by B. V. Larson
Today was no exception. As I reviewed the situation, I saw it was clearly hopeless. What’s more, it always had been. Since we’d landed on this creeping sundial of a planet, we’d been abused by Armel and every living being who cared to call this rock home.
To me, that seemed just plain unfair. When faced with an unwinnable situation, well sir, I felt clear of mind and soul to take unusual action to rectify the perceived injustice. What’s more, I felt fully justified to take any manner of action I saw fit.
In this case… I decided it was time to cheat.
Helsa had given me something a day earlier: the keys to her small army of combat drones. Taken by themselves, they weren’t all that much. Just a few hundred deadly robots, more or less.
But, when coupled with a few other advantages, they could be an important factor on the battlefield. One of these advantages was the simple fact that I’d ordered them to bury themselves in the loamy soil near their old stomping grounds, at the center of what used to be the Shadowlander town. The other advantage was they were now positioned behind the last saurian’s flapping tail.
With a sense of righteous destiny, I pressed the activation button on the controller Helsa had seen fit to leave with me.
At first, nothing special happened. I bared my teeth and squinched up my eyes, trying to see the center of the field past all the raging lizards and whatnot. Then I recalled that these drones liked to take their time while booting up.
My troops were experiencing a brief lull in the fighting, but it wasn’t going to last long. Most of them were wandering around, carrying the wounded to the rear and generally looking stunned.
“Prepare to hold back the second wave!” I roared. “Lights, advance and take up morph-rifles if the heavies fall. Leeson, move your weaponeers forward with their belchers. Stand fast, boys!”
They all hastened to obey my orders. More than a few groaned at talk of a second wave—but they were game. They took up positions and continuously fired into the billowing smoke and dust that now blocked everything from view.
Most maddening of all, I could no longer see my combat drones. Were they engaging or not? I had no idea.
The second wave was brutal. They were a lot fresher and most were uninjured. They came on with a vengeance, but we met their fury with a shocking amount of firepower. Saurians staggered to our lines, dead on their feet. Still, they often managed to land a blow or unload a magazine at point-blank range before they toppled at last.
This time the fighting was hand-to-hand before it was over. We won, but at least half my troops were dead or dying. On our flanks, 2nd Unit and 4th Unit had all but collapsed.
Harris wormed his way over to me, and he slapped me on the back. “That was some good fighting, McGill. But we both know we’re screwed now.”
“Yeah… probably.”
Harris laughed. “I saw those waves back there. We’ve only stopped half the saurians, and that doesn’t even count Armel’s ball-throwing reserves in the rear. We’re toast, and you know it.”
“Yeah…” I repeated.
Every second my eyes roved over the scene, looking for a break in the storm of dust and smoke. Where were those damned drones? Irritably, I pressed the activation code several more times. There was no visible effect. I cursed and waved Harris away irritably.
Climbing to my feet, I began to march toward the center of the battle field. Maybe the damned remote had a small range, and the drones hadn’t gotten the signal.
“Where are you going, Centurion? Sir?” Harris asked, but he was talking to my back.
“Take command, I’m going to check on something.”
“What the fuck…?”
I broke into a trot, then a dead run. I plunged into the smoke and dust, leaping over bodies and debris that came at me seemingly out of nowhere.
The third wave of saurians rolled up about then, meeting me in a ragged line. They seemed surprised to find a human out here, but when I slammed into them, they attacked me, snarling.
Force-blades sprouted out of my black armored sleeves. The armor was lighter than any normal heavy trooper wore, and more flexible, but it still had the capabilities of our standard-issue heavy suit.
I slashed and thrust at them. They looked at me like I was a madman—which I pretty much was. Getting over their surprise, they shot me a dozen times.
I stumbled and went down to one knee, but then leapt up again. Deep cuts from my blades disemboweled two of them, those who’d thought they could rush close and finish me.
They’d thought wrong. I was fine, if a bit banged-up. With the new undercoating of soft stuff I’d put into the suit, it was hotter inside but much better at protecting my body.
Pellets splashed and exploded over me. I was tossed off my feet again, and a saurian planted a big three-clawed foot on my chest.
That was a mistake. The last thing I wanted was to be pinned down. I cut off that offending foot with a single burning slash and stood up again.
Three saurians encircled me. They’d been left behind by countless others. Most of the wave had probably never even known I was here, what with all the smoke and confusion.
The trio rushed me together. That was bad. There had to be five hundred kilos of lizard coming my way, and although I’m a big man, I was about to be rolled back on my can. If they just sat on me, there wouldn’t be much I could do.
I took a chance then. I grabbed the only grav-plasma grenade I had off my belt, activated it and dropped it on the ground.
The lizards barely noticed. I got a few nicks in as they closed with me, having figured out by this time that the armor I had on wasn’t being pierced by anything they threw at it. One lizard’s arm hung by a thread, and another had lost his tail.
But then they were on me. They bore me down on my back, forcing me to lay supine.
The truth was, I didn’t fight quite as hard as I could have. After all, the grenade’s timer had to just about be up.
