Conquest

-19-

When the impact came, it barely shook the room. All of us looked at the walls and ceiling with wide eyes.

“Was that it?” Sandra asked.

“I heard it strike sir,” Major Sarin said. “It has to be down.”

I nodded. “A dud. Or it was knocked out by all our counter fire and unable to detonate.”

I thought fast for a few seconds. I watched the screen. A few more red streaks had made it through the barrier, but I saw less than a dozen. Those that went further over the island were shot at by more and more of my laser turrets as they came. They blinked and went out. Only two of the Macro missiles actually went off, and in both cases they were too high to do much damage. I figured the missiles knew they weren’t going to reach their targets and had self-destructed. Either that, or they were damaged somehow and misfired. In either case, the overall results were excellent.

I began to smile. “We did it,” I said.

“It actually worked,” Sandra said. Her voice was that of someone who could not believe they were still alive.

“I thought we were dead, too,” Major Sarin said quietly.

I glanced at her, feeling a pang of sympathy. Maybe that’s why she’d been hurt in those final moments when I promoted Barrera. To be passed up for promotion was never pleasant, but it had to be more poignant when you were convinced you were in your final moments of life.

I felt a sharp jab in the ribs. Sandra smiled at me tightly when I looked down at her. She’d poked me with a pair of stiff fingers. I wasn’t sure, but she might have cracked a rib.

I took in a sharp breath of air and looked away from Jasmine’s lost face. My side ached, but I managed to speak in a natural-sounding voice. “Connect me to First Sergeant Kwon.”

Major Sarin came alive and did as I asked.

I heard whooping and cheers. They came in a deafening chorus. I smiled slightly, it was hard not to.

“Kwon?”

“Yes, sir! The men here are celebrating. Can we go up yet?”

“That’s why I’m calling. Get your helmets on. I’m going to suit-up as well. We have a piece of unexploded ordinance that came down in the base somewhere. You’re team is to seek and dismantle that weapon.”

The joyful chorus died down. A babble of low voices erupted as Kwon relayed my orders. Once the helmets were on, I could only hear Kwon’s voice.

“We’re on it, sir. I should have thought of that one. Please order the rest of the base personnel to stay underground.”

I waved to Major Sarin, who put her hand to her headset and began contacting the other bunkers, emphasizing that the all-clear had not yet been sounded.

As Kwon’s unit was the only team of marines on the base who had battle suits, I decided they were the logical ones to send up. If the warhead detonated, of course, their personal armor wouldn’t make any difference. But fusion warheads used smaller explosions to get the reaction that caused the big bang. As well, the systems engine might ignite or the entire missile might be set to self-destruct upon sensing approaching enemies. We just didn’t know how these missiles worked. We’d never been near an unexploded Macro missile before. I knew they had some level of machine intelligence. They were definitely smart weapons in every sense of the term.

“I don’t want any surprises,” I told Kwon. “Use the utmost caution. Don’t let anyone play around with it.”

“Right, sir.”

“I’ll be right there after I’ve suited up.”

I walked quickly to my battle suit and climbed up into it. The easiest part of putting one of these things on was getting your legs inside. The suit expanded everywhere and split itself open across the chest. The legs however, remained standing by themselves. The suit’s exoskeleton took care of balance and kept itself erect.

I jumped up on top of it, and slid my feet down into the two vertical tubes of the legs by pointing my toes. Once inside, the armor plates slid closer forming a tighter fit around my feet. I shoved my hands into the armholes and felt the suit clamp down on them. Now that I was inside, the chest area began closing over my torso. It was a disturbing process, and made one feel claustrophobic.

“A little help with the helmet, please,” I said.

Sandra appeared in my face. “Are you crazy, Kyle? Why do you have to go up there?”

“I want to see what a Macro missile looks like.”

“So have Kwon take a video and check it out later.”

“Helmet?”

She made an exasperated sound and put the helmet on my head. I adjusted it and tapped the ‘seal-ready’ button with my chin. All the suit’s systems went live and I heard oxygen begin to flow around my face. I clanked up the stairs. Sandra followed me. I had to order her to stay behind.

“When do I get one of these gorilla-suits so I can go with you?” she asked hotly.

I thought about it, not liking the idea. “Many of your special capacities would be blocked by a suit like this. It would greatly slow you down. Why don’t you just stay here in the bunker and protect Jasmine for a while?”

