THE heat was intense. The ship had baked in the sun all day, and now that it was night, the steel deck radiated that heat back out.
Hector Ramos couldn’t help wondering how it would look to the seeker of an antiship missile.
The invasion force had gotten under way the day before, and immediately scattered. The major said there were submarines below them, drones far above. And now and then you could spot one, a dark speck, way up there in the blue. But most of the time it just felt like the three ships, Makassar, Surabya, and one distant destroyer, floated alone in a vast and hostile ocean.
Hector lit a kretek. He hadn’t smoked before, but one of the Indonesian officers had offered a pack of the sweet clove cigarettes and now he couldn’t do without them.
Since he was a three-landing Marine now, Division had approved his transfer. With a black mark for instability, probably, but … whatever.
He was still a Marine. But he wasn’t with the Marines anymore.
At least, not the U.S. Marines. He looked back at his troops. They were lined up two and two across the deck, grunting and yelling as they went through hand-to-hand drills.
Smaller than most Americans, though pretty much Hector’s own size, the Indonesians still appeared tough. Their rifles looked like a cross between an M-4 and an AK. Their other gear was new to him too. The sergeant said a lot of them were Papuans.
Hector pretty much accepted whatever the division noncom, serson mayor—sergeant major—told him. Handayani was taller than Hector. Which wasn’t saying much.
But they looked up to Hector too. They called him “pria tua,” which seemed to be some kind of compliment.
After he’d turned down the tactical cyber-school offer, knowing there was no way he was smart enough to keep up, his orders had sent him to Indonesia. Headquarters, Third Pasukan Marinir, the Third Marine Division. Most of the officers spoke some English. So did a private named Slamet, so Hector had grabbed him as gofer and translator. The Indonesians kept asking Hector questions, since he’d been in combat and they hadn’t. He tried his best to give useful advice. The language barrier was a problem, though. Not just for him; apparently not many of the troops spoke the official tongue as a first language.
His first recommendation was to get rid of the bright purple berets. The second was to get a lot fitter, and to practice moving and shooting in full gear. There’d been limited facilities in port, but he’d led the troops on runs and set up a firing range and shooting house, to give them at least some practice. They had their own squad tactics and he didn’t want to confuse them. But they perked up when he demonstrated a combat glide—how to steady the sights so you could shoot as you were moving—and it got picked up across the division. He emphasized the basics, Barney-style. Communicate. Lay down fire. Keep eyes on your NCO. Hold on to your masks. Don’t touch the enemy dead.
Across from them now, ranked in rows, sat dozens of CHADs. The old model, the Cs, repainted, refurbished, some pieced together from battlefield retrievals. The scrapings from the bottom of the barrel. And only enough to furnish one per squad. The Indonesians were wary of the bots. They called them “hantu” and gave them a wide berth. The best he could figure was to use them as disruptors, sending them in ahead of the human troops to draw fire so the follow-ons and supporting arms could light up strong points. He’d recommended that to the general, who’d said it sounded reasonable and put him in charge of training the NCOs in the control apps.
He strolled to the edge of the flight deck and looked down at the passing sea. He didn’t want to. But he couldn’t help it.
Yeah. There they were. Again.
Under the water.
Looking up at him. Some, waving. Others with their mouths moving, though he couldn’t hear what they were saying. Bleckford. Breuer. Titcomb. Conlin. Schultz. Vincent. Orietta and Truss and Whipkey and Lieutenant Hern. Pudgy little Lieutenant Ffoulk. Sergeant Clay, Patterson, Karamete … they wanted something from him.
He stared down, wanting to make out their words, but afraid to.
He knew what they needed, anyway.
They wanted him down there with them.
He lifted one hand and gave a little half wave back. Groped with his other hand, and found the crucifix Mirielle had sent.
He held it over the water for a while, and finally let go. It dropped, vanished, sucked down into the black.
Someone came up behind him and took his other hand. Hector jerked, flinching away so violently he nearly toppled into the nets, with nothing but nylon between him and the blue-dark water slipping past below. Then he would be joining them, because the captain had made it clear they couldn’t turn back if anyone went overboard. “What the fuck!” he shouted, before he remembered: he’d seen lots of the Indos holding hands. It didn’t mean … anyway.
“I am sorry, Sergeant Ramos,” Private Slamet said, clearly startled.
