by Rick Partlow
“I wonder when he’s going to get back from that trip he went on,” Ian mused, worry creeping into his tone. “I wish he could have given us more details.”
“You know how it is for him, Ian,” Maggie said with a shrug. “He’s got a lot on his plate and he can’t tell anyone about most of it.”
“What the hell are those things doing?” Ian didn’t know who had asked the question; it was one of the many surfers gathered around the showers. But at the words, he looked up instinctively and immediately saw what the man meant.
It was the biomechs. They had stopped in the middle of their tasks and were standing stock still in the sand; their dead, dolls’ eyes staring into nothing as if they were listening to instructions from somewhere… Then, as one, they dropped their trash bags, raised their rakes in their hands and began advancing towards the crowd of people near the parking lot, first at a lockstep walk but then in a pace that quickened to a trot.
Ian McKay had not led a sedentary life. He’d served his mandatory two years in the Marines rather than maintaining public parks in the Republic Service Corps like most of his friends. After getting a degree in Marine Biology, he’d spent over a year at a deep-sea research station hundreds of meters below the surface of the Pacific; and dove in Arctic waters with mink whales to work on his doctorate. Even after twenty years as professor and fifteen more as dean of the Biological Sciences Department at the University of California Trans-Angeles, he spent significant time surfing, rock-climbing, backpacking and sailing; and he had been in some very difficult situations through the years.
But seeing that row of identical biomechs charging across the sand, Ian felt a stir of alarm in his chest, a feeling of wrongness and stark fear that he couldn’t ever remember experiencing before in nearly seventy years. His board and Maggie’s were propped up on a low fence that formed the border of the shower and restroom area. They were expensive and hand-painted but he didn’t even glance back at them. Instead, he took Maggie’s hand in his, feeling a clamminess to her skin that matched the shocked look on her face.
“The flitter!” he said, waving back towards the parking lot. “Let’s go!”
Unfortunately, there were over a hundred people clustered around the restrooms and showers and everyone seemed to have the same idea at the same time. Ian hadn’t gone two meters before he ran into the backs of a pack of people, all trying to squeeze through the gate that led to the parking lot, the scent of sweat and fear strong in the air. The sky was growing darker and a sense of claustrophobia closed in around him and Ian felt an irrational urge to climb over their backs, but Maggie brought him back to rationality with a tug on his arm, motioning toward the fence line. The fence butted up against a steep, sandy hill, but it was better than trying to squeeze onto the narrow path to the parking lot.
Ian vaulted the fence, then waited a moment to make sure Maggie got across cleanly before he began scrambling up the hill, digging his water shoes into the sand and trying to gain purchase, his quads burning with effort, his breath rasping in his ears. His wet-suit still hung around his waist and he felt as if his legs were in an oven where it covered him. It seemed like it took hours, but it was probably just over a minute before he reached the top of the hill, clambering over a short, rock wall onto the pavement of the parking lot. It still retained some residual heat from the earlier sun and he could feel the difference through the thin soles of his water shoes as he turned to make sure Maggie was still behind him.
That was when the screaming began. He saw it down the hill as he helped his wife over the wall: the biomechs slammed into the massed tourists and surfers with rake handles rising and falling rhythmically, the disturbingly meaty sounds of them smacking into human bodies reaching his ears even above the screams. He saw a teenager go down in a spray of blood, an older man collapse with his neck at an impossible angle, a woman trampled beneath the feet of the desperate before he turned and ran toward their flitter with Maggie right behind.
Why are they doing this? The question seemed inane, but it was better than surrendering to the gibbering terror that was snapping at his heels. What could make them do this?
They had to run the length of the lot, past dual lines of groundcars, past desperate families trying to yank open doors and get to perceived safety.
