How to 3D Print a God

Chapter 2

No more than five minutes in the kid raised the alarm. "Skata, we got drones incoming!"

"Yes!" I said raising my rifle, "Time for some duck-hunting."

"No, they are land based, parallel to us, closing in at our front vector," the kid said.

Alkinoe went pale. "Landmines. They are landmines. Thomas grab the wheel," she told him and lifted her torso out of the window. She pivoted her body outside the car and peeked in again. "It's standard Amazonian tactic, two drones come firing for distraction and two faster ones get in front and deploy," she said and looked at me.

"Got it," I said and opened the van's back door. The poor kid was distracted on his monitors and almost fell out so I grabbed his arm and hauled him back on his seat. He held on tighter after that scare. The ex-Amazon climbed in front of the speeding van, lowered herself at near asphalt-level and took out her spear. The thing is retractable, she carries it all the time, but she doesn't let me touch it.

"Can't you hack them or something kid?" I asked him while steadying my rifle.

"Nah, its fail man, not in time. I can only make them show on your smartlink, here," he said gulping down his fear.

I looked at the bushes whizzing past us in the dark. Lousy place to make an ambush if you are a man, great place if you are a land drone. I could see pitch black skata for a long couple of seconds, and then a red target appeared on my overlay. Nice.

"When you fire make sur-" the kid tried to say but I was already BANG WHIZ BLAM broken drone. Bullets fell on the van like hailstorm from the flanking side and we both fell on the floor. Thomas did some evasive maneuvers and we thought we lost Alkinoe for a second.

Then she raised her hand in an "ok" thumbs up and held her place.

Bullets ripped the top of the van into a cheese-grater and the kid was holding down his head.

"MAKE SURE OF WHAT?" I screamed over the bullets.

"MAKE SURE IT IS THE FARTHEST ONE CAUSE THE OTHER WILL BREAK CAMO MODE," the kid screamed back.

"GEE THANKS FOR THE WARNING," I yelled back to him and propped my rifle to take the drone down. The red target was moving around, something was wrong. I fired but nothing seemed to go blowie. Thomas was obviously trying to keep the van steady, but was that the right strategic decision or was he going to get us killed in order to protect his girlfriend?

Alkinoe held the tip of her spear in front of the van, adjusted it when she saw the mine-drone in the headlights and gritted her teeth.

Contact. She had placed the tip at the side of the drone, tripping it over to our side. It bounced like a football and got lost into the darkness.

No explosion.

I was trying to find the second drone that was at the moment not firing at us but was sure to do so soon. The overlay targeting was all over the place. Bah, that's why I don't trust these things.

Muzzle flash, metal torn into bits. I instinctively ducked for cover. I had to do this the old way. I put as much metal as I could between me and the drone but I knew that if a smartbullet was to come for me, it would be as much protection as a pile of napkins.

I gritted my teeth. One shot at this. Maybe not even that. But even if the drone shoots my right arm away, I would take it down with the other. For Thomas. For my brother. I had to do this, there was no escape.

Well, there was actually. I thought of the ground racing below me. I could fall down. The drone might shoot me, or might not. Who knows? The drone-mine in front would blast the van but not me. I could get away with some broken bones. Better chances of that than counting on a drone missing his shot. Or there might be Amazons behind us, coming in on their bikes. Would they capture me? Kill me? Force me to impregnate them all? Did they still do that or had they upgraded to artificial insemination?

The kid was waving his hand in the air. I thought he wanted to tell me something but then I realized he was just controlling his computer, doing his thing, little dots of overlay data running around his face.

We are gonna die and the son of a poutana is checking his emails.

Muzzle flash. Bullets tearing a line on the side of the van, on a neat straight line towards my face. I held still. The shots were moving alongside us. We were moving at relative speeds. The drone brain would choose a perfectly parallel path. Aim. The drone fired again, its bullets whizzing at random directions. One little smartbullet refused the jamming and changed course, right on my chest armor. No matter, I was holding my breath anyway. Who needs lungs? Fire. Direct hit.

And then I emptied the clip just to be sure.

I heard a clang at the front as Alkinoe forced the second drone-mine to bounce around the van and hit a rock. It came back at us and exploded on the road behind. The shockwave slammed the van doors at me and threw me on my back.

The whole van wobbled and stopped. I guess Thomas was worried about running over our girl. "Are you ok? Are there any more?" he asked her.

"No, that's it for now. Let's run," she said, some scratches on her arm but otherwise in one piece.

"Let me bandage that arm for you," he told her, trying to hide his worry from us.

"I'll do it myself, drive. The operators could be after us," she said and climbed in the back. What was left of it anyway.

"Pfft. The operators could be driving the drones from halfway around the world," said the kid, giving the medkit to Alkinoe.

The look she gave him made him whip his hand back. "Amazons like to get up close and personal. Remote presence doesn't cut it when it comes to the thrill of the kill," she told us demonstrating a thrust with her retracted spear and then snatched the medkit from the boy's hand.

"Strap yourselves in, I'm punching it," Thomas said, and we blasted through the night towards Hephaistos Heavy Industries. I looked through the broken glass at the darkness behind us and imagined a gang of angry little ladies riding their bikes towards us.