My hands shot up in a feeble attempt to block it, but the MurderCrab was dropping too fast to stop. The razor arms snapped open as it landed squarely on my face and neck. Spindly arms began encircling my head in a vice-like grip as I felt the bite of one of its blades into my flesh. The neck seal of my suit had been breached; the thing had its blade to my throat. Fiery pain lanced up my face and down my spine. Ada began sending alerts, and I knew she was going to do a suit discharge. I blocked it. I couldn’t afford for my suit to be offline in battle.

  I saw Gi turn his gun on me and fire. The beast’s hooked metal limbs that had clawed deep into my flesh were torn away under a fusillade of rounds. The suit offered me a wound seal, which I slapped into place. I raked the ceiling with my rifle, bringing down dozens more of the murderous little bots who had also gone for the more tactical high ground.

  “I have a firing solution,” Ada finally said.

  “Oh, thank God!”

  “It will require the armament in both of your suits.”

  “Understood.” I entered the command to slave Gi’s battle suit armor to Ada. He looked at me with a shocked expression as he suddenly found himself unable to move on his own. I then ceded control of my suit to the AI. Each of us simply riding along now in our own suits moved in opposite directions, then she launched specialized demolition charges at the far wall. The rounds were in our stores of specialized grenades but were coated in a molecular adhesive that activated on contact with atmosphere. They stuck on the walls where Ada had directed them.

  Then she released us from her control.

  “Run!”

  The wall beside us detonated in a specific pattern that the AI had deemed would cause the most damage. We plowed over and through the mass of MurderCrabs to get to a relatively clear space beyond, but the wall came down on us as well as them.

  However, the robot army was immediately in the path of the much heavier sections of stone wall. They fared much worse than Gi and me.

  I was on the floor, one of the damn crabs on my visor. I could see every detail of its underside and filed that away for later. I flung it off with a hand. It was dead weight, its misshapen body torn apart by the blast of the wall.

  I cleared the rubble first, then pulled the Korean out. “Destroying the corridor? That was your big plan?”

  It hadn’t been a plan so much as a… ‘What else can I do,’ sort of play. “It worked.”

  Stone walls are the only thing I had seen that slowed them down.

  The soldier looked at me funny. “Is that more music?”

  Shit, my bucket was busted up. The helmet’s external speaker was now playing my dad’s playlist. I guess it had been going the entire time. My concentration had obviously been elsewhere. Some eighties rock song was blasting out, pumping bass and a chorus about eyes of tigers.

  “Yeah, kid… you don’t have a fight song playlist?” I said, feigning as much machismo as I could.

  Sumo had Voss cornered, but I’d already seen that fail. She was more dangerous than the corridor full of metal monsters.

  “That was impressive,” she said. The smile on her face offered no warmth. “Almost.”

  This lady liked her barbs, and that one stung. Or maybe it was the flap of skin the goddamn crab bot had carved off my neck that was burning.

  “How is it you are still unblemished?”

  She was, too. Truthfully, she looked fantastic, distractingly so. Carol may have been right when she suggested inevitably I try something with her. That was before, though. Before she tried to get me killed, then helped save me, then led me into a pit full of killer bots. Then maybe saved me. Shit… I couldn’t keep up.

  She turned her back on all of us and walked toward a door. Sumo looked at me as if wanting permission to take her down.

  “I already told you to do that, yet she’s still standing.”

  As if in response, I felt a wave of fear that melted my resolve. Glancing up, I saw the Wraith peel itself off a wall and fly through the door behind the woman.

  Stumbling up to Sumo, I patted his head and gave an ear a small scratch. His head turned into my hand. I rubbed his face.

  “I know buddy. She has weapons.”

  “Hey, Macarena!” my speakers suddenly blaring at twice the normal volume.

  Gi moved his arms in a relatively good impression of the old dance. I shook my head and followed Voss. “I hate my life.”

  “They won’t stay buried; you do realize that, don’t you? Plus, that was only a small part of the inventory.”

