“I like to think of myself as the witch doctor,” Natty said, “thank you very much. I share the title conjointly with my wife. Just because our methods are a tad nontraditional…”
“A tad, he says,” Ajax mumbled, half-asleep already. It was as if he was talking in his sleep, actually.
Leon held his thumbs-up to Cassandra and Natty. “Good job, both of you,” he whispered, throwing his voice at the same time. Then he committed a couple last blasts of air from his lungs to his air pillow before tucking himself in for the night. He was looking forward less to sleep, which he suspected would not be forthcoming for him, and more to the pools of silence he relied on to drain his undigested emotions into. He hadn’t forgotten about the twelve men that had died earlier that night.
He glanced up at Cassandra from his hammock as an afterthought. “I’m guessing you don’t sleep?”
She shook her head no.
He nodded. “Excellent. You get first watch and every watch thereafter then. Welcome to the team.”
She smiled ruefully. Went back to her knife filing. Interrupted periodically with a knife hurl and her outrunning the knife in a blur to catch it at the receiving end. She was demonstrating her ability to get to anyone in camp before anyone else could get to them, Natty thought. Especially since she was throwing the knife straight at one of the men or another. Though being the only one still awake to observe the ritual just sent shivers up Natty’s spine. So he laid down and went to sleep for the night.
THIRTY-TWO
“The sun is shining. Bright new day. I feel reborn, fellas. A whole new person.” Ajax finished stretching and panned his head right just a little bit from the inspiring vista he was beholding to the Goliath-Bot with its foot in the water. And its arm extended. The Goliath-Bot was funneling the water up through the pumping mechanisms in his leg and shooting it out his hand. Ajax sighed. “Scratch that. Different day, same shit.”
The water corkscrewed in midair as if it had a mind of its own. Ajax gulped. “He’s taking regular water and making it smart somehow. Conscious water? I thought we weren’t playing with nanites anymore.”
“No one said anything about biological warfare done at a nano-scale, just no nanobots, as in microscopically small robots,” Leon said, observing the same phenomenon. “Must be some virus or bacteria that functions like a hive mind.”
“Yeah, yeah, I read this book called Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. According to this fellow, they can communicate with one another around the world, giving the entire planet a form of consciousness. Of course, that guy was nuts.”
“It’s attracted to the light.” Leon pointed to the glass, dew-covered panels on the Goliath-Bots reflecting the sun at different angles. The smart water was migrating to the Goliath-Bots’ surfaces, looking for more real estate to acquire. “It must live at the surface of that pond, feeding on the sunlight.”
Once the water hit the Goliath-Bots it adhered to them, spreading evenly over every surface, and turning the transparent glass a milky white. Blinding the operators inside. The opposition, fighting on Leon’s side, was battling blind now and quickly becoming more of a menace to one another than to the enemy.
“I don’t understand,” Ajax said. “Why don’t our Goliath-Bots recruit the rest of the light spectrum as a workaround? If they can’t see with visible light anymore, they have a lot more rays to choose from: X-rays, Gamma-rays, Infrared.”
“Because someone mutated that bacteria further so the group mind can throw up an interference shield, blocking all EMF propagation in and out.”
Ajax shook his head slowly. “Earth. Wind. Fire. I can’t believe I overlooked the water element. I thought we had all the elements covered. I mean there were only four. How could I lose count?”
“Fighting for your life makes you really smart in some ways, really dumb in others.”
Ajax turned to face Leon. His face a mess of emotions. “Tell me we thought to commandeer one of the water-element Goliath-Bots,” he said, his voice sounding whiny.
“Nope. Be sheer dumb luck to have one of them on our side.”
“Isn’t dumb luck how we win many of our campaigns?”
Leon took that one on the chin. He was sure no disrespect was intended. He grabbed Ajax’s jaw and turned his face back towards the action.
“Whoa! He just froze that other Goliath-Bot in a block of ice.”
