Cyberdrome (16 page)

This guy was
nuts, Alek thought as he tried to stand up. Suddenly, the walls spun around and
he fell to his knees. “What the hell did you do to me?”

Javid looked
down at him. “When I first encountered you, I assumed that you were simply
another CeeAut in a stolen Tracer. I used the stun as a precaution—your balance
and energy will be restored momentarily.”

As Alek kneeled
there, he began to feel stronger. Like earlier, he felt energy surging up from
the ground and into his body. A minute later, he felt more alive and vital than
he thought possible. “What’s doing this?” he asked.

“HomeSpace is a
source of pure energy—it supplies what we need to survive,” Javid said. “Here,
below the surface, we are even closer to the source.”

Feeling strong
and back in control of his body, Alek stood and faced Javid. “You said that you
thought I was a ‘CeeAut.’ What’s that?”

“You will
acquire that knowledge in time,” Javid said. “But first, we must leave.
Species-2 controls this sector and this tunnel will not provide us protection
for much longer.”

“Just a minute,”
Alek said as he tried to pull away from the man’s strong grip. “I’m not going
anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”

Javid frowned.
“You were not formatted completely, Alek, so I do not expect you to understand
everything I am about to tell you. It will take effort on both of our parts to
get you properly trained.”

“What are you
talking about? Trained for what?”

Javid faced him
squarely and looked him in the eyes. “You have been brought from your world to
HomeSpace, to bring order back to the system. You are a Sentinel, Alek Grey.”

“Now I get it,”
Alek said with a sigh of relief. “You’re one of the hostages. You saw me fighting
those machines inside a Sentinel’s Tracer, so you think I’m one of the
enforcement programs. Well I’m not. I’m from the real world. Your company hired
me to help get you out of here.”

Javid smiled. “I
understand your confusion, Alek. You believe that you are a human and that you
lived on a planet called Earth. What you must understand is that all Tans
believe this. It is part of your programming. You must strive to go beyond what
you have been programmed to believe. You must trust me.”

“Listen to me,”
Alek said. “I’m not a program. I’m a human being interfaced to Cyberdrome. I’m
here to get you out.” Then Javid’s words finally sunk in. “Wait a minute.
You’re not a hostage, are you? You’re a Sentinel.”

Javid smiled.
“Now you are beginning to think beyond your basic programming. Yes, I am a Sentinel.
I believed that I was the last of my kind until I picked up your Tracer’s
signature on my scanner. However, because of your lack of formatting, you have
a great deal to learn, but I can teach you.”

This was getting
him nowhere, Alek thought. “What makes you think I’m a Sentinel?”

“I observed the
way you maneuvered your Tracer and defeated a large group of Species-2 without
help. Only a Sentinel would have the required skills.”

“I just got
lucky,” Alek said. “Besides, the Tracers design just seems to make sense to me.
I feel comfortable inside mine.”

Javid showed his
chalk-white teeth. “It is just as I surmised. Most of your Sentinel formatting
is complete. Only your outer appearance and some of your memory routines are in
error. I can work with that.”

Alek sighed.
Until he located Maya and the others, he was alone and needed all the help he
could get. If this lone Sentinel had survived when all others were destroyed,
then it was either very skilled or very lucky. Either way, what better ally
could he have? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to play along for a while.

“All right, I’m
a Sentinel. So how do we get past the Spiders?”

Javid cocked his
head to the side. “You are referring to Species-2?”

“Right. What you
call Species-2, I call Spiders. These tunnels were made by Moles, which I guess
you call Species-4.”

“Interesting.
You have chosen a naming convention based on Earth creatures. Why is this?”

I can’t tell him
the truth
,
Alek realized.
What would this Sentinel think if he learned that I helped
create these monsters?
“Well, I guess it’s because they sort of look like
the names I gave them.”

“Logical,” Javid
said. “To aid in your training, I will utilize your designations from this
point forward.”

Just then, an
explosion rocked the walls around them.

“We have been
discovered,” Javid said. “You must follow me and do exactly as I say.”

They ran along a
narrow passage that led to a wide chamber containing two Tracers. One was beat
up and looked like it had seen a lot of combat. The other he recognized as his,
since it had only a few singed sections.

Javid jumped
into the damaged Tracer and Alek climbed into his. As soon as the canopy sealed
above him, he felt a wave of relief pass over him. The little ship had already
become his home, he realized. Faced with so much that he didn’t understand, at
least his Tracer made sense.

He had his ship
powered up and ready for action in seconds. Both Tracers lifted off the ground
and then Alek followed Javid along another passage that sloped upwards toward
the surface.

As they rose
above the ground, Alek saw a group of Spiders off to the left. Both Tracers pivoted
to the right and raced off at full Recon Mode speed. Alek felt more comfortable
with the velocity this time, for some reason. Maybe Javid Rho was right, he
mused to himself. Maybe he really was born to be a Sentinel after all
.

