Amplitude Page 20

  Major Bill Peterson scoffed. “Well, then, we sure as hell aren’t getting in that way.”

  Vaughn turned a questioning look to Angela.

  She raised her binoculars and began to scan the valley floor to the south of the ATLAS experiment entrance, closer to their current position. Then she nodded. “We’ll just go in the same way Vaughn and I did the first time.” Pausing, she pointed to an area of the burned-out city that lay between them and the entrance to CERN. “I think I see Marché Station.”

  Rourke craned his neck to see the area. “That’s the subway entrance you two used to get in?”

  Nodding, Vaughn raised his binoculars and scanned the area. “Yeah, the first time, anyway.” Searching the rubble-strewn roads and still smoking hulks of gutted buildings, he soon identified the main thoroughfare that Angela had led them down the first time they had searched for the entrance. It was still quite far away, although significantly closer than ATLAS.

  Spotting a familiar stone archway, Vaughn tried to turn the zoom knob, but it would go no farther. He narrowed his eyes and then nodded. “I see the entrance.” He raised an arm to point. “It’s right there along that main road, next to the … Wait.” Seeing movement in an adjacent building, he shifted his field-of-view and saw a scavenger bot working inside the structure. Then he detected additional movement. Panning the field glasses, he slowly shook his head. “Crap,” he said, drawing the word into two syllables. “We’re not using it this time.”

  Mark looked at him. “Why not?”

  “The area around the subway entrance is chockablock with scavenger bots.”

  “Shit, man,” Teddy said, his surfer boy persona reemerging. “That’s hella-thorny.”

  Monique spoke up as she continued to peer through her binos. “Is there another way into the subway, perhaps another station?”

  “Yeah,” Vaughn said. Looking over the edge again, he studied the land beyond Marché Station. “We passed through several of them on our way to the collider.”

  Panning upward, he inspected the burned-out remnants of the city, seeking another entrance. Block after ruined block slowly slid across the narrow field of view afforded by the zoomed-in binoculars. Then he spotted a cleared area where something had shoved aside the rubble, leaving the ground smooth. It was roughly rectangular and had a dark black square at its center. He tilted his head. “I think I see another entrance, but it looks like they’ve done something …”

  The forgotten words fell from his mouth as a horse-sized, multi-legged black monstrosity emerged from the square black void that he now realized must be a vertical shaft.

  Vaughn’s pulse pounded in his ears as he stared at the robot that had emerged from the opening in the ground. With its many and frenzied legs, the thing looked like a giant mechanical caterpillar.

  “Where?” Major Peterson asked as he raised his binoculars and started to scan the area. Then he flinched. “Slap my ass and call me a donkey! What the hell is that?!”

  Having seen the same thing, Angela lowered her field glasses and looked at Vaughn with a face drained of color. “It must be one of those construction bots, the ones we saw climbing up the sides of the towers and working on their tops.”

  Teddy looked at her with widening eyes. “You have seen this before?”

  Watching the monstrous insectile bot slither across the ground, Vaughn shook his head. “No, not this clearly anyway.”

  “Wh-Where?” Rourke stammered. “Where did you see them?”

  Vaughn twisted his face. “I might have forgotten to mention these.”

  Bill looked at him accusingly. “How in the hell do you forget to mention ten-foot-long mother-effing caterpillars?!”

  Rachel’s head snapped toward the man. “Keep your voice down, Major Peterson.”

  He looked at her and nodded and then shifted his gaze back to Vaughn, eyebrows raised in a look that said ‘Go ahead.’

  “When we first saw the city, there were lines of black dots streaming from the industrial facilities. They were climbing the sides of the newer buildings, the incomplete ones. They covered the tops of the ones that were still under construction.”

  Teddy’s brow furrowed. “There were many of these things?”

  Raising his binos and staring at the menacing-looking machine, Vaughn tried to swallow. His suddenly dry throat clicked in his ears. He nodded. “Thousands of them.”

  As if on cue, several dozen of the caterpillar-like robots began to stream from the opening. Spotting additional movement near the top of his field of view, Vaughn shifted the binoculars upward and found a similar aperture. “I see another shaft.”

