by Isaac Hooke
“Understood,” Unit G sent.
The signal abruptly terminated, and Rade knew Ganye had applied the jammer in full force once again.
“Take them to Marakdom,” the governor told the robots that had secured Rade and the others.
“What’s Marakdom?” Rade asked.
“The highest security prison we have,” Ganye said.
The robots forcibly led Rade and his companions outside. The three of them rejoined only some of the Argonauts and allied Centurions. Robot guards watched them from all sides.
“Where is everyone else?” Rade asked.
“We couldn’t fit in the elevators anymore,” Lui said. “Not with all the guards. So they’re taking us down in groups.”
Rade gazed at the distant hallway as he waited for the elevators to arrive.
“There is still a possibility he hosts a Phant,” Surus said.
“I didn’t see any signs of possession,” Rade replied.
“The neck condensation only appears if the Phant is in control of the AI core,” Surus said. “It’s entirely possible the Phant retreated deeper inside the chest case of the Artificial, perhaps reprogramming or blackmailing the unit to behave the way it did, first.”
“If it reprogrammed the Artificial,” Lui said. “Then why would it even bother remaining inside? It could have just as easily resided within one of the Model 6As in the room. Safer that way. That’s what I would have done.”
“We should have seen something in the neck region of the robots, then,” Rade said. “I checked them all.”
“Could be that it momentarily relinquished control of whatever robot it was possessing,” Shaw said. “To evade that initial check. Like Surus suggested might have happened to the governor.”
“Maybe,” Rade replied. “TJ, see if you can figure out how to bypass their jamming frequency.”
“It’s an ID-based jammer,” TJ said. “Meaning that they’re adjusting it to match the frequencies of our Implants in realtime, using the unique IDs assigned to those Implants. So even if we change frequencies, they can reinstate the jam. Not the easiest thing in the world to bypass.”
“I have faith in you,” Rade said.
The elevator opened, and his turn to go down came.
The robots led Rade and the others from the building. A truck with a wide trailer attached to the rear was waiting just in front. Rade was carried up and chained to the truck bed with the others. Two of the 6As assumed guard positions in the truck bed, while another two sat in the passenger area of the automated cabin.
“Well, looks like I’ve attained my dream,” Bender said. “I’ve always wanted to go to prison.”
“Nothing to call home about,” Lui said. “Food’s terrible. Gym’s terrible. The air reeks of sweat and balls. And your roommates all want to get cozy with your backside.”
“Doesn’t sound too different from bootcamp!” Bender quipped.
“We’re not going to prison,” Rade stated emphatically. “Not if I can help it.”
six
Since his hands were bound behind his back, and secured to the truck bed via the chains, Rade flipped open the cap on the surgical laser in his glove by touch. It was located in the index finger. Normally that laser was meant to affect repairs on the jumpsuits of injured comrades, but it doubled as a weak cutting instrument in a bind.
He switched to Tahoe’s viewpoint. His friend was situated at the most optimal viewing angle behind Rade, allowing him to get a good view of the flexicuffs and the chains that bound him. Rade positioned his fingertip next to the chain and activated the laser, choosing its most intense frequency, and setting the depth to automatically increase as the metal melted. He fired in rapid pulses, and a small cloud of smoke erupted from the chain. Around him, other Argonauts were following his lead.
It took Rade about five minutes to cut through the chain and free himself from the truck bed entirely. Since Rade couldn’t use the laser to saw away at his flexicuffs directly—the angle was too extreme—once he was free, he instead slightly repositioned his body so that his wrists were next to Bender, allowing the latter Argonaut to work at them. Rade tried to be subtle about it, well aware that the 6As in the truck bed were watching them. Indeed, his movements caught the attention of one of the robots. It must have realized he had moved farther than the restraining chain should have allowed, because the robot promptly stood up.
“You there,” the 6A said. It tilted its rifle toward Rade.
Right at that moment Rade felt the pressure against his wrists diminish: Bender had cut through the flexicuffs with his own laser.
Freedom.
Before Rade could do anything, Tahoe jumped the robot from behind. Tahoe had had his back to Lui, who had obviously managed to free him as well.
The 6A toppled to the truck bed, its plasma weapon landing within Rade’s reach.
Rade wrapped his gloves around the weapon and wrenched it free of the robot’s grasp. He knew security features prevented it from being fired by anyone on his team, so he tossed it TJ’s way as he clambered to his feet. He fired his jetpack, smashing into the other 6A that had spun about to bring its weapon to bear. He hit so hard that the two of them were flung right off the truck bed and into the incoming traffic lane.
Rade heard the honk of a semi and quickly activated his jetpack again; he heard a screech and saw black smoke fill the air as the self-driving system of the vehicle slammed on the brakes. The front end of the cab struck a glancing blow to his leg before he could get away, and he was sent spinning into the pavement and crashed into a fire hydrant. His impact broke the hydrant right off and the water geysered. Onlookers scrambled to move back.
Rade hardly felt the blows—the suit exoskeleton had protected him from the worst of it. There were no punctures, either.
