“There are lots of ways to make something disappear, DiSparta. Nano can edit what you’re seeing, and what you remember seeing on the fly. Neutralizing the value of your drone surveillance pretty quickly.”
Leon sighed. “I hadn’t thought of that angle. I’ll have Patent look into it. If Truman isn’t using that kind of tech, maybe we should be.”
He threw another glance back at the robots then at her. “David and Goliath games, huh? Sounds like fun.”
TWENTY-NINE
The Goliath-Bots were on the move.
In any other part of the world, the insects would still be drying their wings in the morning light. Leon wasn’t sure if insects in the Amazon river region, where it was perpetually humid, needed such a rite. He just knew that mornings were a transitional time, during which humans woke from the dead of sleep and, as with any resurrection, there was a ritual of appreciation to be observed. One these robots clearly were not concerned with. From the moment they took their first step, they seemed to have but one purpose in mind, to bring the light that was above the canopy to the dark recesses of the forest floor. All it took for them to uproot a tree was to step on one. And so they spilled light wherever they went like a cult of techno-missionaries.
Leon fired a grappling hook at the knee of the one coming towards him. Ran up the front of the leg, holding on to the rope. The robot continued moving as if he was too insignificant to pay attention to. Which, on the cosmic scale of things, he imagined he was. He lobbed a grenade inside the knee joint as soon as he was close enough then released the hook and slid down the leg like a sliding board at a kid’s playground.
The grenade exploded.
The robot, minus his leg from the knee down, toppled before he could take another step. The sound of one of these things falling was like a thousand mad-as-hell mastodons chasing you down with but one thought, to impale you. Birds fled the trees by the thousands.
One sentinel down. A field more of them to go.
Leon gazed up at Cassandra. She was doing somersaults and back flips and handless cartwheels, using the momentum of the robot’s legs to propel her vaults from one limb to another and one elevation to another. She wasn’t using a grappling hook and a rope. She didn’t have to. Her feet and her hands stuck her to the robot’s smooth planar surfaces like a gecko climbing a tree. “God damn it!” Leon shouted into his mike at her. “It’s not an Olympic event. And no one’s holding up five-point cards for you just to watch you showboat.”
Just then he heard the whistling and cat calls coming over the party line. His compatriots interrupted their robot climbing to dangle from their grappling hooks and hold up five point cards for her, and clap. The “cards” were the flat surfaces of the plastic explosives bricks. Leon grimaced. “Don’t encourage her.”
Once she worked her way down from the thigh part of the leg that she’d been bounced up to, overshooting the mark, she slashed one of the hydraulic cables in the knee with her cutlass. The line snapped like a guitar string held up to a microphone.
Down went the robot.
“Did she just do that without wasting any explosives?” Ajax said over the party line.
“Does make what we’re doing seem rather wasteful?” Cronos echoed in Leon’s ear.
“Waste not, want not, I say, especially with like a thousand robots to go.” That was DeWitt speaking into Leon’s earpiece.
Leon sighed. “Fine. Who am I to complain about people who want to preserve my hearing?” Just then another of the robots fell. An airbus falling out of the sky would have landed quieter. He was getting to where he could tell the kinds of trees dying by the sounds their snapping tree trunks made. “And yet I still can’t hear myself think.”
“Must be a blessing,” Ajax chided in his ear.
***
Crumley, crawling over one of the fallen robots for spare parts, whistled to Leon.
From out of the darkness, Leon came running over. “You know,” Crumley said, “if we’re just severing the cable in their knee, we really don’t have to scrounge these guys for spare parts. We can just refurbish them, get them back into the battle, only, fighting for our side. Way quicker turnaround time.”
“Natty says it’ll take the parts from at least three of these things to make one self-piloting robot,” Leon explained. “We may as well put those parts in one that isn’t damaged to begin with, even if we’re just talking a severed cable.”
“Yeah, but no one’s paying attention to the fallen soldiers. Trying to appropriate one of the ones still in action…”
Leon sighed. “You’re right. We’ll do it your way.” He was off to bring down his next target.
