Peligroso Factory
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 2. 3. 20:15
Our crew moves through underbrush, cutting a way through the overgrown area to the doors of the Peligroso guanite factory. Separated from the Warren by two kilometers and yet another electric fence, the plant looks like it’s been shuttered for at least a decade, but according to Aziz, it was still in use a year ago. That’s the way things go on Mars—stop using a thing, and the semitoxic atmosphere starts breaking it down, chewing through steel like an omnivorous bush hog.
“Sarge,” Aziz says, “take the target from Pinch. She needs a break.”
Sarge grouses but accepts Charlotte from Pinch. “What’s your problem, Pinchie? This bird weighs less than an empty sack.”
Pinch works her sore shoulders. “Say that in a hour, tough guy.”
The factory doors are locked and chained shut, with the words DANGER and DRÆU spray-painted across them. The windows are filthed over. A few are shattered.
“Hinky,” I say, and wipe dirt from a window as Pinch picks the locks. “There’s machinery inside. Equipment and metal, too. Makes no sense for the đibui not to live here or at least strip this place bare.”
The chain falls with a clank to the ground. Pinch starts on the deadbolts on the door.
Aziz points to the word painted over every door: DRÆU. “There’s your answer.”
“Drow?” I say.
“It’s pronounced dray-you,” Pinch says. “The wobblies are scared shitless of them.”
“Why?” I ask. “Didn’t think the đibui were afraid of anything.”
“Rumor says the Dræu are soldiers gone feral.”
“Wild animals, they are,” Sarge says. “They’d as soon kill you as look at you. And you better not run up on them when they’re hungry.”
I catch Vienne’s eye. She shrugs, signaling that she’s never heard of them either. “That’s ridiculous,” I say. “Just some kind of legend meant to scare children.”
Pinch pops the deadbolt. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen what we saw.”
“Enough gab, Pinch.” Aziz tries to swing the door open. It’s stuck. “Daylight’s burning.”
I look back at the setting sun. Just a few minutes until darkness falls.
“Seventeen minutes, fourteen seconds,” Mimi says.
“Mimi,” I say, ignoring her correction as Aziz rattles the door, “you know anything about these Dræu?”
“Negative. My data contains no record regarding such a class of entities.”
“Shoulders on the door,” Aziz says. “Sarge, hand me the target.”
The four of us hit it all at once.
The door flies open.
“Hooray for symbiarmor,” Aziz says. “Secure the facility. Check for hostiles.”
We fan out.
Shine lights into the darkness.
Silent.
Waiting.
Watching.
Textbook.
After a few minutes, we’ve covered the bottom floor.
I call it first. “Clear!”
“Clear,” Vienne says.
“Clear!” Pinch says.
“Yeah,” Sarge says. “Me too. Whatever.”
“Roger that,” Aziz says. “Pinch, check the next level up. Durango, help Sidewinder barricade this entrance.”
I shove a metal desk against the doors, then wedge a metal beam across the frame. I dust off my hands. “That’ll keep ’em.”
Vienne waves her light over the cobbled-up mess. Without a word, she walks over to the side and slides a security bar across the doors, which locks them into place.
“That’s good too,” I say. “Not as creative, but, you know, efficient.”
Vienne mimes a turtle poking its head out.
“Very funny,” I say.
“I need eyes on the roof to establish an EZ,” Aziz tells Vienne. “Take the target with you.”
Vienne takes Charlotte from the chief and hoists onto her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
“Careful,” I say.
“I’m always careful.” Vienne gives me a quizzical look, then jogs toward the stairs. With three long strides, she’s gone.
“What’s my job?” I ask.
Aziz tosses me a metal box. “Locator unit. Find a spot with no interference and turn it on.”
The locater unit is a simple black rectangle with a strip antenna and two LEDs—green and red—to indicate signal. “This is Plan B?”
“Part of it,” He says. “After you set the transmitter, haul butt to the seceding floor, but block every fire door. There are four stairwells. You get one, and I’ll take the other three. Got it?”
I resist the urge to salute. “Loud and clear.”
“Now pipe down and move out,” Aziz says. “We don’t want to get caught in here at night.”
“Why? Afraid the Dræu are real?”
“Oh, I know they’re real,” he says, “but they’re not what scares me, if that’s what you mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you think we fought some vicious wobblies today,” he says, “just wait till you see what comes out in the dark.”
After searching a bit for the strongest signal, I set the transmitter on a window in the far corner of the factory. Then flick the switch, and the LED turns green.
“Are we transmitting, Mimi?”
“Affirmative.”
I run back to the stairs leading to the second floor. I slam the door, snatch a fire extinguisher from the wall, and jam it in the panic bar before running to the next floor. I’m grabbing another extinguisher when I hear Pinch’s voice in my earbud.
“Chief!” she yells, a note of panic in her voice. “Come take a look-see!”
Curiosity gets the best of me. I set down the extinguisher and open the door.
“Durango!” Pinch calls from a few meters away. “What do you make of that?”
I shine a light, and the beam finds her standing next to a panel labeled with four white letters: MUSE. Then, below it, DANGER: RADIATION.
“Whatcha got, Pinchie?” Sarge says as he joins us.
“Something hinky,” she says.
“What’s so hinky about it?” Sarge asks.
She bumps the door with her hip. “It’s locked. From the inside.”
