Cold War 2395, page 16
“Check the rear!” Barton shouts through our comms, his voice barely audible over the sound of gunfire.
Good thing he said that, otherwise I would’ve almost begun to think we were holding out decently enough. Turns out, while we were slamming the fuck out of the main herd, a couple, oh, I dunno, hundred of them decided to push toward the back. Now we have a sloping wave of fucking panther robots closing in on the tail cars. How are we supposed to handle them when we have the rest of the wave right in front of us to worry about?
Keeping one hand on the turret trigger, I use the other to grab my rifle. Only way to hit two sides at once is with two guns, after all. Thank God for the ACA’s pneumatic pump joints; otherwise the recoil of dual-wielding these guns would tear off my arms and get everyone around me killed. Free-handing both weapons, I angle myself so my ninety-degree fire range won’t take off any friendly heads, then I let loose with everything I’ve got. My turret handles the tail of the panther wave since that requires the most range, leaving my right hand free to clutch the heavy rifle and shoot the piss out of the bots directly in front of me. And I do mean right in front of me—the gap from a minute ago has shrunk yet again; now they’re just a hundred or so yards from clamping their claws onto the side of the car I’m on.
“Might wanna double up,” I say into my helmet’s mic, hoping Beecher will hear me and take my lead. Even though he’s right next to me, there’s no way I can shout over the robo-cats’ stomping, our tram screeching across rails, and a couple dozen turrets firing. Hell, thanks to our train’s raw speed, the wind we’re getting slammed with is probably enough to mute all but the loudest roars. Though the sound barrier my helmet provides keeps some of the commotion outside, my ears are still getting pounded with way too much noise.
“Roger that,” he responds.
Right away, another outbound stream of red laser fire appears, and I know we’re packing as much heat as possible, for whatever that’s worth. And actually, that’s probably worth around . . . oh, I dunno . . . seven or eight dead mech kitties a second. Good rates on an overall shitty deal.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Grimm and the rest of the guys to my left focusing all their fire on the rear-flanking Russkies, but I’m not sure how much good that’ll do. The bots are almost within jumping range of the last car, and—
“We’re boarded!”
Well, that confirms it. If they can’t knock us over, they’re gonna try to chew us out from the inside.
The tram gets a lot shakier, and something tells me it ain’t happening ’cause of a bump in the tracks. Even the turrets can’t drown out the scraping sound coming from behind us. If these things can close a miles-wide gap in a handful of minutes, I can’t wait to see how fast they cross ten train cars.
“Sierra Squad, form up on me. Bring some firepower,” Grimm says over comms, barely audible over the surrounding chaos.
Sounds like a plan, Cap. After latching my rifle onto my back sheath, I rip my turret off its detachable mount and make my way toward the next car where Grimm and two of the sergeants are stationed. Since everyone’s busy holding the line on our left flank, it’s easy for Beecher and me to get where we’re supposed to go. Besides, we’re the ones swinging around detached turrets. It’s not like anyone wants to be on the blocking end of these things.
After a quick trudge across the connector bridge, we’re back on the car from our initial drop. Grimm is setting up an ACA-exclusive defense line at the back. While the normies hold the sidelines, it looks like the suits will be responsible for hands-on animal control.
“Beecher on the left, Gourd on the right. McGregor will handle the bridge”—makes sense, since he’s got the fists—“and Toufexis and I will fill in the gaps. Clear?”
“Roger,” Beecher and I confirm before splitting up to get in position. Not sure if the plan’s good enough to succeed, but if Cap says it, it’s probably the best option we have. I plop down my turret and get ready to rumble, scoring a few seconds to adjust my optics before one of the crates in front of us goes blasting off the train. Piece by piece, the bulky cargo separating us from the enemy is sent flying. Prep time’s over.
Our car rumbles heavily. The scraping noise is raging now, which means those mechanical mewlers are about to break through the last of the crates. Our firing line braces itself as the final stretch of our barricade is blown to shreds, exposing the threat in full: a wall of pointy-fanged panther bots.
