The Soldiers of Halla (24 page)

I motioned for Mark to go first. He jumped up and scampered to the wall of the factory and the double doors. I held Elli's arm and helped her run after him. My other hand was on the straps of the two rifles. I'd have preferred to have one of them pointed and ready, but I couldn't do that, hold the other strap, and guide Elli all at the same time. I had to trust that if a shot needed to be taken quickly, Mark would take it.

We got to the door in seconds. Mark tried it. It was locked.

“I guess that would have been too easy,” he said with a shrug.

He tried to force it open. No go.

I looked at the ladder.

“We could climb, or we could head around the corner of this building to look for another door. I'm thinking that the longer we spend sneaking around, the better chance we'll be seen.”

Mark didn't wait for any other opinions. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed the ladder.

“One more climb,” I said to Elli with a weak smile.

She went right after Mark. I was last in line. Climbing this ladder was hairier than any of the others. For one, we were totally exposed. Anybody coming by would spot us in a nanosecond. It was scary, too. Underground it was safe and closed. Out here we clung to the side of a building with nothing around us but air. We probably would have been hurt just as badly if we had fallen when we were down below, but being out in the open made this seem much more dangerous. I guess it's like the difference between walking a tightrope that's two inches off the ground…or thirty feet up. I made a point of not looking down.

We made it to the top with no problem. When I reached the lip and stepped onto the flat roof, I gasped. I actually gasped. The building was huge. Seeing one side wall didn't give the full perspective. Up on top we could see the whole thing, and there was a lot to see. The roof was completely flat, broken up by various air ducts and skylights that dotted the surface. From the front corner we could pretty much see to the far side. It was a long way away. The building was probably twice as long as it was wide. It was an enormous, sprawling structure.

“You could make a whole lot of helicopters here,” I pointed out.

“I guess you need a lot to hunt down seventy thousand people,” Mark added.

“Let's go see,” I said, and jogged off.

We were totally exposed up there, but what else could we do? I ran toward the closest skylight, hoping it would give us access. The glass window looked like a small greenhouse structure on top of the flat roof. I got there first and peered down for my first look inside.

Sure enough, there were several rows of gleaming black, brand-spanking-new helicopters lined up, ready to fly. Each had rocket launchers in front. These choppers were assault weapons, no doubt about it.

Elli and Mark joined me and looked down.

“Wow,” Mark exclaimed. “Armed for bear, too.”

“It's monstrous,” Elli gasped, numb.

A few feet beyond the skylight, I spotted a hatch with a handle. I grabbed the metal loop and pulled. The hatch opened.

“I guess they don't expect anybody dropping in from up here,” I remarked.

Inside the building another small ladder led down to a metal catwalk. I climbed down first, then helped Elli. The catwalk ran along the wall, high above the factory floor. From inside we could look down to see the entire fleet of choppers. Or whatever it is you call a bunch of helicopters. They were all new. They were all armed. They were all ready for their deadly mission.

“Look,” Mark said. “They're making even more.”

He pointed to the far side of the space, where we saw several more helicopters in various stages of construction.

“Yikes. How many do they think they need?” Mark asked.

“Seventy thousand people is a lot of people” was my sober answer.

I scanned the vast factory floor, trying to take it all in. It was then that something struck me.

“This might get worse,” I announced.

Mark said, “Worse than a few dozen attack helicopters armed with rockets?”

“I mean, this isn't the whole factory.” I pointed to the right, which was the direction the building had stretched out before us when we were on the roof. “What we're seeing here isn't even half the factory. Look at the far wall. No way that's the end of the building. There's more beyond that. A lot more.”

“Could there be even more helicopters?” Elli asked.

I saw that the catwalk continued on along the wall, high above the factory floor.

“Let's find out,” I said, and moved quickly along the metal walkway.

