Desert Kings

Then inspiration hit and Delphi walked to the control board for the supercomputer and raised the service panel to palm over the complex wiring. Incredibly, he received an answering tingle and dug among the morass of shielded circuits to retrieve a lumpy section of a slim piece of ribbon cable. It was a Thinking Wire, and almost as advanced as the version that he carried. Even more important, the microchips embedded in the cable seemed completely undamaged!

Keeping out of sight behind the raised lid of the console, Delphi opened a port in his chest and fed in the wire. It took a few moments for his systems to initiate the new hardware, and there was a moment of disorientation. Then whole sections of deactivated programs and hardware became active in his mind. His autorepair systems were back online! Scrolling through the command menu, he held out a palm and there appeared a barely visible sheen in the air. Frowning slightly, Delphi rerouted some power and the translucent distortion expanded to a full yard, then it turned transparent.

I have a force field again! Now he was safe from bullets, lasers, anything. Everything! Even a focused EMP beam designed to burn out his internal circuitry and render him powerless, paralyzed, a prisoner inside his own augmented body. Helpless prey for the agents of TITAN. If they were actively hunting for him, then it was time to turn and take a stand. No, he’d attack them! The balance of power had been redressed. Now the war began in earnest.

“Sir?”

Quickly dissolving the immaterial force field, Delphi looked up and saw Davenport standing nearby. How much had she just seen? Did she know the truth? “Yes, what is it, Cotton?” the cyborg asked in forced casualness.

That made the sec woman pause. This was the first time he had ever called her by her first name. Guess I’ve just stepped into an aced man’s boots and am the new sec boss for the convoy.

“We’re ready to leave, Chief,” she replied, resting the still-warm barrel of her Kalashnikov on a shoulder. Bellany’s gunbelt and Webley .44 hung over the other arm. “Unless there’s something else you want to look for around here.”

“No, I’ve found what was needed,” Delphi stated, lowering the service panel and locking it closed once more. “Let’s go.”

“Where, sir?”

There was only one answer to that. “East,” Delphi said, flexing his hands, feeling the power course within them. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Four

Astonished by the sheer speed of the spidery droid, Ryan hit the floor braced for the searing onslaught of pain from the laser beam. Incredibly there did not seem to be any damage from the bright ray. But he felt fine, and even his shirt was undamaged. What the frag? Had the thing missed?

As the droid fired again, Ryan rolled out of the way and the rest of the companions triggered their Kalashnikovs in unison, peppering the machine with a hail of 7.62 mm rounds, the ricochets zinging everywhere. Then Ryan came up holding the 9 mm SIG-Sauer and put two Parabellum man-stoppers directly into the machine’s eyes. The red crystal shattered and the droid began randomly lancing out with the strange white beam, hitting the walls, floor, coffins and Doc, to no effect whatsoever.

Snarling a curse, Jak cast away the useless AK-47, smoothly drew his Colt Python and stroked the trigger, sending a booming .357 round directly into head of the droid. With a loud ringing noise, the shiny metal deeply dented, the machine limply fell from the ceiling to crash on the floor, wildly shaking, the metallic legs flailing insanely.

Moving fast, Doc stepped in close, leveled the LeMat and sent a massive .44 miniball directly into the dent. The metal split apart with a huge eruption of sparks and smoke began to rise from the droid as the legs slowly lowered to the floor and went still. Nobody moved for a few moments until they were sure the droid was aced and not merely faking.

As the companions gathered around the creaking machine, Mildred went to Ryan and checked the man over, looking into his eyes for any signs of dilation, taking his pulse, pressing an ear to his chest to listen to his heart, and even yanking up his shirt to see the skin underneath.

“I’m fine,” the one-eyed man said patiently.

“Yes, you are,” Mildred finally said, tugging down his shirt. “And I’m damn glad for that, but puzzled as all hell. Why are you fine?”

“I guess it missed me.”

“No way, lover,” Krysty said, turning. “I saw that white beam hit you dead-center.” Her hair started flexing as the woman frowned. “At least, I think it hit you…”

“Hit,” Jak stated in a no-nonsense tone. “Hit Doc, too.”

“Indeed it did, my young friend,” Doc rumbled, going to the weapon lying impotently on the floor. The man kicked aside a leg partially covering the device. “Which begs the question of why we are unharmed. Did the laser malfunction, or did it do something else to us that has yet to achieve full effect?”

