Legion Of The Damned - 02 - The Final Battle (39 page)

But of even greater danger, to her squad at least, was the fact that O’Neal couldn’t find a reason to care. She was currently rated among the top 5 percent of the noncoms on Drang, but hadn’t made any effort to get there, and was operating more from habit than anything else. She was tired of being scared, tired of being a soldier, and tired of living on the inside of machines. Even new and improved ones. Death, and the ensuing peace, seemed ever more inviting. The only thing that had prevented her from calling for a fire mission on her own position was a sense of obligation to her tea
m and a desire to punish the Hudathans for what they’d done. And the supersecret “Counter Blow” program had the potential to do that. Or so she told herself, but with less and less conviction all the time.

“Blow,” or “the blow job” as the troops inevitably referred to it, was nothing less than an all-out effort to counter the threat from the Hudathan cyborgs who had done so much damage on planets like Jericho. So rather than strap even more hardware onto aging Trooper II bodies, the brass had decided to create a whole new generation of cyborgs. A “paradigm shift” as they liked to call it, designed to win the war and secure the peace.

“Which is where I come in,” a voice said in her mind.

Try as she might, O’Neal had never been able to adjust to the fact that her “symbiotic co-warriors,” as the training holos euphemistically called them, could access her thoughts anytime they wished, although the entity she called “Weasel” was the only one of them capable of articulated thought. She sent one in his direction. “You come when I
tell
you to come . . . so shut the hell up.”

The being called Weasel sent a rude thought in her direction but lapsed into silence. Which was just as well, because just as DIs could “zap” cyborgs for disciplinary reasons, O’Neal could punish her mostly nonsentient analogs if they got too far out of line.

There were five analogs, counting Weasel, and with the possible exception of him, the rest fell into the category of what most sentient races considered to be animals, i.e., creatures more reliant on instinct than cognition. All were trainable, however, and like Terran dogs, preferred to hunt in groups, a trait th
at was supposed to make them more amenable to operating as part of a team, never mind the fact that “the team” had been jerked out of perfectly healthy bodies and dumped into cybernetic counterparts.

O’Neal’s fire team consisted of Weasel, a near-sentient tunnel dweller from Zyra II, whose long snakelike body was coiled out in front of her position; Frim and Fram, ground-dwelling carnivores from Myro Major, both of whom had been installed in highly maneuverable tracked-weapons platforms; plus Drapa One and Drapa Two, better known as “One” and “Two,” who were leather wings, had originated on Santos XI, and flew small disk-shaped battle disks.

Though not as articulate as Weasel, the other four members of the team communicated via unmitigated emotion, and though unable to understand the exact nature of the robotic threat, sensed O‘Neal’s general uneasiness, and were on edge. Knowing that her analogs had hair-trigger “fight or flight” reflexes, the human overcame her negative feelings to broadcast waves of “everything’s all right” comfort. The tension eased a little and O’Neal uplinked to her battle disks.

The vast expanse of clear blue sky; the sweep of reddish, rock-strewn earth—everything was as it had been before. Or was it? Had those boulders been so close? Or had they been further away?

One of the things that O’Neal liked about her new body was the fact that everything she “saw” was stored in buffer memory for a period of six hours. The legionnaire made use of that feature by retrieving what she’d seen an hour before and superimposing it over what she saw now.

The comparison, and the fear the noncom experienced when she saw it, scared the analogs and caused them to gibber in the background. O’Neal sent a warning in their direction, opened the command channel, and zapped copies of what she’d observed to each member of her nine-borg squad.

“Baker Four to Baker Team . . . the boulders you’re looking at have advanced ten yards during the last hour. I want condition-five readiness starting now.”

The confirmations came on the team freq while O’Neal switched to the company push. “Baker Four to Charlie Six.”

“Go, Baker Four.”

“I have estimated two-four enemy units two hundred yards forward of my position. They are in-creeping at a rate that should put them on the perimeter at sundown. Request permission to engage.”

