“Fall back!” Zoraster yelled across all frequencies.
Directly in front of Sid’s new drone, one of their Grilla commandos was hit, his leg severed. Blood spurted from an artery. As Sid watched, transfixed, the coagulants in the Grilla’s bloodstream kicked in, staunching the flow. At the same time, the Grilla’s exoskeleton arm extended downward and clicked into the damaged leg structure.
Sid’s situational map glowed red. The Alliance had designated it a kill zone. All kill decisions went to automatic, the attacking drones disengaging from their sensors and shifting into a frenzy. There were no humans here, just Grillas. Sid concentrated and threw an invisibility shield down around the injured commando.
“Norrece, you mobile?” Zoraster growled, bounding over and picking his friend up.
Norrece nodded, putting down one arm to support himself. He stood on the improvised leg his exoskeleton had reformed. They ran back under cover of their own drone support. A signal in Sid’s situational display confirmed they’d achieved their goal. A transport was coming in.
“Now we do it my way,” Sid said to Zoraster. “Drop your weapons.”
Zoraster let go of Norrece, letting him run for cover. “What’s next?”
The main Alliance drone force was already taking off to the south, chasing the retreating Grillas, but a swarm of them still circled overhead. Zoraster dropped his MD and dropped a utility belt of detonators and explosives.
“If we carry any weapons, it’ll be harder to mask our presence,” explained Sid. He had the transport on visual. It was dusting the horizon. He looked at Zoraster. “Come on, all of them.”
Frowning, Zoraster reached into his body armor to pull out an old gunpowder-pistol and a knife. He dropped them into the dirt as well.
The transport grew in size until it was hovering above them, its exhaust blasting away the dirt beneath their feet. With a roar it descended, rocking on its landing gear while the whine of its electric turbofans cycled down.
The hatch opened.
“Stay still,” Sid instructed. The Alliance wouldn’t be expecting this. It was as much a technical feat as a magic trick of misdirection. He hardened the reality filters around them.
Bipedal bots climbed out of the transport, oblivious to the presence of Zoraster or Sid’s drone in their midst. They began scavenging through the debris of the battle, looking for any scraps of machines that might be analyzed for data recovery.
Sid powered up the rotors on his drone and hovered, sending up a small cloud of dust. “Don’t worry,” he said to Zoraster. “Just continue straight on, slowly, no sudden movements.”
Zoraster took a deep breath and walked through the knot of Alliance bots to the transport. He grabbed the rung of a ladder on the side and began climbing up. “You better be sure about this, kid.”
Sid watched the Grilla disappear into the hatch of the transport, then he powered up his drone and followed.
7
The orange light of a sodium bulb on a solitary lamppost spread across the cracked concrete sidewalk. Bob floated, searching the blackness. He found what he was looking for in a cinder-block shack, its corrugated-tin roof hung aslant. Slivers of electric light shone through the cracks in its closed wooden shutters.
Bob heard voices within, raised voices. An argument.
He glided from the sidewalk to the side of the shack, across tufts of crabgrass littered with trash, and eased himself up to the door. Reaching forward he pushed it open. Inside, rust stains leaked down the walls onto metal shelves piled high with stacks of graying paper.
The argument stopped. All faces turned to the door.
Toothface, the one who’d captured Bob—hunted him—was sitting at a table. Across from him sat the gaunt-faced paramilitary who had guided Bob up the Yoba River. Two of his men sat on a couch against the far wall, dressed in stained fatigues, slouching with their rifles, smoking cigarettes.
Ignoring them, Bob crossed the room, directly toward Toothface. Bob’s former guide jumped out of his seat, backing away, hesitating, but Bob didn’t hesitate. A blade flashed in his hand, slicing through the air into Toothface’s neck. The table and chairs clattered to the ground as Bob fell onto Toothface, urging the knife deeper, hot blood pooling beneath them onto the concrete.
Freud called dreams the “royal road” into the unconscious, all the forbidden wishes you had but wished you didn’t. Bob wondered what wishes his dreams were yearning for, but this last one wasn’t hard to interpret.
Waking and sleep were becoming hopelessly intermixed while he roamed virtual worlds of his own creation, his body trapped in the life-support unit at the bottom of the oceanic transport. It was refreshing to finally get outside his own mind, into a synthetic external world. The Ascetics controlled this section of the darknet, and the priest bartered to get access.
Squinting, Bob looked across breaking waves caressing a perfect beach. He sat in the shade of palm trees that drooped to the surf, thick with green coconuts. Digging his fingers into the hot sand, he leaned back to stretch his legs. “So Sid’s doing okay?”
“He’s good, mate,” Bunky replied, the underminer’s avatar sat beside him in the sand. “He helped Zoraster infiltrate Allied HQ.”
“That’s good,” said the priest, pacing behind them. “The Red Rider must be stopped.”
“And Vince?”
Bunky scratched his neck. “Haven’t gotten much from him, but he’s gone into Washington. It’s all going to plan, if you can call it that.”
Bob’s body had arrived at a deep-water connection point in Rio de Janeiro. Bunky came in person to oversee the transfer from one oceanic transport to the next. The underminers had close connections with the transportation guilds. More than that, though, Bunky was bringing underminers around the world to the cause.
“So you’ve found these crystals everywhere?” Bob asked.
Bunky nodded. “Once you know what to look for, they’re pretty easy to spot, spreading into the rock strata under the big cities like mold on cheese. Sibeal says it might explain how Atopia is expanding its computing infrastructure so quickly.”
This had been something of a mystery. The computing infrastructure Atopia controlled didn’t seem to add up to the exponential proliferation of virtual worlds that were spawning from it.
“So it’s merging with Atopian pssi?”
Bunky shrugged. “Beyond me, mate.”
“And these other underminer guilds, they’re joining in?”
“Never thought of myself as an evangelist, but yeah, for the most part.” Bunky flashed his broken-tooth grin. “Especially when I show them the stuff. They’re digging it all out now, trying to slow the spread.” An alert lit up in Bunky’s workspace. “I can’t stay in this world much longer.”
They were connected in a darknet pleasure world, part of the Spice Routes that crisscrossed the underside of the multiverse. Bob heard children playing in the distance, laughing. He looked up the beach to see them splashing in the water.
“You’re straight onto the Atopian territorial boundaries on this transport,” Bunky added. “No idea what you’re going to do then.” He cocked his head and looked at Bob. “But that’s why they’re sending you, buddy. I guess you’ll know.”
Bob shook his head. “I hope so.”
“Me too, mate, me too. Listen, I really have to run.” He clapped Bob on the shoulder. “Good luck, and nice to meet you.” Smiling, Bunky faded away, leaving Bob alone with the priest.