The Robots of Gotham

by Todd McAulty

  “I can.”

  “How do you talk to the machines?” she asked. “What is your secret?”

  “Let’s talk about this inside,” I said, my eye on all the soldiers still watching us. I took her arm, guiding her toward the college.

  Two soldiers met us at the entrance. They gave us a stretcher loaded with two body bags and other equipment and then held the door open. We went inside.

  There were more soldiers at the top of the stairs. I went first. The damn stretcher was heavy—it felt like we were lugging something at least as solid as a body. The soldiers watched us until we reached the basement.

  “Are these really the best stretchers we’ve got?” I asked. I didn’t relish the prospect of lugging them all the way into the tunnels and back.

  “The AGRT has hover-capable units. But they are too bulky to navigate stairs.”

  “Great. What the hell are we carrying?”

  “Standard emergency medical gear,” she said. “We can dump some of it.”

  Van de Velde didn’t seem to be having any trouble with her end. “How did you get stuck being my guide?” I asked, changing the subject.

  “The capitán wanted to send one of my squad. But I insisted it should be me.”

  “That was courageous of you.”

  “I led my men into these tunnels. I should be the one to get them out.”

  We reached the underground cafeteria, and Van de Velde told me to set down the stretcher. She did a quick inventory of everything the soldiers had packed inside the bag. She pulled out a fair-sized medical kit and set it aside. “We won’t need this,” she said grimly.

  That made the stretcher a bit lighter. As we started walking, Van de Velde seemed to realize where we were for the first time.

  “How did you get past me, down here?” she asked, looking around. “We saw you on camera and searched the whole bottom floor for you.”

  “I hid. In that cabinet over there.”

  Her mouth dropped open. From here, the cabinet looked a lot smaller than it was. “Are you being serious?”

  “Absolutely. I saw you cooling your heels right here while your squad ran around looking for me.”

  She shook her head. “You’re an asshole.”

  We made our way down the long corridor toward the escalator. “Where did you get that fake combat suit?” she asked. “It looked authentic. You had some of my squad convinced it was real. You could have convinced me, except you couldn’t run or fight for shit.”

  “It’s not fake. It’s real.”

  She actually snorted. “You’re telling me you have a real American combat suit. And you expect me to believe you’re not a spy.”

  “It’s useless. It doesn’t have any power cores.”

  “If it’s real, it’s not useless. The Americans would pay a fortune for it, cores or not. So would Venezuelan Military Intelligence. They’d do anything to get their hands on an American combat suit.”

  Yeah, I bet they would. Especially considering this one had been stolen from Venezuelan Military Intelligence. “It’s not for sale,” I said.

  “So if you’re not an American spy, where did you get it?” she persisted.

  “I’m not a spy. I took it from someone who it didn’t belong to. Let’s leave it at that for now.”

  We were approaching the escalator. “Are the robots here?” Van de Velde asked nervously, scanning the darkness ahead.

  “No. This is just the pedestrian walkway, linking the nearby buildings. The robots are in the old tunnels, one level down.”

  We walked down the escalator. “Tell me about them,” she said.

  So I did. I told her about my run-in with Stone Cloud, and the existence of the colony.

  “They don’t sound like much of a threat,” she said.

  “They’re not. But the Orbit Pebble . . . that’s something else entirely.”

  “Where does it come from?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know. That thing shouldn’t be here. It’s acting irrationally. It may be cognitively compromised, impaired by battle. I don’t trust it, and I don’t want you to go near it.”

  “You don’t give me orders,” she said, resentment in her voice. “This is my operation.”

  I set the stretcher down and turned to face her. “Look, Sergeant. Let’s keep this simple. You see the Pebble, you get the hell out of there. You run. You understand me?”

  “I’ll decide when I run—”

  “This isn’t a negotiation. These are my terms. You want my help, these are the rules we play by.”

  “I don’t want your goddamned help,” she said. She picked up her end of the stretcher and walked past me.

  I watched her drag the stretcher into the darkness for about forty feet. I sighed. I caught up to her and picked up my end.

  “Damn, you’re stubborn,” I said.

  “Don’t think that just because you bluffed the capitán you can pull that shit on me,” she said.

  “No ma’am.”

  We walked a little farther, until we came to the folding metal security gate. It had been forced open, and a good third of the fence had been pushed aside, jammed up to the left.

  “This is where you shitheads shot at me,” I said.

  “Warning shots,” Van de Velde said. “And you deserved it.” We guided the stretcher through the gap. “What were you doing down here anyway?” she said.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you sometime.”

  “Were you stealing? We found a group of looters in the college. They stole a lot of medical equipment.”

  “I didn’t steal anything.” That much was true at least.

  “So you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “Story of my life,” I said.

  “Colonel Perez released the camera images of someone in a combat suit to the American press this week. I assume that was you?”

  I didn’t know that. “What? Why would he do that?”

