Legacy of a Mad Scientist (58 page)

In the east, the sun touched the distant horizon. The
early desert air felt clean and crisp against the Doctor's face.
For the past week, he'd been in a state of panic. Finally, all the
last minute details were complete, and the project was ready for
delivery.

The transport landed on the upper receiving dock, and
the personnel disembarked. Major General Cruthers, followed by his
colleagues, was glowing with excitement. After brief introductions,
Dr. Fox led the gentlemen to the storage hangar.

The cyber-tanks sat connected to various cables,
power and fluids snaking along the floor to ports and pumps. The
hangar smelled of industrial chemicals, gun oil and fuel. The tanks
themselves were dark masses of armor plate with wicked looking
tracks and munitions delivery systems protruding from several
angles. Extra ammo drums were mounted on the rear fenders. Belt-fed
twelve-barrel machine guns were mounted to the front. Running
perfectly, they glided over rough and rocky ground smoother than
ice on glass, four diesel engines powered the heavy-duty treads,
top speed - two hundred kilometers an hour.

Dr. Fox led the inspection team up to one of the
forward units. He pointed out the shielded sensor array, the triple
redundant communications drives, overlapping armor plates and other
external features before touching on the internal functions of the
unit.

Colonel Thompson, standing next to General Cruthers,
raised his hand. "Are these units autonomous or do they require
rear-echelon support?”

"Both and neither. They house organic operators,
wired to the control systems, and they also maintain constant
communication with command and control agents, here at the
facility.”

"You're saying there are people in there? A soldier,
an operator?”

"An experienced soldier, battle tested veterans. They
have some of the best reaction times we've ever seen...”

"But isn't that illegal?" the colonel
interrupted.

General Cruthers rolled his eyes. "Thompson, do you
want to be part of this unit or can I just transfer your ass back
to Washington?”

"Sir, it's just...”

"We're trying to win a war here, Colonel.”

"Sir, direct weapon-to-brain wiring systems have been
illegal for over seventy years. The political ramifications could
be...”

"It's illegal for citizens, Thompson. We can't be
expected to fight a war with fucko's back in Washington making all
the rules.”

Cruthers turned back to Dr. Fox. "Please continue,
Doctor."

Later that afternoon, as he was escorted from the
facility, Dr. Fox had an awful feeling about the impending
skirmish. He had tried to impress upon the General and his staff
that the bio-tanks should never be taken above level six when
facing civilians. The higher levels were reserved for more advanced
enemies. The Christian socialists could hardly be called an
organized enemy. Their defense and offense were one and the same, a
human wave of men, women, and children: healthy and young, old and
sick. Their attack came in the form of a protest march. They all
came.

Fox felt sick to his stomach knowing that Cruthers
and staff would be commanding the base-side operators. Fox knew
that Matthews and his team weren’t likely to play along.
Unfortunately, they were no longer under his jurisdiction. The
operators were contracted as part of the project deliverables and
now accountable to the military authorities responsible for the
project.

Dr. Fox suspected Cruthers intended to take the
mechanized war machines to their highest level, ten, reserved for
training only, one mech against another. At that level, the
machines would drive over infants, relishing in the squishy sounds
from beneath their treads.

Fox was suddenly awash in fear, regret, and shame. He
contemplated demanding the pilot turn the vehicle around but
didn't. He knew the captain would not change the flight path. If he
went back and opposed Cruthers now, it would be career suicide.
They would call it treason. Now there was little Fox could do
besides get himself shot.

A ripple went through the crowd; it was time. The
barbecues were hastily put out, and the caravan prepared to press
north. Small arms were given a quick field cleaning and oiled.
Ammunition was passed around and loaded into clips. Children and
old folks packed into cars, alongside sand bags and ammunition
crates.

The faithful fell silent for a final blessing. They
crossed themselves, kissed their rosaries and plastic
glow-in-the-dark statues of Jesus, (which were passed around and
placed on the dashboards of the cars). They waited while the audio
up front was sorted out, excusing the whispered joke or
interruption to pass the tequila bottle.

Father Ricardo raised the microphone. "En el nombre
del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espiritu Santo.” He made the sign of
the cross over the crowd, holding a crucifix in his hand, which he
kissed, the microphone held low, in his left.

The people made the sign of the cross, each in their
own way, in their own time.

“Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here this
evening to celebrate freedom and community in the Lord. This is the
birth of a new age. Tomorrow the sun will rise on another city,
freed from greed and tyranny. Once these were our lands, but for
500 years, the liars and hypocrites from across the sea have stolen
our birthrights.

"Yes, I say hypocrites, though many profess to be
members of the faith. They were once People of the Lord, but they
have fallen. For the Lord says that one cannot serve two masters,
and they are the servants of gold.

“They erect borders and issue citizenship cards of
different status. That is not truth. For are we not all children of
the one true God? What is a citizen? It's just a word, an idea.
It's an idea that is used to separate the children of God. Used to
put one person's worth above another's. We are not different,
American or Mexican, European or Asian, African, Columbian or
Canadian; we are all children of the Lord. So we must be - brothers
and sisters.

"Show me a border in the earth. It does not exist.
The Lord did not create borders. He created mountains, rivers and
oceans, which some men miscall borders, but they are only
mountains, rivers and oceans.

“We serve truth. For only the truth can set you free.
I am the way, the truth, and the life. Serve the poorest among you,
so that he may know the Lord's tender loving care.

"When We, The People Of The Word, arrived here in
this place, our Lord struck the enemy with fear and made him take
flight. He does not stand and face us. He does not want to hear the
Word of God. He knows we come in the name of Justice, Liberty, and
Equality.

