I Am Automaton 2: Kafka Rising Page 29

  “One kilometer out,” he told his suit recorder.

  It was strange speaking into a hypothetical future like that, he thought. Especially one which presupposed his death. An issue for another time, he supposed.

  The main hangar entrance appeared up ahead of him. A long, stone ramp, much closer than he’d expected. One and a half kilometers from his ship, then, rather than two. That probably made his likelihood of escape worse, actually, but it was too late to worry.

  Now, he could see the main guard towers and their swiveling lights. These ones were definitely manned.

  Better look for cover, he told himself, forcing away his anxiety with a deep breath. If he didn’t stop every once in a while to regroup, he was likely to overlook something important. This was, after all, his first mission, and not an easy one. It wasn’t like the holo training. This time, he didn’t have someone in his ear directing him. He was one hundred percent accountable for his actions, and rushing straight up the gut to a manned Kalak stronghold was an easy way to suffer the ultimate accountability lesson, not just for himself, but for his fellow crewmen and women in the dungeons beneath the surface.

  He didn’t necessarily care for every one of them, but there was one person, alive or dead, who provided more than enough motivation to keep going.

  Wendy.

  “Scanning for alternate entrances,” he informed the future annalists.

  He glanced down at his wrist, waiting for the topographical hologram to project again. It was another strange feeling, he reflected, to be standing out in the Baru Sheen winds with so much gravity pulling him down. His legs were more or less stationary because of the boots, but his upper body felt like it had caught its own current. He struggled to keep his arms and neck steady.

  When the hologram finished loading, he shuffled up to the canyon wall searching for cover from the wind.

  Perfect, he thought as he viewed the results.

  His luck hadn’t quite run out. There was a small cave roughly five meters ahead to his right. It wasn’t very deep, but he had a few charges to take care of that.

  Maybe. But what about the noise?

  The crash of the sea and the howling wind would drown out a small explosion, but he might need something big. The rock on Baru Sheen was maddeningly resilient. It had to be to withstand the relentless waves of acid beating against it. Otherwise, Conor would have been able to widen the hole with the torch beam on his glove.

  The charges will do, he assured himself. They have to.

  An echoing roar startled him back a few steps, followed by a burst of weapons fire near the main entrance.

  Shit…

  He drew his SX-90 rifle and crouched against the canyon wall.

  Kalak.

  They’d spotted him. He was sure of it. And now he was trapped in the middle of an open canyon without a way up or out aside from the main hangar entrance. Until he planted the charges, he wouldn’t be able to get through to the cave, either.

  Breathe.

  He exhaled and squeezed the rifle against his chest.

  There was another series of loud reports from a weapon that was far too powerful to be a standard-issued fleet rifle.

  Conor risked a quick glance toward the watchtowers and held his breath.

  There was only one Kalak watchman up in the towers, and, by the looks of it, the alien had gone mad. It was shooting at three giant, reptilian creatures scurrying across the canyon floor.

  More Kalak.

  Two of them were running down the third, who was scrambling like hell to get over the fence and away from the gaping hangar entrance. None of the ground trio had weapons, but the watchman’s rifle, powerful as it was, didn’t seem to have much effect on them, either. Bullet after bullet tore into their chests, arms, and legs, but they kept running toward the fence, never once taking their eyes from the lead runner or faltering in the least.

  Steady.

  It looked like the lead Kalak was going to beat the others over the fence, and that meant trouble for Conor. Once it was on his side, they’d be practically on top of each other. And even though the runners were unarmed, it was never easy to face a Kalak head on, let alone three. They were too big. Too powerful.

  This is it, Conor thought.

  He didn’t have a prayer.

  Then, the lead runner made it over the fence, bleeding from the neck. The pursuers were bleeding, too, and they were having much more difficulty negotiating the climb.

  He could almost smell them.

  One way or another, Conor knew he wasn’t getting out of the canyon alive. If those three bastards didn’t tear him apart and the watchman didn’t shoot him, one of them would at least sound the alarm and the whole goddamned base would be on him in a heartbeat.

  Fuck it.

  Might as well go down fighting.

  No longer worried about stealth, he stepped out of the shadows, scowled, and raised the SX-90 at the approaching Kalak.

  Here we go.

  His hands took over before his brain had a chance to slow them down.

  Slow and purposeful.

  He targeted the lead runner first. It took two quick shots to the head from seven meters but the big bastard fell with an unsettling look in its gray eyes, far too close to relief for comfort. Conor didn’t waste time worrying over it. The lead hadn’t even hit the cracked canyon floor before he swung the barrel of the SX-90 around and pointed it up at the watchmen.

  Nothing wild. No nerves.

  He pulled the trigger.

  To Conor’s surprise, the guard was even easier to pick off than the lead Kalak because it was stuck in the tower and hadn’t seen him yet. In fact, it never even stopped firing at the other two runners. It only took one steady shot this time and the Kalak flipped over the side of the watchtower onto the top of the canyon wall.

  He was only halfway through, but at least the runners were still stuck on the other side of the fence.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, Conor was damned impressed with himself.

