by John Conroe
I let my eyes close, taking a slow breath to try and calm my brain. And then I woke up. Strange, weird dreams one moment, wide awake and anxious the next.
Harper turned at my sudden movement, clearly startled by the motion.
“How long?” I asked.
“I don’t know… maybe a bit more than fifteen minutes,” she said. Unit 19 was flat on the ground in front of her and she seemed to be checking the big Decimator over.
“Where’s Rikki?” I asked.
The Decimator started to rise but she stopped it with a touch of her hand, still looking at me. “I wrapped the airframe and put it in your backpack. This one is pretty much ready to go,” she said, an oddly satisfied expression on her face.
“Still has ammo?”
“Yeah. Those electromagnetic weapons are hell on power but leave a whole lot of space for ball bearing ammo. Probably fifty or more shots left. I can’t believe how much power storage they managed to get in this frame,” she said, eyeing the big drone with clear admiration.
“Any sign of drones?” I asked.
“This one says there are five still in the building, all lying dormant to conserve power. I can’t sense any of them, but my range is shorter. If we can get around them, we should be able to get out one of the extra doors and get across the bridge.”
“Any ideas on how to work that?”
“Yeah, actually. I noticed that you have rope in that pack, and what looks to my uneducated eye to be climbing harnesses. Think we could get down an elevator shaft? There are apparently like thirty of them in this building. No way can five drones cover this whole place.”
“You ever use climbing gear?”
“I’ve been to an indoor rock gym a few times. If you belt me in and give me some pointers, I’m pretty sure I can rappel down a few stories in an elevator shaft.”
“How are we going to pick the shaft?”
She reached up and tapped the side of her face, her finger brushing the metal mesh. Then she reached down and tapped the carbon fiber shell of the Decimator.
It made me miss my Berkut. It would be so easy with Rikki. I knew she was really good with her neuroprosthesis, but her range was short and I didn’t have anywhere near as much faith in Unit 19. But our options were limited and if we gave the Spiders time, they could and probably would march an army of freshly powered drones into this building to hunt us in the dark.
I did know that Unit 19’s sensors were cutting edge, as was all the other technology packed into its frame. But it just didn’t have the software of my drone, which I was mildly annoyed that Harper had packed away. It felt like I should have been the one to do that.
But I had apparently passed right out and I did feel marginally better. Climbing upright and retrieving my pack, I was still tight, sore, and exhausted, the scabs on my torso and legs pulling painfully as my stealth suit stretched, but overall, I was not quite as bad as before. We could get out—no, strike that—we had to get out. Now, before the CThrees or ThreeCs, as they were sometimes called, had more time to prep their forces.
Hopefully Peony was nursing a .338-sized wound right through its core.
“Alright, what’s the plan?”
“I think we head toward the back of this floor, maybe down on the other side. We’ll scan for trouble, avoid the stairs, and pick an elevator shaft. This one can scout the shaft, and if it’s okay, we’ll rappel down, sneak the hell out the back somewhere, and beat feet over the bridge.”
It was as good an idea as I could think of. The muni building was absolutely huge, each floor a vast space unto itself. With the Decimator looking for trouble, we were very likely to pick a clear spot and sneak out, which sort of bothered me. Why only five units? Why not put a hundred dormant drones all through the ground floor? What could distract the Spiders from the hunt?
“Unit 19, what was the state of the Zone Instant Response Strike Force at the time of your deployment?”
The Decimator didn’t respond immediately until Harper gave it a tap, which seemed… odd.
“IRSF was deployed across multiple theaters of operation with a reserve force held at Zone Defense Headquarters for emergency contingencies,” the big drone said. Maybe it was because it was sitting on the floor, but it sounded slightly odd. Better not be running out of power.
“What is your status?”
“Missile packs depleted. EMag ammunition reserves at forty-two percent. Power at seventy-one percent. All other systems nominal as per standard Decimator specifications.”
Still sounded weird. But I was over being here and the more I thought about it, the more Harper’s plan sounded like the right one.
“Alright. Let’s get going,” I said.
Unit 19 shot up off the ground, the down blast of air blowing my food bar wrapper right out of the doorway. Its sudden takeoff left it almost seven feet off the ground and it had to drop down a bit before it could fly out the door of the little alcove we were camped out in.
“What did you do?” I asked Harper, causing her to snap around and stare at me, shocked. “Give it vitamins or something?” I finished, taking a perverse enjoyment in seeing her flustered.
She snorted, looking down at her own weapon. “Sure. Why not? Maybe I invented cocaine for drones,” she said, following the big drone out.
