"Got to hand it to them, no one would expect high-tech manufacturing in Venezuela."
WENDE and CORALINE could see tent cities, fires, and riots as their chartered jet flew over Venezuelan land. The two combat gynoids shared a common appearance: bright blonde hair, white skin, flat facial features, and glowing green eyes. Both of them wore matching military fatigues. WENDE had the build of an adult woman, while CORALINE was short and slight like a teenager. Not much about the latter was childlike, however. Not the sniper rifle she cradled, nor the intense focus on the classified information on her laptop.
"I don't feel great about this. We're traveling light and I trust Anderson as far as you could throw him", said WENDE. As if for emphasis, she snapped back the bolt on her assault rifle.
"We have three weeks before we have to fly back to Cuba for the next fight", replied CORALINE. "Plenty of time to solve complications. Put on your camo paint. The less recognizable we are, the better."
WENDE sighed and began daubing green and brown paints on her white metallic face. CORALINE followed suit.
CORALINE continued while painting her arms, "The good thing about Venezuela, is a total lack of air defenses. Government can barely hold onto their capital, let alone shoot random planes overflying farmland. We won't have interference from Maduro's people. We're only facing down whatever rogue Morningstar Tech stuff Anderson pointed us at."
"Which still leaves a lot that can go wrong", said WENDE. "I'd be a lot more cheerful about getting to kill stuff, but the last time I went in guns blazing, I got shot. A lot. I had to straight-up replace a leg."
"Yes, I know, I was there."
"You set the whole thing up. Fuck you for that, by the way."
"You're welcome", said CORALINE with a not entirely cold smile.
"I want to be clear: since I pissed off Jerry Vastrix-"
"Great move, by the way."
"-since I pissed off Jerry Vastrix, Anderson's lead is our only clue about the guys hunting us. But if we have to back off from this trip and sit on our hands these next three weeks, then we do that. It beats being mulched into scrap. I left most of my- our spare parts in Los Estados Unidos. Between Cuba and here, we can't afford to take big risks. We take it slow, we pull out if it gets hot. Clear?"
"Crystal", said CORALINE.
Both gynoids finished painting their skin. Very little of their original white sheen showed through the camouflage body paint. WENDE tied on a green kerchief to hide most of her blonde hair. CORALINE put on a helmet that engulfed her child-size head, then thought better of it. She set it aside in favor of a dull green military cap.
"This is our stop!" said CORALINE. "Thanks, Andrés! Take care now!" She pulled the plane's door open, causing air to rush in.
The pilot replied in Spanish. WENDE's built-in translator did its best over the loud wind and jet engines. She guessed something about "crazy gringo ladies". She shrugged and followed CORALINE out of the door.
The clouds and sky rushing through her face and hair did little to irritate or stimulate her. Some humans considered this exhilarating, WENDE thought. Right now though, she couldn't wait until she was on the ground. Harsh winds tore at her fatigues and metal skin but found little purchase. Only trees and dirt tracks met her eye below.
CORALINE's small silhouette fluttered below her. CORALINE's voice came in through a radio in WENDE"s ear. "2000 meters! Pull!"
WENDE's hand went to her ripcord and pulled. She felt an enormous force tug her backward and the jungle stopped rushing up to meet her. The shadow of her parachute darkened her view of CORALINE's parachute below. She waited to land on the earth below.
She neared the ground but didn't quite touch it. With a sudden jerk, part of her body was yanked upwards by her parachute cords. She looked up and saw the outline of a branch jutting out of her parachute. She freed a knife from her combat vest and severed the cords. She landed cleanly on both arms and one leg despite the awkward angle. Retrieving her rifle from a sling on her chest, WENDE stood up and started walking.
"You ready?" asked CORALINE's voice.
"Had a bit of difficulty landing, but I'm ready", said WENDE. "Time to find out if Anderson screwed us."
Machete in hand, she marched into the jungle.
"Okay. You reached the compound?" said CORALINE over the radio.
"Finally", replied WENDE.
The factory buildings were a dark blue-grey. Much of the paint had since rusted off, revealing light grey concrete underneath. The buildings sported no-nonsense sharp edges and round domes. It stuck out in the lush jungle surroundings. A large gap scratched out of a billboard suggested a former logo. This place had seen better days.
