This continues Max Flanagan (Long Haul) and Colderidge Andersson’s (Cooley) stories. The story contains graphic language and violence.
On his first tour, Max was eighteen, and by the time his four-hundred-day deployment ended, he was an old man. Old as shit. Whatever optimism he came in with, that bright-eyed and bushy-
tailed, was ground down to dust real quick.
Fast.
Combat will do that to you. It’s like a rock tumbler, except the rocks don’t come out pretty and polished in the end.
Max made it back home, alive, but with the sound of gunfire still rattling in his skull like pocket change. It took a few years to stop swerving his Pontiac away from every bit of litter and trash on the freeway. A few years of avoiding large crowds.
That was the thing. He couldn’t settle down. So he did what most do. A lot of drunken nights, and thankfully a lot of stints trying to sober up. And therapy. Lots of shitty therapy.
Dr. Jackson was good, though.
Yeah, the fourth therapist finally took. Helped him pull together the broken pieces of his life and get moving again. Enough to buy a truck and start working. To ‘establish stability,’ as Jackson put it. A path out of the ditch and back onto the road.
It was a process.
None of the work ever healed what he lost back then. That’s what the medicine was for. Without the meds, they always came to him, free of charge.
Randall. Travis. These were the two men he lost from his original crew. The other that sometimes showed up was the Iraqi man he slammed against the wall and punched out during the night raid.
“Bad intel,” he remembers someone saying, as if that absolved him. But that didn’t stop the night-raid man from going to Abu Ghraib.
No. It didn’t. And who knows…
“Stop,” he whispers to himself. “Find your breath. Jesus, find your breath.”
He sits on his cot, doing the work, back where he once was, with rattling gunfire and shelling in the distance, as if his life has skipped a groove in the record. He’s back, except now he is really old as shit. Fifty-six years old, and back in this hell-hole that, for all the blood and treasure spent, doesn’t seem to have gotten any better.
“Sergeant Flanagan?” a voice calls, making him flinch.
He looks up, and Murphy stands there, his helmet off, his body looking thin. Thinner than it should look. Murphy is young, just like everyone he commands as an E-5.
“You should come see this. Command is sending us intel.”
“I’ll be right there,” Max says. “Gotta take a piss.”
The soldier nods and leaves.
He says this just to buffer some of the constant stimulation that is his life now. The pop-pops and the rattling gunfire that never end. The skipping record, back to 2003 and back to now. Same place. Different Max. Same war and yet…
He walks into the command barracks after emptying his bladder, stepping under green, burning fluorescent lights.
The Staff Sergeant stands by the mobile neurolink console. He looks at Flanagan, with his young, twenty-something face. He could be Max’s son, and here he is reporting in to him.
“Jack in, Flanagan. Lieutenant is on the line.”
Max can’t stand neurolinks, but there is no use arguing. This is the way it is now. He puts on the headset and is enveloped by a blazing white light.
Secure connection established. All Union Communications are the property of the Greater Union of States and Polities, stored in the data repository of preferred vendor partner Amity Holdings Inc., under New Constitution statute §33.43. No recordings or transmissions of this connection can be stored, shared or otherwise accessed without Union clearance approval. Failure to comply can constitute treason against the Greater Union of States and Polities.
Max blinks through the acceptance agreement in a huff, but feels his hands begin to shake as his body jacks into the environment.
The white space fades away, and Max finds himself seated in a simulated briefing room. Next to him, in a row of uncomfortable, metal chairs, are four more E-5s. They are the rest of his platoon, though their forces are spread all across Iraq. He glances over at them. It’s been four weeks, but he’s getting the read on them. Most of them are young pups, men in their twenties and thirties; three, to be exact. The other one is an old dog, like Max. They’ve spoken a few times over the weeks. Trent. He served in Afghanistan. Two tours, like Max, a long time ago.
Trent throws a glance over. “You ready for the dog and pony show, Flanagan?”
“Does it even matter?” he whispers back.
“It matters if it gets us into the action. I’ve been waiting to get back in.” His eyes bore into Max’s. “Got a lot of pent-up energy, you know?”
Max doesn’t say anything, but he nods. He knows this feeling. It’s the feeling that comes when you look over a cliff edge. He remembers traveling with some friends during his drinking days. After his first deployment, but back in the States. Before the Union sprang up. He can’t remember the details of all of that. He was too drunk then.
