Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1) (19 page)

The warrior drones were all folded up in teardrop forms in their launch tubes, ready to be fired from the belly of the Republic warship. I strolled along the aisle of the ship, my spacesuit bouncing along the metal grating in the low gravity environment. I was the first biologic human to set foot aboard a starship in our solar system in nearly a hundred years. The ships simply weren’t equipped with the facilities to handle humans on a regular basis, or on extended voyages, but as the commander of the division of drones in this engagement, it was customary to inspect the troops before their deployment. Given that the cruiser was in low-orbit over the planet, I could spend a few days in an environment suit, being intravenously fed and watered…a catheter removing my bodily wastes.

The
Javelin
was one of only a handful of dedicated warships that the Republic owned, all of which were named after ancient weapons. I looked out the porthole and saw the others in close formation:
Flamberge, Halberd, Cutlass, Discus,
and the command ship,
Morningstar.
While all the buildings of the Republic were comprised of graceful, sleek lines, these grey behemoths were boxy by comparison. The large armored fronts and sides were smooth and swept along to the rear in a tapering line, but as the plating tapered, it revealed the squared edges of the actual hull of the ship. It looked almost as if a big boxy ship was wearing a smooth helmet.

It looked, I thought, like a giant warrior robot, halfway unfolded.

Since the Republic had no enemies with spacefaring capabilities, the assault ships were usually tasked with “milk runs” between large colonies, carrying cargo and supplies. The reason for their existence was one part insurance and one part deterrence: if there were any hostile alien species out there, some sort of defense would be needed, and if any colonies tried to rebel, the government needed a quick way to end the uprisings. Generally, however, the warships and their complements responded only to natural disasters or other calamities. This would be the first time any of them had dropped their forces in anger.

I went over the numbers in my head again. Each ship could drop 100 warriors in a “volley”, and hold another 100 for a second drop. With six ships, we could drop a total of 1200 warrior drones to the surface, operated via remote link from the Bionics Research Facility. With nearly 400 children at the BRF, which of course they were now calling “the Barf”, each operator would get three lives, in video game-speak. We’d also have limited air support from a squadron of two-dozen “fast-movers,” very small dropships with air-to-ground weapons and extraction ability.

Finally, a company-sized unit of about 100 Vanguard warrior forms—the last full company of regulars in existence—would drop in from a number of standard cruisers and the GEO station. Each cruiser normally carried six warriors, and tomorrow their complements would be tripled. GEO could fire three dozen at the planet per volley. They would all land in two precise waves to seize and secure the Cheyenne Mountain complex itself, while the drone forces pushed the zombies down the mountain slope, into MAC range—and away from the vital information processing center. The fighting was expected to be more technical in the narrow passages and tunnels, and the Vanguard’s skill was necessary where the children, despite their weeks of intense training, would still not be up to par.

I watched a test firing of a tube that had been malfunctioning. It was almost like something out of an ancient text by Heinlein, who had first imagined this type of orbital insertion. The teardrop was rotated into the tube. The tube closed. A whirring noise indicated that the magnetic trolley inside the tube was powered up. Then a loud “clunk” and a shudder of the ship as the magnetic tube accelerated its target up to maximum velocity and fired it like a bullet. The MAC guns worked the same way, but had much larger magnets and power needs so that they could pulverize asteroids or blast holes in planets deep enough to access the molten inner cores. Whereas the whole ship had to be aligned to fire the MAC, the drop tubes were independently targeted and could place an entire company of troops within centimeters of their intended targets: an important feat when trying to keep multi-ton hunks of metal from crashing into each other after flying 800 kilometers at 25,000 kilometers per hour.

I received a communication from Marshal Burnham aboard
Morningstar
. He would be commanding the shipboard side of the drop while I commanded the ground forces from inside the simulation. The last nine ships, he said, had entered formation with their loads of Vanguard regulars. These cruisers were the typical research and exploration ships of the Republic, each crewed by about twenty enhanced forms and typically used for surveying or exploration, collecting biologic and astrogeologic samples from across the universe. With the exception of
Paradise Falls
, none of them had ever fired their MAC guns in combat, only for science. mining, or planetary defense from large asteroids;
Paradise
had been the one to strike Earth at several locations since “the Battle of Omaha,” as it was now being called.

