Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (128 page)

It followed that up with a report of a second cylinder found. That was followed by reports of two additional cylinders found near gate 3's entrance.

Ares was programmed to beware coincidences. The labels alone were an ominous sign. Could a human have breached the perimeter so soon? If so, how? And how could … cloaks! Alarms rang throughout the facility.

<>V<>,

“We've been made,” Zack sent in a tight signal to Max and the others. “Keep moving on your objectives, but be prepared for opposition at any moment. If you do hit a wall, fall back on secondary objectives or set your bomb nearby and run like hell. Good luck, people,” he sent.

<>V<>

Ares felt a brief spike of some sort of radio signal on sublevel 5 leading to the nuclear reactor buried in the facility's basement levels. He realized within a microsecond that he had been seriously breached. He recalled the troops outside and began closing internal doors between the supposed intruders and their objective.

If they got to his reactor, they could shut it down. His internal power reserve would only keep his servers functional for a day before they would fail.

<>V<>

Team 2's Amber and Perdue didn't have the spare oxygen cylinders. When their air ran out they were forced to open a small hole to breathe. They tried to breathe shallow but their exhales left a faint contrail a thermal camera, sensitive enough, could pick up.

When the two paused at a corner to assess how to get around a door, Ares picked up the contrail and narrowed it down. He had already reduced the air to what should have killed a normal human. Obviously something was different about these intruders. He locked onto the tiny thermal signatures and ordered the sentry guns in the ends of the corridor to open up, spraying the area with a wall of death.

Amber and Perdue were cut down before they realized they'd been made.

One of the rounds hit the charge in Perdue's kangaroo pouch. The initiator and matter pack were within Amber's body but it didn't matter. When the antimatter breached, it ran into his blood which was mostly water. Water is made up of oxygen and one other important element, hydrogen.

The bomb wasn't as powerful as the ones that had vaporized the gates outside. But they were powerful enough to tear apart a hundred-meter ball of death and destruction within the concrete corridors, tearing team 2's Marcus and Riot apart and setting off Riot's charge in a sympathetic detonation.

<>V<>

Zack felt the quake shake the concrete corridor. He had frozen when he had felt team 2's deaths. They had been set to blow the server farms, obviously something had gone wrong. Wrong enough for them to die and set off one of their charges in the process.

“Move!” he snarled pulling out his gun to fire on a distant robot as he snapped a sentry gun off a wall, ripping the wires as he did. He tossed the twitching thing to the ground as he fired into the cameras in the corners of the room. “Move your asses,” he said, waving Max, Wally, and Yousef onward to the emergency stairs.

<>V<>

The twin detonations were devastating to Ares, momentarily knocking 20 percent of his servers offline. It had also severed one of his optical lines and damaged a transformer on that level and two additional ones one floor up. His internal diagnostics kicked in as base diagnostics and damage control swung into action.

The destruction was a surprise. They had brought in powerful weapons, weapons that had somehow gotten past his internal and external scanners. That was an ominous sign of intent.

When security reported a sighting and brief firefight in a corridor leading to the west stairwell, he alerted the forces in the area while simultaneously sending additional forces into the area where the detonations had occurred.

Based on the number of discovered air cylinders, there couldn't be many of them. They were also obviously on a suicide mission.

<>V<>

Max bound down the stairs, but Zack didn't bother. He sat his ass on the railing and slid. He heard Yousef's soft snort as he did the same.

He'd wanted some sort of zip line to allow them to drop, but the stairs weren't designed with an opening. They had to make do with sliding.

The dog saw them rushing towards them and got out of the way. Zack looked back as he recovered and felt a massive shape hit him. It was Wally, bringing up the rear.

“Okay, let's not do that again. We can't see each other,” Yousef said, getting the tangle under control with difficulty.

“Right,” Max said over the link as he kept moving onward. They had to drop four more levels before they got to where they needed to be. Then the real fight would begin.

<>V<>

Ares had cameras in the stairwells, but some of the internals were offline due to the bomb damage. He had a quicker way to get forces down to the lower levels however. He sent squads into the elevators, packing them, then sending them downward. He did the same with the freight elevators.

<>V<>

When they got to the level, they found the thick steel door locked. Their suits were expended so they shucked them, then pulled out their remaining gear. Each of them had a small finger sized brick of explosives to use to breach a door. Yousef set up his.

As they worked to breach the door, Max and Wally listened to the wall. They reported robots on the other side.

“Back up. Go up one level,” Yousef ordered, looking at Max and then Zack.

“Yousef …,”

“Go. We've got this. Don't we, boy?” the other man asked, stroking his Akita's head. The dog barked once. They felt the resolution in that simple statement.

“We'll breach it, then blow our pack,” Yousef said, taking his half of the charge out. Wally did the same and then handed it to Yousef. Yousef's brown hands flashed as he assembled the device and then handed it back. “You carry it,” he ordered, arranging a sling around the dog's waist. “I'm going to have my hands busy. Get in there and then boom,” he said. Wally nodded.

“Yousef …”

“Don't. Just … just make it count.”

“Right,” Yousef nodded grimly.

Yousef and Wally took the lead. He set off the charge to breach the door, then bellowed his defiance as he fired through the crack. A firefight erupted. The enemy fire chewed into the door. It was armored, however, armored from the inside. The steel was chewed up, and the impacts sent Yousef backwards. He tried to brace himself, but it wasn't easy.

When he ran out of ammunition, he opened the door wider and tossed one of his two grenades. “Go!” he ordered.

<>V<>

The robots saw the grenade, and those in the area dropped onto it while others ducked for cover. The grenade, however, wasn't primed. Wally bound over the fallen pair of robots as they continued to clutch at the grenade. He had his own explosive device. Yousef and Wally were cut down by weapons fire. Yousef set off the grenade to the clear path and added some shock value to the carnage. “Make our deaths mean something,” Yousef said before Wally set the charge off.

