Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  No human being.

  Nearing the hyperloop terminal, they’d start to encounter people. Specheads, transfers, loaded into hyperloop cars like a canned meal.

  “Hostile engagement not authorized,” she told her pack.

  Knuckles regarded her briefly.

  “We’re close now,” She said. “They know something is coming. I expect some kind of hello.”

  “Like what?” Knuckles asked.

  M@ti shook her head. “They’ll try to stop us.” She checked her war mode on her display. “They’re already attempting to regain control of our robots.”

  “Can they?”

  M@ti tapped the head of the virtual cane. “Not a chance.”

  The light from hov engines glided below on the main concourse. She saw a train depart the station, illumination strobing through the tube which housed the cars. Everything appeared normal.

  “You got incoming,” Deva called out over their connection.

  “What? Where?”

  A solid thump resonated through the cockpit and M@ti felt the floorboards rattle. Knuckles furrowed his brow, rapidly scanning instruments then shaking his head with a frown.

  “No damage I can see.”

  Then came another. And another.

  “Multiple bogeys, hotshot,” Deva called. “Might want to take evasive.”

  The Black Beetle belched flame and M@ti watched something ignite in the air and the smoking remains spin toward the earth. She leaned forward for a closer look when a sharp smack against the windshield sent her back into her seat.

  M@ti stared past the star-shaped crack in the glass and watched the shattered remnants fall away. A square-ish housing, a loose propeller or three.

  “The drones!”

  Knuckles had flown in low to avoid being seen. They were nearly on top of the hive of shipping activity. She remembered the endless thunderheads of drones the day they boarded the hyperloop.

  “Take us up!” she cried, but Knuckles had already thrown the helicopter to the side and banked upward. She gripped the seat and leaned against the sudden change of gravity.

  M@ti opened a channel to Kraken. “I need you to make sure my control over this military hardware isn’t compromised. Just stall any attempts so I can focus on other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Keeping from dying! You let me worry about the details.”

  UNIDENTIFIED CRAFT, YOUR FLIGHT IS UNAUTHORIZED. PROCEED TO THE FOLLOWING LOCATION OR RISK DESTRUCTION.

  The message scrolled across her display against the horizon in blaring gold. An arrow stepped its way across her view, curving smoothly toward a soggy, isolated field just north of the terminal.

  “Superuser assholes,” M@ti snarled. Fine, so maybe if some humans got in the way, casualties could be acceptable. She dashed out her response.

  Eat a dick. <3 M@ti.

  The dense drone swarm began to separate, jagged edges changing course and streaming toward them. TrueSight became a hailstorm of incoming transmissions. Drones were being handed new instructions, their precision guidance systems reprogrammed, collision systems taken offline.

  “This all part of your incredible plan?” Deva radioed.

  “It’s why we’ve got you. Keep them off us!”

  The Black Beetle rocketed by at a downward angle of attack, coming closer than necessary to the rotors, her wake giving the helicopter an unfriendly nudge. Knuckles cursed and corrected. M@ti launched into issuing commands, sending in as many of the flying death machines as she could spare for support.

  Deva’s battle platform cut a tiny figure against the incoming tsunami. She’d threatened them both earlier, but M@ti felt a pang of guilt. At any time, Deva could abandon her and Knuckles to this crazy mission, but she didn’t. Even in the face of insurmountable odds.

  M@ti commanded her fliers into a tighter formation. Many had weapons and munitions which hadn’t been properly tested in centuries. One ignited in a ball of flame as it tried to unleash an attack, the wreckage spewing orange flame and punching through the ranks of the drones. The shell impacted the Hackensack River in a glowing torrent of spray and steam.

  While the flyers under M@ti’s control created a defensive envelope around the helicopter, the angel of death had taken on a very different tactic. Deva headed directly into the heart of the swarm. Against the night M@ti watched cannons erupt from the Black Beetle’s arms in staccato orange pulses. Drones plummeted along erratic paths to the ground, burning in their death and showering streets and rooftops. Tracers ripped through the swarm creating an open corridor.

