Pushing Daisy

by Scott Baron

  “Looks like they went through to the storeroom,” Sarah suggested.

  “Daisy, back here!” Tamara’s voice shouted from the storeroom.

  “Told ya.”

  She ran to the back of the building and saw Tamara’s head sticking out of a small goods delivery elevator shaft.

  “This way! The others already went down. It’s access to the shipping tunnels,” she called out before sliding down the shaft.

  Outside the building, a massive commotion could be heard. The beasts, robbed of a meal, were obviously on a rampage.

  “Okay, then. Back underground we go.”

  Daisy hit the bottom with a solid thud, but other than a dusty behind, she was unscathed.

  “What’s the sitrep?” she asked, quickly hopping to her feet.

  “It is a service tunnel network for commercial deliveries,” Jonathan said, the servos in his eyes humming slightly as he surveyed their surroundings. “I’ve heard of them, but never seen one, being from Los Angeles.”

  “Why’s that?” Daisy asked.

  “It’s more of an inclement weather sort of thing. This way commerce is not interrupted due to snowfall and the like. It is nothing so complicated and speedy as the loop-tube network, but the electric monorail cars are quite efficient when covering shorter distances.”

  “Shorter distances? So you’re saying this may take us the remainder of the way?” Tamara asked.

  “I am fairly certain, yes,” Jonathan replied. “While it will not deposit us at the central terminus, I believe the peripheral drop-off point should be relatively proximal to our original destination.”

  “And this thing has power?”

  “It would appear so,” he said, gesturing toward the illuminated tunnels.

  “Well, then,” Daisy said, slinging her pack into the nearest monorail car. “Let’s get moving. There’s no time to waste.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The team finally reached the peripheral terminus at Colorado Springs two hours later, silently and safely hidden out of sight, far beneath the surface, though even if the aliens had been watching, none would dare attack them once they were within the confines of that particular city.

  Unlike the rest of the state, Colorado Springs happened to be defended by a particularly robust automated defense system, owing mainly to the massive, and near-impenetrable, military complex housed under the towering stone peak looming above it. Cheyenne Mountain was one of the few places the invaders had quickly––and wisely––decided to simply avoid entirely.

  Conflict there would escalate rapidly, and almost certainly lead to mass destruction of their resources without likelihood of even penetrating the facility. Ultimately, once the satellite and communications network was taken out, their plans could proceed around the heavily fortified base. It simply wasn’t worth the effort and risk. Thus, it was left alone.

  As a fellow mechanical, Jonathan felt it would be wise if he approached Joshua’s facility fully visible to the powerful AI.

  “Better,” he said, enjoying the freedom of movement without the bulk of the Faraday suit restricting him. “One does want to make a good first impression, after all.”

  Trekking through the desolate streets, Daisy’s senses were on high alert. There wasn’t anyone or anything around, and yet the eerie sensation of being watched was making the back of her neck itch.

  Good thing I ate an extra ration before we left. I have a feeling you’re going to be burning through a lot of ATP before the day is over.

  “I’ll try to keep things narrowly focused as possible,” Sarah replied. “Save you as much as I can. I have a feeling this one’s gonna be a doozy.”

  Tamara took point as they progressed through the long-abandoned vehicles littering the city, leading the team on a weaving path through the shadows blotting the ground around the taller buildings. Her senses working overtime, she moved slowly, scanning every doorway, looking for danger in every shadow, pulse rifle pressed firmly to her good shoulder while her metal arm hung useless at her other side.

  Despite her handicap, however, Tamara felt good. It had been far too long since she’d run a proper mission, and stretching her legs in the fresh air after the ride in the claustrophobic pod felt pretty good too.

  Having a cyborg carrying her heavy pack wasn’t so bad either.

  The trip there was not exactly uneventful, and the open space was a relief to them all. Their little monorail had been delayed beneath the surface, miles from any egress point, for nearly an hour, when that tunnel section had gone dark on them. The unexpected interruption left them stuck all alone in a dark and silent tube. Cut off. Wondering what had gone wrong.

