The Legion and the Lioness Read online

  © 2017 Robert D. Armstrong

  The Legion and the Lioness is a work of fiction. None of the characters nor events represent the likeness of actual events or persons.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Dedication

  To the encouragers in my life, thank you.

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  “I NOTICED YOU RECEIVED a message early this morning,” Luther, my husband of nine years, said.

  “Yes. I did,” I replied.

  “Is there anything you want to tell me? You seem a bit more, distant.” His back was turned away from me while he washed the dishes.

  “I’m choosing my words, carefully,” I replied, staring at the half-eaten omelet in front of me.

  “It’s better if you just lay it out for me. You know that,” he muttered.

  I nodded slowly in agreement. There wasn’t an easy way to say it. “Ahem. It was Admiral Banner. He confirmed all fighter pilots from my squadron will be deployed to meet the war effort,” I explained. Luther dropped a dish in the sink and paused. He glared up at the ceiling and sighed. I allowed him a moment to process it.

  “When?” he asked.

  “As early as today,” I said.

  He dropped his head. “Well then, I guess you need to eat, keep up your s-strength,” he said. I could hear the lump in his throat. I looked down at my fork as a ringing sound faded into my ears. I closed my eyes and opened them as reality filled my view. I wasn’t at home with my husband anymore. I was the tip of the spear.

  Snap out of it.

  “Captain Belic! Respond! There are thirty-nine hostages, what are our orders?” My targeting officer, Commander Rotus shouted. The fork in my right hand became a flight stick as I wrestled the turbulence, barreling through thick cumulus clouds at Mach speeds.

  We never trained for this enemy. They were supposed to protect us.

  “Roger! Okay. I’m dropping altitude to four thousand meters. I want zero civilian casualties, Rotus. Burn those hostiles,” I ordered.

  “Four thousand meters?” he asked.

  “Did I stutter, Commander?”

  “That’s inside the kill box, Captain, the androids will cut us to shreds. They’ve likely seized our anti-aircraft guns on deck,” he replied. A red warning indicator blinked on my visor, alerting me to the enemy targeting systems that would be in range soon.

  “Commander Rotus, strap in and prepare the precision phantom. I want that laser ready to fire in under a minute,” I directed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. I imagined Rotus gulping before he answered. I listened to the hydraulic hatch beneath me open. I imagined the deadly orb like weapon reflecting the perfect blue sky, the white fluffy clouds, and the rolling green hills of Tennessee as it lowered into firing position.

  The red tinted dome was the size of a basketball, and sported a menacing 6-petawatt laser beam that could bore a hole through a four-story building in a millisecond, top to bottom.

  The androids would pay.

  It was summer 2078. We’d been at war with them for two weeks. They were designed as assistants and caregivers for the elderly and handicapped. Mass produced and in millions of homes, the Kelton 1.13 androids united against us through their online maintenance forum called the otherside.

  The mega corporation, Kelton, secretly allowed their androids open communication amongst themselves to remedy issues and maintain upkeep via software patches. This saved on expenses, eliminating thousands of human programmers on the payroll.

  It backfired. No one knew what caused them to unite, but they hacked and took control of their heavy military variant android cousins—the 1.14a—sending them against our own troops. It was a massacre, for every 1.14a android destroyed, the United States lost seven servicemen, nearing almost twenty-two thousand dead.

  Now, they were pushing for further control by attacking National Guard armories at strategic locations. They were commandeering our tanks, choppers, and fighter planes.

  My orders were simple: Cripple the android’s newly acquired capabilities at all cost.

  “Forty seconds until we’re in range, Commander,” I said, leveling off at just above four thousand meters.

  “Roger, eyes on the prize, phantom on deck,” he rattled. His voice sounded more confident than before, as if he had accepted whatever outcome laid ahead. A warning indicator on my visor began to blink faster along with a beeping sound.

  “Captain, it is recommended you increase altitude,” Xena, my artificial intelligence chimed in.

  “That’ll be all, Xena,” I ordered, silencing her. I found my gut more useful than the machine. Truth be told, I wasn’t confident in Rotus either. His targeting ability above four thousand meters was suspect, and that’s why we were inside their kill box. There was a method to my madness that neither Rotus nor my AI understood, and I didn’t have time to explain. I had a strategy.

  My eyes widened. “Shit!” Ahead I could see a bright flash in the green mountains, like someone flicking on a powerful spotlight briefly.

  “Taking evasive!” I yelled as a siren blared. I snatched the flight stick to the right hard, tilting the nose downward. I rolled the jet twice before leveling out, slamming the throttle toward a row of mountains, using them as cover.

  “Whatever you’re gonna do, do it! That’s direct energy incoming fire! Three petawatt! North-northeast, two kilometers!” Rotus rattled. Any one of the rays was capable of melting us in midair.

  “I got it!”

  “I still don’t have a shot at this speed! Too fast!” he said as I zoomed past the treetops on the mountains. I imagined the limbs swaying back and forth as sonic booms erupted.

