Web of Extinction (Zone War Book 3)

by John Conroe

  “Signal location is the same spot as depleted charger unit hidden in vehicle well.”

  “Let’s move,” I said, barely making the words audible. It must be sensitive if it could find the exhausted charger.

  “AJ, if Rikki can sense it, it can sense Rikki.”

  That should have been obvious to me, but I wasn’t used to this Rikki, the one that lived in the Decimator and was no longer a double drone agent with encrypted access to Plum Blossom’s network. We needed to move even faster.

  Rikki stayed facing behind us, but now his fans took over his propulsion and moved his airframe without my aid. That left both my hands on the ChemJet. We moved at the fastest pace I could go while still staying as quiet as I could. Our route now curved a little southeast, and the bend in the road would leave even more buildings between us.

  “Unidentified drone is moving in this direction.”

  “Has it alerted other drones?”

  Rikki might be locked out of the network but he could monitor all the frequencies for activity.

  “No definitive answer to that question. Little to no activity on any known frequency used by CThree units. Current speed of unknown drone matches our pace and general direction. Also, I have detected a patrolling Skyhawk point-seven-six kilometers to the northeast. It does not appear aware of us.”

  “Which may answer the question.”

  “Unless enemy drones are engaging in subterfuge.”

  We veered a bit more south, still moving as fast as we could, all senses, biological and electronic, straining for the slightest sign of drones. Our cross-country move across the highway ramps and green spaces had taken us to the beginning of Park Row, but now we moved onto side streets to avoid the big open roads that the armored vehicles of Zone War used, at least up until a few weeks ago. The side streets, like Nassau Street, which we worked our way over to, paralleled Broadway, but were less likely to have as much drone coverage.

  We were approaching the Corner of Nassau and John Street when Rikki froze up in mid-air. He just stopped, locked into place.

  I froze too, eyes moving everywhere while I waited for some clue as to what he had sensed. Our normal protocol is for him to either audibly update me or use one of a number of silent signals that we’ve worked out. Everything from LED lights to the new little hologram that appeared above his armor. But he did nothing. I, on the other hand, had turned a slow, careful circle and, at about two-hundred and seventy degrees of rotation, I spotted the problem. Or at least a problem—a big problem.

  A rifle barrel was pointing right at me, seemingly out of thin air, about six meters away. Then the air shimmered and I realized I could just barely, if I really concentrated, make out the fuzzy outline of a human form. Oddly, all I could think of was that old set of movies about the giant alien warrior that hunts humans and acid-blooded xenomorphs with cloaking technology.

  “You didn’t think you were privy to all our secrets, did you?” a female voice asked from behind the rifle barrel.

  I knew that voice. “Corporal Kottos?”

  “Among others,” she said. “Take your hands off your weapon.”

  I carefully lifted both hands away from the ChemJet, letting it fall across my front on its sling. The faintest sound of movement came from behind me but the unmoving muzzle pointed right between my eyes held me in place like a stone statue.

  I felt someone come up behind me and a hand I couldn’t quite focus on lifted my rifle up and over my head. A second later, the same hand came back and pulled my pistol from my vest, followed quickly by my kukri being yanked from its back sheath. Then the .22 submachine gun in its case was taken away.

  All the time this was going on, Rikki just hovered, frozen.

  The shimmer in front of me changed and Corporal Elizabeth Kottos’s face appeared, floating a meter and a half over the asphalt of the street.

  “The major thought something was going on with his pet project there,” she said, nodding toward Rikki. “Oddly it was because the damned thing was getting too good, too fast. All of its performance appraisals went way, way up. His little team of dweebs thought it was great and all their doing, but Yoshida’s a tricky bastard. Had them check the thing six ways from Sunday. They found nothing. But he wasn’t satisfied. So he had a close range remote lockup mounted inside the frame during some routine maintenance. All we had to do was push a button and your scary pal is like a block of ice.”

  Two more sets of shimmering shapes appeared, one on either side of her. Their cloaks, or whatever the tech was, turned off and I found myself facing Tyson Perry and Carl Abate, which told me that the man behind me was likely Gunny Kwan. The dream team of special operators I had trained for the Zone.

