by Mark Harritt
Mike saw the disappointment in Matki’s eyes, but Matki nodded, “It will be done.”
Mike turned, looked at Ken and his group, “The rest of you, come with me.”
Mike turned and started running toward Jen’s position. Behind him, he heard Caul giving orders to move people into their defensive positions. Mickey and Tom were headed over to help Everett. Mike’s team had fallen in behind him. Everybody knew the drill and they moved like a well-oiled machine.
Sec and Spec, or Security and Special Operations were done. Now it was just one team. Mike needed to restructure when they were finished to reflect that fact. Hell, even the civilians, like Hank, Will, and Billy needed to be integrated into the team hierarchy. No more civilians, soldiers and airmen. They were all warriors now. They’d come a long way since the null generator had dropped them into a shit storm of trouble.
Mike turned to the problem in front of him. There were so many red icons overlaying Jens position that he couldn’t see the blue friendly. He turned the corner, and all he could see was a seething mass of black swarming the mech. Jen was pumping incandescent rounds from her railgun into the heaving mass of robots. Mike stopped, swung his weapon up to his shoulder, and started shooting the robots off of Jen, afraid they’d overwhelm the mech.
“Fuck, Mike, stop thinking like that!” he chided himself, mentally. He couldn’t let the fact that it was Jen out there override his critical assessment of the battle. If he did he’d screw everything up, and that wouldn’t help anyone.
“Clear those robots off the Mech! We have to watch Jen’s back. If they get around her, we take them down!”
The others fell in on Mike and started shooting, targeting anything that was behind, or on the Mech. Some fell, but Mike watched in frustration as they kept piling on. These robots were a different than the ones that Mike had encountered at the necropolis. There was no hesitation. They swarmed, trying to break the mech.
Mike watched as Jen picked up one of the robots, and used it like a bat to clear the others off of the armor. She picked another up and slammed its head into the rock wall, stone shattering from the impact, the hollow ‘boom!’ echoing down through the canyon. She hammered another one down into the ground, the metallic structure of the robot crunching as it was pounded flat.
She turned on the rail gun and the pulse laser. Luminescent streams of superheated metal slammed into the robots, ripping them into shreds. The pulse laser swung back and forth, dismembering robots. The ones that were still intact were trying to maneuver around the Mech, seeking advantage. She used her heavy boot to stomp the ones that were underfoot, crushing the automatons flat. Even through the mask, Mike could smell the stink of burning hydrocarbons. Oil, hydraulic fluids, and other remains of the dismembered robots coated the gravel floor of the canyon.
Still, the automatons kept coming. It looked like some kind of organic, swarming alien organism that wanted to swallow the mech whole. The mech started to cant to one side as more of them swarmed onto it. It looked like the Mech was going to topple.
“Grenades!” Mike screamed.
He pulled a grenade from his kit, pulled the safety wire, and tossed it into the seething mass of robots, knowing that the Mech’s armor would protect Jen. His grenade was followed by two more. His grenade went off and the overpressure knocked down the robots closest to the Mech. In quick succession, the other two grenades went off. The overpressure from the second two continued the work that the first one had started. Some of the robots were down, unable to get back up. Mike couldn’t tell if it was due to broken mechanicals or damaged electronics. Some of the robots staggered around as their internal circuitry tried to compensate for the explosion. Mike just wished that fabrication had been able to make grenades with shrapnel, not just concussion grenades.
Still, the concussion grenades seemed to help. They slowed the robots enough that Jen was able to get the Mech stabilized. She started carving up the robots again. As she moved, she stepped on the downed robots, making sure they wouldn’t get back up again. He watched one of the robots explode as the pellets from the rail gun ripped into it. Mike continued to target the robots around the Mech. Ken and Rich stood on one side of him and Bill and Craig were on the other side. Rifles blazed as they added their fire to Mike’s.
Then, something changed. The robots noticed the five men pouring bullets into the swarm. Several of the automatons turned and started loping toward them.