  “It was an exit strategy, lady.” She hadn’t actually fled but made her way to an area that she deemed safer and waited for me to catch up.

  Truthfully, I didn’t know any of that, but I wasn’t about to let her know.

  “Why were they attacking us? Why is all of this shit attacking us?”

  She gave me a withering look of pity, then shook her hair out and pulled it back into a ponytail. Voss produced a band from one arm to keep it bound up. She was no more bothered than if she was changing workout machines at the gym.

  “They are security. You are an intruder. They are programmed to stop you.”

  “Why are they active?” I growled. “Nothing else in this goddamn world works, but these things still do, and what about the staff? The mutant freaks down there slaughtered them.”

  She was sitting on the edge of a crate. Her tight-fitting jeans and loose blouse were distracting me. I am man enough to admit it, and is that sexist? You’re damn right it is. Still, I was on an artificial adrenaline high and probably couldn’t have done anything, even under normal circumstances. This was very definitely not normal.

  Gi and Sumo were guarding the entrance. We’d followed Voss upstairs one floor. I wasn’t sure, but this seemed like maybe a receiving room that could have also been used for staff training. I had Gi make contact with Bayou while I attempted to interrogate Voss. I wanted answers. She saw where my eyes were looking, and her smile warmed slightly. At some point she’d ditched the battleskin.

  “Yeah, the Furies, as you call them, they are not part of his mandate. Not exactly. Reichert was given some latitude but clearly had underestimated the transgenic changes. They should have been moved to one of the research sites, but he wanted them here.”

  “What were you looking for here?”

  She pursed her lips and crossed her legs. I wasn’t getting answers to that question. Not today, maybe not ever.

  “This facility needs to be destroyed. I’m going to order my team to take it down”

  “Feel free to, Master Sergeant. It won’t matter.”

  I stood up, wobbly from the makeshift chair of boxes I’d been using. I got up in her face and did my best interpretation of my old drill sergeant. I walked over and gripped her shoulder tightly. I could feel the strength beneath that lovely exterior. She was every bit an operator as I was, and she’d kept it hidden until now. I felt something beneath my grip, cables and straps. She was hiding something there; I felt sure.

  “What in the fuck does that mean?”

  She smiled and she batted her eyes at me. Coyly, I believe is the term. She knew the effect she was having on me, and she was letting me know she wasn’t afraid of using it.

  I saw a flash of color in my peripheral vision, and I swiveled my targeting camera to a blank section of wall.

  “Your pet? The Wraith, is that how you survived in here?”

  “It’s not a pet, and yes, it is a formidable protector, as you yourself discovered. We have mutual interests… much as you yourself, Joseph.”

  “You are full of shit, lady.”

  “I deserve that.” She stood and made a show of smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from her clothes. “I have a mission. I do not fail. I manage this by using whatever and whomever I need to be successful.”

  “Half the country is in ruins. Was that your mission?”

  “Don’t be absurd. Who do you think did all this?”

  “Russians, Chinese, the coalition?” I answered, clearly guessing.

  “You are assuming it was only one. Why not all three?”

  I thought it through—the reason our uneasy truces with the other superpowers held as long as they did was they needed us. Having a common enemy is good for business, especially one that is not such an enemy that they won’t also do trillions of dollars in other business with you. No, none of them would trust the others enough to ever team up.

  “It wasn’t them,” I answered. I’d already heard someone had hit them just as hard as the Alliance had been.

  “You were here to do something. If not to stop this, then what?”

  I’d made up my mind now that she was not what she originally claimed. An agent, a spy, maybe just a bit of inside leverage from within DARPA’s own bureaucratic hierarchy. No one trusted anyone anymore.

  “The enemy is here,” she whispered.

  I wanted to challenge that. To tell her she was out of her mind. What I’d already seen here was enough for me to keep my mouth shut.

