E-Day

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  The machines opened their jaws, rimmed with razor-sharp teeth, releasing electronic shrieks meant to intimidate. It worked—Ronin and the other civilians around him huddled together like frightened animals.

  “We can’t stay here any longer,” said Contos. “We need to make a run for the APCs.”

  Ronin looked over his shoulder for his father, for the hundredth time. But for every second that passed, it was less likely Kai was still alive. He had already been gone for hours.

  Dread filled Ronin at the thought of losing his father.

  “Get ready to move,” said one of the Royal Pistons.

  “You guys ready?” Zachary asked.

  “Kai,” Lise said.

  Zachary rose to his feet and tightened the backpack that contained the Warrior Codex. His features were tight and serious, the same look as before a Droid Raider match… he was ready to fight. “I’ll go look for Dad.”

  Lise grabbed his arm. “No, if he’s already… I can’t lose you too.”

  “Let’s go!” Contos shouted. “Follow me!”

  Ronin took Lise and Elan’s hands. The Pistons led the civilians around the crates, following Contos on the war horse. They kept low, a chain of hands and bodies making their way toward the APCs.

  Suddenly the lead Royal Piston vanished in a puff of smoke and light, his body thumping to the ground next to Ronin with a sizzling, melon-sized hole in his chest. Organs gurgled out.

  Then a woman slumped to the deck, her face erased by a simmering red hole.

  “Keep moving!” Contos shouted.

  Screams rang out around Ronin, but he held his mom and brother tightly, pulling them forward, using the glow of emergency lights and plasma bolts to guide him. More machines broke away from the heart of the battle, their armored frames illuminated as they fired. Ronin heard a rattling above and halted, pulling back on his brother and mom just in time.

  Both Pistons in front of him fired up at a Canebrake running on the ceiling. Its plasma cannons burst to life, hitting the two soldiers in their helmets.

  The Canebrake leapt down, right in front of Ronin and his family.

  “Watch out!” Lise cried.

  Four black arms whipped back and forth as the Canebrake’s black eyes searched for targets. One arm fired at Ronin, only to be hacked away by a Piston. Ronin fell on his back, bringing Elan and Lise to the floor with him.

  A crackling Canebrake screech reverberated through the room.

  “Get back!” Zachary shouted.

  He ducked under another segmented arm, and then swiped up with his sword to cut the Canebrake across the ridged shell-like chest plates. The machine reared back, directing both plasma cannons at Zachary, but he dove between the machine’s wide legs, cutting into the plated armored covering of two of them. The Canebrake went down, and Zachary was already on his feet, delivering a swift stroke that nearly severed the machine’s head.

  Ronin helped his mother and Elan up.

  “Keep moving!” Zachary yelled.

  “Stay behind us!” Contos yelled.

  The horse advanced as another Canebrake skittered like a crab overhead. It dropped onto a four-seater ATV, crushing the roll bars and firing its pulse cannons. Three Pistons dropped under the wave of fire, and others pounded the Canebrake with hundreds of bolts, its armor hissing and cracking.

  The droid kept fighting, slinging its arms and firing at the soldiers.

  Contos dodged, but the guard on his right wasn’t as fast. A blade punctured the center of his faceplate, breaking out the back of his head with a spray of blood.

  Ronin picked up the guard’s rifle and brought it up to fire just as the Canebrake hopped off the vehicle and made a run for Kichiro. The droid horse kicked up, with a limb wrapped around his neck.

  The stallion pulled the Canebrake forward just as Ronin pulled the trigger, firing a burst of plasma bolts that missed. He fired again, impacting the Canebrake’s shoulder and knocking it off balance. It twisted its torso, and he squeezed off another burst that burrowed into the Canebrake’s eyes and forehead.

  Using his right front hoof, Kichiro crushed the center of the Canebrake’s fanned head.

  Contos turned in the saddle and offered Ronin a grateful nod.

  “Ronin, come on!” Zachary yelled.

  Elan pulled Ronin’s arm, and they ran for the APCs. A Piston opened the back hatch of the closest vehicle and herded civilians inside.