The guy was still too close. Hector bulldozed his chest with both palms, shoving him away. “Get this straight, Private. I’m not your buddy.” He clutched his head. He needed a drink. But there would be no drinks until after the battle. Unless he could organize something, the way he had in Taiwan. “Uh, look. Don’t go to thinking we’re friends. Mengerti?” That was one word he’d picked up. Usually from some guy giving him a blank look when he was trying to explain something. “Saya tidak mengerti”—I don’t understand.
“We are not friends?” The terp furrowed his brow.
“Get lost,” Hector told him. “Shove off. Don’t you get it? There’s no point. We’re both gonna…” he stopped himself at the last moment. He’d almost said We’re both going to die, but that wasn’t what you told anybody you were trying to lead. He mastered himself, trying to look away from the faces below. Whipkey was laughing. Fucker … “Don’t get attached, Private. It’s just gonna.… wreck you, when they get killed. Concentrate on hating the enemy. Mengerti?”
The Indonesian only looked puzzled. He stood with arms dangling, staring. Until Hector sighed and walked away.
THEY mustered after a midnight meal of rice and fish with a red sauce that reminded him of his mother’s pico de gallo. Then had to wait for hours in a sweltering passageway to load up. The usual drill.
Hector squatted without thought, without emotion. The colonel had wanted him to hold back with the headquarters unit. And maybe that would have been okay for a liaison, but Hector had insisted he wanted to go in with the first wave. The officers had glanced at each other and worked their eyebrows but finally agreed. Clapped him on the back and told him apparently complimentary things, but in Indonesian so he didn’t have to respond.
He didn’t care what they thought. Or if he made it through this time.
Actually, it would be a relief not to.
The Indos didn’t run LCACs so he loaded with Slamet’s squad. Down in the well deck, yells and clanking echoing off the high dark overhead. Now it was windy, and water dripped down from above. They filed down into a landing craft that looked like a leftover from World War II. They huddled cheek by jowl cross-legged under the hulls of two huge-wheeled APCs, Hector elbow to elbow with a CHAD. The Indonesians, except for Slamet, glanced at them both, but didn’t speak to them.
Hector spotted their machine gun, and held out a hand. After a glance at his squad leader, who nodded, the gunner pulled his mag, racked his bolt, and handed it over.
The weight was reassuring. As heavy as the old model 240 with the steel receiver. Belt-fed. A hefty handle to change barrels with. He didn’t want to give it back. But finally, reluctantly, let it drop from his hands back into the gunner’s.
“You’re the king,” Hector told the gunner, then to Slamet, “Tell him what I said. Translate. The machine gunner, he’s the king of the battlefield. Infantry, they’re the queen, but the king fucks the queen. Got it?” The private looked doubtful but rattled it off. The rest of the squad looked shocked, then chuckled uneasily.
Hector blew out and glanced at the CHAD. Its oculars were examining him curiously. What was it thinking? Oh yeah, they didn’t think. Didn’t feel. Or see the faces of the dead, like it was Día de los Muertos every night.
“Must be nice,” he whispered.
He looked at the oculars of the others. The humans. Nothing going on there either. Robots made of meat. Or maybe that was just him, a meat robot named Hector Ramos. Who’d seen too much to feel anything ever again. A burned-out fuse in an old house like his mom’s. Rented from Mr. Tankard. The old round glass ones that turned black when they burned out. Did his eyes look like that? Burned out. Nothing behind them.
He sat with the rifle he’d been issued across his lap, swaying with the roll of the ship. When the fuck were they splashing?
They’d given him the transfer, but the captain said it wouldn’t look good in his record after the war. Hector had stayed silent, not wanting to say that didn’t matter. There would be no “after.” He groped for Mirielle’s cross, then remembered: he’d dropped it overboard. Fuck, why had he done that? Maybe its power had kept him alive. A sudden jolt of panic terror left him sweating. Then it too vanished, sucked back into the massive numbness.
At long last he felt the craft lift. Water surged around them. They rolled, only a little, but enough to know the ship was flooded down. The engines whined and started. They settled into a dull roar and smoke choked the air. The marines coughed. A few broke out masks.
The sky appeared. A black lid slid back to expose the stars. The landing craft took on a sharper roll as it hit open sea.
The engine droned on, hour after hour. Now and again water spattered up and rained down. He licked salt from dry lips. It mixed with the blood from a deep crack in the middle of his lower lip. Here and there bright stars swayed overhead, like scratches on the night. How fucking far out were they? He tried to figure out how far they’d come already, but couldn’t multiply in his head. The old problem: numbers. They’d issued him a combat cell, a gimcracky thing, but since it was in Indonesian he couldn’t access it.
