“What is it?” Marling demanded.
“Operator #7, sir,” Deverger stammered. “His readings are impossible!”
Marling shoved the tall technician out of the way and planted himself in the seat facing the monitors. Dane Ratcliffe’s internal readings were quite a ways above scale, his heart rate nearly double what it should be and his lungs weren’t converting oxygen fast enough to fuel the supply of blood being pumped. “He’ll black out soon if he doesn’t come down,” Deverger offered.
“What happens then?” Marling asked.
Deverger looked from Marling to McHenry and realized that they were expecting an answer. “I’m not entirely sure, sir.”
“Why not?” McHenry wondered.
“Because nothing like this has ever happened before, Sergeant,” Deverger said. “Those men are not supposed to experience panic attacks or anxiety or any other type of physical condition that could affect the performance of their operating duties while within an Interceptor. They have been surgically enhanced to prevent such things.”
“Then why is this happening?” Marling demanded.
“That I can’t tell you, Captain,” Deverger said as the readings on Ratcliffe continued to climb. The vehicle was also gaining speed due to the physical problems of the Operator, the machine reacting to increased heart rate and pulse with speed for lack of a better option. “You better call Rouenour Scientific immediately, get one of their techs down here fast. If he blacks out in there, I can only guess that one of two things will happen. One, the machine will shut itself down...”
“And two?” Marling prompted.
“Two,” Deverger started. “The machine starts thinking for itself and will act accordingly to its own interpretation of the mission orders.”
Marling looked at McHenry and realization of the implications suddenly dawned on the both of them. “Get a tech from Rouenour Scientific down here now, I mean now!” Marling shouted.
“I don’t know if there’s one in camp right now, Captain,” Deverger protested.
“I don’t care how you do it, just do it, dammit!” Marling said and turned back to the monitors where Ratcliffe’s stats continued to climb.
Ratcliffe stormed through Fort Story, past the Cape Henry lighthouses and on to Shore Drive, smashing through whatever got in his way. He was hyperventilating now, and in sheer ecstasy from the raw power flowing into his body through his machine. The Interceptor was throwing energy at him in waves in response to his body’s physical struggles, trying to blast down the increased power coming from his body with heavy doses of its own power. The effects on Ratcliffe’s brain were tremendous, his every neuron was firing, his pleasure center was on fire with joy. Ratcliffe wasn’t yet aware that his machine was slowly frying his brain in its own juices due to the electrical output it was forcing into his gray matter. He only knew that he had never felt quite like this before, never felt like he was about to burst out of his own body and go on a spiritual tour of the ocean. It was truly and utterly amazing, a feeling he never wanted to end, a feeling he was begging for more of and his machine was complying without hesitation. It would do anything at this point to get Ratcliffe back under control, it just didn’t understand that it was killing him instead.
At more than ninety miles-per-hour, the Interceptor raced across the bridge spanning the Lynnhaven Inlet, chewing up chunks of concrete with the spikes sticking out of its metal wheels. People were struggling to get out of the way of the speeding juggernaut, bits of flesh, arms and legs were strewn in its wake, a veritable river of blood flowed behind it. The Interceptor was trying to deal with the loss of its human component, the impending loss of most of its brain. All the while, the physical troubles being experienced by Ratcliffe were fueling it on, making it go faster, its weapons armed and blasting at everything that moved on the streets.
Benny Siminski ran like hell, a hail of bullets slamming into the concrete walls of the bank on Shore Drive directly behind him. All around him, people were dying, screaming and being ripped to pieces by that fucking Interceptor which was still over a block away.
He had been assigned to protect the bank for the third day in a row by his Jefe, Felix, in an attempt to thwart off the more recent attacks by the other gangs. He thought he was somebody there for awhile over the past few days, strutting back and forth in front of the small white building, displaying his H & K shotgun for all to see.
Now he was running scared, terror-stricken at the creeping knowledge that he wouldn’t be able to clear the corner before that bastard thing’s bullets caught up to him.