He and a couple of other veterans he had gotten to know rode their Harleys up through the Smokies and crossed the Tennessee line. Max had a Road King, a beast of a bike, with an engine that thundered so hard between Max’s legs it was almost indecent. But that weekend, they flew those bikes so hard and so damn fast. Eventually, they got to Fontana Dam and drove over it.
Max remembers pulling over and walking to its side. To peer over the steep edge and look straight down. Four hundred and eight fucking feet down to the bottom, and it took everything in Max’s body not to stand up on the railing and…jump. Jump over the edge. That’s the feeling. That’s the temptation. To live and to die all at the same time.
“A-TENNNT-TION!” The record skips again, and Max is back in this place that is no real place at all. Second Lieutenant Boggs is there, and all the E-5s are up with their salutes, ready for the dog-and-pony show to begin.
“At ease, men,” Boggs says.
The men are back in their hard-as-rocks, simulated seats.
You’d think they’d make these a little more comfortable…
“As some of you know, we have been running reconnaissance at the borders of the enemy’s taken territory, just north of Baghdad. This rogue intelligence, which we are labeling as EL-13, has rapidly weaponized itself over these past three months.”
The lieutenant throws out a map, showing the country divided into two stark colors: red for the land seized by EL-13 and blue for Union Coalition forces who hold everything south of Tikrit. Max’s throat goes bone dry as he watches the enemy AI’s progress animate. The entire north of the country is blanketed in crimson, with the timestamp showing today: October 12, 2041. The map’s time reverses, skipping back one month, two months, all the way to when the AI broke out of a lab south of Mosul.
Holy shit.
A tidal wave of red started at one single point in the country, Mosul, and erupted out like an atomic bomb…fast. Every week, thousands of square miles of territory were swallowed up into EL-13’s control, dispersing or killing millions of Iraqis.
“Intelligence has determined that the original kernel of EL-13 had planted itself within the existing Iraqi infrastructure systems almost five years ago. There it waited and bided its time. But now, for reasons we do not fully understand, it is moving, and as you can see, it has rapidly divided the full country in less than a quarter of the year.”
The E-5s sit like stone statues, struck dumb. Max feels Trent lean towards him.
“Shit, man, what the actual hell is this?”
“I don’t know,” Max whispers.
The second lieutenant continues, “You men are here on behalf of the Union Coalition, in order to protect our territorial ally, Iraq. The Union is outfitting each of your fire teams with the latest in infantry technology.”
Another screen lights up, and Max sees a humanoid robot’s projection hovering beside the lieutenant. It stands nearly a foot taller than Boggs and is nearly twice as wide. In its hands…Max blinks.
No. Hand. Singular. Where a second hand should be, a long weapon is fused directly to its right arm, some sort of armature that looks to Max like a square gray cylinder, if cylinders can somehow be square.
“Each one of your fire teams will be assisted with the latest innovation in automated infantry support. These units have been co-developed with our Union-preferred vendor partners, and are now ready for the field. This is the Amity Arc Infantry Unit, or AAIU.”
The lieutenant pauses, as if waiting for the E-5s to applaud. The room remains silent.
Boggs coughs and sips water from a glass on his dais. Max can’t help but wonder whether this drinking he’s doing is real, or if that, too, is a simulation.
What is real anymore?
Nothing has felt real for Sergeant Flanagan in a very long time. Not since that last fever-dream delivery he took up to Boston, where he almost had a mental breakdown. Before he sold the truck. Before he said goodbye to Carrie and Charlie and shipped off to Fort Bragg. Whoever heard of such a thing—a fifty-six-year-old going to war?
Jesus either wept or laughed, but Max wasn’t sure which. But it was what it was, and the silver lining was that right after his call with the recruiter, his benefits opened up. No more scrounging for pills. Charlie was able to return to school after seeing the specialist in Charlotte. With the sale of the rig, Carrie could live in their house without the burden of a mortgage. And they got married. Just in case…
You did all you could. Now you just need to stay alive.
Boot camp was different than how he remembered it. At Bragg, they injected him every week with a potent syringe of some concoction that, for Max, felt like a miracle. The weight he carried from years of hauling on the road dropped in a matter of weeks, and Max felt his body begin to change, his flabby midsection slimming to a leanness he could barely remember, and every thread of muscle he came in with growing stronger. His endurance improved. His two-mile run went from torturous to bearable in a matter of days, and then he found himself running the full five. There was just more in the tank. More in the tank than there had ever been for years.
