D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

Sure enough, on the far side of the chopper factory, a dozen dados came flooding down the same ladder we had used to get down from the roof. We were trapped between two groups who were closing fast.

“Twenty-eight shots left,” Mark said coolly.

“What if there’s twenty-nine of them?” I asked.

“There’s twenty-nine thousand of them!” Mark exclaimed.

“Climb down,” Elli announced.

Without waiting for our opinions, Elli scrambled for a ladder no more than ten feet ahead of us that led down to the factory floor. She swung the rifle over her shoulder as if she had done it a thousand times before and quickly made her way down the ladder.

Mark looked at me with surprise, as if to ask, “Who woke her up?”

I shot past Mark and went for the ladder. The catwalk was high over the factory floor. The narrow ladder ran straight down with nothing around it but air. If we hadn’t been on the run, I’m not so sure I’d have been able to climb down as quickly as I was. One slip and it would be over. As much as I didn’t want to look down, this time I had to. We had to know if any bad boys were arriving below. I looked out over the sea of dados and my stomach flipped. It was like descending into a tank of piranhas. There were thousands of them. It was insanity. We were running away from a handful of dados toward an entire army. At least the army hadn’t been activated. I hoped that they were no more dangerous than statues.

My foot slipped off a rung. I had to clutch the sides of the thin, metal ladder or I would have fallen through. It was a dumb mistake. I was more worried about what we would find on the floor than about getting there safely. I had to force myself to look ahead and concentrate on my footing. One step at a time. Don’t worry about the dados. There would be time for that soon enough.

I met Elli on the ground, followed shortly after by Mark. We all had our guns out and ready. But ready for what?

“They’re coming down,” Mark announced.

A quick look up showed that the dados from the roof had reached the ladder and were coming after us. The dados already on the catwalk were getting closer. I was happy to see that they didn’t have weapons. At least they couldn’t take shots at us from the high ground.

“Are you okay?” Elli asked me. She was focused and in control.

“I’m fine,” I said, a little embarrassed. It made me realize that Elli wasn’t the frail old lady I thought she was. What’s that saying? “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”? Well, Elli was on her way.

“We’ve gotta find another way out of here,” Mark announced.

The two groups of dados were about to join up and descend on us. I looked around but there wasn’t an obvious way out. It became very clear, very fast, that there was only one thing to do.

“Needle in a haystack,” I declared.

Mark looked at the sea of dados and smiled. He got it. “Right.”

“What does that mean?” Elli asked.

“We’ll get lost in the dados,” I said. “C’mon.”

The three of us ran for the army. They may have been dados, but they looked like people. And there were thousands of them. Some even looked like Mark. My hope was to get far enough into the ranks so that the dados who were after us wouldn’t know which way we had gone. It seemed like the best way to buy a little time until we could find a way out of that factory. The three of us plunged into the line of robots, barely grazing them as we moved as quickly and quietly as we could without knocking any of them over. We all knew enough not to speak. That would have defeated the purpose and given us away. Without planning it, we relied on hand signals.

Mark was on my right. Elli on my left. I took the lead and motioned for Mark to start moving diagonally toward the right. We made our way along, one dado width apart from one another. We didn’t even have to duck down, because the dados were all at least a few inches taller than I was, and I was the tallest of the three of us. Still, I crouched a little, just in case. In seconds we were deep among the dados. I looked back to see if we were being followed. I was sure that we were, but they would have no way of tracking us. I didn’t relax, but we had bought a little breathing room.

Moving through the field of dados was one of the eeriest things I’d ever done. Dados weren’t human, but they sure looked like it. They were inactive, but looked as if they could spring to life at any second. I tried not to look at them too closely. I pretended they were statues and we were running through a museum. A really twisted museum where the exhibits might suddenly jump us.

Sheesh. Thinking like that wasn’t helpful.

We kept moving quickly, putting as much space between us and our pursuers as possible. Every so often I motioned for everyone to change direction slightly, so we weren’t moving in a straight line. The idea was to make it as tough as possible to track us. When I felt as if we were roughly in the middle of the dado sea, I motioned for the others to stop. I put my fingers to my lips to be sure they stayed quiet. We stood stock-still and listened. I wanted to know where the pursuing dados were. Strangely, we didn’t hear anything. Had they stopped chasing us? From where we were, we could see up to the catwalk. It was empty. They were definitely on the factory floor. But where?

I got paranoid. Our plan was to hide ourselves among the dados, but it worked both ways. If the robots chasing us got close, we wouldn’t see them until they were almost on us. They could be anywhere. They could be hiding from us as much as we were hiding from them, and we might not know they were on top of us until it was too late. We may have been like needles in a haystack, but they were like needles… in a stack of needles.

I scanned around, looking for any sign of movement. There was nothing. I motioned for the others to keep moving, but slowly. After a few more zigzagging steps, we came upon an open space where no dados were lined up. It looked to me like the spot where the dados first came off the assembly line. There was a conveyor belt that led down and under the floor to somewhere else. The space was ringed by silent dados who wore the dark green uniforms of the dados from Quillan, complete with golden helmets. They circled the open area, all facing the center. Pointed at us. It made my skin crawl.

When Mark saw the conveyor belt, he smiled. He was thinking the same thing I was. We might be able to follow the belt out of there. Wherever it would take us, it would be better than where we were, since we couldn’t hide from the dados forever.

I got Elli’s attention and pointed to the belt. She nodded. That was our way out. We made our move for the opening that led down below, when I quickly held my hand up, stopping everyone again. I had sensed something. Some movement. I did a three-sixty and saw nothing but the ring of inactive, mute dados. But I knew I had sensed something. It was fleeting, and I had only caught it out of the corner of my eye, but it was real. My Mooraj training was telling me so. Something was there. But where? Were there dados just outside this clearing, stalking us, getting ready to pounce? I stood stock-still. I wasn’t looking for anything, so much as trying to sense something.

It happened again. This time I was ready for it. The movement wasn’t on the floor. It was above us. I looked up quickly to see what looked to be a control room that hung down from the ceiling. It was an octagon, with glass windows surrounding it. It would be easy to see the entire dado-factory floor from up there, and that’s exactly what the person inside was doing.

There was a dark figure inside, looking down on us. I couldn’t tell who or what it was, but it was definitely active, and I had no doubt that it was looking right at us. Mark and Elli saw where I was looking and looked up as well. We all froze. What was this guy going to do? Sound an alarm? Direct the pursuing dados to our position? I didn’t want to stick around to find out.