Devana Files: Chapter 29
Hammer Down
This is a long chapter…but I decided not to break it in two. 🩵
This is the Twenty-Ninth chapter. We are in the home stretch, with about forty chapters in all!
You may find earlier chapters here:
Space 2074: The lunar colony is the new Wild West. Sheriff Kate Devana goes off-colony to wrangle a fugitive con artist who bilked retirees for billions and is trying to escape to Mars on a deep space supply shuttle. But back home, robots are glitching, killing people, and she is the target of a corrupt Federal Agent looking to avenge the death of his former partner. Bodies are piling up faster than she can get home.
On the moon, Kate Devana is the law.
While this is the 3rd novel in the series, each is designed to be read independently.
For accessibility, there is a voiceover for each chapter.
Hammer Down
APRIL 11, 2074
LUNAR SURFACE. LPS: UNKNOWN
Jin chased the patrol down to seven, opening the stairwell door to a mossy-green floor. Rainforest-level humidity hit him in the face, and then a sense of déjà vu stopped him. Aztec carvings decorated the doors and walls. Vines grew from half-barrel planters. He’d never been here, but it looked familiar, like an ad for a tourist trap.
Or maybe just a trap. He backed out and closed the door. From here, the stairs descended directly into the basement. Signs below read, NO ADMITTANCE and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Everything was dull gray. Pipes and conduit hung from the ceiling, and a red box warned him about FIRE and other assorted dangers. Inside there would be a fire extinguisher, spare oxygen, and maybe a first aid kit. Nothing useful. He needed a rifle, and something to convince him he wasn’t in some sort of simulation.
He sat on the steps, running his fingers along the diamond-checker treads on the aluminum floor. They were cold and sharp, like spurs, meant to grip soles to keep people from slipping on the stairs. They felt like a cheese grater.
He balled his fist and mashed his knuckles on the metal. The spurs dug into his skin. He twisted his wrist, putting all his weight on it. It stung like hell, like coarse sandpaper on his knuckles. He mashed harder, twisting more, grating off skin, until the spot was slick with blood and sweat.
His knuckles looked and felt like they’d been dragged across bare asphalt. His hand throbbed.
As much as his hand hurt, he felt relieved. The pain couldn’t be faked. At least now he was sure that he was sober, not dreaming, and not in a simulation. He was real. There might have been a first aid kit in the red box above him, but he didn’t want their help. Pressing his fist against his thigh stopped the bleeding all the same.
He eyed the NO ADMITTANCE sign below. There was no bulked-up android with rock-hard silicone and fifty-amp servos threatening to grind him into moondust if he picked the lock. There was no peephole, and no cameras either. Someone thought a lock and a few signs would do. Whoever designed the security in this place seemed to rely on people being weak-willed and robotic, or maybe drugged like the people he’d seen upstairs. Locks only slowed people down, and signs hadn’t warded thieves since the first humans scratched the first ‘no trespassing’ sign on the mouth of a cave. Behind every Q-mart door labeled NO GUNS NO VAPE NO SHIRT NO SHOES NO SERVICE, there was a guy in flip-flops, holding a case of beer, with a vape pen hanging out of his mouth and a pistol slipping out of his beach shorts.
If anything, an orange block letter NO ADMITTANCE SIGN was more of an advertisement, valuable stuff inside. Basements usually had the servers, the storage lockers, the morgue if they had one, the power plants, and the armory. Big, blasty rifles would be hidden behind doors labeled AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Rifles with a lot of caliber and a loud boom and long reach that could pop an android like a water balloon, sending silicone and metal spraying everywhere.
He heard a door open three floors up, and a man and woman’s voice talking about him.
He slid down the stairs and picked the basement door lock as quietly as he could. Along with pointless signs and talismans, too many security professionals had become lazily reliant on AI and technology, making biometrics easy to defeat.
The basement door swung open to a long hallway, and he knew instantly he was in the right place. So far, all the floors he’d seen were like a museum trip to an ancient civilization exhibit. Here, there were no marble statues or ancient cave art. Just plain, practical, gray walls, the same color as the stairwell, along with a lot of office doors with numbered placards. And no feeling of déjà vu.
As the basement door soft-closed behind him, he saw his bloody print on the handle. He was leaving a trail. There was nothing he could do, though, but hurry. He waited, listening, holding his breath. The voices above him had disappeared. Now, he heard muffled voices ahead of him, and he decided to unholster his makeshift pistol. Not that ten bullets would do him much good, but at least he’d take one or two with him.
The first door on his right opened to a square room decorated like the interior of a courthouse, but organized like a conference room. A lot of oak decked the walls, some of it framing whiteboards, some of it framing astronomy pictures. The offices along the walls had the same oak trim and glass. One massive, donut-shaped oak table with twenty black leather seats occupied the center, with microphones and pop-out tablets at each seat. The entire setup dripped of self-aggrandizing seriousness, of saving the world one pontificating circle of doom meeting at a time.