“They’re coming at us, Mike!” yelled Ken, pointing out the obvious.
“Take them down. Concentrate on the ones closest to us. Jen?”
“What’s up Mike?”
“We have a problem back here we need to concentrate on, you’ll have to fend for yourself for a little bit.”
She acknowledged, “Got it.”
Mike lay awake in a cold sweat many nights after their combat with the robots at the necropolis. Watching the robots here loping across the canyon floor brought back some of his old nightmares, ones in which he’d stood helplessly as the robots in the necropolis attacked him. In his dreams, he wasn’t able to stop them, waking just as they reached him and leaped up at him. Still, those weren’t as bad as the dreams he had when the giant robot grabbed him and he watched the other hand come down to clap. Mike felt a trickle of sweat on his upper lip as he raised his rifle to shoot.
The concentrated fire did the trick on the lead robot. It went down, slamming into the ground, tumbling over.
“Shift!” Mike yelled.
There were two right behind that one. Three rifles barked at one, two rifles at the other. The one on the left side went down and all five rifles hit the one that was still up. It went down and all rifles turned to the last one.
It went down and Mike gave new orders, “Shift back to the mech!”
All rifles shifted back to the swarm on the mech. Then, as one, all of them, at least the ones that were still capable, started to pull back. Mike’s crew lowered their weapons.
Mike cried out, “What the hell are you doing? Keep shooting. Don’t let any of them leave!”
The sound of the gunfire intensified as the other four started shooting at the retreating robots again. Mike watched his head’s up display as the tide of red receded. The buzz of the Mech’s railgun punctuated what Mike had told his team. She kept up fire until the last of the robots had retreated down the canyon and were masked by a curve in the rock wall.
Mike looked around at his crew, “What the hell are you guys thinking? You keep killing them until there are none left to kill. Besides,” Mike walked over to kick one of the robots, “These things aren’t alive. If we kill more of them now, that’s less of them they’ll be able to send back in here.”
Ken replied, sheepishly, “Sorry Mike. I guess the old training kicked back in. We were trained in Security that, as soon as your assailant isn’t a threat anymore, you stop engaging them.”
Mike frowned beneath his mask, “Yeah, that might work on Malmstrom Air Force Base, or if you’re a cop in the USA, but you better get that out of your head here. You keep shooting until it’s dead. Or, you stab it in heart, or maybe punch it in the throat until it stops breathing or its not moving. Don’t stop until you know it’s dead. You won’t get a second chance to make a mistake.”
“Okay, Mike, got it.”
The other three replied also, agreeing Mike’s guidance.
Mike called to Jen, “Jen, ACE report.”
“Green, Green, Green.”
Mike went through the ACE report with everybody else, and got the same thing, though Craig was about a magazine lower in ammunition than everybody else.
“What the hell, Yee? Itchy trigger finger?” Bill asked.
Mike called out for SITREPs from the other teams, “Murph, you still with me?”
“Yeah, Mike, we’re good. Things were getting dicey there for a minute, then the robots peeled back out of the canyon.”
“Did you get an ACE report?”
Murph replied back, sounding disap
pointed that Mike had asked him, “Come’on Mike, you know me better than that, of course I did.”
Mike grinned, “Sorry Murph, you know I gotta ask. How’s your team?”
“Green, green, green, right now. If we get hit again like the last time, I think we might have a problem,” Murph replied.
“Everett, how’s things over on your side?”
“Things here got a little bit exciting, but we’re copacetic now. Same thing here, green cubed. The robots seemed to have gone back to wherever they came from.”
“Think we’ve seen the last of them?” Mike asked.
“Nope.”
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Taectis and Fancheion stood on opposite sides of the table as officers and other soldiers hurried around the room to complete crucial tasks before the men were ordered forward to engage the enemy. They ignored the commotion as Fancheion briefed Taectis.
