Swarm

-30-

As it turned out, the machines didn’t come—not right away. We proceeded at a ground-eating trot. Trotting for Star Force marines wasn’t the same as trotting for normal men. Not even when we carried our bulky reactors and thick laser tubes.

Our gear had undergone many improvements. There would be more, I was sure of that, in the future. The main design points were still the same: we carried the reactors on our backs and the projection unit was connected to it with a thick black cord which, as yet, only the Nano machines could make. The military engineering people had worked on the rest of it. The suits were made of bulletproof materials and everything we carried except for the reactor itself was in front of us, largely centered around our bellies and the lower chest area. Flares, food, medical kits, etc—it was all in front of us to help counter-balance the mass on our backs. We still ran in an odd posture, leaning forward to keep from falling on our backs. If we did lose our balance, we always landed on our butts, with the hard surface of the reactor slamming into the back of our skulls.

The helmets and hoods had improved too, and now were nanite-impregnated. Friendly fire anywhere in the area caused a signal to bleep out, warning nearby suits. In a millisecond, everyone’s vision was protected by instantly darkened, re-polarized goggles. This was a necessity, as the new green-beamed lasers were so powerful that open exposure could burn out a man’s retina permanently. The automatic darkening and lightening of the landscape took some getting used to, but it was necessary. We couldn’t just leave the full shades on all the time, we would be bumping around unable to see where we were going.

In less than an hour, my battlegroup came to the edge of the crater surrounding the dome. Macro workers from the silvery dome had built a barren crater around it with high walls of debris. Apparently, the Macros liked their domes in the center of a dry, flat area with walls all around. If such a spot wasn’t handy, they changed the region to their liking.

Bad news came in over my com-unit as we approached the rim of the target crater. It had an uneven ridge of black earth and junk about two hundred feet high. I could see the crest through the trees when a report came in from the Pentagon.

“The Macros are taking out our satellites, Riggs,” General Kerr told me.

“I’m surprised they didn’t do it earlier.”

“I think you finally impressed them enough to make them move. They either didn’t want to waste the ordinance, didn’t think the satellites mattered, or were waiting until a strategic moment to blind us when we weren’t expecting it. I think it’s the latter.”

I leapt over a rusted bicycle in the middle of a cracked highway. I had to leap again to clear a giant pothole left behind by the foot of a Macro. We were proceeding southward down an Argentinean highway, my HUD said it was the 205. The road was crisscrossed with giant machine footprints. They had punched through the asphalt and formed five-foot deep sinkholes in the dirt beneath. I tilted my head to hear the General better. I thought about ordering a halt, but we were too close. I told myself we wouldn’t stop moving until we reached the crater’s edge and gathered up for the assault.

“At least I’ve impressed them,” I said.

“Indeed you have. Some of the brass here took a crap in their coffee when they realized you were abandoning the beachhead. You are taking a big risk, you know.”

“No sir, sitting pinned down until a thousand machines arrive, that would have been the big risk.”

“I agree with you. But stay away from the proverbial pooch’s hindquarters.”

“Will do, sir,” I said. The pooch again. I figured I would buy him a poodle for Christmas when this was all over.

“One last thing, we might lose communications with you soon. They are taking out every satellite indiscriminately. They are blinding and silencing us. We’ll try to set up an alternate communication network, but there’s no guarantee they won’t hunt that down and nail it, too.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Godspeed, Colonel, or whatever you are calling yourself today.”

“You too, sir.”

We broke off the connection and I trotted faster to catch up with my company. I was falling behind. Beside me, Major Radovich paced along easily. I yearned briefly for the early days when I had been the strongest man around. My men had long since surpassed me. In the field with my nanite-enhanced marines, I was one of the slowest of the supermen.

The other battlegroups hadn’t reported any resistance yet. All the way out from Buenos Aires, as we trotted and huffed in our suits, the tension had grown. At first, I had felt relieved not to have contacted the enemy yet, but at the same time I became more apprehensive with each passing minute. They had to show up eventually.

