The machine ground troops aimed their fusion guns at Rhodes and opened fire. He was too busy thrashing his lasers at more invasion ships trying to surround him.
He fired lasers out of his eyes instead. He didn’t make the conscious decision to do it that way.
He was just too busy using his arms against the enemy ships. He altered his weapons configuration without thinking, slashed down the ground troops, and spun around to face more incoming enemy vessels.
Oakes, Lauer, Coulter, Thackery, and Dietz widened their circle to give each other room to clear the area. The platoon soldiers crouched in the center of that circle firing outward to hit enemy targets whenever and wherever they could.
“The Ero is in the atmosphere, Captain!” Wild called over the noise. “Captain Ackerman can’t descend until we secure the surface.”
“Secure it, then!” Rhodes yelled over his shoulder. He couldn’t turn around.
He faced another five enemy vessels circling from the north. He had to stop them from getting near Rhinehart, Henshaw, and the platoons.
He occupied the enemy with his lasers. The invasion ships charged him trying to break past him and get behind him.
He released another five Vipers and hit two of invasion ships, but Vipers didn’t damage them.
He concentrated on the others. They tied him up while another ten landed farther out in the wasteland of bodies. Those ten ships unloaded more ground troops. How much longer could the enemy go on with this before they took out the battalion first and then the platoons?
Out of nowhere, a revolving pinwheel of laser fire rocketed across Rhodes’ line of sight. It slashed down dozens of robot ground troops and kept on going.
The pinwheel spun parallel to the ground, circled the battle twenty yards out from the battalion’s position, and whirled back around to rejoin the battalion before the pinwheel changed back into Fuentes.
Rhodes didn’t have time to congratulate anyone before another five invasion ships closed on him. He fired his Vipers again and swung his lasers one last time, but he couldn’t destroy these things. They were too big and too powerful.
They hovered off taking his Viper hits on their jumbled outer hulls. They could have slaughtered him in seconds if they really unloaded their weapons on him, but they didn’t.
They drifted back and forth in front of him for a second and then lifted off into the atmosphere. Their machine ground troops retreated, loaded up, and evacuated the planet, too.
He stood there panting for breath and searching the landscape for any other enemy coming after him.
“The Ero is on approach, Captain!” Wild reported again.
Rhodes couldn’t speak to answer. His eyes darted back and forth across the landscape. He didn’t want to believe that those machines really were gone.
They weren’t gone. They still battled against the Legion on other planets and out in space.
The Ero took advantage of the lull to descend on the battalion’s position, but the ship couldn’t find a flat spot to land.
It drifted a few feet off the ground and waited there with its landing bay open for the battalion to evacuate.
Rhodes and his people herded the platoons in front. Lauer picked up Henshaw. Rhodes had to change himself into another giant monster so he could carry Rhinehart.
The platoons packed into the bay. Rhodes’s form gave him a clear view over the soldiers’ heads.
Dr. Osborne tried to meet the battalion there, but the platoon blocked his way. He had to fight his way through to get near Rhodes and Lauer.
A bunch of soldiers from the platoon tried to talk to the battalion on their way through the hold.
Rhodes saw the soldiers smiling and holding out their hands to shake hands with the battalion, but he pushed past them. He really needed to get off by himself and think.
“We can’t work on them here!” Osborne called over dozens of voices. “Bring them up to the capsule hold. I’ll work on them there and you can all go into conversion cycles.”
“They were SAMs!” Fuentes panted. “They were SAMs!”
Osborne looked over at him. “Who was?”
“Not now, Corporal,” Rhodes interrupted.
Rhinehart weighed a ton. Rhodes didn’t want to carry him in some otherworldly form that might scare the crew, but Rhodes couldn’t carry Rhinehart without changing into something.
He and the battalion followed Osborne upstairs to the capsule hold. Rhodes and Lauer laid Rhinehart and Henshaw in their capsules. Osborne and Trudeau started working on the two injured battalion members.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Coulter stretched out in his capsule and went into a conversion cycle right away. He groaned when he turned over on the mattress and locked into his prongs.
Rhodes stayed across the room watching his people settle down. Lauer and Thackery had a hard time putting the battle behind them. They both paced up and down for more than an hour.
Fuentes approached Rhodes. Fuentes no longer glared—or not as badly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t carry out the objective to hit the base ships, Sir. I hope you don’t mind me taking the initiative to take out those ground troops instead.”
“Not at all, Corporal. You did great. You ended the battle much quicker than it otherwise would have. I’m glad you feel free to take the initiative that way. You can keep doing it as much as you want.”
“Thank you, Sir. I think I’ll take the initiative by going into a conversion cycle.”
Rhodes started to smile, but he stopped himself.
Fuentes went straight to his capsule and locked himself into it. Dietz sat down at the computer terminal. He didn’t usually get a chance to work on it. Fuentes monopolized the terminal back at Coleridge Station.
Oakes sat down at the table, but he didn’t work on his drawings. He and Rhodes didn’t bring any paper or pencils with them. They didn’t need to. They stayed in stasis for the trip here and then went straight into combat.
Fisher broke in on Rhodes’s thoughts. “I’m so sorry, Captain. I can’t forgive myself for letting you down in the middle of a battle.”
“You had nothing to do with that transponder code,” Rhodes replied. “I’m the one who’s sorry I had to get inside your head like that to break the code.”