As if the biomechs can’t work a door control…
Finally they reached the other end of the lot, where their flitter was resting along with a half dozen others. None of the other flyers had reached their vehicle yet and for some reason he felt a sense of relief at being away from the crowd of desperate people as well as the biomechs. Ian came up against the canopy of the flitter with his shoulder, taking a moment to catch his breath as he fumbled with the sealed, water-tight pocket on the hip of his wet-suit.
“What is it?” Maggie snapped impatiently, pounding on the side of the canopy with the palm of her hand. “Open it, Ian!”
“Have to get my ‘link,” he replied tightly, finally pulling the device out of the pocket. “It has the rental code to unlock the doors.”
“Ian!” Maggie screamed, yanking at his arm. “Look out!”
Ian spun around and saw the two biomechs running towards them with their awkward, childlike gait that was still deceptively fast. Ian hesitated for just a heartbeat, debating inwardly whether he could get the door open and get inside before the biomechs reached them, but they were just too close…
“Run!” he yelled, pushing Maggie ahead of him as they cut across the sand and gravel that surrounded the parking lot, heading for the road. “The visitors’ center!”
The Venice Beach Park Visitors’ Center was about three kilometers down the old Pacific Coast Highway; it was surrounded by shops and restaurants and hopefully the Park Police would be there as well. Ian felt the pavement of the old road slapping painfully against his feet, but it seemed disconnected from reality somehow, as if it were happening to someone else, just as abstract as the pain in his calves and quadriceps.
He didn’t try to hold back for Maggie’s sake: she was a better runner than he, a long-distance racer and triathlete. Instead, he found himself trying to keep up with her and, more importantly, trying to stay ahead of the two biomechs on their heels. He didn’t have any idea how fast the things could run or how long they could keep their speed up, but it really wouldn’t help to know: all they could do was run as fast as possible and hope it was fast enough.
Ian wished a car would come…anything that could distract the things, get them off the scent. But the road was deserted, as most roads were even in tourist areas such as this. The only reason there were even any cars at all was the fact that the trains didn’t run all the way to the beach and the shuttles were notoriously inconvenient. That made it worthwhile for the few who were interested in outdoor activities and could afford the high taxes to either rent or buy and store a car. It was nice, usually---for those who could take the time, money and trouble---because the beaches were not crowded most of the time. At the moment, Ian would have been willing to trade a lifetime of crowded beaches for just one car…
Ian didn’t want to look back; he was trying to force himself not to look back. But after a minute, he couldn’t help himself and jerked his head backwards for just an eyeblink…and saw the biomechs still behind them, and much, much closer: not ten meters back. They were gaining and they weren’t getting tired. The damn things probably never got tired.
“Faster, Maggie!” he gasped. Even as he said it, he didn’t know if he could run any faster. Maybe Maggie could, though…
“What’s that noise?” he heard Maggie ask, not nearly as out of breath as he was.
He hadn’t noticed it over his own labored breathing, but now he heard it: a high-pitched whine in the distance, something familiar that tugged at the edge of his memory. Then the whine turned into an ear-splitting roar and a hot wind tugged at his back as a huge shadow passed over them…the shadow of a massive, delta-wing assault lander, its belly a dull grey and its upper fuselage a m
ottled camouflage.
It took every bit of self-discipline that Ian had not to stop cold in the middle of the road and stare at the thing in disbelief; but he knew the biomechs wouldn’t be as awed by the sight as he was, so he kept running, and so did Maggie. The deadly-looking aerospacecraft swung around in a slow arc then came to a hover just thirty meters off the pavement less than a hundred meters ahead of them, streams of superheated gas causing the air beneath its belly jets to waver and shimmer as a cloud of dust swirled in spiral patterns around the lander.
“Get off the road!” the shuttle’s external address speakers blared at them above the roar of the turbines. “Get down!”
Ian knew what was coming and grabbed Maggie around the waist, yanking her off the side of the road then throwing himself down. He took the impact on his right shoulder and felt gravel scraping off his skin just before Maggie landed on top of him and his breath left his lungs in a whoosh. He rolled over, desperately shielding her with his body but unable to look away as the lander’s chin cannon coughed harshly for just a half a second.
