Cry Pilot by Joel Dane

Author:Joel Dane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

I sheathe my Vespr and bring my pinpoint Boaz to bear. Like my armor, it’s modified for recon: half the weight of a regular Boaz, inflicting half the damage at half the range.

If I stumble into a firefight, I’m dead, but in lieu of stopping power and a firehose capacity, my Boaz is loaded with eight jellies: Gelatinous Field-Emplaced Signal-Reconnaissance Monitors. Each one expands to the size of my palm and the texture of watery dough. Once you splat a jelly into place, it starts transmitting signals to your proxy. They’ll paint a picture of the inside of this enclave for DepCom to review. They’re paleo enough to function through most pulses, though easy to detect with a focused sweep.

Still, jellies are highly effective with proper placement. That’s the next hurdle: we need to place them.

Three streets branch from the plaza. Two lead toward the heart of the enclave—toward the small-arms fire—while the third curves through a theater district in winding loops. I want to keep Jag behind me, covering my advance, but Voorhivey tentatively countermands. He’s feeling pressure from above: widening our surveillance footprint is a priority.

We have to separate.

“I’m on the northwest route,” I lens to Ting and Jag, highlighting my path into the shitstorm. “Tet-Two, take the eastern route, confirm.”

“Confirm,” Jagzenka sends.

“Tet-Proxy, transmit optimum position for jelly emplacement.”

“Transmitting,” Ting says.

Seventeen target dots appear on my map. I flip to Jagzenka’s map and see thirteen on hers: more than enough options, with only eight jellies in each of our cans. I lens Jagzenka a wordless click to say good luck, scan the street again, and slip toward my first target.

Halfway through a gauntlet of upscale retail displays, pounding music spills into the street. A window unfilms four or five floors above me. My heart jerks, my barrel rises, and my thumb switches to liquammo slugs.

Silhouettes shift against the clearing film. It’s not a threat, it’s a party. A dozen people are dancing and drinking—and shouting close it, close it! The security film re-forms. Either they don’t know what’s happening outside or they’re making the best of a bad situation.

Although on second thought, I don’t know what’s happening outside, either. I’m not seeing any meaty-pink lampreys, but ninety percent of my display is composed of black splotches and dead zones, from privacy films and signal interference.

I’m working blind.

I slink beneath a chromacrete gazebo and fire two jellies: one at the high tower of a residence, one at an orbital array steeple that looks like a work of art. Neither is a bull’s-eye, but both stick within usable tolerances.

“Vehicle approaching.” Ting shoots me a map with a blinking dot. “No arms signature, threat level low.”

Crunching sounds behind me and I switch to slugs again. A six-door civilian tramcar—a rarity in an age of public transport—whips past, following the print-path around the corner.

When the noise quiets and my heartbeat settles, I climb to a high, swaying walkway.

The sound of small-arms fire is fading. I lens Jagzenka for a status update and I’m firing my third jelly when her response comes.

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