A bird glided along inches above the surface of the lake, striking at an unseen meal before returning to the trees with a small fish in its talons. Anna glanced down, studying the hand touching hers.
“It’s so peaceful here, James. I’m almost afraid our being here will ruin it.”
He stared at ripples where wind touched the water. “Perhaps. I wanted to offer you the chance to unwind before the storm.”
She leaned up and kissed him, a quick smooch on the lips. Jumping back, she smiled at the astonishment in his eyes, and did it again, longer the second time. He gave in, embracing her with a kiss that rolled onto the ground.
Breath fogged in the air as she ran her hands over his shirt; he seemed hesitant to surrender control of the moment. She kissed over his cheek to his neck. His arm tightened across her back as her warm breath flooded his ear.
“I love you, James.”
She surrendered to the hands that worked her clothes away as she continued to kiss him. Cold air washed over the absence of cloth as she reclined with a grin. He shrugged off his coat and shoes, and threw his necktie to the side with a sly grin. Biting her lower lip, she sat up and helped undo his belt. James leaned forward, lowering himself on top of her. His scent enveloped her; she closed her eyes, reveling in the warmth of his body against her as they embraced. He kissed her breast before his lips glided up to her neck where he kissed her again. The scratch of his goatee upon her skin sent shudders through her legs, intensified by the feeling of the rough tartan blanket scraping her writhing body.
He stared at her with an expression as if lost in a dream. “Are you certain this is what you want?”
Anna pushed and rolled on top of him, her eyes brimming with adoration. She stared down at the face surrounded by a fan of chestnut hair in the grass. His hands slid down her sides, caressing her hips. Anna scarcely noticed the puffs of mist their breaths made, or the frigid air across her back.
“I am,” she said with a breathless rasp.
His grin held a touch of imperiousness as he rolled again so he was above her. She squealed, arching her back, paralyzed by the unexpected caress of frosty dew-laden grass. Their fingers interlaced, palm to palm and he pushed her hands apart to the ground on either side of her head. Her effort to get away from the soaked green only tightened their entwined bodies.
She was his.
Anna gazed at magnificent white clouds floating in an ocean of endless blue. She cried at the sight; until that moment, whenever she had looked up, the sky had always been grey.
Trembling, she moaned in a voice half shout and half whimper as they moved as one.
A few feet to the right, the holoprojector in the picnic case died a brilliant sparking death―not that either of them noticed.
Giving herself in to bliss, she made love for the first time in her life.
Amid a strewn mass of clothes and picnic supplies, they cuddled together wrapped in the tartan. She couldn’t get rid of the silly grin while staring at the dark spot on his nose and his fluffed up hair.
“I rather fail to see the humor,” he said.
He set about fussing with it to make it sit down; when it continued to frizz back up, he squinted at her.
“You are doing that on purpose.”
She bit her lip and acted innocent until he shook his head with a faint chuckle. She snuggled against him, and relaxed the mild current so he could set his hair back to rights.
Anna put a hand over her face, rubbing a sore spot. “The nose to nose bit was an accident. Remember when you asked if it ran away with positive emotions?”
He stopped combing with his hands. “I say, having a romp with you is quite an electrifying experience. Perhaps wet grass was a poor choice of scenery.”
“Puns, James?” She sat up. “I thought you were an intellectual?”
He stretched past her to retrieve the wine and glasses. “I am, but we are on holiday.”
nna’s eyes popped open at the urging of a bladder full to the point of pain. The woozy head of wine passed away into a dull sense of discomfort. Between James and the blankets, she found it quite difficult to summon up the willpower necessary to make the horrible trek outside to the privy.
Country dark was a new experience. For a few seconds after she awoke, she couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed; it didn’t make any difference. Snuggling into his warmth, she attempted to go back to sleep, but the need nagged at the recesses of her mind until she sat up with a growl.
