Doomed Cargo

by Ian Cannon

  She sensed it through her mind-to-mech connection before she saw it, just knew it was going to happen: Opposing battle waves—Condors and swarmers—closed together at the rapid pace of war, filling her path with the stew of combat. And she plunged headlong into it.

  The fiber optic overlay zipped into view. Object indicators clouded her vision. Calculations formulated at several hundred thousand operations per second. Her path showed as a gold string of light weaving and bobbing through the commotion based on split-second hypothetical numerations. But her eyes could see her path through the fray, as if glimpsing seconds into the future, predicting the motion of combat. Her suit adjusted her flight in fast, jarring motions—around one fighter swimming through a pond of swarmers, then another, falling deeper through the thick of the combat zone.

  An explosion bucked her violently making her yelp. An unexpected happenstance her battle suit couldn’t predict. No tech was perfect.

  “Calculation failure,” a voice said in her ear.

  The gold light band fizzled, disappeared. She was on her own.

  “Give me control!” she screamed. Her limb thrusters fell under her command. “Wipe overlay, give me real-time visual!” The overlay disappeared showing the fight through her visor. She would have to depend on her intellect-connect. Using subtle notions she jetted her way straight and true toward her target.

  Point A to point B. A straight line. The quickest way.

  Let there not be a speeding fighter cross my path.

  The distance meter ticked down. Eight hundred feet. Six hundred.

  “Incoming object. Slow,” the voice called.

  She saw it. A fighter vessel streaked through a swarm, explosions blinking like balls of light all around it. It zipped toward her extremely fast, just a blink in space.

  Collision course.

  “No, accelerate!” she screamed.

  The suit redirected its thruster outflow in near simultaneous speed. The combat vessel juked around her, blasting her with its space wake and spinning her into a dangerous tumble.

  Two hundred feet.

  “Brake, Tawny!”

  She growled through clenched teeth reversing her limb thrusters.

  One hundred feet.

  Inertia jammed her around, straightened her flight, but the membrane was upon her.

  WAM!

  She slammed into its gentle curve sending ripples across its surface, and got bounced away. She wheeled over flailing her arms and slugging her armor-hands across the membrane surface. She felt herself begin sliding across its downward curvature, fighting to slow her descent. It worked. She decelerated—slowing, slowing, until she felt her armor-boots sink through the membrane’s circumstantially permeable skin, and pull her through with them.

  She was a hundred feet over the control stage when artificial gravity took her. She plummeted with her retros booming out from her boots and arms. She came down hard on her feet pounding the control stage’s floor like a hammer, compressed into a squatting position. She was unhurt, her battle suit absorbing the impact perfectly.

  She stood slowly to full height scanning the area before her. The control stage was an enormous, flat area several hundred feet in diameter. It was mostly-dim, hiding the distances, but with multiple workstations, operation centers and control hubs, each on differing levels or set into recessed areas in the floor. The entire area culminated into a hundred-foot-tall dais at the center, and above was the transparent membrane giving three-hundred and sixty degree visibility. The battle raged overhead, trails of fighters zinging through space stitching the night with cutting laser beams.

  No one was home here. There were no operators, no station guards, no controllers. Even the control panels and operation equipment seemed dormant. There was no sound at all. Not even a whisper.

  The silence made her blood chill.

  Where was the Bitch?

  Sudden, shrill laughter trilled down at her, and Tawny jerked a look up. Her face tightened under her helmet and visor.

  There she was.

  Xantrissa sat at her throne atop the dais looking down at her with her long, slender legs crossed comfortably at the knees. The backdrop of space battle raged silently over her head. She swung her foot over in a large flaring motion and stood to her full height. Her eyes burned with a wild evil. “A very nice entrance, I must say,” she said in her wicked, sharp voice.

  Tawny took a step back, armor-fists clenching.

  Xantrissa stepped gracefully over the edge of her dais and slid down the curvature with tremendous speed, until it vaulted her into the air at the bottom and she landed squarely, several paces before Tawny.

  Tawny tilted her head and said, “You too.”

  The Bitch’s eyes glided over her, back and forth, up and down, her face still bearing that razor-thin grin. She took in Tawny’s armor. It was bulky and battle-scarred with plates on top of plates. Tawny’s visor was a black T-shape giving her ensemble a serious, warrior’s appeal.

