Chapter 24
Rochester, Homeland
It had been dark for about an hour when Inquisitor Unit Six showed up in their black armored vehicle at the chief of police’s makeshift field office. Four black bipedal inquisitor bots, like the ones destroyed in the police station, disembarked from their armored vehicle and took positions on each of the vehicle’s corners. Then the unit commander and his lieutenant stepped down. They were dressed in black uniforms with black helmets.
Angry onlookers shouted, saying things like “Good! Maybe now something will get done!”
Chief Mitchell looked at the hostile crowd and had never seen a Homeland crowd be so openly hostile. Then the Chief and Major Bernard greeted the Inquisitors. The thin and short Inquisitor Unit leader with a long beard shook hands with them and said, “I’m Commander Hussein”.
Chief Mitchell said, “We’ve been expecting you; for quite awhile, actually.”
“Things are keeping us busy. We had a situation with some haters we were deployed to subdue on the way; but we are here now and we will take care of this.” He looked at the Major, “So, the Hunter-Killers are not . . .” Hussein did not want to use words that might offend Major Bernard.
The major finished his sentence for him, saying, “We went after them twice. The first time we got ambushed by some . . . I hate to say it; Sidekick units.”
Hussein looked surprised. He made the conciliatory comment, “You never know what you are going to run it to, Major.”
Bernard continued, “Then the second time, we went in force and were repelled by an improvised microwave defense.”
“No way,” Hussein said.
“That’s right,” the chief said. “You and your lieutenant can not go in there. Only inorganic units can go near there.”
“Got it,” Hussein said. “Anyway, the lieutenant and I will be remotely flying drones.”
The Inquisitor lieutenant opened the back of the armored vehicle. Instead of a blockbuster robot, there were two quadcopter drone units, each just small enough to fit into a standard doorway.
Bernard said, “So you’re figuring on flying them in there?”
“Yeah, actually. That one on the left is carrying an LSD, Logistics Systems Disarray. The way it works; it goes into the room with the enemy bot. It has cameras on it that takes pictures of the background in the room. Then it projects holographic images of those same elements, but flashing in random locations and angles. This causes disorientation to some android models, especially the older ones with slower processing, like those Lucids. When it is particularly effective, the target or targets are unable to track the locations of their own body parts in relationship to each other, rendering the unit unable to control its own movements. After an LSD attack, the unit requires time to self-recalibrate. The LSD doesn’t work on humans. They only see a lot of random colors. Our other drone is armed with a lightweight mini-cannon to blast their confused heads off.”
“I hope it works,” the chief said.
“Me too,” Hussein chuckled.
Soon the four Inquisitor military androids approached the police station. As they got within ten yards of the front door the crack of a Plasfusion blast came down upon them from the second floor. It was a direct hit on the torso of one of the Inquisitor bots, sending it into a blazing heap near the vanquished Viking Sidekick remnants. The other Inquisitors returned fire at the window from where the blast originated. Then they ran to the front door. The two drones buzzed with very high RPMs under such heavy weights. One of the Inquisitors held the door open, then the LSD equipped quadcopter descended from above and into the door. Then the drone with the mini-cannon slipped inside.
The LSD immediately started projecting random flashes of holographic background elements in the very poorly lit rooms where it travelled. The LSD projectors clicked as it projected scrambled images. The copter continued down the hall followed by the mini-cannon mounted quadcopter. The three Inquisitors followed.
Just inside the door, the gorilla Sidekick unit stood gazing, confused at the changing landscape. An Inquisitor walked up to the toy primate and smashed it in the face with its fist, then stomped on it with it heavily weighted boot. The boot was designed not for speed, but to lower the entire Inquisitor bot’s center of gravity toward the ground to help keep it upright. The stomp left a well defined flattened footprint on the totally destroyed gorilla.
The undamaged one of the two newly arrived Lucids, known as Hermie, was standing in the hallway, with U-1 behind it. U-1 was wirelessly trying to communicate with it and could tell that Hermie was holding a Plasfusion rifle, but in total LSD confusion. There was nothing in U-1’s diagnostic records to explain Hermie’s catatonic situation, so U-1 started to physically pull away Hermie and was conferring with the Lucid Series network on the next course of action. Before U-1 could get away down the hallway, Hermie had become U-1’s shield from the mini-cannon, which ripped a loud buzzing stream of large hot lead bullets that blasted the metal-shelled Hermie into hot shreds of scrap metal. U-1 returned devastating suppressing fire with the Plasfusion weapon while it backed away. The Inquisitor Quadcopter firing stopped and large spent cartridges could be heard still rolling around on and quenching with a hiss the wet floor. U-1 made it backwards around the corner and dropped what was left of Hermie. Eventually, the Lucid tactical database told U-1 about the LSD system and to come up with a tactic to obscure its cameras. Only a few feet away, U-1 saw a fire extinguisher and then put down the rifle and seized it. U-1 quickly pulled the pin and squeezing the handle and sprayed it down the hall, filling the small hallway with a cloud of CO2.
