by Isaac Hooke
“Well, that was nice of him, I suppose,” Jain said.
Jain received a share request.
Sheila wants to give you access to Rifleman A and Rifleman B. Do you accept? (Y/N)
Jain accepted.
“See you down there,” Sheila said, and vanished.
Jain glanced at his Accomp. “Xander, how bad is the lag going to be once we’re planet side?”
“About two seconds,” Xander said. “I’d recommend deploying the spare stealth skirmisher in low orbit, just above the Kármán line.” That was the area just before atmospheric entry began, in Earth’s lower thermosphere.
“Do it,” Jain said.
Jain switched to normal time and watched the skirmisher deploy. It decelerated rapidly, traveling down toward the Kármán line above Earth’s dome. He didn’t activate the stealth settings: the constant stream of transmissions would give away its position anyway. He’d just have to hope it wasn’t shot down by either side while he was down there.
“I’ve detected a shuttle launch from the Talos,” Xander said.
“There’s our ride,” Jain said. “How are we doing for lag?”
“Currently one second and falling as the skirmisher converges with the target,” Xander said. “It should be under ten milliseconds when the transport begins atmospheric entry.”
Jain waited impatiently. He could transfer his consciousness now, but the lag would be… uncomfortable. When he shifted his eyes, or his head, or moved his lips to talk, he expected his body to respond immediately, not one second later.
He observed the transport via one of his external camera equivalents. Finally the craft converged with Earth’s dome, and a yellow ball of flame formed around it.
The holographic pyramid in front of him suddenly shifted.
“You will be destroyed,” 46 said coldly, and the line cut out.
“I was wondering when he’d notice our little subversive communique…” Jain said. The tactical display blinked beside him. “What just happened?”
“We just lost our data link with the rest of the Mimic fleet,” Xander said. “We’re relying on internal sensors to calculate the positions of every other unit on the battle space now.”
“Oh.” Jain studied the display. “Well, assuming this is right, we’ve drifted too far away for destruction at the hands of the Mimic fleet to be a concern at the moment.”
“We’ve been marked for future destruction, undoubtedly,” Xander said.
“Not going to worry about it right now,” Jain said.
“By the way, lag is under ten milliseconds,” Xander said.
“All right,” Jain said. He felt his heart beating faster, an illusion of the VR environment to simulate the excitement he was feeling.
And the dread.
Gotta love virtual adrenalin.
“Activate full consciousness sharing with Rifleman A,” Jain finished.
The bridge darkened, and Jain floated in darkness.
The sweet oblivion before battle.
He didn’t relish it. A similar oblivion likely awaited him upon death. One that he could never wake from.
Will I survive today? Will humanity?
Before he could come up with an answer to that question, reality returned. It wasn’t virtual this time.
He resided in a shuttle cabin. Fully upright, he was clamped into a metallic alcove whose sides intruded upon his peripheral vision. Across from him he could see two other alcoves. They contained other riflemen: humanoid robots with multiple antennae on their square-shaped heads. Their wrists were surrounded by large rectangles that reached to their elbow servos: those were heavy plasma guns, known as Hammer PT-51s. They were currently in the retracted position; when deployed, the Hammers would envelope his hands and fingers, restricting use of the latter digits. The Hammers functioned as both rifles and pistols, complete with built-in scopes and laser targeting.
Because of the weapon types the robots were equipped with—Hammers—he had flirted with the idea of calling the robots “carpenters,” but in the end the team had voted on riflemen because they thought it sounded “cooler.”
Blue indicators above the riflemen in front of Jain labeled the one on the left Sheila, and the rightmost Gavin.
“Welcome back, boss!” Gavin said. The top part of his avatar appeared in the lower right of Jain’s HUD as he spoke.
“So you all decided to come…” Jain said.
“Of course,” Sheila said. “We weren’t going to give up our chance to fight at your side one last time.”
“It’ll be like old times,” Gavin agreed.
“Well, you’re more optimistic than I am about this mission,” Jain said.
