Deadly Backlash Read online

  An ornate table lay on its side, chewed on by an overzealous hound of some kind, perhaps a desert bear or sand raccoon . . . Liam shook his head, wondering why he was trying to invent local wildlife.

  Then he spotted something that looked suspiciously like another pile of ash. He dreaded what it meant.

  The corridor stretched the entire length of the building, and doors stood open on both sides. The shrieking came from a room on the right about halfway down. Light shone from that room, dancing wildly, all very puzzling. He couldn’t imagine time grubs using flashlights.

  He glimpsed movement and froze. Just past the noisy, light-filled room, the corridor opened out to the right where an elevator foyer might be. Not that it worked in this abandoned state, but it might also suggest another staircase, probably full of grubs. Three or four emerged the moment he thought this, and Liam watched as they turned toward him, shuffled a few yards, and then disappeared into the shriek-filled room.

  Seconds later, they left the room again. Or maybe it was a different bunch. Who could tell? Either way, Liam stood rooted to the spot, amazed they hadn’t spotted him. Of course, the hotel was darker than it seemed, easy to forget with his infrared vision activated. So they couldn’t see him standing here in the darkness? Whew.

  He crept closer, daring to approach the doorway so he could peer around the frame. Optics may have detected only four grubs guarding the king earlier, but at least fifteen or twenty of them filled the room now, crowded around something huge and heaving near the wall, something black and oily and downright ugly.

  Liam couldn’t see over the heads of the grubs. They were shoulder to shoulder, two rows deep, standing in a semicircle and shrieking, waving multiple three-fingered hands in the air as a dazzling beam of light danced and flickered around the room. It projected from low down on the floor, shining up at the ceiling and highlighting masses of cobwebs and several nasty-looking spiders that Liam wished he could erase from his memory.

  Being in a robot body meant he couldn’t physically tremble with fear, but that didn’t stop his heart from pounding—because the Ark Lord had thoughtfully preserved it along with his face and brain. Just enough to make us feel human, he grumbled to himself. And right now I wish I were nothing but an emotionless machine.

  The grubs’ king, easily five or six times the normal size, seemed to be bending over whatever he had trapped on the floor before him. Optics had to be there, judging by the flickering beam of light. What about the others?

  Torn with indecision, Liam stood there in silence, absolutely still, fully visible to any grub who happened to glance toward the door. He couldn’t charge into battle with these things, and he had no weapons. The Ark Lord had shown a surprising lack of judgment when it came to choosing his team of battle droids. What use was Liam right now? All he could do was run really fast!

  And create wormholes.

  The glimmer of an idea percolated in the back of his mind: Create a wormhole right next to them, maybe suck some of these grubs into it and away to some distant place . . .

  It was a plan riddled with flaws, and before he could think more about it, one of the grubs spotted him gawking. Its shriek rose higher than the rest, and immediately a sea of faces turned toward him, whiskers twitching.

  In that moment, as the grubs spread out in an effort to rush at him from all sides, Liam glimpsed Optics on the floor, lying spread-eagled, twin beams of light shining from the stubby barrels on the top of his head. Next to him lay Medic, lying awkwardly on her side.

  Liam took all this in within half a second. Then the grubs were reaching for him, and as several tongues flicked out, he lurched backward and watched with morbid fascination as two bright flashes sizzled in the air. A couple of grubs vanished and reappeared at the back of the crowd, near the other side of the room where they’d been just a few seconds before.

  A booming, almost mournful cry from the king halted the grubs. Or at least gave them pause. Then they launched themselves at Liam, and he stumbled into the corridor—and came face to face with a crowd of newcomers. Completely surrounded, he spun around and around, desperate to escape, working fast to call up his wormhole generator . . .

  They clutched at him with multiple arms, and he quickly lost the ability to move freely. Held in the viselike grip of what seemed to be a hundred hands, he scanned his databanks for a suitable wormhole location. Not Ant’s room, he thought with horror at the idea of grubs being dumped on his friends. Maybe . . . maybe the Ark?

