Cold Snap

by Macky Santiago

  “Three minutes, but that takes me out of the fight.” JP says.

  Behind us, I hear the Huntsman charging up for another blast. I swear under my breath in every language I know. We need to lure this thing away from the girls.

  “Run it now, Jean Philippe. Bell, guide the good captains through to the extraction points. Leon, brace for impact, but after that, stay with them until soldier bucket is in full swing. Then, you and JP rejoin the party. The rest of you, on me. Let’s dance with tall, dark and ugly.” I say, bracing for impact as the Huntsman fires again. “On my mark!”

  The blast cracks through the darkness, lighting up the town square with an eerie green glow. It slams into Leon’s shield hard enough to my teeth rattle.

  “Now!” I yell, still shaken.

  Iñigo and I leap with practiced grace off our respective hovercrafts and make our assault. From their positions, Mick and Mila unload shot after shot at the Huntsman.

  I sink into the neuroweave for a few seconds. Not deep enough to achieve full interface, but enough to sync up better with Mick, Mila and Iñigo. I have to save energy, which means I can't afford to connect with them on this level for more than the space of one breath.

  Everything slow. I feel my friends. I feel their anticipation, their eagerness to be in sync for the next wave of damage we planned to visit upon our enemy.

  Just as quickly as it slowed, the world explodes back into action and we descend upon the Huntsman.

  We pummel this thing with everything we have. Blades flashing, blasters and ordnance exploding… But the Huntsman barely staggers under the hailstorm we unleash.

  While I expected it, it's still disturbing to see the Huntsman's nanite shell reform and rearrange itself to repair the damage we've dealt.

  We circle it, relentless in our assault, diverting its attention from the two vehicles speeding further and further away.

  I hear thuds as Mila and Mick finally join the battle at a closer range. They switch to short-range projectiles and explosives, leaving the Huntsman in flames and riddled with holes.

  For a moment, I believe that my fears of a prolonged battle with this thing won’t come to pass. That we won’t have to lead it away from the transports. But any hope that we can destroy it on the spot fizzles out as it unleashes a radial concussion pulse that knocks us all back.

  My vision swims. I am winded, but I get up and start shooting, as Mila and Mick do too.

  The Huntsman limps quickly away from us. At this distance, I see it trailing nanites. Like a swarm transporting their quarry, I watch in horror as some of the surrounding metallic debris finds its way to the Huntsman’s body as it begins to mend itself.

  Of course this one was different. It wasn't just self-healing. No, this one apparently incorporated metals and who knows what else into itself, like it did earlier with the Huntsmen we destroyed.

  The fact that it ignored four prone enemies instead of attempting any kills means we aren’t its prime objective. And it’s healing. Not good.

  “Mick, full payload! We’ll cover you during cooldown!” I command.

  Mick rights himself and becomes a fountain of death and destruction, raining fire on the Huntsman. It stops moving, but I don’t relax an iota.

  When the smoke clears and Mick begins cooldown, all we see is a melting slag heap. It makes no sense. We can’t have melted down all that Physicorum. I mean, Mick could, but at the expense of a few city blocks. That the Huntsman didn’t explode in a way where we would need to contain the blast tells me this was not a victory.

  I spot it then, much too late for comfort. Around the quickly solidifying mass, right at its edges, I see them. Cracks. Small fissures.

  I lunge forward. Mick and Iñigo are quick to come to my aid, and together, we lift the heap aside and uncover a hole in the street.

  It must have broken through to the lower tunnels during the barrage. And we gave it all the firepower it needed to do that.

  I look around frantically for any vehicle we can use. “Leon! It’s beneath you. Fully shield from below! Bell, I need you to scan for that thing! We lost it and it’s coming to you!” I warn my team.

  Finally, behind me, I spot a transport craft. It looks relatively intact and I run toward it. Getting into the driver’s seat, I hope to the higher powers that it’s functional. Mercifully, it hums to life with just a nudge of the ignition disk. I gun the engine as my strike team piles onto the vehicle from all sides.

  Up ahead, we hear an explosion and the same eerie green light from the Huntsman’s energy blast illuminates the street. It shoots upward like a beacon before dissolving into the dark.

  Which would have been fine, if I didn’t also hear Z and Theron swear and the princesses scream over the comms.

  Heart in my throat, I check my HUD for life signs. I would have been more comforted to see that all life signs were stable, had it not been for the deathly silence over comms.

  “Bellona! Sit rep!” I call.

  No response.

  As we speed up the street, the chaos erupting among enemy ranks greets us. Bots and synths try to suppress the resistance coming from the human contingent of the battalion. Not all humans, mind you, but there’s enough of them causing trouble to be a distraction.

