Refurbished

by Isaac Hooke

  “There goes our hide,” Frogger said, sitting up beside him.

  Eric sat up, too. He reached out and ripped a large shrapnel fragment from Frogger’s chest.

  “Right above your AI core,” Eric said. “You’re lucky.”

  “That’s what we have armor plates for,” Frogger said, tapping the area with a polycarbonate knuckle.

  Frogger did the same for Eric, tearing a large rectangular piece from his leg.

  “Imagine if we were still human,” Frogger said.

  “You imagine it,” Eric said, scrambling to his feet.

  Brontosaurus was already standing, and had both of his heavy guns pointed toward the remnants of the room behind them.

  Eric glanced at his power cell levels. Fifty percent. He’d left his battery pack behind in that room. There was a good chance there was nothing left of it.

  He heard a loud bang and spun toward the foyer located at the far end of the hallway.

  The entrance door had exploded inward.

  Three insurgents stood in plain view, their weapons pointed directly at him.

  Eric switched to Bullet Time as those weapons activated. The projectiles created shockwave tunnels through the air, like boats traveling over the surface of water and leaving waves in their wake.

  Eric stepped out of the way of those bullets and took cover in an adjacent room.

  As time returned to normal, he glanced at his overhead map. Frogger and Brontosaurus had ducked into the room across from his own. He peered past the doorframe slightly, until he could see that room; staying hidden, Brontosaurus pointed the tip of one heavy gun out of the room and let loose. Invisible laser pulses fired from the tip as the muzzle rotated to target the different insurgents.

  Eric moved deeper into the room. He reached the wall, and punched repeatedly, forming several holes that penetrated entirely through the drywall to the kitchen on the other side. Then he stepped back, and hurled himself at the weakened area, and the force of his impact brought him right through.

  Having a robot body does have its advantages…

  White plaster dust settled over his body, ruining any chance of applying a stealth skinning.

  The kitchen was separated from the foyer only by a counter. Beyond that counter, he could see the main entrance. Because of his current angle, he also saw two of the insurgents taking cover in the hallway outside, next to the entrance.

  And they saw him.

  He immediately ducked as bullets came in.

  Eric carried two types of grenades on the harness he wore over his chest. One was the standard frag grenade that detonated upon impact, launching a deadly spray of shrapnel. The other was a pulse grenade, which sent out a series of electrical bolts via random plasma channels—particularly effective against robots.

  He retrieved one of the former from his harness, and tossed the frag grenade over the counter toward the entrance. Dee helped him calculate the necessary speed and throw angle, as well as an appropriate fuse timer.

  When the explosion came, he switched to moderate Bullet Time.

  He leaped over the counter, the movements of his accelerated body on par with his increased time sense. He moved through the slow moving cloud of debris. Two insurgents were already dead on the ground. Beyond the cloud, he spotted three more on the right side of the door, and four on the left.

  The surprised men tried to turn their rifles on him, but he was too fast. He made his way toward them, and utilized the martial arts techniques that were part of his training package to neutralize them. He launched a side chop into the neck of one man, punched his steel fist into the face of another, and grabbed the rifle from the third, giving him a roundhouse kick to the stomach in the process. The impacted body moved backwards slowly, as if in water.

  Eric grabbed that man while he was still in midair, and then spun him around to face the other four that lingered on the other side of the entrance.

  Those four had begun to open fire.

  Eric released the midair man, so that he began hurtling toward the firing insurgents, absorbing the slow-moving bullets in the process.

  Eric raised the rifle that dangled from his shoulder, and released four laser pulses in turn, targeting the heads of each man. The invisible light beams instantly created small black burns in their foreheads.

  Eric released Bullet Time.

  In front of him, the hurtling body struck the four men, who were already dead. Behind him, the other two insurgents toppled. The neck of the first was bent at an odd angle. The face of the second had caved, leaving behind an unrecognizable, bloody pulp above that thick beard.