  Angela lowered her field glasses and looked at him. “Where?”

  Raising his free hand, Vaughn pointed to the area. “It’s a few blocks north of the first one.”

  As everyone else focused on the new shaft, Vaughn zoomed out and then blinked. “There are more openings. They’re in a line that points toward the construction site above the ATLAS experiment.”

  Angela nodded. “Looks like they’re following the rough outline of the subway’s underground passage.”

  A realization struck Vaughn.

  He lowered the binoculars and looked at Angela. “Those must be the shafts they’ll use later to access the aboveground portions of the city. They’re building the infrastructure to support it all.”

  “Uh …” Major Peterson started but then paused.

  Vaughn turned to see the man slowly shaking his head as he continued to stare through his binoculars.

  Finally, Bill found his voice again. “So … So you’re saying the entire subway is …” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “… is full of those things?”

  Vaughn slowly shook his head in disgust as he zoomed in on one of the machines. “Yeah, I think it is.”

  The caterpillar dug into a pile of debris, viciously extracting a large hunk of steel. It shook the item like a dog shaking a rag. Dust and debris flew off of it in every direction.

  “Oh, hell no!” Bill dropped his binos and started backing away from the ledge. “Nope. Nope. Nope. I am not fucking with an army of ten-foot-long mechanical caterpillars.”

  Monique looked at Major Peterson, and her eyes narrowed. “Get your black ass back here, William.”

  Blinking, Vaughn lowered his binoculars and turned to look at Monique. It was the first time he’d heard her use anything close to a swear word. The tall African-American woman was leering at Major Peterson.

  She pointed at the ground next to her. “Get back in position, and help us find another way!”

  The man hesitated.

  Monique glared at Bill as she tilted her head toward Rachel. “You think having your ass used as a flip-flop sounds painful? Try me, William. You will wish a metal caterpillar was your only problem.”

  The big man’s visage took on that of a scolded puppy. He looked from Monique to the city and back to the woman as if trying to decide which was the greater threat. Evidently deciding the nearer of the two represented a more imminent danger, he slowly returned to the indicated position.

  Still regarding the man with her lips pressed into a thin line, Monique nodded curtly and then looked at Angela. “As I recall, the collider has a circumference of almost seventeen miles. Is there another access point we may use?”

  Angela nodded. “Yes, actually. There’s one for each major experiment.”

  Raising his binoculars, Teddy started scanning the valley floor. “Where are they, Command-Oh?”

  Vaughn looked at Angela, eyebrows raised. “Uh, yeah, Command-Oh, where?”

  Angela looked at him defensively. “I never mentioned it because, at the time, it was already covered by the machine city.”

  “Oh … Guess you got a point.”

  Pursing her lips, Angela turned from Vaughn and started surveying the valley. “There are three other large scale experiments, each with its own entrance.”

  “Those are the only other entrances?” Mark asked as he, too, followed her
gaze.

  “No, there are dozens of smaller ones, emergency evacuation shafts, but I don’t know the exact location of those. They only have small buildings at their exit points, but the experiments each have large aboveground facilities, buildings we should be able to see from here.”

  Peering through his binos again, Vaughn searched the region Angela was scanning but didn’t see anything that stood out. “Where are they?”

  “Picture the ring as a clock.” Raising an arm, she pointed toward the alien construction site. "As seen from our current vantage point, ATLAS sits at the collider’s seven o’clock position.” She shifted her gesture to point farther west. “The next experiment over is ALICE. Its ground-level access is at the ring’s nine o’clock position.”

  As she spoke, Angela continued to search the indicated area.

  Vaughn again tried to follow her gaze. She appeared to be looking at an area a mile or two northwest of the robot construction site. The wind had swept the last of the fog from the region.

  Smoke streaked the valley floor like the septic veins of a dying world, hazing the otherwise relatively clear atmosphere.

  Dark clouds pregnant with a coming storm still hung above the northern mountains. Other than an occasional flash of internal lightning, it didn’t appear any closer. Not yet, anyway, Vaughn thought.

