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And then she heard the thudding sound of four approaching footfalls, coming from the hallway on her right, and she knew she wouldn’t be out of the line of fire for long.
Frantically she lunged again for the shotgun.
•••
Hunter/killer drone Hornet Nine Eight patrolled just a dozen meters directly above the mansion’s steeply angled roof; its internal brain was fed data six hundred times per second from all the other integrated units present at the location. Its own camera inputs fueled its processors, as well, and the device scanned straight down towards the balcony, looking for any targets in the billowing black smoke there.
An ISR drone inside the building had turned up no targets on the portions of the second floor it was able to gain access to, so it began heading down a back stairwell, while the other Hornet bot was now in descent, responding to Greyhound One Two’s input that a figure had moved on the ground-floor veranda.
Hornet Nine Eight locked on open flames licking out the shattered window below as the fire seemed to move farther out onto the balcony. The drone switched off its infrared camera in favor of night vision, then switched that off as the contrast from the inferno below flared out the camera.
Finally settling on its regular optical camera, the machine focused on the balcony, and in the flames it registered irregular movement as something on fire emerged quickly through the smoke.
With the camera and the computer locked on to the unidentified apparition below, the classifiers in the machine’s brain identified the movement as that of a humanoid running while engulfed in flames.
The human in motion had not been designated as a target yet; facial recognition was unable to capture and process the face with all the distortion from the fire and smoke. Nor was the human an obvious threat to the Hornet, so the hunter/killer drone simply tracked the movement as it tried to absorb more data about the unknown subject.
But then, crashing into metal deck chairs in the center of the balcony, not three meters from the railing, the flames dissipated around the upper torso of the figure, and instantly the AI brain on the drone made its identification and its determination.
Target Gama 19 acquired. Prosecute.
The Hornet switched from a patrol hover to terminal attack dive in an instant, and it began rocketing towards the figure below it.
•••
Court’s skin seared as he ran. He crashed into heavy furniture but kept his feet and kept moving, knowing he had to get into the pool before he burned to death or was slammed on the head by a warhead-carrying killing machine.
Springing up onto a glass table, he took a second leap, pushing off as hard as he could with his back leg, and then his front foot landed on the top of the railing.
Above him in the air he heard the screaming of propellers, confirming his fear that he’d be targeted by an explosive kill bot. He launched off and out, his skin scalding, and he flailed his arms and legs for distance until he began dropping like a rock.
Court tucked his legs in, covered his head and ears with his arms, and shut his eyes tight.
Impacting headfirst with the surface of the deep end of the swimming pool, he went under, shot down, and his back hit the concrete bottom just as the hunter/killer drone three meters above him slammed into the water’s surface.
The bot detonated on impact.
The blast couldn’t reach him through the water, but even with his hands over his ears the concussion was stupefying. He felt debris rain down on him, no doubt pieces of the drone and shrapnel from the warhead.
The worst of the burning sensation that had covered his body cooled and melted away almost instantly.
Finding himself to be largely unhurt, he pushed off the bottom of the pool, breaking the water’s surface at the eastern side, where he grabbed the edge as he rose.
Court heaved himself up and out of the pool with all his might. Landing feetfirst on the pool edge, he began running towards the area where he’d last seen the sentry with the shotgun, and he quickly found the man, now dead in the sand, his weapon beside him.
•••
Moments earlier, Zoya gave up on getting the sling of the shotgun from around the body, and she instead uncoupled the weapon from the strap with its quick-release buckle. She snatched the pistol-grip 12-gauge, scrambled to her feet, and began running easterly up the veranda, away from the hallway and towards the stairs she and Court had tumbled halfway down just minutes earlier.
Passing the stairs, she heard the unmistakable sound of a large drone descending into the courtyard behind her, and then she heard the massive detonation of an explosive back at the rear of the building out by the pool.
She knew Court had been attempting to get back there, and her heart sank, but she remained on mission. Checking the shotgun to make sure it had a shell in the breech, she entered a large kitchen, clear of the smoke from the courtyard, and here she dropped down to her butt and hid around the side of a large cabinet.
Her low back ached, another injury from rolling down half a circular stairwell.
Zoya’s position was only twenty feet or so from where the veranda ran into the kitchen, and she could still hear the buzzing out there above the courtyard.
Through this noise, however, she could also make out the sound of rubberized metal footfalls, moving closer, slightly out of sync.
