Silicon Uprising

by Conor McCarthy

  When the men stood high above the road, the distant satellite communication facility appeared above the tallest buildings in the park. Alan said, “This is perfect.”

  Jason opened the cloth and pulled out the antenna. “Wow,” he said, “brilliant.” The Black Doves had made it a work of art, painting it to blend in with the dirt, rocks, and vegetation. Only a careful survey would pick it out. Jason dug out a depression in the ground and nestled the antenna securely while aiming it at the target facility.

  The transmitter looked like a rock, and once Alan placed it on the ground nobody would ever have considered it out of place. He connected the antenna and clicked a button on a small box attached to the transmitter’s external battery to activate the timed switch.

  As the countdown ticked toward zero, they descended to the street.

  Jason retrieved his combat gear and the local-oscillator detector from the van and jumped into an empty van that stopped to take him to the far end of the park. As it drove down the center street, he pointed binoculars out the rear window. It took some searching to spot the camouflaged equipment even though he knew roughly where to look.

  Soon he passed the Archer building on his right, where the Black Doves had already set up. Jason gazed up at the flat roof. It had no guardrail around the perimeter, so the decoy dish antenna stood prominently at the edge. Further back two men waited beside a light cannonlike contraption with a CO2 bottle connected to it.

  The van curved around south, past the Duke building, which had a series of external steel support pillars that afforded good cover, but retreating from behind one meant running out into the open.

  He left the roundabout and headed east again toward the enemy, past an old car that sat rigged to blow. Another hundred and fifty yards further on, he parked the van in a lot outside a building, with the rear windows facing the road.

  Jason changed back into his combat fatigues and body armor, and from a pocket he pulled the remote bomb trigger.

  He looked back toward the center. A large semitrailer curved its way along the roundabout, exited to the south, and slowed before he lost sight of it. Gordon had mentioned that he expected a couple of large trucks full of Black Dove fighters.

  Some smaller vehicles also arrived and distributed themselves. Any bystander would begin to think that something strange was up, but from Jason’s position nobody seemed to be around. Not that they’d have time to bring much trouble anyway.

  Jason’s watch ticked over to the start of the twelve-minute jamming window. Alan’s voice over the radio broke the tense silence. “Angel is giving a sermon.” That meant the transmitter had been activated and was now squashing the distant satellite signal.

  Half-Bit’s receiver station would be downloading garbage. Goons must have been rumbling in their lair.

  Any minute now.

  Jason readied the local-oscillator detector. Only the sound of his own breathing disturbed his intense focus on the view of the eastern approach through the van’s side window.

  Small gleaming shapes appeared in the distance. He could make out three gray SUVs, which he reported over the radio.

  As they grew nearer he pointed the detector at them. The display showed a positive reading. The vehicles were too far away to discriminate between them. He moved to the rear window and pointed the detector at the road in front of him. Soon the wind rush from vehicles at high speed approached.

  Jason stared at the readout as the first SUV flashed past. A definite indication. The other two flew past. Nothing.

  He readied his finger on the bomb trigger. Out the van’s other side window he focused on the convoy moving away rapidly.

  Jason glanced at the trigger in his hand. It was also the starting gun for the fight.

  The lead vehicle neared the rigged car. Jason’s viewing angle made it difficult to judge distance. He checked the SUV’s shadow on the road instead.

  Darkness hit the rear edge of the old car and swept across its side. Jason pressed the trigger.

  An explosion blew the SUV into the next lane, then it tilted sideways and rolled along the road. The rotation flung pieces into the air, followed by a goon’s body. The force ripped his boots from his feet and they flew high in the air.

  At the same time, the area around the center of the complex seemed to come alive with Black Dove soldiers taking positions behind parking lot walls or smashing their way into multistory buildings.

  The other two gray SUVs skidded to a halt behind the smoke and flames and goons poured from them. Guns ready, they scanned the buildings beside them and ahead toward the center of the complex.

  Jason took his chance while they weren’t looking his way. He checked that no more vehicles were coming from the east, flung open the rear doors, and ran toward the gap between two buildings.

  Just as he reached shelter, he checked the eastern approach again.

  Another, much larger convoy was heading into the complex. Soon a horde of goons would stand between him and his comrades. He needed to move fast to join his friends in the fight.

  Jason ran to the rear of the building and then west along the back alley toward friendly territory. Gunfire broke out ahead and became more and more rapid. It echoed off the buildings and seemed to come from all directions.

  He pressed on across three more lots, vaulting over the low walls that divided them. The shooting grew louder.

  The sound of the approaching convoy brought him to a halt at the back corner of a building. He peeked out to find two gray SUVs and three troop-carrying trucks rolling by. They were decelerating to deploy troops not far ahead.

  Another two lots further on he peered around the corner of a building toward the street to check for enemies. Boots on the sidewalk sent him scrambling back into cover. A half-dozen goons ran past and then out of sight. Jason grabbed the wall, ready to jump it, but someone shouted an order for three goons to break off and advance along the rear.

  They backtracked and rounded the corner as Jason ducked down. He crammed his body against the base of the wall as they ran along the other side of it and around toward the fighting.

