BY JOEL TAGERT ART BY ROMAN MAKARENKO The fabricator would endure only a few blocks’ exposure in the short journey between Nishiki Tech’s Kotoku factory to the Shinsei Maru, currently docked at the Port of Tokyo directly adjacent to the industrial ward. Once at sea it would be infinitely harder for Nao or her AI to infiltrate, the container being completely sealed against intrusions physical or electromagnetic. Pandora’s box was a copper and aluminum Faraday chamber in a nest of steel armor. Flying with a six-rotor drone attachment on the robot’s back, Nao piloted the security android to the top of a building three blocks away from the container’s transport route. Ikaonryo, her AI, had created a cover story for her progress here; the android was ostensibly on the roof to maintain the building’s enormous HVAC units. Whether and how long this story would hold up under scrutiny was an open question, especially since any clear image of the bot would show that it bristled with weapons. They’d run the scenario in the sim again and again, but this was real (or so she kept telling herself), and there was no telling what would happen. Ika could predict and project until Nao died of old age, but there were other AI just as powerful assigned to protecting the fabricator, merciless corporate guardians that bore about as much resemblance to a personal assistant as a great white shark does to a pet goldfish. A garage door rolled open at the rear of Nishiki’s factory. First came a security vehicle, an armored Hummer-sized tank with a weapons rack on the roof. Next came the transport, a big blue electric semi, its sloped face smooth as a beetle’s carapace. On its back was the container, emblazoned with Nishiki’s orange dot-dash-dot logo. Another small tank followed. “Is everything ready?” “Affirmative. Operation Spawning Ground is ready to execute.” The launch word was on her (figurative) tongue, but she hesitated, knowing that this was it. Nothing she’d done so far was certain to result in irreversible consequences even if discovered, but this was the real deal. Succeed or fail, Nishiki and the police would stop at nothing to find the perpetrator. International agencies, the world’s canniest investigators and their superintelligent AI, would turn their gazes toward this spot and this moment like terrifying sphinxes. Let them! Nishiki and its government accomplices had assassinated her parents and robbed her of her body. Even if they traced her involvement, and sealed her again in the prison of her body, they’d know she hadn’t taken it lying down. So to speak. She lifted her hand. “Spawn,” she said, and five small missiles shot from her left wrist down toward the moving truck. They were intercepted in midair by even smaller concussive missiles launched instantly from the lead tank’s roof rack, but that was expected. They exploded into giant clouds of smoke, clouds that kept growing as their components spread through the air, hampering the convoy’s sensors. The tanks had traced the missile’s flight path, and a dozen sparrow-sized drones also shot up to disable her android. In response a swarm of glowing bees burst from her shoulders, their paths corkscrewing through the smoke, exploding into little fireworks when they struck a drone. In any case she was no longer on the roof, having leapt from it the second she’d fired. The android landed on its feet with the surety of a precision gyroscope, smoke swirling around her. Several small bots skittered rapidly toward her, spider drones released by the tanks. Nao used the cinder block wall behind her to press off in a high leap above the spiders, firing concussive rounds from her arms. Metal and plastic shot in all directions. She couldn’t hold them off for long, but she wouldn’t need to. Beneath the transport a bright silver light was growing, a robotic plasma cutter she’d planted earlier having attached itself to the bottom left of the container. She was reasonably sure it wasn’t directly below the fabricator; if she was wrong, all this would be pointless, the sensitive nanotech components sure to be damaged. Her leap had brought her within yards of the container. A timer dinged in her audio feed, as though she No. 120
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