Protocol 7

THE ALCOVE

Trapped in the ice. Trapped in the dark. Utterly, completely lost. But glad they were not dead.

Still alive, each of them thought—almost in unison, barely aware of it, feeling the identical bloom of relief and dread. Still alive…but now what?

Simon realized they needed to regroup and make decisions quickly. “You think we’re still being followed?” he asked Max, who scowled at the thought, and then nodded.

“What the f*ck have we gotten ourselves into?” Hayden said, his voice trembling on the edge of hysteria. “This wasn’t supposed to be like this. Underground? In tunnels, for Christ’s sake? And being chased by I don’t know what!”

“Relax,” said Max, strong but reassuring.

“But—”

“Relax,” Max said again—and this time it was more an order than a bit of advice.

Hayden started to argue again. He opened his mouth; brought up an accusing finger, and suddenly Max was out of his seat and hovering over the inventor, almost nose to nose with him. The rest of the crew watched them in fascination and horror.

“Hayden!” he hissed. “We agreed to do this, all of us, together, no matter what. You

remember that?”

“But—”

“No f*cking ‘buts.’ None of us knew what we were getting into at the time—how could we? But this is what it is. Now. Here. And if you can’t handle it properly, okay. Then get your gear and get the f*ck out of the Spector.”

Hayden gaped at him in disbelief.

“You’re f*cking kidding me.”

“No, Hayden. I’m not. Get on board or get out.”

Hayden lifted his chin, still defiant, but his tone had changed. The hysteria was gone; the anger tightly controlled. He looked at the others now, talking to all of them. They listened in rigid silence. “We need to decide what to do quickly,” he told them. “That’s all I’m saying. We’re descending farther and farther into this hell, and if we don’t have a plan for escape, we will all freeze to death, stuck thousands of feet below the ice.”

Simon was in deep thought, listening with one ear as he contemplated their next move. These are ordinary people, he realized. Extraordinary brains maybe, but ordinary people. None were equipped for the danger that was confronting them. He was asking far too much, and he knew it, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

He stood up suddenly, nodding at his father’s oldest friend.

“Hayden, you’re absolutely right. None of us want to perish in this hell.” He looked at Max, who watched him closely, eyes narrowed. “So let’s assess what our options are and decide what we should do together, all right?”

“Maybe we need to contact the authorities, guys,” Samantha said, quiet but steady. “This is out of our scope. This is out of anybody’s scope.”

“Who is it that you want to contact?” Max said, frustrated at the sheer naiveté of the comment. “Do you realize that we are violating international law by even being here?”

“You want to try and go back, then go,” Simon said with a weary finality. “Me, I’m ready to pack my gear and go searching for Oliver on foot if I have to. These very tunnels are evidence that something crazy is happening down here, and we’re part of it now, all of us, whether we like it or not.”

“And the longer we sit here,” Andrew said, his eyes still on the deepscan console, “the closer our pursuers get.”

“Still on our tail?” Max said, already knowing the answer.

“Tight as a tick on a dog’s ass, I’m afraid. Someone—three someones actually, though I have no idea what they are or what they look like—is heading our way this very moment. I’m gathering we don’t want to confront them quite yet.”

“Exactly,” Max said, but he couldn’t suppress the glint in his eye. “Not yet.”

While the others had been talking, Ryan had been scanning the walls of the alcove, looking for options. “I do believe I’ve found a possibility,” he said, and they all turned to see. “Max,” he said, “can you make just this section of the hull transparent? Right here?” He pointed to a large blank patch to his right.

“Sure,” Max said. He manipulated the console, and a portion of the wall as big as a bathroom mirror faded away, revealing the rocky floor and the cracked and not-so-distant wall of the alcove.

“This looks just large enough for us to go into,” Ryan said, walking to the transparent image and double-tapping on one particular portion of a crack in the ice wall—little more than a gap in the ice. But as the image zoomed forward at his command, they could all see it: a vertical crevice just a bit wider than the Spector itself that seemed to go far back into the wall, revealing an open, lighted area beyond.

