Chapter 1.
LOS ANGELES.
BLIP. BLIP. BLIP. BLIPBLIBBLIP.
In the vast underground streets of Los Angeles, a bot named Munchy-05m15 is looking for a package.
BLLIPBBLIIIIIIIIIP.
Munchy-05m15 is getting closer to the package. Meanwhile, a team of hired spotterbirds are covering the area around him. The birds easily flys throughout the underground and in the sky above. Though, in Munchy's experiences, they like to stay in one spot.
Lone-eye-07m14: Floor 57, southbound lane 356. Enemy force size 46 bots. Formation changes: single file to SWEEP. Buddy system.
Lone-eye-05m14: Floor 53, southbound lane 333. 4 units spotted.
Lone-eye-01m14: Warning. Enemy forces are spread throughout 4 floors.
RORORORORORORORO.
The commotion by the loud LAPD bots alert Munchy-05m15 to the nearness of the bots.
Munchy-05m15 climbed up into a squarish hole two story up. Two units with double barrled shotguns are scrolling by beneath Munchy.
BLLIPBLLIPBLIIIIIP.
Evidently, Munchy is getting closer still. His cameo unit is recharged, but he only have a limited amount of time to search for the package. Munchy laboriously moves down and up so that he could detect the difference in the strength of the signal.
BLIPBLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.
Up, it is.
3 blocks north, A LAPD(Los Angles Police Department) missle luncher bot just taps Lone-eye-02m14's protruding eyes as it was moving south. Lone-eye-02m14 didn't dare to alert the bot of his presence. So it acts limp for that brief tap.
Lone-eye02m14: STOP. STOP. Climb back down, Munchy.
Munchy ducks.
The LAPD bot continues to move south. Nothing happens.
BLIIIPBLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.
Lone-eye02m14: All clear for 3 in lane 330-333 lane 55, with line-of-sight 15 blocks.
Munchy looks up and saw what's look to be a cutout squarish outline. Clearly, it was cleverly disguised so that only bots with vision like Munchy's can see it. He can't be sure if that's the package, but he decides to investigate.
BLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP.
Sure enough, as he get closer, his radar acts up more. It's the package. He picks it up with his crawls and deposit the package in his storage container.
Lone-eye-03m14 and Lone-eye-04m14 flew up to check for possible hostiles. As soon as hostiles are away, other spotterbirds begins to move to adapt to where Munchy is.
Now, Munchy must climb up to a suitable area where a linersbird can take his package.
The area two floors up are clear. He decides to shoot up a rope that help him climb up. It's thinner than the width of the human hair. It should be enough to keep him invisible.
Meanwhile, in the center of the city, in the LAPD Operation Center, the operators of the LAPD bots were monitoring the action.
Captain John Manning stares intensely at the triple screen trying to look for any anomaly in the area. He recevied intelligence that there was something going on in the area south. The coordinate indicates that there were no humans living in this areas but it was known that there were heavy courier activities on the surface.
John Manning commands, "Release the new experimental unmanned gunship now."
"But sir, R&D won't like their pec", but the opposing voice was cut off.
"Do you want to be fired?", Manning threaten.
"No, sir."
"Good."
After the crushing of dissent within the LAPD anticourier command, a linerbird is approaching the city. Crusnik-01m10 has just flown 2600 miles to reach this city.
A brust of AA has just fired up. But it misses Crusnik-01m10 by nearly 500 meters. Then, the gunfire quickly subsided as Crusnick move away from the city's outer limit. Even so, the oblivious robotic gunners are still firing.
"BLAST! With all the flying around, they decided to change pattern at the last minute", Manning yell. "Damn. It would be a goldmine to be able to slavage those bots for data."
Crusnik-01m10: CALLING for sparrows. Calling for sparrows.
A dozen of sparrows flew into the air from the roofs to escort Crusnik.
Meanwhile, a couple of LAPD bots descended onto the battlefield.
Lone-eye-07m14 caught a visual of one those units on floor 65. Lone-eye-07 recongnizes the unit as something totally different. Still, it was not a courier style engineering at all. However, it does have legs.Lone-eye-07 guesstimate that it was a climbing bot. Still, lone-eye runs some more algorithm on the scanned bot. He quickly deduce that there are two double barrel machine gun mounted beneath the triple eyes.
On floor 60, three bots were coming onto Munchy from three different directions. One of those bot was looking upward. His cameo is almost out. So he decides to make a quick getaway up toward floor 65, as the floor in between were covered up by the shaft that Munchy is climbing up through.
Lone-eye-07m14 warns: ALERT. New unit. Climber. Likely hostile.
By then, the spilt second anaylsis and his warning afterward was too late.
BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. BBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRR. BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRR.
Lone-eye dodges the spray of bullets. Several of the bullet richochet Lone-eye-07m14. Lone-eye-07 flys south, away from the firefight.