After running all day, the heater had taken the fangs out of the chill inside the cabin. The cold had lost much of its paralytic nature, but still stunned a gasp out of her as the blankets slid away. She stepped on her boot while attempting to get up, and tripped into the wall, collapsing on all fours.
“Sorry James,” she whispered.
To her surprise, he had not broken out of sleep. A short crawl left resulted in her head smacking into something hard. She cringed into a ball and muttered swear words into her knees. Her hands felt around at the floor in a search for some piece of identifiable clothing. When it became too uncomfortable to continue bending forward, she made an electrical arc between her fingers for light. In the flickering blue, she grabbed his shirt and stuck her feet bare into her boots. The shiver that came with the cold imitation leather against her legs almost made a walk outside needless.
Anna held the spark out as she snuck out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her so as not to disturb James. His shirt tickled at her thighs as she tiptoed past Aurora’s door to the rear exit. The night air wrapped her legs with a chill so intense it came on as a blanket of biting needles. Her teeth chattered two steps along the footpath, beneath the shifting blues of lightning-lit trees. For a second, she debated letting fly on the grass by the door, but shame won out.
The outhouse opened with a low drawn out creak, leaving her face to face with her nemesis―the frozen toilet seat. Edging into the tiny space, she pulled and latched the door.
“Dammit, Lauren. Why did you keep feeding me tea last night?”
She put an arm through her mouth, hiked up the shirt, and sat. The muffled shriek from contact with something so cold did not carry too far. Relief came at the absence of discomfort, and she sagged forward. The moment of elation ended with a sudden strange feeling. Indistinct amber light wobbled about outside, the sense of it masked by the wall. Anna braced her hands on the cold wood, searching the perfect darkness. When she caught a glimpse of it again, she focused, and her mind created the image of a ten-inch sphere outside.
An orb? She froze. Oh, James! They found us.
She eased herself upright, pressing down on the seat to keep it from making noise. Cold air biting at her legs added to the unknown threat outside, and left her unable to stop shivering.
Through a tiny crescent moon hole, blinking red lights floated amid the black, stopped, and swiveled to face her. Scant moonlight gleamed on the barrel of a gun extending forward like the proboscis of a rabbit-sized mosquito. Her eyes flared. She scrambled electricity within it, and the orb glimmered, encased in a lattice of sparks and smoke. It flew about in a sped up impression of a moon orbiting nothing as it went haywire, spinning about for several seconds before it plowed into the ground and exploded.
She fumbled for the latch. A momentary loss of coordination came on at fear fanned by the sound of a man yelling a distance away. At last, the door opened, and she sprinted through the frigid darkness in the direction of the faint glowing lights on the fubox.
Four times, she fell on her way from the outhouse to the back door, tripping over roots, slick spots of wet grass, and the paving stones. Anna stumbled into the cabin, and felt her way to the bedroom. The two front windows flooded with bright artificial light that sent creeping shadows through the room. Stealth at that point became futile; she sprinted.
Bursting through the door, she flung James’ shirt off and gathered her clothes. She kicked at him while she dressed, pleading in a half whisper.
�
��James, they’re here. Wake up.”
He moaned; in the passing flash of a searchlight, she made out the shape of his hand rubbing his eyes. “What are you going on about?”
“Orbs… One was about to shoot me in the loo.”
Glass shattered in the main room; James sat bolt upright.
“Damn, they are early.”
Anna gaped at him. “You were expecting them?”
He shrugged. “Of course. I had hoped they would not come calling at this awful hour.”
His chest glowed in the radiance of a small searchlight; another orb, inside the cabin above the table, swiveled to point at them through the open door. Anna thrust her arm out, palm facing. With a loud snap, an arc formed for a nanosecond between it and her hand. The orb went dark, ringing like an out of tune bell when it crashed onto the wooden table. It rolled and fell to the floor with a clang. Anna gathered her coat closed.
“Looks like you have this sorted, my dear.” James reclined as if to return to sleep.
