Dark Dragons (56 page)

Jorge nodded.  “He would have to set up a shitload of
firewall nodes to hide his inquiries, but yeah, he can do it.”

*

“Major Forrester?”

Towsley scanned the closed-circuit security console, but
seven static-filled screens told him half the cameras on Level One which housed
the Containment Area/Lab and Infirmary were inoperative.  Two of the remaining
three Response Team squads had taken up position at both elevators and
stairwells on Level Two, the floor comprising the hangar, COC, and generator
rooms, while the third team cautiously made their way to the CBRN suit storage
next to the lab.  Caliban was nowhere to be seen.

“What happened to the power down there?”

“We had a major surge across nine circuit lines,” Breuer
said, reading a computer monitor.  “All on Level One.”

“Well, then reset the breaker switches!”

Breuer gave him a defeated look.  “We have to fix
whatever’s causing the surge or the breaker’s will keep snapping the power
off.  And from what I can guess, the problem is on Level One, colonel.”

Towsley said into his mouthpiece, “Squad Five, you see any
sign of Seven and Eight?”

“Negative, sir.  But we just checked the lab storage .
. . Caliban got in there and ripped every anti-chem suit to shreds.  We
have no nerve gas protection.”

Towsley spotted Caliban on one of the closed-circuit
monitors.  “There he is!  We got him, Squad Five!  He just
stepped out of the infirmary!”

Caliban had used white gauze tape to wrap the nerve gas
canister to the end of a cocked 9mm Beretta which he had no doubt pried out of
the still-warm hands of a security guard.  The alien had taped the pistol
itself to his left hand.  One pull of the trigger would set off the
canister’s internal detonator and swing the reaper’s scythe through the entire
base with one angry swath.

“Squad Five, back out!  He’s got the VT taped to the
end of a pistol.  Back out!”

On the monitor, Caliban looked up at the camera and held up
his makeshift gas bomb and a pastel line drawing of his trilobite fighter taken
from his cell.

“What is this all about?” Admiral Breuer asked.

“He wants safe passage to the hangar,” Towsley replied, “or he’ll
set off the nerve gas.”  Caliban wasn’t aware that his fighter had been
stripped clean years ago.  “When he finds out we’ve taken away his only
means of escape, we’re going to have one pissed off alien on our hands. 
We have to evacuate, admiral.  He’s going to set that gas off when he gets
to the hangar and realizes he’s not going anywhere.”

“One good shot to the head will turn him off like a
switch.  We’ll keep the Response Teams here.”

“I’m not going to chance that.  It would take a
well-aimed shot to the head, and that might not even kill him.”  Towsley
shook his head.  “We evacuate——now.”

*

Towsley was reminded of that old maxim pertaining to someone
shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater when he looked around at 178 base
personnel running up the NESSTC’s tunnel.  The Secret Service agents were
practically parting the crowd like Pamplona bulls to clear a path for the
president and the First Lady.  Towsley had a queer feeling that Caliban
might have already set-off the nerve gas canister and that lethal VT molecules
were floating up the tunnel after them.

Admiral Breuer looked like he was about to pass out. 
“I haven’t done any running like this . . . in a long time.”

“It’s good for you, sir.  A little terror-inspired
exercise never hurt anyone.”

“I can do without . . . the terror.”

After joining the growing crowd already gathered at the
tunnel entrance, Breuer bent over and put his hands on his knees.  “Now
what?”

Towsley watched the remaining personnel and Response Team
Strykers bring up the rear.  “I don’t know.”

“We can call in an air strike.”

“What for?”

 “To incinerate the base.  Colonel, it’s the only
way we’re going to get rid of that gas and take out Caliban at the same
time.  We can have a Strike Eagle slide a fuel-air explosive or tactical
nuke right down the tunnel.  The base is useless now anyway.”

Towsley had stopped listening to Breuer when a distant,
forgotten face suddenly popped into his head.  He looked around at the
throng of confused base personnel who seemed to be wondering what to do next.

“Something wrong?” Breuer asked.

“Who was in charge of stockade duty on Level One?” 
Towsley began to walk briskly through the crowd, looking frantically for the
face.

Breuer followed him.  “I’m not sure.  Why?  If
you’re inquiring about General Taggart, he’s being detained in one of the
Strykers.  We got everyone out.”

