He hurried forward, his eyes and his ears seeking for signs of danger.
The first corpse he saw was Veldt. The mercenary lay upon his back, eyes wide. If the plasma bolt through the stomach hadn’t killed him, the mine shrapnel in the neck definitely had done the job. March had anticipated that the slag scattered across the floor would augment the deadliness of the mines, giving their explosions greater force.
In haste, he checked the corpses, but none of them were moving. All the Graywolves had died in the space of about ten seconds. As March looked at their corpses, he felt no guilt. They had been coming to murder him and Taren, after all, but they hadn’t expected that he would be ready for him.
But he did feel puzzlement.
They had died…but they had died so sloppily.
They had walked into his defenses without hesitation. Without checking, even. If they had sent in a scout drone, they would have detected the charged capacitors on the plasma cannons. Hell, even if they had done a basic scan, they would have noticed his defenses.
They had done none of those things, and they had walked blithely to their deaths.
Almost as if…
“You all right?” came Taren’s voice.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” said March.
A distraction? Had these men been sacrificed as a distraction?
“I think you should come out and join me,” said March. “Bring the laptop.”
“Acknowledged.”
“Wait,” said March as an idea came to him. “Bring the relics as well. Just in case. I don’t want them left unattended.”
“Good idea. On my way.”
About a minute later Taren jogged from the dormitory doorway, laptop braced on her left arm, pistol in her right, the leather strap of the satchel across her chest.
She came to his side and looked at the dead men.
“God,” she said. “Those poor idiots. They had no idea what they walked into, did they?”
“But why?” said March.
“I’m more concerned about how,” said Taren. “How did they find us? No one but Bishop knew we were here.”
“I don’t know,” said March. Had Bishop been captured before he could reach the Tiger? Or had the Tiger been taken and boarded? More likely, Bishop had left, and the Graywolves had found March and Taren’s hiding place by some other method. “But we won’t be able to stay here.”
“No,” said Taren. “If they sent one force after us, they’ll send another.”
“But why send this force?” said March.
“To kill us and take the relics, obviously,” said Taren.
“But they were so damned sloppy,” said March. “If they had done even a little reconnaissance, they would have realized the danger. If they had come with even unpowered battle armor, they would have been much more dangerous. It’s like someone deliberately told them this would be a cakewalk.”
Taren frowned. “You think someone sent them to their deaths on purpose?”
“Maybe.”
She glared at the dead men. “That’s exactly the kind of thing Laredo would do.” She looked back at the dormitory. “A distraction?”
“Probably,” said March, his unease growing. “We need to get out of here, now. Let’s head to the public areas of the station.”
“Won’t that make it easier for Laredo to find us?” said Taren.
“It will,” said March, “but if he’s only got mercenaries left, it will be harder to attack in a public place.”
“Agreed,” said Taren. She took a step back, and then stumbled with a yelp. March darted forward and caught her elbow before she could fall.
“Thanks,” she said. “Lost my balance…” She frowned down at the floor. “What the hell?”
Most of the floor in the ore complex was bare rock, though cut smooth and level to prevent trip hazards. In several places were metal plates covering equipment access hatches, and Taren’s foot had almost gone through one.
The metal looked…wrong.
It resembled a slice of cheese, riddled with small holes of varying size. March turned his head and looked at the nearest smelter, and saw that those strange holes had spread up the side of the machine.
He was certain, absolutely certain that the machine had not looked like that when they had arrived two days ago.
He was also certain that it hadn’t looked like that five minutes ago, and he knew of only one thing that could do that to metal.
“We need to get out of here now,” said March, stepping back towards the dormitory door. “Right now.”
A few meters away, one of the dead men sat up.
Chapter 9: Pulse
“What the hell?” said Taren, her voice as shocked as March had ever heard it.
All around them, the dead men sat up, their unblinking eyes staring at March and Taren. Their movements were stiff and clumsy, but they were nonetheless moving. The men were freshly dead, but already the veins in their faces and hands were turning black, the skin around them becoming gray and pale.
The Machinist nanotech in their flesh was already replacing their blood.
“Move!” said March. He leveled his pistol and squeezed off four shots at the nearest corpse. The first plasma bolt blasted through its skull, turning its brain to cinders. The next three shots tore up its back and destroyed its spinal column. The corpse twitched and fell back to the floor.
But the others were on their feet and moving towards them.
“Run!” shouted March, pushing Taren towards the dormitory door.
She needed no prompting and sprinted across the complex. March followed her and glanced back over his shoulder.
As he did, the heads fell off the shoulders of the running corpses.
There was no blood, only a few spurts of the black slime created by nanobot waste. As the heads fell, metallic legs like those of a spider sprouted from the base of their skulls. The heads landed on their new-grown metal legs, talons rasping against the stone floor. Now nineteen headless corpses pursued March and Taren, accompanied by nightmarish creatures that looked like metal spiders with human heads.
