by Isaac Hooke
“I’ve got something,” Unit C said.
Rade switched over entirely to that Centurion’s feed.
“I see it,” Rade said. “Zoom in.”
Unit C engaged the magnification, and advanced a few more steps until more of the object was in view. It was cigar-shaped.
“I believe that is one of their troop transports,” Harlequin said. “The craft must have smashed through the street and into the subway.”
“I’m not seeing any signs of activity,” Unit C said.
“Wait, obviously it’s active, though,” Fret said. “Or we wouldn’t be reading any heat from it.”
“Proceed with caution,” Rade said.
The squad followed fifty meters behind the robots, staying close to the walls.
The Centurions neared the pod, which was so large it took up most of the free space in the tunnel. The Centurions had to edge their way past it; the far side wasn’t visible.
“Careful...” Rade said.
Rade saw a blur of green motion and then the video feed from Unit C winked out. On the overhead map, the dots representing both Units C and D, which were leading the way, had become dark.
“Contact!” Unit A said.
Rade and the Argonauts already had their scopes trained on either side of the pod; Rade saw a green shape emerge from the side he was targeting. It towered over Unit A.
He aimed at the center of mass and fired.
Others around him engaged, so that the tunnel filled with streaks of green from the plasma rifles.
The tango retreated from view. Rade swerved the aim of his scope to the opposite side of the pod: he saw another green shape, this one closer to the ground, as if it had collapsed. Rade fired at it.
“The second tango is down!” Bender said.
“The first one dodged back behind the pod,” Lui said.
Rade glanced at the overhead map. The red dot of the fallen tango had darkened, while the first remained a bright crimson on the opposite side of the pod. That was its last known location, of course. It was most likely sheltering behind the large cylinder, and attempting to call for help.
“Rush them, Centurions!” Rade said.
Rade watched the video feed from Unit A, and saw as it rounded the pod with its rifle raised.
There was nothing there.
“Where did it go?” Tahoe said.
Rade dismissed the feed urgently and spun around.
The alien towered over the party, where it had materialized behind them.
He opened fired as it dove into their midst. The alien wrapped its mandibles around the nurse.
“No!” Kato said.
Others unleashed their plasma rifles, too, and the spider collapsed. But it was too late for the woman.
Kato pulled her remains from the alien’s grasp. “No. No.”
The alien had likely sent a signal to its brethren. The overhead map appeared deceptively quiet, of course: it wouldn’t update, not while there were no cameras nearby.
“We move forward, now!” Rade said. “Kato, come on!”
“I can’t leave her,” Kato said.
“She’s dead,” Rade said. “And you will be, too, if you don’t come now!”
Kato reluctantly lowered her.
Rade and the others advanced to the cylindrical pod. Unit B was pinned under the corpse of the first spider, and Harlequin and Surus helped free him.
Rade glanced at the wreckages of Units C and D. “Are they salvageable?”
“Negative,” Harlequin said. “We’ve lost two brothers today.” He glanced at Kato. “And a dear nurse.”
“She was my fiancée,” Kato said.
The party hurried forward, resuming their previous canter. They came within fifty meters of the next camera in the tunnel, and once more reestablished communication with the city’s surveillance network.
“Uh, the cams are detecting incoming bugs behind us!” Lui announced. “As in, a lot of them. The tangos we took down obviously got out a call for help.”
Rade glanced at the overhead map. Behind them, red dots were swarming onto the platform, coming down the escalators from the city above. It looked like one of the nearby high-rise apartment buildings had served as their temporary barracks.
“Those numbers are off the Richter scale,” Manic said.
“Hope you’re happy now, Bender,” Fret said. “You’ve got your wish.”
“Damn right I’m happy,” Bender said, though his voice sounded tense.
“Pick up the pace, people,” Rade said. “I want your top speeds!”
“The civilian won’t be able to keep up,” Tahoe said. “We talked about this.”
Batindo wore a strength-enhancing jumpsuit like the rest of the Argonauts, and in theory he wouldn’t need any assistance. But Kato...
“Leave me,” Kato said. “I just want to die.”
“If you die then she gave her life for nothing!” Rade said. “Now you will fight, damn it! Like the rest of us! Bender, give the man a lift.”
“What am I, a camel?” Bender said. “I never signed up to give civilians piggyback rides!”
But Bender slowed, motioning for Kato to jump on his back.
Kato hesitated, then leaped onto Bender, wrapping his arms around the jetpack. Bender momentarily stumbled under the weight but straightened a moment later, obviously upping the strength-enhancement of the exoskeleton.
“Now run, Argonauts!” Rade said. “Run for all you’re worth!”
The robots once more took the lead, though only by twenty five meters this time.
Rade pushed himself hard. Strength-enhancement only carried one so far: the top speed was ultimately based on the physical condition of the suit occupant, and it required him or her to really work. Body weight also factored in. The bigger guys, such as Bender, TJ and Tahoe, were closer to the rear. Batindo was dead last, Rade noted.
Rade didn’t slow. On the overhead map, the cameras embedded in the lamps along the street above recorded the positions of several aliens wending their way across the asphalt toward the next subway station in an attempt to head off the Argonauts. Rade refused to allow the bugs to beat them.
