The Train to Emeryville - Part 6

 It is five years previous, and a hot wind blows to the beach from the Makran desert.  Tim feels his body dehydrate as the heat settles in.  The landings on the beaches west of Bandar Abbas began with the first marine division as squads came ashore with the ‘Sea Mobs,’ automated amphibious robots with twin mounted .50 caliber machine guns and 30mm cannons.  Tim heard the ‘bumps’ of the 30mm’s taking out the bunkers and armored vehicles of the Iranians.  The Sea Mobs were operated by soldiers on the destroyers Harkness and Defiant, remotely in part with partial AI control.  They cleared the beaches after about an hour of fighting leaving many bodies behind.

Tim’s squad came ashore without taking any casualties.  They entered the outskirts of Bandar Abbas before they took significant fire.  The first Tim heard of it, two of his buddies were shot, one in the chest, the other in the arm.  Hunkered down behind a thick stone wall, he released a breacher, a two-tracked robot with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted in its center.  He armed the robot's AI and the robot rounds began to shoot in short controlled bursts.  

Once the breacher was working autonomously, he launched a handheld drone to scout the enemy positions and peek around dangerous corners.  “SO to squad,” he said, “you’re clear to the corner.”  The marines responded and moved out to occupy the street corner in front of them.  

The breacher had cleared the street in front of them and Tim cleared the squad to move forward.  A large overhead drone, run by battalion, used its thermal sites to scan the building in front of them floor-by-floor and spot threats.  One marine pulled a throwbot from the robotic pack mule that had entered the street behind the squad that carried most of the squad’s gear, ammo, water, and batteries.  The soldier chucked the throwbot through an open window in the building as Tim toggled between drone views on a ruggedized tablet.  

Another fireteam of three men tossed a ground robot equipped with chemical sensors and its own thermal cameras down a manhole into the rather complex sewer system.  The bot scoured the dark for potential fighters that could pop out any moment.  It triggered an explosive-packed tunnel set to trigger when a vehicle passed.  A medical bot was treating one of the wounded marines; the other one was dead.

Tim saw from his tablet that the building ahead was occupied by the Iranians, but before he could warn his squad, they opened up with RPG heat-seekers, which honed in on the marines' heat signatures.  One exploded next to him, and he lost consciousness.

When he came to, he was in a field hospital.  Bandages were wrapped around his head.  He couldn’t feel his toes, and for a moment panicked until he saw his toes.  The shock came when he realized that his right arm had been amputated at the elbow.