Man Vs Machine

by Greenberg, Martin H.

. . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Impact!

  Bright columns of fire rose up through swirling gasses, and the ground shook and bucked beneath Marcos Rajas’ feet. Nearly threw him to the ground again. His suit’s suppression system dampened the violent sound of the heavens splitting open down to a merely head-aching roar. After a few seconds, filled almost at once with the wailing cries of Bravo’s suppression fire, small chips and shards of stone and bits of blackened earth pattered down into the trench, a few still glowing a dull red.

  There would be half a dozen new craters pocketing Antares VII, Marcos knew, each of them rimmed with the telltale molten crust of an antimatter flash.

  “Dead ball,” Big Mike shouted. And on the inside of Marcos’ faceplate a blip registered on his incoming DATA STREAM as the location of Mike’s failed grenade downloaded to his MAP files. Good to know, if his platoon was forced on the move, where all the unexploded ordnance lay.

  So, five new craters. Enough to set the Cyb Walkers back on their mechanical asses. He hoped.

  Hope was coming in shorter supply, however, minute by minute.

  Two new inquiries flashed up on his Christmas Tree. Bravo soldiers. Princess and Three-Joe. Eyeballing their positions, he saw each man hold their rifle overhead and shake it. Not possible that they were already out of ammunition. But for whatever reason, two more rifles were now out of service.

  Another DATA STREAM blip as Tommy-G uploaded revised enemy positions to Marcos’ tactical computer. He networked the data to the rest of his platoon. Raised his rifle overhead and squeezed off ten seconds of firepower. “Talk to me,” he ordered Books.

  The young corporal shook his head. “It don’ make sense.” He had a shard of rock from the earlier fallout melted to the side of his faceplate. Brushed at it angrily, but could not dislodge it. “Near as I can figure—” and as near as Marcos translated “Ahken figger” out of Savannah and into Standard “—this weapon says that Gravel, here, has surrendered.”

  Marcos replayed “srended” through his mind several times and still came up with the same result. His mouth dried to a sharp, metallic bitterness.

  “Surrendered? No one surrenders without my order.” He glanced both ways along the trench, as if to make sure of that. At the rest of his platoon, raising their weapons up just enough to splash firepower to the northwest, to the south. Rifles wailed and energy washed around in showers of new distortion. Return fire from the Cybs shredded the trench’s lip again. Shards of stone rattled off his faceplate. “We’re still in the thick.”

  But that would make sense, wouldn’t it? A surrender command, if ordered by the highest ranking officer or NCO on site, deactivated the weapon before allowing it to be dropped. An enemy could never pick up a surrendered weapon and turn it against other AID soldiers.

  “Might be a software glitch,” Books said. “Ah’ve never read of one. Never heard of one to read about, even. S’pose it’s possible, though.”

  “A glitch that spreads like a virus?” Marcos asked. And something in that idea sparked a new and terrible thought. “Three weapons down now?” Then another inquiry flash, and Rabbit held his rifle overhead. “Four! Fragging ridiculous.”

  “Maybe we should pull back,” Rabbit said. Anthony Guitterez. Marcos didn’t need to check his tree to know who had dropped into the STANDARD VOICE conversation. Rabbit was always first to suggest a pullback.

  “Not gonna happen. This is our stretch of nowhere. Command said to hold this position, and that’s just what we’re gonna do. Tommy-G! Grab another look.”

  “Ya got it, Sarge.”

  The platoon’s senior corporal lowered his rifle and slid a few meters to his right, his ICAS armor shifting from sooty-black to the dark gray of ash, blending in with lighter burn marks along this stretch. Easing up to the edge, his helmet’s color faded to a stark, bone white: the color of the horizon on Antares VII. Able and Bravo doubled up on their firepower, buying Tommy-G a few desperate seconds.

  Two more inquiry lights flashed with exclamations. Two more soldiers with rifles pointing straight up. Useless.

  Marcos hooked each man with a silent assault rifle into a common channel. Flashed them into the VOID to clear their designations and then regrouped them under a new MENU as GAMMA auxiliaries. “Grenades,” he ordered this new unit. “Full set, then stagger.” Each man reached for one of the small, deadly canisters at their hip. Rabbit had trouble getting his to release from the clip, but the other six managed. And with Gravel doing a hand-count for coordination, all let fly at the same time.

