was glassy-eyed in shock, his brain not registering properly. His breathing was difficult. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a pair of legs, half a pair of them actually, blown off just above the knees. One was flopped on its side, but the other leaned against a counter, as if it were still standing.
“Hey…” the weapons designer muttered as he was dragged over the top step.
“Save your strength, Dane. It’ll be okay,” Rogers whispered. “It’ll be okay…”
Whitman looked drunkenly up at the man. He thought he should know this nice person’s name, but it escaped him. All he could think of was the dinosaurs, the Ankylosaurs. He smiled.
He loved dinosaurs. He always liked to read books and watch movies about them…and when he went to the museum…
His eyes blinked lazily.
“Dane, hold on dammit,” Rogers gritted.
“I like the museum…” Whitman whispered, his head resting on the cold stone step. He closed his eyes, imagining an era when leviathans roamed the Earth.
Death took the genius as he smiled dreamily.
GENERAL ROGERS FELT for a pulse and found none. His lips pulled back tightly, and he looked down at the mirrored disk the man died to retrieve.
“To learn who attacked,” was what he’d said before the 25 mm cannon shell had blasted his upper thighs into a messy spray of vaporized flesh and bone.
Rogers took the disk and slipped it under his jacket. “Okay, Dane. I’ll make sure the right people get this.” The general took off down the stairs, reaching under his jacket and drawing out the SIG-Sauer M-11 pistol from its concealed holster. The little handgun wouldn’t do much against an armored juggernaut, but it was something that gave him some confidence. He wasn’t completely helpless.
As he reached the base of the tower, he glanced at a gaping hole in the wall. Two soldiers were strewed in the rubble on the steps, and Rogers knelt to check on them. Both were dead.
Numbing anger washed over him. These soldiers were under his command, and they had given their life in a rush to his side. His jaw set, he shook off his shock. He needed to contact the rest of his men and insure their safety. He looked down and spotted a field radio.
He plucked it from the corpse’s belt and heard the sounds of the Yuma Security Task Force as its members tried to coordinate a defense against the attacking robots.
“This is General Rogers. All security forces fall back! Those things are too powerful to stop!” he ordered. “Fall back to shelter and do not engage!”
Rogers sensed danger and threw himself to the base of the steps. The impact jarred the old soldier’s bones, but the drop saved his life as machine guns and cannon fire tore at the steps he’d just occupied. He looked at the radio and stunned realization hit.
The attackers drones had homed in on his transmission. He lurched to his feet and raced for the door. He pressed down the lock transmit button and called into the unit, “Cease radio communication! They’re targeting anything that transmits!”
Gunfire chopped at Rogers’s heels and he tossed the communicator away from him as he continued his mad dash across the field. The deadly line of autofire that hounded him swung away and ripped apart the ground where the radio bounced. The shock wave of a grenade detonation buffeted the general’s back, but Rogers continued to rush toward a stone bunker. The Ankylosaurs, as Whitman called them, paused, seemingly confused.
Rogers smiled. His last message had gotten through. The drones had nothing to target. One of the machines suddenly whirled toward him.
Radio targeting wasn’t their only means of detection, Rogers realized and he threw himself into a ditch instants before heavy-caliber machine gun fire slashed the ground he’d just vacated. The general flopped facedown in the mud and curled tightly to the bottom of the runoff ditch.
The rumble of the Ankylosaur’s approach thundered in his ears and he looked up at the looming robot. A blunt, bearlike head adorned with two 25 mm cannon barrels and belts for the weapons swiveled along the ditch. Multifaceted lenses swept across Rogers and he held his breath. Those lenses had to have been infrared sensors. The thing would spot him…
The Ankylosaur pivoted, as if continuing to search for him. Chilled and drenched, Rogers felt his teeth begin to chatter and he clenched his jaw shut. The cold mud caked him and obscured him from IR detection. Only the momentary snap of chattering teeth had drawn the murderous robot’s attention.
Sonar or vibrational sensors, Rogers realized. His ears throbbed with the hum and chatter of low-frequency sonics buzzing through the air. Just like Whitman’s design for the MidKnights. The ULF sonics provided an obscuring cloud of null-sound that counteracted both a vehicle’s audible signature and the vibrations it released as it moved. That’s how it had sneaked up on the testing grounds unseen. But from where had it come?
There was no time to answer that question.
Rogers stayed deathly still, counting his heartbeats, wondering whether the next pump would be his last. The two barrels leveled at him, like the murderous black-eyed sockets of the Grim Reaper himself. The general had served his country his entire life, and fought to make sure his men would be safe. At least he knew he’d give up that life having given his soldiers the chance to be safe.
A thunderbolt struck the head of the machine and hot, flaming wreckage sprayed all over Rogers. He recoiled from the sudden wave of burning splinters, but when he looked up, he saw that he was unharmed. He patted his jacket and felt the DVD, still intact, nothing had burned or marred his jacket where he’d secreted it.
“General!” a voice shouted. The Ankylosaur opened fire, and Rogers rushed along the ditch away from the autofire. He looked back to see the tail boom of the wounded battle robot swivel toward his troops.
Throwing all caution to the wind, Rogers leveled the muddy M-11 pistol at the raised launcher. He opened fire, burning off the entire 13-round magazine and the hot 9 mm ball round in the pipe. The tail boom sparked as the high-impulse bullets struck home, then flashed brilliantly.
The general’s stomach dropped as he realized that the robot tank had launched one of its rockets, but the fireball was too bright to be the flare of the miniature missile’s engine. The Earth shook and the tail boom separated from the attacker robot. The explosion flattened the general and knocked the empty pistol from his hand.
He had to have hit the machine rocket as it entered the launch tube; a one in a million shot that had saved the lives of his men.
More antitank missiles and the deep-throated thumps of heavy-caliber antimatériel rifles filled the air.
A young man raced into the ditch, a smoking missile tube in his hands.
“Sir…” Corporal Vance Astrovik called as he swung a rifle off his back. “Sir, are you okay?”
Rogers nodded. “I ordered you men to clear the field.”
“We wouldn’t leave you behind,” Astrovik stated. He saw that the general was soaked with cold muddy water, and bent down to scoop up a helmet full of cold goop. The soldier poured it over his own head and face, then crawled to the edge of the ditch.
“Don’t
