Metal Fatigue (47 page)

Cati's depthless eyes watched Roads as he moved across the platform. The killer's fist had fallen to his side, but it remained at the ready. Roads raised the communicator to his lips again.

"Cati, listen to me. Listen to me carefully," he said. "Your previous orders have been superseded: Phil Roads is no longer a threat, and neither is the woman with him. You are not required to kill them. Do you understand? They can live." He paused, then added: "Please indicate your understanding immediately."

Cati nodded, and straightened to a more relaxed posture.

Roads took a deep breath.

At that moment, the Mole reappeared, ran across the platform and collided bodily with Cati, knocking him to the metal surface. Katiya screamed and went to his aid, but the Mole dashed her aside.

The artificial image flexed and twisted as force-fields warped; fingers stretched, became talons like pointed daggers, impossibly sharp at the tip. Cati rolled away as they stabbed down at him. One slashed his abdomen, but the others missed and buried themselves deep in the metal of the platform. The Mole twisted again, following Cati as he tried to escape. Its gait was no longer possible to mistake as human — like something out of a bad dream, impossibly silent and deadly — and far too quick for even Cati to avoid for long.

Then a voice shouted at both of them: "Freeze!"

Roads, Katiya and Cati turned as one to face the voice coming from the ladderwell. Only the Mole ignored it. While Cati was distracted, it stabbed forward again with five rigid talons aimed directly for the killer's undefended throat.

The gunshot blew it backward across the platform, warping active field-effects at chest-height so it seemed to collapse inward upon itself.

Barney aimed again as its shape readjusted and came forward. This time the bullet did not encounter anything solid, and passed through the illusion unimpeded. A third time Barney fired, and kept firing until her clip was empty — aiming at throat, hips and nipples ...

She hit something with her last shot.

Sparks flew from a point somewhere within the hologram's right chest, and the Mole froze in mid-step.

With a fierce crackle, the image dissolved into static, then winked out completely. All that remained were the five silver balls at its heart, hanging motionless in midair and humming furiously with pent-up energies.

As though in sympathy, everything else became still: Roads lying on his back with the bloody transmitter still clutched in his hand, Katiya on the far side of the platform where the Mole had pushed her, Barney in a sharpshooter's stance next to ladderwell — and Cati, solemnly watching them all.

Then, before anyone could react, Cati turned and ran for the edge of the platform.

"Cati!" Katiya screamed.

But Cati took two bounding steps and dived gracefully into space, his huge frame hanging motionless for an instant, then curving as it fell.

By the time Katiya reached the edge, Cati was gone.

From far away, almost lost beneath the moaning of the wind, Roads heard a splash.

Katiya turned away and buried her face in her hands.

Barney brought the gun down, wiped sweat from her forehead.

Roads sagged onto his one good elbow and winced at the pain in his back. "Behold the cavalry," he muttered.

"In the nick of time, right?" Reaching into a pocket, Barney replaced her pistol's clip without looking away from the Mole.

"Silver bullets?"

"Lead, actually. I pinched them from Martin."

"Speaking of which ..." Roads subvocalised: "Can you hear us now?"

"Clear as a bell," replied the RUSAMC officer. "Whatever caused the problem must have fixed itself."

Roads mentally thanked Keith Morrow, and remained silent.

The sound of further movement came from the ladderwell. Barney stepped quickly aside to allow a line of RSD officers onto the platform. They held their weapons nervously, looking for something to aim at.

"That," said Barney, pointing. "If it so much as moves, give it all you've got."

Only when she was certain the Mole was covered did she turn away. Crossing the platform to where Roads lay, she reached down to help him to his feet.

"How're you doing, old man?"

"Feeling my age, for once." Roads forced a smile through the pain of his injuries. "You missed most of the action."

"Well, I'm here now." She cast him a mock-scathing look. "The least you could do is show some gratitude."

"What do you want? You turn up late and scare Cati away, and you expect me to carry you on my shoulders through the streets?"

"A 'thanks for trying' would be something."

