CHAPTER 2 - CROSS THE BREEZE
Miles learned later that the tank colonel was to provide an escort to a new model of robot - a missile carrier - one which could fight its way across the city to destroy the prawn ship to the north.
The colonel was unable to follow, not with the scant survivors of his decimated tank company. And despite the obvious strategic nature of the exercise, there was a lack of coordination somewhere "higher up" at United Command, and Miles' squad was not considered when it came to a nuclear strike by a robotic missile tank.
Now of course, much fuss was being made back to UniCom about this gross oversight, not just by Sergeant Cheng's commanding officer, but by the rest of the squad.
That, plus the message which flashed across their battle blisters, were rubbing everyone wrong. The message was from the robot itself, and someone had asked aloud if it was legal for a machine to order live soldiers around.
To the sergeant's credit, he allowed the complaint to go through before he quelled all dissension. Orders were issued, if not by the robot tank, then at least it was a courier for the same orders from some general in a mountain enclave. In any case, there was a new objective, and rightly or wrongly, Cheng's Gibbon squad was there to do the job.
The situation though, was less than ideal. Arsenyev and Brinkmann, already dead, were vaporized along with their machines when their rigs' antimatter containment fields failed. No effort was made to salvage remains because there weren't any.
Soltyk's Gibbon, damaged before by the berserker's rampage that caught his two luckless squadmates by surprise, came through surprisingly undamaged, along with Sikarna and Cheng. It was all thanks to the latter's timely action to collapse the street they were on to shield them from the nuke blast. Even then, their machines were hot enough that their rigs' outer frames would probably be relegated to the scrap pile should they return to base.
Losses were appalling only in terms of the bot forces near the 'zerker when the nuke landed. The sergeant had Webster send her mechanical task force forward just seconds before the big tank's warhead impacted. Now, the Newcomer had approximately half of her bots remaining. It was enough to make a retreat or a last stand, but not quite enough to do what was coming next.
Still, if the big new missile tank was going to do most of the work, why not let it?
Miles glanced at their escortee, now silhouetted against the dim light of the dying day. From his brief examination of their new model robot, he was impressed. Instead of limbs, the missile carrier reverted to the centuries old caterpillar track design. Each bogey wheel was about half as high as a Gibbon stood (over two meters) and they were spaced fairly evenly in two rows, with interspaced drive sprockets on the bottom row.
Without a crew, the tank could afford plenty of redundant equipment, like extra engines ... and even extra armor and weapons.
The robot was articulated, with a stout forward fighting engine encased in a domed carapace made from a potent mixture of graphene blocks and super-dense nano-carbon fiber. The curved dome mounted several rotating PIG emplacements, and the dome itself seemed to be able to rotate like a tank's main turret.
An array of warheads (probably antimatter micro-missiles, Miles thought) peeked out from under the dome's outer rim, like evil metal bats nestled in a mountain of moving death.
Miles gaze swept towards the tank's rear carrier, and he wondered if it was being towed, or if it could run on its own power. He noticed it sported a similar wheel and track arrangement but had limpet-type PIG emplacements. The newbie could see some were missing or simply molten pits of slag - probably destroyed earlier in the fighting. What was most interesting were the large silo covers running all along the length of the vehicle on both sides.
The rookie counted ten on his side. If symmetry held true, he hazarded a guess the machine probably had twenty nuclear missiles at its disposal. Minus the one it used on the berserker, it meant it'd have nineteen left, although if the tank had fought other targets before, it would have fewer.
It's like having our own berserker, Miles thought.
The group of manned machines and accompanying bots followed the overhead highway. Big missing sections in the elevated roadway convinced the sergeant to leave only the scout Gibbons - Oiguchi and Sudek - up top with their thruster packs and laser armaments to deal with prawn missiles and attack drones while the rest of the squad followed the robot juggernaut on ground level.
While there had been no enemy contact since the bot tank destroyed its alien opponent, Miles was uneasy as he knew they were headed right into the jaws of the enemy camp. A simple text message played across the squad's display like a marquee.
:: CAUTION. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPEDIMENT DETECTED ::
"Heads up," Cheng rasped on the comms. "The big bot just bitched 'bout something it don't like."
"Hey Ginny," it was one of the scouts asking, "can't you control that thing?"
"Can't," Webster said simply. "It's self-contained, down to the tactical command level. All we can do is watch it do what it's been ordered to do."
"It won't blast us, right?" someone else asked.
"I don't think so," the Newcomer was thoughtful. "Not directly."
"Tell it again," Soltyk sounded doubtful. "It didn't seem to notice - or care - that we were near that hopper dreadnaught when the nuke went off."
"Think of it as an occupational hazard," Sergeant Cheng cut in. "UniCom says the ship is o'er a large nest 'bout eighty klicks outside the city limits."
