Xenoform (52 page)

‘She’ll eat you alive, man, seriously. You don’t know what she’s like.’ Sofi stepped fully into the room and Debian could see that she was smiling after all. ‘Guess I’ll avoid the tanks tonight,’ she said, a little laugh in her voice. ‘Don’t worry about me – I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.’ She walked past him, openly grinning now, and out the opposite door. Debian felt himself grinning, too. He wasn’t sure how much of it was the dope.

He leaned over Tec’s sleeping body and relit the reeferette on the last embers of the fire. He sat and smoked it to the roach, thinking, of course, of Whistler. She was right. Why not live a little while they still could? He would go to her. His heart was racing in his chest. He threw the roach into the fire and stood, his head reeling pleasantly.

He turned to follow Whistler and Ari was standing in the doorway. Spyflies swarmed around the robot’s insect body. Dark and threatening mechanical shapes crowded the corridor outside. Debian’s mouth fell open.

‘It seems,’ said Ari coldly, ‘that you can no longer be trusted with the liberty of choice.’ And then the robots flooded into the room.

Whistler was in the process of trying to make the small drift of old blankets into something approaching an actual bed when she heard gunfire from the level above. It had come from the canteen-room where she had left Tec and Debian, she was sure of it. She stopped, straightening as if electrocuted, dropping the blanket she had been holding. The smartgun was alive on her hip, practically buzzing with excitement. It was already in her hand as she bolted into the passage outside and mounted the steps in two bounds, cursing as she went. Roland was there, too, and thankfully he had exchanged the massive rocket launcher for a small sidearm.

They dashed towards the canteen together as the sounds of gunfire crashed and clattered to a crescendo. Tec’s voice, hoarse and possibly hurt, could be heard above the din. Whistler recognised the rattling sound of the submachine gun.

As Roland and Whistler neared the doorway of the canteen a huge humanoid robot leapt out in front of them. Whistler was so utterly shocked that the smartgun shredded the machine before she could even wonder where it had come from. Roland ducked into an alcove beside her, firing round after round into the smoky gloom. He was shouting something between shots but she couldn’t make it out. Spyflies swarmed out into the corridor, hazing the air like smoke – thousands of them. Other shapes were barging out into the passage. Whistler copied Roland and ducked into cover, firing into the clamouring shadows as fast as the weapon would allow, watchful all the time for body-heat signatures. The cold white glare of the smartgun’s light splashed over the chaos, glinting off metallic bodies. Sofi was in the corridor too, now, at Whistler’s shoulder. She stepped out bravely, not flinching as solid rounds buzzed like bees around her, and let loose with an assault rifle that Roland had brought as a backup. The strobing blaze of the weapon showed a scene of capering robots that covered every surface, clung to walls, climbed over each other, clawing their ways through the throng to get at the humans, revealed in brilliant snapshots.

‘Ari, you little fucker!’ yelled Roland as he ducked in to reload. Whistler saw a hail of chemical ice shards shatter against the wall where he had just been.

Sofi flattened herself against the wall next to Whistler, and leaned close to Whistler’s ear. ‘What the hell is going on? Where’s Tec? Where did all these fucking things come from?’ She swatted at a cloud of spyflies that swarmed around her head, harassing her. Whistler could only shake her head and resume fire. The rounds from her smartgun sent chunks of metal shrapnel flying from her assailants’ bodies. She hit a golden security bot in the head and the glass blew out of its visor. It collapsed, knocking down a smaller machine beside it and pinning this other beneath its bulk. Its place was immediately taken by another.

Sofi filled the corridor with random fire, shattering metal and concrete alike. Something blew up, the backwash of heat scorching Whistler’s eyebrows but giving her space to advance to the next alcove, Roland mirroring her movements opposite. Through the smoke and spyflies she saw Spider appear at the other end of the corridor, advancing cautiously to meet her. Another robot, a cheap home defence unit, popped out of the doorway and shot Roland with a micro-launcher. The old man collapsed, screaming, as Whistler gunned it down. Its tiny, child-like body was shredded – its head came clean off and landed in the pile of mechanical debris.

