Then it hit him. Vacuum chamber.
He couldn’t breathe because there was no air. If he stayed in here he would end up inside-out with his blood boiling out of his ears. If he tried to open the door behind, he would let in a stream of spyder shrapnel that would bounce around the airlock until he was soup.
At least I’ll die in peaceful silence.
His head burst and his eyes popped, or at least felt like it. He could hardly see, and felt like he was swimming. He hallucinated that he was floating in the vacuum, gravity gone, and that his head was banging against the door in front of him.
His head banged against the floor inside the room beyond the airlock. He slowly swam back to his senses, or they swam back to his head, and he looked up.
The door had opened, and he was breathing. Whether the force of habit and years of training had kept his hands working just long enough to cut that last wire, or whether he had accidentally touched something in the panel that had made the final connection to open the door, he didn’t have any idea. He thanked every higher power he knew of in case any of them had intervened, and he sat up.
15
Janice could not remember ever being so angry. Her breath came in sharp pants, almost barks. Her face was flushed a dark red, and her hands shook. With an effort she stilled them. You couldn’t fire a rifle with shaking hands.
That... that...
She didn’t know a word vile enough to express what she felt.
He’s going to ruin everything. First Glenn, and now him. How I hate them! All of them!
She was in good shape and she relished the burning feeling in her thighs and calves as she trotted through the jungle. Beside and behind her rolled the bots. She felt nothing toward them, no affection, certainly no love. They were inorganics, useful enough for the moment, but with no place in the larger scheme of things. And Janice was all about the larger scheme of things.
She remembered the first time she’d met Glenn, how impressed she’d been, almost in awe in spite of herself. It wasn’t his fame, though he was known the world over to both Greens and Grays. And it hadn’t been his intelligence, although no known test had fully quantified his abilities. It had been his vision, a far-off look in his eyes that made you think he was seeing something wonderful that normal people would never understand. She'd had no difficulty acting captivated when he asked her to become his research assistant and confidante. And the next few years had been genuinely mind-expanding, glorious.
But then she’d learned the truth. It brought her back to the reality of her mission.
Glenn had limitations. Lines he was afraid to cross.
The disappointment had been as keen as a knife-cut. And it had only been much later, after many tears and some screamed arguments, that she had realized the irony of it all.
Glenn hadn’t the courage or the conviction.
But I do.
It had been an epiphany, a trembling moment when the future became as clear as glass and she knew exactly, for the first time in her life, what she had been born to accomplish. She had felt dizzy with the magnitude of it. Glenn had given her the tools, but to her fell the awful responsibility.
It made killing him much easier.
A branch slapped her across the face, bringing her back to the present. She was sweating heavily in her jumpsuit, rivulets running down her cheeks and back. The jungle was steaming with humidity. She cursed as she tripped over a root, wishing for the cool air-conditioned interior of the Facility, then catching herself. Soon there will be no such thing as air conditioning, or a Facility to shelter in. I must make Mother’s earth-lap my heaven.
It would be over in less than an hour. She’d find and corner the techie with the help of her bots, put a bullet in his brain, then run diagnostics to ensure he hadn’t messed anything up.
She felt a wave of frustration with Eve; the techie had been allowed too much leeway. She’d have to have a frank chat with Eve and set her to rights. Nothing can be allowed to hinder the schedule!
Janice shifted the rifle’s sling to her other shoulder and stepped over another tangled root. Her boot slipped, however, and she lurched to one side, hitting her head on a tree.
As she fell, she felt a supersonic whip go past her ear; immediately drowned out by the earsplitting chatter of automatic weapon fire. Tree bark pelted her cheek as she wriggled frantically behind a fallen log.
The entire jungle seemed to have exploded. Leaves shredded and hovered in a green haze in the humid air. Her bots were returning fire. She saw a small tree shudder, then fall as if cut in half by an invisible axe. She rolled, jerking her rifle off her shoulder and desperately checking it for damage.
It can’t be him, can it?
It had to be. She screamed in frustration and pounded the soil with a fist.
One of her bots, a battered old Humboldt unit, stepped from behind a tree to return fire. Its head suddenly exploded in a blaze of sparks. The torso remained standing, weapons blazing in a futile response to its last command. The Humboldt’s CPU was in the torso, but its optics had been in the head, and it was firing blindly in the direction it had seen an enemy. Janice peered in that direction but saw nothing through the tangle of creepers. She wriggled to the left for a better view.
Twenty meters away, a large killer bot, designated KB01, paused in its firing to let its gun barrels cool. It switched to flechette canisters while initiating a search program – motion sensors for the inorganics and infrared for the organic it had spotted seconds earlier.
KB01 had already engaged and destroyed two enemy bots in less than six seconds, designated as Targets 2 and 3, but it had missed Target 1 through sheer chance when the organic slipped in the mud, narrowly avoiding the bullet sent her way.
KB01’s coolant vents whirred softly. It would have another chance. Organics never remained still for very long. When she moved, she would be dead.
