“Better?” Ammanuel echoed. “You want them to hurt us?”

“A little, sure. They have to make this challenging or people won’t care. The protes are doing this for attention, to get tips for their cause and keep agitating for change. We’re expected to get tips, too. Almost a third of my shield income comes from the public. If they don’t help us put on a good show, we all lose.”

Jackson took a flow after she buckled in. Her hands twitched, and her lips moved in silent communication. The car wove through traffic, priority horn blaring. Lesser vehicles and foot traffic gave way. Chill air blasted the interior. Goose bumps rose on Welga’s skin as her sweat evaporated.

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the entry of a sprawling office complex. A solid metal gate swung open to let them in. The anachronism wouldn’t stop Jackson’s attackers. Welga craned her head against the one-way glass window. Three delivery drones flew over the gate. A fourth drone of the same size trailed them. The face of goddess Kali glared from its belly, her red tongue exposed, her chest decorated with a necklace of severed heads. That had to be the least original image to plaster on an attack drone. Por Qué tagged it as belonging to Death to Bots. Amateurs. Slogan text danced around it in Welga’s visual: Humanity Before Bots; Power to the Proletariat; Pills Are Worse Than Poverty!

Kali’s face split as the belly opened and disgorged half a dozen cubical blox.

Anyone with a halfway decent agent had been forewarned of the incoming protest action and had either left the area or tagged themselves to appear gray on a visual overlay. Injuring a marked nonparticipant, whether intentional or not, would bring criminal charges. The publicity of a protest made it easy to review camera feeds and assign blame. Platinum would fire a sloppy shield faster than an exfactor on zips. Clients didn’t like being associated with causing injury to anyone, especially bystanders.

Their car stopped in the broad, circular driveway.

Welga sprang out, sticky gun in hand, and aimed at the drone. It landed on the ground with a satisfying crunch. Swarms of microdrones gathered above the area like a cloud of mosquitoes. Welga launched some extras of her own from her cartridge.

“Por Qué, maintain standard combat formation on my swarm views,” she subvocalized. She couldn’t rely on the public feeds, which would follow the action that most interested viewers.

The cubes rebuilt themselves into mobile turret-bots, buying her and Ammanuel time to take cover. They used the two columns that held up the portico, Ammanuel behind one and Welga behind the other. Bullets were ineffectual against machines built from self-assembling blox. Sticky pellets flew from their guns instead. They tore apart a few of the turrets, wrapping the smart-metal with inert material. The fragments twitched and flopped on the ground like bloodless severed limbs.