The vehicle must have used that orange ray to clear its field of fire around the dome. While rocks taller than the human stood all around the edge of the cleared area, nothing inside that perimeter was taller than a few cracked rocks under six inches high.
Astin slid down behind a two-meter high chunk of shiny volcanic stone and tried to examine his options. Failing to do that, he concentrated on trying to find an option to consider.
He had no weapon, no armor, no food, and no real information on his opponent. He wasn’t even sure if the first time he was detected, a half-dozen heavily armed Jenkle would pour out of that dome. Intel had said no life signs, but they had missed the automated laser tank as well.
After sitting for several minutes discarding one absurd and impractical plan after the other, Astin realized something. He was sitting less than a hundred meters from that tank and it was doing nothing. Why?
Maybe the unit’s AI was not programmed to see anything not using power as a threat? Maybe it was unable to detect him at all. Once more the trooper crept up the cool volcanic rock and studied his opponent.
It hadn’t moved. After watching the Jenkle vehicle for what seemed a very long time, Astin lost patience. He had to do something. Creeping back down behind the boulder, the trooper grasped one of the many fist sized rocks and lofted it toward the Jenkle dome.
The small yellow ray that vaporized the rock left only the smell of ozone behind.
It was some minutes before Astin risked another look over the boulder. This time the Jenkle weapon began turning toward him the moment his head appeared. Astin dropped and rolled painfully across numerous sharp edged rocks until he was several meters away from the boulder he had been hiding behind.
The concussion as the orange ray smashed into his former hiding place threw jagged shards onto the trooper even as he dived for cover behind another thick rock. Less than thirty seconds later, that new meter high stone protected Astin as a second orange beam completed the destruction of the first boulder. Two tons of obsidian had shattered, spraying hundreds of rock shards in a fairly good simulation of an antipersonnel bomb. Over his ragged breath, the corporal heard the sound of dozens of the stones thwacking against the far side of the outcrop. If he had been in the open, the last of the Fourth would have been very dead. Noticing for the first time that he was half submerged in a shallow pool left by the recent rain, the corporal knew he didn’t dare move.
The growl and whoosh of the Jenkle vehicle grew louder as it approached the spot where Astin hid. For a moment, he almost accepted defeat. Then the vehicle stopped just short of the dust and pebbles that were all that remained of the man-high rock it had destroyed. The sodden trooper stayed very still and barely breathed. After what seemed to be an extremely long time, the weapon growled back to life and moved away. After another long time he risked a glance over the rocks and saw it had returned to the same exact spot by the dome where he had first seen it.
Carefully making his way back to the far shore, the trooper collapsed into the same crevice he had first hidden in just after reaching the island. The alien sun was halfway down, but after picking several small hunks of stone out of his side and legs, the exhausted and battered human tried to rest. He remembered that Khumn had a day almost eighty standard hours long. That hadn’t seemed important for a quick smash and grab operation. Now he worried that he would be at an even greater disadvantage at night on the moonless planet.
Or just be too late.
Rousing himself, Astin began to explore. He nurtured the hope that somehow he would find some way to defeat the Jenkle robot. Unarmed and without his armor, it was hard to not feel helpless and hopeless. Even time counted against him. The attack fleet was going to be passing through this system in less than two standard days. And with no way to tell time accurately, he had to leave a serious margin of error. He figured he had been down about eighteen hours, but he had no real way to be sure. That left no more than twenty-four hours, or it was all a waste.
Grimy and scraped even through his uniform, the human walked waist deep out into the ocean. The salt level of the water was low, barely stinging as it cleaned his wounds. Being clean felt good. At least he didn’t stink of his armor any more. Sadly, Astin glanced across the empty sea to where what remained of the familiar suit sat shorted and lifeless several meters deep.
Despite the situation, the trooper almost allowed himself to relax . . . just a bit. That was, until he felt a sharp sting on his lower leg. Rushing back to shore, Astin looked down at a small, round, clear creature almost like a tiny but tendriless jellyfish clinging to his leg. Quickly he brushed it off, using the sharp edge of a rock when it hung on stubbornly, and went back to the water’s edge to splash the wound clean. The entire process took only a few painful seconds.
Dozens of the creatures bobbed on the surface of the water where he had been standing. Astin realized that his body heat must have attracted the organisms. It was unlikely they were reacting to the otherworldly body chemistry. Pushing back visions of alien poisons and even more alien infections, Astin went back and studied the creature even as the pain in his leg subsided. His issue pants were some kind of super fabric that lasted forever and was resistant to almost anything. Where the creature had clung to his pants near his ankle, the fabric was barely discolored. But he had been burned almost like from an acid where the critter had eaten a hole in his less resistant socks and started in on his skin. Checking carefully, he found two more jellies attached to the back of his uniform jacket and another on the back of his other leg. Again it took a sharp edged rock to pry them off. One had even eaten part way through the titanium buckle on one pocket. Whatever solvent they excreted, it was hell on metals. Using the same rock, he rolled the first acid jelly over. The rock where it had sat for just a few minutes was already bleached and cracked. Under different circumstances, Astin might have wondered at the ecology that had developed such a creature. But as frustrated as the trooper was, he just filed the jellies as an added annoyance in the middle of a disaster. Astin continued walking the shoreline, looking for a miracle. He found lots of a harmless plant that was like a combination of sponge and seaweed, and little else.
