by Chris Hechtl
“No idea, sir. We … we've only had a bit of contact with them. Supply missions. She took over a decommissioned naval depot station. She kept her people alive and together, though I picked up a few rumors.”
“And didn't pass them on?” the Major inquired.
“Sir, they were rumors. I don't like to act on scuttlebutt. Not when we have a mission in front of us. You said no distractions,” he reminded the major.
Major Sing grunted. “Correction noted. What did you hear?”
“She was focused on human collaborators, sir. Fanatically so. She lost it, sir; according to the 2nd Mass, she was holding drumhead court martials and executing people.”
The Major winced.
“But she's dead. A Colonel Weaver has taken over.”
“Weaver, Weaver … where have I heard that name?” the Major asked.
“Reservist, sir. He did some work in Eastern Europe. He also worked in the UN peacekeepers briefly. He became a weekend warrior when he had kids, two daughters.”
“You seem to know about him,” the Major said, eying the sergeant.
“I've shared a couple of beers with him, sir, at a barbeque. I didn't know he was an officer at the time,” the sergeant said. The major nodded. “He's a good man. Quiet, sometimes intense. He's got a mind like a steel trap, and from what I saw when he broke up a brawl, he's got a lot of hands-on experience,” he reported.
“Good to know.”
“Second Mass is mostly volunteer, sir. Civilian. I bet there are a few former military in there but apparently not many. But they've held together and performed well.”
The major nodded. “Okay. Set up a meet with the colonel. It's time we coordinate.”
“I'll do my best, sir,” the sergeant said, nodding.
“Dismissed.”
<>V<>
Attila shook his head as he heard another smack, scream, and guttural laugh. The place was turning into a regular bordello. Each of his men had taken a woman; most were young. Bravos had two. Two of the women had been killed and replaced shortly after. Vladek was turning into something of a sadist. He eyed Wladislaw sourly.
“I know. It's getting out of hand.”
“You think? We need to maintain a watch. We're losing discipline here. And more mouths to feed means the food runs out quicker.”
“They don't eat much,” Wladislaw admitted.
“But they still eat,” Attila stated. He shook his head. Bravos was the only one not having sex with the girls he'd brought in. He'd thought it odd, thought the guy had been into little girls, but apparently that hadn't been the case. He was sort of a father figure to them, even protecting them from Vladek and the other dik diya mozga in the group. Wladislaw had used his girl a few times but not nearly as often as some of the others.
“We're going to have a chat. The girls are going to be locked up. I'm going to have to ration them,” Attila growled.
Wladislaw winced. He knew the idea of rationing pussy wouldn't go over well with the men. He also knew that what was going on was prejudicial to good discipline and order.
“Boss, tin cans outside. Following the tracks from the vehicles,” Bravos said, coming inside.
“You lead them to us?” Attila asked coldly.
“No,” Bravos said, shaking his head. “They followed the tracks though; Vladek parked the truck right outside.”
“Frack,” Wladislaw snarled, grabbing his rifle. “How close?”
“A kilometer off. I saw them rounding the bend as the fog was lifting.”
“Get that Pizda Vladek out here! Now!” Attila snarled, voice rising in rage. Lever came out, drawers being held up by one hand. “Get in gear! We've got trouble! No thanks to you and Vladek!” Attila snarled, marching down the corridor to Vladek's room. “Vladek!” he snarled, pounding his fist into the door hard enough to shake it.
“In a minute!” Vladek snarled back. Attila could hear huffing and puffing inside along with faint mewing sounds.
“Now Vladek! We've got tin cans outside!” Attila snarled.
That got the other man's attention. When the door was flung open however, Attila grabbed the guy by the back of the head and slammed him into the wall as the others poured out of their rooms in various stages of dressing and arming themselves. Attila slammed him head first a second time then crushed him against the wall as he snagged the man's right arm and pistol and twisted it back and up to lock it in place. Vladek gasped, disoriented and in pain. Attila casually pinned him with the back of his forearm to the back of his neck as his hand took the pistol. He screwed it into the other man's ear. “What did I tell you about parking the vehicles?” he snarled.
“Um …”
“I said, to park them away from us der'mo diya mozgi!” He emphasized his point by roughly slamming the man into the wall more and increasing the twist on the arm. “Now you get to go out there and move the vehicles and draw them off. Right?”
“Yeah, okay, whatever you want,” Vladek panted.
Attila pulled him away from the wall and pushed him to Wladislaw. “Get this debil out there to do the job he should have done in the first place.” He glared at all of them. They were obviously shocked by the tableau. “Move your asses!” he snarled, waving the pistol for emphasis.
He glanced over his shoulder to the girl, a blond this time, on the bed. Vladek had tied her to the bed and had been choking her. That was evident from the marks on her neck. Her face was streaked with tears and grief. She tried to look away, to curl in a fetal ball. Attila's lip curled in contempt as two of the other girls moved past to help the woman.
He grabbed his gear and then followed Bravos outside. They stood in the entryway, below ground level, and used a periscope to look around. Vladek had gotten out there in just his pants well ahead of them, ducking and moving quickly to the truck. He opened the driver's door and then climbed inside. A moment later he started up the truck with a roar and then barreled down the road.
