Movement caused me to refocus on the thing. For some reason, the other mutants had not attacked, instead letting this one do their bidding. Now it was struggling to get off its back. Its gruesome head turned its one working eye toward me, and I could feel its hatred radiating from yards away.

  My eyes only saw red, hatred, anger. I ran at the thing that lay on that floor. Its claws were raised, maybe to shield its one remaining eye, maybe as a sign of surrender. I did not care; I was offering no truce in this battle. Monsters don’t get the luxury of mercy. These things were bio-engineered killers. They had murdered every other living thing in this room. To be honest, this one had come late to that party. It had probably just been awakened by a giant robot slamming into its watery bed. Now it was vulnerable and being attacked by something it did not understand, something that ignored its remarkable power.

  The weakened Furie raised a damaged claw and made a piteous mewling sound. I looked at it in disgust. Then stamped down hard on its misshapen head.

  “Ranger’s lead,” I said, turning away. The others seemed to reappraise the lone human as more of a potential threat than they first considered. Somewhere deeper in the cavern, I heard more of the Warbots entering the space. I recovered my weapons with my one good arm and started moving along the shadows of the far wall. My adrenaline levels were receding, and in their place, pain and exhaustion rushed back in. It was time to make a tactical advance to the rear. Right. Retreat!

  “Exit twenty meters to your right.”

  I turned and ran, only realizing minutes later that had not been Ada’s voice in my head. As I pulled the door open, another of the creatures slammed into it from the other side. I pushed it back solidly against the wall until I heard something crunch and saw more blood seeping under the door.

  Behind me, more of the Furies were joining the chase now. Time to move your ass, Kovach.

  “Frags and smoke,” I yelled.

  Ada automatically deployed the mini grenades stored in specialized slots along the edge of my rear armor.

  I slammed the heavy door, then braced my body against it. The sound was muffled, but the concussive wave hit the steel door like a truck. It bowed in as the frame deformed under the intense blast. Still, I heard the sounds made by the mutant beasts as their hatred of me grew in intensity to match the name I’d given them. “I don’t think I’m going to be on their Christmas card list.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTY-THREE

  I took the stairs, as that was the only thing on the other side of that door. The shoulder where I’d been shot and the deep abdominal wound had joined my useless arm in the serious damage column. The suit’s internal muscles enhancements gave me some movement but only with excruciating levels of pain. All of this on top of the fact my body was fighting against itself as my organs were being attacked by my own immune system. Ada helpfully displayed my body temp in my health meter. Currently, it was at 102 and climbing, although I knew that the augmented immune systems in my body were still hard at work doing the jobs they’d been designed for. Rapid recovery, combat readiness, accelerated healing, and higher pain tolerances for damage were the only reasons I could still move.

  At the next door, I could hear the now familiar tapping. Everything in me said, ‘Do not open this door.’ I knew nothing good would happen if I did, so I kept climbing. Next floor, housewares and ladies’ lingerie… maybe not. The stairs ended, so I didn’t have many options except to take door number one.

  My pain and drug induced mental fog cleared momentarily as I took inventory of the space. “Who was that before, telling me where the door was?”

  “The voice print matches that of the woman you know as Damiana Voss,” Ada said.

  “How did she do it? Is she still connected?”

  “Unknown,” was the simple reply. Also, why did Ada phrase it the way she did? ‘The woman you know as…’

  Whose side was that woman on? And well, shit, now I apparently have two assholes that could call me and track me whenever they wanted.

  I opened the door onto a brightly lit corridor with doors on each side. The space screamed barracks to me, but that was probably a bias from my years on military bases around the world. I swear they all have that same green paint. You know, the same shade as sewer sludge if you shake it up a bit. I personally think they all also have the same smell. Too many sweaty bodies, testosterone, and hopelessness in a confined space.

