The Guardians of Sol

by Spencer Kettenring

  Before all of the forces launched for this final battle, a loud argument had gone up among the leading generals. About half of them wanted to simply surround London and starve Uther’s men until they surrendered. The Sentinel had argued passionately for the need to end this war quickly to minimize suffering for all parties. Since bullets were currently flying around my head, the old man had apparently won the argument.

  It had been fairly quiet, actually, until my force was about two blocks into the city. Then we hit the first barricade and all hell broke loose. Some kind of broad-spectrum magnetic field disbursed the energy from my squad’s plasma weapons, and whatever the barricades were made of was just as remarkably resistant to conventional weapons.

  “Garrett, I need an artillery squad on my position!” I told the commander of the 22nd battalion as I yelled over the firefight going on around me. Switching off my audio input, I gave my armor some attention for a moment. “IRIS, get my sound buffers back online! I’m going to go deaf at this rate!”

  “Everyone is a bit busy right now, Castle!” Colonel Garrett yelled right back. “I’ll try to spare a team from Bravo’s Redwings, but I can’t let them stay long!”

  “I won’t need them for very long!” halfway through I could actually hear myself as things quieted down. “I just need the artillery to knock a wall down for me.” I finished without yelling. It is always a relief to be able to hear yourself think.

  “They’ll be over in a minute, have to divert them through the back of the lines!”

  “Thanks. Let me know if you need anyone from my end. Castle out.”

  I kept my back to one of the buildings hiding me from view of the barricade. I pulled up an image of the barricade on my HUD. With IRIS’s help (she is a very useful AI) I identified at least three points that the artillery team might be able to punch through the fastest. I had IRIS mark the spots on the image and the corresponding coordinates on the map and forwarded them to the artillery team.

  “Captain Castle, this is sergeant Caide of the Redwing third team. We’ll be on your position in about fifteen seconds and take your wall down nice and easy.”

  “Acknowledged. See you soon.” I toggled over to the channel for Charlie Company, of which I currently had command. “Fall back at least half a block, we have heavy artillery incoming and I don’t want any friendly fire.”

  A few seconds later four Castigars in bright red and silver extra-heavy armor came bouncing down the boulevard, skidding to a stop at my position. They took stock of the position of the barricade, and began matching up the coordinates to the actuality.

  “Sergeant Caide,” I hailed. “Keeping busy?”

  “Just another day in the life, sir. You know how it goes… Soldier, blow up this bridge. Soldier, destroy that com tower. Soldier, open this jar of pickles. And no one ever says please. This is the fifteenth barricade that my team has broken down and there are at least nine other artillery units on this side of the city.”

  I laughed, harder than I would have in less stressful circumstances, “Well, I can at least give you a thank you. Thank you for your service, soldier.”

  “You’re welcome, sir,” He replied happily. It wasn’t every day that artillerists got permission to blow up so many things. “Calculations are complete. You may want to stand back, Captain.”

  The Redwing artillerists arrayed themselves at equal intervals across the street. They each took a particular stance before anchoring spikes unfolded from their leg armor and slammed into and through the pavement. The massive cannons on their backs swung up and around and doubled in size as everything clicked and secured into place. Each man only had the one cannon, but the weight was balanced by an ammo belt on the other side of the pack that fed into the cannon. A wall of sound hit me as they began firing. A fraction of a second later the concussion wave from the first explosions blew out windows all along the street.

  I walked into the street, facing all of the fury, and zoomed in on the smoke and flame where the barricade was. The artillery team sustained their fire for a full ten seconds. We waited for another minute, but the smoke from the fires still obscured the barricade too much to know for sure whether it still stood or not. I have to admit, I wasn’t in the most patient of moods, so I fired a round from my plasma engine cannon at the central point of where I last saw the barricade. The shot tore through the curtain of smoke and flew further down the street, either disbursing into the air or actually hitting something. I fired another round that detonated in the middle of the wall of smoke to further clear the view.

  “Thank you again for your service, Sergeant. Give the colonel my regards,” I switched channels again to the one I saved for command discussions. “Alright boys, let’s get back on track. Lieutenant Freed’s group first, Sergeant Mace’s in reserve. Move!”

  The Redwings took off towards the rear of the assault force, and my company headed forward over the ruins of the once frustrating barrier. The barrier had closed off a street intersection on three sides, and a few blocks down there appeared to be yet another. I glanced back at the now tiny specks of the artillerists and sighed. I, obviously, wasn’t the only one who could use their continued services. I did, however, have a few alternate ideas that might get us through these damned barriers. The problem was getting the right men close enough without dying…

  I slammed the analysis spike from the bottom of my hammer into what little remained of the barricade. The spike read the molecular makeup of peculiar material and IRIS began to compute the specifics of the appropriate destructive harmonic field; it also doubled nicely as an emergency weapon. The chemical composition of the wall wasn’t like anything I had ever seen before – not that I was any sort of expert – but I beamed the profile to the rest of my squad anyway. If we were lucky, the shatter hammers would do something about the particular problem of the barriers. That was, of course, if the electromagnetic field from the barriers didn’t disrupt the hammer’s tech.

