Armor World Page 10

  Harris blinked at me twice. I knew that hadn’t been the response he’d been expecting—but it was all he was going to get from me.

  “But sir, as the senior adjunct here—”

  “You’re not senior,” Leeson shouted. He was listening from a safe distance.

  Harris tossed him a scowl before turning back to me. “Centurion, we’re of a mind to march back out of here. We’ve done our piece. There’s no one here that we can rescue.”

  In the distance, I heard a rippling gush of rifle fire. Somewhere across the battlefield there was another unit encountering God-knows-what.

  “Our mission is to eradicate these pests,” I told Harris. “I’d say that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “But sir—”

  Turning away from him, I pointed a long arm into the town. We were standing at the outskirts, and the roads were choked with vehicles.

  “It’s less than three klicks from here to the center of Hammonton. Are you telling me I’m going to have to walk it alone? That my whole unit has gone chicken-shit?”

  “No sir, it’s not like that at all—”

  I stepped up to him. “I think it is. I smell the stink of fear on all of you. Shameful. I bet you all wet your pants as kids when you walked up to the big haunted house on Halloween, didn’t you?”

  There were a few weak snickers. People shuffled from foot to foot.

  “Now, let me hear from Barton. If she wants to leave—”

  “She got run over and hacked apart by some sixteen-armed tram, McGill,” Leeson called out.

  “Oh, that’s right… We should circle-up and do a roll call. Count off!”

  We gathered among the smoking, bleeding trams. Without being told, my men formed a perimeter with their weapons pointed outward in every direction. Walking the middle of the circle, I counted heads.

  Normally, I’d have checked the data with my tapper in private—but inside this dome it wasn’t working right. We were cut off from any kind of grid service. There was still too much radio interference.

  The numbers I tallied up were grim. Barton was indeed dead. Natasha had been killed as well.

  “That’s a real shame,” I told Carlos as he gave me the grim news. “We could really use our techs and weaponeers on a mission like this.”

  “No shit, sir?” he asked, and I cuffed him.

  This knocked him flat, as I was wearing powered metal armor—and he wasn’t.

  He got back up, spat some blood and went on with his report.

  “We’re down to about fifty percent effectives, Centurion.”

  “I’m ready to carry that report back to Graves, sir,” said a voice out of nowhere.

  “Cooper?” I demanded, whirling around.

  He wasn’t in sight of course. He was a ghost.

  Now, under normal circumstances that would be acceptable. But not today. Not here. Because I knew that the enemy could see through his stealth suit—and he knew it too. That meant he wasn’t wearing it to hide from these creatures.

  He was wearing it to hide from me.

  I took a swipe with my boot where I thought he was. He skipped back, but I’m quick and unreasonably long of limb. My metal-encased boot swept his legs out from under him, and he went down on his can.

  Leaning over the depression his invisible ass left in the grass. I gave him a stern warning.

  “Don’t hide from me, Specialist. That’s the kind of move that gets a man the most dangerous of assignments.”

  He appeared immediately, dragging the cloaking suit off. He hopped to his feet and saluted.

  “Sorry about that, sir. It was force of habit plus my extensive training that made me suit-up.”

  That was a good lie, so I accepted it with a nod.

  “All right. We’ve lost a lot of people—you can run back to Graves and make one last report.”

  “Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

  Cooper ran off like a bunny in heat.

  Harris snorted. “What a piece of work that kid is. I didn’t know chickens could go invisible.”

  “He’s made three solo runs so far to our rear lines, and he’s still alive. Even better, he keeps coming back for more. You want his job?”

  Harris looked startled. “No.”

  “Okay then, we’re moving forward. We’ll check out the town center—then we can call Hammonton scouted.”

  Normally, I’d have been in contact with the other units or Graves at least. But this was no normal operation. We were still cut off from the outside world and the rest of our units that were presumably under the shield with us.

