This is terrifying. The agent froze as her many years of training dictated. House Archival might have been librarians and custodians of dry facts and histories, the Imperial Coalition’s memory, but their agents were just as highly-trained combat operatives as every other house. Only a House Archival agent had expressly been trained to be able to investigate and analyze situations in order to gain specific information.
Everything inside Milan’s body screamed at her to stand still until an opportunity presented itself to avoid certain death, but with great strength of will, she forced her legs to move, taking the first stone step down to the floor and then another, in the opposite direction that Irie had taken.
Whirr. Click.
“Yzyk-0^3!?” said the last, tallest of their colleagues, looking up at her over its mess of mouth-tentacles. It was the Q’Lot, clad in its now-dusty off-white and silver-edged robes. The thing’s head was encased in a large blue sphere that Cassandra had thought was some kind of visor containing breathable liquids, but she could see the thing’s face just as clearly as if it were just blue-colored air. The Q’Lot appeared agitated.
“It’s alright,” Cassandra tried to reassure her colleague. Was it the same one that had rescued her, and whom she had talked to in the Q’Lot ship? She didn’t know.
“Kelli-f4^ou-ikha!” The Q’Lot made a strange series of gargling and rasping noises, ending on a set of highly tonal trills like that of a songbird. Even the House Archival agent, trained in at least seven of the major languages and a further four of the minor ones to be found throughout the reach of the Imperial Coalition, still had no idea what it was saying unless it decided to speak human Old Earth Standard.
Which I know you can do. Cassie made slow, pacifying movements to her Q’Lot savior as she wondered whether the Q’Lot had a particular reason why they wouldn’t want to speak in human tongue. Did it pain them to make their mouth parts move in such ways? Or shame them?
I cannot explain to you what is going on, only that it is. Cassie willed her thoughts at the creature, knowing that it was useless. You just have to trust me…
Just as she just had to trust that Irie Hanson’s mental calculations had been right.
“Come on, Cassie!” Irie said in an overly enthusiastic and loud voice. “Once you get moving, you will start to feel better!” she said forcefully, all for the sake of whatever mechanical ears that their prison guards had installed on them.
I drekking well hope that you’re right, Irie. Cassandra took another step, expecting to feel the clamp of metal on her wrist or skewering through her ribcage at any moment. But it didn’t come.
“Yzyk-!” The Q’Lot started to wave its two larger, more humanoid arms.
No! What are you doing!? Cassie thought in alarm.
Click. Whirr. The assembled spider-drones easily split their numbers again, with a third concentrating on Irie’s movements, a third on Cassandra’s, and the last third now focused on the anxiously signaling Q’Lot.
It’s trying to help us out! Cassandra realized, by splitting the attention of the drones. The Q’Lot might not know what they were planning, but it was working as best it could with them, she saw. Filled with this opportunity, Cassandra took another step, and then another.
“Easy does it…” Irie said, waving her arms about her head as if regaining some life through them as she neared the far end of the chamber, near the exit.
Click. Click. CLACK! The nearest of the robot drones next to Irie moved to block any attempted passage into the tunnel, moving in one smooth, automated motion.
Had she pushed it too far? Cassandra locked up once again, and everyone stilled, taking a deep breath.
The spider-drones similarly stalled, as one.
Phew. There were no sudden movements from their captors, no screams from the engineer. Cassie started to move, trying hard to ignore the whirrs and tracking movements around her as she passed halfway, then most of the way to the other end of the room.
“Yzyk-! Yzyk-!” The Q’Lot resumed its frantic waving, and this time opened up its smaller midriff arms as well, further causing consternation amongst their watchful enemy.
I’m there! Cassandra reached the precisely smooth walls of stone and turned to see that Irie had similarly turned back towards her, nodding as she raised her own hand that held the Low Range Frequency Disruptor—
“Halt,” an oddly cultured voice burst into the room. It sounded almost human, Cassandra observed in an instant. Almost, except for the fact that it was being transmitted at the exact same time through whatever electronic speakers that each of these spider-drones had. The voice also displayed an oddly clipped sort of tone at the same time, as if the mind that the voice belonged to did not really understand human vocal subtleties.
