Mechanical (26 page)

            Then Tom's fingers froze on his computer's display.

Unless they couldn’t. What did the briefing say? That the subways were unused. But the soldiers could have used them to enter the terminal. Unless the subway tunnels were blocked. But why would the enemy block unused subway tunnels? Maybe because the enemy wanted to hide something? Or maybe because the enemy was in there?

Tom got up and started pacing the concourse, ignoring falling bricks, tiles, plaster and the occasional explosion rising up above the din of the firefight. The enemy might be hidden there, in the subway. And the enemy might not otherwise use the subway for any other purpose, so no one would think to look there.

Suddenly, all the arched and windowed entrances shattered in uncanny unison as, one after another, Hummer light-armored vehicles broke into the concourse, firing from the machine guns mounted on their roofs, 12.7-millimeter bullets washing over all the Serpents.

While Tom dove for cover, pummeled repeatedly by the heavy bullets, the three other Serpents turned and started firing at the Hummers. Actually, the Serpents' Barrett rifles used the same type of 12.7-millimeter ammo, but the Hummers were lightly armored, in sharp contrast to the Serpents' composite armor, the toughest armor modern military science could produce.

            The Serpents swayed from time to time, and the enemy's bullets left ugly streaks of soot on the armor, sometimes even creating small chinks in the Serpent's black, matt outer skin, but the Serpents were generally immune to the machine-gun fire.

            However, the Hummers were not immune to the Serpents' fire. The heavy bullets smashed into the Hummers, first finding and destroying the engines, then silencing their machine guns, and finally Ramirez descended with glee onto the floor, running from Hummer to Hummer with talons extended, and shredding metal, plastic and flesh with the same ease and the same relish.

            Tom sat behind an unused dust-covered booth and tried to ignore the shots and the explosions and the fire-filled concourse and think.
So the enemy was inside the subway system and not the buildings. Great. How to find it?

            Tom tapped a long talon on a section of the booth, slowly creating a dent in the plastic. Power! They thought the enemy needed power so he only had to find the place where the power drainage was the greatest. 

            Tom rapidly tapped his computer display screen and brought up the recordings he had made in the Manhattan power control center, among them the recordings of the subway system’s power-consumption values. Tom replayed those images of the graphs and his fist smashed into the marble floor, creating cracks that ran in a ten-foot radius. The subway system was at present drawing the same amount of power that it had drawn before the enemy came!

           
Wait a minute! There are no running subway cars now, so who's draining all the power?
Tom started to feel his anger ebbing away. The subway system drew in 1.8 kilowatt-hours annually, enough to light up a large city for a year.
And the enemy consumed all of this? Wait!
Tom went through the graphs he had recorded and found one that showed him the consumption rates of  individual subway stations.

            Tom would have smiled had he been able to. Three years ago, all the subway stations drew equal amounts of power. After the enemy came, all the stations gradually started drawing less and less power until they finally reached, about two years ago, a state of minimal consumption barely enough to operate station and tunnel lighting, ventilation and other line equipment. Now, eighty-five percent of the power was drained by one station.

            Wall Street Subway Station.

            Tom had found the enemy!

            A pillar, along with a whole section of the wall around Ramirez, disintegrated in a great puff of fire and black smoke. Gray dust billowed. Ramirez leapt away, clearing the fires in an instant. The northern concourse wall now had a huge hole in it, a hole filled with fire and curling smoke. A moment later, another flash of fire hit, this time on the western side of the concourse, creating another huge hole.

            “Sir, I have it!” Tom sent while getting back up to his feet. “The enemy is at Wall Street Subway Station!”

            “Is this confirmed?”

            Tom paused. “Sir, that’s the best guess I can come up with now, but the evidence leads to that direction.”

            “Pencil pushers always guess, never guarantee,” Ramirez sent, but Tom only looked at the captain.

            "Are there enemy positions around the station guarding it?"

            "No, Sir. The enemy is probably wary of our satellite reconnaissance. If it concentrates forces in the area, we would know it and would figure out why. But it would surely send reinforcements to the area as soon as it figures out we know its location."

Captain Emerson stared at Tom for a moment and they locked gazes, two immobile black monsters standing in the midst of the mayhem raging around them. Ramirez was firing away from his Barrett, and Sergeant Jebadiah, moving as best he could from position to position, and supporting himself on the wall, was firing out, holding his rifle with his one good hand.

