by Isaac Hooke
“Mayor,” Rade sent. “Is this building capable of withstanding a dome breach, as per colony code?”
“It’s up to code,” the Mayor replied. “You punch a big enough hole, the ventilation seals will automatically activate, and the building air system will switch to its internal oxygen supply. The skyscraper will pressurize fully. We’ll have enough air for at least several weeks. Hopefully enough time for the repair swarm to fix any breaches. All of this assumes of course that the emergency power kicks in. Remember, Zoltan prevented us from opening the exit to our floor all this time...”
“TJ,” Rade said. “What do you think? Will the skyscraper seal or not?”
TJ responded a moment later. “All the emergency interfaces have power, as far as I can tell. It should seal.”
“Mayor, will my r—” Rade almost said robots. “Will my men be able to get out if the building seals off?”
“Yes,” the mayor replied. “Inner hatches will activate at the main exits, effectively transforming them into airlocks.”
“Bender, order all remaining HS3s into the building!” Rade said. “Units A, B, E, get inside! Harlequin, join them! We’re going to vent the atmosphere!”
“What about you?” Harlequin said.
“I’m strapping into Tahoe’s passenger seat.” Rade activated the securing clamps of the seat. On his overhead map, the blue dots representing the Centurions and HS3s converged with the stairwell superstructure. The HS3s timed their approach to match the entry of the combat robots, the smaller scouts evidently flitting inside before the door shut.
“Shaw, I want you to fire the lasers in a spread pattern,” Rade said. “Strategically weaken the glass. Basically, prepare areas of the dome to receive Hellfire strikes. I want to explosively decompress this atmosphere. Suck these damn drones out.”
“Will do,” Shaw replied.
“Fire when ready.”
A few seconds later: “I’ve prepared four side by side regions to accept missile impacts. Launching Hellfires now.”
Rade waited as the tense moments passed. The second wave of rooftop smoke was clearing away again by the time he heard explosions. The concussive force of the expanding gases tore over the rooftop, rippling the smoke, and crashing a few of the drones.
He glanced skyward. A large gash had been cut through the dome, revealing the natural red sky. It was like a bloody sore in the roof of the world. The missiles had weakened the surrounding glass enough to cause more sections to break free, so that in moments it had expanded to about four times the original size.
The wind picked up to gale levels, and the smoke and drones were swept from the rooftop, along with two of the goose neck vents. Other superstructures and loose debris from the buildings below swept past, some striking the mechs. The Hoplites themselves were unaffected by the winds—the war machines were far too heavy.
With the smoke gone, Rade realized that one of the reptilian creatures had attained the rooftop in the confusion. It had crawled behind TJ, and towered over his Hoplite, somewhat over twice as tall as the unit.
“TJ!” Rade called.
Too late. The metal armor around the creature’s head shifted, sliding back and lifting. It was apparently a visor of some kind. With the metal moved aside, another head was revealed, this one possessing a green snout above a toothy maw, with two horns above the eyes. That mouth opened, showcasing jaws a meter in size, filled with serrated, conical teeth.
Rade saw all of that in the millisecond it took the creature to wrap those teeth around TJ’s passenger seat. The jaw tore through the metal, and when the creature ripped its head away it had removed a substantial portion of the seat, including the sanitation robot TJ had carried.
The creature tossed the crunched metal and destroyed sanitation robot aside—the wind sucked the debris into the sky immediately. As the reptile’s giant mouth closed, the visor slid shut once again, protecting its face.
“Yup,” Bender transmitted. “Definitely a bug.”
Bender’s Hoplite leaped at the creature and landed on the back of its neck. The armored head bowed under the weight.
Another creature topped the west side of the roof, and smashed into Bender in a blur, pulling his Hoplite off the first and crushing the mech under its weight.
Fret and Lui hurtled into the creature, knocking it away from Bender.