The LSD started recording its own holographic images of the CO2 cloud and went into an endless loop of recording and displaying the foggy images. The LSD system was projecting more and more clouds of holographic gas even after it had dissipated. Finally, U-1 could hear the quadcopters moving away as the remote pilots became frustrated with the situation. U-1 picked up the rifle in one hand while still holding the extinguisher. Then it heaved the extinguisher down the hallway and heard it clang into a bogged down Inquisitor. Then, Plasfusion beams were being traded back and forth as the holographic clouds in the hallway cleared up. U-1 was able to score a critical hit on one of the Inquisitors, but another Inquisitor unit returned fire and took off one of U-1’s hands in a steel-searing bolt. The powerful bolts continued past U-1 and blue-white blasts exited the building near a back door, causing panic outside. U-1 was off balance from the force of the hit it took. Then the Inquisitor was upon U-1 and pointed the weapon at very short range at it. But behind the Inquisitor, Gorky popped out of the restroom and bounced into the Inquisitor with just enough force to make the unwary black android miss the mark. A row of floor tiles flew up into the air as the entire floor trembled. U-1 leaped and high kicked the Inquisitor in the head and knocked it down while another Inquisitor moved into the fray.
The T-Rex came around from behind the back Inquisitor and latched onto its leg with its iron jaw. The attack was countered by the Inquisitor with repeated backhands that still failed to dislodge the clamping toy’s strong bite. Then the denuded Sidekick with the cannibalized mismatch components also came down the hall to the T-Rex’s aid by attacking the other leg.
The other Inquisitor managed to free itself from Gorky and turned to attack U-1. But the Inquisitor was knocked down with a superheated Plasfusion blast from U-1 that ate through its shoulder. The shoulder blast also lopped off the unit’s arm and lit the android with an internal fire.
Meanwhile, Commander Hussein came running outside the armored vehicle and said, “Chief! Major! Now is the time for everyone to move! Attack right now!”
“Okay people!” the chief said, “Everyone move!” The force charged the building and almost overran it when another microwave attack hit them. The immobilized Lucid android that had previously suffered very heavy damage outside the building was stationed at the communication center in the basement and was tipped off to engage the improvised microwave defense when the first humans were heard coming into the police station. Once again the microwave defense was deployed. Many police suffered moderate burns as they tried to flee the long distance return trip away from the improvised microwave’s effective range.
Back inside, the two remaining Inquisitors squared off against U-1 in close combat. U-1 struck one opponent with a high knee, sending it backwards. The other Inquisitor had a clear shot at U-1, but before it could finish the Lucid off, it was blasted in the back by the characterless Sidekick that unloaded a constant stream of Plasfusion fire. The undersized lowly Sidekick continued to hold the blasting weapon on the Inquisitor, rapidly discharging the sequential quantum flux batteries until the rifle exploded in an intense flash, taking out itself and finishing off the Inquisitor near it. As load bearing hallway walls collapsed, part of the ceiling caved in on the other Inquisitor. The explosion caused massive damage to the building sending part of the second floor downward in a crushing pile.
When the smoke and dust cleared, burning robot components were scattered all about. Sections of walls were demolished. Both of the Inquisitors were mangled in a pile of destroyed building materials. U-1 sat and replaced its missing hand with Hermie’s hand. U-1 looked at the hand and tested each finger and knuckle in a hand diagnostic subroutine.
*******
Outside, after the Inquisitors failed to exit the building, the chief said to Commander Hussein, “Aren’t you going to send those drones of yours back in there?”
“There’s a pretty good chance that they won’t come back out,” Hussein said, grimacing while scratching his head. “They’re not cheap.”
The chief said, “It’s nothing compared to what we’ll lose if that place gets bombed. Not to mention we may still have people in there who would be killed. ”
“We need to at least come up with some kind of response to this. At this point we can hope that the Inquisitors inflicted some substantial damage on the enemy. That ought to make your job a little easier,” Hussein said.
“Oh sure,” Chief Mitchell said. “Thank you very much.”