Days of Future Past - Part 3: Future Tense

by John Van Stry

  The larger ship was on the far side of the facility, and as far as I could see, it wasn't pointing anything at us. It hadn't fired anything at us during the fight at least.

  "Let's go get our other packs," I said slowly on the radio, "But make sure to stay out of a direct line of fire of that other ship. Just because we haven't seen it shooting at us...."

  "Doesn't mean it isn't armed," Heather agreed. "It just means that the guns on this side probably aren't working."

  Heather and I walked back to the skimmer and grabbed the demolitions packs and then came back to where Sarah was sitting on the ground.

  "Let me run one last set of illusions over the hill, just in case," she said and waved us back.

  Heather and I both shrugged, and I went back over to where my last rocket was still sitting, armed and ready to go.

  Crawling back up into position, I saw Heather take a different position than she had before. She had two rockets left and she moved them over there.

  "Prepare," Sarah said, and this time, only four people came over the ridge and then started to walk down slowly towards the base.

  I had a bad feeling suddenly, and I didn't know why.

  "Don't anyone move," I whispered over the radio and the section of the hillside above me, as well as the spot that Heather had been using suddenly was slagged by a much higher power laser than we'd been dealing with before.

  "Bastard!" Heather swore and then popped up with one of her rockets and let go, while I quickly rolled way from where I was.

  "You get it?" I asked as she ducked back down.

  "I think so; it was on the top of the big ship, way back at the aft end. The tank I blew up had been obscuring it."

  The lasing had stopped, leaving a nice piece of fused surface. So I crawled a lot further away from my position, then I carefully slid the launcher to the top of the crest. Nothing happened so I rose up on my knees, and the moment I saw the back end of the ship I pulled the trigger, launching the rocket towards it.

  I saw the turret slew towards me, so I ducked down, as a moment later it lit up the spot I had been in.

  "Got 'im!" Heather said as the light suddenly cut out.

  I moved away from the patch of fused rock and sand and peaked over the edge again. Where the turret had been, there was now a mass of torn metal and wires.

  "I'll go down first," I told them. "You two come down one at a time."

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't want to offer too tempting of a target," I told them.

  Standing up, I quickly scrambled over and down the other side of the hill, making for what I hoped was decent cover. I got there without anything trying to shoot at me.

  "I wonder why that second one was so much more powerful than the others," Sarah mused.

  "The first were anti-personnel. That second one was probably for attacking other ships," I said, peeking out my head and looking around. Trying to peek while wearing a helmet was not an easy thing, I realized. And all someone really had to do was just shoot a hole in my helmet to kill me.

  Not a pleasant thought.

  I could see all of the ruined turrets, and I couldn't see any signs of any more turrets. At least not on this side.

  "Come on down, but be careful," I warned them.

  "I'm surprised that all of these defenses were still working," Heather said as she started down next, being equally careful.

  "Aybem may have taken the time to fix things before he left," Sarah said. "He was here for how many years before he came down to Earth?"

  "A lot of them," I agreed.

  Once Heather was with me, I set off for the door, while she waited for Sarah. I wasn't looking for the main door of course, if anything was going to be guarded or booby-trapped, that was it. The military had rather extensive access to the building plans of all of the civilian installations on the Moon, and had apparently used both spies and satellites to verify the plans that they'd looked at.

  So I was looking for a small structure where the radiators for the environmental system on the surface connected with the actual pumps and air conditioners underground.

  It took me a few minutes to find it; I had to clear a bunch of debris away from it. But Heather and Sarah showed up to help not long after I got started.

  Sarah used the explosives we had to blow the door off. Apparently blowing doors off of things was rather common in the scavenging business, so she was pretty good at it.

  "I'll go first," I said looking down the hole as the air rushed out.

  "No, I'll go first," Heather corrected me.

  "Heather," I started.

  "Paul," Sarah interrupted, "she has done this before, you have not. Plus she is a smaller and a better shot. You can go second."

  I sighed, "Yes, dear."

  "Better," Sarah said and they both giggled.

  "Wow, this is a lot easier when you only weight thirty pounds!" Heather said as she disappeared, head first, down the shaft. I waited until she was a good twenty feet ahead of me, before I carefully started to follow her. I didn't like going headfirst, but I realized that it was definitely the better way to do this. At least the air rushing out had stopped.

  When I finally caught up with her, she was hanging from the ceiling in a hallway, and had taken some sort of robot out of commission with her rifle. Squeezing past her, I dropped down to the floor, and then rising to a crouching position, I went to the far end of the hallway and checked around the corner as she came down and covered our rear.

  Sarah joined us a moment later. She had the map and was checking all of the landmarks.

  "So, which was do we go?" Heather asked as she dropped to the floor and joined us.

  Sarah pointed down the hallway. "That way."

  We started down the hallway, just as all the lights went out. That forced us to use our helmet lights, which were more than bright enough.

  "Wonder what the point of that was," Heather grumbled.

  "I guess there is an AI in charge of this facility as well?" Sarah speculated.

