Seven Wonders (42 page)

  Aurora's chair at the conference table was swiveled at an angle and the panels in front of it were dark. If there had been anyone to stand by the observation windows and look out across the plains of Taurus– Littrow, they'd see the dust had finally settled around the frozen corpse of Hephaestus, which lay undisturbed, abandoned but not forgotten. There would be time for burial and remembrance later.

  Contrary to popular urban myth, human bodies don't explode in the vacuum of space. Sure, fluids phase into gas, water puffs to vapor in seconds, but the mechanical strength of human skin is more than enough to keep it all contained. Not that Hephaestus was strictly human. Bare skin tough enough for the god to plunge his arm to the elbow into the Nuclear Furnace would not be affected by the moon's lack of any tangible atmosphere. So his body lay still in the silent gray dirt, the Earthlight reflecting sharply from the mirror polish on his breastplate.

  Aurora's control deck flickered, nothing more than a blip of power, like a half-plugged-in television set getting a signal for a second then powering off. As soon as it went off the OLED display embedded in the glass table top glowed blackly in the dark room.

  And then another light. And another. Tiny, insignificant, unimportant. The hard drive spin of data retrieval, a standard, ordinary green flicker of network activity.

  
Snik snik.

  Detecting a lack of activity within, the automatic systems of the moonbase went into an efficient power-save mode, gently dimming unused portions of the base and dragging the internal temperature down slightly, every infinitesimal decrease in ambient life support prolonging the lifespan of the solar power arrays by months.

  As the air cooled and thinned, sound became indistinct, hard to get a direction on. But the corridors of the base were metallic and hard, and the sound that echoed down them equally harsh.

  
Snik snik.

  The lights on Aurora's display went out. SMART's memory core sat on the table, connector lead still plugged in, the LED on the plug still a strong green.

  
Snik snik.

  Down, levels down, ground level. Compared to the rest of the base, the workshop was hot. It had its own furnace – a smaller, safer version of the great atomic maelstrom back in the Citadel of Wonders – but even though the furnace shield had been undamaged in the superheroic battle with SMART, energy leaked from it, warming the huge space, filled with a chaotic mess of twisted componentry and solid metal debris. SMART's headless body lay where Aurora had put it, fused into the buckled wall of the building with his atomic punch. There was a breach here, a tiny tear from the fight. The atmospheric leak was small but significant; the life support in this section of the base was running a little over norm to compensate.

  On an undamaged wall opposite SMART's resting place, a rack of servitor drones hung in various stages of deconstruction. In the building of his super robot, Hephaestus had constructed separate sections and tested each by attaching them in sequence to a basic robotic skeleton. While SMART had been built in the Citadel Forge, the servitors were useful tools and the blacksmith kept a stock in both bases. The ten servitors hung on a rack, a loose and heavy chain drawn across each. They were a mix of mismatched robot parts − a slim mannequin form with oversized prototype gun arm, one with augmented leg pistons, one with a gigantic test claw. Each was different, none were whole.

  
Snik snik.

  One was more complete than the others.

  In the annex control room, a panel flashed, ran an automated script, then shut down once the
ping
of command completion sounded to nobody.

  
Snik snik.

  The servitor that was more complete than the others had a whole body, legs and head, and one thin arm. The other arm, from the shoulder to articulated five-digit hand, was a wide, white metal construction, a freshly repaired spare arm from the SMART robot itself. Compared to the rest of the robot the arm was ridiculous and huge, like something out of a badly drawn manga.

  
Snik snik.

  A light sparked in the servitor's optics, and the black fingers of the SMART arm flexed again,
snik snik.

Lunar dust kicked over the threshold as the door closed. High above, the view from observation windows in the conference room would show more reflections, more moving lights. Everything on the moon that wasn't rock or dust acted like a mirror at noon, lunar time. The thing that moved was mostly dark brown and dark blue, but the wide, lopsided robotic arm was white and dazzling in the vacuum.

  The robot's feet crunched forward, making no sound but sending an uneven vibration up and down the frame as the servitor continually tried to rebalance the SMART arm. Gears spun and pistons pulled. More vibration, more unsound.

