He headed toward her, his rifle on his shoulder, and raised a hand in greeting, a curiously relaxed expression on his face. “You doing okay? No one took a shot at you that you forgot to mention?”
“There wasn’t anyone left alive on my way here,” Jia replied. “You were rather…thorough.”
Erik shrugged. “More convenient that way.” He looked around. “Right now, all I care about is making sure the terrorists don’t kill anyone.” He tilted his head toward a hall across the room. “Now that you found me, we should go get those damned bots before they decide to flood the platform. Stunning someone who is already hurt could give them a heart attack.” His eyes lowered for a moment, and his mouth curled up into a faint grin. “Speaking of stuns, you gave up on the stun pistol? Not complaining, and I like that you’re using the gun I got you.”
“It’s because of the bots.” Jia huffed. “I’ll still argue carrying a stun pistol has value.”
“Whatever works. If it takes down a terrorist, I’ve got no complaints.” Erik felt around inside his duster and in the exterior pockets. “I’m almost out of mags for my TR-7. I have a few for my pistol. How about you? I’m guessing it won’t be a few bots.”
“I brought some extras because it was Halloween, but not a huge number. I expected to be arresting drunks, not fighting terrorists.” Jia glanced around the room and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “It’s ghoulish but necessary.”
“What is?” Erik asked, his eyes darting back and forth in curious search.
Jia pointed at a dead terrorist and then the rifle lying beside him. She holstered her pistol. “There’s a certain poetic justice in using the criminals’ weapons to stop their murderous scheme while helping save lives.”
A huge grin took Erik’s face over. “Now you’re thinking like a grizzled anti-insurgent veteran. I’ve had to borrow weapons from men I’ve killed more than once. I’ll grab an extra rifle and some mags, but I’m keeping the TR-7 until I’m dry.”
“I’m not complaining. The weapon serves you well in this sort of situation.” Jia walked toward one of the dead men and patted him down for magazines. She found two and tucked them into her pockets before grabbing the man’s rifle, then nodded.
Her stomach tightened. Neo SoCal wasn’t some frontier planet mired in an insurgency. Erik’s anecdote only confirmed that the situation had spun out of control.
She might have been naïve about the level of crime and corruption, but a blatant and open terrorist attack was shocking regardless of one’s level of cynicism.
Erik jogged to another body to liberate the ammo and rifle from the corpse while Jia continued to gather magazines. He headed toward another dead terrorist, looking ridiculous with his two guns, five barrels between them.
Both detectives spent a couple of minutes retrieving extra ammo, including ejecting the half-used mags from other rifles. By the time they were done, they’d collected enough bullets to make a decent stand against a small army.
“There is unusual lidar activity,” Emma reported. “Someone has gone to the trouble of using a laser jammer and multiple flares on the opposite side of the building. There’s a high probability that they may be attempting to cover their escape. They are near the location where the security bots are gathering. That might explain why they waited until this point to deploy them.”
Both detectives broke into a jog.
“Those assholes are not getting away,” Erik growled as he hit the opening to a narrow hall. “We let them get away and they’ll only try harder, plus they’ll have information about response times and tactics.”
“Are we sure there are even any terrorists left?” Jia asked. “I know what you said, but they might be controlling the bots remotely to distract us. There might be some other scheme.”
Emma scoffed. “Given the level of jamming activity, EMP use, and other tricks, I’m dubious they are controlling them from any appreciable distance. I would fly to intercept whoever is on the other side of the building, but I possess a startingly painful lack of weapons.”
Jia rolled her eyes. They didn’t have time to worry about offending an AI’s feelings over her theories.
“I’d stick a few guns on you if they’d let me,” Erik offered. “But I doubt even Ragnar’s going to let me get away with it.”
“There might or might not be any terrorists left in the building,” Jia muttered. “We’ll find out soon enough when we get there.”
The detectives turned at an intersection. A distinct clicking and tapping grew in volume as they continued their journey, joined by something else—a human shout.