  Frogger and Brontosaurus appeared at the entrance.

  “Are you sure I can’t convince you guys to call me Neo?” Eric said.

  The insurgent that Eric had used as a bullet shield was still alive, but barely. He was trying to pull himself away along the floor. The roundhouse kick to the stomach had ripped open his belly, and whitish, blood-covered intestines trailed along the floor.

  Brontosaurus approached the man, who stopped when one of those big polycarbonate-metal feet landed in front of his face.

  Brontosaurus switched to Arabic. “Are there any more of you in the building?”

  “Fuck you,” the insurgent replied in English.

  Brontosaurus crunched his foot down hard, popping that head.

  “Why couldn’t you just laser him?” Frogger said.

  Brontosaurus shrugged. “We have to assume that this building is compromised. Get to the first floor. We’re relocating immediately.” He switched to the comm line. “Dickson, Sniper Team C has been compromised at location B12. Requesting backup. Also, I want a precision airstrike on B13.” That was the building across the street where the insurgent had launched the initial rocket propelled grenade. According to the map, there were currently no friendlies inside.

  “Marlborough already has Morpheus diverting some Ravagers your way,” Dickson replied over the comm. “Hang tight.”

  Eric stared at that headless body for several moments after Brontosaurus walked away.

  We need our emotions back. Without them, we’re completely stripped of our humanity. Whatever happened to mercy?

  Then again, what Brontosaurus had done had been a mercy, of sorts. Though there was a good chance the platoon medic would have been able to repair the man. What was the point of that? He’d only return to fight another day.

  Repair. Funny how he thought of men as things to be repaired now. Rather than healed, or mended.

  In the past, Dee would have offered some odd riposte to thoughts like these, but he had long since turned off the Accomp’s listening abilities. He wanted at least some semblance of privacy, and these days reactivated Dee only when necessary.

  The trio reached the far side of the hallway, which was covered in a floor-to-ceiling window that provided a view overlooking the street below. A stairwell door offered a route to the next level beside them.

  The floor shook.

  “That’d be our airstrike next door,” Brontosaurus said.

  The window wasn’t facing the building that had been struck, but a cloud of debris flooded into the street from that direction.

  “Bye bye American pie,” Frogger said.

  The glass abruptly shattered, and Eric and the others were sent flying backward by the force of something exploding.

  Four insurgents with jetpacks roared into view. They carried rifles: Eric recognized the characteristic markings of Chinese laser rifles.

  Eric switched to Bullet Time, and fired as two of the insurgents passed through the broken window and landed inside. Dark spots appeared on their foreheads.

  Brontosaurus and Frogger were also firing, but they were too late: one of the insurgents still outside got off a shot.

  Frogger went down—it was impossible to dodge a laser after it was fired.

  On the lefthand side of his HUD, Eric had a list of callsigns representing the status of each member of the platoon. Frogger’s name had g
one red.

  The two insurgents still outside spiraled out of view as their jetpacks fired randomly—dead men couldn’t provide controller input.

  Eric went to his fallen twin. The beam had struck Frogger in the chest, above the already weakened area over his AI core; it had passed right through into the neural network inside.

  “He’s gone,” Eric said in disbelief.

  “What’s the status on Frogger?” Marlborough asked over the comm.

  “He’s gone,” Eric repeated for the sarge. “His neural core shot through.”

  Speaking over the comm was an art. It involved disconnecting the speaker located behind the mouth grille, so that any words spoken weren’t voiced aloud, but heard only over the shared adhoc network. It was almost like thinking, except that one had to invoke the same muscles responsible for talking in order to transmit any sounds, otherwise the words wouldn’t register over the comm. It allowed the team members to keep their private thoughts to themselves rather than broadcasting them for the team to hear.

  “We’ll restore him from a backup,” Brontosaurus said.

  “But he’s still gone,” Eric said. “This version of him, he died right here, on this floor. Even if we restore him, it won’t be the same Frogger.”