He hurried to his feet on the sidewalk and spun toward the street—the 6A had been run over by the semi, and lay in a twisted mess on the solar panels that composed the asphalt. The traffic had ground to a halt, so Rade dashed to the robot and retrieved the plasma rifle, then he jetted onto the roof of a nearby mid-rise apartment.
He raced to the edge of the flat roof—torch-on membrane, approximately ten years old, a part of his mind noted, thanks to the short gig as a general contractor he had worked shortly after leaving the military. Then he leaped across to the adjacent roof.
He continued forward in that way, leaping from roof to roof, trying to make his way toward the blue dots gathered in the bed of the truck that he was tracking on his overhead map. If the vehicle went too far, without access to the city’s comm nodes Rade would lose them.
The truck was swerving, and Rade knew his men were vying to get control.
“TJ, I need you to hack the lockout mechanisms of these plasma rifles pronto,” Rade sent.
“Working on it,” TJ returned.
Rade heard a distant screech, followed by a crash. On the overhead map, the truck had stopped moving. It looked like it had plowed into a low-rise building.
Rade glanced at the vital signs of his team members. All green. Every allied combat robot was online as well.
Rade reached the edge of the building that bordered the street where the crash occurred and he dropped to the elevated rim to aim down. Through the scope, he tracked two walkers approaching the scene from the sidewalk of the nearby avenue, their feet thudding and clanging across the pavement. Bystanders quickly ran from their path.
Rade centered the targeting reticle over the center of mass of the first walker and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. Frustrated, Rade continued to track the tango, and tried again.
“TJ...” Rade sent.
“Got it,” TJ replied.
The third time Rade squeezed, a beam of superheated ionized gas emerged from the muzzle.
The walker halted, a hole cleanly drilled through its torso section.
The second walker’s upper body immediately swiveled toward Rade.
He ducked and rolled away.
Behin
d him, several rents tore through the elevated rim of the rooftop where he had been lurking as the walker’s invisible lasers fired.
He heard the rising thuds as the robot raced across the street, apparently it was planning on jetting up to his position.
And then he heard a crash.
He glanced at the overhead map and saw that the walker’s red dot was quickly moving northward. Tahoe’s blue dot was just in front of it.
“Got it,” Tahoe said. “Man, I’ve missed driving these.”
“Argonauts, join me on the rooftop I’m highlighting.” Rade marked a nearby building on the map. It was on the way to the subway station that would take them back to the first dome, and the hangar bay where their shuttles were stored. According to the map, that hangar bay was the only one in the entire colony. If they wanted to get out of here, they had to make it to that dome.
Rade got up and jetted toward the destination building. On the map, he saw the blue dots of his companions following close beside him. When he glanced to the left, he saw Lui and Bender leaping from building to building across the street from him, along with three allied Centurions. It looked like Lui and Bender had torn the minigun turrets off of one of the walkers.
“Who has Batindo?” Rade asked.
“That would be me.” Shaw apparently had a vehicle, because her blue dot was quickly speeding along the map; Batindo’s dot was beside hers. At her present speed, she would handily beat them to the building.
“Got a Perdix swarm,” Lui said. “Coming in from the east.”
Perdix swarms were popular defensive units employed by colonies. Basically, you took drones, added lightweight lasers to them, and sent them out in swarms to act as backups during emergency situations. Designed for military use, they were overkill for most civic disturbances, but now and again, when a bunch of ex-MOTHs were set loose in the geodesic dome of a colony for example, they could prove useful. Especially considering that none of the Argonauts were equipped with the expensive electronic warfare countermeasures that could disrupt the drones’ navigation. Nor did they have their Hoplite mechs, whose anti-laser shields could have offset the incoming fire and provided the group with at least a fighting chance against the airborne swarms. As it was, all it would take was one laser hit to the center of mass of his jumpsuit, and Rade, or any of his companions, would be taken down.
He glanced at his overhead map. “I see them. Looks like we’re going to have to hole up inside the building when we get there.”
“You sure you’ll make it before the drones arrive?” Shaw said. “I mean I know I can, but you’ll be out in the open for the next minute or so, judging from my estimate.”
“Not out in the open,” Rade said. He leaped off the current apartment building, firing his jetpack to cushion his fall as he landed on the sidewalk below. A frightened mother lifted her child into her arms, then spun around and ran in the opposite direction.
Rade hugged the walls of the buildings as he proceeded forward, placing the structures between himself and the line of fire of the Perdix drones.
The buildings interfered with the signal between himself and his Argonauts somewhat, so that the blue dots representing his companions on the overhead map occasionally stuttered and froze. Even so, he saw that the other Argonauts who hadn’t secured vehicles were doing the same as him: staying close to the building walls.
But speaking of vehicles...
Rade directed his local AI to point out those vehicles running unpatched and outdated software—basically, something he could hack with the rootkit built into his jumpsuit. He dashed out into the middle of the road, directly in front of one of the oncoming self-driving cars that the AI had highlighted. The vehicle’s automated system took over and slammed on the brakes.
Rade went to the passenger window. “Open up!”
The frightened passenger simply stared at him, apparently too petrified to move.