Alpha. Cassandra grimaced, sweat beading on her brow. She knew that voice anywhere. She had been there when the thing was born and that it had announced itself to the world, after all.
“You are behaving with a forty-eight percent deviancy from human normal in all captor-hostage scenarios. Desist immediately,” Alpha stated.
Casandra looked at Irie, and even from the opposite ends of the room, she could see that the other woman’s eyes were round with worry.
Drekk this. Cassandra raised her own hand containing the device. I’m not taking orders from that thing anymore… She thumbed the button, making sure that Irie saw her do it, and hurriedly repeat—
“Halt!” the echoed voice of Alpha had a chance to say just as Cassandra felt an electric tingle spread along her arm, and every hair on her body started to frizz with the pregnant static energy she had introduced.
Do I keep my thumb on the button? She realized that she had no idea as she held the small thing out in front of her, copying Irie precisely.
The spider-drones had tracked their available talon-arms to the humans’ last movements, but they weren’t attacking. If anything, they appeared to be no longer moving at all, as the Q’Lot suddenly stood up, and elicited no response from any of the drones nearby. They all just stood stock still in their last positions.
“Looks good to me…” Cassandra hopped quickly to one side. Again, no movement. “We did it! These things worked!” she called out to Irie, who was already using her one free hand to pat down her suit and hurriedly draw out a small stick of something whiteish.
“Of course it worked! Just keep holding the button down until I can get the fixative in place!” Irie smeared the end of the white plasticine-like glob over the depressed button and waited, blowing on it to speed the drying time as it turned solid in moments. “Here. Do the same. Don’t stick your thumb to the damn thing.” Irie set her Disruptor on the floor and then threw the stick of plasti-crete adhesive expertly over the heads of the spider-drones for the House Archival agent to catch one-handed, before copying her.
“What do we do now?” Cassandra said. “The Alpha-vessel is in atmospheric orbit outside. It’s probably sending a new wave of something down here to get us…”
“It has to be here somewhere…” Irie had snagged more tools from her engineering pouches and was already half-scrambling over the nearest drone, looking for something. “We’ve been lucky. These spider-drones might be created by the most advanced machine intelligence the galaxy has ever known, but it made an awful lot of them in a short time, and that means that it’s easier to make from a template…”
Cassandra saw Irie’s face suddenly light up as she said, “Aha! Found it!”
“Found what?”
“I’ve seen something like these spider-drones before. I used to be a mech-builder before I was a starship engineer, right?” Irie moved one of the handheld tools to one side of the drone’s central body-power unit, and Cassandra heard a fizz as sparks leapt up from the tiny laser welder.
“Well, these spider-drones look based on an old exploration robot drone that Armcore used to build. Dead easy to build, and they all work on transmitters here, just under the right heat exchange vent.”
“The w
hat?” Cassie was frowning as she looked at the nearest stilled drone.
“Doesn’t matter. The little black grill on the side of the body? Under that is a round crystal-glass window. Smash it and the transmitter-receiver diodes behind it,” Irie stated, already burning out the crystal-glass window and the transmitter-receiver on the next spider-drone, and the next. “I recognized the build of the drone and figured, or hoped anyway, that the Alpha hadn’t had time to come up with any special design for them. But it looks like it didn’t!” she said happily.
Cassie Milan saw immediately just what she was looking for, and from her pockets drew forth the small concealed snub-pistol that she had hidden there.
FZZT! A single shot was all it took for the tiny crystal-glass porthole to burst open and the sensitive electronics on the other side to melt and twist. Cassandra instantly moved to the next one, and then the next, as she noticed that the Q’Lot who had helped them was also doing the same thing—just not with any welder or assassin’s pistol, but instead with one of its midriff claw-arms. All it took was one simple tap from the large, almost eight-foot-tall Q’Lot and the window and electronics behind smashed.
