Wolves

SIXTEEN

The door wasn’t going to hold, even with Les’ body braced against it. The machine on the other side rammed it again, and he staggered backward into a lab table. A twinge of pain ran through his back where the armor had smacked against the rounded edge.

He fired his rifle at the robot trying to break its way through the barricaded glass windows.

The door exploded off the hinges, sailing past him and crashing into another lab workstation. He pivoted to fire on the AI that stormed into the room, orange visor and mouth glowing like a portal to hell.

Rounds peppered the metal face; denting and contorting the humanoid features. Les emptied the magazine, hoping one of the bullets would penetrate the metal shell, but the thing kept coming. An electronic chirp came from the open mouth as if it were trying to speak.

But these AIs didn’t have voices like Timothy Pepper. At least, Les hadn’t heard them try to communicate using anything other than their electronic wails.

He slung his rifle and unholstered the venerable .45-caliber M1911 pistol. An orange light blazed out of the machine’s visor, tracking him as he moved. There was no way to get out of the lab without getting hit by a laser bolt.

Crouching down, he raised his pistol and fired a round into the machine’s open mouth. It shook violently, still standing but dropping the weapon. Sparks exploded out of its orange visor and mouth, and it fell to both knees, where it wobbled a moment before slumping over on its side. The orange battery unit dimmed and blinked off.

So they can die…

“I killed one!” Les yelled over the comms. “I fucking killed one!”

The sound of mechanical joints filled the hallway outside the broken door, cutting his celebration short. Les holstered the pistol and picked up the laser rifle by a curved olive rail with iron sights mounted to the center of the black barrel. It was light, about the same weight as a blaster, and not much bigger.

He held it like a rifle and quickly checked for a magazine but saw nothing extending from the bottom or side of the weapon. He wasn’t sure how many bolts remained, but even one was a gift he wouldn’t pass up.

The route back through the labs took him a few minutes to navigate. Even with the sporadic working lights, the rooms looked different from when he came through hours ago.

He wasn’t sure where Layla and Michael were, but with Michael’s injuries, they couldn’t have gotten far. It was amazing the young commander could walk at all after hitting the water so hard and then losing his arm.

Les checked over his shoulder one last time before entering the next lab. The other robots were coming through the open doorway, and the orange glow pulsed into the open space. Shadows rushed in with the light. Several of the machines were on all fours, moving like dogs.

The sight made him gasp, but he managed to aim the laser rifle at the closest robot and pull the trigger. The bolt sizzled through the air and hit it in the back. Animal bones exploded, and sparks flew.

Another orange light fizzled out.

He fired again, holding the trigger down this time to fire a laser that cut off the leg of another robot and sliced the lab station behind it in half.

The next trigger squeeze clicked, and he felt the heat coming off the muzzle of the barrel through his gloved hands. It was either overheated or out of bolts. He turned and ran as the other three machines approached. One hurdled a lab counter and slammed into a desk, sending the furniture crashing into a wall. The electronic howling grew louder. The machines were getting frustrated.

A flurry of lasers sizzled through the air, leaving white-hot incisions wherever they touched. One came dangerously close to his helmet, shooting past his right side.

The noise of their ethereal wails hurt his ears, but there was no blocking it out. He ran into the next hallway, hopping over the mummified corpses that littered the floor. Then he flattened his body and squeezed through the metal barricade.

“I’ve got multiple contacts heading toward the front entrance,” Erin said over the comms. “Better sit tight, Layla, and let me take them down.”

The message echoed in Les’ helmet. They were being flanked. But where had the other robots come from?

“Hold your fire—you’ll just draw them to your position,” Layla said. “I’ll hunker down with Michael. Les, where are you?”

“On my way topside. I got several pursuers.”

“That’s my goal,” Erin said. “I’ll buy you some time.”

Les almost halted when he heard her voice.

She was going to sacrifice herself.

“No,” Michael said. “Hold your fire, Erin. That’s an… order.”

