Resist the Red Battlenaut

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  Scott shook his hand. "Thank you, sir."

  "I realize this is a hell of a lot to put on one guy's shoulders," said Perseid.

  "I can take it," said Scott.

  "I know you can." Perseid tightened his grip. "Why do you think we've been putting the screws to you since you came aboard?"

  Scott stopped shaking Perseid's hand. Suddenly, the grueling regimen of his life on the Sun Tzu made sense.

  "It was a test?" Scott frowned. "And I passed?"

  "What do you think?" Perseid let go of his hand. "Now go get ready for planetfall and show us what you're really made of. Show the whole quadrant."

  "Yes, sir." Scott saluted.

  "We've got twelve hours of orbital reconnaissance," said Perseid. "Then you'll get your chance."

  "I'll be ready."

  "You better be." Perseid waved him off and turned to face the view of the approaching planet. "Of all of us, you damn well better be."

  *****

  After leaving the Command Deck, Scott went back to prepping his Battlenaut...but not for long. An hour later, he was summoned to a conference room by Captain Rexis.

  When Scott entered, Rexis and seven other Diamondback officers were staring at a holo projection cube hovering over the big ebony conference table in the middle of the room. Right away, Scott identified what they were watching as video of the surface of Shard--a recognizable landscape of gray and silver shapes gleaming in the cold light of a pale yellow sun.

  "Corporal Scott." Rexis gestured at the screen. "These are some of the first images from the A.I. probes sent to Shard."

  Scott nodded and moved closer, watching the hovering cube as the video continued to play within its boundaries. It was like gazing into a cube-shaped window, following a scene near the planet's surface thousands of kilometers below.

  "Take a good look," Rexis told him. "Let me know if anything jumps out at you."

  Scott watched closely but didn't see anything unusual. The A.I. probe was shooting video from what seemed like a few hundred feet up, zipping along over fairly nondescript land undisturbed by artificial structures.

  "What do you see?" said Khalil, who was sitting at the end of the table nearest to Scott. "An army of Red Battlenauts on the march?"

  "Just metal," said Scott. "Lots and lots of metal."

  "That's what we're seeing on telemetry, too," said Rexis. "Not that that means anything, when it comes to the Reds' stealth capabilities."

  Just then, Masada Feinberg spoke up from the middle section of the table. "Second feed's coming in." She was playing a tablet computer, flicking her delicate, spindly fingers over the screen.

  "Put it up," said Rexis.

  A second holo cube appeared alongside the first, displaying video from a different location. In this feed, instead of a flat, relatively featureless landscape, Scott saw rolling hills covered with the Shard equivalent of forests--stands of treelike biometallic organisms, shiny and conical as evergreens dipped in platinum. There were ponds and lakes, too, filled with gleaming liquid metal like mercury or molten silver.

  "That's a thousand kilometers due West from the first feed," said Feinberg. "For reasons we don't understand at this time, it's a region with a much higher concentration of lifeforms."

  Scott could see she wasn't exaggerating. When the probe passed over clearings in the forest, he saw they were crowded with herds of big, gleaming beasts, the local versions of cows or rhinos. The ponds and lakes were life-filled, too; triangular fins and V-shaped tails broke their surfaces as the probe hurtled overhead. Even the air was populated. Flying creatures swirled in the distance, sunlight glinting off their light aluminum-like bodies as they darted out of the probe's way like tiny fighter craft.

  "Well, Corporal?" said Rexis. "Do you see anything out of the ordinary?"

  "Other than an unprecedented ecosystem based entirely on biometallic lifeforms, that is," said Trane with a snicker.

  Scott stared intently at the second feed, looking for anything non-native...but came up empty. The probe banked around a mountainside, then followed a mercury river through a valley lined with low-growing metallic scrub--and still, nothing unusual revealed itself.

  "No sign of the Reds?" said Rexis.

  "Nothing yet." Scott checked the first feed, too, and saw more of the same as he'd seen there before. The probe just kept sailing along over drab, rolling plains with no flora or fauna in sight.

