by Isaac Hooke
The robot raised its hands and stepped aside.
Rade surveyed the lobby. He was expecting to see at least a few guests waiting to get out. But there was no one present.
He glanced at the doorman. “Where is everyone?”
“I have been opening the shield and letting out guests at their request,” the robot replied.
Rade glanced at Shaw. “Your parents might not be here.”
“They’ll be here,” Shaw said. “They have to be.”
When everyone was inside, Rade considered having Algorithm close the blast shield, but decided to leave it open, as he wasn’t sure how long the building would have power. He approached the elevator but then passed it by in favor of the stairs, once again not trusting the power to stay on for much longer.
“What room were they staying in?” Rade asked Shaw.
“4E,” Shaw said.
Rade took the steps two at a time. The flights reversed at each floor, so that Rade zigzagged his way up.
He entered the fourth floor hallway. Doors lined either wall. He approached 4E.
Rade considered having Algorithm attempt to hack the lock, just as at the front entrance, but he was worried about frightening the parents.
“Shaw, can you reach them over the adhoc network formed by our Implants yet?” Rade asked.
“I’ve been trying,” Shaw said. “But they don’t have Implants like us. If they’re not wearing their aReal goggles, they won’t pick up.”
“Damn it,” Rade said. “We told them we were coming. You’d think they’d keep those goggles glued to their faces.”
His frustration affected his knocking at the door, which was perhaps a little louder and rougher than it should have been. Well, it conveyed the appropriate sense of urgency, he thought.
There was a small camera set in a glass dome above the door lintel. Rade looked right at it so that any occupants would see his face.
He forced a smile and knocked again, but no answer came.
He was about to tell Algorithm to hack the door when he heard a rough voice speaking from within.
“Fucking guy!”
“Hey, Mr. Chopra,” Rade said resignedly.
The door opened. Shaw’s mom and dad waited just inside. They were two chestnut-skinned, beautiful young people. Well the woman was beautiful, anyway. The man, not so much. His features were harsh, his nose a sharp hook, his mouth a thin line. Because the two were so young, they looked almost like kids to Rade. Their short height didn’t help matters.
Shaw’s parents spread their arms wide and dashed at him.
Here it comes.
Rade reluctantly held out his hands to accept the embrace, but the two barreled right past him and together hugged Shaw instead.
She smiled at him sheepishly.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Rade said.
Mrs. Chopra was the first to break the hug. “Where are the children?” she asked Shaw. “Are they safe?”
“Yes of course,” Shaw said. “We’re taking you to them. Get your things.”
Mrs. Chopra hurried back into the room.
Shaw’s dad lingered to glower fiercely at Rade. Once again Rade felt like a kid stood there before him shooting daggers his way, and it diminished the effect.
“This is your fault, fucking guy!” Mr. Chopra said.
Rade raised his hands defensively. “It’s not my fault.”
“We saw your face on the Localnet!” Mr. Chopra said. “The enemy... they’re all you!”
“Hey, as I said,” Rade replied, “I had nothing to do with this. If invaders want to attack my world with clones based on me, what the hell am I supposed to do about it?”
“I think you should take the cloning as a compliment, personally,” Shaw said. “A testament to your physical prowess, that they chose an army based on your physique to lead their invasion.” He detected more than a note of sarcasm in her tone.
“Funny,” Rade said.
“Anyway, Dad, come on,” Shaw said. “We really have to go. It’s not safe here.”
Mr. Chopra glared one final time at Rade, then he muttered something involving the F-word and went inside.
Both parents returned a moment later carrying several pieces of luggage.
“You can’t bring all of that,” Rade said.
“We can, if your lazy ass helps!” Mr. Chopra said.
Rade held out his arms, and the two promptly dumped every last bit of luggage on Rade. He struggled to hold the many pieces of baggage in his arms.
“What am I, a pack mule?” Rade asked.
“Yes, you’re a mule!” Mr. Chopra said.
Rade glanced at Shaw helplessly. “Why is it that whenever your parents make a weekend trip to the city, they have to carry the entire house with them?”
“Algorithm, Brat, help with the luggage,” Shaw ordered.
“That’s right,” Rade said. “Make good use of the combat robots. Reduce them to the role of simple porters.”
It was Shaw’s turn to glare at him. “Not now,” she mouthed.
Rade gave up most of the baggage to Algorithm and Brat, keeping one particularly large suitcase for himself. He hefted it in front of him.
“This should prove a useful shield in a pinch,” Rade said.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Mrs. Chopra said. “My flower sari is in there. It’s my favorite dress.”
Rade shrugged. “It’s either me, or your favorite dress.”
“The dress, of course!” Mrs. Chopra said.
Rade ignored her and glanced at the combat robots. They held the bag in their left hands, and kept their right arms free so that they could wield the rifles. “If you have to fight, you’re going to throw away those bags, or use them as shields, understand me?”
“We understand,” Algorithm said.
“You throw away those bags, we throw away you!” Mr. Chopra said, staring pointedly at Rade.
“That wouldn’t be so bad, right about now,” Rade said. “By the way, could you get your aReal goggles? It would kind of help if you were connected to our adhoc network.”
