Warden 4

by Isaac Hooke

  Some of the Wardenites continued to pin down the robots there, covering her. A few bolts still targeted her, but she deflected them with her Ban’Shar.

  Around her, some of the unarmed drones littered the floor, while the remainder buzzed about overhead, trying to dodge the Wardenite fire.

  She took a running leap and jumped, easily reaching the top of the transport in the lower gravity. She vaulted to the other side and leaped down.

  She transformed the Ban’Shar into twin blades as she fell toward her enemies.

  The surprised robots tried to turn their aim upward but she plunged the weapons into the two closest, and swiped sideways, passing the blades through their bodies and into the robots immediately beside them.

  She transformed the blades into disks to deflect the attacks of the remaining four robots, sending the bolts flying into two of them. She finished the remaining pair in two quick rushes.

  Then she hurried out from behind the transport and toward the maintenance tunnel. The wreckages of the remaining drones lay scattered across the floor, courtesy of her Wardenites. Most of the men had gathered around the tunnel opening and were firing their plasma pistols liberally inside.

  Rhea rushed right past them without pausing, trusting entirely that they’d cease firing. She held both Ban’Shars in front of her.

  She deflected the bolts of the four robots that were still standing deeper in the tunnel.

  “Hey!” Will shouted.

  A bolt skimmed past her right shoulder from behind, narrowly missing her.

  “Sorry,” she heard a distant voice say. Miles. “Got distracted.”

  “You could have killed her!” Will was saying.

  She tuned them out and thought no more on the matter. Accidents happened in the heat of combat.

  She managed to deflect two bolts into the torsos of a pair of combat robots, and when she reached them, she mowed down the final two, so that they joined the wreckage of the others.

  Her comrades were fast coming up behind her, so she continued forward.

  “Dude!” Will called.

  She glanced behind her, and he tossed her the CommNixer pistol that she’d abandoned at the entrance. He’d topped up the ammo.

  She switched off her right Ban’Shar to catch it, and then swung her arm forward. She targeted the next camera ahead and took it out.

  A bigger robot stepped into view from a side passage ahead. Two-legged, lacking arms. With forbidding-looking plasma turrets protruding from either side of its head, and RPG launchers mounted to the top of each leg.

  “Stay back!” Rhea called over her shoulder.

  The big robot unleashed its RPGs. Rhea ran forward, wanting to put as much distance between herself and her companions as possible. She sheathed the pistol and reactivated her remaining Ban’Shar, so that she had two shields to protect her.

  The grenades struck her shields and detonated. She was shoved backward by the released energy, and the lower hem of her cloak and underlying outfit burned away. She hardly noticed and kept moving forward. If this had been Earth, she would have been pushed back a lot farther. But it was Mars.

  She felt almost invincible here. It was similar to how she’d felt on Ganymede.

  Have to be careful, not let myself grow overconfident.

  She reached the robot and ran between its big metal legs. She slid her Ban’Shar disks outward as she passed, slicing through each limb entirely, and the robot collapsed behind her. She spun around and flung the disks down into its torso, cutting it in half.

  The other Wardenites joined her and leaped over the wreckage.

  She continued forward, pausing next to the side corridor from where the bigger robot had emerged. She peered past, holding her disks in front of her.

  More combat robots were lying in wait, and opened fire.

  She deflected the bolts, taking down three of them, and rushed the remainder. The Wardenites terminated another two with their plasma pistols before she reached them, so she only had four to skewer when she arrived.

  When that was done, she surveyed the passageway, confirming that no more robots awaited, then turned around, a grim smile plastered across her lips.

  “Try not to look like you’re enjoying yourself so much,” Will commented.

  She took the lead once more, switching one hand back to the CommNixer pistol.

  “They were waiting for us!” Brinks said from behind her. “In the hanger!”

  “It seems obvious Targon betrayed us,” Miles commented.

  “Wonder how much they paid the bastard,” Brinks said.

  “Won’t be enough, for when I get my hands on him!” Rhea exclaimed.

  From ahead, she could hear a muted alarm of some kind sounding in the terminal.

  Pulling her hood low, she shot out another camera, and then rotated the Ban’Shar back into her hand before kicking open the door to the main terminal. Unsurprisingly, a ring of combat robots awaited. They all opened fire.

  Moving in a blur, she deflected those bolts and executed a gymnastic routine from her muscle memory, which allowed her to flip behind her attackers. She beheaded two of the robots in midair with the edges of the disks, and when she landed, she continued swerving between them, employing the weapons to deadly effect. She transformed the Ban’Shar back and forth between swords and disks as suited the moment, an artist at work, her Ban’Shar the brushes, the robot soldiers her canvas.

  Meanwhile the Wardenites were firing at the next group of robots that were rushing in from deeper in the terminal, and protected Rhea’s back.

  Rhea finished with the latest group and turned to face the next. The alarm blasted loudly in her ears, but she hardly noticed it. She dashed forward to meet the machine rush, leaping over the random citizens in the terminal who had dropped to the floor to avoid getting shot.

  She sprinted right up to any of the machines that opposed her and tore them apart if she wasn’t able to deflect their fire back at them. Some of the robots tried to take cover, hiding behind pillars or benches, but she hunted them all down with a grim smile on her face.

