“What the fuck?” Tyson said, spinning around as something hit me from behind. Kwan’s body weight drove me down onto the pavement, but the impact was reduced by my body armor and kneepads. I was still looking forward, so amidst all the jumbling and bouncing around, I saw the moment that another cable shot out, the tip of it hitting Carl Abate in the chest.
The cable retracted, the sharp tip bloody, and I followed it back to what looked like a pile of moving wreckage. Shaped like a short, fat cylinder, its exterior was all metal: green, black, brown, and rust-colored. Elizabeth’s body lay in front of it, her neck bent at an angle that wasn’t survivable, her eyes open, unmoving and bulging out of her head.
Tyson opened fire with his FN carbine, firing short bursts of 7.62mm, every burst hitting the target—and all of them bouncing right off.
The cylinder was armored with what looked like the exterior plating of numerous salvaged drones. Tiger stripes mixed with Wolf green and black. Its body moved about on four equidistant legs and it shifted quickly from side to side, reducing the hits Tyson was making on it. Segments of the cylinder seemed to spin in either direction.
I felt a hard knee press down in the middle of my back, then gunfire thundered from right overhead, hot brass tinging to the street on my right as Kwan started to fire his own weapon.
Abate was still alive, and he lifted his torso off the ground, aimed his rifle one-handed, and fired off a burst. Between the shots, I could hear him wheezing like a punctured truck tire. Sucking chest wound.
The cylinder danced sideways, then part of its body spun in place, an unseen arm coming around, a black blur shooting from it straight to Abate’s head, knocking him flat.
The two remaining soldiers continued to fire with limited effect. Tyson pulled a grenade from his vest. Instantly the unknown drone scuttled backward so fast that it was around a building corner before he could even pull the arming pin.
My eyes flickered to Abate, his skull caved in by a brick, the little remote lying on the street about a meter from his outstretched hand, and more importantly, about three meters from mine.
“What the fuck was that?” Tyson asked, ducking behind a blown-out Prius.
“I’m guessing Ajaya was telling the truth about that unknown drone,” Kwan said, putting a new magazine into his rifle.
“Really? Ya think?” Tyson yelled. “What the fuck was that thing, Gurung?”
I spit out some dirt, looking around for sign of the drone. “I have no idea, but our best chance at survival is to unlock Rik—ahh, Unit 19 there,” I said.
“Bullshit!” Tyson said.
“Yeah, not happening, Ajaya,” Kwan said, his weight still on me. “If you move, I’m going to cap you so… don’t.”
Something shot out from between a pair of buildings to our right, moving fast enough to make a whistling sound. Tyson ducked and, whatever the projectile was, it hit the windshield of the Prius he was hiding behind, went through the interior, and blasted out the rear window. Twenty-five meters down the street, a broken chunk of metal skidded along the ground.
“It’s heavily armored, throws rocks and shit like a cannon, and has those cable things, which kinda look like they came from a Render,” I said. “We need firepower.”
“As soon as we unlock that thing, it’s going to shoot us,” Gunny Kwan said from above me.
“The Decimator is programmed to protect humans, not kill them,” I said.
Another swooshing whistle announced a new projectile. Instantly I felt Gunny jump sideways off me just as the curb next to my head exploded into powder and lumps of concrete. The stone had missed Rikki’s motionless form by a decimeter and Kwan’s own body by even less.
Immediately, I rolled left, nearer to Abate, ignoring Kwan’s threat. Both operators were firing off bursts of two and three rounds, shooting and moving. I was focused on the little black square of tech now lying a meter and a half from me. Without looking around, ignoring the next two kinetic bombs that blasted down among us, I bear crawled as fast as I could scramble, my left hand scooping up the device.
It looked like an old-style iPhone from years ago, with a flat screen that lit up as soon as I moved it. Luckily it didn’t seem to be secured like the cell phones of long ago. Instead, the screen showed a green lock button and a blank unlock button. Easy enough. Unlock.
Rikki shot off like a bullet, disappearing across the street between two buildings in an instant. I found the remote’s off switch and powered it down before tucking it into a thigh pocket.
Then I set about finding my ChemJet. Kwan was kneeling behind an old steel mailbox, the kind we used to use before the Post Office was shut down by Congress as a financial failure. A stone or brick slammed into it as I watched, caving in the thick steel. After flinging the rock or whatever it was, the unknown bot scuttled back over the top of and behind a UPS van that lay on its side in the road.
I kept looking around till I spotted what I wanted. Behind the Gunny’s cover spot was a neat pile of my weapons.
“Where the fuck did your uber drone go? It fucking ghosted us,” Tyson said, popping out to nail the bot with a burst of three rounds that spanged off into the distance.
“He’s hunting,” I said, taking the moment to rush across the ground, diving just as I sensed the Zone bot moving back up onto the van top.
