Keith also dragged. No doubt, the wearying Gs took their toll.
The sense of urgency grew in Maddox. He wanted to sprint ahead and attack the others. There was another problem. Every second longer they took, the doomsday machine flew that much closer to Earth. If they took too long, Star Watch wouldn’t have a fleet left.
Finally, the urgency boiled up in the captain’s chest. It forced him to say, “We have to run.”
“How long do you think we can run under these conditions?” Keith asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
“Sergeant?” Keith asked. “How do you feel about that?”
“This isn’t a debating society,” Maddox said. “Ready, Sergeant?”
“No,” Riker said, wearily. “But that never stopped me, sir. This is like Loki Prime all over again. Instead of the infected prisoners chasing me, we’re chasing the end of our world.”
“Correct,” Maddox said.
The captain gripped Riker around the waist and began to run. Riker stumbled, but found his footing. Together, the two Intelligence operatives lumbered down the corridor. Keith struggled to keep up.
Soon, Maddox heard the harsh sound of Riker and Keith’s breathing in his headphones. He kept pulling the sergeant with him. Every time he glanced back, the ace doggedly remained a few steps behind them.
In time, their breathing worsened, becoming harsh.
“We’re running out of time,” Maddox told the other two.
“Yeah,” Keith wheezed. Likely, it was all he could say.
They hit a ramp, and Riker stumbled. Maddox held the sergeant up until the man found his footing again. When the captain looked back, Keith had lost several meters.
“Need…rest,” Keith wheezed.
“Not yet,” Maddox said. “We have to push. Think of it this way, nothing else you’ve ever done in life matters as much as this. We have to reach them in time to save the human race.”
They ran through massive corridors and crossed bigger chambers. There were dark pits, crystal machines emitting loud clicking noises and another room that was thick with a cloudy atmosphere. In there, discs of varying sizes changed position with electrical discharges zigzagging between them. Motes shimmered in the cloudy haze.
Maddox tried to encourage Keith. The captain discovered that the shortwave radios didn’t work in here. He had no idea what kind of alien technology the discs represented.
Riker stumbled more and more often. The man’s strained features looked old and weary. Sweat stained his leathery skin, and his eyes stared straight ahead. The sergeant didn’t complain, though. Maybe he couldn’t anymore. He seemed to be on autopilot.
Keith had dropped even farther behind by the time they left the floating disc chamber. The ace now limped noticeably. Maddox also felt the strain, but what he felt even more was a terrible sense of urgency.
They turned a corner, and it felt as if someone slugged Maddox in the chest.
He saw thirty, bio-matter, robotic creatures. They had spikes for legs, three dots in a triangle for eyes and five spike arms. In swift, jerky movements, the thirty robots headed in the direction of Oran Rva’s party.
Keith made a strangled noise over the headphones.
Maddox glanced back. The ace fell onto his chest, having tripped or given up. The next moment, Maddox drew a blaster. He didn’t have time to hide or figure out a different way to reach Oran Rva. Thirty alien machines blocked the way and he had to get rid of them now.
“Are you ready, Sergeant?” Maddox asked.
“I’m no good shooting left-handed, sir. I’ll give you my blaster.”
“The two of you go back around the corner and hide,” Maddox said.
“No,” Keith said.
“Don’t be stupid,” Riker said. “Do as the captain tells you. If he’s worrying about us, he won’t do his job as well.”
Maddox didn’t wait to see if they obeyed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the sergeant set his blaster down on the spongy deck by his feet and back away.
Maddox picked up the second blaster. He had no idea how much of a charge these weapons had. Today, he would find out one way or another. Aiming at the first head, Maddox pulled the trigger.
A pencil-thin beam gushed out and burned the first head. He shot a second and a third. Oil gushed from neck trunks. Each of the machines collapsed and froze. More oil pumped onto the floor, soon sinking out of sight.
The seconds passed and Maddox continued to burn them down. He waited for the other bio-robots to turn around and attack. They never did. Each surviving creature continued to spike-step forward, following their programming without deviation.
Maddox felt a tug at his shoulder. He turned, staring at Riker.
“Stop, sir,” the sergeant radioed.
Maddox lowered the blasters.
“I’m thinking you don’t have to kill them,” Riker said. “They’re going after the others, right?”
“Right,” Maddox said. He should have already figured that out. He was tired and getting sloppy. “Where’s Keith?”
“I’m coming,” the ace said.
As the three men spoke, the remaining bio-robots continued to jerk down the corridor, ignoring the broken machines behind them.
“How much of a cushion should we keep between them and us?” Keith asked.
“We’ll hang back a little,” Maddox said. “I want to keep them in sight, though.”
The three men walked past the frozen robots. There was no sight of the spilled oil.
Ahead of them, the other bio-robots moved faster than they appeared to be going. Soon, the three men broke into a jog. Even so, the alien constructs gained separation.
Finally, the men ran after the machines to keep up.
More of the bio-robots joined the others until sixty or more seethed down the corridors.
Behind the machines, the three men staggered, barely able to see the robots anymore.
“We’re close to the control room,” Maddox said, glancing at the recorder.
“What’s that?” Keith shouted.
“What?” Maddox asked, hearing the worry in the ace’s voice.
“See that little ball sailing over the robots?”
Maddox looked up. As usual, Keith was the first to spot a flying object. Then, the captain realized what he spied.
“Down,” Maddox shouted. “It’s a pulse grenade.”
The captain hit the deck. Seconds later, so did Riker and Keith.
The small object landed and ignited, blowing away bio-robots, raining body parts and oil. Another grenade sailed and a third, fourth and fifth. Heat billowed down the corridor as concussions washed against Maddox’s vacc-suit as he lay on the deck.
Then, a thick man in an armored vacc-suit appeared down the hall. He held a blaster, and he burned the surviving robots. Afterward, the man seemed to inspect the destroyed constructs. Satisfied, or so it would appear, the man holstered the blaster and disappeared around the farther corner.
Keith turned to Maddox as they lay on the floor. “We’ve reached the others.”
“Yes,” Maddox said, climbing to his feet. “It’s finally time to finish this.”
-43-
Meta was bewildered by everything that had happened but most especially by what was happening. Deep in her mind, she tried to free himself from her immobility.
She stood in a small chamber, at least relative to things inside the doomsday machine. Crystal machines hummed around her, seven of them. They were tall like spires with mechanisms visible inside. At the top, flows of energy went from point to point. The energy lines continually changed color. It made her skin feel itchy.
In the very center of the chamber was a crystal cube machine. It was ten meters by ten. Swirling colors moved at random on the surfaces. If Meta looked at the colors too long, her thoughts faded away. It was like watching flames flicker but even more so.
At the top of the cube was an odd mechanical construction that seemed different in nature to everything else in here. It was shaped like an octopus with a bulbous section and eight cable arms. The ends of the arms were embedded in the cube.