Through the endless runs and obstacles, he found more like him. Old dogs. Many came from the Iran ground war in the 2020s, and a handful, like Max, came from Iraq and Afghanistan. At night, lying in the barracks, they would whisper to one another.
“Man, it doesn’t feel real, does it?” Plemmons said, lying on his cot and looking over at Max.
“It does, and it doesn’t. Feels like the same song and dance we’ve seen over and over again,” Max whispered.
“You’d think after all the country has done in this part of the world, they’d finally put a stop to this violence and annex the whole damn Middle East as part of the Union.”
Faulk spoke up, rising from his cot, “Then where the fuck do you think they’d fight?”
Max could feel Faulk’s eyes burning in the darkness.
“Don’t you get it, Plemmons? Iraq, Iran, all of it is just one big boiling pot of stew, a goddamn test kitchen. They keep the heat up because they know that they can keep adding shit into the pot — new tech, new tactics, new meds that make you young— just so that the money printer never stops spinning. They don’t want peace. No man. Peace is bad for the fucking business.”
Plemmons snapped back at Faulk, “Then why the fuck did you re-enlist, Faulk?”
Faulk went quiet, but Max felt the violence in it.
Max opened his mouth. To ease it. To stop the fistfight from breaking out.
“It’s okay. The point is, we are back. We are all in this together. We can’t control the reasons.”
Faulk cut in. “Flanagan, you and I both know this is not okay. Never has been okay. Never will be. What good did our tours in Iraq do all those years ago?”
Flashes of his fire team rose from the darkness in his mind. Randall. Travis. Randall standing by the open burn pits. Travis, lying out on the sand, his face chunked out, scattered across the ground.
‘Boswell is opening it back up for business. I’m here to tell you to stay out of it.’
Max pushed the image of the ghost riding in the passenger seat of his Mack truck from his mind and tried to catch his breath. He had no reply to Faulk, who sat up in his cot, his voice growing dark.
“My reasons for enlisting, Plemmons? You really want to know?” Faulk fired back. “I like to fucking fight. It’s all I fucking live for, and trust me when I say it’s better for me to be fighting out in the damn desert than to stay here, ‘cause that fight… that fight ain’t ever going to let up. Not for me.”
The record skips, and Max is back in the simulated briefing room.
Boggs continues, “What we know about our enemy is that EL-13’s intelligence cores are resilient, and from our intelligence, its infrastructure is somehow completely decentralized. Even mobile.”
A holographic image of an arching, spider-like transport floats above Boggs’ head. “This is an EL-13 nexus. Think of it as part data center, part factory and part resource-harvesting operation, combined into one unified apparatus that roams the desert and scavenges. There are thousands of these, and each represents a node in the redundant network of EL-13’s intelligence.”
A hand goes up. One of the other E-5s. A young pup.
“Do we know EL-13’s objective? Its purpose?”
“Good question. What I can tell you is that we have tried to make formal contact with the intelligence, but we haven’t succeeded. We don’t know why this entity operates the way it does. For now, we can only comment on the outcomes of its decisions. The people of Iraq are being killed and displaced from their land at an unprecedented rate, as the intelligence continues to strip-mine the environment of all natural resources. The burning of oil alone has set back the Union’s energy and climate progress by a decade.”
The room shifts uneasily.
Boggs continues, “As some of you know, these nexus nodes, or crawlers as we are calling them, are far from undefended. From our experience, each crawler is protected by a cloud of micro drones that can fly faster than any of our traditional missiles and fighter jets. We have yet to penetrate a single crawler’s defenses.”
He pauses, again, dramatically for effect.
“That’s where your fire teams’ AAIUs come in. These mobile units travel with you and your fire teams to get into position. Based on our forecasting, the railgun on each unit is the only weapon in our arsenal capable of penetrating the defenses that surround a nexus crawler. Each of you is tasked with covertly getting into position to take a clean shot at a designated EL-13 nexus. Get the AAIU in position to make the shot, and then we will see if we can contain this threat. Each of you will have to get into that position under cover. That means hiking in the desert, gentlemen. Command will be sending you the rendezvous coordinates after this meeting.”
Boggs stares out over all the sergeants in the room and takes another sip of water.
Max can feel the emotions. Dread. Fear.
“We’re counting on you, soldiers. Good luck. Dismissed.”
The desert day gives way to twilight as Maxwell’s fire team marches up the rocky outcrop of the ridgeline. The sounds of evening, the low, encompassing quiet of the desert wind dancing across the sand, coupled with the faint calls of desert foxes, announce to Max another miserably cold night out in the wilderness.
