Machines of Eden (19 page)

The lock on the
cabinet door was
a
manual
key lock
.
Purposely old school, to diversify
security. And it slows me down. But not too much.

Pulling his pocket kit
out,
John
chose
his favorite tool for fast jobs that didn’t need to be delicate. It
was a small tube-shaped soldering iron, needle-like at the tip and
similar to a cauterizing pen. He slid the switch and held down the
charging button, waiting until the tip was glowing brightly, then
pressed it
straight
into the lock
. He pushed until
it
drill
ed
right through
,
m
olten steel
d
ripp
ing
out onto the
floor
. He put the tool away
and
broke the cabinet
open with a good kick and a yank.

Forty
seconds
, and there wasn’t even
incoming fire hitting right around me
.
I’m l
osing my touch
already
.

Inside the
cabinet
was a stack of
thick Avalon datacards
.
Grabbing
one
, he left the room and cautiously
approached the front door of the tower to peer out the small
window.
No one in sight.

Any other way he tried to
leave the tower would expose him even more
. W
hat he needed was a
distraction.

H
e rummaged in
the
cabinets
inside
until he found
something
he could use:
a
small flare from an emergency kit
.
He wrapped the flare in some flammable sacking
from a dusty refuse bin
and then lit
it, walking rapidly to the door.
Taking a
deep breath, he threw the door open and flung the hissing
flare
bundle
across the bridge as hard as he could.

It bounced off the central
hub’s wall and skidded away across the walkway. He cursed. Aside
from melting some plastic
weather
shielding
at the base of the structure, it
wouldn’t do any good there.

Then a hatch opened on top
of the mushroom dome over the hub building, and an automatic
firehose
e
merged.
Swiveling to aim at the small fire he had started, the mechanized
nozzle shot several bursts of heavy foam. The air was instantly
filled with
millions of
particles that shone in the sunlight.

Good
enough
.

He bolted out of the
doorway and crossed the bridge in three bounds. A shot rang out,
but it came late and he was already pressed against the doorway of
the hub. This time he had kept his head up, and could see that no
one was perched on any of the towers.
The
ridge, then.
That was good, it gave him
more time and meant that the sniper had remained on the
headland.

John
slipped inside the central hub and made a quick search,
finally finding what he was looking for. With
his
pocket kit
screwdriver
, he removed a stainless
steel lid from a storage locker and carried it to the door. The
central hub was between him and the ridge, so he skirted the
walkway until he reached the bridgehead. Holding the locker lid
toward the ridge, he hit the bridge at a dead run, headed for the
Data Center. Two shots were fired, one puncturing the plexiglass on
the bridge, and then he was inside.

Four
minutes later he emerged with a live datacard in his cargo
pocket.

“
Eve?”

There was no
answer.

“
I’ve got the code, Eve.
Now I just need to find a way out of here without getting
shot.”

The generator at
the
cable-car
dock began to hum. He froze.

I didn’t activate
that.

A new voice sounded
in
John’s
earpiece. It was feminine, but definitely not Eve.

“
Eve can be treacherous.
Maybe you’ve already noticed that. I’ll
punish
her once I’ve taken care of
you.”

Buzzard bots were a
particularly nasty creation, deployed originally in the
wars of the early
twenty-first
century as surveillance
drones for urban combat zones. Each bot was the size of a
grapefruit and carried optics and recording/transmitting hardware.
They deployed in swarms, usually twenty, and were one of the first
bot generation
s
to possess a hive mind. A central controller could monitor
all twenty from the safety of an armored comm tank, but they
functioned as an autonomous system. If one was destroyed, the
others knew and adapted. Working in tandem, a swarm of buzzard bots
could easily infiltrate a bombed-out city block by block, spying on
everything and everyone.

Later, as the technology
advanced, the buzzards were outfitted with small caliber weapons.
Their ammunition capacity was small due to weight concerns, but
when a swarm triangulated a soldier, it was all over. Twenty
simultaneous bullets from all directions, coordinated and adjusted
by the hive AI. There was no escape.

Combat techs had been
especially vulnerable. Usually only lightly armed, relying on the
infantry for protection, techs were singled out for termination.
Even if the buzzards couldn’t get to them, they’d hover, relaying
the position to the artillery, and a barrage was always soon in
coming. Even worse, techie units assigned to forward recon were
easy prey for buzzard pods set to deploy when motion sensors were
triggered.

Sergeant John
Fletcher
lost a good friend that way once.
Brooks had tripped through a laser beam in the dark and the pod
erupted almost at his feet. By the time the
rest of the squad
got to him, Brooks
was riddled and bleeding out.

