Borough of Bones

by John Conroe

  We had studied it pretty extensively before this mission. While much of its functionality was lost due to a lack of electricity, a surprising amount of data in the form of packets of light still traveled its fiber optic highways, passing through on their way to who knows where.

  Its architecture was based on something called German Expressionism, which means nothing to me, but the ziggurat structure definitely reminded me of mid-twentieth century European construction. It very much evoked the 1930s and ‘40s to me, at least based on those images I remember seeing in high school history. Over a hundred years old, yet still standing strong like some modern castle harboring a dangerous army. Which it probably was. Still, I saw no signs of robotic infestation. Nothing visible, at least from the ground, nothing perched on any of the multiple stepped layers, waiting for the rising sun to charge depleted energy cells. Nothing hovering, creeping, clinging, or moving. If Peony was there, it was keeping all activity hidden, which would be logical. A building like this was fully visible to patrolling Renders, and any indication of major drone activity would make it a building of interest. Not a target, though. Massive stores of emergency diesel fuel were thought to still be present on the upper floors; fuel for emergency generators. Any sniping by a Render could ignite an internet catastrophe. Again, a perfect lair for a Spider. Access to the internet, protection from aerial assault, vast spaces to hide in.

  Hence why we were hoping to lure it out.

  Rikki floated out from a street to my west, having completed his circuit. His wings waggled again. Nothing. Time to nut up and get marching. Well, more creeping than marching, but either way, time to go.

  We covered the block and a half left with no consequences. Now we were right in front of the building, looking at the huge arched windows and doorways on the ground floor, the protruding brick columns and buttresses covered with more small ledges and steps, reinforcing the fortress feel of the place.

  The central door was gone, ripped completely from its hinges, just the bottom edge visible and lying on the floor of the darkened foyer inside. Something, probably a Tank-Killer based on the damage to the sidewalk and surrounding brick, had rammed it right out of its frame.

  Rikki dropped his altitude till he was just five meters off the ground, hovering near my left shoulder. Moving close in was standard for us when we were entering a potential ambush site, close enough to combine firepower and cover each other, yet just far enough apart to make getting both of us in the same attack doubtful.

  Nothing moved in the dark, broken doorway; no sound came from the looming building, just wind moving through the man-made ravines of the borough. Creepy, but ninety-nine percent of my time inside the Zone can be called that. We kept moving, trying not to show anything more than what might be considered normal curiosity about such a large structure. Then we were past it, starting to hit the next block. The high-end specialty liquor store was just ahead.

  Suddenly a sound came, distant, echoing off the buildings lining the street. A booming sound, subdued but instantly recognizable. A gunshot—rifle fire, high-powered, partially suppressed maybe.

  We both spun around. It came from behind us, blocks away. Seconds ticked by as I strained my ears and Rikki processed sensory input. Two more booms sounded, then automatic weapons fire. More shots, different locations, different shooters, multiple fire fights in multiple locations. My students were under attack.

  Chapter 26

  My brain went blank for a second then kickstarted as the answer hit me right in the forehead.

  The Spider or Spiders know we’re here, in force, and while I’ve been baiting them, they’ve been hunting my students. I turn and bolt back up the street, back the way we came, covering two blocks in a few seconds, blocks that had taken me ten careful minutes to travel.

  The gunshots were louder, coming from the west. We veered off on a side street and popped out onto Greenwich Street. A firefight was happening right in front of us. Two sets of combat operators, in two different buildings on the east side of the street, were shooting it out with a big mix of Cranes and Wolves as an aerial battle took place above them, Kestrels and Raptors swirling in a dogfight.

  I was getting ready to jump in, my gunsight already hovering on a flechette-shooting Russian Wolf, when the sky darkened. A glance up showed the massive Quad copter overhead, objects plummeting from its open cargo door.

  Armored soldiers hit the ground like bullets, not a single super hero pose among them. You know the one—legs bent, one arm down on the ground, one arm cocked, super dramatic and totally useless. Instead, they landed on flexed legs, weapons up and firing from the moment of impact. Six troopers shot and killed a dozen drones in as many seconds.

  I pulled back, ducking behind the corner of the nearest building. The gunfire ended. And no more shots from anywhere else. Yoshida was on it, backing up his new counter-drone force at the first sign of trouble. And the new trainees had acquitted themselves well, destroying at least ten terrorist bots before the cavalry arrived. I had no idea of casualties, but that wasn’t my responsibility. Spider hunting was.

  I wasn’t needed here and maybe, just maybe, this offered me an opportunity. Combat activity inside the Zone wasn’t common. Multiple firefights are unheard of. If the Spider or Spiders had sent out hunters to hunt my people, instead of, say, randomly stumbling across multiple teams at the exact same time, well, they may have gotten more than they bargained for.

