“Suck it up, buttercup,” Mayer, the Mossad agent, said to Abraham over comms, as she ran toward Ike. “A soldier couldn’t ask for a better death than this.”
She was right about that. As far as deaths went, this was by far the most epic. If they were successful, their story would be told for generations, to his sons and hopefully by his sons to their children. He was about to add to her words, to let his father know that he didn’t fear death, that he’d made peace with it a long time ago, but a crack of lightning arced down and hit the aberration’s back, just a hundred feet behind Mayer. The boom and bright light forced Ike’s eyes closed, but in the afterimage projected on his eyelids, he saw one of the creatures, which his father had dubbed ‘Crawlers,’ surging at Mayer from the side, unseen.
He swiveled his weapon in her direction, eyes still closed, and shouted, “Beside you! Three o’clock! Get down!”
Ike lifted his XM25, opened his eyes, seeing the chaotic world through streaks of green afterimage, and pulled the trigger. Three rounds launched from his rifle. The second was a yellow-hot tracer round, revealing the two explosive bullets’ course. Mayer’s head twisted as she dove for the rough terrain, tucking into a roll. Her quick reflexes and trust in Ike saved her life twice, first when the rounds passed within inches of her face and second, when they struck the underside of the airborne Crawler descending toward her back.
The Crawler’s forward momentum came to an abrupt end as the two explosive rounds burst beneath it, shattering its underside and spinning it away. But the explosions, just a few feet behind Mayer, struck her as well. Her dive and roll turned into an ugly sprawl as metal fragments struck and flung her forward.
“Liz!” Graham shouted, reaching down for her with his left hand, while firing with his right. That he was able to maintain control of the weapon, which had a considerable kick, while lifting Mayer off the ground, was a testament to his strength. He was the consummate Ranger, and he had won Ike’s immediate respect.
“I’m okay,” Mayer grumbled, though she didn’t sound okay. “The armor stopped most of it.”
Most.
Not all.
But there wasn’t time to argue or even worry. They were set upon by the enemy.
With Edwards by his side, just like old times, Ike picked his targets one-by-one, firing over and around Graham, covering the pair of warriors until they reached the bomb. Mayer was in obvious pain when they arrived, but Graham didn’t place her gently on the ground and fawn over her. He lifted her up, depositing her on her feet and returning her weapon to her hands, bringing her back to the fight.
They were all going to die here. Wounds weren’t going to be healed. Their lives couldn’t be saved. They were simply buying time.
With their lives.
The four soldiers fired at the encroaching horde. The dead Crawlers created an obstacle course of carnage for the living. Their bodies needed to be climbed over or around, and their guts, mingling with the rain water flowing over the Machine’s back, made the landscape slick. Their efforts slowed the assault, but couldn’t stop it.
“How much time?” Graham asked, while changing out his magazine.
Ike looked for the Osprey, but couldn’t see it in the sky. Lightning crisscrossed above them, lighting up two of the massive spines rising up into the clouds, cutting through them like a witch’s spoon through a steaming brew. “Cauldron, ETA to safe zone?”
No response.
Ike fired the six remaining rounds in his XM25, killing two more Crawlers and then dropped the weapon, drawing his sidearm and his twelve inch knife. The next Crawler he faced would be up close and personal. But Graham pushed him back and stood in front of him.
“Don’t even think about it, kid,” Graham said. “Your job is to push that button. If we go down, don’t wait. Your father has survived worse.”
Ike smiled at Graham’s confidence in his father. He’d only heard a handful of stories about their time in the wild, about what they saw and how they survived their first encounter with the Machine, but those were enough for him to share Graham’s confidence. Still, as strong as his father was, he wasn’t indestructible. If he didn’t reach the minimum safe distance before the bomb went off, he would die with the rest of them.
Ike crouched down beside the bomb, finger hovering near the button that would detonate the electric charge and the nuclear warhead. It would be a violent, but painless death. “Cauldron. Do you copy? ETA to safe zone?”
