The Moscow Offensive

One

Moscow was burning.

Fires glowed orange-red around the horizon in all directions. Each blaze showed where long-range standoff weapons launched by Polish and Iron Wolf fighter-bombers and drones had slammed home — obliterating Russian surface-to-air missile batteries, military airfields, air defense radars, and command posts.

Sun-bright flashes rippled across the night sky, lighting up a spaghetti-like tangle of wildly corkscrewing smoke trails left by missiles. Blinded by the loss of most of their radars and by waves of electronic jamming and decoys, the city’s surviving air defense units were shooting almost at random, hoping to score lucky hits. It was all they had left to fend off any airborne attackers slashing in to strike Moscow’s center of political and military power, the Kremlin.

But the Russians were too late. Their enemies were already on the ground, well inside their outer defenses.

Vozdvizhenka Street ran almost due west toward the tall red-brick walls and towers surrounding the Kremlin. On one side of the street, three- and four-story buildings housed a mix of cafés, restaurants, shops, and government offices. A wing of the huge Russian State Library ran along the other.

Now wreckage and rubble blocked most of the street. Oily pillars of black smoke curled lazily away from mangled police cars and BTR-82 armored personnel carriers. Bodies were strewn across the cratered pavement. Flames danced eerily inside darkened buildings blown open by high-explosive rounds.

Nothing seemed to be moving.

And then a twelve-foot-tall humanlike machine emerged from the billowing smoke — moving with terrible, almost predatory swiftness. Two arms carried weapons, a 25mm autocannon and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher. More equipment and weapons packs were attached to its long, broad-shouldered torso. A six-sided head studded with sensor panels swiveled intently from side to side, carefully scanning the surrounding streets and buildings.

It was a Cybernetic Infantry Device — a human-piloted combat robot. First developed by a U.S. Army research lab years before, every CID carried more firepower than a conventionally equipped infantry platoon. Protected by highly resistant composite armor, its powered exoskeleton was faster and stronger than any ten men combined. A special haptic interface translated its pilot’s smallest gestures into motion by the exoskeleton, allowing the robot to move with eerie precision and agility.

Very few Russians ever saw a CID up close and most who did died within seconds.

Inside the robot’s cockpit, Brad McLanahan concentrated intently, allowing data gathered by a wide array of passive and active sensors to pour into his mind through a neural link with the CID’s sophisticated computer systems. Red targeting indicators blinked into existence across his displays. Each identified an enemy infantry squad or heavy-weapons team frantically deploying along his axis of advance. They were taking up concealed positions inside buildings, planning to ambush him with machine-gun fire and RPGs as he charged past.

Sorry guys, he thought, you can’t run and you can’t hide. Not from me. The direct link with his sensors, coupled with advanced computer analysis, gave him astonishing situational awareness. It was like being gifted with a god’s-eye view of the world.

With difficulty, Brad fought down a sudden sense of wild, inhuman glee. Piloting one of these Iron Wolf Squadron combat robots was an incredible thrill ride. You couldn’t help feeling an almost godlike rush of power, perception, and speed. But that way lay madness… and death.

CIDs were tough… but they weren’t invincible. Some of his friends had found that out the hard way.

C’mon, McLanahan, get your head back in the game, Brad growled to himself. The Russian soldiers scurrying across his path to the Kremlin were off balance, shocked by this sudden attack and their horrendous losses. They were ready to break. But going in half-cocked was just a way to get killed.

“Wolf One to Wolf Six and Wolf Two,” he said aloud, opening a secure channel to the other Iron Wolf Squadron war machines committed to this operation. “I’m roughly four hundred meters from the ramp to the Troitskaya Tower gate. Standing by.”

“Six copies,” the laconic voice of Colonel Wayne “Whack” Macomber answered through his headphones. “I’ve got the right flank.”

“Two copies, Wolf One. I am in position to guard your left flank,” a clear, crisp female voice said a heartbeat later. “Submit we stop pissing around and finish this before the Russians fully wake up. Even they will not run around like idiots forever.”

Brad couldn’t help smiling. In combat, Major Nadia Rozek was tough, fearless, and intensely focused. Off duty and out of uniform, she was astonishingly passionate. But no matter where she was, the beautiful, dark-haired Polish special forces officer was a force of nature. When she made up her mind to do something, you either sided with her or you got the hell out of her way. There were no other choices.