“Faster!” Rade said.
As the party neared that station, it soon became obvious, at least according to the cameras, that the bugs wouldn’t reach it in time.
Too bad that station wasn’t the destination of Rade and his companions: it was too far from the transmission tower. The next station after that was where they needed to go.
The Argonauts reached the station and remained in the tunnel area. They continued on without stopping, passing the battered platform screen doors without incident.
After the group traveled a hundred and fifty meters, on the map, the red dots began to flood down onto the platform behind them from the surface, joining those already in pursuit.
The party ran another two hundred meters. On the map, other red dots began to flow into the target station, apparently from another barracks nearby. They moved onto the platform and into the tunnel; the vanguard moved into a region of the passageway ahead where there were no cameras, and their dots froze, forming a thick red line.
“Bugs are blocking the way,” Tahoe announced.
“I see that,” Rade said.
“Where’s one of those fabled maintenance doors when you need one, huh boss?” Fret asked.
eighteen
We make our own maintenance door,” Rade said. He turned his rifle upward. “Concentrate fire, Argonauts. Harlequin, sync the AIs in our jumpsuits to target a circle half a meter in diameter. Let’s make ourselves a path. Units A, B, watch our flanks!”
“According to the thickness described on the map, even if we combine our firepower, it’ll take at least fifty seconds to drill a hole to the surface.”
“Then we better get started!” Rade said.
The Argonauts gathered in a tight, layered circle. Those in the outer regions of the circle extended their rifles over the heads and shoulders of
those in the middle, so that they could all target the same general area. They began firing rapidly, guided by AI aiming. The weapons could only let off four or five shots in rapid succession before requiring a cool down period between shots, and the firing rate quickly slowed. Clumps of packed dirt began to fall down as the plasmas bored through the cement shell, and Rade occasionally tilted his head forward to disperse the soil that fell onto his faceplate.
“Need windshield wipers or something in these helmets,” Bender complained. “It’s like trying to muff dive during a period.”
“Eww, thanks for that Bender,” Fret said.
“Wish we had plasma rifles in past operations,” Fret said. “These things beat the hell out of laser cutters.”
“It’s an illusion,” Lui said. “Plasma is only moderately better than laser cutters against armored material.”
“Got a sighting,” Unit A said. “Multiple tangos.”
“Centurions, defend,” Rade said. “Argonauts, continue firing.”
Rade saw flashes of green at the periphery of his vision to the left and right, and he knew that the Centurions were taking down the forerunners of the incoming spiders.
Rade and the Argonauts continued to fire at the tunnel ceiling; he switched to LIDAR bursts so he could get a visual picture of how deep the bore was, as the thermal band was useless at the moment. The three-dimensional wireframe depicted a half-meter wide bore that was about five meters deep so far. He probably could have switched to full LIDAR, or even visual, as the plasma beams were revealing their positions anyway. But why turn a glimmer into a bonfire?
He kept an eye on the status of the street above via the overhead map; so far, that street remained clear of tangos.
A moment later, the wireframe representation of the cap at the end of the tunnel disappeared.
They were through.
“Argonauts, cease firing!” Rade said. “And get back... into the center one at a time! Meanwhile, help the Centurions defend!”
The party separated, breaking their tight circular formation. While the others lay down suppressive fire, Tahoe stepped directly underneath the bore and onto the pile of loose dirt that had formed below. He activated his jetpack and spurted upward into the new tunnel.
Shaw followed, with Rade third.
Rade landed on the asphalt and assumed a defensive position beside Tahoe and Shaw; he scanned the streets around him. The others joined them in turn, geysering from the ground and landing nearby, so that soon a cigar formation had taken shape around the hole bored into the asphalt.
When everyone had surfaced, including the Centurions, Rade ordered: “To the rooftops!”
Rade deactivated his LIDAR entirely—he could see the outlines of the buildings well enough on the thermal band, courtesy of the profusion of street lamps, most of which were still active.
He jetted to the top of a low-rise building.
“It’s an encouraging sign,” Tahoe said, landing beside him. “That power is still on throughout the city. It means we’ll definitely be able to contact the Argonaut.”
“But it’s also a little surprising,” Manic said. “It’s almost as if the bugs want to preserve as much of the existing infrastructure as possible.”
“That makes some sense,” Lui said. “After all, if you want to steal technological ideas from another race, you don’t go about wantonly destroying their tech.”
“Yeah,” Shaw said. “They save that wanton destruction for the organisms who inhabit those cities instead, apparently.”
Rade jetted from rooftop to rooftop. In between jetpack bursts, he sprinted at maximum speed, staying near the middle of the buildings. He chose low- to mid-rise buildings, moving between flat roofs and sloped ones.
Cameras recorded the positions of bugs emerging onto the streets behind them. Evidently the spiders had broken through and enlarged the relatively small hole Rade and the others had drilled.
“That didn’t take them long...” Lui said.
Rade could almost imagine how the pursuing aliens would have sounded if there had been atmosphere... the hoots and howls, the screeches and shrieks as they fought amongst themselves to be the first to reach the party. Such sounds were lost in the void of course. He realized the silence somehow made the approach of the aliens all the more menacing.
