Chapter 52 #2
Pouring additional power into his legs, he leapt off the ground, launching himself at the remaining gearheads. Two swung around and fired. He registered new damage to his torso casing, but he didn’t waste computing power to assess it. His only priority was to stop them from shooting at his wife.
Ronin’s momentum knocked the gearheads to the ground, and he fell with them. Despite the groans of protest from his hip, he swung himself up onto a knee and pivoted toward his scattered enemies, emptying his firearm into them.
The soldiers who’d followed him from the clinic fired at the remaining gearheads. Their gunfire drowned out all other sounds. When it ended, a heavy silence settled over the area.
Only two of the enemies were still moving. A prone gearhead with smoke billowing from its perforated casing extended a hand and dug its fingers into the ground. Actuators whining, it dragged itself a few centimeters forward.
Rising to his feet, Ronin tossed the assault rifle aside and approached the other bot—Warlord.
Warlord pushed himself up onto his knees. One of his optics was a gaping hole, and the synthetic flesh on his cheek had separated entirely from the bottom of his face, exposing the underlying plating and his teeth. His casing was riddled with bullet holes, and his clothes were in tatters.
He glared at Ronin. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Warlord’s jaw fell open with the first word and ceased its motion.
Ronin swung the AMR into his hands. “From what I’ve learned, so are you, Kevin.”
It was a battle to keep from turning around to find Lara. He needed to see her, needed to know she was all right, but the possibility that she wasn’t…
Warlord snickered, shaking his head. “Haven’t heard that name in years.”
The crowd moved in, slowly surrounding the pile of deactivated bots. Their anger charged the air with static. No one spoke.
Warlord ran his remaining optic over them, his exposed face plates oddly neutral in their positioning.
Ronin halted with three meters between himself and Warlord, leveling his rifle at his target. “It was yours, long ago. When you were human. Kevin Turner.”
A gasp ran through the humans, and the crowd murmured.
Warlord held still, his lone eye on Ronin again. “That supposed to startle me? Supposed to…jog my memory?”
“You had a family. People who cared for you.”
Where is Lara?
Despite the damage Warlord had sustained, Ronin couldn’t look away, couldn’t trust that Cheyenne’s deposed tyrant wouldn’t try to inflict more harm before he was shut down forever.
“Diane, Michael, and Liam,” Warlord responded.
“You remember them now?”
“I never forgot. Never forgot that humans and their war did this to the world, that it was mankind’s fault I never got to see them again, to hold them or touch them or hear their voices!
” He swung an arm in a harsh slashing gesture, disrupting his balance and pitching himself forward.
He caught himself by planting his other hand on the ground.
Ronin’s voice dropped low. “Did you forget the fear you put into your wife the last time you saw her?”
Warlord remained hunched over, propped on his arm, with his head down. The fluid dripping from the breaches in his casing looked unsettlingly like blood. “Do you believe in destiny, dustwalker? Logic says it’s all just a game of probability, but for all these pieces to fall into place…”
“You don’t think this is result of cause and effect? The consequences of your actions finally come to fruition?”
“I should. But there’s more here. The masterless warrior seeking to right the wrongs done by the local warlord, rallying the townsfolk to stand against him…it’s too much like an old story to be anything but destiny that brought you to Cheyenne.”
There was movement in the crowd behind Warlord.
Lara pushed her way to the front. Strands of hair stuck out from her braid, and her face was smudged with dirt and blood.
There were small cuts on her cheek and arms, and a larger gash near her shoulder.
Crimson stained her tattered clothing on her side.
But her expression was firm, her eyes determined. She offered Ronin a small, relieved smile, and dropped her attention to Warlord.
“I believe in fate,” Ronin said.
“You’re everything they’re not, dustwalker. They destroyed this world. They don’t deserve it anymore. We’re stronger, faster, tougher, smarter. We’re immortal. You’ll see it yourself, eventually. We are the future, and they’re nothing but a lingering curiosity on their way to extinction.”
“But you’re the one everyone is staring at, like a creature in a cage,” Ronin said.
Warlord lifted his head, meeting Ronin’s gaze. Seconds ticked by. The plates around Warlord’s mouth shifted subtly, and he threw himself upright, raising a rifle.
A single gunshot went off, and Warlord’s remaining optic exploded outward. Warlord’s weapon fired into the grass as he sagged forward onto the ground.
Lara stood behind him, pistol raised in both hands, her brows low. “Fuck you.”
Warlord laughed, struggling to rise on trembling arms. “Already did that, didn’t you?”
Ronin stepped forward, slamming a boot down onto Warlord’s back to force him into the dirt.
He fired the last round from the AMR. Its boom echoed across Cheyenne and into the Dust, lingering for five seconds in the ensuing quiet.
Blue fire poured from Warlord, igniting and extinguishing in a flash as his power cell burned.
Dropping the rifle, Ronin cancelled his automated diagnostics and dismissed the alerts informing him of the damage he’d taken. He turned toward Lara, intending to go to her, but she’d already come to him.
She leapt at him and threw her arms around him in a desperate embrace. Ronin caught her and held her close, burying his face in her hair.
Warlord’s reign had ended, and Lara was alive, in his arms. Her heat seeped into his skin, lighting up his sensors. The chances that he never would’ve felt her again, never would’ve held her again, had been so high…
He buried his fingers in her hair. “Lara…”
She pulled back, taking his cheeks between her hands. Her gaze swept over his face. Tears glistened in her eyes, but she smiled. “You look like shit.”
Ronin smiled back. “And you look beautiful.”
She laughed, and her tears fell before she pressed her mouth against his. Her lips lingered, caressing his, even as a sob escaped her. “I knew you’d be fine.”
“I had the best reason to survive.”
“All right everyone,” Captain Cooper called, claiming the crowd’s attention. “We’re clearing the hospital’s entrance. There are medical personnel inside, and more inbound. Whether you’re a bot or a human, if you are injured, please proceed to there for treatment.”
He approached Ronin and Lara as the crowd thinned. Bots and humans alike assisted the wounded in a slow, careful journey to the clinic, where soldiers were removing rubble and deactivated gearheads.
“Heartwarming as this is, you two need medical attention,” Cooper said, smiling. Maul and Chester came up behind him, the latter with several new holes in the front of his casing. His walk was labored, but steady.
“We’ll get to it,” Lara said.
“Thank you.” Ronin nodded to Chester. “Thank you for keeping my wife safe. We owe you everything.”
Chester grinned. “All I did was stand in front of some bullets. Not the hardest job I’ve had.”
Lara chuckled. “I would’ve done the same for you, except, you know. The death thing.”
Ronin laughed, though he didn’t find the joke particularly funny.
She was alive.
And so was he.