There was a brief moment of lighthearted agreement.
“How about you two?” Rachel asked Elvy and Marcus. “Got someone waiting on you?”
“No,” Elvy replied dryly.
Marcus smiled ever so slightly and answered, “Yeah, a bit.” Rachel looked at him for a long moment, prying with her eyes. “Craig,” he added. It looked like he might have gone on but then the speakers on their devices cracked open.
“They’re on us,” Eric shouted over erratic bursts of gunfire. “Move.”
Quey, his crew, and the five of Eric’s people who were to go with them snapped to their feet and started toward the door on the far left. He looked back to see Amber and Natalie lagging behind a little further than he’d like. “Come on,” he shouted back at them then quickened his own pace to the door.
They stopped when they reached the wide metal cargo door. It was designed so the security deploy could drive small vehicles, probably a cart or forklift, through to move supplies from the dock to a storage area.
Eric’s soldiers crowded the door.
“I’ll see if it’s clear,” Ryla said as her robots rolled up to the door.
The door opened on a wide corridor that was well lit and the robots entered, covering opposite directions. Ryla nodded and Marcus and Burke were the first through, rifles aimed ahead of them, with Elvy and Ross close behind. The first two faced left, the other two right, then Argento moved to the wall opposite the door and pressed his back to it. There was no cover in the corridor so staying tight to the wall was the only way of making yourself less a target. After a moment Argento waved Quey and his people through.
Marcus and Burke started to move forward, led by the barrels of their rifles. Quey and the others stayed in the middle with Argento. Elvy and Ross kept back, watching the flank down the barrels of their guns.
“Anything happens,” Argento whispered, mostly to Natalie and the kids, “Get low and close to the wall.” They moved ahead at a quick pace, gunfire and chatter coming through the earpieces of the soldier’s devices. Wherever Eric was, it was in the middle of a battle. Marcus turned the volume down and the others followed his lead. Now they could even hear the whirr of the robot’s engines.
Ryla looked down at her device when they came to a cross section and said, “We go right here, then we pass two doors and head left.”
The five soldiers moved to guard each branch of the T section before pressing on, heading right down the corridor. They passed the first door and continued on to the second. From there Marcus and Burke pressed on more slowly. When they made it to the next door they stopped.
Quey fidgeted with his wound and Natalie smacked him. “Leave it alone.”
Quey looked at Rachel and saw the nervous energy reflected in her eyes. He glanced to Arnie and saw he was in a dark place where he was ready to accept death as easily as success. Amber was visibly trembling as her chest heaved with quick stuttered breaths.
“It’s through there and it looks like the corridor leads down into a lower level,” Ryla informed them.
“Down into a lower level?” Marcus asked. He and his men exchanged a look. “You sure about that?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“I don’t like this,” Ross barked from the rear.
“Yeah, this is too fucking easy,” Burke added.
“They should have left something behind,” Elvy piped in.
“Agreed,” Marcus said, solemn and thoughtful. “And why would they put a spaceship on one of the lower levels?”
“This whole thing stinks of wrong,” Ross snapped.
Marcus turned to Ryla, “You’re sure about these plans?”
She nodded.
“They didn’t know we were coming,” Quey said. “They couldn’t have-”
“Maybe not,” Marcus interrupted. “But something’s not right.”
“Your call,” Burke said.
Marcus thought for a long moment before realizing there was nothing else he could think to do. If they came all this way, lost all those lives on the dock only to fail in getting these people to the ship then what was the point. He wouldn’t let his friends, his brothers and sisters, die without at least trying. “Keep sharp,” he told them and then opened the door.
They started down the corridor, descending at a rather steep angle and turning every fifteen meters like the ramp in a parking garage. As they walked, Quey tried to wrap his mind around what the soldiers had said. They spoke truths, something wasn’t right about this. He had a feeling in the pit of his stomach, it was the same as the one he’d had as a kid when his con was about to get busted, and it made his wound itch.
Natalie slapped him again. He hadn’t even realized he was fidgeting with it.
They made it down what must have been a little more than two stories when they came to a door.
“It is a trap,” Ryla said and everyone stopped. “Just not for us.”
“What’s that mean?” Marcus asked.
“When Rain sent us the schematics for the bases she sent also sent a bunch of other files, everything she could as a matter of fact. Still, Blue Moon will have realized we had the plans for the bases and would assume we had them for a reason. They increased security across the board, but they don’t know we’re heading for the ship. They think we’re going for the communications center, to attempt to access the planetary and universal networks.”
“Which’ll be in the command center,” Elvy concluded.
“What do we do?” Ross asked. “We have to warn them.”
Marcus turned the volume up on his device and heard the chatter coming through. The dock was overrun and Eric was pinned down.
“… Don’t know how much longer…” and then there was an explosion. “Have to pull back.”
“Nowhere to pull back too,” another voice shouted.
Marcus looked at his group.
“We have to do something,” Burke insisted.
“Yeah but what?” Elvy asked.