"Fair point." Roads put his good hand on her arm. As empty as he felt on the inside, she didn't deserve to take the brunt of his disappointment. "I'm sorry. You weren't to blame for Cati. DeKurzak ordered him to jump off the bridge after he had killed me and Katiya."

"He did? Why bother when we were already on the way?"

"To hide the evidence. He wanted a nice, convenient tableau to convince the Council that Stedman and I were guilty of
something
. With me and Cati dead, there would be nobody left to pin the blame on him."

"Except me." Barney shrugged. "Anyway, DeKurzak himself is dead now, so now no-one's left to mount a case against you."

"Maybe," Roads said, weariness sinking into his bones.

"Pessimist." Barney left his side to study the Mole. The silver balls didn't move as she approached; they hung unsupported in mid-air like Christmas decorations minus the tree. The angry buzz continued unabated. "We have to get back and help Roger, Martin," she said into the RUSAMC intercom. "But what about
this
? What do we do with it now?"

"I'm not sure," said O'Dell from below. "We can try moving it, if you like — although I wouldn't recommend it. It may look inactive, but it could be faking, playing dead. Even damaged, it's not defenceless."

"Have you tried communicating with it?" asked Roads.

"Yes. Still no response. Whatever it's doing, it isn't talking to us."

"Maybe it's thinking," suggested Barney. "Trying to decide whether to give up."

"Or not." Roads moved forward to stand at Barney's side. From so close, the Mole didn't look dangerous at all; just alien, incomprehensible. It was hard to believe that such an innocuous device had caused so much chaos in the last six weeks. "I won't relax until I see the damn thing in pieces."

Before either of them could react, the Mole reappeared. An invisible force-field pushed Roads and Barney aside, spilling them bodily to the rusty metal several metres away.

Roads rolled as he hit, grimacing as his broken arm tangled under him. They came to a halt together near the edge of the hole in the platform.

"What the hell?" Barney muttered as she clambered to her feet. The RSD squad had turned their rifles on the expressionless Mole and fired several times.

Barney and Roads joined the squad. Each bullet vanished into the holographic illusion with a faint fizzing noise, audible over the echo of the shot.

"It must be draining power at an incredible rate to maintain that sort of field," said O'Dell via the cyberlink. "But why now? What does it stand to gain?"

Roads tensed as the Mole took a step forward.

"Any guesses, Phil?" asked Barney.

"I don't know," Roads admitted. "But I don't like it."

The Mole took another step, then began to change. The image blurred and swelled, ballooning into an upright lozenge two metres high. The light it cast was a deathly pearl-white, growing brighter by the second.

"Martin?" prompted Roads.

"I'm not sure, either," replied O'Dell. "I've never seen this sort of behaviour from any of the prototypes."

"It must mean
something
."

"True." O'Dell took a deep breath. "It's maximising its surface area, discharging its energy reserve at a dangerous rate. That could mean it's trying to overload its power supply."

"Which means what?"

"That the batteries will explode."

"It's going to self-destruct?" Barney took a step backward, away from the pulsing lozenge.

O'Dell hesitated. "You'd better get as far away as possible, just in case. Try to put as much metal between you and it as you can."

"Will that help?"

"Well, I've seen only one EPA malfunction before, and that destroyed a personnel carrier. The Mole has
five
..."

"Shit." Barney relayed the situation to the rest of the RSD officers on the platform, and told them to move away.

"How long do we have?" Roads asked.

"A couple of minutes. Your guess is as good as mine, I'm afraid. It depends on what the Mole hopes to achieve: complete annihilation of everything around it, or just enough damage caused to kill one person."

"Me?" Roads edged across the platform. The Mole followed him as though joined by an invisible string.

"Given a choice. I'd assume it's partly trying to erase all evidence that it ever existed, seeing it knows it's been discovered. If it can take you with it, all the better."

Roads exhaled as the RSD squad filed down the ladderwell. This was one threat he'd be unable to fight his way out of. He had to pass on what he'd learnt about DeKurzak's long-term goals. "You'll have to do me a favour then Martin. I'm about to transmit another feed. It's not long. Just make sure Stedman sees it and passes it on to Mayor Packard, with the recording you've made of all this. Do it now, before we lose contact again."

