by Isaac Hooke
Miles and his team had already gotten their hands on the specs to the bypass modules, and they’d sent drones ahead to begin the hacking process. These drones had made good progress brute-forcing the wireless interface, so that by the time the rest of the convoy arrived, it took only a few more minutes for the robotic assistants to finish the job.
When the bypass was in their control, the robots draped canopies between the tankers and the pipeline to hide their activities. Those canopies were painted with a reflective coating to block infrared as well as visual, but it would still be fairly obvious what was going on to anyone watching the orbital feeds.
With the canopy in place, the robots affixed a forking connector to the bypass valve, then in turn attached the hoses from each of the tanks to this new connector.
“We’re ready!” Miles announced from the top of the tanker next to hers. He had on rock-digital camo outfit similar to the one Rhea wore.
“Open it up!” Rhea shouted.
A moment later the hoses expanded, shifting as water from the pipeline rushed into them.
“Loading in progress!” Miles said. “Hoses and connectors are holding!”
Rhea followed the pipeline to the westernmost horizon and let her gaze linger there. When Aradne’s security forces arrived, that was where they would first appear.
Will watched the sky beside her. “Nothing I hate worse than the calm before battle.”
“You get used to it,” Rhea said. She glanced at him, confused. “Not sure where that came from.”
“Blame your past life,” he said.
She nodded. “Good call.”
The next few minutes passed very tensely. Finally, when all the tankers were topped up, Miles gave the order to seal the bypass.
“Careful not to close it too fast!” Miles shouted at the robots. “You’ll cause hydraulic shock!” Instigating a water hammer in a pipe of that size would probably be bad. Their goal was to steal some water from Aradne, not to cause major damage to the supply.
The robots disconnected the hoses. Rhea and the others waited a few moments in trepidation, scanning the pipeline on both sides for signs of hammering, but all seemed calm.
“Looks like we’re good!” Miles said.
“All right, time to go our separate ways,” Rhea told him. “Good luck!”
“No, good luck to you. You’re the diversion!” Miles climbed down from the tanker and darted toward one of the smaller vehicles that would be heading directly west. The canopy overhead would shield him from the spying eyes of the satellites.
Rhea could only smile wanly at his words. It was true that the three tankers were the diversion. Miles and his team were the real mission; it was important they returned at all costs.
Rhea watched them leave, then she leaped onto the rooftop of the semi and swung into the passenger seat, joining the already waiting Will and Horatio. The other two semis that composed the diversion were babysat by Renaldo and Chuck respectively. The pickup trucks with them, along with the laser turrets in their beds, were operated by AIs. Rhea had wanted Renaldo and Chuck to join the others, and Will and Horatio, too, for that matter, but they all refused to leave her. In theory she didn’t need to be here either, but she thought it would be too obvious this was a diversion if no one accompanied the semis. And she wasn’t about to order anyone else to do a job she could do herself. Not when that job was as risky as this one.
And so here she was.
The semis departed almost due south, ripping away the canopies formerly draped between the tanks and the pipeline. They were headed toward the ruins of a city located fifty kilometers away—roughly half an hour of driving. The relatively close proximity of those ruins was another reason they had chosen this particular spot to perform the operation: they hoped to take shelter there before or during the fight, because if they stayed out in the open, they had no chance at all.
Rhea kept her gaze on the western horizon. So far, the sky remained clear.
“Aradne security is late,” Will said.
“Maybe they won’t come at all,” Horatio commented.
“Don’t jinx us,” Will told the robot.
“They’ll come,” Rhea said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Will said. “We could have let the AIs operate these machines.”
“I’m insulted,” Horatio said.
“We’re selling the diversion,” Rhea said simply.
She glanced at the drones overhead. Most of them had joined the diversion: having them accompany the main convoy would’ve served only to betray their position. Besides, all that airborne weaponry would be needed in the coming fight.
Gizmo was up there, flying on the eastern edge of the drone swarm. In theory, that was the safest position at the moment, considering that side was the farthest from the incoming enemy.
She returned her gaze to the ground, which passed in a blur beside them. The terrain was rockier than she would have liked, but so far, she still hadn’t felt any jolts, courtesy of the super-gimbaled shocks.
“Giz is detecting the ruins of several skyscrapers ahead,” Will said. “Looks like we’re going to make it before the Aradne forces arrive after all.”
Rhea looked south and zoomed in. Yes, she could definitely see the tops of skyscrapers. At this distance they looked like small sticks poking up from the ground.
“Spoke too soon,” Will said. “Got several police drones incoming from nine o’clock.”
“All right, it’s time to show our Warden what we’re made of,” Chuck said over the comm. “You wanted to prove yourself in combat, Stick Arms? Well, now’s your chance.”
“You’re the one who’s going to be doing the proving,” Renaldo transmitted. “I’ll be busy fighting.”
“Good comeback,” Chuck commented. “Too bad it makes no sense.”
