Helios (Cerberus Group Book 2) Page 11

  Fallon’s mouth worked but he had no answer.

  Carter studied the door, looking for some vulnerability in the electrically-powered computer-controlled system. There were no hinges, which meant the door opened outward into the hall, and that gave her an idea.

  “We need to drag that table over here.” Without waiting for Fallon or Tanaka to join her, she crossed the room and grabbed one end of the table. It was a lightweight folding rectangle, made of plastic or some similar composite material, durable enough for everyday use, but nowhere near as heavy or solid as a wood or metal table would have been.

  It’ll have to do.

  She tipped it over on its side. The edge banged against the carpeted floor, the noise causing both Fallon and Tanaka to wince. Neither of them had made a move to help her.

  She folded the legs up and maneuvered the upended table around the toppled robot, lining it up perpendicular to the door, leaving a gap of a couple feet. “Never mind,” she muttered. “I’ll do it.”

  She lowered her shoulder to the back edge of the table and then, like a sprinter bursting forward at the sound of the starter’s pistol, rammed it into the door. The lightweight table was a far from ideal battering ram, flexing in the middle with the impact, but enough of her momentum was focused into the leading edge to burst the internal latch free of the bolt hole. The powerful electric hinges kept the door from flying open and started trying to close it again, but the blow created a narrow opening between the door and the frame. Carter shoved the table forward again, forcing it through the gap to ensure that the door didn’t close again, then used it like a pry-bar to force the opening wider.

  “Little help?”

  Fallon shook off his stupor and moved up to assist her. “Would you please stop breaking my things?”

  “News flash,” she grunted, as she squirmed half her body through the gap. “Your things are already broken.”

  She stuck her head out into the hallway and saw two more of the upright wheeled robots scooting toward her. They were identical to the one that had guided her in—and then turned on them—except that instead of a bright yellow, their sensor disks were glowing fire engine red. A stentorian male voice, amplified as if by a bullhorn, barked out, “Halt. You are being detained.”

  “I guess security really has been notified,” Carter muttered. With a heave, she scraped through, spilling out onto the carpeted floor.

  “Halt,” the robot voice repeated. “Do not move, or you will be forcibly subdued.”

  Despite the warning, Carter started to rise, but then she spotted bright red pinpoints of light shining from something mounted under the robots’ sensor disks. The lights reminded her of lasers—not the kind in science fiction movies, but the kind used in supermarket scanners and CD players.

  And close-range gun sights.

  She glanced down, saw two star-bright red dots on her chest, and threw herself flat again.

  A loud pop, like a balloon bursting, signaled the discharge of some kind of compressed air weapon. Something flashed above her and embedded itself in the wooden door behind her with a faint thunk. She looked up and saw two long, twisted wires extending from the robot to the door. The rapid clicking sound of a pulsed electrical discharge confirmed her suspicions that the robots were armed with Tasers.

  She took little comfort in the knowledge that the machines were only trying to stun and not kill her. If she couldn’t get Fallon to the antenna array, and soon, the distinction would cease to matter. But she was encouraged by one thing. Unlike bullets, Taser electrodes weren’t designed to penetrate flesh. Or anything else.

  She rolled over, reasoning that a moving target was harder to hit than a stationary one, and grabbed ahold of the folding table that still protruded from the doorway. A single sharp pull brought it the rest of the way out into the hall and in the same motion whipped it around so it was between her and the robots. There was another pop and she felt a faint thump reverberate through the tabletop, as a second Taser shot hit, with no more effect than the first.

  Carter peeked over the top of her shield. The security robots were only about ten feet away. Their advance had stalled but they were still blocking her path to the exit. She looked back at the door and saw Fallon wriggling through.

  About damn time, she thought. “Do these robocops of yours have anything more powerful than Tasers?”

  Fallon stared at her for a moment as if flummoxed by the question, but then shook his head. “No. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Of course not.”

  Tanaka came through after Fallon, which both surprised and pleased Carter, as she had expected the Japanese scientist to stay behind. If removing the meta-material from the array didn’t shut the Black Knight down, his expertise would be critical to figuring out what to do next.

  When both men were crouched down beside her, she raised the table a few inches off the ground and said, “Follow me.”

  Without further explanation, she started forward, as fast as her crouched stance would allow. The robots barked another warning, but they stood their ground. Carter didn’t slow. Instead, she raised the shield a little more, just high enough to clear the twelve-inch diameter wheels on which the machines rolled. As the tabletop collided with the robots’ sensor disks, the impact tipped the robots over backward. Carter let the table fall flat, pinning the machines to the ground beneath it, and then clambered over and sprinted down the hallway toward the exit.

  Another automatic door—this one made of half-inch-thick glass—blocked the exit, and as expected, it remained closed as she approached. She pushed on it and tried shouldering it open, but it didn’t budge. Desperate, she looked around for something—a chair or some other solid object—to smash through the glass, but Fallon had designed his building with robots in mind. There was no reception desk or visitor lobby, no creature comforts at all. Just the door and the hallway leading into the building.

