Gods of War (Jethro goes to war Book 5)

by Chris Hechtl

  Marco looked at her and then turned to the doorway. “Medic! Someone find Polo, damn it!”

  <)>^<)>/

  Captain Zhukov monitored the spaceport via a remote feed. The feed went to a series of transceivers that sent a piece or all of a short compressed and encrypted transmission. The transceivers were whisker lasers that shot their transmission to a repeater further out away from the spaceport. It allowed him to continue to monitor the situation and exercise some degree of control but not much.

  They couldn't directly control the robots, but they could set targets and modify their programmed triggers. For instance, he'd had the SAM units stand-down for the time being when he realized the Marines weren't going to land directly on the objective.

  Robot snipers were waiting in various locations to be activated. They were powered down; some had their batteries out of their bodies. The batteries were shielded by a quarter-centimeter-thick lead shield and connected to the bodies by long cables they'd appropriated.

  The robots would be using passive sensors initially; they wouldn't go active with their sensors until they were engaged.

  <)>^<)>/

  Lance Corporal Waters Darkly wasn't happy with his assignment. It was racial; he knew it. He was an elf; they'd stuck him in the dirtiest, smallest, smelliest place to be during the assault. He kept telling himself that, and that the entire endeavor was a waste of time right up until he got to a bend and saw something standing outside the stream of light coming in from the rectangular water intake.

  He carefully leaned back against the corner, then fished out a small fiber optic probe. He stuck it to the back of his glove, then watched it worm around in the air to be sure it was active before he pointed it to the corner.

  The probe snaked around the corner and peeped. He exhaled slowly. Okay, so maybe there had been a good reason to send him down there. “Turtle One Four to Charlie Alpha, we've got bots in the sewers,” he said through his implants.

  Unfortunately, his choice of radio settings set off the robot. It picked up his betraying omni broadcast and went to full alert. When it saw shadows pass the light from the rectangle, it acted. It powered up and then moved into the light and started firing its rifle on full auto.

  <)>^<)>/

  Anastasia massaged her thigh as Doc Polo worked on her wounds. He dabbed at the cuts on her back. “Quit that,” Polo said just as weapons fire broke out. Both of them turned to see Mysti and Marco go down.

  “Shots fired! Two down. I say again, two of ours are down!” Anastasia said as she brushed off Polo's helping hands. “Sorry, Doc, but I've got work to do,” she snarled just as she felt the impact of rounds on her left shoulder and arm.

  Her implants picked up where the shots were coming from as she rolled desperately to the right. “We've got rats in the sewers!” she called out as she swore. “And Polo, I need you again,” she muttered as she pulled herself behind a wrecked vehicle and out of the line of fire of the sewer slit. She turned back to see Polo down.

  “Frack me!” she snarled. “Three down!” she called out over the radio net. “Someone get the bastard!”

  <)>^<)>/

  Lance Corporal Water's Darkly heard the gunny's call in-between the cracks of the rifle going off. He swore viciously. He was too small to carry a grenade, which would be the best thing to use. His small caliber rifle would barely scratch the paint of that thing. He needed an EMP or grenade he thought again.

  “Someone get the bastard!” the gunny called out, spurring him to action. He put the probe away, then gathered himself, ducked his head and charged around the corner.

  The robot was focused on the narrow slit looking for fresh targets. It took a pot shot at a drone flying overhead and didn't notice the elf charging it.

  That allowed Water's Darkly to leap onto the thing's hip, and then stuff his rifle under the right kidney armor plate and fire off his entire clip.

  The robot detected the weight and then realized it was taking damage. It started to swing its torso to engage the threat but some of the rounds clipped the water feed to its liquid cooling, and also hit one of the wires leading out of its body to its shielded power source nearby.

  The water short circuited the electrical line. Breakers kicked in to preserve its electronics, which also served to shut the robot down.