  “It’s our curse,” Brontosaurus said. “And our greatest gift.”

  Brontosaurus gathered up the Chinese rifles from the two dead men, and slid the straps over his shoulder.

  “Either those insurgents stole that gear from the Chinese, or the Chinese gave it to them,” Eric said.

  “Stole, I suspect,” Brontosaurus said. “Though it wouldn’t surprise me if the Chinese did in fact give it to them.”

  Brontosaurus placed charges on the jetpacks and then swung Frogger’s body over his shoulders. Then he hurried down the stairs.

  Eric rushed into the stairwell after the heavy gunner. The air roared behind him as the jetpacks and all the propellant they contained exploded.

  They moved down the zig-zagging flights of stairs. When they rounded the platform of the third flight, they stepped straight into the line of fire of several more insurgents waiting at the next platform below. The men held more laser rifles.

  Eric engaged Bullet Time, turning his body away as he dove for cover. His left arm became riddled with boreholes from laser impacts before he was beyond the line of fire.

  He landed beside Brontosaurus, next to the upward leading run of steps. The heavy gunner had received a similar amount of laser damage to his upper chest. His armor had held.

  Eric flexed his arm. Nothing seemed damaged… no wait, he had lost control of his pinky and adjacent finger.

  “Dickson, where are those Ravager mechs?” Brontosaurus said over the comm.

  “Almost there…” Dickson replied.

  Brontosaurus directed the tip of one heavy gun past the bottom edge of the steps, and activated auto-targeting mode. The muzzle rotated as it fired repeated pulses.

  The out-of-view insurgents shouted.

  Brontosaurus slid his rifle further past the edge, no doubt accessing the video feed returned by the scope so that he could search for targets without exposing himself.

  Eric meanwhile covered the approach from above. He considered attempting to punch through the stairs, but a glanced at the staircase overhead told him that overall, it was probably a bit too thick.

  He saw a small puff of smoke appear from the carpet of the step above him, and realized the insurgents were attempting to fire their lasers through the stairs themselves. They would have had to have been firing randomly, and probably as fast as they were able. Their rifles would soon overheat. The question was, when?

  9

  Eric jacked his time sense to max, slowing everything around him to a halt, then accessed his video feed timeline—Cicadas kept running logs of all sensory input for the past twenty-four hours—and stepped back until he had the current insurgents in frame once more. He zoomed in on the weapons they held, and confirmed the make and model: they were the same Chinese laser rifles Brontosaurus had collected from the last attackers. Eric ran a lookup on that particular make and model in his military database.

  Apparently, the insurgents would only be able to fire eighty pulses in rapid succession before the weapon overheated, and they’d need a thirty second downtime interval. Those pulses were fired in quarter second intervals. So if the attackers held down the triggers to fire non-stop, the weapons would overheat in twenty seconds. Glancing at the video timeline, he saw that he’d taken cover fifteen seconds ago. They’d probably begun firing into the underside of the stairs shortly after Brontosaurus took out some of them with his heavy gun, which was eight seconds ago.

  That meant twelve seconds to go.

  Assuming all of them had opened fire.

  Eric restored his time sense to normal, and watched the puffs of smoke continue to appear as the wood, and the rug, were burned through in random areas. He kept himself flattened on the platform, hoping to reduce his exposure profile.

  He waited the prerequisite amount of time, and then told Brontosaurus: “Cover me.”

  “What—”

  “Just keep your heavy gun aimed past the edge,” Eric said. “With auto-targeting of tangos turned on.”

  Eric dialed up his time sense halfway to max, so that his body still moved at an acceptable rate in comparison to the hyper-perception of his mind, and then he flung himself past the edge of the stairs.

  He lead with his rifle, holding it in front of him, and aimed past the edge as he traveled forward. He accessed the scope feed, so that its video filled most of his vision, and then he ramped his time sense to max.

