Labyrinth of Night (39 page)

‘Oh, no,’ he whispered. ‘Miho.’

Boggs lurched to his feet, yanked the Steyr off his shoulder, and began to race across the red sands toward the City.

They had stayed off the comlink channels to avoid giving themselves away to L’Enfant and his men, so they had to touch helmets and use hand signals to communicate with each other. As soon as they had exited the base through the Module One garage doors, Sasaki had suggested that they hide in the C-4 Pyramid.

It seemed like a good idea. Nash knew that it would only be a matter of minutes before their absence was discovered. He also realized that L’Enfant would probably have the
Akron
searched, possibly before any place else. Like it or not, the plan for smuggling the science team aboard the dirigible was now dead, as was his scheme to hide himself and Sasaki in the observation blister. All they could do, at least for the time being, was make a run for the city.

Escaping into the City was almost equally risky, though, since monitor cameras ringed the site. Yet if no one was watching the screens in the command module, they just might be able to get into the C-4 Pyramid and hide within the Labyrinth until it was time for the
Akron
to depart. Boggs had to get the dirigible out of Cydonia within the next twelve hours; if they could hold out inside the City for just that long…

Grabbing Sasaki’s hand, Nash ran for the distant pyramid. It hurt like hell to make the ten-league hop-skips in the lesser Martian gravity; every time his boots touched ground, his swollen stomach muscles shrieked in agony, yet it was the quickest way to cover the long distance between the base and the ancient necropolis. Sasaki didn’t have any trouble keeping up with him, although she hesitated when they approached the first of the stalk-mounted surveillance cameras. Nash was tempted to shoot out the lens, but then he realized that, the next time someone attempted to use that particular camera, it would provide a clue to their whereabouts. He let it go and kept running.

They had almost made it to the pyramid when something came through the doorway.

It was nine feet tall, metallic and jet-black, although odd streaks of dark red ran chaotically across its seamless form like imperfections in a sheet of mica. Human-like in its general form, it had trunk-like legs which shifted on double-jointed knees and wide footpads which oddly resembled the MRV. In fact, the behemoth was akin to a CAS; with its wide, massive body, rotary joints, low sloped head and vaguely hunched back. But its accordion-jointed arms were gorilla-like in their length, almost touching the ground as it lumbered forward, and the hands were massive, sharp claws.

Nash stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth gaping open; Sasaki halted with him, grabbing onto his suit for support. A single, cyclopian eye moved toward them within a narrow eye-slit and stopped as it locked onto them. The leviathan paused for a moment, then ponderously began to advance toward them. Behind it, a second creature—identical to the first except for a different pattern of red markings—was emerging from the stone doorway.

‘Back off,’ he said softly. Freeing himself from Miho’s grasp, he took two steps backward, warily raising the Steyr into firing position. ‘Take it slow, but back away…’

Sasaki didn’t respond; she stayed in place, staring at the black monster. Nash remembered that his comlink was switched off and she couldn’t hear him. He hesitated for a moment, then stabbed the appropriate button on his right gauntlet’s wristpad. ‘Miho!’ he snapped. ‘Back off!’

She jerked a little at the sound of his voice, then switched on her own radio; however, she still didn’t move away.
‘August, I don’t think it’s…’

At that instant, the first creature raised its vast arms and lurched toward them.

Nash heard Sasaki’s scream through his headset. He lunged forward, shoved her out of the way, then raised the Steyr to his shoulder and clenched the trigger with his right forefinger. There was the muted noise of firecrackers next to his ear; he felt the rifle stock recoil against his shoulder, almost knocking him off-balance, as spent shells danced across the back of his forearm.

His aim was good; a jagged line of thumbhole-size pockmarks appeared in the creature’s wide chest. The thing jerked back slightly, its movements less fluid, more mechanical—now, for the first time, Nash realized that it was some sort of robot—but it didn’t fall.

The second robot, unharmed, continued to advance steadily as the first behemoth recovered itself. Claws outstretched, it stalked in their direction.

‘Get out of here!’ Nash yelled. He opened fire again, still focusing his aim on the closer of the two creatures. Sasaki finally reacted; as she flung herself out of the way, the robot’s right arm swung at her, its immense claw viciously slashing through the space where she had just been standing. If she had still been there, she would have been disemboweled.