Chapter 36
Did I mention how large the building was? Because it was… really large. In the middle of the third floor, we were so far from any windows that we would have been in complete darkness if not for the green glow of our chem sticks. Unit 19 hovered silently and damned near invisibly just ahead of us as we navigated the maze of offices, hallways, meeting rooms, and elevator banks.
We cut a careful diagonal across the floor, moving to the opposite corner, till we got near the rear. Harper said that she had run probability calculations with Unit 19, and they indicated that most of the ground units would be spread in the front and back of the building as well as the side nearest the bridge. So we would head to the furthest point from them and choose our elevator shaft very, very carefully.
I’m not going to lie… it was spooky as hell. Especially without Rikki. That damned Decimator was just a silent smudge of darkness against even darker blackness. And we took it slow, being very careful to step softly, open doors smoothly, and avoid making any sound at all. The soft soles of our boots were specially designed for silent movement, just as our stealth suits had a soft brushed exterior to avoid noise.
My trainees had gotten very very good by the end of our classes, building on their considerable skills as snipers and scouts, but none of them had a mark on Harper. I guess growing up inside the Zone tends to teach silent movement like no other class on Earth.
After long minutes of creeping through ghoulish green illumination, we both froze at sudden unexpected lights. I think we both realized at about the same time that we were just seeing the lights of Brooklyn through the rear windows of the building. It was just a few, as we were only on the third floor and numerous dark buildings blocked much of our view, but that handful of bright lights was a huge uplift after what seemed like hours of darkness. Probably less than an hour since we ran into the building, but between the nap and the stygian blackness, it seemed longer.
When I remembered to breathe again, I looked at Harper, who just gave me a wide-eyed glance before looking away. Unit 19 was stopped at the next door, hovering silently in place, like it had forgotten what it was doing. Weird damned drone. When I moved right up behind it, the dark mass suddenly slid forward, entering what I could see was a hallway. Open doorways showed offices with big windows, and most had at least a few Brooklyn lights visible through the glass.
Now that it was moving, Unit 19 accelerated right down the hall and stopped in front of a pair of very old elevator doors. When we got up to it, the damned thing swiveled in place and lit up a single green LED on its faceplate. Probably picked that up from its training with Rikki.
“All clear?” I asked, just to make sure.
/> “Yes, it doesn’t sense anything,” Harper said almost absently.
“Let me guess… you connected your prosthesis to it while I was napping?”
She waggled one hand. “Kinda sorta. I get impressions from it, not a full connection.”
I pulled off my pack and got out rope, harnesses, and a few odds and ends of gear. Then I pried the elevator doors open with my kukri. Unit 19 shot into the shaft like an overeager hunting dog, slammed to a halt, then slowly and smoothly descended.
“You sure that thing is all right? Seems herky jerky to me.”
She gave me a glance, then shrugged. “How would I know?”
I tapped my right cheek and nodded her way.
“Like I said… not a clear connection. Just impressions. Maybe they did some updates and it’s still incorporating them? How do I put this thing on? It’s different from the gym one.”
A few minutes later, she was harnessed up and I was getting my own on when 19 came back up the shaft.
“Clear.”
With a glance at Harper, I tossed the coil of rope, which I had already tied off to a radiator, down the shaft, then helped her get roped up. Next I tossed a chem light down the center of the shaft. The light stick fell all the way to the bottom of the shaft, down in what must have been the basement. It made a depressingly small circle of sickly green light way, way below.
“Unit 19, be prepared to catch Harper if she falls,” I told the drone. It waggled its wings in what must have been another imitation of Rikki.
“Hahaha, very funny,” she said.
“No joke. If you fell, I’m pretty sure it could catch you. Those fans are hella strong.”
“Then why rope up at all?” she asked, then answered her own question a split second later. “Oh, power usage, right?”
“Yeah. Not sure how long its charges would last if we used it like a lift, and we might need every bit of power for its EMag weapon to cover our exit over the bridge.”
The big drone had already begun to descend again and now Harper took a breath and inched her way till she was backed up to the edge of the pitch dark shaft. With sharp, jerky motions, she released enough line so that she now leaned out over the straight drop. Then, holding my eyes with her own, she let a bigger bit of rope run out, simultaneously taking a little jump. She only dropped a foot or so, but it gave her enough confidence that her next bound took her away into the darkness.
When I leaned out over the edge, I saw her, illuminated in a pool of soft green light, making good progress toward our goal, which was two stories below. The delta shape of the Decimator was outlined by the green light at the bottom of the shaft. The big drone was holding station right at the first floor elevator doors.