  “Dude, let’s go!” Will shouted above the alarm.

  She glanced at Will and saw that he was gazing nervously at the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that formed the main entrance to the terminal.

  She looked that way: several two-legged walker robots were entering, forming a long line just inside the terminal. They were all armed with RPGs. Rhea knew they weren’t going to fire those weapons, not in here, not while so many civilians had yet to evacuate. Then again, this was Mars…

  “Got more behind us, too!” Renaldo said, slamming shut the door to the maintenance tunnel.

  “This way!” Rhea said, herding her companions toward the escalators that led to the lower levels. She kept her Ban’Shar directed toward the walkers, in case they did decide to open fire.

  They did not. But they did give chase.

  She took the lead and raced down the escalator. Her companions used their CommNixer pistols to shoot out the latest cameras.

  “What’s the point of disabling the cameras?” Renaldo shouted. “They know where we are anyway!”

  He was probably right. But Rhea didn’t answer, letting her companions continue to shoot at the cameras, so that they could at least feel like they were doing something to help.

  She reached the lower levels. People were running frantically all around her.

  The pedway was just ahead, according to the map.

  Another group of combat robots emerged from the pedway.

  Rhea didn’t slow. While her companions unleashed their weapons, she drew the fire of the robots, performing a series of acrobatic somersaults while deflecting their shots with her Ban’Shar. She landed in their midst and transformed the weapons into swords. She spun, tearing through the machine bodies. A group of them rushed her, and she leaped toward them, swirling her body as she did so, so that her blades cut into them like a horizontal rotor. When she landed, the sliced up remnants of the r
obots dropped to the floor all around her. It was over.

  She leaped over the wreckages and into the pedway system. No more robots awaited within the tight confines.

  “Let’s go!” she said.

  At the top of the escalators behind them the walkers were appearing. Along with armed, airborne drones.

  The Wardenites quickly piled into the pedway behind her.

  The alarm wasn’t as loud here, but a red light intermittently flashed on and off.

  “So many dead robots,” Horatio said. “Our enemy uses them like cannon fodder!”

  “He does indeed,” Rhea said.

  “Why don’t you convert some of them to your side?” Brinks asked. “Like you did the customs robots?”

  Rhea glanced over her shoulder. “No time.”

  “She’s right,” Will said. “You saw how long it takes.”

  “Yeah, but we could use ourselves a robot army right about now!” Brinks said.

  She raced through the concrete walls of the underground pedway system. The ceiling was about twice her height, with glow lamps embedded at intervals to provide ample illumination, and red lights still occasionally flashed among them. The passage was wide enough to fit ten people abreast.

  There were a few other people in the pedway, but they all ran directly away from her. Either they had seen her terminating robots firsthand, or they’d noticed other citizens running away with fear written plainly all over their faces; it was also possible they’d received a warning of some kind on their augmented reality goggles.

  There were ordinary delivery robots in the pedway system as well, some humanoid, some tread-based, and these all turned to face the wall as Rhea passed to let her know they intended no harm. She ignored them. But Miles blasted at a few of them.

  “Can you stop that?” Horatio asked.

  “Why?” Miles replied. “It’s fun.”

  “Should we activate DragonHunter’s camera hack?” Will asked.

  Rhea glanced at her overhead map: a security camera would soon be coming up.

  She shook her head as she ran. “There’s no point. It was designed for a stealth scenario… and there’s nothing stealthy about this. We’re being chased by robots—essentially mobile cameras, feeding the city’s AI a constant stream of positional information. The AI knows where we are. If we use the hack now, blocking our images from the camera, we reveal the presence of DragonHunter’s code, essentially for no reason. The AI will track down the code and remove it. I’d rather save the hack for another day.”

  “Assuming there is another day!” Will said. “All right, I’ll go ahead and disable the camera.”

  He went ahead and fired a CommNixer at the incoming device, which was only just coming into view.

  They continued past it. Several meters ahead the walls widened to form an underground concourse of sorts.

  Behind them, the airborne drones swooped inside the pedway. Rhea dropped back to protect the rear of the party. Just in time: the drones unleashed plasma fire on approach.

  Rhea deflected the bolts. “Take cover in the concourse ahead!”

  The party members dashed into the concourse. Flashes behind her alerted her to another firefight taking place there. Rhea couldn’t help, not yet.

  Ban’Shar in hand, she raced toward the hovering attackers. She deflected the attacks, sending a bolt straight back into the lead drone. She leaped onto the leftmost wall, shoving off to pass in front of the next drone, which she promptly rent in two.

  She landed on the floor and immediately vaulted onto the rightmost wall, pushing off again to fly at the next drone, which she also split in half.

  She continued to zigzag in that manner, using the lower gravity to assist her, bouncing from floor to wall to floor again, leaving the wreckages of falling drones in her wake.

  When she’d reached the last of them, she turned around and hurried back to the concourse. She raced inside.

  It was a food court, with fast-food outlets lining the walls. She noticed that CommNixers resided next to all the cameras she spotted, courtesy of her companions. Speaking of the latter, her Wardenites had taken cover behind tables, chairs, pillars and garbage receptacles at random positions in front of her.