“Good work, Ryan,” Simon said and clapped him on the shoulder.

Then Simon turned to Max. “You think we can fit in there?”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” replied Max, as he slid his hands over the holographic controls. The Spector turned on its slowly churning treads and trundled toward the opening. As they approached, Max noticed the sharpening image on the forward deepscan display: the crevice was indeed a passageway through the ice wall—a very long and twisted path that descended gradually to another dome, hundreds of feet below.

As they accelerated toward the new opening, Hayden made a disgusted sound in this throat. “So that’s the plan? Just keep running until…when? We run out of power, food, or luck? Or just whichever comes first?”

Simon was the one who rose to the bait this time. “Hayden,” he said, seething. “If you would like to wait here for whoever is on our tail, then be my guest. But we are moving on. You want to complain, fine, but right now is not the time. We’re going to be discovered any second.”

Just as the nose of the Spector entered the small passage, Andrew stiffened at his display and said, “I think we already are.”

Suddenly, a huge mechanical tentacle, a flexing arm, curled around the corner of the alcove wall at the edge of Tunnel 3 and flailed, searching for a hold. It banged into the ice, anchored itself, and pulled. An eight-legged creature made of unusual materials, three stories tall, dragged itself into view.

“Mother of god,” Samantha whispered. “What in the world?”

Max accelerated before Samantha spoke another word. The Spector cut through the ice, treads spinning, and penetrated the narrow passageway, turning slightly to the left to keep to the widest portion.

Don’t get much smaller, Simon prayed. Ten feet narrower, fifteen feet at the most, and we’ll be stuck like a plug in a pipe.

There was a deep mechanical thoom at their back. Simon didn’t have to look to know what that sound meant—the mechanical Spider, like an angry dragon from hell, was approaching. He felt a rush of adrenaline as they pushed forward.

“What are your thoughts now?” Simon asked Hayden, dripping sarcasm. The effect was dampened a bit by the sudden high, screaming contact of the Spector’s smartskin with an upthrust outcropping of ice. It sounded far too much like a human scream.

“Max,” Simon said. “Dial up the transparency on the rear—sorry, the aft—section of the Spector. I want to see what’s behind us.”

The vehicle suddenly veered to the right and nearly sent Samantha into yet another tumble, but she grabbed at a locked-down cabinet as she fell, and it helped to steady her. An instant later the entire rear of the vehicle seemed to disappear, and the crew could see the jagged opening of the passage and the bluish light of the dome they had just left behind.

The robot Spider, swooping and twitching, was still coming for them on all eight legs. They watched in horror as the huge beast wasted no time in its graceful gallop across the alcove floor. It looked more menacing the closer it came, the blinding lights attached to its limbs swiveling to focus directly on the back of the Spector.

Max was getting more and more concerned as the passage continued to narrow. He had very little room to maneuver; a few yards farther and he would have even less. And one subtle mistake would take off one of the side panels, he knew that for sure: the ancient ice was as hard as stone.

If anything irreparable happened to the Spector, they were as good as dead. They would all freeze, stuck in the icy tunnel. And given the Spiders behind them and the narrow passageway all around, Max knew there was only one way to go, and that was forward.

Behind him, the rest of the crew swiveled in their seats to look at the approaching robot, their eyes fixed on the visual displays.

Simon was both fascinated and horrified. This is the world you came to, Dad, he thought. This is the world you’re trapped in. And now he knew, as sure as he knew his own name, that his father was in terrible danger. But Simon wasn’t afraid; he was angry rather than terrified. It swelled in him like a tumor as he imagined Oliver experiencing his own version of the frozen hell they had entered.

Nastasia was transfixed by the bizarre machine crawling toward them. “From the look of that thing,” she said with typical Russian reserve, “it does not feel as if we are welcome.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t,” said Hayden, petrified at the sight of the massive machine on their tail.

By the time the Spider had reached the opening of the tunnel, the Spector had moved several hundred feet inside. To everyone’s amazement, the massive robot stopped moving at the opening of the crevice, its lights glaring, its arms waving and poking into the passageway. From their vantage point, they could see only the legs of the robot through the opening of the tunnel, not the central command bubble that glowed a dull blue.

