by D. P. Oberon
“Clear, Sir!”
Was Bheem being tortured right now?
“So to everyone else nothing is happening? And we’re killing one another below the surface,” Yoriko said.
“That’s like a duck ain’t it?” said Buckingarra. “They like calm as ice up top and furiously paddling down low.”
“That WikiPeeks article can so easily be taken out of context. I’ve met Sanatani and she was quite straightforward. I’ve got faith in her. I’ve never had faith in a single politician in my entire life,” Saradi said.
Peng, Buckingarra, and Yoriko all turned to look at Saradi. Their expressions said the same thing: you’ve met the Greatest Scientist?
“You will be given a detailed debrief on CPEDEF robotic forces like triants, dragonflies, and mantises. CoNBAT will update your targeting systems with the enemies’ vulnerabilities.”
“Geez, this just gets better,” Buckingarra said. “It turns out I’ve volunteered to become a suicide bomber.”
Peng chortled beside him and Saradi told them both to shut up.
“As for Corporal Bheemasena Anantadevi we believe he’s alive because his dog tag is beaconing. He could be injured. Could be tortured. Could be dead even? Remember: hope for the best expect the worst.”
Saradi squeezed her eyes shut. I didn’t go through Inferno Week to discover Bheem’s body. I’m going to rescue him, she told herself. Bheem, be alive. Her forehead beaded with sweat. An image of her brother’s emaciated body filled her mind, his jaw hanging by a tendon, his entire body wracked, his skeletal hand reaching out to her.
“I will be joining you on this mission. Platypus Lake debrief over. Dismissed.” Trisdale saluted them.
Saradi, torn out of reverie, shivered and returned the salute weakly. She felt a bad premonition about this mission. Was this how Bheem had felt? She realized she was standing now in the same room where he’d stood to receive his mission instructions.
#
The two megabats slashed through the ionosphere at hypersonic speed going well past Mach five, at fifty-six hundred kloms an hour, they coasted a thousand kloms above the earth. Nothing, nobody, would ever seem them coming. They reached their target within ninety minutes crossing over nine and a half thousand kloms from Central Australia to Yakutsk. There they paused as their vertical thrusters oriented themselves and prepared to descend to the landing zone.
Inside, red light bled over the darkly armored members of Bravo Two Zero. The U-clamps and T-clamps tightened around their shoulders and thighs pressing them into the seats. The beeping sounds signifying and imminent landing filled their ears.
“I couldn’t even get to my second lunch,” said Buckingarra, staring in dismay at the piece of grilled soy-fish on a skewer. The small auto-hand by his seat took it and shoved it into a receptacle. Buckingarra burped filling the air with the smell of fake peanut sauce.
Saradi snorted. She thought about her mother, daughter, husband, and brother. The irony tasted bitter in her mouth. In her executive days only a year back she hadn’t thought of her family like this. Now in a single swipe they could all be taken away from her.
“We’re going into a LZ swarming with the enemy and that’s all you can think about?” Yoriko asked, who sat right across from him. All five of them — including Ganmi — sat around facing inward.
“That too. Now we’re getting dumped at the LZ? The heck Ali make us do all them emergency action procedures for? I was like excited, gonna jump out da pod.” He shook his head.
Yoriko said, “It’s less risky this way. We can’t be shot out of our drop pods and we’ll have the shelter of the megabat when we land. It’s also quieter.”
Peng whispered, “We are the shadows that leave our enemies dead and them wondering how they were killed.”
“I heard that before, dumplings, can’t remember where from,” said Buckingarra licking his lips. They’d dialled their visor portion of their helmets to clear.
“Trisdale said it, week one, during our induction when Ali met us at the dome,” Saradi said. She moved slightly as the vertical thrusters activated. “Hold on it’s going to get gnarly.”
“I think I saw orbitals as we passed,” Peng said, pointing at the holo-display in the space between them. The circle consisted of a compute-column that showed them a spherical view of the outside.
