“Don’t tempt me to stop,” she muttered. “Backup en route, arriving soon.”
Erik took a deep breath and fired at the yellow flitter again. It was over a hundred meters away and waggling like an animal having a seizure. A moment later, smoke trailed from the vehicle. Overlapping gunshots followed from deeper in the plant, joining Erik’s and Jia’s.
The vehicle pitched to its side as it sped toward the ground. The flitter passed over the fence and smashed into a small building near the corner of the grounds. A massive explosion ripped the flitter apart and blew off the side of the building, tossing small sharp burning chunks of the vehicle and the wall into the air.
“That’s why you don’t carry a lot of explosives in your flitter.” Erik smirked triumphantly.
Jia fired a few more rounds before giving him an incredulous look. “Are you serious?”
“That’s advice for other people,” he clarified, waving a hand. “Not for us. We haven’t been blown up by our own ammo.”
She shook her head, looking at the attackers. “The month just started.”
Another enemy flitter crashed on the road outside the fence line, skidding, but the survivors had dressed their rough formation and were headed toward a corner of the complex—the one previously defended by two now-smoking towers. No one fired from the far towers, the guards more concerned with avoiding missiles.
“There’s a problem,” Emma reported.
Erik grunted. “Other than the army that’s about to land?”
Emma broke away from the blue flitter, which slowed and dropped toward the ground in preparation for landing inside the fence with the rest of the enemies. “My armor held, but they got a few lucky hits on the grav emitters. I’m being forced down. I should be able to repair enough of the damage to get back to regular flight, but it’ll take a few minutes.”
“Time isn’t our friend right now,” Erik argued.
Jia pointed to the descending flitters. “They’re nowhere near any of the main storage tanks.”
“It’s also easier to hit the tanks than the towers,” Erik observed. “This must not just be about blowing up the plant.”
“A large number of additional gun goblins appear to be en route on foot in multiple groups from additional directions,” Emma explained. “They just emerged from different buildings in the nearby area. They’re shooting out drones as they move closer, so it’s not like they’re stealth-minded. I’ve relayed their positions to the local Dispatch, but the first group is close to where the other flitters landed. The only security guards near the landing zone were in the destroyed towers. They are unconscious…at best.”
Erik lost sight of the landing flitters after they descended behind a tall, wide building. “It doesn’t matter if they’re at the storage tanks.” He jogged forward. “If they get inside, they can reach almost anywhere in the plant.”
“Oh, the insurance premiums,” murmured Malachi, who was cowering on the ground, his hands still over his head. “My quarterly bonus. Gone. I was going to buy a new flitter with that. Maybe even an MX 60.”
A massive explosion erupted near the landing site. Additional alarms sounded.
“Warning! Warning! Fires now affect buildings B32 and B33. All personnel please evacuate while the fire is contained.”
“What the hell happened, Emma?” Erik asked.
“They fired a rocket at a building near their landing site. They also threw grenades to blow a hole in the fence. Local police reinforcements are now in pitched battles with the reinforcements, and they have stopped the criminals’ advance. The gathered forces are now at numbers you should be able to handle.” A hint of boredom underlaid her tone. “Oh, now they’re tossing smoke grenades. How quaint.”
“How many guys can you see?” Erik pressed.
“I can directly observe thirty,” Emma replied. “There are odd readings on someone still inside the blue flitter. I’m not able to get direct visual confirmation, but there’s a high probability that he’s a Tin Man with advanced levels of augmentation.”
Jia hissed. “Talos.”
“I doubt they’d run a fleet of flitters and rain rockets down, but if it is Talos, there’s a reason they’re attacking this plant.” Erik inclined his head toward the plume of smoke rising from the corner of the complex. “Security and the local EZ have everything else locked down, and I think that might have been the point. It’s a distraction.”
Jia ejected her magazine and shoved a fresh one into her rifle. “Then let’s offer a distraction of our own.”
