by Bob Blink
"I'll get started examining the nodes," Luke said, anxious for the moment to put some space between Walker and himself. He didn't like the way Walker was watching him.
"Call me on channel two," Walker said, pointing to a second Communicator on the table. Even as he did so he had a passing thought as to how secure the devices might really be. It was too bad that a single redundant tower served the entire cavern. There was no way to track where any calls were made from. Then he shook his head. He'd had a case of twenty of the special units, and all were accounted for.
"Luke."
"Yeah?"
"Remind Bill that I want Rao alive. Even if it is risky to take him that way, it is extremely important to all of us. He doesn't have to know why."
Luke nodded, then turned and left.
Walker watched him go. His mind returned to the puzzle of the stolen Cyborgs. He had to assume that Rao had a means to insert memories into the units, but what memories? Walker worried that he might elect to draw from the Sim, and bring back people who had authority over Walker. What if he brought back the Project Director, who had hired Walker? Or maybe even the President? He was still in the Washington Sim, and he and Walker had a fragile relationship. That was in part why Walker had been eliminating those that had opposed him. Would the people believe that was who occupied one of the Cyborgs if such a claim was made? Could he argue it was a trick, and not really the President? Only a limited number of the Cavern residents even knew the things existed at this point, but Walker wasn't sure that bought him much. Even he could think of several ways such a claim could be proven. He'd have to hope that they found Rao and his friends before they could hatch whatever plan they were devising.
Chapter 56
Sequoia Facility
The news that the truck had been found was sobering and unwelcome to say the least.
"They'll be searching this part of the caverns," Ray warned. "Up to now I believe they never thought about this end of the Facility. Most people here see it as empty wastelands save for the Ring and the nodes, which are generally off-limits to everyone. I know very few people who have ever ventured this far south."
"Fortunately, we are past the critical stage," Ray said, seeing the bright side. "Tomorrow we would have made the presence of the Cyborgs known anyway, and it would have been difficult to keep this place secret once that action was taken. This just means things are happening a bit faster than we planned."
"I assume you have guns?" Rodriguez asked.
"More than Walker does I believe," Ray replied. "At least ours are standard manufacture. When I was with him the handguns were all something he had made up. They had half a dozen rifles like we have that were stored in the caverns for Walker's use, but I don't think they have gotten around to having more of those built just yet."
"I wish we'd had the night to become more accustomed to these bodies," John Morrison complained. "I'm not entirely at ease with my movements just yet."
"Let me get you armed, and you can move around as needed to settle in," Ray suggested. "We can't know when they might appear."
They followed Ray into one of the side rooms where he displayed the gear that had been brought back from topside. Jessica's cloned Cyborg went for the shotgun, as did Don and Raobot. Everyone else, including Ray and Greg went for the military grade rifles.
As they were getting organized and splitting into two teams, one to cover the east entrance and the other the west, Ray's Cyborg spoke up. "I have been thinking and would like to suggest a change in names," he said. "Raybot or R-Bot sounds too much like Raobot. That might prove an issue when things get harried. How about I use Burke, since my flesh and blood counterpart uses my first name, Ray?"
Greg Harper immediately jumped on the suggestion.
"Good, and I'll be Greg, and my Cyborg counterpart is Harper. I think that is easier."
The Cyborgs from the Sim personalities already were using names, so that only left Jessica.
"I like J-Bot," her Cyborg self said. "I think it shows the kind of power I now control in this mechanical body."
With that matter settled, they split into two teams. Burke, Harper, Sammi, and John would cover the west entrance, while J-Bot, Lee, Rodriguez, Don, and Raobot would see to security on the east side. The non-Cyborgs would stay inside out of sight were they were safer. The handguns that Walker's people might have would be unable to do more than superficial damage to the Cyborgs, but could easily kill the humans.
Burke and Raobot took the first watches. They were more familiar with the terrain, and would watch for any sign the bunker was about to be discovered while the others familiarized themselves with the new bodies and the use of their weapons in their new forms. One handy capability that Raobot was quick to demonstrate was that the Cyborgs were able to activate a magnetic plate on their back which was easily strong enough to hold the rifle in place. When they wanted it, they need only grab, and switch off the field.
An hour after they took their positions, Harper came and took over for Burke to give him a chance to practice movement in the new body. Two hours later they spotted the first searchers.
Bill Williams had been joined by Jason when the twenty-two auxiliary troops arrived. Only Bill had a rifle. Everyone else was now armed with the handguns manufactured here in the Facility. That would be enough for the people, since there was no indication that anything beyond the handguns they had taken off the bodies of Joe Thomas and Pete Coleman, but Bill wasn't at all certain how the Cyborgs were going to be handled if Rao and his friends had somehow managed to activate them. For the moment, none of the auxiliaries had been told anything about the Cyborgs. While they were getting their search patterns worked out, Luke Morales arrived. Bill couldn't help but note that Luke was using Walker's appropriated vehicle, and that he had his rifle in the side seat and a handgun on his belt, making no effort at hiding it.
"Walker wonders if they could be hiding inside the nodes," Luke explained.