  Angela pointed. “It should be over there, just beyond the western edge of the city.” Blinking, she lowered her field glasses and peered over them. “They’re gone.”

  Vaughn looked from her back to the edge of town. “What is?”

  “The buildings. They’re all gone.”

  “Maybe they burned up,” Mark said.

  “No.” Angela squinted through her binos. “I’m looking right at the area. The ground is smooth, almost like it’s been paved over.”

  Locating the indicated section, Vaughn saw what she was talking about. It was a large, rectangular patch of ground absent of any structures, burned or otherwise. Then movement drew his eye. A black dot crawled up from an unseen hole in the ground.

  He realized it had to be one of the caterpillar construction bots.

  Bill groaned. “That’s another massive load of Nope!”

  “Crud,” Angela said as she shifted away from the region. She started searching the ground east of Marché Station. It appeared she was looking at a parcel just beyond Geneva’s airport. “Maybe Beauty’s access is still intact.”

  Raising his binos, Vaughn pivoted into position and searched the area.

  “What beauty?” Teddy asked.

  “It’s the name for the experiment where we were trying to discern why the universe has more matter than anti-matter.”

  “Da,” the cosmonaut said, nodding sagely.

  When Vaughn looked at the man, Teddy stared back at him with a befuddled expression.

  “Dammit!” Angela said and then released a frustrated growl.

  “What?” Vaughn turned and squinted through his binos. “What is it?”

  “Same thing. Paved over. Nothing but caterpillar bots.”

  Vaughn gnashed his teeth. They were running out of options.

  Apparently, Rourke had the same concerns. When the young man spoke, his voice sounded an octave higher than usual. “What do we do if we’re cut off, if we can’t reach ATLAS?”

  Still scanning the valley through her binoculars, Angela said, “Like I told you, we don’t have to get to ATLAS. Part of the collider’s High-Luminosity upgrade was an expanded intranet. They even called it the HiLumi Intranet. There’s a firewall that prevents external access, but if I can reach a HiLumi-enabled computer terminal anywhere within the collider complex, I should be able to initiate the overload.”

  “Yeah,” Rourke said, not sounding the least bit reassured. He pointed toward Geneva. “But how are we going to get in there with monster caterpillars crawling all over the place? They’re cutting off all of your access points.”

  Angela lowered her field glasses and looked at Vaughn, a smile blossoming on her face. Then she leaned forward and addressed the entire group. “The CMS facility is still intact.” She pointed across the valley. “It’s on the far side of the ring, about the one o’clock position as seen from here.”

  Raising his binos, Vaughn studied the indicated area. “Where is it?”

  “Just past the northwest side of the city.”

  Everyone else sighted in on the region.

  Rachel used the scope on her rifle. Then she glanced at Angela and cocked an eyebrow. “Could you be a little less specific?”

  Angela rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be a smart ass.” Sighing, she raised an arm and pointed. “Okay … see the ski slope on the far side of the valley?”

  Vaughn did. Snow still clung to a few of its trails. Even through the hazed atmosphere, the small white patches glowed starkly against the otherwise dark mountainside.

  Teddy’s head bobbed. “Da, Command-Oh, I see it.”

  “Me, too,” Mark said.

  “Everyone else see it?”

  “Good,” she said after receiving an affirmative nod from the rest of the group. Angela shifted the aim of her gesture. “Now pan down from there until you see a broad patch of farm fields between two villages. You’ll see the area below and just a tad to the right of the ski slopes.”

  “I think I see the facility,” Rachel said. “Is it that group of gray buildings?”

  Angela nodded. “Yeah. The ones right in the middle of that farmland.”

  Bingham lowered his binoculars and looked at Angela and Vaughn. “How in bloody hell are we supposed to get all the way over there? That’s the far side of the valley.”

  Rachel raised her gun until it appeared she was aiming it at the top of the far ridgeline. Still gazing through her scope, she said, “Maybe we can fly the V-22 around to the back side of the ski slope and come in from there.” Just as she finished saying it, a massive bolt of lightning struck the top of that mountain.