According to the map, some of the spiders were running alongside the party on the street, though he couldn’t see them from his current angle on the rooftops. As he leaped between one mid-rise building and another, activating his jetpack to give him a boost, he caught a glimpse of the asphalt below, and the masses lurking down there, colored green on the night vision.
Before the street ceded from view, he saw a flash down there, and realized one of the aliens had likely teleported. Did that mean the party had been spotted?
“Watch for teleporters!” Rade said.
Sure enough, a spider materialized directly in front of him. Rade fired, bringing it down.
“On drag!” Bender shouted.
A red dot had appeared on the overhead map directly behind the party on the roof; it went dark an instant later.
Bender or someone else had handled it.
“The transmission tower is just ahead, according to the map,” Rade said. He could see the outline of the structure on the thermal band, a rectangle-shaped lattice sticking up from a fenced-off plot of land situated between two apartment buildings. Long rods protruded from the top, where the various antennae were attached. Different sized satellite dishes surrounded the rim lower down.
“I believe one of those dishes is responsible for the jamming signal,” Lui said. “The antennae at the top, those are for the InterGalNet, we want to leave those alone.”
“Fire at the dishes if you can!” Rade said. He instructed his AI to target the dishes, and his arms automatically stabilized and engaged the rifle as he ran.
Another alien materialized in front of the party, and Rade ripped control back to aim his rifle at the enemy. He launched a plasma beam at the spider from near point-blank range, and then thrusted over the falling corpse. Some of the Argonauts likewise jetted over the body behind him, while others merely sidestepped.
“We’ve taken down all the dishes!” Tahoe said a moment later. “At least those on this side.”
“Jamming signal is still present,” Lui said. “The dish must be on the other side.”
“Can’t we just shoot down the whole damn tower?” Bender asked.
“No!” Fret said. “We’ll lose the InterGalNet. And it’ll be that much harder to contact the Argonaut. Remember, Rade ordered the ship to leave its geosynchronous orbit when the mercenaries arrived, and Bax will have further withdrawn the Argonaut with the appearance of the alien mothership. So good luck getting a signal up there without the InterGalNet, especially since we can’t piggyback on the shuttle comm nodes, which are located in a different dome!”
The group vaulted onto the final apartment lying between them and the transmission tower. A long building. Before they reached the edge, spiders began scrambling up the far side. Others teleported directly in front, blocking their paths.
Rade and the others were forced to halt, firing rapidly. They fought back-to-back in a circle, as other bugs were materializing and scaling the walls of the building on all sides. Kato had released Bender, and cowered in the center of that circle with Batindo.
“So close!” Tahoe said. “And yet so far!”
“I need a volunteer to jet out there and destroy the remaining dishes,” Rade said.
“I’ll go,” Harlequin said. “Cover me.”
Before Rade could agree—or disagree—Harlequin jetted skyward, arcing over the apartment toward the transmission tower. He altered his thrust randomly so that he wouldn’t be an easy target.
“Unit B, go with him,” Rade ordered.
Unit B jetted upward.
Rade and the others continued firing at the incoming bugs. Some of them were distracted by the flying Argonauts, and Rade
used that to take down some of the tangos more easily.
A spider materialized just above Unit B in the air, and must have chopped down with one of its legs or mandibles, because Unit B exploded in a shower of sparks and plunged from view.
“I’ve landed on the tower,” Harlequin sent. “I’m climbing around to the other side. The aliens are firing... hitting the tower. I have to be quick...”
Rade aimed at some of the more distant spiders that were lining the edge of the rooftop ahead, aliens that were contributing to the attack against Harlequin, and he took them out.
“All the remaining dishes are down!” Harlequin transmitted. “I’m jetting to the opposite rooftop. It’s only a short distance. Thanks for covering me. I’ll try to rendezvous with you when I can.”
Rade glanced at his overhead map and saw Harlequin’s blue dot successfully attain the roof of the building across from the transmission tower. Red dots pursued the lone Artificial.
“I have contact with the Argonaut!” Fret said.
“Have Bax dispatch the Hoplites!” Rade said. “Now! And make sure they bring the backup stun rifle!”
The incoming aliens were proving overwhelming. More were materializing than ever before as “jump” units among them reached teleport range. Any time now, and Rade’s men would begin to fall.
“Shaw, with me!” Rade said. He leaped into the center of the circle, beside Batindo and Kato, and aimed his rifle down at the roof. “We drill a hole!”
His rifle and Shaw’s would be enough to penetrate the relatively thin material. He rotated his aim as he fired, forming the outline of a circle in the surface. With Shaw’s help, he drilled through the roof and into the drywall below. In moments, the cylindrical plug they had formed collapsed inward, forming an entrance.
“Argonauts, into the apartment!” Rade said.
Shaw leaped down and Rade followed. A motion sensor activated the light fixtures, and Rade dismissed his night vision. He was in an abandoned in-suite laundry room of some kind. He proceeded into the living room and more lights activated. He aimed his rifle at the front door to guard.