Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

“Hey! Soup can! Come on! Aqui, aqui, aqui! ”

He was shouting at the top of his lungs, wanting to keep the ’hog’s attention directed at him, hoping desperately to gain Laura some breathing room.

So far, it looked like his plan was working. The robot advanced on him at a steady clip, bulky, squat, low to the ground, at once beetle-like and nearly human in its appearance and articulated movements. Like a hybrid life-form that had evolved in a cave on Jupiter. At first it retraced the path that its three earlier patrols had left in the snow cover. Then it veered sharply toward the mouth of the alley, its caterpillar tracks shoving and pushing and piling the snow on either side of them into loose, crumbly banks. Mario guessed it was doing thirty to forty miles an hour, probably close to its top speed. No match for his Jolt but faster than he could run. And bristling with weaponry that would extend its killing power well beyond whatever distance separated them.

Then an idea popped into his head. It was a desperate ploy and might only buy a few seconds. But that was better than nothing.

He took his phone out of his pants pocket. The lock screen still showed his podcast app’s Play-Pause-Skip controls. He pressed the Play button and thumbed the slider all the way up to max the volume.

“—like to thank my friend and colleague Adrian Soto and CloudCable’s Jim Yates for presenting different sides of the controversial plan to—”

Mario waited till the ’hog had almost reached him before he pitched the phone into the trash bin. Then he turned and hurried down the short length of the alley.

The Quonsets were the standard twenty-by-forty-eight prefab dimensions, and as he emerged behind them three seconds later, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw his ploy had worked. The ’hog had paused to investigate the voices, tipped the bin on its side, and plucked out the phone with its claw. Mario could still hear the podcast blaring from its speaker.

“—be happy to return as the project advances, Dr. Michaels. This is a transformative moment in web connectivity—”

The ’hog held the phone up to its optical lenses, examining it much as a person might study a curious new object. Mario almost stumbled looking back at it. There was something strangely fascinating about its approximate human inquisitiveness.

But the inspection only lasted a second. The ’hog confirmed the voices did not belong to a present threat and then was finished with it.

Mario was already outside the alley as it dropped the phone into the snow and started after him again. He had gained several seconds—and the longer he kept the ’hog away from Laura, the better.

He raced to his left behind Quonset Four and hurried on toward the fifth and last hut in line, crossing behind it, wanting to cut around its north side and put the hut between himself and the robot. Only as he neared the corner of the wall did he risk another look back.

The robot was emerging from the alley mouth between Quonsets Three and Four. It turned behind Quonset Four and unleashed another volley from the machine gun just as he rounded the corner of Quonset Five. The hut shielded him from the fire, but he was at the end of the line. All the huts were behind him and there was nothing but open field in three directions.

He was out of cover.

Mario ran west over the snow and frozen grass. He had been listening for something else, and now, finally, he heard it. The sound of an ignition turning over.

Glancing to his left, he saw taillights wink on outside Quonset One. Laura’s hut. She had reached the Jolt. In a matter of seconds she would be headed off toward the south gate—and then hopefully out to safety.

He kept running to lure off the ’hog, hoping to God he could buy her all the time she needed.

Laura was wrenching open the JLTV’s door with one hand and desperately trying to hold Buttons against her body with the other when the cat shot from her arms.

Her eyes wide open, her heart clutching in her chest, she watched him run off. There was nothing she could do. No time to even think. In a second, he was gone. Lost in the darkness.

Shaken up, she opened the door the rest of the way, got in, and started up the engine.

Her hands trembled around the steering wheel, but not from the cold. She was barely even aware of the cold.

She shifted into Drive and put her foot on the accelerator and leaped forward. Mario had left the vehicle facing south. She could speed from the parking area to the north–south transverse and reach the gate in minutes. Then turn east on the road to Bucharest.

But she did not head for the road. Instead, she turned right, swung another hard right to make a full U-turn, and sped north across the fronts of the huts.

Away from the gate and in the direction Mario had led the ’hog.

Her foot heavy on the accelerator, Laura prayed silently under her breath. A prayer she learned from her mother as a little girl, for when she was alone in bed and the lights went out. Angel de mi garda, dulce campaia, no mi desampares, ni de noche, ni de dia.

Guardian angel, sweet companion, don’t forsake me, not by night or day.

She refused to let that heartless, soulless metal thing hurt Mario. Refused to let it take him from her.

Wrapped around the wheel, her hands continued to shake with angry determination.

Mario was in the field north of Quonset Five, scampering west through the snow, when he heard the low rumble of the JLTV speeding toward him from the left. He looked over his shoulder and saw the bright circles of its headlights growing larger and larger and realized to his horrified surprise what Laura intended to do.

She was coming back for him. She had to know it was suicide. But she was coming back.

The ’hog’s .50-cal chattered behind him. He’d put about seventy-five yards between himself and the row of huts, close range, but the bullets struck the ground to his right, muffled beats in the snow. The robot’s bumping movement over the frozen, uneven turf had thrown its aim off the mark: two inches closer, and the burst would have torn off his arm and half his torso.

Mario ran forward, his knees and hips working overtime in the ankle-deep accumulation.

He gulped cold air into his lungs and ran. Ten feet. Twenty. The hedgehog was catching up. It probably weighed seven hundred pounds. That massive weight compressed and flattened the snow underneath it, and its tread belt gave it solid traction. And it was a machine. He already felt himself getting fatigued, but machines wouldn’t fatigue. They had no muscles to stiffen up. They never got tired.

Mario ran, his throat raw, snow sucking at his boots. His legs were getting tired. His elbows were stiff from pumping. He thought he could hear the ’hog’s servos whirring faintly behind him as it edged closer and closer.

It was no more than thirty yards back when the headlights flooded over him, coming straight on from his left until they were almost on top of him. Their horizontal beams momentarily dazzled his eyes and then abruptly swung out and away as he watched Laura scrape around in a hard left turn and grind to a halt, nosed in the same westerly direction he’d been running, the right-rear door hanging wide open.

“Stop staring and get in!” she said through her lowered window.

Mario dove into the back seat as she jammed her foot on the gas and the JLTV bucked forward with his door still open, its tires spinning up a cloud of fine white snow crystals.

“Cut the lights and zigzag!” he yelled, sprawled on his stomach.

“What?”

“The lights! Cut them! Then zigzag!”

Laura cut the lights and veered left, right, left, right, ice, dirt, and frozen grass rasping and rapping against the Jolt’s undercarriage. Mario pushed up in his seat, swayed violently, braced himself with both hands, and looked back through the rear window in time to see a rocket-powered grenade blaze an orange trail through the night between the ’hog’s angled launcher and their vehicle. The projectile smashed into the ground a few feet off to the right and detonated with a loud booming blast and a churning orange fireball.