“Up here!”
We ran through the desolate streets of the residential block with a pack of hounds hot on our heels. My point had been proven quickly as dozens of Rampants poured outwards from their hiding places and gave chase. Scrambling up a flight of stairs and forcing our way onto one of the balconies was our only recourse to try and even the stacked odds. Yantai and I took the lead and stood at the fore, blocking the walkway and reducing their advantage in numbers.
A stampede of metallic feet rushed past the building and fanned out in an attempt to locate us. Yantai’s hand clenched and relaxed on the hilt of one of her twin blades. Finally, a trio of bots scampered up to join us, weapons bared and eyes glowering with malicious intent.
“You’re not going to survive this!” Yantai roared.
They did not heed her warning. She drew her swords and joined me in bracing our feet against the concrete floor. The Rampants charged at us, intending to knock us off-balance and disturb our formation. A tremendous clatter of metal and plastic colliding filled the empty air, but we remained firm and pushed back against them.
Pocatello used their spear to stab through the open space between us, catching one of them in the stomach and leaving a deep gash in their plastic shell. Yantai went straight for the kill, slicing across neck-level using one of her swords and decapitating them on the spot. Their head flew through the air and landed in a puddle of spilt oil and coolant fluid.
Sarasota was panicking the entire time.
“W-What are we going to do?”
Preston shook his head and tried to get involved in the scuffle from the backline.
“We’re gonna’ fight them off! Obviously!”
The robot trying to attack me backed away when I powered up the saw and started to wave it in their direction. Overcommitting would result in me being able to sink the sharp edge into their chassis, and it was unlikely that they could cause more damage than me within that timeframe. The real problem was Yantai, whose advanced motors and joint systems could dance between them with the grace of a trained dancer.
Yantai charged ahead having open a space and lashed out with her swords, clashing against their own blades and pushing them back towards the stairs. I kept close and covered her side so that they couldn’t team up and take the initiative. The noise was sure to attract more of them before long. We had to deal with the handful facing us now before they arrived.
Yantai was a blur. A flurry of furious blades cutting through the air and threatening to slice clean through the rusted metal and plastic shells that our enemies used as protection. My chosen partner managed to land a blow against my left arm, but it deflected from the plate attached to it due to the shallow angle of attack. It would take a decisive blow to cause real damage.
They dove too deep for the next one. The edge of their sword got caught in the gap between my arm. I clamped down on it and held them in place, coming down across their face with the grinder and slicing open one of their glowing eyes. Shards of glass flew outwards as the lens inside was ripped to shreds. I kept pushing, forcing the rotating saw deeper until it got down to some of the underlying components inside.
I pushed them away and kicked at them. They stumbled back and over the broken railing, falling from two stories up and landing on the floor with a loud crash. Pieces of coloured plastic and sheared metal flew across the ground from the point of impact. They weren’t going to get up from that one so easily.
Yantai decided that it was time to stop toying with her prey. An overhead chop separated one of their arms before they could react and defend against it, before the other sword was jammed deep into their torso through an open gap in their armour. Yantai pulled upwards and almost bisected their body clean in two, only stopping when they met a piece of metal that provided too much resistance. The oil-drowned blade slid free from their chest and allowed them to collapse onto the floor.
Sarasota’s voice quivered; “That was… very violent.”
“Get used to it. These are nothing but the dregs,” Yantai explained, “No real weapons and armour, and they don’t know how to fight a trained opponent.”
“The leaders of this operation must be concealing themselves near the artery,” I reasoned.
“That’s right. The Rampants are nothing if not craven. They’ll happily send their followers into the grinder as long as it keeps their own hides intact.”
We had only destroyed three of their number. How many more remained was a mystery. The labyrinthian halls of the residential block could easily conceal hundreds of unseen enemies, to the extent that randomly wandering the place would still render us unable to locate any of them. If a critical mass of their forces were here to guard their destructive device then we wouldn’t be able to fight through all of them.
“I wish we knew what they’re planning to do,” Preston muttered.
“It doesn’t matter. We know what they want to do, how they achieve that doesn’t matter to us. It’ll be explosives, most likely, or a stolen vehicle. There are a few tunnel-boring devices still hidden in the depths of this place,” Yantai replied.
