by Ari Bach
“Well, this team was short-lived,” he stated over the team link, coded so that the Udachnaya team couldn’t hear.
“We’re not dead yet,” replied Violet.
“Tell me that in ten minutes.”
“I will,” she said, “They wouldn’t have sent us out if they didn’t think we had a chance.”
“They didn’t think we’d run into panzercopter troops.”
“Because we told them it was three thieves,” said Vibeke. Even over the link her voice wavered. She had come up with the estimate, now proven wrong. There were at least eight on the copter, in a far superior position. The enemy had come in a craft made for war, made for the old, tough wars. N team had told them in training how Valhalla wished it had a panzercopter, how the things could take out an army base, how they could massacre a city, how one had killed everyone on E team when E team had been armed to the teeth. How only the most besieged companies like the YUP still used the things because they were overkill for anyone else. There was no doubt that the craft had an edge on Udachnaya and from the sounds outside, it was busily annihilating all the guards stationed to protect them as they worked.
“Maybe it’s survival of the fittest,” Vibs reflected. “Our team got it wrong, so we’ll die for it.”
“That may be,” said Violet, “but I plan to live for at least ten minutes just to prove Veikko wrong.”
Violet wanted to say something comforting to Vibeke, anything to relieve her of the responsibility of that three-man estimate. She could have admitted she’d been no help, that nobody in Valhalla thought otherwise, but it was all too petty. She wanted to move on, to abandon the subject. To say something noble, stoic. “And I don’t know about you, but I died to the outside world with a sword in hand. I’m going the same way if I’m dying for good. When Alf gives our eulogies, I’m gonna make sure he does it proud.”
“Damn straight,” said Veikko with a nod.
“Works for me,” linked Vibs.
“Forget your eulogies and forget ten minutes,” said Varg aloud. “I’m gonna live forever.”
He stood up and drew his microwave. A petty weapon compared to what was outside, but in Varg’s hands, it looked like it could save all of Siberia.
Dmitri walked up behind him, hauling a crate. He spoke aloud. “The only thing we know for sure is that they want what’s in here. They’re going to come in. You know how to use these, yes?” He pried the lid off the crate to reveal ten of their Gatling shotguns. Another crate revealed as many drums of shells.
Varg called back, “Oh hell yes.”
They passed out guns to everyone, Dmitri and one of his men held two each. He spoke again. “And you four, Valhalla, don’t use your bone bugs unless you want to lose ’em.”
Questionable advice, but they weren’t about to argue. Training took over their minds. Panic didn’t set in; it didn’t even threaten them. They took the best strategic positions in the room and dimmed out their suits. The room went black. Gunfire outside had ceased. All was silent. Had the troops outside ended the threat? Could it all be over already? They would wait for the link to come back on before making such an assumption. They would hold their positions until relieved and assured the situation was over.
Violet set 99 percent of her mind on tactics. The last percent was still dwelling on their underestimate of the intruder forces—they’d put it at three, and now they knew it was at least eight. At least eight people with a panzercopter, a craft even Valhalla didn’t wield. A formidable nightmare. Violet heard an angry buzz, a tractoring force from outside. The entire top floor of the arsenal tore off to reveal the panzercopter, four more panzercopters, and a descending force of thirty armed, gas-masked personnel, all in heavy white armor.
“Oh fuck!” shouted Varg.
“Chyort voz’mi!” yelled Dmitri. Everyone in the shredded room seemed to shout an old native curse. Violet was inspired by no obscene exclamations. Before she was hit by the shock of seeing such a powerful opposing force, she saw the gas masks, and training demanded she be prepared for a gas attack. She pulled up the aerotoxin-coat shield from her collar and sealed it against her nose and mouth. The rest of her team did the same quickly after. The Udachnaya teams lacked gas-masking uniforms.