By the time Corporal Olowoi realized he had nearly circled around the small island and was getting dangerously close to the Jenkle base, he had just about run out of hope. His thoughts turned to the men and women of the Fourth that had been his close friends and comrades over the last year Their loss cut deep, and he fought guilt that they had died under his command, his first—and likely last—command. A darkness deep inside the trooper began to break free and spread. It was the darkness soldiers learned to keep at bay. Now it emerged, and it carried despair with it. There was no way to complete the mission. His squad had died for nothing, and the attack fleet would fail. His personal failure was going to doom all humanity. He was unarmed and beaten. It was all just hopeless.
Astin found that he was sitting on the beach crying when he began to take hold of himself. His eyes were blurry and his throat raw. As reason again took hold, he worried just how much time has passed. Panic replaced despair. He no longer knew how long it would be until the attack fleet entered the system. How long until its detection would complete his failure.
The trooper knew he wanted to win. But his mind could not get past the fact that he was already beaten. That the Fourth had ended in failure. The Jenkle had beaten him and that their robot would destroy him the moment they clashed. One on one, his opponent was unbeatable. The Jenkle could outfight and outrun him. He was outgunned, out-thought, and outmaneuvered. It was just the better soldier, the better man. All he could do was hide until he died of starvation.
Better man . . . ?
The unit defending that dome wasn’t a man, or even a Jenkle. It didn’t outthink him. It couldn’t. He had been looking at this the wrong way. A real Jenkle or human that well-armed and armored would be unbeatable. But that was a machine. It had limits and could react only as it was programmed. Those limits and tha
t programming was his edge. Not much of an edge, but leverage none the less.
If even a few of the Fourth had survived, he could conceive of several ways they could take the robot out. But they hadn’t. Only he remained.
The trooper fought back his depression and focused on the mission. There was just a chance he could defeat that automaton. Or he had to admit—and the thought no longer frightened him—that he could die while trying something that just might succeed. There was nothing left to lose.
Tired, limp muscles tightened and prepared for what Corporal Astin Olowoi had trained and prepared for for years—combat. The man’s mind raced, discarding plans and reevaluating both his resources and what he knew about the Jenkle defense unit. The Fourth had been almost destroyed, but one member remained, and with almost a smile on his face, that lone trooper began to analyze his past encounters.
The Jenkle had ignored him at least three times and reacted with overwhelming firepower the other two times. What was the difference? What about his opponent being a machine had made that difference? A human enemy might had just missed seeing him. But even a half-competently programmed computer could not have. Any good automated defense unit would be scanning its surroundings constantly. It would only have taken a fraction of second to see him. So why didn’t it shoot him when he was first collapsed on the beach? Why had it simply left instead? Or only fired the second time he had looked over the rock at the dome? Why did a unit which could pick off the entry rockets a thousand miles away not sense him on the far side of the rock when he was only a few meters away later?
The waves lapping nearby gave Astin the answer. A machine reacted to the parameters given for any target. The defense unit was not a thinking being. It could only act or react to what it was programmed to recognize as the enemy. The entry pods would have been literally flaming through the atmosphere. They would have been an easily recognized target. The unit only fired at identified targets. But why had it fired on him minutes after ignoring that same head appearing over a rock? The bit of his head showing would have been the same both times.
Temperature. He had been wet, chilled really, each time it had ignored him. On the beach, and from the rain the first time he had popped up to recon the Jenkle base.
The Jenkle saw more into the infrared spectrum. They could literally see how hot or cold an object was. Where a human robot would recognize shape and patterns of movement, the Jenkle must have added another requirement to their targeting parameters . . . temperature. Or maybe to them, color. Humans are a nice, consistent 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit. The Jenkle saw infrared. So it was likely all humans were that same color to them. The color of human skin would be less visible to the Jenkle than the color generated by body temperature. The aliens had programmed their defense unit to kill anything the color of a human and to ignore everything else unless it became a threat or was identified as a part of the human shape.
Then a moment of doubt ensued. Was he just clutching at straws, convincing himself of something just to feel he had a chance? It had blasted the rock he had thrown too. But that had actually been thrown toward the dome. It made sense the robot would shoot out of the air any missile, even a stone one, threatening the relay unit. So it was also apparent that anything, of any temperature or shape, that Jenkle weapon detected inside the kill zone near the dome would be fired upon.
Then maybe he could use being soaked, if he was right, to get close to the dome. But there still was no way to get inside it without getting rid of the Jenkle unit. And that unit was armed and armored. He had rocks and seaweed.
There had to be another option. There was, Astin finally realized. He didn’t have to destroy the defender, just get it to stay away from the dome long enough for him to place the cube. Maybe he could lead into a chasm or pit? Problem with that was that old quandary of trying to outrun a bullet, or in this case an even faster power beam. If he got the machine to chase him, how could he stay alive to lead it into some pit? Even if it turned slowly, it could still fly just over the broken ground much faster than he could run. And it was a war machine. It would begin firing at him a tiny fraction of a second after he was spotted.
