Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [110]
Outside, Cesca and the engineer administrator bounded up the slope toward their squat vehicle. She had barely begun grieving for the loss of Jhy Okiah, and now two more Roamers had been slaughtered in front of her. Even through her shock, Cesca strengthened her resolve, pushed Purcell forward, and mentally raced through possibilities. First the two of them had to escape.
They reached the grazer’s airlock hatch just as the first Klikiss robot emerged from the tomb passage. The beetlelike machine hesitated, scanning the terrain as if reawakening stored memories...or searching for prey. Several others emerged behind it.
Purcell quickly forgot about maintaining radio silence. “They’re coming!”
Cesca threw herself against the airlock and opened the outer hatch. Because the chamber was empty, the door unsealed after only a brief series of status lights blinked on the control panel.
She herded Purcell into the one-person chamber, then crammed in beside him. They didn’t have the luxury of cycling through one at a time. The two of them barely fit. Cesca pounded her gloved fist against the inner controls, sealing the outer door and starting the cycle.
Status lights danced in a graceful but laboriously sluggish pirouette. The pressurization continued at a sedate pace, pumping atmosphere from the main vehicle into the airlock. Beside her, Purcell swore to himself. “We should have ridden in vacuum, with our suits on! Then we could have just opened the inner door.” At the time it had seemed an unnecessary discomfort and inconvenience during the long journey.
From the tiny window in the chamber’s outer hatch, Cesca saw four of the insectile machines standing together only a few hundred meters away. Their exoskeletons looked oddly discolored against the bleak white landscape, and she realized that their black hulls were spattered with shiny, frozen blood. The four robots began to scuttle up the rise toward the grazer.
“Come on!” she said through clenched teeth, as if the airlock mechanism could sense her urgency.
Extra air dumped into the chamber with the force of a gale wind. The airlock was nearly filled.
With her clumsy gloved fingers, Cesca worked the override and finally popped the inner door. She felt a hollow thump against her helmet as the pressure equalized; inrushing air from the inner chamber felt like a hand shoving them back. Cesca regained her balance. “Come on, Purcell—you drive this thing better than I can. Get us moving!”
He lumbered toward the seat and threw himself in. Cesca flicked on the power systems while Purcell activated the engines and adjusted the driving yoke. The grazer hummed, then began to crawl forward. The engineer turned the vehicle around in a ponderous semicircle.
Operating the rear viewer, Cesca saw one of the horrific robots loom up, frighteningly close. It raised segmented claws to hammer down upon the back of the slow vehicle. The thud of impact reverberated through the grazer’s hull.
Purcell yelped. “They’ll rip us open like a pack of emergency rations!”
Three more robots converged on the rear of the vehicle, hammering, scraping, pounding.
Purcell added power to the engines, and the treads pulled the vehicle forward, nudging it over the crest of the rise and turning downhill. A shriek and a clang rang against the metal hull. The robots were grabbing any clawhold to batter their way in.
The puttering engine roared, and the low vehicle trundled forward, groaning with the strain. A curling belch of processed steam vomited from the exhaust tube, spraying one of the robots with thick white frost. It released its grip. Two others continued their grasping attack, but Purcell fed power to the engines, dragging the gas-harvesting vehicle over the frozen ground.
Cesca heard metal shear away with a tearing groan