by Isaac Hooke
“Spray and pray? Will do.”
TJ gave the order. The robots stepped over the bodies and approached the arch. Rade let them unleash their weapons into the opening for the next several minutes.
At the five minute mark, the weapons had begun to badly overheat, reducing the firing intervals to twenty seconds each.
“All right,” Rade said. “Cease firing. Let the weapons cool down.”
“Done,” TJ said.
“Okay, in a few minutes time, here’s what I want the robots to do. Unit B is to fire repeatedly into that opening while Unit S dashes inside at top speed. Unit B is to time and aim its shots so as to avoid hitting Unit S, with the goal of providing covering fire. Unit S is also to fire randomly, at least until it detects something, at which point it is to bring all its shots to bear.”
“Understood,” TJ said. “I’ve sent the orders. The Centurions are waiting on your command.”
“Jerry,” Rade said to his AI. “How long before those laser rifles of theirs return to optimal firing ability?”
“About ten minutes,” Jerry replied.
“What about five?” Rade asked.
“The firing rate will still be high, at three seconds per shot.”
“Not good enough.” Rade activated a timer on his HUD. “I’m sending the robots inside in ten minutes, people.”
Rade and the others waited quietly as the moments ticked past. On the robot video feeds, nothing stirred within the cave during that time.
At the ten minute mark Rade gave the order. He had the video from both units piped into his HUD so he could observe the progress.
Unit S dashed forward while Unit B, the Praetor unit, fired into the cave.
Rade saw a blur on Unit B’s feed; the video from Unit S turned blue. Signal lost.
“Cease firing,” Rade said. On the remaining feed, there was no sign of Unit S beyond the arch.
Again Rade heard what sounded like a trash compactor operating in the background. It was louder that time, because of Unit B’s proximity to the opening.
“TJ, did you see that blur on Unit B’s video?” Rade asked.
“I did. Rewinding the feed now.” TJ paused. “A black mass comes into the frame. I can’t tell what it is. Here’s the clearest shot. Have a look.”
Rade found himself staring at a frozen image. Beyond the arch, a blurry, amorphous darkness surrounded the lost robot.
“It came from above?” Rade asked.
“As far as I can tell, it did,” TJ replied.
Rade dismissed the image.
“Bacon detected another surge of electrons,” TJ said. “Because the Praetor is standing so close to the opening, that surge came very close to its tolerance levels.”
A moment later the remains of Unit S were thrown outside. One of the pieces struck Unit B in the chest with a resounding clatter.
“Looks like we only got Bacon left,” Bender said.
twenty-four
All right, people,” Rade said. “We’re in a bit of quandary.” He paused. “Cyclone, Bomb, TJ, Skullcracker, you’re with me. The rest of you remain here. Bender, you’re in charge of them. Guard our six.”
“Guard it from what?” Mauler said. His Titan pointed at the sealed wall behind him. “There’s nothing here.”
“You have your orders,” Rade said.
“What about the Marines you carry on your four Titans?” Luxe asked.
“Dismount, and wait here.”
Rade paused while the Marines climbed down from their designated mechs, and then he had Bomb lead the chosen Titans forward.
“What are you going to do, Rage?” Bomb asked during the advance.
“I don’t quite know yet,” Rade said.
When the four of them reached the cavern, Rade stared at the opening on the far end. That ominous outflow of human and robot bodies made him shudder.
“We should rush it,” Skullcracker said.
“You saw how well that worked out for Unit S,” Tahoe said.
“It might have succeeded if Unit B had gone inside, too,” Skullcracker said.
“I’m sure the other platoons that came before us had the same glorious idea,” Tahoe said. “Count the bodies, and tell me if you think it was a successful strategy.”
“Fighting aliens and kicking ass is one thing,” Bomb said. “But stepping into a meat grinder?”
“Maybe you won’t have to,” Rade told him.
“What are you planning?” Tahoe said.
