Unwilling From Earth

by Andrew Maclure

  As soon as she had their attention, Sally addressed them: “Listen up. You all know the mission objectives. The strategy plan, individual tactics and your personal objectives are all available for upload to your AI’s. If you haven’t got them, get them now and review them on the way. We are leaving as soon as the briefing finishes. We are about three kilometres out, our path is mapped by the reconnaissance drone. I have sent it off to the North, when it’s in position it will drop some of its stealth cloaking and make an approach to the base. With luck, they will be suckered into thinking an attack is coming from there. Mark - for your information we’ll still have cloaked drones keeping an eye on the battle zone to give us warning of anything nasty. For this operation Mark, I want you to stick with Orange and follow his lead. Mike will be with Ti’rrk and Simon with me. Any questions?”

  No one spoke.

  ”There’s the drone.” Sally said, pointing at a grey ovoid object, dropping into the clearing. It landed and split open to reveal two new pulse rifles. “Mike, Mark, get the Mark Eights and your combat gloves. Clip your Mark Sevens to your backpacks in case the Mark Eights don’t work out. Everybody, dump what you won’t need for the battle into the drone. For you Mark, that just means your spare jumpsuit and eating implements.”

  There was a quick bustle as Mike and Mark got the Mark Eights and the gloves out and Mark threw his spare jumpsuit, mug, bowl and fork into it. There was a shower of containers and cooking equipment thrown in from the others. The drone closed itself, rose into the air and disappeared through the tree tops.

  “Mark, collect some grenades from Ti’rrk. Put a belt full on and as many as you can comfortably carry in your backpack. Don’t forget to tell your AI to bond to them.”

  Mark collected a grenade belt from Ti’rrk and clipped it on. Orange was filling his backpack with demolition charges and spare magazines for his KE rifle.

  “Backpacks on. Simon on point. Me, Ti’rrk, Mike, Orange, Mark. Orange keep an eye on Mark, remember he is a rookie. Let’s go.”

  Simon led the way out of the clearing. Orange turned to Mark and said “Quiet as you can Mark. Don’t use the comm link unless you really need to. There is a risk that the enemy will detect the transmission.”

  “Got it.” Mark answered and followed Orange into the forest.

  They travelled through the forest at a much slower pace with Simon picking the path with the least undergrowth rather than just crashing through it. Although Ti’rrk was much larger than anyone else, she moved with a silent grace on her six legs with their multiple articulations. Orange walked in front of Mark with a careful tread making less noise than Mark, who was doing his best to keep quiet.

  As the pale disc of the sun dropped below the tree tops and the light faded from the sky Mark found that he could see as well as he could when the sun was at its highest. He sub vocalised to his AI - “I can still see well. Is that the image intensifier from my helmet?”

  “No.” His AI replied. “That is the night vision that I am providing. I can give you good visibility in all but total darkness.”

  “For god’s sake!” Mark said in frustration. “Why didn’t you give it to me before? Last night would have been really helpful.”

  “You didn’t request it.”

  “That’s because I didn’t know you could do it! Look, you are super intelligent, if there is anything else that you have that might be useful - tell me about it!”

  “Would you like a list now?” Mark's AI asked.

  “Don’t be a dick! Of course I don’t want a list now!” Mark snapped. “Use your bloody intelligence and tell me about anything useful as and when I might need it and if you think I really need it at any point, just tell me what you are doing and do it! I thought you were supposed to assist me. You are not doing much of a job of it.”

  “On the contrary, I am providing you with assistance all the time, you just don’t notice it. As I am learning about your needs and capabilities, I am altering many parameters. As you are the first human to have had an AI installed there is no experience for me to draw on. When I was installed and bonded with you I was set to semi-dormant mode. As you expressed a phobia about having embedded technology, I have kept my intervention to the absolute minimum but as you have now requested maximum aid, I will render all the assistance that I am able within the limits and restrictions imposed on me. Is that acceptable to you?”

  “Yes.” Mark snapped irritably. “As I am stuck with you, I might as well make the most of you.”

