Chapter Twenty-Seven

But she was not patient. It must have been shortly after midnight when she had woken up by Mac’s commotion; now it was perhaps an hour before dawn. She had headed to her room in the house and seethed, plotting her next move. She had only stopped by Long Fei’s tent and told him to be ready for anything. He seemed skeptical, but she knew implicitly that he would stand with her, whatever happened. For the next several hours she lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling, grimly contemplating the paths available to her.

The watch of two members of the Colony was up, and in light of the recent events she wondered why she had not asked questions about why a watch was necessary. In any event, they were stationed near Simon’s tent, where she knew Mac was being held. They were big and armed but as inattentive as she had assumed they would be, this late in the night, and they were on her turf. She crept past them and slipped into the tent without issue.

She was temporarily encouraged to hear a deep snoring sound, until she realized that it came from Mac, not Simon. Mac sat, arms still fastened behind him, attached to the frame of Simon’s bed. Simon was wrapped in a blanket and appeared to be in a deep slumber himself. She knelt down besides Mac and snipped his thick plastic cuffs with shears, wanting to do so before she woke him to minimize his opportunities to blow their cover. When his hands were free, he leaned a little farther over to his side, but still sat up, snoring contentedly. Casting one more glance back at Simon, she reached up and held his nose shut with her hand. He gave off a vague, gruff choking sound for a moment, then his eyes flew open, looking half-crazed as he transitioned back into consciousness.

“Wha-” he started, but she grabbed him by his beard and tugged him towards her, giving him her fiercest look as she clinched his mouth shut. She brought her index finger up to her mouth to order silence, and though he looked bewildered for a moment, he complied. In a moment he had shaken off the cobwebs. She pointed over to where Simon slept, and he nodded. She led him by the arm to the side flap of the tent. The two guards standing watch were muttering to each other as they paced around. She paused for a pregnant moment, hoping to see if there was some pattern to their movements, but felt compelled to move. When one circled in front of the other, his back to them, she took her chance and dragged Mac by the arm out of the tent.

Had she been alone, it would have been easy, but with Mac it was like trying to creep around in tap shoes. In the first seconds she was sure she would hear shouting behind them immediately, with his loud breathing and awkward trotting beside her. Somehow they made it to the side of another tent, out of view of the guards. As the paused, she pushed aside her urge to scold him for his clumsiness. He pointed towards the house and raised his eyebrows, questioning silently. She shook her head no.

“Show me,” she whispered. He nodded, then motioned to her to follow.

Another 30 seconds of his wince-inducing inability to move quietly, and they were beside a storage tent. The thick military tent was clasped shut with a padlock, but she was able to make short work of a frayed piece of sidewall rope with her shears, and soon they were pushing through the exposed flap. There would be no hiding what she had done in the morning, but she was past that point now.

Mac led her over to a stack of the long thing boxes she had seen being loaded into the vehicles back at the Colony’s headquarters. He pulled one down from the top of the stack, then propped it against the floor for leverage. He pulled at the locked opening of the case, muscles bulging, straining against the lock for a moment before it popped open, the seams breaking. He turned the case towards her so she could see inside. Lying in it was a long, alien-looking device, a kind of electronic lance, its barrel solid with no obvious aperture. The other end housed a conventional trigger. Whatever its particular application, it was clearly an instrument of war.

“Come on,” she said. “I’m going to see what exactly they’re doing.”

“If we keep this up, sooner or later they’re going to catch us,” said Mac.

“I don’t care,” she said.

They ran over to the computing tent, where Long Fei slept. At least if they caught her in there she would have a plausible excuse, though with Mac by her side there was now no avoiding a conflict. She crept up to Long Fei and was unsurprised to find him lying awake; his illness had always made him a light sleeper. She placed her hand on his shoulder, and he rose to a sitting position. She maneuvered over to the terminal and sat down.

The interface was text-only. The cursor blinked expectantly as the login prompt asked for a password. She frowned for a moment, then felt Long Fei nudging her.

“Here,” he whispered, then tapped in a password. She raised her eyebrow at him.