“Those are the construction orbitals,” Yoriko said. “That’s where they’re building the seed-ships. I think they’re about five hundred kloms high.”
The cold air compressed and sucked the breath out of them and it felt like the gravity had been ripped from them as the megabat shot down to the earth.
The megabat’s AI chimed around them, “Landing in T-minus six seconds.”
“Wow,” said Peng. “How can it be that fast?”
“Six.”
Yoriko said, “The megabats have been fitted with blinks.”
“Five.”
“—They’re part of the technology—
“Four.”
“—that will be on the seed-ships. As we descend—
“Three.”
“—miniature wormholes are opened and shut.
“Two.”
“The megabats were the first aircraft—
“One.”
“—deployed with them.”
A loud echoing rattle sounded throughout the craft. Saradi’s stomach felt exactly like the time she’d jumped off a cliff into a river. Except magnified by ten.
Without any explanation the U-clamps and T-clamps shoved them outward. Saradi staggered to her feet as the ramp doors to their left swished open and revealed an icy white escarpment.
“On me,” she ordered, holding out her LR4 as she walked down the ramp into Yakutsk. In the distance she caught a glimpse of the Alrosa Mirny mine that sat in the depths of the earth like an alien crater beckoning them to enter.
They landed on a wide hillside sheltered on either side by lumpy snow-covered mounds. Saradi realized they were old, discarded vehicles. The megabats themselves would appear invisible to the human eye. Not that human eyes mattered in this deployment. They would be dealing with CPEDEF robots.
“Get behind that cover,” Saradi said, pointing at a snow hedge that had piled up on the large rocks that edged the cliff face. Mission command had done their job, Saradi thought begrudgingly. At least they hadn’t put them in a middle of a battle like they had in Selection.
“Bravo Two Six, we are at the LZ and taking cover,” Saradi said into her voxcom.
“Bravo Two Zero, we are also at our LZ and performing a site survey,” came the reply.
Saradi closed her eyes and breathed out in relief. Bheem could be here, she told herself. Bheem! She wanted to shout out across all the voxcom channels. She did not.
Chapter 34 – MistReaver
“Sara, it feels too quiet,” Chengmedu said on a direct channel to her. The voxcom defaulted into three channels. One was the leader channel for leader-to-leader talk that enabled squad leaders to voice unpleasant thoughts to one another without affecting the morale of the squad. The second channel was a squad channel for all members in the squad to talk with one another. The last channel was a group channel and that was for squad to squad chatter.
Now with her AI up and running she just had to think of talking to Chengmedu direct and the neural interface just worked.
“Squad Leader, CoNBAT is up and running,” Yoriko’s voice squawked in her voxcom.
Communications Network Battle Array Target, CoNBAT, provided them with a real life topography of the surrounding area, highlighted mission objectives, and plotted the optimum route to their mission objectives. As CommsTech, Yoriko wore an optimized smartpack that processed all input and output data from each squad member and combined it into a single optimized display shared by the squad members.
Saradi felt like a dormant computer being finally turned on as her AI interface overlaid itself with CoNBAT.
“Mating CoNBAT with Bravo Two Six,” Yoriko sa
id. Both squads CoNBAT would now be connected and transferring information.
Eight soldier icons appeared on Saradi’s interface. Bravo Two Six lay in the snow four kloms to the east.
Saradi thumbs upped Yoriko.
“Sporadic cover,” Saradi replied to Chengmedu. “We’re six kloms out from the edge of that mine.” Her CoNBAT interface updated: primary objective to reach bunker. Her display showed a single AAEDEF bunker highlighted in yellow that sat across the lip of the crater.
“And here I thought we were in a good location with ample cover,” said Buckingarra. “Those things in the snow are just shrooms. If we get under fire we’re fucked.” Saradi let the chatter build on the squad channel. They were nervous; letting them vent was better than forcing them to keep quiet.
Saradi knew that they’d been dropped here so that the megabats were kept out of harm’s way. They would need them to make their escape once they achieved their mission.
“Chengmedu, I’ll take Bravo Two Zero first and we’ll route our way towards the bunker. That way if we see anything you can provide support.”
