That made one of the burners pause from his shoveling of papers. “But… those are-”
“People?” The fat man strode over to loom over his subordinate. “They’re science projects! Nothing more!”
“Sorry, Dr. Carr.” The OCI man bowed his head and went back to throwing papers in the fire.
Science projects? Lance had said there were other prisoners. Were they doing things to them like they did in the Imperium? The possibility made Faye extra mad.
Nobody had seen her yet, but she was fed up with listening to these jerks, so Faye lifted her shotgun and pointed it at the nearest enemy. She hadn’t really thought this part through. She was extremely good at killing folks, but these had information that could clear her friends’ names, so just shooting them, especially the fat one, was out of the question. “Reach for the sky!” Faye shouted, because that was what they said on the cowboy radio serials when they captured outlaws, and it seemed as reasonable as anything else.
It didn’t work nearly as well for her as it did on the radio, though.
“Traveler!” Carr shouted, and ten men all decided to shoot her. Faye pulled the trigger. She was so close that the buckshot didn’t even separate. She simply blasted a big hole through the first man, then she Traveled to the opposite side of the room. She’d killed a second one before any of them managed to get a shot off, and that was aimed at the spot she’d just left. Faye ran to the side, jerking the trigger on her automatic shotgun, and as soon as they focused on her and her head map screamed danger incoming, she instinctively Traveled away before bullets filled the air where she’d been standing. Glass shattered and lead ricocheted off metal.
Faye hit the ground and rolled under a desk. She waited a moment and let the bad guys do her job for her. Panicked, confused by the smoke and the flickering lights, with their imaginations filling in grey-eyed killers popping into existence everywhere, they began to shoot at anything moving, which was mostly their friends. Faye grinned as she pulled shells off her bandoleer and stuffed them into her shotgun. She loved her job.
Seeing a pair of legs coming close, she blew his knees off, and then she shot him in the chest when he got to her level. Then she Traveled out from under the desk to the far wall, where she shot another man in the back, jumped to the other corner and had to fire several times to finally get enough lead to go through a filing cabinet to hit a fellow that thought he could hide from her. Shotgun empty, she pulled her. 45 with one hand while stepping through space, appeared behind somebody who was shouting profanities, and put a single bullet in the back of his neck. His buddy turned toward her and she shot him in the chest four times before he could even lift his pistol.
Faye paused to check her head map. There were bodies strewn everywhere. That’s what they got for not reaching for the sky like she’d told them to! Except for the crackling flames, the room was deathly quiet. Did I kill everybody already? So much for confessions. But happily, her head map told her that the fat doctor in charge was limping down the stairs. Her head map also said that whatever the oddness was below, it was getting bigger, right quick, and it wasn’t like anything she’d ever felt before. Instinct told her that if she Traveled next to that thing, there would be no coming back.
She’d deal with the doctor in a minute. It wasn’t like anybody could outrun her. Faye went over to the filing cabinet and pulled out some of the papers that they’d been trying to destroy. There was lots of writing and it seemed to be in code, which meant it must be super important, so Faye gathered up as much as she could possibly carry in both arms and Traveled away.
“What the hell are those?” Dan asked as he risked a glance around Sullivan’s shoulder.
Grey metal forms were marching out of the main building and across the hard-packed dirt of the OCI compound. These machines were similar to the one that Sullivan had met at the EGE factory, with rounded bodies and ungainly limbs, only these were slightly bigger and each one had a single glowing blue eye in the center of their rectangular heads. It reminded him of an illustration from a Popular Mechanics article about the future of warfare, only this was right now, and these things belonged to the secret police rather than the Army.
“Mechanical men,” he muttered, then he raised his voice so the rest could hear. “Take cover!”
The knights had come through the hole in the wall and used the outbuildings and parked vehicles to cover their approach, but the robots were blocking their way. The roof of the main building was on fire, and it provided enough illumination to see at least half a dozen of the things. The automatons all froze in place at the same time. A beam of light, bright as the headlamps on a car, erupted from each mechanical man’s eye, and the heads slowly began to turn side to side like a searchlight.
