by Guy Haley
Open fire! thought out Otto. Gunfire burst from the cyborgs' positions, felling pickets, and the convoy erupted with shouts. A few rebels panicked, diving to the floor or spraying the forest blindly with bullets, but the remainder showed admirable discipline, retreating back to the convoy, their friends in the trucks laying down covering fire. A man in a uniform and a pair of data feed cybands shouted orders from the weapons cupola of a truck, gesturing with his pistol. Otto sighted down his rifle, exhaled into the trigger squeeze as he blew the officer's brains out. The rebels scanned the bluff above them. Methodically, they lay down fire, guessing where the Ky-Tech were from incoming fire. Vs of dust exploded around Otto. They'd zeroed in on their position far too quickly. There were still thirty or so rebels left, bad odds if they did not break and run.
Buchmann! Fallen tree! He indicated a length of sun-baked timber, thick enough to stop small-arms fire, a little across and downhill from his position. Lehmann, covering fire! Otto and Buchwald moved rapidly. Bullets followed their dust trails. They converged on the toppled trunk and scrambled down behind it.
"Jesus!" shouted Buchwald, holding hard to his helmet. "They almost hit me!"
Why aren't they running? thought out Muller. The rebels were covering the woods to the other side of the road where he and Kaplinski lay in wait. They were wise to Ghost tactics.
Otto and his men were pinned down.
These, thought out Lehmann, as his cannon barked twice, slamming hi-ex into the hidden form of the sixteenth vehicle, are not starving farmers.
Bullets whined through the air, burying themselves in the wood of the dead trees. Guns chattered loudly, engines roared as the rebels tried to push the GMM off the trail into the woods. Men shouted, the wounded screamed. The ambush had turned into a full-scale battle. So much for stealth.
A new sound joined the cacophony, a high-pitched hum, climbing higher.
You hear that? Lehmann. He switched to full auto and pumped a magazine of rounds into the invisible vehicle.
EMP! EMP! Muller. Down down down!
The whine reached a crescendo, subsonics building with it blurring out lower registers, suppressing the sound of battle, then it ceased and a sharp cone of energy burst into the forest, targetted on Buchwald and Otto.
EMP had little effect on biological or mechanical systems, but as a cyborg Otto felt it to his bones as an insistent swell and tug, a riptide of invisible light. His body and internal electronics were protected by Faraday armour and multiple failsafes. The camo-scales and wave-sweeper units, delicate, exposed, were another matter.
Electrical shorts skittered over Otto and Buchwald and died, leaving them visible. Shouts from the convoy directed the attention of more of the rebels towards them. The buzzing of metal redoubled, sketching cages of fire about them.
Get out of there! Muller, his urgency blunted by the MT. Crawltank! Get out! Get out!
Buchwald: "What the…"
"Move!" Otto shouted, grabbing Buchwald's webbing, half dragging him. Behind them the fallen tree exploded into splinters. Buchwald cried out as they found their way past his armour. The tree bent upwards, middle shattered, then sagged downwards as if a giant were shuffling a deck of cards, half of it breaking away to roll down the hill and crash into the wrecked GMM. The trunk began to smoke in the flames of the wrecked vehicle. Otto and Buchwald threw themselves into a hollow in the hill; shallow, but awkward to hit from below.
Otto risked a look. The tank's camouflage had failed, its own EMP burst frying its lamellae, the forest behind the machine flickering across its body only intermittently. It was a hexapedal type, legs arranged round a polygonal thorax, a toroidal turret atop it – the killing, business end of the thing. A ball pivot in the centre, protected by an angled skirt, gave it a wide range of movement. Missile racks and EMP projectors were situated on the top, twin cannon hanging from below either side of the torso. The front was a mass of lenses, and antennae that combed and tasted the air bristled from an aperture that looked like the mouth of a malformed sea creature. It had four-fingered maniples in two pairs on either side. Squatting on the forest path, its sharp feet planted firm in the baked forest floor, the tank swept the hillside with ordnance, its shell the colour of blood in the dying light, a monstrous land crab.
"Where the hell did they get that!" Buchwald. "It's the fucking Chinks. I'll bet it's the fucking Chinks! Shit! We're fucked!"
"Shut up, Buchwald!" said Otto. Muller, schema, now!
Mark IV Glorious Dawn autonomous spider tank, People's Dynasty manufacture. There was a momentary stutter in Muller's signal as a flood of data in comprehensive blueprints flashed into the minds of the squad, built-in near-Is quickly highlighting weak points and suggesting fresh avenues of attack.
Perhaps it was the weight of the datastream, perhaps the tank's sensor array finally snagged their communication's carrier signal, but the tank heard the MT broadcast. Its torso abruptly rotated and sent round after round of shells directly toward Muller's position. There was a judder in Muller's feed. He let out a raw yell. A group of rebels looked toward the source of the noise. They broke off from the convoy and, running between fire from Lehmann, Buchwald and Kaplinski, went haring off towards him.
They needed to get that tank down, and fast. Otto scanned the blueprint. The tank was well designed, heavily armoured, no crew; one weak spot, and not that weak. Lehmann! thought out Otto. Ball joint. Hit it! Hit it now!
