Micro

Karen accelerated and dove behind the bot that was chasing Rick. Maybe she could knock it out of the air by hitting it with the nose of her plane. Her propeller was in the tail of her plane, so the plane’s nose could be used as a blunt weapon. She aimed for the bot and pushed the throttle forward. Just before the strike, she hunched down in the cockpit and tucked her head, bracing for impact. Her plane slammed into the bot.

There was a pinging sound and her plane ricocheted one way and the bot went the other way, both corkscrewing through the air. The crash didn’t hurt the plane or the bot: they merely bounced off each other. The bot whirled around and stopped itself in midair, and hovered, and oriented itself, and then began to follow her plane. Karen regained control of her plane and peeled away, watching the bot. The bot accelerated toward her, putting on a burst of speed, and then, to Karen’s surprise, the bot unfolded two jointed arms.

It grabbed hold of the wing of Karen’s plane with the sticky pads on the ends of its arms. The bot clung to her plane as she flew. She tried to shake it off, slamming the stick around, banking left and right, but the bot had gotten a firm grip and wouldn’t let go. It began cutting into the wing with its blades.

It was breaking up her wing.

Rick turned back when he saw the bot attach itself to Karen’s plane. Karen was in trouble. He flew toward her, asking himself what he could possibly do to free her plane from the bot’s grip. His plane wasn’t armed. No guns, no fire control buttons, nothing. But wait-Rourke had armed the planes with machetes. There was one in here somewhere. He groped around and felt a handle, and swooped toward Karen’s plane, holding out the machete like a cavalry rider. “Ayah!” he shouted and hacked through the bot’s neck as he passed, severing it. The blades and neck spun off, squirming, and the beheaded bot released Karen’s plane and zigzagged away, seemingly disoriented. Karen regained control of her plane.

The bots were hovering-dozens of them.

Rick circled through them. A bot darted in and clamped its arms on Rick’s plane as he passed, and the bot began jerking his plane around. Then the bot began snipping through the wing with its scissor-swords while Rick struck at it with the machete, but he couldn’t reach the bot. Rick’s plane went into a spiral. Another bot grabbed his plane, and stopped its fall. The bots held Rick’s plane in midair, hovering, as if they were quarreling over their prize while they cut it up.

Rick bailed out, taking his machete with him. As he fell, he flipped over on his back and saw Karen’s plane above him. Bots clung to it; she was spinning out of control. One bot shredded Karen’s propellers while another tore into the side of the plane. At that instant, Rick landed on the floor on his back, unhurt, still holding his machete.

He stood up. The generator room seemed enormous. He had no idea where the micro-control panel was; he couldn’t see the white circle. The plastic floor, glowing with light from below, was strewn with golf-ball-size grains of dirt. Looking up and around, he tried to see where Karen’s plane had gone. He couldn’t see her. The floor was a mess.

He heard a sound like “Oof!” Karen King landed on both feet, like a cat, about a hundred yards away. She had bailed out, too. She was holding her machete and staring up at the bots. A dozen of them were bobbing high overhead, holding the planes and pieces of the planes, and chopping everything up. Debris from the planes rained down. For the moment the bots seemed distracted by the planes.

“It’s this way!” Karen called, pointing with her machete.

Now he could see the white ring. He was surprised by how far away it was. They both started a desperate sprint toward the ring, jumping over debris, running an obstacle course through grit. Rick tripped while leaping over a human hair, and he sprawled.

He picked himself up. He had lost sight of Karen. “Karen?” he shouted.

Overhead, the bots had finished cutting up the planes and were now flying this way and that, hovering, swooping, fanning throughout the room, as if in seek mode. Rick wondered if the bots would be able to see them as they ran. Dozens more bots dropped from the walls and ceiling, until at least a hundred bots were flying back and forth, hunting for the intruders. Were they communicating with one another? It would be only a matter of time before the bots found them.

Chapter 50

Tensor Core 1 November, 5:10 a.m.

It’s not a bad way to die,” Drake was saying. “You hardly feel a thing.” He worked the controller.