by R. K. Syrus
Nobu hated when people messed with his toys.
“What about the platoon of Rangers incoming?”
“No ETA. They’re bogged down on the river. Some crap about it being hippo mating season.”
“Guess we’re sittin’ here, then.”
Bryan checked the observation station. It was a periscope-style device with a 180-degree hi-def view of the tree line. He made sure the real-time feed was linked to his forearm-mounted comms screen. They could track, record, and assess enemy movement without having their helmets shot off.
“Snakelips, don’t let them get a good angle on the entrance,” Sarge yelled up to their designated sniper. “Anyone tries, pop their heads off. If they lob in gas canisters and we have to put on masks and WMD gear, we’ll be even less combat effective than we are now.”
“Whitebread,” Snakelips said without taking her eye off the scope of her mahogany sniper rifle, “prep me some more FMJ .308s.”
The specialist hooked a .308 projectile pouch up to the M-956 flexmunitions module. His beefy hands cranked the handle, and it spat out match-grade rounds. Cased in cellulose, their RFID-tagged powder charge was exactly matched with the sniper rifle’s ranging scope.
Whitebread handed them up to Snakelips’s perch by a vent shaft. “Here ya go—”
“Oy cacada!” She knocked them away, heedless of the freshly crimped bullets scattering on the floor. “Forget it. Get me the red box.”
“The one you tell us never to touch or play with?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Snakelips said, swapping out her barrel.
In Bryan’s experience, watching her change barrels was normally like watching a pro golfer choose what kind of club they were going to use: 6.5 mm putter or .50 cal driver. This time her hands moved so fast he could hardly follow. She was ready before the biggest mag he’d ever seen got passed up. It was marked:
¡No tocar!
“Ortiz?” Bryan said calmly. “Is there something we should be made aware of?”
Instead of answering, she flicked on her scope-share channel. Everyone’s forearm feed display got a view of what she was looking at through her aiming optics. Branches were shaking all along the tree line. Something big was rolling toward them, more than one.
“What are those?”
“I seen them somewhere.”
“Of course you did, sucka,” T-Rex scoffed. “They’re TALOS perimeter sentry bots.”
“Why are they coming toward us?”
“Why are they moving at all?” Bryan got a bad feeling. “Nobu, you deactivated them, right?”
“I did everything but pull the mechBrain chip housing, which would have taken hours.”
Everyone ducked as the first electromagnetic-fired mortar rounds fell short.
“They’re supposed to be locked down and inactive,” Nobu concluded weakly.
“They’re hella active from where I am,” Snakelips said. “Permission to fire.”
“Blast ’em at will,” Bryan confirmed. “Can you take ’em out?”
She shook her head. “There’s too many.”
“They must be piloting each one by joystick,” Nobu concluded after trying to counterhack the robot tanks’ mechBrains. “The AI controls are lobotomized. Steering and firing is on manual. It’s a lot slower and less accurate. From here there’s nothing I can do to stop them. The insurgents must have coding skills.”
“Terrorists got programmers now?” T-Rex said, aghast. “No dang fair!”
“Maybe you can email their ombudsman,” Whitebread said.
“Seal up your pie holes,” Bryan snapped. “What else we got?”
“Not much.” Nobu checked through their light ordnance duffel. “We packed for snakes and mosquitos, not to fight our own heavy mobile armor drones.”
The only bright spots were the occasional flashes and ear-splitting thunder coming from Snakelips’s position. She was letting off T-17 .60 cal HEAT rounds. While the shaped charges on the high-explosive antitank rounds would not go through the incoming bots’ frontal armor, she’d gotten a few mobility kills by taking out their ATV tracks and turret hydraulics.
“Last two rounds,” she said calmly.
“Save one for that piece o’ crap Stymph drone up there in the sky,” T-Rex said. “Thing’s got the firepower of a guided missile cruiser, and it’s just hang glidin’ up there.”
Sarge made up his mind. They were facing incoming robot tanks firing mortars and encirclement by disorganized but very aggressive and plentiful hostile militia.
