Atomic Swarm Read online

  Punk wobbled as his twelve spikes shot out and steadied him against the rocks. Using a test program Brooke had designed to calibrate Punk’s ducted fans, Jackson set their thrust to two per cent. The robot rattled against the rocks as the tiny engines spooled up. Jackson wasted no time and curled his body round the machine, trying his best to avoid being poked by the spikes. It was a relief when the warm air thrusting from Punk’s vents started to flow into Jackson’s trousers and jacket.

  It only took about twenty minutes for him to feel stronger – twenty minutes in which he also managed to think of a possible way to get out of the freezing blizzard he was now facing, without even a truck or shelter, and on to Yakimoto’s mine.

  Jackson didn’t waste time taking Fist out of his bag; he just started him up and let him rip himself out. It took several trial-and-error gestures to get Fist into the shape Jackson had in mind – but, eventually, his four large plastic hands were cupped in a shape that resembled a cradle.

  Jackson had his dogsled – now he needed a dog!

  He accessed Tread’s defence systems menu and selected the stinger. Being careful to point the robotic wheel’s right-side chrome hub away from himself, he fired the lightweight toughened-nylon strip. The five-metre strip shot out across the road, some of its titanium barbs biting into the ice, while others sat upright, ready to rip open the tyres of unsuspecting runaway cars.

  Jackson grabbed the end of the strip and walked it back to Tread, looping it around the gyro-stabilized camera that sat in the centre of the hub on the other side of the wheel. Then he carefully knotted the nylon strip round the camera housing, its sharp barbs helping to secure it.

  Finally, Jackson salvaged what tech he needed from the bags and loaded it on to Fist, along with himself and Punk.

  Moments later and the snow squall was stinging his face. But Jackson didn’t care – he was belting northwards along the ice road at 60 kilometres an hour.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jackson’s makeshift sledge sped along the ice road – one of Fist’s super-smooth and ultra-robust plastic hands holding the nylon reins, the rest acting as runners. Thanks to the snow chain he was wearing, Tread was making short work of the ice and rock, and after only an hour of bone shaking and extreme cold it looked as if Jackson’s thrill ride might finally be at an end.

  Through the windblown snow, he caught sight of the blurry outline of a compound.

  Jackson dialled down the throttle setting of Tread’s electric motor so he could glide closer for a better look. A tall fence that seemed to stretch across the entire visible horizon came slowly into focus, and then a large red sign:

  Jackson climbed from Fist and stretched his aching limbs. He was battered, bruised and exhausted from the effort it had taken just to hold on to his improvised sledge, and the thought of entering the lion’s den filled him with trepidation. He was tired and the wound on his head was throbbing, but at the same time he knew this was the only chance he had to catch Lear and Yakimoto red-handed. All J.P. had ever done was help him, and now he was locked up. The only sure way Jackson knew of changing that situation, and avenging the deaths of his parents, lay beyond the fence.

  Jackson thought he could pick out voices, carried by the strong gusts of wind coming from the east. They were coming from where he suspected the road led into the compound. It was logical that there would be guards stationed there. He couldn’t risk trying to find an unmanned gate. If I can’t find a way round the fence, he thought grimly, I’ll just have to go through it!

  Jackson punched up Fist. The robot’s industrial-strength memory metal muscles hardly needed to flex at all in order to prise open a hole in the fence, big enough for Jackson and his kit.

  Brooke didn’t do patient.

  It had been two anxious hours since her connection to Jackson had been severed. She’d expected the communications link between them to re-establish itself within minutes. But after almost two hours all she had on her touchscreen was static.

  For all she knew, Jackson was lying dead in a frozen ditch.

  To make matters worse, she had come up with the idea of accessing the IP address of the security camera system her dad used to monitor their Martha’s Vineyard house from the mainland. She could only watch, infuriated, as FBI agents rifled through her stuff. It was a good job that Jackson had the robots with him, otherwise Brooke might not have been able to resist sending Punk and Fist down the valley to kick them out of her place.

