by Mark Harritt
Mike tracked the threat. The beast was not tracking directly towards them. That didn’t decrease Mike’s anxiety, however.
“What do you think?” Everett asked.
“It is just one threat, and as long as it remains just one threat, I don’t think we’ll have a problem,” Mike replied. “I was able to stop one of them with just one set of mech armor, so I don’t anticipate too much of a problem with it.”
Mickey spoke up, “don’t jinx us boss. If you say something like that, you’re just pissing off Murphy.” Mickey meant Murphy, of Murphy’s Law, not Murphy, security.
Sure enough, right after Mickey said that about Murphy, their head’s-up displays started blinking red again as two more hostile squares appeared on the map of the valley.
The entire team started cursing.
“Jesus Mike, what were you thinking? You went and pissed off Murphy.”
Everett was poking fun at Mike. Every soldier was a little bit superstitious. The team realized that eventually, they would probably have to contend with multiple targets. They felt it was inevitable. They were fully prepared for this scenario. They had been practicing for such an eventuality, and they felt comfortable with their mechs. The AIs in the suit were becoming more focused and able to allow the team to do things in their armor that would have been impossible just five days ago. Mickey had been doing karate katas to explore the range of movement. Mike and his team had been practicing gymnastic moves as well, such as barrel rolls.
The hostiles moved closer to the facility.
Mike gave the orders, “Okay, team, light up your camouflage.”
The camouflage capability was a wonder to Mike, and it would have been totally impossible without the AI, the quantum computer, and the carbon fiber electronics cables that the electrical system in the mech armor was wired with. The entire mech was dotted with camera lenses. This allowed three things. First was the head’s up display that showed everything in the area around the mech, to give the men in the mech three hundred and sixty degrees of situational awareness. They could see everything around them, up and down. Second, the full body construction, with no windows to weaken the integrity of the armor, ensured that the body of the suit possessed no weak points that could be exploited. No windows meant a stray shot couldn’t compromise the integrity of the armor. No windows meant a laser couldn’t penetrate to kill or blind the soldier inside. Third, and this was the thing that Mike thought was amazing, was that it allowed the mech armor to display an adaptive pattern of camouflage on its exterior.
The cameras filmed the area around it, and the armor, with the help of an adaptive electric capability, using pixels on the body of the armor, was able to display the area directly behind the armor onto the face of the armor. While not completely perfect when the suit was moving, it allowed a near perfect camouflage when the suit was motionless.
As the camouflage engaged, to the security team and civilians in the cave it looked as if the mech armor had just disappeared. Joseph and Stein were standing close to each other, and they both muttered, “Awesome,” at the same time. Other members of security laughed when they heard them say it in unison.
Mike and his team fanned out in a defensive perimeter. As they moved, the armor camouflage distorted until it moved back into a stationary position. Then the hard part began. They waited.
The hostiles were identified as dragons. The first hostile target wandered around the valley. It was not moving directly towards the cave. Over time, it driftedcloser to their location. The other hostiles were moving with more intent. Each of the secondary hostiles seemed to be moving towards the first target, but they were being wary towards each other. The secondary targets seemed to be testing each other out.
Tom spoke up, “Gents, I think I know what is going on with these critters.”
Mike asked, “What’s that, Tom.”
“Remember, this is just a theory, but I think the first one is a female, and the other two are males. You notice that the secondary hostiles seem to be moving around each other, but they’re both definitely moving towards the first target.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“I’ve seen the same kind of thing among rutting males during deer season.”
“Okay Tom, any pattern to the movement of the first hostile?”
“Yeah, I think she’s smelling the areas that the previous owner of this valley spent time in, finding the scent patches, and trying to figure out the threat.”
Mike relied on Tom’s instincts. He was the master hunter.
Rob spoke up, “Tom, are you sure that is a theory? Sounds more like a hypothesis to me.”
Even in the face of danger, Mike’s crew couldn’t resist ribbing each other.
“Team Mech leader, this is Security Leader Actual, over.”
Actual meant that it was Pang talking, the leader of the security team. Mike had placed Pang in charge of Security. Jondreau wasn’t too happy about this, but Mike trusted Jen a lot more than he trusted Jondreau.
“Roger, Sec leader, this is Mech leader, over.”
“Mike, the security team is in place.”
The security team had pulled two SAWs, Squad Automatic Weapons, out of storage. These weapons were previously only used when the security police traveled out to the range. Now they were employed at the edges of the cave mouth to ensure that nothing slipped past the mech team. There were no more weapons that were locked away. Everybody that could be trusted with a weapon had a weapon. Still, Mike wished they had something with a larger caliber. The SAWs shot 5.56mm bullets. He would have preferred the M240B in 7.62mm, or the Browning M2 in .50 caliber. Hell, even the old M60 in 7.62mm would have been great. But beggars can’t be choosers. The SAWs would have to do.
The first hostile was moving closer. It was now within 2 kilometers of the cave mouth. The secondary hostiles moved within a kilometer of the first hostile, though they were still being wary of each other.
