by B. V. Larson
As we dug, we kicked up more earth until a dust cloud formed, but a breeze came up the mountain and began to blow the dust away. I could see the water shining far below us for the first time, about two miles away. It was strange to think that seawater had covered this world just weeks ago.
After the first hundred scoops or so, the work began to get a little more taxing. I welcomed the prickling of sweat I felt as I kept going.
“Sir?” asked Kwon, coming to stand over my growing trench.
I looked up at him, feeling a trickle of sweat run down from my face. “Trouble, Kwon?”
“No sir. But I don’t know why you’re digging your own trench.”
“It’s good exercise, First Sergeant. I highly recommend it.”
Around me, the men made quiet, appreciative comments as they worked to connect their trenches to mine. I knew they liked seeing an officer dig a hole, and it was a rare sight. But I wasn’t really doing it to generate good will or to raise morale. I’d been in space and eating air-swimmers for weeks. It felt good to get in a solid workout.
After staring down into my dust-filled trench for a full minute, Kwon finally joined me. I guess he felt guilty, or else it looked like fun to him. He spread his hand-shovels and laughed, then dug in. When we hit hard rock, we burned it, and our visors darkened so much we could hardly see.
I imagined that from the bottom of the slope, our activities must look like we were tearing the mountain apart. The enemy would be barely able to see us, if they were looking. We’d be buried in a plume of billowing gray dust.
When I was tired of digging, I contacted Fleet. This time I was looking for Marvin, not Captain Sarin.
“Marvin? What is the story with the ring? Have you managed to gain control of it yet?”
“All my attempts to do so have failed, Colonel Riggs,” he said. “The enemy might be jamming my efforts by sending in a flood of conflicting command signals. I’m getting resonance readings from the ring that seem like static, but I suspect someone is transmitting signals to it.”
I shook my head in disappointment. “That blows my easy victory,” I said.
I’d hoped to land, then hit the machines by surprise by reversing the flow of the ring. If I could have gotten the ocean currents to suck a few trillion gallons of seawater out into another star system somewhere, the Macros in the vicinity would have been destroyed or at least seriously inconvenienced.
“Well,” I said, “keep trying. If we can get the ring to suck them back where they came from, we’ll pretty much win right there.”
“Will do, Colonel,” Marvin said, “but I calculate the odds of success as rather low.”
I glared up into the sky, wondering about Marvin and his true motivations. Too often, that robot was a mystery to me.
“Just keep trying,” I snapped, and disconnected. I turned to Kwon and told him the bad news.
“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” I said.
Kwon was overjoyed. “No problem, sir! We’ll gut every machine personally. Ha!”
I nodded unhappily. Kwon loved nothing more than a good fight, but sometimes he didn’t seem to see the big picture. The machines weren’t going to go down easily.
Our first surprise came when we were about half-way done with digging. It came in the form of a series of blazing lights and ripping sounds from above us. I looked up the mountainside to see what was going on. It was hard to make out due to the visibility issues, but there was something happening up there.
I connected to the command channel and tried to make sense of the chatter. The various tactical channels were buzzing. Something was happening, and it seemed to be centered on our original LZ. I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Kwon!” I shouted over my local chat—then I remembered the chain of command, “Kwon, Captain Marcos, report!”
They quickly responded. “Captain, get your men into firing positions. We’re done digging for now. Kwon, assist the Captain, please.”
They began relaying the instructions and the marines around me started to hustle. They tromped and even flew past, stowing their smart metal hand scoops and unlimbering heavier equipment. Within a minute, they were all sitting in an assigned trench with weapons pointed watchfully in every direction.
In the meantime, I’d received my first reports about what was happening upslope. The machines had broken through the crust of the mountain and attacked the second wave of freshly-dropped troops as they were landing.
Any invasion force is at its weakest when in the very act of making landfall. No one wants to drop directly into a fight. The Macros had never been known for giving us a lot of breathing room.
“Kwon!” I roared again. “I mean, Captain Marcos…dammit…assign a squad to distribute barrels of constructive nanites. I want every trench we have layered with a network of nanite strands. Then, have half your men continue with the digging while the rest stand ready to engage anything that hits us.”
“But sir,” objected the Captain. She was another lump of metal to me in her suit, but the pitch of her voice was higher than most. “Those nanites are on reserve for a permanent base structure. Our supply is—”
“The supply is more than adequate to comply with my orders as given, Marcos. Get moving.”
She didn’t say anything more to me, but a lot of shouting began on the company channel. I muted that one and tried to raise someone up at the LZ. Finally, a Captain Ling answered my questions.
“We’re in action, sir. Not many of the machines here, but they are hard to kill. We’ve only encountered the small ones that dig. They’re coming at us from inside the mountain. Repeat, they’re burrowing, sir.”
“Just as I thought. I want you to conduct a fighting withdrawal downslope, Captain Ling.”
“I can’t see a thing, sir.”
“I know, but you can tell which way is down, can’t you? The machines can’t be hitting you very hard up there yet. I’m sure you can get out and move. I’ve established a makeshift firebase down here. We’re waiting for you on that mountain spur below you on your maps, at an altitude of four thousand feet. Get down here, we’ll cover your retreat.”
