Smith dropped and rolled to his side with his pistol held out in front of him. A large projectile had come through the east window and slammed into the back wall. It shattered on impact, sending what looked like a bunch of finned .50-caliber rounds cascading to the floor.

Genjiro used the confusion to pull away and struggle to his feet amid a sound that reminded Smith of the Independence Day bottle rockets his father used to buy on the black market.

“Get your ass down!” Smith shouted as tiny jets of flame erupted from the backs of the objects lying around the room. A moment later they began to skitter across the floor and take to the air.

Smith managed to grab Genjiro’s ankle but it was too late. One of the projectiles hit him in the right side, puncturing his heart and both his lungs before erupting from his back in a spray of blood, tissue, and bone. It cartwheeled out of control, finally hitting a wall and going dead.

Most of the others hadn’t gotten off the ground yet and Smith stayed low, going for Genjiro’s wife. He had no idea what the hell these things were or what their capabilities were. Did they have a targeting system or did they just fly at random and cut down everything in range? Either way, he wasn’t planning on hanging around to find out.

Smith heard a loud whoosh behind him and he dived, rolling over the top of the woman who was just starting to shake off the effects of the Taser. The projectile barely missed him, rocketing past his right shoulder and sticking in the heavy wood molding near the ceiling.

If all these things managed to get into the air, Smith knew that his survival would be measured in seconds. He grabbed the dazed woman, dragging her toward the heavy desk that dominated the room. She screamed and he felt the warmth of blood splattering across his face. When he looked back, a chunk the size of a baseball was missing from her right thigh.

His plan to get beneath the desk and pull it toward the wall as cover was starting to look completely pointless. It was quickly becoming clear that these things weren’t just high-tech shrapnel—they had some kind of command and control structure. If they weren’t able to get around the desk, they’d go right through it.

Smith lifted the struggling woman into a fireman’s carry and went for the broken window, falling through it and bringing what glass was left in the frame down on them.