by James Rosone
Yogi and Pauli shared a nervous glance. This was a hell of an audacious plan Sergeant Riceman had just given them. Pauli wasn’t sure any of them would survive the next twenty minutes the more he thought about it, but this was the kind of tough-as-nails mission the Special Forces soldiers were known for—impossibly tough jobs that needed to get done.
“OK, Sergeant Riceman, we’ve got it,” Pauli said confidently. “Between my squad and Yogi’s, we’ve got thirty-four of us. Someone from the Midway was kind enough to lend us your armor and versions of your own weapons. We’ll do our best to support you.”
“I’d expect nothing less from you RASs,” said Riceman, nodding in approval. “Your battalion fought well with us on New Eden. I’m sure you’ll do just as good or better on this damn station. Now, let’s get to it. These animals need to be culled, and we’re here to do it.”
The sergeant’s mouth was visible below his HUD. Yogi and Pauli could see a wicked grin on the man’s face. He clearly loved his job, killing Zodarks.
Turning to the soldiers filling up in the corridor behind them, Pauli made sure his HUD was synced with both squads. “Listen up. We’ve been given a ballbuster of a mission by our Delta buddies. We’re going to filter into this storage room over there. I need our breaching team to pull out your explosives and meet me on the western side of the wall.”
The soldiers filed into the storage room. Three soldiers moved to the north wall, pulling out some small strips of explosives. When Pauli joined them, he explained what he needed them to do. The three of them talked about it for a minute. Once they’d formulated their plan, they began attaching the strips of explosives on the wall.
They started applying one line of the explosives at the base of the wall and unrolled it like a piece of tape, going up the wall about three meters high. He turned and kept rolling the line about a meter and a half to the right before unrolling the explosives down to the floor—he’d essentially created a rectangle the size of a large door. A corporal attached a small chip to one end of the explosives, then told Pauli they were ready to breach.
Pauli got Yogi’s attention. “Have one of your fire teams break to the right,” he directed. “They need to cover our backs while the rest of our soldiers advance on that large bay the SF sergeant told us about.”
Yogi nodded and disseminated the order. Then Pauli nodded to the corporal holding the detonator.
Bam!
The explosion wasn’t as loud as Pauli had thought it would be—perhaps because it wasn’t a big charge, or perhaps the special armor they were wearing helped to dampen the sound. Either way, when the wall came down, Pauli motioned to his fire team leader to go.
The seven soldiers ran through the smoke and immediately broke left. They headed down the corridor, prepared to keep going until they came to the next bend or until they ran into some opposition. Once they were through the door, Yogi’s fire team ran through next. They broke to the right and would do the same thing; they’d set up a blocking position to make sure no one came through and hit them from behind.
As the second team finished filing through, Pauli led the second fire team as they raced to catch up to the first set of soldiers. Running down the hallway in the new gear reminded Pauli how unused to this equipment they really were. The body armor and exoskeleton combat suit the Deltas used were both incredible and dynamic, but to an untrained person, they were hard to control. He had had to relearn how to adjust his run speed and how tightly he gripped something. It was incredible gear, but using it didn’t come naturally.
When Pauli rounded the corner at the end of the corridor, he saw the fire team ahead of him had stopped at the next bend. Approaching his corporal, he asked, “What’s the holdup?”
Without taking his eyes off what he was looking at, the soldier replied, “We found the bay where the Zodarks are holing up. There’s a crap ton of them in there. Here, take a look.”
The corporal took a step back, making room for Pauli to catch a glance.
Pauli inched forward just a bit and then pulled a small camera pen out so he could see around the corner. What he saw boggled his mind. Not only was the room filling up with more and more Zodark soldiers, he saw the strangest species he’d ever seen.
Pauli connected his HUD communicator with Sergeant Riceman. “Sergeant, we’ve found a way into that large bay you told us the Zodarks are attacking you from. But I need you to take a look at this. I’m zooming in to get you a better image of what we’re seeing.”