Somebody else was screaming, too, from inside the room. Throwing caution to the winds, Whistler rushed the doorway, letting the smartgun lead her. Its dark muzzle darted this way and that, trying to look in all directions at once. Inside the room was a litter of machine parts. Tec was lying sprawled on the still-smouldering remains of the fire, a fan of blood round his head, the submachine gun smashed into junk beside him. Something that looked like a random heap of bent pipework leaned in from the opposite doorway and took a pot-shot at Whistler. The round pinged off her armoured shoulder-pad and she shot the machine twice before it could duck back out of sight. Some small metal disc came off the thing and rolled across the room. It came to rest against the still-twitching, severed arm of another robot.

Roland, Sofi and Spider rushed in behind her. Roland was holding the stump of one smashed hand up in the air, the pistol gripped now in his left, face like thunder. Someone was shouting – Sofi? – as Whistler went to Tec, stowing the smartgun in its holster. She felt the weapon’s suspensor actually resist her for a moment. She knelt beside him, checking for a pulse in his neck. It was faint – so very faint – and fading. Somebody was shooting over her head as she bent down. Concrete chips sprayed her face, smoke stung her eyes. She held her friend like a baby, his chest hitching weakly, speechless with grief. She was muttering, ‘Not another, not another, not another,’ under her breath as she began to rock him. She looked around for help and saw only chaos. ‘He’s stopped breathing!’ she cried into the din. ‘He’s stopped breathing!’ Roland was shooting out of the far doorway as Spider kicked heavy metallic bodies out of his line of fire. He was shouting – screaming, almost – though she couldn’t make out the words.

And then Roland was shaking her by the shoulder, very hard, shouting at her. Slowly, she returned to the room.

‘They coming d’other way! We gotta go! We gotta go, Whistler! He’s dead! He’s dead! Come on! They’ll cut us off! We gotta move!’

And then a dark fog fell over Whistler’s vision. She was on her feet again, the smartgun buzzing in her hand, infusing her whole being with a murderous fury. It was firing, she was firing, machines were everywhere, something stung her on the side of her chest, something glanced off the wall next to her, she was screaming, they were running, Sofi was ahead of her, Roland was behind her, Spider ran beside her, smoke filled the base, she tripped, stumbled, got up, still shooting, ran out of ammo, hands reloading of their own volition, firing again, shrapnel flying, machines everywhere, she was sprayed by blood, whose blood she didn’t know, and they were out in the passageway that led back to the surface, running, shooting, pursued, Roland had lost a hand. And one, only one, coherent thought cut through this confusion, this dreamlike killing trance: Where was Debian?

They fled up the tunnel, spyflies buzzing around their heads. Behind them a veritable army of machines gave chase. Roland had retrieved the rocket launcher from somewhere and he periodically fired it down the the tunnel. Each rocket erupted in orange flame, the pressure waves concussive and deafening. Shrapnel rattled against the stone walls musically and gradually the pursuers fell back. Occasionally a shot would come from behind them. One actually impacted against the huge, shielding bulk of Roland’s launcher, and ricocheted harmlessly away. Sofi paused to affix a scrambler-bait, engineered to the same size as a standard micro-grenade, to the wall of the passage, then hurried to catch the others up.

‘Where’s Debian?’ demanded Whistler at last, finally able to vocalise her concern. They moved at as great a pace as their constant rearwards vigilance would allow and she was out of breath, now, as well as in a state of shock. She still had Tec’s blood on her hands.

‘They fuckin’ took him!’ roared Spider. He popped a micro grenade and launched it overarm back down the tunnel even though their pursuers were no longer visible. The explosion it made looked almost comically small after Roland’s launcher. ‘Bastards! They fuckin’ killed Tec! Is this your damn robot’s fault, Roland? He was right not to trust that fuckin’ thing!’

‘Man, I hope not, I hope not. I never had no reason to suspect Ari – Ari been with me for ten years, disconnected since this shit-storm first began. I real sorry ’bout your friend, man, real sorry. Debian, too, but I don’t reckon we could’ve done much about that. I think we lucky to be alive, any of us. I don’t think it’s all down to Ari, but I don’t know what the fuck just happen.’ Roland sounded almost fatally out of breath now and his dirty string vest was speckled with blood. One of his skeletal hands was a jagged and shattered mess. Small wires poked from the splintered bone-ends. Whistler wondered how old he actually was and whether he was going to keel over from a heart attack.

