The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic

by Michael Ivan Lowell

  It turned.

  “C’mon, you motherfucker! Come get me!” she yelled. She could see that the worm had unearthed both of Ward’s legs—which looked to still be attached. And then she saw one of those legs move. He was still alive!

  The machine charged after her.

  The worm was moving incredibly fast. There were still thirty seconds left on the RDSD’s counter. The damn thing would be on top of her by then. She reached down and remotely triggered the charges just as the worm reached the center of the cavern.

  It exploded in a shower of metal and sparks.

  The worm was dead. There were no segments left.

  Rachel sprinted over to Ward, dodging burning worm debris on the way. He was trying to push the rocks off of him, and she helped as best she could. When she was finally able to see his face, blood was oozing out from under the mask, but he smiled.

  “I think I’ve got worms,” he said.

  Rachel retrieved her i-hook from the opening and helped Ward detach his wings from the bug suit. It took him only about fifteen minutes to fix them. The impact with the stone wall had caused part of the compression unit to jam, he told her. No big deal. And he then proceeded to tell her every small detail.

  She didn’t understand a fucking word, but what she did know was that their ride home was back in business.

  And with that settled, she went back to searching for the power source they’d come to sabotage. The RDSD pointed them toward the big stone wall.

  The one with the tunnel built into it.

  The tunnel was small and, like the large cavern they were standing in, dimly lit by fist-sized lamps embedded into the stone. Ward peeked down the passageway and spied a hard bend back to the left about fifty feet in.

  Rachel tapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve got this one, sexy. Why don’t you take a load off.”

  “I just did,” he quipped, glancing back at the rock pile.

  She grimaced, pulled out her RDSD, and disappeared. Ward could hear her shimmy up into the mouth of the tunnel. Her footsteps faded into the passageway.

  “What do you think?” Ward asked into the shadows.

  “Looks like the energy source is on the other side of this wall, and I don’t see another way in but this.”

  A loud rumble rose up behind them.

  “Fuck me, not again!” Rachel breathed, and reappeared in the tunnel.

  The earth exploded behind them, and a new worm came whipping out of the ground, maw open, drills extending and spinning toward them.

  “Hold on!” Ward shouted as he ignited his wings, keeping them folded tight against his back so they would fit. He launched forward through the mouth of the passage, tackling Rachel into his arms and zooming deeper into the dimly lit tunnel.

  When Ward realized what part of her upper torso his hands had grabbed he felt his cheeks flush hot, and he moved them down. “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “Just go!” Rachel shouted.

  A mechanical roar bellowed behind them.

  They snapped their heads back to see the worm—close, too close—bounding up the tunnel at incredible, frenetic speed. Gaining on them. The tunnel hadn’t been built for a human. It was just big enough to fit one of the worms.

  Ward goosed the engines, and they shot ahead. Turning his head back forward in the same moment, he saw the tunnel take another hard curve to the left. It was too late to adjust their flight path. His right shoulder smashed into the rock wall of the passage, absorbing the blow, keeping Rachel out of harm’s way. Her suit was not armor. A blow like that could snap her collarbone.

  The passageway twisted hard back to the right. Followed immediately by yet a second twist to the right.

  Ward could feel the machine gaining on them. “Shit! I can’t increase our speed with all these twists and turns!”

  Above the quiet engine of his wings he could hear the worm’s awful roar and the sound of rocks cracking behind them as it used the tunnel walls to speed itself toward them. The buzzing of the razor-sharp drills rose louder.

  This worm was clearly an expert at using the tunnel.

  “I’m gonna try the darts! Hold on!” Ward shouted to her. With his right arm still planted firmly around her, he dropped his left behind him, loaded the disabling darts, and took quick glances back.

  The worm was two feet from them now.

  “Wait!” Rachel shouted. “Look!”

  A ghostly blue glow began to stain the stone wall in front of them, growing brighter.

  He rounded the final bend in the stone, and they blasted out into a large opening.

  Ward had only enough time to notice that they had entered into another enormous cavern before a colossal, crackling blue energy field was upon them.

  Right in front of them.

  “Don’t hit that thing!” Rachel shouted, and Ward pulled them up as hard as he could, arcing upward toward the stone roof of the cavern.

  The sound, light, and power of the blue energy was nearly overwhelming. It crackled before them in a grid-like pattern.

  The worm could make no such move. It flew out of the hole and slammed into the energy at top speed.

  And exploded.

  Segment after segment of the worm’s mechanical body plowed into it like freight train cars slamming into a wall, bursting apart in bright-blue sparks of energy. Metal shrapnel zoomed up at them.

  A worm popping in a giant bug zapper, Ward thought. He tried his best to dodge the careening shrapnel. He kicked at it. Punched at it. Anything to keep it from flaying Rachel alive.

  With so much attention paid to the shredding worm, he lost track of where he was going.

  “A little close to the girls, don’t you think?” Rachel shouted to him. Uncharacteristic panic laced her usual snarkiness.

  Ward glanced down and saw that the shrapnel had stopped spewing up at them. There was nothing left of the worm.

  But then he saw what had Rachel panicked.

