******
The rain that should have come did not. The overhead clouds that gave the A.I. a cloak of darkness during the attack retreated with it. Now, sunlight cast its rays on the arid ground, further illuminating the black smoke and devastation at the base.
With the exception of a few buildings and hangars, the UEP CSOW base was a flaming inferno of debris. Teams of military and civilian workers darted in all directions trying to put out the fires. Medics attempted to provide needed care to the victims of the attack, while junior personnel had the unenviable task of hauling off the cooked corpses of the fallen. Julius would have stayed to help, but he had other priorities.
He raced across the field and made his way to the hill. His feet kicked up dust trails behind him as he barged toward the open door of his home on the peak. Julius ran inside and called out Daryl’s name, but no answer came. If Daryl had done what Julius had instructed him to do, he would not be anywhere near the home.
Good boy. He listened to me, Julius thought.
Julius strode through the sparsely decorated home to the dining table, where he normally kept a pair of conference rings on the table for him and Daryl to use. One of them was missing. Julius grabbed the remaining ring and slipped it on his finger. He tapped it and a small holographic image appeared above it, showing Daryl’s face amid the background of the inside of a house.
“Hello, sir,” Daryl said.
“Daryl, where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, sir,” he said in between bites of something he was chewing. “I did as you ordered. I ran away from the house and toward the mountain range to hide. Along the way, this nice lady showed me a good hiding place near the base of a mountain. After a while I came out and ran into Miss Haylee, who took me into her home. That’s where I am now.”
At that moment, Miss Haylee, the wife of one of the CSOW pilots appeared.
“Elizabeth,” Julius said. “Thank you for taking care of Daryl.” Julius swallowed. “We had an… incident here at the base—”
“I know,” she said. “I heard from John, who’s fine—that crazy man. He actually tried to attack the thing in his fighter.”
“So that was him. I saw him fight it, Liz. He was brave—very brave.”
“Almost as brave as you, I hear. John thinks that they might give you a medal for what you did. I’m just glad you both are okay.”
“As am I,” he said. “But there will still be many broken families as a result of this. We lost a lot of good men.”
“We have a good support system here,” she said evenly. “We’ll get through it—it’s not the first time.”
Julius nodded, frowning. “Personally, I’d rather be fighting ten nanobot clouds than to have to do the job you and the others will be facing to keep those families from falling to pieces. I’ll come by and pick up Daryl as quickly as I can—”
“No,” she cut him off. “The base needs your help. Daryl is not a burden at all—I’m enjoying the company. This is a big house and it’s rare for me to have time with children, as you know.”
Julius thanked her and shut off the conference. He made his way back down to the base. He noticed that most of the fires had been extinguished, and all the bodies of the fallen had been taken away. As he walked the base and surveyed the damage, Lieutenant Manning, an aide to General Harving, approached him. They saluted each other, and then both returned their gaze to the cleanup work around them.
“She hit us good today,” Manning said. “But it could have been much worse.”
“We got lucky,” Julius said.
Manning smiled. “You really do believe in luck, don’t you, Julius?”
“Sometimes even the best-laid plans are going to fail. When those plans fail, when your men are dead or dying, and everything that was given to you to fight has failed—the only weapon you have left is luck.”
Manning’s smile faded. “Well, Captain, let’s hope our luck lasts. The general wants to see you now.”
Julius followed the lieutenant into the office of General Harving. He led Julius through the corridors of the office, where several personnel tried to clean up the mess created by a section of wall caving in. Upon closer inspection, Julius noticed that the wing of one of the fighters had caused the damage.
They entered a room where he saw General Harving seated behind a desk. Standing in the office with him was another man who wore an army uniform that brandished the rank of general. The army general was a broad man with dark hair. His beady gray eyes looked like a snake ready to strike as his head turned to follow their approach.
Both Julius and the lieutenant saluted.
General Harving stood and saluted back, but the other general remained impassive, keeping his gaze on Julius.
Julius held his salute for the general out of respect.
A grin crept onto the general’s face, looking more like a distorted cross between a smile and a sneer.
“So, you’re the cannon fodder that brought the bitch to her knees?” he bellowed, then finally saluted back.
“At ease, gentlemen,” General Harving said. “Captain Julius Verndock, I want to introduce you to General Hugo Valdez, Commander of the Army.”
General Harving motioned for the lieutenant to leave the room. They waited for the door to close behind him and the three men sat down.
“I would tell you that what you did was very heroic, Julius,” General Harving said. “But from what I know of you, I don’t think you care about getting a pat on the back. Am I correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Harving said. “Then we’ll save the medal for someone who needs it more. Any suggestions on who should get one?”
