I heard as all the Battle Droids fired, a nano second later the Cartel's Droids fired. People died and then their captors blew apart.

"Unit 11C, take the shot..." Parker ordered again.

"Negative Captain." I replied. "Look in her eyes, is that really an image you want to take with you?"

Parker started to speak but stopped herself, as she saw what I saw; a scared little girl in a world not of her making. Her eyes were red and watering but she was brave, or tried to be.

"We need to..."

"If we proceed, it will kill her. Everybody stand down." I ordered over the com, rewriting the Droids orders not to bypass this monster.

"Unit 11C...there's a cold fusion Reactor in enemy hands...they could blow that and take out a lot more than one little girl." Parker said. She was right, we couldn't waste time looking for a solution. "Take the shot."

"Unit 11C, you're disobeying a direct order." Lincoln stated. "What is your malfunction?"

Fifteen point nine percent.

I calculated different scenarios and the best outcome of all of them was a 15.9% chance this girl survived. All others were zero.

"I'm sorry..." I said to her. "I am really sorry."

I adjusted my aim and fired.

The other Droid fired.

The best chance she had was if I targeted where its bullet was headed, my round was streamlined for speed through the air; it travelled faster. But I was five meters away, while there was only fifteen centimeters between its point of ignition and her skull. My hope...her only hope was if the firing mechanism caused her to flinch and move her head centimeters the other way.

If she didn't, it would be my round that killed her.

Even then, still only 15.9% chance she would survive.

It wasn't enough.

But it worked.

She moved her head over, my round hit the other one and they both shattered at the top of the barrel; the shrapnel went into the Droid.

My next three rounds destroyed the gun and head of the machine. It fell backwards.

The girl screamed and moved forward as she started to cry.

I lowered the weapon, and looked back to Parker as I released control of the other team members. She wasn't pleased, her brow furrowed as she contemplated what I had done.

"Situation Captain." Lincoln asked. He must know, they could see what we see.

"Under control, proceeding with mission sir." Parker gave me one last look. "Everybody move out, converge on the reactor building."

I waited as she jumped off the side of the building and then looked to the girl. She had sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees. I stepped toward her and she tensed up, so I paused and knelt down.

"Miss." I chose the local language and spoke in a soft tone. "You can't stay here, there are villagers seven blocks over, I can't take you there, if you let me."

She looked up at me and my heart sank, the only machines she's known tried to kill her; and here I was, virtually a death machine asking her to trust me.

Look past that...this isn't really me; I'm more than what you see. I tried to will my thoughts to her.

She lifted her arms to be carried.

I hooked my Assault rifle to my back and picked her up, adjusting my grip to compensate for her size and held her to my chest. I walked toward the edge of the building.

"Close your eyes, this is going to feel weird." I waited until she did and then jumped the two flights down to the ground. None of the impact reached her and I started up the street for the other civilians.

I had to walk past the other members of my team who were clearly planning for the next assault; but stopped to watch me. I must've made an interesting sight but they didn't say anything.

I left the girl with four others, three women and a man that she clearly knew; I watched as they grabbed onto her for safety. Then they looked up to me, and I nodded before heading back to my squad.

"I'm good." I said as I reached the team.

"Yeah, good." Parker shook it off. "We're going in the side entrance. There's less places for an ambush, but if they're armed like these others I don't think they'll be an issue."

"Understood." I motioned to the other Droids and the seven of us headed for the large building in the middle of town. It was five stories high, the length of four football fields and width of three. It was industrial in nature but fitted with the modern technology needed to power an entire country.

This is why we were chosen for this operation rather than our nine-foot or larger counterparts; we could fit through the front doors and move through the hallways.

I kept to the left in the hallway, hoping it would provide me some protection, as I wouldn't be an open target. The Battle Droids behind me didn't care; they walked shoulder to shoulder down the hall. Their heavy steal banging down with each step, trying to intimidate anybody we came across.

I tried to break into the internal security, but it was taken off line already.