“Not much to do in here but observe,” he said. She gave him a light punch on the shoulder in appreciation.

She navigated through the file directory. It wasn’t easy; the layout of files and folders was hard to grasp, and the command line had some idiosyncrasies. To make matters worse, she wasn’t 100% sure what she was looking for. Long Fei occasionally provided quiet advice, while Mac paced anxiously behind them. Finally she found a command to examine running programs. Listed was something called “PPulse.” She noodled around some more, figuring out how to call it up, then punched in the appropriate command. PPulse gave her a simple scrolling text readout. On the far left was a series of time signatures, separated by five seconds in regular intervals. On the right was listed “Intensity,” which was unchanging. Next to that were directional and coordinate information, which showed a sweeping pattern, pulsing out towards to the west, shifting positions in a clockwise rotation before resetting.

Haojing rose from the chair, trembling, looking up at the antenna above her.

“Hey!” came a shout behind them. A member of the Colony was standing at the entrance. Day was dawning and light spilled over them. He moved to run, but Mac closed the distance quickly and grabbed him in his big arms, wrapping him up and pulling him into the tent. The much smaller man kicked and squirmed but could not escape Mac’s grasp. But behind him rushed up several other members.

“Let him go, Mac,” said Haojing wearily. He complied.

Soon the Colony’s entire party surrounded them. Several of them trained their guns on them. Simon approached from behind them, keeping his distance, shaking his head. And then, sweeping in as his people parted around him, was Clay. His cape fluttered behind him, and his long white hair framed his face. The kindness that she had seen in his face before was gone. Now all she could see was his angry, staring eyes, lit up in the early daylight. His infirmity seemed to have left him, and he approached them with authority and purpose. Soon he was standing right in front of her, and she fought back hard against her instincts to shrink away. When she spoke she was proud to find her voice did not waver.

“What is this?” she said. “What are you doing? This antenna isn’t gathering information in. It’s sending something out.”

Clay brushed by her and stood at the terminal, tapping around to see what she had done.

“You’re… you’re summoning them, aren’t you?” yelled Haojing. “You’re bringing them here!”

“Yes,” said Clay, not turning from the computer. “Yes, I am bringing them here. I am starting this war. For all of us.”

“This is my home, and you’re endangering us,” said Haojing. “I won’t let you.”

She reached behind the computer to grab at cables, hoping to disconnect something, do anything to shut it down. Clay looked at her with wild eyes and grabbed her wrist with his cybernetic arm. She screamed in pain as he grasped her with crushing force. Mac shouted and moved towards her, but was tackled from behind by two of the soldiers, who pressed him against the ground.

“Let me?” Clay said, air hissing from the vents in his facial prosthesis. “Let me? Do you really doubt my capacity for self-preservation? My loyalty to my mission?”

 “Stop it!” shouted Long Fei, who reached to defend Haojing. Clay swung his other arm, knocking Long Fei to the ground. She was wracked with pain, which throbbed from the wrist and seemed to overtake her whole body. She could feel her bones giving way inside her. Her vision went spotty and she felt she might pass out from pain. Finally came relief, as he relaxed his grip. Then came her understanding of why. From somewhere deep inside of herself, she felt it, far off but growing closer, that perfect alien vibration, pulsing and unseen.

“It’s too late,” said Clay, wheeling around and pointing towards the western horizon. “They’re here.”

With military precision, the Colony fanned out into defensive positions. Clay threw her aside, dismissively. In a moment their entire group had essentially abandoned the three of them, intent on meeting their quarry. For Haojing, there was nothing on her mind but the pain, the incredible pain in her crushed wrist. Mac climbed to his feet and pulled Long Fei up from where he was still lying on the ground. He turned towards Haojing, who staggered to her feet and leaned against him.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“It’s broken,” she said, clutching her mangled arm. “It’s all broken.”

“Look,” said Long Fei, pointing, and they saw them. The Sanhedrin’s emissaries had arrived.

A flight of drones crowded the sky, at least a dozen of them, immaculate and shining like the one that had attacked before. The first drone had approached in an unhurried fashion, meandering through a mission of exploration and salvage. These were coming directly towards them, hunting, intent on reaching their target. The vibration grew stronger as they approached, and it sent fresh waves of pain radiating from her wrist. Long Fei grasped her shoulder in concern.

