Weaving around a city maintenance truck, the end of the street suddenly came into view. The massive Manhattan municipal building loomed over everything, a solid dark mass that took up two city blocks. The huge building was lit by the sun behind us, the whole face of it illuminated. Realization flooded my mind. The sun was setting. Darkness was almost here.
Normally, nighttime in the Zone was a good thing, with drones slowing and losing power in the fading light. But that all went out the window when Spiders were running emergency generators inside former NSA hard points.
Just a fast right-hand turn down Centre Street, a turn that was right smack dab in front of the muni building, and there would be the ramp leading up onto the Brooklyn Bridge and to freedom. I pushed the speed up, even though my clear straightaway was gone, ruined by the string of NYPD cruisers lined up across the road. Some kind of last-ditch stand to protect the city building maybe. The white cars were pocked with bullet holes, laser burns, flechette marks, and rust.
My peripheral vision picked up on Harper’s nervous glance my way. I ignored it, speeding up a little more. We needed to get off the island before dark. Fully powered drones had all the advantages in the almost complete black of Zone night.
“Ajaya…” she began, but whatever she was going to say was blanked out by the mass of concrete and brick that suddenly impacted the street directly in front of us. My foot hit the brake but the car was already hitting the stone. Something smacked my face, blocking my vision, even as I felt the rear wheels come up off the ground. A second later, the car fell back, slamming down with a huge crash.
Stunned, head reeling from impact, my mind was nonetheless screaming at me to get moving.
Peeling what I now realized was an airbag off my face, brushing away powder from the bag, I started to unbuckle myself. A glance at Harper showed me she was even more stunned than I was, so I reached over and popped her seatbelt too.
“Driver door is unlikely to function. Egress passenger side,” Rikki said, hovering outside my window.
I heard the whine-thump of 19’s e-mag, then Rikki lifted a half meter higher and ripped off three fast shots.
Crawling almost into Harper’s lap, I got her door unlatched, hitting it over and over with the heels of both hands until it moved. Then I really climbed on top of her and shoved the door open while she shoved me off her.
Outside, I looked behind us to see a flock of drones flying our way, our Decimator and Berkut calmly sniping away.
Suddenly terrified we were going to die almost in sight of the bridge, I yanked Harper out of the car, pushed her rifle into her hands, and hauled her by main force toward the only shelter in sight—the municipal building.
“Out of ammo,” Rikki said, floating backward. I fumbled the last full ammo block I had for him from my pouch, awkwardly throwing it his way.
It was a bad throw, forcing him to twist around and face the muni building. Which is why he didn’t sense the Skyhawk that slammed into him in a suicide run.
The Indian UAV spun off and exploded into fragments against the broken fragments of building that had crashed down in front of our car. Rikki ricocheted the opposite direction, flung almost directly into my arms, his ocular band completely dark.
“Come on!” Harper yelled, now alert to our danger. She took off at a full sprint and, still clutching Rikki, I raced after her.
Feet thumping on pavement, the zip and ting of high velocity flechettes impacting all around us while behind, Unit 19 continued to fire its electromagnetic weapon, giving us as much cover as it could. We were close—so close—just twenty or so meters to go.
We raced across Centre Street, under the arches and into the government building, straight through the wide-open doors, jumping over piles of clothes with skeletal remains poking out.
At first, we just ran flat-out, but the interior was dark and we slowed, both looking around.
“Unit 19. Where are the nearest stairs?”
The big UAV swung around, its nose now pointed down a dark side hall. We turned and ran into the dark. Light bloomed, LEDs on the front of the Decimator, and we found the door to the stairwell. Once inside, we jimmied the door shut behind us and then climbed. Three floors later, we slowed, both exhausted and out of juice. I requested that the Decimator check the area just outside the stairwell and it complied readily, although it completely ignored Harper when she asked for some additional light.
“How did it get here?” she asked me, watching it with a frown as it hovered down the long, black hallway in front of us. We were in some old nook of the third floor, away from the offices with windows.
“I don’t know. Let’s ask it when it returns. For now, I want to look at Rikki.”
I wish I hadn’t. Three of his rotors were busted, one of them so completely that the drive motor hung by just one thin wire.
“Oh man, I have so much work to do to get him back online,” I said.
Harper looked at me sharply and when I raised an eyebrow at her incredulous expression, her face turned sympathetic. She reached over and turned the Berkut in my lap, shifting it enough that I could see the top of his airframe. A deep cavity was punched right into the tough carbon fiber, about the shape and size of a Skyhawk’s nose cone.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I said, yanking out a chemical light stick. We had held off while waiting for the Decimator’s report, but now I had to see the extent of the damage.
His protective shell was crushed, right over his CPU. It was so bad that I couldn’t get the outer case open and had to pick out shards of broken armor until I could see the core of his being. It was gone—smashed completely. My Berkut was dead.