Toy Wars (13 page)

“Use your processor
,” I said to myself as I brushed rock chippings from my fur.
My opponent had the skill and the experience.
I must use my brain.
Standard load
-
out was four magazines of 5.56
-
millimeter
ammunition at thirty rounds per magazine.
Six shots had gone to bring me to ground initially, and the remainder of that magazine had followed me to my cover.
Just three more
magazines
I speculated
.
From them, t
hree more shots nearly took off the tip of my weapon.
That only left him with eighty-seven rounds
—
all things being equal.
“Only eighty-seven,” I muttered sarcastically.
Coaxing them out of my opponent would take time.
It did.

For thirty-two minutes I played moving target
—
rapidly
moving target.
I would sprint out of my hiding place and then right back, just as a trio of slugs ripped the ground where I had just been.
I dove from one rock group to another, earning a pair of bursts.
In o
ver an hour of fluid
-
churning work I suckered out over sixty shots.
 

Then, just when I thought I had him, he stopped
expending his fire so liberally.
The sniper
now took
its fire more exactingly and only a single shot at a time.
This was what I was hoping for.

I began a pattern of popping my head up for nearly a full second
,
and dropping back, at different places along my protective rock. Only once over a dozen attempts did I hear the wheeet of a
bullet
flying past my head.
It was odd to hear it from only one direction.
My gyrations rewarded
me.
I visually located the sniper, lying on a tiny cliff ledge
406
meters to the north with the top half of its body exposed.
I had to make my shot count.

I gritted my teeth as I jumped up and leveled my rifle, popping off three rounds.
I felt a single slug hit my right shoulder at the same time I saw a baby
doll, in a tiny pink dress, kick over backward.
I could tell that the slug
that
hit me penetrated the minor clavic joint and disrupted service there, but I didn’t move.
I kept my weapon, after the minor shock of impact, trained on my target’s location.
I could just see one foot
—
the
rest of the body obscured by a rock of its own
—
in
what looked like a black patent leather shoe lying on the ground absolutely motionless.
I
wouldn’t take any chance that it repeated my trick by playing dead.
After an eternal minute, I popped the exposed leg with three more rounds
.
It didn’t move
.

I took a brief second to remove my pack and slap a temporary patch on my shoulder wound.
It wasn’t seeping any fluid, but again safety first.
The damage limited my range of motion by
30
percent. I couldn’t even see the damaged site to attempt a repair.
I would have it fixed when I could get to a
Nurse Nan
.

Just on the off chance a second sniper waited for me to come out into the open,
I spent
another thirty-one minutes, twenty-three seconds
worming
flat on my belly to the base of the sniper stand
.
I decided that ammunition was something I could afford to spare.
I tossed a grenade up into the hollow of the sniper stand.
Seconds later a resounding boom
was
followed by a rain of tiny rocks and a cloud of dust.

Because of my weakened shoulder I climbed slowly.
I pulled myself over the ledge
to see
the remnants of the sniper.
Nothing but a scattering of pale tan skin-bits, metal bones
,
and pink
-
flower
ed
cloth remained.
I did find the pieces of the M16, but it was totally unserviceable, twisted almost beyond recognition by the force of the grenade blast.

I rested on the ledge for just a few minutes.
My hydraulic
reservoir
showed
an abnormally high temperature
. It had
to
drop
before I proceeded.
I looked out over the flatland where I had just been ambushed.
This was a perfect location for a sniper, but if I were in charge I think I would place an M40 here rather than an M16.
An M40 sniper rifle would be able to reach the entire floor.
It was something I would keep in mind.
I learned something from this episode.
There was no such thing as a safe place.
Behind the
battle
only meant a lesser chance of being hit.

Once my system flushed the heat, the task of making the
front lines
seemed daunting.
I found myself looking at every slightly hidden spot as a potential danger.
I sprinted from one safe cover spot to another, and scanned for more danger.
The
closer I got to the front
,
the
more often I heard the whistle of mortar fire or the chatter of a machine gun.
None of the sounds
approached my location
,
but that didn’t stop me from falling down to the ground.
My belly was bright red in dirt from my craven leaps for cover.
Was I a fool for hiding, or
would I be a
fool for doing nothing?
I never managed to answer that question
.
I finally realized I could be overly cautious
—
paranoid, the Humans call it
—
and my leaps to cover reduced
.
Three hours later, I
arrived at
the rear units of the combat line.

