“Blaze, are you hurt?” demanded Donnell.
“Just a minor burn. I dodged too slowly.”
“Learn to dodge faster,” he said, in a hard voice, and fired his gun again.
I tried to ignore the pain in my shoulder and took my turn at firing. My gun was still counting hostile targets. The number of drones went down to thirty, and then to fifteen. I was starting to think we could take them all, but Ghost spoke when the count was down to twelve. “We’re running out of arrows. We can take two more.”
A second later, I heard the voice of my gun. “Warning, power level nearing critical.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Archers, use your remaining arrows and get inside the monument,” said Donnell. “Blaze, we’ll save the last of our guns’ power to cover their retreat, and then follow them in.”
I ducked behind the parapet just as a laser beam hit it, melting some of the stone, and sending a hot fragment flying into my face. I rubbed blood from my cheek as the archers took their last shots. There was the sound of running footsteps as they obeyed Donnell’s orders and headed inside the monument.
Donnell took down one drone with his gun, and then I shot one myself.
“Warning, power level approaching critical,” said my gun.
“Gun power level?” asked Donnell.
“Approaching critical,” I said.
We each fired again. My gun told me there were six hostile targets remaining, before adding ominous words. “Final warning. Power level now bordering critical. Extreme caution advised.”
“Gun power level?” Donnell repeated the question.
“Bordering critical.”
“You can take one more shot now, but you mustn’t try to fire your gun again after that,” said Donnell. “Just run to join the others. I’ll take my own shot, and then be right behind you.”
I fired my gun at the leading drone. It plummeted downwards, and I scrambled to my feet and ran into the monument.
“Power level now critically dangerous,” said my gun.
I was feeling cold and breathless, and a giddy spell made me stumble on the stairs. I’d felt these symptoms once before, when I first put the gun on my arm, and knew it meant the gun was out of power and drawing energy from my body heat.
As I clattered on down the stairs, I heard Donnell firing his gun, and the number of red dots on my tracking display went down from five to four. When I reached the first doorway, I instinctively glanced over my shoulder to check that Donnell was coming, and saw him appear at the top of the stairs. He started running down them, but there was the menacing shape of a drone close behind him. The drone’s lights flashed the fierce, red colour that meant it was about to fire.
I turned, raised my right hand, and screamed. “Get down!”
Donnell threw himself sideways. The red beam of the drone’s laser missed him, carving a long gash in the stone wall of the staircase instead. Donnell came rolling down the stairs towards me, and I saw the drone’s laser was turning to target him again.
“Stay down!” I yelled.
I fired at the drone, and it crashed onto the stone steps next to Donnell. I wasn’t just feeling cold now, but as if I’d been plunged into icy water, and my gun’s tracking display had vanished.
I was finding it hard to think, but it was obvious that something was terribly wrong. My gun’s tracking display shouldn’t shut down when there were still three more drones hunting for us. I looked down at my gun, and saw the intricate segments of the main section were limp and lifeless, while the tendrils had stopped flashing entirely.
Another drone was coming down the stairs towards us now. Donnell struggled to his feet, grabbed me, dragged me through the doorway into the room, and shoved me into a corner.
I swayed, leant against the wall to steady myself, and looked around the room. Ice was by the doorway, pulling off his coat. Ghost, Wall, and Raeni were near the two windows. I could hear Tad’s voice babbling words, but I couldn’t see him or work out what he was saying.
Raeni pointed in my direction. “The off-worlder boy is useless. He’s having a massive panic attack.”
I finally realized Tad was in the corner right next to me, sitting on the floor with his hands over his ears.
Donnell ignored Raeni’s remark. “There are three drones left. They could cut their way through the stone walls, but they’ll probably take the easier option of coming in through the door and the windows.”
Donnell stripped off his coat and joined Ice, so one of them was on each side of the doorway. I remembered that we were supposed to throw our coats over incoming drones. This room had one open doorway and two windows. The two windows both still had glass in them, but that wasn’t going to be much of a barrier to drones armed with lasers.