  Propellant bursts sent two of those grenades the wrong direction, arcing them back over the trench to the far side. Tiny blips in the DATA STREAM already marked them as failed ordnance. Marcos counted down on the others, waiting for the detonations—even one!—but nothing. No antimatter flash. No ground-shaking columns of fire walking over the battlefield.

  “Dead ball,” Gravel said in his sing-song delivery.

  Rabbit shook his head. Flapped his arms in disgust. “Maybe we can find some rocks to throw at them.”

  “Cover!” Marcos ordered, shoving Rabbit toward a nearby crevice in the trench wall where the soldier could at least keep his head down and his mouth shut. This many failures, cascading one upon another so quickly, spoke of purpose. Of design. And Marcos believed he finally had a grasp on it.

  He moved back to the wall and hooked through STANDARD VOICE so that his entire unit could hear. “What you got, Tommy?”

  “Two Cans, rolling up fast,” the corporal reported. Another quick glance. “Walkers holding at the outer perimeter. I think I can grab a better angle if—”

  But Marcos was already firing. Thumb down on his assault rifle’s trigger stud, adding short, choppy shrieks to the caterwauling symphony. Two sprays south. One northwest. Two sprays south again. Hacking away at the enemy positions again, then again.

  Then nothing.

  As simple as that, his assault rifle suddenly stopped firing. Ammunition stock still at seventy-three percent. No damage icons to warn of impending failure. The best technology available to AID, a rifle practically with a mind of its own, and it refused to engage the enemy! Marcos shook the weapon, as if he might jog a loose part back into place. And then a bright, painful bolt slashed across his retinas as a tree-light flared up briefly in stark white. It faded quickly, though not fast enough that Marcos saw Tommy-G shoved rudely back from the edge of the trench.

  One moment his man had been edging up over the rim, scoping out enemy positions. The next, he lay on his back between Big Mike and Rabbit. Half of his helmet shot away.

  Three more soldiers held rifles overhead. Shook them. Another short handful of inquiries lit up the inside of his faceplate.

  “Damn. Blast. Cybbing frag!” With each shout, Marcos beat his rifle against the hard, hard ground next to Tommy-G, ready to smash the useless weapon into ruin.

  Then Big Mike and Gravel were at his side. Each grabbed an arm and hauled Marcos back from his fallen man to pin him against the trench wall. Voices worried him from all sides as the entire unit dropped back to STANDARD VOICE, a confusion of shouts and questions torn apart by the five working rifles still wailing on the enemy positions. Five rifles. Not enough to hold the Cybs back.

  Not enough by far to take down the remaining antipersonnel Canisters. Which rolled up over the rim of the trench, hung motionless at the edge for one long and painful heartbeat, and then dropped into the wide, shallow scar.

  “Cover!” at least three men shouted along with Marcos as everyone dove for the ground.

  And then the entire world tore itself apart in a storm of fire and smoke and razor-sharp metal.

  The darkness never completely claimed him, though Marcos nearly smothered beneath its weight. Like being buried alive. Eyes clogged with soot and fire-blackened earth. His lungs burning, straining to pull even a shallow breath from the acrid-tasting air. For a moment, he wondered if it had happened. His brain recovered from the battlefield by Cyborg Walkers, scooped out and now at
rest in a dark canister somewhere. His arms and legs felt as if they were bound in heavy casts of steel, barely able to move. Better to just lie there. Easier. Lie there and count the tiny, red pinpricks of light scrolling across his retinas. Marking off each second, each heartbeat.

  Each computer cycle, as the ICAS technology slowly brought him out of HIBERNATION.

  Still alive! Still whole!

  At least the ICAS core programming had yet to fail. The first priority of any Interservice Combat Assault Suit was to keep the solider alive. The Cybs had not penetrated to this level. Yet.

  Sergeant Marcos Rajas knew. He knew that it had to have been some kind of Cyb virus, or the equivalent, to promote such rapid failure of the technology used by his platoon. From what Books had said. What he had witnessed. And just his gut sense. A soldier had to trust his equipment, yes, but first he trusted his instincts. Automation was the soldier’s friend. So said AID Command.

  Until that automation failed. Or was subverted.

