Atomic Swarm Read online

  To his complete amazement, with each tap, the object that had darted in front of Tread slowly edged into the centre of his phone’s radiant surface. Hanging in the air, in the centre of the freeze-frame, could be seen not one but three identical round balls that Jackson guessed were no bigger than tennis balls in size. They appeared to be flying in perfect geometrical formation, forming the three points of an equilateral triangle.

  This fragment of a second’s worth of video footage confirmed Jackson’s theory: Lear’s robot swarm was real.

  And if the swarm was here – so was Lear.

  CHAPTER 25

  Jackson had to laugh. Here he was in Canada’s frozen wastelands where the temperature outside was enough to take his breath away – but Brooke was the one getting cold feet.

  ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Jackson,’ said Brooke. ‘If you’re right and Lear is there – hunkered down outside the compound most likely – then what’s to say he’s not watching you right now? His swarm could attack you at any time, Jackson. I say you get out of there. We’ve got the conversation from the cave and you have footage of the swarm that attacked the reactor! It might be enough for Dad’s lawyers.’

  ‘Might isn’t good enough, Brooke. We need more than that,’ said Jackson, ignoring her advice. ‘What’s our Japanese friend up to?’

  Despite the very real possibility of being shot by the guards or attacked by swarm-bots, Jackson wanted nothing more than to run out of the building in which he was hiding and into the hut where he knew Yakimoto was. He turned over a scenario in his mind in which he could follow this urge and direct Fist to tear the man limb from limb. But Jackson knew that his desire for revenge threatened to spark an explosion that could lose him, Brooke and J.P. their only chance of exoneration. He forced the hatred back inside him. Yakimoto would wait. Lear was the priority for now. Footage of the world’s most famous dead man would end all this.

  ‘Jackson, you’re impossible!’ Brooke shouted, before reluctantly answering his question. ‘They’ve finished packing the diamonds and are discussing business details. I doubt it’ll be long before he lifts off. Visibility is bad enough and it’ll be night-time soon. Which brings me to my next question. How do you intend to get out of there?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he said. ‘When we’re ready, you can tell the FBI where I am and let them figure out how I’m getting home. In the meantime, stay on Yakimoto and I’ll see if I can find where Lear is hiding.’

  The streaming video from Tread showed the uni-wheeled robot approaching the breach in the perimeter fence that Fist had created. Under Jackson’s control, Tread shot through the hole and out into snow-covered terrain beyond.

  Tread’s tyre grabbed at the hard-packed snow as he continued his patrol. With a wide sweeping turn, he sped on towards the hazy outline of the setting sun. Jackson studied every detail of the wintery vista from Tread’s camera, zooming in on dubious-looking trees and rock formations.

  The robot had been running as fast as the slippery uneven ground would allow, when Jackson noticed a lump on the horizon that seemed out of place. He altered Tread’s course to arc him round the suspect mound. It was situated another hundred metres or so out from the mine perimeter and was only visible because its ‘white’ was a different hue to the snow all around it. The snowfall had given the landscape beyond the mine a uniform sleekness, and now the sun was lower in the sky, everywhere was tinged with orange – except the smooth hump Tread was closing in on.

  Jackson commanded Tread to slow down as he rolled round the back of the mound. There, behind a snow-camouflage cover, was an encampment, and at its centre stood an eight-wheel amphibious truck with a huge storage container on the back.

  ‘Are you seeing this?’ said Jackson.

  ‘It’s a HEMTT,’ said Brooke confidently. It stands for Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck! Call it a military-grade motorhome or a luxury mobile hideaway if you’re a runaway billionaire! With the generator on board that thing, Lear could stay out there for a month. It’s the perfect command centre for whatever the heck he and his swarm are up to.’

  This is it, thought Jackson. Lear is in there. He has to be. But how to coax the rat out?

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Brooke. ‘I might have figured out how all this works. Lear steals and irradiates the diamonds. Then he gets Yakimoto to legitimize them by miraculously finding the coloured gems in his mine.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing, Brooke,’ said Jackson. ‘But, if that’s the case, why is Lear hiding in a camouflaged compound out here?’