The marshal’s message also ordered me planetside, to oversee the last of the preparations at the BRF. I was excited that the battle was drawing so near, but sad that I’d have to leave space.

Heading home wasn’t all bad though: I had an itch behind my knee that I hadn’t been able to scratch through my suit for two days.

The dropship left the hangar of the
Javelin
and made a graceful arc toward the planet’s atmosphere, which glowed blue against the darkness of space. The pilots must have forgotten I was biologic, because the G-forces were astounding. The ship didn’t shake or rattle, it was just a constant pressure that grew stronger and stronger. I could hardly breathe. I was pinned to my seat. I felt like hours were going by, like I was going to black out…and then everything became calm as we stabilized in the atmosphere. I couldn’t imagine what that re-entry felt like as a warrior form, if they even felt it at all.

The ship landed at the facility where two white-clothed technicians came to help me out. I staggered for a moment, but then could walk under my own power. The suit seemed so much heavier than when I’d gone up. They brought a motorized gurney to me, laid me on it, and took me into an examination room where they detached my biomedical monitors, IV access port, catheter, and all the other tubes and wires stuck to me.

I stood shakily to my feet, and then sat back down in a chair while sipping on a glass of ice water. Two days in space and I’d really missed drinking water. Even though my body didn’t
need
the water because of the tubes and fluids I was receiving, I still
wanted
it. I felt thirsty. Parched, despite being carefully and precisely hydrated. Maybe that’s like how Semper missed food, even though he knew he didn’t need it?

After an hour of medical tests confirming that I was, in fact, still alive or something like that, I put on my crisp, deep-blue uniform and headed to the BRF auditorium. The kids—who were now wearing Fleet jumpsuits and being called “cadets” —trickled into the hall, taking seats, getting ready for the last mission-briefing before tomorrow’s big “invasion.” There were laughs and jokes among the cadets. I don’t know if real troops would have been as jovial. For these kids, even though the real-life situation was dire, combat was still just a game.

I caught a glimpse of Rebekah staring at me from the side doorway. I ran to her, and when we were out of sight, I gave her a long kiss and let my hands wander her body for a minute before I regained my composure. I straightened out my uniform.

“I love you,” she cooed in my ear.

“I love you, too,” I whispered, nuzzling against her cheek.

“It felt like you were gone for ages,” she whined.

“I know.”

A loud clanking-thumping sound came from around the corner. Footsteps from something giant and metal. There was silence in the room as the big metal robot walked up to the stage, the floor groaning under its mass. The big screen on the wall glowed behind it, and there was the face of Major Walling.

“Good morning, cadets,” she said, to a round of applause and cheers. “I’m glad we could meet in person.” Her avatar on the screen smiled.

From the simulations, all the robots seem like they’re tiny, because they’re the same size as you. In person, they seem so much larger. I hadn’t felt so tiny since that day in Omaha, when the one had picked Rebekah and me up under each arm and carried us to safety.

We walked back into the auditorium and took our seats.

Major Walling detailed the tactical plans on big, projected maps. The crowd was hushed. Bravo Company would be dropped north of the entrance to the facility, Charlie to the east, and Echo to the south. Delta was to be dropped wherever the fighting was most intense after initial contact. Alpha—the Vanguard regulars, would drop only after the entrance to the mountain fortress had been cleared.

“I want to remind you,” she said, “that this isn’t a game. You will get three chances each.”

She paused, before saying, “but some of us will not.”

Any laughter in the room left. The smiles dropped from the faces. That’s why Major Walling had come “in person.” She wanted to make this real. It was brilliant.

A cadet in his mid-teens with a round face raised his hand. The robot pointed at him.

“Yes?”

“Why,” he asked sheepishly, “do we only get three chances?”

Her avatar on the screen replied. “There are only twelve hundred warrior drones to be used. If you’ve lost more than three, you probably shouldn’t be operating another.”

“Any other questions?” she asked.

There were none, so she called me up to the stage. I stood next to the robot, looking small and probably mush less powerful than I was supposed to feel. Maybe that was another part of her lesson to the group as well.

