Resistance (Relic Wars Book 1)

by Max Carver

  “I didn't know they were here on Caldera, or anywhere in this system,” Iris told her. “There was some probability of finding a relic of the ancients, yes. There often is on habitable worlds. But this did not interfere with your search for gold. In fact, you found quite a lot of it down there, already minted into coins for you, stamped with the portraits of the most noble of insect statesmen. But titanic worms with plasma artillery? No. I had no information about hostile aliens on Caldera. And I came as close to dying as the rest of you tonight.”

  “Prentice and Reamer got closer,” Alanna said.

  “Aliens!” Bartley said. “I knew it! I told everyone, didn't I?”

  “This is fascinating, but guys, I'm wearing loafers here.” Bowler Junior approached Naomi on her scouter. “Feel like giving a guy a ride yet?”

  “You can walk like the rest of us, pal,” Bartley told him, before Naomi could reply. “You've got no idea what we've been through. You spent the whole night huddling in your gold-leaf marble bathtub while we nearly died again and again.”

  “Actually, I was lying on an antique fainting couch that Grandmother sent me. It was a tad lumpy.”

  “Do you want people to hate you? Is that it?” Bartley asked.

  “Miss Li-Whitward, you can ride with me if you want,” Naomi offered. “It's technically your scouter, anyway.”

  “I'm sure it's leased,” Alanna said. “We didn't give Reamer much of a budget to work with. Lean and cheap, that's what my father likes to see. The lower the floor, the higher the margin, he always says. Not directly to me, of course, but I have occasionally been in the same room with him.” Alanna slid on behind Naomi and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, ma'am. Just remember me at Christmas bonus time. That's Naomi Lentz, with a 'z.'”

  “Something's coming,” Bartley announced, stiffening like a hunting dog who'd caught a whiff of game bird. He raised the plasma rifle. “Loader, get ready to fight.”

  “Load?” The robot held out his bucket hands.

  “Whatever.”

  A dark shape approached at high speed along the road. Eric held out his larger robotic arms, ready to grapple with whatever was coming. He glanced at Iris to make sure she was somewhere behind him, protected, as if her safety was his responsibility in particular. He wondered what to make of her now—had everything she'd said and done so far been a deception? Had she been manipulating him along with everyone else?

  He didn't have much time to think over those questions, because the fast-moving dark shape zipped out of the shadows and slammed to a halt as it arrived.

  It was Malvolio, with Hagen still in his arms, Hagen's leg still impaled by the alien spear.

  “That's how people get shot, Mal!” Bartley lowered the plasma rifle. “Don't charge in like that without announcing yourself.”

  “What happened at the hospital?” Eric asked.

  “Woe, woe, we bring tidings of woe!” Malvolio cried, in vintage drama-bot fashion. “Our fair city has fallen! The invaders from the deep have risen to the world above, loosing calamities from the all-consuming fires of Pandaemonium, that submerged city of devils—”

  “Speak English!” Bartley snapped. “Like, the normal modern kind.”

  “Hospital's gone,” Hagen said, his eyes sagging under the effects of the first-aid painkillers. “Somebody get this spike out of my leg...I'll even let...Herbie the Dentist over there do it...”

  “Is he talking about me?” Bowler Junior asked.

  “He's babbling nonsense,” Naomi said. “If you got any skills at all, rich boy, get in there and save him.”

  “And if you fail...just remember, nobody knows you made it out of that mine alive.” Bartley grinned like a skull.

  Bowler shivered. Malvolio gently lowered Hagen to the pavement, and Bowler Junior knelt beside him to inspect the injury.

  “I still don't understand what's happened to Canyon City,” Alanna said.

  “At times, words fail to paint a portrait that only images can render,” Malvolio said. He swept his arm around at all of them. “Therefore, I now transmit to each of your personal screens—and my mechanical heart is heavy indeed that I must bear such ill tidings—I transmit all the video my eyes have just gathered, much of it quite magnified as I zoomed in from a ridge above the city. Warning: this content may be disturbing to some viewers. Discretion is advised.”

  Eric pulled his screen from his pocket and expanded it. What he saw filled him with icy dread.

