The Hazmat Sisters by L. X. Beckett (Asimov’s SF, May-June 2021) sees a man approach three teenage girls in the wild, who quickly mount a hi-tech defence:
“Unknown interloper.” Text from the hot scrolls across her augmented display.
She flicks the warning away with a gesture, linking to Tess’s dragon and zooming with its cameras. It feeds a view of the brush direct to her goggles. No coyote this time. The man’s scrawny, but a man nonetheless. Not as big as Fee, but full-grown.
He’s creeping toward them. Not blundering, not snuffling about for shelter, and moving superslow. Bidding to fool their motion detectors? Not good.
Wilmie checks the charge on Pony—three quarters—then side-steps, fighting a sneeze as she crouches beside her twin, Tess, and puts a hand over her mouth. Tess goes from slack to electric under her hands. She joins the Dragon channel, takes one look, and sends, subvocally: “Someone’s coming, Fee.”
Wilmie’s earbuds make the utterance seem loud.
Fee, their fearless leader, rolls deeper into the culvert they’ve claimed for the night’s camp. “Secure the mule.”
Wilmie obeys, triggering a clattering furl of shield over Mule’s chest-mounted solar panel. Pony collapses into a pile of dull silver spaghetti, camouflage mode, pretending to be broken chain-link fence, scattered in grass. Dragon rises another three meters, propellers whirring lustily as Tess, emitting a cheerful spray of happyface moji, queues up a trank dart. p. 74-75
The man is eventually confronted by the girls and slinks off. Afterwards, the three suspect that he may be a Dixie deserter up to no good (the Dixie militia is one of the factions in an ongoing American civil war that has reduced—along with corona superviruses—much of the country to a post-apocalyptic landscape).
The rest of the piece provides some backstory as well as further trials for the three as they try to walk to the DMZ, their mother/stepmother (I forget the family details), and safety. This involves: the man reappearing on two further occasions; potentially weaponised tree-planting drones appearing while they are queueing with others to buy supplies; a man with a wife and baby who helps them out; and much bickering between the three.
During all this the mother is monitoring the girls remotely, and conferences with them every night (one of the gimmicks of the story is that the mother gamifies—D&D, I’m told—their journey to try and make the three more co-operative).
This is alright, I guess, but the (spoiler) final fight scene with the man isn’t as clearly described as it could be (the problem is continually having to describe what various pieces of future tech are doing), and, overall, the story feels like an extract from a longer work rather than a self-contained piece.
**+ (Average to Good). 9,350 words. Story link.