The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge (35 page)

“The Covenant,” Phoebe explained. “They're real.”

“The…the…” He tried to comprehend. “And what the hell is THAT!?”

Phoebe had to suppress her scream.

In the cloven skull of the nearby Watchman, something was writhing. It had an oily, eel-like body covered in wiry tendrils that connected to circuit boards in the soldier's Computator brain. The creature sparked and spasmed, emitting a high-pitched decompressing sound as it tried in vain to detach itself. Its grotesque round mouth, like an ulcer filled with layers of bronze pin teeth, pulsed as it gasped for air. Then the thing was still.

“It's…” Phoebe struggled for the words.

“…a mehkie,” gasped Micah.

“Augmented robotics,” her father said grimly.

“Puppet slaves,” Orei spat at Jules.

Now she understood why Watchmen were such a secret, why they weren't sold in Meridian. Within their heads lay the dark truth of the Foundry.

A quaking boom. Dust streamed from above.

“It couldn't be,” her father gasped.

Another jarring blast.

“Move!” Orei shouted, her apparatus measuring like mad.

She sprinted out of the torture chamber, followed by the others. They emerged into the corridor, only to be staggered by a blinding blue explosion. The way they had come was now choked with smoke and Dervish rifle fire. The chraida whizzed overhead, and the flail-armed mehkan held up the grievously wounded hunchback. The Covenant team was retreating.

Orei barked orders. Korluth ran to assist them. The commander continued down the corridor to secure the way ahead.

BOOM.

The escape route collapsed. A roaring wall of fire and burning debris. Through the haze, a monstrous figure appeared, filling the hall and cloaked in flame. Pillar legs, cannon arms. A constellation of lights glared across its sweeping body. Its beacon eye found them.

“Titan!” Jules screamed.

Phoebe saw its symphony of artillery churn to life.

They plunged back down into the torture chamber. Cannon fire pulverized the corridor. A familiar shriek burned into Phoebe's marrow.

She would know it anywhere. The scream of a chraida.

Orei conferred with the battered remnants of her team. Jules looked around frantically.

“Trapped,” the commander said, her voice brittle.

“No!” Phoebe cried.

“We're toast,” Micah panted. “Dead end.”

She looked around and realized he was right—the torture chamber had but one entrance. They were cornered.

A volcanic explosion in the hall. The Titan was coming.

The Covenant began to pray.

“Down,” Jules said suddenly.

Orei looked at him, her assemblage ticking and assessing.

“The pipes, back in the vesper plant.” Her father rushed to the open tube where Micah had been imprisoned. “They run under the floor.” He aimed his rifle down into the narrow cell and opened fire, twirling out a barrage of bullets.

Walls shook, ringing the torture instruments like iron bells as the Titan approached in a storm of cannon fire. They heard the clacking march of an organized platoon o
f
Watchmen soldiers. The Foundry had finally broken through.

“Come on!” Jules shouted.

Orei addressed her warriors one last time. They snapped their fists over their blood-red dynamos. She shoved past the humans and leaped down into the narrow tube to hack through the bottom, now perforated by gunfire. Jules followed, and then Micah, who hesitated for a brief instant at the thought of going back in that torture tube.

Then it was Phoebe's turn. Her father's open arms waited below. She dropped into the blackness and felt his strong hands catch her.

The last thing she saw was Korluth's unreadable face staring down at her as the hunchback's blue detonations mingled with the Titan's angry red fire. Only then did she realize what was happening—the Covenant team had been ordered to stay behind. Korluth gurgled something, then slammed the lid.

She didn't know his words, but she knew his meaning.

Praise the gears.

he ceiling of the crawl space was inches above their heads, and it trembled with explosions. Phoebe wriggled after the others, wedging herself through the nest of plumbing and bundled wires. She could barely see anything, just a few patches of light poking up from below.

“Eighteen percent rise in heat ratio,” came Orei's voice.

“The smelting factory is that way,” replied her father. “Too dangerous. Follow me.” He took the lead, and they crawled after him, squeezing between ducts and channels, finding a path through the chaotic knot of conduits.

Phoebe peered down through a gap in the stretches of pipe and saw some kind of shipping zone. Watchman workers in Multi-chain conveyors and Over-cranes were loading a fleet of bullet-shaped trains. The shipments zipped through a semicircular array of tunnels, hovering silently along cylindrical tracks that glowed purple. Magnetic rails, she realized.

Phoebe hurried to catch up with the others. There was barely enough room to crawl, and she knocked her head and got tangled as they slid under the skin of the Citadel.

“Here,” Jules called out. “Down here.”

Orei tore a gash in the metal duct, wrenched it open, and slipped through. The rest of them followed, dropping onto a rusty boxcar, then lowering themselves to the gritty ore.

