Today, though, Erik wasn’t there for immediate satisfaction. He was there for whatever Alina’s analysts and Barbu’s records had helped him find. There was something important enough in the cargo flitter to cost ten men’s lives already, and its appropriation or destruction would wound the conspiracy a lot more than taking out a couple of Elites.
It was time to turn everything around on Luca.
“This is your last chance,” Erik yelled. “We’re not here for you and your toy bots, but if you want to fight us, we will kill you.”
“Bots?” The echoes made it sound like the entire hangar was laughing. “Is that what you think an Elite is? Oh, you deluded fool.”
“You programmed it to try to intimidate people.” Erik crept toward another gap between the crates, wondering if it was wide enough to not block the beam of his laser rifle. “I’ll give you credit, Luca. It was a tough bastard, and if we had not been properly geared up, it might have taken us out, but a bot’s just a machine in the end. And that’s the problem, a person can always outthink a bot. Your jamming is going to prevent you from directly controlling them, and even if you could, it’d be too hard to deal with all four of us and my friend outside.”
Erik didn’t consider Emma a bot. He no longer knew if “artificial intelligence” was a good description, considering how she was created. Making a human-like intelligence starting with a human was about as natural and non-artificial as he could imagine.
“Oh, I’m disappointed,” Luca replied. “But you and the Warrior Princess can’t always know what’s happening. The Elites aren’t bots. Don’t you understand? The Ascended Brotherhood was nothing more than a prototype of something grander, a better class of servant. Can you outthink a man who has the strength of a machine?”
Jia shivered in revulsion, resting her launcher’s tip against a crate. Anne and Kant didn’t look happy either.
“You’re saying that was a Tin Man we fought?” Erik asked.
“No, that’s the problem. A Tin Man is just that, a man with modifications, stuck in a basic humanoid shape. The Elites are something grander, a human brain in whatever shell needed. We are the ultimate soldiers.”
“It’s just a matter of time before Cybernetic Psychosis Syndrome sets in,” Erik countered. “You sick bastard. I don’t know what tricks they pulled with the Ascended Brotherhood, but at least they were closer to what the human brain evolved to handle. You really think you can run around like a spider and not have every part of you reject that? It might not have happened yet, but it’s going to.”
“You’re sure?” Luca asked. “You’re confident you understand. Humanity could have accomplished so much, but my employers aren’t bound by the feeble fears of the past. That’s why they’ll win.”
Erik frowned. Luca had sacrificed an Elite and an entire complex of bots and yaoguai to slow the team. Even his pathetic attempt to convince Erik the revenge was done seemed like a stall tactic. That suggested he wasn’t as confident as he sounded about his Elites.
Reinforcements? More Elites? That was a possibility. The other most likely explanation was that they’d planned to escape, but something had stopped them, something outside. Maybe Emma had contacted the locals, and the police, CID, and militia had the facility surrounded. There might already be piles of destroyed Elites outside.
“I bet most of the people who run the conspiracy are a lot like Sophia Vand,” Erik began. “And it’s hard not to notice she wasn’t a brain in a bot body. You’re an idiot. You’re being played, and we’re leaving this place with that flitter. If you want to live, you better find the back door to this place and skitter away to find someone to swap out your parts.”
Luca scoffed, derision thick in the sound. “Did you really think I’d agree to that?”
“Did you really think I’d walk away because you murdered some mercs and blamed everything on a conveniently dead woman?”
“A pity, Erik. Your death and Jia’s will make the UTC a worse place, but you, like those on Molino, are a necessary sacrifice.”
Kant replaced his magazine with AP rounds. “Ouch.” He whispered, “It’s like Anne and I aren’t here.”
Anne flipped the safety off her rifle. “I’m fine with not being on a first-name basis with a conspiracy nut.”
Erik nodded at Jia and kept his voice low. “Blow away the front of the cargo flitter.”
Jia stared at him. “What? Are you insane?”
“Take it out. The cargo’s not going to be in the front.” Erik inclined his head toward the doors. “We need to make sure they don’t get away. I don’t care what kind of souped-up can he’s riding. We saw it earlier. They can’t fly.”
“I’ll only have one missile after that.” Jia hoisted the launcher onto her shoulder and edged toward a break in the crates that gave her a clear shot at the flitter. “You sure?”
“It’s fine.” Erik patted his laser rifle. “I’ve got all the Elite remover we need.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
The heavy steps of the Elites echoed through the hangar.
Their shadows were fleetingly visible through the gaps between the shipping containers and crates as the metal monsters moved, reinforcing their size and threat.
Jia ignored them and concentrated on cutting off their line of retreat. They’d beaten an Elite before. They would beat them here. They couldn’t risk letting them escape.
All their investigations and fortune had led them to this hidden base on Alpha Centauri. This was about more than a new kind of cyborg. Jia wasn’t ready to believe in Erik’s Lady, but it wouldn’t hurt to give her a kind thought.
Perhaps two.
She wanted to believe Emma was outside as backup, but for all they knew, the MX 60 was a burning wreck, the victim of outside forces. The team would need to handle the problems inside.
