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  “We QMTed down from the shuttle to the planet,” Jack said. “Explain that.”

  “Well, I said, I believe it is set up to QMT in and around the field but not out of it,” Nancy answered.

  “Okay then, we QMTed out. We went two light-years to find these ships.” Jack shrugged his shoulders and raised an eyebrow. “So there is a backdoor out of here.”

  “That’s it, Jack!” Nancy knew that Jack was a brilliant pilot and was a hell of a soldier, but there were times where his pragmatic and bulldogged way of thinking was extremely deductive and damn useful. “It must be the backdoor. And that is exactly how we’ll get out of here.”

  “Work it out or find the place generating the field and we’ll blow it up. Give me control of the ship here and I’ll fly over to our people,” Jack said. “Looks like they are trying to vector toward the QMT facility.”

  “They’re stranded in space.”

  “They must have come up with a plan not to be,” Jack replied.

  “Allison agrees with you.” Nancy shook her head. “Oh my God, that would take weeks to do. And where the hell were they going to go once they got there?”

  “Better than just floating in space and doing nothing until you died,” Jack said, then he took the controls to the ship. Nancy could feel the ship’s propulsion system push her into the helmsman’s seat cushions a bit before the inertial dampers kicked in.

  “Right. I’ve got the QMT backdoor approach figured out.” She didn’t really want to say that Allison had figured it out, but she figured Jack guessed that anyway. Or he didn’t care.

  “How do we get them in?” Jack seemed to be talking to himself. “Ha, we’ll swallow them with the hangar bay. I guess I need to give them a call.”

  “Wait, Jack. You don’t have to do that. I can lock onto their snap-back bands and tie them into the ship’s QMT pads. I can teleport them in.” Nancy thought about what she had just said. She wasn’t sure that doing that was even possible with standard pads like on the Sienna Madira. The way the wristbands worked is that they had to be quantum connected to each pad they were using. But this system on these ships could reach out and connect to beacons and spacetime locations and pull them in like a snap-back procedure but without the initial connection. Neither she nor Allison had ever seen that level of technology before.

  “You can do that?” Jack’s eyebrows raised in disbelief.

  “Looks like we can. Open a com channel and tell them what is happening.” Nancy tapped at some controls and brought up a map of the ship DTM for both her and Jack to see. The mindview of the ship sprang to life and highlighted a pathway to a QMT pad only a few tens of meters down one corridor aftward and one deck below. “I’ve got them locked on.”

  “Lieutenant Franks, do you copy? This is Captain Boland.”

  “Copy, sir! I sure hope that’s you in those bigass ships, sir,” Franks replied.

  “It’s us. Listen up, team. We are about to teleport you into the flagship of this fleet. I am then uploading the layout and path to the bridge. Once aboard you are to make your way to it. Understood?”

  “Roger that, sir. Have the ship layout now,” Franks said.

  “Okay, Nancy. Bring them in.”

  “Okay, Jack.” Nancy touched a blue icon on her screen and smiled. “They’re onboard, Captain.”

  “Great. Start the algorithm and get us back to the Madira.”

  Chapter 19

  November 7, 2406 AD

  29 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 6:37 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  USMC Lieutenant Colonel Francis Jones had served on the U.S.S. Anthony Blair during the last two decades and through the major battles with the Separatists, so he’d seen his share of the shit. When former President Moore asked him to come along as the AEM commander for the mission he was honored, excited, and most certainly surprised. He’d figured Ramy’s Robots would be the team he wanted. But it turned out that Ramy was done. He’d retired and moved back home to New Detroit. With the head AEM from the old Sienna Madira crew hanging up his armored boots, Moore had told him that the Blair was the next best thing. Of course, the crew of the Blair would have taken that as an insult, but any good Marine wanted to go where the shit was. And if history was any indicator, then where Moore went, there tended to be a whole lot of shit. Francis had jumped at the chance to serve with the major-turned-senator-turned-president-turned-general.

