CHAPTER 35
HUB 3
LANDOVER, MARYLAND.
The area around the pumping stations was surprisingly isolated and rural feeling, given they were in the middle of Landover. Trees, bushes, and green space zipped by below them. Neighborhoods of spacious houses dotted the area. Once firmly middle class, now the homes were neglected and run down. Plenty of green space in between, once manicured, now left to grow wild.
Sophia had Drayger strapped to her suit as the two scorched across the sky via her powerful boot-jets.
She was just about to descend toward the target when—
A loud beep rang in Sophia’s ears and an emergency message scrolled across her visor. “Shit!”
She slowed the thrusters to a crawl.
Drayger leaned his head back and peered up at her. “What?”
“We’ve got a message.”
“A message? I thought our coms were off.”
“They are. But we’ve got local text.”
“Yeah, local. Like you and me.”
“No this is local. It’s the D.C. HQ.”
“What?”
“It’s an SOS. I’m going to switch audio on.”
Drayger’s voice rose. “An SOS?”
“I read you, Washington,” Sophia said into the com. “This is Helius.”
A calm, deep, business-like voice answered. “Helius, this is Station Chief Kendall Myers. We have a large bogie approaching. Scans confirm a large squad of drones.”
“Shit!” Sophia said just to Drayger, then spoke into the com. “Are you requesting assistance?”
“If they’re here for the reason we all fear, then yes ma’am, I sure am.”
“Have you initiated evacuation?”
Evac’s under way. We need air cover. Boston patched us in to you. Evidently, you’ve got local com only.”
Yeah, long story,” Sophia said. “Need-to-know.”
“Understood,” Myers said flatly. But then his voice timbered soft. “We could sure use your help, Commander.”
Commander. She liked the sound of that. As second-in-command of the Suns, that was technically her rank, but no one ever invoked it. Despite all that was happening, she felt a swell of pride. “On my way. Helius out.”
“Evacuation?” Drayger asked.
“They’ve got a dozen secret passages leading into Jacobs Field.”
Drayger seemed shocked. “Jacobs Field? How’d they get permission for that?”
“John Jacobs? I thought you were a sports fan? Big-time attorney here in D.C. He owns the building that the HQ’s housed in. His law firm is run out of there. That’s their cover.”
“Oh,” Drayger said, nodding.
“He was also a founding member of COR.”
“But if we pile everyone into a stadium, won’t the drones just see them from the air?”
“Man, you really don’t watch football do ya, kid? Jacobs Field has a retractable roof.”
Jacobs Field loomed ahead of them on the horizon, Seventy-nine thousand seats. In seconds they were upon it. Off to their left they could see the distinctive pattern of the three white water-pumping stations. The target locale that Lantern’s digi-sphere indicated housed the A.I. hub. The round tanks made an obvious landmark.
“Okay, Ben, looks like you’re on your own for this one.”
Drayger peered back up at her, trying to make eye contact. “What if I run into trouble?”
“Find the hub, do your best,” she said flatly. “If the drones spot you, stick as close as you can to the hub. I’m sure they’ve got a command that prevents them from destroying their own controller.”
“Uh, yeah, okay. That makes sense.”
“You’ve still got your pistol, right? You didn’t drop it on some brownstone in Jersey, did you?” Sophia had felt kind of protective of the young Drayger ever since he had joined the team. In her mind, he’d more than proved his bravery. He just needed more experience in the field.
Drayger snorted a laugh. “No, I’ve got it.” Then his face hardened, and he swallowed. “What if you run into trouble?”
“Don’t worry about me. They haven’t killed me yet.”
Sophia lowered them toward the pumping stations. The area was an isolated field in the middle of a large fenced-off yard. A small one-lane road led up to the fence. The round white tanks, so visible from the air, could not be seen from the road. It was a good place to hide the hub.
They landed, and Sophia at long last let go of Drayger. He immediately whipped out an RDSD and began scanning the three tanks. As luck would have it they landed next to the winner.
“Yep, it’s inside this one,” Drayger said. “I can’t find an entrance, though.”
“It’s on top,” Sophia deduced. Right in front of them was a rusty ladder that hooked onto the top of the tank.
“Ladies first?” Drayger grinned.
“Gotta go. I’m gonna go hunt some—” Her breath caught in her throat, and she snapped her head up. “Get back!” she breathed. And pushed Drayger into the side of the tank, hiding them under the small lip that ringed the top of the cistern.
He peered up and saw a pterodactyl drone soaring above them. It was high in the sky, sunlight gleaming off it. From so far below it looked small. It was hard to tell it was as big as either of them. They watched it fly on toward the HQ. But at the last minute, it veered off and headed straight toward the stadium.
Sophia gasped. “It’s not going to the HQ!”
The drone arced back and circled the dome of the closed-off Jacobs Field. “That damn thing knows they’re there. How could it know?” she shouted at Drayger.
He blushed and stammered, “Well, I, certainly couldn’t know—”
But Sophia couldn’t hear the rest. She blasted off, cutting a hard trail toward the stadium. She was taking no chances.