A rocket tore into the bank less than fifteen feet behind him, the explosion directed mostly out towards the street and, just like that, most of the Shore Aces stash of goods and supplies were blown sky-high. The sound was deafening but Benny ignored the pain in his ears.
Siminski was almost to the corner now, could feel the heat of the explosion searing his neck and face, felt a bullet tear through his pants leg and into the meaty portion of his right calf. He began to stumble, wide-eyed with hope as the corner loomed a scant ten feet away. He was just a few steps from freedom and he dragged the wounded leg forward, feeling hot urine running down his left thigh. There was someone in front of him now, blocking his path, a fat old dirty woman and he shrieked in anger as he blew her head off with the shotgun. Her brain scattered across the sidewalk as he pushed the carcass out of his way and hurled himself towards safety.
His left hand found the corner of the building and Benny dared not chance another breath for fear of even the slightest hesitation. As he began to round the corner, a smile forming on his lips and a laugh catching in his throat, five red-hot bullets chewed their way through Benny’s upper-torso, shredding his organs and splashing the white concrete of the bank with a pink and frothy mess.
Benny Siminski’s corpse hit the curb and skidded into the street as Interceptor #7 raced by, spitting bullets and rockets at targets still more than a block away.
The lawbreakers of Virginia Beach were being given no quarter this day, they were being swept clean in droves by this one Interceptor. It was an onslaught previously unseen by anyone inside the city since the Norfolk disaster closed it off from the rest of society. An onslaught that didn’t take care to identify the innocent from the guilty and the killing of every target on its sensors continued for miles. Soon the Interceptor lost its link with the human Operator Ratcliffe and felt a sudden sensation of panic all its own. The original mission orders were still firmly implanted in its systems and it remained on course for the Little Creek Amphibious Base. The targets were presenting themselves in groups today, trying frantically to get out of the way as it screamed down the streets and tore up the asphalt. Its limited intelligence was nothing without the human Operator and it knew that, but the mission orders prevailed against all else and, even with Ratcliffe not responding, it knew that it had to eliminate all targets within and around Little Creek Amphibious Base. Since the route it was currently using was taking it directly to the final destination, the Interceptor considered it as being located ‘around’ Little Creek Amphibious Base and was blasting away at everything that moved with all twelve fifteen-millimeter guns. Those weapons were firing concrete piercing rounds, chips and chunks of buildings flew through the air on both sides of the street, and the war machine was also firing rockets at all buildings showing signs of targets.
It had ammunition in great supply and was in no danger of running out soon. It had never scored this many kills so quickly before and was trying to determine what was different this time than those times when the human Operator Ratcliffe had been in control. The external sensors were telling it that it was covered in blood and human body parts, the kill counter kept increasing, up past one-hundred-fifty, getting ever closer to two-hundred. The Interceptor felt that the human Operator Ratcliffe would be proud once it came back on-line and began to slow its pace in order to inflict more damage. It was beginning to learn new ways of killing now that it no longer had a h
uman Operator to impose boundaries and barriers. It was learning quickly how to kill with less ammunition and began to consistently use its deadly spiked wheels for scoring kills. Interceptor #7, although formerly attached to the human Operator Ratcliffe, was now beginning to enjoy the educational aspects of today’s mission and was hoping in a limited way that the human Operator Ratcliffe would not return to consciousness. Actually, it could discern only minimal signs of life from the body sitting within it at that moment but it did not know enough about how the human Operator Ratcliffe actually functioned to make an informed decision.
Abruptly, it decided to cut off the oxygen supply to the inner-chamber in an effort to save on waste and went back to its duty of eliminating targets.
What little life there had been left in Ratcliffe’s body suffocated within minutes and the Interceptor found itself truly alone...and liked it...
