by Isaac Hooke
“We might have to get out there, soon,” Jason said.
The armored vehicles unleashed their missiles in droves, and explosions littered the battlefield. When the smoke cleared, he saw that the turrets had been blown off all the tanks, leaving them defenseless.
“Damn it,” Aria said. “We have to get out there now.”
“Wait.” Jason saw that some defense platforms were still firing. The armored vehicles turned their missile launchers on them and unleashed a barrage of rockets. In moments, all of the defense platforms were offline.
“So much for all that printing we did,” Aria said.
“You can melt them down and print them again,” Tara said. “The ore has already been processed, so it won’t take as long.”
“You obviously don’t understand 3D printing!” Aria said. She launched into a diatribe.
Jason tuned them out and concentrated on what he was seeing.
The vehicles assumed a half-circle around the edges of the ravine, while infantry robots entered the ravine itself. Those robots circumnavigated the fresh blast craters the bombing run had created, and then paused just outside the storm drain—all of their weapons were aimed inside.
A gunship arrived in the clearing smoke. The helo flew low, and hovered before the enlarged storm drain. Rocket launchers, lasers, and plasma weapons hung from the mounts on either side of the craft.
“So, either we retreat through the escape door,” Sophie said. “Or we fight. What do you want to do?”
“They bombed the street above,” Jason said. “That tells me they detected our cameras at least with their scouts. Whether or not they realized we had an escape door there is another question.”
“We can take a few measly combat robots,” Aria said.
“What about the helo?” Jason said.
“I got it,” Sophie said.
“I’ll take the armored vehicles,” Tara said.
“I’ll help you,” Aria said.
“The small robots are mine,” Lori said.
“All right,” Jason said. “I’ll attack whatever you leave me.” He glanced across the cistern. “Tara, herd the dogs to the back, and make sure they stay there. I’m not sure this is a battle we want them involved with.”
“No, we don’t,” Tara said. She had fashioned leashes for the Rex Wolves from different bramble-weeds outside for just this type of situation, and secured the mutants to the pillars on the far side of the cistern. They whined to her, and when she walked away, Bruiser barked miserably.
“It’ll be okay, big guy,” Tara told him.
“The gunship is unleashing its missiles at the main hatch,” Aria said. “So far it’s holding.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Tara said. “We designed it to serve as a blast door.”
By then much of the dust had settled, so Jason had a good view of the combatants, at least those that were close—visibility was still only around five hundred meters. He watched as the gunship unleashed a barrage of plasma bolts to follow up the missile attack against the hatch.
“All right, line up behind the hatches,” Jason said. “Aria, you’re at the front. Sophie, Tara, you’ll follow. I’ll go next. Lori, you’re after me.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” Lori sent over a private line.
“This isn’t about protecting,” Jason said. “This is about the element of surprise.”
Lori promptly became invisible. She understood, apparently, exactly what he wanted: because of her abilities, she was the best suited to attacking from the shadows.
They assumed their places in front of the inner hatch. Aria deployed her silvery ballistic shield and held it in front of her body.
“Okay,” Jason said. “Open the hatches, Aria. It’s time to fight.”
The inner hatch irised open, followed by the outer hatch.
The gunship had only just launched twin seeking missiles: the two rockets struck Aria’s shield. She dashed forward and leaped from the storm drain and into the ravine. She fired her ZR-22 at the same time: the bolt struck an armored vehicle in front of her, and the electricity arced outward, impacting the smaller robots nearby.
Sophie jetted out immediately after, her jumpjets carrying her toward the gunship. The micro machines swarmed in front of her, forming a deadly, spiraling maelstrom that drilled into the floating aircraft.
Tara teleported into the fray and appeared directly on top of an armored vehicle. She smashed her sword into it, sending electrical sparks traveling all around its hull.
Jason dashed forward. Switching to Bullet Time, he aimed his energy cannon at one of the armored vehicles, and fired. The bolt traveled across the ravine, struck the vehicle, and drilled a hole right through its armor.
He landed amid the smaller robots, and he moved among them, stomping down on them, and batting them aside with his other hand. He occasionally fired his railgun at those robots at point-blank range, tearing them apart. He also continued to fire at the armored vehicles, located along the rim of the ravine in front of him.
The gunship crashed behind him.
The robots underfoot returned fire; even operating in Bullet Time, he was unable to dodge every attack in time, and a rocket struck him in the leg. It tore a huge chunk out of his calf, but he felt no pain; he couldn’t bend his ankle anymore, but that was fine: it only meant he stomped down all the harder.
Another robot with a rocket launcher turned toward him, but then an energy bolt erupted from the empty air nearby, ripping the robot apart. Other nearby robots were split asunder as an invisible assailant stomped down on them, or lifted them into the air and crushed them. Lori.
Sophie had moved on to the armored vehicles, and was ripping a path through them with her micro machines, joining Tara and Aria. Long streams of superheated railgun fire began battering Sophie’s spider mech in the back; she was taking fire from two more gunships that had just flown into range overhead.