  When the power finally came back on, Cal reached out via the restored comm link and apologized for the inconvenience. A Chithiid ship, it seemed, had been scanning for salvage a little too close to the area to keep the system running safely.

  It all worked out fine in the end, and they arrived with plenty of daylight to spare, though the hike across town took a little longer than expected. It seemed the direct route was nearly impassible as the lush growth of unbridled Colorado wilderness had reclaimed the road.

  After hacking their way through the lighter foliage, the team was eventually forced to deviate, taking an alternate path that led them around the normal ingress up the main road, dumping them instead onto a small berm a few hundred meters from the entryway. It turned out to be a fortunate inconvenience.

  “Check it out,” Daisy said, handing her binoculars to Tamara. “Infected. You can tell by their movements.”

  Tamara scanned the dozens of fleshless, corrupted cyborgs surrounding the facility.

  “It looks like they’ve been trying to get in, from what I can tell,” she said, handing the binoculars back. “Did you see the main security door? They’ve chipped away several feet deep in the rock over the years. And look at the shiny parts. Those persistent bastards actually made it all the way to the metal beneath it, though that’s still got to be at least a solid three feet of Navy-grade steel. And those aren’t even the blast doors.”

  “I know. Cal told me. About a mile down, the actual blast doors are mounted off to the side of the tunnel, the idea being that if a nuclear blast somehow made it through the front doors, by the time it made it down into the mountain, their side-situated placement would reduce the force of the blast as it passed by something like eighty percent.”

  “Someone did her homework,” Tamara said with a grin.

  “If I may,” Jonathan said, crouching down beside the two women. “It appears as though the virus infecting the cybernetic men and women surrounding the entrance was likely a far weaker variant. Possibly an infection filtered through a more powerful AI as it battled the virus, resulting in what you see below. I recognize their chassis models, and can say with some degree of certainty that while they will be erratic, and possessing greater strength than humans, their reflexes and processing speeds will be significantly diminished.”

  “So even though we’re drastically outnumbered, we have a chance, is that it?” Daisy joked.

  “Essentially, yes,” Jonathan replied. “There is, of course, the possibility of my becoming compromised should I come into close proximity with an active host, so I would ask that you please remove my wireless communications link before we begin the assault.”

  Tamara seemed shocked by the request. “But that’s essentially one of your senses. You’re asking us to cripple you.”

  “To further the mission, yes,” he said, unfazed. “And while it is an alarming necessity, and one I do not look forward to, I am hopeful that perhaps Cal will have the resources to repair me if and when we return to Los Angeles.”

  “You aren’t sure he can fix you?” Daisy asked.

  “No, I am not. But the mission is what matters above all else.” He removed his hat and reached behind his head, carefully twisting free a small, flush panel on his shiny dome. “Tamara, if you would please. I cannot see the back of my head to do
this myself.”

  “Sure, Jonathan, just tell me what I’m looking for.”

  “There will be a small silver cube with an indentation on either side. It is mounted to my left-hand side. Pry that out. It will require a knife or other implement.”

  “Here,” Daisy said, handing Tamara a ceramic knife. “Non-metallic. No static discharge.”

  “I am shielded from minor electrical disturbances, Daisy, but thank you for your concern.”

  Tamara poked the blade into the small opening and carefully began prying the link unit free. After several seconds of constant pressure, it finally came loose with a pop.

  Jonathan wobbled a moment, then regained his composure.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  “Yes, thank you, Tamara,” he said, re-sealing the panel and placing his stylish hat back on top of his head. “With that, I should now be largely protected from infection. At least any wireless variant.”

  “Wait,” Daisy said. “You mean all that and you’re not even one hundred percent safe?”

  “No, but the procedure increased the odds of our success significantly. Now, I believe time is of the essence. Daisy, given the unexpected numbers of potential resistance, what is the new plan?”

