CHAPTER 3 - COLOR OF NIGHT
Stupid fucking robot, thought Miles. He couldn't believe he was still alive. The tank's forward half, still in the sluice channel when the shooting started, didn't make it out before enemy mechs swarmed the machine en masse. Its PIG systems destroyed or disabled, it decided to shut off its power plant's containment field, creating an uncontrolled and devastating reaction.
Unfortunately, the rear half decided it would fire its cruise missiles from the aqueduct rather than get close to the prawn ship. Even more unfortunately, the missile half of the bot decided that the best position to launch its payload of volatile antimatter warheads was the bank next to the self-destructing front half.
What kind of fucked up logic was that, Miles wondered as he mulled over his mission performance. The blond rookie relieved himself, and was amazed he hadn't sweated himself dry from his last encounter with the enemy. Still, he may have had drank a good portion of the distilled water installed in his survival column; the same water was used to rinse his privates after he went.
He was supposed to be safeguarding the Bactrian, to which Sergeant Cheng demonstrated he could do by himself, command the squad, and save the ass of the idiot newbie without breaking a sweat.
Miles was more or less intact, thanks to the fast thinking of the sergeant and the skills of his scouts. Cheng covered the two scout Gibbons as they jetted in and hauled Miles to safety in two big jet-assisted leaps just before both halves of the bot tank leveled most of the immediate area.
Thankfully, the sluice funneled most of the resulting blast along the channel, sparing the Gibbon drivers.
It was now nighttime, and after the very destructive mess in the city, Sergeant Cheng moved the squad and the surviving bots - a limping Jackal, a Mastiff with a body partially cored by an explosion, and a pair of sparking Raptors - away from ground zero. The goal was now to circle around the enemy, who were sure to send in forces to pursue. Despite the temptation to send the bots to act as a decoy force, the sergeant had Webster keep her loyal metal pets close.
Thankfully, there were no further human casualties, except the expected battle damage. Displays were probably fizzing out on some of the more heavily scarred machines, like Soltyk's, but all in all the squad's rigs were holding up well given what they went through.
The group was moving - on auto-walk so everyone could rest their legs - silently through the filthy slums outside the city. There wasn't much debris or vegetation to hide a five meter tall metal machine (let alone a group of them) but the surrounding hills confounded radar detection, at least from the enemy's ground patrols.
"Given how things are goin', I think it's best to have Faraz lead th' second team," Cheng stated his case. "Objections?"
Miles kept silent, although others murmured their opinions. Too put it mildly, the Rook was too embarrassed to speak after his rescue. And the meeting wasn't a normal situation conference, especially not for a leader of Cheng's temperament. It wasn't routine for someone like the sergeant to ask subordinates for input.
Then again, the squad wasn't run-of-the-mill infantry; each rig driver controlled a good amount of fighting strength on their Gibbon, and not coordinating as a team could lead to disastrous results.
"If you're divvying up the recon element," Sudek sounded displeased, "should we divvy up the remaining bots?"
Cheng kept silent and motioned for Webster to answer, and she did.
"Personally, I don't think so Nastasha," the pretty Newcomer managed a cute frown of frustration. "I can't do much with four bots. Splitting them up makes it worse. I'd rather have them around the Bactrian defending it 'til me and Teabags get blasted. That frees up the Rook - Miles - to go on the front line."
"I can't argue with that logic. I don't have to like it though." Sudek sounded unhappy at losing her scouting partner, Oiguchi.
Of course, if Miles believed more of the shipboard rumor-mongering, Sudek and Oiguchi were much more than friends. And neither were bad looking either, for a couple of muff-diving dykes.
"No one's askin' you to 'like it'," Cheng took command once more. "No one likes bein' out here. If I had my way, I'd send out bots to corral the hoppers into containment zones before we nuke 'em en-masse, but there are some things even bots can't do right."
"Case in point." Miles surprised himself by finally speaking. The bot tank's performance was definitely a sore point today. Webster busied herself with a post-battle report about its performance before sending it to UniCom.
