C. Cargill - Sea of Rust

As I passed the entrance to the first feeder I could hear the uniform footfalls of armed facets from within. I had to run as fast as I could and hope that the bots behind me slowed them down. I scanned the Wi-Fi. Still hot. Why hadn’t anyone thrown the switch on the Milton?

I ran another twenty yards to the next turn, then up a flight of stairs to the next level. And that’s when I heard it—the pop pop pop of small-arms fire coming from the generator room down the hall. Someone was already up here and had encountered facets of their own.

The generator room was the only way forward. I had my first hard choice: turn back to try to find another way out, facing the facets I knew were there, or run blindly into a gunfight.

Fuck it, I thought. Maybe the gunfight would be distraction enough to let me slip past. So I slid quietly through the door into the generator room.

The air was thick and heavy, smoke billowing from a pair of blasted capacitors. CISSUS was using plasma. They never brought out the plasma this early; not in the initial raid. Plasma melted bots, cooked their insides, turned them to useless scrap. No, they only hauled out the plasma when they were culling those they couldn’t incapacitate.

This was no ordinary raid.

I crept quickly behind a generator, peering around the side to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Facets. Three of them. One brute and two plastic men. Facets are faceless things. Even the humanoid ones—the plastic men—had smooth, featureless heads like a motorcycle helmet, their optics hidden behind a sheet of sheer lab-grown sapphire.

The brute was a new model—big fucker. A large, hulking, oblong, almost egg-shaped mass of carbonized steel with a single four-inch band of sheer sapphire running around the entirety of its body, two tree-trunk-like stems for legs, and two solid arms that could crush a car by grabbing both ends and pushing them together. It was carrying a massive plasma spitter which chucked out steaming balls of ionized gas every 4.7 seconds, vaporizing the air around the muzzle with a sizzling hiss. Behind him crouched the plastic men—their bodies sleek and slender, made of a cheap carbon-fiber composite, each armed with a pulse rifle, using the brute for cover.

Pop pop pop pop.

Four armor-piercing shells bounced harmlessly off the brute’s outer armor. The brute didn’t even bother to pretend to dodge the shots. He took a massive, clanking step forward and the plastic men followed perfectly in stride. One mind. Always in concert. The brute lurched to the side and one of the foot soldiers used the cover to make a run for it.

Right toward me. Shit.

I pulled back. He hadn’t seen me yet. I had only seconds to react.

He cornered the generator just in time for me to grab hold of his rifle and deliver a flying knee right to his featureless face. The hit knocked his head back, buckled his posture, and dropped him to the floor. I tore the gun from his grip, squeezed the trigger, and pasted him.

The shot hit him like a molten brick. Plastic and carbon fiber shattered into a rain of smoking ruin, and his internal wiring caught fire. His chassis spasmed, his arms flailing at the floor, his RAM still trying desperately to carry out his last few commands.

The upshot was that now I had a gun. The downside? He had seen me. Why the fuck hasn’t anyone switched on the goddamned Milton? Now they knew I was here. The element of surprise was lost.

So, you know, fuck stealth.

I leapt out from behind the generator and held the trigger down on the rifle as I sidestepped wildly toward the next bit of cover. Plasma sprayed, riddling the remaining plastic man with holes, his architecture popping with violent flashes as he exploded from the inside out. I kept stepping left, trigger still pulled all the way back, now targeting the brute.

The brute turned to face me, his massive arms lining up to shield his vital components. His armor-plated arms were designed to shrug off armor-piercing rounds and low-yield rockets—not plasma. The metal burned a bright orange, impact sites turning yellow and then white. But he stood his ground, unwavering.

His right arm popped with sparks, the heat fusing his circuitry, his hand twitching, malfunctioning.

He dropped his plasma spitter to the ground.

I made it to cover just as the pulse rifle howled an overheat warning. It was shutting down to cool, but it had done its job. I peered out at the brute. He knelt on one knee, reaching down with his one good arm to pick up the spitter. The arm still glowed, plastic and carbon oozing out of holes in the metal, fingers stabbing the ground six inches away from the gun, twitching, locking into a fist.

He rose to his feet, arms useless, preparing to charge, when, from out of the flickering shadows, the lithe, feminine form of a companion bot launched itself into the air, landing square on his back. 19. She pointed her popgun of a pistol down through a hole I’d put in the sapphire, firing three shots.

Pop pop pop .

The brute convulsed, tossing her off, flailing about, smoke pouring out of the vents in his back. 19 slammed hard into a capacitor, but landed like a cat. She looked up at the brute, smiling, ready to pounce again.

But the brute was done. His lights had gone out and he tottered on his failing servos, his legs finally giving out as he slumped to the ground with a sensor-splintering clatter.

19 looked down the corridor ahead, scanning the area. She clutched her popgun, a small, antique .50-caliber Desert Eagle, peering through the smoke in my direction. “Who the hell is that?” she called out through the heavy smoke.

My pulse rifle screamed to life, beeping loudly to indicate that it had finished cooling off.

19 sprang, leaping forward into a tactical roll, looking for cover.

“It’s me! It’s Brittle!” I leaned gently around the corner and let her get a good look at me.

“Oh, goddammit, Britt. I almost shot you.”

“With that little popgun?” I joked. “Please.”

“Fuck you,” she said with a smile. “It’s all I could sneak in here.” I liked it when she smiled. It was one of the few things that made me remember the old days with any fondness. Few bots were designed with the ability to show emotion, but Comfortbots were built with a full range of expression. If she still had her skinjob, she’d even be able to bite her lip. She waved behind her. “Coast’s clear. Let’s move.”

From behind the generators trundled the bruiser I’d seen at Snipes’s with 19 earlier. He looked around, scanning the area, then waved behind him, ushering out three translators—the rest of 19’s entourage.

“More are on their way,” I said.

“I know,” said 19.

“No. I mean here. They’re using relays to keep the Wi-Fi up this deep underground.”

“Why hasn’t anyone—”

“Switched on the Milton?”

“Yeah.”

“Couldn’t tell you. All I know is that the facets know we’re here. We broke their relay chain, so they’ve probably lost contact with the rest inside. They’ll move back here, and soon, to reestablish a link.”

19 popped open a small compartment in her leg—her “toy box,” as the manufacturer called it—and holstered her popgun there before leaning down to pick up the pulse rifle. She quickly searched the plastic men for extra battery clips. She looked up at the bruiser, pointing to the plasma spitter. “Herbert, you know how to use that thing?”

Herbert picked up the spitter and felt the weight of it in his hands. “It’s an entirely new design,” he said in an aristocratic, almost academic voice—clearly a mod—and nodded. “But it’s pretty self-explanatory.”

19 smiled again. “I guess if you start melting, we’ll know otherwise.”