Raddocks Horizon (Godyssey Legacy Book 1) Page 10

  “The survivor came back in a pod. That ship landed somewhere. The crew of the ship had found something, and he kept it with him when he returned to Earth. And now it’s loose here,” it says turning to face the broad cityscape.

  “You think Caufmann did it? Is that why you keep trying to get into the lab?”

  It nods solemnly, “I thought it would ease your mind if you knew that I plan on preventing this from happening, before I kill you.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. “Yeah, thanks.” Rennin huffs, feeling another spark of pain in his ribs.

  “Try to relax. It will hurt if you’re tense.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” he says forcing himself to pull in more air.

  It starts making its way down towards him in a manner Rennin knows well. His superior during the war was a CryoZaiyon lieutenant of terrible power. He was a force of industry; not nature.

  Thinking quickly, Rennin leans back. Reaching into his jacket, he grabs his gun. Without taking it from the holster he fires, trying to lean on a rough angle that might result in a hit. The glowing yellow shot tears a hole through his coat missing the android by a country mile before sailing off into the distance.

  Prototype smiles again before reaching down for him. At the same moment Rennin pulls the gun out of his coat aiming it right at Prototype’s head. With the back of its hand, the android taps the gun off angle and another shot flies off course, this time into the roofing.

  Prototype grips his wrist, ensuring the gun is dangling uselessly, and hoists Rennin off the ground with an ease that chips another wedge out of his ego. The android clamps its fist closed. Rennin screams at the crushing of his wrist bones, dropping the gun before he’s thrown back onto the roof, near one of his previous wide shots.

  Rennin does his absolute best to ignore the burning pain in his shattered right arm as Prototype seems to gloat over him. He realises that the android isn’t looking at him but the bullet hole. Rennin glances over to see that the hole is rapidly expanding. The metal is being dissolved before his eyes.

  He looks back to the android and for the first time sees a look of doubt on its face. Most likely due to it being unwilling to risk a wound by one of these bullets.

  The android grips Rennin by the collar and lifts him up to land a blow to his head that sends a flash over his vision before he’s dropped again. The hood absorbed most of the shock but he’s still in so much of a daze that he finds his mind swimming.

  He can’t gather his thoughts and the ones that enter his mind are scattered. He finds himself wondering if he turned off the coffee machine before leaving work this evening. The scent of the kitchen in the house where he grew up is also present.

  Rennin regains focus in only his right eye. He blinks as if that will click his left eye on. It doesn’t. The entire left side of his face is numb. A light body check from this android broke his ribs and a calculated strike has cracked his skull. If it weren’t for the hood absorbing the shock, he’d surely be dead.

  His wits come back to him to see Prototype’s face only inches from his own. At first he thinks it strange until he feels a hand beginning to clamp across his throat. The grip is cold and feels like cast iron. The stars he was seeing after being hit in the head are already back as his air is cut off.

  Rennin tries bracing a leg against the android’s chest, but the machine is too heavy to lever off. His right hand is useless and numbed from shock. He is weakening quickly, unable to see at all now so decides to do something drastic.

  He uses his good hand to draw the second gun. Prototype is taken off guard but Rennin knows it won’t last. He crooks his arm at an awkward angle, and fires off one of the high calibre rounds. His elbow dislocates painfully, as his arm snaps back from the recoil.

  The bullet itself goes through his folded leg at the thigh making two entry wounds and two exit wounds above and below the knee before travelling into the android’s abdomen.

  The pressure on his throat is released instantly but Rennin’s body is a twisted ruin. He doesn’t know or care where the android is anymore. He is going into shock. As he loses consciousness, images of Caufmann wrestling Prototype at the lab entrance flash through his mind.

  Fuck it. Rennin gives in to the blackness.

  ◆◆◆

  The crowd is getting rowdy, Pharaoh Drake thinks, as be bludgeons his way through. His six-man squad was forced to split up to look for the progenitor-class after its reading was lost a short while ago.

