She landed on her feet and leaped into the air immediately, avoiding two more beams. She easily reached the ceiling in the lower gravity and slammed her Ban’Shar into the turret that had fired a moment before.
When she touched the floor, she bounded forward, and took out two more turrets in rapid succession, just as they began to glow with firing intent. She swerved between two plasma cannon attacks, deflecting a third plasma bolt with her Ban’Shar.
She glanced at her overhead map. There were only three beam turrets left, according to the map. Meanwhile, seven plasma cannons remained untouched.
Horatio had been hit by a beam, as had Burhawk, and the two were frozen in place. Min yet stood, along with three other combat robots. The remainder of Rhea’s mechanical troops had been hit, either by the beam turrets or the plasma cannons—the work of the latter evident in the smoldering wreckages scattered across the floor. Rhea was thankful the plasma cannons didn’t target Burhawk and Horatio to finish the job started by the disabling beams, but it made sense that the cannons would concentrate on the most dangerous targets first.
Rhea deactivated one Ban’Shar and unholstered the pistol from her belt, as the remaining beam turrets were halfway across the room. She raced toward one of them, firing at it, while Min concentrated on another, and the combat robots fired at a third.
Rhea released five shots, but still the beam turret hadn’t gone down—it was taking quite a few more hits than she expected, spoiled as she was on the quick kills of the Ban’Shar. The turret returned fire as she approached, and she dodged the attack, along with a second beam launched by another turret nearby. She deflected two incoming plasma bolts to boot, continuing to fire at her target the whole time. Finally, she melted it into oblivion.
Min destroyed the other turret, while the combat robots handled the third. Unfortunately, the latter robots were mowed down by the plasma cannons, so that left only Rhea and Min.
“Just the two of us,” Min said, racing past her to charge a plasma turret. “Just like old times!”
“Too bad I don’t remember these old times you speak of!” Rhea said.
“You will!” Min responded.
Rhea fired at the plasma cannons with her pistol; they were much easier to destroy than the beam turrets. She kept moving, dodging and reflecting plasma bolts. Min and Rhea spread out to make life more difficult for the cannons.
And then, when there were only two plasma cannons left, Rhea suddenly froze. Her joints simply wouldn’t respond.
Min was running toward her. Behind the sensei, a diamond-shaped turret that hadn’t been marked on the map emerged from the floor.
Behind you! Rhea tried to transmit over a mental channel, but her comms weren’t responding.
The beam struck Min from behind, and her companion froze.
No doubt a similar turret, or turrets, had emerged from somewhere behind Rhea to strike her down. Burhawk’s map had not been complete.
The two remaining plasma cannons kept pointing at her, threatening to fire. But they did not.
Several seconds passed. A minute. Rhea could hear shouts from outside, and the occasional clang of metal as a robot fell, so she knew the attack had not yet let up. She was waiting for Khrusos to make an appearance, to mock her, but nothing happened.
Perhaps he’s already fled.
She could see Min’s eyes looking at her, pleading with her, so Rhea knew that her companion was yet conscious, like herself. But otherwise, the two could not communicate.
And then she heard footsteps behind her. At first, she thought Khrusos had at last presented himself, but then the plasma cannons swung toward the newcomer.
The footfalls increased in pace. The cannons fired. Small plasma bolts came in answer, as of those fired from a pistol, and slammed into one of the cannons. In only a few moments it went down.
The remaining cannon fired repeatedly, tracking some moving target she couldn’t see behind her. She thought it had hit that target when the cannon stopped tracking, and instead fired repeatedly at the same angle. But then return fire came a moment later. She suspected whoever it had been tracking was taking cover, probably behind the wreckage of one of the robots, and someone else was providing suppressive fire from the entrance.
Sure enough, the turret shifted slightly, no doubt to attack the source of the covering fire, but then more plasma bolts slammed into it from the side, and it went down.
The beam turret behind Min began to fire now, too.
Will appeared beside Rhea. He took a head-on hit from the disabling beam, but of course it didn’t affect him as he was human. He fired at the turret, but instead of sitting there taking the blows, it immediately retracted into the floor. Will shot past Rhea’s shoulder, likely causing the remaining turret to similarly withdraw, because he stopped firing a moment later.
“I got you,” he comforted her as he lowered her to the floor. He dragged robots in front of and behind her, to protect her from the beam turrets should they emerge before he could finish what he intended.
He doffed his backpack, letting it fall to the floor, and removed a canister. He opened it up, sprinkling the contents out onto her chest.
Metal insects crawled outward in all directions. They bored into her torso, vanishing inside her. She had collected a good ten percent of her total nano machines before the battle, stowing them in that container. She hoped it would be enough.
Inside her, they spread out, reactivating her body parts—consuming their destroyed brethren, remaking her damaged circuitry, and producing more of themselves in the process, so that she would soon be back at her iteration limit.
First,
