Armor World Read online

  I explained why we were here, what we were expected to do, and what I needed from her.

  Natasha sat her ass down hard on the ground. She put her rifle down and rested her chin on her knees.

  “They really ditched us here?” she asked. “They really did that? Just to get a clean ground-zero on these freaks?”

  “Yeah, looks like it. But listen, we might get a chance to change things up a bit.”

  I explained about the tanks that were certain to come after the rhino creatures, especially if we hadn’t been wiped out yet.

  Natasha looked fearful. “What the hell are we supposed to do in this situation, sir?”

  “Die,” I said, shrugging. “But maybe we can do more than that. I’ve been thinking about these vehicles—the big ones, I mean. The living tanks.”

  We talked, and we plotted. Soon, we got the chance to put our plans into action.

  The first thing we did was leave the rest of the cohort behind. We had to draw the enemy into a region that was apart from the others in order to have a chance. Accordingly, we sprinted across some open ground, then entered another wooded hilly area to the east. Behind us, there was a lot of firing and now and then a faint, echoing scream.

  “I’m having real trouble with this, situation McGill,” Adjunct Barton told me.

  “How’s that? You hurt?”

  “No… no, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about the fact we ran out on the others.”

  I shrugged. “We’re destined to die out here today, Erin. I’m good with that, but I’m going to take as long as possible to do it. Therefore, I’m following orders.”

  She still looked troubled, but I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, we were doing our jobs better than the rest.

  We waited in the new hiding spot for about twenty minutes before a trio of hunting stork-things came along. They were clearly looking for survivors.

  “Ambush them,” I ordered.

  We waited until they were close, then rushed out and gunned them all down. Not a single trooper died.

  After that, morale improved. It really shouldn’t have, but men always like fighting and winning more than they like running away.

  We went back into the trees and hid.

  “Um…” Leeson said. “Maybe we should move on, sir? To another position? They’ll have us zeroed soon.”

  “Yep. That’s the point. We’re trying to attract a bigger group.”

  The adjuncts looked at each other nervously, but they didn’t say anything.

  A few minutes later, my tapper began to buzz. It was Graves. My face soured, and I silenced it.

  Centurion Mills came looking for me about ninety seconds after that.

  “The primus wants to talk to you, McGill.”

  With a grunt, I answered the call.

  “Primus Graves, sir!” I said loudly. “I just want to thank you for this fine vacation you arranged for me and my deserving men. I can’t imagine why no one of primus rank accompanied us. We’re all down here having the best shore-leave of our—what’s that, sir?”

  “I said shut up, McGill. Why are you so far out of position?”

  “Uh… I’m following your orders, sir. We’re still alive, we just killed an enemy patrol, and we’re—”

  “McGill, you’re going to start listening to me, or I’ll turn you into an adjunct the next time you come out of the oven on Blue Deck.”

  That made me wince a little. Due to various misunderstandings and injustices of the past, I’d been demoted from time to time. I had no desire to experience the process again.

  “Right sir. Tell me what you need.”

  “I need you to get your asses closer to the LZ. There’s a formation of their largest armored vehicles coming out from the city right now. Those vehicles are our primary targets. I want them all in one spot for easy disposal. We can’t bomb the whole area without using nukes, and we’re trying to avoid that for environmental reasons.”

  Confused, I scratched at my face through the open visor. “Did I hear that right, sir? You’re trying not to blow down too many of the flowers out here?”

  “That’s right. We’re visitors on 51 Pegasi. This is, in fact, the first time Earthers have landed on this planet. If we blow everything up—well, it might not leave the best diplomatic impression.”

  “I guess I can see that. All right, we’ll return to the LZ. McGill out.”

  Glumly, I closed the connection. I told Centurion Mills what he’d said. She looked sick.

  “You mean he wants us to march toward the enemy? Right into the targeted area?”

  “Yeah. He wants them tightly circled up, I guess. A saturation bombing with conventional smart-bombs is coming our way, if I had to guess.”