  I slipped back down my side street, which, now that I wasn’t sprinting, I could see was named Franklin Street. I start using normal Zone tactics, weaving quietly between a city bus and a crashed taxi. Gaps between the buildings on the south side give me possible nooks and crannies to move through or hide in. Rikki was now hovering within a meter of my shoulder. I slid into an alley, moving behind a dumpster that might have started its life painted green, but was now the reds and oranges of rust. A quick mag change gave me ten full power, armor-piercing rounds, including the one that went into the chamber when I racked the action. The subsonic round that got ejected goes back in the switched-out mag and back into one of my suit pockets. After a second’s thought, I pulled an MSLAM from a different pocket and set it in front of me.

  Rikki hovered down next to me, folding down into his orb shape. In this form, most of the original carbon fiber on his airframe surrounds him. Those spots that would be exposed in a normal Berkut are covered with material I added to him. He was fairly well shielded, not projecting detectable radio waves.

  We hunkered, me kneeling, rifle ready, while Rikki landed on my shoulder and then rotated so that his gun barrel was pointing up. We were completely behind the dumpster, with me listening and him ready to greet any aerial units that came overhead. Time to wait.

  In the distance, I heard the sounds of troops mopping up, the rumble of the big Quad’s engines telling me it was still hovering. A few minutes later, I heard it move off, leaving this part of the borough to go quiet.

  Time passed. Birds started to make noise and behind me, at the end of the alley, I heard soft rustling inside the jammed back door of some abandoned business. Great: more rats.

  The rustling suddenly stopped and I heared the flap and squawk of pigeons taking flight. Something startled them—something that made a clicking noise. Rikki’s mechanical talons were holding onto the shoulder material of my suit. They suddenly squeezed once, twice, three times. He was telling me he detected three units nearby. Silently, he rotated back to facing forward, which told me nothing aerial was near. Ears straining, leg muscles clenching to keep from cramping up, rifle ready.

  The sounds grew louder and my ears could distinguish differences among them. Two sounded like medium ground units, maybe Wolves or Leopards. The third one had a deeper clunk to it and a cadence that didn’t match the others. The main ground bots are four-legged and walk just like a real mammal would. No programmer yet has found a gait for four legs that is more efficient than nature’s various patterns. But this third one didn’t sound like four legs
at all. More like six. It’s a sound that I’ve heard before… Spider gait.

  We were hoping to bait a Spider, and instead the Spider had tried to bait me—using attacks on our people to lure me somewhere else. Now it was out on the hunt.

  The sounds changed, one set continuing forward while the second and third slowed to a stop.

  If I had to guess, I’d say that the Spider sent a scout forward while it waited with the second UGV. Four-footed clicking started again, moving away, coming back, moving away again. But the Spider’s footsteps had ceased.

  We were in a narrow alley, our retreat limited to the rodent-filled business behind us—not a sure thing. Blocking us in were a Spider CThree and either a Wolf or a Leopard, with another medium ground bot a short distance away. A hyper-intelligent metal monster and maybe two armored killing machines. Sounds bad when you say it like that, but on the plus side, there weren’t any aerials in the immediate area and the damned Spider could have arrived riding on top of a Tank-Killer. This was about as good as it gets.

  My left hand reached up and tapped Rikki to get his attention, then tapped again three times. My right hand picked up the MSLAM, thumb clicking it to impact detonation. In this mode, it would act like a grenade. Rikki’s claws tightened, then loosened.

  I tapped him again, paused, then started tapping in sequence. One—two—three. On the third, I stood and stepped left as Rikki pulsed straight up in the air. My right arm was already cocked, and as soon as I saw the hulking black shape, I threw the mini bomb and dropped my right hand to meet the rifle that my left was already lifting, simultaneously stepping back and crouching.

  The MSLAM flew through the air, right at the side of the armored multi-legged horror.

  A green and brown blur intercepted it, the Wolf’s vice-like jaws catching the bomb and landing in an almost perfect imitation of a real canine. Almost. Brand-new, it might have been graceful enough to make it. Ten years old, it had some clunk to it. My smart bomb did not like clunk. The Wolf disappeared in a flash of light and the sound of thunder.

  Unlike a standard grenade or even an air fuel munition, the MSLAM has multiple uses, most of them utilizing a shaped charge. In grenade mode, its explosive force is a little less directed but still not the general spherical shockwave of an antipersonnel device. I threw it so that the shaped charge and explosively formed penetrator was directed at the Spider. The Wolf caught it from the side, still indexed toward the command and control monster, so while the Russian ground unit’s head was vaporized by the detonation, a decent portion of blast force was directed toward the Spider and, more importantly, away from myself and Rikki.

