Shadow Play

by P. R. Adams

  So silent and stealthy now. How? What had happened to the noise it had made earlier? Why had it made such a show of what it had done?

  Tossing a head. Drooling blood. It wasn’t logical. It was bad programming!

  Knoel rushed around the front of the vehicle, eyes scanning for the robot.

  Nowhere.

  His mind was slipping.

  He sprinted to the next Panther, just a handful of meters away. Surely that one would be—

  Something caught his boot.

  He tumbled to the ground, hit hard enough to make his wrists ache.

  That was part of training. Keep moving. Come up with your weapon ready.

  But there wasn’t anything there.

  Until he realized he’d tripped over a corpse. Parts of it. Blood and visor as black as the darkness. And there was another head.

  Knoel pushed away, gasping and snorting. One ancient scouting robot had killed nine Commandos? Preposterous! His men were the best, the deadliest! They had studied hundreds of battles and scoffed at the mistakes humans had made.

  He ran toward the other Panther but skidded to a stop when the robot-dog jumped onto the roof.

  “Bastard!”

  This thing was far too clever to be the simple dog-robot. Something had changed.

  Knoel brought the battle rifle up and fired before the thing could move. The weapon report was deafening.

  External audio input too high!

  He cranked it down as he took a step toward the Panther, searching for the robot.

  It was nowhere to be seen.

  His shoulders slumped, and he lowered his weapon.

  How—?

  Something hit him in the small of the back, knocking him to the ground. His face smacked against the rock, and lights flashed behind his eyes. He tried to turn over, to bring the weapon up and sight in on the attacker, but his limbs were soft and weak.

  And then an icy pain lanced through his throat, and his external audio picked up a wet hissing sound.

  His vision cleared just long enough to see the robot-dog. It dropped something dark and wet.

  My throat. It tore out my throat!

  A second robot-dog appeared, as black and slick as the first.

  Darkness closed on Knoel’s awareness, but it wasn’t quick enough to spare him the pain of the robots tearing him apart.

  And through the pain, one thought lingered: He wasn’t a perfect soldier after all.

  31

  Kohn grunted, and his hold on the battered door loosened; Stiles stopped.

  Without their boots scraping, the maze of rubble was eerily quiet. She forced a patient smile. “Are you all right?”

  The petty officer shifted his grip. “Yeah. It’s heavy, that’s all.”

  It was. Heavy and solid. Twenty or more kilos, easily. If it was the work of the forerunners, it wasn’t intended for efficiency or aesthetics but security and durability. Maybe the thing hadn’t tested the door because it knew better. That wouldn’t explain it not tearing through the fast-plaster, though.

  She adjusted her own grip. Despite the gloves wicking away moisture, her palms were sweaty where the door pressed against them. It couldn’t be nerves, not for her. She was conditioned not to handle anxiety like others.

  Yet she felt something. Concern? Something. It left her mouth dry and her tongue rough as sandpaper. Her breath was strange—alien.

  A quick blink, a reminder of who she was, and she was calm. “Ready?”

  Kohn nodded, and they resumed their slow, scraping trudge through the winding course of mounds.

  “You sure the commander can get the shuttle into the ruins?” His voice shook.

  “She has Reyes piloting.”

  “Okay. But there are lots of walls out there. This whole place looks ready to collapse.”

  “We have to trust her.”

  As they passed the flare, it sputtered, then died, leaving them with only her flashlight as a guide. She’d hooked it to the back of her belt so that it could shine ahead of them, but the light swung with each step, creating the same sense of moving shadows the flare had.

  The thing wasn’t down there with them. It couldn’t be. One way in and out, that’s all there was, and it was what had convinced her that Srisha couldn’t be trusted.

  Whatever programming kept the thing from testing walls and doors would have kept it from opening the hatch. Someone would have had to do that.

  And only Srisha had survived the attacks. None of the rooms had doors, so she had walled herself in.

  While the thing tore its way through the others.

  The GSA agent was starting to get a sense of the why behind it, too.