Silence.
“Cauldron, answer me, God damnit!”
“Down!” Edwards shouted.
Graham, Mayer and Ike ducked. Looking down into a puddle, Ike saw a Crawler launch over the ridge behind which they’d planted the bomb. As it soared above them, reaching down with its talons, Edwards fired up into it. The explosions tore into the creature’s underside and Edward’s helmet with equal force, tearing both apart.
It took all of Ike’s focus to not scream out and dive to his friend’s aid. He’d already lost Felder and Gutshall, but Edwards had been his closest friend over the past few years. Honor him by completing the mission, Ike told himself. He came here to die. Like the rest of us.
“Master Sergeant,” Graham said, his voice a warning. They were about to run out of time. To punctuate the fact, Graham dropped his now empty assault rifle and drew a long blade. Mayer did likewise, opting for the .50 caliber hand gun strapped to her waist.
“Cauldron,” Ike shouted. “Do you read? ETA to safe—”
“Ike?” It was his father. He sounded desperate and afraid, but not for his own life.
“Dad,” Ike said. “Are you clear?”
“Clear,” came the response. “Ike, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for, Dad. Your actions taught me how to live in this world, and how to die in it. Love you, Dad.”
“Ike!” Graham shouted. “Do it!’
Ike didn’t hear his father’s reply as his thumb shoved the detonation button down.
Bright white light flashed.
A thunderous boom tore through the air.
Heat coursed through his body, tingling every cell.
But there was no bliss to follow.
No choir of angels.
No white tunnel.
Just more of the same. Rain. Darkness. Lightning...
It was a lightning strike, slamming into the Machine’s back nearby. He looked up and saw several Crawlers, unmoving and steaming, cooked by the electricity.
“Do it, Ike!” Graham shouted.
“Push the button,” Mayer screamed at him, reaching for it herself.
Ike pushed the red button one more time.
Nothing happened.
“It’s not working!” Ike said.
Graham reached down and pushed the button several times, but the bomb didn’t explode.
They’d failed.
“Ike?” His father’s voice. “What’s happening?”
“The bomb failed,” Ike said. “Dad, we failed.”
The pause before his father spoke again was filled by the booming of Mayer’s handgun. The powerful rounds punched into a nearby Crawler’s eyes, making it rear back in pain.
“I don’t think so,” Abraham said.
Ike stood, armed with his handgun and knife, ready to go out fighting. “Dad, the—”
“Son,” Abraham said. “Ike. Look up.”
As Ike turned his eyes up to the turbulent sky, the gunfire around him fell silent. Were they out of ammo? Or were they seeing what he was seeing and stunned into inaction? He didn’t bother checking. It didn’t matter now. Their mission was a success.
The massive towers that had been rising up into the clouds just moments before, fell inward, toward the Machine’s back. But they weren’t like falling trees. They were turning to dust. Caught by the wind, the disintegrating particles swirled and coiled away, churning downward.
“It’s coming apart,” Abraham said. “The spikes. The tail. All of it.”
“But...” Mayer
sounded stunned. “How? The bomb failed.”
“The electric charge,” Abraham said. “It must have been enough.”
Ike looked back at the device, still armed, still ready to fire, but not functional. The nuclear device hadn’t fired, but neither had the electrical charge. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t them.
“Get out of there,” Abraham said. “Go! While you still can!”
The possibility of survival sharpened Ike’s senses.
They were still surrounded, but the Crawlers seemed confused. They staggered about, twitching, black eyes tilted up at the disintegrating body they called home. Ike turned north. The Crawlers had closed in from every other direction, but the path north, along the plate’s seam was clear to the horizon.
He turned to Graham. “Take her. I’ll cover you.”
Mayer opened her mouth to protest, but found herself flung over Graham’s shoulder before she could say anything. She reluctantly handed Ike her weapon. He nodded in thanks and said, “Go!”
