The Robots of Gotham

by Todd McAulty

  “Yes. It was sort of . . . yellow.”

  “Yellow, yeah. It’s a ceramic composite. Hard as metal, but a lot lighter. There’s only one fabrication unit in the Western Hemisphere that uses ceramic composites to make aerial drones.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s just outside Amsterdam. It’s a hundred percent controlled by the Monticello prefecture.”

  “Monticello? The Sovereign Intelligence?”

  “That’s the one. Monticello does work only for one client: the Sentient Cathedral.”

  Van de Velde snorted. “You’re crazy. Why on earth would the Sentient Cathedral send a drone halfway around the world to snoop in some tunnels in Chicago?”

  “I think the Cathedral sent dozens of drones. They’re probably all through these tunnels. I think they’re watching us right now.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Why would they be interested in us?”

  I heard a whine again. This one was different—lower pitched, deeper. I stood up slowly, listening, trying to get a fix on it. I kept my flashlight fixed to the east, the way we’d come, wary for any sign of movement in the tunnel.

  “They’re not interested in us,” I said. “They’re interested in the robot colony.”

  “The colony? What do they want with the colony?”

  “They want to destroy it.”

  The whine was getting louder. It was also getting harder to pinpoint, because as it did, a wind was starting to blow through the tunnel. It was barely noticeable at first, but within seconds I could feel it stirring my hair from behind. It was coming from the west, and I could see it kicking up dust and making smoke swirl in the air.

  “What’s going on?” Van de Velde said.

  “Someone must be pumping air into the tunnels. Maybe to clean out the smoke—”

  But Van de Velde wasn’t listening. She was staring over my shoulder. “What the hell is that?”

  I turned around.

  Something was heading toward us from the west. Something fast. At first I thought it was two drones, since the only things I could make out were two fast-approaching pinpricks of light. But as they grew larger—as the noise grew to the sound of a hurricane and the air began to whip around us violently—it became obvious what it was.

  “Shit! Get down!” I hit the deck, rolling in the dirt, taking cover as best I could on the uneven floor.

  When I looked up, Van de Velde was still standing in the center of the tunnel, shielding her eyes from the wind and the glare of the approaching thing, trying to get a look at it.

  “Van de Velde! For the love of God, get down!”

  It arrived with the force of a tropical storm. It decelerated quickly, throwing its thrusters in reverse, kicking up a dust cloud that flooded the narrow passage, making the air almost unbreathable. Its wingspan was so large it barely fit in the tunnel.

  It was a Dieu Tueur, a massive war drone. A Godkiller. It came to a stop not thirty feet away, the center of a violent whirlwind of dust and air and rage. As it stopped it righted itself, bringing its lights and weapons to bear. So much dirt and noise hammered my face that I could barely stand to look at it.

  On my left, I saw Van de Velde draw her sidearm, try to take aim at the thing.

  “No!” I shouted uselessly into the raging air. It was so loud, I couldn’t even be sure if Van de Velde was firing her weapon.

  I got to my feet, took two running steps, and tackled her.

  We went down hard, in a tangle of arms and legs on the dirty floor of the tunnel.

  “Are you crazy?” Van de Velde screamed. “Get off of—”

  The Dieu Tueur opened fire. Bullets cut through the air overhead, slamming into the brick wall on our left. Van de Velde shouted, twisting and trying to cover her face.

  It was shifting in midair, rising slightly, correcting position to bring its weapon to a better vantage point. Jesus, it’s going to fire again, I realized.

  There was no cover and nowhere to run. The door to the stairs was thirty feet behind us. The gun would cut us in half before we’d even made it to our feet.

  There was only one chance. I jammed my right hand into my pocket, where I’d put the anti-drone device. I felt the cold metal against my fingers and groped desperately for the button. I found it and pressed it, hard, then tucked my head down and threw my arms over Van de Velde. I had no idea if the thing would affect something as advanced as a Dieu Tueur, or if the device worked underground. Or if it had any influence on a drone after it had identified us. But it was the only thing I had left.

