The attacks ceased.
“They’re pulling away,” Will said. He tentatively lifted his head past cover.
Rhea did likewise and gazed at the empty street past the window.
She accessed Gizmo’s feed.
Most of the drones had swerved away; only a few remained behind to shadow the three tankers.
Will rotated Gizmo to the left, toward the retreating drones.
And then she suddenly understood why the security forces had abandoned them for the time being.
Bioweapons had emerged from the rubble of the surrounding skyscrapers, where apparently, they’d been slumbering.
Tasins.
9
Rhea stared at the creatures on Gizmo’s feed. She had never encountered a Tasin in real life. The last one she had met was virtual, while she trained with Bardain.
The Tasin. A creature with four barbed tusks protruding from its anvil-like head, beneath the armored plates that protected its insectile eyes. Its mouth was a large, toothless sucker, coated in acid strong enough to melt through the hardest steel in a matter of seconds. Long antennae drooped from its head, constantly swaying across the ground in front of it. The body was avian, covered in green, chlorophyll-pigmented feathers, yet wingless.
Four legs poked from its underbelly, spaced like those of a mammal; the top portions were thick and muscular, while the bottom sections were composed mostly of tough tendons and bones, so relatively thin in comparison that they could never be confused for anything other than avian in nature. The bottom portions of those legs ended in feet whose half-moon talons were bigger than scythes.
An elephant’s strength. A fly’s nearly three-hundred-and-sixty-degree vision. The antennae of ants, whose sense of smell was unmatched by any animal. A bird’s metabolism and speed. It had the best parts of every species that formed it.
The Tasins lunged at the enemy units, ripping some of them out of the sky. She saw a large police drone swallowed by a leaping bioweapon, and a gunship unexpectedly snatched from behind by the acid-dripping sucker of another. The central portion of the latter craft melted away almost instantly, and the two pieces of the gunship crashed to the ground, exploding.
However, those were about the extent of the casualties: most of the Aradne forces had moved well beyond the range of the creatures. That didn’t stop them from moving temptingly closer, pulling back again whenever a Tasin lunged.
“They’re trying to keep the Tasins away from the tankers,” Will said.
Rhea nodded.
She could appreciate what the security forces were doing… if those bioweapons reached them, it was doubtful Aradne would ever recover the water. Still, given how many machines had been lost already, she had to wonder whether the water was really worth it. Perhaps the loss was justified to the mayor of Aradne. A public relations victory, to show the lowly denizens of Rust Town that if they tried to steal any water from the great city they camped outside, Aradne would simply take it back again.
Not all of the Tasins were distracted by the enemy drones. Some continued down the street, drawn by the noise of the tankers, or perhaps their “smell.” With their massive feet the Tasins crushed all debris underfoot and broke away portions of any skyscrapers they rubbed against. Acid dripped from their mouths and carved fresh runnels into the asphalt below.
“Get to the garage!” Rhea shouted.
Will took control of the tanker and stepped on the accelerator.
He recklessly drove over debris, at such a speed that not even the super-gimbals could hide the jolt from the riders. The other two tankers kept pace close behind.
Rhea observed that the route ahead was crisscrossed with runnels similar to the kind the Tasins were forming behind them at that very moment. Those thin trenches had been present throughout the city since the convoy’s arrival, but she hadn’t paid much attention to them until now. In fact, she hadn’t really noticed them. Not surprising, given that she’d been slightly occupied.
The advance scouting party had mentioned the runnels, but since there were no other signs of Tasin infestation, they’d concluded the creatures had abandoned the place a long time ago.
Seems they were wrong.
She leaned out the window and noted the five enemy drones that had stayed behind to shadow their passage. She pulled herself back in before any of them could fire at her.
“Horatio, can their eyes in the sky see us currently?” Rhea asked.
“Checking the Sat Displacement Map,” the robot answered. That was a satellite position calculator; it computed the positions of the spy satellites every hour of every day, something the Wardenites had hooked them up with. “Negative. Their two closest satellites are near the northern horizon. The skyscrapers are completely occluding our passage at the moment. The drones are their only eyes.”
“Let’s take them out,” Rhea said. “Chuck, Renaldo, target the pursuing drones.”
She leaned out the passenger side and aimed at one of the drones. It was a tricky shot, given the distance. But plasma bolts traveled almost as fast as projectiles, which meant the drones would have little time to react before they were destroyed. And it wouldn’t take much to down a drone either—she only needed to damage one of the rotors.
She squeezed the trigger.
The drone plunged.
She ducked inside before any of the other drones could return fire. She glanced at Gizmo’s feed to get an update on the latest positions, waited a moment, then leaned out once more, and fired at the next drone. Got it.
With the help of Renaldo and Chuck, she took down the remaining craft in less than twenty seconds.
“They’ll be sending in more drones to look for us,” Horatio said.
“We’ll be inside the garage before then,” Rhea countered.
She hoped.
Will turned onto the road that led to the garage. It was free of bioweapons and enemy drones.
“I was starting to worry we wouldn’t make it,” Will said.
“We’re not inside yet,” Rhea told him.
Will nodded. “Horatio, quit jinxing us!”
The robot swung that featureless head toward him. “What? You’re the one who’s jinxing us!”
“I knew I could
