“I’ll take that under consideration. I have to admit, we’ve never really hurt them enough to make them retreat down here.”
I nodded, satisfied. A klaxon went off then, alerting us to take cover. Everyone moved to a wall and braced themselves. We put on our headgear and stood ready.
First, the flash of light hit us. That came before the rest of it. Even though we were in a sealed bunker the light seeped in somehow. Camera hookups went white as well, adding to the effect. The light of a million suns flared up on the surface of the Earth. I wondered how long it had been since we’d done that-lit one off at ground level on Earth.
It wasn’t long until another flash loomed up, then a third and a fourth. Then the initial cracking sound hit us, rolling over the camp. We were too far out for a pressure wave. Too far away to feel the blast itself. But we were in range of the gusting winds.
More flashes. More rolling thunderclaps. The walls shook. Each grain of sand around my boots shook individually, dancing a thousandth of an inch from the surface. Dust rolled around inside the bunker as the weight of sandbags shifted and released fractions of their contents.
Finally, the all-clear sounded. The General pin-wheeled his arms. “Out, topside everyone. Let’s have a look at what we’ve done today.”
We marched up onto the sandy soil and gaped at the sky. A dozen mushroom clouds expanded in a line to the south. No, I thought. There must be nearly twenty. I counted, and came up with nineteen, although they were beginning to overlap.
“What about fallout, sir?” asked a colonel. It was the first time I’d heard one of the other officers dare ask a question. I had gotten the idea that General Kerr didn’t really like questions.
The General huffed. “In three or four days the hot zones will be livable as long as we stay in our suits. I believe I’ve mentioned that in previous briefings.”
“Yes sir, but will the fallout come in this direction?”
“No, not unless the weather boys are complete morons. The prevailing winds are to the south in this area at every atmospheric level. And today, luckily, is no exception.”
“And what will attract the surviving Macros to us, sir?” I asked.
The General turned toward me. One of his eyes was visible through the portholes in his suit. His voice came through in a muffled manner, as if he spoke through a pillow.
“Our decoys. They are already headed down there to tease them. They’ll come back this way as soon as they get their attention. Based on past behavior, the Macros will assume whatever is buzzing around is the culprit and needs to die.”
“Decoys, sir?” I asked.
“Helicopters. A few hundred of them.”
“But the radiation, the pilots…” I said, trailing off. I had assumed when he said decoys he had meant remote-controlled aircraft. I supposed however, now that I considered it, we probably didn’t have any drone craft designed to tease huge robots into following them.
“Volunteers, Commander,” the General said sharply. “They were all volunteers. Just as every man on this beach is a volunteer, including you.”
I couldn’t but help notice he used the word were, rather than are when referring to these volunteer pilots. Perhaps it had been a slip of the tongue.
I nodded and fell quiet. Internally, I did not call myself a volunteer. I recalled having been drafted by a silent, black starship, in the middle of the night.
24
“Move out! Move out! Keep moving! Move OUT!” shouted a sergeant with an amazingly loud voice. It seemed his suit didn’t dampen his natural volume at all. Squads of men trotted dutifully in the directions he pointed. I followed a platoon of men that were stationed along the riverbank. We’d left our bunkers behind. Veterans all agreed, that was the first thing the Macros would blow up when they got here.
Our assault plans were simple, direct, and somewhat suicidal. We were here to test these weapons I’d built. Oh sure, the army had done plenty of testing. There was enough power in these laser rifles to feel them kick lightly when you turned them on. They could burn through the trunk of one of these palm trees that surrounded the area with less than a one second exposure. But that wasn’t what we needed. We need to burn through solid metal. Lots of metal, and quickly.
The Macros were coming. The estimates were that we had less than an hour to position ourselves. Now that the nuclear mines had gone off without a hitch and the helicopters had managed to tease the Macros into charging in this direction, all we had to do was hide and wait. Supposedly, we were going to ambush the monstrosities. I hoped they would feel ambushed when they got here.
Avoiding all structures in the base, we waited in foxholes dug everywhere. On top of every hole was a layer of fabric and on top of that was a layer of dirt for camouflage. The Macros had infrared heat-sensors for targeting systems, but according to the techs, an inch or two of soil could foil that.
We had men everywhere, buried in gopher holes. When a Macro came near, the bubble of their shields would pass over us. We would then pop up inside the shell of their electromagnetic shielding and fire for all we were worth. We were to shoot the small automated turrets on the thing’s belly, then take out the legs. When it was helpless, we would bore in with concentrated fire until we penetrated the hull and killed it.
Actually, I wasn’t supposed to do any of this. I was supposed to observe. They told me I was too valuable to risk engaging with the Macros myself. In truth, I think they figured I would get in the way. It was only with obvious reluctance that they’d armed me with one of my own weapons systems. I supposed they couldn’t figure a way to turn down my request, seeing as I had designed the things.
The first Macro showed up early. There was barely any warning. Something squawked in my headset, but I didn’t catch what the officer in charge of the platoon I was embedded with tried to say. There was too much noise going on, too much thunderous, pounding, rumbling… I finally caught on. The sides of my foxhole were shivering, collapsing in little sandy avalanches. Either they had set off another bomb, or the first Macro had taken the bait and arrived.
It was a slaughter. I peeped out of my covered hole to watch, I couldn’t help it. What was the point of fighting this hard, this long, then getting turned into a grease spot on the bottom of one of these monstrous things’ feet without even knowing it was coming? The Macro was big-bigger than I’d imagined. Shaped like a crab and bristling with weaponry, it had six legs that looked like steel columns from my vantage point. Its shifting, louvered belly plates were at least fifty feet above me.
I couldn’t see it at first, but I could feel it. The feeling was like that of an approaching high-speed train. I recalled taking Jake to stand close to the railroad tracks when he was a kid. We’d put nickels on the tracks, then step back and watch a train roar up. When it ran over the nickel, it would smoosh it flat, into a long, curled shape like a tongue of silvery metal. Sometimes, you could hear it ring and tinkle as it fired from the rails, already flattened by the first dozen tones of weight that pushed down on those steel wheels.
Nearby a row of trees cracked and split to expose the white, wooden flesh inside. The palms exploded, trunks looping through the air as a churning metal tower brushed them aside with startling speed. Another tower cracked through more trees and I realized the metal towers were the Macro’s legs. Six immense legs churned toward us, each of which was several yards thick and triangular in shape. The spike-like foot shifted twice more, then swept over me and the foxholes nearby. Where it stabbed down, men died silently, hiding in their holes. The sky darkened and the monster paused over my head. I knew that sixteen belly turrets were locking on targets.
The Macro targeted and blew apart the bunkers at first, as was part of our plan. The main heavy battery and the anti-air weaponry were on top of each Macro, but underneath it were what could only be called anti- personnel turrets. These were overkill for the job, however, as they were quite capable of destroying an armored tank.
I realized we must be inside the bubble of the machine’s shielding. We couldn’t see the shield when we
