Zone War

by John Conroe

  “But General, this is unprecedented behavior. Extreme problem solving and planning, far beyond anything we’ve seen before,” a skinny guy in a white shirt and khakis said.

  “The Spiders are learning,” I said. “Just like the Chinese military created them to.”

  The room went silent.

  “Spiders?” a voice asked. I turned and looked. It was Chester Flottercot himself, the big man of Hollywood.

  “It’s unproven, Chester,” Davis said.

  Flottercot opened his mouth to say something. Another voice spoke first.

  “General! One of our Renders is being lased,” a soldier wearing VR goggles and Translation gloves said. I thought she might be a Render pilot.

  Everyone looked at the screen and could see one of the sub feeds flashing to whiteout sporadically.

  “There sir, down low by the street,” another pilot said. One of the feeds focused on the JTLV showed a small drone flying low over the street, its laser aperture focused up at the other Render.

  “You have Artemis micro-missiles on board?” Davis asked the second pilot, who nodded.

  “General, I don’t think you should shoot,” I found myself saying.

  He eyed me with an unhappy frown. “Shoot it down.”

  The pilot touched an invisible control with her gloved finger, the laser drone took off sideways right at the nearest building, and a white streak shot from the Render.

  The little drone flew into a broken widow in the building, the missile followed, and a split-second later, the front of the building blew out. Then a decent section of the front of the building slid down into the street, burying the JTLV even further.

  I had a flashback. Five months ago. Deep in the Zone. Watching from a twenty-first floor hide on a particularly sunny day as Wolf UGVs moved into and out of a building across the street from me. Must have seen six visible at a time and since some were streaming in and some were streaming out, I figured there were a whole lot more inside the building. The ones coming out were covered in sheetrock dust and concrete debris. They would recharge in the sun, then head back in when others came out. That was on Fifth Avenue, south of 57th, but it now made sense.

  “General, I think there’s a pretty good possibility that the drones have been destabilizing structures all over Manhattan,” I said.

  “Creating kill zones?” Yoshida asked.

  “That’s mildly terrifying,” Agent Black said to his partner, but loud enough to hear.

  The major who had been lecturing was leaning over the shoulder of the female pilot whose Render had been lased. He was watching the big screen as he gave her instructions, which she conveyed to the Render. The footage zoomed in on the top of another tower.

  “Sir,” the major said, standing upright. “These other cooling units look like they’ve been cut free from their supports. Not moved, but ready to be.”

  Davis was quiet for a second. “Effective immediately, ground transportation into the Zone is suspended. Render units will begin a survey of high rise rooftops for signs of similar damage.”

  “What about my people?” Flottercot asked.

  “Major Yoshida?” Davis asked. I noticed that Yoshida’s combat uniform was slightly different than the others. Subtle differences in the color of the urban camo and different shoulder patches.

  “Only option is aerial assault, sir,” Yoshida said.

  “Another trap. Sir,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “It’s the old wound the soldier and shoot the rescuers ploy. Sniper trick.”

  At the same time I said all that, I was wondering about Zone Defense planning a rescue mission. Never before had anyone attempted to save a team from the show. Something had changed.

  “What if you come with us? With your… trick?” Yoshida asked.

  On screen, the building had mostly stopped crumbling, just some falling dust, pebbles, and debris. Connor and Mike were okay dudes. I’d met them once, not that they knew anything about me other than that I went in on foot. The show had sent them in, knowing about the likelihood of a trap.

  Shit. That waitress had been right—I knew way too much about the show. Knew Mike and his wife had just had a baby girl. She’d be growing up without her daddy. Yeah, fuck that.

  “They’re waiting for us to use air,” I said.

  “Yeah? What are they going to do? Drop another HVAC unit on us?” Yoshida asked, curious.

  “Gonna engage us with Cranes. Snipe at us from every building. Get us all looking up. Then probably come at us from underground. Up under our bellies. Also try to hack any of our autonomous assets. Use them against us,” I said, the ideas just coming to me.

  “Shit. That’s… that’s pretty slick,” the other major said.

  “What do you recommend?” Yoshida said.

  I thought some more, then turned to look back up the stairway at the big recruiting posters. “Well, you military types need to work out the details, but if it were me, I’d set off the trap, snatch the bait, and trap the trapper,” I said, pointing at one of the posters.

  Yoshida followed my finger, then smiled an evil smile. “Similar to what I was thinking, but explain.”

  So I did.

  Chapter 12

  I complain about Zone bureaucracy a lot, but there are times when the military impresses the shit right out of me.