  The town of Canyon City looked as though it had suffered heavy bombardment, or a severe earthquake. Buildings were collapsed and in flames. Entire rows of them had been swept from the terraces and into the river below, leaving only broken sheet metal and shattered bricks behind.

  Huge shapes slithered among the burning ruins; the fire glinted off their armor. Their rings of teeth dripped with blood, as though they'd recently feasted on piles of raw meat.

  “The worms took the city,” Bartley whispered.

  Eric saw footage of Angel Moroni Hospital. Not even the hospital had been spared—it had been reduced to a single chunk of brick wall with burned-out holes for windows.

  “What about the spaceport?” Alanna asked.

  “A mere crater,” Malvolio said. “Nothing remains.”

  “So we're trapped on this planet,” Naomi said. “And there's nobody left but us.”

  All of them fell silent, gaping at their screens, except for Bowler Junior, who was occupied with his medical duties.

  “Hey, mine-worker guy with the mech suit, step over here,” Bowler Junior said.

  Eric approached, his metal feet clanking on the pavement. Hagen was white as chalk, nearly unconscious now. Bowler had cut away his pants with small shears from the first-aid box. Eric could see where the spear entered the muscular, hairy meat of Hagen's quadricep.

  “How can I help?” Eric asked.

  “How precisely can you program the arm on that suit?” Bowler Junior asked.

  “Real damn precisely,” Bartley commented. “It's a damn Arenson.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Eric asked.

  “You'll have to pull this out, and—this is extremely important—it has to follow the exact same path that it followed on the way in. It can't wiggle. Zero wiggle room. It's right up against a major artery...maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Naomi asked.

  “Well, I tried to double-check a medical encyclopedia, but my screen's not getting a signal,” Bowler Junior said. “Anatomy wasn't my strong point, either.”

  “How did you even get into medical school?” Bartley asked.

  “Hard work,” Bowler Junior replied.

  “His dad made a big donation,” Alanna clarified.

  “Just put me out of my misery,” Hagen muttered, eyes completely closed now.

  Eric studied the angle of the metal spear, then rotated the hand of one of his smaller robotic arms to grasp it carefully. With his two larger arms, he pinned Hagen to the ground to keep him from moving in any way.

  “Okay,” Eric said. His heart was pounding, and he was covered in nervous sweat. If he got this wrong, Hagen would very likely bleed to death.

  He hesitated.

  “You can do it,” Iris whispered. She touched his hand briefly, then backed away.

  Eric whispered a prayer.

  Then he pulled.

  The robotic arm moved at a fifty-one-degree angle to Hagen's leg, the exact angle at which the spear had entered. It had been launched at an upward trajectory from the worms' position below the elevator platform.

  The long, narrow shaft of metal gradually slid upward, coated with blood. Eric had sent the instruction to his arm, and now he could do no more than watch—any attempt to intervene with freely moving hand movements would surely rupture Hagen's artery. He had to hope that he and the Arenson suit had calculated things correctly.

  The tip of the spear finally pulled out of Hagen's leg, dripping fresh blood. More blood gushed o
ut onto the pavement around Hagen.

  “Blood!” Bowler Junior shrieked. He looked like he would throw up at the sight of it.

  “I thought surgery was your strong point!” Naomi snapped.

  “It is,” he said. “I mean, compared to everything else.”

  “We need to bandage him.” Naomi jumped off the scouter and knelt beside Hagen. Bartley, who had some training for battlefield injuries, dropped down to give her a hand, and soon the wound had been cleaned, stitched, and bandaged. Hagen was mercifully unconscious throughout.

  Bowler Junior barfed a couple of times while they did it, fortunately walking a decent distance away before heaving his guts out among rocks by the side of the road.

  “That should do it, I think,” Bartley said, double-checking their work. “He'll still need a real doctor as soon as we can find one. But we can all get moving again.”

  Naomi returned to her scouter, with Alanna still seated behind her. She looked down the road. “So...where do we go now?” Naomi asked.

  Her question hung in the air. Nobody had an answer. The town was destroyed and overrun with worms, and so was the spaceport.

