“I’m coming, too,” Will said.
“No, you’re not,” Rhea told him. “You will stop at the door to the throne room. At least until we can clear the turrets within.”
Will frowned but didn’t contest her.
“How do we know Khrusos will even be in this throne room of his when we arrive?” Horatio asked. “Do we know his schedule?”
“He never leaves the throne room,” Burhawk said. “It’s his permanent residence. He conducts all business for the United Settlements, the High Council, and Mars from within. He eats there, sleeps there, defecates there.”
“Interesting way to live,” Brinks commented. “Sounds like a pigsty.”
“It’s one of the cleanest places you’ll ever see,” Burhawk said. “Along with the deadliest.”
“The door to the throne requires a special entry code, if I remember correctly,” Min said.
“Yes, I can handle that,” Burhawk said. “I know how to bypass the code, even if it’s been changed. But the question is, how are we even going to get close to the throne room? It’s guarded at all hours. When I said there was a plethora of robots on the grounds, I wasn’t kidding. That isn’t something to be taken lightly. There are so many places where you can be pinned down and fired upon from multiple angles. I highly doubt those glow shields of yours will be enough. We’re going to need an army…”
They were all looking at Rhea expectantly. “I have an idea.”
She revealed the plan that had been simmering inside her head.
13
Rhea strode beneath the crystalline skyscrapers with Will and the Wardenites. They wore their black robes, the raised hoods pulled low about their heads. As usual, Rhea and the others were careful to match the gait of the locals, and they kept their gazes diverted when passing security cameras, or other foot traffic.
A pair of sentry robots stood at the corner of an intersection ahead. They had their backs to her, and observed the passing vehicles, and pedestrians. Instead of having rifles barrels built-in to their forearms, they carried actual separate weapons.
Hidden beneath the canopy of a street-side cafe, Horatio watched the sky from across the road, and transmitted the locations of any nearby security drones that hovered overhead. She checked her map, and confirmed no airborne drones were nearby, and that the closest security cameras had a poor view of what she intended. Indeed, the bodies of the robots would block her almost entirely from said cameras.
Her two preconditions satisfied, she broke away from the Wardenites and approached the intersection. When she arrived, she glanced both ways, confirming no other robots were nearby. She lingered behind the sentries, waiting for the foot traffic to pass, then checked her map one last time. After verifying no drones had arrived since the last glance, she stepped forward and placed her hands on the cold shoulders of the robots. She already had nano machines deployed and at the ready, so that when she made contact, several of the tiny metal insects flowed onto her targets.
She removed her hands as the robots turned around, and she dropped her gaze to conceal her face in shadow.
“Can we help you?” one of the robots asked.
It would take a moment for the nano technology to reach the AI cores from the shoulder area, so Rhea shook her bowed head and simply said, in an altered voice: “I mistook you for someone else.”
She inclined her head lower before turning about and quickly walking away.
She hid in a side alley, where the other Wardenites were waiting for her.
“Did it work?” Will asked.
“We’ll know soon enough.” She peered past the edge of the alleyway.
The robots had returned their attention to the road and seemed unaffected. As the seconds ticked past, she was beginning to fear that the nano machines had failed to take, but then the heads of both robots bowed suddenly. Their arms drooped downward as well, so that they nearly dropped the rifles they carried.
They remained frozen like that for the next minute, as if powered off. A passing man paused to rap one of the robots on the head with his knuckles, and when it didn’t respond he shrugged and moved on, muttering something. Her sensitive ears picked up: “Only in Hongton.”
After a full sixty seconds had passed, the robots raised their arms and heads once more, standing up straight. They began to look about, as if searching for someone.
“There we go.” Rhea confirmed no airborne drones were watching, then stepped from cover and went to them.
“What can we do for you, Mistress?” one of the robots asked.
She gave them their orders and ended with: “You will delete all logs of this conversation.”
She smiled inside as those words left her lips. The robots had a one-minute lag time between their recording of external data, and its transmission to the central AI: the conversation would never reach the city’s main computer.
“Understood,” the robot said.
Rhea momentarily activated her wireless mesh network, setting it to minimum transmission range, and recorded the remote IDs of the two machines. On the overhead map the indicators of both robots changed from red to blue, marking them as hers.
With that done, she disabled her network once more, turned around and left.
She rejoined the Wardenites, and they retreated. Horatio mirrored their route on the opposite side of the street, ready to resume his skywatching when the next opportunity presented itself.
Thus, she continued through the city, keeping her hood pulled low, and converting different robots to her side as the opportunities presented themselves. She usually went for pairs of sentries standing close together, but occasionally she converted a larger walker, or a drone hovering low to the ground, always from behind. Sometimes the robots seemed angry that she had touched them—especially the walkers—and demanded that she enable her comm node and lower her hood. In those later instances she always refused them, stating in an altered voice that it was her right to wear her clothing as
