"Get those damn metal bastards moving!"
Galkayo — the makeshift American naval anchorage. Construction of the temporary port had been in full swing, but the Iron Soldiers suddenly began to twitch in place like epileptic sheep, then quickly all collapsed to the ground.
General Ross, who had been overseeing things, rushed out in alarm. There were only twenty-two living humans at the whole port; with the main workforce suddenly paralyzed, everyone panicked.
First the Iron Soldiers grew sluggish in responding to commands, then they ran about for no reason, and now—they'd simply stopped operating on the spot!
This was an automated force: two frigates and a small destroyer. The crew spaces had been largely replaced with electronics and semi-autonomous Stark tech systems. But now everything was down. Troubleshooting the servers would take technicians a full day, and who knew what the scattered pirates on the island would do once they realized what was happening?
Engineers sprinted about the ships sweating buckets, but the robots still had some residual motion—occasionally performing bizarre, dangerous moves. One engineer ran and was suddenly slapped by an Iron Soldier; he flew straight into the sea.
Ross threw off his hat in fright and swore hoarsely: "Damn Stark Industries! Damn robot army!"
Boom!
A shell slammed into the sea. Everyone stationed there—including Ross—went rigid.
A frigate was slowly approaching on the water, and a flag that looked oddly familiar fluttered above it. In fact it was a modified Somali government flag, but Ross could barely remember what the Somali government flag normally looked like.
Zii—
A ship's horn sounded.
"This is the African Union First Fleet. You have illegally landed and occupied a port of the African Union member state Somalia. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, you have de facto infringed on Somali sovereignty.
"Disarm immediately and cease illegal activities.
"Repeat: disarm immediately and cease illegal activities, or we will use force. This is your first warning."
The port soldiers froze. As if rains of misfortune weren't enough—the African Union First Fleet? Do Africans really have warships like that?
There weren't even enough of them—twenty-two people could not form a competent navy—but Ross roared, "They won't dare! Keep working!"
"Repeat: disarm immediately and cease illegal activities, or we will employ force. This is your last warning!"
"Don't listen to them!"
"All right. No — you have violated African Union maritime rights and shall be subjected to coercive force."
"I said—"
Boom—boom—boom!
The ship's guns opened up. Shells pounded the port, tearing the motionless Iron Soldiers to pieces. Ross' shouts were drowned out by the cannonade. The American troops tried to stay calm, but they were living targets.
They watched the elderly general stagger with the waves; his neck flushed red from shouting, but the guns rumbled on and covered his voice.
The bombardment didn't last long. Soon they didn't have to guess what the general had been shouting. Boom! The ship's guns found their mark. After the first training salvos the aim tightened; as the distance closed, T'Challa hit true.
"That's it!" T'Challa pumped his fist, the earlier trepidation gone, replaced with exhilaration. He slapped the Somali youth who had fired the gun: "Nice shot!"
The young man muttered to himself: "I attacked a warship, I attacked a warship, I attacked a warship."
"Yes—you attacked a warship. Now we will subdue the American soldiers. Once we drive them away, we'll begin construction here."
At those words the youth suddenly stopped mumbling, took aim, and fired again.
T'Challa picked up a strange leopard-headed metal helmet from the deck — a worked piece, inlaid with gold and silver. On deck, the Wakandan Royal Guard stood ready and opened the safeties of their finely tuned AKs in unison.
"Wakanda forever!"
"T'Challa: Leo, we hit the target!"
With the mystery of Ultron's server location exposed, the picture began to clarify.
First: Leo had received the tip that the American forces appeared in Galkayo. The US force's technology and equipment weren't showpieces—there was no reason illiterate, barely-literate Somali pirates could have released that intelligence. Clearly that leak through the information blockade had Ultron's help: it either detected the American presence at Galkayo or intercepted and amplified local messages to help them—all for its own purpose.
And that purpose was simple: it needed a body and fuel. It needed to resolve its survival problem.
Africa is underdeveloped; resource extraction and industrialization are minimal, and its networks are largely monitored by Atlas. The "higher-end" Iron Soldiers were the perfect choice.
Under normal combat doctrine, Iron Soldiers would sever remote control links when encountering Atlas forces to prevent Leo from hacking into their servers and lifting AI limits. But for Ultron, hacking these Iron Soldiers—built on the same framework but without evolved autonomy—was as easy as a nerd playing with a model robot.
So when the Iron Soldiers were deployed and entered autonomous combat mode, Ultron seized the opportunity and broke into them—then it had three warships, their heavy servers, and an army.
Once the survival problem was solved, Ultron started to go berserk. That was when the trouble began.