Snarling and hissing with pleasure, they crouched on my body, biting the legs and punching the belly. It wasn’t pleasant, but nothing penetrated.
Boom!
The grenade went off, and the lizards were treated to a front-row seat. Their tails were lifted up and the underparts were showered with shrapnel. This was done with such suddenness and force that they were sent flying right over me.
One of them, the guy with the dangling arm, did a perfect “one” flipping ass-over-teakettle onto his back about three meters off. He struggled to rise for maybe two seconds before slumping down in death.
The others were squirming and grunting, wishing they were back in their mamma’s egg-sack… or wherever they’d come from originally.
Standing up, I found I was sore around the groin area. But everything was still intact. “Sorry boys, but I’ve got to run.”
I took off as fast as I could toward the center of field. When I got there, two things confused me. For one, the fourth wave I’d spotted earlier had never materialized. For another, I found the holes I’d placed the drones into—and they were empty.
“Huh…” I said aloud, standing in the midst of a swirling firefight with my hands on my hips. “Might as well keep going and see what’s what.”
Trotting fast, I headed toward Armel’s line. I don’t rightly know what I expected to see—but I knew those drones had to be out here somewhere. If I could find them and help them do some more damage, so much the better.
That’s when I began to find bodies. Lots of them—all saurians. A dozen lay dead, tails-up, in that weird pose so many of them die in when stricken hard. There were a lot of parts missing, blown clean off.
I began to grin and trot faster. This had to be the work of my drones. It had to be.
The smoke and dust cleared enough for me to make out what was happening nearby. A pitched battle was occurring, and I could see the combatants clearly.
On one side were around eighty robots. The rest had been knocked out of commission. Surrounding these was a desperate
mass of struggling forms—they were lizards, but they didn’t have armor on.
I realized at last what I was looking at. The combat drones had found Armel’s reserves, the scaly pricks with the mortars that had been showering us with all those acid balls all day long.
Without hesitation, I joined my robots. We killed those damned lizards for the next ten minutes or so—every last one of them we could find.
-73-
Armel showed up about when I ran out of lizards. This was kind of a surprise, as he was usually the chicken kind of officer, the kind who stayed well behind the front lines.
But not today. He came up out of nowhere, and he belted me one in the back of the head. I was surprised by this as well, as my robots didn’t do shit to stop him.
Then I recalled that I’d ordered them to kill saurians—not humans. I’d done that just I case some of my own men showed up. I didn’t want anyone from Varus to die in a blue-on-blue accident. After all, my people might then shoot at the robots, thinking they were the enemy.
When Armel showed up, however, he was definitely the only human in sight. The rest of my people were doubtlessly hunkered down in some blood-and-mud filled hole on the other side of the battlefield.
“So, it is you!” Armel growled in a raspy voice. “I knew it the moment these metal monstrosities showed up. It couldn’t have been the Shadowlanders. They would never be so full of treachery and deceit!”
Having been knocked to one knee, I stood up and turned around. The blow hadn’t put me out, despite the fact Armel had landed it with the butt of his combat rifle. My helmet had absorbed the shock nicely.
Armel was wearing fancy armor, too. This surprised me.
“Hey! Where’d you get a suit of the good stuff, Maurice?”
“From Rigel of course. I have you to thank in that regard, you me gave the idea after impressing me a week ago.”
I nodded. “Well, that will even things up some I guess…”
Armel formed two stabbing blades of force, and I did the same. We were both going to be pretty damned hard to kill as long as we kept our suits on, so we squared off and circled.
We jabbed and slashed at one another, drawing smoky lines across each other’s breastplate—but nothing went through.
“You are a fool, McGill. You have lost this planet by cheating.”
“Nonsense. We faced your lizard-legion and won, fair and square.”
“Then where did this mass of murderous robots come from? Answer me that, you lying ape!”
I threw my hands wide, and I took a long step backwards. There was a heavy crunching sound under my left boot. The sound was, in fact, from the control box that Helsa had given me. I’d dropped it when Armel had belted me, and now I’d stepped on it. Rotating the heel of my boot from side to side, I made sure the box was ground into dust.
Oh sure, I’d considered ordering the robots to kill old Armel, but that would have been a mistake. If I proved now that I was in control of them, well sir, the Nairbs never looked kindly upon rule-breakers like myself.
“I honestly don’t know where they came from,” I lied. “They must have been left behind when the nomads took off.”
Armel’s mustache squirmed over his lip in rage. “You are so full of shit it’s amazing it doesn’t squirt from your ears when you smile at me like that!”
“Now, now, try to keep your brain turned on for one second. Notice that the robots aren’t attacking you? Or me? They’re just killing lizards.”
Armel’s eyes slid from side to side. “You have programmed them for this.”
“Nope. I’m not smart enough. All I do is kill people and wreck things.”
Armel lifted a gloved hand to his helmet. I could tell I’d planted a dark seed of doubt in his mind. “It is a trick. It’s always a trick with you.”
“The way I figure it, it was just chance. We fought over the center of the old Shadowlander town. They always parked their robots right here, in this same spot. Last time they saw your lizards, they were attacking their town. Maybe they were set to hate reptiles, or maybe they—”
Slam! Armel had bashed me one in the helmet. My head rolled to one side, but I rolled it right back. I grinned at him.