Before he solved that puzzle, the trooper realized there was another possible problem. If the cube changed the signal coming from the dome too much, there was a good chance the defender was programmed to knock it off the air. That again would warn the Jenkle that something was up. Keeping the relay station from being shut down is why the Fourth had been dropped on Khumn in the first place. Otherwise a single missile from orbit would have been all that was needed.
So, he had to get the defender away from the dome and keep it away. That meant disabling its hover fans. But the sides of the machine were solid metal and the fans were protected. The only openings in that armor were those two thin slits along the edge of the roof for the air intakes. And it was likely that air system was completely isolated by more armor from the control and weapons areas. Even his fingers would not fit more than an inch or so into those slots. He would have to destroy the fan blades from the only direction they could be accessed, below.
Astin contemplated ways to get under the Jenkle machine. He envisioned jamming a long shard of obsidian into one blade. But the only reason the weapon would move anywhere away from the dome was to kill him, and it wasn’t going to move on top of its target. At least not while he was alive. Then the realization hit that if he disabled the fans while the war machine was hovering just over him, it would come down on top of him. So much for that.
Leading the Jenkle defense unit away would be risky, but the right plan could work, Astin decided. There was always a way. But what? And he could not just lead it away and loop around. It was too fast and he had to prevent it from ever getting back to the dome.
The sun moved visibly before the trooper felt he had a plan that, given a lot of luck, just might work. Sore and tired, Astin began gathering the sodden seaweed and watching the sky for another rainstorm. The expression on his face was way too determined for his mouth to actually be showing a grin. It was an expression any human would have understood. The Fourth’s sole remaining trooper was going to win or die.
He no longer intended to die.
“Shape, movement, temperature,” Corporal Olowoi repeated the parameters almost like a mantra. He was exhausted, and the Khumn sun was starting toward the horizon. One small cloudburst had drenched him before he was ready. Now as he tied and shaped another mass of the absorbent seaweed, Astin watch anxiously as the cooler evening air triggered more showers. This had to be it. He was out of time.
At the first drops of rain he ran to the sea and stripped off his pants. Carefully tying each leg closed, the the trooper ran into the ocean. The water felt cold on his bare legs. Which was good since that meant they were heating the water around them. He saw the jellies moving toward where he stood. The human ran back toward the shore, but not quite fast enough. A sharp pain on one ankle made him drop the pants he had held poised and begin scraping where the little critter had attached to his leg and secreted acid.
The three-centimeter circle of livid, tortured skin hurt, a lot. Even splashing water on the wound didn’t help much. Astin knew there was no more time. The rain was falling steadily now, and he rushed to edge of the water, where he saw dozens more of the acid oozing critters had been attracted to where he had stood. Using his pants as a scoop, the trooper pulled them through the thickest patch of jellies. Once on the beach he saw them clinging to the inside of the legs of his rugged uniform. His ankle was throbbing, but he had well over two dozen of the jellies trapped. That is, trapped until they ate through the tough, artificial fabric of his uniform.
Hurrying toward the area he had prepared, Astin left the pants hanging on a jagged outcrop, took some seaweed from the large pile below it, and draped the wet mess over the pants until their shape was obscured. Then tossing more of that same soggy plant over his soaked shoulders and head, the trooper continued toward the dome and its lone defender.
&nbs
p; The trooper crawled the last few meters before the spot he had prepared near the blasted area cleared around the dome, blessing the rain that made it harder for the weapon platform to see his movement or detect his distinct heat signature. Finally he reached the pile of carefully tied seaweed he had prepared and dragged there earlier. He had formed it into a something that bore a vague resemblance to a human. His jacket, filled with the stuff, helped the illusion.
The rain had begun to taper off as Astin threw the seaweed dummy over the boulder and straight at the dome’s defender. He was running the other direction, before the seaweed had cleared the top of the rock formation that had been between him and the alien’s kill zone. It was still in the air when the yellow beam struck it on one “leg,” and the resulting explosive release of steam from the soaked seaweed in that leg tore the rest of the crude manikin apart.
A rock he threw while still on the run got a bit farther before being turned into dust.
Astin threw the second dummy he had prepared, this one was held together by his t-shirt. He tossed it with all his strength directly into the air and made no attempt to even throw it toward the dome. He didn’t need to. He heard the growl of the hover tank’s fans as it moved toward the decoy, and him.
Again the bolt of yellow tore apart seaweed and cloth. Astin angled to his left, reaching the relative shelter of a V-shaped extrusion where he had left the next of his creations. This one was just seaweed. He had run out of clothing except for some shorts and his boots. His uniform shirt had been sacrificed earlier. Again he threw the soggy manikin almost straight up and ran. Having to turn before firing, the tank actually didn’t fry the decoy until it began to arc downwards. Astin stored the information on how long it had taken to shift.
Man Vs Machine Page 10