The Clone Elite by Steven L. Kent

Author:Steven L. Kent [Kent, Steven L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-19T06:09:16+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Freeman sat fiddling with the S.C.O.O.T.E.R.’s controls as I lugged three trackers up the hall to the right. About twenty yards in, I started passing arterial hallways that led down into the heart of the mountain. The halls were fairly uniform, about six feet from floor to ceiling and somewhere around twenty-five feet from wall to wall. I tried to imagine a platoon of eight-foot-tall Avatari soldiers running through these halls. It seemed impossible. I would need to hunch my back to fit in there, and Freeman would need to crouch. I had no idea how a bunch of animated statues like the Avatari would fit; those bastards had another foot on Freeman.

As I peered into one of the tunnels, something surprised me, at least it surprised me once I realized what I was seeing. The grand corridor might have been brightly lit with the stuff that made the ion curtain, but the ancillary tunnels were dark as night. I relayed this piece of intelligence back to Freeman, but he did not reply. He might have been too busy guiding the S.C.O.O.T.E.R., or more likely he had already seen this in the S.C.O.O.T.E.R.’s video feed.

Looking for the right place to set up my first tracker, I walked just deep enough into a tunnel for my visor to switch to night-for-day vision, then called back to Freeman. “Think I should set up trackers in this tunnel?” I said.

“You wouldn’t want to go too far in there,” Freeman said.

“Any particular reason?” I asked.

“Because it’s full of giant spiders,” Freeman said.

I leaned the tracker against the wall and trotted back to have a look at the control screen. I did not like what I saw.

No one would ever describe the creature we saw on the tiny black and white screen as a “Space Angel.” Apparently the Avatari considered the humanoid form efficient for combat but not for mining. The creatures in these shafts looked like enormous spiders. They had eight multijointed legs. The two forelegs were shaped like a knife blade; the rear legs did not taper down to points. They were broad at the base—limbs made for mobility.

“I don’t like the look of that,” I said.

Freeman had switched to manual controls so that he could bypass the S.C.O.O.T.E.R.’s self-preservation programming. Using a joy-lever and dials, he guided the little robot toward the closest miner, then directly under its belly. Through the fish-eye lens, I watched as the spider-thing slashed at the granite floor with its forelegs. There must have been real power in those legs—they hacked through the rock as easily as a shovel digging in dry sand, showering the S.C.O.O.T.E.R. with rock and debris.

“Think that thing can cut through armor with those legs?” I asked.

Freeman, who seldom speculated on anything, said, “Yes.”

Scary or not, these things would have been useless on an open battlefield where men with guns could pick them off before they got within striking range. I saw no sign of guns or projectile weapons on the creature.

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