Taren tore through the door and into the dormitory corridor, and March closed and locked the door behind her. He hit a button on his phone, and a second later he heard the roar as the remaining mines detonated. He didn’t know how much damage they would do against the infiltrator drones, but it was better than nothing.
“What the hell are those things?” said Taren, her eyes still wide.
“Infiltrator drones,” said March.
Something thudded against the door.
“I’ve never heard of them,” said Taren.
“The Machinists sometimes dose their agents and mercenaries with nanobots and don't bother to tell them,” said March. “If the agents are killed, the nanobots will rebuild their bodies, using the dead brains and spinal columns as CPUs. That’s where all those holes in the metal came from. The nanobots harvested metal atoms to use as raw material. They’ll use the heads as eyes, and the bodies as an attack force.”
Another thump came through the door, and this time a dent appeared in the metal.
“They can’t punch through the door, can they?” said Taren. “They’re just made of dead people.”
“Dead people don’t feel pain,” said March, “and the nanobots will augment their strength if given enough time. Another two or three minutes, they’ll be through that door. Grab one of the survival packs. We’ll need to retreat through the lift shaft.”
Taren nodded and ran into the lounge. March hurried down the corridor and came to the doors to the lift. The long, dark corridor of the lift shaft stretched before him, the squat cylinder of the plasma turret pointing into the darkness.
An idea came to him.
“Ready,” said Taren, coming to a stop as March lifted the plasma turret with a grunt and turned it towards the door to the ore complex.
“Good,” said March. “Get behind me and give me the laptop.”
She jum
ped into the corridor, handed him the laptop, and stepped behind him. March braced the laptop against the turret, entering a series of commands. The laptop beeped in acknowledgment, and he heard the faint whir from the turret as the motors controlling it powered up.
He closed his left fist, crushing the laptop’s keyboard, processor, and the main circuit board, and the display went dark. March tossed aside the wrecked computer and turned to Taren as both his phone and hers let out irate beeps as they lost their connection to the laptop.
“Why’d you do that?” said Taren.
“Set the turret to auto fire,” said March. “It will shoot anything that comes through the dormitory door until its capacitor runs dry. Let’s go.”
Taren nodded, and they jogged down the lift corridor, taking care to keep between the metal rails running along the floor. March pulled out his phone and consulted a map. They were a long way from the inhabited areas of the station, but if he read the map right, in another two kilometers the lift corridor would open up into one of the cargo corridors. The docking bays along that corridor were still in use, and from there they could make their way to the public areas of the station.
From there, March thought their best bet was to ask Heitz for help. Heitz was a corrupt toad, but he hated the Machinists, and he would be infuriated that there had been both Graywolves and Machinist infiltrator drones on his station. Of course, depending on how many Graywolves were on the station, that might be suicide. Did Lorre have enough men to take over the station entirely? March doubted it. Lorre’s main plan had been to board the Shovel and take the relics and Taren, and his backup plan had been to use his Iron Hands to seize the artifacts from the docked freighter. By good fortune, March had defeated both attempts. He suspected Lorre was improvising now, reacting rather than planning. That was good. The side that dictated the tempo of a battle usually won it.
But Lorre was very, very good at improvising.
“How much longer do we have before the corpses punch through the doors?” said Taren.
“Not much longer,” said March. “They should do it any…”
As if in answer, he heard the distant roar of plasma fire.
“About now,” said March.
“Do we have to worry about lift cars?” said Taren. She was sweating a little, but she wasn’t breathing hard. March was relieved that she was in good enough shape to flee for her life down the lift corridor without collapsing in a wheezing heap.
“We shouldn’t,” said March. “This section of the station has been abandoned for years.”
Ahead in the corridor he saw a flare of distant light, heard the whine of an electric motor powering up.
A lift car. It was heading right towards them.
“I spoke too soon,” said March.
“It’s going to force us towards the infiltrator drones,” said Taren.
“No,” said March. The engine noise got louder, the light becoming bigger and brighter as the distant car sped towards them. He thought the car was still a kilometer or more away down the corridor, but the lift cars on a station of this size could get up to a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour, more than enough speed to kill both him and Taren on impact. “It’ll run us over. We won’t survive the impact, but the relics will. Lorre will just dig the relics out of the mess.”
He looked back and forth, trying to decide what to do. There were access hatches in the ceiling, but the ceiling was five meters overhead, and he didn’t have any way to climb up. The car would fill the entire corridor, leaving no place to dodge. They might be able to flee back to the dormitory entrance before the car caught them, but even if they made it, they would still have to face whatever infiltrator drones had survived the plasma turret.
That left only one option.
“That T-junction ahead,” said March. “Run! As fast as you can!”
Taren nodded and broke into a sprint, and March tore after her. About a hundred meters ahead, there was another lift corridor on the right. March thought they could make it before the oncoming car turned them to bloody paste. He ran as fast as he could, ignoring his injuries, ignoring his fatigue, the unyielding discipline that he had practiced his entire adult life driving him onward.
