Robopocalypse

“Drop a fat one in here, Houdini,” mutters Carl over the radio. A short electronic tone whines as the target coordinates come over the air and register with the tank.

Houdini click-clocks an affirmative.

My ride lurches to a stop and the trees around me grow taller as the spider tank squats to get traction. The squad below automatically take defensive positions around it, staying behind the armored legs. Nobody wants a plugger in them, not even old Nine Oh Two.

The turret whirs a few degrees to the right. I press my gloves against my ears. Flame belches from the cannon, and a chunk of the woods up ahead explodes into a mess of black dirt and vaporized ice. The narrow trees around me shiver and send down a powder coating of snow.

“Clear,” radios Carl.

Houdini stands back up, motors groaning. The quadruped starts plodding ahead again like nothing happened. Like a pocket of screaming death wasn’t just obliterated.

Cherrah and I look at each other, bodies swaying with each step of the machine. We’re both thinking the same thing: The machines are testing us. The real battle hasn’t started yet.

Distant thuds echo through the woods like far-off thunder.

The same thing is happening for miles, up and down the line. Other spider tanks and other squads are dealing with stumper outbreaks and incoming pluggers. Rob either hasn’t figured out to concentrate the attack or doesn’t want to.

I wonder if we’re being drawn into an ambush. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. We have to do this. We’ve already bought tickets for the last dance. And it’s gonna be a real gala event.

As the afternoon wears on, a creeping mist grows from the ground. Snow and dust is swept up by the driving wind and thrown into a haze that speeds along at the height of a man. Pretty soon it’s strong enough to obscure vision and even push my squad around, wearing them out, grinding them down.

“So far so good,” radios Mathilda.

“How far?” I ask.

“Archos is at some kind of old drilling site,” she says. “You should see an antenna tower in about twenty miles.”

The sun lingers low on the horizon, pushing our shadows away from us. Houdini keeps on walking as evening twilight creeps in. The spider tank stands taller than the thickening haze of wind-borne snow. With each step, its cowcatcher cuts through the gloom. Once the sun is a simmering bump on the horizon, Houdini’s external spotlights chunk on to illuminate the way.

In the distance, I can see other headlights come on from the spider tanks that form the rest of the line.

“Mathilda, what’s our status?” I ask.

“All clear,” comes her soft reply. “Wait.”

After a little while, Leo pulls himself up over Houdini’s belly rig and latches the frame of his exoskeleton to a U bar. He hangs there, leveling his weapon over the sea of dense fog. With Cherrah and me up here and Carl on the tall walker, only Freeborn squad is left on the ground.

Occasionally, I spot the head of the Arbiter or Hoplite or Warden as they patrol. I’m sure their sonar cuts right through the driving fog.

Then Carl lets out half a scream.

Chuck-chuck—

A dark shape lunges out of the mist and knocks over his tall walker. Carl rolls away. For a split second, I see a scuttling mantis the size of a pickup truck cutting through the air toward me, barbed razor arms up and poised. Houdini lurches backward and rears up, pawing the air with its front legs.

“Arrivederci!” shouts Leo and I hear him unlatch his exoskeleton from Houdini. Then Cherrah and I are thrown onto the hard-packed snow and into the driving mist. A serrated leg needles into the snow a foot from my face. It feels like my right arm is caught in a vice. I turn and see a gray hand has got hold of me and realize that Nine Oh Two is dragging me and Cherrah out from under Houdini.

The two massive walkers grapple above us. Houdini’s cowcatcher keeps the scrabbling claws of the mantis at bay, but the spider tank isn’t as agile as its ancestor. I hear the chuck-chuck of a large-caliber machine gun. Shards of metal spray off the mantis, but it keeps scratching and clawing at Houdini like a feral animal.

Then I hear a familiar sizzle and the sickening pop of three or four nearby anchor blasts. Pluggers are here. Without Houdini we are in serious trouble—pinned to the spot.

“Take cover!” I shout.

Cherrah and Leo dive behind a big pine. As I go to join them, I see Carl peeking out from behind a tree trunk.

“Carl,” I say. “Mount up and go get help from Beta squad!”

The pale soldier gracefully remounts his fallen tall walker. A second later, I see its legs scissoring through the mist as he runs for the nearest squad. A plugger fires at him as he goes and I hear it ding against one of the tall walker legs. I put my back against a tree and scan for the plugger firing pods. It’s hard to see anything. Spotlights slash my face from the clearing as the mantis and spider tank battle it out.

Houdini is losing.

The mantis slices open Houdini’s belly net and our supplies spew out onto the ground like intestines. An old helmet rolls past me and clanks off a tree hard enough to gouge the bark. Houdini’s intention light glows blood red through the fog. It’s hurt, but the old bastard is tough.

“Mathilda,” I gasp into my radio. “Status. Advise.”

For five seconds I get nothing. Then Mathilda whispers, “No time. Sorry Cormac. You’re on your own.”

Cherrah peeks around a tree trunk and motions to me. The Warden 333 leaps in front of her just as a plugger launches. The metal slug hits the Warden hard enough to spin the humanoid robot in the air. It lands in the snow, sporting a new dent in its frame but otherwise fine. The plugger projectile is now an unrecognizable hunk of smoking metal. Built to burrow into flesh, its drill proboscis is crooked and blunted from an impact with metal.

Cherrah disappears, taking better cover, and I start to breathe again.

We have to mount Houdini if we’re going to make it any farther. But the spider tank isn’t doing so well. A chunk of its turret has been sliced and is hanging cockeyed. The cowcatcher is covered in shining streaks of fresh metal where the mantis blades have scratched through the patina of rust and moss. Worst of all, it’s dragging a rear leg where the mantis sliced a hydraulic line. Searing hot fans of high-pressure oil shoot from the hose, melting the snow into greasy mud.

Nine Oh Two sprints out of the mist and leaps onto the mantis’s back. With methodical punches, he begins to attack the small hump that is nestled between that wicked tangle of serrated arms.

“Fall back. Consolidate the line,” comes the command from Lonnie Wayne over the army-wide radio.

From the sound of it, the spider tank squads to our right and left are in equally deep shit. Here on the ground I can hardly see anything. More plugger shots ring out, barely audible under the wheezing hydraulic whine of Houdini’s motors as it does battle in the clearing.

The sound paralyzes me. I remember Jack’s blood-filled eyes and I can’t move. The trees around me are iron-hard arms poking out of the snowy ground. The woods are a confusion of swirling mist and dark shapes and Houdini’s frantically sweeping spotlights.

I hear a grunt and a distant scream as somebody catches a plugger. Craning my neck, I can’t see anybody. The only thing I see is Houdini’s round red intention light streaking through the mist.

The screaming goes up an octave as the plugger starts drilling. It’s coming from all around me and from nowhere. I clutch my M4 to my chest and breathe in panting gasps and scan for my invisible enemies.

A streak of blurry light cuts through the mist thirty meters away as Cherrah pours her flamethrower into a mess of stumpers. I hear the muted crackle as they explode in the night.

“Cormac,” calls Cherrah.

My legs come unfrozen the second I hear her voice. Her safety means more to me than my own. A lot more.