"I see it from here," someone said.
"So can we, Sudek. It do'n't have its scrambler field on. Which means it's deliberately not hidin' or somethin' inside broke."
"That or it's a trap," Sudek was smug. Miles saw her partner, Oiguchi, snicker in silent agreement on his pop-up display.
"S'you think it's a trap, boss?" Doyle pressed home the question.
"There could be 'nough XTs there to slag Mex'co, even if we sent in two dozen rig teams," the sergeant quirked a brow before he let the surprise drop. "It could also mean that th' ship got the same sort'o xeno-plague that killed the JoBurg ship an' its crew."
There was a moment of silence, then general clamor broke out.
"New plague?" "Is it dangerous?" "How'd we know that?" "Won't nukes sterilize it?"
Cheng let the chatter die down before he answered their most pressing questions.
"First off, we don' know if the ship is ridden wi' plague. If t'isn't, the big bot here has orders to blast it."
"And if it's xeno-plague?" Webster's face was impassive. "What then?"
Cheng's expression was equally nonchalant. "We still put down th' ship, but as intact as possible. An' once we do, we dig in an' secure until UniCom sends in th' cavalry and a salvage crew. Should be easy wi' this nuke-flinger backin' us up."
Miles almost rolled his eyes at that, but didn't, since he'd be seen. That plan sounded ridiculously impossible given the hit and run nature of the squad's initial mission. Even if Webster's bots were up to full strength, and the squad wasn't down two machines, there was little to keep the prawn ship from dropping multiple berserkers and annihilating them in an overrun.
I think I just signed up for a suicide mission, Miles thought.
He spied Doyle's window, and her expression more or less mirrored his feelings about the whole thing. While Miles was ruminating on the stupidity of military planning, the group had come across a large aqueduct cutting across their path - the "environmental impediment" the big bot had alerted the squad about.
The men and women in the Gibbons halted, along with the bots under Webster's command, but the bot tank seemed to play down the tenacity of the obstacle. Suddenly, the robotic gargantuan stopped, then just as quickly revved its motors, changed course, and started off towards the ditch at an oblique angle. Another text message played across the battle blisters
:: WILL ATTEMPT CROSSING. STAND BY ::
"Looks like it's going to break its hitch," remarked Soltyk.
There was a loud metal clang from the big bot tank's hitch, but the linkage didn't break. Instead the two vehicles that formed the bot carrier separated. The lead bot tank scurried down the escarpment and sat idling on the aqueduct's bottom, waiting while the nuke carrying half tried its best to climb the opposite bank.
"Smartass mothe'fucker," Cheng muttered under his breath. "All right, Sikarna, Sudek, Oiguchi, and me will cover until everyone gets across. Move it."
"I think it's havin' some trouble. Too big," Doyle slid her machine smoothly down the into dry water channel, then looked around. "Just like us. Too bad the stupid thing can't make and use hand-holds."
Miles saw Doyle's Bactrian use her modified PIG like a crutch, one mitt on the bracket anchor while she leveled a powerful kick on the concrete escarpment.
"Step up an' step lively, lads," Doyle leaned her weapon against an undamaged facing of the aqueduct wall and leaned her Bactrian forwards against the bank, slowly climbing the concrete face. "Up, up and away!"
Oiguchi and Sudek, with their thruster packs, easily crossed over. One of the scouts even grabbed Doyle's weapon and put it down on the opposite side, ready for her to pick it back up. Miles followed the other rigs, using a side protrusion in the dry channel as a step for his machine so he need not drop his own weapon. The different bots crossed over in a variety of methods, but they managed.
Only the big tank seemed stuck, and too stupid to realize it was stuck ...
Before anyone could step in to help it, the front half of the tank - the armored dome with the PIG emplacements - swiveled one of its guns and fired on the embankment. Miles and a few others nervously shifted their weapons, but before long, the robot tank had created a rough ramp for itself. The missile carrying tank half growled its way up the rubble strewn slope.
"Hmph, so the thing can learn by observation," Webster mused. "I always wondered how good AI would develop once it got cut out from a network."
"Well, now y'know," Cheng said, then his tone got business-like quick. "We'd better move. Soon as its better half joins up, we can -"
:: threat alert. threat alert. threat alert ::
The sergeant didn't have time to state the obvious when the front half of the big tank rotated its PIGs and fired down the dry canal as HIVELOC rounds zipped back the same path towards the squad. None of the Gibbons were seriously affected, but one Raptor's sensor snout was torn off and the leg of a Mastiff caught a few more rounds than usual, causing it to spark.
