by Scott Baron
“We should move him back underground. Put his body with the others.”
“No, there is no time for that. Habby will not be pleased we lost the human. Finding her is our top priority. We can return for his remains after,” Mr. Pin Stripes replied.
Daisy quietly retreated from the corner and stashed her binoculars as she padded the opposite direction.
“I know you counted them too. Only three, plus the dead one.”
“Yeah, I saw,” Daisy replied as she scanned the streets and buildings stretching before her. “It’s going to be night soon enough, and they’ll have the advantage in the dark. I think the best bet will be to find some cover and wait it out until morning. By then they’ll have hopefully searched the area and moved on.”
A block later, Daisy finally found what she’d been looking for. A doorway accessing the emergency stairs leading down below.
It’s alarmed, she noted, but it looks like the power’s still out.
Movement far down the street caught her eye. She couldn’t make out what it was. Dog, deer, cybernetic organism trying to capture her.
Fuck it, she thought as she grabbed the handle and pulled hard. Not like I have any better options right about now.
The door popped open on surprisingly quiet hinges.
No alarm.
And now for the fun part.
Daisy stepped into the dimly-lit space and shut the door behind her. Only the faintest of glows illuminated the space, the battery backup emergency lights long ago drained of nearly all their charge. Cautiously and quietly, she began her descent under the city once more.
This section was far less commerce-oriented than the one she had been in previously. It appeared to be largely for transit and equipment delivery. Logical, given the more industrial nature of the section above.
Daisy felt almost at home in the utilitarian area, strangely comforted by the machines and conduits snaking through the tube network. A tempting-looking access panel beckoned to her, and once she carefully loosened the screws holding it shut with the manual torque wrench tucked in her bag, she knew she’d found the best hiding place possible to settle in for the night.
“Kinda like the Narrows, only with a bit more space,” Sarah noted somewhat cheerfully.
“Yeah, and the odds of those things looking in here are slim to none.”
She carefully crawled into the restrictive space, sliding forward, after closing the grating behind her, of course, until she was a good several meters from the entrance. She then adjusted her bag into a rather lumpy pillow and settled in for some much-needed rest.
“You really should finish that other EM pulse grenade. Might come in handy, don’t you think?”
“Later. I just want to rest a minute.”
“You know that’s not the wise choice.”
Daisy tried to ignore her, closing her eyes and attempting to sleep. Sarah was right, though, and she knew it.
“Damn your logic, Sarah.”
Reluctantly, Daisy dug the unfinished device from her bag and began working on it in her cramped hiding place.
“You know what, Sarah? All that time we talked about getting home? The beaches, the margaritas, all the fun we were going to have? Well now you’re dead, everyone is gone, and here I am, crammed in an access shaft beneath our empty city.”
Daisy let out a deep sigh.
“This fucking sucks.”
Chapter Thirty
Morning brought with it the disorientation and body aches that one would expect to accompany sleeping in a cramped subterranean access conduit. Daisy stretched as best she could in her confines, then slowly slid herself back to the access panel she had closed behind her the night before. As quietly as possible, she unfastened it and peered out into the silent reaches of the tunnel system, straining her ears for the slightest sound.
Nothing.
Good sign.
Hopeful, and in desperate need of some fresh air, she lowered her feet to the ground, closing the access panel, but not sealing it, keeping her hiding place readily accessible, just in case.
Ready and eager to return to the shuttle and what she hoped was a now-functional comms array, Daisy quietly mounted the stairs and headed toward the surface.
A simple distress call to a few other cities should do it, she reasoned. Whatever reason they had for abandoning L.A., it shouldn’t take them more than an hour to launch a recovery team and get me the hell out of here.
“Maybe they abandoned it because of the freakin’ aliens. You think of that?”
Of course I did. Look, whatever’s going on, they need to come pick my ass up. We can figure out the details later.
The power was still out when she reached the surface, though a small amber light flashing above the door caught her eye just as she opened it.
Was that there yesterday?
A silk-suited metal arm grabbed her shoulder as she stepped out into the sunlight. Daisy quickly spun free from its grip, twisting into a diving roll, drawing her machete from her bag as she did. A second cyborg came at her from the other direction.
Modified Iaijutsu draw, she thought, somehow knowing the ancient Japanese technique guiding her arms as if it were always a part of her.
“Two on one? That’s not very sporting,” she teased, swinging the machete at the nearest tin man. The makeshift blade glanced off its metal hide with a clang, slicing the sleeve of its suit, but doing no further damage. That was fine by her, she was simply trying to distract and confuse them before the real fighting began.
“This is a genuine silk suit!” the cyborg sulked. “Habby will not be amused.”
“I couldn’t care less what Habby wants. Just leave me alone and I won’t put any more holes in your precious clothing.”
“Negative. You are to call more humans from your ship, then come back with us.”
“Not happening, fellas.”
Unlike martial arts movies where attackers politely wait and take turns, the two cyborgs launched a simultaneous assault. Daisy lurched aside and brushed off a glancing blow from one metal man, but took the brunt of a swift forearm strike from the other.
