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  Together, the four of them caused half of the swarm to redirect toward them.

  That was better, at least. But would it be enough to save the main platoon?

  Eric noted that the main alien bioweapons were staying back near the base.

  For now.

  They trusted fully in the termite swarm’s ability to do its job.

  That trust probably wasn’t misplaced. Not at all.

  As Eric raced across the rocky plain, he pointed his rifle toward the incoming horde and engaged smart targeting.

  Was he cleared to fire yet under the Rules of Engagement?

  Only one way to find out.

  He attempted to squeeze the trigger.

  His finger didn’t respond.

  Damn it.

  He continued forward, and narrowly avoided tripping on a rock that jutted from the ground ahead.

  And then, finally, a termite well ahead of the secondary swarm landed on him. It caused a small spark as the electrified skin repelled it.

  “Did the rest of you see that?” Eric said. “One of them just tried to land on me. We’re good to fire!”

  At least, he hoped they were. If his Rules subsystem interpreted it as an attempted attack, which it was, the override would be transmitted to the entire platoon, freeing not just Eric, but the rest of them to fire.

  He pointed his rifle behind him toward the sky once more. He squeezed the trigger.

  His finger responded.

  Good.

  He kept the trigger down. Termites dropped as they were struck; sometimes two or three, if they happen to be along the same line of fire, since the weapon penetrated them easily. However, it was like shooting grains of sand at a beach: there were simply too many to make much of a difference. He was starting to wish he had some pulse grenades left.

  Brontosaurus, Slate and Bambi similarly fired their lasers into the swarm, bringing down a few of them.

  A flash drew his attention to the main swarm that still headed toward the rest of the platoon. Electrolasers had hit that swarm, and the plasma channels arced from termite to termite, striking hundreds of the closely-packed micro machine at once. The termites fell in large swaths as the Jupiters fired repeatedly.

  Meanwhile, the secondary swarm continued to home in on Eric and the other three. The size of that particular horde remained constant, and menacing as ever, despite the laser barrage from the four Cicadas. There were just too many.

  Eric’s laser rifle abruptly overheated.

  Damn it.

  The outlying members of the secondary swarm began to arrive. Continuing to run along with the others, Eric flipped his rifle around and utilized it as a club to swat the insects away. When his electrified rifle touched the different termites, sparks erupted, reminding him of mosquitos hitting a zapper.

  Other termites began to land on his electrified exterior, and they too fell away as the surface sparked.

  “It’s working!” Bambi said.

  “So far,” Eric said. He glanced at his power level on his HUD. It was quickly falling.

  “Come on, you pieces of shit!” Slate said. “That all you bitches got?”

  Like Eric, Slate’s weapon had overheated, and he was bashing wildly at the incoming termites.

  More of the micro machines impacted as the rest of the secondary swarm began to arrive. Eric’s power levels dipped precariously.

  He had an idea.

  “We have to touch, back to back,” Eric said. “Share the electrical field… stress our power cells less! We’ll last twice as long!”

  He hoped.

  Eric slowed down, allowing the others to catch up, and they quickly formed a back-to-back fighting stance so that they were all touching and sharing the hull electrification.

  There was no point in activating Bullet Time. It might help him swat individual termites more easily, but it would only drain his power cell faster.

  His rifle fire indicator abruptly turned green on his HUD. He flipped the weapon around and sprayed the nearby termites with laser fire.

  His power cell was at twenty-five percent.

  As more and more of the termites were zapped as they touched his electrified hull, he realized he wasn’t going to make it.

  But then electricity suddenly arced from termite to termite in front of him, carving away a huge swathe of them.

  The Jupiter electrolasers were firing at his position.

  He glanced at his overhead map.

  The red dots of the main swarm had vanished. The platoon had won.

  “How’d you manage that, Sarge?” Brontosaurus said.

  “Frogger here came up with an idea to daisy chain the power cells of the Abrams tanks to the Jupiters, via the charging cables,” Marlborough said. “Boosted the stopping power of the electrolasers tenfold.”

