by J. J. Green
“Help,” he cried as they reached the tunnel mouth. “Carrie, stop them.” She pushed a robot hard, but only managed to swerve it slightly from its path. The robots paused at the exit, flew back a little, then surged forward. They launched Dave through the gap to the outside and into the air. “Help,” he cried again as he flew out. He yelled as he fell, his voice growing quieter as he disappeared from view.
“Dave,” shouted Carrie, darting forward. “Dave!”
Chapter Nine – A Hard Landing
Carrie leapt from the tunnel and skittered down the loose rocks to where Dave lay among the discarded machines on the mountain slope. He had landed next to the remnants of a machine that appeared to have been torn to pieces. Its tools and other debris were scattered widely, and several pieces of metal peeked out from beneath Dave. Carrie’s approach also sent a shower a small stones tumbling down and over him. As she slid to a stop next to him, he opened an eye.
“Thank goodness,” exclaimed Carrie. “Are you okay? Have you broken anything?”
Dave winced as he gingerly moved his legs and arms and rotated his ankle and wrists. He wiggled his fingers. “I don’t think so.” He tried to sit up. “Ow.” He grimaced and eased himself into a sitting position, pulling something that looked vaguely like a screwdriver from under his behind and tossing it down the mountainside.
“Try to stand up.”
Pushing down with his hands, Dave rose to his feet, sliding a little down the slope.
“Careful.”
“I am being careful,” he said. “I’ve just been thrown down a mountain by gang of vicious robots. Pardon me for not getting my balance so easily.”
“But you’re okay?”
He moved his shoulders and turned his head from side to side. “Yes, apart from some bruises and scrapes, I seem to be all right.”
“Shall we get off this slope then? I think those robots over there are scavenging. We don’t want them trying to scavenge us.”
They started down the slope, partly walking and partly sliding. Every so often they started mini-landslides of loose rock and debris, which carried them down at a faster—if more hair-raising—pace. After a short time, Carrie’s shoulders began shaking and she bit on a knuckle.
Dave noticed her out of the corner of his eye. “What’s up with you?”
Unable to control herself any longer, Carrie let out a great snort followed by a roar of laughter. This had the effect of sending her skidding down the mountain, but her rapid descent didn’t affect her mirth. She continued to guffaw, interspersed with small screams when she slid particularly fast. One hand clutching her side, she used the other to try to avoid falling against the scree.
Dave followed at a more sedate pace, his long strides carrying him down in a more dignified manner. When they reached the bottom, Carrie’s mirth had subsided to occasional peals of laughter as she wiped her eyes and tried to straighten up.
“I’m sorry,” she said, red-faced, panting and sniffing. “I’m sorry. But you looked so funny when they...they...” She burst out laughing again.
Dave put his hands on his hips. “When they threw me out of the tunnel?” He raised an eyebrow.
Carrie nodded. “They must have thought you’d broken down.” She clamped a hand over her mouth.
“I’m sure it was hilarious. Now if you can calm yourself down a bit, don’t you think we should get out of this sun?”
Exerting as much self-control as she could muster, Carrie swallowed and took a deep breath. “Yes, you’re right.” She scanned the barren landscape. “We should try to find another entrance to this mountain, or go to another. The Liberator must be inside one of them, unless the Council engineers got their calculations wrong. And the placktoids, well, I don’t think this terrain would be very suitable for the ones with wheels or caterpillar tracks. Inside the mountains the tunnels are quite smooth.”
She adjusted her bag. A realisation hit her. She looked at her friend, and a cold chill settled over her heart. “Your bag.”
Dave gasped and clutched at the side where he usually carried his Council toolkit. “When the robots picked me up...” he muttered. They both turned to look up at the black hole in the mountainside high above them; the entrance to the tunnel Dave had been evicted from. “I had the gateway device.”
