Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  “Scatter!” Kate shouted, and she bolted to the left, dragging Khan to the ground with her.

  As the Bot-Killer rockets streaked along the dusty road, she saw Mavrides haul Hawkins to the ground. One of the rockets hit a stand of trees where Danny had taken cover, blowing splintered wood and leaves apart and knocking him backward. The second hit the ground right between Hartschorn and Prosky.

  The explosion tore them apart, blasting smoking pieces of robot all over the road.

  Alexa lay on her back on the ground. Her ears were ringing from the explosions and her cheek felt damp. One hand fluttered up to touch the wetness there. She held her fingers in front of her eyes and saw red. Her blood, from a piece of shrapnel that would have taken her eye if it had struck two inches higher.

  With a groan she rolled onto her side on the hot road and found herself staring at her father’s corpse not six feet away. His eyes were open. A lone fly buzzed around his face with great interest and then began to investigate the exit wound on his chest. A fresh wave of grief rushed up through her and new tears sprang to her eyes even as the sounds around her returned.

  Gunfire.

  She forced herself up to her knees, checking herself over for injuries. She turned and saw Birnbaum fifteen feet to the north, down on one knee, firing at the Bot Killers in the distance, not worried about the other members of her platoon who were in the crossfire, knowing her bullets could do nothing to them.

  Alexa pressed her eyes closed. She heard boots striking pavement and then hands grabbed hold of her. Her eyes flew open and she struggled even before she saw the grim features of Hanif Khan. She tried to fight him but he batted her hands away, shouted something at her and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Alexa screamed and beat at his back as he ran with her.

  Seconds later he put her down, none too gently, in front of their Humvee TSV, the only real protection they had. His hands were still cuffed, but in front of him now instead of behind.

  She shoved him away. “Don’t touch me you fucking—“

  Hanif Khan shoved her against the TSV’s grill and pinned her there with his cuffed hands, his arms like iron bars.

  “You’ll be killed, you idiot!” he barked.

  Before Alexa could reply, they heard the scream of another rocket. Both of them turned just in time to see it strike the pavement ten feet from Birnbaum. The road erupted with the explosion, hurling the robot backward so that she hit the ground and rolled until she was parallel to Alexa’s father’s body.

  When Birnbaum rose, Alexa saw that the robot’s legs had been painted red. She had slid through the pool of Arthur Day’s blood.

  Whatever fear or anger had been holding Alexa up gave way and she sank to her knees. Numb, she stared from the safety of the alley at her father’s body.

  Khan crouched beside her. Alexa realized for the first time that he had probably saved her life. All she could do was wonder why.

  “Don’t worry for your father, girl,” he said, his voice a deep, rasping growl. “For him, the fight is over. Worry instead for yourself.”

  Kate killed two of the rocket-launcher men herself. The other ran for the open door of the Bot Killers’ TSV and went down in a barrage of gunfire. Their TSV’s tires kicked up dirt as it roared off, headed back the way it had come. Several other men rushed the vehicle and leaped in through open or shattered windows.

  “Trav, you and Torres check to see if Hartschorn and Prosky are still functioning!” Kate called as she moved to the center of the road and the rest of the squad started to form on her. “Hawkins,” she said, focusing on the familiar smiley-and-crossbones. “Take Mavrides and Lahiri and go kill those motherfuckers.”

  On foot, the three Tin Men caught up to the Bot Killers in no time. The bastards shot uselessly at them from the retreating TSV until Hawkins—she assumed it was Hawkins—reached in while running alongside and dragged the driver from behind the wheel. Kate turned away, then. Whether Hawkins, Mavrides, and Lahiri wanted it quick or took their time, she was fine with it. The Bot Killers were getting what they had coming.

  Her foot kicked something hard and she looked down to see that it was the blackened head of a robot, its eyes dark and dead. She had no idea if it was Prosky or Hartschorn, but now—reduced to this—it didn’t seem to matter.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, she thought. The whole point of drones was to prevent this.