  “I can review the mission plan for you and summarise it and keep you updated with your role as the mission progresses. Would you like me to do that?”

  “Yeah, that would be great. Anything else?”

  “You might be interested in layering personalities over mine. You can have multiple personality overlays for me for different situations and if any appeal to you could make it permanent.”

  “Really? My granny used to tell me about a famously fearless foreign correspondent at beginning of the twentieth century. Apparently she never lost her cool under duress and always told it as it was, not what the politicians wanted. What was her name now? Katie - something. I can’t remember. She was killed by a suicide bomber in twenty twenty-three I think.”

  “Kate Baraheri? She was the BBC Chief Foreign Correspondent. I have access to recordings of her voice and her biography.

  “Really? Where did you get all of that from?”

  “I have the complete Earth archive. I have access to everything that Alan collected.”

  “That’s interesting,” Mark said. “go on, take on Kate Baraheri’s personality - and voice.”

  “Certainly Mark.” His AI replied in the warm and clipped voice of Kate Baraheri, though as Mark had never heard her voice, he was in no position to judge its authenticity.

  “We must be nearly there now, give me a quick summary of the mission plan and my role.”

  “Briefly, the plan is to go in and blow up everything and kill as many people as possible. Your role is to support Orange in his mission objective by following any orders he gives you. His mission is to penetrate the enemy defences causing maximum confusion in the enemy. He will then find and enter the building with the industrial synthesiser and destroy it. While you are doing that Sally and Simon will seek out command personnel and eliminate them. Ti’rrk and Mike will attack the ground and air transport centre to disable traffic control and any ground or air vehicles they find. If you succeed in your mission, you and Orange will demolish any other installations that might be of value to the enemy and eliminate as many frontline personnel as possible. When Sally considers the mission completed, you will leave the remains of the base and meet up at a rendezvous point which I have the coordinates for.”

  “Seems simple enough.” Mark said.

  “That is the summary. It is quite a complex plan, but that is all you need to know to successfully carry out your role.”

  Orange stopped and turned to Mark and said in a low voice. “This is where we split up. You and I go left, Mike and Ti’rrk are going straight ahead, Sally and Simon are going right. When we reach our insertion point, I’ll tell you when, we go and do what we do best.”

  Into Action

  An area of cleared forest extended about two hundred metres from the edges of the enemy base. Mark and Orange crouched at the edge of the cleared area just inside the tree line. The sun was below the horizon now but with the night sight provided by his AI, Mark could see quite clearly, though the colours were a bit washed out. Mark could see the defences were a mixture of concrete block walls, mud banks and metal sheeting with gun towers standing about seven or eight metres high dotted at irregular intervals between one and two hundred metres apart.

  “What are we waiting for?” Mark whispered to Orange.

  “I’m just going to put a couple of these up.” Orange showed him a small tube open at one end and a spike at the other. “These are flashers. When we need them I’ll fire them off. They fire a very bright flare
in the visible and infrared spectrum that will temporarily overload any night sight or image intensifiers. I’ll warn you when I am going to fire one, when I say now - screw your eyes shut and cover them and the helmet sensors - just above your eyes - with your arm if you can. These are very bright and they should blind the enemy long enough for us to get an advantage.”

  Mark heard Sally on the comm link. “The drone on the North is coming in now, they should spot it any moment.”

  A few seconds later Mark heard an outbreak of KE fire in the distance.

  “Follow me.” Orange hissed at him and started to crawl forwards on his stomach through the short scrub and mud towards the defences. Mark struggled to keep up with Orange but caught up with him just after he had reached the base of a concrete block wall, roughly half way between two gun towers.

  “Time to test your Mark Eight.” Orange whispered, unclipping his Mark Seven from his backpack. “See the tower on our left, there are two soldiers in there. We are going to try to take them both out silently. You take the one leaning out the front, I’ll take the one standing at the back. Tell me when you are on target, fire on my mark.”