  “Sometimes the American public is our biggest ally. They are very proud. He thought someone might brag about who is committing brazen criminal acts in the occupied territory.”

  “Well, I wish him luck.”

  “The American press is very interested. They have picked up the story. Did you break into the Sturgeon Building?”

  Shit. Suddenly, this conversation wasn’t fun anymore.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” she said when I remained quiet. “I should not have asked you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “The American press asked the colonel that question. They wanted to know if this was the same soldier who’d broken into the Sturgeon Building. Colonel Perez didn’t understand what they were talking about. He didn’t know there’d been a breach at military intelligence until this morning, when he saw the reports of a break-in in the American media.”

  “What have you heard?” I asked carefully.

  “Very little. When the colonel shared the images with the American press last night, there was an explosion of questions about a recent incident at the Sturgeon Building. They’ve been calling him all morning. They claim someone in a combat suit penetrated the most secure portion of the building, in an act of sabotage. Several drones and security robots were destroyed. If true, it would be a major breach of security.”

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “Colonel Perez expected the camera footage he released of you at Columbia College last night would be the first image of an American combat suit ever seen inside Sector Eleven. However, the Americans have broadcast the footage side by side with very similar images taken by their drones outside the Sturgeon Building four nights ago. Some are claiming it is the same individual; some say it is a team of secret American resistance fighters. Colonel Hayduk at military intelligence has made no comment.”

  That was fascinating. Sergei and I had expected the Venezuelan press to pick up the story, but if the American media had their own drone footage of our little charade at the Sturgeon Building, that al
most certainly meant that Hayduk wanted them to have it.

  Was Hayduk trying to cover up his illegal possession of the suit by leaking a story that the Sturgeon Building had been attacked by an American in a combat suit? Was that what I just heard? If so, it was a complex and risky gambit. But perhaps a clever one.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I do not think you are a Canadian. I think you are an American spy.”

  “You do?” I said, more than a little surprised. “Then why didn’t you tell Leon?”

  “Why didn’t I tell the capitán?” she said. She was quiet for a moment before she answered. “Because you stood in front of a war machine to protect my men when you had no reason to. There are only one or two soldiers I know who would’ve done what you did. And you did it for men who were trying to capture you. You’re a man of exceptional bravery and integrity. And I owe you that much at the very least.”

  I found myself very touched by her words. “You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “But I appreciate what you’ve done to protect my secret. Very much.”

  “Also, Colonel Hayduk is an asshole,” she said casually. “He is a horrible human being. If it was you who embarrassed him, I will buy you a drink.”

  “That’s very kind,” I said, trying to disguise my surprise. “But I’m afraid I don’t know who Colonel Hayduk is.”

  “But if you ever embarrass Colonel Perez in a similar fashion, or act against him in any way, I will hunt you down and shoot you,” she said flatly. “Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly.”

  We walked in silence for a time. There was a question I wanted to ask Van de Velde. It was bottled up inside me and didn’t want to come out. All I had to do was open my mouth and say, Do you still think I killed Corporal Maldonado? But when I finally opened my mouth, I found myself saying, “This is the door.”

  Van de Velde seemed confused. “What door?”

  “The door to the old coal tunnels. Come on.”

  We had to manhandle the stretcher around a hot dog stand. I realized for the first time that it was the same stand I’d noted when I’d passed this way this morning, right in front of the door to the coal tunnels. I mentally kicked myself. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to notice it while I was running from Van de Velde’s soldiers this morning, and desperately searching for landmarks.

  When we were inside, Van de Velde looked around as I shone my light down the dusty corridor. “I don’t remember coming this way,” she said.

  “Because you were hot on my tail,” I said. “Come on; there’s one more set of stairs to get to the coal tunnels.”

  We reached the top of the stairs about five minutes later. I moved toward them, but Van de Velde held up an arm to stop me.

  “Do you smell that?” she said.

  I sniffed the air. “Smoke,” I said.

  “Yes. And burnt pyropak missile propellant.”

  “From the chase this morning,” I said.

  “Maybe. But it smells fresh.”

  “There’s hardly any air in these tunnels. It’ll probably smell like this for a week.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  We descended the stairs. At the bottom, the stairwell opened up into the coal tunnels. The smell was much stronger here, and my light revealed thin wisps of white smoke drifting lazily above the ground on our left.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said. “It didn’t smell this strong this morning. And where did that smoke come from?”

  “Perhaps there is a fire,” Van de Velde said. She was looking to the right, where the chase had begun. “Deeper in the tunnels.”

  “Damn, that would suck,” I said. I shone my light in the same direction. There was a haze of smoke there, too, but it wasn’t noticeably thicker.

  “Do you think we should wait?” she asked.

  “No. Let’s keep moving. But stay alert, will you?”

  “Definitely,” she said.

