“Crap!” Felice swears. “We just lost contact with one of our copters. The channel’s showing no signal.”
“The other one still sending?” Lincoln asks, feeling his phone buzz. He glances at the screen. A message from Tamara, confirming the dead starburst copter.
“Clear signal on the other one,” Felice confirms. “No problem.”
Yet, Lincoln thinks. A light wind tears at the first lines of smoke, but more are appearing, trailing out of the sky. “Khalid, pull over. Pull off the road. I want to get a look at this.” He turns around. “Rohan, you got binoculars?”
“Yeah, in the back.”
The truck bumps and lurches onto the shoulder.
“Dammit!” Felice says.
“Second one down?” Lincoln asks as he takes the binoculars from Rohan.
“Yeah, what—?” She looks up from her tablet, looks at the sky, really looks, for the first time. “Uh-oh,” she whispers.
Lincoln does not get out of the car. He stays in his seat, using the binoculars to search the sky, achieving a crisp, clear view by using his right eye only, keeping his imperfect artificial eye closed. But there’s nothing to see. Nothing. “Not even a municipal drone,” he says out loud. “I think something just knocked down every UAV over the city.”
Civil defense sirens begin to wail.
Street Fight
The wail of the siren claws away the sediment of years, releasing dormant memories of rockets incoming. True crouches in the passage and uses her data glove to direct the sparrow into flight. A quick turn above the street, a survey of a bright blue empty sky. Nothing to note, so she sends it spiraling higher, a sacrificial bird offered up to the laser-armed marauder.
How many seconds will it take for the aircraft’s AI to lock on to the tiny target?
As the sparrow climbs, she gains a wider view of the streets. She sees people on the roofs with cameras, children being waved inside from the streets, people rushing to their cars, or from their cars, and more cars jockeying for the right of way at every intersection.
Colt says, “South. Five blocks. SUV. Driving way too aggressively.”
“I see it.” A tall expeditionary SUV, with grill guards, racks, water containers, and dark tinted windows, bulling its way through an intersection as a smaller sedan accelerates to get out of its—
The video feed winks out of existence. True doesn’t even hear the crack of the laser strike.
“Bird’s gone,” Colt says, stating the obvious.
True wonders if it’s Lincoln coming in that SUV, but she doesn’t think so. She tells Shaw: “We’ve got possible ground troops. Five blocks out and fighting traffic. Estimating five to six individuals.”
“Roger that. The Arkinson is on the runway.”
“How long to take off?”
“Too long to help with our new friends.” He leans against the passage wall, the Triple-Y balanced in the crook of his arm, no sign of worry yet. He looks at her past the glittering screen of his visor and asks, “You ready for a street fight?”
“Fuck, no. How many rounds are in this pistol, anyway?”
He nods. “Good point.” He lets his daypack slide to the ground. “I’m kind of busy. Could you dig out an extra magazine for me?”
She scrambles to do it, asking, “You got remote access to your SUV?”
“Won’t work. If I move it up here, that laser—”
“Just move it far enough to block the lower end of the street,” she says, getting his pack open. “Make them drive around.”
“Yeah, I can try that.”
She finds the full magazine, pulls it out, and leaves it on the ground where he can get it easily.
A startled squeak from Guiying draws her attention. She turns to see motion in the courtyard. She goes to one knee, drawing her pistol, ready to shoot before she has any idea what’s there.
It’s a cheap little quadcopter, a toy with a thirty-centimeter diameter. True can’t hear its hum over the wailing siren, not even when it accelerates up and out of sight. “We just got our picture taken,” she warns Shaw. “And Kai Yun must have mapped the layout.”
Guiying has her phone out. She’s huddled against the wall. “I will talk to someone,” she says in a hoarse, desperate voice. “I will make this stop. I want no one else to die.”
A nice thought, but True suspects momentum is against her.
“You got an update on those ground troops?” Shaw asks.
“Negative. Laser took out my flyer.”
“Roger that. My truck’s moving. Let’s see how far it gets.”
Colt speaks in her ear: “Any chance that place has a hidden back door?”
“I’ve been through every room,” True whispers to him. “No chance at all.”
She hesitates, running through a mental inventory of her equipment. “I can at least get some eyes on the street.”
The beetle is in her pocket. She gets it out, uses the data glove to direct it in a quick flight out of the passage. It glides into sunlight—and an explosion shakes the street.
Guiying screams and drops her phone. It skitters across the tiles. True watches it, huddling against the wall, hunched over at the sharp concussion.
The beetle, out in the street, gets taken out by the shock wave. Its video feed goes dead.
The siren continues to wail.
“They hit my truck,” Shaw says. “It’s reporting damage.”
Panicked cries come from surrounding buildings as people realize the danger.
“That wasn’t a laser,” True says.
“Grenade,” he agrees. “You got any eyes left out there?”
“Let me try again.”
She drops her pack, rummages in it, whispering to Colt at the same time. “You still there?”
“I’m here. Tell me what I can do.”
“I’m dumping a new feed into your channel.” Her voice covered by the ongoing siren.
She’s got one more surveillance beetle, but the little mechs are fragile. She doesn’t trust it to survive in the street long enough to be useful. She selects the snake biomimetic instead. It’s the size of a standard writing pen, brown camouflage coloration, no flight capabilities, but it can roll on the tiny wheels in its belly, and by rearing up on its segmented body, it can get over curbs and stairs.
She sets it on the ground and, using her data glove, she activates it and links its camera to the channel she’s sharing with Colt. Then she guides it out of the passage and under the nearest car. From there she eases it forward just far enough so that, as its camera swivels, it can get a clear view up and down the street.
She tells Shaw, “Your truck’s blocking the end of the street.”
“So at least it got that far.”
“Looks like they decided to finish it with an incendiary.”
“Give me a headcount.”
“Zero. No one in sight.” She swivels the tiny camera to look up the street, but sees only parked cars. “No one up the hill.”
She flinches as a small hand squeezes her shoulder. It’s Guiying. She speaks quickly in a voice laced with dread. “True, please. No fighting—”
“No choice,” True growls, turning the worm’s camera to look again toward the burning SUV. In a louder voice she tells Shaw, “Here we go. Three on foot, carrying some kind of submachine gun. The others must be driving around the block. No civilians in sight.”
“Got it.”
True looks up in time to see his gloved hand slice through air, clearing his AR screen as he moves to the end of the passage.
She gestures impatiently at Guiying. Move back! Then a whisper to Colt: “Keep watch. Both sides. Let me know when the rest of them show.”