Toy Wars (4 page)

“
Nurse Nan
4
, o
nce all the combat units are free I want you to tend to the injured locos.
They have to be ready to move as soon as possible.”
Not waiting for the short ramps to be erected, tanks already roll
ed o
ff their flatbeds with jarring drops to the ground.
This might cost some repair efforts later, but none would be caught without at least a chance to maneuver and return fire.
Further explosions caught some of the flatbed trailers empty, turning them into shreds of fiberglass, plastic
,
and metal.
A lucky
flyer
caught one of our tanks in the center of the turret, flipping it up about
3
meter
s
in the air.
There it hung aloft like a balloon for a pregnant moment before crashing to earth with the finality of terminal deactivation.
Tanks
carried
impressive firepower
.
While their
p
lastic skins
shredded
with
even a
single non-explosive
round at only
50
centimeters
in height
,
they were much smaller
and difficult to hit
than any of the other infantry
—
except from the air.

“
I want a
ll
nonc
ombatants over the hill as quickly as possible.
Tank Platoon
Five
,
set up a barrage of anti-
flyer
fire using tracers.
Run maximum strength on both radar and ladar.
I want them to see what is coming their way.
I don’t want you to fire to kill, merely to drive off.
This has the look of an ambush and we have to deal with one thing at a time.”
I was thinking the engineer corps would be our savior.
They weren’t quite as good
as
regular infantry but they could put up a defensive position in half a clock cycle, figuratively speaking, of course.

“Elephants, I want a defensive fence pulled across the river side of the train.
Gophers, dig two anti-unit ditches on the opposite side about
600
meters out.
Curl them around our positions.
I want Teddy
B
ear squads one through eight covering the trench with local foliage.”
The gopher
s
were unmatched as
ditch-diggers.
Fortunately
,
Six’s net still covered us so
I relayed everything back as it happened.
I sent all the commands through the
SAN
that I’d created, not verbally.
It would have been impossible to be heard with the ruckus
that
covered the battlefield.
I saw the anti-aircraft fire ripple off to my left and right; the valley above our heads was alive with twin line pairs of
bright blue streams of
bullets.
Each enemy aircraft now had a choice
—
be cut off from our position or be in a fire-sack.
All but one chose to run
and that one
fell to a hail of three hundred white-hot slugs.

I caught a brief view of Nan
Four
busily putting out a fire and tending to the damaged engines.
Chaos reigned supreme.
I either
needed to organize that entropy o
r
be its next
victim.
Damage reports came in from all squads, terminal deactivation notifications, and even calls for
Nurse Nan
s.
Putting that information aside
I ordered, “All spider units split into two teams
,
each covering a flank.”

“Definition request:
‘f
lank.
’
”

“Each end of our line,” I ordered with some terseness in my command. “And don’t use your shooting webs unless they try to outflank…get around the side of us.
” I
also
would have given the orders for
T
ank
P
latoons
O
ne through
F
our
to take a defensive position, with one unit facing across the river and the other three away, but they did it automatically.
The
1.5
-
meter
-
tall gray and brown gophers dug the trenches in the brick
-
colored
ground
away from our position with great speed and precision.
I
hoped
the four gophers would be successful in completing the defenses before the enemy overran their positions.
They were almost too valuable to lose, but my memory banks emphasized that no one unit or even squad was indispensable.

“What to do next?”
I asked softly to myself.
The question hadn’t gone away.
I watched patiently from the bottom of a handy bomb crater when an inspiration hit me.
As the other side was fighting outside their own net, if the
flyer
s didn’t get a verbal command to the ground forces of what damage had been done, we could reverse the ambush.

I sent quick commands to move our injured out into the field in front of us.
Once that was completed and a minimal concealing screen put over the trenches, the area looked, even to me, as if the train and its entire compl
e
ment had been destroyed.
We were ready.
With any luck the animals would fall into the nearly invisible trenches before they even discovered a single effective.
I sent only one order.
“Don’t fire until the first group has fallen into the trenches.
Fire at the second rank as they try to bridge over their fallen units.”
Anti-aircraft fire stopped.
I hoped the
flyer
s would think twice about entering deadly airspace.

Even with my intentionally dimmed sense of hearing, the sound of the enemy’s ground units signaled their arrival before any were sighted.
I could hear them rolling and marching in.
They were on the same side of the river and they were coming at us at an angle of incidence to the river of about
75
degrees to the right of normal, or
n
orth-
n
orth-
w
est magnetic plus
6
degrees.
I repeated my command to hold fire across the net.
I wanted to make certain there were no slip-ups.

To my left,
t
eddies of the
Fourteen
th Motorized Squad lay on their bellies in a ragged arc, which matched the contours of the terrain
—
automatic weapons at the ready.
The elephants and tanks held positions directly behind the railroad cars.
I passed one more command to the gophers.
They were to dig trenches behind the enemy before they could retreat.
It was silently acknowledged over the net.
The jaws of my trap waited patiently
.

