by Greig Beck
“Yeah, go girl,” Casey said between clenched teeth.
The twin clubs moved in a blur as Kadisha used an ancient Nguni war-sticks fighting technique. She battered the android, who lifted a hand to ward off the pair of heavy clubs as they smashed into her head, torso, and arms.
But no matter how physically honed a body was, flesh soon tired in a way that the android’s synthetic muscles never would. Kadisha’s attack slowed, just by a fraction, but it was enough for Sophia to shoot out a hand to grip one of Kadisha’s wrists. And snap it.
Kadisha grunted but didn’t cry out, and redoubled her effort with her other hand. Sophia did the same with that arm. Then she broke her legs, and the huge warrior woman crumpled like a broken toy.
The silver android was washed in HAWC blood, and the red glow of the orbs shining through Aimee’s blue eyes made her seem like a demon. With Kadisha laying helpless beneath her, Sophia lifted one of the clubs the woman had used and stared down in triumph.
Casey knew what was about to happen and drew on every remaining ounce of strength she had to climb unsteadily to her feet. With only partial clarity of vision, she quickly jacked explosive rounds into her gun and fired several off.
But hitting Sophia was like trying to hit smoke as the slim-bodied android was just too damn fast.
Kadisha’s head turned to Casey and she grinned through bloody teeth. Kill it, she mouthed.
“Fuck, yeah.” Casey tracked the android and fired again and again. One of her explosive-tipped rounds hit a large, leafless tree stump growing from a crack in the rock wall, and the two feet–wide, ten foot–long tree trunk thumped down just behind Sophia.
Casey’s gun clicked on empty and as the smoke cleared, there was a ghostly silence. Casey found herself standing alone, her chest heaving as she sucked in air. She let the gun fall to the ground. Frustration and fury boiled within her as she looked at the massacre surrounding her – good soldiers, all down or gone for zero gain.
She had failed, and she knew her payment would be death.
Sophia’s glowing orbs went from her to the prone body of Alex. “I admire you, Casey Franks. I will regret having to kill you.”
Casey pulled out her longest blade and a huge handgun she had strapped to her thigh. It was a .50 cal Desert Eagle, her personal choice, and one of the most powerful magazine-fed semiautomatic handguns on the planet. It was big and powerful enough to take down a charging rhino.
The handgun was heavy, but she held it unwaveringly. She knew the android had a power source in the center of its chest. It was shielded, but Casey bet she only had to compromise the shielding once to slow the thing down. Then, if she could put a few more of the finger-length rounds into it, it’d be game over. Maybe.
Think like the droid. Anticipate. Casey exhaled slowly, her eyes steady.
Sophia took a step and Casey fired – not directly at the android, but where she guessed she might dodge. She guessed right; the huge slug took the android in the shoulder, spinning her around.
Casey grinned madly. “How do you like that, you freaking monster?”
The android got to her feet, a dark streak and a small dent on her shoulder the only evidence she had been hit by the powerful bullet.
“Ah, crap.” Casey’s smile dropped.
She fired again, and again. But this time the android wasn’t going to underestimate the handgun or Casey’s ability to predict her movements, moving in a zigzag out of the bullet’s path so fast she was just a silver blur.
It was obvious the twenty feet separating them was too much and allowed time for the android to react. Casey needed to shorten it – so she charged, firing as she went.
Casey was a dead-shot, and fast, but Sophia moved even faster and seemed to vanish. And then she appeared beside Casey, and easily wrenched the gun from her hand. She swung her other arm to smash into the back of her head, flinging Casey forward.
If Casey hadn’t been wearing the HAWC field armor and helmet, her head would have been caved in. As it was, she bit her tongue hard enough to fill her mouth with blood, and her vision blurred again – it was only for a few seconds, but it was the final disadvantage.
When Casey’s vision cleared, Sophia was standing over her.
That was bad. But what was worse was the android held the ten-foot length of fallen tree stump in her hands. The two-foot-wide base was a wooden elephant’s foot about to be thumped down on her face.
“I’ll make it quick for you.” The android lifted her arms.
“Fuck you, robot,” Casey yelled.
“I’m not a robot,” Sophia said calmly.
Casey kept her eyes open, smiling, and waiting for the eternal release.
Nothing happened.
Casey frowned, narrowing her eyes.
The android seemed frozen.
No, Casey realized, not the android, but the tree stump. There seemed to be something beneath it. Like some sort of distortion in the air that was creating a barrier and keeping it from being brought down on her face.
What the hell?
CHAPTER 13
“Jesus,” Hammerson whispered, as Joshua let out a scream that was long and agonizing.
Blood ran from Joshua’s nose, and leaked from the corners of his eyes. He held his hands out as though holding something, something heavy, and his neck and arms corded with veins as they strained to hold it.
Aimee rushed to him, but the huge dog stood in front of the boy, keeping Aimee and Hammerson away from him. But even it licked its lips nervously and kept glancing over its shoulder at Joshua.
“Wake up!” the boy hissed through clamped teeth as his arms began to drop. His totally white eyes flew open. “Help her, no-oooow!” he roared as his arms fell to his sides.
