Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“Get that AMR up here, now!” Maul shouted.
In Ronin’s peripheral vision, a soldier scrambled forward with a long black rifle—an anti-materiel rifle, Ronin’s memory said.
The weapon didn’t come fast enough.
Comp charged at the entrance, making the ground quake with every heavy footfall. Whatever bullet riddled glass that remained shattered on impact, and the bot’s broad body clipped the doorframe, raining brick and plaster.
A cloud of dust obscured Ronin’s vision, but he still saw the barricade explode inward against Comp’s forward momentum.
The desk broke into countless pieces, and mangled chairs flew in all directions. Ronin ducked out of the way, but at least two soldiers went down. The heavy rifle clattered to the floor.
If the room had seemed cramped with all the soldiers packed inside, Comp made it impossibly tiny. The bot’s powerful arms swung, knocking a synth across the room and tearing down a portion of the ceiling. More dust and debris filled the air.
Muzzle flashes cast strange shadows in the haze, and the shouting and gunfire blended into an indecipherable cacophony. Ronin scanned Comp for potential vulnerabilities. The exposed cables of its neck were a potential target, but they were at least lightly armored.
Ronin leapt back from a flailing arm. At the edge of his optical field, the dark forms of gearheads rushed in through the devastated doorway. Stepping back, he turned toward them, raised his rifle, and fired. One of them slumped backwards, but another indistinct figure took its place.
The AMR fired behind Ronin, its thunderous shot easily distinguishable from the other small arms, followed almost instantly by a metallic pang. The actuators in Comp’s left arm whined. Sparks crackled inside its forearm, illuminating a large hole in the metal.
At the doorway, Maul and two other soldiers battled the invading gearheads with fists and firearms. An explosion from just outside rocked the room. Bits of shrapnel sliced into Ronin’s skin, while others bounced harmlessly off Comp’s casing.
A gearhead stumbled through the entryway, all its parts missing above the abdomen. Electric sparks and lubricant sprayed from the remains as they fell.
Unfazed, Comp lunged forward. Ronin twisted to evade its massive fist, but his hip locked, halting his movement. The blow glanced off his temple. It sent Ronin to his knees, filling his optics with static for a microsecond.
Despite his reinforced casing, the next blow would be Ronin’s end.
While he’d been retrofitted for combat, he knew through data he wasn’t sure he could consciously access that Comp had been designed for it.
Comp was a walking tank, built for situations just like this.
Its purpose had never been to guard doors, but to smash them in.
Bringing up his favorite images of Lara, of her vivid hair, her bright eyes, and her impossibly alive smile, Ronin raised his rifle.
The bouncer recovered from its swing, actuators groaning as it prepared another. The window of opportunity was brief. But just as Ronin didn’t want to exist in a world without Lara, he wouldn’t allow her to suffer a world without him.
Creaking, Comp’s neck cables adjusted, pivoting its head back toward Ronin.
The dustwalker’s CPU calculated the trajectories, and he fired twice within a tenth of a second.
Comp’s optics shattered.
Ronin rolled aside clumsily. A massive hand swept down, smashing floor tiles. Comp’s torso twisted, whipping its damaged arm in a wide arc that destroyed one of the overhead lights, and then it stepped forward, flailing.
The AMR boomed. A new hole opened on Comp’s chest plate, and the bot staggered, leaking lubricant and hydraulic fluid from the creases of its casing. Tendrils of smoke escaped from the narrow gaps around its neck cables.
Throwing its arms up, Comp slammed its hands into the ceiling and pulled. A huge chunk of the ceiling collapsed, falling atop Ronin and knocking him to the floor beneath immense weight.
Though he couldn’t see anything, Ronin both heard and felt Comp’s heavy footsteps as the bot thrashed blindly. His diagnostics indicated only minor damage to his skin.
Shoving off debris, he clawed his way free, emerging in a room that looked nothing like it had only moments before. The air was thick with dust, the floor was hidden beneath the detritus, and electric wiring and light fixtures hung around the edges of a wide hole in the ceiling.
Gaining his feet, Ronin crossed the rubble, his suspension system straining to keep him upright. The synth with the AMR was digging himself out of rubble when Ronin found him. The soldier handed the heavy rifle to Ronin without question.
