Vlad took several shots at the remaining second drone, which was still shooting at the rock behind which he knew Beryl was crouched. The first shot seemed to have been a fluke because all of the shots he now took missed the camera, many by a wide margin. The bullets in his gun were smart bullets, but they were not, apparently, as smart as he had hoped they were.
Then Vlad saw something out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t want to look to see what it was, because he knew it wasn’t good. But the object was so large, there was no way not to see what it was: another drone.
And another.
And another.
Well, shit.
Four drones.
Vlad’s mind did the math for him. Four drones. Two humans. One dog.
The odds on this fight were not looking good.
“What fresh hell is this?” Beryl shouted over the gunfire. She must have seen the three new drones, or Iris must have told her about their new and unwelcome visitors.
Two of the new drones moved toward Vlad, and he crouched back down behind the safety of the rock. The other new drone, from what he could hear, had joined its fellow drone shooting at Beryl’s rock.
Vlad was pinned behind the rock, stuck in the cave. Every time he looked over the rock, the drones took shots at him before he could even get a single shot off in return. He was pinned down.
Vlad looked at his watch, but it didn’t give him any information about how to deal with the situation. Perhaps Beryl had thought of something. “Beryl, do you have any bright ideas as to how we get out of this mess?”
“A miracle?”
That really was what they needed. Vlad wracked his brain, trying to think of anything—any story, any snippet of conversation, anything he had seen in a move—that could help get them out of what looked like a hopeless situation.
The phone line between himself and Beryl remained open, as if they were brainstorming a brilliant answer to what was going on instead of sitting in silence.
Through that open phone line, though, Vlad suddenly heard the sound of Camp growling.
From somewhere in the woods, a loud noise pierced through the sounds of the gunfire.
Vlad knew that sound all-too-well.
They didn’t have a miracle incoming.
That sound indicated they were about to experience the opposite of a miracle.
They were about to get a visit from a Vos.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Are you shitting me?”
Beryl heard Vlad’s voice come across her phone over the sound of the guns as she touched the emerald around her neck. The drones continued to shoot, apparently unfazed by the incoming Vos.
“The sounds must have attracted it,” Beryl told Vlad through her phone. The words were not the truth, but they sounded better than what she suspected to be the truth: the blood from the injuries that the first drone attack inflicted had attracted them.
From the woods to her left, Beryl heard a second Vos calling.
“Was that what I think it was?” Vlad’s voice came from her phone again.
“How about I lie and tell you it was something else?”
Beryl saw the tops of the trees to her right rustle before she saw the Vos jump from their uppermost branches, its wings already spread as it jumped from the forest canopy. Beryl only had a brief view of it during its descent to the ground, its dinosaur-like body disappearing from her line of sight behind the rocks that Beryl didn’t dare poke her head over, lest she lose that valuable appendage to the guns of the drones.
And then, perhaps the only thing Beryl didn’t expect to happen occurred.
Silence.
Every gun which had been shooting at her stopped.
With the silence, Beryl peeked over the top of the rocks, venturing a look out at the clearing.
All four of the drones now had their cameras and guns fixed on the Vos that had jumped out of the trees. None of them were shooting, though. It seemed almost as if the drones were bewildered by the appearance of the Vos and now had no idea what to do with the sudden appearance of a dinosaur in their midst. Or, rather, a dinosaur-like creature.
“Welcome to Jurassic Park,” Beryl heard Vlad say through her phone. It seemed he was watching the scene, too.
“I’ve heard that joke before.” Beryl heard something from her left and knew before she turned to the sound that it was the whoosh of a nearby Vos opening its wings. When she did turn to see it, she saw the second Vos descending from the trees into the clearing.
Seeing the second Vos, Beryl shook her head. She had probably seen a hundred Vos over the years do exactly the same thing. And yet, each time, it sent chills up her spine. One wrong move and she would be a snack.
Watching the creature, Beryl was struck by a crazy thought. “Don’t shoot the Vos!”
“What?!”
“Don’t shoot them! Maybe they’ll take out a drone.”
“This seems like a very, very bad idea.” Beryl didn’t necessarily disagree with Vlad’s statement, but she wasn’t going to admit that.
“Do you have a better one?”
The phone went silent as two of the four drones turned their guns on the Vos to Beryl’s left.
Without warning, the two Vos raised their heads and let out their hunting call. So close to them, the piercing tone caused Beryl to put her hand not holding her gun to her left ear. Next to her, Camp cowered on the ground and put his paws over his head, as if he was trying to physically block out the sound.
Beryl knew she should probably stay hidden behind the rock, especially now that there were six things in the clearing that wanted to kill her, but she couldn’t keep herself from watching to see how the scene played out.
As if they had communicated the attack to each other—something which would not have surprised Beryl—both Vos attacked the two closest drones in a choreographed-looking lunge.
The drones seemed to have no idea what hit them.
Each Vos grabbed a drone, shaking their heads back and forth the same way they did when killing their prey, almost like a dog attacking a toy.