  Sergeant Van de Velde didn’t appreciate my efforts to protect her—at all. If I hadn’t outweighed her by over fifty pounds I’m pretty sure she would have bucked me off, or punched me in the head. As it was she squirmed and fought me until I urgently hissed “Stop” in her ear, and she relented for a moment.

  Seconds ticked by. The drone didn’t fire. I could hear it hovering, still adjusting position, but its guns remained silent.

  Underneath me, Van de Velde was starting to squirm again. “Let me shoot it!” she said.

  I clamped my hand over her mouth. “Stay quiet, or we’re both dead,” I hissed into her ear.

  She stopped struggling, staring at me with wide eyes. The winds shifted in the tunnel again, and I risked lifting my head, looking back at the thing.

  It was moving. Its compact and powerful rotors kept it stable and aloft as it glided closer.

  We were constantly being pummeled with grit and small stones now. Just to look toward the thing I had to shield my eyes and peek through my fingers, and even then I risked losing an eye to one of the countless pebbles and concrete shards bouncing painfully off my face.

  The Godkiller was looking for us, and not just with optics. A single glance revealed that its undercarriage held receptors for what was probably a wide range of sensing equipment—infrared, acoustic, and some others I couldn’t identify.

  Shit. We had to move. The jammer had already accomplished one miracle by keeping us invisible to its visual sensors. But it was too much to hope that the drone’s more sophisticated sensing gear also used the pattern-recognition warehouse the jammer hacked into.

  “Be ready to move,” I told Van de Velde.

  A second later the drone was hovering over us. As bad as it was before, it was far worse right under the thing. Its rotors hammered the breath out of us, assailed us with the kind of noise I thought would burst my eardrums. It was like trying to breathe inside a tornado.

  Then it was past us, hunting farther down the tunnel. It was rotating slightly, turning toward the entrance to the stairwell.

  I felt sore all over, like I’d been tumbled in a dryer for twenty minutes. But I got to my feet, and pulled Van de Velde up. I didn’t dare risk speaking, so I jerked my head westward, back the way it had come. Still visibly annoyed with me, she took the lead. I held her arm so we wouldn’t get separated, and she led us into the darkness. I’d lost my flashlight when I’d hit the floor, and the only things I could make out ahead were vague shapes. We moved carefully, but not carefully enough. After about thirty feet, as I was lifting my right foot, I kicked a large rock that went skittering away down the tunnel.

  The machine spun around, flooding the tunnel with light. Before Van de Velde could start shooting again I grabbed her, shielding her body with mine, making sure the device masked her too.

  The machine hovered closer, scanning the passage. Van de Velde and I stood perfectly still. Now we’d get to see just how sophisticated those other sensors were.

  “What are you doing?” Van de Velde whispered into my ear.

  “Shhhh,” I said.

  She was trying to raise her right arm. The one holding the gun. I hugged her closer, pinning her arm to her body, and shook my head.

  She relented. After a moment, the Godkiller spun back east. A second later, it opened up with a barrage of small arms fire.

  Van de Velde stiffened against me, startled. The Dieu Tueur was shooting into the s
tairwell, making a hell of a racket.

  The noise would cover our movements. When the drone had turned this way, it had illuminated a discarded water tank leaning against the south wall, about eighty feet down the tunnel. I grabbed Van de Velde’s wrist and pulled her toward it.

  We reached it in about thirty seconds. I could just make it out as a light shadow, leaning against a darker shadow. We collapsed behind it, out of sight of the drone.

  I wanted to rest a minute, but Van de Velde had other plans. She reached out blindly in the darkness until she found my face, then slid up next to me so she could speak directly into my ear.

  “What is that thing?” she whispered.

