“Copy that, Red Leader,” Charlie replied, with a mischievous chuckle.
Smiling despite his tension, Macomber ran through one last systems and weapons check. Everything still looked good. So stop stalling, he told himself coolly. The longer he and Charlie dicked around out here, the more likely they were to be spotted by some sharp-eyed Russian sentry. The fact that the Perun’s Aerie garrison was on alert suggested they’d somehow lost operational surprise, but they could still rock the enemy back on his heels by attacking now, before they were detected. “Commence blackout in five seconds,” he ordered. “On my mark… Now.”
He flexed his CID’s right hand, activating its netrusion capabilities. Included among the sensors equipping their robots were active radars. And those radars could be configured to pump malicious code into enemy digital systems, computers, radios, telephone networks, and radars — commanding them to shut down or flooding them with false images. A wolfish grin flashed across his face. After all, there was a certain poetic justice in using the Scion variant of cyberwar against the Russians guarding this Perun’s Aerie complex.
“Three… two… one…” he counted down. “Let’s go!” He leaped to his feet and ran forward into the Russian detection grid. His radars powered up, pouring commands into the preset sequence of enemy sensors and computers. Off on his left flank, Charlie Turlock’s CID was in motion, doing the same thing.
Across the forest and on the high mountain slopes above them, ground-surveillance radars went dead, knocked off-line. Radio communications dissolved into a blur of incomprehensible static. Cameras and motion detectors froze.
Macomber hurtled over a trip wire and unslung his electromagnetic rail gun. It whined shrilly, powering up. Still moving at nearly sixty kilometers an hour, he dodged around trees. The targeting reticle on his display centered on the slit of a Russian bunker. He fired.
CCRRACK! In a blinding flash of plasma, a small superdense metal projectile streaked toward the distant bunker, moving at more than Mach 5. Tall pine trees caught in its wake bent and shook. Blankets of snow and ice layered on their branches exploded into steam. The rail-gun projectile slammed into the camouflaged antitank missile position with enormous force. Torn apart, the concrete bunker vaporized — blown into a swirling cloud of shattered concrete and molten steel.
Charlie’s 25mm autocannon stuttered, firing on full automatic. Dozens of HE rounds pounded the slopes ahead of them. Orange-and-red bursts rippled across the snow as the mines triggered by her burst detonated. A roiling curtain of smoke and dirt drifted across the bowl.
Laser targeting, Macomber’s CID warning system indicated suddenly, coupling it with a shrill BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. Threat axis ten o’clock.
He accelerated and swerved to the left, hoping to shake off the laser painting him. He swiveled on the move, bringing his rail gun on target.
Launch detection, his computer announced calmly.
Trailing a plume of fire and smoke, a Russian Kornet laser-guided antitank missile speared past Macomber’s CID. It missed by less than a meter. Still dodging and weaving, he fired back.
The Russian bunker exploded.
Caught up completely in the fierce exultation of combat, Macomber charged onward. He was fully synched with the Iron Wolf robot’s computer now. New targets appeared on his display. Each was coded by its perceived threat level and the weapon his CID evaluated as most likely to be effective. He fired again and again, using both his rail gun and 25mm autocannon as the circumstances and his battle software dictated. Charlie Turlock moved at his side, firing with equal poise and lethality.
One by one, the defensive positions guarding Perun’s Aerie were knocked out, either left burning or in smoldering piles of heaped rubble. Together, the two CIDs raced up the mountainside, dashing safely through wide gaps Charlie had blown clear through the Russian minefield.
Five minutes after the battle began, it was over.
Macomber reached the enormous tunnel entrance and spun to cover Charlie as she lunged uphill, covering the last stretch. Everywhere he looked, he saw only death and destruction. Plumes of greasy black smoke curled away from wrecked bunkers. Fires crackled, fed by burning ammunition and missile propellant.
“Reloading,” Charlie radioed. Her CID’s metal hands blurred into motion, ejecting empty autocannon ammunition clips and rail-gun magazines and replacing them from the extra packs slung across her robot’s back. “I’m back up,” she announced.
Macomber did the same thing while she covered him. “What’s your status?” he asked.
“I’ve used around sixty-five percent of my ammo stores,” Charlie told him. “But my fuel cells and batteries are in good shape.”
He nodded. That matched his own situation pretty closely. They were lower on ammunition than he would have preferred, but they should still be okay — depending on how much opposition they ran into inside the complex itself. “Any damage?”
Her robot actually shrugged its shoulders. “One of my thermal sensors is kaput. And I have some minor surface damage across my left leg. Nothing too bad.”
“How did that happen?” Macomber asked.
“I ducked a missile and ran into a heavy-machine-gun burst instead,” Charlie said, sounding irritated. She changed the subject, waving at the massive blast door that sealed the tunnel entrance. “So, what’s the plan now?”
In answer, Macomber charged his rail gun. His CID’s battle computer set a succession of aim points in a circular pattern across the blast door. Pausing only briefly between shots to let the powerful weapon cool and reset, he punched a series of holes right through the solid steel barrier. Pale fluorescent light streamed out through the new openings. Their edges glowed cherry red for a few moments, cooling fast in the below-freezing temperature.
“Oh, I like your plan,” Charlie said gleefully. “I always thought the Big Bad Wolf had all the best lines.” She pulled one of her equipment packs off her CID’s armored shoulder and moved forward to the blast door. One by one, she quickly attached shaped demolitions charges to the inside edges of the holes his rail gun had blown.
When she was finished, they turned and darted away along the base of the ridge, plunging through deep snow until they were a few hundred meters away. Both CIDs crouched low. “Detonation in three, two, one,” Charlie murmured. One of her fingers flicked, keying a precoded transmission.
With an earsplitting, ground-shaking BANG, her demolition charges went off simultaneously. In the middle of a bright orange flash that lit up the entire slope, they saw a large section of reinforced steel cartwheeling away through the air.
Before the echoes stopped bouncing around the surrounding peaks, the two Iron Wolf fighting machines jumped up and sped toward the tunnel. Bending low, they squeezed in through the ragged hole blown through the blast door.
They found themselves in a massive passage, more than large enough for their robots to stand fully upright. The first dozen meters were scorched and blackened by their demolition charges, but beyond that the corridor’s walls and overhead lighting looked completely untouched, almost pristine. More tunnels and chambers branched off this central passageway.
No sounds reached their CIDs’ audio pickups except for the low whir of a ventilation system circulating fresh air through the complex. “Knock, knock. Anyone home?” Charlie murmured.
“This sudden absence of any opposition does not make my heart grow fonder,” Macomber growled.
“Maybe our big ka-boom scared the crap out of them,” she suggested.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said doubtfully. “Let’s see if we can stir up any trouble. You take the left and I’ll go right.”