"But — "

"Just send it. You can look at it later." Roads concentrated briefly, then sent O'Dell the recording he'd made of his last words to DeKurzak.

"Phil?" Barney had waited until the last of the RSD squad was gone before turning to him. "After you. I'll bring Katiya."

"No," he said. "It's your turn, remember?"

"But you're
hurt
— "

"Exactly." He took a step to his left, and the Mole echoed the movement again. "It's locked onto me. If I go now, you'll be trapped up here, above it. You go first, then Katiya. I'll come last, when it's safe to follow."

Barney reluctantly obeyed; she knew the difference between good sense and blind heroics. "Don't wait too long," she called up at him as he watched her descend.

He waved and turned to Katiya. The woman's face was streaked with tears; her eyes hardly saw him as he indicated the ladderwell.

"Katiya?" He took her by the arm. "We have to leave now."

"No. There's nothing to go back to."

"Please, Katiya — for my sake. I'm not leaving here without you."

"I don't want to be saved."

Roads hesitated, caught between conflicting impulses. Did he have any right to force her to come with him? If she wanted to die, then that was her business, not his — especially now. There was little time for arguing.

With one last look over his shoulder, Roads swung his pain-racked frame into the ladderwell and began to descend.

The Mole, now a swollen, fuzzy sphere two metres across, followed. Roads heard the angry buzz grow louder as the Mole's power sources began to feel the strain. He tried to go faster, but was hampered by his broken arm.

"How long now, Martin?" he asked as he descended.

"I've spoken to the Cherubim team at base-camp. They reckon still a minute or two."

"Right." The angry light from the sphere became blinding as Roads found his footing on the second ladder. His scalp and neck registered heat blazing from above. The sphere descended close behind.

He reached the bottom of the ladder. To his left, the walkway stretched across the bridge. Below, he could see Barney and the squad; they had reached the first junction of the stairwell.

He paused to catch his breath. The Mole settled onto a junction of cables not far away, burning like a furious sun. To have any chance of surviving, he had to find a way to go faster.

"Martin?" Roads turned to look up the ladders to the top of the tower, not so very far away. "How will I know when it's too late to run?"

"If the safety overrides are still functioning, you'll hear a warning," said O'Dell. "It sounds like a siren, but it only lasts one second. When you hear it, the power systems are about to fuse."

"Good." Roads took one last look down, and then began to climb back upward.

"Phil?"

"Wish me luck, Martin," Roads muttered under his breath. As his good hand began to cramp, he added to himself: "God knows, I'm too old for this shit."

Katiya looked up in surprise as Roads emerged back onto the platform, closely followed by the Mole. Strange shadows wavered in the night air as he clambered to his feet and limped to join her.

"Take my hand," he instructed her.

"What — "

"Just take it!" Roads grabbed her left hand in his and dragged her toward the edge of the platform. "And when I say jump, do it!"

Katiya looked from him to the empty space facing them, and tried to pull away. "No!"

"We don't have time to argue, Katiya."

"But — "

A scream from behind them cut her off her in mid-sentence: the Mole's warning systems had been activated.

Roads braced himself to step forward. "
Jump
!"

He pushed himself off the platform with all of his strength, pitching himself into the air like an inelegant diver.

Katiya, tugged by his hand, had no choice but to follow.

Behind them, the Mole exploded. With a noise like the sky breaking open and a light so bright it dazzled Roads in the upper electromagnetic spectrum, the EPAs unloaded all their stored energy in one powerful blast.

The shockwave pushed Roads forward and out into clear space. Katiya was wrenched from his grasp. Pieces of bridge rained after him, some glowing molten-hot in low infra-red. He began to tumble end over end. A boiling cloud of smoke overtook him, blinding him for an instant in all wavelengths.

When it cleared, he tried without success to relocate Katiya. Flailing wildly with his good arm and both legs, he oriented himself against the growing updraught, and hoped that she was doing the same. If she wasn't, then there was precious little he could do to help her. He had time only to worry about himself — and that time was rapidly running out.