by Jack Heath
But if they didn’t want to retreat to a more easily defended location, that wasn’t his problem. He jammed the levers forward, and the tank clambered up the first few steps of the last flight.
An ominous creaking noise reached Six’s ears, muffled by the tank’s thick shell. He saw the stairs shudder, and a chunk of concrete snapped off the side of the stairs and tumbled down into the dusty darkness. Six’s instinct was to reverse—this flight of stairs wasn’t solid—but he knew their best chance was to drive up it quickly, before it had a chance to collapse completely. If he drove the tank back to the third landing, the stairs might crumble anyway, leaving them trapped there.
The bullets stopped hitting the nose, and now that the tank was facing upward Six saw that the soldiers were ducking for cover as they raced through the doorway. They didn’t want to be in the stairwell when it fell to pieces under the strain.
Six gritted his teeth as he held the levers as far forward as they would go, pressing them against their hinges—he actually felt the steel bend slightly under the pressure. Chunks of the concrete wall rained down upon the roof of the tank, some small enough that they merely bounced down into the stairwell, and some so large that Six felt the cabin shake as they hit. The treads squealed as they scraped against the stairs, the motor howled as gravity dragged the tank backward, and the concrete boomed like thunder as it splintered under the tank’s weight.
Six kept pushing. They had almost reached the landing. The treads were about to touch it. Almost…there…
The flight of stairs snapped off the landing completely and plummeted down into the gloom. The tank remained, half on the landing, half hanging out into open space, the treads skidding uselessly against the ground. Six eased the levers back slightly and the treads caught. The tank rolled forward, away from the precipice, coming to rest a few meters away from the stairwell doorway.
Six exhaled a deep breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You all right?” he called.
Kyntak appeared by his side. “Sure. That was the coolest thing ever!”
Six grimaced. No matter how many near-death experiences they went through, Kyntak never seemed to take things seriously. But then he remembered the look of despair in Kyntak’s eyes when he had first been resuscitated, when he’d thought that they were both doomed. He hadn’t been talking about how cool it all was then. It was impressive that he’d bounced back so quickly…
And suddenly Six realized something about Kyntak that he should have already known. His smiles were convincing, but they weren’t real. Like Six, Kyntak had been in constant pain since his awakening sixteen years ago and, like Six, he had hidden it from everyone else. But while Six had done it by limiting his social interactions, Kyntak had done it by forcing them—creating a happy image that would conceal his misery at a distance, as a mirage conceals hot, dry sand. His jokes were a shield, a last line of defense against the grim world outside and the sadness within, a brave face to put on his numerous troubles.
Six understood now. He had been doing the same thing. These days, when people asked how he was, he said, “Good, thanks, how are you?” Kyntak had been doing it for much longer. He’d been forcing his smiles for so long that they seemed completely genuine—perhaps even to himself.
Kyntak hadn’t bounced back from the despair he’d felt two floors below. He’d simply re-created the illusion of contentment.
“You know what?” Six said.
Kyntak looked at him.
Six grinned. “That was pretty cool.”
Kyntak laughed and slapped a hand against Six’s shoulder. Six smiled.
But they’d wasted enough time. The next part of their escape was going to be the most dangerous. “We have to get out of the tank now,” Six said, stepping towards the hatch.
Kyntak raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
Six pointed through the dark window. “The doorway isn’t wide enough,” he said.
Kyntak stared at Six. “We’re driving a tank, Six, not a golf cart. If the doorway isn’t wide enough, we’ll make it wide enough.” He reached over to the levers and threw them both forward.
Six grabbed the handles on the periscope as the tank powered across the landing. The cabin shook, and Six was wrenched forward as the nose smashed into the doorway. Through the glass he saw concrete shatter outward as chunks of the wall were crunched into dust under the treads.
The tank rolled out of the stairwell into the barracks. But the room didn’t look at all like when Six had seen it last—it was a war zone.
