Five by Five

by Aaron Allston

  “It’ll work,” Tevin promised as the two of them gained the dubious safety of the corner.

  Billy looked relieved to see them. “I wasn’t sure if we should wait.” The younger boy gestured ahead. “It’s just there, isn’t it?”

  It was. A short block away and protected by a heavy steel door that might have been a regular security gate but Tevin knew was much stronger than it appeared. There were no call buttons. No monitor. It was a simple loading platform that had rarely been used even at the city’s busiest. Hardly at all, since the Cyborgs’ arrival at Bountiful. Only a few times, like now, to get evacuees to Doc.

  “Come on, come on.” Tevin paced in front of the steel door. Rapped it once with the flat of his hand, and regretted it instantly when the steel hardly rang but it made his hand sting. He thought he could hear machinery humming on the other side, imagined the lift rising up to street level, but knew it could just as easily be wishful thinking.

  He watched the far corner with rising concern, waiting for Cyborg Sniffers to suddenly appear and mark them for Walkers. Their options were limited. They might try circling the block. Once. Keep moving and hope Doc was waiting for them when they got back. Or, turn north for the rocky hills above the city. He decided that they could give doc another moment, maybe two, and then—

  The steel door began to rise.

  Their city choked with ash and the rubble of shattered buildings. The bank door, just around the corner, so twisted in its seat that it could no longer open or close properly. But here, the giant steel door rose quickly and smoothly with heavy grace. Hardly a sound being made.

  Tevin backed his charges away from the door. Just in time as two rifles shoved out of the darkened space and one of the women stifled a shout. Black-uniformed security agents stood shoulder to shoulder on the lift’s diamond-deck surface, protecting Doc Rutheford with their bodies. The black visors on their full-face helmets betrayed not a sign of mercy or nervousness. An amber light, mounted at the edge of each faceplate, blinked slow and steady. They swept the small group for threats, then with a gesture from the Doc they swiveled to either side and covered the street.

  Rutheford shuffled up to the edge of the lift, but never stepped a toe outside of the protective opening. Two meters tall and gangly, he walked slightly stooped forward like a preying insect. He had a fringe of steel-gray hair left, cut short and shaved high over the ears, and behind his thick lenses a pair of sharp, bright green eyes which Tevin felt as they lashed everyone in turn and finally bore straight into him.

  “Sniffers,” Rutheford said. His lips stretched tight in a disapproving frown. “Two of them.” The way he said it, Tevin knew that the Doc had almost decided leave them to their own fate.

  “Taken care of,” he promised. Doc would have seen him set the trap, or the security door would never have opened.

  The Doc nodded slowly. “We’ll see,” he said. As if they were making a bet. Then he flicked one hand at the civilians clustered behind Tevin and his small crew. “All right then.”

  Without another command Rutheford’s security swept out and herded the civilians forward, onto the lift. Cog and Billy ducked aside to keep from being gathered up as well. Cog brandished his shock-stick, and one of the guards swung his rifle up before Doc called him off with a simple shake of his head.

  After that, there was little trouble. The civilians needed no extra encouragement to pack themselves onto the lift behind Rutheford. The last of their small group—the same small, frightened girl Tevin had noticed trailing the pack before—peeled away at the last moment to wrap her arms tightly around Tevin. Her head barely came up to Tevin’s chest, but she had desperate strength in her arms as she hugged him. He felt her silent sobs, just for the span of a few heartbeats, then she darted away to the backside of the lift and hid behind two of the larger kids.

  That brief, desperate hug warmed Tevin in a way the empty thanks of shell-shocked evacuees never did. He offered a small wave in her direction and felt something like a smile on his face as he turned back toward the Doc. A nice moment, one of few he could remember out of the past week, which soured as Cog stepped up to him and thrust his shock-stick into Tevin’s hands.

  “Me too,” Cog said. He would not meet Tevin’s eyes. “I’m going under.”