It had been three days since the first dragon was killed. Since that time, the carcasses had been plundered of all the meat available. There was nothing there that would attract the notice of a predator now. This included the carcasses of the grasnigs, and the talgits. The team pulled the carcasses further away from the cave mouth once they understood how big the scavengers in this new world were. The average size of the scavengers had plummeted with the decrease in available flesh. They kept the skulls of the big beasts though. Bragging rights were bragging rights, no matter what world they were in.
Now, Mike wasn’t worried about the smell of rotting meat pulling the animals towards them. There was one problem, though. The people that Mike and his team were protecting had to defecate and urinate. That was a powerful smell for any animal, indicating that there was potentially a large presence of prey animals for them to target.
The first hostile was within a kilometer, and the two other targets were still trailing her within a kilometer. Mike transmitted over the radio, “All security teams, be alert, the hostiles are within a kilometer. Mech team, I want a wedge formation.”
The problem that soldiers faced in combat was fields of fire. Everybody had their own field of fire, and they had to stick to this to ensure that they didn’t accidently engage members of their own team. In infantry practice, a team of five men would move into a v shape, called a wedge, point towards the enemy, with the leader of the team at the point of the v. This shape ensured that the team didn’t accidently shoot each other, and would ensure the maximum amount of fire power that they could inflict on the hostiles. At least in theory. Friendly fire wasn’t too friendly.
What Mike, his team, and the security team didn’t know, was that a large group of people were watching the potential engagement down in the play room. They relocated a large screen TV from the offices on the second floor, hooked up the drone feed, and now they watched the drone and armor feeds. They could see everything that was transpiring. Below the screen was information on the AI, and the various systems that kept the mech armor g
oing. The screen zoomed in as the threats came closer to the friendlies.
Dr. Randall was in charge of this. She wanted to ensure that the mech armor was functioning within all of the engineered tolerances. She and her team would go back later and analyze all of the data to ensure peak performance. After her visit to the surface, she was more willing to work with the team. Mike still didn’t trust her, though. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The hostile that had been labeled as target one, possible a female dragon, stopped at the edge of the clearing. She smelled the fragrance of death, of prey animals, and the scent of her old rival. She knew that her rival was dead due to the miasma of death that lingered from previous carnage. She looked out on the meadow. She could see movement inside the cave. Prey was present, and soon she would eat. She screamed a hunting call. The coughing scream silenced everything in the valley.
Tom was looking at his head’s up display, “Holy hell, did everybody see that?”
Mike took his eyes off of the edge of the meadow, trying to see what Tom was talking about. The secondary figures were moving differently now. They were no longer maintaining a triangle figure based on the female in front of them. Now they moved forward, one on the left side of the possible female, and the other to the right.
“Roger Tom, I think they’re putting aside their differences for hunting.”
Mike could feel his emotions cool, his focus increase. His body knew it was going into combat, and was preparing for that action. The rest of the team reacted in pretty much the same way. This team was special, and the reason was, when the rubber met the road, the team didn’t get hyped up on adrenaline. Instead, they become cool as ice, focused on the mission in front of them. Now, with the hostile animals so much closer to the cave mouth, the AI displayed information about the size and approximate weight of the beasts. Mike took it all in at a glance, but it was causing consternation in the room below.
“Damn, look at the size of the first one. It’s about six tons of dragon.” More of the voices started talking as the other threat information was displayed. People were amazed at the size of these animals. In the secondary threats, the possible males, one was eleven tons, and the other was twelve tons, approximately.
The female felt the presence of the two males. She had been aware of them the entire time that she was moving across the valley floor. She was waiting for them to challenge, to kill or maim each other. Once the battle was over, she would challenge the males, to kill them if they were weak. She was not the largest female, but she, like the rest of the females in her species, would not suffer an inferior male to impregnate her.
With the bellow of the hunting call, she was no longer interested in killing them. Instead, her focus was on the prey in front of her. She waited as their posture changed from rutting, to hunting. The males were intrigued by her proposition. They moved up to smell the death in the meadow. They smelled prey that was not familiar to them. This excited them, almost as much as the idea of battle with each other and the mating with the female would have produced. As the males tasted the flavor of the air on their tongues, their curiosity overcame their other instincts. As vicious as they were to each other, the prospect of tasting another animal, different than others they tasted before, overcame their previous instincts. They could challenge each other after the hunt.One male roared his hunting call, then the other did so, both calls echoing through the valley. This communicated to the female that they were willing to hunt with her. She added her voice to the cacophony, and then all three moved forward, out of the tree cover, slouching forward into a hunter’s stalk.
Mike watched all three. Mike gave another order, “All teams, weapons hot, I say again, weapons are now hot.”
All weapons systems were ready to fire at that moment.
“Sniper, are you ready?”
“Roger, I’m ready.”
The sniper in question was a civilian. Joe Oaks was a hunter, and a damn good shot. He volunteered to work with the security police, or, as he put it, “not sit around on my ass while other people are doing their damned best to protect it.”
