Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Baby? You’re having a bad dream. Calm down. Dee is here on the ship safe and sound for once.” Moore patted his wife on the back and then squeezed her shoulder. He adjusted his position so he could look at her without twisting his neck in too harsh a direction. “Everything is fine.”

  “No. Where is Dee? Something isn’t right.” Sehera rose, and Moore watched as the distant starlight and light from the planetoid facility below washed over her naked body as she rose from the covers. Sehera grabbed her AIC wristwatch. Moore still couldn’t get over how she wouldn’t have an implanted AIC, but after what Sehera had seen happen to her mother, he understood.

  “Pamela,” she said out loud to her AIC assistant, “find Dee.”

  “Sweetheart, calm down. You were having a nightmare.” She was always the overprotective one, he thought. Dee was a badass Marine fighter pilot and their daughter. She could take care of herself.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I cannot detect Deanna Moore’s present location,” The AIC responded.

  “Alexander?”

  “Hold on. That can’t be right. Abby, vocal. Where’s Dee?” he said, rising up, only slightly more concerned. Dee could take care of herself and he had never thought Pamela was all that smart of an AIC, but his wife liked her so he kept his mouth shut.

  “Sir, I cannot see Dee’s locator beacon,” Abigail replied over the room speakers.

  “What? Can’t be. She was ordered to stay on this ship. Did she snap back somewhere?” Moore stood up from the bed now and started pulling on his underwear.

  “No, sir. No QMTs have taken place other than the shuttle earlier.” Abigail sounded perplexed. Alexander didn’t like that. Dee could take care of herself, but in the end she was still his princess.

  “Then how did she get off the ship and out of locator range?” he asked.

  “I never said she was off the ship, sir. I said I can’t detect her. In fact, I can’t detect anybody in the forward starboard third of the ship.”

  “What does that mean, Abby?”

  “We’re being jammed, sir.” Abigail paused briefly. “And Dee must be in that section of the ship.”

  “Alexander!” Sehera snapped. “They’re onboard the ship!”

  “I agree. Fucking bots.” Moore toggled the closet open and took a deep breath. “Abby, fire up my suit and sound the alarms. Get Uncle Timmy running the drill.”

  “Pamela, get my suit online,” Sehera said. Moore turned and saw her standing naked by her closet, rolling her neck from side to side and doing pre-suit-up stretches. He started to tell her he could handle this until he thought better of it.

  “Moore to XO!”

  “XO here. What’s up, sir?”

  “Firestorm, we’ve got bots on the ship in the front starboard third. Get me a battle plan and get me troops down there. I also want a list of crew unaccounted for. They are likely in there.” Moore stepped into the back of his suit. The organogel layer made a schlurrping sound as he wiggled into it. He could hear Sehera making it into her suit as well.

  “Aye, sir! Thirty seconds,” USMC Brigadier General Sally “Firestorm” Rheims responded.

  The bosun’s pipe sounded throughout the ship and several klaxons went off. Then the familiar voice of Uncle Timmy, the ship’s AIC commander, came over the 1MC intercom.

  “All hands, all hands, battlestations and to arms. Hostile forces are onboard the ship. Repeat, hostile forces are onboard the ship.”

  Abby, we ready?

  Yes, sir. You want a chill pill or some stims?

  Negative. Just ammo. Lots of ammo.

  Master Gunnery Sergeant Tommy Suez had hoped for some fun working out in his suit in the abandoned decks of the ship. He finally had some “me” time for once, which was something that a sergeant never had. He was spending it in complete communications silence, surrounded by attacking, menacing artificial, intelligence, controlled killer robots. And the motherfuckers just kept coming.

  Fortunately for him, the largest of the bots were the small buzzsaw bots that were about the size of a bulldog. While they weren’t necessarily easy to kill, they weren’t hard to kill either, at least not for a kickass Marine.

  Jackie, can you get any messages out?

  Negative.

  Keep posting our egress route. See if you can get the ship’s lights on, he thought to his AIC. Tommy hated being all by himself and being overwhelmed by bots. He was most concerned about how much ammo he had. He hadn’t been planning on actually shooting at anything when he’d left his quarters.

