The Vagabond Codes Read online

  “Eagle-East,” Tomás called out. “Cover Aiden. Lena, if he misses, you take that scumbag out.”

  “Copy that, Adobe.”

  For the last moment for a long time, all was silent.

  The dragon-faced man stood next to his dirt bike like a defiled statue, his bulging eyes never wavering from the direction of the retreat. After a moment, he spat on Alex, cocked his handgun, and pointed it at the boy’s head. “This is your last chance, you brats! Come out now or—”

  The bullet, traveling faster than the speed of sound, hit its target with a sharp wet smack. The gunshot followed a half-second after, and it echoed across the basin in a deep, mournful boom. Aiden’s shot struck the dragon-faced man in the upper thigh, and he fell to his side, screaming the worst profanities and inventing new ones.

  Propping himself up on one elbow while clutching his thigh with his left hand, the man raised his handgun at Alex, who was crawling slowly into the brambles. Before he could pull the trigger, another bullet hit him in the right shoulder, sending him sprawling backward. A half-second later, Lena’s shot reverberated across the cliffs.

  Then everything happened fast. As soon as the man tumbled over, Alex scrambled over to his body, picked up his handgun, and tumbled down into the creek bed. Howling for blood, two bikers started firing at Alex, and the rest revved their dirt bikes and roared into the basin.

  Machine gun fire suddenly ripped out from a hidden spot among the cactus and rocks, spraying the first three bikers with a barrage of bullets and sending them crashing to the ground. Two bikers swerved to avoid the collision and lost control and flipped over. One biker, wearing only jeans and a sleeveless shirt, was catapulted into an enormous saguaro cactus.

  “Marcelo’s in one of the spider holes!” Tomás called out, pumping his fist.

  The remaining bikers sped toward the mountain. Ben and Danna, now armed with semi-automatic rifles, opened fire, hitting two instantaneously. The bikers split formation, and the two sides moved in a wide semi-circle to close in from the east and west.

  Pairing up, each one unslung his rifle — AK-47s, from what Ben could see — and with one hand gripping the handlebar, returned fire. Ben and Danna dropped to their knees as a round of fire blasted the wall six inches from their heads.

  “This day has just gotten so worse,” Danna said, blowing a strand of hair from her face.

  Several shots rang out from the OPs, missing their marks.

  “Tomás, what’s the situation?” Ben said into his headset.

  “The jerks are just cruising around firing randomly,” Tomás replied, his voice crackling over the radio.

  “We can’t keep shooting at them — they’re moving too fast! We’re gonna run outta ammo by the end of the day.”

  “Maybe that’s what they want,” Aiden called out. “It wouldn’t matter anyway; there’s no way they could get in.”

  “Well, they don’t know that yet,” Danna replied. “And I think they wanna make this place their permanent residence.”

  Danna barely finished her sentence when they all heard a loud vroom and a deep crack of machine gun fire on the far side of the basin. An old pickup truck had burst out of the wood and was barreling toward the retreat.

  The truck was painted black, and at least ten six-foot-long jagged spikes stuck out from holes drilled into the sides like a rabid metal porcupine. Several human skulls were crudely nailed to the truck’s front grill. And mounted on the truck bed was an M2 Browning machine gun operated by a tattooed skinhead with his finger on the trigger and another man with a one hundred round ammunition belt slung over his shoulder.

  “Incoming technical!” Lena yelled over the radio.

  Multiple shots rang out from the OPs, striking the side of the truck. The truck opened fire again, this time at the retreat.

  Ben and Danna hit the deck. A barrage of bullets struck the wall above them, sending down a rain of rocks and dust.

  “Get in here, guys!” Tomás hollered.

  Ben and Danna placed their rifles through the cracks and unleashed several more rounds. Then, crouching low and covering their heads, they scrambled back inside.

  “Tell Aiden and Lena to stop firing!” Ben barked as he rushed into the OPSEC room. “They’ll spot them!”

  A thundering blast hit the side of the mountain, sending a shudder through the retreat, and several objects fell from shelves and smashed to the floor.

  They had grenades.