“Because she isn’t trying to play with a Macro bomb and get herself killed.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said and clanked away. I could feel the two women staring after me.

When I reached the surface, I paused in shock. The forest was on fire in dozens of spots. All around the base, up and down the beach, the trees smoldered and billowed with white smoke. The trees nearest the water had taken the worst of it. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. You couldn’t blow off forty-odd high-yield airbursts and not expect some damage. Fortunately, the blasts had been far enough offshore and high enough in the atmosphere they hadn’t knocked the entire base and the forest around it flat. There was damage here and there. The base buildings looked like they’d been through a hurricane. Debris was strewn everywhere, but I didn’t see any bodies.

I turned around to check out my new headquarters building. Every window appeared to be blown out, except for the large ballistic glass windows of my office on the top floor. Three of those showed impact stars, however. I wondered if I’d live long enough to repair them.

Tilting my helmeted head upward to the limits of the suit, I gazed at the blue-white sky. The wind was blowing westward, so I could see out over the water, despite the smoke from the burning trees. There were definitely some odd-looking clouds out there. A few of them looked like starfish, while others looked like puffy white doughnuts. I wasn’t sure what the meteorological conditions were, but I was sure there were going to be some funny-looking turnips growing in Russia or wherever those radioactive clouds ended up coming down.

I goaded my suit into a trot and hopped over a barracks roof. I found Kwon’s platoon out among the landing pits where the Macro missile had fallen. His men were standing outside of pit ten, encircling the concrete walls. They watched over the top of the barrier while someone in a suspiciously large suit clanked around inside a crater in the middle of the pit.

I engaged my gravity-repellers and sailed over their heads, landing in the pit with Kwon. I walked up and he turned awkwardly to meet me.

“Colonel? I didn’t know you were coming to this party.”

“What have we got, First Sergeant?”

“A hole sir. I can’t see the missile at all.”

“Hmm,” I said, coming up to the smoking crater. I stood beside him and we both gazed down in a mass of molten, sandy soil. It was smoking and looked like a bullet wound in the surface of the island.

“Let’s get a crawler out,” I said. “We’re going to have to dig it out.”

A crawler was a new vehicle Crow had invented while I was away fighting for the Macros. It was similar to hovertank, but wasn’t designed for combat. They had no lasers, but instead had four nanite-arms and were equipped with a blade and a scoop they could use to mold the earth as desired. The crawlers had replaced vehicles such as bulldozers and backhoes on Andros. They were much more versatile. With their four incredibly powerful arms, they could lift cargo like giants. Working together, they could even move ships and small prefab buildings.

We summoned two of the automated vehicles to the spot. One looked lightly damaged from the blast waves that had rolled over the base. It had one mangled arm. But we poured a fresh barrel of constructive nanites into its maw and within a minute or two it had rebuilt itself.

“Now get in there and move the earth away from the metallic object in the center,” I told the crawlers. “Do not touch it, or cause it to shift. When you get close, we’ll go in and do the rest of the job by hand.”

“Script written,” said the master crawler. “Executing.”

The second crawler followed the first and aped its actions. They were linked together in what was known as a master-slave relationship, meaning the brainbox of the first unit controlled the actions of both crawlers. It took less coordination that way. It was similar to the manner in which a nanite swarm operated. Somebody had to have a plan and be in charge.

The two crawlers worked their blades, scoops and arms impressively. They pushed back the circle of concrete walls in spots to get more room to work. Apparently, the Macro missile had sunk into the soil quite deeply. I wondered if we would find much more down there than a mass of twisted metal.

They bladed away a widening oval shape around the spot. The missile had partly disintegrated and left an area of debris that was, well…missile-shaped. Within twenty minutes, the crawlers had the landing pit torn apart and a race-track shaped hole around the object a dozen feet deep.

“This would make quite a swimming pool if we filled it in with gunite,” I joked with Kwon.

The First Sergeant turned his suit laboriously to look at me. “A swimming pool, sir?”

His English had never improved much and he tended to take things literally. I waved away my words. “Never mind, First Sergeant. I think the crawlers are done.”

The two machines had made themselves a pathway that led out of the hole like an earthen ramp. They raced out of it now, arms whipping around overhead carrying their final loads of earth in their scoops. Wet clumps of sand dribbled from the swaying scoops as they passed me.