Jia didn’t bother to tell Emma she was right. The AI already had enough of an ego.
“Hurry,” a man yelled. “We don’t have much time. They’re preparing everything now, but if they don’t have to use it, they won’t.”
“We have our orders,” another man replied more quietly. “We should be following them.”
“The plan failed. We’re the only two who haven’t been captured or killed. This whole thing was stupid. I should have left after everything in Florida. The others will rescue us. There’s nothing to be gained by dying here.”
The second man scoffed. “They aren’t coming to rescue us. They are coming to reinforce us.”
“B-but those cops are too much!”
The overlapping taps and clicks from before were joined by a dull buzzing noise. Judging from the cacophony, there was a horde of security bots in the room.
“Shut your mouth, coward,” growled the other man. “Part of our duty is to die for the cause. We just need to stall them until the surprise comes. Our brothers and sisters are almost ready. The other police haven’t come. We just have those two cops to take care of. If we handle them, they won’t need to use anything else.”
“Don’t you—” The first man sucked in a breath. “Did you hear that? Someone’s coming.”
Jia and Erik exchanged looks and slowed as they approached the final turn. According to Emma’s directions, it would take them to an open nano-augmented reality room, similar to the ones at the Pacific Tactical Center, but meant for far less violent scenarios. With the EMP damage, it was just another empty room with little cover—not the place Jia wanted to have a firefight.
The detectives paused at the corner.
Erik held up the spare rifle. “I’ll toss it as a distraction, and we’ll both fire. We don’t have time to mess around with trying to take these guys alive,” he whispered. “If it’s not the bots, it’s their friends. They didn’t go through the trouble of trying to hide what they were doing if they don’t have a halfway-decent plan. You fine with clearing these guys out?”
“Yes.” Jia gripped her rifle tightly and took a deep breath. She lifted her chin. “Let’s teach them they picked a poor career path.”
Erik chuckled quietly. “We need to work on your trash talk. Three, two, one…” He tossed the spare rifle toward the far wall. Shots rang out.
The detectives crouched and rushed around the corner. The reflection of the red emergency light off the silver floor deepened the eerie atmosphere of the wide, empty room. Two terrorists stood near a back wall while a swarm of six-legged security bots scuttled near the center of the room. The terrorists turned away from their previous target, the thrown rifle, panicked understanding dawning on their faces.
Jia aimed and fired. There was no time for hesitation. Even a small delay might doom her partner. Her burst blasted from her rifle and ripped into one of the terrorists. The other man fell with a howl, and a couple of seconds passed before she realized Erik had shot simultaneously.
The security bots froze for a few seconds and pivoted toward the detectives, the motion almost a ripple in a lake of metal.
“Don’t suppose you can hack them, Emma?” Erik asked. “Using my PNIU as a relay?”
“It’d take too long to explain, but the terrorists did the equivalent of blowing up half the system, probably to ensure that kind of thing wouldn’t happen. I’m att
empting to implement alternative methods, but I recommend simply shooting them for maximum efficiency, especially since I’m distracted by working on a few other things.”
Jia narrowed her eyes. “They aren’t attacking. They’re not even moving.” She backed away slowly. “What are they waiting for?”
Erik switched to four-barrel mode. “Something not good. Something we’re not going to like.”
“I commandeered a drone that flew into the area and am using it as a visual relay,” Emma explained. “It was shot down by a heavy rifle a few seconds after I brought it in range, but filtering for the flares and other interference, there appears to be a large unmanned cargo flitter backing up against the wall in your location. There are multiple people in the forward tractor, but the trailer is too thick for thermal readings. The drone has only thermal and visual spectrum sensors, so I couldn’t tell much more, but there could be a large number of men inside. Possibly dozens or even scores, given the size.”
“The reinforcements.” Jia gritted her teeth. “That’s what they’re waiting for.”
