“See if you can open it, Sanchez,” Brookes said.
“No, that’s okay,” Sanchez replied.
“What, are you scared?” Brookes asked jokingly.
“Actually yes, I am.”
“Geez… okay, never thought an elite commando soldier would be afraid of the dark,” Brookes said as she jumped down into the mess at the bottom of the stairs so that she could open the door.
“You know, I could just order you to open it, Sanchez, but where would the fun be in that?” Brookes said jokingly.
She tried the door handle, but it seemed like the hinges were frozen shut. After a little more effort, Brookes forced open the door and three-feet of mucky water came pouring out.
“No, I wasn’t really afraid, Brookes. I just didn’t want to go through that,” Sanchez said with a disgusted look on his face.
“Yuck… well, I guess the basement is flooded all the way through. I can see some light on the other side, probably where the interior stairs are,” Brookes said as she motioned to Sanchez to come down.
“Umm… you go ahead,” Sanchez said as Brookes rolled her eyes and pulled out a small LED flashlight.
Brookes with her flashlight on and ready, started wading through the cold, stagnant water. A strong, damp, mildew odor permeated everywhere and Brookes was starting to have second thoughts about walking around down here. On her left were the old boilers and to her right was a long dark hallway, that looked like it might lead to a bomb shelter, judging by the old, yellow, tin Civil Defense sign.
Brookes continued to wade through the water and then stopped. The water was beginning to feel as though it had a bit of an oily texture to it. It definitely smelled like it.
“You stopped. What’s wrong?” Sanchez asked, as he crouched down at the top of the exterior stairs to peer in.
“I think there might be an oil leak or -- crap, I think this might be sewage!” Brookes yelled back to Sanchez.
“Gross!” Sanchez yelled back.
Brookes knew she really needed to get out of here. She quickly began wading through the last ten or so feet of water. Brookes stepped up on to the concrete steps of the interior stairwell. She looked back and then down at her pants, which were covered in a thick, black sludge. It smelled just as bad as it looked.
“Terrific,” Brookes said to herself.
“Hey, you made it; I’m going to check on Fischer and Hart!” Sanchez yelled and then disappeared.
“Okay!”
Brookes made her way up the stairs. Very little light was getting in from the mostly blocked off windows; so she kept her flashlight on. She looked to her left and saw the main lobby and walked over. At the front door, Hartford and Fischer had just pulled off the chain and were working on the door lock itself.
They hadn’t noticed that she was inside, as she walked right up to the door, unlocked, and opened it quickly, surprising Hartford.
“Crap, you startled me … oh shit! What did you walk through, a sewer?” Hartford asked as she held her nose in disgust.
“Yeah, Brookes, that is the worst stench I’ve ever smelled. I think you should head in, get your pants cleaned, and get a shower. Make sure you see Cross too, as a precaution. There’s no telling what that stuff is. Hartford, Sanchez, and I can handle it from here, now go,” Fischer said waving his hand in front of his nose.
There’s no way that can be the worst thing he’s ever smelled, Brookes thought.
“I probably wouldn’t go down into the basement,” Brookes said as she walked away, leaving a long, soggy, wretched trail of sludge behind her.
Chapter 18
“All right everyone, let’s get back to work,” Lander said as the squad groaned and grabbed their shovels and picks and headed back into their trench.
The entire reservist battalion and a battalion of Regs were out digging what would become the second line of defense for Grantsburg. Lander and the rest of reservists had moved from shock to anger, to a sort of reluctant acceptance. Lander’s Company hadn’t received any of the promised excavators so everything was being done by hand for right now. The squad had begun to notice the faint electric hum and rumble off to the south. It was the usual tell-tale sign of an approaching HRUO army.
“What’s that noise?” Samson asked.
“It’s just the electric hum. It will slowly get louder and louder as the robot army gets closer,” Lander explained.
“It’s the hum of approaching doom,” Thompson said to Samson, unnerving him a little.
“Really, Paul?” Lander said; he couldn’t believe Thompson would say that.
