War Stories

by Andrew Liptak

  Claws dropped from the ceiling and detached his arms. His physical arms went numb as the neural connection to the suit’s nerve center stopped having anything to connect them to. His arms glided down a track and disappeared into a storage area. The claws returned with larger arms, the hands made of cannon barrels and the forearms embedded with specialty munitions—rockets, flame throwers, and chemical weapons. The arms were placed in position and, after several twists, the claws retracted. The suit reconnected his nerves, and Billy felt his arms tingle.

  The suit’s arms now attached to him could hardly be considered arms at all—fingers replaced by cannons, forearms embedded with lasers, shoulders mounted with defensive countermeasures—but they felt entirely natural to Billy. They were his arms. He ran his final systems check and then took a deep breath.

  Billy Whitaker, the strategic pride of Phoenix Platoon, had no idea what he was going to do.

  He set off with the simple idea of just fighting his way to the village and then holding off the hostiles for as long as he could. It was a ridiculous plan. He would destroy countless hostiles, but eventually one of them would get in a lucky shot or he would collapse in exhaustion.

  He couldn’t see any other result. He would be beyond the perimeter and, in the culture of mission–suit–self, he would no longer be part of the mission. No one would come save him. As he half–heartedly returned the wave of the technician on duty, Billy realized an even more depressing scenario: Command might just destruct his suit by remote before he even had a chance to get to the village. Still he continued onward.

  His earlier route to the perimeter was now wide and clear, the thick vegetation and small trees crushed under the feet of the numerous, massive suits that had marched past. Fallen tree limbs lay strewn along the path, and laser burns scorched the trees that were still standing. Billy checked his HUD constantly even though he didn’t need to. The valley to the north was as clear as the perimeter line marked by the beacons he had laid earlier.

  He knew that once he hit the perimeter line, the path would split to the west and east, where the thump thump thump of armored suit legs walking the path would be an auditory warning to the hostiles, while the pounded dirt they left behind served as a visual one. Beyond the crushed earth of the perimeter line there would be nothing but thick vegetation and trees.

  They had five suits guarding the northern perimeter, and Billy assumed that he’d have a decent chance of meeting one of the guys from his squad at some point, but when he reached the intersection he was alone. He attempted an infrared scan, but it was once again useless. He went silent and did an enhanced audio scan. He could hear an approaching suit from the east, its telltale footsteps obvious. There was rustling all over the forest in front of him, but he couldn’t make out any voices. He heard sporadic gunfire from the north, which filled Billy with relief. The village’s defenses were still holding.

  Taking a deep breath, Billy stepped across the perimeter.

  Less than ten seconds later, a concerned voice filled his head. “Billy, is there a problem? We have you advancing. Have the hostiles engaged?” Billy turned off all of his comm channels. It suddenly struck him that if command didn’t know what he was up to, they wouldn’t destruct his suit. He heard one of the suits pounding toward him, so he plunged ahead.

  After about fifty meters—and without thinking—Billy stopped for a standard initial mission assessment. As he realized what he was doing, Billy shook his head. How could he assess a mission that didn’t exist? He ploughed on.

  He skipped the full visual–range scan and kept to human–visual. There was some movement at one o’clock. Audio picked up voices. Then there were voices at ten o’clock. He heard the click of native weaponry being armed. He cursed and charged straight north.

  The gunfire started a few steps further and came from every direction. His earlier briefing told him to expect a high volume of hand–held projectile fire, which was low–risk against the heavily armored suits. Billy ignored the constant barrage of bullets and rushed forward.

  The vegetation blocked much of his visual range, and he was moving so fast that he ran right into several groups of natives. They were bipedal with reptilian skin and large eyes that protruded from their heads. Their four arms allowed them to carry multiple weapons, creating the high volume of fire Billy faced. He ran right past them.

  He burst past a tree and hit the last thing he had expected to see. The hostiles had created their own perimeter: a pathetic patchwork of tree trunks piled in a loose wall from east to west, hidden from the recon satellites by the dense foliage above. There were more gaps than wall and it was little better than tissue paper against a suit, but what it did provide was confidence, and that worried Billy more than anything. Bullets were hitting him from every direction.

  He knelt slightly and spread his arms. He felt his skin open and the weapons extend as the suit launched missile grenades at the barrier to the left and right.

  Pieces of bodies and wood flew amid bright explosions. Despite the carnage, the rate of fire didn’t decrease at all. The bullets continued to bounce off his faceplate, chest, and limbs. He retracted the missile launchers into his arms, strode forward, and extended the cannons that acted as his hands. High–caliber bullets shredded the barrier in front of him.

  Screams filled the air, and Billy adjusted his aural range to focus on the low and very high ranges. He didn’t want to hear screams. He wanted to hear wood snapping, footsteps, and guns firing. He leapt the ten meters over the remaining barricade. There was a high–pitched sound from behind, and Billy switched to his rear view and initiated defensive countermeasures.

  The lasers mounted at his shoulders turned and filled the woods with a lattice of deadly light. Shredded leaves fell like rain. Tree limbs fell. Anything that moved was pierced and sliced by the lasers. Three hostiles near a concealed cannon fell to the ground in pieces.

