David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

• Visual/cortico/thermal/radar optics — all but visual, disrupted

• HD/Comms — disrupted

• Water — 100%. Napalm — 100%

• Railgun — 99% capacity

• AAR — encountered revins in different circumstances; end result is the same

• Shutting down core operation and initiating stand-by mode

The dawn sunrise cast its warmth on the solar armor of the sentinel, awakening it from the chill of the winter air. High desert clouds reached into the East with the Sun’s corona, aligning to shapes like arctic ice. The light wind blew purple jewelflower petals into the parking lot of the supermarket beneath the scaffolding. Below, in the Trail Dust Town turnabout, several revins were gathered around the carcass of the broken, sunburnt creature that the sentinel had shot through skull the evening before. They were inspecting it, poking it, and sniffing the tracks around the festering body.

DDC39 turned its zoom optics into the University grounds. The stadium was the core of the horde. The writhing, seething masses pushed and squeezed their way in and out of the stadium, which was partially covered by a tattered, tensile canvas, erected by poles jutting up from within the football field. To the northeast of the stadium was the McKale Center — a basketball arena that appeared to be chain-locked from door to door. Wildcat flags fluttered in the wind from the rafters of the decaying coliseum. The surrounding buildings — dorms, fraternity houses, police stations — they were alternatingly boarded up and defensed or broken and ransacked.

With the optical survey complete, the sentinel analyzed the probability of where the mountain swarm had traversed. With the intermittent trail along Tanque Verde, and the masses gathered in the University, the indicators were strongest that the child, if alive, was somewhere in the campus. There was also no question: going into the school grounds would leave little possibility for the sentinel to survive. With the ECM jamming, there were low odds it could fend off that many revins, youth in tow, and make it out in one piece.

The sentinel narrowed down its path into the campus to two options: 1) follow Speedway east for 6.2 miles and cross down on Campbell to the stadium or 2) head east along the narrower Pima road, then go south on Campbell a couple miles, past the University Medical Center, crossing over Speedway and on to the stadium.

Both were fucked. On Speedway, the road expanded out in 4 lanes going each direction. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road, or crashed into one another. The sentinel would have to careen around each one at a high speed lest it be overrun by a pack in the shadows. On Pima, the traffic was relatively lighter — due in part to several concrete-slab checkpoints erected every other mile. The sentinel would be able to bypass these roadblocks over the sidewalk and keep a high speed. Pima road was the path forward.

The sentinel scanned back to the snarling horde, which began howling and groaning into the air. The morning sun cast the sentinel in a blinding silhouette — the horde shielded their eyes and peered into the light on the roof, but could see nothing. They only knew something was there. They moved forward. DDC39 flipped open its minor panel on the trident frame, revealing the banshee disk. It jutted upright on its tri-axel, aiming its core at the display windows behind the slurping, fallow ogres. The disk vibrated. A scream erupted through the turnabout and off the windows — a chorus of howls. The sorrow song of the synthetic. The revins tensed up and panicked, looking behind them and frantically panning back and forth through the windows along the saloon. A silence. Then. Glass shards detonated into the air, ripping through the zephyr and into, past, through the skin of the revin gang. They tore at the air, waving at phantom particles, writhing at the lines of glass shorn into their bodies. The sentinel unlocked its tri-axel and sped down the freight shaft and onto Tanque Verde Road.

A veiled warmth fell upon DDC39 as it raced headlong and onto Pima Road, the east-west artery cutting across the Tucson suburbs. It sped past gravel lawns and palo verde trees. A skeletal revin stood slack jawed outside Pima Gun & Pawn, staring in awe at the sentinel as it passed in a trail of dust. It shrieked into the noon sun and everywhere along the road, between abandoned hovels, revins stepped out and into the street, wandering into the asphalt.

The sentinel picked up speed. It came upon St. Cyril’s at Swan Rd. A gaunt, and elderly revin, bedecked in the skin of some unknown carcass, lunged into the road. Several other ancient souls, naked or tattered, raced into the bitumen, shrieking. They saw the machine barreling towards them and fanned out on the blacktop. The sentinel picked up speed and banked left, spurring up on two wheels as it slalomed around the flailing husks. A calloused, engorged woman thundered out of an auto garage leveling a broken baby carriage high above her head. She locked her eyes on the sentinel’s optics as it sped along on two wheels, straight towards this termagant. She whipped the rattling carriage back behind her and flung it forward at the sentinel. That tinny hum whirred on the air and the woman’s kneecaps blew apart, her femurs collapsing upon tibia and a great mass of cellulite rippled into the asphalt. The carriage sailed past DDC39 and tripped a pursuer running at full speed.

Three miles in. Four miles. The city was alive now. The horde was in the streets, on the rooftops, and clambering over residential fences. Maybe Pima Road was not the best option. The wild eyes of this lost legion of once-thinking-humans, their flailing arms and gnashing teeth, surrounded the sentinel. Ruined homes lined the street behind them — dead weeds, ephedra, and desert broom choked at the cracks in the concrete. The sentinel sped through two thrashing males, tore over a gravel pile on the sidewalk and went airborne — the revins in an angry awe. It landed back on the sidewalk and rumbled over a pile of rotting newspapers in front of a burned out house on the corner of Justin Lane.

The sentinel was surrounded on every side. Soon, it would be overrun. It was blinded — no radar, thermal, motion, or cortico optics. No satellite uplink. It had visual and zoom optics, a railgun, a banshee disk, and some options it didn’t want to use unless it had to. It ran the probabilities as it sped forward through the dense throngs, limbs bouncing off its trident frame with increasing rapidity.

It could find some higher ground and pick off the pack males with the railgun, hoping the rest would scatter. 18% chance of survival. It could back into a 90-degree corner — some concrete right angle — and let loose the banshee disk. 23% chance of survival. Or it could keep running — create a diversion, speed through the dirt lawns and kick up a dust cloud — try to evade the masses. 10% chance of survival. There was one clear imperative: it had to get off Pima Road soon and lose the crowd in the side streets. And, very likely, it had to use one of its last resort options.

It sped up to the intersection of Pima and Alvernon and turned quickly — the shrill screech of tires popping up and down on the asphalt as it made its semi-circle. A group of revins were coming north on Alvernon. A slender, gray revin, emerged from the shattered entrance of a Q-Mart and walked into the street, confidently swaying into the intersection. To the left of it, another pack of revins emerged from the former campaign office of Congressman Pastner, leaping over rusted cars, howling into the noon sun. A scarred, weathered revin leapt out of a Kung-Fu Academy, an iron meat hook impaled in its hand, unfazed by the commotion.

The sentinel panned around at the revins coming at it from each direction. It rolled forward and found the dead center of the intersection. It collapsed its detection array and camera and locked its tri-axel into place. Batten down the hatches. The storm was about to crash in on all sides.