by Drew Cordell
A cloud of smoke obscured my view as I peered out the now chipped windshield. There were people yelling outside, calling out targets.
“Everyone out!” the driver yelled. The soldiers seated in the row in front of us jumped out with their rifles raised, firing at the approaching HKs. Something was blocking the road; otherwise we wouldn’t have stopped.
“You heard him. Don’t even think about trying to pull something on us. I’ll personally go out of my way to end you,” Violet barked, kicking open her door and rushing into the fray.
Taking a deep breath, I unholstered my sidearm and took a deep breath.
“Come on!” I shouted to Mary, rushing out of the truck with my gun raised. Mary and I immediately sought cover behind a large metal trashcan toppled over on its side. The floodlights on the turbo trucks illuminated the surrounding streets and towering buildings overhead. Swarms of HKs were approaching from all directions, climbing over piles of crumbling trash and treacherous debris while the Harvester soldiers fought to repel them with automatic rifles. The noise was deafening as it reverberated through the cramped space between the surrounding buildings towering up into the darkness. Chained cracks of gunfire on our side were answered by the shrieks of splintering metal as disruptor rounds struck turbo trucks and the surrounding environment, wreaking havoc on anything they hit.
I saw Violet too, but there was more than one. In fact, I saw seven identical copies of her charging at a mob of HKs that had emerged from their shadowy refuge. They shot at every version of her but instead of impact, their shots went right through without any trace of damage. It was all some sort of trick—the copies were holograms. When the real Violet struck from the shadows, it was frightening and impressive. She danced through the crowd of HKs with her blades, cutting them down with vicious accuracy, dishing out incalculable damage before the enemies even had a chance to respond. She flipped over one of the slender robots and used it as a shield while another HK’s kinetic rounds tore into her captive’s armor, wrecking the robot. She threw a smaller knife from a wrist sheath which stuck in the head of the HK that was shooting at her, and it dropped to the ground. The collapsed robot sparked then remained still as she released her grip on the scrapped bot.
Marwin rushed toward us and slid into cover behind the trashcan with Mary and me. Mary had squeezed off a few rounds from her handgun, but it hadn’t noticeably damaged the HKs she hit, so we remained under cover while the Harvesters fought. I moved to the side of the trashcan to try to get a better look at the battle and almost lost my head to a disruptor round as it skated across the street mere inches from the edge I was peaking around. The round slammed into a building behind me and exploded in a cloud of crystallized concrete.
I closed my eyes and pressed my back against the trashcan, trying to recover from the harrowing experience while the cacophony of battle enveloped us. Our weapons were less than useless, and I still had a lingering fear of HKs after my previous encounters with them. My blood was freezing, and my body wasn’t lending me the adrenaline it usually did in battle. This time I felt something that more closely resembled paralysis, and it terrified me.
“Help Violet!” Grez yelled, but the other soldiers were already preoccupied with enemies coming from a different direction. I steeled my nerve and stole another glance around our cover, analyzing the situation carefully. More HKs clambered over a mountain of trash bags and rubble to the left of our convoy that had been cleared for an old Scavenger Guild route through the city. There were too many of them, and they were focusing on Violet, firing volleys of disruptor rounds at her as they awkwardly slid and skated their way down the shifting landscape of tumbling bags which was apparently too high to jump from without damage. Violet hadn’t noticed them at first and faltered in her fluid rhythm when they surprised her with their ambush. Her blades couldn’t deflect disruptor rounds, and she quickly found herself in a dangerous, losing position as she scrambled to escape.
Somehow, Violet managed to half-block one of the blasts she couldn’t dodge. She screamed in pain, a fine mist of blood spraying from her hand as fragments of her knife lanced away from the impact and the remainder of the shot corkscrewed away. She dropped the broken blade, quickly gaining control of her injured hand and using it to throw the smaller knives in her wrist sheath. There were still HKs surrounding her, trying to get the edge on her as she did her best to analyze the greatest threats to her and deal with them accordingly.
Soldiers from the group had turned their attention on the new HK threat, but they were still struggling with the mob attacking from directly in front of the convoy. One of the Harvester soldiers fell, a disruptor round piercing through his chest. He wouldn’t be getting up. Violet’s holograms materialized around her, but the HKs had already caught on to the real target. As they approached the bottom of the debris pile, their aim would drastically improve.
I gritted my teeth, realizing she needed my help. “Stay down. I see an opening!”
I seized my opportunity, dashing around the trashcan and feeling my veins ignite with fire as Mary’s yelled response was drowned out by the roar of battle. My fear was fading away now, replaced with the slow, burning clarity of a powerful adrenaline surge. After a few seconds of heavy sprinting, I reached the fallen Harvester soldier and took his rifle, splattered with slick blood. An HK directed its attention to me, blasting away with its disruptor rifle while I dove for cover behind the charred skeleton of a car, landing on my side and managing to line up the red dot sight of the rifle on the HKs head before it could land a shot on me. My weapon kicked against my shoulder as I squeezed the trigger. The first shot connected with the center of the HK’s forehead, denting the angular metal and driving the machine’s head back with a strained whine of the hydraulic servo connecting the head to the body. My second shot broke its armor, and the third pierced all the way through its head, dropping the HK for good.