  “Plan? We go down there and kick ass until there’s no one left standing in our way. Sound good?”

  Tamara flashed a wicked grin. “Oh yeah.”

  “Good, because I’m going to need a secretary for this one.”

  “A what?” Tamara asked.

  “A secretary. Because I’m going to be so busy kicking ass, I’ll need one to stop and take the names for me.”

  Tamara couldn’t help but laugh. “You know something, I’m starting to like you more and more, Daisy.”

  She smiled as she pulled her sword from its scabbard. “All right, then, everyone, stay low and stay quiet. We want to take as many by surprise as we can. Try for the processor in the lower back part of the head or the power cell mid-torso, but if you can’t reach them, take out their arms and legs and move on. We can mop up immobilized ones later. Conserve what ammo you can––only take a shot you can make. We good?”

  The assembled men and women nodded.

  “Okay. Here we go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Daisy and Tamara led the way, staying low as they quickly covered the ground to the guard shack and sturdy outbuilding. The cyborgs were all focused in the direction of the entry doors, and that allowed them to take the first several completely by surprise. That quickly changed as the mechanical people noted the disturbance behind them and turned to rush at their attackers.

  The humans Cal had assigned fought bravely. Unfortunately, brave did not always translate to effective.

  Two were overwhelmed and torn limb-from-limb by a half dozen grabbing cyborgs before Daisy’s power whip ripped the heads off of a pair of them as Tamara plugged the remaining four in that group with well-placed shots from her commandeered pulse rifle.

  “Jonathan, behind you!” Tamara shouted.

  The metal man’s reflexes were far sharper than his assailant’s, and he easily dodged the grabbing hands, bringing his weapon to bear and obliterating its processor with a single blast. He then spun back into the fray, targeting and firing as he moved.

  “You know,” Daisy said with a strained laugh as she swung her sword through the grasping metal limbs, “for a butler, he’s actually pretty good.”

  Tamara chuckled and fired off another series of bursts into the remaining dozens of cyborgs. “Yeah, I think he might have had some pent-up servant rage going on in there.”

  The two women laughed as they fought back-to-back, protecting one another as they instinctively felt each other’s movements and moved in sync, reacting without thought. All the months of brutal training together had paid off, just not in a way they would ever have expected.

  “On your left!” Daisy shouted to the particularly scruffy man struggling to free his weapon from a dying cyborg’s grip. He looked over his shoulder, and his eyes went wide with fear as a one-armed mechanical bore down on him like a crazed juggernaut.

  “Hit the deck!” Tamara roared, and wisely, he did so.

  Her weapon blasted the cyborg square in the chest, melting its power cell into a block of useless slag.

  “You, what’s your name?”

  “Moses,” the stunned man replied.

  “Well don’t sit there staring, Moses, keep moving! she yelled at him.”

  The stunned man retrieved his weapon with a final tug and rejoined the fray.

  Daisy stepped forward into a clear space. The cyborgs’ numbers were finally shrinking enough to safely try something new.

  WRAP. HARD, she commanded.

  The power whip lashed out and grabbed the cyborg she had targeted, shifting from a soft coil to a rigid beam in an instant, turning the device into a power whip hammer of sorts with a firmly trapped cyborg as the smashing head. With a flip of the wrist, she swung side to side, crushing the metal men like they were paper dolls.

  This is so fucking cool. Daisy began smiling. She just couldn’t help herself.

  Tamara took it all in with rapt eyes, watching the glorious carnage, and shared a smile as well as the two bonded over the field of battle.

  From there it was a quick mop-up, smashing the corrupted processors of the surviving assailants until not a single one remained active. Jonathan’s suit was torn in several places, but he had escaped the battle otherwise unscathed. The humans, however, had not fared quite so well. Four of them lay dead on the ground, with a fifth soon to follow.

  Daisy approached the massive door and stared. The cyborgs had gradually congregated there, likely drawn by the distant sounds of the first few hammering on the stone with their hands and feet. The worn-down remains of those early arrivals had long-since been ground to debris by the feet of the subsequent arrivals. Off to the side, there was a section of stone that reminded Daisy of something.