I took one of the guns off my shoulder and held it against my hip, ready to shoot. I kept glancing to the factory floor to see if any workers or dados might be down there to sound an alarm. The place seemed deserted. I figured it might have been a day off. Did dados take a day off? Or maybe it was too early for the first shift to begin. After all, the sun had barely come up. We passed row after row of the attack helicopters. I was already planning some way to sabotage them. Maybe the rockets on board could be fired and that would create a chain reaction. Or something. We had to figure out some way of grounding this fleet of killing machines.

We made the long walk to the far wall, and to a door
that would lead us to whatever was beyond. I grabbed the door handle and turned. It was unlocked. I turned back to the others.

“You think we can do some damage down there?” I asked Mark.

Mark shrugged. “I don't see why not. There's plenty of live ammo around. Of course, if we start making noise, they'll know we're here.”

“You think?” I chuckled.

I opened the door, stepped into the next factory space…

And all thoughts of helicopters left my head.

I dropped the rifle. That's how stunned I was. My arms went limp. The weapon clattered onto the metal walkway. I left it there, taking a few dazed steps forward, as if getting closer might make the image before me clearer, and prove it wasn't what it seemed to be. I hoped it was an optical illusion. Or a trick. Or anything other than what it looked to be.

There was a question I'd often wondered about but never bothered to try and answer. Since leaving home, I had to learn about and understand so many impossible things that some of them I just had to let go. It's how I felt about unique technology on all the territories. I never really wondered or cared about how they created power on Ibara. Or how the air globes of Cloral were created. Or what advanced technology would allow something like Lifelight to exist, or the amber crystals on Eelong that carried radio signals. These were all aspects of the territories that were interesting, but didn't need to be analyzed unless it could help us on our mission.

The same held true for what we saw on that factory floor. This is what Antonio and his team had discovered. This is what he meant when he said the Ravinians had been preparing to attack.

It had nothing to do with helicopters.

The factory did indeed go on. This second section had to be three times the size of the area that held the choppers. The lame choppers. The choppers that now seemed like toys compared to what faced us on that factory floor. I now had the answer to a question I'd never asked.

I now knew where the dados were made.

We stood above a sea of thousands of dado warriors. Shoulder to shoulder. Heel to toe. Row upon row upon perfect row. They were dressed in various uniforms. Some wore the green military-like uniforms with gold helmets from Quillan. Another whole section had on the deep red suits that showed them to be Ravinian guards. One huge section held dados that didn't have uniforms, but instead were dressed in normal clothing that would easily allow them to blend in with the people of Second Earth.

There was more. I saw dados dressed as Batu warriors and Bedoowan knights. Some wore the rags that made them look like Flighters from Ibara. Maybe the most jarring of all was the section of klees. They actually made dado cats.

As with the helicopters, one whole section of floor was an assembly line that held hundreds of dados that were yet to be completed. There were more to come. Many more. I saw multiple rows of legs and arms and hands—all waiting to be used to create more robotic warriors.

The dados all had the same, blank expression. Many were still made in Mark's image, but others branched out with different looks. The dados were looking more human than ever. But they weren't. They were machines. They were Saint Dane's army.

“This is what Antonio found,” I said with a dry mouth. “This is how they're going to attack.”

Mark looked just as stunned as I felt. “There could be seventy thousand exiles, or
seven hundred
thousand. It won't matter. They can't stand up to this army.”

I went into brain lock. I didn't know what to do. About the dados. About Halla. About the exiles. I didn't even know what to do in the next second. I was frozen.

Wump!

A dull but powerful sound tore through the dead quiet. An instant later, a dado that had been creeping toward us along the catwalk fell off and plummeted to the factory floor. It looked like a mannequin because it was already dead. It hit, bounced, and crumbled like a doll. Mark and I both looked back in surprise to see Elli standing behind us with the gun I had dropped. She had it braced against her hip, her finger on the trigger.

She had dropped the dado with a single shot.

“Pick up your guns,” she commanded with confidence. “They know we're here.”

