IGMS Issue 29 (6 page)

"I did see one, dammit," Lucy snapped.

"What the hell? I thought we were stuck in this hole to get some sleep." Bodi stopped next to Lucy, hair tousled. Olivia slipped past him and stopped, whispering one almost-silent syllable when she saw Hastings' corpse.

"Squad, shut up. We have a situation." Taylor's hands twitched, as if hunting for something to hold. "The Hole's been breached. Did you hit the com, Alec?"

"Yeah." Right after he'd seen the slaughterhouse in their conference room. "Nothing. Probably cut the com cables first."

Beside him, Olivia lifted herself up on her toes, giving her scant height another inch. Probably so she could read the name,
Santa Maria
, carved into Hastings' chest.

"We should go."

"Yes." Taylor laid out the orders. "Form up. I'm in front, Alec in back. We'll swing through the quarters, cut through command and get to the lift."

"Lift's just down the hall," Bodi said. "Why go back -"

Taylor cut him off. "Because we haven't seen the techs yet."

"Then they're dead. We need to -"

"Cut it, Bodi. We stick together and we stay tight. No one gets left behind. Stay silent, and sensors sharp."

Not sensors, not now
, thought Alec as they began to move down the hall. This was the real deal, and his body quivered with adrenaline. He watched their six, trying to emulate Taylor's predatory calm. Trying not to think of the horror that had flashed in the eyes of the men he'd hunted with his own bot hours before.

They found Kamil in his bunk, motionless. Taylor sent in Olivia with a flick of his hand.

"Gone," she whispered. "Dart in his back."

"Probably the same kind my bot uses," Alec said. When there was no hostage to worry about, those darts didn't hold tranquilizer. "Neurotoxin. Almost instantaneous."

That's what the techs had told him when they oriented him on his bots specs. Dead before they felt the dart. Very humane. Alec felt the skin on his back crawl, and his eyes traced the dark bulk of the ducts hanging behind the bright fluorescents.

Bodi cursed. "We have to go, old man. The others are dead."

"We make sure." Taylor stepped to the next door and popped the latch, edging to the side as it swung open. He snapped a quick look inside. "Areva's there. I see the dart. Let's move to command."

Areva. Black despair bubbled up, and Alec's jaw clenched as he fought to hold himself together. Across the hall, Taylor watched him, eyes knowing, waiting. Forcing himself to nod, Alec swallowed the fear and pain and fell in line with the others, watching their backs.

Bare feet and slippers scuffed over the floor until they reached command. Taylor stopped, snatched a quick look into the room. "Sam's down. There's damage to the controls. Lucy, how big was that bot?"

Lucy had stopped sniffling and had been moving grimly with them, searching the pipes above with terrified intensity. "Cat-sized, maybe."

"It could be anywhere in there then. Okay." Taylor flexed empty hands in frustration. "We cut across fast. When we get to the lift, me and Olivia will deal with it. It's probably been disabled. The rest of you keep watch. Lucy look up, Alec back, Bodi everywhere. Got it?" They nodded and the squad leader held up three fingers. He slowly folded each one in, and on the last he moved through the door, not running, but fast. Olivia hesitated for a second, then pursued him. In a line they moved through command.

The big room was silent, their rig alcoves empty and dark. Alec caught the sharp, stinging smell of burned out electronics, and below that, the ugly stink of shit. Sam lay sprawled on the floor, the tech's eyes blankly staring. Alec didn't see any blood or dart, but the bowel smell was hideously strong near the body and Alec knew the man was dead.

He ripped his eyes away and went back to chasing the shadows around the room. Nothing, but if the thing was cat-sized . . .

A ringing clatter of metal made Alec spin, rising up on the balls of his feet, and he barely stopped himself from snapping a kick into Bodi's head.

"What the -" Alec hissed, and Bodi rose from his crouch, holding the metal clipboard he'd knocked onto the floor. Alec took it from him, unthinking, and jerked his head toward the others. "Whatever. Go."

In front of the lift, Taylor and Olivia stood together muttering while she tapped the unresponsive control. "Pop it," she said, giving up. "There'll be a ladder in the shaft."

Alec turned his back on them, remembering his job and staring at the cluttered menace of command, waiting. Trying not to wonder if the bot waited too, crouching like an evil jack-in-the-box on the other side of the lift doors.

A grunt, then Olivia said, "Got it. Lift's halfway up. We'll use the ladder. I don't see the bot."

"Guess we're safe then," growled Bodi. "It's gonna let us climb right outta here."

"You have something to offer, Bodi?" Taylor's words were chipped ice, and the big man stayed silent. "Alec, can you -"

"Oh, screw that. I'm not waiting." Olivia swung onto the ladder before Taylor could raise his hand to block her. The ruddy LEDs in the shaft flickered over her as she climbed, closing quickly on the lift's stopped bulk.

Taylor stepped into the shaft, eyes up on Olivia. "Keep watching our damn six," he said.

Alec turned away, obeying the order though he wanted to watch Olivia, desperate to see her make it, to think he might make it, too.

That's when the laughter began.

It crashed through the air, high-pitched and maddening, stabbing Alec's ears like a knife.

He spun, dodging Lucy as she fled the lift shaft's dark throat. The source of that psychotic glee.

Olivia hung on the ladder, just below the stuck lift. Across the shaft from her a black metal monkey howled, then flung itself through the air to land beside her. It clung there, chittering, one of its skeletal hands reaching for Olivia's face.

Olivia jerked and her scream twined in with the bot's maddening cacophony. She lashed out, and the bot met her hand with claws. She screamed again.