Chapter Sixteen
Jia and Erik sprinted between buildings, their point-to-point movement in sync without any words exchanged. A rocket hissed away from the concealed intruders, flying halfway across the plant before exploding against the side of another building. The attack wasn’t close to a tank.
She narrowed her eyes. “They could easily have hit a tank now that they’re on the ground. I think you’re right about it being a distraction.”
“Yeah.” Erik sprinted to the cover of a new building and flattened his back against the wall. The dense, dark smoke in the area drifted throughout the area, overwhelming the buildings.
Thick white powder floated in the heated air—fire retardant. The flickering red, yellow, and orange from the flames diminished with each passing second, victims of the retardant, but the fire-control system could do little about the outdoor smoke. Shadowy outlines of men, guns, and flitters lay in the distance. Erik raised his hand to signal Jia to move up. He counted down with his fingers.
Jia and Erik sprinted forward and sprayed the rifles into the smoke. A suspect screamed and fell to the ground. Men rushed behind the flitters for cover before returning fire. Their outlines were the only thing visible, turning the whole encounter into a bizarre and lethal shadow-puppet show.
Jia and Erik ran between two buildings. The suspects shouted to each other.
Jia squeezed off a few shots, frowning as she tried to concentrate. The constant gunfire smothered the men’s shouts, but that wasn’t what was confusing her. Tones rose and fell with their words. They weren’t speaking English, and they weren’t speaking Mandarin, either.
“Oh,” she declared. “They’re speaking Cantonese!”
While Jia hadn’t mastered all Chinese dialects, her mother had insisted that learning Cantonese was a necessity because of their relatives in Hong Kong. Other than through correspondence, Jia had not met those relatives, but it never hurt to learn a new language.
Active machine translation made for a slightly awkward experience, and Lan Lin wouldn’t insult a relative by not speaking to them in their preferred language without machine aid.
“My Cantonese sucks unless it’s about ordering booze or food. It’s all on you.” Erik nailed another man with a burst. “What are they saying?”
“They’re telling their ‘big brother’ to get into the building, and they’ll handle the security guards,” Jia commented. She jerked back, a bullet whizzing by her head. “I don’t think they realize cops were here from the beginning. That means it has nothing to do with us.”
“Probably, and ‘big brother?’” Erik emptied his magazine. “As in, a triad?”
“Unless it just happens to be a heavily armed family.” Jia popped off a single shot, nailing one man in the head. His shadowy form jerked, and he fell onto his back. “I don’t know if I’m relieved it’s not Talos or annoyed.”
“I don’t care as long as it ends with fewer breathing scumbags.”
A tall, broad-shouldered form emerged from deeper in the smoke, the outline of a huge machine gun in his arms. He swiveled toward Erik and Jia. The machine gun screamed to life, vomiting a stream of bullets. Both detectives jumped back. His gunfire shredded the corner of the building providing their cover, knocking off pieces that pelted their bodies and faces. The deafening roar overwhelmed the other sounds. A long moment passed before the machine gun ceased fire, and its owner jogged back into the smoke. His friends opened fire,
keeping Erik and Jia pinned.
“There’s a good probability that is our Tin Man,” Emma reported. “I can’t get a clear visual, and since my body’s down, I don’t have good line-of-sight to use the other sensors, but thermals from borrowed drones strongly suggest it.”
“I’m betting he’s big bro,” Erik muttered. “Whatever they’re planning, they must think they can pull it off quickly. If it’s not Talos, they’re well-equipped gangsters, and it’s only a matter of time before the local cops overwhelm their reinforcements.”
“The Tin Man has entered a building currently blocked from your line of sight,” Emma reported. She provided a navigation arrow for Erik and Jia. A small diagram displaying the building layout winked into existence. Flashing lines traced a possible path to the destination building either straight through the gangsters or by hugging another building and coming in from their side.
“We don’t have time to mess around.” Jia yanked a plasma grenade out of her pocket. “Time to clear the jungle a little?”
