Revolution swung his ruby cloak behind him and headed for the door. “Get your rest. We leave at first light. Zero six hundred hours.”
CHAPTER 33
HUB 1
MOJAVE DESERT
OUTSIDE OF VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA
Ward set them down at the target location.
There was just one problem. All that was there was a big empty field of desert surrounded by twelve-foot-high barbwire fencing. No sign of an elaborate computer system used to remotely control armies of drones all across the country.
His wings folded behind him as the dust cloud ignited by their transparent exhaust settled over the two of them.
Rachel brushed the dirt off her all-white, skin-tight cat-suit that left nothing much to the imagination as the sun beat down. “This place looks as empty as my bank account.”
“Really?” Ward said, feeling his cheeks flush as he caught himself leering at her innocent actions. Why did every move the woman made strike him as sexual? Maybe he was turning into a pervert!
Or maybe it was just that suit. He was never going to get used to it. “Um...why didn’t you say something?” he stammered, trying to break the spell of his own thoughts, peering down, pretending to check his orange wrist-canisters. Anything to keep his eyes off of Rachel. “I’m a hell of a catch. I’ve got cash to burn on a lovely lady.”
She smirked. “I find one, I’ll let her know.”
They walked a bit further, but Rachel was getting nothing on the RDSD as she scrolled through its numerous settings.
“You think it’s shielded, or did Lantern send us to the wrong place again?” Ward circled his gaze around the dusty field and remembered being ambushed inside Freedom Rise a few months back. It was not a memory he was eager to relive. “And in that case,” he added warily, “where are the homicidal robots?”
“If it is being shielded, it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen—which would actually make some sense, given what we think they have here.”
“Don’t even see any drones on that thing?” Ward was having a hard time letting the homicidal robot thing go. Then he noticed Rachel had stopped walking.
“Nope. There’s balls-loads of energy coming out of it, though.”
Ward chuckled. Balls-loads. “Out of where?”
Rachel pointed straight ahead.
All Ward saw was more empty desert. “You mean the big, non-descript, abandoned ant farm or whatever this is?”
“It just looks abandoned,” Rachel said, still eyeing her device. “The meter keeps climbing the closer we get.”
“Closer to what?” he asked, still seeing nothing but lots and lots of brown dirt.
A rumble rolled under their feet. They both froze.
“Did you feel that?” Ward asked.
“Hold on!” Rachel barked excitedly as she glared into the RDSD. “I’m getting something. Over there!” She pointed to their three o’clock, and Ward followed her as she sprinted ahead.
“Earthquake?” Ward asked as they jogged, his voice jumping in his chest.
The ground rang metallic beneath their feet, and they skidded to a stop. “What the hell?” Ward leaned down and felt the dirt—which felt like dirt, at least at first. He scraped at it with his dark-blue titanium glove, and below the first layer his fingers touched steel. “There’s a door here!”
“Money shot!” Rachel grinned. “There’s got to be a handle or something.”
Ward took her meaning and began searching for it.
The ground shook again.
And again.
A third rumble, this time closer, stronger, knocked Ward over from his crouching position and caused Rachel to stumble.
“What the fuck is that?” Rachel said.
They both scanned the desolate area in every direction. Nothing had moved. Nothing was moving.
Ward glanced over at Rachel and shrugged just as—
The earth exploded behind her.
Rising out of the ground, ripping a twenty-foot-wide gash in the earth, was what looked like a giant metal worm. Its snout breached the soil like the Hindenburg rising from hell. It rose above them in a whiplash spasm, metal shimmering in the sun down its long segmented and perfectly cylindrical sides. This was some kind of massive machine. It was as wide as an airliner and as long as a subway train. Rachel dove toward Ward as the mechanism rose above them, its shadow covering their forms.
“I hate it when I’m right!” he yelled.
Ward grabbed her and shoved her behind him, but in so doing he took his eyes off the monstrosity. When he saw it again, his breath caught in his throat.
The long machine was slamming down toward him, half blocked by the sun. Ward cursed himself for not having thought to activate the sun-shade mode of his visors before now, and he braced for impact. Never taking his eyes off the machine, Ward stood over Rachel and yelled, “Blink out!”, but she was already invisible.
He dove for cover—just as the massive hull of the machine slammed into the earth beside him. The tremor of its impact was like a small quake.
“That was close! Leslie put some serious servos in this reinforced suit. I’m sure I would have been fine, anyway!” he shouted at her wherever she was.
“Don’t test that theory!” came her disembodied voice.
Ward rose again, realizing the giant machine had already spasmed back up into the air and was plummeting back down toward him again. He could only hope Rachel was long gone. He glared about, but there was no sign of her. No footprints, nothing. At least he knew she hadn’t been crushed. Not yet, anyway.
And then he realized he had once again lost track of the worm.
He glanced up.
Just in time to see the giant robot closing on him, impossibly huge and incredibly close.
Ward held his arms up. There was no way to escape. Leslie’s new servos had better be as strong as she’d advertised or he was about to be as squashed as a bug on a semi’s windshield.