“One sec.” Rade addressed the AI of his Titan next: “Jerry. How are we doing on the rad levels?”
“Still low,” Jerry replied.
“Would I survive without a jumpsuit?”
“With your current anti-rad subdermals, yes,” Jerry replied. “Though I wouldn’t recommend it for more than twenty minutes.”
“That should be all the time I need.”
“Of course, there is the small problem of the cold,” Jerry said. “And the lack of oxygen.”
“The latter isn’t a problem, not with the getup I have in mind,” Rade said. “But as for the former, just how cold is it? Snakeoil said it was warming.”
“It is, at least compared to the surface. External hull temperature is currently minus twenty-nine degrees.”
“Certainly won’t be pleasant,” Rade said. “And the pressure?”
“Similar to the atmosphere of Earth at sea level.”
“How about the air itself?” Rade said. “Anything corrosive to human skin?”
“There is,” Jerry said. “Though you’ll only develop severe burns after an hour of exposure.”
“Is it safe to fire jumpjets?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good, then heat up the rock here on my mark.” He positioned the Titan against the wall, with the dorsal nozzles of the jumpjets nearly touching the stone.
“You’re ceding control to me?” Jerry asked.
“You’re pretty good at putting two and two together.” Rade opened up the cockpit hatch and swung himself outside. He climbed the rungs to the hard rock floor. “Open up the storage compartment.”
The leg panel slid aside.
Rade grabbed the EAB—Emergency Air-Breathing—apparatus from a shelf within and attached it to his utility belt.
“All right, heat up the rock if you don’t mind,” Rade instructed his Titan.
Jerry fired the dorsal thrusters in slow burn mode.
After several seconds Rade said: “All right all right, that’s good. Shut off the jets and step away from the rock.”
The Titan complied.
Rade moved over to the glowing rock and when he judged himself close enough to benefit from the radiated heat, he held his breath and twisted open the helmet.
“Rade...” Tahoe said.
Ignoring him, Rade slid off the helmet. Even though the rock was glowing with thermal radiation, his face still felt extremely cold. His eyes watered immediately.
Rade dropped the helmet and then slid the EAB over his face. It pressed into his beard. The goggles began to mist up—so much for the anti-fog technology. He quickly reached above his shoulder and extended the telescoping feed from the oxygen tank to the EAB. He pressed the evacuate button and waited for the fresh air from the O2 tank to flood his mask.
He took a long inhale and his lenses defogged. The confines of the EAB made his breathing sound loud in his ears—unfortunately the mask didn’t employ the noise-canceling tech found in the jumpsuit helmets.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tahoe’s disapproving voice echoed from the external speakers on his mech.
“There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to rely solely upon the skin he was born in.” Rade’s voice sounded muffled to his ears, coming as it did from within that breathing apparatus. “Birth is one of those times. Sex, another.”
“Now’s not the time to joke around...” Tahoe said. “We could be attacked at any time. You should be adding to your defenses, not subtracting.”
“That would be the obvious thing to do, wouldn’t it? And I’m sure that’s what everyone who passed this way before us thought. But consider something, Cyclone. We’re dealing with a directed-energy EMP. We have to get rid of anything that could possibly be affected by that pulse. Or I do, anyway. And that includes my jumpsuit.”
“What about your blaster?” Skullcracker said. “Your EAB?”
“The EAB shouldn’t be harmed,” Rade said. “The blaster, I’m not so sure about. If it is, then I suppose I die.”
Rade stripped off the jumpsuit part by part, detaching the assemblies from the hard points protruding from his body. The heated rock face was quickly cooling off, and he found himself shivering uncontrollably as he undressed.
He had to remove his boots to take off the lower part of his leg assembly, and the ground felt like ice underneath his tight socks. His toes burned. As soon as he had the leg assemblies removed, Rade quickly donned the boots again.
