by Isaac Hooke
The enemy drones came on with renewed fervency; they split their attacks between the passenger area and the hood. Rhea and Horatio struggled to keep the enemy back and found themselves on the defensive more often than not. Once Will had put the tanker back on course to the garage, even he had to relinquish control of the vehicle to duck behind the driver-side alcove—the attacks were simply becoming too much.
Rhea crouched there, next to Horatio, in front of her seat; beside her, enemy bolts tore into the cushions in a ceaseless barrage, keeping her pinned. The semi’s hood was no doubt facing a similar assault, and she wondered how much more of it the engine block could take. She glanced at the overhead map. The three tankers still had another kilometer to the garage.
“Give the order to crash the tankers into the closest building!” Will said. “It’s the only way!”
“We’re only a kilometer from our target!” Rhea said. “We’ll make it!”
“The engine status is red,” Will said. “A few more hits, and it’s gone.”
He shared the engine damage report screen, and she viewed it on her HUD. He was right.
She swallowed.
I can’t believe we have to give up now, when we’re so close!
She was about to give the order to crash the tankers into the closest building, when the strangest thing happened.
The attacks ceased.
“They’re pulling away,” Will said. He tentatively lifted his head past cover.
Rhea did likewise and gazed at the empty street past the window.
She accessed Gizmo’s feed.
Most of the drones had swerved away; only a few remained behind to shadow the three tankers.
Will rotated Gizmo to the left, toward the retreating drones.
And then she suddenly understood why the security forces had abandoned them for the time being.
Bioweapons had emerged from the rubble of the surrounding skyscrapers, where apparently, they’d been slumbering.
Tasins.
9
Rhea stared at the creatures on Gizmo’s feed. She had never encountered a Tasin in real life. The last one she had met was virtual, while she trained with Bardain.
The Tasin. A creature with four barbed tusks protruding from its anvil-like head, beneath the armored plates that protected its insectile eyes. Its mouth was a large, toothless sucker, coated in acid strong enough to melt through the hardest steel in a matter of seconds. Long antennae drooped from its head, constantly swaying across the ground in front of it. The body was avian, covered in green, chlorophyll-pigmented feathers, yet wingless.
Four legs poked from its underbelly, spaced like those of a mammal; the top portions were thick and muscular, while the bottom sections were composed mostly of tough tendons and bones, so relatively thin in comparison that they could never be confused for anything other than avian in nature. The bottom portions of those legs ended in feet whose half-moon talons were bigger than scythes.
An elephant’s strength. A fly’s nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision. The antennae of ants, whose sense of smell was unmatched by any animal. A bird’s metabolism and speed. It had the best parts of every species that formed it.
The Tasins lunged at the enemy units, ripping some of them out of the sky. She saw a large police drone swallowed by a leaping bioweapon, and a gunship unexpectedly snatched from behind by the acid-dripping sucker of another. The central portion of the latter craft melted away almost instantly, and the two pieces of the gunship crashed to the ground, exploding.
However, those were about the extent of the casualties: most of the Aradne forces had moved well beyond the range of the creatures. That didn’t stop them from moving temptingly closer, pulling back again whenever a Tasin lunged.
“They’re trying to keep the Tasins away from the tankers,” Will said.
Rhea nodded.
She could appreciate what the security forces were doing… if those bioweapons reached them, it was doubtful Aradne would ever recover the water. Still, given how many machines had been lost already, she had to wonder whether the water was really worth it. Perhaps the loss was justified to the mayor of Aradne. A public relations victory, to show the lowly denizens of Rust Town that if they tried to steal any water from the great city they camped outside, Aradne would simply take it back again.
Not all of the Tasins were distracted by the enemy drones. Some continued down the street, drawn by the noise of the tankers, or perhaps their “smell.” With their massive feet the Tasins crushed all debris underfoot and broke away portions of any skyscrapers they rubbed against. Acid dripped from their mouths and carved fresh runnels into the asphalt below.
“Get to the garage!” Rhea shouted.
Will took control of the tanker and stepped on the accelerator.
He recklessly drove over debris, at such a speed that not even the super-gimbals could hide the jolt from the riders. The other two tankers kept pace close behind.
Rhea observed that the route ahead was crisscrossed with runnels similar to the kind the Tasins were forming behind them at that very moment. Those thin trenches had been present throughout the city since the convoy’s arrival, but she hadn’t paid much attention to them until now. In fact, she hadn’t really noticed them. Not surprising, given that she’d been slightly occupied.
The advance scouting party had mentioned the runnels, but since there were no other signs of Tasin infestation, they’d concluded the creatures had abandoned the place a long time ago.
Seems they were wrong.
She leaned out the window and noted the five enemy drones that had stayed behind to shadow their passage. She pulled herself back in before any of them could fire at her.
“Horatio, can their eyes in the sky see us currently?” Rhea asked.
“Checking the Sat Displacement Map,” the robot answered. That was a satellite position calculator; it computed the positions of the spy satellites every hour of every day, something the Wardenites had hooked them up with. “Negative. Their two closest satellites are near the northern horizon. The skyscrapers are completely occluding our passage at the moment. The drones are their only eyes.”
