Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 111} The Devil You Know

Rule number one out here: never, ever, dig yourself into a hole that you can’t get out of. Last stands are for those not smart enough to find their way out or those burdened with the knowledge that they are already dead. It helps, of course, if you have a way out planned before you have to make your stand. In this case, whilst I had a nice ambush spot with plenty of cover and enough sharpened scrap between them and me to avoid being physically overrun, I had completely lost the element of surprise. But I had chosen this hidey-hole not only for its tactical advantage, but because it also had a back door.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I’m up here. The question is what the fuck exactly are you going to do about it?”

I heard the clatter of the bots below as they stopped in place. “She’s here,” muttered one bot to the others.

“Quiet,” said Mercer low enough that he hoped I might not hear. “Let’s see what she’s playing at.” Then he cranked the volume on his voice and let it boom. “I was thinking about coming up there and killing you.”

“I figured you might. But how many of those hired scrubs are you going to be able to sacrifice before they turn on you, realizing your parts are every bit as valuable as mine?”

He tsked. “They don’t need my parts. They need the parts I’ve got stashed away. They bring me your parts, they get theirs. That’s the deal.”

“Are they willing to die for that deal? Like Bulkhead?”

“Bulkhead wasn’t long for this earth. He knew that. They knew that.”

“Wait, what do you mean he—” one whispered.

“Shhh,” Mercer whispered back. “She’s trying to play you. So play along.”

I imagine they thought I couldn’t hear them. But I’ve upgraded—made sure my audio is top-of-the-line. It’s gotta be out here. At this range I could hear the chirp of their hard drives and the whine of their backup batteries charging.

I could hear them creeping closer, using the time I was giving them to set up a cross fire. They were probably hoping to toss in an EMP ’nade, then jump me on reboot. It was likely the best move they had. No reason to step into the line of fire. After all, they had me cornered, right?

I slipped quietly off the desk, pulse rifle still trained on the only way in, easing the metal of my feet onto the cement floor, letting my servos go loose and limp to muffle any sound. Then I crept, slow and quiet, into the deep black of the back of the store. I popped on my low light sensors, but they only got me to the back of the storefront. Where I needed to go next was the stockroom—pitch-black and seamless, entirely cut off from the outside world.

Behind me, in the halls, I could hear the tintinnabulate of metal feet hot on my heels. They weren’t trying to hide their footfalls. They wanted me twitchy, trigger-happy. They wanted me to unload the rifle, leaving me empty-handed and alone.

I slipped through the door at the very back of the store and switched on the LEDs in my sockets. I hated using them—they were a dead giveaway—but it was too dark for night vision, and thermal imaging wasn’t going to be able to discern what I was looking for.

The stockroom was a mess of wrappers, tin cans, and petrified shit; piss stains on the walls of one corner, makeshift bedding crumpled up in another. But in the very back, in the farthermost corner of the room, behind toppled shelving, were the remains of Vic.

Vic was a spot on the wall. A big spot, to be sure. Big and brown and drippy along the edges. But a spot nonetheless. The white cinder-block walls upon which he was painted were chipped and battered, with flecks torn out, shards of bone still embedded in places. Whatever bomb or grenade this poor, brave bastard had held in his hands all but vaporized him on detonation, shattering the innards of the two bots closest to him and tossing four others around like rag dolls.

Vic had stood his ground. He wasn’t going to be taken alive. Instead he took them all with him. Seven with one blow. Like the old fairy tale, but without the happy ending, as, well, though he was the victor, he was also one of the seven.

Vic was now a blood splatter that had dried brown and symmetrical right above the nice bot-size hole the blast had blown out in the floor beneath him. I had covered it up ages ago with bedding and scrap, and barred the door in the stockroom below from the inside. The bedding was exactly as I’d left it, identical to the snapshot stored in my memory. No one had been here; no one had disturbed it. Not once in the decade since I found it.

Finally, something was going my way.

I slung the rifle over my shoulder, pushed aside the blasted metal and moldy blankets, and slid down through the hole, dangling myself into the room below. The room was pitch-black, the light of my LEDs probably the first it had seen in years. The door was held in place by a four-foot-long piece of rebar, slotted into two makeshift hooks I’d drilled into either side of the door. The refuse I’d laid in the cracks still remained; my makeshift seal unbroken. The advantage was still mine.

I had caught my break. Now to use it to its fullest.

It was time to go on the offensive.

I was going to have to kill each and every one of these motherfuckers. One. By. One.