The rattle of automatic fire came loud through Muller's feed. Otto watched through his eyes as the Ky-Tech gunned a rebel down. His vitals were becoming erratic. Damage indicators flashed up on left lung, head, right arm and right leg. Another rebel died messily, then they were upon him, clubbing with rifle butts, eyes wild. Muller's feed broke up.
Lehmann's rounds slammed into the tank, wreathing it in fire as they detonated on the skirt protecting the tank's ball joint.
Muller's icon went dead.
No effect, sir, I can't get through, I'd have to be right over it or underneath it. Lehmann was icily calm, even now.
Four near-I guided mini-missiles streaked through the trees towards Otto and Buchwald's position, but the range was too short and the angle of the hill too steep for them to come down on them directly, and they impacted the ground a few metres behind. The tank shot off another salvo, moving up the hill as it did so, the threat of Ky-Tech on the other side of the trail keeping its advance to a cautious pace. "Move, now!" Otto shouted into Buchwald's ear. Dirt showered over them. "The tank will have us pinned down in seconds. We're going to have to get in close." Otto risked another look. A squad of rebels followed in the tank's wake.
"Are you fucking serious? We can't attack that, we'll be dead men!" Buchwald yelled back.
"There are nearly thirty of them and four of us. With that thing in operation, we're dead anyway. We need to get it killed."
"Stingers?" asked Buchwald.
"No good, too many countermeasures. Grenades, in close. Lehmann!" Otto spoke now via radio.
Lehmann was switching positions every few seconds, his gun barking two, three times, moving again. "Sir!"
"Leave the tank! Engage the footsoldiers," shouted Otto. "Take out some of those cars. Leave the trucks, I want to see what they're so eager to protect."
"Sir."
Vehicles began to explode. "Kaplinski! Get out of that jungle and attack close in from the rear."
"But Muller…"
A burst from Buchwald drowned out the rest of Kaplinski's reply. A man went down like a a discarded overcoat of meat, head over heels, ribs shattered, chest open, internal organs tumbling out.
"Leave him, we'll do what we can for him if we get out of this. Throw them off." The tank doubtless heard the exchange, but Otto wanted to distract it. He was gambling that it had no means of communicating the information to the rebels. It wasn't unheard of in such tech-mismatched units.
The crawltank was turning, firing missiles at Kaplinski's position as its cannons came to draw a bead on Otto
and Buchwald. They were away and running before it had completed its traverse. It opened fire with its machine guns, ribbons of phosphorescent tracer bullets fizzing past them. Several rounds hit home but were snagged by Otto's combat armour and internal body plates. Otto ignored the pain. The rebels lent their bullets to the storm. Lehmann did his best to dissuade them, his cannon turning several to showers of gore, forcing the others back. From behind the trucks came screams as Kaplinski let his camouflage drop and set to work with his flamethrower. Fires were burning all round the forest trail, smoke adding to the disorientation of battle.
"Now!" bellowed Otto.
He unsheathed his mono-molecular-edged machete. Buchwald followed suit. They were up and under the tank in seconds, dodging gouts of flame and bullets as the machine turned its anti-personnel weapons on them. Otto struck at these; the tank's armour had some kind of exotic atomic structure judging by how many blows were needed to shear them off, but off they came.
Otto and Buchwald were fast enough to remove the tank's small arms mostly unscathed. Under the tank they were out of the way of its main arsenal. Secondary weapons destroyed, the tank trampled round and round, servos whining, trying to crush the cyborgs into the dirt, its stamps shaking the earth. It knocked them into a car, momentarily pinning Buchwald and severing Otto's gun in two, then staggered back, bringing its cannons to bear. Otto, Buchwald and the tank danced a demented minuet, cannon fire providing an erratic beat as it shot over their heads. The men pulled their grenades from their kit as they wove in and out. Otto hacked hard at a grasping maniple and sent it spinning into the woods, evaded a leg that tried to knock him down, dived past another to get back under the tank. The tank's near-I panicked and emptied its racks, the missiles careening unguided into the trees. Cannons fired randomly, stitching lines of smoking holes across one of the trucks, killing the driver. He slumped onto the accelerator; the truck lurched off and overturned, spilling crates of supplies. Rebels ran, shouting, driven from their hiding places by the tank's stampede. Lehmann picked them off with unhurried efficiency.
Otto slammed a grenade hard onto the tank's legs, small traps breaking on the outside to reveal geckro plates, then another. The tank's governing intelligence belatedly worked out what was going on, and vainly tried to shake off the explosives. Four out of six legs thus adorned, Otto and Buchwald scrambled away. The grenades emitted a series of rapid beeps. The tank stopped moving, legs at full extension, torso rotating frantically as it tried to see underneath itself. As a last resort the tank electrified its hull to try and short out the grenades, detonating them prematurely. Shards of leg scythed through the air, hitting both Otto and Buchwald. Their armour and internal reinforcement took the damage, absorbing shrapnel, blunting a shockwave that would have turned the insides of an unenhanced man to jelly, though they took precious little of the pain.
