I’m in, Kwan signed in ASL. Tyson saw it and signed his own agreement. After a second, I finally nodded too. Kwan raised both eyebrows at my hesitation and signed again. Problem? Think of something?
I shook my head and signed back my response. Shocked at detail. Plan is really good.
It’s your F’ing drone… you programmed it! he came back.
I shrugged. He looked at me evenly then turned to Tyson, who just pointed at his wrist, where some people still wore retro watches. His message was clear—ticktock. Kwan nodded and pointed at my hand, or rather, the little missile it held.
Tyson pulled a multi-tool from his gear and opened it to a hex-head driver, then handed it to me and backed away a meter or so. I gave him a glare and turned to Kwan. He backed up too.
Cowards.
Nice. I got on with it. Each screw backed right out and I carefully set them on Rikki’s rock-steady surface. Then I pulled the nosepiece off. Looking inside, I couldn’t see shit—too dark. I looked at Kwan and squinted at the missile tube. He got the message, pulling a chem light from a pocket. With a quick bend, he snapped the glass inside and shook it to make it light up. Then he held it over the open end of the missile. Inside, by the grayish-green light that was the result of our Potter Cloaks, I could now see a cylinder of gleaming metal. On opposite sides of the tube were little white plastic bits that quickly yielded to Tyson’s pliers. Funny, the government using plastic, a substance that is used less and less by a conservation-minded society every day.
Tilting the missile, I went to drop the plastic retainers on the floor, but Kwan’s hand shot out and caught them. He held up an index finger on his free hand and gave me the no-no signal. Quite right. Never leave anything behind.
I shrugged off the minor embarrassment I felt and shook the missile. The shiny bundle that was the EMP unit slid out into my hand. Kwan reached for it and I let him take it. Rikki’s holo display blinked again, so I glanced at the new words.
Put comparable weight and sized object inside tube and reattach nosepiece. Place back in missile magazine.
He could still launch the missile, and maybe it would knock out a drone from kinetic force alone. After a moment of thought, I pulled a little container of spare 10mm e-mag balls I carried for Rikki and found I could fit five of the hardened steel balls inside the missile tube. The ammo feed hopper port opened on Rikki’s back by itself, and I carefully put the remaining five balls inside. Then I put the nose cone back on the missile and screwed it down. When I held it up to its previous placement on Rikki’s missile pod, the little clamps snapped closed on it instantly and then the whole missile unit folded back into place as both of the lower, bigger pods simultaneously rotated out.
Time to party. I moved back away from the door, rifle barrel pointing off to the left but level with the ground. Rikki moved back as well, the bulk of his airframe between me and the door. Kwan noted that with raised brows before giving me a thumbs up. I nodded. He turned to Tyson, who was at the door, holding the knob. Tyson nodded as well.
Kwan kneeled down, which gave me a clear field of fire, and held up three fingers with his left hand, his right cocked back with the EMP pod in it, ready to throw. After one last glance at both of us, he took a deep breath and nodded. Then one finger folded, a second finger folded, and finally, the last. As his hand formed into a fist, Tyson pulled the door open with one solid yank. Kwan threw the EMP at the nightmare that towered at the other end of the hall and then dropped flat.
The drone, whose top segment was printed with a stenciled WAR, spun around so fast, I almost crapped myself. A single metal arm with a pincher on the end snapped around and snatched the EMP out of the air. And instantly froze as the little EMP projectile crackled and buzzed.
The gray vision instantly cleared and my gunsight, which by this time was centered on the metal monster, went dead. Then we were moving, Rikki zooming forward before Kwan could regain his feet. I followed the Gunny, and Tyson followed me, all of us racing for the dark EXIT sign that pointed toward the familiar stairwell door on the right.
Kwan had the door open and I shot past him, seeing Rikki fly over the WAR bot, a small black metal can-shaped object falling out of a port on my drone’s underside. It hit the horseman drone with a soft clang and stuck. Then I was inside the black stairwell, covering the stairs with my weapon while hearing Tyson run in after me. A second later, Rikki zoomed overhead and up into the darkness. Kwan carefully closed the door and we started for the stairs.