She gasped. “You’re going back to bed?”
He paused halfway to the pillow as true wakefulness came over his eyes. “Damn, there are more than robots out there. We have to leave.”
A shadow across the window drew Anna close. Outside, a row of intense wavering lights lit the grass into daylight. Their constant motion gave the appearance of hovering droids. A multi-legged metal spider the size of a tiny car thrust its forelegs through the window, sending a shower of glass into the room. Her screaming backward leap halted as a second pair of legs grabbed her coat with pincer claws. The two front limbs sprouted eighteen-inch blades, poised to strike at her heart as it pulled her closer.
It froze, the robotic menace shuddering and straining against an invisible force. James grunted from exertion, battling its Myofiber muscles with telekinetic force. Her eyes widened at the spotlight’s gleam along the blades; for a second, she stood without reacting, stunned. At the sound of him growling, she shrugged off fear and grabbed the clamps holding her by the scruff.
Blue sparks leapt from her fingers, swimming around and through the metal arachnid. The entire bot convulsed and crashed against the stone cabin wall as panels exploded off its back. She forced power to the densest mass of fine current she could find―the computer core. Fried to uselessness, the main body thudded to the ground with an impact she felt in the floor. James snarled; in time with his sound of disapproval, the limp legs clattered over the windowsill, out of sight.
As if grabbed by unseen hands, her body jerked to the side as bullets passed through the air where she had been standing a half second before.
Flying into James’s arms, she broke out in a sweat. “No… No… I’m finally happy and they’re going to kill us.”
“Gather your wits, girl.” James squeezed her hand before forcing a patronizing smile. “You may wish to keep clear of windows, though.”
Aurora burst through her door, satin robe unfastened. She turned to speak as a trio of red lasers streaked through the shimmering dust in the air behind her.
Anna yelled. “Look―”
The ivory-skinned woman evaporated into a cloud of silvery mist in an instant, leaving the robe hanging in midair as if still worn. Three bullet holes appeared in the center as it fell.
Anna didn’t have enough time to think as another floating orb came through the window. She induced an arc between it and an unused cable from the fubox. Orange bits of melting plastisteel exploded out of every seam as it went dark. The orb plummeted, landing with a ringing clank, and rolled across the room, where it dented the wall. Anna went for the window again, but he held her back.
“Stay away from the windows. There are snipers. Give Aurora a few minutes.”
“What do you mean?” Anna sank to the floor.
James gathered his clothes. “She has a way with people.”
Gunfire cracked and popped through the darkened woods. Anna crawled through the living room, past the stack of supplies and over the wire leading to the heating unit. She looked back at James with an expression of frightened bewilderment as the entire cabin shuddered and filled with a deafening roar. Windows rattled, silverware and plates on the table vibrated to the side, and small objects fell from shelves out of sight.
Anna shouted, trying to ask James what was going on, but her voice proved no match for whatever aircraft had settled in a few meters above the cabin. The blur of grey and black camouflage snapped her gaze to the windows; from the look of it, six men had hit the roof and rappelled to the ground outside.
Shattering inward, the front door skittered away in several chunks at the arrival of an immense spider droid. As big as an autocab, its flat white hull blocked the entire opening. Evil-looking red sensors on the front end had the appearance of eyes; from beneath small hatch plates, two clusters of three tiny missiles extended upwards in preparation to be fired.
Anna dove away screaming, rolling onto one knee near an unused cable from the fubox. She took a deep breath and grabbed the connector. Power from the portable fusion generator coursed into her, covering her body with a web of shifting sparks. Staccato bursts of light flashed, searing the room into her memory as a series of still images.
Six trails of smoke traced a meter into the room in the blink of an eye; the eight-inch missiles hung in midair, throwing fire and exhaust to the rear, but no longer traveling. James leaned against the wall, sweating, with a wide-eyed stare as his hand shook in a trembling recreation of a constable halting traffic.
