Toy Wars (7 page)

But then my job wasn’t to deal with what
already
worked.
I noticed that the fauna on the other side of our wall of fire finally organized enough to do something productive.
A light mortar fire began to rain over our position and a ragged collection of support
ing animals
began to move around our left flank.
The units on fire had long since stopped moving, either from catastrophic heat failure, their own ammunition exploding
,
or even accidentally straying into someone’s fire zone.
To flank us the animals needed to come around this inferno.

“All
flyer
s, concentrate on mortar units.
I want one in every three tanks to redirect threat axis to
5
degrees west of north.
Fire as you bear.
Rabbits, keep the wall of flame active.”

In succession, the units turned the corner of the firewall only to be killed by concentrated fire.
The bodies of the poor hapless creatures impeded the units further back.
This gave my troops time to either shoot them behind the growing line of bodies or to pick them off as they broached this ever growing wall of death.

Confidence in victory overflowed my processor until
a
large yellow bulldozer crashed into the bodies
,
tearing a hole
3
meters wide
.
My processor voltage shot up as animals poured through the gap.
I nearly panicked.

“Flyer
S
quad
T
hree.
Priority bombing mission.”
I relayed the coordinates and
an
image of the earthmover.
I looked over the zone between the horseshoes and nothing moved except smoke, flame
,
and hydraulic fluid flowing out to spend itself on the
ground
.

“All units refocus fire between
8
and
10
degrees west of north.
”
Tracers redoubled in the area of the outbreak and more animals died than could force their way through.
Soon too this avenue of attack filled too high with bodies to be an effective route of attack.

The battle’s end trailed off over several dozen minutes, unlike its crisp starting point.
My troop hunted down the remaining animals and executed them.
It wasn’t a fight.
One by one our
flyer
s identified a target
,
which followed shortly by a crash of firepower on the enemy.
Usually the overwhelming firepower scattered the body so widely that just a scorch mark remained on the ground.

“Damage report,” I called out
,
wanting to know immediately the cost of this victory.

“Negative.”

“Negative.”

“Tank 15003 main gun damaged.”

“Negative.”

“Rabbit units
143
and
5332 deactivated.”

The rest of the rol
l
call impressed me equally.
In all we lost seven total units with thirteen damaged to one degree or another.
I looked over the battlefield.
In less than an hour we killed
5,412
of the local fauna
. We had only lost
seven
, and
Six’s memories contain
ed
no
record
of a battle so one
-
sided.

I looked o
ver the smoldering and broken bodies on the field.
I had another victory.

Hero

I didn’t get time to enjoy my victory
.
I didn’t even have time to report it to Six
.
M
y flying brethren beamed pictures of
additional
encroaching enemies
following the troops we just annihilated.
Worse
,
the
ir
reinforcements centered on something that chilled my hydraulic fluid
—
something new.
In the center of a pack
of
fifteen dozen miscellaneous units
lumbered
12
me
ters of plastic-skinned trouble
, genus
T
yrannosaurus
rex
.
The monster was immense!

I panicked, ordering all units back to active status.
Almost as quickly as I sent the command I rescinded it
as t
he
flyer
s sent down the speed of approach.
Putting my units back into alert would only wear them out for no reason.
At the lumbering speed of the
T.
rex
I would have approximately an hour to come up with a plan.
I didn’t know what
we
could possibly do against it.
Bullets would probably ricochet off the huge thing or get lost inside it.

Over the first part of that hour
my sump s
pun and I felt like I ground a kilogram of silicon off my processor. Not one good idea surfaced.
My mind drifted off thinking of the gruesome end where we all attacked with bayonet
s
and knives as the massive dinosaur smashed us to bits just by stepping on us. In my daydream one of
my
t
eddy units
,
stabbing
the beast
in the leg
,
was drug
along by the pomm
el of his own knife.
I
gained a new respect for Six’s decision to give me imagination.
It is highly underrated.

“All heavy equipment to either end of the berm.”
Time was the enemy. “
I want two
Nurse Nan
s and a squad of gophers collecting the enemy for salvage
and a squad of tanks as sentry
.”
My plan was to draw away the escorts from the huge dreadnought.
I cringed as I sent these
units
over
the top
.
These
were
sacrificial lambs even though they looked nothing like the furry white lambs that Six created as assault shock troops.

The flyers reported a more accurate count of 246 mixed tanks, teddies
,
and
attack car
units.
As I predicted,
upon spying my small force out in sight the
vast bulk of the enemy force sped up, leaving the T
.
rex behind.
Five minutes later I ordered the rest of the units back to active stations.
 

I held tight rein on my hidden troops as the mass of the enemy closed
on the poor victims who had “volunteered
.
”
W
e waited.
Ten minutes later
,
they hit us.
Their first volley decimated those few I put out to draw them in.
Every single one of my units took at least one hit, sometimes many more.
Only three remained effective enough to return fire.

But behind the berm I smiled.
For a change we
outnumbered the enemy by
four to one and
they sat within our fire sack.
I issued
the command to open up.
The term shooting gallery came to mind.

On the field it must have been like five years in
h
ell itself.
Machine gun rounds, mortar fire,
and
sabot tank projectiles filled the air in the low horseshoe with death.
Our fire dispatched 204 of the fauna in the first volley.
Twenty more of them couldn’t fire effectively for one reason or another.
The fauna didn’t get a second shot.
Not a single enemy who entered the horseshoe
remained
alive
after thirty seconds
.

