Orion Protected

by J. N. Chaney

  “Hold on. Let me get something to stop the bleeding,” Stacy said, looking around frantically.

  “My time is done here,” Maksim managed to say weakly just above a whisper. “I need to speak…to my brother.”

  I pulled off my helmet, making my way through the piles of bodies, and knelt next to Maksim. A war raged inside of me as to what I felt for the man. Half of me could never forget what he had done to destroy so many lives on the Orion and the dreams of others. The other half saw the more recent image of him jumping to defend the doors and sacrificing his life in the process.

  Maksim reached for my hand and gripped it tighter than I thought he’d be able to in his weakened state.

  “It’s on you to kill him now.” Maksim moved his eyes from the ceiling to look me full in the face. “Swear to me you will not let him leave this planet.”

  “I swear,” I told him, swallowing hard. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “In another life, you would see that we were in fact brothers, cut from the same cloth,” Maksim said, turning his blank-again gaze back to the ceiling. “Kill Legion, brother. Kill him.”

  Maksim let out a long, shuddering exhale of breath and lay still.

  There on my knees over his dead body with the sounds of the flamethrowers going off behind me, I was left at a loss as to what to feel.

  I wasn’t sure how long I knelt there. Seconds, minutes maybe. The sound of steel snapping eventually broke me from my trance-like state.

  I looked over to see Sulk tear a piece of steel from between the two hangar bay doors. The doors worked once more and closed a moment later.

  Stacy was with Tong as he woke from his unconscious state. I figured he had a nice splitting headache at this point, but at least he was alive. I couldn’t take any more of my friends dying at this point.

  John had found his way to the control panel, trying to figure out how to turn on the lights in the hangar bay room.

  “I’m not going to even pretend to know what I’m doing here,” John said, looking at the control panel in exasperation. “Why does this section of the bunker have these blue lights and everything else was dark? There has to be power here, but why can’t we turn on all the lights?”

  Now that the hangar bay doors were closed, Dama piloted her mechanical armor over to where John stood over the controls. She pressed a button that opened a section of the giant armor’s center chest plate with a hiss.

  She jumped down the remaining feet to the ground below and sidled up next to John, pressing keys on the control panel.

  “The hangar for the power armor is on a different system than the rest of the bunker. It does, in fact, still have power, but it transferred to conservation mode when the hangar was locked down. I’m resetting the power now,” Dama said, working over the controls.

  A second later, brilliant white light lit up the hangar bay. I winced, shielding my eyes as we went from dull blue lights along the floor and ceiling to what seemed brighter than day inside the hangar.

  What I saw took my breath away.

  The hangar was a giant room deeper than it was wide. Along the far wall stood an army of power armor suits. They were shoulder to shoulder, with their impressive black and grey forms gleaming in the brilliant light. I got my first good look at them. They ranged from eight to ten feet tall, covered in robust metal plating from the helmeted head to reinforced booted feet.

  One thing I hadn’t noticed before was they were all equipped with a tail like the Rung and Remboshi as well.

  “There’s enough here for our own army,” Tong said, standing with Stacy’s support. “We can do this. We can finally take the fight to Legion.”

  “There’s a separate exit above us that we can use to get out,” Dama instructed. “We’ll circle around and free our people. We can then go to other Rung bunkers and free them to help in the fight.”

  “We need to get back to the Orion,” I said. “I don’t think Legion was lying when he said it was under attack. We need to go back and help.”

  “Of course,” Dama answered. “But you’ll need a crash course on how these are piloted first.”

  18

  Dama wasn’t kidding when she said, “crash course.” She taught us the basic movement controls and the weapons systems, and then we were on our own.

  The center chest piece of the power armor suit opened like a door, and a short step ladder folded out, allowing access to the inside.

  The suit, however, was made for a smaller-than-human-sized Rung pilot, which meant it was tight inside for me. I couldn’t imagine how John felt.

  Hold it together, Dean, I told myself. Hold it together. You’re in control; you can get out anytime you want. I never did like the feeling of being closed in.

  When the door to the power armor hissed shut behind me, I had a sense of claustrophobia. I stood in a mechanical get-up inside the larger power suit. My feet were placed in stirrups inside the power armor’s legs, and my arms reached into the arms of the unit. My hands grasped a controller on each side.

  As soon as the door to the chest piece closed, a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the room opened up in front of me. It was like I was the armor instead of just being inside of it.

  When I looked down, I could see my feet. When I looked up, I saw the ceiling to the hangar high above.

  “This thing is so crazy,” Stacy said over the comm line we shared in the units. “How is this even possible?”

  “It will take some time getting used to, but when inside our armor, your movements become the movements of the armor unit,” Dama coached us. “When you move an arm or leg, so does the unit. Go ahead and try it now.”

  “This thing tight for anyone else?” John asked as he stumbled forward in his mechanical suit. “I feel like my huevos rancheros are in a vise grip.”

  “Huevos rancheros?” Tong asked as he practiced in his suit. “I don’t understand what that is.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said with a laugh despite the hour. “Let’s just say it’s tight in here.”

