by Jay Allan
The Machines aren’t actual robots. Not exactly. They are built, yes, but the technology is bio-mechanical. Imagine a reinforced supermetal skeleton, covered with a combination of mechanical and organic materials. Machines that learn, machines that heal. Relentless warriors that feel no fatigue, no pity, no mercy.
But the Machines are pawns in this war, even as my brothers and I are. They are the servants of the Tegeri, our real enemy. The Tegeri build the Machines and command them; they send them into battle against us. We don’t know much about these shadowy puppet-masters, but we know what we need to know. They are our enemies.
But what of the Machines themselves? Are they evil? Or are they merely slaves with no choice, no self-determination? Do they deserve our hatred? Or our pity? Do they feel true emotions? Are they able to wish for something else, something better than a lifetime of war and death on a hellish world?
And how different are we, my fellow-soldiers and I? What choice do we have? We are sustained by our cause, protecting humanity from a ravaging alien horde. However many of us die, however callously we are used by the government, we know that we are protecting those we left behind. If we didn’t have that, I doubt we could go on. I know I couldn’t. Thinking of Beth, my family, safer because I am here fighting…it is all that sustains me.
But do the Machines also believe they are fighting for a cause? Do they see us as aggressors, invaders…streaming from the Portals onto the worlds they have protected for centuries? Are they as self-righteous in their purpose as we are in ours?
I wonder sometimes if the Machines can crave a life elsewhere, if they ever long for peace…or if they know nothing but the hell of war. And if they know nothing else, if they cannot understand love and family and happiness…do I pity or envy them?
“Keep laying down that fire. Don’t give those bastards a chance to regroup.” Taylor had his visor magnification on maximum, watching the engineers move toward the heavy metal hatch of the enemy base. The Machines had fallen back, abandoning their network of trenches in front of the entry, but now they were trying to organize a counter-attack. Taylor’s strikeforce had taken the enemy position…now they had only one job. Cover the engineers while they breeched the fortified hatch.
It had been a hard fight. Samuels’ people had cleared the opposite hillside, outflanking and maneuvering the enemy out of their position. It had been masterfully done, and Taylor had been particularly impressed by Bear’s execution. Taylor had expected a lot from him, but he’d gotten even more. Samuels had accomplished a virtual miracle with his pack of newbs.
The battle to seize the ground outside the base had been a different story. Taylor’s men had paid for every bloody step. They’d had two attacks repulsed and, for a while, he thought they were going to come up short. Twice he’d called for fire support. But the narrow valley was a dangerous place for a Dragonfire gunship, and central command had refused both requests, instructing Taylor to continue his assault with the resources he had. He was used to the high command putting materiel over men, but he was surprised this time…he had thought this mission was important enough to override the usual bullshit protocol.
It was. Taylor didn’t know it, but he’d twice been authorized Dragonfire support, only to have the orders countermanded by higher authority for undisclosed reasons. Jake Taylor was on his own, and his performance was being closely watched…though he had no idea any of this was going on.
Finally, he ordered Bear to post a small flank guard and attack down off the hillside with the rest of his men. The combined assault proved to be too much for the Machines defending the trenches. They pulled back, leaving 2/3 of their numbers behind, dead in their works.
Now the enemy was trying to integrate all the units that had withdrawn and organize a counterattack. Taylor’s exhausted and shattered sections had to hold the ground they’d taken…and give the engineers a chance to break through the enemy fortifications. There were no reserves…they were on their own. The rest of the battalion had moved to cut off enemy reinforcements approaching from the north. If fresh Machine units got through, Taylor’s people wouldn’t have a chance. At 50% strength, fatigued, and low on ammo, they’d be swept away like dry leaves in the breeze.
“Jarrod, get those mortars repositioned. I want fire on those bastards. They don’t get a chance to regroup. Understood?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” Voices coming through on the implanted com unit always sounded a little strange…hollow, tiny. But hearing himself called lieutenant was stranger still. “We’re on the way, sir.”