“Mission accomplished,” the master unit said as it whizzed past. It had many other missions to attend to today, given the state of the base, so I didn’t ask any questions. The Crawler probably would have given unsatisfactory answers anyway.

“Break out the spades, men,” I called to the waiting platoon. “This is the marines, so I know you guys know how to dig.”

Indeed, they did know about digging. We headed down into that hole and circled the central mass that the crawlers had revealed. I almost regretted letting them get away. Perhaps they would have been more delicate with this next stage of the operation than my marines.

Spades flashed in the sun, biting deeply into sandy soil. I helped until I grew tired of it, then joined Kwon in walking around supervising the men. Here and there, they found a smoking piece of black metal. I ordered them to switch to another spot immediately, not to keep poking at it. We were here to reveal this wreck, not to stab it with shovel blades.

“The men want to know if they can open their suits, sir,” Kwon asked me.

“No way,” I said, I’m not having any acute radiation sickness today.”

“How about just their helmets? They are sweating in their suits.”

I pointed out toward the sea. Strange clouds were still visible on the horizon. “The wind is going the right way, but I’m not taking a chance. No one breathes outside a suit on Andros until I say so.”

“Very good, sir,” Kwon said. He didn’t sound like he thought it was very good, but he’d stopped complaining.

It took us much longer than the crawlers took to dig out the rest of the wreckage. It would have taken us even longer if the mass hadn’t become unstable and resulted in a minor avalanche of sand.

“Okay, pick yourselves up,” I said. Many of the men were standing waist or even helmet deep in wet sand. “Use your repellers if you need to. Help each other.”

All around me men were climbing out of holes and servos whined while nanite-impregnated materials flexed to lift marines back into the afternoon sunlight.

I think I was the one who saw it first, even though it didn’t grab me. None of these men had seen a Macro up-close except for Kwon himself. He was bent over double, pulling a private out of a mound of sand at the time.

A familiar flash of bright metal. That was it, just bright metal and a sense of movement. It was more than enough to set off alarm bells in my head.

“There’s something moving in there, men! Shoot long, steady beams. We have to disable it before it can set off the warhead.”

Dirt flew. Flashing metal instruments—steel mandibles at the head of the Macro. They looked like a whirling mass of concentric lawnmower blades. I aimed my laser at the thorax and held down the firing button. A green glare filled the pit with brilliance. Everyone’s autoshades engaged to keep them from being instantly blinded.

Men shouted, one screamed. The Macro had him and was tearing at his suit. He couldn’t get his guns into line with it. The other men fired further back along the monster’s metal body. Kwon joined me and we took the chance, firing deep into its guts, figuring if we didn’t the marine would be dead anyway. Some of those flashing tools were drills that could dig through armor and bore into the meat of a marine very quickly.

Four concentrated beams did the job. The Macro crashed down, twitching and whining with straining servos. I stepped up, calling for a ceasefire.

“All right, that’s it boys. Just make sure there aren’t two of them inside this thing.”

The marines dug much more gingerly after that. No one talked about removing their helmets anymore. I checked out the marine who’d been grabbed by the Macro. His armor was scratched and dented in spots, but the plates had held. The Macro hadn’t been able to get to my man’s flesh. Almost as significant, I found the private had managed to wrestle with and twist away two of those numerous flailing limbs. Employing his exoskeletal strength, he’d managed to damage the Macro as much as he was being damaged, even in hand-to-hand combat. I was impressed.

The single enemy Macro was the only one in the missile. I nodded to myself. It made a strange sort of sense. What better way to make a missile intelligent than to put one of your technicians aboard? Macro missiles were really kamikaze spaceships. They reminded me somewhat of my own men in battle suits. They just took it to the logical extreme, using their own troops like suicide bombers.

The warhead, when we found it, was inoperable. I wasn’t surprised. If it had been repairable, the technician Macro would have set it off. There wasn’t much to learn other than that. The missile had a single large warhead, an engine not unlike a small ship engine and a Macro technician as a pilot. A human pilot would never have survived the impact, but steel alloys were much tougher than flesh.

“There it is, Kwon,” I said, kicking the smoking ruin of metal. The Macro was pitted with laser strikes. “Take a good, long look.”

“Here’s what, sir?”

“The first Macro to invade Andros Island. I have a feeling it won’t be the last.”