“Sorry, sir, but some orders are meant to be broken. Good luck to you. If there is an afterlife, I’ll save you a spot.”

The line fizzled out.

Les bolted down the hallway, gripping the laser rifle, ready to enter the fray topside. It was up to him now to save his friends, but he would have to be smart and lucky.

Distant gunshots rang out as he made his way down the second hallway to the garage. Electronic wails answered, along with the crack, crack of return laser fire.

Erin had shut her channel off, leaving Les, Layla, and Michael no way to contact her. She couldn’t even hear them if they tried to send a message.

He made it to the garage a few minutes later and entered with the weapon aimed outside. The barrel had cooled, and he could only hope it would fire when he needed it.

Gunfire cracked from the piers, and he hurried to the open door to see a half dozen of the machines walking toward the ITC ship, their orange battery units glowing in the dark like handheld lanterns.

They didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Several of them, armed with laser rifles, fired at the stern, where Erin stood firing down on them. She ducked as a bolt sliced the air where her helmet had been the second before. Les almost screamed at her to run, but he couldn’t compromise his position if his plan was to work. Especially since the machines all had their backs to him.

He was moving out of the garage when a door on one of the armored vehicles creaked open. Layla hopped out and motioned at Les. Lying across the back seat was Michael, his stump wrapped with a bandage.

“Help me with him,” she whispered.

Gunfire continued in the distance as Les lowered his gun and grabbed Michael. He was unconscious, and Layla needed help getting him to the navy ship. It was their only way off this concrete island.

Hold on, Erin. We’re coming.

If anyone could handle herself in a fight, it was tough-as-nails Erin.

The sound of moving metal came from the hallway. Les let go of Michael and aimed his laser rifle out of the open door; peering down the iron sights, and waiting for a shot.

A moment later, one of the robots emerged in the flickering light.

Les fired a bolt into the center of the AI’s forehead. The thin blue line bored an instant tunnel all the way through the artificial brain or circuits or whatever the hell was inside the head and right out the back of the metal skull, to the open elevator shaft fifty yards beyond.

That was when Les saw the orange light rising up the shaft.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, listening to the approach of what sounded like dozens of the machines.

The place was a freaking factory of killer AIs.

Michael suddenly shot up on the seat inside the vehicle, gasping for air. Les turned just as Layla pulled a needle out of his leg.

“Adrenaline,” she said. “Come on, Tin. We’ve got to get to that ship.”

He looked at Layla and Les in turn, then at his arm for a second, as if to make sure it wasn’t just all a bad dream.

“You’re okay,” Les said. “Let’s go, Commander.”

Michael didn’t need to be told twice. He jumped out onto the concrete as Les ran back to the door.

“Where are you going?” Layla shouted.

He fired a bolt at the open elevator shaft, showering sparks down on the machines climbing the vertical walls.

Then he grabbed the gun the terminated machine had dropped, and fired off two more blasts at three approaching robots on his right. They returned fire, blowing smoldering holes into the floor.

He slammed the door and locked it before taking off after Layla and Michael. Lightning flashed overhead, and the boom of thunder shook the piers.

“Layla!” Les shouted when he got outside.

She was just around the corner of the garage.

“I’ll meet you at the ship,” he said, tossing the second laser weapon to her. “See if you can get it up and running with your computer and extra battery.”

Layla nodded. “Good luck.”

“Good luck.”

She kept moving around the curved structure. Michael managed to say between groans of pain, “Help… Erin.” For a moment, he seemed to be trying to pull away from Layla and go with Les, but she put his remaining arm over her shoulder.

The hallway door inside the garage creaked, and electronic wails projected out of the room. Three of the machines on the pier stopped and turned in Les’ direction while the other three kept shooting at Erin.

The robots looking at Les were wearing bone armor, too, and one even had a human jaw attached to its face. The jaw moved, and the same electronic noise burst from the mechanical mouth. It was as if…

They’re talking to one another, Les realized.

