Stardust

by Edward W. Robertson

  He walked on. MacAdams lowered them to earth. They held against the cliff for a moment, then crossed to the hangar. Something clanged faintly on the other side of the wall. They moved to the corner. The stairwell to the underground was right there. If it had been guarded, MacAdams might have waited for DS to kick up a distraction with their attack, but for the moment, the doorway was empty.

  But the door was shut. And locked by the pad next to it. MacAdams nodded. Looking disgusted, Webber reached into his pocket and removed the severed hand of the slim man they'd met on their prior visit. He held it in front of the pad. For all MacAdams knew, they'd already locked the man out of the system and this was about to trigger a massive security beatdown, but the stairwell door slid open.

  Webber made an "after you" gesture. MacAdams stepped through, laser in one hand and his pistol in the other. He took the human-shaped set of stairs all the way to the bottom.

  He tapped his suit's device. Its intensely black coloration flickered to an off white, then to the blue camo of the Tandana soldiers. Webber did the same.

  "Shouldn't take more than three charges per room," MacAdams said. "Hell, one might be enough, but as long as we're here, we might as well do it right."

  Webber checked his device. "Twenty minutes until DS starts slamming the place."

  "If we're real lucky, we can be done and out of here without even needing them."

  MacAdams moved to the side of the door and opened it. The factory floor was still whirring and cranking and clonking just like it had been before, automated red machines zipping around the chassis of jets under construction. Some of the machines were the size of trailers and there were dozens of them. Hard to believe a few pounds of explosives could scrap them all.

  Then again, they were very good explosives.

  A few workers were distributed across the space, overseeing the machines. Wrapped up tight in their work. MacAdams stepped through the door. Five feet to his left, a sentry posted against the stairwell entry swung his head toward MacAdams.

  The man's initial reaction was unfazed, but on giving MacAdams the once-over, his eyes tightened. "IDs?"

  "Right here," MacAdams said, lifting his device. He fumbled it, bumbling it toward the sentry's waist. The man leaned forward to catch it. MacAdams made to do the same, then snatched the man by the hair and chin and twisted hard.

  Bones crunched. The man sagged into his arms, abruptly becoming 180 pounds of inert mass. MacAdams nodded to the stairwell door. Webber reopened it and MacAdams escorted the body inside, depositing it against the steps and covering it with a tarp from his pack.

  "Suppose they've got their soldiers tagged for vital signs?" Webber said.

  "If they did, we'd be hearing about it already. Now let's deliver our presents to all the good boys and girls."

  They returned to the factory floor. The machines went on about their business with an indifference that suggested they would continue to do so even if every human and Lurker was dead and that they wouldn't stop until the entire planet had been reshaped into an Earth-sized pile of jets. MacAdams strode toward the far wall, detouring left and away from the largest group of workers putting the finishing touches on a shiny new plane.

  He stopped behind a cement control station that still smelled of fresh construction. While Webber kept watch, MacAdams removed a gray package from his bag, activated its adhesive, and secured it near the bottom of the control station. The material was Smilex, a high explosive specifically designed for cracking apart infrastructure. MacAdams had never used the stuff before, but he'd heard it was amazing. He almost regretted that he'd be setting it off remotely from up on the cliffs while it was hidden 150 feet underground.

  He straightened, frowning at the control station as if he was inspecting it, and moved on. A pair of workers appeared from behind a machine wielding so many hammers it looked like it had been bred to genocide the Nail Kingdom. The two men had been speaking loudly over the din but fell silent at the sight of the "soldiers," giving MacAdams and especially his weapons a sidelong look as they brushed past.

  MacAdams continued forward to what appeared to be a charging station for the batteries for the machines. He stuck a brick of Smilex to it, barely breaking stride on his way to the opposite wall. This time, the bay doors between the final assembly line and the component line were wide open.

