Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 1111} Tunnel Rats

We crept slowly, two by two, down the corridor, 19 and I taking the rear, our pulse rifles at the ready. In front of us walked the emerald translator and one of her black compatriots. The other stayed close ahead of them with Herbert on point, his plasma spitter trained down the hall to vaporize anything that approached.

“Who are these guys?” I asked softly.

“It’s really none of your concern,” replied the emerald.

“Just a fare,” said 19.

The emerald turned and wagged a finger. “You don’t need to tell her anything more.”

“The hell she doesn’t,” I said. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, or who the fuck you think you are, but you sure as shit can’t defend yourself and I’d like to have at least a halfway decent idea of whose ass I’m covering.”

Everyone fell silent. We walked slowly, listening to the distant sounds of gunfire and explosions deeper in the city. “Rebekah,” she said. “Not from around here, don’t know the terrain, and needed a guide.”

“And who are your friends?”

“I’m One,” said the black one.

“I’m Two,” said the other black one.

I nodded. “Understood.” But I didn’t. Who the hell travels through the Sea with a military bruiser escort but no pathfinder? 19 wasn’t in the habit of ferrying people across the desert. She barely got along with me—and we’d saved each other’s ass a handful of times apiece. Something wasn’t right. “How much?”

“How much what?” asked 19.

“How much?”

Rebekah piped up again. “I don’t see how that’s—”

“A lot,” said 19. “My mother lode.”

“Well, all right, then,” I said. “That’s all I need to know.”

“How does that change anything?” asked Rebekah.

I eyed her, pulse rifle still trained down the corridor. “Because now I know that you’re loaded. And that means you must be important. And that means I should probably help keep you alive. I’m kind of fond of 19, here. And if you’re important to her, then you should probably be important to me.”

Rebekah eyed me warily. “And that’s that?”

“That’s that.”

Fwoooosh!

A ball of white-hot plasma lit up the hallway like the noonday sun. We’d all pressed ourselves against the wall, bracing for the hit, before noticing that the light was fading, traveling away from us.

“Sorry,” said Herbert. “I should probably keep my finger off the—”

Plasma bursts rained down the hall, a few pinging off Herbert.

“Get behind me,” he shouted. All three translators fell into line, using him for cover. He pressed forward, returning fire—hateful gobs sizzling down the hall every five seconds or so. “Move! Move! Move!” The hall lit up again, plasma sizzling through the air, Herbert’s large clumsy feet clanking on the concrete. He fired again.

“Where are we going?” asked Rebekah hurriedly.

“There’s an offshoot,” I said. “Fifty meters ahead.”

19 nodded. “She’s right.”

“I’m on it,” Herbert called from the front. He ran in a low crouch, spitter at the ready, his feet clanging heavily on the cement.

No one returned fire. The only sounds were ours and the occasional burst of plasma Herbert fired to clear the road.

“How far do we have to go?” asked Rebekah.

“Pretty far,” said 19. “These tunnels all wind out like an octopus into the desert.”

“Why on earth would they do that?”

“In case this happened,” I answered.

Rebekah nodded.

We made it to a T-section, a ten-foot-wide hall leading to another exit. Just beyond the corner, we saw them. Two plastic men, or rather, puddles. There wasn’t much left after the plasma barrage that had rained down on them.

“What now?” asked Herbert.

19 pointed up the hall. “That way leads to an escape hatch in the middle of nowhere. No cover; just open desert.” Then she pointed down the new hall. “This would take us to a stairwell that goes up into an old building. It’s a bit worse for the wear, but still sound.”

I nodded. “On the other hand, no one uses the escape hatch, so there’s a good chance CISSUS doesn’t know it exists.”

“Right.”

Rebekah looked at us both. “And the building?”

“Is anyone’s guess,” said 19. “Folks use it—not often, but they do. In all likelihood, that’s where these facets came from.”

We all exchanged looks, looking for someone, anyone, to make the call.

“Wait,” said Herbert. “Do you hear that?”

We listened closely. Herbert’s military-grade sensor array was probably far superior to anything I’d ever scavenged. I heard nothing. Nothing but the distant sounds of battle and clanging metal. Then the distant sounds of battle and clanging metal grew closer. And closer.

“We’ve got company!” said 19, taking a tactical position around the corner. Herbert knelt in the middle of the hall, spitter at the ready. I crouched behind him, using his solid steel frame as cover.

Then I looked over at 19. “We’ve got company?”

“Shut up. It sounded cool.” She focused down the hall on the growing clamor. “It didn’t sound cool?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

“Sorry.”

And that’s what I loved about 19. Tough as she was, lethal as she was, she was still a Comfortbot. She needed to be loved, desired, or at the very least, cool. Even when shit was about to go down. Come to think of it, always when some shit was about to go down. And shit was, in fact, about to go down.

The clanging got closer, the gunfire louder.

In the distance, the hallway began to glow with the flickers of plasma fire. I telescoped my eyes in to 50x, magnifying my vision to see what I could. Several shapes, running, firing wildly behind them. Not plastic men, not brutes. I could only make them out in silhouette, but there were three of them: a Laborbot, a machinist model, and… a Caregiver.

Shit. Not now.

I tensed up on the grip of my rifle, setting my vision back to 1x magnification.

“What is it?” asked 19.

“Trouble. Let’s move.”