“There is not made, the missile that can kill an
ideal. Our enemy once worshipped these same ideals, and they know
how powerful they are, but they have grown corrupt and criminal in
their twilight years. The Lord has raised us up and put us in this
place that we might spread his word among them.

“Our Heavenly Father has done his part. He has shown
us the road we must travel. It is up to us to follow it. Let's
bring the light to those who are lost, trapped in darkness. Lord,
though the way before us may be full of peril, give us courage to
press forward and return to these, our ancestral lands. I bless you
in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. En el nombre del Padre, y
del Hijo, y del Espiritu Santo. Amen.”

The blessing over, celebratory beers were cracked and
the People’s Army fired up competing mariachi music from rival
sound systems.

In the failing light, torches, flashlights, and
vehicle-mounted flood lights burst to life. The engines of the
faithful were put in low gear and the army surged forward, crossing
the imaginary border from Mexico into the United States, with
high-pitched screams, and bursts of automatic gunfire punctuating
the auspicious nature of the event.

Shaped like an elbow, the coastline of San Diego is
dotted with hills, climbing from and returning to the Pacific
Ocean. The People's Army had a twelve-mile march to the center of
the downtown area. The first few miles were littered with mines: a
cratered, barren stretch of barbed wire, collapsed trenches and
half-buried corpses. The Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency had
declared the land a free-fire zone decades ago. Both sides fired
mortars into it anytime someone tried to cross.

The Christian Communist Army made slow progress, as
everything in their path was consumed. Stretches of barbed wire
were rolled up and secured to vehicles. Metal barricades were cut
with high-powered torches and used like railroad ties to repair the
path ahead. From the sand bagged backs of rolling pickup trucks,
the People’s Army fired homemade mortars across the no-mans land,
detonating the waiting mines and blowing holes in the longer
stretches of barbed wire.

The battle had just begun, but already the city had
been given up for dead. Only the inevitable desiccation of the
metropolitan corpse remained - the smashing of street-level windows
and burning of storefronts. San Diego had no power or water flowing
through her veins, no foodstuffs were delivered to her markets. Not
one floating residence or business structure adorned her skyline.
Anything that could be carried out during the evacuations had been
taken long ago.

The marines had built their barricades on the
southern wall of the city. Teams of sharp shooters occupied every
room with a view and platoons held strategic locations along every
major route. But all combined, they numbered under twenty thousand.
The People's Army had swollen to several million strong.

The marines were required to stop the enemy at all
costs, but against millions, they knew they could hardly even slow
them down. Before long, the remaining soldiers heard the first of
the proximity mines go off.

The Christians ran vehicles into the minefields at
high speed. The mines were set to be triggered by foot traffic, so
a single vehicle could take out several, providing it didn't crash
into a collapsed tunnel, crater, or any of the dozens of other
likewise destroyed remains of its ancestors.

The marines heard the mines begin, and the call went
out over the radio for all soldiers to retreat to bravo positions
as air strikes were expected to begin any minute. The young
soldiers retreated and waited, but the air strikes never came.

At the Centaur Facility General Cruthers argued with
the high command about the launch orders. He wanted to activate
half the arsenal, but couldn't get Washington to commit that level
of support. Besides, there were only a dozen control stations and a
dozen operators, restricting the initial run to only a dozen units,
launched one at a time. The General's demand to allow the tanks run
unsupervised had ended the debate. Cruthers roundly cursed
Washington as a bunch of rear echelon cowards, and only managed to
get seven tanks off the ground.

The first cyber-tank unit crashed into the no man's
land opposite the Soldiers of Christ. The People stopped in their
advance and regarded the impact site.

They had watched it come whistling in and expected a
massive explosion. The impact was immense, huge clouds of dirt and
debris billowed upward, but there was no explosion.

Several shots were fired at the vehicle, the bullets
screaming away as they bounced and tumbled from the armored
surface.

The unit offered no response.

Despite their fear of the blackish metallic vehicle,
the men crept forward. It took several minutes for the rag tag band
of resistance fighters to surround the vehicle, but eventually,
they did.

They inspected its government-assigned markings,
meaningless combinations of letters and numbers. One drunken
soldier leaned up close against a tinted window. " Oye, hay un tipo
aqui." . He looked over his
shoulder to his comrades. "Y sus ojos son de oro." are golden>.

The crowd jumped back as the engines inside the tank
ignited. Before they could move away, barrels rose from the
machine's hide, and it lurched forward. The courageous men closest
to it were crushed under the sharp treads.

Hundreds were mowed down by the fire-belching machine
guns, blasting hot shrapnel into the Soldiers of Christ.

The next two units landed closer to the northern side
of the border, and had to drive forward to meet the enemy.

The following four came to earth behind the southern
border, chewing up God's People from behind.

There was no escape. There was no mercy, and by dawn,
there was no more conflict in San Diego.

A shootout in the operations lab prevented more than
seven launches. When ordered to set the tanks to level ten, the
lead operator, Matthews, objected and found himself in a heated
argument with the soldiers. One of them accused him of being a
traitor and struck him. Matthews drew his weapon and two soldiers
shot him a dozen times.

Matthew's comrades, including Geoffrey Fox, drew
their weapons and had themselves a wild-west shootout with the
soldiers, right there in the control room. Wielding small arms, the
operators shot at the soldiers who, sporting assault rifles, opened
fire on everything, killing the operators, each other, and utterly
destroying the machinery.

The Generals, watching the satellite feeds in the
officer's command center, weren't present in the operations lab and
failed to either prevent the massacre or be caught up in it. And to
be fair, they didn't much care.

The tanks were free to destroy everything that moved
along the forward battle area; a job they executed with ruthless
and brutal efficiency.

One young operator, who'd stepped out to use the
washroom, managed to escape. Tasha hijacked a maintenance vehicle
and slipped from the facility with a shipping convoy.