the center of the town.
Mei Li paused, to take a sip of Quikshot from her canteen and wolf down a foodbar. She circled the small statue of some forgotten dignitary in the middle of the piazza, while Spider Squad gathered around their wristpads, watching video feed from their drones, up and down nearby streets.
“…Corporal Ivanchik told me this evening about another exercise they had recently run at the wargame range. The town had been set up to resemble a tiny mountain hamlet in northern alpine Italy. They called it Magdelena. Spider Squad had been there a few weeks ago. The Corporal said Magdalena was like a lot of small towns the Squad had encountered in their never-ending field training—“ here she pasted in the sound bite from Ivanchik….
“Yeah, sure…we wiped the place out. I mean completely too. HERF’ed and coilgunned it down to burning rubble and flies. And real flies too, not ANAD bots. We made sure of that. It’s like Lubitsky said…we had to destroy the town to save it. Place was infested, swarms everywhere—“
Mei Li paused her voiceover. She ran the last few seconds again. She was sure she had heard that before, somewhere, in another time and place.
Winger decided to form up another recon detail, this time with humans and drones together. “We got to be sure…sweep this hellhole from one end to another. Lubitsky, you go with Invanchik and Ng down that sector…Barnes, you and Nguyen and D’Nunzio take that one--
“ He sectioned off the remainder of the village into sweep sectors. “You see anything, anything at all, smash the bejeezus out of it. Battalion says this is a free-fire zone. Fry the bastards like popcorn, if you have to.”
Ten minutes later, one of the details came back, completely spooked, insisting to Winger that the whole place was one big swarm nursery, that they were everywhere, behind every corner.
Nguyen, the Vietnamese cadet, was out of breath. “They’re inside… behind the doors… we could see the swarms—faces… parts of faces…in the windows—“
Barnes added, “Even the barns…they were kind of fuzzy, kind of shimmering…like a swarm trying to hold structure…”
Ng said, “Sarge, we need to deploy ANAD…deploy now! Get the master out and replicating…so we’ll be ready—“
Winger knew Ng was probably right. But he didn’t like taking ideas from a newbie. His eyes narrowed. “What did Superfly say?”
Mighty Mite Barnes shrugged. “I don’t know…we didn’t stick around, Sarge—“
Winger ordered a full drone scan of the sector. A herd of ornithopters wheeled about overhead to sniff out thermal emissions, atom debris, electromagnetic disturbances, anything out of the ordinary. The aerial bots swooped low, then careened higher to overfly the area.
Mei Li approached the gathering. “Something, Sergeant?”
Winger said, “I don’t know. I got a bad feeling about this place…too quiet. We’ll let Superfly tell us what’s going on.” The rest of Spider Squad assembled at the intersection, near the clocktower.
Mei Li looked about the piazza, signaling her dronecam to get some establishing shots. Valleyville was eerily quiet. A stray cat. A few birds. A statue in the center. All the shop windows were closed, lights down low. It was just nicely dark. In real villages set in this part of alpine Italy, early evening strollers and café dwellers would have been out congregating at this hour.
Valleyville didn’t seem to have any cafes.
“Nothing, Sarge.” D’Nunzio was studying her wristpad, getting scan data back from Superfly. “Nada…no heat flux, nothing acoustic…nothing. It’s weird.”
“Too weird,” someone said.
Winger rubbed at his chin stubble. “I got my orders. Battalion says clear swarms from the area and hold the town, then we move in for the hostages, if there are any.” He looked around at his men, knew how fatigued and jittery they were. He was on edge himself. He didn’t want to screw this up, incur Ironpants’ wrath anymore. “We can’t take any chances. With Devil Squad somewhere out there, we know what the Bugs can do. This whole place could be a setup. I’m ordering a Level 1 assault.”
Ivanchik brightened. “Level 1…you mean…the works?”
Winger nodded. “Every building is to be completely leveled. All residents—if there are any left in this mudpile—are to be turned out. Everyone leaves town…no exceptions…send ‘em out by the northern roads…keep the southern and western roads clear for Normals…we’re supposed to be relieved in twenty-four hours. Once the place is properly sanitized, I’ll launch ANAD, rep a few gazillion bots and we’ll sweep the whole area. I don’t want any surprises today.”
