“Fifteen brass, two techs, two pilots, and two cabin crew,” Enrico said. “Well within my brother’s skillset.”
“Doable with chest shots,” Jacopo said. “Legs shots, in these conditions, I can’t say with any certainty.”
“What if I drive the front-end loader up close and you sit in the bucket, firing point blank, protected by heavy-duty steel?” I asked.
Jacopo had burst into laughter, suggested that someone in the group have sex with him sideways, and then had said, “It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Fish in a barrel.
His first shots rang out. Steady fire. Five men. All down. And then the wind and snow vanished. Because, of course it would. The world became clear. Bodies rolled in the snow, half buried. Screams rang out.
I pulled my blaster and hunched low in my seat, behind the engine and the drifts I had made getting here. I founda sightline between the bottom of the bucket up high and the top of the engine. More figures leaped from the burning command Sikorsky. Picking a target, I fired. It took a sustained three-second burst at six meters or less to dispatch an enemy. Fortunately, I wasn’t trying to boil the enemy’s innards. I was hoping to disable, maybe scorch a liver, cook some intestines. Nothing immediately fatal. One and half seconds, and the bad guy stopped, cocked his head, and looked down, seeing the tiny red dot on his gut. He dove away. Burned. Out of the game, if I was really lucky, but at least slowed down. Good enough. I picked another form, one rolling in the snow to put out flames in his hair. Her hair. The two-star general. I gave her a two second burst, enough to do permanent damage, but not kill her. If I was wrong about the group here, I’d go to jail. I’d deserve it.
Laughter burbled up from my center at the thought of being in a cell. The sound inside my helmet was mocking and caustic, not exactly human-rational. The last time a nanobot queen had gone to jail, she had transitioned the beginnings of an army, had taken over the jail, and transitioned its leaders into thralls. And then Clairice Warhammer had proceeded with a plan to take over the world.
I had stopped that, but I was a lot smarter than Warhammer. If I was locked up, my nanobots would not be denied. I’d make a nest too. And I’d make no mistakes. I would be unstoppable.
At the thought, my nanobots came alive.Wanting that nest, those thralls. Thatpower.
My nanos zipped through me, igniting need.
And that’s when I felt theothers. Nanos that were not mine.
They were close. Strong.
Wind and snow hit again. A solid fist of ice so powerful it coated my armor, my faceplate. Snow blustered, beatingagainst me, defeating the heated silk-plaz helmet’s faceplate. I was blinded behind the thick layer of white. Sticking the blaster under my other arm, I wiped the silk-plaz. It smeared. I pressed the button to open the helmet. It ratcheted back, folding into the shoulder collar so the auto system would clean it.
Blowing ice hit my face and eyes like a thousand frigid needles, freezing my eyeballs. Blinking against the glacial whiteout, I tried to hear against the roaring basso blizzard.
Close by, from the bucket, I heard high-pitched clicks. Jacopo reloading.
The enemy nanos were . . . everywhere. I couldn’t pinpoint them.
Hearing wasn’t enough. I needed more. I thought about Spy. About the few times we had touched consciousness.Enemy nanos,I thought at her. Help?
It wasn’t a command, a queen to a servant. It was a request.
I felt a disturbance in the nano field.Cats. Cats coming from everywhere.
Three, including Spy, leaped into my open cab, dark and orange-striped shadows, their coats plastered in snow and coated in blood. There were scarlet ice lumps caught in their fur, in their toe pads. Ice packed so deep it had formed ridges against their skin, but they didn’t seem to notice. Spy’s battle harness was caked with snow, which I absently brushed off to give her better mobility. She ignored me, staring into the snow, nose twitching. It appeared that the cats were having a ball, fighting, sneak attacks, playing at war, wreaking havoc and damaging our enemies. I smelled enemy nanos in the blood on their fur.
Where? Enemies, where?I thought at Spy.
Instantly my own vision was overlaid with greens and grays and splashes of color I had no real name for. Cat viewpoints, cat vision, caught in the storm. I lost my balance andnearly rolled from the open cab before catching myself on the ROPS, the rollover protection structure.
The cats in my lap pivoted as one to my right.Enemyenemyenemy, the cats thought at me, each talking out loud, “Mrow Siss.” “Orrrowmerow Siss.” “Sisssss.”
“Got it. Dangerous invaders,” I said, blinking, trying to see what and where the danger was.
A form appeared from the darkness.
It lunged at me. Firing.
I grabbed the ROPS, one arm up, over my head, to steady myself. My armor hardened. I returned fire, one handed. Three shots. The form dropped.
But I had been hit. The round had ricocheted and lodged in a weaker seam of my armor under my arm and over my head, my hand still holding the ROPS. I released my grip on the support steel and tried to move, but had lost any forward range of motion. No frontward swivel at all.Bloody—
I spotted blood on my thigh. My eyes tracked the blood drops to a bleeding cat. Shot. I put down my weapon, unclipped my seatbelt, and picked up the cat, placing it between my feet. Brushed snow from my eyelashes. Something was coming at me. I took the weapon in my only functioning hand.
