The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1)

by John Triptych

  “Goddamn it,” Matt said. “How do those things see us?”

  “If we are to compare it with the last encounter,” Maia said. “These robots apparently use a combination of motion, lidar and infrared sensors in order to determine the whereabouts of obstacles in front of them.”

  “Okay, so if we don’t move, that takes care of one sensor,” Darian said.

  Looking at the camera feeds, it was obvious that the centaurs had now made it to the common area module, and their tentacles were stabbing upwards through the ceiling, checking to see if anyone was hidden in the upper bunk beds. Matt silently cursed. He wished he had made a request for grenades and other explosives, but all they had now were firearms.

  “Maia, try to lock every door so it will slow them down before they get here,” Stilicho said. “Is there a way you could raise the temperature to mess with their infrared?”

  “Yes, there are heater modules in every compartment,” Maia said. “I could activate them all.”

  “Do it,” Stilicho said as he dashed over to an adjoining door. “Where does this lead to?”

  “Looking at the schematics, the adjoining corridor will give you access to the greenhouse module,” Maia said.

  Stilicho opened the pressure door and gestured at the other two. “Let’s go.”

  Darian bounded over to him. “We’re not going to make a stand here?”

  “No cover for us to hide behind,” Stilicho said. “Come on.”

  Matt brought up the rear as they moved quickly through the adjoining corridor and into the greenhouse. The room was the biggest they had seen so far. The cavernous ceiling was much higher than in the previous compartments, with attached heating lamps that extended on down to the rows of trays containing brown dirt. Matt smiled. He could see the logic in Stilicho’s plan.

  “Maia, can you turn on all the heat lamps to maximum power please,” Stilicho said as he crouched down and examined the rows of cabinets below the trays. There was enough space for them to hide inside the small repositories, but they would have to be lying horizontal. He looked up at Matt. “What do you think? Good place to hide in?”

  Matt shook his head. “Once you get into one of these cabinets, you’d be stuck- if they find you, you’d be a sitting duck. I think the best thing to do is to crouch down in between the rows and just move around back and forth- away from their sensors until they leave.”

  “You mean just sneak around them?” Darian said. “What if they split up or move quickly?”

  Matt was observing the remote video feed of the centaurs on his smartglass visor. The robots were moving systematically and leaving nothing untouched. He detected a pattern. “The way they search is using a grid. If we sneak behind them, they won’t know it. We just have to time our movements so that we don’t get in their field of view as they go through this place.”

  Stilicho opened the pressure door at the opposite end, in order to make it look like they had moved on. “Okay, let’s do this.”

  By now the heating lamps had gone to maximum brightness, casting a blazing incandescence over the beds of dirt. Once they observed the centaurs making their way through the adjoining corridor, the three of them split up and instantly got into a squatting position, out of sight from anyone standing in the room. The moment the centaurs entered the greenhouse, their AI cores were taken aback by the intense heat being generated by the greenhouse lamps. With their infrared sensors not helping, the pair switched to motion sensors and lidar. The two centaurs began to move parallel with each other, their horse-like bodies scraping along the sides of the tables as they clomped slowly through the narrow spaces in between.

  Darian exhaled slowly the moment one of the centaurs moved past her as she lay crouching in an alcove. She quickly sneaked into a small space in between two rows of tables, just before the robot turned and scanned the exact spot where she had just been huddling in. The centaur could have easily sensed her heat trail, but with the greenhouse lamps on full power, Darian’s infrared signature was masked by the more intense heat sources around her. With nothing else registering in its processing core, the creature turned back and resumed its room-wide search while moving ever farther away from her.

  Matt was at the opposite side as he timed his subtle movement perfectly, silently evading the other centaur by actually leaping over one bare table, using the low gravity to vault up past the countertop, before diving back down into a parallel walkway. The centaur had its back turned as it was scanning in the opposite direction and missed him completely. Matt got back into a squatting position as he readied his carbine. Now that he was behind them, he would be able to strike at their vulnerable spots.

  Beads of sweat began to form on Stilicho’s forehead. He was caught in between the two centaurs, and he couldn’t find the right opportunity to get behind them. Every time one robot faced the other way, the other would be looking at his direction. He had to retreat back slowly, and the centaurs in front of him were now moving along the last set of rowed tables. Stilicho was running out of space. If he didn’t make his move, they would surely find him.

  Matt could see from the overhead video feed in his visor that Stilicho was in trouble. He wanted to break cover and open fire, but he knew that he would only get one chance. If he failed to disable both robots, then their tentacles could do tremendous damage since Stilicho was well within their attack range. He needed to find a distraction. Matt opened up a low cabinet beside him, took out a small plastic container that held some soil samples and threw it across the room. The box seemed to float in the air as it traveled through the low gravity before finally landing on top of a nearby table. Both robots instantly twisted their torsos and began trotting backwards, their massive quadrupedial bodies unable to turn around due to the tight spaces in between the rows.

