Driftmetal IV

by J. C. Staudt

  Since we only had one working comm, there could be no bluewave communication between the four of us. Timing was key. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see Blaylocke open the hidden footman’s entrance. But I could hear him when he started yelling insults at the operatives to get their attention, and I could see their reaction when they loosed the robots at him.

  I tossed the bedsheet rope, which we had shredded into thinner strips so it would reach the floor, through the hole beside the boarded pathway. “Get moving.”

  Chaz started down first, half climbing and half sliding. He looked terrified of the height, but he shut his eyes and forced himself onward. When his feet hit the floor, he looked up and signaled me with a wave. “What are you doing? Get down here.”

  “Just do your job, Chaz,” I said. “I’ll get you those fifteen minutes… give or take.”

  I heard Blaylocke coming up the stairs, followed by the robots and their handlers. Chaz had plenty of time, as long as we could keep them occupied. I ran to the hole in the upper hallway, not liking the fact that my only way back up was either the rope now hanging into the ballroom or a ride on a robot’s back.

  I jumped down just as Blaylocke was hopping over the top three stairs. Together we ducked into a bedroom and watched through the crack in the door. The first robot plunged a foot through the stairs we’d weakened. It crashed down and chugged in place with one leg hanging through. The other robots tried to move past it, but they only made the damage worse.

  By the time the operatives realized they weren’t going to get around the pile-up, I could smell the bottom few stairs burning behind them. Thomas had made good use of the oil lamp we’d found in the attic. When in doubt, set it on fire, I thought, smiling.

  The operatives began to shout as confusion and alarm gripped them. One managed to slip past the robots and clamber up the steps, but we were waiting for him. When he turned back to help his associates, Blaylocke drew the flecker sword.

  We emerged from the room together. Blaylocke crossed the distance faster than I’d ever seen him move. He struck the operative down while I kept the others at bay with my hand pulser. One of them lifted his remote and began to give the robots a firing order, but I snapped off a pulser burst and sent him stiff before he could finish. His work done, Blaylocke darted back to the room and slipped inside.

  A short moment was all it took for the four remaining operatives to overcome their confusion. They split up; two leapt down through the flames while the other two shot the ceiling with grapplewires and floated over the struggling robots. I was just getting ready to light them up when my pulser lost steam and died in my hand.

  I cursed, tossing it away and breaking into a charge toward the closest operative. Neither Chaz nor Thomas would last long against those two operatives if I didn’t get down there and help them. Bowling the man over, I tore the weapon from his hands and kept running. But he clutched at my legs as I ran over him and managed to get a grip on one of my boots. I took two steps and went sprawling onto my face.

  The rifle I’d taken from him was thick and heavy. It was similar to the ones the robots carried, only with fewer modes and a manual switch. I switched to a mode that looked extra-harmful and rolled over, leveling the gun at his face as he crawled toward me. A bright burst erupted from the muzzle. The operative’s cheek flashed white and sizzled like hot bacon, only it smelled awful instead of amazing. His head flopped over, blackened skin around a patch of oozing telerium.

  I liked this weapon. Before I could move another muscle, holes began to open up in the floor around me. The second operative was a decent shot, and he tagged me on the shoulder as I rolled to face him. I screamed, managing to squeeze the trigger before the strength went out of my arm. The shot zipped past the operative’s knee and hit one of the robots on the stairs.

  What that blast did to the robot startled me almost as much as getting shot had. The metal carapace over the automaton’s torso melted away like the operative’s cheek had a moment earlier. I moved the gun and fired another shot. This one burned a trail along the floor and struck the operative’s shin just above the foot, opening the back of his leg in a blue-violet spray. His leg gave out, and he fell to one knee, his shot landing a few inches from my face.

  I’ve never liked Blaylocke, but I will admit he saved my life that day. As the operative raised his weapon to fire the shot that would’ve killed me, Blaylocke yanked the revolver from the back of my belt and shot him in the face. Before the operative could recover, Blaylocke rushed past me and opened his neck with the flecker sword.

