by Drew Hayes
It was impossible to see through the series of multicolored flashes that struck him from all sides, so Titan didn’t bother trying. He focused on the two robots in his hands, smashing them against the ground and each other over and over until there was nothing but metallic shards to be collected. If the last generation had been able to self-repair, he had to assume these could too, so he wanted to make good and certain these things stayed down.
The group attack died out at last. Titan blinked away the spots in his eyes as he swept the battlefield for fresh targets. One of the robots that had spread out was pinned between two massive pieces of concrete. Another was trying to pull itself up as Juiced hammered it over and over again with her fists; each blow shattered the concrete under its head. Kaiju still stood ready but untested, as none of the robots had made any attempt to flee. Fifty feet away, Topsy was watching patiently as Deadlift hefted up another slab of concrete and took aim.
Four out of nine in the first scuffle and no casualties save for another of Titan’s costumes. He quickly made note of all the burns and tears in the fabric and shook his head. If that order didn’t come in soon he was going to be fighting crime in sweats and a T-shirt.
Titan leapt forward to grab two more of the robots, hoping they would circle up around him once more. He’d already suspected he could take what they could dish out, but now that he knew for certain keeping them trained on attacking him was the best case scenario. Unfortunately, it seemed the robots had also realized the futility of trying to gang up on him, as they scattered the moment he moved. The three he wasn’t reaching for simply bolted, but the closest robot threw itself forward, directly into Titan’s path. It was such a strange action that it took him a moment to realize what it had done.
The robot had sacrificed itself, and in doing so it had allowed the other bots Titan was reaching for to elude his grasp. He blinked in surprise as he tightened his grip against his struggling metallic opponent. Titan had dealt with many a mechanical creation in his Hero days, and he couldn’t think of any that were programmed well enough to respond to a threat with a sudden act of self-sacrifice. All of their tactics were rooted around attack and defense coordination. Either this one had been programmed by someone with the brains to set up default responses to an incredible number of scenarios, or it had been given enough agency to make complex calls on the fly. Whichever one it was didn’t actually matter: they both spoke to a creator that was much smarter than Titan had been expecting.
He quickly scanned the field, taking stock of what the other robots were doing. One had charged Kaiju, another had been snared by Juiced, and two were running toward Deadlift and Topsy. Titan began dismantling the robot in his arms quickly, but not as quickly as he could have if the need were dire. He was the one who had told Topsy these kids needed to score a solid win.
Time to see if they’d be able to pull it off.
68.
Titan was a bit surprised to see Juiced in action. From her swelling of muscles and size, plus the small amount of fight footage he’d witnessed, Titan assumed she would be a straightforward damage dealer like himself, punching and smashing through opponents with enough power to render their defenses futile. As it turned out, though, Juiced had more finesse than that. She was a grappler, bringing her robot to the ground as soon as she had it in her grasp. The robot scrambled wildly, trying to free itself or turn a weapon on her, but Juiced was in complete control from the moment they hit the ground. Locks that were generally used against human opponents to force submission were employed quickly and efficiently to break the robot’s limbs and limit its mobility. Juiced wasn’t as fast at dispatching her opponent as a true heavy-hitter, but she was more precise than almost any strongman Titan had even seen work. She probably wouldn’t fare well in a giant brawl, but one-on-one, the woman was a force to be reckoned with.
Kaiju fell more in line with what Titan had seen on the tapes and expected. His robot managed to fire off one of the beam attacks while closing in the massive reptilian beast, a blast of energy that struck Kaiju right on his scaled flank. The one part Titan hadn’t been expecting, however, was that Kaiju’s red scales didn’t simply hold up under the attack: they reflected the beam upward into the sky. Clearly the robot hadn’t been expecting that either; it stopped in mid-motion while still firing the beam from its wrist canon. Most likely it was trying to calculate whether to risk another ranged attack or to try and deal with its opponent in melee. Kaiju didn’t give it the chance to make that call, however. He barreled forward on all fours and skewered the robot with one set of sizable, sharp claws. They slid through the robot’s tough exterior shell like knives cutting into a very silver cake.
As someone who was in the process of manually ripping apart one of those robots, Titan had a good appreciation for how tough they were. These things had been built to take a beating, and they lived up to it. But Kaiju shredded his opponent like a fourteen-foot- tall food processor bent on destruction. Titan glanced down and saw that Juiced was finishing up with her robot and spreading the pieces she was snapping off in all directions.
Deadlift was the last one to deal with his opponent since he’d been doing ranged work. Unlike the others, he didn’t merely stand in place when one of the robots fired at him. Instead, he quickly rolled to the side, snatched up a concrete column, and hurled it at the reorienting robot like it was made of foam. The robot dodged easily, through the resounding boom that resounded when the column landed was enough to startle anyone, man or machine. Deadlift wasn’t bothered, though; he sprinted forward, grabbed the robot quickly by the shoulder, then threw his opponent up into the air.
