Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
The lights of Cheyenne, which were so out of place in the pitch-black wasteland that had once been Wyoming, illuminated a swath of the overcast night sky.
Ronin recognized the truth of the town now.
Cheyenne wasn’t a beacon of hope and security, but a monument to Warlord’s power and prejudice.
Its light was visible from kilometers around, projecting a challenge—I have what you do not.
Try to take it from me so I may destroy you and claim what was yours, too.
Outwardly, it was an imposing fortress, a stronghold no one could stand against. Ronin had single-handedly ended scores of reavers out in the Dust. Surely Warlord’s gearheads should’ve been able to repel even greater numbers from so defensible a position.
Yet despite its imposing appearance, Warlord’s wall was ineffective.
Alpha Team, led by Ronin and Sergeant Maul, had crossed the nothingness between the base and Cheyenne and walked directly into the wall’s shadow unopposed.
The irregularly placed guard towers on the north wall were empty.
Ronin couldn’t know whether it was arrogance or incompetence that drove Warlord to leave security so lax, but it didn’t matter.
If everything went as planned, all the gearheads would be drawn out soon enough.
As Ronin stood beside Maul in the darkness beneath the wall, his optics strayed toward the southwest. Somewhere, just under two and a half kilometers away, Lara and Bravo Team were arriving on the outskirts of the slums. Though Alpha Team was larger, Captain Cooper and some of his most experienced soldiers accompanied her.
That didn’t assuage Ronin’s fear of losing Lara.
“Time to get our sorry asses over this wall,” Maul said, slinging his rifle across his back. His was amongst the first faces Ronin had seen after arriving at the base. The sergeant had been one of the soldiers who’d escorted Ronin and Newton inside.
The other bots, Ronin included, stowed their weapons and stepped up to the wall. The human soldiers formed a perimeter, some of them equipped with old night vision goggles.
“Land gracefully, boys,” one of the humans whispered. A quiet snicker spread through the team.
“Break a leg, fellas,” a bot replied.
“Shut up.” Maul swept his optics over the group until they were silent.
“I’m not in the mood for any new ventilation ports.
” Turning back to the wall, he directed one of the synths to boost him up.
Most of the bots could jump high enough to haul themselves over the ten-foot-tall barrier, but doing so would’ve been too noisy.
The last time Ronin crossed the wall, he’d been running.
He thought he’d known true fear that day, had thought his concern for Lara had reached its peak, but the panic of their flight seemed so insignificant compared to what they’d faced afterward.
Her death had always been a possibility, but he’d never acknowledged it. Not really.
Before they left Cheyenne, he’d promised to keep her safe, fully confident in his ability to do so. It had only taken a few days to fail.
With the assistance of another bot, Ronin pulled himself up onto the wall, passing out of the shadows and into the artificial light.
The clinic loomed ahead, only made darker by the inadequate glows of the streetlamps on the nearby roads.
The surrounding land was covered in neatly cropped grass.
A line of fir trees separated the grounds from the rest of the bot district, though slivers of the houses beyond were visible through the boughs.
He swung his gaze southwest again, longing for even a glimpse of the ramshackle settlement beyond the wall. If he ran, he could reach Lara in minutes, could hold her and know she was safe.
Instead, he picked his way down through the bent lengths of steel, splintered boards, and cracked chunks of concrete protruding from the wall’s inner face. Perhaps it was meant as much to keep people in as it was to keep them out.
Ronin swung his rifle into his hands, still unaccustomed to the unfamiliar weapon’s feel, and joined the soldiers who’d already crossed the wall. They knelt along the rear of the clinic, expanding their perimeter as more men trickled over.
Within two minutes, the entirety of Alpha Team was crouched in the grass beside the building.
“Place is quiet,” someone remarked.
“Shh. Listen.”
The wind sighed through the trees and grass, and, farther away, howled over the vast, indifferent Dust. Closer, the clinic’s electric lights hummed.
Nearly lost amidst those sounds were two distinct voices engaged in conversation.
Ronin’s audio receptors isolated them, picking the words out from the background noise.
“My processors keep going around in circles. Going to wind up with a critical error at some point,” said the first.
Ronin recognized it as Reg, the synth who normally guarded the east road.