I
don't know what was more stunning: finding the vast army of dados, knowing that we had been discovered and were in for a fight, or seeing Elli with a rifle on her hip after having blown away a dado.

I think it was Elli.

“Move!” she barked.

Mark and I both jumped to the side of the narrow walkway as Elli unloaded again. She shot from the hip, literally. She held the weapon at waist level, the butt against her hip. The rifle let out another dull
wump
as it discharged. For a fleeting instant I thought I sensed the charged particle as it shot past us. Maybe I'm crazy, but I could swear the hair went up on the back of my neck, as if I had been brushed by static electricity. A second later another dado was blown off its feet. It landed square on its back on the metal walkway. Dead. Done. Lights out. Whatever.

Farther ahead on the catwalk, more dados in red Ravinian outfits appeared and sprinted toward us.

“Back to the roof,” I commanded.

We turned to run back the way we had come. Elli led the
way, her rifle out and ready to fire again. Who knew? We got as far as the doorway that led back into the helicopter section of the factory when Elli pulled up.

“They must have seen us on the roof,” she gasped.

Sure enough, on the far side of the chopper factory, a dozen dados came flooding down the same ladder we had used to get down from the roof. We were trapped between two groups who were closing fast.

“Twenty-eight shots left,” Mark said coolly.

“What if there's twenty-nine of them?” I asked.

“There's twenty-nine
thousand
of them!” Mark exclaimed.

“Climb down,” Elli announced.

Without waiting for our opinions, Elli scrambled for a ladder no more than ten feet ahead of us that led down to the factory floor. She swung the rifle over her shoulder as if she had done it a thousand times before and quickly made her way down the ladder.

Mark looked at me with surprise, as if to ask, “Who woke
her
up?”

I shot past Mark and went for the ladder. The catwalk was high over the factory floor. The narrow ladder ran straight down with nothing around it but air. If we hadn't been on the run, I'm not so sure I'd have been able to climb down as quickly as I was. One slip and it would be over. As much as I didn't want to look down, this time I had to. We had to know if any bad boys were arriving below. I looked out over the sea of dados and my stomach flipped. It was like descending into a tank of piranhas. There were thousands of them. It was insanity. We were running away from a handful of dados toward an entire army. At least the army hadn't been activated. I hoped that they were no more dangerous than statues.

My foot slipped off a rung. I had to clutch the sides of
the thin, metal ladder or I would have fallen through. It was a dumb mistake. I was more worried about what we would find on the floor than about getting there safely. I had to force myself to look ahead and concentrate on my footing. One step at a time. Don't worry about the dados. There would be time for that soon enough.

I met Elli on the ground, followed shortly after by Mark. We all had our guns out and ready. But ready for what?

“They're coming down,” Mark announced.

A quick look up showed that the dados from the roof had reached the ladder and were coming after us. The dados already on the catwalk were getting closer. I was happy to see that they didn't have weapons. At least they couldn't take shots at us from the high ground.

“Are you okay?” Elli asked me. She was focused and in control.

“I'm fine,” I said, a little embarrassed. It made me realize that Elli wasn't the frail old lady I thought she was. What's that saying? “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”? Well, Elli was on her way.

“We've gotta find another way out of here,” Mark announced.

The two groups of dados were about to join up and descend on us. I looked around but there wasn't an obvious way out. It became very clear, very fast, that there was only one thing to do.

“Needle in a haystack,” I declared.

Mark looked at the sea of dados and smiled. He got it. “Right.”

“What does that mean?” Elli asked.

“We'll get lost in the dados,” I said. “C'mon.”

The three of us ran for the army. They may have been
dados, but they looked like people. And there were thousands of them. Some even looked like Mark. My hope was to get far enough into the ranks so that the dados who were after us wouldn't know which way we had gone. It seemed like the best way to buy a little time until we could find a way out of that factory. The three of us plunged into the line of robots, barely grazing them as we moved as quickly and quietly as we could without knocking any of them over. We all knew enough not to speak. That would have defeated the purpose and given us away. Without planning it, we relied on hand signals.