"Not seeing any movement from my vantage", said CORALINE. "Did some scouting and there are no external power lines. Not that it would make a difference with the country's terrible electricity right now."
"Okay. IR doesn't show any heat signatures that indicate humans or active machinery. Everything seems at ambient temperature." said WENDE. She put down her infrared scope. "Security looks light. Empty watchtower here or there. I'm going to probe for mines on the outskirts."
"Nah, check it. Animal tracks going in and out. It should be safe to follow those."
"Alright. You have eyes on me, Cor?"
"Got you covered."
WENDE glanced at CORALINE's position. The smaller robot blended well in a tree about 200 meters away.
"Okay. Follow me at a safe distance," said WENDE. "Take the rooftops if they're safe."
"Gotcha."
WENDE emerged from thick foliage and started towards the buildings.
"We're definitely in the right place, Cor." WENDE couldn't feel or smell the dust, but her flashlight’s beam showed the clouds. The light cut straight through the indoors gloom that hadn’t seen sunlight in months.
"Something disturbed the thickest parts of the dust not long ago.", she continued. "Perhaps they packed up when I crashed Pollax's headquarters. But these are spare parts for robots like us."
"You sure?", came the reply.
"Positive. The alloys we're made of aren't available in either civilian or military markets. Proprietary stuff. Trust me, I did my best to find more."
"Same. "
WENDE pocketed the small joints and scraps, made of the same white metal as her body. She spun around to check her dilapidated surroundings. "They tore out everything they could. Machinery, furniture, even light sockets. Not gently, either. We're going to find only scraps at best. I'm going to see if I can find an office, maybe there's some paperwork with a hint or something."
"Good thinking. Most of the stuff I got on Pollax was in their paperwork," replied CORALINE.
"Okay, I'm clearing the building. Moving north-northwest. Be sure to cover my- did you see that? No wait, of course, you didn't, you're outside."
"Yeah, you'll need to get by a window."
" No windows in here. Get on the roof of this building. I need overwatch."
"What is it?"
"I’m fairly sure I saw a humanoid shape in that doorway. Might be one of us, deactivated."
" Wait for me to get there, WENDE."
WENDE grimaced and kept her rifle's mounted flashlight pointed at the doorway. She started to approach.
"Welcome, welcome! My children!" An older man's voice suddenly blared throughout the building. The warmth in his voice was genuine, but WENDE’s threat recognition routines went off with every word.
"Shit, PA system's on", muttered WENDE. No movement came from the doorway. She swung her gun around, checking every last shadow in the pitch-black warehouse.
"I heard it too!" said CORALINE.
"You've shown wonderful, wonderful courage and curiosity in coming this far! To Venezuela, to our wonderful factory!" the older man's voice continued.
"Fuck you too! Who do you think you are?", shouted WENDE. She waited for a response. "Cor, I think this is a one-way system."
"Let's just hear him out? I'm on the way to you," said CORALINE.
"Get ready to bug out," said WENDE.
The voice continued, "You've no doubt wondered where you came from, dear WENDE! Who made you. Why you exist. What your future holds. What I'm here to tell you is that none of that matters!" His voice had a hint of a smile.
"That doesn't sound good", mumbled WENDE. She kept her free hand on a grenade on her belt.
"It doesn't matter, because, my child, this is where your story ends."
A black box with a gun emerged from the ceiling and pointed its barrel towards WENDE. She snap-fired a shot that tore it off of its mount. In that time, three more like it burst out from the ceiling and filled the air with lead.
WENDE cursed and rolled to the side. Streams of bullets followed her movements. She dove behind a crate, buying her precious seconds. She threw a grenade. Her cover disintegrated under the hail of lead. The grenade exploded into hot smoke, obscuring WENDE. The sentry guns started probing the smoke in a circular pattern of gunfire. WENDE dashed from cover and fired blind bursts at the turrets.
Her free hand took a large block of explosive putty from her belt, pressed a timer, and slid it towards the nearest wall. The second the plastique slammed to a stop, it detonated, gouging a hole in the building.
WENDE broke into a mad sprint out of her smokescreen to the breached wall. The sentry guns re-acquired her and resumed firing. She ducked into a slide across the final stretch of floor, narrowly avoiding more bullets.