  If Cog had used the shock-stick on Tevin, the older boy wouldn’t have been more surprised. Cog had been the one sure thing Tevin could count on over the last few days. Always ready. Always tinkering with some bit of salvaged tech to create a new bit of nastiness for the Cyborgs. With Cog at his back, Tevin never worried about anything creeping up on him without warning. The thought of running the streets without Cog made Tevin’s circuitry tat squirm and pulse.

  “You sure?” he asked, aware of Billy’s gaze on the both of them.

  “Yeah.” Cog swept his gaze up to the tops of nearby buildings. “Streets ain’t what they used to be.” And then in a softer voice: “Cybbies are getting too close. I’m not gonna be meat for them.”

  “Maybe you should all come down,” Rutheford offered. His sharp, cutting gaze never left Tevin. “You’ve brought me a lot of evacuees, Tevin, but I’m not sure how many more times I’ll open this door. Even for you.”

  Tevin glanced at the lift. Felt his nose wrinkle as if he’d smelled something bad. Truth was, he felt more secure on up above, even with the Cyborg threat, than hiding in some hole, waiting and hoping for Doc to smuggle them to one of the last evacuation ships. Up here, he had options. Down below … he looked to one of Doc’s guards. The black uniform and full-face helmet hiding any hope, or fear.

  “What about you?” Tevin asked Billy. “You want to go under?”

  The young kid trembled. He tried to hide it, but Tevin caught it before Billy managed to clamp down. “I go where you go,” the young Gladiator said with something approaching conviction.

  That alone nearly drove Tevin onto the lift. Knowing that Billy would never give up the streets for the possible safety of Doc’s underground labs. Not so long as Tevin stayed. What if he got Billy killed? Or worse, if he got Billy captured by the Cyborgs? It was a responsibility Tevin did not want.

  But the strength of the girl’s desperate hug was still warm in Tevin’s chest. Weighed against the cold, dark faces of Doc’s security, it wasn’t much of a choice.

  “We’re good,” he told the Doc.

  A dark shadow passed across Rutheford’s face. Anger? Regret? Something between the two, Tevin thought. He watched the way Doc’s hands opened and closed, as if from some desperate desire to grasp something he wanted. Or needed. He leaned forward, nearly coming out of the lift’s shadows. Doc’s two security guards never made a move, but for a reason he couldn’t say Tevin felt certain they were suddenly a threat to him.

  He took a step back.

  Rutheford smiled calmly. His guards stepped back onto the lift, eerily efficient as always. The steel door slid down. “Maybe next time.” The words slipped out just as the heavy door banged home.

  Tevin felt more than heard the lift begin its descent, and he stood silent for a handful of precious seconds. Torn between a desire to pound on the heavy security door, calling Doc back, and his instinct to move quickly away. Far, far away.

  Instinct was already winning the battle when a nearby explosion shook the street. Tevin shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. His boomer. The Sniffers! Stupid, to burn time standing around in the open. He and Billy had to get moving again. He handed Cog’s shock-stick to Billy. Then, grabbing the collar of Billy’s heavy coat, he pulled the smaller boy along with him as they hurried away from the security door and whatever might be left of the Cyborg trackers following them.

  He glanced back only once, from the corner, before losing sight of the entrance. The steel door looked out of place only in that no street crew had ever tagged it, and the recent fighting had yet to scar its surface. A security door like any of a hundred others in the city. Except that it wasn’t like the others, was it?

  “D
o you want to go back?” Billy asked, uneasily shifting from one foot to the other.

  Tevin shook his head. Still, the question hung over him. Why did he hesitate getting himself and Billy to safety?

  Which direction, he suddenly wondered, did safety truly lie?

  He checked the avenues leading in all four directions, saw flitters falling over a building to the east, and nodded southward.

  “These are our streets,” he said, hands balled into tight fists. “We don’t give them up without a fight.” And glancing down, he noticed his Gladiators circuitry tat had stopped squirming. Like the hug from the little girl, it gave him a new boost of confidence. Of purpose.

  Let the Cybbies shove in on Gladiators territory, Tevin decided.

  He would find a way to shove back.