The muffled voices were coming from the next door on his left. It sounded like chanting. Or maybe not chanting. He heard one voice, and then many voices responded in unison. Over and over. One voice and then many voices. Some kind of church service? He wanted to peek in, but then he’d have hundreds of eyes on him.
He tiptoed past, skipping the next few doors because he saw one ahead labeled SECURITY ONLY. He holstered his pistol to pick the lock. His fingers were sweaty. He tried to control his breathing and adrenaline, but the muffled voices down the hall had stopped, like they had wrapped up whatever spell they’d been casting, and he fumbled the pick. The lock was not releasing. He jiggled. It just wasn’t giving up. So he resorted to brute force, raking the keyway. Metal scraped metal. It sounded like a collision in his ears. Finally, the bolt released with an audible click, and he was in.
The room was pitch black, save for the small knife of hallway light, which vanished when the door closed behind him.
Clunky footfalls passed by the door. His eyes had adjusted, but all he could see was the sliver of light coming from the crack under the door and a shadow flitting by. Someone else came, then two, then a mob, all from the direction of the room with the chanting.
The mob dissipated to a trickle. The clunky footfalls returned, this time from the other direction. They had the cadence of an android, or a human with cybernetic prosthetics.
He needed light, and he needed a rifle. He took off his shirt, twisted it up, and plugged the bottom gap in the door.
When he switched the lights on, he saw he was in a room like a spaceport storage room, the size of a large truck garage. It had two levels of metal cabinets on the walls, with rolling triangular stairs around the room to reach the second level. The cabinets all had padlocks and looked large enough to store EVA spacesuits and equipment.
The back wall cabinet was different than the rest. It had a glass front, stood shoulder-high, and held a lot of guns. Not the mismatched kind you saw with militias. Pristine, top-of-the-line, shiny black coilguns. The kind the agency issued to Feds from Defense Department stock. There were maybe twenty or thirty, stacked upright in a neat array. Enough for a small platoon.
He went to the nearest metal cabinet, on his right, and picked the padlock. He saw his bloody hand and wondered whether he’d left blood on the door when he picked it. Probably. It would lead them here.
Inside the cabinet, armed drones crammed the shelves. Robot bomb sniffers. Robot bomb placers, too, the kind that looked like little tanks with triangular tracks and bulbous spider eyes on every corner. One had a minigun turret. Another had a grenade launcher.
Nothing says tourist trap like high-end military hardware.
The drones were all chained down. He could free them. There was no obvious way to pilot them except with his neuroface, and he didn’t dare hook himself to their systems. They’d see him on the network, cut him off, and probably turn the drones against him. He’d realize his dream of commanding his own drone army, for about one attosecond.
The next cabinet was the same. And so was the next. There were enough mechanized assault drones in the room to take over a mining outfit. There were door breachers and vacuum tent kits too. The kind that could be used to assault the colony.
There were no pressurized mech suits or body armor. All of this was meant to be piloted remotely, maybe by a human, likely by an AI.
The gun case at the rear had premium security. Multilayer biometrics, much better than the cabinets. It made sense. The mechanized infantry drones needed heavy computing power to function. All a gun needed was a human with an itchy trigger finger. Like him.
There was no backup keypad or deadbolt on the gun case, and the hinges were secure. But there was always a way in, and in this case, the flaw was the glass. He could break it. The biggest problem was going to be the noise. Nothing brought people running like the crash and crinkle of glass.
He was already leaving a bloody trail, and he couldn’t do anything about the ensuing commotion. If anyone came, he would have to shoot fast. There was plenty of ammo, in the case’s top shelf above the guns, along with batteries.
He wasn’t going to break the glass by punching it, though. The breacher drones had an attachment like a knife at the end of a metal rod that could break glass. He didn’t need the drone, just the attachment. His bloody trail continued when he unsnapped the glass breaker.
He kept still, listening for footsteps, and rehearsing the move in his mind. Swing to break glass, grab the rifle, grab the ammo, load and make ready, then run. The glass breaker rod was meant to be used pointy-end first, by a heavy hydraulic arm in a stabbing motion, but he would never get enough power behind it by using it like a dagger. He’d have to swing it like a bat. He wouldn’t have much time, either.
He pictured it. Five steps. Swing, grab rifle, grab ammo, load, run. He’d qualified on these rifles, but not on a timed course and not under the duress of his captors zeroing in on his blood trail.
Glass, rifle, ammo, load, run.
Five seconds passed without footsteps. On the first swing, the glass breaker clicked against the glass, creating a spider web. On the second swing, the drone made a satisfying crunch. The spider web expanded and a ragged circular dent formed in the center. On the third swing, the breaker smashed all the way through and knocked askew the front row of rifles.