Rhea switched to Gizmo’s feed and spotted the combat drones approaching from the west. She recognized several different models, based on the specs Brinks and the other Wardenites had familiarized her with—specifications that weren’t available to the general public on the Net. Most were police drones drawn from different precincts, along with a few military models no doubt borrowed from the parliamentary garrisons. These latter were the size of gunships with the firepower to match.
Many of the drones were equipped with missiles, but Rhea doubted the machines would be utilizing those against the semis, not when the tractor-trailers carried tanks full of all too precious water. No, more precise weapons like lasers would be in play for this battle, which meant if she left the cabin, she’d always have to be on the move.
“Deploying laser shield,” Will announced.
Because lasers had such a long range, the enemy would be fast approaching effective firing range—if they hadn’t already.
Metallic sheets began unfolding across the windshield of the semi, and the windows on either side. They were reinforced with ballistic plates meant to repel plasma blasts and painted with a laser reflecting coating. That latter wouldn’t completely prevent the weapons from penetrating, but it would ensure that any laser strikes hit with only a quarter of their intensity. The hood and doors were similarly reinforced and coated.
The semi began swerving randomly, knowing that the AIs manning the attack drones would attempt to fire at the same spot repeatedly in order to defeat the protective metal. Random directional changes made such precise targeting all the more difficult.
There were more ballistic plates installed above the engine block itself: if the attackers intended to target the battery in the hopes of a quick shutdown, they’d be in for a surprise once they penetrated the hood. There were other defensive features incorporated into the semis, as well as a host of cheap, active sensing capabilities that one wouldn’t expect to find on a mere tanker, including LIDAR, thermal, and echolocation—the Wardenites had done what they could to make these vehicles military grade while still staying within their budget.
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�You’re not going to take the wheel?” Rhea asked Will as the view became blocked by the deploying metal.
“The AI has it under control,” Will said. The steering wheel in front of him turned left and right of its own accord. “Nothing I hate more than driving blind.”
Rhea switched to Gizmo’s viewpoint as the metal sheets completely enveloped the windows and the cabin went dark. The drone had pulled well back to observe the battle, and she had a bird’s eye view of the entire convoy.
The pickup trucks accompanying them were randomly swerving as well. Their turrets moved back and forth, targeting the incoming attackers. Laser fire was being exchanged by both sides, no doubt, but she couldn’t see it—such was the nature of laser light, whose concentrated photons traveled in a straight line; none of that light would have a chance to reach her eyes until reflecting and diffracting from the target. But even then, she wouldn’t see the dots marking the impacts, because these particular lasers fired in pulses that lasted for less than a nanosecond—not enough time to register with her all too human brain. She could probably tweak the LIDAR overlay that fed her mind-machine interface to provide some realtime tracking on the hits if she really wanted to. Not that she really had time for such experimentation at the moment.
The airborne drones with the convey were also swerving, and no doubt those that were equipped with lasers were firing them as well.
Some of the pickups carried plasma turrets, and as the enemy came into range, she saw the energy bolts launched by these particular trucks readily enough. The drones that were equipped with energy weapons fired them as well.
Plasma streams were returned in kind from the attackers: two pickups and a drone were struck. They crashed after partially melting.
Missiles came from the enemy, too, hitting pickup trucks and smashing airborne drones out of the sky. But none of those missiles targeted the tankers, as expected. The convoy had no missiles to fire in return.
Rhea heard a loud thud come from the hood of the semi. Two more thuds came a moment later as large objects struck the cabin.
Rhea minimized Gizmo’s feed to the upper right of her vision; internal lamps had activated to compensate for the lack of external light entering the cabin, so she could see well enough. Movement attracted her eyes to Gizmo’s camera once again: the drone had swung its camera toward the semi, no doubt thanks to Will, and Rhea realized humanoid robots had attached to the cabin.
“One of the military drones was a transport,” Will said. “Looks like it’s deployed combat robots. V9000 models. We’ve got three on the cabin, five on the tank itself. Renaldo and Chuck have another eight each.”
“Bring them on!” Chuck sent.
Rhea had disabled her public profile and programmed her comm node to ignore communications handshake requests from third party clients. The others had done the same, which would prevent their IDs from being transmitted without their knowledge to any nearby enemy robots or drones, thus affording them a modicum of anonymity, something they would need when it came time to return to Rust Town. It also, in theory, prevented any hacking attempts.
The metal shell on the windshield began to peel back on the driver’s side, causing bright light to stream in.
Will unholstered the thick pistol from his hip and shoved it onto the exposed glass there. He fired, melting a hole through the windshield.
On Gizmo’s feed, the robot outside let go—or rather, its arm had been shot off. As the semi swerved yet again, that robot lost its balance and fell off.
More light from outside began to penetrate from the upper right of Rhea’s window as the metal shielding there also began to curl back. She saw the clawed hand of a robot gripping the edges.
“Can we get some help from the drones and pickups?” she asked over the comm as she retrieved her pistol.
“They’re slightly occupied at the moment,” Renaldo said.
Rhea aimed at those fingers and fired, creating a hole in the glass, but shooting off the fingers at the same time.