  Stilicho knew this was his chance. He started to make a dash towards the far side of the room, just as one of the robots twisted again, and the creature instantly spotted his movements. The centaur whipped out its right tentacle, hoping to skewer him. Stilicho saw the creature react to him, and he was able to slide along the dusty floor, the tentacle narrowly missing the top of his helmet as it smashed several trays sitting on the tables, spilling mounds of brown sand onto the floor of the compartment. The centaur had now logged his movement, and calculated the most likely spot where he went to. It would just be a matter of time now.

  Matt knew the ruse was up. He stood up in a shooting position and fired. His initial three-round burst impacted at the back of the other centaur that faced the other way, one bullet tearing through its main power cord. The lucky shot instantly cut off the central processing unit from the main battery of the creature, and the robot quickly shut down, its body locked into position, as if frozen in time. The second centaur sensed another hostile contact, and it began to whip its tentacles in multiple directions, overturning numerous tables and smashing through the contents of the greenhouse. Matt fired again, but this time the creature had twisted its torso to face him and his burst fire failed to penetrate the creature’s armored chest. He was able to duck down, just as the centaur’s metallic tentacle crushed the table that he was taking cover behind. The barbed tip of the tentacle connected with the muzzle of his carbine, severely damaging the carbon fiber barrel. Matt stood up and fired again, but this time the bullets began to tumble right out of the damaged barrel, severely reducing his accuracy, and his attack failed to damage the robot.

  Darian stood up in a triangle stance, and used the laser sight on her pistol to aim for the robot’s sensor cluster before firing. Her first shot bounced off the top metal divider, but her second bullet struck the creature right at its lidar sensor. The half-blind centaur went berserk. It started rotating its torso in full circles while extending its tentacles like a giant spinning saw blade. The unexpected savagery of the attack caught Darian by surprise as the spiraling tentacles caught the tip of her pistol and ripped it away. The NASA special agent tried to retreat, but she had misjudged the space behind he
r, and the life support backpack she wore collided with a tabletop. Darian slipped and toppled backwards while upturning a few more trays.

  The centaur started to angle its spinning attack downwards, as it began to rip apart the adjoining tables. Matt drew his pistol and started firing, but the creature was still facing him and his shots had no discernible effect. Holstering his pistol, Matt grabbed hold of a table and tried to use it as a battering ram against the robot, but the centaur’s damaged sensors were still able to detect a large object looming in front of it. The creature lashed out with both limbs, hoping to connect with whatever it was that was attacking it. The centaur’s right tentacle extended ahead of it and struck Matt in his upper left leg. The security officer groaned as he fell backwards, the pain of the deep puncture was enough to nearly put him in shock.

  Stilicho knew he had one chance. He could see that the robot had a battery pack that was jutting out from its back torso. It was common knowledge that robots could only see through their cameras and sensors, they had no sense of touch. With this robot’s severely damaged detection gear, he stood a good chance of disabling it, provided that the robot wasn’t aware of him. He got up and bounded over the top of the tables until he was just behind the centaur. With the robot’s attention turned towards Matt, Stilicho leapt onto the centaur’s horse-like body and used both hands to pull at the battery pack embedded on its back. The centaur continued to demolish the tables in front of it, completely oblivious to the man riding on its back. Stilicho tore away at connected wiring, before pulling at the power box with all his might. He encountered a mild electric shock at first, but the casing that surrounded the battery soon gave way and the centaur’s power was quickly disconnected. In less than a second, the robot’s tentacles went limp and it just stood there, like a statue.

  Darian ran over to where Matt had fallen. The security officer was writhing on the ground as he clutched at his leg. She knelt down beside him and examined the wound. There was a breach in the skinsuit, but the tear was no more than seventy-six millimeters in diameter. Darian took out a repair patch from her own suit pouch, peeled off one side to expose the adhesive and slapped it on. Matt continued to howl in pain.

  Just as Stilicho made it over to the two of them, the room began to shake as the western walls began to bulge inward. He looked up in shock. “Maia, what the hell is going on?”

  “Several more robots have converged upon the facility,” Maia said. “They are attempting to breach the compartment from the outside.”

  Stilicho grabbed Matt by his elbow and propped him up. “We gotta get outta here now.”

  Darian looked around. “Where are we gonna go?”

  Another robotic tentacle burst through the far wall of the greenhouse. The room was already in a state of rapid decompression because of the bullet holes and the exposed corridor that the two centaurs had emerged from. It was clear that the horde was trying to smash through to get at them.

  Stilicho pointed to a hatch up in the ceiling. “Up there.”

  It wasn’t much of an effort to pull Matt up because of the low gravity. Within a matter of minutes, the three of them were balanced precariously on top of the attached heating lamps as Darian began to pull at the levers to open the hatch above. Matt’s arm was draped over Stilicho’s shoulder. The security officer wasn’t saying anything, and his vital readouts were getting weaker, despite being only wounded in the leg. A third centaur started to push its way through the damaged walls, just as Darian was able to get the hatch open.

  “Go, go, go,” Stilicho said as Darian pulled herself up through the hatch. The creature tried to lash out with its tentacle at them, but it was too far. Darian finally made it up on the dusty roof as she knelt by the top of the hatch and extended her hand down below. Matt weakly put his arm up and Darian started pulling him through the hole, with a healthy assist from Stilicho. It took close to another minute, but Darian was able to bring Matt up through the opening.