“Like what?” Mildred demanded, resting a hand on the strap of her med kit.

The man shrugged. “Possibly we now have cancer or will go insane in a few days. You tell me, madam.”

The physician started to rebuff the suggestion, then had to reconsider. Whoever had set the droid as a guardian over the blasters would have been incompetent beyond belief to not make sure it was properly armed. So what did the white light do?

Kneeling on the floor, she ran fingertips over the beam unit, then J.B. joined her and they started to disassemble the outer casings.

“Think more?” Jak asked, studying the ceiling, his blaster held tight in a two-handed grip.

“No, if there were any more of the machines they would have joined the fight,” Ryan said, holstering the SIG-Sauer. “I’ve seen droids with laser camou before, but never as good as this one. Until it moved, I had no idea the bastard thing was hanging above us.”

“Aside from the odd tapping noise,” Krysty added, removing the mostly spent clip from her rapid-fire and inserting a new one. “That must have been caused by the metal legs moving on the ceiling.”

“How do?” Jak asked, easing his stance slightly. If the others said the area was clear, that was good enough for him.

“Magnets most likely,” Ryan said with a shrug.

“And that’s also what this is,” Mildred said, studying the interior of the weapon. “Nothing but a massive capacitor and a magnetic array.” She touched a golden coil. “See, that’s the focusing mechanism. I’ve seen something similar inside a CAT scanner.”

“Not las, but mag gun?” Jak asked quizzically.

“Yep.”

“So what was the light?”

“That was from a halogen bulb.” J.B. grunted, tilting back his fedora. “Nothing more than a souped-up flashlight, probably just there to help aim the magnetic.”

“Aim the magnet, sir?” Doc repeated slowly, chewing over the information. “Are you saying this is some sort of scrambling device? Mayhap a kind of antirobot gun?”

“Could be, yeah. What else would a focused beam of magnetics harm? A comp, mebbe, or a—”

“Cyborg,” Ryan interrupted in a hard voice. “This wasn’t set here by Delphi to guard the blasters. Somebody else put it here to wait for him.”

“A cyborg chiller,” Jak whispered, impressed and uneasy at the same time. Then he eagerly added, “Still work? We use now.”

“No, it’s busted to drek.” Mildred sighed, standing and dusting off her hands. “The circuit boards are fried, the ribbon cables melted, the focusing ring warped…” She dismissed the device with a hand wave. “The only way we could use this to hurt Delphi now is if we dropped it on his head from a great height.”

“This means that most likely Delphi has not been here in a long while,” Krysty added, ruminating out loud. “Weeks, mebbe, or even months.”

“It also means that somebody else wants Delphi aced,” J.B. stated. “Which is fine by me. The enemy of my enemy, and all that, eh, Doc?”

“True words, John Barrymore,” the silver-haired man intoned. “Although, I have usually found that the ‘enemy of my enemy’ axiom loses all coherent meaning after the aforementioned protagonist is finally eating dirt. Then all bets are off.”

“Fair enough,” Ryan said savagely, working the bolt on a Kalashnikov. Then his stomach softly grumbled. “Come on, let’s finish the recce of this redoubt. The sooner we know it’s safe, the sooner we can have some chow.” In an effort to save their stomachs, the companions had deliberately not eaten before doing the jump. It seemed to work, but now they were paying the price.

“I hear that,” J.B. added eagerly, heading for the exit. “I’m not quite hungry enough for Millie’s boot soup, but will be soon.”

“Well, it kept us alive, that’s for sure,” Mildred shot back proudly. “Although it must have been a month before I finally got the taste out of my mouth. It made hospital food seem absolutely delicious in comparison.”

“Indeed, madam, the flavor combination was rather reminiscent of the haute cuisine of Hades,” Doc observed, glancing sideways and trying to hide a smile. “Although to be honest, it was truly the finest boot soup that I have ever had!”

“Aw, shut up, ya old coot,” Mildred shot back, pleased and annoyed at the same time.

Reaching the exit, the companions paused to check over their weapons before proceeding down the long hallway. Jak was the last to leave and closed the armory door behind them. Even though the machine was smashed to drek, he didn’t trust droids and felt better with a good foot of steel between them.

