by James Walker
The intruder resembled a man-sized mechanical bird, its wings still flickering from the blast of propellant that had carried it over the water. Its metal head flicked back and forth, observing the prisoners, their escorts, and the idling transport chopper.
“Get down,” Tinubu shouted.
Janice reacted too slowly. A shock wave knocked her to the ground as the attack drone fired a rocket into the chopper, blowing it to pieces in a deafening geyser of smoke and flames. Two of the guards returned fire with their rifles and were cut down by a gleaming laser. Despite the manacles limiting her movements, Cena managed to tackle the last guard and wrestle his rifle away from him. He drew his pistol and aimed it at her head only to be felled by another laser blast from the drone. By the time he hit the ground, Cena was already scrambling for cover on all fours with the other prisoners hot on her heels. The drone began pursuing them when it came under fire from a nearby watchtower, drawing its attention away.
Janice dove behind a low concrete wall with the other prisoners. “Is it a rescue force?” she exclaimed. “Have your friends come to bail us out?”
“I don't think so,” Vic panted.
Janice's hopeful expression collapsed into a frown. “What do you mean?”
“Well, was it just my imagination?” Vic looked at his comrades for confirmation. “Or does that drone have Spacy markings on it?”
“Yeah, I think you're right,” Cena replied.
“Spacy? T.U. Spacy?” Janice exclaimed. “What on earth would they be doing here? It's been almost three years since the Concord pushed them off Chalice.”
“Great question,” Cena said. “But if that thing is with Spacy, it's probably not going to like us any better than the guards. Let's take care of these shackles and then get the hell out of here.”
They used the stolen rifle to shoot through the chains on their manacles, then began making their way across the prison grounds. The rampaging battle drone was drawing the full attention of the security forces, enabling them to sneak to the edge of the compound with little difficulty. As soon as they reached the fence, Cena threw the rifle to the other side, then she, her companions, and the one-eyed man began scaling it without hesitation. Janice paused for only an instant before leaping onto the side of the fence and climbing up after her the others. Although she lacked upper body strength, her light build and desperation helped make up the difference, and she clambered up only slightly more slowly than the others.
The fence was topped by several strands of inward-tilted bared wire. Janice was unfazed. She took pride in the acrobatic skill she had developed from mastering countless complex dance routines, skill she now put to use by vaulting nimbly over the wire. Despite the impressive display of agility, one of the barbs nicked her in the leg, causing her to yelp in pain and drop straight to the ground on the other side of the fence. She rolled several meters before coming to a halt in the wet grass.
Vic dropped down next to Janice and ran to her side. “Are you all right?”
“I'll be fine,” she gasped. “Just nicked myself on that damn wire.”
“You took a nasty fall.”
“It's nothing. I'm light, so I bounce.”
Janice accepted Vic's hand and staggered to her feet. The others ran by and gestured for her and Vic to follow them. They came to a halt at the edge of the island, staring at an immense void over an expanse of frothing waves. The span of the raised bridge loomed far over their heads, taunting them.
“Now what do we do?” Janice cried, her voice edged with panic.
“This.”
Cena leapt onto the web of metal beams that comprised the nearest tower and attempted to scale it. Despite her best efforts, she found the task impossible while holding the stolen rifle. Her jumpsuit afforded no place to stash the weapon and it lacked a sling to wear on her back, so Cena reluctantly threw the rifle into the water and resumed climbing the tower.
“Are you kidding me?” Janice squealed.
The one-eyed prisoner glanced over his shoulder and fixed Janice with a jeering grin. “The prison is back that way if you don't think you're up for it, sweetheart.” Then he leapt onto the tower and climbed up after Cena.
“I can't believe this.” Janice walked up to the tower, grabbed the nearest beam, and began hauling herself up. “Please don't let me die, please, please, please.”
The metal surfaces were slick from the rain, and the awkward angles of the webbing made for difficult climbing. Janice made excruciatingly slow progress up the tower, triple-checking that she had a secure grip each time she hauled herself up to the next level. Despite her caution, several times she failed to find purchase with her feet and flailed for several panicked moments before she managed to secure her grip. The higher she climbed, the more she was exposed to a howling wind that cut through her saturated jumpsuit, chilling her to the bone.