  Bill Peterson shook his head. “Nope!” He pointed toward the far side of Geneva. “Besides, our entire ingress will be exposed. Every robot in the valley will see us all the way down the mountain and as we cross those fields.”

  Vaughn turned his attention back to the fountain and the eastern portion of the city that surrounded it. The area still looked clear. The robots hadn’t ventured that far east yet. Recalling the topology of Mont Salève, he nodded. “I think I know a better way, one that won’t expose us to observation or require us to fly into that line of thunderstorms.”

  Rourke looked at him with wide nervous eyes. “H-How?”

  Vaughn grinned menacingly. “As our token Millennial, you’re really not going to like this.”

  Chapter 19

  Rourke stared at his endlessly swinging boots. The passage of each launched a small cloud of ash from the pavement. Their pendulous back-and-forth movements mesmerized him. He felt as if—

  “Heads up, boy-oh,” Wing Commander Bingham said, breaking his trance.

  Blinking, Rourke looked up. “Huh?” His mind felt foggy as if he were coming out of a dream.

  “It’s bad enough you’ve been staring at your feet for the last three miles, but now we’re close to the heart of the city, son. You need to keep your head on a swivel.”

  Vaughn looked back at him and spoke softly. “He’s right. We’re close now. Help us keep an eye out.”

  Rourke nodded and began to scan the ruined city around them visually. He had allowed his weapon to droop, but now he held it across his body, its muzzle pointing away from the center of the formation, mimicking the way the others carried theirs.

  They’d been walking for almost three hours now. After backtracking through the woods that buttressed the mountain’s balcony-like terrace, Vaughn had led them down a trail that descended the northeast end of the ridgeline. When they had reached the wooded foot of the mountain, they had emerged from the scorched periphery of the forest and stepped into the broken and burned city. Both business parks and reside
ntial neighborhoods alike had fallen to the all-consuming inferno.

  Even now, broken remnants of burned-out structures stabbed into the smoky sky all around them. Row upon row of shattered apartments gnawed at the choked atmosphere like the fractured teeth of a giant’s lower jaw.

  Vaughn had guided them northeast for several blocks after they’d reached the streets of Geneva, making the detour to keep plenty of room between them and the robot-occupied portions of the city. Eventually, they had turned northwest and headed toward the towering column of spraying water that marked the lake’s west end.

  Presently, they walked up to a major intersection. Vaughn waved them to the near side of a mound of broken masonry. “Time to start tactical ops. We’ll break up into two teams.” He pointed at Major Lee, Colonel Hennessy, Lieutenant Gheist, and Wing Commander Bingham. “You five are Team One.” He gestured at the other four humans and the robot. “We’ll be Team Two. We’ll advance through this part of the city five at a time. One team will cover while the other advances, taking turns. Cover then move. Cover then move. Any questions?”

  Everyone shook their heads. Rourke hadn’t expected any questions. They’d discussed the tactic in detail back in England and had even done a few practice runs around the facility. He’d also employed the same tactic for years while playing Call of Duty with his friends.

  Vaughn peered around the corner and then nodded. “Looks clear.” He gestured left and right. “Team One, take up covering positions. Scan your sectors just like we trained.”

  After the other team moved to cover them, Vaughn nodded to the robot. “BOb, take point.” Then he motioned to Rourke and the rest of Team Two. “Let’s move.”

  They spent the next half-hour leap-frogging their way across the city, each maneuver drawing them ever closer to the busy, broken heart of Geneva.

  Ahead, the fountain still licked at the sky, although now they’d drawn close enough that Rourke had to tilt his head back to see its entire height.

  Between maneuvers, while the two teams were gathered behind piled clumps of wrecked cars, Vaughn gestured at the tablet clutched in his hand. “We’re only a few blocks away from the Mont-Blanc Bridge. It’s just to the left by the fountain. That’ll be our closest pass to the robots. I wouldn’t be taking you that close, but the lake is forcing my hand. It’s way too big to go around, and if we tried to cross it, we’d be completely exposed.”