  “You did a good job, Gurung,” Carl Abate said. “Trained us well. But we’ve taken your skills further, added newer tech, moved past your level, which oddly, seems to have fallen,” he said, frowning at my body armor and ESU coverall.

  “The Zone has changed, Sarge. Didn’t you all get the memo?” I said, my mind running a million kilometers an hour.

  “Yoshida thinks the world of you. Told us not to underestimate you, yet here we are. You unarmed, your stolen multi-million dollar drone neutralized, caught completely unawares,” Abate said.

  “Yeah, about that, why aren’t you hunting the damned CThree that’s ending the world instead of me?”

  “We couldn’t find it,” Tyson suddenly said, earning himself a glance from Abate. “So Yoshida said to do the next best thing… find you. Said you’d figure out where the damned thing was. Said if you could figure out how to hack the bomb in your neck and steal the Decimator, that you’d have a line on this damned Chinese death drone.”

  I could feel Kwan behind me and to the right, slightly out of Elizabeth’s line of fire. Tyson and Abate were spread out as well, both of their weapons aimed my way. They were all professional killers, trained and experienced in taking out other skilled operators.

  Me, my skills were more closely aligned and honed on killing drones. Whatever they had done to Rikki had pulled him out of the fight, leaving me with four hardened killers between me and Plum Blossom.

  “So, how’s this work?” I asked.

  “Easy,” Abate said. He seemed to be the leader. “You give us your intel, we leave you here, trussed up, and the major comes along and retrieves both you and his wayward toy.”

  “I thought we got along, Carl?” I asked.

  He shrugged, moving both shoulders. His right hand was on his weapon, but his left held a small black remote. “We did. As soldiers for the same side. But you’re playing your own hand here, Ajaya. You stepped away from team human, on your own warpath.”

  A little laugh escaped my mouth. “Team human? Really? You do remember that I’ve killed both previous Spiders and more drones than all of you combined? And what about the bomb in my neck that Tyson was chatting about a moment ago, right?”

  “You’d already crossed lines, Ajaya. You disobeyed orders, stepped out of the chain of command, went rogue. But then, you were never a soldier, were you? Never went through the service, never learned to depend on your brothers and sisters in uniform, right? Just did your own thing, hunted your own treasure. Whoever pays you the best, right?”

  “Yeah Sarge, it’s called supporting a family. Wouldn’t know much about that, would you?”

  Sergeant Abate was divorced and his wife had full custody of his child. His eyes went cold and he took a step forward.

  “Don’t, Carl,” Gunny Kwan said from behind me. “It’s what he wants.”

  “What? He’s gonna take me? Unarmed and hand to hand? I’ve been eating little shits like him for breakfast more years than he’s been alive. He may be a hotshot behind a gun, but unarmed? Bullshit!”

  “Major Yoshida expressly warned us not to underestimate him. So now he baits you and you fall right for it,” Kwan said, his voice even. “And Carl? You’re holding the remote to his pet. He doesn’t have to beat you; just has to unlock the drone.”<
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  Damn it. He was exactly right. It had been a long shot, but it was all I could come up with. Dad had taught me to handle myself in a fight, but I mean come on. These people trained for years to kill other people. I had trained to kill drones.

  “You really are a tricky little bastard, aren’t you?” Abate asked.

  I was out of answers, except one. “More like desperate. The Decimator detected an unknown drone following us and there’s at least one Skyhawk within a click of this position.”

  “Not buying it, kid. Gotta give you props though; always trying, aren’t you. I admire the persistence,” he said.

  That’s when the silvery cable snaked out from behind them and wrapped around Elizabeth’s throat. Then she was gone, yanked off her feet like she was tied to the bumper of a fast-moving car.

  Chapter 14

  “What the fuck?” Tyson said, spinning around as something hit me from behind. Kwan’s body weight drove me down onto the pavement, but the impact was reduced by my body armor and kneepads. I was still looking forward, so amidst all the jumbling and bouncing around, I saw the moment that another cable shot out, the tip of it hitting Carl Abate in the chest.

