The Sentinel: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 3)

by Walt Robillard

  Dropping the bot from her ethereal grip, she flared her non-sword arm, flashing an energy shield between her and the space now filled with a swarm of hard light threatening to put her down for good. “Any time you kids want to get in on the party would be...”

  The RIM-III jumped from the floor, to the wall, then behind her, snapping its jaws onto her foot.

  “Cease fire!” Hazek called out over the din.

  The mech yanked her from the deck, slamming her from wall to wall. It let go after the second hit, allowing centrifugal force and gravity to do its work. It followed the path of the person projectile, rolling back into its humanoid form. Ejecting meter long vibro-blades from its forearms, the man-jackal-bot advanced on the downed intruder to decisively end her threat.

  Hazek moved around to scoop up the cuffs laying on the floor. “Who do you think she was talking to?”

  Ninety-nine stopped his advance toward his target, reversing his momentum to cross the hallway faster than it takes a human to blink. Reaching into empty air, he snatched something buzzing for the security guard's helmet. There was a struggle between the servomotors in the robot’s arm and something in its hand firing repulsors. A loud pop echoed into the hall, blowing out smoke through the hole where its pinky finger use to be. “Take caution, enemy forces are using Blaster Bugs to work the corner. Get back to the intersection. I’ll hold them off!”

  A frenetic swarm of miniature drones bobbing along on micro-repulsors swarmed into the hallway. The bot’s hand ejected its ruined finger in time with its other vibro-blade snapping out. It fired down the hall with its 715, working beside its back mounted laser as it shredded the enemy attack. The flashing blade impaled any bot that made it beyond the hail of blaster fire.

  Retreating to the corner with the rest of his team, Ninety-nine retracted the blade into its housing, returning himself to a two handed grip on the rifle. “Sir, I recommend we withdraw to the entry doors on this level so we may use the lift for cover. I believe this might have only been the first wave.”

  The bot waited a moment for the captain to respond. “Sir?”

  The jackal mech took stock of the situation in less time than it takes for an insect to flap its wings. The entire team was on their knees against one of the walls, their weapons stripped and neatly stacked away from where anyone could reach them. Two heavy infantry mechs held their weapons on the group while a human female in armor surrounded by smaller robots were aiming improved variants of modern blaster rifles at him. Countless scenarios played through its combat resolution matrix, nearly all of them presenting overwhelming failure in the face of the superior force. It measured failure as the death of the entire team he was assigned to. Ninety-nine ejected the spent focusing chamber from his laser, withdrawing it into his body, placing his 715 along the wall.

  The new human pressed her rifle against the captain’s head. “Issue the shutdown code.”

  The captain lowered his head, not wanting to look at the bot who’d just saved them, in what passed for its eyes. “Initiate shut down protocol, Caleb, notebook, fourteen.”

  The jackal straightened from its combat posture. “Understood.”

  It folded along several seams, retracting hands in favor of claws, limbs shortening or pivoting in accordance with some internal design which allowed the miracles of versa-tech to operate. Koda Corporation had somehow cracked the system psychosis that had plagued their use, manufacturing several models of autonomous fighter that could fit a multitude of roles in a variety of environments. The mech finally resumed its dog shape, locking down to all fours in a seated posture resembling the statues of ancient temples where such creatures were worshiped.

  “You took quite a hit, Marshal. Are you injured?” Priestess asked.

  “I feel like I tried to ride a rhinosaur in a rodeo.” The marshal placed both hands on the floor, bracing herself to get up.

  “Easy, Marshal. My sensors indicate you might have a concussion.” Priestess, Madame Tarot's medical specialist mech, eased Mara back to the floor. The bot projected holograms across the woman's armor, displaying damage assessments for her injuries.

  “There's no might about it,” Mara grunted.

  Tarot knelt next to the marshal, looking over the feeds. “Can you stand?”

  “In a minute.”

  “Interesting,” Priestess intoned. “She has no broken bones, torn muscles, or any other injury that would normally be associated with...”

  “Being used like a murderball bat?” Mara joked.

