Mechanical (9 page)

The general breathed in deeply.

"But now, with the Serpents, we have a new weapon. I have to be frank with you men. Right now, we don't have a contingency plan. You're the one and only plan and hope we have."

Day Two, Fort Belvoir, Virginia

"They always let us out only at night, did you notice that?" Tom whispered to Ramirez. Tom waited a moment, but the Marine Corps lieutenant just stood his ground. The four Serpents were assembled in the training grounds outside the hangar, waiting.

            "Why do they keep security so tight? After the mission, the Serpents will probably appear on every site and Internet newscast," Tom whispered to Ramirez. Since Ramirez still kept quiet, Tom went on. "Security inside the hangar is even tighter. Did you notice the security cards? They are probably equipped with electronic proximity chips, and I've seen the sensors in the corridors. No one who didn’t have the correct security card would be able to walk these corridors without raising the alarm."

            Ramirez actually turned his head to look at the hangar. Tom continued talking, encouraged. It was the longest conversation he and the Marine Corps lieutenant had had since they met, about twenty-four hours ago. It's true, Tom was doing all the talking, but he didn't allow that to stop him. They must learn to work as a team, Tom thought. They must learn to talk to each other. Tom tried really hard to forget the words "Keyboard Warrior." Besides, those questions he raised were really important.
I'll give him one last chance.

            "There are soldiers everywhere, most of them armed with anti-tank missiles, as if they were expecting an attack at any moment. Interesting, isn’t it?" Tom waited a moment for some type of response, but, unsurprisingly, there was none. "And have you seen any name tags? On anyone? He is a tech person or a soldier? Nothing! Not even the general. He still hadn't told us what his name is, and we don't even know what the name of the military unit that operates this hangar and the project is. We don't even know what branch of the military forces is responsible for the mission. The only name we actually know is Serpent."

            "Told you Riley, you ask too many questions," Ramirez said slowly, as if his heart wasn't really in his words.

            "And they don't let us talk with anyone outside the base, not even our old units. How weird is that? We aren't allowed to talk with anyone! We're all veteran soldiers, they trust us to perform a mission that may determine the future of the war, but they don't trust us to talk with anyone." Tom stopped talking.

            Ramirez, uncharacteristically, walked slowly away.
Did I make him think?
Tom asked himself.

            Three vehicles came out of the base. Two were regular army utility trucks, one of which stopped near the waiting Serpents and killed its engine, the other of which just waited some distance behind. However, Tom's sensors were on the third vehicle, an M2 Bradley armored personnel carrier, which came to a stop a few hundred yards in front of the Serpents. It revved up its engine twice, raising up a cloud of smoke.

            "I don't like the look of this," Tom murmured, looking from vehicle to vehicle impatiently. There was a little clock ticking in his mind, counting the time to the mission and how much time they had to find and destroy the enemy.

           
Come on, move faster,
Tom thought.

            Captain Emerson took something from the back of the utility truck that had parked near them, and he now turned to face the other three Serpents, holding something in his hands. Tom rechecked the image his sensors gave him and then zoomed in. The captain was holding an M82 Barrett anti-materiel rifle.

            "Listen up. It is time to start your weapon practice exercise. Listen well, and do everything you're told because tomorrow is the final exercise. Right after that, we go out on the mission. None of you will get a second chance."

            The captain lifted up the rifle he was holding. Huge by human standards, the captain's Serpent held the thirty-one-pound rifle easily with one mechanical hand. The rifle was fifty-seven inches long, but appeared relatively small when held by the giant humanoid machine monster.

            "The M82 Barrett is the best anti-materiel rifle the United States military forces possess. Doubling as a sniper rifle, its effective range is almost two thousands yards. It is capable of taking out soft targets as well as armored targets using armor-piercing incendiary rounds. It needs a squad of two men to handle in the field, but a Serpent can field an M82 unaided."