“Let’s take them out,” Rhea said. “Chuck, Renaldo, target the pursuing drones.”
She leaned out the passenger side and aimed at one of the drones. It was a tricky shot, given the distance. But plasma bolts traveled almost as fast as projectiles, which meant the drones would have little time to react before they were destroyed. And it wouldn’t take much to down a drone either—she only needed to damage one of the rotors.
She squeezed the trigger.
The drone plunged.
She ducked inside before any of the other drones could return fire. She glanced at Gizmo’s feed to get an update on the latest positions, waited a moment, then leaned out once more, and fired at the next drone. Got it.
With the help of Renaldo and Chuck, she took down the remaining craft in less than twenty seconds.
“They’ll be sending in more drones to look for us,” Horatio said.
“We’ll be inside the garage before then,” Rhea countered.
She hoped.
Will turned onto the road that led to the garage. It was free of bioweapons and enemy drones.
“I was starting to worry we wouldn’t make it,” Will said.
“We’re not inside yet,” Rhea told him.
Will nodded. “Horatio, quit jinxing us!”
The robot swung that featureless head toward him. “What? You’re the one who’s jinxing us!”
“I knew I could get a rise out of you,” Will said.
Horatio sat back. “You make me want to disable my emotional subroutines.”
“I have that effect on robots,” Will quipped.
He drove onto the far left side of the street, past the three lanes reserved for incoming traffic, and weaved between the debris. As the garage came up on the right, he slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel hard right. The semi moaned as its r
ight wheels threatened to lift off the ground, but the vehicle made the turn mostly without issue. The backend fishtailed slightly, but when the wheels caught on debris the trailer portion promptly straightened.
Will stepped on the accelerator and proceeded directly toward the dark garage entrance ahead. The door had long since fallen off its hinges, and the semi plowed straight over it. As the advance party had reported, the opening was big enough to fit the semi and its cargo, but just barely. Rhea could hear the grinding of metal-on-metal as the top portion of the tank scraped against the lower edge of the entrance.
“Not much clearance there,” Will commented.
The sound repeated, more softly, as the two pursuing tankers followed. According to the sensor data shared by the other vehicles, no combat robots remained attached to the trailer portions. But if there had been such robots, they would have been scraped off by the tight confines of that opening.
There were no lamps on inside. Will activated the vehicle’s headlamps, and two cones of illumination lit the way forward. LIDAR filled the dark spaces on either side with wireframes representing former parking stalls. The rusted-out frames of the occasional vehicle appeared on that LIDAR—all the intact vehicles would have been looted for parts by salvagers long since.
Will came to a halt. “Out!”
Rhea opened the door and leaped down. She raced for the door to the stairwell, which was only visible as a rectangular wireframe on the LIDAR ahead.
Horatio and Will joined her, along with Chuck and Renaldo.
“Talk about the ride of the century!” Renaldo said. “I don’t think I’ve had this much excitement since… well, the bioweapon attack on Rust Town!”
“At least you did something this time out, Stick Arms,” Chuck said. “Rather than hide inside your house and grovel. Though I suppose ducking behind the wheel of an AI driven semi is about the same.”
“Hey, you were hiding in a semi, too!” Renaldo said.
“At least I fought back,” Chuck said.
“Bro, if I didn’t fight back, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Renaldo told him.
Rhea reached the stairwell, but heard a strange sound, so she raised a hand and stopped. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
A distant keening filled the air, growing in pitch.
“Bombers!” Will said.
Eyes widening, Rhea kicked in the door and leaped through. The others barreled inside after her.
Thanks to the LIDAR, she saw that the steps leading down to the next floor were blocked by a collapse. However, there was another exit directly ahead, where a door sat askew its hinges. Beyond it, the rectangular corridor of the pedway system beckoned.
She approached that doorway, but as she stepped through, the cement floor shook, and she heard a terrible bang.
The rooftop directly ahead caved in, sealing off the pedway system.
“Crap,” Rhea said, backing away.
“So much for that part of the plan,” Will commented. “Time for the fallback point?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to go deeper at the moment…” Rhea said. “I just want to get out of here!”
She spun around. The floor continued shaking; bangs and thuds of varying volumes filled the air.
“They’re really pounding the daylights out of the city, aren’t they?” Chuck said.
Rhea hurried to the stairwell entrance. Fearful of a collapse, she wanted to rush into the open and make her way outside the building that very instant. But leaving the garage was the worst thing she could do right now. Out in the open, those bombs would make mincemeat of her and her companions. And if not the bombs, then the bioweapons. Sure, it was possible the rest of the garage would collapse, but at least they had a chance while they were still inside. Out there, only death awaited at the moment.
Giving in to his fear, Renaldo tried to rush past her, but she latched onto his shoulder and hauled him back. “Stay here!”
“At least we should take shelter in the semis!” Renaldo insisted.
But she gripped him firmly. Something wouldn’t let her set foot into that garage. Call it instinct.
