Vargas shook his head. "Get going. You have work to do."
Piper watched the Bolivian captain re-holster his sidearm, the horrifying image blurred by the tears flowing freely across her vision. The South American soldiers were killing every person they found alive, and here she was, cowering in a hole, weaponless, clueless, and so damned afraid that she thought her heart might burst.
Her fear and self-recrimination threatened to swallow her up, banishing all thoughts of escape or survival. Piper shook her head, remembering her petty loathing of Saunders, and her helplessness and undeniable sense of loss as he was killed in front of her.
Of the Major and Staff Sergeant Daniels there was no sign. They were most likely dead, and that thought threatened to break her down further, but she pushed her feelings back and dried her eyes. What would they do, she wondered. What would they have me do?
She pictured Daniels standing before her, upbraiding her. The points he would have patiently made almost came along in his voice. She was a REMO and a soldier. It did not matter that she was just a maintainer -- little "Tinker Bell" -- and not a Combat REMO -- there was a mission and a capability, and you adapted or you died.
Anger grew within her, anger at herself for cowering in this hole, for having to invoke ghosts to remind her of her duty, as well as anger against a cowed enemy they had all assumed was far away from their safe, interior lines. Slowly the anger took over, supplanting her remaining loathing and the fear, turning her pity and selfish blame into a growing need for revenge.
Her ambiguity on the righteousness of the UE mission was forgotten. All that mattered was her people. There was no way she was going to let these bastards get away with this.
Piper pulled her maintenance field pack from her back and opened it up, looking at the contents with little hope. She was a Maintenance Remote Operator, about as far from the combat arms as one could go. Less a fighter and more an engineer or "twidget", everything about her job was delicate, small, fragile.
But, oh what her delicate toys could do!
Rippers and Brutes were the frontline grunts for her brethren, the Combat REMOs, and they were invariably shot up and abused through the course of their work. They were resilient machines, but unless the UE wanted to replace them after every operation, someone had to go out and fix them, preferably without a long, vulnerable logistics train. It had only made sense to use nanotech and micro-repair whenever possible.
It was obvious, though, that the repair system designer had possessed an odd sense of humor, as both its acronym and its manner of operation had led naturally to her nickname. Piper looked in her pack at the Field-Ready Remote Repair Elements and sighed. The FRRREs, or fairies, lay side by side: five segmented, contoured cylinders with delicate insectile wings, the electromechanical carriers for payloads of distributed AI micro-assemblers, whose nano-scale tools were invisible to the eye. A piece of shrapnel from the missile attack had struck her pack, and wrecked the fragile dragonfly wings on the first two units, A and B. Units C, D, and E looked undamaged though, and a systems check showed everything green.
They were not exactly guns or hypervelocity missiles, but they were all she had to work with. Besides, she was a soldier. That was all that mattered. She kept telling herself that, a self-fulfilling mantra of hope.
Piper removed a delicate skullcap from the pack and placed it on her head. She felt the gentle fields of the interface engaging the filaments deposited within her brain, and after a brief moment of discontinuity, her vision split in four. She saw out of her own eyes as well as those of the remotes.
She closed her eyes to focus on her linked AI's and set them to their tasks. Their tiny wings fluttered up to a softly buzzing whir, and the diminutive robots lifted off, eager to do some "repair" work, to fix her enemies for good.
The remotes slipped out from beneath the sheet metal covering the culvert and each darted off in a different direction, staying close to the ground. Piper monitored their progress, guiding their simplistic AIs along, and directing them where they could do the most good. She was not at all sure this would work, but it was her only option besides hiding away for the rest of her life.
FRRRE-C proceeded around camp, clockwise from Piper's hiding spot, approaching each enemy soldier in turn and slipping up to land on their rucksacks. The remote then deployed a sparing portion of its assemblers over each soldier, with open-ended instructions to modify any weapons, electronics, or explosives found.
The glow common to the assemblers was a necessary evil, short-range laser pulses essential to the operation of their distributed artificial intelligence, but the brightness of the day outside drowned out most of the glow. However, the day's brightness was fading, becoming overcast for the daily afternoon shower. Piper worried about the growing clouds ruining everything, either by dimming the ambient light such that the assembler glow became conspicuous, or by the rains washing away the dust-sized constructs.
FRRRE-D went counter-clockwise around the camp, performing much the same way under Piper's guidance, while the last remote went up the middle, catching any soldier or piece of equipment that C and D missed. The only fighters who noticed the small flyers dismissed them as large dragonflies.
It was not long before C and D ran out of assemblers, but E had enough to finish their tasks, finishing off all targets with almost half of its payload remaining. The remotes positioned themselves and waited for the assemblers to complete their labors.
About half an hour later, as the soldiers were gathering to leave, Piper thanked her tireless remotes, said a quick prayer, and sent her signal.
Vargas brushed some fine white dust off his rifle, briefly wondering where it had come from, and looked around at his men. Their faces were grim, casualties of each man's bloody afternoon, and the darkening clouds overhead reflected their mood. He nodded. It was as it should be: a sobering event rather than the triumph of battle spoken of by men who had never been touched by war.
