John Ringo: The Hero

Gorilla huffed as he rose and ran. Oh seven hundred had come too early. His oh six hundred alarm call even earlier. He wasn’t hung over, but he was cranky and fatigued even after a shot of drugs to wake him and stabilize his metabolism. He’d known better than to go drinking before an early call, and he’d done it anyway. He promised himself he’d never do it again, and knew he was lying. It was a character flaw in an otherwise very strong personality. He hadn’t found a woman, though he did just often enough that he’d keep abusing himself like that for the unlikely chance of doing so.

So here it was, not yet noon and he was sprinting uphill, in assault suit and extra armor, humping a blocky pack full of killer bots and sensor bots, a sharp rock in his boot top stabbing his calf and sweat greasing him.

A warning flashed in his visor, and he dropped, skipping behind a thick bush and dodging whipping thorns. To his left, Gun Doll opened up with her assault cannon as she took a position behind a rock. The noise had three frequencies — the basso roar of the firing, the harmonic note of the rapid rate of fire, and the hypersonic cracks of the projectiles. Under those was the whine of the mechanism, barely audible, and the pitch shifting caused by the recoil mechanism varying slightly. The weapon wasn’t as accurate as Dagger’s rifle, but then, at twelve thousand rounds per minute at full rate, it didn’t need to be. She ducked again to confuse anyone as to her whereabouts.

Gorilla snapped a ball from his kit, tossed it gently out in front into the matted grass on the slope and ignored it. It unrolled into a large insectoid bot and crawled forward. He didn’t need to see it; he’d seen thousands of them. It ran a wire behind itself, so he could read its sensors with less chance of detection than via a beam. Meanwhile, he was programming killerbiobots because he knew they’d be needed.

Massive fire sounded right after that flash he’d gotten, ranging from pops and cracks to outright roars, screams and booms. A warning flashed across his visor. “ALARM TRIGGERED. RED TEAM GYSGT TIRDAL. ASSAULT REPULSED, FAILED. POINT BLUE TEAM.”

“Oh, blast the little freak,” Gorilla muttered under his breath. He got another message, “CONTINUE WITH EXERCISE FROM FAILURE POINT.” He nodded. There was no point in stopping; they were here to learn. They’d pretend nothing had gone wrong, move forward and keep trying. As they’d have to evade the Blue Team defenders, now that they, the Red Team aggressors, were positively located, it would be that much harder. Blue was likely to score several more “wins” as the scenario adapted, before final no-joy was called. And at a case of beer per point, it was going to get expensive.

“That clumsy Darhel can buy the beer,” Gorilla muttered.

An incoming message from Shiva said, “Gorilla, can you get us some distractions, please?” Shiva was still calm, even in the face of incoming swarms of dumb and seeking projectiles and “simulated” explosions that still shook the ground and slapped at the air.

“Way ahead of you, Sarge,” Gorilla replied. He inhaled a deep breath, smelling scorched earth and metallic explosive residue, got a good map image and pressed a key.

Four of his small killerbiobots charged forward. Each was loaded with a kilo of hyper explosive (simulated). He took in his split screen in a glance, panning across all four “eyeballs” in the drones. They darted and bounced through the brush just like rabbits, which was no surprise; they’d been genetically engineered from that form. As they hit the five hundred meter mark from the defenders, he cut them loose to seek their own martyrdom and launched three flyer forms. Engineered from Islendian peregrinches, they flew out from him in three directions, and at randomly selected moments erupted straight up. They headed over the enemy and stooped into steep dives. Each was rated at .5 kilos and had a four shot canister weapon that fired a swarm of self-seeking flechettes. That done, he glanced again at the sensor bot he had trundling under it all and slugged its eyes’ image to the rest of the team. He turned back to his controls and aimed the already orbiting swarm of killerbees in on terminal, across the line that was the best guess for enemy troops.

His screen was twinned in miniature to the captain and the sarge. They could see what was happening if they chose or if their AI decided the info was important, or as, now, when Gorilla pinged them with a red flash. He had two more bots approaching the line and “created a distraction” by the simple expedient of blowing them in place. As the enemy shifted for cover, the sharp sensors on the flyers caught the movement. The swarm was slower, as it had to buzz the information electronically around its collective intellect.

It worked, sort of. Interdiction fire ripped the flyers from the sky. The killerbees took damage, but each “death” only slowed their thoughts, not stopped them. Two of the rabbits disappeared under fire, but the third “exploded” mightily. If all was well, at least two Reds were casualties.

Then an alarm shrieked in Gorilla’s ears, a shock tingled his spine, and he said, “Aw, shit,” and joined the Darhel, who had already been hit again, in simulated death. He’d been too busy running drones to move. Five seconds was all it took sometimes.

But his distraction had worked; the rest of the team had moved and gotten hid again. Now Gun Doll was hammering away, Thor was providing cross fire with his grav-rifle on full, punctuated with raps from the underslung grenade launcher as fast as he could trigger. His fire stopped as he “died,” but Shiva and Ferret were around the other flank. One of Dagger’s seeker rounds ripped into a grav-boosted dive over a rock, and the captain tossed some cover fire around it.

The Blue Team fire was much reduced. They were definitely taking casualties. Shiva died, which left Dagger as NCOIC.

Dagger, being Dagger, didn’t bother with his remaining team of Gun Doll and Ferret, but just kept shooting. It was good shooting. Still. “Dagger, what do we do?” Doll asked.

“Keep on ’em,” was the taciturn reply. It was encouraging, but not very informative.

Gorilla sighed. His last two bios, both rabbits, were bouncing easily as targets. Before he “died” he’d been hoping he could backtrack the shots that would inevitably kill them.

It sort of worked. One was shot, Dagger counterfired, and another Blue died. The other bio was ignored. The AI deemed its blast insufficient for the cover involved. Gun Doll laid down a blanket of fire until she got swatted. An incoming flyer nabbed Dagger, which left the captain with a punch gun and Ferret with a gauss rifle against fortified troops with support weapons and drones.

“I call!” Bell Toll said. “Well, that was succulent.”

Dagger was talking at once, which was an indication of just how angry he was. “Tirdal, you ever take a step without tripping something?” It had been the second exercise of three today where the Darhel had blown their cover. The third time he’d been slow to return fire.

Shiva said, “Dagger, did you forget you were Fireteam Leader when I bought it?” His voice was still conversational.

“Enough, everyone,” Bell Toll said. “Let’s go watch the after action. And don’t sweat it. We worked well as a team, at least. Up until close to the end.” He didn’t mention Dagger, but the thought was clear to even non-sensats. “And even with that, we inflicted one point six to one casualties against a defended position.”

A bounce pod arrived to pick them up, dropping down on Shiva’s beacon. It descended fast, a dot in the sky becoming an inverted cone that seemed to crash to the ground, its recoil mechanism preventing it from bouncing. They clambered aboard the shelf around the bottom, each backing into a hollow that mostly fit their gear. Gorilla was too tall and had to squat, knees bent. He’d ride it that way the entire trip, swearing colorfully about the machine.