“You heard the major, McLanahan,” Macomber murmured.

“Loud and clear, Whack,” Brad agreed. Mentally, he commanded his CID’s battle computer to assign priorities to every Russian defensive position its sensors had identified — ranking them by the danger they represented. In seconds, its software finished work that would have taken a human staff officer minutes. His targeting indicators changed color and shape to match those priorities.

He took a deep breath, getting centered. “Attacking now!”

Without waiting for a response, Brad sprinted up the street — speeding up with every long-legged stride. Dodging around a wrecked personnel carrier, he opened fire on the move. Rounds from his autocannon hammered an upper-floor window ahead, killing a lurking Russian RPG team. Shards of shattered stone and broken glass spilled onto the pavement.

Another icon blinked insistently at the edge of his vision, highlighting a darkened doorway. 12.7mm heavy-machine-gun team, the CID reported. Threat level high.

No shit, Brad thought. Rounds from that Russian MG might not penetrate his armor, but they could definitely damage or destroy his sensors and other equipment. Instantly, he swiveled the robot’s torso and fired a 40mm high-explosive grenade into the opening. It went off with a dazzling flash.

The threat icon disappeared.

Still shooting on the run, he dashed across Mokhovaya Street, hurtled over a row of stubby metal pillars designed to block traffic, and landed in a wide stone-paved plaza. The Kutafya Tower rose ahead. This barbican was the Kremlin’s main public entrance. Past its wrought-iron gates, a gently inclined ramp sloped up to the tall, spired Troitskaya Tower. To the right, treetops rose above a guardrail at the plaza’s edge. That was the Alexandrovsky Garden, a narrow tree-lined stretch of walkways, flower gardens, and lawns occupying what had once been a moat around the old fortress.

“Armored vehicles approaching,” he heard Nadia Rozek report coolly. “T-90 and T-72 main battle tanks. I am engaging.”

CCRRACK! CCRRACK! CCRRACK!

The sky on Brad’s left lit up as she opened fire with her electromagnetic rail gun, flaring bright white with every shot. Propelled at Mach 5, small superdense metal projectiles punched into the enemy tanks and tore right through their armor. One by one, wrecked T-90s and T-72s slewed across the road and shuddered to a stop, spewing smoke and flame.

“Targets destroyed,” Nadia said. “My camouflage worked perfectly. The Russians never saw me.”

Brad nodded in satisfaction. In a brutal, close-quarters urban fight like this, every edge counted. When stationary or moving slowly, the advanced camouflage systems carried by their Sky Masters Aerospace — built Mod IV CIDs rendered them almost invisible to enemy IR sensors and even to the naked eye.

Hundreds of small, hexagonal thermal adaptive tiles overlaid each robot’s armored “skin”—tiles that could change temperature with extraordinary rapidity. Computers could adjust them to mimic the heat signatures of trees, buildings, and other vehicles. In turn, paper-thin electrochromatic plates covered these thermal tiles. Tiny voltage changes could alter the mix of colors displayed by each plate, giving the CID a chameleon-like ability to blend in with its environment. But both camouflage systems lost effectiveness and drained too much power if they were used when moving at high speed.

Like he was now.

Brad charged ahead, shooting up a glass-walled building used for security screening. The Russian soldiers who’d been firing back at him from inside were hurled backward, either blown apart by 25mm autocannon rounds or cut to ribbons by flying glass.

Flashes winked at him from open arches below the Troitskaya Tower’s spire. Rifle bullets thwacked into his CID’s torso, shattering a couple of its thermal tiles. He spun away and ducked into cover behind the ruins of the security building.

“Drone imagery and scans downlinked,” Macomber radioed. “Looks like the bastards are reacting as expected.”

Brad saw new data relayed through his neural interface appear on his displays. Their Iron Wolf assault team had half a dozen small and very stealthy drones orbiting high over the Kremlin — acting as their eyes and ears beyond the reach of their CIDs’ sensors.

At a glance, he could see that the colonel was right. Most of the Kremlin’s elite guard infantry platoons and armored vehicles were deploying to protect the walled compound’s gates. Anyone trying to breach those entrances would be met by a hail of antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and 125mm tank cannon fire. Not even the composite armor on their CIDs would hold up against that kind of firepower.

Which was exactly why Brad had never planned to conduct a real attack on the gates.

