by Weston Ochse
“Is that it?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m not going to be fixing any servos with these.”
“Can we fit my helmet onto his suit?”
She stared for a moment, then her eyes brightened. “I can’t believe I missed that. The only problem is that you ripped the minigun off. You won’t have any weapons except the Hydra and your blade.”
“Can’t be helped,” I said. “I’ll redistribute the rounds to the other EXOs. I’m sure you’ll have my back.”
Nothing like wearing the suit of a man you’d just killed to brighten your spirits.
To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.
Malcolm X
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
THE INSIDE OF Dewhurst’s suit smelled like onions. It took me fifteen minutes to recalibrate the Gaze to my optics. Ohirra had removed my command module from my suit and replaced the one on Dewhurst’s so all of my settings were saved. Five icons lined the top of my command window. I toggled through the statuses for Sula, Stranz, and Ohirra, noting that they were at seventy-five percent power. Two black icons represented Mal and Dewhurst. I deleted both of them, but made a mental note to hold a ceremony for Mal if I was ever able.
I shook my head. Fighting and funerals. There were some who felt that funerals were a waste of time. I’d heard arguments that the entire world needed a funeral after what had happened. Perhaps it did. Such ideas were beyond my ken. All I was concerned about were my men and women, my friends, and those with whom I’d served. The funeral rite, whether formal or quick, gave me a moment to breathe, to remember them, to perhaps take a piece of them and make it mine. I’d been to far too many funerals and I was destined to attend many more. For as long as there were grunts willing to put themselves in harm’s way, there would be funerals.
I glanced around the warehouse. My suit lay in pieces, hacked apart by our harmonic blades. We couldn’t bring it with us and we didn’t want Sebring or his men to get their hands on any more EXOs. I had no doubt that they’d rounded up Mal’s suit, but with the command module destroyed along with the HUD, it was pretty useless.
Ohirra decided we should keep Dewhurst’s command module. As small as it was, it was the closest thing to a supercomputer we had and she felt it might come in handy. In areas of science, I deferred to her, so it now rested in my EXO’s internal pouch.
I strode to where Stranz and Sula stood. “Status report,” I said.
Stranz stepped aside so I could look out the window. “I’m tracking some UAVs in the vicinity. They know we’ve gone to ground; they just don’t know where.”
My HUD said the same thing. Some sort of micro-unmanned aerial vehicles, probably homemade, using lithium batteries and circuits that hadn’t been fried by the Cray. As long as they were this side of the 605, they could fly them without fear. But once inside, they had to be aware of the seven-hour pulse.
“Where are we on the EMP pulse?” I asked Ohirra.
“The hive will next pulse in two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and thirty-six seconds.”
I didn’t want to lay low that long. We needed to get into the hive as quickly as possible. Optimum was an 0300 detonation and it was already 1745. With twenty miles to go and an untold amount of fungees to wade through, we needed to get moving.
I pulled up a map and showed them my plan. We were in a warehouse off East Temple Avenue. If we took Temple northwest, we’d be across the 605 and the 10 before anyone knew it. I arbitrarily picked the Jack in the Box in El Monte on Ramona Avenue for a rendezvous point if we got separated.
When everyone was ready, we slipped out the back door, past Dewhurst’s body.
“Should we take out the UAVs with missiles?” Sula asked.
“Negative. Let’s save our ammo for the Cray.”
I counted down from ten, then we booked it, moving as fast as our servos would allow. It took six point seven seconds for the first UAV to track us. We kept moving, Sula and me on the right side of Temple and Ohirra and Stranz on the left. Warehouses and strip malls rose on either side of us. Here and there we could see a dead body with spikey ascocarps growing from it.
“Watch your interval,” I said over the net.
