Episode Five: Blood and Steel: A training exercise goes awry with deadly consequences when a saboteur strikes.
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Blood and Steel
May 19, 1957, Skink, California
“And this, Agent Flanagan, is one of the company’s top medics, Doc Taylor.” Lt. Niles said with a smile. “Of course, she’s just a civilian like you for the purpose of this exercise, but I—”
“Dani.” It seemed to Steve as if Niles and the rest of the people in the bunker faded into the background as he met Dani Taylor’s’s eyes for the first time in four years.
He felt himself begin to smile, but she didn’t, and then he started to speak, but he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say, so he closed his mouth, tried to stop smiling, and thrust out his hand. Dani looked down at it as if it had sprouted extra fingers, then after what seemed like forever, she shook it.
She had the same strong fingers as four years ago. Same deep dark eyes, same ebony hair, now close-cropped and military. Same lean body, though the cotton shirt and striped pants were more casual than anything she’d worn in Boston. Her skin was darker too, with a burn scar on her right arm. And all he could think of was seeing her skin by moonlight during the Invasion, tasting it, and the temperature in the bunker seemed to rise forty degrees.
What the hell is wrong with you? It’s been four years since she told you “so long”. Seeing her again is no big deal—you knew she was stationed here, you were bound to bump into her sooner or later. And you’ve slept with other broads since, it’s not like Dani got under your skin or anything.
Is it?
“Excuse me.” Claire White, a gorgeous blonde from the TSC labs, brushed between them carrying a tray of vacuum tubes, forcing Steve to let go Dani’s hand, which he hadn’t realized he was still shaking. “Everything should be cool, professor, once I put the last new tubes in the idiot box and adjust the antenna.”
Dani turned, pulling cigarettes out of her pocketbook, and said something to Claire; Steve forced himself to turn around, away from Dani, and concentrate on the bunker. There was Professor Caldwell, pointing at the huge Omnivac computer with his briar while his assistant Howard something-or-other nodded agreement. Col. Ankrum addressing a couple of bigwigs from Washington, here for the day’s games. Claire, ignoring the dust smearing on her blouse as she wriggled under the television. That’s right, they’re going to try watching the combat exercise as it happens. Seeing if the Guard company can destroy Caldwell’s robots without hurting us ‘civilians.’
He wondered how long it would take, and whether maybe he’d have a chance to talk to Dani, and what he’d say, and whether it mattered when she obviously didn’t care, and then they’d begun walking out of the bunker along with his fellow agents DiNaldi and Trueblood, a Brit officer called Barclay, and as they merged with the crowd already on the street, he realized he’d lost sight of Dani.
No matter how she looked at him, and how she’d ended it in Boston, he desperately wanted to talk some more. Yeah, if I could only think what to say.
It was sheer coincidence, Dani assured herself, that although the crowd had forced them apart as they left the bunker, she’d wound up walking beside Steve a minute or two later, on what had once been Skink’s Main Street .
What the hell is he doing here? Niles said “agent”—why would Steve become a Science Investigator? Not that I give a damn. He made it clear back in Boston that I was just a lay. I should go and make plans with Jason about that weekend away he’s been suggesting.
“So.” She found herself unable to say anything else or even look at him, and lit a fresh cigarette to buy time. “How long have you been in town?”
“Never been here in Invasion City before. I read about how the Deathworms drove everyone out of here, then the government turned it into a testing ground—”
“I meant in Wind Song.”
“Umm, eight months, maybe.” She heard the click of a lighter, a deep inhalation. “Woman I met back east talked me into becoming a Science Investigations agent. I came out here last year, met Nate Strawn, spent a couple of months looking for my brother—” From the longing in his voice, Dani knew Steve hadn’t found him. “—then training in LA. Rules. Procedures. Some science. Then me and my partner, Gwen, were one of the teams sent to investigate those beast-man kidnappings in the redwood forest, then we tracked down the last of Dr. Steig’s atom-brain monsters—”
You see? He’s been here long enough to find you if he wanted to. He had to know you were here, he couldn’t have been around a week before someone would have started cracking jokes about Laura Lyons, girl medic.
“I took a look at that comic book about you,” he said. For half a second Dani wondered if she’d been thinking out loud. “You know, the one with the girl medic who—”
“For Christ’s sake, why does everyone bring Laura Lyons up?” In a second she had him backed into a wall, her face inches from his own as she glared down at him and thrust her finger into his chest. “She’s nothing like me! Always crying over the guy who got away, I don’t cry, I never have! Understand?”
“Sure, sure.” He held out his hands in an appeasing gesture. “It’s called Young Love Comics, right, I guess they’ve got to put in the mushy stuff. Even if they make it up.”
