The Raid

Caster’s knee jittered like a pneumatic drill. She stared at it while trying to crush it in her hand, but that only added her arm to the list of shaking appendages. She let go and sighed. If this continued much longer she’d have to pop a lo. She didn’t want to do that tonight, tonight she needed a clear head. At the moment her head contained a maelstrom of doubts. They clamoured for her attention, getting louder and louder. Soon they were wild hysterics and she could only register their fear.

Enough, she told herself, punching her knee. It bought her a moment’s pause before the hysterics resumed. Emotions were so irrational. Caster closed her eyes and listened for her breathing amongst the ruckus. It was far too ragged for a person sitting down. She slowed it in measures, inhaling a little deeper each time, pausing at the end of every exhale. The voices quietened with each breath, as if she was walking away from them. Soon they mumbled as if they were on the other side of a large room. She delved into the minutia of her breath, and the cold air stung her nostrils when she breathed in, yet warmed her lips on the way out. A smile appeared on her face, unbidden. Her knee was still at last.

Caster opened her eyes once more and reengaged with the outside world. She was leaning against the bank of a gully in the middle of a dense forest. A trickle of water meandered past her boots. Far above her head was a thick canopy of leaves, so thick that daylight wouldn’t have a chance, let alone the feeble glow of the stars. Lush moss covered every surface around her. It carpeted the ground and wrapped around the tree trunks. The forest looked like it had been baby-proofed by a first-time mother.

Caster wasn’t alone in the gully. On either side of her crouched two brutes, whose knotted muscles nearly burst through the armour that covered them. Matteus and Elgar, the stone pillars of her world. On the surface they seemed identically unflappable, but Caster knew that they had arrived at the same point from opposites ends. Elgar was marble to Matteus’s granite; one tempered by extreme heat and pressure, the other born from heat and cooled over time. Dwarfed behind Elgar was Lenk, all wires and sinew, who filled her world with joy. They were nervous like her, but they hid it well. Lenk was crouched like a frog, tracking some unseen creature above them. On any other night she would’ve leapt into the branches to chase after it. Of course she would have, she always did, and she would’ve shrieked with delight at her own prowess. Matteus had the contents of his pack laid out in front of him, examining each item in turn. He had checked it all before they’d left, but doubts could be cruel and persistent. Elgar was making microscopic adjustments to the scope on his rifle. He’d turn the dial a fraction, hoist the rifle to his shoulder to check, and then put it back down and turn it again. It had auto-targeting, but he preferred to aim for himself.

Caster watched them as they all waited. They were there for her, more from choice than duty. They’d each been taken from their families at five years old and thrown together in their grief. They had spent nearly every moment together for the last twelve years. They’d studied and trained together, they’d eaten every meal together and slept in the same room. They’d laughed and cried together, fallen out and made up a thousand times. They were parts of the same whole. That part of the plan, at least, had gone well.

Caster’s visor blinked a notice. Five minutes. It was a neural interface, a contact lens that sat in her left eye. She cycled through the displays; a satellite map, a thermal imager and at last to a low light enhancement. Lenk and Matteus were already scrabbling up the side of the gully, while Elgar made a final adjustment to his scope. She waited for him to finish and they both scrabbled up the side of bank to join the other two. Once over the edge, she lay prone with her rifle at the ready. Raising her head just a fraction, she scanned the area before her. Her visor didn’t register anything unusual, nor did her regular vision in her right eye. Satisfied, she got into a crouch and edged forward. The others did the same, fanning out as they went. The moss muted any sound they made, but they all took care where they stepped nonetheless.

After a few minutes, Caster saw open ground peeping through the foliage. She signalled the others to stop and lay prone on the ground once more and put the scope to her eye. Twenty meters past the forest edge was a chainlink fence crowned with barbed wire. Floodlights stood at sparse intervals, half of them facing inwards. Beyond them was a concrete building with curved walls. It resembled a helmet buried in the sand. It didn’t have any windows and the only door, Caster knew, was on the opposite side to them. It was a military base, and a poor one at that. It was in the middle of nowhere, far away from reinforcements. There were gaps in the floodlights big enough for a battalion to slip through unseen. The fence wouldn’t even slow them down. This was the mighty enemy?

Another notification blinked in Caster’s visor: two minutes. She activated the comms channel.

C: Status.

M: Ready

L: Ready

E: Ready

C: Ready. Proceed.

