It was a combat reflex born of being a veteran. Davis had seen movement at the edge of the ruins of the blown-out corner of the third floor of the Mangoni Building. At first, he thought it had just been a speck of ash in his eye, a twitter, but then he realized that, without thinking, he had eased his M25 phased plasma rifle into position, up close to his chest as he turned on his right side and wormed into position. He watched, carefully. A light breeze brought the smell of urban decay and a scent of smoke.

Davis waited.

Soldier now turned hunter, patient, unmoving, ever observant.

There!

The slight glint of starlight and a quarter moon on something that was trying to stay in place, at the edge of the light and dark in the ruin, something that was, in turn, watching and waiting. Davis pushed his rifle slowly into position … slowly … sighted down the passive array of his flexy-sight and saw … nothing.

Wait.

The breeze came again, and he smelled … oil and ash.

There was movement in his flexy-sight, right in the middle of his crosshair. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly and squeezed with even pressure taking up the slack on the trigger of his M25.

The bright flash of light one hundred meters away reached Davis before the hiss-cry of the plasma bolt from his rifle had echoed away.

“Got IT!” he whispered loudly in his tactical headset.

“What the hell, Davis?! I thought I told everyone to go dark and stay dark! That doesn’t mean you start busting gas at shadows!”

Davis bit his lip. That was Rogers, his CO, another veteran.

“Saw something I didn’t like.” Davis muttered in an angry whisper.

Rogers knew Davis well enough not to second guess his actions.

“Ryan? Go see what Davis just bagged.”

“Confirm.” Ryan said, in a voice that relayed that she wasn’t happy to go.

“Whatever it was, that was a good shot, Davis. I make it about a hundred meters.” His CO whispered through the push mic in his right ear.

Davis smiled, wondering what he had just bagged. It would take Ryan a good two, maybe five minutes to crab-scrabble over to the building and move up through the ruins. It was a long wait, an eternity, as Davis relaxed as best as he could in his combat gear, itself an almost impossible feat.

There was silence.

The sound of the wind.

Davis made a slight adjustment to the gain setting on his flexy-sight and looked around with the eyes of a survivor. His back was to the corner of a blasted wall, giving him cover but no way to see behind him; for that he trusted his ears.

“I’m here. Found it.” Said Ryan in a whisper, slightly out of breath from having to double-time across the ruins and remain as much in cover as she could.

Silence.

“Damn.” Ryan said flatly, not bothering to whisper, her voice loud in his ears.

“What?!” the squad CO asked.

A hundred something meters away Ryan used the barrel of her plasma rifle to carefully move the still smoking wreckage of the Machine around carefully. It was a flat, circular disc, what was left of it. Some type of aerodyne, with sensors suspended from a central pod. It was compact, about the width of a tire on its side and a quarter that size in height … at least from what Ryan could tell. Davis’ shot had been spot-on and on something small like this, devastating. Hyperalloy droplets had splattered from the impact point of the plasma bolt and tore through the Machine with deadly effect.

“Uh … it’s small … and round … and busted. Busted good. I think it’s scout metal.” Ryan said softly.

"You ... think?" Rogers asked.

"Pretty sure."

“Round, aerodyne ring, lots of circular blades in a hull, a pod in the center with sensors, lenses, that sort of thing?” Rogers asked.

“Uh … yeah. Yeah!” Ryan whispered. “It’s scout metal, isn’t it?”

There was a long silence.

“Yeah. It’s scout metal. Damn frisbee must have been shadowing us for a while now. We could be in deep now ... way deep.” Davis whispered into his mic.

“Yeah. We could be at that. Damn."

Silence.

"Ryan. Uh ... you’re our high eye. Three levels up is better than ground level. See what you can see. Do you think it saw us? Is there any other metal coming our way?”

Before Ryan could answer, a stream of hot, purple pulsed plasma played over the spot where Ryan was squatting. She, and an area for six meters around her vanished in vaporized flesh, bone, and masonry. The screaming after report of the plasma discharge and the explosive decoupling of everything it played over reached Rogers and Davis just after the blinding flash.

“What the hell!?” Rogers shouted loud enough to almost deafen Davis through the tac mike in his right ear.

A plasma blast like that had only a few units that carried weapons that powerful and since the plasma had come from some elevation at ground level and not from the sky, Davis knew all too well what Machine carried that kind of firepower. He slowly eased up to look behind him, to peer slightly over the wall to his back, but he heard the HK before he saw it. There, coming relentlessly, four blocks away to the west, grinding the ruins and wrecks under its massive treads was an HK tank. Its powertrain throttled down from patrol speed to search and destroy speed. The massive head turret, crammed with sensors and lenses, turned slowly towards the Mangoni building as its searchlights swiveled and played over the smoking crater, three stories up, where Ryan and a sizeable portion of the ruined building had been.