  Her torso was only inches from the energy field, not to mention his own hands. He’d let them fly far too close to the grid. Any closer and they would both lose some appendages. He grunted, giving it everything he had, his spine bending further than he would have said was possible. His head pounded from the strain. He saw stars. Rachel screamed too as he squeezed her tighter than he should have—the servos in his armor triggering.

  But it was working. They arced backwards away from danger.

  Peering above him, he saw he had a new problem. The cavern roof was quickly approaching.

  “Shit!” he yelled. There was no way he could stop them in time. He applied the brakes, but the stone facing raced toward them. He tried to turn his body, take the bulk of the impact.

  Just then his eyes scanned over a dark shape to his left. He snapped his head in that direction, and at the last possible moment, saw what it was.

  Open space above the energy field.

  Ward gave it everything he had, screaming at the top of his lungs, and swerved them to the left. His right arm slammed into the roof of the cavern. But he made the turn, and even as his arm screamed in agony, he’d managed to hold on to Rachel.

  He slowed their speed as they soared over the top of the blue energy grid.

  “You okay?” he asked her.

  Rachel grimaced and rubbed her ribs. “Didn’t know you liked the rough stuff.”

  Ward smiled. She was okay. “Sorry.”

  The energy grid was connected to a series of seven black girders that together formed a cage-like structure over the crackling blue substance. Below the grid and the black beams was what looked like a giant pool of more blue energy. It was beautiful and at the same time seemed incredibly deadly.

  It was as if someone had taken Sophia’s H3 power and dropped it into a giant swimming pool.

  Ward set them down on one of the black steel girders. There wasn’t much room. Each beam was no more than about three feet across. Tight, considering a misstep meant falling into certain death. And Rachel couldn’t fly.
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br />   “What the hell do you think this is?” Ward said, peering around at the strange structure.

  “I have no idea,” Rachel said, wide-eyed. “Where’s Leslie or Sophia when you need them? This blue stuff has to be the booby trap Rev was talking about. The AI controller’s got to be here somewhere. This is definitely the location, but all this energy is jamming up my signals. I can’t pinpoint it.” She pulled out her RDSD and scanned the area one more time. “That’s weird,” she said, pointing at the stone cavern. “Those walls are porous.”

  Ward shrugged. “More passageways?”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s solid stone, but it’s built kind of like a sponge.”

  “This whole damn place is weird.” Ward surveyed the structure. He couldn’t see any way a human could easily service this thing. The whole structure looked like a death trap. “Gotta be for a drone, right? Not built for a human. You figure the worm is some kind of cargo system?”

  “Yeah, as well as a defensive measure. But this wall wasn’t built for those worm things, either.”

  Ward thought about that, then snapped his eyes back toward the darkness of the stone walls surrounding them. “Does that mean there’s some other kind of monster waiting for us in the dark?”

  Just then his eyes caught a glimmer along the stone facing of the cavern. Something shiny and reflective in the ghostly blue glow of the energy pool and grid covering. He snapped back to find it. “What the hell?”

  “What?” Rachel asked.

  “What is that?” Ward was pointing to the far cavern wall straight out in front of them, ten feet above.

  As they stared at it, a shape emerged from the shadows. A shiny sphere. Something on the sphere was moving. Smaller spheres, maybe? Then the entire object moved to its left just slightly—a jerky, awkward movement.

  That’s when they both saw them. Their words caught in their throats. Attached to the sphere were eight mechanical legs. The small spheres on the body were eyes.

  Another glimmer caught Rachel’s eye to her left. She spun to see it.

  Her jaw dropped.

  The whole wall was glimmering in front of them. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “I think I know what cargo the worm carried down here.” The entire wall was teeming with giant, gleaming metal spiders. Crawling slowly out of the porous holes she had noticed earlier.

  “First worms, now spiders. Someone’s got a sick sense of humor!” Ward said.

  “I bet they built this place,” Rachel said.

  Ward grunted. “Fascinating theory. Got any on what we do now?”

  “Hey, you’re the Spider Wasp. You got any ideas?”

  “Yeah, back out the passage.”

  Rachel shook her head. “No, don’t move. We’ve still got a job to do, and I’m betting those eyes are motion detectors. The one thing I can’t hide.”

  Too late. The spiders leaped into action, jumping from the wall onto the thin metal girders. They looked far too big for the metal railings, but as they landed they folded their legs underneath them, allowing their metal bodies to effortlessly scurry right toward them. It hit Rachel immediately: they were built to ride the girders.

  They moved with robotic precision, charging down the support beam that Ward and Rachel were precariously perched upon.

  “Blink out and don’t move. I’ll draw their fire.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Rachel disappeared and immediately switched her RDSD to scan the oncoming machines. She had been wrong, she saw—they did not have motion detectors in their optical sensors.

  That was a damn good thing.

  She carefully swiveled on the thin metal rail so that she was pointed away from them. And holding her hands out for balance, still grasping the RDSD in her right, looking like a woman on a tightrope, she hurried to the other end of the beam as the spiders gained on her from behind.