“I’m fine,” she said, shaking him off. “Go, get into the house, both of you. Take my aunt and the children downstairs into the basement.”

“Hell no,” said Mac. “If you’re staying out here, so am I.”

“Mac, please,” she said. “Do what I say.”

“Then you come inside too.”

“No. I have to see this. Go.”

He trudged off towards the house. Long Fei looked back at her, then followed. Haojing stumbled over to the side of one of the tents. The morning light was being overtaken by thick dark clouds, and a punishing wind animated the flaps of the tents. Between the weather and the vibration and the crushing ache in her arm she felt sensory overload, and she watched the world play out in front of her like a movie.

Several of the Colony’s soldiers were arrayed in a defensive formation, spaced out at regular intervals. Others ran between them, erecting portable defensive barriers, made out of some sort of advanced carbon fiber. The lances were unloaded from their cases and distributed to the soldiers crouching behind the barriers for cover. The lances were long and awkward but could be affixed to the barricades like turrets. Simon, farther behind, sat in a carbon fiber shed that had stood closed since they had arrived, and which now opened to provide him with defensive fortification, a safe place to direct the others. Behind it he sat with a keyboard and headset, taking in information about the approaching drones, occasionally craning his head out the side to get a visual. She could not see Clay, who had disappeared somewhere. Throughout it all, they ignored her, leaving her to stare mutely as the scene played out in front of her.

In another moment the drones were upon them. The lead drone reared up towards one of the Colony’s tents, deploying its mouthful of probes and instruments. A shout from one of the Colony’s soldiers, and the battle began. One of them fired his lance. Arcing electricity shot from its long barrel. Its beam did not so much strike the drone as envelop it, wrapping itself around its hull and stopping it in its tracks. The drone twitched and stuttered in the air, trying to escape the lance’s pull, but could not break free. Simon barked orders into his headset. After a few moments, another soldier ran under where the drone was hovering, lugging some sort of heavy device, strapped to a large battery pack he carried on his back. He pointed the device up towards the drone’s rotor assembly and engaged it. A deep, loud whirring noise emerged from the device, and the drone began to stall and lose altitude. It fell unevenly, in spurts, then finally collapsed to the ground. Another member of the Colony ran out with a set of paddles, like those on a defibrillator, and pressed them to the side of the drone. The drone shook violently and then lay still. The soldier attached a bungee cord to its frame and started to drag it towards a tent.

The same process played out several more times. The drones were arranged in a kind of phalanx, but the Colony appeared ready, and confronted each one with military precision. Soon the air was thick with arcs of electricity, until they hung over the area like a mesh, or a net. Haojing could not help but feel some admiration for the skill with which they were harvesting the drones, preserving their materials for later use. But then one of them made a mistake.

A drone had been lanced, and a soldier had come to undercut its rotors, as had already happened a half-dozen times. But this time another drone that was approaching was not intercepted quickly enough. Perhaps one of the Colony reacted too slowly; perhaps there was an equipment failure. All Haojing could see was the trailing drone approach the crouching soldier and extend the same red-barreled weapon that had once been pointed at her. This time, it fired, sending a thin line of red energy into and through the crouching soldier’s torso, neatly and easily diving him into several large pieces. Blood poured from his mouth as the sections of his body fell casually apart on the ground.

This set off a small chain reaction of events that threatened to undermine their whole plan. One of the Colony let his lance fall and moved to check on his fallen comrade. The drone he had lassoed shook free of its stasis and rose higher in the air, its sensors deploying and taking in all of its potential targets. It seemed momentarily overwhelmed in its decision making. Another soldier, one of the ones using paddles to disable downed drones, shouted to the soldier to return to his post, waving her arm as she rebuked him. He was standing over the dead man, taking in the divided body in horror. She ran over and grabbed him by the arm, swearing at him in anger for deserting his duty. That in turn broke the orderly cycle of another team. In a moment, discipline and machine-like precision risked falling apart.

