Binary Pair

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Then they all sprung from the ground, took flight, and twisted toward me. I jumped into the car, reached up to grab the hatch, and then yanked the metal down on top of us half a moment before the drones collided. For a good ten seconds, they hammered against the metal lid of our vehicle like a rapid fire sledgehammer. The thick metal sheet we had attached buckled inward a dozen centimeters, and the car felt as if it lifted up on the front and back right wheels, but then the pummeling stopped, and the car bounced back down onto its left wheel.

  The three of us let out gasps of relief, and I heard Paula swallow a few gulps of air.

  “Anyone hurt?” I asked. I didn’t really think anyone was, but there had been a shit-ton of the drones flying around.

  “I got scratched by one on my back,” Paula said as she turned around to show me the injury. There was a thin cut at the base of her neck, but it wasn’t bleeding that much.

  “I’ll patch it up.” I reached into one of my pouches and pulled out my small first aid-kit. It was really just a few vials of expanding salts, a spray bottle of disinfectant, and some adrenaline shots. The package was about the size of a shotgun shell, and the women had bought them on Queen’s Hat when they were restocking Persephone.

  “Thank you. That actually feels much better,” Paula said after I’d used the spray and then poured a bit of the expanding salt on the cut.

  “Is the display for Zea’s drone working yet?” Kasta was sitting in the front seat, and she was staring at the screen on her sister’s wrist.

  “Not yet. The elevator probably needs to go-- ahh there we go!” The screen on Paula’s wrist lit up, and I saw the view from the drone that was in the government center with Eve, Commander Tunar-Roz, and the Lith Dae marines.

  “You do not need to do this. We want to help the people on this planet,” Eve said, and I saw her raise her hands as two marines pointed their rifles at her. The sight made the animal in my stomach scream, and I had to clench my muscles to keep it from taking control of my body.

  “Hey! We did what you wanted! Adam opened the gate to the bunker. You don’t need to--” Zea was screaming through the drone’s speakers, but Tunar-Roz interrupted her.

  “Get him on your transponder,” the commander growled.

  “Hey. I’m here. What is going on?” I spoke through the transponder.

  “Your team lost contact with you,” Tunar-Roz spat. “I thought you had betrayed us.”

  “We had to go to the bottom of the bunker. No signal. We are almost at the top now. Heading to the northwest bunker. Why are your men pointing their rifles at my friend?” I asked as calmly as I could.

  “As I said, we thought you were betraying us.” The commander waved her arm, and the two marines lowered their rifles away from Eve. I knew our plan was counting on Eve killing the group if things went south, but I still didn’t like the idea of her being involved in a battle without me there to protect her.

  “Now you can see that we aren’t,” I said.

  “Yes, our ships in orbit have said the northwest bunker doors are open. You are still in the southwest bunker?”

  “I’m sending my team into the northwest,” I said carefully. I knew that they had thought about closing the doors of this place to trap us in here.

  “How many of your crew do you have heading into the northwest bunker? We see three cars there now, but they haven’t moved inside yet.”

  “They are waiting for my order. I’ll tell them to enter soon,” I answered.

  “You said you are almost to the top of the bunker?” Tunar-Roz asked, and the tone of her voice was a bit too innocent sounding.

  She was definitely going to close the doors on us.

  “Adam will be--” Eve started to say, but the Lith Dae commander pointed her pistol at my friend.

  “I wasn’t asking you. I was asking your captain.”

  “You keep pointing guns at my friend,” I growled. “You’re worried about me betraying you, but I think I should be the one that is worried.”

  “You had to have known what we wanted,” Tunar-Roz said. “Unless you are an idiot. Maybe you are since you only sent one woman with us.”

  “Please do not do this,” Eve’s voice wasn’t pleading, if anything, her eyes were glowing red, and her voice sounded angry. “You know we are good people that just want to help.”

  “Sorry, girl. The strong feed on the weak. We need this planet, and we want your ship. Close the doors on the southeast bunker if you want to live.”

