were this close, but it deflected bullets just the same. Around me, foxholes yawned open. The platoon had thrown back their camouflage and exposed themselves. They began firing, stabbing up at the Macro over our head with dozens of beams. Fifty feet overhead, the Macro’s belly turrets swiveled with obscene eagerness. They splattered us with laser fire. Streams of flashing beams lanced down from sixteen black, flared tubes.
The soldiers were quickly targeted and killed. More uncovered their foxholes and fired, then more still. We were hitting the turrets, I could see that, but we weren’t destroying them.
I keyed my com-link. “Everyone hit one turret, everyone fire on the same one!”
I wasn’t supposed to say or do anything. But I couldn’t help it. I threw back the dirt-covered carpet that shielded me from the monster and I joined in the firefight.
We concentrated on one or two turrets at a time, destroying them after a few seconds. But each second, fewer men were returning fire. We were losing.
A bolt hit me then, and one of my arms stopped working. I fell back into my foxhole, dazed. A dozen long, strange seconds later I saw the sky again. I wondered if I’d died.
It was only the Macro, moving on. I heaved myself up, leaning heavily against the wall of my foxhole, which had transformed into a smoking crater. I raised my beamer with one arm. I considered firing after the machine, but the beam would have just splashed over its shields.
Oddly, I thought about the shields. We’d known how to build them long ago, but we simply couldn’t generate enough power to make them useful. Back in World War Two, the Navy had experimented with electromagnetic shields to ward shells away from ships. But in those days, it would have taken all the power generated on the entire East Coast to make such a system work. One advantage of the Macro’s great size, I realized, was the ability to carry powerful fusion generators.
My state of shock faded. I came back to the here and now. I looked around for the corporal who had been my guide. He was gone. They were all gone. Every foxhole had been turned into a black crater. They’d been blasted open like cooked oysters, the human contents obliterated.
I looked after the machine. I thought I saw a fair amount of damage to its undercarriage. We’d done something to it. But not enough. Were tactical nukes the only answer? Did we have to destroy several square miles of our planet and poison another hundred every time we killed one of these things? At that rate, we would run out of bombs and trees fairly quickly.
I took that moment to look down at my arm. I hadn’t wanted to. My other arm was strong enough to hold up the laser weapon by itself. I was still functional.
My arm was a smoking slag of flesh. There was plenty of metal in there too. The Nanos were working hard, and barely any blood leaked down what was left of my forearm to my relatively normal-looking wrist and gloved hand. I thought about the radiation and the exposure, then. I hoped the nerds back at the Pentagon were right about the prevailing winds. I didn’t want fallout ash sticking to my wounds. I was particularly glad my mask and filtration system were still operating. I had no desire to smell my own cooked flesh.
I looked around, wondering what I should do. I decided to leave my foxhole. The Macros knew about them, and the cover flap had been destroyed anyway. Knowing how computers operated, they would recall the spot every soldier had been sighted. I imagined I’d been marked as dead by their targeting systems. My injury would have taken out a normal man.
I ran, faster possibly than any man in history had ever run with a hundred pound pack thumping on his back. I ran toward the bunkers, which had been marked destroyed on the Macro target list, I was sure. I crawled into the nearest bunker. I had a lot of smoke and heat to deal with, but at least it wasn’t packed with dead bodies.
A few survivors must have seen my move. Over the next few minutes, a dozen or so Recon troops gathered around me. There were no officers. There was chatter and screaming on the headsets, of course. The machine was down near the docks now, working over the guys who had buried themselves along the shore of the river. The thing must be having a good time of it.
“What do we do, sir?” asked a private.
I looked around for two long seconds before I realized he was talking to me. There was still a gold star and some bars on my good shoulder. I bore the rank of a commander, and I was all this team had. I thought about making a little speech and putting the nearest non-com in charge, but I didn’t do it. I saw the look in their eyes, through their auto-dimming portholes. They wanted an officer to tell them what to do. They needed me.
“We kill Macros,” I said.
“Sir? You’re hit, sir,” said the private.
I looked at him. “I’m okay. I can fight.”
They looked at my dangling, shattered arm. Even the one sergeant among them looked impressed.
“Okay,” I said, hunkering down. “Here’s what we are going to do when it comes back.”
I had their attention. “I’ll fire first. Everyone must concentrate on a single turret at a time. When that one is gone, we all fire at the next one. Now spread out. Don’t let it take us all out at once.”
Men scooted away in every direction, taking up firing positions in the ruins of the bunker. We didn’t have long to wait. The Macro finished with the beach group, then headed in our general direction again. But it didn’t go right over us. Instead, it waded into the river, pausing to fire at something on the far bank.
“Dammit,” I growled. We couldn’t leave the ruined bunker, we’d be exposed and cut down at range. I judged the distance. It was less than a thousand yards off. It probably couldn’t get its main top gun down far enough to level it on the bunker at that range. We’d studied these machines, and they were designed with one big gun on top to use on aircraft and larger targets. The belly turrets were for the small stuff like us.
I crawled across the steaming bunker and poked my nose and rifle out on the far side. “Take cover, everybody!”
“What are you doing, sir?” asked someone, I think it was the sergeant.
I shot the thing in the ass. Just a quick burst. It was pointless, of course, I couldn’t damage it through the shields. But the effect was electric. I saw a number of turrets swivel in my direction. The machine didn’t turn around, it simply started walking in our direction. It didn’t really have a face, or a head-a front or back. It was designed to be able to move in any direction at will, like a giant crab with legs all around.
We all ducked. Fire came in, tearing up the ground. Gouts of energy flared and my goggles dimmed themselves to prevent instant blindness. I didn’t bother to give it another encouraging shot. There was no need.
As I had hoped, it came close. This bunker had been marked dead, but now had shown signs of life. In its artificial mind, it would have to be sure this time. It would have to get in close and finish us.
In the end, it almost did. We learned, when the brilliant tropical sky turned dark again due to the vast bulk looming over us, that it had only seven operating turrets left. I had only eleven men. They were good men, and they followed my lead. No one fired until I did. It took about two seconds to light up each turret and destroy it. Unfortunately, the turrets were lighting up my men one at a time in return. When the last turret popped, I had only three men left.
I watched in horror as the last of the turrets fell off the bottom of the great machine. It crashed down, crushing another of my men.
The last man and I fired at the legs next. We took one out at the lowest joint. It tried to stomp us, but I think it was mostly blind down underneath now. Its cameras, or whatever it used for targeting, were probably attached to the turrets.
When we took out a joint, it finally decided it had had enough. It began a shambling retreat. Dragging itself, metal groaning, it lumbered back into the jungle at a fraction of its usual speed. I ran after it, cursing. I shot a second leg joint in multi-second bursts, but wasn’t able to bring it down.
I gave up and collapsed against a tree, my chest heaving for air. I was suffocating in my hazard suit. The sergeant, the last of my men, came up and fell against the same tree. We both gasped for air, unable to talk.
The sky overhead had dimmed. A lovely sunset was building up in the jungle to our west. We heard then, after our breathing had slowed, more rumbling. More cracking trees. Another machine was coming to the party.
“We’re going to die out here, aren’t we, sir?” the Sergeant asked.
“Probably,” I said. “What’s your name, Sergeant?”
“Lionel Wilson, sir.”
“Well, Wilson, you are a good fighter.”
