We all reassembled a half hour later, Mitch, George, Ricky, Megan, Hwang, their lieutenant; whose name I did not know and was not going to ask because I was already dealing with too many names; who was a six foot tall asian man with black hair, Carolina and Doctor Smith.

  “Okay.” the lieutenant started. “This is how we are going to do this. Hwang, Rekki-Ricky” I once more cringed a the translation, and I noticed that Carolina did as well.

  “You two carry the cable that we've put together, it's already plugged in on this end, so we just need to get it hooked up to Captain Cofey's ship. Mitch and Megan, you will be hauling this tarp...”

  He held up a big tarp that looked like it would be used to cover up aircraft in a hanger somewhere.

  “Over our heads to keep us from getting popped by angry cars. Me and the doc” He nodded to Doctor Smith, who I now realized had an assault rifle shouldered just like everyone else. He had also at some point ditched his lab coat.

  “Will be taking down any robots that get close. I have tasked the rest of the platoon with covering us from elevated positions within the building. George, you help out wherever you can, if someone drops the tarp, grab it, someone trips, help em up.” The lieutenant finished. I was rather impressed, concise, logical instructions.

  I raised hand with a single finger pointed up, with a question.

  “Yes Captain Cofey?”The lieutenant asked, looking wary.

  “Have you taken steps to ensure the rest of the platoon won't get splatted by aircars? All it takes is an instant of facial recognition and they'll torpedo your boys.”I pointed out. I really didn't want any more people dying for this, the soldiers so far had been decent enough to me.

  “I have advised the rest of the platoon to cover their faces and if possible cover their firing positions, but I have also advised them to abandon their positions if they detect any inbound aerial assaults, so we likely will not have cover for long if wrapping their faces does not work.” The lieutenant said professionally. He also seemed to have a different accent than the others, though that was all on me to detect, my translator worked fine.

  I was wary of this, it was likely the vehicles could tell if someone was simply wearing a hoodie, it would be a basic safety measure, but a this point I wasn't going to quibble, we needed to get this done and over with, and the longer we stayed here the longer the vice-president and the deaconess could plot to do something to us.

  I stood over by the controls, and in my head I was going over one last countermeasure, checking my connection with my suit to make sure it was ready.

  “Alright, I'm gonna hit the open, wait for all of you to move out, then hit the close and come and join you.” I said, but Carolina interrupted me.

  “Nope, you are going to be at the front of the group so you can let them all into the ship as soon as you get to it, I will open and close the door.” Carolina interrupted, and shouldered me aside.

  “What? Why?” I asked, taken aback.

  “Because whoever opens the door is going to have to sprint to catch up to the group and your legs may just randomly stop working.” Carolina said, her tone like that of a disapproving elder sister who had just caught you about to do something stupid.

  I just nodded and moved over to the gaggle of snickering soldiers, defeated, while Carolina took her place by the control panel, familiarizing herself with it before nodding to the rest of us. Hwang choked back her laughter with a snort and patted my shoulder, managing to make me feel even more like a stupid little brother. Her shit eating grin didn't help matters.

  Hwang and He-Whose-Name-Causes-Pain were carrying a pretty massive spool of wires that had apparently been spliced and connected end to end by electrical tape, all wrapped around what looked like a reel from a fire hose repurposed into a spindle for the cable. It looked like there were more than a hundred segments of wire joined together like this, and I felt a little skeptical that it would hold up to the run we were about to do.

  Megan and Mitch took position on either side of the group, holding up their tarp. I stood behind all four of them and held up my hands to help prop up the tarp. Their lieutenant was standing by me with doctor smith, each of them with their weapons at the ready, and George stood behind us, almost out of the tarp.

  “Alright, ready?” The lieutenant looked over at Carolina, who looked at me, prompting me to nod at her, and her to nod to the Lieutenant(our mistrust was making things complicated).

  Carolina tapped her wires together and we set off, tarp billowing behind us, Carolina rushing to catch up.

  The sky was beginning to darken, and long shadows were beginning to play across the tarmac, giving everything a sinister air.