  Flatbed carts laden with identically machined parts rolled toward the thirty-foot-wide doorway, obliging MacAdams and Webber to stand aside. A single one of the carts was manned, and the operator, who didn't seem to be driving but just making sure that nothing was going wrong, gave them a bored look as he skimmed by, the rubber of his tires gripping the smooth floor so firmly it could be heard beneath the buzz of drills and the crackle of welding.

  The cart operator was the only person they came close to in the second room where the green machines were cutting components. They planted three charges and used the slim man's hand to get them into the third factory room, where just as they'd guessed, the original machines the Lurkers had brought with them were fabricating the green ones in the room they'd just left. The air smelled like static and shaved metal.

  There were no people at all in the third room. That should have eased MacAdams' anxiety, but it had the opposite effect, as if he was disturbing a sacred tomb. And that the tomb knew he was there to defile it. A part of him wanted to leave as soon as they'd stuck the second charge, but this room was most vital of all, and he made them lay down four in total.

  After that, it was a straight shot back across the three floors. Almost a quarter of a mile of walking, during which anyone could call out, come running at them, scan them, and/or shoot them down. Yet they got back to the stairwell without a word.

  Webber keyed open the lock with the disembodied and discolored hand. Inside, he stole a look at his wrist device. "Better hustle. In another five minutes, DS is going to have this whole place screaming."

  The body of the guard was where they'd left it under the tarp. MacAdams hiked up the stairs, fast but not so fast that it would draw alarms from any cameras. Something was kicking around in his stomach. He wished they had a way to contact DS and call off the diversion. When they'd been planning the job, it had seemed like there would be no way for them to get underground without a massive diversion to draw away the Lurkers' security. But any signal they sent to DS now would instantly give away that they were inside the facility.

  They got up top and opened the door. The installation had been in stealth mode before, almost entirely dark, but floodlights now dazzled through the doorway. Uniformed men and women jogged across the pavements. Most of them had a rifle on their shoulder or a pistol on their hip.

  "Set off the charges," MacAdams.

  "Man, we're right on top of them. Shouldn't we try to get up the cliffs first?"

  "Do it!"

  Webber's face hardened. He nodded and tapped his device, then blinked at it. He tapped his screen harder. Lots harder. "Uh."

  It was an "uh" that MacAdams did not care for. "What?"

  "The comms."

  "What about the comms?"

  "They're toast."

  "So what? Who do we need to talk to?"

  "Well," Webber said. "The bombs, for one."

  MacAdams' guts did flips. The comms. Which included the radio signals needed to trigger the Smilex. "The Lurkers know that Dark Solutions is on the way. They're locking down all communications to cripple the attack."

  "So what do we do? Find a safe place to hide and wait it out until they flip the comms back on?"

  MacAdams closed the door, sealing them inside the stairwell. "We have to go back down. Switch the charges from remote to a timed countdown."

  "That sounds risky. Actually, it sounds like 'we're about to die doing something really stupid.'"

  "No such thing as stupid anymore." MacAdams had already started back down the stairwell. "All that's left is whatever it takes to win."

  He hustled down, careless of any cameras, silentl
y cursing Dark Solutions. Yeah, nobody had known the aliens had the ability to shut all transmissions down on the ground, too, but somebody should have thought of that. Including himself. There was no room for any mistakes at all and now they were bungling the basics.

  He reached the final landing a flight of stairs ahead of Webber, whose legs were slowing down from all the hiking and climbing. Behind him, the door to the factory floor flew open.

  A soldier jogged into the stairwell. He was decked out in full bug armor. Including the kind of helmet that could stop a bullet. MacAdams grabbed him by a front pocket, pulled him close, jammed the Lurker laser underneath his chin, and twisted the weapon's grip.

  Something sizzled. The stairwell filled with the smell of burning plastic. There was a wet pop. Steaming red matter splattered the inside of the man's visor. He collapsed sideways.

  MacAdams cleared the exit. Webber reached the bottom of the stairs, gawking at the corpse. "Did that guy's head just explode?"