A part of Rade’s mind noticed that the wind had died down by then—the atmosphere had completely vented. The Perdix were no more. On his map, the red dots of the swarm were scattered across the dunes lying outside the dome, as recorded by the Argonaut’s sensors.
Tahoe leaped at the first creature, which was still trying to recover its balance after Bender was knocked away. Rade was jerked about in the passenger seat. Tahoe wrapped his arms around the armored reptile’s torso. The creature managed to swing the Hoplite down off its back with a free limb, and it bashed its head down on the mech. That visor slid aside, and Rade was forced to duck as sharp teeth nearly bit into him.
TJ struck the foe in the side, knocking it off-balance once again.
The giant lizard’s head armor resealed, and it took a few wobbly steps crabwise, toward the building edge.
“No no NO!” Rade said as the creature plunged from the rooftop, drawing Tahoe over the ledge with it.
Those six arms wrapped firmly around the Hoplite, preventing Tahoe from jetting away. Falling from that height without being able to deploy the air brakes, or successfully fire the aerospike thrusters, would basically destroy the mech and its operator.
Because of his position in the passenger seat, facing away from the creature’s body, Rade was able to revoke the clamps and release himself from the seat. Just in time, too, because the creature’s head visor opened up to tear into the Hoplite once more.
Rade pushed away, shoving off into empty space. It felt like he was floating; the blur of the building beside him reminded him of the deadly fall. He would strike the ground in seconds.
He activated his jet pack to further the distance from the plunging pair; he allowed his rifle to hang from his shoulder by the strap, then fired lateral thrust to turn around, withdrawing the secondary blaster at his belt at the same time.
“Warning, ground impact imminent,” the voice of his suit AI intoned.
Rade aimed at the unshielded tips of those appendages and fired three quick shots in turn. Those three limbs released the Hoplite, and Tahoe was able to break free.
Rade fired braking thrust, as did the Hoplite. Air brakes extended from the mech’s shoulder area. One of them was damaged, Rade noticed. That only meant Tahoe would have to fire more thrust to slow his descent.
Below them, the creature smashed into the pavement. Tahoe’s Hoplite landed hard beside it, but the impact wasn’t enough to damage his mech. Rade landed lightly nearby.
Tahoe was already on the fallen opponent. He ripped open the visor with his Hoplite and shot his cobra point blank into that lifeless face. A black plume of smoke misted from the fresh wound as the blood boiled upon contacting the voided environment of the dome. The creature remained motionless.
“Pretty sure it’s dead, Tahoe,” Rade said as the Hoplite fired into the head again, this time with the cobra on the other arm. “Lui, how are we doing on the rooftop?”
He switched to Lui’s viewpoint and saw that the remaining Hoplites had also torn open the visor of the remaining creature. Blood misted from multiple laser wounds in its face and exposed lower limbs.
“We got the situation under control,” Lui said.
“Shaw, any more of them out there?” Rade said.
“Negative,” Shaw replied. “That was the last of them. Well done.”
Bender’s mech was standing close to Lui’s.
“If aliens could wear body armor, this is what they would look like,” Bender said.
“They’re not alien,” Lui said. “My scans tell me they’re definitely bioengineered from Earth stock. I’m seeing very specific genetic markers in the DNA
from reptiles and birds, along with a lot of staggered DNA cuts and insertions, as is common with CRISPR/Cpf1 genome editing. That’s a trademark of Sino-Korean work. Whoever made these was definitely brought up in the SK school of bioweaponry.”
“Yeah well,” Manic said. “Obviously the designer wasn’t very good at bioengineering if he had to throw in a friggin’ suit of armor!”
“Sometimes it’s impossible to get all the desired traits you’re looking for in bioengineered creations,” Lui said. “Especially if you’re pressed for time. The simulator does a good job of estimating what traits will dominate, but nature sometimes throws you a curveball, and you have to go back to the drawing board. It very well could have been easier to design a suit of armor for the creature rather than burning through another five hundred generations of zygotes to develop that armor naturally.”