Natty looked up from his work identifying the parts he was going to need for Crumley. “Must be hell giving orders to you guys,” he said, eying Leon’s wake.
Crumley snorted. “No room for ego in our line of work, kid. I mean, Natty.”
Natty handed him the latest part. “Now that you know everything I need from you, you’ll know where to find me.”
“Every fourth felled Goliath-Bot.”
Natty climbed down, trying to figure out how to slide off the chest of the fallen robot and hit the ground without breaking a leg. “Just when I’m trying to grow up the world is conspiring to turn me into a kid again.” He angled his body just so to take the “sliding board” to the bottom, screaming “Whoo hoo!” as he went sailing into the dirt and rolling out of the fall so as not to break anything.
***
Leon whistled over to Cassandra. They were both about half way up the legs of their respective robots. “Bring that big boy down my direction. We need to combine our efforts to pilot one of these things.”
“Why the change in strategy?”
Leon pointed to the east of them. She craned her head to see what he was talking about.
The other robots had gotten wise to their lice infestation. They were now actively fending off the encroaching insects. Ajax, dangling from the knee of one robot, had to swing out of the way to avoid a tree swatting him like a fly. “What did the banana say to the vibrator?” he said, trying to settle his nerves. “Why are you shaking? She’s gonna eat me!”
One of the Goliath-Bots, holding on to the tree at the base and swinging the crown at him like a fly swatter, was proving quite effective with his “de-licer”. Between avoiding the tree coming down on him like Thor’s hammer, he was swinging out of the way of the rockets launched off the arms of one of the other robots ganging up on him. Fired with such precision, the fin of the rocket was clearly meant to slice him in half without even slowing. If he’d hesitated a moment longer jumping out of the way, it would have succeeded in its mission. Panting out the feeling of sheer panic as if he were in one of those Lamaze child birth breathing classes, he said, “Why does Dr. Pepper come in a bottle?” He nutted out in between playing Spiderman, “Because his wife died.”
Cronos, for his part, was getting shaved pretty close by the laser eyes of another Goliath-Bot, as he kept swinging from the surface of the robot he was on to the one catching the sun. Hopefully just enough to reflect the lasers back at the attacking robot. His strategy was working pretty well, for the most part. He was taking out more Goliath-Bots than they were scoring hits against him. But he’d been nicked several times already. To the face. To his arms.
“Love the tiger stripes, Cronos,” Leon said into the ear mike. “Makes you look more butch. A guy with someone else’s dick can never look butch enough, you know what I’m saying?”
“Ha-ha. Does this guy do anything but give withering commentary?”
“No!” came the chorus over Leon’s ear piece.
Leon smiled. “You see the kind of grief I’m looking at if you don’t get your pretty little legs over here, girl.”
Cassandra twisted up her face at him, severed the hydraulic cable on the knee of her robot, and brought him crashing down Leon’s direction. She’d had to make herself noticeable enough to the pilot in the cockpit to lose track of where
he was going just to swat her with the robot’s hands first. By then she had the robot lined up how she wanted, and so cut the line.
She sprang from the downed robot to the back of the leg of the still-standing robot Leon was on.
Ascending from there, she met up with him at the neck of the robot. “On three,” he said. She nodded.
On three, they lowered the chin flap, crawled up through the baseboard of the cockpit. Once inside the head of the robot, they yanked the pilots, still too preoccupied with steering the Goliath-Bot out of their seats. Letting them fall through the hole they made in the floor. They waved at the two men screaming back at them and flailing their arms. The enemy combatants landed to burst like a kid’s water balloons dropped from the upstairs balcony.
Leon and Cassandra strapped themselves into the pilots’ seats. Oriented themselves to the controls. “Let’s see if our reflexes are any better than theirs. Even if we’re not exactly the next generation on line.”
“Speak for yourself.”
He threw her an amused look before shifting to all-business mode.
