Hero Code

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Wait.” Bonita held up a finger. “I just got a message from him. He said he’s going through some kind of barrier and may lose contact, but we’re supposed to bring in his robots. And hold off on calling Asger’s buddies.”

  Asger frowned. “Why?”

  “There are two vessels flying toward us,” Viggo announced before Bonita could check.

  “Since when?” Bonita asked.

  “They just appeared on my scanners. Approximately twenty miles to the west and heading in our direction.”

  “Twenty miles west? That’s almost on top of the spot where Casmir’s transponder disappeared.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell if they have weapons?”

  “Yes,” Viggo said, “they do.”

  “Is that railgun on the roof the only weapon this ship has?” Asger asked.

  “On the outside, yes.” Bonita looked at Qin.

  “I’m her other weapon.” Qin smiled.

  Asger snorted. “How are you at knocking shuttlecraft out of the sky?”

  Qin hopped out of her pod. “I’ll get my Brockinger anti-tank gun, and we’ll find out.”

  “Are you joking?” Asger asked as she squeezed past him. “Lopez, is she joking?”

  “No. Stop pestering me or go help her. Or both.”

  As Qin descended the ladder toward her cabin, she heard Bonita add, “I have a feeling I’m going to need to concentrate on my flying soon.”

  Qin already wore her full combat armor, and it only took her a moment to grab her Brockinger since she’d had it out earlier, intending to take it along to help Casmir. Not sure if she would end up in some ground battle eventually, she also grabbed a DEW-Tek rifle and a couple of pistols from her storage drawer.

  The Dragon swooped through its first evasive maneuvers as she climbed the ladder back up to the top deck. Asger was still there, also armed and armored, standing in the corridor behind navigation and gripping a handhold.

  “I’ve got visual contact,” Bonita called back. “Those are some sleek ships. And yes, they have weapons aplenty. Hang on!”

  The Dragon lurched as she spun them into a turn.

  Qin almost tumbled into Asger. She lunged for the ladder leading up to the roof hatch and caught herself before she struck him.

  A weapon that whistled like an obnoxious firecracker streaked past somewhere nearby. Rapid-fire booms followed. The freighter dipped and rose, rolling and banking to avoid the attacks. Something caught the Dragon’s side, and the ship shuddered. Qin wasn’t used to hearing all the sounds of battle, not in space where everything happened in a vacuum of silence.

  The railgun fired with a thwomp.

  “Slick bastards,” Bonita growled.

  “Should I climb up and try to hit them?” Qin asked.

  “Climb up?” Asger asked. “On the roof? The wind will whip you off.”

  A snap-crack emanated from the rear of the ship, and the lights flickered.

  “Anything you can do to help,” Bonita called.

  Qin climbed the ladder and opened the hatch. The wind blasted her helmet.

  Bonita spun the Dragon into a roll, and Qin planted her lower body, hooking her feet under rungs so she wouldn’t fall out as the dark sky and the even darker ground alternated places over her head. She craned her neck, looking for the other ships as she raised her Brockinger to her shoulder.

  The Dragon swept low and upside-down, and Qin’s helmet almost skimmed the treetops. But then she spotted the reason for the dangerous maneuver. A pursuer zoomed down after them.

  The freighter’s railgun swiveled and fired. Even though the enemy shuttle was close and didn’t have much time to react, it was agile, and the pilot whipped to the side in time to evade it. But they were so close to the trees that the shuttle almost swerved into a tall one. It had to readjust its course, and Qin took advantage as it banked hard. She fired before the shuttle could pull fully away from the tree.

  The Brockinger wasn’t as powerful as the railgun, but her shell struck the vessel straight on and exploded.

  “Right up the nose,” she whispered.

  The shuttle likely could have taken a few hits, but her attack caught it at the right moment, and the small lurch it caused made it clip the tree. The craft wheeled out of control, hit two more trees, then streaked toward the ground, streaming flames and smoke.

  “That’s one!” Qin called down—or up—as the Dragon turned back to an upright position.