  Tommy dove headfirst through a hatch leading into an outer corridor that ran close to the exterior hull of the ship. There were energy conduits, large energy conduits, running from fore to aft of the ship. He suspected they were the DEG power tubes.

  He turned as fast as he could get to his feet and dogged the hatch down tight onto two bots that were right behind him. He slammed the hatch so fast that one of the bots was torn in two. Sparks and shrapnel flew, but the damned thing still chomped and buzzed at him with its front legs dragging it along. The other one had made it through and was wrapped up on his leg, digging into his suit. Tommy could suddenly feel searing hot metal tearing into his leg.

  “Shit! Get off me!” he screamed and kicked the thing loose. He reached down, grabbing the broken bot by the front right leg, and did a backflip over the other bot. Using the broken bot as a war club, he smashed the other one across the back, snapping metal structure. He jumped and came down onto the thing with both feet and all the massive weight of the armored suit. Tommy twisted his heels into the bot until its lights went out. Then he battered the broken one against the bulkhead until it was dead as well.

  “I hope that door holds them a while,” he said to nobody in particular, and then bounced aftward as fast as he could.

  Dee rolled over atop Davy, still in the throes of lovemaking. Dee had never really been in love, and she had been sexually active for more than a decade, but with Davy it was always different, better, in a good way.

  “Oh God, Davy, yes . . .” she whispered, and leaned back, putting her hands on his shins and letting go.

  Bang, clank, bang, clank.

  “What the hell—” Davy leaned over as light came around the corner and a fully armored Marine slid to a halt just before he crashed into them. The floods from the suit turned and illuminated the two of them.

  “What the—” Dee covered her breasts and scrambled off of Rackman.

  “Uh, sorry, ma’am. Sir. Had no idea anybody else was here.” The Marine’s voice was familiar. It was the top sergeant.

  “Gunny, please kill the light.” Dee scrambled for her clothes and started to talk but was interrupted.

  “No time for pleasantries, ma’am, sir. This whole area is filled with bots and they are right on my ass! Do you have armor or weapons?” Tommy asked. He turned and shined the light back up the corridor looking for bots.

  “Bots!” Rackman jumped up instantly, grabbing his clothes and knife. Dee could see him in the mix of red light from the grill and the reflected white floods from the armored suit, scrounging through their packs.

  “Why haven’t we been warned?” Dee asked, sliding her tank top over her head and pulling it down. She then pulled up her shorts and put on her running shoes.

  “Sensors are jammed and I’ve got no com to anywhere,” Suez replied.

  The bosun’s pipe sounded throughout the ship and several klaxons went off. Then the familiar voice of Uncle Timmy, the ship’s AIC commander, came over the 1MC intercom.

  “All hands, all hands, battle stations and to arms. Hostile forces are onboard the ship. Repeat, hostile forces are onboard the ship.”

  “Son of a bitch, we’re sitting ducks.” Dee thought for a second on plans of action. Davy pulled her to him and handed her an M-blaster that he’d had in his pack. He had another one in his right hand at the ready.

  “Put this on,” Rackman said to her as he handed her an armored ammo vest.

  “That’s my S
EAL,” she said, and pulled the vest over her tank top. The weight of the armor felt good against her breasts, but she knew it was a false sense of security. The bots could tear into an E-suit. The light armor flak jacket wouldn’t slow them down very long.

  “We need to move. Fast,” Gunny Suez told them. “I locked them out fifty meters or more down the corridor but they’ll find a way in.”

  “Let’s go then.” Davy sealed the auto fastener on his flak jacket and held the M-blaster at the ready. “For now on, I’m carrying an HVAR everywhere I go.”

  “Not so sure about that, Lieutenant,” The sergeant replied. “I’m running out of ammo, but those handguns will run for years on one power cell.”

  “We should just snap back to a safe location on the ship, like the ops medbay aft of the ship,” Dee suggested.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Suez replied. “Won’t work. I’ve already tried the emergency snap-back when I was overrun a bit ago. It’s being jammed.”

