“You may think you can take him out. Plenty of people have tried,” Michella continued. “But he is headed your way with the very weapon you’re trying to stop, and he’s out-juked your blockade twice. You better believe he’ll do it again.”
On the viewer, the SOB cut engines and dropped back, pulling up barely meters from the nearest of the missiles. With a barrel roll, he spun his ship and released the Gen-Mech, sending it in a high upward arc. His tractor beam thus freed, he latched on to the missile and pulled hard aside. The massive weapon veered off course, dragged by the SOB for a few seconds before a chunk of panels peeled away. Lex cut aside and snatched the Gen-Mech again while the damaged missile sputtered and plummeted toward an empty patch of ground.
“Laser banks are recharged. We can fire on your order,” the tactical officer said.
“Not while there’s still a missile out. Too much chance of taking it down instead of him, but if the missile fails, be ready to fire. He’s high enough in the atmosphere to take the full brunt of it now.”
“You must listen,” Michella pleaded. “We can end this without a single building going down. We know for a fact this will work. We delivered a specimen to a scientist during our first run. He—”
“He smuggled a specimen out on his first run,” Paltrowe said severely.
“So he claims,” the communications officer said. “He could be bluffing.”
On the screen, the SOB pulled a sharp loop and managed to put itself behind the missile. Pulling up until his shields were visibly fluttering in the backwash of the missile, Lex pivoted his ship upside down and flipped the tractored Gen-Mech forward, planting it on the surface of the rocket and releasing it. Instantly the machine latched on, slicing eagerly into the weapon and pulling out circuitry. In moments the guidance failed completely, and the missile began to spiral madly through the air, ejecting the Gen-Mech. Lex collected the robot, and a second later the missile detonated in midair.
“I don’t think this boy needs to bluff. Open a channel. Let me speak to him.”
“The connection is now bi-directional.”
“Mr. Alexander, please remain where you are,” Captain Paltrowe said.
“No offense, Captain, but not while your weapons are locked,” Lex said.
“You are carrying a weapon of mass destruction. I consider it an enormous and ill-advised concession that I’ve even held fire to speak to you. If you and associates were interested in friendly discourse, you pursued it in precisely the wrong way. But you’ve got my ear. I wouldn’t waste that if I were you.”
“Fine, fine,” Lex said. “Tell me this. Do you have the capacity to track and identify Gen-Mechs?”
“We do.”
“If every single Gen-Mech was destroyed, would you know it?”
Paltrowe looked to her tactics officer.
“If we were to receive no readings at all, then it would mean that no Gen-Mechs are functional,” the officer said.
“And if you have absolute proof that all of the Gen-Mechs are dead, would that be enough to call off the operation?”
“It would be enough to contact primary command for a ruling,” Paltrowe said.
“Okay. Then all I’m asking is for you to hold off until we’ve got the Gen-Mechs rounded up, then blow them all to hell once we’ve got them.”
The captain stood. “Give me back the movement projections.”
The zoomed view of the SOB was replaced by the map. The red lines had converged, overlapping at nearly a single point.
“Mute outgoing communications,” the captain ordered. A tone indicated the successful completion of the order. “What is the approximate area of overlap for these projections?”
“Approximately two hundred square meters,” the tactical officer answered.
“What is the minimum effective destruction radius for the Arbiter?”
“The spotter rounds will have a radius of four hundred to six hundred meters.”
“Captain, I must remind you that long-range communications are still down. The next Arbiter will be accompanied by a com-relay ship. It will have its own orders when it arrives, and those orders will be fresher than ours. You won’t have the authority to order them to stand down,” the communication officer said.
“How long until they arrive?”
“Based on best estimates, 130 minutes.”
Her eyes lingered on the screen. “Open the communications again. … Mr. Alexander, Ms. Modane. In approximately two hours a second Arbiter will arrive. The orders to contain this threat at any cost are coming from further up the command chain than me. And thanks to your associate’s efforts, we have zero communications with central command. Our orders are stale, and therefore will be superseded by the commander of the approaching unit. I can only offer you my assurance that I will fire weapons on the planet only if there is evidence of an imminent threat. When our reinforcements arrive, you are at their mercy, not mine.”
“Two hours…” Lex said. “Mitch, how are things looking down there?”
#
Though a bit of effort might have earned Michella a cramped position inside the tank, she’d opted for riding on top, strapped to a secondary gunner seat beside the main weapon. Squee was with her, secured with an additional strap fed through her harness, and watching the spectacle below eagerly as they hung several dozen meters in the air over the bait. Her glasses were firmly in place and held tight by a behind-the-head retention strap she usually used when working out.
“The first batch of robots has arrived. All told, they’ve dismantled and emptied about a third of the crates. Now they’re just sort of standing there.”
Each robot below them stood with its spidery legs planted in a wide stance. The sight was uncannily like a herd of deer who had all heard a noise and were unwilling to bolt until they knew which way to run. The stillness continued for several seconds before, almost simultaneously, the bots built with the poorest materials assaulted their better-constructed brethren. Those under attack didn’t fight back or flee. In many cases they were too busy attempting to harvest replacement parts of their own from those further up the component ladder. They seemed completely unaware of what any of the others were doing, focusing entirely on the task of gorging on the buffet of parts the rest of the group had involuntarily begun to advertise. It was madness, a mass of shifting metallic limbs and hissing plasma torches.