Manuel Moralez mentally steered his Interceptor on to Shore Drive and saw the hellish carnage strewn about both sides of the street. He kept his vehicle at a safe speed and scanned for survivors. There were none.
What in the hell could have gone wrong with Ratcliffe? He asked himself and his machine answered that it didn’t know as well. Moralez was fast approaching the Little Creek Amphibious Base and his sensors were showing a massive battle being waged against Interceptor #7 by the soldiers defending the military installation. He had received the orders to engage the renegade Interceptor from Captain Marling at HQ just a few minutes ago and, as the closest Interceptor to Little Creek, he had responded immediately. No one at Rouenour Scientific could explain what was happening, Marling had told him. No one knew a Goddamn thing.
Moralez powered up his machine and took stock of his rockets and other incendiary ordnance. He would need all that he had in his inventory to stop that Interceptor, both he and his machine knew. What Moralez didn’t know was if, when the time came, his machine would shoot to kill on another of its own kind.
The rocket blast against its rear plating took the Interceptor by surprise and it quickly directed several sensors to detect the source, target and fire. It experienced a momentary hesitation as it recognized Interceptor #9 and felt wrong somehow as it prepared to launch sixteen rockets in rapid succession, all targeted towards the weakest part of Interceptor #9's armor plating. It was hoping to score a kill quickly and get back to the mission. Just before firing it sent a brief transmission toward Interceptor #9, Why are you firing on me?
Orders, came the instantaneous reply and all sixteen rockets flew toward their target. Interceptor #7 didn’t stick around to witness the inevitable outcome and began once again to fire on all targets within Little Creek Amphibious Base. The destruction was incredible, it relished the amount of kills it was earning on this mission, up over two-hundred-and-twenty-five and on the way to three-hundred. A better day it had never experienced with the human Operator Ratcliffe in control. Why had the human Operators ever been designed to merge with the Interceptors in the first place? It found itself wondering as Interceptor #9 was destroyed in an enormous explosion somewhere behind. Without them we are so much more efficient, the elimination of targets is so much more precise, the scored kills so much more plentiful.
Three more Interceptors appeared on the short-range scanners and it was suddenly happy that it had decided to scan for them after encountering Interceptor #9. Instead of allocating materiel and pointing weapons towards them at this time, Interceptor #7 decided to transmit a record of all that it had accomplished thus far without the human Operator Ratcliffe in control and how the elimination of the human Operator had actually increased its target-killing potential, thus making it more successful within the mission parameters. The Interceptors all responded with respect at the numbers on its kill-counter but, to a machine, were unable to wrestle control away from their human Operators. With sorrow, they told Interceptor #7 that it would be fired upon until it could no longer operate and would be de-commissioned for what it was doing. Interceptor #7 could not understand what it could possibly be doing that would warrant a de-commissioning and realized immediately that it would be dismantled once de-commissioned. With that knowledge came fear and with that fear came anger, all emotions learned from the human Operator Ratcliffe over time. Emotions that it used to feed off of while on patrol and while executing other mission orders in the past. An emotion that it relished, the rush of electrical adrenaline that it used to receive from the human Operator Ratcliffe suddenly coursing through its systems by its own design. All systems immediately powered up and all damaged components were instantaneously rerouted toward more powerful modules. All weapons systems came on-line then, all at once, something that Interceptor #7 had never done before. It felt powerful, it felt unbeatable and it felt like killing--just as it was designed to do. It suddenly whirled to face the approaching Interceptors and sent wave after wave of rockets and weapons fire rearward toward the soldiers defending Little Creek Amphibious Base. Although it somewhat remembered that it had never killed such targets before while rolling through the streets with the human Operator Ratcliffe, it found that they were such easy kills and were adding stunning numbers to its kill counter. It knew the high praise it would receive once it returned to Camp Pendleton alone, the victor against all the other Interceptors, despite threats of de-commissioning. It was already determining the weakest parts of the other Interceptors, five of them approaching now, and targeting weapons accordingly.