“Well, maybe we could find a way to defuse them without going down there.”
“Unless you’re willing to make a heroic sacrifice I don’t see that happening.”
“Do we have time to stand around here and talk?” I asked.
“This is a defensible position.”
I nodded, “You understand the minutia of combat better than I – but our first priority should be leaving this block and returning with reinforcements. If we fall here then they won’t know where to start looking.”
There was one factor that we had to consider at all times, and that was how much battery life we had left. The sudden burst in rapid activity from our escape and subsequent fight was already increasing the load by a significant degree. There was only one real exit from this block that headed towards Waterway that we knew of, which meant the Rampants also knew exactly where we’d be going if we tried to withdraw. The battery indicator at the corner of my eye ticked down another step.
This was not going to be so straightforward. My mind calculated our odds of success, assuming that the Rampants were intelligent enough to notice our predicament. Given that they were based on the same training data it was more likely than not that they thought of the same thing.
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“On second thought – we may have a problem. None of these domestic-grade plugs are appropriate for our charging ports, and they must have surrounded the exit by now.”
Sarasota clutched the sides of her head; “Oh! Please don’t tell me we’re stuck in here with them!”
>> Why did she volunteer for this if she’s so quick to panic?
“What do you suggest?” Yantai inquired.
“Given the number of footsteps that ran past our location – it may be prudent to press forward to our objective. They will have an open charging port there to supply their guards.”
“Ha! That’s the first good thing you’ve said all day! I’m itching for a real fight, you know.”
>> Yantai’s definition of ‘real fight’ seems to cross over heavily with ‘suicidal.’
“Woah! Hold on a second, weren’t you just saying we should go and hide somewhere?” Preston interrupted.
I moved towards the steps, “There are no good choices. Either we hide and wait until our batteries run dry, or they find and destroy us, or we complete our objective and take their charging station for our own use. Which path would you prefer to take?”
“The one that avoids the most danger.”
“I’m afraid no such convenient option exists.”
Sarasota, Pocatello and Preston all understood that wherever Yantai and I went, they would have to follow. I was intent on making sure that they all concurred with our present course however. They could choose to ignore our orders if they liked and make a break for it, even if the odds of success were extremely low.
“Fine! Let’s get this over with. I’m not going down without a fight,” Preston grumbled.
I led the team away from the apartment block and we took a moment to conceal ourselves within the walls of an abandoned storefront. Once I was certain that the patrols were fanned out across the block, we started to move towards the centre where the hole could be found. This once beautiful public garden had been damaged through decay and leaking water, leaving exposed metal and infrastructure intertwined with roots and vines.
A makeshift walkway had been constructed from pieces of scrap metal, leading down and around until it cut through another hole in the wall and presumably on towards the location of the artery access point. A handful of Rampant militia were stationed on and around it, which made the rickety construction even more unnerving for my emotionally variable companions.
Yantai was chomping at the bit. A sword held in each hand, she rushed towards the stairwell.
“Let’s go! Shock and awe!”
We were left playing catch-up as she charged on ahead and leapt into the air, coming down on top of two guards and slicing them to pieces using her blades. I could only follow up by kicking one of them over the perilous edge and letting them fall into the stagnant water that had pooled at the bottom of the cavern.
None of the guards on the walkway could resist Yantai’s speed and skill. She cut through them like a knife through butter, separating limbs and heads from bodies with a wild abandon. It spoke of a deep rot that had settled in her mind over years of being on the frontlines. To her this was nothing but entertainment, a way to lord her power over others in a way that was explicitly permitted.
“Hahaha! Did you see that? I cut the guy to ribbons! What the hell was he made out of?”
The walkway was connected to an exposed maintenance tunnel. It was immediately obvious that the construction of this tunnel was much sturdier than the others, and coloured markings on the floor and around the doorway suggested that this was a secure area. Only those with express permission were allowed to enter.
>> System: Secure area accessed, please comply with the relevant dispatch procedure.
I stamped down on the voice in my head and continued to follow Yantai further inside. The full-scale collapse of the floor had created this new entrance. It was no wonder why we struggled to locate them before, this was not marked on any of our internal maps. There was almost no reason to ever visit this area of the facility due to the scarcity of valuable resources and the domestic sockets that made it nigh impossible to stay online.