  Suddenly Tread’s video feed started to quiver, and soon the image on the surface of Jackson’s dual phone screen was shaking so much it was virtually impossible for Jackson to make out Lear’s camp any more. He was in the process of pulling Tread round to try and reorientate the robot’s antennae and clear what he thought was electrical interference, when the source of the problem revealed itself. Behind Tread, a spinning ring of tiny tennis-ball-sized robots was hovering just above the snow.

  Jackson guessed that there were about ten swarm machines making up the revolving ring, which was increasing in speed. He suspected that the interference he had seen on Tread’s feed was caused by the red glowing lights at the centre of each of the mini mechanical globes, which looked like some kind of laser array. Seconds later a bright red charge seemed to skip between each member of the ring-shaped swarm.

  ‘Get Tread out of there!’ shouted Brooke. ‘If you ask me, they’re spooling up to strike!’

  Then, just as Jackson was beginning to drive Tread backwards away from the swarm, a pulse of laser light shot from the whirling mass. Tread was already moving so the straight beam of light only glanced off his casing, but whatever metal was touched was cut from Tread’s body with the ease of a knife through butter.

  ‘Hot diggity! What just happened?’ yelled Brooke, sharing part of the spectacle on Tread’s camera.

  ‘My guess is it’s the same laser drill they used to get into MIT’s reactor – but you’re the expert!’ Jackson shouted as he jackknifed Tread through a high-speed one-eighty and beat a hasty retreat in the direction of the compound.

  ‘A single beam of laser light from a robot that small?’ Brooke mused. ‘It can only be a chemical laser of hydrogen fluoride. The beam on just one of those babies won’t do much more than scorch ya. But when the swarm shares wireless energy – hooyah – you do not want to get in the way! At least now we know how they cut their way into the reactor.’

  Tread was no longer in stealth mode – his engine was screaming at full revs as he ignored the hole in the fence and tore himself a new one. But as he went through it, a section of the fence snagged on some of the wiring that was hanging out of his newly cropped casing. A lead that connected to part of Tread’s braking system ripped out, causing his disc brake to lock. The wheel-bot careered straight into one of the corrugated buildings near Jackson.

  By the time Jackson had realized what was happening, the swarm had caught up with Tread. With Tread’s brake jammed, Jackson had little choice but to abandon control of him and turn his attention to Fist.

  Jackson swapped the software control interface on his handset and in a microsecond Fist had grabbed the window sill inside the hut where Jackson stood, and was swinging himself up towards the window.

  The four-fingered machine smashed through the window and swung baboon-like up on to the roof of the building. Running now, on his knuckles, the noise from the roofs of the metal buildings was incredible. If Jackson had wanted to keep a low profile, he had certainly chosen the wrong robot for the job. Fist bounded across roofs, flinging himself between buildings like some kind of mechanical free-runner, in an attempt to get to Tread.

  ‘What d’you think Fist is going to do?’ It was Brooke. ‘Box their little ears? Leave this to me and Punk!’

  The revolving swarm would have cut Tread in two if Punk had arrived a nanosecond later. The spiked wrecking ball slammed into the spiralling hal
o above Tread.

  ‘Strike!’ shouted Brooke, as all ten of the robots were scattered like skittles.

  But in his contact with the swarm, one of Punk’s rotors was severed clean off and, try as she might, Brooke could not prevent him from spinning out of control. Brooke was struggling to regain control when he hit the wind-screen of Yakimoto’s helicopter, crashing straight though its transparent polycarbonate and burying two of his spikes in the pilot’s seat.

  Outside the helicopter, several more of Lear’s tiny flying globes had assembled, buzzing manically around the shards of broken cockpit like flies round a carcass, before flowing in through the hole left by Punk and attaching themselves magnetically to his metal shell.

  ‘There’s no way of stopping them!’ shouted Brooke. ‘They’re trying to scalp Punk!’ Her response was as instant and instinctive as a block from a black belt. She flicked her phone and Punk’s power pack discharged a huge flash-current through all of his spikes – in one instant and surge. The small robots clinging to Punk were instantly fried, becoming useless pieces of melted plastic and circuitry by the time they hit the floor of the helicopter cockpit.