Around him the Indos began to retch. Great: puke and hot sauce. Rice and fish on the deck. Like that movie about Private Ryan. One guy was barfing into his mask. Hector jerked it out of his hands. “You’re gonna want that, once we land,” he yelled, then wondered why he bothered. He shrugged, handed it back, and crawled to his tire again.
The men opposite—there were no women in Indonesia’s assault divisions—took on the same look he remembered from other landings. Some joked and chattered. Most withdrew, looking inward. A few fingered worry beads. Others nervously, mindlessly checked gear, or picked their noses. A few were asleep or pretending to be.
He stared into nothingness, and it reflected his mind.
AT last, a far-off rumble. Faint at first, it slowly grew. Jet engines, or maybe rockets, screeched overhead. Shells howled and crumped.
He knew that rumble. Those sounds.
The hymn of War.
He checked his rifle again, and met the unblinking oculars of the C opposite once more. It hadn’t looked away from him the whole time. Mindless. Thoughtless. A thing. He envied it. He closed his eyes and waited for the shell to hit. Like the one that had wrecked their LCAC on Itbayat, killing most of the Marines aboard. Leaving him wandering memory-less until he’d come to on the beach, not even remembering how he’d escaped that flaming pyre.
The grumble grew into a continuous thunder. He couldn’t see what lay ahead, but he could imagine it. The fiery trails of missiles going in. The flashes along the line of coast. Smoke billowing up. The darting and swarming of the drones. Shell bursts, the searching beams of lasers, and the smoke trails of incoming rockets as the enemy fought back, intent on wiping out the invaders before they set foot in China at last.
He lay propped against the tire as his ear tuned through the barrage of sound. Picking out mortars. Heavy MGs. So they were close now, and this enemy was throwing everything he had against the first wave.
The serson mayor bent and waved five fingers. Hector passed it on. He checked his rifle one last time and adjusted his jelly armor. The Marines had let him keep it, instead of the old-style Kevlar the Indos wore. He eyed the front ramp. A single shell, and no one would make it ashore.
With a jarring, rasping chhhnkk, the craft lurched, throwing them all forward. The engines rose, strained, but nothing happened.
The troops cast frightened glances at each other. The serson mayor bent, and shouted something to them.
“Fuck,” Hector muttered, fearing the worst.
The engines declined to idle. The transmission thudded, then strained again at maximum RPM. Trying to back off. But the deck under them didn’t move.
They were aground. A big fat motionless target for every gun on the beach.
Handayani bent to him. Yelled over the rumble, which reverberated now terrifyingly close, “We are no float. What we do?”
“Debark,” Hector yelled back. “Get off boat.”
Beside him Slamet was yelling too. Handayani sucked air, looking startled. Then his face closed. He nodded, once, and vanished again.
Above them the engine of the personnel carrier cranked, cranked, then fired with a muffler-less bellow. The marines scrambled out from under its iron belly and fastened themselves along the bulkheads. A klaxon honked, cut off, then cawed again. Hector unsnapped the flap of his mask carrier and gripped his rifle, staring forward. Feeling nothing, except that his legs were shaking.
Ahead, light. Flickering color. The rattle of machine guns. The crack of bursting shells, merging in an unending growl that seemed to grow from heartbeat to heartbeat to a crescendo of mind-battering noise.
The personnel carriers roared and eased forward between the ranks of infantry. The deck lurched with the shifting weight, and for a second Hector wondered if they’d buoy up off the reef once they unloaded. But the craft settled back again as the lead APC, venting a cloud of black smoke, charged down the ramp and sank immediately up to its thrashing wheel hubs in a dark surf. It lurched and wallowed, clawing its way toward the shore.
Hector looked out then, into the maw of Hell.
The whole coast was on fire. The first light of dawn showed gray against black, but the burning glare cast writhing shadows across the sea. The pounding surf was heavy. Six feet, maybe eight. High and dry, the landing craft blocked it directly in front, but to either side it surged in toward the beach in snowcapped rollers that broke and foamed as if huge serpents were battling beneath them. But weirdly without sound. No sound at all, the roar was so loud. Concussions vibrated his chest like an emergency room doctor pounding on it, trying to bring him back from the dead.
The second APC gave a bull roar and charged forward. It cleared the ramp, hit the sea with a booming splash, and rolled to a halt, dead, the engine choked.
