The third and final Beneath the Ashes novel is finally arriving!
Below you can read the first chapter for free.
You can find the second chapter right here for 1$/month on my Patreon.
You can read the rest of the novel as I write it in early access here for 3$/month on my Patreon.
Enjoy!
Ethan was as close to death as he had ever been.
He and Kasumi froze as one of the Death Bots they were carefully maneuvering their way around abruptly halted and turned his way. They waited as it seemed to scrutinize them, both covering it with their rifles. They’d packed armor piercing rounds for this trip, but he knew that if they were discovered here and now, they’d die.
The Bots would rip them limb from limb while pumping them full of bullets.
The red light of the Bot’s eyes seemed malignant, hateful even. Suddenly, it turned away and resumed doing whatever it had been doing. Ethan slowly exhaled, his body relaxing just the slightest. He looked to Kasumi.
Even her poker face was starting to slip. She had a faint sheen of sweat on her forehead. She nodded her head gently to her left and he nodded. They resumed their journey.
When Donovan had come to him with a new mission, Ethan had been dubious from the start. Mostly because the expression in the man’s eyes had immediately given away the fact that it was going to be extremely high risk.
Take out a Death Bot factory.
More of them had been showing up in the two weeks that had passed since they had saved the bastion and come back from that extremely bizarre place. That alone would’ve been a problem, but one that they could handle. But that wasn’t the only issue arising.
The creatures that had been getting smarter and coming in closer and closer to the bastion were now smarter and closer than ever.
But that was a future problem, for the moment he knew he needed all his focus.
And all his luck.
If the old tech that was standing between him and death didn’t keep doing what it was supposed to do, well…
At least it would be a fast death.
He and Kasumi reached a junction where two corridors connected and slipped smoothly into it. There, they took a moment to catch their breath. She took a look around, back the way they’d come and down both of the other corridors that slanted away from them, leading deeper into the complex. Then she settled her gaze on him.
She asked him with hand motions if he was still doing well. He responded affirmatively and that he was ready to keep going. She smiled, just for an instant, then turned towards the rightmost passageway and set off down it.
Things were different between them now, and in a great way.
It had taken some time, mostly because they were all so damn busy lately, but Kasumi had finally moved into their house. She’d brought surprisingly little, and when he’d asked her about it, she’d said she’d donated most of her stuff to people in the Pit and was viewing this as a kind of fresh start. And things were definitely different.
Kasumi was a reserved woman, but with him now, she was more open. She smiled more, she laughed more, she relaxed more. That was something he had really noticed. Kasumi always seemed tense, ready to strike or to tackle some difficult problem, no matter where she was or what she was doing. It was nice to see her relax.
It was also admittedly very nice to have her in his house and in his bed so often. Or, rather, to climb into her bed, as that was where she preferred to get intimate with him.
And hopefully they would be able to do that again tonight.
He followed her carefully down the empty hallway, the smell of oil and rust and rot surrounding them. It was accompanied by the sounds of machinery and Death Bots banging around. Ethan kept feeling the urge to look behind him but kept telling himself there was no need and he should focus on the front.
If a Death Bot was coming his way, he’d know it. They weren’t exactly subtle.
They reached the end of the hallway and stopped. Kasumi took a long, cautious look around the next room and then signaled for him to wait. He resisted the urge to sigh, they had already been crawling around this place for what felt like hours.
He thought back to the briefing, trying to comfort himself, remind himself that they had a plan and knew what they were doing.
Death Bots, which had a much more mundane name when they were invented, came from mostly automated factories built before the surface turned to ash, and a few after. They were supposed to be protectors at best, soldiers at worst. The reality of the situation ended up being that the factories just kept on rolling and pushing out killer robots, and those killer robots, without proper programming, tended to wander around and kill.
It had taken some doing, but Donovan and the Governor had finally tracked down where the local Bots were coming from. After that, they’d done a little scouting. From there, they’d brainstormed on how to deal with it.
None of the options had been good.
The initial thought had been to just bomb the place or maybe cause a cave-in, but two primary things kept them from doing that. The first was that there were a lot of resources that could be salvaged from this factory. The second was that there was the very real possibility that they would be able to initiate a kill-command that would not only allowed them to take the factory, but would also shutdown every Bot that had come from it and was still going.
Given that was the most desirable option, (especially since they were still painfully, worryingly low on certain resources), they then turned their attention to the very obvious question of: how do we do this without dying?