“Yes, sir,” Julius said. “Lieutenant John Mathis. During the attack, he was the first one to make it to a Z-4 and attack the cloud.”
General Harving nodded. “I will take that under advisement. Now, you’ll want to know why you’re really here, and for that I will turn this over to General Valdez.”
Harving handed Julius a datapad. It contained a schematic of an advanced prototype robotic technology. Julius was vaguely familiar with some of the research they were doing that involved outfitting infantry soldiers with exoskeleton robotic suits.
“It’s called H-A-M-R,” Valdez said. “Human Assisted Mechanized Robot, but we just say ‘hammer.’ It has cleared the trial stage and is now ready to be put into the battlefield. It’s equipped with special armor plating and neural reactive robotics. Essentially, once inside this thing, you can control it with your mind. It has some other, special enhancements as well.”
Julius paged through the datapad’s information. He noticed the design and size of the model looked relatively small.
“Are these specifications correct?” Julius asked. “It doesn’t look right.”
“They are correct,” Valdez said.
Julius looked it over and shook his head. “If this is accurate, then you’re talking about finding soldiers that are less than two meters tall. That’s going to be rather difficult.”
“Correct, and there’s no midgets to recruit either,” Valdez said.
Julius looked at them both with a sense of confusion. He noticed that General Harving, for the first time, dropped his gaze and pursed his lips. Julius looked over to the impassive General Valdez and raised an eyebrow.
“I’ll save you the guesswork,” Valdez said. “We have to use very young soldiers.”
“Kids,” Harving said, strain evident in his voice. “Kids,” he repeated.
“Teenagers to be exact,” Valdez said.
Julius dropped the datapad on the table. “This is unconscionable! How can we even consider this?”
“Times are tough,” Valdez said. “And we must make tough decisions if we are to survive as a species. This is it.”
“I can’t believe things are so bad we have to enlist children,” Julius said. “Why can’t we just make it bigger so a regular soldier can sit in it?”
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“We tried,” Harving said, shaking his head. “We tried, Julius. The force field that generated by the HAMR, to shield it from nanobots, has a specific set of range limitations. Keeping the form factor of the HAMR to this size was the only way to make it stable. The special shield that it emits will protect the occupant from nanobot attacks.”
“There’s more to it,” Valdez said. “The neuro-interface between the HAMR and its occupant cannot be used by someone older than a certain age. It has something to do with the anti-aging drug. Our tests have shown that the oldest a soldier could be is sixteen years of age.”
Julius envisioned an army of HAMRs, all piloted by children, on a battlefield confronting the A.I. It made his stomach turn.
“Why can’t we just remotely pilot these things?” Julius said. “We have unmanned drones—”
“Yes and you’ve seen what happens to those,” Valdez interrupted. “The A.I. hacks into them and turns them against us! Much greater minds have already debated this, Captain. This is the only way we will win this war and bring that bitch to her knees. Now, are you going to sit here and whine over the hand dealt, or are you going to be the soldier you claim to be and help us?”
Julius winced at the general’s words. “What can I possibly do to help?”
“You will be training our final tier of recruits,” General Harving said. “We will be… ” Harving seemed to struggle for the right word. “We’ll be recruiting a large number of them, and weeding many out. It will be your job to train the elite of the bunch.”
“And then you will lead them to battle,” Valdez said. “Perhaps the last battle of this damned war.”
The meeting soon ended and Julius left the general’s office building wishing he had not been the “hero” to be recruited for this mission. No parent would volunteer their children for such a thing, which meant they would be enforcing a draft of some kind. His thoughts went out to Daryl: would he be one of the children asked to fight in this war?
Julius took a small transport from the base and headed to see Daryl at Elizabeth Haylee’s house. When he arrived, he saw Daryl already waiting for him outside. Daryl climbed aboard the transport and they whisked away to their home. They sat in silence together for a long moment before Daryl spoke.
“Sir?” Daryl said.
“Yes, Daryl.”
“Did I do the right thing, sir? By running away and then going to Miss Haylee’s house?”
“Of course, Daryl,” Julius said. “You did the right thing.”
Julius arrived at their home and they stopped. Before they got out, a thought came to his mind.
“Daryl?”
“Yes, sir?”
“What was the name of the lady that helped you? The one that showed you a place to hide from the cloud attack?”
“Oh,” Daryl said. “She was very nice. Her name was Chorus.”
******
Julius jumped up from his bed, throwing off the sheets that were drenched in cold sweat. He sat for a moment, staring at a wall in his quarters.
“That’s not what happened,” Julius said. “It was just a dream. It didn’t happen that way… ”