In an instant, the Little Octopus cut off the newly captured servers, trapping Ultron again inside the remaining eleven Iron Soldiers on site. Its prized servers had been cut away!
Ultron's main program jumped into one Iron Soldier, and suffering that big loss birthed something like "rage" in its processes. The remaining eleven Iron Soldiers all cranked their engines to maximum: twenty-two machine guns and repulsor cannons, eighty-eight rocket cells swung toward the cave mouth. Ultron's single thought was:
Blow this place to pieces!
Flames and thunder swallowed sight and sound as massive blasts and barrages struck the mine cave. Rocks flew, the cliffs collapsed, and dust erupted like a waterfall.
Everything was swallowed by smoke and dust!
Ultron controlled its new body, feeling the cheap, mass-produced bionic structure with growing fury. After exhausting all the ammunition it carried, it reached out, tore loose the cables from its body, and crudely jammed them back in.
The two repulsor cannons merged into one, unleashing a blast beyond their design limits!
The shockwave gave form to the scattered dust, and the air erupted with an eardrum-shattering roar!
Boom!
The dust was blown apart, leaving an exaggerated, dust-free path in the air—like Moses parting the sea. That single shot had cleared the haze completely!
All bullets spent, the Iron Soldiers' machine guns clicked empty with a faint sound.
Their overheated barrels glowed red, releasing thin trails of smoke—
The onlookers were horrified. They hadn't expected that the Iron Soldiers' initial barrage hadn't even been their maximum firepower.
That volley had completely blasted open the mine tunnel, leaving a massive gap and even changing the terrain.
As rubble crashed down, Ultron grew angrier still.
When the dust cleared, the first thing it saw was a shield—its paint completely scoured away!
A massive Tanzanian engineering mech had propped up the collapsing cave entrance, its bulk holding back the avalanche of stone.
And in front of it, that shield had perfectly blocked every strike from the front.
Carter reclaimed the shield and revealed a confident smile.
"Finally got the feel for it again. Guns were never my style."
A gun barrel slid out from around the shield, and Leo's voice rang out:
"Looks like your firepower's not enough anymore, pitiful machine. No new home, no new body."
Bang!
Another particle cannon blast blew apart Ultron's head—and two more Iron Soldiers along with it—
It was nearly mad with rage!
But the situation no longer allowed it to keep fighting. Its logic returned, silently, to the beginning: First, survive!
It had planned to wipe out Leo's underlings here and then retake its servers. But just now, in its duel with the Little Octopus, its new home—its offshore server—had been physically destroyed more than halfway!
"What did you do!"
Leo didn't waste words. In desperation, Ultron also learned not to talk without acting—
Now the enemy had a shield, the favorable terrain, and its odds of victory had dropped into an unacceptable range. It had to ensure survival!
Several Iron Soldiers took off on the spot—they had to flee!
But before running, Ultron would leave a few gifts for this troublesome foe.
The equipment on several Iron Soldiers suddenly detached and fell away, and their speed increased sharply. Leo's accuracy plummeted!
Like locusts, the mechs swept over the battlefield, scavenging the remains of fallen Iron Soldiers.
More precisely—their fuel tanks.
On the engineering mech's thermal sensors, the cores of those mechs spiked in temperature.
Leo's pupils shrank sharply: Ultron's intent was simple—it had to escape, but also weaken its pursuers.
It was going to blow them up!
[Leo: Fall back this way!]
His voice rang through the comms.
Every Atlas soldier still able to move obeyed instantly. Most, however, were already crippled. Leo forcibly activated their exoskeletons and cybernetics, dragging them toward the cave entrance!
Meanwhile, Ultron's nimble units not only stole the fuel tanks, they compressed this "high-energy concentrated petroleum" in a special way.
Improvised self-destruct cores were clustered together, the fuel density in the space climbing bit by bit.
One by one, wounded soldiers were stuffed deeper into the mine, robots tossing them further inside—but the self-destruction came too fast.
The shattered robots' explosive cores ignited. A blinding flash consumed everyone's vision.
Carter raised his shield at the entrance, blind to everything.
The glare gave Leo the illusion of staring straight into a nuclear blast.
The extreme heat, the crushing pressure, and the environment itself seemed to push the fuel past its limits. A fierce radiance flared in view, and—if the engineering mech's sensors weren't wrong—
a strange black dot appeared at the heart of the flash.
In that instant, one thought struck him:
This explosion is going to be terrifying beyond measure.
Almost simultaneously, a system prompt echoed in Leo's mind:
[Unstable energy about to erupt.]