“That’s not ice. The Goliath-Bot has more than enough strength to shatter ice. The water must have been tweaked again with another bacterial cocktail that makes it flash-freeze a hundred times more solid than granite.” For the time being, Leon was appreciative of the fact that Patent had mobilized the much younger OMEGA FORCE cadets early, figuring for once, he mightn’t have to motivate them to get going. Now that real life had turned into enough of a video game for them. Still, typical of first man in, last man out, they were taking a beating and OMEGA FORCE hadn’t even finished crawling out of the sack yet.
“So, these Goliath-Bots don’t just extract deadly substances from whatever habitat they find themselves in, when in science mode. They weaponize and mass produce those substances on the fly and apply them in the field. Sort of like what our ALPHA UNIT does.”
Leon groaned and rubbed his temples. “Yes, Ajax, like that.”
He finished rubbing his eyes in time to see a small contingent of Goliath-Bots emerging from the water. They were taking on the Goliath-Bots fighting on Truman’s side. Each one adding a different bacterial mix to the water they were pumping out of the lagoon at the bad guy bots. One variety of bacteria caused the Goliath-Bots to lock up and rust over, much like Leon’s people had done to the very first Goliath-Bot to appear on the scene, albeit via a different technique.
Ajax cheered. “I told you. Dumb luck wins every time. You must be feeling damn unnecessary about now.”
Leon took this remark on the chin too. He had bigger worries than playing who gets to have the last word. At least as far as the banter went. As far as the fighting went, that was something else.
***
“You do nice work,” Leon said, turning away from the sight of the self-piloting Goliath-Bots mixing it up with the native-driven ones. He squeezed Natty’s shoulder and shook him affectionately. “If these guys don’t make it in war, I’m guessing they’re still going to put the WWF out of business. Way more fun to bet on.”
“By the time they’re done slugging it out, they’ll have leveled a patch of the Amazon rainforest the size of Kansas. You’ll forgive me if I don’t share your enthusiasm. I’m doing more to destroy never-before-seen-far-less-classified lifeforms today than human history has managed thus far.”
“Trust me, that’s an exaggeration. Anything big enough to be harmed by them has long fled this ruckus. The trees alone fall like rolling thunder before they even land a punch. The punches sound more like elevators landing a hundred floors below after you cut the cord. As far as the loss of insects and the torn web of life go, I get where the apocalyptic thinking comes from, but...”
“If you still don’t think your praise is premature, take another look,” Natty said, his finger pointing the pertinent direction.
Leon returned his attention to the melee. The self-piloted Goliath-Bots were outmaneuvering the native driven ones, if not by as much of a margin as he’d hoped. The entranced tribal warriors had plenty of faster-than-normal reflexes of their own, honed on years of combat from an alternate state of consciousness. One Leon’s men could not yet match.
But at least his people had the skull caps by which to better pilot their Goliath-Bots, hands-free. Something they didn’t have the day before. The improved coordination, speed, and agility of the Goliath-Bots fighting for the good guys was immediately apparent. He sighed. Even if the same thing could be said for the Ubuku-piloted Goliath-Bots, who were now benefitting from skull caps that allowed for hands-free piloting, as well, supplied them by Truman’s techies.
And now, to make matters worse, the natives were not contenting th
emselves with piloting the Goliath-Bots. They were scaling the self-piloting ones the way Leon and his men had done the Ubuku-piloted ones the day before. Well, not exactly the same way. They had rigged slingshots big enough to hurtle humans. And they were making use of their numbers advantage to hurtle those warriors at the self-piloting robots.
The natives only had to make contact with the Goliath-Bot to run up them like gecko lizards. Exhibiting an analogous ability to hold on to the robot’s near frictionless planar surfaces with their hands and feet to the one that Cassandra had. Though Leon imagined that had nothing to do with body nano and everything to do with whatever the jungle-extracted tree substance they lined their hands and feet with.
Leon sighed. “One of these days I’m going to earn the right just to watch from the sidelines.” He tapped his ear mike. “You seeing this?”
“Yeah,” came the chorus over the OMEGA FORCE party line.
Cassandra found her way to his side from wherever the hell in the forest she had disappeared to more than an hour ago. “Tell me you have something for me,” Leon said.