  “Too bad,” Eve shook her head and sighed. “I gave you a chance. There is some goodness in you, but I can see it is--”

  “Close the damn bunker doors, or I’ll put a bullet in you and figure out how to do it myself!” Tunar-Roz pointed her pistol at Eve again, and my heart leapt into my throat.

  Then the screaming started.

  Zea’s drone spun around to see the group of marines shooting their rifles into the darkness of the building. Then one of them stumbled back as if something had hit him in the chest.

  “It’s on me! Help!” he screamed, but I couldn’t see any drone actually attacking him.

  “Get it off him!” Commander Tunar-Roz ordered, and two of the marines jumped to their comrade in an attempt to pry the invisible drone off.

  “There are too many of them!” another of the Marine’s screamed as he swung his rifle through the air wildly.

  Then he pivoted, and the trail of bullets sprayed into the three marines standing next to him.

  The scene erupted into confusion as the armored men started shooting each other. It was obvious from the sound of their terrified screams that they each thought they were being attacked by the drones, but I couldn’t see any visual proof. It was Eve’s illusion magic tricking them, and I realized that I might have been worried about Eve without reason. She was incredibly powerful, and these men never stood a chance.

  “You are shooting each other! Stop! Cease fi---” the commander’s words were cut short, and Zea spun the drone around to find Eve’s mouth closed around the other woman’s neck.

  Then Tunar-Roz screamed, and it sounded as if she’d just peered into hell and saw her darkest nightmares staring back at her.

  The armored woman tried to bring her pistol around, but Eve caught her wrist, and the commander’s arm seemed to slacken almost immediately. Eve’s eyes seemed to pulse a bright crimson as she sucked down her victim's blood, and I could have sworn that the room actually lit up with the color. They seemed to glow brighter as the armored woman’s face paled.

  Then Tunar-Roz’s head slumped to the side, and she let out a final whine before she died.

  “Yessssssssss,” Eve hissed as she let go of the corpse. For half a second, she didn’t look like the kind woman I loved. Her mouth was covered with blood, her eyes were glowing, and the expression on her beautiful face reminded me too much of the evil creature I had seen in my dream. Almost as soon as I thought about the nightmare, Eve’s face relaxed, and she let out a sigh of relief.

  “Uhhh, you okay?” Zea asked through the transponder.

  “I am.” Eve turned to look to her side, and the drone spun to show that all the marines were dead.

  “Zea, you need to start your back door hack now,” I said. “They are going to be expecting communication from the commander.”

  “I was thinking that. I’m hitting it now. Are you three okay? I got worried when we didn’t hear from you.”

  “We are fine,” I assured her. “Paula has a small cut, but she’ll be okay. We are safe and riding a lift up to the top floor.”

  “Thank the stars,” Zea said with a sigh, and I saw Eve’s shoulders relax.

  “We should be up top in…” I looked to Kasta, and she held up two fingers.

  “Two minutes. Then we will head to the northwest bunker. It will be another six minutes for us to get there.”

  “Okay, so let’s talk a bit more about what you want me to do,” Zea said. “My Trojan Horse will cut their communication systems, but it m
ight look like the ground team just isn’t communicating with them anymore. They won’t really know something is up until they try to talk cross ship.”

  “That was the plan,” I said.

  “Yeah, but once they do, they might guess it is us and decide to attack. Or maybe they might not. If I turn and run now, they will totally know something is up, and they might talk to one of the other ships and ask them to tail me. Then they will know for sure we fucked them.”

  “I have a feeling I know where you are going with this,” I said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah. It will be kind of crazy, but I was thinking I just sit here like nothing is wrong. Persephone is still far away from their group. They can launch an attack, but I’ll have plenty of time to get away. Falling back to the other side of the planet will mean that I can’t really swoop down and help you all if you need it.”

  “It sounds pretty ballsy,” Paula chuckled.