“We’re just going to have to go back. Without that we’re stuck here forever.” All comical thoughts evaporated from Carrie as she contemplated the ground that lay between them and the tunnel entrance. Coming down had been pretty easy. Climbing back up would be damn hard, hot, dry thirsty work. “Here, have a drink before we start.” She took her water extractor. A measly few ounces lay at the bottom. Another reason they had to retrieve Dave’s bag. Her extractor would barely provide enough water for one, let alone two. She held out the bottle to Dave. “Here, you drink it all. I had a drink earlier.”
Dave looked her in the eye. “Thanks, Carrie, but we’ll share. Half and half.”
“But I’m smaller than you. I don’t need as much water.”
Her friend shook his head. “Half and half.”
“Okay, but you go first.”
Dave took a swig, checked the level, took another small sip and handed the bottle back. Carrie finished off the remaining water and replaced the bottle in her bag. “Let’s go then.”
The heat of the twin suns pounded into the backs and the top of their heads and the sweat poured freely from them as they scrambled back up the slope. The dust they stirred up as they climbed stung Carrie’s eyes and got into her mouth and up her nose. She was soon thirsty again. She could feel the grit clinging to her eyelashes, nose and mouth. The loose rocks were hot to touch, but they had no choice but to use their hands to climb the steep gradient.
When they reached the area where the discarded robots lay, they had the additional hazard of the scavengers. Though Carrie had weapons in her bag, she didn’t want to fire them and attract attention if she could possibly avoid it. The placktoids from the future were presumably somewhere nearby, and they would soon guess Carrie and Dave’s purpose.
Carrie began to wonder how much water the extractor in Dave’s bag would be holding when they recovered it. She hoped it was a lot. Enough for a big drink. Maybe they should delay searching for the Liberator while they found a reliable source of sweet, fresh, clear water. She drew a sleeve across her face. Behind her eyes, a dull throbbing started up.
After more than half an hour of climbing, they reached the lip of the entrance at about the same time. Dave pulled himself up and in before reaching out and offering Carrie his hand. Soon, both of them were lying panting on the tunnel floor in the cool, welcome shade.
“Better not stay still for too long,” said Carrie, sitting then standing up. She went, blinking, into the dim interior. The tunnel was quiet but for the sound of their footsteps. “Where was it you stopped?” Carrie asked. “Where were you when they grabbed you?”
“Not far from here, I don’t think.” He passed her and went deeper in. There were no robots about.
Carrie followed, scanning the ground as she walked. “Do you think maybe they tossed your bag out after you?”
“You would have seen, wouldn’t you? Or we would have noticed it when we climbed up.”
Rubbing her chin, Carrie frowned as they went deeper in. Too deep. She tried to ignore the realisation that was nagging. As the two walked farther into the mountain, neither saw any sign of Dave’s bag nor its contents. But if the robots hadn’t thrown it out, what had happened to it? Finally Carrie had to state the obvious. “We’ve long passed the spot where you stopped running. If you dropped it when they picked you up, it can’t be all the way back here, can it? Something’s happened to it. It’s gone.”
They stopped. Dave’s expression was grave. Neither spoke. The loss of Dave’s bag meant their aim for the moment had changed. It was now simply to survive, at least long enough to destroy the Liberator. Then, they had to find the gateway device and return to their own time before t
he Council shut down their route back to the future.
They had passed through the rocky zone of the mountain’s crust and into the smooth-walled interior, and during their passage they hadn’t seen a single robot. Just as Carrie was beginning to wonder why, a grinding noise came from behind them.
Simultaneously, Carrie and Dave turned, but there was nothing there. Then a trundling sounded from the direction they had just been facing. They spun round again, to see an empty tunnel. But the noises were familiar. Frighteningly familiar. A chill settled in the base of Carrie’s stomach. She grabbed Dave’s arm and made to run, but she didn’t know where to go. The noises were coming from in front of them and behind them. Before Carrie had time to reach for a weapon, placktoids appeared from both directions.