“This position can’t be held. Only bet is to exfil and join up with Rangers as they proceed up the river.”
The exfiltration maneuver would start with a flat-out run through an open field being heavily shelled. If they made it through that, it would be on to a foot-snagging swampy jungle while being fired on by ten times their number of enemy ground elements.
It was a hella bad plan. There was a good chance not all of them would make it. But sitting there waiting to be blasted to pieces or gassed was worse.
Their stealth camo outfits worked best when they stood in front of nearby surfaces. If they moved slowly and kept close to the TALOS station’s walls, they might be able to slip into cover.
Bryan thought furiously. If these hostiles had enough tech know-how to hack through secure Army mechBrains, could he depend on them not using the robot sentry’s sensors on them? Those could see right through personal stealth. If they relied on their only tactical advantage, they could be sitting ducks.
“Nobu,” Sarge said, grasping at straws. “Did you recheck the schematics? Did the engineers who built this place leave any tunnels under the facility? Anything we can crawl through?”
The half Japanese, half Apache radio tech shook his head.
“Place was sealed when they finished building it. Totally self-contained. It’s a supersized version of the ones they send up to other planets like Mars and Pluto to recharge landing craft.”
“Who runs the generator, then?”
“Robots.”
“And who runs them?”
“Better question is,” T-Rex said, “can we get them into the fight on our side?”
Nobu made his “wouldn’t that be cool” face.
“No. They’re closed in with the machinery. They fix each other. When they ask for parts, those get fed through radiation-shielded slots a foot wide.”
“How did it come to this?” T-Rex said, exasperated. “Robots are sittin’ pretty. Safe, with job security and robo-health-care doctors who make house calls. While we, the human people, are about to get smoked by our own zombie mechBrain artillery?”
“So,” Sarge asked, “no other route underneath? Along some cooling shafts or something?”
Nobu shook his head. “Even if there were, the radiation would fry us before we got a hundred yards.”
“Okay, everyone!” Sarge put on his best boisterous rally-on-me voice. “Take water, ammo, and comms. Whitebread, you and your Gatling shotgun are on point. Northeast is where more of their shooters are. Let’s tear ’em a new one. We’ll link up with the Rangers as they slowpoke up the river and come back swingin’.”
Sarge drew lines and X’s on his forearm display screen map. It was a Hail Mary play in a deadly serious football game.
“Snakelips, if you can disable the second mech here—”
“USA ground force White Rhino,” Bryan’s comms squawked suddenly, “this is Draco Volans aerial survey. Confirm your position and status.”
Bryan had Nobu check the possibly friendly aerial unit’s transponder code.
“He’s WWHI civilian. Incoming in a single-person flier that has no class code.”
“Man! We about to get our asses perforated, and they send one dude in a flyin’ car? I’m never donating to Worldwide Help again.”
“Yeah, they’re really gonna miss your three dollars,” Snakelips said. She sorted through her bulky sniper accessories, stressing about what she would take. “They got more money
than the Pentagon.”
“Maybe this guy can distract them without getting shot down,” Whitebread said.
“White Rhino actual to Draco Volans,” Bryan said into the external comms channel, “if you have an idea, execute it, otherwise we’re out of here in three zero seconds.”
“White Rhino, hold present. Do not discharge your weapons, not once, am I clear? To do that will be a fault fatal for you. Confirm.”
Fault fatal? Dang foreigner. Bryan let off a few other words beginning with “f.”
But he’d seen WWHI contractors in action. Bryan and Sienna had narrowly escaped being drugged and tortured by one in a Khorasan cave years back. They were violent and vicious people without an ounce of mercy. And if you were in a tight spot, those could be downright helpful tendencies. They just had to be pointed in the right direction.
“Confirm, Draco Volans. No weapon discharges until further notice,” Bryan said.
Whitebread shuffled his feet. It was a unilateral ceasefire that, as yet, had no explanation. He could tell the specialist didn’t approve. T-Rex didn’t say anything.