  “Keep her steady, fly boy,” Deva called. “Switch out with me. Go low. Street level.”

  Knuckles tightened his grip on the stick. He leaned forward in the seat, his face a mask of supreme focus as they descended into the cloud. M@ti ordered the ground escorts to converge beneath them. Her airborne force pulled even tighter.

  They were a deathly comet punching through an atmosphere.

  A swirl of drones encompassed the craft, visible only in the constant strobe of explosions. Shock waves buffeted them from all sides. The steady hail of drone parts, smoking and melted, burning and broken, pinged against the fuselage and left greasy smears on the glass. She tensed as one of those pings sounded nearby, inside the cockpit.

  M@ti, we’ve lost one! Airborne! A message from Kraken.

  Flying so tightly, M@ti couldn't’ see all of her airborne units. Her command display reported several had been knocked offline. She came out of her seat, twisting to find the rest. They paced alongside in their formation a mixture of strange limbs and weapon ports clearing away drones who managed to survive Deva’s leading assault.

  One caught her eye as it careened into view, smashing hard into a neighboring unit. The two entangled and dropped out of sight completely. Deva shot past as they continued the descent. She’d maneuvered the armor onto its back and she faced upward, a missile streaking out and away from a chest port.

  The explosion canted the entire helicopter sideways. Tossed against the cockpit door, M@ti planted her hands, unsure if the busted glass would hold. Plastered there, the drone cloud suddenly cleared, and she was staring out at the face of an impossibly close building.

  “Knuck!” she shouted.

  He looked, but never left his zone. Determination deepened, and he swung the controls. Their solid whirl of blades seemed to kiss the glass and brick of a nearby building. Another sudden shift and they were surging forward, nose down over the streets.

  Two days flying over open country and M@ti couldn’t fully process their lack of space at street level. Every building, the traffic sedately cruising below, all of it seemed too close.

  “Stay low!” Deva shouted over the comms. “That way I got less angles to worry about.”

  “Trying,” Knuckles said through gritted teeth. Fiery explosions glared off the buildings on both sides. “Can we find Times Square from down here!”

  M@ti locked onto a hov. Loading up GTA, she assumed control. New destination, Times Square, arrival time, yesterday. The AI immediately responded.

  Arrival time out of bounds. Statistical outlier will effect productivity rating. Results, unacceptable.

  M@ti watched the battery-powered hov shoot forward, faster than she’d thought possible. “There,” she shouted, pointing at the afterglow of the one she’d compromised. “That one, pulling away! Follow it!”

  She was thrown into the seat again. They pitched forward more, and the helicopter began to tear through the streets. The rain of drones slowed as they outpaced them.

  Up ahead, the hov took a sharp left and Knuckles snatched at the controls, drifting wide into the turn. For a moment, M@ti stared right up Central Avenue from where they’d just come.

  Deva provided an umbrella of weapons fire above, the orange flare of explosions washing across the building faces. Below, burning wreckage flecked the avenue. A hov sat idle in the distance, an emergency beacon emitting from the roof. The street beyond that rippl
ed. A thundering horde, her ground forces, seemed to consume the idle hov as they charged after her.

  Then she caught sight of a single belch of flame, too far away to be Deva. Horrified, she watched it streak toward them as the corner building of the intersection cut off her view.

  “Incoming!” she shouted.

  They’d approached with so much speed, they’d barely made the corner in time. Blinding fire filled the cockpit and at first she thought they’d taken a direct hit. The entire helicopter pitched and nearly spun

  Fear broke Knuckles’ determined mask. He wrestled hard with the stick, both hands, as alarms filled the cabin. Teeth gritted, he pried one hand away from the controls and attacked the instrument panel, then reached for the throttle hanging between them.

  They surged forward, faster, a constant wobble threatening to smash them into the closely crowded buildings.

  M@ti couldn’t see, but she heard Deva curse. Another explosion ripped through them, further behind, but she could’ve sworn she felt the heat of it wash through the cockpit.