Chapter Ten – High Commander Performance
A laser pulse from a placktoid hit the ceiling above them, scorching the purplish material. An acrid smoke oozed from the hit. They heard the command, “Do not move.” The placktoid that had fired was tall and thin and resembled a pen standing upright, but Carrie’s amusement at the placktoids’ likeness to office stationery had long ago evaporated. She swallowed and wondered how the mechanical aliens would react if she tried to take out a weapon. Not in a good way, she decided. It was a bad idea. She couldn’t possibly take down enough of them to prevent a deadly retaliation, and Dave was unarmed.
The placktoids slowly approached. The two humans edged closer together. “Got a plan?” Dave asked Carrie.
“Do not communicate,” said the tall, thin placktoid. A pathway between the encroaching aliens opened up towards the mountain’s interior, and the ones behind them crowded closer. Carrie and Dave had no choice but to walk in the direction the placktoids indicated.
As Carrie passed the pen-like placktoid, it lowered a lever and hooked it through the strap of Carrie’s Liaison Officer bag, pulling it from her shoulder. Now neither of them had access to the equipment that was vital to their survival.
The path the placktoids guided them on led upwards. Silver robots appeared occasionally, single machines scooting past, or large clusters of them, apparently working on maintaining fans or other structures with functions Carrie couldn’t deduce. In one area a wall had been breached and a sluggish blue liquid was seeping from vessels that ran just beneath the surface. She now understood the channels of warmth she had felt earlier. Two or three teams of robots carrying a broken comrade also passed, no doubt on their way to a dumping and scavenging site.
After the placktoid’s warning to not speak, Carrie didn’t think it wise to ask where they were going or what would happen to them, but she didn’t doubt they were being taken to see someone high up in the placktoid ranks. Probably a commander, one of the shredder-like mechanical aliens she had encountered twice before. Both times the yellow liquid called the oootoon had saved them by jamming the shredder’s engines, but they had no oootoon with them now.
The only saving grace of the situation was that the placktoids were also looking for the Liberator, or maybe they had already found it. If Carrie and Dave managed to escape, they probably wouldn’t face days of scouring the inhospitable terrain. The placktoids could lead them to it.
The up-slope walking, after their climb up the mountainside, was exhausting. Carrie’s legs ached and her throat was parched. From his pale face and drawn expression, Dave was faring the same as her and probably worse. She hoped they would arrive at their destination soon.
“Halt,” said the tall placktoid, and Carrie immediately regretted what she had wished for. Their placktoid guards had stopped before a wide gap in a tunnel wall. From their position they couldn’t see what lay inside. All the trundling, bouncing and rolling that had accompanied their journey ceased, and another sound became audible. It was the noise of liquid passing through pipes, coming from all around. The blue liquid that ran through the mountain was in abundance here. The walls were probably full of it.
The tall placktoid poked Carrie roughly in her side. “Forward.”
Together, Carrie and Dave went through the gap. Four placktoids followed. A high chamber lay before them. At the top there was a hole, through which sunlight poured in a strong beam thick with dust motes. In the centre of the chamber, directly beneath the light from the ceiling, sat the placktoid leader they had been taken to see. It was not the shredder commander type Carrie knew and feared. For one thing, it was three times the size. The thing was deep matte grey and almost featureless. Two thick walls rose halfway to the roof, flanking a central platform. Somehow, this plain, three-walled design made it more terrifying than the shredders. Their glinting steel maws gave them some resemblance to a creature with a face. This being was pure sentient machine.
Except for the rushing of liquid around them, all was silent. Carrie waited for the thing to speak. A loud clunk reverberated around the chamber, making her jump. The placktoid leader was coming to life. But it didn’t address them. Beams shone out from the two walls and focused at the centre just above the platform. Carrie shielded her eyes against the brightness and peered to see what was happening. In a few moments a structure came into existence where the beams met and, as Carrie watched, it grew larger. The shape was familiar. It was one of the silver robots.
