… Jack Bowie was pretty sure he was going to die before those things got to him.
The bot released its grapple on his chest and flung its metallic claws around his neck in an instant. It was toying with him. Slowly sapping the life out of him rather than pulverizing his neck with one powerful squeeze.
But it meant Bowie still had a few precious seconds left to fight. To be the bull.
Bowie released his hold on the bot, knowing it was doing nothing, and flailed for the Nine on his arm. He pulled the weapon as his vision shrank down to a small pinhole of darkness and emptied the entire magazine into the bot on top of him.
He heard the sounds of the spiders and the warbot trundling along suddenly cease like sound effects interrupted by feedback.
And then there was nothing but darkness.
Quiet. Deep. Darkness as the metal nightmare squeezed the life out of him.
36
Jack Bowie gasped and rolled over, pushing the shattered metallic corpse of the dead bot off of him. Rounds from the Nine had ruined its processor housing. The thing’s head was literally smoking as components lay like metal blood splatter along the floor nearby.
It dawned on Bowie that this humanoid bot with the insectile head had been the THK. The fearsome, legendary THK. And in the end, it wasn’t high-tech EM blasts that brought it down… it was a few 9mm bullets. It seemed so cosmically stupid that Bowie might have laughed had his throat not throbbed so severely.
His leg felt on fire.
Bowie curled into a ball in order to look down along his leg, hearing himself groan in titanic pain as he did so. Feeling a sharp pain from the involuntary effort.
Burnt flesh and exposed bone was what he saw. The bot had hit him solidly and good.
The smartsuit was rebooting and suddenly he was being advised to stand by for combat medicine. Please lie still, flashed across his HUD.
Assessing…
Assessing…
Assessing…
The messaged appeared again and again as Jack tried to breathe. Tried to control the overwhelming pain. There was nerve damage. And the unbidden thoughts he would lose the leg for a cybernetic.
Then the meds kicked in as the smartsuit synthesized what was needed to knock the top off the wild pain gone runaway. Below, where the wound in his leg was, Jack could see the edges of the smartsuit, burnt and fried by the blaster shot, crawling together over the wound.
It was sealing. Probably cleaning the wound.
That’s good, Jack thought as he fumbled for a new magazine from off his belt. Not wanting to speak. Throat and larynx in too much pain to speak. He still held the Nine but his grip—his whole body—felt sweaty and uncertain.
He lay there and waited as the pain miraculously faded.
Bowie knew he needed to get up. He tried to get to his feet but there was no way the leg would support him. It was probably broken. And that was most likely not the worst of the damage. He managed to get upright, supporting his weight on one leg and leaning against the wall.
Spiders, he thought and felt cold ice water rushing along his spine and sweating head. The smartsuit covered his head like a hood. He pulled it off, feeling he needed the air. Removing the comm from the hood, he leaned his head against the wall and activated it.
No ping.
Which meant no rescue team. Unless one was already inbound. He needed to make his way back to the other side of the clean room at the front blast door. That was the last time he remembered his comm working. He pushed himself up along the wall, balancing on one leg.
Good. This was good. He was upright. He could get around, albeit slowly, with just one working wheel. He hopped and stumbled back along the galleries to the main entrance, thankful for the pain meds. Knowing that without them, each jarring hop would be torture. Trying not to think about the damage he might be doing to an already ruined limb.
There were no spiders. No other warbots.
Those things must have been tricks played by the THK to get close. THKs that ran active PsyOps software designed to confuse and disorient their victims. Of course the thing had made it seem like it had help. In all likelihood it was just some relic from the Savage Wars that had been beaten to hell and salvaged by some collector. It probably wasn’t even at full warfighting capabilities.
“Grateful for that,” muttered Bowie as he limped along. He winced from the effort of speaking, and felt a tang of blood in the back of his mouth. His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper.
He got to the front entrance and found an active comms signal again.
“Reiser?” he croaked, sounding like a koob, his throat in agony. “Reiser! Reiser… you there?”
A moment later after a wash of static the old spook who ran dirty work for Team Nilo came through.
“Yeah, I’m here, Jack,” said Reiser. “All clear? We lost you when…”
“Yeah,” gasped Jack. “All clear.”
It was all he could manage to say.
“All right,” said Reiser softly. “They’re coming in now, Jack. Stand by.”
37
Reiser leaned back in his chair at the operations center inside the warehouse after telling Jack Bowie to stand by. Yes, they were coming in.
He picked up a separate comm.
“Go with Alpha Team. Clean him and get everything out of there.”
The confirmation from Alpha Team leader came back. Alpha was go for clean and clear.
There was no one else here in the ops center. The rest of his Nether Ops team was in and around the museum, in armored sleds masked up to look like Team Nilo cargo and ready to take possession of the artifacts that had just been secured.
Stolen right out from under Nilo’s nose.
Now Reiser had to torch the warehouse, issue the burn notice
