Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  What the bots lacked in stealth they made up for with speed. They weren’t Special Forces, they were infantry: grunts in shining armor. When they went after a nest of Bot Killers, they kicked in every door and blew the shit out of everything that got in the way. No stealth required.

  The noon hour had come and gone but the sun still bleached the city, ripples of heat rising from the pavement. Danny led Birnbaum and Travaglini across the roof of the building that abutted the western wall of the Bot Killers’ nest. Danny had the feeling Birnbaum was starting to fall apart and he hoped a mission would help shock her out of it. So weird that she had chosen Hawkins to be her rock during all of this.

  They kept low to the ground, moving swiftly and as silently as possible. Danny signaled and Trav and Birnbaum fanned out to his right, all three of them racing toward the low wall that ran around the perimeter of the adjacent building’s roof. One of the Bot Killers paced along the near side of the opposite roof.

  Danny knelt, took aim, and put a silenced bullet through the man’s skull. Arms flailed and he spun backward to sprawl on the roof. On the far side of the roof a second guard’s patrol of the perimeter brought him out from behind a massive air vent.

  “Got him,” Birnbaum said, and she fired twice, both kill shots.

  Twelve seconds.

  They took a running start and leaped the alley. Danny landed three feet from the guard he’d killed, rolled and came up with his weapon ready.

  Seven seconds.

  They searched the roof for other guards, ducking behind massive ducts and aircon units and a massive, rusting water tank from some old-fashioned sprinkler system. They signaled each other with the all-clear.

  Two seconds.

  Trav took the eastern roof access. Danny kept Birnbaum with him. The last second ticked down, Danny gave the signal, and he and Trav kicked in both doors at once. Fuck stealth.

  He and Birnbaum crashed into the stairwell and raced downward, gunfire erupting below. The teams led by Kate and Hawkins had smashed their way in and the shit had started to fly.

  Danny and Birnbaum took a corner and emerged on a metal walkway suspended sixty feet above the floor of the warehouse. Trav came out onto a parallel walkway fifty yards away, but the real action unfolded beneath them. Danny absorbed it in a single glance—metal shipping containers stacked three and four high around the inner edges of the warehouse floor as if to suggest that the building was full, when instead they protected a large clearing at the core of the place that had been turned into a camp for the Bot Killers. Cots and bedrolls, food and water, and most importantly two enormous, black Humvee-TSVs and a whole array of mechanics’ tools and equipment. The Humvee-TSVs were sleek armored trucks with three rows of seating, plus a long storage bed in the rear.

  A dozen Bot Killers scrambled for their weapons. Some already had them in hand and were returning fire as best they could, but Kate’s team and Hawkins’ team had them in a pincer. With robots coming through the alleys between stacks of metal containers, their only chance at survival was to run. Some of them did. Danny tracked a guy in a black keffiyeh who fled between two army green containers; he sighted and took the shot.

  Trav went over the railing first. Danny saw him drop to the top of a shipping container with a clang and then Birnbaum jumped. Danny came right behind her, slamming down onto a container and then dropping forty feet to land in a crouch between the Humvees.

  Two Humvees, Danny thought. But it had been clear from above that there had been six vehicles here. Six vehicles parked, six vehicles worked on, six vehicles that had left spots of oil and fluid on the concrete floor. Four of them were gone and if the story about keeping the engines shielded was true…they’d been driven out of here after the EMP. That explained why there were fewer Bot Killers than he’d expected.

  Four other TSVs, he thought. How many damn Bot Killers were there in Damascus? They didn’t even know for sure this was the only warehouse.

  A bearded blond guy in a t-shirt and fatigues raced around one TSV and dove between them, thinking he was taking cover. He looked up from the rough concrete and spotted Danny just before the bullet took him.

  Shouts of triumph erupted in the warehouse. Danny stepped over the dead German. Three of the Bot Killers had thrown down their weapons and were kneeling on the floor surrounded by Tin Men.

  “Kelso!” Kate called, weapon still trained on the surviving Bot Killers, as if these three scruffy, weaponless anarchists had any fight left in them. “Secure the vehicles.”