  “The War.” She made air quotes. “Not sure who that was. Maybe these ass hats, maybe The Third World fanatics. What I am talking about is all this tech. The genetic bioweapons. You’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. These people built it, and now it’s loose. It will do far more damage to us as a species than the rocks and stones being hurled up there.”

  I considered all I had seen in this place. Yesterday, the worst of it had been a family that committed suicide together. Now, when I closed my eyes, I could see the faces of dismembered scientists. I could also feel the ground shaking under the powerful treads of those Decimator warbots, and I could see the mutant bodies spilling out of that foul brine onto the floor in the green lab. All of that added up to a simple conclusion and one that my tortured brain didn’t want to accept. My view of the world yesterday was no longer relevant. Today… well, it was going to get much worse.

  She looked at me, her eyes showing the sadness now.

  “Sergeant,” she said, then thought better of her approach. “Joe… you realize that this technology is out there. They developed nothing in isolation. Others have it and will most definitely use it. Plus, every other Hammer facility on the planet will be like this little piece of hell or Iron River or worse.”

  I said nothing.

  “You’ve seen it,” she continued, ignoring the growing sounds of chaos in the outer corridor.

  I silenced the comms and checked in with the team. They were busy, so Ada interfaced with each of the other battlesuit AIs and came back in near record time with, “We’re fucked.”

  Okay, to be honest, she phrased it slightly more professionally, but my sideways thinking, meat sack mind gave the rough interpretation.

  “Gotta go, Voss. Every nightmare in this shithole is breaking out.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  She headed for the exit, not the one I was aware of. Not the one Gi and Sumo had been guarding. Dammit, this woman is slippery. That was fine, as I’d slipped a small tracker onto her when I grabbed her shoulder. I wasn’t taking any chances with her from here on out. The only reason she was alive was I still needed answers.

  “We have a firing line set-up a hundred yards south of your position,” I heard Bayou say.

  “Damn good to see you guys,” I said moments later as we slid in behind the stacked crates. G-Force and I both had laid down a withering barrage of fire just to make it this far. My gun registered sixteen rounds left. I had a feeling Gi was about the same.

  “Mags!” I yelled.

  Halo pointed to a hard case that had rolled up to a stop nearby. I thumped the key-lock and passed out fresh ammo to the team, filling every nook and cranny of my suit with the black bricks of condensed power. I also grabbed several belts of the railgun ammo. These had done more damage on the Furies. Finally, I saw a replacement for my prized Heidelberg knife. I slipped it back into the empty receiver on my chest rig.

  “Grenades?” I asked.

  They didn’t have any of those. I got it. They had to make choices on what to bring down. The most versatile weaponry first.

  “What’s out there, Prowler?”

  I looked at Bayou quickly. I knew I was a mess, but the way she looked at me tore my heart away. She could obviously see where I was headed.

  “They made monsters.”

  I sighed.

  “And killer warbots.”

  “And cyborgs,” chimed in Gi helpfully.

  “I hadn’t seen that, but thanks for completing the party list.”

  “The woman?” she asked.

  I pulled up the map on my HUD and shared it with my second in command. “I have a tracking dot on her. She’s moving up through some back access. She knows this place, but whatever happens to me, I don’t want her walking away from here. You got me?”

  “Sir, yes, sir.”

  “Don’t kill her and don’t underestimate her. Treat her like an asset. A potentially hostile asset.”

  She nodded and went back to sighting downrange at the shadows moving in the distance.

  “Contact!” Priest yelled from off to our right. Just as quickly, Halo opened up with his specialized MK4-B. That version had several added features, including a predictive targeting system. It sensed movement and threats fed into it by the user’s battlesuit AI. If the last shot appeared to kill, it instantly moved to the next highest priority target. The algorithm was so good it could synch with all the squads’ weapons systems, so no one was targeting the same enemy.

  We had encountered the MurderCrabs when we came out into the tunnel, but that wasn’t what was heading toward us now.

  “Shit… Decimators.”

  As they came into focus, my heart sank. What I had battled down below must have been the basic Titans. The fucking things had nearly destroyed the place and ended me, yet they were essentially the warehouse workers. What we were looking at now was the same… but so much worse.

