Boss King and the Blade
Chapter 5 - You must be important to someone

Boss King

Boss King had ceased to be amazed at his new companion. Once she got over her initial jitters, she had climbed down the Thieves Run like an expert. He was positive he knew who she was now, or at least where she had come from.

Melody crouched at his side while they surveyed the sparsely occupied parking lot. Later in the morning there would be cars, vans and motorbikes everywhere, all paying a modest fee to Boss King for the privilege. Right now there were barely a dozen vehicles in the lot, and two of those were sinister black vans he suspected were with the intruders.

The black drones were still circling the Market entrances, keeping watch for the girl. Boss King couldn’t see the Drone Jockey from before, so hopefully he had joined his colleagues inside the Markets.

All of a sudden, the fire alarm sounded from within. It was a long wailing tone, warning everyone to abandon the Markets as quickly as possible. Boss King was confused for a moment, then he realised what was happening. Dami was dealing with the intruders and wanted everyone else to get out of the way.

People started pushing their way out from the exits, some clutching their shopping bags and others holding cash registers or money belts. It was a small exodus compared to a later morning crowd, but it suited Boss King’s needs perfectly.

“Okay, Melody, get ready to join the crowd” he told her. “Let’s pretend we are frightened shoppers”

A few confused and worried people came past their hiding spot, allowing Boss King and Melody to fall into step behind them. The man and woman headed to their parked van, chattering excitedly about the commotion and the gunshot. Their theory was undercover Police Auxiliaries were chasing some escaped criminal who had been cornered on the upper floors.

It wasn’t all that unlikely Boss King reflected as they kept pace with the couple. Lots of wanted felons and refugees ended up in the Hole. The place was infamous for this kind of thing, which always made it hard to try and run an honest trade here. Like extorting money from people who wanted to park their cars.

The couple had stopped at their van, noticing Boss King and the girl right behind them. They looked terrified for a moment, seeing the long machete at his hip, until he gave them a cheery wave and tugged Melody past them.

He thought they were clear, only twenty meters of open parking lot to cross until they reached the surrounding buildings, when a low black shape bounded towards them. It was a mechanical hound, a hunting model with a short gun barrel protruding from its sensor covered head.

“Stay behind me” Boss King warned his companion and swiftly drew his machete. What came next depended on the orders programmed into the dumb AI that operated this machine. With any luck it was set to capture and not kill, meaning he might have a chance against it.

The boxy head swivelled to face him directly and fired, a dull flash and boom as the gun shot at Boss King. Only his instinctive twist and a lot of luck saved his life, the bullet ripping across the shoulder of his jacket, tearing open the cheap wadding that filled it and sending it in a cloud around his head.

He roared in anger and rushed the hound, swinging his blade in a deadly arc. It tried to evade his strike, moving swiftly to the left and jumping high on its piston-like legs. Boss King reversed his blade mid-strike as he charged, catching the mechanical in the air. The Bonded Ceramite blade sheared cleanly through its torso, separating the body into two halves.

With a fading metallic whine the halves clattered to the tarmac, unable to function now that he had severed the brain from the rear battery pack.

“Gotcha!” he exulted, then whirled at a shouted cry from Melody. A second hound leaped and caught his right hand in its mechanical jaws, hurling him to the ground and sending his machete spinning away. He cursed in a fashion that would have shocked his mother, futilely trying to free his wrist from the metal jaws.

It had clamped on tight, locking the jaws so he couldn’t pull free and using its body mass to hold him down. This kind of drone was used to capture escapees, the head and forward body built to withstand the blows he rained on its unfeeling skull.

“Banzai Butterfly!” screamed Melody and swung his machete in a rising cut, making him yelp in terror as he snatched his left hand out of the way. The razor sharp blade severed the neck joint of the machine in one blow, covering Boss King in a spray of hydraulic fluid as the head fell off.

Melody barely paused, spinning on one foot to cut down a flying drone as it swooped in at her. Two more dove down from the sky in opposite directions to try and confuse her. The girl yelled her battlecry once more and leaped like a ballerina, the machete cutting one drone from the sky as she reached the limit of her jump. She cut the second as she came down, her descending body adding power to her lethal blow.

With a soft thump she landed on her feet, legs braced and balanced as she regarded the new swarm of drones surging across the parking lot towards them.