“For god’s sake,” Samantha said through clenched teeth. “Why did it stop?”

“It has no choice.” Max responded, measuring the essential distances with his expert eye. “It’s too big for the passageway.” He glanced down at the readouts from their sensor array and allowed himself a small smile. He was right; the mechanical creatures were about ten percent too big to make it more than a few feet inside, and it would never reach as deep inside as the Spector already was. But the smile died as he looked up again. The damnable thing was huge, almost as tall as the alcove itself, and now two more of the massive creatures were joining it, their spotlights bobbing and swaying as if they were unconnected to the bodies, casting shadows and glittering points of light all along the icy walls.

The beams of light were like physical things, he realized—like endlessly long shafts of glowing force, piercing the translucent walls, cutting through the freezing air, reaching for them—pinning them—holding them in place.

And as he watched, the huge claws at the end of the robot’s flexing arms opened and closed, as if testing their strength, then gripped a chunk of ice at the edge of the opening and broke it off with a single jerk.

They weren’t giving up. They were just making the tunnel bigger. Simon had never felt more trapped in his entire life.





DOME AT FISSURE 9

Inside the DITV, Roland was seething. He watched helplessly as the Spiders clambered into the downsloping tunnel, pursuing the target—whatever the hell it was—their mechanical legs flexing and stretching to such an extreme degree they could fit almost comfortably into the shaft.

“We’ve lost them, sir,” his pilot said.

“I know,” he snapped. “I can see that. Any suggestions?”

“Sir, the only things that can go into these old tunnels are the MagCycles, but we have no way of bringing them up here.”

“How far does it go in?”

“To be honest, sir, the tunnel is no longer registered in our system. We’ve abandoned the old utility tunnels like this one over ten years ago.”

“Then use your f*cking scanners, but get me an answer asap!”

The officer almost popped out of his seat to respond. “We have, sir! We have! But—but the tunnel slopes down toward Shelf 2, and we lose the visual from ice density.”

“Then I’ll alert Central Command and dispatch drones to Shelf 2.”

“But they already have their CS—”

“They can’t do it! It’s not their mission!” Roland’s head was pounding with the tension; he would not put up with bullshit from his own soldiers! “We have to stop this vessel,” he said, forcing himself to calm down. “Even if it means we go in on foot!”

The officer looked as if he had told him to shoot himself in the head. They hate the ice, Roland reminded himself. That’s why they got into Transport & Ordinance. They hate the cold.

He slammed the armrest on his seat, concerned and frustrated about his personal safety and the safety of the whole operation. Vector5 had a zero tolerance for intruders or leakage of information. No one knew what the consequence would be if this secret operation blew open, but Roland knew he wouldn’t be around to find out. Central Command did not tolerate failure, and they didn’t pay death benefits to widows, either. Thinking for a moment, he turned to the driver of the ice transport vehicle.

“Re-route toward Shelf 2,” he grated. “I’m sure I’ll need to have an unfortunate meeting with Central Command about this mess.” He started to turn away and then checked himself. “And make sure the Scrambling Drones are operational throughout the continent. I don’t want any information going out or coming in. Who knows how many more of these damn bogeys there might be?”

The officers jumped to fulfill the orders; the DITV turned and headed back to the lifts that would take him a thousand feet lower to Central Command—whether he liked it or not.

The intruders won’t survive, he told himself, trying to sound reassuring at least to himself. They can’t possibly—not in this frozen hell.





CENTRAL COMMAND

A few thousand feet below, in the Ops Room of Central Command, Blackburn was watching it all. His body was little more than a silhouette against a vast wall that was covered, top to bottom and side to side with holo-screens and projections; he watched every one of them with a tight intensity, closely studying the intruders. Ops gave him a 360-degree view of virtually any part of the ice world. All around him, the walls displayed everything he needed to know about the covert operation of Vector5.