We made it all the way to the foot of the mountain of debris that formed the crater before they hit us. It turned out they were waiting inside the crater. We didn’t know it until we reached the foot of the mound of loose earth and they surfaced at the top, looking down at us. These weren’t the really big machines, but rather the smaller, twenty-footers we’d scathingly referred to as workers. They were like metal ants. Looking up at their dark shadows, I realized there were hundreds of them and they seemed quite large enough to kill a man. Worse, these workers each had a weapon built into their torso, a swiveling turret about where the head should be.

About two hundred of them rose up at once and opened fire. My bounding men were scattered, as per my orders, but not scattered enough. I screamed into my headset to take cover and return fire. The orders were hardly needed. Everyone followed their training and those that lived took cover. We beamed them and they beamed us. At first, they were winning easily. We were softer targets, and we were running around out in the open. Now I saw the wisdom of blasting down everything flat around the domes and building up crater-like walls. These craters functioned as simple, earthwork fortresses. At least this defensive effort confirmed they were important targets. But as I dodged enemy laser-fire, I found the point to be of small consolation.

In less than thirty seconds we lost over a hundred men. After that, we had reached the foot of the rising mound that formed the crater. I thanked God they hadn’t seen fit to make the surface slicker or build minefields into it. We had cover and although they had the advantage of the high ground, we still outnumbered them by four to one.

I thought about ordering the cruise missile brigade to fire on the workers, they should be able to sweep that ridge. But my men were already in too close. We were going to have to do this the hard way.

I crawled into decent cover and got out my com-unit. First, I ordered a company to flank the enemy in either direction, out to the east and west. Then I relayed the news of the enemy tactics to the other teams. They had hours of running to do before they found their domes, but I wanted them to know what to expect and I wanted them to get the message while we could still transmit it.

Working up the hill, we were at close range quickly. They were only a hundred yards away uphill after we reached the base of the mounded earth. With heavy cover-fire, one squad held good firing positions while the second squad of each platoon bounded up to take a higher region of cover. The enemy fire weakened, and as we neared the top, it quit altogether. I watched my men run up the walls of the crater with apprehension. What would we find waiting on the far side?

I broke from cover myself and ran uphill, watching as the first of my men reached the crest. A pair of pinchers lunged and snatched up the fastest man, snipping him in half. Those gleaming, scissor-like blades cut through his suit and flesh just above the waist. A second man met the same fate, and then a third. After that, we took out the machines that had ambushed the first men and drove the rest back. My men crouched all along the ridge and advanced cautiously, blazing fire as they went.

Superior numbers and tactics won the day moments later. The companies I’d ordered to flank to the north and south were in position now, and they came up around either side of the enemy. They fired then at the exposed metallic ants that huddled against the inside rim of their crater. Due to the curvature of the crater, my men had a free field of fire. We annihilated them without further losses.

We turned our attention to the dome itself then. The surface swirled—I supposed that was a good word for it. The dome was milky, semi-opaque and shimmered occasionally as a stray beam from my troops lanced out and struck it. Major Radovich crawled up next to me. All around us, my marines were directing killing beams into any Macro worker which still thrashed. As soon as that was done, they dug in along the rim of the crater. They didn’t have to be told to dig in, not these boys. They were doing it before you could give the order.

They eyed me and I ignored them. I stared at the dome instead. I had yet to give the attack order, so they weren’t sure how long we were going to wait to make our next move. Major Radovich came close and looked at me. I could only see his eyes when I glanced at him. The rest was covered. We halted at the top of the crater rim. We were both lying in the mixture of dirt and twisted, smoking metal that crowned the rim of the crater, exposing only our faces to the dome in the center.

“Well?” he asked me finally.

“I’m thinking.”

“Sir,” he said, sliding close enough for our shoulders to touch, “we can’t just sit here.”

I adjusted the magnification on my goggles, eyeing every inch of that bubble-like shield.

I glanced at him. “What do you suggest, Major?”

“Let’s push. Let’s do it.”

“Just run out there the last thousand yards and try to slip into—whatever that is?”

“Yeah. What the hell else are we going to do?”