Ten meters to KB01’s left, KB02 was performing a rapid scan of its kill zone. A Cobalt Scorpio 2.5 lay smoking on the jungle floor, four of its legs missing from KB02’s opening salvo. Had KB02 been capable of feeling chagrin it would have done so; the Scorpio’s legs had absorbed much of the impact of KB02’s fire and saved the bots behind it. They were now initiating a flanking maneuver to attack from all sides and overwhelm KB02. Even now the sounds of their approach filtered through KB02’s audio dampening systems. It calculated their probable attack pattern and readied itself.
Janice crawled on all fours toward a large mound of earth, the residue of a fallen tree’s root systems. Her eyes smarted as sweat ran into them and she blinked furiously. Safely behind the root tangle, she forced herself to calm down. There was no way to tell how many there were. Some bots, certainly; there had been too much fire to come from the techie alone.
Is Nut involved? No, he is too far gone to leave his hiding places, or to have orchestrated an ambush like this. His time has come, but I can’t deal with him now. This is the work of the intruder, and it’s threatening everything!
She remembered the bots in the service bay. They were nearly ready for deployment, but she had been too busy to finish them and send them out on patrol. They had just been sitting there like wrapped presents for the techie running amok on her island.
Stupid, stupid!
She raged in silence, frightened in spite of herself at how close she’d come to dying. If I hadn’t slipped... and how did Eve let him get to the bots? That could wait for later. Eve had much to answer for.
She slowly peeked around the edge of the root tangle. The jungle was silent here, but several meters away she could hear her bots advancing to engage the ambushers. Now was the time to move, while the enemy was distracted. If she could circle around she might get a chance at a rifle shot from behind. Precision fire was the best way to take out bots in the absence of heavier guns. If she was lucky, she might even get a clear shot at the techie.
Janice licked her lips.
From seven meters away, SB01 watched her. SB01 was a securit
y bot, lacking the heavy firepower options of KB01 and KB02, but it did carry a perfectly serviceable 9mm semiauto in its left forearm. At the moment SB01 was engaged in a complex routine involving its mission priorities. It, unlike KB01 and KB02, had a priority programming mission already hardwired into its CPU, which, among other things, mandated it to protect the organics involved in Project EDEN from harm. SB01 wasn’t sure if this organic qualified under those criteria. It seemed possible, but the organic was not operating in a capacity that SB01 recognized as having anything to do with Project EDEN.
On the other hand, the orders the techie had given it were much more recent and unmistakable: Locate, engage, and destroy all bots and organics approaching the Facility. SB01 took another millisecond to make its decision. Then it raised its arm and sighted on the organic, initiating a quick infrared scan to attain a perfect sight picture of the organic’s heart, which was beating 1.76 times over the healthy range for a female of her age and weight.
Janice gathered her legs underneath her and prepared to sprint to a nearby tree. From behind it she could run unseen for several meters, then turn and come in a wide semicircle from the rear to ambush the ambushers. She rose to her feet, noticing a second too late the tiny red laser reticle that was brushing across her chest.
SB01 disintegrated as a massive barrage of bullets shredded its carapace and internal gear systems. SB01’s scanners had not been maintained to manufacturer’s standards, and had deteriorated even more under the tropical conditions of the island. It did not sense the telltale sounds of its killer’s approach – in this case a streamlined VXC4 Doggett – and perished before it could relay the circumstances of its demise to KB01 and KB02.
Janice screamed for the second time in as many minutes and dove for cover. The Doggett rumbled past, searching for new targets, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
That one should have killed me. No one can be that lucky. No one.
She straightened. Unless they have a purpose to fulfill. Like me.
She gripped her rifle and slipped into the jungle.
KB02 knew its destruction was imminent. The enemy bots were coordinating their attack for the exact same moment to minimize KB02’s ability to respond. KB02 briefly considered singling out one or two of the bots and ensuring their destruction along with his own, but a simultaneous scan of the terrain and the attack vectors of the approaching bots suggested an alternative strategy. It still had a teammate, and bots were very good at teamwork.
KB02 began to discharge every weapon it carried at maximum rate of fire, in all directions. It reserved only its grenade launcher, since the explosives would be useless against the bots approaching under tree cover.
KB01 sat motionless, all power in its scanners, trying to locate its next target. A burst of coded information suddenly reached it from KB02. KB01 understood and began to move to the right, opening up a better field of fire.
KB02 kept firing until the moment of attack, sending a constant data stream to KB01, and died almost instantaneously from a combined barrage that tore it limb from limb.
KB01 adjusted its grenade launchers according to the last data received from KB02, and fired off every grenade it carried in a rapid scatter pattern.
The jungle around the smoking wreckage of KB02 erupted in light and noise as the grenades hit. The bots who had killed KB02 were blown apart or shattered into twisted metal and melted plastic as the surrounding tree trunks rattled under the steel rain of shrapnel. The air was thick with dirt, plant fibers, and the sharp scent of high explosives.
KB01 was on the move in search of targets. It had no way of knowing exactly how successful its salvo had been, but based on its own accuracy and KB02’s information, it calculated a destruction probability of 80% of enemy combatants. KB01 trundled forward on high scan, following a curving trajectory that would sweep the perimeter of the blast zone to destroy any survivors.
