Siege (2 page)

“What could he get from the deal, though? Do you think Sigma gave him the plans for some kind of superweapon? Is that what they're manufacturing here?”

“There's only one way to find out.” I extend the wire with the microcam at its tip, raising it along the side of the huge, gray machine. “I'm gonna take a look at what's on the conveyor belt.”

“No, stop!”

Shannon bumps the front end of her Snake-bot against the tail end of mine. I'm so startled I stop extending the wire. Shannon and I rarely touch each other, even when we're occupying more humanlike robots. And this is a pretty hard jolt. “Hey, what's—”

“You're ignoring orders again, Adam. According to the mission plan, I'm supposed to take the lead. I have the OMSU.”

OMSU stands for Optical Metamaterial Surveillance Unit, which is the official Army name for Shannon's Snake-bot. She and I are occupying different robotic models because we have different roles in this mission: I do the drilling to get us here, and Shannon does the up-close reconnaissance. But now that we're here, I realize I don't like this arrangement. I want to protect her.

“You don't need to go out there,” I argue. “I'll stretch my wire to the top of the machine and use the microcam. It looks like this place has minimal surveillance, so no one will see it.”

“You haven't looked at the whole factory yet. There could be a surveillance camera on the other side of the assembly line.”

“Yeah, but it would have to be a pretty phenomenal camera to see something as small as—”

“Look, the OMSU has the best camouflage.” Shannon pushes upward, prodding my Snake-bot again. “Come on, move over so I can get past you.”

I'd rather take the risk myself, but I can't argue with her. Shannon's more than just my girlfriend—she's my commander. I flatten my Snake-bot against the side of the shaft and make enough room for her to slide past.

As she wriggles toward the jagged hole, she activates the metamaterials that coat her Snake-bot's armor. These are intricate glass-and-metal arrays with highly unusual optical properties. When light shines on the arrays, they refract and divert the incoming beams, bending them around the cylindrical Snake-bot. I point my microcam at Shannon as she emerges from the hole. I can hear her, but I can't see her. The metamaterials act like a magical cloak. They've made her invisible.

I increase the sensitivity of my acoustic sensors and listen carefully as Shannon turns on her Snake-bot's magnets and starts crawling straight up the side of the huge steel machine. The roaring in the factory makes it hard to follow the sound. I can barely hear her Snake-bot by the time she reaches the conveyor belt, ten feet above the floor. But then she opens the short-range radio channel and sends me another message.

“No! Oh God, oh God, no!”

My circuits jangle in alarm. I point my microcam toward where I think her Snake-bot is, but of course I can't see her. “
Shannon! Are you okay
?
”

“I…I'm fine. These—these machines…”

“What is it? What do you see?”

“I'll show you the video. Oh, Adam, it's so—”

Her radio signal cuts off. At the same instant, I see movement in the 360-degree video from my microcam. A North Korean soldier wearing a steel helmet and an olive-green uniform turns a corner and strides toward us. He's cradling an assault rife, a Type 88 model that can fire armor-piercing bullets.

There's no way he can see Shannon. But he marches directly toward the machine that her Snake-bot just climbed—and aims his rifle at the conveyor belt. He's pointing the muzzle
right at her
.

I use my sonar to send an SOS to Marshall, then launch my Snake-bot out of the hole. The robot's motors propel me upward like a spring. While I'm hurtling through the air, I curl my armored tube into a ball, concentrating all my momentum. Then I smash into the soldier's left knee.

His leg buckles, and he tumbles backward, firing his rifle as he falls to the floor. The bullets streak toward the ceiling, passing several feet above Shannon and the conveyor belt, but that's too close. I need to make sure the soldier doesn't fire again.

While he's still lying on his back, I uncurl my Snake-bot and wrap the tail end around his thigh. For a millisecond I consider hitting him in the head to knock him unconscious, but I don't want to risk killing the guy. So instead I swing the Snake-bot's front end at the barrel of his rifle to knock the gun out of his hands.