Donnell and Ice were guarding the door, so I should help Ghost, Wall, and Raeni guard the two windows. I tried to take off my coat, but my fingers were so numb with cold that I could only fumble at the buttons.
A wave of giddiness hit me. The room seemed to be spinning, and my legs crumpled under me. I would have fallen, but Ice reached out a hand to catch my arm and lower me to the floor next to Tad.
“Are you wounded, Blaze?” asked Ice.
I tried to answer him, but my frozen lips wouldn’t move. I could hear what Tad was saying now.
“Cage can’t be overriding my orders. He can’t. It’s utterly impossible, but it’s still happening. I have to find a way to ...”
“Are you wounded, Blaze?” repeated Ice.
Donnell turned to glare at Ice, and spoke in a savage voice. “Blaze isn’t wounded. She’s dying. Armed Agent weapons aren’t intended for long battles. By the time we retreated from the balcony, our guns’ power was down to critically dangerous levels, so I ordered Blaze not to fire another shot. When I first gave her the gun, I warned her that firing it in that situation would be life threatening. The fool still disobeyed me, and fired a completely unnecessary shot at one of the drones on the stairs, so now her gun is killing her.”
That shot hadn’t been unnecessary. It had saved Donnell’s life. I considered swearing at him, but still couldn’t speak. I’d never felt this cold before.
“What do you mean?” demanded Ice. “Why is Blaze’s gun killing her?”
“An Armed Agent weapon normally recharges itself by a combination of taking power from nearby power storage units and using excess body heat from its owner,” said Donnell, in a harsh voice. “We’re inside what’s probably the only building in Manhattan that doesn’t have a power storage unit, so Blaze’s gun had to take all the power for that last shot from her body heat. That will have drastically lowered her body temperature, and the gun is still having to draw more body heat for its basic operating power, so she’s dying from cold.”
“You’re saying that we need to warm Blaze up,” said Ice. “There isn’t any heating in this monument, so we’ll have to make a fire.”
“There’s nothing burnable here,” said Donnell bitterly, “but even if we could make a fire as large as the alliance cooking fire, it still wouldn’t be enough to save Blaze without a power storage unit.”
Raeni coughed pointedly. “There’s a drone outside this window.”
“There are two drones out there,” said Ghost. “One outside each of the windows.”
“There’s another one lurking outside the door,” said Donnell. “They’re assessing the situation before making their attack.”
Ice was still staring at me. “Blaze is my cousin’s daughter, and my only living blood relative on this planet. Is there any way to make her gun take its power from my body instead of hers?”
“Chaos weeping, Ice!” screamed Donnell. “If I could make Blaze’s gun take its power from someone else, I’d have already set it to take power from me. It isn’t possible. The gun is linked to Blaze’s body. It can only take its power from her body.”
I was dying, I thought. That explained why I couldn’t speak or move. I should be feeling either fear or a
nger that my life was slipping away, but both my body and my mind were too numb with cold to feel anything at all.
“There has to be something we can do to help Blaze,” said Ice. “If this gun doesn’t have a safety mechanism that stops it draining so much heat from her body that it kills her, then we have to find a way to shut it down.”
“We can’t shut the gun down,” said Donnell. “Blaze’s gun is linked to her brain, so if it shuts down then she dies. That’s why the gun doesn’t have a safety mechanism. It has to take the basic operating power it needs from her body or she dies anyway.”
Donnell gave a groan of despair. “There’s nothing I can do to save Blaze. I want to sit on the floor, cradle her in my arms, and wail my grief, but I have to keep fighting or we all die.”
Tad lifted his head and shouted. “The drones contain power packs! Smash a drone’s laser weapon and enough rods to disable it, but leave the central sphere with the flashing lights intact.”