He had arrived from the surface barely three hours earlier and instantly relieved Mathias of duty. Wherever he went, wherever he landed, he was boss; he didn’t need challenges to his authority. He would handle it; they would follow his orders. Woe to the first man who looked to somebody else for permission or advice.

Twenty-five years, he told himself as he watched the strange, iridescent vehicle scuttle into the narrow passage and evade the Crevasse Spiders. Twenty-five years of building, planning, and operation, and never so much as a temporary breach. Now, two serious leaks in the last month.

He hadn’t thought of that before. Two of them—so close together. It made him wonder if there was some connection between Jonathan Weiss’ betrayal and this bizarre machine from…somewhere.

He was standing on a black carbon fiber catwalk that protruded into the huge, circular Ops Room. Fifteen technicians sat below him, monitoring the mega-computers, controlling the entire Vector5 operation deep within the Antarctic ice. He knew exactly what was happening. And he knew who was going to pay.

“Status of the Black Ops team assigned to Roland?” he asked. That decision had been made long ago. The commander had failed to stop the intruders and Blackburn simply wouldn’t tolerate that—if this was his last chance, it’d be everyone else’s, as well. And as with any officer-related ‘disciplinary action,’ he knew it had to happen quickly; there was always the concern that a Vector5 officer might defect to save his life, and Roland was no different. But he knew as well as Blackburn did: he had nowhere to go. Even if he somehow miraculously managed to escape the continent, Vector5’s reach extended to the far corners of the globe, controlling and manipulating information at all levels of society.

Forever secret, Blackburn thought, and smiled.

As he walked back toward the adjacent building to meet with his advisors, he wondered how he could have missed the possibility of a connection between Weiss and the intruder. In fact, he realized, it was quite possible that Simon Fitzpatrick himself, and maybe some or all of the scientists recently reported missing from Oxford, could be part of this—even on board the mysterious vessel. Certainly their whereabouts were unknown; Ryan’s fiancée had been interrogated until they had killed her and knew nothing—or gave them nothing—concerning his whereabouts.

Deep down, something told Blackburn that he had hit on something. This intruder was the team he had been looking for. “It’s them,” he said to himself.

One of his assistants looked up quizzically. “Sir?” he said.

“Never mind,” Blackburn said. His complement of eight officers and advisors followed him to the meeting room to start the debrief.

* * *

It was a long-standing custom: when Blackburn returned to Antarctica, his commanders met with him immediately and brought him up to date. Nothing was ignored, nothing was held back, or that would be the commander’s last meeting. In fact, the debrief itself was more of a checksum for Blackburn than a necessity. He could access any information he needed wherever he was on the planet, any time he chose; he prided himself on knowing every important detail of the vast covert operation at any given moment. But the debriefing did give him valuable insight into just how well-informed and in control his commanders were—and how forthcoming.

At home back in North America, Blackburn led a very deceptive life. He played at being an average mid-level Pentagon official, currently assigned to UNED. No one at either organization knew exactly what his roles and responsibilities were, and no one was privy to his existance in Antarctica. Nobody needed to know. It was Blackburn’s operation—his, and the Committee he answered to, the men he had actually never met.

He leaned back in his well-padded leather chair and studied his command team with deep, piercing eyes. Very little affected Blackburn. He believed in himself with a strength, a ferocity that was intimidating to most. He was rarely questioned, and always, always deferred to.

But today was different. This was the first breach of Antarctica’s security in over twenty years. Someone somehow had managed to enter the ice continent and penetrate the network—his network. And his job—his life—depended on getting to the bottom of it.

Vector5 called a security breach an “incision” for a reason: it was a violation of the body; it was a threat to the operation’s continued health. It was dangerous, and it was expected to cause some pain—to someone.

Just not to Blackburn.

“Commander Roland is on his way down,” were the first words out of his mouth. Everyone in the room knew what that meant. The relief they shared—that this time, at least, it wasn’t them—was palpable.

One of the Ops advisors straightened in his chair. “Sir,” he said, “We believe we can—”

Blackburn cut him off with a gesture.