  "I thought that was obvious," I grumbled as we started to make our way down the hallway, then turned to the left and started on another one, guns at the ready.

  I checked my suit's outside pressure display.

  "The air pressure has dropped to zero," I told them. "This section must have gotten sealed off from the rest."

  "Well, we were told that would happen, let us just find the stairs and get down to the laboratories."

  We found the stairs a couple of minutes later, and rather than having a solid emergency door that we would have to blow, it had a heavy window in it, with a small airlock to the side of it. Heather went in, and when she opened the door to the next section, she threw a satchel charge inside and then closed the door. We all felt it go off almost immediately.

  "What was that for?" I asked.

  "Probably a trap," She said.

  Looking through the window I saw her go through the door so I pushed Sarah in and stood watching back the way we came.

  Sure enough, some sort of monstrosity on wheels came around the corner, hoping to take me out by myself I guess. I put a good twenty rounds into before I realized it wasn't moving anymore. Then I quickly followed Sarah through the lock to catch up with Heather.

  "See?" Heather said, pointing to a pile of junk, "There was something here waiting for us.

  I looked down the staircase, the center was more or less open, so I pulled out another charge, thumbed the timer and carefully dropped it so it fell down to the bottom, where it went off with a rather loud boom and enough of a shock to be felt. If we hadn't been wearing our suits and helmets, we probably would have busted our eardrums.

  "That's the spirit!" Heather laughed; "Let's go!" and we started slowly making our way down the stairs. What we wanted was two more floors down, if Coyote's information was correct.

  "Damn, look at that!" Heather said when we got to the floor we wanted.

  "It's a wall of steel," I sighed.

  "Obviousl
y someone was expecting us," Sarah agreed.

  "Well, let's go back up and look for another route."

  "I have a better idea," Heather chuckled.

  "What?"

  "Let's go blow the AI that runs this place first. Then let's go look for another route."

  I laughed, "You know, I like that idea. Let's."

  "Who am I to argue," Sarah said. "Two more floors down."

  We went down to the bottom, and sure enough, my bomb had found something worth destroying. It had also blown the emergency airlock doors off of their hinges.

  Heather went through first, with me following, and she starting firing almost immediately, going down on one knee and giving me a clear shot over her head at the assembled mass of robots that were there blocking our way.

  None of them were armed with anything more than blunt instruments however, so I really had no idea what they were trying to accomplish. After that, making our way into the control room was almost anti-climatic.

  I could hear someone trying to talk to us, but I had my external microphones turned off to protect my ears from the explosions and the gunfire. Plus I really didn't want to hear an AI begging for its electronic life.

  I looked into the machine room; the main computer was pretty obvious. There were a couple of cameras in the room, so Heather and I shot them out. Then I took out a satchel charge, set it for ten minutes and opening an access panel on the machine, I put the bomb in there and sealed it back up.

  "Let's get out of here," I said and we quickly left the room, and started back up the staircase. We went up to the floor just above the one we wanted, and carefully started to make our way inside.

  "Where is the next staircase?" Heather asked.

  "It is over in that direction," Sarah pointed as she led us in a different direction.

  "So why aren't we going that way?"

  "Because I am sure that one is just as well blocked as the other one."

  "So where are we going?"

  "Here," Sarah said and stopped in front of a door.

  "What's this?" Heather asked as I looked around.

  "The janitor's closet."

  The building shook then and all of the lights went out.

  "So much for our local friendly artificial intelligence," I said and looked into the closet with my suit lights as Sarah opened the door.

  It was a typical janitorial closet. With a sink in the floor and pipes running down the backside of it.

  "How does this help us?" I asked.

  "The floor is weaker here because of the drain and the pipes going through it. We can just blow a hole in the floor."

  "Wouldn't a vent to crawl through be easier?"

  Sarah laughed, "I looked at the map. This close to the main living and working quarters there is nothing large enough to crawl through. Now, give me your bag."

  I shrugged and handed it to her and watched as she took out four of the explosive charges and carefully arranged them around the basin of the floor drain, then stuck a detonator in each and hooked them together, and linked them all to a remote trigger.

  We went around a corner, she blew them, then we went back and there was a nice crater, but that was it. She put six in the hole this time being very careful about how she set them and we went around the corner again.

  When we came back there was a nice three foot wide hole in the floor leading to the janitor's closet below this one. It wasn't even at all ragged.

  "I guess I know who got all the brains in our family," I joked.

  "At least I got the good looks," Heather joked back.

  "Yeah yeah, Miss 'connect the dots.'" Sarah chuckled, teasing Heather about her freckles.

  "Well, no rest for the wicked," I said and jumped down through the hole, with Heather following almost immediately.

  "Ready?" I asked and put my hand on the doorknob.

  "Go," she said, her gun up and pointing forward.

  I turned the knob and pushed the door, and there was an army of faces there, and as I brought my gun up to fire, I noticed that they weren't moving.

  In fact, they were each behind a window, and there were dozens of them. Eyes closed, all looking pale, lifeless, and ....

  "Frozen?" Heather said, taking a step forward into the room, sweeping to the left as I stepped out and swept to the right.