  “Although I've never played, I'm not sure that game is played with a bat,” the bot said, affecting a posture that conveyed its confusion. “I'm applying some Vex biomedical gel to your head and nose. After a moment you should be well enough to stand.”

  Mara assumed a kneeling position, holding onto the bot for balance. Her weak grip gradually strengthened, keeping her upright without help. Placing both hands on her lap, she knelt back, each breath bringing her farther into the Crucible.

  “Madame, her vitals. This is incredible.” Priestess pored over screens, moving faster than a human mind could track. She stopped at one screen, showing the display to the Dreadmarr.

  “The Way is a powerful tool to the one who can forge according to its design. Unlike the rest of the Vex, their medical gel is organic in nature, and thus easy to shape in the Crucible. Thank you, Priestess,” Mara said.

  Tarot helped the woman to her feet, returning her helmet, “Now that we've had our space magic lesson for today, we should go.”

  A series of orders passed through Tarot's HUD on their way to her robotic squad. The Dreadmarr had trained her as a Black Tasker to make up for her being new to their ranks. While she possessed the armor and weapons that had cast the organization into a quick and well deserved legendary status as elite mercenaries, she lacked the combat experience of her many new kin. To compensate, they assigned a host of next generation robots to serve as a special mission force, the Card Arkana. In the past, her mission had been to protect Pandora, the android who had just crawled down the hall. The bot had formerly played her doppelganger to lure out criminal elements who wanted the real Yasmine Savoya dead. That is until recently when she worked beside a revenge team whose goals aligned with her own. She owed them for freeing her from being hunted, thus she'd taken this mission.

  The bots took a moment to blast the security team horizontal with a bevy of stun bolts. They filed past, Tarot and Truveau walking at the back of the formation.

  “Morpheus,” Tarot called into the radio.

  “Madame, I have reinforcements moving toward your position. Take the next splinter hallway down to the maintenance sub-floor for this level. That should get you by them. I have the security feeds so you will not be detected.“

  “Thank you Morpheus. Merlin?”

  “Madame, I have recovered Pandora from her frame. Uploading her into the system now.”

  “Very good, Merlin. Make sure to leave a surprise for the curious.”

  The guard's head snapped back. The smoldering crater in his skull was evidence that his brain no longer had a say in directing the body to stay upright. He slumped to the floor without laying eyes on the advancing bot that had shot him.

  “Contact the lab or join your friend,” Temperance said to the remaining trooper. The lithe robot moved toward the sealed blast doors. Engraved on the front of her skull plate was a scale holding a heart on one side and a feather on the other.

  “I can't,” he stammered, his jaw trembling at the site of more bots pouring onto the platform. “Only the command post can contact the lab.”

  Tempi looked back to the approaching Madame Tarot leading her Card Arkana. The Dreadmarr soldier directed some of her team to stack outside the door while others guarded the mouth of the hallway. She motioned for the marshal to come forward.

  Truveau slapped the rifle out of the guard's hand, not bothering to watch it clatter away. She palmed his helmet. “Then we don't need you, do we? Sleep!”

&nb
sp; He gagged, trying to force out her ethereal commands from his muscles. The Crucible won the mental wrestling match, collapsing him to the side of the hall.

  “Morpheus, pop the doors on Lab Six,” Tarot said over coms.

  A flash of steam vented from the doors creasing open. There was a hesitation as motors connected with drive rails, propelling the doors into the wall. A torrent of blaster fire ripped across the hallway, bouncing in a shower of sparks against Justice’s armor. The heavy bolts slammed into Tempi, spinning her from her feet into a ruined heap of parts on the floor.

  Justice jumped to the front of their formation, an energy shield flaring from his arm. Bolt after bolt struck the shield, some dying against the shimmering barrier while others flashed into the walls, scoring them with deep burning gouges.

  Armored security bots, Koda K-900s holding heavy blasters, were standing shoulder to shoulder, dumping impressive amounts of energy bolts into the hall. One racked the underslung grenade launcher on his weapon, flinging a heavy projectile from it with a resounding poot! The fat round took a sharp left, flinging itself down the hall. It pinged off several walls, detonating at the end of a pair of devastated doors.