Almost immediately, the entire troop of Webster's bots spread out to shield the manned rigs, and to present individual targets to the enemy as they selectively returned fire. Despite their best efforts of not drawing enemy attention, the big tank's attempt to create a path for itself carried the distinctive signature of antimatter explosives. Enemy patrols were of course, sensitive to that and would've investigated.
The tank's robot brain could learn from this, if it survived, Miles thought as he ran towards a low revetment for cover.
Miles looked around his battle blister's windows to see where his squadmates were by their shared video feed, and found it was too confusing to follow. He decided to extend a small peeping wand from his own cam-plate to see what his own situation was. No sooner than his spying antennae poked past cover than a warrior's ugly tendril laden face came into view and roared.
:: threat alert ::
Goddamn! Miles jumped back and fired. The electromagnetic warble of his weapon was soon followed by the deathly booming cracks of explosive shots hitting their mark. The enemy stood little chance against such a flurry of firepower, but Miles and his squad were being overrun by sheer numbers. His M/AM rounds demolished the rubble, revealing a small band of warriors carrying a weapon in each arm pairing.
"Clusterfuck! Fall back! It's a clusterfuck!" Miles didn't know whether it was someone on the comms or his brain that kept yelling even as he fired at the enemy.
Prawn blood and guts splattered the rubble and his rig's outer frame as M/AM rounds shed their containment fields and detonated against alien exoskeleton. While antimatter explosions were nearly devoid of extraneous matter, the explosive effect was - in effect - chunking the enemy into prawn giblets.
The alien bio-matter xeno-formed humans and Miles felt mildly queasy as his display gelled up with their innards. No Newcomer was insane enough to see if the insect aliens biology would do the same to them.
That uncomfortable thought in mind, Miles stopped firing his PIG, and used his laser mitt to fry the enemy. Cooked prawn residue made people sick, but it certainly didn't transform them into prawn. Tissue tests in UniCom's labs suggested it was unlikely, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
HIVELOC rounds pinged his armor once or twice, but did no noticeable damage. While switching his weapons, a dying warrior managed to squeeze off a final ARC shot. The bolt of electricity would have been blinding, but the battle blister's display automatically darkened the flash of light so Miles could still see what he fought. The bolt blackened his combat frame, but apart from the tingling feeling, it did nothing to phase him.
:: threat alert. threat alert. threat alert ::
Markers of different colors, shapes, and sizes populated his blister's view, displaying different prawn units he and his squadmates could detect and identify on his HUD.
Solid red squares were prawn warriors, as opposed to red triangles, which denoted prawn drones. A hollow red circle represented prawn units that other units had detected, but were not yet engaged by Miles - at least not yet.
Basically, the rule went that the bigger the marker, with more red on it, the more dangerous it was. As Miles walked backward towards his unit, blazing away with his laser mitt, red gear icons started polluting on his blister's display.
Shit, he thought. "Mechs!"
"Rook, get your ass back to Teabgs, now! Fallback!" Cheng's rasp cut through the din. Miles thought the sergeant might have overridden his volume control to get himself heard.
The rookie wanted to turn and run, but it was too late. Against a single prawn mech, a Gibbon would've destroyed it without much of a thought. The alien machine was smaller, and had weapons that wasn't as effective as the M/AM armament UniCom's rigs used.
UniCom strategists had estimated (somewhat correctly) that an average rig driver operating a Gibbon, was victorious against three enemy machines. It'd take four to call it a draw (whether the rig driver survived was moot, only the destruction of enemy machines counted), and if the enemy attacked at five to one odds, they would win.
Of course, turning away and running wasn't an option at the moment, since the enemy's weapons traveled faster than Miles could run. If the prawn's HIVELOCs and ARC shots didn't shake up a fleeing machine, their missiles could shred a limb. Once that occurred, the aliens could take their time ripping apart the armored shell to get to the man inside.
With no intention to become canned lunch, Miles quickly selected a spot about ten meters in front of his position. A point, swipe, and a tap on his battle blister's display gave the Gibbon's targeting computer enough information to launch a pattern of antimatter grenades in a high arc and a wide fan pattern. By the time the enemy got to him, the bombs would be dropping.
As Miles heard his soda pack launcher thump their deadly payloads overhead, he took aim with his PIG and blew apart one prawn mech, then another. Two enemy machines downed, but another four clambered over the rubble, firing towards his direction. A third mech fell apart after Miles knocked it off balance, then shot it to pieces while it struggled to get back up.
"Get out of there, Rook!"
Miles couldn't remember who was talking, but he realized his grenades would soon reach the apex when he ordered them to drop their antimatter payloads. Anything and everything underneath that shower of antimatter would be flashed into energy regardless of what they were.
"RUN MILES! RUN!" It was Doyle screaming. "G'dam'it, Rook! The big bot's goin' t' blow!"