They pounce into the air, and our muzzles light up in perfect sync. McGregor kicks the sailor talk up a notch as he doles out haymakers. On the edges of the car Beecher and I guard, the fight never gets up close and personal. We turn up the heat the second we see any machine launch its death paws into the air and knock it out of the sky with a good old-fashioned dose of lead soup well before it can get near us. My team’s system works pretty well—for the whole ten seconds we get to keep it going. Then I look up.
The first thing I spot is the outline of a fighter. A second of squinting reveals it’s the glacier-blue fighter I was rooting for earlier, the one dogfighting like a champ high in the skies above us. Then I notice its flaming nose, shredded thrusters, and flight trajectory. It ain’t flying high anymore—it’s falling fast and headed right for us. If my HUD is accurately assessing the speeds of our tram and the falling fighter, then that ship’s projected crash point is going to be directly beside the stretch of track our car will be rolling over in . . .
Three seconds.
Fuck.
Before anyone has time to dive out of the way, the fighter smashes into the ground right next to our car, the roar of its two exploding thrusters swallowing all sound in the area. A wall of fire shoots up from the wreck’s impact, and the resulting explosion knocks us halfway off the tracks for a split second, tilting our car hard-west as the right set of wheels become airborne. I see a perfect opening to nail a pair of jumping panther bots trapped in the space between cars. I fire a quick burst that hits them both with maximum stopping power, knocking their metal bodies out of the air and down onto the rails where the tram is going to land. With the immediate stretch of track covered in robot shells, the rear car we’re facing only makes it halfway back down, crunching the bots stuck between it and the rails. The resulting angular friction twists the couplings between the cars enough to snap them, as well as the bridge McGregor is standing on, disconnecting the flatbed full of kitties from our car entirely. Sparks fly as we crash back down onto the tracks, now the last link in the train. Thank fuck. I like our new, human-occupied caboose a hell of a lot more than the previous one overrun with frisky death cats.
No more than a second goes by before we’re dozens of yards away from the mess of derailed cars and crunched bots, buying us some much-needed distance between ourselves and the remaining pack of panthers that aren’t sure how to proceed. Jesus Christ, that was insane.
“Nice moves, man!” Beecher says over comms. Damn right.
“Never settle for less,” I respond. Play it cool, Lieutenant. You just saved the whole fucking day with a single trigger pull. No biggie.
“Spectaaaacular!” McGregor roars in approval, falling flat on his ass from the recoil of our car bouncing back onto the tracks.
Bringing fists to a gunfight works, I guess, but only if you’re okay with letting the other guy do all the cool shit. Like me. Nah, I’m just fuckin’ around. I like the compliments, sure, but that isn’t what I’m most happy about. As the few remaining fragments of metal panther guts fall off the rear of our car, disappearing into the distance as we pick up speed and outpace the cats for good, all I can think about is taking a moment to breathe. I crack my knuckles and relax a bit, looking over at my tired allies, then back at the miles of green grass around us. I’ve been needing a calm field for a while, and I finally have it. Easy ride express? It’s about time.
CHAPTER 16
Beecher
“You, uh, don’t think these are actually empty, do you?” I ask Grimm, joining what’s left of R Company as we step onto the trio of long roads leading to the Spire and its surrounding town. We might’ve had an easy tail end of our woodland tram ride thanks to Gourd, but I’ll be damned if that’s the last of the surprises the Russians have in store for us, especially so close to the brain of the Red Peril’s whole operation. Still, hopefully nothing’s as death-defying as that tram. I’m gonna be paranoid about rail travel for months now.
“No, I don’t. But R Company is ahead of the pack, and there’s no time for pissing in the wind. We move forward,” Captain responds, his voice gruff and cold.
So much for safety first. He’s right, though; time is in short supply. It’s been hours since Faust . . . since the new mission was established.
I glance at the blue tower in the distance. According to my HUD, we have a little under three and a half hours left. If anyone makes it up there in time . . . well, it’s going to be tight, to say the least. Too tight. Still, there’s no use thinking about the endgame. The shitshow isn’t over yet, and I have no plans to leave my fellow Marines dangling between now and then.