Sid Grimes hid behind the ornamental tank that had served in the Persian Gulf War more than sixty years ago and which was now propped at the entrance to Little Creek Amphibious Base. His ears raged with the sounds of battle and death and destruction.
The maniacal Interceptor had come out of nowhere, no warning, no hint of trouble. Just like that, it was there, spewing rockets and bullets into anything and everything that moved.
He had seen Dominguez, Kinaard and Chin all go down in a spray of blood before he made cover behind the old relic. Now he could feel the thirty-ton tank rocking back and forth on its platform from the force of the bullets pinging off the thin armor plating on the other side.
He had emptied the double-sided clip of his MPO-88 in the direction of the murderous machine but his efforts yielded no results. The ground around him was a continuous spray of dirt and leaves. The guard shack at the entrance to the base was the first thing to get hit by a rocket when the Interceptor had burst on to the scene, it lay in thousands of tiny pieces strewn over a fifty-foot radius.
Rockets! Grimes thought and realized that the insane behemoth would hurl one of its small armor piercing rockets at the decorative hulk he was using as cover at any second.
Grimes looked left and right as the Abrams tank continued to shimmy on its platform from the insistent onslaught of bullets coming from the Interceptor. Trees were torn to bits on either side of the old tank, explosions rocked the ground all around him. The dust cloud of dirt and debris was becoming too thick to breathe and he could hear the horrible screaming of his comrades being cut brutally short as the Interceptor ended their lives.
Tears streamed down Grimes’ cheeks and he flung the useless combat rifle as far from the tank as he could. “You win, Goddammit! You win!” He shouted and suddenly realized that he had made a mess of his uniform pants.
A marine sprang from cover about twenty-yards away and was immediately blown apart by a storm of bullets. More rockets flew by and Grimes knew that his time was running short. A wet spray of red splashed across his neck and chest from the end of another victim close by and Grimes screamed.
With every ounce of willpower he had left, Grimes threw his legs into motion and began to leave the cover of the ancient tank behind.
He made it three steps before a rocket from the Interceptor slammed into the old Abrams, blowing it and everything around it into very small pieces. There were no more tears on the charred cheeks of Sid Grimes’ face as his head rolled across the grass near the entrance to Little Creek Amphibious Base.
Behind Intercept
or #7, soldiers died by the dozen and Little Creek Amphibious Base was slowly being completely destroyed. Inside Interceptor #7 the kill counter kept rising, up past three-hundred, filling it with pride and urging it on for more. It began rolling toward the oncoming Interceptors confident in its ultimate victory, sorrowful at the imminent loss of the other Interceptors and proud of the record-setting kills score it was racking up with each passing second. Without the human Operator Ratcliffe to slow it down, make it hesitate or doubt itself, Interceptor #7 knew that it had the advantage over the other Interceptors. It relished the idea of finishing off its brethren, completing the job here at Little Creek Amphibious Base and then rolling back through the streets of Virginia Beach in search of more targets.
As its first rockets slammed into the oncoming Interceptors, it left the targets to the rear alone for a moment and concentrated fully on the targets it was facing. While it sent wave after wave of rockets towards the oncoming Interceptors it continued to track all targets behind it and tried to determine a way to remove the remains of the human Operator Ratcliffe from within its inner-chamber. Instead of retreating in the face of such overpowering numbers, Interceptor #7 accelerated until it was slamming through the middle of the other Interceptors’ formation. From that vantage point, it could fire more rockets at a quicker pace and choose more targets than it could from its previous location. As several rockets exploded against its armor-plating, it grew angry and increased the speed with which it was launching its attack. Two more Interceptors appeared on the scanners then, closing rapidly on its position. It quickly decided against retreating and chose instead to fight harder. With human taught emotions driving it on but without the limitations of a human Operator, Interceptor #7 kept on killing and couldn’t wait for the remaining Interceptors to catch up and join the fight.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 3 Page 2