  “After all this our reward is to be blown apart? It seems so pointless…”

  “Not at all. With luck, we’ll kill a shit-load of their best armor. We can’t bomb our way through that dome from space—not easily. And I wouldn’t want to march an infantry formation inside there to dig them out if they still have their tanks. This way, we’re drawing them out and destroying their best cyborgs with minimal loss.”

  Jennie shook her head, but I honestly thought it was just sour grapes on her part. After all, dying face down in the mud was just another Sunday afternoon in Legion Varus.

  -38-

  Another alien patrol found us soon thereafter. It was made up of both storks and rhinos.

  As we had a decent amount of firepower on hand, and they weren’t able to close with us fast enough. We put them all down at range.

  “Three rhinos and five storks so far!” I shouted, beaming.

  My positive attitude uplifted the troops, and I wasn’t even putting on an act. I really did enjoy killing these alien bastards. They were as ugly as sin by any measure, and they all deserved killing just on principle.

  One of the creatures must have reported in to their main army. We knew they had radios in their bodies and worked them like speech organs. They bleeped and blipped, and they ratted us out.

  Shortly after the firefight, we soon heard a rumble that grew into a roar. The sounds separated into the rattle and squeal of spinning treads.

  “Come on!”

  I took off at a dead run, and as people tended to do, they followed me.

  I don’t rightly know what the tank that burst out of the tree line had expected to see with its roving cameras, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a hundred and fifty lightly-armed humans.

  We rushed it like a herd of ostriches. Anti-personnel weapons budded up on the sides of the tank, and they began tracking and firing. Some troops were blown to fragments on my left, so I jogged right.

  “Encircle it!” I shouted. “Throw grav-grenades into the treads!”

  The running troops did as I suggested. Mostly, Jennie’s people ran to the left side, and my people followed me to the right.

  Nasty things began to happen. The tank surged forward and ran over about thirty of us—but then the grenades blew its treads off, and it ground to a halt.

  The tank seemed like a huge, complex thing with lots of mechanical parts. There wasn’t so much flesh involved on this monster but there was lots more metal.

  Then I spotted the arms and the eyes. Actual organic eyes roved over the turrets, aiming them with muscles that bulged with the effort to swing the barrels into line. We were too close, too small—

  Boom!

  Surprised, I found myself flying ass-over-teakettle into the air. It was a shockwave, not a direct hit. I was hurt and shocked, but I wasn’t torn apart.

  The world went blank for a moment, but then it came back again. I was pretty sure I wasn’t dead… Not yet.

  My ears were ringing with tinnitus. I rolled up into a crouch, coughing. I felt for busted ribs and shrapnel wounds—there were a few, but not enough to stop me immediately. Taking a nap in the shadow of a raging house-sized tank was never a good idea.

  Forcing myself to stand, I felt a strong arm loop around my b
icep and haul me up. It was Sargon. He was shouting something, but my bell was rung and I didn’t even answer.

  Pointing. He was pointing. I looked at the tip of his dirty, gauntleted finger and followed in that direction with fuzzy vision.

  Someone was waving. Women. Two of them, one was Natasha, the other was Centurion Jennie Mills.

  Breaking into a trot with Sargon half-dragging me, I moved toward those beckoning girls. Maybe, in this rare instance, my natural drive to mate helped me out.

  They all hauled me into a close, tight space. A door made of metal and meat closed behind us.

  Natasha ripped my helmet off.

  “James! James, can you hear me? James?”

  “What’s the fuss about?” I asked in a drunk’s voice. I was coming around, getting a grip, but I wasn’t all there yet.

  “We’re inside the tank. There are compartments and things like that.”

  “What about… where’s my unit?”

  They exchanged glances.

  “They’re mostly dead, sir,” Sargon said. “We wrecked this tank pretty good, it can’t move, but it tore up our men. We found this door when we were down to about ten percent effectives and climbed inside. Centurion Mills noticed you were moving again, so we decided to haul you in with us.”

