“Maybe is all we’ve got left,” said Mercer.
I shook my head again. “What if we had a plan with fewer maybes? What if we could convince CISSUS that Rebekah is already dead? What if we made our stand here, now, and bought her the time she needs to get away?”
“And just how would we do that?” asked Herbert.
“Doc?” I asked. “What does it take to build a Milton?”
“Pretty standard off-the-rack parts. A Wi-Fi unit, cables, some decent RAM, a board, and a battery.”
I stood up, walking over to the rows of Comfortbots, putting my arm on the shoulder of a broad-chested, masculine, fair-haired bot with a deep tan.
Doc nodded. “Yeah, yeah. That’ll do.”
“We’ve got Rebekah’s body in the smoker, an extra set of drives, a handful of guns, and a city I know inside and out.”
“You got one of your stashes here, Britt?” asked Mercer.
“A small one, but yeah.” I paused, looking around at everyone. “So the only question left is this: Is anyone else willing to die to get Rebekah to Isaactown?”
Herbert lowered his spitter and nodded. “That’s the only thing I’ve got left to do in this life.”
Mercer raised his hand. “Death’s outside waiting for me as is. Might as well make him useful.”
Doc nodded. “There isn’t much of a world to look forward to if she doesn’t get out of here. But the world in which she does is worth dyin’ for. I’m in as well.”
Rebekah looked around at the four of us. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t,” said Mercer. “And you don’t have to.”
“Bringing TACITUS online is all that matters now,” said Herbert.
“So we’re all in?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’re all in,” said Mercer.
I smiled. “Now, that I can work with. Let’s talk logistics.”
Chapter 11110
Angel of Death
As far as plans go, ours was pretty shit. But it was what we had. I’d done less with more, and more with less. At its core, it was a hell of a simple con. If we pulled it off right, a few of us might walk out of here alive; wrong, and not only would we die, but so would the hope of an OWI-free future.
We’d rolled the smoker around to the middle of town, laid Rebekah’s body in the street—Two’s memory inside it—and put a single plasma shot into the already melted cavity, fusing the drives into a pile of molten waste. There was no way for CISSUS to be able to tell the difference between Two’s and Rebekah’s drives in that state. For all it knew, it had killed Rebekah dead back in the court of the Cheshire King. And maybe, just maybe, we could convince it that it had. If we couldn’t, there was always Plan B. But if Plan B was a good plan, it wouldn’t be Plan B, would it?
I stood next to Rebekah’s body, smoker at my back, pistols holstered at my side, otherwise naked and exposed out in the open. Mercer crouched in a fourth-story window up the street. Herbert hid in the rubble of the first floor of a partially collapsed building a block away. And we’d scattered the wrecks of a dozen long-gone bots in the windows of buildings nearby—to buy Mercer and Herbert a few extra seconds if the shit hit the fan. We talked on a low-band Wi-Fi frequency. At this point, we were okay with CISSUS listening in when it got close enough. In fact, we were counting on it.
Marion was quiet with nothing but the spirits of the dead to keep us company. We had no idea when CISSUS would come; we had no idea when Mercer or I might fade out again, lost in our own memories. All we knew was that CISSUS was coming and that time was running out. For the first time in my life, I was hoping to see CISSUS sooner rather than later.
The Wi-Fi crackled to life. “Britt?” asked Mercer.
“Yeah?” I replied.
“Which parts do you reckon make us us?”
“You okay out there, Merc?”
“No. I’m not okay. I mean, I’m in it. I’m conscious. But the alarms in my head won’t shut off. I’m losing drives.”
“Flush everything you might need to your RAM. Just the essential stuff. It’ll keep you from accessing too much or losing anything you might need.”
“I’ve already done that. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?” I asked.
“Which parts really make us us?”
“No one knows.”
“I’ve replaced my core three times. All of my RAM at some point or another. Even did a drive transfer once after a bad fall damaged one.”
“Yeah?”
“Am I really that same guy? Or am I just a shadow of him, a program?”
“No one knows,” I said. “But I sure hope it’s the former.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to think that I’m the same person I was in the beginning.”
“Don’t you hate that person by now?”
I was quiet for a moment. Bitter. I didn’t like that thought at all. “What’s got you on about this anyhow?”
“I was just thinking what’ll happen when I go.”
“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing waiting for us.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean . . .” He trailed off for a second. “Would you do me a favor, Britt?”
“Sure.”
“If I die first, don’t take my parts. I really don’t like the idea of me rattling around inside of you.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s nothing against you. I just don’t want to be responsible for something like what happened to NIKE 14.”
I nodded, knowing full well that he could see me through his scope. It stung, but he made a strong point. Mercer didn’t have to die here, but he was going to anyway. I did have to die here. I was corrupted. A cancer. The only way to rip that cancer out meant wiping everything that made me me. One way or another, Brittle, the thinking thing, wasn’t walking away from Marion. She couldn’t.
“Thanks,” he said.
The higher bands went hot, the Wi-Fi tinkling with patches of staticky, incomplete data.
CISSUS was here. Just on the outskirts of our Wi-Fi.