Nash retreated a couple of steps, still firing at the first robot. More bullet-holes marred its thick skin; it seemed to have been slowed down, but it still kept coming at him. Now the second leviathan had turned and was heading straight for him. He let loose another few rounds, then whirled around to make a leap…

The toe of his right boot snagged a rock; he tripped and pitched forward to the ground. Nash instinctively threw his arms up in front of his helmet to protect his faceplate from being cracked; his bruises shouted with agony as he smashed into the rocky soil. Ignoring the pain, he grabbed for his gun…

‘Nash…!’
Sasaki screamed.

And found it missing. It had been flung aside in the fall. In near-panic, he glanced about and saw it lying on the ground about six feet away to his right. He could hear his own breath rasping in his helmet as he scrambled for it…

‘Roll left!’
Sasaki shouted.
‘Left!’

Nash didn’t think twice; he tucked in his arms and twisted to the left. He caught a glimpse of a clawed fist ramming into the ground where he had been lying.

He looked up and saw one of the robots towering above him, its dark form eclipsing the sun. It tore its claws out of the ground and raised them above its head…

There was the rapid
poppa-poppa-poppa-poppa
of full-auto gunfire. The creature staggered back and suddenly Boggs was shouting in his ears:
‘Move it, move it, move it…!’

Nash gasped and heaved himself off the ground, hastily crawling on hands and knees out from under the unexpected fusillade. He felt hands grasp his wrists and haul him up; his feet found the ground and he barreled forward, catching Sasaki in the midriff. She grunted as the breath was almost knocked out of her, but let herself be carried backward past Boggs, where he stood spraying bullets at the advancing creatures.

‘Haul ass!’
Boggs yelled.
‘Get out of here! Move, move, move…!’

Nash had a fleeting wish to go back and retrieve the lost Steyr, but Sasaki was already pulling him away. He glanced back and saw that the robots were still on their feet; they were less than a dozen feet away from Boggs, who still had his gun wide-open on them. ‘Get out of there!’ Nash yelled. ‘You can’t kill ’em!’

‘No fucking shit!’
All at once, Boggs threw down his Steyr, turned and leaped away from the monster in the lead, barely in time to escape another slashing swipe by its claws.
‘Out of ammo! Run for it! They’re gonna…’

‘They ain’t gonna do jack shit,’
a new voice said in their headphones.

Nash looked around. A hulking figure in a combat armor suit stood behind them; the maw of the integrated machine-gun in its left arm was raised and pointed toward the three of them. He could see Marks’ scowling face through the tinted glass of the canopy.

They barely had a chance to dodge aside before he opened fire.

Kawakami had an eerie sense of detachment as he watched the TV monitors. One screen displayed one of the minotaurs and Sergeant Marks, the image caught by the camera positioned near Pyramid C-4. On another screen, replacing an earlier view of the habitat’s exterior, was a close-up shot of the same robot as seen through the fish-eye lens of another camera mounted on the carapace of Marks’ CAS; in the background lurked the massive form of a second minotaur. It was as if he were watching an action movie on TBS back home in Osaka; all that was missing was a melodramatic music score.

He could, however, hear the brash rattle of gunfire over the comlink which threatened to drown out Marks’ voice:
‘They’re taking the rounds,’
Marks said in an almost calm voice, as if he was narrating a documentary.
‘I’ve stopped ’em, but they ain’t falling. What’s this damn thing made out of anyway?’

‘Lay down suppressive fire and hold them in place.’ L’Enfant was bent over Kawakami, balancing himself on the back of his chair. Kawakami glanced up at him; the commander’s face was completely stoical. ‘Let the civilians get out of there, then…’

On the screens, they could see the first minotaur take a lumbering step forward; its armor almost seemed to absorb the bullets, like an ebony sponge soaking up water.
‘They’re not staying put!’
Marks’ voice rose in panic, his matter-of-fact tone suddenly gone.
‘I’m giving them the works, but they’re not…!’

‘Sergeant!’ L’Enfant snapped. ‘Your suit’s ECM will keep them at bay. Now hold your position and lay down more fire. Lieutenant Swigart has lifted off in the Hornet and she can take them out with her cannon. Just…’

‘Goddammit, Commander, the ECM isn’t doing shit to them!’
The robot took another step forward; its long arms were rising menacingly, almost as if to embrace the CAS in a bear-hug.
‘I can’t…!’