Michella sat with one arm threaded through a handgrip grasping her slidepad for dear life while Squee was hooked under the other arm.
“I think we’ve got a winner, Trev. They’re tearing each other apart,” she said. She zoomed the footage and scrutinized it. “When they aren’t dismantling each other and trying to install improvements, they’re trying to take the mound of discarded parts from their latest victim and build a new robot. Any mechanisms that are actually completed and activated almost immediately tear into the nearest robot to upgrade themselves. It’s raw carnage down there.”
#
Lex gritted his teeth. The plan was working, but the same thing that had given it a chance to work was now threatening to ruin it. When the other ships arrived, bombs might start dropping immediately. The best chance for everyone on the planet’s surface was to get as much of the job as possible done before the reinforcements arrived.
“Captain, have you been taking shots at these things at all?”
“Our orders include providing backup to the primary demolition force. We’ve been firing on large concentrations of Gen-Mechs when doing so did not present a threat to civilian populations.”
“As I understand it, those concentrations were mostly concentrated by Silo and Ronzone,” Michella chimed in.
“Well… it’s going to take too long for these things to reach ground zero on their own, but if I can lure them out and act as a spotter, maybe you can pick off the stragglers.”
“The ring of detected robot activity is enormous, and you’ve only got a couple of hours,” Captain Paltrowe reminded.
&n
bsp; “You’re talking to a delivery boy. This is all in a day’s work. Tell me where I need to go, and I’ll get there on time or your money back.”
#
Lex guided the SOB through the atmosphere. After making sure he was in possession of a poisoned Gen-Mech, he had set off to start the roundup. His trusty ship was more than willing to plow through the muggy air at sea level, burning like a meteor all the way, but that presented a number of problems. It put tremendous stress on the shields, and it practically blinded Lex with constant incandescent glare. He had to make sure the Gen-Mech he was hauling remained functional, too. Higher speed could be maintained in thinner atmosphere, but it took time to reach the proper height. Getting here and there quickly and in once piece was a balance between speed and altitude.
“I’m getting close to those coordinates, Mitch,” Lex said.
“Silo, he’s getting close. Where should he be looking?” Mitch said over the connection.
“Just a minute, sugar… Okay. Punch these new coordinates in. And they’re heading north, so he’ll need to adjust,” Silo said, calling out some numbers.
“Silo says—” Michella began.
“I heard her,” Lex said. He tapped in the coordinates and swept the ground with one of his intact cameras. “Okay, I see one… and another one. Man, they are really spread out.”
“Well group them up,” Michella said. “Silo said there are thirty-eight in that cluster. No partial credit if you miss one. And these are the slow ones, so rounding them up isn’t going to be easy.”
“Stop telling me how hard this will be,” Lex said. He angled the ship toward the ground, tracing a wide curve around the farthest of the robots. “SOB, give me visual overlay highlighting all mechanical devices on the surface.”
“Twenty-six targets identified and indicated,” the SOB said.
Lex flipped the tractor beam forward, dangling his bait like an angler fish as he slowed and dropped in altitude. It was clear almost immediately that the Poison Pill was still doing its thing. The Gen-Mechs had always been eager to go after anything that came near enough, but this was something else entirely. It wasn’t a coordinated flocking behavior. Each robot was moving directly for him as quickly as its legs could carry it. One issue, though, was that ‘as fast as its legs could carry it’ was a velocity that varied greatly from bot to bot. Further complicating matters was the fact that with every new Gen-Mech that joined the main tangle back with Silo and Mitch, the distant siren call of hundreds of poisoned bots became that much more enticing. He had to let them get perilously close in order to keep their attention on his own bait rather than the main pile. It took over five minutes of flying figure eights around the clump of robots before all thirty-eight were herded into a tight bundle.
“Okay, Captain. I’ve got them rounded up. Target my location with something quick and give me a half second to get out of the way,” Lex said.
“Lasers are charged and ready.”
“Okay… NOW!”
Lex pounded the throttle. The robots scrambled to follow, but right on cue a column of red came down like a bolt from God, cutting close enough to the SOB to ripple its shields. The tiny and poorly assembled mechanisms lacked the shield that had helped to spare the SOB during the last attack, and they similarly did not enjoy the glancing blow that the ship had taken. Instead the coherent light beam ablated the scavenged skin and chassis of the mound of Gen-Mechs to vapor within seconds. The strike was like a ten-second long bolt of highly precise lightning, complete with the roar of thunder. When the beam had exhausted itself, all that remained was a glassy black patch of ground with an unrecognizable twist of fused metal at its center.
“That was a little too close for comfort, Captain.”
“There’s signal latency. We can’t rely upon your count to fire,” the captain said.
“So when did you pull the trigger?”
“Shortly before you requested it.”