“I’m gonna test it!” he yelled.
The machine slammed down on him with tremendous force. The impact thundered through him, but he caught the thing in his hands. Or rather, he blocked it, and his titanium gloves punctured the robot’s steel shell with a great crying squeak of wrenching metal.
Ward felt his shoulders dislocate as the pressure pushed them grotesquely out of socket and then pop back into place. His stomach lurched from the pain. The full weight of the thing was crushing down on him, and he knew he was about to be smashed like a grape.
He pushed with all his might and threw the giant thing off to the side as the servos screamed inside his helmet and his hands ripped free of the metal.
Damn, he was strong now!
The ground shuddered from its impact, dust ballooning around it.
And for the first time he caught a good look at it. It was fat and metal and segmented. And just before he could ask himself any questions about what purpose those segments might serve, the entire worm spun around, its head aiming right for him. The end of the worm flowered into a hideous mouth of shimmering, spinning steel blades. They sliced at Ward with blinding speed.
“Oh, shit!”
Ward fired the wings, which only had a split second to partially unfold before they sent him careening out of the path of the blades and cartwheeling into the dirt.
He breathed a sigh of relief that Rachel had not been in his path. In his panic he had forgotten to even warn her. How ironic would it have been to have saved her from the giant worm only to end up killing her as he made his own escape?
“Stay clear, Rachel!” Ward yelled to her, wherever she was. And then his heart skipped a beat as the worm launched up from its position on the ground, half of its massive steel body arcing into the air, slamming back down, as the blossoming snout rushed toward him, blades spinning. It was like some kind of hideous giant drill.
The gruesome mouth closed on him. Ward unfurled the wings, aimed his wrist-canisters, and fired two disabling darts right into the heart of
the enormous yawning maw.
Ward launched into the sky as the worm collided with the spot on the ground where he had been standing only seconds before. Blue electricity sparked across the robot’s front segment as it shorted out.
Ward grinned. Spider Wasp: 1 - Big Stupid Worm Thing: 0.
“Alright, gorgeous, I think it’s okay to come out and play again,” Ward called out, unsure where Rachel had escaped to. She reappeared right below him, and he landed next to her. When his feet touched down he heard a metal clang and realized that somehow they’d ended up on the hidden door again.
Rachel was still staring at the giant machine, which was making a low whine, like gears that were stuck and couldn’t move. “Let’s get on with this and then get the fuck out of here,” she said warily.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Ward said. He reached back down and felt the door for a seam. Pain pulsed off his trembling shoulders, but he did his best to ignore it.
The door was perfectly smooth steel. It probably opened remotely. Finally, he found the main seam down the middle, but there was no room for him to insert his fingers. He wondered if the new super-charged servos in his armor could do the trick of pulling the large door open, but if he couldn’t get his fingers inside the seam he’d never be able to find out.
“Maybe I should just pound it?” he said, peering up at Rachel, who was now studying her RDSD.
“Dunno. I’m trying to find the code they use to trigger it.”
“Yeah, I figure it opens on its own, right?” Ward said.
Rachel grimaced at him. “Not with two-hundred pounds of doofus standing on it, it doesn’t. Maybe you should—” Rachel’s words fell off as she raised her head. Her eyes flew open. She was looking past Ward, above him. Her feet started scrambling backward. Her whole body read: panic!
Ward turned to look behind him just as she screamed.
The giant worm had detached the segment that the disablers had hit. The worthless section lay discarded where it had crashed. Where was the rest of it? A shadow covered his face, and he peered up just in time to see the great machine plunging from the sky, seconds away from swallowing him up.
A new, smaller set of spinning blades whirled around the new “mouth” at the front of the end segment. Did every section have its own set of blades? And would he have to disable each individual segment to stop the damn thing?
He would have no time to answer those questions.
The worm smashed down on top of him, and they disappeared as the door Ward was standing on gave way, blasted open from the impact.
The two of them fell through open space.
The last thing Ward heard was Rachel screaming his name.
CHAPTER 34
HUB 2
RURAL EVERGREEN, FLORIDA
The building towered over the flat, expansive green space surrounding it. At least twenty-five stories tall. Completely invisible to radar or satellite surveillance and reflectively shielded from aerial photography—a feat rarely achieved. The structure was gray and windowless, making Lantern wonder if this was a weapons research facility rather than a center of Council communication.
The immediate area was a barren, dirty-white sandy eyesore in an ocean of deep-green pines. Pools of muddy water were scattered about the sandy clearing. It made Lantern think the place might have been used as some kind of quarry years back.
The structure itself was large. It took up half of the cleared area. The entire building had only a single door. One scan of the entrance and Lantern could tell that the lock was equipped with a top-of-the-line electronic keypad. A digital Fort Knox. The kind that could be impenetrable to the world’s most sophisticated thieves.
Fortunately, he was several magnitudes better than that.
Revolution and Lantern approached the door. Lantern eyed his HUD and smiled. “You were right, sir. This place is deserted.”
“Of people, at least.”