"No!" Alec howled, useless. An arm wrapped around him. It was Taylor, mouth working as he yelled something, and Alec realized the old soldier was pulling him back.

"What do we do?" Alec shouted, trying to cut through the paired shrieks.

Taylor may or may not have heard him, but he shook his head and reached for the doors.

Alec realized what the old soldier meant to do.

He reached out, fumbling with the clipboard he still held, and jammed his foot against the closing doors. Taylor jerked his head, but Alec stayed still and looked up. Olivia still hung on, her clothes streaked with blood, and the bot clung beside her, plucking at her with red-tipped claws. Then it paused to twist its skeletal monkey face toward Alec, jaw swinging open.

Alec stared at the dull, silver square of the clipboard, barely realizing he'd raised it. It vibrated from the impact of the dart he'd blocked. He didn't feel Taylor shove him back, didn't feel himself falling to the floor. The doors to the lift crashed shut, and Alec dropped the clipboard to stare at the scratch marring its back.

"Instantaneous," he said. "Instantaneous." A litany against shock.

Beyond the doors, the maddening voice of the murderous bot stopped. In the quiet, there came the muted sound of one last scream that ended in a dull crunch.

"Instantaneous," Alec whispered again.

"There's no way out," Lucy said. "We're trapped down here."

"Fifty feet of dirt." Bodi stood in the center of command, staring up at the shadows overhead. "Signal can't reach through that."

"Somebody strung a wire." Alec stood with his back against the wall, eyes roving the room as his body shook with adrenaline aftershocks. "Dropped a relay down and let their signal in." They'd done that once, when some arms smugglers had hidden themselves in an ancient cistern.

Lucy curled in a chair, small and motionless, watching Taylor methodically tear apart the equipment lockers. "We're top-secret. Nobody knows about the Hole."

"
We
know," Bodi said, and his blue eyes shifted to Alec.

Sure, blame the new guy. As if you people had any trust between you, Alec thought. He touched his face. "That's where the dart would have hit."

"Maybe you asked for too much money," Lucy whispered.

Across the room, Taylor slammed shut the last locker, the metal clang making them all jump.

"We have an hour, maybe two before anyone shows up to see what the hell's going on. Depends on how long the home office dicks around while trying to figure out what happened to communications. That thing's gonna want us dead before then. Which means we don't have time for this."

Bodi flicked his hand, waving away the squad leader's words. But he stayed silent, searching the darkness behind the hanging lights.

Lucy chewed her lip, but her eyes left Alec and went back to Taylor. She watched him kneel below a wrecked workstation, popping free a panel to stare into its electrical bowels. "It isn't fair. Santa Maria wasn't our fault."

Santa Maria. The name carved into Hastings' chest. "What the hell was Santa Maria?" Alec asked.

"A village. Down south somewhere. The customer told us . . . They said they had an informant. There was a lab making drugs, patent infringements, toxic stuff. Guy said it was in Santa Maria. So they dropped us for a scour."

Thin and high and painful, the bot's laugh rattled through the vents, then faded. Lucy uncurled and launched herself up. "It wasn't our fault!"

"I don't think it gives a shit," Bodi sneered.

"What happened in Santa Maria?" Alec asked again.

Did it matter? Doubtful, but if he was going to die for someone else's sin, he wanted to know what it was.

"There was nothing there. No lab, nothing. Just piss-poor dirt farmers. The customer had bought bad info. We could tell coming in. Taylor told us to hold off. But Jackson, our old monkey-man, went nuts."

Lucy sagged back into her chair, never looking away from the duct work above. "His bot was packing a flamer and he let loose, burned half the village before we even knew who was shooting. Yelling about taking fire. So we all opened up. It was all fire and screaming and people running. Hastings hollering, but we couldn't see crap with the smoke, then the village's fuel cell went up and we lost Bodi and Olivia's bots. Less than a minute, and we went from getting ready to pull back to complete flaming fubar."

"And?"

"Taylor screamed at us until we stopped shooting. We got the downed bots and pulled out. When we de-rigged, Taylor clocked Jackson. Almost broke his jaw. Whole squad got docked for the mission and Jackson got sent down to Beta team. That's how you ended up with us."

Alec remembered the prickly tension when he first joined, the evasive glossing of what'd happened to the man he'd replaced. "You think this is revenge?"

"Look at Hastings. Look at what this thing's doing. Playing with us. Torturing us. We wiped those people out, and somebody's pissed." Lucy shook her head. "But it was a mistake. If they want to punish somebody, they should be going after that informant. Or Jackson. Not us." She flashed a smile at Alec, a tight-lipped grimace. "You weren't even there."

"Well, maybe he could tell that to that bot next time it pops up," Bodi snapped. "Maybe whoever's riding it will feel sorry for him. Right after he rips monkey-boy's face off."

"Thanks for the image, Bodi." Alec leaned over to stare beneath the workstation. In the shadows, he could see Taylor crouched over his tablet. The soldier tapped it, slid out a memory key and flipped it into the tangled innards of the station. Snapping the panel back on, the old man straightened, meeting Alec's questioning eyes with a level stare.

"Did you fix it?" Lucy asked, voice threaded with hope.

"No." The bot-monkey's laugh came again, sourceless, terrifying. "We need to move."

"To where? There's only one way out of here," said Bodi.

"Somewhere more defensible."

"Defensible? You planning to fight? With what, a rolled up newspaper?" Bodi snarled a laugh. "We've got nothing down here. Soon as that guy gets bored messing with us, he's going to kill us all."