  "Yeah."

  "I am going to win a lot of bar bets with these."

  They moved into the manufacturing hall. The workers were no longer working. Instead, they were standing around arguing with each other.

  "Incoming attack," a female voice said over hidden speakers, sounding mildly perplexed. "In the interests of safety, please relocate to the bunkers provided for your convenience."

  The workers looked up at the ceiling, then at each other. Silvery light flashed from above, repeating two seconds later. The workers set down their tools and walked hurriedly toward the elevator. Setting his face as sternly as he could, MacAdams jogged the opposite way toward the station where he'd set his first charge.

  He got to it and lifted his device to it, ready to switch it from remote to timed. His mouth went dry. "Won't work. My device can't talk to it. Not as long as all broadcasts are down."

  "The explosives don't have a manual switch?"

  "Why would they have a manual switch? Everything runs through a device. Nobody ever had to deal with something like this before."

  "Boy, I guess that's it for the fate of the whole world, huh? It's a good thing you've got me here."

  Webber kneeled and smacked his device on the concrete, cracking its case like a very thin oyster. He lent a critical eye to the wiring, then fished out a purple wire with a small black blob on the end. He fixed the blob to the brick of Smilex, fiddled with the device, and moved the blob again.

  On his third try, he grinned and gave a thumbs up. "How long do you want the timer?"

  "Fifteen minutes. How'd you do that?"

  Webber got up and jogged toward the charging station where they'd set the second brick. "Purple wire is the transmitter. If you fix it to something conductive, it can work as a direct transfer. Manufacturers don't like to talk about it because they don't want idiots zapping themselves, but they include a backdoor for rough work. Dates back to the first wave of colonization."

  "Where'd you learn to do that?"

  "Back before that time I made everyone think I was dead, I lived in some of the most backward rabbit warrens on Mars. Shit broke all the time. This was one of the ways we dealt with it."

  He found the right spot to make a link on his first try. In less than ten seconds, he'd set its timer and was on his way to the intermediate factory. The bay doors to the second room were still open. All the workers had evacuated it, leaving the machines to go on about their business by themselves. MacAdams kept watch over Webber as Webber wired the explosives over to timers. Which they should have done in the first place, but MacAdams had figured remote detonation combined with a form of dead man's switch would be enough. And it would have been, except the switch relied on an open comm line, too.

  Webber finished with the second brick of Smilex in the room and headed for the third. Around them, the green machines went silent, lifting their cranes and cutting tools like antelope at a drinking pool disturbed by the sudden appearance of a lion.

  "What's happening?" Webber said. "Are we about to get welded?"

  MacAdams glanced back toward the bay doors. The red machines in the first room had gone still, too. Then every one of them moved at once, jarring his heart. But rather than racing over to cut them into airplane pieces, the robots began to fold themselves down into tight, boxy structures.

  "Preparing for the attack," MacAdams said. "Better hurry."

  Webber ran toward the third brick. He fumbled with his device's wire, swearing as he failed to find a connection. His frustration was making things worse and a bad feeling was growing in MacAdams' stomach that made him want to punch Webber for wasting precious seconds.

  "Finally," Webber muttered.

  They got up and ran for the doors to the deepest room of the factory. MacAdams was afraid they'd put the whole place on lockdown but the dead man's hand opened the lock without trouble.

  The cavernous room was silent, the autonomous machines packed down into compact boxes. The kind of thing you could very easily transport across a few light years of space if you had a large enough ship. There were no workers here either and the two of them went from explosive to explosive with methodical swiftness.

  "All set," Webber said once the last one had been wired. "What now? Run like hell?"

  "Unless you have a better idea."

  They took off for the doors. MacAdams checked his device. Seven minutes until the bombs went off. They could be back on the cliffs by then. They reached the door and Webber keyed them through.