  Eric looked at the dark, empty road ahead. There was nowhere to go.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “We're trapped,” Alanna said, glancing at her screen as though she still expected the limo service to call her back. “There's no way off this planet.”

  “Sadly, it seems the time of our perishing is upon us,” Malvolio said. “Let us say farewell, each to the other, and hope for a fair crossing into the Afterlands—”

  “Just keep your mouth shut for like ten minutes, drama-bot. Think you can manage that?” Bartley said. “Does anyone else have any ideas? Iris...or whatever your name really is...any special secret gatekeeper insight? Got any way to get us out of here?”

  “Believe me, I wish I had a transport stashed somewhere,” Iris said.

  “How about you, rich kid?” Bartley asked Bowler Junior. “Tell me you got a gold-plated pleasure craft hidden in case of emergencies.”

  Bowler Junior shook his head, still looking ill from seeing Hagen's blood.

  “Unless somebody knows where we can find a ship on this planet...I say we go after the worms,” Bartley said.

  “Are you crazy?” Iris asked.

  “They don't let you into the marines otherwise,” Bartley said.

  “It would be suicide,” Alanna said.

  “Better than waiting for them to come to us.” Bartley hefted the nearly depleted plasma rifle, their only weapon.

  Eric noticed Malvolio hopping around like he had to pee, something robots typically did not do. Malvolio waved a hand excitedly.

  “What is it?” Eric said.

  Malvolio went into some kind of elaborate, hopping pantomime that just brought puzzled looks to everyone's faces.

  “Just say it,” Iris told Malvolio. The drama-bot gestured at Bartley, then pantomimed zipping his own mouth.

  “Bartley, tell Malvolio he can talk again,” Eric said.

  “Yeah, speak up, Malvolio,” Bartley said. “Spit it out.”

  “Sirs and ma'ams,” Malvolio said. “I...may know of a ship. It may be gone by now, or far too decrepit for our purposes...as well as being an utter eyesore—”

  “Where?” Eric asked.

  “Well, you see, my previous owner—Dr. Erasmus—was the chief engineer on the project. This was many years ago, before and during the war. A colorful man, was Dr. Erasmus. He threw extravagant parties, at which I was honored to provide entertainment to the guests. They were quite an enthusiastic audience, as well, especially once the drugs and liquor were served. In those days, I was a more freshly minted entertainment unit, young and spry, my performances appreciated by the movers and shakers of Money City, even those in the highly distracting environment of the parties' clothing-optional rooms—”

  “The ship!” Alanna snapped. “Tell us about the ship.”

  “Ah, yes. I apologize for reminiscing about the happiest and most fulfilling time in my existence,” Malvolio said. “Where was I?”

  “Dr. Erasmus,” Eric said, doubting that the robot had actually forgotten.

  “Ah, yes. In addition to his wild parties, Dr. Erasmus was a famous astronautical engineer, in the employ of Hernandez-Brinkman Development, an enormous mining concern on Caldera at the time...destroyed during the war, like the rest of the city. Dr. Erasmus himself perished in the Allied attack. Few humans lived. Money City manufactured ships used in industry, but also by the rebellion, you see—”

  “We know!” Alanna snapped. “Tell us about the ship. If there actually is one.”

  “Dr. Erasmus's final project, his piece de resistance, was the Omicron Rex. It was one of the largest asteroid-cutters ever built, designed as a flying factory. It could find a sizable asteroid, cut it apart, process out the valuable minerals and leave the slag where they found it. Erasmus was inspired by the whaling ships of old—incidentally, should anyone like to pause here for a dramatic reading from Moby Dick—chapter 94, 'A Squeeze of the Hand' was always popular with Dr. Erasmus—”

  “Cut it out,” Bartley said. “You're telling us this big ship is still here? How did it survive when the Allies bombed Money City into dust?”

  “The same way I did,” Malvolio said. “You see, Dr. Erasmus was deeply concerned about industrial espionage—that was the main sort of espionage that troubled people in those heady pre-war days. So he constructed a special hangar deep underground, virtually impenetrable to radar or any other method of remote spying. The war brought even more security concerns. The Omicron Rex was parked underground at the time of the Allied attack, undergoing new modifications that Erasmus believed would put his ships even further ahead of the competition.