  “No shit?” Davy tapped a command into his wristband, but nothing happened. “Dammit!”

  “If it don’t work, it don’t work. Just like on every other bot base we’ve been to. They’ve got QMT jammers. I’ll take point,” Dee said. She snapped a flashlight onto her vest and started to run.

  Bree, get Daddy, she thought to her AIC.

  I’m doing what I can to contact Abigail, Dee, but I’m having no luck, her AIC responded.

  Keep trying.

  Damnit, Abigail! Get Dee on the line!

  No luck yet, sir, Abigail said into Alexander’s mind. That part of the ship is being jammed from coms and any QMT tech.

  Alexander Moore bounced and boomed down the hallway like a bowling ball tied to the tail of an elephant with rockets attached to its feet. The booming of his jumpboots slamming into the deck plating with each armored step was nearly deafening. It was all Sehera could do to keep up, but he had told her that he was getting to Dee as fast as he could. Sehera had told him to go faster.

  Sir, I have an idea, Abigail said in his mindvoice.

  What?

  I think the intercom is working throughout the ship. The bots can’t jam soundwaves and hardwires. I’m going to take them over and turn all the mics on to see if I can talk to Dee.

  That’s my girl. Do it.

  Alexander held his rifle at the ready and had the visor on full visual. The floodlights of the suit were on full and he had earlier given Abigail the order to turn every light on she could find.

  “Hang in there, princess. Daddy’s coming!”

  “We’re a kilometer from the next hatch and the bots are going to be faster than us on foot,” Dee said. “They’ll beat us there.”

  “Well, it won’t be long before they tear off the hatch I dogged down just a quarter of a kilometer behind us,” Gunny Suez replied.

  “Maybe they won’t think of heading us off,” Davy added.

  “You knew that was stupid when you said it, right?” Dee retorted.

  “Attention! Deanna! Deanna Moore! Can you hear me?” buzzed over the intercom speakers.

  “Uh, yes? Abigail, is that you?”

  “Yes. Hold for your father—”

  “Dee! Where are you?” Alexander Moore’s voice came over the intercom.

  “Daddy, uh, sir, Gunny Suez, Lieutenant Rackman, and I are in the lowermost and outermost corridor by the DEG conduits. We are about a klick from the midcorridor hatch,” Dee said between heavy breaths as she ran. “We think we’re surrounded by bots.”

  “Are you armed or armored?”

  “Gunny is in his suit and getting low on ammo. Rackman and I are not armored but we have blasters.”

  “Understood. Shit, Dee, you move fast. You get to that hatch. You hear me! You get to that hatch. I’m coming! Gunny, you keep them fucking bots off my little girl!”

  The intercom buzzed and went to static and then silent.

  “Shit, they cut the intercom.” Rackman said.

  “Let’s keep moving to that hatch,” Gunny Suez said.

  Behind them came the screech of metal tearing away and then slamming to the deck. The hull reverberated with the sound of buzzsaws scratching against metal.

  “We’re not going to make it. We need to find a way to hole up and fight these things off until help arrives.”

  “My thoughts exactly, Captain Moore,” Suez replied.

  Dee started looking around for some niche or something to hide in but the corridor was fairly straightforward with nothing but the occasional I-beam and conduit tube running here or there. Then a few meters up was another engineering cubby like the one that she and Davy had used as their campground. It wasn’t quite as big—it looked as if it was there to allow techs to get in behind the DEG power grid and conduct some sort of maintenance on it.

  “Here,” Davy pointed. “We get in here behind the conduits and hold them off. At least this way they can only come at us from the front.”

  “Good. It’ll have to do,” Dee said. She dropped to her belly and crawled under the large-meter-in-diameter tubes into the cubbyhole. The niche was about two meters wide and ran a good five meters from floor to ceiling. Davy jumped up on top of the metal conduits and dropped in beside her.

  “You shoot high and I’ll shoot low,” he told her.