  *****

  My guys and I shortly got pinned down again in front of the next barrier. Regular high-caliber rounds didn’t pose much danger for my squad with our adamantine-GND armor plating, but the men sitting on that stupid wall had incendiary rockets and ammunition that spewed a substance kind of like napalm except that it burned twice as long and at least three times hotter. Sadly, there’s only so much heat that any armor’s cooling systems could handle at a time.

  I peeked around the corner where I was taking cover. They hadn’t been nearly as careful clearing this section of street as they had with the last one; there were still cars parked here and there. I saw one large example sitting at a perfect distance from the wall for a distraction.

  “Shot-put, how’s your throwing arm these days?” I asked.

  “Better than ever, Boss,” My Sergeant replied. “What you got planned?”

  “The other boys and I make a distraction; you use your special toy to bring that wall down. Simple and fast. We get moving forward again and win the race to the palace. That sounds good, right?”

  “Right, sir! I’m glad you volunteered to buy the drinks when we’re done. I’d hate to get cooked in my own armor without good reason.”

  I switched com channels to broadcast to my entire force of 131 men – not counting myself. “On my mark, Thundermakers and squads 1, 2, and 3 begin covering fire. Squads 4 through 10 try to find an alternate route on the next street over. We need to get to that damned palace.”

  “Mark.”

  Shot-put and I rushed onto the street at the same time. Bullets and explosives flew from both directions. A few meters from my particular target an incendiary rocket came right at my head. I deflected most of the explosion with the Spartan shield I’d picked up in Greece, but it stopped my forward momentum for a second. I activated my plasma cannons, although the EM shield from the barrier made it so I only added a little bit of a light show to the scene.

  Shot-put stood in the middle of the road. Incendiaries pinged off of his armor to little effect. When
flames did get going, his armor sprayed little spurts of superheated coolant into the air. A ball about the size of an Olympic shot-put dropped into Mace’s hand from the armor plates protecting his right shoulder.

  More and more attention was getting directed towards my sergeant. I figured I would do something about that. “IRIS, hammer command: short range broad spectrum pulse.”

  “Pulse ready,” She replied.

  With my best golfer’s swing I slammed my hammer into the rear bumper of the SUV that I decided had offended my sensibilities. The vehicle flew into the air towards the barricade trailing metal and ceramic dust. At the apex of its arc I hit the car’s fuel tank with a HEAT armor-piercing explosive round from my arm cannon. Shot-put didn’t even flinch at the explosion. The men on the wall, however, weren’t expecting a car on the street to fly at their heads and turn into a fireball. They ducked down behind cover.

  Shot-put finally threw his shot-put at the barricade. The point of contact didn’t look terribly special to me, but John has always had a talent for finding that kind of weak point. When John’s shot-put (which was built with the same technology as the shatter hammers) hit the wall the whole thing just kind of… shattered. It looked a lot like when I had hit that slab of adamantine back in Chief Ruiz’s workshop, only much faster. I guess the EM field actually strengthened the effects of shatter tech. A good thing to know. Enemy soldiers fell from the structure and were quickly put down by my boys.

  I turned to John. “Think you can keep doing that until we reach the palace?”

  He put the right shoulder of his steaming armor forward and retracted the monofilament cord that tethered his shot-put to him. “If I really have to, then of course I can. I’m just not that fond of being set on fire. Those better be damn good drinks, Rhys.”

  “Don’t be such a baby. Your cooling system didn’t even get that taxed,” I told him, looking over his status on my HUD. I patted out some of the flames still clinging to him. “Besides, the scorch marks look good. Katie will love it.” I tried to reassure him, but probably failed to keep the humor out of my voice. I switched to the channel I kept reserved just for my squad’s command officers. “This is going to take too long. Have you found me a quicker route to the palace, Jimmy?”

  “I think I have. If we keep following Harrow road for about another mile we can take Ladbroke Grove over to… Baywater road and Kensington Gardens. From there it’s just a hop skip and a jump to the palace. Of course, that’s probably were most of Uther’s remaining forces are stationed.”

  “And they’ll be focused on the Guardian army coming at them from the other direction. Then we’ll just have to be the spearhead for everyone on our side to follow. Log the plan with field command and let’s get moving.”

  “Uh, Boss. I think we’re in trouble here,” Sandsmark chipped in over a different channel as the ground started shaking. Cracks formed all along the road, bits and pieces began breaking and pushing up.

  “Defensive positions!” I ordered, following my own order. IRIS tagged similar reports from across the entire Guardian field of operations through the lower portion of my HUD in scrolling text.

  The ground stopped shaking when huge metal doors broke through the concrete, revealing a gaping darkness beneath. That darkness was quickly filled by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of identical armored forms.

  “Well… Crap.” Shot-put said, pretty much summing up everyone’s feelings.

  23

  November 17, 2289. Underground Research Facility

  “What just happened?” Christoph asked the air.

  “I would say this punk and his AEU conspirators just sent a load of reinforcements to the battle topside,” Seer replied, pointing to the unconscious man bound and gagged in the corner of the office.