  “Good shooting, Qin!” Bonita yelled back. “Hang on. The other one is swooping down from above.”

  The enemy shuttle came into view before the warning was complete, and something that looked like a flaming torpedo streaked toward them from above. Bonita tried to get the Dragon out of the way, but there wasn’t enough time. Qin pulled herself back inside, intending to grip the rungs so she wouldn’t be knocked free, but the torpedo caught them on the top of the freighter.

  A boom roared in Qin’s ears, and a massive jolt wracked the ship as she was adjusting her grip. The force flung her out, and she yelled in surprise. The Dragon kept flying as she plummeted toward the trees, trees that were hundreds of feet tall.

  She twisted in the air, almost dropping her Brockinger as she lunged and tried to catch a branch. Her back struck one, tossing her sideways. She hit a trunk and bounced toward another tree. This time, she managed to grab the trunk. She skidded down ten feet, snapping branches and shearing off bark before she could stop herself.

  The tree swayed violently under her weight, and she grimaced, expecting the trunk to snap off and send her plummeting again. But as the roar of the Dragon’s engine faded, the tree stopped swaying. Qin caught her breath, glad her armor had protected her from those blows, but feeling silly that she’d let herself be thrown out of the ship. Yes, they’d been struck by enemy fire, but she was supposed to be better than that. She was embarrassed that Asger had been there to witness it.

  At least she was alive. Alive and—she peered through the myriad branches between her and the ground—more than a hundred feet up. Well, she had cat genes. She could climb down.

  As she started down, she commed Bonita. “Captain, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” came the prompt reply, “where are you?”

  “I fell out,” she said at the same time as Bonita said, “Never mind. Asger just told me. Qin!”

  “Sorry.”

  “I need to lose this guy. We’ve taken damage. I’ll circle back as soon as we survive. Just wait where you—no, wait. You’re actually less than a mile from where—” Bonita broke off, the shriek of weapons fire filling the comm. “From where we lost the signal. Head west and see if you can figure out what happened.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “If we can’t lose this guy, I’m going to try to at least find a place to open the hatch long enough for Asger and the robots to jump out.”

  “Understood,” Qin said, though she wondered how Casmir’s robots would survive a jump of more than a few feet. Zee could have, but the rest of them seemed far less malleable and durable.

  “Lopez, out.”

  Qin had been descending as she spoke, and she jumped the last thirty feet to the ground, her strong legs and shock-absorbent boots making that an easy matter. She used her helmet map to get her bearings, then sprinted through the damp foliage in the direction Bonita had indicated, hoping she wasn’t too late to help Casmir.

  More booms and more DEW-Tek fire burst into the night. Casmir lifted his head from his tree-trunk hiding spot. Rache was out there fighting somewhere, and his remaining robots continued to tramp around, creating a distraction. Casmir shouldn’t waste that. He rested a hand on his tool satchel, the closest thing he had to weapons, and groped for something he could do.

  Could he hack into the local network that the Quasar Stalkers operated on? It registered on his chip, but he’d already examined it, and there were about a dozen layers of security on it. He feared it would take hours—or months—to hack into, but as
long as he was crouching in damp ferns, he might as well try. Maybe he would get lucky, as he had on that cargo ship. Admittedly, his friends had needed to render an android unconscious before Casmir could find that log-in code, but…

  Before he’d done more than start one of his hacking programs running, one of the Stalkers charged away from the cliff in Casmir’s direction. He didn’t think Rache was anywhere nearby, and he gripped the bark of his tree tightly. Could it have sensed his heat signature?

  Branches crunched as the Stalker came to a stop. Casmir ducked low and tried to make himself as narrow as possible. The robot’s insectoid head rotated, a pair of round crimson eyes swiveling toward the forest. Casmir knew the sensors were in a chest panel, and that the eyes were only for effect, but it didn’t matter. In that moment, they were creepy.

  He couldn’t hear his breathing over the cacophony of weapons firing, but he worried the Stalker, with its exceptional auditory sensors, could. He tried to inhale and exhale as lightly as possible.

  A faint crunch was his only warning. The Stalker sprinted toward him.

