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“You’re too late to stop this, mate. You should have gotten on the train to salvation while there were tickets available. This place is filling up with weapons platforms and Cuban army. All I have to do is wait right bloody here until someone or something comes down here to shoot you dead.”
Now Zack smiled, himself heaving with exhaustion. “You and Hinton said something about a new order. Right?”
“Only for those of us who embrace the future.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t be concerning myself about your future.”
Quizzically, Wren said, “What does that mean?”
“Your robots have turned on the Cuban army here inside the building. They’re slaughtering each other.”
Wren shook his head, wiped away blood dripping from his right eyebrow. “You’re lying.”
“Cyrus is fucking up, left and right. And now you dumbasses are giving it to the Chicoms. One hell of a master plan that genius Hinton came up with.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Wren declared.
Zack drew his pistol, tossed it way behind him. Unarmed now, he said, “Then shut up and bring it, motherfucker.”
Wren charged him just as a new cart with a Super Sentry standing on it stopped at the station and the big metal arms began to whiz around them again.
•••
Larry Repult and thirteen other Ground Branch officers watched while the doors to both the northern and southern entrances of the Cluster Room were breached with heavy machine gun fire. The doors came down, and then three different types of LAWs began attacking the Cluster Room in waves, only to be repelled by the rapidly dwindling ammunition of the fourteen Ground Branch officers in the fight.
Smoke canisters bounced around the men who had moved behind big concrete colums, but with the pincer movement being executed by Cyrus’s platforms, Mike One knew his men wouldn’t be able to hold off this onslaught for long.
Into his mic he called to Pace and Travers. “We’re going to run out of ammo if these machines keep coming. We need those doors open downstairs so they’ll disperse and fight the Cubans outside!”
•••
As Anton Hinton sat at the workstation with Chris Travers’s pistol to the back of his head, Jim Pace called over the net from where he stood feet away. “Violator. How we doing on those doors down there?”
There was no response, so he spoke again, “Zack? You up on commo?”
Again, no reply.
When Travers said nothing more, Zoya spoke up from the door to the cage. “We need a team to go down and help them!”
But Jim Pace shook his head. “Negative. We stay put until the upload is finished.”
The men from the other teams showed up with their C-4, and while Travers, Pace, and the others stood guard, the Bravo Zulu men began setting the charges at the server, the terminal, and nearby mainframes.
Zoya said, “Just blow it up now, and let’s go!”
Hinton shouted out, “No!”
And Pace agreed. “Sorry, Anthem. As soon as we’re done here we will—”
“Court and Zack are fighting for their lives down there! Give me two men.”
Pace said, “Look, we’ll shut it down after the upload, the bots will deactivate, and he’ll be fine.”
Zoya looked around frantically, trying to come up with a plan. The man she loved was in peril, and she was doing nothing up here to help him.
•••
Court fought on the floor of the Control Room, struggling with a surprisingly strong and well-trained security man for control of an MP5 submachine gun. Both men were bleeding from cuts and contusions, neither had the advantage, and Court was certain this guy had been a member of the Black Wasps special forces unit, because he was something of a badass.