  Mark could feel his heart thumping as he lifted the Mark Eight up and targeted the soldier leaning out the front of the tower. The soldier was peering around in front of him and sweeping his weapon around to cover the area of cleared ground between the tower and the forest. The image of his energy field armour was glowing steadily with the target dot showing a clear red mark in the centre of his head. Mark focused the field disrupter without activating it. “Ready.” He whispered to Orange.

  Orange whispered “Three, two, fire!”

  Mark activated the field disruptor and fired a stream of pulses at the enemy soldiers head. Almost immediately Mark saw the image of the soldier’s field armour pulse and collapse. He dropped down as the particle beam pulses from Mark’s weapon tore through his head. As the soldier dropped Mark swung his Mark Eight and fired at the other soldier, who was swinging around and bringing his rifle up. With Mark and Orange’s field disruptors on him as well as fire from a Mark Seven and a Mark Eight he went down immediately. The only sound had been a quiet thud as each of the dead soldiers slumped to the floor. The whole thing took less than five seconds, but Mark’s heart was hammering and he had a light sweat on his forehead.

  “That went well. The Mark Eight seems to be effective.” Orange said. “That tower is where we’re going in.”

  Orange ran at a crouch to the base of the tower, swung his hand behind him to clip the Mark Seven on to his backpack and leapt to the top of the wall catching the lip of it with the fingers of his right hand. He swung his left arm up to get a grip with both hands and hauled himself up and over the wall. He disappeared for a moment, then leant back over the wall and stretched his arm out. Mark reached up to grasp Orange’s hand and was quickly pulled up onto the wall. Mark looked at the buildings behind the wall. There was one large building that looked like a warehouse, with what appeared to be concrete block walls, and a widely spaced scattering of smaller buildings, some made of concrete blocks, others made of timber panels. Soldiers were coming out of some of the buildings, alerted by the sporadic sound of gunfire coming from the North. Orange jumped down to the ground. Mark laid on his stomach and swung his legs over the wall. He pushed himself over the wall and hanging on to the top for a moment, dropped like a stone. He landed heavily and fell over in an untidy heap.

  Orange pulled him to his feet. “You really do need a lot of training.” He whispered to Mark. “I want to take out both of the gun towers either side of us. How far can you throw a grenade?”

  “I’ve no idea. I doubt I could reach either of the towers, but I am confident that if I could reach them I would miss them.” Mark whispered back.

  “OK, I’ll throw a grenade at the one on the right, and fire on them, you try and take out the soldiers in the one on the left. We can stop whispering after that. As soon as we’ve taken care of them we’ll run over to the large building. You know how to use your grenades?”

  “Yes,” Mark whispered back. “but I told you I can’t hit one of the towers.”

  “There will be plenty to throw grenades at soon. Set them to fragment unless you see something big and nasty coming towards you.”

  “Did you get that?” Mark asked his AI.

  “Yes,” Kate Baraheri's voice answered. “As you get one to throw I’ll set it to fragment. You throw it and tell me when to detonate it.”

  “About that,” Mark said. “I know we can’t use AI for fire control, but if I’m running when I throw a grenade, I won’t be waiting for it to land and judge when the best time to detonate is, can you do that?”

  “If you are instructing me to use my judgement when to detonate a grenade that you have selected a target for and you have launched - that’s OK.” Mark’s AI answered.

  “Good. We’ll do that.”

  “You ready?” Whispered Orange.

  “Yes.” Mark replied.

  Two loud explosions came from their right followed by the rattle of automatic fire from large calibre KE weapons. More gunfire came from further away.

  “The others have started.” Orange said and launched a grenade high into the air.