  "Maybe there's nothing to see," said Abby. "Maybe whoever built the Reds got what they came for and left."

  "That would suggest a limited effort," said Taggart. "Maybe they only built a few units instead of a whole army."

  "Which wouldn't be a bad thing at all," said Abby.

  "But is highly unlikely," said Khalil, "given the number of incidents which we suspect are the result of Red intervention."

  "I hate to say it, but I agree with Khalil." Trane scowled and shook his head. "The Reds did more than drop by here for a cup of biometallic ore."

  Just then, Scott lunged closer to the table, running into its edge, and everyone looked in his direction. Something had caught his eye on the second feed.

  Then it was gone, as the probe kept whizzing along above the planet's surface. "Can we play back the last fifteen seconds of feed two?" His heart was pounding when he said it.

  "Yes." Feinberg's fingers danced over her tablet, and a copy of the second feed cube appeared beside the original. Within the new cube, the video from the feed spun backward, making it look as if the probe had suddenly changed direction and started zipping back the way it had come.

  "Right there!" said Scott, and the feed froze. "Now start it forward again, but slowly."

  All eyes in the room were locked on the video as it crawled forward again.

  "What exactly did you see?" asked Khalil.

  Scott didn't answer. His attention was totally focused on the left side of the cube, where a huge tangle of what looked like copper wire slipped into view.

  As he watched, the tangle of wire seemed to ripple, as if waves of heat were flowing over it. The rippling stopped, then started again--and the tangle changed shape.

  "Stop!" said Scott. "That's it!"

  Feinberg paused the video, but Scott wasn't happy with the freeze-frame. The new shape was severely blurred. The most he could make out was the corner of a square shape angled into the upper left quadrant of the shot. Whatever the thing was, the rest of it protruded outside the camera's field of vision.

  "What do you see?" said Trane.

  "Not sure. Move another frame forward," said Scott.

  The video flicked forward another frame, and the unknown object was still there, just as blurry. What the hell was it?

  "Another frame," said Scott. Still, there was no change. "One more." The image stayed the same.

  "What are you looking at?" said Rexis. "Where is it located?"

  "Upper left corner of the shot." As Scott said it, he looked at Feinberg and twirled his index finger. Feinberg picked up the hint and moved the video forward another frame.

  Rexis pulled out a holographic pointer and directed its bright red beam at the general area where Scott saw the blurred shape. "So what does it look like to you?"

  "I don't know. A blur." Squinting, Scott leaned further forward. "Can we roll the video ahead in very slow motion?"

  Seconds after he asked, the video crept forward, a frame at a time. At five frames in, maybe seven, the blurred object started looking like a silver cube. Then, as the probe veered right, even the cube slid out of the shot.

  "Now it's gone." Scott shook his head and leaned back. "I don't know what it was."

  "Take another look," said Rexis, and he did. In fact, he went back over the video a dozen times, rechecking the same segment. Always, the results were the same: he saw the blurred object turn into a silver cube, then disappear. There was no clarity to be found whatsoever.

  But there was guidance nonetheless.

  "All right." Rexis let out a heavy sigh after t
he twelfth review of the video. "At least we know where we're going."

  "We do?" Trane sounded like he thought she was crazy.

  "Corporal Scott saw something," said Rexis. "He doesn't know what it was, but it was something. And that's good enough for me. That tells us exactly where we need to be."

  "But the feeds are still coming in," said Khalil. "What if there's something else he should see? Something that's more important?"

  "That's why he's going to stay glued to the feeds." Rexis nodded at Scott when she said it. "He's going to watch as much as he can and let us know of anything else that catches his eye. Right?"

  Scott nodded. "Yes, sir."

  "And if he doesn't find anything else, we'll stick with Plan A." Rexis pointed at the freeze-frame of the planet's surface hovering over the conference table. "We'll move in on that location and light the place up."

  "Assuming our onboard A.I.s can target the Reds effectively," said Abby.

