“Goddamn you!” Craig yelled and ordered his remaining tanks to charge
directly into the lead elements of the battalion, all guns firing. He lost
two more tanks in the wild charge and then he ran the survivors head-on
into the remains of the battalion’s transport section. Tanks ground over
jeeps, butted trucks off the road and smashed scout cars. Then the
battalion artillery began firing into its own supply train and in seconds
it was all over.
Craig screamed in frustration and scanned the board. There was a section
of warbots in the next hex over, 130-ton monsters with limited flight
capability. They were also on the gold side, but that didn’t matter.
Taking direct command of the unit, Craig sent them hurtling toward the
armored battalion even as it reorganized for the march.
The battalion was massacred before it could even deploy again. Salvo after
salvo of missiles tore through the armored column. Multi-gigawatt battle
lasers raked it from end to end, blowing up tanks and simply melting
smaller vehicles. Finally the warbots themselves closed, smashing tanks
beneath their enormous feet and picking up vehicles and flinging them for
hundreds of yards.
“Yes!” Craig yelled and hunched over the screen. As fast as he could move
the mouse he ordered a general engagement. Everything was to attack
everything else.
What had been a relatively well-planned large-scale exercise turned into a
mechanical armageddon. From one end to the other the central plain of the
exercise area blazed with explosions, laser blasts and burning vehicles
and robots. Artillery batteries fired on the units they were supposed to
be supporting or turned their guns on each other. Recklessly tanks crashed
together. Warbots tore other warbots limb from mechanical limb.
Where the battle wasn’t fierce enough or the destruction great enough,
Craig took direct command of his units, overriding their carefully
programmed tactics in an urge to slaughter. Blind and unheeding, robots
charged forward in obedience to their master’s command. They didn’t even
break stride when they reached laser range. Instead they slammed into each
other, flailing with their arms and butting their heads against each
others’ armored carapaces.
Finally it was over. On all the plain there were no more units capable of
movement. Every damaged unit had fired off every available round, even if
it meant beating the bare earth senselessly with machine guns. The few
units that had ammunition they could not fire set it off in the magazines
in an orgy of self-destruction.
Looking down on the destruction he had caused, Craig felt more relaxed.
His fury at Mikey had died to a dull resentment. The guy was an asshole,
but hey, it didn’t matter much. They’d go into battle soon enough and when
they did, Craig would show him what this stuff was worth.
As he rose from his command chair Craig remembered about the scouts. He
still needed to scout the rest of the island. Well, he’d start making more
tomorrow.
Thirty-five: COSMIC SQUARE DANCE
The blue thing on the screen wove and interwove. It divided, branched and
rejoined in a complex, twisting pattern that hinted at an order beyond
human imagining.
“How goes the work, Sparrow?”
Wiz jerked his attention away from the screen and saw Duke Aelric standing
behind him.
“About like you see. We’re making progress, but it’s slow going.” He
reached for the keyboard and called up a second program with a couple of
quick commands. Now a yellow thing joined the blue one on the screen. It
wove in a complex and elaborate pattern that almost matched the blue one.
Wiz moved the mouse and the two shapes melded together into a single form
that was mostly green. Here and there, however, patches of yellow and blue
still stood out vividly.
“The blue is what we’re producing. The yellow is the pattern you gave us,”
Wiz explained.
The elf duke nodded. “Very good, Sparrow. You make excellent progress.”
They watched the shapes for a while without comment.
“Lord, you said there was something stronger behind Craig and Mikey,” Wiz
said. “What?”
Aelric took his eyes from the screen. “Does it matter, Sparrow? More to
the point, do you think you would understand the explanation?”