Most of the bunks in the middle of the room still stood, although the mattresses had been shredded by gunfire. But the ones near the stairs had all been overturned to make cover; Vanish’s soldiers were crouched behind them, firing single shots from their Owls over the top. Their Eagles lay discarded on the floor. Six’s earlier sabotage had made them useless.
The soldiers weren’t firing at the tank, although they scrambled away from its path as it thundered out of the stairwell. They were firing in the opposite direction, towards the armory. And as Six swung the periscope around and put his eyes to the viewer, he saw why.
The ChaoSonic troops had arrived. Cockroaches had toppled bunks to make their own barricade at the opposite end of the barracks. They were blasting bullets right back at Vanish’s soldiers.
There were only two dozen troops there, fighting more than fifty Vanish soldiers. But as Six watched, another eight cockroaches ran through the armory to join the ranks, having taken the elevator down. There was an explosion up above, and Six tilted the periscope, watching as a square chunk of the ceiling fell, crushing three bunks into twisted metal debris, and crashed to the floor. More ChaoSonic troopers emerged through the hole in the ceiling, abseiling rapidly towards the floor and firing as they came. Within seconds another five troops were on the ground, knocking over more bunks to make firing positions, and plenty more were raining down from the ceiling.
Six looked at the scene with horror. The concrete floor was already littered with fallen soldiers from both sides, some writhing in agony as they pressed their hands against their wounds, some slumped lifelessly on the floor. Six hoped that they were merely unconscious rather than dead. He watched as a Vanish soldier clamped one hand around a gunshot wound on his arm to stop the bleeding and used the other to repeatedly press the morphine button on his remote. It was useless.
We caused this, Six thought, guilt squeezing his stomach painfully. I caused this. This is my fault.
“Six,” Kyntak yelled. “We have to go, and I don’t know how to drive this thing.”
Six nodded grimly. If nothing else, the presence of a tank in their midst would distract the soldiers from killing one another for a while. He shoved the levers.
The treads spun to life again, and Vanish soldiers ran aside as the tank plowed through their ranks, grinding their makeshift barriers into the floor. The ChaoSonic troops opened fire with their Crow KOT45s, and Six flinched instinctively as the bullets slammed into the hull of the tank, sparking harmlessly off it and the glass. He kept the pressure on the levers. Row after row of bunks toppled over as the tank slammed through them.
Vanish’s side had been panicked by the loss of their nanomachines and radios. The cockroaches had no such hindrance. Instead of scampering aside, they retreated slowly, facing the tank, concentrating their fire on the windows. Six doubted that they would have much luck. If the windows could be broken by bullets he would have seen signs by now.
The tank kept rolling forward, and the soldiers kept retreating backward towards the armory. Now the tank had passed the halfway mark—the troops abseiling down from the ceiling were behind it. But they weren’t retreating, Six saw as he stared through the back window. They were following the tank, step after smooth, swift step, Crows raised.
“Hit the deck!” Kyntak roared. Six looked through the front windows long enough to see a PGC387 grenade spinning through the air towards the tank. He ducked and dived, hitting the floor of the cabin with
a graceless thump that was lost beneath the sound of the treads pounding the floor.
The throw had been accurate and well timed. Six heard the tap of the grenade clipping the window only a split second before it detonated, smashing the thick glass into thousands of deadly slivers. The light burst through the cabin, which rocked as the explosion pushed the tank backward. Six wrapped his arms over his head and kept his eyes shut, face pressed against the floor. The sound of the treads squealing as they scraped backward over the concrete was almost masked by the shrieking din of the explosion.
Six scrambled up from the floor, ears ringing. He checked himself for injuries—he was clean. The control panel had shielded him from most of the blast and the flying glass. “Kyntak! Are you all right?”
Kyntak was at the far end of the cabin, apparently having been blown back by the force of the blast. He climbed to his feet, and Six saw that his hands were bleeding. “I’m fine,” he yelled. “Just cuts and bruises. Keep going!”
Six pushed the levers, wincing as the still-hot metal singed his palms. The ChaoSonic troops kept retreating, but now they were all aiming at the windows. Six tried to draw one of his AM-92s, but it was caught in his belt and he was too slow. “Incoming,” he yelled back to Kyntak as he ducked down, keeping his hands on the levers.
