They were twenty seconds from the intercept point when an annoying chirping sounded in Meiko’s ears. “Fuck,” one of the troopers next to her on the little maintenance cart said. “Targeting ladar.”
“Loh said the drone didn’t have anything like that. Javier, stop,” Zheng said, and their driver hit the brakes. “Everyone off!”
Meiko unclipped her tether and swung herself over the rail, her eyes questing for a new tether point. Operating in microgravity meant that they could easily turn themselves into accidental and temporary satellites of Ileri, and easy targets if they went flying free in the wrong place.
The chirping ceased, for Meiko anyway, as she pulled herself across the surface to her chosen tether point. She checked her HUD for the positions of her teammates as she clipped in. Her tether was thirty meters long, which had sounded like a lot. But out here on the surface of an asteroid five klicks wide, it seemed pitifully small.
“Emission source pinpointed.” One of the troopers, ten meters ahead of Meiko in the direction they’d been traveling, held a sensor wand out from behind the girder he sheltered behind. “Looks like a Hunter-class combat bot.”
“Shit. Rebels must be coming for the nano too.” Zheng had her right arm extended in firing position. “OK. Bounding overwatch, successive bounds. Ahmed”—the other armored trooper—“and I are trailing element and base of fire. Got it?” Everyone signaled assent, even Meiko; she hadn’t practiced these kinds of tactics in decades, but the old lessons had stuck. “Haruman, Bakshi, you lead. Ogawa, you and Achide follow, then me and Ahmed. Go.”
Meiko raised her assault laser and searched for targets but found none. When her turn came, she unclipped her tether and pulled herself to a position online with the first two soldiers, took cover, and clipped in again. Zheng and her armored companion then moved up to join the line, and they repeated the cycle. They didn’t catch sight of the enemy, but twice more they caught splashes of ladar, confirming something was out there.
Things went to shit on the fourth bound.
She was just clipping in when Bakshi, one of the lead element, called out. “I can see the objective. It’s about sixty meters ahe—”
High-velocity slugs punched through the radiator return line Bakshi lurked behind and through their armored suit like it was rice paper. Meiko watched in horror as the spray of blood and gas and tissue that vented out of the exit holes briefly sparkled as it flash-froze, then dissipated. Liquid coolant under high pressure spurted from the punctured radiator and flung Bakshi’s corpse out to the limit of their tether, whereupon the combat bot shot them again.
“Counter-battery!” Zheng called. Achide pulled a tube from their chest pack and stuck their arm out from behind one of the radiator’s support pillars. Sparkles briefly winked into existence at both ends of the tube as the compressed gas inside kicked the missile out of the launcher. Meiko, knowing what came next, ducked, so she missed the blinding flash as the missile locked onto its target and lit its engine. The trooper was already moving to a new position before the missile struck home.
She poked her assault laser out from around her cover and swept the camera across the area in front of them. She could see the drone now, and her IR sensor picked up the rapidly cooling hotspot that marked where the bot had crouched. Her djinn found a possible target, a human-shaped form on the ground next to the now-stationary drone. She lined up her target reticle and fired three pulses.
At least one of her pulses hit and she was rewarded with the sight of outgassing; she’d breached something under pressure, at least, though whether she’d hurt the person inside the suit wasn’t clear. She pulled her weapon back behind cover and unclipped her tether, hunting for her next firing position.
That’s when she saw the second bot. “We’re flanked! Target bot, nine o’clock from my position, range eighty meters!” She brought up her legs, got her feet onto the stanchion, and pushed off hard. She skimmed along the surface to the next stanchion even as the bot, anchored into the rocky surface of the hub asteroid, fired another burst of slugs, catching Ahmed in the side. Even power armor wasn’t proof against the bot’s weapon and Ahmed screamed as the rounds penetrated. His screams cut off, whether from the severity of his wounds, loss of pressure in his suit, or the armor’s internal medical system pumping him full of sedatives to try and stabilize him, she didn’t know.
She reached cover, grabbed on to arrest her motion, and clipped in. She fumbled her laser into firing position and triggered a full ten-pulse burst, the most the weapon could handle before overheating. The bot moved forward and she pivoted towards the other side of her stanchion, anxiously watching the cool indicator. Something flashed between her and Zheng, who had moved forward to engage hostiles up by the drone, and Achide’s status indicator went dark. That was bad; only Achide carried missiles, and only those or Zheng’s weapons were likely to hurt the bots.
Meiko rolled right, sighted again, and triggered another ten-pulse burst to no evident effect. “Zheng! Can you deal with the bot on our flank? I can’t hurt it.”
“Busy,” Zheng said. Meiko looked and saw her crouched over Haruman’s body, realized she was slapping an emergency patch onto the trooper’s suit. Fuck. Four down in less than a minute, and two of their heaviest weapons out of action to boot.
She rolled left, poked the weapon out again, and swept it across the space between her and the combat bot. There, another coolant return line, right between her and the bot, which was now only forty meters away.
“Keep it busy, Meiko,” Zheng said. “Just need a few seconds.”
“Trying.” She unclipped her tether, took a breath and triggered her music. The volume was low, but she sang the ancient Porto song, older than the journey to Exile, as she lined up another ten-round burst into the pipe:
Long live my god
Long live my master
Who taught me
Capoeira...
Coolant sprayed from the holes she’d made, spraying across the space between her and her antagonist. It wasn’t much of a screen, but she saw some of the streams hit the bot. Maybe it would help. Just a little... She launched herself across the rocky surface towards Achide’s body, sure the bot would kill her before she reached it.
It is water for drinking
It is iron for striking
It is from the sacred drums...
“GOT IT!” Zheng cried out. Meiko blinked up her feed and saw the pressurized canister rupture under the hail of armor-piercing slugs from Zheng’s mini-guns. Her djinn, scanning the debris, flashed highlights around a piece bearing a biohazard symbol. From the data dump they’d captured from Mizwar, she knew the nanoware couldn’t survive the combination of vacuum and radiation. The station was saved—
The bot fired, but not at Meiko.
Zheng cried out, once, and then her body was sailing out into the dark as the bot fired again, and again, each burst hitting her, each bullet pushing her further out into the dark.
Zheng hadn’t clipped her tether.
Meiko blinked back both tears and Zheng’s feed, now showing a pinwheeling view of the stars. She grabbed hold of the girder to which Achide’s body was tethered and wrapped her legs around it like a lover. Her grasping hands pulled at Achide’s chest pack, found the missile. She leaned back, pointed it at the bot and twisted the firing collar. She released the tube and snatched up her laser, sighted in, and fired.
Golden light seared her vision as the missile’s engine lit, and a lance of fire hit the combat bot, blowing it to pieces.
Then it was silent, except for the ragged heave of her own breathing.
Her nemesis dead, she carefully eased down to the surface, then scanned the battlefield. Nothing moved, and all the IR traces were dying out, cooling rapidly.
She looked up in the direction her djinn told her Zheng’s body must be but couldn’t find it. She checked the status indicators again and found that Haruman, indeed, was still alive. She checked the integrity of the emergency patch Zheng had applied, then carefully gathered the trooper into her arms for the short trek back to the cart.
Mission accomplished. But God, what a price.