At that moment Clay emerged, striding out from somewhere in the tent compound. His white hair flowed behind him, as did his cape. His prosthetic arm glinted in the dim light of the stormy morning. He carried one of the lances, striding quickly towards the battle. Haojing could hear Simon shouting into his headset for Clay to get back to cover, but he was ignored. Amid the chaos, Clay raised the lance and fired on the uncovered drone, bathing it in electricity. When he had gotten it firmly under control, he motioned to a member of the Colony, who came and took over the lance. Clay strode over to where the shaken soldier remained standing over the body. He grabbed the soldier by the collar, wrenching him to his feet, and pulled him towards his face. Haojing could not hear what was said, but the message was plain, and the soldier hurried back to his post. With some more shouting and movement, the Colony were quickly back to work.

Another few moments and several more drones were downed and disabled. They were making such quick work that Haojing felt a strange sense of anticlimax, even though she was amazed at the spectacle in front of her and knew should would never see anything like it again. She was trying to sort out her emotions when she felt the tremors.

Amid the sensory overload of sound and vibration the incredible pain in her wrist had subsided to a dull ache. But it snapped back into sudden focus, thanks to a sudden shake in the earth. It would have been hard to notice in the chaos but for the exquisite sensitivity that her shattered bones had brought to her, like a whole new sensory mechanism, a second sight. She thought she felt something and winced in pain, and then it happened again and she knew she felt something. At first she considered that she might be having a heart attack, or a stroke, or an embolism. But with each throb of her wrist it became clearer that the land really was shaking, and then she could tell that the Colony felt it too. She could see them, intently concentrating on their battle with the drones, gradually realizing that something else was happening. Simon was frowning into his computer screen, and suddenly he was shouting, and then the mechs appeared.

They were bipedal, and the engineer part of her brain objected: bipedal robots are inefficient, she thought to herself, a clumsy artifact of anthropomorphism. But then there they were. There were three of them, maybe 12 feet tall each, coming through the woods, stomping heavily towards the yard. They shook the earth and each shake sent pain radiating from her wrist, and she alternated between observing the mechs and feeling like she would collapse in agony. They were far different from the drones; their machinery was intricate, their power undeniable, but they had none of the machined precision of the drones, the rivets and welds obvious in their frames, thick kevlar wiring running along the arms, gearing and tubes in the joints exposed to the world. Above, near the “face,” she made out thick tinted glass, and she realized they were occupied.

They struck before the Colony could react. The lead mech raised a robotic arm and pointed it at one of the soldiers who was busy disabling a drone. A burst of machine gun fire rang out and he crumpled to the ground, screaming as he fell. Another mech swept the group with fire, sending the Colony members who weren’t behind cover scattering. As they attacked, the coordinated hunting of the drones broke down.

Haojing got a close look at military discipline, who had it and who didn’t. One of the Colony soldiers bolted from behind his carbon fiber cover, heading for the woods. He made it about a dozen meters before he was cut down by machine gun fire. A few others cowered, shaking with every burst of gunfire.

But some others were strong and did not panic. One trained his lance at the lead mech, showering it with an electrical field. The effect was not as immediate or obvious as on the drone, and clearly the weapon had not been calibrated for this type of combat. But the mech shuddered, and its arm swung less surely, and when it returned fire, the soldier ducked beneath his cover and waited, unrushed, preparing to return fire. How they fought before, she wondered, as a group? If so, against who? Another soldier swung her own lance away from the drone she was tracking and took on the same mech. Before she really had time to grasp what was happening, there was a proper battle in front of her, some Colony members dying in gunfire, but others standing their ground and fighting back.

She noticed Simon was missing from his station, and then there he was dragging a thick crate out towards the battle scene. He looked exposed and vulnerable and she felt oddly concerned for him. But he moved deliberately, and in a moment several of the Colony members were unloading conventional weapons from the crate – rifles, grenades, what looked like a rocket launcher. And then a Colony member was launching a rocket at one of the mechs, and it flew past its target and exploded against the ground right next to her home, and suddenly she was panicked and running. Her house was no longer safe.