  The blast pelted me with bits of Russian bot and threw both of us back a pace. The Spider vanished in a cloud of smoke, fiery plasma, and Wolf parts. I started firing even as I fell back, forced to drop to a knee.

  The smoke cleared, the Spider was gone, and a Leopard in full leap had replaced it. Our guns fired together and the Indian robot slammed into the dumpster, knocking hand-sized pieces of rust off.

  The leopard was on its side, legs spasming—which moved it as well as shook the dumpster, eventually shoving itself out of sight, with the dumpster between us.

  Rikki zipped around in an arc in the air, gun pointing at the spot the Leopard disappeared into. As he moved into position to see what I couldn’t, his 9mm fired full automatic, hosing at least half his magazine into the fallen robot, expended brass clattering to the ground below him.

  He stayed in position for a few seconds, gun locked on target. I moved around the dumpster, muzzle of my rifle leading the way. A twitching wreck came into view, its motions limited to one rear leg that was snapping out, then pulling slowly back, only to slam back out. The robotic version of a dying reflex.

  Then Rikki spun in place, facing back toward Hudson, then suddenly spun toward Greenwich.

  “Incoming. Multiple aerial units.”

  “How many?”

  “Twenty-seven. Now twenty-nine. Coming from east and west.”

  The Spider called for backup, sending more UAVs than we could handle. At least two swarms were heading to catch us between them.

  I turned and ran toward the back door of the rodent-infested business. The steel door was open about ten centimeters. I slammed my shoulder into it and bounced off. Lifting a leg, I tried to kick it open. It shivered and shook but didn’t move a centimeter.

  A loud buzz filled the air. Shadows darkened the alley and the open end was suddenly filled with flying death.

  Chapter 27

  I raised my rifle to fire, but the muzzle hadn’t even covered the target when the drone I was sighting got slammed out of the air like a giant had swatted it. Then the drones on either side exploded into bits and pieces. Muzzle blasts echoed off the buildings around me as more drones were hit from above. I shot one and I’d guess Rikki got at least two, but that was it. The rest were picked off by snipers above—at least six of my class leaning out windows in three different buildings—or were shot down by the swarm of black Kestrels that came from all directions at once. It was over in about fifteen seconds.

  The last gunshots echoed through Manhattan as the sky suddenly darkened. The giant Quad floated back over the tops of the buildings, automated electromag guns panning for targets. The back cargo hatch opened and a trio of lines shot down, slamming into the pavement at the front of the alley.

  Three of Yoshida’s armored soldiers slid down the ropes, one tall, one short and feminine, and one a giant with a massive three-barreled gun.

  “Let’s go, Shooter. Time to haul ass outta here,” Corporal Kayla Jensen said, throwing me a climbing harness. Her two companions, B. Boyle and T. Thompson, turned to watch opposite directions, weapons ready.

  Less than two minutes later, I was taking off the harness onboard the Quad, the passenger seats filled with a mix of armored soldiers and stealth-suited drone hunters. I saw some of my class getting medical treatment and one was lying on a med surface, getting flechettes removed from his back.

  “Close, kid. Close,” Yoshida said, walking over with a tablet. “At least from what we got off a couple of the Kestrels.”

  “Rikki, please copy and transfer our encounter with the Spider to the major’s tablet,” I said.

  “Major Yoshida, I am transferring the requested footage,” Rikki said as he hovered over one of the drone charging stations that the Quad was now outfitted with.

  The major watched the tablet, Sergeant Rift and Corporal Estevez looking over his shoulder.

  “Shit! Damn that fucking Wolf!” Rift said, still watching.

  “Is that even normal?” Yoshida asked me. He pressed a few touch controls on the tablet and the images were suddenly being projected onto the wall of the Quad for everyone to watch.

  The Wolf leapt through the air, grabbing the MSLAM in its mouth.

  “I don’t know, but my gut tells me the Spiders control any drones around them pretty thoroughly.”

  “Spider CThree units regularly suborn UGV and UAVs in their immediate vicinity,” Rikki announced on his own. “Wolf UGV was under direct control.”

  Everyone in the cargo area was looking at my drone in surprise. Yoshida glanced at me, surprised. I smiled. “What can I say? He was programmed around my sisters. You gotta speak up if you’re gonna get heard in that household.”

  Yoshida raised one eyebrow before turning back to Rikki. “Rikki, how do you know the Wolf was directly controlled?”

  “Unit Peony attempted to control Rikki unit as well.”

  “And you resisted?” the major asked, really shocked.

  “Correct.”

  “How?”

  “RF resistant outer shell protects from multiple radio frequency and high volume attacks. Peony attempted software breach using sonic pulse technology. Rikki Unit turned off sonic sensors during attack.”