‘Why did they take Debian?’ she asked as she ran. She kept checking back over her shoulder but even her gun was starting to relax a little now. There hadn’t been a shot from behind them for several minutes. She didn’t understand what had just happened but she was amazed to have survived it.

‘Beats me,’ answered Sofi, effortlessly keeping pace beside her. ‘Do you wanna go back to look for him?’

‘You fuckin’ crazy?’ demanded Roland. ‘Them things still back there. I dunno how they took him out – must be another exit somewhere, I guess. But no way we can go back, no way. I dunno how we still alive.’

Whistler was acutely, painfully aware of how close she may have come to something good. She wanted to go back, wanted to save Debian. She knew that, in some way she didn’t fully understand, this was at least partly his fault. But she still wanted to go back for him. However, she knew that it would be suicide. If the robots, presumably acting on direct behalf of the AI, had taken him away then he could be anywhere by now. For them not to have taken him by this same tunnel they must have had another exit. Just finding it, particularly in the midst of a running battle, might prove impossible. She had lost two team members in a week now. Spider was in visibly poor shape, Roland was injured if not actually in pain, Ari had clearly gone over to the other side. She couldn’t lose anyone else – she had a duty to her team and she took it seriously. She could not lead them back that way, however much she may want to. So much for one last night of fun before the end of the world.

‘Let’s keep going,’ she said. ‘If everybody can.’

There was a chorus of weary affirmatives and they continued, slowing a little, into the buried maze of tunnels. Spider loped along at the rear of the newly reduced group like a great bear, his breath coming in loud grunts. Roland began to wheeze. Even Sofi started to look tired.

They came to a spiral staircase of rusted metal that twined up into darkness. Above the entrance to the stairwell was a small sign reading WATER MAIN GRAVITY PUMP 0021. The sounds and signs of pursuit had faded away now but they were all aware that the robots were probably still following them, if with renewed caution.

‘What’s this?’ asked Sofi.

‘Gravity pump,’ said Roland.

‘Well no shit, genius. I mean what
is
it?’

‘They massive water towers. Used to pump them full at night when electricity was cheaper then they’d feed the mains by gravity in the day. Don’t think they used any more.’

‘Tower?’ asked Whistler. ‘Does it actually stand above ground level?’

‘Sure, you prob’ly seen ’em. Quite a few around still,’ answered Roland between deep, hitching breaths. He was leaning on the rocket launcher like a crutch, bent over. His cheeks were sunken and his face looked grey in the light of the group’s torches. Whistler wondered again if he was going to make it. Ridiculously, the old man began to roll a cigarette, one-handed, from a pouch of tobacco. His remaining hand proved surprisingly dexterous at this task, although his face wrinkled in concentration.

‘Got a better idea than climbing up there where we at least have a field of view?’ asked Whistler. Nobody had. She looked around at them – Roland, Sofi, Spider – and her heart sank at the sight. What a beaten, rag-tag, uniformly dun-coloured bunch they looked. In fact, they looked like she felt, which wasn’t good. ‘Then let’s do it,’ she said. She checked the readout on her smartgun. It was drawing particles from the air at its maximum rate, rebuilding its ammo supply. It would take several hours to fill the mag, though. She felt her pockets – she had had several full magazines but they seemed to be missing now, presumably dropped in the scramble to escape. She was aware that, for a while, she had not been fully in charge of her faculties, and this knowledge frightened her more than she would care to admit. She felt that only now was she really coming round again, as if waking from a bad dream.

‘Fuck, man, okay,’ agreed Spider, wiping his sweaty face against one metal claw. ‘But it feels a bit too much like a last stand for my liking.’ They let Roland finish rolling his smoke and then they began to climb the stairs, guns covering every shady nook and cranny. As they ascended the walls became slimed with greenshit ooze, pocked and melted-looking. In a serious, defeated silence, they climbed up the water tower, their numbers as diminished as their confidence. Whistler let herself shed a few tears as she mounted the steps in near-total darkness. She was sure that nobody noticed.