Swarm (29 page)

They eyed me and I ignored them. I stared at the dome instead. I had yet to give the attack order, so they weren’t sure how long we were going to wait to make our next move. Major Radovich came close and looked at me. I could only see his eyes when I glanced at him. The rest was covered. We halted at the top of the crater rim. We were both lying in the mixture of dirt and twisted, smoking metal that crowned the rim of the crater, exposing only our faces to the dome in the center.

“Well?” he asked me finally.

“I’m thinking.”

“Sir,” he said, sliding close enough for our shoulders to touch, “we can’t just sit here.”

I adjusted the magnification on my goggles, eyeing every inch of that bubble-like shield.

I glanced at him. “What do you suggest, Major?”

“Let’s push. Let’s do it.”

“Just run out there the last thousand yards and try to slip into—whatever that is?”

“Yeah. What the hell else are we going to do?”

I heaved a sigh. “What, indeed,” I said. I hesitated for a few moments more, but he was right, the enemy weren’t doing anything, and we couldn’t stay here. If nothing else, they would probably launch a massive missile barrage at us. We had reached the first dome and threatened it. They would respond. I was sure of it.

But I was equally sure they had another trick or two left. Whenever this enemy sat quietly, it seemed to mean they had laid their trap and were patiently waiting for us to walk into it. I didn’t want to lose more men due to a wild attack. What was inside? What new horrors awaited us, should we even be able to enter?

I finally turned to Radovich. “Major, I want concentrated fire. Everyone is to fire a five-second cutting beam at the base of that dome. Then another five. Let’s try to focus everything we have on a single point and see if it gives.”

He stared at me for a second, then nodded. I could tell he didn’t approve. He and a lot of other men had come here to avenge some part of their lost lives on these machines. It looked like we had the Macros on the run, and he wanted to finish it personally.

It took a minute or two to get everyone organized, but soon we were firing in concert. I opened up with the others. It felt good to shoot at something. The light of the combined lasers was intense, too much even for our blacked-out goggles. I closed my eyes, and still the greenish-white light of hundreds of lasers firing at once crept in through my eyelids, painfully bright. Inside my head, my pupils constricted to pinpoints. I had an instant headache and purple splotches pulsed in my skull.

“Cease fire!” I shouted, not wanting anyone’s vision damaged. Neither did I want any of the lasers to overheat and shut down. Releasing enough heat, besides the problem of vision-scorching brilliance, was one of the biggest limitations of these new weapons. I suspected more than a few men could feel the prickle of nanites in their heads and on their burnt hands, as the microscopic robots worked to repair cellular damage from overexposure.

While my head pulsed, I squinted to see the dome. It was still there, but it wasn’t the same. It had changed color to a burnt orange where we had all hit it. I chewed my lip as I watched the circular area we’d beamed. It soon shifted back to a shimmering, opal-white.

“I don’t think we have enough firepower to burn our way through,” I said aloud.

Radovich grunted in agreement. “Are we going to assault the dome now, sir?”

I hesitated for a few more seconds. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. The enemy was clearly waiting for us. But they were probably working up a counterattack as well that would come if we didn’t move quickly. Sitting around wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I began to wonder if I should have ordered our men to split up into three battlegroups instead of six. Perhaps, due to overconfidence, I’d set us up to fail in six attacks instead of succeed in three. There was no fixing it now, however. If this battlegroup was destroyed, a new commander would fight with new knowledge of the enemy capabilities.

“Deploy the same companies that did the flanking. They took lighter losses than those that did the frontal assault on this ridge and should be at full strength. Have them move in on that dome from two angles. The rest of us will support with fire down the center from here.”

Radovich rolled onto his side and looked at me. “Permission to speak, sir.”

“Talk to me.”

“Sir, we should go in with at least half our strength. What’s our backup plan if those first two waves vanish into that dome? What if they get in, but get eaten?”

“Then I have eight companies left to figure out what to do next.”

“Sir, I know you have some infantry experience, but in standard tactics—”

“Listen, Major. I hear you, but we are not fighting a bunch of men with rifles. We have no idea what will happen when we assault this dome, but I suspect it won’t be anything good. And I don’t want their next surprise to hit my entire force.”

“How about half our force?”

“No.”

“Sir, what about the cruise missile brigade?”

“We’ve fired a thousand missiles at these domes, they are always shot down. The missiles are for a major concentration of unshielded targets. We haven’t gotten the chance to use them yet.”

“Sir, permission to lead the charge.”

He had more balls than most of my men. I looked at him and thought about it. “Denied,” I said. “I need you here with me, Major. Don’t worry. I’ll bet you a hundred Euros you’ll see all the combat you want today.”

He snorted, but didn’t take the bet. My orders went out, and two full companies of nanite-filled marines charged across the relatively smooth, featureless landscape toward the dome.

By the time the two forward assault teams were three-quarters of the way there, all hell broke loose.

-31-

A force of Macro workers had been gathering secretly in the trees behind us. These workers were equipped differently, with twin lobster-claws protruding from the torso of every unit. My first impression when I spotted them, charging our rear, was that they were built for harvesting of some kind. Probably, they foraged around the domes for metals or maybe even trees—although I had no idea what use the machines would have for wood. In any case they lacked guns of any kind, and they rushed close to attack.

At least half my men were distracted by this flank attack. We fired as they charged from the tree line. Many of the enemy lobster-types didn’t make it to us, but those that did simply plucked men from the ground with their claws. They lifted my men into the air with one claw, then proceeded to snip off their limbs individually. With a final grinding effort, they crushed each victim’s helmet until the skull inside popped.