  A whistling sound caught her ear, and she saw Ward whiz by behind her firing his disabling darts. The spiders that had been closest to her fell into the grid and sizzled apart. She breathed a sigh of relief—just before she realized that the spiders had now all turned and begun shuffling for her beam.

  Shit! They’ve realized there is something on this girder!

  By shooting at it, Ward had drawn attention to her beam, and the spiders had figured they needed to investigate it. The worm might have been a big dumb cargo hauler, but these guys were smarter. Built to make decisions, assess the odds.

  She couldn’t yell to Ward or it might draw their attention directly to her. She could only assume they had some kind of audio detectors. So she sent him a text over the com and just hoped he would see it in time. “Paul I need help,” it read. Spiders were bounding down the girder now, crawling over one another to get to her. She was still sure they could not see her, but they were using machine logic and were probably going to check the entire length of the girder.

  Ward doubled back and opened fire on the machines. They stopped in their march down Rachel’s support beam and turned back toward the flying Ward, following him with their many small robotic eyes.

  She typed another text. “Shoot some on the other girders so they don’t know where I am,” she sent to him, and he did. Spiders turned back from converging on Rachel’s girder and fanned out toward the others. Ward hit spiders up and down the structure, never giving them a single spot to focus on. All the while, the creepy machines kept their main attention on Ward zipping above them.

  There was nothing they could do to him. He picked them off one at a time with ease. Spiders were falling all around, popping and exploding in blue sparks.

  This gave Rachel the opening she needed. She aimed the RDSD down at the pool of blue energy, desperate to find some kind of control panel—hoping against hope she would not be taken out by a piece of flying robot spider debris. What a way to go.

  There it was.

  Inside the grid.

  Floating above the pool on a lone girder that she had not noticed before but now could barely make out over the immensely bright glow of the pool below her. Somehow she’d known she needed to be up here to find the hub. Why would they make it easy, after all?

  “I found the control panel!” she yelled out over the com.

  And instantly regretted it.

  Every spider in the place stopped and turned toward her. It was a frozen moment in time she would have liked to have never left. Because all of them, too many to count, began charging for her the split second after.

  Ward was on the other end of the grid. He arced around and headed to save her.

  “No!” she yelled. She knew he was coming to fly her to the cavern floor or, worse, back down the tunnel. But they had to stay focused. “Find a way in! It’s all on you to stop this thing!”

  “Are you kidding me?” he said incredulously.

  “Do it! I’ll distract them. Just be quick about it!”

  Ward curved back and headed toward the narrower end of the grid-cage. He’d noticed it looked different than the side that he and Rachel had nearly crashed into when they’d entered the chamber. If they were different, did that also mean they might contain a way into the pool area?

  The answer was yes. As Ward reached the edge of the grid, he dove down along the side, with the floor of the chamber staring him in the face as he flew. Below him and rapidly approaching, he spied a small opening in the side of the grid. The support beam Rachel had seen with the AI hub on it. He flew into the tight opening, managing not to get fried in the process, and spied the lone control panel in the center of the beam. The beam spanned across the entire length of the cage. He imagined those spider things climbing along the girder to service the panel. At least that part made sense. The spiders were both the maintenance team and part of the security detail.

  But then he realized there seemed to be no way for the spiders to actually get to the girder. Energized grid blocked their path in every direction. He pondered that as he aimed the disabling beam at the control panel and prepared to fire.

&n
bsp; Up top, Rachel was learning the answer to Ward’s mystery. The spiders were closing in. She had retreated to the edge of the support beam. One inch behind her heel was the bend in the girder at the cage’s edge—and a two hundred-foot fall. She had nowhere else to go. That’s when she remembered her small i-hook. She pulled it out of her utility belt and fired the hook at the first spider, which was now only a foot in front of her.

  To the machine, the hook seemed to appear out of nowhere, and it latched onto the spider with a magnetic hold.

  Rachel pulled with all her might. It was just enough to yank the spider free of the girder, and it fell into the grid just as Rachel released the hook’s hold.

  It was then she realized the error of her strategy—the reason maybe her conscience had not let her think of this approach until she had become completely desperate.

  First, she lost her balance. The momentum of pulling the spider and it wrenching free of the girder rippled onto Rachel, and she stumbled.

  Second, the spider became a grenade. It exploded right below her.

  And then to make matters even worse, all the lights went out as Ward’s dart hit home on the control panel.

  She didn’t have to see to know the shrapnel was exploding up toward her or that her feet were slipping off the girder. She did the only thing she could do. She leaped straight up off the support beam and fired the i-hook into the darkness above her, hoping it would make contact with the stone roof of the cavern before her feet made contact with the giant blue bug zapper below her.

  It did.

  She hung there, still invisible. But also blind.

  As her eyes adjusted to the dim light from the embedded lanterns, the ceiling started to move. Spiders had climbed up the walls to the roof of the cavern and were now searching for her.

  Some of them were headed toward the hook on the ceiling. Desperately, she scanned into the darkness below her to find Ward, but she could see nothing. Her arms were starting to ache.

  The cable on the i-hook began to tremble and shake, and as she glared up to see what was happening, her eyes went wide with horror. A spider had found the cable. One was climbing down toward her and another...