“Sara, we’re going in at the same time. Cut the hero bullshit. That gets people dead,” Chengmedu replied.
Saradi felt her face flush and was glad they spoke on the leader channel.
“Wedge formation, on me,” Saradi said. They all knew what their objective was: the bunker highlighted on their CoNBAT interfaces. It was a four klom march in the snow.
They moved down the hill through a gap between the vehicular debris. The soft snow sucked at their feet. Saradi auto-mounted her LR4 rifle on her shoulder mount, and wore her two SR2 handguns auto-mounted into gauntlets. This way she was free to balance herself and the shoulder mount would fire automatically.
Still, the steep descent had her running to avoid tripping. She made her way to what appeared to be an ancient tractor-mech that lay face down on the ground.
Yoriko came nimbly after, soon followed by Peng. Buckingarra came last. He had both his LR4 rifles auto-mounted on his shoulder turrets.
The blue dots on her AI, Bravo Two Six, moved up ahead and Saradi realized with a start they much moved quicker.
“Go at your own pace,” Chengmedu said on the leader channel. “We’ll meet at the intersect point.”
Saradi nodded. “On point,” she said to her squad. “We’ll rendezvous with Bravo Two Six at the intersect point.”
The carcasses of large tractor-mechs, drill-mechs, sentry-drones, and recon-drones provided them with cover. They waded through the cemetery of the damned giants in silence. Saradi felt like an ant dwarfed by these ginormous industrial-grade chassis made to work in one of the largest mines.
Saradi’s senses dialed up to hyper-aware. If Saradi could’ve seen how silently and quickly they moved she would’ve marvelled. But right then every jagged piece of mech, a drooping LED light, the huge fist of a tractor-mech that lay on the ground curled into a fist seemed like it would jump to life and attack her.
“Squad Leader, I don’t like this,” Yoriko said over the squad channel. “A bot could be hiding here.”
“It’s just a junkyard,” Buckingarra countered. “A big forgotten junk yard half covered in snow.”
“Stop,” Saradi said.
A large haul tray used by a tractor-mech to haul tons of iordite out of the mine lay on the ground. It stretched about twenty meters by ten meters, much larger than a megabat. The tray held a load of iordite. The black diamond-like shards were size of a person’s head. Each had a white face that caught the light. There was so much iordite that it overflowed the side of the haul tray creating a huge mound against the machine’s hull.
“Bravo Two Zero, we are two fifty meters across from you,” Chengmedu said. She looked up and saw the small forms of Bravo Two Six from across the huge mound. They looked tiny compared to the mech junk around them.
Saradi spoke into the group channel for the first time. She said, “There is a fresh haul of iordite right here without any snow over it. It’s as if something just recently dumped this haul here.”
Bravo Two Six increased their pace. Yoriko neared the mound and poked her LR4 rifle into it. She knelt down and her fingers stared at the holo-display that flared up from her forearm console. Dozens of small recon-drones jutted out from Yoriko’s back and flitted into the air.
The recon-drones were triangulating as they flew higher until they were so high they could see the entire mound.
“Squad Leader, we need to get away from here. Now,” said Yoriko’s voice. The image she overlaid on the large mound looked like a slumbering giant mech. “Now!”
The mound shifted, tonnes of iordite scattered. Saradi ran back going for cover even as the huge head reared itself from under the blanket of iordite followed by huge hands consisting of massive weapons. It fired.
#
The MistReaver mech tore out of the iordite mound like a kraken emerging from a black pool of ink. Its cone-shaped head whirled; it sounded like magmite screeching against magmite. Instead of hands, its two huge arms ended in a rectangular box filled with six barrels. The mech jerked back in pneumatic recoil and sent out planck beams that sizzled Saradi’s retinas as they slammed into the ground ahead of her. Machine gun fire thudded towards them, and grenades exploded, showering Saradi in iordite.
“Engaging,” Chengmedu shouted on the group channel.