Pauli then made sure the camera was taking some live video shots and feeding it into the chat channel between the two of them. At first, Riceman didn’t say anything. Then the private channel filled up with several new people: Captain Royce, who Pauli didn’t know, and then Lieutenant Atkins and Major Monsoor.
“This is a good job, Sergeant Smith,” said Sergeant Riceman. “Captain Royce, I believe what Smith found might be an Orbot. It looks exactly like the pictures the Altairians and Prims have shown us, but this is the first time we’ve seen one in person. What do you think, sir?”
“I think you’re right,” said Captain Royce. “Those do look like the Orbots the Altairians told us about. Sergeant Smith, can you try to give us a better view of the room? I need to see if there are more of them present.”
Pauli pulled the zoom out on the camera and then slowly panned the large room. There had to be close to a hundred Zodarks in there. They were breaking down into smaller squads, with several of them appearing to be giving some orders and guidance on what to do next. There also appeared to be twenty or so Orbots.
Pauli found himself mesmerized, watching these quadrupedal biomechanical cyborgs. The lower portion of their bodies resembled a mechanical spider with half as many legs, while their upper bodies looked very similar to the C100s. They also appeared to be holding rifles and had other military-style equipment fastened to their chest. Clearly, these Orbots were soldiers, just like the Zodarks in the room.
Pauli’s HUD radio chirped. Captain Royce explained, “Sergeant Smith, we have several transports inbound; they’re at least twenty mikes out. I’m going to need you to do something really tough. I need you to bust in there and do your level best to kill as many of them as possible. They’re clearly regrouping to launch another assault down the corridor that’ll lead them to the hangar. We can’t let that happen. I’ll let you figure out how you want to carry out this assault, but you need to figure it out in the next couple of minutes. We don’t have much time.”
Pauli thought through the scenario. There was a very high likelihood they were about to get killed in the next few minutes, but there was also no other way around this situation. They needed to attack this numerically superior force and break up the attack before they could launch it. This was what the Special Forces did. These Delta operators would hurl themselves into unimaginable situations like this and somehow come out on top.
“That’s a good copy, sir. We’ll get it done,” was all Pauli said in reply to the order.
He turned to the soldiers behind him. “Here’s what we’re going to do. All of you carrying an M85, switch over to your smart grenades. When we come around the corner, empty your magazine of grenades into the enemy. Make sure you blanket the place—this way we envelop the entire area. When you’ve emptied your magazine, drop down to a knee and reload.”
Pauli then turned to the two soldiers with the M91s and the four soldiers with the M90s. “While we’re blanketing them in grenades, you six need to open fire on that horde with your machine guns. Those of you with the M91s, pay special attention to the Orbot soldiers. Keep in mind, these Zodarks are damn fast. They can take a lot of hits and shrapnel before they go down. You need to hit them more than once, so don’t let up once the shooting starts.”
He turned back to the first group of soldiers. “Once you’ve reloaded your smart grenades, blanket the area with grenades again. Focus on the Orbot soldiers if possible with your second magazine, but you must hammer the hell out of them. When you’v
e emptied your second magazine of grenades, switch back to your blasters and join the fray.
“Do what you can to move from time to time and spread out, but remember, the first few seconds of this assault are going to determine whether we live or die. We have to cut as many of them down as possible with our initial barrage. Hooah?”
“Hooah!” came the simple reply from his guys.
“We got this, Pauli,” Yogi said to his friend with a nod and a look of confidence on his face.
Watching the soldiers around him, Pauli knew it was time. They were ready, and so were the Zodarks. The Zodarks were letting out their raucous war cries, a clear indication that they were getting ready to launch another attack—an attack that might recapture the hangar.
“Follow me!” roared Pauli. He let out his own guttural yell as his body filled with adrenaline.