“It’s a little disturbing how much you know about bioengineering...” Bender said.
“I purchased a CRISPR kit a while back,” Lui said. “Gene editing is a hobby of mine.”
“Which begs the question, who the hell makes gene editing a hobby?”
“What I don’t get is how these things survived once we breached the dome,” Manic said. “What with their extremities exposed to the vacuum like that. Plus they kept opening their visors to bite at us. Couldn’t have been a pressurized environment inside that armor.”
“According to my readings,” Lui said. “Like birds and reptiles, they don’t have sweat glands, and instead rely on evaporation of water from their lungs. When exposed to low pressure environments, organs in their throats seal up, allowing them to function either in atmospheric or vacuum conditions. The only worry for them when operating under the latter conditions is that they might overheat.”
“What about respiration?” Manic said.
“It looks like they can hold their breath as long as a sperm whale, for up to ninety minutes,” Lui said. “Due to extra myoglobin levels, which stores oxygen in the muscle tissue.”
“How can they see with that armor covering their eyes?” Fret said.
“Probably some sort of LIDAR system feeding them visual information,” Lui said.
Bender spoke again. “The more I listen, the more I think: what kind of price would we get on the black market if we sold their genome? Plus designs for the armor that goes with it?”
“We don’t deal in weapons,” Rade said. “Erase your data, Lui.”
“You got it boss,” Lui replied.
Bender cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by the suggestion he had just made. “Bug has certainly got armor...” he said, obviously attempting to change the subject.
“Armored Bugs,” Lui said. “That’s what we’ll call them.”
“Dude, that’s a terrible name,” Bender said.
“You came up with it...”
“No I didn’t,” Bender said. “I was making a comment.”
“Armored Bugs it is,” Manic said.
Rade muted the connection. He glanced at Tahoe’s Hoplite. “I need a moment. Get up on the rooftop and supervise for a while.”
“Supervise?” Tahoe said, sounding confused.
“Yeah,” Rade said.
He approached the main entrance to the building. Through the glass, he saw that an inner seal had activated, turning it into an airlock. The emergency power had worked in that regard after all. That was a relief. He knew he had risked the colonists lives by hoping that the pressurization system would activate, but the thing was, if Rade and his team died, the colonists wouldn’t survive anyway.
Rade approached the glass door, and the previous hack caused it to open immediately. He stepped inside and the door sealed behind him. He waited for the air to mist inside, and watched Tahoe activate his jumpjets outside to begin the return trip to the rooftop.
The inner hatch opened and Rade stepped into the building. He sat down on one of the steps leading to the main concourse. Well, he more collapsed than sat down, really.
“Rade, are you all right?” Shaw sent.
“Yeah, just need some space,” Rade said. “I’m turning on call screening. Don’t let anybody through unless it’s an emergency.”
Rade sat there, listening to his shaky breath for long moments. His gloved hands were trembling from adrenalin hangover. He felt nauseous, and light-headed.
Don’t vomit, don’t vomit, don’t vomit.
He clenched his fists. The shaking only increased. Then he relaxed his fingers.
Mercifully, the nausea passed.
He slumped forward and stared straight ahead, seeing nothing.
He heard the distant voice of an AI from a time long past. “Warning: armor penetrated.”
seventeen
Rade. Boss.”
Rade blinked. He realized a figure in a jumpsuit was kneeling in front of him. Harlequin.
“How long have you been kneeling there?” Rade said.
“Only a few seconds,” Harlequin replied. “But we’ve been trying to contact you for the past five minutes.”
“Why didn’t you tell Shaw to ping me,” Rade said. “She’s been screening my calls.”
“I did ping you,” Shaw transmitted. “You weren’t answering me either.”
“Your vitals were okay, and we could tap into your vision feed, so we knew you were conscious,” Harlequin said. “They sent me down to check on you.”
“You all right, boss?” Bender said. The concern was obvious in his voice.
“I’m fine.” Rade stood. “That battle just drained me a little, that’s all.”