  Ronin took a seat next to Elan and his mother, still gripping the rifle. Zachary sat across from them. A woman tried to hush a baby, but the child wailed, echoing in the enclosed troop hold. The vehicle screeched away, plasma bolts pounding its sides.

  “Everyone hold on,” said the driver. The APC zigged and zagged around crates and downed Pistons. “When I stop, get out and run straight to the corvette!”

  “Stay close,” Lise said firmly. “We go together.”

  The APC jolted to a stop, and the hatch opened to screams of horror.

  A Canebrake stood outside, rising to its maximum height of almost ten feet. Its cannons belched to life, and the woman next to Ronin burst like a leech full of blood.

  Then, in a flash of metal legs and titanium hooves, the machine vanished. Contos dismounted from Kichiro and waved. “Let’s go!”

  Lise and Elan were already moving. Ronin avoided looking at the woman to his left and ran after the other civilians. There weren’t many survivors. Maybe a dozen. On the exit ramp, he noticed Zachary wasn’t with them.

  He looked back and saw Zachary limping toward him, a hand on his leg, and the other gripping the sword.

  “Go!” Zachary insisted.

  Ronin turned and saw his mom and Elan enter the corvette with two Pistons.

  Contos and his men formed an armored phalanx to protect the civilians escaping into the shuttle, firing at a Canebrake that had leapt on top of the APC. Zachary turned and swung at one of the arms that lanced toward him, deflecting it with a clang. He fell on his back, and Ronin aimed his rifle at the Canebrake’s helmet from the ramp.

  Please, please, please don’t miss.

  His brother’s life was on the line and Ronin had the power to save him.

  He closed one eye, lined up the sights on the war machine and pulled the trigger.

  The weapon kicked, the bolts blasting high into the ceiling.

  He steadied the rifle, held in a breath and aimed again as the Canebrake towered over Zachary, arms up and heated blades glowing red.

  Ronin could not miss again.

  He lowered the barrel slightly to adjust for the recoil, and pulled the trigger. This time the three bolts slammed into the chest of the Canebrake, knocking it away from his brother.

  “Run, Zach!” Ronin screamed.

  Zachary pushed himself up, his face a grimace of pain, blood surging from a gash in his thigh. He fell back to the ground as Ronin hurried down the ramp to meet him.

  “Take the book!” Zachary shouted. Still on the ground, he flung his backpack through the air. It landed a few feet from Ronin, who snatched it up.

  At the other end of the room, a phalanx of Pistons folded as more Canebrakes crashed through. A pack of three machines vaulted over the downed soldiers and onto the Juggernauts. Kichiro reared up on his back legs, kicking the air as plasma rounds tore past.

  Zachary glanced over his shoulder at the Canebrake that Ronin had knocked away. It was still down, but flung a segmented arm through the air.

  Ronin screamed and reached out as his brother turned back to him, just as a blade sliced through his neck, and retracted back to the machine.

  Zachary stared at Ronin for a split moment before his head slid off his neck.

  An animalistic cry echoed through the entire chamber.

  When Ronin went to open his mouth, he realized it was from his own mouth.

  “NO!” he howled.

  Ronin fired at the Canebrake as his brother’s headless corpse slumped to the
ground. He held the trigger until the gun hissed, overheated.

  The machine swung another arm at Ronin. He had just enough time to duck beneath the heated blade.

  “Get back!” boomed a voice.

  Ronin jumped to the side, narrowly avoiding Kichiro as the machine stormed past with War Commander Contos in the saddle. The horse slammed into the Canebrake, and Contos hacked into the head with his long sword, disabling the droid.

  He then reached down with his free hand and grabbed Ronin, hauling him up onto the horse.

  “Let me go!” Ronin shouted. “I’ve got to get my brother!”

  “Kid, he’s gone,” Contos said. “We must go!”

  Ronin struggled to look at his dead brother, hoping, praying that his eyes had lied to him earlier and that Zachary would get back up and make it to the shuttle. But the sight of his headless corpse and pooling blood confirmed this was real, that his older brother would never get up ever again.

  His short life was over.

  Plasma bolts lanced through the air as Contos dropped Ronin on the ramp in front of two Pistons. “Get him out of here!”

