by Mark Harritt
“Just testing,” Will replied.
“That’s what I figured.”
“Hey, are you guys are putting out Claymores?” Rita asked.
“Yep,” Tom answered.
“Ah, are you sure you want to do that?” Rita asked.
“Rita, you remember what I told you?” Hank asked.
“Yes, Hank, I remember. You built this contraption. You know what it’s capable of. Nothing’s going to get in here and hurt me.” Rita replied, petulantly.
Everett started laughing, “You sound like my teenagers.”
Mickey glanced at Everett, “Is that good or bad?”
Everett thought about it. He didn’t have the nightmares anymore. He missed his daughters, and he always would, but the wound wasn’t fresh. He felt the melancholy, a little sadness, but it didn’t hurt the way it used to, “I don’t know. I guess, neither.”
A gunshot sounded down the canyon where Tom was placing one of the claymores. Evidently, one of the robots wasn’t completely out of service. Joe rendered it so. Tom walked over to the side of the canyon and used a piece of chalk to draw a thick line with a large arrow pointing down.
“Can you see that, Everett?”
“Yeah, I can see it Tom.”
“That’s 105, Everett. Alright, movin’ forward to place the next one,” Tom and Joe started walking forward. Joe could have been Tom’s brother. Laconic, skinny, and he could drive a nail with a rifle. He was from Utah, though, the only Mormon left on the planet.
“Hank, I understand that this thing is well built, but you aren’t on the receiving end of the claymores.”
Hank segued back into his conversation with Rita, “Those claymores won’t do any harm to you. It will sound like rain on a tin roof, that’s it. And, don’t call that fine piece of precision engineering a contraption, young lady. I hand built that thing with tolerances you wouldn’t find in a Bentley. You talk about her like that again, and I might turn you over my knee and spank you.”
“Promise?” Rita asked.
Silence fell as the chatter stopped. Every head turned to look at Hank. As the exchange was translated into Contai, they also turned to look.
“Ah, well, I mean . . .”
Mickey’s big ham hand folded into a fist and he used a finger to poke at Hank, “Bet you wasn’t expecting that, were you?”
“Ah, no, ah . . .”
Will’s helmet was fixated on Hank’s back. Everett wasn’t sure, but he could imagine Will’s eyes boring into Hank, “Jesus Christ, I’ve never seen him speechless before.”
Hank kept stammering, and Rita started giggling.
Will wasn’t helping. Will thumped Hank on the back, which did absolutely no good, and seemed to set Hank off into another fit of stammering, “You okay in there? You need some water? You might want to take that helmet off and get some oxygen. It getting’ a little hot in there?”
Mickey tag teamed, “We can move you to the shade, treat for shock.”
Everett’s display tinged with red. It looked like all the hostiles were moving again. Unfortunately, it was moving back toward them, “Okay folks, heads’ up. We’ve got hostiles moving back to our position.”
“Oh thank God,” Hank exclaimed. Once again, every helmet and head turned to stare at him.
“I, ah, I meant . . .”
“I am going to remember this day for the rest of my life, and whenever you get on your high horse, I’m going to remind you about it,” Will informed Hank, “rendered speechless, by a girl.”
“And you wonder why I sing the dwarf song when you start carving into the rock.”
Will’s head slowly turned toward Mickey, “What the hell are you talking about.”
Mickey held up three fingers, “Three things dwarves are famous for: Drinking beer, hoarding gold, and holding a grudge.”
Will stared at Mickey, “You just can’t let it go, can you?”
Mickey shrugged, and spread his hands, “Nope. Your reaction is priceless. Too good to let go.”
Will jabbed a finger at Mickey, “You’re right about that grudge thing. You forgot though, Giants don’t do well around dwarves. They have a tendency to get carved up.”
“I’m lucky you ain’t got your ax then.”
“Oh, I don’t need . . .”
“Hey, I’m just sayin’.”
“Oh no, Will, I am definitely not a little girl,” Rita interjected.
“No, you are most definitely not,” Hank replied.