  The grubs yanked him before the king, and the sight of that monster threw Liam off his game. He stared in amazement at the giant, repulsive, sluglike monarch that puffed and wheezed and quivered in a puddle of sticky slime. It had the same eight pairs of arms, but they were lost among enormous folds of fat. Its legs were nonexistent, completely hidden somewhere underneath. From its mouth slipped a wet, dripping tongue that seemed to thrum with energy, little arcs of blue light dancing as it licked its swollen lips.

  The grubs forced Liam to the floor, putting their entire weight on him to pin him down alongside Optics and Medic, who turned out to be glued to the floor with some of the king’s sticky slime excretion. Twin beams of light jerked about as Optics gasped, “Where did you come from?”

  “You’re dead!” Medic exclaimed, apparently just as mystified. “We saw you turn to dust!”

  “Well, I’m back now,” he said feebly before the significance of her statement hit home.

  A curious silence fell as the grubs finished securing Liam, and in that brief quiet came the distant sound of gunfire, which caused several grubs to twitch their whiskers in concern. Medic froze at the sound, and even Optics’ beams stopped moving for a second or two.

  The king leaned toward Liam and allowed a cascade of drool to slide from its open maw. It pooled on the carpeted floor around his upper body, and he felt the glue taking hold, pinning him down.

  But all he could think about was what his teammates had said. They’d seen him turn to dust? Did that mean the pile of ashes on the roof was his?

  Chapter 3

  Stuck to the carpeted floor, Liam struggled in vain to break free. Medic and Optics lay nearby, just as helpless, as the Gorvian king loomed overhead and a dozen or more grubs shrieked all around. Once in a while, a pause in the din revealed the sounds of battle outside, the muffled thumps of explosions.

  But Liam was more interested in the king’s ghastly jaws hanging over him. “What’s it gonna do?” he gasped, staring with distaste at the slobbering beast.

  “What it’s been doing for the past four hours,” Medic retorted. “Trying to eat us. It knows we must have some good meat somewhere, but it’s not finding it.”

  “It’s been chewing on you for four hours?”

  The king chose that moment to lunge at him, swinging its head down and latching onto his leg. Liam yelled, but it was a reflexive reaction; it didn’t hurt one bit. He stared in horror and fascination as the hideous creature drooled and sucked at the plastic casing of his lower leg like a toothless grandmother trying to bite into hard candy.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion,” Medic said from beneath a layer of thick slime, “that these grubs are monumentally stupid, and their king is ten times more idiotic.”

  Liam’s mind was spinning. “You said it’s been chewing on you for four hours?”

  “Like I said, it’s not very bright.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said as the king twisted its head slightly and adjusted its grip. He felt the tugging as deep-set jaws took hold, but his sensors indicated no external damage. At least not yet. “I’m not talking about the chewing part. I’m talking about the four hours. Are you saying I’ve been gone that long?”

  Medic said nothing. Optics, his eye-lights still shining, flashed around the dusty, filthy room, catching a number of grubs in his glare and casting their shadows on the ceiling. They flinched every time he dazzled them.

  The king switched to Liam’s other leg, the nasty sucking, chewing noise growing stronger. Schloop, schloop, scritch, scratch.

  “Four hours,” Optics agreed. “You turned into a pile of dust and vanished. The grub you injected almost got Medic, but it collapsed and died just in time. The three of us had to work at the door to get it open. It’s a fire escape. You can only open it from the inside. Took us fifteen minutes to get in.”

  Liam remembered the state of the heavy metal door at the top of the emergency stairs. “The three of you?” he said, trying to ignore the king’s wet snorting and the crackle of blue sparks. “Where’s Stealth now?”

  “She didn’t make it,” Optics said.

  Their conversation was mostly over the intercom because of the screeching grubs and snaffling king. Optics’ somber tone was surprisingly soft and whispered, yet Liam clearly heard every word.

  Medic spoke up. “She went first down the stairs, and the grubs zapped her.”

  Liam remembered the second pile of ash on the carpeted floor of the corridor.