  Drake checks his heads up display. Before dispatch, Caufmann equipped Drake with a tracker for Rennin’s glasses, in case of the Prototype’s reading being lost. They have been secretly tasked as his backup in case he actually found the thing.

  Constant requests for details regarding their mission fell on deaf ears. Caufmann refused to share anything with the Beta HolinMech team. Drake only knows that Rennin Farrow has been taken into the Godyssey Head of Research’s confidence.

  Initially, Drake’s unit stood guard around the club Starsprite. It was the last place Rennin was seen, and coincidentally the same general direction as the android’s now faded signal.

  A shot rings out. Familiarity prompts Drake’s military training to kick in automatically. The unusual mix of fog and rain defuse the sound, making the location difficult to determine. The bustling masses don’t seem to notice. They probably think it is fireworks. But that was definitely a high calibre round.

  A second shot sounds, which starts Drake jogging towards Starsprite. The bouncers make a move to intercept, but Drake’s readied assault rifle, and a hand gesture towards the HolinMech emblem on the shoulder of his fatigues allow him to pass without incident.

  The reading from Rennin’s glasses directs Drake upstairs, so he leaps three steps at a time towards the blasting music. He enters the dance and bar area where people are looking completely smashed and totally oblivious. They don’t seem to notice him since he’s wearing black. A couple of them see the rifle but these people appear difficult to intimidate; he even gets a wink from someone he’s not sure he should be attracted to. Another shot—barely audible—registers to him and his focus is renewed.

  The reading is suddenly behind him. He turns to see the entrance to the toilets, and moves into them quickly. The toilet is too small, though he knows Rennin is somewhere in this general direction. The reading comes from much farther out than this little area.

  Taking a moment to survey the room he soon spots the broken stall door and the open window. The reading in the glasses suddenly vanishes. He launches himself through the opening onto the roof, rifle at the ready. After taking a moment to secure his position, he starts moving quickly.

  “All units this is Four-Niner, I’m on the rooftops of Starsprite and need backup immediately. White Rabbit may be down.”

  “Copy, Four-Niner, exact location?” It is Serro Hopper’s voice, Drake’s immediate superior.

  “Come down on my transmission. Out.”

  He cuts off the communicator and heads over the roof as fast as he can, scanning both left and right with his weapon, maintaining a steady aim. Drake runs over several of the rooftops before seeing a figure clutching its abdomen, approaching the far edge of the local roofing system.

  “Contact! Android!” Drake calls into the com-unit and opens fire, taking three shots.

  The first two miss but the third strikes the construct in the right shoulder blade throwing it forwards and off the roof.

  Drake hears a loud smash and a few people crying out in surprise at street level. He runs across to peer over the edge, in time to see the android rolling off the wreck of a car to begin limping up the street.

  “Target marked, heading west of Block G, looks wounded.”

  Several acknowledgements come back to him from the other units. Drake is about to find a way down, when he hears a moan of pain. He swings around but sees nothing. He climbs up to the nearest roof peak to see a bloodied, mangled, mess of a man lying next to a gaping hole in the steel roof tha
t is getting bigger as he watches.

  “I need a medic at my transmission location immediately, White Rabbit is down, confirmed.”

  “Copy, forty-nine, a gunship is en route and almost there. Is he alive?”

  “Affirmative. Not for long, though, target did a number on him but it looks like he managed to shoot it. Both his arms are broken, his left leg has been shot up and the left side of his head is crushed.”

  “I’ll advise the medic. Out.”

  Barely a moment later, the gunship is overhead and lowering across Drake’s field of vision. The down draft increases to a gale as the craft that looks more like one of the old days helicopters than a gunship begins to settle a mere metre above the peak of the roof. It has two main fusion engines midway down the oval shaped body of the craft with a wing extending out from each that hold the main cannons and missile launchers. There are four small stabilizer engines on the bottom and top of the gunship to give it incredible stability.

