I powered over to the nearest vessel and drifted inside. “Colonel, we have a new problem.”
The Colonel replied, “If you are referring to the tracked vehicles, we are aware of them. York did a fly through for us several hours ago. It appears they are automated and have a more powerful ion cannon on them. Our best estimates place the cannons at just below what is needed to penetrate our wall armor. We don’t see them as much of a threat at the moment.”
As I looked over the automated cannons, I began to smile at the thought that had entered my head. “Colonel, you say these are automated. What are the chances that we can plant our own programming on them? Imagine these bay doors opening and these tanks rolling out blasting their own soldiers!”
The Colonel replied, “We’ve had a team working on that very scenario. York brought back a processor unit from one of the machines. I’m still not sure how she managed to get it out of there, but she did. Anyway, we have been attempting to crack the encryption on the processor without much luck so far.”
I again smiled. “Colonel, I’m coming back. The Swift has a cracker program in her computer that Frig wrote some time back. If we can run that on it, we might have a shot at breaking in.”
I powered back to the city of Mirada, where the Colonel and his staff were waiting. The Swift was ordered to the ground, and the engineers that had been assigned the task of taking control of the processor carried it out to the waiting ship.
I stepped up into the Swift’s hold as the engineers followed. “Set it over here. In this locker, you should be able to find the necessary interconnects for power and communications. I’ll bring up the application we used.”
The engineers knew their work. The processor was connected to power and brought online. Once it was connected to the comm circuits, a scan was conducted for any malicious content. The processor was clean and the decryption application was enabled. Within a few minutes, an image came up on the holo-display showing the estimated layers of encryption followed by a percent complete number, which currently read “0.”
I spoke to the engineers. “You might as well have a seat. This could take a while. This button will deactivate the active skin and open that door if you need out of here for some reason.”
One of the engineers replied, “Active skin?”
I nodded. “Yeah, it’s a technology this craft has. I hate to say it, but it is also a need-to-know security asset, so I can’t explain it further. Just know that you should be better protected in here than you would be out there.”
With the cracking program running, I made my way back to the Colonel’s office, where I was soon seated on my stumps in the chair by his desk console. “Colonel, I want to send one of our Wrens back to Molov with the intel we have on those new Durian ships. I think it’s imperative that Ashley, Frig, and the doctor know that we can be detected in these ships. If the Durians establish a screen around this planet, we are going to have to figure out what to do with our Wrens as they are built.”
The Colonel replied, “Excellent idea, Grange. We are going to be knee deep in Colossun androids in a few hours. We will be needing all the help we can get from those Wrens. And Grange, aside from not having any legs, which hasn’t seemed to hamper you at all, you have been full of good ideas lately. I think that DNA shot you took is working!”
I laughed. “I will admit that I feel better than I have in a while, Colonel. But smarter? I think the jury is still out on that one. I would just say more experienced is a better fit.”
The Colonel shook his head. “Call it what you will, Grange. It’s a good thing either way. We need all the great ideas we can get. As those enemy numbers increase out there, our estimates for holding onto Tackor keep falling. Our conservative estimate is now down to four hours, with our best guess at six. If that city falls, we expect them to immediately follow up with an assault on Ganitee. Our best estimate for Ganitee is twelve hours, but that estimate has been dropping all afternoon.”
I replied, “At what point do we stop them, Colonel?”
The Colonel leaned back in his chair and crossed his massive arms. “We don’t. At least not until they reach the core.”
I inquired, “The core?”
The Colonel sat forward and brought up a map on his console. “These four cities are the ones that contain the underground bunker complex. They are the most heavily defended. They are the core of our existence. If any one of those falls, we are doomed, but we aren’t going to let that happen. We are estimating that the Duke’s ground forces should be depleted to the six-to-seven-million-soldier range by then. If that holds true, we may even be able to go on the offensive.”
I smiled. “Offensive—I like the sound of that, Colonel!”
The Colonel replied, “Unless we hold those four cities, we are done for as a species. The Duke may have his victor in the next week or two.”
When my discussion with the Colonel had ended, I returned to the Swift to check on progress. I found the engineers poking around in the cabin, looking intently at the technology that they could not identify.
I spoke. “Some fascinating stuff, huh? I would love to sit and tell you about it, but the fewer who know our secrets right now, the better. I wouldn’t put it past the Duke to still have spies amongst us.”
The first engineer replied, “Sorry for our being nosy, Sir. I do want to ask you about it all in a big way, but I will keep my trap shut until advised otherwise.”
I patted the engineer on the back as I floated past him to sit in my chair. “Thanks. In a few weeks’ time, you will probably know everything or nothing, depending on how well we do out there.”
As I brought up the programming for the Wrens, a new thought occurred to me. The engineers would be on the Swift for some time as the cracking algorithms ran their course, and I could control the Wrens from my HUD. I would send the Swift, along with the engineers, out to Molov to deliver our latest intel to the others. If upon their return the Durians had been successful in establishing their screen perimeter, the Swift would then fly back to Molov and into the capable hands of Frig.