“No firing,” Bryan told the Dogs. “Unload and show clear, but keep watch.”
They could afford to give the new player a chance. A mad dash into the jungle through a storm shower of hot metal could wait a few minutes.
“There he is,” Snakelips said, looking through her spotting scope.
They saw not one ultralight but six. All were taking ground fire from the tree line.
“He’s projecting holograms to fake ’em out.”
“That’ll work until they turn the tank sentries’ radar on him.”
“Or pepper all six targets with RIP rounds,” Nobu said.
“Look,” Snakelips said. “He’s releasing something.”
“Is it drones?”
“A microSwarm could lay down smoke or harass the hostiles.”
They could do a lot more than harass, Sarge Bryan knew.
“It’s not drones. They’re falling into the trees,” Whitebread said.
“What’s this about not shooting?”
The next time they heard from the pilot Draco, he asked them to do something really dumb.
“White Rhino, will you be so kind as to present the enemy with targets? Try to be as elusive as you can, but do draw their fire. Do not discharge your weapons. Please do this immediately. Out.”
“A civilian in a volocopter talkin’ to us like that!” T-Rex said.
“Thanks for volunteering, Probationary Private,” Whitebread said. “Draw their fire and try to be as elusive as you can.”
Keeping down flat, T-Rex crawled outside the bunker. He stuck up a low-tech helmet on a very low-tech stick. This faked out the high-tech insurgent enemy.
Like it generally did, gunfire spurred more gunfire. The fake target was soon well and truly shredded.
“Good,” airborne Draco said. “Very good, White Rhino. You can get back to safety. I’ve got them.”
As to how and with what their new ally had “got them,” on his own, Bryan would have been in the dark. But Nobu, probably pissed he did not have these new toys in his box, had been busy figuring them out.
When T-Rex was safely inside the power station bunker, they gathered around a display.
“See? This is video feed coming from those things the flyer dropped.”
In a murky green rectangle, the point of view was what you’d imagine a snake sees. Roots and leaves and bugs slid past. Suddenly there was a big military-style boot with a skinny ankle coming out of it.
“What are they?”
“I can’t control them,” Nobu said, “but I’ve been recording their feed. It’s not highly encrypted.”
“I can’t see anythin’. Just vines and crap.”
“Just wait until this one looks at another one,” Nobu said. “There. That’s them.”
In slow motion, the video panned over to a device that looked like a LEGO lizard toy. It crawled on four legs and used a chunky tail to balance itself while getting over objects.
“Subterranean drones. About a foot long. Designed for maximum power efficiency. They can go weeks surveying inside cave complexes with sonar and other sensors. Nicer than anything the Army has.” Nobu sounded jealous.
T-Rex said, “Unless they got teeth and we’re gonna ankle-bite the enemy, how’s that help?”
For a change, he made a good point.
The crawling drone they were monitoring stopped moving. A human form was right above it. The enemy. The lizard bot leaned back to pan up the soldier’s torso.
“Hey, look, this one’s just a kid,” Snakelips said.
An African boy about nine years old was in the drone’s orange crosshairs. He was dwarfed by the AK he carried, which had the stock shortened and a smaller magazine inserted. An assault weapon modified for use by preteens.
Without warning, the power output scale on the side of the screen went from normal green to amber danger to red overload. The feed and the boy’s image cut out.
Inside the bunker, Bryan heard dull popping sounds from the enemy positions.
He and the Dogs cautiously exited their bunker. Draco’s volocopter landed in a clearing that had been pockmarked by mortar impacts. He had blue quick-clot oozing out of a forearm wound. He looked pleased with himself.
“I’ve been theorizing how to weaponize these underground lizard robots. I’ve never had the chance to test them.”
The Dogs greeted their rescuer with cautious comradery. He was about Bryan’s age but very lean. When he flexed the hand of his wounded arm, tendons popped like an anatomical model.
