Zone War

by John Conroe

  He was still in the windows, but his wings were folded into ball form and he was facing out, visual and auditory sensors aimed at something outside and far below. Dull sounds reached my ears as I moved closer.

  The southeast windows looked down at Broadway south of my position, and what I saw made my stomach clench, all thoughts of a fast egress gone in the blink of an eye.

  A war was raging on the city street way down below. A white and orange Johnson Recovery light armored vehicle was poking out of a side street just a few buildings down, and it appeared to be somehow stuck, all while a veritable assault force of drones fired on it from every direction. Flying units swarmed around the LAV, not appearing to do anything, but in reality I knew they would be burning every sensor or armored window with invisible laser beams. On the ground, there were three or maybe four Wolf drones waiting to spray bursts of electromagnetically accelerated flechettes at any hatch or door stupid enough to open. But the real danger came from the Russian tank killers facing off with the LAV.

  I pulled my Zeiss binoculars from inside my stealth suit and zoomed in. A thick cable was caught under the front axle of the LAV, which had eight wheels, in effect lifting the front of the heavy vehicle almost two feet off the ground. I scanned the length of the cable and found a Russian heavy tank killer on each end, each robot reversing to tighten the cable even as one fired its heavy caliber machine-gun at the LAV while the other TK lit it up with its hundred-kilowatt high energy fiber optic laser. One TK was on the south side of Morris, the other on the north.

  Johnson Recovery had fallen into a trap, and that meant only one thing. Swinging my binocs around the fight in ever-widening circles, I found what I was looking for. There, further down Broadway, right at the back of Bowling Green Park, high atop the US Customs house, was the seven-legged, black armored form of a Spider CThree, clinging to the roof. My little circle of vision swung back to the LAV, right to the armored front windshield. I found a blonde head, wearing laser-resistant goggles, swiveling everywhere, arms spinning the wheel as the LAV surged forward and back. Astrid Johnson.

  The Johnsons were fighting back, the GAU-17, M-134 minigun on the roof of the LAV hosing the laser tank killer while two gun barrels, a .50 sniper rifle and the 11 millimeter electromag that JJ favored fired at the machine-gun-mounted robot tank. The minigun used 7.62 rounds, individually not sufficient to threaten the mini-tank’s armor, but when fired in an angry stream of up to six thousand rounds a minute, it could chew up even hardened steel.

  But their time was running out. The TK with the standard gun was too close to fire either of its two anti-tank missiles, being well inside arming distance, and that heavy machine-gun would eventually cut through the LAV’s side armor. Those massive rounds would then begin to ricochet around the interior. An image of Astrid cut down by heavy bullets popped unbidden into my head.

  My mind kicked into gear. Had she not been there, I’m not sure if I would have helped. Not proud of that, but there it is. Instead, I started moving, even as my suddenly hyper-active brain laid out all the steps I needed to take.

  “Rikki, airplane mode.” Turn off the IFF responders and remove him from the net. I didn’t trust my software against a Spider’s raw computing power. My own Berkut might be turned against me in a New York second.

  “Airplane mode engaged.”

  “Designate tank killers as units North and South. Range both units, range Spider on Customs house,” I instructed as I started shoving furniture around. Two standing desks were just the right height to fit side by side, creating a raised shooting platform maybe six feet back from the south window. I screwed the Titan ACC suppressor onto the MSR, unfolded the bipod, and laid out two mags of ammo.

  Then I split my pack into two pieces. A small daypack holding the recovered laptop went back on my body, and the tool bag propped open the glass entry door to Rocon Financial. From the tool bag, I pulled out the mini acetylene canister and a red plastic jar of powder. Inside the jar was a second, smaller jar that held another powder. When I mixed the two powders, they went from inert to an activated binary explosive that was susceptible to high velocity impacts. I taped the now volatile mixture to the acetylene, leaving the bomb out in the middle of the doorway, my hands shaking with adrenaline.

  Next, I used my titanium pry bar to split apart the elevator doors and jam them open. My fast descenders clamped smoothly onto the elevator cable.

  Racing back to the standing desks, I climbed up, lay down prone, and snugged the big rifle to my shoulder. I slid my hood-mounted hearing plugs into each ear. Satisfied, I inserted the first big mag of five cartridges into the gun and cycled the bolt.

  “Range to Spider?”

  “Two-hundred ninety-one meters.”

  “Range to TK South?” The southern tank killer was the one with the 12.7mm machine-gun and, from what I could see, only two remaining anti-tank missiles of its original four. The northern unit with the laser had empty rocket tubes and I decided it was the lesser of the two evils.

  “Eighty meters.”

  Both tanks were really close range for a sniper rifle. Even the Spider wasn’t all that far. The angle of declination on the Spider wasn’t all that big a deal either, so rather than get Rikki’s more precise calculations; I decided to shoot by eye. The TK units were almost straight down. Dad might be rolling in his grave, but time was of the essence here. The missiles were likely too close to achieve arming distance, but that could change.