  The lunar dust was disturbed again as Hephaestus' body was dragged by one foot, turned roughly in a semicircle, leaving a scour in the dirt that would remain until the end of the universe.

  The black hand on the end of the white arm reached down and took hold of the blacksmith's hammer. The dead hands refused to surrender the weapon, but were no match for the superpowered mechanical systems, and the frozen flesh and bone snapped clean off.

  Wielding the hammer with SMART's arm, the servitor limped back to the airlock.

CHAPTER FIFTY

"Captain!"

  Gillespie turned, scanning the mass of people weaving through abandoned cars on the packed highway and wishing he had a cigarette.

  Everyone was heading away from the city in one great tide. Gillespie couldn't see a single person coming back towards the interstate bridge that connected North Beach to San Ventura proper.

  Then he noticed that what he thought was the blue and red flicker of his Kojak was actually a blue glow from over his head. Looking up, he saw the Dragon Star descend, alighting on the only clear surface – the roof of his car. As her feet touched it, a translucent glowing bubble floated down behind her, attached to her powerstaff by a fine tether. Inside, the chief watched his two detectives gingerly find their footing, accompanied by billionaire industrialist Geoffrey Conroy wearing a strange black costume with a white cross on the front, and a woman with short black hair wearing… an orange prison jumpsuit? He recognized her at once, pleased at least that
somebody
had managed to take Doctor Jean Ravenholt into custody.

  As soon as the Dragon Star snapped the bubble off, the group dropped another inch onto the roof of the car. Sam slid off the side straight away, then snapped a salute to her captain with a smile.

  "That's quite an entrance, detectives," said Gillespie. "I'll take the cost of roof repair out of your next checks." He glanced up at Conroy and Ravenholt, still standing on the roof, and raised an eyebrow. "Good evening, Mr Conroy." He turned back to Sam. "I'm gonna ask you about them later. First up, we need help."

  Sam nodded and quickly surveyed the roadway. Most people were walking towards the suburbs. What space there was on either side of the highway on the narrow isthmus was packed with more people standing and watching the burning city. The area was a popular spot for watching city displays on the Fourth of July or similar occasions for those who weren't committed enough to camp for hours farther up the hills in the prime viewing positions. But this was something else entirely. Everyone looking back towards the city was doing so in complete shock. Well, most people. Some were crying, but some were laughing and pointing too. Assholes.

  The meteor shower seemed to be passing. Although the sky was still filled with shooting stars, no further debris was falling on the safe side of the harbor. A few rocks, much smaller than the devastating lumps that had pelted the city earlier, but still large enough to be seen as they streaked downward, fell on the city. Their falls were slow, sickly somehow, almost drifting downwards in a steady tumble. It was surreal and frightening, like CG from a movie. Sam shook her head and turned away. Joe had his arms folded and watched with a grim expression. He nodded back to his captain.

  "OK, what do we need to do here?"

  Gillespie pointed back down the bridge. "There are police down the opposite end of the bridge. No one is answering their cell, and the radio in my car seems to be out as well. I don't know what's going on in the city, but if we can liaise with the patrol at the end of the bridge, perhaps we can get these people moving farther up into the hills."

  Joe nodded, then looked at the one-way push of pedestrians walking between the stationary cars. A lot of vehicles were empty, engines cold, the drivers and passengers having abandoned them on the bridge and roadway to join the exodus on foot.

  "Talk about pushing against the tide. Come on."

  "Hey!"

  Doctor Ravenholt shouted from the top of the car, and jumped off, pointing a finger in Sam's face. "What about us, peaches?"

  "I'm hoping she is in custody and you aren't trusting her an inch," said Gillespie, glancing at her orange jumpsuit. He watched as the detectives fumbled for a concise explanation, but he'd already turned around.

  "I can vouch for Jeannie," said Conroy. "We're all pitching in tonight."

  Gillespie held his hands up. "OK, whatever, time's a-wastin' here. Let's clear this up first, then we can debrief." He began to walk off.