She wasn’t sure if the leader was creating the robot from materials like a 3D printer, or whether it was also growing it using the intense light—a process the placktoids had developed to speed up their species’ reproduction rates. As the new robot grew, however, it became clear something had gone wrong. Instead of a smooth, rounded, symmetrical oblong, the shell in one corner was twisted inward. The robot was growing malformed.
A second clunk sounded and, as abruptly as it had begun, the process stopped. The robot was complete. It floated in midair, but when the beams shut off it slipped downward. Then it recovered and stabilised. It glided away from the platform, but its flight was bumpy and erratic. Its malformation seemed to be hindering its operation. The robot flew and stopped, hovering, flew and stopped again, before falling to the ground with a shattering clank.
The response from the placktoid leader was swift. An intense red beam emanated from it. As the beam touched the fallen robot, it dissolved and disappeared, leaving nothing more than a slight scorch mark on the floor. Carrie’s skin prickled with sweat. Would that be all that remained of her and Dave in a few moments?
The placktoid leader finally addressed them. “Humans, you have not been granted permission to come to our planet. Your existence in this place and time is illegal. As High Commander I demand you explain your presence.”
Carrie gripped Dave’s arm. Both maintained their silence.
“The former Transgalactic Council of the future has sent you back to sabotage our rightful restructuring of history, has it not?”
“It isn’t the former Council,” said Carrie. “It still exists, and it won’t let you change the past so you can tyrannise the galaxy.”
“I demand you tell us the Council’s plans. How many agents has it sent back? Where are they? What weapons do they possess?”
Carrie folded her arms and glared at the High Commander. She had said all she was going to say to this evil alien. But she didn’t ignore the implications of its words. The placktoids didn’t know that she and Dave were the only Officers the Council had sent, and they feared the new weapons the Unity had developed, which were capable of piercing the tough placktoid armour.
“As I suspected, you organic lifeforms are too stupid to do what’s best for you. We suspected the Council would send you, Carrie Hatchett. Yes, I know your name. You are responsible for the capture and destruction of two highly esteemed commanders in our forces. Justice for your acts is long overdue.
But the former Transgalactic Council’s faith in your abilities is misplaced. Humans are soft and easy to manipulate. Your brains are simple and you have not even developed mind control. Anticipating the Council would be foolish enough to place its trust in you a third time, we have prepared a simple serum that will rem
ove your ability to censor your speech. You will divulge the Council’s entire plan, and we will eliminate all threats to our rise to a deserved supremacy over all galactic civilisation.
A note of glee entered the High Commander’s voice. “Yes, the Transgalactic Council has made a grave error in sending humans. Our drug eliminates inhibitory chemicals in the human brain. Time is the only factor. And when you have told us everything, you will be executed for your crimes against the New Social Order.”
Carrie's knees weakened, but she stood resolute. She couldn’t bear to look at Dave. It was her fault he was here.
The High Commander didn’t hang around. A paperclip placktoid approached—the placktoids’ transportation module. It zoomed over to Carrie and Dave and pulled them into its central forcefield. Bobbing between the long metal tubes that curved above and below, they were carried out of the chamber and away from the High Commander. As they left, there was a thunk. The High Commander had commenced making another of the silver robots.
In the smaller chamber the paperclip took them to, both humans were fastened to the floor of the chamber by their wrists and ankles. While their restraints were being sealed, Carrie managed to whisper to Dave, “The High Commander said the drug removes our mind’s ability to inhibit what we say. That doesn’t mean we have to answer their questions. Just say something else instead. Anything.”
“Like what?” murmured Dave in reply. “What should we tell them?”
“If we lose all inhibition, it won’t be hard to think of something.”
Chapter Eleven – Truth Time
Carrie gasped as the truth drug entered her bloodstream, sending icy chills through her neck where the placktoid had fired the pressurised shot, and down her spine. The drug’s effect was immediate. Carrie felt drunk, but not pleasantly so. She was woozy and disoriented. She frowned, trying to focus on where she was and why she was there.