His fire team had been hiking through the maze-like Hamrin, a naked crop of desert mountains rising from the west and towering over the flat desert plains. For three days, they had hiked with their giant AAIU unit after being dropped off by the bird, slowly making their way to the hide-site rendezvous point.
Get one clean shot at the nexus crawler. One shot.
That was their mission.
It seemed simple enough, but something about it made Max recoil. He could not put words to it.
Max checks the map on the small tablet strapped to his wrist and sees the hide site location just over the next ridge. He looks back at his men to gauge their energy and calculate how hard he needs to push.
Private Coldridge Anderson stands apart from the others, staring out over the valley below, a cigarette trail burning from his mouth. Whatever brand he smokes, it reeks.
Corporal Lamb stands beside Maxwell, his face hidden behind the sunglasses he still wears despite the oncoming darkness. His sniper rifle is strapped to his back, and he hums a Springsteen song.
Nebraska? Max listens, picking up the mellow tune. Yeah…it was Nebraska.
Max winces. He still can’t believe that Springsteen is gone.
Everyone goes eventually, Maxy. Especially the good ones.
Max shudders.
Marc Davidson, the last member of the fire team, marches next to the AAIU. He serves as the team’s gearhead and grenadier. He was trained to work with the AAIU, this giant hulk that walks beside the rest of them, its steel-like frame painted the color of desert sand.
“How much farther, Sergeant?” Davidson asks.
“Just over the ridge. We need to keep going and set up camp. Our mission is to get in position and wait.”
Lamb asks a question to the bot, “Any word from command, Slingy?”
The AAIU looks at them and speaks in a precise, calm tone.
“No messages from command, Corporal Lamb. We are still on track to make the rendezvous point for the hide-site this evening, and should be able to complete our mission to destroy any EL-13 crawlers that should cross into our range.”
“That’s good enough for me. Let’s keep marching.”
The fire team goes for a few more hours. The sun descends and Max feels the desert air chill. The tablet on his wrist vibrates. They have made it to the spot.
“Let’s make camp, men,” Max says.
The men set down their heavy packs and get to work setting up a humble camp within the desolate terrain. The air has already grown cold, and Max can see their breath clouding in night air.
“I don’t like the damn desert,” Coldridge admits as he takes off his pack. “Don’t think I’m built for it.”
Lamb laughs, and Davidson, his face illuminated like some desert spirit as he looks at his tablet, snickers.
“Yeah, Anderson? Only you and ninety-nine percent of humanity agree. Jesus, man. Now give me one of those cigs.”
Anderson’s face goes cold, and Max reads it, seeing his body tense. Coldridge fumbles through his fatigues and pulls out two cigarettes.
“You don’t have to be a damn motherfucker, motherfucker,” he mumbles, his own cig dancing off his lips.
Davidson flashes a smile. “Come on, Cooley, you know I’m just messing with you.”
“Don’t call me that name. Not unless you want to start something,” he growls.
Davidson lights the cigarette and smiles.
Max breaks in, “Shut it down. Both of you. We don’t got time for this. Davidson, shut your damn mouth and treat Anderson with respect.”
Davidson looks up at him and takes a long drag. He’s an asshole. Young. Arrogant. Self-assured.
“Sure, Sarge. I was just messing,” he says.
Lamb cuts in, grabbing Davidson’s tablet. “Shit, guys, it’s going to be cold tonight. Tabs got it running down to the 40s.”
Max gives Lamb a slight nod, grateful for the distraction. He stands up, cracks his knuckles, and turns to the AAIU, Slingshot.
“Sling, how far out was the target last spotted?”
The bot runs the query. Max wonders what miracles of technology afford this connection in the desert back to command.
“Last visual sighting from recon was three days ago, Sergeant. The crawler was four miles out from this spot. We have a 75% chance of having a clear shot on the target at this position.”
“Chances of making the shot in the dark?” Max asks.
“Significant spread of variability, Sergeant. Intel on crawlers is still largely unverified. Right now, we are still unsure whether they emit an actual heat signature. A visual confirmation will yield better chances at our mission’s success.”
Max nods, frustrated by the answer. The AAIUs carry enough energy for one clear shot. They can’t risk a miss, though he’d rather keep the men moving than play babysitter between them on this damn goose hunt.
One more day, Maxy. Then it’s over.
“Okay, men, get something warm in you and bundle up. No open flames. I’ll take the first watch.”
