But a moment later the liquid froze, encasing the building fragment in a block of ice; the servo mechanisms attempted to close the non-existent lid as a new liquid-filled cavity swiveled into view.
She returned to the second opening she’d made in the casing. Sure enough, a new ice block had rotated into place, containing a fresh weapon. She removed it and the weapon promptly thawed out.
She kept placing the bricks into the bin one by one, causing the next ice block to cycle through, and in that manner retrieved the weapons. Eventually the internal conveyor belt began to carry her own frozen bricks into the second opening, which she ignored.
Shortly after that, fresh liquid stopped appearing in the main cavity, and instead a frozen block containing a weapon appeared. Apparently, the conveyor belt had wrapped around—she’d exhausted the bin’s storage capacity. She removed the block, letting it melt, and the next frozen weapon promptly rotated into view. She continued taking them, and very soon she’d relieved the bin of all its confiscated weapons.
With a grin she began to sort through them. She was able to look up the specs on the Net—at least weapons data hadn’t been suppressed from the population.
There were a wide variety of weapons, from pistols to rifles to energy knives, and even a bladed weapon. The latter was a bit of an antique, according to the Net, intended for extreme close-range fights. Called the X2-59, it was essentially a cylindrical guard the wearer attached to the wrist, which could deploy and retract the blade at will. Apparently, the metal was made of a special material that allowed it to fold up inside the guard. When deployed, it was enveloped by plasma generated by electrolasers.
Since energy weapons had little effect on the Hydras, the X2-59 might be something worth considering, especially after she’d seen the Hydras physically tussle with one another. Then again, she hadn’t actually seen them inflict any harm, except to push one another out of the way. Sure, a Hydra had screamed when the tendrils from one of its brethren had struck its underside, but those were stinging tentacles, not pieces of metal. There was no guarantee the blade would even be able to penetrate the thick scales. Also, using it meant she’d have to get in extremely close, which was a big downside to fighting with it in and of itself.
A weapon to be used only as a last resort, I think.
She stowed the X2-59 into her pack alongside the other weapons, intending to give them out to the residents at the appropriate time. She kept the most powerful weapon for herself, a rifle called the Dupra-Linx 32, or DL-32. It could fire burst attacks that had roughly five times the intensity of the energy bolts her original pistol generated, though the drawback was a reduced firing rate. The DL-32 had a strap, so she hung it from her right shoulder.
She glanced at the empty holster on her hips, then fetched the most powerful pistol from the backpack and slid it into her belt, figuring she might as well keep a backup for herself since she had the holder.
Then she climbed the ruins of one of the taller buildings on that street, not far from the wall. It was a mid-rise apartment that had partially collapsed. When she reached the jagged upper portion, she sat on the building frame, letting her feet dangle over the edge. She gazed out across the ruins before her and waited. From her vantage point, she could partly see the rocky plains beyond, between the skyscrapers on the far side of the ruins.
She searched for the scouts she’d encountered earlier, but there was no sign of them. And so, in the coming minutes she began to doubt herself. Was she making the right choice? More importantly, were the bioweapons even coming at all? She didn’t let herself dare hope the Hydras would leave the settlement untouched. They were coming. And as for making the right choice, all she knew was that she couldn’t run away like Will and Horatio. She had chosen this battle, and now she had to fight it.
She wondered if Will was right with his Karnator theory. That when she died, she would be reborn as a bioweapon, or perhaps an alien on the far side of the galaxy, with all memories of this life gone. Rebirth like that wasn’t so different from what had happened to her already, when she’d awakened after a mind wipe, so she supposed there should be nothing to fear.
Even so, while it was a slightly comforting thought, it was also terrifying. She wasn’t sure whether she would prefer nothingness to an endless life of random rebirths. Although… she imagined some sort of presence, conscious or otherwise, would be required to govern the many forms of life that existed throughout the universe, so the infinite rebirths the Karnators believed in made sense in a twisted sort of way. If it was true, what troubled her the most was coming back as something completely foreign to human consciousness. She wasn’t even thinking about life on another planet… what if she returned as a plant, for example? Or an insect?
And so her thoughts continued to roil and wander as she watched the plains beyond the ruins. The seconds turned into minutes, and the minutes became hours.
Though she was outside the settlement, because of her height, she still had a relatively good connection to the Net. Thus she was able to livestream everything. Unfortunately, only one or two viewers joined her stream as the hours passed, and whenever she tried talking to them, to warn them, without fail they promptly left.
And then, finally, a dust cloud appeared, stretching from horizon to horizon on the plains beyond the broken skyscrapers.
The bioweapons had arrived.
She sent a final message to Bardain.
“They’re here.”
28
Rhea watched in trepidation for several moments, unable to move from her perch atop the building frame. Entranced by that growing cloud, she watched