“Damn, this sucks! You can’t dig in this stuff; it’s all rock after two-feet,” Ellerby complained.
“That’s what the picks are for,” Thompson shot back.
“Come on guys, less complaining, more digging. Lieutenant Forsythe told me earlier that we should be getting an excavator before too long,” Lander said.
“Heh… emphasis on the word should,” Thompson said.
“Well then, why don’t we just wait for the excavators?” Ellerby asked as he grabbed his pick.
“Regardless if we have them or not, we need to get this trench dug and it connected with the other trenches before nightfall,” Lander said.
“Yeah, Ellerby, haven’t you ever wanted to dig your own grave?” Thompson said as he took a big swing with his pick.
“All right, Paul, that’s enough of that, cut it out,” Lander said.
“What? Is there not a million robots heading this way? Are they not sending us to the front after being active for just two days? And are we not digging holes in the ground? I don’t think I said a single thing that was inaccurate, did I?” a frustrated Thompson sarcastically exclaimed as he stopped digging.
“I said cut it out, Paul,” Lander said sternly as he stared Thompson back into working.
“Geez… fine Chet, sorry. It’s not like I -- or we really have a choice in the matter. We’re dead if we leave or stay anyway, so what does it matter? I guess I might as well make my grave look nice,” Thompson said as he went back to digging.
Lander was starting to wonder if the stress was getting to Thompson, but he figured everyone was on edge, including himself.
“You know I heard from a friend of mine in the 2nd Platoon that we’re going to be attached to the 14th Special Forces Brigade,” Riley said, probably trying to ease the tension.
“Really? That’s awesome!” Ellerby said excitably.
“Oh bullshit, Riley, they’re not gonna attach us; a bunch of cannon fodder reservists to an elite commando unit. We would just slow them down,” Thompson said as Ellerby’s head slunk in disappointment.
“No, I wouldn’t lie about this. Apparently, a Lieutenant Harlan, the CO of the Red Hats Commando Squad spoke to the CO of 2nd Platoon and told him that their unit will be effectively under her command during the upcoming battle, and that the rest of Bravo Company’s platoons will be attached to the other Commando Squads,” Riley said as Ellerby perked back up and Thompson scoffed.
“Isn’t the Dark Horse Commando Squad in the 14th Special Forces Brigade?” Porter asked.
“Yeah, it’s Captain Rex Fischer’s squad,” Riley replied.
“Wow, the Dark Horses -- Captain Rex Fischer! I wonder if we’ll be attached with his squad,” Ellerby said, lighting up with excitement.
“Maybe,” Lander said as he threw out a shovel full of dirt covered rocks.
“Who’s Captain Rex Fischer?” a confused Samson asked.
Lander glanced over to Ellerby who looked as though his jaw was going to fall into the trench.
“What, you’ve never heard of Captain Rex Fischer?” a surprised Ellerby asked.
Samson shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“Not sure why you’re so surprised, Ellerby. Did you really think that Samson here actually paid attention in history class?” Thompson chuckled.
“Hey, I just don’t like history. It’s boring,” Samson said.
“Captain Rex Fischer is probably the single greatest hero of the entire world,” an excited Ellerby started raving.
“Ehh… you mean was. I don’t think he’s done much of anything recently,” Thompson said.
“Not true,” Riley said. “When I was serving on the Blue Ridge Front, my Platoon was cut off from the rest of our Company; our damn CO wasn’t paying attention. We held our own for a few hours, until we began to run out of ammo. We had a Mark Three closing in on us; just before it got into range to deploy its flamethrower, it exploded. It had been hit by an AR missile fired by someone in the Dark Horse Commando Squad. Captain Fischer and his squad dropped in and got us out of there. They saved three other squads just like us that very same day.”
“Sounds like Captain Fischer is pretty clutch,” Lander said, though he thought it was probably more due to luck more than anything else.
“Then how come we never heard of it?” Thompson asked.