  “You got it, Sarge,” he said. A quick glance and he spotted McKelvie. “Mac, take the second one.”

  The rest of the squad was still celebrating, happy to have any kind of win in the shadow of the day’s horrors.

  Danny circled the nearest TSV while McKelvie went around to the other one. Danny opened the rear door on the driver’s side and looked inside. The upholstery had suffered some wear but the Humvee had been cleaned out recently. Something niggled at the back of his mind and wormed its way under his skin. The smell of fresh motor oil wafted off the vehicles and there seemed no doubt it had been recently tuned up. These two vehicles were precisely what the platoon needed if they were going to take anyone with them to the coast—perfect, really, and maybe that was what bothered him.

  Good luck hides its price tag, his father had told him a thousand times, so he couldn’t help but wonder what this stroke of ridiculous good luck would cost them. And again: where are the other four vehicles?

  He opened the driver’s door, reached in and popped the hood, then walked around to the front end and hauled it up to expose the engine.

  “Hey, Kelso,” McKelvie called. “The keys are in it.”

  If Danny had still had a heart, the sound of McKelvie trying the Humvee’s ignition would have broken it. Danny’s hands worked quicker than his mouth, fingers darting down to pull wires even as he shouted “Down, down, down!”

  McKelvie’s Humvee exploded in a ball of flame and shrapnel. The hood blew off and blazing engine parts crashed into walls as Danny crouched beside the other vehicle, praying the blast wouldn’t cause a chain reaction. Most of the second TSV’s windows blew in and it rocked up onto its left wheels for an eyeblink, but it didn’t explode.

  Bots were shouting fury as the first vehicle burned. Kate roared orders and Danny looked up to see Birnbaum peeling herself off the ground, tossing aside a fiery bit of melting metal and plastic. Two of the Bot Killers who’d been on their knees in the middle of the warehouse floor were dead. One had taken a gasket or something to the chest and lay bleeding on his side on the concrete with smoke coming out of his wound. The third stood up and began to scream while Kate snapped at Mavrides to lower his weapon and the bloodthirsty punk shouted about booby traps. No shit, dumbass, Danny thought. What was your first clue?

  He didn’t think about McKelvie because McKelvie was done.

  Danny moved around to look at the intact vehicle’s engine again, the thing wired with so much Semtex Six that it had been impossible to hide it. Opening the hood before starting it up had saved him—saved some of the others, too, because this one had shielded them from the worst of the explosion.

  A shot rang out. Danny whipped around and saw the last Bot Killer with his head snapped back, a hole in his skull, dead as he toppled to the floor.

  “Fucking Mavrides!” someone barked.

  But Danny looked at Mavrides and even with those robot features he could see the kid was as shocked as anyone. He hadn’t pulled the trigger…and the angle was all wrong. Danny looked up at the same time Kate and Trav and a few others did and they saw the sniper up on the suspended walkway.

  The sniper didn’t bother trying to kill them, just stood there while the Tin Men shot him full of holes. He hung draped over the railing, blood falling in a crimson rain to spatter on the concrete sixty feet below. Danny stared at the dead man and all he could think was how? He and Trav and Birnbaum had cleared the roof and the stairwells coming down and that could only
mean one thing—this guy had shown up after them, come across from another rooftop just the way they’d done it.

  By himself? Just to finish off the survivors?

  “Kate, we’ve gotta get out of here!” he called. “It’s not just the trucks!”

  Slamming the Humvee’s hood, he raced around and jumped inside. Broken glass crunched on the seat beneath him as he started it up. The engine roared to life and he counted to two and then smiled because he hadn’t exploded. He might not be able to disarm Mavrides just yet, but he’d disarmed the Semtex Six under the hood.

  Trav appeared beside the window. “What’s the story?”

  Danny jammed the Humvee-TSV into gear and gave it gas, pulling away from the burning wreckage of its twin.

  “Get in!” he snapped at Trav.