“If you are finished taking a break, we need to get out of here!” she told Boss King calmly.

“Uh, sure” he agreed and pushed the dead hound to one side. The head was still clamped around his wrist, the jaws locked in place. There was no way he could use his machete until he got this weighty lump prised loose. “Follow me” he said and climbed to his feet.

They started to run, aiming for the buildings that surrounded the parking lot. If they were lucky they could try and hide in a few places he knew of. Then the first drones swung around in the air ahead of them, with more buzzing in from behind.

Melody and Boss King stumbled to a stop, gazing at the dozen or more drones of various sizes that hemmed them in from all sides.

“Somebody really wants you” Boss King said from the side of his mouth. “You must be important to someone”

Melody gripped his machete tightly in two hands, holding it like a sword.

“I won’t let Archimedes take me” she replied. He could see her tensing her arms and legs, ready to leap into battle once more. Archimedes? he wondered to himself. Then he saw the new drones race across the morning sky, bright silver and red ones he knew well.

“It’s going to be Okay, Melody” he told the girl. “The Cavalry has arrived”

=====

Melody-Six

Melody had never seen a drone battle before. This was her first time and it was amazing and terrifying in equal parts!

Like a swarm of angry silver and red wasps, the new drones hummed into the attack. The black drones swerved and dived, two of them bursting open with flashes of blue sparks as they were ripped from the sky.

One black drone dashed at Melody, its hypo-injector aimed at her neck when a silver-red drone sliced into it, a long curved blade mounted across its front like a scimitar. The black drone tumbled away to the ground while the scimitar drone did a victory roll then accelerated back into the battle overhead.

“It’s Zeke, the best Drone Jockey in the Zone!” Boss King yelled to her. “I knew he wouldn’t be happy they sent all those drones onto his turf!”

Melody stepped closer to the boy, ducking once as a black drone raced at her. She was going to cut it down when another bladed silver-red drone zipped in neatly from the side, bouncing it away from them. The black drone wobbled a bit, like it was angry at the ambush, then got punched from the air by a second scimitar drone that hit it from behind.

“Zeke used to pilot combat drones in the last Global War” Boss King explained as they huddled low to the ground. “He was an indentured child soldier for the Northern Block. He told me once about the battles he fought in and I always thought he was exaggerating. The guy is a legend!”

The last black drone tried to escape, chased out of sight by half a dozen determined silver and red drones. A larger, heavier drone hovered down to face Melody and Boss King. Its black sensor eyes swivelled to regard them impassively.

“You kids alright?” came a man’s voice from a tiny speaker underneath the head.

“Yes, we’re fine thanks Zeke” Boss King declared. “Sorry about all the fuss”

“That’s Okay” the voice answered. “I was fast asleep when it kicked off, so my apologies for the delay” The drone tilted slightly, examining Melody with its inhuman eyes. “You may want to get a move on now, young lady. I’ll make sure there are no drones watching you while you get out of here”

“Except for yours?” Melody answered, wishing she could see who this Drone pilot was and if she could trust him.

“Zeke is one of the good guys, trust me on this” Boss King assured her. She nodded her head in reluctant agreement. With his right hand still gripped in the robot’s jaws, he grabbed her with his left hand.

“Come on, I’ll take you somewhere safe”

He led her across the lot, leaving the big drone hovering behind them. Melody spared one last glance at the remote then followed the boy.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“My place. Its time I introduced you to my mother”

=====

Mr August

He sat quietly in the black van, hidden behind tinted and armoured windows as he watched the various data feeds from the drones. The last signal died as it was cut from the sky, so August closed the datapad with a faint grimace of annoyance.

There were still the data streams coming in from his agents, but all bar one of them was even now heading back to one of the two vans they had arrived in. As for the solitary man left behind, he would deal with him soon enough.

Agent Michael-Two arrived first, opening the driver’s side door of the van and sliding into the seat. He was the most experienced Agent that had been deployed, so the success or failure of this mission rested on his shoulders. August outranked him of course, but he was only here to observe and report.

“I am sorry, Mr August” Michael-Two began as soon as he was seated. “The girl has escaped. Her signal has been masked somehow”

Other Agents began to open the rear doors and climb into each van. As soon as both vehicles had all the Agents aboard, minus one, they started up their electric engines and rolled smoothly away from the Markets.