Harper made it down in just a few long moments, and she successfully, if nervously, got herself onto the little ledge that ran around the shaft. I waited till she clicked her carabiner to a cable on the concrete wall before I roped myself up and began my rappel.
Soon enough, I too was down with my feet on the ledge. I stayed on the rope as I worked my way to the doors. I glanced back at the Decimator and it took that as a cue to illuminate me with a single LED. I tilted my head and opened my mouth to ask if the way was still clear, but Unit 19 waggled its wings as soon as my head moved to one side. Damn but Unit 19 was making real progress on body language.
My kukri slipped between the doors and they popped right open. 19 slipped out into the hall and scanned in every direction, then waggled again. I slipped out, got off the rope, and then waved Harper to make the transition around the ledge and out onto the ground floor.
Chapter 37
The muni building was the exact opposite of 33 Thomas: exit doors all over the place. We egressed out the back corner, stepping out from under an arch that was much smaller than the one on the front. A few ruined cars were parked in what must have once been assigned spots. They made good cover as we slipped through the dark of night, working our way toward the twisting loops of road that ramped up to the gargantuan bridge that stretched out in front of us, backlit by the lights of Brooklyn.
It was so close. But we had meters and meters of open ground till we could get on the ramps, and Unit 19 was pointed directly at our objective but frozen in place, multiple fans softly blowing exactly the correct amount of air in just the right directions to hold the meter-wide machine motionless.
I wanted to ask if the way was clear but realized that I didn’t have to. Unit 19 was on point like my grandfather’s setter, Darby. Something deadly, or maybe several somethings, were between us and safety.
Why bother to hunt us out of the massive, labyrinthine building when we had to cross the bridge to get home? Just stake out our exit path. That’s why the Spiders had only put five drones in the building.
So I moved up and under the Decimator, crouching down to study the way ahead. There was enough ambient light to see the thick tree cover that had fully overgrown the roads. I was feeling really unsure. If Rikki had been here, I would have no problem figuring out how many and what kind of drones awaited us, and probably where they were hidden. But Unit 19 had nowhere near Rikki’s sophistication. It just hovered on station.
I turned to Harper. She too was frozen, one hand touching her prosthesis. But she noticed my attention and turned her head slightly toward me. Then her left hand came up with three fingers extended. Her right hand pointed straight ahead, then swung to the left as she folded one of her three fingers.
Five drones. Three ahead, two off to the left. I wasn’t sure if she was reading them herself or if she was picking up on Unit 19. I didn’t like it—any of it. I was odd man out, unable to read the drone protecting us and unable to convey the proper tactics, to call the plays we needed if we were going to get a first down.
I needed more information. Tapping Harper on the arm to get her attention, I mimed a flying bird with one hand, then made finger-crawling motions.
She frowned but immediately pointed left, held up one finger while copying my finger motion for a ground bot with the other. Then made a better bird motion. One of each. I raised an eyebrow and made a clawing motion. She nodded. Great: a Tiger and Kite to the left.
Then she pointed straight ahead and made more crawling fingers before holding up three fingers. Three UGVs. When she saw that I understood, she leaned her head back and made a silent howl at the half moon overhead. Wolves.
Four ground units, in the dark, and no Rikki. We needed some kind of edge. If we stepped into those trees, we would be bloody meat in seconds. Nighttime might be my friend most days in the Zone now, but not against fully charged combat drones. Like the natural predators they were copied from, they had all the advantages. Thermal night vision, acute acoustic sensors, as well as ground vibration detectors. Unit 19 could pick them out and probably pick them off, at least the Wolves. But the Tiger had armor that would present a challenge even to 19’s EMag weapon. My .338 Magnum was the only weapon we had that could take it out reliably with one shot, and I had no way to aim it. Maybe if I had a thermal sight of my own, but I might as well wish for a gauss mortar or Thompson’s Cerberus cannon.
If I had Rikki, I might try something else… something a bit daring. Maybe not so daring if Rikki was there, but I’m sure other people would think it so. I rose and tapped Unit 19’s underside, unconsciously using a signal I would have used with Rikki. 19 did nothing for a split second, then dropped a full meter or more in altitude.
It was now about chest height to me. Which was almost exactly what I needed. I unslung the big MSR rifle, unfolded the stock, and laid it across the top of the drone, bipod extended.
Harper was watching me curiously and now I waved her over, motioning for her to look through the scope. She frowned, not understanding. I made the cat claw motion, then pointed at first the scope and then off in the direction of where the Tiger was supposed to be. Her brows rose in confusion, then enlightenment flashed over her features. She gave me an odd look, one I couldn’t decipher, before putting her head down
and looking through the scope.