  Water's Darkly didn't know that. All he knew was that as he was firing, it started to turn, then it shook like a rag doll, and he lost his grip. He went flying, hit the wall nearby, and then slid down the slimy thing into a pile of mud and excrement.

  He managed to recover in time to note the robot was slumped over at the waist, propped up by its rifle.

  “Robot is down,” he said as he warily got up. “I got it,” he reported over the radio just as he saw movement beyond. “But there are more where he came from!” he said, voice rising as he sought cover.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Gunny Kodiak is hit again. We've got three KIA in her area, two WIA other than her,” Lieutenant Ch'th reported to Captain Irenez.

  “Damn,” the captain muttered as she looked at the board. Resistance had been nonexistent right up until reports of the robots started to come in.

  “We've got more sniper activity, ma'am. It's coming in from all over. We're pinpointing it now,” a sergeant reported.

  “Get the drones on it,” she ordered.

  “Aye aye, ma'am.”

  <)>^<)>/

  Anastasia grimaced as she used Doc's field kit to try to dress her wounds. She was aware that her implants would cut off the bleeding, but that was a bad thing long term. She didn't want to lose her arm, and she was depressingly certain she was going to need it so the pins and needles feelings of it falling asleep due to lack of blood flow needed to go away.

  There was no pain, not much anyway. She was thankful for that.

  She heard footfalls and looked up just as the drones moved in to engage a suspected sniper on the other end of the strip. She looked up to see another robot go in over the building she was outside of and then engage something on the other side. The footfalls came closer and then a familiar body in Marine camo came around the vehicle wreckage she'd been taking cover behind. “Damn, Gunny, you are having a bad day,” Bob said as he came trotting up to her.

  “They've had worse,” she said darkly, indicating the fallen bodies.

  Bob looked over to the bodies and then grimaced.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Trigger the SAMS. Target the drones. Hit them hard, then scoot,” the captain ordered. “Get them off the backs of the snipers while we regroup them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mackie said as he raised his unseen hands. He hated that he could only see a wire frame of the battle, but that was all he truly needed. Like an orchestra conductor, he swung his index fingers like they were tapping on an unseen music rack to get his orchestra's attention, then he swung them like he was sketching out the beat of a symphony.

  “Your turn is coming. Be ready,” the captain said as he rested a heavy hand on Lieutenant Robinson's shoulder. She looked up to him, nodded, and then put her own VR headset on.

  <)>^<)>/

  The drones were busy sweeping for snipers when they started to take lidar and close range radar hits. Their programming reacted by dancing them about the sky and dropping them, much to their distant operator's ire. The initial thought was that they were being jammed, hacked, or were malfunctioning quickly ended when SAM fire took out the first two drones.

  “SAM attack,” Ensign Summers, a controller aboard General Murtough reported. “Drones are under SAM attack,” she said again.

  Unfortunately, they had to look after the safety of the drones. The Marines would have to look after themselves for the time being she thought.

  <)>^<)>/

  “We've got movement in the big hangar and serious heat spikes. I mean serious spikes. Watch it,” Captain Irenez said as she saw the relay from a drone as it flew overhead before it was hit by something and exploded.

  “Someone
get me a better view of that. Tell higher we need a hard look at that hangar. We might need to send a crowbar down if it's too big,” she said.

  “We'd have splash damage all over if we did. It'd be danger close, ma'am,” Lieutenant Decoure warned. “And the way those heat signatures were building, I don't think we're going to have time,” he said.

  “Heat signatures for what exactly?” the captain retorted.

  <)>^<)>/

  What turned out to be something unexpected. As the heat and noise in the hangar grew, all eyes turned warily towards it. The hangar was quite massive, several hundred meters wide and three times that long.

  “I don't think I'm going to like this,” Anastasia murmured as she looked about her to seek cover.