  A strident blast of sound ripped through the relative quiet, causing her to wince in real pain. She whirled around, wondering if this was some new sonic weapon being employed against them, and she saw a grinning Fallon with one hand on a small red fire alarm button mounted to the wall.

  “Try it now!” he shouted.

  Carter pushed on the glass, and the door swung open. Some kind of safety override feature, she thought. That would have been nice to know about a few minutes ago.

  She headed through the door and waited for Fallon and Tanaka to catch up. There was no electric cart waiting to bear them to the antenna array. “How far away is it?”

  “Not far,” Fallon said, taking the lead. “Half a mile.”

  It would take seven or eight minutes to walk half a mile—four or five to run it—and that was assuming they didn’t run into any more security robots. How long did they have before the Black Knight finished deploying and started either scorching the Earth with prolonged solar radiation or ripping it apart with tidal forces?

  Not far? It might as well have been in another country, but what choice was there?

  Fallon took off at a jog, running deeper into the complex of buildings. Carter followed, looking for a large parabolic satellite dish, or something that resembled the pictures she had seen of the HAARP array in Alaska—which in pictures looked like two dozen old-fashioned TV antennas lined up in military formation—but Fallon’s destination turned out to be something else: a one-story windowless parking garage.

  “We’re driving?” Carter asked, as they headed through the doorless opening leading into the structure.

  Fallon glanced back. “You didn’t think we were going to walk?”

  He stopped just inside and stared out at the arrayed vehicles. Carter was surprised to see how many of the parking spaces were filled. There were more than a dozen different vehicles. She wouldn’t have guessed there were so many human employees at Tomorrowland. Fallon was evidently a generous employer, too. There were no minivans or soccer-mobiles in the lot, just luxury sedans and sports cars.


  “Which one’s yours?” she asked.

  “They’re all mine. Just trying to decide which one.” He threw her a defensive look. “What? I like cars.”

  She shook her head and muttered. “First world problems.”

  Fallon angled toward the closest vehicle, a blue Tesla Model 3. He tried the door handle but it didn’t budge. “What the hell?”

  “Don’t you have the key?”

  “There are no keys. It’s biometric.” He held his fingertips against the handle for a few seconds before trying again, but the result was the same. “It’s not recognizing me.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around. Somebody doesn’t want you shutting that antenna down.” Carter scanned the other cars. “You got anything low-tech in here?”

  Her eyes roamed the line of sleek modern vehicles and settled on a classic 1960’s, silver sports car with elegant spoked wheels. It looked like something from an old James Bond movie. “What about that one?”

  “Perfect,” Fallon flashed a mischievous grin, and ran to the vehicle, which was unlocked. Fallon went to the right side, which confused Carter for a moment—does he want me to drive?—until she realized that the car was configured for right-side driving. Without complaint or protest, she squeezed into the cramped back seat, allowing Tanaka to have the front passenger seat, while Fallon started the vehicle.

  Driving the silver car seemed to energize Fallon. He slammed the gear-shift lever into reverse and the car jolted violently as he let out the clutch, backing out of the parking space with a screech of rubber. He shifted again, and the car shot forward, whining in protest as he maxed first gear before reaching the garage door.

  Despite the cramped seating arrangement and Fallon’s over-excited driving, Carter was relieved to finally be moving in the right direction, and even more relieved when, after less than a minute of tearing down the paved road, Fallon brought the sport’s car to a skidding stop in front of a small cinder block structure at the end of the drive. Just visible behind it was an elaborate structure of wires and metal rods that looked a little like an electrical transformer hub.

  “See?” Fallon said, throwing the door open. “Not far.”

  “This is dangerous, Marcus,” Tanaka said, breaking his self-imposed silence. He waved his tablet, and Carter saw that it was still displaying the real time feed from the Space Tomorrow satellite trailing the Black Knight. Evidently, the hacker had only locked them out of control function, allowing Fallon to keep his eyes in the sky. “We don’t know what will happen if we interrupt the signal.”

  Fallon waved a dismissive hand. “It’s not going to make things worse. Until we can get control of the transmitter back, this is the right thing to do.”

  Carter withheld comment and followed the two men at a distance. Tanaka’s wariness concerned her—What if he’s right?—but she had no expertise to inform her opinion, and in any case, she was more inclined to agree with Fallon’s approach.

  Fallon opened a utilitarian metal door—a regular door with a door knob and no fancy electronic gizmos—and went inside, with Tanaka close on his heels. Carter remained outside, but she could feel heat radiating from the interior, which was dominated by an enormous machine enclosed in a non-descript metal housing from which sprouted a pair of thick insulated cables. A loud electrical hum emanated from the device. Fallon opened a small access door on its side, revealing a nest of wires and processors, and then reached inside.

  The loud hum stopped.

  He reached in a little further and rooted around for almost a full minute before emerging. Something that looked like a scorched, crumpled piece of tightly woven window screen, about the size of a washcloth, protruded from his closed fist.

  “That’s it?” Carter asked.

  It looked too ordinary to be so dangerous.

  Fallon cocked his head sideways and smirked. “Doesn’t look like much, but it’s probably the rarest material in the world.” He turned to Tanaka. “Any change?”