“Oh… well, in that case, it wasn’t so bad. And that’s thirty-eight down… how many more to go?”
“According to Silo, four or five hundred,” Michella said.
“So we’ll hold the celebration until after then,” Lex said. “Where’s the next batch?”
“Just a second, we’ve got our own problems over here,” Michella said. “The flyers are starting to show up.”
#
Michella stared at the dim glow of thrusters and repulsors, dozens of them heading directly for the growing pile of berserk mechanisms.
“Okay… if these things get ahold of Poison Pills, they’re going to be able to outpace any of the nonflyers,” Silo called up Michella. “That means they could start dragging off their own chains of Gen-Mechs in different directions and the whole ‘gather them together’ plan goes out the window.”
“In theory wouldn’t the other fliers catch them and tear them up just like the crawlers are doing to each other?” Michella asked.
“I don’t trust any plan that hinges upon the phrase ‘in theory.’ I say we take the guesswork out of it and clip their wings,” Silo said. “I seem to remember you doing some decent shooting back when we first ran into these things.”
“I can handle a gun if I have to,” Michella said.
“You have to.” Silo handed up a hefty energy pistol. “How about you, hon? You any good with a sidearm?”
“Who, me?” Ronzone asked. “I’ve never held a gun in my life! VectorCorp has three whole divisions dedicated to that sort of thing. I’m strictly white-collar.”
“Then you get up here and hold this slidepad,” Michella said. “If I’m going to be putting this skill to use, I might as well get some camera time.”
“Your priorities are seriously skewed, woman!”
“If my priorities were skewed, I’d be holding the camera instead of the gun. Now get up here!” Michella growled.
Ronzone reluctantly complied, shakily holding the recording-communication device as the flying targets drifted into range.
“Still waiting for those new coordinates,” Lex said over the connection.
“Hold your horses, sweetie,” Silo said. “You’ll have them in a second. Then I get to climb up there and pitch in.” She pulled out the handheld scanner and swept it around. “All right, take these numbers down…”
While Silo read out a set of coordinates and a target count, Michella opened fire. With an energy pistol, she didn’t have to cope with recoil. This was fortunate since her off arm was still wrapped around the increasingly excited Squee. It took half a dozen shots before she got her eye. The seventh shot clipped the nearest robot, severing a leg in a shower of molten metal. The only indication the machine was even aware of the attack was a brief deviation in its flight path while it adjusted to its new flight profile. Three more shots and she finally sent the thing spiraling into the melee below. Silo, now finished delivering her orders, squeezed past the VectorCorp-agent-turned-cameraman and pulled a pistol of her own.
“You’ve got to hit them dead center or on the thrusters, or they won’t even flinch,” Michella said.
“Yep,” Silo said knowingly. “Basic drone combat tactics. What’d you expect?” She opened fire.
“To be honest,” Michella said, squeezing off three more shots before pausing to let the weapon cool down, “I was always taught that if you had the proper stopping power, it didn’t matter where you hit something.”
“Then you were taught by someone used to shooting at people,” Silo noted.
Michella’s expression hardened as the observation sank in.
“Hey! If you two are shooting and I’m holding the camera, who’s flying the tank?” Ronzone said.
“I’m pretty sure I got the autopilot working,” Silo said.
“Pretty sure?” he objected.
She picked off two more flyers. “We haven’t crashed yet, have we?” She glanced to Michella. “Be careful of the pile, hon. Looks like the bots around the edges are piecing some of the fliers back together. This going to b
e like fighting the tide with a bucket.”
“Didn’t crash yet?” Ronzone cried.
“Just hold the camera steady,” Michella snapped, hefting Squee into a firmer grip before opening fire again. “Some people just aren’t cut out for journalism.”
#
The passage of time is extremely subjective. For Lex, two hours was a tight but potentially achievable deadline. For Silo and Michella, it was a grueling and interminable high-stakes turkey shoot. For most of the heroes involved, time was flying by. One, however, was left with nothing but time on his hands. Garotte gazed at the pulsing rails of the massive weapon, counting the pulses. Shortly after he’d taken up his current position, he’d figured out they pulsed five times a minute. To keep his mind from going in unfortunate directions, he’d busied himself by seeing how long he could count off the remaining time without looking at a clock. As distractions go it wasn’t a terribly stimulating one, but it had kept madness at bay for an hour and a half.
“One hundred nineteen, one hundred twenty… That should be thirty-four minutes remaining.” He glanced to the ship’s chronometer. “Thirty-six minutes?” He opened the channel for the shared com connection. “Captain Paltrowe, you simply must have your Arbiter’s acceleration rails inspected. They’re running a bit fast.”
“I’m not interested in your opinion,” came her reply.
“Lex, Silo, where do we stand?”
The answer came after a few moments, amid nearly constant weapon fire in the background. “Sorry, hon, the hands were a bit full. Lex is heading over to the next batch. Once he’s done he’ll be about two-thirds through the stragglers.”
“That puts you well behind schedule,” Garotte said.
“The next few batches are close together, and really bunched up, so he should make up some time.”
“How are you and the others doing at ground zero?”
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