The dance Kaleb proceeded to do was one that would’ve gotten him kicked out of any nightclub he’d ever heard of. If he ever went to any. But he couldn’t contain himself. So he shimmied across the floor of the darkened assembly plant as he gyrated his hips and grunted rhythmically. He pirouetted around one of the unpowered conveyor belts as he thrust his arms into the air. The datapad with the evidence clutched in his hand.

  “I got you! I got you! I finally fucking got you!” Kaleb sang as he shook his head from side to side.

  He came to a stop in the middle of the room, next to several automated assembly arms, and cheered into the dark.

  “Finally! After all this time! I have PROOF! Definitive proof… that the HLO… bought… robots. From a robotics company?”

  Kaleb’s brain caught up with his mouth and he reread the datapad he had picked it. It was clearly a business email sent to the TekNik company. To the Loadmaster of this specific warehouse, in fact. The redaction’s made it hard to figure out what they were discussing. But given the fact that some messages were straight up invoices, Kaleb had a good idea what was happening. The HLO was buying combat robots and a lot of them.

  “But what for?” Kaleb said aloud as he walked back to the Loadmaster’s desk. His mood ruined.

  The invoices and the HLO logo apparently weren’t the smoking gun he thought they were. An international business like the HLO was bound to order a few robots here or there. But so many? Kaleb looked over the invoices and checked the dates on each one. They were practically monthly orders of the same bots. The exact number and type of bots were blacked out, but they left the product numbers out of the redaction. Going back and forth from the invoices to the messages on the datapad, Kaleb had a rough timeline of the orders. But not what they were used for.

  Kaleb continued looking for more correlating information between the emails on the pad to the notes on the Loadmaster’s desk. But it was tricky. He assumed that the OZ on each message was for Ozarious, the current head of the HLO. Which was another odd thing. Why would the CEO be placing orders himself? And from the tonality of each message, it appeared that OZ was getting angry. It wasn’t anything overt, like swearing or multiple exclamation points. But Kaleb was well-acquainted with business-angry. It was a lot of passive aggressive expectations and hidden snark that made Kaleb curl his lip. Whatever the HLO was up to, it was not going well.

  He was looking for some other thread to follow when the warehouse came to life. Lights fluttered on and machinery whirred up. Kaleb blinked as his eyes readjusted to the bright lights. As he did, he heard the mechanical sounds of the automated arms going to work. His vision cleared in time for him to watch as the conveyor belts spooled up and carried their robot loads forward.

  Kaleb hid as best he could in a dark corner behind some machinery. His new rifle clutched in his hands. The shutters leading into this room were pulled upward into their housings as new robots were brought into the room. The entire assembly plant quickly came to life and Kaleb worried that workers would soon follow. He crouched in his hiding spot and watched the doors leading into the room, ready to leap into action at any moment. But after ten minutes, nothing happened. Then twenty minutes passed. Then thirty.

  Kaleb watched the assembly line trundle along as he grew bored. It seemed clear to him that no one was coming to oversee the automated plant. The robots were built one limb at a time as they passed along the line, their weapons and armor grafted on toward the end. Then they were marked with a laser etcher and bundled away into a metal container. Kaleb watched as a container was fully filled and then carried along some tracks on the floor. The tracks pulled the container to the far back wall and then stopped. He watched with curiosity as the container just sat there for a few seconds before it rocketed up the side of the wall like it was being carried by an invisible force.

  “Someone’s getting a new batch of war robots.” Kaleb quipped before he dashed over to the Loadmaster’s desk and checked their notes.

  The HLO’s orders had been a near monthly thing. He was hoping he was watching the next delivery being loaded. It would both be a way to get out of here and it would lead him to the next piece in the puzzle. But as he went over the notes and datapad, he realized he was out of luck. The HLO had already received a shipment this month and probably wasn’t expecting a new one.

  “So where the hell are these going?” Kaleb asked himself.

  With a shrug, he figured there was only one way to find out. But first he had a promise to keep. Quickly pocketing the Datapad and the Loadmaster’s notes, he ran. Kaleb zigzagged his way around the machinery in the room and slipped through the now open shutters. He quickly crossed the first room, which was now also alive with machinery and automated arms building robots, and exited into the hallway. He placed his new rifle against his shoulder and hurried down the hall back to Lab #1A. A tiny part of him felt it was cruel to ruin an entire lab’s work just because he had personal ethical issues with the type of work they were doing. But one glance at the poor aliens suspended in their tubes quickly stymied that feeling.