Bill looked at the closest of the impressive buildings.
"There would certainly be room, but I've been told you can't get into those things without alerting everyone what you are doing."
Luke shrugged.
"I've orders to have a look and see if there is any indication that someone has been going inside. Thought I'd start back here closest to where you found the truck. What are your plans?"
Bill pointed northward, indicating the rugged landscape with its irregular rolling hills and ravines.
"Search all the open spaces from here to the north end of the ring. There's a lot of area, but not much beyond the tanks for the nodes reactors out there. At one time I guess they planned on cleaning it all up and making it a huge park, but then realized maintaining it would require far too much in the way of resources, so they left it barren, almost the way they found it."
"I can't see how they could set up any place out here that would allow them access to the nodes. There's no power, nor data lines, and not much of any place to stay. I think it's a waste of time."
"Walker said search. Would you want to disobey him?"
"I guess not. You aren't going to check the Power Plant?"
"Walker told me he'd have the work crew there do a thorough check. They know what's there and what would be out of place far better than I would."
"Well, it's getting late," Luke said. "I better get started. Walker told me to tell you that he contacted Facilities and ordered them to adjust the lighting schedule. It'll stay at full daytime brightness until we are done looking."
Bill looked at the line of irregulars that he planned to stretch out about a hundred yards apart as they walked north through the wild country. That would give them a swath just under a mile and a half wide, so it would take three trips before they could walk the full width of the southern area. He hoped that a hundred yard spacing wasn't too great.
"I'm not too worried about Rao and the others, but I worry about that Cyborg they have with them," Bill said.
"You have a rifle.
I'm told that's more than adequate to stop one of them. Put your shots into the chest. That'll get the brain or the power supply."
"What if they have activated all of the others?" Bill asked.
"Walker doesn't believe they have the ability to activate the ones they took."
"And he's never wrong, right? Why would they have taken them if they couldn't use 'em? You know what I worry about? I worry that they not only have the ability to populate them, but they have brought those cops we tried to eliminate back in Los Angeles before these guys bombed the Resort and cut our line. Wouldn't that be something. We thought we could get at them with full immunity, and now they might be here on our own turf, in bodies that are nearly indestructible."
"You're just spooking yourself," Luke replied, but felt a bit of a chill at the idea that had never crossed his mind. "I doubt you'll even find them out here."
"Oh, I think they're here," Bill said. "I can feel 'em."
"Well, you're job isn't to take them out, just to find them. If you figure out where they are, back off and call it in. Everyone will come out and we'll deal with them together."
Bill nodded, but Luke's words of support didn't help much. The tide had changed against them, and Bill was certain that today wasn't going to be any better than the past week had been. Watching Luke walk away toward the closest node, the DC one if he wasn't mistaken, he shouted at Jason to get the men ready to go. They'd start with the central third of the searchable area for no other reason than that was closest to the emergency exit entrance where they were, and the central swath was the most empty, being farthest from the east and west ends of the Ring itself.
Two hours later, when they crested a small rise, Jason spotted an area in a depression almost two hundred yards ahead of them that was clearly man made. Something had once been there, although it looked to be nothing more than a large concrete pad in the middle of nowhere. But, they'd found nothing else of interest, so he called the men to close ranks so they could have a look.
"Most of them have handguns," Mike Lee said over the encrypted link the Cyborgs had discovered was available only to them. Greg had taken a look and suggested that it was a line-of-sight link using a different set of frequencies than those used by the Communicators, and probably couldn't be detected by anyone else. Even if it could, unless they had the equipment and algorithm to decrypt it, they'd get nothing but static. "I see one with a rifle. He and the guy to his left seem to be the ones in charge."
"Let them get closer," John suggested. "We haven't seen how these rifles are sighted, and I want to be certain of a hit. I'll take the one with the rifle. You or Rodriguez take his friend. Then we'll deal with the rest. Anyone who shoots, we take out. Anyone who has a rifle, whether he shoots or not, dies. And anyone who goes for one of the rifles from someone we've eliminated suffers the same fate. The rest we'll give a chance to surrender. They haven't thought this out. They've got no place to go and very little in the way of hiding places out here. Once we know they are without long guns, we can pretty much charge out among them with impunity."
In the end it wasn't much of a battle. John's shot would trigger the defenders. He waited until the man with the rifle got within a hundred yards, and then dropped him with a single shot. Almost immediately a second shot from the far side of the bunker caused the second man they'd specifically identified to fall. A few others shot in their direction randomly, earning bullets for their trouble. The rest panicked, and tried to run or find a low spot in the rolling terrain.
"Let's go," Sammi yelled, and was the first up and on her feet charging across the rugged ground. She was surprised at how fast she could move. Two, maybe three times as fast as she could in her human form. The telescopic vision the Cyborgs were equipped with had allowed them to examine the group, verifying that it was just the one man with a rifle, so what she was doing was reasonably safe. John, Burke, and Harper weren't far behind her, and on the far side of the bunker she could see five more Cyborg bodies charging toward the fleeing attackers.
