That was what he’d told the recruiter when he signed up. He wanted to be where the rubber meets the road.
At the moment, though, he really wished he’d gone in for radar technician or computer repair. He’d gotten the word that there was a group of bots headed for the lasers. And they had orders to take them out.
The only problem being that it seemed like every single one was headed for his bunker. There seemed to be a million of them and they were coming in very low, very fast, and very very hard.
There seemed to be only one thing to do, so he toggled off the safety on the M-240R, picked a point in space over the bots and pulled the trigger.
The remaining problem of the M-240R, after it was cooled, was ammunition. The best choice would have been the ramjet rounds demonstrated by Dr. Reynolds and Alan Davis. However, producing enough of them in any reasonable time had proved to be impossible. Instead, a modified sabot round was the best that could be created. Since the probes ate metal as it flew towards them, the new round consisted of a plastic outer “shoe,” or sabot, with an inner ceramic round. As the round left the machine gun, the plastic sabot fell away, leaving the ceramic round to do the damage, however the relatively low-density ceramic round tended to tumble beyond about four hundred yards and lost velocity rapidly.
The probes, on the other hand, had a momentum of their own. And the ceramic rounds, while lightweight, could still shatter the metal facing of the probes in tests.
Against the killer probes, however, things did not go as well as planned. Soldiers watched in disbelief as the rounds sparked and crashed into the probes, but seemed to have little or no effect. A few of the probes lost control and slammed into the mountainside in a shower of sparks. But the majority, even when they were struck by the ceramic rounds, continued on as if nothing had happened.
Soldiers stopped firing and spun around, pressing a button he had been told not to use under any circumstances. It was the button that put him through directly to the brigade commander in the bunker.
“This is Soldiers, Bunker One-Niner-Five. Sir, the killer probes are armored, repeat armored. Ceramic rounds have no effect, repeat no effect.”
“Move it!” Cady yelled, redeploying the platoon so that most of them were on the northeast side. “Shag ass!”
“Sergeant Major!”
Cady looked up in surprise as the voice of the major boomed out of the sky and then realized there must be a PA system on the laser bunker.
“Platoon! The killer bots are armored, repeat armored. Try to hit them on the underside and see if that works.”
“Oh, this just gets better and better,” Jones said, taking a knee and hefting his rifle. The platoon had been armed with the latest version of the sergeant major’s “super-gun.” Thanks to Alan, Lurch and a local paintball company, the gun was capable of firing more powerful rounds, faster.
“Time to cue the music, sir,” Cady muttered. As he did the speakers began to crackle with the sound of thunder and lightning.
“What are you doing, Major?” the general asked quietly.
“I hope you don’t mind, sir,” Shane said, gulping. “It’s something we would do in Iraq when we knew we were in the deep. Motivational material, sir. Just a song one of the troops liked and we picked it up as a unit thing.”
“ ‘Citadel’ by Crüxshadows,” the general said, smiling faintly. “You do think we’re in the deep.”
“I see a citadel alone,” Shane replied. “Clinging brave, defying fate. Not sure there’s a better description. Sir, permission to speak to Lasing?”
“Do it. Out here.”
“Lasing, this is Major Gries,” Shane said. “Can you make a bubble to the northeast of the bunker? We’ve got dead ground under your laser. I need to move my troops to cover it.”
“I can give you a bubble,” the lasing officer replied. “Five meters wide and, say, three and a half high call it? That do?”
“Fine, and I’d suggest tightening your fire into that area.”
“Teach your granma to suck eggs, Major,” the lasing officer said, with grim humor in his voice. “Already done. Those things are our main threat at the moment.”
“Any way to point out where it is?” Shane asked.
“They’ll know.”
“Crap, look at that,” Jones said as a small bush directly in front of them exploded.
“Laser,” Mahoney replied over the music. “That’s why you don’t want to go forward. You’ll be the burning bush. There,” he added, waving at what appeared to be thin air. But there was a faint glow as the laser ionized the atmosphere. “That’s what you’ve got to avoid.”
“Top, move forward,” the speaker boomed, cutting off the music. “There’s a hole in the lasing, due northeast of the bunker, five meters wide, two plus high. You should be able to spot it. Move forward to cover the dead ground! You need to stop them before they get to the top of the mountain!”
It was the first time that Jones had actually seen the sergeant major shocked. Everyone looked over at the NCO and could see him with his jaw wagging up and down, trying to find something to say. Jones wasn’t sure whether to be terrified or laugh out loud. He decided a hysterical chuckle was called for. Okay, cackle.
The, more than one, hysterical cackle seemed to center the big NCO.
“What the fuck are you doing still sitting here with your thumbs up your ass?” Cady roared. “You heard the man! Gregory, take right, I’ll take left. Tighten up and stay low. Forward!”
Cady swung left and duckwalked forward, keeping one eye on the occasional strikes on the ridgeline and the other over his shoulder, trying to use the two points to get some idea of the line the deadly, and invisible, beams were following. After a brief pause Staff Sergeant Gregory headed right, doing the same.
“Jones, Mahoney, Nelms,” Gregory said, expanding on the sergeant major’s orders. “You three front rank, between the S’maj and me. Crawl it. When you get to the edge, poke your head over. Shag ass.”
Mahoney and Nelms both looked at Jones, who shrugged and grimaced.
“Bugger this for a game of soldiers,” he hissed but then threw himself prone and started fast-crawling forward on elbows and knees with the other two following and then catching up to flank him.
The rest of the platoon followed, more or less in groups of three.
“Second and third ranks,” Cady said, still sidling towards the edge and trying to stay out of the beams, “get ready to fire upwards. When those things come over the edge, just fucking hose it until you’re out of ammo!”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jones said as he reached the edge of the summit. It had been a fairly abrupt drop to a short bluff. Now it was as perfectly cut as if it had been carved away… well, it had been carved away by a laser. The fact that the laser wasn’t, at the moment, shaving it seemed a minor point. “This is fucking nuts!”
“We gonna do this?” Nelms asked nervously. The normally sanguine sniper seemed unusually perturbed.
“No,” Jones said, then shrugged. “One… two…”