  The cable retracted, the sharp tip bloody, and I followed it back to what looked like a pile of moving wreckage. Shaped like a short, fat cylinder, its exterior was all metal: green, black, brown, and rust-colored. Elizabeth’s body lay in front of it, her neck bent at an angle that wasn’t survivable, her eyes open, unmoving and bulging out of her head.

  Tyson opened fire with his FN carbine, firing short bursts of 7.62mm, every burst hitting the target—and all of them bouncing right off.

  The cylinder was armored with what looked like the exterior plating of numerous salvaged drones. Tiger stripes mixed with Wolf green and black. Its body moved about on four equidistant legs and it shifted quickly from side to side, reducing the hits Tyson was making on it. Segments of the cylinder seemed to spin in either direction.

  I felt a hard knee press down in the middle of my back, then gunfire thundered from right overhead, hot brass tinging to the street on my right as Kwan started to fire his own weapon.

  Abate was still alive, and he lifted his torso off the ground, aimed his rifle one-handed, and fired off a burst. Between the shots, I could hear him wheezing like a punctured truck tire. Sucking chest wound.

  The cylinder danced sideways, then part of its body spun in place, an unseen arm coming around, a black blur shooting from it straight to Abate’s head, knocking him flat.

  The two remaining soldiers continued to fire with limited effect. Tyson pulled a grenade from his vest. Instantly the unknown drone scuttled backward so fast that it was around a building corner before he could even pull the arming pin.

  My eyes flickered to Abate, his skull caved in by a brick, the little remote lying on the street about a meter from his outstretched hand, and more importantly, about three meters from mine.

  “What the fuck was that?” Tyson asked, ducking behind a blown-out Prius.

  “I’m guessing Ajaya was telling the truth about that unknown drone,” Kwan said, putting a new magazine into his rifle.

  “Really? Ya think?” Tyson yelled. “What the fuck was that thing, Gurung?”

  I spit out some dirt, looking around for sign of the drone. “I have no idea, but our best chance at survival is to unlock Rik—ahh, Unit 19 there,” I said.

  “Bullshit!” Tyson said.

  “Yeah, not happening, Ajaya,” Kwan said, his weight still on me. “If you move, I’m going to cap you so… don’t.”

  Something shot out from between a pair of buildings to our right, moving fast enough to make a whistling sound. Tyson ducked and, whatever the projectile was, it hit the windshield of the Prius he was hiding behind, went through the interior, and blasted out the rear window. Twenty-five meters down the street, a broken chunk of metal skidded along the ground.

  “It’s heavily armored, throws rocks and shit like a cannon, and has those cable things, which kinda look like they came from a Render,” I said. “We need firepower.”

  “As soon as we unlock that thing, it’s going to shoot us,” Gunny Kwan said from above me.

  “The Decimator is programmed to protect humans, not kill them,” I said.

  Another swooshing whistle announced a new projectile. Instantly I felt Gunny jump sideways off me just as the curb next to my head exploded into powder and lumps of concrete. The stone had missed Rikki’s motionless form by a decimeter and Kwan’s own body by even less.

  Immediately, I rolled left, nearer to Abate, ignoring Kwan’s threat. Both operators were firing off bursts of two and three rounds, shooting and moving. I was focused on the little black square of tech now lying a meter and a half from me. Without looking around, ignoring the next two kinetic bombs that blasted down among us, I bear crawled as fast as I could scramble, my left hand scooping up the device.

  It looked like an old-style iPhone from years ago, with a flat screen that lit up as soon as I moved it. Luckily it didn’t seem to be secured like the cell phones of long ago. Instead, the screen showed a green lock button and a blank unlock button. Easy enough. Unlock.

  Rikki shot off like a bullet, disappearing across the street between two buildings in an instant. I found the remote’s off switch and powered it down before tucking it into a thigh pocket.