  “We thought we were all dead, but they paused and grabbed us,” Optics said. “Some kind of telepathic instruction. Their king told them to take us prisoner instead.”

  Schloop, schloop.

  “Wait,” Medic said, struggling to sit up and failing. The slime that adhered her to the carpet made a similar goopy sound as she writhed. “You’re here, Runner—so that means Stealth should be coming back soon as well. She was taken fifteen or twenty minutes after you.”

  “So she might be heading down the stairs as we speak,” Optics said with sudden excitement.

  Liam sucked in a breath. “And Armory! He was first to go and probably first to come back. He might be outside right now.” Light dawned. “That’s him we hear making all that noise!”

  “I’ll bet Armory and H
ammer are having a blast,” Medic muttered.

  “They could have told us," Optics complained. “Their intercoms are off."

  Medic huffed with annoyance. "Probably too busy blowing things up. How many grubs have they wiped out?”

  It had only been a few minutes since Liam’s capture and already he was sick of being chewed on. He wriggled and tried to knee the massive beast in the face, but the glue gripped him too firmly. “We have to get out of here.”

  “I’m excited to hear all your ideas,” Medic said. “I had a small cutting tool for amputating limbs, but it didn’t last long. As soon as I started it up, the grubs threw themselves on me to protect their king. One nearly disemboweled itself. They snapped the saw blade off pretty quick.”

  Liam stared in horror at the thin spatter of dark stuff congealed on her casing around her upper right arm.

  “They’re certainly loyal,” Medic added. “Not sure what the benefit is to them. It’s odd that it’s a male they’re rallying around and not a female—unless it’s the male that reproduces on this world. That’s not unheard of. Or maybe it’s trying to find a mate. Maybe that’s the purpose behind this migration—”

  “Wow, you’ve been stuck to the floor a long time,” Liam interrupted. “This is like some kind of nature program to you, isn’t it? Never mind that a monster is trying to chew through my leg right now.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  The king abruptly froze in mid-chew, its jaws clamped on Liam’s left thigh. The ring of grubs fell silent, and in the sudden peace came more dull thuds from outside.

  “What’s going on?” Liam whispered.

  Optics said, “The king’s brain is heating up. It’s glowing bright red on my thermo display. Looks like he’s thinking hard about something.”

  Liam watched with concern as the multi-limbed sluglike creature gazed unblinking toward the open doorway. Somewhere out there in the hallway, a grub shrieked.

  Stealth’s voice hissed over the intercom, “Where are you all?”

  Medic sucked in a breath. “About halfway along on the right, just before the elevator lobby. Careful—there are grubs here.”

  “Grubs here, too,” Stealth said. “But they’re having trouble focusing on me. I’m like a shadow. Be with you in a moment.”

  “But then what?” Optics demanded in a low voice. “You don’t have any weapons!”

  “So distract it. Runner, bring up a wormhole.”

  Distract it, Liam thought, dazed by the turn of events. Stealth was back just as Medic had said. He focused on what the creepy robot had suggested. “A wormhole,” he agreed. “Yeah, I can do that.”

  While he delved into his databanks for the coordinates of a suitable wormhole destination, he watched out of the corner of his eye as the king continued its odd freeze-frame state, its jaws still clamped to Liam’s thigh and a thick, jagged vein in the center of its forehead pulsing steadily. Whiskers twitched, and eyes blinked in slow motion. Clearly it was still deep in thought. Liam guessed it was communicating with its brethren in the hallway, a telepathic link as they tried to locate the new intruder.

  Liam found a newly added set of coordinates, the usual pair of long numbers marked “source” and “destination.” He’d created that last wormhole right outside the hotel . . . so why not use that source as his new destination? Yes, a new wormhole from right here in this room to wherever he’d taken delivery of the boombox from Earth! Maybe Armory and Hammer would spot the illuminated tunnel in the darkness. If so, they could leap in and help.

  He activated the coordinates, and a vertical slice of light appeared like a laser bolt just a few feet above his head and right before the Gorvian king. The grubs let out a piercing wail.

