Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

“All right then,” he said as he turned around. “Let’s just blast the fuckers out of their hidey-holes with the biggest conventional weapons we’ve got. How does that sound?”

The grinning and back-slapping was unseemly, but they were all so relieved Blackburn allowed it. No one wanted to tell him about the other part of the problem, about the oxygen depletion effect that literally sucked the air out of a man’s lungs if he even came near the new fusion tech.

What they don’t know, Blackburn told himself, is that I’m already aware of it. Have been from the beginning.

What they fail to understand, he thought as he looked at his craven “team” of advisors and mercenaries, is that I just don’t care.

Max pushed on.

The narrow passageway opened up a little more than a hundred yards from the opening. It was by no means wide enough or straight, but at least they weren’t surrounded by walls on all sides.

Max had never thought of twenty miles an hour as a dangerous speed. But now, guiding the Spector on its massive, swiveling treads, dodging pieces of ice as big as houses, veering past deep arroyos and avoiding patches of blackness that indicated yet another feeder tunnel, running off in yet another direction…now, twenty miles an hour seemed insanely fast.

The massive robotic Spiders hadn’t given up. Their arms, it turned out, were not just endlessly flexible; they were as strong as wrecking cranes. The others had watched through the transparent aft section and reported as the robots pulled away key patches of ice and outcroppings, pounding at the accumulated ice of the narrow entrance until, all too soon, it gave away, and they gave chase.

It was slow going for them, but they were relentless. Max could see that; he watched their progress on the holo-display of the rear scan as they moved forward, paused, pounded or pried another obstacle out of the way, then moved forward again. He could see that they were still a thousand yards behind them, and not gaining-but not falling back, either.

Focus, damn you, he told himself. There was no room for error here. He could take a wrong path, make a bad choice, and they would crash, fall, turn over, be crushed; he’d run out of grim alternatives. Only one thing left to do, he told himself. Succeed.

Simon sat in the co-pilot’s seat next to him, silent and determined. Max had known the man his whole life, and when Simon had said he would leave them behind and go on foot to find his father, Max had believed him completely. It was the kind of man he was-just like Max himself. Now Simon was focused entirely on the task at hand-getting the hell away from the CS23 and finding a place to hide, until they could figure out what to do next.

The terrain began to slope downward-not the steep fifty-degree grade of the first tunnel, but a relentless fifteen-degree angle of descent that took them deeper and deeper. And the deeper they went, the greater the tension they felt. It was as if they could feel the weight of the ice and stone growing above them, pressing down, worse with every inch they moved forward. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the transparent section behind them, showing every detail of the robots as they followed close on: their flexing arms, the bulbous, roiling central body, the grasping claws and the blinding spears of light that passed back and forth over the Spector, piercing it again and again like swords.

Without warning Max shouted, “Get down! We’ve got company!”

As if on cue, the entire crew whirled around to look at the front-facing screen, their window on the world that lay ahead.

The screen was a flat black shadow, given texture only by the reflected lights from the robots, the Spector’s own shadows, and a thousand tiny points of green light. Like fireflies out of the swamp, like luminous birds no bigger than a sparrow, they were swarming just outside the vehicle-straight in front, off to the left, off to the right.

They paused. They seemed to focus, to aim.

Then they streaked through the blackness and smashed against the Spector like gunshots.

Phit! Phit! Phit-phit-phit! Hundreds of lights were striking the Spector, slamming against the shielded surface, sounding like a barrage of stones. Everyone ducked as Max stopped the Spector instantly and spun his chair away from the line of fire.

The front-facing camera that had served them so well sizzled and went black. Tiny bumps, reverse dimples, appeared in sudden lines stitching across the cabin as the bullets dented the smartskin but did not penetrate.

Not yet, anyway, Max thought.

Max knew the sound of gunfire all too well. He rotated his seat to face the crew, cowering all across the bridge, and started to move the Spector in reverse, backing away from the gunfire, moving toward the approaching Spiders. For a moment the transparent aft walls stayed transparent, and he saw the gleaming arms of the CS-23 sway and grip one more time, and then the transparency flickered away, and he was staring at a blank interior wall.

Phit! PHIT phit PH-ph-PHIT!

Samantha clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. Max could see that Andrew and Ryan were only a step behind her.

It felt like an ambush-foot soldiers to the front, heavy artillery at the rear. But why waste men? Max wondered. They could just set off a couple of grenades and block us in without exposure.

Phit PHIT PHITPHITPHITPHIT-

The deepscan holos sizzled and disappeared under the continuing assault. The bridge was little more than a hollow shell now-and one that was starting to crack under the relentless hail of bullets.

“What’s going on?” screamed Samantha as Simon threw himself from his seat and jumped half the length of the cabin to throw his arms around her. He had never felt so helpless: caught between the menacing machines in one direction, a barrage of gunfire in another, a thousand feet below the killing ice.

Death-the real, imminent, tangible specter of Death-flashed before his eyes as he tried to comfort her. Hayden, doubled over in the tiny space below the tech console, bellowed through the noise of the thunderous bullets as the last of the Spector’s emergency lights blinked out. “They hit the main electric panel!”

But the Spector kept moving. Just as Max had directed, it staggered in reverse, away from the gunfire, back toward the robots, foot after stubborn foot-

— until it smashed into something huge, immovable, and utterly invisible, just beyond the buckling metal hull.

The team was thrown across the darkened cabin as the vehicle shuddered to an instant halt. The pounding bullets didn’t even pause; if anything, the rattling tattoo of the attack grew even louder, more angry, as the soldiers approached and redoubled their fire.

The next few seconds felt like an eternity as Max scrambled to find his pistol. Simon asked Samantha in a quiet whisper, “You all right?”

“I’m not dead yet,” she whispered fiercely. “At least I don’t think I am.”

“Down, guys!” Max shouted from the floor. “Unbuckle, get down!” He frog-marched to Andrew and helped him with the complex arrangement of belts. The left side of the bridge exploded in a shower of sparks. A new vibration, deep and almost subsonic, rumbled through the vessel. It seemed as though it was coming from the outside and getting stronger with every second. It was accompanied by a low hissing noise that sounded like an approaching eighteen-wheeler.

Max grabbed Simon’s shoulder and said, “It’s zero time.” He saw Simon struggle with the words for a second; then a look of realization dawned on him. It was a bit of slang from their childhood, back when they only played at being spies and adventurers. It meant “now or never,” “do or die.” But it meant something more, too. It was a phrase only they used, and only with each other. It was part of a secret language that had made them more than friends from an early age.