With a wolfish grin, he darted away from the Kutafya Tower, swung over the iron railing, and dropped lightly into the tree-lined expanse of the Alexandrovsky Garden. The Russians had bought his feint. Now it was time to show them why they should have been thinking vertically instead.

Brad sprinted south, paralleling the Kremlin wall rising beyond the trees. An antitank missile streaked after him, impacted against the trunk of a lime tree, and blew up. He dodged away and kept running.

Preset targeting icons appeared on the massive redbrick wall. “Engaging Spider-Man protocol,” he said wryly. He raised his autocannon, quickly checking to make sure he had armor-piercing rounds loaded. Then he skidded to a stop and opened fire.

WHANG. WHANG. WHANG. WHANG.

Broken bits of pulverized brick exploded away from the wall. Ragged craters appeared at precisely calculated intervals, rising from near the bottom all the way to the top. Since the Kremlin’s ancient defense barrier ranged between eleven and twenty-one feet thick, none of the rounds penetrated all the way through.

But that’s not the point, now, is it? Brad thought with a silent laugh. Swiftly, he slid the autocannon and grenade launcher back into his weapons pack, flexed the fingers of the CID’s hands, and then started climbing the wall — pulling himself up fast using the craters he’d just blown in the brickwork as handholds.

He reached the battlements and scrambled onto a wide walkway used by guards to patrol the wall. There, he met a disheveled-looking soldier hurrying toward the distant Troitskaya Tower. The Russian was frantically trying to squirm into a bulky set of body armor.

The man stopped dead. He stared up at the huge combat robot in horror. “Mater’ Bozh’ya! Mother of God!”

Apologetically, Brad shook his head. “Sorry, pal. That’s not me.” Then he grabbed the Russian with one big metal hand and tossed him off the wall. Shrieking, the soldier vanished into the darkness. His despairing wail ended in a dull, wet-sounding thud.

Brad winced. That had to hurt.

He blurred back into motion and dropped over the other side, coming down on his CID’s hands and knees inside the Kremlin compound itself. He was in a small courtyard close to the armory.

Without further thought, Brad stood back up and pulled out his rail gun. It powered up with a shrill, high-pitched whine. The autocannon dropped into his other hand.

He looked around for a way out of the courtyard and spotted a big, solid-looking wooden door into the nearest building. One quick kick smashed it open, revealing a short, well-lit corridor.

Bending low, Brad trotted down the corridor. He ignored a gaggle of panicked clerks and officials scrambling out of his path. They were no threat. None of them were armed.

He smashed through another door and came out onto Dvortsovaya Boulevard. The State Kremlin Palace, a massive and horrifically ugly Soviet-era glass-and-concrete edifice, loomed straight ahead. Blowing the snot out of that monstrosity would probably be doing the Russians a favor, Brad decided.

Instead, he swung away and sprinted north toward the Troitskaya Tower gate. His CID burst out into the open, right on the flank of the Russian infantry and armored units deployed to block the gate. Targets crowded his vision.

Brad opened fire with both the rail gun and autocannon, often shooting almost simultaneously at different targets. Tracked BMP infantry fighting vehicles and T-72 tanks shuddered and exploded — ripped open by rail-gun rounds. Infantrymen and antitank missile crews scattered in panic. A few, braver or more foolish, turned to fight. Autocannon bursts knocked them dead or dying to the cobblestone pavement.

He stalked on through a nightmarish tangle of burning vehicles and bleeding soldiers, slowing only now and again to destroy new targets identified by his CID computer. Through the thickening smoke, he could make out the wooded confines of the Kremlin’s Senate Square… and beyond that, a large, triangular-shaped building, the Kremlin Senate itself. Its yellow walls were studded with tall white columns.

Brad’s mouth tightened. Signals intercepts and other intelligence confirmed that building was where Russia’s vicious president, Gennadiy Gryzlov, was holed up, along with his closest advisers. He raised his rail gun, aiming at the upper floors. Three or four slugs ripping through those walls at supersonic speeds ought to kick things off with a nice bang.

Suddenly Nadia Rozek broke in over the radio. “Unidentified movement from the west detected. Moving to engage!” She sounded startled. “I cannot get a lock. Repeat, I cannot get a—”

Her voice vanished, replaced only by crackling static. In that same moment, the icon representing her robot abruptly flared orange and then red. It winked out.