Rounding the corner, Pauli saw a large group of Zodarks about to head down the other corridor that led to the hangar bay. He aimed his M85 at the mass of enemy soldiers and fired one 20mm smart grenade after another until he had emptied the eight-round magazine. By this time, the rest of his motley crew had also joined the fray. They blanketed the entire area with smart grenades. Then his two heavy gunners opened up on the Orbots, sending streaks of blue light into their ranks. The four M90 gunners laid into the horde of enemy soldiers. It was almost like shooting fish in a barrel. Pauli’s HUD told him there were one hundred and twenty-three Zodarks and thirty-one Orbots in the cavernous facility.
Within seconds of the human soldiers appearing out of nowhere and firing on them, the Orbot soldiers pivoted toward them and returned fire with their rifles, which released a small vapor trail that flew out of the barrels and raced to connect with a human soldier. When one of the vapor trails hit the armor and exoskeleton combat suit of a soldier, it was like someone had just hit that person with a sledgehammer. The human soldier was thrown backward, off their feet and to the ground. Pauli wasn’t sure what to make of it when he saw one of his guys go down. His HUD told him the soldier wasn’t dead but injured.
As Pauli finished slapping the second magazine of smart grenades into place, he shifted his fire to where the Orbots were and proceeded to send a hail of grenades in their direction. To his amazement, the cyborgs shot at the grenades—their internal systems must have identified them as the most immediate threat to deal with.
While the bunched-up Zodarks got cut to pieces by his M90 gunners and his grenadiers, only three of the Orbots had been rendered inoperable. Pauli knew he needed to call an audible quick, or they were dead.
“Everyone, switch your rifles from blasters to magrails and focus on the Orbots. Our blaster bolts are bouncing off their armor, and they’re shooting our grenades before they can reach them!” Pauli boomed over their coms system.
Flicking his own selector switch, Pauli took aim at one of the Orbots just as it hit his last M91 gunner. As soon as he squeezed the trigger, the railgun projectile flew at incredible speed, slamming into the head of the Orbot he’d been aiming at. It blew right through the cyborg’s helmet and exploded a mist of biological and mechanical material out the other end. The Orbot’s body fell to the ground, dead.
The Orbots were now fully engaging Pauli’s team. The damn cyborgs were accurate as hell and didn’t miss nearly as often as a Zodark.
Pauli kept shooting at them, but he was having a hard time keeping track of the information on his HUD and staying focused on shooting at the enemy soldiers all around him. He didn’t have any cybernetic implants to help him, or a neurolink like the SF soldiers did. Pauli stole a quick glance at the blue force tracker—half his squad were already KIA.
Damn! Crap! They’d only been fighting for less than a minute, and sixteen soldiers were gone. Pauli took a deep breath, centered his mind and staved off his feelings of despair.
“Sergeant Smith, my squad and a handful of Terminators are about to enter the hangar,” Sergeant Riceman told him. “Hold it together for a few more minutes.”
Pauli sensed he needed to duck. He dropped to a knee just as an Orbot blaster shot sailed over his head, right where he had just been fractions of a second earlier. He scrambled to a new position a few meters away and then popped up just long enough for his HUD to identify an Orbot and zero in on it. He squeezed the trigger several times and saw chunks of the cyborg’s body get ripped apart. The Orbot collapsed to the ground, part of its body unable to function. It still tried to shoot at Pauli, so he sent a couple more slugs into its head.
Pauli grabbed for one of his M99 fragmentation grenades and pulled it from its quick-release holder on his chest rig. Depressing the arming mechanism on the grenade, he gave it a good throw in the direction of the Orbots. The damn cyborgs constantly moved about as they sought new cover and a way out of the human soldiers’ kill box.
The M99 was the newest version of a very old weapon of war. When the Army had first encountered the Zodarks, they’d realized they were going to need a new set of weapons designed specifically for use against them. The previous generation of fragmentation grenades worked exceptionally well against humans, but they had not worked nearly as well against Zodarks. The Zodarks’ skin was too tough, and their body armor was just strong enough to protect them from the older versions of the grenades. The M99s, however, packed a serious punch. They were twice as powerful as the previous grenades and had a specially designed shell that, when detonated, broke apart into larger chunks, thereby making it more likely to kill a Zodark.