            The captain lowered the rifle and looked at his small command. "This rifle had taken out armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft missiles, and numerous trucks and soft vehicles during conflicts in the last two decades. Soldiers have used it against enemy soldiers during the Second Gulf War and in Afghanistan. When used against a soldier, any hit on the torso of the enemy will disable him."

            "Vaporize him," Ramirez snorted.

            "The M82 will be our hand weapon in the mission, and each of you will field an additional heavier weapon. But for now, we will start with the M82. Assembling and disassembling drills are first. Begin."

            The Serpents moved one after the other, and each picked up a rifle as well as a strange conformal ammunition box, which together weighed about one hundred pounds but were light as feathers in the Serpents’ monstrous hands.

            Tom moved away, put the ammo box down and stared at his rifle. It occurred to him that the rifle was the first thing he was actually manipulating with the Serpent's hands since he started piloting it.

            At first it was strange manipulating the rifle with the long black fingers of the Serpent, but finally, Tom got the hang of it. The fingers were very responsive and sensitive in their way, and all Tom had to do was apply the minimum amount of pressure to force even the stubborn barrel to unscrew from its base.

Tom took care not to lose the rifle's small pins, removed the bolt carrier and the charging handle, and then carefully removed the muzzle brake. Starting assembly, Tom put all the parts back on, pulled the charging handle and was rewarded with a very satisfying metallic click. 

            Tom looked up with some pride, the completely assembled rifle in his hand, then noticed a little shamefully that he was the last to finish.

            "Load magazines," the captain ordered, and presently three definitive clicks echoed loudly as the rifles' charging levers were pulled and released almost simultaneously by the Serpents, hard and harsh on the silent training range. This felt strange to Tom. Loading the giant rifle wasn't an easy task for a man, but the Serpent manipulated the rifle with its long, responsive fingers with disturbing ease.

            "We have set up target practice for you: plastic targets placed at varying intervals, going out to the rifles' maximum two-thousand-yard effective range. Each of you has your own targets. Sergeant Jebadiah, commence shooting."

            Tom looked as the sergeant scanned ahead, picked out his first target, located three hundred yards away, moved forward rapidly, and prepared to assume firing position behind a small rise in the ground.

            "Stop," Captain Emerson said and Jebadiah froze in place. "Remember, you are not firing the rifle with your own body but with the Serpent. The recoil force will not affect a Serpent the way it affects a human. You can fire the rifle standing up."

            Jebadiah looked dubiously at the captain, then at the weapon in his hand, and then at the target. The M82 could only be fired by a man in prone firing position as the recoil force was strong enough to cause serious injury if the rifle wasn't held tightly and the shooter wasn't lying down. Jebadiah tried putting his cheek against the stock and placing the recoil pad against his shoulder as would a human shooter, but the Serpent's size made it impossible.

            "Just hold it in front of you, Sergeant," the captain said. Jebadiah paused and finally held the weapon in front of him with both hands, one hand on the bipod legs and the other one on the rifle's grip, the tip of one finger in the trigger guard.

            "Fire," the captain said softly, and a shot exploded over the silent training range. Smoke billowed out of the rifle, obscuring the Serpent for a moment till the soft night breeze swept the smoke away.

            "I hardly moved," Sergeant Jebadiah said wonderingly.

            "Sergeant, kill you target," Captain Emerson commanded. Sergeant Jebadiah resumed firing, shot after shot rolling across the craggy terrain.

            "Target dead, Sir," Sergeant Jebadiah said. Tom zoomed in on Jebadiah's target, a small green plastic image of a human. Small smoking craters on the ground nearby partly obscured the target, but Tom could see enough. Only the legs remained; everything above the waistline of the target had disappeared.

            "Each of you has twenty targets. Soldiers, commence firing," Captain Emerson said in his usual flat tone.

