C. Cargill: Sea of Rust

I shook my head. “I was hoping we could do this the easy way.”

“There is no easy way this time.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“It’s time you joined us. None of you are getting out of Marion. This is the only way. Join The One.”

“No.”

“Zebra codex—”

I popped my Wi-Fi and let out a 4.5 MHz trill.

Four buildings around us detonated, interrupting the facet midsentence, rubble and debris shooting across the street from both sides at hundreds of miles an hour, clearing the road of most of the facets. The city shook, the street filling with the dust and asbestos from the collapsing structures.

With the crack of Mercer’s rifle, the golden facet exploded in front of me, his chest blown open, his body falling awkwardly backward to the ground, the light already gone from his eyes.

I hopped back on the low-band Wi-Fi. “I guess it’s Plan B?” asked Doc.

“It is,” I replied.

The Wi-Fi screamed like it was being murdered slowly, the sound of three Miltons being turned on at once.

The dust of the demolition swept toward me, overtook me, all but blinding me. A rifle cracked. Then cracked again. And a spitter hissed to life a block away. Seconds later, though I couldn’t see it, a dropship smashed into a building, its engines letting out a sad whine before the entire thing exploded with a tumultuous din. Shrapnel clattered through the street, the blast shattering what few windows remained. Detritus whizzed past me, one piece far too close for comfort, the sound of it like a bullet without the gunshot.

I patted myself down. No damage.

There was no return fire.

One unit down. Seven to go.

They were blind. They were disconnected from CISSUS. And they had no choice but to dismount and make their way into our rubble-strewn bottleneck. We had to count on home-field advantage to get us to the next part of the plan.

Two minutes and the clock was already ticking.

I jumped up onto the smoker and took cover behind a blast shield.

The seconds ticked by, each one filled with the alarms in my head warning me of shutdown.

The clang of metallic footsteps echoed through the city, dozens of facets converging on us at once. This was it. The firefight.

Dust hung in the air, flames licking at it, plumes of black smoke cutting through it in places. I zeroed in on the sounds of approaching feet, triangulating their positions.

I fired off three shots into the dust before quickly ducking back behind the blast shield.

Two sounded hits. One whizzed off into the distance.

A barrage of fire rained down upon the smoker, plasma shots sizzling against the thick metal plating.

Mercer’s rifle cracked from high above, the sound of shredding metal and shattering plastic following milliseconds after.

I swung back around the blast shield and fired off three more shots, this time only sounding one hit before returning to cover and the hail of fire that followed.

The dust was settling. Soon we’d be fighting out in the open, outnumbered, outgunned.

Twenty seconds.

I fired again, four shots, three solid hits.

There was no telling whether or not I was dropping any facets. Mercer was. His rifle kept cracking, and facets kept spilling onto the pavement.

Fortunately there was little coordination between them. They sounded orders to one another, clearly possessing some sort of command structure, but had no way of keeping their plans quiet from us. They shot at me, they shot at Mercer, they shot at the shadows of wrecks that hung in the windows above.

Engines roared in the sky behind me, but I was still obscured in a cloud of dust, so the odds were in my favor that they couldn’t pick me out in the confusion. I held the pistols close to my chest, curled into a ball, and hoped they couldn’t see me.

The dropship hovered close above us, using its engines to blow away the dust and smoke, clearing the air.

Shit. We needed a few more seconds.

Down the street, Herbert’s spitter hissed.

The dropship jinked to the side, trying to slip the shot, only to be broadsided, the plasma splitting the ship in half.

The ship exploded, showering engines and flaming facets across the street as its hull crashed down two blocks away. What dust had settled or been blown away was now replaced by the smoking ruin of another dropship, the street littered with white-hot debris.

The sound of clanking feet came from all sides now. We were surrounded.

A small alarm twinkled in my head.

The two minutes were up.

I leapt backward, jumping to the ground behind the massive vehicle, firing wantonly into the smoke. Both pistols emptied at once. I pressed the buttons on the sides, sliding out the battery cartridges before effortlessly replacing them from the holster on my hip.

I made my way back up the street, knowing full well I was charging into an advancing unit. But the cavalry needed cover fire.

Just as the clanging feet of the facets grew their loudest yet, the small red door down the stairwell of a half-collapsed building flew open. And the sound of pattering feet erupted out of it.

From belowground emerged dozens of sexbots, their clothing cast off, voluptuous breasts and massive dongs flopping as they ran. Some carried spare weapons from the smoker; others brandished lead pipes or sharpened scrap metal. They were howling, angry, and ordered to viciously attack anyone they didn’t recognize.

And at this point in their short, fresh-out-of-the-box lives, we were the only ones they’d ever met.

The facets fired at them and the sexbots fired back.

The first volley was lethal, nearly a dozen Comfortbots and almost as many facets gunned down in an instant.

Mercer’s rifle popped continually above, clearing out any facets that were more focused on the sexbot horde than they were on the sniper hidden somewhere in the city above.

I pulled the trigger slowly, steadily, shot by shot picking off the military-grade bots pouring out from the rubble on the other side of the sex shop. Not every shot dropped one, but it sure as shit distracted them. And the waves of naked flesh overtook them, putting plasma into them, smashing their optics with pipes, or hacking their limbs off with makeshift swords.

The facets were, for all intents and purposes, among the most highly trained tacticians the world had ever known. Their only weakness was chaos. And that I excelled at creating. I had played my part in a number of misadventures, but this, what might well be my final orchestration, was my masterpiece.

Sexbots leapt upon facets, swinging weapons, trying to pry heads from bodies, wrestling them to the ground. Facets tore the limbs off the naked bots, bots took apart facets in groups of two and three. Indiscriminate fire tore through sexbot and facet alike. It was a writhing mass of pseudoflesh and metal, tearing itself apart piece by piece, hair coming out in clumps, heads being rolled aside as their severed bodies thrashed maniacally.

For a moment—and only the briefest of moments—I allowed myself to savor the ridiculous destruction of it all.

I heard the steady, hurried clang of Herbert’s footsteps behind me in the smoke, and I knew that we were on to the next part of the plan.

Mercer and I cleared a path through the facets to the sex shop, paving the way for Herbert to get there safely.

Engines blared above us, a dropship swinging out from behind the cover of a building. Guns blazed from four points on the ship, cutting a sexbot throng to pieces. Herbert stopped his advance, pointed the spitter up, firing.

The dropship slipped to the side effortlessly, the shot going wide, missing it entirely. Then its guns turned on Herbert.

Fire riddled the street, Herbert diving for cover.