Because taking a Death Bot factory was a brutal, savage thing, even under the best circumstances. Donovan had initially been drafting a plan to essentially storm the place with every single Crawler backed up by a dozen security personnel.
That was when Kasumi had offered her own idea.
She’d come across references to devices that were supposed to make you invisible to the Bots. According to her, it sent out a continuous command for a thousand foot radius that forced every Bot to essentially ignore the wearer. Theoretically, they should even be able to walk right up to a Bot and slap it across its cold metallic face and be fine.
No one was willing to test that, though.
Kasumi had apparently been looking for one of these for a long time now, and had been in touch with a tech expert in another bastion who knew how to make them. She’d been piecing one together for a few months now, as apparently they were difficult to construct. She’d been keeping the information back mostly because she didn’t want to get everyone’s hopes up.
Donovan had been dubious, but had ultimately given her some very rare, valuable resources from the tech vault to allow her to finish making two of them. And that was all she could make, just the two of them. Given the choice between this and an all-out assault that would almost certainly result in heavy casualties, the Captain had reluctantly gone with Kasumi’s plan.
It was a hell of a gamble, but they all trusted her and Ethan to make it happen.
Though Ethan, (and Kiva when she heard the plan), had insisted on testing them out at least once. And they had, firing up a Death Bot they’d salvaged and running a few tests. It had worked, but Ethan was still uncertain.
Regardless, he and Kasumi had been dispatched quickly.
Ember had been especially upset, given how dangerous it was, and he knew he was going to be handling her stronger emotions for the next few days at least. He felt bad, but what could he do? This was the job he had signed up for.
This was a job that needed to be done.
Kasumi signaled to him and he shadowed her out of the chamber, coming into a low, long machine shop. For whatever reason, it was dark and derelict. There were a handful of Bots around, but they looked deactivated, standing along the walls or at worktables, frozen in time.
This was going to be bad.
The place was poorly lit thanks to the fact that only the door they were coming in through and the one they had to leave through were the only things offering light. They couldn’t risk turning on their flashlights because they weren’t sure if that would draw attention, if the Bots’ programming would identify that as a problem.
Kasumi led the way into the dim tech bay. Ethan followed, struggling to maintain his silence and composure. They’d had to walk four hours just to get here because a few tunnels were collapsed, so they’d had to go almost an entire mile out of their way in the wrong direction just to get to another tunnel that would bring them back around to where they wanted to go.
They moved with great care through the machine shop, walking between two long rows of tables packed with tech and gear and tools. Even in the wan light, Ethan could identify several things that would be useful to them. This place had to be an absolute motherlode of technology and if they could get here and strip it down, it might help them for months or even years to come.
Oh crap, Ethan thought miserably.
Near the darkest central part of the room, he saw that two bots were standing almost back to back. There was enough space for Kasumi, there was probably enough space for him. He began looking around for an alternate route, as he was none too eager to get that close to a pair of Bots, and that was when the lights suddenly snapped on.
Both of them jerked in shock and it was only a lot of discipline that kept him from squeezing the trigger in surprise and fear. The Bots around them immediately came to life and began working. They were all fixing or dissecting various bits of technology.
Interesting. Apparently Death Bots were useful for more than just death. He wondered suddenly if they might be able to reprogram them...but that was a thing that had been tried before. He knew some bastions supposedly used ‘tamed’ Death Bots for security, but he also knew there were horror stories of them going rogue and killing a lot of innocent people.
Ethan had to strongly resist the urge to turn around and back out, or to say something to Kasumi. She was rigid, but facing away from him, no doubt trying to solve this new problem. He took a quick look around and saw that, unfortunately, the alternative paths were even more blocked off than this one, either by more Bots or piles of crates.
Kasumi signed to him to come closer. He stepped up beside her. For a moment, she seemed to struggle. They only had so many things they could effectively communicate with their hands. Finally, she pointed to the two Bots in front of them, then motioned for him to stay still and watch her. He nodded, curious as to what she’d come up with.
She studied the Bots closely. They were moving as they worked, their bulky metal bodies shifting to and fro, making the path between them even more dangerous. Kasumi took a step closer to them, now so close that she could reach out and touch them.
Ethan felt his entire body seize up in terror as he prepared for the worst.
Abruptly, Kasumi slipped through.