Behind me, I heard the sound of rock hitting asphalt, then my hands were grabbing the ChemJet as I judo rolled over the weapons pile.
Coming up onto my knees, I pulled the rifle to my shoulder and simultaneously heard the whine of Rikki’s e-mag weapon firing, followed by the loud ring of metal on metal.
When I looked, I saw Rikki swooping past the back of the UPS truck, firing magnetically accelerated metal balls at the hidden bot. The ChemJet’s gunsight, motion activated, turned on as soon as I lined up the rifle on the truck.
“What the hell is it doing? Why doesn’t it kill that thing?” Tyson asked, clearly done with the whole moment.
There was another sound, the high-pitched whine of Rikki’s missile pods rotating out of his storage nacelles as he stopped in place in mid-air, a rock suddenly flying past where he would have been if he hadn’t stopped. He spun around to bring his missiles to bear and the killer bot came racing up and over the UPS truck and right into my sights. I fired.
Long burst, maybe seven or eight rounds. Every damned one hit that thing and tore into it like its steel armor was aluminum foil. In fact, the rounds went right on through the bot, and then right through the UPS truck, and then knocked a chunk off the corner of the building behind it. Damn… this ChemJet was a frigging beast!
The weird Zone drone was lying in the street, torn almost in half, one of its four legs snapping open and closed, over and over, but slowing down.
“He was flushing the prey out so I could shoot it,” I said. “We’re going to need to save all of his missiles for later.”
Both soldiers were staring at me and I noticed that their weapons were almost pointing in my direction.
“You really want to get back into it? We just held a pretty noisy firefight. I doubt we have much time before this place is overrun.”
“Incoming UAV units from three directions. Head west to the door under the taco sign,” Rikki said, flying into a position overhead, his gun barrel pointed to the northeast. “You have approximately nine seconds.”
I didn’t wait for the the others, just bolted at a dead run right past the cylindrical bot, past the UPS truck, and skidded through the doorless opening into the taco place. I heard booted feet pounding right behind me, and I took a glance at the downed bot as I raced by.
We piled into the restaurant and the air behind us suddenly filled with the hum of incoming drones. I heard Rikki’s e-mag gun snap off a round, heard a crash, then another round fired, followed by a mid-air explosion. Then the sound of the Decimator’s powerful fans rushed past the doorway and off into the distance. A veritable swarm of enemy drones whined away after him.
I looked around at the two soldiers with me. Kwan’s eyes were intense but his face was blank while Tyson looked a little wild, his breathing heavy. Both stared at me for a second, then almost like they’d synchronized it, their eyebrows went up in question.
“Leading them away,” I signed in ASL.
Kwan nodded and began to silently check his gear over. Tyson just stared at me for a moment longer, his eyes still wide but breathing normally again. Then he looked at my rifle and back up at me, eyebrows back up.
“Experimental—DARPA,” I signed, spelling out the letters.
He considered that for a second, then nodded, turning to look outside, even walking over to peek out. I took the time to replace the magazine in my rifle, tucking the partial mag into a different pouch. The mags had come pre-packed and I didn’t want to mess with trying to unload and reload empty or partial mags, possibly ruining the ammo in the process. So I was saving the half mags for when I needed them later rather than trying to consolidate the leftover ammo into just one or two magazines.
Tyson came back and looked at Kwan. “Nothing out there,” he signed. “What’s the play?”
The question was very clearly to the Gunny and not to me. I watched to see what they decided.
Kwan didn’t answer immediately. Instead, it was his turn to consider my rifle and then my face.
“Mission is still on. Kill the fucking queen Spider,” he signed not taking his eyes off me. “We need him. He knows where the Spider is, he has the Decimator, and he knows how these things think.”
“But he can’t do this,” Tyson said risking a whisper, and then disappeared. He was still there, but all I could see was a blurry outline. Oddly, it also felt colder, like his body heat was being cloaked as well.
“Opto-thermic, low-power body cloaking,” Kwan whispered to me. “It’s light-years beyond stealth suit technology. The Potter Cloak three-point-O.”
He looked at Tyson’s outline. “We may be able to salvage Elizabeth or Carl’s for Ajaya here.”
The Ranger was silent for a moment, then his form shifted and after a second, I realized he had turned around. “I’ll go check,” he said with a resigned sigh. The blurry area disappeared for a moment until I spotted it going out the doorway.
“So where is this thing?” Kwan asked.
I didn’t see any harm in telling him. He was completely right: They needed me.
“55 Broadway.”
“And the Decimator?”
“Will be back when he’s either killed the swarm or lost them, or both. Where are your drones?”
“We lost them early. These cloaks kept us safe but there were way too many UAVs for our Kestrels.”