He also had to temporarily divest himself of his gloves to part with the arm assemblies, and his exposed fingers felt like they were on fire in that frigid air. He quickly pulled the gloves back on. Meanwhile his feet had stopped burning, and were already growing numb.
“You shouldn’t be the one doing this,” Tahoe said. “I don’t think it’s allowed, what with you being our LPO and all. And essentially our chief.”
“Probably not,” Rade said. “But I can’t let anyone else do what I plan to do.”
“You can,” Tahoe said. “You must.”
Rade hesitated. He knew Tahoe was right. Yet... “This is something I’m always going to struggle with. Ordering someone, essentially, to their death. I thought I would be able to do it. I promised the lieutenant commander I could, when the time came.” He sighed. “I was wrong. I’m sorry, Cyclone. Tahoe. Call it the privilege of command: it’s the one time being in charge isn’t a burden, but a benefit. I killed Keelhaul, and I’m not going to kill another one of you.”
“At least let one of us volunteer to go in your stead,” Tahoe said.
“You’ll all volunteer,” Rade said.
“Then let us draw straws.”
Rade laughed. “You know that whoever runs the randomization app will simply tilt the odds in their favor. Or disfavor, depending on how you look at it. Including myself.”
Rade had to momentarily disconnect the feed line to the EAB when he detached the jumpsuit’s torso piece, causing his goggles to mist up once more. Mostly by touch, he fetched the small emergency oxygen canister from the jumpsuit and then reconnected the feed, restoring his air and his vision.
He wrapped the utility belt from the jumpsuit around his midsection—he had to tighten it several notches to compensate for the smaller size of his waist sans the suit—and secured the O2 canister to it. He also grabbed one of the explosives from the storage compartment: a Mylar-wrapped M117B demolition block, obtained from the combat outpost on the surface. He held the blaster with his other hand, still uncertain whether either weapon would actually function in there.
He was wearing nothing but his ventilation undergarments, his boots, his gloves, and the EAB. The rock had stopped glowing beside him, and he shivered frantically. The liquid cooling features of his undergarments didn’t help. He was a little worried his shaking fingers would accidentally squeeze the trigger on the blaster; he kept it pointed downward at all times, of course.
Momentarily stowing his weapons, Rade grabbed the bug-out kit from the Titan’s storage compartment. He grabbed two heat packets, squeezing them to break the divider between the chemicals inside, and shoved the packets into his gloves. Next he grabbed the thermal blanket, and folded it a few times to mix the heat-inducing molecules it too contained, then tied it around his chest. He didn’t feel that much warmer.
“I want you to line up in front of the entrance.” Rade said. “Illuminate the inside for me as much as you can. I won’t have thermal vision in there. I’ll only be able to see by your light. Shine true, my friends.”
“You can’t be serious,” Bender said. “You’re going to go in there like that? You can’t even aim straight with your shaking hands.”
Rade dropped and did several pushups, getting the blood flowing. When he stood up, his hands were no longer shaking. “Now if you don’t mind, the entrance?”
Moving with obvious reluctance, the four manned Titans crossed the bodies and debris to line themselves up in front of the opening as Rade requested. They shined their headlamps within, illuminating a nondescript cavern beyond. They all aimed the weapons salvaged from the drop site inside.
Rade retrieved his blaster and the explosive charge. “Jerry, might as well join them.”
The unmanned Titan took its place by the entrance.
Rade followed, picking his way through the dead. “If I don’t survive, Cyclone is in command.” He would have named TJ, but he had a feeling the drone operator didn’t want the burden.
Rade turned toward the waiting combat robot. “Praetor, with me.”
“Affirmative,” Unit B said. Bacon.
Rade couldn’t resist a small joke. “I guess now would be a good time to remind you to bring home the bacon, Bacon.”
“I’ll do my best, LPO,” the Praetor replied.
Rade paused at the threshold. The dim cavern beyond the arch looked fairly innocuous. Rade leaned forward, gazing upward. The light didn’t penetrate far enough to reach the ceiling. Anything could be lurking up there.