  We didn’t make it far into the town’s streets before we ran into trouble. Hammonton looked like a pretty normal place to live if you ignored the abandoned look of the place. The lighting was probably the oddest thing, but if you told yourself they had a new kind of yellowy streetlight here, well, you could almost buy it.

  But about six blocks in, things went wrong.

  It was a feeling at first. A quiet fell over the streets. Now and then, we heard rippling gunfire. There were flashes in the sky, off to the eastern side of Hammonton. They rose in frequency until there was a veritable storm, then they died down again to random popping.

  “That’s snap-rifles and morph-rifles both,” Leeson said. “I bet someone is taking it in the shorts out there.”

  “At least it’s not us—not yet,” Harris noted.

  Frowning thoughtfully, I stopped marching at a stop sign. It was one of the old fashioned ones made of painted steel.

  “Let’s head that way,” I said.

  “Toward the action?” Harris asked incredulously.

  “Maybe we can lend assistance. With luck, we’ll come up on the flank of some of these freaks.”

  They grumbled and shook their heads, but they led the men that way. I stepped up to the front lines, where our lights had fanned out. Since Barton was dead, I’d taken over as their platoon leader.

  The night was darker on the tree-lined streets than it had been in out in the country. Mostly, that was because the strangely bright sky was obscured. After a ten minute walk, we ran into something.

  “Contact!” came a cry from up ahead.

  Another firefight lit up the night, but this time it was much closer at hand. Streaks of accelerated snap-rifle rounds formed pulsing lines as Barton’s nervous platoon focused their attack on the end of the street.

  Peering into the dark, I looked at the concentration-point of those converging lines. At first, I thought their target was a tractor. But then I realized, as we advanced in a rush from tree-to-tree and house-to-house, that it was more like a walking ogre on two legs. Dull metal covered most of the body, and I couldn’t see any eyes or other soft parts to target.

  The thing had no arms. It had no face—but it did have a bulbous body coated in metal that sat atop two stork-like legs. Protruding from the turret on top was a tube of some kind. It was about the size and length of a belcher, and it reminded me of the long beak of a stork or heron.

  The tube swiveled here and there, releasing a wavering gush of energy each time it paused. It was a broad beam, but no less deadly for all that. Everything it touched—troops, broken cars, trees—everything exploded into flame.

  “Go for those skinny legs!” I roared. “Cut it down to size!”

  My heavies were getting close enough to target the thing, and we lashed its legs. A sizzling sound began, and the thick odor of roasting meat filled the air. Clearly, there was flesh inside that strange, bird-shaped metal body.

  Barton’s light troopers were helpless. It was immediately obvious their snap-rifles couldn’t hurt this monstrosity, and the troops had used most of their grav-grenades during the last battle at the outskirts of town.

  Serving only as a distraction, the light troops scattered like rats under the ogre’s tramping feet. The walking machine moved eagerly after them. It’s single snout-like gun swiveled rapidly, almost greedy to kill. Radiation gushed out from that tube and men died in smoking, t
hrashing heaps.

  From over my shoulder someone fired a belcher then, and they nailed the walker in the left kneecap. It stumbled and went down on one knee.

  The turret quickly swiveled in our direction. The beak-like tube lifted, the aperture narrowed, and it returned fire. A precise beam flashed down the street, and I could tell from the angle that it was aiming at the weaponeer in our rear ranks who dared to injure it.

  After that, we got in close and tore it apart. It couldn’t move on one leg, so we circled and dashed in like pygmies hunting a crippled ostrich. Force-blades stabbed, belchers gushed at point-blank range—we cooked the meat that was hidden inside that armored body.

  At last it sagged down, thrashing. When it had stopped moving, I walked up and toed the massive… thing we’d just killed.

  Was it a machine or a living beast? It was hard to sort out, but best as I could tell, it was a little of both.

  “Centurion, look!”

  It was Harris. He was standing beside me. Looking up, I saw a group of figures running toward us. We lifted our rifles—but then lowered them again.