The two cyborgs found themselves behind the ruin of a car. Buchwald sighted over the bonnet, snapping off fire.
The bodies of rebels littered the forest floor. The battlefield stank of propellant, shit, blood, smoke and sweat.
The crawltank lolled ineffectually, turret face-down in the dirt, twisting back and forth as it tried to right itself, remaining two legs crippled. Enemy fire was becoming sporadic. Kaplinski was doing his work well, the insistent hiss of his flamethrower drawing nearer. The need for Lehmann's cannon became less pressing. Otto counted nine surviving rebels, then eight, then seven. The moans of the dying and the sputter of the fires in the dead wood were winning out over the report of weapons.
"Why aren't they running?" asked Buchwald, cracking off another burst. "They always run. Shit, that fucking tank got me. God damn, that hurts!" He winced. "Is it bad?"
Otto glanced at Buchwald's leg. His armour was shattered, uniform charred away. The meat of his leg was seared, a slow well of blood rising with each pulse of his heart round a shard of blackened metal buried in his thigh. "You'll live. It won't matter in a few minutes if they run or not. I want to see what's in those trucks. Do you think you can make it?"
Buchwald wiped his hand over his face. He was pale. Sweat beaded his skin like tiny blisters. His feed told Otto that Buchwald's healthtech was damaged, his pain dampeners failing. "Yeah, yeah, I can."
They moved to the back of one of the trucks. The container on the trailer was faded green, spotted with rust and adorned with Arabic script worn to illegibility, doors locked with heavy chain. Close up, Otto could see signs that its corrugated walls had been crudely reinforced.
He signalled with his hands, the terse gestures of battle: this is it. Cover me. Buchwald raised his rifle. Otto cut through the chains with one blow of his machete, unclasped the door lever, threw it up and out. The doors creaked wide.
Within were a dozen terrified women and children.
Otto never found out who they were; the families of the rebels, wives and children of the commanders, perhaps.
That shouldn't have mattered.
For all the atrocities the rebels had perpetrated, they were still women and children. They could have been Hitler's own harem and a gaggle of bastards, they were still women and children.
He'd wonder what they were doing there for the rest of his life.
Kaplinski spoke over Otto's shoulder. "This is for Muller, you miserable fuckers."
His flamethrower turned the trailer interior into an inferno. The people inside didn't have time to scream.
The machete dropped from Otto's hand.
Kaplinski laughed as they burned.
Otto screwed up his eyes, pressed upon them with his knuckles until spots swirled on the blackness. When he opened them the faces were gone.
Nightmares, every night for months.
Fragments of memory assailed him as his mentaug ended its sleep cycle. He took in a deep, shaking breath. The shitty tang of sleep-furred teeth competed with the lingering flavour of ash. He looked at the clock on the glass of his bedroom windows, because his internal chronometer was gaining time again. He squinted, fell back, rubbed his eyes. Past midday; he was late. Time to get up.
He had to clear the memory of ash from his throat before he could speak. "Windows," he said, and sat up. The bank of black glass that filled two walls of his apartment bedroom cleared to reveal another grey New London day. The holo came on unbidden, rolling news flickering in the air, more diplomatic protests from the Chinese about USNA's Martian terraformation plans. They were playing the conservationist card again, and no one was buying it. Otto didn't listen. The dispute had been rumbling on for months.
He reached for the glass by his bed. Whisky. He swilled it round his mouth; it was warm and stale. No matter, it washed away the flavour of night. It would have no other effect. A monumental amount of alcohol was required to get a cyborg drunk. That did not stop Otto from trying.
Otto rubbed at the electoo circuitry on his head, raised lines running through close-cropped, greying hair. He traced them habitually, like lines of Braille. Like his dreams, they never told him anything new.
He hadn't had the spider tank dream for a while, but he had plenty similar to keep him occupied.
They'd said there'd be no spill over from the mental augmentation. They'd told him that when he'd been changed. They'd been wrong, or they were lying bastards. Otto inclined toward the latter opinion.
He sat on the edge of the bed and waited as his mentaug quieted, running down from his nocturnal memory dump. The morning spill of recollections continued, some pleasant, others less so.
The mentaug thought of Honour. Her face, her body, her scent flooded into his mind with perfect clarity. For a second it was as if she were there beside him. He gritted his teeth and tried not to look at the phantom. Mercifully, her face was washed away by others.
Dead faces, all.
Muller, dead in the jungle. Buchwald, dead from Bergstrom syndrome in the hospital. Otto had been to see him. He hadn't stayed long; the disease was so advanced Buchwald hadn't got a fucking clue who he was any more.
&
nbsp; He'd reminded Otto too much of Honour.
So many. Some he'd killed, some he hadn't. Thanks to his altered mind he remembered every one.
The worst part of it was, they seemed to remember him back.
He moved to the centre of the room and sat on the carpet, shutting his eyes. He went through his breathing exercises until the magic lantern faded from his mind. Maybe next time it would take his sanity with it, like it had with Buchwald and Honour. Maybe not. He didn't want to think about it. Otto had always been a man of intense focus, and today he had things to do.