Erik raised his brow in surprise. “Uh, zero to kill in two seconds there?”
“I think I was at kill before they landed.”
The triad soldiers fired a steady stream of shots, keeping Erik and Jia from advancing. The criminals didn’t stop talking, but the only thing they were offering was profanities concerning Erik’s and Jia’s mothers and their employment prospects as prostitutes.
“This isn’t a conspiracy trap,” Jia hissed. “They don’t have an army of full-conversion Tin Men.” She primed the grenade. “They’ve been trying to distract us from the beginning by hitting us from all sides and purposely drawing fire in the air. If we waste too much time here taking all these guys down, their big brother is going to pull off whatever he’s planning. I’ve got plenty of magazines, and Emma can watch my back. I’ll stall them. When I make my move, get ready to take the flanking path and go have a heart to heart with big bro.”
A stiff wind parted the smoke, revealing a clearer view of some of the gangsters. All wore full breather masks. They had pulled their wounded behind the flitters. Others dropped to reload while their comrades popped up to fire. It was decent tactical discipline for a group of antisocial thugs. Despite the wind, enough smoke remained for Jia’s plan to work.
“Give us target highlights, Emma,” Jia ordered. “We need to make sure none of these guys sneaks up on Erik.”
“Of course. I don’t have access to the cameras inside. You’re on your own there.”
Red outlines appeared for each gangster. All the active shooters remained clustered behind their vehicles, but big brother had already made it into the building. There was no highlight for him.
Erik nodded slowly, tightening his grip on his TR-7. “You’re not allowed to get killed by this batch of losers.”
Jia snorted in dismissal. “The only reason I’m telling you to go is that we don’t have enough time. For all we know, he’s going to hack the system and blow the plant that way. Don’t worry. I’m not going down to less than a room full of yaoguai or aliens.” She shrugged. “Or well-armed bikini babes.”
“I’d pay good money to see that,” Erik noted.
“I bet you would,” she replied.
They stared into each other’s eyes. Jia’s stomach tightened. This was what her future held—her life constantly in danger from dangerous, ruthless killers—but as long as she had Erik?
She wouldn’t care.
Jia primed the grenade and screamed in Cantonese, “Stop talking about my mother that way!” She hurled the grenade in a beautiful, smooth arc. Her scream of feigned rage followed as she fired without aiming.
“It’s a grenade,” yelled a gangster.
Erik launched himself from the ground, his legs pumping in a dead sprint. The gangsters threw themselves on the ground. The grenade released its brilliant white death, consuming half a flitter. A larger secondary explosion ripped the flitter apart, bowled over several men, and ripping chunks off other vehicles. Jia was beginning to wonder if the Lady was trying to tell her something about keeping too many explosives in a vehicle.
Jia didn’t stop to think about it. Instead, she took the opportunity to nail the exposed downed men with quick single shots. She swept her rifle back and forth. Not every shot hit a gangster, but the survivors rolled behind the flitters.
She laid down cover fire in the direction of Erik’s destination.
Her partner turned the corner, continuing his run. The crackle of the fire and the moans of wounded and dying joined the gunfire near and distant to conceal his movements. The enemy was down to half their original strength, but it didn’t matter. Transfixed by Jia’s assault, none of them saw Erik run into the building.
Jia’s mocking laughter rose above the chaotic din. “Give it up. You’ll never win.”
“Shut your mouth, bitch,” a gangster shouted back.
“Okay, fine. Be that way.” Jia punctuated her taunt with a burst of fire, producing another curse from the guy.
Chapter Seventeen
Erik rushed through the smoking, burning hole into the building. A massive plaque near the remains of the door read B32.
The gangsters’ attack had opened a path into what appeared to the blasted and scarred remains of a narrow conference room.
Half-burned furniture lay strewn about, covered in fine white powder. Charred pieces of a long table covered the floor. The fire suppression system had done its work, even if dense smoke filled the room. Erik waved his hand, clearing some of it out, then covering his mouth with his arm.