“We’re going to be outnumbered heavily tomorrow,” I said. “For security reasons, I can’t give you all the details about this mission, but let me tell you that your objective is clear: kill as many zombies as you can, and protect Alpha Company while they secure the mountain facility.”

I realized that my voice was shaking. I swallowed hard, trying to seem more like a leader and less like a scared kid.

“Three lives seems like a joke. From the oldest
Mario
game to the most intense role-playing game on EagleVision sets…we’ve always had a way to respawn. Get more lives. Save and go eat dinner. Don’t think about this like you have three lives to spend tomorrow. You have one life to spend, and if we don’t succeed tomorrow, it might just get spent.”

I went over the types of enemies again, showing pictures and video on the screens, though everyone knew what we were up against. Runners were the fast, but not so strong zombies. Drudges were the standard slow-moving, hard-to-kill variety. Ghouls were the lurking smart ones. Hulks…jeez I didn’t even want to think about the hulks. Our satellites had counted how many were in the mass of zombies and I got goosebumps thinking about the thousands that were down there.

I reminded them that headshots were only good with Gauss rifles and that shots to the heart were best with anything smaller. Aiming at the ground with explosive weapons was good for disabling, but not necessarily killing them.

I pulled my digibook from my pocket, tapped on the screen, and its contents were displayed on the screen behind me. It was the live satellite feed of the Colorado Springs area, zoomed in on the zombies, which looked like a writhing mass of ants.

“There are almost a half million of them down there,” I said, returning my gaze to the crowd. “There’s one of you for every thousand of them. And I think that’s really good odds.”

The smiles came back to the crowd and there was applause and cheering.

“Get a good night’s sleep and be ready for battle before sunrise. Good hunting, cadets.”

The Bionics Research Facility had been extensively modified to accommodate hundreds of extra simultaneous users. When I had first visited with Semper and Adara, it could handle no more than about sixty users at a time. Now, over four
hundred
children and teenagers were being jacked into the neural web to control their warrior drones.

I would be entering combat with them. Since the strategy was predefined, there wasn’t a lot of oversight. Marshal Burnham and his staff would be orchestrating the larger tactical picture and the Fleet action. Major Walling’s company was operating autonomously from my command. I was free to play the game like everyone else.

Rebekah, even though she was incredibly smart and had lightning quick reflexes, wasn’t ready for the neural web interface. Most of the cadets had been using the system for years, or at least had been playing
Slayers
and had a better understanding of game theory and digital environments. I could tell she was sad that she wouldn’t be joining the battle, but at the same time, relieved that she didn’t need to be strapped into the interface. She told me she’d be waiting for me, right in front of me the whole time. I smiled, and making sure no one was looking, gave her a quick kiss. The technicians entered the room, followed by the four other cadets who I’d chosen to be company commanders. They sealed the door to the room and began attaching the cadets to the interface.

I stepped into the dark metal coffin, slanted backwards, with all of its hanging wires. I had dreaded this part, always. The world between. Limbo. Purgatory. Undeath. The black sensory deprivation chamber always conjured up those images in my mind for the seeming hours that it took between connection and activation, or between deactivation and disconnection. I remembered back to my frantic moments trying to escape the chamber on my very first visit.

Just breathe
, I thought.
Just breathe. The light is coming soon.

But the light didn’t come. I had forgotten about this part. Our robots weren’t on the training field but tucked into metal cylinders aboard the starships, ready to be fired at twenty times the speed of sound into the atmosphere. My sensors were active, but there was nothing to see inside the starship tube.

A gentle female-sounding voice floated around in my mind. I wasn’t hearing it…it was being projected into my consciousness.

T-minus two minutes to Charlie Company drop.

Two more minutes of this. Geezus, I was going to lose my composure. I sat there, counting out loud to myself. When I hit ninety, the voice came back into my mind, counting down softly from thirty. I counted with her.

Three. Two. One.

And then a sudden rush. I imagine it was like what your stomach being pushed into your throat on a roller coaster ride would be like. Or falling. I don’t really know. In the warrior-drone interface, it was exciting.

After a half-second, I was free in space. My sensors could see the vast emptiness of it all. Feel the cold. Observe the pinpricks of light of the stars. See the Milky Way in stunning detail. I could hear the voices in my comm channel of others equally as enthralled.