  Handing his gun to Danna, Ben started for the elevator shaft.

  “Where are you going, Ben?”

  “We can’t just let those guys have their way down there,” Ben replied over his shoulder. “The only way to wipe them out is fighting them face-to-face.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Tomás asked nervously.

  Ben popped his head around the corner. “Not we,” he said with a grin. He pointed to himself. “Me.”

  “You mean HULC!” Danna called after him. “There’s a difference!”

  The elevator door opened to the dimly lit garage and Ben walked out to see Joey Nguyen and Cody Frank, both twelve years old, standing there dressed in oversized Kevlar military body armor and carrying semi-automatic rifles with extra magazines strapped to their vests. Their faces were nervous but grim.

  Ben had planned to ride out alone on HULC, but he quickly changed his mind. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said as he grabbed his exosuit body armor from his locker. “You guys remember two summers ago when we went paint balling and destroyed those older kids?”

  “Yeah, that one dude was pretty much crying for his mommy,” Cody replied with a grin.

  Joey didn’t answer. He took off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “Look, it’s gonna be the same thing,” Ben said. “But this time you’ll be on the ATVs, and as soon as we open the garage door, you start unloading on them.” He caught his breath and continued: “Once you’re out, Joey, you’ve got left; Cody, right. I’ll be right behind you, guns blazing with HULC.”

  “Who’s covering the garage?” Cody asked.

  “Nobody — I don’t wanna risk getting shot from behind. That’s why we need to get out fast. The last thing I want is them getting in.”

  “Okay, then what?”

  “You each drive straight to the rock markers at the foot of the OPs. Get down and use your ATV for cover, and take down every scumbag you see.”

  “Lena and Aiden will cover you,” Tomás added over the radio.

  Another blast shook the retreat.

  Ben gazed sharply into their eyes. “This is it, guys.”

  Joey and Cody nodded their heads. They were brave kids. Ben had known them since fourth grade, and all those years they had never backed down from anything or anyone. If they were scared now, and they probably were, they didn’t show it.

  “Let’s do this,” Joey finally said, his jaw clenched.

  They held their hands high and bumped their fists.

  For a short period after Ben’s father resigned from the military, and before he was hired as the advanced robotics and artificial intelligence director at DARPA, he was contracted by several corporations to design prototypes for exoskeletons and mini-mechs.

  Upon hearing of the sudden and shocking retirement of Colonel Thomas Knight, one of the world’s foremost experts in the field, companies like Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, and John Deere scrambled to get his expertise and ideas to become the first manufacturer to sell powered hard-suits to nonmilitary customers.

  Ben’s father sold his services to Lockheed and developed a prototype large-scale exosuit called the Hybrid Universal Load Carrier. Or, as Ben affectionately called it, HULC. Larger than an exoskeleton but smaller than a mini-mecha, the seven-foot tall HULC was the first exosuit to be powered by kinetic energy and supported by a beyond state-of-the-art lithium air battery.

  Designed for heavy industrial labor such as mining and factory work, HULC was outfitted with sensors that reacted to the oper
ator’s movements and added substantially more power to whatever move the operator wanted to make.

  As Ben’s father put it, HULC transformed the operator into a super human. For example, it had the power to flip over a truck or break through a brick wall and still protect the driver from muscular and skeletal injuries.

  Most exoskeletons and mini-mechs must either be tethered to a power generator or have minimal battery power. However, both HULC and its subsequent prototypes designed for DARPA could operate for weeks, if not months, depending on the project or mission.

  For over six hours in a remote part of eastern Oregon, Dr. Knight had demonstrated the HULC prototype to Lockheed Martin, which wanted to manufacture exosuits for the new Mars colonization mission. Afterwards, the corporation offered him five million dollars for the design.

  Without telling Ben or Cameron why, he turned it down. Instead, he joined DARPA to lead the government’s top-secret research in robotics and artificial intelligence.