She switched back to the satellite view and saw seven red dots appear on the map on all sides of the base. There were two each to the North, East and South of it, but just one behind Caster and the others. Bolders, the Commandos of the AI world. She watched as they staggered their launch clockwise from North and decimated the gap between them and the fence. She kept her eye on the first dot, approaching from the North. Sixty meters…. thirty… twenty… her periphery caught a mechanical blur whizz past her but she didn’t lose track of the leader on the map. The alarm triggered at twelve meters from the fence, too late to matter. Sirens obliterated the silence as floodlight beams moved rapidly in several directions. Then gunfire added to the alarm.

A crash nearby brought Caster back to the real world. The Bolder had run straight through the fence, which now lay obligingly flat, and was already attacking the right-hand side of the building wall. A figure appeared around the corner towards it, its weapon half raised, but then its head splattered as its body left the ground for a second before crumpling into a heap. Caster turned to see Elgar adjust his scope another notch.

C: Forward in 3…2…1…

Matteus and Elgar broke cover and hurtled towards the base. Caster and Lenk waited for them to clear the fence before getting up to follow them. Lenk winked at Caster as they ran and then streaked ahead. She was the fastest of them and never missed an opportunity to prove it.

An explosion boomed from the other side of the compound and miscellaneous debris rained down on Caster as she ran, but she kept her eyes on the building. She caught up with the trio at the wall just as the Bolder had managed to break through. It forced the hole wider with jack-hammer punches and then stepped through to the inside. Caster made to follow right behind it but Matteus dragged her back and stepped in before her. Even with his helmet on she knew he was scowling. She cursed her lapse as she waited for his signal. At last he waved her in. The hole opened up into the corner of a narrow, L-shaped corridor. One side stretched directly ahead of her, while the other went to her left. It was bathed in a dull, red light, a sure sign that the generators were down. The Bolder had taken a few steps down the corridor ahead of her, while Matteus was edging crab-like down the left fork. Caster stepped over to the inner corner and waved in the others. Elgar stepped in first, sighting his rifle at the droid’s back, while Lenk quickly made her way down to Matteus. Without warning the bolder took off down the corridor. It reached the door at the end and stopped. Sparks pierced the gloom as it drilled the locks. Soon enough it was through and it disappeared from her view.

Caster switched to thermal view. Her crew were muted blues and greens in her visor, not much different from the walls. Their gear did a fantastic job dampening the heat. Lenk was crouched next to Matteus, while Elgar was still behind her watching the entrance. She tapped him twice on the foot and then made her way to the others. They all walked in a semi-squat, ready to charge anything that crossed their path. Muffled explosions and gunfire still reached her ears as they moved, but it was gradually getting quieter the further away she got from their entrance. They moved quickly and silently, Elgar walking backwards the whole time. Caster’s thermal view picked up no signs ahead, but still they paused at every corner while Lenk crouched low and peeked around just in case. Either their distraction was really effective or this base was more poorly defended than they’d thought.

At the end of one corridor the were halted by a steel door. None of them could detect any activity beyond it, but they couldn’t be sure. They waited as Lenk took out a microdrill and held it firmly against the lock. It heated up as she worked, oranges and yellows radiating from the drill point. For all its power, the drill was whisper quiet, a dull buzz not much louder than a processor fan. After no more than a minute, Lenk put the drill down and pressed a few buttons on her wrist. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver ball. It was a bio-grenade. She edged the door open and then rolled it through the gap and quickly closed the door behind her. It would seek out the nearest biosign that wasn’t her and explode. If the coast was clear then there wouldn’t be an explosion. If it wasn’t then it soon would be.

Caster quickly flicked back to the map view to check on the Bolders. Five of them had already made their way into the building. Two were by themselves roaming the edges, but three were much further inside and clustered together. She sent a destruct code to the outer two, and their dots flickered off her screen. There still hadn’t been an explosion from the room beyond, so she signalled to the team to move forwards. Lenk shouldered the door open sped to the middle of the corridor. The slight grind of metal on concrete filled the corridor as the ball rolled back to her. Caster watched from the doorway as Lenk picked up the ball and put it back in her pocket. She nodded to Caster and they got back into formation once more.

The group progressed quickly through the base, the occasional locked door being the only resistance they encountered. It didn’t take long for them to find the Command Room. It was at the end of a long, wide corridor, at the centre of the building. Caster at last picked up unfamiliar heat signals on her visor. Most of them were darting back and forth in the room around one solitary figure in the middle. They seemed to be facing in the opposite direction to the door, no surprise there as the remaining Bolders were attacking the wall on the opposite side. She took her time analysing the scene, running the possibilities over and over. Satisfied, she opened the comms channel.