I heaved a sigh. “What, indeed,” I said. I hesitated for a few moments more, but he was right, the enemy weren’t doing anything, and we couldn’t stay here. If nothing else, they would probably launch a massive missile barrage at us. We had reached the first dome and threatened it. They would respond. I was sure of it.

But I was equally sure they had another trick or two left. Whenever this enemy sat quietly, it seemed to mean they had laid their trap and were patiently waiting for us to walk into it. I didn’t want to lose more men due to a wild attack. What was inside? What new horrors awaited us, should we even be able to enter?

I finally turned to Radovich. “Major, I want concentrated fire. Everyone is to fire a five-second cutting beam at the base of that dome. Then another five. Let’s try to focus everything we have on a single point and see if it gives.”

He stared at me for a second, then nodded. I could tell he didn’t approve. He and a lot of other men had come here to avenge some part of their lost lives on these machines. It looked like we had the Macros on the run, and he wanted to finish it personally.

It took a minute or two to get everyone organized, but soon we were firing in concert. I opened up with the others. It felt good to shoot at something. The light of the combined lasers was intense, too much even for our blacked-out goggles. I closed my eyes, and still the greenish-white light of hundreds of lasers firing at once crept in through my eyelids, painfully bright. Inside my head, my pupils constricted to pinpoints. I had an instant headache and purple splotches pulsed in my skull.

“Cease fire!” I shouted, not wanting anyone’s vision damaged. Neither did I want any of the lasers to overheat and shut down. Releasing enough heat, besides the problem of vision-scorching brilliance, was one of the biggest limitations of these new weapons. I suspected more than a few men could feel the prickle of nanites in their heads and on their burnt hands, as the microscopic robots worked to repair cellular damage from overexposure.

While my head pulsed, I squinted to see the dome. It was still there, but it wasn’t the same. It had changed color to a burnt orange where we had all hit it. I chewed my lip as I watched the circular area we’d beamed. It soon shifted back to a shimmering, opal-white.

“I don’t think we have enough firepower to burn our way through,” I said aloud.

Radovich grunted in agreement. “Are we going to assault the dome now, sir?”

I hesitated for a few more seconds. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. The enemy was clearly waiting for us. But they were probably working up a counterattack as well that would come if we didn’t move quickly. Sitting around wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I began to wonder if I should have ordered our men to split up into three battlegroups instead of six. Perhaps, due to overconfidence, I’d set us up to fail in six attacks instead of succeed in three. There was no fixing it now, however. If this battlegroup was destroyed, a new commander would fight with new knowledge of the enemy capabilities.

“Deploy the same companies that did the flanking. They took lighter losses than those that did the frontal assault on this ridge and should be at full strength. Have them move in on that dome from two angles. The rest of us will support with fire down the center from here.”

Radovich rolled onto his side and looked at me. “Permission to speak, sir.”

“Talk to me.”

“Sir, we should go in with at least half our strength. What’s our backup plan if those first two waves vanish into that dome? What if they get in, but get eaten?”

“Then I have eight companies left to figure out what to do next.”

“Sir, I know you have some infantry experience, but in standard tactics—”

“Listen, Major. I hear you, but we are not fighting a bunch of men with rifles. We have no idea what will happen when we assault this dome, but I suspect it won’t be anything good. And I don’t want their next surprise to hit my entire force.”

“How about half our force?”

“No.”

“Sir, what about the cruise missile brigade?”

“We’ve fired a thousand missiles at these domes, they are always shot down. The missiles are for a major concentration of unshielded targets. We haven’t gotten the chance to use them yet.”

“Sir, permission to lead the charge.”

He had more balls than most of my men. I looked at him and thought about it. “Denied,” I said. “I need you here with me, Major. Don’t worry. I’ll bet you a hundred Euros you’ll see all the combat you want today.”

He snorted, but didn’t take the bet. My orders went out, and two full companies of nanite-filled marines charged across the relatively smooth, featureless landscape toward the dome.

By the time the two forward assault teams were three-quarters of the way there, all hell broke loose.