  I reloaded my weapons with fresh magazine charge packs, then peeked into a couple of the doors. Indeed, rows of bunks, all empty, common areas for toilets, and somewhere on this floor would be a galley and probably medical. I looked down; my left arm still dangled uselessly, blood dripping steadily from the gloved hand. Other parts of my body were in nearly as bad shape. Medical bay might be a worthy stop, but I didn’t have the time. I instructed Ada to tourniquet the left arm and cauterize the wound. I braced myself as she did it, and mother!!!!...fuck, it hurt. Intense, but brief, heat seared my body closed in several places, including the claw stab wound in my gut. It stopped the external bleeding, but not much else.

  As I entered another corridor, a sound caused me to bring my gun up. A door opened ahead of me, about twenty feet farther down. I could see rough walls and darkness behind as a friendly IR strobe blinked on in my HUD.

  “G-Force?” I asked on comms.

  The door opened wider, and he stepped out, followed closely by Sumo.

  “Yes, Prowler. Good to see you again, my friend.”

  “Is that a sword?”

  He nodded proudly, and I could see it was already stained with blood. Although, the man and my dog looked rather pristine, which made me feel both relieved and pissed off at the same time. He rushed over to assist me; he could see the damage and the pain etched across my face.

  “I… I’m okay.”

  I waved him away, but I bent down and hugged the dog, who had been waiting patiently. Sumo knew me, knew the bravado was bullshit. I was certain he could smell the death hanging around me like vultures circling roadkill.

  “Where’s Voss?”

  Gi looked pained. She had gotten away from him. I knew that had to chap his Asian ass, but she’d apparently gotten away from Sumo as well, and that is no simple task.

  “I am here.”

  The voice was in my head and from somewhere in one of the rooms behind me. I was really tired of this woman fucking with us.

  “Locate.” I gave the command to both Ada and Sumo. The dog took off, knowing he was still on task.

  I no longer trusted the voices I was hearing. That was when the lights went out. The silence was immediate and suffocating. The darkness was complete. But there was something in that darkness. Something evil, something that was hunting us. Something that had tasted my soul before.

  Despite what people think, fear is a good thing to have, as long as it doesn’t render you stupid or impede your actions. Fear sharpens your attention to needle points of focus that can mean the difference between winning or losing. Between living or not living. Some fears were common; I had gotten used to them over the years. Like doing the ballistic drop, still scared the shit out of me, but I knew it. We had made peace, and it hadn’t killed me yet.

  The fear I now felt was a more recent addition to my haunted collection. This fear was more acute, less apprehensive than a total loss of hope. It was unnatural, it was external. It was also fake.

  I said the word aloud, hating the passivity of being right and knowing with total certainty that I was.

  “Wraith.”

  Here’s the thing: fear cannot kill you… not really. I guess if you had a weak heart or something, maybe it could, but for most of us, the only play it has is making you do something stupid or running away in terror. When you think about it, if you could weaponize fear, it would be a nearly perfect offensive armament. I was certain that was what the creature had done, and I assumed it, too, was a product of this hellish place.

  The psionic waves affected something very primal and basic in us. I could feel my bladder trying to release. Every fiber of my being wanted to flee. My visor had automatically gone to night vision, and I studied Gi’s face. He was standing a few feet away. If the man was feeling the same thing I was, he showed none of it.

  I was a borderline quivering baby wanting to climb up in his momma’s lap. The Korean looked like he was ready to order some Dim Sung and enjoy the afternoon. Dim Sung isn’t Korean, is it? Shit, I always get those mixed up. I’m uncouth, but that’s irrelevant because I did just piss myself. To be honest, in the battle suit, you are supposed to do it that way. It takes too long to get out of the damn thing for nature breaks, so I’m going to say it was just a convenient time to do it, not that I was fucking terrified and, well... you get the idea.

  I motioned Sumo to stay close; Gi moved off to my weak side without being told. Good soldiers inherently seem to know where they are needed. My left arm was for shit, so that was my weak side now.