“Stop it with your absurd lies,” he said. “You’ve obviously destroyed my army with outside help. I won’t listen to any more—”
Deciding to test out his suit’s quality, I swept up my boot and slammed it into his balls. He wasn’t expecting that, as I was still grinning at him like a two-bit fool. I did that a lot with enemies, it kept them guessing.
I was gratified to see him wince and snarl. He didn’t go down, but I could tell he’d felt my ten kilo boot all right. You just try wrapping up your jewels in some foam rubber, and then let your buddies beat on your crotch—it’s no picnic.
“You fiend,” he said, baring his teeth and stumbling back a pace. He was still on his feet, but he wasn’t a happy camper.
“Sorry about that. You really should try putting some padding under your armor. Sure, a bolt won’t penetrate, but—”
“Shut up. You have lost. I’ve filed a complaint with the Nairbs, and they have agreed to take up the case. They will never stop their investigations, and the Inspector hates you personally.”
“Yeah… that’s true. But it doesn’t change reality, Armel. What’s your explanation for what happened on this battlefield today?”
“Subterfuge. Sabotage. Backstabbing and cheating. All of these words describe the incident accurately.”
“What’s your evidence?”
He straightened his spine up some and pointed a gauntleted finger at me. “What are you doing here alone? Why have you broken ranks and raced across a bloody battlefield? Because you obviously knew what was happening here. You knew, and that is proof enough.”
“Hell’s bells,” I said, slapping my black breastplate. “Are you blind, old man? See this here? I’m wearing impenetrable armor, same as you. We’re the only two men on this sad-sack planet who’ve got this kind of personal protection.”
“So what?”
“So, that’s why I’m here. I raced across the battlefield because no one else in my legion could pull it off. If we’d all had this kind of armor, why, we’d have cleaned your clocks by now, robots or no.”
Armel’s shifty eyes did some shifting then. He was thinking it over, and I could see that he could understand the logic in my bullshit. I was laying it on thick, mind you, but I’ve found over my long lifetime that when you lied you had to go whole-hog. There couldn’t be a hint of doubt in your mind, or the other guy would detect it.
In fact, my absolute certitude concerning my fabricated version of events was working some magic on Armel’s brain. I could see it. He wasn’t sure what had happened.
Finally, however, he got his second wind and stepped closer. He wagged a finger in my face. I hated that almost as much as a kick in the nuts.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not today. This battle was compromised. The Nairbs will surely see that and rule in my favor. They aren’t as impartial as they would like you to believe they are. Their hatred for you, McGill, will cause them to stray from their stance of neutrality and award me the victory by default.”
I blinked at him for a moment, wondering if he was right. Then, I faked another kick.
He hopped back comically, and covered his gonads with both his gauntlets. Laughing, I turned back toward the west, and we went our separate ways.
-74-
My normal expectation after a victory of the kind I’d helped achieve today was to be lauded as a hero upon my return to camp. Today was no different. I arrived with a big grin and a laugh.
“We beat their scaly asses!” I shouted. “Legion Varus has swept the field clear of saurians! The battle is ours, brothers and sisters!”
At first, everyone who heard me hooted back their encouragement. The grimy remains of my own unit rushed up from their hiding spots, clapping me on the back and marveling at the completene
ss of my kit.
“That armor is unbelievable,” Leeson said.
“It’s more than that, it’s frigging unfair,” Harris said. “Why does McGill get a suit, while we get squat?”
I clapped him on the shoulder, letting my hand land quite hard. He staggered a half-step and glared at me.
“Because, my friend, rank and honor comes with certain privileges. But don’t worry, as soon as these go into mass-production, I’ll order a suit for each of you.”
That promise put a damper on all complaints. It was total bullshit, of course. We couldn’t make many of these suits. It just wasn’t practical. At this point, they had to be made by hand, and we only had about seventy captive Vulbites who could do it.
The Rigellians had thousands of suits, naturally, because they’d been allied with the Vulbites over a long period of time. They therefore had billions of individuals crafting them, rather than a few dozen.
Still, none of these pesky facts needed to be shared. Everyone was in a great mood, and I hated to needlessly bring people down. It just wasn’t my way.
Another figure appeared then, a skinny man with a pair of thin sour lips to match his stick-like limbs.
“There you are, McGill,” Winslade said. “Do you realize that Graves ordered me to come out here and find out what happened to you personally?”
“Uh…” I said, and I looked down at my tapper. Sure enough, there was foil tape wound all around my arm. I’d done that when I’d decided to run off by my lonesome toward the enemy lines. After all, fielding thirty-odd calls from Graves and other officers would have been mighty distracting.
All of that was a big deal to me, but I wished I’d managed to remember to take the tape off when I’d left Armel and returned to our side of the field.
Damn.
Wearing a distracting grin, I put my hands behind my back and began picking at the silvery tape.
“So good of you to come out and check up on me, sir,” I told Winslade. “We’re all fine and dandy here. I’ll investigate my tapper malfunction and—”