“I don’t understand why,” replied the other, voice crackling faintly with static that had nothing to do with the wind. “We’ve seen people come in from the Dust. Logic dictates that there are more settlements out there.”
“Logic dictates that even this place shouldn’t exist.”
“That logic is flawed. Have you run diagnostics lately? Your data might be corrupted.”
“That’s the whole problem. Logic dictates this place should not exist, yet here it is. If it’s here, there must be other places. But none of those places should exist, either. It’s going to fry my damned CPU if I don’t break the logic chain.”
“Why are we talking about this again, anyway? We’ve had the same conversation every time we’re stationed at this post together.”
“Because this post is dull enough that I worry my joints will rust and I’ll be stuck in this spot forever,” Reg replied.
“Another irrational thought process. We would—”
Ronin cut his audio receptors back to his immediate vicinity. “At least two gearheads, guarding the main entrance.”
“We can take one of these other doors,” someone suggested. “I count four from here.”
“No idea if they’re barricaded from inside or just locked, and my mapping only covers the active portion of the building. Maybe fifteen percent of the complex, at best.”
Maul shifted closer. “We’re going to have to deal with all these gearheads at some point.”
“Would be ideal if we had control of the clinic before we attracted attention.” Ronin ran his optics over their surroundings again. Everything was relatively still, relatively quiet. That only meant a raised alarm would be heard all too clearly by the bots deeper in the district.
“Yeah. So, we need to make this as quick and quiet as possible. Dodge and Dozer, you’re with me and Ronin. Time to introduce ourselves to our hosts.”
Two synths stepped forward. One was a slight female with short blonde hair and DOZER painted across the front of her helmet in thick black letters.
Ronin’s memory contained information on large, powerful, pre-Blackout machines called bulldozers, but it was fragmented, and he couldn’t guess if it was somehow related.
Seemingly sensing Ronin’s unspoken question, Maul said, “At some point before we were all wiped, someone modified her. She wasn’t retrofitted for combat, like a lot of us were, but her actuators are the most advanced we’ve seen. Might’ve been some experimental shit.”
Dozer offered Ronin a lopsided grin and fell into place behind Maul.
The sergeant gestured to the other soldiers. “Gracie, Eisener, Palitto, and Morrison, flank around the east side. Keep below the windows and stick to the shadows. I want you in position and ready to open fire if necessary.”
The group hurried off, disappearing around a corner.
“Rest of you, hold tight. Ears on for the signal to advance,” Maul said before pressing forward.
Ronin followed, his footfalls hushed over the soft grass.
Were Lara and her team in position yet? Was she safe? For several seconds, the urge to change course threatened to override his current processes.
Somehow, he resisted, crossing the lawn to the clinic’s brick face.
As he readied his rifle, he found himself missing the familiar grooves worn in the grip of his old firearm.
His prior weapon had served him reliably for fifty-seven years.
He knew his attachment to it was sentimental, and therefore irrational, but he couldn’t deny it.
Maul halted at the corner, pressed his back against the wall, and peered around it. This section of the building ran north-south, and the next was perpendicular to it. The front entrance was at their meeting point.
The sergeant turned his head toward Ronin and the others, lowering his voice so it was barely audible. “Two armed targets. Eighty-five meters between us and that door. And they’ll have optics on us the moment we leave cover.”
Ronin’s processors ramped up, tumbling through thousands of simulated approaches. Leaving cover was a necessity, and the highest chances of success afterward involved immediately opening fire on the guards.
But the consequences of doing so…
He stepped away from the wall, unslung his rifle, and held it out to Maul.
“The hell are you doing?” the Sergeant asked.
“Taking the most direct approach.” Ronin gestured to Dozer. “Give your weapon to Dodge.”
“You must be in the throes of a critical error,” she replied, stone-faced.
“Gunfire will draw attention. We don’t want that yet, not until we’re ready.”
“So, the answer is to walk up to them and ask if we can go in?” Maul asked.
Ronin shook his head. “No. She’s going to walk up to them, dragging me along.”
“And what will that accomplish, besides giving them some easy targets?” Dozer held her rifle across her chest, casually resting her left hand atop the handguard. It was an incredibly human pose.
“All the bots in Cheyenne come here for repairs. They see you dragging another bot with limited mobility up to the front doors, and their first reaction won’t be to shoot.”