“I don’t see him.”

“Who?”

Towsley looked back at the tunnel opening.  “Oh god,
no.”

*

Geils poked his head out the door.  “Hello?”

One half-hour had passed since the roar of distant rifle
fire jarred him awake.  No sounds of battle since.  Had Darren and
those guys come back for him?

The guard was nowhere to be seen.  Not a sound roused
the corridors.  He stepped out of the cleaning room in the Infirmary that
had served as his makeshift cell.

“Sergeant Collins, or private, or whatever——I gotta use the
bathroom!  Hell-ooo?”

Geils stepped down the hall, looking for any guard in a blue
beret.  Most of the hallways were mysteriously blacked out, and only a
couple of corridors had working lights.  Geils’s inquisitive nature sensed
a dire situation brewing.  First, gunfire, now missing guards and blacked
out hallways?

Geils stopped looking for Sergeant Collins and began
searching for an elevator or stairwell.  In an underground base, the exit
had to be on the top floor.  A quick stroll through the lit corridors,
however, revealed not a single passage to the next floor up.  He had to
brave the darkened hallways.

The fading light from the corridor behind him guided him to
a corner.  Geils entered the quiet darkness and ran his hands along the
wall.  He reached a door and worked the knob.  Locked.  He
continued on and became acutely aware of a sharp metallic odor in the
air.  It grew thicker the further he went.

A light.  Up ahead.

Geils sped faster and rounded the corner to another
corridor.  A flashlight lay on the floor against the wall, illuminating
his tennis shoes.  The pungent odor now reached overwhelming intensity
strong enough to taste.

His stomach stirred.  He knew what the smell was even
before he picked up the sticky flashlight and aimed it ahead of him.  He
had prepared himself to see blood but hadn’t anticipated so much of it——nor did
he expect to behold the knotted, human pretzel that used to be Sergeant
Collins, U.S. Air Force.

“You know what?” Nate said. “They’ve got an alien locked
up next to us.  I overheard one of the guards.”

“Yeah, right,” Geils replied.

“I’m serious . . . bet you it’s reading our minds right
now. . . .”

He shook his head, trying to reject what occurred here to
preserve his sanity.  The reasons for the automatic gunfire were so
painfully clear now.  He was alone on this floor with some sinister,
slimy, outer space mutant-monster with tentacles and buggy green eyes——or
something.  Dozens of other possible physical features went through his
head when he turned to search for escape.

*

After a fifteen minute recon of their immediate area, no one
could find anything which remotely looked like a computer terminal or any kind
of electronic access point.  They found several small corridors and air
ducts leading to and from unknown machinery under the decks but nothing
more.  Finally, Jorge decided to have Brutus——carefully——perform a sort of
robotic “mind meld” with one of the cybernetic maintenance drones.

The squid-like creature had appeared from a pyramidal
structure a hundred feet from the parked Andromeda transport and began to
insouciantly walk pass the group of humans toward some unknown task before
Brutus stopped it.  Darren and Nate held the creature in place while the
robot inserted its Omni-Interface Tool under the drone’s skin.

“You sure these things don’t know we’re here?” he asked.

“Positive,” Jorge replied.  “These things have the
cognitive power of a sea urchin.  Relax, will you?”  He stopped to
read Brutus’s incoming data stream.  “These things are weird. 
They’re artificial life forms with cybernetic implants . . . and like I
figured, they don’t have an organic brain, just a small circuit processor and
random access memory.”

“Nice.  Are they plugged in?”

“Yeah.  Here’s our computer terminal to the ship’s
central processor . . .
whoa.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I think Brutus just killed our host.”

“What?”

The drone suddenly went limp in Darren and Nate’s arms and coiled
to the metal floor in an undignified heap.  None of its tentacles moved,
and a barely audible beeping could be heard coming from one of its implant
devices.

“Aw, crap . . . what did your killer pet robot just do?”
Darren demanded.  “What if the enemy’s security VI’s see they got a dead
squidy and send some nasties out to investigate?”  Jorge didn’t answer, so
Darren looked up and shouted, “Hey!”

Jorge was scanning Brutus’s data on his visor.  “Shut
up and let me read, will ya?”