  –6–

  The banshee wail of a dozen-plus CAR-7 rifles drove cold fingers into the back of Marcos’ brain—squeezing, digging—while all around him reality wavered in the backwash of overlapping distortion fields. His jaw ached from clenching against the rifle discharge. His temples throbbed. But it wasn’t allowed to be pain. The egghead lectures clearly defined pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential physical damage. CAR-7 discharge fields might be unpleasant and disorientating, but they did not—would not (ever)—cause actual tissue damage.

  Therefore, no pain.

  The eggheads could lecture all day. So far as Marcos was concerned, in the second hour of their run-and-gun firefight, he was now certain of only one thing.

  It fragging well hurt.

  A jet of white-hot plasma swept overhead, arcing and spitting, driving his men back from the edge and into the aqueduct once more. Hypervelocity pellets cracked the air around Marcos, half a hundred tiny, supersonic breaks creating a short peal of deadly thunder.

  He dove for the ground, scrambling away as a furious salvo shattered the aqueduct’s rim. Concrete erupted in a spray of razor-tipped shards; a handful gouging deep tracks across his faceplate.

  Marcos’ platoon clung to the aqueduct’s steep side like desperate spiders, scrabbling along the edge, hammering back at the Cyborg walkers attempting to flank them. Below, the wide basin was filled with less than a meter of gray, ash-swollen water siphoned out of the poisoned river which twisted its way through the distant battlefield. The wounded struggled and slid and climbed to the best of their ability. Two-Joe and a few others had surrendered to the mucked-up waters, wading along as best they could.

  As cover went, he could have asked for better.

  Then again, not much was worse than the open battlefield they’d had to cross in order to gain the city’s outskirts and some semblance of a defensible position once it had become clear that the platoon’s network would be some time rebuilding. The greatest danger on a battlefield is a soldier who does not know what he is doing. Due to poor training or a weak commander, this man becomes a liability to himself and everyone around him. The second-greatest danger is a unit that no one else in the order of battle understands what it is doing. Non-responsive to commands and unable to update their standing orders. Stumbling about in the middle of a detailed operation. Such a unit is worse than the soldier who doesn’t know what to do. They think they know, and so they act. And if they are lucky, they will only find themselves unsupported on the flanks of a battle.

  Worse would be to target what would seem to be an enemy position, and take out your own command post. Or blunder too close to the enemy and find yourself on the receiving end of overwhelming friendly fire. Bad enough suffering casualties from an enemy you know is offering no quarter. When you understand that the soldier at the other end of the bullet was on your side, morale got real low, real quick.

  Making a break for the city’s edge had seemed the best possible course of action at the time, clinging to the remnants of their standing orders—support forward maneuvers, preserve AID assets—with the strength they had left. Physical assets were still plus-eighty percent. Three-Joe was dead, again, holding to the curse among General Issue soldiers that three synthetics crowded a unit; as were two recruits who hadn’t been around long enough to collect a name. Princess and Rabbit led the walking wounded with antimatter flash burns and a light concussion, while Two-Joe brought up the rear staggering along with one arm still attached by nothing more than the stubbornness of ICAS technology.

  “Books! Where’s my network?”

  Able’s corporal was also the platoon’s self-appointed tech specialist. If there was a manual published, a reference cited, or even the faintest rumor of a work-around, he’d read about it. Somewhere.

  “Fried a good, Sarge” Books said on a private circuit. “If’n Ah take it off-line, strip it down to the command root, Ah can get fire support back up. Mebbe.”

  A mebbe from Books was as close as Marcos would get to a sure bet today. “Do it,” he ordered. Then dropped into STANDARD VOICE. “I want PADs ready to burn the rim as soon as Cybs pop on our screens. Everyone else ready with overlapping fire. Able, then Bravo. I want grenades on—”

  It was as far as Marcos got before the world exploded around him.

  A geyser of shattered ‘crete and fire erupted behind and below him. It lifted Marcos from the side of the aqueduct, thrusting him uphill and sideways.