A sudden hush fell as Mickey and Will suddenly stopped dickering, both intrigued at the new direction that the conversation had suddenly lurched toward.
Everett was enjoying the exchange, but he knew what it really was. Everybody was nervous. Better to make distracting small talk than to piss yourself with fear. There was a hoard of enemy combatants out there, and God alone knew if they were going to make it through the upcoming battle. The bickering and banter was just a way for them to ease the tension, to set aside the fact that some of them would survive, and some of them wouldn’t. Knowing that didn’t keep Everett from enjoying Hank’s discomfort, though.
“You been checking me out, Hank?” Rita asked.
Every helmet and head turned to stare at Hank.
Hank hung his head and started shaking it, staring at the ground, “Damn it!”
Everett was grinning so hard his face hurt, “Looks like you’ve got a stalker, Rita. I don’t know what we can do about a restraining order. In these canyons, there’s no way we can keep you two a hundred feet apart.”
“Oh Jesus Christ!” Hank exclaimed.
“Apart was not what I had in mind,” Rita purred. “I think Hank and I have some talking to do when this is done.”
Hanks head popped up, “We do?”
Rita wasn’t the only one laughing when Tom came trotting back.
“While ya’ll was palavering back here, some of us was actually doin’ some work.”
Everett turned his head to look at Tom, “You plant the claymores?”
“Yep, fifty meters apart, with the first one about fifty meters behind Rita.”
“Hank, you sure about what you told me?” Rita asked.
“Rita, the last thing I would ever do is put you in danger. There is nothing that I’ve seen on this world that could put a dent in that armor.”
Everett listened to the resolve in Rita’s voice, “Well, if you guarantee your work, then I trust you. You owe me a drink if it doesn’t work as promised.”
“I’ll buy you a drink either way,” Hank replied.
Rita sounded smug as she replied, “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”
Everett was glad that the two had made a connection, but he had to snap them back into reality, “Guys, I hate to interrupt this romantic moment, but, hostile robots, inbound.”
Tom started singing, “This magic moment, so different and so new, Was like any other. Until I kissed you . . .”
Everett turned to stare at him, “Tom, killer robots. Kil-ler Ro-bots.”
Mickey started, “Damn, I nearly forgot! I brought more grenades!” He rummaged around in his bag and pulled out grenades to replenish the ones that Everett and the team had used against the robots in the earlier wave.”
Everett started stowing the grenades around his kit, “Best Christmas, ever!”
“I got more magazines of ammo, too.”
“I didn’t know that Santa Claus was Italian,” Hank exclaimed.
“Irish-Italian,” Mickey replied. “I specialize in the gift of rearming.”
“The gift that keeps on giving,” Joe replied.
“Or taking, depending on which side of the barrel you’re standing on,” Tom pointed out.
“Giving a bullet,” Joe countered.
“Taking a life.”
Joe pointed out at the mass of scattered metal across the canyon, “Not so much here.”
Tom paused, “You’ve got a point.”
“Heads up, they’re coming.”
; Since they had the body armor, the security team stepped in front of the Contai. Mickey and Tom joined them. Between them, the Contai moved up so that they could put their muzzles between the security team and could fire without worrying about hitting them. Beside Everett, he had four Contai ready to shoot, two on either side. On both sides, one took a knee and the other stood over him. Everett wasn’t worried about a negligent discharge from these Contai. Part of Matki’s village, they’d been battle tested and thoroughly trained. They were hardened warriors. Besides, Caul had sent them out, and he’d only send the best.
Everett watched the head’s up as the red icons split into three distinct groups. They surged toward the opening of the the three canyons. He grunted as he realized that the largest group was heading toward their canyon. The red intensified as the mass of robots converged on the mouth of the canyon. He could hear curses as the rest of the team realized just how many of the robots were heading their way. Even with all the red on his display, Everett was able to pick something out, “Rita, looks like you have a couple of the big ones headed your way.”
Rita sounded concerned, “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop the small ones from getting past me, not with those two giant ones coming at me as well.”
Everett didn’t need for Rita to be worried about them, “Don’t you worry about us, Rita. We’ll take care of the ones that get past you. You just make sure you take care of those bigger ones.”