  An hour and a half later found me in a ready room, getting buckled into the best body armor the US military complex had ever created. Special forces powered armor was one of those ill-kept government secrets that always pop up. Enough information had bubbled to the surface over the last five years to move the idea from conspiracy theory to openly accepted idea, but still real shy on details. Lots of eyewitnesses, some grainy and poorly lit video, but no real pictures or explanation.

  Now I was being buckled into shit that Robert Heinlein would have creamed his jeans over.

  Nano synthetic muscles under multi-laminate nano-scale reactive armor. I almost crapped myself when Yoshida told me the full details of the plan I had kick started.

  Now a soldier, a woman named Akachi, was helping me into armor that she had casually mentioned cost thirty million dollars a suit.

  “This is a training suit. Turned down so that you don’t hurt yourself. Do not try to do what you see us do,” she said, turning on the armor’s back power unit. Akachi was seriously tough, hard black eyes, muscular arms flexing under skin darker than my own, a scar over her right eyebrow. I could tell she was conflicted, mostly ‘cause she mumbled to herself.

  “Taking a newbie into combat, what’s he thinking,” she’d said as she first measured me with a laser unit that I guessed sent my particulars right into the suit of armor standing by itself next to me.

  “You the one shot up the tank killers?” she asked me a second later.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said. She’d had me put on a spider silk undersuit first, a clingy second skin that could stop most handgun bullets on its own. So basically I was feeling naked.

  “Some of the nicest shooting I’ve ever seen,” she said. I smiled and thanked her. Then she frowned. “But we don’t sit still, lying around like a lump. We move. Shoot and scoot. You think you can do that?”

  “Yes,” was all I said. Didn’t know jack shit about powered armor or special operations or any of that. But I can shoot—in any and all situations. Dad made sure of that.

  “Major said you aren’t checked out on an M-43 or M-45 e-mag rifle. Said to give you a FN SCAR medium. You good with a SCAR?”

  “Yes ma’am. That’s perfect, ma’am.”

  “Don’t you give me that ma’am shit. I’m a sergeant; I work for a living. Call me Sergeant Rift or, if your civilian brain can’t handle that, I suppose you can call me Akachi.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Rift,” I said.

  She flicked a finger in midair and the top half of the suit rose up on cables, leaving the hip and leg unit standing empty. “Alright. Now step into the lower housing. Once you get in, you gotta put your dingle dangle in the uri
ne entrapment pocket so that when, not if, you piss yourself, it doesn’t run all down inside my expensive training hardware, got it?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. My legs slid easily down into the cushioned interior and then my ass, hips, and groin were similarly encased. Reaching into the suit, face flaming hot, I did as instructed while she ignored me to prep the upper unit. Something she did made the torso armor segment open, expanding the opening above me.

  “Done? You sure? Be hard as hell to make any adjustments after we lock you in.”

  “I’m sure, Sergeant.” Damn, my face was burning up

  She eyed me like I might be lying, then shrugged. “Hands up.”

  I put my arms up and looked up into the bottom of the upper half. Her finger twitched in midair and the upper slid down over my arms, head, chest, and stomach. Then she touched a spot on the armor and it clicked, slid, and folded back together like an old-time accordion. I know ‘cause I’ve found more than one in the Zone.

  No helmet or faceplate, but I wasn’t gonna ask. Better to have her question my fitness for this trip than open up my yap and remove all doubt.

  “Okay, spend the next fifteen minutes moving around. Make sure it feels natural. The suit shouldn’t feel heavy. If it’s tuned right, it should feel like you got plastic costume armor on, not two hundred pounds of ballistic laminate. How’s it feel?”

  I moved, slowly, then shifted almost immediately to normal speed. “It feels like slightly bulky motorcycle leathers,” I said.

  “Good, keep moving though. It’s gotta be natural and you don’t have any time for training,” she said. I started to do squats and leg lifts.

  Sergeant Rift casually pulled off her combat uniform, revealing a skintight set of black silks that hugged muscular feminine curves in a decidedly distracting way.

  “Don’t be staring at my ass, sniper boy. Just square yourself away,” she said without turning around. How the hell had she known?

  “Na… no, Sergeant,” I mumbled, turning back toward the doorway, doing knee raises and then trying to run in place. Luckily that’s the direction I was facing when Yoshida came in, already in armor, two men right behind him, one short, the other massive.

  “He ready to roll out, Sergeant Rift?” Yoshida asked, eyeing my suit.