“I have HQ approval. We’re moving out through the streets. Follow me.”

“Captain Emerson, permission to hold position and occupy the enemy’s attention.”

“Approved.”

“What?” Tom sent.

"Sergeant Jebadiah can't move with us in his condition. He'll hold position and create a distraction."

“Sir, I won’t be able to move fast enough, but I’ll stay here and give them hell. By the time they figure out you’re gone it will be too late.”

“What? Come on Jebadiah, I’ll help you.”

“You can’t, Sir. I’ll only slow you down. The only thing that matters is killing the enemy.”

“But—“

"Sir, did you really mean that thing you said about freedom?"

Tom paused. "Yes."

"Then go fight for it, Sir."

Captain Emerson leapt up and his claws dug in into the elaborately decorated ceiling, his talons ruining the stars and constellations painstakingly drawn there. The Serpent pulled his hands apart and a large section of the ceiling just fell down in a cascade of bricks, mortar and dust.

"Serpents, move!"

Ramirez leapt up, and then Tom followed, holding onto the ledge for a moment and looking down the concourse. Huge boxy shapes were moving through the smoke and dust, and squeals from the tracks almost drowned out the noises of the firing. A bright flash streaked through the concourse and culminated in a huge explosion.

Down below Tom, Sergeant Jebadiah put away his Hellfire missile bin and grabbed his Barrett rifle again. He crawled slowly to another position, stopping here and there to fire his rifle.

"My brother, Bart, always got his answer in the end, too. If you can, say to Mom that I love her and tell my pa he can be proud of me. Tell him I did my duty. I stuck to what I believed in." With that, Sergeant Jebadiah broke radio contact and Tom turned away, exiting the Grand Central Terminal after Ramirez and Captain Emerson.

            Tom did not know if he imagined it or if he really heard metallic shrieking from below him within the concourse: the shrieking of composite black armor being stripped away from the body of a Serpent.

Day Five, Park Avenue, Manhattan, New York City

Following Ramirez and Captain Emerson, Tom ran south on Park Avenue, moving through the mayhem that the two Serpents were creating in the enemy forces still streaming along the avenue towards Grand Central Terminal.

            They moved through tanks, Hummer light vehicles and Bradley armored personnel carriers, using the Serpents' strength and speed to actually jump above vehicles and leap away faster than the enemy-controlled soldiers could react and fire.

            Even so, the air was filled with gunshots, the rapid chattering of machine gun fire and the occasional low-pitched booms from larger-caliber cannons that created a thick, black cloud of smoke the Serpents penetrated. The many vehicles suddenly stopped their approach and turned south to follow the Serpents. Even though the enemy-controlled vehicles were almost perfectly synchronized, it till took time for so many vehicles to make a U-turn.

            Tom tried hard to follow the other two Serpents' mad dash through Park Avenue, slipping between the military vehicles swamping the wide thoroughfare and filling every lane. Tom knew that every cannon, gun and firearm was swiveling as fast as it could, trying to box in and shoot at the Serpents.

            Tom stumbled twice. Once he landed straight on a Hummer and his clawed right foot sank right into the vehicle's engine compartment. He tried to free his foot, but his long claws had sunk into the Hummer's engine, and his foot was trapped inside, making him fall flat on the truck. Tom put his left damaged hand on the vehicle's roof and pushed as hard as he could, freeing his foot, leaping away and making the vehicle tumble away and land on its roof.

            Tom glanced ahead. Captain Emerson was nowhere to be seen. Ramirez was already one hundred yards away and moving fast.
They won't help me,
the thought suddenly materialized in Tom's mind.
I gave them the location of the enemy, so now there's no need to help me.

            The thought galvanized Tom and he started moving faster, giving it everything he had. The deep rhythmic pulse of his power core shook his Serpent's body and the constant whine of the Serpent's many electric motors became a roar.

I will not be left behind!

            Tom ran onwards, trying to evade the heaviest concentrations of enemy vehicles and fire. After about three hundred yards there were less enemy military vehicles on the avenue, though Tom could see more vehicles streaming their way into Manhattan.

            The second time Tom stumbled was when an intolerably bright pulse of yellow light flashed behind him. The yellow radiance was so strong that Tom could actually see the long spiked shadow his Serpent cast on the road in front of him being etched into the concrete. The glare of the light kept increasing and its reflections from everything made out of metal were positively blinding.