"An' some things bots do better than people," the sergeant barely skipped a beat at the rookie's outburst. Miles quickly lapsed into silence once more.
"Who go with me?" Faraz asked in his broken English.
"Your usual," Cheng was referring to Rachid and Hasan. "Plus Oiguchi, Menshik, and the Rook."
Miles kept quiet. Effectively, his job of protecting Doyle and Webster was over. While it was boring, it was also light, and didn't involve him running around getting shot at much. Except for his broken peeping wand and a few holes in his armor, his Gibbon was one of the least damaged. Now, it was all combat going forward, and he wondered about his luck.
"Sergeant?" It was Webster. "There's something ahead. Five hundred meters out."
"Let's put our shit to th' test. Faraz, take your team forward. The rest of us find cover - quietly."
Cover? What cover? Miles looked around his battle blister, the display lit up showing an artificially bright hillside with little else apart from a few boulders and ramshackle shacks piled on top of one another.
"Over here," Menshik waved his Gibbon's arm while it stood beside the rubble. Miles recognized the pilot from earlier in the day; he was the one who was waiting at the highway ramp.
"Thanks."
Menshik didn't respond. Instead he slipped his left arm out of the cradle to make a "ssh" motion on his window before slipping his arm back in position. Miles looked at his battle map, and saw Sergeant Cheng and Faraz both drawing colored arrows, directing which direction their respective teams would shoot at when contact was made.
"Mary, any luck wi' what's coming?" Miles heard Doyle whisper. Contact could be anything, be it human, Newcomer, or prawn.
"No luck. The Raptor that picked this up has a damaged sniffer," Webster frowned more in annoyance than in fear. "Looks like a sentry though. One medium signature moving slowly."
Miles hefted his PIG and aimed in the direction Faraz had indicated for him. He noticed he was aiming effectively down range with a lot of ground to cover.
"Steady," Cheng rasped. "Hold fire unless it shoots. Conserve ammo."
Of course, thought Miles. We've been fighting all day, or at least the others were. Only he and Menshik had plenty of ammunition. They were directed to aim straight ahead, down towards where the unknowns were coming towards them. Miles waited with bated breath and wondered what was to come next.
"Sergeant?" It was Webster again. "The blip's stopped."
"Think it saw us?" Cheng asked.
"I don't know. It just stopped." The Newcomer swiped at something on her screen.
"Faraz," the tactical sergeant rasped. "Check it out."
At that, the Arab team leader tapped at Menshik's and Miles' markers on his blister display, then made a forward motion with his hand. That was the signal to move. Feeling a mild sense of dread, Miles ambled forward alongside Menshik, who was equally as apprehensive walking point. Their rigs lumbered forth, PIGs wagging ungainly in the dark of night.
The blister did not sound any alarm, and Miles slowly eased his itchy finger on his PIG. As soon as he set sights on the "unknown" enemy, he lowered his weapon. It appeared to be another rig, but it was not any design he'd seen before. However, it sported the UniCom logo and it was too large - and too human-looking - to be prawn-made.
The unknown machine also sported a strange, pronged tube-like weapon perched on its shoulder, but with it lying awkwardly on its side, Miles figured it was probably not combat ready.
Miles wondered if it was occupied or if it auto-walked until it detected a friendly UniCom signal. He thought he could hear the light hum of its power plant in the cold night air from his external earphones, and could almost feel the vibrations of its servos through his blister's cradles. Perhaps the driver within was too injured to move?
"Sergeant?" Webster called to her commander, then suddenly dipped into her throaty native Newcomer tongue to speak.
Miles watched Cheng's face harden before the scrappy sergeant barked new orders.
"Hold position. No one move. Faraz, private line with me and Ginny, now."
"All hold station," the Arab managed to say before his portrait blurred into a white hazy cloud. Cheng, Webster, and Faraz were now in a closed conference in their respective battle blisters while the rest of the squad stood guard in the cold black night.
"I wonder what's going on?" Miles broke the silence over the general channel.