Erik walked toward the tossed rifle but kept his TR-7 aimed at the frozen security bots. “If we wait, we’ll have to deal with whoever’s coming and a room full of bots.” He grabbed the rifle. “Let’s clear them out before the terrorists realize what’s happened.”
“If we fire, they’re almost certain to respond,” Jia pointed out.
“We could use some cover against whoever’s coming in, too.” Erik looked around in earnest. “But I don’t have an easy solution for that.”
“Ah, that I can do something about,” Emma offered cheerfully. “The nanites, by their nature, are more EMP resistant than other systems. I’ve been studying the technical capabilities of these nano-AR systems as part of my scenario preparation at your club. The underlying nanites generally gather their necessary power from the main system, but they all maintain a small backup charge. I should be able to make minor modifications to the room, but I can only do it once before using up the charge. Any major charge will likely require the power stored in the entire room.”
“I don’t intend to keep fighting different battles here.” Erik looked at the empty silver floor and the dead bodies on the other side of the room. “Give us some cover near the opening of the hallway. Several rows if you can. That’ll cut down on the chance of us getting shot.”
The silver floor twisted and contorted to form thick barriers. The detectives darted forward and took positions on opposite sides of the hallway opening, each comfortable behind their own makeshift defensive position. Erik set the secondary rifle down.
Jia braced her rifle on the top of the barrier. “We need to clear out these bots before th—”
A massive explosion shook the entire room. Jia and Erik ducked behind their barriers. The back wall blew inward, blasting chunks of wall, along with a huge plume of smoke and fire into the room. Rubble buried the bodies of the downed terrorists and a large number of the security bots.
Jia peeked over the barrier. “So much for making this easy,” she muttered.
The machines came to life and scurried toward Erik and Jia.
“I’ll clear the bots,” Jia shouted. “You keep the reinforcements from coming in.”
She didn’t wait for a response before poking her gun around her barrier and opening fire. The modest height of the security bots forced Jia to fire at an angle, limiting the effectiveness of her attacks to secondary suppression fire, but Erik made up for it as his gun roared, vomiting bullets toward the smoking hole in the wall. Several people cried out in pain from the darkness.
Return bullets erupted from the smoke, bouncing off Emma’s makeshift defenses.
Jia obliterated the unarmored bots as she swept her weapon back and forth. She didn’t even look at the hole.
Erik would handle it.
She made quick progress on her task. Civilian-grade bots might be useful for stopping a drunk, but not an angry detective taking on terrorists. She kept up her attack until her gun clicked empty. “Cover the bots while I reload,” she shouted to Erik.
He turned the wrath of his favorite weapon on the machines. Heart pounding, Jia yanked out the magazine and reloaded in one smooth motion like she’d spent thirty years on the frontier fighting insurgents seven days a week.
“Taking over,” Jia barked. She resumed obliterating thousands upon thousands of credits worth of security property.
Erik fired another burst into the thinning smoke and stopped. He ejected his magazine and slapped in a new one. “Down to my last TR-7 mag.”
Disappointment tinged his voice.
A group of terrorists emerged from the smoke and sprayed the room with weapons fire, shouting as they did so. They didn’t have access to Emma’s barrier, but two large piles of debris formed from the earlier explosion were almost as good, and they ran toward them. Erik’s quick bursts killed two terrorists before they could make it behind their shield.
“We’re almost clear on the bots.” Jia stopped sweeping with her rifle and instead aimed single shots near the center of a bot. Two bullets per bot seemed sufficient to disable it.
If she was going to keep ending up in these kinds of situations, she would need to carry a lot more ammo, or maybe a few grenades.
Jia scoffed under her breath. She was turning into Erik more strongly with each passing day, and she couldn’t argue that was a bad thing anymore.
Jia’s gun ran dry as she finished off the remainder of the bots. She ducked to reload.
Erik tossed the TR-7 down and brought up the other rifle. A brave terrorist took the opportunity to peek out from his cover and earned a bullet through the eye for his courage.
