The Saffron Malformation (99 page)

             
Eric sat up in his chair and demanded, “I need to know what the fuck all this means or I’m pulling my men off this shitstorm.”  Quey explained it, with Ryla interjecting from time to time, and when it was over Eric was in awe.  “You fuckers are crazier than I am.”  After a moment he smiled and said, “I dig that.  So this… boyfriend, is he going to be a problem?”

             
Ryla thought for a set of ticks then answered, “No.  He doesn’t know anything about our plan and even if he surrendered to Blue Moon and handed them full access to the compounds computers by the time they were able to extract anything useful this will have been over for some time.”

             
Eric nodded, clapped his hands and barked, “Good.”

             
“What about Jacob?” Natalie asked.  “I mean what if Blue Moon finds him?”

             
“All the better,” Eric answered.  When he got looks from everyone he asked, “What?  This Jacob doesn’t seem like a bad guy.  He’s got an agenda is all.  Don’t much care for the idea of killing all humans but I can respect his perspective.  Probably feel likewise in his boots.  Least he has purpose, which is more than I can say for most humans I’ve met.”  Quey glanced at Rachel.  “Shame about the robots though, could have used those,” Eric finished.

             
“No,” Ryla said plainly.  “You couldn’t have.”

             
Eric smiled slyly, with a degree of arrogance, “You make the mistake of believing you’re in charge of this scenario.  You have a good plan and I like it because it sticks a thorn in Blue Moon’s paw, and so I go along with you but if push comes to shove I don’t need you.”

             
“You make the mistake of believing that I am incapable of a clever ruse.”

             
“Again, I don’t understand.”

             
Ryla took steps forward as she explained it to him.  “I would have agreed to your terms of giving you my robots if it had come to it.  Upon completion of our mission I would have allowed you access to the compound.  Once inside I would have executed a security order that you would not have survived.”  She was looming over Eric, looking down at him with a sharp glare.

             
He nodded slowly until he finally smiled, clapped his hands and proclaimed, “I like her.”  He stood and in a swift motion gripped her face between his powerful hands and kissed her forehead near the hairline.  She felt the strength of his grip and it was surprising, lean as he was he contained an unexpected degree of power.  “Good people you fell in with sis,” he said to Rachel, rubbing her head.  “I’m gunna have a shit and a shower and possibly a nap,” he added as he moved away from them.  “Someone let me know when its dinner.”

             
Then he was gone and the room was left silent.

             
“Rachel,” Quey finally said.

             
“I know, but we all knew he was a little off his rocker before this started.”

             
“This is more than a little off,” Natalie added.

             
Rachel looked at everyone.  Only Arnie seemed not to care, sitting at the bar with a watered down drink in front of him.  He was weaning himself off the stuff.  “Come on,” she began.  “This is a guy who started a militia with the intent of bringing down the government.  You really expected sane and rational?”

             
Quey started to laugh and a moment later Rachel followed.

             
“I don’t get it,” Ryla said.

             
“We’re all mad down here,” Quey told her and he and Rachel laughed some more.

              Eric wasn’t shy about dinner.  He ate heartily and then spent the better part of the evening in video conference with two other men, apparently his lieutenants, giving them orders as to where to go and what to do.

             
Quey’s brow was pulled tight as he listened to bits of Eric’s conversation from the hallway where the cabins were.

             
“What is it?” Natalie asked, approaching softly.

             
He shook his head.  “Not sure yet.  Something feels…”

             
“Like falling,” she finished when he couldn’t.

             
He nodded, “Bout right.”

             
“You think we can trust him?”

             
“Not as far as I can throw him, but we don’t have a choice.  We’ll just have to save one eye for keeping it on him.”

             
“Dangerous,” she said, almost to quiet to hear.  He looked at her and she added, “Dividing our attention with what’s to come.”

             
“Agreed but again.”

             
“No choice.”

             
Quey nodded and started away.  “Try and get some rest,” he said after a step.  “Probably won’t be getting much once we’re off these rails.”

             
She watched Eric Hoss sip iced tea and look over something on his sheet.  Reports from his men?  Status updates?  Sports scores?  She didn’t know but whatever it was it had his attention and she knew, watching the way his eyes scanned the information, the depth of his focus, that he was a dangerous man to be on the wrong side of.