But even with the three of them, there were a lot of drones to cover, and all the while, Cassandra was painfully aware that the Alpha-vessel would probably have already strategized the perfect plan to counter their little mutiny and was already enacting it.
“How–how does this help us get out of here?” Cassandra said, panting as she completed her tenth or eleventh such emancipation.
“Probably doesn’t. But it’s an idea I have…” Irie stated, stopping on the last one and then proceeding to cauterize a hole through the top body and quickly drawing the connection cables from her own wrist computer to plug directly into it. “These things are all slaves, right? That’s how inter-linked mechas and drones work. It’s too much processing power to have attack and defense protocols and to think independently, so they slave their over-all mission intelligence to a controller—either a human pilot or, in our case…”
“The Alpha upstairs.” Cassandra saw immediately what she meant.
“Precisely. But they’re interlinked, as I said. We’ve cut the communication between Alpha and its toys down here, now we…” She turned and held her welder to the fixed Disruptor, for it to spark and flash in a small rupture of smoke.
“Same?” Casandra checked, pointing her snub pistol back at the Disruptor she had recently held. When Irie nodded, she expertly shot it into an exploded wreckage of metal.
“Now we tell them that they have a new master.” Irie’s fingers feverishly worked over her wrist computer’s holographic controls, and the singular spider-drone before her shook and shuddered for a moment, before turning back towards the passageway.
“We have to keep this one safe. All the rest will follow the orders I give it.” Irie dismantled the cables with a flourish, just as there was the sound of thumps and scrapes from far above them as something landed on the roof of the ziggurat and scrabbled to the hole that had let in this drone army.
“Now we run,” Irie said, already taking off with the master drone galloping just ahead of her, and instantly the wave of other freed spider-drones followed.
“There’s more following!” Cassie called as she ran beside the scuttling shape of one of the spider-drones at her side. They were charging down the tunnel that they had so recently charged up, but this time, their party was minus one Captain Eliard, and the spider-drones that surrounded them were their allies, not their pursuers.
Behind them, more of Alpha’s controlled drones were chasing them, having spilled into the gate room as soon as Irie and Cassandra had destroyed the low-range disruptors. Because the disruptors would kill Irie’s wrist computer connection to the Mercury Blade as well, Cassandra had heard her shout.
But Irie had sent messages through the master drone to the others for them to split their forces, with a sizable component staying at the back and forming a writhing, attacking wall against their own mechanical twins.
“Nothing we can do about that! We’ll have more up ahead, I’m sure of it!” Irie said as the caved-in boulders of their entrance met them. She quickly set the first wave of their slaved drones into making a tunnel through the rocks, and Cassandra caught her breath to the sound of metal arms pounding on rocks.
Crash! With a great billow of sand and rock dust, the way was clear, and instantly there was the whine and shriek of metal against each other as the forward line of freed drones met an approaching line of Alpha drones.
We just have to push on through… Cassie raised the Q’Lot weapon that she held in her hands. Their weapons had been ‘confiscated’ by the spider-drones when they had been under the control of Alpha, but with the disruptors, they had managed to find them—all in working order and thankfully not destroyed by Alpha’s minions.
“Dammit!” She couldn’t get a clear shot past the bodies of the spider-drones. In fact, she couldn’t even tell which of the writhing mass of metallic bodies were on their side and which were on the hybrid Valyien’s!
“There’s nothing we can do…” Irie said, gritting her teeth as she looked from her wrist computer to the fighting both in front and behind them, the master drone standing patiently at her side like a pet.
Crash! The only advantage that Irie and her robots had was that they had to fight in a confined space, and that Irie had no compunction against sacrificing the drones if it meant that she could take out more of the enemy. Cassandra watched as Irie worked on her wrist computer and one of the forward emancipated drones suddenly jumped forward, whirling its metal prehensile arms around itself in a spinning dervish-wheel against the front two Alpha-drones.
