Dixon didn’t respond. She was in shock.
He crouched in front of her and wiped the sand off her lenses so she could see him. “This is all these bastards want. It’s all they were made for. To kill the body and to kill the mind. They want you to give up from the horror of it all. They want you to believe you stand no chance. And so do the men who made them.” He grabbed her shoulder. “You see me.”
She nodded slightly.
“We’re still alive.”
She nodded again.
“So we fight for those who aren’t. We fight for the dead. Because they can’t. Do you understand?”
She looked him in the eyes. “I understand.” She grabbed her rifle. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Brodie. “Never apologize for being human.” He rose to his feet. “We need shelter. C’mon.”
They doubled back along the road until they were again at the mess hall. Brodie signaled to Dixon, then stepped into the doorway and swept the room with his M240.
He didn’t see any movement. The dark room was filled with long tables and benches, covered in a layer of dust from the gusts coming through the smashed windows.
He and Dixon walked to the far end of the room where the windows were intact, and Brodie set the machine gun down on a table. Dixon trained her EMP rifle on the double doors at the north end of the hall that led to the kitchen.
Brodie tried the walkie again. “This is Brodie. Anyone hear me?”
Nothing but static.
Dixon said, “Everyone’s dead.”
“We don’t know that.”
She looked at him. “These things are fast, Scott. And they can communicate with each other instantaneously and nonverbally. They’re built with low-frequency transponders that won’t be too affected by this weather. So even though it might be screwing up their optics a bit, their comms are intact.” She looked at his walkie. “Unlike ours.”
“We need to think like them. And you need to help me.”
“I’ll try.”
“What is their goal? To kill everyone?”
“I didn’t write Praetorian. I don’t know how they work now. But if they are running a type of counterinsurgency playbook, they will wantto establish physical control over the battlespace that is populated by the insurgents.”
“Right. And Camp Hayden is a larger and more complex battlespace than the mock village, even without a sandstorm. First they armed themselves and destroyed what they couldn’t take. They ambushed us because we were easy targets, and whether knowingly or not they took out the senior-ranking Ranger. Now they will focus on closing the net. Station themselves at the south and west gates to prevent escape. Put snipers on the guard towers. Place units at all major intersections and crossroads, especially the parade grounds. The goal is to prevent enemy movement and then go building by building clearing them of insurgents.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“I have. But we valued our own lives and the lives of civilians. Neither of those applies here.”
“To a point,” said Dixon. “They don’t value their lives individually, but they do as a unit. And thanks to their transponders they know at any given moment precisely how many of them are left.”
Brodie thought about how Sergeant Miller had talked about the training exercises in the village. It was a problem of math. How many units could the D-17s afford to lose in the course of exterminating the enemy? He thought about how Lenny had gone into hiding after the initial attack on him and Taylor, maybe trying to plan and launch isolated strikes. Like an injured wolf that had lost its pack but still needed to eat. But now the whole pack was out, and they had strength and security in numbers. The question was, could the humans at Camp Hayden grind down their numbers and force them into using greater caution? Or was it already too late?
Dixon asked, “What’s up?”
“I’m trying to game this out.”
“I know I’m not Maggie, but you can do it out loud.”
He looked at her. “Of course. I’m thinking—”
Noise emitted from the walkie. Brodie picked it up. “This is Brodie. Say again.”
