by J. C. Staudt
“What’s the hold-up?” Yingler wanted to know.
“Robots. Looks like they’re spreading out beyond the circle. They’re patrolling the streets like constables now.” A few of the men reached for their weapons, still concealed beneath jackets and layers of clothing, but I waved them off. “No. It’s fine. Just caught me off-guard, that’s all. I think we’ll be alright as long as we don’t start getting trigger-happy. Follow me.”
We set off down the street, my legs wanting to break into a run and my brain reminding them that anything faster than a walk was liable to garner unwanted attention. There were dozens of intersections, cross streets and side avenues between us and the Commissioner’s house. Kupfer had refrained from making any marks on the map that might give away our destination in case we got caught, so I tried to remember every twist and turn of the route we’d settled on earlier.
All the way there, my heart never stopped pounding, and the medallion never stopped humming in my chest. There was one problem with having an identity well-known to the legion’s collective intelligence: I assumed the synod had told all units to be on the lookout for me. I only hoped we could make it down into the sewers before I came face to face with any of them. Once we’d reached the safety of raw sewage, I wouldn’t have to worry about being recognized anymore.
Just as we encountered the line of stately rowhouses where Mrs. Maude Fitzsimmons was supposed to live, the first fat raindrops began to fall. I assumed Maclin’s engineers had not been so absent-minded as to overlook the robots’ need for water resistance, but wishful thinking never hurt anyone.
In the spacious square outside the Commissioner’s dwelling stood no fewer than five of our mechanized friends, who were guarding a gun emplacement that had been vandalized during the night. We could either take another half hour to circle around them and risk running into others, or we could find a way through.
“I’m guessing none of you happened to bring a facemask, did you?” I asked.
All I got in reply were a bunch of blank stares.
“Okay then. Here’s how we’re going to do this. Berryman and Roper, it’s time you two went on overwatch. Make sure you can see the house and the long gun from your lookouts. Minoe and Jigson, you’re on escape detail. You hang out here and bluewave us if anything happens while we’re inside the Commissioner’s house. If things go bad, we’re gonna fall back this way, and we’ll probably need cover fire. Yingler, Pearson, and Zilch—you’re coming to the house with me. We’ll keep to the edge of the square. I’ll need a human screen until we’re out of sight of those robots. If they see my face, there’s a chance they’ll ID me.”
“What happens if they ID you?”
I paused. “Let’s do our best not to find out. Everybody ready? Overwatch, you’re up first. You’ve got a forty-five second head start. Go now.”
Berryman and Roper hustled off into the thick of the city, their long rifles still disassembled and stowed away inside hidden compartments across their chests and legs. I waited the allotted length of time and told Minoe and Jigson to keep their eyes peeled. Then the four of us lined up and moved out, hugging the edge of the square to keep our distance from the robots at its center. Most of the city’s residents seemed to be doing the same. I wondered what had happened to all the riots and turmoil from the night before. I had been too preoccupied with trying not to die in my tiny rocket pod to even try looking down over the city as I’d left it. Maybe the synod had made a more convincing announcement than I had, or maybe the citizenry had lost interest in the invaders. That, or they’d finally realized that as long as they weren’t hostile toward the robots, the robots would leave them alone.
We hadn’t made it halfway across the square before I heard the motorized hum of movement at our backs. I threw a glance over my shoulder just in time to see a pair of Mark-Fives racing around the corner, heading toward us. The robots guarding the artillery platform hadn’t spotted me yet, thanks to my human meat shield. The two running after us must have gotten a good look at my unprotected side as we passed by.
“Behind you,” I shouted.
For all their law-loving ways, I can’t disparage the efficacy with which Civvy grunts are trained for combat. Zilch spun and activated his flecker shield all in one fluid motion, as if instinct had granted him the foresight to do so. The pole shot from his wrist port and the umbrella fanned out. The robots stopped in their tracks and sent a volley our way. Pearson and Yingler stepped in beside Zilch and returned fire as the flecker particles spattered across the shield like hot electric slime.