Whumpf! A bright flash of flame and light as the two Alpha drones blew up, taking out the dervish drone with it. Irie grinned savagely and activated the next of their freed drones to do the same, pushing deeper through to the mouth of the tunnel before performing its frenzied, maddened attack, and then the next, and then—
They were out!
Cassandra felt the sudden blanket of oppressive warmth fall on her shoulders and the glare of a distant sun as her feet gave way.
The humans and their drones were sliding down the weatherworn steps of the ziggurat, surrounded by the leaping and whirling shapes of Irie’s drones as the sky was filled with the sound of whirring and clanking.
There are so many! Cassandra gasped as two rival ‘streams’ of the Alpha drones catapulted through the air towards them, for the freed drones to rise just in time.
Fa-Thoom! Cassie had a better chance at shooting the drones now, using the Q’Lot rifle that looked more like a large bracketed conch-shell then it did any sort of weapon. The air in front of it miraged and doubled as the invisible energy fields hit some approaching Alpha drones, and they were torn apart by strange magnetic forces. The Q’Lot weaponry and ships were just as strange as the Valyien, she knew, but of a completely different nature.
Screeech! One of the Alpha drones landed just meters away from her in the sand dunes outside the half-sunken ziggurat, and Cassie swung the Q’Lot rifle around, only for them to sweep past her, heading for the nearest of the freed drones.
Fa-Thump! Thump! It was an easy thing to take the enemy robots out as their backs were turned to Cassie, but it made her stumble as she wondered, Why didn’t they attack me?
The protocol against killing them had to still be in place!
“Irie!” she shouted suddenly. Their battle wasn’t progressing. If Irie had meant to fight their way clear to where the Mercury Blade was still moored, then it was failing. Alpha had multiple times more spider-drones than they did, and they were bogged down right outside the ziggurat.
With the Alpha-vessel above… Her eyes caught sight of the great beast of alien technology that hovered over the ziggurat, its undercarriage wreathed in thunderclouds.
The Alpha-vessel was massive. Larger than even an Armcore war cruiser. It was also strange to look at, with its large humped ov
al of a body like a snail shell at one end, and the protruding ‘snout’ of four thin towers like lances for a prow, encrusted with globular, almost organic forms. Cassandra knew that the thing also had three super-large solar sails that it used as ‘fans,’ but they were reefed tight to the thing’s body as it hovered gargantuanly over the battlefield.
“What!?” Irie shouted back.
“They’re not trying to kill us!” Cassandra said, swallowing nervously.
Fa-THOOOM! An explosion threw the sand everywhere as one of the nearby spider-drones were destroyed. “You could have fooled me!” Irie screamed, rolling over the sand with the master drone at her side.
“They’re not! Rear-guard action!” Cassie snapped at her, pointing instead to the distant form of the Mercury Blade where it hovered over the sands. Irie took a moment to look at the battle raging around them and realized the truth of what Cassie was suggesting. In just those few heartbeats, there were multiple opportunities for Alpha’s drones to direct their attacks against the Q’Lot, Argyle Trent, Cassandra Milan or herself, yet they didn’t.
“You’re right,” Irie said, flicking her fingers through the holographic controls at her wrist several more times for the remaining emancipated drones to concentrate their attack into a tight wall on the other side of them. They would have to run for the Blade, but with the spider-drones concentrating on attacking the freed drones, Cassandra rather thought that it was the best chance they had.
“Go!” Cassandra called, already starting to run as Argyle Trent and the Q’Lot instantly outpaced them, before stopping at the next dune to turn and fire back over Cassie and Irie’s heads.
They ran, Cassandra’s feet being pulled at by the sand so that it felt like ten times the effort to get half as far if the surface had been solid rock. Behind them came the ever-increasing sound of explosions and rending metal.
They were halfway there. Irie started to activate the Mercury’s engines remotely, and Cassandra saw the dull glow of the thrusters powering up—
Valyien Boxed Set 3 Page 16