  But it was too late.

  The first and only shot from the cannon hit him below his right shoulder, knocking him forward and to the ground.

  Billy jumped to his feet and recalibrated, maxing out three–hundred–sixty–degree countermeasures while he did field assessment. Both lasers were still functioning and were firing at anything that moved.

  Bio came out normal, but the right arm of his suit dropped to twenty percent functionality. It was a disaster. He hadn’t even gone a hundred meters, and his suit was badly damaged. He closed his eyes, disengaged audio, and thought, the lasers flickering in the background his only distraction.

  What he really needed was his squad. You could encircle a squad, but you couldn’t surprise one with a cannon shot in the back. Drops of sweat started to form on Billy’s forehead, and the suit engaged its fans.

  He tried to put thoughts of the squad behind—they weren’t going to save him or the village. They would observe the perimeter. That was their mission, and if anything defined the power of the corps, it was their rabid devotion to finishing each and every mission, no matter how small—even if it meant leaving suit, civilian, or friend behind.

  And in the depths of that cold knowledge, a solution formed in Billy’s head.

  He turned back toward the perimeter and re–oriented the systems for maximum defense and speed. The cannons in his arms retracted, and the lasers on his shoulders switched to full power.

  He leapt back over the demolished barrier and turned to the southeast. An alarm started to sound: the battery was exceeding its safe operational range. He silenced it. There wasn’t much else he could do. He needed full power for his defensive lasers and full power for traveling at speed.

  The hostiles hadn’t anticipated him rushing back south, and the ones who now operated the cannon fled in disarray as he attacked them. The lasers took out the hostiles while he crushed the cannon itself with two blows from his left arm. He rushed onward, running parallel to the northern perimeter.

  And there it was: the first beacon. At this point, Billy was more concerned with Comman
d than the hostiles. He didn’t know how they would react if they realized what he was doing,.

  He knelt down, gunfire striking him in the back but, with the lasers wreaking destruction within close range, the rate of projectiles had significantly slowed. He reached for the beacon. With his combat array, all he had was a small, two–pronged maintenance claw. The rest of his suit was nothing but weapons. He reached for the beacon but it slipped. God, please make this work. He wiggled the beacon and then pulled again.

  It slid out.

  He held the beacon against this chest with his damaged right arm and ran. He could hear another suit approaching from behind and to his left. Wondering if they would try to stop him, he arrived at the second beacon. It came out easily, and he ran to the last one. Cortez was standing next to it, motionless in her suit.

  Billy ignored her and knelt down and worked on the beacon. There were some explosions, and he looked up. Cortez was wreaking destruction on hostiles in every direction. Her missile launchers were firing in harmony with her cannons in a terrible symphony of destruction. Missiles shattered trees, cannons flattened logs, and screams bled into the upper range of Billy’s audio.

  Billy stood up and opened up his external speaker.

  “The perimeter is moving north, Cortez.” She nodded, her faceplate mirroring sunlight and falling leaves. She didn’t move.

  Billy felt the heat of the battery against his skin so he turned off the lasers and put all energy into field assessment and mobility. He sprinted toward the valley. With the beacons cradled against his suit by his right arm, he had to avoid even small trees rather than just knocking them out of his way. He had every sense turned to the max. The sound of gunfire and ricochets off his suit were constant, but he tuned them out.

  Focusing on sound, Billy avoided areas with heavy hostile audio indicators. It took him longer but he side–stepped immediate danger. After a few hundred meters, the gunfire slowed down. He switched to full visual and could see the lasers from the village firing in the distance. He passed the village, added a fifty–meter buffer, then knelt down. The rods tumbled out of his right arm. He grabbed one with his working claw and shoved it into the dirt. He awkwardly pounded it in with the barrel of a cannon. He fumbled with the other two beacons, cradled them under his arm, and moved east.

  He had just laid the second beacon when his audio warnings screamed. It was too late. A cannon shell smashed into his back and threw him forward in a rolling mass of metal. He slammed against a tree.

  He tried to engage his suit’s countermeasures but found them to be nonfunctional. He did an emergency assessment. The suit had cushioned his body so he remained unscathed, but the suit itself was ruined. Arms nonfunctioning. Legs nonfunctioning. Helmet mobile but visual nonfunctioning. All other functions failing.

  Billy ignored them all.

  The new perimeter was incomplete, and he had to set the final beacon. Billy initiated his emergency disengage protocol. The wires that connected his brain to his suit retracted into the box at the base of his skull. He suddenly felt deaf and blind.

  Plugs that connected the nerves up and down his arms, legs, back, and body jerked out as his suit opened. The smell of forest decay, burning ozone, and dirt staggered him as he collapsed to the ground.

  Billy Whitaker, half naked, nerves raw and senses overwhelmed, looked around. He heard rustling somewhere in the trees as his eyes alighted on the last beacon, lying on the ground five meters away. He half–ran, half–stumbled to the beacon, picked it up, and ran east.

  He surprised a hostile, who didn’t fire as Billy ran past him. Of course, they are expecting a suit. That thought was short–lived, however, as a bullet whizzed past his head. The shot must have alerted the hostiles, for he could hear them rustling through the vegetation in every direction.

