The machines made their next move shortly after dawn. I doubt they planned it for that time, that’s just when their final tunnels breached and Macro diggers swarmed out of their holes. They had brought all their underground units to encircle Fort Pierre. Since they weren’t able to dig through our underground defenses, they came up outside the walls and rushed us from every side.
The big machines began to move then, standing up from their dormant states and forming groups of their own. They marched forward, all surging toward Fort Pierre. I nodded to myself, blinking sleep from my eyes. Typical Macro behavior. They often waited for a crucial tipping point, then slammed everything against a critical juncture. Unfortunately, in this case the juncture was the base I was standing in.
We’d had some forewarning this was their plan. The underground movements showed they were massing more troops under us all the time. They had already knocked out our heavy weapons, weakening us against the big machines.
I had my helmet off. Barrera and Sandra leaned over the table with me. Everyone had dark circles around their eyes. I’d learned the delicate art of scratching my cheek with battle gloves on, and employed it now. I winced as a few hairs of stubble were caught and yanked out. But I was successful. No skin had been removed, and the itch had been vanquished.
“Barrera,” I said, “what do you think we should do in this situation?”
He shrugged and eyed the boards speculatively. “Fight on the walls. That’s why we built them.”
“Can we hold the walls against the tunnelers?”
“Probably.”
“And when the big machines come racing up behind them, what then?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. They’ll step right over the walls. We’ll be overrun.”
“Major, have you ever been underneath an invasion Macro with all sixteen of its belly turrets spraying fire down onto your troops?”
Barrera shook his head. “No, sir.”
He was looking at me now, warily. The others followed his lead. They all stared at me. They knew I had an idea in my head, and that I was bringing them around to making the same conclusion I had. I could tell from their expressions they doubted they would like my conclusion.
“No, you have not,” I said. “None of you have. I can tell you, it is an unpleasant experience, one you will never forget should you be so lucky as to survive. We can’t sit here and wait for them to hit the walls. Not all of us. We have to go on the offensive. Small units will hunt the big machines in the deep forest.”
“Small units?” Barrera asked.
“In the forest, sir?” Major Sarin asked. “Why?”
“Small groups are harder to focus on and wipe out. If they try, we will have succeeded in distracting them and keeping them off the main base. We’ll meet them out in the forest because I don’t want to set off even a small nuclear device inside these walls. And that is how we are going to have to stop them, people-by going nuclear.”
Out of nowhere, Kwon clanked up to my side. He banged his hands together with an ear-punishing ring of metal striking metal. “When do we fly, Colonel?”
I saw the excitement in his eyes and I had to smile. Everyone else in the room looked faintly sick at the prospect of combat with giant robots, but not Kwon. He had signed up with Star Force to kill machines. He never tired of it.
“We’ll send out half the garrison. That should leave you with more than a thousand marines to man this base. Don’t lose it, Lieutenant-Colonel.”
“I’d like to command one of those units, Colonel,” Major Sarin said.
I looked at her in surprise. “Have you trained with the new battle suits?” I asked.
Her lips drew tight. “No, sir. I haven’t had time. I’ve been on ops since-”
“I know,” I said. “I put you on ops. But I wouldn’t send you out in any case, Major. No one is more critical to this operation than you are, and I need you right here running this command screen.”
I watched Jasmine’s face. She wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t going to say anything. I could practically hear her thoughts. She was angry I’d told her she needed command experience, then denied her the chance to get it when the opportunity arose.
I caught Sandra glaring at the two of us and frowned. I could tell she was becoming jealous again. If we didn’t all die in the next twenty-four hours, I planned to assign one of these two women to a new base on the Moon.
“Is there any reason why you have to go personally, Colonel?” Sandra asked me, speaking up for the first time.
“Kwon and I have taken down more of these machines than most. At last count, only five hundred of our Star Force marines are veterans of the South American campaign. If you are thinking of my personal safety-don’t bother. This base, even this bunker, will not be any safer than the forest. Possibly, it is a deathtrap.”
Sandra backed off, and everyone looked grim as my words sank in.
“Colonel,” Barrera said, “as your second in command, I’ve seriously considered your plan. I think you are making the right decision.”
If anyone else had said it, that man might have been called a kiss-ass. But everyone here knew Barrera didn’t kiss anyone’s butt, not even mine. The decision was made without further debate and within three minutes I had my helmet on and was jogging up toward the surface. Kwon clanged ahead while Sandra ran lightly behind me.
Sandra sent me a private message, helmet-to-helmet. I opened the channel.
“Did you ever think, Kyle, that Barrera might be the one behind the assassinations?”
“No,” I lied. To tell her yes, I had thought such a thing, might unnecessarily threaten the life of my second in command.
“Well, you should. Maybe he thinks your idea is crazy. Maybe he wants you to go out and get yourself killed.”
She snapped off the channel after that, and I briefly thought about her concerns. I couldn’t think of anything to do about them at the moment, so I dropped those worries from my mind. Assassins were small matters in comparison to the robots we were now going to engage. That was one detail where I’d bent the truth. By any sane measure, it was safer to stay in the fort. I would have ordered Sandra to stay behind if I’d thought I could get away with it.
We gathered a team of men, bringing along Captain Sloan as the company CO. Kwon shouted most of the orders, seemingly giving them before I had time to pass them down. He was an excellent non-com, the kind that had a mental link to his officer. Again I thought I should promote him to lieutenant, but I knew he wouldn’t feel completely comfortable in that role. More importantly, he didn’t want it. Kwon wasn’t interested in rank. He was interested in killing machines. From his viewpoint, today was going to be a dream come true.
We flew low, only a foot or so off the ground. Single-file, we glided through the forest. Only Sandra was on her feet, as disinterested as she usually was in wearing a heavy battle suit. She could run as fast as we could fly between the trees, so it wasn’t a problem. Sloan led the point squad while Kwon, Sandra and I accompanied the second squad of the three. We wended our way northwest, then swung back to the east, hoping to hit the Macros’ right flank. We could tell we were getting close when the bird sounds cut out. Soon thereafter even the insects fell silent, saving their humming and buzzing for a safer day.
My helmet radio squawked, and excited words from the lead squad spilled out. There was no need for elaboration; we’d obviously made contact with the enemy. A series of rapid cracking sounds approached as a dozen trees were shocked by powerful impacts. The sounds were distant at first, then swooped closer and closer. I could see treetops ahead, bending forward as if they’d been battered by a passing giant. In a way, that was exactly what occurred.
The first squad engaged the monster with flashing laser fire. Trees smoked and burned. The crashing legs of steel, visible only in flashes up ahead, slowed and turned with a loud mechanical whirring sound.
Following our simple, but precisely-timed plan, my group didn’t charge ahead underneath the enemy as the first squad did. We took up what cover there was and fired our beamers up at the monster that darkened the forest like a passing cloud.