They got in some practice with the robot’s hands, which were operated by their hand controls, and with the legs, which were operated by their foot pedals. Just marching only required one set of foot pedals. But any fancy kicks required both of them.
“This interface sucks,” Leon said. “Doesn’t this kid play videogames like every other kid on the planet?”
“No. And that’s because I’m not a kid!” Natty said over his earpiece, sharing the same party line as the rest of them.
“A simple head plate would suffice,” Cassandra said. “So it can translate our thoughts into action. No hand or foot controls necessary.”
“That’s not a half bad idea,” Natty said.
“No, it isn’t,” Truman said, cutting into their party line. “Appreciate the pointer, Natty. You can bet tomorrow’s Goliath-Bot wars will be better than today’s Goliath-Bot wars.”
“It’s what we’re here for, sir,” Natty said, his faux kiss-ass tone not covering his hostility half as well as he would have liked.
“Glad to see you getting in the spirit of these team builders, Natty. It really makes my day.” Truman cut out at his end.
Natty muttered, making no effort to keep the mocking out of his tone, “Nah, we don’t need to encode our communications. No one can be bothered to listen in.” There was no response to his remarks on the party line. Perhaps they had more on their minds right now than repartee.
“We done playing with ourselves?” Leon asked his copilot.
“Yeah, let’s go stomp some monster butt.”
***
Cassandra lasered off the top of one of Truman’s Big Boy robots, sending it running off without its head. The other robots had to keep kicking the headless horseless man out of the way before they could return to their own war efforts. It managed to topple several robots that couldn’t defend themselves against the unpredictable onslaught of a headless, or more to the point, mindless attack, which could hardly be predicted. Finally several laser beams crossed paths, fired from numerous destinations, to take down the pesky rogue agent.
The distance shots with the lasers kept the encroaching circle of attackers around Leon’s men from getting any wider. But for the most part, he and Cassandra were busy with close quarters combat, aimed at picking off the robots harassing his men dangling on lines and interrupting their efforts to topple the robots.
The boys, for their part, were doing more than just trying to hold on. They’d mastered how to take down more than one robot at a time.
***
DeWitt was currently jumping from one knee to another on his robot, secured by his grappling line. Snapping pictures for his ten-year-old all the while. Once he got the legs looped by the rope, down the robot went, colliding into another one. Their combined weight in turn took down a third. He got the entire domino effect on camera for his kid before pocketing the camera, thinking, coming in closer to harass Leon’s boys had some advantages for the good guys.
Before the three downed robots could get up again, DeWitt took out their pilots. They were sitting ducks inside. Between being strapped in and armed with pistols they hadn’t been properly trained how to use, they couldn’t react fast enough.
When he waved at the first duo from just outside the faceplate, one pilot tried repeatedly to fire at him. The shots deflected off the bulletproof glass until they took out both pilots. He didn’t even have to force his way in.
Instead, he made his way to the second downed Goliath-Bot. The two inside were still fighting with the safeties on their guns, pointing it at him, trying to get the pistols to fire, wondering why they wouldn’t. The natives looked far more out of their element piloting the robots, DeWitt thought, than they did on the ground firing blow darts at him. He was wondering why Truman would choose to handicap his own war effort to this degree. Sure, utilizing too many regular soldiers risked word getting out of his off-book operations. But surely, that risk outweighed what he was seeing here. Then the lightbulbs went on in back of his head. About the time the natives inside the cockpit charged him, beating against the glass with their fists.
They couldn’t figure out how to use the guns, and that was okay. They couldn’t figure out how to break through the glass, and that was okay. DeWitt saw the rationale Truman used in employing them in their eyes. They were fearless. And they were obviously high on something. Probably generations of warring with other local tribes, all hopped up on peyote, or whatever the hell they used down here. That was their advantage. Their ability to fight fearlessly and from an altered state of consciousness, one in which they would never fatigue, never stop coming at you, and were stronger than any three soldiers combined. The adrenaline coursing through them right now was the kind that allowed people to lift cars off of their trapped loved ones. Probably explaining why their pounding fists were cracking the bulletproof glass. If he stood there taunting them with his presence, he had no doubt they’d get to him. Pity any prison that tried to hold these guys.
