“Sorry about that,” he said sympathetically. “We’ve all been through it. But they aren’t human. Not anymore. Try to remember that.”
Barrie brought the back of a hand up to wipe the bile off her lips. Was this how Anton felt the day he died? Sick to his stomach, afraid to fail, yet determined to go on?
Yes, Barrie thought, now I know. Hale was correct. Anton was a brave man.
Then there was a whirring noise and the elevator began to drop.
Hale and his men stood with weapons at the ready as the platform dropped down into the level below and came to a smooth stop. Again the light was dim, but when Hale looked out into the room beyond, he could see row after row of sturdy storage units.
“Don’t tell me,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “let me guess. You want to go shopping.”
Barrie was fully recovered by that time. “Yes,” Barrie replied firmly. “I do. The fuel cores could be anywhere.”
“Roger that,” Hale replied stoically. “Kawecki and Pardo will guard the elevator while the rest of us walk the walk. I’ll be on point, the doctor will fill the two-slot, and Yorba will walk drag. Let’s go.”
Hale’s rifle wasn’t equipped with a light, not normally anyway, but that deficiency had been corrected by the simple expedient of taping a black flashlight to the barrel. So he slid the switch into the on position, and a blob of white light sprang into existence.
Barrie slung the Bullseye across her back so her hands were free to use a small video camera. It had a light of its own, and the two sources of illumination enabled them to examine the objects on the shelves. None of the items on display looked familiar to him until Barrie stopped to examine a chunk of machinery.
Before he could warn her, the insectoid-looking Patrol Drone came to sudden life. All Hale could do was reach out and jerk her backward as the machine fired from inches away. The blast missed, and as the drone wobbled up off the shelf, Gaines put a burst of automatic fire into it. The machine exploded, peppering everyone with tiny bits of shrapnel, all of which stung.
That was when all hell broke loose.
Having been “awoken” by the destruction of a fellow machine, more than a dozen drones came to sudden life and darted into the air. They produced an ominous humming sound which seemed to come from every direction at once, and they fired on the intruders. The blackness made them almost impossible to see as Hale, Gaines, and Yorba fired up at them.
“Take cover!” Hale shouted, launching one of the Marksman’s small semiautonomous drones. “Then we can pick them off.”
Large cargo modules were stored against the adjacent wall, and offered the only alternatives. So as the rifle-launched drone began to fire on its larger counterparts, thereby drawing them away from the humans, Hale led the team across the open area. There were spaces between some of the containers, and a couple were empty, giving the humans a place to hide.
“This is Echo-Five,” Kawecki said over the radio. “Do you want us to stay where we are? Or come a-running? Over.”
“Maintain control of that elevator,” Hale replied as projectiles pinged the modules around him, “but find cover. It won’t be long before they attack you as well. Over.”
Hale heard two clicks as Kawecki acknowledged the order. Yorba was using the heat-activated reticle to find targets and fire through the module he was hiding in. Striking up a rhythm, he began to destroy the drones with machinelike efficiency. Some of them exploded, strobing the big room with momentary light, while others crashed into storage units, cargo modules, and the floor below.
Hale managed to bag a couple of Patrol Drones with well-placed shots from the Marksman. Then the battle was over, and an uncanny silence spread through the room.
Barrie was the first one who crawled out into the open. “Come on,” she said. “I don’t think the cores are stored on this level, but we need to make sure, and the clock is running.”
Hale gestured, and the team followed her over to the vertical storage units, where the inventory continued. It took about ten minutes to check the rest of the shelves and confirm what she had predicted. “The fuel cores are located somewhere else,” she announced. “Probably on a lower level. We need to get back on the elevator.”
Kawecki and Pardo were waiting for them by the time the rest of the group arrived. They gathered together, and Gaines took the controls.
“Check your weapons,” Hale said grimly, as the platform began to drop. “Because if there are a bunch of stinks on the next level down, they sure as hell know we’re coming.”
But once again there were no Chimera waiting to shoot at them. The only illumination came from regularly spaced pools of light, and they could see that this room was quite different from the one above.
The floor consisted of gratings that crisscrossed a large open space. Below them, and located to either side, a maze of large storage chambers could be seen. They were open to each other and filled with what looked like water. Vertical boxes occupied each chamber, some of which were empty, and others of which contained cylindrical objects.
Above the storage chambers a system of rails could be seen, along with the chain hoists that rode them, and could be positioned anywhere in the room.
“This is it!” Barrie said excitedly, as the platform came to a stop. “They store the fuel rods in those water-filled chambers in order to keep them cool.” From what Hale could see, it looked as if the rods came in several different sizes.
Barrie was gone after that, and he had to jog to keep up with the scientist as she hurried out onto one of the walkways. Kawecki and Yorba remained behind to guard the elevator. Gaines and Pardo followed Hale.
“There!” Barrie proclaimed, as she came to a halt. “See the smaller ones? That’s what we want.”
Hale followed her pointing finger down to a section of storage silos and saw that roughly half of them were filled with silvery canisters. Each was about the size of a standard oxygen tank. That meant they were larger than he would have liked, and no doubt heavier as well, which explained the need for chain hoists.
“It’s my guess that the actual fuel rods are about the same diameter as a milk bottle,” Barrie said, “and twice as long. Each canister probably contains three or four of them, all protected by a steel cylinder and at least three inches of shielding. Inside, nestled between them, is some form of neutron absorber. What we need to do is jerk one of them out of there, load it into one of the shipping containers stacked against the far wall, and take it up to the roof.”
Hale met her eyes.
“Is that all? For a minute there I thought the process might get complicated.”
Barrie’s eyes narrowed.
“The clock is running, Hale… Shouldn’t we get going?”
“All right,” he conceded, turning to Gaines. “Go get one of those chain hoists and slide it over here. Pardo, jump down there, and get ready for the hookup.”
“Gotcha, Lieutenant,” Pardo responded as he laid his weapon on the grating. “We’ll jerk that thing outta there in no time at all,” he said confidently.
The Fury lived in the ever present now.
It didn’t think, not the way humans do, nor did it have a need to. Because its purpose was simple—to execute a carefully prescribed set of activities which, when combined with the functions carried out by other Chimera, would enable the virus that had created them all to conquer the planet.
Any planet.
In this circumstance it meant living where the Fury was designed to live, in a body of water that it considered its own, defending it against anything not Chimeran. So when the not-Chimera appeared on the gratings above, the Fury could hear their discordant speech-sounds, and followed them to a point it knew as a unique water-taste.