  Casmir sprang back and raced for the trees behind him. He glimpsed the robot running on its springy legs. A heartbeat later, the tree where he’d been hiding exploded.

  The boom roared in his ears, and the shockwave hurled him into the air. He flailed, trying to avoid slamming into a huge trunk right in front of him. His shoulder clipped it, and he bit his tongue to keep from crying out. Not that it mattered. The Stalker knew right where he was.

  It charged through flames burning up and down the stump, which was all that remained of that tree, and sprang toward him.

  As soon as Casmir hit the ground, he scrambled for cover, anything that could protect him. He flung himself over a fern, damp fronds batting him in the eyes, and dove behind another tree.

  The Stalker fired, and the tree erupted with a thunderous crack. The trunk pitched down toward Casmir.

  He gasped and rolled to the side, flinging himself through the undergrowth to avoid it. The trunk might have hit him anyway, but it smashed against another tree, and that halted its fall. It did nothing to halt the Stalker. The agile robot sprang over a log, and its crimson eyes stared at him as it lifted its cannon-like appendage.

  Even as Casmir threw himself to the side, he knew he wasn’t fast enough to dodge. No normal human would be.

  A black figure sprang onto the Stalker’s back.

  Zee? No, it was Rache in his black combat armor.

  He roared, gripped the robot’s head, and twisted and yanked it off with inhuman strength. Shorted wires spat and hissed. Rache jammed something down into the headless stump and sprang away.

  “Move!” he shouted.

  Casmir jumped up and ran deeper into the woods. An explosion roared right behind him, and shrapnel pelted him in the back. Thankfully, the galaxy suit protected him somewhat, keeping the shards from penetrating, but one piece was large enough to knock him over again.

  Something grabbed Casmir from behind, and he almost yelled in alarm before he realized human hands held him, not robot grippers. Rache lifted him to his feet and pulled him behind a copse of trees. He was panting inside his helmet, dents and melt marks marring his armor, but his eyes had a wild gleam, and he was grinning.

  “Thanks,” Casmir said.

  Rache slapped him on the shoulder, almost sending Casmir into another tree.

  “Where did you get explosives?” Casmir asked.

  “Stole them from a robot I took down,” Rache said. “We have to get inside. Running around out here and fighting the cannon fodder is going to get us killed.”

  “You don’t think going inside might also accomplish that?”

  “We need to find who’s in charge.”

  “To negotiate with him?”

  “To kill him. Cut off the head, and the snake dies.”

  “Little known scientific fact,” Casmir said. “Severed snake heads can still bite for up to an hour after decapitation.”

  “Maybe we can round up enough ordnance to blow up their base from out here. The whole cliff.” Rache waved toward it. “That old fortress built into it looks like it could collapse without much effort.”

  Rache turned, as if to enact his idea right then.

  Casmir lunged and grabbed his arm. “You can’t. My parents might be in there.”

  “What?”

  “I just found out, not an hour ago. They were kidnapped from their apartment. I don’t know they’re in there, but I’m afraid they might have been picked up to ensure my cooperation.”

  Rache looked toward the cliff again. Another of the Quasar Stalkers stomped into view beyond the trees, maybe wondering what had happened to its buddy.

  “All right. This way.” Rache drew Casmir along a line parallel to the cliff, keeping the trees between them and their enemies.

  Another boom erupted, followed by metal raining against stone and wood, and Casmir knew another of his robots had been destroyed. There couldn’t be more than five left. Once they were gone, nothing would remain to distract their enemies, nothing to keep all those Stalkers from charging into the woods and mowing down Casmir and Rache.

  “We’re going to have to go back to the idea of going inside,” Rache said. “Find the boss, make him tell you where your parents are.”

  “The entrance is fifty feet up.” Casmir grunted as he stumbled over another hidden log. “And there were two astroshamans standing on the platform, guarding it.”

  “I saw. They’re only partially armored. Their heads are vulnerable.”

  “To what? They’re way up there. And we’re—”

  “I have jet boots.” Rache pointed at his feet.