             
Ryla was sitting in her room, alone in the dark, looking down at her sheet computer, watching the news feed broadcasting the bombardment of her home.  Earlier in the day they’d begun dropping bombs.  When they weren’t successful they switched to another sort of shell.  These were designed to punch into the earth and destroy underground bunkers.  Ryla watched one of these hammer into the rooftop, punching a hole through the middle and a moment later it detonated.  There was a spray of debris as the third floor was shredded by the blast.  Everything below that, however, was designed to withstand such an assault.

             
She thought of her home, her bedroom, her painted walls, her clothes, and possibly even Botler (though she hoped not) being ripped apart by fire and it pinched her chest.  If only she had re-plated the roof of the third floor when she’d rebuilt it then her home would still exist.  Now it was flaming wreckage giving squads of soldiers’ reason to cheer.

             
With a few taps of her index finger she returned to the compounds interface and discovered she was still locked out.  She couldn’t tell if anyone was engaging the lockdown protocols for the floors below the third.  She couldn’t engage them herself.  She was helpless and as the soldiers’ pulled into ranks and prepared to move in on the building, it seemed her home was as well.

             
For a moment she thought of Quey and how none of this would be happening if she had just left him to the rain.

             
Rain… she’d be alive too wouldn’t she?  Of course Ryla wouldn’t know that because she wouldn’t have known her.  Was that a good trade though?  It seemed selfish to wish knowing her over having her alive.

             
Whatever the case the point was moot because either way the planet would still be dying.

             
That put things into perspective for her.  It was a stupid thought and she recognized that she wasn’t angry with Quey.  She was angry at Blue Moon.  She was angry with Richter Crow.  She felt herself grow regretful of her thought because if she’d have left Quey to the rain than she wouldn’t know him either.  She’d made many mistakes over the years, the longer she spent with her new friends the more she recognized them, and leaving him out there would have just been one more.

             
On her screen two more bombs dropped into the smoldering hole that had once been her home before the soldiers began moving, along with vehicles, toward the wreckage.

             
A thought occurred to Ryla and she began to type out a message.  Hopefully Boyfriend would read it.  Hopefully he would understand, and maybe she could redeem herself for some of the things she’d done.

The Forth Basement and …What The Fuck

              Boyfriend felt the building shudder as the shell pierced the roof of the third floor.  He stood behind the bank of computers on the second and looked to the ceiling.  A moment later there was a massive rumble and a sound that registered off his decibel meter.  The sound had no shape to it—no coherent audio to be deciphered—it was just chaotic noise.  It was particles colliding into one another and moving away at an exorbitant rate.  Then he fell to the floor as the vibration from the explosion took his balance out from under him.

             
He crawled to his feet as he made his way to the computers and began tapping the screen wildly.

             
‘What to do?’ he wondered as his fingers worked frantically, ‘What to do!’

             
He sat back in the chair uncertain and looked at the screen before him.  There had to be measures for such happenstances but he didn’t know what they were.  It occurred to him then that he was too new in the world to handle such a situation.

             
Another explosion overhead.  Then another and he was certain that his life was going to end before it was even two days old.

             
‘Why had she done this to him?’ he wondered silently.  ‘Why give him awareness if she knew this was coming for him?’  There was no reason he could fathom and now the perimeter alarms were going off.  He tapped the screen and switched to one of the camera views.  They were moving toward the compound, formations of men dressed in black and carrying guns.  They spoke into devices attached to their shoulders and scanned the rubble with the clear displays in their helmets lowered over their eyes.  It was only a matter of time now.  He was going to die.

             
A thought occurred to him and he sat forward and began tapping the holoscreen.

             
‘Or am I?’ he wondered as he sat back and weighed his options.

             
The first groups of soldiers were scouting the rubble of the compounds third floor when the ground began to rumble.  Everyone stopped to look around.

             
“Defense protocol alpha initiated,” a soft female voice announced through the damaged speakers of a massive P.A. system.  “You have five minutes to clear the area.”