The car howled towards them.
March spun around the corner and into the next corridor, skidding to a halt. Taren was just a few meters behind him. He turned to urge her on, and as he did, she tripped on the edge of a rail and fell with a cry, landing hard on her stomach, the wind blasted from her lungs.
She didn’t have time to get up before the car ran over her.
March did not hesitate.
He seized the corner of the wall with his left arm, using his cybernetic strength to drive himself around the corner faster than he could have managed otherwise. He grabbed the collar of Taren’s jacket with his right hand, yanked her from the floor, and used the strength of his left arm to pull them both back. She slammed into March, and her weight overbalanced him and drove him backward.
They hit the ground together a half-second before the car screamed to a stop behind them, its closed doors maybe half a centimeter from the heels of March’s boots.
If he had been an instant slower, Taren would have been dead. March likely would have been dead with her.
She stared down at him, her gray eyes enormous, a few loose strands of hair hanging past her face. Her breath came hard and fast in the aftermath of their sprint and the shock of near death, and though she braced her weight on her palms, he still felt her breasts brushing against his chest with every breath. He felt the warmth of her body against his, and despite the horrendous danger of their situation, for a moment he could think of nothing else.
No. Duty had to come first.
And if it didn’t, they were both going to get killed.
“Oh, God,” whispered Taren. “I was sure that was it. When you turned back, I thought you were going get killed.” She let out a ragged breath. “I’ve never seen anyone so fast.”
“Are you all right?” said March.
“Yeah,” said Taren. “Just a little bruised, I think. I…you saved my life again.”
His right arm was still resting across her shoulders, and he made himself remove it. “We have to keep going.”
“Yeah,” said Taren again. She blinked, nodded, and pushed herself off him, stumbling back to her feet. “Yeah, you’re right.” March got to his feet. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. His half-healed wounds hurt damnably, but the nanotech ought to keep them from ripping open again. He opened his left fist, and rock dust fell from his gloved fingers. March had grabbed the rock wall with such force that he had actually torn a chunk from it.
“Good grip,” said Taren, her voice still a little shaky. “The car…why did it stop?”
March saw that the car had stopped at the T-junction, filling it completely. That cut them off from the dormitory and the way to the docking bays. It also meant that the surviving infiltrator drones could not catch them. Had Lorre made a tactical error?
No, he hadn’t.
“It stopped,” said March, “because we’re being herded.”
Taren frowned. “Where does this lift corridor go?”
March consulted his map again. “A habitat dome. Abandoned.” He grimaced. “I should have realized. That’s what Lorre’s play was the last time he was here. He holed up in an abandoned habitat dome and docked a ship nearby. When his operation went sour, he fled to his ship before I could catch him.”
“Then what do we do?” said Taren. “If we walk into his trap he’ll be ready for us.”
“Yeah,” said March. “Yeah, he will. But we can be ready for him, too. Let me see your pack.”
Taren nodded, slid her arms out of the pack, and set it on the ground. March went to one knee and rummaged through it, remembering the contents. He hoped it was still there…”
“Good old Bishop,” he said, drawing out a grenade. “I’m going to set this to a deadman’s switch.”
“But if you do that,” said Taren, “Lorre will just shoot you from a distance.”
“Which is why I’m setting it to a three-second timer,” said March, adjusting the fuse control on the squat black cylinder. “If he shoots at me, I can throw it at him.”
“Do we have to walk into his trap?” said Taren. “We could just wait here for him.”
March shook his head. “I think Lorre’s reacting. Improvising. Else he would have sent that lift car to trap us in the dormitory while his infiltrator drones attacked. If we wait too long, he’ll have the chance to think up something clever, and then we’ll be finished.”
“Then we’re going to see who can improvise better?” said Taren. “You or Lorre?”
“I’m afraid so,” said March.
To his surprise, she smiled. “Then I’m confident of our odds.” Her smile faded. “But if God decides that my number’s up today…I hope I can shoot Laredo before I die.” Her gray eyes looked like the ice of a comet. “Maybe that’s my purpose in life. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going the entire time.”
“No,” said March. “I don’t believe that.”
“What do you believe, then?”
He believed that they might very well die in the next five minutes.
“I believe,” said March, “that we’re going to win.”
“I almost believe you,” she said. She drew her pistol and took it in both hands. “Ready?”
“Almost.” March fiddled with the trigger on the grenade and held down the fuse button. With his right hand, he drew his pistol. “Let’s go.”
They walked forward, moving through the gloom of the corridor, the only illumination coming from the service lights every twenty meters along the ceiling. The corridor would have been ideal for a trap, but March’s guess proved right so far. The operations on Rustbelt Station must have strained Lorre’s local resources to the breaking point. The man had burned through an appalling amount of assets – the starfighters, the Graywolves, the Iron Hands – and he still had not claimed the quantum inducers or the Firestone. The Final Consciousness was forgiving of its covert operatives, believing they learned best from experience, but there were still limits.
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