  The battle plan was simple. Push a squad of AEMs through the perimeter line the bots had created and move to the center. The best estimate his AIC could give him was that there would be a hundred bots per AEM, minimum.

  Francis had grabbed ten AEMs, and they ransacked the nearest weapons lockers and took every EMP grenade they could get their hands on. That ended up being about fifteen total.

  The ten Marines he had with him ranged from three privates first class, to a lance corporal, two corporals, two sergeants, a staff sergeant, and a captain. He really wished he had his Top Sergeant Suez with him, but his blue force tracker showed the sergeant in the medbay as a casualty.

  “Captain Folgers, I want you and Sergeant Spears to take Meo, Ceres, and Freeman on the right. Watch out for being flanked in 3D!” The lieutenant colonel spelled out the game plan to his squad. “I’ll take point with the other five behind me on the left. We’ll push in a V formation like a flock of geese. Standard phalanx attack.”

  “What sensors do you think, sir?” Staff Sergeant Bill Prichard asked.

  “Good question, Staff Sergeant. Use them all but only trust Mark One Eyeball! Don’t lose any of those EMP grenades until I say so.” LTC Jones thought about the plan all the while as he led the troops down the final corridor leading up to the backs of the troops doing their best to hold the line of bots back.

  The corridor led into one of the larger chambers that served as a rec area for the troops. With a full contingent of crew the area was used for a mess hall but the space had been converted into a bar, weight room, and movie room. There was even a bowling lane on one side. But right now it was a staging area with troops and support crew running in with more ammo and out with casualties. The lighting in the area was dim and flickering. The bots were apparently taking their toll on that part of the ship. The number of casualties being hauled around on gurneys was worrying.

  “Why aren’t they teleporting to the medbay?” PFC Karuthers asked.

  “Bots are jamming the QMT in this part of the ship,” Captain Folgers replied. “We get wounded in here, we have to hump our way back to get fixed.”

  “So don’t get fucking wounded, and that’s an order,” Francis replied gruffly and led the AEMs across the room to the makeshift barricades and covers on the other side.

  “You heard the colonel,” Staff Sergeant Bill Prichard stepped in, taking the squad’s top sergeant role. “Now get focused, Marines, and stay frosty.”

  Rifle fire, M-blasters, grenades, and the gnashing of metal spikes, blades, and saws and human screams created a mish-mash of sounds that could cause even the strongest skin to crawl. It was where the shit was.

  “Listen up! Ten meters beyond that barricade is the shitstorm of a lifetime,” LTC Francis Jones started. “We start from right here picking up speed. I want us at top speed when we bounce over the line and I want every weapon firing nonstop on a target. Oorah?”

  “Oorah!” the Marines responded.

  “Good. Let’s move, Marines!” LTC Francis Jones stomped his kick boots into the floor, and bounced five meters ahead of his team, and started into the fullest sprint the armored suit would allow. The sound of the AEM suits clanking against deckplating only added to the cacophony of noise. Jones bounced over the first line of barricades, flipping over just in time to duck through a hatchway. He rolled to his feet with his HVAR firing at full auto. The hypervelocity rounds zipped through the atmosphere of the ship, leaving ion trails behind them and splattering molten metal when the rounds hit either a bot or a bulkhead near one. Light purple
glowing ion trails zipped in every direction, ending in a shower of molten red. As he broke into a full forward sprint with his rifle rested into his shoulder, Jones managed to stomp on several buzzsaw bots with his kickboots before they could cut into his suit.

  “Goddamn, it’s thick in here, Colonel!” Sergeant Alan Sanchez voiced on the team’s tac-net channel.

  “You got that shit right, Sarge,” PFC Karuthers added.

  Jones could see his V formation pushing through, leaving a wake of bots sputtering out of control, leaking fluids, exploding, or just plain dead behind them. A couple of his troops were spending too much time fighting the bots, though, and not moving, causing his V to have a weak side.