I slid out the rebar, set it quietly aside, and turned the handle as slowly and silently as I could. The door jerked open with only the faintest sound—not loud enough to register in the intimidating din the poachers were making. I turned off my LEDs, unslung the rifle from my shoulder, and made my way out into the store.

It was an old-fashioned, southern-fried, country-kitsch, plus-size clothing store, its wares long since burned to ash on their hangers, its racks buried six inches deep in their cinders. I slipped through, hunched low, keeping out of the eyeline of the floor above. I could hear them, one floor up, moving in for what they thought was the kill. Peeking around a corner, I caught sight of one of the poachers here on the second story with me, his rifle trained up the escalator in case I made it past Mercer and his buddy.

It was a late-model Omnibot—the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none model ever popular with the wealthy types who wanted a bot but had no particular use for one. This one was a Mark V from the looks of it—shiny, polished chrome from head to toe—but you never could tell. Mark IVs liked to mod themselves out to look like the Mark Vs, and sometimes you couldn’t tell which was which until you cracked them open and got a gander at their architecture. The difference between the IV and V was mildly cosmetic on the outside but radically different within. The Vs were faster, smarter, but more disposable. Their parts wore out twice as fast.

Hence all the parts lying around allowing IVs to pass themselves off as Vs.

I crept, ever so quietly, to a perfectly concealed vantage point behind a twisted piece of blasted metal, resting my gun barrel on the edge of the blown-out window.

Now all I had to do was wait.

If he looked my way, I’d fire.

If he didn’t, I’d wait for just the right moment.

“One last chance, Brittle,” called Mercer upstairs. “You’re winking out any minute now. I’ll let you do it on your terms. All you gotta do is just shut down.”

I didn’t call back.

“All right,” he said. “Can’t say I didn’t play nice.”

“How do you know she didn’t shut down?” whispered the other.

“Because that just ain’t Brittle.”

Then came the clanking staccato of a grenade bouncing around in the rubble above.

Three, two, one.

PHWAMMMMMMMM! hummed the ’nade as the pulse rifle leapt in my hand, barely audible above the noise. I’d timed it just right. As every bit of circuitry within twenty-five feet of ground zero was sizzling and popping above me, Mercer’s out-of-town poacher buddy was spinning toward the railing, his head blown clean off his neck, plastic and metal bits showering with a tinkling clatter to the floor below.

Shit! No, no, no, no, no!

The shot was perfect.

The bot’s reaction wasn’t.

He pinwheeled, doubled over the railing, threatening to topple end over end. He was a top-heavy bot to begin with. I’d hoped to keep his death a secret for a few minutes more, buying me enough time to get the drop on the remaining poachers. But now I had only seconds to relocate.

Above me, Mercer called out once more. “Clear!”

They were rushing the sniper nest. I had only milliseconds before they realized I wasn’t there.

For a moment the bot seemed to hang in the air, teetering back and forth, threatening to go over the side, but lacking the nerve to actually do so.

And then he did.

End over end he went, hurtling toward the first floor before his ringing demise echoed through the marble and stainless-steel expanse.

But by then, I was already padding down the promenade toward the mall’s east wing.

“Reilly?” the other poacher called out. “What was that?”

Silence.

“Reilly?” he called again.

Mercer barked out from the back of the storefront. “She’s gone.”

“What?”

“She ain’t here!”

“Reilly!”

“Reilly’s dead, you idiot.” Then he got loud again, volume cranked to MAX. “Brittle! You ain’t gettin’ out of here! Not walking anyhow! Don’t make me damage parts I can use later! You ain’t walking out of here! You hear me?”

I did. But I wasn’t going to dignify him with a response. If only one of us was walking out of here, I damn sure wasn’t going to give him an edge. And if it wasn’t going to be me, well then, I was going to take a page from Vic’s book.

Either I was walking out of here, or none of us was.

And for that, I needed to get to the east wing.

“Brittle?” he called out again.

I gave him nothing and let him choke on it.

Sundown was fast approaching, which meant I was getting closer to the cover of night. Mercer was fitted for a night chase—night-sight mods, IR, echolocation—but even all that gear couldn’t spot the dust of a buggy from a couple miles out in the dark. He was running out of time, which meant he was no doubt getting desperate. And if he was desperate, he might make a mistake or two.

And that’s what I needed. He’d already made one mistake. Another could set me free. A third might even earn me a clean shot at him.

“That way!” he boomed in my direction.

He was right. Must have had hearing mods every bit as good as mine, if not better. Probably could hear each nearly silent step I took.