  “Well, unless anyone can see a way to shut the automatons down, we still have a job to do. Keep looking for a way into the palace, and keep an eye out for a way to help our brothers up top. Sergeant, get your team together and take the Centurion back to the subway station. Signal for a pickup and get reinforcements. We should have backdoor to the palace by then, even if we have to blast our way in.”

  “Yes sir!” The officer replied, and the four men headed back through the factory with the Centurion bouncing none too gently on one of their shoulders.

  “Everyone else, spread out by pairs and keep looking,” Christoph ordered again. The captain was feeling a bit nervous about languishing for so long in the middle of an enemy stronghold with no reinforcements.

  “Translation matrix compiled, Captain!” Seer called. “Checking for a way to remotely shut down the automata… I can’t do it from here. The systems are tied into the armor of the knights leading them, with secondary advanced IFF protocols and combat programming in the event that the knight goes down. Ultimate controls seem to have been rerouted to somewhere in the palace. I’m going to look for the actual schematics and see if there’s a weakness.”

  “Good work,” Christoph replied, poking around the office. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be much of anything immediately useful. There was plenty of technical paperwork for analysts to go over later though. Precious minutes passed, with Christoph receiving intermittent updates on his HUD with an increasingly accurate map of the facility, but still no entrance to the palace.

  “Found the schematics, sir. AI is analyzing for any weaknesses. I’m running a search for the communication system so that we can bounce a signal to our forces topside, and an official facility map. If our entrance is anywhere, it’ll be on that. Do we know where we are in respect to the palace? I’d hate to think we’re putting all this effort into finding an entrance that’s a mile away.”

  Christoph did some quick math in his head, consulting with his own AI. “The facility proper should be on the edge of the palace lawn. It doesn’t seem logical that Uther would have an important research facility so close to home without a way to sneak into it. Of course, that’s assuming that my math is right.”

  “Well. We might very well be screwed then, sir,” Seer smirked. “I’ve got the facility schematics. Why the hell would the facility schematics be encrypted in the middle of the facility that it’s mapping? This is going to take me a few minutes, sir. Hopefully one of the other guys finds something, because nothing is labeled here.” He ended with a sigh.

  “Just keep working, private. Decryption is taking too long, patch your AI into the squad coms and network with all of the suit AIs. We need to end this before we lose many more of our brothers up top.”

  *****

  Streams of burning light blasted into my men and the buildings around us. I took the brunt of that first volley on my borrowed shield, which unleashed enough vaporized coolant to make my visor automatically cycle through frequencies to allow me to keep seeing clearly. What I saw was several of my men, including poor Filch, cooked inside their own superheated armor. Filch’s vital signs were completely flat on my HUD, so at least he likely didn’t suffer long.

  “All units engage with extreme prejudice!” I yelled, slamming my hammer into the nearest opponent, and crushing another with the edge of my shield. I noticed circuitry and hydraulic fluid, but no blood or guts. “They’re just automatons; don’t hold back if you were thinking about it!”

  A flurry of bullets ripped more of the robots apart, while another volley of plasma felled more Castigars. I noticed a few targeting Squatter for a concentrated burst, and activated the retrieval system in my gauntlet. The competing magnetic fields diffused the plasma enough that Squatter charged through it mostly unscathed and shattered the automatons. Tinder and Gripe snagged some of the fallen plasma rifles and combined the fire from those with their built in weapons to blow through several ranks of our mechanical foes.

  On the whole, we were giving more than we were getting, but there were just so many of them. I kept breaking and blasting them, and the mainline Castigars in my command kept shooting and slicing. Eventually, IRIS marked two knights amidst the horde of automata, and I tagg
ed them for the benefit of everyone else. Sandsmark was the first man to get close to one of the bastards.

  “Watch your back, Stick,” I told him. I’d already lost one man today and I really didn’t want to lose another to this insanity. I got a double-click acknowledgement in response, and kept on with my own path of destruction.

  Stick had never really cared for the shatterhammers that were the signature weapon of our squad. Lucky for him, Ruiz’s engineers had been more than happy to upgrade his arc spear, tying it directly into the power core of his armor. As he approached the knight, his spear was fully extended. The electric arc from the spear superheated automata armor, which the blade cut through like butter, and fried their internal circuitry. Sandsmark cut a much larger swath through the robots much faster than any other Castigar, while a team from one of the mainline squads was managing to cover his back.

  Once the knight noticed the approaching man, the surrounding automata spread out and focused on other targets. The knight apparently had some small notion of honor, and wanted to duel. The man stowed his rifle and unsheathed a broadsword and shield. Sandsmark, for his part, put away his shatterhammer and took his arc spear in both hands.

  The knight approached slowly, shield forward, and sword held overhand. Sandsmark dashed forward, the tip of his spear barely missing the center of the shield and skittering off, but leaving a brightly glowing line of metal behind. He dodged to the side, and deflected a thrust from the knight’s sword. The sword’s normally dull red glow was bright white where the spear had intercepted it.