  As the shaft of light spread wide, Optics said, “We can’t leave Hammer behind. Nor Armory if he’s out there.”

  “We can come back for them,” Medic said. “Right now we need to get free of this floor.”

  Obviously the two of them assumed the wormhole led to some other world. Hoping Hammer and Armory could at least hear what was being said even if they’d put themselves on mute, Liam spoke loudly so all five of his teammates could hear. “This is the wormhole we needed earlier—a quick way in and out of the hotel. Hammer and Amory, we need your help.”

  The wormhole formed into a swirling tunnel. As a powerful suction formed, the grubs panicked and skedaddled, but the closest three left it too late and were pulled into the wormhole, their tongues lashing angrily. They materialized again in the crowd where they’d been a few seconds before, the last dramatic event magically undone—but they were instantly dragged up into the tunnel again, where they vanished a second time, tongues alight with sparks. This once more returned them to their previous positions among their fellow grubs, only to be yanked away straight after.

  This bizarre repeated event looked like an instant replay on the TV, but their plight gradually became futile, and they finally gave in to the tunnel’s power. Then they were gone.

  Meanwhile, the king had released its hold on Liam’s leg, and he lay there covered in slobber and feeling like a giant dog’s discarded bone. If he and his teammates weren’t stuck to the carpet, they would have been hurtling through the tunnel already. Instead, he watched as the repulsive monster lunged backward, plastering itself against the wall and staring with wide, darting eyes. It needn’t have worried; clearly it was too big and heavy to fall victim to the suction.

  As grubs milled about in panic and the king gazed at the wormhole, Liam spotted movement in a dark corner of the room. Somehow, Stealth had snuck in. Her chameleon abilities allowed her to slip all the way past the grubs as though she were one of the many dancing shadows cast by Optics’ eye-beams and the dazzling wormhole.

  She boldly dashed from the gloom and reached down to grip Liam’s outstretched hand. She bent her knees to pull, straining hard, and Liam felt something give behind his shoulders, a slight tearing of glue. “Keep pulling,” he urged.

  It was too much to hope for. The grubs might have been blind to her creeping about near the walls, but they spotted her now. How could they not? The king did, too, and he howled. Grubs rushed in, their long tongues already building up energy . . .

  And then a seven-foot-tall figure burst out of the wormhole, two enormous metal fists held out in front. One exploded into motion, shooting across the room and punching a hole right through the wall behind the Gorvian king. Dust and bits of wood flew everywhere as the projectile tried to veer around and return, but the cramped space caused it to thump into another wall and lay still, smoking.

  A second figure emerged just as Hammer’s robotic feet thudded to the floor. Armory came with shoulder-mounted guns rotating upward and firing off short bursts. The ceiling collapsed, coming down in a pile of debris that blanketed several grubs. Those grubs instantly reappeared where they had been seconds before, and this time they turned and scuttled in the other direction before more of the ceiling collapsed on them again.

  The deafening show of force within the confined room, along with the dazzling lights penetrating the fog of dust, seemed to cow any remaining grubs. They whimpered and turned about in circles, hopelessly confused. Meanwhile, their king struggled to climb through the new hole in the wall, heaving its glistening folds of fat over the rubble.

  “Free us!” Medic gasped.

  Stealth resumed her work, trying to yank Liam up. Hammer reached down with his one remaining hand and made short work of pulling Optics to his feet. The carpet wanted to come up with him, but then it wrenched loose, leaving tufts behind on the robot’s casing.

  “Armory, take its head,” Hammer said, pointing at the king as he went to help Medic.

  The weaponized robot reached for his thigh, which was already opening in a series of clicks and whirrs to reveal the handle of a short sword. Armory yanked it out with a screech of metal and wielded it as Optics’ beams bounced off its shiny surface.

  It was no ordinary sword, though. It buzzed into life, its sharp edges suddenly glowing red. When Armory swung the sword downward, it sliced easily through the floor with a sizzling sound. Flames roared for a second, but they quickly went out, replaced by black smoke and the nasty smell of burning carpet.