Now that my companions were no longer blocking me from sight, I heard the sounds of recognition coming from the other five robots in the square. No half-witted bucket of bolts is gonna catch me today, I promised. Unfortunately, by the end of that day, I wouldn’t be able to live up to that promise.
Pearson may have fancied himself a gearhead, but he wasn’t a half-bad shot, either. He put a laser bolt through a Mark-Five’s eye, sending the head up in a spout of flame. The robot’s body continued on as programmed, its sensors blown and unable to locate us, but its arms still fully capable of firing its weapon in our direction. The erratic bursts zipped in mercilessly, but the shield’s ionic barrier pulled them spiraling off course, toward itself.
The rain strengthened to a drizzle. I drew my hand pulser and fired a few snapshots over Pearson’s shoulder. They, like the majority of my companions’ laser bolts, struck the robots and deteriorated harmlessly across their metal carapaces. Yingler managed a glancing shot off a weak point in a robot’s rifle. The weapon sparked and hissed, then erupted in a shower of steam as it lost pressure. Seeing that the automatons in the square were poised to join fire from our left, I activated my own shield and stepped up beside Yingler. A dozen flecker particles splashed home against the shield instead of hitting him.
“Thanks,” I heard him breathe, cheek pressed to the stock of his rifle.
Then, a strange thing happened. As soon as I came to the front of the group, the robots stopped firing and started running toward us again. We backed up as a unit, heading for cover at the nearest side street. If this commotion doesn’t get the synod’s attention, nothing will, I predicted with dismay. Just before we rounded the corner of the building, a laser bolt snapped down from the roof of a nearby manse. One of the robots buzzed like a stuck gear and toppled over in its tracks.
“It’s Berryman,” Zilch yelled. “Death from above.”
“Score one for the good guys,” I shouted back. I couldn’t believe I was calling the Civs good guys. But as I had come to learn, that term is often more relative than we believe.
Back where we had entered the square, Minoe and Jigson had entered the crossfire, and were trying unsuccessfully to draw one or two of the remaining robots off our case. The one Berryman had shot picked itself up and continued forward, parts dangling from its face, torso, and limbs. A laser bolt came from a church tower and struck one of the others from behind. Its arm surged and jolted, carrying its weapon off course but doing nothing to stop it running toward us.
“These things just don’t want to stay down,” said Yingler, firing shot after shot.
I told you they were tough, I might’ve said. I tried to warn you. “They have weak spots, but they’re not easy to find.”
The robots were converging on us now. There was no way we were going to take them all down before they got to us.
Yingler spoke fast. “Muller, we can’t hold out here. You’ve got to go. Get inside that house and we’ll be on the comms. Meet up later.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I took off down the street, allowing the delicious warmth in my chest to spread through my body. I glanced back as I ducked down another street, making my roundabout way toward the Commissioner’s house. Pearson, Yingler, and Zilch were scattering like roaches as the robots opened fire again, bearing down on their position.
One long stretch of backstreet turned into another. After a handful more, I lost count, as well
as my sense of direction. With all these buildings in the way, and with the rainstorm reducing visibility to almost nothing, I could no longer see the tall row of houses in which the Commissioner lived, nor could I tell which street would take me to them. Even if I’d had any idea where I was going, I ran into a pair of robots on what seemed like every other street corner. Separated from both my companions and Yingler’s map, I spent the next indeterminate length of time getting hopelessly and irrevocably lost.
4
When I finally located the Commissioner’s house again, I found I had swung around behind it and was coming in from the opposite direction. Another line of rowhouses stood in my way, but with robots patrolling either end of the long street ahead of me, I opted to take the shortest path: straight over.