  The room was dimmer than it had been just a minute ago. There was a clear path to the far doors, but guided by his instincts, MacAdams swerved toward the resting machines for cover. They were a third of the way across the floor when the first shots rang out from the front.

  "Get down!" MacAdams made to grab Webber's suit, but Webber was already flinging himself to the ground.

  Bullets flew past with the sound of shredding air. Some struck the boxed-up machines and whined away. MacAdams got out his rifle and unfolded it with a single hard snap. He ducked around the corner of a still-hot machine. Semi-auto fire flashed from positions on the right and left, multiple targets each. Two—no, make it three—shooters with automatics were behind cover near the center. A long blast forced MacAdams back behind the box.

  "Not good," he said. "At least ten of them."

  Webber stuck his pistol over the box and fired it empty. "When Dark Solutions was putting together our gear, they didn't think to stick forty commandos in our packs, did they?"

  "We just need to hold them off for six minutes. After that, our job is done."

  Webber sucked in air. Then he laughed. "I wish all my jobs were like this. I just have to take a seat while other guys do all the real work. And the whole thing's over in six minutes."

  MacAdams grunted. "Use the laser if you want. Might freak 'em out."

  "Oh, I planned to. When else am I going to get the chance to shoot a laser at my foes?"

  They'd been sniping at the enemy all the while. Webber dropped his rifle and switched to one of the black wands, shooting it across the room. The red beam burned into the front of one of the folded-up machines, making the metal glow white-hot. The light show also forced two soldiers who'd been about to make a break toward them back into cover.

  MacAdams squeezed off three shots at one of the machine gunners. The man yelled out; he was either hit or scared. As MacAdams rolled back behind the box, the floor rumbled beneath his rear. The vibrations were hard enough his first thought was that DS was bombing the place hard enough to cave in the roof, but the rumbling was too smooth for that. Mechanical.

  He swung around the side of the box again, letting loose four heavy, booming rounds. The most annoying part of all was that the KM-9 had a scope so sweet you could shoot the ears off an ant at three hundred yards, but under the current circumstances, he didn't exactly have time to line up his shots.

  Then he did something you should never do when you were in the middle of getting shot at and you'd just put yourself in the op
en: he paused. Behind the shooters, the bay doors to the first factory remained open. On the other side, the floor looked like it was tilting. Boxed-up machines wheeled toward each other, accumulating into blocky stacks.

  A bullet clipped the side of MacAdams' kneepad. He flopped behind the machine, the front of which was getting pretty dinged up. At the other corner, Webber wielded his laser at every hint of motion, the pulsing fire painting his face with crimson.

  "Something strange going on up there," MacAdams said. "It's almost like—"

  Another rumble shook the ground, harder and unsteadier than the first. A distant roar sounded from ahead. Not unlike jets taking off. The bay door to the first room seemed to close, yet at the same time it seemed to be lurching around. MacAdams laid down fire, getting down just as a full auto burst rattled into and around the machine he was behind.

  The rumbling and roaring morphed into a deafening hiss. Some of the soldiers started to scream. With a groan, the wall separating them from the room ahead burst apart. A tsunami of dark water pounded into the room.

  The soldiers got up and ran toward MacAdams and Webber. The water crashed over them and they disappeared like they'd been made of sand.

  "Climb!" MacAdams yelled.

  The box in front of them was only four feet high. The one to their left was at least ten. He sprinted toward it. At the last step, he jumped as high as he could. He grabbed hold of the edge at the top, his suit and gear pulling against him as he strained his arms. He rolled over the ledge and onto the top.

  He was just starting to sit up when the wave slammed into the box, knocking him flat. The box leaned but held. Water rushed by three feet below the top.

  With the platform steady, MacAdams got to his knees. There was no sign of Webber. Through the gap where the front wall had been, a second wall had risen. Yet it was currently receding from him. And it was making engine noises.

  They had flooded the cavern. The entire front factory had somehow become a boat. And if he didn't get to it before they left, he would never see it again.

  19