“What the hell is that idiot doing?” Wladislaw demanded.
“I have no idea,” Bravos whispered. His eyes widened when he saw the truck take fire. “Should we …”
“He made his bed,” Attila growled. The truck made a U turn and then came on, right for the squad of android troopers. From the look of them, they were military grade Attila judged.
“They are focused on Vladek. The rest of you get out, lay flat, and crawl to get around them,” Attila ordered, pushing them out. They were reluctant but moved out anyway.
Vladek's truck picked up speed as it barreled down on the robots. They were caught with steep hills on either side of the road; a product of the rough plow job the cons had done to be able to use the trucks they had salvaged. One robot tried to climb the berm on the left while the other seven continued to fire into the cab and engine compartment.
The truck seemed to stagger and loose speed, but it had enough momentum to hit the robots as it fishtailed through where they were standing. Two of the robots were unknown, but Attila smiled slightly in grim approval as he saw android parts flying about and the satisfying buck as the truck rode over others.
“Quick, up there before they recover. Finish them,” Attila urged, motioning them to move.
It took only a few minutes to get within weapons range to see the carnage. Two of the robots were still on their feet; others were in pieces but still trying to recover. Bravos led the charge as they fired into the robots. Lever tossed an EMP grenade. Attila snarled at the waste, but it was too late. The EMP went off, and it did actually do some good, taking down a couple of the damaged androids.
The last two took concentrated fire from Gilpin and Jimenez. The robot twitched and danced like a marionette under their concentrated fire before it went down. Bravos kept moving past them, glancing once down to kick at a robot's head before he continued on to the truck and where it had rolled to a stop.
“Finish them,” Attila said, pulling out his small sledge. He used it to smash the heads of the robots, destroying their sensor
s and a portion of their electronics. Wladislaw policed the weapons while Gilpin watched the perimeter. Posey used a crowbar to get into the chest cavity to yank the batteries.
“We'll need to get rid of the evidence,” Wladislaw said. “They can't have good transmitters. Why they are on foot …,” he shook his head.
“No idea. I'm not sure about the range,” Attila grunted as he slammed a head under the chin and knocked it off to tumble away. “A drone might be in the area too,” he warned. That made Wladislaw look up.
When Attila finished with the last head, he turned to see Bravos on the driver's side of the truck. The other man was swearing and pounding on the door jam.
“That can't be good,” Wladislaw said gruffly. That got everyone else's attention.
“Keep working,” Attila said, glancing around as Bravos returned to them, clearly dispirited. His head was down, and he kicked anything he saw along the way.
“Dead?” Attila asked.
“As a door nail. The man is a colander,” Bravos snarled. “Why the hell did he do it?”
“Stupid,” Wladislaw said, “and to make up for being stupid earlier. Two stupidities is all it takes to get you killed,” he said with a grimace of distaste.
“We'll need to move the truck. Bury the body. Bravos, you get on that.”
“Yes, sir,” the dark soldier said sarcastically. Attila eyed him coldly then turned away. “Lever, go help him.”
Lever looked to object, but when that cold look was turned his way, he jack rabbited to help. When he got to the truck though, he took one look and then turned away, sick as a dog as he retched.
“I'll go help,” Wladislaw sighed, shaking his head as he hefted his rifle to his shoulder and moved out.
“Right. The rest of you, get the weapons and what gear we can use back to the base. Prep to move in case of trouble. Get rid of this shit. Smash the electronics; scatter the remains,” Attila ordered.
None of the remaining troops were willing to argue with him. They just grimly got down to business.
<>V<>
Zhukov noted a priority message from a subcommand unit; a squad of troops had missed a check-in. They had been dispatched to look for possible resistance forces in an area Skynet had noted continuous losses.
A drone was dispatched to their last known location. When its pings didn't initiate a response, not even of their onboard tracking beacons, the A.I. noted the location. Clearly some significant resistance was in the area, strong enough to take out a squad quickly enough to prevent them from getting a radio call off. That meant it would need to concentrate resources in the area to pinpoint their location and possibly interdict them.
The drone was not tasked with thermal imaging, however. It returned to base so a second drone, this one armed, could be tasked. However a storm front moved into the area, grounding the aircraft.
Zhukov calculated the resistance in the area would hunker down under the weight of the storm and then move out when it cleared. It would need to get the drone in the skies to watch for such movement.
<>V<>
As the EMP plan came closer to fruition, more and more people started to wonder about the long-term consequences. The costs of rebuilding the planet was becoming a heavy burden on everyone's mind.
Jack knew it would be a bitch, but there was one thing that kept him up at night more—that they had to win the damn war first. Some people just didn't seem to grasp that concept.
He hadn't expected his daughter to be one of them. Wendy hopped a yacht flight to come to him for a personal face-to-face rant about the plan. She brought Congresswoman Saigon and Mayor Ellington in on the discussion. Jack wished she'd come to him alone, not with them. It bothered him almost as much as the subject seemed to incest them.