Gavin’s avatar shrugged. “We’ve got spare bodies.”
“But the rest of humanity doesn’t,” Jain said. “If we fail…”
He leaned forward against his clamps slightly, and spotted Mark in the alcove just to the right of Gavin. On the far left, in the pod next to Sheila, the unit there was labelled Rifleman C.
Mark was uncharacteristically silent; Jain glanced at his HUD, and realized the status indicators for Cranston and Medeia were missing.
He glanced at Sheila and said, over a private line: “Cranston and Medeia?”
“Didn’t make it,” Sheila replied. “Very few cloakers and teleporters did, unfortunately.”
Jain was saddened to hear that.
Jain studied Mark again. The robot had a featureless face, of course, but Jain had no doubt that Mark was seething inside over the loss of Medeia. Whether that anger was directed at the admiral of the space fleet, or the aliens, Jain didn’t know.
He decided it was time to clarify a few things.
He opened a private line with Mark. “I don’t want you to do anything foolish out there.”
“Don’t intend to.” Mark’s avatar wore a dark look. “I’m only here to kill some aliens.”
“Good,” Jain said. “Because that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Wooyah,” Mark said blankly.
Jain sighed. He amped up his time sense, and transmitted a timebase sync with his next communique to Mark, so he would match. “Look, we’re going to get her back. When this is through, we’re going to repair her ship and restore her from her latest backup. Cranston, too.”
“That’s not the same thing as actually getting her back,” Mark said. “You know that. The Medeia we all know is dead.”
“Yes, but none of us will know the difference once we restore her,” Jain said. “It’ll be like she never left. Hell, she won’t know the difference.”
“But the real Medeia will,” Mark said. “The one whose ship lies in fragments out there.” He sighed, and his avatar shook its head. “Maybe we should leave the dead alone. Maybe this whole reviving crap should. It goes against nature. It’s… unnatural.”
Jain studied his avatar. “That’s a dangerous road to take. Because you were restored from a backup yourself. If you believe that, then you believe you yourself are unnatural. I remember reading a few years back about a Mind Refurb called Manticore. He was part of the legendary Bolt Eaters.” That was a group of Mind Refurbs who had single-handedly repelled the Second Invasion. “Manticore hated what he had become, and wanted to destroy all Mind Refurbs, including himself. It was this hatred that drove him to partner with the Banthar in their invasion of Earth. Don’t be like Manticore.”
Mark gave Jain a defiant look, then his expression softened. “I won’t. I just need to kill some aliens. Then I’ll feel better.”
“We all will, I’m sure,” Jain said, and he returned his time sense to normal.
The cabin jerked suddenly.
“Gotta love atmospheres,” Gavin said. “Turbulence.”
“That wasn’t turbulence,” Sheila said. “The bioweapons shoot at everything that passes overhead. Those were some evasive maneuvers on the part of the AI.”
Again the cabin jerked, roughly. Jain glanced at his overhead map, which indicated the tra
nsport as a yellow dot above the terrain around the Yellowstone hotspot. He realized the craft had dived low, and was hugging the treetops for its final approach to avoid being further targeted.
“I call them Rhinos by the way,” Jain said. “The bioweapons. And the machines: Diggers.”
“Creative,” Gavin mocked.
“Yeah, what do you want to call them?” Jain asked.
“Oh no,” Gavin said. “Rhinos and Diggers is fine by me.” His avatar tried hard to keep a straight face, and then snickered. “Rhinos!”
Jain frowned, and dismissed that annoying avatar.
Ahead, the overhead map indicated a clearing in the forest ahead, adjacent to the force field perimeter. The vessel touched down just inside the forest rim.
The clamps retracted. The ramp lowered.
Jain stepped forward, and deployed the Hammers in both hands.
Locked and loaded.
“Secure the perimeter,” Jain ordered. He glanced at Sheila. “Stay here with me.”
The other riflemen, manned and unmanned, dashed down the ramp and enveloped the transport in a cigar formation.
