S: Please be patient. You’re going to speak to him.
CHAPTER 18
We’re goners. We’re dead. We don’t have a prayer.
I jump to the left and Zia leaps to the right, but the T-90 tank inside the crater has already fired its gun and the shell is streaking toward us. It’s moving at three thousand feet per second, but thanks to my high-speed camera I can see the grayish, bullet-shaped projectile arcing over the shattered remains of Pioneer Base and rising toward our position on the crater’s rim. I can even identify the model of the shell—it’s a Russian-made 3BK29 round, packed with enough explosive to punch through a foot of steel armor. My databases have a ton of information about the weapon. I know exactly how it’s going to kill me.
I can still save Dad, though. I turn away from the shell and fold his body in my arms, putting all my armor between him and the projectile. Then I brace myself for the explosion.
But the shell misses my torso. It misses Zia’s too. It whistles between us and plunges into a gap in the wreckage, the same gap we barged through just three seconds ago. An instant later the shell explodes inside the stairway.
The blast shakes the ground, but the stairway’s concrete walls absorb most of the force. I manage to stay on my footpads while chunks of concrete ping against my armor. We’re lucky, incredibly lucky. Sigma tried to kill both of us with a single shot, but the tank shell missed us and the explosion closed off the top of the stairway. It may have even destroyed Pioneer 4A, the Sigma-controlled robot that was chasing us.
The noise rouses Dad from his stupor—he opens his eyes and clutches the steel arms that are cradling him—but he quickly slips back into unconsciousness. I have to get him away from the crater. The radiation levels here are still too high. And Sigma is probably reloading the T-90’s gun.
I start to run, heading for the mountain ridge on the western side of the basin. Zia runs alongside me, still balancing the steel beam on her shoulder joint.
“Look!” she shouts. “Up ahead!”
A half mile to the west is the runway where we trained with the Ravens, and beyond the runway is the hangar, a concrete building with an arched roof and big steel doors. The runway is cracked in several places, clearly damaged by the shock wave from the underground nuke, but the earthquake-proof hangar is still standing. I retrieve a memory from my files, an image of what I saw inside the hangar the last time I was there: a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, equipped with a neuromorphic control unit.
“Think we can do it?” I shout back at Zia. “Transfer to the helicopter and fly out of here?”
“We have to get it ready first. Open the hangar doors, push the chopper outside, unfold the rotor blades.”
“That’ll take forever. Sigma’s tank is gonna shell us before we’re done.”
“So we’ll split up. I’ll keep the tank busy.”
“How are you going to—”
“See you later, Armstrong.”
Without another word, Zia cuts to the right and circles back to the crater. As she approaches the crater’s rim she lifts the steel beam, holding it like a javelin. Then she hurls the thing at the T-90, which is climbing the slope below the rim. The beam hurtles end over end through the air and hits the tank’s turret with a resounding clang. Although the impact doesn’t even dent the T-90’s thick armor, it gets Sigma’s attention. The tank swings its main gun toward Zia, who tilts her torso forward and sprints to the north.
She’s psycho. She’ll never make it. But she’s drawing the tank away from me. She’s buying me some time.
In less than a minute I reach the runway. I stop in front of the hangar and rest Dad on the tarmac as gently as I can. Then I rip the hangar’s doors off their hinges. The Black Hawk is still parked inside, thank God, but as Zia predicted, it isn’t ready to fly. The long blades of its main rotor are folded and bunched together on top of the fuselage to make the chopper compact enough to fit inside the hangar. That’s why Sigma didn’t take control of the Black Hawk—the AI couldn’t get it ready. You need a person or a Pioneer to manually unfold the rotor blades.
As I stride into the hangar, my acoustic sensor picks up a distant boom. It’s the sound of the T-90’s main gun. A half second later I hear another boom, even more distant. It’s the detonation of a high-explosive shell. I want to rush outside to see if it hit Zia, but I stop myself. I have to focus on the helicopter.
First, I remove the chocks from its wheels. Then I grab the tow bar under the Black Hawk’s nose and pull the aircraft out of the hangar. At the same time, I turn on my data transmitter. I have an idea: I’m going to try DeShawn’s balancing trick again. I make copies of my files and send them to the Black Hawk’s control unit, stretching my mind so it can occupy both the Pioneer and the helicopter. Soon my thoughts are bouncing back and forth between the two machines.
As my Pioneer hauls the Black Hawk across the tarmac, I simultaneously scroll through the files in the helicopter’s control unit, which has all the instructions for operating the aircraft. Within seconds I’ve turned on the Black Hawk’s auxiliary power. Luckily, the fuel tanks are nearly full. Better yet, there are two laser-guided Hellfire missiles hanging from the chopper’s weapons rack. I’ll need them if I’m going to take on the T-90.
After I pull the helicopter onto the runway, I scramble to the top of its fuselage and start unfolding the rotor blades. But before I can finish the process, my radar detects an incoming object. It’s too large and slow to be a tank shell, but it’s heading straight for me, moving across the basin at thirty miles per hour. When I point my camera in that direction, I see it’s Pioneer 4A. The T-90 didn’t destroy it after all. It must’ve survived the explosion at the top of the stairs and clawed its way to the surface.
I feel a surge of panic. Turning my turret around, I focus my camera on Dad. He’s lying on the tarmac, unconscious and defenseless, while Sigma’s Pioneer races toward us, only a hundred yards away. I retrieve another memory from my files, an image of what Pioneer 6A did to Corporal Williams, the robot’s steel fingers coated with blood.
No! DAD!
Then I remember: I’m inside the Black Hawk’s circuits too and I can operate all its weapons, whether the chopper is flying or not. Desperate, I turn on the laser guidance system and aim it at 4A’s torso. Then I launch one of the Hellfire missiles.
A jet of flame erupts from the back of the missile, propelling it from the weapons rack. The Hellfire follows the laser beam to Pioneer 4A, but at the last instant the robot hurls itself to the ground. The missile flies right past it.
But while 4A is still sliding through the mud, I aim the laser again and launch the other Hellfire. Before the Pioneer can lever itself upright, the missile smashes into its torso. The explosion hurls pieces of the robot across the basin.
My fear subsides, but only for a moment. The T-90 fires its main gun again, and I turn my camera toward the noise. The tank shell hits the ridge on the northern edge of the basin and a cloud of smoke rises from the slope. But I don’t see any sign of Zia. Maybe she’s been blasted to smithereens, or maybe she’s just hiding behind one of the rocky outcrops on the ridge. Either way, there’s no time to lose.
I finish unfolding the blades of the Black Hawk’s main rotor. Then, while my Pioneer jumps down from the fuselage, I send a signal from the helicopter’s control unit to the turboshaft engines. As the tail and main rotors start to turn, I pick up Dad from the tarmac and climb into the Black Hawk’s crew compartment.