“The cost …”
“The cost will be born, ultimately by our children or our children's children. But the cost in blood, that has to be paid in the present,” Jack reminded them, trying to keep his tone even and firm. “We can start planning on the aftermath, I know Radick and Pavilion have already been gearing for it.” He shook his head. “That's fine and dandy, but we have to win the war first,” he said firmly. “That means taking whatever measures we need to use to get the job done for the least amount of blood and money expended.”
“It's not that …”
“No? I see you getting cold feet.”
“Can you blame us?” Mayor Ellington stated.
“You're talking about wiping out every piece of electronics on the planet. Basically starting over. Who are you to make that decision for the human race? You know it's not right to do that and then make them use your company to rebuild. That's sick,” the congresswoman stated.
“Actually, I'm against him doing it for free,” Wendy said, holding up a hand to interject her viewpoint. The congresswoman eyed her coldly. “Hey, I have shareholders to answer to. Charity can only get you so far, but it doesn't pay the bills in the end you know.”
“So again, what gives you the right to make the decision? You should never have even tested the weapons until we had finished debating it,” the congresswoman said, eyes flashing.
“If you had, you'd still be debating it. Our people are fighting and dying now. They need support now. The billions of people on the ground are dying like flies … now. Today,” he said locking eyes with the congresswoman for a moment then turning his head to her supporters.
“You may not like it, but I'm the guy with the plan. And I never said they have to use my company to rebuild,” Jack insisted. He looked to Wendy and shrugged slightly. “There are a lot more fish in the sea; I know that. I also know it is a bigger job than one company can handle. I'm all for anyone pitching in any way they can,” he said, hands up.
“But that is what you mean about having all the industry come from space,” the Congresswoman practically wailed.
Jack shook his head. “Do you trust anything on the ground? I don't. Sorry, that's just how it is. And I know you agree with me. We can't do it. We can't rebuild the industry on the ground until every microchip, every diode, every memory circuit is recycled. We can't risk this thing getting into space- or spreading all over again.” He could see the mayor's grim but silent agreement in that statement.
“But still, it's not right,” the congresswoman said petulantly.
“It's the best one we've got. Do you have one better?”
“Well, no.”
“People latch onto a plan. I have one. You don't. It may work; it may not. It might need adjusting. But it is a plan. It's called leadership. You still can't come up with one. Just pick apart mine. Fine. Just stay out of my way. We'll get the job done.”
He could see that stung. He didn't care.
“It still doesn't give you the right. A lot of people are going to die, Dad,” Wendy reminded him softly. She knew this was playing out as well as could be expected. Her father was right of course, but his bullheaded insistence on going his own way should come back to haunt him eventually.
Especially if she played it right to the key shareholders she needed to win over.
“News flash. They are already dying,” he told her coldly. “Everyone dies. It sounds trite, but it's true. And ever since this damn A.I. virus hit they have been dying in droves, including your mother, Wendy,” Jack growled, eyes flashing.
“I know that,” Wendy murmured softly. “We're still not …,” she squirmed, “still not sure. There is no body,” she reminded him.
“When we get the chance, we'll look for her. When the time is right. As much as it pains me, we have to wait. She'd understand that,” Jack said, talking directly to his daughter. “She is … was a doctor. She understood the concept of triage.”
She nodded, near tears. Not all of it was feigned for their audience's benefit.
They gave her a moment to dash her tears with her fingertips and regain her composure. Jack sat back, forcing himself to relax.
“Deployment of the EMP is under the control of the military. They
have a plan. If it works, it will buy the refugees on the ground a considerable amount of breathing room to survive that much longer until we can get in and help them.”
“It will yes, cost some lives, and yes, it will do some damage to the environment. We can't make an omelet without breaking an egg. Sorry, that's the way it is,” Jack said gently. “We don't have the manpower to do it all—to save them all. Not even with the Neos coming up. Sorry, it's not going to happen,” Jack stated as the congresswoman looked to object. He locked eyes with her, shooting her down by force of will. “You've seen the loss numbers. You know this is true. Even with the pharmaceutical companies and my own medical division offering incentives for retirees to remain on or to come out of retirement, we still don't have the manpower we need. The economy is barely moving and the losses are hurting everyone everywhere. Morale of course most of all. This measure, it will go a long way to evening the odds. Possibly knocking them more in our favor.”
“I hope you’re right,” Mayor Ellington murmured.
Chapter 41
The HEMP devices were created in mass quantities after the successful test on Titan. There were two different versions. One was a basic nuclear weapon. The fusion neutron bomb was designed to channel into EMP instead of other forms of radiation. It had taken careful modeling by Vulcan to get the proper design.
The second version was a canister powered by antimatter. It was set up to deploy one millimeter thin, four hundred kilometer long cables out of the ends of the canister, then set off a massive EMP as it dropped through the atmosphere to the ground. The good thing about the device was that it could be set off much lower to the ground and wouldn't affect any organics. The nuclear device had a massive heat and light signature, one that would be blinding to anyone who happened to be looking up to the sky.
Isaac watched the final preparations as the sublight freighter dropped off the last load. The freighter did a ball and twine orbit around the planet, planting seeds of Skynet's eventual destruction. Hopeful destruction he amended mentally.