  In the back of his mind he heard the sudden calls, the yells from his platoon, but his immediate world had shrunk to a haze-filled tunnel of information and reaction. Still in the air, ICAS threat assessment circuitry identified the weapon as a minecaster, splashing the warning across his retinas as if he didn’t have better use for his vision. Blinking the warning into his VOID, Marcos knew it had been a near miss simply due the fact that he could know anything at all.

  He struck the side of the aqueduct with bone-jarring force. Slapped one arm out in order to arrest his roll. Scrapping his left heel hard against the surface, he swung himself into a long, pendulum slide facing back up toward the rim. Searching for the Walker.

  Assault drone. Bipedal, but with reverse-canted legs instead of the usual humanoid mimicry. Wide, thick shoulders and no head. Two heavy, single-jointed arms with minecasters attached to each, and two spindly appendages wrapping up and over the shoulders ending in hypersonic “spitters.” Wrapped with harvested muscle and sinew, it had a bloodied, unfinished look to it. A double-waisted thorax made the Walker look very insect-like, but Marcos knew that meant it had two humanoid brains hardwired into its processors. Able to think like a human, redundantly, but overriding any emotional response with its computer core.

  Marcos mashed down the firing stud on his CAR-7 before he even realized he had aimed. With a terrible screech the rifle stripped rods from stock and shoved them through the acceleration field. Tiny rings of ionized air opened in between Marcos and the Walker as his stream of fire caught the next minecaster projectile at its midpoint.

  A halo of plasma-laced fire opened up around the Walker like a terrible blossom. Marcos cut through with a furious onslaught, rocking the Cyborg back as he sliced away meat and metal.

  The long, steep slide of the aqueduct blurred as energy washed around him. Even through the distortion, Marcos was aware of other ICAS troopers sliding and tumbling down the side of the aqueduct. And others who were not.

  Several rifles turned on the Walker, though not as many as Marcos would have thought, would have hoped. But then, he had forgotten the final order he’d been in the midst of making. It wasn’t until a half dozen propellant blasts popped along the aqueduct’s rim (about a half-second before he struck the water, head-first) that he recalled his half-finished order for grenades.

  Now everyone was sliding for the basin, and Marcos felt a padded fist strike him across the back of his head and shoulders, holding him for a fraction of a second, then pulling him into a watery, gray embrace as half a dozen white-hot flashes seared the edge of the aqueduct’s rim.

  Violet afterimages dancing in front of his eyes. Every movement sluggish. ICAS interlocks at least prevent
ed him from losing a grip on his weapon. It did not prevent his legs from tangling up as he fought to get them down into the basin, or keep him from pressing the firing stud long after he lost sight of his target.

  His rifle knew enough to stop firing, however, and he soon got his feet beneath him. Standing from the waist-high waters.

  “Report,” he barked over STANDARD VOICE, already searching the standing column of status lights along he side of his faceplate and reading the worst of the news in a glance.

  Seventeen active troopers attempted to answer him, queuing up his standing column with request icons. ICAS protocols allowed only the senior non-com to OVERRIDE Marcos’ filters. With Books offline, concentrating on the platoon’s network, it should have been Cowboy.

  Instead, Big Mike’s powerful voice filled his ears.

  “Scrap one Walker. Put another dozen grenades over the top, which should give the Cybs something to think about.” A pause. “Sarge. Cowboy …”

  Marcos waded to the aqueduct’s sloping bank, ash-thick water helping support him as he fought to clear his head of cobwebs. The fading taste of adrenaline was rancid in his mouth as he turned over Cowboy’s half-submerged body. Made certain.

  Cowboy had lost his weapon. His PAD would be laying on the bottom of the basin somewhere, beneath a meter of cold, mucked-up water. Nearly impossible, if ICAS technology detected any life. Any at all.

  Three spitter holes punched through the faceplate cinched it. And the helmet’s inside was a gruesome spray of blood, brain, and bone.

  Cowboy hadn’t served with Marcos the longest, but he’d been a damn fine corporal and Marcos had come to rely on him. Like Books. Like Gravel and Princess and Big Mike. Pushing the Cyborg forces from Rho VII, any chance they had to uncover what made this world so special to the enemy, in Marcos’ opinion it had just gotten harder.