A storm of bullets sprayed through the window into the cabin, most hitting the roof and ricocheting down. Kyntak crawled forward across the floor towards Six, who was shielded by the control panel.
The firing stopped for a moment, and Six had a pretty good idea why. He rose to his feet, drawing the AM-92 in one smooth motion and pointing it out the window. He was right. There was a soldier about to throw a second grenade. Six pulled the trigger. The dart hit the soldier in the shoulder, and his throwing arm flopped as he lost consciousness. The grenade bounced half the distance between him and the tank. The other cockroaches dived for cover as the grenade hit the floor.
Boom! Concrete dust spurted up towards the ceiling and the blast carved a deep trench into the floor. The explosion only slowed the tank down this time, and it rolled forward slowly before toppling into the blast crater. Six jammed the levers forward, but the nose was stuck against the other side of the trench, and so the treads ground uselessly against the rubble.
Six heard the thunk of boots on the roof and turned to see soldiers clambering up across the rear window. The cockroaches who had abseiled down from the ceiling and followed the tank were making their move now that it was stuck. They were boarding.
Six swung the gun alignment wheel, and the turret on top of the tank spun wildly. One soldier lost his balance and tumbled off the top. The other howled with pain as the half-finished gun stump slammed into his hip, knocking him down onto the concrete. Six heard the clumping of footsteps above. More were coming.
“Kyntak!” he yelled, but Kyntak moved too slowly. The hatch was torn open from above, and a grenade fell through.
It bounced on the floor of the cabin. The stomping across the roof indicated the hasty retreat of the soldiers. Six scanned the cabin for possible exits. If they were still inside when the grenade went off, they’d be vaporized.
The grenade bounced a second time. The only exits were the hatch and the smashed window. The hatch would take too long—they had perhaps two seconds before detonation. He turned to the window—and recoiled in horror. The last explosion had not only deepened the trench—it had breached right through the floor! There was a gaping chasm through which Six could see the shattered remains of the glass cube, the hollowed-out bus, and the unconscious soldiers on the floor below. They were lucky the tank hadn’t already fallen through the hole. And if they tried to climb out that way, they would both fall to their deaths.
The grenade drifted downward through the air, ready to bounce a third and final time—and Kyntak caught it. Six watched him throw it back up into the air, through the hatch, and then reach up and pull the hatch closed behind it.
He only had to pull it halfway—the explosion slammed it closed with a metallic clank. The muffled boom was like a thunderclap, and the cabin shook wildly, stirring up the dust from the floor.
Kyntak grinned smugly. Why didn’t you think of that? his expression asked.
Six turned to the controls again. There was still no way to cross the hole in the floor. He doubted the tank could drive at a fast enough speed to jump the gap, and if he tried, it would either get stuck or fall right through. And suddenly he realized that this had been the reason the last few grenades had been thrown—to trap the tank on the other side of the gorge, forcing him and Kyntak either to retreat or to get out of the tank and continue on foot.
He pulled both the levers back and the tank rolled out of the trench. He drove it backward about twenty meters and stopped. He looked at the hole, at the soldiers behind them, and at the controls.
Then things suddenly got a whole lot worse. Two ChaoSonic soldiers marched forward out of the armory carrying a giant square cannon—an EMU D-38. Six gaped. He’d only seen an EMU once before in his life, in a secret ChaoSonic weapons bunker—and he’d never seen one in action. But he knew of its destructive capabilities—it fired thirty-millimeter depleted uranium bullets at a rate of ninety per minute.
The tank could shrug off rounds from Crow KOT45s as if they were spitballs. An EMU would tear it to pieces.
“Six,” Kyntak said, moving away from the window.
“I know!” He pulled the levers back, and the tank rolled back towards the barricade Vanish’s soldiers had made. They were by far the lesser threat now.
“Six!” There was an urgency in Kyntak’s voice.