             
The soldiers exchanged looks and shrugs before the order came through to continue on, despite the uncertainty of the situation.  The recon team was making there way through the remnants of Ryla’s home when the doors in the ground began to open.  Massive hydraulics began to whirr and the earth began to shake.

             
“I don’t know about this,” a soldier said.

             
“What could possibly be down there?” another considered.

             
James Penn overheard his men’s chatter and knew no good could come of speculating so he put an end to it.  “Nothing,” he snapped.  “Just keep focused.”

             
Time passed slowly.  It seemed like you could fit a whole cluster of five minutes in the time it took this one to pass.  The soldiers in the hole that had been the compounds third floor were scouring the rubble.

             
“Update,” Penn shouted, turning his head toward the device attached to his left shoulder.

             
“Seems there’s some sort of plating under the floor.  It looks like only the top level of the building was compromised.”  Everyone heard the news come though his speaker.

             
“Can you find a way into the lower levels?”

             
“On it.”

             
The team continued to move through the rubble, tossing aside bits of furniture or wall, as they made their way toward something of promise.

             
“We have an elevator shaft.”

             
James Penn heard this and his eyes lit up.  “Good work.”

             
Suddenly there was a deep and steady vibration underfoot.

             
“Looks like it works,” the recon team leader reported.

             
Above ground James Penn, like everyone else standing in the area, looked around with a degree of concern.  “Come again?” he asked.

             
“I said it looks like it works,” the voice repeated.

             
“How can you tell?” commander Penn inquired.

             
“Because it’s moving,” the soldier replied with a bit of urgency.  Then he shouted a command to his men.  “Flank the elevator.  Everyone else behind cover.  Whatever comes out of there hold fire until my order.”

             
“Think they’ll give up?” Kallan, a young man only two months deep in his career asked.  Penn looked over at him, his face hollow.  He knew better than that.  The rumbling under his feet was growing stronger.  There would be blood.

             
“Cover!” he shouted.  “Keep eyes on those fucking tunnels and be ready.”

             
Soldiers moved with purpose.  Sweat trickled down brows.  Hands shook.  Hearts raced.  It wasn’t battle that gave them a rattle but the unknown.  Would there be a battle, and if so what the fuck would they be fighting?
              “Positions,” Penn heard his man in the compounds top floor shout through the speaker in his helmet.  He heard his team leader bring his own rifle up.  There was a pause, a set of ticks that stretched on almost as long as the five minutes the compound had given them to clear out.  Then panic came through Commander Penn’s device.

             
“What the fuck is that!”  It was the sound of a man faced with something he couldn’t begin to understand.

             
“Fire,” he heard the team leader shout as gunfire roared.

             
Commander Penn’s eyes widened as he listened to the gunfire crack through his device and across the distant air as it rose from the structure as tiny bursts that sounded like nothing bigger than firecrackers.

             
A mechanical screech scraped across the sky and he looked up and around for a split before he realized the sound had come from the tunnels in the ground.  The gunfire in the compound was subsiding already.

             
“We’re overwhelmed,” he heard his team leader say breathlessly.  “I don’t know by what.”

             
Some sort of tentacle rose from each of the tunnels and crashed into the ground, digging down five or six feet.  It appeared to be made of metal but it had a pliability and texture he’d never seen.  It was like metallic skin and then he watched as something just under that strange surface contracted.  A muscle, he realized and his eyes widened.  The tentacles pulled from the tunnels a massive egg shaped thing, though that wasn’t right because each of them were slightly different and each contained the imperfection of organic shape.  They rose into the sky, hovering, each bigger than a house with a set of tentacles beneath.  Penn had never seen anything like it as he watched them shimmer in the afternoon sun.  It didn’t look like metal and yet it did.  He thought that if he could reach up and touch one of these things it would actually be soft in some way.

Two massive eyes opened in the sides of each of these things, they were round slits like a reptiles, they gazed down at the soldiers and then came another of those metallic shrieks, like someone tearing metal in half over a deep boom of raw bass that shook the world.  Each oblong seemed to shiver as it made the sound, like a screaming man might.  The sound lingered in the soldier’s bones as they looked up at the… creatures?

              Penn wasn’t sure but then they opened fire.

