Chapter 3:

Drone?

Altruist


Snow was thoroughly confused by this turn of events. If Leroy had found them out, he would have attacked with drones from the beginning, and even if he had sent men, they would have used lasers instead of guns. Naturally, Snow had assumed he was fighting anti-Council rebels.

However, only Altruist could operate a drone. The encryption they used had never been broken, and only foreign nations had the technology or resources to attempt such a feat.

As the drone continued to tear down the wall, Snow decided he could figure out who was attacking them later. He fired his laser rifle, but the beam just bounced off the drone’s exterior. With another sweep of its arms, the machine cleared away the remaining part of the concrete wall, leaving Snow and David totally exposed.

The drone had an oblong body with six legs attached. Each leg had a tread around the exterior so that it could roll across the ground like a tank, but the legs could also be positioned so that the drone walked like a six legged creature. This was useful when it needed to move off the streets and cross mountainous terrain that normal vehicle could not.

At the top of the machine were duel cannons on a swivel mount, and there were smaller guns at the front, back, and sides. The cannons had likely fired the missiles that had hit their vehicle in the first place.

The front mounted small guns began firing at Snow, sending a hail of bullets towards him. He was ready for them.

His brain was connected to a processor that predicted the likely path of the bullets and fed the information to his eyes. Before the guns had even begun to fire, lines of red sprang forth in his vision showing the likely path of the bullets. With the predictive algorithm and his enhanced reflexes, he was barely able to dodge the projectiles.

Snow jumped and rolled forward, positioning himself under the drone. He tried firing his rifle at the underside, but it seemed to do even less damage than the first shot. The machine was probably reinforced on the bottom to survive IEDs.

When the drone started to back up out of the room, Snow moved with it, staying underneath. It hadn’t yet spotted David, who was sprawled on the floor, and he was hoping to lead it away before that happened. Instead, the drone stopped and lowered its body, forcing him to slide out from beneath it to avoid being crushed.

Once again exposed, the small guns began to whir, but he shot them at close range with the rifle before the bullets left the chamber. This, at least, did some damage, piercing through the barrels of the guns.

The drone turned to fire at him with a different set of guns, but Snow jumped and landed atop the swivel mount. It tried shaking him off, but he was well balanced. He fired several shots at each of the cannons, but went unrewarded for his efforts. Then a shot from behind hit him in the shoulder and knocked him from the drone.

Before he could recover, the drone was on top of him, stomping down with its front leg. Lying on his back, he caught the leg with both hands. His body was well engineered, constructed with carbon nanotubes that were lightweight but extremely strong. It was enough to hold the drone back, but only for a moment.

The drone lifted the leg up and slammed it down again. Once again, he caught it, but the machine slowly began to press down further. He struggled and strained, but there was nothing he could do. With terrible realization, Snow understood he was about to be crushed.

Then a projectile collided with the drone resulting in an extraordinarily loud boom. The leg stopped pressing down, and the machine keeled over onto one side.

Snow stood up and found where a large hole had been punctured in its exterior, oozing smoke. David sat holding his railgun, a new set of eyes set in his skull.

“Thanks for the distraction. I hope you weren’t thinking you could do everything without me,” he said.

Snow gave him a smile. He thought David smiled back but couldn’t be sure since most of his friend’s face was still missing.

“Something seems off,” said Snow. “I thought we were fighting rebels, but they couldn’t hack a drone.”

“I know,” said David. “Let’s inspect it, while we can.”

Once the smoke cleared out of the interior, Snow climbed inside. He expected to find an array of mechanical and computer components, but was shocked by what he found instead. Much of the core had been hollowed and retrofitted with screens, a control panel, and a seat occupied by a still burning corpse.

They didn’t hack it, they rebuilt it, Snow realized.

He relayed his findings to David, who sat thinking for a minute.

“So they were using a human operator instead of an AI. I guess that would make sense. It still doesn’t explain how they got their hands on a drone in the first place though.”

“There’s one more thing,” said Snow.

“What?”

“Someone shot me from behind and knocked me off the drone earlier. That means there’s at least one more of them out there who got away.”

“Damn, we’ve got to let the Compact know what’s going on. We can’t have these guys screwing up our plans,” said David.

After doing their best to repair themselves, the pair settled on a new plan. David would rendezvous with other members of the Compact while Snow carried forward with the mission. When David had gotten more significant repairs, he would rejoin Snow.

And so, Snow limped higher up the mountain into the Middle District, doing his best to looked scared and injured.

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