Toru crouched off to the side. “So you Americans have gakutensoku of your own? I was not aware of this.” Before Sullivan could respond, Toru stepped out from behind cover, held his machine gun at his hip, and fired as he ran to the side. Bullets sparked against one of the robots. Three of the blue headlights locked onto the Iron Guard and three arms rose simultaneously, returning fire just as Toru dove behind the corner of another building. “Ours are faster”-Toru shouted as a bullet punctured the wall next to his face-“and more accurate.”
The robots let loose a torrent of machine gun fire, working their flashing arms back and forth, piercing the knights’ meager cover. A bullet went through a car door and Simmons’ leg went out from under him. The Torch seemed surprised as he hit the ground and a torrent of blood spilled from the jagged exit wound. Heedless of the danger, Dianatkhah crawled to Simmons and went about trying to save his friend’s life.
“Cover the Healer!” Sullivan picked a robot and the slow thunder of his BAR began. He worked the gun across the metal body, burning just a bit of Power to make the gun heavier and more controllable. Sullivan was an artist with a machine gun and he picked different spots-legs, arms, joints, neck, the head-looking for a weakness. The light of the single eye went out just as it was able to swivel over to shoot back. Bullets ripped a line up the dirt several feet away. “The eyes are how they aim,” Sullivan shouted as he pulled back to reload. It sounded rather simple when he said it that way, but you never knew until you tried.
Off to the left, three of the blue lights went out simultaneously as Diamond used his Power to hurl debris against them. They continued shooting, but wildly, flinging bullets everywhere.
One of the blinded robots lifted its other arm. With a roar, a gout of flame rolled past, forcing Sullivan to retreat to avoid being engulfed. “Flamethrower!” The robot turned, casting a wide arc of destruction, igniting vehicles and buildings.
But not men. Their wounded Torch lifted one bloody hand from his ruined leg and extended it toward the fire, which recoiled, stopped, grew, and then was forced back against the pressurized jet. The fire climbed back into the robot’s arm and ignited the fuel stored inside.
The explosion rocked the courtyard. Fire washed over several of the other mechanical men. One of them ignited, wobbled a few steps on its duck feet before it too exploded into a cloud of shrapnel and bolts. The others must not have been packing flamethrowers, since they caught fire, but didn’t burst. A flaming robot charged Sullivan, the rounds for its machine gun popping as they cooked off inside its arm. Sullivan hit it with a wave of gravity and sent it tumbling away.
Mottl used his Ice magic and hit a few of the robots with a burst of extreme cold. The humid air froze and clung to them in a sparkling sheen. These seemed to grow sluggish and confused. Apparently, robots weren’t that resilient against temperature extremes, but before Sullivan could yell encouragement to Mottl, the Icebox caught a bullet in the stomach. On the right, the robot that had shot him lurched as Ian’s latest Summoned collided with it, took it down, and hammered its gigantic fists against the robot’s head. A line ruptured and hydraulic fluid sprayed across the Summoned’s pale flesh.
The Summoned was knocked over by the impact of an explosive shell. Anothe
r robot had clanked its way through the drifting smoke, and this one had a recoilless rifle mounted on one shoulder. As it turned his way, Sullivan shot at it; Diamond put out its eye with a brick, but it still got off a blind shot. The wall next to Sullivan turned into an expanding cloud of shrapnel and he went rolling through the dirt. The Healing spells on his body were burning, trying to keep up with the cuts and abrasions. By the time he lifted his face out of the mud, Toru had knocked the robot down and was beating it savagely with what appeared to be a bumper torn off a car. Dianatkhah was dragging Mottl away.
It was chaos.
Dan appeared next to Sullivan and shouted between bursts from his Thompson, “Times like this… can make a Mouth… feel a little inadequate!”