Brad swallowed hard against the taste of bile. Somehow, some Russian son of a bitch had just knocked out Nadia’s CID. He spun around, looking for the fastest way to her last known position.

“Drop it, McLanahan!” Whack Macomber growled. He sounded like death itself. “Continue the mission. I’m on this.” The icon showing the colonel’s own CID was already in motion, rushing north.

“Understood, Wolf Six,” Brad said through gritted teeth. He turned back toward Gryzlov’s lair. It was time to finish this.

More hostiles approaching, his computer reported calmly, reclaiming his attention. Threat axis at three o’clock.

Swearing under his breath, Brad glanced to his right. Three more T-72s had just appeared around the far corner of the mammoth State Kremlin Palace. Whirring, their turrets spun in his direction, bringing their main guns to bear.

“Ah, crap,” Brad muttered. He slid to the side and snapped off a quick rail-gun shot at the lead tank. Hit squarely beneath its long 125mm cannon, it blew apart. Twisted fragments of the turret flew skyward on a pillar of fire.

One of the other T-72s fired back at him. The armor-piercing shell screamed low over his head, missing by less than a meter. Rocked by the shock wave, his CID staggered slightly and then recovered its balance. A coaxial machine gun chattered. 7.62mm rounds spattered off his composite armor.

Camouflage systems seriously degraded. Minor hydraulic damage to left arm, the computer told him.

Brad stayed on the move, veering unpredictably to make it harder for the Russian gunners to draw a bead on him. His targeting reticle centered on another T-72. He squeezed the trigger. Hit broadside, it burst into flame.

Two down. One to go.

“I see Major Rozek’s CID,” Macomber said starkly over their secure channel. “It’s a total write-off. No life signs. And there’s no sign of whatever killed her.”

Brad nodded bleakly. Successfully bailing out of a damaged robot under fire was virtually impossible. “Understood, Six.” He fired again, smashing the last Russian tank. His threat displays were clear, empty of any new enemies. “I’m going after Gryzlov now. Watch my back.”

“Affirmative, Wolf One,” Macomber replied. Then his voice tightened. “Holy shit! What the fuck is that thing? Am engag—” Abruptly, his CID beacon flared bright red and disappeared.

For what seemed an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a second or two, Brad stared at his tactical display in complete consternation. What the hell was happening here? This was a nightmare, a total damned disaster.

Angrily, he shook himself back to full alertness. Disaster or not, he could still kill Gryzlov and accomplish the mission. He owed Nadia and Whack Macomber that much. He turned back toward the Russian president’s headquarters.

And then a stream of 30mm cannon rounds hammered the side of his CID with horrific force. Brad crashed into the edge of the cockpit as his robot tumbled off its feet and smacked headlong into the pavement.

Warning. Warning. Sensors severely damaged. Hydraulic system function down to thirty percent. Ammunition and weapons packs off-line, the computer told him. Camouflage systems inoperative. Armor breaches in multiple locations.

Groggily, Brad shook his head, an action emulated by the robot. He forced himself upright. Damaged servos and actuators whined. More failure and damage warnings flowed through his dazed mind.

Moving slower now, he spun around, toward the soaring glass-and-concrete façade of the State Kremlin Palace. That was where the Russian bastards who’d just ambushed him had to be lurking. Fragments and bits of glass were still falling from one of the enormous second-floor windows.

A tall, humanlike machine leaped out through the opening and landed only meters away. Its spindly arms held an array of weaponry.

Brad’s eyes opened wide in shock. Oh my God….

Before he could react, the other combat robot opened fire again, this time at point-blank range. Multiple armor-piercing rounds tore into his CID, hurling it backward across the cobblestones in a shower of sparks and torn bits of wiring and metal. Sensors were ripped away. Whole segments of his vision grayed out and shut down. Red failure warnings cascaded through his bleary consciousness, each telling a dizzying tale of catastrophe.

Stunned, Brad fought to regain some measure of control over his dying CID. Nothing worked. His computer systems were damaged beyond repair. Through his one working visual sensor, he saw the other robot leaning over him. Slowly, almost gleefully, it took aim with its autocannon… and then it started shooting.

Everything went black.

“Battle simulation complete,” a smooth, computer-generated voice said in satisfaction. “Total mission failure. Assault force casualties: One hundred percent.”