             
Shells the size of a man’s fingers tore through the soldiers clustered around the smoldering pit that had once been the third floor of Ryla’s Robotics Compound.  For decades the roaders marked it as a place to keep away from.  The whole of Saffron was finally learning why as the news cameras were surely catching this.

             
“Fire!” Penn shrieked and his men obliged.

             
The air filled with the stink of gunpowder and the sound of shots.  He watched the things move overhead.  The rifle rounds merely bounced off their flesh with a slight spark but when the big guns began to roar they bobbed this way or that, dodging the shots like a boxer might dodge a punch and answering with return fire.  A line of muzzle flashes where their mouths might have been.

             
Penn finally understood the reason for the tentacles.  They could use them to grab the ground and yank themselves this way or that, combined with their ability to fly their maneuverability was amazing.  They moved without the slightest hit of mechanics.  They moved like an animal.

             
The teams operating the pulse cannons began to get wise to them and worked together, all firing at the same creature in succession and at slightly different trajectories and finally scored a hit.  A roar of excitement erupted through the soldiers while the oblong shrieked as it was torn open.

             
A slit opened between and slightly below their eyes, like a mouth turned on end and each of the orbs released a barrage of energy blasts that took out one of the pulse cannons and more than a few vehicles.  Penn could see that the two uninjured things were guarding the third now.  He could also see in their massive eyes that they were pissed.

             
As Penn looked up at them, the only word he could think to describe them was impossible.

             
Screams erupted to his left and he looked toward the compound where whatever had taken down his recon team was climbing out and joining the fight.  Commander Penn would have liked to see them but a bullet tore through his skull and sprayed his brains across the wasteland.

             
Whatever these things were, that had been kept in the forth basement of the compound for who knows how long, they were well beyond anyone fighting for Blue Moon.  The two remaining pulse cannons managed to bring the injured oblong down, striking it with two more blasts that sent it shrieking as it hammered into the ground where it lay crying as the battle ragged on.

             
The other two loosed another spray of energy pulses that tore through and scattered Blue Moons forces.  Men in charge screamed commands that cracked through each soldier’s personal device, attached firmly to their shoulders, but none were heeded.  It was survival out there and every man was just doing the best they could.  A second floating creature was wounded by a pulse cannon and in a fit of rage it flew at its assailant and slammed down on top of it, crushing the cannon and two of the three men operating it.  As it slowly rose back into the sky it seemed as if the creature was chuckling to itself.

             
From the smoldering hole of rubble that had been Ryla’s home came a slew of creatures, sacks of flesh with metallic components intertwined with the skin.  When it came to these creatures their mechanical parts weren’t bits that had been added to some living creature, it was as if a living creature and a machine had grown together.  The ones who took to four legs moved fast, dashing across the waste at what must have been seventy or eighty kilometers an hour, rolling left or right depending on the aim of the soldiers, returning fire with guns built into their bodies.

             
Others stood on two legs and sprayed Blue Moon security with bullets.  They moved with an impossible fluidity, made possible by the fact that they were all linked to the same network node and shared thoughts as easily as computers on a network transfer data.

             
The battle didn’t last very long.  Across the news feeds the planet Saffron watched as Blue Moon’s security forces were taken out by the two remaining creatures floating over the wastes and the massive horde of whatever was crawling out of the compound.  Finally another creature began to emerge from the hole the oblongs had floated from.  It issued another cry of twisted metal that shook the air before what might have been an arm reached up and sent a missile at the news vehicle and the feed went to static.

             
Deep in the compound Boyfriend watched as the building was defended and he felt a bit of satisfaction.  There was a notice on one of the holoscreens.  A message.  He tapped it as the creatures crawling out of the third floor hole finished off the soldiers on foot.  It was from Ryla.  His eyes watched it, contemplatively, for a set of ticks before he opened it and read.  When he was done he paused and read it again.

             
He decided he was fine with the outcome of today’s skirmish, even if she wouldn’t be.  He had done well, as far as he was concerned and he didn’t want to give her full access to the building, but still he found he had a soft spot for her so he made a compromise.  After sending her his reply he settled in behind the computers and began to program a button for her.