As soon as WENDE reached sunlight, she rolled up and out of the line of fire. The sentry guns hammered at the wall behind her but did not punch through. She took a moment to recover when to her side, another stream of bullets cut through the concrete. The new attacker forced her to run again and scramble for cover.
She turned a corner behind a second building. The shooting stopped. She hesitated to peek out.
She shouted into her headpiece, "CORALINE! We have-"
Gunfire and yelling were all that came through the radio.
"Okay, you're busy. Shit, I guess it's up to me", muttered WENDE.
She looked around for escape routes. The buildings stood far apart, but that's all she got to see. Another sentry gun on a faraway rooftop swiveled to meet her. She ducked back behind the corner right as its bullets peeled off chunks of concrete.
She did not count on it running out of bullets anytime soon. Her electronic mind raced for an exit strategy. The automated turrets had hemmed her in.
The choice was made for her. From the hole in the building she had just left, something loud and electric whirred up. WENDE cursed and ran into the open, juking and diving to avoid the faraway sentry turret in front of her. The area she had just left exploded with the “BRRRT” characteristic of several thousand bullets fired at once.
WENDE snapped off a shot in mid-dive and by a miracle, managed to strike the sentry gun on the faraway rooftop. It crumbled under the bullets and crashed into the ground, scattering bullets everywhere.
She scrambled behind a smashed crate behind the shaded half of a tower. She took a good look at her attacker with the heavy gun. It was … her.
Well, not quite. The other robot was blonde, green-eyed, and pale. But it also stood at least eight feet tall and was built like a high-tech shithouse. It held a massive rotary cannon, fit more for an aircraft than anything on foot. It wore a dark green jumpsuit like the one WENDE first had when she was released a year ago. The dull look of rage on its face didn't quite resemble her. The doppelganger scanned the area.
I'm going to guess you're WENDE series B, thought WENDE. Big rampage-y ones that got hunted down early, Coraline said. Except for this one. She did not doubt something that tall could outrun her.
The series B didn't seem to be able to see her behind cover, and WENDE felt grateful for her camouflage paint.
She mentally searched through what she had packed, not daring to rummage and risk drawing attention. Chaff grenade. Might confuse it, but that’s all. Flashbangs. Won’t work on robots. Sidearm. Nope. Rifle, still not nearly enough firepower. Claymores, not on something that size. I didn’t bring anything to fight heavy armor...
Her train of thought derailed from a thunderous tearing noise. The larger robot started firing its massive gun at select locations...and not randomly. Oh shit, it’s searching by fire. WENDE had no illusions about her cover’s ability to stand up to that many bullets at once. She began to crawl away from the smashed crate, moving just slowly enough to avoid her foes’ immediate attention.
She heard servos moving and spotted another of those damned sentry guns on another rooftop. She cursed and broke into a run. Two streams of bullets followed soon enough. A massive cloud of dust erupted behind her as both the sentry gun and WENDE-B filled the air with lead.
WENDE didn’t have time to shoot back. She zigzagged at the last second, causing both attackers’ fire to overshoot her and tear through another hapless structure. She unhooked a chaff grenade from her vest and threw as hard as she could, near her doppelganger.
The grenade took a seeming eternity to explode. The gunfire missed her by hair’s widths. She tried constant maneuvers, dives, and rolls that kept her body from becoming abstract art.
She tumbled onto the soil and realized she had landed in a position with poor recovery. The distant chaff grenade thankfully went off right then. She could feel vestiges of its microwave pulse wash over her skin. WENDE-B stopped shooting for an instant. WENDE raised her rifle and tore the sentry gun off its mount from five hundred paces away. She had just flipped back to her feet when WENDE-B resumed firing and the bullets ripped into her body. She didn’t even have the power to scream in pain, as if all breath was stolen from her. She crumpled onto the damp Venezuelan soil, leaking lubricants and sparks from a dozen wounds.
She scrambled and rolled for cover as more bullets erupted around her. In the fog of pain and electronic warnings about system integrity, she didn’t know what kind of cover she managed to find. But it was sheltered from the sun and seemed to stop the shooting. She then realized her rifle had been knocked away by the bullets. It was most likely scrap anyways like her torso now was. Her hands fought to even draw her sidearm. It was agonizing and slow. She cursed as her malfunctioning body finally grasped the small gun. Maybe a direct shot through the other robot’s eyeballs might blind it long enough to crawl away…but how would she get close enough?