  Only then did she notice that she had lost track of Hanif Khan.

  Danny clambered to his feet, head ringing from the explosion of the rocket that had nearly done him in. If not for those trees, he’d be scrap metal now. He started toward the Humvee feeling useless and pissed off, then saw Khan crouched behind the vehicle with Alexa Day. With the last gunshots resonating in his head, he strode toward them. Birnbaum knelt over the ambassador’s corpse in the middle of the street but Danny walked right by her. The rest of the squad was back along the road a ways, dealing with their attackers, but Danny’s interest was in Khan.

  The anarchist’s brown eyes tracked him as he approached, but Khan did not try to flee. He had managed to slip the chain on the cuffs beneath his feet so that he would have his hands in front, but he did nothing to protect himself as Danny stomped up and grabbed him by the shirtfront.

  “There were other TSVs,” Danny said. “That means the motherfuckers my squad just killed are not the only ones out there. So I’m asking…how many men did you have with you this morning? How many more of them might be in pursuit?”

  Sweat glistened on Khan’s expressionless face.

  “Many,” the anarchist said. “Very many.”

  Alexa Day backed away from them both. Danny shook Khan again.

  “Why are they doing this?” he demanded. “You didn’t strike me as Jihadists.”

  “We are not.”

  “Then why? People don’t sacrifice themselves like that unless it’s for faith!”

  Now Khan sneered, upper lip curling back in revulsion. “Faith,” he said, “or revenge. Every one of the men working with me lost someone they loved—not combatants, you understand, but innocents—to your kind. They know you are all vulnerable now and they are not going to stop until you are dead. Or they are.”

  Danny hated him, but as he studied the man’s eyes he understood that Hanif Khan’s hatred was greater than his own.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Who did you lose?”

  “Not an innocent,” Khan admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. If not for you, he would still be alive.”

  Alexa Day made a small sound, one Danny feared was born of sympathy. He wanted to remind the girl that her father lay dead forty feet away…but when he looked at her he saw her staring at Khan with such hatred that he realized he didn’t need to say a word.

  Danny grabbed Khan by the back of the neck and shoved him, stumbling, around the side of the Humvee. There were so many retorts struggling to make it to his lips, but he spoke none of them. He held on to the belief that the Tin Men had done more good in the world than harm—he had to believe that—but he couldn’t argue with Khan’s hate. Only with his actions.

  He hauled open a door and shoved Khan into the back of the Humvee. “From now on, I’m your keeper.”

  ~16~

  The bullet struck the President on the left side of the head. Felix was standing beside him when it happened and a little spray of blood spattered onto his shirt. President Matheson pirouetted and began to stumble out into the street, fully exposed to the gunfire that ripped pavement and plinked dead cars and shot out the windows of shops.

  Felix took a step after him. Maggie snatched his shirt collar and dragged him back into the doorway where they’d been hiding.

  “Don’t be stupid!” she said angrily, blood seeping from a forehead scrape she’d gotten from a fall.

  “It’s the—“ Felix began, but stopped himself.

  The trio of Tin Men were already out on the street, flanking Matheson, hustling him back toward the open door
way. Blood streamed down the left side of his face but he was alive. Felix stared, trying to make sense of it, and as the robots pushed Matheson into the doorway he saw the furrow along the man’s skull and realized the bullet had only grazed him. The skin had been torn open and the blood flowed, but his brains were still inside his head.

  “What now?” Felix asked, turning to Syd, the ranking Secret Service agent left alive.

  Syd gave an angry look. “Same as the last hour. Stay alive.”

  There were fourteen of them now—President Matheson, three Tin Men, four staffers, three flesh and blood Secret Service agents, President Rostov and his bodyguard, and Felix. Of all of them, Felix felt the most expendable, and that feeling haunted him. It crawled underneath his skin like tiny metal ants, able to magnetically attract bullets. Yet he’d been expecting death ever since they’d left the hotel and somehow he still lived. For Kate, he kept moving. Nobody had handed him a gun yet, but he felt sure it would come to that. What he would do with one he had no idea.

