by Isaac Hooke
Visibly shaking, she dropped behind the aforementioned kitchen counter
He closed the door behind him.
Adrenalin hangover. That’s one thing I don’t miss about being human.
He held the rifle in both hands, at the ready, and made his way down the hall. He was headed toward the stairwell. He could hear the muted sound of plasma bolts firing from the rooftop, and the occasional muffled shout, likely coming from one of the residents trapped in the building. A few of the doors were slightly ajar up ahead, with tenants peering out fearfully. Some shut the door immediately when they spotted the rifle he carried, while some defiantly kept them open.
“I’m with the police,” Eric reassured those residents who continued to peer at him through the entryways. “Shut your doors and stay inside,”
Though the former was a lie, apparently, they believed him because they promptly shut their doors. Or maybe they had executed an ID and realized he wasn’t with the police, but still thought it was probably best to obey him, considering he was the one with the laser rifle.
He kicked open the stairwell door and headed inside. Keeping his rifle pointed ahead of him, he took the concrete flights of steps that zig-zagged to the next floor.
When he reached the door to the next floor, he opened it a crack and carefully peered out. It was clear in both directions.
He cautiously opened the door wider, and let himself into the hallway. Brontosaurus had a suite on this floor, and Eric was making his way toward it.
Brontosaurus. It wasn’t his actual name, of course, but his callsign. Though they were all twenty years retired from the army, none of the team ever used their real names. They couldn’t bring themselves to. They’d fought and died for each other using those callsigns. He couldn’t even call his own girlfriends, also former Bolt Eaters, by their real names. They’d always be Bambi and Crusher to him.
Eric wondered if he’d actually find his friend Brontosaurus in the apartment: the Bolt Eaters were probably the only members of the building with any military training. As soon as Brontosaurus heard the shooting, there was a good chance he would have made his way to the top floor to lend a hand if he could: like most of the team, Brontosaurus had a rifle and other military gear hidden in his rooms, none of it legal. Eric wondered if he should be heading toward the rooftop, rather than here.
Then again, Eric remembered how reluctant he himself had been to risk his own life only a few minutes ago when he had crouched on the rooftop of the opposite building. It was possible, no, likely, that Brontosaurus had remained in his suite, choosing to obey any broadcasts advising the residents to remain locked inside, letting the building’s local security robots handle the disturbance.
Yes, Eric had made the right choice in coming here.
Once more he encountered some doors that were ajar; like on the previous floor, most residents closed them when they saw his rifle, but some continued to peer out and he forcefully told them to go back inside.
“What’s going on?” one woman asked him when he told her to lock the door and barricade herself inside.
“Building’s under attack,” Eric said.
“By who?” the woman pressed.
“We don’t know,” Eric said.
He grabbed the handle and shut the door on her. The remote locking mechanism engaged automatically.
Eric continued until he reached the door to Brontosaurus’ suite. It was wide open. He carefully “pied” the entrance with his weapon by moving in a half circle, or “pie” pattern, in front of the entrance, and confirmed that no attackers were lying in wait around the corner.
The kitchen and family room of the one bedroom apartment were clearly visible. The furniture was upturned, and the closet ransacked. Eric was beginning to worry that Brontosaurus had in fact never left the rooms.
Eric entered the foyer, rifle aimed in front of him, and approached the bedroom. When he arrived, he pied that area, too, and then swiveled around the corner. He expected the worst.
At first glance, the room was empty. The mattress was upturned, the clothes in the closet had been thrown onto the floor. Eric checked underneath one of the mattresses that lay against the wall—it formed a crack big enough for a man to hide inside. But there was no sign of Brontosaurus’ android.
Well, it was a relief that he hadn’t found Brontosaurus’ android body at least. Nor any of his stashed gear.
But that didn’t help the feeling of dread that was steadily growing inside of him.
Maybe the robot attackers had collected him and all his gear, and were in the process of gathering the other Bolt Eaters.
I hope I’m wrong.
2
Eric made his way down to the next floor below, where Tread and Mickey had two side-by-side apartments. When he reached the suites, he discovered the doors wide open and the rooms also ransacked and empty, devoid of any of the military gear the pair had stashed there. From the state of their rooms, and Brontosaurus’, Eric was pretty sure the attackers were targeting his team.
The question was, had the team members made it out of their apartments before the kidnappers had arrived? And if so, where had they gone? Upstairs to the rooftop, like he had originally guessed? Then again, he couldn’t hear the shooting at all from this floor. So unless Brontosaurus had come running downstairs to warn them, Tread and Mickey wouldn’t have known.
When Eric emerged from Mickey’s rooms, he spotted a door slightly ajar on the opposite side of the hallway; he made his way toward it. Infuriatingly, the occupant was one of those who was frightened by his rifle, and shut the door before he could think to hide it.
Eric knocked, but the resident refused to answer.
“What did you see?” he asked through the door. He cringed at how loud his voice sounded, and he quickly glanced left and right to confirm no hidden attackers were emerging to fire at him from the depths of any of the apartments.
