Below stretched a valley of lush trees, their dense green canopies a stark contrast to the balding crown of the mountain.
From their position, Leon could see Friggs and Valedalls swooping and circling, distant and dwarfed by the crags and promontories whose shadows they passed under. He’d only had a brief glimpse at the mountain’s facade, but it was enough to know that there were no Wharhounds or thousands of Machines scaling the cliffs like goblins. The metal fiends numbered in the hundreds, to be sure, but they were mostly still, looking outward at the sea, as if standing guard.
Leon glanced at his watch. He and Clovis landed forty-five minutes ago. Unless Droll and Orissa were forced to detour, they should have arrived at their destination by now.
“If we can’t get word to them,” Leon began, “we need to assume they’re where they need to be. And that they need as much help getting in as we do. Could be worse for them, even.” He looked into Clovis’s black lens. “Now’s the time.”
“I agree,” answered the drone. “I will hook into the haais network.”
Seconds passed—had Leon not been staring at his watch, he would’ve thought it had been minutes—before Clovis spoke again.
“The missiles are ready. They are being launched.” Clovis fluttered onto the dash. “I have never heard so much chatter on the global Machine Network.”
“Can you parse anything? Never mind. I think they’re telling every hunk of metal to haul ass off this mountain.”
The cargo doors of Friggs and Valedalls opened as they crowded the mountain facade. Machines poured in. Moments later, the ships tore off northward, thrusters spitting blue venom in their wake.
“Ignoring those at sea,” began Clovis, “I detect only twelve Machines still present within a ten-mile radius of our location. They are not moving.”
“Strange, but we’ll deal with them if we have to. Let’s get moving and find the entrance.”
Clovis fired up the twin engines of the Frigg and surged toward the north face of the Atlas Mountains. Leon again read him the coordinates to the mythical Illythia.
“There,” said the drone, projecting a beam of light into the windshield like the pointing of a finger.
Leon made a fist, allowing himself the momentary and ever fleeting sense of triumph. A jagged maw had been carved into the copper mountainside, darkness obscuring whatever lay beyond. Clovis brought the Frigg to a plateau before the entrance.
“The twelve Machines are inside, I believe,” said Clovis. “Nine hundred feet away.”
Leon had his rifle in his lap, heart thumping in his ears. “What kind?”
“Primes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck me,” said Leon. “All right. It’s Prime time, then.”
Slowly, Clovis angled his lens toward Leon. “What?”
“Never mind.”
“They’re scattering like ants,” said Orissa, watching from her perch in the sky as a thin froth of clouds broke around the Frigg. The Machines had gone scuttling toward thick vegetation of myrtles and willows, leaving the facility unsecured. Even the Wharhound had spooked, each of his strides covering a quarter mile and quaking the earth with such force that entire tree branches were stripped of leaves.
“The missiles must have been launched,” said Droll.
Orissa pricked at the skin of her cheek, bleeding herself again. It felt almost soothing to taste pennies and nickels on her tongue, as if the realness of pain kept at bay the nightmares that had sprung into her world. She expected to see her mother staring up at her, one eye of pure obsidian and the other of metal, judgment cast from both.
“Take us down,” she ordered Droll.
As the Frigg’s nose pointed toward the gaping hole in the flattened earth, Orissa wondered about Leon. He’d be worried about her. She feared for him as well, but she had an advantage there. The time that she had to herself in the wilds after escaping the Machines had hardened her heart. It taught her how to suppress emotions, which compartments of her soul to store them in so that they’d wriggle and writhe but never pop free till weeks or months later.
She used to think of that as a strength, and perhaps at times—like this one—it was. But when those doors of her soul opened, and they always did, the feelings would entrap her like the silk of spiderwebs, fangs slicing her open in ways she didn’t know were possible.
Better to be cut open later than now, she thought as the cockpit doors lifted. She jumped out, tasting the sickly wet air of a humid Florida morning. Her lungs felt coated in vapor with every breath she drew.
Most of the Machines were out of sight, hidden in the womb of the forest. The Wharhound, of course, could still be felt lumbering on, and its massive chassis could still be seen, but it was too concerned with fleeing an imminent mylosynicide explosion to search for trespassers.
The entrance the Wharhound had exposed was even more impressive close up. It was incomprehensibly large, and seemingly needlessly so as well. What could warrant this? It looked like a silo but for missiles four times the size of giant sequoias.
Droll flashed his light at four ladders which descended equally into black depths below. They didn’t appear rusted, but Orissa still felt a flutter in her stomach as she put a foot on the first rung.
She counted the steps as she descended, the darkness vaporized with the piercing of Droll’s light.
When she finally reached bottom, something crunched underfoot.
It was a human skull.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The African air tasted as dry as the earth which crumbled under Leon’s boot. He took the approach into Illythia’s womb slowly, absorbing every fine detail. The entrance looked to have been made with a bore, its edges even and fairly smooth.
Clovis beside him, Leon entered Illythia, trading russet colored cliffs for the nothingness of a black expanse.
“Major General Imus,” said Clovis quietly, “the Primes appear to be in a quasai-stasis.”