  The bot leaned out of the lab, slapping its hand against the outer wall hard enough to dent the resicarbon and ceramaclear. Had Mara not moved her lid, her skull would have been crushed by the assault. It continued to pivot, leveling its weapon at the agile marshal.

  “All wrong! No style. No flash. Just brute force. Allow me!” Mara's body soaked in the Crucible’s power, forcing it to obey her commands in the Way. She was at the wall one minute, and beside the robotic guard the next. She pulled the Requiem heavy repeater, a custom weapon built just for her. A quick trigger tap blew the top of the mech's head clean from its shoulders. Mara was about to turn the deadly pistol on the other bot when the one she'd thought she'd dealt with spun about, smashing its rifle into her like a club. She flew past the other security android, taking multiple hits as it continued to fire on the hall.

  Another of the Card Arkana threw a tomahawk down the hall, impaling the headless mech on the chest plate. “There are so many chicken jokes I could make right now!”

  The enemy machine pulled the weapon, stopping in mid rip when it beeped. A focused explosion blew it back into the lab next to its battle buddy. Resicarbon shards lacerated the uninjured bot, bouncing it off the wall. It quickly adopted a kneeling stance, trying to put more bolts on target despite the surprise onslaught by its adversaries.

  Tarot yelled over the fighting. “Jester! Finish that thing off, now!”

  The new bot danced one way, then the next dodging incoming fire. That he was actually dancing to do it was lost on the current audience as Tarot didn't care and the rest were artificially intelligent. Jester threw a handful of balls onto the floor toward the enemy. They rolled into a set of spider legs, propelling them forward like a mad dash of insects after a mass of sugar. The remaining security mech put repeated bolts into the crawling doom, blowing them to chunks across the polished flooring. One had slipped past the rest, never ejecting its legs in favor of rolling on target. It sprung up, flaring the legs to capture the bot's leg in a clamp. It blew the mech into the ceiling. Jester flung another axe grenade into the floor where it was sure to land, triggering the weapon to detonate upon impact. The security mech crumbled into ruin.

  Priestess called over the com. “Madame, Marshal Truveau is well and is telling me to slag off. I don't believe she wants my help.”

  Mara was up on her knees, leaning on the bot for support to stand. “You think? The armor took the shots, but it's hosed. If I take another hit, I could be in rough shape.”

  Tarot worked through several command screens in her HUD, issuing new orders to the rest of the Cards. “Then you'd better stay there, marshal. This isn't over.”

  A mechanized armored spider tapped across the floor, blazing away with its forward heavy pulse guns. Electromagnetically driven flechettes tore into the hallway as the Cards dove in all directions to dodge the rending fire. Pipes tore open, spilling caustic fluids across the hall. The walls caught fire from the impacts, filling the space with noxious smoke.

  “This is a Koda Research Corporation facility. You are in violation of station security. Surrender or be terminated. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

  “Does anyone ever actually comply after you shoot first and then offer surrender as an option?” Jester asked.He repositioned the energy shield, giving maximum cover to Tarot who snuck behind him.

  “Hey, that was funny.” Tarot said to the jovial bot. Grabbing the drag handle on the back of the marshal's armor, she pulled the downed Templar into the room with the ruined doors, ignoring the technicians that were hiding behind mountains of lab equipment.

  “How bad?” Tarot asked.

  Mara flicked a display in her HUD. “I might be able to take a hit from small arms fire but those pulse guns will finish me off. Also, that last bot cracked a rib.”

  “Stay here, then.”

  “You got a plan?” Mara asked the Dreadmarr.

  “That's a RIM-II. Only one way to slag it.” She flicked the comset in her HUD. “All right boys and girls. You know the drill. Eight seconds left.”

  “We give up! Don't shoot,” Justice called over his energy shield.

  “Step forward and deactivate all weapons and defenses. You will now be taken into custody,” the small spider tank echoed from its loudspeakers.

  The Cards did as ordered, leaving their weapons in place. The spider directed them against the hallway wall, putting them on their knees. It removed the hard shell packs from Jester and Merlin, sliding them down the hall near the ruined door.