  They want this thing. The SAID wants this forerunner technology, same as the Azoren must have.

  But the Azoren had been on Jotun for years. Why would they abandon the ruins? Something terrible must have driven them out. The dead researchers Srisha had found? There must have been something more, but that should have been a sign anyone could read to stay clear.

  Anyone but SAID, apparently.

  She glanced over her shoulder as they rounded another pile, and saw Halliwell waving them forward. Another smile seemed appropriate. “Almost there, Chuck.”

  “Good. I think my arms are about to come out of their sockets.”

  He huffed and grunted and groaned the last stretch but held on. She had him put his end down, then set hers against the wall and rushed to pat his back when he doubled over. “Nice work.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” His eyes darted up to hers for an instant, seeking confirmation.

  Stiles smiled again, this time without thinking about it. It felt strange. Legitimate. Sincere.

  She liked the sensation.

  Halliwell rapped his knuckles against the door. “Maybe it can’t get through that.”

  Grier came out of the shadows, weapon at the ready. “Hope the fuck not. You see how fast that thing moves?”

  “I know.” He pointed to Stiles. “She’s the one trying to outrun it.”

  Grier snorted. “No offense, ma’am. You’re fit and all that, but…”

  The lieutenant rubbed the plaster wall. “I won’t need to outrun it, and this door won’t need to stand up to its attacks. This plaster wouldn’t hold up to more than a few strikes, anyway. You don’t think the programming limitation is real, Staff Sergeant?”

  Grier punched the tall Marine in the shoulder. “He don’t trust computers.”

  Halliwell touched his chest.

  The chunk of shrapnel that should have killed him. It was his own superstition.

  After a few heartbeats, he knocked the tip of a boot against one of the buckets of plaster. “Let’s get this going. Toni, check on Carruth. We need those explosives rigged now.”

  Kohn stretched his back. “The program’s done. All he has to do is figure out how to get the wiring to work. I think I could’ve done it.”

  Halliwell cocked his head. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Something about crossing wires and being turned into a red mist, I guess. I prefer electronics. There’s a hint of safety in all the redundancies I deal with.”

  “Yeah, like the ones that kept us from drifting in Fold Space?”

  Kohn’s shoulders slumped. “That was sabotage.”

  The petty officer didn’t have to look at Stiles for her to know the accusation was there. Trust had to be earned, and the greatest sabotage she had ever committed was to that one human aspect of emotion, that connection she had never before realized held such value. When your life was the GSA, from inception to conclusion, trust just wasn’t part of your identity.

  She brushed past Halliwell. “Excuse me. I’ll need to be sure I know what’s going on before you seal me in here.”

  Carruth and Grier were on their way back, with Srisha trailing behind them. The older Marine waved a gray slab of plastic when he saw Stiles. “All ready for you, ma’am.”

  Grier held up the satchel and jerked her head toward the storage
room. “Let’s go, Srisha.”

  The SAID agent nodded but only took a step. Her eyes seemed drawn back to the hatch at the far end of the hall.

  Stiles held out a hand. “Tell me what to do, Sergeant.”

  Carruth set the slab in her palm, revealing a screen with a ten-digit passcode prompt. “Simple enough. Activation code is six digits: 010101. Type that in now.”

  The code opened a new screen. There were a few icons, one of them a large, red button. “This is the detonator?”

  “Set up for a five-minute delay right now. You want to change that, go to the app that looks like a clock.”

  She brought the clock app up. It showed: 00:05:00. “And this blows everything?”

  “I’m thinking this entire complex we’re in will sink about ten meters when it’s all said and done, and that comm center is probably going to be a crater of its own, probably twice as deep. That’s top-grade explosives. No forensic evidence is going to survive.”

  That meant they would never recover the dead and never know what really happened, not unless Srisha decided to admit to a crime. But would the explosion be enough to destroy the thing? That’s what mattered at the moment. It would certainly be buried.

  Stiles powered the device down and slipped it into a hip pouch.