“I know!” There was no cover. Nothing for them to hide behind. The hull of the tank was thick steel, reinforced with tungsten, and therefore the toughest surface in the room by far, but the EMU bullets would tear through it as if it were paper. Their best chance was to either back up to the stairwell they had just emerged from and hope the gunners weren’t expert marksmen—or to get out and run…
“No, behind us!” Kyntak insisted. Six turned, and his jaw dropped. Silver eyes stared impassively at him through the back window.
“Harry?” Six said, although he doubted that the robot could hear him.
The cabin lurched up at a crazy angle, and suddenly the front window was facing the ceiling. Looking out the back, Six found himself staring at Harry’s torso and upper arms.
“He’s lifting the tank!” Kyntak shouted.
“I can see that!” Six yelled as he grabbed the control panel for support. “Why?”
Harry staggered forward, one slow step at a time—Six heard the synthetic legs groan under the strain. Earle Shuji had told Six that the bot could lift weights of up to one ton—surely the tank must weigh more than that? Then Six saw the smoke from Harry’s exhaust valve. His jet pack was on. He wasn’t flying, but he was removing some of the strain from his legs—probably at least a hundred kilograms’ worth, Six thought.
The floor shook with each step Harry took. For a moment Six thought it couldn’t be Harry after all. Harry was instructed to protect his owner, and moving Six closer to the EMU didn’t seem to fit with that.
Thump. Six’s second thought was that Harry didn’t know he was inside the tank—but he had seen Six through the window. So why would…
“Grab hold of something,” Six called to Kyntak suddenly. “He’s going to throw us over the gap!”
Kyntak immediately gripped the periscope handles. Six grabbed the wheel that controlled the half-made gun. The cockroaches had apparently worked out what was happening before he had—bullets were already pinging off the tank’s underbelly in thousands. Harry’s footsteps kept a steady pace. Through the window Six saw a few rounds hit Harry’s torso—they chipped away the plastic skin to reveal the steel abdomen.
Six heard an electronic bleep—the EMU was loaded and ready to go.
“Kyntak!” he roared. “Take cov—”
The rest of the warning was lost as the EMU opened fire. Bullet
s punched through the underside of the tank and kept enough momentum to rip through the ceiling. Six held on to the wheel with one arm and curled the rest of his body into a ball. Kyntak did the same with the periscope.
Most of the EMU bullets hit the rear end of the tank, which was closer to the ground—Six suspected that this was no accident. The gunners expected him and Kyntak to have tumbled down to that end as Harry lifted the tank. They didn’t know that they were hanging from objects closer to the front.
The storm of bullets stopped. Six heard another bleep—presumably the EMU was out of ammo. This was only a minute’s reprieve—if they were prepared to expend an entire magazine that quickly, they probably had plenty to spare.
Thump. Thump. Harry kept walking. Six guessed that they had almost reached the hole in the ground, but it was hard to tell with one window at the ceiling and the other at the floor.
Thump. Thump. He was willing to bet that when the EMU fired next, it would be at the middle of the tank’s hull—right about where Kyntak was dangling from the periscope. The same thing had obviously occurred to Kyntak—Six could see the panic dancing in his eyes.
Six stretched a hand down and hung as low as he could from the wheel. Kyntak executed a one-armed chin-up on the periscope handle and grabbed Six’s outstretched arm with his free hand. Six dragged him up to the wheel.
Harry’s footsteps stopped. We’re about to get thrown, Six thought. He hugged the wheel tightly.
A mechanical howl boomed out from Harry’s speaker as the robot heaved the tank over the hole. Six was suddenly weightless, and he bumped into Kyntak as they flew through the air. He guessed that they probably wouldn’t be going very high—Harry had struggled to lift the tank, let alone throw it. He watched the warehouse spin by through the shattered window.
The crash of the treads smacking down onto the concrete floor was deafening. Six was dragged off the wheel by the impact as if he had been kicked in the chest, and his body smacked down painfully onto the floor. His vision sparked and crackled as if he were watching an old movie. The ringing in his ears disoriented him until it was replaced by the sound of the EMU firing.