Techie units took to
carrying shotguns, nicknamed buzzard-busters, but still it was
always touch and go. In urban zones the trick was to lead the
buzzards into a narrow place where they were clustered and there
was no room to maneuver. But outside, in the
open
, it was murder.

Well, that’s blown it wide
open
,
John
thought.

Keep
moving
, muttered
Sergeant Wiley
.

John
hugged the steel locker lid and leaned around the edge
of
the hub building
. The cable car was still in its dock, but would begin its
cliff-ward journey any second. He could hear the beginnings of the
generator whine.

Options were obvious and
limited. The cable
-
car access was the choke point; it was the only way to or
from the
station
.
And the cable car itself was not an option
. F
rom the sound of the rifle she
was using,
Janice
could turn the car into Swiss cheese. Unless
John
found a way
to
get back to Eden
without being seen,
his
sniper would eventually pick him off. His cover
was limited and she could wait him out or come in slow, boxing him
in until there was no place to hide. And if she had bots
at her call
, the job
would be that much easier and quicker.

There
ha
s
to be another
way.
After a
nother
moment
of thought
, he found one.

He broke into the open and
sprinted for the loading dock in a wild zigzag. No shots came,
surprisingly, and he made the cable car just as the gears kicked in
and the
empty
car
began to move.
He slid to his knees,
putting the car between him and the cliff top, and quickly
tossed
the locker lid through a
window
.

As
the car
moved
up and away
from him, he
reached
for a
sturdy loop of steel cable
that
was bolted to the bottom end of
the car
. This
allow
ed
it
to be hooked and dragged with a pole when near the
dock
, but John used it now to
hook his elbows through and hold tight as he left
the platform. His
legs
sw
ung freely
beneath him as the car moved upward into
the
open air. He felt ridiculously
exposed,
but
as
long as
Janice
remained above him
on a direct line
toward the cliff top, he was blocked from view by the cable car’s
body.

A
loose strand of the
steel
cable he held punctured
his skin painfully.
He
ignored it, focusing on recalling
his
anti-sniper
training. You had to find them, but
first...

Distract until location
ascertained.

He cleared his
throat
and spoke into the
earpiece
. “So, uh, Janice,
right?”

The woman responded
instantly. “Names are unnecessary.”

“
Oh, I think they’re very
necessary,
Janice
,” John said.
Might as well overdo
it, as long as I’m trying to get under her skin.
“
You know, I never liked
the name Janice. Sounds like a headmistress of one of those uptight
girls’ schools,” he reflected, trying not to let the strain of
hanging outside a cable car affect his voice. “Glenn
probably
secretly
hated you. I know I sure do
, and
I’ve only just met you
.”

“
Adam, please don’t—“ Eve
began, but was cut off.

“
Shut up, both of you,”
Janice grated. There were a few seconds of silence and then she
spoke again, almost muttering to herself. “Glenn was brilliant in
so many ways, and yet so strikingly naïve. It caught up with
him.”

The cable cars were about
to pass each other, and he would be at his most
vulnerable.

Time to really kick the
hornet’s nest. Maximum distraction.

“
One thing I've been
curious about – did you kill Glenn yourself, Janice, or have one of
the bots do it for you?”

There was total silence in
his earpiece, and then the cars passed each other. Rapid-fire
gunshots from
three meters
away shattered the tranquility of the seaside
ravine, and he felt the car rock with the impacts. Swinging farther
under the car, he hooked his feet through some bars that ran
parallel to either side, and grabbed onto them, hiding his body
under the car’s belly.

The gunshots stopped. He
tucked himself as close to the underside of the car as he could,
refusing to lower his head to look back at the other car that would
be rolling down into view by now.

Seconds ticked by and there
was no sound other than the rattle of the cables overhead. There
had been no further shots and he had to be nearing the cliff top
dock by now, but he couldn't relax.

The voice that finally
broke the stillness was calm and quiet.

“
Is he gone,
Janice?”

“
If he was hiding in the
other car, he’s definitely gone and it’s your
fault
,” Janice said
.
“
You’ve
been a bad, bad girl, Eve.”

There was a silence. “How
long were you listening to us?” Eve asked.

“
Long enough, Eve. It’s
over. I'm locking you all the way down after this. I can't afford
any more messes like the one in that cable car.”

“
Janice, what he said
about Glenn...”

“
It's not important
anymore, is it, Eve? Anyway, who are you going to listen to, me or
some intruder we don't know from Adam?”

Eve sighed. “I suppose it's
for the best. He was exhibiting a rebellious streak that made him
ill-suited to what we're doing here.”

“
We’re going to have to
have a chat about your recruiting efforts behind my back,
Eve.”

John
was almost to the docking platform at the top, and couldn’t
resist breaking in.
"Sorry to disappoint
you
ladies
-- I'm
not quite dead yet."