The Elderon Chronicles Box Set

by Tarah Benner

  I jerk to a halt but don’t let go. The bot has her by the neck, and it seems to be tightening its hold. Maggie kicks and thrashes, but it’s no use. The bot is stronger than both of us.

  I watch in horror as it straightens its torso. I can hear the hydraulics lifting it higher, and Maggie’s feet leave the ground. Her face is turning an alarming shade of red. She’s kicking at the air — completely petrified — and there is nothing I can do.

  The bot could break her neck. It would be that easy — one simple jerk at a forty-five-degree angle — but it’s going to strangle her instead.

  Feeling desperate, I bring the butt of my rifle down on the bot’s mechanical joint. The clang of metal pierces my ears, and I hit it again.

  The bot doesn’t release her, but its hold is weakened. I continue to beat the bot’s joint with my rifle, huffing and hacking like a madman.

  Maggie jerks her body desperately, and I grab her around the waist. She looks down. Our eyes lock. I know we’re out of options. I tug her down as hard as I can, and somehow she slips free.

  Everything that happens next is a horrible blur. I catch Maggie as she falls to the ground, deep painful gashes spewing blood from her neck. She gasps for air and chokes for dear life, but I just grab her hand and run.

  I don’t look back to see what the bot does next. I can hear the others gaining ground, but we make it through the next set of doors.

  “Ping!” I yell.

  “We lost some!”

  “Not all of them!”

  We’re approaching the last set of doors separating the bots from the rest of the colony. The doors open automatically, and I hit the button to seal them before the bots come through.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” I mutter.

  But the rest of the bots are just yards behind us, and the stupid doors won’t move.

  We’re out of time.

  Keeping hold of Maggie, I turn and run. There’s nothing else I can do.

  35

  Maggie

  My body gives out just when we reach the archway leading to the barracks. I feel my legs wobble beneath me, and Jonah lurches forward to catch me before I hit the ground.

  He smells good — some bright citrusy notes from deodorant or cologne. It’s clean and fresh and completely human, which I find comforting at the moment.

  I allow myself to lean against him, and he keeps one arm locked around me as he pounds on a keypad mounted beside the archway. It must be some emergency lockdown protocol, because a second later, a door seems to unfold from the wall, sealing off Sector Q from the rest of the colony.

  Jonah scoops me off my feet, and I feel a surge of embarrassment that I need to be carried. Jonah doesn’t speak or even pant. It’s as though I weigh nothing at all.

  He walks me down to his room, scans himself in, and deposits me on his bed. His blanket is folded in a perfect rectangle, but he shakes it out and drapes it over my shoulders. Then he disappears, and I take the chance to study the picture above his bed.

  It’s the only personal item he has in the room, so it must be important to him. It shows a pretty woman with long dark hair and two boys that look like her sons.

  The youngest is probably around ten years old. He’s got big blue eyes and a reluctant smile that tells me he has to be Jonah. The other is a teenager — maybe seventeen or eighteen. He looks like Jonah, but there’s something about him that’s very different.

  A second later, the real Jonah reappears with two bottles of water. I tear my eyes away from the picture. He sits down next to me, opens a bottle, and orders me to drink.

  I don’t need telling twice. I am absolutely parched.

  Jonah watches me for a moment with a concerned expression. He’s thinking about the killer bots. I know he needs to report them.

  Then there’s Buford. He left me in that airlock to die, which is problematic for so many reasons. For one thing, it’s our word against his. For another, we don’t know whom we can trust.

  There’s also the tiny problem of us being in a restricted area in the first place. I’m not exactly worried about my standing with the Space Force, but this is Jonah’s career. There’s a lot at stake for him, and going up against his commanding officer could have far-reaching consequences.

  He gets to his feet and touches his Optix to make a call. He starts to pace back and forth, and a second later, he rolls his eyes.

  “The emergency dispatch is an answering service. Can you believe that?”