C: Sigma in 5…4…3…2…1

Caster signalled the Bolders to push through the opposite wall as Lenk rushed towards the room, closely flanked by Matteus and Elgar. They each thew a grenade at the wall close to the door and followed them up with a chaser of bullets. Caster managed to switch off her thermal view just in time as the first grenade exploded and then chased after the others.

The grenades had destroyed the door, and Lenk, Matteus and Elgar were stationed around it taking potshots at the people inside. Caster put her rifle on her back, unholstered two semi-automatic pistols and ran full pelt at the opening. She combat rolled into the room beyond firing every which way as she stood up. Her first volley took out three of the soldiers and she zig-zagged towards the man in the centre of the room. In seconds she was stood right in front of him with both muzzles under his chin. His sea-green eyes registered but a moment’s surprised before bullets tore through his brain and out the top of his head. A rain of blood, bone and brain mush splattered Caster’s face as his body fell limp to the ground. She looked around the room. Behind her others had already cleaned up anyone she’d missed. The Bolders had broken through the wall ahead of her and were making confident strides into the room. Her visor picked up a thermal in the far corner of the room. A prone figure stirring in the debris of the wall. She ambled over to it, wrenched a gun out of its grasp and then turned it over. Caster saw her own face stare back at her in confusion and disbelief. She smiled at her reflection and then knocked the figure out with a practiced right.

The others gathered around the figure and looked from her to Caster.

L: Excellent work

M: It’s uncanny

E: You’re prettier

C: We’ll have to fix that.

The droids were on autopilot, downloading intel from the various consoles. She summoned one over and had it scan her unconscious twin. It reported that physically the only difference between the two was a broken nose. She sighed.

C: make it quick

Matteus stepped forward and punched her hard in the face. She stumbled but didn’t fall and the droid stepped in to stop the bleeding. She kept an eye on the girl with her periphery. Lenk and Elgar were undressing her, and setting all her clothes in a pile. She stirred briefly while they worked and received another smack for her troubles. They dropped her to the floor once they were done, naked and unconscious.

When the droid had finished patching her up, Caster took off her own gear and got into the other clothing. The underwear was uncomfortably warm, the uniform a perfect fit. She put the pistol she had taken into her new hip holster and caught a glance at the name on her breast pocket. Pvt Caster.

Caster looked back at the naked version of herself on the floor. Uncanny. She turned to her siblings and opened the comms channel once more.

C: Surveillance cleaned?

M: 5hrs wiped

Caster nodded. She looked at them all and tears flooded her eyes. She pulled them into a hug that lasted for an age and an instant all at the same time. They whispered platitudes about seeing her again someday, and hoped that it was true. At last they broke apart and walked away from her. Lenk made her way to the middle of the room, where the Captain’s body lay. Matteus and Elgar were already at the door.

Caster turned away from them all and steeled her nerve. She walked slowly back to the body of her doppleganger with her new gun in her hand. She stared down at the naked figure, and felt the rage bubble up inside her. She stood still as it boiled then at what felt like its peak and shot the figure point blank in the head. Then she spun on her heels and fired again. This bullet went straight through Lenk’s temple and out the other side. Before Lenk’s body had hit the ground, Caster was running towards Elgar. She picked up a discarded rifle on the way and fired a short burst at his head and torso just as he’d turned face her. Elgar sat back against the wall with his eyes open. Hot tears streaming down her face, she hurried to another dead soldier in front of where Matteus stood. She picked up another rifle and stood in front of him and met his eyes. She expected to see him scowl at her weakness. But instead he was smiling. Her arms shook and she struggled to keep the gun aloft.

“Be brave, Marie,” he said, “for us.”

Caster closed her eyes as she squeezed the trigger and heard a heavy thumb a second later. Without looking, she stumbled back to where her own body lay and sat limply on the ground. She could hardly breathe as she sobbed, her grief overwhelming her at last. She hugged her knees as she wailed for her family. A Bolder came over and injected her in the neck and she went numb. She stood up took out her visor and handed it to the droid. The other two made short work cutting her double’s body and loaded the pieces into their chest cavities. The first droid took five paces away from Caster, turned and then deftly shot a round into each of her shoulders. Then the trio disappeared back through the hole in the wall.

The pain from her wounds registered in Caster’s consciousness, but she didn’t really feel it. She thought about stemming the blood, but a voice stayed her hand. It was rational, rather than emotional. Bleed out, it said, and you’ll be with them again. She stared at the remains of her world, strewn among the havoc she had wreaked. She couldn’t see much of Lenk or Matteus from where she sat, but Elgar was staring right at her from across the room. He had died with a smile on his face. She smiled back and then tipped over on her side and passed out.