She didn’t breathe, but she took a deep gasp anyways and managed to unclench her eyes enough to see where she was. In the doorway of another building. She decided dying inside would be better than getting gunned down in the dirt. The maimed robot clawed her way forward with pistol in hand, dragging her broken legs and torso with her.
It took a surprising amount of time for the series B android to look into this building, but it, at last, found her. It didn’t taunt her. It didn’t sneer, frown or even seem to acknowledge her. It just grimaced at WENDE’s broken body in the same mindless rage that had driven it so far. It lifted its gun-
The claymores on the doorway went off. The point-blank explosions battered the larger robot on the left and right. As expected, the mines didn’t do much more than dent and ground WENDE’s giant clone. But it would be enough. As the series B forced itself up to one knee, WENDE struggled to lift her pistol at its head. The first shot took an eye, to her pleasant surprise. The second shot glanced off its stark-white face. The third shot took its other eye. The series B lifted its enormous rotary cannon in her direction.
WENDE allowed her mangled body to fall off the tall, bare shelf she hid in. She hit the floor hard. The immense barrage of lead ripped the shelf into splinters. Round casings and wood fragments rained on the floor, then silence.
The blinded series B hesitated and stood in place. Both of its eye sockets were large unsightly cracks on its face, but it didn’t seem to register pain as WENDE did. WENDE lay where she had fallen, trying her best to suppress any sounds of pain. Both robots waited for the other to make a move.
CORALINE collapsed. Her legs gave up. She had lost her B series opponent several rooftops ago. A faraway hole indicated where it had fallen through. Still, it fired blindly upwards, where it thought CORALINE might be. The echoes of bullets landing got nearer and nearer. CORALINE tried her best to drag herself away.
“WENDE unit B-3 was blinded by what seem to be mine explosions but managed to inflict severe damage to rogue unit WENDE D-4. It is unable to confirm a kill. Unit B-4 lost contact with rogue unit C-1 “CORALINE” and became immobilized by a fall. Our automatic sentries in the area have been disabled or did not detect movement for ten minutes.”
“Excellent, excellent, my child!” The jovial older man in cardinal’s robes smiled as if he had heard pleasant family news from a friend. He propped his elbows on the mahogany desk with an eager expression. “What do our prognostics make of this?”
“Cardinal Urizar… I should stress that the ambush is not yet successful. Our models suggest a 64% chance of one or both rogue units escaping with no further action from us.”
The beneficent smile did not leave Mariel Urizar’s face. “God will see our wayward children reunited with us. Intact or otherwise. What options do we have?”
“We have aerial assets already orbiting in Venezuelan airspace-”
“All of them.”
“Pardon, your holiness?”
“All of them, my child.” The old cardinal smiled innocently as if murder was the furthest thing from his mind. “I have much to see to. The deals with McStrump, the upgrades of our metallic Angels… do everything we can. Destroy all evidence, even our units. God will recognize His own.” Urizar dismissed his advisor with a gentle wave of the hand and returned to the papers at his desk.
“Yes, your holiness. It will be done.”
The AC-130 circled the ruins of the factory. The battle had aged the facilities by another decade at least, but that didn’t concern the pilots. Enormous cannons and machine guns emerged from the gunship’s sides. They opened up on everything that might have been moving or capable of moving down below.
A wing of fighter-bombers blew past the gunship and dropped a thick carpet of ordnance over the central mass of abandoned buildings. Like God Himself raking claws through the earth, the explosions tore a fiery swathe from one end of the facility to another. What didn’t crumple under the AC-130’s howitzers, shattered under the carpet bombing. The rumbles of thousands of pounds of ordinance shook the buildings into gravel.
The gunship continued pounding into the ground below as its faster brethren left the airspace. Minute after minute of shelling and shooting shredded the ruins into a nondescript heap. The guns clicked dry at last. The AC-130 folded in its wings and sped off.
The rubble burned. Then faster than the eye could see, a cruise missile slammed into the largest pile of rubble. It left only a massive explosion and a faint steam trail as evidence it had ever existed. The hundred-meter crater it left didn’t ever seem to stop smoking.
Then silence. Not enough concrete was left standing by the assault to even topple. The facility had been utterly flattened.
Somewhere in the destruction, a pale metallic hand with hints of camouflage paint pushed off a slab of rock.
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