  Kate trusted him enough that she hadn’t thought to question his instincts. She barked orders and they started to withdraw, moving quickly through the openings between stacks of shipping containers. Trav climbed into the Humvee and Danny drove after them, watching the containers, wondering how much Semtex Six the bastards had been able to get their hands on. The squad hustled between containers and Danny could see past them now to the hangar-style doors they’d left open.

  Couldn’t be the containers. They’d never have sent someone in to silence the survivors if they’d rigged the whole warehouse. That left only one option.

  “Speed!” he shouted out the window. “Make speed!”

  Kate turned as she reached the splash of sunlight from outside. He saw her devil horns though he couldn’t make out the little pitchfork from this distance. She had her weapon ready as she called to the rest of the squad…and then they were gone, zipping out the door so fast that they seemed to have vanished.

  Lahiri was last out the door. The first rocket landed right behind him, the blast blowing him forward into the street.

  “Stop!” Trav shouted.

  Danny hung a left past the last of the containers, flooring the gas pedal as the Humvee roared along just inside the warehouse wall. As they left the entrance behind, rockets obliterated the doors and another punched through the wall of the warehouse twenty feet above them, blowing metal shrapnel inside. Explosions sounded in the street and gunfire cracked the air, but it was muffled inside the Humvee as Danny and Trav raced between the row of containers and the wall.

  “What do you say, Trav? Mostly corrugated metal, right? The steel beams would be a problem, but otherwise it’s not so bad.”

  “What are you thinking, Kelso?” Trav demanded.

  Danny had spent months training how to pilot a bot, how to adjust to the additional weight and power of the Tin Men so he didn’t accidentally destroy anything. He didn’t worry about damaging the Humvee, just floored it with all he had. They approached the far wall of the warehouse at fifty miles per hour and gaining. Trav shouted at him as he aimed between two of the wall’s vertical beams, and Danny wondered if the wide TSV could fit between them.

  They’d make it through the wall. He was banking on it. If not they’d have to leave the Humvee behind and then Ambassador Day and his daughter and Hanif Khan were not going to make it to Athens.

  “We’ll make it!” he told Trav. “One way or another—“

  “Kelso, the fucking explosives!” Trav shouted.

  Danny hit the brake, whipped the wheel hard left, and the Humvee rocked up on two wheels as he skidded around the containers in the corner of the warehouse. The rearview mirror on Trav’s side smashed off and the Humvee scraped the wall as Danny held onto the steering wheel. Then they were rocketing through the open space just inside the west side of the warehouse.

  “Holy shit,” Trav said.

  “Idiot!” Danny snapped, angry with himself. If he’d driven head-on into the wall with all that Semtex Six under the hood—

  The Humvee’s headlights picked out a door straight ahead. Closed, but some sort of delivery door, and not the one the squad had used to come through the back.

  “Trav, do you see it?” he barked.

  Already in motion, Trav scrambled out the window and onto the hood, leaped to the concrete and raced alongside, quickly outpacing the Humvee. Danny tapped the brakes as Trav reached the door, tore off the lock, and hauled it open. As the door rattled back on its tracks, Danny floored the accelerator and started counting in his head. How many seconds before one of the Bot Killers spotted the open door and swung a rocket launcher around to take aim?

  The TSV roared out into the back alley and Danny cranked the wheel to the left, rolling the dice that they’d expect him to turn toward the embassy instead. The tires skidded and the Humvee sideswiped a dumpster and knocked over a crowd of garbage cans. A rocket struck the warehouse only feet from their exit and the wall blew inward with a shriek of metal and a roar of flame.

  Something struck the Humvee from behind and the vehicle bounced and juddered on its shocks. Thunder slammed over his head and Danny glanced around to see a dusty metal leg hanging over the edge of the Humvee’s roof…and he smiled.

  Trav scrambled to keep purchase on top of the Humvee as Danny swerved around a second dumpster, half a second before a rocket hit the dumpster and blew it apart. A third rocket struck the side of another warehouse twenty feet ahead of them and Danny steered the Humvee through a curtain of smoke and flame and into an intersection.

  “Hang on, Trav,” he said.

