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  “What the hell,” Slate said over the comm. “Chinese bitches have dispatched a drone swarm to take down our Predators!”

  “Switch Predators to evasive maneuvers!” Marlborough ordered.

  “Already on it!” Slate said.

  “It’s not the Chinese,” Eagleeye said. “I’ve got eyes on the Russian FOB on the far side of town.” FOB stood for Forward Operating Base. “More drones are launching from it at this very moment. Harbinger equivalents.”

  Harbingers were drones halfway between Ravens and Predators, and were ideal for swarming. They didn’t carry missiles like Predators, but had an array of laser turrets that could be trained on fast-moving targets. Like Predators.

  “Mickey, get on the comm with the Russians and ask them just what the hell they think they’re doing!” Marlborough transmitted. “In the meantime, Eagleeye, I want our own Harbingers launched from the FOB.”

  “You got it, Sarge,” Eagleeye said. “Best way to fight a drone swarm, is with a drone swarm.”

  “My Spiders on the eastern front are encountering Russian bots,” Bambi said over the comm. “My units are taking a lot of damage!”

  “So are my Reapers,” Traps said. “Armor people, can we get some tanks or mechs over here? Assuming you want our combat robots to live to see another day…”

  “On it,” Hank said. “Sending a few Ravagers your way.”

  “And I’m sending some Abrams,” Tread added.

  Eric glanced at his HUD as the three Ravagers took a side street. The map had lit up with several new red dots along the eastern front. The dots were tinted a darker red than the previous, indicating Russian autonomous troops. Chinese troops would have showed up a lighter red.

  “You might want to disembark here,” Morpheus told Brontosaurus and Eric. “Unless you want to fight on the front lines.”

  Eric leaped down, as did Brontosaurus, who was still carrying Frogger’s body over his shoulders.

  As the mechs retreated, the two Cicadas headed toward a nearby apartment building. The front doors were already kicked in from a previous round of house clearing troops, so they raced upstairs.

  “We just lost our last Predator,” Slate said. “I tried to steer the remaining two away from the fight, but the damn range of those Harbinger lasers is too great.”

  “There goes our air support,” Manticore said. “Maybe it’s time to look into assigning a more competent operator to the Predators.”

  “Shut up, Manure,” Slate said. That was his nickname for Manticore when he was angry. He also called him Manicure.

  “What’s the status on our Harbingers!” Marlborough said.

  “They’re just beginning to enter the combat arena,” Eagleeye said.

  “Too bad we don’t have our Paladins,” Hank said. “These bitches would have been dealt with already.”

  The Brass had recalled the Paladins—heavy artillery—a few days earlier, citing an urgent need for another operation nearby. Thankfully, the Chinese and Russians had also withdrawn their artillery at the same time: probably not a coincidence.

  Eric saw a flash overhead and then an enemy Harbinger crashed into the rooftop across the street. He knew it was an enemy because his vision overlaid a red rectangle over the unit. He saw other Harbinger units overhead, some outlined in red, others green, as they engaged in autonomous drone combat.

  “I’m requesting a pair of bombers and gunships from base to serve as backup,” Marlborough said. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “The Russians are probably doing the same,” Donald said. According to the overhead map, the comm officer was deployed near Marlborough.

  “Then we’ll just have to see how far they want to escalate this skirmish,” Marlborough said.

  Eric and Brontosaurus reached the roof. Braxton and Hicks were utilizing this particular rooftop for sniping purposes, and had hidden underneath a water tank that bordered the eastern side. Crusher was watching their rear flank with her heavy gun attachments. Her weapons were the smaller H130 Beast variants: lighter than the H134, but almost as deadly.

  “Hey boys, this rooftop is taken,” Crusher said.

  “Make room,” Brontosaurus said. “Scratch that. We’ll make our own.” He dashed next to the water tank and took up a position beneath a blocky wireless Internet antennae next to the building edge.