I spoke. “Guys, I am sending this ship on a mission, and you will be aboard her as she goes. You don’t have to do anything other than making any adjustments to your connections that the cracking application calls for. The ride out and back may be a bit boring, but you will be traveling far faster than you ever have before. You should be back here in just over eight hours.”
As the Swift lifted off on its journey to Molov, I powered my way back to the defenses at Tackor. The city sat on a slight rise in the terrain, giving a more commanding view of the farming plains that surrounded it. I parked myself on a parapet that looked directly towards Nevil.
A lieutenant standing next to me spoke. “How’d you lose the legs, Sir?”
I replied, “Ion explosion cut them off. They were prosthetics. I would get new ones, but I don’t have time to train them, so I would just be dragging them around.”
The lieutenant laughed. “Tell me about it, Sir. I still have trouble with some of the more subtle tasks such as squatting to pick something off the ground. Those are the things that take all the practice, the ones that you are not naturally doing, such as walking.”
I looked over at the lieutenant. “How long have you had yours, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant replied, “Three weeks, Sir. I do like the fact that I can jump down off this wall and then land on my feet without breaking my back. Might come in useful once this all starts up.”
I smiled. “Well, let’s hope we all at least get the opportunity to make that jump, Lieutenant. There are hard times coming our way.”
The lieutenant laughed and shook his head. “I’ve been through this enough times that the prospect of dying doesn’t bother me anymore, Sir. Fretting about it doesn’t solve anything. Besides, staying focused on what I need to do is what’s kept me alive this long. And the Admiral, he gives one heckuva pep talk. You come away inspired, despite the odds you face.”
/> I replied, “If every Marine thinks the way you do, Lieutenant, the Durians are going to have one beast of a time taking this planet.”
For the next few hours, I walked the walls of Tackor. Again the waiting for what I knew was coming was torturous. As I turned and looked back over the city, our Marines continued their efforts at raising the walls and increasing the Tantric plating on them. The only other sound was the occasional whump the ion cannons made as they fired upon a descending or ascending Durian ship.
A set of large ion explosions rocked the wall behind me as the alert sounded in my helmet. From my vantage point, I had a two-kilometer clear view of the farmland in front of me. The assault started as a thin black line on the horizon. That black line was soon matched by the skies behind it growing dark as the hundreds of thousands of fighter craft lifted off. I looked back at the buildings that made up Tackor for one final time. In an hour, there would be nothing left standing.
I took aim with my coil gun and began to fire rounds out towards the coming black wave. Almost as far as my eyes could naturally see across the horizon, the enemy soldiers moved forward.
I looked at the lieutenant standing next to me. “Best of luck up here, Lieutenant.”
The lieutenant tilted his head as if in question. “Where you going, Sir?”
I pointed out towards the fields. “I’ll be mixing it up out there for a bit.”
With my statement made, I blinked out and turned my BHD glove on full. I dropped down in a field twenty meters in front of the oncoming army. My coil gun fired rounds into the troops on the left as my ion blaster fired to the right. The dark-gray-outfitted Dakar soldiers that I had landed in front of exploded, with body parts flying into the air.
As the ranks of the dark army overtook my position, I turned to continue my slaughtering of the species that had once called themselves allies. I was joined soon after by York and another forty BGS-equipped Marines. The killing was relentless.
As my fingers once again became numb from pulling the trigger, York came over the comm. “Mr. Grange! I could use some help over here! I have about five hundred Durian Helgrons coming towards me. My tungsten rounds are knocking them down, but they are getting back up. Ion blaster has no effect!”
I powered over to York’s position in time to see her first encounter with a Helgron fighter. She blinked out, punched her fist into the oncoming soldier, and then blinked in for only an instant. A gaping hole opened in the Helgron’s chest.
York spoke. “It’s the only way we are going to kill them, Sir! They are not going to stop when they hit that wall!”
I replied, “Call in the other BGS-equipped Marines. We have to stop them before they make it to there!”
Word went out, and one by one the BGS Marines powered over to our position. The Helgrons were falling, but not fast enough. When they had reached the wall, the first to arrive dropped to their hands and knees, forming a single step. Those that followed repeated the process. In under a minute, the stacked wall had grown to eight meters high. I continued to punch and blink, but the fighters were too many in number.
At twenty meters in height, the Helgrons began to divide, allowing Colossun androids to take position within their center. At thirty meters high, a wedge had formed that ran outwards from the wall to almost fifty meters’ distance. The oncoming soldiers began forming up behind the wedge.
I spoke. “York! If they get this thing built, they are going to be topping that wall sooner than the Colonel estimated! What can we do? We need ideas!”
York replied, “Bring down a Wren, Sir! Park it in the middle of that pile and have it blink in and out!”
I stopped firing for only a moment to allow the idea to sink into my head. “Excellent suggestion, Major! When that ship blinks in and out, it will take the part of that stack equivalent to its size with it!”
I brought the first Wren, which we had christened the Monitor in honor of our newly discovered naval history, up to the wall. When it had settled at ground level, I set the active skin to disable and then once again enable, the result being that every bit of matter that occupied the same space as the Wren was instantly turned into a void. The stack sank by five meters’ height.