“Goggles are dead!” Mrs. Chopra said. “The power cells failed! And we forgot our charger!”
Rade nearly threw up his arms, but the heavy luggage prevented him. “All right then, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Wait, have to make one last run,” Mr. Chopra said. He dove back into the hotel room.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Rade asked Shaw.
“He always triple checks when leaving a hotel room,” Shaw said. “To make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything.”
“Um, do we really have time for that?” Rade said.
Shaw shook her head fiercely. She lowered her voice. “Humor them, please.”
Rade sighed. He knew what was coming.
“Maybe if you were married we would treat you better,” Mrs. Chopra said.
Yup, there it was.
“We’ll meet you at the stairs,” Rade said. He made his way down the hallway with the two combat robots.
Finally Shaw and her parents joined him, and the six of them hurried down the flights of stairs. They reached the lobby.
“Thank you for staying at the International Hotel,” the robot doorman said. “Good luck out there, Mr. and Mrs. Chopra.”
“They don’t need luck,” Rade said. “They have us.”
“We need luck!” Mr. Chopra told the doorman emphatically.
Down the street, fighting had broken out amid the ruins, as predicted. Scorpion units were in the process of overrunning the positions of the snipers that had taken up residence on the rooftops and within the debris. Rade fought off the urge to come to their aid.
There’s too many of them. Have to get out of here. Shaw’s parents to protect.
The small party proceeded in the opposite direction, hurrying deeper into the city, and hugging the building walls. The lanes were tight here, the intact buildings bordering close on either side. With all the twists and turns in the road, visibil
ity was poor, and Rade half expected a patrol of clones or scorpions to round the bend at any time.
Rade scrambled over any debris that presented itself and led the way on point, while Brat brought up the rear, keeping its weapon trained on the road behind them with its free arm.
The group neared a cross street; the way forward was partially blocked by the ruins of a corner building that had mostly collapsed onto the asphalt, leaving a husk of concrete beams still standing. The debris formed a mound that spanned the length of the cramped roadway.
Rade motioned the group to wait at the bottom of the rubble; momentarily shouldering his rifle, and using the suitcase he held in his left hand as a cane of sorts, he clambered up the fragments of gypsum to the beam composing the building edge, and carefully peered around the bend. The street beyond was straighter, allowing him to spot a party of ten clones approaching at a run about two hundred meters away. He knew them immediately from the distinctive crescent moon helmets they wore.
Rade ducked out of view and turned around to signal the retreat. The team would have to hide in the rubble or the nearby buildings until the patrol passed, and then they could continue onward.
Rade started making his way down the rubble toward Shaw, but just then the beams composing the husk of the building spontaneously collapsed. At least he thought it was spontaneous—he saw no indication of a missile or laser impact.
“Rade!” Shaw shouted.
As the building frame came crashing toward him, Rade was forced to race down the debris, away from the rubble to the street beyond, and directly into the line of sight of the incoming patrol.
Dust rose into the air behind him. The collapse had filled the already tight street behind him: Rade was completely cut off from Shaw and the others. There was no way he was climbing back up there, not unless he wanted to expose his back to the clones the whole time.
“I’ll draw them off!” Rade said. “Get out of here!”
ten
Rade held the luggage beside him as a shield, knowing that the patrol would be opening fire at any moment. He hurried across the street at a crouch, zigzagging between the debris.
Rade ducked behind a building on the other side of the cross street and paused to examine the luggage. Several dark veins were expanding from impact sites across the surface. He dropped the luggage before those veins could touch his hands. He would have to tell Mrs. Chopra later that her favorite sari had saved his life.
On the overhead map, the positional indicators showed him that Shaw, her parents, and the robots had dashed into the remnants of another building near the collapse. At first he thought Shaw was prudently taking cover to avoid being sighted by the clone patrol, but then he saw the red dots representing the scorpion units near the hotel—according to the map, those units had moved on from the Franco-Italian snipers, and were fast approaching Shaw’s location, likely attracted by the collapse. For those units to be updating in realtime like that, it meant Shaw or the Centurions were witnessing them with their own eyes, and retransmitting the data to his Implant. Which also meant Shaw and the others were likely taking fire.
Well, Shaw could handle herself. It was her parents he was worried about. Not that he could do anything about it.
Got my own problems at the moment.
He aimed his rifle past the bend and had the AI help stabilize the targeting reticle. With the stabilization he was able to align the crosshairs over the eye socket region of one of the clones after several moments. The eye continued to bob about, and when it moved into the center of the reticle, Rade squeezed the trigger.
The tango fell.
He ducked as more fire came in, and the wall beside him blackened with dark veins.
Rade hastily retreated from the building edge, moving farther away from Shaw. He found himself wishing he had a jetpack, or a strength-enhancing jumpsuit. All he had at the moment was the strength of his human body.
And his wits. Never discount wits.
He ran half a block and smashed in the door of a closed pastry shop. He moved inside and aimed past the doorframe, at the corner building where the patrol would emerge behind him.