Carlos approached. "My Captain, we've secured a number of drives and data-stacks. I hope you get some use out of them, but I fear by the time you break their encryption, the Unies will probably have changed all of their codes and important data."
Vargas gave him a half smile. "Every little bit we might learn helps us and hinders them. There's nothing wrong with that. Are we ready to leave? I'm keen to go before a flight of Hornets appears overhead."
"I suppose so, sir . . . ."
"What is it?"
Carlos appeared nervous. "Nothing really, sir, but I know I gave you my guarantee. It's just that I've been unable to locate Specialist Biel's body."
Vargas' face darkened. "And who was he?"
"She was the company's Maintenance REMO." Carlos held up his hands to ward off the captain as Vargas stalked closer. "I'm sure she's just buried under the debris of the control trailer, the poor girl."
"And if she's not? She's a REMO! She could be directing a phalanx of Rippers here right now."
Carlos shook his head. "No, no. She was just a maintainer, a mender of things."
That was when ten of Vargas' 26 men exploded, the grenades and rockets on their rucks detonating simultaneously, the actinic flare of their N8 explosives practically vaporizing the soldiers. Another nine were killed by their proximity to the blasts and everyone else was knocked flat, hot shrapnel cutting into them all with searing pain.
Vargas struggled to his knees and looked around for the threat, trying to see who was firing upon his men. There was no one, no movement, no one firing, no attack to be seen.
He just began to rise when the three people who were carrying unexpended HVM launchers each suffered, as it is known in industry terms, a "restrained fire incident." The DMT pulse fired, but the missile failed to leave the tube, thus sharing all of its ill-gained momentum with the bearer. Vargas shielded his face as his three men were each up-translated to approximately Mach 10, the pieces of their bodies arcing off toward the forested horizon. An explosion would have been kinder.
> Piper tried to control her breathing, to keep from hyperventilating, but she was simply too scared and too unnerved. Adrenalin seemed to have taken over and she had to focus to remember the elements of her plan. This was her first taste of real battle, and her emotions were jumbled all about, leaving behind a dull gray sensation where memory hardly functioned and everything became visceral sensation.
Nineteen of the Bolivians were gone, taken out by their own weapons due to her subtle modifications. But eleven more remained: Carlos, the captain, and his nine men. They were armed and hyper-aware, their rifles scanning all around, trying to place a target upon their unknown attacker.
It was time to get more involved. Her heart hammering in her ears, Piper cinched her maintenance pack tighter on her shoulders and stood up, knocking back the piece of sheet metal that had shielded her.
"This is gonna suck . . . ."
Vargas, Carlos, and the remaining men all heard the crash of the discarded metal, and each one swung his rifle over to aim at the female soldier who sprinted directly in front of them, taking the longest possible route to the tree line. If it occurred to any of them that this was an odd way to flee, it did not impede their actions.
Vargas and Carlos did not fire, Vargas because he alone kept a watchful eye on his men, and Carlos because he was relatively untrained and hesitated to shoot the young woman whom he had grown to know. The other soldiers each aimed carefully and fired, if not as one, then as close together as humanly possible.
Every one of their rifles blew up in their faces, the barrels blocked and the breeches weakened by Piper's fairy-deposited assemblers. Vargas fell back as the rest of his men died, their faces ruined, bleeding out from the terrible wounds they had sustained. The captain threw aside his rifle and motioned for Carlos to do the same.
Carlos nodded, threw down the suspect rifle, and pulled his pistol in one smooth motion.
"No!" Vargas screamed, but it was too late. Carlos pulled the trigger, aiming at Piper's back, and achieved the same glory as Vargas' men. The weapon exploded as if it had been turned into glass, the deadly shards of which buried themselves into his face and neck.
Vargas cursed and reached for the knife on his belt. He cringed at what it might do to him, but he rose to his feet, ran up, and threw the blade effortlessly, a trained master of knives.
Piper heard the explosions and screams behind her and slowed, unsure of what awaited her beyond the tree line. Was it safer to go back and make sure the job was done, or continue on into the unknown refuge of the forest?
The sudden thump of metal contacting flesh sounded and her right leg refused to respond. She fell and tumbled to a halt amid the tall grasses that surrounded the camp, well short of the uncertain safety of the trees. Reaching down toward the burning pain that began to course through her leg, she could feel the slender sharpness of a knife cutting into the meat of her thigh.
She moaned in pain as her hands jerked away from the knife. The injured maintainer, now closer to battle than she had ever truly imagined she would be, turned to drag herself through the grass and into the trees. It was too far, though, and she was too close to the enemy to hide away in the grass. Piper heard the sound of running behind her and could not keep herself from looking back.
Captain Vargas slowed to a walk and approached cautiously. The girl, Specialist Biel he presumed, lay upon the grass, his knife buried in her upper leg, trying to crawl away. She looked back at him, her fear palpable.
He reached down to pull out a second knife, this time from his boot. Fury and dismay burned in his eyes. He could not bring himself to believe that this single girl had destroyed his team so effectively.
Vargas stopped, standing almost on top of her, savoring the terror he saw in her eyes. He smiled grimly. "I don't want to hate you, but after what you've done, however it was you did it, I can't help but despise you a little. You're not a warrior and my men deserved a better death than some technician's tricks."
