Suddenly, the lighting turned crimson, and an alarm began to blare.
Toriko, Allia and Ichini burst out the door and dashed past Mencari. “Robots coming! Plan B—this way!” Toriko shouted.
Mencari ran to catch up. From behind, the sound of clanking feet grew closer. Mencari peered back to see a man appear, chased by a huge guardian robot.
Ahead of them, a wall of sentinels approached. Allia took a defensive stance as Ichini transformed into a beetle-like creature. Mencari activated his hand-phaser and aimed, unleashing a steady stream of low-powered blasts. As Ichini charged, Allia reached to her sides and gripped something concealed under her clothing, drawing out a dark-metal object. As she gripped it, barbed edges flowered from the main shaft, creating small but deadly-looking sabers.
From behind them, they could hear the stranger attacking the larger robot.
Relying on the others for defense, Toriko twitched her fingers to summon her holographic cube. In moments, she was hacking the nearest robot using her virtual interface. It suddenly stopped dead. Emboldened by success, she attempted it again on a second. Her face pruned instantly. “Reactive firewalls? Oh Eudora, they’re adapting fast to my hacks!”
Allia and Ichini double-teamed one of the robots, gashing its critical systems and sending it crashing to the ground. Mencari raised the power of his hand-phaser and fired, destroying the fallen robot and riddling the remaining robots with shrapnel.
Mencari blasted another, then joined Allia and Ichini against the final opponent blocking their path, easily taking it down. They all turned in time to see the stranger struggling against the giant sentinel behind them. Its massive hand swatted the stranger, sending him reeling. He hit the ground hard and tumbled a few times before his body flopped and was still.
Mencari fired a few shots into the sentinel’s head, while Allia scampered to the fallen man and helped him to his feet. “He’s breathing, just stunned,” she yelled.
Ichni morphed back into a tiger-like creature, and ran circles around the large sentinel to distract it.
Allia suddenly yelled “Rhysus! Watch OUT!”
He turned, as to his amazement, a battle-damaged small sentinel streaked past him and engaged the large one.
“It’s on our side now!” Toriko shouted. “Hurray for hacking!”
Getting the most from the distraction, Mencari hollered, “Let’s get out of here!”
Toriko pointed to an open vent. “This should take us back up a level!”
“Come on!” Mencari said, helping the stranger to his feet and dashing for the vent. Inside two mining robots were waiting, drills pointed at the group, ready to attack. Mencari used his hand-phaser to take out the first one, while Ichini transformed and used his bladed arms to slice through the second.
Suddenly, the whole vent began to shake violently, and in the next instant, a mammoth robot hand ripped through the floor. With one jerk, the vent was torn apart like wet paper beneath them, and they tumbled out as the floor gave way.
Before them stood a guardian robot twice the size of the large sentinel they had been fighting. Its hand raised, ready to strike. Mencari saw Toriko directly in its path. He cried out to her, knowing he couldn’t get there in time to prevent her death.
In a flash, the man they’d helped barreled into Toriko, knocking her out of the way just as the robot’s arm whooshed by and embedded into the cavern wall next them. Mencari kicked his blaster setting to maximum. Squealing with charge, he unleashed a barrage of blasts.
Despite direct hits, the robot only stumbled a few unbalanced steps back.
“Oh, Eudora,” Toriko shrieked.
“It’s BIG!” Mencari yelled.
Slightly stunned by the fall, Allia winced and held her arm. Ichini circled her, ready to protect her.
A bleep from her armguard drew Toriko’s attention. “Rhysus, it’s Spark. The two scout ships. They’re headed back this way.”
The man’s head jerked toward Mencari. “You have a ship out there?”
Mencari nodded.
“Those scout ships will bring reinforcements!”
The man spoke with the confidence of knowledge, and Mencari had no reason not to believe him. They had to get out of here, back to the ship and away, or they’d all die here.
