The Machine Awakes (40 page)

“You gotta admit, it's pretty impressive.”

Kodiak looked up. Braben was standing halfway along the gallery, hands poking out the pockets of his jacket as he looked down at the submerged pods.

“And this is just one storage facility. There are three others here.” Braben whistled in appreciation. “That's a lot of bodies.”

Kodiak stood slowly and rolled his fingers over the grip of his staser. Braben glanced at him and shook his head. He pulled one hand out of his pocket and pulled the edge of his jacket clear, revealing the red silk lining and the staser in place on his belt.

“Think you can draw that in time?” asked Kodiak.

“Probably not,” said Braben, “but then again, I don't really need to.”

Braben took a step to the side. At the far end of the gallery, Kodiak saw a red pinprick of light as Tyler Smith took aim with his sniper rifle—right at his chest. He raised his hands, still holding the staser pistol, fingers splayed away from the trigger.

“So I was right,” said Kodiak.

Braben laughed. “You couldn't have been further from the truth, buddy.”

“No, I don't think so. I said it was an inside job. And it was.”

Braben nodded down at the pods. “The Fleet doesn't know about any of this.”

“I'd say that's true,” said Kodiak. “But I'm not talking about this place. I'm talking about the assassinations. You're Tyler Smith's handler. You got him in and out of the Capitol Complex. You kept him hidden. Following Caviezel's orders.”

Braben turned to face Kodiak, took a step forward. “Caviezel is right, Von. The Fleet needs leadership.
Direction.
We need to win this goddamn war or life as we know it is over, man. Over!”

Kodiak pursed his lips. “So Caviezel knocks out the Fleet's top brass and then rolls up in a war machine the size of a small moon.” He turned to the gallery rail and lowered his arms onto it as he looked down at the sleepers and nodded to himself. “I guess you'd call that a hostile takeover. Go big or go home, right?”

Then Kodiak frowned and glanced down the gallery, toward Tyler, who stood unmoving at the other end. “So how come Tyler still has his manifest tag in?” he asked. “Caviezel has the tech to remove it without killing the subject. Tyler's tag showed up at the time of the shootings, but not before or after—I guess when he was out of his box, right?”

“The tag is needed to control the sleepers,” said Braben, “so you have to leave it in.” He shrugged. “That's all I know.”

Kodiak snorted a laugh. Next up Braben was going to talk about how he was just following orders, right?

Braben ignored him. “But you're right, Tyler's tag doesn't show up when he's in his pod. The stasis field shields it.” He waved at the pods in the giant pool below them. “None of these will show up on any Fleet system. You can't hide an army otherwise.”

“So what's it for, Mike?” asked Kodiak, turning to his old partner. “Caviezel called Tyler an experiment. So he has an army here, trained Fleet soldiers, marines, personnel. All officially dead. All kept on ice. But for what? Your boss has his own Spider war machine. What does he need an army for?”

Braben shrugged again. “Like I said, I don't ask questions, I just do as I'm told. Come on, Von, we both know how that works.”

Kodiak smiled. Goddamn if he wasn't right. Braben was playing exactly the card Kodiak thought he would.

“Yeah, well, I guess everyone has their price, right Mike?”

A shadow passed over Braben's face. “It's not just about money, Von. Although I don't expect you would understand that.”

“Committing treason isn't something you just decide to do.”

“Haven't you been listening, Von? You want a
reason?
Take a look! There's your reason! Look at what the Fleet is doing. The Spiders are killing us, man. There are fifty thousand pods in this facility, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. We can't keep on like this.”

Kodiak shook his head. “The Fleet didn't put them here, Mike. Caviezel did. And yes, the Spiders are killing us. But look at what this company is doing! These people here, they're not dead, they've been stolen. Kidnapped straight off the Warworlds, death records faked. None of this is the Fleet, Mike. This is the Caviezel Corporation.” Kodiak laughed again. “And you don't even know
why
he's doing it. You never even thought to ask.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Braben moved closer, spittle flying from his lips. “This is
all
the Fleet's fault. All of it. Do you know how many Warworlds there are? How big the front is? Do you know how many men and women the Fleet sends out to war? How many never come back?”

