Machines of Eden (6 page)

There was no sign of
activity on either bank, but he waited for ten minutes, crouching
behind a dense stand of grass. The road came out of the jungle from
the west. He wasn’t sure if it was the same maintenance track that
followed the fence. It disappeared into the jungle on the far side
and seemed to skirt the bottom of the hill with the antenna, now
clearly visible from where he sat.

He gave it five more
minutes
, studying the area and assessing
the risks. Finally he decided it time to make a move, and he
started for the crossing, ready to sprint across.
Just as his foot stepped onto the packed earth, he heard something
coming down the road behind him. A bend ten meters away hid
whatever approached. He darted back into the jungle, rolled into a
swath of grass, and lay still.

T
wo bots emerged from the jungle road and began to cross the
river. They were like nothing
John
had
ever seen before, heavily modified
quadrupeds and in much better shape than the ASKALON-9. One was
clearly built on an old Koyuki base, but instead of the tires that
the pre-war Japanese manufacturer had favored, it had small
rubberized feet that moved in a rapid four-cycle march. It carried
two heavy pincher arms of an unfamiliar design.

The other was a bizarre
blend of a Misca sentry bot and a Cobalt Arachnyd X4; a small
cylindrical torso from which sprouted eight jointed legs ending in
four-pronged claws. It strongly resembled a spider and moved in
much the same way
, but was not quite as
tall as a man
. Both bots were armored and
neither had any external apparatus, making them much more difficult
to disable. Only a direct hit to a sensor socket would blind these
ones.

The bots walked briskly
across the road and entered the trees on the far side.
John
saw movement in the
jungle, a flash of sun on a reflective surface
that quickly disappeared
, and
he waited a moment longer
.

As long as I stay out of
sight, those bots are my best shot at finding a person or a
computer that can tell me
where
on earth I am
.

He sprinted across the road
feeling horribly exposed, and breathed a sigh of relief when he
made the trees. He could hear the bots marching up ahead. He had no
idea how sensitive their auditory feeds were, so he’d have to hang
back and walk slowly. He slowed his breathing and strolled forward,
listening intently.

A few minutes passed. The
road was slowly rising in elevation, and he hoped that meant it led
to the top where the antenna stood. It was likely the two bots were
going there for routine maintenance. Maybe there was a vehicle
shed, or at least a terminal with a human interface that he could
access without undue difficulty. Maybe –

John
threw himself to the ground just as a flechette canister
whirred by overhead. Three square meters of jungle thrashed as
hundreds of razored metal scraps shredded it into a haze of
chlorophyll. He rolled hard off the road to his right, downhill
into the trees. A rapid clanking above warned him of the bot’s
approach.

Stupid, stupid,
stupid!

They’d planned a perfect
ambush, one bot continuing ahead and making noise while the other
secreted itself at the edge of the road and waited for him. If he
hadn’t heard the slight clunk as the flechette canister loaded into
the launcher, he’d have been instantly shredded. Luckily, the sound
was unmistakable once you’d heard it a few dozen times. Once
y
ou’d seen what it could
do
…

He kept rolling until he
was behind a thick banyan and he gripped its roots, mind racing.
The bot, probably the Arachnyd, would be scanning the jungle for
movement and infrared signatures simultaneously. When it saw
nothing it would descend, looking for him, another flechette
canister ready. He had maybe twenty seconds before it flushed him
out.

Up
, screamed Sergeant
Wiley
.
Up!

Up.

John
stood and jumped for the nearest branch. Banyans trailed so
many creepers, vines, and branches that getting
up
was easy. He pulled
himself
higher
,
keeping the trunk between himself and the road. The bark was slimy
and smelled foul
as he
slithered
upward
, breath rasping in his throat
.
Settling into
a fork in the main
trunk
, a
curtain
of vines hid the road
from
sight
, but he could hear the Arachnyd
finish its scan and descend the slope toward the banyan. He waited,
listening to the sounds.

The Arachnyd moved slowly
for several meters, then stopped. He almost poked his head through
the vine curtain to see, but controlled the urge and waited. After
a moment, the bot continued much more quickly, circling wide to
gain the best trajectory. When it reached the point where it should
have been able to see him, it stopped again.

He drew in a deep
breath.
Any second now.

The Arachnyd
would be
calculating all
possible angles of escape, and the tree offered the best chance of
concealment.
Therefore it’s going to shred
the tree.

On cue, the machine
approached, flechette port aimed at the lowest probable hiding
place, a curtain of vines that draped down over a fork in the main
trunk. It prepared to fire.

John
dropped down from directly above the
Arachnyd
, tearing a sharp branch with him
as he went
. An attack from an elevation
above a bot’s approach vector had been a favorite of his during the
war, and the banyan had a branch perfect for the job. He landed
directly on top of its torso, his weight slamming the spidery body
onto the ground.

Instantly he was off,
thrusting at its sensory sockets with
his
tree
branch. A leg flailed at him, and he
leaned out of its reach. The socket caved in and sparked, and the
legs ceased flailing. He couldn’t destroy the bot entirely without
a better weapon or tools to pry off its armored carapace, but it
would be unable to hunt him now unless repaired.