  When I looked down at my shoulder, I found a gruesome crater of blackened skin and melted telerium. All sensation in my left arm was gone. I couldn’t lift it, move it, or flex the muscles. I won’t be able to climb back up into the attic, I realized.

  I must’ve been screaming, because when Blaylocke picked up the operative’s gun and came over to hand me my revolver, he was shushing me. The robots were still climbing over one another, half of them hanging through the staircase and the other half tripping over the unfortunates. Blaylocke took the other operative’s weapon and shot each of the robots until they stopped moving in meaningful ways.

  “Chaz and Tom… you have to get them out,” I said, as soon as I could form a coherent sentence. My shoulder felt jackhammered. Even the medallion’s soothing serum wasn’t enough to dull the pain completely.

  “The stairs are out,” he said. “There’s no way down… and no way up.”

  “Help me.”

  He took my hand and lifted me to my feet.

  Let’s see what other modes these things have, I thought, but didn’t have the stamina to say. I shoved the revolver into my pocket and picked up the operative’s rifle, then motioned for Blaylocke to follow me as I staggered into the bedroom. There, I flicked the mode button on his rifle and pointed at the wall. “Shoot.”

  He studied me, then raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired. A glowing blue pool spread over the wall’s surface, then diminished and disappeared. I flicked the mode button and pointed again.

  This time, a handful of rubber balls ricocheted off the wall and bounced back through the room. We both yelped—him more than I—as the rounds chose several choice locations in which to strike us. Cursing, I flicked the mode button and flung a hand toward the wall.

  Blaylocke’s next shot swam through the air like a string plucked underwater. The blast tore the wall open like a battering ram. We walked over and peered through wooden studs and layers of broken plaster into the ballroom, where Chaz was digging around inside the severed head of a dead Mark-Five.

  “Chester,” Blaylocke called on my behalf. He had to repeat himself before Chaz looked up at us. “Get Thomas and get up that rope.”

  “I’m almost done,” said Chaz. “I almost have all the parts I need.”

  “Bring the whole blasted head,” I growled.

  He stuffed everything into the backpack and stood, pulling the straps over his shoulders. “Where’s Thomas?”

  “Somewhere down the hallway near the kitchens.”

  “Okay, I’ll go find him,” said Chaz. “Meet us in the attic.”

  “We’re kind of… stuck down here. We need you to climb up and move the rope.”

  Chaz looked at us like we were crazy, then ran off to find Thomas.

  “Pile furniture,” I told Blaylocke. “In the hallway.”

  My shirt was soaked with blood, and I left trails of blue droplets as I went around with Blaylocke to each bedroom. I gave him what one-handed help I could, and together we heaped a couple of beds and a dresser into a swaying stack beneath the hole in the dormitory ceiling. Then I returned to the first room to check on Chaz and Thomas.

  Through the hole I could see Chaz standing beside the rope of bedsheets as Thomas tried to climb it. He would reach up and take hold, jump and pull himself up a few feet, then slide back down. Without our intervention, they might’ve stood there all day and not gotten anywhere.

  “Let Cha
z go first,” I shouted.

  They both glanced over. I didn’t know whether Chaz could climb up any better than Thomas, but he’d done alright on the way down. He and Thomas switched places. He made his way up to the first knot with only a little trouble and one restart. After that, the knots came more frequently and he seemed to be able to use them to maintain his progress. He kept his eyes clamped shut, only opening them to squint at the ceiling and see how close he was.

  He’d come within a few feet of the ceiling when another squad of robots and operatives appeared at the ballroom’s main entrance.

  Oh no. I swung the rifle up from my side and stabbed it through the hole, propping it there and using my one good hand to squeeze off a few rounds. Blaylocke lifted his rifle and came alongside me to join in. The operatives ducked out of sight when their surroundings lit up with weapons fire, so we concentrated on bringing down the automatons first. Meanwhile, Thomas took off running for the servants’ passage.