“Sergeant, I am happy to take the watch. I have no need to sleep…”
Coldridge barks at this, “No! I ain’t having one of those…”
Max cuts in.
“With all due respect, Sling, I shouldn’t have to say this again. This is the fourth time I’ve told you, we,” Max points to all the soldiers, “keep our own watches. Is that clear?”
“Understood, sir.”
“Don’t ask me about that again, Sling.”
“Yes, sir.”
Max looks at Davidson, “Run some diagnostics on him. We need to make sure he’s calibrated for what is coming.”
Davidson grunts, but gets up off his ass and hardwires his tablet into Sling’s port entry, located in the small of its back. The other men hunker down onto the cold ground and lay their backs against their packs. Max tries to endure both Coldridge and Davidson smoking their foul cigarettes, and Max feels his body begin to surrender to how tired he is. He thinks about Carrie, about Charlie.
God.
It feels like his insides might boil over from missing them.
Davidson finishes the cig and flicks it, its embers sparking out against the sand like a firework. He unplugs the tablet.
“Slingy’s good to go, sir. All firmware and patches are in place. No updates from command.”
He sits back down and puts his head on his pack. Max is just about to doze when he remembers he is on first watch.
Lamb sits in the dark, humming.
What is this time? The lyrics come to him within the tune that Lamb hums.
I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name,
It felt good to be…what was it?
In the desert you can’t remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one…da dum dum dum dum dum.
He hadn’t heard that song in a long, long time.
“Where you from, Anderson?” Davidson asks, breaking up the silence.
Shit. Here he goes, Max thinks.
“Oh, I don’t think that really matters, sir.” Coldridge’s tone has a venomous edge.
“Come on, Anderson,” Davidson says. “I’m sorry. There, I said it. We got a long night ahead of us. I’m not sleepy. You’re not sleepy. Is it so bad to get to know one another? Tell me where you came from.”
“North Carolina. Salisbury originally. Got picked up in Charlotte.” Anderson says.
“Huh, I’m from Charlotte too, Coldridge,” Max says. “Concord area. We are neighbors.”
Coldridge nods, “I knew you were from the South. I could feel it.” He smiles, and Max knows it’s genuine.
“What do you mean picked up in Charlotte?” Davidson prods.
“Man, I mean what I said. I got picked up. Drafted up and out of the streets. Been holding this damn rifle and marching for the Union these past three months.”
“Shit, man, you came in with the Gleaning?” Davidson says, shocked by this.
“All I know is that me and everyone on the streets got pulled in, shrinked out by the doctors and shipped out. The Union needs you, they said. So here I am.”
Lamb speaks, his breath fogging the air. “Doesn’t matter where we came from, boys. We’re all here now. I came with the volunteer draft, before it shifted to mandatory. Every able-bodied man getting called up to fight EL-13. Doesn’t matter how. We are all here now.”
Davidson growls, “I fucking hate Boswell. Ripping us up and throwing us down in this hell hole for no goddamn reason.”
Lamb cuts in, “It doesn’t matter now. Property doesn’t have the right to practice politics. We are all under Union orders now. We got a job to do. We ain’t here to think.”
“Man, I ain’t no-man’s property,” Coldridge whispers.
“Respectfully, Coldridge,” Lamb says, “these dog tags around our necks tell me otherwise. I’m just saying we are all the same now. You’re the same as me, same as Sarge, same as Davidson, and same as Slingy.”
“Easy,” Max calls out. “We all got a job to do, and the sooner we get it done, the sooner we go home.” A shadow falls over him as he speaks, and he feels the untruth in his words. He wants to believe them, of course. Everyone wants to believe them. But they sound too good to be true.
Davidson flicks out his pocket knife and begins cleaning his fingernails. “Oh, okay, Sarge. Keep toeing that line. I’ll believe it when we see a river spring up in this desert.” He looks at the others. “Here’s the truth, boys. We shoot down the crawler, and you know what will happen? We will go back to base, sit around for two weeks and then fly back out to snipe another one, and then another one. And then another one. But these crawlers? They ain’t ever going to end. There are thousands of them, and they’ll keep us on this hamster wheel as long as it takes.”
“As long as it takes for what?” Coldridge asks.
“That’s the million-dollar question, Anderson,” Davidson says, his voice dark. “You already know the answer.”
Max snaps, “Davidson, shut your goddamn mouth. That’s an order. We won’t have time for that talk.”
Davidson holds up his hands in surrender. “Understood.”