  “It sounds like something Adam would do,” Eve said through the transponder.

  “Ha! Yeah. Maybe I think I have nine lives too. Anyways, what do you think, Captain?” the hacker asked.

  “I think you are right. Just sit tight. Eve, can you close the hatch to this bunker after we leave? It might buy us a few seconds from their fleet. They might think their commander tried to get it done, but we talked her out of it.”

  “Or they might think we killed all of their ground team and we want to make it look like we talked that bitch out of it,” Zea said with a laugh.

  “I will shut the door as soon as you tell me, but I will not be able to leave this place until the drones are re-programmed.”

  “We’ll work on that next,” I said. “Zea, let us know if the Lith Dae ships do anything.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the hacker replied, and I pressed the transponder again to mute our communication.

  “Eve really is a vampire?” Paula asked.

  “She was sucking blood, so I’d say so,” Kasta replied.

  “I was asking Adam.” Paula rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, I know. I’m trying to be funny. How was it?” Kasta turned to me.

  “It wasn’t very,” Paula said as her face made a sour expression.

  “Adam is smiling, though,” Kasta winked at me, and then I actually did laugh.

  “See? Androids can be funny,” she said as she joined my laughter.

  It felt good to laugh, and a bit of the tension left my shoulders. Paula actually let out a little giggle as well, and I saw some of the panic leave her face. We still weren’t done with this mission, but I was starting to think it was going to work out fine.

  Then the lift screeched to a halt.

  “I thought we had another minute or two up?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Kasta said as she looked at the monitor. Paula and I leaned over the front seat and stared at it also. There were a few bird-drones fluttering around us, but nothing else to see beside the far wall of the massive lift shaft where we rode.

  “I think something has caught in the magnetic drive,” Kasta said.

  “Something?” I asked.

  “Probably a drone,” she answered with a shrug. “Someone is going to have to go out there and dislodge it.”

  “Shit,” Paula and I said together.

  Chapter 17

  “It should be me,” Kasta said quickly. “They don’t seem to attack me.”

  “Ugh. I still hate the idea,” Paula said.

  “Adam can open the top a bit, then I’ll crawl out and fix it. Will only be a moment.”

  “There is a shitload of them out there.” Paula pointed at the screen. There wasn’t exactly a ‘shitload’ we could see, but there were one or two of the drones fluttering by the forward display every five seconds.

  “I’ll be fine. Adam, you ready?” Kasta asked as she leaned into the side of the hatch that opened.

  “Yeah, but be careful,” I said as I grabbed the latch. She nodded at me, and then I pushed up the hatch. Kasta slid out like a slithering snake, and I yanked the top down as soon as she was out.

  “What do you see?” Paula asked into her transponder as soon as I closed the hatch.

  “The ships are still sitting there. I’m watching them,” Zea replied.

  “Oh, sorry. I meant Kasta,” Paula said.

  “Isn’t she with--”

  “Fuck. I see where the drone got stuck. Actually looks like two of them,” the android said.

  “Can you pry them out?” I asked.

  “What is going on with--” Zea tried to ask.

  “It’s gotten sucked under the port.” I heard banging noises. “I’ll need to crawl under the lift and try to get to it.”

  “Crawl under?” Paula asked. “Is there a service shaft?”

  “Ahhh. No. When I say crawl under, what I really mean is hang from the joists beneath the lip, monkey bar over to the joint where the drone is stuck, and then kick it free with my feet.”

  “Fuck,” Zea, Paula, and I said.

  “I’ll do it,” I said as I moved toward the hatch of the car.

  “No. You can’t go out there. They will tear you apart.” Paula grabbed onto my arm.

  “There aren’t actually that many in the shaft,” Kasta said. “All three of us could probably shoot most of them, then Adam could traverse the bottom and kick the blockage free quickly. At least quicker than me. I’m a bit stronger than a human woman, but I’m not as suited to the task as our captain.”

