THERE WERE WORSE THINGS than getting swept up in the first battle of the first war in over a century, but Bradley could not right away think of any.
They had been out on a lark, really. Bradley got his buddy Paul to go along, flying low over the hills to watch the grand formations of men and machines. Bradley knew how to keep below the radar screens, sometimes skimming along so close to the treetops that branches snapped on their understruts. They had come in before dawn, using Bradley’s dad’s luxury, ultraquiet cruiser—over the broad fields, using the sunrise to blind the optical sensors below.
It had been enormously exciting. The gleaming columns, the acrid smoke of ruin, the distant muffled coughs of combat.
Then somebody shot them down.
Not a full, square hit, luckily. Bradley had gotten them over two ranges of hills, lurching through shot-racked air. Then they came down heavily, air bags saving the two boys.
They had no choice but to go along with the team that picked them out of their wreckage. Dexter, a big, swarthy man, seemed to be in charge. He said, “We got word a bunch of mechs are comin’ along this road. You stick with us, you can help out.”
Bradley said irritably, “Why should we? I want to—”
“Cause it’s not safe round here, kid,” Dexter said. “You joyriding rich kids, maybe you’ll learn something about that today.”
Dexter grinned, showing two missing teeth, and waved the rest of his company to keep moving into the slanting early-morning glow.
Nobody had any food and Bradley was pretty sure they would not have shared it out if they had. The fighting over the ridge to the west had disrupted whatever supply lines there were into this open, once agricultural land.
They reached the crossroads by midmorning and right away knocked out a servant mech by mistake. It saw them come hiking over the hill through the thick oaks and started chuffing away, moving as fast as it could. It was an R class, shiny and chromed.
A woman who carried one of the long rods over her shoulder whipped the rod down and sighted along it and a loud boom startled Bradley. The R mech went down. “First one of the day,” the woman named Angel said.
“Musta been a scout,” Dexter said.
“For what?” Bradley asked, shocked as they walked down the slope toward the mech in air still cool and moist from the dawn.
Paul said tentatively, “The mech withdrawal?”
Dexter nodded. “Mechs’re on their way through here. Bet they’re scared plenty.”
They saw the R mech had a small hole punched through it right in the servo controls near the back. “Not bad shootin’,” a man said to Angel.
“I tole you these’d work,” Angel said proudly. “I sighted mine in fresh this mornin’. It helps.”
Bradley realized suddenly that the various machined rods these dozen people carried were all weapons, fabrications turned out of factories exclusively human-run. Killing tools, he thought in blank surprise. Like the old days. You see them in dramas and stuff, but they’ve been illegal for a century.
“Maybe this mech was just plain scared,” Bradley said. “It’s got software for that.”
“We sent out a beeper warning,” Dexter said, slapping the pack on his back. “Goes out of this li’l rig here. Any mech wants no trouble, all they got to do is come up on us slow and then lie down so we can have a look at their programming cubes.”
“Disable it?”
“Sure. How else we going to be sure?”
“This one ran clear as anything,” Angel said, reloading her rifle.
“Maybe it didn’t understand,” Bradley said. The R models were deft, subtle, terrific at social graces.
“It knew, all right,” Angel said, popping the mech’s central port open and pulling out its ID cube. “Look, it’s from Sanfran.”
“What’s it doing all the way out here, then, if it’s not a rebel?” a black man named Nelson asked.
“Yeah,” Dexter said. “Enter it as reb.” He handed Bradley a wrist comm. “We’re keepin’ track careful now. You’ll be busy just takin’ down score today, kid.”
“Rebel, uh, I see,” Bradley said, tapping into the comm. It was reassuring to do something simple while he straightened out his feelings.
“You bet,” Nelson said, excitement lacing his voice. “Look at it. Fancy mech, smarter than most of them, tryin’ to save itself. It’s been runnin’ away from our people. They just broke up a big mech force west of here.”
“I never could afford one of these chrome jobs,” Angel said. “They knew that, too. I had one of these classy R numbers meanmouth me in the market, try to grab a can of soybean stew.” She laughed sarcastically. “That was when there was a few scraps left on the shelves.”
“Elegant thing, wasn’t it?” Nelson kicked the mech, which rolled farther downhill.
“You messed it up pretty well,” Bradley said.
Dexter said, “Roll it down into that hollow so nobody can see it from the road.” He gestured at Paul. “You go with the other party. Hey, Mercer!”
A tall man ambled over from where he had been carefully trying to pick the spines off a prickly pear growing in a gully. Everybody was hungry. Dexter said to him, “Go down across the road and set up shot. Take this kid—Paul’s your name, right?—he’ll help with the gruntwork. We’ll catch ’em in a crossfire here.”
Mercer went off with Paul. Bradley helped get the dead mech going and with Angel rolled it into the gully. Its flailing arms dug fresh wet gouges in the spring grass. The exposed mud exhaled moist scents. They threw manzanita brush over the shiny carcass to be sure, and by that time Dexter had deployed his people.
They were setting up what looked like traps of some kind well away from the blacktop crossroads. Bradley saw that this was to keep the crossroads from looking damaged or clogged. They wanted the mechs to come in fast and keep going.
As he worked he heard rolling bass notes, like the mumbles of a giant, come from the horizon. He could see that both the roads leading to the crossroads could carry mechs away from the distant battles. Dexter was everywhere, barking orders, Bradley noted with respect.
The adults talked excitedly to each other about what the mechs would make of it, how easy they were to fool about real-world stuff, and even threw in some insider mech slang—codes and acronyms that meant very little to mechs, really, but had gotten into the pop culture as hip new stuff. Bradley smiled at this. It gave him a moment of feeling superior to cover his uneasiness.
It was a crisp spring morning now that the sun had beamed up over the far hill at their backs. The perfect time for fresh growth, but the fields beyond had no plowing or signs of cultivation. Mechs should be there, laying in crops. Instead they were off over the rumpled ridgeline, clashing with the main body of humans and, Bradley hoped secretly, getting their asses kicked. Though mechs had no asses, he reminded himself.
Dexter and Bradley laid down behind a hummock halfway up the hill. Dexter was talking into his hushmike headset, face jumping with anticipation and concern. Bradley savored the rich scents of the sweet new grass and thought idly about eating some of it.
Dexter looked out over the setup his team was building and said, “Y’know, maybe we’re too close, but I figure you can’t be in too close as long as you have the firepower. These weapons, we need close, real close. Easier to hit them when they’re moving fast but then it’s easier for them to hit you, too.”