by Isaac Hooke
The team members aimed their weapons skyward and launched spacetime bolts into the air, toward the airship. Five black holes formed overhead, directly underneath the airship, and immediately devoured any nearby termites.
Eric felt the pull, and dug in with his metallic hands and feet. He watched as other termites were sucked up from where they assaulted the tanks below, vanishing into the spacetime tear.
The airship was unaffected of course, since it utilized inertialess drives. The Devastators and support units on the street below were forced to similarly dig in. Some of the bioweapons and tanks began to rise into the air from the gravitational forces.
Marlborough waited until the last of the termites vanished, and then gave the shutdown order. “Fire dispersion bolts!”
Eric launched two of the necessary bolts for good measure. The first struck the black hole and it immediately dissipated. The second dispersed when it struck the energy shield of the airship. Dispersion bolts from other team members hit the remaining holes, and those tears in spacetime also winked out.
The gravitational pull subsided, and the bioweapons and Sloths dropped to the street.
The Devastators released their hold on the asphalt and cut through the remaining Sloths with their Wolverine blades, while the tanks handled the bioweapons.
“Help the tanks!” Marlborough ordered.
Eric and the others approached the edge of their respective buildings and unleashed energy shots en masse into the lobster-gators. They quite literally tore them apart.
When there were no opponents left, the Devastators launched their spears skyward, at the airship, disabling its energy shield.
“Scorpion, Black Hole!” Marlborough ordered, presumably because Eric was in a more advantageous position than Marlborough at the moment, at least when it came to firing a black hole into the airship.
Eric launched a dark bolt at the ship, creating a black hole in the tractor beam bay that was just opening up. The inside of the bay broke away rapidly, spaghettifying into the spacetime rent. The rest of the ship followed, imploding rapidly.
Eric fired a dispersion bolt when the craft was gone, and the black hole winked out.
The tanks turned their turrets toward those Bolt Eaters that were currently visible on the rooftop, including Eric.
He resisted the urge to crouch from view. His energy shield was active: if any of the human units fired, it would absorb the blow. And if the Devastators tossed spears at him, he would have time to dodge.
At least that was what Eric hoped.
“Unknown alien units identify yourselves!” a voice came over the general comm band.
Eric recognized the speaker immediately.
“Da hell?” Slate sent. “Is that Lieutenant Arnold?”
“I believe it is,” Marlborough commented.
“He’s not actually present,” Eagleeye said. “He can’t be. Command types don’t like to get down and dirty with the troops.”
“Yeah, obviously he’s got repeaters deployed from here to Timbuktu,” Frogger said.
“Tim fuck what?” Slate said.
“Never mind,” Frogger said. “Command and control,”
One of the Ravager support units stepped forward. “Shit! Bolt Eaters! I thought it was you guys. Where the hell have you been?”
“We had some problems,” Marlborough said. “But we’ve resolved them, at least for the time being. Bolt Eaters reporting in for duty, Lieutenant.”
“Are you actually in that Ravager unit, Lieutenant?” Mickey asked.
“That’s right,” Arnold said.
“Nice,” Hicks said. “I thought all those units were autonomous.”
“The Brass finally gave me a chance to fight with my men,” Arnold said. “Of course I took it.”
“Your men?” Dickson said. “You mean Mind Refurbs.”
“If you want to get technical, yes,” Arnold said.
“Are they our clones?” Marlborough pressed. “The backups you promised to reinstate if we didn’t return in time?”
“Not exactly,” Arnold said. “They’re clones of only one of you.”
“And which of us is the lucky one?” Marlborough asked.
“That would be you, Sergeant First Class Marlborough,” Arnold replied.
“Shit, this is insulting,” Slate said. “A platoon of Sarges. Like you couldn’t trust the rest of us to perform the mission, so you duplicated the one you thought would follow orders the best.”
“The one we thought would fight the best, actually,” Arnold said.
“Same difference!” Slate commented.
“Get in line, Corporal,” Marlborough said. “The lieutenant outranks all of us.”
“Sorry,” Slate said.
Eric was a little disappointed himself. The Bolt Eaters were perfectly capable of completing any mission thrown at them. The very fact that they were here was a testament to that.
Then again, on the flip side, he was also kind of happy that more clones hadn’t been made from his backups, because it meant less versions of himself running around in the world. He liked to consider himself unique, alien copies notwithstanding.
“So tell me you have some grand plan to save us all,” Arnold said. “Or at least the rest of the country, considering that New York is basically lost.”
“It’s not lost yet,” Dickson said, gesturing toward the intact buildings around them.
“You haven’t seen the city from the air,” Arnold commented. “It’s not pretty. Let’s just say, it’s going to take at least a decade of rebuilding before the city gets back to the way it was, if it ever does.”
“So you asked if we had a plan…” Marlborough said.
“And so I did,” Arnold agreed.
Marlborough relayed the details that the Bolt Eaters had ironed out.
“Hm, so you need us to provide a containment field?” Arnold asked.
“That’s right,” Marlborough replied.