After a long and arduous climb, gasping for breath, her heart threatening to beat out of her chest, Janice realized she was within a few meters of the top. She reached out to the next beam, got a firm grip on it, then shifted her weight and began pulling herself up. She reached out with her other arm—
And her hand slipped off the wet metal.
That one instant telescoped into an eternity. Janice flailed her arms, trying to grab a support beam. She missed. Her weight pulled her backward and a black abyss opened up under her. She was in free-fall. Involuntarily, she opened her mouth to scream—
Something grabbed hold of her wrist, arresting her fall. Her body swung into the tower and bounced off a support beam. She looked up and saw Vic's soaked face staring down at her, holding her wrist in one hand.
“Tinubu, help,” Vic cried. “I'm not strong enough to pull her up by myself.”
Janice followed Vic's gaze down to see Tinubu scrambling up the tower. He climbed up to Janice's right and grabbed her other wrist. Together, he and Vic managed to haul her up so that she could grab hold of a beam. The three of them scrambled the remaining distance to the top and pulled themselves onto the span. Janice collapsed onto her side, trembling from fear and cold. She realized she was almost hyperventilating and tried to take deep, controlled breaths.
Vic and Tinubu knelt to either side of her. “You OK?” Vic asked. “That was way too close.”
“I—I'll be OK,” she stammered. “You saved my life. Thank you.”
Cena and the one-eyed man, who had beaten the others onto the span, came over to observe. The one-eyed man's lips were twisted into a contemptuous sneer.
“This chick is just gonna slow us down,” he said. “I say we leave her behind.”
Janice's stomach lurched.
“Screw that noise,” Cena said. “If we leave anybody behind, it'll be you, Cyclops.” Then she assumed a friendlier tone. “Come on, Blondie, we've got to keep moving. We ain't out of the woods yet. Or off the bridge, I guess you could say.”
Janice pushed herself to her feet. “I won't slow you down,” she insisted. “I can keep going.”
They jogged across the slick metal of the span. The bridge was so enormous that, even at their hurried pace, it took them ten minutes to reach the opposite side. As they drew nearer to the end, the sounds of battle grew louder and they could make out more flashes from explosions and weapons fire. Then the roar of an aerospace engine overpowered all other noise and a bulky transport plane appeared overhead. As it flew over the town, the plane opened its bay doors and a dozen mechanical silhouettes dropped into the streets. No sooner had the plane finished its drop than an azure beam lanced out of the town and tore one of its wings off, sending it careening into a hill where it exploded in a massive fireball.
“Concord drone drop,” Cena observed. “That's one hell of a battle in progress.”
“With T.U. Spacy, no less,” Tinubu said. “The question is, is it a surgical strike, or did they launch a full-scale invasion?”
“My money would be on the latter,” Vic replied. “The Concord's embargo is strangling Thera to death. They're
crazy if they thought the Union wouldn't hit back with everything they've got.”
“Then we have a huge problem,” Tinubu said. “Picking between the Union and the Concord is like choosing between a viper and a python. I say we get way the hell away from this battle and let these two snakes kill each other.”
Finally, they reached the end of the span. Janice inched her way to the edge of the platform and stared out at the precipitous drop. The dizzying height nearly made her sick.
“And now we have to climb down,” she said, her voice brittle.
“Just don't look down,” Cena advised.
“Too late.”
Vic clapped Janice on the shoulder. “Don't stop to think about it,” he said. “Just do it.”
Once again, they grabbed on to the metal webbing of the nearest tower and repeated the perilous climb, this time in reverse. If anything, climbing down the tangle of beams was even more difficult than climbing up. Despite Vic's advice, Janice could not help but replay the moment her hand had slipped over and over in her mind, fearing that it might happen again at any time. But somehow, her feet touched down on firm ground before she even realized she had reached the bottom.