“Don’t. It’s pathetic. You have no solutions; you—all of you—are responsible for this happening in the first place.” He leaned back again and stared at the blank white walls. “This is what we will do. We will wait for the intruder—the intruders, plural, as it happens—to come to us.”

“But sir,” one of the defense commanders protested, “If they were to somehow penetrate—”

“They will penetrate nothing. There’s no way they can send any signals beyond the continent, and the farther they run from the Spiders, the deeper they go—and the closer they get to us.” He shook his head briefly and tapped the grey tabletop. “No, we will meet them at Shelf 3…if they manage to survive until then.”

“But sir, if I may,” said one of the officers. He tried to stand, saw the expression on Blackburn’s face, and gave it up as a bad idea. He cleared his throat nervously as he retook his seat. “Sir,” he said again, “We still have not been able to locate the eighteen scientists that escaped a few weeks ago. What if…?”

“What if what, Lucas?” he asked the officer very quietly. “Your inability to hold on to operational assets that were in your care is hardly the accomplishment you want to mention at this meeting, is it? It was a failure to begin with…but, I am quite sure, not terribly dangerous. They will run out of rations and freeze to death in the next few days, if they haven’t already.”

Another advisor—my, they’re feeling bold today, Blackburn thought, almost amused—half-raised his hand in a timid bid for attention. “Sir,” he said, “We have reports that several pieces of our old MCs have been dug out of the ice and are probably in the hands of those scientists. The tracker-bugs on them started to fire—for a while, until someone disabled them. So we know—”

Blackburn shrugged it off. The intruders are not the only ones who keep digging themselves in deeper, he thought. “Fine,” he said, dismissing it. “I couldn’t care less. Where the hell do they think they’re going to get the hydro-fuel?”

“They are the scientists who created the machines,” the advisor said. “If anybody can—”

“But nobody can,” Blackburn said. He looked closely at the advisor, his dark eyes drilling deep. Well, at least this one has some balls, he thought. Throw him a bone.

“All right,” Blackburn said. “I’ll go out on a limb for you. I’ll authorize the use of special armament to find and deal with the renegades, as long as it doesn’t raise our profile.” He cast a glance at one of the tech officers. “What’s the probability of vibration being picked up above ground by UNED or civilians if we unleash the hounds?”

“Nil, sir,” replied the specialist. He was sitting across the room, behind some of the officers. “Thanks to your efforts, the continent is clear of significant sensor arrays. UNED is constantly monitoring the total quarantine, but their ears are nothing compared to ours.”

“Excellent,” Blackburn replied. Then he gave a gentle smile—almost merry. “So let’s not waste the opportunity. Let’s try explosives on the defectors.”

A sense of panic filled the room as many of the officers cleared their throats. It almost made Blackburn laugh—all the shifting and throat—clearing, all the sudden tiny beads of sweat. The foolish defense officer raised his hand again. Fool, Blackburn told himself. You’re next.

“Sir, if I may, we have never used explosives in the network before. We have no idea what its impact will be. At this point, it’s all theoretical.”

Blackburn stood up suddenly and turned his back on his men. He couldn’t stand looking at them anymore. Instead he stared at the silver-blue hologram of the entire Antarctica complex that filled the black well near the end of the room. It was a beautiful thing. Beautiful and strange.

“So you’re telling me,” he said without turning around, “that after ten full years, millions of man-hours, and billions of dollars spent on investigation and development…we still can’t put this stuff to use?”

“Not yet, sir,” one of the I&D advisors said. “It’s too…unpredictable. Just last week, some of our vehicles started to levitate, and we still cannot understand how this is possible.”

Blackburn closed his eyes and tried to will the man away. It didn’t quite work.

“Our estimate still holds, sir. Eighteen months until we can safely build a prototype.”

“Safely,” Blackburn said acidly. “Maybe that’s the problem—too goddamn many people concerned with their safety rather than changing history.”

He gave it up. Maybe it wasn’t the time, but at least he’d made his point: keep moving or get run over. Now, back to the crisis at hand…

“All right then,” he said as he turned around. “Let’s just blast the f*ckers out of their hidey-holes with the biggest conventional weapons we’ve got. How does that sound?”