All three of us snapped chem lights as we climbed, moving to get space between us and the ground floor drones, but not willing to do so in pitch darkness.
The heavy fire door at the stairwell’s entrance muffled sound, but all three of us glanced at each other as we heard the whine of UAV fans in the hall. We moved faster, me first, then Kwan, Tyson bringing up the rear. I set each foot carefully into the the most recent tracks on the dusty steps—my own, from a little more than a month before. Behind me, I noticed the others stepping where I did, so that we weren’t leaving any new tracks that might alert the drones behind us.
We were two floors up when a sound below froze us in our tracks. A glance over the railing, down into the depths, showed a bloom of daylight. The stairwell door had just been opened. Hurriedly, we each tucked our chem lights into our clothing, hiding the pale green glow.
All three of us listened intently, but no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t pick up a sound. Not the whine of a fan, nor the minor hum of a servo.
I tapped the Potter Cloak’s headband control, but nothing seemed to happen. A glance through the ChemJet’s rifle sight, with a shake of the rifle for good measure, didn’t result in the sighting reticle lighting up. Tyson tapped his own headband, once, then a second time. Nothing happened.
Kwan suddenly held up one finger, getting our attention. Then he pointed it at his own ear. Tyson and I froze, listening. After two seconds, we all heard a sound. A click. Like something metal coming down on concrete. Both soldiers had alert expressions on their faces. Then we heard another click. Suddenly I knew what had made that sound—I’ve heard it before, closer even than this: the sound of a Tiger’s metal claw as it hit stone, asphalt, or concrete.
I held up my left hand and signed Tiger.
Both men frowned but nodded their understanding. I signed Switch places with me to Tyson, lightly patting the stock of the ChemJet so he would understand. 7.62mm armor piercing rounds, which is all they carried in their magazines, could chew through Tiger armor, but my ChemJet would kill it quicker, even at the short distance we would have on the stairwell.
He nodded and I moved, almost climbing up onto the stair rail, Kwan following my example a second later, so that Tyson could take point. Kwan followed him and I stepped silently off last. Another click sounded in the dark depths below, followed quickly by a second. Without a sign or signal, we all picked up our pace. Rikki was somewhere above us, scouting the stairs for drones ahead of us. It was up to me to provide security from the metal death below.
We kept moving, slower now as we took pains to be even more silent, pausing every three to five steps to listen. I had no real way to judge these things, but I felt like the few random clicks I was hearing were down by the first floor, as Europeans would call it, second floor by American definition. We were snail crawling past the third, a scant two floors between us and the relentless killer below.
The clicking continued and we kept climbing, the stress mounting with every step. Sure it was easy on our cardio, climb-wise, but murder on our nerves and tense muscles. Like slow yoga while carrying weights. And only fifteen more floors to go. My mind kept flashing back to every scary mystery movie I’d ever seen, where the victim is walking in darkness or fog and every time they stop, they hear a footstep that stops as well. We were being stalked.
My hope was that the Tiger’s power conservation programming would kick in if it didn’t get definitive sensory evidence of our presence. It was losing and using power every moment that went by, here in the lightless stairwell. Either it had already captured enough solar power to see it through till tomorrow morning, or it would decide the utility of gathering more energy outweighed expending it for no reward. Every tread higher was potentially the one that the Tiger’s internal logic circuits would decide enough was enough. As long as we were silent.
It was Gunny Kwan whose foot brushed the piece of paper on the stair. It must have lain there for over ten years, undisturbed—just common, for the time, copier paper, the stuff that I had seen in countless places across Manhattan. I didn’t see what happened, didn’t observe how his foot touched it, as I was watching behind us. I heard it though. The oh-so-soft crinkle of paper. Really just the slightest rustle. We all froze. Below us, the clicking stopped entirely. Seconds ticked by.
Then came the whine of heavy servos, the screech of metal raking across concrete followed by a heavy thump that shook the whole stairwell. And immediately repeated again, and again, coming faster with every second.