  The Dragon Star pushed off into the air. Already the flow of pedestrians had snarled around the vehicle on which she'd landed as people called out to her with outstretched arms, begging or demanding assistance. She flew up just a few yards, but enough so everyone could now see her, from the end of the bridge to the furthest line of people halfway up the North Beach highway. Her powerstaff flashed, calling everyone to attention.

  "Enough," she said, the authority in her voice overcoming her physical youth. "We have come to help and we expect full cooperation. You will obey all instructions of the law enforcement authorities." Her voice was loud,
superpowered
loud, and echoed out in the night. Everyone heard, some people cheered and clapped, and the exodus resumed their slow shuffle into the hills, perhaps at a slightly faster pace than before.

  The Dragon Star lowered herself, and pointed her staff at the five unpowered humans. Gillespie took a step back and held his hands up.

  "I'm needed here. You take the others wherever is best."

  The superhero indicated her understanding. "Come," she said, a blue bubble of energy growing from the end of the powerstaff and enveloping Joe, Sam, Conroy and Jeannie. The Dragon Star turned and pulled her charges behind her into the air as she flew to the city side of the bridge.

  Gillespie watched them for a moment, then turned back to his other officers. He really wanted a cigarette and, against all odds, he really wanted a robot coffee.

Sam had no clue how long they'd been chaperoning pedestrians and directing traffic, trying to get the bridge clear. She needed to rest – she and Joe both did – as they hadn't really stopped since the battle in Moore–Reppion Plaza that had killed Tony Prosdocimi, but so long as men, women, children, babies, even cats and dogs needed assistance in reaching the relative safety of the North Beach hills, they'd keep working.

  It was only when Joe started talking to her that she realized she wasn't listening. She'd spent the last couple of hours on autopilot, her conscious brain taking a much-needed break.

  "I'm sorry, what?"

  Joe raised his voice, thinking perhaps she just hadn't heard him above the hum of the crowd.

  "I said, it looks like the main fires are under control."

  Sam craned her neck over her shoulder at the cityscape behind. Most of the skyscrapers were now dark, not only because the power grid had either been shut down or burnt out, but because the ferocious yellow of the fire had almost vanished completely. Sam half-wondered what Aurora had been able to do, his power being based on channeling nuclear energy from the sun − fire from the stars, quite literally.

  "Do you think they found the core yet?"

  Sam shook her head, then shrugged, then rubbed her forehead. Now she really was too tired for such advanced thought processes. "I think we would know by now. Any news, Dragon Star?"

  The superhero had just arrived from the opposite side of the harbor, where she had ferried a disabled man and his family over the top of the still-thick stream of people. There was little room on the roadway, so she hovered above Sam and Joe, forcing them to crane their necks awkwardly to see her. Sam wished she could lift the whole crowd across, but it was impractical and she knew only a select few – the disabled, infirm and elderly – could get a ride in the Dragon Star's magical bubble.

  The Dragon Star stared into the city, then spoke. "I have not heard anything."

  Joe nodded. "Well, yeah, we'll find out when they do, I guess. How's the progress on North Beach?"

  The Dragon Star rotated on her axis in the air, gently coasting around to face away from them. Sam didn't know how far she could see, or hear, or whatever, but it was a little unnerving. Still, she'd been a tremendous help, moving not only people but cars and even buses.

  "The beach and foothills are becoming crowded, but the area is safe. Regular law enforcement and emergency ambulance services will be able to get in soon. There are helicopters there already, both police and rescue. People are traumatized and unprepared for a night in the open, but they still hold hope."

  "To be expected," Sam said. "We've been lucky. The city is used to weird happenings. Even on such a grand scale, they've handled it well."

  There was a crackle, and right above Sam's head, the Dragon Star's powerstaff kicked in the air. The hero gained height a little, and the staff twitched again. Her cloak billowed in the breeze, lit from underneath by the pulsating light of the device.

  Sam could sense something different about her. The superhero may have the body of a teenage cheerleader, but Sam had to remind herself that the alien intelligence animating the body was just that, alien, a fact betrayed by incorrect body language and, well, an inhumanly cold manner. Right now, she was rigid, tense, listening and looking for something. The Dragon Star raised her powerstaff, which buzzed hotly in the air.