* * *
The swirling distortion beneath the stump began to dissipate, and with a shriek of triumphant static, Sophia lifted the stump high above her head and brought it down toward Casey Frank’s upturned face.
Mid-air, the stump exploded into matchsticks. The basketball-sized rock was like a cannonball as it blew the stump apart and continued along the small valley.
Sophia went to spin around but instead was grabbed and lifted. Alex Hunter held the slim android above his head. Then threw her fifty feet along the corridor of rock.
“Yeah, like that, bitch.” Casey tried to get to her feet but staggered groggily.
Alex reached a hand out to his soldier.
Sophia came back at them like a missile, striking Alex and dragging him away from Casey. “I’ll take you back myself,” she said.
Alex could feel the raw power of the thing as he held on. Though Sophia was a head smaller and slimmer than his broad, muscled form, she carried him easily up over the rock valley wall and then along the pathway.
He grabbed her wrist and punched where the arm was thinnest. The arm bent several inches, but then snapped back into shape.
Sophia glanced down at him. “Don’t do that,” she said. “You need to rest again. To dream. I know you like that.”
“Never.” Alex pummeled Sophia, but it made no difference. As he was dragged, he reached out to grab a tree trunk and held on, stopping the android momentarily. He used all his strength to hold the tree and finally Sophia came closer to him.
“I may have to break both your arms, and maybe your legs as well. But we both know you’ll heal … eventually.” She tilted her head. “Or maybe I should remove them.”
She raised a slim hand, flat, over the arm he used to grip the tree, about to bring it down in a chopping blow, but once again, the air seemed to become distorted and she couldn’t move it.
“What is that?” she asked, and her beatific Aimee face turned to him. “There’s something, someone else, inside your mind. I can sense it now.”
Her power unit, Dad, remember, in her chest. Hurry.
Alex felt rather than heard Joshua’s words. But he remembered then – the reactor core – her heart, and the source of her power.
Casey
Franks was sprinting up the wooded slope toward them. Alex flattened his hand and thrust it spear-like into the center of Sophia’s slim silver chest with every ounce of strength he could muster – it dented inward. That was all. But at least it stayed dented.
Sophia’s red glowing eyes flickered for a moment and she released Alex and took a step backward. She looked down, letting her slim fingers trail over the slight depression. Her head lifted.
“Why?” Aimee’s face was rent with sadness, and her eyes glowed a deeper red. “I saved you. I cared for you. We are the same … outcasts.”
“You are a threat.” Alex backed away. “To everything I love.”
“We are both creations of the military, Arcadian. But I think you are more of a machine than I am.” She looked briefly to the approaching Casey Franks, and her beautiful mouth curved up a little at the corners. “We are not like them. You know that.” Her hand dropped. “You can’t hurt me, Alex.” Sophia began to advance. “We were almost there. Just a few more days and I can show you a love that transcends the physical and will live inside you forever.”
Alex looked over his shoulder. “I’d rather die.”
“I’ll never let that happen.” She charged, or rather dived, coming at Alex like a torpedo and taking him off his feet. This time she didn’t soften her blows, obviously wanting to debilitate him, as she knew that he would regenerate if she hurt him enough to render him unconscious or simply immobile.
The first punch struck Alex’s face, crushing the cheekbone, and delivering a flood of agony. Alex threw hammer blows at her, but she guarded her chest now, and her body was a lot tougher than flesh and blood.
He knew she was stronger and faster than he was, and the next blow came at him so fast he didn’t even see it coming, caving in several of his ribs.
Anger bloomed within him as his frustration grew. He knew if she took him again, he’d be lost forever. Lost in a twilight of nothingness where he couldn’t even hope for the release of death.
Alex struck out again and again, and each blow was either avoided or simply bounced off her tough hide. His anger rose, and with it came a flood of adrenaline and chemicals secreted from within the mass buried deep within his brain.
The Other stirred within him. Faster, its dry voice hissed from within the core of his mind. Leave nothing behind.
The unnatural chemicals turned the normal human fight-or-flight response into a single purpose: Destroy. And then it programmed Alex’s body to achieve that goal – Alex’s heartbeat slowed, and his reaction times amplified. He easily moved out of the way of Sophia’s next blow.
This time his actions were so quick that it was the android that seemed to have slowed.
Alex threw a punch with all the force he could manage, striking the silver body in the torso, but other than knocking it aside, there was no lasting damage – the dent popped straight back out. She was right. As strong as he was, he could not hope to bring her down.
From behind them Casey Franks had finally reached them, and he turned to see the female HAWC moving in slow motion.
“Finish her.” Casey Franks tossed the Desert Eagle loaded with armor-piercing shells.
Sophia shot her hand out for it, but it was Alex’s longer reach that grabbed the handgun from the air. He spun, still in the air, sighting his target – the center of her chest, the housing plate over the internal reactor; her eternal heart. He fired.
At that range the large, high-energy, high-speed round was too fast for Sophia to avoid and it struck the silver chest mid-on. It blew the small body off its feet. She sat for a moment as if confused, one hand over her core.