The enemy had taken out one of the mortars, along with its entire team. Corporal Stone and his people didn’t have any warning. They’d been changing their position after every two shots, but the enemy still managed to target them and score a direct hit. Jarrod ran over to see if there were any survivors, but he couldn’t find a piece of anybody bigger than a softball.
“Lieutenant Taylor…Captain Graves here.” Graves was the lead engineer. His crew were UN regulars, not UNFE lifers. There was a lot of resentment between the conscripts condemned to Erastus and the short-term UN specialists with a ticket home, but Taylor had made it clear to his people he wasn’t going to tolerate anything less than total support for the engineers.
“Yes, Captain.” Taylor didn’t share the resentment. He might hate the higher ups, the people who made the policies that sent him and his brethren to die on Erastus. But that animosity didn’t extend to a team of engineers. He might envy their ticket home, but that wasn’t the same thing. They didn’t create the situation any more than he did. “What can I do for you?”
“We’re going to blow the plasma charges in 3 minutes. I need all your people at least 500 meters from the hatch by then.”
Taylor sighed. Three minutes wasn’t much time. “Understood, Captain.” There was no use arguing. Graves didn’t have any latitude, and Taylor knew it. Getting into that base was worth more than his entire strikeforce to UN Command…worth more than all of Graves’s men too. Any of his people who were too close in three minutes would be vaporized by a plasma charge. On UNFE’s spreadsheet it would be just so many more casualties in the glorious victory.
“Attention all personnel.” He was practically shouting into his com. “I want everyone a minimum of 600 meters…” He added an extra 100, just to be safe. “…from the hatch in two minutes.” His voice was commanding, his tone urgent. He didn’t intend to lose any rookies because they fucked around instead of obeying his orders immediately.
Taylor tapped the controls on his helmet, activating his tactical display. He took a quick glance, making sure everyone was obeying his withdraw order. Satisfied, he tapped his com to Black’s line. “Blackie, I’ll be going in with the engineers in a few. You’ll be in charge out here while I’m in the base.” With the rest of the battalion was positioned on the northern perimeter, Taylor was in command around the base itself. “If anything gets through the outer defenses, you need to keep the valley clear. Dig in on both sides, and put the mortars in the center so you can fire in either direction.”
“Got it, Jake.” Black’s voice was sharp, but Taylor could hear the fatigue too. The 2nd Section had been in the forefront of the attack, and they’d borne the brunt of the losses. Taylor’s old command was nearly shattered, but he knew they’d still do the job. He was trusting them with his life. He was leading Hank Daniels’ 1st Section inside with the engineers, and if the enemy retook the valley while they were in the base, none of them would get out.
“Lieutenant Taylor, Captain Graves here. Detonation in 30 seconds.” Taylor could see the engineers on his tactical display, running away from the base entrance, putting enough distance between themselves and the charges. “It’ll take about five minutes for the area to cool down enough for us to go in.” Cool down was definitely a relative term on Erastus. “Have your people ready and in position by then.”
“Understood, Captain.” Taylor felt a small flush, not anger, really…more annoyance. He realized he d
idn’t like getting anything that sounded like orders from the engineer. Not when they concerned one of his combat forces. But he bit back on it. “We’ll be ready, sir.”
“Launch light modules.” It was dark in the passage, the kind of pitch blackness you could only dream about most places on Erastus. It was all well and good to wish for relief from the relentless sunlight, but Taylor and his men, their eyes adjusted to the brightness of two massive suns, were ill-equipped to maneuver in the dark.
There was a whoomp sound, then another. Then half a dozen more. The light modules could be attached to the assault rifles like grenades. They were polycarbonate globes generating light through a contained chemical reaction. They lasted around six hours, and each one could light up an area with a diameter of roughly six meters.