  Just like the fabrication hangar, she realized, prying the stone free, exposing the military-grade control panel.

  “Daze, that’s some heavy-duty stuff, there,” Sarah said.

  She was right. This facility was not secret, and as such, it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast. There was no way she could access that control panel with the meager tools in her pouch.

  A cold electronic eye watched from high above on the stone face.

  “Can you hear me?” she called out. “Joshua, are you listening? We have come to talk to you. Other AIs are still alive and need your help. Can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  I wonder if that thing is even working.

  Daisy slid the comms device from her back and powered it on.

  “Dark Side, we have reached Cheyenne Mountain and are at the entrance. We lost five of our escort here, and another two in Denver, but we have eliminated the infected cyborgs that were blocking the way. We have a problem, though. There’s no way to reach Joshua that I can see. I spoke to the one visual system I located, but I have no idea if he’s even listening. Please advise.”

  She looked around while they waited for the signal to make its several-minute-delayed journey past the moon and back, now that the relay was back online. She noted what appeared to have been some sort of communications access port near the door, but it was destroyed, burned out what looked like decades, if not longer, ago.

  “Hey, I’m going to take a look in there,” she informed the others, gesturing to the weathered guard shack and adjacent outbuilding.

  “Go for it. I already did a quick run through. It’s clear,” Tamara replied.

  “Cool. Thanks,” she said as she walked toward the open door.

  The building had been largely untouched by the cyborg horde, but then, she figured that only made sense. The computer terminals had all been stripped, and anything remotely mechanical had burned out hundreds of years prior.

  Daisy opened the door to the break room and turned on the lights.

  St
ill working. That’s a good sign.

  The room was barren but for a pair of long tables and a few overturned chairs. Several very old but still sealed military food ration packs sat untouched on the counter.

  Cyborgs don’t eat. No need to ransack this place, she thought, examining the dusty container. Hmm, Chili Mac, Chicken Fajita, Veggie Burger, and the packaging looks intact.

  “Don’t you even think it.”

  Don’t worry, I’m not that hungry.

  She dropped the packets and continued surveying the area. The piles of empty fatigues spoke to the plague that wiped out humanity having done its dirty work on the men stationed there, immobilizing and killing them in days, and reducing their remains to dust in mere months. She had to hand it to the Ra’az Hok, they had engineered a near-perfect killing device.

  She was about to exit the room, when a sticky note affixed to the doorframe at eye-level caught her attention.

  Don’t forget to check the refrigerator, the handwritten note read.

  “That’s odd,” she muttered.

  “What is?”

  “I was just thinking, how on Earth did that thing stay stuck to that doorframe all these years?”

  “If no one came in, no one would disturb it.”

  “But the sticky backing should have dried out a century ago.” She pulled the note free. Yes, it was still sticky. And there was something about the writing, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  Daisy shoved the note into her pocket, then crossed over to the refrigerator and food replication unit. A warning was lit up on the embedded screen, flashing its ominous text.

  Do not eat contents. Spoilage. Risk of food poisoning, it read.

  “Okay, Mr. Note-Writer. Good to know,” she said, steering clear of the fridge.

  “Daisy, we received your update,” Sid’s voice crackled through the comms. “Multiple additional AIs have been found intact by the advance teams and have been networked back into the restored communications hard-lines. At present, all communications appear normal, and all are functioning at peak operational capacity with your modified safety kill-switches installed. Major cities, including New Orleans, Chicago, San Diego, Minneapolis, and Houston are now all online. The teams are continuing their missions and bringing more cities back into the fold as I send this. Regarding your dilemma. We have searched records for alternate access points to Joshua’s network, but as you know, Dark Side’s data stores were largely purged prior to my installation. We will, however, continue to search, and will inform you if we find any information that may prove useful. Please update us regularly.”