Reg closed up on her and while she raised her rifle to her shoulder and scanned down the street. She gave him a nod and he stuck his head out. The street was clear, though he could hear noise down the cross street to the right. He doubled over to the far side and took up position in the doorway to a café.
The others followed suit and soon Sue was back in the lead heading west along the street. Up ahead there was supposed to be a circular park. She was peering in the half-light to make it out when a shot was fired from back down the street. A burst from Dakotas quanto left her in no doubt that they had been sprung.
“Wilkenko’s down” hailed Akos.
Now she was turned and facing back down the street. Sue could see that the team was split on either side. Dakota was already prone on the northern side and firing. Dai was on the same side another twenty paces closer to Sue and she was taking aim. There was Wilkenko’s body motionless out in the middle of the road. A loud crack came from Akos as he fired his sniper’s rifle. A figure about 150m down the street was lifted in the air and slumped backwards.
“Let’s move it” hailed Sue. “Reg covering fire down the middle.”
Reg began taking steady aimed shots at the southern corner of the intersection from where the enemy had appeared while Art led the group on the southern side up the street past Sue. Dakota and Dai made their way at a clip on the north side.
A burst of pulse fire opened up from a soldier entering the intersection from the north. Reg couldn’t get the angle. Sue took a step and then went to ground on the southern side of the road where she could get an angle on the firer. She let off two shots and the enemy retreated back behind the building.
Art pushed on ahead, past Sue and Reg, leading his cohort at the trot. He glanced back down, saw no firing and ran across to the north side. The others followed. Dakota and Dai also passed Reg and as soon as they got to the next apartment building past the café, Dakota fired a burst through the glass doors and they piled in.
Buster was puffing as he came through and passed Dai. “We can’t stay here. Out the back.” He found the rear exit onto a courtyard that looked very familiar somehow. ‘Bloody developers’ he thought to himself ‘not an imaginative bone in their bodies.’ “Are we good to go boss?” he hailed.
“Yeah go Buster” said Art. He was now tail end Charlie.
“India One” hailed Jim Bucknell “this is Three Zero Mike do you copy?”
Art could not believe it. He was not expecting anyone to call him least of all at such an inconvenient time. He had just entered the courtyard as Buster was leading the team into the building opposite. He moved past Reg and told him to watch the six while he responded to the call. “Three Zero Mike this is India One. Is that you Jim?”
“Indeed it is Art. Where are you?”
“I’m downtown in a running fight with rebels heading west towards the Council Chambers, which is several blocks away. I can’t talk right now but you can tell me what’s happening.”
Art ducked under Akos’ arm as he was holding the door open and followed Sue who was following Dakota who was following someone else through the maze of corridors that Buster was leading them through.
“Right Art the situation is that there’s been a rebellion but I guess you know that now” said Jim. Art could sense from the pace of his speech that Jim must be talking on the march as well. “My force is here to put down the rebellion. I have new orders for you. Where can we meet?”
“We’ll try and break contact and hole up somewhere. I’ll call you back and let you know where. The rogan have armour in the city heading south to stop an Alliance column heading north. You are going to run right into them. I hope you have something to deal with them?”
“I’ve brought the Tangoes. How many rogan AFVs?”
“Eight that I know of plus there’s a militia company gone over to the rebels led by Alexis Rega. He’s the henchman for Emily Shriver, who was on the Council here in Niku till she saw a better career path.”
“Eight…shit” said Jim. “What about infantry?”
“Don’t know Jim but the AFV’s we saw mount a small turret, could be a beam weapon, and can carry personnel in the back. When did you get here?”
“Just arrived. The Droids are down too. We may need their help.”
“Does this mean that our mutual friend is still up top?”
“It does.”
“Right!” said Art a little surprised but not really. Sue was beckoning him to come through a hole in the wall that Dai must have created on the quiet with her pack of demolition tricks. “Got to go Jim” and he ducked his head and craned to see what lay out in the street ahead. He could see Buster on the other side looking back at his tail end. The sounds of explosions could be heard to the south and vehicles to the east. “This way” said Art pointing north. “Follow me.”
Buster looked a little surprised at the change in direction but now wasn’t the time to have a discussion. He gathered up his charges and they jogged north. The apartment blocks were giving way to commercial offices and a few shops and restaurants. Art led them into a high rise office tower on the next corner.
“This will do” he said to Buster as he caught up. “We’ll stay put and wait for the cavalry.” Buster looked confused. “I’ll explain in a minute. I’m going up. Post Reg and Dai here. Check out our escape routes if we need to high tail it. And then come on up.”
Chapter 20. Resolute over Beta Phi 0600, 22 May
Aubrey entered the command centre to take the watch expecting to find just Chase and John. Instead the centre was packed, the holo had a lot more icons on it than she recalled from the last time she had seen it. She caught Rihan’s eye. “Did I miss something?”
“Just a bit” said Rihan with a smile.
Aubrey could see that Rihan hadn’t slept much, if at all. She could see the fatigue and the strain on Dave’s face too. “Good morning Sir” she said to him.