  Stilicho made it halfway through the hatch, just as the third centaur finally tore through the hole in the wall and strode inside. It thrust out its barbed tentacle at Stilicho’s legs, but a last minute assist from Darian pulled him through the hatch and on top of the roof. Maia had activated the external floodlights, and when Stilicho stood up and looked around, he let out a curse.

  There must have been dozens of them on the ground below. They were in all shapes and sizes, from centaur-like robots to multi-tentacled monstrosities that resembled some sort of strange, extraterrestrial lifeform fashioned from steel and carbon-fiber parts; a teeming mass of metallic exoskeletons, actuators, and exposed wirings. One creature brought up a skeletal fist, alternately opening and closing it, as if it was gesturing that it would crush them in its hand. The robotic horde that faced them looked like a technological vision of hell conceived by a mad scientist.

  Darian tried to bring Matt up into a standing position, but the security officer slumped down on the rooftop. She could see that Matt’s pulse was rapidly weakening, and she didn’t know what the problem was. “Maia,” Darian said. “What’s wrong with him? I slapped the patch over his leg but it looks like he’s fading away.”

  “I cannot determine what his exact injuries are without proper medical instrumentation, but it seems that he may have suffered internal complications, perhaps his femoral artery was injured,” Maia said.

  Darian bit her lip. The femoral artery served as the body’s main blood supply to the leg. If Matt sustained a wound there then he must have been bleeding internally. “What can we do?” she asked.

  Matt looked into her face. Despite his decreasing strength, there was still a fire in his eyes. “You can’t do anything. Not while we’re outside. I’m going to bleed out, so it’s best you two get outta here.”

  Darian started to tremble. “But …. We can’t leave you behind like this!”

  Stilicho pointed towards the northern edge of the wall. “One of them is trying to climb up here.”

  Matt’s hands were numb from the blood loss, but he calmly drew his pistol from his hip holster and reloaded with a full magazine. “You two get going. I’ll hold them off.”

  A robot with a rounded torso that vaguely resembled a metallic sphere with attached tentacles climbed its way up at the opposite wall, but a few shots from Matt’s pistol made it waver, and it ducked down for a bit before trying again. Matt continued his fire to keep it at bay, but he had to reload a second time. His left hand had completely lost its feeling and it took him two tries to fit the magazine into the pistol grip of his handgun. He turned to look at Stilicho and Darian one more time. “Go already!”

  Stilicho nodded at him in respect as he tapped the outer edge of his helmet visor. “Maia, we need to get outta here and right now.”

  “Affirmative,” Maia said. “The robotruck is standing by. But if I move it now then the other bots would surely detect it and disable it before I could bring it over to you.”

  Stilicho gritted his teeth. “Where is it?”

  “Right underneath one of the panels in the adjoining solar grid,” Maia said. “Approximately twenty-two meters south of your position.”

  Darian looked out towards the south. No robots were around that area, but as soon as they started in that direction, the enemy would be after them. With the low gravity, they could easily leap down from the colony roof and run on top of the dusty solar grids that jutted out less than three meters off of the ground. She turned to look at Matt one more time and placed a hand on his shoulder. Matt nodded slightly.

  “On three then,” Stilicho said as Matt returned his attention at the robotic octopus trying to get at them. “Three!”

  Darian and Stilicho immediately began to sprint along the rooftop. Stilicho wasn’t as experienced in light gravity, and he would overcompensate his strides, which inadvertently make him leap higher in the air, slowing his pace. Darian was soon ahead of him as she made a short leap over the edge of the roof and landed on top of one of the solar panels that faced the M
artian sky. Darian began taking longer strides, leaping over two panels at a time, the readout on her visor indicating the direction as to where the flatbed truck was.

  Just as Stilicho landed on top of a solar panel, his boots slid out from under him due to the fine layer of dust on the strip, and he landed on top of the grid with his buttocks. The horde that was facing them on the ground instantly reacted, and two centaurs began galloping towards him, their tentacles uncurling. Stilicho quickly got up and began running after Darian, hoping that he could somehow get to the waiting flatbed before they could impale him.

  By the time the tentacle creature made it to the roof deck, Matt had lost consciousness. He lay out in a sitting position, the pistol on his lap. The robot briefly paused as it scanned his unmoving form and calculated he was no longer a threat. Nevertheless its AI directives had committed it to make sure, as the steel octopus used two of its limbs to sever Matt’s head from his body.

  Stilicho was nearly there as he saw the truck begin to move. “Maia, hold on!”

  The lead centaur whipped out its tentacle and missed the back of Stilicho’s head by a scant few millimeters as the ACE Corp troubleshooter leapt forward and landed onto the rear of the flatbed. Maia instantly accelerated and Stilicho was thrown backwards, nearly falling out of the truck until Darian grabbed him by his leg and kept him from falling any further. Darian pulled and Stilicho was thrown forward, falling face first onto the flatbed. As he struggled to get up, Darian took out the pistol that was in Stilicho’s hip holster and fired it at the pursuing centaurs. One of her shots grazed the top part of the enemy robot’s sensor package and the creatures slowed down, stopping their pursuit.