He noticed his gasping breath. He was surprised by how tired the short sprint had made him.
Getting old.
Though he knew the weight of his upper body was to blame. Without a jumpsuit to compensate for that weight, all the muscle mass he worked so hard to build up in the gym proved an impediment.
He would have to consider allowing those muscles to atrophy sometime.
Then again, how often do I fight without a jumpsuit?
As he waited for the clones to appear, he had a thought. He glanced at the particle beam rifle he still had, and decided to give it a try, curious what the effect would be. If it could cause damage without forcing him to spend precious extra seconds targeting the eye region, then it would be worth it to switch weapons.
He shouldered his laser rifle, lowered the particle beam weapon, and aimed the scope at the edge of the corner building.
The first of the clones rounded the bend.
Rade fired at its center of mass, then shifted his aim rapidly to the right, in increments, striking the other three that emerged in the chest in turn. They all dropped to the pavement.
The others in the patrol were more cautious it seemed, perhaps noticing the fate of their comrades, and weren’t so quick to rush around the bend.
Rade lowered his aim to observe the dropped clones. Their eyes were closed. The helmet had fallen off one of them, and dark veins spread across its eerily familiar face.
The eyes abruptly shot open and the clone stood. As did the other three.
Rade fired again. The second hit did nothing, and the clones kept heading toward his position, bringing their rifles to bear. The remaining members of the patrol emerged behind them.
Damn. So the weapon functioned as a single use stun weapon of sorts, at least until the nano-machines realized the organic life they were invading was in fact already one of their own.
Rade ducked inside the shop as the door frame blackened from the particle beam impacts.
He hurried deeper into the building, and past a dividing wall to the back area. There was no sign of the owners, but robot pastry chefs cowered within. Rade considered shooting them down with his laser rifle to prevent the enemy from converting them, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“Run!” he said. “They’re coming to the front door! Don’t let them catch you or you’ll become one of them!”
Rade opened the back door and found himself staring into a narrow, pedestrian-only alleyway. The robots suddenly rushed past him, their metal feet clanging on the cobblestone outside. Neither had bothered to check if there were any attackers lying in wait.
Fools.
As he scanned the alleyway and bordering rooftops, a part of his mind wondered why he was able to spare the robot chefs, when in the past he had rarely shown mercy to unarmed alien robots, or aliens themselves. In fact, in the last mission he had given the order to test kill a few members of a peaceful race known as the Taenia, when he was hunting Surus. Of course, he hadn’t known the Taenia were peaceful at the time, but still...
He supposed he gave these robots mercy because they were made in the image of humans, while aliens and their robot creations were little more than bugs in his view.
I wonder if it’s time to change that attitude.
A thud at the door in the adjacent room brought him back to the present moment. He finished his scan of the alleyway and barreled outside, following the two fleeing robots. The closed back doors of different shops interrupted the walls on either side.
Some distance ahead, the alleyway opened into the street beyond. As the two robots dashed out, they immediately collapsed, either mowed down by laser fire or conversion beams.
Not going that way.
He bashed in one of the side doors in the alleyway wall, and found himself in a kitchen. There were more robot chefs here hiding unde
r tables.
Rade shook his head, not bothering to say anything this time as he ran past the robots into the front area. It was a cafe of some kind, judging from the furniture arrangement. The blinds on both the door and window were closed.
He approached the entrance. The door used a traditional manual locking mechanism, he noted, so he wouldn’t have to worry about hacking his way out.
He went to the window blinds and split them apart slightly to peer past. Scorpion units spidered over the debris outside, racing toward the adjacent street, and perhaps the alleyway he had just escaped from.
Trapped.
He tossed over several of the tables, forming makeshift barricades. He arrayed several of the upturned tables in front of each other, layering them. Laser beams would probably get through, but he hoped the barricade would be enough to stop the particle beam weapons the clones used.
He ducked behind one of the tables and aimed his targeting reticle over the top, aiming for the entrance to the back room.
When a clone appeared, he shot it in the eye.
The next man wasn’t as forthcoming. Rade spotted the rifle tip an instant before it fired, and ducked just in time. The wall behind him blackened as veins spread out, crystallizing.
Rade reached toward his belt and detached one of the grenades he had collected. He tossed it toward the back room.
“Frag!” someone said. The voice matched his own.
Four clones dashed into the cafe. Rade had only just reset the aim of his rifle, and was only able to take down one of the tangos before they ducked behind the main room’s counter. The explosion went off, and another clone still in the back room was sent reeling into the main cafe, where he smashed into a wall.
Rade instantly tracked the man with his rifle and fired into the eye region, insuring that the clone wouldn’t get up.
He tossed his final grenade toward the right portion of the counter, and rolled to an adjacent upturned table. Two more clones leaped the counter, and he fired into their eyes in turn. Tricky shots, but his aim proved true, and the tangos dropped like marionettes whose strings had been cut. The grenade detonated a moment later.
He doubted he had eliminated the remaining clones lurking behind that counter; he carefully aimed past the far side of his new cover, and spotted a clone leaning into view on the counter’s left flank. It was scanning the room with its rifle.