When the team talked to him, they found out that he was the civilian version of Tom, a guy that went hunting as much as he possibly could. He rattled off ballistic statistics to Tom, then walked him through several different weapons systems. Tom was impressed, so he put Joe on the .338 Lapua. They hadn’t had time to get somebody ready on the BMG .50 caliber. They moved that weapon into the cave tunnel to be used as a last resort in case something tried to slither through. It would be very hard to miss at the point blank range in the tunnel.
Plus, there was a lot more .338 ammunition than there was .50 caliber.
“Okay, Joe, you see the smaller animal in the middle?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I want you to shoot it. Try for the chest or the shoulder, but if you can’t get those, then take a head shot.”
Joe lined up the shot, and then pulled the trigger.
Because of her stance, he couldn’t get a good shot at the chest or shoulders, so he aimed for the eye. She jerked at the last moment, and the shot went above the eye, creasing the top of the head.
“Roger, shot out.”
This short sentence was drowned out by the bellow she unleased, rage surging through the monster. She felt the impact of the bullet and pain seared through her head. The shot itself was deflected by the thickness of her skull. Still, the impact ripped skin and cracked bone. Her hunting companions smelled the blood in the air and felt her rage. The short stalk was finished. She leaped forward to kill the thing in the cave that hurt her, and the males leaped forward to join her.
Mike gave the order to the teams, “All mech and sec teams, you’re free to engage.”
The burr of high speed projectiles announced their launch from the rail guns. They hit the three animals like a chainsaw. The tough hide was hard to penetrate. These animals, even with the advanced capabilities of the mech armor, were difficult to kill.
Mike called out, “I’m taking the small one in the middle, Mech two and four take the one on the right, Mech three and five take the one on the left.”
With that statement, his AI painted the smaller dragon as his primary target in red, and the secondary targets in orange. Reality blurred as Mike slammed into the body of the dragon closing in on his position. The beast howled as the hard ridge of the cutting fists of the mech armor slammed into her body. She didn’t understand what was happening, not seeing her enemy before it attacked. Mike activated his pulse laser, cutting into flesh. Gore dripped and splattered across the armor. He could feel small arms fire plinking around his armor as the security team tried to aid him.
The dragon twisted her body, and Mike felt his armor lifted from the ground, rotating around her body, and then slamming into the ground on his back. He felt the protective foam collapse and re-inflate as it took the majority of the energy of the impact and dissipated it. He was underneath the dragon as shehammered him down with her paws and mouth. He punched from underneath, trying to cause as much damage as possible to what could be a softer underbelly. His pulse laser cycled as he tried to cut into flesh.
He felt his world shift again as she laid over to use her back legs to rake his mech armor. When this didn’t bring the results that she hoped for, she rolled until he was on top, then set her legs against his armor, and kicked him into the air, away from her. His mech armor slammed against something and then he landed on the ground, the foam cushioning his impact once again.
He rolled to his feet, whatever he landed against moving away from him. He found his target circling him, about to launch into him. Since she was a good hundred feet away from him, he triggered his rail gun and the projectiles cut into her front leg, spoiling the jump. He was able to side step and punch out with his hands, driving them into her shoulder. He grabbed a handful of the writhing tentacles and used them to launch onto her back. As he gained the back of the dragon, he aimed his laser at the base of her neck. The
movement of her body underneath him spoiled his aim, and he only succeeded in cutting off tentacles.
She rolled again, trying to dislodge him from her back, and she succeeded, though he was able to retain his hold on the tentacles. Gravity slammed him back up against the damaged leg. He tore into the leg. The hide along the leg was ripped and bloodied from the damage he inflicted, so he rammed his arm against the leg, and then shot the elbow of the leg with his rail gun. The elbow collapsed. He followed the body of the female to the ground. He used his grip on her tentacles to position himself so he could pound her face with the gauntlet. The gauntlet pounded continuously until he felt the orbit of the eye socket collapse. The dragon screamed in pain, rearing up and shaking her head, tossing him away from her. His armor sped toward the ground. He tucked and rolled the armor, his AI helping to move through the maneuver, coming back on his feet as he prepared to hit her again.
Then he heard the warning, far too late. The huge paw of one of the heavier males hit him and sent him tumbling across the ground. As he righted himself, he could see the big male launch on top of him. The male grabbed the arm of the mech armor and started shaking him like a rag doll. If he had been in metal armor, this wouldn’t have been possible. Since the armor he was in was mostly graphene and titanium, it was much lighter. Still, the armor didn’t crack or crumple. The engineers had designed well.
The big beast didn’t realize the mistake it had made. Mike’s rail gun was inside the large male dragon’s mouth. He triggered the rail gun. The side of the dragon’s mouth exploded as the rail gun ripped into it. Gore dripped from the side of the dragon’s head. He grabbed a handful of the tentacles and used that leverage to shift his rail gun deeper into the beast’s throat. As the beast choked on his hand, he triggered the rail gun again. The projectiles tore through the beast, into the back of the neck, into the chest cavity, causing maximum destruction as they went.