  "They should do the trick," said Rexis. "We know our sensors and cameras can detect Red equipment, though the resulting data and video are invisible to everyone except Scott. If the Reds can't hide from our equipment, the computer-driven A.I.s should zero right in on them when we take humans out of the equation."

  "And if the A.I.s fail?" said Khalil.

  "That's where Scott comes in," said Rexis. "He'll tell us exactly where to shoot...won't you, Corporal?"

  "You can count on me." Scott tried to sound confident, though he had his doubts. "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's seeing Red."

  *****

  Chapter 14

  Scott's Battlenaut marched down the drop ship's rear gangway, just a few steps from the surface of Shard. The planet's mysteries and dangers were closer than ever now, waiting to challenge him.

  Not that they'd have an easy time getting to him when they tried. Scott was surrounded on all sides by armored Diamondbacks committed to protecting him. As a secret weapon, the only one who could see the enemy, he had to be shielded at all times. If things went south in a big way, the Diamondbacks had orders to get him back to the Sun Tzu at any cost.

  Protect the Red-detector: that was the heart of the team's surface warfare strategy for this mission. Scott knew it was the right strategy, he had no doubt in his mind...but he still hated the thought of it. His instinct was to take the point and drive hard at all times, not hang back while someone else drew fire on his behalf.

  "Here we go." Abby's sharp tone came through crystal clear over the comm. She was on point, in command of the squad. "Keep it tight, people."

  "Roger that," said Trane, who was stomping down the gangway on Scott's left. "Locked and loaded, good to go."

  No one else said anything right away. They were about to step out into an inhospitable environment, with unknown enemies in the wind and high stakes on their shoulders. Lack of focus in the first moments on the surface could lead to early casualties and premature mission failure.

  On his frontside feed, Scott watched Abby's Battlenaut cover the last few meters of ramp directly ahead. Without hesitation, she stomped right out onto the planet's surface--in this place, a deep bronze flat with a pebbled texture.

  The squad held up behind her as she stood for a moment, surveying the area. Projectile guns had formed on both her forearms, and she swept them back and forth as she looked for trouble.

  "All clear." She kept the guns raised as she moved forward again. "For now."

  The rest of the squad took that as their cue and followed her out.

  With Trane on his left and García on his right, Scott took his first steps on Shard. He was letting Frank the A.I. do the driving, with overrides for course correction and sudden stops or starts as needed. Minor adjustments were handled just fine by Frank, whose autopilot capabilities had been demonstrated as outstanding during every drill and exercise on the Sun Tzu's Training Deck.

  That was a good thing, because Scott had other minute-by-minute mission critical tasks on his plate. Chief among them, he had to eyeball his video feeds constantly, watching for any signs of Red activity in case Frank and the other A.I.s missed it.

  As good as the A.I. systems were, Scott didn't trust them entirely. The Reds were so adept as concealment, he couldn't imagine they hadn't planned for A.I. involvement.

  As Scott walked across the pebbled bronze ground, he brought up every feed and used eye control to arrange them side by side in front of him. He locked them in place, then flicked his eyes from one to the other along the line, checking for aberrations, finding nothing...yet.

  Then, on his frontside feed, he saw something lunge out of a hole in the ground at eleven o'clock, a golden blur streaking toward the ebony bulk of Abby's Battlenaut. For an instant, Scott thought it might be a Red threat, blurred by masking technology--but the blur was just the product of fast movement. As soon as the thing landed in front of Abby, its image clarified.

  It was some kind of biometallic creature, like a gold-skinned serpent with the head of a wolf. As it reared up in front of Abby, it bared its golden fangs and unfurled rows of gleaming blades like cleavers running along the sides of its body. Pulling back, it looked like it was ready to strike.

  Which was exactly when Abby's armor grew a large-bore shoulder cannon and blasted five rounds right through the creature's skull in short order. Headless, its body flopped to the ground at Abby's feet.

  "Avoid contact with native fauna whenever possible," said Abby, quoting the pre-mission briefing they'd attended aboard the Sun Tzu.