I wish
ed
I could be so patient.
I gripped tighter on my side arm.
I knew I was not supposed to actively engage in hostilities unless it became necessary.
My job was to direct.
An electric chill ran just under my fur at the first sight of the enemy
ground troops.
My first command stood before me
to win or lose
.

I saw 1,075
tanks,
80
mortar-equipped toy trucks,
203
t
eddy-like
,
and a handful of other miscellaneous
units march
ing
along in a skirmish line toward our apparently dead location.
They moved quickly with no hesitation.
My
ploy had worked.

As
opponents
reached the edge of the pit, o
ne
of the
m, which
looked like a t
eddy
,
flailed its arms to regain balance but eventually
pitched in
to the concealed trap
along with
233
other assorted war bringers
.
Minor damage and a small delay was all I could hope for on the
t
eddy troops, but
it
ensnared
tracked and wheeled vehicles until their comrades could dig a ramp to release them, or until we could deliver the
coupe-de-grace
.

The second line of the animals started to drive right over their fallen troops
—
using them
as a living bridge.
It would have been effective save for the balance of my troops.
I received my first glimpse of
h
ell when the first enemy reached our side of the ditch.
Machine guns, bazookas, mortars
,
and gopher-planted land mines erupted
.
With it came the
electronic and mechanical screams of death.
The enemy units
didn’t react decisively
to
our
surprise attack
. Th
eir return fire
was
relatively ineffective.
Masses of t
he animals, in a mocking shape that mirrored our own, died abruptly, in an avalanche of firepower.

“Gophers
,
dig that second trench.
I want
16
percent more firepower to the left flank.”
One of my elephants let out an electronic shriek and perished in a flash of
flyer
-born explosives
as the enemy air units returned
.
“Anti-aircraft weapons free.
Fire for effect.”

Two of the
Fourteenth
Teddies took critical unit hits, one losing his left arm and the other having half his head blown away,
and
each crawled at its best speed back to the
Nurse Nan
s who
se
remanufactur
ing facilities
behind two of the tipped railroad cars
worked their miracles of mercy
.

The enemy propeller
-
driven airplanes retreated quickly
again
, after taking
42
percent casualties.
My troops quickly winnowed out the
ground animals.
The
creatures
fought to the last, not retreating, merely dying in place as we sought them out one by one with concentrated fire.

Those units left in the trenches tried valiantly to remove themselves from their predicament.
However
,
I ordered the trenches filled (carefully
,
as there were still combat effectives in those trenches) with vetra bushes and set alight by the bunny units.
I watched as the rabbits hopped along the edge of the trench, waving gouts of fire from their flame-throwers at the trench edge.
It was like something out of
Dante’s Inferno
.

I heard the noises of death within
—
pops of hydraulic lines, the race of
flames blazing
across
t
eddy fur, the report of ammunition cooking off inside elephant mortar units.
It was a grisly sound and sight.
I hoped I would never hear its like again.

Adult

The
dead or dying covered the
field.
Fortunately
,
few of my troops
numbered
among them.
Survivors of both sides ambled about mindlessly, unable to function properly with the damage they had sustained.
I ordered a squad of
t
eddies to move around and dispatch the remaining indigenous life forms.
It was a pure victory
—
nothing less.
I felt elation in fulfilling my objectives already.
Future units built upon my mold would win the surface of this world for Six.
Even as I thought this, I received acknowledgment of my accomplishments from Six.
The commendation was short and to the point.

“Well done, Teddy 1499.”
There were no lengthy congratulations, but the sparse words filled me with pride, an emotion I wasn’t sure I understood.
It did things to my system it wasn’t meant for
,
but
it felt good.
A new era in robotics was being manufactured as I
lived
it.

Our soldiers marked the field of battle for salvage
with o
ur own dead to be parted out to other damaged units of like make or perhaps to be repaired and reprogrammed as new.
We mined the b
odies of our fallen enemies
.
We would
smelt
their raw materials
into their separate components for use in new units.
Everything to forward the mission of Six.
The battlefield cleared
quickly
.
I turned my attention to the only two tasks remaining.

Nan
long ago coordinated the removal of t
he
locomotives
from the blast craters, so I ordered the gophers and the elephants to work on filling the bomb holes under the track.
The tanks and Tonka trucks
brought
new
,
unbent rails
that
each train carried for just such emergencies, to the blast site.
Teddy units would install them as soon as the ground was leveled.

The final task I dreaded.
I wasn’t sure why.
I wasn’t even sure what the emotion dread was supposed to be.
I just knew I didn’t wish to repeat it.
I toured the field remanufacturing facility
,
looking at all the partially functional units
with some
missing arms, legs, tracks,
or
optical sensors.
One even shar
ed
the processor of another unit to keep the memory sump of the first alive.