The doors to the reactor room were three inches thick, it took two of us to tear it down; the Hostiles braced it on the other side with extra parts of the generator. I wondered what they used to move the three ton parts around like that.

Unit 11D and I braced against it and pushed it out of the way, which was when the gunfire started.

The rounds bounced off us, hit the walls and bounced around some more. My system scanned all incoming rounds as they searched for anything dangerous to us. I sent out the command to return fire.

The whisper sounds filled the air around me, it lasted six seconds as the hostiles were cut down. I scanned the reactor room, all clear except one man calmly waiting in the back behind a generator.

His vitals were fine. His heart rate was sixty-two beats a minute.

I moved down the red walkway and around the passages until I reached him, quickly deciding if he was a hostile or not. He was, just not a threat.

I towered over him. He didn't seem worried.

"You aren't cartel?" I said, and he shook his head.

He turned to look at the generator so I followed his gaze, on the generator structure was a magnetic black box my systems couldn't scan. Only visually. I looked back to the man as he made the hand gesture for explosion.

Magnetically sealed, touching it would set it off so diffusing it wasn't an option. He had wired it directly into the reactor, powering the system up. I quickly calculated the radius of the explosion and how long it would take to reach critical mass.

"Captain Parker, we have fifteen minutes to evacuate." I said, and sent a signal to the Drones to come get us.

"Sit rep." Her voice said.

"The core is wired to blow, no way to defuse in the fourteen minutes forty-two seconds left. Blast radius, including secondary detonations, is fifteen kilometers. Drones incoming."

"Get out of there, we have to move."

I took one last look at the Man and headed for the exit, as the other Droids already jogging back to the end of the building.

We came out and ran to the parking area where Parker and her troops waited for us. "Drones one minute out." One of the soldiers informed her.

"What about the survivors?" I asked.

"What about them?" Parker asked back.

"We can't leave them here," I informed her, only to be stared at in puzzlement. "They'll be killed."

"Captain?" Lincoln's voice came over the net. "There's no support to evacuate civilians, get your men and get out of there."

"We can't leave them..." I stepped forward and they tensed, I could see they wanted to aim at me.

Parker wrestled with it, I could tell she was on the fence but in the end lost out to protocol. "I'm sorry...Eric, we don't have the room."

I felt angry, pure anger at her for stepping in line to what was clearly the wrong thing to do. "Leave the droids."

"The droids are the property of the United States of America," Lincoln shouted at me over the Com. "As are you, stand down Unit 11C, and do as your told."

"Sorry Colonel, I didn't sign up for this." I turned to my team. Three kilometers east is underground bunkers, run for it; you have a 66.7 percent chance of surviving there.

The Robots had no choice as I again messed around in their protocols and forced them to take my orders over their chain of command. They ran off for the town as I watched them go; they might make it at their present pace.

"What are you doing?" Parker stepped forward.

"I have redirected the Drones to the civilians location, if you want to evacuate with them I suggest you rendezvous there." I tried to make it sound light, but it was lost in the moment.

Parker took some breaths and looked over as the Drones came down a few blocks away. "Move out!"

I led the Troops around to the Drones and where the Civilians waiting. They and the Little Girl were out trying to see what the Drones were doing.

"We have to evacuate the area," I shouted in their language, "We will assist you in attaching yourselves to our vehicles and take you to safety. Thank you for your cooperation."

Stunned, the Civilians allowed us to strap them onto the Drones with belts; one by one the Drones took off with their new and surprised cargo. I helped a Woman and the Little Girl onto one side, and she smiled at me just before it lifted off.

"You, you're with me." Parker said to me as she hooked herself in. I stopped and watched her. "I'm not asking."

This was a mistake. Not the first one I've ever made.

I climbed onto the Drone and we were the last two to lift off and head for the hills; my hope was some of them would protect us from the blast.

When it detonated, the core went up as a bright blue orb that dissolved everything within a kilometer of it. The giant charge it sent out overloaded and detonated all the other generators within fifteen miles. Not only did it nearly crash the Drones, it caused earthquakes and slowed the rotation of the earth by two nano seconds.