It sent her tumbling, but her agility played to her advantage against the mechanicals as she quickly sprang back to her feet, jumping in the air, unleashing a whirling attack of kicks, designed more for a distraction than to cause damage. The real attack was the whistling blade that flew through the air as the machines struggled to regain their balance.
The first blow hit the nearest cyborg on the head, neatly slicing its fedora and denting the metal ever so slightly. Daisy followed through with a rebound spin, transcribing a sweeping arc with the blade, bringing it down on the cyborg’s left shoulder, nearly severing it at the weak spot. She then immediately dropped to one knee before it could even react, flashing the deadly steel through both of its knees. The first one she cleanly severed, the lower portion of the leg falling away from the startled attacker, while the second merely bent at the joint.
It didn’t matter much. Minus one leg, the cyborg tipped and fell, desperately trying to brace its descent with its one remaining functional arm.
Seizing the brief opportunity, the other cyborg kicked Daisy hard in the ribs, nearly lifting her body from the ground with the impact. She slid to the side and grunted in pain, sucking in air as best she could.
“Get up! It ducked behind you on the left, moving fast!”
Daisy pushed off to the other side and avoided the pair of grabbing hands. A series of complex fighting moves flashed in her head.
“How do you know all that? This wasn’t in the sparring files you upgraded.”
“No idea. Talk about it later,” she curtly replied, contorting her body in uncomfortable ways as she launched a mixed-style counterassault. The cyborg took a step back from the flurry, then another, before adjusting its own movements to better handle its difficult prey. Daisy then did something that startled even herself; with a quick half-squat, she jumped high in the air, flipping over the cy
borg just as it reached out to wrap her up in an immobilizing metal embrace.
Mid-leap, Daisy twisted in the air, bringing her sharp piece of metal to bear on the AI processor in the back of its head, the same location she’d observed the alien creatures destroy the previous day.
Her aim was true.
“Okay, now I know for a fact that wasn’t in your sparring programs.”
Sparks leaked out from the mechanical’s head, but there were no fancy explosions or fanfare. The metal man simply dropped at her feet, lifeless, as if it were a marionette whose strings had been abruptly cut.
“You killed David,” the crippled cyborg said, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, and you should count yourself lucky that I’m not killing you too.” She glowered at the disabled machine. “You still have one good arm, so crawl back to Habby and tell him to leave any humans he might stumble upon alone. If not, I’ll get a team together, come back here, and wipe all of you off the face of the Earth.”
In the heat of her anger, Daisy almost believed she could do it.
It was a fairly long walk, and Daisy scanned the streets with a wary eye as she drew nearer to the shuttle. There were quite possibly three cyborgs still looking for her, unless her rather violent message was somehow received already. Though she wished that were the case, she thought the odds of being that fortunate to be highly unlikely.
Sarah was keeping watch, her additional set of eyes behind the eyes scanning the periphery more closely as Daisy took in the big picture. She didn’t know exactly how her imaginary friend did it. Maybe it was just an aneurysm putting voices in her head, and she’d drop dead in three more steps. Whatever the case, it was a symbiotic relationship, and riding shotgun inside her head, Sarah could take in the big picture and act as backup for her. More than that, she also seemed to be able to run calculations independent of Daisy’s conscious mind. It was like having an invisible partner always looking out for her.
And talking trash once in a while.
“You shouldn’t have let it live.”
“If there’s even the slightest chance other humans are walking this city, it was worth trying.”
“I know you don’t want to be alone down here, but you never leave the enemy alive and behind you in an area you’ve cleared. It’s just bad tactics. Even I know that.”
“Point taken. And ignored, just this once.”
She could almost hear Sarah’s ghost’s frustrated sigh in her head.
Five city blocks later, Daisy altered course and headed over to the parallel street. Just as she’d anticipated, despite the confusing twists and turns of her evasive route getting there, the looming shape of the disabled shuttle greeted her a mere fifty meters away, an incongruous shape sitting smack-dab in the middle of the highway, where it had come to rest.
Solar panel looks intact, she noted. If the energy cascade actually worked, the comms should have powered back on by now. At least she sincerely hoped so.
Twenty meters from the ship, Sarah called out a warning.
“Movement, three o’clock! Duck!”
Daisy quickly took cover behind one of the countless abandoned vehicles, narrowly avoiding being seen as two of her cyborg pursuers came into sight. The shuttle was obviously of great interest to them, and they quickly started making their way through the disabled vehicles and overgrowth to investigate. Something else caught Daisy’s eye.
“Oh no,” she gasped.
From the other direction, a small scouting party consisting of a pair of the tall, four-armed aliens neared, picking their way through the immobile obstacles as well, carefully examining everything in their path as they approached the downed shuttle.
Inevitably, the two groups noticed one another.
The aliens seemed to possess only one low-powered weapon between them, but it would be enough if they could get a clear shot of their cyborg adversaries. The machines, for their part, realized cover was scarce and they had no chance of escape if they fled. Instead, they pried deadly pieces of metal from the wrecks around them and ran headlong into the fray.
Daisy hunkered low, watching the battle from afar. The cyborgs, for what it was worth, managed to get close enough for hand-to-hand combat, and did so with only one burst from the alien weapon making contact, burning through one of their finely-tailored suits, but not damaging the metal skin beneath it.