“Well,” Draco said, “Sergeant Bryan and D Group auxiliary squad, shall we mop this up?”
They couldn’t think of any reason not to.
Most of the enemy were down with severe burns. The rest had given up or run.
First order of business was to stop their own rampaging sentries. Each was about the size and shape of an eighteen-ton MRAP armored truck. They were better protected and carried more weapons on account of there being no crew.
“Okay, I got the robots back on our side,” Nobu said after hardwiring the mechBrain of one sentry. The rest would fall in line and ignore remote commands.
“Sarge, we got sixty-six enemy hostiles captured,” Whitebread said hesitantly. “Many are wounded. Two or three might not last until medivac. And… they’re mostly kids.”
The average age of the detainees was about thirteen.
“There’s got to be adult supervision,” Bryan snarled. “Find them.”
Awhile later, the ringleader was found, but not by them. Sonic stunner blasts sent up a flight of multicolored birds from over near the river. Couple minutes later, the pilot, Draco, dragged a shirtless, ornery-looking bastard back to the casualty collection point.
“This one is called Najeer,” the contractor said. “That’s all he’s said. I would like to incentive him to be more loquacious. If that’s all right by you, Sergeant.”
Until their support force of US Army Rangers finished taking their sweet time and got there, Bryan’s people had their hands full. If it weren’t for rules of engagement, he’d stun cuff Najeer and see if he could swim.
“Take him off. But nothing too loud,” Bryan said. “I don’t want to freak out the detainees.”
Disarmed and disoriented, the boys on the ground all around them were moaning in pain or crying quietly. The former eleven WWHI hostages had only two MDs among them. The rest were scientists in specialties Bryan had never heard of. They pitched in as best they could.
“Mr.…?”
“Draco is fine.”
“Yeah, okay. What did you hit the enemy combatants with? We saw you drop the survey robots, but they don’t have any armament.”
Draco’s thin lips stretched into a tight smile under his hollow cheeks.
“I was not entirely sure it would work. The ultralight was running low on fuel and has only a limited payload. I was out of options, or rat
her, you were. I could have flown away.”
Draco examined one of the boy soldiers. He had a big “+” mark burned into his shoulder.
“My survey drones shot them with a sheet-beam klystron. These have an output of 2.45 GHz, similar to a microwave oven. It is used for communications and chain-recharging deep underground. The pulse overloading worked. Lucky for you and your men.”
“Another boy just died, Sarge,” Snakelips said, shooting a look of pure venom at Najeer. “The burns didn’t look that bad.”
Draco studied the dead boy.
“Some of their internal injuries will be unrecoverable.” He took closeup snapshots of the dead and injured. “I have alerted our nearest hospital. Their transport may arrive before your Rangers. In any case, WWHI is best equipped to deal with the wounded.”
“The lizard drones zeroed in on their targets using sound,” Nobu said, lifting up a limp lizard bot to get a better look at its sensors. “The sounds of gunshots. That’s why you wanted us to cease fire.”
“Exactly,” Draco said, dragging Najeer away. “It was the only way to tell the good guys apart from the bad.”
9
Bryan knew there could be other hostile elements wanting to try their luck at the radioactive prize inside the steel and volcanic concrete piñata. After they had secured US Station TALOS, they assessed the remaining perimeter bots. The MRAP-sized sentry drones had to be redeployed to protect the buried nuclear generator.
“That one’s scrap metal,” T-Rex said, looking at a carbon-scored hole in the housing of its mechBrain. He stood nearly waist deep inside a deep rut. This had been dug in the soft ground by the wild churning of the sentry’s tank treads.
“You nailed this one too, Snakelips,” Nobu said, putting his hand inside a bullet hole. “I hope they don’t bill you. They are really expensive.”
“I’m sure there’s loco paperwork to fill out,” she shot back. “And I’m double sure that’s the probationary private’s job.”
“What the heck was so interestin’ for scientists way out here anyway? Sarge?” T-Rex asked.
“…Sarge?”
• • •