“We’ve located resistance here, here and here,” Fancheion indicated by pointing at the locations on the display in front of him. “These mountains have multiple entrances to multiple canyons. The robots have mapped most of those canyons. Many of them are box canyons that don’t lead anywhere. In these three canyons, though, the robots met heavy resistance. We’ve lost about a third of our hunter killers in those three places.”
Taectis frowned, “A third of our automatons? I thought we were facing primitives?”
Fancheion nodded, “That’s what we’ve been told, but like the Turinzoni were misled about what they were facing, I believe we have been as well. It was a good thing you decided to send in the hunter/killer packs first.”
“Do we have any indication of what the hunter/killers were facing in the canyons?”
“We do, Shaedur Taectis. We’ve downloaded these pictures from some of the sensor scouts.”
Fancheion quickly switched the screen from the map to a series of pictures, “As you notice, they seem to have some kind of automatons. We weren’t told about those.” He switched to another view, one that showed figures in black, battle armor, “And here, behind the larger automatons, there are soldiers.”
Taectis swiped the image on the screen and it rotated one hundred and eighty degrees as she looked at the pictures, “Are you sure they’re soldiers, not more automatons?”
“Reasonably sure, Shaedur. If they are automatons, then they are much better than the ones we use.” He touched the picture to highlight the joints of the soldier that he was looking at, “They move much more smoothly than we’ve seen with other automatons. That alone seems to indicate a biological instead of a mechanical.”
Taectis swiped the table so that it switched back to the larger mechanical, “Do you think this is all they have?”
“It is impossible to tell. We don’t know how far back into the mountains these canyons go. Our satellites can’t penetrate the fog, plus there seems to be temperature variations that indicate geothermal activity. We don’t have radar capability with the satellites we have in place. We can’t judge until we move further into the canyons.”
Taectis contemplated the map, “How long would it take to get satellites in place with radar to map these canyons?”
“Too long, Shaedur.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Taectis snapped, “How long?”
“We have to find a ship to lift them into place, then we have to run tests to make sure they’re working. Possibly three to seven days, local.”
Taectis raised her head to look at Fancheion, “Local?”
He nodded, “Local. I’ve already asked, and that’s the guidance I received. There are no commercial craft that will do it sooner.”
“Om Varee’s influence?” She mused.
Fancheion shrugged, “Possibly.”
“Baagh!” Her beak tapped, tapped, tapped as she weighed her options, “Then we have no choice. We have to scout by force, movement to contact. But these automatons that they have, they seem to be too tough for our hunter/killers to force past.”
“They’re armed, Shaedur.”
Taectis’ eyes blinked as she contemplated that bit of information, “Why in the Gods own names would they do something like that? If one of them malfunctions, it could kill all of them.”
“Alien minds think differently, Shaedur.”
She nodded, “Indeed they do.” She stared back down at the picture of the huge robot, “Well, once again, we have no choice. I prefer to leave them in reserve, but they’re there to be used. Send in the dreadnaughts.”
Fancheion raised his hand, forestalling her decision, “Please, Shaedur, I have another proposal.”
Taectis looked up at Fancheion. Her eyes narrowed, “And what, would that be, Shomcuer?”
“We could use our mortars against them. We know approximately where the Automatons are. We could destroy them before we send the hunter/killers back in.”
Taectis shook her head, “We can’t. Our contract does not allow us the use of mortars. The Dostori Rev will not let us use high explosives in those mountains.”
Fancheion stared down at the display, and then switched it back over to the map, “Why not?”
Taectis laughed, her cackle causing the officers in the C and C room to pray that it wasn’t them that had drawn her attention, “She gave me no reasons why she wouldn’t allow it. I just know that the contract that we signed limits the actions I can take here.”
Fancheion shook his head, “That is . . . unfortunate.”
Taectis waved at the map, “Unfortunate or not, I will clear this mountain of these ghost soldiers, and send their heads back to the Dostori Rev. It appears, though, that they aren’t ghosts after all. And since they aren’t ghosts, they can be killed. Now, we will kill them all.”
