by M. D. Cooper
1.20 seconds: Ruby was closer again. The TC didn’t seem to care. Maybe it was that Leck looked like the bigger threat because of his size. That old animal brain housed in the TC’s shell was making the wrong calls in the face of hard data. Leck was probably good in a bar fight. Ruby was good in a war zone. The TC most likely computed that a slim figure was running at it, SMGs firing useless bullets that bounced off like rain, and prioritized Leck up the kill list. Austin lined up the TC’s throat, and squeezed the trigger.
1.30 seconds: Time was getting tight. Ruby had a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the TC before it fired. In Austin’s experience, fifty-fifty meant ninety-ten to the house. It didn’t look good. He didn’t know what she was going to do when she got there anyway. She had two useless SMGs. But hell, Austin liked the way she smiled, and if he was going to die, a blaze of glory wasn’t a bad option. If Olivia was still around to write this down, she’d have a great final moment to play out.
1.40 seconds: Ruby’s RUBY SMG ran dry, the woman dropping it to fall—so slowly—towards the ground. The Glock fired again, Austin’s overlay noting the previous shoulder joint impact was also a good effect, a glowing coal of a hole opening in the TC’s frame. The DPUs were expensive, but it felt like money well spent 0.60 seconds away from certain death.
1.50 seconds: new target. Go for the head. Why not? The brain might be there. Might not. Only one way to find out. Austin moved the Glock’s targeting camera further up the TC’s frame towards that metal face.
1.60 seconds: the rotary cannon was almost ready for fire. Leck had made perhaps three steps in all this time. Ruby was almost at the TC. Olivia was out of Austin’s care zone right now. She might be the key to everything, but that only mattered if they weren’t all dead in a hail of gunfire.
1.70 seconds: TC’s head under the Glock’s sights, Austin fired again. Sure enough, the throat impact had left a glowing crater in it’s neck. Austin wished TCs weren’t so damn strong. While his previous shots had left the TC’s arm and shoulder impaired, it still had one perfectly good arm connected to that cannon, and that was more than enough to wreak terrible revenge on its targets.
1.80 seconds: okay, so Austin had got it wrong. It wasn’t two seconds to firing, it was 1.80 seconds. The rotary cannon started its fusillade of death, the first round—from a weapon designed to fire five hundred rounds per minute, which was a little over eight a second, or just under one every tenth of a second—impacting against Leck’s shield, then through it, and into Leck himself. Forward momentum would carry Leck on to glory or death.
1.90 seconds: Ruby was at the TC. Austin risked one more shot, the Glock barking fire and uranium at the TC’s head.
2.00 seconds: another round from the rotary cannon impacted Leck through his portable wall. A bright white-hot hole appeared in the TC’s forehead from Austin’s shot. Ruby’s PAGE SMG had fallen silent, and her free hand had blossomed open like a metal flower. An impossibly thin blade extruded from her open wrist as she brought that arm around and into the TC’s torso.
2.10 seconds: It was hard to tell over the speed of overtime, but Austin felt this was the moment where everything changed. The TC, at this point, was not firing on all cylinders. It used its broken arm to swat Ruby aside, which would probably have killed a normal human. She didn’t appear to care as she started overtime’s slow journey through the air.
2.20 seconds: okay, great. So the brain was in the torso. Austin lowered his weapon, selecting auto fire on the Glock. He pulled the trigger. Leck took another one for the team. The bullet holes in his back were erupting in showers of meat, and his trajectory was now more towards the floor than forward.
2.30 seconds: The Glock fired again.
2.40 seconds: The TC stopped moving with conscious will as the crater Austin had opened in its chest left a glowing tear through to something made of meat and previously alive inside. The rotary cannon was still spinning, but decelerating, Austin’s overlay reporting that firing had ceased, but not before one more round exited the chamber, hitting Leck—again.