Charlie Six, a DI who was playing the role of company commander, was ensconced in air-conditioned comfort about twenty miles away. He looked at the monitors and grinned. O’Neal was sharp, no doubt about t
hat, but was she foolproof? Meaning, could she deal with a fool, and still do the right thing? He opened his mike. “Permission denied.”

O’Neal could hardly believe her nonexistent ears. Permission denied? The sonofabitch must be out of his frigging mind! Assuming he had a mind. Was there a real honest-to-God reason for his refusal? Or was this a test of some sort?

The noncom smiled internally. Maybe Charlie Six had her confused with someone who cared. A plan came to mind. If it worked she’d be free to engage the enemy
before
they ended up in her lap . . . and Charlie Six could kiss her chrome-plated ass. She sent an image to Weasel.

It showed him crawling to within fifty feet of the still-creeping boulders. His reply was nearly instantaneous and incorporated some of the profanity he had learned since induction. “Bullshit! The rocks will turn into killing machines and blow my pointy butt off!”

O’Neal sighed. It would be a long time, if ever, before the Legion got the same unquestioning obedience from Weasel that they expected from bio bods and cyborgs. “Shut the hell up and get your tail out there before
I
blow it off.”

The analog obeyed but she could feel his resentment the whole way. The analog’s snakelike body appeared as little more than a fifteen-foot-long heat differential, and even that would disappear as his temperature rose under the direct sunlight. The robots would detect him, of course, but that was the whole idea, and should serve to get things rolling.

The long armorflex body wasn’t all that different from the one Weasel had been born to and provided him with a side-to-side snake’s-eye view of the ground. He was smart enough to understand some of the dangers, and didn’t like this particular errand. What was the human up to anyway? Charlie Six said, “No,” and no meant no, didn’t it? At least that’s what she’d told him, not just once, but dozens of times. Not that humans were especially consistent, since they usually had one standard for themselves and another more stringent requirement for everyone else. The egg-sucking bastards.

Interactive camouflage, electronic countermeasures, and high-density shielding can work wonders, but there comes a point at which their effectiveness disappears and a robo-tank looks like a robo-tank. Unfortunately for Weasel, that point arrived at the exact same moment that an armorflex snake looked like an armorflex snake. The robots opened fire on him. He turned, made use of what little cover there was, and snake-slid towards home. The analog’s report, made while bullets churned the dirt around him, was more than a little shrill.

“Damn it, Sarge! I’m taking fire from at least twenty, repeat two-zero armored vehicles. Tell one of those flap-assed leather wings to pull my butt outta here!”

O’Neal noted the breaks in both military and radio discipline but knew better than to comment on it. The fact that the analog had included the number of enemy vehicles was an improvement over the week before.

“Negative, Baker Nine . . . extraction denied. Find a hole and pull it in after you. The fire mission starts three-zero seconds from now.”

The DI known as Charlie Six chuckled and made a notation on the portacomp strapped to his right thigh. Having discovered the robots, and having been denied permission to take what she knew to be the correct action, O’Neal had intentionally provoked an attack on one of her analogs, thereby gaining authorization to fire according to the rules of engagement, while still remaining inside the bounds of military discipline, and saving her squad from possible destruction.

It was the kind of gutsy, out-of-the-box call that a lot of noncoms are hesitant to make, which is why Charlie Six listed O‘Neal as a potential PFR, or “promotion from the ranks.” Given that many of the cyborgs were criminals, they had traditionally been ineligible for command. But, what with the famous Chien-Chu coming back from the dead, and an increasing number of “accidental” cyborgs like O’Neal, the policy had changed. Casualties had been heavy, and the brass needed officers.

In the meantime O’Neal had called on the tubes located five miles to her rear for an artillery mission. Within a matter of seconds 155-mike-mike rounds were screaming out of the sky and exploding among the tanks. Fire flickered around the massive machines as their twin gatling guns filled the sky with lead. Some of the shells exploded, hurled chunks of red-hot shrapnel in all directions, and spared the tanks below. Still, every third shell was steerable, and packed enough AI to dodge the worst of the defensive fire. O’Neal saw one of the tanks take a direct hit and explode into an orange-red f
ireball. She shuddered and gave thanks that no sentients had been aboard. It made her wonder, if this was a training exercise, what would the real thing be like? Mauled, and at risk of total destruction, the robots withdrew.