Grez was beside me a moment later, lining up HKs and trying to take them down before they could get down the mass of trash and gain a foothold in the battle. Some of them dropped and slid face first down the trash while other recovered and took their chances jumping, landing hard and struggling to raise themselves from the ground. With our cover fire, Violet finished the last of the HKs surrounding her and dashed behind the turbo trucks where she could recuperate and plan another attack.
Grez and I continued firing at the HKs attempting to flank us until my rifle clicked dry. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t had time to grab the fallen soldier’s extra ammo. “I’m out!”
“Left belt pocket,” Grez barked, firing his rifle in the short bursts of a seasoned shooter.
I pulled a magazine from his belt and slammed it into the receiver of my rifle. I stole a quick glance back and saw Mary and Marwin were still pinned to the trashcan, unable to contribute to the fight. The tide of battle shifted in our favor. Even with the ambush we were winning, driving back the remaining HKs which looked to be fleeing into buildings and darting down alleyways to make themselves useful somewhere else. Despite their superior number, we defeated them.
Our group took out as many of the stragglers as possible, remaining in defensive positions with weapons raised even as a heavy silence fell on our surroundings. There were a few cries of pain, but it looked like Jennifer and a few of the other soldiers were already assisting in treating the wounded.
“I’ll need that rifle back, Jake,” Grez said, holding out a large hand. I wanted to argue, to tell him I had just saved his daughter’s life, but it wouldn’t do any good.
I handed him the weapon. “If you put a little more trust in us, we can help in situations like this.”
Grez’s expression hardened. “I said no real weapons for a reason. Don’t go against my orders again or there will be consequences.”
There would be no thank you for risking my life to help his daughter, no extension of trust to my group. I managed a nod and kept silent, walking back over to join Mary and Marwin while bottling up hot anger.
Violet returned to us, deactivating the burning edge on her remaining knife and sheathing it on her waist. “So much for avoiding a fight,” she grumbled. “You three okay?”
“Fine,” Mary said, but I could tell she was upset, probably because we still didn’t have weapons to protect ourselves with and we still had a lot of ground to cover.
“How’s your hand?” I asked, trying to get a better look as Violet stood in the light of one of the trucks.
“Not as bad as I thought. A small spear of metal went all the way through, and the rest of my hand is pretty cut up from the shrapnel,” she said, holding up her hand and flipping it so we could see the damage. “Jennifer will get me patched up and I’ll be just fine. Probably won’t even need any stitches. Thanks for your help, Jake. I don’t know if that was brave or crazy. Hell, maybe it was both.”
I nodded. “Don’t expect my help again, though. Your dad isn’t happy with what I did.”
“I’ll talk to him. You could have easily killed me and you helped me instead. That goes a long way in my book.”
Violet went off to talk to Grez while the uninjured soldiers cleaned up the scene and loaded the broken HKs in one of the trucks that would be returning to the Harvester base after they dropped us off later down the line. One of the trucks had taken substantial damage to the engine block and veered off into a wall of trash, trapping the entire front half while blocking off the rest. The engineers in the crew were already hard at work on repairing the engine. The non-technical members of the group were working on freeing the vehicle from the wreckage, but until everyone was done we couldn’t leave.
The HKs seemed to be spread out in the Slums, but that didn’t mean more weren’t alerted to our presence. Additional ammo was distributed to the soldiers, and gear was replenished while Jennifer finished bandaging the wounded and helping a few of them into one of the trucks that would be returning from the journey early. Aside from the soldier whose weapon I had taken, the rest of the injured would live.
Marwin walked over to us. “I couldn’t see anything from my point of view, but please be careful, Jake.”
I pulled him to the side, almost able to control my shaking arms. “Why did Grez want you to ride in his truck?”
“He wanted to talk about trade,” Marwin said. “What we’d be willing to offer for food in terms of products and services. Things like that.”
I nodded. “Okay. Keep us updated if you talk more with him once we get going again.”
Mary looked frustrated. “Our weapons are practically worthless, so we need to stay low if another fight breaks out. I landed four headshots on an HK, and the thing didn’t even flinch.”
“I’m surprised our weapons fired at all, honestly,” Marwin said. “At least we have the armor, but try not to get hit.”
Mary skulked. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good, just keep an eye out for Jake and make sure he doesn’t try anymore stunts like that,” he said, punching me in the arm lightly before walking back to talk to Grez while the soldiers continued to stand guard and search for hidden enemies.
Violet walked back over to Mary and me after Jennifer patched her hand. “All right. Let’s get back in the truck while we wait. We don’t need to be out here while the engineers work.”
“Sure,” I said, following her and Mary back to our truck. The armor was dinged up, but the HKs hadn’t damaged any of the mechanical components of our vehicle.
“Any chance you give us an upgrade now?” Mary asked. “I landed four consecutive headshots and didn’t damage the HK. We’re not going to be able to protect you or anyone else if we have to unless you’re planning on others in the group dying and freeing up a weapon.”