  First mission jitters my ass.

  He quickly pushed the thought aside. It was too early to celebrate. If the runners got back through the open hangar door, he’d be in even bigger trouble. The shots from the guard had been loud, and so had Conor’s. For all he knew, a whole battalion of Kalak troops were about to storm into the canyon with a hurricane of bullets, ready to pulverize him into a glob of dark flesh on the cracked ground.

  Letting the runners call down the thunder certainly would make his job more difficult.

  “Hey!” Conor yelled to them, trying to distract them in case they gave up on the fence and decided to return with reinforcements. “Fuckface!”

  The bloodied Kalak turned and looked at him, growling so loud and low that Conor could feel it in his tailbone. It almost made him pull the trigger before he was ready.

  Wait for it. Calm down.

  He jogged the last few steps towards the fence and took aim.

  They were much more frightening up close than he’d thought they would be, but he’d never seen a Kalak before in his life. The gaping bullet holes in their necks and temples were particularly gruesome and terrifying. So were their enormous jaws and the gore dripping from their chins.

  Incredibly, they were so frenzied that they ran full speed into the fence over and over to reach him. Their teeth were bared. They didn’t even use their hands to protect themselves from the impact.

  Conor jerked back in alarm, expecting either the fence to give or one of their giant hands to break through and grab him even though the holes were too small. They stepped away again and roared instead.

  “Come on!” he shouted back, masking his fear with rage. He needed to bring them in close one more time to feel confident with his aim. His hands were shaking too much to trust.

  “Fuckers!”

  In the heat of the moment, he’d slipped into English rather than Standard Galactic Speak. Judging by the blind hunger in the runners’ eyes, though, he didn’t think
they would have understood anyway. There was one thing on their minds.

  Blood.

  Steady hands, he thought. He forced himself to take a deep breath.

  The runners charged again.

  Bringing the SX-90 up to bear, Conor trusted his instincts and pulled the trigger. Again, his hands didn’t fail him. He had just enough time to realize that the two Kalak runners didn’t have breathing masks before their skulls imploded beneath the concussive force of his assault rifle spray.

  Blood splashed the surface of his helmet, covering the glass.

  How are they breathing?

  He kept shooting until they stopped tearing at the fence. It took a lot longer than he thought it would, even for a couple of angry Kalak soldiers.

  As soon as they hit the ground, he turned his rifle toward the gaping hangar door and backed into the shadow of the canyon wall. He expected to see a full complement of pissed-off lizards rushing out with their massive assault rifles ready to tear him to shreds, but the doorway was quiet on all fronts and he didn’t hear any alarms or approaching footsteps.

  They weren’t wearing masks, he thought again.

  How the hell were they breathing?

  For some reason, that mystery was much more chilling than the number of bullets it had taken for him to take down the two crazed runners, and that was forgetting the tower watchman’s contributions. The climber hadn’t taken nearly as many, but it had also been wearing the thin oxygen apparatus the Kalak strapped over their snouts. No real mystery there, or in the watchman’s fall from the guard tower.

  But why were they attacking each other?

  What the hell is going on?

  He supposed he’d find out soon enough, so he made sure there weren’t any other guards in the watchtowers and turned back the way he came. He might have been able to climb the fence and save himself some work finding an alternate route into the facility, but he didn’t trust the emptiness at all. Or the fact that the hangar door was still open to the merciless elements.

  Strange. Very strange.

  Things didn’t add up at all. But at least his combat training hadn’t failed him in the heat of battle. Yet. That was something to be grateful for, he supposed. Two hours earlier, he would have put his chances for taking down a quartet of Kalak troops, even with three of them unarmed, at slim to none. And he hadn’t had the high ground, either. It was a good thing his SX was up to the task. At six feet tall, one hundred ninety-five pounds, he wouldn’t have had a prayer of overpowering even one of them in hand to hand combat.

  Come to think of it, even that asshole Sergeant Wilkins would be damned proud.

  He guessed there was a reason Commander Chalmers had recruited him straight into the Aidric Ground Team, after all.

  ORIGINS I

  Dorothy.

  An explosion rocked the city street. Detroit was under attack.

  That’s the wall. They’re heading straight for the plant.

  Conor was pinned down in the potato chip aisle of a rundown liquor store. The power had gone out in the blast. The room was completely dark. From the sound of it, an army, at least a small one, was just outside the building and was liable to bust in any second with weapons blaring. But that worry was far from Conor’s mind. He was more concerned with where their road ended.

  Specifically, the Midwest Academy of Scientific Research.

  Dorothy.

  He couldn’t let them get to her.

  Someone screamed from the dry-cleaners next door. The sound made him wince. He’d heard how brutal the Kalak could be.

  From where he crouched with his back against a row of candy bars, he heard the clerk breathing all too heavily, fighting back sobs that were determined to break through. There were a handful of other customers in the store, maybe more. He hadn’t paid close attention to numbers when he’d walked in. The first blast had followed almost immediately.

  Another explosion now, answered by the sound of breaking glass across the street.