Thirty seconds into their retreat, Ike thought they would escape unnoticed, but then whatever state of confusion that had transfixed the Crawlers, faded away. The creatures attacked the bomb first, assaulting it with savage efficiency, tearing it apart and ensuring that it could never be repaired or used. Then, they turned toward the fleeing soldiers and charged.
“Here they come!” Ike said, but he held his fire. The handgun only held eight rounds. If he was lucky, he might be able to stop or slow down four of the creatures, but he didn’t trust his aim with a handgun while running. And he wasn’t about to stop.
Being Rangers, and survivors in the wild, Ike and Graham could run long distances while carrying heavy weights. It was a necessary survival skill. Sprinting wasn’t as easy. Sprinting for a mile pushed them to their limits. But stopping, or even slowing, meant a certain and gruesome death.
Ike fired two rounds, the second of them striking the nearest Crawler’s eye. It stumbled for a moment, and would have kept charging, if the creatures behind it hadn’t plowed into its backside. All three Crawlers thrashed and kicked, until they were free of each other. The rest of the horde widened out around them, looking like a football defensive line from the seventh circle of Dante’s hell. The line steadily closed the gap, their hard limbs clacking against the Machine’s shell.
Taking the two shots slowed Ike’s speed, and he found himself lagging twenty feet back. He poured on the steam, willing his legs faster. He looked down at his feet like he did when he was a kid, imagining himself as the Flash, watching his boots blur as he ran. Faster, he thought. Faster!
Ike blinked when he saw what looked like smoke billowing out from his feet. For a moment, it looked as though he was running fast enough to set his boots on fire, but then he noticed the entire landscape was smoldering.
Not burning, he thought, coming apart.
The nano-particles were separating, top to bottom. If they didn’t reach the edge soon, they’d be falling through the creature’s insides. If we make it that far, he thought, and he glanced back. With a shout of surprise, he aimed the high caliber weapon back with one hand and pulled the trigger. The bullet punched through the leaping Crawler’s underside. It didn’t have the explosive force of the XM25’s ammunition, but a fifty caliber round mushrooms and breaks apart on impact. The hole in the creature’s underbelly was neat, but the damage on the inside was enough to topple the creature when it landed, right behind him.
The bullet had saved his life, but firing the weapon one handed had pulled the gun from his hand and broken his wrist. Defenseless, Ike turned to run, but he was hammered in the back. He sprawled to the ground, now covered in a foot-deep layer of loose nano-particles. If not for the mask over his mouth and nose, he’d be breathing them in. When the attack didn’t continue, he pushed himself up, using his good hand. He looked back. The dying Crawler had managed one last attack, but it was now curling up on itself.
When another Crawler leapt onto the back of the fallen creature and let out a shriek, Ike focused all his energy on running. Within seconds, he was catching up to Graham and Mayer at the same rate the horde was gaining on him.
“Nearly there!” Graham shouted.
Ike looked past them and saw the terrain drop away.
Graham leapt over the edge feet first, but he didn’t let go of Mayer.
Ike followed them over the side, diving forward, expecting to see a drop off to the ground. Instead he found himself falling down to a steep incline, which Graham was now sliding on. Ike fell past his fellow Ranger and struck the incline moving fast. His armor absorbed some of the blow, but instead of sliding down the side, he toppled, completely out of control.
As he spun, he saw flashes of lightning above. Black mist whipped away by the wind, and a horde of Crawlers plummeted toward them. The creatures had followed them over the edge, just as they had the first time Graham and Abraham had fled the Machine’s back. When Ike first heard the story from Graham, he thought it had been embellished, like the myths of old. But now he was living it, following in his father’s footsteps, down the side of a planet-destroying monster. Each impact brought jarring pain, but less than expected. The aberration’s side was coming apart as well, providing a cushion of loose nanobots.
Slowed by his tumble, Graham and Mayer slid past him. As they did, Graham shouted, “Here we go!”