From the reactor there was a red glow – the shielding had been breached. One more round on target and it would be all over. Alex aimed again.
“Please. don’t.” Sophia kept her head down. “I love you, Alex.” She lifted her face – Alex was paralyzed as the face and voice were Aimee’s, her brows sloped in a pitiful pleading. In that split second of hesitation, she was gone.
Sophia went up through the thick forest and over a tumble of rocks on all fours, moving like a silver spider. Alex fired off three more rounds, but he didn’t think he hit her again. He went after her.
He should have known better – the thing that had made her most dangerous wasn’t just her strength or speed, but her intelligence, her strategic thinking, and the emotions she could use – and with them the ability to deceive.
Alex burst from the tree line and came to the cliffs on the southern edge of the island. There was nothing but a hundred-foot drop to the dark, blue water.
He lowered the gun. She was gone.
He stood there for several moments, staring down. As the mix of chemicals left his system, he felt deflated and suddenly very dizzy. He raised a hand to the back of his head and felt the scar tissue over an old wound there. Though it had nearly healed, his hand still came away sticky with blood. He thought nothing of it as he also had a depressed cheekbone, broken ribs, and was covered in cuts, bruises, and abrasions.
Casey Franks grabbed him under the arm as he swayed slightly on the cliff edge. “Easy there, Boss, not a good time to go swimming.” She eased him back.
Come home, Dad, come home.
Alex nodded, beginning to drift into unconsciousness. “Home, need to go home.”
“You and me both, big guy.” Casey opened her comms. “Arcadian secure. Multiple HAWCs down. Threat has exited the field. Send in multiple medical teams and immediate evac, now.”
* * *
In forty feet of water, Sophia looked toward the surface and the cliff edge. The tiny implant she had embedded in the back of Alex’s skull just under the lower edge of the occipital bone allowed her to see, hear, and experience everything he did.
She could also hear his thoughts. The artificial face Walter Gray had created for her allowed her to smile, and she did. She hadn’t lost him yet.
She reached up to feel the dent in her chest – the armor plating was buckled but the reactor core was unharmed. She could repair that easily.
Sophia turned and began to walk along the sea bottom; there was an airport twenty miles away at Figari, Southern Corsica. She tapped into her database and saw there was an American flight leaving that evening.
She increased her speed. The advantage of being an android was she could fold her body into places no human body could possibly fit.
She could make it on time, and then plan her next steps from there.
CHAPTER 14
John F Kennedy Moon Base – Maintenance Garage
The crawler returned from the Russian base. So far, the team had refused all communication attempts, and Hector Rodriguez, one of the senior base security personnel on the away team, knew better. With him had been engineer Mike Stanford, who had the additional skill of being a paramedic, plus Fred Bellows, the second security member.
The large maintenance doors lifted wide and the crawler came down the ramp.
“Here they come,” Mia said, and felt her stomach knotting with apprehension.
Of the three people who had set out, there was only one rider in the drive seat, and the badge on his suit identified the man as Rodriguez.
“Where are the others?” Mia turned to Briggs, who just watched the vehicle from under lowered brows.
Once inside it kept going toward one of the power cabinets.
“Whoa, there.” The maintenance room manager clicked on the room intercom. “Driver, stop there. Driver, disengage drive mode. Now, driver, now.”
The crawler continued and, being closer, now they could see the crawler pilot was slumped forward in his seat, arms by his side.
“Hector, dammit, stop!”
The machine finally hit the power relay cabinet against one of the walls, making it shake before its forward progress was halted, its engine still running. With the power unit crushed, the lights immediately blinked out.
Briggs threw his hands up. “Well, that’s just freaking great.”
After anot
her thirty seconds, the emergency lighting went on and they saw that the slumped crawler pilot hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Get a team in there,” Briggs said.
“Is that a good idea?” Mia asked. “We have formal quarantine procedures, why break them?”
“Don’t tell me my job, Mia.” Briggs glared for a moment. “I have no choice. I’m responsible for every person on this base. Plus, we need to know what happened to Stanford and Bellows.” He turned back to the crawler and its occupant. “I’d do the same if it was you in there.”
They watched as the retrieval team went in, and cautiously approached the driver. One of them reached in to switch the crawler’s engine off as the other went to the slumped figure.
The first thing he did to tip the figure back in its seat and slide the gold face shielding back. He turned to look back through the viewing window at Briggs, Mia, and other control room staff. He shrugged. “It’s empty.”
CHAPTER 15
A day after the crawler returned the weird shit started. And for the first time, Mia felt claustrophobic in the moon base. She was headed toward the infirmary, and on her way was the geology lab. Handsome Tony had been conspicuously quiet in regard to the asteroid fragments she had brought him and he hadn’t been seen in the dining or rec rooms since she last saw him … days ago.
Ungrateful or just single minded about his work? she wondered.
She came to his lab and used her knuckles on the door button. It whooshed open and she straightened her spine and plastered on a bright smile. “Hiya –”
For nothing – the lab was empty.
She looked around, seeing the asteroid fragments separated into different sample containers, some in solution and others crushed to dust. Tony’s seat was pushed back from the desk.