  I was doing my best to maintain the pace of the military members, but every time I moved my left leg, my entire left side really, I heard motors whining, and there was more resistance than there should have been. My suit had been abused heavily and my HUD said it was running out of onboard power, it was a good thing we were going to be aboard my ship soon.

  Carolina was sprinting up behind us as the doors closed behind her, coming in right beside me under the tarp.

  I huffed out “So far so good.”

  “You think?” Carolina asked.

  “Well, if any of the airships... cars... whatever had spotted us, we'd be paste by now, so... yeah.” I huffed out.

  It was at this moment that Dr. Smith's weapon barked to my right, followed swiftly by him calling “INCOMING!”

  On our right more than a dozen robots were hurling themselves towards us.

  The lieutenant ;I feel bad about not getting his name; moved over to the same side as the doctor and began firing as accurately as he could while maintaining pace with us and staying under the tarp.

  I was rather impressed by his accuracy as first one, then another, then a third of the robots fell.

  But they were closing with us rapidly.

  I looked to Carolina and nodded to the two running and carrying the reel, each of them having shouldered their rifles on the shoulder opposite the reel.

  She nodded to me and we both powered forward.

  I got up beside Ricky-Rekki and said. “NeedToBorrowYourGunOrWe'reAllGonnaDieThanks” I rapid fired out of my mouth as I snatched the rifle from him and brought it up to my shoulder.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the safety, or rather my implants helpfully highlighted it for me, flicked it till it clicked twice, and then sighted in on the oncoming robots while telling my suit to maintain pace with everyone.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  It's actually rather impressive how accurate you can be on the move when you don't actually have to focus on moving your legs. Even if one of said legs was a little worse for wear.

  My suit kept me limping enough to prevent me from coming completely out from under the tarp as I squeezed a burst of fire out of the gun; I had been expecting auto fire, but apparently this weapon had a burst fire mode and I had swapped to that instead. My implants AR display was not that detailed.

  My first burst went wide, but after I was able to nail three of them in rapid succession.

  Between us, I had gotten three, Carolina had gotten four, the doctor had taken down the first one before his weapon apparently had a jam, and the Lieutenant had gotten three, the same as me.

  Unfortunately that left one.

  The robot reached us and leapt at Doctor Smith, hurling him to the ground and fighting to get access to his chest.

  “Keep Moving!” The Lieutenant called out, coldly. The rest of the group looked at the doctor but kept running.

  I had other plans.

  I reversed directions and ran back to the doctor, out from under the cover of the tarp and skidded on my ass to a stop, my feet touching the doctors shoulders as I brought up my rifle and blew the robots chest cavity apart.

  I quickly;for me; got to my feet and moved to help the doctor up.

  Then I heard it.

  Engines screaming towards me.

  I looked up and saw the aircar in a dive towards us.

  And activated my final countermeasure.

  ***********************************************************************************

  My suit screamed at me as transmitters overloaded and processors fried themselves enacting my command, sending reams of data flooding out from it.

  The effect was immediate, the aircar heading for us promptly fell out of the air and hit the ground.

  And started bouncing.

  Doctor Smith who had gotten to his feet by this point half dragged and have threw hurled me along with him.

  “Move!” The good doctor shouted.

  I did my best to move with him, but my suit was well and truly buggered by this point, the connection in my spine feeding me no more than a string of error signals about system failure.

  This had the unfortunate effect that I no longer had any assistance with my legs, so my 'run' was more of a graceless stumble.

  I saw the aircar tumbling towards us, and realised that we weren't going to make it. I thought about pushing the doctor away, but he had an iron grip on my shoulders and there was no way I was going to overpower him.

  A moment before the two of us were to face our grim, probably messy, death, an even firmer grip attached itself to my waist and I felt myself bodily picked up. George had gone for me as soon as I had turned to get the doctor apparently, and had simply picked me and the doctor up onto his shoulders and was currently sprinting, also wheezing, towards the rest of the group.

  “The hell was that?” The lieutenant asked as George caught up and placed us both onto our feet. The doctor's iron grip hadn't slackened the entire ride, which I was thankful for as my left leg was completely limp and I nearly fell over without his help when I was put down.

  “Last ditch effort. Flooded the air with conflicting commands, shutdown orders, override orders, anything and everything I could think of that wasn't blocked in the bot I hacked and sent it through every transmitter I had.”