He waited a few moments in front of that door, but unsurprisingly, no one answered.
There were no other doors open anywhere else on that floor, and even if he kicked them down, he doubted he’d get any answers from the occupants.
So he returned to the stairwell and made his way down to the eighth floor. There was no one he knew on that next level, but on the floor below, Traps had a suite.
As Eric passed the eighth floor door of the stairwell, a distant thud alerted him to the fact something was amiss.
He went to the door, very softly opened it a crack, and peered past. He caught a glimpse of a black, rifle-wielding robot entering one of the doors in the center of the hallway. Based on the location of Traps’ suite below, the apartment would have been just above it.
He increased his time sense to the max to consider the different scenarios. The only reason for the robots to enter that suite would be if Traps was resisting on the floor below; they likely intended to shoot through the floor and ambush him. If that was true, that meant there would also be robots below breaking into adjacent rooms, and perhaps the suite underneath, and maybe even the external windows, if only to surround him on all sides.
That meant Eric had to do what he could to help his friend.
And quick.
He considered his options, and chose what he thought was the best course of action.
He slowed his time sense back down to normal and then dashed into the hall.
He raced toward the suite, and switched to Bullet Time when he reached it. He amped up his servomotors to maximum power so that he’d be moving in a blur to ordinary humans; it wouldn’t give him much of an advantage over these robots, however, since they’d be able to move just as fast. Still, at least it put him on a relatively level playing field.
He pied the opening, and immediately spotted a robot standing guard just inside.
Eric fired his rifle at only a meter away, burning a thumbnail sized hole through where he judged the AI core to reside. He guessed correctly, because the small blue light on the robot’s visor turned dark. That
would probably be the only sign that it was offline—unless it was off balance, the machine wouldn’t topple, but merely stand in place.
Eric stepped inside, and saw the other two robots that were standing in the family room, past the kitchen counter. There were a dead man and woman lying on the floor, with parts of their faces blown off. Both robots had their weapons currently pointed downward, at the carpet, and one of them was firing.
The other one had spotted Eric, and was lifting its weapon toward him. The movement was fast, and Eric had no choice but to dive behind the counter to avoid the resultant plasma burst.
He switched the rifle to smart targeting mode and amped up his time sense to the max to rewind the video recorded by the scope; he highlighted the desired chest sections he wanted the weapon to target, and then dismissed the video feed and returned his time sense to the previous setting; then he jammed the weapon past the edge of the counter and squeezed the trigger.
The muzzle rotated in rapid succession as it fired at the two targets; Eric switched to the point of view of the weapon, and saw that he’d stopped both robots in their tracks. One of them toppled to the floor, its heavy body frozen. The other remained standing, the small blue light on its visor had gone dark.
Eric got up and shut the door behind him. He surveyed the room: there was a window on the far side, but the curtains were closed, preventing anyone outside from seeing him.
He passed the counter and checked the laundry room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. They were all clear.
Eric returned to the family room, and approached the small hole the robots had carved into the floor with their plasma rifles.
He spotted a muzzle pointing up at him from the room below just in time to step back and out of the way as a plasma bolt burst forth. It struck the ceiling.
“I got it!” a muffled voice came from below.
“It’s me!” Eric said. “Asswipe.”
“Oh, hey Babe!” Bambi said.
“Oh, hey...” Eric said. If he were human, his cheeks would have turned red. He’d never call Bambi an asswipe. He could have sworn the first voice had belonged to Traps, but that could have been because he was expecting to find Traps inside. Wait a second... “Bambi? What are you doing in Traps’ suite?”
“Having sex with him, what do you think?” Bambi said.
She always did have a twisted sense of humor.
Eric glanced at his HUD: their status indicators now showed up, thanks to the adhoc network formed by their internal comm nodes, despite the jammers. The range was obviously severely reduced however, because Eric hadn’t picked them up until he was almost right above the hole in the floor.
Eric peered into the opening and saw Bambi’s pretty face gazing up at him from the floor of the room below. Except it wasn’t so pretty at the moment—it was covered in white plaster dust from the walls, her eyes red around the edges as the gland components simulated irritation. A portion of the skin had also peeled off one of her cheeks, revealing the metal interior underneath, no doubt thanks to a glancing blow from a plasma bolt.
“What the hell happened?” Eric said.
“Got some robots firing at us from both sides,” Bambi said. “All the Bolt Eaters are down here. We gathered here when the attack began. The only one missing is Eagleeye.”
“Good,” Eric said. “I was worried these bastards had captured you. You should get your collective asses up here. This floor is completely clear, at least for the time being.”
“We’d love to,” Bambi said. “Except for the small fact we’re kinda pinned down.”
“Can you get to the fire escape from where you are?” Eric asked.
“Ha,” Bambi said. “Nope. Check the building blueprints.”
He did. Even if they could get out the window without being shot down, the fire escape was too far away for even an android body to successfully vault onto.
“So, pinned down…” Eric slipped his rifle into the opening and switched to the scope’s point of view. He surveyed the room around Bambi, and saw other members of the team crouched behind different tables and chairs. There was a huge blast hole carved into the wall behind the upturned sofa Bambi was crouched behind.