            Tom picked up his ammo box, moved a little away from the others, set his ammo box down, and searched for his own target. He aimed his rifle carefully, holding it as a human would hold a handgun, and pulled the trigger gently. The rifle barked, and Tom would have grinned if he could. The rifle barely moved in his hands and the noise of the shot, which would have been disturbingly loud for an unprotected human, was just pleasantly comforting to Tom, secured inside the Serpent and using sensors to hear.

            Tom squeezed out two more shots and was rewarded with the sight of the target being vaporized on the third. Tom quickly found the next target, located one hundred yards further away and fired at it gleefully. The terrain around the target went up in smoke and flying shrapnel. Tom quickly discovered that the Serpent was a completely stable firing platform. All he had to do was compensate for air humidity and wind, which the Serpent's sensors measured, adjust for distance and, presto, fire away.

            Tom moved from target to target, blasting away. He fired the rifle much faster than a human could have, since his aim barely shifted from shot to shot, and he did not suffer one bit from the recoil. In fact, when his rifle's barrel overheated, Tom, without thinking, just grabbed it in his hand, unscrewed the barrel assembly with the barrel muzzle, and replaced the barrel with another one that conveniently was waiting inside the ammo box. There was no need for tools. The Serpent's fingers were excellent tools in themselves.

            The exploding, extra-loud shots of the M82 rifles came fast and furious, much faster than human shooters could have managed. The cordite smoke obscured the Serpents and created a thick local fog. Spent cartridges flew everywhere, occasionally followed by magazines and, now and then, a glowing, red-hot rifle barrel.

            The M82 fires a .50 Browning, 12.7×99mm NATO cartridge. This cartridge was developed for machine guns and packs a lot of power. It can easily defeat light armor and the combination of the rifle with its ammo creates an incredibly lethal weapon. Now, coupled with the Serpent’s firing stability and its advanced sensor targeting in all conditions, the rifle really was an awesome weapon.

            Finally, the Serpents stopped firing and lowered their rifles. Tom was crestfallen. He had been the last to finish shooting, and even though he quickly searched through the targets of the other Serpents, he could not find a target that remained intact.

            “Pencil pusher,” Lieutenant Ramirez whispered, loud enough to be easily heard by every Serpent. Tom said nothing.

The captain moved in front of the Serpents again, unaffected, of course, by the dark fumes that still filled the area.

            "You've had some practice with the rifle against stationary targets. Now, place the conformal ammo carriers and fit them on your Serpents. Then, we'll begin the next phase of this training exercise."

            Tom picked up the elongated ammo box. Inside were two spare barrels and two dozen full M82 magazines. He glanced up and then quickly fixed the ammo box on the thigh of his left leg, the way Sergeant Jebadiah just had done.

            Tom did not fail to notice that the M2 Bradley Armored Personnel Carrier had fired up its engine, and its turret had started swiveling experimentally from side to side, repeatedly raising and lowering its 25-millimeter cannon.

"Your mission is to take out the Bradley. Be advised, it will try to do the same to you. Commence. Weapons are free," the captain said and moved away. The squat twenty-five-ton armored vehicle started moving slowly, driving further away into the firing range. The three Serpents paused for a moment and then plunged in pursuit, Ramirez first, Sergeant Jebadiah second and Tom last.

"We have to flank it," Tom said, but the other two Serpents were already too far apart. They moved into a relatively flat area in pursuit of the M2 Bradley whose engine was now working steadily, belching black smoke. The squat armored personnel carrier traversed the difficult land carefully.

Tom found that his Serpent navigated the craggy terrain easily, its giant strides effortlessly clearing every obstacle, while the claws on its armored feet made him feel very secure as they grabbed everything underneath him—earth, rocks, or low plants—without any chance of slippage. Tom glanced ahead, trying to make out the Serpents and the M2 Bradley. Ramirez was approaching the armored vehicle from its rear, while Sergeant Jebadiah was running towards a small rise on the ground, trying to find a good firing position. The Bradley started turning towards Sergeant Jebadiah.