The Cain Conspiracy (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 8), page 24
A fitting end for such a strong-willed team. Fighting as a team. Dying as a team. All in the name of scientific advancement.
He wished he could have faced Harvey Bennett and his new wife Juliette once more, but he wasn’t the type of man to take needless chances. He had needed to record a video for his buyer, a final documentation of proof that he had what he said he had.
What better way to do that than to use the CSO crew as the operators in his latest generation of tech? What better way to prove to his buyer that their expectations would be met and exceeded?
“Wh — what are we watching?”
Garza turned and faced Canisius, taking another sip of coffee before responding. “This, Father, is what your organization is purchasing.”
“There is no way the Catholic Church or the Vatican has any need for something… of… such —”
“Such what?” Garza asked. “Destruction? Such overwhelming power?”
Canisius swallowed, then looked side to side. There were two chairs nearby, but the soldiers standing just inches away from him tightened up. Good, Garza thought. If you sit down, you may miss something.
“This is irresponsible. It’s sinful. So much unnecessary killing has already plagued this world, and —”
“And how much of that killing has been done at the hands of the Church? How much of that killing has been perpetuated by the Church? By your church, Father Canisius.”
There was a flash of rage on Canisius’ face, but the man swallowed it back, staring defiantly at Garza.
“I urge you to look, to see what your organization has purchased, Father. This display is being recorded, of course, but —”
“My organization has nothing to do with this.”
“Ah, that is where you are wrong.”
“They would never purchase something like this. No matter the potential benefits they may have been sold. These are death machines, and… what? You expect me to believe that they want machines? For what? To replace the guardsmen? To stand at the foot of the Basilica?”
Garza smiled. Good. Get more worked up. Begin to feel it again, Father. Just like I’ve felt it.
“No,” Garza said. “No, not at all.” He laughed. “I see the confusion. Of course. I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with you. I apologize.”
He snapped his fingers, and one of the seated Ravenshadow men stood and nodded.
“Get Victoria,” he said. The man immediately turned and left the room.
60
Ben
Ben heard Garza’s voice as he maneuvered his own Exo around in the corner of the room. He was amazed at how easy his suit was to control, but he knew Garza was capable of such miraculous feats — there was nothing technologically possible that was out of reach to the man. He had unlimited funding, and it was clear why: he had been able to produce something no other government or corporation could. The Exos weren’t perfect, but they were as close as anything that had come to market. He knew that was why the buyer wanted them — they were close to perfect. Ravenshadow had figured out that it wasn’t just a well-trained soldier or a fancy, technologically advanced exoskeleton suit that would be the difference.
It was both — or, rather, it was a suit and a soldier that didn’t need to be trained.
The three suits in front of him advanced, their short, dark-skinned operators staring as blankly back at him as he knew he looked. They all raised their weapons — the arm-mounted cannons — and fired.
He felt his Exosuit performing before he’d realized he’d issued the command. He ran sideways, his torso still facing them, and fired with his turret. The lighter rounds tore hundreds of tiny holes through the advancing Exos, dropping one of them and halting the forward motion of the other two.
It took them a second longer to adapt and change their focus of fire, and Ben took full advantage of it. He stepped forward, moving out from the relative safety of the heavy crate and fired again, this time adding his cannon to the mix. The blasts hit the center Exo full-on, throwing it onto its back. Another one that had been focusing its attention on Mrs. E tripped over it, stumbling, but then turned to face Ben.
Crap, he thought. One down, one more takes its place.
His actions never faltered. He accepted the addition of the newcomer, fired a cannon shot to prevent it from getting overzealous, and then once again turned to face the third Exo in the previous wave.
But that Exo had maneuvered to Ben’s flank, and he felt the impact of its cannon round before he registered that it was still firing on him. His own instincts, or his Exo’s built-in artificial intelligence — he wasn’t sure — turned the turret gun and launched a barrage of tiny bullets toward it.
The new advancing Exo fired at the same time. Rounds from both Exos’ cannons hit Ben’s side and chest, and he faltered. He grunted, then the Exo he was standing in fell to its knees. He struggled with the controls, suddenly feeling as though they were foreign. He was no longer in sync with the machine as he had been, and he wondered if there was a way to —
There.
He pressed his feet downward in the suit, trying to simulate the motion of standing up. The Exo reacted immediately, and he felt the hydraulic lifts in the legs pressing upward. The Exo stood, then fell again. Ben’s left leg screamed out in pain — the suit had been hit on its left leg, and when it fell back again Ben’s leg had been caught inside.
He couldn’t tell if it had been crushed or badly bruised, but he had no time to worry about it. Nor did he have any way of reacting if it had been injured. His body simply moved on, as if it had marked down the loss and worked to readjust its strategy.
The problem was that Ben had no idea what that strategy should be — he was nearly on his side on the ground, his Exo unable to stand. He was firing back at the advancing Exos, but now two more had joined the fray. They were working to spread out, to make Ben’s attack on more than one of them at once impossible. The Exos’ torsos could rotate quickly, but they had a limit.