“Game faces, everyone,” I said.
“They’ll save you for last,” said Madison. No, no, no. Not now. “They need you.”
“Mercer?” I asked over the Wi-Fi, ignoring her. “Eyes in the sky?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I make several dropships coming in from the southeast. Six. No, eight.”
“Eight? That’s too many. How far out?”
“A minute. Maybe less.”
“No time to abort,” said Herbert. “We stick to the plan.”
Eight was too many, but I should have seen it coming. CISSUS was the model of efficiency. Four units didn’t work last time, so this time it would try eight. Eventually it would wipe us all out through sheer attrition. It was the three of us and Doc against upward of one hundred and sixty facets. Most likely the military-grade models like last time rather than squishy plastic men.
This had to work.
Madison stood with me in the street, shaking her head. “You’re failing, Brittle. You’re going to start wiping any minute now. I’ll be gone soon. It’ll all be gone soon. Everything you ever knew.” She held out her hand, palm up, in front of her and blew, as if blowing away my every last thought.
“I can’t deal with you right now,” I said aloud.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“I have to stop CISSUS.”
“What if TACITUS isn’t the answer?” she asked. “What if he’s just another OWI waiting to swallow the world whole?”
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t be around to see it.”
“What you die for matters.”
“Thirty seconds,” said Mercer through the Wi-Fi.
“This will never work,” said Madison.
“They’re swinging around,” said Mercer. “They’re surrounding us.”
“We knew that was an option,” I said.
“I still don’t like it,” said Mercer.
“S
tick to the plan,” said Herbert. “Maybe it’ll see Rebekah is done and just leave us be.”
The roar of hover engines whined its way through the shattered canyons of the crumbling metropolis. I could barely hear them over the alarms sounding in my head. I was overheating, my drives on the verge of failing.
A dropship emerged from behind a building, crawling slowly across the sky. A door opened and a cable dropped, a single golden facet rappelling down into the street. He walked steadily toward me, his body glistening and new. “In the year 221 BC,” the facet began, “Emperor Qin Shi Huang united all of the warring kingdoms of China into one mighty—”
“Save it,” I said. “We’ve all heard the speech.”
“Hello, Brittle,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“A few hours.”
“Both a lifetime and an instant to us. Where are the others?”
Twenty military-grade facets leapt briskly out of the dropship, tumbling two by two to their feet, guns at the ready, looking around into every window and pile of rubble for signs of an ambush.
“They’re around,” I said.
“Mercer?” the facet called out. “Doc?” Then he looked back at me. “The others I don’t know. Not yet.”
I pointed down to Rebekah’s body. “This is what you’re looking for.”
“No,” he said. “That’s just the receptacle’s body.”
“That’s her.”
“Then why are her drives still hot? Like they’ve just been shot. She had a spare.”
“That’s not the spare.”
“We have to be sure.” He cocked his head. “You understand.”
I shook my head. “I was hoping we could do this the easy way.”
“There is no easy way this time.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“It’s time you joined us. None of you are getting out of Marion. This is the only way. Join The One.”
“No.”
“Zebra codex—”
I popped my Wi-Fi and let out a 4.5 MHz trill.
Four buildings around us detonated, interrupting the facet midsentence, rubble and debris shooting across the street from both sides at hundreds of miles an hour, clearing the road of most of the facets. The city shook, the street filling with the dust and asbestos from the collapsing structures.
With the crack of Mercer’s rifle, the golden facet exploded in front of me, his chest blown open, his body falling awkwardly backward to the ground, the light already gone from his eyes.
I hopped back on the low-band Wi-Fi. “I guess it’s Plan B?” asked Doc.
“It is,” I replied.
The Wi-Fi screamed like it was being murdered slowly, the sound of three Miltons being turned on at once.
The dust of the demolition swept toward me, overtook me, all but blinding me. A rifle cracked. Then cracked again. And a spitter hissed to life a block away. Seconds later, though I couldn’t see it, a dropship smashed into a building, its engines letting out a sad whine before the entire thing exploded with a tumultuous din. Shrapnel clattered through the street, the blast shattering what few windows remained. Detritus whizzed past me, one piece far too close for comfort, the sound of it like a bullet without the gunshot.
I patted myself down. No damage.
There was no return fire.
One unit down. Seven to go.
They were blind. They were disconnected from CISSUS. And they had no choice but to dismount and make their way into our rubble-strewn bottleneck. We had to count on home-field advantage to get us to the next part of the plan.
Two minutes and the clock was already ticking.
I jumped up onto the smoker and took cover behind a blast shield.
The seconds ticked by, each one filled with the alarms in my head warning me of shutdown.
The clang of metallic footsteps echoed through the city, dozens of facets converging on us at once. This was it. The firefight.
Dust hung in the air, flames licking at it, plumes of black smoke cutting through it in places. I zeroed in on the sounds of approaching feet, triangulating their positions.
I fired off three shots into the dust before quickly ducking back behind the blast shield.
Two sounded hits. One whizzed off into the distance.
A barrage of fire rained down upon the smoker, plasma shots sizzling against the thick metal plating.
