Jerome Preisler: Net Force--Attack Protocol

“Safer if they come to us,” he said at length. “We head for the depot, the damn robots will pick us up. Nail us before we get anywhere near it.”

“Agreed,” Fernandez said.

Howard looked at him.

“All right, Julio,” he said. “Call us a ride. An escort, too. And do it quick .”

Mario Perez stamped down on the Jolt’s brake pedal, bringing it to a halt outside the Quonsets that housed the compound’s nonmilitary personnel.

A second later he pushed the door open, sprang out into the night, and glanced quickly back the way he came from. Two huge globes of flame glared in the distance. One was straight behind him, to the west, around the concession and mess hall. The other fire was off toward Command headquarters, near the northern perimeter. They corresponded to the explosions he’d heard while speeding toward Laura’s quarters.

Mario gazed at them with bewildered horror. There was an orange glow above the burning buildings, the firelight refracting off the frozen snow crystals in the air in a kind of scattered, rippling aura. He didn’t know what was going on. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the hedgehog he’d seen after saying good-night to Laura. He was sure they were only supposed to leave their rounds in an emergency and had felt concerned enough that he’d decided to make sure she got back to her housing unit okay.

The two apparent detonations occurred as he was driving here. One closely following the other. When he heard them, Mario had immediately radioed the watch but gotten no response. Absent explicit orders from Command, he was thinking he would go investigate the fires. But not until he found Laura Cruz.

He turned toward the long aluminum huts. Six of them stood in a row behind a small dirt parking area, ten or twelve feet apart, separated by narrow alleys. Two had cars out front.

Mario didn’t know if Laura owned a car. Didn’t even know which unit was hers. But only one of them, the second from his right, had lights spilling from its front windows. And she would have gotten home just minutes ago.

It stood to reason she was still awake.

He hurried up to the Quonset. The shades were drawn shut in all its windows, the light escaping their sides and bottoms in pencil-thin yellow lines. There was a rubber welcome mat, a glass storm door, a buzzer in the inner door’s metal frame. The light seeping from the window next to the door was bright enough for him to read the printed adhesive label underneath it: L. CRUZ.

Mario pressed the buzzer.

No one came.

He pressed again, holding his finger steadily down on the button, listening to the grating buzz inside the hut.

No one came.

He knocked on the storm door, got no answer. Knocked again a little harder, four quick raps. No answer. He opened the storm door, knocked on the solid inner door. Nothing.

Mario sidestepped to the window, cupped a hand over his eyes, and tried to peer through the pencil opening on one side of the shade. But he couldn’t see anything besides the thin strip of light and the reflected glow of the distant fires in the glass pane.

His heart thumped. What if Laura wasn’t home yet? Didn’t she say she was stopping at her friend’s unit?

It was possible she was there. But he couldn’t help thinking about the sentry robot. The hedgehog that had strayed from its patrol area in the darkness. It was also possible she had run across it on the way home.

He returned to the front door and called her name.

Nothing.

Again, louder. “Laura!”

“Mario...I’m over here!”

Her voice, from his left. Then the sound of a door slamming shut and footsteps scraping on the ground.

He turned his head, saw her hurrying over from the last Quonset in the row. She had carried something out the door with her. Initially Mario thought it might be a pillow, but after a moment he realized it was kind of wriggling and squirming around in her hands.

Pillows didn’t wriggle and squirm.

He ran toward Laura. She ran toward him. They stopped, facing each other.

“Gracias a Dios!” she said. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, his eyes dropping to the agitated little creature in her hands. It was black and white and plump and furry. Twisting and squirming and thrashing in her grasp, pawing and clawing at her sleeves.

“This is Buttons,” she said. “He’s a cat.”

“I can see that,” he said. “Laura—”

“Emily’s cat.”

“Laura, listen—”

“I was feeding him when I heard the noise,” she said. “It was like bombs went off.”

“They weren’t bombs, Laura. At least I don’t think so. I saw a hedgehog back at the concession. Out of its patrol box—”

“Did you hear those blasts?”

“I heard them.”

“I thought the first one might have been thunder. But when I heard the second, I knew it wasn’t,” she said breathlessly. “Buttons panicked and hid, and I had to dig him out of the closet. Once I found him, that is. He—” She abruptly interrupted herself. “Wait. A hedgehog.”

He exhaled, guessing she was pretty upset and must have needed a few seconds to register what he’d told her about the robot. “Yeah,” he said. “I know it’s wild. But—”

“Mario, listen...”

“We can’t stick around here—”

“Mario...”

“We have to—”

“Mario, listen to me .”

He stopped. “What is it?”

“I told you,” she said. “A ’hog .”

Mario abruptly realized she wasn’t looking at him at all but past him into the near distance. He snapped a glance back over his shoulder, following her gaze.

The sentry robot’s squat, low-slung outline was unmistakable in the glow of the parking area’s pole lights. It was about a hundred yards off...and gliding silently in their general direction.

He turned back to Laura, standing stock-still in the snowy darkness. If they hurried, they could make into his JLTV before it got too much closer. But that wouldn’t help if something strange was going on with the ’hog. If it was sniffing around for them, its sensors would lock onto their thermal signatures. And onto the heat of the vehicle’s engine. And onto its motion. And it would have rocket-powered grenades that could take it out before he put any distance between them.

“The robot,” she whispered. “You think it knows we’re here?”

He watched it move closer. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I think it’s very possible.”

“Then what do we do?”

He looked quickly around for a place to take cover. The aluminum walls of Laura’s Quonset might mask their body heat. But there was a door in front. Possibly a back door, too. And even the thinnest spaces between door and door frame would leak heat from inside. Mario didn’t know if it was enough heat for the ’hog to pick up their readings, but he suspected it would be. In which case the hut would become a death trap.

He looked around some more, acutely aware of the ’hog’s continued gliding approach. Then his eyes seized on the space between her hut and the next in line. He saw a bicycle leaning against the side of the hut on one flat tire, and the trash bin shared by both Quonsets. Right in front of the bin was a rectangular chest of some sort. It was about four feet high and twice as long.

“Laura, what’s that over there?”

She followed the urgent jab of his finger.

“It’s my freezer. I dumped it when I got the new one. You think it would hide us?”

Mario was thinking it would have built-in sidewall insulation, a sheet of thick fiberglass foam between its outer and inner panels. And rubber stripping on the edges of the lid.

“It should,” he whispered. “But we gotta lose the cat.”