis?” she said, looking back at the stretcher.
“Leave him.”
“Leave him? Why?”
“Because we have to run.”
I expected her to object, but thankfully she didn’t. My light illuminated the bumpy ground ten feet ahead as we raced through the darkness, side by side, heading west to the stairs. I was winded in a matter of minutes, but Van de Velde kept pace beside me, her breathing even and her stride constant. Every twenty seconds or so I flashed the light on the south wall, looking for the door to the stairwell.
Van de Velde held her questions until we saw it, not sixty feet ahead. When we did, I relaxed our pace, then stopped and dropped into a squat, scanning behind us with my light and trying to catch my breath.
“Why did we just leave my man behind?” she said at my side. She didn’t sound winded at all.
I listened, but couldn’t hear the whine of the spy drone. Perhaps we’d lost it.
“Well?” she said, her hands on her hips.
“That probably wasn’t the only drone in the tunnels,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“That drone wasn’t Venezuelan.” I swept my light up to the ceiling, panned up and down to make sure the drone wasn’t sneaking up on us. “Or Argentinean, or American. Did you see its hull?”