Two Times the Killin’

by O. J. Anderson

conclusion

Jack nods towards Alpha team, spits out his toothpick, then pulls the grenade pins with his teeth. Two-second cook-off. Ten grenades fly through the air, bounce, and skid under Lisa-7’s legs. Ready for the blast, the team is down on the deck. Jack keeps eyes on with only his forehead and eyes exposed around the corner. Then he sees a peculiar thing happen.

Just as the grenades are about to go off, a black haze, like a swarming of flies, forms around Lisa-7. As the grenades blow they send a wave of concussion down the hallway thick enough to boogeyboard on, but the Lisa-7 is apparently unfazed. The cloud dissipates and she turns on the team and starts chucking .50 cal. down the hall.

Jack takes cover behind the wall. Chunks of concrete tear from the corner and pepper the team. “Well that didn’t work,” he says, unclipping the radio from his vest. “Doc, this is Black Ace, over.”

“Uh, yes, hello?”

“Doc, can you tell me why that thing just turned black and withstood ten grenades?”

“Right. Yes, well, that would be the nano-armor. It’s a shield comprised of billions of tiny-”

“Not now, Doc.” More .50 cal. decimates the hallway; larger chunks of rubble fall from the walls and ceiling. Jack says into the radio, “And don’t worry, the weapons systems seem to be dialed-in just fine. But tell Timothy thanks for the hot tip anyway.”

“Oh, okay.”

The thunk thunk thunk of Lisa-7’s boots coming their way.

Jack unzips his thigh pouch and takes out a one-pound block of P-10 already prepped with short fuse and igniter. Peels off the backing and sticks it low on the wall. Thumbs back toward the conference room. Alpha team moves out as Jack pulls the ignition ring. The demo hisses and spits out a thin stream of white smoke.

Back at the Op room, the P-10 blows and rocks the facility. Ceiling tiles fall. Jack calls for his team leaders and tells them that route now is effectively blocked and inoperational. The A team leader, Pitts, wonders if the girl was hurt by the blast.

“No,” Jack tells him. “She’s got some sort of shield. And you can forget about tackling her, too.”

Lisa-7’s shield also rules out disabling her weapons with strategic gunfire and wounding Lisa herself with a non-lethal blow. But Jack, being a master tactician, has it already figured out. First, though, they need to even the score. He calls up Dr. Risler and asks him: “Where can we get some of those shields, Doc?”

“Yes, of course, they’re on the second floor on the east side. In Room 12, I think. They look like black fleece vests with a silver reflective strip across the back. But they’ve not yet been field tested against high caliber weapons, I’m afraid.”

“They’re about to be,” Jack says. “You can thank us later.” He sends two men from Bravo team upstairs to retrieve the vests.

Romero, the B team leader, says, “So what’s the plan?”

Jack says, “Well, we can’t shoot her. Can’t blow her up. I don’t know if we can gas her, but I don’t really want to get into all that.” Unwraps a fresh toothpick. “What we can do is pin her to the ground. At least get her off her feet. Then we’ll take it from there.”

Pitts: “How we gonna do that?”

Jack points upward. “We’re gonna drop the second floor on top of her.”

“Nice,” Romero says.

And Pitts: “Sweet.”

This is turning into real operation. Jack has Pitts send two of his men back out to the van for all the P-10 sticks they have, with remote detonators. They down-load all the useless concussion grenades. When Simmons and Kessler return a little while later with the nano-armor vests, Jack puts B team on stage for the big show.

Four men from Bravo team, Romero, Simmons, Kessler, and Goetz, have vests, that makes them the primary demo team. They strap on the four packs loaded up with the P-10 sticks, about twenty per bag. Jack will do the honors of setting them off. Before they leave, Jack asks Dr. Risler:

“Okay, Doc. They’ve got the vests on, but nothing seems to be happening.”

“Yes, yes... the nano-shield will only activate itself under duress. But you must be cautious: you will lose visibility when the shield is activated.”

Jack takes out his pen and draws a rectangle on the wall. “Here’s the building,” he says, drawing a quick sketch of where the charges are to go. Marked with Xs: crumple zones, structural break points, collateral buildup areas, exfil routes, and the kill zone. They’re going to block off all routes except one, the one leading into the middle of the facility where Lisa-7 will get body slammed by the second floor. Only Jack and the demo team stay inside; everyone else goes back to the vans.

They move rapidly through the halls, peeling adhesive backings and sticking charges all over the place. No sign of Lisa-7 though. Not even a sound. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

“Get ready for a real chick-fight,” Jack whispers. Dirty. Nasty. No holds barred.