  It was in its compact form, everything retracted down to about twelve feet high. The legs were folded up and armored treads moved the body forward. I could see gun ports, targeting lasers, Dual Plasma Cannons mounted on each side of the massive ‘head.’ The damn things could reconfigure themselves to whatever the battle space demanded. Here in these tunnels, it looked more like an armored tank, with arms and, well... even more guns. As my squad began targeting the thing, its arms snapped open, revealing a rotating plasma gun that reminded me of a GAU-8 cannon they used on the old A10 Warthogs.

  As it opened up, firing on us, the comparison was even more pronounced. If the Titans came at us looking like this, I was going to call them Warthogs.

  “Cease fire!” I ordered. “We brought knives to a gunfight. Make it difficult for them, but let’s get the hell out.”

  Banshee was here because of me; I wasn’t willing to risk them in a battle we couldn’t win. Halo, Priest, and Gi all plastered proximity mines on the tunnel’s walls and ceiling as we made our way back in the entrance’s direction.

  “Do we have any assets overhead? Can we call in a strike?”

  “Like… nuclear?” Bayou asked. “You want to nuke Tennessee?”

  We were running now, not jogging, but flat out sprinting for daylight. It wasn’t that I wanted to nuke Tennessee, but well, fuck…

  “Yeah, doesn’t everybody? This shit gets out, we’ll never stop it.”

  A blast sounded from behind, followed closely by three more. Rock and dust rained down everywhere, and a section of wall collapsed just ahead of us.

  “No joy, Boss. None of our hardware up there is responding on Milcrypt comms.”

  “Anything on the dropship that could do it?” I knew the answer, but I was out of ideas.

  Bayou offered a nervous laugh. “Nothing, Boss.” I heard the mechanical whine of the Titans moving through the rubble. I could feel their movements vibrating through my combat boots. Jesus, these things were powerful. Then, the tap, tap tapping joined in.

  “Shit, shit, shit… both of the mechanical fuckers are coming at us.” More likely they were just trying to break free, and we were standing in their way.

  “The Wulf is close,” Bayou said, urging me on. I knew my steps had gotten increasingly unsure. That last little sprint had tapped out the last of my energy reserves. I felt her arm on mine. She was pulling but I pulled back.

  “No.”

  I stopped running. I could see the underground garage area just ahead.

  “I’m done, kid. We both know it.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Prowler.”

  “I can slow ‘em down some, maybe even collapse this place.”

  I had the shakes again, much worse than before. My gun hand was shaking so badly, no way I could hit anything I shot at. The rest of the team raced past, heading for the transport.

  “Joe…no!”

  “I’m not trying to be a hero, Deb… I’d love to stick around and help you sort this shit out, but there is nothing here that will save me. But there is a lot here that can fuck up the world. Up there, you just have killer vines. Down here we have that.”

  As if on cue, the monstrous Warthog pulled itself down out of the tunnel entrance with two huge mechanical arms and swung around toward us.

  “Go. Leave me your gear. Get back into orbit and call in a strike on this position. I don’t care if it’s from the Russians or Chinese or whoever’s left up there. Just do it.”

  She hugged me tight. I could see the remnants of my battered soul in the reflection in her visor. She quickly unlatched her helmet, removed it, leaned in close, and pressed her forehead to my helmet. My visor was up. I could smell her sweat, her shampoo, and her need for me to come with her. The monster who lived down the tunnel whined, and I knew that was its blasters warming up.

  Bayou nodded and was gone. A line of rounds arched toward me. The lead bot’s targeting was clearly off as it simply tore long gouges into the walls. Sumo woofed. I turned to see him attacking some of the MurderCrabs coming through. “Sumo, leave it. Go with Bayou.”

  The dog looked at me, confused, then ignored my command. The little bastard had been insolent before. At times, he would obey reluctantly or with attitude, but not completely disregard what I said.