I had climbed only a few feet into the full greenery of the massive oak in front of the nearest house when its occupants—a man, his wife, and their two children—returned home. I froze as soon as I saw them stepping through the gate and starting down the front walkway. I could hear the man’s keys jingling as they passed beneath me. The younger child was whining about something. The older, a small boy of about six, stopped partway down the walkway and looked up, squinting against the rain.
Our eyes locked, and I put a finger to my lips. Don’t squeal on me, kid. Just pretend I’m not here and move along.
“Billy,” came his mother’s voice. “What are you doing? Come on inside before you get soaked.”
“Mommy?” he said uncertainly.
When I saw him point upward, I took off climbing. The medallion sped my reaction time, but it didn’t make me any better at scaling wet trees with no climbing spikes and one arm in a cast. The sides of my boots were scraping along the slick branches for traction when the woman’s scream startled me. My feet slipped free, and I found myself hanging from an upright branch, like a fireman who’s found that the floor beneath his sliding pole has inexplicably vanished.
The woman was shouting for help, dragging her child toward the door and hollering at her husband to quit just standing there and do something. I managed to hook my leg around a branch and pull myself into a vaguely stable position. My left arm was throbbing in its plaster cast; the strength in my right was wearing thin from having to carry most of the load. The agile leaps and bounds by which I had imagined myself surmounting this obstacle were the result of my prolonged overreliance on a plethora of augments.
I struggled up the tree as neighbors gathered around beneath their umbrellas to peer up into its foliage. I could hear them muttering shameful remarks about burglars and peeping toms. It was one of the most embarrassing physical struggles I’ve ever undergone, just to climb high enough so I could plant my feet and leap to the semicircular balcony on the house’s top floor. From there, I clung to the decorative brickwork and managed, with some difficulty, to haul myself up to the building’s flat roof.
Finally out of my hecklers’ sight, I stood and found the row of houses where the Commissioner lived standing across the plummeting gap above a wide back alley. I sprinted across the roof, splashing through puddles like a child at play, and leapt. My hydraulic legs carried me a great distance, but as the inadequate trajectory of my jump became apparent, I began to miss both the puddle-splashing days of my youth and the gravity-defying aid of my solenoid.
With dismay, I watched the roofline rise out of reach and felt myself begin to fall. I was staring down through four stories of open air onto a dingy cobbled street. My body was still moving forward, though, and I slammed into the third-floor fire escape and doubled over the railing. The wind left my lungs in a great whoosh. I started to slip from the rain-slick banister as my dangling feet searched for something to step on.
It may be the only time in my life I ever thanked the heavens for armpits. When I slipped off my stomach, those two underappreciated crevices saved me a long plummet to the street. Pulling myself up until I could shove my boot between two posts in the railing, I climbed over and flopped onto solid, wrought-iron ground. I’m losing it, I thought to myself as I brushed rust and leaves off my wet clothes and hobbled toward the window. As I came closer, I saw the curtains swing closed, as if someone had just been peering out at me.
A second later, someone swept the curtains aside, and I found myself under the sharp-eyed stare of a graying man in his fifties. In his hands was an old blunderbuss, its flared barrel yawning into my face like the mouth of a cave. A cave of wonders, with all manner of dangerous treasures inside. The rain running down the window made it difficult to see any further into the house’s dim interior, but I could tell by the look on the man’s face that he’d have no qualms about shooting through the glass if he had to. The blunderbuss would have no qualms about adding that glass to its pile of dangerous treasures, either.
“Oh, give me a break,” I muttered, raising my hands in surrender. “This is just what I need right now.” I gave the alley below a pair of over-the-shoulder glances to make sure no robots had picked up my trail. “Listen,” I said, speaking to be heard through the window. “I’m looking for a Mrs. Maude Fitzsimmons. I’m here to help.”
“Don’t need any help,” the man said matter-of-factly.
“I’m here with the Civs,” I tried. “The Civil Regency Corps. I’m an undercover agent, and I very much need to speak with Mrs. Fitzsimmons.”
