Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

In an RPG, the friction that caused the spark was created by motion. Specifically, the rotation of the warhead. It launched, it spun, after four and a half seconds it activated the piezoelectric fuse. Then, detonation.

Which was where the monoworm came in. It taught the hedgehog, itself powered by electricity, how to generate a charge precisely simulating that of the piezoelectric backup fuse. Of brief duration, the charge would be directed at the onboard rocket warheads. And create sparks.

Without launch.

Without motion.

Without rotation.

Eight tiny sparks. Eight warheads, each of which was loaded with over two pounds of high-yield plastic explosive and could punch through three inches of solid steel. All set to blow at Earl’s command when it reached the lane.

Ingenious.

Fernandez was thinking that if Howard was conscious, he would be pissing vinegar at him.

And probably he’d be justified.

The sergeant could see Earl racing toward him, bearing directly toward the lane between Percy Two and Percy Three.

From a soldier’s perspective, he’d been dumb. There was nothing he could do to stop the ’hog from outside the vehicle. The autons wouldn’t open fire without his direct command. They did not learn, and they did not make decisions for themselves like hedgehogs. They were, in reality, semi autons programmed to execute specific tasks assigned by a human.

And he had abandoned their controls.

Jumped out the vehicle’s hatch.

Dumb.

The ’hog drew closer, its big Ma Deuce silent. That worried Fernandez more than if it had been firing away at him, though he wasn’t sure why.

He and Wasserman pressed against the wagon’s rear fender with the colonel slumped between them. Then he realized the four evacuees who’d carried the stretchers inside were reaching their hands out the rear entrance, doing what they could to help. Themselves walking wounded, they were reaching for Howard .

He glanced over at the private.

“We’re lifting him in!” he shouted. “With me?”

Wass nodded. “Say when.”

Fernandez took a breath. He didn’t want to just shove Howard through the hatch. He didn’t know how badly he was injured and worried he might do him internal damage. But they couldn’t afford to be gentle.

“Okay,” he said. “Now!”

They heaved him up. The evacs grabbed hold of Howard’s sleeves, the back of his shirt, his belt, whatever they could get their hands on, tugging and pulling and hoisting his body off their shoulders. Fernandez pushed until he was all the way through the entrance, then turned to Wasserman.

“Let’s move, bro,” he said and started around to the front hatch.

Wasserman nodded and quickstepped behind him, shooting a cautious glance up the lane toward the ’hog.

And suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

“Sarge,” he said, “what’s it doing?”

Fernandez held up in front of him. Half turned to look.

The ’hog was hurtling toward the lane faster than he’d ever seen one of the robots move. He guessed it was about a hundred twenty yards away. At the rate of speed it was going, it would reach their position in seconds. Before they could get into the vehicle’s cabin, let alone drive away.

What’s it doing? He still didn’t know. But he assumed it wasn’t anything good.

His heart thudded. The robot kept coming. He thought suddenly about the kamikaze fliers in the sky. He thought suddenly that Earl’s barreling, head-on speed reminded him of suicide drivers in Afghanistan. The two thoughts came together in his mind, and he understood that the ’hog was going to take itself out—and take them along with it.

Then he heard the noise coming from the darkness behind it, glanced past the bot, and felt his eyes gape.

“Ohhh, mama, this takes the cake,” he blurted.

Sergeant Julio Victor Fernandez didn’t know where the Jolt came from. But that wasn’t his main concern.

He seemed to see it all in herky-jerky slow motion. The JLTV bounding up behind the hedgehog, coming on, coming on, coming on seemingly out of nowhere on a direct collision course with it and then vaulting up the final few feet and slamming into Earl only ten yards outside the lane.

There was a loud crackling crunch like metal in a giant compactor as they were entangled in a violent collision, the Jolt’s front grill bending and warping, the ’hog buckling and twisting, the warheads aboard it exploding with a sudden burst of thunder, light, and heat. The thunder clapping out a pressure wave that ruptured both of Fernandez’s eardrums. The light glaring into his eyes and leaving him momentarily blinded. The fiery furnace heat baking his forehead and cheeks.

Lifted three feet off the ground on an orange toadstool of flame, thrashing and twitching in its terminal convulsions, Earl slammed down onto the Jolt’s crumpled hood, rolled back over it into the windshield, and smashed halfway through the glass to lodge between the burning driver’s and passenger seats.

Wasserman stood there a moment, stunned, black smoke pouring over him through the lane. It stung his eyes and nostrils and crawled deep down into his throat.

“Holy shit, Sarge!” he said. “What just happened here?”

Fernandez looked at the private through thick ropes of smoke, more reading his lips than actually hearing him. His ears hurt and were ringing loudly.

“We can figure it out inside,” he said and nodded at the C&C.

For a second Mario stared at the leaping, churning flames thirty feet away, amazed by what he’d just seen with his own eyes. Asking himself basically the same thing Wasserman had just asked Fernandez. He understood that the hedgehog had been headed toward the Pumas to do damage, understood that it was out of its robotic head, understood it had been hijacked so it would turn on the humans it was supposed to protect...

But he had not expected it to blow sky-high when the Jolt slammed into it. Get knocked off course, absolutely. Maybe, he’d hoped, get trashed in the collision. But to blow like that...

He was wondering how it could have occurred when Laura came trotting up to him.

“Mario!” she said. “You did it!”

“I guess,” he said, unsure exactly what he’d done.

“You guess?” She nodded toward the fire, its reddish light playing over her features. “ Eres fantastico! You are my hero!”

He looked at her. “Really?”

“That you’re a hero?”

He shook his head. “No, you didn’t say a . You said my .”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said, ‘You are my h—’”

Mario broke off. He could hear something above them—and noticed Laura did, too. They looked up simultaneously.

The fliers were gathering overhead. However many of them were left. There had to be ten, fifteen, coming together above them.

Mario’s heartbeat accelerated. He lowered his eyes to Laura, saw the terror on her face, and scooped her into his arms, pulling her close, clutching her tightly against his chest.

They had nowhere to run. Nowhere to take cover. They were trapped out here in the open field.

“Laura, I want to marry you,” he said.

The fliers dove.

Fernandez stared hard at his forward display as the Pumas barreled across the parking area, all four vehicles falling back into a wedge formation as they rolled toward the western edge of the ’Burbs. He recognized the uniformed kid up ahead as a 24 Delta named Mario Perez. The woman wrapped in his arms also looked familiar...from the base exchange, he thought. Why they’d driven out here in the Jolt, and how they turned it into a demolition-derby vehicle on its last romp, and when they’d gotten so chummy were questions for another time.