The serson mayor walked forward. He stood for a moment silhouetted against the gray dawn, rifle raised, yelling something soundlessly back at them.
A clatter tattooed along the bulkheads. Suddenly he whirled and fell, rolled off the ramp, and vanished.
Hector grabbed Slamet with one hand and the CHAD that had been eyeing him with the other, dragging them forward. Toward the gray light, the battering sound. Each step forward took an age. But they couldn’t stay here. Another burst would wipe everyone out. The steel walls were a trap now. “Get out or die,” he screamed. “Tell them, Private. Get out or die.” Four steps to the edge of the ramp. Three. Two.
He drew a deep breath and jumped down into the foaming surf.
It was shockingly cold, and much deeper than he’d expected. His face went under and he struggled, choking, drowning. A hundred pounds of pack, weapon, ammo, and gear weighed him down as if four anvils were strapped to his back.
Then the jelly armor inflated, automatically buoying him up. He shrugged off his pack and ditched his helmet and entrenching tool. Got his boots on something soft underneath him, maybe the sergeant major, and pushed off. He got a hand on the stalled APC. Bullets clanged off it, lacerating the hull, ricocheting into the landing craft, where the Indos were still crowding the ramp. Some fell. Others jumped. They all vanished under the black sea, in the glimmering surf. A few fought their way back up, without weapons, and stumbled or swam after him. Hector looked for the CHAD, but the robot had sunk like a stone. He waved the platoon forward, then faced front again.
The beach was blazing with what looked like a hundred Fourth of Julys going off at once. Laser beams searched here and there through the smoke, focused to burn out retinas and flash-sear skin. Hector clawed his way around the stalled armored carrier, ducking almost too late as the forward machine gun began firing, then began wading toward the distant beach, angling left in case the guy in the gunner’s seat depressed his aim too far. He remembered his rifle and lifted it above his head, then changed his mind and lowered it to shield his chest.
Tracers floated lightly above the surf, like fiery fairies. The din built as the flashes ashore turned blinding white flecked with sparks of blue. A familiar smell freighted the wind. The stench of explosives and burning vegetation.
Two hundred yards out from the beach the sandy bottom dropped away under his boots and he went under again. This time he felt heavier. Or weaker. Underwater the sounds were muffled. Bullets went pock and zzzip. He fought free of his mag pouch, leaving him only the thirty rounds in his rifle. Came up again, gasping for air, vision hazed and burning with red floaters he couldn’t tell from tracers or lasers or something damaged inside his eyes.
Shallower now … close to the beach … he turned again and saw their heads, helmets gone, most of them, black heads bobbing in the surf. Others, just corpses, each wave body-surfing the dead on toward the land they’d striven to reach in such agony in their last moments.
This was worse than Itbayat. Much worse than Taiwan. The enemy had learned from those defeats. He was putting everything into decimating the first wave, hoping that discouraged the rest, persuaded them to go to ground or retreat.
Hector staggered forward, each impossible step consuming him. The sand seethed at his knees. Then at the tops of his boots. A wave rolled in and shoved him forward, almost toppled him onto his face. He staggered on, boots digging and slipping in wet sand.
Then at last found dry ground, hard footing. He forced a last floundering run from quivering waterlogged limbs and stumbled thirty yards to higher ground. He hit the deck and hugged the sand for a long time; seconds, minutes, sucking air. Until he was able at last to breathe, get his head up again, and peer around.
To their left flank, beach houses, a development, burning fiercely, the flames squirming shadows all along the beach, smoke blowing low and dense along the surf-line. Farther away, the white towering of high-rise apartments or hotels. Now and again something exploded like fireworks, throwing green sparks and heavy black smoke. Beyond them blue flashes rippled steadily, like a string of giants’ firecrackers. To the right, a rise, MG fire flickering from it. Along the beach lay a dark wave of stranded troops, a little above the high water line, like seawrack cast up by a storm. Behind them floated the dark hulks of wrecked, burning APCs and landing craft. Zeroed on by the enemy’s artillery and missiles, it didn’t look like a single piece of armor had made it to the beach. Above them, the threatening buzz of quadcopter drones, imminent as hornets.
Hector hoped the drones were friendlies. For the moment, at least, they didn’t seem to be firing on the marines. He was timing the muzzle-flicker ahead, waiting for the belt to run out, when a cicada buzzed against his throat. He flinched away, then recalled: the detection alarm. Silent, so it didn’t give away your position.