A triage center had been set up for unit repair right where I stumbled into the line.
It was overflowing with units.
They were lying all over in so many various stages of dismemberment,
exposed wires hanging out of burned skin
and shattered bones
,
that I was appalled.
Gunfire
snapped
constant
ly
now, just over a tiny rise from me
. T
he only thing
that
lit the camp was the constant glow of fires and the occasional brilliant flash of some explosive.
I grabbed a
Nurse Nan
.

“Priority repair.
First
-
aid
,
level four only.”

“Affirmative,” she said, towering over me at the
Nan
’s full height of
3
meters.
She pulled out a pair of skin cutters the size of tin shears and swung me around.
I felt her cutting away the shell of my back to expose my damaged joint.
The tinkering inside took less than fifteen seconds.
I could feel a wet compound being smeared in the wound, where it would harden to replace my
ceramic inner skin
, and then the pull of the thread through my skin, to seal my fur.
A similar rough stitch was used on my front, closing the tears in
the ballistic fabric of my
fur
with thick black
first
-
aid
strands.

I reached into my backp
ack and pulled out the
ear
I’d retrieved from the place of my ambush
.
Nurse Nan
took it and went behind me.
I felt some tinkering, similar to what was done through my back.
Once again my world was filled with stereo sound.
More black stitches mounted my ear back up near the pinnacle of my head.
From where
she sewed the ear
it felt lopsided, but at this point I didn’t care.
I
could hear. I could function in my mission.

I returned the
Nurse Nan
to the work I had interrupted, and promptly returned to my own.
Back down on my hands and knees
I crawled over the hill
. Craven, yes. I didn’t want to have to be repaired again so soon.

When
I reached the crest, I
saw
all
the ravages of the
d
evil himself loosed upon this fair planet.
My exposure to war
to this point
had been brief and violent with a quick and nearly painless victory compared to this holocaust.
On a ravaged hillside lay the corpses of thousands of units.
The dead littered the field so thickly that
units stood on skulls of fallen comrades to continue
fighting
.
Craters large and small overlapped and mixed with footprints muddy from the liters of bodily fluids spilled.
Smoke rose gray from hits only on bare earth and oily black from incendiary fire
-
striking units. Too many of the burning bodies no longer moved, only adding billowy columns of black to the haze of battle.
The constant rippling of automatic weapon fire
couldn’t be heard when
the overwhelming mortar explosions
overwhelmed them and lit up the
darkness.
I didn’t know whether to stay
, to fight, to run
,
or
to pray to the Humans.

When in doubt, I thought, do what you know.
I
’d never received
help from
Human
s
the few times I’d prayed to them so
I
passed
on that option.
Instead
,
I did a priority tap into the net to gain enough information to begin controlling
our side of the
battle.
Just as I began to receive information, a
rubber
-
band
propelled glider swooped down almost onto my position and dropped a tiny bomblet.
I snapped a s
hot at the glider
, missing wide, and rolled.
Unfortunately
,
I started rolling down the hill
toward the river
.
The tiny explosive lit up the hilltop.
The flame singed and melted the fur on the bottom of my feet but didn’t directly cause any real damage.
My body paid for its own good fortune at getting away from the heat by absorbing the beating of rolling down the steep slope.
While I waited to stop, my mind drew data from the net.

“Oooof
!
” I exclaimed as I came to an abrupt halt against the burning stump of a tree
that
happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
At impact, my internal gyros fought gamely to keep the damage to a minimum.

Six’s units numbered
1
,
124
without a single airborne unit.
We
held a naturally fortified position on the uphill side of a wide, swift
ly
flowing river.
Our
limited
objective was to hold this hill
.
Far from the simple sound, t
he animals already
had
twenty thousand
deactivated
in a forced crossing
.
M
y threat map showed no fewer than fifteen thousand more
—
and that was just what
I could see.
Projections from Six ranged from five hundred to twenty thousand additional
fauna
wait
ing
for a breakthrough here.
T
en-to-one odds against, with the natural terrain in our favor and some air power,
were within the realms of doable.
Fifteen
to
thirty-five-to-one odds did not give us any chance.
Almost worse, our supplies and munitions were down to only sixteen hours at current expenditures.

“1499 to Six.
Request additional five thousand units and additional logistical support to reinforce current position.
Breakthrough from enemy an almost certainty.”