the battle within

copyright ©1999,2019 arden henderson

It was the third day out and we found ourselves on Congress Avenue between Fourth and Third, heading south, walking carefully through the debris of collapsed building fronts and overturned burnt-out car hulks. In the background, radio traffic clicked and buzzed, tense voices chattering about other situations in the City. Generally, it was a bad night, and no one was getting used to it yet.

The Sergeant Major was in a foul mood. We had been on patrol for three days straight in full-gear, stopping only for brief breaks. Everyone was hot, hot as heck and it wasn’t even summer yet. And sweaty and dirty. We knew the Lieutenant was somewhere up close with the rest; Strat had briefed us minutes before. We were converging on the reunion.

Over the city, the low dark sky glowered. Way in the distance, way south, there were silent flashes. Some sort of action there. Just up ahead, a building loomed out of the murk. All the windows were dark but horizontal blue neon lines accented the edges. Other buildings stood nearby, some dark windows, some lit. Someone remarked that power was on here and there in the City. Some things worked, some didn’t.

We walked slowly, the rear guys in a backwards walk, scanning the destroyed street behind us. North on Congress, the Capitol was unrecognizable. All of us were heavily armed and loaded with equipment, bulky in our gear, our strapped M16s with grenade launchers held horizontal. Garcia had point.

We found the entrance and clambered down, over the crumbled brick and splintered wood. We were headed to a basement. Up above, most of the top floor was gone, pieces jutting skyward into the night like twisted claws. It was dark, way dark below, which made sense because it was night, after all. Flashlights strapped to gun barrels came on. Always hate to do that. We could see glow of lights below, as we slowly stepped down the stairs.

It was a bar. The Sergeant Major seemed to relax. He turned his camouflage- painted face back to us and grinned without humor, adjusting his helmet. We could hear more radio traffic. There were low lights in the place. Sweat dripped down our faces as we fanned out into the room. There was no escape from the outdoor heat. This building had natural air conditioning now.

The Lieutenant was sitting at the bar, what was left of it, smoking a cigar. A couple of grunts from the platoon were hanging out. Since the place had minimal power, the smoke eaters were off and the haze hung heavy. They turned their weary faces to us. Somehow they had resurrected some pints of beer. Bet it was warm. It turned out it was bath-water warm. We could hear faint music from the room’s sound system. Some things still worked, some didn’t.

 

As we swept our lights across the room, Jenkins and Walters strode to the back to check it out. Our light beams crossed past overturned tables, broken chairs, places where cozy couples had sat, saying whatever cozy couples say to each other while smooth live jazz plays. Over there, along the empty bar, a few scattered bar stools remained, where people had waited in great anticipation for a reunion. But that was a long time ago and no one was here but us.

The Sergeant Major was chatting with Lieutenant. The Lieutenant looked detachedly at the black ceiling above, studying stapled dollar bills. Across from him, behind the bar on the wall was a shattered Celis light fixture. He seemed disconnected. Could be lack of sleep. We all knew about that.

No one stood down. We all kept our weapons horizontal, safeties off. We had seen too much. The place was dark and cluttered. Our boots crunched on broken glass. Pretty much we assumed a staggered position across the room while the leadership worked out details. They were talking about further south, maybe the lake.

Tinny voices crackled on radio gear. We could hear coordinates, yells, tense action elsewhere in our earpieces. We said nothing. There was nothing to say.

The shoving match had escalated rapidly, turning into a full-steam war before anyone knew what was happening. Diplomats were shot, scorched earth policies lit up the sky. Communication was ended. The war dragged on, a contest of sheer wills. Then every one went nuclear. Most of the world was in flames now. We had carved out our own niche. As always, the leftover internal battle was the real war.

Garcia heard it first. The tone. Garcia’s eyes widened and he turned to us. He didn’t have to say anything. It was a tone guaranteed to wake you up screaming from a nightmare, a tone guaranteed to cause everyone to cry and run away.

It was outside, coming down Congress, maybe less than a block. We all shifted our stances looking at each other. The Lieutenant stood up rapidly, readying his weapon, his cigar puffing erratically. The Sergeant Major looked mad as heck. He was not happy. We were not happy. No one was happy. It was not a good night.

The distinctive sound of a ADTS unit came closer, up above, near the entrance to this building. Built years ago, the ADTS (Autonomous Defensive Targeting System) units had been designed as free-moving destroyers, in theory to move ahead of the troops, to help the troops, to deliver serious damage. They had protected well, for the commonwealth had suffered much in the dim past and it would no longer be vulnerable ever again. Response time was always immediate.

 

No one had planned for the sudden disappearance of the opposing force. Indeed, no one had planned for any conflict at all, all had been well with the world. Confused, probably due to software bugs now floating up, and left with nothing to attack, the many ADTS units began to wander on their own. It was all internal now. We had heard stories.