The two biomechs that had been chasing them disappeared in a haze of smoke, blood and fragmented pavement as the explosive rounds struck just between them with a thunderclap that shook the ground beneath Ian and Maggie. Ian wheezed painfully, an ache in his chest from where Maggie had landed on it, as he rolled off of her and came up to a seated position in the sand and rock.
“Who is that?” Maggie asked incredulously.
The assault shuttle’s jets throttled down steadily and it descended on clouds of sand and dust. Ian and Maggie had to shield their eyes from the storm of sand that whipped at them for a few seconds until the lander touched ground and the VTOL jets powered down. Ian looked up and saw that a ramp had lowered from the shuttle’s belly and someone in a uniform was stepping down it…
“Jesus,” Maggie said, putting a hand on his arm. “Is that Shannon?”
Ian found himself standing despite the pain in his shoulder, and he and Maggie moved back out onto the road, meeting Shannon Stark halfway as she strode purposefully toward them, a sidearm in her hand. She cut quite the striking figure, Ian thought not for the first time: a contrast of beauty and lethality that he had always found unsettling. He wasn’t sure how Jason was ever comfortable with her.
“Mr. and Mrs. McKay,” she said, “are you both all right?”
“Thanks to you,” Maggie told her, pulling her into a hug. Shannon looked a bit embarrassed, Ian thought. “You saved our lives!”
“Shannon,” Ian interjected, “what the hell’s going on? Why would the biomechs attack people?”
“Someone programmed them to,” Shannon told him, gently disengaging from Maggie. “But I don’t have time to explain it all; I need you both to get on board and strap in.” She waved them back towards the ramp. “I had to make sure you two were safe…but now I have to get back to the city, and I won’t have time to drop you off along the way.”
As Ian followed her up the ramp, he looked back at what was left of the biomechs that had been chasing them. He could still see the blood spray on the broken pavement. He shook himself and stepped into the hold of the shuttle, hearing the ramp closing behind him.
“What’s happening in the city?” he asked Shannon, watching her help Maggie get strapped into an acceleration couch. “Are the biomechs going after people there, too?”
“Yes,” she told him, tightening Maggie’s restraints. “But that’s just a diversion from the real attack.” She looked over at him, her face grim death. “They’re going to try to set loose the nanovirus, the one that hit Tintagel, the one they tried to use on the Danube Corridor.”
Ian paled as he fell into the seat next to Maggie’s. He knew how to secure himself: he remembered from his days in the Marines, so many decades ago. Shannon left them and headed back into the cockpit. In a moment, he heard the turbines whining louder, throttling up for take-off.
“Ian,” Maggie said, stricken, “if they use that in the city…”
She didn’t have to finish. They both knew the biochemistry involved, but at that moment Ian envied his son his degree in History. Because if that virus got loose in Trans Angeles, history was about to change.
* * *
Tanya Manning cursed softly as she worked at releasing her safety restraints, trying desperately to free herself from her seat. The restraints had automatically yanked her tight into the seat when the truck had smashed into the flitter and now they were being very recalcitrant about letting her loose. She was sure there was some safety protocol that was deactivating the release and she was also sure there was some very simple way of overriding it…but she didn’t have time to figure out what it was.
She pulled a knife from a sheath on the outside of her leg armor and sliced through the strap across her chest, then did the same for the restraints over her lap. She slipped out of the remnants of the harness and pushed forward into the front compartment of the flitter, checking on Caitlyn Carr and Abshay Patel.
“Are you two okay?” she asked, broadcasting on their team frequency and also over her helmet’s external speakers.
They were both conscious but Carr was blinking and shaking her head and Patel was yanking futilely at his seat harness.
“I’m good,” Abshay said. “Just can’t get this damn harness off.”
“Here,” she handed him he knife. “Cut yourself free, then get her loose too. I’m going out.”