And that’s when she saw them. A whole horde of drones, spread across the skyline, heading right for the HQ. Myers hadn’t indicated their arrival was imminent! How had they gotten there so fast? Two more drones had joined the one at Jacobs Field and were making circling passes overhead like hungry vultures.
Sophia mentally keyed her com. “Station Chief Myers, are you still there?”
There was static on the line, and then his voice broke through. “Helius, I’m here. We are finalizing the evac to JF. Be advised, all personnel being transferred to JF.”
JF stood for Jacobs Field, of course. Sophia glanced back at the stadium, the three metallic birds circling it. “Myers, do you have an alternate evac? Repeat, do you have alternate evac?”
“Say again?” Myers’s voice said. “We’ve gotten everyone in the tunnels. Looks like—”
Myers’s voice cut out just as a brilliant flash of light made Sophia jump. She righted herself vertically and gaped in horror at the source of the light. The entire horde of drones had opened fire on the HQ simultaneously. Complete synchronization. As if controlled by a single mind.
The building erupted.
Myers was gone.
Instantly, the drones shifted left, swarming like a flock of birds. Moving in unison, they aimed their laser blasters at the ground between the smoldering HQ and the stadium—and fired.
There was no doubt, they were targeting the tunnels to the stadium, where people—innocent civilians—were scrambling for safety. How the hell could they know about that?
“Neuro, you’re gonna be on your own a little longer than I anticipated,” she said into her com.
“Are you at the stadium yet?” he asked.
“Stadium? No, I’m...”
The stadium!
In mid air she spun, heart pounding. She snapped back toward Jacobs Field. The three drones were still circling. That’s where the drones were going next! She had to stop these things before they got there.
“Get to that hub, Neuro. Take it down. The sooner, the better.”
She sent a mental command to her suit, and a sheen of blue energy enveloped her whole body. It wa
s time to test the new fusion shield—even if it would drain her power faster. She was gonna need it.
Sophia rocketed forward.
The drones sensed her approach, and a third of them—something close to thirty machines—turned toward her and opened fire.
Their impacts hit her like a hail storm. But the shield held. She could feel every one of the laser blasts, but none of them did any more damage than a bee sting.
Sophia grunted through the onslaught, raised her arms, and let loose her propulsors. Two drones exploded immediately. The blast took a couple more out in the process.
The twenty-some remaining drones recalibrated, breaking off into four separate squads. They moved like a flock of birds.
There were still a good sixty or so lined up across the sky, firing into the underground tunnels. She had to stop them.
With the four squads trying to surround her from all sides, Sophia dropped, headfirst. She pointed her hands at the ground and went nearly vertical, flying toward the earth. She slipped beneath the line of drones targeting the tunnels. The four squads instantly adjusted for this new tactic and followed her.
She leveled out near the treetops, rolled onto her back, and fired her blasters full power at the line of drones targeting the tunnels. Drone after drone exploded. Her new and improved propulsors were so powerful that each direct hit ripped the machines apart.
Something screamed at her from her left, and she looked back over her shoulder just in time to see a new tactic by the drones: kamikaze dives. Two drones slammed into her from above and behind her. The drones exploded on top of her. The blast was like a gut punch, hitting her everywhere at once. Their explosions rattled her, but still the fusion shield held. She had to catch her breath from the impact, but the fire, the shrapnel, none of it had gotten through. She glanced up at her power levels. They read seventy-eight percent. The shield was draining them quickly.
It was time to get serious about this shit!
Two more birds crashed into her. Showers of flame clouded her vision then cleared as she zipped out of the fireball.
She gunned her boot propulsors and kept on shredding the drones out of the sky above her.
Something screamed in from out of nowhere, and before she could react, four drones had kamikazed in, slamming her from front, behind, left, and right. A massive explosion rocked the sky. A fireball rose above her. Sophia was spinning. She plummeted from the sky but managed to right herself after a few seconds. The display in her visor shuddered and shimmied. Her power was down to forty-seven percent.
Pain pulsed through her body. She screamed her defiance.
So the drones changed tactics again. The four squads of drones pounced on her and attacked in dazzling aerobatics from every direction. They swarmed her like a buzzing nest of killer bees.
Sophia righted herself. Launched skyward. And drove straight through them, using her body as a nuclear-powered battering ram. At the same time, she fired her bracelets into the line of drones, now directly above her. The pterodactyls exploded and shredded all around her.
They didn’t stand a chance. Dozens peeled off and fled.
Sophia felt a rush of elation. She had fended them off. They were outgunned and very logically bugging out. She’d taken down at least fifty of them.
But then her heart sank. They weren’t fleeing. They were headed toward the stadium.
Sophia rocketed after them. But she was too late. Dozens opened fire on the retractable roof of Jacobs Field, ripping it open, causing large chunks of burning debris to fall, crashing onto the thousands of people congregated on the field and in the stands below.
Screams filled the air.
“Goddamn it!” she cried. And slashed another dozen drones out of the heavens with her blasters just as she reached the stadium. The drones were not proving a challenge to her, but there were just too damn many of them and too many potential targets for them to hit. How could she protect all of these people?