The grinning and back-slapping was unseemly, but they were all so relieved Blackburn allowed it. No one wanted to tell him about the other part of the problem, about the oxygen depletion effect that literally sucked the air out of a man’s lungs if he even came near the new fusion tech.

What they don’t know, Blackburn told himself, is that I’m already aware of it. Have been from the beginning.

What they fail to understand, he thought as he looked at his craven “team” of advisors and mercenaries, is that I just don’t care.





TUNNEL 3

Max pushed on.

The narrow passageway opened up a little more than a hundred yards from the opening. It was by no means wide enough or straight, but at least they weren’t surrounded by walls on all sides.

Max had never thought of twenty miles an hour as a dangerous speed. But now, guiding the Spector on its massive, swiveling treads, dodging pieces of ice as big as houses, veering past deep arroyos and avoiding patches of blackness that indicated yet another feeder tunnel, running off in yet another direction…now, twenty miles an hour seemed insanely fast.

The massive robotic Spiders hadn’t given up. Their arms, it turned out, were not just endlessly flexible; they were as strong as wrecking cranes. The others had watched through the transparent aft section and reported as the robots pulled away key patches of ice and outcroppings, pounding at the accumulated ice of the narrow entrance until, all too soon, it gave away, and they gave chase.

It was slow going for them, but they were relentless. Max could see that; he watched their progress on the holo-display of the rear scan as they moved forward, paused, pounded or pried another obstacle out of the way, then moved forward again. He could see that they were still a thousand yards behind them, and not gaining—but not falling back, either.

Focus, damn you, he told himself. There was no room for error here. He could take a wrong path, make a bad choice, and they would crash, fall, turn over, be crushed; he’d run out of grim alternatives. Only one thing left to do, he told himself. Succeed.

Simon sat in the co-pilot’s seat next to him, silent and determined. Max had known the man his whole life, and when Simon had said he would leave them behind and go on foot to find his father, Max had believed him completely. It was the kind of man he was—just like Max himself. Now Simon was focused entirely on the task at hand—getting the hell away from the CS23 and finding a place to hide, until they could figure out what to do next.

The terrain began to slope downward—not the steep fifty-degree grade of the first tunnel, but a relentless fifteen-degree angle of descent that took them deeper and deeper. And the deeper they went, the greater the tension they felt. It was as if they could feel the weight of the ice and stone growing above them, pressing down, worse with every inch they moved forward. Everyone’s eyes were locked on the transparent section behind them, showing every detail of the robots as they followed close on: their flexing arms, the bulbous, roiling central body, the grasping claws and the blinding spears of light that passed back and forth over the Spector, piercing it again and again like swords.

Without warning Max shouted, “Get down! We’ve got company!”

As if on cue, the entire crew whirled around to look at the front-facing screen, their window on the world that lay ahead.

The screen was a flat black shadow, given texture only by the reflected lights from the robots, the Spector’s own shadows, and a thousand tiny points of green light. Like fireflies out of the swamp, like luminous birds no bigger than a sparrow, they were swarming just outside the vehicle—straight in front, off to the left, off to the right.

They paused. They seemed to focus, to aim.

Then they streaked through the blackness and smashed against the Spector like gunshots.

Phit! Phit! Phit-phit-phit! Hundreds of lights were striking the Spector, slamming against the shielded surface, sounding like a barrage of stones. Everyone ducked as Max stopped the Spector instantly and spun his chair away from the line of fire.

The front-facing camera that had served them so well sizzled and went black. Tiny bumps, reverse dimples, appeared in sudden lines stitching across the cabin as the bullets dented the smartskin but did not penetrate.

Not yet, anyway, Max thought.

Max knew the sound of gunfire all too well. He rotated his seat to face the crew, cowering all across the bridge, and started to move the Spector in reverse, backing away from the gunfire, moving toward the approaching Spiders. For a moment the transparent aft walls stayed transparent, and he saw the gleaming arms of the CS-23 sway and grip one more time, and then the transparency flickered away, and he was staring at a blank interior wall.