Deep in their embedded software minds, the ADTS were supposed to recognize friendlies with various matching parameters. This, apparently, didn’t always work. Always a screwup somewhere.

We were very silent and switched off our lights and switched on our targeting lasers. We could hear the ADTS pause at the entrance upstairs, the ominous signature tone shifting as it became interested.

It had probably already picked us up via infrared. It had probably already recorded noises. Then it came closer. We could hear it crawl over the rocks, making a heckuva lot less noise than we did. Self-centering hydralics with fast feedback loops. We stole a glance at the the Sergeant Major. He was puffing his cig nervously. Someone muttered the long-standing joke about what goes on inside the bottle of bottled-up rage. No one laughed.

Taking what seemed forever, the ADTS unit worked its way down the stairs. We could hear the wood cracking and splintering under its weight. Coming to the door entrance, it pushed its way in, bowing out the frame and shattering glass. Then it paused.

We could hear its servos humming and muttering as the various sensory and weaponry systems pivoted and spun, taking in the room, scanning us, imaging us. Its hydraulics hissed and murmured. Enclosed gears purred.

Some of us, most of us, had never been this close to a fully-functioning ADTS before. It was huge, seeming to protrude into the room like a too-large Nightmare Alice from Hell in a rabbit burrow. We were targeting it by now and it was targeting us. The hazy room was a silent chaos of crisscrossed red beams, frozen in time.

Our weapons wouldn’t be much match for this ADTS. Too much armor. Too fast. Very serious weapons. Back in the room, Daniels had already radioed up help. Two gunships and a nearby squad, Baker’s squad, the “Dozen,” a vicious efficient squad, were making tracks to our location. They would be too late if the ADTS didn’t like us. They would do the cleanup. The heckuva deal was the ADTS was us. It was one of us.

We stood there silently, our fingers on triggers, as the ADTS hummed and clicked to itself, its multiple minigun cannon barrels spinning, rotating, swiveling left, then right, on well-oiled bearings, towering over us, crammed in the low-roof basement bar. Its target recognition systems rotated and peered at us. Thanks to low-light imaging, we knew with no doubt it could see us better than we could see it. But what we could see was ugly, an ugly self- contained machine, automatic, internal, and on a mission.

We knew deep down in its firmware mind, it was determining if we were friend or foe. The place seemed like a tomb except for the eerie sound of the 1960 Bobby Darin tune Beyond the Sea softly trickling out of the bar’s sound system. No one had turned it off.

Then, for no reason, maybe some reason, we didn’t know, the Lieutenant began to hum along. Then the Sergeant Major joined in. He was out-of-tune.

We all knew the words. One by one, we began to softly sing, following the Sergeant Major, following the Lieutenant, following Darin. We noticed out of the corners of our eyes the tears rolling down the Lieutenant’s face as he gritted the cigar in his teeth and sang, priming his grenade launcher, keeping steady. Maybe he was thinking about his home, the wife, the twelve kids. But he was going to keep the poker face for this one.

There was no telling what the Sergeant Major was thinking about; he had no home. The Sergeant Major had a distant vacant look in his eyes as he kept his weapon tracked on the ADTS. We’d seen that look before. The rest of us, sure, we were thinking about home, and we were like Dorothy, clicking our heels together three times over and over and it wasn’t gonna happen. No way to get back home for us. Not this time.

Garcia looked back, looked at us with fathomless eyes from deep under his helmet, then steeled his face and looked forward. We looked at each other with expressionless faces. Jenkins, Walters, the rest of us, we kept the poker faces, see, watching the huge killing machine wedged into the bar’s entrance, watching us, calculating.

The ADTS paused in its scanning, puzzled by the sound of our voices, seemingly, if firmware and hardware can be puzzled. Servos hummed and sensory devices whirred, panning the room. Deep inside its firmware mind, it rapidly reduced variables.

We sang louder now, in defiance. Someone had turned up the bar’s audio system. Bobby Darin was leading us in the song. Two dozen red pencil-thin beams were all centered on the ADTS as it rapidly switched its own red multiple targeting beams across our group, from one person to the next in little jagged jumps.

Down the street, Baker’s squad was doing low-profile triple time down Congress, zig-zagging past burnout car hulks, and, as they ran, they heard us sing, first on the radio, and then our voices faint from the basement.

The gunships were too far off, background radio chatter indicated they were now at Guadalupe, coming low and fast and hard. Radio traffic was tense, crunchy background noise. It wouldn’t matter.

“Somewhere, beyond the sea…” we sang.

Then, the ADTS, one of our own, on the inside, one of us, yet all alone, far from home, made its final decision.

 

 

Beyond The Sea lyrics were written by Jack Lawrence with music from the French song La Mer written by Charles Trenet. The song was first recorded Benny Goodman (1948) and then Bobby Darin (1960), with many covers to follow.

From the April 22, 1999 weekly blip.