Speaking of the latter… below, more and more people from the growing crowd continued to follow her lead; in fact, citizens were climbing all along the base of the wall now. She stopped glancing down at them when she witnessed a young woman lose her grip and plummet to her doom.
It took her another minute to reach the top. When she arrived, she pulled herself onto the rail between two large turrets, only to spot a pair of security robots waiting on the walkway below. They were blue and black polycarbonate things, with wicked-looking barrels built into their forearms like Horatio. Small grenade launchers were deployed on their shoulders.
Keeping one hand securely on the rail, with the other Rhea reached for the pistol at her hips. She was careful not to touch the weapon, however, as the walkway robots had so far made no aggressive movements: their arms, and the barrels they carried, remained pointed downward, as did the grenade launchers.
“Help us!” Wart Nose told them. “Rust Town is under attack!”
“Do you wish to claim asylum?” one of the robots said.
“Yes!” Wart Nose said. “I claim asylum!”
“Granted,” the robot replied.
“Me too!” the second man said.
“Granted,” the robot repeated in the same tone.
“You’re going to let them in?” Rhea asked in surprise. “Just like that?” She kept her fingers close to the pistol.
The robot bobbed that featureless head up and down. “We’ve been instructed to allow entry to any Rust Town residents who scale the wall.”
“Noble of you,” Rhea said. “And yet you’re not going to open your gates…”
The robot nodded again. “We cannot risk the lives of our own citizens.”
“I see, and why is it that these bioweapons aren’t climbing the walls of Aradne, do you think?” she asked sweetly.
“Our weapon turrets and Hunter Killers are keeping them at bay,” the robot explained.
Rhea started as both turrets on either side flashed a bright blue at the same time. An audible crackling filled the air, and all her synthetic hair stood on end. She glanced over her shoulder in time to witness a pair of azure smears descending from the turrets toward the streets below.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “These weapons that can’t even penetrate their scales are keeping them at bay…”
The robot didn’t answer.
Rhea hauled herself over the rail and landed on the walkway below. She lowered her backpack to the metal grating that served as floor and let her human cargo debark. She flexed her robotic shoulders, glad to be free of the burden, not just physically but mentally.
“Thank you,” Wart Nose told her. “I won’t forget this.”
“Nor I,” the other man said.
She nodded brusquely, then slid the empty pack back onto her shoulders. It felt so light.
She gazed out across Aradne City, whose towers stretched before her. She stared at those skyscrapers so longingly; some appeared to be covered in crystals, glinting beneath the sun. Perhaps it was simply the way the sunlight caught upon their exteriors. Then again, she’d heard some buildings had windows made from sapphires polished and cut to an incredible thinness, and that it was these sapphires that were responsible for the assortment of interesting geometric shapes bedecking the city, engineering marvels that wouldn’t have been possible with ordinary glass.
Everything was calm and peaceful out there. Delivery drones went about their business uninterrupted. Flyers carried citizens to their local destinations. Parents lounged in parks while their kids played on the grass. It was… utopian.
“Do you wish to claim asylum?” the robot asked her.
She blinked, instantly brought back to the present moment.
The streets between Aradne’s beautiful skyscrapers remained entirely unsullied by bioweapons. This while she could hear the screams coming from Rust Town behind her. And the roars. None of the people she saw in Aradne seemed to notice, which made her wonder if the citizens even knew Rust Town was under attack. The walls likely prevented any sound from passing into the city. And it would be relatively easy to suppress live streams sourced from the settlement. Private drones that attempted to cross the wall could be shot down…
Then again, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if the citizens of Aradne did know. They might have protested, but there wasn’t much they could do, not while they were locked inside those towering walls and serving entirely at the whim of the city’s rulers.
She sighed, then glanced at the robot and smiled faintly. “Not yet. I plan to save at least a few more people. Something you robots should seriously consider, if you have any sort of conscience in those polycarbonate brains of yours.”
The two robots exchanged glances, and though they had no faces, she had the distinct impression her comment confused them.
Rhea pulled herself over the rail of the walkway.
Once more unto the breach…
She leaped off before the robots could stop her.
29
Rhea had spun her body as she leaped, so that she was facing the wall as she fell. After dropping four meters, she grabbed onto a protruding strip of metal. Her weight and momentum peeled it away, nearly tearing the strip from the wall. The upper portion clung by only a small corner that threatened to detach at any moment.
Probably should have chosen a less dramatic exit…
She activated the HUD markings she had recorded previously, then glanced at the vertical surface below and rested the tip of her foot on the labeled hold. She gently released the torn strip with one hand and grabbed onto the indicated handhold for her right arm next.
She proceeded quickly using those markings and climbed down almost as fast as she had ascended.
Halfway down she paused to gaze out across Rust Town. All of the bioweapons had entered the settlement by then—there was no cloud of dust blotting the ruins and plains beyond. Instead, the creatures