“Good morning Aubrey. We could do with some fresh legs” he said and then added “not to mention fresh eyes and a clear mind. Chase is a bit busy at the moment for a hand over. We’ll do that in a little while. Rihan can you brief Aubrey?”
“Sure.”
Chase overheard that remark about him being too busy. He wasn’t that busy. They were basically waiting to recover the craft. He felt Kat’s pass key in his pocket and he really wanted to be somewhere else right now. “Sir I can handle that.”
John looked up with a wry smile on his face but otherwise remained silent. He saw Crystal enter and beckoned her over.
“Oh all right Chase” said Dave. His focus was really on just one track now, that of the hippos. The droid pods were already recovered. Ivan stepped up to the plate and handled the control of the incoming warthogs while Chase handed over to Aubrey and John handed over to Crystal.
Dave stared at the timer above the Hotel icon. He was conscious now that they had been lucky in getting out of the atmosphere before dawn but he wouldn’t relax till they were on board.
He heard Ivan undertake the handshake with Felix two minutes out and he eased a bit. He glanced over to John and Crystal. He could see that while each was doing the handover they were also keeping one eye on the work station in front of them alert to any development. ‘That’s good training’ he thought.
A minute later after the Hotel icon was removed from the holo and Ivan had finished his conversation with Felix, Dave rose and said “Well done everyone. Aubrey you have the ship.” He turned to Rihan “Breakfast?” She nodded and they left the command centre.
Chase overtook them, not intentionally but he did nonetheless. He reached the elevator before them and waited for them to get in. They exited the elevator and Dave and Rihan turned right to enter the mess.
“Are you joining us?” asked Rihan.
“No Maam. I’m really tired” said Chase.
She watched him head down the corridor and remarked to Dave “He’s seems very keen for someone so tired.”
“He does at
that” said Dave with a smile.
Chapter 21. Niku 0605, 22 May
2nd Droid Platoon Bravo Coy was moving at 10kph along the Ramsey Boulevard, the main eastern distributor into the north of Niku. Its droids weren’t running as such. Their gate was more like a human marching at the double, but their speed would leave most running humans in their wake, especially those carrying the load they were.
The droids were robots with no pretence to look like a human. They did however have two legs and two arms and a head. Halloson plastic was their flesh, Ekon titanium alloy was their bones, Quong hydraulics their muscle, Qi electronics their nervous system, Zeister optics their eyes, Bosen audio processors their ears, Bluecon computing their brain and Panther AI their intelligence.
When standing upright they were as tall as an average human soldier. But they could carry twice the payload and move at twice the speed. Their reflexes and response times were far superior in most cases, though most humans clung to the belief that when the crunch came they would come out on top. Their hydraulics and titanium structure meant that they were almost twice as physically strong as a human soldier. They could see better in normal light, thermal, infared and ultraviolet spectrums. They had inbuilt motion sensors and the support droids even came with passive and active radar.
Droids could carry and handle a range of weapons, including all of the standard issue weapons available within the Fleet. In addition all droids had an inbuilt Rez discharger capable of delivering an electric shock to anything or anyone within two metres of them. This could be directional or zonal and provided an effective means at close quarters of disabling opposition before using their superior strength to crush them.
They also came standard with their own pulse rifle integrated into their left arm. It was fed with ammo automatically from the bottom tray on the housing on their back which in many ways resembled a back pack. The middle and top sections were used to store a variety of ammo or other devices. A secondary weapon was affixed to the right hand side of this housing and was automatically brought into the correct position for use by its right arm on command.
Each team of ten droids could fight as two sections of five. Within each section, one was armed with a Quanto, one with a Bulson automatic grenade launcher, one with a Ziger sniper’s rifle, one carried demolition charges and the last one carried a Rizstorm rocket launcher.
Each platoon, company and Bn HQ had a command mech, which could operate in either fully automated or manual override mode. The mech was a lot bigger than a standard droid. Its torso was in effect a compartment in which a human operator could sit fully encased in the protective armour of the mech. The operator could then override the commands that the AI would normally assign to its subordinate droids.
To prevent enemy from simply capturing one of these and thus taking control of its subordinate force a sophisticated ID checking regime was installed. And this was one of the features that worried the command staff of the Resolute not to mention Jim Bucknell and his leaders of the 30th Marine Coy. Their biometric data was all embedded but there had been limited time to put everyone through the simulation drills let alone actually practice using them.
Jim’s only experience was not encouraging. He had found the sheer speed of the interface updates just too fast for his humble human brain to cope with. Julian had worked hard to modify the interface, increasing the delays when human controlled. But even Julian admitted to being less than satisfied with the final outcome.
So the decision had been taken not to man the command mechs but to allow them full automation. Influencing that decision was that without human operators the droid pods could be subjected to much higher Gs on entry and hence be inserted faster. So far the command mechs were performing above expectations. The real test would come once they were engaged with the enemy.
Chapter 22. Resolute over Beta Phi 0610, 22 May
In the bowels of the Resolute on H deck Julian had rigged up a droid control centre and he and Emilio Shavez, normally the company sergeant major (CSM) for 30th Coy, were at two workstations monitoring progress with the Droids. Julian’s role was to deal with any technical matters while Emilio focussed on the operational side of things.