  "That was native fauna?" said Trane. "Looked more like García after a bender."

  García said nothing in reply. His armor looked as implacable as ever when Scott stole a glimpse at his rightside feed.

  "That was a documented species, actually," said Khalil, who was stationed at Scott's seven o'clock behind Trane. "It could have tunneled right into her armor and devoured her down to the bone in less than a minute."

  "You sure about that?" said Trane. "She's pretty stringy."

  "And there are nastier creatures than that down here," said Khalil. "Much nastier."

  "Not counting the Reds," said Donna.

  "Move out!" Abby marched her Battlenaut over the creature's carcass as she said it. "We're still three klicks out from our target."

  The squad fell in behind her. The drop ship had put them down some distance from the location Scott had spotted on the probe feed. They had some ground to cover, but it was better than landing too close and getting blown to pieces right off the bat. This way, even if the Reds had detected the drop ship's approach, the squad still made landfall and had a chance of reaching the target in one piece.

  For a while, the seven Diamondback Battlenauts continued their march in relative silence--no chatter over the comms, no gunfire, no surprises. They looped around a dark gray slope that kept them out of eyeshot of the target, letting them close to within half a klick of it before they'd have to emerge from cover.

  The whole time, Frank did the driving while Scott scanned the feeds. He saw some amazing sights--bizarre plantlike lifeforms and creatures close by or at a distance, bodies grown from biometallic materials. There were beasts like pygmy unicorns plated in glossy blue titanium armor...trails of dull gray-green powder flowing in intricate patterns over silvery flatlands...galvanized pods like pitcher plants the size of full-grown men, spewing showers of ball bearings into the air. He was struck by how strange and beautiful Shard was, even as he recognized how deadly it could be. For every butterfly of lacy aluminum fluttering by, he saw a giant lizard-thing studded with silver spikes or an elephantine leviathan covered in whirling razor-sharp blades and spring-loaded jaws with hundreds of serrated teeth.

  But he didn't see any Reds. He didn't see any mysterious blurs or incongruous visuals that might suggest a cloaked presence.

  At least until the squad finished rounding the slope.

  "Approaching target coordinates," said Abby. "Safeties off, people."

  Scott followed her around the last curv
e of the slope, gazing intently at his frontside feed. Then, as the leading edge of the target slid into view, Abby stopped, and Scott did the same.

  "So this is it? A bunch of empty space?" Abby pointed one of her projectile guns toward the coordinates. "Is that what you see, Scott?"

  "No, sir." Scott's eyes were wide as he gaped at the feed. "It most certainly is not."

  What he saw was anything but empty space. "Holy flux." It was an enormous structure, a huge, cube-shaped building sprawling across the valley. "It's some kind of facility. A big one."

  "Amazing." Trane stepped forward, angling for a better view. "My A.I. sees it, too...but I don't see a damn thing."

  The rest of the squad pushed forward, too, breaking formation.

  "I don't see it, either," said Khalil. "But yes, my A.I. tells me it's there."

  "Are you sure it's there?" said Balko.

  Even García joined in. "Maybe the A.I.s are wrong."

  "It's there, all right." Scott saw the image clearly in his frontside feed, rock-solid stable and free of distortion. "But who knows what it's there for." From a distance, the walls of the structure looked completely smooth and seamless, reflecting the sky and landscape without giving any clues to what lay within. "It just looks like a big silver box."

  "A factory, maybe?" said Donna.

  "A processing plant for biometals, I'll bet," said Trane. "It's what we expected."

  "No one coming and going, according to my A.I.," said Abby.

  "We need to get closer," said Khalil.

  "To the giant, unidentifiable building on the planet of living knives." Trane's voice oozed sarcasm. "I can hardly wait."

  "It's why we're here." Abby grew a laser out of each shoulder and added barrels to the projectile guns on her forearms. "We're going in."

  "As one big cluster of Battlenauts stomping up to the front door." Trane snorted. "Awesome plan."

  "We don't even know where the front door is," said Abby. "We need to draw them out."