It might be big enough for a micro-plane to pass through; he couldn’t tell. He backed away and flew up close to Karen, until their wings nearly touched. He switched off his radio, and shouted at her: “He can’t hear us when we shout. Fly toward the door to the generator room. Looks like there’s a way through.”
He got some altitude above the vent in the door, and ran up to full power, and dove at the slot. His wings clipped the slot as he went through, and he ended up inside the generator room, spiraling out of control. Karen followed him a moment later. Rick recovered, got his plane under control. He flew straight toward the center of the generator chamber, the pattern of hexagons below him. He picked out the central hexagon and banked, looking down. He could see a small white circle in it, far below: it marked the location of the control panel. He could see Karen King flying off his right wing. “I’m going to land by the circle,” he shouted to her, hoping his voice carried over the rushing wind as his plane flew.
Just then Drake’s voice came on their radio headsets. “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said. “I saw you fly into the generator room. However, you may wish to know that the bots in there can see you. Smell you, too.”
They saw Drake’s face staring in the window, now, his eyes moving, tracking them as they flew. Drake held up the bot controller where they could see it, and he pushed a series of buttons. “I changed the sensitivity. Now they can find you,” he said, and looked up at the ceiling of the generator room.
Karen followed Drake’s gaze. She saw them: glittery specks, scattered across the ceiling. The specks were moving. Dropping and falling like tiny raindrops. As they fell, they fanned out, flying under their own power. She saw one of them turn toward Rick, and it began tracking him, flying after him. As Rick went into a dive toward the floor, the bot dove as well. It was powered by a turboprop fan in a housing, and it had a snaky neck, with knives on the end of the neck. As it flashed past her, following Rick, she saw the eyes: the bot had a pair of compound eyes like an insect’s, but it was a machine vision system. A pair of eyes meant it had binocular vision, depth perception, she realized.
“Rick,” she shouted. “Behind you!”
He didn’t hear her. He was heading for the floor and the white circle. The bot closed in on him; she had to get that bot off his tail. Not sure what to do, she dove her plane, chasing the bot and Rick. Out of the corner of her eye she saw more objects flying, and she looked over her shoulder and saw dozens of bots, maybe more, flying behind her. They seemed to be converging on her and Rick. The bots shimmered as they flew, and some of them hovered, darting, seeking. “Rick, behind you!” she shouted.
He turned his head and saw the bot following him. He immediately pulled up and banked, getting out of the dive, twisting upward, trying to shake the bot off his tail. The bot flew at least as well as Rick did. It was closing in on him.
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.
Eric lay propped up with his back against the wall of the Omicron lab, by the door to the generator room, dizzy from the beating Drake had given him. Drake held the gun at his face, shining the light into his eyes. Eric could feel a bot cutting through his forehead. Blood had begun to drizzle down his face, getting in his eyes. He could see specks hovering in front of his eyes, their props whining like mosquitoes. Apparently Drake could direct them with the controller, because they all suddenly flew toward his face. He felt them landing on his cheeks, his neck, exploring his eyelids. A bot crawled into his shirt; he could feel it, and heard its engine buzzing.
“You see how they ignore me?” Drake worked the controller. “It’s because I have the controller.” Drake thumbed a joystick, and a bot crawled up Eric’s cheek and stopped by the corner of his eye. “I can make them crawl into any orifice in your body.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Research, Eric.”
Eric felt a slight sting near the corner of his eye. The bot had planted its scissors in his skin and was making