But the soldier doesn't let go of the rifle. I'm surprised by the strength of his grip. He's a smallish guy, young and skinny. My microcam still dangles from the Snake-bot, and when I train the camera on the soldier's face, I get another surprise. I thought he'd be scared out of his mind—he was just attacked by a metallic snake!—but his expression is blank and his eyes are focused. He twists underneath me and smashes his rifle into my Snake-bot's midsection.

It's a powerful blow. I don't feel any pain—there are no pressure sensors in my armor—but the impact dents my armor and damages one of my motors. I try to wrap the Snake-bot around the soldier's arms to restrain him, but he contorts his body like an acrobat and bashes me with his rifle again. The blow tears off my microcam, blinding me.

I panic. My Snake-bot isn't designed for combat, and this North Korean kid is one heck of a fighter. I can't retreat because then he'll go after Shannon, whom he can somehow detect despite the fact that she's invisible. So I press closer to him instead, loosening my grip on his thigh and wrapping the Snake-bot around his chest. He writhes on the floor, fighting like a madman, but now he can't swing his rifle at me. At the same time, I turn on the infrared camera at the Snake-bot's front end, so I can see what's going on. The soldier glows brightly inside my grip, his body temperature a couple of degrees above normal. His blood must be pumping with adrenaline, raising his temperature and speeding his heartbeat.

“Adam!”

I can guess Shannon's position from the strength and direction of her radio signal. She's crawling down the side of the machine, heading back to the hole in the floor. But her Snake-bot isn't built for speed.

“Get in the hole!” I radio back to her. “I'll follow you down!”

“No, it's too late!”

My acoustic sensor picks up the sound of rapid footsteps. One, two, three more North Korean soldiers barrel toward us, running in lockstep across the concrete floor. Fear races through my circuits as I train my infrared camera on the men. Each carries a Type 88 rifle. At twenty paces, they stop and raise their guns, like a well-coordinated firing squad. The soldier on the left aims at Shannon, and the two on the right aim at me.

Desperate, I focus all my processing power on survival. I send a frantic command to my motors and uncoil the Snake-bot from the young soldier on the floor, sliding off him just as the other soldiers open fire. Their bullets miss me by inches and slam into the skinny kid's chest. My acoustic sensor records each sickening thud.

There's nothing I can do for the kid—he's already dead—but I can try to save Shannon. I zigzag across the floor, racing toward the soldiers. Their bullets smash into the concrete all around me, but I dodge their fire and keep moving forward. I have to get closer to the shooters to stop them.

But the soldiers are excellent marksmen. One of their bullets nicks my Snake-bot's midsection and gouges its armor. Then another bullet pulverizes the tip of its tail. Then, just as I'm about to spring at the soldier who's firing at Shannon, a third bullet hits my Snake-bot dead-on. It penetrates my armor and severs the wire between my motors and my battery.

My Snake-bot freezes. I'm paralyzed, helpless. I slide across the floor and come to a stop at the North Koreans' feet.

The soldiers cease their fire. Then the two shooters on the right lower their heads and inspect my crippled Snake-bot. The damage to my systems is severe, but fortunately the bullet didn't hit my neuromorphic circuits. I can still think and access my memories. My infrared camera works too, and it's showing elevated body temperatures for all three soldiers. While the two standing next to me bend over and prod my robot with their rifles, the third man strides toward the base of the machine and picks up something cold and cylindrical from the floor. It's Shannon's Snake-bot. The impacts from the bullets must've disabled her magnets and the invisibility cloak.

I send her an emergency transmission. “
Shannon
?
” She doesn't respond. I repeat the message fifteen thousand times over the next half-second, but there's only silence on her end.

“SHANNO
N!
”

The scream explodes out of my sonar in a hundred different frequencies. Because some of my sonar frequencies are within the human hearing range, the soldiers grimace and cover their ears. The shooter who picked up Shannon's Snake-bot drops it, and the two standing over me let their assault rifles clatter to the floor. Seeing their distress I scream louder, channeling all my power to the frequencies that will hurt them the most. I want them to suffer. I don't know how badly damaged Shannon is, but I want them to pay for what they did to her.

All I can do is scream, though, and that's not enough. The soldiers are more surprised than hurt. The two who dropped their rifles bend over to pick them up. The men prop their guns against their shoulders and aim at my Snake-bot.