            Tom fell down and curled into a fetal position, awaiting the explosion that was sure to follow. True enough, an instant later a rolling explosion moved across Park Avenue; but it was not as powerful as Tom feared and there were no after effects, nor had the blast wave flattened everything in sight.

Tom got up and looked behind him. Grand Central Terminal was gone. In its place was a crater filled with thick. billowing yellow smoke though there was surprisingly little damage to the buildings around what remained of the terminal.

I will try to make you proud of me, Sergeant Jebadiah.

Tom turned and continued on his way.

The tall buildings on Park Avenue all had their windows open, and people were standing there, staring down at Tom with the same expressionless gazes Tom had come to recognize and dread. The people on the avenue itself acted the same: groups of people stood stock still and did not flinch even as the ten-foot-tall black, spiked monsters ran towards them.

Tom started to gain on Ramirez, mainly because the Marine Corps lieutenant had slowed his run. Ramirez was slicing trees growing along the avenue's sides, making them fall so that they heaped on the road. He knocked down almost every street light that arched over the avenue that he passed, and then Ramirez veered away to run through a scaffolding hugging a building, making numerous metal bars and wooden planks cover the street.
He's trying to make following us harder,
Tom thought, though the way the Serpent moved showed how much he enjoyed cutting and slicing things.

A truck suddenly broke into the avenue from East 23
rd
Street and tried to slam into Ramirez, but the Serpent leapt away and immediately leapt back to run parallel to the ten-ton truck. Ramirez sliced through the driver's cabin with one long talon, only needing two sharp movements to dissect the cabin completely before he slowed down slightly, grabbed the lower side of the truck and lifted. The truck veered away, crashing into the sidewalk and overturning on the avenue, blocking two lanes after it had skidded to a stop.

That's what he's doing,
Tom thought.
He's blocking the road.
Tom glanced behind him. A veritable sea of army vehicles was coming from behind them, heading towards them as fast as they could. The number of vehicles seemed endless, all pouring after them, guns and turrets moving in a perfect, synchronized order that was frightening. The immense power of the enemy, amply displayed by the river of military vehicles chasing them, was daunting.

Tom faced forward and tried to pump even more power into his limbs and run even faster. He tried to ascertain if the electric whine coming from his motors was getting any higher, but a moment later he was sure it hadn’t. Tom had reached the ends of his Serpent's power.

Glass windows were breaking all above them, filling the air with shards. There was a constant grating sound as the Serpents ran over the broken glass. Building fronts exploded, scattering bricks and stones all over the roads. Craters suddenly formed in the road, concrete fountains erupting all along the Serpents' paths. The air was with thick with shots from the military vehicles that were following, the explosions slowly and surely approaching the fleeing Serpents. A building took a direct hit and a number of decorative Doric columns fell into the street, rolling away. Flames and fires erupted all over, the result of shell and bullet impacts.

They were now running southward on Broadway. This avenue was narrower, and the buildings along the side of the road were both lower and more decorated.

They’ve put more effort into making sure anyone who visits Broadway knew people had style here,
Tom thought stupidly, while two or three cannon shells hit a building and knocked its entire façade down, the seven-story wall falling onto Broadway Avenue and engulfing it in clouds of dust and grimy, soot-filled smoke.

It had little effect on the Serpents. They just ran on, their unleashed speed and agility unbelievable even to Tom.

The Serpents passed a large flower-filled park on their left. The taller buildings of the Financial District started obstructing the skies ahead. There was a church on their right, built out of some sort of dark-red brick, looking short and squat and outdated compared to the office buildings all around. The church had obviously not been used, nor even opened, in three years, and it was the only building Tom could see that had no people inside, staring out at the running Serpents.

The enemy obviously had no use for churches,
some part of Tom's analytical mind thought. Yet, there was something in the church that bothered him, and it was not the fact that it looked old, but perhaps that even though the building looked old and outdated compared to the office buildings, it did not care. It was somehow proud of being old and outdated.

We're almost there, Riley. Get your act together.

About five hundred feet before the subway station, Captain Emerson turned back and started firing Hellfire missiles at the pursuing military vehicles. The captain then changed position and ran beneath a glass-covered building that promptly exploded into a million stars of glass that flew into the air, creating a false and deadly starry night.

"Proceed to the enemy's position. Kill everything on sight," Captain Emerson commanded, and Tom and Ramirez ran on, followed by the sounds of continuous firefight behind them.