  “Meo, Menendez, you two keep moving and don’t let the formation spread out!” he ordered.

  “Sir!”

  The rapid movement and constant rifle fire were enough to stun the bots. Jones noted that the bots were not countering them in an orchestrated manner but rather they were counterattacking individually. That was working to the squad’s advantage. And it suggested to Francis that there was not a central controlling command bot somewhere. They were all acting with a general order and working individually toward that goal.

  “Two hundred meters in and ten down!” he ordered. “Stay tight and keep fucking moving.”

  At first the bot density seemed to increase with each step toward the center. Then they burst through what must have been the line. About seventy-five meters in, the bot density dropped to almost nothing. As best he could tell there was an expanding spherical line of bots expanding about the ship from a central point. The thickness of the line was about seventy meters or so. He realized he needed to get that information to the general somehow but all their communication systems at that depth into bot country were jammed.

  His team had made it through the line with very minor scrapes to their armor. No casualties. The question now was, what to do? Did they proceed on to find out if there truly was a central nexus where the bots were coming from or were they simply growing their numbers on the line as they marched forward?

  “Hold up!” He held up his left fist. “On me and stay frosty.”

  “What’s up, Colonel?” Captain Greg Folgers bounced to his side.

  “I’m not sure what our best plan of action is at this point,” the lieutenant colonel said. “I’m not sure the bots are even here except where systems are being reworked. We went from thick as shit to nothing within a distance of ten meters or so. And why didn’t they stay on us?”

  “Sir, over here!” Lance Corporal Weeks was pointing at a hole in the floor deckplates that looked like a monster had chewed through the metal.

  “Hmm. What the hell?” The entire team followed Jones quickly to the side of the hole and peered down into it. It went down at least two decks beneath them. “Looks like they must have come up through here.”

  “We are about two hundred meters aft of where the Warlords blew out the side of the ship, Colonel,” Staff Sergeant Prichard said, pointing in that general direction. “They were on this deck, sir.”

  “Maybe that’s why there ain’t any bots here,” Captain Folgers added. “Maybe Warboys smashed ’em all here.”

  “These things are reproducing too fast and there is little sign of battle,” Jones answered. “There’s no threat here. That’s why there are no bots here. The main SIF generators are two decks down. This hole goes down two decks. Can’t be a coincidence.”

  Francis gestured to his men to follow and then dropped through the opening in the deck with his rifle pointed down between his feet. He held his elbows in tight as he fell through the hole in the next deck, and then the next, and then he clanged to a stop two decks down. He quickly moved aside as Folgers, then Prichard slammed into the deckplates behind him. He scanned around the room with his helmet floods on full, casting fast-moving shadows as the white light flashed across the bulkheads.

  “Stay alert,” he said as he continued to scan the room. The SIF generators were another thirty meters around the corner, where he could hear metal-against-metal action. “Everybody dim their lights and go to IR.”

  The AEMs carefully spread out to guard the periphery of the landing spot beneath the hole in the ceiling plates above them until the entire team had descended. Then the lieutenant colonel motioned them forward. This time they moved more slowly and cautiously, like a recon squad instead of a frontal-attack squad.

  As they turned the corner of the corridor there were conduits running forward and aftward and from top to bottom and from port to starboard into the room. Two large metal cubes accepted the tubes with giant flanges. Metal bots filled the room, crawling on every wall but mainly swarming around the conduits leading into the metal cubes.

  “The big boxes, those are the SIF generators,” LTC Jones said. “The conduits run power to SIF projectors all around the ship. There are about eight of these sites throughout the ship.”

  “What are they doing to it, sir?” PFC Janie Karuthers asked. “Looks like they are hotwiring it or something.”

  “I think that’s exactly what they are doing. Maybe we can slow them down,” Staff Sergeant Prichard offered.

  “I agree, Staff Sergeant,” Captain Folgers agreed. “Sir, we should move on them before they move on us.”