  “Got ‘em,” Deva shouted. “Your straggler, he came back for his shot. You guys good?”

  “Lost the tail rotor,” Knuckles barked.

  “I’m sorry,” Kraken said. “Thought I had them all.”

  “The hov, we needed a guide. I was distracted. I didn’t see it either!” M@ti said.

  “You need more Nexus time, M@ti,” Knuckles shouted. “Get used to the chaos.” She wasn’t sure if he was joking but he didn’t bother with a smile or wait for her to laugh. “Only way into Times Square now is full throttle or we lose control.”

  “But, can you land it?”

  Knuckles gave her a quick glance. “Land is maybe putting it too optimistically. Controlled crash.”

  They didn’t have time to change plans. The speeding hov cleared an overpass and made another sharp turn to the right. M@ti followed the trajectory and saw the empty ribbon separating Manhattan from the area near Croxton Terminal.

  “Back off!” she shouted. “The tunnel, it took the tunnel!”

  Knuckles had little time to react. Their damaged ride shimmied under every adjustment he made. Steadily, he pulled them up and skirted under an overpass, nearly scraping the concrete arch. A net of solid columns and more overpasses engulfed them and M@ti held back a scream as they threaded each one. Knuckles blasted through the last set and leveled them out above the Hudson.

  M@ti felt she could hear her rapid breaths louder than the deafening engine. Across the river, they faced the deeper canyons of Manhattan proper. Lights shined bright and fervent. A reassurance. Once they were between the towering buildings again, she could find their way.

  Then, the blackout struck.

  41

  “Going dark!” Knuckles shouted. Lights winked out on the helicopter and M@ti relayed the message to Deva.

  Being a bright, shining beacon streaking through the empty space over the Hudson seemed like a good enough reason to M@ti. She cranked up her LUX app and tried to make out the gaps in the forest of concrete and steel they were fast approaching.

  “Up?” she shouted, half command, half question.

  “We’re coming down hard. Not an option.” Knuckles strained against the seat harness, pushing close to the front glass. “Where?”

  Faint outlines of streets and alleys knifed between buildings, thin cuts which seemed impossible for the ungainly chopper to navigate but which were growing with every passing second. The Collective had cut power to the entire Preserve. No hov exhaust lit the way. No lights, period, from the street all the way to the highest penthouses.

  They’d killed power to every spechead’s stationary gear and dumped the wireless feeds as well. For a brief second, the citizens would be free.

  Until M@ti ate a skyscraper and their masters flipped the switch back on.

  She pointed to an empty space which might have once been a parking lot. Low buildings surrounded it, low enough, they’d skim the tops, but they were losing altitude, fast. Knuckles had already swung toward the area, the bald patch of concrete glowing against a feeble moon. One last hope to buy them time.

  She knew the skyline from her rooftop several blocks north of here. She knew the old map she’d found by heart. But she didn’t think she could recklessly fly them blindfolded into the heart of the city.

  Her own display had gone dark. Comms were open to Deva, to her robot army, and that was all. She could see the ground forces boil out of the tunnel, their mass a surging column of radioactive, angry ants. Their demonic glowing faces could’ve led the way, but they couldn’t keep pace. The fliers stayed dutifully in formation, prepared to eat a building if she didn’t order them otherwise. She needed to get them closer to Times Square before their ominous sounding ‘controlled crash.’

  She reached out for the faint connection in Times Square which was her ultimate target. The single thread in that dead zone where Loadi had transferred into the guardian. Different system. Walled off from the rest. Could be it still had power. If it didn’t their mission was over.

  M@ti tuned TrueSight to home in on the signal. Nothing at first, their landing gear scraped a rooftop and the chopper bounced. Knuckles corrected with precision movements and they drifted slightly left, the trailing gear bounding off a ledge and into the empty space between buildings.

  From the lower edge of her display, a thread raced toward them.

  “There!” she shouted.