They come to a large open area near enough to the middle to qualify as the kill zone. It’s a good hundred feet long by fifty-ish feet wide. Doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose; just a few sofas, chairs, tables, and a water cooler. Dead space. Simmons and Kessler place double charges high along the walls, all around on supporting areas.

A burst of machine gun fire comes ripping through the far wall. Simmons is already shrouded in black nanoparticles, but goes staggering across the room and slams into the wall. He falls to the ground and starts low-crawling back to Jack’s position.

“Must have picked us up on the heat scanner!” Jack shouts over the gunfire.

The automatic gunfire is supplemented by dull, throbbing whoompf sounds as Lisa-7 touches off 10-gauge fleschette rounds that sizzle through the building like white-hot icepicks through a bowl of Jell-O. To his left, fifty meters down the hall past the kill zone, Jack sees two black blobs hunched over, Romero and Goetz, getting pounded by Lisa-7.

Simmons positions himself in front of Jack to cover him. Kessler is unaccounted for. Lisa-7’s got herself a perfect vantage point, making good use of the thin walls and open layout of this part of the building to pin down the team. And she has enough weapons to suppress a vast field of fire at one time. However, Jack thinks, she probably can’t detect that the team is using the nano-vests.

“Where’s Kessler?” Jack calls out.

Simmons, who fades in and out of the black cloud, says, “Over there! Over there!”

Jack pokes his head around Simmons and sees another black blob across the room low-crawling back towards a crumple zone. Not an excellent choice, but he can’t see where he’s going. Lisa-7 seems to be concentrating her fire on Kessler at the moment. He’s blind and getting knocked around. Jack wonders how long these nano-shields will hold up under that kind of pummeling.

Time to close that corridor off before Kessler gets stuck in there. Jack flicks on the detonator and punches a few buttons. “Fire in the hole!” Three daisy-chained short sticks of P-10 blow and seal off one-quarter of the building. A giant puff of dust and debris shoots through the kill zone.

There is a short cease-fire right after the explosion during which Kessler’s shield goes down and he is able to get his bearings. But as soon as he starts to move again, albeit in the right direction this time, he goes black and gets beaten like a tackling dummy at the start of summer camp. Still moving, though.

Jack signals Romero and Goetz to freeze. As Kessler nears, he brings with him a heavy stream of lead. Simmons tightens up against Jack, throwing his body lengthwise to cover him as much as possible. They lie there waiting. A short while later Kessler finally feels his way out into the hallway and bumps into Simmons.

He stops. The gunfire stops. Shields go down. Jack says, “Get on top of me and play dead. I’m about to bring down the house.”

Immediately after Kessler starts crawling again, Lisa-7 picks up with a high rate of minigun fire. It stops again when he becomes still on top of Jack.

While Jack thumbs the remote detonator as quietly and with as little movement as possible, he whispers to Simmons and Kessler, “Not a word of this to anyone. Ever.”

“Roger that,” Kessler whispers back.

Thumb ready to blow the kill zone. They lie still, lifeless. It’s quiet now, and stays that way for several minutes. Then comes a whirring noise, followed by the clunky metallic footsteps of Lisa-7 coming out to do a battle damage assessment.

When she appears at the far end of the kill zone she is a menacing figure, all titanium framework and hulking joints. One weapon over each shoulder, scanning for targets and ready to rock. This is the first good visual that they’ve had on Lisa so far. She’s pretty: blonde, with an athletic figure. And she is totally spaced out; definitely not herself at the moment — which comes as a relief to Jack as she will, hopefully, not later recall how she had him and his men stacked up on the floor like a bunch of sissies playing dead.

She moves slowly, cautiously. Almost close enough now. Jack looks at one of the charges up on the wall, not too far away. This is gonna hurt, he tells himself.

Lisa-7 takes a few more steps toward the center of the kill zone. Good enough. Time to blow this thing. Jack says, “You’re lucky you got that nano-shield, baby.”

* * *

The facility now looks like it has imploded in on itself. Sunken in the middle, like a collapsed souffle. Some of the sides of the building are still up: most of the front side, bottom floor, where Jack and his team rode out the blast, and a good bit of the east side is still there; the parts mostly responsible for containing the shock wave and shrapnel. All in all a fairly tidy operation minus the kilometer-wide debris field they usually end up with.

Lisa is free from the battle frame and is being treated by the medic, who expects her to be fine. Although, now Dr. Risler and Timothy look as though they could both use a fistful of sedatives each. Standing side by side, looking at what’s left of the facility, they seem to be having a little trouble taking it all in. Everything’s gone. Years of research, technology, equipment, files, car keys, everything. Luckily, they’ve got Jack Creed there to comfort them.

“Hey, Doc,” he says. “Can we keep these vests?”

No reply. Only dust, smoke, and the stench of burnt, twisted metal.

“Doc?”