Titan watched the metallic dot soar through the sky until it broke through the lowest layer of clouds, at which point he lost track of it. Deadlift might not be technically strong, but whatever he did was still damned impressive in its own way. When he glanced down, Titan couldn’t help but let himself smile. The last robot, having seen its counterparts be destroyed one by one, had decided to try and attack the only untested opponent still on the battlefield. It was making a rush for Topsy, who stood calmly as it raised an arm to fire one of the beam weapons at him.
The beam of light crackled through the air, racing toward Topsy with incredible speed. When it was only inches away from the older man’s body, his defense kicked in. What appeared to be a black tornado encircled Topsy’s form, casting wind in all directions and tearing up the ground under his feet. The beam was shredded the moment it touched the swirling mass, whittled away to nothing under the relentless assault.
While most of the Gentle Hammers had been strongmen, there had been a few whose abilities fell outside those bounds. Topsy, with his power to creating swirling energy vortexes, was one such example. The man might not be able to lift a car or shrug off a bullet, but when it came to taking and dealing damage, there were precious few who could outpace him. Sadly, it was also why he’d never risen as high as he deserved in the public’s eye. When one had a power of pure, unrestrained destruction, it made people uneasy. Too often they would look at him and anticipate what he might do if he went evil rather than appreciate his efforts as a Hero.
As the beam died out, Topsy let the defensive tornado fall away. The robot raced forward, determined to handle this old man in melee since range was ineffective. As it extended a fist toward Topsy’s stomach, he reached out and carefully placed a hand on its metallic forearm. The robot seemed to swell for a moment, like a silver balloon being overinflated. Then it exploded outward, pieces flung all over as the vortex Topsy had placed inside of it came roaring out. The only part of it that remained even remotely unscathed was the fist and forearm Topsy was still clutching in his hand.
Titan was impressed: not by Topsy, who he’d always known was a force to be reckoned with, but by the strength of the Wild Bucks in combat. Even with him and Topsy pitching in, they’d handled themselves smartly and with skill. It didn’t make sense that this team had been completely crushed by the last generation of robots. This grou
p was tougher than the last ones Titan had fought and seemed a bit smarter too, so they certainly hadn’t downgraded. Something else had changed, clearly, but whether it was removing the other members or the remaining three getting a sense of what the stakes really were, Titan didn’t couldn’t be sure. He just knew that they had real potential.
As he finished crumpling up his robot, the one Deadlift had hurled into the air became visible once more as it careened toward the ground at an incredible rate. Deadlift was already there, column hefted over his shoulder, and when the metallic man came in range, Deadlift took a steady swing. The robot wasn’t quite as demolished as Topsy’s had been, but there was no way it would be putting itself back together. Not without a lot of time and buckets of super glue.
“Dispatch, our hostiles have been resolved. No injuries, no need for healing, but we could do with a little cleanup.” Titan walked over to the robot still pinned under the concrete slabs. It was struggling, but seemed to be losing power. “Even got one in somewhat decent shape, so tell the tech people to sharpen their scalpels. Or. . . I guess wrenches in this case.”
69.
Titan and Deadlift rode the elevator, accompanied by a generic rock ballad that seemed familiar yet impossible to place. Walking into a hotel in full costume had been strange enough, but odder still was how the staff had seemed unsurprised to see two Heroes casually saunter in and request to use the penthouse elevator. When Dispatch had given them the meeting location, Titan had almost, almost asked her if she was sure it was correct before coming to his senses. If she said this was where everyone was gathering, then it was the spot. Trusting Dispatch was as ingrained in a Hero’s life as trusting themselves.
An elegant chime filled the air as the elevator’s doors opened, showing not a hallway like Titan had been expecting but rather the foyer of a luxurious suite. Already standing there, tapping his foot impatiently, was Jeremiah, whose handsome face broke into a grin as he saw his guests arrive.
“Titan, good to see you as always; Deadlift, a pleasure to meet you. If you could both come this way, the others are already here.” Without waiting for their reply, Jeremiah turned on a heel and walked briskly down one of the halls jutting off the foyer. Titan and Deadlift quickly followed suit, the younger Hero struggling not to marvel at the opulence around him.
Titan had been surprised when Dispatch reported that the other robot squads had been effectively handled, and he’d bordered on shocked when she told him a post-battle meeting was being held less than half an a hour after the attack. Obviously, someone had been ready for this, or at least expecting it. Technically only Deadlift was required to attend since he was the leader of the attacked team, but Titan had been invited along for a multitude of reasons, most important of which was his vocal curiosity about why this attack seemed to deviate from the established pattern.
Jeremiah opened to the door to a large room with a projector and a finely-crafted conference table. Already seated were Gale and Aether, the representatives of the other two attacked teams. Both looked more or less unaffected by the skirmish, unlike Titan, who was wearing a borrowed sweatshirt that barely fit him.
“My fellow Heroes, I have called you here to discuss the robotic attack you all suffered today,” Jeremiah said, gesturing for Titan and Deadlift to take seats.
“Can we also talk about why you’re in a freaking hotel penthouse instead of a base?” Deadlift asked. “How much does this place cost to rent?”