“The Drones?” asked August in his flat, emotionless tone.

“One hundred percent losses, Sir” Michael-Two answered, letting the onboard dumb AI drive the van. “Both Drones and Hounds, before and after the incursion at the Market building”

“That is an unacceptably high loss rate, considering the mission was a failure” August responded without inflection. “What about the Agent left behind?”

Michael-Two swallowed and turned to regard his superior.

“Agent Vance-Nine was unfortunately too inexperienced for a mission of this nature” he replied. “He panicked and drew his weapon, resulting in a firearms discharge. No civilians were injured but he was subdued and captured by the local security officer”

“He has had Resistance training to interrogation, has he not?” August pressed his subordinate. “Can he hold out long enough for a recovery attempt?”

Michael-Two looked away, his cheeks showing a slight red flush of embarrassment.

“It is uncertain, Sir” he admitted unhappily. “If he is interrogated by a skilled operator he may give away some secrets”

It was August’s turn to grimace with a hint of sadness.

“Losing an Agent, even a poorly trained one, will reflect badly on the mission report” August said solemnly. “However I can see no alternative. Please activate the Termination of Service clause on Agent Vance-Nine”

“As you command, Mr August” Michael-Two answered. He took out a small datapad from his jacket and entered a coded series of commands. With a final glance at August, who nodded his agreement, he pressed the execute button.

There was a small ‘whump’ sound from the roof of the van as a swift remote was launched from the concealed launch bay. It flashed away into the morning sky, aiming itself at the towering Markets still visible in the distance.

“There is one small consolation, Michael-Two” August said to his Agent. “It appears that boy, the one who helped the girl escape, still has the head of the Retrieval Hound locked around his wrist. Make sure your operator keeps following the tracker built into the device. With any luck he will stay with her, giving you another chance for recovery”

“Yes, Mr August” he agreed.

=====

Dami Kane

As Chief of Security for the bustling Markets, Dami had been in plenty of fights. She had gone up against drug-crazed thieves, gun-toting Freelancers and even rogue Sentinels under the command of a Scanner.

What she had never encountered before was an obviously well dressed guy in a suit who gave off no emotions at all. It was like the man was actually a cleverly made robot built to look like a person, even down to the little trickle of blood coming from the side of his head.

That injury had been sustained when Dami had crash-tackled him from behind, using her powerful metal arm to lock his gun at his side. Both of them had hit the concrete floor hard, but Dami had made sure she was on top.

“Come on, just give me a name or show me some Ident and this will go a lot easier” she told the blank faced guy one more time.

His handsome features, Japanese or Korean she guessed, gave her nothing back. He kept his eyes fixed forwards, staring at nothing, while he sat almost completely immobile. If it wasn’t for the gentle rise and fall of his chest, she could have been talking to a life-sized statue.

“The Police Auxiliary will be here soon” she warned the guy. “They won’t ask their questions as nicely as I have”

She sat back on her desk, pondering why this man and his accomplices had come to the Markets. They had obviously been chasing someone or something and she was certain it had to do with Boss King and that girl from yesterday.

There was a crash outside her office and she heard one of her team, Willow it sounded like, squawk in alarm. Dami pulled her Stun Baton from her waist and headed to the door. She was almost there when the thin plastic partition had a hole busted through it, a slim machine slipping rapidly into the cramped room.

Dami jumped backwards, hitting her over-stuffed shelves of case notes and evidence and collapsed to the floor. She recognised the dangerous machine only from the news feeds, an Assassin Drone used against politicians and the like. It scanned the room and rotated to face the suited prisoner.

“Come on, get out of there!” Dami screamed at the guy. He just stood up calmly, facing the remote weapon.

“Forgive me, Hive Father” he said. Those were his last words as the drone fired a slim silvery dart into his chest. He convulsed once, then fell lifeless to the floor.

Dami yelled and swung her baton at the device, sending a massive surge of voltage into the killing machine. It sparked and dropped to the floor as well, landing not far from its victim and as equally lifeless.

“Boss! Are you Okay?” called out Willow from the main office.

“Yeah” she answered, catching her breath. “Can you call the Police Auxiliary and tell them they don’t need to arrest anyone now. They can just send the Morgue team”

“Sure thing, Dami” Willow replied. “Anything else?”

“Call Zeke Tao on the upper floor. I think I need to discuss some things with him”