“I'm amazed we made it across the bridge without anybody falling to their deaths,” the one-eyed man said. “What's the next move?”
“Get the hell out of town and far away from the fighting,” Tinubu said.
“Works for me.”
“Whoa, wait, who said you're coming with us?” Cena objected. “We don't even know who you are.”
The ground rumbled from a nearby explosion that sent a pillar of flame shooting above the buildings a block to the right. The escapees stumbled and stared at the billowing flames in alarm.
“I don't think we have time to stand around arguing right now,” Vic said. “Let's get out of immediate danger before we start blackballing people.”
“Good call,” Tinubu replied. “As far as I could tell from the bridge, the fighting was thickest on the north side of town, so we'll try to escape to the south, keeping to back alleys as much as possible. Cena, you take point. The rest of us will follow at ten meter intervals.”
Janice followed the others as they took off at a crouch, scrambling through narrow, trash-strewn alleys and sprinting across the exposed space of the streets when necessary. They passed the smoldering wreckage of several battle drones and a handful of corpses, about evenly mixed between Concord soldiers and Spacy marines. The main thoroughfare was jammed with a flood of civilians fleeing in a panic, so they gave it a wide berth. Several times they spotted gunfire a few blocks away.
After several blocks of progress, their luck ran out. Cena ran around the corner at the end of an alleyway only to double back immediately, signaling for the others to halt their advance. They gathered at the alley's exit and leaned out to survey the plaza beyond. Three quadrupedal battle drones were scuttling through the plaza, their sensors sweeping back and forth in search of hostiles.
“Ugh, not those things again,” Vic whispered. “Those are the same kind of drones that killed all those people in Port Osgow. Bad memories.”
Suddenly, one of the drones ceased its scuttling. Its sensor fixed on the entrance to the alley, then it turned and began scampering toward the escapees, its legs clanking on the wet concrete in an uneven staccato.
“Oh shit,” Cena hissed. “It's seen us. Move it, go!”
They started to withdraw back into the alley when another aerospace engine roared overhead. An azure beam fell from the heavens and impaled the pursuing battle drone, obliterating both the drone and the asphalt below it in a shower of melted debris. Then came the wash of jets as a winged exosuit with Spacy markings dropped from the sky and stabbed a second drone on the end of a shimmering plasma blade. The final drone, positioned behind the exosuit, fixed its sensor on its foe and fired its laser, but the target had already moved. With a quick blast of its wing thrusters, the exosuit executed a backflip and landed behind the drone, causing the ground to tremble and kicking up a cloud of pulverized asphalt. With the same movement, it slashed its plasma blade through the drone, tearing it in half and sending its shattered internal components flying across the plaza.
The exosuit deactivated its plasma blade and walked to the center of the plaza, sending a deep clang reverberating through the streets with each fall of its mechanical feet. A powerful spotlight activated near its head and swept across the plaza until it came to rest on the alleyway, flooding it with blinding light. Janice scrunched down behind a set of steps while the other escapees hid behind a dumpster, crouching in the deep shadows cast by the harsh illumination.
Janice's heart pounded in her ears. At any moment, she expected the exosuit to spot them and incinerate everything in the alley. Suddenly, the light vanished. Janice peered cautiously out from behind her cover and stared as the exosuit underwent a dramatic transformation. Its wings snapped into a fixed position, its legs locked into place, and part of its torso swung up to form an aircraft's nose. With a blast from its main jets, the exosuit took off and blazed out of sight, sending a supersonic shock wave washing through the alley. Janice clamped her hands over her ears until it was gone.
The escapees let out a collective sigh of relief and came out of hiding. They emerged cautiously into the plaza, stepping over smoking rubble and making their way around the craters left by the exosuit's rampage.
“Augment,” Tinubu said with audible trepidation. “We do not want to cross that guy.”
A twisted smirk appeared on the one-eyed man's face in response to this comment. Janice cast a puzzled glance his way, but said nothing.
“I ain't never heard of an exosuit that could transform like that,” Cena whispered. “Must be a brand new model. If they've got bleeding-edge tech like that in their attack force, I think it's safe to say Spacy has launched a major invasion.”