  One of Xantrissa’s eyebrows raised, impressed. With a crooked smirk, she quipped, “A bit overdressed, aren’t you?”

  Tawny positioned her feet and said, “Nope.” She flicked her right arm, swinging the pounder-gun around on its hinge and unleashed a volley of close quarters laser strikes from triple spinning barrels.

  Xantrissa howled with delight flipping in a long-limbed somersault over the near control deck as flame licked all around her. She landed in a crouching position, and struck toward the base of her dais sliding feet first toward cover as Tawny’s laser strikes pounded after her.

  Tawny released the trigger and held her gun in a vertical position as fingers of smoke wound from the barrels. She blink-commanded her visor overlay. It opened. The shapes of the control stage showed in shimmering green lines. The heat of her residing laser strikes pulsed red. She scanned the base of the dais. Her helmet system’s theoretical ops showed Xantrissa hiding on the other side.

  Tawny pointed the pounder-gun at the tower, honing in on Xantrissa with her target reticle. Her high-velocity plasma rounds would blast clean through the thing and strike her enemy. Laughter came at her, this time low and slithery. The Bitch said, “Try it.”

  Tawny paused.

  “Just pull the trigger, little birdy, see what happens,” and she laughed again.

  Tawny said into her helmet’s command function, “Analyze target.”

  A pair of yellow bracket icons closed around the green-lit shape of the dais. Analyzer indicators flashed in circles, miniscule readouts scrolling in quick columns. A voice said, “Titanium alloy with crystalline steel atomic bonding, all magnetically sealed.”

  It was a repulsor surface. The dais would deflect her bolts in a flurry of unpredictable angles. Tawny grinned enjoying the game, and stepped around the edge of the control stage to find a better angle. It was dark over there as shadows lay over iron-colored flooring. Her eyes peeled across the space, heightened by her tactical sensory nodes. The visual overlay constantly picked out suspect nuances in the surroundings and zoomed up for quick inspection, then back. Silence fell, except for a snicker that registered in echoes. Tawny adjusted the pounder-gun, ready to use. So far, she detected nothing. No Bitch.

  Overhead, one of the Underworld corvettes suffered a catastrophic engineering event and the ensuing explosion ripped it apart, spreading into a blinding bright mini-star. It showed like daylight through the membrane. Shadows on the floor shortened. Shapes revealed.

  A figure. Long torso. Narrow, muscled shoulders. Squatting in dissipating shadow.

  Her!

  Tawny swiveled over in a blink and unleashed her gun—BRATATATAT. Xantrissa squealed gleefully, springing away inhumanly fast. Plasma bolts stitched at her, leaving strike impacts along the floor, the control runs, railings, everything exploding. Tawny side-stepped, opening her angle of fire and laid down a swath of blaster bolts. But she was one step behind. One tiny second. One sliver of time.

  Xantrissa darted across her control stage in a wid
e arc, her body moving with an economy that Tawny had never seen before. She avoided blast strikes, seemingly dodging them as she moved, until she looped back around, nearing. Tawny never let up, growling mad and laying on her trigger device, lighting the whole place up. Xantrissa hit a nearby control station, leapt up onto it and went airborn with her body sprung like a plasma-pult, one hand snatching up the whip at her hip and coming down fast. Tawny tried to follow, bringing her weapon to bear, but the whip cracked in a loud shotgun blast and an explosion bucked her off her feet. She flew through the air and landed hard, sliding away.

  Xantrissa landed in a double roll, got to her feet and stood there, solid as a statue, grinning, extremely impressed with herself.

  Tawny rolled over and lifted the pounder-gun, but it was shattered. There was nothing left of it but a trigger handle. The rest was scattered around in little, burning embers. The Bitch struck it with her whip and plasma erupted it.

  Xantrissa started laughing at her and recoiling her whip.

  Tawny discarded the weapon, reached back and unsheathed her pump-action concussion gun. Ch’chuck Boom!

  Xantrissa sprang away again as the ground where she had stood erupted. The Bitch was headed for the exit. Tawny pointed again—Ch’chuck Boom!

  Zero target.