  Eric joined him, using those large antennae for cover, and gazed down onto the street below. In the next street he could see several robotic troops dug in amid the rubble. Traps’ Reapers. The robots looked slightly insectile: they had four crooked legs supporting a head and torso. Each Reaper had no arms per se, but rather laser turrets attached to either flank. Upon the shoulders they carried small rocket-propelled-grenade launchers. They were essentially smaller versions of mechs.

  On the other side of the street, Eric saw the muzzles of laser turrets protruding from nearly all of the window frames of the apartment building there: those were the Russian machines that sourced all those red dots on the map in this area.

  “Okay, just heard back from the Russians,” Mickey said. “They’re pissed at us. Apparently they’d sent a shitload of robot sappers into the sewers to infiltrate a suspected insurgent hideout. Unfortunately, the fuel from a downed mech—it’s not clear if it was one of ours, or theirs—had been leaking into the sewer, and when one of our Predators dropped a bomb nearby, that fuel detonated, taking out all of their sappers.”

  “Well that’s their fault for not warning us their troops were in the area!” Hyperion said.

  “The Russian commander doesn’t see it that way,” Mickey continued. “He refuses to stand down. He says he’s not going to stop until every last one of us pays for this outrage.”

  “Do we have any idea who this Russian commander is?” Marlborough asked. “Does he have any idea he’s risking an escalation that could lead to all out war between our sides by doing this?”

  “The ID on his comm indicates he’s ‘Senior Sergeant’ Sergei Bokerov,” Mickey said. “There isn’t anything about him in my local database, but a contact on base tells me he’s a Mind Refurb, like the rest of us.”

  The Bolt Eaters still had a connection to the main base eighty kilometers away thanks to the military satellites in orbit, however comms would be delayed slightly without the Predators to boost the signal. At least until those bomber and gunship reinforcements arrived.

  “Of course he’s a Mind Refurb,” Bambi said. “There are no humans on this battlefield. Other than the insurgents.”

  Eric heard the whine of an incoming bomb.

  10

  Eric glanced at the data sent by nearby Harbingers and confirmed, to his relief, that the bomb wasn’t headed for the rooftop, but the street beside it.

  A huge plume of smoke filled the street below upon impact. Eric ducked as shrapnel from the close blast clattered into the water tanks and antennae on the rooftop.

  “Damn it,” Traps sent. “Bastards just took out all my embedded Reapers.”

  “Eagleeye, redirect half of our Harbingers to intercept their Predator equivalents,” Marlborough said. “They want to play nasty, do they?”

  Eric aimed his rifle scope into the clearing dust below. Windows began to appear. He focused on one of them, and when he saw the characteristic muzzle of an enemy rifle, he adjusted his aim toward the potential center of mass.

  “Don’t fire,” Brontosaurus said. “If these are Russian troops, they’ll be able to triangulate our position based on the angular impact data. Position triangulation means an air strike. A change in tactics is necessary.”

  Eric glanced away from his scope to look at Brontosaurus. “If we’re in the same building as them, they can’t call in an airstrike.”

  Brontosaurus grinned, showing off those LED teeth. “Time to get in their faces.”

  Eric retreated from the edge of the rooftop and stood. Brontosaurus did likewise, still carrying the wreck of Frogger over his shoulders.

  “Guys, wait,” Cr
usher said.

  Eric and Brontosaurus took a running leap off the rooftop, and landed on the roof of the next building.

  “Damn it,” Crusher said. “We can’t cover you!”

  “Then don’t,” Brontosaurus said, dashing forward.

  While running, Eric glanced at his overhead map and saw red dots embedded in the target building going dark as he watched. Braxton and Hicks were indeed covering them, at the risk of an air strike.

  Eric maneuvered into the center of the rooftop, so that he was out of the line of sight of any attackers in the target building.

  A moment later, Eric heard the whine of an incoming bomb.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the adjacent building in time to see Crusher and the other two robots leaping off just as it exploded.

  “Told them not to cover us,” Brontosaurus said.

  “I want those enemy Predators downed, posthaste!” Marlborough transmitted.

  Eric reached the rooftop edge and leaped across to the building that harbored the Russian robots.