Getting too close to the person in front of or behind us would provide a larger footprint and a more seductive target. As it was, if we could maintain our spacing and our speed, we’d be able to evade anything they threw at us short of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Temple was turning south, but we were heading straight. We left the pavement and crossed a frontage road. An immense three-story warehouse stood before us. We ran to the left and were about to race around the building when my spider sense went through the roof, a mere second before my telemetry indicated an incoming RPG round.
“Evasive move three!” I screamed across the net.
We dove to our left and completed two somersaults, then dove forward and completed another somersault.
An RPG round struck the ground where Sula had been standing.
I traced the trajectory; it had come from atop the building. I wasn’t about to climb up. I’d be too large a target.
“We have motorcycles coming from the east,” Ohirra said.
I had to make a snap decision.
“Stranz, defend our rear. Sula, deploy your Hydra and take out whatever is on the roof when you get a lock.” I ran to the corner of the building where Ohirra stood. “Report.”
“Not good. They have forty pax arrayed in defensive formation.”
“Weapons?”
“Heavy machine guns and RPGs.”
Our EXOs could take small arms fire, but would most likely breach against a sustained rate of fire from larger rounds.
“Can we go around?”
“Not until we know what’s on the roof. For all we know, they might have a platoon of RPG gunners.”
I smacked the side of the building. “Where’d they get them all?”
“Army national guard depots. They’re all over L.A. Being underground probably kept them safe from the EMPs.”
Suddenly Sula fired three rockets. I saw them hit targets, followed by secondary explosions as RPG rockets cooked off.
“Are there more?” I asked.
“Can’t be sure, sir.”
“Motorcycles are getting closer.”
Two blocks away.
Fuck it. “Everyone up!” I leaped and caught the bottom of the fire escape. A few seconds later it was tumbling around me, pulled from its housing by my EXO’s weight.
“This way.” Ohirra was scurrying up an immense water pipe, using the steel brackets attaching it to the building as hand and footholds. By using the brackets, she wasn’t putting all of her weight on the pipe.
I ordered Sula to go next. She slipped a few feet halfway up, but caught herself.
I heard the minigun rip from above, then spin to silence.
“Roof is clear,” came Ohirra a little breathlessly.
I sent Stranz up next and watched for a moment as he scuttled up the pipe, then turned when my HUD flashed a warning as a pair of motorcycles came within range. I selected heat-seeking and sent four missiles their way. For a second I was able to see the RPG gunners behind each driver before both bikes exploded.
Stranz reached the roof.
I leaped and started to pull myself up. I felt several shots strike my rear. My HUD told me that several Tangos had come around the building to try and keep me from climbing out of their reach. I sincerely hoped none had an RPG. I was almost to the top when I heard a ripping sound from above as Sula fired her minigun at the Tangos targeting me.
Ohirra and Stranz pulled me the rest of the way up.
Just then a small UAV with four rotors and a camera rose into our eye line. I gave it the middle finger with the EXO glove on my right hand, then Stranz cut it in two with his harmonic blade.
The roof was a sea of ventilation pipes and air conditioners. We all rushed to the cent
er and crouched. From our locus, there was no way anyone could target us, even if they were able to keep eyes on. I glanced at Ohirra, who now had the nuke strapped to her back.
“You do know if that gets hit everyone’s dead within several miles.”
“Charming,” she said. “Way to brighten my day. But if that happens, then we won’t have any problems, right?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“What now, sir?” Stranz asked, worry seeping into his voice.
“What’s wrong, sergeant? Think we’re sitting ducks?”
He gulped. “We are if they have mortars.”
“What’s the chance they’d have mortars?” I asked. And as soon as I did, Murphy’s Law laughed at me. The sound came from several hundred meters to our west and was a dull whuumpf.
“Incoming,” Ohirra yelled.
Seriously? Mortars? GNA was better supplied than some of my units in Iraq. I tracked the incoming round and watched it take out the southwest corner of the building.
Shit! We were going to have to move.
“Ohirra, track us a way out of here. Everyone, I’m taking control of your targeting control in a few moments. We need our ammo, but it’s not going to do anyone any good if we’re dead.”