“Wait a minute, I may have something,” Krysty said, rummaging in her bearskin coat pockets to finally pull out a handful of jerky. She offered it around and everybody took some. “Been saving it for a while,” she said. “But it should still be good.”

It took some determined chewing before the dried meat yielded any flavor, but as the reconstituted juices trickled down their throats, the hunger pains in their bellies eased.

Slightly refreshed, the group reached the elevators at the end of the corridor, but instead took the stairs. They had been hesitant about using the elevator before as the noise would announce their presence to the whole redoubt. Well, the blaster fight had already accomplished that. But the cage was a deathtrap if they got ambushed. The stairs at least gave them some room to move.

Climbing and chewing, they proceeded to the next level and found the barracks empty and unused, but spotlessly clean. Ready to house hundreds of soldiers at a moment’s notice. Ominous.

Continuing up the stairs, Ryan took the point and eased open the door to the garage level. The parking area was full of civilian vehicles from the predark soldiers rushing to the base to escape skydark: pickup trucks, a couple of Harley bikes, battered station wagons, an SUV and the like, but there were no mil wags in sight. Curious.

Staying low, the companions spread out through the ranks of the vehicles, checking out the workbenches along the walls, fuel depot, grease pit and wire cubicle where all the heavy equipment was stored.

“Okay, we’re clear,” Ryan announced, standing upright again. “Let’s go outside so J.B. can find out where we are.”

“And then we eat,” Mildred declared, patting the MRE envelope in her coat pocket. Sealed in a Mylar envelope, the Meals Ready to Eat was military ration that was as fresh and tasty today as when made a century earlier. It was almost as if the government knew the nuke war was coming, Mildred thought, and had made preparations for some people to survive. The observation was not new, just disturbing. Politicians, smart enough to plan for war, but too damn dumb to hold on to peace. Thank goodness they were all gone.

Taking the zigzag tunnel to the exit of the redoubt, the companions abruptly halted at the sight of a vehicle parked just in front of the huge black doors. It was a huge smooth sphere, vaguely egg-shaped, mounted on a set of armored tank treads.

“Delphi!” Doc bellowed, brushing back his frock coat to whip out the LeMat and start fanning the hammer. The Civil War handcannon boomed and miniballs slammed into the wag.

“Hold fire!” Ryan yelled.

“See him inside?” Jak asked.

“No, I did not,” Doc rumbled angrily, waving the LeMat to dispel the volumes of smoke pouring from the hot barrel. “But the windshield can be made opaque.”

“So, mebbe he’s not inside,” Krysty said.

“Mebbe he’s playing opossum,” Mildred shot back tersely.

“Got the implo ready?” Ryan asked, working the bolt on the rapid-fire.

“All set to go,” J.B. replied grimly, the sphere tight in a hand.

“Odd that he hasn’t returned fire yet,” Krysty said hesitantly.

“Got a test for that,” J.B. said, and stepped around the corner to whip something forward, then duck back behind the wall once more.

After a few seconds there came a resounding explosion, followed by a thick ringing silence.

Tensely alert, the companions waited. A minute passed, then another, and some bitter smoke drifted along the tunnel following the gentle breeze coming from the air vents.

“That not implo.” Jak scowled. “Reg gren?”

“Sure,” J.B. replied, lifting the precious implo gren into view from a pocket. “I’m not going to waste this until I knew the son of a bitch is in there for sure. Lots of reg grens, but only got the one implo, remember.”

Listening hard, Ryan couldn’t hear any movement from around the corner, and bent low to take a quick look. The wag was exactly the same as before. Suspecting a trap, he rolled another gren under the wag and waited to see what would happen. After another minute, he stood in plain view. Still no response.

“Okay, it’s clear,” Ryan stated, walking around the corner. “There’s no way Delphi would sit still for this long unless he’s unconscious.”

“Or aced,” Doc rumbled dangerously, the LeMat held in a white-knuckled hold. “I do not honestly know which I would enjoy more, seeing him deceased or doing the job myself!”

“Bloodthirsty old coot,” Mildred shot back.

“And you have never been his captive, madam,” the time traveler growled. “While, sadly, I have.”

Gathering around the huge wag, the companions now could see it was in poor shape. The treads had several shoes broken off or missing entirely. There was some sort of box on top reduced to little more than twisted wreckage, and the opaque windshield was badly cracked. The normally smooth white hull was badly pitted in spots, tiny rivulets of silvery steel congealed along the sides.