Nothing happened.
The machine shop continued buzzing and banging along as it had been. She turned around and looked at him urgently, then motioned to the two Bots. She brought her hands together, palms flat, fingers pointed up, as though she was describing how big something was. She brought her hands apart, then moved them back together.
When he didn’t respond, she did it again, a little more urgently, and suddenly it clicked.
The Bots were moving in a rhythm.
Rhythms were predictable.
He nodded and motioned for her to back up, then he took a moment to make sure everything on him was still cinched down or secure in a pocket so he would make no extra noise and have as slim a profile as possible, then he studied the Bots.
Whatever they were doing, it probably wouldn’t last, in that they would start another task and the rhythm would change. So he had to do this now. He watched as they leaned away from each other, then back towards each other. The pattern quickly became obvious, the problem was that it was going to be a very narrow gap.
Oh well, you didn’t have this job without taking risks.
Ethan stepped closer, waited, and then shoved himself through. He actually felt his chestplate brush against the back of the Bot. Then he was through and preparing to feel a cold, giant metal hand suddenly clamp onto the back of his neck and snap it with horrifying ease. That didn’t happen, however, and the relief he saw on Kasumi’s face made it obvious that it had worked.
She gestured sharply to him to follow her and he did without hesitation. A moment later, they were finally free of the tech bay. She led him into another corridor, down it, through a door and up some stairs and then into another corridor. He wanted badly to ask how much further, because that last scare had apparently knocked his mental map of the place cleanly out of his skull. He and Kasumi must’ve studied it a dozen times, but suddenly it was gone like smoke on the air.
Kasumi, however, seemed to remember just fine. She led him unerringly down the corridor, then up a second one, and finally in through a door. It led to a dusty room full of beeping, blinking pieces of tech that covered the walls in a chaotic mess. All of it seemed to be hardwired into a single big console at the back of the room.
Ethan felt relief flood him. This is what they’d been looking for.
Kasumi gestured at him to guard the door as she pulled out the data storage device. This was it, the moment of truth. Ethan waited, aiming his weapon at the door they’d just come through. While it was clear that the tech for making you invisible to a Bot worked, he was far more dubious about this particular piece of software.
Apparently the Crawlers had found the killswitch, as they were calling it, some time back. Every factory came with one, or they were supposed to anyway, but the problem was that they were small and portable and important. Which meant that they tended not to actually stay in the factories they were intended for.
And, unfortunately, you couldn’t just upload it from anywhere, it had to be in the actual factory to work properly. Ethan didn’t really understand all of it, and apparently it was too complex to try and teach him in the time they had, so they just knew that they were going to have to rely on Kasumi.
Ethan became aware of a heavy metallic stomping. There was a Bot out there somewhere, getting closer. Shit. Maybe Kasumi had tripped something, he could hear her working back there. The stomping was getting closer. Before long, he could tell it was in the actual corridor just outside the room, and it was still coming closer.
He tensed as a large shadow fell across the floor just beyond the doorway. It had been stuck open and he hadn’t wanted to bother trying to close it for obvious reasons. The Death Bot stepped suddenly into the doorway and Ethan tensed worse than ever as he covered it with his rifle. The Bot stood there, motionless, but he could hear its internal devices working.
Was this some kind of standard check or did it realize something was happening?
Or was it something else entirely?
If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the thing was confused.
Abruptly, a whirring sound inside of the Bot got louder, and then louder still. It seemed to be staring directly at him now. Ethan swallowed, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down his face now. With a jerk, the Bot raised one arm. Its hand opened up and a gun barrel appeared.
“Kasumi–” Ethan began, breaking the silence as he started to squeeze the trigger.
“Got it!” Kasumi replied.
Abruptly, the light went out of the Bot’s eyes and it froze up. All the sounds that had been coming from it ceased. All around them they heard a lot of clanking and banging, and then silence. A long moment went by.
“Fuck,” Ethan said, slowly lowering his rifle. “That was way, way too close.”
“Yes,” Kasumi agreed quietly. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” he muttered, eyes still locked onto the Death Bot. “So it really worked?”
“Yes, it did what it was supposed to do. They’re fried. Not just off, but fried. They aren’t coming back on. We did it, Ethan.”
“Good. Now, uh,” he stepped cautiously forward and poked at the Bot. It barely moved. He sighed. “Let’s see if we can figure out how to get around this thing.”