“Gas,” he yelled, and the cry, in English, went along the wrack of troops. The men rolled over in the sand, pulling frantically at mask carriers, fitting black goggle faces over their own. Others, maskless, fought their comrades for them. Rifle butts rose and fell. Men scrambled up and bolted back toward the sea. The MG cut them down as they ran. They flung out their arms as they were hit, falling in splashes in the red firelight to lie at rest at last in the embracing ocean.
Hector was too occupied to care. The mask first. He snapped the soft curved rubber over his face and sucked. Tight. Ripped open the protective suit. Pulled it on in a sort of controlled frenzy. It had to go on fast. But it was easy to tear. Finally he sealed the last seam.
The belt ran out and the gun ahead fell silent. He grabbed his rifle and jumped up, or at least lurched up, and ran along the line of troops. Looking for someone, anyone, who’d gotten some weapon ashore heavier than a rifle. To his astonishment another trooper rose too and ran four paces behind him. Private Slamet, still alive, still with him, faceless in the black mask, helmetless like Hector, but with the hood pulled up over his head.
Hector found a beefy Papuan Javelin gunner with his missile and tube still bagged in green invasion plastic. He’d lost his ammo bearer, but Hector clapped him on the shoulder and signed follow me.
Leaving Slamet to organize covering fire, he and the gunner rushed and dropped, sweating and suffocating in masks and suits, until they were behind the wrecked pier. They rested for two minutes, panting, then worked their way toward a parking lot.
Asphalt, good. Hector kept peering to the right, looking for another bunker or post or maybe a tank, because you set up for interlocking fire, but the prep must have taken it out because he couldn’t see any. The noise was still rumbling away, flashing and quaking the ground, but it had moved inland, walking ahead of them. Good.
A roar in the sky, and heavies came in, shaking the earth in russet flashes all along the beach. He reeled back off the lot and burrowed into the sand as the salvos walked over him, tearing apart his mind. He screamed into the black din. Again. Harder. He couldn’t remember who’d told him to scream. The heavies in Taiwan … this was even worse. The noise was catastrophic. Objects wheeled through the air. Bodies. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in the sand. Dirt cascaded over him. He screamed. The cicada chirruped at his collarbone. He was starting to salivate. He pulled the mask tighter and extracted two injectors from his pocket. He jammed one into the Papuan’s round ass as the man lay ahead of him, the other into his own thigh. He kneaded it, distributing the injection.
When the barrage slackened his ears rang so loud it sounded almost quiet. He pushed off the dirt, along with something heavy and soft he didn’t want to look at, and low-crawled up onto the lot again. The Papuan was behind him now, both men low-crawling for all they were worth.
A huge crater, a smoking hole. They skirted it, creeping from abandoned car to car, the wrecks perforated like rural stop signs, gas tanks burning with a sputtering roar, until he spotted what might be a clear line of sight to the bunker. But even on a paved surface, the backblast would highlight their position. And he was still edgy about drones. But they might get off one shot.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, then shook his head to clear them under the mask. He was weeping. Drooling. The cicadas chirruped, chirruped. Dawn was darkening back into night. His lungs felt like dishrags being wrung out. His mother’s strong hands, wringing out a wet towel. He coughed, trying to get a clear breath. But fluid seemed to be bubbling up nonstop from a thick spring deep in his lungs. His hands shook violently. He dropped the rifle, groped for it, dropped it again. Dug for another autoinjector and jammed it into his other leg.
A CAS drone screamed over. For a second he thought it might be after the bunker, but it screamed on inland, weaving between burning buildings until it suddenly exploded in a gigantic fireball that sputtered with red sparks and spun from the sky in a spiraling pinwheel of white smoke lit from within as if welders were at work. Hector hadn’t seen what had shot it down, but there might be enemy troops over there, ahead.
The darkness receded a little. He clawed down a halfway decent breath. Then another. The tightness was still there, but he could get air past it. For now.
Okay, the bunker … bent double, they rolled behind a white SUV with bullet holes riddling the doors. He tilted a side-view mirror and spotted the bunker. A line-of-sight shot into its firing slit? Even if the Javelin missed, fragments and blast might take out the gunners. If there was a human in there. This could be automatic, or teleoperated. Maybe overhead mode would be better. He positioned the big Papuan behind the rear quarter of the vehicle and got him set up. He checked their rear, slapped the guy’s shoulder, and yelled, “Fire in the hole!”