“I’ll use my ship to distract the scouts,” the man said as he fired. “We’ll need to use your ship to get us out of here.”
Mencari said, “Is anyone on your vessel?”
The man shook his head. “Autopilot. Cover me a sec, I’ll call it up.”
Determined to break their attacker, Mencari fired numerous blasts from his phaser. The large guardian robot struggled, but remained in a defensive posture against the increased attacks. Smaller robots appeared from down the corridor.
He needed something more, and fast. Glancing at the stranger, Mencari could see his attention was on his ship.
He was about to try manifesting one of his own energy attacks, when the robot began to twitch. Mencari looked down, puzzled. The ground beneath his feet began to tremble.
“The virus activated,” Toriko yelled. “Oh Eudora! The mining bots. I forgot!”
The stranger looked at her. “What virus?”
“To make the robots run amuck! They’re gonna tear this place up! When I planted the bug, I thought we’d be gone by now!”
Another bleep caught her attention. “Rhysus, Spark reports that the scout ships are chasing a new ship that just showed up.”
The man nodded. “Mine.”
She nodded back and relayed instructions to Spark, then pointed down the corridor. “I’m calling Spark in! Let’s head to the bay!”
Mencari and the stranger fired their weapons at the guardian robot’s head, temporarily blinding it. They all followed Toriko’s yelled directions that led them to the docking bay. They entered in time to see their craft whoosh into the docking channel. The guardian robot’s heavy feet clanged behind them.
Mencari looked anxiously up at the ship, waiting for it to touch down.
“Come on, come on!” the stranger said, watching.
The guardian robot entered the bay and came toward them at a fast lumber.
A high-pitched squeal and a shockwave shattered the air around them. Cracking like thunder, a blast hit the guardian robot. The lights of its eyes faded as a back panel blew off in a shower of sparks. Carried by its momentum, the robot flopped forward, screeching a few feet before stopping. The motionless hulk smoked as the harsh scent of crisping wires clogged the air.
Toriko turned toward the ship to see Spark barking happily through the main window. “He fired the EM pulse! Good boy!”
As the ship touched down, the side hatch opened. The others dashed en board and strapped in while Toriko took control of the ship.
“So you’re the one that left that footprint,” Allia said.
The man looked over at Allia. “What footprint?”
Mencari swiveled his head around.
“When we first climbed down into here, I saw a faint footprint in the dust,” she said. “I knew we weren’t the first ones to go in that way.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Mencari said in equal parts annoyance and concern.
As their ship left the bay, they saw a ship explode in the distance, finished off by the scout ships.
The man moaned, “Goodbye, baby. You were good to me!”
Toriko stiffened in her seat. “Uh . . . it was a good decoy, but it looks like those ships are coming back this way!”
She plotted a course to maneuver through the asteroids and put maximum distance between them and their pursuers.
Leaving their escape to Toriko, Mencari turned to the man. “Who are you? And what were you doing in there?”
“You’re Rhysus Mencari, right?”
“How did—?”
The man grinned. “Your combat style. Of course, your friends calling out your name helped confirm it.”
“How do you know about me?” Mencar
i pressed.
“Connections. . . ”
The deliberately aloof answer alarmed Mencari. “You say you know me. You haven’t said who you are.”
“I’m Liren. And thanks for that rescue back there. If you hadn’t—”
“We seem to be on the same side. I’d like to know a hell of a lot more about what you know.”
“I . . . thought I was being careful,” Liren said.
“We found robot parts,” Allia said shaking her head. “In a service tunnel between the main floor and the mine.”
Toriko looked up from her console. “And there was a report of a robot found deeper in the mine, destroyed.”
Liren’s head bobbed. “Yeah, that’s where I got in trouble. That big bot found me.”
An alarm rang out as their craft banked hard to port and their harnesses pulled tight. Toriko waved away her holographic interface and grabbed the manual controls. “Evasive maneuvers. Sorry, I got it now!”