  The ground shook from an explosion not far off and Felix gritted his teeth. There had been so many that he ought to have been used to it by now. Instead, it frightened him more deeply every time. One of the Secret Service agents snapped at the aides to stay back. Rostov’s bodyguard said nothing, only ducked his head out into the street then pulled back in, expression grimmer than ever.

  Rostov stood staring at the three Tin Men clustered around the President. For a second, his gaze flickered toward Felix and something passed between them—perhaps a mutual acknowledgement that if Matheson died, the protection they’d received so far would evaporate. At least you have your bodyguard, Felix thought. The ugly, granite-faced Russian seemed to have no problem with the idea of dying for his President. Felix didn’t want to die for anyone.

  Especially not in a dress boutique full of colorfully clad mannequins.

  “Come on!” Jun cried out. “We can’t just stay here!”

  Syd turned to face him, blond hair bedraggled with sweat. “The President is down, kid. Nobody—“

  “Scratch that,” a deep voice said, and they all turned to see Chapel, the leader of the President’s Tin Men detachment, stepping away from the others. “The President is up.”

  Matheson had stitches in the side of his scalp. The blood had stopped flowing but still smeared his temple and cheek. He glanced around, clearly disoriented, but then Bingham—the female amongst the bots—took his arm and guided him to Felix.

  The robot stared into his eyes. “Minor concussion. Maybe worse. Stay with him and we’ll try this again.”

  Felix nodded and then they were all in motion. Chapel and Bingham went to the open doorway and the gunfire aimed at them started up again. The rest of them stayed back. Felix felt the President’s grip on his arm tighten and he turned to see a dazed, frantic light in Matheson’s eyes.

  “They don’t know it’s us, Felix,” Matheson said. “Rostov and me. If they did, this whole building would already be down. You hear all of those other explosions, the rest of the gunfire? Right now they’re hunting everyone from the conference, trying to make sure we’re dead. But that’s going to be over soon and then they’ll be more thorough. This is our one chance.”

  “I’m with you, Peter,” Felix said, hoping he sounded comforting, worried now about the extent of this concussion.

  Matheson cupped a hand on the back of Felix’s neck and drew him close. Eye to eye, it was plain that the man still had his wits about him, though he seemed in pain.

  “I’m sorry,” the President said.

  The three Tin Men stepped out into the street and opened fire, Bingham and Marquez in one direction and Chapel in the other. They shouted for the others to go and Felix’s legs were in motion before he could command them to stop. Syd and the other Secret Service agents surrounded him and Matheson with Rostov and his bodyguard just behind, followed by three of the aides. The fourth aide, a pale and lanky man Felix couldn’t have named, remained in the recessed doorway and only shook his head in refusal as the rest of them departed. Nobody shouted at him to follow or tried to get back to force him. He had made his choice.

  Felix’s final glimpse of that aide, ghostly as he slipped back into the shadows of the shop, would remain with him until his last breath.

  Maggie began to shout just over the gunfire. Jun held her hand and they ducked down low as they ran. Felix had President Matheson’s arm and they hid behind the Tin Men as they raced diagonally across the street toward the darkened entrance of a Metro station whose cavernous mouth offered the promise of quiet and refuge.

  Bullets strafed one of the Secret Service agents just as he came abreast of Rostov, his presence saving the life of the Russian president in an irony that made Felix want to weep. Rostov’s bodyguard took a bullet to the shoulder but instead of slowing him it sped him up. He grabbed Rostov’s arm and rushed him forward, hurling the two of them into the open Metro stairwell. Felix and Matheson followed a moment later with the others on their heels. Last inside were Bingham and Chapel, who turned to shout at Marquez that they were clear—they were safe.

  A rocket struck ten feet from Marquez, blowing him back along the road. The explosion brought concrete dust raining down on their heads in the Metro stairwell and blew in windows across the street. Felix held his breath as he watched Marquez rise to his feet, turn and begin to return fire.