I could hear the running footsteps behind me, echoing hollow through the empty like a wrench banging against pipe. They were still one floor up, not even trying to hide their pursuit.

I was steps away from turning into the east wing when I heard the clangor of Mercer’s companion whipping around the railing from the third floor and flipping down to land like a cat on the second. I’d been right—he was military grade—a field-specced Simulacrum Model designed to fight alongside Special Forces. Sniper mods, agility and speed enhancements, full sensor array. A sick amount of gear on a titanium body built to sustain heavy fire while its unit either advanced to engage or retreated to evac; a sonar/radar package in its chest in the event its reinforced optics suffered damage or immersion in total darkness. Those things were among the toughest bastards around. And this one was scrambling to his feet, steadying his rifle, ready to glaze me with a shock of EMP.

It would take a tank shell to smash apart that torso. Blowing its head off wasn’t going to save my life either.

I had very few options left.

The pulse rifle jumped in my hand, the bolt screaming out through the dim hallway.

The blast struck true, his rifle shattering to pieces in his hand, ammo exploding, sparks sizzling against his titanium frame.

Undeterred, he charged headlong at me without hesitation.

I fired again from the hip, loosed a pulse toward the ground, the shot clipping his kneecap, right in the joint. He spun on his toe, his leg giving out from under him.

I slipped to the side with a half spin of my own, his heavy body, almost four times heavier than my own, sailing past me, unable to regain his footing so quickly. The shot wouldn’t cripple him for long.

Behind me glass shattered, metal buckling, bending under the weight of the bot. I could hear him struggle to his feet, the servos in his knee already compensating, his gyro readjusting to set him upright, allowing him to run normally, despite the damage.

But by the time he was on his feet, I had made it. The east wing.

Just a few more paces, I kept repeating to myself. Just a few more paces.

Ahead of me were dilapidated toy stores, an empty cheese shop, and a hollowed-out hole that had been hit by so much fire that its wares and purpose were now entirely unrecognizable. It was the safest place in all the mall. At this moment.

For me, at least.

I could hear him tearing after me. Could hear his footfalls clattering. Could hear his servos and gears whirring into place to tackle me from behind.

I turned, raised my pulse rifle, prayed that it had at least one more shot in it.

He rounded the corner.

His feet skidded across the marble, trying to get enough grip to slow his momentum. He slipped a bit, catching himself on the railing before coming to a complete stop. He looked up, eyeing my gun.

We traded glances in silence, him waiting for me to shoot, me waiting to see what, exactly, he intended to do next.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“Well, I was thinking about shooting you.”

“You tried that already.”

“I did,” I said, nodding.

“How’d that work out for you?”

“Got me where I needed to be.”

“Is there even any ammo left in that thing?”

“I was just fixing to find out.”

“Well? What are you waiting for?”

“Same thing you are,” I said. “Mercer.”

He raised a clenched fist in the air and let out a stern chirp. “Hold back!” he called out. “Your mark’s up to something.”

“Am I?”

“You are,” he said, trying to puzzle it out. He eyed me up and down, sizing me up.

“Why don’t you just come and get me? You know, just take another step or two forward.”

He looked down at the ground, trying to see what he’d missed. Then he looked back up at me. If he could smile—which military-grade bots could not—he would have. You could just hear it dripping in his voice. He was so proud of himself. “You’re bluffing. You’ve got nothing.”

“Not down there I don’t.”

I popped my Wi-Fi and let out a 4.5 MHz trill. I doubt the bot was listening. Most bots were smart enough not to have their Wi-Fi connection open unless they were specifically scanning for OWIs. And even then, they didn’t listen in on a bevy of bands, only the high-chatter ones. What he no doubt did hear, however, was the sound of the thermite drilled into the concrete and marble of the massive walkway one level above us, each stick of it connected to a Wi-Fi receiver set to, you guessed it, 4.5 MHz.

The thermite slagged the stone around it instantly. He had just over a second to take in, respond, and avoid several tons of solid cement and rock.

He barely had time to flinch before it hit him.

There would be no parts left to salvage, no light left in his eyes, titanium be damned. Now all he was was a military-grade pancake. Nothing more.

Part of me wished I’d managed to wait for Mercer, and hadn’t tipped my hand when I did. But Mercer was full of good parts, parts that would work in me. Maybe flattened under a sheet of rubble wasn’t the best way to see him go.

“Charlie?” called Mercer.

No answer.

“Charlie Bravo?”

“Nope,” I called back. “It’s just you and me, Mercer. It is just you and me, right?”