The Papuan fired. Click. The missile blooped out and his upper body jerked back, absorbing the initial recoil. The projectile lofted twenty yards, then the booster ignited with a white flare and it powered upward.
Rocket-smoke shrouded them, but not for long. Hector grabbed the guy and pulled him up into a trot away, headed for a yellow dumpster on the far side of the lot. As they ran, wheezing, staggering, he glanced back over one shoulder, through the warped fogging lenses. He tensed. The fucker was heading off downrange … no … it reoriented itself a hundred yards up, twisting in the air. At the same moment a long burst from the bunker found the SUV. Projectiles ripped through the passenger compartment, shredding it. Glass blew out, and the car rocked on its springs before exploding into flame.
Above it the missile, still tailed by white fire, straightened, plunged. Exploded in a modest distant thud on the roof of the bunker. Gray smoke and dust mushroomed up. The gun fell silent.
With a cheer, a line of soggy-uniformed, sand-frosted troops in masks and suits surged up off the beach, yelling and firing. They stormed the bunker, swarming to the firing slit and triggering magazine after magazine inside. Tossing in grenades. Hector panted, bent over, elbows on his knees, drooling, wanting to yell at them to stop wasting ammo, but couldn’t force the words out. And he’d lost his fucking terp back somewhere after the parking lot.
The colonel had shown him the division plan earlier. After taking the beach, they had about a klick to the firstphase line, “Bullet,” on the far side of a north–south road and along the crest of a series of defensible rises. Stop there and wait for air support to clear any obstacles, then advance up the road to the reservoir. There they’d link up with the Vietnamese, who were landing on the far side of the main base. Meanwhile the follow-on waves were supposed to be bringing in reinforcements, med teams, ammo.
But looking out to sea, which surged now a sullen and dreary black under a first light dulled by smoke the color of an unsheathed bayonet, he didn’t see any armor. Other than the burning hulks. And without them, how could there be any follow-on waves?
Which meant they were on their own. Stranded. Still, they had to press ahead. He kept looking for officers, but if any had made it ashore they were keeping their heads down. Blending with their troops. Not exactly inspiring leadership. But to be fair, this was the first time these guys had been under fire. Things had been pretty fucking confused on Itbayat too. The first time the Corps had hit a defended beach since Inchon.
But nobody else seemed to be taking charge, so he waved together whoever would follow and led them down a depression with an open culvert at the bottom. They passed two light tanks, enemy 105s with cage armor. Something had burned through one hull, gutting it from the inside. It was still smoking so he snaked his guys around it, giving it a wide berth in case it felt like exploding. The other looked undamaged, but didn’t move. One of the hatches was open. He considered manning it, trying to get it rolling, but he was no tanker. They grenaded it and moved on.
They seemed to sort-of get his hand signals, so he vee’d his fingers to show them: Form wedges. Where the fuck was the private … he sure could use a translator … finally he gave up and just trotted on at point, keeping a sharp eye out for cover and defilade.
The detector had stopped vibrating. He took a knee and tugged the mask off. Coughed, spat, wiped his eyes, and scrubbed dirt over the rubber. Noticing, as he stowed it back into its carrier, that a pack of the disk-drones had picked them up and were escorting them on both flanks. “Cool,” he whispered. A large air support UAV howled over, heading inland, and he felt even better. If only the CHADs had made it ashore … or the armor … but they had Javelins and the Belgian MGs and air and drones. They could still make it.
Close with and destroy the enemy. The gut-level credo the Corps drummed into you from boot camp on.
But where was contact? Where were the fucking Chinese?
The king fucks the queen.
He was still thinking this when ahead of them something … assembled itself, as far as he could tell, from beneath the ground itself. It straightened, grew, lurching erect, like strung-together sticks picked up by a puppeteer, and began striding around their flank on long spiderlike legs. It vented a white plume that blew down toward them. Some of the Indos fumbled their masks back on again. Hector decided to wait. It smelled sulfury. Antitargeting smoke. He crouched in the ruins of a bungalow, peering at the thing. Nada. Just glimpses of something large lurching around out there. The Papuan said some urgent-sounding words, crouched beside him. He’d discarded the empty launcher and picked a rifle up somewhere.