Dmitri’s men opened fire immediately, spraying the intruding force as they dropped in. The spray of Gatling shot hit the intruders’ body armor like hailstones, bouncing off harmlessly. Only when a spray hit the rubber joints in their armor did it disable a limb. Varg opened fire sparingly, targeting their neck fittings as best he could. The rest of the team followed his lead and managed to take out two of the enemies as they descended, knocking a couple of others’ weapons from their hands. Intruders were beginning to make the ground, and as soon as they landed, they could deploy heavier armor. Shields sprouted from their forearms and the torso joints were no longer vulnerable. Violet focused all her fire on legs, knee joints, and ankle joints. She disabled one man, but it was little progress. The landed enemies did not return fire. They kept their heaviest shields to the team and headed straight for the generators.
Dmitri called for them to fall back. They started to back up, checking carefully behind them as they had learned. When they looked back, they saw Udachnaya teams hauling something out from the ditch around the arsenal. Artillery. Though the panzercopters had destroyed Udachnaya’s antiaircraft batteries, the microwave arrays from the arsenal were ready to go, having been moved for retrofitting work. V team took cover by the arsenal foundations, and the sky lit up with ultrahigh-intensity waves. Two of the copters lost electrical power and fell to the ground. Three remained in the air. Two of those airborne began an assault on the new arrays. One moved in closer to the arsenal.
The landed troops had already affixed cables to one of their target generators. More troops on the copters pulled the cables up along the drop lines and affixed them to clamps. Varg stepped up and sighted the clamps with his microwave. He was on target, but beams weren’t enough to sever the cables or clamps. The panzercopter lifted the generator and some of their ground troops with it. Once in the air, the troops lowered their shields and started firing at the microwave arrays. Varg and the Russians were forced to take cover again.
The two other panzercopters successfully obliterated one of the microwave arrays. Working together, they headed for the remaining unit, which let loose all it had on the northern copter. It drifted back, its field rotors partly scrambled from the attack and having trouble holding their airfoil shape. The other copter began firing, sending the Udachnaya team running for cover away from their overheated array.
One copter was about to leave with a generator. The other generators sat in the open. Vibeke shouted through her mask,
“Armor! Metal armor! Start one up!”
V team ran for the remaining generators. Dmitri and his men started unloading a crate beside them. Violet started one of the systems, while Vibs and Veikko hooked up the cannons. Varg lifted the cannons with his bare hands and pointed them in the right direction. Dmitri arrived with the contents of his crate: the manual targeting hardware. His team began wiring it in. Other Udachnaya teams saw them at work and headed back to the remaining microwave array. They retargeted at the enemy escape route, but the array was still so hot the chambers were on fire. They would only be able to keep a burst going for a few seconds.
It was enough. The Mjölnir system was up, and Dmitri’s men targeted the panzercopter carrying the stolen generator. Violet looked around at the intruders. Something was strange. They weren’t firing at her. The copters were firing to suppress and disperse, but not massacring the teams in the remains of the arsenal. On the ground, the men had weapons but didn’t use them; they kept their shields up and despite losses, they weren’t shooting. Violet thought it strange enough to comment on. “The intruders! They’re not firing at us!” she called out.
“They will after this!” shouted Dmitri as he triggered the generator. Varg was knocked off his feet when it fired, but the bolts hit
the copter right on its belly. In milliseconds the ten-meter craft became a fist-sized crumpled mass with its crew crushed inside. V team felt their metal uniforms flex for an instant when the magnetic field hit. The generator and troops fell to the ground. The troops didn’t put their shields up. This time they drew their Gatling shotguns. The big Udachnaya microwave array targeted them. Then one of the remaining copters appeared to break in half. Its cockpit and motor segment held still as the back half lifted like a skunk lifting its tail, exposing two nozzles. They fired a glowing cloud at the microwave array. It was blinked out of existence along with six Udachnaya men. The copter lowered its troop hold back into place and flew for the arsenal.