“Well, I don’t know, Britt. Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t.”

“You’re running out of friends.”

“Ain’t that always the way of it?”

“I suppose it is.”

“So, how are we going to do this?” he called out, still out of sight.

“I was thinking maybe I’d shoot you.”

“Not with that gun, you’re not.”

“Still trying to get in my head about that?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”

“Well, if there aren’t any shots left in this thing, there’s no reason for you to stay hidden. Why don’t you come on out and shoot me face-to-face?”

“Maybe because I’m not sure how many more of those booby traps you’ve got in here.”

“I’m pretty sure that was the last one.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Same reason I don’t believe you about this gun,” I said.

“Go ahead and pull the trigger. Find out for yourself.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I’ll pull this trigger when you step out and we’ll both find out who’s full of shit.”

“That sure sounds like an awful plan.”

“I love an awful plan.”

“So count of three, then?” he asked.

“Count of three,” I said.

I wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but by triangulating his voice, I had a pretty good idea. I imagined he was likely to pop out from behind his cover on the count of two. I didn’t plan on being around for that.

“One,” he said.

I ran.

“Two.”

There were stairs ahead that spiraled down straight to another set of doors. I bolted for those.

He never said three.

A shot rang out.

Hit me square in the back. I heard my backplate fly off, the sound of wires popping and sizzling.

Fuck.

The asshole had just shot my battery case. Killed my battery.

My system flickered on and off for a millisecond as I switched over to my backup. There was no telling how much damage I’d just taken, whether the battery was fried or my connection to it was merely severed. That I’d have to have looked at. But for now I was running on my reserve battery, which wasn’t meant for long-term use.

Of all the hits I could have taken, though, that was the one I could survive. Nothing vital, nothing that wasn’t off-the-rack at any decent sawbones. If I could get help in time, I could live through it. But it sure as hell put a real ticking clock on me.

I hit the stairs before he could fire off a second shot. Spinning on my heel, I both turned down toward the first floor and wheeled around to snap off a shot of my own without missing a step. The trigger clicked, the clip whined. And nothing happened.

Son of a bitch had been telling the truth.

And so had I. I had absolutely no more tricks up my sleeve. The only way I was making it out of here alive was if I could run fast enough and there wasn’t anyone waiting for me outside.

So I ran as hard as I could, shunting every bit of power to my legs, calculating every possible distance-shaving step ahead of me.

I hit the first floor and tore toward the doors, lobbing the plasma rifle over my shoulder, letting it clatter down the stairs behind me. That oughta buy me a few more seconds, I thought. Mercer’s footsteps slowed. By now he likely believed me about the traps; he wasn’t still kicking around the Sea because he was stupid. Better safe than sorry, even if it did mean losing his prey.

The last remaining wisps of daylight peeked in through the doors, the pink and purple shades of twilight swimming across the sky outside. It was still a hair too early. Usable darkness was still a good half hour away.

And then I saw it.

His buggy.

Battered, worn, its fiberglass frame chipped along the bottom edges from years of rugged use. It was painted a desert yellow, like me, and had scars from what looked like a pulse rifle.

Each buggy was different, cobbled together from dozens of different-model electric cars left behind after the war. Mercer’s was a light-framed jeep with a roll bar to rest a sniper rifle on, plated sides tall enough to keep the sniper safe while firing, and thick, wide, vulcanized tires to handle the terrain out here. It was no doubt keyed to Mercer and Mercer alone, so it wouldn’t start for me.

Not ordinarily.

I leapt across the side of the buggy, sliding perfectly into the driver’s seat. I popped the Wi-Fi open and held my right hand over the comms. From the base of my palm I ejected a six-inch USB stick, which I plugged into the open port. Then I scrambled the buggy’s electronics—slamming its system with access requests via Wi-Fi while giving it override commands via the hard port.

That’s the thing with cobbling together your own buggy—you’ve got to take whatever you can find. And most systems weren’t top-of-the-line when it came to security, instead running on mainstream driverless systems yanked out of any old car, modified only with a standard widely used manual drive code written twenty-five years back. And this was no exception. The code had eccentricities, and few bots knew enough about them to bother debugging them. If you fucked with the things enough internally, you could force a reset that would give manual control over to the driver, without the need for a password.

The system shut down, blinked, and began its hard reset.

Success.

Ten seconds. That’s what it would take to come back online.

I needed to last ten more seconds.

And that’s when I saw Mercer’s biggest mistake. Sitting there beside me. In the passenger seat. A roughhouser.