I tore my eyes from that scene to watch the men charging the dome. In front of us, all around the far side of the crater’s rim, another force of big machines appeared. They had gathered out of our sight. They had probably been swelling in numbers since we arrived at the crater, running in from neighboring patrols and domes. They had bided their time on the far side of the crater, getting together every unit they had, until we approached the dome. It was clear to me that our attack had triggered their counterstrike. They didn’t want us anywhere near their dome.

The men I’d sent forward into the crater never had a chance. I ordered them to turn and run, but it was already too late. Half our men up on the crater rim were firing backward at the lobster-workers who streamed out of the trees behind us. The other half attempted to give covering fire as our men bounded back toward us, but the enemy Macros were too fast. They ignored our fire, which had no real effect on their shielded bodies. I counted twenty-six of the huge, silvery bastards. They rolled over the rim of the crater, overran my men and burned them down. My troops looked like sand castles caught in a tidal wave. Hundreds of belly-turrets blazed at once, and my marines melted. Seeing they were doomed, they stood and fought to the last. The big machines went into a frenzy, shouldering one another and clashing together massive legs in their eagerness to kill. My marines fought until utterly destroyed. They only managed to take out one of the big machines before they were all burnt to ash.

The workers rushing our rear were driven back with heavy losses, but they had done their work. I realized belatedly they had held our attention and kept us pinned down until the big machines had time to get in close and destroy my two forward companies. As I watched, the big machines pulled back beyond the far side of the crater.

“They are resetting the trap!” shouted Major Radovich. “If we all go for the dome now, the workers will come up behind us again and hit us in the back.”

“We have to attack again,” I said.

He looked at me. After watching two companies get slaughtered down there, his bravado had faded.

“We could hold and call for another battlegroup,” he said.

“The nearest is an hour or two away. If we sit here that long, they will launch a missile barrage. For all we know, a mass of missiles is coming here right now.”

“Can’t our birds see—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. I hadn’t had time to fill him in on the loss of our satellites. I did so now. His face was a shade grimmer by the end of my explanation.

“So, we don’t know if….”

“No,” I said, “we have no idea what’s coming.”

He paused. “What are your orders, sir?”

“We came here to destroy that dome. We will do so or we will all die. I thought we could probe and scout the dome. I was wrong. We’ll leave a company on this ridge, with the cruise missile brigade. The rest of us will roll down there and either take out those machines and that dome or die trying.”

“I thought I was the craziest one here, sir,” he said.

“You’ll have to take a number,” I told him.

“It’s been less than a pleasure serving with you, Colonel.”

“Same.”

We grinned at each other, the smiles of two men who face imminent death. Then we relayed our orders. We stood up with our men, and together we charged down the ridge. Almost immediately, the big machines that had pulled back to the far side of the crater swept forward again to meet us.

“Listen up boys,” I said, broadcasting to everyone, “I want you to get into that dome if you can and destroy whatever is there. Run all out for the dome. We can move faster than they are expecting us to. Engage if you have to, but try to keep moving toward the dome.”

We almost made it. I think they had underestimated our speed. In past battles, with normal humans, men had always run at a certain rate. Their software had not yet made the adjustment. They came at us in a wave, but we were only a few hundred yards from the dome when they met us and a pitched battle began. I shouted orders commanding my men to put up a running fight. We had to shoot and keep moving toward the goal, to move right under them, right through them.

Many of my men failed to follow these orders. When the machines loomed over them, blocking out the sky, they slowed and concentrated fire on the belly-turrets that strafed them. I cursed, seeing this, but then I was in the middle of the battle and felt the same urges. To keep moving was nearly impossible once you were beneath the legs. Huge, looming columns of metal flew around, as if an eight-story building had come to unholy life and had decided it must kill you.

The noise of the machines was tremendous. They had a smoky smell about them too that reminded me of burning tires. I sighted on a splattering turret and burned it until it ruptured like a light bulb. The effort took nearly two seconds, much too long. It was only luck that I wasn’t crushed or beamed down as I stood in one spot for so long. When combating a pack of angry Macros, two seconds was a lifetime.

“Forward!” I shouted, hoping some of the men could hear and obey me. I ran then, sprinting. The dome was very near. Around me a knot of marines followed.

Something roared and I was knocked flat. For several blinking seconds I didn’t know what had happened. Then I had it: a missile strike. The barrage had come in, finally.

It took me a few more seconds to realize there were very few missile strikes. This wasn’t a barrage, it was just a smattering of missiles. I could see now what was happening. Up above the dome, above the machines and the struggling men, a launcher had arisen. It had many tubes. Periodically, each tube sparked and a missile flashed. Spiraling smoke trails led down toward us. They were firing right into their own machines at point-blank range.

Two men picked me up, and I was dragged, half-running toward the dome. My body was full of metal slivers. When I breathed, liquid bubbled out of my chest as if I were a wet, popped tire. My men dragged me under the last machine that stood between us and the dome. It had run out of belly-turrets by this time and two of its crab-like legs were dragging behind it.

I shouted into my com-unit. “Cruise brigade! Take out that missile turret now!”

I wasn’t sure if they acknowledged or not. I wasn’t even sure if they were still alive. We made it under the dying Macro’s legs and hit the dome. All sounds of the battle cut out.

Stepping under the dome was like entering a cool, calm world. Cut off from the outside completely, I could feel the barrier as I passed through. It felt like I’d walked through some kind of plastic film, as if I’d been swallowed in bubble-wrap. We pushed inward and it pushed back, but gently it gave way. I think it was designed to allow slowly moving things to walk through. How else could the workers easily gain access? I supposed they could have sent in some kind of signal, but signals could be duplicated. Besides, I suspected now that the shield prevented all signals from penetrating. Signals were fast-moving energy, just like the laser beams from my rifle. These domes seemed to stop such emissions.