“Made up. Exactly. And don’t ever forget it!” Suddenly Dani was aware how loud her voice was and how many eyes were watching them, and what a total fool she was making of herself, and she turned and strode into the nearest alley, refusing to run even as she felt her cheeks turn crimson. It’s perfectly understandable, he was your first, meeting him by surprise—dammit, if they’d lift that stupid rule against women participating in combat training, I’d be with the platoon instead of—
“Hey, Dani, wait up!” She heard his footsteps, didn’t stop, then he was in front of her, blocking the path. Better dressed than four years earlier: Cheap suit, cheap shoes, cheap shirt and tie, cheap fedora, but better quality and without any visible holes.
“What?”
“Look, I—” His mouth opened and closed, fishlike, for a couple of seconds. “You know my brother, Tommy? Don’t bring him up, okay? He’s still on the FBI’s wanted list, I don’t want anyone to know—”
“Bring him up?” That’s all he wanted? “Do you imagine I’m going to be discussing you with someone, Mr. Flanagan?”
“Uh, no, but—”
“Maybe I should mention it.” She moved closer, forcing him to back up along the alley. “Maybe the TSC security people should know if a science agent’s brother is a Red spy.”
“He wasn’t a spy, and you gotta know I wouldn’t—”
“I don’t ‘gotta know’ anything about you.” I guess I never did. “All I know—” She felt anger start to overwhelm her again and took a deep breath. “This is a waste of time. The robots will attack any second, the Guard will arrive ten minutes later, we need to be out there with the other—”
At the far end of the alley, someone gave a scream that would have sounded phony in a costume melodrama.
Then came the tearing sound of shattering metal and glass, followed by gunshots and a scream that wasn’t phony at all.
A beam of silvery light shot into the sky overhead and struck the helicopter the camera crew was using. The beam swung to the left and seemed to drag the helicopter with it, despite the protesting whine of the chopper engine, until the copter smashed into the fourth floor of the Skink Savings and Loan and exploded into flames.
“Well, what do you know?” Caldwell’s assistant Howard Chableau said in his sleepy drawl as the television screen filled with static. “Told you a pretty girl like Claire couldn’t—”
“That’s Dr. White to you,” Claire snapped, rushing over to the screen. “And I don’t think the problem’s here, you saw that flash? Either the filmless camera the chopper’s using shorted out or—”
“Moran? Peabody?” Lt. Niles’ frown deepened as he pressed the buttons on his wrist-radio. “I’m not getting a response from the helicopter crew—just static.” He pressed another button. “Nothing from Sgt. Hill at the base, either.”
Howard frowned and turned back to the gauges in front of his chair, adjusted a couple of dials. “Now that’…odd. Omnivac says the magnetic director is beaming signals to the robots, but it’s not getting anything back. Professor, would you come look at this?”
“It’s the computer,” one of the Washington men said uneasily. “There’s always a possibility they’ll start thinking for themselves.”
“Omnivac could no more think for itself than it could split this scene and go to a coffee house,” Claire said, suppressing a laugh. Squares.
But listening to Caldwell and Chableau, it was obvious something had gone wrong. She began running through the possibilities, taking comfort from the fact that even out of control, the robots didn’t have the weaponry to put Dani or anyone else in danger.
“Stay back!” Dani’s arm blocked Steve from running out onto the street, while she fished her Colt from her pocketbook with her other hand. “Sarge’s first rule: See what you’re fighting first and don’t let it see you.”
“I bet Laura Lyons never gets this bossy.” But even as he said it, Steve nodded and crossed the last nine yards as stealthily as possible. He tried his wrist-radio for the third time, but he still got nothing but static.
The gunfire had stopped, though Steve could still hear some further away. Four robots—eight feet tall, humanoid, with dully metallic skin—stalked down the center of the street, heading south, glancing side to side at every step.
A dozen people lay scattered up and down the road, some lying crumpled against walls or trees, three pinned under an overturned Studebaker, a few lying flat on the ground as if they’d been knocked out trying to run. A couple of mailboxes and empty cars had been tossed around for good measure.
Gunfire blazed from the broken window of a five-and-dime across the street. One of the robots turned and a silver beam flashed from its eyes through the window. There was a choked shriek, then silence.
“Jesus.” Steve glanced at Dani. “They’ve got real death rays!”
“Maybe not, some of those people in the street are still moving.” Dani glanced from the departing robots to her Colt, then shook her head reluctantly. “As soon as the robots are gone, we’ve got to get out there and help those people. Only—dammit, I don’t have my kit because I came in Claire’s car and there wasn’t supposed to be—” He saw a fresh thought hit her. “If the company can’t contact the bunker, they’ll assume it’s part of the exercise. We have maybe ten minutes before they get here.”