  I’m willing to bet that the ones causing a ruckus are most likely Faldanians. They must really love the princesses if they're defying the Conglomerate this way. Or maybe they’re just decent human beings who don’t want two little girls to die.

  “Guys?” I ask calmly as I can. “Someone talk to me…”

  Just after we crest a small incline, I stop trying to contact the team and hit the brakes hard. The transport comes to a screeching halt and skids to the side. Just a few more feet and we would have toppled into a fissure several meters wide. No doubt this was the Huntsman’s handiwork.

  Not too far from where we stopped, I see both hovercrafts are powered down and on their sides. Leon has cast a protective dome around both vehicles and Bellona has taken shelter within it at ground level.

  All around them, the mutinous soldiers are slowly overrun. The few synths that have managed to break through the ranks unopposed have positioned themselves within shooting distance of the transports. They open fire on Leon's energy dome.

  “Captain, we have tanks incoming. No sign of the Huntsman, but scans indicate it is immobile. The energy readings I’m picking up from it are off the charts though, and they keep spiking upwards. We can punch through any of the synths and even the tanks, but we can’t manage that Huntsman and keep the princesses safe.” Bellona reports. “Both transports are functional, and the captains and the princesses are coming to. They’re banged up, but not concussed.”

  “Jean Philippe?” I ask, pushing the rising dread in my stomach down. We need that soldier bucket protocol.

  “A minute and a half at least.” He says. “But even if we manage to deploy…”

  “Captain!” Bellona interrupts and I see it. The Huntsman. But it's not exactly the same one we fought earlier.

  Now standing ten meters tall, the Huntsman hulks toward us, blocking the clearest exit to our rendezvous point with the Diamond and the Pernix. Its form bristles with discarded tech and wrecked vehicles, nanites crawling all over its new skin in frenetic green lines. Flanked by the two assault tanks Bellona warned us about, all three begin to glow as they start to gather energy for an attack.

  The fact that I could smell the ozone displacement from this distance meant the energy output of that Huntsman behemoth has doubled.

  No time for words. If this is the enemy’s winning hand, I need to play mine.

  For the second time within the last twenty-four hours, and for the last time today, I dive deep into the neuroweave and link up with all seven of my crew.

  The world slows down once more and I am bathed in a galaxy of synapses, zeroes and ones. I feel the pull of everyone’s collective minds and anchor them to mine, their thoughts orbiting me as I bring us into one accord.

&n
bsp; Almost instantaneously, we are one and everyone knows what to do.

  I only have about fifteen minutes of full interface, so we need to make this last gamble count.

  I move in slow motion, the world around me almost completely still, the noises silenced to a distant hum. I run and jump, landing on both Iñigo and Mick’s open ‘palms’. They launch me forward across the small chasm with ease. I land on the other side and survey the battlefield.

  The stretch of road we need to clear isn’t long, but it’s littered with enemy bots and synths shooting at Leon’s protective dome.

  I draw one of my blasters and ignite one of my lumenblades. Just before I wade into the fray, I begin shooting at the targets closest to Leon’s protective field.

  When the Huntsman and tanks fire, Leon will need to disable the protective field and deal with the blast. That will leave the transports vulnerable. I need to neutralize enemy units that I can’t cut down in the next few seconds. With too many on the field, I reach reach deeper into the neuroweave and coordinate our attack.

  While shooting, my heart thrums in time with Bellona’s processors. I feed my choice of targets to the team, and we tear through them in seconds. Mick and Mila take out the targets nearest the downed transports, while Iñigo and I make short work of the targets that are a little further away.

  As our shots and blows land, the tanks and the Huntsman fire pure destructive energy at the two transports.

  All at once, I am pulled in so many directions.

  I am with Leon and Bellona, calculating power levels and dissipation ratios in pico-seconds. We cut all power to the dome and throw the strongest counter shield we can manage at the coming blast.

  I am with Mila, eliminating enemies shooting at the transports. As her targets fall, I shoot at mine. Our aim is perfect each time, the quick discharge of my blaster and the paced firing of Mila’s rifle taking on a nearly musical rhythm.

  I am with Mick, fighting in concert with Mila's targeting protocols. We fire heavy ordnance at precisely the right coordinates, so that each explosion takes out as many clustered targets as possible.

  I am with Iñigo, eliminating the targets unfazed by the sudden wave of explosions, and disposing of them before they can shoot at the now exposed hovercrafts. We hack and slash our way through enemy synths and bots in a lethal cadence of steel and fire.