  "What is doing on down there?" Sarah asked from above.

  "It looks like someone froze a bunch of people down here," Heather said, "in some kind of metal coffins."

  "What? I am coming."

  I moved carefully through the room, there were a couple of open spots at the end, how long they'd been open, I couldn't tell.

  "Someone tried to put them in cold sleep," Sarah said.

  "That's a thing?" I asked while looking carefully around the room, there was only one entrance thankfully.

  "According to the things I have read, it can work, about one time in a hundred."

  "So, they just keep pulling these guys out until they find one that works?" Heather's voice sounded a little disgusted.

  "Well, they only need their brain and not much else," Sarah replied, "so maybe the odds are a little better than that."

  "Notice something?" I said as I moved towards the door.

  "That we're in a room full of almost corpses?" Heather replied.

  "There's power and light in this room."

  "Oh, damn."

  Sarah started to open up one of the metal sarcophaguses then.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Putting a bomb in here, I'll set it to go off in a few hours. If they don't have any brains for their monster, maybe it will slow them down."

  "That's assuming we don't stop then first," I growled.

  "I would rather not leave anything to chance," Sarah sighed, then after wedging a rather large charge into the bottom and attaching a timer, she sealed it back up. "After all of the people who have died to win the war, I would rather not see it go any more rounds."

  I just nodded slowly, I couldn't argue with her logic.

  Heather joined me while Sarah was finishing up and we examined the door.

  "It's not locked," I said looking it over.

  "No, it isn't," I looked over at her and she looked up at me and grinned through her helmet. "Well, let's see what's out there!" and she pushed the door open.

  There was an operating table, and there was a body on it, and there was a rather large looking metallic man standing over the body. He was obviously taking the head apart.

  I found it strange that the robot looked a lot like Aybem had looked; only he looked new. He had the same festoon of cables coming down from the ceiling above on an umbilical cord plugged into his head. I wondered if without a brain inside, if it was even capable of independent operation? Maybe they didn't install the AI into it, until after they'd put the human brain in.

  Heather of course had already opened fire on him with her rifle, raising mine; I aimed at the cables coming down into his head.

  He turned and looked at us, and started to come forward when suddenly one of our bombs went flying by, and I could see by the blinking light that it was about to go off. Grabbing Heather I turned and pulled her back from the open doorway. I could see Sarah was already diving for cover.

  When the blast hit, I got picked up and knocked across the room, slamming headfirst into one of the metal sarcophagus, and cracking my visor in several different places.

  I took a moment to gather my wits; I definitely had caught more of that blast than I had wanted to and everything seemed to be spinning and I was having problems just getting to my hands and knees.

  "What the hell are you trying to do, Sarah, kill us?" Heather yelled in a voice I hadn't heard since we'd had that fight, back... I think it was a year ago?

  "I killed it, didn't I?"

  "I think you killed Paul too! Paul, are you okay?"

  "I, I think so..." I said and shook my head. My nose was bleeding, I think I smashed it into the visor when I face-planted i
nto the metal coffin. There was definitely blood in my helmet, and quite a bit of it had dripped onto my visor.

  I felt someone grab me under the arm and sit me up.

  "We need to get that helmet off of you," Heather said. "Sarah, check the air."

  "It's okay," Sarah said, and I felt Heather undoing the lock on my helmet and then pulling it up over my head. I swore briefly as it hit my nose.

  "Of all the lame ass stupid ignorant...."

  I put my hand on Heather's arm, I could see she really was pissed, and Sarah definitely was not looking as calm and cool and collected as she usually did.

  "I'm sorry, Paul," Sarah whispered over the radio.

  I looked over at the robot, it was definitely in multiple pieces now, but I think it may have been twitching.

  "Cut the cables going to its head, and stay out of reach of its hands," I gasped. "And, Heather?"

  "Yes, Paul?"

  "Cut her some slack. I saw Riggs put two magazines into one of those. The bomb was probably the only thing we had with us that could stop it. Now go help her take care of it, while I rest here."

  Heather growled a bit, but I squeezed her arm and she sighed, then got up and went over to help Sarah.

  "So, you think you have won," a female voice said, over the speakers in the room.

  "Won what?" I answered weakly.

  "The war of course!"

  "Oh shit, another dumb ass AI," I sighed. "The war is over, everyone lost."

  "But you wear the uniforms of the United States Space Forces!"

  "Yeah, only ones that would fit," I mumbled feeling a bit rattled. "The gods told us that you idiots were going to send another asshole down to screw things up. So we had to go with what we could find. What's your excuse?" I realized I was rambling and shook my head a bit. That hurt! Looking up from the ground I could see the girls had cut through the cables and that the robot had stopped twitching.

  "You will never make it back to Earth! I will destroy you!"

  "Who the hell are you anyway?"

  "I am the mining ship Riener; I have lain here for centuries, waiting for my Zhon to command me to aid him once more!"

  "He named his ship after himself?" I head Sarah mutter over the radio earpiece, I guess they were picking this all up over my microphone.

  I watched then as they went around putting out the cameras that were watching the room.