The next few hours were passed repositioning her squad in case one or more of the attack bots had managed to get a fix on them. Especially important in case the DIs declared an “intelligence failure” and provided the previously ground-only enemy with air cover.

But once they were dug in, with their positions separated by the standard fifty feet, and the parameters for interlocking fields of fire entered into their on-board computers, there wasn’t much to do.

It was then that the usual tidal wave of depression rolled over O’Neal and pulled her down. Her analogs stirred uneasily, checked their sensors, and decided that all was well. After all, this wasn’t the first time the human had felt this way, nor would it be the last. Besides, with the exception of the ground-dwelling carnivores from Myro Major, the rest of the analogs had been nocturnal, and were equipped with sensors so good that darkness held little fear for them.

Still, one can’t be too careful when it comes to the safety of one’s ass, so Weasel checked to make sure that the noncom was truly off-line, assumed her manner, and ordered Drapa One and Two out on a reconnaissance mission. Which was a lot like sending
himself
on a reconnaissance mission, since the roundabout electronic linkage allowed Weasel to “see” what the leather wings saw, “hear” what their pickups heard, and “feel” what they felt.

It was an exhilarating sensation, floating out over the plain, looking down on an ocean of light green blotches, each surrounded by successively darker rings, eventually fading to black. Most, if not all of the blotches were rocks, still in the process of releasing heat acquired during the day, laying where they had for hundreds of years. Still, the odds were good that at least
some
of the blotches belonged to robots, their infrared signatures doctored to look like those that emanated from the rocks.

Electronic prey was what One and Two were looking for, just as they had searched for the night-feeding xunus of their native steppes, plucking the fat little creatures from beside the safety of their burrows, and carrying them into the night.

Two noticed something and her excitement was immediately transmitted to Weasel through O‘Neal. A blotch was moving, slowly to be sure, but in a determined zigzag course that would eventually carry it to the Legion’s lines. The leather wing requested permission to destroy the robot and Weasel stalled. He used words to prod O’Neal. “Sarge! Come out of it! Something’s coming our way!

O’Neal heard from a long ways off. They were bothering her, always bothering her, and for what? So they could live another day. Why the hell bother? What if the miserable little bastards had thoughts instead of instincts? They’d be as depressed as she was, that’s what. The words formed and sent themselves back to Weasel. “So who cares? Let ’em come.”

Weasel swore and felt his head hurt with the effort to think. What would O‘Neal do in this situation? Not
this
O’Neal but the real one? The battle disks repeated their request and the analog was forced to continue his impersonation. “Permission denied. The target is a scout. Find the force that sent it.”

Leather-wing resentment flooded back through the interface and Weasel fought to control his anger. He was doing the best he could, wasn’t he? What did the fly-by-night assholes want anyway? Eggs in their beer? Not that he knew what beer was or would want any if he did.

The DI’s attention had been elsewhere, throwing a frontal assault at another poor bastard, and watching him flunk. He turned his attention back to O‘Neal. The training plan called for a frontal assault on her position as well, but the instructor felt that would be too easy for someone of O’Neal’s obvious abilities, so he opted for something a little more challenging.

The Hudathans had used microbots on two different battlefields so far. The first use had taken place on Worber’s World when they broke out. The second had occurred on Diko II just weeks before where a half million tiny machines had come within half a pubic hair of defeating a battalion of marines.

But numbers aren’t everything, and thanks to the fact that the geeks had demonstrated a marked aversion to loading their constructs with a sufficient amount of AI, it was possible to outthink them. So, given the fact that a full complement of training machines had arrived, and O’Neal didn’t know about them, there was an opportunity to provide her squad with a valuable lesson. The challenge was to allow enough casualties so that it
felt
real without overdoing it. It would be damned tricky with all that live ordnance flying around. Charlie Six made a notation on his portacomp, issu
ed a series of orders, and settled back to watch.