Mark was on my right. Elli on my left. I took the lead and motioned for Mark to start moving diagonally toward the right. We made our way along, one dado width apart from one another. We didn't even have to duck down, because the dados were all at least a few inches taller than I was, and I was the tallest of the three of us. Still, I crouched a little, just in case. In seconds we were deep among the dados. I looked back to see if we were being followed. I was sure that we were, but they would have no way of tracking us. I didn't relax, but we had bought a little breathing room.

Moving through the field of dados was one of the eeriest things I'd ever done. Dados weren't human, but they sure looked like it. They were inactive, but looked as if they could spring to life at any second. I tried not to look at them too closely. I pretended they were statues and we were running through a museum. A really twisted museum where the exhibits might suddenly jump us.

Sheesh. Thinking like that wasn't helpful.

We kept moving quickly, putting as much space between us and our pursuers as possible. Every so often I
motioned for everyone to change direction slightly, so we weren't moving in a straight line. The idea was to make it as tough as possible to track us. When I felt as if we were roughly in the middle of the dado sea, I motioned for the others to stop. I put my fingers to my lips to be sure they stayed quiet. We stood stock-still and listened. I wanted to know where the pursuing dados were. Strangely, we didn't hear anything. Had they stopped chasing us? From where we were, we could see up to the catwalk. It was empty. They were definitely on the factory floor. But where?

I got paranoid. Our plan was to hide ourselves among the dados, but it worked both ways. If the robots chasing us got close, we wouldn't see them until they were almost on us. They could be anywhere. They could be hiding from us as much as we were hiding from them, and we might not know they were on top of us until it was too late. We may have been like needles in a haystack, but they were like needles…in a stack of needles.

I scanned around, looking for any sign of movement. There was nothing. I motioned for the others to keep moving, but slowly. After a few more zigzagging steps, we came upon an open space where no dados were lined up. It looked to me like the spot where the dados first came off the assembly line. There was a conveyor belt that led down and under the floor to somewhere else. The space was ringed by silent dados who wore the dark green uniforms of the dados from Quillan, complete with golden helmets. They circled the open area, all facing the center. Pointed at us. It made my skin crawl.

When Mark saw the conveyor belt, he smiled. He was thinking the same thing I was. We might be able to follow the belt out of there. Wherever it would take us, it would
be better than where we were, since we couldn't hide from the dados forever.

I got Elli's attention and pointed to the belt. She nodded. That was our way out. We made our move for the opening that led down below, when I quickly held my hand up, stopping everyone again. I had sensed something. Some movement. I did a three-sixty and saw nothing but the ring of inactive, mute dados. But I knew I had sensed something. It was fleeting, and I had only caught it out of the corner of my eye, but it was real. My Mooraj training was telling me so. Something was there. But where? Were there dados just outside this clearing, stalking us, getting ready to pounce? I stood stock-still. I wasn't looking for anything, so much as trying to sense something.

It happened again. This time I was ready for it. The movement wasn't on the floor. It was above us. I looked up quickly to see what looked to be a control room that hung down from the ceiling. It was an octagon, with glass windows surrounding it. It would be easy to see the entire dado-factory floor from up there, and that's exactly what the person inside was doing.

There was a dark figure inside, looking down on us. I couldn't tell who or what it was, but it was definitely active, and I had no doubt that it was looking right at us. Mark and Elli saw where I was looking and looked up as well. We all froze. What was this guy going to do? Sound an alarm? Direct the pursuing dados to our position? I didn't want to stick around to find out.

“Let's go,” I commanded.

The need for secrecy was over. We ran for the conveyor belt and the hole that would take us below.

We didn't make it.

No sooner did we start to run than the lights in the
control room came on. I guess he didn't feel the need for secrecy anymore either. He also didn't feel the need to tell the few dados who were chasing us where we were. That was because he had plenty more to take their place.

