She glanced at the overhead map. Enemies were marked as red dots, courtesy of the active sensing capabilities of the convoy members. Their dots froze whenever moving behind obstacles, indicating the last known positions. Meanwhile, the semis were marked in green, and the escorting technicals and drones in blue; the positions of the friendlies updated in realtime, regardless of whether they passed behind buildings, thanks to the common network the machines utilized for communications. She was shocked by how few escorts seemed to remain intact out there.
A quick glance at Gizmo’s feed confirmed her fears. There were maybe a score of technicals left, and a dozen drones.
With less escorts to protect the tankers, the enemy drones doubled their attacks, swooping down at the cabins with increased alacrity. Some of them also concentrated their fire on the tires, apparently not understanding that the wheels were run flats.
“So who was it that said coming to the city would provide us with the cover we needed?” Will said, firing at another drone through a crack in his window.
“When we reach the parking garage, we’ll lose them,” she said, unleashing her pistol at another drone on the passenger side.
“Assuming it’s still there,” Will countered.
“It’s there,” Rhea said. “The scouts passed this way only yesterday.”
An advance party had scouted these ruins the day before to confirm the accuracy of the crowdsourced map data the Wardenites had on the place—data uploaded to the Net by salvagers, wreckage tourists and the like. The scouts verified that the garage was present, and that the tankers could fit. The advance team had continued on to the next Net-enabled city in order to report their findings—Rhea had specifically told them not to return to Rust Town right away, to avoid having any satellites flag their behavior as suspicious.
Once inside the garage, Rhea and the others planned to abandon the tankers and lose their pursuers on foot: a stairwell in the garage led to a pedway system that was still intact, one that wound its way underneath the city from building to building.
In theory, the Aradne forces would give up shortly after losing them. They only really wanted the water, after all—especially if Rhea could keep her identity hidden. The forces would deploy a few of the smaller hunter-killers and combat robots, leaving them behind to search for the escapees, but that was something Rhea and the others could readily handle. The majority of the forces would return, escorting the captured tankers back to Aradne.
At least, that was the hope.
“Who knows,” Horatio said, firing past Rhea at a drone. “The building that harbors the garage could have collapsed since yesterday.”
“With the state this city is in, wouldn’t surprise me!” Will quipped.
Rhea fired at yet another incoming drone, and it dropped from view. She glanced at her overhead map. The route to the parking garage was plotted as a green line between the different skyscrapers; the AIs responsible for steering the semis were following it to a T.
She took down another drone, and a moment of respite followed.
She used the interlude to glance at Gizmo’s feed, wanting to get an inventory of how many still fought for her. There weren’t very many escorts left at all: a few quadcopters, a handful of pickups struggling across the debris. Gizmo had survived by keeping well back, but now that they were in the city, the drone kept closer by strategically employing the buildings for cover. Indeed, Gizmo darted behind a broken skyscraper as she watched, blocking the convoy from view. Just when she was about to use the drone to check on the enemy positions…
She returned her attention to the real world, puzzled why the adversaries weren’t continuing to throw everything they had at the semis. Past her damaged window, she could see the ruined husks of buildings reaching for the sky, their tips broken and jagged. She turned her gaze forward, and through the boreholes that marred the protective covering of the main windshield, she studied the street ahead: the debris that scattered the route seemed to be increasing in frequency. In moments, the ruins of collapsed skyscrapers blocked the road to such an extent that the semis were forced to travel in single file—only a tiny aisle remained clear down the center of the street. That aisle quickly narrowed, and not even the super-gimbaled shocks could prevent the cabin from tilting sideways as the rightmost wheels had to drive over the collapse. Cement dust lingered in the air, as if another large vehicle had already passed this way ahead of them, or…
“I don’t recall the streets appearing so congested in the data,” Will said. “See, the crowdsourced map is wrong already.”
“The map data isn’t wrong,” Rhea said, gazing skyward past the triangular gap in her window. “The drones are attacking the buildings.”
The brief respite in attacks was because the enemy drones had all swooped upward: they were concentrating their fire on the skyscrapers ahead, collapsing them in an effort to block the convoy’s path.
As she watched, a big building fell directly in front of the semis. Dust filled the street, and the view outside the exposed portions of the windows became completely black. The cabin’s internal lights activated.
“Switch to LIDAR!” Rhea ordered.
“Won’t make much difference in this,” Will told her.
He was right. There were too many particles for the individual photons to scatter upon, and she got no readings.
“Echolocation,” Horatio said.
Chirps echoed from the exterior of the semi via a series of strategically spaced speakers, which fed the resultant data to the HUDs of Rhea and her companions. She could see the debris and the buildings around her once again.
Using that data as a guide, the AI operating the semi realized the way forward was completely blocked, and reversed course. However, it soon got stuck when it ran over a cement block that elevated the
