Departure – May Dawney

Even the meager supplies they got were air dropped in by drone. The EMP blasts Mara must have rained down on the bots had most likely short-circuited some tiny print plate somewhere deep in the mechanism and the result was so overwhelming to behold that for a moment, Kari forgot everything around her as she tried to wrap her head around it.

“Kari, run!” Her attention was pulled back to Mara, who had somehow managed to down one of the giants with nothing but a lead pipe and the plasma gun she was so famous for. “What are you doing?” She knew Mara couldn’t hear her across the distance, and that her shout would probably make Mara’s ears ring through the implant, but she couldn’t help herself. Seeing her here, where Mara shouldn’t be, was impossible to wrap her head around.

“Saving the ship!” Mara thrust out her free arm and the plasma gun fired out a shot of magnesium fire pilfered from a mechbot at an earlier date. It tore straight through the hip joint of one of its brethren and its leg went out from under it. A small earthquake accompanied its fall. Kari ran. “Bag. Base. New timer.” Mara smashed in the mechbot’s vision sensor, then ran away from the strut, deeper into the Zone.

The remaining bots followed. Mara’s hurried words spurred Kari on. The hope they represented gave her wings. If she could rig the timer into the bomb, she wouldn’t have to set it off manually. She wouldn’t have to die. While she pulled herself crossed the square, Kari pressed the transmitter button. “Go back to the airlock! Go back in!”

No reply. Kari spotted the promised bag at the base of the ladder and grabbed it with one hand while she gripped a rung with the other.

The whir of robotic joints haunted her every step. No matter how many steps of her own she took, the steady sound got closer. Her lungs burned and her muscles screamed. She thought of a million ways to escape her pursuer and rejected them all. There was no way to escape a K9.

Kari jumped down a ledge without checking what lay below; she didn’t have time to think of anything as trivial as ensuring her safety. She landed hard, rolled, got up, and ran. Her body armor took most of the blow. Six seconds passed before she heard the thud produced by the mechbot’s landing.

Its pistons hissed as they relegated the impact force. Panic set her veins ablaze. There was nothing she could do, nothing but run. She had a goal and she’d make it to it. After that, the K9 could kill her. All that mattered was blowing up the damn docking clamp. Whir, tap. Whir, tap. Whir, tap.

Whir, tap. One full movement. She glanced behind her in search of the tell-tale glowing green of her mechanical hunter’s eyes, but for now, she had reprieve of its gaze. Her foot caught behind something and she went down. Pain seared up her chin and jaw. Her fingers came away bloody.

Up! She scrambled like a newborn lamb. Run! Whir, tap. Whir, tap. Whir, tap. Whir, tap. Three seconds. The search lights on top of the Wall swept the street as she squeezed through a crack in the building’s shell. Her skin flared wherever she’d scraped it past the organic “concrete” and metal reinforcement bars the Auent used to build their houses.

She knew the K9 wouldn’t fit through the crack, but the thought offered no reprieve, because it would find a way around. K9’s were equipped with military grade scent modules. It would track her without pause. She ran as fast as her desperate desire to stick to the darkest shadows allowed her to. “Sergeant McCaine, come in.” Mara—“Colonel Anderson” now; not that she had time to be bitter— came in through the bone implant behind her ear.

Her voice was distorted by interference. This close to the Wall, it was a miracle the signal had gotten through the jammers at all. It was just her luck that Mara was her team’s direct commander for this mission—but of course, if she hadn’t been, they’d never have crossed all the boundaries they’d crossed together.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 452cc2d583bbc26b
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 359,900 bytes (0.343 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 26
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 40.39 minutes
• Total Words: 8,078
• Total Characters: 44,691
• Average Words per Page: 310.69
• Average Characters per Page: 1718.88

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