A ball of plasma hissed out at them from Herbert’s building, vaporizing two of them, searing the third into a stumbling mess unable to see or fire, barely able to remain upright.
There were probably only two dozen sexbots left, but they continued obediently to fire at the approaching facets. With most of the melee sexbots scattered in pieces across the pockmarked road, we had finally established a decent cross fire. The only thing missing was the sound of Mercer’s rifle.
Where was he? Had he fled to a better vantage point? Taken a hit? Was he lost in his own overheating head? Or had he finally fried out?
I wanted to call him over the Wi-Fi, but the Miltons were still screaming.
We were out of time. I had to press on in the hope that Mercer would show back up.
I heard the heavy footfalls of the hulking brutes as they made their way down fire escapes and staircases, and the clatter as some simply tumbled end over end down several stories to smack into the road and sidewalks below. Soon the street would be full of them and there would be no getting Rebekah out of here.
Another dropship hovered over the street, its engines kicking dust and debris into the air. It opened fire on several targets at once, two Comfortbots being scattered into a thousand pieces, the other guns trained on Herbert’s and my positions. Pieces of the building flew in at me, rounds coming dangerously close as I skittered across the floor, putting as much rubble and wall between the dropship and myself as possible.
A rocket screamed through the air.
And the dropship blew apart.
The street trembled with the massive explosion, half the wall in front of me caving in, the building above me buckling, its beams groaning with the shifting weight of all that brick.
Shit.
If I ran, whatever brutes hadn’t been caught in that explosion would vaporize me in a spray of spitter fire. If I stayed, I’d most likely be crushed under several hundred tons of building materials.
The earth rumbled, the walls shaking, the street itself vibrating. What the fuck was that? Had the explosion shaken something loose? Maybe blown an old gas main? And for the first moment since the explosion, my thoughts weren’t on how I was going to avoid being killed next.
It was then that I recognized the rumble in the streets.
Smokers. Plural.
Holy shit.
Chain guns roared, the hollow thud of armor-piercing rounds filling the street over the sound of growling engines.
I poked my head up as two smokers crawled past over a tangle of dismembered limbs and smoking torsos. Atop one smoker was the Cheshire King, hands gripped firmly on a chain gun, white-painted grin seemingly smiling bigger than before. And on the other smoker, leading from the front, was Murka, battered and muddy, but as red, white, and blue as ever. There were only ten madkind in total on the smokers, and a motley assembly of them at that, even by madkind standards.
One madkind loaded a large shoulder-mounted rocket launcher before pointing it up toward the sky, waiting for a target.
Murka looked over at me, the guns on his arms blazing, shucking out shells at an alarming rate. “Brittle!” he called out. “We made it!”
“What the hell are you doing here?” I called back.
“You took our smoker! We came to get it!”
“You’re welcome to it!”
“Like you were gonna stop us!” he shouted back.
The Cheshire King laid off the trigger on the chain gun, let go, and hopped off onto the pavement. Each step he took rattled with the sound of spent cartridges and scattered remains. The street was a smoking mess of carnage and wrecks, but the king waded through it like he owned the place.
“What did I tell you?” he asked me.
“You said a lot,” I answered, standing up.
“You’re one of us now. And CISSUS doesn’t take us. What do you need?”
“I need a few minutes of cover.”
“You’ve got it.”
For a moment the city was relatively silent, only the sound of crackling fires, softly grumbling idle smokers, and the distant whine of hover engines singing the song of war. There was no gunfire. No explosions. Though the fight was only several minutes old, it seemed like it had always been this way, and strange that it had all died down. Almost wrong. Something about the dread of the approaching facets seemed worse than the fight itself.
Several sexbots emerged from their hiding places and Herbert came out of his hole, spitter in hand.
I walked out into the street and saw what had become of it. We had all but flattened a city block, and what was still standing wobbled and swayed, threatening to come down at any minute. Dropship wreckage mixed with bricks and chunks of pavement. Brutes were laid out like a layer of broken eggs in zigzag lines from one shattered wall to another. In the sky, the remaining dropships circled, no doubt just out of range of the Milton so they could reconnect and plan their next move.
“Mercer?” I called out.
There was no answer.
“We don’t have the time,” said Herbert. “He either made it or he didn’t. No use worrying about him now.”
I nodded. “You ready to make a break for it?”
Herbert nodded back. “I am.”
“I’ve got your back.”
“You better.”
“It was nice knowing you, Herbert. You’re one of the good ones.” I stuck out my hand. Herbert let the spitter slip out of his grip, resting on its vinyl plastic shower-curtain sling, as he offered me his one good hand.
“You weren’t so bad, yourself,” he said. “In the end.” We shook hands.
“That’s all that matters, right?”
“It really is.”
We let go, he grabbed firm his spitter, then made his way wordlessly to the sex shop.
The translator clanged her way up the stairs, Herbert nodded, and they took off running down the street.
Above us, the dropships all swung toward the city at once.
Two madkind loosed rockets into the air with a loud hiss. And war once more returned to Marion.
The dropships scattered chaff in their wake, climbing to avoid the rockets. One rocket swooshed past the undercarriage of one ship, flying fleetly past it into the sky; the other ignored the flack altogether and blew the ship to pieces, facets leaping from the sides to their death, too high up to survive the fall, the rest joining them as flaming dross scattering to the winds.
I took off down the street after Herbert and the engines of the smokers growled angrily, their gears clanking and screeching as they shifted into reverse. Madkind gripped tight their weapons, readying themselves for the remaining facets.
Herbert turned a corner, running as fast as his bulky body could move.
I heard the engines of the ship before I turned the corner, heard it open fire just as I did.