“And provide covering fire when the time comes?” the lieutenant pressed.
“Would be nice,” Marlborough said. “I’d suggest continuing to reinforce the front lines so the Banthar don’t suspect anything. Not like it will really matter if they do, I suppose, since it will be too late by then.”
“No, it’s probably a good idea,” Arnold agreed. “All right then. Let’s set this plan in motion.”
Eric stood guard on the apex of an intact tower in the Ice District, so named because at its center was a skating arena that had kept its ice year round. The arena was ruined now, of course, along with all other structures in the neighborhood, ravaged by the micro machines. In this portion of the city, the termites reigned supreme, coating all the remaining buildings in sight. They had only just begun to assail the tower he and Mickey clung to.
Eric was reminded of a visit to his grandparents’ farm he had made as a young boy when he was still human. A caterpillar infestation had swept the area, and the squirming creatures covered everything, munching at all the bare foliage—leaves, grass, stalks. Those caterpillars had made an audible chittering—the sound of trillions of tiny mandibles biting into the greenery, and trillions of minuscule limbs crawling over branches and other caterpillars. The distant hum of crunching metal produced by the termites wasn’t all that different.
A building collapsed as he watched, its desiccated frame too weak to support its weight. It hit the ground, sending up a dust plume that bathed the neighborhood below, blotting out many of the buildings nearby and the termites upon them. But that inexorable chittering continued unabated, if slightly muted.
Eric and Mickey fastened themselves to the tower via a series of carbon fiber straps.
“All right,” Eric said. “Team 1 in position.”
“Activate the termite,” Marlborough instructed over the comm.
Eric turned toward Mickey, who carried the micro machine the pair had captured. The termite floated in between two parallel steel plates that produced a magnetic containment field, tr
apping the micro machine in between them. Those plates hummed, connected as they were to Mickey’s power supply. The termite trapped in the center was little bigger than a cockroach, and Eric had to zoom in with his camera to see the tiny legs, mandibles, and wings.
During the first invasion, Mickey had spent a lot of time experimenting with a termite the team had captured via a similar containment field. Mickey had discovered the termite communicated with its machine brethren via high-energy photons, and found that by beaming certain frequencies of photons into said termite, he could cause it to issue a swarm command, which would be sent to all other termites in the immediate area. Those micro machines in turn would rebroadcast the command, drawing in termites from all over. The process would continue until all micro machines on the continent were swarming the same exact area.
Mickey’s avatar nodded on Eric’s HUD, and then a green light activated on the customized LIDAR unit the comm operator had attached beside the containment field. The LIDAR unit would be beaming the necessary high-energy photons into the termite at that moment, photons that were well beyond the visible spectrum.
“Termite is activated,” Mickey announced.
“Is it transmitting?” Marlborough asked.
Mickey paused, then said: “The micro machine is calling its friends. I’m detecting return transmissions from other micro machines in the area, matching the high-energy transmission. The termites are picking up the call, and repeating it.”
Eric studied the surrounding buildings. None of the micro machines were abandoning the adjacent skyscrapers. Below, the termites that had invaded the current building hadn’t emerged, either.
“It’s not working...” Eric said.
“I expected I’d have to tweak the frequencies,” Mickey said. “Adjusting now...”
Eric gazed at the closest building, watching the living mass of termites as they devoured it. None of them seemed to be responding, and Eric began to wonder if the plan was going to work at all.
And then, all of a sudden, the termites began to break away from the structure, heading toward the tower that harbored Eric and Mickey.
“That did it,” Mickey said. “Still works like a charm.”
“You’d think they would have made some changes to their machines after the last invasion,” Eric said.
“You’d think,” Mickey said. “Though my guess is they didn’t know what we did the last time. We destroyed their mothership after all, and by the time we used the termite we captured, Manticore was long gone, so he couldn’t have told them, either.”
Micro machines also emerged from the building immediately below so that in moments Eric and Mickey were completely enveloped by the termites. The emitters repelled them, giving the pair a small bubble of free space one meter on all sides. But beyond that, the air seethed with the termites that answered the summons of their trapped brother.
“Better make this quick, Sarge,” Eric transmitted. He wasn’t sure if the message got through the thick mass. It didn’t matter. Marlborough and the other Bolt Eaters would be watching, waiting for this moment.
Eric and Mickey couldn’t fire their black hole weapons themselves. The seething mass would trigger the bolts and create a spacetime rip directly in front of them: they’d be sucked inside and spaghettified instantly.
Eric felt the pull then, somewhere to the east. The micro machines were ripped away, but Eric and Mickey remained in place, strapped in as they were to the tower beside them. The wind gusted past him, and he could almost believe it was the hurricane-force gale that produced the pull, when it was the exact opposite.
The termites vanished inside a black hole that hovered between the buildings about five hundred meters away. More black holes appeared around it a few moments later as other bolts arrived, and the force increased. Eric would have been ripped free if not for the carbon fiber straps that bound him to the tower. Circular bites began to appear in the closest buildings as pieces of them broke away and plunged into the spacetime tear.