Noise by the door announced Tyson, who de-cloaked a meter in from the doorway. He held up what looked like a cluster of little black pods, each the size of an earbud. Kwan went to him and took about half of the pods, both men coming to me. With sure movements, they began to attach the little devices to my clothing. Two at each ankle, front and back, two on each thigh, four around my hips and butt, six over my torso, four on each arm, and one at the base of my throat and one at the back of my neck.
“Take off your helmet,” Kwan ordered in a whisper, waiting patiently while I complied. Then he fitted a little black elastic band over my head with a slightly different unit front and back, like a headlamp and battery pack.
“Headpiece controls the whole thing. Each unit has to be perfect or the whole thing won’t work. Luckily they built them tough and they stay attached to cloth like they’re welded to it. Touch your headpiece and it will activate.”
He did just that and suddenly the world went grey. I could still see everything, but color was gone and the sunlight at the door was much muted. The two operators were dark gray at least until Tyson touched his own headpiece and suddenly became very clear to my sight.
“We can see each other when cloaked. Most drones don’t seem to pick up on the detail and our thermal and EMF signatures are covered as well,” Tyson explained. “That traitor drone of yours can see us if it thinks to look for these spectrums, which is why we had to shut it down fast.”
I moved around, then stopped as a sudden wave of dizziness hit me.
“Disorientation is normal till you get used to it,” Kwan said. “Let’s scout outside and see what we can recover.”
The Gunny led the way outside, carefully checking things over before stepping out. In fact, both soldiers displayed excellent Zonecraft, staying careful despite the safety of their high-tech cloaks, which they shut off once they were sure the coast was clear. “Gotta save power,” Kwan said. I turned mine off by tapping the side of the headpiece.
Kwan went to Abate’s corpse and began stripping ammo and important items while Tyson did the same to Kottos’s body. Me, I gathered my 9mm Magnum, the American 180 still in its case, and my knife from where Kwan had left them, then went to study the strange bot.
The other two joined me moments later.
“It’s made from a whole bunch of scavenged drones, including the connection cables from a couple of Renders,” I said, giving up on the whispers but still keeping my voice very low.
“But the frame is unique,” Tyson said, squatting down. “Look, at least three cylindrical segments, each of which can spin, each with arms to throw, and look—each cable winds up with one of the sections.”
“Which is how it pulled Elizabeth so fast. And those little throwing arms can also chop,” Kwan said, using his rifle barrel to point out a sharp blade attached to the underside of one of the short arms.
“So they can snatch people right off their feet with those cables and are deadly with any piece of stone or metal they can throw,” Tyson said. “Plus they have choppers. Friggin’ great.”
“The cables are pretty ingenious. The Renders use them to connect together at altitude to create more surface area for riding thermals as well as exchange data and power,” I said. “They’re made of nano material that can move like a snake’s body. And look, those batteries are brand new—a commercial make. Must have come off some of the civilian drones that got hosed on Drone Wars,” I said, pointing through a big hole in the body of the drone.
“Makes you wonder if they set that whole fuel bomb ambush up just to harvest parts?” Kwan suggested. “What’s that stenciled on the top cone, just under the ocular band?”
“It says Pestilence,” Tyson read. “That’s one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Bible.”
“What?” Kwan asked.
“Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death. Revelations, the last book of the New Testament,” Tyson said.
Kwan and I exchanged glances, then looked back at the Ranger. “What? I was raised Baptist. Bible study class was kinda my thing.”
“Would that CThree really name its creations?” Kwan asked me.
“Who knows. I wouldn’t be at all surprised. But the worst part is that it would seem to indicate that there are at least three more of these horsemen out here in the Zone,” I said.
I heard a familiar whine, which rapidly got louder and closer. At first I saw nothing, even though the sound was right in front of me, and then Rikki’s black delta form just appeared in mid-air as he shot between two buildings about two meters off the ground. He came right up to us. One moment nothing, the next a full-blown Decimator.
“You have a Potter Cloak too?” I asked. It certainly explained how he’d gotten through the subway with all those New Yorkers around.
“Affirmative. Installed during last upgrade. Uses large amounts of power.”
“You never told me that.”
“You did not query about my upgrades. Your interrogatory speech centered upon detonation codes and the interception of them.”
I turned to see both Tyson and the Gunny staring at me.
“What? You try having a bomb implanted inside you and see where your priorities lie.”
I really should have quizzed Rikki about his upgrades instead of spending all my free time worried about my neck bomb, but, well… bomb.
“Status?” I asked him.
“Thirteen enemy UAVs destroyed. Remainder lost contact when optic cloak was engaged. Enemy network has been alerted and additional swarms are being called in from around the Zone. Suggest continuing mission immediately or aborting. Power at sixty-four percent. Ammunition at ninety-four percent.”
“Let’s go,” Kwan said, turning toward the nearest side street that would bring us out onto Broadway.