  “They were designed to hold the largest Rung, but even a large member of our species is only the size of a small human,” Sulk said.

  Chatter continued as Stacy and Tong asked questions about the armor’s capabilities. The suits used several types of energy to recharge. If we were outside, we would be using the solar energy of the two suns. While we were inside, that energy was harnessed and channeled into the power armor. It was a technology I was hoping our scientists would explore further once we were back to the Orion.

  I focused on putting one foot in front of the other. True to Dama’s words, the suit obeyed without hesitation. When my right knee came up, so did the suit’s. When I changed into a defensive stance and lifted both hands in front of me, the suit obeyed immediately. I practiced a little more and could see it wouldn’t take too long to become proficient at navigating the suit despite the tight fit.

  “Imagine going around in these things?” John said, moving to stand in front of me. He weaved back and forth, bouncing on his toes. “Legion has no chance.”

  “On the lift,” Dama said, waving us over to a large circular platform. “We have no time to lose. We need to get to Legion and get rid of him before he does any more damage.”

  “What about weapons?” I asked as we moved to obey. “We’ll need those sooner rather than later.”

  “Flamethrower on the back of your left forearm and blade on the back of your right,” Sulk said as he maneuvered his suit onto the platform. “To activate each one, your fist has to be closed, then press the button beside your thumb.”

  “Cannon on your shoulder is activated by shrugging your shoulder inside your suit,” Dama said. “When you shrug, you’ll then have the option to press your shoulder back. Doing this will open fire. A targeting system in your screen will allow you to aim.”

  I soaked in all of this information as we gathered on the raised platform. Truth be told, I couldn’t wait to try the weapons out. With th
em in our arsenal it was hard to imagine a scenario where Legion would be able to stand against us. Finally, for once, we would have the upper hand and we could put an end to this.

  The ceiling above us parted in the middle as the circular lift took us to the open air above.

  “Wow, watch it,” Tong said as the suit John was in activated the blade in his right arm’s vambrace.

  “Sorry, sorry about that,” John said, not sounding sorry at all but rather a little giddy, like a child with a new toy. I hoped we wouldn’t injure each other by accident, but then again, didn’t the armor guard against that problem?

  A single steel blade six feet in length sprouted from above John’s closed fist.

  “You were going to use these weapons against the Remboshi?” Tong said in a quiet voice. “I mean, after you defeated Legion?”

  “We’ve all made mistakes,” Dama said, matching his somber tone. “I’m just glad we fight together now. We will never have to wage war with one another with these machines now.”

  I had lost all sense of time underground in the Rung bunker. When we were lifted to the desert landscape overhead, I was surprised to see it was the end of the day. The twin suns were beginning to disappear against the horizon.

  “We’ll head for the Orion,” Stacy said, moving off the platform onto the soft sand. “I’m not sure how fast these things can move, but if we travel through the night, we might be able to get there by morning.”

  “You will. There’s an autopilot when springing,” Sulk answered. “It’s by your right foot. Once you start running, tap your foot to the left to engage and disengage.”

  “We’ll head to free this bunker and then others,” Dama said. “We’ll have enough pilots to arm more power suits but not all of them.”

  “Do what you can,” Stacy said. “If we’re able, we’ll bring soldiers back to man the suits you were unable to. Will this channel remain open over the distance we have to travel?”

  “It should,” Dama said as we all stood off the lift now. “Go to the Orion. You have my word that once we free the other bunkers and arm ourselves, we will come to your aid as you have come to ours.”

  The way Dama said the words, there was no doubt in my mind the Rung would do exactly what they said.

  “Thank you,” Stacy said, looking over to Tong, John, and me. “Let’s go. We have to make it back to the Orion as fast as we can.”

  That was it. Tong took the lead in his power armor suit as we made the run back to the Orion. I thought it would be tiring at first, but once the autopilot was engaged on the power armor suits, we were as cozy as could be.

  Our stations inside the armor didn’t seem to move at all while the armor’s legs sprinted over the desert landscape.

  The section of armor my own legs were in separated from the rest of the unit and tapered, while the wider portion of the leg spread outward. This way, the armor’s legs could take massive strides while my own legs sat comfortably inside the inner section.

  “Oh dear,” Tong said over the speakers inside our units.

  “That sounds ominous,” John said.

  “Didn’t think you’d know what that word meant,” I teased the big man. “You know, with all the concussions.”

  “Hey, don’t judge a book by its cover,” John said. “I read. I can be smart.”

  “Apparently, not smart enough if we all signed up to come on this trip,” I said under my breath. “I guess that goes for me too.”

  “No argument there,” John said.

  “Tong, what was it that you saw?” Stacy asked, interrupting our banter and reining in the conversation. “Legion?”

  “Yes. I’m going to see if I can send you the image I have on the smart pad to the armor unit’s screens. One moment,” Tong said as his line went silent.

  “Can we just appreciate what we’re all doing for a moment?” I said, not able to control the level of awe I felt. “We’re sprinting over an alien world in giant mech warriors.”