“And if they're here on the surface, that means they've penetrated the orbital defenses,” Tinubu said. “Dammit, the people of Chalice deserve better than to have their land and homes destroyed in a war between two despotic governments competing to see who gets the privilege of grinding their faces into the dirt.”
The cacophony of battle grew softer as the group moved beyond the scorched plaza, steering clear of small groups of civilians fleeing the battle on foot and in private vehicles. They had nearly made it outside the town when they spotted a department store just off the road. The darkened letters on the inactive holographic sign identified it as a Spendlot. The windows were dark and there were no signs of activity within.
“Jackpot,” Tinubu said. “Must have been abandoned when the evacuation order went out. Much as I hate stooping to the level of a common looter, I think we'd better take advantage of this opportunity to grab some supplies.”
“Fine by me,” the one-eyed man grinned. “I ain't got no problem with a little looting.”
“This is a dangerous detour,” Cena said. “What if the battle spreads and engulfs us while we're busy robbing stores?”
“We'll be hurting if we hit the road without any supplies,” Tinubu replied. “It's worth the risk.”
They ran up to the entrance at a crouch and tried the front door, only to find it locked. Tinubu led them around the side of the building where they found a secondary entrance, which likewise frustrated their attempts to gain entry. Cena and Tinubu took turns giving the door futile kicks while the one-eyed man rooted around in a nearby dumpster and extracted a large wooden beam.
“Nice and sturdy,” he said. “This will do her. Let's head back to the front.”
They followed the one-eyed man back to the front entrance and watched as he smashed the glass door with one mighty swing of his plank. Ignoring the blaring alarm, they walked through the entry area and let their burly companion smash open the second set of glass doors, gaining them access to the store's interior. They made their way through aisles of murky shadows until they found several flashlights and batteries. They slapped the batteries in and clicke
d the flashlights on, carving eerie circles of light out of the darkness.
“Let's make this quick before anybody else shows up with similar ideas,” Tinubu said. “First order of business, let's find some hacksaws so we can cut these damn bracelets off.”
With a few minutes of searching, they found the hardware department and located several sets of hacksaws, then went to work cutting each other free of their manacles. Once hers were off, Janice gingerly rubbed the tender flesh around her wrists and ankles, relieved to finally be free of the painful devices.
“Now for supplies.” Tinubu ticked off a long list on his fingers. “We'll want backpacks, food, water, tents, blankets, sanitation items, cookware, fire starter, first aid, pocket coms and rechargers, basic tools, and of course new clothes. Some weapons would be nice, but I'm not expecting much. Too bad we lost the rifle you took off that guard.”
“Sorry,” Cena replied. “Trying to scale that bridge with the rifle would have been suicide.”
“I know,” Tinubu sighed. “At the very least, let's try to find some knives and hatchets or something.”
They made their way back to the entry area and found several rows of inert shopping robots, which gave no response to their attempts to activate them. Janice shone her flashlight on the wall behind the robots and illuminated several shelves packed with shopping baskets.
“Guess that will have to do,” Tinubu said.
Tinubu assigned each person categories of supplies to gather, then they distributed the baskets and dispersed. Janice was in charge of sanitation and first aid. As soon as she was separated from the others, the silence and darkness of the deserted store fell upon her like an oppressive cloak. She interrupted her search frequently to look around until she spotted the dancing circle of a flashlight from one of her companions, to reassure herself that she wasn't alone in this shadowy labyrinth.
Although having to navigate by flashlight made the process slower, Janice managed to track down her target departments one by one. First came bath and body, where she filled her basket with soap, shampoo, deodorant, razors, nail clippers, toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, feminine hygiene products, tissues, and toilet paper. She located the pharmacy next and grabbed several bottles of pain relievers, anti-diarrheal pills, and antibiotics. Next came the health department, where the only items of obvious use she could find were bandages, disinfectant, and some clotting solution. That didn't seem quite adequate, so she found the crafts department and grabbed some needles and thread.