Fancheion bowed his head, “It will be as you command, Shaedur.”
She nodded, “Yes, it will be. Clear the obstacles, and then, once they’re cleared, send our men in to hunt down everybody else. It has been commanded. We receive additional bonuses to kill them all. She want’s every head, man, woman and child.”
----------------------------------------------------
“Oh my God.”
Mike didn’t need his head’s up to understand what was about to happen. He knew they’d come again. Still, the head’s up made the enemy’s advance seem even more daunting. The entire set of red surged forward. Nothing was left behind this time. Even the big ones that Luis had pointed out earlier were moving toward them.
“Mechs, we’re about to engage again. Mech 4, Mech 5, keep your eyes and ears open. You’re going to have to shift to where you think you’re needed. We may not get a chance to call you in. Luis, keep an eye out, let us know if there are any problems that the reserve need to take care of.”
Michelle answered for the two of them, “Don’t worry, Jen, we’ve got your back.”
“No problem, Jennifer, I’ll let you know if there are any problems,” Luis replied.
When Jennifer finished, Mike called Caul, “Caul, there’s a bunch of them. We’ll try to stop them. If we can’t, you need to make sure they don’t get to the women and children.”
Caul replied in a cold, professional voice, “Nothing’s going to get past us, Mike.”
When Caul was finished, Matki cut in, speaking to everyone on the main command channel, “Mike, Jennifer, all of you. Thank you. My family thanks you. We all thank you.”
Mike didn’t know what to say. He choked up a little bit. Since he didn’t hear anybody else say anything, he was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one. His voice was a little heavy with emotion when he spoke, “Matki, you have to promise me. You have to make sure that all the women and children get out. If we start going down, that’s your first priority.”
Matki started to say something else, but Jen’s voice announced the arrival of the robots, “Mike, show time.”
The wave of robots came around the corner like a tidal wave. Jen’s rail gun opened up. Robots went down, but more took their place. Crai
g started to lift his rifle, but Mike shook his head, “Wait. Wait until they start to slip past Jennifer. They’re too far away for these rifles right now. When they start getting past her, then we start shooting.”
The robots slammed into the Mech, making it rock. Jennifer stepped back, got her footing, and the mech held. She was getting used to fighting the hunter/killers. All that time practicing paid off.
Mike watched in awe as Jennifer killed with ruthless efficiency. Rail gun, pulse laser, and bladed gauntlet shredded, sliced and ripped in a brutal display of ferocity. Still, as efficient a killer as she was, it was inevitable that some would get past. This time, though, there were many, many more. They started attacking in groups of twos and threes. Mike and the others started shooting at the attacking robots. They tried to concentrate fire, but sometimes it was impossible.
Still, they killed. Slowly, the robots got closer. Too close, for Mike’s comfort. He pulled a grenade, pulled the pin, yelling to let everybody know what he was doing, “Grenade!” He pitched the grenade as the others covered him, shooting at the robots closest to him. One robot fell at his feet. The grenade he threw flew through the air to land at the mech’s feet. The grenade exploded, and the overpressure cleared out some of the robots, and staggered others.
Jen wasn’t able to deliver the coup de grace to the disabled robots this time, though. The first Dreadnaught had arrived.
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Chapter Seven
Everett ran toward Rita, the team on his heels. The long ripping sound of superheated metal flying out of the mech’s railgun echoed down the canyon. Everett felt more than heard the impact as Rita slammed into the enemy robots. The noise was loud but unusual to his ears. There were crunching, clanging, slamming, and pounding noises, the sounds you’d hear in a junkyard, or maybe in a demolition derby. Those weren’t the sounds you usually hear in a pitched battle. There wasn’t the wailing, screaming, cursing, or crying that Everett was used to hearing. Because of that, the battle ahead sounded strangely quiet to him.