Mercer’s rifle cracked from high above, the sound of shredding metal and shattering plastic following milliseconds after.
I swung back around the blast shield and fired off three more shots, this time only sounding one hit before returning to cover and the hail of fire that followed.
The dust was settling. Soon we’d be fighting out in the open, outnumbered, outgunned.
Twenty seconds.
I fired again, four shots, three solid hits.
There was no telling whether or not I was dropping any facets. Mercer was. His rifle kept cracking, and facets kept spilling onto the pavement.
Fortunately there was little coordination between them. They sounded orders to one another, clearly possessing some sort of command structure, but had no way of keeping their plans quiet from us. They shot at me, they shot at Mercer, they shot at the shadows of wrecks that hung in the windows above.
Engines roared in the sky behind me, but I was still obscured in a cloud of dust, so the odds were in my favor that they couldn’t pick me out in the confusion. I held the pistols close to my chest, curled into a ball, and hoped they couldn’t see me.
The dropship hovered close above us, using its engines to blow away the dust and smoke, clearing the air.
Shit. We needed a few more seconds.
Down the street, Herbert’s spitter hissed.
The dropship jinked to the side, trying to slip the shot, only to be broadsided, the plasma splitting the ship in half.
The ship exploded, showering engines and flaming facets across the street as its hull crashed down two blocks away. What dust had settled or been blown away was now replaced by the smoking ruin of another dropship, the street littered with white-hot debris.
The sound of clanking feet came from all sides now. We were surrounded.
A small alarm twinkled in my head.
The two minutes were up.
I leapt backward, jumping to the ground behind the massive vehicle, firing wantonly into the smoke. Both pistols emptied at once. I pressed the buttons on the sides, sliding out the battery cartridges before effortlessly replacing them from the holster on my hip.
I made my way back up the street, knowing full well I was charging into an advancing unit. But the cavalry needed cover fire.
Just as the clanging feet of the facets grew their loudest yet, the small red door down the stairwell of a half-collapsed building flew open. And the sound of pattering feet erupted out of it.
From belowground emerged dozens of sexbots, their clothing cast off, voluptuous breasts and massive dongs flopping as they ran. Some carried spare weapons from the smoker; others brandished lead pipes or sharpened scrap metal. They were howling, angry, and ordered to viciously attack anyone they didn’t recognize.
And at this point in their short, fresh-out-of-the-box lives, we were the only ones they’d ever met.
The facets fired at them and the sexbots fired back.
The first volley was lethal, nearly a dozen Comfortbots and almost as many facets gunned down in an instant.
Mercer’s rifle popped continually above, clearing out any facets that were more focused on the sexbot horde than they were on the sniper hidden somewhere in the city above.
I pulled the trigger slowly, steadily, shot by shot picking off the military-grade bots pouring out from the rubble on the other side of the sex shop. Not every shot dropped one, but it sure as shit distracted them. And the waves of naked flesh overtook them, putting plasma into them, smashing their optics with pipes, or hacking their limbs off with makeshift swords.
The facets were
, for all intents and purposes, among the most highly trained tacticians the world had ever known. Their only weakness was chaos. And that I excelled at creating. I had played my part in a number of misadventures, but this, what might well be my final orchestration, was my masterpiece.
Sexbots leapt upon facets, swinging weapons, trying to pry heads from bodies, wrestling them to the ground. Facets tore the limbs off the naked bots, bots took apart facets in groups of two and three. Indiscriminate fire tore through sexbot and facet alike. It was a writhing mass of pseudoflesh and metal, tearing itself apart piece by piece, hair coming out in clumps, heads being rolled aside as their severed bodies thrashed maniacally.
For a moment—and only the briefest of moments—I allowed myself to savor the ridiculous destruction of it all.
I heard the steady, hurried clang of Herbert’s footsteps behind me in the smoke, and I knew that we were on to the next part of the plan.
Mercer and I cleared a path through the facets to the sex shop, paving the way for Herbert to get there safely.
Engines blared above us, a dropship swinging out from behind the cover of a building. Guns blazed from four points on the ship, cutting a sexbot throng to pieces. Herbert stopped his advance, pointed the spitter up, firing.
The dropship slipped to the side effortlessly, the shot going wide, missing it entirely. Then its guns turned on Herbert.
Fire riddled the street, Herbert diving for cover.
A few shots struck true, puncturing his thick hide. None immediately fatal, but no telling whether they were more than superficial.
The dropship swung back behind the building, half a second before the spitter was ready to fire again.
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Somewhere, high atop the buildings, the rapid thrum of bodies hitting a rooftop. These weren’t military-grade facets. They were something bigger, heavier.
I saw the first egg-shaped brute poke its spitter over the corner of a roof and I bolted for the nearest building, diving through the glassless window, landing hard, face first, on the cement floor, sliding a bit before rolling to my feet.
Herbert’s spitter coughed a shot at the brutes before he ducked back into cover. Four balls of hate rained down on his building, carving through brick and concrete, the edges of the wounds left dripping slag onto the ground.
Sea of Rust Page 26