Termites city-wide were drawn to the gravity wells, thanks to the high energy photons emitted by the captured micro machine. When the termites got close, they promptly spiraled into one of the five black holes. It was a beautiful sight. As beautiful as destruction could be, anyway.
The gravity wells grew in size as more and more of the micro machines were devoured, and the nearby buildings began to shed pieces with greater frequency; some of the weaker structures broke apart entirely, and were consequently devoured, further enlarging the black holes.
At one point the Bolt Eaters launched dispersion bolts from the nearby buildings to reduce the size of the black holes, wanting to keep the spacetime tears within manageable levels.
Airships promptly arrived and tried to fence off the black holes with their vessels, which were unaffected by the pull, but the termites were invariably swept around them and into the holes.
One of the airships broke away from the fence, and swerved directly toward Eric and Mickey.
“We’re going to have to move!” Eric said. “Guys, can you get rid of the black holes?”
“Disperse all except one!” Marlborough ordered over the comm. “Once Eric and Mickey are out of the way, recreate the others.”
“Wait, is one still too much, given their distance?” Brontosaurus asked.
“Five hundred meters should give them plenty of leg room,” Marlborough replied. “If not, we’ll disperse the final hole.”
Four of the holes winked out, leaving only the original. The winds died down, but were still gale force.
Eric and Mickey cut the straps that bound them just as the airship launched several energy bolts. The two of them let go of the building and plunged downward. Their fall was curved, thanks to the influence of the black holes, and slower than it would have been with Earth’s gravity acting fully, but otherwise Marlborough was right—they had plenty of leg room.
Eric fell fast enough that he felt the need to activate his energy shield before impact. He hovered in place a meter above the surface before he disabled it. Mickey landed beside him, and the two of them dove into a side alley that was out of view of the airship.
The incoming termite swarm struggled to follow them, but the micro machines were still pulled away before they could enter the lip of the alley.
The airship approached fast, but then Arnold’s Devastators appeared overhead, standing on the building adjacent to the alley. They’d been keeping other enemy troops away, but had apparently repositioned when they noticed Eric and Mickey’s plight. They launched their alien spears at the airship, and disabled the shield. Someone fired a black hole from out of view, and the craft promptly imploded. The Devastators retreated as the termites were sucked into that new hole.
Eric and Mickey secured themselves to the alleyway by forcing their hands and feet into the pavement below, and they felt the wind pick up as the other Bolt Eater formed more black holes.
It took about ten minutes before the swarm of micro machines from the remainder of the city ceased. Eric gazed at the lip of the alleyway, but spotted only empty sky.
“I think that’s the last of them,” Hicks transmitted.
“Keep the holes running for another five minutes,” Marlborough responded.
No more micro machines arrived during those five minutes, and the Bolt Eaters stationed on the surrounding rooftops fired dispersion bolts, clearing the black holes.
The hurricane force winds subsided, and the constant upward pull that Eric felt ceased; his body slumped to the pavement.
“Well, that was fun,” Mickey said.
10
With the termite threat nipped in the bud, at least for the moment, Eric and the other Bolt Eaters switched their focus to driving back the remaining alien invaders. They attacked the bioweapons, the alien machines, and the airships. With Arnold’s Devastators at their side, they called in bombers as necessary, and other air support. With the termites gone, the tide quickly turned, and humanity drove back the invader
s, until the enemy occupied only a small section of town on the eastern side, near the coast. But the aliens were firmly entrenched there within the different buildings; bombing runs and artillery attacks did nothing to reduce their numbers—the remaining airships physically placed themselves between the bombs and the alien troops so that their energy shields absorbed the impacts.
Early in the second day of the fighting, Arnold recalled the Bolt Eaters to a side alley for a private huddle.
“It’s going to take a few days to break through the enemy position,” Arnold said, transmitting from inside the Ravager mech he used for the fighting. “Maybe a week.”
“Man, I hate this kind of urban fighting,” Slate said. “When the bastards know they’ve lost, but they refuse to surrender. And they fight to the last man. Like there’s honor in that or something.”
“Well in this case, they’ll be fighting to the last alien,” Tread said. “Or at least, the last alien AI.”
“In any case,” Arnold said, “I think your time will be better used elsewhere.”
“What did you have in mind?” Marlborough asked.
“First of all, let me set the stage,” Arnold said. “New York isn’t the only locus of alien activity. Other invasions are taking place in major capitals across North and South America. Los Angeles, Austin, Washington, Vancouver, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires. In each city, airships have deployed micro machines, bioweapons, alien mechs… the works. And of course your clones are at the forefront of each invading force.”
“That really, really, sucks,” Eagleeye said.
“Yes,” Arnold said. “But the termites are the greatest threat at the moment. We’re going to ship the black hole weapons and alien spears we’ve captured to those cities, along with instructions on how to replicate what we did here. Once that’s done, we’re hopeful the local military will be able to push back the alien forces with those same weapons, as we’ve done.”