  Gunfire erupted from across the street. Startled, Jason darted his eyes around, searching for bullet impacts. When he got his bearings it turned out the gunmen were out of sight a little further ahead, shooting at his people.

  Jason jumped the south wall at the rear of the lot and ducked behind it for cover, then continued west into the next lot and toward the fighting. Keeping his head down, he ran beside a long narrow mulch bed that nurtured a line of shrubs beside the wall.

  Near the corner of the lot, gunshots seemed to be coming from the next lot diagonally opposite. He moved around a Dumpster and advanced toward the intersection of the four walls.

  With two yards to go, boot steps pulled his attention to the left. A goon emerged from behind the building.

  The gunman focused his attention northwest toward a volley of gunshots, then suddenly became aware of Jason when he stood only two feet away.

  They looked each other in the eyes. Jason recognized him immediately.

  “Why hello there, Butthead.”

  The nickname startled the goon. Maybe he was unsure which side Jason fought on. Jason pitied him for being the butt of the others’ jokes, but he still fought for Lowgrave, and had sneaked around from the south to boot.

  That sealed his fate.

  Jason rammed the butt of his M16 into the goon’s face, knocking him to the ground. Then he pulled out the suppressed Glock and finished him.

  Jason looked north over the wall to find three goons near the street shooting west from behind a parking lot wall. He rested the M16 on his wall and fired short bursts at them.

  Disoriented, they flattened themselves on the ground while searching for the source, but nothing shielded them from the attack and retreat would be their only escape.

  Before they figured it out all three lay dead.

  A goon across the street saw what had happened and spotted Jason imme
diately. “Butt-fucking terrorist scum!” the man shouted.

  Jason dropped down into cover as a spray of bullets flung concrete fragments from the top of the wall.

  He sat poised in silence. Screw being trapped down in that corner away from the fighting. He hurled himself over the wall to the west into what appeared to be Black Dove territory. Nobody shot at him.

  High up from across the street a grenadier drone advanced on his position, weaving side to side to foil his aim. It carried a cluster of three grenades that would explode on impact with anything solid.

  He sat down with his back to the wall. He’d be lucky to hit the thing at all with an M16. It would pursue him until he managed to lose it or it dropped its load on him.

  Taking shelter in the building seemed like the best option.

  Butthead’s image flashed into his mind. It seemed like an unwanted intrusion until he realized what the man had carried—a semiautomatic shotgun.

  As the drone reached his side of the street and flew for the gap between the buildings, he leapt over the wall and grabbed the weapon. The goon across the street seemed to have taken cover while the drone did its work.

  Jason rested the barrel on the north wall and aimed at the right-hand limit of the drone’s sideways movements. Fortunately the two buildings corralled it somewhat.

  As it slowed for its next weave, he blasted two rounds at it. A piece of rotor flew off.

  The thing wobbled but stabilized itself using the remaining three rotors. It shifted back and forth more slowly as it came at him.

  Carefully he aimed again. The drone swept into his sights and away once more. He felt his own deep and steady breathing as it swung back, only fifteen yards away.

  It floated into perfect alignment and Jason knew the shot would hit. He blasted it into scattered wreckage and a flaming battery pack that left a smoke trail as it fell.

  While he grabbed and reloaded the M16, heavy tires mounted the curb behind the building to the east and then what sounded like a truck smashing down a wall alerted him to the arrival of yet more enemies. Boot steps tracked toward the rear alley where Jason sheltered. He hid behind the Dumpster while three goons ran past, jumped the wall, and suddenly turned right toward the street. Meanwhile, a tank’s metal tracks pounded the pavement as it drove by. The Black Doves’ job was getting harder by the second.

  A loud boop emanated from somewhere to the west. Jason immediately thought of the CO2 cannon on the Archer roof. Maybe they’d set one up on another roof this side of the roundabout.

  He moved west to the wall and looked over it into the next lot. Something caught his eye off to the left.

  A clanker stood with its four eyes and twin guns pointed right at him.

  He froze, waiting for the end, then felt like a fool.

  The mirrored glass wall of a nearby building shattered in a barrage of automatic gunfire. The quadruped’s programming apparently didn’t handle reflections well, or maybe it blasted anything that looked like a target. Jason ducked behind the wall, yanked the magazine out of his rifle, and searched like mad in his store of ammo for the one magazine of tungsten-carbide antibot rounds that Gordon had been able to spare. He rammed it home and pulled the bolt.

  The clanker moved parallel to the wall, then turned and advanced toward it. The twin muzzles of its armament protruded over the top as it swung its head to scan for human flesh.

  Jason squatted below, poised for the right moment. He knew not to make the mistake of shooting at the head. The central processor controlled the body from deep inside the beast’s chest.

  A split second before the twin guns reached the furthest point on their scanning arc, he sprang up, took aim, and squeezed the trigger.

  Jason gripped the barrel to keep his shots centered on a small patch of the clanker’s chest and poured armor-piercing slugs into it. Sections of the thin reactive armor blasted the first few projectiles away harmlessly. One of them grazed his shoulder but he grimaced and kept firing.