  Dr. Knight brought HULC to the retreat to help with the final stages of construction, such as building the OPs. Just three weeks before the Surge, he and Ben — who adopted HULC as his own and thought he knew it even better than his dad — outfitted it with an M240 machine gun and custom-made RPG launcher. Ben once asked his father where he got all the weapons. With a wink, he just replied: “I’m not supposed to remember.”

  As Ben ripped the dust cover off HULC, he realized that his father’s decision to weaponize HULC and bring it to the retreat might save many lives.

  Ben flipped HULC’s main power switch, and the large upper body helmet-hatch hissed open. Outside in the basin, Ben heard the enemy’s machine gun exchanging fire with the group’s defenses. He wondered about Alex.

  Ben stepped into the foot beds underneath his boots and fastened the straps around his thighs, waist, and shoulders. He grabbed the augmented-hand controls and ran a system check. Within a millisecond, the foot pads’ sensors connected to the onboard microcomputer, which in turn initialized the electrohydrostatic actuators.

  Gritting his teeth, Ben closed the helmet-hatch, and his visuals were transformed to a digital interface projecting through a helmet-mounted display. He then attached the body hatch to his armor and checked the machine gun and RPG launcher as well as the riot shotgun strapped in a side compartment.

  Joey and Cody pulled up next to him on Honda Ranger ATVs, rifles in hand. They both gave him a thumbs-up.

  Ben flicked on HULC’s radio. “Tomás, this is HULC, do you copy?”

  “10-2, HULC, signal is good.”

  “Any word from Alex or Marcelo?”

  “Negative, HULC. Heavy fire down there. Danna, Tess, and Vic are holding down the porch.”

  Ben pursed his lips. He increased to full power and locked and loaded the machine gun. “Okay, guys, let’s form up,” he said in a low, steady voice. “Joey, on the left; Cody, on the right.”

  “Copy that, HULC.”

  “Adobe One, open the garage door,” Ben said. “All units cease fire.”

  The garage door opened and the blazing morning sun lit up the vast concrete space like a lantern casting forth unwelcome light into a hidden catacomb.

  The men were forty feet away when they saw L3’s door open. Two were reloading the truck’s machine gun; another two were on dirt bikes and arguing with the driver; the location of the others was unknown.

  For a moment the men paused, gaping into the garage, probably wondering why it opened and whether the “punks” were surrendering. Within a second, the driver popped the clutch, spun the truck into a semi-circle, and slowly idled toward the entrance. The two bikers signaled to the driver and followed suit.

  Hidden in an angled shadow at the entrance, out-of-sight from the men, Ben launched the RPG for the first time in his life. The screaming grenade tore through the dust and hit the ground fifteen feet in front of the pickup truck and exploded, shooting chunks of broken rocks and a great cloud of dust high into the air. As exhilarated as he was, he had missed the truck.

  The two bikers swerved off course and accelerated to loop back around for another attack.

  “Now!” Ben barked into the radio.

  Firing their rifles in one hand, Joey and Cody roared out of the garage in the ATVs and broke off in opposite directions.

  As soon as they were out of view, Ben stepped out into the entrance, held up his right arm and pulled the machine gun trigger, firing thirty rounds at the cloud of dust.

  He heard bullets hitting metal, and then saw the flash of the truck’s machine gun. Blinded by the suffocating blanket of dust, the gunner wildly returned fire. One bullet struck HULC’s two-inch glass helmet, leaving a small chip near the top.

  Ben gasped and jerked his head backward. His body stiffened, and the color drained from his face. He stepped back into the shadows for cover and unbuckled his left arm and reached over to slide another cylinder grenade into the launcher. The second-to-last one. Clasping his arm back into place, he waited.

  Several bullets hit inside the garage, shattering one of the overhead lights.

  “Adobe One, this is HULC,” Ben said into the radio. His heart was pounding hard. “Can you see anything?”

  “Negative, HULC,” Tomás replied. “No visuals, your blast sent up a huge pile of dust.”

  Ben closed his eyes, gathered himself, and stepped back out.

  Ten feet away, two armed men were cautiously approaching the garage. Looking up, they saw HULC for the first time, and terror engulfed their faces.

