Carmody and the Electric Dragon
Chapter 21

A broken, flailing robot dragged itself with its few remaining limbs along a dark tunnel. Hydraulic fluids, coolants and other less discernible fluids stained the floor in its wake as it struggled to find a dark corner to hide in.

Bob Two had never truly experienced terror before. As a machine or as the Emissary, the creatures he had been never feared for their existence. Death was something he gave to others, not a thing he was frightened of.

Tonight he had learned a new truth. Humans could be utterly terrifying, as ruthless in the destruction they wrought as any machine or servant of the Abyss. His Sentinels and the others under his command had charged gleefully at the three humans they had found in the tunnels.

Two young women and a hulking man, all armed with simple swords and axes. Not a single deadly firearm among them, at least that could be seen. The Sentinels had reached the trio first, barely blinded by the sudden blue light that flared from the sword of the dark skinned woman.

Blades had flashed in the narrow confines of the tunnel, surely an environment that best suited the heavily armoured mechanical soldiers. The humans had carved them up like insignificant rodents, shattering the armour plates and severing their metal arms and legs.

By the time Bob Two reached the battle only the modified welding robot had been standing. It jabbed and cut at the tall man with blazing welding torches, yet he was easily as strong as the robot and the machine was unable to get past the defensive shield of its opponent.

The fragment of the Emissary had climbed over the heads of the combatants, using his tentacles to grip the cables and pipes running along the ceiling. He had dropped to the floor behind the smallest human, a female the others had called Suki.

She had fought with a single curved sword she swung in two hands, no strange glow to her weapon and no shield to defend her body. Bob Two had lashed at her with his claw tipped tentacles, expecting an easy victory. Her blood and Soul Spark would be his in mere moments!

As his first then second strikes were blocked, he felt no concern. Bob Two braced himself with his lower limbs and cut at her again. Yet she had his measure now it seemed and stepped inside his swinging arms with unexpected agility. He felt no pain but alerts flashed into his robot brain as two tentacles were neatly severed.

He pulled back to try and get her away from his body and she kept pace with him. Her sword swung again and again, alerts warning him he had lost two more of his primary arms. In desperation he threw himself against the slender woman, trying to drive her against the hard walls of the tunnel.

Like a spring suddenly released she leaped upwards, sliding over his upper casing and landing on the far side. Before he could change direction her curved sword ripped a gaping hole in his main body, severing control lines and nearly piercing his battery cells.

The battle was over and his forces were destroyed without any major wounds to the three humans. Bob Two was arrogant but he was not stupid. He transferred all his remaining power to his legs and raced away from the deadly humans.

His energy had faded quickly and he slowed to a painful crawl. The humans had let him go, perhaps seeking the lair of his master, the Emissary. It no longer mattered to Bob Two, he was nearly spent.

A dark crevice opened in the side of the tunnel and he gratefully rolled himself into it. He pulled his broken tentacles in around himself, feeling the torn segments in his outer casing still shedding fluids.

Like a wounded animal, Bob Two hid himself and hoped he would not be found.

=====

“Contact! Contact!” Nero called out over their communicators and immediately began firing his assault rifle into the chamber ahead of him. The flashes and rapid chatter of his weapon were matched by return fire, stray rounds sparking and whining down the tunnel.

“Stay behind Deuce!” Eric ordered Lilly and Achmed as he ran to join Lucky. The third Jack appeared before the two children and interposed his massive, armoured body between them and the enemy.

It was only moments yet felt like hours while the two friends huddled against the solid back of the clone. The roar of the guns was tremendous and they heard meaty thumps as their clones took hits from the enemy gunfire.

Then suddenly it was over, only the stink of the caseless ammunition filling the tunnel. Sparks drifted down lazily from a power cable that had been hit by a ricochet only a hand’s breadth away from Achmed’s head.

Eric reappeared at their side, unhurt it appeared other than a bloody line drawn across his upper right arm. Lilly gasped when she saw it but Eric waved it off as a mere ‘flesh wound’. He grinned at them both and admitted he had always wanted to say that.

“What about Nero and Lucky? Are they Okay?” Lilly asked and Eric nodded his head.

“Minor hits, nothing to take them out of the fight” he told them. “The Emissary will know we are coming now, so we have to move fast. Lilly, I need you beside me, ready to teleport an EMP Grenade into any Sentinels or robots we find”

“Okay, Eric” she agreed and stood up nervously. Achmed gripped her hand tightly and smiled at her in the semi-darkness.

“I’ll try Scanning ahead as we go” he told Eric. “It may not work but we may get to spot any ambushes before we walk into them”

“Thanks guys!” Eric said and with few more words the group began moving forwards again.

They quickly passed the large junction chamber, Achmed and Lilly’s eyes bugging out at the sight of at a pair of Sentinels plus a half dozen assorted robots and drones in various stages of destruction. For all the gunfire they had heard, there were few stray bullet holes anywhere. It seemed that nearly every bullet fired by the Guards and Eric had hit their intended targets.

“Our guys certainly aren’t Stormtroopers!” Achmed observed to Lilly as they hurried across the chamber. He had already determined that they were close to the source of the transmissions that controlled the rogue machines. It was less than two hundred meters away and was still active.

“You are such a geek!” Lilly said with a smile and gripped his hand a little tighter.

=====

“Gunfire ahead, Guard standard Assault Rifles by the sounds of it” Dog announced to his companions. “Could be Sentinels too, they use the same guns”

“Looks like our friends have been discovered” Nata said. “Time to join the party”

She took off at a loping pace, easy to maintain over long distances. Dog matched her speed, barely breathing hard, leaving Suki to push herself to keep up.