Each step was agony, but fear powered her steps, and she raced towards the house without concern for the carnage before her. As she neared she came eye to eye with a drone, loosed from its stasis by the fighting. It swung over and above one of the Colony’s tents and undertook its programmed scavenging routine, sweeping the tent with sensors and deploying its pincers in search of salvage. She might have laughed at the single-mindedness of their scavenging in the face of this struggle, but then another swung and attached itself to the face of her house as she had seen before. It latched its claws into the house hungrily, then deployed an arced welding torch and began excavating a hole in the second floor, cutting steadily through the house’s exterior. And now her panic was total, and she could only plunge into the house.

She found them all huddled together, in the dank and cold basement, her aunt shaking and pale, her cousins and young brothers crying. Mac was standing against the door, looking shocked and overcome. Long Fei hugged one of the younger boys, trying to comfort him.

“We need to get them out,” she shouted as she raced in. “All of them. Down the street. Now.”

“Outside?” said Mac. “Into the middle of all of that?”

“We don’t have a choice,” she said, grabbing one of her cousins up in her arms. “They’re going to blow this house apart.”

Right on cue, an explosion rang from outside, shaking the foundation around them.

“If the drones don’t tear it to pieces first.”

And then they were racing away from the house, she cradling a child to her breast in her good arm, her aunt and Mac each clutching a couple toddlers, the younger boys running behind them, Long Fei wheezing along. Gunfire rang out around them; Colony members barked orders and screamed in pain; pneumatic groans sounded from the joints of the mechs; electricity rippled the air. All she could do was hold the young boy close to her, shielding his face from the violence around them, and press on.

Somehow they arrived at the next house over. It was still too close to the fighting but she felt they had no choice. As they neared the building her heart was beating out of her chest and she felt she might collapse. She approached the door of her neighbors – it struck her suddenly that they had never really liked each other and it felt odd, incongruous and silly, to be coming to them in that moment – and she banged and shouted for their attention. No response came. Still holding her cousin next to her, she sagged where she stood.

“Mac,” she said.

“Right,” he said, and he placed the children he was lugging around on their feet, delicately, and the next moment he brought his boot up to the door frame and brought all the weight of his huge body down in a kick, and the door was off his hinges. They all spilled in, all of them, and Haojing found them face to face with the neighboring family, the father waving an antique rifle vaguely in their direction.

“We’re staying here for a while,” she said simply, hustling the rest of her crew through the door.

“Now listen –” said the man, gun shaking in his hand.

She grabbed the barrel in her good hand and pushed it towards the ground. He did not resist.

“If you don’t take us in, right now, without complaining, I promise I will kill you.”

He looked at her astonished, and she stood with her mangled arm drooping next to her side, all 5 feet of her, and he nodded.

“Okay,” he said, simply.

The children were crying, and one of them started to wheeze, and it struck her how little they had with them. He was panicked, they all were, and his breathing only became more labored, and soon he was doubled over and gasping for breath. Mac scooped him up in his arms and held him in concern.

“He needs his inhaler,” Haojing’s aunt said quietly. “It’s been bad for days.”

Before Haojing could respond, Long Fei was racing out the door.

“I know where it is,” he shouted behind him, and he was gone, racing towards the battle again. She yelled after him, in fear and anger, and peeled off to chase him. But she knew this was his moment, knew that he had longed to help in some way, even as she was intent on tracking him down. She was amazed at how fast he was moving, even with all his infirmity.

The drone had cut a large portal out of the side of their house, and a huge block of the side had fallen into the yard, and the upstairs sat exposed. She looked and saw the battle raging on. One of the mechs was billowing out smoke, lying on its side, and several drones sat in ruins around them, but the Colony’s numbers appeared to have been cut in half. She coughed in the smoke, and sidestepped to avoid ricocheting debris from the fight.

Up ahead of her, she saw her brother approach the house. He held his hand in front of his face, shielding it from heat and smoke. And as he took the final steps to head inside, an explosion rang out, sending debris flying everywhere, and a large piece of concrete disintegrated before them, and a piece of rebar as long as her forearm flew through the air and pierced Long Fei through his heart.