  I blinked and squinted at them stupidly. “I was out?”

  “You sure as hell were. I thought you were stone cold dead three minutes back—before things went to Hell.”

  “Right… Status?”

  They looked at each other, and that kind of pissed me off. I was functional. I was still in command.

  Taking a deep breath and a stim, I gave my head a shake.

  That was a bad idea. I closed my eyes and groaned in pain.

  “Okay,” I said. “I take it we’re all that’s left except for a few other stragglers. What are we going to do now?”

  Opening my eyes again, I saw them all staring at me and one another. They didn’t have a clue.

  “Since you’re in bad shape, McGill,” Centurion Mills said, “I’ll take over. You’re senior to me, but I’m definitely in possession of all my faculties.”

  “Uh… what? Oh… okay, sure. Take your best shot.”

  Slumping on my back, I closed my eyes again. But I still listened in.

  “What are we going to do?” Natasha asked. “Those things will find us. We can’t sit in an ammo compartment for days.”

  “Don’t panic,” Mills insisted. “We’ll be fine if we keep our wits.”

  “That’s not our mission,” Sargon said.

  “What?”

  “We’re supposed to attract attention, round up all the machines we can and let Legate blow them away. Sitting here and not panicking—that’s against orders.”

  My eyes fluttered open. I sat up. “Sargon is right. We’re getting out of here.”

  Heaving myself up again, I headed for the strange door. It seemed to have tufts of fur on it… disgusting.

  I reached out for the bony release that opened it, but Mills put her hand over mine.

  “McGill,” she said in a soft tone. “The missiles already came down. We saw the flashes in the distance. That’s partly why—why we decided to take shelter in here. There’s a fallout cloud outside, and God knows what else.”

  My mouth sagged low. I looked at her in disbelief, but after I saw the expression there, I was convinced.

  They’d nuked the aliens after all? Graves had said he was trying to avoid that… but worse our small group had been so far out of position he’d missed us anyway.

  “I get it now…” Mills said. “That was why Graves ordered us to head back into danger, back toward the LZ. He wanted to make a clean sweep of things.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s what he told me.”

  “That prick…”

  I didn’t argue. I looked back at the others instead. They had haunted eyes. I especially felt for Natasha. Once, long ago, she’d been exiled from Earth because they’d made a copy of her by accident. Unable to go home for fear of execution, she’d stayed on Dust World for a decade.

  Now, we were in a similar situation. If they revived us back on Legate, then there would be two copies of all of us. We’d all be twins. On the other hand, if they didn’t have confirmation of our deaths, they’d let us rot down here.

  If we got killed now—well, that might mean we were permed.

  “This sucks,” Sargon said suddenly, and with feeling.

  I had to agree with his sentiment.

  -39-

  It didn’t take long before I made a crucial decision. Normally, Centurion Mills might have been expected to take over, as I was in bad shape—but she had a few decades less experience than I did.

  Painfully, I dragged myself to my feet again and went outside.

  Behind me, the others were calling out. I could tell they’d just as soon sit in this dark, gross hole and hope for rescue—but I wasn’t interested.

  The tank-creature was dying around us. It had given up running on its broken treads. The eyeballs on the turrets and the eyes that moved them still operated, after a fashion. They swiveled and tried to track me as I exited the machine-hybrid, but they couldn’t get a good shot.

  I imagined the tank would normally have slid around and run over any impudent weasel like myself. If the tank had been healthy, daring to get in so close the guns couldn’t target me would have meant certain death—but this tank wasn’t doing any fancy maneuvers today.

  Lighting up my tapper, I beamed a note to Graves. It wasn’t much, just a coordinate ping and a basic sitrep.

  After that, I turned to go back into the tank. There were worried faces looking out at me.

  “You’ll be seen,” Natasha said. “Get back in here, McGill.”