Her voice quavered when she answered. "I'm a soldier, and I don't care what you think of me."
A storm cloud covered up the sun and the hot, bright day grew very dark, from one heartbeat to the next. The girl closed her eyes, unable to face him at the end.
FRRRE-E received its summons and took off, homing in on its storage pack and mistress. Once overhead, though, it received a very odd directive. It looked at its newly designated maintenance target and did not recognize any mechanical systems, electronics, or explosives related to its usual maintenance actions. In fact, E was fairly certain that this constituted a proscribed event. The remote queried for clarification and was given its master security password, removing all prohibitions and reiterating the order to begin full disassembly actions upon the maintenance target immediately. The little AI maintenance fairy instantly sped to action. It was a good little soldier and it would obey promptly.
Vargas brought the knife up, professionalism and rage warring within him. As the darker side won out and he brought the knife down, something flew in his face. The captain halted his killing blow and rolled to the side. He jumped to his feet and searched for this new attacker. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it.
Some sort of construct -- about the size of a large dragonfly and moving in much the same way -- flew circles about him, darting in and out, avoiding his knife and his sweeping hand. The construct flew up and began sprinkling him with particles of some type, their scintillating, golden glow pushing back the gloom that heralded the coming rain. Brilliant spirals of what he could only describe as pixie dust fell down upon him, disappearing upon contact with his skin.
The old soldier's skin started to glow, and then the glow filled his vision. Then the burning started, followed by an indescribable pain, lancing away all his professionalism and reserve, flaying him until the loyal officer was no more and only an animal remained. He screamed and screamed, until it seemed as if that was all he had ever done.
Captain Luis Vargas, a warrior who had seen far too many of the horrors of war, experienced a new one all his own.
Piper turned her back to her victim just as the captain's screams faded away and his skin began to slough off. She ripped the interface from off of her head and proceeded to throw up into the grass. The girl lay for a moment in tears, stinking of bile, sweat, and blood, crying for all that had happened that terrible day.
The skies opened up, washing away the filth, if not the memories. Behind her, the assembler glow covering the captain's exposed flesh faded out, the distributed AI out of power and drowning in the torrents of rain. It was peaceful now, with only the white noise of the heavy downpour to break up the silence. She felt cool, but Piper did not know whether it was from the rain or from her loss of blood.
A twitter of wings beside her revealed the last remote trying to crawl back into her pack. It could hardly fly in the rain, so she picked it up, smiled, and petted FRRRE-E fondly.
It was a silly, joking nickname, but it had proven capable of a far darker magic than its designers had originally planned.
There was a sudden crack overhead of a Hornet zooming past at supersonic speeds. The flattened-teardrop shape of the fighter banked tightly over the ruins of the camp and made one orbit. Piper rose up as high as she could and waved her hands wildly about. The Hornet executed a sharp roll right over her position and then flew off back to the north. It would not be long now before the helicopters arrived, to pick her up, to assess the damage, and to drop off a new company and new equipment. The war for a united Earth marched on. But not today. Not for her.
Piper Biel petted her tiny robot with a soft touch. "I think that's enough combat for one day, for this non-warfighter anyway. Let's go home, my little tinker."
STRATEGIC DEPLOYMENT
The fragile jewel of the New Poland colony burned with the pinpoint flames of battle. Sleek, stealthy, teardrop-shaped Hornets dipped in and out of the atmosphere, streaking low to deliver their kinetic and energetic payloads and then soaring away to search eagerly for ne
w targets. The hapless colonists, farmers, and factory workers who had dared to grasp for something as ephemeral as freedom, darted about on the ground, panicked and confused, desperate to find some form of shelter from the rain of destruction.
Nineteen light-years away, Peter Highsmith beheld the horrifying whole with his mind's eye, like some vindictive god laying out his retribution upon the unfaithful. But Peter was no god, and he could only look upon what he was doing with dismay, sickened by the way the Hornets' bloodthirsty whispers spoke to him, thrilled him. He was back, doing what he had sworn he would never do again, doing what had to be done despite his own misgivings. Peter was the Sweeper once more.
Worst of all, as terrible as the destruction he delivered was, there was yet more to be done. The greatest danger, both for himself and the colonists of New Poland, still lay ahead. Peter fought back the darkness of his encroaching memories and firmed up his resolve. With a thought, he reasserted primary control of the Hornets and gave them their final assignments, all the while aware of her presence near him, watching his every move, smiling at every new flare of combat.
Peter shook his head in disgust. I never should have said yes to this mess. This is exactly what I walked away from, and now I'm the only one who can do what needs to be done . . . .
The mess in question had begun earlier that day with a very unwelcome reunion. Peter sat, bristling with anger, in a mid-level bureaucrat's office within an immense imperial government tower, nestled in the heart of the overcrowded sprawl of the Dallas-Houston megalopolis. The object of his anger sat arrogantly behind the desk in front of him, gloating at his impotent, spiteful regard. They both knew who had the power here and it was not Peter, the broken soldier who had lost himself in a factory for the last decade.
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