“What were you doing there?” Mencari said to Liren.
“I could ask you that myself.”
“Fair enough. We have a friend that was attacked when coming through this area.”
Liren’s eyes narrowed. “A friend?”
Liren hadn’t been forthcoming about his friends’ names, so Mencari saw no reason to reveal Ujaku’s name. He said, “We wanted to find out what those scouts were guarding here.”
“You must be mercenaries. Whom do you work for?”
Mencari laughed. “Ourselves. We’re tracking a race of aliens—”
“Nukari. Yeah. I know all about them.”
Mencari looked Liren over. Perhaps his task would be easier than he thought. “Maybe they’re not the secret we thought they were?”
“No, they do a good job at hiding. I just have some . . . experience dealing with them, that’s all.”
“Like?”
“That mine used to be ours. My world has mined these asteroids for millennia.”
Allia said, “They took it from you?”
“They start out nice enough. Their ambassador to our world asked to see our facility. To help better their techniques, he said. Once they found what was in the mine, their goon squad took it over.”
Mencari pulled out a few of the rocks taken from the mined pile. “We took samples to see what they’re taking from the asteroid.”
“No need to analyze it. That’s tritium.”
Toriko turned her head slightly, never breaking eye contact with the navigating monitor. “The alloy used in ship hulls?”
Liren nodded. “We used it for our space fleet. But that’s just what was mined on the upper layers. Down deepest, at the core of the mine . . .” He reached into his ammunition sash and pulled out a few crystals that shone a brilliant blue. “Triset crystals. The energy source. Our homes, personal devices, vehicles, even our space fleet uses it for power. Even some of our weapons.”
He looked down at Mencari’s hand-phaser. “What powers your phaser?”
Mencari popped open a small slot to reveal a dull-yellow crystal.
“Muihtilid. Common.” From his sash, Liren selected a crystal the size of the muihtilid and handed it to Mencari. “Pop this triset in. Keep your feet planted and brace your wrist with the other hand next time you fire. And here’s a spare if you need it.”
Mencari took the crystal, gazing into it. “You think this is what they wanted? To use it in their weapons?”
“Weapons, sure, and more—if they find it. I was here to try to determine if they’d reached that part of the mine.” He sighed. “Once they do, fighting them will be a whole lot harder.”
“Didn’t they see that crystal when they were taken through by your people?” Allia said.
Liren looked out the porthole. “Not something we advertised on tours.”
Mencari said, “So . . . have they?”
“Found the triset, you mean? The tunnels into that part of the mine looked pretty dusty. Don’t think they’ve made it there. Yet.”
Toriko said, “Uh, just in case it matters. . . their system said they were at fifty percent operational.”
Liren nodded. “Might or might not mean anything. Likely, they replaced our system with their own. Who knows what that means?”
Another alarm rang out.
“It’s okay,” she said, “we’re way ahead of the scout ships. They haven’t gained on us at all.”
Mencari smiled at Toriko. “I forgot to thank you. A little quick on the draw with the virus, but . . . nice work.”
She smiled as her cheeks turned red. “Thanks. And it looks like the scout ships have given up their pursuit. They just turned back towards the mine.”
The ship neared the entrance to the spaceway.
“Sorry about your mine,” she said to Liren. “I’m sure the robots are tearing the place up right now.”
Liren laughed. “That’s one less for those Nukari to plunder. I say great job. Keeps the triset hidden too.”
“Thanks for using your ship as bait for those scouts,” Mencari said.
Liren shrugged. “If I’d been more careful, I wouldn’t have needed to.”
“You know, we could use your help against the Nukari. We don’t know that much about them yet and—”
“I’d like to.”
“Will you come back with us then?” Mencari said.
“Can’t. Not now. Have to get back and let my people know what I found.”
“Ah . . . where should we take you, then?” Toriko asked briefly looking over her shoulder.