“So let’s go find you some bad guys made outta meat.” Sullivan slammed in a fresh mag as he got up. “I’m heading for the command center. Cover me.” He ran for it while Dan emptied the remainder of the Thompson’s drum. Sullivan slid in behind a disabled, ice-crusted robot just as a blue targeting light swept overhead. The freezing cold of the metal could be felt through the rough fabric of his coat. He waited for the light to pass, then sprang up and continued on.
A robot lumbered out from behind a burning truck. Sullivan ripped gravity to the side, and the top-heavy thing toppled onto its back, only to be immediately engulfed in magical fire. The next robot that appeared through the smoke was speared by a steel bar that Diamond had hurled across the compound, and as it stumbled back, a blast of ice struck it in the head.
Sullivan reached the mechanical man, grabbed the steel bar protruding from its chest and ripped it free in a spray of hydraulic fluid. He swung hard, and the iced-over head shattered like glass.
The robots were outmaneuvered, outfought, outwitted, and their numbers were dwindling rapidly. They were no match for the combined Powers of the knights. They shouldn’t have sent a machine to do a man’s job. Ian’s Summoned tackled the last visible mechanical man and began to pummel it into scrap. “Diamond, see to your wounded and clear this compound. I’m going in.”
As he reached the large door the robots had filed out of, Sullivan took cover to one side and risked a peek. Inside was a wide-open, pitch-black space. He went around the corner and- Wham!
Tasting blood, he hit the ground hard. The robot had been just on the other side of the entrance and it had nailed him with one big metal arm. Dazed, Sullivan gathered his Power to knock the robot aside, but the machine gun arm was already coming up. A terrible blue light scalded his eyes.
The machine gun roared. Sullivan flinched, but death didn’t come. There was a horrendous racket as metal was shredded by bullets. The blue headlight turned away enough that he could see again. Partially blinded, it took Sullivan a second to realize that the robot’s gun arm had been twisted back against its own torso. A figure, dwarfed by the immense robot, was shoving it back. “Get up, Heavy!” Toru shouted.
The Brute slammed his fist against the robot’s chest, and the huge dent indicated that he was burning his Power hard. The robot crashed back into the warehouse, and Toru immediately clambered up its side and drove one hand through the narrow gap between spindly neck and armored chest. His fist came out clutching a handful of wires and a hose squirting oil. The robot’s legs collapsed and it toppled over, but Toru wasn’t finished. He grabbed the rectangular head in both hands and wrenched it around backwards. Metal tore and rivets popped, until the head was hanging loose and useless. The light flickered and went out.
Toru stepped off the dead robot. “You call this garbage a mechanical man? Cumbersome, slow, poorly balanced… The Tanaka Engineering Works’ gakutensoku is superior in every way. Your Cogs should be ashamed of this inferior design.” Reaching down, he took hold of the machine gun arm and pried open the metal casing. “I need this more than you do, my metal foe. Hmmm…” Toru tore out the Browning 1919 machine gun and a long belt of ammunition. “Though, I must admit that you Americans gave yours a bigger gun,” he admitted begrudgingly.
The Healing spells on his chest were certainly earning their keep tonight. Sullivan got to his feet. The lack of noise from the courtyard indicated that his team gotten all the mechanical men. “Thanks.”
Toru just grunted a noncommittal response as he lifted the feed tray to check the condition of his borrowed machine gun. They didn’t see the final robot inside until it turned on its eye and illuminated the Iron Guard in blue light.
Sullivan’s Spike reversed gravity, and the gigantic machine fell upward to hit the steel beams in the ceiling. Sullivan cut his Power and the robot dropped. It crashed hard into the floor where it lay twitching and kicking. The two of them riddled the mechanical man with bullets until the light died and it lay still in a spreading puddle of oil.
“Normally, this would be the part where you thank me for returning the favor and saving your life.”
“Yes. Normally… If we were court ladies instead of warriors,” Toru answered. “Shall we continue onward or do you wish to stop and discuss your feelings over tea?”
Sullivan looked forward to the day that the two of them would be able to finish their fight. “Let’s go.”