  “What’s the mission, Boss?”

  I thought about that. Had there ever been a mission? “We get the fuck out of this place.”

  “Banshee Actual to Banshee-1.”

  “That you, Bayou?”

  “On site and coming in, package is secure,” she stated confidently.

  “Have I mentioned how much I love you?”

  “Not today, Boss, but the day is young.”

  I heard some intermittent gunfire over the comms.

  “Hate to ask this, Prowler, but how do we determine friend or foe?”

  I didn’t know what she was encountering, but in my odyssey, back toward the surface, I’d adopted a new battle plan. One both my dad and most of his eighty’s movie icons would have supported.

  “If it moves, kill it.”

  Everything down here was designed to hunt, attack, or kill, and I wasn’t even convinced I’d seen the entire product line yet. Maybe I should have picked up a brochure in the showroom.

  “We have your beacon; Halo pegs you half a klick out and a hundred and fifty feet below the surface. What’s your status?”

  If she had my beacon, they had access to my transponder, which gave them every bit of info my suit had on me. Low on ammo, significant damage to both arms. Running a high fever. Body on the brink of total organ failure. If you saw all this on an autopsy report, you wouldn’t be surprised.

  “I am absofuckinglutely great, LT!”

  And then my world disappeared in a blast of rock and metal. Not the massive arms of the Decimators. Instead, a cascade of a much smaller battle bot. An entire side wall of the corridor had given way, spilling them into the corridor. The opening was into one of the numerous caverns, and there, taking refuge on the far wall, was Voss. She looked straight at me, then pointed toward the left.

  I had no time to consider what she was up to as the swarm of battle bots was coming at both Gi and me. Sumo was staying well out of reach. This was my first time seeing the damn things up close, and they looked about as friendly as a wolverine getting a razor blade enema. They were oddly angular. The sizes varied as did the appearance, but most were about the size of a crab, a crab with a front and middle limb that looked remarkably like a folded, old school razor blade.

  As they extended the limb, the bladed edge reflected the light. What was it with these people and bladed weapons? The back legs were thick with bundles of what I guessed might be some sort of artificial tendons. It was obvious they could jump or push with those back legs while slicing down with the front. Only then did I realize the things also had other, smaller appendages that allowed them to spin in place or roll back over if they wound up on their backs. Then there was the constant drone of the tapping. Hundreds, no… more like thousands, all in nearly perfect horrific synchrony.

  But it wasn’t the sound or even the numbers that were so unnerving as much as their actions. Every few seconds, they would all pause and do the same motion at the exact same time. It was like a giant conga line of MurderCrabs. They jerked and swiveled in a deeply disturbing snap upward. Stop, jerk briefly to a halt, then pop back down. It was a well-planned showpiece of horror as they moved as a unified mass.

  “What is this? What are they doing?” Gi asked. He was trying to grasp the danger and significance of the horde, as was I.

  “Beats the fuck out of me. I think they used to call it the Macarena.”

  Somewhere inside my skull, I heard my dad start singing the damn song. Was he listening to everything now?

  “Hey, Macarena!”

  They had dark black, wedge-shaped heads and bodies that were more trapezoidal than anything else. I assumed the designers had a specific reason for the shape, but it was lost on me. The underside of most was a dull, unpolished, silver gray. Others were a blood red, and a few, toward the rear, seemed to have blue colored undersides. Some sort of rank? Different purposes? I did not know.

  They didn’t move fast; they didn’t need to. Once they swarmed, there was nowhere to run.

  “What’s the play?”

  I didn’t bother looking at Gi. Shit, the good idea fairy hadn’t paid me a visit. I was clueless. He started swinging with the sword. I dropped and started unleashing carnage rounds into them. Off in the distance, I heard even more of the things coming. They were breaching the walls in multiple places now.

  We would not be able to win this round. “Ada, EMP… anything?”

  “Pops, do you know how to stop these battle droids?”