This was a graveyard of trains. It was crowded with rows of obsolete engines and wood-paneled carriers. Crushed boxcars were piled like demolished Autos at a junkyard, and pulleys dangled from busted equipment. Cracked trestles and lumber lay in rotting mounds. A set of those magnetic rails cut right through the middle, but these were not glowing purple like the others. They swept to the left, winding out of sight.

Orei withdrew a white spike from the confines of her ticking disks and struck it on the side of a boxcar. It resonated like a tuning fork, and strips along its pointed end flared open. She plunged it into the ground, letting the device ring for several seconds in the ore before retrieving it.

“Move,” Orei pointed to the right, past the wreckage of the train yard. A tunnel led into the darkness, its mouth cordoned off with age-worn barricades.

“The E-Four line?” Jules asked. “No good, it's collapsed.”

“There,” Orei insisted. “Immolation in five-point-four-seven ticks.”

“Wait,” Phoebe said. “What about Dollop?”

“Yeah! We ain't leavin' without him,” stated Micah.

Orei swept about to face them. “Seven Covenant left to rust. All for pathetic bleeders,” she snarled. “No delays.”

“We either get out now or not at all,” Jules said.

“Not without Dollop!” Phoebe shouted.

Orei froze, the sensors on her body ticking like mad.

With a sudden, vehement swing of her arms, she knocked the kids away.

A massive wooden beam smashed into the ground where they had been standing, exploding in a shower of moldy splinters. A long black shape leaped into view. A caged bulb mounted to a strut illuminated his cadaverous face.

“No escape,” Kaspar growled.

The air shook as her father fired. The soldier dodged with alarming quickness, but two rounds punched his chest, knocking him back. He kept his footing. White epoxy bled onto his bullet-proof flak jacket.

Kaspar sprang at them, farther and faster than was humanly possible.

Orei intercepted in a whistling blur. She snared his leg and redirected him in midair. Kaspar rebounded and swung at the mehkan. Her rings snapped and slid, parting so that he only managed to pound at the air. She cinched her blades closed to hack his hands, but he was too quick.

“Move!” Orei commanded as she kept Kaspar at bay.

Jules hurried the kids into a maze of stacked cargo transports, charging toward the collapsed tunnel in the distance.

A creaking groan behind them. They turned to see a tower of boxcars toppling in their direction.

Jules and Micah dove one way, Phoebe the other.

CRASH.

She looked back to see Kaspar leering at her.

Orei sprang at him again, and they tumbled out of sight. Phoebe was cut off from Micah and her father, separated by the fallen wreckage.

“Phoebe!” came their voices.

“Go! I'll meet you up ahead!” she shouted.

The overturned pile of boxcars had spilled over the corroded trains lining the tracks. She raced alongside until she found a gap between two carriages.

“Come on!” Micah shouted. “Climb through!”

She grabbed the edge of the car and placed a foot on the coupling. There was a squeal as the train was propelled forward. The cars collided in a splintering crunch, and Phoebe fell back, cut off again.

Kaspar rocketed at her. She tried to scramble beneath the locomotive, but he snatched her ankle and flung her out into the open. She tumbled across the dusty ore, and he was on her in a flash. He grabbed her by the front of the coveralls and lifted her, a sadistic grin stretching his face. She screamed and tried to kick at him, but her attacks were futile. He carried Phoebe effortlessly, holding her at arm's length.

“NO!” her father cried, crawling from under the train car with Micah. Orei, too, was sprinting for her, but she was unsteady, a cracked ring hanging loose from her body. They weren't going to make it to her in time.

Kaspar hauled her over to a rusty orange hook dangling from a chain.

She screamed again.

“Three!” came the collective cry in the throne room.

On the giant screen, another beast was shredded by Foundry fire.

A Watchman distributed chilled champagne among the staff. Bodies were already being recovered from the detainment block, but a handful of stalwart intruders still held out near the Armory. The entire control room watched the monitors, counting down as each target was dispatched.

The directors, however, were not impressed. They stood like a firing squad before the Chairman. But Goodwin stood tall, shoulders squared and hands clasped behind his back.

“This is a dark day.” Director Malcolm's leathery face folded into a frown.

“An unacceptable oversight,” berated Director Obwilé.

“Agreed.” Goodwin nodded. “We must be more diligent.”

“We?” Director Layton scoffed. “This is unforgivable. What happened to the Citadel's so-called impervious security?”

“Jules happened. And I have dealt with him accordingly,” Goodwin said, motioning to the video feeds.

“Your coddling of Plumm caused this,” she retorted.

“No,” the Chairman corrected coolly. “He leaked the relevant intelligence weeks ago, which means this little scuffle was unavoidable. However, my
coddling
,” he emphasized, “enabled us to extract a full confession so that we may properly manage this threat in the future.”

