War Machine: The Memoirs of a Synthetic Marine

Episode 38

A Glimpse of Mortality

Paralyzed by fear and indecision, I stood frozen, as the Marine who had just casually murdered my squad leader turned slowly towards me. My mind raced, desperately trying to determine a course of action, any action that wouldn’t result in my immediate death.

Realizing there was no way I could win a gunfight with this guy; I accepted I was going to die in the next few seconds. Strangely, my resignation brought with it a sense of calm, as I stood facing my executioner.

In the Marine’s mirrored face shield, I saw a reflection of my image against a stark, snowy battlefield. A poignant portrait of a soldier at the moment of death. I felt an upwelling of something like emotion, which I was certain would have produced tears of profound sadness, if I was still human.

I switched off my optical sensors and waited for oblivion.

After what seemed like more than enough time to finish the job, I realized I still existed. Even though I had accepted my fate with equanimity, my assassin delaying my execution seemed like a final unacceptable indignity. I felt a hint of anger welling up.

“Listen, we both know what’s going to happen here, so … so just do it.”

When the inevitable didn’t immediately occur, I added a further inducement, “Come on asshole! Get it over with.” Still nothing.

I’ll be the first to admit that taunting one’s executioner seems pointless, but I wasn’t about to be toyed with in my final moments by this murderous piece of shit. Now truly pissed, I covertly brought my weapons online, and prepared to go out in a blaze of righteous glory.

After enabling auto targeting, I powered up my optics, only to make a startling discovery. The target of my vengeance had inexplicably disappeared. RUFKM?

Dialing up the magnification of my optics, I observed a pack of heavily armed Marines in the distance. I wondered if Kam’s killer was among them. As I was trying to work out how to distinguish my target from the group of identical MK12 combat-bots, my radio crackled.

“Is it gone?”

I recognized the voice, but looking down at Kam’s headless MK12, I thought, “No fucking way.”

“Hey!… Mc Cann!”

Startled by what must surely be an echo from the afterlife, I hesitantly asked, “Kam? Is that you?”

“Yeah. Come on, help me up.” I cautiously grasped Kam’s not quite dead hand and helped him to stand. A tangle of frayed wires and weeping hydraulic lines sprouted from a jagged opening where his head previously resided.

“Are you okay?” I asked, without realizing the absurdity of the question.

“Yeah, I’m fabulous.” I was still in shock from the recent traumatic events, consequently, Kam’s sarcasm was lost on me. He then added, “We’ve got to get out of here, and I mean now. Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute. Do you really think that’s a good idea? I mean, you … you’re seriously damaged.”

Kam scoffed. “He only took out my sensor array, not my control module. My HUD’s blank, I’m hemorrhaging hydraulic fluid, and I need a shitload of repairs, but I’m salvageable.” He began listing heavily to one side as he spoke. He gripped my shoulder, while I held an arm to steady him. “I guess he hit my gyrostabilizers too. I can’t walk.”

He got on the radio, and I heard him requesting an immediate maintenance evac. I appreciated his sense of urgency to get out of here, but I wasn’t willing to leave without first identifying the homicidal Marine who had almost killed him. The incident, and the Marine in question, needed to be reported immediately.

“Listen Kam, we need to let Command know what happened here. This is serious shit. You almost got wasted by one of our own people. That’s attempted murder.”

When I asked him if he’d seen the Marine’s name tag, instead of answering, he became furious. “That thing didn’t have a name. It had a fucking serial number, cause it’s a goddamn bot. And we aren’t reporting anything.”

I could feel my CPU’s speed ramp up as it began processing this new information. Was one of Command’s new strategies to shift away from UCCs and deploy ‘dumb bots’ in their place?

Bots, controlled by a basic AI instead of a universal combat consciousness, were less effective on the battlefield since they were far less adaptable than UCCs. However, if deployed in sufficient numbers, they could still overwhelm an enemy who was fighting a defensive war. These dumb bots required fewer resources to produce, and when equipped with a simple learning program, didn’t require any training.

The implications of such a fundamental change in war strategy were not immediately clear to me. So I decided to consult with Cherri, once we were back onboard the ship.

In the meantime, I could see some of our squad mates in the distance making their way to us through the snow. “Hey Kam, we’ve got some of our guys inbound. We’ll hook you up and get you back to the squad to wait for the evac. Okay?” He gave me a thumbs up in response. The prospect of getting away from the scene of the crime seemed to calm him a little.