When Pauli’s grenade landed between two Orbots and blew up, the explosion ripped them both apart. Then, to Pauli’s horror, more than two dozen Zodarks circled around his left flank while his soldiers had been focused on the Orbots.
Pauli saw all eight soldiers who had been covering his exposed flank, lying in different positions on the floor, dead. No, one of them is still alive according to the blue force tracker, he realized. But that soldier was unconscious and in a bad way.
“Behind us, I need some help ASAP!” Pauli yelled over the coms, hoping someone might hear him.
Yogi turned to see the chaos and then opened fire as fast as his M85 would shoot at the charging horde. Another soldier fired his 20mm smart grenades into the mass of enemy soldiers.
Pauli felt something slam into his chest hard, then another solid punch to his gut or diaphragm knocked the wind right out of him. Yogi saw him go down and made a move to come to his aid. Pauli watched in horror as his friend got hit by several Zodark blaster bolts before his body spun around and landed with a thud on the floor.
Just as Pauli thought they were all dead, Sergeant Riceman and his squad of Delta soldiers rushed through the other entrance into the large room. They charged right into the Zodarks, firing and shooting the entire time. At the end of their M85 rifles was a newly designed blade or bayonet, specially built and adopted by Special Forces and the C100s for the close-in fights they often got into with the Zodarks.
The Deltas tore into the Zodarks, thrashing and slashing as they went. The few remaining C100s went right for the Orbots. Pauli tried his hardest to keep his eyes open and lift his body up to help fight, but the more he tried, the weaker he felt. Then everything went black as his head rolled over on the floor.
*******
“Take those Quadbots out!” barked Captain Brian Royce to his soldiers as they rushed into the room. The Primords called the Orbots “Quadbots” because of their four legs—now that the human soldiers had encountered them, the name was starting to stick.
Several of the C100s moved like lightning toward the Orbots, firing their weapons the entire time. After seeing what that regular Army sergeant had done with the magrails, Royce had ordered his soldiers to switch over to their magrails as well. It was the only weapon that appeared to penetrate the cyborgs’ body armor.
Royce saw only a couple of the RA soldiers left shooting from the other side of the room. Most of them had been wiped out during their attack. Then an urgent alert flashed across his HUD.
System shutting down…System shutting down…
It took Royce a moment to realize who or what was saying this. It was his handful of C100s. One minute they were rushing toward the Orbots, shooting at them—the next, their metal frames were clattering to the floor with a loud thud.
What the hell just happened to my terminators?! Royce asked himself.
One of Royce’s master sergeants chimed in. “Sir, I think the Orbots might have hacked into our C100s and shut them down.”
Oh crap! If they can hack into the OS, they may be able to turn them against us, Royce thought, alarmed.
Royce linked himself into all the operating C100s on the station with them and the C100s on the transport that was in the process of docking at the moment. “Execute emergency shutdown, code: Bravo, X-Ray, Niner, Niner, Three, One, immediately!”
Blaster bolts from the remaining Zodarks and vapor contrails from the Orbots continued to zip all around the Deltas as they tore into the enemy ranks. The few Zodarks that were left fell back further into the station as they sought to get out of the hail of fire from the human soldiers. The Orbots, on the contrary, not only held their ground—they were working as a combined unit to engage the Deltas as efficiently as they could.
One by one, the Orbots were taken out. Their refusal to fall back with the Zodarks, or perhaps their programming not allowing them, ultimately led to their demise.
As the battle in the bay ended, several of the sergeants organized a couple of squads to pursue the Zodarks further into the station. They weren’t about to let them have a chance to catch their breath or reorganize for a counterattack.
While the Special Forces soldiers continued to press home the attack, more regular Army soldiers started filtering into the area. The rest of that major’s battalion had arrived, and they were now doing their best to augment Royce’s unit. With his last two platoons finally arriving, Royce sent them forward to help his other squads out.