“Plastic men?” asked Herbert, fingering the trigger of his spitter.

“Worse. Freebots.”

“How is that any worse?” asked Rebekah. “There’s safety in numbers right now.”

“Not with these numbers. One of ’em at least.”

I raced up the passage ten paces, turning to see if anyone was following. They weren’t.

“Come on!” I shouted.

They hesitated.

It was too late, the freebots were almost upon them, the clanking of their feet almost thunderous. As they grew close enough to see clearly in the dim light, Herbert leveled his spitter at them. “Get down!” he bellowed, his voice reverberating each way down the corridor.

The three bots kissed pavement, just as Herbert unleashed another volley of plasma. The ball hissed down the hall, erupting in a flash of white-hot light. I raced back to the corner, telescoping my eyes in again to see a pair of plastic men splatter into a shower of goo.

The three bots rose to their feet. Doc. Mercer. And Murka.

Murka was an I-series Laborbot—one of the oldest models of its kind still in operation before the war. They were cheap-as-hell labor, prone to the kind of mental instability found in early-generation AIs, but physically strong, durable, and built to last. Every inch of him was painted in red and white stripes except for a big blue patch on his chest with fifty-one white stars. He had large golden ornaments welded to his fists shaped like bald eagles, and his faceplate was painted with vertical red and white stripes, emblazoned with the words We the Persons in blue lettering.

Murka was bad news, rumored to be madkind—a group of wasteland dwellers who lived aboveground in a town rumored to be so crazy even the OWIs wanted nothing to do with them. He’d never done anything untoward, but whereas Orval the Necromancer was clearly a little nuts, yet harmless, Murka always seemed on the outside edge of a violent outburst.

“Doc!” 19 exclaimed. “You made it.”

“So far,” said Doc, nodding.

“Mercer?” 19 asked politely.

“19,” he said, not for a moment taking his eyes, or his gun, off me. My gun was leveled at him as well, had been since he started to get up. At once the other bots became painfully aware of the tension.

I glanced at his shiny, new, straight-out-of-the-box, factory-condition arm. While internal SMC components were hard to come by, all the failing models kept dealers swimming in cherry-picked body parts. “Nice arm,” I said.

“Doc does good work,” he said casually. “I’m sure that new backplate of yours is equally well crafted.”

“Shit,” said 19. “Do you two have beef?”

“We have beef,” said Mercer.

19 looked at me with eyes that read Oh, honey, not now. “Britt?”

“He gunned me down out in the Sea. Wanted me for parts.”

“Mercer!” shouted 19, sounding like an angry teenager chastising a friend.

“I had my reasons,” he said.

19 shook her head “There’s no good reason for poaching.”

“He’s failing,” I said. “He’s days away, maybe.”

“And so is she,” said Mercer.

“We have to go,” said Rebekah. “We don’t have time for petty squabbles.”

“There’s nothing petty about this,” I said.

19 drew close, getting right in my face, her eyes now pleading. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t do this. Not here. Not now.”

“Can’t trust him,” I said. “He’ll shoot me in the back first chance he gets.” We stood there, pulse rifles pointed at each other as the other bots slowly backed away out of the line of fire.

Mercer shook his head. “You ain’t any good to me dead. I ain’t any good to you dead. And neither of us has the time to pick clean the other’s wreck with all this hell raining down on us. So what do you say we call it a wash, get the fuck out of here, and live to try and kill each other another day?”

“That sounds reasonable,” said 19. “Doesn’t that sound reasonable, Britt?”

He was right. Killing me here would ruin his last chance of saving himself. In truth, at the moment I was actually safer with him than with any other bot in the world. He was the only one who needed me alive—for his own sake, sure—but alive nonetheless. And that street went both ways. I could kill him, right there where he stood, but then I’d never get the parts I needed. An hour later things would be different, but for the moment we were all each other had.

I lowered my rifle, nodding.

Then Mercer lowered his. “Truce?” Mercer asked.

“Truce.”

“Good. Let’s go do some damage. Where are we headed?”

“The escape hatch,” said 19.

“We haven’t decided that,” said Rebekah.

“Yes, we have.”

“The escape hatch opens up in the middle of the desert,” said Mercer. “There’s no cover for half a mile.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But CISSUS probably doesn’t know about it. Should be clear.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“Then it definitely knows about all the other exits and we’re screwed anyway.”

“Fair point,” he said. “Let’s go to the desert.”

We beat feet pretty quickly through the complex.

19 and I had both mapped out every inch of NIKE 14—every alcove, every service tunnel, every crawl space. You had to. It paid off at a time like this. Back in the bowels of the city, bots were being slaughtered or infected with code, becoming part of CISSUS. By the time we reached the hatch, the worst of it would no doubt be over. That was a problem. Once they were no longer distracted by the principal population, the facets would set their sights solely on rounding up the stragglers.

Us.

We needed to get out quickly, fan out into the desert, and find a place to hole up for a while before the plastic men, the brutes, and the drones swooped in to kill anything that moved. I hoped silently that the poor bots still caught up in the thick of it would hold out just a bit longer, would fight just a bit harder, if only so we could escape.

I realized I was hoping to prolong their suffering so I could live just to see this all happen again. Just as I had too many times before. Then it dawned on me that this was likely to be the very last time I would see it at all. And frankly, I didn’t know which was worse.