  “He doesn’t care if he’s seen,” Sargon said, stepping out into the open. He blinked and flipped his visor open—but after getting a whiff of the stinking machine we were hugging up against, he changed his mind in a hurry and flipped it closed again. A mild coughing fit ensued.

  “What a horrible smell,” he complained.

  “McGill?” Mills said sharply. “Did you… did you send a message?”

  “Sure did.”

  “My tapper is lighting up,” Natasha said.

  “Mine too,” Sargon said.

  They were all getting a message.

  “It says: ‘hold your position. Help on the way.’”

  “Hmm…” I said, not liking the sound of that. “Natasha, give me your kit. I need more power to uplink to Legate from here.”

  Biting her lip, she came outside and hooked me up. I used her tech specialist’s more powerful computer and power supply to reach out to orbit.

  “McGill?” Graves asked, coming online. My tapper was cracked, but it still worked.

  “Yes sir. McGill here, reporting in. We’ve made a very significant find. You’ll want to—”

  “Just hold tight. Don’t move from those coordinates. Bird is in-bound.”

  “Uh…” I said, knowing exactly what that meant.

  Often, officers found it expedient to kill troops who were stragglers rather than commit resources to a rescue mission.

  “That might not be the best plan, sir. Take a look at what we’ve captured.”

  Using my tapper’s camera, I panned around, showing the tank.

  “Is that one of the enemy armor units?” Graves asked.

  “That’s right, sir. Disabled, but still alive. We could study it—it sure would be nice to know what we’re up against…”

  Graves seemed to think it over. “Dammit… all right. This better not be bullshit, McGill. I’m dispatching a lifter. Be ready to board with your prize and deliver the briefing of your life when you haul it back up to Legate. Graves out.”

  I whistled long and low through cracked lips. “Kids, you all owe me your lives today. We’re getting a first-class rescue.”

  “A lifter?” Sargon said doubtfully. “Sir, that’s nice and all, but I’m not s
ure it’s such a good idea. This robot, here… he might put a hole in the lifter when it lands.”

  “Oh God,” Mills said. “He’s right. You aren’t thinking right, Centurion.”

  “He’s thinking just fine,” Sargon muttered. “The problem isn’t brain-damage. He’s just dumb.”

  Centurion Mills shot him a dark glance. She didn’t like enlisted men talking shit about their officers, I could tell that right off.

  The thing was, however, Sargon was correct in this case. I hadn’t thought my plan through completely. In fact, calling my little scheme a ‘plan’ at all was kind of extreme.

  “Hmm…” I said, then I looked at Natasha. “Can we disable these guns somehow? Without killing the tank?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She got down on her back and slid under the treads. She vanished underneath the monster a moment later.

  “What’s she doing?” Mills asked.

  “Don’t worry!” I told her. “If a broken machine can be fixed, Natasha can do it. She’ll patch it, muzzle it, and spay it by morning.”

  “We haven’t got until morning,” Sargon pointed out. “We’ve got maybe thirty-five minutes.”

  In the end, that turned out to be cutting things pretty close. When the lifter landed, the eyeballs still sighted and the arms still aimed—but the guns didn’t fire. She’d severed the nerve to the guns that carried the critical impulse.

  Dragging her out from under the vehicle by her feet, we stood her up and marched her aboard the lifter. A pack of wary techs came the other way, staring at my prize with huge eyes.

  “Now, don’t go and mark up my pet!” I admonished them. “He’s not house-trained, but he’s worth a lot to the brass.”

  Nervously, the techs circled the monster and applied grav-clamps to lift it from the mud. Soon, they began to guide it toward the lifter’s cargo ramp.

  Right about then, the tank must have figured out it was being captured. It spun broken treads. The turrets swung wildly, and those eyeballs—they were peeled back to the whites.

  But despite all this, we got the thing aboard and lifted off into space. I took a prime window seat on the top deck, where the brass normally hung out. With a grateful sigh, I sunk into a seat with some actual padding on it.