They glanced at each other, worried.
“Listen, I’ll get you out of here,” I said, almost believing it. Olivares had once told me I was a killer and not a leader—that I got my men killed because I didn’t know how to lead. It might have been true then, but I’d be damned if it was true now. “For now, I want any UAV with eyes on us destroyed. I don’t want anyone helping correct their mortar team’s lousy aim.”
I left them and went to Ohirra just as another whuumpf sounded. I paused as I tracked the incoming round, then ignored it as it landed almost in the same place as the last one.
I crouched beside Ohirra behind a giant air conditioning unit. “What have you got?”
“Look there,” she said, pointing.
I followed her gesture and saw a mass of civilians moving our way from the other side of the 605.
“Who are they—oh, shit, fungees.”
I counted more than two hundred inbound vectors heading towards the GNA forces, who were so intent on destroying us that they’d forgotten to guard their flank. Even as I watched, I saw a wave of fungeed men, women and children sweep into the rear rank of GNA. For a moment, I couldn’t separate the two groups. All firing had stopped. All we heard were screams. Then GNA opened fire on their new attackers, turning their backs to us.
Sula fired on a UAV with a missile. She missed with the first, but scored with a second.
“Find a way clear, Ohirra?”
I saw a line appear on my HUD, detailing our escape route, which seemed to take us directly through a large section of GNA. “Are you certain?”
“Their backs are turned, and even if they weren’t, everyone has dropped their RPGs in favor of close combat weapons. If we can make a mad dash along this path in the next sixty seconds, I think we can make it through.”
I shrugged. “Why not?
“You go first. Sula, you’re next. Stranz, you’re next after Sula, and make sure no-one attacks her six or we’ll all get blown up. I’m coming last. Don’t worry about controlling your weapons. I have master control, starting now.”
“How are we doing this, Ohirra?” I asked as we all got in line. I began tagging targets along our route of travel and assigning them to our EXOs. I was moving so fast my head was spinning.
“We’re going to lower ourselves, then full out run. I’m not sure that the three-story fall would be good for the servos, so better waste a few seconds than do something we can’t undo.”
“Not like we have any more spare suits.” I gritted my teeth and concentrated on my HUD, counting on my body to get me where it needed to.
I could hear Ohirra take a deep breath before she said, “Ready, steady, go!”
And she was loping across the roof. We fell in line behind her with five-meter intervals between us. She slid over the edge, lowering herself before letting go, then Sula, then Stranz, then me. I paused for a moment from attending my HUD to make sure I didn’t land wrong, but once I began sprinting across the parking lot in front of the warehouse, I returned to my targeting plan.
My grunts’ Hydras were all out and ready to fire. I waited until Ohirra was within twenty meters of the first group of GNA engaging with fungees before I let twelve missiles loose, three from each EXO.
Every one found a target as we ran towards the battle lines, exploding almost simultaneously.
A pair of motorcycles went up, the shockwave and shrapnel sending combatants tumbling into the air. Ohirra ran under an exploding SUV as it rocketed into the sky, Sula close on her heels. As the vehicle crashed back to earth, Stranz vaulted the ruined hood. I was so integrated into my display that I almost fell over the wreckage, managing to inelegantly stumble around it.
I’d sent two rounds into the hastily constructed mortar pit and couldn’t help smile when their stash of 40mm rounds cooked off.
I felt hands grabbing at my EXO and I jerked my harmonic blade free. I swung blindly in all directions as I continued targeting. A laser indicator found Sula. I tracked and targeted the device to the edge of the warehouse and sent three missiles into it, smiling as a plume of fire and smoke rose from the area.
Then we were across, no longer in the GNA lines. I kept running, no longer targeting, instead checking the status of each of my grunts. Everything was green. No one seemed to be hurt.