  She’d even begun to question the logic of their evading capture. She allowed herself to picture her father in the police cell. While she was on the run, there was no way she could risk letting him know she was OK. He’d be sick with worry. The familiar sting of guilt was back. This was all her fault. If she wasn’t such a thrill seeker, she’d never have got caught up with MeX in the first place. It seemed that everything she built got her and her dad into trouble. She’d almost killed herself in Tin Lizzie, caused havoc with Fist and blown up most parts of the lab with various experiments. And the person it always seemed to hurt was her dad.

  She really did suck in the daughter department.

  When the Messenger software on her screen finally flashed, showing an incoming message from Jackson, she couldn’t answer it fast enough.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she said, her voice charged with relief.

  ‘The snowplough decided to go for a swim,’ replied Jackson.

  Brooke was horrified. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m all right, but I think you’ll need to find a new Chauffeur.’

  ‘To hell with that! Where are you? It’s not too late to call this off, Jackson!’ Her voice was frightened.

  ‘It’s all right, Brooke,’ said Jackson. ‘Everything is under control.’

  Jackson glanced around. He had scrabbled inside some kind of storehouse and immediately set about fixing the broken satellite dish before venturing back outside to secure it to the side of the building. He’d magnetically clicked together all three of the phones he had brought with him to form a narrow crescent-shaped widescreen, which he’d propped up on an oil drum. The view was showing him the compound via several of Punk’s cameras. In one of the video boxes, Jackson could see a large Sikorsky Executive Transport Helicopter sitting on a helipad.

  ‘You should be receiving Punk’s feed now,’ said Jackson. ‘I’m guessing Yakimoto has recently arrived. If you switch to the thermal view, you can see there’s no one in the helicopter, but its turbine is still warm.’

  Brooke followed Jackson’s instructions and she could clearly see the hot red outline of a jet turbine engine in the top section of the helicopter – meaning it had only landed a short time ago.

  ‘Any sign of Lear?’

  ‘Not yet! But the mine is big. Really big.’

  Jackson rotated his phone hand. Instantly, the main view from Punk pivoted until a cavernous pit appeared through the snow flurry. Jackson had to pan Punk’s view in order to see the entirety of the immense hole in the ground.

  ‘Punk’s done a quick thermal sweep of the buildings near me, and the only other people up here look to be two security men guarding the main entrance.’

  ‘So Yakimoto’s down there,’ said Brooke, poking the screen of her tablet computer. A reciprocal marker, representing where Brooke had placed her finger, appeared in the centre of the mine on Jackson’s display.

  ‘Mind if I go manual for this one?’ asked Brooke enthusiastically.

  ‘Be my guest!’ replied Jackson.

  On Brooke’s direction, Punk crested the snaggy edge of the mine hole. The scale of the excavation was breathtaking – it looked so wide and deep that Jackson imagined it could swallow up an entire city. Around the edge, a thread of pathways, gnawed out by machines, corkscrewed downwards around the sheer walls of rock and ice.

  The metal robot tracked the frozen path, descending through clouds of swirling snow as his cameras struggled to focus through the milky haze. Eventually, Brooke and Jackson saw the dim glow of
a tunnel and Brooke directed her spiked spy towards it.

  The tunnel was illuminated by a series of electric lanterns hanging from the ceiling. As he hovered by the cave entrance, Punk’s video showed uniform bite marks on the rock surface, made by the drilling machine that had scooped the cave out.

  Punk flew slowly down the passageway, then, rounding a corner, came across a large open chamber. The underground cave was high enough to house a huge drilling machine and a small crane on tracks. Most intriguing of all were four white loaders parked in a line.

  ‘What are those?’ asked Jackson.

  ‘D’you what? I don’t know,’ came Brooke’s puzzled reply.

  It was the first time, in Jackson’s experience, that the identity of a vehicle had eluded Brooke. Thanks to her lifelong love affair with machinery of every description, Brooke had an uncanny ability to spot the telltale chassis configuration, axle arrangement or load-lifting faculty of even the most exotic industrial contraption. The fact that these three loaders were unregistered in the red-haired mechanic’s mental database made them quite extraordinary.

