by Nick Cole
Another pause. The HUD pinpointed the LZ below, graphing in flowing digital lines and showing the route to approach Creeper had marked out. Reese adjusted the yoke for a descent profile but left the power set to cruise.
“I say nine wounded,” replied Creeper over the comm. “Make it fast, Two-Six. Once they see you comin’ in they’re gonna light the jungle up with arty. If you have to wave off, drop us a speedball. We’re low on charge packs.”
“Negative, Creep. We’re pulling you out. No hurries, no worries.”
Static filled the pause.
“Well, we’re gonna be hurryin’ once you’re down, Two-Six. See you shortly. Creeper out.”
Reese leaned forward as the ship plunged through the jungle haze toward the treetop canopy below.
“What shall I assist you with during the landing, Captain Reese?” asked H292. “I am very good at checklists. I have a full suite of—”
“You’re on gears, Tin Man. Don’t crank ’em out until I tell you. Watch our clearance in the river and the trees. If one of the intakes sucks in a branch, we’re dead. Stand by to give me full flaps forty.”
The haze cleared as the dropship screamed in over the tops of the jungle and dashed out above a muddy brown river.
“We got Dobies!” shouted MacWray from in back.
He’d been quiet so far this morning. Reese almost had forgotten he was aboard.
MacWray opened up with the swing-mounted N-50 heavy blaster from the portside cargo door. Automatic blaster fire raked a Doro patrol making its way along the banks as the SLIC streaked by. Huge plumes of water erupted in sudden sprays in front of the scrambling dog men as MacWray tried to find his range on them.
“LZ in sight!” shouted Reese over the howl of the engines. “Stand by for full repulsors.”
As they neared the glowing rectangle in the HUD that lay over the shallows of a muddy intersection of river and tributary, Reese pushed the throttles full forward, and the engines shifted out on the stubby wings and pointed forward and up. Intake valves flared across their sides as the engine switched from drive to repulsor.
“Gimme the gears!” Reese shouted as he pivoted the bird to line up with Creeper’s requested LZ. The legionnaires would be hiding back in the jungle under cover. They’d come out at the last second—as would the Doro. The ship needed to be lined up properly for them to board quickly.
H292 efficiently dropped all three of the fat gears and started calling out altitude readings to gear down.
“I hope you got the depth right,” muttered Reese as the gears disappeared beneath the muddy swirling brown river.
The craft settled into the mud, tilting slightly.
“We’re comin’ out now,” said Creeper over comm. “Cover us!”
Sergeant MacWray traversed the gun across the tree line, scanning the engine blast–shifted jungle for any sign of the Dobies.
And then blaster fire was everywhere.
The legionnaires, carrying their wounded comrades on stretchers, waded out into the muddy brown shallows. In the aft cabin, the heavy N-50 blaster cycled and whined, filling the air with acrid burnt ozone. And on the far bank, the Doro dog soldiers were loping out into the water, braving the murderous onslaught. Their short-barreled blasters were held high, their muzzles and snarling faces a mask of hate and determination to drag the legionnaires down before they reached the ship.
Above the heavy whine of blaster fire, Reese heard a distant but unmistakable whistle growing louder.
A massive geyser of water erupted directly in front of the SLIC’s cockpit. The Doro artillery was beginning to find its range on the LZ.
“We got one more group coming out,” shouted Creeper over the comm. “We’re getting pushed from inside the jungle. Trying to hold—” Blaster fire drowned out the rest of the comm message. A second later he was back. “If you have to go, go!”
Another artillery round exploded farther out in the river. Legionnaire medics were pushing the wounded aboard the SLIC.
“Get in!” shouted Reese out the side window, motioning for the medics to climb aboard. Then, “Sergeant, tell the medics to get in. We’re takin’ everyone.”
The next group came out carrying fewer wounded. But the legionnaires in their tiger-striped bush armor were firing back into the jungle they’d just come from.