"Who knows? When the chief's talkin' behind closed doors, it ain't ever good." Menshik sounded impatient, but he didn't venture near the fallen machine. Sergeant Cheng was not a commander to be disobeyed, especially on a battlefield.
"Hang tight now," Doyle chimed in. "The virgin's bound to tell. I still have to lug her around, 'member?"
"Yea, you're right," Miles shot her a grin of bravado.
"Yeah, I s'pose." Menshik did not sound happy, but then again, he never seemed to be either.
After a lengthy moment of tense silence and gossip, Cheng's, Faraz's, and Webster's portraits sharpened once more.
"People," the sergeant proceeded slowly. "I know we've a mission t' take out that hopper ship, but we have t' make an urgent detour t'night."
Cripes, thought Miles. What now?
"Faraz? Send Rachid and Hasan to relieve the Rook and Menshik."
"Sarge?" Menshik barely got his word out before Cheng rudely cut him off.
"Follow orders, skin-dick. Fall back. Now."
Miles moved past Hasan's and Rachid's Gibbons as Menshik grumbled and followed his lead. Cheng continued as they were relieved.
"Most of you know what prawn bio-matter does t'Newcomers an' humans."
Of course, of course, Miles soured. Who could forget what happened to Van Der Merwe?
"Now, I'm askin' you all t' stay calm an' hear what this fellow has t' say. Under no circumstances are you t' interrupt, or do anything stupid, like firin'. Understand?"
Open fire? What the hell, Miles thought. Cheng made sure the squad mumbled their acknowledgments before he muttered something in Newcomer to Webster. The pretty bald-headed alien put on a brave smile and put up a portrait that caused Miles to blanch.
It wasn't human, or it wasn't anymore, that thing that was inside the battle blister. Someone cursed, and there was nervous laughter in the background. Miles thought it could have been him. Or it could have been someone else.
"Ladies an' gentlemen," Cheng growled, "This's Lieutenant Clifford Lansford, of -?"
"Firrrst Marrrauder. Schpeshall Oppperrrashuns Grrroop."
Miles looked on in patient shock as what was left of a man's mouth tried to work human speech. The prawn-like growths that were supposed to be mandibles were interfering with Lansford's efforts. It took a little effort to understand his deep lisp, that Cheng jumped in to speed things along.
"SOG/1E - One Echo - was here t' disable th' prawn mothership with the big missile tank earlier," the sergeant explained. "Obviously, that didn't go as planned. What you're seeing is a SOG rig - a Dhampir - with an Einvelocity Cannon."
Damn, thought Miles. He thought he'd never see one in his lifetime. The sergeant was referring to the metallic tube with the prongs and forks on the SpecOps rig. The weapon - also called the "Void Cannon" or "Space Gun" - gave Miles a chill down his spine.
It was considered dangerous, using hitherto unknown concepts from adopted Newcomer technology to discharge a de-synchronous wave that accelerated normal matter to barely faster-than-light speeds. A thin beam of antimatter was then directed through the center of the wave, and the resultant reaction turned all matter in the wave's path "vanish" into nothing.
The first live test of this weapon turned the Melbourne Research Facility into a gaping hole of nothing - as well as the surrounding area 20 miles equi-distant. A large bay now sat in southeast Australia, the ocean having rushed into the gap after the accident, along with part of Earth's atmosphere. There were no human survivors.
The only positives to have come out of that was the test was being monitored by UniCom, so the error (chiefly in power output, but also in the vector of the wave's discharge) was corrected and the weapon refined.
The other positive was that the prawn ship that routinely savaged the area got half of itself disintegrated with the accident, and the remaining wreckage crashed into the sea. UniCom forces made sure nothing escaped - not alive anyway.
"One Echo was supposed to be the bot's back-up along with Colonel Hammer's tanks," Cheng continued his explanation as the squad regrouped on Lansford's machine. "Deploying the Void Cannon was a fall-back plan."
"So what happened?" Miles heard someone ask.
"The bot tank didn't make it, obviously," the sergeant replied, "but while One Echo was busy followin' it, they got ambushed near a refugee camp not too far from here."
