Cyberdrome (27 page)

“CeeAut detect
nothing,” Persis said. “Sentinel tricks not work.”

Good
, Javid thought.
At least I have her talking
. “I would not deceive you, Persis. Boost
your scanner to maximum and you will see them yourself.”

Kaido cut in
just then. “Leave us to our battle, Sentinel.”

A screech came
from Persis’ channel. Javid wasn’t sure if it was a cry of terror, or a roar of
anger. His question was answered just then as he saw her Tracer arc around and
head back toward Kaido at full speed.

“I see them
now,” Kay Broon said. Obviously, Persis was no longer blocking communications
with her. “Jas, my mate. I am farther out than you are, and I see the objects
the Sentinel speaks of coming into my long-range scanner. The Sentinel does not
lie.”

Javid studied
their power signatures and made note their positions and movements. It was a
Mantis army, he concluded. Organized and unified.

“Persis, check
your long-range scanner now. You will see that we are not deceiving you.”

The CeeAut’s
Tracer came to an immediate halt and Persis’ face appeared on his dashboard.
“Persis sees them,” she said with a hiss.

Javid switched
to the general command channel and spoke to all Tracers at once. “This is
Sentinel Javid Rho. We are surrounded and outnumbered more than 20 to one, but
we can prevail if we work as a team. I need an agreement from each of you that
all hostilities toward one another will cease immediately.” He waited, and when
no one spoke up, he added, “The enemy is there, not here, and it is a common
enemy to us all.”

“CeeAut will
fight,” Persis said as her Tracer pulled up beside Javid’s ship.

“The CeeAut is
of no consequence while this threat remains,” Kaido said as his Tracer came
into view. Kay Broon appeared from the other side and signaled her agreement as
well.

“Very well,”
Javid said on the open channel. “I will hold each of you to your word.”

“Where is Alek
Grey?” Kay Broon asked.

“Alek and Maya
are both indisposed. In fact we must defend this position in order to protect
them both.”

“What is your
plan?” Kaido asked. “I assume that Sentinels have plans for every situation.”

“In fact we do,”
Javid said. He rechecked the location of the advancing army. Being walkers,
they were not able to advance very quickly, so they had a few minutes. He
looked at the three ships around him and realized that he had a squadron to
organize. It was a strange and unorganized group, to be sure, but they were all
fighters and they each had skills the others lacked. He would have to organize
those individual skills into a cohesive fighting unit and he would have to do
it quickly. He took a deep breath and began. “This is what we need to do
...”

THIRTEEN

W
hen
Alek opened his
eyes and sat up, the room was noticeably darker. Maya was sitting on one of the
cots with her back up against the stone wall. Her hair was damp and her eyes
were closed. Herschel was on the cot nearest to the door, snoring loudly.

He felt thirsty
and equally dirty. Maya’s eyes stayed shut as he stood and walked over to the
shower. He closed the curtain, turned on the faucet, and cupped his hands under
the warm stream. The water tasted metallic, but he was so thirsty, he didn’t
care.

When he had his
fill, he pulled on the neck of his Omnisuit and felt his clothing begin to separate
along the seams. At first, he thought it was helping him remove it—in the way
Lorena’s Omnisuit had helped her put it on—but then watched as the entire suit
fell off his body and ended up in a pile at his feet.
Close call
, he
thought as he kicked the steadily decaying material away from him.

There was a
misshapen bar of soap on a small ledge protruding from the wall. Under a stream
of warm water, he soaped up from head to foot and then rinsed thoroughly. When
he turned off the water, Maya was leaning in through the curtain, holding some
wadded up clothing for him.

“Sorry,” she
said, turning her head away. “I could only find one pair of halfway clean pants
that should fit you and a tunic with a hole in one sleeve.”

“That’s okay,”
he said, grabbing the wad of clothing to cover himself. “Thanks.”

She pulled her
arm out and he heard her bare feet walking back across the room. He dried off
and pulled the clothing on. When he pulled the curtain back, Herschel was
sitting up. A shower and a bit of sleep had obviously done him some good. Even
Maya looked refreshed.

“Dr. Rivero was
just telling me about your father’s fail-safe device on the ship.” Herschel
said.

“Please call me
Maya,” she told him.

Alek looked at
Maya and raised an eyebrow. “What fail-safe device?”

“I haven’t had a
chance to tell you yet,” she said, as she patted the bed beside her.

Alek sat next to
her, facing Herschel. “Tell me what?”

Maya proceeded
to tell him about her encounter with the carbon-eating nanobugs.

“How long do you
think we have before they reach this fort?” Herschel asked.

“No way to know
for sure,” Alek said. “I would guess no more than a couple of days. If they
really are fast replicators, their growth will be exponential. In a week they
could cover a hundred square kilometers.”

“So, what do we
do about it?” Maya asked.

