“We’re on,” said Noel. “These guys have only just started their round.”
“I see it.” Alanna shifted, tense with excitement. “Empty bag.”
They’d come up with their plan four days ago on seeing a mech carrying a load of wailing humans in its rear cage. No doubt taking them to the Ezeroc for questioning.
Or keeping them for rendering. Didn’t much matter. People in those cages were lost, but that didn’t mean Noel or Alanna countenanced murdering them. The plan was to find a mech with an empty cage. Kill the AI, consciences clear.
Noel flipped his console’s view from a pure visual feed to one showing electromagnetic radiation. The machines had hearts of EM fire, fuel cells alongside complicated electronics. Part of their yet-to-be-tried plan was locking Marine weapons onto the machine’s own energy signature network. Time to see if it’ll work. Noel nodded, then gave Alanna a nudge. “Turn up the volume.”
“You know it.” Alanna worked her rig’s console, amping up the signal strength on her cam network and associated local comm network. The response in the machines below was instant. The three leading humanoids scattered, moving for any cover they could find.
In the center of the intersection, cover was conveniently available.
One zipped inside a burnt-out bus. Another lifted the edge of an autocar, huddling alongside. The last sidled next to a building. So far so good, the machines now distracted from pure visual scanning.
“Come on,” hissed Noel to his console, as if he could convince the machines through thought alone. “You know you want to.”
The big war mech paused, top dish rotating. Like clockwork, the AI fired up whatever milspec comm jamming network they used. Noel’s cam feed died in a haze of static. He shared a grin with Alanna. She scrabbled on the ground, lifting the firing control. It was a device you held in one hand. Clench, and the magic would start.
The magic came from the small bundle of wires leading from it, across the wall at their backs, and through a crack in the building. Outside, it forked in three, one strand leading to the northwest building, the other to the southeast. The third wound its way into the intersection where the three humanoid machines were. Alanna still wore a grin, first one Noel remembered seeing on her face. She offered the firing control. “You want the honors?”
“Be my guest.”
She nodded once, then squeezed.
From the top of the northwest and southeast buildings, heavy machinery whined over the wind’s keen. From their position, it wasn’t loud. The buildings were forty stories, high enough they weren’t immediately accessible by the AI humanoids’ jump range. Close enough they’d make an impact.
Atop the buildings, missile silos came online. They roared into the burnt sky, contrails of fire pushing payloads into the freezing wind. Noel watched fingers of fire reach for the heavens. He held his breath. This is it.
The humanoids on the ground opened fire with railguns, ferrous payloads leaving trails of smoke as they burned the air. The sound was loud, and almost continuous, as the humanoids acted as ground-based point defense cannons. Missiles in the sky bloomed and exploded as the machines destroyed them.
Still all according to plan.
“Here.” Alanna held the firing control toward Noel. “I know you’re dying to try it.”
He took it from her. She wasn’t wrong. Digging up the ceramicrete in the intersection had been hard. Harder still was putting it all back. Noel switched the dial on the firing control, whispering, “For the Empire.”
His words were lost in a massive explosion as the intersection erupted in a ball of roiling fire. Mines they’d planted the previous day erupted, tossing ceramicrete and metal into the air. The shockwave blasted fragments of stone and glass through the open window above them even this high up, Noel and Alanna huddling together as the noise and destruction raged on.
The air felt alive. Like it was hungry for whatever the machines used for blood.
Noel tapped the side of his head, feeling dizzy. The explosion was so loud it felt like it had pressed his brain between his ears. Alanna crouched over him, her lips moving like she was talking, but Noel couldn’t hear anything but a high-pitched ringing. She shook her head, took the firing control from him, and squeezed.
Lying on his back, Noel saw the missile pods fire again, sending a second salvo of payback toward the heavens. He pushed himself up, scrabbling to the window, risk be damned. Below, the intersection was a solid mass of flame, nothing left of the three humanoids that had sought cover. The war mech lurched forward, the disk of its head seeking targets amid the noise and confusion of heat and fire.
Said heat and fire was so great, it confused AI thermo imaging. The mech didn’t spot the launched missiles above it. They curved, arcing toward Earth. Speeding down at six times the speed of sound, locked onto the EM signature of the war mech. They impacted like the hammer of the gods themselves.
Alanna tackled Noel, dragging him to the ground. Debris rained through the broken window. Noel had a moment to wonder what would have been left of his face — probably not a lot — if she hadn’t saved him.
They lay on the ground as the firestorm outside abated. When sound came back to Noel, he was confused. There was a noise he hadn’t heard before. It took him a while to place it.
Laughter.
Alanna was laughing.
She whooped with joy, rocking back and forth. Alanna slapped Noel on the shoulder. “We did it!”
His own laugh started low, right in his belly. A chuckle, as if that’s all the universe had left to give, and then rising into a full laugh, deep, and long, and loud. Noel grabbed Alanna in a hug, not caring the cold metal of her rig hurt his face.
They stood, leaning on each other. The street below was gone, the first three floors of each corner building aflame. Of the machines, not a scrap of metal remained.
Noel turned to the sky. He wasn’t sure if he’d meant to give thanks to a higher power, or just see the bloom of reflected fire on the scorched clouds. What he saw stopped his laughter, a faucet turned off, the sound trickling to dry silence.
Above them, an aircraft streaked across the sky. It looked small, but the shape was wrong for a fighter. More like a bomber. In its wake, blooms of faint orange light came to life, like poisonous flowers. “Alanna?”
“On it.” She worked her rig’s console. “Oh. Oh my.”
“What is it?”
Her eyes were wide as they found his. “Nanotech. Another plague.” Alanna reached a hand for him, touching his face. No helmet. No ship suit to keep him safe against the horrors of a nanobot swarm. Nothing to stop him being milled into slurry, like the people of Osaka, hundreds of years before.
Noel looked into her eyes, then at the neck seal of her rig. Her visor, safely tucked away. As if she was ready to share his fate. No. We’re done dying for the wrong reasons. “Thank you.”
“No. Don’t … go.”
“It’ll be okay.” Noel tapped the corner of her collar, then clicked the EMERGENCY SEAL control. Alanna’s visor lapped out, shutting her away. A helmet, against the horrors of what was coming. “Just, don’t forget, okay?”
“I won’t forget you.” Her voice had a hard, metallic tinge, her rig’s speakers taking away some of her humanity.
“Not just me. All of us.” Noel pointed to the blasted city outside. “Remember. It’s okay to use excessive force on these motherfuckers.”
She laughed. He tried to join her, but coughed, then choked, stumbling to one knee. Noel tried to scream, his lungs and brain alive with pain, like every part of him was being dipped in acid, pulled apart, tiny robots in his blood milling his cells back into separate atoms.
As he slumped, fingers scrabbling for something, anything, they found Alanna’s gloved hand. She held him tight as the universe unfolded around him in all its terrible beauty.
• • •
The journey of the Tyche continues in Tyche’s Angels. Why not treat yourself today?
&n
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Tyche's Ghosts Page 29