EIGHT

W
hat’s that?”
Alek asked a few minutes later. His scanner showed some sort of wall ahead.

“All memory
sectors inside HomeSpace are separated by barriers,” Javid replied in the
ship-to-ship intercom. “This prevents illegal programs from jumping sectors.”

This is the
boundary that Klaxon mentioned
, Alek realized. “How do we get past
it?”

“You have
observed the numerous circular markings on the ground. Some of them are Circuit
Gates and only Tracers can activate them. Maintain your current speed and
heading and follow me. Accept?”

“Sure—I mean, I
accept.”

The barrier was
now visible out of Alek’s forward window. It was pitch black but the surface
seemed to ripple with raw energy. He could only guess what waited inside for
any program trying to cross it. 

“Activating
Circuit Gate,” Javid said.

A disk rose out
of the ground directly ahead of them, then folded in half and began to glow. He
braced for impact as both ships hit the disk, but they passed right through.
Strange patterns flew past him at high speeds. Symbols he didn’t understand
seemed to dance all around him. It was like the worst drug trip he could
imagine. A moment later, the trip ended and his ship reentered the now familiar
Core space.

Alek opened his
mouth, but said nothing—words couldn’t describe what he had just experienced.

Javid’s blue
face smiled at him from the communications display. “I remember my first crossing,”
he said. “I’m sure my eyes were as wide as yours are now.”

“So, where are
we?”

“This is the
sector I was patrolling when I detected your Tracer’s signature. It is
controlled by Species-3, but there is a small resistance cell attempting to
retake control.”

“Sentinels?”

“Negative. As I
have explained, we are the last of our kind. The life forms in this sector are
from the local Earth simulation. How they escaped their world is still unknown
to me.”

“Are these the
CeeAuts you mentioned?”

“Negative. These
Tans call themselves, ‘KaNanee.’ The CeeAuts reside in an adjacent sector and
are hunted by the KaNanee.” Before Alek could ask another question, Javid
added, “Reduce speed now. We are entering KaNanee territory.”

Alek reduced his
Tracer’s velocity, mirroring Javid’s movements perfectly. They were entering an
area where a number of rectangular blocks of varying sizes covered the normally
flat ground. The blocks looked like they were made of uprooted floor material.

Javid brought
his ship to rest near one of the taller blocks and Alek stopped a short
distance behind him. When he saw the Sentinel climb out of his Tracer, he
reluctantly did the same and rushed over to join him. He was about to ask what
was up when something appeared from behind a group of blocks in the distance.
It had legs like a Mantis, but it seemed to be missing its entire upper half.

“What’s that?”
Alek asked.

“It is a
KaNanee transport
.”

Alek watched as
the hulking thing walked toward them. As it grew closer, Alek finally saw why
it looked so strange. It was a Mantis after all, or at least the lower half of
one. The upper half was missing and filled with what looked like two dozen
people. They were bouncing all over the place as the Mantis legs below them
traversed the rough terrain.

“What did they
do?” Alek whispered. “Kill a Mantis and turn its carcass into a vehicle?”

“The KaNanee are
adaptive,” Javid replied. “They have done well inside HomeSpace. I have seen Species-3,
what you call Mantis, going out of their way to avoid them. They are fierce
warriors indeed.”

“If they are so
good, how do you know they are not unformatted Sentinels like me?”

“They came to
HomeSpace by means other than death.”

Alek looked at
him. “What do you mean?”

Javid shrugged.
“Sentinels are only brought into HomeSpace service after death in the Earth
simulations. We are, in a sense, resurrected for this singular purpose.”

Alek was about
to say that he didn’t die before coming here, but then remembered the injection
the doctor had given him. He assumed that it was just something to knock him out,
but there was no way to know for sure.

The KaNanee
stopped their transport a short distance away, then threw ropes over the sides,
and began sliding down to the ground. As they approached, Alek saw that they
were large people, well over two meters tall and very muscular. Both men and
women had long, matted hair of varying colors, and their clothing seemed to
consist mostly of rags.

Two from the
group approached the ships while the remainder made a wide circle around them.
“The male is Jas Kaido,” Javid whispered without taking his eyes off the approaching
pair. “He is the current leader of the KaNanee. His mate, Kay Broon, walks
behind him.”

“She looks
almost meaner than he does, if that’s possible.”

“Do not look at
her, or any other KaNanee female,” Javid warned as the couple neared.

“Sentinel Rho,”
the male called out with a deep, raspy voice. “I should gut you where you
stand.” Alek noticed that the movement of KaNanee’s mouth didn’t match the
words he heard, which meant that there was some sort of translator built into
his Avatar.
Nice touch
, he thought.

“I would welcome
the challenge, Kaido,” Javid yelled back, with more malice than Alek thought possible.