Smoke spilled out of the destroyed section of the Mangoni building as loose masonry fell to the sidewalk and street below. The roar of the HK's powerful, electric motor driven treads grew louder, as did the whine of its two independent turrets. Louder. Closer. Each turret housed an independently operating fire control system and its own sensors linked to a pair of high gain plasma guns and a powerful, variable aperture searchlight. As Davis watched, the searchlight for the left turret went back to sweeping the area … and fell hot on the spot that he knew Rogers was crouching in. The diameter of the light narrowed as the intensity of the brightness increased. The right side turret traversed with a high pitched whine and its dedicated spotlight fell on the same spot as the first, turning a patch of rubble and shadow into daytime at night.

The HK must have seen … something.

A thermal vent?

An EMS spike?

Movement?

Didn't matter ... not for Rogers.

The spotlights began to strobe, fast pulses and Davis looked away on instinct and experience, still, he almost hadn't turned his head quite in time. The residual pattern of the strobes left him feeling queasy and a momentary wave of nausea that he curled up in a fetal position there in his chosen cover and gripped himself tight, riding out the wave of nausea and fighting down the need to get up and flee. SKYNETs big killers, the tracked HKs, the quad Centurions, and the aerial HKs, all used high intensity search beams that, when acquiring targets, could switch to a strobe effect that had a involuntary seizure effect in a very large percentage of what was left of the population. Davis didn't know if Rogers had been looking at the big HK when the strobes lit up or if Rogers had started to seize uncontrollably but one thing was for sure ... out of the corner of his eye, not daring to look at the spot directly, Davis saw two streams of white strobes light up the area. 

Shadows danced on walls, maddening figures and shapes from Hell's own puppetshow.

On. 

Off. 

On. 

Off. 

A spastic madman playing with an electrical switch, but instead of insane laughter there was just the roar of the HK. The sound ... the bone vibrating roar of the electric motors that propelled the heavy tracked HK echoing off the walls and alleys of the ruins around him. The vibration of its weight moving along the blasted street sending small pebbles and rocks skittering along and causing dust and loose masonry to fall from ruined buildings.

The strobes.

The strobes!

Rapid fire sequence, almost too fast for the eye to discern but that was part of the delivery system ... strong enough and bright enough to be seen even if you had your eyes closed ... closed down tight, squenched shut so tight you'd need a knife to pry them open. Davis, his eyes closed so tight he thought the very act might pop his eyeballs in the sockets of his skull, threw his left forearm across his eyes, reached up with his right hand and grabbed his LoTex goggles on top of his head and slapped the goggles down over his eyes. The LoTex goggles were proof against the scanning lasers that SKYNET used to temporarily or permanently blind soft targets as well as the strobes that the big HKs used to optically stun. 

Where in the hell had the big HK come from?

Intel hadn't said anything about there being any heavy sector pacification units operating in this area!

The HK must have been in loiter mode, low power, parked several blocks away, maybe against some ruins, or even hull down in a collapsed sublevel of a parking garage or basement of a warehouse ... just low enough and cold enough to break up its tell-tale outline and EMS signature. If the Scout Metal had gotten a tag on Rogers' team, it hadn't taken long for the tracked HK to go from standby to combat readiness, a few seconds, and crawl out of whatever spiderhole it had been sleeping in. A tracked HK was not something you wanted to have hunting you, not when you weren't a dedicated tank killer team. Rogers' team was recon ... no spotter, no sapper, no engineers, no heavy unit takedown capability, no surface to air capability. Intel had told Rogers and Davis and Ryan that there were no heavies operating in this ops area but Davis knew, with the experience that only a survivor could attain, that if there was one tracked HK there was usually two ... and an aerial HK ... or two ... working as high eye and close air support.

SKYNET always operated in combined forces doctrine ... ground and air.

Always!

SKYNET owned the air ... so ... where was the ...?

About then a new sound filled Davis' ears ... the high pitched shriek of electrically driven ducted turbofans.

Aerial HK.

The waspish waist airborne HK roared slowly overhead, its sensors and scanners searching ... probing ... feeling ... smelling. The down blast from its twin electric driven turbofans blowing dust and grit all around Davis, stinging his exposed skin ... it's two powerful search beams stabbing down and all around, playing off rubble and ruins and debris, across the gaping wounds of old ruins, along the street, bring day to night. The Aerial HK began a slow bank as one of its search beams settled on the same spot that the twin beams from the tracked HK had settled on ... the Aerial HK finished its lazy, short radius bank and brought the second beam on that same spot from above. Again, strobe flashes, now four beams of insanely fast stream flashes on the spot that Rogers was hiding in.

Intel.

Intel said there were no heavies in this ops area!

Damn, Intel!

Intel was going to get Davis killed ... it had already gotten Ryan killed and Rogers ...

Rogers!