  He heard the buzzing of Harbingers.

  “Ours?” Eric asked.

  “Nope!” Brontosaurus said.

  Eric amped up his time sense, and raced toward the rooftop shed that harbored the stairwell. Menacing Harbinger drones floated upward, appearing over the edge of the building. They looked like mini-gunships, with laser turrets protruding on either side.

  Eric threw a grenade and leaped at the door, breaking it, and landed rolling into the stairwell inside. Brontosaurus joined him. Behind them, several small black holes appeared in the shed as the Harbingers riddled it with their invisible pulse beams.

  He returned time to normal, and heard an explosion outside. That would be his grenade. On the overhead map, one of the red dots representing the Harbingers winked out.

  “Eighty-three,” Eric said. When no one answered him, he remembered that Frogger was KIA. Their little competition over fallen tango count was over.

  He continued down the stairs. He glanced at the map and saw the Harbingers leaving the area to hunt and kill other targets. That his external map was still updating told him that the team still had eyes out there; probably Ravens perched on nearby rooftops. Blue dots abruptly came in—friendly Harbingers. They chased the red ones away. It would have been fun to watch the dogfight, but he had other things to worry about at the moment.

  He reached the stairwell door, and waited for Brontosaurus to arrive behind him. Over the comm to the heavy gunner, he counted down:

  “Three.”

  “Two.”

  “One.”

  He kicked in the door, going low—at a crouch—while Brontosaurus went high. The hallway was empty.

  They made their way to the closest door. It was open.

  Eric detached the scope from his rifle and held it to the doorframe, slowly shoving it past the edge. He switched his point of view to the video feed returned from the scope. He used thermal imaging.

  “I spot two tangos,” Eric said. “A flanker watching the door. And a sniper at the window.”

  “I see them,” Brontosaurus said. Eric had shared the video feed with him.

  The Russian infantry models were humanoid, like the Cicadas, but they had all of their weaponry mounted directly into their forearms like a mech, which made them look similar to Popeye in Eric’s eyes. He had to smile at that: he was probably one of the very few people alive who even knew who Popeye was.

  He reattached the scope to his rifle, and detached a grenade. With Dee’s help, he calculated the optimal throw angle and speed based on the layout of the room he’d just scoped, and his target, and then tossed the weapon inside.

  “I’m Popeye the Sailor man,” Eric sung.

  “Huh?” Brontosaurus said.

  “Never mind,” Eric said.

  The bomb exploded.

  Eric stepped into the room, and unleashed two quick shots, finishing off the remaining robot, and firing a double-check shot into the brain case of the first.

  “These are 3M30 Bulavas,” Brontosaurus said. Eric’s Russian translation subroutine converted the word Bulava into mace, as in the weapon. Not that he needed to know that. “Support troops: they don’t carry Mind Refurbs.”

  “This whole building is probably full of support troops,” Eric said. “Too bad we can’t just find and kill the Mind Refurb responsible for them.” Because if they did that, another Russian Mind Refurb would simply assume control. It wasn’t quite cut off one head and two more appeared, but pretty close.

  He turned around, but Brontosaurus pushed him further inside. The entrance exploded behind them, and the two Cicadas were sent flying into the room.

  “They got out a signal,” Brontosaurus explained.

  “Too bad.”

  Eric was in a common area of some kind, filled with toppled furniture.

  Before he could do anything, the wall to his left detonated, spraying him with plaster.

  Eric activated Bullet Time and scooted forward, moving into an ambush position next to the gap before the dust cleared. Brontosaurus did the same on the other side of the opening.

  Several small balls rolled into the room, and sprouted legs. They began crawling toward Eric and Brontosaurus.

  Eric, still functioning at a higher time sense, unleashed his rifle in rapid succession, and between the two of them, they destroyed those power-draining robot bugs before they could touch either of them. But the robots would have transmitted the positions of the two Cicadas…

  Eric leaped forward, aiming to take cover behind an upturned couch. The wall exploded behind him when he was halfway there.

