Dead Space by Kali Wallace (e novels to read online .TXT) 📗

they were upon us. I stumbled away, tripping over myself in my hurry to retreat, fumbling for my radio as I lost my balance and fell awkwardly into a shipping container.

There was a flash of light—a bright green blink—and Mary gasped.

That bright flash, so much brighter than anything else in that warehouse, confused the input from my prosthetic eye into a stutter of double vision. I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting back the sudden nausea and pain.

When I opened them again, there was a multilegged bot racing up Mary Ping’s leg. She yelped and batted at it, kicked her leg wildly. The bot scurried over her hip, her waist, and dodged her grasping hands to reach the center of her torso.

Her eyes widened in shock and she took in a sharp, pained breath. Her lips were parted, her hands frozen in rigid claws over the bot. Beneath her rasping breath I heard a quick snapping sound. An acrid chemical scent drifted on the air. With it came the unmistakable scent of blood.

Mary Ping screamed. Red blossomed on her chest as she grasped at the bot, but she could not tear it away.

“Get it off me!” She turned in frantic circles, batting helplessly at the bot. “Get it off, get it away, get it—”

There was a white flash—her scream stopped abruptly—and a deafening concussion of sound. The world became a storm of flashing lights as the noise faded. I staggered to the side, thrown off-balance by the confusion of my eyes and ears. My shoulder hit the side of a shipping container; my knees struck the floor.

Mary was not screaming anymore. There was a damp gurgle. A whimper.

I pushed myself upright, shaking my head to settle the flashing in my left eye. I crawled toward Mary. My right hand slipped on something warm and wet. Her blood, spreading across the floor.

FOURTEEN

She was lying on her side with her eyes and mouth open. Her chest was a ruin of scorched flesh and shattered ribs. A twist of smoke rose from the wound, and blood seeped through ragged gaps in the cauterized flesh. The remains of the bot clung to the skin just below her collarbone with two intact legs; the rest of it had been destroyed. The acrid chemical smell faded, replaced by the scent of cooked meat. Nausea roiled in my gut and I gagged, coughed, struggled against the urge to vomit.

A second bot crept along her leg, illuminated by a delicate blue internal light. Its legs folded and unfolded elegantly, letting it cling with three one moment, six the next, constantly shifting its shape as it picked its way over the landscape of Ping’s body. The blue light flashed brighter for a second, and my heart squeezed with panic.

I grabbed the bot with my blood-smeared hand, not thinking, wanting nothing more than to pull it away from her. I felt a sting of pain and shook my hand frantically, stirring the bot into a whipping whirlwind of wire. It legs folded into its body until only two remained extended; those two grasped my palm and wrist, piercing the skin. The entire device emitted a biting chemical smell, powerful enough to make me cough.

I flung the bot away from me—tearing the legs from my hand—and sent it slamming into the side of a shipping container. One of the bot’s legs bent and worked, turning in a helpless circle as it tried to stand.

I scrambled to my feet—almost lost my balance again—and I stomped on it. It made a loud, satisfying crunch beneath my boot.

When I looked up, the person in the mech suit was still standing several meters away.

“Stop!” I shouted, although they hadn’t yet moved. My voice echoed dully from the shipping containers around us. “Don’t move!”

I reached for my radio, but I had dropped it along with my PD. I had to call for help. Blood trickled from the wounds on my hand, the metallic scent mingling with the acrid accelerant. I couldn’t take my eyes off the killer.

They remained eerily still. I could see absolutely nothing behind the blankness of their faceplate. They had no headlamp or flashlight. They stood just beyond the bright circle of the ceiling lights, not quite in shadow but not illuminated either. Everything about the suit was featureless and black, with its supple limbs blending seamlessly into hidden joints, and not a single external obvious vulnerability in its mechanical workings. I had never seen anything like it.

“I need you to identify yourself,” I said. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to say. It was never my job to bring suspects into custody. “Reach up very slowly and take off your helmet. Do you hear me? Take off your helmet and identify yourself.”

I glanced down again; my PD and radio had slid several meters away. One look at the map would tell me who was standing before me. Or one question.

“Overseer,” I said, raising my voice so it could carry. “Please summon Safety Inspector Adisa to this location and identify the crew member— Shit!”

I was expecting them to turn and run, or reach for another explosive bot to throw at me, or lunge toward me in an attack. I was not expecting them to bend their knees and jump backward, then do it again, and again, covering two or three meters with every bound, the motion so smooth and so strange I spent a few stunned seconds trying to work out how the suit helped them keep their balance.

Then I stopped staring and sprinted after them.

I bounded down the row with a wild, flailing abandon, letting my gecko soles anchor me, momentarily forgetting that I had no real practice running in gravity this low. The insistent ache in my left hip returned, but I gritted through it. I wasn’t fast enough—I didn’t think anybody would have been fast enough—and within moments the killer changed directions. They jumped again,