  Knuckles’ face only briefly showed his confusion and he swerved hard to match where she was pointing. The wounded helicopter shimmied and M@ti thought they’d fly apart. Instead, they settled into the empty space above a street, pitch black walls hemming them in under a sliver of sky. The connection to Times Square ran below like a delicate seam.

  Out of the dark, a shadow detached from the buildings and hurled itself at the helicopter.

  “More drones!”

  Knuckles pitched the craft nearly on the side and the fuselage absorbed the blow meant for the rotors. More shapes began to converge from the faces of buildings. M@ti ordered her fliers in tight. Knuckles glanced nervously around at the protective envelope, the military hardware’s own status lights and engine wash forming a patchy cocoon.

  Ahead, M@ti saw the exhaust of the Black Beetle.

  “Deva, let me hack your rig!”

  “Negatory.”

  “Do you know where we’re going? You have TrueSight?”

  “Remember, no open data connections on the Beetle. This isn’t hacking gear, it’s an ass kicking machine.”

  “I need you to see what I’m seeing. You’ve got comms. And you seemed concerned enough by my probes at the quarry. There’s a way in, you just aren’t telling me.”

  The drone assault began once more. Sparks flew, and brilliant explosions filled the cockpit with orange, blinding light. Fragments of drones fell like rain and under the withering assault, M@ti’s forces began to dwindle.

  “Does your air force shoot back or are you wanting to lose all your support?” Deva called out.

  “I can’t risk stray bullets tearing into the buildings. People live here.”

  “Noble, yeah, but the whole fucking swarm is targeting you!” Deva said. “I can’t return fire without putting your ride in danger!”

  “Times Square!” M@ti shouted. “Faster we get there, the less all this matters! We don’t have time to wander the streets blind! Give me your ride!”

  M@ti waited, the sharp cracks of collisions buffeting the craft. Fire washed over the windscreen and Knuckles squinted.

  “M@ti! What next?” She could hear panic creeping into his voice. “Where to?”

  Her display lit up with an entirely different view. She saw a wireframe of the Black Beetle, alerts strobing in from every section. Ammo depleted. Armor low. The battle rig had taken some heavy damage. She saw targeting reticles shaped like the facets of the armored suit’s eyes flitting about like flies on a carcass.

  Deva had piggybacked on the low bandw
idth comms channel and opened up her systems to M@ti’s control. It took skill, M@ti realized, but more than that, trust.

  “Show me what you got,” Deva said.

  “Thanks.” M@ti quickly shared the path indicated by the signal which wove through the streets like a string left in a labyrinth. “Scout it for us. It avoids getting cut off at solid walls, but it’s likely to go through places we can’t.”

  “Copy that.”

  “Knuckles, stay close to her.”

  He focused on the twin jets burning ahead of them and tuned out the world coming apart around them.

  Slowly, pieces of their shell fell away in flaming bursts. The drones were small, and their collisions mostly glanced off the hardened escort robots. Long ago, these machines had been humanity’s hope against a genetic menace in a war which could’ve ended them all. Today, she led them to destroy the order they’d helped create.

  A ramjet powered flier with sweeping wings took a direct strike. The scream of its death cut short as it spiraled into the pavement. Another which looked like a massive delivery drone itself was set upon by a cloud of its smaller cousins. The larger rotors diced them into deadly fragments before its own blade shattered and launched at the helicopter. M@ti screamed as the blade embedded in the glass, jagged fissures spreading across their already pitted windscreen.

  The cockpit window looked like a moonscape. Deva disappeared around a corner, but the warnings on the Black Beetle display were impossible to ignore. The helicopter careened after her in pursuit. Knuckles was forced by their uncontrolled speed to take an angle which nearly sent them nose first into a brick monolith covered with small, square windows. Faces peered outside reflecting the flames.

  The thundering rotor noise shuddering off the bricks receded as they swept back to the center of the street. Several fliers failed to make the turn, becoming fireballs against the kiln-forged bricks. They were rocketing now down a canyon of glass.