In a CPU core of Munchy, Munchy makes use of the map data that the spotterbirds transmits to him in the last few hours or so to devise an escape routine. Several possible routes were found. He adds in the last locations of all enemy bots that were found in the last couple of hours and estimate the probability of their location. Then he run through an algorithm that yield him some of the best escape route. He randomly picks one.
Data are still transmitting to him. Spotterbirds' warning will have to be weight against the dangeorus LAPD climbers.
"Send the three gunship in this area!", Manning commands.
IN the air, the linerbird was searching for a signal for package delivery for today. A spotterbird's signal was getting through.
Lone-eye-01m14: WARNING. HOSTILE UNITS. HOSTILE UNITS.
Crusnik-01m10's eyes spotted something pericular on the horizon. 3 gunships of a new particular design.
Trigunner-01m14: REINFORCEMENT NEEDED.
Crusnik-01m10: ACKNOWLEDGED. Enemy forces sighted.
Lone-eye-01m14:
Crusnik-01m10: Sending visual.
Lone-eye-01m14: !!!
Lone-eye-01m14: NEW IDENTIFIED TARGETS. UNDERGROUND HOSTILES. UNDERGROUND HOSTILES.
Crusnik-01m14: Acknowledged.
Ground weapons is now hot on Crusnik-01m14.
The chase underground has been going on for 10 minutes or so. The LAPD trackbots are trying furiously to climb up, but in the commotion, 3 LAPD bots suffers permament death. Oh well, they can alway produce more.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRBRRRRRRRRRRRRR. A climber bot missed Munch by 1 meters, but he hit a loose support beam. The cut was so clean that the support beam begins to fall. BBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAANG. One out of five down.
Still, the four robots are chasing them furiously in a group. With a bot falling down above, they dodged and lose pace. They lost Munchy.
"STUPID AIs. Who programmed these junks? Order them to spilt up so we can catch up to this robot."
"Yes sir."
And so it was done.
A bot comes up early. He was spotted quickly by one of the spotterbird. Crusnik turns his weapon on the bot.
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Soon another bot comes up.
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Two bots are now full of holes.
Still, an enemy UAV fire his weapon at Crusnik. BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBR. Crusnick quickly boost his engine and engage an evasive manuver by flying upward deeply to the left. Soon, the UAV spotted a sparrow and shoot a missle. However, the missle being too large as well being relatively unmanuverable, simply miss the sparrow.
The sparrows lead the guns of the UAV toward to the right. BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRBRRRRRRRRR. BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOOM.
However, it was not the sparrows, but the UAV's allies that he shot down. Soon, three sparrows descends on the lower wings of the plane and plant bombs near his weapon bay on the bottom. Then, they drop themsleves into the ground below. They open up their wings at the last second.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
Munchy was underground still. He intinctely climb up near objects that can fall down to the ground below, having internalized the lesson that he learned from the accidental death of his chaser.
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Munch was shot in his hind legs! He'll have to make do with using his upper body strength to climb up. However, a loose heavy object begins to roll, then fall. The chaser bot tries to dodge, but his head was crushed. Since the head contains the computer, it dies.
Soon, Munchy reached the surface, beyond the 100th floor. He raise up his behinds using his front claws and level the platform. He raised the package with the lifter at the bottom of his storage box.
Crusnik dives deeply, than pull back up. The catch gear are out of his loadbay. SSSSSSSSSWWWWWWWWWWWWWIFT.
The package is caught, and soon the linerbird on his way. Munchy just completed his part of the mission. Now the package will be delievered about 2600 miles to some place to Atlanta. Munchy don't know what's in the package. Courier bots are not supposes to know anyway. Nonetheless, he receives very good pay for his work.
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The bullets were embedded into the body of Munchy and with such force that Munchy fell down into the abyass below.
3 sparrows soon gouges out the eyes of the last enemy climber bots with their torching beaks. The bot let out a stream of gunfire until it runs out of bullets. Soon, the bot was forced to retreat back into the underground. But not before the bot's eyes were destroyed.
Back at the operation center at LAPD headquarter. Morale was not especially high. Even though they disable a bot, several new bots was destroyed. Some even thought that their commander's neck would come soon enough the next day. All the new methods and reform were not enough. Datagathering, statistical anaylsis, installation and repair of camera equipments, and so on, all ends up in a lucky catch. A lucky catch that ends in a terrible loss. They could lose all the junky slow moving bots and it would be alright. However, they just lost several all the most advanced units chasing after an unarmed courier and then eventually got destroyed on the surface. Worst of all, most of them were destroyed by their own stupidity or the stupidity of other bots. Clearly, heads are going to rolls at the research and development too.
But despite of all of this, the commander is strangely upbeat.
"The end is near."
END CHAPTER 1.