  “Three-round burst on south window on my mark. Triangular pattern, twenty centimeter spread.”

  “Affirmative.” Rikki was hovering over my shoulder.

  The first round up the pipe of the big MSR was a subsonic ‘cause I needed the quiet for at least the first shot. It was followed by four full-power, armor-piercing rounds. Sound wouldn’t matter after the glass hit the ground, and I would need the extra power.

  The crosshairs settled over the black armored form of the Spider, hovering over one black electro-optical sensor. The subsonic round might just glance off its armor at this angle, but a shot through the eye should break its concentration, so to speak.

  “Three, two, one, mark.” I started my squeeze at the two and the gun bucked against my shoulder just as Rikki burst fired three suppressed rounds, Spiderwebbing the plate glass before my bullet left the muzzle. A small part of my brain considered that I hadn’t thought of high-rise buildings having anti-shatter glass. But the .338 bullet and, probably more important, the massive muzzle blast of my rifle blew out most of the glass, solving the problem for me. I had maybe a bit under four seconds before the glass hit the ground, alerting the combatants to my location.

  Time slowed down as I cycled the bolt, seeing the Spider’s left ocular lens explode, before shifting crosshairs down to the heavy machine-gun turret on the tracked tank killer.

  TKs have heavy armor. My .338 wasn’t gonna penetrate that, but the gun-mounted aiming module was fair game. The heavy armor-piercing round smashed the robot’s gun sight all to crap but I was already running the bolt and aiming for the top rocket. My number three round smashed through the missile tube a third of the way from the back, my fourth shot hitting the lower rocket in almost the same spot. Nothing happened, but that was my goal. Try launching those missiles now, motherfucker.

  The Spider was gone, having vanished like a phantom, and the gun turret on the TK spun toward my building, heavy machine-gun rounds blindly smashing the floors below me. I focused on my last round, taking a breath and locking the crosshairs a smidge over my target. My gun bucked, the cable connector on the front of the laser-equipped TK snapped, dropping the LAV’s front end to the ground. The cap blew off the end of the top missile tube on the other TK, the launch charge shoving the rocket partway out of the tube before the flight charge ignited, a blow torch of flame jetting out the bullet hole in its side. The missile failed, spinning end over end into the air, like a Chinese firework.

  Time sped back up to normal and things happened quick. The LAV eng
ine roared, the cable still caught in its front axle. The other six tires spun, sending the twelve-ton LAV back down Morris Street. The cable tightened and yanked on the smaller eight-ton TK, spinning it around like a fish on a line. The front of the LAV disappeared but I could see minigun tracer rounds lighting up the little robot tank as it got dragged around the corner and down the road.

  That’s all I had time to see. I rolled off the desks, ejected the spent mag, and inserted the other one as I ran for the elevator, Rikki keeping pace.

  “Target red plastic jar in doorway,” I ordered as I slung the big rifle and grabbed the descenders, sliding my feet into the fabric loops. A whirring noise by the windows caught my attention. Six flying drones swarmed through the opening as I stepped off the edge, instantly starting to fall.

  “Fire one round on Mark, then follow. Three, two, one… Mark!”

  I loosened the descenders, dropping two meters as the world above me roared and flashed orange flame.

  Chapter 5

  I fell forever.

  Okay, that’s maybe a bit dramatic. I didn’t fall; I slid at what felt like a crazy speed as debris rained down on my head and shoulders. Then something bigger hit the side of my head, followed instantly by my legs jamming onto an object that filled the elevator shaft. I fell backward, my slung rifle whacking my elbow with its steel barrel, a hard object slamming into my lower back.

  It took me a good five or six seconds to bring my wits back on line. I was on top of the elevator car. Rikki was on top of me. His lights were dead, his spherical hover form likely the heavy object that had glanced off my skull. Dust and sheet rock and other shit trickled down from above, but nothing moved overhead. High, high above, I could see the light and smoke in the open doorway, but down here it was pretty dark.

  “Chora, you must always take stock before you decide on a course of action. Think, my boy—think of what you have, what you need, where you want to go, and how best to get there.” My father’s voice echoed in my head as if he were still with me, still alive. I think perhaps I shall always hear him so. I hope so.

  I started to move but pain shot through my right ankle, ripping a short, sharp “Shit!” out of my mouth before I could stop myself. Freezing in place, listening for movement. Nothing. A pocket of my stealth suit yielded a chemical light tube. When I unwrapped it, I found it was already starting to glow, the inner glass tube of activating chemicals broken when I fell. Shaking it brought a soft green light to my little world.

  We were at the bottom of the shaft, the elevator car parked at the basement level, at least according to the words stenciled on the elevator shaft. I say we, but Rikki was dead, or offline at the very least. With ginger movements, I pulled myself over to the trapdoor at the top of the car, dragging Rikki with me. It wouldn’t open, not till I convinced it with my kukri, using the big knife like a pry bar. The chem light dropped neatly down, showing me it was empty, which was a good thing. Never know where a body could be lying or a drone waiting.