“C’mon, guys,” MacWray growled, “you’re in my line of fire. Can’t cover you when you’re standing between me and the Dobies.”
But there were plenty of targets. MacWray stepped over the wounded and reached the other N-50 mounted on the opposite cargo door. He charged it and began to fire into the opposite tree line where more Doros were racing for the LZ.
As two more legionnaires came out onto the bank, one of them tossed a couple of fraggers into the dense jungle they had just fled, while the other backed into the shallows, not letting up his fire. Reese recognized the man. Creeper.
As Creeper turned and pumped his gauntlet, letting Reese know they were the last friendlies out of the jungle, he caught blaster fire. It spun him around and sent him into the thick mud along the bank.
Immediately the nearest legionnaire turned back and plunged toward shore. The brown water all around him was alive with blaster strikes as though a school of carnivorous fish had chosen to have dinner at that very moment. Without regard for the danger, he waded back up onto the bank and reached Creeper.
“We got a man down out there, sir,” said MacWray matter-of-factly. “Spool up, Cap’n. It’s getting’ hot. We gotta diddy or we’re gonna end up blown to pieces.”
He’s right, thought Reese, as two more artillery strikes smashed into the surrounding area. One hit farther down the bank and sent sand and splintered jungle wood in every direction. The other struck just behind the rear of the bird, sending a plume of water over the canopy.
The legionnaire attempting to rescue Creeper was struggling through the water, executing a fireman’s carry in an attempt to reach the SLIC. The backwash from the repulsors was making it hard, pushing the soldier down and away. The Dobies swarmed across the river, emerging from the jungle on all sides.
Reese moved his hand to the repulsor controls. Feeling the knobs as he prepared to grasp and pull and get out of there.
Without a word, H292 unfolded itself from the co-pilot’s seat, leaving an open gap in the cockpit through which engine wash and water sprayed. It loped in front of the cockpit, engaging the closing Doros with its wrist blaster, and with a series of tremendous strides, reached the struggling legionnaire. The legionnaire passed Creeper to the bot, then raised his rifle to engage the dog men now swarming into the shallows just feet away.
It was a real knife and gun show, with blaster fire exchanged at almost point-blank range. H292 dragged Creeper back through the water while the legionnaire covered. Creeper also fired his sidearm into the Doro, managing a headshot at close range on a dog man who’d hoped to stab Creeper with the wicked bayonet at the end of its compact blaster. The Doro’s brains turned into a brief pink mist before being carried away by the back blast from the SLIC’s engines.
Sergeant MacWray swore, switched machine-blasters, and opened up on the jungle. Massive swaths of tropical palms and vegetation disintegrated under withering heavy blaster fire.
A moment later, still engaging Doros at dangerously close range, H292 had Creeper aboard, and the other leej was pulled in by his brothers. Reese didn’t waste a second. It was gear up, and the SLIC spun and climbed away from the impromptu battle, heavy artillery now raining down in earnest.
***
Headed south through the jungle’s haze, Reese called the medical report in to base. They had one leej in cardiac arrest. The auto-surgeon bot had spidered down from the roof of the main cabin and was trying to sustain life, but there’d been too much blood loss. He asked for a trauma team to be waiting on the pad at Mojo.
“Tin Man saved some lives,” Reese added.
H292 swiveled its head and studied the human pilot in that wa
y that bots do. Like a child. Without guile. Without an agenda. Just… watching us.
“Why do you call me Tin Man?”
Reese shrugged. “It’s a song. Old song. Classical music from Earth, if you believe that place ever even existed.”
“But I am not made of tin,” H292 replied. “I am primarily composed of hyper-forged ceramic and nano-graphene. Neither of which is a derivative of the alloy known as tin.”
“Why am I even talking to you?” Reese muttered to himself. The thing was just a bot. A tool. A servant at best. If it broke, who cared? You just tossed it in the scrap heap and went on with your life. No one ever grieved over a broken appliance. And Reese was tired of grieving altogether. He was tired of feeling.