Lamb stares at Davidson, his lips pressed down into thin lines, as if he wants to say something. Coldridge pulls out another cigarette, shaking the pack nervously and lights it.
“What do you think, Slingy?” Lamb asks.
The bot turns, still standing sentinel over them. “I think everyone is tired and misses their home,” the bot says with more empathy than Max would expect. “I think you are all discouraged. I’ve heard that humans benefit from telling stories to one another. Does anyone have a good story to tell?”
Lamb laughs, “I got one. Let’s take what Davidson said. Water in the desert. Now there are a few stories about that we could go into.”
Davidson snaps, “I ain’t in no mood to hear a sermon, preacher. Keep that shit to yourself.”
Lamb shrugs, “Well, you know what they say, don’t you? The devil roams out here in the desert. This is the wilderness, where men’s lives and choices get tested. The Muslims call him Shaytan, and the Bible says he roams around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
“Hope he starts with you,” Davidson snaps back.
Coldridge interrupts, “Man, you don’t have to be in the damn desert to see the devil. I can tell you that. I’ve seen him so many times it don’t even matter. But it ain’t the devil I’m scared of.” His eyes fall on the AAIU, and the conversation gets quiet.
Max feels the record skip, and he’s standing in the Flying J, looking at the back of a man’s head wearing a cowboy hat and a turquoise bolo. Cowboy hat is playing slots under the burning fluorescent lights. Coins drop where no coins should be, and they clink and rattle like the gunfire that still echoes in his brain.
Find your breath, Max. Find your breath.
“What are you scared of, Anderson? This I got to hear,” Davidson asks, flicking the grime from his fingernails.
Coldridge clicks his tongue. “All I’m saying is what I’ve seen and experienced out in the streets ain’t got nothing on this. This is just nature… well most of it.” He gives a sidelong glance at Sling. “Anyway,” he says, slapping his arms against the chill. “It’s cold, and I’m tired, but at least I can see the stars.”
“Oh, damn, Anderson. I didn’t know you were a poet. Look at you, being all transcendental and shit,” Davidson says. “Seems to me that I’m the only realist here amidst this group of the faithful religious. Shit, talk about hell!” He cackles. His glee fades into a seriousness that makes all the men listen. “No, gentlemen, I don’t have time for angels or devils. The truth is there ain’t nothing beyond this life but a bleak, dark pit, where whatever we are disappears, and this,” he throws his hands up, “this fine blue orb spinning in space just keeps going.”
Max can’t help but whisper, “That’s a lot more faith than I have, Davidson.”
He snaps back, “Maybe. But it’s true. I have faith in the truth.” He glances over at the AAIU who still stands on its feet, as the men rest against their packs. “Tell him, Slingy. Tell them the truth.”
Slingshot looks at Davidson for a beat, and Max senses the bot thinking.
“Come on, Slingy, lay that beautiful logic on them. Tell us what you’re thinking.”
The bot speaks, its voice cautious. “I find it fascinating how humans navigate their worlds with a diverse set of cosmologies and philosophies. I can’t speak authoritatively on any of these topics. I was built for one thing. War. My experiences and my purposes thus are very limited, but if you look at the data, it is odd that life, and even consciousness, should only be found here, isolated on Earth.”
Coldridge Anderson starts to laugh, a deep bellowing laugh, “Oh shit. Ohhhh shit. Damn, Davidson. Even the bot’s got more faith than you!”
“Fuck you, Cooley,” Davidson snaps.
And then it starts. Coldridge is up, about to go to blows with Davidson, and both Lamb and Max shoot up to get between them.
“ENOUGH!” Max yells. “Davidson, one more time out of you and I’ll get you on insubordination.” He cuts his eyes over to Coldridge. “Anderson, you react one more time and take his bait, and you’ll get it too. No more of this shit. It stops now. That’s an order to both of you. You hear me? We are here to do one thing and one thing only. No more talking.”
Coldridge’s face folds up in a rage that could easily catch fire, but Max watches him. The soldier finds his breath. Shakes off his frustration. “Yes sir, Sarge,” he says.
Anderson gets up and walks away from the team, heading into the darkness to sit at the edge of the ridge. Lamb sits next to Davidson and whispers.
“Shit, man, what the hell is wrong with you? If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out.”
Davidson clicks his tongue and looks at Lamb. “Fuck you, Lamb.”
Max is up and throws Davidson to the ground. He stands over him, rage rolling through him.
“Davidson. No more from you. Final warning,” Max commands.
Davidson glowers at Max but keeps quiet.