“What the hell’s a quasai-stasis?”
“The Machines are functional, but only at basic levels. They have more processes firing than if they were in a total stasis, but far fewer than when fully functional. I don’t believe they can detect us until we are close.”
Leon considered this. “How close is close?”
“Conservatively, two hundred feet. I have roughly mapped out this enclave. There are four hallways, one of which leads into a room the Primes have converged in. It is straight ahead.”
“Is there a door?”
“Yes.”
“Then turn on your light and let’s get acquainted with our surroundings.”
Clovis’s lens shuttered. A beam of cool white light shot from his eye, expanding to encompass the entirety of the room.
“Looks like an antechamber of sorts,” said Leon. “Filled with… Clovis, these are artifacts. Human artifacts.”
The relics lay in glass display cases staggered throughout the antechamber. One had in it the Declaration of Independence from the United States of America, and another proudly displayed the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. Nigeria’s constitution was there, along with Brazil’s and countless others.
There were pictures too and captions to go along, showcasing world wars, civil wars, major discoveries, influential people, and cultures across the globe.
A lectern stood in the middle of the room. A vinyl sign was pinned to the center. Above it, inlaid in the wood, was a cracked display panel.
The sign read:
Welcome to Illythia, the Last and First Bastion of Humanity.
Please select your preferred language to receive a brief welcome packet.
Looks like this place was to be a refuge for all of humanity, thought Leon. Not just a few people from the president’s council. The Machines must have struck too quickly.
“You say the Primes are straight ahead, through that door? What about other rooms among these offshoot hallways?”
“They appear to be empty or at least scarcely decorated. The construction of this refuge is incomplete.”
You don’t say. A question lingered on Leon’s tongue that he’d kept hold of for too long, fearful of the truth. “Any sign of humans? Dead, alive… in between?”
“No.”
Leon bristled at that. However, there was the possibility of a cryogenic system powered by RTGs, right? But, then, why would Primes be guarding cryogenically-preserved humans?
To raise them as Rogue Hunters, came the silent reply in Leon’s head. That would mean the Governor wasn’t here. That, if it existed at all, Orissa might have been on the right trail.
The smart move might have been to hedge his bets, steal back into the Frigg, and take a straight shot to the Florida facility. To not chance a firefight with twelve Primes.
But what if his theories and hopes were wrong, if there were no humans? What could the Primes be guarding? Something vital to the Machines.
Maybe the Core?
No. That was absurd. Not a chance the Machines would leave something vital to their existence so exposed.
Whatever lay in the room surrounded by a dozen Primes, Leon needed answers.
“All right,” said Leon. “We need to draw those Primes out, funnel them through the doorway into this room. We can’t take on all twelve at one time.”
“I could hijack one’s processes and fully control it for a time,” noted Clovis.
“What about two of them?”
“That would require a great deal of processing from myself. It’s possible, but the Primes may be limited in functionality.”
Leon thought about it. He glanced over his shoulder at the wink of daylight through the opening of the mountain. A pair of hefty rotary guns stared back at him.
“I’ve a better idea,” he said. “You interface with the Frigg. Get those guns ready to blow a dozen Primes into Orion’s Belt. I’ll peel them out of the room.”
“Understood. I can interface with the ship remotely to reduce the chances of casualties.”
“In other words,” said Leon, “to keep you from having your parts strewn throughout the Atlas Mountains in case a Prime manages to fixate his big fuck gun on you?”
Clovis’s lens shuttered. “Exactly.”
Leon chuckled. “Get in one of those hallways, then.”
“Of course. The door is now unlocked.”
“I didn’t realize it had been locked.”
“Minimal security,” Clovis explained. “Archaic, even for human standards. It appears to never have been retrofitted to meet Machine specifications. It is as though they intended for humans to come and go as they pleased. Or as the Machines willed it.”
Leon’s nose wrinkled at that. “Don’t add more questions to my mind, Clovis.”
A crescent of light carved up the drone’s lens. Careening and whirring, he stowed himself in a dark corridor, light extinguished. He gave an audible shuttering of his lens when he was in place.
This is insane, Leon thought. Orissa, you better not be pulling anything like this. He was the one who made it clear that they could not needlessly risk their lives, that if the shit hit the proverbial fan, they’d bail and return as a team.
He should have known that in agreeing to that, both of them were lying. Leon was a soldier, one who’d do anything to get the job done. Orissa was… well, she was bold, determined, damned stubborn, and had enough courage to make the Cowardly Lion march straight to the gates of hell alongside her.
Since separating from Orissa, Leon knew in the back of his mind there was a high probability that one of them wouldn’t see the sunrise tomorrow. He wasn’t okay with that in the least. But he also knew a perfectly valid truth born the moment humanity made their mark on this world: it’s the person willing to die who pushes forward the human race.
All things equal, the person willing to die wins. If you hold anything back—anything at all—against an enemy like the Machines… you lose, every time.
Not everything is black and white, but some things are.