Mei Li and her dronecam had captured everything on vid. “Excuse me, Sergeant…didn’t Corporal D’Nunzio just say there was no evidence of swarm activity in the area. Yet you’re still going to destroy the village—I don’t—“
Winger was unmoved. “They’re here, Ms. Li. I can feel it. So can my men. You’ve seen the vids, you know what the Bugs can do. No, we’re playing this one by the book. Level everything and set up a defense perimeter. Any bugs that are still loose, we zap ‘em right then and there, right to eternity.”
As Mei Li made another posting to the Net, Winger gave the order. The Solnet correspondent made sure the dronecam got good vid of everything.
“It wasn’t long before the village of Valleyville was engulfed in flames…all the thatched roof buildings, the old stone churches, the shops and cafes, even the statue in the piazza crumbled into dust under a withering barrage of HERF and particle beam fire…there were a few residents and they ran through the streets in their pajamas and robes, terrified, screaming…it was all frighteningly real and convincing, as it was meant to be. The troopers of Spider Squad were like bots themselves, going from one street to the next, systematically pulverizing every structure they found…making sure as they moved on that nothing was left standing…nothing that a swarm could masquerade as…
“It didn’t matter if the swarms, or “Bugs’ as the troopers called them, were in Valleyville or not. What mattered was that Spider Squad believed they were there. In vids this reporter had seen prior to the exercise, the enemy had been able to masquerade as civilians, barns, abandoned cars, even trees and bushes. Nothing could be trusted. Since nothing could be trusted, everything had to be destroyed.
“Now, Valleyville is a burned-out rubble pile. The residents, those that survived, have fled north, along the highway to places beyond the mountains, so I was told. And the troops of Spider Squad have set up camp outside the rubble, to await their relief.
“Their mission has been accomplished. There’s nothing left standing that the Bugs could emulate or infest. Spider Squad has done what was required of them.
“The last step of the sanitizing process was for Sergeant Winger to launch his own ANAD master bot. This device would then replicate itself into a swarm and the swarm would be driven throughout the streets of the town to sweep out any residual enemy bots.
“The troopers called it ‘polishing the floors’, as if they were a heavily armed and somewhat paranoid cleaning crew.
“When the ANAD master bot was launched from its containment capsule by Corporal McReady, and began replicating, it looked like a miniature thunderstorm, a faint, flickering fog growing up and out, spreading like some Biblical plague across the grounds.
“That’s when something incredible, something completely unscripted happened…Corporal Joseph Ng himself began to deconstruct into something similar…a glowing fog of twinkling lights like fireflies—“
Mei Li halted her voiceover in mid-sentence. All hell had broken loose outside Valleyville. In panic and confusion, troopers were firing HERF and coilguns wildly, trying to beat back the growing swarm that had once been Ng. The main body of the ANAD swarm was already maneuvering toward the center of the piazza. The thing—swarm—plague—whatever—that had minutes before been Joe Ng was a smaller formation, but faster. It sped on its own propulsors across the g
rass and dirt, sending up little dust devils as it chased after ANAD.
Winger, momentarily startled, ordered a full-bore volley, everything the squad had. “Light ‘em up! Hose the place down!”
Someone dragged Mei Li to the ground. It was D’Nunzio. “Keep your ass down, ma’am! Those bugs could turn on us in no time!”
Mei Li stopped her voiceover. Overhead, the dronecam orbited in a safety pattern, awaiting instructions. Its vid footage would prove invaluable in after-action debriefs in the days ahead.
Jurgen Kraft leveled an even gaze at Johnny Winger across his desk. “Well, Mr. Winger, this is becoming a regular occurrence with you. Once again, you’ve managed to stretch the Rules of Engagement…and my orders…in a tactical exercise. As far as Operation Slammer was concerned, I believe the ROE called for you and Spider Squad to reconnoiter the town, secure the town, rescue any hostages and avoid collateral damage to existing infrastructure, to the maximum extent possible.”
Johnny Winger looked down glumly. Here it comes now…my exit papers.
“Yes, sir.”
Kraft didn’t blink. The vein on his forehead quivered red like a thing alive. And his huge moustache looked like it was making fists at Winger.
“So your interpretation of the commander’s intent and tactical directives is to obliterate the objective into a smoking ruin, run