Ike spun through the air, waiting for the next impact, but it never came. Instead, he fell through open air, his body no longer tumbling, but facing up, toward the raging sky, where Crawlers spilled out, surging for him. The nearest reached for him, its sharp-tipped limbs just inches away.
With a snap of fabric, Graham’s parachute deployed. Still clutching Mayer in his arms and legs, he glided away from the descending chaos.
Ike let out a roar and swiped at the creature with his knife.
The blade passed through it, as though he was cutting through air. And then, as one, the horde burst into dust and was carried away.
Ike dropped his knife, reached up to his chest and pulled the ripcord for the parachute built into his armor. The chute deployed a moment later, but he didn’t feel the sudden slowing that comes from an open parachute. He looked up and found the open chute whipping through the wind, limp and useless, shredded, by the Crawlers’ final attack.
He soared past Graham, who had Mayer clinging to him like a baby monkey. Her parachute would be shredded as well, something Graham had no doubt realized before committing to the jump.
“Ike!” Graham shouted, his voice clear in the comm. But there was nothing else the man could say. They were miles in the air, but there was no way to stop his fall.
Ike saw the Osprey fly overhead and bank away.
His eyes moved to the Machine, its body coming apart, its glowing insides flickering and going dark.
“I see him,” came the voice of his father. “Twelve o’clock, Ike.”
Ike’s eyes widened as he saw a human missile cut through a cloud of nano-dust and plummet toward him, arms outstretched.
“Lose the chute, Ike,” Abraham shouted.
Ike slapped the button on his chest, freeing the useless parachute. It billowed in the air above him while he fell even faster. But as the ground rushed up below him, his father, a man turned legend, rocketed down above him, no trace of fear in his eyes, hands outstretched.
“I’ve got you, son.”
47
Abraham
I’m terrified.
I thought I had lost my son, leaving him as some kind of sacrifice to the Machine. But the bomb failed. Now, despite that failure, the ancient world-destroyer is coming apart. The moment I saw it, I understood what was happening, and ordered the Osprey to turn back.
But now we’ve arrived too late to pick up the surviving members of my team. From high above, I watch them tumble down the Machine’s side, sliding through clouds of nanobots the consistency of dry flour, despite the rain. The Crawlers chase them down the side, as mindless in their pursuit of
prey as ever.
Go, I think, willing them to fall faster. Go!
Graham and Mayer reach the edge and fall into open space. I hold my breath. When Graham’s parachute opens and slows his and Mayer’s fall, I breathe a sigh of relief. They’re going to make it.
Then Ike spills over the edge, a Crawler reaching for him, inches away. If he pulls his chute now, he’ll—
The Crawler bursts into black dust.
The horde follows its lead, like miniature Machines, disassembling into their nano-components. They were part of the whole, I realize, like some kind of external, defensive pruning system, or perhaps just the caretakers for all those shed eggs.
Nanobots swirl into the air, and for a moment, I assume it’s the wind. They twist and curl, sliding into the air and merging with larger clouds, all of it moving forward, and then down to the ground. The Machine’s head is nearly gone. Its underside flickers, the brilliant light fading as it comes apart. But it’s not the wind carrying the dust away. The rain, and the wind carrying it, is blowing in the opposite direction. The nanos are still in control, still operating under some ancient function. But to what purpose now? Is it attacking in some new way, or abiding by its promise? Ike lives, but not because either of us was unwilling to make the sacrifice.
The moment Ike’s chute deploys, I know he’s in trouble. It doesn’t billow out. It just flutters, limp and useless, torn apart. Before I’ve fully registered my actions, I’ve leaped from the back of the Osprey as it flies over the scene.
Graham’s voice booms loud in my ear as my son falls past him. “Ike!”
“I see him,” I say, leaning forward into the fall, gaining speed. It’s been a long time since I did this, but I’m far more calm than all of my previous sky dives, and I have no trouble angling myself toward my son. As I come in from above his head, I say, “Twelve o’clock, Ike.”
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