Signs of occupation lingered in the hallways and rooms beyond. Piles of supplies, weapons and personal items besides jury-rigged charging plugs hanging from whatever power sources were available. They had gone all-out in transforming this normally quiet block into a hive of activity.
“Where are the rest of them?” Preston whispered.
“This section must go very deep,” I replied, “We have to find where they’ve breached the artery chamber before the rest return.”
“If they’re as tough as the ones we just destroyed, then there’s nothing to be worried about!” Yantai boasted.
Sarasota and Pocatello did not share in her confidence. If they had the same hydraulics with a diverse range of motion, their body language would have been a lot clearer to her. Unfortunately, the working bot was not given such luxurious parts. It wasn’t needed for their jobs, and some said that stiff joints were better for lifting anyway.
We pressed onwards and descended down more steps, until we eventually stumbled across a large control room. Almost one-hundred screens were aligned across the back wall, along with five rows of consoles intended for the energy management team to use to watch the reactors and manage the flow of electricity through the facility.
“Is this a dead end?” Preston asked.
I approached the front of the room and discovered what they had done. A large hole had been dug through the floor to reveal the metallic chamber which contained the artery lines. What surprised me was the absence of any explosive devices. That was my first guess as to how they hoped to damage it. On the other hand, that would hardly be a precision strike against Waterway. Were they simply reckless, or did they know something we didn’t?
“Oh. They dug a hole through the floor,” he realized.
“But there are no explosives here and they haven’t breached the containment yet.”
Yantai leaned back against one of the consoles, “No explosives? Then how are they planning on cutting through? It’s not made out of an inch of steel – it’s designed to survive pretty much anything you can throw at it. Earthquakes, fires, explosions, you name it.”
We couldn’t ‘stop’ their plan if we didn’t know how they were going to execute it. My initial hopes that we would find an object of importance to remove from the tunnels were dashed, unless we had somehow missed a hiding place during our mad dash through the living area they had created.
“We’d better go and search the other rooms instead of standing around in here,” I concluded.
But the sound of rumbling feet traveling through the ground above made it obvious that we were running out of time. Yantai led us back the way we came and into the main hallway, where a new group of Rampants had assembled to try and stop us. At the fore was a bot equipped with four heavy legs designed for logistics use. It was the same one who had scared me and Houston away during our fight.
“A bunch of Waterway rats!” he chuckled, “I’m going to have fun ripping you all limb from limb.”
The most significant thing was what was attached to his left arm. A large, cannon-like device that was split down the middle and crackled with pulsating energy. I had never seen anything like it. My assumptions were incorrect – they did have an item that they could use to cut through the artery, and he was wielding it as a weapon.
>> System: No model number or ID detected.
“What is that?” Yantai asked, pointing her sword at the quadruped.
“Heh. Wouldn’t you like to know? Don’t worry, I’ll give you a demonstration!”
He hefted the weapon high into the air and braced himself, bringing it down and pointing it down the hallway. The sensors in my head went haywire as a sudden burst of energy emitted from his body, far beyond what most Infrabots would be capable of generating without modifications.
“Get down!” Preston shouted. He grabbed Pocatello by the collar and pulled him out of the way, but Sarasota was too slow to react.
Without warning a beam of red energy was shot from the end of the gun and towards her. The super-heated wave sliced clean through her chest, leaving a deep orange scar made from molten metal. Sparks flew and a moment later the top half of her body was separated from the lower. She collapsed to the ground in a heap.
>> Dangerous emittance detected. Please contact the nearest health and safety officer.
“He got Sarasota!”
“I can see that!” Yantai shouted back, “If you think I’m scared of that, you’re dead wrong. I’m going to take that thing and shove it up your exhaust port!”
“Just one?” the gunner complained, “Cover me! I need to charge up!”
The other bots closed ranks and formed a defensive barrier. Yantai and I were the only ones who could break through and stop him from firing again. That was how they were planning on cutting clean through the artery. They had an arm-mounted weapon that could slice through almost anything. Questions raced through my mind between the warning signals and system errors, but there was no time to worry about them now.
I had to fight.