  ‘Is Punk OK?’ Jackson asked hurriedly.

  ‘He’s not going to win any aerobatics competitions anytime soon,’ said Brooke, attempting to drive Punk back out of the cockpit. ‘But he’s still got some fight left in him!’

  ‘Good!’ said Jackson. ‘Cos I think they’re coming for me!’

  CHAPTER 26

  Jackson didn’t have time to be scared as the robotic swarm buzzed in circles around the roof of his building.

  ‘My guess is they’re going for my satellite link on the roof first – to cut you out of the picture. Then they’ll be coming for me!’

  ‘Give me Fist then!’ said Brook. ‘And I’ll set him on Lear!’

  ‘No!’ Jackson shook his head. ‘There’re too many of them. I need Fist to defend the satellite – chances are we’re going to lose contact with each other soon and I need you to transfer a file from your tablet PC to Punk!’

  ‘A file? What file?’ asked Brooke.

  ‘Tug’s personality!’ yelled Jackson.

  Jackson had a view from Tread of what was happening on the roof above him. Tread, who was still disabled by his own brake, remained in the twisted wreckage of an adjacent building, but his high-quality camera was showing Jackson a scene that was like some futuristic version of King Kong. Fist stood astride the satellite as the pint-sized swarm robots darted between swipes from his two free hands.

  To observe Jackson at work with the phone in his hand would have been like watching a boxer fighting with his own shadow. Each distorted punch and abstract grapple that Jackson made was translated into hundreds of kilograms of load, compression and thrust through Fist’s memory metal muscles. When he connected with one of the balls, he hit it out of the park and it never came back, but overall the swarm was winning. Several of the diminutive machines had already struck the satellite on the roof above Jackson and, with them now beginning to circle in equilateral formation, Jackson wasn’t confident of it being online for much longer.

  ‘Come on, Brooke,’ he cried. ‘I need that file. I think we’re going to lose the connection between us, any second now!’

  ‘I’m working on it,’ Brooke replied urgently, her voice fading intermittently as electromagnetic energy from the spinning swarm interfered with the delicate satellite data connection between the Canadian hut and her hijacked Wi-Fi Max antennae on Martha’s Vineyard. ‘Transfer is complete, Daddy-o!’ she yelled triumphantly a few seconds later. ‘Punk is going to be as mad as a wet hen when he gets his old pal’s mean side!’

  No sooner had Brooke finished her sentence than the flash of a laser pulsed overhead and all connection between the two friends was lost.

  Worse still, one of the intensely hot beams from the swarm had caught Fist’s primary power unit. Three of his hands were twitching nervously and, despite all Jackson’s efforts to recover him, he slipped off the roof and collapsed in a trembling, twisted heap.

  Jackson could think of only one course of action – he ran outside, shouting.

  The first ball-shaped machine that got in his way felt the force of his boot. Then the glowing red eyes of another eleven swarm machines turned towards him and Jackson began running harder than he had ever run before.

  The air was so cold that it burned when Jackson took desperate mouthfuls as he ran. He rushed between two garages. The snow was blinding and it wasn’t until he saw the edge of the mine at the end of the aisle he was running down that Jackson realized he was boxed in.

  The swarm fanned out in a sickle shape, throat height, their red lights blazing.

  So this is it! thought Jackson, as he cowered before the spiralling swarm. Whatever Lear and Yakimoto’s game is – they win. I lose. He gulped down a freezing lungful of air that he feared might be his last.

  The whole swarm shot forwards and Jackson closed his eyes, bracing himself for death. But to his amazement nothing happened.

  Jackson swung round to see that all of the spherical swarm robots had shot straight past him. Four gunmen, the two from the entrance and Yakimoto’s bodyguards, now stood before the swarm robots, spread out in defensive positions.