Lantern figured hundreds of people could easily work in a building this size. But then again, there was also no parking lot and no main road to the site. The road that had led them here was dirt. Sand, really.
Revolution glared down at the keypad lock. “How many hoops do we have to jump through?”
Lantern scrolled through countless settings on his RDSD. Finally, he looked up from the small screen. “Three codes to crack to get past this door.”
Revolution glanced around the area. “Alright. What then?”
“Once we get past the door, there is a time-lock safety device that auto triggers. We have a matter of minutes to get to the hub and shut it down.”
“Any idea on how to do that?”
“Not yet. I’m sending the Hollow in now.” Lantern then paused, and Revolution could tell he was perplexed by something.
“What is it?”
Lantern hesitated, then said, “It’s just that...this is a major controller for their entire supply of drones...as well as the Aztech and Photuris. Why keep it out here in the open where we can get to it?”
“Hidden in plain sight,” Revolution mused. “I don’t think they ever thought we would find these hubs in the first place. That’s why it was so critical that you’ve kept your identity secret. If the Council knew that Diego Alvarez was still alive and on our side, it would scare the hell out of them. And they would put a lot more resources into shielding places like this.”
Lantern said nothing and returned his gaze to the keypad. He had to admit that the general’s words made him feel good.
That feeling didn’t last.
“I’m not reading the Hollow’s signal. It’s blocked somehow.”
Revolution peered around them, wary. “Actively blocked? Like someone knows we’re here?”
“Can’t tell yet.”
“Do you have a solution for the door, yet?”
“Give me a minute, sir.”
It took Lantern five.
Revolution put his red titanium hand on Lantern’s shoulder. “Now, before we open this thing, you sure there aren’t any drones on the other side?”
“Didn’t see any, sir. But I can’t be sure. There’s an enormous amount of energy on the other side, playing havoc with the readings.” Lantern was staring at the gauges thrumming inside his helmet.
Revolution readied his cylinder grenades.
“Alright, then. Let’s find out,” he said.
They opened the door.
The Hollow was waiting for them just on the other side. It was standing in one massive room that made up the entire facility. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all concrete block. And in the very center of the room was what looked like an enormous antenna. It seemed to be made of pure steel.
It towered over them, just like the building had.
It was tall and straight with limbs jutting out from all sides. Smaller branches lanced out from the limbs. Its silver steel made it look like a dead, leafless tree covered in sparkling ice. The shiny steel glimmered in the low lights of the room. Where the “tree” met the ground there was a round black base that Lantern suspected might be some kind of rubber, but as they got closer to it, he could see it was actually steel.
“What the hell is that?” Revolution asked him, peering up at the strange structure.
“It looks like an antenna.” Lantern was far from certain.
“It looks like a tree.”
“That too,” Lantern agreed.
“Could it be an energy receiver?”
Lantern scanned the odd structure. It was at least two hundred feet tall. He examined it with both his helmet and the RDSD. There was enormous energy coming from somewhere, but none of his devices could pinpoint the epicenter. The energy simply seemed to be everywhere and yet no place in particular.
“Where the hell is the control hub for the AI?” The Revolution was already starting to sound impatient.
Lantern considered their situation. The Council still thought Revolution was dead. But here they both were breaking and entering one of the Council’s most i
mportant and hidden facilities. Something Lantern had searched after for months. The longer they stayed the more they risked being discovered or, worse, being taken captive. And the big problem was, the AI hub was nowhere to be found.
Revolution finally turned and stared straight at him. Waiting for an answer.
Lantern had no choice. He had to tell him the bad news. “I’m sorry, sir. I can’t find it.”
Revolution turned back toward the tree. “Well, if it’s in this room, I’m guessing it has to have something to do with this thing.” Revolution strolled under the structure and peered up. The lowest limbs were a good twenty feet above him. “If Ward were here he’d make some crack about climbing trees being monkey business.” Revolution bent at the knees. Lantern could hear a faint hum of power course through his armor. “And that’s probably about what this amounts to.”
He leaped into the air. Twenty feet passed quickly, and he snagged the lowest limb, latching on tightly between two of the metal branches. The thick limb bent and sagged from his weight, pulling him down. And then, to Lantern’s utter surprise, it snapped back up, yanking Revolution up with it.
A mere second after this, a thrum of power echoed across the empty room. It sounded like a freight train.
A bright red beam of energy shot out of the black metal ring on the floor and rode up the trunk of the antenna, lighting the silver steel as it went. It reached the limb Revolution was on and shot out across it, forking off into all of the smaller branches, ending with a brilliant starburst of crimson light as the energy exploded outward, slamming into the Revolution. He released the limb, fell, and smashed onto the floor below.
Lantern couldn’t help but notice that the energy vibrated out of the base in two directions: down the limb, with the beam that had taken out Revolution; and above it, to dissipate somewhere just before it reached the very top of the antenna.
Lantern sprinted to him. Revolution was moaning. “Sir, are you okay?”
Revolution peered up at him through his eye slots. “Definitely monkey business,” he grunted. “That tree is for the birds.”
The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 23