  I tied a piece of parachute cord to Rikki, my rifle, and the last part of my pack, the part that contained my payday salvage. Lowering the whole bundle and then dropping the end of the cord was easy. Getting my body ready to drop on my one good leg was harder. I shimmied and shifted till my feet were through, then my hips, stomach, and finally shoulders and head. Hanging from my hands, I was only a couple of feet above the floor of the car. I dropped. Left foot hit first, but I fell to the right and my bad foot came down automatically. The pain was enough to make my vision narrow and darken, spots swimming before my eyes.

  No swearing this time but mostly because my jaw had been clenched hard enough to crack a tooth (which I didn’t—lucky me), but damn.

  When I could see (and breathe) again, I decided the elevator car was a good place for some first aid. Medical supplies were always distributed about my body, something Dad had taught me. Wound clotting bandages and tampons (which make great bullet hole stoppers—not that they helped my dad all that much) in more than one pocket, ibuprofen and stronger pain killers in a shirt pocket, and an elastic bandage in yet a third pocket. I wrapped the ankle right over my boot. The skin was already swollen and I was afraid of taking my boot off, only to not get it back on. Three ibuprofen were dry swallowed and then I turned to my rifle. Dad was gonna be rolling over for sure. But nothing for it. I wrapped a regular gauze bandage over the muzzle of the MSR, then put duct tape over that to hold it all in place. Now I had a $16,000 precision crutch for hobbling about. Super.

  My kukri slid between the doors and they pried apart pretty easy, considering that they’d been shut for ten years. I tossed the chem light out and pulled back, my Five-Seven in my right hand even though the butt of the rifle-crutch was in that same armpit. Nothing. Just empty basement.

  Now, how to get out?

  The building wasn’t real old, but old enough that when fiber optic lines came along, it was retrofitted. And the fiber optics took up much less space than the original copper wires did. The result was a utility pipe that ran out under the street, sixty or seventy centimeters in diameter, with a much smaller fiber optic tube only taking up a portion of that little tunnel.

  It took forever. First I had to stack boxes and stuff to climb up to the utility tube, then haul up my drone, rifle, and pack. Then scoot through the tunnel on my stomach, my only light a pale green chem stick.

  Stale dry air, my light reaching just a few feet forward before the wan green glow faded to black, dust and dirt in my face.

  I’m not claustrophobic, not after all the years of worming through openings and windows, basements and tunnels. That’s how I got Dad to take me with him in the first place. A locked and barred jewelry shop on the West Side. He couldn’t get the doors open enough to get through and our bills were piling up. I begged and begged and he finally relented. Big fight that night between Mom and Dad. But in the morning, I went with him and when I torqued myself through that narrow gap, I came face to face with the object that was jamming the door. The owner’s bones. My fear of the skeleton wasn’t as strong as my fear of failing Dad, so I sucked in my scream and scrambled around it. Then I looted that store like a professional. After that, he started to bring me into the Zone from time to time, mostly when he needed a pint-sized infiltrator.

  But that damned utility tube went on and on. My leg was killing me and I had no idea what I would find at the other end. If it was blocked or dead-ended, I was screwed. And of course there could be rats. Really large, human-flesh-fed rats. If I got blocked, I’d have to crawl backward and shove my gear with my feet. If there were rats, well, I’d just die right there. So yes, it was nerve-racking. I kept telling myself that at least Astrid should have made it out. That helped… a little.

  But the end of the tube brought me to a bigger tunnel. One of the newer ones, dug when the whole fiber optic craze hit Wall Street, the need for faster and faster links to bring more and more money. Nowhere was the adage that time is money more true than the old Wall Street or the new Hoboken Exchanges.

  Now able to stand up and completely uncertain how much time had passed, I hobbled uptown, despite the fact that it would take me further from my closest Zone exit point. No way was I getting out of the Zone today. I’d have to camp out for the night and see what I could do to help my fallen companion.

  Chapter 6

  My father set up bolt holes all over the island, a practice that I’ve continued to expand on. Most are below ground level, as meters of dirt and concrete do wonders for masking sound and electrical activity.

  My nearest one was west of Broadway, just a couple of blocks away, but it seemed like miles. I came up from underground via a utility manhole cover, then started the journey, which took hours. It was all old-school stuff, what with Rikki down and out. Slow, stealthy movements, staying low, sniper crawling under cars, buses, delivery trucks, which thankfully had been abandoned where they stood, in long lines of deadlocked traffic. There was lots of ongoing construction at the time of the Attack, so the
scaffolding protecting the sidewalks is everywhere, and I love it. Invisibility from UAVs. Sometimes a Crab will hang on the outer frame of a sidewalk scaffold, but mostly they were clear. When I had to crawl, it was actually less painful than hobbling would have been. But it sucked.