  The twin guns on the head pivoted toward him while he shot more hardened metal through the damaged chest area.

  Before its guns could align with his face, the entire monster rocked onto its back legs, obscuring Jason’s target, so he stopped firing. Seeing what was coming, he dropped to the ground on his back, knocking a puff of air from his lungs.

  With a thrust of hydraulic actuators, the powerful back legs launched the beast half over the wall. Its front legs slammed into the ground on either side of Jason’s ears, presenting the more vulnerable underside to his M16.

  He fired his remaining ammo into it.

  By the time the gun went silent the armored body was already falling toward him. It crunched onto the wall and began to topple to the right.

  Jason tucked his head in and rolled left as the side of the beast crashed onto the wall. The head flopped sideways and hung in the air while the back end planted on the concrete. Smoke and the stink of a burning battery flowed out of the holes in its armor.

  Using the dead robot as cover, Jason climbed the wall and entered a wrecked office inside the long building that the machine had just blasted a way into. He exited into the corridor and sprinted to the far end.

  The windows fronted on the roundabout opposite the Duke building. Black Dove soldiers still held their ground. At the intersection with the east-west road, the tank burned in a pool of gasoline amid the scattered remains of a huge glass bottle. Jason smiled and felt brief elation at his comrades’ efforts.

  A missile, fired from somewhere east, trailed smoke as it streaked past the Duke building and across the roundabout, heading for the decoy antenna. A sharp bang shattered windows on the top floor of the Archer building and hurled pieces of the decoy up into the air.

  Jason announced over the radio, “I’m breaking glass facing the roundabout east of Duke. Hold your fire.” Using the rifle butt, he rammed his way through the window.

  Gordon’s voice burst out on the radio, “Another quadruped incoming. Pull back to Duke. Repeat, regroup at Duke!”

  Jason sprinted across the street to the Duke parking lot along with other Black Dove fighters, helped by covering fire from Doves on the roofs of the Duke and the building next to it. The tank had blown away the northern third of the structure.

  As soon as Jason and a dozen others had taken up positions along the eastern wall around the Duke lot, the new quadruped opened fire on the men in the next building, goons poured from behind cover across the street, and a grenadier drone sneaked through from the northern side and attacked men behind the Duke building.

  Jason and the others retreated to the western wall of Duke. He jumped down beside Alan, stuck a thumb toward the enemy, and with a wry smile said, “Looks like your jammer is working.”

  Before Alan could reply, the drone whizzed around the corner. A grenade fell from the cluster. Everyone flattened themselves on the ground, and Jason clamped his hands over his ears.

  The shock of the blast hammered inside his head despite the protection. The body of a Black Dove soldier flew up and crashed through a window. Something impacted Jason’s leg near his ankle.

  There was no time for examination. His legs still worked and the drone weaved onward toward the street, ready to release grenades on more soldiers, who desperately tried to shoot it with their assault rifles.

  Glad to have lugged the shotgun on his back, he pulled it into his hands. The gun moved like a part of his body until the sights aligned on the perfect spot ahead of the thing’s path. He emptied the magazine of ammo, blasting the machine’s battery out of its compartment in flames.

  Goons arrived from across the street and took cover behind the flared steel support pillars of the Duke building. But they found themselves pinned down by gunfire coming at an angle from the Archer roof.

  Gordon said from somewhere close, “Stop them from coming around the back.”

  Jason scrambled to take up a position behind the wall at the rear of the building, jumping over bodies the drone had depo
sited there.

  From the east, at the far end of the building, a man in combat gear planted one hand on the boundary wall and leapt clean over it. His boots thumped to the ground.

  Victor Lowgrave.

  He carried a fifty-caliber sniper rifle in his hands and a submachine gun on a strap. From another strap around his neck hung a device that looked like a radio direction-finder.

  They looked at each other until Lowgrave spoke. “The little boy who couldn’t shoot a raider at five yards. You’ll fail, boy. Men will save this world.”

  Jason had caught Lowgrave with his sniper rifle pointing at the ground. Did he have a trick up his sleeve? No, that thought came from Lowgrave getting inside his head again.

  He took aim and fired at Lowgrave, but the head goon dove to the right and disappeared behind the building. Jason’s shots met empty air and the corner of the structure.

  A faint voice said over the radio, “The sniper is inside. Our men on the roof are down.” Jason could hardly hear the radio, so he checked his earpiece but found nothing wrong. The grenade and gunfire had deadened his hearing.

  Lowgrave must have discovered that the jamming signal hadn’t been disrupted. The roof was the highest in the area and afforded a view of the real jammer on the slope of the hill about two thousand yards away. Climbing up there was Lowgrave’s only remaining move.

  He might just spot the jammer and could easily put a fifty-caliber armor-piercing round through it with one shot if his scope had built-in AI.

  And he’d have nothing short of that.

  “That was Lowgrave,” Jason shouted. “I’m going up there.”

  “Get him,” Gordon replied. “We have our hands full.”

  The clanker trotted into view on the street beyond, cutting Jason off from Lowgrave’s entrance. Instead he shot open an emergency exit, making enough noise to probably be heard throughout the building.