Dark Phase by Jonathan Davison Read Free Book Online Page A

variant that Sarazen had yet to encounter. Its limbs were large, reinforced structurally to offer increased physical power, its torso rounded and armoured. It was an 'enforcer', one of The Mother’s minions. Sarazen uttered a pathetic noise in astonishment and in apparent fear as it moved inside his apartment uninvited and without the courtesy of a greeting. He looked over to Keera who remained in her pod still silent and impassive. Sarazen could expect no aid from her; she was much as his enemy now as the enforcer which moved forward with increasingly menacing intent. The troubleshooter barely had time to contemplate how his carefully laid plan had failed so miserably before the enforcer was upon him raising his giant arms into the air in order to smash the life out of his prey. Sarazen had not experienced combat, but he had watched and analysed the organics as they did battle. He had learned one thing that might aid him in the coming conflict, the fact that the small and nimble can often outwit the slow and bulky. As the colossal arms of the enforcer swung down to punish the troubleshooter, he dived out of the way and under a sturdy table which graced the centre of the room. Sarazen pulled his limbs in tight as he hoped that the enforcer had not seen him scrabble beneath. His answer was swift as the table was smashed into two pieces with the mighty force of the pounding enforcer's fists. The table took the majority of the blow, but not all of it, and Sarazen’s head and shoulders were rocked by the splintering materials and his upper torso pierced by a metal strut which had sheared in two and found its way under Sarazen’s pectoral plate. The pain was immediately felt by the scurrying prey and he tried to ignore his on-board sensors as they fired up sending his core into a muddled frenzy. He had to get out of the living space at all costs; in the confined environment he stood little chance against the powerhouse assassin. Scrambling to his feet, Sarazen bolted toward the exit door. He expected any moment to be pummelled from behind as he reached the previously opened portal, only to find it tightly shut and unresponsive to commands from the control panel. Sarazen turned only to see the glistening hulk of the enforcer before him at point blank range and he dropped to the floor as the enforcer's violent effort missed his quarry and smashed through the thin white polymer door showering the cowering troubleshooter in thousands of tiny shards. Thinking swiftly, and before the enforcer could muster another blow, Sarazen leapt through the broken portal tearing his weave on the sharp remnants as his body fell untidily into the hallway outside in a heap. There was no time to collect himself; he had to run as fast as his design would allow. He had only reached the elevator at the end of the hall when he realised that excessive physical movement increased his core temperature significantly. There was no way he could keep up the fight if he burned himself out. Engaging the elevator, he caught a sight of the marauding enforcer striding down the corridor, his companion Keera standing behind it as the elevator door slid shut and the mechanism engaged.
    The elevator descended at an agonisingly slow pace, but Sarazen felt the relief of momentary safety inside the steel encased box. The tired mechanism whirred, but the only other sounds that could be heard were the whispering servos buried deep within Sarazen’s limbs as he clutched at his gaping wound to assess the scale of the injury. There was suddenly a distant tremor and a disturbing clang of metal upon metal. The sound came from above and Sarazen looked to the elevator’s ceiling just as another almighty crash rang out and the ceiling of the elevator bulged as if some great weight had struck it from above. The elevator lurched, its high tensile cables struggling to maintain their integrity and even though the elevator was still descending, Sarazen scrabbled at the large sliding