  They were human troops. It was 6th unit, and they were coming our way at a dead run. They ran up and stopped, sides heaving.

  “6th?” I called out. “Where’s the rest?”

  “This is it, Centurion,” a veteran ranked man said.

  ‘No officers?”

  He shook his head, wiping sweat from his brow. “Just me, sir. We’ve got… nineteen left. Mostly heavies. The lights and the auxiliaries, well, those snake-things killed everyone without body armor.”

  “Snake-things, huh?” I asked, not encouraged by the description of what was undoubtedly another form of alien menace.

  Hearing our talk, those of Barton’s light squad that had survived looked more nervous than before. That’s when I noticed they were mostly standing around in the street.

  “Spread out!” I ordered. “Take up firing positions and keep your eyes open. This isn’t a frigging block party!”

  Turning back to the veteran, I nodded to him. “Good to meet you. I’m commandeering your squad. Fold into Harris’ platoon, you’ll lead your squad.”

  “That’s excellent, sir,” the veteran said in relief. “How are we getting out of here?”

  I looked at him in surprise. “We’re not. We’re pressing ahead to the center of town.”

  All of the relief drained out of his face as he absorbed these words. I couldn’t blame him, but I didn’t let on that I sympathized. It would have been bad for morale.

  -18-

  With around seventy troops at my back, I marched toward the city center. It wasn’t such-a-much, as they said back home. My grandma might have called it a one-horse town, but that would have been a little harsh.

  There were no high-rises or anything like that on Main Street. Instead, there were some brick buildings, a few of them topping out at three stories high. The oldest trees were a good deal taller.

  The place was eerily quiet. The sounds of battle in the distance impinged occasionally, but not that often. I suspected one side or the other had won for the most part—could have been either them or us.

  We passed a couple of schools and a park. When we came up to the town center, where a puff-crete City Hall building showed on the maps we had on our tappers, we got a surprise.

  “Dear Lord…” Leeson said. “What the fuck is that?”

  “That’s wrong,” Harris said. “That’s just plain wrong!”

  “Can that be… human?” Sargon asked me. “Can that whole mound of quivering stuff be some kind of meat?”

  “I think so…” I said, squinting at it.

  The town plaza had a hospital of sorts, really more of a medical center. Next to that was an outdoor row of shops and the government buildings. At least that’s what our tappers showed us was supposed to be down here.

  But that wasn’t what we were seeing. Instead of the medical center, our eyes were offended by a nightmare of overgrown flesh. A tumor-like monster squatted on the building. It had to be ten meters high and maybe a hundred in diameter. Here and there, at what should have been the bottom floor of the building, there appeared to be entrances and exits. Smaller creatures, humanoid in form, were carrying things in and out of there like ants feeding their queen.

  “That’s an abomination against nature,” Leeson said with feeling. “We’ve got to blow that up, McGill.”

  “You willing to die to do it?” Harris asked him.

  Leeson thought about that for a second, then he nodded his head. “Yup. I’m willing.”

  “Hopefully, you won’t have to,” I said. “Let’s burn it.”

  There was a fueling station nearby. We got out buckets and trashcans, filling them with gas. It took a while, but oddly, the worker-aliens ignored us. They didn’t seem to see us as a threat. Either that, or it wasn’t their job to kill us.

  Forming something like an old fashioned bucket-brigade, we began to splash the quivering mass with gasoline.

  “It doesn’t like that!” Leeson laughed. “Pour more on those knobby sucker-cup things up high!”

  We kept working, but all the while, we were looking over our shoulders. Sure enough, a response came before we were through.

  I wasn’t sure how the weird, nest-thing we’d found had called for help, but the reaction was undeniable. Dozens of those walking things with beam-tubes like beaks appeared on the street and stalked forward.

  “Huddle up!” I shouted. “Get close to this hamburger pile! Stand close so if they miss, they hit their nest!”