Two of the attackers who had tried to hide fired in their direction as they approached. They later found that one of the pistols bullets had penetrated about a third of its length into the tough outer material of Burke's Cyborg. Sammi shot one of them, and Ray another. John had used his Cyborg's voice amplifier and was shouting to those still alive.
"Anyone who shows a weapon or fires a gun dies," he hollered. "Lay down your weapons and surrender."
They could see that a few individuals who had been on the far periphery of the search line who were going to get away, presumably with their weapons. That didn't matter. They would disarm these and allow them to go free. They'd carry a message to Walker and his core group. It didn't matter that the bunker was exposed. The war had started, and Walker wasn't strong enough to take it.
In the end, six of the attackers had been killed. The encounter had been completely one-sided, not surprising as it had been a search party, not a combat team that had been sent into the Ringlands. Rodriguez picked up the rifle and clipped it to the back of his Cyborg frame, while Don and J-Bot collected the handguns from the thirteen survivors that had surrendered. All looked shaken by the presence of the mechanical creatures they hadn't known even existed.
"Listen up," Rodriguez warned the prisoners once they were gathered together. "We will be turning you loose, this time. You are to be our messengers. The first message you are to carry back to Walker and your friends is that anyone who resists from this point forward will be executed. Do you all understand that?"
A number of heads nodded reluctantly.
"Second, you are to tell Walker he is under arrest for multiple crimes of murder. So that you understand our authority, we are all police from inside the Simulation representing multiple cities. Walker and his people, including those two," and he pointed at the fallen Bill and Jason, "are responsible for the deaths of Senators, businessmen, and a number of cops. We have come to arrest him and his team for those murders. Anyone who stands in our way will be considered equally guilty and treated appropriately."
"How can we know you are telling the truth?" someone shouted out.
"I think you know what Walker is up to is contrary to the directives of the Facility," Ray shouted back. "Full evidence will be presented to the citizens of the caverns once Walker is in custody."
"With that, all of you are free to go. Think hard on what we have explained, and make sure Walker learns of this. You can take the bodies or leave them, your choice."
"Do you think they'll do as ordered?" Don asked, as they watched the group set off northward, leaving the dead where they had fallen.
"Some of them. Others have thrown in with Walker and whatever he promised them," Lee said.
"It looks like we should initiate our plan now rather than wait for morning," Greg suggested.
Jessica nodded, and said, "Good! I want Walker."
Rao and the other humans remained to protect the bunker. They secured the east door against any reasonable entry, and Ray and Greg, armed with rifles, were the primary defense team. Everyone else kept one of the combat shotguns close by, just in case. Rao was busy keeping their counterparts in the Sim informed of progress.
The Cyborgs could move faster without the humans, and were well represented by Raobot and the three other cavern representatives who had chosen Cyborg form. First stop was Security, where they charged in unannounced and quickly took over the small crew on duty. Burke explained who they were, and that the caverns were now under the authority of the United Simulation Police, and that Walker was being sought for murder. Burke stayed on to oversee the facility and make sure any new arrivals were made to understand the situation, and that none tried to aid Walker. There was little doubt he had people loyal to him here, but all they had were the stunners they had quickly learned didn't work against the Cyborgs.
Next they took over Facilities. Once it was secure, Cindy was brought inside, where she spoke with former co-workers, and prepared to put a pre-recorded m
essage onto the cavern net explaining to everyone in the Facility what was about to happen. She would launch that message once she had word that the Cyborgs had taken control of the Command Center. Don would be staying behind with his shotgun with her to ensure control.
The Command Center fell as easily as the other two facilities, but with it in their control, Walker couldn't use the citizens of the Sim for leverage. Neither Walker nor any of his core team were there, although it was likely he had supporters among the staff, so Raobot and Harper were left to ensure order, with the remaining group of Cyborgs heading into town to look for Walker, who they were certain would have fled from his residence by now. They weren't surprised, so that now they'd have to begin a search for the former Director. They'd rely on input from the citizen's who had heard Cindy's message, and intelligence gleaned from the communications networks that they believed Walker would be using.
It might take a couple of days, but Walker's time here was over. Rodriquez and his team were certain of it.
Chapter 57
Sequoia Facility
Word of the confrontation did not take long to reach Walker's ears. Luke was the first of Walker's people not directly involved to become aware of the situation. He'd been checking the second of the ten nodes, in this case the New York City node, that he was tasked with verifying hadn't been compromised, when he heard the shooting. Realizing that Bill must have found Rao's group as he predicted, Luke grabbed his rifle and started out into the flatlands between the nodes to see if he could help. He hadn't gone far when he encountered several of the auxiliaries fleeing the engagement.
"They've got some kind of robots," one of the men exclaimed. "All of them armed with rifles. They are fast and deadly. Bill was killed right off, first shot fired. Jason and a half dozen other men were taken down in the first minute."
Cyborgs, Luke realized. Somehow Rao's little band had managed to activate and populate the machines and were now using them as soldiers to fight Walker's fighters. These men wouldn't know about the Cyborgs. That information had been held pretty close thus far.
