Empire (Empire 1)

“But do we go this way or that way to get to the next station? Or the one after that? Or is there some way up to the surface not at a station?”

“Not that I could get us into,” said Willis. “This way.”

They dropped down to the track level and ran, the emergency lighting barely illuminating the tracks enough to see where to plant their feet.

Reuben pulled out his cellphone. No bars. “Am I getting no signal because I’m below ground, or because the signals are jammed?”

“We’ve got cellular all the way through the subways,” said Willis. “So it’s jammed.”

“Too bad,” said Reuben. “I was going to call in air support.”

“I can’t believe they’re not already here.”

“The Air Force may not know yet. It’s what, six-thirty in the morning? If nobody in New York can call out, has it even been reported?”

“You can’t keep something like this a secret!” said Willis.

“Not forever. But for an hour, maybe you can.”

They came to another station. “No,” said Reuben. “They’ll be waiting at this one. They can move at least as fast above as we can down here. Keep going.”

They went on to the next. And the next. Now they were beyond the Holland Tunnel. They’d have to backtrack.

They ran up the stairs to the surface and immediately ran for a side street so they were out of the view of the avenues. They were lucky. No mechs in place to observe them.

“If they had five hundred of these things,” Reuben said to Cole, “they could scan the whole city. They don’t have that many. Not even close.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Cole. “What do you think it takes to build one of those? Two million? Six?”

“Real costs or Pentagon costs?” asked Reuben.

“Microsoft costs.”

“These are not a Microsoft product,” said Reuben.

“Developed in secret, though.”

“Yeah, but they don’t lock up.”

Willis knew the objective and he knew the streets. He’d never been a soldier, but he was a commander, and a good one. His men followed him without argument. So did Reuben and Cole. You follow the guy who knows what he’s doing.

When they got to a bunch of concrete barriers near the entrance to the tunnel, that stopped being Willis and started being Reuben and Cole.

There were no mechs guarding access to the tunnel. But there were a half-dozen men in space-suit uniforms. Helmets that covered their whole heads, even their faces.

“I bet those helmets are transparent from their side,” said Cole.

“With a heads-up display and automatic targeting and heat-source tracking,” said Reuben.

“And Tetris,” said Cole.

“Got to kill these guys,” said Reuben. They had no way to deal with prisoners. They needed stealth. “Except maybe the last one, for interrogation.”

“Body armor for sure.”

“Which I bet their own weapons can pierce.”

“They only have to be able to pierce ours.”