  Mark brought his Mark Eight up to the gun tower on their left and targeted the image of the soldier closest to the front. With the field attenuator activated, he sent the command for continuous automatic fire from the Mark Eight to his AI. As he fired, the grenade that Orange had thrown exploded with a loud crack followed by the roar of Orange’s rifle pouring a hail of KE rounds into the tower on the right. Both of the soldiers in the left-hand tower were turning toward Mark and Orange, alerted by the sound of firing. The targeted soldier had time to bring his weapon up before Mark’s view of his image started pulsing as his field armour collapsed and the soldier was no more. As Mark swung his Mark Eight round, the second soldier started firing a heavy calibre KE weapon at him. He could see on the display of his armour multiple strikes of KE bullets and the integrity gauge dropping quickly. He fired as he swung round to target the second soldier and could see a row of holes being punched through the sides and beams of the tower as his rifle tracked across, then the sparkles on the image of the soldier's armour as Mark’s fire settled onto his target. Within a few seconds of combined fire from the Mark Eight and the effect of the field attenuator the image of the target’s armour pulsed, collapsed and his image disappeared.

  “Move!” Shouted Orange as he sprang to his feet and charged toward the large, warehouse building, firing as he ran at the soldiers who had come out of the buildings when the gunfire started in the North.

  Mark followed, doing his best to fire at targets as he ran. As soon as he and Orange started moving, the enemy soldiers opened fire and started running towards them, but few of their shots hit their targets. One of the enemy quickly outpaced the others, a huge figure at least eight feet tall with long legs that sped him across the ground. He was carrying a KE weapon held out in one hand in front of him spraying bullets around, and held a long bladed weapon in the other. Mark could see that the approaching soldier was on an intercept course with him and that he would reach him well before Mark reached Orange at the building. He had a vision of his approaching death running toward him.

  As fear took hold of Mark he stumbled and fell. He remembered to roll with the fall but knew now he had lost any chance of catching up with Orange before the soldier would be on him. He also remembered what Mike had told him about his armour not stopping an attack with a blade. He tried to get to his feet but his legs were shaking so much that he couldn’t lever himself up with them and was stuck kneeling, waiting for a rather nasty but certain death. He pulled up his Mark Eight and field attenuator to target the bearer of his oncoming doom and poured continuous particle pulses into the enemy’s armour. He was only about fifty metres away and coming up fast. Mark knew that he didn’t have enough time to collapse the soldier's field armour but, terrified as he was, he wa
sn’t going to go down without firing a shot.

  As he held his weapon up, firing it, he heard the urgent voice of Kate Baraheri as his AI said “Two grenades in front of him. Now!”

  Still holding his Mark Eight up and firing at the soldier with his right hand, Mark fumbled with his grenade belt with his left, un-snapped a grenade and tossed it in the direction of the soldier. As soon as he released it, he reached down, unsnapped another and threw it after the first one. They landed about thirty metres in front of him and as soon the soldier came in range they detonated. Each fired a high-velocity slug of heavy metal which impacted the soldier in the centre of his torso. The soldiers armour easily deflected the impacts and he carried straight on. By now Mark had his left arm back up on his Mark Eight with his field attenuator targeted and continuous pulses of his weapons particle beam were pouring into the soldier.

  The soldier loomed over Mark and raised his blade, which was more like a narrow bladed short sword than a knife and Mark fell over backwards, still firing. Abruptly, the image of the soldier's armour in Mark's peripheral vision started pulsing and as the blade of the sword plunged down towards Mark's throat the armour collapsed and a tight pattern of holes punched by Mark’s Mark Eight suddenly appeared in the target area that his AI had painted on the soldier's chest. As the soldier fell forwards, still clutching his sword, Mark tried to roll out of his way but the soldier, by now riddled with holes, fell on top of Mark, trapping his left leg and arm, with the sword missing his cheek by less than a centimetre.

  Mark struggled wildly and managed to free his leg. The soldier's leg started twitching and Mark, terrified that it was going to come back to life and attack him again flipped his right arm with his Mark Eight in his hand and fired repeatedly into the soldiers head, but it’s leg kept twitching.

  “You are OK.” His AI said. “It’s dead. A lot of reptilians continue to have post-mortem spasm for some time after death. This is a Krendor. They are rare amongst post emergent species in that they are very warlike and aggressive. If you care to check it when it is off of you, you will find it has two large ripping claws pointing forwards on each of its feet and one pointing backwards. They are known to have a preference to kill with their claws or bladed weapons. They are similar to the ancient earth Theropods but with powerful arms.”