Shouldering the AMR, Ronin took aim at Comp. Automatic rifles roared to his right, and bullets from outside whizzed through the lobby, embedding themselves in the interior wall.
Comp twisted and bent, smacking around chunks of rubble in a search for something to break. When the bot’s torso was exposed, Ronin squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against his shoulder as it discharged. He leveled the barrel and fired again.
The first shot caught Comp in the middle, and its torso ground to a halt.
The second bullet punched through the bouncer’s casing and hit its power cell.
Electricity arced from its eyes and joints, and flames licked out of the holes in its casing before Comp stilled, legs locking while its torso and arms sagged.
Ronin rose and turned his body fully toward the front door.
Maul and several bots stood strong, advancing in a walking line as they fired at the gearheads retreating outside, and more shots rained from the floors above.
Two of the fleeing gearheads fell before they could make it more than a few meters across the grass circle at the driveway’s center.
The battle had turned. The enemy had broken. They were no less dangerous, but their will to fight had shattered. Self-preservation had won out over their loyalty to Warlord.
Ronin turned the AMR in his hands. The weapon was familiar, though he’d never come across a functional one in all his time in the Dust. It had a five-round capacity. Drawing the charging handle back partway, he confirmed that a single round remained in the chamber.
So long as Maul had no objections, Ronin planned to use it on Warlord.
He crossed the rubble to reach the Sergeant. At least six gearheads lay in and around the doorway, deactivated. Four of Maul’s soldiers were unmoving.
“We need to finish this.” Ronin drew the AMR sling over his shoulder, stowed the heavy weapon behind his back, and loaded the last full magazine into his automatic rifle.
Maul nodded, and the flap of synthetic skin hanging from his cheek bobbed. He reached up, took hold of it, and tore it off. His jaw-plates shifted subtly. “Yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”
Ronin and Maul turned to face the others; several more soldiers had come down from the upper levels. Some had suffered damage to their synthetic skin and casings, others wore sheens of sweat and blood.
“Are you ready to show them what an attack looks like?” Maul asked.
The soldiers offered an affirmative shout in response.
It had only been one hundred and four days since Ronin met Lara, since his existence was irrevocably altered, but it felt like an eternity had passed. Now, this part of their story would be done. Warlord would be no more.
Ronin charged out of the building, leaping over the shattered remnants of the doors, walls, and ceiling. Guns roared in front of and behind him. His optics took in the chaos ahead, and despite the speed of his processors, he didn’t immediately understand what he was looking at.
The retreating gearheads had been intercepted by a group that had come from the south, a mob of bots and humans—Bravo Team and the residents of Cheyenne. Some fought the gearheads with firearms, but most wielded pipes, prybars, and all manner of improvised weapons.
Cooper and a group of soldiers advanced on the shrinking cluster of gearheads.
Warlord stood in the center of the enemy group, brows low over the bridge of his nose and lips pulled back in a snarl.
The gearheads fired into the crowd, heads turning rapidly to track their many targets, but their leader’s attention was fixed on one person.
Ronin followed Warlord’s line of sight with his own.
He glimpsed red hair behind a synth soldier named Chester, and his processors buzzed, nearly overloaded with anticipation.
The soldier shifted to line up a shot, revealing Lara.
She held a large pistol with both hands.
It jumped when she pulled the trigger, but she calmly brought it back down and aimed again.
Warlord stared directly at her, wearing his hatred plainly upon his face. He thrust a finger toward her and snarled, “Kill her!”
Though she was positioned toward the rear of the crowd, one of the most distant and obstructed targets, the gearheads swung their weapons toward Lara.
Had Ronin had a heart, it would’ve stopped at that moment.
“No!” Ronin pushed his legs faster. As the gearheads opened fire, he lined up his automatic rifle and pulled the trigger, sending armor piercing rounds into two of the bots’ heads.
At the edge of his vision, he saw Chester turn and sweep Lara into his arms, using his back as a shield.
Ronin’s audio receptors isolated the sound of Lara’s cry from the cacophony.
He couldn’t tell if there was pain mixed in with the distress and terror.
He knew only that there was no guarantee Chester’s casing would stop all the bullets.
Chester’s clothes tore, his skin broke, and his body shook with the force. He collapsed over Lara, catching himself by jabbing the barrel of his rifle into the ground for support.
“Lara!” Ronin shouted.