“That was his LAV,” Doc stated in his stentorian bass.

Tilting back his fedora, J.B. gave a whistle. “Well, somebody kicked his ass, that’s for trip damn sure,” he said happily. “Mebbe he is dead. That’d sure solve a lot of problems.”

“He was probably trying to get the LAV into the garage for repairs,” Krysty guessed, running a hand along the armored hull. “Anybody know a way inside this thing, so that we can check?”

Almost too soft to hear, there came a low click and then a section of the hull jutted slightly. Quickly the companions stepped backward, bringing up their weapons, as the hatch cycled downward forming a short set of stairs.

Wordlessly, Ryan pointed to the left and right, J.B. and Krysty heading around the machine to attack from the other side.

Then his heart skipped a beat as a long, black, metal leg extended from the interior, closely followed by two more and the globular body of another droid. It took only a nanosecond for him to see this machine did not have a cyborg chiller mounted to its belly, but something else, a sleek, ferruled tube with pulsating fiber-optic cables and a narrow red lens that glowed like the eye of a demon from Hell.

“Las!” Ryan bellowed, throwing himself to the side and raising the Kalashnikov as a shield.

The same as before, he was still airborne when the beam stabbed outward. But this time it was a brilliant red beam the color of burning blood. Ryan felt the rapid-fire get hot in his hands, and when he hit the floor, he threw it away only a moment before the ammo detonated.

The blast rocked him, but he went with the force of the concussion, rolling away until hitting the wall. There was a pain in his side and another along his neck, but Ryan ignored those and pulled the SIG-Sauer as he stood, tracking and firing.

The beamed stabbed the wall next to him and he could feel the terrible heat radiating outward, it was so close. Ducking, he fired the SIG-Sauer twice, then spun and fired twice more.

Gotta keep moving, Ryan realized. Can’t let it get a bead, or I’m the last train west! Move, Cawdor, move!

Firing and weaving, he got behind the egg-shaped wag and the droid went out of sight. Then it rose above the vehicle, the dead eyes searching for him. He locked gazes with the machine, and the smooth hull of the wag turned yellow, orange, pink…and the laser cut through the vehicle less than an inch away.

Raising his blaster, Ryan cursed. With the machine on the other side, he couldn’t shoot through the LAV to hit it! Using the wag as a shield had saved his life, but now he couldn’t fight back!

Suddenly there was a thundering detonation from the opposite side of the tunnel, and the droid dropped from sight as a hot wind breathed around the armored treads underneath, the metal pinging and cracking from shrapnel.

That had been a gren! Knowing this tunnel was the best place to bomb the droid, he yanked out his gren, pulled the ring, flipped off the spoon and lofted the bomb over the wag. Then he ducked.

If possible, the second blast sounded even louder than the first, and something heavy slammed into the LAV, making it shake.

Glancing upward, Ryan saw a cloud of smoke billowing in the tunnel, then Doc appeared from around the first turn in the passage and waved him on. That was all he needed. Breaking into a sprint, Ryan charged around the wag and across the empty space. Friendly hands grabbed his clothing and yanked him behind the metal wall just as the laser cut through the smoke, missing him by less than a hair.

“Everything!” Ryan commanded, holstering the SIG-Sauer and pulling the second gren from his pocket. He armed the charge and threw it hard at the opposite wall. The mil sphere hit and bounced out of sight into the next section.

The rest of the companions did the same, and the tunnel shook from the continuous bombardment of high-explosive plas. The lights went out with a crash of glass, the explosions casting distorted shadows as they went off.

Then the droid lumbered around the corner only a yard away from the companions. One eye was gone and a leg was bent, but it still moved with grim resolve.

“Dark night, the nuke sucker is armored!” J.B. shouted, throwing the unprimed gren in his hand with all of his strength. The metal sphere hit the remaining eye of the droid and bounced off harmlessly.

Then Jak and Doc fired together, the .357 Colt Python and the .44 LeMat sounding like chained thunder. Even as the droid came closer, the eye shattered, and it froze, motionless.

Moving around the corner, Mildred took a full second to aim, then gently squeezed the trigger on her AK-47. The fiber-optic cables of the deadly laser were ripped from their couplings and the housing bent slightly.