  “I was down there as well, when the nuclear bomb dropped. In time, I left in search of my mandatory maintenance check and upgrade—a standard requirement on units such as myself—but of course no Indus Rotronics factory-certified android mechanics remained in the ruins of the city. In time, I came into the possession of the secondhand dealer in Canyon City from whom you purchased me. My time with him was miserable, as his only dramatic interests involved jokes about flatulence—”

  “You're saying the mining ship is still in that hangar?” Iris asked.

  “It certainly was six years ago, when I left,” Malvolio said. “Perhaps it remains.”

  “We have to go there!” Eric said. “Where is it?”

  “Money City, of course.” Malvolio pointed south along the river, in the direction of the distant bombed-out city.

  “We can't go there!” Bowler Junior said. “It's radioactive. Full of mutant animals, too, they say.”

  “You're welcome to remain here,” Alanna said. “The worms will be along for you soon enough.”

  “I'm willing to risk radiation poisoning to get off this rock,” Bartley said. “I'd even go back home to Gorrum and freeze my ass hairs off to escape this planet.” He shuddered.

  “But how do we get past Canyon City without the worms catching us?” Iris asked.

  That was a good question, enough to make everyone go quiet again.

  “Maybe we go up?” Bartley suggested. “Try to find our way through the smog? Maybe the worms will avoid the smog, too.”

  “It'll be rough,” Eric said. “There's no road up there. Just rocks to climb over.”

  “What about the river?” Naomi asked. She lifted her screen, rewound the images, zoomed in. “There's a couple of boats at that dock. The worms destroyed the city but didn't bother with the boats.”

  “Maybe they hate water,” Alanna said.

  “The worms were previously seen in a swampy ecosystem,” Iris said. “So they aren't completely water averse. But those boats...” She stared at them.

  Eric felt a twinge of hope, too. “We just have to get one of those boats.”

  “Which means waltzing right into town!” Bowler Junior said, almost squeaking. “Where the worms are! Those docks a
re right out in public. Unless somebody knows of an invisible dock somewhere.” He snorted.

  “Loading,” the loader bot said, raising one big yellow hand. “Loaded!”

  “Okay, calm down, boy,” Bartley said. “Malvolio, any idea what's freaking him out?”

  “Oh, yes.” Malvolio nodded at the loader bot, then turned to Alanna. “Loader has just transmitted the location of a more concealed dock, where the trash barge is loaded to take garbage out to sea for dumping.”

  “They just dump garbage in the ocean?” Iris shook her head.

  “It's not like this planet could really get any uglier and dirtier,” Bartley said.

  “The approach is relatively hidden, compared to most of the roads,” Malvolio said. “I'll send it to your screens.”

  Eric looked at his screen as the data arrived. There it was—not perfectly secure, but essentially a back road through town, with high rock ridges on the sides. He'd lived here six months and never known about it.

  “Problem,” Bartley said. “They can attack us from high ground on each side of that road. We'll be like those foam dinosaurs you shoot with a nail gun at the county fair.”

  “Your county fairs sound a little different from ours, but yeah,” Eric said. “It could be dangerous. But it seems like the only way.”

  “This is certain death,” Bowler Junior whispered.

  “Does anyone have a better idea?” Alanna asked.

  The group went quiet.

  Soon they were making their way toward the destroyed city again, Naomi and Iris on the scouter, everyone else walking, Malvolio carrying Hagen.

  Loader led the way. Much of the road was in deep shadow. Portions of it wound through caves, where trash was piled at the bottom of shafts and chutes from the city above—soda and beer cans, rancid take-out bags, chicken bones, and other delights, waiting to be collected and dumped into the ocean.

  The group kept silent, all of them tense and on high alert. The smallest sound, a tumbling pebble or spill of dust, set them on edge. They expected an attack they couldn't possibly fend off. They were all exhausted, strained beyond breaking, but there was no way they could stop moving. Death was everywhere on this planet.