  “Good old Frogger,” Eric said.

  Tread had to be careful in his aim, because the boosted electrolasers could quite easily destroy the Cicadas in friendly fire. But he was an AI, after all, with an AI Accomp, and calculated the necessary firing solutions without issue.

  In a few moments only a small number of the swarm remained; Eric and the three with him finished off the termites by bashing them away, and purposely allowing them to land on their electrified hulls.

  “You’d think they’d learn not to do that by now,” Slate said.

  “Obviously they haven’t had time to update their algorithms,” Eric said. “They’ll probably be rethinking the use of termites against us going forward.”

  “Get back to the hide!” Marlborough said. “The bioweapons are leaving the base.”

  Eric glanced at Malibu. Sure enough, the Red Tails were racing down the hill. They scooped up some sort of weapon from inside the base before emerging—long, metal spears that they held in the arms emerging from their torsos.

  He hurried back to the platoon with Brontosaurus, Bambi and Slate, and the four of them took cover behind the natural rise.

  Marlborough and the others had already opened fire by then. The Jupiters and other tanks had repositioned to get a bead on the tangos; electrolasers from the Jupiters struck two different Red Tails as Eric watched. Actually, no, the weapons struck the metal spears that they held, and arced between the similar spears gripped by other Red Tails nearby, causing no damage whatsoever.

  “Nicely done on the part of the enemy,” Hank commented.

  Their ordinary lasers, meanwhile, did in fact drill holes into the bioweapons. However, the creatures kept coming.

  “The hell!” Slate said. “I drilled a vagina into one of their heads, and it’s still coming!”

  “Obviously they keep their brains in a different area than their heads,” Bambi said. “Sort of like you guys. I’d recommend aiming between the legs.”

  “Har,” Slate said.

  “Hank, Tread, deploy mechs,” Marlborough said. “Defensive positions. The rest of you, pull back to the tanks.”

  The Cicadas and support troops pulled back to the tanks as instructed, while the mechs assumed positions hull-down behind the natural rise. They aimed their laser turrets and missile launchers over the crest.

  The mechs launched missiles and the impacts sent Red Tail body parts flying into the air. The longer lasting laser pulses from the Ravagers and tanks, meanwhile, were able to tear off heads and rip open bodies.

  “Poof!” Slate said. “Take that, bitches!”

  The Red Tails kept coming, and soon the vanguard reached the Ravagers.

  The mechs switched to bashing the creatures at close range.

  One of the Red Tails smashed its metal spear into a mech: the impact sent up sparks, and the mech promptly collapsed.

  “Don’t let those staffs hit them!” Marlborough ordered.

  “Trying…” Hank said.

  Another creature slammed its big, spherical tail down on a mech. The red sac burst open, covering the mech in some sort of goo. The Red Tail promptly died. The Ravager mech, meanwhile, was frozen in place, unable to break fr
ee of the red sludge.

  “Scorp, Brontosaurus, take control of one mech each,” Marlborough commanded. “Now!”

  Eric sent the request to Tread, who promptly ceded control of one of the units.

  Eric switched to the point of view of the mech and interfaced with the movement and weapons subsystems, so that it was like his AI core was inside of the unit, and he observed the world from the viewpoint of the cameras on top of its head. When he moved his arms and legs, his own limbs remained stationary, whereas the mech’s responded.

  One of the Red Tails was coming directly at him with a metal spear…

  20

  Eric leaped to the side, moving a bit slower than he would have in his Cicada body. He’d practiced with mechs during training, of course, so that wasn’t entirely unexpected.

  Just have to adapt to the change in movement speed again.

  He grabbed the creature as it went past, wrapping his hands around the base of the tail, away from the spikes of the central body. Then he smashed it into the next bioweapon; the glandular sac on the tail burst open, burying the other creature. The Red Tail he carried, meanwhile, promptly died. It continued to grasp the metal spear firmly within its arms, however.

  Maybe I can use that.