The headlamps were still active on the semis, illuminating the floor and ceiling in front of the vehicles, and casting the surrounding area in a dim light. As she watched the roof shake, she thought about what was happening. Either those bombers had been present all this time and were simply holding off on deploying their bombs so as to not risk damaging the water tankers, or they had only just arrived. Whatever the case, the mayor had taken a calculated risk, hoping that the garage would protect the tankers from the bombs dropping nearby. He was right, it did.
But it didn’t stop the bioweapons from breaking inside to seek cover.
She heard a strange slurping sound to her left. Glancing that way, she saw the entrance enlarge as a Tasin melted through with its sucker, sweeping that disgusting mouth in a circular pattern. The creature slammed into the surface occasionally, pressing the sucker hard into the closest edge, where it remained for several seconds, the acid eating a dome shape into the concrete, until the creature could push itself backward and continue the circular motion—Rhea had the impression it was struggling against what must be a press of Tasins behind it.
Sure enough, when the creature had made an opening big enough for its body, the bioweapon was unceremoniously shoved forward and stumbled inside on those stilt-like, avian feet, its giant claws clattering on the cement floor. More bioweapons frantically flooded inside after it, trying to escape the carpet bomb slaughter. More than a few of them were squealing, though the most frantic cries came from one that was on fire, and another missing a foreleg.
Renaldo slipped from her grasp, slinking deeper into the stairwell. Rhea retreated slightly, too, but kept close enough to the entrance to continue watching. Will, Horatio and Chuck crowded behind her, peering past her shoulder.
As more and more of the creatures shoved inside, pieces of the entrance broke away, enlarging it further, until almost two bioweapons could squeeze inside at the same time. But then the flow subsided. Rhea counted twenty-one of the creatures crammed into the front portion of the garage.
Now that they were out of the death zone, most of the bioweapons calmed, despite the fact the roof continued to shake, and that some among them still squealed; their antennae began feeling about, and they branched out, some approaching the stairwell. For a moment Rhea feared they were coming for her and her companions, but when the Tasins discovered the tankers, the bioweapons all began squealing with glee. The four-legged creatures rapidly surrounded all three tanks, and promptly began perforating them with their suckers to get at the water. They fought amongst each other for access, squeezing between one another until every last square meter was covered, with the bioweapons pressing their mouths to the steel surface and melting through to drink.
The Tasin that was on fire still shrieked off to one side, but then it promptly collapsed. Its carcass burned silently in one corner. The others seemed not to notice, busy as they were sapping the tanks.
The roof stopped shaking. The bombing run was over, at least for now.
Remind me why we thought stealing water from Aradne was a good idea? Will commented over their mental line.
We’re not really going to go out there, are we? Renaldo asked over the same thought channel.
We can’t stay here, Rhea said. When they’re done with the tankers, they might rest for a few minutes, but as soon as they start moving again, they’ll find us. Those antennae can sense odorants at concentrations well below point one parts-per-billion.
The question is, do we head to the fallback point? Will sent. Or do we abandon this place entirely, and head back to the entrance.
We’ll have to sneak past them, if we attempt to return to the entrance, Horatio transmitted over the mental line. Even if we hug the walls of the garage, we’ll still pass within five meters of at least three Tasins. But if we travel to the fallback point, this is the closest we’ll get to them. For
now.
We’re only fifteen meters away, Chuck sent.
Fifteen meters is better than five, Horatio countered.
But didn’t the Warden just say they’ll find us with those antennae of theirs? Renaldo sent. Retreating to the fallback is just as bad as staying here. Maybe worse, because we’ll only be trapping ourselves deeper in the garage.
Yes, but at least we’ll have a vehicle when we reach the fallback point, Horatio said. If they discover us now, we’re doomed. There’s no way to outrun them.
Maybe the Warden can pull a Rust Town for us, Chuck sent. And use that bladed weapon of hers to chop off all their heads. We’ll pull our weight, or course: Tasins don’t like it when you shoot them in the suckers, I hear.
While it’s true that their mouths are a known weakness, I’d rather avoid combat, if I can help it, she broadcast. If you’ll recall, I ended the battle of Rust Town in pieces.
She’s right, Renaldo transmitted. If we have to fight, there’s a good chance at least one of us won’t come out the other side.
And that would be you, of course, Stick Arms, Chuck sent.
Let’s say we go to the fallback point, and get the vehicle the advance party left us, Will said. What then?
We wait, Rhea said. When the Tasins come, they’ll likely be spread out in a long line, dispersed throughout the garage. We drive around them. If any get too close, we shoot them in the mouth. We keep going until we reach the exit.
And emerge straight into the arms of the waiting security forces? Will pressed. I lost contact with Gizmo when we entered the garage. Who knows what’s waiting for us out there?
Keeping an eye on the bioweapons, Rhea hastily explained her plan.
I don’t like it, but I suppose we don’t have much choice, Will sent.
I don’t want to go, Renaldo said. Can I stay?
Grow a pair, Chuck told him. You’ve come this far. Do you really want your life culminating in a coward’s death? Devoured by a Tasin beneath a stairwell in the middle of nowhere? You say you fought when you were cornered in the semi? Well, fight now, then. Otherwise I’ll never believe you. I’ll never let you live this down. Assuming you live at all.