We ran under the 605, ignoring the occasional fungee that hurtled towards us. Sometimes they’d come at me, then turn away, battering their hands and fists on the others. They recognized me as one of their own, just as I recognized them from their red halos. We ran away from them rather than engaging with them. After all, there was no reason to kill them unless we had to.
We were now beneath the black alien vine canopy. No longer did we have the wide open vistas of Greater Los Angeles with views of the ever-present mountains. Now all we saw was the black roof of our new world, with things moving in the shadows, needlers flitting through the leaves, and death everywhere we looked. Even the buildings looked murdered, the alien vines breaking them open and turning them to dust.
We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.
General Douglas MacArthur
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
WE WERE FORCED to go to ground at the El Monte shopping center. Ohirra was dehydrated and had begun to stumble the last mile. The suits enabled us to wade through hell, but inside them we were very human. When we stopped, I had Sula and Stranz help Ohirra, giving her water slowly so it wouldn’t make her feel worse. We had little onboard water and food. We’d expended a tremendous amount of energy and needed to get it back.
We’d stopped at what had been a women’s clothing store. Someone had pulled off all the clothes and placed all the mannequins in the middle of the store, where they’d painted them in an impossible variety of garish colors. The greens, blues and yellows were brilliant in the gloom. I both kept watch and checked our time to detonation. It was taking too long to get to our target. We had no idea what was waiting for us at the hive and had to reserve as much time as we could to deal with that unknown. Every second we stopped, every moment we were forced to slow, put the entire mission in jeopardy. Of course, the fault lay with Dewhurst. Had we connected with Mother and her forces, we would have begun much closer to our objective. I knew one thing for certain: whatever we were doing, it had to change.
After twenty minutes, I had Stranz switch places with me and checked on Ohirra.
“How is it?” I asked, eyeing her as she climbed back into her EXO.
She shook her head. “Stupid, stupid. I shouldn’t have let myself get like that.”
“It is what it is. You ready to go?” I knew the answer from her stats, but wanted to give her the chance to reply.
Instead she said, “This is untenabl
e, isn’t it?”
“It is what it is,” I said again. “Right now we just need to move. Every second is a second we can’t get back.”
She frowned. “Then let’s go.”
I shook my head. “Let’s give it twenty more minutes. I need your firepower and your advice. I don’t need you falling out.”
She started to argue, but I held up a hand.
We waited the twenty minutes and I was pleased that her CO2 max had increased to an acceptable level. No sooner did I say it was okay than we were in file out the door, heading down the alien-vine-shadowed street. The vine had ignored the cars and anything made purely of metal, instead seeking those things it could smash and crumble. Here and there the wooden homes were already giving in to the alien vine. Concrete was going too, albeit to a lesser degree. I had no doubt that the deeper we went into the vine, the worse things would be.
Two hours later I was rewarded with visions of almost complete destruction. Rows of homes lay fallen and crumbled, not even a shadow of what they once were.
Traveling through the waste of what had once been the pinnacle of consumer culture was in and of itself a memorial to how great we’d had it. It was also a reminder of how quickly it could be taken away.
We were coming up on Almansur Men’s Golf Club when our HUDs flashed a warning, tracking an unidentified aircraft above the alien vine.
An aircraft? This close to the hive? I’d lost track of the EMP bursts, but it was suicide to get this close. At first I thought it might be a UAV, perhaps even belonging to GNA. But it was much larger. My targeting resolved it as a Chinook. Could it be the Chinook that had come for Dewhurst and HMID Sandi? If so, what was it up to now? It was certain to draw the attention of the Cray, which was something I wanted to postpone for as long as possible.
I’d had everyone form on me to prepare for possible assault when a spasm of PTSD rocked me. The world dissolved into a mélange of Michelle, scarred and crying in my arms, while I saw men with saws and knives and pliers cutting, ripping, attaching hoses and cables to Sandi, who screamed my name over and over. I gritted my teeth so hard my jaws ached.