It was only then that the pair of drones began shooting again, each of them taking on its own Vos.
Unlike their smart bullets, though, the bullets now pelting the Vos did not explode the dinosaur-like creatures.
The problem the drones were about to have was immediately obvious to Beryl. The thick skin of the Vos was not repelling the bullets, but they weren’t fully penetrating their skin, either. From where she was standing, it looked like the bullets were nicking the skin of the Vos, leaving bruises and sometimes a little blood, but not much more than that.
The major effect of the bullets was clear, though: they were pissing off the Vos.
The Vos closest to Vlad tossed the drone in its mouth toward the woods, where it smashed into a tree in a metallic crash, like a car accident. Now, without a drone in its mouth, the Vos decided to rectify that situation by going after the drone shooting at it. The drone was not fast or nimble enough to escape the giant creature, which soon had it in its mouth.
Directly in front of Beryl, the same scene replayed with the other Vos.
As the Vos in front of her attempted to destroy the drone now in its mouth, Beryl looked toward the one the Vos had tossed so easily into the woods. It was resting on the ground and looked worse for wear, but even slamming into a tree at high speed hadn’t destroyed it. Slowly, as if it was waking up from a nap, the drone rose back into the air. It took a second or two once it lifted up off of the ground before the drone seemed to remember what it was doing, but then it flew back into the fight. It was moving slower, but it definitely had not been destroyed.
Beryl watched as the two Vos tossed the drones around some more, while the drones continued to fight back. The Vos were both bleeding from the many bullets that had shot them, while the drones similarly seemed to be suffering from their own injuries. Their outsides were dented, and two of the drones were each missing a gun. Another was wandering the
clearing randomly as if something had happened to the system that allowed it to fly.
If she had to choose sides, Beryl would have to give the fight so far to the Vos. However, it seemed pretty close to an even match. If her life wasn’t hanging in the balance, Beryl thought it would have been the sort of thing others would have gambled on.
Who was she kidding? If the planet wasn’t under attack, others would have gambled on this, whether or not her life was on the line.
The Vos nearest to Beryl grabbed one of the drones missing a gun and shook it yet again. It tossed it again, but this time, instead of tossing it toward the woods, the Vos tossed it toward the Rocks.
Beryl watched the metal object arc through the air, striking a rock above her head in a shower of sparks from the metal and rock collision.
As it had when it hit the trees previously, the drone sank to the ground.
Only this time, instead of falling to the ground at the edge of the clearing, the drone fell into the small area behind the rock where Camp and Beryl crouched.
“Oh, shit.” Beryl heard the words come out of her mouth as the drone slowly rose from the ground, its lone remaining gun mere inches from where she stood.
It wasn’t shooting at her yet, but it was only a matter of time before it would.
Beryl watched the drone turn, allowing its camera to re-orient itself in what was a new location.
At most, Beryl realized she only had a few seconds to make a decision before the camera saw herself and Camp. At worst, she had even less time.
That didn’t give her time to do anything but react. And the only option she had was to get out of the enclosed space before she found herself at the wrong end of the drone’s gun.
Beryl lifted Camp up, helping him scramble up the rocks he couldn’t clear without her help. She climbed up after him, dropping into the clearing next to where the dog now stood.
Beryl had decided to take her chances with the Vos.
In the clearing with the two Vos, that suddenly didn’t seem like it had been a good choice.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vlad yelled, loud enough for her to hear it without her phone.
“A drone fell behind the rock with me. Coming out here seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You couldn’t have shot it through the camera?”
Beryl hadn’t thought of that, but she realized it wouldn’t have worked. “And explode the thing in the Hole? The shrapnel would have killed me.”
“And those Vos are somehow not going to kill you out there?”
Beryl didn’t answer, because right now, it did seem that the Vos were going to kill her. She and Camp stood with their backs to the rock they had climbed over. She tried to take the whole scene in, wondering which of the creatures or drones was going to notice them first and become the last thing either of them saw.
It turned out, it was one of the drones.
Its camera noticed her first. The drone turned its guns toward her, which is when Beryl saw she was almost entirely out of options.
Beryl did the only thing she could at that point: she pointed her own gun at the drone, hoping she could get a good shot off at its camera. Vlad had destroyed the one drone that way, the only one that they had managed to demolish.
If she couldn’t do that, Beryl knew she was pretty much screwed.
Beryl aimed her gun at the drone’s camera and closed her eyes, not wanting to see it if the drone got a shot off at her before she got a shot off at it.
And then, Beryl heard a sound like an engine shutting down, and a relative silence descended upon the clearing as the noise from the drones stopped.
Beryl opened an eye as the guns of the drone in front of her dropped toward the ground, limply dropping like they had run out of energy. The camera stopped its near-constant moving and searching, now locked in place.
Beryl looked toward the other two drones in the clearing, unable to see the third one in the Hole. She couldn’t see the one in the Vos’ mouth well, but the one that was currently shooting at the Vos seemed to have had the same thing happen to it as the one in front of her. It hung limply in the sky as if they had stopped receiving any commands.