  Icons flared to life against the backside of his blackened faceplate. LIFE SUPPORT, functioning at critically low levels. An EMERGENCY signal to AID Command. Then the Christmas Tree, lighting up with inquiries to his soldiers who were still alive.

  Rabbit. Books. Gravel. Two-Joe and Three-Joe. Big Mike. Counting himself, that was half a dozen. One short squad left out of fifteen men.

  He swallowed painfully. Tasted the metallic tang of mercury choking at the back of his throat. “If you can hear me,” Marcos whispered, hooking his remaining men into a common channel, “don’t move. Don’t speak. Just flash me an inquiry.”

  Three inquiries flashed at once. Two more staggered in a few seconds later. Big Mike’s icon flashed an uncertain connection. Maybe he was unconscious. Maybe his suit was damaged.

  Two-Joe dialed in an exclamation, and Marcos blinked the channel open.

  “We got Walkers,” the GI soldier warned.

  Marcos had guessed as much. He had held off on a complete ICAS restart, in fact, worried that the enemy would be near. Checking bodies. Looking for more raw material. Blinking his way through a system restart MENU, he isolated his faceplate polarization controls and dialed it slowly back from opaque.

  At first, the landscape looked as if it still suffered from the energy distortion of CAR-7 rifle fire. Blurred. Glassy. Then he realized that his faceplate was cracked in several places. Amazing, really, that it still held together at all.

  Finding a clear section, he turned his head just enough to survey what had been his platoon’s strong-point. Saw a Cyborg Walker not three meters away.

  Maybe fifty pounds of meat—muscle and nerve clusters, and a brain, of course—threaded through a metal exoskeleton. Four legs, this one. Low speed. Good stability. Marcos knew this design. It would have six arms tucked away. Two for carrying weapons of different size and operation. Two simple claws for utility purpose. And two ending in a handful of tools for detail work.

  The Walker bent down over Tommy-G’s body. Taking a detailed survey. Not much gray matter left to work with there, the exoskeleton reached down with a mechanical claw and grabbed the soldier’s rifle. Prying it from the man’s cold, dead fingers. It turned the weapon over and over again, inspecting it closely.

  Another Walker stepped into view. Dragging Three-Joe away by one leg.

  “Books,” Marcos whispered. Risking the comms more than he wanted. “If it was a surrender deactivation, I can rescind. Yes?”

  Silence, for a moment. Then, “In theory. If’n it follows standard protocol, a countermand order by the commanding officer or senior NCO would override.”

  Exactly what Marcos thought. “So why does that sound too easy?”

  Because it was. “Don’ think that’ll work,” Books said. “If the system was compromised, it had to’ve been tricked into believing you ordered it in the first place, Sarge. Without knowing how the Cybs did it, it would take too long—Frag me! Ah got one right behind me!—too long t’dig outta trouble!”

  He rushed out this last, and it took Marcos an extra second to unravel the man’s accent. “But a new senior NCO could do it.” A cold chill took him, knowing what he would have to do. Or maybe that was just a side effect of the mercury poisoning. “So after Tommy-G, that would be you,” he said. Head swimming and not trusting his own analysis one hundred percent.

  “Ah guess so.”

  That was the way it had to be then. Marcos still had his own rifle. Deactivated or not, his grip on the stock had been too strong to shake. Maybe it could be made to work again. Certainly he owed his men that chance.

  He grabbed his EMERGENCY beacon by eye, and blinked it into the VOID. Followed it up with all functions under his LIFE SUPPORT menu. One by one. Stripping away his ICAS technology. Shutting down all repairs. Killing his presence in the platoon’s networked combat suits. Until POWER and COMMS were all that was left.

  Then he shifted his weight against the bulk of his suit, rolling up onto his side in order to attract the attention of the nearest Walker.

  “Sarge,” Gravel said. The young man’s melodic voice sang with fear. “There’s a Walker moving right toward you.”

  “No one move,” he said. “Not a muscle or a twitch until Books gives you the order.” He overrode multiple queries, flashed them into the VOID behind all his critical systems.

  Only Books remained tied into his comms. “Ya can’t do this, Sarge. We don’ even know—”

  “It’s all we have left, Books. It’ll work.”

  It had to.

  And before his corporal could argue further, Marcos stripped his COMMS system out of the MENU, flashed it into the VOID as well. Leaving only a baseline POWER level functioning. Enough for him to still move in the heavy ICAS skin. Enough to call back his systems, if he desired.