Clutching his magnetic pulse rifle like it might squirm away from him at the worst moment, Leon crept up beside the closed door within the antechamber. He was without a guiding light, but his eyes had adjusted well enough. The darkness was many shades of black, not a singular, solid color.
The door resembled one inside a prison, cast from thick steel. He grasped the lever.
It didn’t budge.
Shouldering his rifle, he used both hands and pulled with all his might.
Click. The door began to open, pulled along tracks hidden within the wall. It signaled the end of its journey with a clank.
Back against the wall, magnetic pulse rifle in his hands, Leon listened for movement.
He heard nothing.
Skeptical that the opening of the door wouldn’t generate at least a nominal response and begin to wake the Primes from their partial stasis, he waited, counting each passing second in his head.
After two minutes of silence, he peered around the corner, half expecting a bullet to come screaming at his head. The only sight that met him was that of idled Primes, a picture of harmless crouching silhouettes, a betrayal of their murderous nature.
He had time to take in the room if he wanted, but the hanging darkness was less forgiving than that of the antechamber. Beyond the Primes, he could make out little except undefined shadows.
What needs to be done to make these buckets of metal move? As if his rifle had hollered an answer, Leon’s eyes dropped to the thick barrel. It’s an idea, he thought. And a good one, too.
Stock firmly against his shoulder, he unfolded the twin sights with a press of a button. The left paneled-sight offered the usual information: a crosshair, distance to the target, and wind. The right paneled-sight showed nothing until he squared up a Prime. A rendering of the Machine in a T-pose appeared then, parts of its body colored from shades of blue to red.
It was a heat map which indicated the highest probability of inflicting the greatest amount of damage with each shot.
Leon set the crosshairs on the middlemost Prime, centering them on the Machine’s chest. Had Leon been laser focused on that particular Prime—and not naturally paranoid—probably he would have pulled the trigger and not let go until the bastard Machine was decimated.
Probably he would’ve taken the Primes’ numbers from twelve to eleven.
Probably he would have died himself.
From the corner of his vision, a rotary gun. It inclined slowly.
Could’ve been an artifact. Might’ve been a product of fatigue. Stress. A hundred different things.
People love telling others to go with their guts, or with their hearts. Leon’s heart was in Florida, and his gut—well, he wanted to keep that where it was. So he trusted the little voice in his head that told him to get his ass to cover.
The gun revved like an engine, spiraling up nearly instantly. Leon had barely jerked himself back behind the wall when the plasma rounds hissed by, fiery marbles that spewed through the antechamber. They chewed into the walls, imprinting a ring of char into the stone.
Then, to his surprise, the still of quietness settled into Illythia. The silence didn’t last, though. It never did.
The clap of metal against stone reverberated in Leon’s skull. One foot and another, two strides and then four.
The Primes were coming.
Let them, thought Leon, a grin eating away the corner of his mouth.
The Frigg’s four rotary guns stared at him, idled like the rest of the ship. The engines were cold, the pilot’s seat empty. With friends like Leon had, however, pilots needn’t be present.
The Primes neared, the soles of their titanium feet clacking and clanking. If Machines could breathe, Leon would’ve heard their inhalations.
He bailed, beelining it toward the corridor in which Clovis hid. One eye on the Frigg, the other navigating his way through the antechamber, he saw the rotary guns begin to spin.
He als
o saw the apocalypse coming for him.
If he could’ve shit his organs out in fear, doubtless he would have, for the Frigg exploded in a fiery hell as two missiles tore through it.
Leon ducked as metal and rock spewed through the antechamber. One stray cut of the Frigg’s armoring, or an errant jigsaw of the wall to Leon’s head and he’d be taking the long nap, nano-armor or not.
Sprinting through sheets of smoke and microscopic debris, Leon stumbled into the corridor as another missile—or was it three?—torpedoed into Illythia.
The ensuing explosion knocked him off his feet. A dust-filled halo of light shone through his eyelids.
“Major General Imus,” said Clovis, “are you all right?”
Leon belched dirt from his lungs. “Fuck me. What the hell was that, Clovis?”
“Machines.”
Leon kicked a collapsed chunk of ceiling from his legs. He got to his feet, brushing crumbs of rock from his hair. “No shit. Why’d they come back already? The empty warhead already land? Is the jig up?” He glanced into the antechamber. Rather, where the antechamber should have been.
“This is just great,” he said, shaking his head. He put his hands against a lopsided pyramid of rock that obstructed his path into the main chamber.
He pushed. He grunted. He swore. The newly made wall answered back with the stiffness of stone.
“Clovis, can you update your mapping of this place? See if there’s an exit out of here.”
“I’ve attempted to do so, but the enclosed space has made it impossible. Consider a flood-fill algorithm. While the haais mapping algorithm is not the same, the concept is similar and space that is sealed will not return a—”
Leon frowned. “I don’t care why, Clovis.” He put an ear to the rubble. The clacks of metal feet droned from the antechamber, Primes searching for their victim.
He tapped the canteen in his belt. It was full, but it wouldn’t last long under a dry, arid mountain. His throat was already parched.
Rebirth (Archives of Humanity Book 1) Page 21