Ryla went to the door and opened it. Beyond was a room so large it could be called an area, lined with doors in every wall. She stepped inside and scanned the walls then ran to what she’d been looking for—a computer terminal. Her fingers danced over the keys as the others crowded around her.
“What are you doing?” Marcus asked. He looked at the holoscreen in front of her and saw a schematic of the base. Dots of lights were flashing across the map.
“Tell Eric and his people to get back into the south hallway.”
Marcus used his device and relayed the message.
“Nothing there but the power core and taking that out doesn’t do us any good,” Eric shouted back.
“Tell him if he wants to live he better be there in one minute.”
“Get that?” Marcus asked.
A disheartened, “Yeah,” came through the device.
“What is it you’re planning?” Ross asked.
“That hallway is equipped with blast doors made to withstand a massive detonation, in case the power core were ever to melt down.”
“We’re here,” Eric shouted.
Ryla tapped a few buttons and alarms began to sound. On the holoscreen the door flipped from green to red.
“That’s great but we still need to get them out of there,” Ross barked.
“And the dock,” Argento added. “We need that boat.”
More alarms began to sound. “I reactivated the bases internal sensors and alarms,” Ryla informed them. “They’ll know where we are now. I’m programming a few phantom squads throughout the base. Hopefully they’ll check some of those first.”
“No,” Marcus said briskly. “They’ll know we didn’t come all this way to get into the pantry. When they see a cluster of dots down here they’ll know this is the priority.”
Ryla was watching the dots on the screen. “Tell Carmen to get out of the dock now. She needs to make her way here.”
“I’m not giving up my position,” she shouted back over gunfire.
Marcus struggled with a decision for a few ticks then tapped his device, opening the channel to all his fellow soldiers. “The dock is about to be overtaken by,” he tried to estimate the number of dots he saw moving in that direction and couldn’t, “a whole lot of fucking people. There is a plan B, and anyone who wants to live needs to get their ass to the fucking hangar. Just follow the opened doors.”
Angry chatter swarmed through the speaker on Marcus’ device. A moment later Carmen cracked through and shouted, “You heard him, we’re falling back from this position.” Gunfire rang out through the speaker.
“They’ll lead them here,” Rachel said. The sound of her voice caught everyone off guard, as she hadn’t said anything in a while and the tone she used didn’t sound like her at all. It was hopeless.
“Anyone care to enlighten on the nature of this plan B?” Burke asked sharply.
“We’re working on it,” Quey replied then turned to Ryla.
“That’s comforting,” Ross croaked.
“Where’s the ship?” Quey asked.
Ryla pointed to the door in the far right wall, a dozen or so steps and they’d be there.
“It’s time then,” he added.
Ryla nodded and they started for the door. She lifted her arm, activating her device, as Marcus tapped the button to open the door. The room beyond was nearly as massive as the one they were in, and sure enough, there in the middle of it was a long metallic oval with one end nearly pointed while the other bordered on flat.
“You recognize it?” Quey asked Arnie, gaping at the size of the ship. When they stood it up and pointed its nose to the sky he guessed it would be near a dozen stories tall. As it sat now it was somewhere between two and three.
Arnie nodded. “It’s a good model.”
Quey took a breath and said, “Guess we should get to it then.”
“I have no signal,” Ryla said softly.
“What?” Quey, Rachel, and Marcus asked nearly at once.
“I have no signal. I can’t activate the compound’s defenses.”
“We need that distraction,” Rachel snapped. “Without it they blow us out of the sky.”
“And those false alarms’ll only throw them for so long,” Natalie added. “Without a real threat they’ll narrow us down to this base in no time.”
Carmen and her people hadn’t moved with as much caution, probably running the entire way. They poured through the door in the main area and closed it behind them.
“We have to seal it,” Ryla said and ran for the computer terminal.
Carmen watched Ryla go by then made her way to Quey and his group. “Some plan,” she said, glaring at Marcus. Then she stepped close to him. “You and I will talk later,” Quey heard her mutter. He and possibly Rachel were the only ones who did.
“It just got more complicated,” Ross announced as Ryla sealed the main entryway and made her way back to the group.
“I sealed them,” she announced. “Should buy some time, though not much.”
“Explain complicated,” Carmen demanded.
“We can’t get a signal to call in our reinforcements.”
“What do you mean you can’t get a signal?” she snapped. Carmen turned to Ryla, “Aren’t you some kind of robot wizard thing? Don’t you have an antenna?”
Ryla glared at her. “My signal should be good up to thirty meters deep. There must be a layer of something between here and the surface for the sole purpose of blocking signals. Whatever it is, it isn’t in the base schematics.”
“So what now then?” Quey asked.
Rachel snapped her fingers, “You can use the base com to broadcast.”
“We shut that down,” Quey said.
“Yes but it’s still a tower, you want an antenna? There it is.”
Ryla nodded. “It’ll take a bit of wiring and some reprogramming.”