  The Walker moved over him, showing no fear of Marcos’ rifle, or the fact that the soldier remained alive on the battlefield. Multiple camera eyes focused down at him. Checking for any trap, or simply surveying for raw material—what was the difference in the eyes of a Cyb? Liabilities and assets. Everything weighed with an algorithm and directed by software.

  Much like ICAS technology, in fact.

  The Walker reached down with one utility claw, clamping onto the barrel of Marcos’ rifle just as the platoon’s sergeant blinked his POWER into the VOID, fully deactivating his suit. The extra weight sagged around him like a skin of steel. Heavy. Barely flexible without its baseline charge. Whether the Walker sensed this or not, it doubled its own efforts and hauled Marcos half upright as it attempted to steal away his useless weapon. Just in case? Or following an encoded protocol for dealing with prisoners, no matter their state?

  Marcos didn’t know and didn’t much care, so long as he did not lose the rifle. He held on with a one-handed grip, fighting the weight of his damaged suit as much as the Walker’s pull. Buying time for Books to reboot the network. Gasping for breath as his lungs burned for lack of oxygen. Vision blurring. The muscles in his legs cramped painfully, and he tasted blood at the back of his throat. But still he refused to let the Walker pry his weapon loose.

  Not this time.

  Not his!

  And then the high-pitched whine of a charging weapon reached him even through the suit’s insulation. In the distortion blurring his peripheral vision, he saw motion. Men rising up from the dead. Weapons thrust forward. And Marcos spent the last of his strength to wrench the weapon against the Walker’s grip, angling the barrel around, and dragging his thumb over the firing stud.

  Held it there as the rifle shrieked one last time in defiance.

  “Think he’ll come around?” the choir asked in high, pure notes.

  “Yeah. He looks baed. Like’n fersh rodkul.” Fresh . . . fresh roadkill? Maybe. “Ain’t seen anything looks like this since—”

  “Lastime you looked inna mirror,” Marcos Rajas slurred, fighting his too-thick tongue. He cracked open one eye. Saw a waxy-pink face swimming against a gray background. “Mus’ be hell. Full of my own
person’l demons.”

  “Anyone understand him through that accent?” Books asked. At least, that was how Marcos translated unnerstad’m, and ass ant. But the soldier was grinning, showing off lots of large, white teeth. Which meant that brimstone and eternal torment might still be a way off.

  “You look far too happy for an ICAS slave. You get a discharge I don’t know about?” Marcos asked. He struggled his other eye open, saw that he had been stretched out in an emergency survival tent. Not a lot of light and even less room, especially with so many bodies crammed inside. Four . . . five . . . six . . . He tried to sit up. Big Mike and Rabbit helped him, still in their suits but helmets doffed.

  And Two-Joe. Gravel. Princess and Three-Joe as well—two men he had thought dead before that last, desperate gamble.

  “Suits were fragged,” Princess said, flashing Marcos a trademark wink. “Slipped into hibernation long enough for Booksie to get a tent up. Pulled us all out of the big sleep.”

  Marcos’ mouth tasted as though he’d tried to gargle with razor blades, all blood and metal. The vision in his left eye wasn’t great. But all in all, he felt as if he might live. He noticed that he still wore one suit sleeve, still clenched his rifle in a gloved hand. Looked up, confused.

  “We had to cut you out of your suit,” Gravel said. He nodded at the weapon. “We left the sleeve when we found out we couldn’t take the rifle out of your hand. Quite a grip you had on it, Sarge. Must have frozen your glove in place when you cut your power.”

  Marcos nodded. Still staring down at the weapon. “Yeah, well. My rifle. My choice.”

  “Command is sending down reinforcements to pull us back,” Two-Joe said, leaning in. “You’re pumped full of meds, and you seem to be all right. Now that you’re awake, we can dismantle the glove. Let you rest better without all that dead weight hanging off your arm.”

  “Going to need to replace the rifle anyways,” Books said. “Not much good without a working suit tuned to it.”

  Not true, though. Not by a far shot. Marcos laid himself back down, carefully. Cradled the rifle across his chest. He wasn’t letting it go. Not after everything they’d gone through together. “No thanks,” he whispered.