Tara aimed at the next gunship that arrived and unleashed her grappling hook. It struck the underbelly of the fuselage, and she tugged, hard, sending the helo on a tailspin. She pulled again, ripping the weapon free, and reeled it in as the aircraft plunged. When the hook had returned, she teleported past the missiles the second gunship had launched at her; she materialized above it, and rammed her sword down through the spinning blade and into the AI core of the cockpit. Electrical sparks flew away in all directions; she leaped off the craft as it exploded behind her and dropped to the ground with a resounding crash.
Jason heard a high-pitched keening. “More bombs!” He switched to the highest level of Bullet Time so that everything essentially froze around him, even his own body. The only objects still moving were the relatively smaller humanoid robots, who were extremely fast. Their limbs still maneuvered at a relative crawl, however.
“Aria, your tanks survived the bombing, what are the chances that our mechs can outlast it?” Jason said.
“Oh, we’ll survive it,” Aria said. “But whether or not we’ll still be in the fight afterward is a different story entirely. Mechs, though well armored, are far less resilient than tanks against things like bombs and missiles, especially considering the range of motion our armor has to allow for. You saw what happened to your leg already when a rocket hit: ate clean through. I’m the most well armored among us, and while I’d survive the bombing run, I’d probably lose my mobility and most likely my ZR-22.”
“Your ballistic shield wouldn’t protect you?” Jason asked.
“Some, but against cluster bombs?” Aria said. “I’d probably lie down, hold the shield over my body, and hope for the best…”
“Sophie, if we get close to you, can your energy shield protect us from the bombs?” Jason asked.
“No,” Sophie replied. “It’s not powerful enough. Especially if I expand it to include the rest of you.”
“Tara, can you teleport all of us back inside the storm drain if we can get close to you?” Jason asked, growing desperate now as his options ran
out.
“No,” Tara told him. “I could take one other mech back to the cistern at this point, and that’s about it. And I’ll drain my power cell to the core, in the process. I won’t be able to leave the cistern.”
He checked to see who was closest to her. “Lori, get to Tara. She’ll teleport you back to the cistern. I want you to seal the hatches once you’re inside.”
“I don’t want special treatment!” Lori said.
“This isn’t special treatment,” Jason said. “You’re the closest to Tara.”
“But what about Sophie and Aria?” Lori asked. “And you?”
“We’ll find a way,” Jason said. “Now go. If we don’t respond after the bombing run, I want you to take the escape hatch and get the hell out of here. Is that understood?”
“It is,” Tara said. “Good luck.”
“Sophie, Aria, you’re with me,” Jason said. “We’re going to take cover next to one of Aria’s tanks.” He marked the tank that was closest to them, next to the ravine edge.
He amped up his time sense so that he could move again, but kept it low enough to avoid any attacks from the faster robots underneath him. Sophie and Aria cut a path through the armored vehicles in their paths: Sophie with her micro machines, and Aria with lightning bolts from her ZR-22.
Jason reached the tank first, and ducked down low, below the edge of the ravine, so that it covered his eastern side, with the tank protecting him from the north. He curled into the fetal position. Tara reached Lori, and wrapped her arms around her; the two mechs disappeared from view.
Sophie leaped down on top of him using her jumpjets, her eight legs surrounding his body, but then she repositioned herself beside him, next to the tank.
“Leave room for Aria!” Jason told her. “I want her between us!”
She moved aside, and curled into a tight ball, like him. Her micro machines were wrapped into a sphere around her midsection.
Aria arrived last, just as the first bomb was coming in. She landed between Jason and Sophie next to the tank, and crouched low. She couldn’t curl up as tightly as Jason because of her thick armor, but she lowered her profile as much as she was able. She held her ballistic shield above them at an angle so that one side rested on the tank, the other on the ground next to her feet.
Sophie extended her energy shield over the three of them. She also redeployed most of her micro machines so that the swarm formed a small wall that filled the gap on her left side, between the top of Aria’s shield and the ground.
The bomb struck.
Jason was watching the scene from the viewpoint of one of the cameras on the far side of the ravine, and saw Sophie’s energy shield flash as it absorbed the blow.
The camera went offline.
He heard more explosions. They came in rapid succession as the other bombs arrived. The sounds were muted at first, but became louder as the moments passed, extremely so; he realized that Sophie’s shield had failed.
Above him, depressions formed in Aria’s shield as portions of it melted inward. Sophie’s micro machines failed entirely, and the wall shattered. Sophie’s body was shoved into Aria, who in turn pressed into Jason.
And then the thudding ceased.
Aria hesitantly shifted her shield to the side. Slag dripped down from the edges. “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
“Sophie, how are you?” Jason said.
Sophie shifted. “Well, my carapace took the brunt of the damage. My jumpjets are offline. And I lost almost all of my micro machines. But I’ll live.”
Jason hadn’t suffered any damage at all, thanks to his position wedged in between Aria, the tank, the shield, and the ravine wall.
Jason searched his HUD for an external monitor camera to access, but they were all offline.
“Tell me you’re all right?” Tara’s voice came over the comm.
“A bit damaged, but otherwise none the worse for wear,” Jason said.