“I haven’t seen any grenades,” Jia asked. “Have you?”
Erik jerked his head down as several terrorists popped around the corner to fire at him. Bullets thudded against his barrier. Jia took a few quick shots and dropped some of the enemies, the others retreating behind their cover.
“They would have used them if they had them by now,” Erik finally replied, his voice low. “And if they had more guys, they would have come out by now. This will be an easy final clean-up.”
“We need to get around them,” Jia suggested. “Emma’s got several barriers for us.”
Erik grunted. “Give the count and I’ll move.”
“Anything else?”
He grinned. “Yeah, shoot anyone who’s not me.”
Jia hunched as she made her way to a distant barrier.
She lifted three fingers.
Dropped one. Dropped another. Dropped the last.
She sprinted around the corner and sprayed a burst. Erik spun around the other corner, firing. The new angles of both detectives offered them new victims. They thinned the terrorists' forces before settling in behind new barriers.
“You can save yourself a lot of pain if you just surrender,” Jia shouted. She expected a few bullets to come her way, but the terrorists didn’t fire. “You have to realize by now that you’re outclassed.”
Intimidation might not work, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
“The woman has a point,” Erik appended, a huge smile on his face. “There are a lot of dead Grayheads on this floor. Your dying will accomplish nothing.”
“We die for the cause!” screamed a terrorist. “All our sacrifices will save humanity. You would never understand, you puppet of the unenlightened and corrupt government.”
“You die for the cause?” Jia scoffed. “Killing innocent people isn’t going to convince the Leems, Zitarks or anyone else to take over the UTC. You would be pitiable if you weren’t trying to kill innocent people.”
“You’re nothing but mindless cogs,” snarled the voice. “You’ll best serve society by dying.”
Jia rolled her eyes. “At least when I was ignorant, my beliefs made some sort of logical sense. Surrender now and you might have a chance of getting out of prison before you die, you zealous idiots. But you don’t seem smart enough for that.”
She turned toward Erik and mouthed, “I think we can get them to come at us if we push hard enough.”
Erik nodded and grinned. “Makes no difference to me,” he shouted to the terrorists, the sound infused with menace. “As far as I’m concerned, you all are nothing but a live-fire training exercise. It’ll be a nice story to tell some alien ambassador someday. I can see it already. ‘Mr. Honorable Funny-Name-I-Can’t-Pronounce Leem Ambassador. Can you actually believe we had humans so stupid as to kill other humans, thinking you’ll take over? Maybe we could trade our fools for your fools.’ Then we’ll laugh. I’m sure the Leem Ambassador will find it hysterical.”
A terrorist screamed and opened fire. The bullets plinked off the barrier.
Jia held her fire. “Touchy! You know, if you don’t die, you could consider other options. I’m sure the aliens will need pets.”
Several terrorists shot at the detectives and shouted obscenities.
Erik, still crouching behind the barrier, reloaded. “You know, if someday we find out that aliens love to eat humans, we can ship you Grayheads off. That way, you all can finally serve the species you love so much as delicious snacks.”
Half the terrorists broke cover to charge Erik, leaving them easy prey for Jia. She put a round into the first man, then aimed and fired at the next before repeating the process. Soon, five more dying terrorists lay on the ground.
The shattered charge left the remaining terrorists distracted. Erik popped up to put holes in a few more, leaving only a single terrorist.
She might not feel the amusement her partner did, but a grim satisfaction filled her.
These men weren’t petty thieves driven by circumstance or even greedy gangsters. They had chosen to become terrorists, chosen to become killers. No one had forced them to target innocent people in pursuit of the betrayal of their own species.
They were disgusting.
“Ready to surrender now?” Jia called. “You’re dying for a pointless cause. Your comrades are dead or dying, and right now, all your living organization members are being loaded up in an ambulance. You failed. Your mission was a waste of manpower and resources.”
Shattered Truth Page 37