  As Punk swept slowly along the line of shiny white machines, Jackson thought they had the appearance of bi-pedal robots – a large glass half-sphere for a head, powerful metal shoulders and arms with vice-like pinchers for hands and two stout metal legs.

  ‘They’re powerlifters!’ said Brooke. ‘It makes sense – the Japanese have been working on this technology for years. A worker climbs inside and the robotic exoskeleton around him gives him the lifting ability of a forklift truck.’

  The stereoscopic audio sensor in one of Punk’s spikes momentarily peaked and Brooke and Jackson’s attention was drawn to the sound of talking. Four men were walking towards the line of lifters near the spot where Punk was loitering. Brooke swished her handset in three precise patterns, which directed Punk to shoot between the legs of one of the lifters.

  From his position on the ground, one of Punk’s cameras could still see the backs of the four men as they stood talking. It was hard to see any distinguishing features, but two of the men were larger than the others, their broad shoulders obvious even through their thick coats. Bodyguards, thought Jackson.

  One of the men turned and held something up to the light in the ceiling.

  Brooke touched her display in order to guide Punk’s focus and a shiny rock, about the size of a plum, flashed from the end of the man’s fingers.

  ‘A diamond in the rough!’ said Brooke.

  But Jackson wasn’t looking at the stone; his attention was on the man holding it. It was Yakimoto.

  It was amazing to Jackson how the face of the real Yakimoto evoked his mother’s drawing. There was the photograph from the Internet of him standing with the mineworkers – but it was his mother’s doodle that accentuated the blades of his cheekbones and the thick, flowing jet-black hair. He was even wearing the blue round spectacles from his mother’s sketch, pushed up on his forehead as he inspected the stone with his naked eye.

  ‘Are you getting this on hard disk?’ he whispered, not wanting even the vibration of his own voice to spoil the clarity of the moment.

  ‘Safe and sound, cuz!’ Brooke responded.

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘It’s just coming through now…’

  Brooke had carefully repositioned Punk so his listening spike could better tune in to what the men were saying. Slowly, fragments of conversation came through the speakers built into Brooke’s and Jackson’s respective devices.

  ‘Quite extraordinary, Mr Botha,’ said Yakimoto.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the shortest and fattest of the four men, in between coughs.

  ‘And this is the twenty-seventh gemstone of this carat and colour you’ve found in my mine?’

  ‘Yes, all the stones were uncovered in the same cavity of the Kimberlite pipe. We’ve roughly polished several of them and they are all the same exquisite blue colour.’

  ‘Naturally occurring blue topaz diamonds like these, Botha, are extremely rare!’ Yakimoto exuberantly stated. ‘Why are the men who found them not here? I want to congratulate them.’

  ‘Charles and Dominick called in sick this morning, Mr Yakimoto, sir.’ Mr Botha coughed and sniffed again. It was clear to Jackson from the small plump man’s overalls, and his deferential treatment of Mr Yakimoto, that he was some kind of foreman. ‘They’ve been working like dogs for the last two days trying to clear the pipe of all the stones, in readiness for your arrival,’ the man explained.

  ‘And you’re sure you’ve got them all?’ said Yakimoto.

  ‘We’ve scanned the seam and we’re confident that’s it, sir.’ He hacked up something and turned his head to spit it away from the group.

  ‘Good! Well, Mr Botha,’ the Japanese man said, bowing sharply in his direction, ‘your team have excelled themselves. This has to be one of the greatest diamond finds of the decade. I will see to it that you and your men are handsomely rewarded. Now, I suggest we return to the office and prepare the stones for me to transport them back to Japan.’

  The four men disappeared from Punk’s video stream for a few seconds, then reappeared in a small open-top six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle.

  Brooke commanded Punk to follow the men up the steep path.

  ‘Can you enlighten me as to what is going on here?’ said Brooke, keeping Punk at a safe distance behind the men. ‘I thought we were going to film Lear handing over the stolen diamonds to his partner in crime. Maybe I’m missing something, but didn’t we just watch Yucky-moto being handed diamonds found in his own mine?’