  <)>^<)>/

  Lieutenant Robinson took full control of the craft and over half the available bandwidth to guide it through her implants. The craft was a Shiu Genesis III shuttle. It was proverbially better known as a Skywhale. It was a massive delta-shaped winged shuttle painted in faded red on top with scorched blue on the midsection and underside, and chipped gold trim and livery in-between. At one time in her prime, she'd been used to move passengers and cargo to and from orbit in the core worlds. At some point in her history, she'd been used to evacuate a planet, possibly more than one, then she'd exchanged hands several times before making her way to Destria.

  How she'd gotten there and why she remained was a mystery, she was far too large for a boat bay. In fact, she out-massed some of the tramp freighters that tended to visit Destria. The shuttle had been used by the natives to ferry goods and passengers to orbit to visiting starships. It could carry over two thousand souls on board … or her interior could be refitted as cargo space, reefer space, or to handle livestock.

  She finished warming up her engines from a cold start under the remote direction of Lieutenant Robinson. The two-minute long spooling up of her engines let the wary and curious Marines around the spaceport know something was up.

  “Moving out,” she said. “There better not be any chocks under the wheels,” she muttered as she kicked the brakes off and then slowly goosed the throttles up. The one thing she liked about the monster was that it had articulating engines to allow it to take off from short runways.

  <)>^<)>/

  For just a moment, all was quiet except for the muted howl of engines before all hell broke loose.

  The building front exploded as the giant shuttle moved out. The building's massive ceiling collapsed on the tail section but the shuttle seemed to shrug off the extra weight as he moved out onto the taxi way.

  All eyes turned on the shuttle.

  “Well, you don't see that every day,” Anastasia said dryly, looking on to the scene. She was a kilometer away, but that didn't stop some of the debris from flying and impacting nearby.

  “Guess someone forgot to program that in the SIMS,” Bob said dryly. “What do we do?”

  They could hear the distant cracks of small arms fire into the shuttle. The shuttle might be a civilian model but the small arms fire was just that. They had to hit something vital to damage the craft.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Turn and burn,” Lieutenant Robinson murmured. “Look at me, boys and girls. Now watch me dance,” she murmured wickedly.

  “All eyes on the prize. That means it's time. Go on the offense Mackie,” Captain Zhukov ordered.

  “Roger that,” Mackie replied as he signaled the real offense to begin.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Okay, this is unexpected,” Captain Irenez said, staring at the shuttle in disbelief. “We, um, we need to take that thing out with an EMP or gunship,” she said, turning to her staff.

  “EMP will affect our own troops,” Lieutenant Li Decoure warned.

  “Gunship it is then. Captain Falco, we have a mission for you,” Captain Irenez said as she turned to the side and placed a hand to one ear.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Where the hell does he think he's going?” Bob demanded. “Like it can run! There is no runway!” They watched as Marines, debris, and even vehicles were scattered by the wash of the shuttle's massive engines.

  “Does it matter? He's the proverbial elephant. Wherever he wants!” Anastasia said as she tried to rise onto her good leg. The medic pushed her back down again, however.

  Despite the debris hanging from the tail and the holes from the weapon fire, most concentrated around her shot-out windows, the shuttle rolled and then began to rise majestically.

  “No frackin way it's taking off! Bob said as the shuttle's wheels lifted off the ground. “Now I've seen everything,” he said as he took his helmet off to scratch at his hairline.

  He didn't see the round come in that made his skull explode like a watermelon.

  “We're taking fire!” Anastasia roared. She was drowned out by the engines of the monster shuttle however.

  <)>^<)>/

  Captain Falco heard the order and nodded once. He tapped the gunships in the area since taking the shuttle down would need their fire power. “Fire mission Wolf 2Another tap highlighted the rising shuttle. “Bring that sumbitch down,” Captain Falco ordered over the Air Cav radio network.

  “Wolf 2, roger,” the pilot replied.

  <)>^<)>/

  Wolf 2, a Bell Ichim 222 Osprey gunship moved in to take the shuttle out. The pilot lined up above and behind the bird as it lumbered in the air. “We've got a problem; she's moved out over a populated area,” the pilot reported.