He deactivated his Implant. He wasn’t sure that would save it from the EMP. If it burned out, he still had the aReal provided by his helmet when he got back.
Assuming he survived.
“You know, either that EMP won’t affect the M117 block you’re holding,” Skullcracker said. “Or it will detonate the thing.”
Rade regarded the explosive uncertainly. He had chosen the non-timer variant. The chemical nature of the adhesive acted as the trigger: once it attached to something, in three seconds the explosive detonated. No moving parts or electronics were involved. In theory, it shouldn’t detonate from something as simple as an excess flow of electrons. Still, did he really want to risk his life on a theory?
“Stand back.” Rade and the others retreated a few paces, then he hurled the block toward the arch. It didn’t detonate at the threshold, and instead landed several meters inside the adjacent chamber, bouncing a few times before settling.
He waited a few moments, but it still didn’t explode.
“That’s a good sign,” Rade said. “I think. Resume positions.”
The Titans moved into place once more, as did he and the combat robot.
Rade retrieved another explosive charge from his mech, then faced the entrance. He gazed inside, listening to his loud breathing for several seconds. Then:
“Praetor,” he said. “Advance.”
The combat robot obeyed without question.
The moment it passed over the threshold and into the cavern, a dark shape swept down from the ceiling and the Praetor was yanked upward.
Rade dove inside.
twenty-five
Rade swiveled his body before he struck the floor and aimed his blaster into the darkness above the ascending robot. He squeezed the trigger.
The weapon worked.
Rade struck the ground hard, dropping the M117B block.
Apparently he had struck his target, however, because the robot plunged, released by whatever had gripped it, and smashed to the stone beside him. It didn’t get up.
Rade sensed movement above, and instinctively rolled to the side. His EAB repeatedly pressed into his face as it contacted the rocky floor. The stone battered his ankles and knees. Not a pleasant sensation. He halted and leaped to one knee.
Where he had lain moments before, a large metallic shape had dropped down. The light cones shone by the Titans at the entrance illuminated a wide black abdomen, the size of a tank. Eight segmented metal limbs protruded from it, curving down to the stone floor. Welded to the front o
f the abdomen was the outline of a head and thorax. The silhouette of large fangs, the size of Rade’s arms, protruded from them.
A dark red glow suddenly came from the center of that head, as if it was about to fire a laser.
Rade rolled across the floor once more, hardly noticing the pain caused by the EAB digging into his face, nor the rock slamming into his joints.
He came to a halt and got up; from the groove cut into the stone beside him, he realized his hunch about the laser had been correct.
The giant robot began to tremble, and then it darted to one side, into the darkness beyond the light cones.
Rade realized the Titans standing beyond the threshold had opened fire on the thing.
“Boss, you all right?” Bomb said over his external speakers.
“Where did it go?” Rade said.
“I don’t know,” Tahoe responded. “Do you want us to come inside?”
“Stay where you are!” Rade glanced around. He no longer felt cold. Not at all. He peered into the darkness beyond the combined light cones, but could see nothing. His goggles had begun to fog slightly.
Rade made his way to the block of M117B he had tossed inside earlier, located in the middle of the floor. He gingerly picked up the explosive charge.
“Where are you?” he said softly.
He edged his way backwards.
He struck something.
He spun around, only to discover one of those columns made of melded stalactites and stalagmites. He exhaled in relief.
The light didn’t reach beyond that column. But as he stared at the darkness beyond, he could’ve sworn he saw the outline of the eight-legged robot, lurking there.
Rade fired.
The robot rushed him, ramming into the column. The rock cracked, but arrested the thing’s motion.
Rade hurried backward, lifting his blaster, but before he could fire he tripped on some protrusion in the floor.
The robot skittered into the light, eager to close with its apparently vulnerable prey.
Rade fired at one of its legs. A lucky shot: he struck a servomotor. That leg failed.
But it had seven more.