Davis couldn't do anything to help his CO. He managed to get a peek, a quick peek, when the heavy plasma guns of the left turret fired with a deafening shriek, staccato pulses of purple light like strobes that ionized and incinerated the air that they passed through. The Aerial HK's ventral rapid pulse, heavy phased plasma gun whined in its gimbaled turret, pointing almost straight down at Rogers before it screamed its own shrieking stream of pulsed plasma at the spot that the four strobe beams were converged on.  The spot where Rogers had been taking cover exploded in white hot plasma, secondary explosions from the munitions that he had carried, and he became a part of a brightly glowing geyser created of burning earth, melted concrete and other debris; a geyser rising two stories into the sky, ejected by force from the four-meter wide, two-meter-deep crater that had once been Davis’ CO.

“Shit.” Davis thought, close-mouthed, careful not to let even a whisper escape his lips lest the sound sensors of the HK hear him. It wasn’t the first time that he’d been alone, hunted by metal, and it wasn’t the first time that he had been hunted by big, tracked metal.

The strobes went back to solid beams of light ... searching.

Two beams moving up and down, playing off of walls, the rusted wrecks of vehicles ... destroying night and shadows where the beams touched. Two more beams from above followed in their own lazy tracks. The roar of the tracked HK and the scream of the Aerial reverberated in Davis' bones.

Davis slowly, oh so slowly, slid down back behind the wall of the ruins, trying to make himself as small as he could for all the good that it would do him. He had one BiNex cannister charge, slung over his back, but if he reached for it, even as careful as he could, he might make enough movement to set off the motion tracking sensors of the big, heavy, death machine that was now hunting him and its airborne companion.

The scream of the twin ducted turbofans again rose in intensity, held their pitch, then slowly began to fade.

Neither the Aerial HK or the tracked HK had acquired him ... yet.

If he could get one shot … just one quick shot, one lucky shot … maybe … just maybe … he could use his M25 to take out the FiConSys sensors on the left side turret and blind the big hulking, tread slapping son of a metal bitch. Then and only then, might he have a chance ... two, maybe three seconds at most, to throw his cannister charge. If he was really lucky, then the cannister charge would roll under the tracked steel and blow the HK to hell. If he wasn’t really lucky, he could still probably blow a tread assembly apart thus crippling or slowing the HK enough that he could get away on the side that he managed to gimp up, losing himself among the ruins until he could regroup with another unit or maybe even make it back to front command on his own.

There, behind the cover of the ruins at his back, watching the searchlights play over the ruins and street in front of him and to each side, Davis slowly reached over his shoulder and grabbed the BinEx cannister charge from its carrying harness, setting it carefully down beside him. Davis gripped his M25 tight, shutting his eyes, and praying for all that he was worth. Two ... maybe three seconds after he fired ... if he hit ... if he hit the sensor and target search tracking pod, he might just stab the giant in one of its eyes, gimp it on its left side, and he'd have those precious few seconds to arm and throw his BinEx cannister charge and run. Of course the big tracked HK could just hose the area with plasma fire but Davis was betting that in those first few seconds after the BinEx cannister charge went off that he could cover a lot of ground.

A desperate man could cover a lot of ground in just three seconds. He knew that from experience because he had done that before.

But ... what about the Aerial HK?

If he timed it right, Davis could hit the tracked HK while the Aerial HK was making a long sweep in search mode. The second the tracked HK came under attack, the Aerial HK would do a high energy turn in place, skating in the air on variable gimbaled ducted turbofans, and it would come screaming at top speed to the aid of the tracked HK, searchlights, strobes, ventral heavy plasma gun screaming away, all sensors and scanners locked and looking at the immediate area that the attack had come from ... but by then Davis would no longer be where he was now.

No.

Davis would be pushing elbows to kneecaps, running as fast and as hard as he could and putting every big piece of concrete, metal or ruin between him and anything screaming at him overhead. He could outrun, outhide, an Aerial HK ... those wasps weren't too smart ... just a whole lot of angry and ... again ... combined forces. SKYNET depended on ground and air units working together to be efficient. Take one or the other out and you upset the dynamic ... you upset the balance and you knocked the efficiency of the Machines down a notch or two and right now that's all Davis needed to do to survive; knock the two Machines' efficiency down a notch or two ... or three.

One step at a time.

One second at a time.

Have a plan, follow a plan.

The Aerial HK again screamed overhead, quieter this time, farther away, maybe two blocks down, maybe three. Davis caught a glimpse of the Aerial HK and its search lights playing over the sides and rooftops of the ruins then it vanished from sight, the roar of its ducted turbofans diminishing as it grew smaller in the distance. Behind him, now just little over a city block away, the roar of the HK’s drivetrain grew louder, almost deafening. On it came, relentless, crushing the rusty and shattered wrecks of old cars and trucks flat under its massive weight and wide treads, barely rising with each wreck it passed over. The vibration through the ground of the heavy treads slapping pavement he felt, rattled the sling on his M25 rifle, plastic on plastic. The high-pitched whine of the electric turrets as they traversed in a limited 270-degree arc … EMS sensors, FiConSys and heavy, rapid pulse phased plasma guns searching for any living target …

… searching …

… searching.

_______________________________________

RETURN