  “Going to war with an intelligent virus,” John added.

  “And our allies in this are aliens,” Stacy added. “With tails.”

  “Good,” I said. “I just didn’t want the craziness of the moment to be lost on anyone.”

  “Oh trust me, this one’s going in the diary,” Stacy said with a half laugh, half sigh. “Amongst a myriad of days to be remembered since our crash, this one’s in the top five.” I was happy to see that her humor was returning and that her stress level was decreasing. She had been pretty tense and emotional for a while, and understandably so.

  She was right, in any case. Today would be one for the books.

  No matter how it played out.

  I settled into the smooth ride of the power armor unit while the auto pilot course kept us straight, running across the desert toward the canyon we had entered to get here in the first place. It had almost lulled me to sleep when Tong’s voice came over the comms.

  “Here we go.” he said. “I’m tapped into the feed of our low-flying satellite. “I can only see a certain number of miles ahead of us, but I think it’s pretty obvious what’s happening.”

  A small square screen popped to life beside me on the bottom right of our three-hundred-and-sixty-degree viewing screens inside the power armor.

  The smaller screen showed an aerial view of the canyon ahead of us. Small dots ran sporadically, away from us and in the direction of the Orion.

  “He doesn’t care about getting to us anymore.” Stacy said what we were all thinking. “He only cares about getting to the Orion and taking it out before we get there and then getting off-world.”

  “Can’t these things run any faster?” I said, trying to urge my power unit to go faster, even though we were traveling at a dead sprint. “We have to get there faster.”

  “This is it,” Tong said. “I do think we are traveling just as fast, perhaps faster than on a predator.”

  “I think we’re going faster. It seems like it at least,” Stacy answered. “The canyon is coming up ahead of us. As hard as this may seem, we should try and rest. We’ll have to run through the night and maybe we’ll reach the Orion as the sun rises.”

  “I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think sleep is going to come that easily,” John said. “Not with everything going on.”

  “Just try,” Stacy said. “We have no idea how long the battle tomorrow will last.”

  The comms went silent for a time then as we each got lost in our own thoughts. I knew Stacy was right. I even managed to fall in and out of sleep a few times.

  When we were in the canyon, we found out our units had sensors that kept them from slamming into a curve when the canyon wound right or left. We were also able to avoid the boulders and obstructions that the predators had to swerve around. It was jarring at first but having the power armor jump over or skirt around the obstacles without having to prompt it was liberating. One by one, like real life soldiers, we sprinted forward with ease.

  As much as I wanted to forget about what had happened in the Rung bunker, I couldn’t. Maksim’s bloody face appeared in front of my eyes every time I closed them.

  It had taken a very serious threat for him to realize it was time to stand together. Crashing on the planet hadn’t done that nor did finding out aliens existed. The villainous threat Legion posed of getting off planet was what did it.

  What did that say about Legion? What did that say about Maksim?

  I didn’t know. These were all questions that had to be saved and answered over the years or maybe never answered at all. Right now, our focus had to be singular. Kill Legion.

  After a few hours of off and on sleep, I came to the conclusion I’d rather stay awake than live through another nightmare of a dead Maksim calling me his brother.

  I played with the power armor interface, coming to a menu where I was able to communicate privately with the other power armor units via private channels. They were numbered R14, R15, and R16. I couldn’t be sure which one was Stacy, but I figured
I had a thirty-three percent chance of getting it right, even if I guessed.

  I decided on R15.

  “Hey, you there?” I asked, deciding this was the best way to start a conversation if it were John or Tong.

  “How’d you know this one was me?” Stacy asked. “I was going to send you a private message but didn’t want to start spilling my guts to John or Rung. Actually, I don’t know which would be worse.”

  “Lucky guess,” I said, trying to figure out how to begin the conversation I wanted to have. Not wanted, maybe needed to have. I could face down an opponent that outweighed me by a hundred pounds no problem, wade into a mob of infected (as long as they weren’t oozing that black stuff), or grab a flying alien, but this conversation scared me more than any of that.

  “You still there?” Stacy asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “I just need you to hear me out.”

  19

  “I don’t know what the fallout of all of this is going to be,” I began, already feeling like I was messing up the conversation somehow. “I mean, this is the worst time to bring this up, and I get that, but…well, tomorrow is promised to no one, right?”

  I paused, thinking back on the many people we’d lost. Too many to count. The faces of Ira, Maksim, and others floated by. They were all dead now. The last image to come to mind was Lou.

  “I don’t even know if I can be good at a relationship again, but I do know that I care about you—my gosh, why is this so hard?” I asked out loud, frustrated at myself.

  “You’re doing great,” Stacy said softly. “Keep going.”

  “Well, if we live through this, I want you and me to have a future together, to at least explore the possibility,” I said. “And if we don’t, I don’t want to take this to the grave.”

  “Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?” Stacy asked playfully now. “Because if you are, the answer’s yes. I feel the same way about you, Dean. We both have a lot of red in the ledgers of our past. But I know we can look past that. The past just shapes who we are today. And I think we’re both better for it.”