  Tanaka looked down at the tablet for several seconds, then shook his head. “As I feared, it’s not responding. We should restore the transmitter. Maybe whoever did this knows how to shut it down.”

  “No.” Fallon was emphatic. “I’m not going to take that chance. The transmitter stays offline until we can get control of our systems again. Speaking of which…” He nodded to the waiting car. “It’s time to take back Tomorrow—”

  The declaration faltered and died as Fallon’s stare fixed on something in the distance beyond. Carter followed his gaze and saw why he had been rendered speechless.

  One of the bulldozer-sized construction robots Carter had passed on the way in rolled into view from behind one of the main buildings. Another one came after it, and then several more. Six of them altogether, moved single-file, like floats in a Christmas parade. When the last of them was clear, the formation broke apart and reshuffled until the machines were lined up side-by-side, like a cavalry charge, sweeping toward them.

  FOURTEEN

  Carter grabbed the end of the memory metal fragment and tore it from Fallon’s grasp. It felt strange in her hand, cool to the touch, with a texture like a handful of little springs. Fearing that it might ooze out of her grip, she shoved it into her pocket and darted for the right side of the car. She slid behind the steering wheel, clutched, and turned the key. As the engine roared to life, Fallon stuck his head in through the passenger side door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving,” she said, putting the car in gear.

  Fallon’s jaw worked but she cut him off before he could articulate his protest. “Get in. If you want to fix this, we have to go now.”

  “Ishiro, let’s go,” Fallon said without looking away, and then as an afterthought, he muttered, “Shotgun.”

  As they climbed in, Carter checked on the advancing robot wave’s progress. They were still about a hundred yards away, and while not built for speed, they were moving faster than a human could run. Two of them blocked the road, while pairs on either side rolled across the landscaped greenspace, crushing topiary shrubs and throwing up huge clods of dirt with their metal treads. Getting around them was going to require more than fancy footwork and a plastic table.

  As soon as the two men were inside, Carter let out the clutch. The car shot forward, and she hauled the steering wheel around, requiring almost a full-body effort since the car didn’t have power steering. She carved a tight U-turn that brought them back around onto the road, facing the construction-bots. “Is there another way out of here?”

  “That’s the only road.”

  Carter surveyed the off-road possibilities. The pavement was bordered by hedges, which the second and fifth robots were obliterating with complete indifference. Beyond the hedgerow, there was a grassy expanse about twenty yards wide. It ended at Lake Geneva’s shore on one side and a stand of trees on the other. But most of the open space was dominated by the robots at the ends of the formation. “Do those things have any weaknesses?”

  Fallon blinked as if he found the question insulting, but then shrugged. “They’re built for heavy labor…construction. They aren’t war machines.”

  “Could have fooled me.” She considered the statement a moment longer. “What does that mean exactly?”

  “It means they don’t see us as an enemy. You can’t just splice in a line of code and turn a construction machine into the Terminator.”

  “So you’re saying they’re here to… fix us?” Try as she might, Carter couldn’t see how the distinction mattered.

  “I’m saying they don’t think strategically.” Then he added, “And they can’t turn worth a damn.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Carter accelerated again. She pushed the gas pedal, let out the clutch, and the car shot forward like a robot-seeking missile.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Fallon cried out, flailing his arms as if trying to stop himself from falling.

  When the wall of robots was just fifty feet
away, she slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, sliding into another U-turn, now only a few feet ahead of the advancing machines. In the rear-view mirror, she could see hydraulic manipulator arms unfolding above the tracked chassis like the legs of some gigantic praying mantis reaching out to crush them in its pincers.

  Carter floored the gas pedal again, and the car shot forward as one manipulator arm, tipped with an over-sized circular saw, came down. There was a shower of sparks as the blade struck the pavement, mere inches from the rear bumper. She cut the steering wheel to the right and the robot made another grab for her, but as it did, it veered into the path of the neighboring machine just as it also tried to attack.

  The air behind them was filled with an ear-splitting shriek and the crunch of metal being torn apart, as the two machines tried to occupy the same space. Chunks of debris began raining down all around, pelting the back of the sports car, even as Carter cut back the other direction.

  The two robots were hopelessly entangled, and after only a few seconds of struggling, they gave up the fight. As the advancing line moved past the wreckage, the others closed ranks, making sure that the road was blocked. And they kept coming.

  Carter made a wide sweeping turn, leaving the road surface, crashing through the hedges on the roadside, and carving twin furrows in the lawn like a teenager on a joyride. The tires slipped on the soft ground, spraying out loose dirt as they dug down, looking for something solid to grab onto. The car fishtailed and slid sideways as she fought to maintain control.

  When the arc of the turn brought them back around, she straightened the steering wheel and gave the car a little more gas, headed toward the machine moving along on the right side of the pavement. Another human, or an artificial-intelligence capable of strategic thinking, might have realized what she was planning to do and taken steps to head her off, shifting the entire formation to block her. But the construction robots stayed on course, as if daring her to a game of chicken.