Digital Plague

“Systems,” she repeated, her little hands curling into fists, “were offlined.” I remained where I was, waiting, all of my systems up and sniffing the air, because the scent of violence was in the air. After a moment she relaxed. “I would suggest, in a purely advisory function, that you get them back online and get us into the air soon, Mr. Kieth, unless you want to end up back inside that box.”

She stepped through the hatchway. I started to follow, but before I’d gone two steps Ty’s voice crackled through the air, warping and melting.

“Mr. Cates!”

I stopped and closed my eyes. I saw the nanos, like tiny little spiky fish, floating in the darkness. “Yes, Ty?”

“How does Ty know you won’t kill him?”

I swallowed. “Ty, you have my word. You know me, Mr. Kieth. I keep my promises. You have my word. We will find another solution.”

“Your word, Mr. Cates,” Ty said.

“You have my word, Ty,” I repeated, and stepped quickly into the main cabin. I kept my eyes on the floor and didn’t look at anyone. Because I was lying.

XXVI

Day Nine: The Rest of the World was a Bonus

Eyes down, I dropped my extra clips into my coat and hobbled into the cabin. The Stormers were all assembled, back in their full ObFu kit, in standard formation for a drop. The drop in this case was just a few feet, since the hover was sitting dead on the ground. The big drop-bay doors were shut tight, leaving the cabin gloomy and claustrophobic. The whole place smelled of soured sweat and oiled metal, and I knew I was pumping self-loathing and a good bit of fear into the atmosphere, too.

If Kieth could get the hover into the air, we didn’t have much to worry about: the hover’s bottom-mounted turrets would chew even Monks into small, digestible pieces in short order, and Monks still couldn’t fly, as far as I knew. Until that magical moment when the displacers roared into life, however, we were basically sitting in a shiny metal box that had never been designed to repel boarders.

The closed Vid screens above the drop bay lit up suddenly, showing the dead city around us. “Ah! Found the visuals,” Kieth chirped, sounding pleased with himself.

Onscreen, I could see the Monks outside, dozens of them surrounding the hover, more emerging from the scummy water of the river. I watched them arrange themselves and tried to imagine what they were pla

Ooh, Avery’s afraid of Monks, I heard Glee say. Avery’s got a phobia.

Happling appeared at my elbow, two autos slung into crisscrossed holsters under each arm, his huge humming shredder in both hands. His red hair was standing up in bizarre, dirt-crusted directions, and he was smiling. I kept my eyes on him without moving my head, resolving not to speak to him because I didn’t want to hear what he was thinking. Happling looked like the sort of berserker who got you killed. He was enjoying himself.

Hense produced her flask from some hidden pocket but didn’t bother with her dainty little cup. She unscrewed the cap and took a blast, then walked over and handed the flask silently to Happling, who took a superhuman gulp, liquor dribbling down his chin. Smacking his lips, he handed it back to the colonel.

“All right,” he said, and I braced myself for crazy. “We dealt with these freaks once,” he said loudly, to the whole cabin. “Some of you were with the force, I know, when we had to clean up these Tin Men during the Monk Riots. They’re fast. They have digital filters on their visual and can switch between visible spectrum, heat sig, or motion sensing. They don’t like bullets any more than you and me, but they can shut down individual systems if damaged and don’t exactly feel pain. They’re fucking murder. But a shot to the head puts them down, and inside that freak show is a stupid shithead brain.”

I stared at the multiplying Monks on the screen and felt Happling next to me. I couldn’t decide where I’d rather be. All the cop testosterone in the air was suffocating. On the other hand, I had this weird feeling that I was watching civilization in action here-the line between order and chaos-and it was ma

“Order it up, Captain,” Hense said in a low, controlled voice.

“Listen up!” Happling shouted immediately, as if her command had been a coincidence. “This is a Scenario B4 situation. Rumor has it you faggots have had some training, so I’m expecting a clean execution. Watch your crossfire! Hey, fat girl,” he snapped, jabbing one huge hand in the direction of the round-faced, slow-talking Stormer. “You’re on Intrusion Detection. I want you humping it up and down this fucking hover and anything you see, feel, hear, or fucking smell that seems unusual, you make a fucking ruckus, right?”

I had this weird urge to defend her. She managed to make her salute simultaneously crisp and mocking with just the slightest curve of her lips, and I thought I might be falling in love with her. “On it like a duck on a june bug, sir.”

Happling stared for just a second, then obviously decided he didn’t have time for ass-kicking and nodded, sweeping his gaze back around the cabin. “This group here,” he said, dividing about a dozen of the Stormers with a knifing motion of his hand, “you are on the hatch. That’s our weakest point. Watch your fucking crossfire, but when they rip that shit off-and they will-you pour murder into it and you don’t let a single one in here. Do not deploy your shredding rifles in this enclosed space. If I see any of you unslinging a shredder, be sure the next sensation you feel will be me shoving that hunk of metal up your ass.”

“You,” he said, turning to look at another Stormer, this one a big, square-headed guy apparently made out of a single slab of beef. Beefy looked at Happling as if he wished he’d remembered his suicide pills that morning. “You’re on the drop-bay door panel. See it? Do I have to go piss on it so you can find it, trooper? We don’t have time for this, Nancy-okay, open that up. If it looks like they’re going to force those bay doors, trooper, cut those wires. The fail-safes will kick in and snap that motherfucker shut tighter than your asshole right now. This is your discretion, trooper, don’t make me fucking dig you up later to reprimand you.”

“The rest of you,” he continued after a moment, in a lower voice, “you just wait for people to die. Someone goes down, you get in there and take their place. Do not fire from a rear position, you’ll just fucking kill your own people.”

From above came three or four dull thuds, but I was the only one to glance up.

“Here they come!” Happling shouted, pulling his guns from their holsters and gri

I looked around, but a bell-like metallic clang and the groaning noise of metal fatigue sounded as the hatch door was grasped by something outside and pulled outward. With a rattle of metal all the cops leaned forward. I ran my eyes over the whole cabin and stepped back, suddenly sure that we’d just fucked up in a massive way but completely unsure how to rectify the situation. I didn’t have plans for the hover and couldn’t even begin to guess where two Techies might be spending some quality time breathing each other’s farts and whispering about security protocols.