The Abyss of Time

Chapter Five

     Miller heard the transport car moving again and braced himself. The moment it appeared, entering the cargo bay, he jumped out from behind the bulldozer he'd been hiding behind and fired bursts of bullets in all directions. Behind him he heard the car's door hissing open and heard men running madly for cover. There were bursts of gunfire from the cyborgs and he heard the cries of men being hit and falling.

     He made himself ignore the sounds and ran for the storage room he'd seen the cyborgs emerge from. There were none in sight. They were hiding too. He ran nevertheless, and to the left of him he saw movement. He spun around and aimed his taser, pulling the trigger before he'd properly identified the target. If it was a security man he was almost certainly killing him. The taser was non-lethal, but the unfortunate man would be left helpless for several seconds. An easy target for the cyborgs. He fired anyway, knowing that if it was a cyborg it would kill him if he took the time to properly identify it.

     It was a cyborg. It spasmed as the electrical charge hit it and Miller spun on his heel to charge at it. Another cyborg appeared in the corner of his eye. Instincts honed over fifteen years of bitter warfare made him ignore it. If he diverted his attention to the second cyborg, the first one would recover and kill him. Leave the second cyborg for his comrades in arms. You survived a battle with cyborgs by trusting the men at your side. Of course, this time, the men at his sides weren't fellow veterans. They were amateurs. They'd probably all frozen up already, paralysed with terror, leaving him to fight alone. About to be blown into a cloud of crimson smoke as every cyborg turned its weapon on him.

     He put the thought out of his head and aimed his captured P16 at the first cyborg, squeezing the trigger. The weapon spat hot lead and the cyborg's face and throat exploded into gore. He turned towards the second cyborg, expecting to feel his body shredded by enemy fire at any moment, but the cyborg was shivering as electricity from a guard's taser shot through its body.

     Miller dismissed the second cyborg from his attention, dropped his P16 which was just about out of ammunition, and scooped up the weapon of the cyborg he'd killed. Then he resumed running for the storage room. Never stand still. Keep moving. Stand and you're dead. The anonymous guard would kill the second cyborg, or the cyborg would kill him. Either way, he had a couple of seconds in which it wasn't a threat to him. He had to make those seconds count.

     There was a security guard approaching the storage room from another direction. There was movement in the storage room and Miller saw the man aiming his taser at it. Then he hesitated, his face going white with shock. The hesitation cost him his life as the enemy in the storage room cut him down with gunfire. Then he emerged, looking for more targets.

     Miller felt his own electric surge of shock when he saw the cyborg. It was Dhlomo. The Captain. His head had been shaved and there were sutures where his scalp had been cut open and sewn shut again. There was no awareness in his eyes. He'd been turned into a hollow imitation of a man incapable of independent thought. Capable only of obeying orders. What had been known, back in the war, as a zombie.

     His brain was half cybernetic now, but there'd been no time to replace his eyes or install the strips of armour on his ribs and scalp. He was as vulnerable to bullets as any normal man. Miller raised his captured P16, therefore, and Dhlomo raised his own weapon in turn. There was no recognition in his eyes as he aimed at Miller. He would kill his former friend and subordinate as casually as if he were swatting a fly. He would have killed his own wife and children just the same.

     Miller shot him, feeling nothing as his bullets tore into his former Captain. Dhlomo was already dead. Putting down what was left of him was an act of mercy. Memories tried to surface, tried to overwhelm him, of other friends he'd had to kill back in the war. He forced them back down using the techniques his therapist had taught him and moved on before he became a target in turn.