  The lieutenant looked up as another aircar crashed to the ground.

  “And you didn't do this before because?” The lieutenant asked.

  “Cause it burned out my suit, I have fuck all functionality anymore. Can barely walk. Also, I only got a few.” I pointed at aircars cirlcing further out, even as another of the nearer aircars hit the ground with a resounding thud, followed by an explosion.

  “Was meant to be a hail mary move if I got separated. Which I did. Sort of.”

  The lieutenant shook his head and angrily looked at the three of us, then over at George. “Good job George.” Before refocusing on what was ahead of him.

  We reached the ship soon after, Doctor Smith half carrying me as we ran. I had gotten some feeling back in my legs, but I was unsteady and keeping up more than a walk without help was just not in the cards.

  Hwang and Rekki-Ricky were looking for somewhere to plug in, but I shoved them aside and rammed my little wanna-be-USB into the slot right next to the airlock and forced the outer door open and woke the ship to full combat status. Thankfully it seemed the USB could bypass most of the suits damage and connect directly to my implant, though it was screaming errors at me the whole way. I also connected to the ships wireless protocols and started checking on things.

  “Everyone in.” I said. I had spotted a horde of robots rapidly approaching us, closer to a hundred than the dozen that had approached us before.

  “But the cable...” Hwang started.

  “Live first, connect later!” I shouted as the airlock cycled open, Hook sending me a bunch of updates of what had happened while I was gone, mostly repairs.

  We rushed inside the airlock, I disconnected and reconnected into a new plug on the inside, Hwang hauling the cable in with her.

  “Won't the door sever the cable?” Megan asked.

  “It would if I were to let it close.” I said, overriding dozens of safety messages that told me I shouldn't do what I was doing.

  I could hear the robots getting closer.

  I pushed through the last override and the interior door of the airlock opened while the outer was still open, sending off a cascade of alerts and lighting off amber alert lights all along the interior of the fabricator we now found ourselves in.

  “Go go go!” I yelled.

  Hwang tried to move in with the cable but I held up a hand and said “We need to plug it in there!” I pointed at a plug in the wall.

  She hauled it the reel over closer but then dropped it, her hands shaking. The heavy metallic slam cluing me in to how much she had been carrying, and the marks on her hand told me all I needed to know about whether she'd be able to perform the delicate next step.

  “George, or Mitch, or someone, get this plugged in here!” I said as I pointed at the larger than standard connection point I had been planning to plug this thing into.

  George tried to plug the cable in as Hwang joined the other's. She brought up her rifle in time with the other soldiers; Except for Ricky-Rekki, whose rifle I had stolen and then discarded in my attempt to save the doctor.

  The timbre of the approaching robot feet changed and I knew they were on the ramp, almost upon us.

  I cut through the streams of error messages and forced the inner airlock doors shut, but they were moving too slow. Forcing them to open at the same time as the outer doors had resulted in some shared component between them breaking, and they were juddering closed only slowly.

  The soldiers opened fire, the noise deafening in the halls. A dozen robots fell in the airlock.

  And a dozen more made it through before the doors closed.

  Three more were ripped apart and fell before the absolute worst thing that could happen in this situation happened.

  The soldiers ran out of ammunition. All at once.

  The first person they reached was George, who was focusing on rotating the plug to try to get it to connect. They bowled him over and his head slammed into the wall with a sickening crunch that made my stomach flip over.

  Rekki-Ricky dived forward and grabbed George's rifle, spraying the robots while falling back to the rest of the reloading squad.

  Right past me.

  They had been backing up in a formation, keeping up fire, and I was trying to keep up, but in the chaos they outpaced me, and as soon as the fullisade of fire stopped I felt a grip clamp down on my leg and pull me down. I looked up at Rekki-Ricky running past me, and for a moment I saw a glimmer of determination, but then his eyes tracked behind me, and that determination faded to something like grief.

  It's weird how much you can process at once when you are about to die, implants or not.

  “You are in cardiopulmonary distress, commencing resuscitation, please hold still, I am here to help.” The robot above me said, as it placed both of it's mechanical hands on my chest.