Extinction

-15-

The hovertanks were big and bulky-looking. When puffed out to carry extra troops and hide the laser turret each one had on top, they were about fifteen feet high and thirty feet long. They looked like shiny, teardrop-shaped motor homes from the fifties. But these motor homes had no wheels, no windows, and floated about a yard off the ground.

An hour before dawn, I loaded my deceptive vehicles with every marine I had and we fled the camp. The interior of my hovertank was dimly-lit and thrummed softly as we traveled along the road. The scraping branches sometimes squealed against the thin hull. My men looked around, thumbing their beam-projectors nervously. The marines didn’t like the vehicles, but I found myself strangely comfortable inside them. It was lot like being inside the Alamo again. I wondered if I would ever build a new ship like the Alamo and fly her.

I chuckled to myself. Here I was, reminiscing about that liquid-steel witch of a ship, the same machine that had heartlessly killed my family members. Was I crazy, or was it the world that had gone mad?

Like a pod of silvery whales, the hovertanks followed an overgrown road that led to the coast in single file. I led the way to the coast. We crashed along, the thickest branches denting in the stretched skin of my vehicles while we brushed aside about a thousand smaller twigs. The dents worked themselves out slowly, the walls folding back into place. It reminded me of watching an air mattress fill out when you pump it up.

I had time, along the way, to wonder if Kerr was right. What if the Blues really were all dead? It would explain a lot. Possibly their machines roved upon a thousand worlds, following their programming to examine or destroy other species. One group, the Nanos, were trying to save “biotics” from the other group, the warrior Macros. If the Blues were extinct, and that was the hidden truth behind these wars, I found it depressing. It was all pointless and terrifying, and humanity was caught up in the middle of it. We were ants at the feet of struggling giants. Pawns caught up in an argument between incomprehensible, idiot gods.

I shook my head and rubbed my face. A few last spots itched where Crow had hit me. There were times in life for introspection and pondering unknowns. This wasn’t one of them. I looked up and noticed we were breaking free of the tree line and the hovertanks were picking up speed, sliding down a gentle slope to the beach. Soon, we would be gliding over the waves and would be able to increase our speed.

I’d named my hovertank the Patton. Crow had named his the Napoleon. I had wondered about his name choice briefly. I supposed it made as much sense as any name.

I watched the screen I’d set up on the Patton’s forward wall. My tank was at the point of the formation. Once we were over the ocean, I ordered the vehicle to turn northward and head around the island, hugging the coastline.

“Riggs?” said the ship, relaying Crow’s voice. We’d dispensed with the business of opening channels. Unless we wanted a private conversation, anything we directed the tanks to transmit would be heard by all of them.

“Riggs here,” I said.

“Colonel, I’m giving you operational command of this taskforce. Napoleon out.”

Very kind of him, I thought to myself drily. We’d already decided I was running the tactical ops back at camp, if only because I’d invented these crazy things. I knew the real reason behind his announcement, of course. Crow wanted to be seen publicly as the man behind the scenes, the real seat of power. I rolled my eyes.

“Thank you, Admiral. Now tankers, set your vehicles to auto-follow one another in a diamond formation. You are to maintain auto-follow mode unless we are engaged.”

I watched the screen until I saw they’d taken on the directed formation. It took longer that it should have, but our pilots were very green. I decided not to chew out anyone.

“It’s time to reconfigure our vehicles and unlimber our primary weapons. Order your tanks to reconfigure to sea transport setup now. Report back when reconfiguration is complete.”

I turned and ordered the Patton to switch to sea-transport configuration. This would melt away the conical hump of metal on its back, revealing the big beam-unit that rode there. We would be armed, but still keep the current bloated shape. Our tanks still looked like ships, but we were armed with the equivalent of a large laser battery mounted on top. Essentially, we were now mobile versions of the laser turrets we’d set up to protect the camp. I couldn’t switch into the full combat configuration, which was smaller and sleeker with thicker armored walls. The interior would be too small for my troops in combat mode. If I gave that order while my troops were inside they would be crushed and squeezed out like rabbit pellets into the ocean.

I ordered everyone to activate their turrets and put them into auto-defense mode. The firing algorithms were the one thing I wasn’t too worried about. I’d taken the time to have the brainboxes from the stationary turrets back at the camp upload their neurological targeting algorithms to the new fire-control boxes. These turrets should be as good at targeting as the stationary turrets had been. In fact, their performance should be identical, except they still had to learn to compensate for being on a moving platform. I felt like having the guns test themselves on trees and boulders as we glided past them, but restrained the urge. It would improve their aim, but I didn’t want to advertise to anyone that we were armed. Not just yet.

For the first time, I relaxed a fraction. The plan had worked so far. The enemy could have hit us when we were bloated and weaponless. My pregnant metal balloons would have popped easily, and we could not have shot down so much as a single incoming RPG. Now, with our lasers up and tracking, we at least had a good chance of taking out projectiles and engaging any attacking ships or planes.

We had our lasers out, and were no longer helpless. But the hovertanks were not yet in battle-mode. In that configuration, I’d taught the tanks to take on sleek lines with angled sides that I hoped would take a hit from incoming fire without buckling. Their hulls would deflate dramatically too, leaving room inside only for a few men. The hulls, thus collapsed, would be denser, thicker and better able to operate as armor and deflect incoming fire.

“Patton, adjust your screen. Increase the scope out to two hundred miles. Reduce contact size accordingly, but inflate small contacts to be at least one quarter of an inch in size, regardless of scale.”

“Acknowledged,” rumbled the tank. It had a throaty, masculine voice. I smiled to myself every time I heard it. I had insisted on this detail, but I’m not sure why. Maybe I’d become punch-drunk working on them all night, with only a few catnaps taken while waiting for one element or another to be finished. Whatever the reason, all the hovertanks had the voices of gruff, old men.

The wall before me rippled. I could see the coastline now. Soon, as we reached the northern shores at the top of the Andros Island, we would swing to the right and head east. We would follow the beaches eastward, then finally turn south. If we made it down the coast as far as the main camp I’d be very happy. I wasn’t sure if we would make it that far without being blown out of the water, but if we did, I figured the other side was in for a rude surprise.

We almost made it in the end. We cruised in formation without incident, and made our planned to turn southward on the final approach to our goal. We’d been cruising at nearly one hundred knots, and the miles went by quickly. In the east, directly ahead, I knew the sun was rising. It had to be lovely, cool and bright pink outside.

The planes came in from the east. One contact separated into six, and they were moving much too quickly at that range to be ships. I questioned the Patton, and learned they were skimming less than a hundred feet above the waves. Maybe they thought they would be invisible at that low altitude, with the sunrise coming up behind them, blindingly bright.

But the artificial eyes of my hovertanks weren’t easily blinded.