“Be ready to move, Tycho.”
I saw a flash of light. “Go, go!” Andrea yelled.
I ran out shooting, fanning my weapon from side to side. I caught a glimpse of the androids as I barreled by. It looked like there were more than two, but it was hard to tell for sure with their thermoptic camo. I dropped behind a freight loader, knowing they could probably shoot through almost anything with those beam weapons. I was faced with the option of waiting to die behind ineffective cover or engaging the enemy and dying in the open.
What was the saying? Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate.
I rose up from behind the freight loader and retaliated. I started firing to the left of where I expected the androids to be. My first few shots slammed into the bulkhead wall on the other side of the dock, but then there was a shower of twisted metal three meters in front of me. A Jovian military android carrying a beam weapon rippled into view as it fell to pieces. I saw an arm spin away, followed by its head and a section of its torso. Just like my bullets, they all seemed to arc to the right before dropping to the floor and skittering across the dock.
The other androids almost seemed startled, if that’s even possible. One way or the other, they didn’t seem to do anything for a second or two, they just stood there so still I couldn’t even make out the telltale thermoptic distortion in the air.
Not until they all turned and started firing at once.
I threw myself behind cover again, but this time I was able to catch a glimpse of what formation they were using. It was hard to be sure, considering that they were nothing but vague shimmers in the air, but the positioning seemed to track.
“Jovian Alliance proxies. They’re using Turtle formation,” I said.
“Are you sure?” asked Li Fei.
“Three meters from me. Use the dead one as a marker.”
“Copy that.”
He popped out from behind another mooring arm further down the dock. He fired a short burst and got under cover again. This time the androids all responded with an extended barrage, which forced us to keep our heads down. The second beam weapon was still in play, so we had to be cautious.
“I got one,” Li Fei announced. “Looks like there are four left. One directed energy weapon, the rest standard ballistics.”
Veraldi’s voice came through. “They’ll change to Box formation.”
“I’m on it.” This was Andrew Jones, who opened fire a moment later. “Shit, I missed.”
“Change positions, Jones!” Raven called out.
Li Fei’s voice was sarcastic. “Jones?”
In the middle of a firefight, the man had still noticed when Raven used the real name of one of our people. The beam weapon sliced through the air as soon as he said that, followed by Andrew’s voice.
“Holy shit, that was close!”
There was another burst of fire, although I couldn’t tell if it was from their side or our side. The androids had the advantage, even though they had only killed one of us while we had so far killed two of them. They had us pinned down, and at least one of their weapons could go right through our armor. They were using standard military small unit formations, and they had the space completely covered.
Andrea didn’t seem to think they were winning, though. “We need to take out the android with the beam weapon first.”
“Agreed,” Li Fei replied. “But how? If it sees us, it will kill us.”
The androids weren’t firing continuously, a tactic that might have been a much bigger problem for us. Their combat logic seemed to be based strictly on sight cues, with a limited ability to extrapolate where the target would be after dropping out of sight. I’d succeeded in running right past them without being hit.
“I can come up,” I volunteered. “Then one of you can take the shot.”
“No way, that won’t work,” Raven said.
“I think it’s worth trying,” Li Fei replied. “I’ll back you up.”
At first I was surprised—the guy hated me, after all—but then I got it. If he backed my play, he improved his own odds of survival while possibly getting me killed at the same time. It was a win-win situation for him.
“That’s the best plan we’ve got,” said Andrea.
“Okay, then. On three. One…two…”
I came up shooting on “three,” and I ran down the dock for new cover. The android with the beam weapon wasn’t facing me when I popped up, but it turned as I went running by. I dove for the floor, and the energy beam sliced through the air behind me. I waited for what felt like forever, but a fraction of a second later Li Fei cut the thing in half with gunfire.
“It’s done. There are three of them still standing.” His voice was still neutral, but it had lost a little of its cold anger. The android responsible for Mike Mitchell’s death was now just as dead as he was. The universe made at least that much sense.
“Let’s clean it up.” Andrea sounded confident, but then the three remaining androids opened up with their own weapons all at once.
“I have them,” said Raven, and she came out of hiding shooting. The first shot to connect hit the android in the head and sent it pinwheeling into the airlock door. The second shot went through another android’s chest and knocked it onto the floor. It kept firing until its magazine was empty, but it never moved again. The third shot went through the remaining android’s neck, mostly severing its head from its body. It stopped shooting and blindly walked forward until it hit a wall and went still.
Raven had aimed her weapon progressively lower and further off to one side with every shot, and I realized later that she was correcting her aim on the spot. At the time it just seemed like divine intervention. It was an impressive show of marksmanship to take out three androids with exactly three shots under those conditions, but I would have expected it from her.
“Nice work, Robin.” Andrea stood up from hiding, followed by Li Fei and then the rest of us.
Li Fei seconded her words, but with the sarcasm I’d come to expect. “Excellent shooting, for a Section 3 agent.” As a pure intelligence unit, Section 3 is not exactly known for fielding high-level sharpshooters.
“Let’s not waste even more time,” Capanelli began. “We need to get on—”
The ship’s thrusters burned to life and the dock gate began to part. Either someone on the Havisham had managed to hack the system and rescind the lockdown, or someone on Llyr Station had gone up to the bridge while we were fighting the androids.
“Move!” she shouted. “We need to board that ship!”
The mooring arms pulled away and the ship began to drift forward in preparation for takeoff. As I started to run, I heard the Arbiter Commander over our shared channel.
“They’re trying to run, Li!”
Li Fei replied from behind me. “I’m on it, sir!”
I ran for the airlock, knowing that the ship couldn’t develop any real velocity until it cleared the station. Even so, it was a desperate sprint to catch it anyway. The Havisham was eclipsing me and getting faster with every passing second. I came up close enough that I thought I could make the jump, and I took the opportunity. Li Fei followed suit, and both our mag boots gripped the side of the ship at almost the same moment.