“Two!” the staff cried in unison as a Titan vaporized another intruder.

“How could you allow this?” Director Obwilé scolded.

“I am”—Goodwin took a step toward him—“the sole reason it is over. Imagine what would have happened had I not personally deciphered their intent and thwarted their attempts to infiltrate the Armory.”

“This was on your watch!” Director Layton blasted.

“To my knowledge, no one foresaw this. And had I somehow managed to divine that the Covenant would surface, you would have dismissed it as a ridiculous fairy tale.”

Director Malcolm paused to touch his earpiece. “The Board understands your position,” he explained with a smile. “But we require some assurances.”

“A sweep of every sector is currently under way, along with a thorough investigation of the incursion,” Goodwin explained. “Ladies and gentlemen of the Board, this was a desperate attack and far from successful. We have incurred only minor damage, limited entirely to non-vital sectors. And thanks to preparedness and decisive action, it is being mitigated as we speak.”

“It remains an unconscionable breach and—” Director Obwilé started.

“It is over,” Goodwin declared, “because
I
stopped it.”

As if in response to his words, a hundred darkened screens around the control room flickered on simultaneously as power was restored to the disabled Omnicams. There was another cheer from the staff.

“Selkirk,” Goodwin called across the room, not breaking eye contact with Director Obwilé. “Turrets.”

“Yes, sir!” shouted the technician.

A handful of screens flashed as Dervish turrets leveled the remaining creatures from behind, demolishing them in a white hailstorm of bullets.

“ONE! ZERO!”

The control room rang with the joyous popping of champagne corks. The directors did not celebrate, but the severity in their demeanor eased. Only Director Obwilé
seemed dissatisfied. He stepped away from the group, adjusting his glasses to scrutinize the wall of Watchmen feeds.

Goodwin savored the triumph.

“Thank you all for your questions,” the Chairman concluded, spreading his hands and guiding them to the exit. “Now let's leave our team to wrap things up here. We have important matters to discuss.”

“Such as?” Director Layton inquired.

Goodwin looked at the directors with his icy, shining eyes.

“Retribution.”

Phoebe shrieked.

She kept trying to kick free, but Kaspar clamped her legs and tensed, rearing back to impale her on the rusty hook.

A silver blur whipped down from above and wrapped around his head. Stumbling back, he dropped Phoebe and clawed at the thing over his face. As she scurried clear, Jules let loose with his rifle, blasting away at the soldier. The white rounds pinged off the crane hook, and Kaspar leaped away.

He tried to seize the thing locked around his head, but it kept changing shape, transforming to evade his grasp. Phoebe stared at it in wonder.

Orei attacked once more, spinning at Kaspar with renewed ferocity. He tore the silvery form from his face, then engaged the wounded commander.

Dollop reassembled himself and took Phoebe's hand to flee.

“I f-f-found you!” the little mehkan cried.

“You saved me!” she heaved.

“Here!” Micah called out, cutting between two boxcars to make a getaway. Jules covered them with his rifle while they escaped. Phoebe looked back to see Kaspar grab Orei by her wounded appendage and hurl her at a metal strut. He struck at her, but she twirled away, and his blow bent the massive beam as if it were rubber. She staggered to her feet.

Kaspar was going to kill Orei. There was no question about it. And then he would kill the rest of them.

Phoebe had to do something.

She sprinted after her father, Micah, and Dollop, racing toward the collapsed tunnel. Rotten wooden railroad ties had been ripped up and tossed aside in craggy mounds of debris. Beyond those, affixed to the side of a pillar, she spied a battered metal control box.

It came to her in a flash, crystal clear and complete.

She skidded to a halt. “Wait!”

“What?” Micah blurted.

“I need your help. To get Kaspar.”

Micah's eyes nearly popped out. “Don't be psycho.”

Her father and Dollop stopped up ahead.

“Come on!” Jules shouted urgently.

Phoebe looked at Micah, galvanized.

“No guts, no glory,” she smirked.

She quickly explained her plan to them and grabbed a couple of rivets off the ground. Then she raced back toward the clanging sound of combat.

Kaspar appeared atop a boxcar, holding Orei overhead. Slashes across his face leaked dark blood. He hurled her body down in a clattering heap, and then pounced, swinging both fists in an arc. She rolled sluggishly away as Kaspar slammed a crater into the ground. His flesh bulged and quivered beneath his tattered gloves, sinewy folds swelling, veiny pistons pumping.

A rusty bolt cracked into the side of his head.

Phoebe didn't get the chance to throw another.

He charged her in a fog of bloodlust.

She ran, faster than she had ever run before, faster than she ever thought she could. She scrambled over the mound of torn-up rails, spikes stabbing and splinters scratching her face. Kaspar ripped the rubble aside.