“All right, everyone, file formation. McGregor, Delta Squad takes the left road.”
“Aye, Cap.”
“Barton, Alphas on right.”
“Roger that.”
“Toufexis, Bravos are here with us in the center.”
“Roger.”
If I had a fear of heights, these roads would make me shit the bed. Not only are they incredibly high and dangling over a sea of insta-death generators, but they’re barely supported—hell, I don’t see any supports. Beyond their connections at each end, these things hang freely. For that reason alone, walking across them is tough going. I can’t believe they’re the only way into the city. The Russians really didn’t want the wrong people getting in.
Once everyone has their position sorted out, we begin our march into the heart of the storm. And storm’s the right word for it, hands down. There’s no skyline over the Spire, just a giant, gaping spiral of dark matter. Even the stretch of road we’re on is losing the warmth of the Red Peril’s artificial lighting with each step taken.
“Spooky, yeah?” Gourd whispers, pointing at the handful of abandoned transport trucks littering the main road. Their doors are still open, a sign that whoever was inside must’ve been in a real hurry to get the hell away from here. The question is, where did they go?
“Yeah, definitely . . .”
The bluish-black glow of the dark matter cannon’s interior reflects coolly off the road’s white tiling. The farther down the road we move, the farther our shadows stretch in front of us, as if drawn to the darkness ahead. Pretty sure that shouldn’t be happening, but with the colony’s wacky science, I’m not making any bets on what’s normal and what’s not.
Other than the weird visuals, the walk is pretty low-key and uneventful, barring a few bombs we detect in some of the abandoned trucks along the way. The traps are obvious and our ACA sensors detect the trace amounts of Semtex residue scattered about well in advance, giving us ample time to neutralize the explosives before they can detonate and take out any of us or destroy our path forward.
Beyond those brief moments of activity, there’s nothing but eerie silence as we make our way across the lengthy roads, those of us with ACAs hovering slightly ahead of the rest of the group. I now see why the trucks are there in the first place. Making the trip on foot clearly isn’t ideal.
We’re about halfway across when the first legitimate cause for concern crops up. For a fraction of a second, something blips on my radar.
“Hey, did you—”
The second I open my mouth, the blip disappears. Strange.
“Yeah, I saw it too,” Gourd responds, confused.
“Keep moving. If something’s out to get us, we’ll find out soon enough,” Grimm says, ordering R Company forward.
After a couple more yards, the blip comes back and goes away again, just as fast as the first time. Strange.
“Barton, slow down,” Grimm tells the sergeant, ordering Alpha Squad to take a firm position at the rear. “McGregor, double time.”
It’s a smart move; we need eyes and ears watching in front and back. If there’s anything coming for us in the first place, that is. Maybe it’s just the dark matter messing with our sensors. I hope it’s that and not something more serious, like the dark matter affecting our cognitive processes. After all, who knows what the stuff can do. I follow suit with the rest of my peers, sliding my rifle out of its sheath. Can’t afford to take any chances.
We trudge forward as the blips continue on and off, appearing and disappearing at regular intervals. I keep my ears open but can’t hear anything out of the ordinary. All I detect are the sounds of R Company’s clomping boots. I’d hear if something was coming, right? Right?
“I’m getting goosebumps, man,” Gourd says. “I got a bad feeling.”
That’s my cue to raise my rifle and enter a firing stance. I don’t need an official order to tell me what my gut’s feeling. Gourd senses it, I sense it, our sensors sense it. It’s not just our paranoid imaginations playing tricks on us. It can’t be.
“Stay calm and keep moving,” Grimm orders. He can say that as much as he likes, but being calm isn’t really a choice, given where we are right now.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, James. You’ve been on plenty of narrow stretches before today and gotten out fine. No reason the current one will be any different. Besides, it’s not like there are any enemies around. Can’t be scared of bad guys that aren’t even real. Well, I mean, I know they’re real, but they aren’t visible. Wait, what if that’s it? What if they’re invisible? Damn it, now I’m just freaking myself out. Cloaking devices don’t work on anything smaller than a shuttle, and they definitely don’t work at such close range. Unless, of course, the station I’m in is testing a new kind of cloaker. Not like I haven’t seen impossible shit here already.