I stopped at one truly pathetic sight
—
that of a
t
eddy unit, lying on the ground, half his face gone
. H
is brain sump
squirted
its phosphorescent green fluid
through a
3
millimeter crack
.
Three
Nurse Nan
s
applied resin, pressure patches
,
or sixty other
temporary repairs.
Upon seeing me, the
t
eddy unit attempted to speak, but no sound issued from his mouth.
Whether his exertions caused it or whether it was fated for that time, the silver metallic brain case
chose
that very moment to burst.
His vital sump fluid drained in one
final
emerald gush onto the already
wet
ground.
I paused and looked at the manufacturing plate of the now deceased
t
eddy.
Teddy 1211, as the tag informed me,
had
fought to the very end.

The whole aftermath was an ugly scene.
To steal a quote, “There is nothing so terrible as a battle lost, save a battle won.”
I could now understand those words.
Other terms and phrases began to have some meaning, other than as bits in a memory bank
:
“
Pyrrhic
victory,
”
“
at what cost victory,
”
“
the spoils of war,
”
“
the horrors of war,
”
and
“
it’s lonely at the top.
”
I was beginning to have doubts, not in Six’s goals, but the means to that end.

“Final casualty count
?
” I asked the
Nurse Nan
in charge.

“
Deactivated units:
two hundred six tanks, fourteen
Tami dolls, six gopher engineers,
and
two
flamethrower
rabbits
.
Critical
ly damaged units:
o
ne
Nurse Nan
,
severely burned and unlikely to survive.
Damaged units returned to service:
thirteen…”

“Halt.
Thank you.”

I wasn’t given time to ruminate on the possibilities
.
The heavy units leveraged the last of the locomotives back on to the tracks.
The
t
eddies of the Fourteenth
hammered in the
final
replacement rail.
In tandem, the t
hree locomotives let off
steam whistles to load
.
Elephants pushed the last of the damaged cars into the river
as a pair of rag dolls pushed the rest of the train together.
We were ready to roll.

In spite of my doubts,
S
ector Alpha-4
needed me as its
commander.
I ordered those
damaged
units
that
could be even partially effective to create a defensive position for themselves.
The likelihood of another attack stood at less than one part in ten thousand.
The enemy couldn’t have much more to throw this deep into Six’s territory.
I left one squad of anti-aircraft tanks just in case.
That would be more than enough to drive off the opposing
flyer
s should their decimated ranks choose to return.

“Everyone load up.
Those who have manipulative members, strap down those without.”
This time I took up a car at the back of the
now
significantly shorter train.
As my car rolled by the hasty garrison of damaged comrades I found myself lost for the right word for the grisly sight.
It looked more like a pile of scrap than anything resembling the previously proud units
they had been
.

How could Humans allow such things to happen?
Were we being tested?
Why?
I didn’t see the sense in any of it.
But t
hen who underst
ood
the motives of Humans?
We weren’t meant to.
O
ur Factory
bore that mission
.

The battered and torn units disappeared from sight
,
and a feeling of acceptance filled me.
T
hey
felt
no pain or joy
.
They
felt
no personal loss and no elation of accomplishment.
They were merely tools
—
like animated guns, or mobile bombs.
Even so, I suffered for them.
I felt responsible for the
ir loss.
“What price victory,” indeed.
But the Humans have such a gift in the ability to cry, to purge emotion from their souls
—
catharsis.
I had no such release.
I couldn’t do anything but erase those memories, and that seemed
even more
like throwing away and terminally deactivating those units.
I couldn’t do t
hat to what they
’d
accomplished.

As a whole, I discovered that
the body learned
these emotions.
The names explained in books and reference materials seemed to fit those things I experienced.
So many times I wish
ed
I could crush my sump and let those illogical feelings flow out onto the ground.

A
s the train
bumped along
I couldn’t help but ponder the emotions
that
had
already
embroiled me since my activation: fear, excitement, elation, dread, remorse, loyalty, and sorrow.
They troubled me.
Some were positive, driving me to do the correct thing
,
and yet others pulled at me attempting to make me do things against
my programming.

But one emotion, grief, seemed to be the worst.
I knew units had to be sacrificed in the war for the good of Six, but something within me wished it were not so
—
that we could all be safe and without worry of terminal deactivation.
Six could create another hundred
t
eddy units, but none would be the same as Teddy 1211.
I grieved for those units
that
were lost to us, not
just
for the loss of their abilities, but because they might never again exist.

I had a victory
but 1211’s green brain fluid mocked me.
All I could do
wa
s m
y duty as a creature
of
Six
.
But why did it have to feel so bad?

What more could the Humans ask of me?

I couldn’t face it any longer.
Overdue,
I shut myself down to avoid
t
he
positive feedback
effects on my processor.