Phit! PHIT phit PH-ph-PHIT!

Samantha clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. Max could see that Andrew and Ryan were only a step behind her.

It felt like an ambush—foot soldiers to the front, heavy artillery at the rear. But why waste men? Max wondered. They could just set off a couple of grenades and block us in without exposure.

Phit PHIT PHITPHITPHITPHIT—

The deepscan holos sizzled and disappeared under the continuing assault. The bridge was little more than a hollow shell now—and one that was starting to crack under the relentless hail of bullets.

“What’s going on?” screamed Samantha as Simon threw himself from his seat and jumped half the length of the cabin to throw his arms around her. He had never felt so helpless: caught between the menacing machines in one direction, a barrage of gunfire in another, a thousand feet below the killing ice.

Death—the real, imminent, tangible specter of Death—flashed before his eyes as he tried to comfort her. Hayden, doubled over in the tiny space below the tech console, bellowed through the noise of the thunderous bullets as the last of the Spector’s emergency lights blinked out. “They hit the main electric panel!”

But the Spector kept moving. Just as Max had directed, it staggered in reverse, away from the gunfire, back toward the robots, foot after stubborn foot—

—until it smashed into something huge, immovable, and utterly invisible, just beyond the buckling metal hull.

The team was thrown across the darkened cabin as the vehicle shuddered to an instant halt. The pounding bullets didn’t even pause; if anything, the rattling tattoo of the attack grew even louder, more angry, as the soldiers approached and redoubled their fire.

The next few seconds felt like an eternity as Max scrambled to find his pistol. Simon asked Samantha in a quiet whisper, “You all right?”

“I’m not dead yet,” she whispered fiercely. “At least I don’t think I am.”

“Down, guys!” Max shouted from the floor. “Unbuckle, get down!” He frog-marched to Andrew and helped him with the complex arrangement of belts. The left side of the bridge exploded in a shower of sparks. A new vibration, deep and almost subsonic, rumbled through the vessel. It seemed as though it was coming from the outside and getting stronger with every second. It was accompanied by a low hissing noise that sounded like an approaching eighteen-wheeler.

Max grabbed Simon’s shoulder and said, “It’s zero time.” He saw Simon struggle with the words for a second; then a look of realization dawned on him. It was a bit of slang from their childhood, back when they only played at being spies and adventurers. It meant “now or never,” “do or die.” But it meant something more, too. It was a phrase only they used, and only with each other. It was part of a secret language that had made them more than friends from an early age.

It meant, “Brothers forever.” It meant, “I will always have your back.”

He grinned in spite of everything, and was surprised to feel burning tears in his eyes. “Zero time,” he said.

Phit-PHIT! Ph-ph-ph-ph-PHIT!

The subterranean vibration grew deeper, stronger. They could feel something approaching, like an army of horses stampeding straight for them.

PHITPHITPHITPHITPHIT

“We’re trapped!” screamed Hayden. “We can’t open the airlock without power!” And without power, they all knew, the heaters had stopped working, too. With every passing second, the temperature of the vessel was dropping, and with the seals still locked in place, the air was growing thin as well.

The end? Simon asked himself. Cowering under a metal console, suffocating as he started to freeze? Not yet, he prayed, thinking of the people who had trusted him, thinking of his father. Not yet…

And the gunfire stopped.

In an instant; all at once. It didn’t trail off, or sputter to a halt, or simply pause and begin again. It stopped.

The five-second silence that followed was absolutely deafening.

Then, suddenly, inexplicably, a bank of harsh lights in the Spector’s ceiling blinked on, died, then blinked again and stayed on. The first thing Simon’s eyes fell on was an astonished Hayden, gaping at the ceiling from his hiding place.

“Son of a bitch,” the inventor said into the cavernous silence. “Emergency back-ups. Completely forgot about those.”

Even the smartskin flickered back to life, but only in bits and pieces. Simon found himself peering through transparent foot-square patches randomly scattered across at the front and side of the ships, into a craggy darkness illuminated by the skittering beams of the approaching robotic Spiders and the blue-green luminosity of the foot soldiers’ weapons, still glowing even as they approached the Spector.