Aria removed her shield entirely, revealing a landscape choked by smoke. Jason switched to echolocation, and a chirping unit activated on his head. Around him, the outlines of the robots appeared. Or rather, their remains. Along the edge of the ravine beside him, he spotted the wreckages of the attacking armored vehicles. Nothing seemed active out there.
“Tanks are completely offline, now, too,” Aria said. “They must have dumped almost everything they had at us. Maybe everything.”
“They sacrificed their own units to get us!” Lori said.
“They must want us dead really bad,” Tara said.
“Why do I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of them?” Sophie said.
“Let’s get back to the cistern, in case they decide to make another run,” Jason said. He got up, and with Aria and Sophie, jogged back to the storm drain entrance. They navigated between the fresh blast craters littering the area.
Tara remotely opened the hatches before they arrived.
“Don’t seal the doors yet,” Jason told Tara. “I want to dispatch the Explorer.”
When he was inside, Jason ignored the barking Rex Wolves, which were still restrained in the far corner of the cistern. Tara was doing her best to calm them.
Jason started up the Explorer—which momentarily made the mutants bark all the louder—and then sent the scout into the exit tunnel.
He relayed his echolocation data to the drone to help it navigate the storm drain entrance, which was still obscured by the smoke and debris from the bomb impacts. When it was clear of the storm drain, he switched to the point of view of the Explorer and assumed full control. He kept the entrance hatches open to improve reception, though was ready to close them the instant anything went wrong.
He steered the drone upward and the smoke began to clear, thanks to the ever-increasing distance from the impact sites. Repeaters he’d placed at different spots outside the ravine were still active, and the antennae relayed the digital signal back to him with minimal pixilation.
Soon the drone had left the cloud behind entirely and emerged into the clear air. He rotated the craft three hundred and sixty degrees, but everything seemed quiet out there, including the skies.
“Looks like the bombers are gone,” Jason said. “And the area beyond seems clear.” He returned the drone to autonomous mode, with instructions to alert him if any motion was sensed out there.
“My local antennae picked up a bidirectional transmission out there,” Lori said. “The bombers were calling home. And they received a response.”
“Were you able to decrypt it?” Jason asked.
“Not yet, but I’m working on it,” Lori said. “I also sent the individual data packets along to Tara, Sophie, and Aria in case they want to help out.”
“This stuff is beyond me,” Sophie said.
“You could use your Teaching AIs if you really wanted to learn,” Tara said.
“I know,” Sophie said, with a tone of voice that implied: I don’t want to.
“I’m trying to decrypt it as well,” Aria said. “But it’s tricky. Going to take me a while.”
“Well, you have some time,” Jason said. “We’ll stay here for a few hours to repair, but I want to be gone before dark. This base isn’t safe anymore. I have a feeling they’ll be back, and with a whole lot more units. It’s time for us to leave Brussels.”
“All this time, and work, spent building up a base of operations,” Sophie said. “Only to leave it all behind.”
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Jason said. “Given the situation.”
“Well, it was fun while it lasted,” Tara said.
20
Jason activated his repair swarm and the drones took flight. They began working on his leg. On his map, he designated the wreckages outside as sources of spare parts, and the drones flew back and forth down the entrance tunnel as they retrieved the different components they needed.
The girls meanwhile activated their own drones to repair local damage. Sophie directed her surviving micro machines outside to re
produce up to her limit, using the debris of the different robots.
When local repairs were finished, the team sent their drones outside to concentrate on Aria’s tanks. One of the tanks had only suffered minor damage, and was finished in only half an hour. But the other two needed a full two hours each to repair. Jason decided it was worth the delay to repair those units, but he kept the Explorer on full watch, with plans to evacuate the instant any bombers or other enemy units were detected.
Jason and the others went outside into the clearing debris cloud to help pulverize some of the destroyed robots and make accessing their raw ore easier for the drones. Tara let the dogs loose, and they took up watch positions outside the clearing cloud.
Lori sent a message over the public band while they were doing that. “Hey babe!”
Obviously her comment was directed toward Jason, since she wouldn’t have called anyone else babe. Or would she?
He waited, and when no one else answered, he said, rather awkwardly: “Uh, hey.”
“Did you just call him ‘babe’ over the common channel?” Sophie said.
“Er, yeah?” Lori said. She added excitedly: “That’s because I got some news!”
“Do tell,” Jason said.
“Okay, I finally hacked the headers of the packets I intercepted earlier,” Lori said.
Jason waited for her to say more, but she kept quiet.
“And…?” Tara said.
“Well, I wasn’t able to decrypt the actual messages,” Lori said. “So I’m not sure what was exchanged between both parties.”
“You interrupted all of us to tell us that you still haven’t cracked the transmission?” Aria said.
“Well, er, yeah, but I mean, didn’t you hear what I said?” Lori sent. “I hacked the headers.”
“How does that help us?” Tara asked.
“Well, they made the mistake of including location information…” Lori said.
“I get where she’s going with this,” Aria said. “So you have the coordinates of whoever they were calling home to?”
“That’s right!” Lori said. “I did it! I was the first one to figure it out for Jason! Er, for the team!”