  He spun in midair, increasing his time sense even further so that everything slowed right down around him.

  He glanced at his power cell. He was down to a quarter.

  Yikes.

  He directed his rifle toward the clearing dust behind him, and picked out the humanoid form lurking behind it. The Bulava had the turrets of both arms pointed toward him. He fired, scoring a hit.

  The Bulava also shot. Repeatedly.

  By the time Eric had fallen behind the couch, he had several new laser boreholes drilled into his plate armor. His AI core region was flashing critical: he’d almost bit the dust.

  Brontosaurus had taken cover behind an overturned table beside him. He seemed in better condition than Eric.

  Hiding behind furniture wouldn’t protect them from laser shots, of course, but it at least occluded their exact positions. He glanced at his overhead map. Two red dots were in the adjacent room. Two tangos.

  Eric pointed his rifle at the ceiling and fired a Vision Round. It impacted and gave him a view of the room around him, allowing him to see past the couch.

  Brontosaurus tossed several grenades, setting the fuses extremely short so that the Bulavas wouldn’t bat them back before they exploded.

  Unfortunately, the Bulavas launched grenades of their own.

  Eric grabbed the upper edge of the couch and pulled it down over his body, shielding him as the grenades detonated. He hoped Brontosaurus was able to do something similar.

  When the dust cleared, he saw Brontosaurus rising from the wreckage of the table. His right arm was blown off, but that wasn’t enough to stop him from firing the heavy gun mounted to his left.

  Eric slid himself across the floor, and out from underneath the shielding couch, and fired his rifle in turn at the closest Bulava. The two tangos shuddered as the pulse weapons struck them, and then they collapsed.

  Brontosaurus fired a Vision Round toward the entrance, and it slammed into a wall on the hallway outside.

  “Gotta run!” Brontosaurus said.

  On the overhead map, several red dots had appeared, indicating enemy units closing in on the room.

  Eric slung his rifle over his shoulder, and then dashed toward the window. It was already partially broken away, so he cleared the fragile shards with his robotic arm. Then he reached through, found purchase on a pipe outside, and pulled himself out. />
  He hauled himself upward, slamming his fist into the fire brick exterior as he went, making his own handholds. Brontosaurus followed beneath him.

  Eric pulled himself onto the roof, and reached down to help Brontosaurus, who still carried Frogger on his back. Eric spotted Bulavas peering through the window below. They aimed their rifles up at them, but Eric hauled Brontosaurus over the rooftop edge just in time.

  They hurried to the far side, and leaped onto the nearest intact building. They headed toward the blue dots representing Crusher, Braxton and Hicks.

  Enemy Harbingers swooped down.

  “Get off the roof!” Brontosaurus said.

  The pair leaped onto a lower, three-story roof nearby.

  Behind them, the Harbingers went down, shrieking loudly.

  “You’re welcome,” Hicks said.

  “Thanks Hicks, you hick,” Eric said.

  “You’re the hick,” Hicks replied.

  Eric and Brontosaurus leaped the final three stories to the ground, and dove through the already broken glass of a shop window, joining Crusher, Braxton and Hicks inside.

  “Just got the last of their Predators,” Eagleeye said. “Redirecting the surviving Harbingers to rejoin the fray against the enemy drones.”

  “Good,” Crusher said. “Because they’re giving us the time of our lives in here.”

  Eric assumed a position on the opposite window with Braxton, while Brontosaurus watched the entrance with Crusher. He tracked and shot at any Harbinger drone that came into view. Sometimes said drone was highlighted in green, marking it as a friendly, so he held back.

  Soon the drone traffic let up.

  “Has that batshit Russian Mind Furbie called off his attack yet?” Traps asked over the comm.

  “Negative,” Eagleeye transmitted. “My Harbingers have been waging a war of attrition. There are only a few of the units left, on both sides.”

  That was too bad. But when equally-equipped autonomous units took on their equivalents, the outcome was usually equal decimation on both sides, thanks to the algorithms involved.

  “You know, I think this Russian dip is the only one out here,” Slate said.