The Plague Forge [ARC] Read Free

the front, where the woman sat hunched over the steering wheel. “Let it get some traction.”
    Vanessa tried again, coaxing the accelerator this time. At first nothing happened, and then the wheels began to spin against the mud below again, gaining no purchase.
    “It’s not working!” Vanessa shouted back.
    “Fuck, fuck,” Skyler whispered.
    Pablo’s Gatling gun thrummed to life again. Skyler heard cries of pain from somewhere outside and wished he had a window.
    Vanessa, in frustration probably, slammed the accelerator to full power. She was only digging them in deeper, Skyler knew. He had to take the driver’s seat from her, and was starting to rise when the armored subhuman in the tunnel slammed into the vehicle again. Even through the closed rear hatch, Skyler could see the flash of reddish light flare in through the tiny gap around the edges. The whole APC lurched forward from whatever weapon the subhuman had embedded in its hands. Lurched enough that the tires found a bit of purchase. Vanessa still had her foot firmly planted on the accelerator, and like a caged animal being freed the vehicle surged into motion.
    Skyler saw Pablo turn around, heard the Gatling begin to sing its deep song again.
    “The trigger,” he said to Ana.
    She nodded, went to the side bench, and picked up the small transmitter. It was a simple metal box, with a plastic bulge on the front that covered a tiny switch. Ana flipped the cover up and thumbed the switch.
    On the drive into the circle of red aura towers, Ana had pushed bundles of explosives out of the vehicle every ten meters or so. Each had been fitted with a custom arming switch, cooked up by some of the techs in camp. The bombs would arm when they came in range of the trigger Ana now held. Once armed, when the trigger left their range the bombs would detonate.
    Ana grinned mischievously when the first explosion went off, a grin that turned into a broad smile with the second, and third.
    Skyler found himself smiling, too, until the APC hit a bump in the ground that sent him bouncing upward. His skull smacked into the ceiling, not hard, but enough to remind him of the danger they were still in.
    “Take it easy up there!” he shouted forward to Vanessa.
    “Bite me,” she shot back.
    More jostling followed as the APC barreled over fallen trees and rain-carved grooves.
    Explosions continued to go off in rhythm with their departure. Skyler had no idea if the bombs would kill, or even harm, a single subhuman, but the hope was that it would keep them from following. At least until the APC reached the road.
    “Low on ammo!” Pablo shouted down from his perch on the turret.
    “Conserve it until we’re back on the path,” Skyler said.
    “Almost there,” Vanessa said over her shoulder. Then, “The towers are moving.”
    “Just as we hoped,” Skyler said. “Get ahead of them if you can, and let Karl know to be ready.” He got to his knees on the floor of the compartment and studied the object he’d stolen from the cave. In shape it almost reminded him of a giant wedge of cheese, square on two sides and triangular on the others. Two points of the triangle were sharp, but the third, the “tip,” Skyler decided, looked as if it had been cleaved off. He wondered at the reason for that, but knowing the object would fit into a specific place inside the Builder ship seemed to answer the question: It would only fit in one position, like a puzzle piece. Or a key.
    Skyler lifted it into a hard case, then closed and latched it.
    Explosions trailed behind them, every two seconds.
    “The armored one is following,” Pablo said. “The rest stayed inside the mist.”
    Skyler glanced at Ana. “How far behind us is it?”
    “Ten meters,” Pablo said. “I can’t get a good shot.”
    Ana read Skyler’s face and knew his plan almost before he did. She moved to the rear and grasped the door’s handle.
    Skyler lifted the seat of one bench, revealing a compartment within. He pulled