  Trav cried out as Danny took a hard right. Robot fingers came down to grip the frame of the broken passenger window and Danny heard Trav scrambling on the roof. He righted the Humvee and jammed his foot down on the pedal again, and an instant later they were roaring down a wide street.

  In his rearview mirror, Danny spotted a pair of Bot Killers running out into the intersection behind them. They leveled Steyr assault rifles and started firing, bullets spraying the buildings and the stalled vehicles. One or two hit the TSV, but nothing vital.

  Danny found himself laughing out loud, and a second later, Trav joined in.

  Whatever his body was made of, it felt good to be alive.

  Aimee sat at her monitoring station and tried to block out everything but her search for a satellite signal. It seemed useless. Aboveground, men and women were dying. The feed from the cameras Mendelsohn had been able to get working had been rerouted inside the Command Core. Too many people had been standing around gawking at it and Major Zander had put a stop to that. Access to the Command Core was restricted; only those with access could see what transpired aboveground.

  Aimee glanced over at Mendelsohn’s monitoring station. As much as it pissed her off not to be able to keep tabs on the battle outside, she could only imagine how furious Mendelsohn had been when he received the order. He had abandoned his station—gone off to get something to eat—but that had been nearly an hour ago and he had not returned.

  “Barker’s Victoria Cross this is Wiesbaden Army Airfield,” she said, once again trying to raise the underground base in Vancouver. She had sought others, but she had kept coming back to this one because it seemed to have such potential. And yet—the same quiet hiss of an opening line. Nobody answered, but she couldn’t help feeling that someone might. It was that hiss, like a promise.

  “Do you read?” she asked. Sinking down over her station, Aimee hung her head. “For Christ’s sake, does anybody read me?”

  The odds of the Pulse having knocked out every single satellite in orbit were infinitesimal. The bad news was that there were only a handful of places in the world that were likely to still have the capacity to broadcast to antique satellites. They good news was that those places would have people searching for signals the same way she was. Aimee believed that in time they would make contact, but wasn’t sure what there was to gain by it. What was she going to say if she got an answer? Hi there, we’re fucked. Oh, you’re fucked, too? Okay, well, see ya.

  Klaxons sounded, a terrible alarm that instilled immediate terror. She spun to see a pair of sentries rushing along a catwalk. Chief Schuler appeared from
the entrance of the Command Core and waved an all clear, trying to inspire calm and confidence, but Aimee didn’t buy it.

  She glanced at her station. With the apocalyptic blare of that horn she wouldn’t be able to hear a damn thing even if a chorus of angels tried to talk to her over that line, so there was no point in sitting still. After a moment’s deliberation she set off toward the steps and almost collided with Ken Wheeler. The security officer was rushing to respond to the alarms himself. Aimee didn’t ask permission to tag along and he didn’t try to dissuade her. Soon they were racing along the catwalk and she realized that she was returning yet again to Staging Area 12.

  An icy nugget of dread formed in her gut and it only grew when she followed Wheeler into Staging Area 12 and saw the fifteen or so people scattered about the room. The medics were bent over a pair of open canisters, transparent lids jutting straight upward. Sentries were reporting to an officer who looked as furious as the sentries looked crestfallen. Several techs raced through the six-by-six aisles of canisters, checking readouts and peering through lids.

  “I’ve got another one over here!” a tall, redheaded female tech called, her words nearly drowned out by the alarms.

  The officer roared at the sentries to kill the alarm. Aimee stood by the railing at the top of the stairs as Wheeler hurried down to offer assistance. She felt paralyzed by the scene before her. Others passed, jostling her, but she barely moved as the full weight of what she was seeing settled upon her.

  Platoon A. These were her soldiers. She looked after them, monitored their vitals as well as their activity in the field. Major Zander had ordered her to focus on searching for a satellite signal and she had done that, turning her attention away from the men and women in their canisters in Staging Area 12. They hadn’t needed her attention; they weren’t going anywhere.

  But apparently they had needed someone.

  “Shit,” she whispered, as the alarms went silent at last. Her footfalls rang on the metal steps as she hurried down to the staging area floor. She raced toward the nearest tech, a parchment-pale guy named Powers. “What happened? Are any of them…”