Jackpot, Paul thought to himself. He pulled a pin and hurled a grenade deep into the room. This time he didn’t duck. He had this timed and he had body armor.
The grenade’s motion caused a pudgy lieutenant colonel to pull off his headset, stand and shout a question in German.
Paul pulled the trigger, putting two bullets into the commanding officer of the 10th Panzer-Grenadier Drone Battalion.
The grenade exploded. Surprised operators shouted in agony as they toppled to the floor. Others turned in horror, their faces showing dismay and terror at the sight of Paul.
Kavanagh used the chaos. He used their torpor and the fact that it took precious seconds for them to realize what was going on around them in the real world. Methodically, he began to cut down the enemy, firing into their bodies. A few had guns. One man in his chair fumbled and dropped his weapon. Paul killed him before he could retrieve it.
Three operators managed to get off a single shot each. One bullet missed, gouging the wall behind Paul’s head. Another went between his legs and ricocheted off a swivel chair’s metal roller. The last punched against Paul in the chest. The body armor absorbed the bullet, but the force caused Paul to stagger backward. It felt as if someone had slugged him with a baseball bat. It shook his rhythm.
The GD sergeant who managed the shot lined up his pistol for a second one. The soldier grinned and he had a face full of freckles. He pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. The gun must have jammed. Dismay twisted the sergeant’s face. It gave Paul time to regain his balance and his mental equilibrium. The two of them stared at each other across the short distance.
Paul didn’t know he stared at Sergeant Luger, the drone operator of Sigrid #71. Paul didn’t know Sergeant Luger had seen his friend Hans Kruger crawl under a desk to escape the one-man mayhem.
The GD sergeant cocked back his arm to hurl the pistol at Paul. This wasn’t how the war was supposed to go. Luger had killed and even treaded Americans with ease, not the other way around.
Before the sergeant could complete the motion, Paul shot him in the forehead. It was a perfect hole, with smoke dribbling out of it. The sergeant pitched back and thudded against a desk, flopping onto the floor. He lay in front of his trembling and hidden friend, Hans Kruger.
As the sergeant fell, Paul swiveled around. A GD captain charged him from the left. The captain held a teapot for a weapon, getting ready to swing it. Paul clicked the trigger to no effect. The magazine was out of bullets. The GD captain shouted. Before the teapot struck the side of Paul’s head, he thrust straight and bayoneted the German in the chest.
The blade almost stuck on a rib. Almost—it slid past the blocking bone and speared the heart, entering two ventricles and killing the captain. With his rifle, Paul shoved the dying man onto the floor. Then he tore out the empty magazine and slammed in another. He moved so fast that two GD enlisted personnel watched him as if they were rabbits. Paul put two bullets into each. He used another grenade, lobbing it over knocked-down desks. A German yelled in terror, rose up and attempted to run away. The grenade exploded, lifting him off his feet, dashing his head against a wall.
Paul approached the barrier and found three huddling GD personnel. Two of them were badly bleeding. Those two looked up at him, pleading with their eyes. Paul killed them and the one who refused to look up. He had to kill. This was war. The drone operators must have slain hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans through their robot weapons. Fair was fair, eh, Fritz?
Earlier in his career, all this killing would have left Paul shaking. He kept his poise now. He turned around and scanned the room. Some GD personnel yet lived. A few groaned in agony. Others lay stunned, their eyes staring and glazed.
He brought the barrel low and shot each of them in the head, ending it.
He approached a different operator. The man swore at him in German and he looked angry. Paul shot him. Paul was angry. The invaders didn’t have any right to be upset or angry with him.
“We didn’t invade you, did we?” Paul asked under his breath. “You came here to steal our land.”
There wasn’t anyone left alive in the area except for one German sliding away from him. Maybe the old Marine general Len Zelazny had known what he had been talking about after all.
Paul blinked slowly as the killing high evaporated. The GD man continued to slide away. The enemy soldier refused to stare at him, but the man seemed intent on living.
“No,” Paul said softly. “You don’t get to get away.” He licked his lips, and suddenly all the energy seemed to pour out of his shoulders. Just like that, he was sick of it. He wasn’t a butcher. He fought in the heat of combat, but coldblooded killing…
He wasn’t quite looking at the man now. Paul knew what needed doing. He just didn’t want to do it.
I have to start searching for the codes and special equipment. But which are the important pieces of equipment anyway?
Paul wondered what had happened to Romo. As he did, the reptilian part of his brain tried to flag his attention. It was time to leave as fast as possible. The GD would send tough infantry soldiers here soon enough. He had to be gone by the time they arrived.
As Paul stirred, his blood brother walked around the corner. The Mexican-Apache had a crazy smile on his face. Something inhuman shone in Romo’s eyes. He was a killer. He was no longer an ordinary mortal and this was his world.
“We have to leave,” Paul told him.
Romo stopped short, and he spied the slider. The enemy soldier attempted to climb to his feet. Without mercy or pity, Romo lifted his assault rifle and shot the man dead.
“What are you doing, Amigo?” Romo asked. “That’s foolish. You never give an enemy the chance to fight back. These cretins invaded us. They’re butchers. They’re rapists. You must stomp them like the cockroaches they are.”
“They’re dead now,” Paul said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re supposed to collect one of them for HQ, remember?”
“And the codes,” Romo said. “We need their special codes.”
“Which codes? What are we supposed to get that will make any difference?”
Romo’s eyes seemed to shine with a greater thrill and intensity. He motioned for silence.
Paul raised an eyebrow.
Romo pointed at a desk.
Paul caught the noise: the slow slide of a boot. Someone had remained hidden all this time. Maybe they hadn’t killed everyone after all.
AI Kaiser HK A7B12 “Hindenburg” clanked through the darkened city streets. Tall buildings loomed. On one, a dangling sign fell, plunging to hit the street with a crash of dead neon lights.
The “it” of the AI independence program—what let a machine make battlefield decisions—had developed a personality through many months of tests and now war service. Internally, Hindenburg had taken the maleness of the name and assigned himself a gender.
In other words, Hindenburg referred to himself as he, a him, a male. There was no “it” about him. Just look at the destruction, at the precision of his ploys, his trickery and the sheer awesomeness of assault. That made him a great giant of a he. Who else could compare to him? There was no war-machine worthy of even carrying his ammo.
Granted, the enemy possessed a tank capable of challenge. The Behemoth tracked vehicle—Hindenburg anticipated destroying several of those and launching his reputation to even greater heights. Then High Command would see that the AI Kaisers were supreme, without peer and worthy of…