  And all Conor could do was thank God it hadn’t come from the MASR building next to the Renaissance Center. MASR was another block away, and Dorothy’s research lab was on the fifteenth floor. She hadn’t been hit yet. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be soon, or that the fifteenth floor was any less vulnerable to the powerful Kalak explosives.

  Do something.

  But what?

  He took a quick look around. The power was still out but there were lights in the street illuminating the store even through the explosion cloud. An old woman cradled her purse in her lap with her cheek pressed against the beer fridge. A teenaged boy wearing the orange and green belt of one of the more lethal neighborhood gangs squatted between Conor and the exit, trying to peek out into the action.

  That was all he could see from his vantage point aside from the pudgy right hand of the clerk stuck beneath the bulletproof glass divider where he was reaching for a twenty dollar bill.

  The clerk…

  Dorothy.

  An idea struck him. Every halfwit liquor store owner in Detroit kept at least one firearm behind the cash register in case of an attempted robbery, which meant the blubbering sack of shit with his hairy wrist stuck beneath his own glass was probably packing heat, so to speak. He also probably wouldn’t be able to reach the gun as long as he was stuck.

  Creeping down the aisle as swiftly and silently as he could, Conor stepped to the employee door beside the counter.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, crouched beneath the handle.

  A few feet away, the clerk stopped squirming for a moment to listen.

  “Hey,” Conor said again. “You need some help back there?”

  “Fuck off,” the store owner snapped.

  Conor didn’t blame him for being cautious, especially given the opportunistic looting that inevitably broke out within moments of every major tragedy in America since the plague.

  Dorothy.

  But he didn’t have time for bullshit. Not even to explain himself.

  Instead, he stood up, walked over to the window where the clerk’s hand was red and swelling more and more with each attempt at retrieval, and grabbed the man’s fingers.

  “Open the door,” he said, giving a light squeeze.

  Another bomb went off out in the street but all eyes in the liquor store were on the cash register. On Conor.

  The clerk tried to rip free of his grip, so he squeezed harder. The clerk yelped.

  “Open the door,” Conor said again. “I want to help you.”

  “Let go of me or I’m calling the police,” the clerk snapped.

  Conor squeezed tighter and now he could tell the man was in pain by the way the muscles in his arm tensed and attempted retreat, even though Conor couldn’t see the man’s face in the shadows.

  Dorothy.

  Alarm bells rang in his head. It took all his self-control not to cry out or run aimlessly into the street to try to reach her in time.

  In time for what?

  He didn’t know. What he did know was that he needed to play his cards very quickly and very carefully if she was going to live.

  “I don’t think you can reach the phone,” he said. “Besides, I think the cops have their hands full right now.” He eased his grip and the clerk quit squirming. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I need your gun. Now.”

  “I’m not giving you my gun,” the clerk whined.

  “Hey!” the old woman at the beer fridge shouted.

  Oh great. Here come the civilian heroes, he thought. Of course, they would see what he was doing as looting, bullying. He’d been afraid of that. They didn’t understand, and they wouldn’t be able to in the amount of time he had to save her.

  Another explosion.

  Conor bit his lip. “I’m not trying to hurt him,” he told the others.

  He could hear the passing army outside the window. Thin shapes moved in the clouds of debris.

  No time.

  But the old woman shook her head emphatically. “I know,” she
said. “Someone needs to do something out there.” She rushed over, her forgotten purse banging against her hip. “Give him your gun,” she told the clerk.

  Conor dropped his hand and stepped aside to make room for her.

  He looked back at the customers dotting the aisles of groceries and junk food and pornographic holocards. None of them looked threatening or outraged. None of them looked like they thought he was the Devil incarnate. But they all looked scared. Even the rough and tumble gangster crouching near the door.

  “Go on,” the old woman urged. “He looks like he can fight, and those damn lizards will be in here any second.”

  Conor frowned but kept quiet, afraid anything he said would only make the clerk more indignant.

  Dorothy.

  Seconds passed like days. Another explosion, this one farther off.

  Dorothy.

  Screw the gun. It’s time to go.

  “Fine,” the clerk relented.

  The battery-powered door unlocked with a click. Conor had it open in a heartbeat and didn’t waste any time with apologies or pleasantries. “Where is it?”

  “Beneath the register.”

  “Is it locked in or coded?”

  “Not with the power out.”

  “I thought everything here ran on back-up.”

  The clerk didn’t say anything. He didn’t really have to.

  Conor hustled over to the cash register and felt around in the darkness beneath the counter.

  There.

  An assault rifle.

  Another explosion in the streets. Shouting.

  Dorothy.

  He’d never fired an assault rifle before and wasn’t sure why a liquor store owner would have one, even though crime had escalated in the city and it was easier than ever to slip things under the noses of the over-worked and under-staffed Detroit Police Department with the war going on.

  No time.

  “Thanks,” he told the man over his shoulder. He was halfway out the door by the time he got a response. Not from the clerk or the old woman, but the terrified teenaged gangster.

  “Good luck out there,” the boy told him.