Kodiak banged his fists on the gallery rail in frustration. He gazed out again across the sleepers, rolling his neck, focusing his thoughts. It was pointless arguing with Braben. He'd bought whatever Caviezel was selling.

This wasn't what he had expected to find. Caviezel was kidnapping Fleet personnel off the Warworlds, and now he'd found where they were being kept, but that didn't explain the Spider infection—the AI that Caviezel had deliberately acquired and installed in the JMC Sigma mines. Where did it come from? Was there something else hidden in the Freezer? Braben had said there were four pools storing fifty thousand Fleet personnel in suspended animation. How big was the facility?

Big enough to hide something else?

And was Braben just playing dumb, or did he really not know anything?

Kodiak stood back from the rail. At the other end of the gallery, Tyler had the sniper aimed at him. Braben had composed himself and was smoothing down the front of his jacket.

“What about his machine?” asked Kodiak.

Braben just shrugged. “What about it?”

Kodiak sighed. “Whatever Caviezel thinks he can do, he's wrong, Mike. He didn't build that machine, his robot mines did. They're not following his plan. They're
infected,
taken over by an alien AI. You were there, in the control room. You heard it too. The mines have built a
Spider,
right here.”

Braben's eyelid twitched. “Caviezel can control it.”

Kodiak took a step toward his former partner. “This facility is the source of the Spider operating system. Caviezel managed to extract it and deliberately infect the Sigma mines, but from there it spread to the JMC computer. That infection is going to keep spreading, taking over every computer system in the Fleet if it gets out of the planetary shielding. Caviezel thinks he can control the machine—but even if he's right, even if he can find another Pilot, it won't matter. As soon as he leaves the magnetosphere, the Spider AI will jump to Earth. We'll be finished, Mike. The war really will be over.”

He took another step forward.

“Back off,” said Braben. From his other pocket he pulled Tyler's controller. At the other end of the gallery, the red light of Tyler's sniper moved as the psi-marine adjusted his aim.

“You have to make a choice, Mike,” said Kodiak. He reached out toward Braben. “Come on, we were partners. Special Agents of the Fleet Bureau of Investigation. Our job is to serve and protect the Fleet.”

The blue light cast from the pool below the gallery shimmered on the wall next to Kodiak. He glanced sideways down at the rows of stasis pods. The water from Europa's ocean now had a series of small ripples moving across the whole vast surface.

He looked back at Braben. His old colleague either hadn't noticed or wasn't paying it any attention. Kodiak nodded toward Tyler.

“You think maybe if you use Tyler to shoot me it'll make it easier on your conscience?”

“You got a tool, makes sense to use it,” said Braben.

“That another pearl of corporate wisdom from your boss?”

“He'll be your boss too, once he's in charge of the Fleet.”

Kodiak smiled. “You say that like there's a chance I'm getting out of here.”

“Like you said, buddy. We were partners once. Don't see why we can't be again. There's a place for you with us, Von. Once you realize the truth.” He nodded toward Kodiak. “Maybe time to drop the weapon now.”

The light from the giant pool shimmered. Kodiak lowered himself to a crouch and gently lay the staser on the gallery floor. He smiled up at Braben. “Don't want to drop it in the drink, do we?”

Braben held up the remote control. “Don't try anything.”

Kodiak shook his head. “Wouldn't dream of it,” he said. “So where do we go from here?”

“You going to listen, finally?”

There was a faint splash from far below. Kodiak looked down at the pool. There was something down there, moving around the pods. Servitors? Some kind of underwater maintenance system? Kodiak didn't really think it was a good idea to stick around and find out.

“Look, I think we need to get out of here—”

“I said, are you going to
listen
—”

Water erupted from the pool in a huge spout. Kodiak threw himself sideways against the wall as a giant wave crashed onto the gallery. Braben, caught by surprise, raised his arms over his head as he was knocked off his feet while, behind, the red light on Tyler Smith's sniper tracked up the wall as he too was washed off balance.

Black metal rose out of the pool, water from Europa's subterranean ocean cascading from it in torrents. Kodiak, blinking through the water, saw shapes moving, great angled girders that shrieked as their joints moved. The creature rose up out of the water as its scissored legs straightened out.