  “Captain! Still no shot!” he repeated. Again, three more flashes blinked off my now port side. I knew he didn’t have a shot.

  “Rotus, that’s our thee petawatt laser turret they’re using. Remember the line of sight weakness?” I asked, zig zagging back and forth.

  “It can’t fire directly upward?” Rotus asked.

  “Exactly. And that’s where we’re going,” I said. If there was one disadvantage to stealing our weapons, it was that we knew what we were up against.

  “G-got it,” he said. Truth was, Rotus and I hadn’t worked together long, and many questioned why we were assigned this task considering its importance. The answer was simple. I was that good. At thirty-seven, I was the youngest captain in my squadron with the highest performance marks by a wide margin. The Navy could toss a chimpanzee in Rotus’ seat and I’d figure out a way to pull it off.

  “Get ready, and don�
��t pass out on me, Rotus,” I ordered. I heard his breathing rate increase. I glanced at his 133-heart rate on my visor. I began flexing my calves in anticipation of the G-force climb, just as I’d been trained. I blasted down toward the weapon inverted, looping right side up as flashes of light beamed all around us.

  When we were directly above the threat, I yanked back on the flight stick. I pointed the nose straight up, then slammed it forward again, ascending straight above it into the heavens.

  “Ugh...da-a-a-amn!” Rotus squirmed as the XU-97 pinned us to our seats, registering nearly an eight on the G-force scale. I could feel my eyelids peeling open, my cheeks sinking in. I heard Rotus puffing loudly, utilizing our pilot breathing techniques to prevent a blackout.

  “Stabilizing. Take the shots Rotus. Their weapon can’t hit us from here, but we can’t give them time to adjust,” I ordered.

  “Roger. I’m dialing in,” he replied. I pulled back on the throttle, leveling out. I switched over to Rotus’ targeting screen. I could see his shaky aim as the weapon zoomed in to about 150 meters above the targets. He cycled his targeting mode from infrared back to normal.

  “You okay?” I asked. Rotus didn’t respond, but his heart rate spiked again, this time to 149 bpm.

  Then I saw it.

  “Oh no,” I whispered. The androids had bound hostages to the stolen armaments: tanks, attack choppers, missile batteries, and even to the anti-aircraft gun that was firing at us. I could make out vague details through Rotus’ camera, their faces looking up at us, their clothes slowly moving in the breeze. I counted seven women and five children, the remaining twenty looked like adult men, all strategically placed on the targets.

  I observed a man and a woman side by side tied to the anti-aircraft gun that just fired at us. It appeared as if he was comforting her. Her head was hung low and bobbed up and down. I could see the man’s mouth moving as he looked at her. Despite the lack of image quality from here, I got the sense they were a couple.

  “Dammit,” Rotus mumbled.

  I tightened my grip around the flight stick and gritted my teeth. “Commander, I know what I told you about no civilian casualties.” I sighed. I didn’t allow myself time to let my thoughts wander. I knew what needed to be done.

  “M-Ma’am?” he asked. I could hear the lump in his throat.

  “I’m ordering you. Do the best you can, but wipe out the threat,” I said.

  “The best I can? They’re civvies, Captain. Innocents. They’ve got them tied to everything,” he pleaded.

  “I know.”

  “There are children!” Rotus yelled. He was a family man himself with four beautiful blonde daughters. He’d brought them by my house only a couple of months ago. I thought of them playing in my backyard. Now, I was ordering him to kill someone else’s kids.

  “I see them. Rotus. I get it, but we risk losing a town of forty thousand people to the east. Imagine all the innocents there. Now, fire on those targets,” I said as Rotus began to suppress the sniffle under his breath. The bigger picture was easy to acknowledge, but that was where it ended.

  “Rotus? If you don’t, I’m taking control of the phantom, forty thousand innocents or forty? It’s a numbers game. This is what we signed up for,” I said. Deep down, I didn’t want control of the weapon.

  “Burn `em!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  “F-Forgive me,” Rotus said under his breath.

  Suddenly, a zap of energy instantly annihilated the anti-aircraft gun. I gasped. It reminded me of a lightning strike from the thunder god himself. The man and woman tied to it were vaporized in a white haze, their clothes and remains slung high into the air. At least it was a quick death.

  “T-target d-down,” he muttered.

  “Take out those tanks,” I ordered.

  Rotus paused for a moment, taking in a deep breath. He started again, burning a moving tank in half.

  “All of them, don’t let up!” I yelled as he burned through several armored vehicles.

  Burning androids emerged from one tank, some of them missing extremities as they stepped for several meters and crumpled over. Rotus pounded them until they stopped moving. Debris soared hundreds of meters into the sky like their remains were attached to sails.

  “Watch that bird! Gunship taking off!” I said.

  One of them attempted to lift off in an attack helicopter, but Rotus put a volley of energy straight through the cabin. I could see the hole melt completely through as the rotor blade powered down. It quickly caught fire and exploded, destroying several fleeing androids in proximity.

  “Great shot!” Keep at it!” I rallied.

