“That is the name of one of the black units we acquired from the civil defense bunker.”
I moved my arm, and sure enough, my mech shuddered against the repair bay restraints. The whole thing rocked again, and I clattered several feet to the floor.
Roger crackled. “We will need access to the crew portion of the ship through the door attached to the bulkhead in front of you. You are much too large to pass through, unfortunately. I will have you punch out…. Please wait. Never mind.”
Right in front of me, a small door at about chest level opened, revealing two men in overalls.
“What the…?” the first man said as Trixie 2 and Priscilla zoomed up. Trixie appeared to inject the first man with something while Priscilla used a cutting arm on the second, and the man was suddenly just headless. The whole attack took seconds. One moment, they were there. The next, they were on the ground with blood spilling over the edge and into the repair bay.
“Holy crap, Roger,” I said.
The first man, the one who still had a head, started convulsing as foam erupted from his mouth. He shook, and a moment later, he went still. But he was close to the edge, and he suddenly slipped off, falling about two meters to the floor of the repair bay. The two scouts disappeared down the hallway. The lone regular honeybee unit appeared, climbing up the repair bay like a spider. The unit slid down slightly when it encountered the blood, but it caught itself and continued on its way. It entered the service hallway, skittering after the two scouts.
I still hadn’t seen the third scout, Lorraine.
“I have found the manual control panel. I will open the entrance from the repair bay to the storage hall. This is a separate room fromthe one where the units are printed. You will have to disable the mech storage transporter. Be prepared. Once this happens, they will know that there truly is something amiss. Be ready to fight. The door is at your feet, and you will fall.”
Before I could answer, I was falling. I clattered heavily to the ground as I dumped into a new room. I hit the ground with a crunch, and heavy mechanical arms grabbed me. The body of the dead worker also splattered to the floor of the room with a sickeningsplatch.
Across the way, another mech was in the process of being torn apart by a pair of giant arms and then shoved into a storage area. This room was bigger than anything I’d ever seen.
I was attached to some device that was on rails. It made a beep, and then it was moving, shooting off with me in its arms. I whipped around a corner, turned again, and jolted to a stop. All around me stood massive walls and walls of mechs, all torn apart and stored into cube-like structures.
“Oliver, you need to break yourself free before you are disassembled.”
I extended my arm blades, turned, and I smashed both of my forearms down into the arm holding me in place. The blades did barely any damage, and my right arm became stuck, which was a strange sensation. My virtual arm was stuck in place no matter what I did. I disabled the arm blades, which freed them. I tried again, this time aiming for the hoses. That worked. The moment I sliced, I easily cut through the line of cables running along the metal arm. Steaming-hot fluid started hissing from a severed pipe. A moment later, the arm clutching me had no grip, and I was freed. I jumped from the platform to the ground. I had to jump out of the way a moment later as a platform carrying another mech crashed into the stopped platform that had been holding me.
I looked at my map, and I started heading toward a large set of double doors that led to the printing room.
An alarm started to shrill. As I approached the massive doors, they slid open on their own, revealing the colossal room filled with the industrial printing squares. This was the same place I’d launched from, but at this angle, I could see how huge it was.
Trixie 2 was already in here buzzing through the room. She was systematically moving from one printing cube to the next, entering something into the computer in front of it.
“Oliver, the shipAdioshas just gone offline. This ship was in near orbit withForlorn. I fear we only have minutes left. I will not be able to complete this mission until I am installed in the local net. Your current connection will continue to work, but the mech you are in does not have the ability to get to the human area of the ship. Please give your mech’s internal autopilot orders to destroy the printing cubes, and then I will transfer you to Priscilla.”
“Shit,” I said as I moved to the menus of the mech. Across the way, a man appeared, shouting. I didn’t know where he’d come from. A UAV whipped across the space and smacked the man across the head. He went spinning.
“Do they have weapons on board?” I asked as I worked.
“They have emergency security printers that will print defenses, so we need to hurry. Once they assess the threat, we will be facing sentry guns and anti-mech EMP pulses.”
Orders received.
And without preamble, the mech I was controlling smashed a fist through the industrial printing cube to my left. The smart filament fluid spilled everywhere. The mech moved to the printer next to it and did the same.
“Oliver,” Roger said, “I will be going offline in moments. I have found and activated some external sensors onForlorn, and we have an incoming torpedo that will hit dead center in thirty seconds. New Sonora is about to lose their connection to the net. I amtransferring you to Priscilla now. If she goes offline or is destroyed, you will automatically move to the next available unit. Your connection will break once all three of the scout units are destroyed. Goodbye, Oliver.”
“Wait,” I said. “Roger! Roger!” But my display went black again.
Chapter 49
Sam tapped me on the shoulder, and I stopped playing. The song ended. Sound pass-through automatically engaged.
“Well,” Sam said, “I guess our concert is over. All the streams are stopped.”
“That. Was. Fucking. Awesome,” Lulu said over the microphone.
“Guys,” a new voice called. This was Miguel 1, who was in the secondary bunker, but he was also monitoring the cameras outside the bar for us, keeping watch. “I see a group of RMI soldiers down the road hauling ass toward you. They’re just running on the road. The two honeybees outside are lying down. Does that mean they’re offline?”