  He continued to slide forward, thanks to the momentum of his jump. As the enemy units slowly came into view, he targeted them one by one with his rifle, and squeezed the trigger. Two men went down. The third had started to swivel his body toward Eric, but then he got that man too.

  As his shoulder collided with the far wall, the fourth insurgent came into view. The man had swung his rifle completely toward Eric, and it was aimed at his chest—the AI core.

  Now he’d find out if he was right about the weapon cool down or not.

  Eric squeezed the trigger, and a dark smudge appeared on the man’s forehead. No similar smudge marred Eric’s chest plate in turn.

  He increased his time sense so that he could recover from the impact, and then he spun his body to tumble down the stairs. He fired twice more in rapid succession, aiming past the bars of the railing, and taking out the two remaining insurgents that had sheltered there.

  When he hit the platform leading to the next zig-zagging flight of stairs, he restored his time sense to normal, and the men he’d struck all dropped dead in front of him.

  “Nicely done,” Brontosaurus said.

  Eric dismissed the video feed from his scope and stood.

  The wall exploded beside him, and he was sent flying into the opposite wall by the debris.

  A large Ravager mech burst inside, barely fitting the confines of the staircase.

  “’Bout time you showed,” Brontosaurus said.

  “Sorry it took so long,” Morpheus said over the comm in her Japanese accent. “We encountered some resistance along the way.”

  Eric knew it was her speaking, not just because of the voice, but because her name was highlighted on the platoon list on the left side of his HUD when she spoke. As happened when anyone used the comm.

  “Send a lady to do a man’s job...” Brontosaurus said.

  “Hey!” Morpheus said. The Ravager under her control mech swung its laser turrets toward the upper flight, where Brontosaurus was just stepping into view.

  The heavy gunner raised an arm in surrender. “I kid, I kid. Come on, you know you’re my favorite mech operator.”

  “Jump on,” Morpheus said.

  Eric spared a moment to glance at his power cell. Thirty percent.

  He leaped onto the Ravager’s back, and clambered into the passenger seat above the jumpjet
s. Brontosaurus joined him. There was just enough room for the both of them to strap in.

  Eric requested a link to the Ravager’s AI so that he would receive notices. A moment later the AI confirmed the request.

  “I don’t suppose you can transfer control of the Ravager to me?” Eric asked Morpheus.

  In answer the Ravager leaped out the gaping hole in the apartment wall and fired its jumpjets to cushion its landing on the street below.

  The bodies of about twenty insurgents covered the street around him. Apparently the enemy had chosen this moment to make one of their famous sorties.

  He glanced at his overhead map, and saw that red dots representing tangos had appeared all over the place, and were pinning down most of the Bolt Eaters and their support troops. Which would explain why only one mech had arrived, and why it had taken so long to do so.

  Laser shots erupted from the far side of the street, and the Ravager deployed a thick metal ballistic shield in its right arm. Apparently that sortie was still in progress.

  He accessed the feed from one of the Ravens on a nearby rooftop, and spotted the insurgents lying behind the concrete Jersey barriers the Bolt Eater’s own robots had placed earlier.

  “They’re on three o’clock,” Eric said.

  “I see them,” Morpheus said.

  Two more mechs landed beside the main Ravager, and deployed their shields as well. They were digging in, and placing the laser turrets in their other arms over the top edges of the shields to fire at the enemy.

  A moment later an air strike hit the Jersey barrier, and the building beyond it, cloaking that side of the street in a big dust cloud. Similar strikes hit other areas nearby.

  Eric glanced at his overhead map. Huge swathes of red dots had vanished in an instant.

  “Gotta love those Predators,” Brontosaurus said.

  The three Ravagers stood upright, and began to retreat.

  Eric heard a growing whine, as of an aircraft coming in for a crash landing. A moment later a Predator appeared overhead, and clipped the apartment with its wing, crashing into the street behind them. The wingless fuselage skidded along the asphalt before falling into a blast crater and exploding.