The Elites’ size and power presented obvious costs. They had not surged over the crates or charged through any of them. That meant they were either unwilling to lose their cover or unable to challenge the cargo maze with ease. The fewer direct lines of fire available, the greater the advantage for the human team.
If the Elites couldn’t do that, it was unlikely they could fly. No cargo flitter meant no escape.
Holding her breath, Jia pulled the trigger. The missile roared away from the launcher and sped toward the front of the flitter, leaving a trail of smoke. Her stomach tightened during the short seconds the missile zoomed from her position to her target.
It needed to hit.
It needed to destroy what she’d aimed at, but she’d expected one of the Elite’s shields to surround the flitter or a point-defense system like a torch dragon. Could they hold off the Elites and keep the cargo flitter pinned down by themselves?
Her missile struck the front of the flitter, and a massive fireball engulfed it. Flaming chunks of the cockpit shot all over the nearby area, embedding themselves into containers and the floor. The force of the blast toppled the nearby stacks of containers, scattering them all over.
Containers smashed into the floor, releasing their contents, some mundane, parts, furniture, or equipment. Others were more deadly, such as one crate spilling grenades in a pile, or another filled with small black cubes.
She ducked back behind cover, trading her launcher for her rifle. There were holes in everyone’s defenses. The Elites had concentrated so hard on protecting themselves, they’d left their entire group vulnerable.
“Nice shot,” Erik yelled.
“I thought so! I didn’t think one missile would take out that much. We need to adjust the parameters in our training scenarios. They don’t blow up as much.”
“They do. You don’t get the full effect in the training center. It’s not enough to hear it and feel heat. You need that full sensory experience.”
“You’re insane!” screamed Luca. “You think you can do that and ignore me while you prattle on?”
“Yeah, pretty much,” Erik answered. “We blew up your ride, and that leaves yo
u trapped here with us. And the guy who gave up his body to get stuck in a spider robot is calling us insane?”
“You’ll die here,” Luca snarled. “You can’t win against us. You’ll regret ever coming to this planet in the short seconds before you die!”
“Talk, talk, talk. That doesn’t change the fact you’ve got half a flitter!”
With a growl, two Elites crashed through a pile of crates, their cannons ready.
“Oh, crap,” Kant commented.
Jia and Erik had been wrong about their inability to go through the crates.
The enemy cannons spun up, their rounds ripping through the metal shipping containers and crates like paper and forcing the team to crouch to avoid losing their heads. Jia didn’t want to test her vest against that large and fast a round.
Two other Elites stayed behind their cover, their movements betrayed by loud clanking as they worked through the makeshift pathways away from the team toward the half-destroyed flitter in a possible flanking maneuver or an attempt to secure the cargo. The simplest solution to solving the mystery would be to take all the Elites down.
That way, the answer didn’t matter.
Erik crawled toward a stack of tall, narrow containers. Anne and Kant risked quick return fire. Their bullets bounced off the advancing Elites, leaving them with only minor damage. The enemies continued their ruthless counterattack, one spinning toward Erik.
The Elite angled its cannon down but not enough to hit him, the bullet storm blasting into the floor just past him and coating him with dust and small pieces of the component material. Erik scurried forward surprisingly fast, considering he was on his stomach.
She’d seen it before in the training environment, where Erik was fond of making her crawl through fake mud.
Anne and Kant rolled out of the way as the other Elite swept their area with its cannons. Rounds tore past them, perforating their cover so thoroughly they gained a new bay window in their temporary home.
It allowed a touch of sunshine to come through.
With a wrenching noise, the containers at their level began to buckle, the damaged walls no longer able to support the weight above them. Kant pushed Anne out of the way as large crates, some near as big as the agent, tumbled down and buried him.
Anne landed hard on her back, knocking the air out of her. She gasped for breath.
A low groan escaped the pile. Kant wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t in a position to counterattack, either.
Jia’s stomach tightened. Helping Kant meant leaving their flank exposed and risking all their lives.
“Kant,” Jia shouted. “Are you okay?”
“Okay” was relative given the situation, but any encounter with deadly cyborgs that didn’t end with your head torn off was a good start.
The pile shook, and Kant’s thumb popped through a gap. “I’m breathing. Pay those bastards back for me.”
He yanked his hand down when an Elite fired into the pile. Anne sucked in a breath, regaining control.
The third and fourth Elites continued their mad dash toward the cargo flitter. Though their maximum speed was far more impressive than the meandering advance of the first encounter, they weren’t much faster than Jia at a dead-on sprint.
Jia could see why they needed the flitter. There was no way they could escape from drones if that was their best.
She fired in their direction, nailing the targets in brief windows of opportunity but earning nothing more than sparks and new dents for her trouble.
They were heading to the flitter for a reason, and it wouldn’t be good for her team.
The Elites continued lumbering along, closing on an opportunity: the spilled container of grenades. They didn’t seem to notice or care, but Jia did.
Shooting grenades, especially plasmas, wasn’t typically enough to set them off. She’d have to sacrifice one of her small supply to be sure. There wasn’t time to consider her action rationally. She had seconds to decide.
Decision made, she pulled, primed, and threw a plasma grenade as an Elite cleared the corner and entered the smoking debris field near the burning flitter.