  We began to make our way east, taking care to avoid loose debris on the ground. The smell of smoke and pyropak was even stronger here.

  “I can’t believe you led me and my men down here,” she said behind me.

  “You’re the assholes who followed me.”

  “Do you know your way around?”

  “Hardly. Twenty-four hours ago, I never even knew these tunnels existed.”

  “I thought you told Leon you’d studied the robot colony for years!”

  “And I thought you knew better than to believe everything I told the capitán.”

  “So . . . what? You just happened to stumble on the tunnels while we were chasing you?”

  “Something like that.”

  I was holding the stretcher with one hand now, using the other to investigate every nook, cranny, and shadowy pile of junk we passed with my flashlight. One of those piles turned out to be a giant robot hand.

  “Put down the stretcher,” I said.

  I moved to the side of the hand, playing over it with the flashlight. “What is that?” Van de Velde said, coming up by my side.

  “It’s a piece of the Orbit Pebble,” I said.

  “I didn’t know it only had one hand.”

  “It didn’t.” I squatted down next to it, taking a closer look.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Somebody shot it off,” I said. I leaned forward, sniffed at the still-warm metal. It stank of explosives. “In the last few hours.”

  Van de Velde began pacing up and down in the tunnel, shining her light at her feet. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  She found it a second later. Her light illuminated it at the rim of a small crevasse.

  “A rocket casing,” she said. “For a Korean self-propelled rocket grenade.”

  “The Koreans shot the Orbit Pebble?” I said.

  “No. The Koreans manufacture low-cost standardized ammunition, for a variety of machine weapons.”

  “Then what shot the Pebble?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  I didn’t like the sound of that. At all. We walked a little farther, until she stopped again. I watched while Van de Velde played the light on the wall on our left.

  “High-caliber bullets,” she said, pointing at the wall. There were dozens of impact marks in the walls, in tight little rows, just above chest height.

  “From what?”

  “The Orbit Pebble. It was returning fire.”

  I shone my light at the ground, swung it left and right. There were brass shell casings everywhere. And small bits of gray metal.

  I put the stretcher down again, got down on my hands and knees. “What are you doing?” Van de Velde asked.

  I stood up and walked back to her. “Collecting these.”

  I showed her what I had in my hand. Half a dozen metallic shards, small and twisted.

  “What are they?”

  “They’re pieces of whatever the Orbit Pebble was shooting at,” I said. “Part of its hull, maybe.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, pocketing the shards and staring at the wall. “But it was big.”

  “Who won?”

  “Hard to say. But there’s not much that could kill an Orbit Pebble at close combat.”

  “Do you think the robot colony attacked the Pebble?” she said. “Tried to drive it out?”

  Looking at the shards of metal in my hand gave me a distinctly uneasy feeling. “It’s possible. But doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

  “What’s strange about it? The Pebble attacked us. It’s dangerous. The other robots had to know that.”

  I didn’t exactly agree, but this wasn’t the place for a debate.

  A few minutes later, we came to a wide intersection. New tunnels branched off to the north and south.

  “You almost lost us here,” she said, looking north. Evidently she was starting to remember the route after all.

  “I wish I had.”

  “What did you do—switch of
f your light? Run into the tunnel in the dark?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re one gutsy son of a bitch.” She started to pull to the left, toward where her men had fallen. “Come on.”

  “Hold on,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Just shut up for a second.”

  I turned around slowly, shining my light down all four tunnels branching off the intersection. The light revealed long stretches of dark, black tunnel, but little else. No signs of a fire and only a few stray wisps of smoke.

  “I don’t like it down here,” she said after a few minutes. “I want to get moving.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

  “So?”

  “We should hear the robot colony by now. They were working constantly—digging, excavating, building. The sound carried for miles in these closed tunnels.”

  “We didn’t hear them this morning when we were listening for you.”

  “I know. But I heard them loud and clear when I passed through about an hour earlier.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Dozens. All working at various tasks.”

  She turned around slowly, looking as I shone my light down each tunnel in turn.

  “I don’t hear them now,” she said at last. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “I know. It’s like they’re all gone.”

  “Where would they go?”

  “I’m not sure. When I made my way back to the hotel this morning, I walked through the heart of the colony. It was deserted. I figured they would have returned by now.”

  “Returned from where?” She shone her own light up and down the tunnels. “You think the Orbit Pebble killed them all?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t see any bodies.”

  That uneasy feeling was getting worse. “Is it possible the Venezuelans already sent a force down here to try and drive off the Pebble?” I asked.

  “We’re it,” said Van de Velde.

  “No. Something else has been here.”

  “If so, we didn’t send it. I sent my report to Colonel Perez this morning. Capitán Leon was tasked with recovering my fallen men immediately.”

  “Could someone else have gotten here before you?”

  “Who? The colonel has no other men to send.”

  “Hayduk, maybe. Someone from military intelligence?”