Ben threw his wrists side to side and up and down, working the controls as naturally as he’d been born with them in his hands. He moved the Exo’s weaponry side to side, firing when he knew there was an open shot. The AI worked as well to diminish the threat, accepting control of the weapon Ben was currently not using, and together man and machine fought to stay alive.
But without the ability to move, Ben knew it was an impossible task. There were more and more Exos joining in every second, and he wondered if perhaps they were joining the fight because one or more of his teammates had been annihilated. Had Mrs. E fallen? The woman was a hell of a fighter, but Ben had no idea how comfortable she felt behind the controls of a fighting machine.
She was also the hardiest of them all — she could survive anything. Reggie had once called her the ‘cockroach of the CSO,’ a term she hadn’t seemed to enjoy.
Maybe Reggie or Julie had been killed? Maybe the Exos had overcome their position, firing on and relentlessly pressing forward until they, like Ben, had been reduced to a pile of guns and metal, and then…
No. He refused to allow himself to think that. If his thoughts were the last thing he had control over, he’d use them constructively, right up until the very end.
In that case, he thought, let’s figure out how to get the hell out of these things.
He knew the suit was their best protection, but it was also their best chance at death. The Exos had been ordered to fight each other, the operators inside simply along for the ride, unable to remove themselves from the machines. He didn’t know if they would start firing at him directly if he were somehow able to get himself out of his suit, but he figured it was a chance worth taking.
But how to do it?
The CSO team, as well as the other Exo operators on the demonstration floor, were all under the spell of Garza’s chemical compound. He knew there was nothing he could do to break it, not on his own.
But…
There had to be a way. He knew it. He’d been in enough sticky situations to know for a fact that there was something he could do to extricate himself. Something he could do to break the spell, to turn off the…
That’s it. He didn’t need to get the chemical out of his body. He needed to turn off what was controlling it.
And he had just realized that the chemical — and his mind, because of it — was being controlled by the sound. The high-pitched noise.
61
Ben
Wherever they had been, the high-pitched noise had signaled the arrival of enemy Exos. The singular pitch, nearly inaudible to them, had been a pinprick in his eardrum the entire time they’d been on the demonstration floor, and Garza had made it a point to never let the sound die out — even allowing it to continue being piped in through the speakers while he talked over it.
The sound was activating the chemical, which was controlling his mind enough to prevent him from acting on his own volition.
He didn’t know how it worked, nor did he care. He now had a mission.
And if there was anything he knew about himself, it was that he would take his stubbornness to the grave. When he had a goal, a mission he could see, clearly, he wouldn’t stop until he accomplished it. He couldn’t stop.
And his mission was clear: figure out how to turn off the sound.
The problem, however, was still ever-present in his field of view. His eyes were barely above the top edge of the suit, but since he was lying diagonal to the floor, lower than his attackers, he could see them all.
There were six of them, and they were still pressing forward. He couldn’t move his head or eyes to see behind him, but he knew the back wall of the demonstration floor was only feet behind him. Crates were stacked high to his left, most of them shredded. If he pushed, he could clear them and break free, only to find that he’d lost a few precious seconds to the machines trying to outmaneuver him.
To his right the path was clear.
That was his goal, now: get there.
After that, he didn’t know.
He tried to will the Exo to understand the plan, to explain to it that it didn’t need both legs to move. It took a second and a half — an unbelievably long time in the realm of human thought and artificial intelligence, but it worked.
The Exo complied, dropping its left “arm” to the ground and pulling itself forward. Ben could feel the scraping of the broken left leg as it dragged behind, but he kept on moving. The right arm cannon was still firing, the shoulder-mounted turret doing its job to stave off immediate death. Thanks his Exo’s superior firepower and speed with its weaponry, the onslaught was stifled enough for Ben to move the machine toward the right, around the next stack of crates.
But the Exo was too slow. The damage had been done, and without one of its legs to move, the suit was helpless to the next attack.
It came in the form of seven rounds of cannon fire, blisteringly fast, all centered around the Exos back.
The battery housing was hit immediately, a cap or metal cover on the top of it flying off and nearly taking Ben’s head off with it.
The other rounds peppered the back of the suit, taking out enough components that even Ben’s gentle prodding and urging couldn’t convince the Exo to push itself back up. A gear rolled away from the suit, now lying flat on its stomach.
Ben knew the end was coming. He wasn’t sure how well he would hold up against the barrage, but he knew there was no metal that couldn’t be pierced — the enemy Exos would break through, no matter what. It was only a matter of time.
A few seconds, perhaps? Maybe a minute? The Exo was down, but the others weren’t stopping. The cannons blasted different bits off the suit. The entire right leg, the foot of the left, a few more gears and a long line full of dark fluid.
Ben sighed. This is the end. He moved his right hand off the controls and tried to push himself up and away from the front of the suit. He could now feel the weight of the suit on him, as if…
Wait a minute. He had just moved. He had moved his hand, and he’d lifted himself up off the suit’s front.