  “Where is your commander?”

  “Right here, handsome!” Tarot’s voice carried down the hall along with a blaster bolt from her enhanced rifle. The shot punched hard enough to force the mech to stumble, even if it didn't penetrate its armor. It whirled like a child's top spun in place, finishing the rotation with a cough from both pulse guns.

  The Cards rushed the machine, grappling each leg with Jester jumping to the top. It bucked wildly, trying to fling the offending bots from its frame. A flash of electricity sparked from the spider, doing little to faze its attackers. With a quick tumble, it shifted shape. Struts and rods altered form, pushing plates in new directions. Amid the strangle hold of a squad of combat robots, it altered forms to that of a man shaped mech with four arms. Swinging wildly, it pinned Merlin to the wall, while crushing Jester against the opposite. The heavy infantry mechs were the toughest to wrangle. From one of its arms, it fired a grappling line next to the ruined doors. It yanked toward the end, reeling in the line until it ran over Justice. Spinning on its heel, it pinned Lucifer beside Jester.

  Jester's pack slid across the floor, coming to rest between the multi-armed enforcer. It tried to move into the adjoining hall, but the cards had hold of him, keeping him from pulling away to safety. Two slats opened on the packs, releasing a torrent of fireflies that flitted to the RIM-II's skin. When they'd all attached, Justice kicked straight up, upending the spider. The Cards bolted in every direction, freeing themselves from what would come next.

  The fireflies exploded, rupturing the walls into the ocean beyond and tearing the spider bot into a blooming shrapnel flower. Walls buckled, the pressure of millions of liters of seawater above them threatening to knock them in and fill the level.

  Mara half limped, half ran down the hallway with her hand around Tarot's shoulder. The cards recovered their gear, ushering the women into the adjoining room. Tarot barked into the coms, “Morpheus, we're at lab six, close the blast doors, now.”

  “Madame, it seems there's a catastrophic loss of pressure to that side of the structure. You should leave immediately.”

  “Thank you for the update! Close the doors!” Tarot roared.

  The doors slammed, sealing in the team as the structure submerged into the icy dark.

  Nineteen

  “What is
your name?” Tarot said through the external speakers in her mask.

  “Doctor Habizade. Are you here to steal from us?”

  Habizade was a Zolokan, a race of people descended from avians on their homeworld. While his particular breed had no feathers or wings, their faces were birdlike with wide eyes. He merely stared at Tarot, waiting for her answer.

  “No. I want you to shut down the power feed to that chamber and then stand over there with your colleagues.”

  “I will not,” Habizade said flatly.

  Tarot transferred to her helmet's internal coms. “Morpheus. We're at Lab Six. Cut the power to LMX-1460.”

  The sound of power winding down flooded the room in concert with groans from the superstructure, wrestling with the external pressure of the ocean. Habizade rushed forward, stopped in his tracks by Lucifer planting the barrel of his heavy blaster rifle in the center of his chest.

  “No! You mustn't deplete the energy field. All of our work will be for nothing!” the gangly doctor whined.

  The power shut down until the lab was eerily quiet. The lab techs looked from one side of the room to another, always coming back to center where a sizable chamber dominated the room. Holograms crawled across its surface, showing power cycles going from green to red. Warning indicators protested across the lab every time a display went crimson. It was an angry, noisy affair that unless tended to, meant dire consequences at the other end of the alarm.

  “Control this is Habizade! Initiate override Alpha, Zulu, Quarren eighty-one!”

  Instead of whatever voice the doctor had expected to answer, he got Morpheus instead. “I'm quite sorry, Doctor. Your AI is no longer in control of this facility.”

  Torrents of fumes hissed from under the chamber, filling the room with an acrid smell. Lab techs whimpered from their hiding spots in the corner, much the same as they had when Tarot and crew had forced their way in. Flashing lights strobed across the room, drowning out the displays that littered the lab. A thunderous bang echoed like it came from the bottom of the world now that the lab was surrounded by water. The medical chamber hatch lifted, groaning against some unseen mechanism designed to keep it shut.