Donnell turned to stare at him. “Tad’s right. If we can take a drone prisoner, it’s possible that Blaze’s gun will be able to take the power it needs from its power pack instead of her body. Ice, you and I will take the stairs drone prisoner. Ghost, Wall, and Raeni will deal with whatever comes through the windows.”
“Door and windows,” muttered Tad. “That’s the answer. I have to overwhelm the security system with multiple commands at once. Hundreds of them. Cage won’t be able to override them all.”
“Incoming now!” yelled Ghost.
I saw the glass in both the windows start glowing and then melt. All three of the drones entered the room in a synchronized attack, one coming through the door, and another through each of the two windows.
Donnell and Ice both threw coats over the door drone, knocking it to the floor. It managed to fire its laser once as it went down, but then Ice stamped on the laser and smashed it to pieces.
Over at the windows, Ghost had hurled his coat over one of the drones, knocking it to the floor so quickly that it didn’t have time to shoot before he and Raeni started stamping on it. The other turned its laser to fire at Raeni, but Wall hurled both his coat and his body onto it. As they crashed to the floor, I saw the laser beam flash upwards, piercing a hole through Wall and on into the ceiling.
Raeni gave a strange cross between a gasp and a scream, and turned to kick at the drone. Wall rolled to one side, grasped his left arm with his right, struggled to his feet, and joined her in stamping on the drone.
“I thought you were dead,” said Raeni.
“The drone only got my left shoulder,” Wall kept stamping. “I’m going to get every inch of its body.”
Raeni reached out to touch the neat hole in Wall’s shoulder that was oozing blood, before drawing her hand back, and staring at the red stain on her fingers with an oddly dazed expression.
“My drone is dead,” said Ghost calmly. “Wall and Raeni’s drone looks dead too. Did you manage to capture the stairs drone, Donnell?”
“Yes.” Donnell was on his hands and knees, examining the drone. “We’ve smashed the laser and some of the rods as Tad said, but the central sphere’s flashing lights show the power pack is still active.”
“How close does it need to be to Blaze for this to work?” asked Ice.
“I don’t know.” Donnell picked up the wreckage of the drone and carried it towards me. “I’ve no idea if this will work at all. I’ve never been in a situation like this before.”
He put the drone down on the stone floor next to me. I saw the lights of its central sphere flashing the bright red that meant it was trying to fire its broken laser, and one of the rods waved back and forth twice before going still again.
“While the New York power supply was turned off, the Parliament House had a limited supply of solar power,” continued Donnell, “but Machico made sure that the power storage unit in my apartment had at least a minimum charge. I found that if I used a bow most of the time I was out hunting, and only fired my gun six times, then it could recharge fully overnight.”
He knelt beside me, and studied the limp, dark tendrils of my gun anxiously. “Chaos weeping, I can’t see any improvement at all.”
“Yes!” Tad cried in triumph. “I’ve finally established a basepoint in the security system, and can start taking control of sections. Too late to be any help in the battle but ...”
He moved to kneel next to Donnell. “Let’s try establishing actual physical body contact between Blaze and the drone.”
Tad gently lifted my right hand to place it on top of the drone’s central sphere. It felt like I was touching the sun-warmed body of a giant beetle. The drone’s lights were flashing faster now. I knew it was only a machine, so it shouldn’t have emotions, but I felt that it hated me.
The lights of my gun started flashing faster too, and I had the creepy feeling that it was talking to the drone, or perhaps it was arguing with it. Whatever was going on, my right hand was getting warmer and warmer.
“That sphere is hot.” It was only after I’d said the words that I realized I was able to talk again. It wasn’t just my hand that was getting warmer. My whole body was getting warmer too.
“You’re back with us then, Blaze.” Donnell peered into my eyes. “I wasn’t sure whether you were conscious earlier or not.”
“I’ve been conscious all the time. At least, I think I was.” I frowned. “The sphere is getting even hotter.”
Ice touched the top of the sphere. “It feels quite cold to me.”