As she arced down through the now open and burning roof of the stadium, she saw that nearly all of the five thousand souls who worked and lived inside the D.C. HQ had made their way in. Myers hadn’t been kidding. They’d gotten this evac rolling fast! But now they were all sitting ducks, served up for target practice to these synchronized killing machines.
She was their only protection.
CHAPTER 36
HUB 1
MOJAVE DESERT
OUTSIDE OF VICTORVILLE, CALIFORNIA
Rachel Dodge dashed for the opening.
The dirt-covered steel door had been ripped off its hinges and thrown into the dimly lit cavern that Rachel was now staring down into. It was a long drop to the bottom. No sign of Ward or the worm, only the now clean, silver remnants of the steel door reflecting up at her from the cavern floor below. There was a dim light source down there. She could hear crashes and booms emanating from deep inside, but due to the darkness down there and the bright sun up top, she couldn’t see the source. Was that Ward fighting the worm, or was it something else? Was Ward even still alive after taking that hit from the worm? Rachel shivered.
Shaking off an image of Ward crushed beneath the metal mouth of the machine, she unhooked the small i-hook gun she had attached to her utility belt. She always traveled lightly. A small i-hook gun, a supply of lock putty, her trusty RDSD, and a few MagCharges were her staple tools of the trade.
She aimed the gun at the opening and fired the i-hook. It latched onto the mouth of the opening, and she lowered herself over the precipice as if she were rappelling down a cliff face. As she lowered into the dim light, the booming sound got louder.
It was an easy climb down. The opening was filled with dirt on all sides, essentially a vertical tunnel that led to the cavern. She wondered how the burrowing worm hadn’t caved in the cavern roof. When she got to the bottom, which formed the ceiling of the large underground space, she saw the answer: a titanium roof covered the cavern. There were clear signs of wear and tear and worm-shaped indentations from the other side that indicated the machine had slithered across the titanium with regularity.
The whole cavern was dimly lit by fist-sized lamps embedded into stone walls.
As her eyes adjusted she saw, one hundred feet ahead of her, Paul Ward in the fight of his life against the giant worm.
Ward had already disabled two more sections of the worm, and as she looked on, he fired another dart straight into the mouth of the worm as it charged him head on.
The space he was in was just the cave version of the field above them. Nothing but dirt. Stone walls made up the sides. But there was nothing down here, Rachel noted. Nothing but Paul and this fucking robot.
The worm shook like a dog shaking off water, and the dead segment flung away, crashing into the cave’s stone wall and sending up blue sparks.
And it charged Ward again. This time it reached him. Ward could do little more than grab the edges of the worm’s mouth and hold on. The worm slammed him back first into the stone wall. Rachel hoped his wings would still work after that.
Hoped his spine would too.
That was answered as Ward kicked the worm away from him. The new bug suit made him strong. And now with just two segments left, the worm was not the overwhelming beast it had been before. It was slower but still looked to be powerful.
Why wasn’t he flying above the thing? Maybe the wings were already toast.
Ward ignited the wings, and Rachel’s fear were confirmed. They sputtered and coughed, just enough to help Ward leap over another surge from the Worm. But they certainly weren’t going to fly him anywhere. The machine rammed into the wall below him a millisecond later.
Then, Rachel heard herself scream his name again as part of the stone facing of the wall crumbled and gave way from this final assault by the machine. The rock avalanched down onto Ward, knocking him out of the air before he’d even had a chance to land, and buried him in a pile of boulders and rock.
The worm burst free from under the rubble and turned to fin
d the source of Rachel’s voice.
She went invisible.
The worm scooted over to the center of the underground room, searching for her. Rachel just hung there, trying her best not to move a muscle or even breathe too hard. She could feel her arms starting to shake when the machine finally lost interest and returned back to the rock pile.
Carefully and quietly as she could, Rachel lowered herself to the ground. Less than a foot of cable remained in the i-hook when her feet touched down. That was a relief. Not only did she not want to have to fall to the ground, because—ouch! She was also sure the worm would hear or feel her vibrations if she did.
With her eyes now adjusted to the lack of light, she noticed a small tunnel-like opening on the far wall opposite from where Ward was buried. It gave her an idea.
Rachel watched as the worm returned its focus to the rock pile. The spinning blades from its mouth began cutting through the boulders, evidently searching for the fallen Ward.
She needed to hurry. Rachel made her way to the back of the worm as carefully as she could. Standing right between the final two sections of the worm as it dug, she pulled out two MagCharges and placed them as quickly as she could on both segments and then bolted away from the worm, moving faster than she ever had before.
And froze.
The worm turned. Obviously, its sensors had picked up on the placement of the charges, not to mention her sprinting footfalls. It spun its body to and fro, searching, but it saw nothing.
Soon it was back to digging for Ward, so Rachel headed for the other end of the room and the small tunnel she had spied, stepping as carefully and lightly as she could. As she did so, she used the RDSD to set the MagCharges to explode in one minute. She got to the tunnel just as she heard the sound of the digging change. She peered back and saw Ward’s boot sticking out of the rubble. The worm had found him.
Shit!
Climbing up in the tunnel she made a decision. She turned visible again and leaped back down onto the cavern floor. The worm instantly sensed the vibration.
The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 24