  The soldiers grabbed Ronin and hauled him into the shuttle. He screamed as they carried him.

  “Don’t move from this seat!” one of the men yelled. He threw Ronin into it forcefully. Elan and Lise were down the aisle. Her lips were moving, but Ronin couldn’t hear her voice over the roar of the engines.

  A string of plasma bolts hit the porthole windows. Outside, War Commander Contos rode Kichiro toward the group of retreating soldiers.

  Ronin closed his eyes, trying to block out the nightmare. When he opened them again, the corvette had launched and was rising above the underground silo. Rockets soared across the streets, exploding against buildings. Flashes of light crisscrossed, and brilliant explosions burst across the skyline. A squadron of enemy Praying Mantis fighters, their metal mandibles glowing blue, curved toward a formation of civilian shuttles taking off from the airport. One exploded just after lifting off, bursting over the tarmac in a spray of debris and flames.

  Ronin knew then that it wasn’t just Zachary he had lost. His father and uncle, if they were still alive, wouldn’t be for long. He wiped away his tears. They wouldn’t want him to cry for them, they would want him to take care of his twin brother and mother. He pushed up the rack and stumbled over to them.

  Lise stared at Ronin, her lips trembling. She was in shock.

  An impact suddenly pounded the Stingray, shaking it violently.

  Ronin turned to look out the window behind him. A formation of enemy drones that looked like black shuriken slammed into a civilian shuttle that had made it into the sky. An explosion burst through the hull, flames soaring out, and with them, human shapes, sucked away into the night.

  Ronin gripped his brother’s and mom’s hands as their corvette vibrated from the impacts. The pilots swerved, climbed, and swerved some more, and for the next ten minutes, Ronin prayed for his father, uncle, and brother.

  And for their shuttle.

  More explosions thumped outside, but a new noise rose over the blasts—the roar of a Short Sword stealth fighter jet. It unleashed a flurry of rockets, destroying a wave of incoming drones. As they burst across the sky, the Short Sword fighter pulled up and peeled off into the darkness.

  The alarms in the cabin of the shuttle stopped beeping, and the frightened cries of passengers faded away. Even the baby stopped crying. Relieved voices cried out as people strained to look out the windows.

  Ronin leaned forward, trying to get an idea where they were evacuating to, but the ground was so far away that, within a few minutes, the Earth appeared as a ball of darkness, the lights of megacities glowing in the night. One suddenly winked off as the shuttle flew away from the planet, and then a new view came into focus—the dazzling sea of stars and the glowing white moon.

  Ronin snapped free of the shock gripping his body and mind.

  They hadn’t just evacuated Megacity Tokyo. They were evacuating Earth.

  ***

  A second corvette launched from the base, blasting into the sky.

  Akira watched, hoping his family was on it.

  The convoy of trucks slowed and parked in front of the sealed gates of Tokyo’s western wall, three hours to spare before Hros-1 entered orbit. But the asteroid was the least of Akira’s worries right now.

  Faint gunfire and explosions sounded on the other side of the fifty-story wall.

  Akira hopped down and walked over to Kobe, the Yakuza leader. The soldiers in the beds of the trucks, hardened nomads, seemed to understand what was going on, and Akira registered their accelerated heartbeats on his scanners.

  “This is as far as we go,” Kobe said. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.” Akira extended his hand. It was an old school way of giving his thanks, but Kobe refused it.

  “Just because we helped you, doesn’t mean we’re friends,” he said.

  “Perhaps someday I can repay the favor,” Akira said.

  “If there is a someday,” Kobe said. He rotated his finger in the air, and the trucks peeled away, heading back into the slums.

  Akira instructed Blue Jay to fly over the walls for a look. “Ghost, get us in.”

  Ghost approached the sensor panel at a pedestrian port. The eight-foot steel door creaked open. Walking through the opening was like stepping into a time machine. A lush garden of cherry blossoms and bonsai trees grew up against the interior of the wall. On the other side were blocks of traditional Japanese mansions with tiled roofs.

  Okami stomped through a bed of flowers, sniffing for threats.