What the hell?
He frowned, again noticing that the thought had translated into an action. An action he had initiated.
He smiled. No idea what’s going on, but I’m taking advantage of it.
He pulled himself forward — out of the top of the suit — and toward the two crates lying in front of him and to his left. There was another dead Exo there, too, a sign that he might have a bit more protection than just a few thin planks of wood.
He reached the downed Exo and noticed that the other Exos were still firing at his old suit. Good, he thought. They must be working to eliminate the Exos, not necessarily the humans inside. His theory had so far proven true, but he didn’t want to wait around to test it out.
He crawled forward a few more inches, and suddenly his mind lost connection with his body.
Once again, he was completely immobile.
62
Ben
What’s going on? Ben wondered. How was I able to move?
He realized that the droning whine had faded in volume. He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but it had in fact had an effect: when the high-pitched tone was gone, he was able to move.
As he’d felt himself locking back up, his motion stymied, he’d heard the sound creep back into his mind, filling the void it had previously left.
Now he was lying on the floor, just out of reach of his Exo suit. Not that he could reach for it anyway, if he wanted to. He could lift his head, and he was thankful that he had been looking sideways, focusing on the advancing enemy Exos, as he’d frozen up again. His hands lay motionless at his sides, one of his legs was bent and the other was straight.
Is this the position I’m going to die in? he thought. Will I be crushed or trampled to death? Or will the Exos just ignore me for Garza to kill after?
He wondered how much time was left on Jeffers’ watch. It had to be less than thirty minutes by now. And what would happen when it reached zero? Jeffers had told them Sturdivant planned to “bring it all down on top of them,” but what exactly did that mean?
Didn’t matter now, Ben figured. He was laying like a half-dead snake on the stone floor, hearing the sounds of the battle raging around him. The Exos behind him banged away at his fallen suit, apparently not satisfied with its operator escaping and leaving the suit useless on the ground. They wanted to seal the deal.
He heard another explosion as a component from a nearby Exo exploded, and he felt the vibrations through his body as it landed inches away from his head.
Add: death by flaming debris missile to the list of possibilities, he thought.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw another two cannon rounds smack against his fallen Exo, pushing it toward him. The shoulder-mounted turret of his suit crashed against his leg, bending it inwards and upward. Ben couldn’t feel it, but it didn’t seem to have done any damage.
And then… he moved it. His leg bent, and unbent, his other leg straightening out, now fully extended. He tested his arms, then hands, and found that they too could move. His head was still riveted in place, as if the topmost quarter of his body had been rendered inert.
He pulled himself backwards with his hands and feet, sliding slowly toward his downed Exo. The chemical abruptly released its hold on his head, and he worked his jaw open and closed a few times, working out the kinks and sleepiness.
Okay, he thought. Time to figure this out.
As before, the sound piped in from the speakers up above had been mostly silenced, only the slight pressure of the noise evident in the back of his mind. He strained his ears but couldn’t hear the pitch above the racket of the fight.
The fight!
He had almost forgotten about his comrades, and he took a precious second to glance left and right, looking for his team members. He saw Julie and Mrs. E fighting, working side-to-side against their respective walls, each fighting off a handful of slower, heavier Exos.
He couldn’t see Reggie, but he didn’t have time to check, and he knew it wasn’t worth the risk. The last time he’d been freed from the grip of the scopolamine chemical compound he’d been within proximity of his suit. When he’d crawled away, the rigor mortis effect had immediately set in.
The effect had something to do with his proximity to the Exo suit — his Exo suit. But what? He couldn’t figure out why his suit — previously his own private prison — was now the thing that allowed him his freedom.
Unless…
Ben shifted around, now facing the “head” of the fallen exosuit, examining its damage. Only after it had been hit, nearly destroyed, had it “turned off” Garza’s noise.
He examined everything he could see from this vantage point. He was no engineer or mechanic, and even then these were far more technically advanced than anything he had inspected before. He didn’t even know what he was looking for, but he figured he’d know when he saw it.
His eyes traced the outline of the Exo, down to the backside of it that faced the wall. Where the arms connected — one now completely missing — where the battery had been attached…
There.
A panel that used to cover a section of the Exo’s upper-right torso, just beneath the shoulder area on the back of it, had gone missing. There were blast marks around the rectangular section, giving Ben a clue as to what had happened. He reached a hand inside and pulled out a mess of wiring and cables, careful to not unplug any of them.
The Exos that had been attacking his downed suit had lost interest, apparently satisfied that the suit was effectively disabled. Ben also assumed that Garza couldn’t see him at the moment — if he had, Ben had no doubt the other Exos in the room would suddenly have received new orders, and Ben’s life would have ended a few seconds later.
For the moment, Ben was alive and no one was the wiser. He hoped he could keep it that way. He moved aside bound and zip tied collection of cables and found a small, rectangular object, hanging from the top side of the interior of the Exo.