Hector fought the desire to pull the world down on his head and cower. More and more Indos reached him, sprinting in short bursts down into the depression. “Shit,” he muttered. He was gathering them into a perfect target. Whatever that thing was, or if enemy observation spotted them, one mortar shell would take everyone out. He kept trying to signal the Indos out onto the flanks, but they only huddled, as if in shock. Sure. The noise, for one thing. His own ears rang with ghost sirens. But he’d been on a battlefield before.
A taller guy he didn’t recognize rolled over to face him. His dirty face was streaked with sweat. “I am Captain Andarwulan. You are the American.” Hector nodded. “What is that thing like spider?”
“I don’t know.”
“We cannot stay here.”
“Ya, pak,” Hector said. “Do you have comms? Connectivity?”
“Nothing works. Jammed. We have to advance. Do you know where?”
Hector pointed where he figured the axis of advance lay. The watery smoke obliterated all sight, as if they floated in some milky netherworld that didn’t really have sharp edges anywhere. “But if we get out of defilade, then what?”
“Then what?” The guy looked expectant.
“That’s what I don’t know,” he shouted, suddenly impatient with this idiot, who seemed even denser than the usual officer.
Adarwulan hesitated, gripping a pistol. A fucking pistol? Hector thought. Seriously.
At that moment his hearing, sorting through the clamor, caught the unmistakable shriek of barrage rockets being launched.
The officer hurled himself to his feet and charged up the slope, yelling and brandishing the handgun. Hector grabbed for him, but hesitated an instant too long. If the meat robot wanted to self-destruct, let it.
Adarwulan stood atop the depression, shouting at his men, waving them forward.
The rockets screamed down, and he vanished in smoke and noise and fire.
This barrage bracketed them, then walked behind them, toward where some of the troops still lay prone, figuring probably they were sheltered. But just from the sound of the projectiles bursting Hector knew even before the detector began chirping. “Gas,” he yelled again. His hands operated independently, jerking the mask out, spreading the thongs, snapping it on again. Around him the Indos were struggling with their protective gear, those who still had it. Those who didn’t crouched as if struck dumb, or scrambled toward the rear. A crackle of fire meant they’d been quickly dealt with.
The lurching thing loomed through the smoke again, it or another like it, and he saw it clear just for a fraction of a second. A sleek, metallic insect-body, teardrop-shaped, with spiky antennas and a dozen bug-eyed oculars spaced around it. Not enough room in there for a man. Autonomous, like the CHADs. A bag or tank slung beneath, from which something was spraying. Needle-thin, only sporadically visible beams shot out from it through the smoke, searching its surroundings. One reached for him and he shrank back, ducking.
When he poked his helmet back up it was striding along on long black legs, many more than it seemed to need, insectile and obscene, the beams fingering the ground around it. Searching for victims. It moved with a dismaying fluid effortlessness even as it jerked from one microdecision to another. Something flashed overhead, spearing downward, but the silvery central body crouched with incredible quickness, hunkering down flat. The missile flashed past and buried itself in the soil before going off, throwing up clods of dirt. Only adding to the din of battle.
As the spider erected itself again Hector got his optic sight on it. He took the slack out of the trigger. But as if sensing the threat, it suddenly wheeled and stalked off, submerging, once more, into the smoke.
Hector stabbed at his cell again but got nowhere. It was all in Indonesian. He was going by guess and topo contours, trying to figure out where the phase line was. A road across their front. Hit that, dig in, wait for reinforcements. Maybe like what they’d done in Korea. Halt, sucker the enemy in, wait for the counterattack. Cut them to pieces with air and drones and arty. Maybe.
Desperately thirsty. Dizzy. Out of injectors now. But they had to keep moving. As soon as the shelling lifted he grabbed the Papuan and a couple others, pulled them to their feet, shoved them forward. Dismasked troops lay convulsing, unpupiled eyes staring up sightlessly as they died. Hector ignored them. He couldn’t help. The others staggered out of the depression after him, their harsh agonized breathing snoring through the masks.
A brick building lay ahead. It was on fire. Smoke blew across a freshly mowed lawn. No … there was a soccer net. Not a lawn. A playing field.
The grass was soft under their boots, powdered with a light coating of gray dust. His breath rasped in his mask, buzzed in his ears. Perspiration fogged his lenses. The cicada chirruped, chirruped.
