Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (31 page)

Up on the ridge top, Izin slid
another slug into the SN6’s breach, adjusted his position and recalculated the
travel time of his projectile to the autoturret. “Throw,” he said, firing before
the rock left my hand.

The autoturret popped up when Izin’s
projectile was already in flight. It destroyed the rock, then exploded as
Izin’s smart slug detonated inside its metal housing. Electrical short circuits
flashed from the turret as the barrel shuddered and skewed towards the ground
at an awkward angle.

“Now the other one,” I said.

“Throw as far as you can,” Izin
said, “forty five degrees to your right. I will not fire the first time.”

I tossed a rock as directed, then
some distance away another autoturret appeared and fired. When Izin had readied
himself, I hurled another decoy. The second autoturret popped up and was
immediately torn apart by Izin’s micro-munitions.

“One of those things failing is a
malfunction, two is sabotage” I said. “Izin, is anyone coming out?”

We waited while Izin studied the
base. “There’s no visible activity.”

Considering the ever-present
threat of Klasson’s survivalists, I knew security couldn’t be sleeping, so where
were they? I waited a little longer, then said, “We’re moving.”

Marie and I stepped out from
behind our boulder and jogged across open ground towards the first test lot. We
were halfway across when Izin’s voice sounded in our earpieces.

“An aircraft is lifting off from
the center of the base. It’s heading towards you.”

We were in the open with no cover
and no time to reach the nearest test lot. I drew my P-50, replaced the
anti-personnel magazine with armor piercing slugs, and went down on one knee hoping
the aircraft wasn’t armed. Marie moved away a short distance and drew both her
needle guns. They would do little damage against a large vehicle, but their
flash might distract the pilot while I tried to bring the aircraft down. Once we
had it on the ground, Izin could help us, but he was too far away to do
anything while it was airborne.

My P-50 was still charging when a
dull gray cargo lifter appeared above the base and flew towards us. It was
rectangular, with four large tilt thrusters slowly vectoring from vertical to
horizontal flight as it picked up speed and altitude. I followed it in my
sights as it headed straight for us, then realized it was continuing to climb
and pick up speed. The pilot looked down at me as he passed on our right, then
the lifter raced away towards the crater wall, narrowly clearing the rim, before
diving down the other side.

“It’s moving away fast,” Izin
said, “at low altitude.”

Marie and I ran towards the first
test lot, assuming the pilot had reported our presence and expecting a
welcoming committee to come charging out to greet us.

“There’s another aircraft taking
off,” Izin said.

A white intercontinental research
glider rose above the base, extended a pair of long gossamer-thin wings and moved
off slowly to the south. When it passed over open ground, an autoturret popped
up beneath it and fired, cutting the vehicle in half. The autoturret continued
firing until the glider’s single thruster hit the ground and burst into flames.

I holstered my P-50, exchanging
puzzled looks with Marie. “Looks like they have more to worry about than us!”

Keeping watch on the base ahead,
we crept into the first test lot filled with date palms and rubber trees. A
silver and white column-shaped machine, twice the height of a man, stood in the
center gathering data on each species’ suitability to the climate and susceptibility
to indigenous organisms, while also controlling the test lot’s irrigation and
nutrient dispersal system. Nearby test lots had similar monitoring systems,
feeding data to the base’s biolab.

Two small cropbots riding on
metal treads, and equipped with flexible arms, tended the plants and ensured
the equipment functioned perfectly. From the rim of the caldera, we’d seen white
coated technicians in the fields as well, but now they had vanished.

We slipped across a dirt road
into a corn field, turning into one of the narrow tracks that
criss
-crossed the test lot. A spherical machine with a
circular red glowing eye-like sensor emerged from the corn and floated towards
us. It stopped a meter from us as a thin red laser light flashed out from its
eye, probing us.

Izin’s voice sounded in my ear.
“One step to the left please, Captain.”

I did as instructed, then the sentry
bot’s
eye shattered as Izin’s slug drilled it
perfectly. A small internal explosion shook the machine, sending it crashing to
the ground.

“Cutting it a little close weren’t
you, Izin?” I said, glancing back up to the crest of the crater wall where my tamph
engineer was perched.

“I could have shot sooner,
Captain, but you might have lost an ear.”

Thankful I still had two ears, I
said, “That’s three of their watch dogs dead. Any guards coming out for a look?”

“No activity, Captain.”

“What does Klasson think?”

We waited while Izin discussed
the lack of security with the survivalist leader. “He believes the guards
should have come out to investigate by now.”

Increasingly apprehensive about
why we were being ignored, we hurried through the corn field towards a long
white, three story prefab building. As we reached it, a siren began wailing.

“Izin, what’s happening?”

“People are running towards the
eastern side of the base,” he replied. “No one is approaching your position.”

Whatever had triggered the siren,
it wasn’t us! We hurried to the corner and looked around the side. The prefab was
a cropbot storage and repair facility. A paved road ran past it to other large
white structures, all of which were open and deserted.

“Looks like we missed the party,”
I said, watching several men in the distance running away, oblivious to our
presence. They ran hard, like their very lives depended on it. One tripped and
fell. His companion abandoned him without even a look back.

“They’re scared!” Marie said as
the man who’d fallen jumped to his feet and started running again.

“Yeah, but of what?”

Beyond the warehouses were the
accommodation blocks, laboratories and the energy plant. The spaceport’s control
tower rose in the distance, not far from the enormous upper works of the
Soberano
which were visible above the base’s
buildings.

“Izin, which way?” I asked

“Mr Klasson says the biolab is ahead
of your position and to the right.”