Taylor looked down the passage, now lit by the modules. It was about ten meters wide, and it stretched deep into the mountainside. The light globes were doing their job well. All of Taylor’s people had flashlights, but a handheld light was more effective at giving the holder’s position away to a hidden enemy than providing useful illumination. The modules were far more effective, and the grenade launchers could throw them several hundred meters.
“Alright, 1st Team take point.” Taylor was going to follow just behind his advanced team, the engineers and the rest of the section falling in behind him. “Prepare to move out.”
Hank Daniels had been at the end of the formation, organizing the teams bringing up the rear. Now he trotted forward to Taylor’s position. “It’s hard to believe we’re actually inside an enemy base, isn’t it, Jake?” He shouldn’t have been calling his superior officer by his first name, but Taylor wasn’t a stickler for formality…and he certainly wasn’t used to being an officer. Besides, Daniels was rapidly becoming a member of Jake’s inner circle.
“It’s pretty incredible.” The response was perfunctory, without emotion. Taylor looked around him. The walls were smooth, the bare rock coated with some unidentified material. Taylor knew he was inside the lair of a species far ahead of his own, but all he could think about was the cost. Half his people had been killed and wounded taking this place…and from what he could piece together, the rest of the battalion had suffered almost as badly. He knew it was a big step forward for the war effort, but it was still too early to think of it in those terms. The losses were still too fresh.
“I know it was a hard fight, Jake.” Daniels had a pretty good idea why Taylor was so somber. “But at least it wasn’t a waste. We’re a big step closer to ending the war on Erastus. That’s something, at least. How many of our people have died on this miserable rock for nothing?”
Taylor took a deep breath. Daniels was right; he knew that. But it was still hard to see the big picture, to decide how many mangled and dead soldiers an objective was worth. “I know you’re right, Spider.” He paused. “But it’s just hard for me to see it that way. That’s all speculation…and these dead boys are real.” Taylor knew he shouldn’t be commiserating with a subordinate in the middle of an operation, but he had to get through all of this somehow. He tried to be the unmoving rock, always there for his men, never in need of support himself. That was a great image, but an illusion, an impossible standard.
Daniels had to suppress a smile when Taylor called him Spider. He’d picked up the handle when he was a sniper, and none other than Jake Taylor had given it to him. Taylor was a corporal and team leader when Daniels arrived on Gehenna. The rookie was a crack shot from the beginning, so Cadogan made him a sniper. But it wasn’t his aim that was truly extraordinary…it was his patience. Daniels could stay in a hidden position, motionless for hours, just waiting for his shot. One day Taylor compared him to a spider sitting in its web waiting for prey, and that was that. The name stuck.
“Look at it this way, then.” Daniels turned his head, glancing over at Taylor. “Maybe the war here will end sooner…and in ten years a whole batch of kids won’t get blackmailed into throwing their lives away because of this.”
Taylor didn’t respond, but he thought about what Daniels said. It made sense, but it was still hard for him to accept that anything could justify the casualties and suffering his people had endured…and he figured that next group of kids would just get sent someplace else to die.
“OK, Lieutenant Taylor, we’re all set.” Captain Graves was walking up from behind. He had been in the rear, supervising his crew as they prepped their equipment. The engineer wore the same sand-colored fatigues as Taylor and his troops, but his were totally soaked through with sweat, making them look darker. Other than his obvious distress from the heat and the silver Engineering Corps insignia on his shoulder, he could have been any officer in UNFE. Except Graves was going back home someday.
“Very well, sir.” He tapped the com pad on his helmet. “1st team, move out.” Taylor turned his head and glanced at Graves, nodding. Then he followed his advancing troops down the dimly lit corridor.
“Machines moving down the west passage.” Taylor could hear shooting in the background as Corporal Danton made his report. Taylor had sent Danton and his team to investigate the scanner contacts they’d been picking up. Jake had been afraid it was an internal security force…a fear that now seemed well-founded.