  Across from them, combat robots were similarly entrenched. Both sides were pinned and exchanging fire.

  Plasma bolts came in at her from the enemy side but bounced harmlessly away from her energy shields.

  Without hesitation she jumped onto a chair and then leaped from table to table, holding the Ban’Shar in front of her as she headed directly toward the enemy positions.

  A combat robot tossed an energy grenade at her, but she batted it away with her Ban’Shar and it exploded harmlessly a few meters beside her. More grenades came in, but this time she deflected the bombs at those who had thrown them. She steered away from the resultant explosions and rushed the remaining robots. She converted her right Ban’Shar into a sword, and kept the left in shield form as she proceeded to weave among the enemy, blocking with her shield, and impaling with her sword, killing with such ease that it almost seemed too easy. She considered trying to convert some of these robots to her side, but decided against it, since the returns would only be diminishing—for every one she converted, ten more would arrive.

  “Let’s go!” Rhea shouted at her companions when the last of the targets had gone down.

  But then from ahead, on the eastern side of the food court, twenty more combat robots piled inside.

  The clatter of heavy feet came from behind, along with the humming of angry bees: on the western side of the food court another twenty shock troops appeared, with a similar number of armed, airborne drones accompanying them.

  Too many.

  “This way!” She dashed toward one of the food outlets and took up a position in front of it, deflecting the attacks from the robots and drones to the west. Meanwhile, the Wardenites sprinted toward her, firing as they ran, targeting the robots on the eastern side, forcing the enemy there to take cover behind tables and pillars.

  The Wardenites vaulted over the counter of the fast-food outlet in turn, and ducked underneath. When the last of them was over, Rhea leaped across the counter as well and joined them.

  Will led the way, crawling into the back area where automated cooks prepared the food, and then crouching as he headed toward the back door. He opened it a crack, and then peered through.

  “Clear!” He shoved past and entered the employees-only hallway.

  “Go!” Rhea said.

  The others followed Will into the tight hallway, and Rhea brought up the rear behind Renaldo.

  The hallway could fit two of them abreast, but they ran in single file.

  Rhea deactivated her right Ban’Shar and unholstered her plasma pistol instead. She kept glancing over her shoulder as she ran.

  It didn’t take long before the airborne drones swooped into the hallway behind. She shot them down in turn and deflected a few bolts that came in with her Ban’Shar.

  The passage took a hard left, and soon the drones were out of view.

  “Drop!” Will shouted.

  The men dropped, but Rhea remained standing; she tilted her Ban’Shar to the front in time to deflect against the plasma attack launched by a walker robot that blocked the way forward.

  The men opened fire from their positions on the floor, and Rhea leaped over them, carefully placing her feet until she was past Will and heading for the walker. She kept the Ban’Shar in front of her to deflect its attacks and fired over the top with her pistol; by the time she reached the robot, it was completely disabled, and toppled to lean against the wall on one side.

  Rhea squeezed past it. “Come on! We have to get to the palace!”

  The men got up and forced their way past the wreckage of the large robot.

  She rounded a ninety-degree bend, only to find herself facing down another two-legged walker, twenty meters ahead; between its iron legs she could see more walkers, all lined up in a row. Had to be a
t least twenty of them, if not more, blocking the corridor all the way down.

  She quickly crouched behind her Ban’Shar as the lead walker opened fire, and backed away until she stood at the intersection of the two corridors, while she decided what to do. From the passage beside her came the buzzing of drones. The men dropped again.

  She redirected one of her Ban’Shar that way to protect herself from the drone attacks; she kept the shield angled upward to avoid killing her men with an accidental deflection. It was a relief that the drones targeted her only, even though the men were firing back at the airborne machines.

  “Warden,” came a voice from beside her.

  Keeping her Ban’Shar in place, she glanced that way.

  A door had opened in the wall. A man stood there. A black robe clung to his thin frame; the hood was raised, its low hanging hem hiding his face.

  “Come with me, Warden,” the man pressed urgently. He glanced both ways.

  Rhea continued to take fire, but her Ban’Shar held. “Who are you?”

  “A friend!” the man said. “Now come!”

  His voice was strangely familiar…

  “I have to get to the palace!” she told the man. “Can you take me?”

  “No!” he said. “You can’t enter the palace. If you do, you will die.”

  “I won’t die,” Rhea said, deflecting more bolts. “I can take on an entire army!”

  “You said that the last time,” the man said. “You don’t know what technology Khrusos possesses. Technology he has hoarded, stolen from Ganymede. Trust me. You will die. If not in body, then in mind.”

  “Who are you?” Rhea asked again.

  Still he did not answer. She returned her attention to the walker robots that blocked the path in front of her.

  “I can take them!” Rhea insisted.

  “You can, perhaps,” the man said. “But what about them?” He nodded at the Wardenites still lying flat on the floor beside her.

  More and more airborne drones continued to join the fray, so that the air above the Wardenites became a thick mass of plasma streams. She could smell the ionized particles.

  “Dude, make up your mind!” Will said.