  Racing up with our last buckets of fuel, we threw them on the fleshy mass and stood with our backs to it.

  The alien walkers seemed to be aware of our implicit threat. They didn’t fire their beams at us. That was a good thing, as they could have wiped us out if they did.

  Standing about a hundred meters off, they halted, and their deadly snouts swiveled this way and that seeking an advantage. They tried to encircle, walking around, but we always made sure they couldn’t get a clean shot without hitting the flesh-factory, or whatever that nasty thing was behind us.

  “McGill?” Harris called out. “What now? If we torch this thing, they’ll kill us all for sure.”

  “Wouldn’t that be worth it?”

  “Say what? Fuck no! There’s gotta be a better way!”

  “He’s wrong!” Leeson shouted. “Just do it, McGill!”

  My rank-and-file troops looked freaked out, especially the guys from the 6th. They didn’t know me well, and were therefore new to my surprising brand of solutions to tactical problems.

  I’d just about decided to go for it when another army showed up. They were walking on two legs as well, but they looked fairly normal. They were definitely humanoid.

  A few of my troops even cheered, thinking they were seeing reinforcements—but the cheering died pretty fast. It was the odd, tottering gait these newcomers used that gave them away.

  They’d once been people, I was sure of that. What’s more, they wore Varus uniforms in many cases. Some of them even carried snap-rifles.

  We called out to them, just in case, but they weren’t talking. Not a peep. We shouted and we challenged, but they just marched closer. The only sound we heard from them were whining motors every time they took a step.

  “Take them down!” I shouted, and a one-sided firefight began.

  By one-sided, I mean the other side wasn’t shooting at all. They were just coming at us, getting in close.

  We blasted and sprayed them as they came. Often, they spun around and fell, but they usually got right back up again and kept coming. It was kind of spooky to watch. The first row fell, then the second, then the third—but most of them climbed back on their feet and shuffled closer.

  The first of them to make it to our thin line grabbed hold of a surprised light trooper. He plucked her rifle from her hands. He raised the rifle, lifting it up like a club. But before he could smash her down, she’d gutted him and cut his head
clean off his neck with a combat knife.

  All along our line, the things that made it to us did similar things. They grappled us, they punched us with their fists, and they strangled us with long metal fingers.

  Behind each wave was another rank. Another hundred—another thousand.

  That’s when I knew it was time to make my play.

  “Burn this bitch down!” I shouted.

  A moment later, while I was doing a slow-dance with an armored-up bag of meat, Sargon used his belcher. A wide beam lit up the building-sized nest-thing. With all the gas we’d poured on it, the flames surged greedily. I could feel the heat on my back and my hair began to curl and singe.

  The creature that wrestled with me seemed to react, becoming stronger, more desperate. Muscles bucked under its tunic, and it ignored the broken ankle it was grinding on, striving to throw me down.

  Instead, I managed to use its motion against it and toss it to one side. It fell into the burning pyre behind me, and the flames surged higher still.

  It seemed like we were winning. The enemy was only using their claw-like hands, and although they were numerous and strong, we had better weapons and much better reflexes. I dared to hope we’d kill them all.

  But then, the bird-things showed up again. Now that their nest was on fire, dying, there was no reason to hold back. They began to use those beak-like tubes, blasting us with beams of hot radiation. They burned humans and former humans alike indiscriminately.

  “Retreat!” I shouted, seeing the bird-things no longer cared if they hurt their nest, or killed their mindless brothers who wrestled with us. As long as they could slay a human, that was good enough for them. Instead of holding our own, we were now losing troops at a rate of about one every second.

  “Retreat where?” Harris called out from somewhere to my left.

  “Into the building!”

  “Shit… I knew you were going to say that.”

  Those of us who could get away did so. We slammed our armored shoulders into the enemy, bowling them over and racing past. The bird-creatures sang with those slashing rays, cutting down a dozen of their own troops to get just one of us.