“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.
The machine looked bigger than I remembered. Those six churning legs were each as massive as a dozen tree trunks and formed of scarred, dull metal. Atop the towering, swinging legs was the vast body. Like a crab’s carapace, it was curved, but unlike any natural beast it bore sixteen belly-turrets to deal with irritants such as ourselves. The turrets blazed, sending ripples of blinding flashes down at my troops.
Sloan and his squad had what was easily the least enviable job of the unit. They were to get underneath the machine and dodge the legs and turrets. They were to fire and attract attention, but it didn’t really matter if they hit anything. The important part for them was to keep moving. The enemy turrets took nearly a second to lock onto a man and pour down streams of deadly fire. If you kept moving, you were much harder to hit.
It was our job, standing back with the second and third squads, to bring down the machine. My plan was to do so by focusing fire on the legs and ignoring the belly turrets. If the machine was flat on the ground, the turrets were useless anyway.
“Target is right-center leg, the one caught up on that big pine. Fire on my mark…mark!” I shouted.
My two squads had two heavy beamers each, one in each arm. Nearly forty streaks of energy flashed out to slice into the thick metal. First, a gush of vapor and plasma erupted from the leg. Dozens of lines were being cut into a single spot, a single massive joint. The metal soon turned orange and curled, opening up with curving lines as our lasers sliced into the outer hull. After a second, we cut the beams.
I squinted through the smoke and saw the machine was limping on that one leg, but it wasn’t down yet. I saw it catch one of Sloan’s troops with three turrets at once. Two others swung in our direction and raked our tree cover with suppressing fire. Men ducked and cursed all around me. Some returned fire, aiming at the turrets.
“Stay on target!” I roared.
I heard Kwon echo my command. He cuffed two helmets and strode around the crouched men as if the enemy Macro couldn’t hit him on a bet.