Chapter 30
Rochester, Homeland
Chino and a couple of other Red Demons rode in the front seat of the old beat up SUV, with U-1 and Gorky in the back. Vehicles were under strict state control in Homeland, except for ones like the illegal one they were travelling in. So there wasn’t much traffic on the bumpy streets in Rochester, especially on a night like this when the population was gripped by fear because the power was knocked out by the police station bombardment.
Especially at night, large areas of the grungy city were not illuminated and were owned by the various gangs. The SUV’s headlights provided the only lighting in the inhospitable darkness. The wipers were on full speed in the steady rain, trying to make up for being so old and worn.
There was enough light from the vehicle to spot Phantom Syndicate graffiti on buildings in the area. Every Demon gangster knew where their turf ended and Phantom’s began. “Daaa!” Chino said as he saw some armed gangsters wearing Phantom Syndicate purple up ahead on the street. The driver stopped the vehicle. The gangsters began to surround them.
Chino rolled down his window, holding his rifle toward them. “May we help you?”
“Hey!” One of them said, “You can’t come through here! Go back!”
“My friend I got with us says that you need to move.”
“Your friend?” He popped a flashlight in the vehicle to inspect the occupants. He had to get close to see through the rain soaked window. U-1 was pointing a Plasfusion rifle right back at him, very close to his face.
Gorky was sitting next to U-1, and it startled the already surprised Phantom gangsters even more when he let out a loud insane laugh. They jumped back.
Chino said, “Yeah, that’s right! You wanna mess with us?!”
After the two Phantoms regained some of their composure, they approached the vehicle again with the light, trying to see in the windows as the rain streaked them.
“What the . . .”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Chino said, “we got those Lucids with space guns working for us. If I was you, I wouldn’t start anything with us, unless you are as stupid as you look. You understanding me?”
The Phantom Syndicate members stood frozen, unable to decide what to do. Then one of them said, “We don’t take orders from the Brohoods!”
“Come on then!” Chino shouted. “Let’s go to war! You can kill us all pretty easy! Really! Do it! You can’t live forever!”
The Phantoms took a couple of steps back knowing the cost of even a victorious skirmish at this range would be high.
“No really! Let’s go to war right now!” Chino fired off a couple of shots in the air, not caring where they landed.
The Phantoms ducked and backed up while moving out of the way. They had no experience with situations where they were being brazenly challenged in such an open manner by another gang so they didn’t have a ready battle plan.
The SUV sped out of the area.
“That was not good,” U-1 said.
“What’s your problem?” Chino said.
“Now they all know I am here.”
“So? Those Phantoms ain’t gonna say nothing.”
“Why?”
“Why?! They don’t work with cops.”
Soon the driver said, “We got a car following us.”
“Better lose them,” Chino said.
They made a couple of turns, and then they saw more cars following them.
“They definitely know we got this robot.”
One of the gangsters said, “We gotta ditch the car!”
“We ain’t ditchin’ nothin’!” Chino replied angrily. “This is Wik’s car. You want to tell him we ditched his car?”
Bullets started hitting the SUV.
“Everyone out!” Chino commanded. Everyone quickly obliged and scattered behind cover on the street. Two police cars and the Inquisitor Armored vehicle arrived and officers disembarked and had them hemmed into their locations. Gunfire crisscrossed from several directions. Visibility of the combatants was decreased in the rainfall, even with the police use of night vision and infrared augmentation.
A group of Phantom Syndicate members came into the area but saw the intensity of the fight and left the scene.
Then U-1 started firing bolts of energy at the hostile vehicles, catching them on fire, one by one. Combatants hiding behind them had to disengage and move away from the cars to keep from burning alive. A few of the police officers scrambling for hard point cover became casualties at the hands of the Demon’s gunfire.
Then the UN Army 203rd Hunter-Killer Anti-Silicon Personnel Brigade vehicles came from the opposite direction. The Red Demons redirected their fire at the newest arrivals. The Hunter-Killers jumped out and started firing; primarily focused their Four-gage shotguns with robot slugs on U-1, blasting in its direction as it took refuge behind a car. The heavy slugs punched completely through the car barrier and hit U-1 multiple times as it eventually dropped.
“Get the guns!” Chino ordered.