  But the pilot realized the shuttle was too low, its wash was flattening homes and hurting people anyway.

  “This is Alpha Wolf. Take it out,” the captain replied.

  “Here goes,” the pilot said as he selected his missiles and then lined up on the shuttle's engines. If he did his job right, it would skew the thing right back to the spaceport he thought just as he squeezed the trigger.

  The missiles had locked onto the hot exhaust from the engines. They roared off his rails and right into the rear of the craft. The engines erupted into flame and debris. The shuttle nosed down.

  “She's going down,” the pilot reported just as his instruments screamed of a SAM lidar hits. “I'm being lazed!” he growled as he went down to the deck. “Pop chaff and sunbursts!” He had no more time or attention span to watch the shuttle go down; he had to worry about saving his own skin.

  “Wolf 1 get in to cover Wolf 2,” Alpha Wolf called out just as radio reports came in of the Marines on the ground taking heavy fire.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Look out!” the medic said as he pointed to bounding shapes coming their way. Anastasia saw the robots and grimaced. “Not these things again,” she said as she rose and brushed the medic off. She tossed a grenade, but the lead robot dodged it. It went off harmlessly behind it. She picked up a metal bar and swung it at the dog. It tried to leap over it, but the bar caught it on the hind legs and knocked it into the ground.

  The second and third dog bounded over the fallen first as it tried to right itself, but a second grenade caught them and the first. Then pistol fire peppered the remains. Anastasia turned when she was certain the dogs were down for good to look at the medic still pointing his pistol at the robots.

  “Thanks,” she said dryly just as the cracks of additional weapons fire penetrated her hearing.

  <)>^<)>/

  Lieutenant Ch'th realized they'd been had by a distraction when a text message came in warning of more casualties. The Naga officer ducked and then tried to hear the report while watching the missiles tear into the engines of the Skywhale. The massive giant teetered in the air then pieces fell off as it went nose down. He groaned as it hit the ground, sending up a cloud of dust and even making the earth under him shake. The roar in his ears continued as the thing tumbled and then flipped … taking out fencing, flattening homes, and people in the way before it came to rest more or less facing the way it had come. Everything was still for a moment as smoke climbed up from it, then something let go and the fuel tanks detonated.

&n
bsp; Fire and debris had sprayed the area. As his ears cleared, he heard more thunder. He looked up to the cloudless sky and then around as he realized it was the bark of weapons fire. Shots spanged off his LAV, and he turned to find cover.

  “Frack we're taking fire from all over!” a Marine reported as the Naga lieutenant took a hit in one of his front legs. He slithered on his belly under the LAV as he started to issue orders to counterattack.

  <)>^<)>/

  “Damn! The shuttle is down,” Lieutenant Robinson said, sounding disappointed as she took her headset off. “Damn, I thought I'd get farther than that.” The alpha plan had been to get the shuttle up high enough, then detonate it. Barring that, they were to try to fly it to the Marine's base and blow it there. Granted, both objectives had been a bit of a reach she knew.

  “No matter. Like a good magician's assistant, you did your job. Now it's up to Mackie and Bill,” the captain said, indicating the duo.

  Lieutenant Robinson grimaced as she watched the other two do their part.

  <)>^<)>/

  Mackie saw the shuttle go down but was only peripherally aware of it. He jumped from one robot to another, activating or holding them back as the dance began. When the Marines turned and reacted, he jumped to a nearby robot and activated it. The robots sometimes caught the Marines in a murderous cross fire.

  But not always. And the Marines seemed to be tough, taking the small caliber hits easily and seemingly shrugging them off. “What does it take to take them down?” he snarled as a Marine got up after taking a series of .22 hits in the arm and torso.

  “What?” Captain Zhukov asked distantly.

  “Bastards are hard to kill. They don't stay down!” Mackie said as the robot he'd been monitoring was torn apart by concentrated heavy weapons fire. “They've got heavy weapons!” he said as he moved to another remote control site.