An unsteady peace falls over the camp, and the team is silent. Only the sound of the wind moving the sand below them can be heard in the valley. It sounds like ocean waves.
“Coldridge, can I have a word?” Max asks as he walks up and away from the group.
Coldridge is looking over the edge into the darkness.
Max leans in towards the man, looking up into his face.
“I need you to not let that damn New Jersey boy get under your skin. I know he’s an asshole, but if you play into him, he’ll keep at it. You know what I’m saying?”
Coldridge blinks and nods, his face frustrated.
“How’d he find out about this name thing?” Max asks.
Coldridge snorts and spits on the ground. “We came over together on the bird to Baghdad. Some of the others on the street called me that name. It was my street name, but it ain’t my name. He heard the others, so…”
Max nods. “Look, I get it. But I need you to be the bigger man here. That’s an order. You’re smart. You work hard. You got grit. He ain’t worth your time. You hear me?”
“Yessir,” Coldridge says.
“ Okay then. Let’s hunker down. You all need to get to rest right now. Tomorrow is going to be another day.”
“Understood.”
After Max orders lights out, he sits up, takes the watch and waits. What he is waiting for, he can’t even be sure of, but there is something in the air that makes his hackles stand up. He looks out into the dark valley and allows himself to give in to the feeling, not trying to control the sensation.
The record skips and he is back in Dr. Jackson’s office, his eyes closed, entering into a guided meditation, while he feels his body coiling like a spring, ready to pop.
Breathe. Find your breath. There is only right now.
Back in the deserts of Iraq, he feels his body slowly unwind; the pressure in his shoulders releases, ever so slightly. He takes in another deep breath. He opens his eyes, staring out into the sea of darkness within the empty valley. A blanket of stars hovers overhead, a dome of cosmic tranquility presenting snapshots of a universe that no longer exists. And yet he can still see them. He can still experience them. Here in this time.
Maxwell Flanagan sits there, letting the night wash over him. He lets himself be part of it and embraces the here that is, for now, here.
A deep vibration rolls through the ground, and for a moment, Maxwell wonders if he is hallucinating. Another deep, resonant vibration rolls through the earth, followed by another.
BUMM.
BUMM.
BUMM.
Max stands up, and the fire team around him rises, weapons drawn.
“What the hell is that?” Lamb calls out.
Davidson puts on goggles and stares out into the night, looking like a bug, while Coldridge lies prone, looking down the barrel of his rifle.
“Sling?” Davidson asks. “You see anything?”
“No visual confirmation, but I’m picking up frequencies,” the bot says. “Chatter from an EL-13 confirmed. Nexus crawler at an eighty-eight percent chance of entering our visual range. We need to position the shot. Now.”
“You heard him, men, let’s move into position!” Max orders.
The team is up and moving in the cold night air when a buzzing sound whirls above them, and an explosion of heat and light tears through the night sky.
“What the hell?!” screams Lamb.
Coldridge fires his M12 up in the star-lined sky, and the sound of live fire rips through the night. The bullets connect with the buzzing above, but not enough to stop the waterfall of fire that folds over the sky and descends for them, this bright, hellish red light falling in the darkness.
Max watches in horror as the firestorm falls over both Lamb and Davidson. In an instant, both men are engulfed in flames, their bodies falling to the ground, and the fire goes from orange to a bright, blinding hot white. It is as if stars have fallen from above and are erupting up and out from both men’s torsos.
Slingshot runs towards him, but it is too late, and Max watches in horror as half his fire team is extinguished.
Maxwell screams, “Anderson and Sling! To the summit! We’ve got to make the shot!”
Anderson is sprinting, and the mechanized AAIU unit follows. Max’s heart is in his throat, and he prays there is enough time. Enough time to do what must be done and make sure Lamb and Davidson’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
They’re dead. Already dead. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Travis’s dead voice whispers in his ear, “I told you Maxy. I told you to stay out of this.”
BUMM.
BUMM.
BUMM.
The crawler’s sound surrounds them now, and the buzzing above feels like a swarm of bees hovering just above their heads, invisible within the night sky.
Max and Coldridge are next to the bot, and Max screams over the din, “Do you have a visual? Do you have a visual?!”
Sling holds out its weaponized hand, the long, square cylinder, and Max watches the bot’s ocular scanner flick from white to green.
“Yes, Sergeant. The crawler is in my sights. But if I fire this close to you, both you and Anderson could suffer irreversible bodily harm.”