  “Oh, right. So you can get in. Uh, can you carry me up there?” Normally, Casmir wouldn’t have volunteered to help storm an enemy base, but staying out here would be a death sentence.

  “Maybe. Do you weigh more than a bunch of comic books, two pizzas, and a toy robot kit?”

  “Uh, probably not much more. That didn’t exceed the weight allowance and make you crash, did it?”

  “No. It just altered the handling noticeably.” Rache turned, putting his back to him. “Climb on—wait.”

  One of the Stalkers raced between the trees and toward them. Casmir sprang to the side. Rache charged right at it. Robot and man hit like two wrecking balls slamming into each other and bouncing off. The Stalker struck a tree. Rache flew ten feet, landed on his feet, and sprang toward it again.

  The agile robot recovered before he reached it. Whirling and blocking, it kept Rache from gaining a grip.

  Rache fired twice with his pistol. The bolts did nothing to damage the Stalker.

  The robot leveled one of its cannons at him. Rache flung himself to the side a split second before an energy blast burned through the air. It slammed into a three-foot-wide trunk and snapped it. The tree pitched over, startling Rache, and for the first time ever, Casmir watched him lose his footing.

  The Stalker rushed him.

  “Look out!” Casmir shouted—uselessly.

  Rache regained his footing, but the swift robot would have barreled into him. Something barreled into it first. One of Casmir’s bipedal robots. It and the Stalker clattered into the undergrowth at Casmir’s feet.

  With the Stalker busy battling another foe, Rache recovered and had time to yank out another explosive. He waited until he could leap in, then jumped atop the Stalker and, as with the first, ripped off its head. He shoved his explosive inside and, even as Casmir sprinted to get away, Rache grabbed the robot with both hands, hefted it over his head, and hurled it twenty feet. It struck a tree at the same time as it exploded, fiery orange light illuminating the forest.

  “Combat armor seems useful,” Casmir noted.

  “You should get some.”

  “I’ll put it on my Hanukkah gift list. Chocolates are more common, but it is a holiday about celebrating victory in war.”

  “Good armor is expensive. Your gift-giver may need to finance
it.”

  “If we rescue my parents, I’ll finance it.”

  All business, Rache turned again and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get on.”

  Casmir made sure his tool satchel was secured, then grabbed Rache around the armored neck and wrapped his legs around his waist. A memory popped into his head of his father giving him piggyback rides when he’d been about five. Since he and Rache were the same height, this seemed like a ludicrous version of that.

  “Hang on,” Rache warned, and fired his boots.

  For some reason, Casmir expected him to angle through the trees and toward the entrance halfway up the cliff, but he shot straight up into the air. Casmir had been holding on tight, as ordered, but as they rose over a hundred feet, his sensible grip turned into a panicked vise-like clenching with all of his limbs.

  They rose higher than the cliff and were looking at the trees on the bluff, and the Stalkers far below, before Rache stopped rising. He angled them inward on a more horizontal plane.

  Casmir’s stomach protested the shift with a queasy lurch. He told it to knock it off. He was not going to puke on Rache. Not twice in the same night.

  “I’m going in fast since we’ll be a target,” Rache said as the entrance and the two astroshamans came into view.

  For a few seconds, they were even with the satellite dish, and Casmir studied it briefly. It was clean, modern, and free of dirt and vines. He wondered how it transmitted through the barrier that was blocking his chip from accessing the global network. He almost asked Rache to fly closer so he could take a look, but it was too late. Rache tipped them downward.

  The wind battered at Casmir’s helmet as they dove out of the trees and toward the astroshamans still out on that ledge.

  Casmir realized why Rache had wanted gravity on their side. They plummeted down like hawks, and their startled enemies didn’t have time to point weapons at them. One managed to spring back into the fortress entrance before Rache struck. The other didn’t.

  Rache hit so hard that Casmir flashed back to the shuttle crash. He lost his grip and crashed into a wall, biting his tongue, and blood tainted his mouth. He flung his hands out for balance, afraid he’d fall off the precipice. That was what happened to the first astroshaman.