Four Marines, including me, hooked tethers to Kam and dragged him like a sled through the snow towards the squad’s position, and relative safety.

We made it back to the squad and hunkered down to wait for the evac. I took a look around at the other Marines in this cobbled together fighting force. There was only a handful of us now.

We had technically won this battle but paid too high a price for victory. There were only 19 survivors from the shuttle crash and subsequent assault. Just from our shuttle, we had lost a total of 342 UCCs. All of them veterans.

Likewise, the assault force of rookies had suffered massive casualties, with more than half their number KIA.

This sort of battlefield attrition wasn’t sustainable without a massive increase in the supply of control modules. I thought back to the rapidly shrinking inventory of modules I’d seen in the charging grid prior to this mission. It was clear Command couldn’t tolerate such high combat losses for very long.

Even if Command was committed to using dumb-bots to fight this war going forward, each of those bots required a control module, just like a UCC equipped Marine. The difference was that UCCs were far more survivable on the battlefield, not to mention more effective in combat.

While I puzzled over why Command would choose to deploy less effective weapons on the battlefield, a few Marines could be heard on the radio, chatting as we waited.

“Hey Bob. Looks like, besides our box, three other shuttles went down.”

“Yeah? How do you know that?”

“I overheard Kam talking to Command on the radio.”

“No shit? So, including our shuttle, and the other one inbound for this LZ, that’s two boxes of veterans shot down? Hell, there were only 4 boxes of vets to start with. This is really bad.”

Someone else asked, “Who was on the other two? “

Suddenly, my interest shifted from war strategy to the dark math being discussed over the radio.

“They were all veterans.” Profanity erupted in the background, as outraged Marines began to realize the magnitude of our losses for the first time.

My thoughts immediately turned to Cherri. I jumped into the conversation and asked, “How many survivors were there?”

“I don’t know. Kam asked Command the same question. They said they were still searching.”

The odds were that all of us had lost somebody we knew on this mission. Some directed their anger at Command.

“Fuckin’ Command. This is all their fault.”

“Yeah, those assholes.”

Just then, Kam came on the radio. “Hey, listen up everyone. I have an update from Command.” He paused, while I tried to keep my mind from running probabilities for a thousand different scenarios pertaining to Cherri’s survival.

“We’re being evacuated immediately. Our shuttle is only a few minutes out.”

Leading with this information seemed odd, considering he must realize we were desperate to hear about possible survivors. I imagined this must be a prelude to bad news. There was a profound silence as everyone anticipated some news on survivors.

“And … I was advised that we will be notified about details on casualties when we get back onboard the ship.” There were groans and the typical profanity upon hearing this. “So, police up your gear and get ready to be evac’d.”

I suspected Kam was under orders not to disclose any information on casualties to us. Command didn’t want their best combat troops to be demoralized at being sidelined by dumb-bots, in addition to learning their fellow Marines’ lives had been wasted in a battlefield experiment.

The whine of jet engines could be heard in the distance as our ride home maneuvered to a landing on the snowy wastes of Proxima Centauri b. I’d fought on two exoplanets so far, neither of which I ever cared to visit again.

As our shuttle touched down in a flurry of billowing snow, I went over to help transport Kam onboard. I and three other Marines lifted his headless bulk on a stretcher and began moving towards the shuttle. I felt a hand grasp my arm.

“Hey Outline.”

I stubbornly continued looking forward, unwilling to hear the words I knew Kam was going to speak.

“I’m sorry ...”

“Please, not now.”, I thought. I desperately tried to block my sensors from picking up the squad radio. I managed to make it as far as the shuttle without hearing a word he said.

Although, while securing him into the restraints, my concentration briefly lapsed, and I picked up something. A voice on the radio, heard as if from a great distance. “… Cherri’s shuttle …” “… no survivors.” I felt instantly numb. Which is to say I felt nothing, and everything, all at once.

All of my strength seemed to drain away as I slowly sank to one knee. It was as if I was being crushed by a tremendous weight. The weight of my unwillingness to see the truth. Recalling our last discussion, I realized only now that she’d had a premonition.

“How could I have been so blind?”, I thought.

She knew all along she wasn’t coming back from this mission.