All around us, the green-suited dados came to life. One second they were standing like statues. The next their heads slowly turned…and looked at us.

“It's the dado control room,” Mark gasped. “He's turning them on.”

The horrible truth of those words took a second to sink in. Whoever was up in that control tower was doing just that. Controlling. It was Dado Central. He had the ability to activate the dados. There were thousands of them, and all we had left were twenty-eight shots.

The dados closed in.

And we opened fire.

“Go for the ones near the conveyor,” I ordered.

Wump! Wump! Wump!

All three of us let loose. The kick was a lot stronger than I expected. Each time I pulled the trigger, the gun bucked and punched me in the hip. The air instantly felt charged with electricity. Dados crumpled, one after the other. Elli was just as aggressive as Mark and I. She kept her rifle close to her hip and her eyes on her quarry…which wasn't hard, because there were plenty of them.

“Keep moving!” Mark shouted.

The dados weren't armed. If they had been, it would have been over in seconds. Even without weapons, our only hope was to keep them off of us long enough to escape down into the hole. Mark and Elli concentrated on the dados near the conveyor. I spun around and fired at those who were creeping up from behind.

Wump! Wump!

They fell, one after another. No sooner did one fall than two more came to life, turned, and moved toward us. It was like something out of
Night of the Living Dead
, except the dados weren't going to eat us. At least I didn't think they were.

We were moving closer to the conveyor tunnel, but not by much.

“If you can travel, get out of here!” Mark shouted at us.

No way that would happen. I couldn't leave Mark to the wolves. But Elli didn't need to be there.

“Go,” I said to Elli. “Back to Solara.”

Elli ignored me and kept firing. It was like she was possessed. She had a steely look in her eye that reminded me of her daughter. She was scared, no doubt, but it also seemed like she was taking some pleasure in blowing the dados away. She had been through a lot. Maybe she was taking some small measure of revenge. Whatever it was, she wasn't leaving.

“Elli! Go!”

She gave me a quick look and shouted, “We're almost there.”

She backed toward the opening in the floor, firing as she went. There wasn't time to argue. Dados were closing in on her from the other side of the conveyor belt. I spun and fired to keep them back. Aim wasn't all that important. The charged particles that these weapons fired seemed to fan out like buckshot. Close was close enough. I dropped a dado with one shot, and saw a second fall at the same time. I fired again and dropped two more. But we were running out of ammunition, and time.

Elli's gun emptied first. Without hesitation she dropped the weapon, turned to jump into the hole…

And was blown off her feet by a shot from another weapon that was fired from somewhere else. She let out a sharp gasp, as if she had been punched in the stomach. She hurtled backward and hit the floor, hard, square on her back. I think she was unconscious before she landed. I had the brief feeling of relief that she hadn't been turned to cinder. Whatever hit her, it wasn't the same kind of charge that we had seen from the silver weapons in the Taj Mahal. But where had it come from?

I glanced up to the control tower to see someone inside with a rifle up and on his shoulder, leaning out of an open window like a sniper. No doubt he was the guy who shot Elli, and he was swinging the rifle toward me. I lifted my own weapon quickly and fired off three quick shots. I didn't worry about aim. The sight of Elli being so violently thrown by a shot from that guy made me lose it. I wanted him to suffer.

One of the windows of the control tower exploded from my first shot. The second hit the guy and knocked him back into the control room. The third blasted out a second window.

As I ran to help Ellie, I yelled to Mark, “Jump in the hole!”

Mark was out of ammunition. He fired two more times with no result, then threw his rifle at the approaching dados. No sooner did it leave his hands than he was knocked off his feet by another shot. I looked back up to the control tower to see another sniper leaning out of one of the windows I had shattered. Unlike his pal, he didn't hesitate to admire his marksmanship. By the time I looked up, he was already aiming at me. I was staring square into the barrel of one of those black weapons.