  The SAID agent turned from the hatch to Stiles. “We’re destroying it?”

  “It’s kill it or die, Srisha.”

  “But it’s the most advanced automaton we’ve ever known.”

  “I guess we’ll have to learn to live without that knowledge. Maybe we can get to the point of creating one of our own in a more responsible way than its creators managed.”

  Carruth chuckled and squeezed between them. “Or maybe we don’t create a genocide machine after all. Excuse me.”

  The small SAID agent pulled something from the bag she wore on her hip: a knife.

  A monomolecular assassin’s blade, with edges so sharp, it could slip through almost any armor.

  Stiles froze. “Srisha, don’t.”

  Carruth spun around. “Whoa! Srisha, put that—”

  Srisha shivered. “We aren’t leaving it!”

  Grier poked her head into the storage room. “What’s going on?”

  The SAID agent lunged, but Carruth jumped her, and took her to the ground. He grunted in surprise when the smaller woman slithered free of his grip, then groaned when she buried the blade in his gut.

  Dark blood gushed from the wound, and he rolled aside. “Shit.”

  Srisha was on her feet, gory blade held up. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Stiles backed up, widened her stance, and raised her hands. “I do, too, Srisha.”

  Gunfire roared, and the SAID agent dropped. Her knife clattered to the floor. Grier stepped over Carruth, kicked the knife away, then turned Srisha over. “Sorry, Lieutenant, but I know what I’m doing, too, and that’s getting the fuck out of here.”

  Stiles relaxed. “Is she…?”

  “Dead? She will be. Did she kill the others?”

  “I think—”

  The female Marine’s head turned to the hatch at the end of the hall. “Fuck.”

  Stiles didn’t have to twist around to know what the Marine was looking at. She tore free the SAID agent’s hip pouch and pushed Grier toward the storage room. “Go!”

  Grier hooked an arm under Carruth. “Get that door ready!”

  Stiles helped pull the wounded Marine through the doorway, just ahead of Halliwell and Kohn sliding the battered door into place over the opening. There were already two fast-cure plaster buckets open. She grabbed a trowel and scooped some of the pale gray material, then slathered it along an edge of the door. Halliwell and Grier leaned against the thing while Kohn looked the wounded Marine over.

  Srisha’s wet breathing grew louder than everyone else’s. “It’s coming.”

  Grier patted Stiles’s shoulder. “Hear that? Might want to hurry it up.”

  The door shuddered, and the plaster split.

  Whatever qualifications the programming had for barriers, the door wasn’t going to meet them.

  Stiles slapped more plaster on. If it could just cure, it would at least buy them some time. “This isn’t going to stop it.”

  “I kinda figured that out on my own, ma’am.” Grier braced her back against the door and swapped out magazines. “I’m empty after this.”

  Kohn hissed. “Carruth’s bleeding out. We need to get him somewhere that I can—”

  The burly sergeant groaned. “Fuck it. Get the hell out of here.”

  “We can resuscitate you.”

  “I don’t play that game. One life, live it right.”

  Srisha’s breathing sped up. “Oh. Oh. The claws. You can see the claws!”

  A meaty thud preceded wet gurgling, then the SAID agent’s communicator squealed before going silent.

  The first strip of plaster was going dull, drying. Stiles applied a third, then a fourth. If the forerunner robot followed its apparent programming, it would spend some time tearing Srisha’s body apart. Seconds, even minutes—it was all they would need.

  Kohn took up another trowel and helped her, connecting privately. “He doesn’t want—”

  “I know. He doesn’t believe in it.”

  “But we can’t just leave him here.”

  She glanced at the dying Marine. His hands were pressed against his gut, and his eyes were squeezed shut. “It’s what he wants.”

  Halliwell squatted but kept his broad shoulders pressed against the door. He sent a private connection request.

  Stiles accepted his request, bringing him in with Kohn. “What is it, Staff Sergeant?”