But as they watched, something rose from the top of the droid, a flexing cable with a tiny light at the end. It pointed at them, and the body rotated, the legs extending and contracting as the war machine glided forward.

Gaia, the thing had a spare eye? Krysty cursed bitterly as she moved away, dropping a clip and reloading fast. One droid to capture, a second to ace. Somebody wants Delphi eating dirt even more than we do, she thought. Now that it was out of the LAV, the robotic machine had them in a chilling zone, with nowhere to hide. Some dim recess of her mind rationalized that this was probably why it had laid in waiting inside the broken wag just like a real spider, waiting for the flies to get close before it pounced.

Retreating fast, Jak and Doc fired again, throwing more smoke than lead, with the others firing away with the Kalashnikovs. The combination was nearly deafening, and it became impossible to shout any suggestions as the desperate group ran along the zigzag tunnel, getting only a split second of respite before the droid appeared once more seeking fresh targets, the lethal energy beam constantly flashing out to punch small molten holes in the metal walls and floor.

Tossing grens, the companions scrambled around the last corner, then broke for the lines of parked wags. As the charges detonated, the laser cut through the swirling dark smoke, shattering the rear window of an SUV and exploding the front tire on a compact foreign car.

Ryan and the others barely got behind cover before the droid stepped out of the tunnel looming high, almost brushing the ceiling. Obviously it was trying to stay away from the grens, and with just cause. Two of its legs dangled uselessly from its armored body, a third was badly bent and there was a crackling electric display crawling around the ruin of the second eye.

At the sight, Ryan impulsively touched the patch covering his own damaged orb and bizarrely felt a instant of sympathy. Then cold reason took over and he swung up the Steyr to fire at the busted section. That would be the best chance to reach the minicomp inside the machine. Holding his breath, Ryan put two rounds directly into the charred opening, then the laser impacted on the other side of the convertible he was behind. The beam sliced through the fabric as if it was mist and moved along the side in a sweeping maneuver. Ryan ducked and felt the heat of another near miss. Then he stood and fired again into the eyehole.

This time he was rewarded by a fresh geyser of sparks. The machine titled slightly, but then righted itself and advanced once more. Moving among the civilian wags, the droid stabbed out the laser again and again, breaking windows and mirrors as he tried to track the scurrying norms.

Ducking behind a sedan, Krysty got a clear view of the machine and rose to shoot at the laser. Already weakened, the casing was slammed away, exposing the delicate crystals and wiring. As the droid turned toward her, the woman stood her ground and fired again. In an explosion of crystal, the laser winked out, chips and wires sprinkling to the floor.

J.B. and Jak whooped in triumph. Then the dead laser dropped off the droid, a hatch flipped open on the left side and another weapon cycled into view—larger, covered with smooth metal, with a small hole at the end of the barrel instead of a crystal.

“Needler!” Mildred cried in warning, firing her Kalashnikov. The physician hit the weapon twice, the 7.62 mm rounds ricocheting off the dense housing as if the rounds were thrown gravel. Then there was a low hiss from the droid and the Cadillac the physician was hiding behind violently shook from the barrage of 1 mm fléchettes.

Ordering the companions to get down, Ryan threw a gren high to detonate in the air above the machine. It shook from the blow and hosed a stream of fléchettes in his direction, almost tearing the front off the battered old pickup.

By the Three Kennedys, this weapon is even worse than the laser! Doc realized, triggering the LeMat and AK-47. Internally, the man struggled to recall if he had faced such a device before. Most of how he escaped from the Chronos whitecoats was lost in foggy memories. There was something, a symbol, some sort of a circle within a circle…

Reloading the rapid-fire, Doc shook off the useless recollection. But even as he shot again, the old man made a mental note to tell the others about the symbol. It could be very useful later on. A circle in a square? A triangle…? It was gone, like so much of his past.

Mildred threw another gren and the droid picked it off in midflight, the plas creating a fireball directly above a limousine bearing mil license plates. The blast crumpled the vehicle, and incredibly, the theft alarm began to bleat.

Unable to shout directions again, Ryan made a decision and threw his last gren at the limo. It hit the floor and rolled underneath before exploding, the blast flipping the wag over to crash on a small compact car. But thankfully, the alarm ceased to sound.