The last jab seemed to ignite a spark of anger in Violet. “Not a chance. You also won’t be able to kill us before we kill you either. Like I said, we’ll keep you safe. I’ll also make sure I don’t need you to save me again.”
Mary scoffed. “You mean save you like Jake just decided to do? Like what just happened not even an hour into our mission?”
“I didn’t ask him to save me. Maybe I would have lived if he didn’t step in, I’m not sure, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m not thankful he did.” Violet narrowed her eyes. “I don’t trust you very much, and you don’t trust me either. I know you can shoot. Not a good combination.”
I interrupted before it could escalate. “This isn’t worth fighting over. Don’t give us guns, fine, that’s your decision. Just don’t expect any more help if you’re in trouble. If that soldier didn’t die, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”
Violet shrugged. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Mary said.
“How did you do that illusion trick?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Stealthsuit and Nanodrones. They’re tiny and can project my image all over the place. I have ten of them,” she said, lifting her arm and pulling back the sleeve of her jacket to reveal small circular disks embedded in the wrists of the armor she wore beneath.
I hadn’t ever seen tech like it before, even in Olympus. There was no telling where she got it, but it also didn’t seem like something the Harvesters could build themselves. Perhaps we had all severely underestimated their technological prowess and maybe Grez wanted it that way.
We were all in a bad mood and spent most of the next half hour in silence until the two soldiers riding with us eventually climbed back into the seat row in front of us. The convoy rolled back into action.
The rest of the three-hour trip to the staging area was uneventful. Two of the six turbo trucks returned to the Harvester base while the rest continued forward on the last stretch of the journey above ground. Grez’s careful planning with the protection detail paid off, and I was thankful they’d been able to stave off the HKs we encountered. It seemed like there was no end to the murderous robots, and it was staggering just how many were still roaming the Slums, killing anyone unfortunate enough to encounter them. The truck slowed to a stop, and I could make out a massive, well-lit structure in the distance. It was a monolith of light and activity sticking out against the surrounding perpetual darkness and lifelessness of the Slums.
The Greater Lift was unlike anything I had ever seen. The Scavenger Guild had developed the surrounding area, and it was swarming with armed guards. The Lift itself was massive enough to easily take all our trucks down to River’s Port. More impressively, the two Greater Lifts were built after the collapse of society, once almost everything and everyone were gone. It made sense now that we knew the Scavengers had been working with the Omniscience Engine, at least in part, after the collapse. It was still a marvel of engineering that helped River’s Port expand even in the most difficult of times. The thought of the Omniscience Engine sending resources to River’s Port made me sick. I could only hope the city itself wasn’t under the control of the Omniscience Engine and swarming with HKs and Enforcers.
Guards waved us toward an inspection area in front of the checkpoint.
“Remember, my father and I do all the talking. Stay silent, and don’t talk unless you’re spoken to directly. You’re consultants with our group and nothing more,” Violet said as we got out of the truck, stepping onto a large metal platform. There were a lot more guards than we had initially seen, and more were appearing from behind shipping containers and buildings around the lift.
“Weapons are permitted in River’s Port, but if you draw them without good cause, we’ll have a problem,” one of the Scavenger Guild guards said as we walked to where the others were standing. There were several people carrying datapads ready to inspect the truck, and a man wearing a Scavenger Guild jacket stepped forward to address our group while they worked. Violet went and stood at the front with Grez while the two soldiers in our group stood by Mary and me. Marwin was off to the side by one of the engineers of the group, probably with the same instructions Violet had given us.
The portly man smiled. “Greetings and welcome to our Greater Lift. We
will be happy to allow you to pass into River’s Port assuming your cargo passes inspection and you're able to pay the transit fee. The fee is a one-time deal and will grant you a free return trip from River’s Port. If you do not require a return trip, we can give you a discount on your transportation,” the man said, his tone friendly but commanding.
“What kind of fee are we looking at to move our trucks?” Grez asked.
“It’s a variable fee of five percent value of your haul plus a fixed expense per truck,” the manager of the lift explained.
“And you determine the value of our haul, I’m guessing?” Grez said. He clearly wasn’t happy with the arrangement thus far, but was remaining collected enough.
“Yes sir. We’ll assess your haul then apply the fair market value of what your goods would sell for in River’s Port,” the man responded.
“And that’s not up for negotiation? See, we haven’t visited River’s Port before, and I wasn’t aware anyone was dealing with credits anymore. If it’s credits you want, we probably have a few thousand we can pay right now.”
The Scavenger Guild man smiled artificially, clearly not amused. “We don’t deal in Government credits. Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking, sir? This is the first unscheduled arrival we have had in a very long time.”
“West New York Undercity. We have a good core group that got us through the collapse. We heard some good things about River’s Port from other survivors and decided to try our hand at establishing a trade route.”
“I see. Well, if you’re interested in establishing a more long-term trading relationship, we can offer Greater Lift access as a subscription. If you plan on trading high volume on a regular basis, I could even set you up with an appointment with some of my guild’s higher ups to establish a trade contract.”
“We’ll just take the single pass right now and see if we like River’s Port,” Grez said.