“I don’t know. Something like that should’ve been on GNN, you would think,” Riley said as Thompson had a skeptical look on his face.
Lander thought about it and it did seem odd that a big war hero from ten years ago would not even get noticed for an action like that.
“I know why,” Porter said as she cleared out her throat. “It’s because the war hero stories don’t draw the ratings like they used too. You’ve got to understand that for most of the people not within a hundred miles of the frontlines the war doesn’t matter as much to them. They don’t pay much attention to it; people in New Omaha especially more so. At least that always seemed to be the case when I was there.”
“Why do you say that, Porter?” Ellerby asked.
“I used to be a combat videographer for GNN up until last year. My crew and I used to shoot some really horrific post-combat footage. A lot of what we shot never got on the air; even the patriotic stuff we were told to get would just get shelved most of the time. I started to wonder why we were even out there shooting, if hardly anything was making it on-air. My producer would tell me that the ratings for the war stories were down and that the big wigs wanted to shift to the escapism crap. I would try and call him on that horseshit, but it never made any difference. They just did whatever they wanted. After a couple years of the run around shit and circle jerks; I just got sick of it all, quit my job, and moved back in with my folks here in Grantsburg. Never thought in a million years I would ever be back on the front,” Porter said as she slowly shook her head.
As Lander thought about it more, the more it seemed to make sense. The war had been stalemated for such a long time that public war weariness had reached its zenith. Lander knew he was guilty of it too. He would frequently change the channel when there was a war report on or glance away from the casualty figures. He just wanted to forget all about it, but then again, his whole job had been supporting the war effort and not to mention he had been in the military and was now in it again. Lander could only imagine what the people in New Omaha thought, they probably could care less about anything that was going on here, Lander almost did and he lived only a few miles from the front.
Lander caught himself blankly staring off into space.
“You all right, Chet?” Thompson asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. We need to get back to digging. Lieutenant Forsythe won’t be too happy when she comes by and sees that we’ve only manage to dig what we’ve got so far,” Lander said as everyone went back to digging.
“What’s a videaugerfur?” Samson asked after the squad had only been digging for about ten minutes.
“A cameraman or I guess in her case, camerawoman,” Thompson said.
Samson looked to Porter, probably for confirmation.
“Videographer sounds nicer, and I did more than just shoot footage,” Porter said.
“Okay,” Samson said.
“Did you see any Mark Fours out there?” Ellerby asked.
“No, the military never let the press in to the really nasty hot zones, but of course that doesn’t mean we didn’t see horrible stuff. The biggest robot I ever saw was a Mark Three. It had been taken out by single soldier. The gal made a one-in-a-million shot on the thing’s fuel tank and it blew itself up; that was another story we did that got filed away. Shame too, it was a pretty good story, or at least I thought so,” Porter said.
“What’s a Mark Four?” Samson asked.
“No, stop joking around, Samson,” Thompson said.
“I’m not joking. I don’t know what any of the Marks mean, I never really paid attention to any of that stuff,” Samson said.
“Who wants to take this one? I’m going to finish up my grave before Samson’s stupid questions put me in it,” Thompson said as he took out a huge scoop of dirt with his shovel.
“I go it,” Riley said. “There are four different infantry ground attack robots. The Mark Ones are the slow, blocky, cannon fodder ones. Those stand about two meters tall and their only weapons are the three pronged steel claws at the end of their arms. The Ones don’t have very much armor, so it’s pretty easy to take ‘em down. Then there are the Mark Twos, which are more or less a beefed up version of the Mark One. They stand about three meters high and have slightly thicker armor. They usually come equipped with two laser pistols; one in each hand or just a single laser rifle. The Twos also come equipped with a single wire guided rocket launcher on their shoulder; they usually save it for vehicles or fortifications. Now, the Mark Threes are nasty. They’re four meters tall and ten meters long on their six legs. Their long bodies house a quad plasma mortar, with about twenty shots for each tube and a fuel tank for its head-mounted flame thrower. The damn things also explode if you get too close to them after they’ve been knocked out or disabled. So, if you see an unexploded Three on the ground stay away from it. Luckily, you don’t see too many of those in a normal battle, so they’ll usually get targeted first. Then the Mark Fours, well, I’m not even sure what they look like actually.”