  Eric swung the Red Tail about like a rag doll, wielding the body like a weapon. Whenever the metal spear clutched by the dead body impacted another Red Tail, a bright spark went up, and the targeted creature fell to the ground. And even when the spear didn’t hit, the force of the body’s impact sent any stricken Red Tails flying away. He made his way forward like that through the enemy numbers, and adjusted his time sense up and down as necessary so that he always held the advantage.

  Behind him, the tanks fired over the rise continually with their own laser turrets, along with the Cicadas and support troops, tearing black holes into the resilient units.

  A group of Red Tails was attempting to race past him. Eric fired the last of his Ravager’s missiles, sending up a cloud of body parts and halting the advance of that group.

  Beside him, Brontosaurus’ Ravager had also procured the corpse of one of the enemies, but this one didn’t hold a metal spear. Even so, the heavy gunner used the body with deadly efficiency, bashing away any targets as he went.

  In moments, the two of them, along with the remaining Ravagers, and the support of the tanks and the rest of the platoon, had reduced the attackers into piles of dead meat.

  “Smells like curry!” Hyperion said. “Who’s up for hitting an Indian restaurant in VR after this?”

  “Watch the Frankendogs!” Marlborough said.

  Eric glanced at the top of the hill.

  The two guards had moved forward, and as he watched, their smooth sides peeled back, and malevolent-looking weapons turrets jutted forth.

  “Oh oh,” Brontosaurus said.

  Eric deployed the ballistic shield in front of his mech, and ducked behind it.

  “It’s firing an intense gamma ray burst!” Mickey said. “Concentrated on your position. Don’t stay in the same place for too long… even with the extra armor in your mech cores, you won’t last long!”

  Eric promptly fired the jumpjets on his Ravager, and landed running several meters ahead. He jogged toward the base of the hill, keeping his ballistic shield angled in front of him.

  “What are you doing?” Marlborough asked.

  “Drawing away their attention,” Eric said. “I suggest you keep firing.”

  Eric reached one of the troughs at the base of the hill, and dove behind it. He kept his ballistic shield angled behind the edge of the trough for an added layer of protection and lifted the large laser turret that was built into his arm over the top, and switched to the viewpoint of its scope.

  The quadrupeds were making their way down the hill. He aimed at the center of mass of one of them and squeezed the trigger. No effect. The laser seemed to reflect off that polished material.

  Eric aimed at the head next. When he fired, a satisfying black hole appeared in the skin. But the creature didn’t go down.

  Electrolaser impacts also came from the Jupiters in the distance behind him, but the bolts of electricity arced harmlessly between the silver bodies. A shell landed on one of the Frankendogs, courtesy of an Abrams, and the resulting explosion ripped the skin completely off the head, revealing the faceless metal ovoid underneath. The entity otherwise remained unharmed, and continued its advance toward Eric’s position, along with the other.

  “Catch!” Brontosaurus said.

  Eric spun in time to watch the charged spear Brontosaurus had thrown lodge in the ground in front of him. Eric reached for it hesitantly. The top of the protruding metal was colored black, unlike the silvery hue of the rest of the spear.

  “The black portion is safe to touch,” Brontosaurus clarified.

  Eric cocked his head, and then folded away the laser in his hand so that he could grab the weapon. He reached forward, still somewhat hesitant, but then wrapped his big fingers around the black haft of the spear.

  Nothing happened.

  “With all the tech available to us, we have to use spears,” Eric said, wrenching the weapon free to examine it. “I can’t believe it.”

  He was about to toss the spear at one of the Frankendogs when a portion of the trough disintegrated entirely in front of him, along with a good portion of the ballistic shield, and his shoulder. Eric dropped the spear and quickly ducked his Ravenger as low as he was able, wrapping the shield over top of himself. He was careful not to touch the dropped spear in the process.

  “Uh, what just happened?” Eric said.

  “Looks like a Frankendog just launched a high intensity laser at your position,” Dickson said. “I’d advise against getting up.”