Then the atmosphere approached. It got hot. Really hot. The sensors were designed to mute the impulses but you could really feel yourself burning as you slid through the upper layers of ever-densifying air.

An alarm sounded. My control screen and HUD came online. All systems reported normal. The biggest orbital drop in human history, and I was in the middle of it.

Another alarm. This one started counting down the altitude. At 1km above the surface, the body unfolded and the jump jets deployed. I could see my shiny metal legs below me. I was still on autopilot, unable to move and thereby ruin the precise insertion calculations. I watched as one of the drones whizzed past me—the retro rockets malfunctioning—and cratered into the zombies in a deafening explosion that sent tiny bodies flying everywhere.

“Locccccckkkkk and looooooooooad,” a voice yelled across my comm channel, out of excitement, not for the need to actually lock or load a single thing.

Then, as quickly as it began, I was on the ground. I never felt an impact—not even a bump—as the rockets had softened my descent to where the impact was lighter than a falling feather.

All three companies landed in their precise formations in the exact locations. Only the one drone had malfunctioned, and the operator was already in the process of being transferred to a new robot that was being loaded into the tube aboard
Flamberge
for immediate reinsertion.

I looked around, acquired targets, raised my arms, and began firing.

The initial wave caught the sparsely-organized zombies off guard with stunning precision. I could identify multiple targets, send off whatever ordinance I had, and reacquire new targets, using literally the blink of my eyes. Black zombie blood splattered everywhere. There were mostly drudges and a few runners. No hulks. Yet.

We instantly cleared the immediate area and pushed down the hill without a single casualty. Enough room was made for Alpha Company to land at the entrance to the Cheyenne Mountain facility. The hundred thunderclaps overhead signaled their arrival. Delta company was still aboard the ships.

Were they still trapped in the black of the tubes? I was horrified at the thought.

“Marshal,” I said into the comm, calling the Fleet commander directly.

“Yes, Commander,” he replied.

“We can’t leave Delta Company sitting in the tubes much longer. I know that
I
was getting claustrophobic in there.”

“Affirmative,” he said. “I’ll be putting them in right behind you, and in front of Alpha.”

My unit pushed down the barren slope to the halfway point. Our goals were to hold the hilltop and not let the zombies get up on high ground above us. We spread out in two staggered lines, one fifty meters higher in elevation than the lower. I could see Bravo to the North and Echo to the South doing the same thing. Digging in. Readying for the counterattack. I was surprised by the lack of resistance, but then I noticed on the minimap of my display how very little of the mass we had cleared.

More thunderclaps. I couldn’t count them, of course, but I knew a hundred more robots were joining our lines. They’d be dug in on the hill even higher than we were, in one long thin line stretching from Bravo to our rear, to Echo, ahead.

The ground starting rumbling. Pebbles danced on the dusty ground. It felt like thunder, but there wasn’t a cloud in the twinkling pre-dawn sky. The cloud of dust rising in the distance told me otherwise.

Incoming hostiles,
the female voice said with not enough alarm to match the severity of the situation. The mass of the zombie horde was bearing down on us.

“They’re in standard formation,” I said into the all-command comm channel. “Little bastards in the front, big ones in the back. Save your heavy ordinance for the hulks. Don’t forget your backup weapons when you run dry, or they get on you. And seriously…watch the friendly fire.”

I heard my company commanders and squad leaders reiterating my commands.

The bulk of the horde was now a thousand meters out. We started opening up with our small arms fire, knocking down the waves of runners out in front of the main body. I could see the large looming shapes of the hulks behind them, mixed in with the masses of drudges.

“I’m dry on Gauss,” came the Echo Company commander’s warning. “A lot of my guys are, and switching to ‘nades.”

The forearm-mounted grenade launchers made a popping noise as they fired, a whining noise as they reloaded, and then another pop. Where the runners had been simply falling down or having limbs blown off before, now they were exploding into unrecognizable bits.

“Slow your rate of fire,” I warned. I had seen firsthand what happened when you wasted your heavier ordinance before the hulks came.

Despite the volumes of fire coming down on the horde, it kept moving forward. Over, and around the bodies of the fallen. Finally, despite the high rate of fire, they made contact with the line.