There was a bank of displays on which the camera feeds from the droids could be viewed. Julian had proposed originally to have 20 displays in two rows of ten, but Emilio said that he could not possible cope with that many and so they settled for six. At a single touch on the OB display on his work station he could change the feed to whatever droid he chose.
He had chosen the lead scout in both A and B Coys, their respective team leaders and their respective platoon commanders. A Coy feeds were on the left because they were approaching from the west and B Coy feeds were on the right because they were approaching from the east.
Emilio had watched camera feeds before for humans and was used to the jerking head syndrome but with the droids it was more like a staccato effect as they changed direction and zoom in a series of rapid stages. But he soon got used to the pattern and it was a discernable pattern as the droid panned and zoomed across its assigned arc. The lead scouts had almost a 180 degree arc to their front but at a regular interval they would look completely left and pan back and then at the next interval look right and pan back. In this way they hoped not to get surprised thought Emilio.
It was in one of these intervals as the lead scout of Bravo Coy was looking right – ie to the north - that it spotted, analysed and identified a rogan warrior. Emilio was still registering the spot icon when the scout engaged the identified hostile with its pulse fire from its left arm. A return fire splash could be seen coming from the area to the right of the target.
On Emilio’s workstation the spot had been confirmed by no less than six other droids from the leading team along with more for the other enemy firing back. He focussed on the team leaders feed and an overlay indicated a change of orders. He used a control on the workstation to bring up the op order for the team leader droid. It was implementing a contact drill in reaction to the sighting and engagement. ‘Fair enough’ thought Emilio.
His workstation flashed an alert indicating another spot and engagement back down the platoon column. He went to the Platoon leader and could see that he was now reassessing his plan. No, that was almost immediately replaced with a new order. Emilio was now racing to bring that up. There it was a quick attack with the lead team providing the base of fire and a right hook from its other two teams.
“Hey it even includes a separate supporting fire task for two droids from Charlie team” said Emilio out loud. “Nice.”
“Yeah” said Julian “and look here the Company command mech has ordered his two other platoons to hold and has ordered his support droids to provide on call support fire if needed by the 1st Platoon.”
“They did all that in what…less than three minutes. Fuck!” Emilio then hailed Dave. “Sir we have first contact with B Coy from what looks like a rogan team on the eastern distributor. 1st Platoon is putting in a quick attack. It mounted that in 3 minutes. Can you believe that?”
Dave was trying to drink his orange juice up in the officers mess. He swallowed and replied “All well and good Chief but it’s the outcome I’m more interested in. Keep me posted. I’ll be down soon.”
“If you don’t get some rest Dave” said Rihan with a concerned look “you’re not going to be good for much.”
“Yeah and you don’t look so fresh either” he said with a tired smile.
“Thanks. I know who to turn to when I need a compliment.” She gave him a disapproving frown.
“Oh sorry honey. You’re right.”
“Look I got a bit more sleep than you” she said. “How about I go down and you go to bed?”
“OK. Thanks.”
Back down on H deck Emilio was totally engrossed now as the battle hotted up. 3rd Platoon sighted more rogan on foot on their right and their platoon commander adjusted his deployment so that he now had two teams facing north. He had called in a fire
support mission and one of the support droids was assigned to it. The feed from the 3rd Pl Cmdr showed a ripple of explosions falling in the light commercial buildings that lined the boulevard.
The other support droid was now responding to calls from 1st Platoon and the platoon commander had asked for the fire rate to be increased to deal with yet another enemy group further west on the north side of the road.
The two assault teams had just shaken out into line and were commencing their assault. Emilio switched to the team leader of Bravo Team. He was managing the right hand team of the assault. Its flank was now exposed to any enemy that may appear from the north. They had reached a large warehouse and Emilio could see half the team deploying to provide a base of fire while the other half entered the warehouse.
The Charlie team on the left deliberately slowed down lest it get too far ahead. It was still in the carpark which was effectively open ground. Emilio glanced over to the platoon commander (Pl Cdr) display and could see that he was now moving at what looked like high speed – yes 15 kph – toward the warehouse. Emilio switched one of the A Coy displays to show the 1st Pl Cdr’s op plan. The Pl Cdr had brought with him the three other droids that comprised his command team and were now his only reserve.
The Pl Cdr feed showed a single storey warehouse with a mezzanine at the far end from which the enemy had set up an automatic pulse gun and were engaging the droids from Bravo team that already entered. One droid lay on the ground in a mangled state.
The sheer volume of pulse shot being returned against the rogan was impressive. The decider came when a brace of grenades took out the enemy on top of the mezzanine.
Emilio checked the ammo state of Bravo team and the Pl HQ group. “Look at this Sir” said Emilio “We need to tweak the rates of fire. They will be out of ammo with another fight like that.”
“Noted Chief but as you know we can’t transmit. So it will have to wait till we can.”
Insurrection: Book 3 of Warner's World Page 18
