“The cavalry’s just come over the hill, thanhanshi. Look.”
Manny leans forward against his harness, squinting his eyes to get a clearer picture of the oncoming vehicles. A jeep is in the lead, and on the passenger’s side, a tall figure stands, one hand wrapped securely around the padded rollbar. It’s a figure he knows, with long, inky black hair streaming behind like a war bonnet in the wind. “Dakota!” he yells happily. “Hot shit! Yeah!” His jubilance fades, however, as a second Jeep roars into view. The driver is also a figure he knows—and all too well at that.
“So much for sneaking in the back door, huh ‘cuz’?” Tacoma needles, grinning.
Manny flips him an abbreviated peace sign and slumps further into his seat. “I’m fucked. Well and truly fucked,” he groans.
“Have faith, thanhanshi. It’s not over till it’s over. We’ll play you up as the Hero of the Wind Fans. Get your sentence beat down to two weeks in the brig…three tops.”
Whatever nasty reply Manny is about to make is aborted as the lead jeep catches them, and Dakota jumps out before the vehicle has stopped rolling. Tacoma breaks quickly as Koda trots to his window.
“Is everybody ok?” she demands, eyes flashing.
“We got some burns, bad ones.”
“Fucking droid played suicide bomber on us,” Manny adds. “Took out one of our APC’s. Few dozen more of ‘em came outta nowhere and started shooting.”
“Did they follow you?”
“I don’t know,” Tacoma replies. “The ones we saw were on foot, so if they did, they’re far behind us now.”
Dakota eyes both of them. Unconsciously, they find themselves straightening into a position of attention, ache, pains and all. There is a commanding presence to her; a dark, roiling energy that they can almost see, hovering around her like a malignant cloud. “Get yourselves back to the base and to the hospital, best possible speed. We’ve got a few assault vehicles to escort you. Don’t stop for anything, understand? Nothing.”
“Understood,” Tacoma responds.
Her expression softens only slightly. “I’m glad you guys are alright. Now, take off.”
With a sharp nod, Tacoma does just that, throwing the truck into gear and rumbling off, the others in his abbreviated caravan following like ducklings. As they pass the second jeep, Manny winces. Allen stares through the windshield, marking him, letting him know in no uncertain terms and with just the power of her gaze that fighting the androids was the easy part of this adventure.
“Think it’s too late to go AWOL?” he whines to his cousin.
A bark of laughter is his only response.
*
“Turn down this way. We’ll come at them from the back.”
Following the direction of Koda’s pointing finger, Kirsten wrestles the jeep onto a narrow, rutted path—‘road’ would be a definite misnomer in this case—and shakes the leaves from a passing branch from her hair as she straightens the vehicle out. “Do you really think it was an ambush?”
“It’s looking that way,” Koda replies, lifting a hand to brush the hair from her eyes and mouth. “We’ll know more once we get to the site, though.”
“If you’re right, that means there’s someone on the inside.”
“Could be,” Koda muses. “But let’s wait till we know what we’re up against before we make any assumptions.”
“Right.”
Ten minutes later, they arrive at the site of the ambush, Maggie’s jeep right behind them. The Colonel hops out of her vehicle and takes a quick look around. “What a mess.”
“It is that,” Koda replies, squatting and sifting through the still smoldering rubble.
“We’re just lucky nobody died,” Maggie comments, squatting beside Dakota.
Koda pins her with a look. “We don’t know that for sure. Tacoma said they had some pretty bad burns.”
Maggie looks at her for a moment, then sighs, nodding. “You’re right, of course.” She looks over the rubble carefully, gingerly picking up several pieces of jagged metal with just the tips of her fingers, and turning them this way and that. “Well, what do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” Dakota replies, then looks up. “Kirsten?”
Joining the duo, Kirsten lowers herself to her haunches, her expression somber. “I think we’re in trouble.”
Dakota gazes steadily at her. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when you told me about Tacoma’s ‘suicide bomber’, I had gone with the assumption that we were talking about an android carrying a bomb.”
“We’re not?” Maggie asks, a little shiver of apprehension skittering down her spine.
“It doesn’t look that way.”
“Then what are we talking about, if not an android with a bomb?”
“An android that is a bomb,” Dakota intones, continuing to gaze at Kirsten.
“Got it in one,” Kirsten replies soberly, lifting a piece of metal whose purpose is incomprehensible to both of her watchers. “I’ll need to gather up as much of this stuff as possible to be sure, but unless I miss my guess, we’re talking about an entirely new type of android here. One that I’m almost positive didn’t exist before the uprising.”
“Jesus,” Maggie breathes. “How certain are you about this?”
“Certain enough to make it an executive order that no one, including Tacoma and everyone else who was out here, speaks a word of this to anyone.”
Maggie nods. “Consider it done.” Rising to her feet, she dusts her hands off on the legs of her fatigues. “I’ve got a few tarps in the back of my Jeep. Let me bring ‘em over and we’ll start collecting the evidence.”
Dakota also rises and looks down at Kirsten a moment more. “I’m gonna check out some likely staging areas. This place reeks of an ambush.”
“It does,” Kirsten agrees, looking around. Darting a quick glance in Maggie’s direction, she gazes back up at Dakota, a sweet, shy smile curving her lips. “Be careful, ok?”
Koda tips her a wink and a megawatt grin that leaves Kirsten seeing stars. “You got it.”
Thankfully, Kirsten’s blush fades before Maggie returns, arms full of tarps and several sets of latex gloves. “You’re the expert, Doc,” she grins, laying her booty on the ground next to the smaller woman. “Let me know what you want me to do, and I’m there.”
Smiling her thanks, Kirsten pulls on the gloves, pats the ground next to her, and begins showing Maggie exactly what it is that she’s looking for. Within moments, both are heavily engrossed in their task.
*
It is several hours later and the sun is preparing to set as Kirsten gets to her feet and stretches legs gone numb as blocks of wood. Intense concentration and looking for miniscule android parts without benefit of her glasses has given her a headache strong enough to fell a charging moose. Stretching, she groans in mingled pleasure and pain as her vertebrae crackle and pop down the length of her spine, struggling to realign themselves against the ravages of inactivity and poor posture.
Nearby, Maggie stows the last of the gear in the jeep, taking care to tie it down securely, especially given the stiff evening breeze that has suddenly kicked up.
Kirsten looks down at the now denuded ground, then west, toward the setting sun. She watches the sky fill with color with a sense of almost pleasant melancholia. Her day has been long; her night promises to be longer still, but she feels…fulfilled. The task set before her is one that she is confident in her abilities to take on. Better than running line after line after byte after byte of fragmented code with no end in sight. Better still than playing titular head to the lost and the broken.
They had lost one today. An elderly woman who most in the camp adored. She had lost her entire family in one fell swoop, only managing to stay alive pinned beneath the body of the man she had shared her life and heart with for over fifty years. The children of the base had swarmed to her like bees to honey, and she seemed genuinely glad to fuss over them. In the end, though, the family she’d gained couldn’t replace the family she’d lost, and they’d found her this morning, an empty pill bottle at her side.