  I am with Jean Philippe, playing puppet master and overclocking our systems, so we can finally see if the ace up our sleeve is worth a damn. Linked up like this, my processors clocking in sync with Bellona’s, Jean Philippe crunches down on the soldier bucket protocol and completes it in half the projected time.

  I am with Doctor Capaldi, taking lock and stock of our human charges, checking for concussions and fractures, healing any cuts and easing any bruises. Reinforcing windows and wind shields, just in case we find some way to use the hovercrafts.

  I experience all of this in real as the enemy fire strikes Leon’s shield.

  The dissipation shockwave is larger than we expected. Enemies close to the impact zone are knocked prone. Leon’s shield wavers for a moment under the concussive force of whatever energy we were not able to properly dissipate.

  The strike team and I make use of the commotion to push hard and clear a path to the convoy.

  As we close the distance, I find myself feeling both present, but also far away at the same time. Full interface means everything happens both in real time and slow motion.

  So, it is surreal watching the girls exit the vehicles with the captains because I am both in the Doctor’s consciousness and standing a few feet away.

  Meanwhile, somewhere in the distance, the faraway whine of elite Conglomerate tech heralds another assault. Seems like their plan is to pin us down and blow the city up around us.

  My mind races as I weigh all our options, scenarios we’ve run versus scenarios we are creating on the fly. There are still too many of them where we end up either captured or dead.

  In my periphery, mutiny among the humans is at a stalemate. A few more synths and assault bots break loose and launch an offensive attack. As one, Mila, Iñigo and Mick begin counter-offensive patterns while I continue to sift through our options.

  I am everywhere at once: reviewing countless possibilities, present in every shot fired and strike made, holding up our defenses as the next energy beam is discharged.

  The aftershocks feel both real and dreamlike. A faraway sensation in the face of my frantic attempt to find the clearest line of sight to our survival and escape.

  One of the few things that anchor me to reality are the princesses. They are nearby, crying but trying to stay brave. I want to hug them and tell them things will turn out fine. But I am too many things all at once.

  I steal a glance at Theron and Z.

  Theron is busy shooting at the enemy, taunting them as he does. He’s always loudest when backed into a corner. The sheer level of profanity he is shouting at such high decibel levels does not bode well. Somehow, amidst all the bluster, he manages to yell instructions to his crew. For the life of me, I cannot make out what he is saying.

  Z is doing what I can’t. He's calming the girls down, and reassuring them that we’ll get them out. He glances at me for a second, a silent question. I give him no answers, because right now, I have none.

  “We need an extraction plan and we need one now.” Z shouts. “What’s your play?”

  "Hey Doc! Cover for me!” Theron shoves his wrist cannons into the Doctor’s ‘hands’, and the Doctor takes them begrudgingly. I feel him evoke some of his battle protocols as he begins shooting. “We need to get to the Pernix and the Diamond. Work with me, Yuki. What are our closest physical rendezvous points?”

  I rattle off all the rendezvous points and exit routes on my holo-display. Theron shakes his head. “No. Physical rendezvous points. Where can the ships be the closest to our location physically? Straightest lines only. Little to no detours.”

  In the distance, I hear the behemoth charging up once again.

  I lay down the geographic points across the entire space station as instructed. Theron's eye catches on one point on the schematic. “There.” He points. “Right bleeding there.”

  Z looks confused. But before he can comment, the third energy blast hits us and the shockwave sends debris flying our way. The girls run to Z and the Doctor takes time away from shooting to check if the girls are injured.

  Theron and I are still looking at the ‘sky’. We know for sure that behind the artificial atmo-panels is open space.

  “You can’t keep this up for much longer. We need the last of this…” He gestures toward me. “… to do something quick and big. Or we may as well give up now.”

  I recognize that look he gives me. Theron only ever gives me that look when I’m doing something dangerous with my nanites. Even in the chaos I can see the glow from my face as the nanites trace teal fire through my scars.

  I briefly recall a time when seeing my nanites activate at the highest level made him uncomfortable. Now, everyone flinches except him.

  How he even knows I’m on the last legs of today’s final full interface is beyond me. And yet, I appreciate it. Funny where the mind wanders in the face of imminent capture or death.

  “There’s a Conglomerate blockade forming out there. We’ll need to get to the ships in the next seven minutes and forty-five seconds if we want an eighty-three percent chance at escaping. Every five seconds we lose past that point, our success rate drops by six point three percent.” I rattle off the statistics in perfect unison with Bellona.

  “Let me worry about the blockade. Can you get us up there?” Theron asks. There’s a familiar mad glint in his eye now.