  “Grab your gun and let’s go,” I instructed Paula. Her terrified eyes almost convinced me to change my mind, but then she nodded and reached for her weapon.

  I flung open the hatch, jumped out onto the elevator, and swung my rifle around. A quick count gave me thirty or so of the drones within the circle of illumination that the car and weapon lights gave us, and I started to pick them out of the sky one by one.

  It was actually pretty easy to shoot them. The inside of the elevator shaft wasn’t lit, so I guessed the drones that flew up here were losing power faster than they could gain it. Kasta and Paula began to fire their rifles a few seconds after I did, and we eliminated all of the drones in less than half a minute.

  “Shit, I thought this was actually a closed shaft,” I said as I walked to the lip of the lift. There was a good ten meters of space between where the platform of the lift ended and the far wall of the shaft. I stepped to the edge of the platform and looked down. The light from the earlier room where all the bird-drones were looked like just a small dot, and my head started to spin with a surprise flash of vertigo.

  It was a long fucking way down, and I didn’t have a parachute to save me if I fell. Even if I did, there would be thousands of bird-drones waiting to tear me apart when I landed.

  “Do you see a way to get under from over there?” Kasta asked. “There is a spot near the front of the car, but where you are standing is closer to the center.”

  “I think I see one,” I said as I looked closer at the lip. There was a metal bar at the side that looked like it might have been part of a ladder, but there wasn’t another rung for another two meters. I’d have to climb down those two rungs, then I’d actually be able to glance under the metal of the lift to see if there were other bars to grab.

  “Take my rifle,” I said to Paula a second before I tossed it to her. Then I took a deep breath, hit the button on my sleeve to turn on the lights of my armor, and jumped onto the first rung.

  I moved down the next bar and then reached down to hold onto it. My feet swung free over the abyss, and I peered across the bottom of the lift platform.

  “Do you see the drone? It should be right at the magnetic port. I can see it here from the top, but it’s too far away for me to push out.

  “I see it!” I called back. I also saw a network of metal “I” beams I could grab onto. None of them were clean holds like the bar I currently grasped, but I wouldn’t fall if my hand pinch strength didn’t give out.

  “Is there a clear way?” Paula asked.

  “Yeah, I’l
l be right back,” I took a few more breaths, tried not to look down, did so anyway, took a few more ragged breaths, and then reached across to pinch the closest beam with my fingers.

  I swung free of the side bar and grabbed onto the next beam. My hands were strong, so I wasn’t worried about slipping, but my strength wouldn’t last forever. I needed to hurry the fuck up and kick this drone free of the elevator workings so we could get up.

  “What is going on? Did you guys clear the elevator?” Zea asked through my transponder as I swung to the next beam.

  “Can you access my drone? It is D-45789.” I heard Kasta say, then I noticed that there was a drone floating next to me.

  “Got it. Hey Captain, what are you-- Fucking shit that’s a long ass way down!” Zea shouted through my transponder.

  “Not helping!” I growled as I pumped my legs back, threw them forward, and then let go with both my hands. I traveled through the air for two meters and then hooked my fingers into the next beam before I dropped into the abyss.

  My entire body was trembling, but I was about halfway there, so I kicked back again and threw myself to the next beam. One more brought me right next to the blockage, and I angled a kick up to try and knock the bird-drone free of the maglev shaft.

  “Uhhh, Adam?” I heard Paula ask.

  “Yeah?” I grunted as I kicked the drone again. It budged a little, and I guessed I would need to do it a dozen more times to knock it out of the shaft.

  “Please hurry,” she said, and there was no mistaking the fear in her voice.

  “What’s--” I started to say, but then Zea interrupted me.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Hurry! Kick faster!”

  “I’m trying to go as fast as I can,” I hissed as I brought my knees up to my chest and kicked both of my boots into the broken robot.

  “Go faster! The drones from below are coming!” Paula screamed, and I looked down.

  The small dot of light flickered. It was as if there was a wave of water over it, and the light was only passing through as a refraction.