  Then I set about finding my ChemJet. Kwan was kneeling behind an old steel mailbox, the kind we used to use before the Post Office was shut down by Congress as a financial failure. A stone or brick slammed into it as I watched, caving in the thick steel. After flinging the rock or whatever it was, the unknown bot scuttled back over the top of and behind a UPS van that lay on its side in the road.

  I kept looking around till I spotted what I wanted. Behind the Gunny’s cover spot was a neat pile of my weapons.

  “Where the fuck did your uber drone go? It fucking ghosted us,” Tyson said, popping out to nail the bot with a burst of three rounds that spanged off into the distance.

  “He’s hunting,” I said, taking the moment to rush across the ground, diving just as I sensed the Zone bot moving back up onto the van top.

  Behind me, I heard the sound of rock hitting asphalt, then my hands were grabbing the ChemJet as I judo rolled over the weapons pile.

  Coming up onto my knees, I pulled the rifle to my shoulder and simultaneously heard the whine of Rikki’s e-mag weapon firing, followed by the loud ring of metal on metal.

  When I looked, I saw Rikki swooping past the back of the UPS truck, firing magnetically accelerated metal balls at the hidden bot. The ChemJet’s gunsight, motion activated, turned on as soon as I lined up the rifle on the truck.

  “What the hell is it doing? Why doesn’t it kill that thing?” Tyson asked, clearly done with the whole moment.

  There was another sound, the high-pitched whine of Rikki’s missile pods rotating out of his storage nacelles as he stopped in place in mid-air, a rock suddenly flying past where he would have been if he hadn’t stopped. He spun around to bring his missiles to bear and the killer bot came racing up and over the UPS truck and right into my sights. I fired.

  Long burst, maybe seven or eight rounds. Every damned one hit that thing and tore into it like its steel armor was aluminum foil. In fact, the rounds went right on through the bot, and then right through the UPS truck, and then knocked a chunk off the corner of the building behind it. Damn… this ChemJet was a frigging beast!

  The weird Zone drone was lying in the street, torn almost in half, one of its four legs snapping open and closed, over and over, but slowing down.

  “He was flushing the prey out so I could shoot it,” I said. “We’re going to need to save all of his missiles for later.”

  Both soldiers were staring at me and I noticed that their weapons were almost pointing in my direction.

  “You really want to get back into it? We just held a pretty noisy firefight. I doubt we have much time before this place is overrun.”

 
“Incoming UAV units from three directions. Head west to the door under the taco sign,” Rikki said, flying into a position overhead, his gun barrel pointed to the northeast. “You have approximately nine seconds.”

  I didn’t wait for the the others, just bolted at a dead run right past the cylindrical bot, past the UPS truck, and skidded through the doorless opening into the taco place. I heard booted feet pounding right behind me, and I took a glance at the downed bot as I raced by.

  We piled into the restaurant and the air behind us suddenly filled with the hum of incoming drones. I heard Rikki’s e-mag gun snap off a round, heard a crash, then another round fired, followed by a mid-air explosion. Then the sound of the Decimator’s powerful fans rushed past the doorway and off into the distance. A veritable swarm of enemy drones whined away after him.

  I looked around at the two soldiers with me. Kwan’s eyes were intense but his face was blank while Tyson looked a little wild, his breathing heavy. Both stared at me for a second, then almost like they’d synchronized it, their eyebrows went up in question.

  “Leading them away,” I signed in ASL.

  Kwan nodded and began to silently check his gear over. Tyson just stared at me for a moment longer, his eyes still wide but breathing normally again. Then he looked at my rifle and back up at me, eyebrows back up.

  “Experimental—DARPA,” I signed, spelling out the letters.

  He considered that for a second, then nodded, turning to look outside, even walking over to peek out. I took the time to replace the magazine in my rifle, tucking the partial mag into a different pouch. The mags had come pre-packed and I didn’t want to mess with trying to unload and reload empty or partial mags, possibly ruining the ammo in the process. So I was saving the half mags for when I needed them later rather than trying to consolidate the leftover ammo into just one or two magazines.