“It’s your gun that’s getting hot, Blaze, not the sphere.” Donnell moved back a little, but still didn’t take his eyes from my face. “My gun hand feels warm as well. I think the guns are in some sort of emergency recharge mode that ...”
He broke off his sentence and began another one. “Yes, my gun has now recharged to just above the critical power level. My right hand seems to be returning to its normal temperature again, so I think my gun has swapped back to standard recharge mode.”
Everyone else had gathered around to watch us now. “Why would a gun go back to standard recharging if it’s still barely above critical power level?” asked Ghost.
“Because emergency recharge speed is dangerous,” said Tad. He touched the back of my right hand, and then my forehead. “Blaze has gone from freezing cold to burning hot.”
“Should we move the drone away from her?” asked Ice.
“No,” said Donnell. “We have to let the gun get above critical power level, or it will start taking power from her body heat again. How do you feel, Blaze?”
“I feel like I’ve got the winter fever.”
“Tell us as soon as your gun goes above the critical power level,” said Donnell.
“Once your guns are both above the critical power level, does that mean you two will be able to fire them again if we get in trouble?” asked Ghost.
“No,” said Donnell. “Getting the guns above critical power level just means they won’t be draining our body heat at a life-threatening rate any longer. Once they’re back to standard recharging, we’d need to cuddle that drone for a couple of hours before we could fire them even once, and this is no place to linger. As soon as Blaze’s gun is above the critical power level, we should start heading back down the stairs even if we have to carry her.”
Raeni went across to the corner of the room, picked up her bag, and opened it. “While we’re waiting for Blaze to recover, we should treat our other injured people. Wall needs a bandage on his shoulder. Does anyone else have a wound that needs bandaging?”
“If you have a spare bandage, I could use one for my forearm,” said Ghost.
“There are plenty more bandages in my bag if we need them,” I said.
Raeni tossed a tightly rolled white bandage to Wall, and another to Ghost.
“Ice needs a bandage for his leg as well,” said Ghost. “At least, his clothes have a neat hole just above his ankle, and I’m guessing that means there’s a matching hole in his leg. I suppose our captive droid
shot him when he was stamping on it.”
Ice glowered at him. “It’s only a minor flesh wound. The laser barely grazed me.”
Raeni threw a bandage at him. “Tie it up. We may have to carry Blaze down all those stairs. We don’t want to have to carry you as well.”
She turned to Donnell. “Do you have any injuries?”
Donnell laughed. “Only some bruises from rolling down those stone steps.”
There was a pause while Raeni helped people tie bandages.
“Blaze, didn’t you get hit by a laser when we were shooting from the balcony?” asked Donnell.
I felt that people had put in more than enough effort taking care of me already. “The drone shot me from long range, so I’ve only got a minor burn on my shoulder. I don’t think a bandage would help.”
Raeni nodded. “These bandages are just a temporary measure. Once we’re safely back at Parliament House, Nadira can treat everyone’s wounds properly.”
Donnell and the division leaders all stood up and put on their coats again. “This was my best coat,” mourned Wall. “Now it’s full of holes.”
I heard the voice of my gun speaking in my mind. “Power level above critical. Extreme caution still necessary.”
“My gun just went above the critical power level,” I said. “My fever seems to be easing now, which must mean the gun has gone back to standard recharge mode.”
“Good,” said Donnell briskly. “I’ll help you back to the balcony. I want to check everything is quiet over at the Citadel before we start heading down all those stairs.”
“What about the captive drone?” asked Ghost. “Are we taking it with us?”
Donnell took my hand and pulled me to my feet. “I’m not keen on the idea of carrying it in my bag.”
Tad stood up. “It’s too dangerous to keep a badly damaged drone with us. The power pack might explode.”
“We’d definitely better leave it here then.” Donnell took my arm and supported me as I walked up the short flight of stairs to the balcony.
“The Citadel just looks its usual boring self,” said Wall cheerfully.
Scavenger Blood Page 33