“Clear!” Gavin said.
Jain glanced at Sheila. “Let’s go.”
The two of them hurried down the ramp. He joined Gavin near the front of the transport.
Fifty meters ahead and to the left, Claw artillery units, basically big tanks controlled by Mind Refurbs, resided inside the tree line. The pines behind them had been trampled, indicating the path the Claws had taken to reach that particular vantage point. The soil was chewed up by their treads.
He signaled the Void Warriors to approach and ordered his Direct Report, Rifleman B, to mirror him.
As he neared the long line of Claw units, which squatted smack-dab against the tree line, he could see the clearing beyond. Judging from the fallen trunks, that clearing had been formed by the plasma and laser fire exchanged by both sides.
As Jain neared the tanks, he could see the targets the Claws were whaling on: various mounds and fallen pines near the perimeter of the force field, which the aliens sheltered behind.
Jain kept moving, dashing from tree to tree, not wanting to be exposed for too long.
Combat robots flanked each Claw unit. Trafalgar models, manned by Mind Refurbs. Some of them fired out past the tree line, while the others watched the flanks. The closest nodded as Jain approached.
But before he arrived, plasma bolts abruptly slammed into the artillery units, sourced from the opposite side of his position, within the forest. Those bolts fired in rapid succession, eating through each Claw in turn.
Jain ducked for cover behind a tree, as did the other Void Warriors. He leaned past the edge, and spotted a group of Rhinos: they had secretly penetrated the tree line and approached from the far flank to pummel the units.
Some of the tanks managed to return fire at their surprise attackers, as did the Trafalgars entrenched with them, but in seconds, all fifteen tanks had been taken offline. Only two Rhinos went down, as far as Jain could tell.
“Why the hell are we hiding behind trees?” Gavin said. “We may as well be hiding behind paper for all the protection it offers!”
“Because even paper can shield you from the eyes of the aliens,” Mark said.
“You want to hide behind the tanks instead?” Sheila told Gavin. “You saw how well their armor held up to those plasmas.”
The Trafalgar units had all taken cover in the forest as well, some behind trees, others within depressions in the ground, and they were firing at the Rhinos, who were retreating into the forest now that their task was done.
That retreat didn’t make sense from a strategic point of view, since the aliens could have easily rushed forward and overwhelmed the Trafalgar. And the Void Warriors.
But then when low-flying bombers roared past overhead and let loose a bunch of bombs, igniting the forest, Jain understood: being inside the forest wasn’t the best place to take down support aircraft, considering the difficulty of targeting incoming jets or bombs with all those trees in the way.
That was good, because it meant Jain and the others wouldn’t be pinned.
An incoming fireball overwhelmed his position, and Jain ducked lower.
He heard more explosions coming from the direction of the clearing, and as the fireball evanesced, he realized the jets were crashing into the force field and disintegrating.
“The Rhinos in the clearing managed to get in some shots,” Gavin commented. “Taking down the bombers after they released their payload.”
“That’s too bad,” Sheila said.
Clumps of dirt and alien body parts fell from the air from the closer explosions; a cloud of floating dust cloaked the area, but his robot vision allowed him to see through it well enough. Several craters marred the forest where the alien attackers had hidden. Mangled bodies, barely recognizable as Rhinos, were sprawled among the fallen trees surrounding those craters. The pines that were still standing next to the Void Warriors were on fire.
“They dropped those bombs a bit close for comfort,” Sheila said.
“Hey, they know we’re robots,” Gavin said. “They know we can take it.”
“I like it,” Mark commented. “I especially like what it did to the aliens.”
As the dust cleared, Jain cast his gaze toward the clearing beyond the tree line, and said: “It’s time to destroy those Diggers.”
33
The Trafalgar robots who had taken cover behind the flaming trees and tank wreckages had also survived the bombs. Jain sent a transmission to one of them.
“I’m Jain Sagan, commander of the Void Warriors,” he said. “Who is in command here?”