It was a Spider. Immature and small, merely the size of a Fleet shuttle, but alive, aware, a living intelligence driving a huge death machine, its black spherical body studded with antennae and ports, eight optical units arranged in a grid on the front. The underside of the machine glowed red as it vented blasts of steam from its combined exhaust and mouth, the heat vaporizing the surface of the pool beneath it.

The Spider was looking at Braben. Braben fumbled for the staser at his belt, but it was too late. The creature unfolded a smaller, knife-like appendage from its front and picked the former agent up, drawing him toward its eyes, seemingly curious but near-sighted. Braben struggled in the pincer, desperately reaching for his weapon.

Kodiak scrambled for his own. A staser pistol might be remarkably effective against electronics, but he wasn't sure what it could do against a baby Spider. All it would probably do was draw attention to him, but even if that got it to drop Braben it was worth a try. His old friend was a traitor to the Fleet, but that didn't mean he deserved to be eaten by an alien war machine.

Kodiak slipped on the wet decking, his fingers sliding the staser farther out of his reach. The weapon slithered across the floor, heading toward the open railing and a long drop into the tank below. Kodiak swore and dived on his front, grabbing the staser just as it hit open air. Lying on the edge of the platform, Kodiak got a quick view of the roiling water below, the sleeper pods now swarming with other Spiders—tiny ones, no bigger than he was. Worker drones, spawned by the monster that was about to tear Braben in two.

Rolling onto his back, Kodiak gripped the staser in both hands and opened fire. White bolts slammed into the body of the machine. Kodiak aimed well away from the claw holding Braben, not wanting to risk hitting him.

The Spider roared as it vented more hot gas. Kodiak rolled onto his side as he was hit by the exhaust reflected from the water below, drying him and the gallery almost instantly. Then he clambered to his feet and hunched back against the wall. He turned and fired again. Where his staser bolts hit, white arcs of energy crackled over the black metal of the Spider's side. The machine kept its firm grip on Braben, but it shuddered under the impacts. It seemed stasers were bad for Spiders.

Kodiak fired again, flicking the pistol's controls to rapid fire as he squeezed the trigger so tight his finger hurt. Bolt after bolt slammed into the machine, energy arcing across it. It shook, Braben flopping in its pincer, crying out as he was squeezed by the convulsing machine, but still it didn't let him go.

Then it dived back into the water, taking Braben with it. Kodiak rolled to the edge of the platform, holding the staser out over the water to loose off more shots, but it was too late. The machine was nothing more than a black shadow descending below the churning water while its drones clung to the stasis pods.

Kodiak pulled himself up, keeping the weapon raised. He looked around, at the floor, ceiling, up and down the gallery, but none of the drones had made it out of the water. The smaller Spiders seemed content to sit on the pods, minding them like they were eggs waiting to hatch.

Something caught his eye on the slick gallery decking. Braben's remote control. Kodiak picked it up and turned it over. There was a crack running across the surface from one corner to the next, but when he depressed the inset button on the top edge, the screen lit up. It was still working.

A movement, at the end of the gallery. Tyler Smith was lying against the wall, his body jerking as Kodiak activated the control. Kodiak pressed the button again and the screen went dark. Then he slipped the control into his pocket and ran over to the psi-marine.

Tyler looked uninjured; Kodiak got his helmet off and pulled the collar of his combat suit down to check his pulse, which was slow and steady, as was his breathing. Tyler's skin was cold and clammy.

The marine's eyes were closed.

Kodiak pulled the control out and activated it. Tyler jerked again, but that was all. Kodiak frowned at the device—the screen was on, but it was blank. He wasn't sure if it was broken or whether he was supposed to input some sequence to take control of Tyler. What he really wanted to do was wake the psi-marine up.

There was a splash from the pool. Kodiak pocketed the device and lifted Tyler across his shoulders. In full combat armor, the psi-marine was extremely heavy. Kodiak, hissing with the effort, his body bent under the load, moved as quickly as he could back along the gallery to the corridor that led to the elevator lobby.