“Kill me.”
It was a reasonable request given the circumstances, but the cyborg knew that his main source of protection lay in the fact that the bugs were unaware of his presence. So if he put the poor wretch out of his misery, there was the possibility that one or more Ramanthians would happen along and realize what had taken place. Especially since Batkin lacked the means to dispose of the body. But the chances of that seemed remote, so the cyborg activated his energy cannon, and there was a whir as the barrel appeared. “I will,” Batkin promised solemnly. “But fi?rst . . . Can you tell me where you were captured?”
Both of Cassidy’s startlingly blue eyes had disappeared by then, and there was a long pause, before the pain-fi?lled orbs opened again. The long, drawn-out answer came as a sigh. “G-l-a-d-i-a-t-o-r.”
Batkin felt an almost overwhelming sense of despair. He was cut off on Jericho, with no way to receive news, but if the Ramanthians had taken the Gladiator, then the Confederacy was in dire straits indeed. “You’re sure?” the spy demanded. “You were aboard the Gladiator?”
“Y-e-s-s-s,” Cassidy hissed. “Kill m-e-e-e. . . .”
So Batkin fi?red the energy cannon, the marine was released from hell, and the rain continued to fall as the cyborg followed the trail east. Even though the spy’s top speed was rather limited, it didn’t take him long to catch up with the tail end of the column. But what Batkin lacked in speed, he more than made up for where sophisticated detection equipment was concerned, which was fortunate indeed. Because it wasn’t long before his sensors detected a substantial amount of electromechanical activity and he made visual contact with four Sheen robots. And, for one brief moment, the machines made contact with him.
But Batkin had disengaged by that time, activated all the cloaking technology resident in his highly sophisticated body, and taken refuge in thick foliage. So, having been unable to verify a contact, the robots continued on their way. As did a large heavily armed human whose eyes were concealed by a pair of dark goggles. The only human on Jericho other than Batkin who wasn’t a slave.
Cautious now, lest one of the robots spot him, Batkin propelled himself out and away from the column. Then, having given himself suffi?cient electronic elbow room, the cyborg sped ahead. After about fi?fteen minutes, he turned back again, located the trail, and snuggled into a treetop. In spite of the rain and the curtain of leaves that served to screen his hiding place, the spy had a mostly unobstructed view of the point where the POWs would be forced to cross a small clearing. With his cloaking measures on, and most everything else off, the agent was confi?dent he could escape detection. And thanks to some truly magnifi?cent optics, Batkin would be able to snap digital photos of each person or thing that crossed the clearing. An important step in verifying whether the bugs had captured the Gladiator or not.
A full fi?fteen minutes passed before the fi?rst poor wretch emerged from the dripping trees to splash through a series of puddles directly opposite the spy’s position. Batkin took at least one frame of each person’s face, and couldn’t help but be moved by the misery that he saw there. All of the men wore beards, most of the prisoners were fi?lthy, and some were clearly lame. A woman who was walking with the aid of a homemade crutch tripped on an exposed tree root and fell facedown in a pool of rainwater. And when a man paused to help her up, a Ramanthian trooper subjected both prisoners to a fl?urry of blows and kicks. And so it went as the long, ragged line of POWs passed before Batkin’s high-mag lens. There were hundreds of them, so the faces began to blur after a while, until the unmistakable countenance of President Marcott Nankool appeared! The chief executive was wearing a beard, but was quite recognizable to a political junkie like Batkin. Still, the cyborg continued to wonder if such a thing was possible, until he spotted Secretary Hooks! A person he had met at a political fund-raiser and was likely to be at the president’s side.
The discovery resulted in a heady combination of consternation, fear, and excitement. Because if he was correct, and Nankool was a prisoner, the sighting was a very big deal indeed! But even as the cyborg continued to snap his pictures, one aspect of the situation continued to trouble him. Assuming that the man who had already crossed the clearing and reentered the jungle was Nankool—then why was he being treated in such a cavalier fashion? Surely, assuming the Ramanthians knew who they had, the president would be treated in an entirely different manner. He would be more heavily guarded, for one thing, transported via fl?yer for another, and held separately from the other prisoners. But what if the bugs didn’t know?
That possibility would have caused Batkin’s heart to race had he still been equipped with one. But the sensation was very much the same as the cyborg took pictures of the Sheen robots and the strange-looking human who trailed along behind the main column. Then the POWs were gone, having been consumed by the jungle, as the column continued on its way. That was Batkin’s opportunity to depart the area and upload his report to one of the message torps above. No, the agent decided, make that two message torps, just in case one went astray. Because of all the reports that Batkin might eventually fi?le—this was likely to be the most important.
Confi?dent that it was safe to leave his hiding place, the cyborg fi?red his repellers, and “felt” the surrounding leaves slip over his alloy skin as he rose up through the thick foliage to emerge into the open area above. And that was when a host of threat alerts began to go off, and the sphereshaped monitor that Tragg liked to refer to as “Tail-EndCharlie,” began its attack. Tragg was a careful man, so even though the overseer wasn’t aware of a specifi?c threat, one of the airborne robots had been ordered to follow along behind the column just in case somebody or something attempted to follow it.
And, had the Ramanthian-manufactured machine been equipped with more potent weaponry, Batkin would have been blown out of the sky. Still, the remote did have a stun gun, which it fi?red. That was suffi?cient to partially paralyze the cyborg’s nervous system, which caused the spy ball to shoot upwards, as his now-clumsy brain attempted to reassert control over the nav function. All this was effective in a weird sort of way, because it was impossible for the alien robot to predict what would happen next and plot an intercepting course. But Batkin had entered a death spiral by then, the jungle was coming up quickly, and the remote stood to win the overall battle if the human cyborg crashed into the ground. In spite of the numbness that threatened to end his life, the spy summoned all of his strength and forced a command through the neural interface that linked what remained of his biological body with its electromechanical counterpart. The response was immediate, if somewhat frightening, as the cyborg suddenly swooped upwards. The monitor pursued Batkin at that point, but the device lacked suffi?cient speed, and it could do little more than follow the spy as he led the robot away from the trail. Meanwhile, as the effects of the stun gun began to wear off, Batkin regained more control over his body. Still hoping to conceal his presence on Jericho, the spy chose to activate his energy cannon rather than the noisy .50 gun that was also hidden inside his rotund body. Conscious of the fact that there wouldn’t be any second chances, the recon ball dropped into the jungle below.
The robot followed, and for thirty seconds or so, the creatures of the forest were treated to a never-before-seen sight as two alien constructs weaved their way between shadowy tree trunks and fl?ashed through clearings before exploding out into open spaces. Then the chase came to a sudden end as the monitor swept out over the surface of a rain-swollen river where it was forced to hover while its sensors swept the area for signs of electromechanical activity.