Hank spoke, “Rita, remember what I told you. There’s no way those robots can get into the carapace of your suit. Kick ass and know that you’re safe.”
“Okay Hank, but you worry about yourself. Remember, you owe me a drink.”
“I wouldn’t miss that for the world, Rita.”
The red tide of icons continued down the map on Everett’s heads up. It didn’t take much to realize that there were a lot more headed their way than they’d dealt with before. When the seething mass of hunter/killers came around the bend, there was a collective gasp from the men, immediately followed by cursing. Nobody moved an inch, though, knowing that fear would doom them all. And worse, doom the men, women and children that were depending on them.
Everett had never really known gut wrenching fear before. There’d been moments when he’d been afraid, mainly in training, like the first time he jumped out of a C-130, or when he’d done crossovers underwater with his hands tied behind him at the Special Force’s SCUBA school. But, in war, against the enemy, he’d always been able to rely on his training to get him through whatever it was that he faced. The fear was pushed aside as muscle memory coaxed him through shooting and reloading. Shoot, move, communicate was the automatic mode that his body went into.
That all changed when he saw what was coming down the canyon at them. Rita opened up as soon as she saw the wave of hunter/killers. There was no way that she could miss. Her rounds knocked out whatever they hit, but there were just too many of them. There were at least a hundred of them, maybe more. And in the middle, like titans of the old myths, two of the dreadnaughts strode toward them.
Joe, without saying anything, raised his rifle and started shooting. Everett did the same, and then the rest raised their rifles and gunshots rang out across the canyon, counterpoint to the sound of the railgun. They couldn’t miss. A solid wave of lead slammed into the robots. Some went down, but just like the railgun, it didn’t seem to slow their momentum at all. The steady sound of Mickey and Tom’s SAWs sounded among the barking of the rifles. The SAWs put out a steady stream of bullets, but the 5.56 just didn’t seem to have enough mass to deal the damage they needed to kill the robots. The smaller caliber of the Turinzoni rifles didn’t do as much damage as the old 7.62 that Everett was used to. Bigger rounds would have helped, but they had to fight with what they had.
Everett’s attention was pulled to the two huge titan robots. Walking among the smaller, quicker robots, the titans seemed slow and ponderous. That was just an illusion, though. Everett remembered just how quickly they really moved. His thoughts went back to the team’s headlong rush down the street in the necropolis, back when they still had Roberto with them, trying to escape from the one that Mike ended up killing. For a moment, Everett stared at the titans, reliving the terror he’d felt back then. The tread of the giant robots wasn’t really heard so much as felt through the ground.
Then, those thoughts slipped away as the wave of robots crashed against Rita’s mech. He watched as three slipped past only to be gunned down. That was just the beginning, though. The wave surged around Rita like a living creature. She kept firing, and used her pulse laser, cutting into the robots as they wended their way around her mech.
There was no way that she could stop them, though. It was like trying to use your hands to dam a river. There were way too many. The hunter/killers went past her, and started loping toward Everett and his team. Bullets flew, and different voices sounded the sing song, “Loading – Set!” as the men dropped one magazine to replace it with another. Everett couldn’t even make out singular targets in the surging wave, so he just concentrated his fire into the mass of robots, hoping that he was doing damage.
The two dreadnaughts were now close enough that Rita couldn’t concern herself with the smaller robots. She couldn’t help with the smaller robots anymore, she had to worry about herself. She shifted her focus from the hunter/killers and engaged the two giant robots. Rita wasn’t as smooth as Jen was with martial arts, so she did more of a boxer’s bob and weave as she engaged the two titans. She still had lots of ammunition to engage them with, though. She used the railgun to target their sensors joints. When she could, she hit the joints with her pulse laser. Rita didn’t have as much room to maneuver as she would have preferred, though, and she took her licks as the robots pummeled her mech.