  “Good to go, sir. Didn’t issue no SCAR though,” she said, already lowering the upper section of her suit onto herself. Her armor had boob bumps. Not sure what I expected, but there they were.

  “Estevez, get young Gurung a weapon and ammo loadout,” Yoshida said.

  “Yes sir.” Estevez was a corporal, short but wide, same hard eyes as the others. He moved to a locked steel door and leaned into a retina scanner.

  Yoshida moved up close, the other, much bigger guy right behind him.

  “As I’m absolutely certain Sergeant Rift explained, your suit won’t have the extra abilities of ours,” he said, checking over my armor.

  Behind me, Rift snorted.

  “Yes sir. No time to learn how to use super strength. It’ll be weird enough wearing armor, let alone trying to use abilities I know nothing about. Also glad I’m not gonna be toting a weapon I’ve never checked out on. A SCAR is perfect though,” I said.

  Estevez came out of the armory with a short black rifle and a cluster of black magazines.

  The big guy, whose armored chest nameplate read T. Thompson, took the mags from the smaller corporal and started sliding them into molded holders built into my suit. Four across the waist, two on my right thigh, one on each bicep. He handed me the last one without a word and stepped back. I glanced at he cartridge rim, .300 ACC Blackout stamped in the metal, arcing around the primer pocket. Old cartridge but solid performance out to about three hundred meters.

  Estevez moved up and clicked the weapon sling onto magnetic attachment points on my suit’s shoulders, letting the light rifle hang diagonally across my body in patrol fashion.

  “Don’t load till one of us tells you to, got it?” Yoshida asked.

  “Affirmative, Major,” I said, clearing the action, eyeballing the chamber, then adjusting the stock to fit my arms and armor. The e-sight came on anytime I lifted the gun to my shoulder. Not used to that, ‘cause anything electronic will get you dead in the Zone. There was a molded mag holder on the stock, and I put the one I had been holding into it.

  Yoshida studied me closely. “Here’s the deal. You already know the basics ‘cause it was your idea in the first place,” he started. The other three glanced up at that sentence, then exchanged a look. Yoshida didn’t move his head but I knew he’d caught the exchange. “So we fly in, shoot the shit outta any drones we see, drop our little surprises, hook onto the JTLV, and haul it outta there. Your job, and the whole reason I want you with us, is to use all those years of Zone experience and look for surprises. You are to sound off loud and clear if anything, anything at all, tweaks your gut, clear?”

  “Affirmative, Major.”

  “Your ace in the hole gonna be around?” he asked me.

  “Depends on if I call him, Major,” I said, trying to figure out what he wanted. “That much commotion, though, and he might already be there. Likely is,” I said.

  “It won’t attack us?”

  “No, Major.”

  “You’re not in the army, kid. You don’t have to Major me all the time,” he said.

  “Hard to break my father’s training, sir,” I said, wincing at the involuntary sir.

  “I read up on your old man. A real hard soldier, wasn’t he? SAS Colour Sergeant. Decorated out the ass. Sniper’s sniper. Honest to God Gurkha soldier.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t put my finger on.

  “When did he start training you?”

  “Basically the cradle, sir. Kinda the Gurkha way.”

  He nodded, still not looking at the three other soldiers but I suddenly realized all of that was for their benefit. Give me some street credit or something.

  “So you stay out of our way, don’t do what we do, but put all your instinct and knowledge into helping me keep my people safe. You’ll hang near Thompson here. He’s our heavy weapons guy and if you think something can benefit from application of his Cerberus, you bring it to his attention, clear?”

  Thompson was coming out of the arsenal, a massive three-barrel weapon held easily in one hand.

  “Affirmative,” I said, managing to catch the sir before it could leave my mouth. He clapped me on the shoulder, rocking my heavy armor a bit, then turned to discuss weapons with Estevez.

  Thompson, who wore sergeant’s chevrons on his armor’s shoulder, motioned me over to his side as he began going over his Cerberus.

  I knew a little about the weapon, but like the armor, there was more myth and legend than detail on the Internet about it.

  Three weapons in one. Stacked munition 40 millimeter grenade launcher, 20 millimeter electro mag Gauss gun, and some kind of energy weapon that no one knew the details of.

  “Major says you got a pet drone?” he asked as he opened breeches, checked magazines, and replaced energy packs.

  “Yes, Sergeant. A Berkut,” I said, eyes focused on the massive weapon.

  “A fucking Berkut?” Sergeant Rift asked from just behind my shoulder. “You telling us you got a fucking Russian Berkut Death fucking Eagle on a leash?”