  “Sorry, sport.” He was still humming the damn infectious tune to the ancient song.

  The arm blades were slicing wildly now, and each of the damn things kept tapping down as they moved. It was freakish and unnerving. I saw Gi falter once in his nearly robotic swings. The man was tiring, and I was running low on ammo packs.

  Several of the MurderCrabs shot forward, getting past Gi’s sword arc. The Korean officer muttered something unintelligible that Ada offered to interpret. It wasn’t necessary, as I was pretty much thinking the same thing. ‘Oh, shit’ in either language is said with the same levels of pitch.

  The MurderCrabs closed in on my human partner. The thick fiber bundle on the rear limbs seemed to coil, then release as the damn things jumped in unison at Gi, the bizarre leg knives carving the air as they headed toward various parts of his body. Gi had expected the lunge and sidestepped while expertly plucking one of the metal beasts out of the air by its rear legs. He ripped it down onto the floor, where he stomped it. That did not stop it, but it slowed it down. I placed a round into the thing, then turned back to the rest of the advancing menace. These were just scouts; they were testing our defenses. What would we do when they all came for us?

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  The fucking things were tough. Because of their size, I’d initially downplayed the threat. We were in armored suits, and yeah… I was an idiot. Simply through sheer numbers, their aggressiveness, and the realization that they were determined to stop us, made me quickly reevaluate our response. Add that to the absolutely freaky way they moved as one, and I think they scared me as much as the Wraith.

  “Sumo, get the woman.” I saw the dog looking at me from a distance, unsure what his mission priorities were. The combat dog was great in a fight, but I didn’t think he would be helpful against this inhuman enemy.

  I continued to unleash lethal rounds into the mass, offering up mass casualties to the robot god of war. Still more poured in from the fallen wall. It seemed like for every one I killed, two more took its place. All the tapping I’d been hearing since I’d arrived must have been the things trying to break down the walls of their containment room.

  That gave me an idea, a crazy one, but one worth considering. I signaled it to Ada, who started working on the problem as I played defensive cover for Gi. A group of MurderCrabs hit me from my blindside, their momentum spinning me around. Their mass surprised me. The damn things were made of a dense alloy. My feet got tangled as another of the bots hooked a limb into my boots and spun it in the opposite direction. I went down hard, my helmet bouncing off the floor with a loud crack.

  Immediately, I felt tiny limbs trying to unlatch my tactical helmet. Shit! The little fucks were smart, too. They had gotten me down and knew the first thing they needed to get to. Not my gun, but my head. Whoever programmed these bastards had done his homework. I’d worked with a lot of battle-bots over the years from Gen-4,s that were mainly demolition droids, right up to the latest Gen-X models, but they were all slow, unreliable, and rarely useful for anything offensive except as an ammo hauler.

  Most of them were even more limited by their weak AIs, more so than their limited power supplies. Whatever was powering these things seemed limitless. I had yet to see any slow or stop on their own. And the programming seemed fluid and natural. It was orders of magnitude ahead of anything I had seen in the military or commercial spaces.

  A metal crab body banged into the tunnel wall beside me just as Gi stumbled past me on my left. Blood coated one of his arms, and I could see the machine army had done a number on the joints in his battle suit. His eyes locked briefly onto mine. I could see the weariness, the fatigue of a battle that had gone on too long.

  “Got your back, brother,” I said, my voice weary with exhaustion.

  “Me… also,” he said, pulling me to my feet. He was out of breath and, I knew, hurting almost as much as I was.

  Gi raised his Rattler MK4, the sword back in its sheath for now. A rapid-fire burst of ‘pong’ followed by the tap-tapping rise and dip response of the herky-jerky crab army. I swung in beside him and flipped the selector to single shots. I was down to my last two magazines and didn’t think that was going to be enough.

  We picked off outliers, trying to keep the main group bunched together.

  Suddenly, something dropped toward me from the ceiling.

  The damn things could climb?