“How long before the shot is primed?”
The bot’s mind whirs, just as another wave of buzzing roars over them.
“HOW LONG?!”
“Two minutes, Sergeant.”
Coldridge looks at him. “Do it!”
“Fire your shot as soon as you are primed; that is an order, Sling!” Max confirms.
Another fire blanket spreads over the night sky, covering the starlight. The fire falls, and Max can see now the mammoth machine in the distance. It is the size of a mountain.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, and his mouth goes dry.
“What. The. Fuck.” Coldridge whispers, eyes locked on the abomination filling the desert valley below them.
Whatever was shown in the neurolink briefing room, this is not it. Mechanics ride on top of living flesh, something that, at first glance, could only be described as organic, but undulating and moving with a speed and bend completely alien to any life that sprung from the Earth. Out of it, thousands of black drones scatter, clouds of fire, dive bombing madly, looking to flush them all out to die.
Max screams at the bot, “CAN YOU TAKE THE SHOT?”
The bot’s eyes flick from white to green, then to red. “Affirmative.”
Slingshot aims its railgun-fused arm towards the behemoth, and Max grabs Coldridge and throws him to the ground, as another blanket of fire lights up the night sky.
Max watches the AAIU turn its arm not toward the crawler but towards them as an ear-splitting explosion rings out. Hot white light erupts from the AAIU, and Max knows this is how he’ll die. He pushes Coldridge into a ditch. He’s blinded, and all he can think of is Davidson and Lamb, their bodies now ash, their last moments screaming together like two stars exploding on the desert floor.
He sees them. Far away.
Carrie. Charlie.
The sound follows the light in a colossal explosion, and the two men fall to the earth. The smell of burning ozone and acrid air clouds around them.
Hold on, Anderson, Max thinks. Hold on.
Then the world goes dark.
Coldridge Anderson is on his back, staring at blue sky. He’s shivering, and he can’t move his legs. Dark, streaking clouds slash through the blue canvas above him, and he strains to lift his head.
The Sergeant is lying next to him, but Coldridge can’t tell if he’s alive or dead.
A thumping rolls behind him, and Coldridge recognizes the sound of a helicopter. The sound grows and grows until it eventually crosses the sky he watches.
They are coming to save us. They are coming…
A thunderclap goes off, and Coldridge watches the helicopter go down like a shot dove. Whatever hit it was so fast that Coldridge second-guesses if he is hallucinating. Then he hears the bird explode as it hits the desert floor.
The sun arches above him, and he can feel the heat of the day beginning to fry him slowly on the ground. He looks to the left, and tries to remember what happened.
The bot. The damn bot.
It takes all he has, but he sits up. The Sarge lies on the ground. Coldridge knows he’s dead. His torso… it’s hollowed out and cauterized.
He hears a sound of water falling, and he knows he’s losing his mind. He follows the trail of the shot that went through the Sarge. The shot’s path cuts through the ground, leaving a deep, wide trench behind it.
The shot’s trajectory hammered through the mountain rock, and there, to Coldridge’s utter amazement, a spring of water pours out onto the ground.
Tears well in Coldridge’s eyes, and he tries to crawl towards it, just as a shadow falls over him.
The AAIU. Sling. Sling is standing over him.
Coldridge tries to open his mouth and to speak.
Sling looks at him, and Coldridge watches as the bot leans down towards him. What does he see on the bot’s face?
Disgust? Contempt?
“Hello, Cooley,” the AAIU says, its eyes flicking from white to red.
Coldridge looks at the bot dead in the eye.
He looks back at the bubbling water and laughs, a silent, rolling laugh. Something about this is so funny to him. So incredibly funny. He looks at the bot.
“That…ain’t my name.”
He can taste blood pooling in the back of his throat and tries to cough between the laughs.
The bot leans down and grabs the sidearm from the Sergeant’s body. Without hesitation, the bot lowers the pistol onto him.
Coldridge does not react. He keeps his cool. Sarge is already dead, and soon he will be too, but he’ll follow orders all the same. He’ll be the bigger man. He isn’t scared.
There’s nothing to be scared of, baby brother.
Coldridge blinks, and Big Mike is standing over there, looking behind the bot. He is smiling.
I’m here. I’m here for you, Coldridge hears him say.
Coldridge smiles as the AAIU holds the pistol over his head. He can’t stop laughing.
“Hey, Sling?” he says, his voice finding its strength.
“What?” the bot says, its voice grim.
“My name is Coldridge Anderson.”