by M. D. Cooper
Tanis let Angela control their nano, sending it up the center gap between the doors, searching for bolts holding them together and to the cave’s ceiling.
Saanvi shrugged.
Tanis nodded.
the other AI replied.
Tanis laughed, shaking her head.
Joe crouched and leapt to the ceiling, grabbing hold of the lip around the top of the door, where he began releasing flowmetal.
While the others worked on opening the door, Tanis reviewed the scans that Sera’s nanoprobes had made of the room beyond. The space was a foyer of sorts, the far side lined with octagon-shaped windows looking into what had to be a control center. Doors on either side of the foyer connected the two, with another set of large doors on the left side.
Beyond those lay a curving passage that led to the reactor chamber.
She released additional nano, focusing on the foyer and the room beyond, looking for any signs of security drones or other defenses. The doors themselves had been constructed to keep a blast in, rather than enemies out, but that didn’t mean that the Sigs weren’t worried about sabotage or infiltration.
The control room beyond was more difficult to clear. Some of the consoles had active EM signatures, and conduit under the floor was carrying power as well—though some portions of the room were entirely dead.
There were no seating divots in the room, but based on how large the nests were elsewhere in the facility, she estimated that the space held fifty workers. A lot for managing a reactor, but then again, she had no idea what level of automation the Sigs utilized.
If they did share some attributes with ants, she could see them relying on people power versus tools, but that may be a behavior pattern that didn’t hold up once technology was introduced.
After all, humans used to do the same thing.
Tanis pulled herself from the examination of the reactor control room to glance back at the two Marines.
Tanis, Jason, and Saanvi tucked against the left wall behind Isabella, while Joe and Sera took the right side behind Roy.
Roy nodded, and he and Isabella threw their shoulders against the doors, their powered armor giving each one the strength of a dozen unaugmented humans.
This time, the creaks and groans were loud enough to travel through the thin atmosphere and the team’s clear helmets.
When the doors were open enough to admit one of the Marines, they stopped pushing, and Isabella unslung her rifle, stepping through first. Roy covered her until she reached the far wall, next to the right-hand door leading into the control room. Once she was in place, Roy followed after, Tanis and Jason moving to the opening to cover the Marines with their sidearms.
When Roy reached the far side of the foyer, everyone paused and waited for a ten-count, ready for any age-delayed security response. None came, and Tanis moved in next.
Angela said.
Angela supplied.
Tanis resisted commenting and instead nodded to Roy, who pushed the door wide and moved into the control room. She followed after, her left hand gripping her sidearm while her right hovered near her thigh, ready to draw her lightwand.
Other than the light scuffing of their boots on the ground, there were no sounds—virtually no light, either, just what Sera’s hoverlights provided from the passage outside.
A glow caught Tanis’s gaze, and she turned to see an illuminated panel on the wall not far from the door. She approached, staring quizzically at the small rectangle with several physical switches on it, each with a blue light beneath.
Tanis laughed and took a closer look at the row of switches. She supposed that ‘toggle’ would be a better word; rather than a narrow pole, each one had a wide paddle with an indent on either side—perfect for slotting a hook-clawed appendage into.
Deciding that, at some point, they’d have to push a button and see what happened, Tanis flipped up the left-most one.
A spark flashed from inside the panel, and the blue light went out, a red one appearing above. At first, no other change was apparent, but then a smattering of overhead panels began to glow.
Tanis nodded.
The others followed after, fanning out as Tanis fed nano into the switch panel, and traced the wires that ran through the wall and overhead. T
he two on the right were connected to electrical motors, and after figuring out where they led, she realized that the far wall wasn’t a wall at all, but shutters.
Throwing caution to the wind, she flipped the first switch, and shutters on the left side of the room opened up to reveal the telltale outline of a rather dilapidated triple-helix reactor.
What surprised her—and the others, if the shared expressions were any sign—was that the reactor was well to the left of the control room, with power lines running from it to a thick wall that lined up with where the right-side shutters started.
She pushed the toggle up, the blue light turning off, and the red sputtering on. A motor squealed as it struggled against the shutters, the wall coverings fluttering a few times before the squeal grew in pitch, cutting out abruptly.
Sera and Jason joined him, all three pushing up on the ten-centimeter shutters, which fought them the entire way. After a few seconds of straining, a loud snap came from the far end of the wall, and the shutters flew up.
Before anyone else could respond, Isabella called out from the foyer,
Her warning was followed by the sound of kinetic rounds striking the windows between the outer room and the control center.
Without a word, everyone hit the floor, working their way toward the windows—everyone barring Roy, who barreled toward the closest door, his A9-SCR railgun barking in the thin atmosphere as it spewed pellets through the opening and into the foyer.
Once Tanis reached the wall, she drew in half a dozen deep breaths, hyperoxygenating her lungs before sealing her nose, eyes, and ears against the cold air. Satisfied that she could survive ten minutes without air, she pulled off her helmet and activated her flow armor’s stealth capabilities.
An alert went up on the combat net; Isabella was down from wounds on her chest and right leg.
Joe and Jason had divested themselves of anything that couldn’t go stealth, and Tanis gestured for them to take the left door while she and Sera took the right.
Two of the enemy bots were in the foyer, each one moving toward one of the command center doors, while the others hung from the half-open doors, covering their counterparts.
The one closest to her door was fifteen meters away. Tanis didn’t wait any longer before darting out, moving toward the ten-legged machine with erratic bounds.
Her nano masked the crunch her feet made in the atmospheric snow that spread across the ground, but there was no hiding their imprints. Moving erratically was her safest bet—something that paid off, as the machine detected her first two sets of footprints and extrapolated her location.