Austin let the overtime go, tasting coffee and chocolate. In the aftermath, he saw Ruby hit the wall, bounce off like a thrown cushion, and land on her feet. Leck was down, blood and gibbets everywhere. Olivia was fine, roughly in the same spot she’d been when the shit hit the fan. Austin walked up to the TC, pointed the Glock at it, and fired into the chassis a couple more times for good measure. The superheated holes glowed in the wake of the depleted uranium rounds, but it wasn’t a cheery kind of glow. It was the sullen burn of lessons taught the hard way. He took no pleasure in it.
Although: now Leck was down, that was a net savings for the cost of the mission. Austin had always figured himself as a glass half full kind of guy. “How we doing?” he said.
Ruby was rubbing her ribs, giving a stretch. “I could do this all day.”
“Leck’s down,” said Olivia.
“Less kill-stealing,” said Ruby. “More of a bounty for us.”
“Uh,” said Olivia. “I guess.”
“Well,” said Austin, “as fun as this has been, I think we should press on.” He waved the Glock at the door. “Soft what light through yonder window breaks and all that, right?”
“It’s… not a girl,” said Olivia. “It’s a device, isn’t it?”
“Metaphor,” offered Ruby.
“Exactly,” said Austin, tapping his head with the nose of the Glock. He ejected the DPU magazine, slipping some armor-piercing high explosive rounds back in. It was important to save the good stuff for the right times. “Be creative, Olivia. Life’s too short for anything else.”
“What are we going to do about Leck?” said Ruby.
“We’ll get him on the way out,” said Austin after a moment’s thought.
“Give him to his family?” said Olivia.
“Maybe, but I was more thinking we shouldn’t leave evidence lying around,” said Austin. “C’mon. Let’s get cracking. If the schematics are correct, behind this door is a guard station. We can expect some resistance. It’s not a big guard station, so I’m thinking just a couple of people.”
“Two TCs would be a rough time,” said Ruby. Her hand slicked back into place, all evidence of the blade gone. To puncture the chest of a TC, that blade needed to be made of something hard and strong, backed by an arm stronger than a jackhammer. Definitely ex-military. Metatech had that kind of technology, but not many others. Still. She was batting for his team, and everything was working out just fine.
“Olivia, can you have a look?” said Austin. “Over the link network.”
She nodded, unslinging her deck. She frowned. “Okay. We’ve got two people in there. They’re behind desks. Overturned, looks like.”
Ruby took a look a the deck’s screen. “Okay. Boss? You want left or right?”
“Buyer’s choice,” said Austin.
“Great. Left’s my lucky side.”
“I’ll go right then,” said Austin. “Let’s go make some magic.”
• • •
When Olivia opened the door for them, her access to the local link a thing of wonder and beauty, everything was as described. The guard station was a standard affair, used to housing a pair of usually-bored, but currently-terrified, soldiers. These soldiers were expected to do clearance checks for people going into the lab proper. There shouldn’t have been anyone unauthorized making it this far into the facility. If intruders did make it this far, they would—under normal circumstances—have had to joust with a hundred troops, locked doors, and other forms of resistance.
Which meant anyone making it this far back was a serious motherfucker, and not to be messed with. That was Austin’s firm view, anyway, and cards were playing well in their favor tonight.
Inside the guard station were the expected soldiers, one left, one right. They had—unlike the TC outside—correctly identified Ruby has the point of hard contact, weapons trained on the woman as she ducked in and to the left. They had assault rifles, good weapons for a
n everyday situation, and they were firing on Ruby as she moved.
As Austin entered, moving to the right, he raised the Glock, then paused, the film of overtime settling around him. Ruby was moving like a gymnast, a hands-free cartwheel turning her through the air, bullets missing her by the grace of God alone. As she was inverted, head down, legs in the air, no part of her body connected to the ground, she unloaded with both her SMGs at one of the Reed soldiers.
Not to be outdone by mere staff, Austin focused on the other Reed guard. The Glock was still set on automatic fire, and seeing no reason to break a winning formula, he left it alone. He squeezed the trigger, the gold of the Glock bright under the room’s fluorescent lights, and emptied the weapon into his assigned soldier, like bullets were treats handed out at a party. The rounds hammered into the soldier (who was still focused on Ruby, which would teach them—ever so briefly—that Austin was also not one with whom you wanted to fuck).