“No idea, we bought it outright,” Jeremiah replied. “Subtlety Heroes often have to move about, so having multiple locations rather than a static one suits our needs better. Most of my team’s hidey holes are less opulent than this, but they’re also closely-guarded secrets. Consider this place the equivalent of our guest room.”
“Our guest room is a corner where we store our extra weight bench,” Deadlift grumbled.
“Lovely as it is, I’d rather talk about the matter at hand,” Gale interrupted. She and Titan shared a brief look that, while not exactly warm and friendly, at least didn’t dip so cold as to be called frosty. “Namely, why did the robots come after us this time? And why with such paltry numbers? That last wave had no fewer than a hundred units attacking half a dozen different targets, most of them civilian.”
“Quite accurate,” Jeremiah said. “But you left out the fact that this attack also came much earlier than their others. Usually there’s at least a three month gap between attacks, presumably so that more units can be designed and built. Only about a month and a half has elapsed since the last attack, which I believe speaks to why the units we dealt with weren’t nearly as refined. By my estimations, this was not the next generation of robots. I believe they were the same generation of units with some additional features and programming slapped in.”
Aether was hunched forward, fidgeting with the corner of her glove while her forehead creased in thought. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why come after three Hero teams with nothing in common, using already-beaten units and low numbers?”
“That it makes no sense tells us the real reason for the attack,” Jeremiah replied. He produced a remote from his pocket and clicked one of the buttons, causing the projector at the back of the room to hum with life. Moments later an image displayed on the white wall across from the projector, one immediately recognizable to all present as a map of Brewster.
“As soon as I heard that the robots were attacking Wild Bucks, Transcendental Justice, and Elemental Fury, it was obvious that they had nothing to gain from such an assault. I took this to mean that they weren’t out for gain at all. . . they were just pawns, calculated losses.”
Titan let out a weary, frustrated grunt as understanding kicked in. “Decoys. They were all decoys.”
“No fair getting ahead of me.” Jeremiah glared at Titan for a moment, then sighed and clicked his remote again. “Delpham Technologies and Pharmaceuticals.” Jeremiah paused to point at the building’s location on the map, which was marked by a large red X on the new slide. “At exactly five minutes past three, an alarm was tripped, indicating that a robbery was taking place. Police responded within four minutes and noted robots fleeing the scene. They put in a call for Heroes to deal with them, but no one was close enough to reach the robots before they somehow dropped out of sight. Now, here’s where the ingenious part comes in.”
Jeremiah clicked again and new slide appeared. This one still marked Delpham’s location, but it also had colored dots representing each of the bases attacked by the robots. Before he said a word, it was evident what had happened. Those three bases formed a misshapen triangle around the company—not especially close to it, but probably nearer than any other Hero bases.
“As you can see, your teams would have been the first to respond to the call, were you not under assault. Additionally, having those three squads make such a ruckus let the fourth one slip through town unnoticed, and ensured most of our Heroes were playing defense rather than offense. From stem to stern, this whole play was never about sticking to their pattern. It was about keeping our hands full while they stole prototypes from Delpham, and damn if they didn’t pull it off perfectly.”
“Bastards,” Gale swore, grimly staring at the map before them. “How did we not see this coming?”
“Why would we have? They’ve never done anything remotely like this. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that they spent all those other attacks training us to look right, just so they could completely catch us off guard when they went left,” Jeremiah said.
“Let’s focus on the matter at hand,” Titan said. “If they went to all that trouble to successfully rob some place in the middle of Brewster, it must have had something they wanted pretty badly.”
“That was my first thought, too,” Jeremiah agreed. “Sadly, the company was not particularly compliant in giving us a list of stolen goods. Something about copyrights, industrial espionage, technology thieves, blah blah, you get the idea. It will take me time to get a full list of everything that was taken,
but before the meeting I was able to. . . let’s call it liberate. . . the details of one item.”
Jeremiah clicked his remote once more, and a detailed schematic for some cylindrical device popped up on screen.
“Yeah, if we’re supposed to know what this is. . . we don’t,” Deadlift said.
“Nor would I expect you to. This device is a highly experimental gravity distortion field generator, based on the work of a long-dead tech-genius who attacked San Francisco. From what my smarter teammates have told me, it seeks to circumvent the size restrictions inherent to building large machines. Giant robots, for example, currently weigh too much to be able to move on two legs unless the higher pieces were made of far less dense materials. So, unless someone is a tech-genius who finds a workaround, robots must either be small and durable or large and vulnerable. With this device, however, the weight could be compensated for by a weakened gravity field, allowing for almost no limitation on the size of a robot’s construction.”
Jeremiah paused to make sure the others were taking his message; the worried expressions greeting him made abundantly clear they were. Still, he felt it was good to really send the point home, just so they understood the severity of what faced them.
“To put it simply: the next wave of these machines we face may not come through downtown. They might be the size of downtown.”
70.
Owen was expecting a bit of a circus when he returned to the top floor of the Mordent Holdings building; after all, the city had just seen another attack by robots, albeit a small one. He was not, however, prepared for the utter chaos he walked in on as soon as the front door opened.