She showed him her net-woven bag of fruits. Looked just like figs. “It’s what those bastards eat to procure the altered state they’re in.”
“That’s not something you could have figured out on your own?” Natty said. “No one knows the forest as well as these natives, and they’re not exactly documenting everything on line.”
“That’s why I became one of them,” she said, “at least for a while, last night.”
Leon killed his mike and hers. “You were supposed to be standing guard over us!”
“I was. I can be in two places at once.”
Leon’s eyes went wide. Then he made the connection in his head. “You’re not supposed to be running nano wars out here! It’s against the rules.”
“Not using nano. You forget I have Laney’s bioengineering abilities. I trained the cells in my body long ago to feed directly from chi. So I don’t ever have to eat or drink. And I trained the neurons in my mind to make better use of the quantum field, directly.”
Natty, standing beside Leon, nodded. “It’s an unconscious ability we all have but few know what to do anything with, except for some artists and one-percenters known for their ability to access flow state. Even they don’t have that kind of access to it though.”
“I’m more dialed into my quantum mind than most. So I can take advantage of nonlocality.”
“Ergo, being able to be in two places at once.” Natty nodded, thinking it through in his head. “Nice.”
“And the shapeshifting?” Leon said.
“Since I know what a stickler you are for the rules, it was just a skin job.” She showed them. She had the Ubuku-look down pat, down to the glowing skin. “You don’t mind me using my nano for camouflage purposes, so I figured…”
“That’s because it’s nothing we can’t do with some face paint!” Leon groaned.
“Face paint and maybe some wigs,” Natty said, with a wry smile, enjoying her Medusa’s head of Egyptian cornrows done up as snakes.
“Their language?” Leon said. “Their mannerisms?”
“I’m a fast study, nano or no nano. I hung back long enough to pick up some basics. And if it makes you feel any better, I had to get out of there when they smelled a rat. Something that definitely would not have happened with the nano assist.”
Leon decided to let the matter go. To Cassandra, he said, “You keep the ability to be in multiple places at once to yourself for now. I don’t mind my men walking a fine line of being afraid of you and grateful you’re on the team, just so they don’t fall off that tightrope.” He let out another groan. “If you can do all this with your meditations, why so keen to get your hands on Natty’s latest nano upgrades?”
“You said it earlier, important not to get too reliant on the tech; it can always fail you. Hence a little more self-reliance is always a good thing. That said, going it old school I prefer to think of as a last resort. Access to those kinds of powers is reliant on buy in from the Higher Self, the part of us that’s one with God, the cosmic consciousness, whichever you prefer. Compliance that’s not always so easy to get. Witnessed by my frequent disappearances prior to getting Natty’s latest nano upgrade, so your soldiers didn’t have to see me devouring food to replenish the nano like a mad woman.”
“How did you morph from your lithe body into Leon’s big, brutish body so quickly with the more primitive nano?” Natty asked. “Can’t believe this gap in logic escaped me until now.” Natty’s eyes went wide. “You used your bioengineering aptitudes to figure out how to hold on to my nextgen nano, keep it from self-dissolving.”
She dodged his last remark by addressing the less damning question. “I made my inside more of an aerogel, so I could simulate the volume without having the actual cellular density.”
Natty nodded and grimaced. “Cool.”
Leon reengaged the COM. “We’re going native, guys,” he said into the party line. “Cassandra got us some of that mind-altering fruit the bird men are using. So we get to have jacked up reflexes and whatever else those altered brainwaves can conjure for us.”
“About time someone bought us some decent tickets to this sporting match. Tired watching everything from the cheap seats,” Ajax blurted.
Leon took one of the fruits out of her bag, gestured to her to distribute the rest to the others. She disappeared to the next location rather than hightailing it. Leon snorted the way a dragon does before it dusts someone.
“Relax,” Natty said. “She tries that in front of them, they’ll just think she’s making use of her cloaking abilities to run the supplies up the line.”
Leon groaned, stared at the “fig” in his hand. “I finally get to play Alice in Wonderland. Thought it was a bit outside my range until today.” He bit into the fruit.