Saradi pushed herself forward using the boosters against her hardshell. She burst out of the mound of iordite LR4 held up high and fired at the MistReaver.
Superheated flechettes thrummed as they shot out of the LR4s barrel. They whizzed as they cut through the MistReaver’s shield and scalded its dark armor, rending holes at its feet.
“EngTech, set up the gauss-turret,” Saradi said to Peng. She stared in worry as the MistReaver thumped towards Bravo Two Six. “Everyone else fire at the MistReaver’s left leg. Peng, aim for the left leg as well.”
This is bad, Saradi thought. A single SOHIC squad faced up against a MistReaver. That was the job of super-marine squads, not SOHIC stealth squads. But she knew there wasn’t any point rushing in and firing. She had to keep her squad safe and fire from behind cover.
Peng and Ganmi whirred about in a frenzy. They choose a stable position and began to build. Ganmi’s hands moved in a blur as she spit out xfabrics — a material that could be used to build anything — and within moments the gauss turret had been constructed. Peng stepped into it and fired.
“Cover Peng if that MistReaver returns fire,” Saradi yelled. She’d gone to her stomach, aiming and firing constantly. At that time she didn’t care if they ran out of shots on the LR4s. Three other superheated flechette lines seared through the air. Each of them hit the same spot, the MistReaver’s knee joint. CoNBAT highlighted it clearly and guided their shots to convene on the exact location.
The MistReaver mech turned in anger. It seemed to shout at them. Bright yellow light flashed across its cone-shaped cockpit as its hands aimed at them and fired.
Peng’s counter fire slammed into the planck beams sending a huge discharge of energy that flared out in concentric circles. The energy charge was so strong that it blew Bravo Two Zero back, each of them clutching at their weapons as they were slammed by the wave.
“Saradi, leave now. Continue to head to the primary mission objective,” Chengmedu said on the group channel.
“Fuck that, we’ll help you,” Saradi said, sliding on rubble as she stood. “GunTech and CommsTech, on me,” Saradi said, running toward them. She had to leave Peng so he could keep firing, but she couldn’t stay there.
The screams of Bravo Two Six slammed into Saradi’s ears. She was so charged with adrenaline that she couldn’t even feel the anger that coursed within. The ground thumped beneath her feet and then she came so close to the MistReaver she could see the scorch marks on its knees.
She was ten feet away from the towering monster. It could turn and stomp her. She held out her hand, routing commands over CoNBAT to Yoriko and Bu
ckingarra to hold up behind her and take cover.
That’s when she spotted Chengmedu.
He fired two LR4s incessantly. His entire body quaked from the shooting. He was standing over somebody’s body, she realized. No, a pile of bodies. And then, to her horror and shock, she registered the CoNBAT update showing three of Bravo Two Six’s squad as dead.
No, a voice said in Saradi’s head. No, it can’t be. Not like this. She hadn’t even seen it. It had just happened in a blink. We just got here!
For a moment she thought Chengmedu caught a glimpse of her. She primed her two grenades, dimly aware of Buckingarra and Yoriko doing the same, and then they all threw them at the same time.
The explosion rocked the MistReaver, throwing it on the ground. Chengmedu vaulted forward, ran over the mech’s huge hands, leaped on its back and then planted a charge. It was a suicidal maneuver.
“Get out of here, Saradi,” Chengmedu urged over the voxcom. A hoarse scream that stunned her. He waved his hand from the mech’s back as it stood and tottered, urging them to get away. The mech spun and twisted, trying to throw him off. The MistReaver’s hand jerked back and sent a tractor-mech flying, its scoop tray flipping into the air then landing with an earth-shattering crunch right next to Saradi.
Saradi fell.
She slid down the side of the iordite mound, spinning on her back, and then she landed at the bottom.
In the distance a loud explosion sounded. Something huge slammed down. She felt the reverberations through the entire ground, shaking Saradi even as she stood. She wanted to run back and check to see what had befallen Chengmedu.
But CoNBAT now showed her all four members of Bravo Two Six as dead.
