Border Patrol
We were on a routine patrol just inside the front line. This was back before we had robots for that sort of thing. We were a squad of eight and I was TechOp which meant I was wearing a powered exoframe that allowed me to carry the extra weight of an advanced mortar, a bunch of sensor gear, the AI and a couple of drones. We were walking through dense winding ancient woodland along a path that has probably been there since the Vikings. I was fifth in line and I heard the rifle grenade bounce off the tree.
Before I had time to react, the AI in my helmet threw the exoframe off the pathway into cover. The grenade exploded with a flash of heat and a loud bang. Then the screaming and the gunfire began. The exoframe had put me into a standard defensive pose, down on my arms and knees, in the shelter of a giant oak. It felt stupid and uncomfortable and I couldn’t move to look or see, I just knew members of the squad were dying ahead of me. Another grenade. Red lights in the helmet vision system showed me where the guys were and how they were doing. Not good. First order of business, I launched the medical drone. It was one of the old Grainger ones, looked like a small crude robot dog, but it was capable at basic emergency triage and completely autonomous. It bounded up onto the path and was raked by gunfire. Damn.
Next I launched the hummingbird. That’s a tiny surveillance drone, they were originally meant for urban combat but they are great in the woods too. It zipped up 6 meters and looked down the trail, the infrared piped back into my helmet. Two insurgents in a fox hole, they’d been buried deep which is why we hadn’t seen them on infrared. Both equipped with scavenged SA80 rifles with grenade launchers. Three of our guys down, not moving, The sarge at the base of a tree, bleeding from the leg.
I yelled for covering fire from our tail enders, didn’t matter that they couldn’t see down the trail, just wanted some noise and time to assess the situation. The hummingbird was doing a standard search pattern and not finding any more insurgents. Lone team. My AI developed a mission dump and transmitted it back to our forward control post. A medical helicopter was inbound to our start point. The sarge was yelling, losing blood fast.
I decided to end it quick. I told the exoframe to prep the mortar and used the sarge’s helmet to get a fix on the foxhole. Felt the hot rush of gas as the small missile flew out of the backpack and disappeared around the big oak. Loud bang, red mist, no more insurgents.
With the dogbot down we did first aid on the sarge and the other casualties the old way and were in a Wildcat helicopter headed back to forward command twenty minutes later. An hour after that I was back at Leigh Delamare eating EU humanitarian relief pork and beans. God damn remainers. At that point they held more than half of England and things were getting really nasty.
By the end of that summer the robots had already started to replace human soldiers and I’d moved onto the dogs. Best choice I ever made.
Before I had time to react, the AI in my helmet threw the exoframe off the pathway into cover. The grenade exploded with a flash of heat and a loud bang. Then the screaming and the gunfire began. The exoframe had put me into a standard defensive pose, down on my arms and knees, in the shelter of a giant oak. It felt stupid and uncomfortable and I couldn’t move to look or see, I just knew members of the squad were dying ahead of me. Another grenade. Red lights in the helmet vision system showed me where the guys were and how they were doing. Not good. First order of business, I launched the medical drone. It was one of the old Grainger ones, looked like a small crude robot dog, but it was capable at basic emergency triage and completely autonomous. It bounded up onto the path and was raked by gunfire. Damn.
Next I launched the hummingbird. That’s a tiny surveillance drone, they were originally meant for urban combat but they are great in the woods too. It zipped up 6 meters and looked down the trail, the infrared piped back into my helmet. Two insurgents in a fox hole, they’d been buried deep which is why we hadn’t seen them on infrared. Both equipped with scavenged SA80 rifles with grenade launchers. Three of our guys down, not moving, The sarge at the base of a tree, bleeding from the leg.
I yelled for covering fire from our tail enders, didn’t matter that they couldn’t see down the trail, just wanted some noise and time to assess the situation. The hummingbird was doing a standard search pattern and not finding any more insurgents. Lone team. My AI developed a mission dump and transmitted it back to our forward control post. A medical helicopter was inbound to our start point. The sarge was yelling, losing blood fast.
I decided to end it quick. I told the exoframe to prep the mortar and used the sarge’s helmet to get a fix on the foxhole. Felt the hot rush of gas as the small missile flew out of the backpack and disappeared around the big oak. Loud bang, red mist, no more insurgents.
With the dogbot down we did first aid on the sarge and the other casualties the old way and were in a Wildcat helicopter headed back to forward command twenty minutes later. An hour after that I was back at Leigh Delamare eating EU humanitarian relief pork and beans. God damn remainers. At that point they held more than half of England and things were getting really nasty.
By the end of that summer the robots had already started to replace human soldiers and I’d moved onto the dogs. Best choice I ever made.