“Why you? You are the magic bullet I’m conjuring out of thin air, my deus ex machina, the only ones who have a chance to keep this planet from plunging into a catastrophe even worse than the Water Wars. You.”
I thought I knew who Sawyer was. I thought I knew the depths of his pragmatism, the extent to which he’d sacrifice himself and others. I thought that beneath it all, there might still be an ounce of humanity, a flicker of warmth.
I was wrong. The coldness of his voice makes that more than clear.
“Do. Not. Fuck. This. Up.”
17
[Kobayashi]
“Eyes overhead. Passives only.”
Wind’s voice is soft, softer than I’ve ever heard. I can’t blame her. This doesn’t feel at all like the Game, no matter how similar the interface, no matter how much we’re trying to treat it like just another encounter. I’ve put her in charge of recon, since she’s actually our best coordinator, Slend’s efforts in the dailies notwithstanding, but I can feel her jumpiness. I’m jumpy too. It’s been a long day, and not looking to get any shorter.
“We’re fucked if we launch those kinetics, Ash. There’s no way the silkies don’t come back from that with nukes. Not on an arco. They can explain away drones as another corp, some railgun shots as a targeting algorithm glitch, but not kinetics. Everyone can track orbitals.”
“Fucked anyway,” Slend says, her attention on the Hercs moving into position to the south and east of the target, still outside the arco walls, moonlight dappling their camo panels. “Too many defenders. Even with kinetics. Total Kobayashi.”
I split my attention away from the Shredders I’m maneuvering—fast, highly mobile four-limbed drones with molyblade edges on the inside of each leg. Good for killing things long after the ammunition runs out.
“Then we better hope we can cheat a way out. Jase, you doing okay?”
“Y-yup.”
For some reason, I flash back to earlier in the day. Steve the pilot.
“It’ll be fine, Jase. You know what to do. Remember the plan. Just be ready for my signal.”
I flip from command view to strategic, taking in the entirety of the battlefield. The southeast quadrant of the arcology unfolds beneath me, a sprawling mass of interlinked office towers, apartment complexes, and vertical malls radiating outward from the huge domed manufacturing complex in the middle, purveyor of trinkets and knickknacks to all the drones swarming within. Massive conduits snake through the buildings like hideous metal veins, shunting people, cargo, food—anything and everything anywhere and everywhere so long as it never has to leave the arco.
It looks like a distended pimple, waiting to burst.
Our target is an eighty-story tower located halfway to the manufacturing complex, bordering one of the smaller outer neighborhoods. On the forty-sixth floor is the main office for Unlimited Holdings Limited, as far up the corporate shell as Jase could pierce, and the primary server cluster for the corp. If we can get one of the Shredders inside, it should be able to pull out any information related to the hoods and bounce it back through the haplink.
Getting a Shredder inside without starting a war is going to be the trick.
“Wind, Slend, in position?”
I flex my fingers to bring me back to command view, making sure my squads of Shredders are in position along the east wall. I’m going to be ghosting those drones soon enough, and I’m not really looking forward to another dive into Sawyer’s wartech depths. Mom still hasn’t made it out.
“In the box.”
“Yup.”
Wind’s controlling the Ravens, recon and fast fire support, her natural role. Slend’s on the Hercs, our heavy hitters and main tanks. I’m on the Shredders, and… the other two. I try not to shiver, looking at the gently blinking icons for the offshore cruiser and the orbital. Using those won’t just result in some ones and zeros shifting around in a Game server, but I may not have a choice. Sawyer made it clear that failing this encounter isn’t an option.
All the drones are slaved to rudimentary combat algorithms, allowing us to broadly direct them from command view, but the algorithms don’t offer much tactical flexibility. For that, we have to jump into an individual unit, give it a more personal touch. Wargame encounters in endgame normally involve anywhere from fifteen to fifty units per player, and the best players know exactly when to take over a drone for maximum effect, constantly swapping among individual control, command view, and strategic view. Luckily I’ll only be controlling twenty Shredders, so multitasking will be a breeze.
Just another encounter.
“Wind, let’s see what we’re up against.”
“Raven one, going hot.”
Wind flips one of her circling drones’ sensors to active, bathing the area below in strobing sweeps of radar, lidar, infrared and ultrasound. Threat icons splash into existence across the map.
Slend is right. We don’t have a chance.
Three security stations, each packed with more than two hundred rapid-response drones, lie between us and the tower, their defensive emplacements already cycling up. Almost fifty Hercs patrol the empty ground-level streets, guarding against corporate espionage and sabotage from any discontented arco residents. A hangar in the upper left, near the manufacturing dome, starts spitting out interceptors, swarms of deadly anti-air drones capable of dropping a Raven in one pass. There’s no way we’re making it through all of that without using kinetics.
Well, maybe one way.
“Scenario three. Slend, take us in.”
Slend’s Hercs rip out a volley of high-velocity rounds, aiming at the same spot on the thirty-foot-high wall surrounding the arco. Massive divots appear across its concrete surface, then a segment of wall simply vaporizes, loosened stone collapsing to either side of the gap in a geyser of dust and debris. My Shredders are already flowing through, the Hercs not far behind. We’re met with counterfire almost immediately, HV rounds and cluster bombs spraying back from the nearest arco Hercs. Two Shredders disintegrate, caught on the edge of the blast zone, and one of Slend’s Hercs loses a leg, but her counterfire obliterates the closest threats in a flurry of violence. Flames and smoke lick up into the night sky, highlighting the underbelly of the arco. Cracked asphalt flows beneath my feet, alarms wailing from behind shattered glass windows, and we make our way forward.
My senses fall into the peculiar rhythm of battle, time slowing down and speeding up simultaneously, attention flicking from Shredder to command view to strategic view to Shredder like a hummingbird with attention deficit disorder, each slice lasting a lifetime, then gone in less than a second.
Wind’s Ravens stooping and screaming across the sky, missiles streaking in whipcrack lines, clouds of interceptors chasing them like angry wasps.
Slend and I smashing our way through a cluster of riot drones, chrome and polymer pinwheeling out of explosive impacts, one of the Hercs going down to concentrated micro missiles.
Shadowed megaspire canyons linking the occasional noon-bright intersection, buzzing yellow sodium lights flitting past like falling stars, a brief lull amidst the chaos.
The flaming wreckage of a Raven slamming into the upper floor of a megaspire, debris raining from above in deadly molten drops, crippled interceptors plummeting in hailstone impacts.