“Yes sir.”
Every instinct urged me to call in support: fighters, heavy beams from above, or even to advance with Captain Marcos’ company to meet them. But I resisted the temptation. In the chaos of a general landing which had been hastily planned and executed at best, we all had to make due. I wanted to keep major assets like the fighters in reserve until I knew where they could best be deployed.
I didn’t want to abandon the fortifications I was building, either. I knew this firebase we were in the middle of constructing would form a much needed strongpoint as the invasion progressed. The troops were going to keep falling from the sky for the next day or so. As the battalions kept coming down, Captain Ling and a dozen men like him had to fight their own battles independently until we established a coherent front and could set up lines with the enemy to push against.
One of the problems with fighting the Macros was their reactions in combat. Human troops were predictable, they would typically break when a certain level of losses were taken, for example. In a situation like this one, humans usually wouldn’t react quickly. When the Allied forces invaded France on D-day, for example, the German troops were slow to react. They held back and allowed the Allies to get a critical stronghold before counterattacking. Experiencing a short state of shock was pretty normal for a human army when attacked suddenly.
The Macros, however, were machines. They weren’t experiencing any kind of shock. They weren’t going to fall back and try to figure out a safe course of action. They were going to throw themselves at us and bleed us wherever they could. They didn’t really care about dying, other than seeing it as a form of mission failure. If they could win a battle by dying, through self-sacrifice, they were very happy to do so. It was like fighting a nest full of gigantic, intelligent insects with bad attitudes.
Looking ove
r my maps, I contacted Captain Sarin next. She was overseeing the entire drop from space. “Fleet, this is Colonel Riggs. Respond, please.”
It took a second, but I had the Captain on the line very quickly.
“What is it, Colonel?” Sarin asked. She sounded harried.
“I know you have a lot going on, Captain, but I want you to change the targeted LZ. Don’t send the next battalion down at the same location.”
There was a moment of quiet, during which I heard rasping sounds. Possibly, she’d taken up a microphone and switched the channel to a private line.
“Are you sure you want to second guess the plan now, Colonel?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “The Macros are already digging under the initial LZ. I want you to drop each remaining battalion in a random pattern at about the eight thousand foot level. Find a good shelf of rock and drop them on it. We’ll establish firebases wherever we can lower down for the men to assemble.”
“A random pattern?” she asked. “That is not good procedure, Colonel. I can’t condone it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re up there with the Fleet. Things look a little different down here.”
I quickly filled her in on the lightning-fast enemy reactions to our landings.
“We’re going to have to keep shifting our LZs,” I said. “They’re harassing us much faster than we suspected they would.”
Jasmine was a stickler for details and didn’t like changing plans in mid-motion. As a commander, I considered this to be a strength and a weakness at the same time—depending on whether she was right or not. But in this case, I overruled her objections and ordered her to move the LZs.
“What about the fighters, sir?” Kwon asked from behind me. “I thought we were supposed to have air cover.”
He was standing in my trench. I wondered what he’d overheard. I had him on the command channel feed because he operated as my personal aide. Figuring he’d heard it all, I shook my head.
“I’m not calling down any fire support until I have something big enough for them to shoot at. So far, the enemy are just digging up out of the ground under our feet and trying to slice them off.”
Kwon chuckled at that idea and made stomping motions with his amazingly large boots. “They’re going to have a hard time taking the feet off of these suits, Colonel!”
I had to agree with him.
Shortly after I disconnected from the command channel, I saw a shower of loose white dust rising up directly above us. It was clear after a few moments of observation that whoever was making that dust cloud was coming directly toward us.
I zoomed in and saw the dark shapes of marines racing down the mountain ahead of the billowing cloud.
“Captain Marcos!” I boomed. “Get a few long-ranged turrets set up. I want them on overwatch in case anything is chasing those men!”
The company surged into action around me. They’d been busy laying out nanites in the fresh trenches. The nanites themselves were lacing together the soil, hardening it and forming polymer filaments in the dirt that were as strong as steel.
Now, the troops switched to pulling out and deploying our heavy-weapons pods. Every drop company had three of them: automated laser turrets with beam projectors that were about six feet long from tip to base. These were placed on tripods and attached to three critical elements: a generator, a brainbox and a small sensor array. Set on automatic, these units operated primarily as air cover.
But they could also be switched to manual control. With a marine as a gunner, they’d been designed to serve as a heavy gun against ground targets.
Three corporals with specialized training stepped into the gunner’s slot when the pods had been put together and powered. Today, if we were going to be hit, it was going to be by ground forces.
The first clue came when I saw a marine get sucked into the dust cloud. He’d been running along steadily, kicking up a huge plume of dust behind him one second. The next second, he was gone.
I attempted to connect with Captain Ling again. “Ling? Are you there? Report your status. You are less than one mile from my position, in my estimation.”
“Big ones, Colonel!” came Ling’s response. It was almost a scream. “They are coming up out of the mountain, under our feet.”