His sneer deepened as the alarm left his face, and the fuming projectiles rotated over to point out the door. As he relaxed, they streaked off into the woods where a bloom of gas clouds and loud concussions broke the darkness, the last one accompanied by a man’s startled howl. A soldier appeared in the window for an instant, confused eyes staring out from a gas mask.
“Away,” said James, twirling his finger.
The man jogged off with purpose in his eyes.
The droid shifted about, seeming confused at the misfire. Bladed claws at the tip of its forelegs grasped the frame of the door, crunching into the wood as it dragged itself through. The other legs folded tight against its hull as it forced its car-sized body through the too-small doorway, cracking and pushing stones out of the wall. Another hatch split open along the centerline of its back, sliding down into the body as a rotary cannon came to bear.
Anna drew power from the wire, amplifying it into a two-inch thick streak of lightning that sent the bot into a shaking frenzy of burning wires, twitching actuators, and molten metal. Plumes of smoke filled the air with the smell of scorched silicon as it crashed to the ground in a heap, inert legs splayed out in eight directions.
Two soldiers climbed over it and swung their rifles through the door, making entry as another pair came in the back. Another two appeared at the smashed windows; all six of them aimed at the woman covered in dancing flashes of azure.
Anna’s thumb sank deeper into the socket as her fists clenched. Before she could react, or the soldiers could fire, James’ presence swam through her mind.
She turned her head to look toward the sound of his voice; his arms rose to either side, his eyes flickered with a white glow, and his lips moved in a rapid whispering that gnawed at the back of her brain. The commandos wobbled on their feet, lost in a daze of a telepathic saturation. James had seized each of them, injecting such an amount of different sights, sounds, and feelings they stood there like drug-addled dolts.
Any time you’re ready, my dear. Doctor Mardling’s voice spoke clear through the muted chaos, snapping her out of the fascination caused by the mere eavesdropping of his surface thoughts. As much as I enjoy entertaining these buffoons, I think they are about due for a bit of a jolt.
Anna stood, clutching the wire. Lightning sizzled along the heavy rubber insulation, racing to and from the back porch. She leaned her head back and let power go in all directions with an angry banshee wail.
Jerking and twisting from a rapid-fire electrical di
scharge, the solders danced in place. A fusillade of snaps, pops, and resonant bangs flooded the cabin. Smaller sparks sounded like breaking twigs, while the big jolts―the ones that knocked bodies to the ground―sent window-cracking booms into the air. Jagged lines of black ash formed on the walls as a stray bolt attempted to follow one retreating man through the stonemasonry.
Anna relaxed and fell to her knees, ready to fall asleep on the floor right there. The texture of braided wire scraped against her palm where the insulation had melted away. Searchlight bots closed in on the front, aiming through the windows at her. Not bothering to stand, Anna growled and focused on the hanging orbs.
Hair-thin trails snapped through the air in a row. One after the next, the floating machines burst in place, electricity leapt from their power cores as she drew it in. Bolt after bolt of lightning came to join the cloud of shifting sparks on her body. Other soldiers creeping up below the droids screamed, scattering to evade the hail of orange flecks and falling debris.
A concussive whump rocked the cabin as the capacitor in the fubox reached its breaking point. The detonation pushed and pulled at the air in her lungs. She dropped the wire and dragged herself up to the wall adjacent to the front door, hiding behind the dead spider to peek outside.
Confusion swept through the soldiers; they shouted between gunshots. Azure muzzle flashes appeared at random in the trees as they fired on each other. One man turned, shooting at the soldier next to him before stumbling back as if drunk. Seconds later, fog coalesced around another man who then froze in place, shuddering and clutching at his head for a brief instant before he raised his weapon at different soldiers. Then, he too swooned with an intoxicated stagger. Some of them moved naturally, others like zombies. Two men in the distance aimed at each other in stalemate, neither seeming to know if they faced friend or foe.
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