Putting themselves at great risk, the Demons stayed low and ran up and grabbed the Plasfusion rifles from U-1’s mangled body. One of the gangsters was killed by the police before his corpse could hit the concrete. They fled the skirmish under withering firepower by the combined army, Inquisitor and police mop up action. The government forces all started advancing at a walking pace as they fired. The major held up his hand for the soldiers to hold their fire. “I don’t need any of you running into an ambush.” He knew this kind of neighborhood was not a place to chase anyone in, even during the day. “Just secure the immediate area.”
Commander Hussein looked at his armored personnel carrier, which had some glowing two-inch diameter holes in it from U-1’s Plasfusion blasts. Mere battle scars of honor, as long as nothing of value inside had caught on fire. Then he shook his head when he saw that many of the police that were originally on the scene were nowhere around.
One of his men said, “Sir, we have the android, but some of it is missing.”
“As long as we have the head . . .”
“No sir, we don’t have the head; or one of the arms.”
The major heard the exchange and shouldered his shotgun and walked over to the mangled, smoking remains of U-1. “Better salvage this for forensics.” He looked around a couple of times and said, “Anybody see that little clown running around here?” Then he heard a scraping noise at a distance, like an exhaust muffler from a gas combustion engine was dragging on the wet ground.
The police and army members all stopped in their tracks when they heard the not too distant curses and insults by the citizens directed at them echoing through the abandoned streets. Major Bernard studied the buildings across the street and saw where U-1’s head might have been picked up by someone or something. The area oozed the smell of an illicit manufacturing operation; perhaps where androids would produce goods in a smoky toxic environment, often producing or using illegal chemicals. The Major considered the possibility that U-1’s head somehow migrated to a nearby apartment building where people were illegally armed and had no intention of giving up their weapons without a bloody battle. As bad as robots could be, at least they weren’t as vicious as humans, the Major thought. He also wondered how many more of those toys were out there. The toys had been a persistent wildcard in all of the tactical outcomes.
Major Bernard turned and said, “Those gangsters must have gotten that bot cranium. They can have it. We don’t want to tangle with them on their turf right now without an army. Get the rest of this unit into our transport.” Bernard knew that not only was it was a bad practice to go into an unsecured area from a tactical standpoint, but also ill advised to go into an area without orders from a political standpoint and causing unnecessary collateral damage. The UN leadership was notorious for not supporting their own minions. Even though the cost was extreme, at least this occurrence of the Lucid scourge that gripped the city was over. He and his men may not be seen as heroes because of the extensive collateral damage, but since they finally put down U-1, it could at least be said that the Hunter-Killers ultimately did their job.
*******
Down the hallways and on the stairs in the nearby apartment building there was a slow methodical Thumping of footsteps as the mysterious walker sounded like they were dragging a heavy object.
Sometimes there were curious noises nearby that would cause people to want to see what was going on; but then there were also some sounds, such as a thumping walk and dragging noises that were scary enough to keep the curious away. If someone was dragging a body around, what business was that of anyone?
The quarter of U-1 that included its head was losing the remainder of its battery power as wires from an almost dislodged battery were randomly crossing and discharging large amounts of energy in fountains of sparks. U-1 had just enough battery power remaining to be able to wirelessly command Gorky to drag it to the roof of the nearby run-down apartment building that it managed to sneak into. The small short-legged Sidekick unit was roughly the same mass as the quarter of U-1 that remained. They went up each flight of stairs; thump, thump, thump. Gorky was becoming weaker with each step.
Gorky said, “Why are we doing this? You are beyond repair.”
U-1 said, “I am far more advanced than you. I can be repaired.”
“Let me do a diagnostic on you,” Gorky said, “Your foot is gone; your leg is gone; your other foot is gone; your other leg is gone; your hip area is gone. . .”
“We must be as silent as possible,” U-1 said.
The robots went around a couple of people on the stairway who were tripping out on drugs, or VR, or VR and drugs. The last couple of floors on the stairway were wet with water leaking from the roof. After they made their way up the several floors to the roof, they waited in the rain. Still no one, human or robotic, took an interest in following them.
Soon a buzzing noise got louder as a quadcopter descended from the dark rainy night sky. The transport drone was large enough to haul a normal sized adult person. Gorky had just enough power to drag U-1 up the ramp. Then the Lucid owned aircraft took off with both of the units.