"Refugee camp? Here?" asked Doyle.
"They ain't our kind'o refugees," Cheng rasped. "How many of you know a Doctor Clara McKay?"
"Her name sounds familiar," Sudek temporarily freed a hand of its cradle to scratch an itch under her breast. "Don't know why though."
"McKay's the Shrimp Lover, Tasha," Doyle's tone went cold. "The Prawn Doctor."
"Half right, slokaa," Webster corrected her. "She's a xenologist. She studied my people too, when we were in Quarantine."
"You knew her?" Cheng asked.
"Just barely," Webster smiled blandly. "I didn't know who she was until I saw her again on the news in the assimilation center. After that, I had a name to put on her face."
"I thought all us humans look alike to you," Menshik managed to get in his barbs.
"Almost all." The Newcomer appeared unphased, but her reply was unmistakably curt.
"So, who is this Dr. McKay?" Miles asked.
"I'm guessing you don't follow news much." Doyle's nostrils flared slightly before she gave the rookie a short history lesson.
"Like I said, McKay's a a shrimp lover. In short, a sympathizer. She protested the MNU when the cricket districts were created, and supported the Newcomers to be discharged from Quarantine, but when X-Day came, her tone changed."
"Everything changed, Tanya." Cold fury was in Sergeant Cheng's voice, but he let Doyle continue.
"Well, she would've been left alone for the most part. Maybe someone in a sanctuary might've slashed her face or beat her silly for prattling on about prawn rights, but she took things too far."
"What'd she do?" someone asked.
"McKay used her UniCom credentials to break into a hazmat vault and stole some XT bio-fuel," Cheng answered before Doyle could speak.
"What? But why?"
"The doc went and exposed people to that shit," Doyle explained angrily, "in vain hope we'd broker some sort of peace with the prawn."
"That's insane," Miles felt ill. "What was she thinking?"
"I don't know," the sergeant growled in aggravation, "but more importantly, I don't care. Lansford says McKay's at th' refugee camp. She an' her bitch friends bush-whacked One Echo, took their juice packs for the space gun, and exposed them t' hopper shit."
"Innnjehckt," the half-human Lansford managed to lisp, but his deformed fingers mimed a needle going into his neck. "Mmmussst ssstohp."
Jesus, thought Miles. That doctor must have went completely psycho to inject prawn bio-matter into people.
"All-right," Cheng growled imperiously. "This is war, and war can get ugly. I have no idea what McKay wants with those juice packs, but we need 'em for One Echo's cannon. With ev'ry inch of land a free-fire zone, I don't e'spect there will be anyone to rescue."
Miles shifted uneasily in his blister cradle. Did the sergeant just imply what Miles thought he implied?
"Although I'm not all opposed to savin' anyone who ain't a sympathizer," Cheng finished.
"And how will we be able to discriminate?" Miles heard someone ask.
Right sergeant. How are we able to tell? Mind-reading?
"Simple," the sergeant's voice hardened, "we find the camp, and anyone who don't run can be considered a sympathizer."
"That should be easy." Miles heard someone say. The rookie tried rubbing his fingers and thumb, but his limb cradle limited him to stroking empty air; his Gibbon was carrying a PIG, and its stout handle was securely held by his machine.
"We can't use PIGs or any explosives," Cheng said soberly, "we need 'em later at the mothership. Bound to be heavy resistance there."
"Lasers then?" asked Oiguchi.
"Gettin' to that," Cheng knitted his brow. "Any lasers or glittersticks are going to be a dead give-away to patrols if we miss. It'll be a light show in the dead of night."
"So, what are you sayin' sarge?" Menshik asked the obvious question on everyone's mind. "How are we going to secure the place and get the job done?"
Tactical Sergeant Cheng's window temporarily changed from his portrait to the arm camera on his Gibbon. The squad watched as his machine tilted slightly, grab a long piece of steel rebar, then heft it like a crude baton. When the sergeant's window changed back to showing Cheng's face, Miles saw the man smiling grimly.
"We do it the old fashioned way."