  It was startling how intimate this was. She felt closer than she’d ever been, even when I had tackled her. I was very aware of the sensation of her lips when they brushed my skin, the gentle pressure of her hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s a Dieu Tueur,” I said. “One of the deadliest drones ever built.”

  “What’s it doing here?” She leaned over me, peeking up over the tank. I steadied her with my hands on her hips . . . not entirely because she needed to be steadied.

  “It’s not hunting us,” I said, when she’d settled down next to me again. “It’s a robot hunter. It tracks and kills robots.”

  “Who sent it?”

  “There’s only one authority that can field a Dieu Tueur. The Sentient Cathedral.”

  “The robot colony.”

  “Exactly. It’s here to exterminate the renegade colony.”

  “God. Do you think it killed them all?”

  “Possibly. I hope not. It destroyed the Orbit Pebble; that’s for sure.”

  “It doesn’t even look damaged!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t it shoot us?”

  “It can’t see me,” I whispered. “And it can’t see you, if you’re close to me.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not indeed. I couldn’t tell her about the drone jammer, of course. I shouldn’t tell her anything, really. It was better for me if I left her in the dark altogether.

  But not better for her if I got shot and she had to make her way out of here alone.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out the device. I slipped it into her hand. “Because of this,” I said.

  She took the device. “What is it?”

  “It’s a drone jammer. It messes with their pattern recognition.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  I gently took the thing away from her. “I’ll tell you all about it someday.”

  She leaned in close again. “Who are you?”

  I laughed quietly. “You know who I am.”

  Fortunately, she accepted that for the moment. She risked another look over the tank.

  “It’s not moving,” she said when she settled back down. “So what do we do now?”

  “You stay here. I’m going to try and lure it away from the exit.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “That is a stupid plan,” she said.

  “Just stay quiet,” I said.

  I headed back east. Up ahead, the Godkiller was giving off enough light to let me pick my way without stumbling over anything this time. It was still hovering in front of the stairwell, but at least it had stopped firing.

  What the hell is it doing? I thought.

  That became clear soon enough. When I got close, I saw that the Godkiller was not alone. Buzzing around it were three or four of those smaller drones. While I watched, two of them disappeared into the stairwell.

  It was using them to hunt for us. We wouldn’t be any safer in the stairwell—at least not until it had moved farther east.

  I got closer, struggling not to cough in the whirling cloud of dust around the thing. I kept close to the north wall, trying to inch my way past it.

  It twisted in the air, so that its front was pitched forward. Its forward lights were shining on the ground. The reflected light illuminated it, and for the first time I got a good look at the hardware on its underside that I’d glimpsed when the craft hovered over us.

  It looked like the Orbit Pebble had managed to do some damage after all. The bottom of the drone showed significant scoring and impact damage, and there were several hull breaches where external gear—probably sensing apparatus—had been blown clean off.

  No wonder it couldn’t see us. Except for its optics, it’s practically running blind.

  I stuck to the north edge of the passage, inching closer. Just as I was about to pass it, the damn thing moved away from the door, bringing its rear rotors dangerously close to my head. I flattened against the wall, watching the spinning rotors get so close I thought they were going to shave off three days of stubble.

  The Godkiller banked right, sliding back down the passage. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  But only for a moment. As I stepped out into the center of the tunnel, I saw it picking up speed, vanishing into the darkness.

  Headed west . . . where Van de Velde was hiding barely a hundred feet away, behind the entirely inadequate protection of a rusted-out water tank.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Over here, ugly!”

  The drone didn’t respond. It was fifty feet away now and picking up speed.

  I glanced around desperately, looking for something I could throw. A brick, a stone—anything. But with the drone gone, it was so dark I could barely make out my own feet.

  Sixty feet. Without the protection of the drone jammer, it would spot her in seconds.

  I reached into my pocket, grabbed the drone jammer. I switched it off.

  “Over here, you cold-blooded piece of shit!”