“We are having a conversation, Captain,” said the bot, “so that I might better come to understand you and thus improve our working relationship. This will increase mission success indicators.”
“That’s not a conversation,” Reese replied. “That’s just you using your learning protocols to better assist me. It’s little more than a menu-driven function inside your root. Given time and talent, anyone could rewrite that and make you do all kinds of things. A conversation is between two living beings. You and me, we’re just exchanging information. And I don’t even know why I’m doing that.”
“A conversation is an exchange of information,” the bot replied.
Reese made a face. A pained, sour face.
Someone was dying back on the rear cargo deck. One of the leejes was screaming at MacWray. Telling him, “Ringo’s gonna die if we don’t get going! Tell your pilot to speed it up!” The legionnaire spoke in that deep voice of command their buckets all affected.
But it seemed Ringo was dying anyway. No matter how well or how fast Reese flew.
Just like Doger.
Just like all the others.
Reese ignored the rear of the SLIC and focused on the cockpit. “The song is a reference in an old book. A story about a robot who wanted a heart from a wizard. He went on a… call it a quest. Everyone wanted something they already had. The Tin Man wanted a heart. The song is saying that no one can make you into anything that you aren’t already. Like you back there. You didn’t go out there because you wanted to save those leejes. You went out there because your programming told you to, regardless of the harm you might encounter. You did that because you’re just a tool, H292. Just a bot. You don’t really care if these men live or die. You just care about the numbers they represent. They’re just calculations in the math of war.”
H292 stared out the front canopy. The jungle haze was rising as the sun began to heat up the day.
“You’re probably right,” replied the bot tonelessly. “I was trying to save those legionnaires so that we could leave sooner. I think you were intending to wait for them, and the odds of us taking a direct hit from the indirect fire we were experiencing were increasing significantly. I do have self-preservation subroutines that govern all my actions. They were installed after our first refit. It helps make the 58 Series less… ‘homicidal’ is the word used we aren’t supposed to use.
“So you are wrong, Captain. I was acutely aware that given a sustained amount of fire, or the employment of an anti-armor weapon, which the Doro are likely equipped with, I would suffer a fatal loss of runtime.”
Reese tried to ignore the bot for the rest of the flight. He put on his music and piped it through the ship. Blasting America’s hits. Singing along and looking at the bot when it came to that line about the Tin Man.
The bot stared back like an overgrown yet murderous child that didn’t quite get it, but was having a good time nonetheless.
Day Three
The situation inside the Aachon Valley was rapidly disintegrating. The Legion still wasn’t sure how many divisions they were facing, and all incursions into enemy territory had been halted. The afternoon turned into a holding action, and by dusk the legionnaires were ordered to fall back south of the main river, complaining the entire time that they were moving in the wrong direction. The hilltop forts hunkered down for another long night of artillery bombardment.
This could all be over with two orbital bombardments. Was command really that daft?
Angel 26 made one run to Hilltop Defiance in the twilight. The cockpit had switched over to night vision and red instrumentation, and the fog was a thick soup oozing up from the river as the temperatures dropped. The enemy had hit the hill hard throughout the day, getting as deep as halfway into the camp and killing its commanding officer.
But not before the legionnaire had called in artillery on top of his position. The surviving legionnaires retook the camp in brutal trench-to-trench fighting, giving the Dobies much more than they could handle. By the time Reese arrived, the wounded that could be collected had been pulled off the hill.
Reese watched the legionnaires guarding the wounded on the LZ. Many of them were missing their buckets, which was bad news. Not only were these for protection, but they were the automated brain of the Legion, providing HUDs, sensory enhancers, night vision… the list went on and on. And all the legionnaires looked worse for wear. Reese had a distinct feeling that many of these soldiers wouldn’t make it to the next dawn.
As they lifted off, the SLIC’s engines rising into a howl, the next Doro attack began beneath them; Reese had barely made it out in time. The night was alive with lanterns and torches, and thousands of streaming dark shapes made the jungle look like it was crawling with black insects. Sergeant MacWray chewed holes in them until the SLIC banked and moved out of effective firing range.