  The new power core in his rifle whirred to life, and Kaleb fired into the room repeatedly. The sounds of shattering glass and spilling liquid filled his ears. But Kaleb kept firing. The blue beam of energy scorched the desktops and melted the equipment in blazing over. The beam took large chunks of the furniture with it as each shot hit home. After over a dozen rapid-fire shots, the gun beeped ominously, and Kaleb took his finger off the trigger. Glancing down, he saw a blinking overheat symbol staring up at him and scowled. The rifle’s barrel hissed as it cooled itself and Kaleb’s mind automatically went to work on ways to fix the guns overheating. But he quickly put those thoughts aside.

  Parts of the lab were a smoldering wreck and all six tubes holding the alien bodies had been blown apart. But somehow, it wasn’t enough for Kaleb. Too much of the place remained intact. He contemplated using his Magic Gun again when a new thought entered his brain. Kaleb reached into his lab coat pockets, his fingers immediately coming into contact with one of the laser rifle’s power cores. He had grabbed a few while in the robotics lab. Mostly for study. But he was heading back to that assembly room, anyway.

  Kaleb raised the cylinder to his face and looked it over. The power cell seemed to hum with energy as he held it. Then he glanced around the lab. It was fairly large, with a few more desks and cabinets untouched by his earlier shooting. So he reached into his pocket and pulled out two more cylinders. Finding some tape, Kaleb quickly wrapped the three power cores together and placed them at the center of the room. Which was right where the tubes had been. The alien bodies were splayed out on the floor all around as the liquid from their tanks mixed together. He ignored the smell as he stood the trio of cylinders up and walked back to the open lab door. Pulling his Cybar out of his holster, he held his rifle loosely in his other hand.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  “I should probably say something quippy right now,” Kaleb admitted as he aimed his pistol. “But honestly, this whole place can fuck right off!”

  He squeezed the trigger and fought the kickback on his Cybar before he quickly went blind. He had enough time to see his blast hit the power core at the center of the room. But then he was lifted off his feet and blown straight into the opposite wall of the hallway. The initial sound of the explosion deafened him and his eyes burned. But he still felt the entire hallway shake beneath his feet. The force of the explosion held him against the wall for a few seconds and he felt an extreme heat all over his body. As quickly as it had come, though, the sensation passed and Kaleb was dropped unceremoniously to the floor. His face and body were both sore and hot as hell. Also, the noise wasn’t going away.

  Kaleb rubbed his eyes and blinked rapidly, trying to get the spots to go away. For a few seconds Kaleb worried he had done permanent damage to his eyes. But then color finally came back to his vision. He blinked as all he saw was a wall of brown dirt in front of him now. The remains of the door and the lab beyond it were gone now, buried under an avalanche of dirt. His mind quickly put together what happened as he staggered to his feet. The explosion had nearly burned him alive, but the roof collapsed, saving him, but just barely.

  “Okay. So three power cores were too much. Noted.” Kaleb muttered to himself as he vowed to tell no one about this.

  Coughing and wheezing, he stumbled down the hallway back to the robotic warehouse. His scales felt stiff, and he desperately wanted a drink of water. But he forced himself forward and into the second lab. Things were still loudly clattering and clanking along as he wobbled his way over to the second area. Robots were currently being loaded into a container in lines of three. He quickly snuck his way around all the moving arms and sat himself down in the container.

  Sighing as the cool metal felt good on his skin, Kaleb waited for the container doors to be closed and then held on. The robots stayed standing as the container was roughly moved along the track toward their destination near the wall. He double-checked that the datapad and the notes were still in good condition before he fully settled. The whirring of the tracks and the anticipation reminded him of a theme park rollercoaster. Then his container was gripped by whatever force carried them away, and Kaleb’s stomach dropped. He stayed firmly on the ground in the container somehow, but whatever was moving them had no pity for Kaleb’s flipping stomach.