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on myself,’ replied Jackson. Had he and Brooke just seen the stolen diamonds? They were blue, just as Atticus79 had told him they would be after being irradiated in a nuclear reactor. So why was Yakimoto’s own foreman handing him Lear’s stolen diamonds as if they’d just been pulled out of the mine?

  ‘Jackson! I’m getting a faint reading of something near your cabin!’ It was Brooke. As the ATV surfaced from the mine, she spotted a shape that could be a person or perhaps a guard dog in the small video box she’d reserved for Punk’s thermal-imaging overlay.

  Jackson’s senses sharpened. He turned his head to see if he could spot anything through the window. Nothing. He crept across the room and opened a crack in the door. The freezing blast was shocking – it was amazing how, in such a short space of time, Jackson had already grown accustomed to the warmth of the small gas fire inside the building where he was hiding. He didn’t relish the thought of venturing outside again.

  ‘From what I can see, there’s no one out there, Brooke.’

  ‘Nope. I’m definitely seeing a trace of something or someone. It’s hard to say, but I’m guessing they are now behind your cabin.’

  Once again Jackson walked to the door and pushed it slightly ajar. At the same time, the image of a warm mass on Brooke’s screen vanished.

  ‘Well, that’s weird!’ she said. ‘Perhaps Punk’s still got some sea water sloshing around inside his circuits!’ But even as she spoke, the apparition, a blob of purplish-red rather than the identifiable shapes Brooke was used to seeing, reappeared.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Brooke quietly and slowly. ‘Either I didn’t pick up something when I ran the diagnostics for Punk’s thermal processor – or something is stalking you!’

  A shiver ran down Jackson’s spine, and it wasn’t because of the cold. ‘You stay on Yakimoto,’ he whispered. ‘I guess I’ll have to investigate outside.’

  Jackson couldn’t risk attracting the attention of the guards – so he made sure Tread was in stealth mode as he slowly opened the door to his storeroom and let him out.

  ‘Where’s the signal now?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘It’s crazy, Jackson. It just vanished – the second you opened the door!’ replied Brooke.

  ‘I’ll let Tread off his leash for a bit. If there is someone creeping around outside, I’d rather know about it!’

  Jackson used his p
hone to weave Tread steadily through the ground-level complex. The wheel-bot passed the accommodation block and two corrugated-metal structures that housed an assortment of vehicles, including a line of three more of the white powerlifters Brooke and Jackson had spotted in the mine. Despite the driving snow, Tread’s UHD camera fed crisp images back to Jackson’s widescreen display, now made up of two handsets. As he rounded the garage area, Tread offered a gyroscopically level shot of the two guards in the hut near the gate. A moment later Yakimoto and the other men entered the shot in their ATV, and then left again as they entered a hut.

  With Tread’s tour of the buildings over, Jackson had to conclude that Brooke might have been right about the water in Punk’s sensors. He was about to let her know all looked OK when a small object flashed quickly across his display.

  It appeared and disappeared so quickly that it made Jackson jump.

  ‘There, in front of Tread! Did you see it?’ snapped Jackson.

  Through Punk’s thermal camera feed Brooke could see the shape of Tread clearly, his warm electric engine glowing at his core. But the only other heat signatures in the camp were Yakimoto’s group and the two gatekeepers.

  ‘I’m seeing nothing, Jackson,’ she said.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ He had an idea. ‘Everything Tread is seeing goes on to my phone’s hard drive, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Brooke. ‘Everything Tread sees is stored as a video file inside him and, if there’s enough band-width, which with your Wi-Fi Max connection there is, it is simultaneously transferred to the controlling device – that being your phone.’

  Jackson swiped the surface of the phone in his hand to bring up its desktop, then navigated to video playback. As he snapped the device in various directions, the phone’s gestural interface picked up the commands to open and then fast-forward the latest video file. Seconds later and Jackson drew a ‘P’ for PLAY in the air and the video of what Tread had recorded, only moments ago, started to roll.

  Just as Jackson had seen it, a small blurred anomaly flashed across the screen, from right to left. Jackson quickly formed the gestural sign for PAUSE in the air and then rewound the footage frame by frame, by gently tapping the left side of the device.