Chapter 8

The four Spirits and their eight Marines were back at the dropship loading zone, Amad having respawned after the mecha was taken down. They were awaiting pick up and communicating back and forth with the other Spirit squads. They had removed their helmets. Hannah let down her shoulder-length hair. Sandy’s hair was tied in a bun. All the men were bald like Amad or had short hair.

“We good on hostiles?” asked Amad.

“Long-range scanners suggest no more hostiles in the area, Commander,” replied one of the marines. “At least, they suggest no more active hostiles. This is a factory; there might be more in the walls. But they aren’t deployed.”

“Good, good.” To the others, Amad asked, “Those metal people we encountered, Command didn’t include them in the list of hostiles. What’s up with that?”

“May I make a suggestion?” asked a marine. The man had been on two deployments prior to taking the factory complex.

“Go ahead,” confirmed Amad.

“They seem to register as people, not robots. When these guys started to attack our cities and colonies, they were exclusively regarded as robotic enemies. Across the last two deployments I was on, Intel briefed us that we were going to fight robots. The scanners from both deployments confirmed robots as hostile. There were some people registered on scan, but they weren’t registered as hostile.

“Had we encountered those people, I think we would have found metal superheroes.”

“That would explain the lack of enemy field commanders.” Amad was present on one of the two deployments in question.

“How many of them did we take down?” he asked the group, referring to the metal superheroes.

When they all tallied up their numbers, it came to seven of them.

“And the one in the mecha. His armor had stripes on it,” said Sandy.

“So, eight total metal superheroes and one of them being a field officer of some kind. The others were probably NCOs. They appeared to have limited control over the complex. The other three squads are wrapping up their objectives. We’ll have their reports soon.”

The reports from Alpha, Bravo, and Delta were essentially the same as the one put out by Charlie. They were told robotic defenders but got engaged upon by metal superheroes. Alpha encountered infantry and metal superheroes. Alpha also found a mecha. They confirmed its destruction. Bravo got mostly enemy armor—a lot of enemy armor, but a couple of metal superheroes were also encountered. Delta had a combination of infantry, squat mecha, superheroes, and aerial gunships.

“It would seem that we underestimated our foe.”

“Understatement of the year, Amad,” said Sandy.

“I know. I really thought this would be an easy assignment with no bumps. I guess I thought wrong.”

“Cheer up, big guy,” said one of the marines, “They may be big, but we are bigger. We got this.”

Amad smiled. The marines were something. They always looked towards a bright future. Nothing got them down.

“Okay, next item on the list. We secured the entrance, okay. The entrance of what?”

“Obviously a factory,” said Hannah.

“It’s a factory that produces robotic infantry and those squat mecha,” corrected Sandy.

“Really? Oh shit.”

“That would explain the excessive number of those things that got dumped on me,” Yeshua mused.