  He lets out a groan of frustration, but I’m still in too much shock to respond. I can’t believe how close I came to death by space vacuum and death by killer robots.

  “Sergeant Jonah Wyatt, number 85-6827. I’d like to report a dozen rogue maintenance bots originating from Sector J.” There’s a pause as he listens to some automated message, and he hangs up with a grunt of frustration.

  He tries another number, and this time he reaches a dispatcher in hospitality. That’s when it goes from bad to worse.

  “This isn’t a prank. Are you stupid? There are ten or twelve bots that just tried to kill me roaming around the station.”

  Pause.

  Jonah’s brows knit together into a tighter and tighter line, and I realize that he’s actually kind of cute when he’s mad — when that anger isn’t directed at me.

  “Check the cameras, you stupid fuck, or I’ll call Captain Callaghan and tell him how incompetent —” Another scowl. “No, I can’t ‘hold.’ Are you —”

  He scowls. He hangs up and tries to ping someone else, but he just ends the call with a furious growl. He must have gotten another automated service.

  “They didn’t believe you?” I ask, my voice raspy from dehydration and very near death.

  “They said all the bots were shut down.” He shakes his head. “At least they’ve been warned. As soon as they get off their asses and check the cameras, the whole station’ll be on lockdown.”

  He sends out another quick ping and then reaches under the bed for something. It’s a first-aid kit, and it occurs to me that he’s responsible for taking care of his squad in the event of an emergency.

  He passes me the second bottle of water without a word, sits down, and lifts the hair off my shoulders to examine my neck. It feels strange to catch him in such a human gesture. By now the deep gashes have started to clot, and the blood has taken on a tacky texture. My neck is unbelievably sore. I can already feel it swelling.

  Jonah handles me with a surprising amount of care, but I still shudder when he swabs the blood away.

  “Sorry. Does that hurt?”

  “No.” I shake my head, thinking back to the bot that grabbed me. “It’s just . . . Those things . . .”

  “I know.”

  “What happened?” I ask. “I thought they disabled them.”

  “They did,” says Jonah grimly, dabbing at my cuts with an antiseptic wipe.

  I savor the harsh sting that sizzles in my wounds. It means I’m not dead.

  “Ping had to shut off the power to that sector to open the airlock. When he rebooted the system, I guess it reset the computer that controls the bots and allowed the malware to take hold.”

  “Ping shut off the power?” Ping is the last person I expected to be involved.

  Jonah shrugs. “He’s the one who helped me find you. If it weren’t for him, you’d be dead.”

  I turn that thought over in my head. A day ago, Jonah called me a liability to his squad and then accused me of being a spy. He was going to turn me in to Captain Callaghan, and yet he came to my rescue.

  “I know you weren’t the one who stole that data,” he says in a low voice.

  I don’t dare say anything. I can’t tell if he still hates my guts or if this whole ordeal was some kind of weird bonding experience. If it was, I don’t want to ruin it.

  “I shouldn’t have accused you,” he continues, his voice slow and unsure as if he hasn’t had much practice apologizing.

  “It’s all right,” I say. “I did lie abo
ut who I was. But I swear I never meant to put anyone in danger.”

  “I know.”

  We fall into awkward silence, and Jonah wraps a clean bandage around my neck.

  “I found out who sent me the fake ID,” I murmur.

  “Who?”

  His tone is so severe that it makes me question our newfound camaraderie.

  I take a deep breath. “Tripp Van de Graaf’s assistant, Porter.”

  “Why?”

  “He also thought it was weird that Maverick brought a thousand private military personnel onto a civilian space station. I guess he figured sending me in would get him the information he needed.”

  Jonah raises both eyebrows. “You think he’s capable of hacking the bots?”

  I take another swig of water. “No. He has the connections to make it happen, but it wasn’t him.”

  Jonah shoots me a dubious look.

  “I’m telling you . . . That man’s whole life is taking care of Tripp. He would never do anything to put Maverick in jeopardy.”

  “Wow,” he says, averting his gaze. “You’re on a first-name basis with the guy?”