From what damage reports I was listening to over the net, it seems
we again took minimal casualties
—
other than those I sacrificed as a lure. I had succeeded in dividing the enemy forces.
We had won the
Second B
attle
of the Berm
, but not yet the war.
Gratifying though our mini-victory was, our most serious threat would be here in minutes
—
T
yrannosaurus rex had to die.

I sent three of the
flyer
s to drop their
remaining
payloads of bombs on the monstrosity.
If I was correct, there was only one way we could defeat it.
T
he balloon
s spun up t
heir props to attack speed and move
d
directly for the enemy.
The T
.
rex ignored them as he continued his lumbering approach to our location.
The monster wore its imperviousness like a cloak, moving
straight in with no attempt to avoid our fire.
It obviously didn’t care and showed it to everyone who looked.

From
my distant vantage point
2
kilometers away
, time slowed to a mere trickle compared to the normal river of its speed.
The first balloon dropped its load and, finally free of its heavy ordinance, it leaped skyward.
Each of the twelve 2.2
kilo
bombs fell in exaggerated slowness until they impa
cted, one after another, striking the shoulder
left of
T
yrannosaurus rex’s plastic head crest.
The rippling sounds of sequential thunderclaps
pounded my ears
even at this distance.
A living yellow ball of flame and smoke
wreathing its head
dispersed in less than a moment by the moving dreadnought.
When it emerged, n
ot a single scale appeared out of place on its rubbery hide.
I wish
they hadn’t, but m
y predictions
proved
correct.
Just call me a pessimist.

To ensure the monster hadn’t gotten lucky, I did not countermand the previous orders and the other two balloons attacked other parts of the huge animal
. At its speed the bomb hits were guaranteed
;
however
,
e
ach grouping of bombs
resulted in th
e same insignificant effect.

The dinosaur still ha
d
eight or
more minutes until
it reached
effective personal weapon range, so I continued to worry the problem in my mind.
“We still should be able to deal with this.”

“KA
A
BOOOM!” exclaimed a huge explosion of dirt to my right
with no warning at all
.
T
hree of my units
flipped
into the air like
crazed
balloon units, only to crash heavily to the
ground
.
I couldn’t understand where the fire had come from.
The rex was too far away
even if it sported a mortar.
I
had no other reports of units.
“KAABOO
OM!” reported another explosive, even farther to my right
,
turning five more tanks into nothing but plastic shrapnel.

“Then again,” I said as
I scrambl
ed
for shelter behind a large red
boulder
, “I could be wrong.”
This time the muzzle flash of the creature
’
s tiny left arm stood out clearly and o
nly moments later
came
the brilliant explosion of dirt and
even more
units
dashed
against our self-made hill.
That one massive weapon outranged anything we possessed in Six’s entire arsenal.

“All combat units begin a hasty retreat.
Construction units
and
S
pecial
S
quad Foxtrot
follow previous instructions.
Balloon units, cover the retreat of our military units.”
It was a ruse.
I had to draw the beast in closer.
I prayed to the Humans for it to make
just that one fatal mistake of being too greedy.
By now each and every
one of the beast’s
footfall
s
shook the ground.

I stayed, however.
I don’t know why.
My memories don’t show any decision being made at that point, but I stayed.
Staying was actually against my basic programming to remain outside the fight and direct action.
I had violated those orders before
,
but this time it could be more dangerous.
I think it made the difference
as m
y presence steadied the construction units with
a
reassuring
S
AN
.

The beast actually screamed a high
-
pitch
ed
roar as it moved forward, leveled its left arm and belched forth another fiery projectile at
my fleeing brethren.
My troops, bless their built-in programming, scattered, making it so that each of the heavy artillery rounds only dealt death to one or two of my units at a time.

The balloons,
contrary to orders
, hovered above the beast, dropping bombs on its head.
To my surprise some of them blew fist-sized holes in the
fauna
’s
rubber-like
skin.
These didn’t slow it or its rate of fire. The creature looked up at the
flyer
s and screamed again.
It pointed its right stubby arm at my kin. As the hand spewed fire, the sound of ripping plastic, only a thousand times louder, assaulted my ears.
Hundreds of tracers flew out of the arm.
The rex waved the Gatling gun in his arm like a scythe
,
cutting balloons apart until
no
flyer
s floated on the air currents
.

I hadn’t realized just how long this had taken when I
saw
that the beast
’
s
inattention
now led it directly into the horseshoe.
“Just one more step and we have him
.
”
The r
ex took that one step.
I ordered all the heavy equipment to begin moving.
Between the right leg coming off the ground and it landing
,
all of the dozers pushed sections of our defensive berm to cover the thing
’
s left foot. In seconds only
,
t
he gray-green brute
’s appendage
was nearly encased in a hillock of red and crimson earth and stone.
The monster seemed m
ostly unaware of our
rapid movements beneath him.

T
yrannosaurus rex
tried to
pick up
his left leg for his next step
—
“
tried
”
in this case being the operative word. The foot
didn’t release from its earthen cage
.
His
balance and
forward momentum required that his left foot come down somewhere in front of him.
The foot didn’t budge, even as he fell.
The foot even stayed firmly in place as he hit the ground with an earth-shaking rumble, one that jarred me
58
centimeters off the ground and landed me on my side
.
The only damage I sustained appeared to be to
my ego.
Still, half the plan had been accomplished.