“I’ll see if I can help you out,” Eric said.
He aimed toward the hole in the wall behind Bambi and scanned the adjacent room. He spotted three enemies whose heads were in plain view, visible from his current angle. All of them were hiding behind different pieces of upturned furniture.
Eric upped his time sense and fired in rapid succession, targeting the head areas. If these were like other military units, successful headshots wouldn’t disable the units entirely—to do that, he’d have to strike the AI cores or power cells located in the torso region. However, he would knock offline the visual processing and communications subsystems, which would prevent the robots from receiving video feeds from any other sources, including other robots, as well as their own rifles.
He took out two of the tangos in that fashion. But when he shifted his aim over the third, the robot in question had already ducked from view.
“Missed one of them,” Eric waited a few moments, keeping his targeting reticule aimed over the upturned table the tango was using for cover. “The other two have no visuals.”
The two robots he’d hit were attempting to use echolocation to see, but their squawkers were badly damaged and they sounded like ducks with a bad cold. The pair would still have the last known positions of the team members recorded, so they fired randomly, trying to keep them pinned down.
He spotted movement on the far left side of the table he was watching, but before he could react a plasma bolt struck his laser rifle, and he had to pull it back. He examined the weapon. The muzzle was completely melted away.
Eric tossed the useless weapon aside, and grabbed a plasma rifle from one of the robots he’d taken down in the current suite. He confirmed that he had complete access to the unit, and then returned to the opening in the floor.
He saw that Bambi was firing over the couch already in the room below, distracting the target, so Eric aimed through the gap with his new rifle and accessed the scope interface. He placed the targeting reticle over the upturned table in the adjacent room, and spotted the tango. It had switched to the far side of the table, and kept crouched, thanks to Bambi’s suppressive fire.
Eric aimed at its torso, which was in view, and squeezed the trigger. The plasma bolt struck the tango in the AI core region, and the off balance unit toppled over.
The two other robots were still firing intermittently, but Bambi and the other Bolt Eaters had already shifted spots slightly so that their current locations didn’t match up with the positions recorded by the damaged robots. Eric still only had shots on the head areas. He fired at each of them a few more times, disabling the annoying squawkers.
Eric moved around to the other side of the hole so that he could search the rest of the apartment. He spotted Slate, covered in white plaster dust, crouched behind a coffee table facing the bedroom on the opposite side of the room. The occasional plasma bolt came from that room, from a far wall that had also been blown out. The angle was poor, and Eric couldn’t sight any of the targets.
He glanced at his overhead map to check where the other points of attack were: the window seemed to be blown out, but it was clear at the moment—the police were finally doing their job out there. Past the foyer, there were five more tangos in the main hallway.
He repositioned so that the foyer was in view. He saw that the main door was lying on the floor, broken off its hinges, and the edges of the doorframe were ragged, as if eaten away by an explosion, but otherwise he didn’t spot any of the tangos.
“I don’t have a bead on any of the other attackers from my current angle,” Eric said. “Maybe I can drill a hole in the ceiling with my plasma rifle and catch them off guard long enough to take a few down.”
“Don’t think the off guard part will work,” Marlborough said. Eric couldn’t see him, but the vo
ice of the Sergeant First Class came clearly over the comm line. “Trust me, you notice when plasma bolts dig into the ceiling above you. Plaster dust drops down after you unleash the first shot.”
“All right then, we’ll use it as a distraction, giving you time to get up here,” Eric said. “After I enlarge this opening…”
Eric set down his rifle on the floor and used his android strength to rip away the drywall and floorboards underneath the rug, enlarging the opening the original attackers had made. In about thirty seconds he had a hole wide enough to fit human beings—or in their case, androids.
“Okay, that should fit you guys!” Eric said. “Now for the distraction. I’ll handle the neighboring room.”
“Hicks, cover the front door with me,” Marlborough said. “The rest of you, get your robotic asses up there as soon as you see plaster dropping from the next room!”
Eric raced to the foyer of the current suite and checked that the hallway outside was still empty. Then he went to the neighboring apartment, kicked in the door, and hurried into the family room. He peered into the laundry room, bathroom, and bedroom along the way—they all appeared empty at first glance.
He had dropped out of comm range, thanks to the jammers, but the last known positions of the tangos were still visible on the overhead map, which indicated they were in the family room just below. Eric aimed his plasma rifle into the floor and opened fire. In moments he had carved a small hole.
His map updated. He saw that Brontosaurus and Slate were in the neighboring room. And Bambi at the entrance to this one.
Which would explain why the map had refreshed.
He glanced at her as he fired.
Some of the dust had fallen away from her body, revealing the tattoo of an elk the French beauty had on her forearm.
“Bonjour,” she said demurely. She had her face angled away, so that she was hiding the cheek where the skin had been ripped off. Her eyes didn’t seem as red—she must have adjusted the sensitivity of the involved components. Getting closer to her ravishing self. “Need any help here?”