A body, torn and bleeding. Indo uniform. A pistol in the outstretched hand. The captain. Hector stepped over him and trudged on toward the building. Keeping the sun on his right. It shone ruddy and baleful through the drifting smoke. No one was firing at them. Press on. To the road. Hold the road. No entrenching tools, he hadn’t seen one since the beach, so they’d have to make do with rifle butts and hands. He glanced back, alert for more of the spidery stalkers, but the smoke eddied past blank and ashen in opaque curtains. Tracers arched above it like blazing softballs. The stalkers were loose back there.
The Papuan buckled like a collapsing tower. He lay with chest heaving. Hector grabbed him by the web gear and pulled him to his feet again. Weepy brown eyes, terrified behind plastic. The other Indos stared at Hector. They were clumping up again. Making targets. He motioned spread out with an angry abrupt gesture.
They reached the red-brick building and took cover, crouching under the windows. Smoke blew across the field and blotted out the goals. Hector liked brick. Brick would stop a bullet. His mouth was stuffed with steel wool. Each time he tried to breathe powerful fists twisted his chest. The cicadas buzzed, panicked, dying. He didn’t want to leave cover. But they had to press on. He let them rest for a couple minutes, then crept along the wall.
A bus was parked in front of the building. A bright orange bus with yellow and black piping. The engine was running but no one was around. No. A woman was slumped in the driver’s seat. Motionless. Unmarked.
Hector followed his rifle’s muzzle around the front fender. The grass between the bus and the school was … carpeted. For a moment he couldn’t see anything but a patchwork quilt. A parti-colored rug unrolled on the gray grass.
Then he made out faces.
They were very small. He stared confused before his slowed brain assembled the colors into what they really were.
The children lay in windrows, ragged lines, as if they’d been in queues when they fell. Some were holding hands. All black-haired. Wearing colorful rain slickers. The boys were in blue. The girls in pink. By then he was walking in among them. The bodies crunched and yielded under his boots. He stepped on a pastic pencil box with a colorful cartoon. They all had the same pencil boxes. The Papuan was whimpering under his mask, making mewling sounds. The cicadas chirruped, chirruped.
Meat.
Robots.
No. Children.
What had killed them? Gas, or the violet shells?
He didn’t know. Didn’t care.
Do you hate the Chinese? The twisted, raving face of his boot camp DI. Brady. Do you hate the Chinese, Private Ramos?
I hate the fucking Chinese, sir.
I will stick my bayonet into them and blow their guts over my boots.
Some of the kids had been carrying plastic water bottles. Hector bent to scoop one up. The bottle sloshed half full. Other than raging thirst, he didn’t feel anything now. Just an immense blankness. A void. The total absence of fear. Of terror. Even of rage. He pushed up the mask and sucked at the red plastic bottle.
He was a CHAD now. Autonomous. A mechanism. Hollow. Filled with swirling smoke. Assembled of muscle and bone and blood that very soon now would stop operating. The only meaning lay in the phase line. Bullet. Phase Line Bullet. Ahead. Reach it.
The cicadas chirruped, chirruped. He resealed his mask and threw the empty bottle away. The world darkened, tilting through dirty lenses. His lungs warped in his chest. He drooled and gagged and sweated. His bowels and bladder loosened and released.
He reeled forward over the carpeted dead, through the blowing smoke, gaze nailed to the axis of advance.
They passed the still idling bus and left the school behind. Trotting through streets now. Hector threw flankers out. Small houses. Tile roofs. All deserted. Corpses sprawled near the doors. One lay tangled in a toppled bicycle. Some of the houses were on fire. Others looked undamaged, pristine. Modest homes with little neatly kept gardens.
He led his improvised squad in slow staggering dashes from house to house, scanning behind and around them for the machines, for hidden snipers, machine guns. But aside from the spiders there was no resistance. Just smoke. And gas. As if the enemy had pulled back. Were refusing combat.
More bodies. These white-haired, spindly-legged, tumbled in a hedge, savagely torn, as if minced by huge blades while trying to run. Battle rumbled all around the horizon, hidden from the marines by a shifting curtain of smoke. Violet flashes deep in the murk.
Hector feels nothing. His chest is cast of solid pain. His eyes stream. He spits drool from a scorched mouth. Shapes shift within the smoke, striding about. They cast long mucus-yellow shadows from the bloody sun. A loose formation of silvery disks whirrs over a hundred feet up. He looks for cover, but they hum on inland, ignoring them. Far above, contrails scar the sky.
He stumbles across a lifeless land. Desolate, numb, hollow, still gripping his rifle, coughing and sobbing into his mask. And the cicadas chirrup, on and on, without pause.