“Well then, fly man!” I shouted. “Fly! Gunners, if you see anything unusual, you have my permission to take a shot at it.”
“Negative, Colonel,” Captain Marcos said. “We can’t do that. We’ll be hitting marines if we fire blindly into that dust cloud.”
I shook my head in frustration. I didn’t argue with the captain, because she was right. But it was disturbing.
What could be chasing those men? It couldn’t be just a few worker Macros. They were no match for drop-troops in power-armor.
It had to be something else.
-17-
I saw flying power-suits now, rising up above the dust cloud itself. Looking like tiny black and silver dolls riding a hurricane, they came at us as if they’d been thrown in our direction.
Reaching the upper limits of the cloud and cruising there above it, the men were burning their power supplies at an alarming rate. These suits were highly protective and had many functional advantages over lighter gear, but long operating life wasn’t one of them.
I frowned and zoomed in tighter. I thought I’d seen…yes, I was sure of it. A silvery rope-like tentacle had reached out and grabbed a marine. One second he’d been there, riding over the cloud. The next he’d been sucked back down into the dust, yanked out of sight.
“Ling?” I called. “You still there? Report.”
There was no response.
“Whoever is in command of Bravo Company, Sixth Battalion, please—”
I didn’t get any farther, because suddenly the dust cloud settled. What was revealed beneath it made the words die in my throat.
The fleeing company had hit a stretch of exposed flat rock. With nothing much to kick up, they left the cloud behind and I finally saw what was chasing them: a nightmare of burnished metal.
The machine coming at us was unlike anything I’d ever encountered. It was big, with more bulk to it than the largest robots. It wasn’t shaped like a typical Macro, either. Instead of having eight legs like a steel spider, it had the shape of a horseshoe crab. Underneath was a churning mass of small legs, which I realized as it got closer were really whipping, snake-like arms.
The moment I saw it, I could only think of one thing. Kwon thought of it too, and he put the thought into words first: “It looks like a giant, crazy version of Marvin, sir,” he said.
“Yeah, it kind of does.”
From the armored back of the monster sprouted longer arms. These could stretch a hundred feet into the air. As we watched, it used these thick tentacles to deadly effect, reaching out and snatching flying marines as they tried to escape it. The unlucky troops were dragged down to the front of the machine, where they were unceremoniously shoved into the monster’s maw. The opening was more of doorway than a mouth, as there didn’t seem to be any teeth or jaws. I could see inside now, and it was filled with a livid red heat that reminded me of a lava flow. I figured it had some kind of melting furnace inside, probably built to digest ores it found in the mountain.
“What the bloody hell is it, sir?” Kwon asked.
“Some kind of mining bot, I’d assume,” I said. “What matters now is that Ling’s company is bringing it right to us. Get those heavy beamers firing on the carapace! It has to have a weak point!”
He relayed my orders, but orders weren’t really necessary. The gunners could see the monster now, and they didn’t need any encouragement. They knew what to do. My visor dimmed as streaks burned the air and punched through the roiling dust clouds. Two of the gunners focused on burning off whipping arms, while the third tried for a lucky hit on the thing’s mouth. None of these beams seemed overly effective.
“Why didn’t Ling just blow it up?” Kwon asked wonderingly.
I knew he was refer
ring to the tactical nuclear grenades many marines had as part of their kits. Each company had been equipped with ten of them.
“It probably got in too close,” I said. “They couldn’t get away to that quarter-mile safe zone around it before lighting a grenade.”
“I might of done it anyway,” Kwon remarked, still staring at the approaching monstrosity.”
“I bet you would have.”
Kwon had been officially forbidden to touch heavy explosives. I’d been personally injured more than once by his negligent use of tactical grenades.
“All right,” I shouted, engaging the company override. Every helmet in the immediate vicinity buzzed with my voice. “This is Riggs. Get into your holes and flatten yourselves out. We’ll burn this thing from underneath if it overruns our position. If it has a thousand legs, maybe it probably can’t operate with only five hundred left.”
Kwon looked at me in surprise, but then quickly jumped down into a foxhole. A hundred other marines did the same. They’d been expecting a battle, but this was more like surviving a stampede. We couldn’t stop the thing, it was too close now and going too fast. Momentum alone was going to carry it downslope and directly overtop of us even if it died in the next second.
What had looked bizarre and alien at a distance was absolutely terrifying up close. The sound it made—it was almost indescribable. Like ten freight trains bearing down on me at once and running me over while I shivered in a hole. I’d heard descriptions of tornadoes tearing at homes while the owners huddle in the basement—this was louder than that.
A moment later, the sun went out and I knew I was under it. I felt as if a battleship with legs had walked over me. I learned then that the small feet underneath weren’t all that small. They were each a foot thick and twenty feet long. The entire monstrosity had to be five hundred feet across.
We laid on our backs down there in our holes while dirt sifted down onto our visors and we fired our beams up into the belly. My plans of fighting the thing from underneath quickly disintegrated. I’d thought maybe we could chop off those legs and disable it—but instead it was the legs that disabled us.