  Beyond the wealthy neighborhood, dark skyscrapers loomed in the distance. Fires sparkled in their glass windows. Gunfire and sporadic blasts echoed through the night. Screams of horror and agony joined the cacophony.

  Tadhg advanced on a bridge over a koi pond. Ghost and Frost fell in behind Akira, with the Pistons Toretto, Bella, and Allen behind them. They took up defensive positions behind the trees and compound walls as a contact from Blue Jay flashed on their HUDs. Akira ordered the droid down for a better view.

  He thought about his family. They had traveled here to visit him in what was supposed to be a time of peace. Now Tokyo was a warzone, and an asteroid was three hours from hitting Baku. He prayed Kai had gotten them to one of the shuttles.

  Focus on each stroke of your blade. Win the battle, then focus on the war.

  Tadhg halted and raised his hand. Just ahead, a Hummer Droid crawled across the concrete, dragging its lower half behind it in a tangled mass of cords.

  “Looks like it tangoed with Tadhg in the arena,” Ghost said quietly.

  Gunfire cracked and popped in the distance. The noise came from flesh guns, not plasma rifles, which meant the locals were fighting back. Akira knew there was no way they were winning.

  Okami stopped ahead to sniff the damaged droid, his tail going down. The machine turned toward them and reached up to Frost with skeletal fingers.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  The droid latched onto her ankle and pulled. She tried to kick free but it pulled her to the ground.

  “Hey!” she cried. “Get it off me!”

  Okami clamped down on the Hummer Droid’s arm with a crunch.

  Akira stared for a moment as his brain processed the scene. It took another beat to understand what was happening—the Canebrakes weren’t the only droids that had turned on humanity.

  Frost squirmed under the weight of the machine as Tadhg plucked it off. He twisted its head right out of the socket.

  “The Hummer Droids now, too?” Frost exclaimed. “What about…”

  They all looked over at Okami. The wolfdog chewed on the severed arm of the destroyed Hummer Droid, his tail wagging again.

  “Ankle Biter seems fine,” Tadhg said.

  “His OS is an older model,” Akira said. He was glad he had never upgraded the archaic system, but he wasn’t
totally convinced the droid wouldn’t still turn on them. Still, he wasn’t going to abandon Okami, not after all they had been through.

  Tadhg shook his helmet wearily. “I knew this shit would fucking happen, man. No one listened to me.”

  “Yeah, you’re a genius,” Frost said sarcastically.

  Ghost raised his hand, mumbling.

  “What?” Tadhg asked. “I was the one who warned everyone about this happening. AI is salvation has always been complete bullshit.”

  “We still don’t know what happened, and AI brought me back,” Ghost said. “So are you siding with the Coalition now?”

  Tadhg stepped up to him. “Take that shit back.”

  “Enough,” Akira said. “We have to get to the base.”

  The Engines fanned out across the road with Akira taking point, his eye on Okami.

  “Captain, I just scanned that droid’s serial code, and it was assigned to a shelter not far from here,” Frost said. “Maybe we should check it out. It’s on the way to the base.”

  Akira checked the mission clock. Two hours, forty-five minutes remained until Hros-1 would arrive. “Okay, but we make it fast.”

  They cleared the next corner, ran across the street, and entered a park. On the other side were more houses fenced off with stone or wooden walls.

  Sporadic gunshots popped. Akira no longer heard screams, but a crunching sound came from somewhere nearby. He followed it until his augmented ears pinpointed the location.

  It seemed to be coming from under the street.

  Frost pointed toward a gated entry ahead, accented by waterfalls and rows of flowers, framing a road into the secluded community.

  “Let me,” Tadhg said. Grabbing two of the ten-foot metal bars, he pried them apart, providing a doorway.

  Akira slipped through, keeping his rifle shouldered as he ran down the edge of the road toward an underground subway. The crunching grew louder, joined by snapping, popping, and ripping sounds. At the station entrance, one of the two blast doors was off its hinges. He peered down the stairs at the source of the sounds.

  A black and yellow Hummer Droid leaned over bodies, twisting heads and ripping off limbs. Akira put a plasma bolt into the droid’s helmet, then he slowly advanced upon a scene of horror.