“I’m not talking about the code,” Fisher murmured. “I’m talking about before that.”
Rhodes turned to face his SAM. Fisher had withdrawn so much from Rhodes recently. Fisher didn’t intrude on Rhodes’s life unless he absolutely had to.
“I shouldn’t have let those SAMs…..”
“Stop calling them SAMs, pal,” Rhodes snapped. “You can’t think of them as that.”
“I have to, Captain. That’s the problem.”
“You calling them that is what’s causing the problem. They’re our enemies. Did you see the way they targeted the battalion? They know who we are. They came back to Bao for us alone.”
“Doesn’t that just prove that they are SAMs?”
Rhodes tried to shake those thoughts out of his head, but nothing would get rid of them now. “They aren’t SAMs. Don’t call them that.”
“What should I call them, then?”
“Call them the enemy. That’s what they really are.”
Fisher fell silent for a moment. He and Rhodes watched Osborne and Trudeau working on Rhinehart and Henshaw.
Osborne adjusted a few things on Rhinehart’s cranial implant and then did the same thing to Henshaw. Her implants started to repair themselves.
A few minutes later, Osborne closed both capsules with Rhinehart and Henshaw inside. Thackery started to relax and sat down on the edge of her capsule.
“You should go into a conversion cycle, too, Captain,” Fisher told him. “Your system is depleted.”
“I know, man,” Rhodes muttered. “I just don’t seem to be able to dial it down.”
Just then, Osborne came over to him. The doctor studied Rhodes extra closely. “What did Fuentes mean when he said they were SAMs?”
“Nothing,” Rhodes lied. “How’s Henshaw? Is she going to recover?”
“She’ll be fine, now that her implants are repairing themselves. Rhinehart’s head injury isn’t severe. He should be fine after a conversion cycle.”
“That’s what Rocky said.”
Osborne cocked his head to inspect Rhodes even more intensely. “Is something wrong, Captain? You don’t look good.”
“What does that mean? I never do.”
“I mean you look like you’re in distress. You look like something is bothering you.”
Rhodes almost confided in the doctor and then changed his mind. Dr. Osborne joined the Battalion 1 project after it got started.
He wouldn’t have been involved in whatever Frankenstein creation made these rogue SAMs into a force powerful enough to attack the Legion that created it.
“I’ll be all right. I better turn in. Thanks for everything, Doctor.”
Rhodes sat down on his mattress, stretched out on his back, and closed his capsule cover, but he didn’t connect to the prongs. He lay there staring at nothing for a while—except that Fisher was still there.
“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” Fisher asked.
“He won’t be able to tell me where these….these machines came from. He wasn’t around when the project got started.”
“He’s the one who will reprogram me and the other SAMs.”
Rhodes started to shut his eyes. “I told you not to worry about the transponder code. The Legion can change it easily. Those machines won’t be able to use it a second time.”
“I’m not talking about the transponder code, Captain,” Fisher murmured with his usual saint-like patience. “I’m talking about our programming that won’t allow us to attack another SAM.”
Rhodes tried to insist again that these machines weren’t SAMs, but that argument obviously didn’t work.
He tried to look away, but Fisher just moved with Rhodes every time he turned his head. “Maybe I don’t like the idea of reprogramming you to do anything, pal. Maybe that’s why I don’t want the doctors doing anything to you.”
Fisher’s expression twisted. “I’m grateful that you’re trying to protect me, Captain.”
“That’s nothing you haven’t done for me a thousand times. Tell me this. Would you want to fight these machines if they weren’t SAMs? Did you want to fight them before you found out they were SAMs—or that they were using SAMs technology?”
“Of course. They tried to kill the battalion—and you. They attacked the Legion and wiped out all those Emal. Of course I want to fight them.”
Rhodes shut his eyes again. “Then, as far as I’m concerned, this is just another malfunction.”
“If it’s a malfunction, you should want the doctors to correct it,” Fisher pointed out.
“I would rather correct it amongst ourselves if we can—without the doctors tinkering with your programming. That never ends well.”
“There is another problem, Captain—as I’m sure you know.”
“What’s that?”
“That these….these machines wanted to retrieve you—to retrieve us. They wanted the battalion—and not to study us the way the Emal did. How do you think these machines found the battalion on the one planet where we were fighting? These machines could have intervened in any battle anywhere the Emal are invading the Treaty of Aemon Cluster. These machines chose that one planet—the one planet with the battalion on it. It looks like these machines came here to retrieve the battalion.”
“Then they really are our enemies. I’m going to sleep now, pal. I suggest you do the same thing. I promise you we won’t go back into battle until we work this out—even if it means reprogramming you.”
“Captain, do you think….?” Fisher broke off.
“Do I think what?”
“You threatened to take me offline if I interfered with the battle—which I did.”
“You tried to break that transponder code. You didn’t interfere with the battle.”
“I interfered by recommending that you treat these machines as something other than the enemy.”
“Dash did the same thing. Besides, the Legion and the Battalion 1 governing body have some questions to answer about where this technology came from. I’m not going to take anyone offline until I get those answers.” Rhodes locked into the prongs. “We can talk about this when I wake up. I’ll see you when we get back to Coleridge Station, pal.”
“Good night, Captain. Sleep well.”
End of Chapter 27.