Simon Hawke - Argonaut Affair

Trying to ignore the pain, he sprinted hard for the harbor. He glanced over his shoulder and saw two figures running after him. He swore and redoubled his efforts, but they were gaining on him. A plasma blast exploded on the ground to his left. Seconds later, another one hit to his right, directly ahead of him. They had him bracketed. The next one would find its target. He started to run serpentine to throw off their aim. It was the only thing to do, but it resulted in their closing the distance between them.

He reached the giant robot straddling the harbor, with plasma fire exploding all around him. One blast hit right next to him, close enough to throw him to the ground and set his clothes on fire. Gasping with pain, he ripped off his burning shirt and threw himself through the doorway in the robot's ankle, stabbing with burned fingers at the controls which would shut it. As it started to slide to, two plasma blasts struck it in rapid succession, the wash of blue flame coming through the slowly closing opening. He threw himself back just in time. Several more blasts hit the door and he saw molten bronze flowing at the bottom of the crack. There was no way out now. He was sealed in.

He half ran, half staggered up the metal stairs toward the control room, pulling himself along with his right hand grasping the railing. "Bastards!" he swore, as he climbed the stairs, "fucking bastards!"

Finn and Andre fired charge after charge into the door in the giant robot's ankle. They saw the bronze soften and start to flow, but even the intense heat of the plasma charges was not enough to blast the door open.

"It's no good," said Delaney. "The door's melted shut."

"Then he's not going anywhere," said Andre.

"Don't bet on that," Delaney said, tersely. From inside the robot, they heard the sounds of machinery and hydraulics starting to move.

Curtis had posted guards around the perimeter of the transit area, but he needn't have bothered. The terrified population had fled in terror from them. The ground was littered with the corpses of Moreau's creatures and with the bodies of several of the Rangers who had been killed in the suicidal attack of the harpies. Drakov's ruined palace was ablaze. It was all over by the time the first wave of the T.C. I, strike force battalion started to clock in. Curtis approached Col. Cooper, the commander of the strike force.

"Looks like you people didn't need us," Cooper said. "You seem to have the situation well in hand."

"We had no idea what kind of resistance we might have encountered, Colonel," Curtis said. "There was a — "

"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!" said Cooper, looking beyond him. "What in the hell is that!" Curtis turned around. "Holy shit!" Finn and Andre were running at top speed toward them, while behind them, gaining with every massive stride, was Tales. The bronze giant, with Benedetto at the controls, was moving slowly, awkwardly, but with the length of its strides, it didn't need to move fast. Servomotors within it whined with each giant stride. The huge arm lifted the bronze obelisk of a sword.

"Skirmish line!" Cooper shouted out to his battalion. "Fire at will!"

A hundred plasma rifles opened up on the advancing robot, wreathing it in an aura of blue flame and blackening the bronze. Benedetto was blinded by the plasma fire, but he remained at the controls, keeping the robot advancing toward the soldiers. He felt the intense heat building up as the relentless barrage continued. The bronze began to soften.

"I knew I should have installed cannon in this ridiculous contraption," Benedetto said, grimacing with pain. The controls were growing hot to the touch. "I'm going to be cooked alive like some damned lobster." He slammed a control lever forward, but the robot arm holding the sword remained immobile, the servomotors damaged by the plasma fire. "Damn it!" Benedetto swore. He reached for the level controlling the arm holding the shield.

"Maintain fire!" Cooper shouted as the strike force and the Ranger unit poured everything they had into the robot. Molten metal was now running down its exterior like hot wax flowing down a candle. The robot's impassive features sagged. Molten bronze fell to the ground in globs with each step it took.

Inside the control room, it was like an oven. The interior walls were starting to glow red. Benedetto's skin was turning red and blistering. His hands were being crisped as they worked the controls. "Christ!" he screamed, in agony. "CHRIST!"

The left arm extended from the giant's body and then bent at the elbow back toward the robot's chest. Benedetto was blind now, but he knew the soldiers were somewhere in front of him. With his last ounce of strength, he released the locks holding the shield in place and then slammed forward the lever controlling the arm.

"Look out!" Curtis shouted.

The massive bronze shield spun toward them like some flying saucer. The soldiers scattered, but the shield ploughed into the ground where they stood, crushing a number of them beneath hundreds of pounds of superheated metal.

"Concentrate your fire on the legs!" yelled Cooper. "Slag that fucker!"

Benedetto's hair burst into flame. He screamed as his skin crackled and the fluid ran out of it. He smashed his head repeatedly against the interior wall of the control room, then staggered back and fell over the railing, landing hard on his back in the room below. The impact snapped his spine. Overhead, at the dome of the robot, the huge V-20 warp disc came loose from its fastenings and plummeted down, crushing him as it smashed into pieces.

"He's going down!" Delaney shouted. "Run for it!"

The left leg gave way and the robot, melting like solder, slowly toppled. Its shadow fell over the soldiers as they ran and then it slammed into the ground hard enough for the shock of the impact to knock several of those closest to it off their feet.

Delaney slowly picked himself up off the ground. "The bigger they are-" he said.

Steiger glared at him. "Don't say it."

"I still say Curtis was right," said Steiger. "This was a dumb idea."

"You didn't have to come," Delaney said.

"Andre, will you talk some sense into this guy?" said Steiger. "It's over, for Christ's sake! What's the point of running this risk? What if we run into S.O.G. agents?"

"He's right, Creed," Andre said. "You didn't have to come, you know."

"All right, all right," said Steiger. "So I wanted to find out how it turned out, too. But what if we've timed it wrong? What if we-"

"We've clocked back in months after the Argonauts should have returned," Delaney said. "We should know soon if there was any significant disruption or if the S.O.G. has managed to adjust the situation. We did have a mission to complete, you know. I want to find out if-"

"There it is!" said Andre, pointing.

The Argo was riding at anchor in the harbor of Iolchos. "All right," said Steiger, "so we find out what happened and then we're out of here. The sooner we get back through that confluence, the better I'll like it. Our report's going to look bad enough as it is. If General Forrester finds out about this, he'll hand our asses to us."

"Look down there," said Andre, pointing to an area where the framework of a ship was being erected. "Isn't that Argus?"

"So it is," Delaney said. "Come on."

The shipwright was astonished to see them. "Fabius! Creon! Atalanta! By the gods, we thought you were dead!" He clapped his arms around each of them in turn.

"We came close enough to Hades, old friend," said Delaney. "We managed to escape the dead warriors of Colchis, but when the ship left without us, we had to make our way back over land. It was a long, hard journey, but we had to come back and find out what became of all of you."

"It has been a long time," Argus said. He shouted to one of his workmen. "Demetrios! Take over for me! I will return later." He turned to the temporal agents. "Come, we will sit down to dinner and we shall have some wine and I will tell you all about it."