“And they’ve got tracer blanks in their guns and handmines loaded with flour, nothing that might hurt bystanders, right?”
“And there’s a dozen of those robots on the loose. The way those four are headed, they’ll be ready and waiting—”
“We gotta stop this.” Steve stroked his chin, wishing he had Gwen’s brains to call on. “Maybe if we head back to the bunker?”
“We’d have to get past the robots. Besides, Claire’s there, if something’s gone wrong with Omnivac, she can fix it better than we can.” Dani glanced at the robots, then at the wounded. “Let’s start with the guys trapped under the car and—”
The sound of squealing tires cut her words short. A Mustang appeared in the intersection behind the robots; as they turned, the car smashed into a power pole, sending it toppling and the wires lashing toward the robots. A second later, a burst of silver rays sent the car flying away, the driver leaping out at the last minute, only to be caught between the car and the wall as the two met.
Almost simultaneously with his scream, the power lines hit the robots. A crackling electric aura seemed to form around them, staying just an inch or so away from their bodies. In addition, electricity seemed to outline invisible wires reaching out from the robots, half of them pointing down the street toward the bunker, the others arcing backward toward the homes on the far side of the town square. “What the hell is that, Steve?”
“Wait a second…Caldwell makes these things run with magnetic motors, right? Controlled from the bunker?” Dani nodded. “So maybe those invisible lines are where the magnetic controls hit them. Which would mean the other invisible lines are from someone else’s controller, right?” He turned to her, grinning. “We can’t stop the robots, but if we stop the robot-master, we don’t have to.”
“Not we.” Dani raced into the street ahead of him as the robots turned the corner. “My job’s to keep people alive while you’re doing that—if you can do it alone. If you can’t—”
“We got a couple of dozen agents volunteered for this thing, I’m sure I can find some help.” They reached an unconscious woman bleeding heavily from a broken leg that had been hit by a car hood. Steve pulled off his tie, Dani snatched it from him. Just like in Beantown. “If you see more robots show up, for god’s sake run and hide.”
“If you see any, find a way past them. We’ve got maybe eight minutes, at most.” She wrapped the tie round the woman’s leg. “Thanks for the tourniquet…be careful, Steve.”
“You, too.” He wanted to stay and help, but he turned and ran in the direction of those invisible wires instead, eyes peeled for any agents he could ask for help. If we don’t stop those robots, a full MASH unit ain’t gonna be enough.
He turned into the next street, racing past dried-up, overgrown tangles that had once been front yards, leaping nimbly around cracks and potholes in the sidewalk-then he heard metal scraping on stone behind him. He braked to a stop, spun around and saw another of Caldwell’s robots striding toward the corner Steve had just turned.
“No, you don’t, buddy!” Steve drew his automatic and fired a couple of shots into its back. The robot started to turn, so Steve dove into the nearest garden, crouching behind a gazebo. The robot stood, surveying the street, started to turn back; Steve fired three more shots, jumped up and ran around the side of the house, a second before the silver beam struck the ground where he’d been standing. A rusty trowel flew into the air and embedded itself in a tree trunk.
The robot advanced toward him; Steve drew a sigh of relief, knowing he’d drawn it away from Dani. Now all I gotta do is keep it chasing me, stay alive, and find whoever’s behind this. Yeah, piece of cake. He fired another shot, just to keep its interest, then raced for the next yard, keeping the house between him and the robots eyes. And I didn’t bring any more ammo. Great…
After a couple of minutes of ducking, weaving and shooting he heard the sound of gunplay nearby with relief. Darting down the street as the robot crashed through a faded white picket fence behind him, he spotted the battle on the far side of two empty lots. Trueblood, DiNaldi and a couple of other agents were trading fire with three men; two robots were flashing their silver beams at the agents, but unable to hit anything but walls or trees. The men, big guys in leather jackets, crouched behind a wood-paneled station wagon in the back of which a black disc rotated wildly on top of a small pillar, sparks flashing over its surface. That must be what’s controlling the robots—could I hit it from here? Maybe if I move closer—
Then the English guy, Barclay, leapt from behind a tree, went into a roll and landed behind the nearest wall. It took Steve a second to realize that in the middle of the leap he’d hurled a stone straight at the disc. The black disc didn’t break, but shot off its stand through the window of the station wagon. The robots suddenly turned and walked down the street, no longer firing rays. Steve glanced back and saw the one following him doing the same thing. Sonofabitch, they did it!
The three men scrambled into the station wagon and left just ahead of a hail of bullets. Steve turned and began racing back toward Dani. He tensed a little as he ran past the robots, but they gave no sign they even noticed.
(continued on page 2)