The only other passenger still aboard had a. 38-caliber hole right between the eyes, so Francis used his mind to steer the rudder while he hid in the front of the boat. There was a tarp, so Francis covered himself, got low, and waited to hit land. The OCI on shore had more than likely heard the gunshots. If he was lucky, they would come running to investigate when they didn’t see their friends, and even luckier if they didn’t have a Dymaxion.
Behind him, Mason Island was on fire and there was so much gunfire it sounded like Fourth of July firecrackers. As he got closer to shore, he saw that to the south the Washington side of the bridge was burning. It was quite a ways off, but the sirens of the police cars stuck there could be heard. Closer now, he pulled the tarp over his head and waited.
He was terribly nervous, but his Power felt ready, which meant that there was probably no Dymaxion here, or at least if there was, they hadn’t turned it on yet. There was a crack of wood against rock, and the whole craft shuddered hard. The boat slowly turned sideways and ground against solid earth.
Footsteps. Somebody was running this way. There was swearing, and Francis could only assume that they were playing a hand torch over the boat. The boat shifted as some weight landed in the middle of it. Francis pulled down the tarp just enough to see. A man in work clothes stood over the body of the thug Francis had shot in the face. Francis hesitated, because he had no way of knowing if this man was OCI or not.
Keeping his light on the dead man, the stranger grabbed a handful of hair and lifted. He swore again, then turned and shouted back toward the truck. “It’s Pete. They shot Pete!”
That’ll do. Francis shot him through the tarp. It wasn’t like he could use the sights that way, but they were nice and close. The first bullet hit him low in the back. He grunted in surprise and stood straight up. So Francis adjusted the muzzle upwards and fired again. That one got him right between the shoulder blades, but instead of falling over, he started climbing out of the boat. This was a perfect example of why Francis preferred a. 45 to a. 38. The man landed on the rocks, shouting that it was an ambush while reaching into his pocket. He came out with a little pistol and popped off a couple of wild shots at the boat before turning and running. Francis sat up, and since he couldn’t see the sights in the dark, pointed and squeezed off his last shot. That time the OCI man threw his arms wide and fell on his face.
There was more shouting from the truck. Francis could easily hunker down here and wait for help… But that truck was part of a bigger plot, and the way Bradford Carr had talked about it, innocent people were going to die if he didn’t stop them. “Time to be heroic.”
Francis clambered over the side. Water splashed up to his knees, but he quickly moved up the rocks. He was out of ammo and needed to find items that could be weapons with his Power. The more something weighed, the harder it was to manipula
te. The further away it was, the harder it was to control, and if something was more than forty feet away, it was pretty safe. Sure, he could throw something further than that, but good luck hitting anything.
Sadly, the truck was parked nearly twice that far away and there was absolutely nothing between him and it worth hiding behind. He concentrated on the downed man’s dropped pistol and it zipped over to him. Francis snatched it out of midair and ran for the truck. Somebody moved in front of the headlights and a gun boomed. The shot was so close that he could hear the bullet whine past his ear. Francis raised the unfamiliar pistol and fired wildly. He had to get closer.
Suddenly, Francis was falling and couldn’t figure out why. He landed hard on his face, and then he felt a searing flash of heat in his thigh. He’d been shot. The son of a bitch shot me!
He had to get up. These men were about to do something terrible and he was the only one that could stop them. Francis was far more furious than scared, and he shoved himself right back up. Pain flared through him when his foot hit the ground, but it didn’t matter. He had to get closer to use his magic. Limping forward, another bullet clipped him. This time the pain radiated up his arm, and Francis looked down, astonished, to see a hole right through his left wrist. Then it was as if somebody had taken a spear and driven it through his chest.
Shit. I’ve been shot in the chest. But he was still alive. Good thing it was too dark for proper aiming or that one might have been in his heart. He kept on limping, raised the little pistol and cranked off the rest of the magazine in the general direction of the truck. There was a clang of metal and one of the headlights went out. The shadow in front of the truck seemed to be reloading while the door of the cab opened and another person leapt out.
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