Tumbling to the ground, the alien attackers utilized all four of their arms with great effect, leaving the two-armed machines on the defensive far more often than not.
A mechanical man wrenched its arm free from the strong grasp of the alien atop it and managed to grab a piece of metal nearby. The four-armed creature bellowed in pain as the shard was thrust into its flank, just below the second arm.
Weak spot. Good to know.
The injury seemed to be of consequence, as thick, dark blood gushed from the wound. Calling on the last of its strength, the alien gripped the machine by both shoulders, levering its uninjured arms to force the cyborg’s head to the side. With a massive effort, it then heaved the mechanical man up from beneath it, briefly holding it aloft before smashing it down onto an exposed shard of metal from a vehicle’s frame, twisted into a sharp point by Daisy’s crash landing.
It pierced the head of the machine, but missed the AI processor. Nevertheless, its connections were severed, and while the cyborg’s brain remained alive, it was cut off from its body. The alien turned, as if to go to the assistance of its comrade, but it was not meant to be. Precious blood streamed down its side with every movement.
Like a drunken sailor, it swayed and stumbled, then finally went limp, sliding to the ground, all four eyes open and staring, but not seeing a thing.
Debris flew as an energy blast hit the road far too close to Daisy for her liking. The other two combatants were wrestling for the pulse weapon held in one of the alien’s hands, discharging it haphazardly as they fought. Both were injured, though it appeared the alien had the upper hand. Or hands, to be correct.
It reared up, twisting its weapon arm free, but as it swung the barrel toward the downed cyborg, a chunk of concrete thrown by the mechanical man in desperation struck it in the side, sending it tumbling. The weapon discharged a bolt, striking the shuttle with a sizzle.
“Stop!” Daisy shouted, lunging to her feet. “Don’t shoot my ship!”
The alien turned toward her, a baffled look on its face, then quickly remembered the cyborg struggling beneath it and aimed its weapon down, frying the processor of the tin man. It then refocused its attentions on Daisy, but hesitated.
Why isn’t it firing? Daisy wondered.
“Daze, how did you know its language?”
“I don’t. I yelled ‘stop’.”
“You didn’t.”
The alien seemed to come to its senses, firing in her direction but missing its mark by a long shot. Only when she heard the pounding feet directly behind her did Daisy realize what she’d forgotten.
There were six of them. That means—
Daisy barely managed to turn, awkwardly bringing her homemade machete up in defense just before the racing cyborg barreled into her. It grabbed her swinging blade mid-arc—she had most certainly not been expecting that—and wrenched it free as it knocked her to the ground, continuing its run toward the alien without breaking stride.
Energy blasts flew past the mechanical man as he moved, but the alien must have been more seriously injured than it initially let on. Struggling to aim properly, its shots could not seem to find their mark.
The cyborg, fresh and undamaged from battle, was not so impaired. It faked a move left, then powered to the right, throwing the machete like a makeshift spear. Amazingly, it flew true, and the alien slumped to the ground, gurgling thick blood from its mouth.
Daisy frantically dug in her bag as the machine turned its attention back onto her.
Fuck, where is it? She searched feverishly as the cyborg strode rapidly back her way.
Come on! Where the—Ow! S
he felt the jab of a barbed spike entering her finger. Ignoring the pain, she pulled the spiked orb free and depressed the red button.
“Bet you’re glad you took the time to finish it, aren’t you?”
Shut it.
A faint hum vibrated in her hand.
Little more than five meters and closing fast. Lurching to her feet, Daisy threw the pulse device. This time she knew it would fly true, and it did, striking the cyborg square in the chest. There was no flesh for the barbs to penetrate, but Habby’s craftsmanship was top-notch, and the stylish fabric was sturdy as well as fashionable, easily supporting the orb’s weight.
A second later a massive burst of energy pulsed through the cyborg, blasting the device to bits, tearing into the cyborg’s torso as its power cell exploded, frying it from head to toe in a spectacular way.
Oops. I guess I might have overpowered this one.
“Ya think?”
My bad.
“Better too much than too little,” Sarah said with a little chuckle.
“True, that.”
The smoldering cyborg dropped to the ground, inert.
All was silent for a moment, as if the city had all the oxygen sucked out of it. Suddenly the air itself seemed to shudder and come alive as a hearty chuckle rumbled out across the highway from all directions.
“Oh my,” the disembodied voice laughed in a deep baritone. “Now that was interesting.”
Daisy froze.
“Daze? What the hell was that?”
“You’ve got me,” she replied. She had been experiencing a constant, paranoid feeling that she was being watched. Now it was confirmed. And it wasn’t anything she’d expected.
The vehicle nearest her crunched and flew into the air.
Reflex took over, and Daisy dove out of the way, running and hurdling vehicles as she reacted instinctively.
The alien’s power whip dropped the wreck and lashed out once more, but Daisy was clear of its reach. Energy blasts, however, not so much.
A pair of energy bolts slammed into her cover, sliding it a few feet and sending Daisy scrambling again. She stole a quick glance in the direction of the attack.