  “Switch to this mode,” I told Blaylocke, pointing to the one that had seared through the operative’s shin and chewed into my shoulder like a flesh-eating fungus.

  Once he’d switched over, he began to do some damage. His shots were more accurate for obvious reasons; with two working arms, I would’ve left him in the dust. The robots were by no means easy to disable, but our rifles and their mysterious firing modes helped. Whatever this new weaponry was, it worked better against them than any other technology we’d tested at the Maclin facility.

  The robots trudged forward into the face of our rapid-fire assault, lifting their weapons in our direction and ignoring Chaz. I made a silent exclamation in favor of Chaz’s good fortune. The downside of this was, of course, that the robots were now shooting at us.

  Blaylocke spun away from the hole just as a barrage of flecker rounds carved a chunk through the wall. I, on the other hand, wasn’t as quick. I got myself out of the way, but my weapon wasn’t so lucky. A round clanked into the fore grip; a second bounced off one of its many tanks; a third hit the barrel, then a fourth blew through another tank. The weapon screamed like a tea kettle. Its metal piping ruptured and the pressure gauge fell to zero.

  I cursed and shoved it aside. “Not much I can do from up here, anymore,” I said. “Keep them pinned down.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where I always go,” I said. “The one place I probably shouldn’t.”

  I shoved the bedroom door open and sprinted toward the staircase. I hurdled the railing and fell past the mountain of dead robots at the top of the stairs. Much to my dismay, I fell into the fire that was still blazing at the bottom. The stairs collapsed and I tumbled onto the parquet, my clothes still burning. Thomas wasn’t in the passageway, so I darted left toward the kitchens, stumbling like a scarecrow in a brushfire.

  When I got there, the kitchen was empty and the door was wide open. I ran outside and let the pouring rain put me out. Across the courtyard, the two operatives who had jumped through the flames earlier—and who had ostensibly come outside for the same reason I had—were introducing Thomas to their augments. Just after they’d pushed him into the mud and given him a swift kick to the head, I charged in and drove a shoulder into one of the operatives. He tripped over Thomas, which I kind of felt bad about later, and flopped into the mud.

  The second operative whirled and punched me in the face, a high one on my forehead. I reeled back a few steps, but stayed upright. The medallion and I were ready for his second punch. I swayed to avoid it and caught him under the chin on the riposte. His head snapped back, but he didn’t so much as stumble.

  “Get out of here, Tom,” I said. Thomas didn’t move. Then to the operatives, I said, “The whole CRC fleet is about to come down on you. I’d get off Roathea now and find a new job, if I were you.”

  The operatives didn’t listen. The first man got to his feet and circled around to my left. He stepped over Thomas and gave him a kick with his back foot on the way over. On the ground, Thomas lay still. I held up a fist, my left arm hanging limply at my side. Together the operatives put up their dukes and began to advance. I backed up in lockstep with them.

  “Listen, guys. We can work this out in a non-violent fashion. I have one fist, and you have four. Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?” I became faintly aware of a rumbling sound inside the building, but I was too preoccupied to pay it any mind. I wasn’t about to leave the courtyard without Thomas, but I was willing to get my ass kicked if it helped him get away. When neither operative responded to my plea for mercy, I resorted to taunts and empty threats. “Alright, come on then. Bring it. I’ll tear you in half, you talentless sons of goats.”

  The operative to my left swung a fist, but I was out of reach. I sidestepped the punch anyway. His hand disconnected from his wrist and shot past my head like a striking cobra. The long metallic cable between his hand and the rest of his arm curved and began to twist around my neck. I’d seen all kinds of limb augments in my time. These telescoping nerve extensions were some of the most expensive—and the hardest to maintain.

  Instead of trying to loosen the cable, I grabbed the hand and wrenched the pinky finger backward. There was a crack, but the operative didn’t make a sound. This isn’t a nerve extension, I realized with dismay, as the cable tightened around my throat and the hand clamped over my mouth. It’s a mechanical hand. I fell to my knees and tried to suck in a breath, but the other guard stepped forward and planted a knee in my gut.

