"Bloody hell!” Ricky began to raise his machine pistol to fire, but before he could squeeze the trigger, he was beaten out by the lightning quick cyborg next to him, who fired one clean shot that took the drone out of commission.

Immediately the alleyway began filling with battle drones to assist the aerial drone, which was equipped with camera technology to broadcast to the rest of the detachment.

At the same time, the elevator opened in the building they had just escaped from, and a multitude of beautiful female pleasure bots emerged, with orders to kill. Both sides of the alley were filling with drones and their retreat was cut off as well. The two brothers exchanged a sad and knowing look between them, neither Titan could see a way out of this situation for all of them.

“Do we fly?” Rocco asked.

“Negative.” Ricky answered quickly. “Not leaving them behind.”

“Looks like the gig is up?” Rocco chuckled.

“Well, guess it was a good run.” Ricky replied.

“I’m not going down without a fight!” Cried the suddenly bloodlusted cyborg, who began emptying his final magazine of ammunition into the approaching Zenith battle drones. Showing some truly excellent marksmanship under pressure, he destroyed the heads and processing units of eight drones before his big Etcher began dry firing in his hand.

It afforded them a little bit of an opportunity, though not much of one. There were many more coming in the other entrance to the alleyway, and both Rocco and Ricky focused their fire ahead, into the same group that had just been hit hard by the cyborg’s shots.

Rocco pulled back the trigger and sprayed a blinding burst of fully auto gunfire in an arc before them. Five or six more drones dropped to the ground, and it appeared for just a moment that they might make it as there were only about three more in sight ahead. Then it was Rocco’s turn to pull the trigger and have nothing happen. He glanced at the readout, which predictably read 0% in blinking red font.

Ricky was the only one with ammo left, though not much of it. He sprayed the remaining three, cutting them down like the rest. They quickly crossed the length of the rest of the alley, while the first shots began ringing out from behind them. They rounded a corner and came face to face with another group of battle drones, and to their dismay, two of the massive CMIs were waiting for them.

“Goddammit!” Rocco exclaimed.

“Fugitives. Surrender immediately.” One of the foremost battle drones commanded.

Taking everyone by surprise, one of the CMIs suddenly exploded, sending a shower of jagged metal and parts in every direction. Several chunks of hot shrapnel imbedded inside the raccoons while the blast knocked them both backwards off their feet.

“What the hell?” Bingo, who managed to stay upright began looking around, just in time to spot several Titans on a roof behind them.

A second shoulder mounted RPG fired from the roof and hit the second CMI, which did not explode, but did stumble and knock backwards from the explosion. A volley of sniper fire came down at the same time, picking off the smaller battle drones around the larger CMIs. The group was now caught in the middle as more than a dozen rebels wearing feature distorting bandannas and head wraps leaped down from windows or emerged from hiding spots within the alleyway and began firing on the Zenith forces.

As chaos erupted around them, the first of several pleasure bots leaped on the brothers from behind at that point, and their attention was diverted. Bingo joined into the fray immediately, yanking the female bots away and throwing them aside, ripping and tearing savagely at them as they emerged into the alley. Rocco was beside him, beating back one of the robots with his electrified batons.

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Ricky sank his energy blade into one of the female bots’ head, which lost functioning and began shaking violently.

“Run!” Ricky yelled.

Suddenly multiple zings whizzed by them as the Zenith robots coming from the opposite side of the alley opened fire on them. Ricky, Rocco and Eligah ducked and threw their arms over their heads as gunfire erupted all around them, pinning them down and striking chunks out of the brick building behind them.

“Run where?” Eligah asked desperately. “We’re trapped!”

Bingo stuck a boot on one of the female pleasure bot’s torso to hold it down, and using both hands, tore an arm off. He then took a moment while more shots zinged past to target the battle drone firing at them, and then chucked the arm in that direction. The metal appendage flipped through the air end-over-end until it crashed into the battle drone on the other side of the alley, knocking it to the ground.

“Good show!” Ricky remarked.

“We can make it.” Rocco looked down the alley and then back up into the clear night sky. “Take Eligah.” He nodded to his brother while powering on his flight pack.

“Shit. Not this again.” Bingo grumbled, but acquiesced, letting the large Procyon scoop him up under his arms.

The two brothers both took to the sky with their passengers in tow as bullets from both ends of the alley fired at them. They could see more Zenith drones converging on the scene, but they began flying north and hoping their luck held out as the sounds of gunfire and crashing noises sounded from behind them.

* * * *

The bright blue ocean came into view, stretching out over the horizon. Across from the ocean, the pilot saw through his windshield view screen the city of Furwood stretching out for miles into the other horizon. It had been a few years since Lupis had last been to the west coast of the Federated Territories. He remembered a few particularly easy bounties he had picked up among the city’s elite rich and famous. The people here were soft and stupid. Being rich allowed one to sit and philosophize all day, to become invested in great ideals of other rich Titans who never spent any time in the real world.

But the problem with these types of elites is that they’ve never been hungry. They sit in cafes debating their ideals and are never put in a situation where they must stand on these ideals. A hungry Titan or a soldier truly knows better the fine line between right and wrong when it’s essential to their immediate survival. The crazed gangs in the wastelands knew more about the real world than the ivory tower philosophers any day of the week.

This began to make Lupis’ mind drift to his past, into territories that he’d long ago segmented and compartmentalized. An undisciplined mind was a weak mind, and Lupis fought to push the memories aside and focus on the task at hand. Fuck the rich, he thought bitterly…but fuck everyone else too.

Lupis followed his ship’s coordinate indicators and found a small lot to land in with cheap daily rates. He truly was not sure how long this could take, could not tell even if this would be worth it, but it was as good a place as any to land. He issued a command to his ship directly through his linked armor and began scanning all local channels.

Almost immediately hits came up. Shots fired within city limits. His law enforcement AI Gabriel was now searching through local law channels. He was now hearing from nearly everything except Zenith itself. That was a task he had learned through many bad investments that was as close to impossible as could be. It was only after investing and buying several expensive high-tech devices that were purported to be able to “hack” Zenith communications he had learned that Zenith used special AI technologies that simply weren’t available to the public. Advanced Zenith AI coded and scrambled their signals thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of times a second, then sent it through a few dozen proxies first. Much like the firearms issued to their battle drones, which were coded directly to the drones’ operating system and were useless to anyone else, so too were their frequencies impossible to crack.

Getting the inside scoop from Zenith was off the table, but the local law channels were claiming a fierce engagement had taken place and could possibly still be taking place. Local media were already playing it up as the worst national tragedy in the history of the Federated Territories, and worldwide media were saying the “battle” was as large as the one in Gothamir. He was fairly sure that couldn’t be true as in Kallerish City, entire sections of the Astrobloc fought back, as well as outsiders as well.

Calling the fighting in Kallerish City an insurrection against Zenith could have been warranted, but they were already claiming the same about here in Furwood, despite the fact that he could find no claims that any other groups had joined in the fighting. No, this seemed much more like a group of wanted fugitives that tried to resist a targeted ambush.

Lupis instructed Gabriel to input the coordinates into the ship’s map system. In a moment he was looking at a 3D map and saw the locations where these alleged shootouts were taking place. It seemed like a good time to get eyes on the targets, hopefully before Zenith got to them.