  As he considered whether he had gone far enough, Billy felt a bullet smash into his left arm. He cried out and reflexively tried to turn on maximum defensive countermeasures but then remembered—he wasn’t in his suit. Leaves rustled and branches cracked. It’s now or never, Billy.

  He stopped, pressed the edge of the beacon into the ground, and leaned all his weight against it. It had slid about six inches when another bullet hit him in the leg. He fell to the ground next to the beacon, pulling it downward with his body. Another bullet hit him in the side of the chest.

  Looking up, all Billy could see was green, a beautiful verdant green. In the distance, he heard an approaching thump thump thump, and then he started to cry. He had lost his suit. He had lost his self. But the mission lived on.

  In Loco

  Carlos Orsi

  THE SNOW IS EVERYWHERE. WITH the whip of the wind, it even hits you from below. It’s a blizzard. They say that a hundred years ago, Scandinavia was a beacon of civilization. I can’t see how people can remain civilized in a climate like this. The situation now—with the warlords, the ruthless infighting, the sheer anarchy—seems much more attuned to the environment.

  The sensors in my mask are all but worthless in this weather. The snow and the shards of ice disrupt the lasers in my night vision, and the contrast between warm bodies and cold particles flying around at high speed turns infrared into a kaleidoscope. So I turn everything off: time to go with the two wetware eyes I was born with.

  Ours is a peacekeeping mission. The rest of the world believes it has a duty to help Scandinavia back on its feet, ignoring the fact that the Scandinavians seem quite happy lying on the ground with their hands at each other’s throats.

  My platoon is escorting a shipment of medical supplies to a village far inland. Bad weather prevents us from using aircraft, and the weather is rough enough to scare even the VTOL drone people, which should mean something.

  “Transport of medical supplies” means we have a big target painted on our backs: every warlord in the area would love to get their hands on some antibiotics and frost blockers. It keeps their foot soldiers fighting and helps blackmail the villagers. Guerrillas can’t eat ammo and there’s only so much deer you can hunt on the hills, after all, so popular support is needed, even if by extortion.

  The road is, of course, a frozen riverbed. There are mountains and all around us. And we are moving uphill all the time. It’s an ambush waiting to happen, but this is the fastest route, the medicine is badly needed, and frankly the captain is cocky: he thinks that if the barbarians want to try something, well, they are welcome to have their asses handed to them.

  And then it happens, textbook style: three mortar shells, one at the point of the column, one at the rear. The air smells of burned body armor and is already thick with smoke when the third explodes five meters above our center—they don’t want to hit the center with a direct impact and run the risk of destroying the supplies, but the detonation over our heads, with the light and shockwave, stuns us.

  I fall hard on the ice, thinking for a moment that it will break and plunge us all in the river below, but it holds.

  Despite the helmet and mask, I feel blood in my mouth and my ears are ringing. I feel something sting at the back of my neck, then a numbing cold—some shrapnel must have broken through the neck line, where the armor is softer.

  Above the ringing in my ears, I hear someone scream “The loco is hit!” and I know he’s talking about me. There must be blood on my armor, visible against the white plating, now that the flak has subsided. I turn and see someone with corporal stripes on his chest pointing at me. I am painfully aware that a bleeding loco is always an extraordinary thing to have around, but, being a corporal, he should be paying more attention to the enemy.

  Our attackers don’t rush us. They wouldn’t dare. The shipment is now, ironically, our hostage. They can’t risk having it destroyed. The blizzard is still running at full force all around us, but the amplified voice comes loud and clear above the wind, speaking Spanish with a cracked accent:

  “You are surrounded. Give us your cargo, and you may leave with your lives.”

  “Leave with your lives.” T
his guy has to have watched some very old movies to use such a line. That, or he doesn’t know shit about the international peacekeeping corps.

  “These supplies are sorely needed in the village ahead. We will deliver them. Leave us and you may live,” our captain shouts back, not to be outdone in the corny line department, even if his point is somewhat stronger than the warlord’s. Some of the survivors in our front and back are already morphing into flying configuration. Quite limited in such weather, but even a few seconds airborne might be enough to allow them to send a killing barrage of fire onto the slope the guerrillas are using as cover.

  But then something strange happens: everybody stops. The morphing remains incomplete. The corporal is still pointing at me like a statue. The captain remains in his preposterous, self–conscious heroic pose without moving a simulated muscle. I twitch my fingers. I can move. I breathe. But I decide to stay prone on the ground. The guerrillas come down and take our cargo, and nobody does anything about it. They are all frozen, and I do my best to imitate them. I don’t want the guerrillas to know that there is a single human being among this platoon of drones.

  §

  Since the beginning of this century, no self–respecting civilized democracy has ever sent one of their sons or daughters into the senseless carnage of war. Those countries instead send them into RV cocoons, from which the aforementioned sons and daughters can control drone bodies into the senseless carnage, etc. When a drone “dies,” its pilot feels a little discomfort—to call it “pain” would evoke an interminable legal harangue, human–rights–wise—but nothing else.