Another explosion shook the building, followed by a loud Cantonese curse. Erik rushed out of the conference room onto a production floor. The smoke remained concentrated in the conference room, barely bothering his eyes or lungs as he emerged into a complex web of pipes and squat storage tanks the height of a tall man.
Most of the pipes led out of the cavernous room, either outside or to other buildings. Metal stairways stood at several places.
They twisted upward, leading to small landings set next to manual valves spread throughout the floor. Drones hovered, oblivious and not caring about the alarms. Holographic data windows hovered in front of interface stations scattered throughout the structure, showing streams of numbers and graphs.
The Tin Man was somewhere in this jumble of industrial technology.
Smoke drifted upward from a dense patch of pipes. Erik turned toward it since heavy footsteps had sounded from there. A few seconds later, a huge man emerged from behind some pipes. He carried a belt-fed machine gun longer than Erik’s laser rifle with one hand as he jogged down the side of the room. He had a crate in the other arm, the source of his ammo.
“Looks like I found our Tin Man,” Erik whispered. He raised his TR-7 and put his finger over the trigger.
He needed to take out the machine gun first.
A holographic display flashed next to him. Erik grunted in surprise. The gangster spun toward him. Erik leapt behind a pipe wider than his body before the machine gun spat bullets his way. He landed hard on a metal grating that revealed drainage channels beneath the main production floor. The bullets bounced off the pipe, sparking and producing small cracks. It wasn’t as bad as shooting a heavy weapon in a ship in deep space, but it was close.
“You sure it’s smart to shoot at me in here?” Erik shouted. “I don’t know what they’re pumping through, but unless you have lung implants, it might end up as a bad day for you, too. I’m not security. I’m Detective Erik Blackwell, NSCPD. This is your last chance to surrender before you get shot.”
“Screw you, cop,” the gangster snarled. “You’re not leaving alive.” The machine gun roared, and a shower of sparks cascaded off the pipe.
“Emma, how worried should I be?” Erik asked.
“There are numerous chemicals in use in the plant that are poisonous to humans,” Emma replied. “There are also several that could explode under the right circumstances. Since I don’t have current low-level access to the
systems, I can’t tell you which chemical might be in any given pipe, tube, or storage tank. I would not recommend testing your luck.”
Erik snickered as he looked over his shoulder. “Damn. For once, I wish I had a stun pistol. I didn’t grab any stun grenades, either. This might get hairy.”
“What’s the matter, cop?” the gangster shouted, his voice muffled when steam released. “You thought you could take me down, didn’t you?”
“I know I can take you down,” Erik yelled back. “So just keep being an idiot, and I’ll try to make this quick for the both of us. I haven’t eaten and am a bit hungry!”
“Reinforcements are moving closer,” Emma reported. “Detective Lin has the gun goblins outside suppressed. Many are severely wounded, and those who aren’t are in no position to reinforce their associate.”
The gangster’s gun fell silent, and his steps suggested he was running off. Erik bolted from cover. He just needed the Tin Man to enter a hallway or another room, and it’d be over.
Erik zigzagged between pipes and partitions, presenting only seconds of exposure for his enemy. His prey turned and fired a burst, striking a nearby storage tank. A clear liquid Erik hoped was water leaked out of several holes. Another shot ripped into a pipe in the back of the room. A green liquid sprayed everywhere, hissing and sizzling as it splattered on the ground.
Definitely not water.
“Yeah, I’ll try to not get that on me,” Erik muttered. “I think fighting in the Scar was less annoying.” He moved, trying to close the distance. The gangster bellowed in challenge and fired again. Bullets nailed Erik in the chest. He grunted in pain, tumbling behind a storage tank. His TR-7 clattered across the grating, sliding away. Another machine gun burst struck the weapon, knocking it even farther in the opposite direction.
“He had to have half a brain,” Erik hissed and sat up, a stinging sensation radiating through his chest. He patted the vest, finding embedded bullets and deep dents.
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