table.
The sirens were going off, air-raid sirens that warbled high and then low again. They had time for about three undulations before it was all over.
A red streak came down right on top of us. It was decelerating, but still coming in very fast. I saw lasers streak up, meeting it, burning it. But they were too late.
We were going to take a hit.
“Brace yourselves,” I said unnecessarily. We were about to die. Bracing wasn’t going to stop a direct hit from a thermonuclear device. Neither was a hundred feet of sandy, wet earth. If anything, the soil here would transmit the shock of the explosion straight down to our bunker. If we lived, we’d be digging ourselves out.
My last thought was for Kwon and his sixteen battle suited marines on the floors above us. I should have ordered them down deeper into the command post with us. But there simply wasn’t time now.
— 19
When the impact came, it barely shook the room. All of us looked at the walls and ceiling with wide eyes.
“Was that it?” Sandra asked.
“I heard it strike sir,” Major Sarin said. “It has to be down.”
I nodded. “A dud. Or it was knocked out by all our counter fire and unable to detonate.”
I thought fast for a few seconds. I watched the screen. A few more red streaks had made it through the barrier, but I saw less than a dozen. Those that went further over the island were shot at by more and more of my laser turrets as they came. They blinked and went out. Only two of the Macro missiles actually went off, and in both cases they were too high to do much damage. I figured the missiles knew they weren’t going to reach their targets and had self-destructed. Either that, or they were damaged somehow and misfired. In either case, the overall results were excellent.
I began to smile. “We did it,” I said.
“It actually worked,” Sandra said. Her voice was that of someone who could not believe they were still alive.
“I thought we were dead, too,” Major Sarin said quietly.
I glanced at her, feeling a pang of sympathy. Maybe that’s why she’d been hurt in those final moments when I promoted Barrera. To be passed up for promotion was never pleasant, but it had to be more poignant when you were convinced you were in your final moments of life.
I felt a sharp jab in the ribs. Sandra smiled at me tightly when I looked down at her. She’d poked me with a pair of stiff fingers. I wasn’t sure, but she might have cracked a rib.
I took in a sharp breath of air and looked away from Jasmine’s lost face. My side ached, but I managed to speak in a natural-sounding voice. “Connect me to First Sergeant Kwon.”
Major Sarin came alive and did as I asked.
I heard whooping and cheers. They came in a deafening chorus. I smiled slightly, it was hard not to.
“Kwon?”
“Yes, sir! The men here are celebrating. Can we go up yet?”
“That’s why I’m calling. Get your helmets on. I’m going to suit-up as well. We have a piece of unexploded ordinance that came down in the base somewhere. You’re team is to seek and dismantle that weapon.”
The joyful chorus died down. A babble of low voices erupted as Kwon relayed my orders. Once the helmets were on, I could only hear Kwon’s voice.
“We’re on it, sir. I should have thought of that one. Please order the rest of the base personnel to stay underground.”
I waved to Major Sarin, who put her hand to her headset and began contacting the other bunkers, emphasizing that the all-clear had not yet been sounded.
As Kwon’s unit was the only team of marines on the base who had battle suits, I decided they were the logical ones to send up. If the warhead detonated, of course, their personal armor wouldn’t make any difference. But fusion warheads used smaller explosions to get the reaction that caused the big bang. As well, the systems engine might ignite or the entire missile might be set to self-destruct upon sensing approaching enemies. We just didn’t know how these missiles worked. We’d never been near an unexploded Macro missile before. I knew they had some level of machine intelligence. They were definitely smart weapons in every sense of the term.
“I don’t want any surprises,” I told Kwon. “Use the utmost caution. Don’t let anyone play around with it.”
“Right, sir.”
“I’ll be right there after I’ve suited up.”
I walked quickly to my battle suit and climbed up into it. The easiest part of putting one of these things on was getting your legs inside. The suit expanded everywhere and split itself open across the chest. The legs however, remained standing by themselves. The suit’s exoskeleton took care of balance and kept itself erect.
I jumped up on top of it, and slid my feet down into the two vertical tubes of the legs by pointing my toes. Once inside, the armor plates slid closer forming a tighter fit around my feet. I shoved my hands into the armholes and felt the suit clamp down on them. Now that I was inside, the chest area began closing over my torso. It was a disturbing process, and made one feel claustrophobic.
“A little help with the helmet, please,” I said.
Sandra appeared in my face. “Are you crazy, Kyle? Why do you have to go up there?”
“I want to see what a Macro missile looks like.”
“So have Kwon take a video and check it out later.”
“Helmet?”
She made an exasperated sound and put the helmet on my head. I adjusted it and tapped the ‘seal-ready’ button with my chin. All the suit’s systems went live and I heard oxygen begin to flow around my face. I clanked up the stairs. Sandra followed me. I had to order her to stay behind.
“When do I get one of these gorilla-suits so I can go with you?” she asked hotly.
I thought about it, not liking the idea. “Many of your special capacities would be blocked by a suit like this. It would greatly slow you down. Why don’t you just stay here in the bunker and protect Jasmine for a while?”
“Because she isn’t trying to play with a Macro bomb and get herself killed.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said and clanked away. I could feel the two women staring after me.
When I reached the surface, I paused in shock. The forest was on fire in dozens of spots. All around the base, up and down the beach, the trees smoldered and billowed with white smoke. The trees nearest the water had taken the worst of it. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. You couldn’t blow off forty-odd high-yield airbursts and not expect some damage. Fortunately, the blasts had been far enough offshore and high enough in the atmosphere they hadn’t knocked the entire base and the forest around it flat. There was damage here and there. The base buildings looked like they’d been through a hurricane. Debris was strewn everywhere, but I didn’t see any bodies.
I turned around to check out my new headquarters building. Every window appeared to be blown out, except for the large ballistic glass windows of my office on the top floor. Three of those showed impact stars, however. I wondered if I’d live long enough to repair them.
Tilting my helmeted head upward to the limits of the suit, I gazed at the blue-white sky. The wind was blowing westward, so I could see out over the water, despite the smoke from the burning trees. There were definitely some odd-looking clouds out there. A few of them looked like starfish, while others looked like puffy white doughnuts. I wasn’t sure what the meteorological conditions were, but I was sure there were going to be some funny-looking turnips growing in Russia or wherever those radioactive clouds ended up coming down.
I goaded my suit into a trot and hopped over a barracks roof. I found Kwon’s platoon out among the landing pits where the Macro missile had fallen. His men were standing outside of pit ten, encircling the concrete walls. They watched over the top of the barrier while someone in a suspiciously large suit clanked around inside a crater in the middle of the pit.