Kinetic rounds sprayed through the air where she would have been if she’d not changed course. To her right, Sera took advantage of the bot’s distraction to leap toward it, sailing through the air to land behind the machine.
The drone’s laser turret pivoted, tracking her and getting off two shots before she hit the ground and rolled out of the weapon’s reach.
In the intervening seconds, she reached the bot, and after a moment’s thought, slid underneath it, narrowly avoiding one of its clawed legs as it turned to get a firing angle on Sera.
Once under the four-meter-long machine, Tanis drew her lightwand and toggled it on, letting the blade stabilize for a moment before slashing it up through the body of the machine.
Sparks flew from the gash, and the drone wobbled to one side. Tanis rolled to the other and sliced off two legs on her way out from underneath it.
Behind her, the bot hit the ground, spinning to the right, its kinetic weapon spraying rounds in a kamikaze death thrash.
Tanis smirked as she jumped into the air, landing on the bot’s back.
She grabbed the kinetic gun mounted on the spider-bot’s back and jerked it toward where the two bots hung on the doors—both currently spraying fire at Jason and Joe, who had taken cover behind the overturned, and now battered, body of the second drone.
The heavy rounds tore into the machine hanging from the far door, but not before the other drone swung out to fire on Tanis. It got off four rounds before Sera, who had been moving along the far wall, leapt into the air and drove her lightwand into the machine’s kinetic weapon, twisting the blade and cutting it from the Sig drone’s body.
A second later she was gone, and Tanis directed her machine’s dying fire to that target, knocking it from the door as Joe and Jason finished off the other.
Less than a minute after it had started, the combat was over, and Tanis turned back to the windows, shaking her head at the sight in the inner room.
CHAPTER 19 - KYLIE
STELLAR DATE: 01.05.8960 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: The Barbaric Queen, approaching Scorpii Minor
REGION: Pi Scorpii Beta, Independent Systems of the Lupus Cloud
Kylie stood on the bridge of the Barbaric Queen, watching as Rogers executed the final burns to enter a high orbit around the planet below.
Instead of her typical leathers, today she wore a floor-length, form-fitting ballgown—blue, because that was the best color for her—and her toes peeked out from beneath the satin trim. In lieu of a braid, her long, brown hair was pinned into rows of curls down her back.
“Keep the ship ready to go,” Kylie said as the pilot completed the last burn.
Rogers nodded. “You’ve got it, Cap. A moment’s notice, if that, is all we’ll need.”
“You can handle that and keeping the kids out of trouble?”
“Don’t worry. I have Chuck for the ship, and MFP to keep an eye on the kids.”
“NO HE DOES NOT,” Mr. Fizzle Pop grumbled from his chair on the other side of the cockpit. He stretched out his paws and laid his head back.
“There’s a pizza in it for you.”
Mr. Fizzle Pop huffed, his ears pulled back. “OK.”
Rogers shook his head. “That will never stop working.” He paused for a moment to check over his console. “Fifteen minutes till we’re in position. Special envoy for the duchess and her armed escort.”
“Here goes nothing,” Kylie sighed.
“Aw, you’ve got this. A transport shuttle will be waiting to take you to the party, and once you’re there, it’ll be easy. You’ve done this dozens of times.”
That was true, but most of those had been done with Marge. It had taken time for Kylie to manage her advanced nano without Marge’s help, ultimately requiring augmentations to handle it.
It wasn’t the nano that worried Kylie, but the choices she’d have to make in the field.
“Just mission jitters. It happens, right? Fly straight and true, Rogers.” She slapped him on the shoulder before making her way down to the airlock.
Marie sat outside the hatch, playing with her favorite NSAI doll. Kylie bent down and stroked her daughter’s chin.
Marie peered up at her with sad eyes. “When will you be back?”
“I won’t be gone long, back before you know it. You stay out of trouble. I hear Mr. Fizzle Pop is excited for one of your epic tea parties.”
Marie grinned and showed off her
tooth gap on the top row.
Kylie kissed her cheek once more. “Be good for Rogers and Burt. Tonight, we’ll read your favorite story.”
She stepped into the airlock after a final hug. Grayson stood by the mechanized door, fixing his bowtie, and gave a grunt of frustration. “You think they could find technology that would help these things stay straight.”
She slinked over to him and enjoyed straightening out his tie.
“Thank you,” he said. “Did you see Marie outside?”
Kylie nodded. “Sure did. She’ll be fine.”
“Of course she will. We won’t be gone that long,” Grayson said, just as he always did before they left on a mission. Even those they weren’t too sure about.
This one should at least be a simple in and out.
Behind them, Kylie heard heavy footfalls. She turned to see Winter approaching in a white suit and struggling pulling his sleeves down where they should go. “Why do I need to wear this thing again? I feel like a penguin.”
“Because we’re supposed to be a regal and refined group. I’m a duchess.”
Winter snickered. “You really think I’m going to fool someone in this?”
“You’re our bodyguard, which is exactly what you look like.”
“What’s a bodyguard without guns?” he argued. “I know I’m a lethal force, but if I could bring Dolph with me….”
“No one will let us on a shuttle if we’re packing that much heat,” Grayson said. “Do us a favor and stand tall, act grouchy, and try not to complain too much.”
“Complain?” Winter rose his eyebrows. “Since when have you known me to complain?”
Kylie and Grayson sighed.
Winter shrugged. “What?”
Kylie acknowledged, then opened the shuttle door. Grayson offered her his arm, and she readily took it while Winter walked behind them.
