Swarm

-35-

It was a very tough two days, but I managed to pull together my battered marines. I had about ninety percent of my survivors back in the field and in respectable fighting shape. Most of that miracle was due to relentless rescue-ship forays to gather them from their scattered locations and the hardworking, thankless nanites who repaired their bodies. Men who were too far gone—mostly men with missing limbs—got to rest up back on the Falklands. The new recruits Kerr had so kindly created for me in my brief absence were spread around amongst the veteran units. The new men were green with their weapons and their new bodies. They tried to look tough, but they could tell by the quiet, haunted look in everyone else’s eyes that they were in it deep.

The men in my new unit, in particular, seemed chastened. They were proud to serve with me, I could sense that. But they were also worried. Stories must have circulated about the casualty rate in my previous command, which had been higher than any other battlegroup. I had to wonder if I had any flashy nicknames yet. I had heard a few muttered words in this vein. One was The Blender, which I found distasteful. I was sure about my unit name, however. We’d gotten the moniker of Riggs’ Pigs. I supposed it was the best I could expect.

This time, instead of splitting up my forces, I massed them under a single banner. I decided to use my ships for anti-missile cover this time. Crow thought I was mad, but I feared that my new strategy could be undone by a single enemy nuclear missile. We knew they had them, or at least they had used them from the ship when they had first invaded. Perhaps the invasion group didn’t have the power to build new nukes, but I didn’t want to assume such a thing. Maybe the only reason they hadn’t nuked us earlier was because we had been so scattered. Or maybe they hadn’t built a stockpile at that point. Another possibility was they hadn’t counted us as serious threat until we began taking out domes, and by then we were in too close to use such drastic measures without destroying themselves.

This time we would be openly advancing on them in a large formation. I didn’t want to learn about a new stockpile of warheads first hand as soon as we made our move. So I used ten ships, clustered toward our rear. They weren’t to engage with the ground forces. In fact, to prevent losing them, they had orders to pull back if the big Macros charged us. But if a missile barrage came our way, they were to take it out. This was crucial not just to prevent a nuclear strike, but also to protect my regular compliment of troops. Normal men couldn’t take a body full of shrapnel and recover in a few days.

We advanced with half my marines in the vanguard. If the Macros charged in at us, they would have to pass over them and be damaged. The rest of my marines, including myself, were intermixed with the regulars in the core of the formation. The regulars looked more nervous than anyone. They had good reason to be. Kerr had issued them shoulder-mounted rocket launchers rather than rifles. Bullets were useless against Macros of any size and regular men were too weak to carry effective lasers. The rocket launchers would only be useful against the worker machines we’d faced—not the big ones. When it came right down to it, I doubted these rockets could do much in combat, but we could hardly send the men in unarmed.

The most important element of our new forces consisted of armor units. They were an even number of American M-1 Tanks and Russian 2S19 ‘Mstas’, which were essentially self-propelled artillery units. The Mstas looked like tanks with extremely large cannons. They could lob a shell nearly twenty miles. It was their very large guns that had nominated these weapons platforms for this special duty. I wasn’t sure why they sent us Russian howitzers instead of American units, but I figured it was probably political. Or maybe the American units had been knocked out fighting earlier battles. In any case, they formed the center of my new strategy.

We marched with what seemed grim slowness. My own men bounded along at a slouching trot—perhaps ten miles per hour. Around us flowed the heavy machinery. We had to maintain a slow speed to keep the formation moving together without stragglers. We circled the forests and stuck to the plains. We avoided rivers and rocky areas. The going was steady, but seemed agonizingly slow. At any moment, we expected some form of attack. But for hours, none came.

The regular troops—poor bastards—rode in their personnel carriers with rocket launchers in their laps. I could only imagine the fear pounding in their hearts. It was one thing to be asked to die against another force of men. It was quite another to be a softie, facing death by laser and steel pincher, with no hope of surrendering to the merciless robot enemy.

The Macros didn’t come at us until nightfall. They’d learned a few things, I think. We couldn’t wear night vision gear in battle, not with the lasers we carried. Hence, our ancient weakness of poor eyesight haunted us. The enemy had no such qualms. They did not fear the dark, and with infrared sensors, they could see as well in the night as in the day. Our lasers didn’t seem to burn out their sensors, either.

We had not halted our advance during the night. I wanted to get to the shores of the Salado River, south of Buenos Aries. In the morning, we would cross at dawn. We’d honestly begun to relax, fractionally. It seemed clear the enemy wasn’t going to hit us, at least not until we traveled another fifty miles south and drew close to one of their precious domes.

We were wrong. They hit us when we nosed downward into the river valley. It wasn’t a sharp dip in the land, but it was enough to limit our visibility and our line of sight against approaching targets.

Enemy contacts, the Alamo whispered into my brain. I had programmed her to do so, and I was very glad I did. She had seen the Macros before anyone else.

I opened the command channel and hailed all my unit commanders. “Enemy approaching. Halt the advance. Prepare everything we have to fire.”

How many? I asked my ship.

Sixty-four major contacts. Five hundred twelve minor ones.

I didn’t have time to ponder the significance of the binary numbers of enemy. We were about to be overrun.

Range?I asked my ship.

Six miles for the larger enemy. Zero for the smaller ones.

I almost blinked, but my eyes didn’t close, they widened. “Forward units, pull back! Defend the vehicles. We have diggers. They are under us. Repeat, we have diggers. Everyone watch your feet!”

Almost as soon as I said the words, the first screams and flashes of light began. Hundreds of machines bubbled up under us. Men who’d never seen a Macro before, fired and died with startling speed.

I decided to forget about the diggers. They were mostly a distraction. My men could take care of them. But the big boys were coming in a rush and in numbers I’d never seen. I was worried they were already too close to spring our big Russian surprise on them.

Alamo, pull back unless missiles—

Missiles incoming. ETA thirty seconds.

Another carefully timed strike from multiple angles. These machines loved to hit us all at once from every side. Okay, I told my ship, take out the missiles, then pull back out of range of the Macro anti-air fire.

Huge beams of energy stabbed out. Distant objects flared in the skies like fireworks. I heard roars and snapping explosions. Some of the barrage was getting through.

“Artillery commander!”

“Yes sir,” said a man with a Russian accent.

“As soon as you get a confirmed radar trace on a Macro, lay one of your special rounds on it. Fire a barrage of regular shells along with it for cover.”

“Cover? They can’t shoot down a shell, Colonel.”

“Obey the command.”

“Yes sir,” said the Russian. He sounded a bit huffy. I barely had time to mutter a curse before the Mstas roared in unison. The sound was extremely loud. The flashes were almost as bright as laser fire.

“Everyone who can, duck!” I roared, broadcasting over the general com channel.

An incredible flash went off ahead of us, to the south. The shockwave rocked the command vehicle I was in. A small tactical nuclear charge had gone off. I smiled. They hadn’t shot it down. Our hail of shells had been seeded with one atomic weapon. The Msta was an old, Cold War weapon. It had been built to fire nuclear shells back in the last century. Now, for the first time in history, it had performed its appointed task with devastating effect. My men gaped at this surprise for a few seconds, then worked quickly to button up their suits. Fallout was unavoidable at this range.

The charging line of sixty-four Macros never got to us. I’m not sure if they were all destroyed, or if the survivors had retreated. In any case, after mopping up the diggers and suffering relatively light casualties, we had won the battle. I couldn’t help but feel proud. The Macros were in a real fight now, a fight for survival. Unfortunately, our element of surprise was gone.