  The second rocket hit him dead center, blew apart his carapace and ignited his power core, which went up with a muffled crump of metal and enough force that it knocked Maggie and Jun off their feet. The President stumbled but Felix kept him from falling as they all began shuffling down the stairs into the darkness, nearly tripping over several terrified people who had taken shelter there.

  “Bingham, take point!” Chapel ordered.

  As she moved ahead of them, her chestplate blossomed with illumination so bright that the people sheltered on the stairs threw up their hands to shield their eyes. The guidelight turned the stairs into a dusty gloom that made Felix think of a shipwreck deep on the ocean floor. They began to descend into that eerie void with the echo of Marquez’s death still ringing in their ears.

  Eleven left, Felix thought.

  The President tumbled on the stairs, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them several times in a row as if trying to clear his vision. Chapel hustled along behind them, his own guidelight coming to brilliant life in the darkness.

  Felix glanced back up at the square of rapidly diminishing sunlight they’d left behind and felt the concrete closing in around him. He’d thought the Metro station would provide them a quiet refuge, but now he reminded himself that the same could be said of a tomb.

  They reached the station lobby and hurried over the turnstiles, down another flight of stairs. Syd stopped at the edge of the platform. Rostov and his bodyguard didn’t even slow. They clambered down and dropped to the subway tracks, then turned to stare at Chapel. No one acknowledged that Matheson’s injury had called his leadership into question, but they all recognized it.

  “We must make it to Piraeus, get to open ocean,” Rostov said. “The only way we get out of here is on something with sails.”

  “So which way?” Syd asked.

  Bingham jumped down to the tracks and turned to the left. “Port of Piraeus is this way.”

  “You sure?” Chapel asked.

  Bingham glanced at him and Felix saw that in the depths of the subterranean darkness, their eyes were bright.

  “All right,” Chapel said, pointing. “That way.”

  The Tin Men helped Matheson down to the tracks as Felix sat on the platform and slid himself off, taking care not to twist an ankle. He didn’t want to be left behind like the ghost in the dress shop doorway.

  Finding himself once more partnered with Matheson, Felix held his arm and helped him stumble quickly along the tracks, but his thoughts were plagued by something the man had said—something that had rung false even then.

  “You have Tin Men with you, Mister
President,” Felix whispered to him, eardrums still thrumming from the hellish noises they’d endured. “You don’t think they knew who it was they were shooting at?”

  Matheson looked at him, features bathed in the light that came from Chapel’s chest as the robot guarded their flank.

  “Felix,” Matheson said.

  “Professor Wade is right,” Chapel said. “The word will have gone out. If they have communications of any kind, they’ve got to be limited, but the shooters up there were trying to keep us pinned down, waiting for backup. Once it gets here they’ll be after us.”

  Rostov had stopped ahead of them. “Don’t despair,” he said. “An hour ago, most of you thought you would not live another hour. Let’s see how we’ve fared an hour from now.”

  As they all set off into the darkness with Bingham’s guidelight leading the way, Maggie fell into step beside Felix and tapped him on the arm.

  “Hey,” she whispered. “How screwed are we when the Russian president is our resident optimist?”

  Aimee and North stood in a corridor near the Command Core with Major Zander. He had an office somewhere nearby but didn’t seem inclined to invite them for tea.

  “What happened to chain of command?” Zander asked, fixing Aimee with a hard glare. They had drawn him out of a meeting for a quiet word and he was impatient.

  “Yes, sir, it’s only that—“

  “Sabotage trumps chain of command,” North said.

  Aimee shot North a look. First he’d wanted her to do the talking but now—what? He wanted the glory? When had he ever been gung-ho about anything other than a drink or a great set of tits?

  “You’re talking about Staging Area 12?” Major Zander asked, eyes narrowed. “Those deaths weren’t an accident?”

  “I don’t believe so, sir,” Aimee replied.

  Major Zander normally kept a fairly icy façade in place, but for just a moment it broke. Anger and frustration brought color to his cheeks and he glanced at the ground, just for a moment.