York yelled, “Hit her again, Sir!”
After the sixth time of deactivation followed by activation, the Helgron pile had been reduced to only two meters in height. The second Wren was then ordered to follow the same process at a separate location. After more than an hour of continuous onslaught, the outer wall of Tackor had not been breached.
The Colonel came over the comm. “How are you faring out there, Grange? Nice work with making use of those Wrens. We are expecting another surge within the next ten minutes. I’ll try to forward the positions of any Helgrons to you when that happens.”
I replied, “Thanks, Colonel. Using the Wrens was York’s idea. I think she might be due for another promotion after this. By the way, what are our casualty numbers looking like?”
The Colonel sent a chart. “Not bad. Sixty-two Marines are out of duty; four of them are dead. We had a section of wall that hadn’t received its Tantric yet that took a heavy bolt. The energy of the shrapnel was enough to take out our boys.”
I spoke. “That is fantastic, Colonel! Not the losses, of course, but the low casualty count. How about our troops with prosthetics?”
The Colonel replied, “Only a dozen of the Tackor Marines have had the upgrade. We have about fifteen hundred that are scattered across the other cities and another fifteen thousand here at our primary bases. These are the cities that we absolutely have to hold.”
The Colonel continued, “The Swift should be making its turnaround at Molov now. Those new Durian ships continue to stream in. If their rate stays constant, we can expect this planet to be isolated in the next few days.”
I replied as I continued to blast away at the enemy, “We can’t let that happen, Colonel. If they shut us in, they only need to wait for further reinforcements while they pick away at our numbers. As soon as I get a break, we need to get a team together to brainstorm this.”
York came over the comm. “I’ve got another pack of Helgrons coming my way! Could use some help!”
The Colonel spoke. “I don’t think we are going to see a break, Grange. This ground war will likely be constant from now until whatever end comes about.”
I replied, “So that rest I had earlier may be the last time I ever sleep?”
The Colonel laughed. “Always looking to take a break, aren’t you, Grange!”
I shook my head. “Hey, not what I meant, Colonel. And when was the last time you had a rest?”
The Colonel replied, “I have your BGS suit on now, Grange. No more resting, no more eating, and no more wasted time on the crapper. I’ll be running this from this seat from here on in.”
I again shook my head as I blinked a hole through an onrushing Helgron. “We all need rest, Colonel. Even if it’s just a catnap. Take fifteen or twenty minutes when you get the chance. The suit will put you out and wake you up.”
The battle for Tackor raged on. Three times the wall had been breached by a handful of the enemy soldiers. Three times Admiral Chaulk’s men had pushed them back. The attackers came in an endless stream. The battlefield ebbed and flowed with each new offensive. Tackor was not going down easy.
Chapter 20
During the fifth hour of battle, the Swift returned with the engineers. Frig had added to his application algorithm, and on the flight back, the processor encryption had been cracked. The Colonel’s team had a new operating system at the ready for the automated tanks of the Colossuns.
The Colonel spoke. “Grange, we need you to take one other BGS Marine with you to those tanks. We have the code; all you need to do is swap out at least one of those processors aboard each ship, as they are all controlled from a single point. If we get that controller, we can make the lot of them do what we want. And Grange, we need this in a hurry. The analysts are telling me the next wave is likely to be the
one that tops that wall in multiple places.”
I replied, “On it, Colonel. Frost, you are coming with me!”
I powered over to the quad and picked up the processor. Two minutes later, I was landing in the cargo hold of a Colossun tank ship. I pulled open the control box on the nearest tank and swapped out the processor unit. The tank immediately came to life.
As I looked on, the next tank and the tank after that powered on one by one as our new operating system spread throughout their numbers. I pulled the processor I had inserted, replaced the original, and then handed the altered unit to Frost.
Frost looked at the processor. “What am I supposed to do with this one, Sir?”
I shook my head. “There are another fifty of these ships parked out there. Maybe you can start the process on one of those?”
Frost laughed and nodded. “I got it, Sir. Sorry, my head was still stuck in the fighting back there.”
I replied, “Well, let’s get it going; the Colonel thinks we only have about five minutes before the next big push happens. They are predicting that this will be the one that takes out Tackor.”
Frost inserted the processor into a pouch on her pant leg and then blinked out. I removed an altered processor and made my way to the next available tank ship.
As we reached the halfway point of the conversion, the Colonel again came on the comm. “Grange! The push is starting! We need you and Frost back on the lines as soon as possible!”
I replied, “Give us three minutes, Colonel. And, I’m ordering the Swift and the Wrens to start strafing those farmlands out there, with a focus on any groups of black uniforms. Those Helgrons can handle a hit from my coil gun, but not from the Swift or a Wren.”
When the last of the processors had been placed, we raced back to the battlefield and set down near a half-crazed York. She had been continuously firing both weapons while simultaneously blinking in and out. She commanded a death zone that covered fifteen meters to either side of her position.
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