  Jackson dived for cover as bullets from their automatic weapons started to fly. But the battle was short-lived. In a second the swarm formed up over the heads of the men and, pooling energy from each other, detonated a wave of sub-audible sound. Jackson recognized the signs of Lear’s infamous Bass Bomb as the pressure wave emanating from the swarm hit the four men, causing them to drop their weapons and double up in pain. As the men fell to the frozen ground, the waves of the low-frequency oscillations vibrated through Jackson’s stomach, making him vomit instantly.

  Unlike the men who still lay on the ground, their bodies contorted in agony, Jackson hadn’t taken the full force of the Bass Bomb, and after a few seconds he was able to pick himself up off the ice. He was physically exhausted and chilled to the bone, and felt like any attempt to move would make him spew. But if he thought he was due a respite, he was mistaken. Through the blizzard, from the path leading up from the mine, Jackson could see a shape emerging. He could hardly believe his eyes as the figure of Yakimoto emerged from the edge of the mine, seated inside one of the white powerlifters.

  Now that the fearsome-looking white machine was upright, Jackson could see it was a robotically assisted heavy-lifting tool that encased its operator inside a steel skeleton and an armoured glass bubble. Jackson cowered down in the snow and watched as Lear’s robots regrouped, changing the shape of their swarm into a densely packed dot. Yakimoto swung his machine’s powerful rock-crushing arms in an attempt to swat the flying robot.

  Jackson couldn’t believe what he was seeing – a fight between Lear’s machines and a mechanically enhanced Yakimoto. It made no sense to him at all. Weren’t the two men in this criminal heist together?

  A blinding pulse of white light burst from the circular swarm. Jackson recognized it as another of Lear’s signature non-lethal weapons that Brooke and Jackson had used on the MeX robots – the Dazzler.

  Yakimoto’s machine was engulfed in a surge of electricity, dancing along and disabling its big white robotic legs and arms. But as Jackson’s own eyesight slowly recovered from the harsh, glaring light, he noticed that the thick glass dome round the machine’s Japanese operator had darkened to absorb the light. Probably some sort of sunlight protection screen, thought Jackson.

  The lifter seemed to be limping a little now, as it carried Yakimoto towards Jackson. His gut was throbbing as he stumbled back between the buildings in a feeble attempt to escape the man-machine that moved relentlessly towards him. Out of nowhere, Lear’s HEMTT vehicle emerged through the driving snow. Yakimoto must have seen the fast-moving object at the last second, as Jackson saw the lifter spring into the air like a white tiger to land on top of the moving truck.

  Lear’s truck slammed into the base of a crane, th
e force of the impact causing its articulated back section to buckle where it joined the driver’s cabin. Yakimoto in his lifter moved quickly over the roof of Lear’s camouflaged white vehicle, pursued by the swarm.

  Once the powerlifter reached the back section of the truck it took just seconds for its powerful claws to mangle Lear’s antennae arrays, smash his power supplies and rip out banks of batteries. The effect on the robotic horde was instantaneous and catastrophic. The entire swarm dropped from the sky.

  Jackson felt a flood of relief when the burning red eyes in each of the robot balls slowly extinguished as they lay motionless on the frozen ground.

  He desperately wanted to flee the scene of the fight, but was mesmerized by the spectacle of Yakimoto’s muscular machine as it stomped along the top of Lear’s vehicle towards the driver’s cabin. Here were the two men he had travelled thousands of kilometres to find – locked in mortal combat. Jackson watched, rooted to the spot, as the lifter’s talon ripped the driver-side door clean off Lear’s eight-wheeler and plucked a struggling figure from the driving seat.

  The silhouette of the lifter looked like a mechanical T-Rex, with its prey struggling helplessly in its jaws, as Yakimoto carried the pathetic figure of Devlin Lear towards the lip of the gaping diamond mine.

  Jackson watched, horrified, as Lear was tossed over the precipice like a rag doll.

  CHAPTER 27

  Jackson felt something jabbing into the small of his back.

  He turned round to see the fat, squat figure of the man he’d heard Mr Yakimoto refer to as Mr Botha.

  ‘Walk!’ he said, jamming his pistol harder into Jackson’s spine.

  Yakimoto had turned his lifter from the mine’s edge and it was striding towards Jackson and the foreman.