Somewhere to my left, on the Bravo Company first line, a warrior was wrestling with two runners who were snarling and ripping at it. The left arm of the robot wasn’t moving, and fluids were dripping from the armpit.

“Johansen, sir,” came a voice on the company comm channel. “Can someone get these things off me?”

I raised my right arm, with the Gauss rifle, and picked the two off. Suddenly, something slammed into me from the right side and knocked me off my feet. I scrambled back up to see a large drudge, dripping with blood and pus. I punched it and it flew, flopping down the rocks of the hill like a little toy. That fall would have killed a human, but the zombie got right back up.

“Damn it,” I muttered, selecting a grenade, and watching it explode to pieces.

All across the lines the zombies were making physical contact. We started losing robots. One or two at first, then more suddenly. After just another minute or two we were down by a dozen. Two dozen.

“Operator!” I yelled into the comm channel.

“Combat control operator,” came the reply from a smooth male voice.

“How long till reinsertion?” I asked.

“The tubes are full but the avatar transfers take up to two minutes. It’s a lot of data. The first reinserts should be entering the atmosphere in thirteen seconds.”

Almost on cue, individual thunderclaps started pouring in. The long low rumble told me how many robots we had lost along the lines, and I was concerned. The hulks still hadn’t made contact. These things were just buying time and wasting our ammo until they got here.

The new arrivals were operators on their “second lives.” Even before their jump jets stopped firing, their rifles and grenade launchers were loosing rounds at the horde. The endless sea of death. I literally couldn’t see the end of it.

Something hit my right arm and yanked me to the ground. My right arm was pinned under something. A boulder. How had a boulder landed on my arm?

I panicked.

“Hulks!” I yelled into the comm. “They’re here.”

More of the robots to the left and right of me started getting knocked over by the boulders. Some were crushed outright. Some were pinned, by arm or leg, to the ground. The majority were simply knocked over for the runners and drudges to rip apart.

I mentally thumbed through my weapons selector. I had been saving this for when I ran dry of ammo, but I needed to get up or I’d lose my first life.

The energy sword on the back of my left arm flashed brightly in the dim light. My display showed that my power levels were dropping…it took an incredible amount of energy from my fuel cell to power the two-foot long plasma cutter. I hacked off my own right robotic arm, which surprisingly hurt, and then I stood back up in time to stand face-to-face with a hulk.

It punched me and I staggered back, the software assisting me with my balance. I swung hard with the plasma sword and took the arm off the hulk. It charged again, and I carved it straight through from right shoulder to left hip. It split down the middle and fell backwards.

The original warriors didn’t have these devices installed, and the Battle of Omaha had shown the critical flaws of the battle robots: running out of ammo and close-quarters combat. This one little device would hopefully buy us more time.

I hacked and I swung at zombie after zombie. My power levels were dropping precipitously. I glanced around and saw others using their swords too. I turned to face another hulk, this one raising a giant boulder over its head.

I thrust the energy sword into its stomach and slashed sideways. It lurched forward, driving the boulder into my shiny metal face.

Everything went black.

T-minus two minutes to reinsertion,
cooed the female voice.

“God-damn it!” I yelled inside my tube.

After an eternity waiting for the neural web to transfer, I was fired into space. The excitement of being flung toward the planet was less astonishing now. I was angry. I wanted revenge, even though I know I’d already killed the zombie that killed me.

My drone unfolded from the teardrop this time at two kilometers above the carnage below me. A sea of shiny metal bodies covered the hillside, the horde advancing over them. The rear line of Delta was now the only “line” and the reinserted drones were either being fired to augment that line, or right into the middle of the swarming mass. A few of the reinserts barely got off a few rounds before they were torn apart again. I saw I was being fired back toward the tunnel entrance, not the front line.

“Marshal,” I yelled into the comm, ”we can’t keep this up.”

“I know,” came his terse reply. “Some of our troops are going into their second reinsert right now. We don’t have the numbers for this.”

“Should we use the MAC?” I asked.

“Alpha Company encountered unexpected and fierce resistance in the tunnel,” he said, “and taken
heavy
casulaties.”

His emphasis on “heavy” made my stomach flop inside my human body.

My jump jets fired, slowing me to a halt at the precise instant I would have hit the ground.