  “Well, I see your lips moving and don’t hear anything. I figure you two are planning something, and I think I should be in on it.”

  She slapped plaster along the top of the door. “No planning yet.”

  “All right. So here’s mine. I say we grab some debris and pile it against the door and make a run for the stairs.”

  “Let’s get this to cure a little bit.”

  “Sure. But like you said, if it doesn’t see this as a legitimate barrier for some reason, it might go after those walls.”

  Stiles paused. “Okay. You go. Corporal Grier can hold the door now.”

  Halliwell jogged off.

  Before Grier could protest, the lieutenant reconnected to the group channel. “Here’s the plan. Petty Officer Kohn and I are going to continue applying the plaster. When we have a decent seal, Corporal Grier, you’re going to help Sergeant Halliwell gather debris. We’ll try to block this up as good as we can, then we make a run for the stairs.”

  The corporal grunted. “Okay. Won’t it just go back out through the hatch?”

  “Unless it thinks it can hunt us down in here. It might not be aware of the stairs.”

  “Oh.” Grier squatted a little lower. “What if the satchel doesn’t blow a hole big enough to get us out.”

  That drew a pained snort from Carruth. “Problem’s not gonna be whether or not you get a big enough hole, Corporal. That satchel just might blow out—” He coughed and groaned. “—might blow out the floor and bring those walls down on top of you. Best put it up high as you can.”

  “Great.”

  Halliwell returned, huffing and cradling a good-sized chunk of the shattered building materials against his chest. He set the debris against the base of the door, then hurried away. By the time he returned with another, most of the early plaster strips were curing.

  Grier cocked her head. “Safe?”

  It didn’t seem to Stiles that the rest of the plaster would make much difference. “As safe as we’re going to get.” She drove her trowel into the hardening muck at the bottom of the bucket. “Let’s get some rocks. Chuck, maybe slap some plaster against these chunks of wall to seal them to the door?”

  The petty officer flashed a thumbs-up. “On it.”

  They had eight large chunks of rock piled up, with two of them already sealed befo
re the thing returned. Its first test was against the door, which surprisingly held without cracking the fresh seal.

  Halliwell set his wall fragment down and frowned. “Not good.”

  Kohn slapped plaster against more of the debris. “It held.”

  “That was just a tap. It’s just seeing what it’s up against. It still doesn’t see it as a barrier for some reason.”

  Grier set her own block down and dusted her gloves against her thigh armor. “Because it saw it as an opening first?”

  “Maybe.”

  He turned to Stiles. “More rocks won’t matter.”

  The door shuddered again, and this time, cracks appeared in the fresher plaster.

  Stiles pulled her flashlight from her belt. “Let’s go.”

  Carruth held a hand up weakly. “Give me the detonator.”

  She handed the pouch of storage devices to Kohn, then waved the others on. “Follow the path I marked. Hurry. I’ll catch up.”

  Their booted steps echoed but were drowned out by two more cracks, this time against the plaster walls.

  It wouldn’t be much longer.

  She squatted next to the wounded Marine and pressed the detonator into his bloody hands. “You want this?”

  “Oh, yeah. My little—” He growled, and his eyes sparkled. “—revenge.”

  “The universe will be diminished without you.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll find a way to brighten it.” He winked. “Best hurry.”

  Stiles ran, fighting the uncertainty that gnawed at her gut. Carruth seemed ready to pass out. Would he have the strength to press the button? Would they have enough time to get out?

  Trust. She had given it to Carruth. He’d earned it.

  A shockwave rolled through the underground, spraying dust and raining chunks from the ceiling.

  She kept her footing and threw her arms up over her head.

  They’d blown the satchel charge.

  Dust hung in the air, obscuring her flashlight beam. She slowed to reduce the risk of running into something.

  That saved her from serious injury.

  At the second bend, the rubble piles on either side of the passage had fallen in, littering the floor and creating a small gap she would have to crawl over to go any farther. She scampered along the edges of the debris on the floor, then up the pile that nearly blocked her way.