  “Sirs,” Gunny Suez turned to them, “I’ll stay out here and fight them off of you. If you two would be so kind as to keep them off me as best you can, we might be able to hold out until backup gets here.”

  “Right. Thanks, Gunny.” Dee looked at the Marine’s face through his visor. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She knew what she was thinking. She was thinking she was scared and vulnerable as hell.

  The screeching and squealing grew louder.

  “Here they come!”

  Chapter 14

  November 7, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 5:11 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Alexander, do you hear that?” Sehera asked over the tac-net. So far it wasn’t jammed—at least in the hundred meters or so between them.

  “Yes. There’s a fight up ahead, it sounds like,” Alexander replied. “Stay back until I see what it is.”

  Two levels up from where Dee was, Alexander turned from the main corridor into the central hangar bay to a sight he wasn’t expecting. The bay was full of bots, and tanks in bot mode were stomping around the hangar crashing into them and fighting them hand to hand.

  Abby?

  Comms are working, sir, the AIC replied.

  “Warlord One, copy?” Alexander said.

  “General Moore?” Warboys’ voice came through. “Sir, I’ve got you on Blue force tracker. You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “Mason. My daughter is pinned down two decks below and forward about a klick. She has no armor and only a blaster. We have to get to her.”

  “Uh, yes, sir. Understood. Hold on—let me find a route,” Warboys responded. Alexander targeted a path across to the tank squad commander and bounced toward him, taking out several bots with his HVAR, fists, and his boots along the way.

  “These damned things are no match for tank armor, sir. But, we can’t move throughout the ship; only in certain places,” Warboys explained. “We’re just too big.”

  “Understood. Make a hole. We’ll fix the ship later,” Moore ordered.

  “My thoughts exactly, General.” Warboys agreed. “You might want to cover your ears.”

  Just as Alexander landed on the giant mechanized right shoulder of Warlord One’s bot-mode hovertank, the main cannon spun around and aimed at the deck. A large purple plasma ball flung from the muzzle, recoiling the gun nearly a meter. The tank barely moved but the blast wave almost tore Moore loose. He managed to grab hold and stay on the tank.

  Sparks flew and molten metal sprayed in every direction. As the smoke cleared Alexander could see a hole in the deck of the ship that was big enough for a tank to drop through, which they promptly did. He heard a deafening me
tal-on-metal clank as they landed on the deck below. The bot-mode tank had dropped twenty meters to the deck of the next level, slamming hard enough into the plating to leave huge indentations with its feet.

  “Warlords Two and Four, cover this exit and don’t let any bots get through it. I don’t want them coming up behind me and biting me on the ass!” Warboys ordered to his team.

  “My wife is not far behind me, please see to her safety,” Moore added.

  “Understood, sir,” Warlords Two and Four replied.

  “We need to move outward as best we can before we drop down to the next level. Shit!” Warboys said.

  “What is it?” Alexander asked.

  “I just lost all sensors. The bots are jamming me. We’re flying blind now,” Warboys said.

  Alexander looked at the corridor. There was only one hallway large enough for a tank in any mode and it was behind them, in the wrong direction. The bay they had dropped to was the maintenance bay. There were several fighters, tanks, and suits scattered about in work stations.

  “Mason, we have to get down there fast as we can.”

  “Well, sir, without sensors it is difficult to know what we can safely knock out of the way and what we can’t.” Mason had a point.

  Abigail, search schematics of the ship and find me the route for knocking out a path to Dee. If you need to get the CHENG online do it.

  Sorry, sir, but there isn’t a safe path from here. The main directed energy gun power systems run through this section of the ship. I wouldn’t recommend it. Too bad we can’t get to the outside of the ship.

  What do you mean?

  There is only one level of vacuum hull between Dee and the outside as best I can pinpoint her location. And there is only one return power tube on the outer wall of the corridor they are in.

  Shit! I’ll go on foot from here then. Moore jumped down from the tank, landing on the deckplate at full sprint.

  “Thanks for the lift, Mason. Get back to your team,” he ordered.