“We get the hell
off this planet,” Alek said.

Just then, the
door opened and yellow-tooth leaned in. “Night’s coming—time to prepare,” he
said in a hushed tone. Something about the man seemed much less hostile than
before. He actually looked nervous—perhaps even a bit frightened.

“Good,” Herschel
said, turning first to Alek and then to Maya. “I can show you both what I have
been working on. Hopefully, one of you can help me with it.”

Maya looked like
she wanted to say something more, but the presence of the waiting guard made
that impossible. Herschel walked out the door while Alek and Maya followed.

They walked back
across the main courtyard. Judging by the reddish-blue sky and the long shadows
climbing the East wall, the sun was a few minutes away from setting.

Guards were
everywhere—some lighting oil lanterns along the outer wall while others were
busy fortifying the main gate. None of them seemed to be concerned with the two
newcomers among them. They were preparing for the night, when Kazak said the
monsters would come.

Night would also
be the best time to make an escape, Alek thought as he carefully surveyed and
tried to memorize the layout of the courtyard. When the time came, they would
have to move quickly.

They entered a
large building on the far side of the courtyard where the guard left them. Once
inside, Herschel turned on an overhead light and Alek saw that the building was
some sort of warehouse. Huge piles of broken and twisted machinery littered the
room—apparently scavenged from the Survey Vessel after the crash.

Herschel led
them along a winding trail through the junk to a small clearing in the center
of the room. A large wooden table had been set up with several pieces of electronic
equipment piled on top. Herschel moved to the far side of the table and sat
down in a fold-up metal chair. When Alek and Maya joined him, Alek saw a couple
of computers on the floor near the man’s feet and three flat-panel screens
wedged in among the junk on the table.

“Let me show you
what I’ve been working on,” Herschel said as he began making hand gestures over
a pair of input pads. One of them was so beat up that Alek was surprised it
worked. “There wasn’t much that I could salvage from the ship,” he said, “at
least in terms of portable computers. I had to network these two just to do my
work.”

Maya opened her
mouth to say something when a bell began clanging in the distance. A moment
later, gunshots rang out.

“They’re here,”
Herschel said calmly as he bent over and began fumbling with one of the computers
on the floor.

“Who? The
Medari?” Maya asked.

Herschel finally
pulled what looked like a small memory tab from its slot on the computer and
looked up. “They do this every night,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”

A thunderous
boom shook the floor. Something metal fell somewhere in the room.

“What the hell
was that?” Alek yelled.

Herschel stared
up at the ceiling. “They’ve broken through the wall,” he said. “Close to us.
That means that they know of my work.” His eyes were wide with terror as he
looked at the tab in his fingers. “We have to hide.”

“Where?” Maya
yelled.

“Back of the
building,” Herschel said as he shoved the memory tab in his pocket. A second
larger explosion knocked them all to the floor.

Maya was first
up on her feet. She glanced over Alek’s shoulder and whispered. “They’re inside.”

In one swift
motion, Alek grabbed Herschel’s arm and began to run after Maya. He didn’t have
a chance to look back, but he could hear running footsteps behind him.

“To your right,”
Herschel called to Maya when they neared the far side of the room. “The door on
your right.”

Maya reached the
large iron door a full second ahead of Alek. Luckily, it was open and as Alek
shoved Herschel through the opening, he turned and helped Maya close it behind
them.

In that moment,
he glimpsed a scene of horror. A dozen creatures, each as large as a horse and
more hideous than anything he had seen in his life, lunged toward them. They
hit the door full force, slamming it shut and knocking Alek and Maya backward
to the floor. Before the creatures had a chance to realize what they had done,
Herschel slid the door’s thick iron bolt into place, locking out anything short
of a tank.

“This is my safe
room,” Herschel said, his voice trembling. “I had it built months ago, but I
had hoped I would never need it.”

The door shook
with the sounds of metal striking the outer surface, but it held fast. Alek ran
his hand along the outer hinges, looking for signs of strain.

“We are safe in
here.” Herschel said. “Don’t worry. They can’t reach us.”

Alek turned to
face him. “What the hell are those things?” he blurted out.

“That was the
Medari,” Herschel said. “Horrible creatures, aren’t they?”

“They looked
like a cross between a human and some sort of big hairy horse,” Alek said.

“Not horse,”
Maya said. “Camel.”

“What?” Alek and
Herschel asked in unison.

“I can’t believe
I didn’t see this earlier.” She looked directly at Alek. “He did this.”

“Who did?” Alek
asked.

“Your father.
This is your father’s work.”

“What are you
talking about, Maya?”

“I started to
tell you before, about what I found when I was inside the ship. Before the
carbon-eating nanobugs appeared, I discovered a copy of your father’s research
inside the main computer and read some of it. He was combining the DNA of the
people in his worlds with other mammals. It’s called Transgenics.”