Every armored enemy on the ground was now firing at them. The two deactivated copters had also restarted their electronics and began to lift off. Dmitri and Varg retargeted the fallen generator and fired, smashing it. Dmitri called to his men,
“Break out explosives! Destroy the other ten generators.” He targeted another copter with the system, and Varg fired. One of the bolts hit but the other missed. The magnetic field failed to form and the craft was only knocked off course. Three copters were hovering overhead. The fourth was gaining altitude and covering their escape route, but there was nothing left to fire at in the canopy hole. If they wanted out, they could get out.
Troops were back on the ground, and the ones that weren’t crushed in the fall were pissed off. They continued to fire with their microwaves. Several Russians were hit. Varg dropped the cannons and found cover. The rest of Violet’s team hit the deck with another member of De team. The two other Russians stood and shot back. They targeted necks and killed three more of the intruders before they were killed themselves, hit by so many microwaves that chunks of them were vaporized. Four of the remaining enemies seized the generator in use and began affixing new cables.
Dmitri pulled out a remote and hit some buttons. The bomb he had affixed to the generator blew, sending the troops around it flying in four directions each. Other Udachnayans began detonating their own bombs. Six of the generators were destroyed, five of the enemy troopers. Debris hit one of the copters and sent it off course, crash landing in the dirt. It was undamaged, though, and began revving up for takeoff.
Four troops were approaching the arsenal foundation. The copters had the surrounding area covered. V team had no avenue of escape. They only had their Gatlings and even odds. They nodded to each other, an unspoken agreement that there was nothing to do but fight face-to-armored-face. Before they could spring up, the approaching troops were hit from their flanks. Three more teams of Udachnaya soldiers flooded in amid heavy fire from three of the copters. The link came back on and Prokofiev blinked in.
“V team, follow Ef and Ya team to the engineering silos. Kha, Tse, Che to continue engagement.”
They followed the AI’s plan. More troops were dropping in from another copter. Udachnaya teams were taking over the ground battle. As they followed Prokofiev’s path, they saw intruders hold a line around their new target generator, one of three left. One copter was covering the enemy troops, one was awaiting the cargo, and two were laying waste to the pit. They didn’t fire to suppress and protect anymore; they fired to kill everyone they could.
Heavy fire from the copters made the run a desperate one. Microwave blasts turned streaks of sand into glass. Giant shells sent puffs of dirt into the air and cut an Udachnaya man in half. The blood and guts to which they had desensitized themselves in training were accumulating all around. It looked like the simulation, but it wasn’t graphics; it was the men they’d eaten breakfast with. A horrible sight, they kept running through a gruesome alley, ducking shrapnel and taking cover when the microwaves hit something explosive. Violet looked back as she ducked behind a fallen wall. She saw the generator almost ready to rise. Russians adeptly blew the heck out of it, but another generator was already set up to go—one of two left. Nearby, the FKMA robots they had set aside were getting carted into one copter as it awaited its primary target. Spoils of war.
The evacuating teams entered a tunnel and began climbing up to the engineering complex. As they made their way up, one of the copters unleashed an assault on the building. Walls fell in on the tail end of their group. The tunnel was broken and bent, so those behind them were slowed by a sudden rise in the terrain. Violet and Varg ran back to pull men up the jagged cliff, but only one man had not been crushed under rubble. Violet reached out to take his arm, but both of his arms were gone. They stared uselessly at each other for a second. There was no way to help him. The tunnel would break in less than a second. She and Varg moved onward into the building. They sealed the door as the tunnel collapsed. They would find no rest indoors.
They came under fire again from troops in the building, firing with Gatlings they must have picked up from Dmitri’s fallen men. Machinery around the room sent shot ricocheting in too many directions to predict. It was mayhem. Violet took cover behind a giant lathe. Everyone else took cover in an alcove opposite her. They did so because the troops were moving toward Violet’s hiding place.