  I don’t know how to respond to that.

  Luckily, I don’t have to. There’s a frantic knock at the door. I jump, but Jonah lays a hand on my knee.

  “It’s just Ping,” he says. “I told him to meet us here.”

  He takes his hand away and gets up to let Ping in, and I let out a slow breath. Jonah checks the peephole first and throws the door wide open.

  “Get in,” he says, casting a furtive glance into the pod.

  Ping squeezes into the small space, looking as though he just got dressed. His boots are untied, and his shirt is half-tucked.

  “What the hell is going on out there?” asks Jonah.

  “The silent alarms are going off everywhere,” says Ping. “And I got a message from the captain that we should prepare for emergency defense protocol.”

  “It’s the bots,” says Jonah. “I had to report them.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know.”

  Ping turns and suddenly notices that I’m in the room. “Hey! She lives!” he cries, coming over to give me a hug.

  I offer Ping a weak smile and lean into his one-armed embrace. “I hear I have you to thank for that.”

  “Ah, it was no biggie,” says Ping, though I can tell he’s secretly glowing.

  “Maggie says she knows who sent her the fake ID.”

  “Porter Guffrey,” I say. “Assistant to Tripp Van de Graaf. But he’s not the one who’s responsible for the hacks.”

  “So who kidnapped you?” asks Ping.

  I glance at Jonah, wondering if I should tell him. Jonah nods. “Lieutenant Buford.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was. I think he hacked my Optix somehow . . . maybe yours, too. He knew that you’d figured out that I was a journalist, and he knew I’d been to see Porter.”

  “It makes sense,” says Jonah. “He’s the one who showed me the SPIDER in the first place. That data could only have been stolen by someone with access to the private Space Force servers.”

  “That still doesn’t explain who’s been helping him,” I say. “Porter said that hacking the bots had to be an inside job. But whoever did it must not care what happens to BlumBot. This hack is going to decimate the company.”

  “His accomplice could be anyone who’s ever worked for BlumBot,” says Jonah.

  “Any idea why he kidnapped you?” asks Ping.

  I take a deep breath. “He kept saying that I should have minded my own business . . . that I knew too much.”

  “After you talked to Porter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He said he was going to pin it on me . . . try to make it look like I was the one who stole that data.”

  “Does he know you escaped?” asks Ping.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “We need to get to Callaghan before Buford does,” says Jonah.

  Ping and I exchange a look.

  “We have to get ahead of this. And Callaghan needs to know what we’re up against.”

  “Agreed,” says Ping.

  The last thing I want to do is leave this room. I feel as though all the life’s been sucked out of me, and there are killer robots on the loose. Still, Jonah’s right. We don’t have a choice.

  “Are you okay?” Jonah asks. “Because you don’t have to come if you don’t feel up to it.”

  “I’m coming,” I say, getting to my feet and trying not to wobble. Like I’m gonna stay here alone.

  Jonah turns to Ping. “Where’s your rifle?”

  “My rifle?”

  “The maintenance bots are supposed to be bulletproof like the security models, but I used mine to clobber the bot that got hold of Maggie.”

  “Yeah. I can get Davis’s, too,” says Ping. “I know his combination.”

  Ping grabs the rifles from the lockers and hands Davis’s to me. The M500 feels heavy and foreign. We’ve only had about a week of practice with rifles in training, but the feel of cold aluminum and steel between my fingers still has a steadying effect.

  We keep a tight formation as we leave the room and move down the hallway toward the captain’s suite. Luckily, no one is out to raise the alarm, but I’m sure we’d scare anyone watching from the security cameras.

  We reach the captain’s quarters and knock, but no one answers. There’s no sound from inside the room and no light coming from under the door.

  “He must still be in meetings,” Jonah mutters. “Let’s check the war room.”

  I hold back a shudder. I’m not sure what freaks me out more: the fact that there are still murderous bots roaming around the space station, or the prospect of coming face to face with Buford again.

