As it turned out, the enemy stopped coming after the explosion. As best we could tell by our mapping of the tunnels using sonic sensors on the surface, the enemy was either all dead from cave-ins or they’d retreated from the explosion. I suspected the explosion, which had been a low-yield atomic blast, had collapsed their tunnels for miles. I imagined the machines down there in the dark, squirming and grinding under the weight of a million tons of loose earth. The image brought a grim smile to my face. If Macros could suffer pain or feel loss in any form, I wished to heap it upon them.
Almost as clear a signal of our success was the change in the enemy behavior on other fronts. They’d come up outside the walls of Fort Pierre, which had a much thicker underground net of nanite threads to protect it. So far, they’d yet to hit the walls, but they were massing in the forests and our men had retreated inside the fort itself. What were they waiting for? I wasn’t sure, and neither was anyone else.
Less than an hour later, however, we had our answer. Red contacts appeared on our boards marching up out of the sea. Hundreds of them. This wouldn’t normally be alarming, except for one thing: their size. These weren’t worker Macros.
It had been a long time since I’d run into their real ground-invasion hardware. These were hundred-foot tall invasion bots—monsters taller than the trees themselves. They had yet to surface, but they were marching underwater all along the entire eastern seaboard.
My scalp itched as I absorbed this news. Once again, I’d missed the bet. I’d built systems to repel an aerial attack and they’d used sappers to dig underneath me. I’d built walls around Fort Pierre to slow down a thousand car-sized, worker Macros, and now they were attacking with behemoths that could step over those walls without a qualm.
I wanted to rub my face and my hair, but I couldn’t. My helmet prevented such relief, and I wasn’t going to take it off now.
“What are we going to do now, Kyle?” Sandra asked me. “This fight is over, I think.”
I looked around the base. I had to agree with her. I found the captain of the reinforcement company and briefed him quickly. He was the senior officer after me, so I gave him command of the garrison.
“Oh, and captain,” I said as I boarded my flitter with Sandra beside me. Kwon was up front, piloting.
“Sir?”
“If the Macros break through again—don’t chase them down their holes. Not unless you really want to know what’s down there.”
“Uh, no sir.”
We lifted off and headed east.
“Where to, Colonel?” Kwon asked me.
“Head for the center fort,” I said. “I want to know if we can target the beach with those big guns.”
Kwon swung the aircraft around sickeningly. In seconds, we were skimming over the dark treetops. The palm fronds whipped and rattled as we whizzed past.
The Moon was a rising crescent that hung over the sea to the east, right behind the advancing enemy lines. The crescent was mirrored in the ocean below the Moon, forming a wavering silver reflection. I took a moment to stare at the ancient light of Earth’s only natural satellite, marveling at its timeless beauty. I wondered how many human battles it had witnessed and how many more it was destined to observe before the last of us was snuffed out.
-32-
We headed to the central laser-battery fort, the biggest of the three. I’d ordered two companies of marines to support each of the forts and act as a garrison. I saw the men standing around in squads on the loose earth outside the fort. I was pleased they were all wearing our latest battle suits. Most of my men had them now.
Of the three red lines of tunneling Macros, one group had committed themselves at this point. The first line had apparently been digging the longest, and they’d come up to hit my production base. That failure had been costly for both sides, but I had to mark it down as a Macro victory. Although we’d beaten them back, they had damaged or destroyed nearly half my factories. My productions systems took around a month each to build and required many rare earths to construct. They would take much longer to replace than a thousand tunneling Macro troops.
The second line of Macros were trying to dig up into the heart of Fort Pierre, and thus bypass the walls and gun emplacements I’d built up to defend the base. So far, they had been unsuccessful. We’d put a lot of constructive nanites into that soil. They’d killed the local forests, but they’d also made it nearly impossible for the Macros to dig through. Forming tight nets of alloy cable in layer after layer beneath the base, the enemy wasn’t having an easy time of it.
It was the third line of underground attack that worried me most. It hadn’t yet committed itself and wasn’t moving. I suspected it was a reserve force meant to come up upon a target of opportunity. The Macros waited down there in their tunnels, about a mile down underneath the central region of the island. That put them in easy striking distance of several key targets, including all three of my new laser batteries. None of the forts had underground defense systems. We simply hadn’t had time to build them. Just getting the forts operational had taken every marine and crawler I had.
When Sandra, Kwon and I reached the central fort, we leapt out of the open canopy of the flitter and charged into the command post under the big guns. When the garrison CO asked if I expected trouble, I told him to set up listening sensors around the newly built laser batteries and to expect an assault from underground. He paled, then rushed to follow my orders.
The big guns mounted on the fort’s dome angled downward to aim at the sea. They did not fire yet, however. The enemy had not yet shown themselves. Big screens had been rigged up all around the command post. Some monitored radar systems, others provided live vid feed from the beaches. Technicians were all around us, ignoring us and working their controls determinedly. We watched, transfixed as the battle took form. Red contacts showed on radar as formations of large Macro walking machines approached. Our laser turrets were strung out along the beaches. They waited for the approaching enemy and quivered in anticipation.
It was eerie. I knew those sands, I knew those rolling waves and those shifting palms. The enemy’s plan was clear. They were marching up in trenches underwater, keeping themselves low and out of sight as long as they can. My laser turrets were right on the beach, easily within range. They tracked the underwater targets as they came closer.
“Why don’t they fire, Kyle?” Sandra asked beside me.
“They can’t do any damage yet,” I said. “Lasers won’t penetrate a cold, dark ocean. The waves make it even worse. Lots of sediment and foam. The beams wouldn’t be effective for more than a few feet down. They have to wait until the Macros are in water that is too shallow to hide them.”
“I get it,” Kwon said. “Our turrets are smart. They will wait to blast them until they are in close.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Our turrets are smart enough to know they can’t do any damage, so they are waiting. I would say the Macros are the smart ones this time. By coming under the cover of deep water they will be very close when the surface. They’ll burn down our turrets at point-blank range.”
“Look, they’re stopping all along the line,” Sandra said. She took a step toward the screens and pointed at the main radar display. She turned and looked at me. “They’re waiting under there like spiders, aren’t they? Waiting until all of them are into position, then they’ll all rush us at once.”
I nodded, and contacted Barrera. He answered almost immediately, despite what had to be an overwhelming number of details to worry about.