  The drone stopped. It was at least eighty feet out. It started to pivot to the left. But was it because of me or because it had spotted Van de Velde?

  It kept rotating. Its two front lights came into view. Along with its weapons.

  Shit. I hit the button on the jammer just as it started to fire, then dove as far as I could to the left.

  Something struck me in the air, and I hit the ground badly. I curled up and reached for my stinging hip, and my hand came away wet. Goddamn it, the damn thing shot me.

  The shoulder I landed on hurt almost as much as my hip. I wanted to move, get the hell out of this firing range, but I’d just had the wind knocked out of me, and it was all I could do to not curl up into a ball.

  The Godkiller hadn’t stopped firing. It was raking the ground with bullets—hundreds of them. It was firing systematically, in a loose grid, across the floor of the tunnel.

  It knew I was here, even if it couldn’t see me. I watched, almost hypnotized, as the small plumes of earth that showed where it was aiming came closer, closer . . . ever closer.

  Get up. Get up, you fool. It’s going to kill you.

  I got my hands under me, managed to lift my head. The drone had closed the distance; it was now scarcely forty feet away. It was firing, firing, and now that moving line of plumes was headed straight toward me—

  I saw a flash to the west, heard another report, mixed in with the noise from the Godkiller. And then another one.

  Van de Velde was firing at the Dieu Tueur.

  The drone spun again. As it did, a third shot from Van de Velde hit the thing. Another of the sensors on its undercarriage shattered in an explosion of sparks.

  Damn, she’s a good shot.

  The drone was firing again. I fervently hoped Van de Velde had hit the deck, because she was getting the full brunt of the Godkiller’s wrath, and unlike me she didn’t have a drone jammer to help her hide.

  I staggered to my feet, moving toward the doorway to the south. My left foot hit a rock, and I heard it bounce ahead in the darkness. I went after it, down on my hands and knees, flopping around in the dirt until I found it.

  I threw the rock at the drone. I saw sparks, heard the rock smash against the back rotors and then ricochet off the top of the Godkiller with a resounding crac
k.

  I dove for the open door.

  The drone turned around again. It had stopped firing, and even stopped moving. It hovered in the air, facing east, and seemed to be listening. Listening and waiting.

  I saw movement in the stairwell, from where I crouched with my back against the wall just inside the door. Two drones came flying down the stairs. They moved like wasps, fast and dangerous. They shot out the door and into the tunnel, swinging east, already on the hunt. The Godkiller lumbered after them, ready to kill whatever they found.

  I waited for twenty seconds after they’d passed. Then I headed out the door in the opposite direction, jogging and staying low.

  I ran eighty feet, until I saw the featureless shadow of the water tank. The throbbing ache in my hip became an excruciating pain halfway there, but I kept moving.

  “Van de Velde?” I called, as loudly as I dared.

  There was no answer. I felt my way around the tank. It was so dark here I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

  I dropped to my knees, afraid I would step on her. I started groping in the dirt.

  “Van de Velde? Jesus, please tell me you’re not dead.”

  There was a groan. Something stirred in the dirt to my left. I reached out and found a leg.

  “I’m not dead,” said Van de Velde.

  “Oh, thank God. Are you okay?”

  She didn’t respond immediately, and I began feeling for obvious injuries. I ran my hands over her legs, stomach, chest, shoulders—

  Shoulders. Her left shoulder was slick with blood. There was a wet tear in her uniform, and when my fingers slid over it I heard her gasp with pain.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Lie still. Are you hit?”

  “No.”

  My fingers probed her shoulder, gently but insistently. Her uniform had a horizontal cut, about seven inches, starting just below her collarbone and ending at her left shoulder. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, but it didn’t seem life-threatening.

  “You’ve been hit,” I said.

  “No. I told you. The bullet hit the tank. A piece of metal tore off and hit my shoulder. It’s not deep.”

  “You sure?” My fingers wanted to explore the cut, check for a bullet hole, but she slapped my hand away.