The former clone soldier looked at her over his shoulder and grinned at the young woman.

“I keep telling you to run more, Sookie” he said with a laugh. “You need to build up some stamina”

“Stop calling me Sookie” she said grumpily to Dog, breathing hard. “Only my classmates call me that!”

“Sookie! Sookie! Sookie!” Dog said loudly, grinning from ear to ear.

The young Japanese girl shouted a wordless cry and accelerated past the big soldier, coming abreast of Nata.

“Take it easy, Suki” Nata warned her. “The last thing you want is to run into a battle completely out of breath!”

Suki flashed her perfect white teeth in a smile at the older woman.

“Don’t worry, Imp” she said between lungfulls of air, “I’ll always have a spare breath for smacking down the bad guys!”

=====

Sarah and Carmody fell into darkness.

It was not a long way they fell, barely twenty meters, yet it felt to the girls like they dropped into the bowels of the earth. They screamed all the way down.

When they hit the water their screams cut off abruptly as the impact drove the remaining air from their lungs. Dark, chilled water engulfed them, filling their noses and mouths as they descended into the reclaimed water reservoir.

Spluttering and choking the girls surfaced into the massive chamber, at least a hundred meters in diameter. Curved, ribbed walls rose up to the central opening above their heads, faint light showing up there from the gazebo roof.

Of the Sentinel there was no sign, presumably it was at the bottom of this underground body of water. To one side of the chamber was a large metal doorway beside which was a small platform jutting out into the water. A ladder could be seen there by the glow from a couple of caged lights and it looked like the only way out.

Sarah started to swim strongly towards the ladder then noticed Carmody was still treading water, glancing anxiously about the water’s surface.

“C’mon Carmody, we need to get to that platform” Sarah urged her.

“I can’t, I’ve lost Excalibur!” Carmody cried, panic in her voice. “I’m useless without it!”

She was thrashing about in the water, swimming in circles, when Sarah grabbed her by the arm and started to drag her towards the ladder.

“No!” Carmody screamed. “Let me go!”

The slap on her cheek echoed like a gunshot from the walls of the reservoir. Carmody touched a hand to her reddened face and looked angrily at her friend.

“You know, if I slapped you I could knock your head off” she said bitterly. Sarah met her fierce gaze with her own.

“Exactly! You are a Kinetic Enhancer! You can smash walls down with your bare hands. One kick from you and the Emissary will land on the moon! You don’t need your cricket bat to do that, it’s all inside of you!”

Carmody regarded her best friend for a moment, still rubbing her cheek.

“I guess you are right” she admitted and started swimming to the ladder. Over their heads, the metal doors that had opened were now closing up again, shutting off their view of the world above.

“I told you before, I am always right. Even when I am wrong!”

=====

“Where did the girls go?” Sofia shouted over the communications link to the Guard clone. She was hovering in the sky close to the edge of the park, her suit sensors no longer registering the two girls at all.

“I am matching ground maps to the underground network” Fiona replied. “That mound is the top of a big tank used to store reclaimed water. It looks like the local Parks team built a gazebo over the central access hatch. They must have fallen into the reservoir below”

Sofia flew closer, running her suit sensors over the interior of the gazebo. The metal doors were closing she could see so she pulsed power into her Ability and accelerated towards the narrowing gap. Her airspeed indicator maxed at one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour as she rocketed towards the wafer thin gap that remained.

She almost made it when a blurred shape cannoned into her and sent her tumbling across the metal surface and sliding over the dew damp grass beyond. With a curse she righted herself, glad that despite her speed the suit had prevented her from being injured. Her suit diagnostics told her the Chameleon circuits had been damaged though, meaning she was no longer invisible.

“Miss Abrams! Are you alright?” she heard Fiona calling to her, then spotted the Guard clone running to her across the park.

“I’m fine” she called back, standing and stretching her limbs. “I am not sure, but I think that dragon, Stanley, stopped me from trying to squeeze into the reservoir hatch”

Fiona reached her, barely puffing, and looked back at the gazebo.

“I think he saved your life” the clone told her. “It is likely you were going to be cut in half by those closing doors”

“Yeah, I know” Sofia admitted. “But I had to try. So what do we do now? Can we get those doors open?”

Fiona glanced in the direction of the gazebo, her face a mask of concentration.

“No. Something has taken manual control of the doors. The automated system is not letting me in”

Sofia walked forwards, activating the targeting system of the Rail Gun on her left shoulder.

“I can try and blow it open” she suggested.

“Negative” Fiona answered. “We don’t know where the girls are down there. Even a single Rail Gun round could cause a lot of destruction”

They both paused and were thinking hard when Sofia’s visor fogged over. She reached up a gloved hand and wiped it down, only to see another puff of steam blast her face.

The teacher opened her helmet and looked about her. In front of her was a strangely dark and distorted area and she knew what she was seeing, or not seeing to be truthful.

“Stanley! Can you understand me?” she called out. From out of nowhere she felt something push into her chest once. She staggered back a step and felt something latch onto her arm, stopping her from falling.

“Okay, I can feel your presence, even if I can’t see you” she said to where she thought he was. “We can’t open those metal doors, but can you try? If you can, I can bring Fiona with me into the reservoir below”

She received another single poke in the chest and then her arm was released. Sofia rubbed her chest, glad that he had not said No. Two pokes in the chest might have broken her ribs!

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