Even modern-day soldiers with plenty of training might very well see what was ensuing on this battlefield and freak out. They wouldn’t wait for the PTSD. They’d skip straight to the TSD, no post or waiting about it. They’d go AWOL. Or they’d curl up in a fetal position, horrified by what a hi-tech makeover to the battlefield could do to make them petty and insignificant and powerless. Even hopped up with false confidence wearing their giant robo-suits, the surreal nature of what they were doing would have gotten to many.
Seeing the robots in the distance, another thought crossed DeWitt’s mind. The transparent housings about the Goliath-Bots served to play up the intimidating nature of their hydraulic-powered underskeletons. But their “skin’s” refusal to hold on to mud and grime, its inability to scratch from bullets fired at them, ensuring the Goliath-Bots forever moved through time unblemished and undamaged, showing no wear, was a psy-ops campaign in its own right, destined to screw with the enemy. It added to their otherworldly nature, perfect for these primitive backwaters were tribal people were more superstitious than rational. Not that the rational mind did much better when contemplating them.
On the ground, tribespeople were screaming and fleeing, anyone not belonging to the Ubuku. Or any of the tribes they’d managed to absorb. Brazilian soldiers, possibly called in to set up a perimeter for the war games, looked no less entranced by the giant bots, either freezing where they were, only to get stomped on, or fleeing for their lives. Even the evidence that the robots could be brought down that Leon and his men had provided did little to dispel the mystique of the Goliath-Bots. Of course, amid such an army, a Goliath-Bot or two falling was hardly going to deter anyone’s concerns regarding their impregnability. Their marching had a rhythm to it like the drums of the forest. Perhaps that rhythm was part of the fear factor, curtailing rational efforts to grapple with them.
No, all in all, Truman hadn’t been a complete fool making the choices he had. D
eWitt figured he’d put his frothing-at-the-mouth natives through enough anguish. He waited for the splintering glass to leave holes just big enough to accommodate his .9 mm pistol. And then he sprayed the insides of the pilots’ cabin with the blood from their exploding heads, which they were kind enough to put up to his pistol in an effort to head-butt the glass wide open.
DeWitt was off to see what was behind curtain number three.
The pilots in the cockpit of the third fallen robot were hemmed inside by the weight of the two robots on top of them. There was no way out of the cockpit except through the glass wall, which could not be opened. It had to be shattered. Smarter than the other natives, this duo wasn’t trying to fire the guns at the glass to shatter it. Instead, the bigger of the two used the smaller of the two as a bat, swinging him, head first, at the glass. Each time the swinging head came towards DeWitt, he saw the mad eyes, the trance eyes. The native didn’t even blink every time his head made contact with the glass, driving more cracks through it. The only reason his head hadn’t shattered, DeWitt thought, had to have something to do with the trance he was in. The power of belief. Or maybe, these sick bastards were like Shaolin monks. They had weird spiritual combat practices that involved toughening their heads and the rest of their skeletons for times like this. Why not? Most martial artists practiced cracking their heads and the sides of their hands and feet against cement blocks to thicken their bones so they could be used as weapons.
The native doing the bat wielding put down his human battering ram the instant the glass wall of the cage keeping them imprisoned shattered. By then they’d gotten a lock on the guy who’d done this to them and they were storming DeWitt head on. DeWitt put a bullet square in the heart of each of them. It didn’t even slow them down. Continuing to jog backwards while keeping his piece aimed at them he fired square into the center of their foreheads. They still didn’t slow down. He’d severed the corpus callosum connecting both halves of their brains. He figured the next step was to shut down the activity in the right and left hemispheres. So he fired shots into both lobes. Again, no reaction. No slowing of the attack.
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 25