  When the rear access opens up, two medical soldiers jump out with a stretcher. Without speaking to Drake they stabilise Rennin and load the remainder of him onto the gunship. Drake is about to board when he hears more gunfire, this time from street level. Silence falls for a moment, before the screams erupt again.

  From the rooftops, Drake can see the crowd in the street below flooding away from a lone gunman. Drake pulls a scope from a pouch in his vest and snaps it to his rifle. The figure is in police uniform, his face crazed and distorted. On the move now, he is firing constantly in one direction. Serro’s voice comes over his com-unit, “All units, arrest the shooter at the top end of Main Road.”

  Mia Saker, Beta HolinMech sniper, responds. “Arrest? Why can’t we take him out?”

  “I have a clear shot from here,” says Drake.

  “We have orders not to kill, he’s a police inspector. Peter Stanner. The target he’s chasing is the Priority One.”

  Drake jumps in the gunship as it starts to lift off. “Pilot, land me near the gunman!”

  “Yes, sir,” says the pilot. The medics grumble to each other as the craft banks down towards the street.

  The crowd is pure chaos. There is no escape due to the sheer volume of people trying to flee. A full-blown stampede is imminent. When the craft gets two metres from the surface Drake gauges the height.

  Close enough, he thinks dropping the remainder of the way.

  He makes his way straight towards the shooter, who has just reloaded and is firing on the run. There are at least a dozen bodies that he’s shot dead, collateral damage from whoever he’s aiming at. “Four-Niner, we have to make a perimeter to hold the crowd in the immediate area.”

  “Negative! This guy is shooting through them. If we hold them in it’ll be a massacre.”

  “It’s an executive order, Four-Niner. Priority One is in that cluster of people.”

  Drake shakes his head. Whether it’s an executive order or not Drake is going to take this lunatic out. He is getting close enough to the shooter to hear his raving.

  The crowd push and shove past, knocking him about from time to time in their mad rush to escape. The shouting and screaming gets louder. Drake guesses some of them have found the blockade preventing them from leaving the area.

  Drake gets clear of the crowd and can see the gunman loading another clip into his pistol. “Drop it!” yells Drake loud enough to drown out the cries of the fleeing crowd.

  Stanner turns to face him. “It’s going to escape! The infiltrator! Caufmann brought it in!” he yells, raising the gun at the crowd again.

  “Do not fire! I will put you down!”

  “It’s got to die!” another shot rings out, another cry of pain from a bystander. Another death.

  Drake curses himself for following the arrest order and fires off a round that hits Stanner in the stomach, throwing him off his feet. The weapon leaves his hands. Drake slings his rifle, takes out his sidearm, and stalks towards Stanner.

  Stanner is clutching his stomach with one hand while attempting to rant about the android through moans of agony, his free hand clutching desperately towards his weapon. “Forty-nine, the target is subdued, stand down.”

  “Copy, target will be put down,” answers Drake coldly, squeezing round out. It completely pulverises the hand questing for the gun.

  “Negative, negative, forty-nine! Check your fire and stand down!”

  “Copy, sir, standing down,” says Drake, satisfied with himself.

  ◆◆◆

  The badly wounded progenitor-class stumbles up the alleyway clutching the wound the watchman has given it. The shot from the Beta HolinMech soldier on the roof was easily absorbed, but Rennin’s shot is the problem.

  The android isn’t accustomed to being wounded. Its knees would buckle but it doesn’t have the same concept of weakness as a human. It leans against a wall, peeling back its overcoat to examine its wound. It is widening by the minute.

  Its diagnostic system doesn’t know what to make of it or how to deal with it. The android’s immunity programming can combat it somewhat; but closing the wound is sacrificing a vast proportion of its power to keep the corrosive nano-virus in check.

  It stoops, vomiting a thick brownish-purple substance onto the ground.

  ‘Viral body purged. Repeat in four hours.’