“That’d be me.” An avatar appeared in Jain’s lower right: a bearded man wearing glasses and a camo cap. His transmission corresponded with a Trafalgar hiding behind a ruined Claw. “I’m Commander Ricks of the Dark Horses.”
“What say we team up to kick some alien ass?” Jain said.
“I was about to suggest the same thing,” Ricks said.
“All right,” Jain said. “There are four enemy Diggers out there, spaced out at four different locations next to the force field, protected by a sizable number of bioweapons each. I’m labeling them E1, E2, E3, and E4. I want your Dark Horses to come in from the far right flank, Fire and maneuver style, toward E4, then E3. Meanwhile we’ll come in from the far left. We’ll work our way inward, taking down the bioweapons and Diggers first in E1, and then E2.”
“What happens if the Diggers get inside the force field?” Sheila asked.
“Then we follow them and their Rhino entourage inside,” Jain said. “They’ll probably spread out to take on the tanks and mechs waiting within, using the trees for cover. We’ll follow them, attack from behind if we can. Otherwise, we’ll regroup in front of the force field generators and help against the final attack.”
“We go in there, we lose air and artillery support,” Ricks said. “Not that it’s helping out all that much at the moment.”
Several shells arced overhead from artillery that had set up on a hill beyond the horizon. The Rhinos promptly unleashed a rapid stream of plasma bolts, hitting the incoming shells; the bombs exploded in midair, proving Ricks’ point.
Jain and the others didn’t bother to duck as the shock waves reverberated off of their robot bodies. The flames on the trees around them flickered, threatening to go out, but as the air rushed back inside, the burning resumed.
“You have contact with the support teams I assume?” Jain asked.
“I do,” Ricks replied.
“Good,” Jain said. “We’ll coordinate with them to stage a distraction when the time is right. Now move out!”
The Dark Horses sprinted away to the right, staying underneath the cover of the tree line.
“Void Warriors, with me!” Jain led the Void Warriors away to the west.
He slowed down time and upped his servomotor output; to human eyes he and the Void Warriors would have looked like
blurs as they weaved around the wreckage of the tanks, the torn up bodies of the Rhinos, and past the blast craters. They stayed underneath the eaves of the forest, keeping an eye out for possible Rhinos hidden behind the trees. But there were none: the survivors of the air strike, if any, had fled.
Soon the blast craters were behind them and Jain and the others were able to move even faster. When they were aligned with the far left flank of the attackers, he called a halt.
They took cover behind different features of the landscape. Trees, depressions, boulders.
“Sheila, you and your Direct Report are with me,” Jain said. “We’re Fire Team A. Gavin, Mark, you and your direct reports form Fire Team B. The fallen trees will provide a lot of cover, but for those places that it doesn’t, we’ll use basic Fire and maneuver. Fire Team A will follow this route.” He highlighted a path through the trees on the map. “Fire Team B, you’ll take this course.” He drew another route that ran parallel to his own, and indicated the expected points where suppressive fire would most likely be needed.
The two teams separated, and proceeded forward along the routes he had drawn. It was almost like he was a SEAL again. Except as lieutenant commander, he rarely participated as fully as he did now.
He made his way forward at a crouch, using the fallen trees to screen him from the Rhinos. The branches of the big pine trees protruded to a good height, providing ample cover. There were also the wreckages of combat robots and tanks, along with the mutilated bodies of Rhinos, marking where the aliens had staved off an earlier attack. Jain put everything to good use, cover-wise.
He reached a break in the cover, and peered past. He could see the Rhinos ducked behind an embankment, with fallen trees on either side providing extra cover. The Digger had created that embankment with soil from the hole it was drilling. Jain could see that soil being ejected from the ground somewhere behind the Rhinos, but he couldn’t see the actual Digger: it was already completely underground by then.
Some of the Rhinos were looking directly Jain’s way, with their plasma weapons ready to open fire. Even though he was moving with enhanced speed, he knew dodging those plasma weapons wasn’t going to be easy.