Marie and I hurried across the
road, increasingly certain no guards were going to stop us as we ran past a row
of abandoned buildings. Three blocks along, an open topped six wheeled all
terrain vehicle with a flatbed tray at the rear, sped past with two uniformed
guards sitting in front. They paid us no attention as the ATV turned onto the
main road out of the base and headed away at high speed.

“Even the guards don’t care we’re
here!” I said.

“The base appears to be deserted,
Captain,” Izin reported.

Marie gave me a concerned look. “I’m
getting the feeling coming here wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Me too,” I said as we started
running again.

At the next cross street, Marie
pointed to a white four story prefab with darkly tinted windows and a sign
depicting an atom over the main entrance. “That must be it!”

We ran to the entrance as a long silver
arrowhead flew in over our heads from the direction of the spaceport. The sleek
executive transport came in fast and quickly landed on top of the biolab, indicating
whoever was on board was in a big hurry.

“Izin, who’s on the roof?”

“Four men. Three are armed. I
don’t have a clear shot.”

With the siren wailing relentlessly,
we tried the biolab’s front door, but it was electronically locked. I might
have expected the building to be secured at night, but I couldn’t understand
why it was sealed shut in the early afternoon. I drew my P-50 and blasted the
lock, then slid the door open and stepped inside. Two men and a woman wearing
white head to foot anti-contamination suits ran towards us. I aimed my gun at
them, thinking they were charging us, but they ran past us.

“There are more trapped upstairs!”
one of the men yelled as he ran outside.

There were elevators near the
entrance, stairs to the right and a floor map of the facility on the far side
of the foyer. Pico scanning was on the third floor. Not wanting to risk being
trapped in the elevator, we took the stairs. When we reached the third floor,
we heard banging and muffled, frightened voices calling for help from a door
labeled Genetics Lab 2.

“Get away from the door!” I
yelled, then blasted the lock.

Two women wearing the same
anti-contamination gear as the three on the ground floor rushed out. “Thanks!
We thought we’d never get out.”

“How long have you been in
there?” Marie asked.

“Six hours,” One of the lab technicians
said as they started for the stairs.

“What’s that alarm?” I called after
them.

The lab tech glanced back, surprised
I didn’t recognize it. “The evacuation alert!” she said before disappearing
down the stairs.

“We definitely shouldn’t be
here,” I said, wondering what they were evacuating from.

I forced open two more doors in
response to cries for help before we reached an entrance labeled ‘Picometric
Scanning’. I blasted the lock, then slid the door open to find a large
laboratory with a brightly lit, arch shaped machine at its center. The arch supported
a translucent circular projector which was emitting a high pitched whine and
directing a tight blue beam down onto the Codex, which sat on a flat metallic scanning
surface.

Vargis stood beside the Codex
impatiently while my two old friends from Hades City – Scarface and Jawbones – threatened
a white coated technician. None of them had heard me shoot the door lock over the
siren and the deafening whine of the malfunctioning pico scanner.

“Shut it down!” Vargis yelled.

“I can’t!” the technician replied
helplessly. “It’ll damage the Codex!”

“It’s indestructible, you idiot!”
Vargis shouted, turning to his two enforcers. “Shoot it!”

Scarface fired once into the top
of the arch, shorting out the pico scanner with a flash, silencing the machine.
The blue emitter beam shut off, allowing Vargis to grab the Codex.

I pushed the door wide open,
raising my P-50. “I’ll take that!”

Scarface pushed the technician
aside and turned a nasty looking hammer gun towards me. I leapt back into the
corridor as he fired. The hammer gun’s slow moving slug popped a micro field
moments before it hit the wall, punching a hole through it bigger than Izin’s
head. It was a short range, notoriously inaccurate weapon, but one hit would
cut a man in half.

I dragged Marie back down the
corridor as Scarface fired again, blasting a large hole through the white wall
and spraying the corridor with debris. We kept running as sections of wall
exploded behind us until we were safely past the neighboring lab. Once out of
range we stopped to survey the corridor, now strewn with shattered white prefab
fragments.

“Wow! They’re not kidding!” Marie
said.

Vargis’ pet knuckle-draggers might
have been slow, but they didn’t need speed or accuracy with that kind of
artillery. “Izin,” I whispered, “We’re on the third floor, half way along. Vargis
is here. Can you see anything?”

“No Captain, the windows are too
dark.”

“Sirius Kade!” Vargis yelled from
inside the pico lab, “you have an annoying habit of turning up uninvited.”

“The Codex isn’t what you think
it is, Vargis.”

“On the contrary, it’s everything
I expected!”

I had no choice but to tell him. “It’s
Mataron. They wanted you to have it. They’re setting you up.”

“The Matarons?” Vargis laughed. “If
I told the Chairman that, he’d have my head. He’s very unforgiving of
incompetence.”

“It sabotaged my ship!” Marie
yelled. “It’ll do the same to yours!”

“I brought it all the way here from
the Shroud,” Vargis said, “in a specially insulated vault. My ship is fine.”

“Maybe it couldn’t link to his
systems,” I said softly to Marie, then yelled, “The Codex linked to the base,
didn’t it Vargis? Through the scanner. Now the base is being evacuated. Why?”

“You expect me to believe the
Codex caused the evacuation?” Vargis yelled.

“That’s what it does. It attacks
our technology!” I said creeping towards the nearest hole in the wall.

“Thanks for the warning, Kade. I’ll
be sure to pass it on to our cyber-weapons group.”

I fired a single shot through the
hole at the windows, then jumped back as both muscle-jobs blasted the wall,
showering the corridor with white prefab chunks.