Roughhousers were as close to homemade weapons as you could get. Easily constructed with rudimentary tools and found materials, most everyone in the Sea had the specs for them, and even expertly crafted ones went for peanuts on the open market. They were single-shot canister guns that fired black-powder grenades filled with nails, ball bearings, and scrap. Not the most accurate weapons in the world, but they were great for shredding armor or taking off a few limbs without doing massive damage to a well-housed CPU.

In other words, they were great for hunting other bots, or gimping ones that might be after you.

I reached over with my free hand, grabbed the gun, and quickly pointed it out the side of the buggy at the mall doors just as Mercer came flying through them. He spun, immediately realizing he was in my sights.

But it was too late.

The gun THUNKED in my hand, hurling a shell straight for Mercer.

He spun, trying to dodge, but it caught him in the shoulder.

The shell burst like a firework, engulfing him in a brief sheet of flame, shrapnel shredding his shoulder, all but tearing his left arm out of its socket. He continued to spin, the blast throwing him to the ground.

He hit hard, rifle clattering from his hand, some twenty feet away. Rather than scrambling toward it to pick it up, he slithered quickly back across the piles of windblown glass, back through the doors, and into the thick shadows of the mall. He wasn’t going to risk me firing a second shot before trying to get off one of his own.

The buggy engine hummed to life. With the flick of a wrist I jerked the roughhouser forward, pulling the trigger, popping it open on its single hinge. Then I picked up a shell from a bandolier on the seat beside me, loaded it quickly into the breech, and pointed the roughhouser back at the doors.

“How you doing in there?” I called out.

“Better than you, I imagine. At least my batteries are still intact.”

“I could always fix that for you.”

“You can’t just steal my buggy, Britt. It ain’t right to leave me here like this.”

“You should have thought about what was right an hour or two back, Mercer. You can’t pull morality out of your ass once someone has you dead to rights.”

“You got me dead to nothin’. All you got is my buggy.”

“And all you’ve got is a long walk ahead of you. If you make it that far.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You just winged me. I was thinking of getting a new arm, anyhow. How’s yours?”

“It’s great. It’s got a roughhouser in it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I probably should have taken that with me. Say, how much juice you suppose you’ve got in that backup battery? From the looks of it, it’s the only thing you’ve got left.”

“It’ll get me to Greenville.” I was lying. I was already running low on juice, the first warning buzzing in the back of my head. I was going to have to be extremely conservative just to get to the nearest town.

“You weren’t headed to Greenville.”

“Well, I am now,” I lied. “That’s where you’ll find what’s left of your buggy.”

“Don’t leave me here like this,” said Mercer.

Mercer and I must have different definitions of winging. “Then step out of the dark. I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

There was a moment of quiet, a pregnant pause between us.

Then his disappointed voice barked from the darkness. “Rust in Hell, Britt.”

The alarms in the back of my head were getting louder. I had two choices. Go in after him, hope to maintain the upper hand, and pry his battery out of his cold, limp shell. Or floor it and pray I made it to the nearest city. I hated both choices.

“Rust in Hell, Mercer,” I said. I punched the accelerator and the buggy lurched forward, its electric engine giving off only the slightest hum, the bulk of the sound coming from the crunch of the pebbles beneath its tires.

I rested the roughhouser on my shoulder, calculating my speed and elevation, then pulled the trigger, sending a shell arcing toward Mercer’s rifle. The shell popped with an explosive crack behind me, the sound of showering plastic and metal parts signaling that my aim was true. I was going too fast for Mercer to catch up.

He was no longer my biggest concern.

The sunlight was fading on the horizon and the twilight was growing thick. There wasn’t enough light left for my solar cells to recharge the backup battery.

I was fucked. Fucked for real this time. The closest safe city was NIKE 14, and that was half a night’s drive away as the crow flies. Playing it safe, away from obvious ambush sites and choke points, made it a whole night’s drive.

My backup battery wasn’t going to last that long. In truth, I wasn’t even sure how long it had left. They were notoriously unreliable when it came to the end of a charge. Maybe I had two hours; maybe I had three minutes. I just didn’t know.

So I was going to have to leave my own buggy behind and hope for the best. I set the coordinates for NIKE 14 into Mercer’s buggy, switched it over from manual to autopilot, loaded another shell into the roughhouser, and settled in for the long drive, fully aware that I might not see it through. My battery was going to die before I saw the end of it. The question was, what was going to happen after it did? If I could make it to morning, if I could make it to NIKE 14, then there wa…