Peter Watts - Maelstrom

A light came on in Vive's head.

"Hey," she said. "There is something that puts out a bit of a field. Portable, too. It'd be touchy—we'd have to play with its insides or it'd attract all kinds of the wrong attention—but you wouldn't have to be around for that part anyway."

"Yeah?" Lenie asked.

"Oh yeah," Vive told her. "No problem ."

Les beus had the crowd cordoned off, and were pushing them back across the concourse. The rifters on the edge were getting shocked, of course, but at least nobody'd dropped any gas bombs yet. The crowd moved like an ocean, great sweeping waves emerging miraculously from the constrained jostling of a million trapped particles. The comparison went farther than that, Vive knew: human oceans had backwash, undertow. People could get sucked underneath and trampled.

She let the currents carry her along. Jen and Lindsey bobbed behind her to either side. Vive had told two friends; they'd told two friends; so on; so on. All around them fission was taking place, just below the surface. You could barely see it at first; people worked their way through the crowd from all sides, tacking against the current until they were just an arm or two away from Vive et al. Glances, nods were exchanged. The local turbulence subsided just a tiny bit as friends and allies anchored each other against the push and pull.

Within minutes Aviva Lu was the bull's-eye in a crowded circle of calm.

Three botflies approached in formation a couple of meters above the crowd, reciting the usual riot-act platitudes. Vive glanced at Jen; Jen shook her visored head. The machines cruised past, recessed muzzles dimpling their bellies.

Jen tugged at her sleeve, gestured: another 'fly coming up the concourse. Vive slipped her own visor over her eyes and magged on the target. No obvious gunports or arc electrodes. Purely surveillance, this one. Glorified note-taker. Vive looked back at Jen, at Linse.

Both nodded.

Vive doffed the visor and hooked it over her belt; some things you still needed your own eyes for. Her arms went around Jen's and Lindsey's shoulders, just three ol' girlfriends out for a good time, nothing to see here. The crowd blocked any view of Vive pulling up her legs, now all her weight on the shoulders of her friends, now most of it weighing on the stirrups Jen and Lindsey had improvised by interlocking their hands. The 'fly cruised closer, scanning the crowd. Maybe it was interested in this curious little knot of stability in the Brownian storm. Maybe it was on its way somewhere else entirely.

If so, it never got there.

The botfly was out of reach to anyone jumping unassisted from the floor; it was an easy mark for someone boosted by 'dorphderms and a two-stage launch. Jen and Lindsey bounced into a quick squat and heaved , throwing Vive into the air. At the same time, Vive pushed off against their hands. She embraced her inner überchick, endorphins singing throughout her body. The botfly floated into her embrace like a big beautiful Easter egg. She wrapped her arms around it and hugged .

The 'fly never had a chance. Built entirely of featherweight polymers and vacuum bladders, its ground-effect lift couldn't have been more than a kilo or two. Aviva Lu shackled it like ball with no chain, brought it down into the arms of the welcoming crowd.

A roar went up on all sides. Vive knew that wordless sound, and she knew what it meant: First Blood .

Not the last, though. Not by a long shot.

They smashed the botfly against the floor, shielded by a swaying forest of human bodies. They went after the lens clusters and antennae first; they'd all be sockeye if they didn't get the 'fly offline real fast. It wasn't easy. Modern tech had long since figured out how to combine light with strong , and evolution hadn't come up with the egg-shape for no reason either. Jen and Linse had their toolkits out.

On all sides, the sounds of escalation.

Shouts turned to screams, rising briefly then lost in the ambient roar. Something exploded nearby. An electronic buzzer honked in the distance like a quarantine siren; official notification that the pigs were on the warpath.

Pre-game show over. First period underway.

Something went

BANG!

right in Vive's ear; she jumped, stumbled against a pair of legs. Jen, a little too eager to cut through the carapace, had ruptured one of the vacuum bladders. A high, pure tone trumped the sound of the riot. Vive shook her head.

A hand on her shoulder; Linse in her face, mouthing got it over the dial tone in Vive's head. Jen held up a necklace of optical chips and a battery, strung along a mist of fine fiberop. Behind her, their buffer guard staggered against some conducted impact. The space began to collapse around them.

Go.

Vive grabbed the necklace and stood. A human storm surged and collided on all sides; she could barely see over it. Fifteen meters away a phalanx of botflies was bearing down like the Four Horsemen. Some joker in springsoles trampolined into the air and tagged the one in the lead. A tiny lightning bolt arced between jumper and jumped; Springsole Boy grand mal 'd in midair and dropped back into the mêlée.

The botflies, undeterred, were heading right for Vive.

Oh shit . Surge pushed her backward. Her feet tangled in the carcass of the dismembered floater. The opening in the crowd had completely collapsed; bodies pressed close on all sides, kept her from falling. Vive lifted her feet off the ground. The crowd carried her as though she were levitating. The wreckage passed beneath.

Still the botflies came at her. We weren't fast enough. It got off a signal, it sent a picture-

She could see their electrodes. She could see their gunports. She could even see their eyes , staring coldly down at her behind their darkened shields…

Right overhead.

Past.

They're after Jen and Linse . Vive twisted around, following the flies in their pursuit. Shit, they just left, they don't have enough of a lead, they're gonna—

Right out of left field, another botfly charged into view and rammed the leader.

What—

The head of the phalanx skidded sideways, out of control. The attacking botfly spun and charged the next in line. It came down from above, hitting its quarry and knocking it down a meter or so.

Far enough. The crowd surged up and engulfed it in a hungry, roaring wave.

Bad move, that. A surveillance 'fly was one thing; but those other ones were armed .

Yelps. Screams. Smoke rising. The submerged botfly ascended triumphant from the crowd. The crowd tried to pull back from that epicenter, ran into its own seething resistance; a wave propagated out across the riot, the panic spreading even if the panic-stricken couldn't.

The rogue botfly was charging again. Its targets were starting to regroup.

What the hell is going on? Vive wondered. Then: lucky break. Don't waste it.

Ten or fifteen meters to the medbooths. Solid chaos in the way. Vive started pushing. There were still people nearby who were in on the plan; they moved back as much as they could, trying to part the Red Sea for her passage. It was still start-stop all the way—too many out of the loop, too many simply gone rabid on the battlefield. Even half the people who had grabbed the bone had dropped it again.

" I saw her. "

A K voice, calm but amped loud enough to hear over ambient. Vive threw a glance back over her shoulder.

The rogue botfly was talking. " I saw her come out of the ocean. I saw what— "

One of the assault 'flies fired. The rogue staggered in midair, wobbled dangerously.