He looked down at his wrist and read a small display. “Actually, follow the ship next to you.”
“Um. What ship?” She checked her display. “I don’t see anything on the scanners.”
Liren smiled and pointed out the side window. “That one.”
A ship pulled into their view range. Stunned, she checked her scanner again. “I— It’s not showing anything! Nothing at all!”
“You’re not supposed to see it. And it isn’t my ship. These are . . . compatriots.”
“How did they know how to—?”
“When I got into trouble in the mine, I called for help. Didn’t think they’d get there in time, but I didn’t know about you guys. So you could say they were coming this way anyway.”
The other ship sent over a small transport pod to fetch Liren. Before he left, he thanked everyone again.
“How can we find you?” Mencari asked.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find you when it’s time...” he added as he stepped into the pod.
CHAPTER 12:
Search for Jerin
A concerned Osuto greeted them when they returned to the asteroid base. “What happened to checking in?”
Mencari winced. “We ran into trouble. Lots of it.”
“I gathered that,” Osuto grumbled.
“Let’s go to the conference room. And get Seigie. We have something she’ll be interested in.”
“I’ll get her!” Allia said, and she and Ichini raced for Seigie’s crystal lab.
“We may have made a new ally too,” Mencari added.
* * * * *
“I can’t wait to use these in my . . . research,” she said, her ruby eyes gazing into the triset crystal.
It took little for the ever-skeptical Seigie to agree that Liren had given them a genuinely powerful gift: the crystals proved that to her.
They gathered around and watched Seigie’s face from under her hood. The sound of crystal grinding on crystal rang through the air as she sat, cringing, as she examined the small gemstone. More and more, the ancient woman’s face showed traces of chronic pain.
Allia blurted out, “Seigie, on my planet, I know a lot of people who work with crystals and rocks. Maybe they can find a way to reverse what was done to you when you went through the infusion. Living with all those embedded crystals can’t be very comfortable.”
Seigie’s expression remained cool. “Now isn’t the time. With the Nukari around, I don’t want to j
eopardize my abilities.”
Her brave words were belied by the longing in her eyes, but Allia let the matter drop.
* * * * *
“You can’t afford another stunt like that, Rhysus. What if one of you had been killed?” Osuto’s face showed unaccustomed disapproval.
“We were just going in for a little recon. I didn’t expect—”
“Expect what, Rhysus? You didn’t expect that they might be powerful enemies in the vicinity of where Ujaku was attacked? This is why I wanted us to plan our moves.”
His mentor’s bark echoed off the sheer walls of the control room. At least the briefing was done. “Before we engage the Nukari again, we need more like us,” Mencari said. “I realize that now—”
“Um . . .” Toriko’s voice gently drifted to them as she came around the corner. “I just need to get some of my tools and—”
“It’s okay, Toriko.” Mencari motioned her into the control room, embarrassed that a teammate was witness to his scolding. He and Osuto waited, uncomfortably, while she skittered to an open panel and dug a number of tools from it. As she stood, she hesitated, staring at one of the displays.
“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop and all, but, maybe if I tap the trading post’s APIs through the inter-core network and get to the central servers . . . I’d have to work out the proper queries, compare some foreign keys . . .” She hesitated, and shook off a frustrated look. “I’m sure I could search the public News Core systems for useful information for us. Maybe help us find better leads on the Nukari. Or maybe locate others who could help us. Others like us.”
“How long do you think it would take?” Osuto said, his annoyance gone.
She simply grinned and disappeared.
* * * * *
Ichini playfully circled Allia before entering the hatch, followed by Rhysus and Seigie. The craft’s com came to life as they strapped in, and Toriko's image appeared.
“Out of all the names returned from my database search, this is the one that looked most promising,” Toriko said. “Jerin Odoli is who you’ll be looking for. The News Core posts say he’s a warrior of the ‘Okiru haven,’ whatever a haven is.”
D'Mok Revival 1: Awakening Page 21