The rumbling grew louder. The vibration from below them shook the entire crippled vessel like a toy.

Then a giant cycle-like vehicle with a large single wheel roared down the passageway, behind the foot soldiers. They ignored it as they moved forward, weapons still raised, but the bullets had stopped flying.

The front lights of the large cycle were blinding; it made it hard to estimate distance or size. Andrew turned away momentarily from the brilliant light and saw Nastasia bent over almost doubled, sifting through her nutrition case again.

She looked up at Simon, and he saw she was holding her inhaler in one hand and what seemed to be a pre-packed powder in the other. “I just…because of my condition I can’t live without this.” As he watched she pushed the inhaler into the kit, forced the lid shut and snapped it tight, then put it aside.

They both turned and stood as the huge cycles accelerated toward them, skidding to a halt in unison almost a hundred yards away.

Several figures, dressed in heavy gear to protect themselves from the bitter cold, started running toward the Spector. They were holding rifles, coming at the crippled vehicle like a SWAT team with laser-guided instrumentation. It was hard for Max to see them; the light source from the rifles themselves was shooting straight toward the Spector.

Simon and Max had already moved to the door, prepared to protect the others if they had to. Max gestured with his pistol, waving toward the ready room and shouting at the rest of the crew. “Move toward the back.”

Simon stood with his back pressed firmly against one side of the door, opposite Max. He looked across the bridge to Andrew, who was sitting in the crooked, half-broken pilot’s seat.

“Shut her down,” he whispered.

Max watched the approaching figures with every ounce of his concentration, calculating, gambling. His gut told him these men were somehow not connected to the menacing robots. He knew all too well how trained mercenaries would move, and these men with the rifles clearly did not move that way at all. They weren’t professional soldiers; he would bet his life on that.

One man, face fully covered by a cloth and plastic mask, was ten steps ahead of the others. He was holding an unusual weapon, a rifle unlike any Max had ever seen, its stock pressed tightly against his chin. He was using the light on the weapon as a flashlight, trying to study the unusual surface of the Spector.

More men started approaching the vehicle, and Simon tried to count them. It looked as though there were eight or ten—it was hard to tell in the blinding, dancing lights.

“Lay down,” whispered Max, as the team watched the scene unfold on the half-blind wall panels.

Simon had reached the same conclusion. “Max, these guys don’t seem like they’re after us. They seem as scared as we are.” He couldn’t help but notice how the men were studying the Spector’s exterior in amazement. Not like soldiers at all. More like…

“Let’s open the door,” he said impulsively.

Samantha almost choked in fear as she tried to express herself. “I don’t want to die.”

“Don’t think that will be the case,” Max said. “Just relax and lay down.”

There was a sudden thud toward the front of the vehicle as one of the men smashed his rifle against the thick armor of the Spector. Inside, the team only heard a faint sound, but could clearly see the man trying to smash the exterior.

“He has to stop that,” Hayden said. “The surface is still carrying a charge, he could—”

Other white-clad gunmen attacked the hatch that Max had sealed only moments earlier. One had found a piece of torn metal he used to scrape and scratch at the smartskin; the other had an actual crowbar he was trying to insert in the tiny crack that outlined the hatchway.

“They’re going to kill themselves!” Hayden said, jumping up in spite of Max’s orders. “The skin is still charged, it’ll electrocute them if—”

“Andrew!” Simon screamed. “Open the f*cking door to the outside hatch!”

Simultaneously, Max bellowed at the others—a deep voice, a commander’s voice: “All of you into the ready room! NOW!”

This time they moved, scrambling over each other for cover.

The instant they were safely out of sight, the hatch began to shift and open, very slowly. Max turned and raised his pistol with the laser guidance system and pointed it straight at the hatch door.

Simon stood flattened against the door, a two-foot piece of razor-sharp steel in his hand. It was the only weapon he had.

They weren’t going to take any chances.

And they sure as hell weren’t going to die today.