The problem now was the
other bot. He heard it coming in response to the distress signal
the Arachnyd had sent the instant he attacked. Now the Koyuki unit
was descending the slope toward them
, its
pincer arms swatting branches aside as it came
. He ran for the river, knowing that the Arachnyd had already
transmitted all information of his attack to the Koyuki, along with
modified attack suggestions based on his movements.

The bots always learn from
their mistakes,
screamed the
Sergeant.
Adapt and keep
moving!

He launched himself out
into the river as far as he could, and went deep. Even underwater
he could hear the hiss of the flechettes as they peppered the
surface. He surfaced midstream and risked a glance back just in
time to see the Koyuki launch a small projectile with a puff of
smoke.

Grenade
.

He dived.

The concussion drove the
air from his lungs and hammered an intense pain through his ears.
He surfaced again, barely in time, and gulped air. The
current
picked up and took him around a
bend
beyond effective
grenade range
. H
e watched the Koyuki disappear
and
continued downstream for five
more minutes
, swimming to speed himself
away. Then he
clawed his way past a
boulder and grabbed a handful of riverbank foliage. He hauled
himself up onto the bank and crawled quickly into the
brush.

They would be coming soon.
The Koyuki was capable of performing rapid field maintenance on
other bots, sort of a battlefield medic for machines, and although
he didn’t know if this unit had been programmed that way, he had to
assume both bots would be on his trail within minutes. He had to
find a weapon. They’d be ready for sticks and stones next
time.

John
exited the river on the same side he’d entered it, but almost
half a kilometer ahead of the ambush site. If he kept up a good
pace, he’d stay ahead of the bots. He ran through the jungle at a
right angle to the river until he hit the road, then continued
uphill on the far side. He’d just run straight up until he reached
the antenna on top. The Arachnyd might follow, but the grade was
too steep for the Koyuki, and it would be forced to follow the
road.

The ground shook as a
grenade detonated a few meters to his right. A sudden sharp pain in
his shoulder made him gasp. Another explosion fountained dirt and
broken trees to his left.

How’d they find me so
fast?

He ran back downhill
toward the road but another grenade cratered the ground just ahead.
He was knocked to the ground, ears ringing. He could barely
think.
Where are they shooting from? Which
one is shooting?
Others. It had to be
others. The first two couldn’t have arrived so soon. They must have
called ahead.

He lunged to his feet and
stumbled south along the slope, keeping to cover whenever possible.
Behind him came more explosions; they were still trying to
triangulate him.
John
hoped they wouldn’t see his movement until he could get
around the far side of the hill. He crossed a small clearing in
seconds and slid to a stop on the far side. He lay still, panting
and listening, river water still dripping from his hair down his
face.

He stood to get moving
again, and a strange sound came from off to his left. Two darts hit
the tree in front of him, sticking in the bark and sizzling with a
burst of steam. Their design was unfamiliar to him, and he shook
his head in disbelief.

What
is
this place
?

He dodged behind the tree
the darts were protruding from and jumped from there into a shallow
gully. Higher ground was out of the question with hostiles this
close; he would be exposed. He ran along the gully, staying low,
and dived toward a rocky outcropping ahead. There were no more
shots. He stayed behind the dark gray crumbling stone for a minute,
catching his breath. His shoulder burned like fire.

He froze as he heard the
whine of servos nearby. They were advancing, trying to flush
John
out. If he moved,
he’d probably be hit, but if he stayed where he was, death was
certain. He leaped from behind the rock, somersaulting downhill,
and heard the whirr of flechettes and the boom of some projectile
weapon. Only his wild movement had saved him from a hit. He rolled
to his feet and ran, batting branches away from his path and
leaping over obstacles on the ground. He could hear the thing
scrambling after him and reloading cartridges into its internal
chambers.

He sped around a huge
boulder being slowly strangled with creepers and an opening yawned
in front of him, a cave in the hillside. He entered on the run, too
desperate for cover to worry about hazards in the darkness. A
blinding blow to his forehead told him the cave ceiling was
lowering, and he fell to his hands and knees, gritting his teeth at
the pain and feeling blood trickle down his nose. He doubted they
had a bot that could fit in here, but if they had a flamethrower
they could burn him to a greasy cinder from the entrance. He
squirmed forward, kicking for
better
traction
as the cave narrowed even
further, trying not to imagine being wedged in.

Then the sides widened
again. He’d passed some sort of choke point. The floor was smooth
and hard, and he scrambled, daring to rise a little and finding the
ceiling higher than his head. He stood gingerly, head throbbing.
Hardly any light penetrated this far, but enough had filtered back
that he could make out smooth walls, smooth ceiling.

Smooth.

This isn’t a
cave.

There was light coming
from up ahead now, a dim white light.
John
edged around an outcropping.
The light increased. Now the floor was concave and ribbed and the
walls were reinforced with arching girders overhead. The cave had
become a tunnel, curving ahead of him with a small maintenance
light mounted at its entrance. He felt a warm breeze on his face,
heavy with the scent of metal and warm electronics.
Some kind of huge ventilation shaft. Hope it’s
not a silo launch vent. Wouldn’t that be ironic.

The sounds of bot legs
scraping against the rock walls behind him interrupted his
thoughts.
They can’t fit in
here!

These aren’t normal
bots,
the Sergeant snarled
in his mind
.
Move it!