Reaver approached the octagonal control booth, her new rifle swinging from her shoulders. Along with her gun, it appeared she’d found an extra power-pack and had it slung across her shoulder in the opposite direction. I was amazed at the tech now that I’d seen it in use. I’d never seen a hand-held, rapid-fire particle cannon before.
“Like what you see?” she asked, giving me a knowing smirk.
“Yeah, I—” I started to say, then recognized the double-meaning. She was naughty, and I loved it. “I sure do,” I continued.
“Good. Later,” she said as she examined the control booth. “There’s a bunch of cube-like things in here. The hoverbikes have cube-shaped spots between the handlebars. I’m thinking those are the keys—or maybe the power sources. Either way, I think we need them. I signaled caution because sometimes, power sources are also explosive.”
Skrew slowly stood up behind the counter in the control booth. His face was illuminated by multi-colored blinking lights, and his eyes were twice their normal size. Whatever he was looking at had him fascinated, which worried me. Sometimes, fascinating things were explosive, too.
“Don’t touch anything,” I said to him as I walked around the room to the rear entrance.
“But this is...” Skrew trailed off.
When I entered the back doorway, I found myself a bit fascinated, too. There were more buttons, diagrams, lights, and monitors than I’d ever seen in one place except the bridge of a Martian starship.
A shelf held rows of matrices, small glowing cubes about three inches on all sides. I grabbed five, shoved two in my pocket, and turned to Skrew, who was doing exactly as I’d told him not to.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“King is dumb,” he replied, not stopping or looking back. “He dumb, guards dumb, dung-heads. No security. Default code. Too easy.”
I stepped closer, looked over his shoulder, and felt my jaw unhinge. The vrak’s fingers flew over the big screen in front of him. He tapped icons, moved others into glowing representations of boxes, and combined still more. I wasn’t at all familiar with the tech.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Is that us?” Beatrix asked, pointing to another monitor.
“Yes,” Skrew said, a proud look on his face. “Skrew owns all. Skrew is security god. Master of the securities—all the securities. Skrew did to hack them up and now sees all the things.”
Where the fuck had this ability come from? Then I remembered. He’d been sent to the vrak village and sentenced to death for “scribbling code.” I hadn’t understood at the time because I hadn’t seen any computers on the planet at that point, but it all made sense now.
Skrew the six-armed, three-fingered code breaker.
“Hmm…” Beatrix added before she pointed past me. “What’s that?”
I looked to where she was indicating. Three blinking, multi-colored icons were converging in a straight line with an octagonal-shaped green icon. I pointed to the green icon and asked, “Is that us?”
Skrew laughed. “No, that is control room. We are not control room.”
“He means, is that our current location?” Beatrix leaned down, got in the vrak’s face, and shook a couple of tentacles she’d balled into fists.
“Oh, yes.” He nodded vigorously. “Is us. Green is here.”
“What are those?” I asked, pointing to the icons that were even closer.
Skrew waited for Beatrix to back away before looking. His expression changed to one of concern. “Skrew does not know, but the colors say friend, so nothing is to worry.”
“Who’s friend?” Reaver asked. She’d stopped patrolling and was trying to see what everyone was looking at through the bars on the nearby wall of the control booth.
Skrew smiled. “Friend of… oh…”
“Take cover!” I ordered. “Skrew, can you do anything from here?”
He stammered for a moment before answering. “Like fight with the things?”
“Yes, like that?”
“No.”
“Then take cover,” I growled.
As soon as I spoke the words, a deep rumble seemed to come from the belly of the planet itself.
“Not great,” Skrew whispered. “See?” He pointed to the monitor. The multi-colored icons had almost reached the green icon. We were out of time.
“Move!” I barked.
Skrew did, like his ass was on fire. He scrambled one direction, then the other, and back the first way again. I extended one arm and pointed up toward the exit in the ceiling, and he darted through it a moment before a new light appeared on the far side of the garage.
Huge shadows darkened the garage as new enemies crawled through the opening and stood, almost touching the ceiling.
A pair of mechs, each piloted by a vrak.
I ducked behind the counter and left the control room. No use getting myself cornered. One mech was bad enough, but two would be a huge challenge.
Then a third mech entered the garage, the concrete cratering beneath its massive bulk.
The mechs spread out across the room as far as they could without tripping over the big metal boxes or the hoverbikes. My stomach tightened at the thought of the macs destroying our only mode of transportation..
Each of the nearly 30-foot-tall machines was equipped with a plasma cannon on their left arm. Such devices could hurl a ball of plasma—superheated gas—and vaporize anything it touched. I wasn’t sure they were stupid enough to use the weapon underground where destroying enough of the walls could bury them alive. Also, in such a confined area, the explosion could vaporize everything, including them. But vrak weren’t the most intelligent species I’d encountered.
My team appeared to be completely hidden. I could only see Skrew and Beatrix, but since the mechs weren’t shooting, I hoped it meant they hadn’t found any targets yet.
A second later, I ducked as a pair of red beams bracketed the room. The mechs were using some kind of ladar technology—like radar, but with lasers. The good thing was that ladar couldn't see through the boxes. The bad thing was that ladar could see everything in microscopic detail. There was no way to hide from it, other than keeping something between you and the lasers.
Reaver signaled her desire to attack. I didn’t know