“I’m not sure either, I just heard rumors that they were twenty feet tall or something and that they can take out almost anything we‘ve got,” Lander said.
“Yeah, you’re pretty close, Sarge. I haven’t seen one personally, but one of my contacts within the UMI Service sent me a classified photo of one. I’m dreading going up against one. If what they say is true, about eight of them heading this way -- then maybe Thompson is right about the grave thing,” Porter said.
“Thank you!” Thompson exclaimed, still off digging by himself.
“What did it look like?” Samson asked.
“Well, it was kind of hard to judge from the photograph, but I would say it was about twenty to thirty-feet tall. The creepy thing about it was its glowing red eyes. I’m assuming they were its thermal sensors,” Porter said.
“Assuming?” Lander said, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, my contact didn’t provide any info or anything; just the photo labeled Mark Four and stamped secret. I know it wasn’t one that the UMI had captured. It was taken by a recon team deep in HRUO territory, or that’s what the glued-on paper slip on the back read. I’m not even sure how he got a hold of the picture,” Porter said as she struck her shovel onto a rock.
“Pfft… for all we know he was probably pulling your chain, or you’re pulling ours,” Thompson said loudly, his back turned to everyone as he dug.
“I don’t believe he would send me something, unless he thought it was important enough to get out to the public. I just wish he could’ve provided me some more info on it, but I guess he was already risking more than his neck just to send it to me. I showed the photo to my producer. He took it and said he would show it to the higher ups. I don’t know what ever happened to it, because they never ran it and when I asked about it, he would never give me a straight answer about it. I should’ve made a photocopy of it, but I was too scared to do it at the time. Three months later, reports started to come in about gigantic robots obliterating frontline units, and then not too long after that I quit,” Porter said, and then thr
ew out a grapefruit-sized rock with her shovel.
“Wow, that’s crazy. So, is it true that they have two shoulder mounted missile launchers, huge plasma cannons, titanium armor, and a point defense laser?” Ellerby asked.
“I only saw the missile launchers in that photo, but from what I’ve heard, they have all of those,” Porter said.
“What? How are we going to fight eight of those?” a frightened Samson asked.
“Now, he finally realizes,” Thompson said.
“Hey, Paul, you’re not helping,” Lander said, and then turned to face Samson. “Look, we’ll be fine as long as we work together, and do exactly what the Commando Squad tells us to do. I’m sure they’ve taken down plenty of Mark Fours in the past. They probably have a tactics manual for taking one down, I bet.”
Lander put his hand on Samson’s left shoulder to try and calm him down. He began to wonder what the hell was getting into Thompson; he figured he would have to have a talk with him later about it.
After two more hours of digging, Lander’s squad was able to connect their trench with 3rd Squad’s and was currently working on getting it connected with 1st Squad’s, when the excavator finally arrived.
“Hey, where do you need me, bub?” the excavator operator asked, leaning out of his machine.
Lander pointed along the ground towards 1st Squad’s trench and the operator gave him a thumbs up and went to work.
“Okay, let’s get out of his way and improve what we’ve got,” Lander said to his squad; they stop digging and moved back to what had already been dug. Lander looked over to his left and saw the excavator going to work; doing in one scoop what had taken Lander and his squad twenty minutes to do.
After an hour, 2nd Squad’s trench was now connected with the rest of the line and the excavator headed off. The Sun had already fallen below the western ridge as the darkness encroached.
A JLTV pulled up thirty or so yards away from Lander and out stepped Lieutenant Forsythe. She signaled for Lander, Sergeant Briggs, and Sergeant Nettleson to come over. Lander walked over and saluted Forsythe, as did Briggs and Nettleson.
Robot Wars: Thrown Into the Fray Page 11