  Thankfully, the trip was relatively brief and soon his container hit solid ground with a metallic squeal. Almost immediately Kaleb heard the sounds of whirring machines again. But this time they were interspersed by a voice. A monotone one, but a voice all the same. He stretched his ears, trying to hear what the voice was saying. But the container muffled a lot of the noise. It wasn’t until the voice was right outside his container that he realized it was some kind of automated logging system.

  “Container #19-A95632-J. Bound for Site 57. Designation: security and perimeter defense.” The robotic voice said.

  Kaleb groaned as the system didn’t clarify what Site 57 was. But he took it in stride as he felt the container being pushed along tracks again. The entire container rumbled as it was shuffled toward its destination and then tipped upward on one side. Again, Kaleb heard voices. But this time, they sounded a lot more natural and human. He held on as the rumble tracks slowly pulled them upward onto something and then shut off. That’s when the voices outside cleared and Kaleb got a firmer picture of what was going on.

  “Last load of the night, Mac?” a voice shouted in the distance.

  “Yeah!” answered another voice, this one much closer. “Got to take these metal-heads out to the base and then I’m clocking out!”

  “Sounds good! Will we see you at K’thornikins?”

  “Naw! Don’t feel like drinking tonight. I’m just going to go home and…”

  Kaleb stopped listening, and Mac’s friend tried to convince him to go out tonight. That brief conversation had proven that he was back on the surface and apparently headed to some base. He was gauging the likelihood that he could sneak away when his earpiece came to life.

  “Repeating… Professor, if you can hear this, please respond. The break-in at the TekNik building has been resolved. Please respond! Repeating…”

  Kaleb didn’t recognize the voice. But the way it sounded both tired and annoyed told him it was probably a hunter stuck with the shit job of checking on him. Kaleb didn’t let the poor guy get through the message again before he interrupted him. He was careful to be quiet though, as his voice echoed in the container.

  “This is the Professor. I’m back above ground and in a bit of a situation.”

  There was some shuffling over the comms before Farrah’s voice rattled through his ear. She was clearly displeased but trying to remain professional.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me? I take it that’s why you're currently whispering?”

  “Yeah. I found a lot of interesting stuff, Farrah. But the only way to get out was to hitch a ride on a TekNik shipment heading to someplace called Site 57. Any idea where that is?”

  “One second.” Farrah responded.

  Around him, the container rumbled softly as their driver started his truck. The loud sounds of metal creaking and an engine sputtering to life filled the air. Soon after, they were on their way, and Kaleb sighed. There was another sharp drop in his stomach that told him the truck he was in was a flying one before Farrah came back.

  “Professor, you need to abandon that shipment now. Site 57 is a government military base. We don’t need you getting caught hitching a ride on top of a shipping container.”

  “Yeah… a couple of things. I’m not ON the container and I’m pretty sure this truck just took flight. So getting out is going to be tricky.”

  “Trickier than staying in a locked office until the police arrived?” Farrah deadpanned.

  “Hey! What’s done is done. Let’s be solution oriented here, huh?”

  Farrah sighed in his ear. “I only see two options, Professor. Option 1, you bail out of the truck and take your lumps. Option 2, you land at the military base, get caught as a stowaway, and spend the night in a military jail before I can get you out.”

  “How high does airborne traffic usually go?” Kaleb asked sheepishly.

  “PROFESSOR!”

  “What?! I don’t want to deal with regular cops. Why the fuck would military ones be any different?”

  “You will not survive a jump from the skyways. Even if the truck was flying low, which it probably is, you are still too damn high in the air. Just get comfortable and I’ll prepare a statement for the MPs.”

  Kaleb scoffed as he checked his Health and Mana. Both were back to full after his little sit-down in the container. His mind was already working through a few possibilities. He unholstered his Cybar with a flourish and pointed at the container door. It took a few shots, but the thing burst open and Kaleb almost took a step forward into what he thought would be the bed of a truck. Instead, what he saw froze him in his steps and he started swearing.

  He wasn’t loaded onto the back of a standard cargo truck. Instead, he was flying high on an airborne transport vehicle. His container was held in the grip of six mechanical arms as the pilot flew the thing from a cockpit above him. The damn thing was a spider-copter holding him aloft. Which meant he wasn’t on the standard skyways from normal traffic. He was on the military lane, flying over all the normal traffic.

  As Kaleb stared down at the rapidly moving ground underneath him, only one word came to mind.

  “FUCK!”