  The progenitor-class briefly rues its singularity. Being so unique makes it impossible to repair or replace its frame. It is at risk of rapidly dissolving should it need to divert its attention. It knows it would have to find another unit like itself to cannibalise. No such thing exists that’s worth the risk and it would be contaminated instantly upon implementation. Caufmann must have designed this toxin as soon as he took readings during their brief encounter.

  None of that matters now. All Caufmann needed to do was get records of the Isfeohrad Project from the Iyatoya lunar base. The android is sure the good Doctor knows its name.

  Perhaps it isn’t exactly a name. Perhaps it is more of a designation. The progenitor-class doesn’t know, nor does it care. Many androids had names during the war. Names mean nothing.

  Isfeohrad grimaces as genuinely as any sentient. According to its calculations it can sustain itself with an oral purge every four hours to expel the focussed plasma of the oxidizing agent that has become devastatingly virulent.

  It will also need to constantly monitor the progression of its condition and keep cleaning out its blood through a filtering machine similar to dialysis every so often. The contagion level of the virus seems to be null and specific only to the system type it’s infected and reacted to. So this oxidizing agent will be contagious to all progenitor-class androids.

  Like all viruses that have become accustomed to an environment, it will react far more harshly if passed to another.

  ◆◆◆

  It could be hours, days or years later. Rennin has lost all concept of time. He sometimes sees flashes of light that look like hospital lights.

  There are surgeons all around him but he could be inside a bar or anywhere. Not that it matters to him. The pain is too intense to concentrate on such piffling details as where he is. He hears people speaking, but he can’t quite understand them, even in his fleeting moments of consciousness.

  He is absolutely broken in mind and spirit, and being this vulnerable isn’t one of his strong points. Dreams of work, the war, his childhood running in the park and other kaleidoscopic images that strobe past, making no sense, haunt him.

  It forms a terrible self-perpetuating spiral of pain and fear.

  ◆◆◆

  Caufmann is standing over the ruination of Rennin Farrow, looking at him in bewilderment.

  His most talented Godyssey surgeon, secondary only to Jellan Roths, Talati Hillon has taken control of Horizon Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

  Hillon completes her initial visual inspection of her new patient. It does not inspire confidence. “What the hell happened to him?”

  Caufmann is unresponsive.

  “William
. He was armed to the teeth and all his clothing is fully armoured. What could have caused this amount of trauma?”

  “Rennin was on assignment, the nature of which is classified.”

  “He’s going to lose his right arm from the elbow, and almost his entire left leg. The femur and tibia are both shattered by the same bullet. Whatever crushed his wrist did a perfect job, especially so to get through his gauntlet. He is wearing CryoZaiyon Standard issue gear. If it wasn’t for the armour-weave in the collar of his jacket, whatever gripped his throat would have torn his head off.”

  “I agree, the kit was inadequate,” Caufmann concedes, inwardly chiding himself for underestimating the Isfeohrad Prototype.

  “It’s obvious that this was done by an android but progenitor-classes don’t have the hardware required to inflict this kind of damage,” Hillon says.

  Caufmann smiles condescendingly, “And how many progenitor-class androids have you had experience with?”

  “I’m the only one aiding your construction of Del, so I had to do a lot of study. Progenitor units weren’t constructed with metacarpal pistons, therefore they don’t have the ability to crush bone to this extent.”

  “It’s clearly been weaponised. But how and where are questions for another time. Rennin is our immediate concern. He’s the only one who has had any contact with it. The glasses I gave him recorded some verbal interaction, but the rain distorted what was said. I must know what he learned.”

  Hillon nods knowingly, “Ah, that explains everything.”

  “Do we have all the parts required?”

  “Well, yes, but not for his skull. The left side of his head is collapsed. I believe this to be a waste of resources. Also the weight of the parts we’re using are a serious concern. His frame won’t be able to support it.”

  “That’s why I have this,” says Caufmann producing a syringe. In the glass tube a pearlescent fluid is visible.

  Hillon’s eyes widen in wonder, “Is that what I think it is?”