Darren looked down and saw small wisps of smoke rising out
of the drone’s cybernetic implants.

“Red Lobster special,” Tony said.  “Anybody got
butter?”

“What did he do?” Darren asked.  “Shock the shit out of
it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what he did,” Jorge replied.  “He
had to so that he could take over its VI protocols . . . Brutus is now
mimicking its bio-patterns . . . and so far the Vorvons’ central control
computers think the squidie is still alive and performing normally . . . we’re
in, boys.  Brutus just crammed his memory with 684 petabytes of
data.  So . . . what do you want?”

Darren and Carruthers spoke simultaneously:

——“Where’s Vanessa and how do we get to her?”——

——“Where’s the best placement for our bomb?”——

Both of them gave one another dark looks.

Jorge broke the tie.  “Love, first . . . nuclear
terror, second.”  He paused to access Brutus’s new memory nodes.  A
few seconds later, “As big as this moonship is, the internal livable structure
is only about 230 cubic miles in volume.”

“Wow, is that all,” Carruthers murmured.  Sarcasm
noted.

“They have a rapid transit system of vacuum tri-rail tunnels
. . . that should help cut down the enormity of it all.  And there just
happens to be a platform station at the end of this pad tower.  There’s
our entry.”  Jorge paused again to read the maps scrolling across his
visor.  “Darren, Brutus just tagged an area at the very center of the
moonship . . . it looks like some kind of . . . processing chamber.”

“That don’t sound good,” Carruthers said.

Darren didn’t have the heart to shoot him a resentful look
this time.  His heart just dropped into his stomach.

“The chamber is huge,” Jorge continued.  “Brutus is
detecting multiple human bio-signals there along with . . . non-Vorvon
bio-signals.”

“You mean other alien species?” Nate asked.

“Yeah . . . don’t know what that could mean.”  Jorge
focused on Darren, and Darren could see a hint of despair in his brown
eyes.  “That’s probably where Vanessa is.”

“Can Brutus elaborate on the meaning of ‘processing’?”
Darren asked.

Jorge sent Brutus a thought-inquiry, scanned the answer,
then, “Some kind of laboratory . . . he doesn’t have any more info other than
that.”

“Darren,” Carruthers said softly.  “I know you don’t
want to hear this, but you really——”

“I’m not going to listen to your consoling words of
reconsideration.  I don’t care if they dissected her or turned her into a
cyborg squid janitor.  I’m going to get her off this ship . . . and if
that happens to be in a Hefty bag or on a leash, then so be it. 
Okay?”  He turned to Jorge.  “Where’s the best place for these ass
hats to lay their egg?”

Darren heard the click of a rifle and knew it came from the
direction of Carruthers to his left and now aimed directly at his head. 
Before he could turn and tell the CO to go fuck himself, Brutus spun around
with frightening speed, a huge black blur of motion, and fired a low-energy
shot from one of his laser pulse guns.

Carruthers .50-cal CAR15 shattered into a hundred pieces
with a bright flash and a loud crack.  He stumbled back.  The air
around all of them got hot.

The other forty-six troopers were about to raise their
weapons, and Darren screamed, “Stop!”

His demand froze them all.

“Don’t fire, or Brutus will drop you where you stand!”

And he wasn’t exaggerating.  The battle drone had his laser-targeted,
tungsten shotgun humming and his two heavy disrupter cannons in “room broom”
position.  There would be nothing left of Altair Company but tiny bits of
flesh and boron-carbide ceramic plating.

Carruthers’s eyes shot daggers, his lips parted to show
gritted teeth.  Darren wasn’t impressed with his war face.

“Remember what I told you in Taggart’s office, major?”
Darren asked.  “You’re fighting with spears and rocks, so as far as I’m
concerned, you SAWDOG’s are just cannon fodder here to serve as our personal
meat shields.  Let us know if you need rescuing, and the boys and I will
come running.”

Tony slapped his armored gloves together and barked out a
quick laugh.  Nate followed suit.

“I’m growing weary of your unbroken disrespect, asshole!”
Carruthers growled.

A few SAWDOG’s nodded in agreement.  Someone said, “No
shit.”

“Darren,” Jorge said.

“What?”

“Apologize.”

Darren turned to look at him, his eyebrows coming
together.  “Excuse me?”