Austin let his gaze turn to Ruby, who landed on both feet like she’d done this a hundred times before, her SMGs still firing in bursts. The soldier she was shooting was already falling backward, and she strode forward, keeping the rounds hitting the body until her guns clicked empty. Smoke curled about the room, whisked into eddies by the air conditioning.
“Nice shooting,” said Austin.
“Thanks,” said Ruby. “Always been my strong preference to use over, rather than under kill, you know?”
“I hear you,” said Austin. “Olivia?”
“On it,” said Olivia. She opened the last door into the lab itself.
Austin smiled. It was finally time. Payback.
• • •
“What the fucking fuck is this fucking thing?” said Austin, holding up the tablet.
“Looks like a tablet,” said Ruby.
“Definitely a tablet,” said Olivia.
Austin was standing in the lab, the open safe in front of him. Instead of holding the Decider, it held a tablet. This wasn’t expected. This was a surprise. This was not a good surprise. He sighed. Best to see what was what. Bad news could be managed as long as you knew about it. He clicked the power on the tablet, the screen lighting up to show him Cayo Moody’s face.
“Heya,” said Cayo.
“Where’s the Decider?” said Austin.
“The what? Oh, that,” said Cayo. “Yeah, we moved it after Kerry told us you were going to bust on in. We were going to need it, you know?”
“Kerry?” said Austin, something sick dawning like the light of a murder moon inside him.
“You remember her,” said Cayo. “Kerry Forsdyke. Used to be your assistant? Anyway. Turns out she didn’t like being fired because you were an asshole, so she worked out a deal. Hell, we even gave her back her options and a bonus.”
“It was my invention!” screamed Austin. Calm, Austin, calm. He composed himself. “Where is it?”
“Oh, hell now Ainley,” said Cayo. “We’ve brought back to your facility. We need to unfuck all the people you’ve fucked, and it’s a good field test.”
“You’re at my facility?” said Austin.
“Just like you’re at ours,” said Cayo. “Speaking of which, we need a few tax write-offs considering the fuckery in Seattle. So, we’re just going to cross this one off to corporate espionage. I hope you don’t die. Hell, I want to see you again. Because this is personal. You know how it is—”
Austin clicked the tablet off, turning to Olivia. “I don’t want you to panic.”
“I’m not panicked,” said Olivia.
“Good,” said Austin. “There is a bomb in this facility. We are all going to die if you don’t disarm it.”
“I’m a little panicked,” said Olivia, but she got her deck out. “Okay, okay. I think I’ve found it. Yeah, the whole facility is… no, it’s not a bomb.”
“It’s not?” said Austin.
“No, it looks like we’ve got ourselves an orbital strike,” she said, her voice awed. “I mean, the facility would be hard to blow up by conventional means. It’d take a lot of planning and a lot of explosives. But if you can nudge one of your skywatchers overhead? Here. Check out the link comms.” She was right, chatter across the link net was showing soldiers outside evacuating, and a time to strike noted as being less than a minute.
Austin copied that to his overlay, and looked at them both. “No chance to disable it?”
“I’m not linked into their sat network,” said Olivia. “I mean, I love that you think I’m that good, but… hell to the no.” She seemed almost resigned.
Austin could understand her position. An orbital particle cannon strike would turn this particular area into floating dust. It was surgical, raining nuclear-levels of devastation down on a very specific area. They had a minute to get outside, into the car, and to a safe distance.
“We’re fucked,” said Ruby, saying what they were all thinking.
As a leader, you could think something, but you needed to show a little positivity. “Not yet,” he said. Then, “Run!”
• • •
Back out through the guard station. Two bodies, which would shortly be stray atoms in the breeze. It was useful in a way, as if the police—useless, pathetic government servants that they were—ever arrived here, there wouldn’t be any evidence that could tie this back to Austin. That was good. The way the evidence was being erased? Not good.