One of the intruders kept a suppressing fire on them. They knew they had singled out the weak member of the pack. They were moving in to kill her. Stupid, she thought. Every damn soldier had gone one way, and she’d gone the other. Her own Gatling was long out of ammo. Her microwave would do nothing, not even to their joints. She had nothing else to fight with. She saw one man approaching, hunting her. She looked around for anything that could help. She found nothing.
Tikari! Tikari, dumbass, she cursed herself. She ejected it from her chest and took hold of it in knife form. Its AI buzzed into her brain; it wanted to fly out and kill the man coming for her. She suppressed its thoughts. She couldn’t use it like that here, not like this. She still hadn’t fully mastered it in training, and now wasn’t the time to risk it. A thousand reasons not to, she thought. Dmitri had even warned her against it. She couldn’t do it. She had to wait for the man to come, and then she would go for the neck. He wouldn’t expect it. It would work.
Or it would have if two Russians hadn’t jumped out to save her. They came over the lathe with nothing but spent Gatlings they used as clubs. They pounded the armored invader to the floor. The other intruder fired at them, killing one instantly, shredding the other’s back terribly. Violet couldn’t let it go on. She darted past the lathe, keeping under the enemy’s field of view, and stabbed the shooter in the ankle. He fell, and she stabbed him in the neck. He kept fighting. She stabbed him again, again, and again until he stopped and blood leaked from his armor. She looked back to the others. The surviving Russian had taken the attacker’s gun and crammed it behind his armored visor, opening fire inside his helmet. Violet’s rescuer looked at her, smiled, then dropped dead.
Two men had just died because she’d gone the wrong way, because she couldn’t trust her Tikari to do its job. She sensed that the Tikari was pissed at her for it. She shut it up by stowing it in her chest, still bloody from the fight. It was a sickening, dirty feeling to have his blood under her skin. The feeling wasn’t half as bad as having two dead Russians on her conscience. She turned her brain off to it. She would feel it later; she’d learn to trust her Tikari later; she’d clean it off later. Vibs stood over her. They were still on the run.
Once in the silo, she saw several Udachnaya men uncovering what they had come for: a mortar and armor-piercing shells. The unit was under repair, but they knew how to use it in this state. A panzercopter was still hovering outside, letting loose a barrage of conventional gunfire at the complex. The walls held against it. Prokofiev told Ya and V teams to await orders while Ef team set up the mortar and opened an embrasure, then began launching shells, not on the nearby panzercopter but on the cargo craft. They hit it with two shells and broke the cables, but the copter remained. It moved out of the way and another took its place. Men began rewiring the generator yet again.
V team kept to the back of the bay, out of the way. Violet was standing still and couldn’t bear
to have a moment to think about what had happened. She had to do something. “What was that spray,” she asked, “that got the microwave array. What was that?”
“Antimatter,” said Vibs. “Not a generalized antimatter blast—that would blow up half the planet. The weapon works by scanning a target and arranging antiprotonic particles—”
Varg interrupted. “But not true antiprotons.”
“Right,” Vibs said, “but they use the exact solution that will annihilate the target, no more. It’s an uncommon weapon because it takes a long time to scan, and any working computer with a sensor can see it coming and set up a defensive field long before the scan is complete. Even our suit fields could block it.”
She was talking in full explanatory mode, fast. She was doing it, Violet knew, because she couldn’t stand still either, because she needed to avoid thinking about her own mistake. Nobody on her team could bear to let in Violet’s idiocy or the men it had killed. Even Veikko was trying to talk about the damn antimatter gizmo.
“It’s called a Kraken system. Has a twenty-minute recharging time. They won’t use it unless they have to. Don’t worry.”
He was saying “don’t worry” to himself. All four were worried the more they considered it. They were trying to take their minds off the disaster, and all they could talk about was how it could get worse. Then it got worse. The copters were getting tired of their quarry getting blown up. There was only one generator left, and all four copters and about ten armored men were gathered around it, not letting anyone in. They were out of range of the half-assembled mortars, so Prokofiev was sending men about the silo to assemble something that could reach them.