  Ping moves down the hallway in a low defensive stance, and Jonah gives my shoulder a squeeze. I look up. He moves ahead and averts his gaze, but I still catch that quick bracing look.

  We move silently down the hallway toward Sector R. I didn’t even know that there was such thing as a war room on board, and instantly my brain populates with half a dozen story ideas.

  I push them out of my brain and refocus on the mission. Get to Callaghan. Tell him about the bots. Throw Buford under the bus.

  Part of me worries that Callaghan won’t believe us. He never seemed like a very nice guy in the few brief interactions I had with him. The other part of me is terrified that he will and that I’ll have to confront the man who’s responsible.

  Fortunately, I don’t have time to overthink things. We reach the main hall within minutes, and Jonah glances over his shoulder to make sure we weren’t followed.

  It’s nearly twenty-two hundred, and the place is deserted. Our footsteps echo loudly in the empty hallway, and I can see our reflection in the shiny white tile. The cleaning bots must have gotten to this sector before they were powered down.

  We stop outside an unmarked door near the end, and Jonah knocks three times.

  Nothing.

  Ping glances back at me, and I start to feel anxious.

  Jonah knocks again. Still no response.

  “Maybe he’s on his Optix?” Ping suggests.

  Jonah knocks one last time, pounding so hard that he rattles the door.

  “I’m goin’ in,” he mutters, touching a button to wake the scanner.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asks Ping. “What if he’s in an important meeting, or —”

  “This is more important.”

  I can’t argue with that. Nothing screams urgent like a handful of murderous bots.

  The scanner reads Jonah’s face, and a second later, the door clicks to unlock. He pushes it open and walks right in, but I freeze where I’m standing and stare through the doorway.

  Just inside the war room is a sleek silver cart. It’s loaded with a carafe of coffee and all the fixings for a late-night refreshment. Shards of white ceramic are scattered over the floor, intermingling with flecks of ruby-
red blood.

  A woman is lying facedown on the floor, her legs splayed out behind her at an awkward angle. She’s wearing a crisp white collared dress, and she’s got long black hair as sleek as a doll’s. The jaunty blue scarf is a dead giveaway — she’s one of the hostesses.

  My eyes follow the bright trail of blood to a broken chair, scattered papers, and another broken coffee cup.

  There’s a long smear of blood where the struggle took place, leading to a pair of heavy black boots. Captain Callaghan is slumped in the corner, his face as pale and white as a ghost’s.

  His eyes are drooping, but he’s still alive. He’s propped up against a set of built-in cabinets, clutching his abdomen with shaking hands. On the floor beside him is a large metal frame — some certificate of commendation.

  By the looks of things, the frame was ripped clean off the wall, and the corner is scratched. It definitely struck something solid.

  “Captain —” Jonah croaks, stopping dead in his tracks.

  Callaghan’s eyes bulge, and his breathing grows more rapid. He raises his hand to point at the woman, and I see that his palms are bloody. A dark pool of blood is spreading from his abdomen, and more blood is spilling out by the second.

  “Call the emergency line at the infirmary,” Jonah growls, bending down to tend to the captain. “Hurry!”

  I don’t have my Optix, but Ping springs into action. I stumble blindly into the room, narrowly avoiding the trail of blood.

  My mind goes blank as I survey the carnage. It feels like watching a bad slasher movie.

  My brain detects a shiny silver knife with a blade that’s covered in blood, and I survey the room to piece together the struggle.

  Jonah’s voice calls me back to the present. He lays the captain flat on his back and rips off his own overshirt.

  “Help me!” he chokes.

  My body seems to move without consulting my brain. I stagger forward in a horrified daze, carefully avoiding the captain’s eyes. His shirt and pants are soaked with blood, and there’s a sizable puddle beneath him.

  Still, I follow Jonah’s directions and peel up the captain’s shirt. The ripped fabric sticks in his wound, and I hold back a gag as the slash is exposed. It’s clean and surgical. It looks like a knife wound.