They ran out into the death corridor, Austin slipping on something pink and slick oozing from the TC’s chassis. It could have been hydraulic fluid. It could have been liquified brain tissue. He vaulted Leck’s body, feet slapping on the floor as they ran. The guard room was exactly how they’d left it, bodies and all, section of the wall missing. It was funny how you noticed tiny details in the moments before death, like that damn pair of underwear still lying out. That would also be erased, like it had never been. Ruby was pulling ahead of Austin, her overtime not even close to being spent, and Olivia was further behind.
The good news, if there could be such a thing, was that there wouldn’t be any resistance outside. Cayo Moody had baited the perfect trap, closed the jaws tight around them, and was totally fine with eliminating Austin’s people along with Austin himself. Austin didn’t begrudge the man that, because he’d do the very same thing if their roles were reversed. He wanted to do the same thing. He was going to do the same thing. Because Austin Ainley was getting out of this, and he was going to make himself a Halloween pumpkin out of Moody’s skull.
The analogy didn’t hold a lot of water, but being fair on himself, Austin wasn’t really in his prime thinking environment.
The exterior lobby was also the same, the once blue-haired man lying where they left him. Ruby was working the mine on the door, her voice shouting in frustration, “Come on, come on!” and then, with a pop, the mine came free. She tossed it behind her. Olivia came up, panting, and unslung her deck. She worked the door controls, precious seconds ticking by as they waited for the doors to release them. With a hiss and the lash of rain, the night and storm greeted them as the doors opened.
They sprinted towards the air car, the doors already opening to receive them. Ruby hit the car first, hand held out to Austin. He took the hand, slinging himself in beside her. Olivia joined them last, saying something like go go let’s go please let’s just go.
Austin opened a link to the air car, kicking in the emergency launch sequence. The car rumbled underneath them, kicked the safeties aside like you’d sweep the legs out from under a cripple, and fired them skyward in a roar of turbines. Austin was pressed against his seat as they rose, and he risked a look back.
The particle cannon, when it struck, was beautiful. The heavens glowed a soft blue, then blue-white, then a hard, angry white, before the clouds boiled apart. The beam, visible as it carved its path through the rain, struck the facility like the vengeance of the gods of old. Concrete ruptured, the raw energy load fed into the ground breathtaking in its urgency and finality. The roof of the Reed facility was torn away like tissue, pieces
of material blasting skyward with the force of the beam.
The blast wave hit the air car, shaking them like a baby with a rattle. Alarms triggered in the cabin, red lights and noise around them, and the vehicle scudded sideways. Something rang against the outside of the car, then something larger tore the side off. Austin could feel them losing altitude, the machine failing through the rain and dark like an angel tossed from Heaven.
CHAPTER THREE
“I feel it’s time I stopped messing around,” said Austin. He felt sore. He felt singed. What he felt more than anything was pissed off.
“You’ve been messing around?” said Ruby, still looking for the end of her arm. It had been torn from her when the side of the air car was opened like a tin can. She didn’t look like it bothered her, excepting for the obvious loss of a useful limb. Exposed circuits, metal, and plastic were hanging from the stump. A viscous white fluid leaked from within. “Then definitely up your game, boss. These fuckers got my arm.”
Olivia was clutching her deck as she leaned against the side of a street car. She was, miraculously, unharmed, the light from the burning air car glinting in her eyes. “I… think, yes, that would be good. We should really… not do that again.”
“First thing? We’re going to need some wheels,” said Austin. “I’m not walking through all the Five Burroughs just to get back to base.”
“With you on that,” said Ruby.
“Second thing is, I’m going to invoke the… hell, I’m going to call it the ‘zombie protocol.’”
“The what now?” said Olivia.
“Let’s get a ride first,” said Austin.
“Wait up… got it,” said Ruby, holding up her severed forearm from where she’d found it in the wreckage. “I mean, not that it’s going to do me much good. But for later.”