I hear my own breathing, and it’s not sounding too good. My body tenses. Shit, if I’m freaking out inside an ACA, I wonder how the Marines in regular body armor are doing right now—
Then I hear it: the loud, unrestrained scream of a woman getting shredded from the inside out, her pain producing a screeching of the vocal folds so awful that R Company stops dead in its tracks.
The two glowing black eyes of a robot panther are the only thing I manage to glimpse before its fangs sink into an Alpha Squad member’s chest, her body armor no match for her foe’s industrial-strength mechanical jaws. None of her squadmates even have time to turn around and help before the bot flings her gushing corpse into the abyss. With two steely paws firmly latched to the right road’s guardrail, the machine pulls itself over the edge and onto the platform, now a threat to all of Barton’s squad. By the time it’s gotten that far, every gun in Alpha is filling it with holes, but that’s just one down, not nearly enough to assuage anyone’s fears that the worst is over. Now we know the machines are capable of climbing beneath us. Silently. Off the radar. We’re all fucked.
Suddenly, I’m slammed to the ground. My head rocks around inside my helmet as I crash onto the road tiles. I can’t lift my legs. Both my arms are pinned. From my trapped position, the only thing visible is the gaping maw of a bionic cat. It’s a second away from chomping my skull off, which means I have even less time to stop it.
I might not be able to move my arms, but I can still move my hands, turn on my saws, and shake shit up. But what if I cut the beast open and it spews fuel all over me? Can the nanogel take it?
Y’know what, whatever. I’ll be dead in a second anyway if I don’t try something.
I squeeze my right fist, and a saw kicks to life just in time to slice directly into the robo-cat’s metal rib cage as it lunges. There’s a split-second pause as my blade stalls against the bot’s armor. I’m not sure if it’s going to be able to dig in—but that invaluable pause is all I need. Before either the bot or I have time to react, the blade starts chewing at full speed and slices into the beast’s wiry guts, sparks and black goop pouring over my helmet. I sit up and struggle to push the enemy back.
That’s my answer, then. If I have time to sit up and recognize that the fuel’s all over me, then clearly it hasn’t burned through my armor and melted my head off. I’m still alive. The robot’s not going to be for much longer, though.
Pushing forward with maximum effort, I unstick the thing from my blade and send its twitching, cut-open body sliding across the ground, smearing the tiles with fuel. Before I have a chance to get up and finish the job, Grimm slams a foot down on its head and terminates the bot once and for all. The assist buys me a second to pick myself up off the ground and get my bearings. Both Barton’s and McGregor’s squads are engaging the enemy on all sides as an endless swarm of droids crawls out from underneath the roads, attacking Alpha and Delta from every possible angle. The center strip that Bravo and our squad are trapped on is looking pretty crowded as well. Toufexis and his Marines chip away at the units on the railings’ edges, but every few seconds a cat makes it onto the road and sticks a claw in someone. It seems like each time I blink, another soldier without ACA protection gets disemboweled. R Company’s strategy has to change—fast.
Gourd’s busy kicking them off the edge with his ACA’s thrusters, afraid to get down and dirty. “Wait, so are we safe,” he blurts over comms, pausing to boot another hostile into the void below, “from the fuel?”
Gourd’s frantic tone tells me he needs a guarantee, so I march over to his side of the road where a clawed paw is climbing up. Before the machine can raise another one, I grab its forearm and yank it up, quickly wrapping my right hand around its robotic throat. I shove my other arm’s saw blade deep into its skull, my helmet less than a foot away from the bionic cat’s cranium. The fuel spews all over me at point-blank range, covering my visor in pure black. But I don’t need to see it to know what happens next as the sliced-open head stops struggling. I crush the machine’s neck until the rest of its body falls off entirely, spiraling toward the generator pit below.