Halfway back to Mojo, the order was given by General Umstead to turn back around and pull the remaining legionnaires off the hill.
If we do that, some of these guys aren’t going to make it, thought Reese.
He decided to drop the wounded off first in spite of the order. There’d be more. There were always more. If command didn’t like it, they could send him home.
***
The Twelfth Marines lost two gunships and a transport trying to relieve the hill. The fog and anti-air were making it almost impossible to evac. Angel 26 was inbound behind a line of gunships getting ready to make close air-support passes on the tree line when the air boss called “last flight.” The Twelfth was allowed to make one last series of evacs in an attempt to pull as many of the beleaguered legionnaires as they could off the hill.
And then Defiance would have to hold on its own until morning.
As Angel 26 came back in, the glow of blaster fire pushed back the darkness. The enemy were inside the base. An explosion and a blast wave rocked the SLIC as he approached the landing pad. The Pathfinder running the pad waved him off, but Reese held and brought all three gears down. Marines along the pad were firing right into the trenches just below the pad’s northern and western sides. It was that close. The Doro were everywhere and nothing was safe.
Legionnaires climbed in as Reese held the engines at just below max idle, praying they didn’t get a sudden turbine malfunction. A rocket from down in the jungle streaked across the cockpit windshield and slammed into the Legion headquarters building higher up the hill. An explosion and shower of sparks lit the night, joining the fireworks of the battle.
More legionnaires waited to get aboard. Their sergeants were likely shouting at them over their internal comms.
“We’re maxed, Captain,” called MacWray over internal comm. “Unless you want me to give up my seat.”
“We’re good,” said Reese, prepping for dustoff. He signaled the Pathfinder they were ready to depart.
And that’s when the bot spoke up. “Hold, Captain. I’m getting out. You can load a few more legionnaires if I exit the vehicle.”
“Belay that, H2!” Reese shouted.
But the war bot was already unfolding itself from its special co-pilot docking station. It signaled the loadmaster, and its genial, good-natured voice erupted from its amplification system. “We can fit at least three more here, Sergeant.”
The
Pathfinder shrugged and ordered three more legionnaires to board.
Over comm, Reese was shouting. “Why are you doing this, H2? You’re my co-pilot! What if—”
“You said it yourself, Captain. I am just a tool. These are lives. They are more important than me.”
Reese swore.
“I have watched you try and save them, Captain. You care, despite the mathematical advantage of allowing their loss. As a bot I have communicated and learned from you in the short amount of time we have known one another. And this will be my addition to the final calculation. Thank you, Captain.”
They were at max load; legionnaires were literally hanging out the cargo doors. It would be difficult getting out of here, and already the fog was clutching at everything. Reese wondered how high the ceiling was before he regained visibility. There was also the very real danger of taking a hit and losing instruments. He pictured them spiraling into the side of a hill or crashing into the Doro-overrun jungle.
“Hurry the hell up or we’re getting off to rejoin the fight!” someone yelled over the comm.
An artillery round hit the side of the hill downslope.
The Pathfinder signaled, urgently, for the bird to depart. There were still more SLICs coming in.
Reese added power to the repulsors and brought in the thrusters. The dense fog was alive with the pulses and brilliant flashes of explosions and blaster fire. “I’ll be back for you in the morning, H2. First light. You stay alive until then.”
“Operational,” the bot said over comm. “I am not alive, sir. I have runtime. But I understand what you mean, Captain Reese. I shall endeavor to do my best not to become disabled.”
Day Four
The battle broke at about midnight. As though both sides had unanimously grown tired of killing each other and finally agreed to stop, if just for a few hours.
There were two hundred and forty-three legionnaires still alive on Hilltop Defiance. Most of them were separated and isolated in small groups, holding heavy blaster pits, mortar bunkers, and the trenches on the eastern and southern sides.