***
“Shit, Leon,” DeWitt said, piloting his Goliath-Bot, “I’m so fired up on this go-go juice that even the AI-ATVs that like hugging our feet for protection are pulling back. They’re not sure they can react fast enough. What is this stuff? And please tell me Natty can synthesize more for our next little encounter with the unknown.”
Leon sighed over the COM. “One war at a time, DeWitt. Try to stay in the moment.”
DeWitt took a running jump into the air, twirling about on himself like a diver doing a twist off of an Olympic high dive platform, the whole time jettisoning shells from his co-opted Mortar Bot. Every single one found its mark. One per customer. One collapsed-face-down Goliath-Bot each. “I don’t even know how I can do that. It’s like having the instincts of an AI-Gatling gun.”
“Try to keep a lid on all the enthusiasm, DeWitt. Leave some for us to kill.”
“Not to boast, but I even managed to sneak in a picture for my ten-year old for my graphic novel chapter entitled Mortar Man and The War of Dancing Robots, without missing a single mark.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
***
“Crumley, what the hell are you up to?” Leon couldn’t believe his eyes. Crumley, piloting one of the Goliath-Bots, was doing his Capoeira fighting to the rhythm of the drums. But solo. Like some martial arts Kata. Just going through the ritualized moves. When his legs were in the air, because he was springing off his hands, his feet discharged rockets. Sometimes in opposite directions if his legs were in split formation. Sometimes in the same general direction if he simply had both legs bent and knees pressed together.
The wicked hard part of what he was doing, wasn’t hitting the Goliath-Bots he was aiming at—he seemed to be doing just fine with that—it was loading the shells into his feet every time he planted them back on the ground. All without missing a beat. If he took one misstep, missed the mark even by a little bit, he’d blow himself up.
It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d consider doing off the go-go juice. Even as skilled as he was with Capoeira. All Leon’s men were trained in a variety of marital arts, but for some reason, Capoeira was Crumley’s favorite. Th
ough maybe he’d chosen the fighting style out of no more than respect for the locals who were big on it. As good as he was at Capoeira, it was doubtful he could lock on to the rhythm of the drums with all the other noises of an active battlefield off the go-go juice. The Ubuku themselves were so impressed, his lineup of drummers kept increasing, just so they could lock in the trance with him, absorb his mojo vicariously.
***
Ajax had managed to stretch a line from the top of one kapok tree to another, what seemed like a mile across the forest, with the help of his Goliath-Bot. He waited to enjoy the spoils of several charging enemy Goliath-Bots running into it and decapitating themselves in the process. Thus fueling the game of soccer playing out on the ground between Leon’s ALPHA UNIT, currently split into Team 1 and Team 2. More engineers than soldiers, and more raised on video games than reality, they also seemed more inclined to take these outrageous timeouts in the middle of Leon’s battles, to his consternation.
ALPHA UNIT was currently driving the heads by kicking them towards Crumley, the goal keeper, overlooking the large scale mining operation in the middle of the forest, the open pit mine. The goal was scored by kicking the “ball” or the head of one of the Goliath-Bots, replete with its pilots inside, into the yawning abyss of the pit. Whereupon the Goliath-Bot head would land and shatter, or if the shell casings managed to stay intact with a crack or two, then the meat sacs inside were pretty much upholstered to the metal-glass panes of the head by then. And if the natives should somehow survive both mishaps, there was the matter of the crane operator, an ALPHA UNIT guy, whose job it was to drop a payload on top of them big enough to qualify as a foundation stone for one of the Great Pyramids.
Crumley’s “goal keeping” amounted to philosophizing about the end product from his foldout patio chair overlooking the abyss. “Myself, I’m on the fence with this whole civilization encroaching on the rainforest deal. On the one hand, I get how it’s bad for the ecosystem. I mean look at this monstrosity. An open pit mine in the middle of the bleeping primeval forest. For what? To extract gold and diamonds and precious metals? They can friggin’ make diamonds artificially now. As if they have to; there was never any shortage, other than what was agreed upon by the mining conglomerates to artificially inflate the price of diamonds.”
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 30