Rade bashed the glass with his rifle, breaking it, but the vehicle was one of the few self-drivers that had steering wheels, and the occupant took manual control and sped off before he could open the door. She wasn’t a very good driver, however—most people weren’t, due to society’s reliance on autonomous cars—and she slammed into another vehicle in the oncoming lane. She would be fine, thanks to the air bag.
Rade repeated the action, and finally got someone to evacuate a compatible vehicle: an old, three-wheel motorcycle-car hybrid. Once inside he applied his rootkit, and assumed full control. There was no steering wheel; he interfaced with his Implant, and controlled the direction of travel via his gaze.
He glanced at the time in the lower right of his HUD and realized he had wasted a full forty seconds flagging down a vehicle, time that could have been used to close the distance with the destination building. Hopefully he would make up for it shortly.
He spun the vehicle around and accelerated. He was out of practice himself, and sideswiped one of the cars parked on the side of the road. He quickly got the hang of it however and sped down the street.
Ahead, a walker robot placed its massive body in his path.
Rade swerved to the side, then set the vehicle to autopilot; he leaned out the window and aimed his rifle at the walker. He fired.
Direct hit. The robot’s guns descended immediately as it went offline.
Unfortunately, since he was speeding through a red light at the time, another vehicle slammed into his from the side.
Rade was thrown from the three-wheel hybrid; he instinctively fired his jetpack to cushion his fall. He landed rolling. Behind him, he heard more screeches as other vehicles joined the pile-up.
Still lying on the ground, he spun toward the crash site, not sure what to expect: when he saw only stunned civilians stumbling from the wreckages, he clambered to his feet.
But then beyond the pile up he spotted three enforcer robots dashing toward him.
Rade ducked, making his way to the edge of a crashed vehicle. He aimed his plasma rifle past it and took down one of the robots.
They got smart then and dove for cover. One enforcer ducked into an alleyway, the other behind a lamppost.
Rade pulled himself lower, hiding behind the side of the vehicle as the enforcer behind the lamppost opened fire. Holes were melted in the broken windshield above him, but the laser did not find him.
Rade flattened himself on the asphalt and aimed his rifle below the undercarriage of the vehicle. He spotted one of the enforcers leaning past the edge of the alleyway, and he fired, taking it down. The other broke cover and jetted upward, heading for the rooftops.
Rade scrambled upright and aimed over the broken hood of the vehicle; he caught the robot in his sights just as it landed on the roof, and he squeezed the trigger. The enforcer fell.
He heard the characteristic clang and thud of approaching walkers.
“Rade, where... you?” Shaw transmitted.
“Coming.”
He repositioned himself on the far side of the pile-up, and was just starting to track the incoming walkers when the leading members of the Perdix vanguard buzzed past the rooftop above.
Rade pivoted immediately, jetting at full burn toward a nearby building. He crashed through the window.
It was a sit-in bakery of some kind, and clientele who had gathered to watch by the window scattered, taking cover behind the tables.
Two Perdix drones descended into view near the window.
Rade ducked.
Laser bore holes appeared in the far wall behind the counter. It was dangerous to fire in there like that with all those civilians—apparently the governor had given the order to take down the Argonauts at all costs, despite the risk of civilian casualties.
As the incoming fire persisted, Rade low-crawled past the tables to assume a position near the entrance. Then he opened the door a crack and aimed his rifle outside.
The two drones still lingered in front of the broken window, scanning the interior. Rade suppressed a grin as he released two quick shots, taking bo
th out.
But he saw more drones swooping down from above and heading toward the bakery. On the street, more enforcers were also racing toward his position.
Rade withdrew from the entrance and rose to a crouch. Remaining low, he made his way past the counter to the baking area, where robot chefs were hiding behind tables covered in balls of dough. There were two ovens on the far wall, beneath a window. The back door was open a crack to allow cool air inside.
Rade hurried to that door and peeked out. Enforcer robots were setting up in sniper positions on the rooftops across the street. Meanwhile Perdix drones were swooping down from above. On the other side of the street he spotted a subway entrance leading underground. Rade noted the position of the subway, then he went to the ovens. They operated on natural gas. Good.
“Get to the front,” Rade said. “Tell the civilians to get out.”
The robot pastry chefs obeyed.
He leaned behind the ovens and broke the gas lines, allowing the fumes to fill the room.
Then he went to the back door and waited. He peered through the crack outside. Enforcer robots, armed with rifles, were closing on his position from the street, while drones lined up in a long row above, buzzing as they targeted different parts of the building.
Rade programmed his jetpack to take him into the subway entrance. When he judged that enough time had passed for the civilians to flee the bakery, he threw himself against the back door, aiming his plasma rifle in front of him.
“Now!” Rade instructed his AI as he hit the partially open door.
The jetpack fired, the flames causing the built-up gas to detonate. Rade was thrown outside, but his jetpack used the momentum to carry him toward his target. Around him, enforcers and drones were sent hurtling backward from the explosion. Rade attempted to fire at the rooftop snipers, but he was moving too fast to attain a viable shot.
He flinched as he felt a sudden pain near his shoulder, and another pain in his side.
“Warning, suit breached,” the voice of his local AI said.
Then he was falling down the steps into the subway.