‘Hang in there, Ah’
The new voice belonged to Swigart.
‘I’m coming in for a strafing run right this minute, so just…’

‘Commander L’Enfant!’
Now it was Tamara Isralilova on the comlink.
‘Motion detectors have picked up movement near the periphery of the base! It’s coming our…!’

‘Not now, Dr. Isralilova,’ L’Enfant said. ‘Keep monitoring its movements.’

‘Holy shit, Megan!’
The minotaur almost filled the lens of the CAS camera.
‘Get in here and save my ass! This fucker’s about to…!’

‘Hold your position, Sergeant,’ L’Enfant insisted. ‘That’s an order.’ He paused, then added with absurd calm, ‘And both of you…watch your language.’

‘Watch my…? Sweet Jesus, sir, it’s only six feet away!’

‘That’s far enough. Just keep your…’

‘Madman!’ Kawakami’s temper, held under tight rein until this moment, snapped in that second. He slapped his headset lobe and shouted, ‘Get out of there, Sergeant! The ECM will not deter them! They’re too big for the…!’

‘Shut up!’ L’Enfant screamed.
‘Shut up!’

He grabbed the back of Kawakami’s chair and wrenched it upward, and Kawakami was suddenly spilled to the floor. As the Japanese scientist hit the carpet, his headset was torn off his head, breaking his radio contact. Stunned, his breath knocked out of him, Kawakami looked up to see that L’Enfant had already taken his place in front of the console. ‘Sergeant, this is Commander…!’

Kawakami mercifully could not hear the rest; lying on the floor and staring up at the screens, though, he could still see everything.

In a single, violent thrust, the minotaur hurled its right claw straight through the transparent canopy of Marks’ CAS.

‘Marks…!’
L’Enfant howled.

As one screen went blank, the other monitor continued to function, displaying the horror of the moment: frosty oxygen-nitrogen, tinted scarlet by the sergeant’s blood, exploding from the shattered canopy as the massive exoskeleton fell backward, its arms and legs twitching either from shorted-out servomotors or Marks’ death-throes.

As the CAS collapsed, the minotaur withdrew its arm from the wreckage; its claw was bathed in blood…

‘Swigart!’ L’Enfant shouted. ‘Get in there and waste ’em!’

In that second, Kawakami caught a glimpse of something on the remaining active TV screen. The robot which had destroyed the CAS was already lurching onward, passing out of range of the camera. But then, the second minotaur—which, up until now, had done little more than advance behind the first one—strode to the ruined CAS and stopped.

Then, incredibly, it bent over slightly, grasped the thick armored ankles of the CAS, and began to drag it backwards towards the doorway of the pyramid.

All at once, as a white-hot flash of insight burned through his mind, everything became clear to Shin-ichi Kawakami.

His eyes locked on the screen, he fumbled for the lost headset, found it, slapped the mike against his face. ‘Lieutenant Swigart!’ he shouted. “This is Kawakami! Do not fire on the second robot! I repeat,
do not open fire on the…!’

‘What are you doing?’ L’Enfant whirled on him; his face was a mask of anguish and rage as he reached down to grab a handful of the scientist’s jumpsuit. Before Kawakami could speak, he ripped the headset from his head and threw it aside.

‘I thought I told you to shut up!’ L’Enfant snarled, hauling the elderly man upward as his right arm pulled back into a fist. ‘Do you see what you did?
You killed my men, you fucking…!’

‘Look at the screen!’ Kawakami shouted, pointing at the console behind the commander. ‘Don’t you see? Look at the screen! The other one, it’s…!’

He stopped. On the screen, he could see the first minotaur being kicked backward, its carapace splitting open as high-caliber bullets pounded into its armor. Arms flailing spasmodically, it staggered for a couple of seconds before it fell like Marks into the red sand as an inert mass of metal.

In another instant, the second minotaur was similarly riven by a long burst of 30mm shells; its claws released the CAS as it was violently thrown backward by the bullets. If it could ever have been described as being alive in the first place, it was now dead.

‘It’s over,’ L’Enfant breathed, his tantrum suddenly leaving him as he watched the display. ‘It’s over…’

He carelessly released Kawakami from his grasp, letting the scientist crumple back to the floor. His rampage halted, he let out his breath and blindly stumbled backward, finally collapsing into a chair as he capped his right hand over his headset. His face seemed to have lost all its blood; the man looked older now, no longer invincible.