caliber against the thing. With a laser, the machine had nailed the humans, exploding the car. Above the battle, there had appeared a flying hunter-killer, stabbing the night with its beam.
The movie had played haunting music. Paul had never forgotten the movie or its grim future. Now, as a grown man of forty-two, thirty-four years later, he was playing out that future in Toronto.
The GD had built hunter-killers, and they were destroying…well, not humanity, just the United States of America.
Paul watched the robots clank past. From time to time, the tri-barrels rotated on the panzer-grenadiers and the tank’s cannon roared.
With his right shoulder, Romo nudged Paul.
Paul swiveled his head. Americans back there fired several Javelins and hammered the robots with machine gun bullets. To Paul’s delight, a Javelin missile struck and exploded one of the Sigrid panzer-grenadiers. In response, the other Sigrids blasted the humans, annihilating them in swift seconds of carnage.
“It’s bad,” Paul said. “But look at that. They nailed one. The GD isn’t invincible.”
Romo seemed to collapse as his chest hit the ground. Troubled, Paul lowered himself beside his friend.
“How long should we wait here?” Romo asked in a quieter voice than normal.
“We’re supposed to be the great secret weapon, huh?” Romo asked.
“I don’t know about that,” Paul said. “But we got to make it harder on them than it’s been so far.”
“Si,” Romo said. “I can agree with that. Did you see what those things did?”
Paul didn’t bother answering. Instead, he slid out of the cave. The robots turned, taking a different route. Paul shook his head in dismay. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in something so one-sided before. Well, maybe Hawaii had been this bad, and they had lost the islands. Clearly, the GD had weathered the feeble American attack and now counterattacked. No doubt the remote controllers had orders to finish the American soldiers tonight.
As Paul crept through the darkness, listening and watching for enemy robots, booby-traps or sensors, a grinding fury built in him.
This wasn’t war: it was butchery. Paul couldn’t remember the author, but he’d never forgotten a sci-fi short story he’d read once. Generals had fought the battle of Armageddon with robotic troops. The flesh and blood soldiers had saved themselves the horror of battling invincible angels. The robots did that. After the battle, heaven opened and a ray of light shined down on the robotic corpses. One by one, the robot troops came back on line. The human generals watched in the distance as the robot troops rose up and ascended into heaven due to their courage, leaving the humans below.
What glory did the GD remote controllers gain from this? Maybe he wouldn’t ask the question if he were the remote controller. Fighting without having to worry about dying seemed like the way to go.
“What glory am I earning crawling like a rat in the rubble?” Paul muttered to himself.
“Did you say something?” Romo asked from behind.
“Do you see anything?”
“Si,” Romo said. “Look to your three o’clock.”
Paul squinted in the darkness. “I don’t see a thing.”
“Do you have your night vision equipment on?” Romo asked.
“No. Do you?”
“Of course,” Romo said.
Paul didn’t bother glancing back to check. It must be safe if they were still alive. He slid his NV goggles into place and switched them on. The night became more visible, and he saw that Romo was right. Ahead, those stanchions—they must be GD sensors.
It took a solid thirty minutes to figure out how and then get around the stanchions. The flashes on the horizon had lessened by then. The American flashes had stopped some time ago. Their artillery must all be dead by now.
“I wonder how many of us are still alive,” Romo said.
Paul didn’t answer. In the darkness, he leaned against rubble, listening. To his right, a cool breeze blew off Lake Ontario. He glanced there. Movement on the water showed GD hovercraft, five machines moving single file west. Paul would have loved to shed his body armor, find a boat and attempt to row across to New York State. He wanted out of Canada. He wanted to go home.
Thinking about home, about Cheri, Paul opened a pocket and drew out a protein bar. He ate the gooey substance, and his body seemed to absorb the nutrients. The wrapper he stuffed back into the pocket.
“Ready?” Paul asked.
“Si,” Romo said.
The two lonely LRSU men crawled through the city streets. At times, they trudged and then went back to slithering through the dead remains of Toronto. They never spotted civilians. The GD robots weren’t too good at making distinctions. Paul saw hordes of the noncombatant dead bloating where they lay. He saw what had been a young girl, still clutching onto her stuffed unicorn, with speckles of crusted blood on the thing. Other sights were gruesome, and it debilitated him for a time.
“This is too much,” Paul finally said.
“The winners write the history, my friend,” Romo said. “This never happened unless the Germans lose. We have to make sure they lose.”
Paul gripped his assault rifle tighter. AI-run Kaiser HKs, flying UAV patrollers—he spat on the ground. He didn’t want to work himself into a rage. That took adrenaline, and that took badly needed energy from his body. Instead, a cold ruthlessness built in him. He tended toward that anyway, but this heightened the feeling. Along with the ruthlessness came the coiling of a steely spring in him that could release at a moment’s notice. Then the passion would kick in, and no one fought better than he did once he kicked it into overdrive.
Hours passed as the two men inched into GD territory. They made it through the forward zone and even into the secondary one where armored soldiers patrolled. For ten minutes, German Shepherds sniffed the ground, but the big dogs went elsewhere. Finally, the two commandos exited the secondary zone and reached the outer edge of Toronto, the northern end. For the first time they heard regular enemy speech,
Paul checked his watch. Dawn was ninety minutes away. They had been crawling for a solid seven hours. Tiredness pulled at his bones, tugged at his eyelids. He ached all over. His right knee throbbed and his right ankle gave a twinge now and again.
“Hey,” Romo whispered. “Look to your right, at two o’clock.”
Paul eased his head around until he spied it. A soldier, a GD officer by his shoulder tabs, urinated against the side of a building. He could hear the stream of piss hitting bricks. After zipping up, the man hurried to a building. A guard appeared, aiming a rifle at the officer. The officer spoke sharply. The guard opened the door and the officer darted within.
“What do you think?” Romo asked.
Paul scanned the building. It was two stories tall. Then he spotted the antenna array up top. It was the GD design. They’d found a remote-controlling station. By the numbers posted over the door, this was the 10th Panzer-Grenadier Battalion.
A hard smile etched onto Paul’s face. He thought about the Marine general with the eye patch: Len Zelazny. The man could have been a stand-in for the Raiders football logo. General Zelazny had dreamed of this: Recon Marines reaching the momma’s boys and a drone station.
Paul didn’t feel quite the same about that. These were soldiers. They would know how to fight. Thinking they would be cowards was foolish. One didn’t win firefights by underestimating the enemy. Still… the soldiers in there might not be ready to face angry men with guns and knives.
Weariness tried to take over. Paul doubted many of the other elite American teams had reached this far in their sectors. He hoped so, but he had to be realistic.
Muttering some choice profanities, Paul decided to forget about weariness. This was go time.
The two men checked their weapons and readied grenades. Paul dug in a pocket and took out a tiny packet. With his teeth, he ripped it open and dumped two aspirins onto his tongue. He chewed them, the bitter, dusty tablets. He took several sips from his canteen.