“Bet you miss the meds the navy used to feed us,” Fret said. “Block all that shit out.”
“Block what out?” Rade said. “I told you I was fine. And I don’t want to hear anything more on the matter.”
He noticed a couple of Centurions were in the concourse with him, guarding the entrance to the building. He glanced at his overhead map. Tahoe had arranged the Hoplites into a defensive perimeter on the rooftop.
Good man.
Rade glanced through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the sky outside and zoomed in on the rent. He spotted the small, crab-like dome repair bots slowly moving along the ragged edges, 3D printing a plug. “How long until the rooftop dome is repaired?”
“Given the current rate of repair,” Lui said. “We’re looking at two weeks, at least.”
“Unit D, get the mayor to show us where the lab is on the map,” Rade said. “It’s time to track down Ms. Bounty.”
“I have it,” the unit said a moment later. “Marking the location.”
Rade watched a flashing waypoint appear on his overhead map, about five blocks away, two blocks north of the damaged pedway station shed.
“By the way,” the unit continued. “Farhad wants to know how many of those bioweapons we faced.”
“I see no harm in telling him,” Rade said. “Three.”
A moment later, the unit said: “He tells me there were seven of them trapped in the underground pedway system originally.”
Rade stared worriedly past the floor-to-ceiling windows into the street beyond. The remaining four could be anywhere out there. He wondered how long the glass could hold out to an assault.
Fret carried a spare comm node in the storage compartment of his Hoplite; Rade had him leave it with the colonists. Then he and the others vacated the building and proceeded toward the lab building.
Best to draw the creatures away, if they’re watching us.
Rade, Harlequin and the robots once more shadowed the Hoplites from the rooftops.
When they reached the target building, they discovered that the main door was a slab of metal as thick as the one on floor thirty-five of the skyscraper. Neither TJ nor Bender was able to hack through, so Rade set the Centurions to work cutting it.
The main door was three meters high and two across, just wide enough to fit a Hoplite. Of course, whether or not the mechs could fit depended on the size of the hole the Centurions cut.
“Use
your magnetic attachments to scale the door,” Rade instructed the robots. “I want you to cut a hole big enough to suit a Hoplite.”
The robots activated variable-strength magnets embedded in their boots and knee areas, and scaled the wall to begin their cut as high as possible.
Meanwhile, the Hoplites assumed a defensive formation and guarded the entrance. Rade remained perched on the rooftop of the building opposite.
“Seriously Lui, bro,” Bender said. “Who the hell makes gene editing a hobby?”
“You know I’m a foodie,” Lui said. “That should tell you everything.”
“Uh, it doesn’t?”
“I’m looking to craft the perfect turkey breast,” Lui said. “Not just for myself, but you guys. I know how much you love turkey and chicken. Well, I’m going to create the most perfect, most succulent piece of edible delight for you all.”
“I think Lui needs a girlfriend,” Manic said.
“Why, when he already has you?” Bender said.
“Lui, I give you a free pass to cheat on me,” Manic said.
“Thanks,” Lui said. “Bender, what are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing with you,” Bender replied.
“What? Come on, I got room in my mech,” Lui said. “They don’t call it a cockpit for nothing.”
Bender got up and moved to the far side of the defensive perimeter before settling in again.
“We can visit Bangkok instead?” Lui said in mock hopefulness.
Rade chuckled softly.
What would I do without my team.
“You okay down there?” Shaw sent on a private line.
“Fine,” Rade told her.
“I thought I heard you crying just now,” Shaw said.
“Uh, no,” Rade said. “That was a laugh.”
“Oh. Well, I was worried about you back there. Not just during the battle, but afterward.”
“I know,” Rade said.
“Don’t do this to me,” Shaw said. “Don’t shut me out.”
Rade sighed. “Sometimes I just need some time alone.”
“All right,” Shaw said. “But I think you should start your counseling sessions with Bax again.”