The cyborg monstrosity ignored the grenade hurtling toward it, confident in its shield, exactly as Jia had hoped. When the grenade dropped toward the pile, the Elite sidestepped, realizing the mistake. His partner hurried backward, but it was too late for the other Elite.
Red, orange, blue, and white blasts joined the kind of colorful display normally only achieved through the willful misuse of dangerous explosives on holidays.
The bright light, fire, and smoke obscured the Elite. Crates tumbled over the other Elite, burying it with a mighty crash.
The other pair of Elites froze, their attacks ceasing. They turned toward the explosion.
Jia smiled. Could they still feel fear in their metal shells? Luca should have known who he was messing with.
A small crater marked the center of the explosion. Blasted pieces of the unfortunate Elite at the center of Jia’s trick flew through the air, parts of the legs and torso clearly visible as they pelted the floor and their teammates. She grimaced at the thought there could be brains in there, too.
Jia glanced at Erik, who had advanced to an undamaged set of crates, his position temporarily blinding him.
“Three o’clock at one meter high!” she shouted.
Erik grinned and rolled onto his side, still behind a crate. He pointed his rifle at the side of a smaller crate in the direction of one of the hesitating Elites and pulled the trigger.
The invisible beam burned through the crate with ease and pierced the opposite side. It also sheared two of the legs off the Elite and blew off the bottom of the back protrusion. Not bad for a blind shot.
The Elite collapsed, its momentum carrying it across the ground with a horrible grinding sound before it stopped close to Erik’s position.
“I think we found the braincase.” Erik grunted. “All the hardware in the world and it comes down to a headshot.”
The second Elite abruptly spun and rushed toward the opposite side of the hangar. Jia blew out a breath of concern. They did understand self-preservation.
Erik fired another shot, searing off a back leg but missing the brain compartment. His target almost made it behind a huge shipping container when the next shot vaporized most of the braincase.
The buried Elite burst out of the crate as if begging Erik to end it. A quick shot from the laser rifle incinerated a chunk of the back and most of the braincase.
Erik yanked the power cell of his rifle out and tossed it behind him, then grabbed another from the carryaid and spun it into the weapon with a satisfied look.
With a quick glance toward the pile burying her partner, Anne rolled back onto her stomach and crawled toward a crate. She pulled a plasma grenade from her vest and stayed low, keeping her head down.
Kant might be wounded and buried under a pile of heavy metal boxes, but that left Erik’s laser rifle, Jia’s missile launcher, and Anne’s grenades to finish off the final Elite. Jia transferred her rifle back to the carryaid before retrieving the launcher and her final missile.
She didn’t care about this latest iteration of a Tin Man. It was still three to one, and the Elites were on the run.
Metal banged against metal in three sharp bursts. The remaining Elite concealed itself in the cratered wasteland near the flitter wreckage.
“What’s it doing?” Anne murmured.
“Not sure,” Jia admitted.
Erik risked rising to a crouch and moving farther ahead, his path following the bend in the cargo stacks as it arced toward the opposite wall. He remained quiet.
The bangs sounded again.
“It’s an adjustment, this form.” Luca’s familiar voice came from the remaining Elite. “I could play the sound of a clap, but it lacks the satisfaction that comes with performing the action yourself. I understand my laughter and other noises aren’t real. They’re simply recordings they’ve calibrated to my brain responses to allow me a full
range of communication as necessary. I’m surprised they find it necessary, but the technology is beyond my understanding. It could be that a brain without laughter might be doomed for Cybernetic Psychosis Syndrome.”
“Now you’ve got time to be philosophical over CPS?” Jia shouted, hoping to draw Luca’s attention away from Erik. “You should have thought of that before you traded your body and soul away to become a metal monster. What could the conspiracy be doing that could possibly justify that? What would make you volunteer for something like that?”
“Many things, some of which you might even learn before you die, but I think I’ll enjoy killing you and leaving that as another of your life’s disappointments.”
After nodding at Anne and then inclining her head in the direction of Luca’s voice, Jia crept back toward an exposed position, the only place she could get a decent shot off. Luca’s shield would protect him from direct hits, but all she needed to do was blind him for a second and Erik would have his chance.
“The only one who is going to die here is you.” Jia worked on putting a foot in front of the other, staying behind protection. “All that effort and time, and we sliced through your Elites, leaving you the only one alive. We’re going to finish you off, and we’re going to take the cargo.”
She shot a nervous glance at the wreckage. The blast had exposed the trailer, including two narrow black crates secured inside with magnetic locks. They’d been scorched but not breached.
“And then what?” Luca asked. “You think because you find a small piece of the puzzle that you can understand a picture far more complicated than you can imagine?”
Erik reached the bottom of the U. He needed a few more moments.
“You still can surrender,” Jia replied, her shoulder sore under the weight of the launcher. “I’m guessing you control the jammer. Shut it off and let us open the doors, and we’ll figure out something, or you can die, accomplishing nothing like the other four Not-So-Elites.”
Anne quirked an eyebrow at Jia’s taunt. A smirk broke her bland expression.
Desperate Measures Page 35