Finally, they were there!

One hundred yards before the target, Tom could already see the steps leading down to the subway station platform. Ramirez, still in the lead, raised one clawed hand.

"Don't get in my way, Keyboard Warrior," Ramirez sent through their radio link, and Tom found his legs slowing down without even thinking about it. After seeing Ramirez in action, Tom had no wish to see him in action too closely.

Tom looked around. They were approaching Wall Street and Broadway, and the tall buildings, mainly office buildings, were everywhere, their height and power daunting even to ten-foot-tall Serpents. There were … . There was a church here as well, Tom noticed, made out of the same red brick as the church he had seen several minutes ago. However, this church was taller and more elaborate, with decorated spires, tower bells and impressive arched doors.

Why does the Financial District need so many churches? Did the people here feel they had more to atone for?

Ramirez was running straight for the subway station when Tom noticed something. Even though the church was as dust-filled and ill-used as the first church he had seen on Broadway, this one had a cleared path in its yard. In enemy-controlled New York City, nothing happened by chance or free will. And the church was just across the street from the subway station and had a perfect view of anyone approaching the station.

"Look—"

Cannon shots exploded from within the church, and a puff of fire erupted in the middle of the street. Ramirez flew in the air and crashed into a building, then he rolled down and fell on the street, his armor-covered body torn and bleeding white sparks and thick, oily smoke.

Tom was dumbstruck. He could only watch as Ramirez got up on one good leg and fumbled with his right hand to aim his Hellfire bin at the four tanks who just now emerged from the church. Bricks and windowpanes and mortar fell around them as they drove straight through the church’s wall, two by two, their one-hundred-twenty-millimeter smooth-bore cannons at the lowest elevation setting, minus ten degrees.

These were a concealed line of defense,
Tom thought in despair.

The two tanks at the front fired in unison, and Ramirez was thrown twenty yards back, his Hellfire bin flying a further thirty yards away, coming down in pieces.

Ramirez moved while black body parts and pieces were falling off him. He used the stump of his right hand to push himself up and started a stumbling run towards the tanks. His erect spike-like antennas vibrated so fast they rattled, and the huge Serpent made a lethal noise like a huge mechanical rattlesnake. The tanks fired for the third time, and Ramirez was thrown to the concrete road again, a deep gash in its armor exposing the Serpent's metal insides from head to groin.

"
Hijo e puta. La puta. Chinga tu madre. Puto,
" Ramirez's stream of Spanish curses didn't stop while his Serpent got up and promptly fell down again. But Ramirez immediately rose once more and charged the tanks with a slow, haphazard run.

The tanks fired a fourth time, and Ramirez was slammed into the concrete road yet again, but the Serpent would not stay down. Ramirez pulled himself up once more and dragged himself over to the Abrams tanks that emerged from the church's yard and was now driving straight towards him. The Serpent's back and front were belching fire, and pieces of armor and machinery were falling off, creating a trail of oily, black debris behind him. The power of Ramirez's radio transmission decreased, but Tom could still pick up Ramirez's never-ending stream of curses and the monstrous rattle coming from his antennas.

The tanks fired for a fifth time, and Ramirez exploded into red flames in the middle of the street. An instant later, a spiky black form rose from within the flames, but then fell down on all fours. Ramirez was still alive, still crawling towards the tanks, his movements jerky, with little control or power left to the pilot inside the Serpent. Tom could feel the hatred that still burned inside the Marine Corps lieutenant.

"Funny you'll live longer than me,
marica
."

For a moment, Tom could not understand where the transmission was coming from, but his sensors showed him Ramirez's Serpent had lit up with radio energy and the Serpent's mangled and burning head had turned towards Tom.

Less than twenty yards separated the tanks and Ramirez's Serpent, when the two tanks in the front fired in uncanny unison for a sixth and final time. Tom had the presence of mind to hit the deck and stay there, hands around his head and all his sensors off.

Even so, Tom thought he could still see the unbearable pulse of yellow light erupting less than one hundred yards away. Tom could then feel the aftershocks shaking his Serpent's body, and he waited for them to subside before he carefully brought his sensors online and got up.

Nothing remained of Ramirez or the four tanks. A large crater in the middle of Broadway Avenue billowed thick, yellow smoke. The only damaged building was the church, and the only damage it suffered was from the tanks driving out of it.