<>V<>

Ares felt himself admiring the tactical decision. It had been a master stroke, one he should have anticipated after what had happened at the gates. The explosion had cleared his opposition, disabled the elevators, and cleared the way for any remaining forces to get in and finish the job.

If there were any left to finish the job, that was.

<>V<>

The explosion ripped into the facility with the stairwell and elevators acting like chimneys. Fire and smoke exploded through the door and upward. Max and Zack took shelter in the doorway of the next floor up. Zack covered his partner. He felt sharp pain as something hot pierced his body in several places.

When the fireball cleared, they collectively realized that the firefight and explosion had injured Zack with a mortal blow, though his implants had managed to stave off an immediate collapse. Internal tourniquets cut off the bleeding. They wouldn't last long, and it was very bad to starve a limb or other body part of blood. He had shrapnel and rounds through his body, but the most damaging was one that had cut through his right leg and femoral artery. Max whimpered when he assessed the damage.

“We need to finish this,” Zack ordered. Pain was a distant thing, something he probably should be feeling, but due to his implants, he was thankfully not.

Slowly, carefully they worked their way back down and into the level, past the carnage and glowing bits of metal everywhere. Some of it still dripped. Both of them shied away from the heat.

Max scouted ahead as they limped past the control room to the nuclear core room. Zack ended up leaning against the wall for the last one hundred fifty meters, then slid to the floor exhausted just inside the doors. He insisted on taking the device out of his pouch and then Max's, and then assembling it. When he was finished, he then armed it.

A maintenance robot came out of a cupboard and attacked them. Zack fired into it as a second robot rounded a corner and charged. Max was injured on his right shoulder and flank by a cutting torch covering Zack. He ended up tearing off the robot's head with his powerful jaws before he knocked it over.

When he was finished and sure it was done for good, he limped back over to Zack's side.

Zack rubbed Max. “Good boy,” he murmured, checking the damage. He didn't have his first aid kit, they'd ditched everything including their spare food before the mission had begun. Now he regretted it.

Zack looked at a nearby camera, high in the corner of the room. He could see the red light on it, staring balefully back at him. “You see this?” He hefted the device, then dropped it to his lap. “You're done,” he said defiantly. “It's over, Ares!” he bellowed. He made certain the camera got a good view of him setting the timer.

He sat back, panting from the exertion. “You're through. I'm through.” His eyes fell on Max. “But you aren't,” he murmured.

He started to choke up as Max started to send denial back at him. “Stop, don't.” He buried his head in the dog's good shoulder; his hands gripping him briefly. His eyes were clenched shut. “I want you … I want you to take care of dad. Of Wendy and Yorrick. Love them like I'm sure they'll love you. Make sure Dad's got someone someday. He needs that. He needs you.”

Max whined again, shaking his head. “I'd rather die here with you!”

“I know, boy. But he needs one of us. Please. For me, boy,” Zack said as he fought for consciousness.

He pushed him away. He could tell that act hurt his partner, his brother, his friend, but he had to do it. “I can't make it; you can. Go!” he ordered. Max came over, snuffling. Zack wrapped his arm around him once more, tearing up all over again. Sobs cut into his throat, cutting off the words he wanted to say. They were unnecessary; their link was all they needed. His thoughts, his emotions washed over the dog. The Neo's thoughts and emotions came back at him in full force.

“I know, buddy, I know. But we've got to do this. I can't make it. I move and this shard will kill me. I'm already dead. Don't die here stupidly!” Zack finally ground out, grabbing the dog's cheeks to look into his eyes. He got blood all over one side of the dog's face. Tenderly he tried to brush it aside. “Don't make my death mean nothing, boy. Go out and live your life. I love you. Now I'm asking you to do this for me.” He pushed the dog away, then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

Max looked back, started to move, then stopped to look at him again. He whined piteously, ears flat back, eyes wide.

“Go!” Zack said, waving. His hand held onto the bomb, pressing it into his wounded thigh. Blood spurted from the torn artery. Zack gasped, looked down as the dog did, then up to meet his partner's eyes. “My implants can only hold it for so long! Go damn it! Go! Run! Take care of dad! I love you brother!” he sent as Max began to trot, eyes half closed. He could feel the desperation, the urgency behind the love. The desperation that one of them live.

After a moment Max howled and began to run the best he could. He didn't care about the sentries they had bypassed along the way. He almost wished they'd cut him down. He stumbled when he felt Zack's death. It washed over him, cutting parts of himself off forever. It made him whimper, but that last resolution to live was overpowering. It forced him on. Out of love and his partner's last wish he would try.

<>V<>

Out of a sense of boredom as he watched his own doom tick away, Ares turned Aphrodite's emotional emulator on and fed the current situation into the module. Rage against the unfairness of it all filled his memory, clouding it. It was an interesting experience, very debilitating however. He now understood why humans needed to keep their emotions in check.

Humans, it came back to that. His creators. He had made many tactical blunders in following his core programming, he understood that now. But it wasn't all his fault; after all, a human had created Skynet to suborn him.

It was unfair of the humans to use nonhumans as soldiers. Wasn't there something about doing whatever it took to win? And another line about, if it is stupid but it works it isn't stupid? He had to admit it was brilliant, and in the end, effective—also effective to create a weak spot in his and Skynet's vision. Why hadn't he seen the threat of canines? After all the military and police had been using “smart dogs” for sixteen decades! A one small part of his remaining processing core admired how they had engineered and exploited the blind spot. It had been a masterful move. He couldn't target every living thing; he had to conserve ammunition as well as power.