Erin continued raining bullets down on the pack. Not bothering to move for cover, they stood their ground and returned fire. Blue laser bolts punched through the ship’s rusted hull as if it were cardboard.

Keep your head down, Erin…

Les dropped to one knee, aimed the weapon with both hands, and squeezed off a single bolt. The laser zipped through the air, just over the head of a machine that had dropped to all fours.

The other two machines, both without laser weapons, ran toward him. Lightning forked through the sky, hitting the ocean.

Les aimed again, holding the trigger down to fire a longer bolt that took off the top of a metal skull. His next shot went through the chest of the machine with the human jaw, sending it crashing to the ground. It quickly pushed itself back up.

He centered the barrel at the head to finish it off, but the trigger pull ended with an empty click. Smoke rose off the glowing barrel. The third machine suddenly stopped running toward Les and stood on both feet.

The downed robot directed an orange visor toward the sky. The other three robots all stopped firing at Erin and also looked toward the storm clouds.

Les aimed his weapon, waiting for the gun to cool.

A message crackled from the speakers, but he didn’t understand Layla’s transmission. It sounded like the Hell Divers motto.

“We dive so humanity survives.”

But why the hell would Layla be saying it right now?

Thunder grumbled overhead.

He pulled the trigger again, but still it wouldn’t fire.

The sky suddenly rained blue orbs.

Five of them.

“Pull your chutes!” yelled a voice over the comms.

Les stared in awe at the sky, where a parachute suddenly bloomed out under the cloud cover. Then another, and another. All but one of the chutes fired and spread black canopies.

“Katrina came for us,” he whispered.

His speakers crackled with the deep voice that had to be Edgar Cervantes.

“Ramon!” he yelled.

Les watched a body tumbling through the air. It smacked into the ocean several hundred yards out from the piers.

The machines with weapons raised them toward the sky and fired off bolt after bolt. Several of them tore through chutes, sending the novice divers careening through the air.

Les aimed his weapon at the robots.

“Over here, assholes!” he yelled. This time, the trigger pull fired a bolt. The laser traveled through the central chest slot of the machine and the battery exploded in a fiery blast, all but tearing the robot in half.

The other machines all looked in Les’ direction.

He swallowed.

At least he had distracted them from the other divers. Erin stood above the rail, which was sliced through and glowing from laser hits. He hit the deck, rolled, and returned fire.

A diver was already coming in hot over the pier, performing a two-stage flare with such grace, it had to be Katrina.

She ran out the momentum, passing Les as he kept firing bolts. Timing his shots, he tried to keep the gun from overheating again.

Erin stuck her rifle over the side of the ship, screaming as she fired. “Eat this, you walkin’ shit cans!” She squeezed off three-round bursts from side to side. “You want some? Come on! Swallow this!”

Gunfire erupted behind Les, and Katrina ran up beside him with her rifle shouldered.

“Good to see you’re still alive!” she yelled.

Les said the first thing that came to mind. “Where’s Trey?”

“Not sure, but his beacon’s still active.”

The reassuring words energized Les. He came up on one knee and took down another machine on the pier with a shot to the neck. The partially severed head craned to the side, sparks shooting from the wound.

“Focus your fire on their heads!” Les yelled.

Erin and Katrina slowed their rate of fire, the sporadic cracks echoing amid the boom of thunder and cries of the machines.

The two remaining enemies both went down, their skull armor broken to pieces. They squirmed as Les finished them off with laser bolts. The final AI twitched on the ground before going limp, the orange lights fizzling out like coals in the rain.

Les stood and scanned the sky above the ITC ship where Erin was busy changing a magazine. Three more divers were still in the air, but the wind, damaged canopies, and inexperience had taken them all off course. Two floated overhead toward Red Sphere. The third was coming down near the destroyed robots.

“Trey, where are you!” Les shouted.

“Dad! I’m over the ship, but I can’t slow down.”