  They stumbled backward and raised their AK-47s to fire, but Ben was faster. He cut loose with the machine gun, shredding fiber and flesh and sending them sprawling on their backs. They did not move.

  “Adobe One, two guys down,” Ben said, his voice trembling.

  I just killed two people, he said to himself, as if it were the first time. He shook his head and blinked. Sweat was still pouring down his face. Note to self: if you survive, install an A/C unit in HULC.

  The dust was settling, and Ben could make out the shape of the pickup truck. A plume of dark smoke billowed from its hood: the engine was on fire. Even so, the gunner was still in the truck bed trying frantically to load an ammunition belt into the machine gun’s feed tray.

  Aiming slightly high and to the left, Ben fired the grenade. This time it hit its mark. The blast lifted the truck three feet off the ground, and as it landed a fireball erupted followed by an explosion and a billowing storm of dust, rocks, spikes, and skulls.

  With his finger on the machine gun trigger, Ben stomped toward the truck. “Adobe One, confirmed three dead. I can’t tell if there’s anyone else out there.”

  “I don’t think so,” Tomás replied. “Eagles, can you see anything?”

  “Negative,” Aiden said. “Just Joey and Cody at the marker points.”

  “Me neither,” Lena added. “But I saw Joey take down one of the bikers.”

  “Wait, I see the other one,” Aiden said. “He’s heading back to the woods.”

  Indeed, the biker, a shirtless pig of a man, must’ve realized that he was the lone survivor. And with his dirt bike at full throttle, he almost escaped the “haunted mountain” and its arena of death. But four rounds fired from a hidden enemy cut him down as he approached the sentry gate, and he tumbled over his bike like a sack of rotten potatoes and slid belly first into a flowering prickly pear cactus.

  Marcelo, still in the spider hole, had hit his mark with three out of the four shots.

  Ben felt a surge of relief.

  “Cody and Joey, make a perimeter patrol around the cliffs to see if any more are hiding out,” Tomás said. “Eagles, keep your eyes on the scopes.”

  “Guys, I see people coming out of the woods,” Lena said.

  “Is it Marcelo or Alex?” Tomás asked.

  “No, it might be more of these guys,” Aiden replied. “I see ‘em too. Five at least.”

  Ben zoomed in his sights. Five figures wearing blue and gray camouflage jackets and
light blue caps were marching into the basin.

  “Birnam Wood marches to fight us,” Lena muttered, barely audible over the radio.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  “From Macbeth, remember?” Danna interjected, sarcastically. She was still standing out on the walkway, rifle in hand. “We were in the middle of Act 4.”

  Ben smirked and shook his head. He was just an ordinary freshman at Sierra Madre when the Surge hit, sitting through another boring lecture in English class. “Must’ve been doodling during that part.”

  He checked his ammunition. One belt left. “Okay, Aiden and Lena, hold your fire. We’ll take them out. Joey and Cody—”

  “Adobe One, these guys are acting strange, over,” Aiden said nervously. “They’re plowing through the cactus like it’s nothing.”

  At that moment, a trip flare whistled out of its hidden spot and burst into brilliant red streaks of potassium nitrate and sulfur two hundred feet in the air.

  CHAPTER SIX

  These Metal Monsters

  BITING HER BOTTOM lip, Lena lifted her sniper rifle and squinted into the scope. Her face paled.

  “Guys—”

  “Vagabonds!” Aiden called out sharply, cutting off Lena. “Five of them.”

  “All the noise must’ve gotten their attention,” Tomás said. “Eagles, you gotta take them out. Aim for the eyes or the neck.”

  “Not a chance, guys,” Ben said, adjusting his target displays. “Not even with a .50 caliber.”

  Two shots rang out across the basin.

  “I need an update, guys,” Tomás said sharply.

  “Those weren’t from the Eagles,” Lena replied. “They were coming near the sentry gate.”

  Ben refocused the lenses, and he saw Alex spring from a hidden spot and sneak up behind one of the robots. It’s going to kill him, he thought. I’m watching Alex die.

  Alex fired two quick shots in the vagabond’s cranium and then dove into the bushes. The robot fell face first into the dirt.