“That’s a high-security door.” I examine it closely in the light of my torch. “Touch activated with duplicative voice protocols, the kind you’d find in a top-clearance facility.” And not tucked away in an abandoned factory next to the Warren.
“Duplicative voice protocols?” Sarge says, tapping my shoulder with his torch. “What’s that mean, mate?”
“It means,” Pinch says, “that you’ve got to stroke it and tell it sweet little lies.”
“Right up my alley!” Sarge pushes past me. He bangs the butt of his armalite against the frame. When nothing happens, he does it again.
“Waste of time,” I say, and grab his arm to keep him from doing it a third time. “I’ve heard that some facilities are wired with shock-sensitive detonators to keep marauders from forcing their way in.”
“That is nonfactual,” Mimi says. “You have never heard that.”
“Of course I have,” I say. “I heard it just a second ago, when I said it.”
“You are exploiting a linguistic loophole.”
A new torchlight shines on us. “What the hell is this?” Aziz asks, his voice agitated, as he puts a hand on Pinch’s shoulder.
“A high-security facility,” I answer, staring at the panel.
“In a guanine processing plant?” Aziz says.
Pinch smirks. “Like I said, hinky. Mind if I try to crack the lock?”
“Let it go,” Aziz says. “Night is coming, and we’re running out of time. Durango, did you block the fire exits?”
“First floor,” I say, looking at the letters MUSE. “Like you told me.”
Aziz frowns, still agitated. “Sarge, Pinch, block the other exits on this floor, then the third. Meet up on the roof with Sidewinder. That’s our EZ. Got it?”
“Got it,” we all say.
“Then move!”
But I don’t. They scramble, but I stay put, mesmerized by the panel. “MUSE. I know that from somewhere.”
“Affirmative—”
I put an open palm on the metal and say, “Jacob Stringfellow.”
Click.
The door swings open and I slip inside. Baseboard lighting flickers on, illuminating the space. Stainless steel. From floor to ceiling, the whole place is lined with stainless. It must’ve cost a bloody fortune to build.
But other than the steel, it’s empty. It’s been stripped clean. Nothing here, not even a fingerprint. This is a waste of time. I turn to go, and on the back of the door, there is a word scratched in the metal: DRÆU.
“Mimi?” I say. “Any theories on how that got there?”
“I have no data to compute a theory.”
I linger for a moment, chills running down my spine. But Aziz’s warning—“Just wait till you see what comes out in the dark”—rings in my head, and I let it go. After closing the door behind me, I hit the fire exit. Bound up the stairs to the next floor, and then up to the third.
Finally I hit the roof and drop the hatch down. I find a length of pipe and wedge it in the door.
“That ought to hold ’em,” I say, and move to the center of the factory’s roof, where the whole crew has gathered, a signal flare marking the extraction zone.
Charlotte is trussed up, a gag over her mouth. Her eyes dart around like a wonky laser trying to find a target. I feel sorry for her. Nobody with child should be hauled around like a sack of ore. If I were chief, this wouldn’t be happening.
“What took you so long?” Vienne asks me.
“I had trouble with a door,” I say. “What happened to her?”
“She woke up, hit me, and tried to escape,” Pinch says.
“Okay, but why the gag?”
“She yammers too much,” Sarge says. “Talks about things she shouldn’t.”
I glance at her stomach, wondering if she’d said anything about her pregnancy. “Like what?”
Vienne shakes her head, telling me to let it go, which just makes me all the more curious.
“Our ride is late,” Aziz says, too loudly, and checks his watch. “The transmitter is working, right?”
I nod. “Loud and clear. How long before pickup?”
Aziz taps his watch and drifts to the edge of the roof. “Not soon enough.”
In the distance, I see three sets of headlights flash against the red-hued horizon. The sound of the engine is too deep for a Noriker, which means the motors have been souped up.
“We’ve got company,” I say, joining Aziz at the roof’s edge. A wave of vertigo hits as I look down, and I take a step back.
“War trucks,” Aziz says. “Jacked-up haulers fitted out with flame throwers and anything else that will shoot.”
The roar of engines drones in the night, followed by a high-pitched shriek that sends ice- pick shivers up my spine.
Aziz’s face turns white. “Away from the walls!”
He backs up, but I linger, taking in the scene. Below us, the ground is swarming with đibui. Thousands of them. Some carry torches lit by scrap fabric and oil sludge. The rest dance in the dark, their faces turned up to us, waiting.
Waiting for what?
I watch as the three trucks bounce down the road. They stop twenty meters from the front doors. The Razor steps out of the driver’s seat of the lead truck. He climbs on the hood.
“Give me Charlotte!” the Razor bellows through a megaphone. “And your davos can walk out of the Warren alive!”
Vienne answers with a shot that shatters the windshield, but the Razor doesn’t flinch. “Should I put a bullet in his engine block?” Vienne says.
“Get away from the walls!” Aziz yells. “The Razor isn’t the problem!”
I’m about to ask what he’s so afraid of when a howl cuts through the night. My skin crawls, and I have to fight the urge to hide. “What the wa cào was that?” I ask.
“It came from the Razor’s war truck,” Vienne says, and points to something white chained to the bed of his vehicle. She raises the scope to her eye. “Whatever it is, they’re setting it free.”
“Get back!” Aziz yells. “The harii are coming!”