Les turned to see his son sail right over the ITC ship, about two hundred feet above Erin. She, too, looked up as he passed overhead.

“Do the two-stage flare like we trained you,” Les said. “Wait till you’re about eight feet off the deck; then pull both toggles down hard but not all the way, to slow your descent. Then, when you level out, pull the toggles slow the rest of the way down to stop your forward motion.”

Movement on the deck pulled Les’ eyes off Trey.

“Behind you!” Erin yelled.

Bolts hit the deck just right of Les and Katrina. She rolled away from the laser fire, but Les stayed put. One of the machines he had knocked down was getting back up with a weapon raised. A bolt sizzled past Les’ head as he pulled the trigger—the same moment the machine fired a bolt into the sky.

“No!” Les shouted.

He lowered his gun as the robot dropped, smoldering. Les’ eyes jerked upward, searching the sky for his son. But the AI’s laser bolt had not been meant for Trey. An object the size of a melon dropped over the side of the ship, near the stern. It took Les a moment to register what he was seeing.

Erin’s headless corpse, still standing on the deck, slumped against the rail, then toppled over. Her helmet, with her head inside, clattered onto the concrete and rolled a few feet.

Trey’s boots hit the pier a moment later, between the ship and Les. The boy quickly lost control, running and then tumbling head over feet.

“Covering fire!” Katrina shouted.

Les, still in shock, finally turned to fire on the machines streaming out of the building. Erin was gone, but maybe he could still save the others.

Katrina was on one knee, fighting desperately, firing calculated bursts.

One of the divers had landed on the roof of Red Sphere and opened fire from above. The final diver was nowhere in sight.

Six robots strode out of the garage, firing bolts in all directions.

Les heard one crackle in the air just over his head. He was giving them too big a target, so he dropped to his belly. His first three shots took down a machine, and fire erupted from its innards. His weapon clicked on the next squeeze—overheated again.

He switched to his rifle and aimed a burst at the mouth of one of the remaining five machines standing just outside the entrance to the garage.

Bolts cut through the air separating Les and Katrina. They both rolled out of the way and into each other.

Les glanced up, expecting a bolt to his face.

He heard something streak over their heads, followed by a thunderous boom that seemed to come from both the Red Sphere garage and the ocean. The explosion tore the machines standing there to scrap metal, and they vanished in the fiery blast. The diver on the roof fell backward.

Les had already grabbed Katrina and pulled her to the left, where they tumbled over the side of the pier and into the water.

Kicking back to the surface, he pulled himself onto the dock, where he saw a navy ship rounding the piers.

“Got the ship working,” Layla said over the open channel. “Anyone want a ride out of this charming place?”

Pushing himself up, Les ran to help untangle Trey, who was shouting for help on the pier, his chute on fire.

Katrina rushed over to help. They released the chute and put out the flames on his legs. By the time they had him out, Edgar and Jaideep were running across the platform toward the pier.

“You okay?” Les asked Trey.

The boy sat up and managed a nod. “The suit saved me.”

Katrina looked to the left, where Erin’s headless corpse lay in her blood, which was pooling underneath her due to a broken bone that protruded through her suit.

Trey lowered his helmet in despair.

Running footfalls came from behind them.

Jaideep arrived, panting, his arm around Edgar, who was gripping his side.

“Where’s my cousin? Does anyone know what happened to Ramon?” Edgar’s words trailed off when he saw Erin’s body.

“His beacon went off in the storm. I’m sorry,” Katrina said. “There’s nothing we can do for him or Erin now.”

“He’s hurt,” Jaideep said.

Edgar unslung his arm from the diver’s shoulder. “I’m fine.”

But Les could see that Edgar wasn’t fine. Shards of metal stuck out of his chest armor, and another piece protruded from his belly, where blood was seeping out.

Katrina pointed her chin at the cruiser, which was moving into position along the pier. “Let’s go, divers.”