Not waiting for a reply, she hit the canopy control, then slammed her shoulder into it when it opened too slowly…everything was happening too slowly, dammit! The door’s servos whined in protest as she pushed it open and scraped through beneath it before it was all the way up. She could see Franks sprawled out face-down on the pavement to the right of the flitter, and she felt a cold tightness in her chest until she saw his hand twitching and his leg moving up to try to get a foot beneath him.
Manning didn’t immediately move toward him; first, she scanned the area around the truck, immediately noticing movement at the rear of the vehicle. She saw a flash of orange jumpsuit and realized that the biomechs were offloading from the cargo container. For a moment she was frozen with indecision; she couldn’t chance shooting the biomechs for fear of setting the nanovirus loose, but she had to do something to keep them from getting away.
She’d decided on a course of action and was in the middle of switching out the anti-armor grenade in her launcher for a concussion warhead when movement from the cab of the truck caught her eye. She hadn’t seen the driver initially, through a windshield splintered and spider-webbed from the collision and bullet-holes from where Franks had shot through the cab to kill the passenger-seat shooter. She’d thought the woman had been at the back with the others, but her door popped open and the driver stepped out, blood trickling from a cut on her forehead, and raised her assault rifle towards Manning…whose carbine was pointed upwards, with the grenade launcher broken open, her hands filled with two different rifle grenades.
Manning acted on training and didn’t even try to use her carbine; instead, she dropped it and the grenades and tried to transition to her sidearm, knowing even as she swept her arm back towards her holster that she wouldn’t be in time. She had her hand on the butt of the pistol when she heard gunfire erupt behind her and saw the impact of a slug on the chest armor of the driver. The woman ducked back behind the door, firing a wild burst that dug into the pavement meters away from Manning, and then the Special Ops sergeant had her own sidearm out and was putting rounds into the door, trying to keep the driver’s head down.
Manning rushed forward and grabbed at the back of Drew Franks’ armored vest, pulling him towards the flitter. As she yanked him behind cover, she saw Caitlyn Carr leaning out of the flitter’s cabin, still firing at the truck’s driver; she realized with a start that the CIS agent had saved her life, which vaguely annoyed her for reasons she couldn’t quite understand.
She dropped Franks gently to the ground behind the flitter’s partia
lly-crushed plenum, then holstered her sidearm and brought her carbine to her shoulder. The driver’s leg was barely visible in the gap between the door and the body of the truck’s cab and she centered the reticle on the centimeters-wide gap and fired off a short burst. Blood sprayed and Manning heard a scream over the hoarse stutter of her carbine, then the driver collapsed into the street. Another burst went through the woman’s open visor and she jerked spasmodically before falling still forever.
“We have to stop them!” Manning heard Abshay Patel’s voice and turned to see him coming up behind her, his grenade launcher at his shoulder. “The biomechs…they’re taking them away!”
Manning followed the aim of his weapon and saw the three armored men leading the half dozen biomechs down the pedestrian walkway deeper into the city.
“Abshay,” Drew Franks rasped, surprising her as he levered himself off the street, wincing at the pain in his head. “Load up some concussion rounds. You and Caitlyn take the parallel walkway three blocks that way.” He pointed west. “Bust ass and try to get ahead of them, find a good bottleneck and let me know when you get there. No one fires without authorization from me. Go!” The two of them took off down the street at a run. He watched them for a moment, then looked Manning in the eye. She saw him blink hard, trying to keep his head clear. “Tanya, you’re with me.”
“You up to this?” she asked him, fairly certain he had at least a mild concussion.
“Fuck no,” he told her and she had to smile. “But we gotta’ do it anyway, right?”
He pulled his carbine loose from his chest harness and took off after the biomechs at a trot and she followed him, loading up a concussion grenade from her vest pouch as they ran. Manning had opened her mouth to ask him what he planned on doing when they caught up with the biomechs, but realized she’d asked him that question twice already.