The robot’s hand withdrew, but a moment later a muzzle shoved into the hole she’d created. It was pointed directly at her…
7
Rhea grabbed the handle beside her and shoved open the door, bending the muzzle and pivoting the arm of the robot that held it. The weapon fired, but because the barrel was twisted, the robot succeeded only in burning another hole into the windshield.
That muzzle was part of a rifle barrel built into the robot’s forearm, but it had another on the opposite arm, which it promptly lowered into the open door.
Rhea grabbed the weapon and pulled with both hands, ripping the robot off the roof. She tilted her head to the side as she did so, moving herself out of the muzzle’s line of fire; the robot unleashed the weapon as it plunged toward the rocky terrain, and the energy bolt struck the inside of the roof, drilling a partial hole. The robot vanished from view almost instantly when it hit the rolling ground.
One more combat robot remained on the roof of the semi, along with another five on the tank portion itself. A quick glance at Gizmo’s feed told her that Chuck and Renaldo were in trouble. The robots were firing into both of their cabins, and neither man seemed to be firing back.
“Help Chuck and Renaldo!” she ordered Will.
She aimed her pistol at the cabin of the adjacent semi through the hole in her window. It was a tricky shot, considering her semi was swerving, as was the tractor trailer of her target; but her training paid off, and she struck one of the robots assailing Chuck. Her shot hit the power cell and the robot fell away, disabled. Two other robots on Chuck’s tanker returned fire, and she was forced to duck behind the metal shield on her window.
Will lowered his window slightly so that he could help out Renaldo in a similar manner, but then a muzzle shoved inside.
Horatio was ready. The robot’s arms shot upward, deploying the barrels attached to the forearms. They fired instantly, the energy bolts drilling into that muzzle and melting it away.
Will started. “Sheesh!” He leaned outward slightly to fire up at the robot.
“Careful, Will,” Rhea said.
She aimed past him, through the open window, at Renaldo’s semi. Another tricky shot. This time when she fired, she missed. Another shot. Another miss.
Will abruptly pulled back inside. “Think I made him mad!”
The robot on the rooftop swung down into view, and reached for Will, the muzzles underneath its forearms smoking.
Both Rhea and Horatio opened fire, shooting the robot at almost point-blank range. The machine slumped, collapsing on the partially open window.
Will shoved the robot off the door and it dropped out of view.
“That leaves another five,” Will said as he aimed at Renaldo’s semi.
Rhea glanced at Gizmo’s feed; the robots clinging to her own tanker were slowly making their way toward the cabin, but they were still a ways off yet.
“Five?” she said. “I see only four.”
Will shrugged. “You’re right. Maybe one fell off. Or a technical finally decided to pull its weight.”
“Could use some help here!” Chuck sent.
She aimed past the gap in her window, toward Chuck’s cabin. The robots were assaulting it from all sides, ripping away the protective metal layers while firing blindly into the breaches they made.
She targeted one of the robots, and as two semis swerved to and fro, she wondered vaguely if there was a way to tap into the “random” path the AIs of the tractor units intended to take. It would certainly make targeting easier. They were all on the same side after all, so she should be able to get access…
Well, there wasn’t really time to figure that out now.
She fired thrice, adjusting her aim slightly with each shot, until she scored a hit with the fourth. She missed the power cell, but did score a glancing blow against the head; however it wasn’t enough to stop the robot, and the machine simply turned back on her and fired several bolts in return, forcing her to duck behind
the intact portion of the metal shield that protected her window.
Polycarbonate fingers shoved into the gap and grabbed the edges of the shield, bending it right back to expose half the passenger window.
With both hands, Rhea swung her pistol toward the uncovered triangular section of glass, but then a fist smashed through the pane, catching her by surprise.
She fired, melting through a rifle barrel that hung beneath the forearm of her robotic attacker, but the arm itself otherwise remained intact; those polycarbonate fingers wrapped around her left wrist and pulled her toward the window. The pistol caught on the lip of the opening and was ripped from her grasp. She was dragged out, but her midsection caught on the jagged edges of glass, and she halted halfway.
Horatio grabbed onto her leg. “I got you!”
The enemy combat robot crouched on the roof of the cabin above her. Its free hand lowered, bringing the deadly barrel that hung from underneath its forearm to bear. In only a moment that barrel would be aimed squarely upon her head.
Her left hand remained firmly gripped by those irresolute fingers; but her right arm was free. As was the X2-59 she kept strapped to that wrist.
Rhea swung the blade while it was still deploying; the sharp steel leaped forth, enveloped in the bright blue sparks of plasma generated by built-in electrolasers, and she cut off the weapon arm of her opponent at the elbow. She beheaded the robot at almost the same time.
These particular robot models could operate without heads—their AI cores were stored in their torsos, along with the power cells. However, the head contained everything it needed to communicate with the other machines in its squad, along with its vision and hearing sensors. In essence, she had blinded it.
The fingers that held her wrist tightened, as if intending to apply enough crushing force to sever her hand.