Like they were dead.
And then Beryl knew exactly what had happened.
Iris had disabled the drones.
She had cracked the defenses of the Earth AI.
Beryl smiled, despite the situation in which she found herself.
The Vos nearest Beryl grabbed the drone which had been about to shoot her. Like it had done several times before, it shook it and tossed it toward the woods.
Except for this time, when the drone crashed against the tree, it fell to the ground and didn’t get back up.
In short order, the two Vos took out the two other drones, while the one which had cornered Beryl in the Hole remained unseen, apparently unable to get out from behind the rock.
Beryl felt her shoulders relax, the danger of the drones gone.
It was a short-lived relief.
With the drones destroyed, the two Vos turned toward Beryl. Once again, they seemed to coordinate their moves, as if they were dancers intent on destroying Beryl.
The two Vos let out their piercing call together, and Beryl felt every hair on her arms stand up.
The Vos each took a step nearer to Beryl.
From the rocks, Beryl saw Vlad crawl out of the cave, and Beryl realized she was going to be OK. From its trusty place at her side, Beryl drew her gun. As if they, too, were coordinating their actions, Vlad did the same.
Their weapons may not have been effective against the drones, but Beryl did know something they were effective against.
“Thank you,” Beryl said to the two Vos in front of her, still sure of what she had to do, but grateful for the unlikely creatures who had arrived to save them.
She pulled the trigger, and the Vos in front of her exploded, destroying the creature in a shower of the animal’s former insides. Next to it, Vlad’s bullet did the same to the second Vos.
Beryl had never been so happy to be covered in the foul-smelling guts of a Vos.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Beryl checked her gun yet again, as she had been doing regularly since the Bird departed the surface of Columbina. This time, she also touched the armor at her chest, beneath which she could feel the emerald her father had given her.
Even though he was flying the Bird, Vlad caught her out of the side of his eye from where he sat next to her in the pilot’s seat.
“Do you think something has changed in the last ten seconds since you last checked it?”
“How about you shut up and fly the plane,” she responded from the seat next to his.
Behind them, all twelve other seats on the Bird were full. Beryl didn’t have to look to know she was not the only one obsessively checking his or her weapon.
After all, it wasn’t every day any of them flew into space to take over a spaceship.
Like Vlad and Beryl’s normal days in the jungles of Columbina, though, the beachy tunes of Jimmy Buffett accompanied them to their destination. This was one of Vlad’s favorites, Beryl knew.
“Yesterdays are over my shoulder,” the voice of the singer came through the ship’s speakers, a bit of comfort to Beryl with its familiarity, “so I can’t look back for too long.”
Today, Beryl almost liked the music. Perhaps Vlad was converting her to a fan of his music after all these years.
Beryl couldn’t see them out of the Bird’s front windshield where she sat, but she knew two other Birds were in formation behind them. On them, another 28 people were preparing to storm the Earthlings’ ship, though unlike those around her, they likely weren’t being forced to listen to a song someone had long ago sung about traveling on Earth.
In front of them, the Earthlings’ ship loomed large, growing closer by the second. It already took up most of Beryl’s view out of the front of the Bird, a giant grey hulk of a ship that had somehow traversed space to arrive at the
ir own small planet, looking to pick a fight.
And a fight they were going to have, even though the odds did not seem to be in favor of the Columbinians. There would be 42 of them attempting to take over a ship of AI and what could be hundreds of humans.
The best advantage they had on their side was Iris. Without her, they wouldn’t have even attempted what seemed to Beryl to be an insane mission to take over the Earthlings’ ship.
*
Having killed the Vos, Beryl and Vlad had returned to the Caves.
They had entered jubilant, the conquering heroes over the Earth AI and their drones. They had faced the enemy, and come out triumphant.
The mood had not lasted long.
It turned out, it was hard to celebrate anything when every few minutes brought another injured body through the doors.
Even worse were the lifeless bodies who came in.
At the end of the day, there had been seven of the latter.
Seven Columbinians who had survived traveling through space and settling a planet where many of the animals wanted to kill them, only to be slaughtered by technology from their home planet.
If there had been a consolation in losing those Columbinians, Vlad knew it was that, based on how the second round of drones had fought, the numbers could have—should have—been higher. It seemed that the drones had difficulty fighting in the woods, which had saved most everyone. Those who were killed had almost all been killed in open areas, where the second round of drones had an advantage. And most of the injuries were easily handled by Iris and the planets’ doctors.
Still, when you only had 350 people on a planet, losing seven was a substantial percentage of the population. That everyone knew the men and women who had been killed only made it more difficult to see each body come through the door.
Harrison.
Kang.
Lona.
Lee.
Bo, Fawn’s son.
And then, the sixth person: Reed.
After what had happened with Beryl the day before the attack, Vlad had kept an eye on Reed. His temper worried Vlad, who wondered if the man would try to go after Beryl for humiliating him in front of so many people.
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