Then there's a deafening
boom
, but it's not gunfire. Forty feet above us, a missile pierces the factory's roof. The big, gleaming weapon tears through the steel rafters and crashes into the far end of the assembly line.

The impact rocks the factory floor, but there's no explosion. That's because this missile isn't carrying any explosives; it's delivering a payload instead. As the weapon's nose cone smashes into the gray machines and the conveyor belt, an object that looks like a steel coffin detaches from the back end of the missile and lands on the floor. Then metallic arms and legs extend from the coffin-like torso.

It's a Pioneer. Zia's War-bot, to be precise. That's the machine she occupies whenever she goes into combat. Marshall must've received my SOS and released the missile from the B-2 bomber that's circling overhead.

Zia uses her steel arms to lever herself upright and points her sensor array in our direction. Nine feet tall and three feet wide, her War-bot is built like an NFL linebacker. Its sensors are on top of the torso, encased in a round knob that resembles an oversize football helmet. On either side of the knob are armored humps that look like shoulder pads, and protruding from these humps are massive telescoping arms as thick as telephone poles. A computer-synthesized snarl, full of real human fury, rings from the robot's loudspeakers. Then Zia bounds toward us, pounding the floor with her pile-driver legs.

The North Korean soldiers instantly turn away from Shannon and me. They fire their assault rifles at Zia, but her War-bot's armor is so thick that the bullets barely dent it. She picks up speed, rocketing past the smashed remains of the assembly line, and when she gets close enough, she knocks down all three soldiers with one swipe of her arm. She doesn't kill them, but they won't get up from the floor anytime soon.

“Zia!” I open a radio link to her War-bot. “Check Shannon's systems! She's not responding to my messages!”

“Calm down. Let me—”

“Come on, hurry up! Her circuits might be damaged!”

Zia extends her right arm to where Shannon's Snake-bot lies on the floor. She curls her thick steel fingers around the damaged machine and picks it up. Then she uses her left arm to pick up my Snake-bot too. “We'll check her circuits later. We have to get out of here first.”

“Why? What's—”

Another boom rocks the factory. This time, a high-explosive shell detonates against one of the walls, blasting chunks of concrete in all directions. Zia shields Shannon and me from the flying debris by clutching our Snake-bots against her armored torso. Through the dust, I catch a glimpse of the hole made by the explosion, and beyond it, the tank that fired the shell. It's a Storm Tiger, the most modern tank in the North Korean Army. Its turret turns clockwise as it prepares to fire again, aiming the long barrel of its main gun at the War-bot.

For a moment I think Zia's going to charge at the Storm Tiger. She's aggressive by nature—when she was human, Zia belonged to a gang in Los Angeles—and ripping apart a North Korean battle tank would probably appeal to her. But she can't fight very well while carrying our Snake-bots, and besides, there are three more tanks behind the one that's aiming at her. So Zia turns her War-bot in the opposite direction and runs.

“Hang on!” she radios me. “We're gonna find the emergency exit.”

Zia sprints alongside the assembly line, clanking and clanging as she accelerates to forty miles per hour. I look ahead but don't see any doors or windows at the other end of the factory. There's nothing beyond the smashed machines but a concrete wall.

“There's no exit here!” I shout over the radio. “You're going the wrong way!”

Before Zia can respond, the Storm Tiger fires its main gun. Because my Snake-bot is equipped with a radar system, I can calculate the trajectory of the shell as it hurtles toward us. It's aimed at Zia's fleeing War-bot.

“Duck, Zia!
DUCK
!
”

She waits until the shell is just twenty yards away. Then she ducks. The projectile whizzes over her War-bot and slams into the wall up ahead. The explosion buffets us again with chunks of concrete and shrapnel, but Zia doesn't slow down.

“That's our exit!” she shouts gleefully.

The hole in the wall isn't quite as large as the War-bot, but Zia tilts her torso forward and uses her armored head as a battering ram. She barrels through the gap, shattering concrete on both sides, and emerges from the factory still clutching our Snake-bots. Once she's outside, she dashes across the military base toward the chain-link fence at the perimeter.