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Court rushed back to the window overlooking the courtyard, and then he knelt and used the barrel of his little pistol to move the curtain to the side.
Looking out the window to the left of the desk, he first saw that someone had popped a couple of smoke grenades. Through the swirling black clouds he could make out the lush foliage with the white marble fountain in the center, the mosaic tile and arched veranda running along the northern side of the space. He also saw guards lying dead, one crumpled on the grass against the fountain, a submachine gun sticking out of the water in front of his body, and the second, the man Court had watched get head-shot on the veranda twenty-five feet from the stairs. He lay flat on his back; his stockless pump shotgun lay across his chest and a scatter path of blood glistened on the mosaic tile behind him.
Doing his best to listen for the spinning propellers of another drone above, Court instead heard a different noise.
Several footsteps echoing on the tile somewhere in the swirling smoke below.
He lowered even more, just put his head in the corner of the window so he could see across the courtyard, and as soon as he did, he waved Zoya over.
She shut and locked the door, then ran over and knelt next to him, looking out the window. In the smoke on the distant part of the veranda visible to them here, two dark figures slowly emerged, one trailing the other a few feet to its right.
Zoya said, “What the fuck are those? Dogs?”
His voice was dark. “Man, I wish they were.” As the two figures emerged out of the smoke on the veranda, stepping onto the grassy courtyard near the fountain, they came fully into view.
THIRTY-THREE
Zoya squinted through the growing smoke until her eyes suddenly widened. Softly, she whispered, “Shut…up.”
They watched the two robots, both the size of extremely large dogs, and both with what appeared to be rifle barrels protruding from housings on the tops of their bodies. They advanced steadily, their movements at once awkward and graceful.
But the unit in back did not move the same as its mate in front. It seemed to be limping on its right rear leg. Still, it swiveled its hips to slew the rifle and cameras left and right, searching for targets, and it appeared to be very much still in the fight.
“Can we kill them?” Zoya asked softly.
“We can kill anything,” Court replied, but he didn’t know for sure.
The machines closed on the bottom of the stairs to the second floor, and then the limping unit broke off to go down a hallway to the left. The lead bot arrived at the stairs, rose slightly, and then a hatch popped open on its roof. As Court and Zoya looked on, the device fired a small canister out, straight up the stairs. With a clanking sound it hit somewhere out of view, and then with a loud hiss the canister bounced back down the stairs, spewing impossibly thick black smoke all the way.
The lead bot then began adroitly climbing the stairs, firing yet another canister up as it did so.
“Fuck me,” Court muttered, then rushed back over to Fitzroy.
The older man’s face was covered in blood, and his chest heaved from exertion and stress. He asked, “What do you see?”
“Rifle-wielding robot dogs.”
“Blimey,” he muttered. “Maybe you can use the smoke in the room to hide your escape.”
Court shook his head. “Won’t work. Those things are going to have thermal imaging, otherwise they wouldn’t be popping smoke like that. We have to destroy them or disable them, or we have to keep them back until they run out of bullets, juice, or time.”
Zoya knelt next to him. “What’s their battery life?”
Court sighed. “How would I know? I don’t even own a toaster.”
“Toasters don’t have batteries,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
Court looked back to Fitzroy. “We’ve got to go out this window to the ground floor. Can you make it?”
“What about Tudor?”
Court looked at the man. His eyes were unfixed. He bled from too many wounds for Court to treat before he had to deal with the attacking weapons.
To Fitzroy, he said, “Not a chance.”
Fitzroy nodded. “We at least need the name of that woman in Singapore. I’ll stay here and work on him.”
Court liked this idea. “Good. Zoya and I will take care of the threat.”