The main force had worked its way deep into the complex, locating the main power core after a lengthy search. They’d encountered a few sentries, and they’d lost one man, but they managed to reach their objective without running into too much resistance. Graves and his men were setting the nuclear charge while Taylor’s people guarded the approaches. Ideally, UN Command would want to hang on to a facility like this. The potential for researching the enemy’s superior technology was considerable. But it was too risky to try and hold it. The base was deep in an enemy-dominated zone, and they would likely launch a counterattack to retake it. UNFE had only managed to mount an attack against the facility because of surprise. The enemy thought the location was secret, as it still would be had it not been for a random communications intercept and some educated guessing by UNFE Intelligence.
The only tactically sound choice was to destroy the place, thus beginning the long process of attriting the enemy’s strength on the planet by destroying or capturing the production facilities. There had been 8-14 factories on the Portal worlds already conquered. If Erastus followed the pattern, the destruction of this facility would eliminate approximately 10% of the enemy’s replacement capacity. The Tegeri didn’t seem to bring reinforcements through the Portals…they produced the Machines on-planet. When the production facilities were all taken or destroyed, they seemed to give up the fight.
“Lieutenant, we’ve got a lot of Machines coming at us.” Danton’s tone was tense, harried. “They’re advancing from two directions now.” There was a short pause, then: “Sir, they seem to be very disorganized. Not like normal Machines at all.”
“You need to hold them, Corporal.” Jake’s voice was firm. “At all costs. I’m sending you some backup now.” He paused. “No one gets by you. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
Taylor turned toward Daniels. “Hank, send another team to support Danton. He’s got Machines coming in from two directions.” Taylor was in overall command, of course, but he didn’t want to step on Daniels’ toes too badly. Danton had panicked and called Taylor directly…he really should have reported to Daniels. It was tough on a unit commander to have a superior officer along with no other units to command. It was easy to marginalize the junior commander. But Taylor had been in Daniels’ shoes before, and he made sure to respect his subordinate.
“Yes, sir.” Daniels flipped down his helmet and checked his tactical display. “I’ll send Gomez’ team.” He flipped the com circuit. “Gomez, I’m sending you coordinates. Get your team over there immediately and support Corporal Danton.”
“Yes, Sergeant.” Gomez was one of the most junior team leaders in the 213th Strikeforce, but he was fast developing into one of the best. “We’re heading there now.”
“Lieutenant, we’ll be finished in ten minutes…twelve tops.” Graves’ voice was loud, and the message startled Taylor. The engineer sounded distracted. He and his men were working as quickly as possible to set the nuclear mine so they could all get the hell out. Graves – and Taylor too – would have much preferred to nuke the factory with a missile, eliminating the need for the bloody ground attack or for any of them to be deep within the facility standing around a 3 megaton warhead. But the base was dug into a mountain, and it was far from certain any nuke in UNFE’s arsenal would penetrate sufficiently to destroy it. And if they had tried and failed, the surprise so essential to the operation would have been lost. By the time they came in on the ground, the enemy would have massively reinforced. The assault would have quickly turned into a bloody disaster.
“Acknowledged, sir.” Taylor signaled Daniels while he spoke to Graves, holding up both hands, all his fingers upright, indicating 10 minutes. “Be advised that we are engaging substantial enemy forces, Captain.” A brief pause. “Any minutes you can shave off will make our withdrawal less problematic.”
“We’ll do what we can, Lieutenant. You don’t want us rushing too much with this thing.” Graves cut the line.
Taylor nodded. He wasn’t going to waste his time thinking about what could go wrong with the plan. The nuke was Graves’ problem. The Machines were his.
“Let’s go, Gomez. Your people are moving like a bunch of old ladies.” Taylor knew he wasn’t being fair – the corporal’s team was shot to pieces. Danton was dead, and Gomez was leading the survivors of both crews. They had more wounded than able-bodied personnel, and it was hard to withdraw under fire while carrying your comrades. But fair was bullshit, and Jake knew it. There was getting out of here and not getting out. Those were the two options. Fair had nothing to do with any of it.