Then KB01’s infrared picked up a heat signature, moving parallel to its own course, fifteen meters away. KB01 ran the probability; it was slightly more than 93% likely that the heat signature was the organic. KB01 changed course.
Janice heard the thunder of the grenades and ran faster. The ambushers were putting up a good fight. She knew the superior numbers of her own bots would win the battle, but the cost might be high. It was time that she was losing, and time was more precious than gold. While she was forced to fight here in the jungle, who knew what havoc the man was wreaking in the Facility? Eve couldn’t be relied on to stop him.
Janice came to a small clearing; a tree had fallen, leaving a hole in the canopy. She stopped to catch her breath. The sounds of battle had disappeared and the jungle was silent once more. She strained her ears, listening.
Nothing.
KB01 paused. It had lost the heat signature; the target had probably stepped behind a tree. It waited patiently. The odds of reacquiring the target in a few seconds were high. It used the time to run diagnostic tests of all its systems. Everything was operational; its grenades were depleted, but that was hardly an issue. Flechettes were an ideal way to dismantle organic tissue.
Something felt wrong. Janice scanned the jungle, every nerve alert, watching out of the corner of her eyes for movement. Her life depended on seeing the enemy before it saw her. She took a step backwards, then another. A suspicion burned in her brain. She had been hearing noises off to her right through the trees; what she assumed was one of her own bots. But since she had stopped, she had heard no more movement.
My bots would not have stopped. They’d still be in sweep mode.
She retraced her steps through the jungle, curving in an even wider arc. If an enemy bot had been tracking her, it would be using infrared. And if it had stopped, it meant she had momentarily disappeared behind a tree. The bot would pause until it reacquired her. That meant that for the next minute or so, she had a window.
Janice ran wide, then circled back, moving from tree to tree, rifle held at high port. The forest floor was a mass of rotting vegetation and moist earth; her shoes made no sound. The bot would be somewhere ahead, scanning, relying on its speed and accuracy to pick her off when she appeared in its kill zone. Even if it heard her approach, it would take a few seconds to pivot its weapons to aim behind it. Those few seconds were hers to use.
She saw it. A gleam of plastic through the green tangle. She moved slower. Its form slowly coalesced and she saw its scanners moving slowly back and forth, covering the area she’d been a minute earlier. She felt a surge of triumph and raised the rifle.
KB01 reassessed the situation. The organic had not appeared as predicted. Either KB01 had miscalculated, which was impossible, or the organic had access to some kind of detection hardware that had revealed KB01’s position. It calculated some new probabilities, chose a new course, and –
Janice squeezed the trigger, saw the bot’s head jerk under the impact, and fired again, this time aiming at the exposed wiring on the stubby neck. The bot sparked furiously and went still. She put another round through its head to destroy all optics, and sauntered forward to deliver the coup-de-grace.
Too easy.
KB01, unable to see, spent a microsecond calculating its best response. Under the circumstances, it realized that it had approximately 9.2 seconds left before the organic finished it off. KB01 felt no fear or regret. It was unable to do so. Instead, it decided that there was still a 52% chance of terminating the organic, if she approached in the same direction from which she had taken her shot.
KB01 fired off its last three rounds near-simultaneously.
Janice felt a hard blow on the side of her head, and white-hot pain stabbed her ear as the sound of the gunshots echoed through the trees. She gasped, dropped the rifle, and stumbled behind a tree. Her hand darted to the side of her head and came away smeared with blood. Her searching fingers had made a horrifying discovery.
She was missing an ear.
16
The room John found himself in was large and had a low ceiling. Glowi
ng monitors and projected screens covered all the walls, showing data tables, scrolling texts, images from the valley outside, and jagged line graphs. In the center a long, curved table was littered with maps, lists, and a small scale model of the island. There was also a food/beverage vendor and an open doorway leading to a restroom and a small sleeping area. The place had the air of recent use. It’s not somewhere Nut would hide, so this must be Janice’s roost. Unless Eve really does have an avatar walking around here somewhere. Nut said she wasn’t physical, but I wonder if that was her in the hologram?
He walked in, half expecting to be confronted by one or the other of the female threats he was stuck on the island with. But the room was silent, and the only other door leading out of the room was sealed tightly. First things first. He sat at the main console, an impressive six-screen wraparound desk, and pulled three controllers toward him.
Ten minutes later John had sealed off the room, locked the ventilation and power to his control, and cut off any outside tampering with the computer systems inside. The last part was pre-programmed and all he had to do was execute. The basement had been created as a panic-room of sorts; now it made a virtually impregnable bunker for him instead of Janice.
Next, he relieved himself mightily in the restroom, letting all the shakiness from his hallway ordeal run out of him. He took a few nutrient-dense bars from the food vendor and a huge bottle of water, convinced that here at least it would be uncontaminated. As he chewed, he scanned through the imagery on the screens. He was looking for evidence of Janice’s whereabouts, but nothing had been revealed before he cut the live feeds from outside.
Machines of Eden Page 16