“Yeah, right… and I’m a circus clown.” He waved the blunderbuss, either to indicate that he wanted me to leave or that I ought to turn around. Since he didn’t accompany this gesture with words of any kind, I wasn’t sure which. I indicated as much, but he only repeated himself.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Get lost before I blow you clean through the next building.”
That, I understood. I stepped back slowly until I felt my backside come to rest against the iron banister. Okay, old man, I thought, staring him down. Let’s see if you can pull that trigger faster than I can whip out my flecker shield. No guarantees the shield would stop whatever was in that blunderbuss, but it’d be a lot better than stopping it with my face.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” I said. “I just want to talk to Maude. That’s all. Please bring her here and let me talk to her.” If this guy didn’t cooperate, I might as well tell Chaz and the others to take their chances with the escape tubes.
The man squinted his right eye and took a long, hard look at me. “What’s this about?”
“Her job. The sewers. We’re trying to infiltrate the palace and rescue the Regent.”
Without taking his squinty eyes off me, he leaned back a little and hollered Maude’s name.
A moment passed.
“What is it, Jack?” I heard her say.
“Gentleman here to see you.”
“What kind of gentleman?”
“Out on the fire escape. Says he’s a marshal or something. Says he’s here to save the Regent.”
“What’s he need me for?”
“Don’t rightly know.”
“Well why don’t you ask him, Jack?”
He frowned, then gave me a dry look. “What do you want with her?”
“I don’t want her. I just need a map of Roathea’s sewage system.”
Jack leaned back. “He wants a map of the sewers.”
“I don’t keep them here,” I heard her say. “They’re all at the office.”
“She keeps them at the office.”
Of course she does, I realized. Why would she keep any of her maps at home? The more pertinent question was how I could’ve overlooked something so obvious. “In that case, I guess I do need her,” I said. “But just to get me into her office, wherever that is.”
Maude appeared at the window. She studied me for a moment, then turned her eyes to the blunderbuss in her husband’s hands. “Oh, Jack, will you put that thing away? Can’t you see he isn’t one of those robot things?”
“Well you just never know, Maude,” he said, lowering the weapon.
“The poor fellow is liab
le to drown out there,” Maude said. She unlatched the window and slid it open, then stuck out her hand. “Maude Fitzsimmons.”
I used the opportunity to both shake her hand and help myself inside. “Muller Jakes,” I said absently, forgetting my alias altogether as the relief of not being blunderbussed swept over me. I ducked under the window and stepped into a room full of paintings and antique furniture. The smell of coffee and breakfast was still thick in the air, and I considered asking the aging couple if there were any leftovers.
Maude Fitzsimmons had short gray hair and possessed the build of a summertime rabbit—slender up top, and thick through the base. Her quick movements, not nervous so much as alert, evoked the image all the more. She gave me the same skeptical look as her husband, who was still clutching the blunderbuss at his side. After she closed the window, Maude said, “I’ll fetch you something to dry off with. Then you can tell me again what it is you’re planning to do.”
She was back in a few seconds with a fluffy cream-colored towel that had the letters JF monogrammed into the terry bar. I caught Jack’s bothered frown as I used it to dry my hair.
“I’m here with a group of sky marshals from the Civil Regency Corps,” I explained. “The Regent’s palace is under heavy guard, so we’re going to try to get in through the sewers and rescue him. On our way here, the robots attacked us and we got separated. That’s why I’m alone for the time being. We need a map, and we heard you were the one to see.”
“I am,” she assured me, “but I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. You should’ve gone to city hall if you wanted maps or schematics.”
“Where’s city hall? Can you get me inside?”
“On an average day, I could. But not today. When those robots showed up last night, they cordoned off everything within about a mile radius of the throne. I’d be in my office right now, if we hadn’t all been ordered to stay in our homes today.”
I had been hoping for better news. The whole point of using the sewers was to bypass the protective circle. Fighting our way through the circle just to get to the maps so we could navigate the sewers… well, that kind of defeated the purpose.