She and Rachel started toward the terminal as the door across the room opened and Blue Moon Security began pouring through. Apparently they had an over ride Ryla hadn’t anticipated. She chided herself silently because that was her function in the group and she was failing at it. How many mistakes would she make before this was done? How many people would be dead because of them? An argument could be made that if she’d thought more like a person most of the soldiers Eric lost on the dock would still be alive.
She didn’t have time to consider it further because Blue Moon security didn’t waste time opening fire.
Elvy raised her rifle to eye level as a bullet tore through her shoulder and spun her a quarter turn to the left. The second punched a hole through her cheek. Ross dropped to a knee to return fire and took the bullet meant for his chest in the face. His head snapped back and his helmet clattered to the ground and rolled to a stop at Marcus’ feet.
Three of Carmen’s soldiers, two women and a man Quey didn’t know, dropped before they could raise their weapons and there was nothing between him and the security officers any longer.
Bowserbot and Mechaganon answered with an onslaught of bullets that tore through the first wave, killing at least seven and dropping a half dozen more with vicious wounds. A few managed to scurry back into the corridor before the bots could fire on them again. Still, more were coming.
“In here,” Marcus shouted and led everyone into the hangar. Ryla stood at the door for a long moment, looking at Mechaganon and Bowserbot. Finally she went to the doors control panel and opened it.
“What are you doing?” Carmen asked.
The door closed and then she yanked the chords and a circuit board free.
“They’ll have to cut their way in,” she said, tossing the parts to the ground and walking away. She looked to her device and burned with rage. No signal.
She brooded, because she was supposed to be the one who handled the technical side of this operation, and she had failed in her function. She should have anticipated all of the snags they’d encountered. She should have been better at being a person, and for the first time, she really wished she was, not just to fit in or because she wanted people to see her as more than parts, but because she actually thought it was important. If she had trusted her human side instead of only relying on her data they’d be a great deal better off right now. She realized that could be applied across the board, to all the things she was trying to learn about from books. She might never feel the same as other people, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have feelings or that they weren’t important.
Quey went to Ryla and asked, “They’ll be able to handle them?”
“No,” she replied. “But it’s their function,” she added coldly. There was a tremble in her voice.
If she had actually tried to understand the way people perceived things instead of just analyzing them, she would have anticipated someone noticing the cargo was too light. She would have seen the trap in the control room sooner. She would have known they might put signal jammers in a base and leave them off the blueprints. Then she could have left a tether line to a beacon on the docks and she’d have a signal. Before Quey came to her door she’d never cared about having anyone else around, but now that he had she was worried that her crew might not survive, and felt guilty because it was her fault if they didn’t.
“Any chance on getting a signal from this room?” Rachel asked.
Ryla wasn’t ready to give up just yet and so she took a breath to cleanse her mind. She looked up. Above the ship was a long metallic tunnel that led to two massive doors. She looked around the room and saw the control panel along the wall opposite the ship and ran to it. Her fingers danced again and the doors opened, allowing the dull glow of late afternoon to cast a circle of light around the ship.
Ryla ran into that circle, holding her arm above her head. Still nothing. “I need to get higher.”
Gunfire, dulled to a low rumble by the thickness of
the door, thundered outside the room.
“How the fuck do you plan on that?” Burke shouted as they all listened to the battle raging outside.
“Why not just fly the fuck out of here?” one of Carmen’s soldiers shouted.
“The planets grounded,” Arnie barked, speaking for the first time in… Quey couldn’t say as to how long. “It won’t be long after we take to the air they’ll know exactly where we are and gun us back to the ground.”
“The robotics compound defense units will set off a series of alerts, as they lift off the ground,” Ryla informed them.
“Not to mention the ruckus they’ll cause,” Quey added.
The room was silent save the muffled gun sounds for a long moment as they all looked up at the smooth metal shaft leading into daylight. Gunfire raged in the other room and then it stopped. Everyone looked to the door.
“What do you think happened?” Argento asked.
“Maybe the robots killed them all,” Burke hoped.
A cluster of explosions shook the door and rumbled underfoot. Looks passed between the men and women in the room. It wasn’t long before there was noise just outside the door. Someone trying the control panel then someone banging the door.
“They blew them up,” Leone said softly. Everyone knew he was right.
“We got further this time,” Carmen said. “Further than anyone ever has.” Eyes found her and watched as she settled back against the platform the ship sat upon and sat down, looking up at it. “On south continent we tried so hard to make it off this rock.” She huffed a chuckle and finished, “Never even saw a ship.”
Something heavy banged against the door with force. Muffled shouting followed. It was only a matter of time. They were going to get inside.
Marcus nodded and stepped toward Carmen. “Sorry for overstepping earlier.”
She smiled up at him and replied, “Sorry for being such a cunt.”
They both had a laugh.
Natalie and Amber gripped each other while tears silently poured from their eyes.
Leone walked over to a bit of scrap metal, a hollow cone shaped bit, and sent it across the room with a kick. His next few steps were taken with a slight limp and Amber went to him. As much as it pained Natalie, she let the girl go.
The Saffron Malformation Page 81