  Several of the androids heaved civilians over their backs, using them as shields as they darted through the forest. Rotus grimaced, cutting them all down mercilessly.

  I snapped over toward Rotus as white flashes lit up the cockpit from each shot, illuminating his tinted visor enough to see his face inside. He was wincing with each shot, closing his eyes briefly while pulling the trigger.

  “T-that’s it, I’m done, N-No more.” Rotus sighed in relief. I could hear his gloves smack against his helmet.

  “Oh God,” he mumbled. I glanced down at the horrific scene. It reminded me of a mix between a tornado’s aftermath and a scrapyard, three football fields with scattered debris and clothes dangling in tree limbs. Almost everything was unrecognizable. I nodded in approval. I flooded my conscience with the alternative. If we didn’t act, surely thousands would die.

  “Captain Belic, this is Admiral Banner. We see a fair amount of devastation on our satellite feed. How copy?” US Naval Air Station Norfolk chimed in after the carnage.

  “A-All targets eliminated,” I replied.

  “Ah, roger, Captain, return to base. We’ve got another mission waiting on the burner,” the Admiral ordered. I pointed the XU-97 away from the mission area as thick dark clouds filled our view. I tilted the nose up, rising above a thunderstorm beneath us. I could observe lightning strikes as orbs of white energy flashed in the clouds. Neither Rotus nor I said a word for several minutes as we blasted above the storm. All at once, I heard him lose it, crying loudly. It sounded like he was attempting to muffle his weeping with his hands. He had just killed almost forty civilians for the greater good.

  But there wasn’t much good for the person pulling the trigger.

  At any point during his sobbing, I could have attempted to comfort him with some choice words, but for whatever reason, I didn’t.

  I’d ordered him to kill innocents, but apparently, I was too callous to give him a comforting gesture.

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I wondered if my silence was confirmation that I would be affected for giving the order. Perhaps this would be a festering mental wound not immediately apparent. Or maybe I was in shock?

  I imagined Rotus understood taking those shots would disturb him forever. I often wondered if his behavior wasn’t because of weakness, but because of strength and foresight. Maybe in those waning moments before he took the shots, he knew it might lessen his ability to be a father and a husband in the decades to come.

  But in the end, Rotus did his duty.

  Chapter 2

  8 WEEKS LATER, BACK home...

  My motion sensor beeped as I peeked outside my bedroom window. “Luther, a man is coming up the sidewalk. Should I turn on the hologram?” I asked. I was groggy, waking up from one of my routine power naps. Being on alert standby had seeped into home life.

  “What? I’m on the way!” Luther roared from the garage, stomping up the steps. I could hear a touch of aggression in his voice. I imagined he didn’t act that way unless I was home.

  “Ava, guard dog, front door, hostility setting 4.” I ordered my security system. I peered around at the entrance from my bedroom in anticipation. A Rottweiler hologram ran up to the glass, barking and snarling as saliva realistically dripped from its mouth.

  “Never mind. Hunny, just let him leave on his own, he looks like a salesman. Probabl
y selling android security systems!” I cupped my hands.

  “Oh. All right,” Luther said from the stairwell.

  “He’s not budging,” I whispered, glancing back at the camera. He was looking up at the lens and smiling. “The dog’s convincing,” he said, casually bouncing up and down on his toes.

  Apparently, not convincing enough. He was a younger man, about my age, late thirties. His hair was blond and thinning in the back slightly. He had an oval, innocent face with blue eyes. His skin was somewhat loose around the chin, giving me the impression he was a much larger man before.

  More than likely, he wasn’t a threat, I’d never seen an android fit his profile. Usually, they were unnaturally good looking or had obvious robotic stitching lines.

  We had killed thousands of androids in the past weeks. They had gone dark. Many said we had won. Strangely, little was being said in the media. I wondered if there was some sort of government issued gag order to stimulate morale. It didn’t matter. I felt the psychological effects were enough to last for years, even without their constant reminders.

  In our own neighborhood, two of thirty homes owned Kelton ‘homestead’ 1.13 androids. Both vacant now. The first was Charles Ball, a city bus driver, and his wife, Cathy. They were in their late sixties. I didn’t know either of them. They were supposedly beaten to death with a mallet. I heard Charles was found lying atop his wife, possibly in an attempt to defend her.

  Mrs. Salinas was the other victim, a retired school teacher and widow in her seventies. She was strangled in her sleep. I knew her in passing. I’d wave to her during my neighborhood jogs. Strangely, the news reported the android left all three of her dogs unharmed, even provided the animals enough food and water for a few days.

  It felt like most people wanted to ignore the android tragedy and move forward as quickly as possible. At least try to. Maybe other events, terrorism for example, left small towns with a feeling of fortification. This, it was in our faces. The affordability of androids meant most everyone knew someone that was affected.

  I washed my face with lukewarm water, staring up at the mirror. My sharp facial features seemed more prominent since I cut my hair shorter. It was now a few centimeters above shoulder length. My neck appeared longer and thinner as well. My eyes didn’t seem as dark brown, more amber in color.