  “Alright. Focus on getting them off the SIF generator. Open up on them, Marines!” Jones ordered as he took a bead on several of the bots and started firing on them.

  The team took sites on targets and started letting them have it. As soon as the commotion started, bots began to drop from everywhere around them. Interestingly enough, though, Jones thought, the bots working on the SIF generators didn’t flinch at all.

  “Sir, my suit sensors are showing a buildup of EM across all bands,” Corporal Freeman shouted.

  “Mine too, Corporal.” Jones was doing his best to keep bots at barrel length but the occasional one was getting through and he would have to kick, punch, throw, or stomp on it. “I think it is time to drop some damned EMP of our own. Cover my ass end!”

  Jones screamed like a banshee as he rushed through a wave of metal razors and pointy parts. His rifle barrel swept out a swath at chest height but they still managed to grab and bite at his armor.

  “All AICs safe the suits!” the colonel thought and vocalized at the same time. He had his AIC activate the grenade launchers with the EMP grenades as he continued to push through a swarm of bots. One bot swiped a buzzsaw at head height. He ducked just as PFC Ceres dropped the bot with a rifle round. White sparks flew from the bot in every direction as the blue ion trail of the hypervelocity round tore through the bot and continued on into the wall plating on the other side.

  “Shit!” Lance Corporal Weeks shouted. “Oh, my God!”

  Jones could see her blue dot in his mindview turn purple to casualty status. He could see, out of the corner of his eye, her suit go down covered by bots. The purple turned black quickly.

  “Aaarrrggg!” Jones screamed as he felt a searing hot metal blade cut through his thigh armor, but he didn’t stop. He could hear the screams of more of his team, and the icons of all of them but two were flashing purple.

  “My legs!” PFC Karuthers screamed with her HVAR firing on full auto. “Goddamn you, motherfucking, shit . . .”

  “Spears, look out!” Jones heard. His DTM battlescape view showed it came from PFC Ceres.

  LTC Francis Jones grabbed the blade sticking through his right leg with his armored hand and snapped it even while firing a rifle round through the body of the Rottweiler-sized bot it was attached to. Molten metal splashed from underneath it. His AIC instantly had his suit pumping stims and immunoboost into his system.

  Then he popped the seal on his shoulder grenade launchers and fired three of them in the general direction of the SIF generator boxes. The grenades lobbed out across the large, dimly lit corridor and exploded in an expanding sphere of lightning that knocked everything in the room out. With his eyeballs only he could barely see in the very
dim lighting of the room. Thankfully, what he could see were bots falling to the deck, dead as doornails. The screeching of metal on metal had stopped and the room was filled with humans screaming in pain, muffled through sealed and shut-down armored suits.

  Thirty seconds for suit restart, sir, his AIC announced.

  Status on the team?

  Lance Corporal Karen Weeks and Captain Folgers are dead, sir. Sergeant Spears is critical with a metal spike through her left eye and protruding out the back of her helmet. Her vitals are stable according to her AIC. PFC Janie Karuthers is missing both legs but her suit stabilized her before the shutdown. Staff Sergeant Bill Prichard lost his left arm up to the shoulder. The rest have minor injuries on the scale of yours, sir.

  Shit.

  But, sir, the EMP must have damaged whatever the bots are using to jam our communications with. I have QM connectivity with the rest of the ship now.

  Get me General Moore! Instantly, the room filled with several flashes of light and the sound of frying bacon. The team listed by the Blue force tracker as dead or critical vanished before his eyes. He took note of the five armored environment-suit Marines still with him. They had stopped the bots in the SIF generator room for now. What next? he thought.

  Chapter 20

  November 7, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 6:49 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “CHENG to CO!”

  “Moore here. Go, Buckley.” Alexander had mixed emotions about the fact that QMT teleportations were happening now fairly rapidly at the other end of the hangar. On the upside it meant that somebody had knocked out the bot jamming signal, at least for now. On the downside, the number of QMTs was indicative of large amounts of critical casualties.