None of that mattered to Everett, though. As soon as she turned her attention from the hunter/killers, it seemed as if a damn had burst. Sixty or seventy of the robots were left, and they were running hard at Everett’s team. The tide had just turned into a tidal wave. Inexorably, like the fiends of hell itself, the h/k’s closed the gap between them. He watched and timed the shifting wave until he judged it to be close enough to the first claymore. He yelled, “Claymore!” as he triggered the first one. It exploded with a cloud of dust. He watched as one of the robots was lifted and thrown through the air like a rag doll, slamming against the far wall of the canyon and dropping back down. He knew more were down, but he couldn’t tell how many because of the rising cloud of dust mixing with the fog.
Robots broke out of the dust cloud, the fate of their mechanical brothers not halting them in their quest for the team’s blood. They were close enough that the he could see the black fabric flying as the bullets scored hits on the robots. It still wasn’t enough to stop the tide. Once more they hit the threshold where Everett thought he could do the most damage, “Claymore!”
Another explosion, and chunks of metal hit the far wall of the canyon. Tom had angled the claymores forward, but he couldn’t fan the entire width of the canyon. Still, they’d damaged them. Everett could definitely tell that the mass of robots had been thinned out as they burst through the dust of the explosion. The robots were down, but they weren’t out yet.
There was still a sizable mass of robots in the pack as it emerged from the dust cloud. Some weren’t as mobile as the front runners, but they still came with two, three, usable legs, dragging themselves across the mud and scree on the canyon floor, metal scaffolding and electric wires trailing, sparks arcing through the air. Now, all of the fabric on them had been shredded by the explosions and the shrapnel, and the internal frame, mechanism, and electronics that drove them could be seen behind the torn and tattered fabric, making the robots less lifelike, more alien.
Mickey and Tom concentrated their fire on the front runners. Damaged, some were easier to stop than others. The robots fell, fewer and fewer. Now, the problem was that they weren’t concentrated, and you had to aim to make sure you hit them. With the robots running acros
s the uneven terrain, moving side to side, up and down, some were hit, and some weren’t. Robots went down, but it wasn’t enough. Everett knew that some were going to break through to the team. It wasn’t going to be a massacre, but it wasn’t going to be pretty either.
“Grenades!” Everett screamed. The globes of explosives flew forward en masse. It was a crap shoot with the robots moving so quickly. Some of the grenades landed past the robots, some too far in front, and a few landed among them. Rippling explosions knocked many down, but some made it through.
Then the robots were there, and in a split second, among them, and it was every man for himself. Everett braced for impact. He heard screaming as the robots crashed into them. The formation of men convulsed and dissipated as the killers launched into them. The orderly formation turned into chaos as everyone’s world focused on the robot that was trying to kill them. The screaming faded to the back of his consciousness as he focused on his enemy. One ran right at him and he raised his rifle to jam it into the mouth, but it veered at the last moment and went right past him, knocking him to the side. He aimed his rifle at another one right behind it. He pulled the trigger until the rifle ran out of ammunition, then he started pounding the robot next to him with the butt of his rifle. The robot that he’d shot at moved across his front and then he lost it as it disappeared into the scrum.
He wasn’t able to bring his rifle to bear on any of the robots, so he pulled his pistol and started shooting down at the robot next to him. It had one of the Contai rifle men on the ground and was savaging him with metallic tooth and claw. Everett jumped on top of it to knock it sideways. He rammed his pistol forward and pulled the trigger. The robot’s head exploded, but it wasn’t out of the fight yet. Everett aimed his pistol in a different location, this time targeting the torso of the automaton, and pulled the trigger until he felt the frame of the robot loose tension and fall to the ground.
Everett’s world was chaos. Men and robots twirled in macabre dance of death and destruction, the beat of the dance fueled by the screams of dying men. Fields of fire and safe directions were nonexistent as men scrapped to delay their deaths via mechanical demon. Bullets flew everywhere. Something hit Everett in the shoulder and knocked him sideways. He staggered backwards, and saw another robot on top of a soldier in body armor. He jumped forward and shot at the torso, praying that he didn’t accidently hit the man underneath with a stray bullet. Then he heard more shooting from underneath the robot, and prayed he wouldn’t be shot.