  Eric didn’t want to lose his mech, so he remained flat beside the trough.

  “We’re going to try to distract them,” Marlborough said. “Get ready to toss that spear of yours.”

  “All right,” Eric said. “But how do we even know the spear will harm them?”

  “In The Art of War, there’s a paragraph that says: always use the weapons of the enemy against them, if possible,” Marlborough said.

  “That’s not from the Art of War,” Eric commented.

  “It is in my version,” Marlborough said. “I see it here, scribbled in the margins… anyway, get ready.”

  Eric waited a few moments. He reverted his point of view back to himself, so that he could observe the platoon around him. He glanced at the troughs out there, and saw his Ravager lying flat behind one of them; he was surprised at how good of a connection he had with that mech, given how far away it was from the platoon. Then again, there wasn’t much else to interfere with the signal—unless of course the aliens decided to outpunch it with their own frequency. Strangely, so far they had not. Maybe they weren’t even aware of how human comms worked, yet.

  Movement drew his attention to the left flank of the platoon. Two of the Abrams had moved out from behind the cover of the natural rise, and were opening fire with shells and lasers.

  Eric zoomed in on the hill, and saw that the two quadrupeds were altering their descent slightly, and angling their turrets toward the new attackers.

  “Now!” Marlborough said.

  Eric switched back inside the Ravager mech, gripped the black haft of the spear, and stood up. Both quadrupeds had their skin burned away at that point.

  Eric aimed at the closest and tossed the spear.

  His aim was true: the weapon struck the Frankendog and it impaled right up to the black haft. Electrical sparks emerged from the impact site, and the alien robot collapsed.

  The second Frankendog spun toward Eric’s Ravager, and he dropped once more. Above him, another gaping hole appeared in the trough.

  “They’re going to call in that diamond ship of theirs, you know,” Bambi said. “We can’t stay here all day.”

  “Cover me,” Brontosaurus said.

  Eric switched back to himself, and peered over th
e rise. He fired at the remaining quadruped, along with the rest of the platoon, trying to draw away its attention. Meanwhile, Brontosaurus’ Ravager was retreating along the plains, through the bodies of the dead Red Tails. He slid a spear from the clutches of one of the bioweapons, and turned back toward the troughs. He tossed the weapon toward Eric’s Ravager, but then the enemy’s powerful laser found him, and the Ravager toppled.

  The spear landed about five meters behind Eric’s Ravager. He switched his point of view to the mech, and slowly crawled forward as the Abrams and remaining Bolt Eaters continued to ravage it in an attempt to distract.

  “It’s not falling for it this time,” Dickson said. “That robot knows where the real threat is.”

  Eric glanced at his overhead map. The Frankendog was about ten meters away. In another moment, it would come within line of sight of the mech.

  He decided to make his move.

  Eric fired his jumpjets so that he was traveling horizontally just above the rocky ground, and switched to Bullet Time.

  He traveled straight toward the spear, and scooped it up as he passed by. He fired his left lateral jets, swerving in case the robot was tracking him, then activated ventral thrust, so that he was moving upward. He fired another burst to rotate his body toward his opponent, and while he was still spinning, he released the spear.

  He watched the weapon move agonizingly slowly toward its target. He fired his right lat jets, and returned his time sense to normal. The spear struck, disabling the Frankendog.

  Meanwhile his mech landed unharmed. He raced it back toward the rest of the troop, and switched control back to Tread before returning to his own viewpoint.

  “Nicely done,” Marlborough said. “Load up on the tanks, Bolt Eaters! We’re retreating!”

  “Don’t we want to explore that base?” Donald asked.

  “No time,” Marlborough said. “They’ve probably already sent out a distress signal. Like Bambi said, the cavalry will be here shortly. Gather up the alien spears from the fallen Reds, and wrap the tips in field dressing from the med-kit.”

  “I didn’t know we had a human med-kit,” Slate said.

  “Check out the storage compartment of the Jupiters,” Dickson said. “Lots of med-kits.”