  I couldn’t gasp. I couldn’t cough. I couldn’t even squeal. The cable was high and snug along my jawline, compressing my windpipe like a drinking straw. I fell forward, but the cable went rigid and held me in place.

  While there were no nerve endings in that hand, it was connected to the operative’s body by thick lengths of electrically conductive material. So I reached into my pocket, grasped the revolver, and shot myself in the leg.

  The pulser burst made my vision go bright blue. It traveled down the cable and zapped the operative, making him go stiff, then limp. When the cable loosened, I shrugged out of it like a businessman escaping a necktie, then drew the pulser and shot both operatives in quick succession.

  Stumbling to my feet, I backed off a few steps and waved the gun at them, threatening in a gravelly voice to shoot again if they moved. I was out of pulser rounds, but they didn’t know that. Then I heard those rumbling sounds again, louder this time. When I turned toward the building, robots were crashing through the kitchen doorway and stomping out into the rain.

  Three of the five automatons in the latest squad were still alive and well, despite Blaylocke’s and my keen marksmanship. I could see the damage where we’d hit them, and I could tell from the way they were moving that at least two of the three were struggling. Most of the damage, however, was to my morale. The robots’ presence here meant that Blaylocke was probably dead and Chaz wasn’t much better off.

  Great. Just when I was about to get things under control. I dropped the revolver in the mud and lifted my hands above my head. The robots raised their weapons and sighted in.

  Behind me, one of the operatives grabbed my neck and punched me in the spine, lowering me to my knees again. “Time to die, sky trash,” he said with a laugh.

  My last hopeful thought was to pray that the synod hadn’t figured out how to remove my master privileges yet. The way the robots were pointing those guns at me, I didn’t think that was likely. So I shut my eyes and waited for death to come. I’d done too much waiting for death lately, as I saw it. Let it come, then, I decided. Let it come.

  And death did come.

  But not to me.

  The robots fired a volley. The operatives were too dead to make a sound as they fell into the mud, one beside me and one on Thomas’s back. I froze where I knelt, hoping some programming glitch might keep the robots from seeing me. There was no glitch.

  Blaylocke ran out into the rain. He ran straight past me and lugged the operative off of Thomas’s body, then hoisted our unconscious fr
iend over his shoulder and began carrying him back inside.

  Stunned, I stood up.

  I managed to follow Blaylocke inside and help him lay Thomas out on the big kitchen table, which the robots had left barely intact. There in the kitchen, holding a remote control unit that looked more monstrosity than machine, stood the smartest, nerdiest man in the world.

  “You little twerp,” I said in disbelief. “How did you do it?”

  Chaz grinned. “As soon as I got to the attic, I installed the transmitter and ran a frequency scan until I found the unit’s sub-signal. Then I tapped in. The operatives were toast once I had control of their robots.”

  “Oh yeah, sure. Just push a button here, flip a switch there… it’s that simple, huh?”

  “I’ve spent years learning how this stuff works, Mull. Plus, I already did the hard part back in the ventilation room.”

  “You didn’t sound so confident in yourself then.”

  “I hadn’t done it then. Now I have.”

  “Well, I’m going to need you to do it again pretty soon, so keep your head down and make sure that brain stays where it belongs.”

  There was smoke creeping along the kitchen ceiling, and I could smell the scent of burning wood. When I poked my head out and looked down the servants’ passage, the fire in the stairwell had spread. In a few minutes, the whole passage would be blocked off—unless the automatons had some nifty fire extinguisher mode on their weapons I didn’t know about.

  “I still think that fire was a great idea, but we may have just cut off our only route back to the others,” I announced. “Nobody up in the attic has a comm, do they?”

  Chaz held his up. “I’ve got this one, which works, and you’ve got yours, which doesn’t.”

  “I guess the only way back to our friends is through the throne room, then,” I said.