He cleared a hole big enough to drag the guns through. Pieces of safety glass carpeted everything, including his pants. So much for swing and grab. He took a rifle, shook off the glass, and loaded it.
He crept towards the door, glass grinding under his feet, gun at low ready, in case someone burst through. He only heard beautiful silence on the other side of the door, so he gently urged the door open.
The hall was empty in both directions. He aimed for the exit, back the way he came.
The door was open to the last room on the right, where he’d heard the chanting voices. It was empty and looked like a deserted cubicle farm. There were no family pictures, no personal belongings, no stained coffee mugs. It looked sterile. Even the chairs were neatly pushed under the desks. There was no evidence several dozen people had been here a few minutes earlier.
A door clicked behind him.
“Are you ascendant?”
The voice was soft and young. Startled, he whirled, almost blasting her head off. She wore cartoon pajamas, slippers—which explained how she’d snuck up on him—and her brown eyes were sharp and clear, unlike the people he’d seen upstairs that looked drugged. She wasn’t dangling a cube from her neck.
He wasn’t sure how to answer. Her tone was the same as the people who come up to you at the airport, or on the street, asking, ‘are you saved?’ Ordinarily, the correct answer was to keep walking. She wasn’t bothered by the coilgun he pointed at the purple cartoon gremlin on her chest. She had that creepy religious serenity vibe on her face, as if shooting her was all part of God’s plan. He could blast her to smithereens, but she was going to heaven, and he wasn’t.
He struggled to answer. But he had to say something. “I am still…studying. So much to learn.”
“Oh, me too. I am so excited. Have you begun the process yet?”
The process? He shouldn’t linger, but this might be his only opportunity to find out about this place.
“Well, I have…the cube, but I have not begun. Not yet, anyway. Say do you think it’s true what they say about the process?”
“They gave you a cube?” Her eyes lit up, like he’d told her he had a yacht and his own private plane and was taking her to see the Pope. “Oh, so you are ascending soon. You must be excited.”
“I confess, sister—” Every religious sect called each other brother and sister, right? “I confess, I have doubts. Do you think it’s true, what they say about the process?”
She looked into the cubicle farm. The tranquility left her face for a breath, but then she returned to creepy calm. “They say the distillation process produces artifacts. That the ascendant will hallucinate, but it’s like dreaming.”
“Will you be…ascending also?”
“Oh, no. Only the chosen can ascend. You are so blessed.”
He wasn’t feeling blessed. He wondered if this was what it was like to be the only lucid person in a cult, telling the others that there were no aliens riding the tail of a comet, so don’t drink the cyanide.
Still, he wanted to know what was going on here. “But it’s worthwhile, to see the gods. Right?”
Pajama woman grinned. “Worthwhile to live forever, Disciple Knight, as you will.”
An ice-cold finger traveled down his neck. The rifle’s blade trigger was smooth and flat. Only five pounds of pressure and she’d be meeting whatever god she worshiped, although her look suggested it might be him.
Her gaze switched to something behind him. He heard the beeping of a biometric lock and then solenoids moving a deadbolt. The stairwell door handle jiggled. He turned. Shit.
Three people came through the door. First, the temptress from upstairs. Now her hair was in a bun, she wore a black tunic, and carried a rifle as big as his at low-ready. Next, the beefy, scowling android he’d encountered outside her door, holding a pistol. Finally, the clown voted most likely to ruin a colony birthday party, FBI Special Agent Barrett Anders, who should be three thousand kilometers away picking up fugitives, not here.
Except as Anders got closer, something was off. His walk was right. Unmistakable. Anders had cybernetic legs. But he looked pallid, like he’d eaten bad seafood for lunch.
Temptress waved her hand. “Good job, Ness.”
Pajama woman let out a little happy shriek and quivered. Maybe she was getting extra poison at dinner for a job well done of trapping him.
“Looks like you ascend today,” creepy pajama woman said as she spun and receded down the hall.
Jin didn’t wait for introductions. He aimed the barrel of his rifle at Ander’s advancing torso and did what he should have done the instant that cybernetic clownfish came through the door. He pulled the trigger. Again and again and again. He kept pulling, as fast as he could, but instead of a bloody, misty explosion, all he heard were clicks.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Then, he threw the rifle at Anders.
The android stepped forward, batted it away, and raised its pistol. Jin heard the click of the trigger, the whoosh of the dart, and then felt the prick on his neck.
He fell, paralyzed. His vision shrunk. At the end of the tunnel, the temptress was standing over him, dangling a necklace with a black cube.
“He got farther this time,” Anders said.
“He’s proven to be an exceptional candidate. Alpha wants him for ascendance. Now.”