  She got up frustrated as all hells, and bolted after her with her big armor-feet banging on the ground. Something stopped her cold. She knelt down inspecting the floor. Wet spots. She dabbed it with a big armor-finger and looked at it.

  Blood.

  She’d grazed her.

  If the Bitch can bleed, the Bitch can die.

  Renewed with satisfaction, Tawny got to her feet and pounded toward the far exit of the control stage.

  “We gotta get outta here, REX!” Ben yelled pivoting the ship back and forth with the overhead cannon bawling out. Explosions pounded the area constantly. His target was the swarmers. Forget the Condors. He laid into them, stitching blaster streams into their masses and leaving trails of explosions in his wake. But it never seemed to dwindle their numbers. They swarmed in groups, looping and spiraling, columns of them joining together then breaking apart, as if some powerful hive mind was directing their motion.

  Or maybe a hive of hive minds. He couldn’t tell.

  And they were all over, filling up the sky. There might have been a million of them, and they were giving the Condor fighters both hells. Even the overhead Cabal support carrier was raining death down into the combat zone with its row of belly guns. Sheets of laser beams suffused the whole area over the control stage. Explosions were everywhere. Being caught in a random crossfire was a growing possibility.

  REX wheeled around big and bold, and took off with several Condors taking his cue. Together, they blasted from the scene and started thundering their way toward the city hub at the faraway aft with REX in the lead, and several others following.

  The aft city hub—that’s where the big boys were engaging the … bigger boy.

  Of course, the Condors were much zippier than REX, and they left him in their dust, pealing away en mass to join the fight. Taking a sigh of relief, Ben could have sworn he saw one of them tip their snub wings at him, communicating in their own way a thank-you-for-plowing-the-road!

  He started to offer a half-hearted smile, maybe even a two fingered salute, but something big pounded REX in the fuselage making the ship go, “Oww!” It jarred the cockpit knocking Ben over the console momentarily. He shook his head. That was no swarmer. He’d felt a thousand of them ping off the mag-spires, bounce off the cargo area, slide down his flanks. This wasn’t that. This was a laser blast.

  Ben straightened in his seat and looked out the viewport. A Condor flashed by him in a streak and spun around at breakneck speed to face him. It came to a stop, nose down like a threatened animal, and just sat in the sky staring at him. Ben cocked his head over, perplexed. This pilot was daring him to a fight, challenging him to a shootout. It bore the Cabal blue stripe of a squadron leader running from its nose to its cockpit.

  REX said, “Uh—chump’s gotta beef, Cap.”

  Anger flared up in Ben, and he said, “I think your right, REX. Blast him!”

  REX unleashed on him, but he was too quick, too zippy. The Condor committed a standing-still barrel roll allowing REX’s payload to slither by, and thundered forward, guns blaring. His blasts stitched a trail of explosions over REX’s top deck. REX and Ben both growled in agony, and Ben punched it. Their attacker screamed by overhead, going the other way. REX shot forward into a sharp bank and spiraled over the endless tube rail. The fighter U-turned and followed suit unleashing his forward batteries. The blasts zinged by, but not by much.

  “He’s following us!” REX screamed.

  “I know!” Ben cried with clenched teeth, continuing his spiral roll over, down and around the long tube rail.

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know!”

  They couldn’t outrun him, and they couldn’t out juke him. He would pick them apart piece by piece, even if it took an hour. Their only hope was to get lost among the big-boy fray over the city hub, lose this punk. Ben pounded a path toward the aft combat zone as fast as he could with that Condor spitting rounds that went zipping along the fuselage, striking the cargo bay, searing between the mag-spires.

  Tawny came to the far exit of the control stage and into the maglev train passenger hub. Before her was the tube rail made of vacuum plex material as transparent as glass, so long she couldn’t see the end of it—just a clear tunnel heading away as straight as a pin.

  The train was to her right, and it was preparing for a magnetic thrust that would propel it forward along the frictionless mag rail at high speed.

  The Bitch was here, somewhere.

  VWAP!—the train sped off immediately at its sudden top velocity. No hesitation. Tawny leapt onto its top and began sliding toward the rear against the train’s inertia. She rolled over, her suit banging against the metal, and dug her armor-hands into the surface. She dragged to a stop, ripping up strips of metal with her. Readied, she got to her feet, looked forward, to the right, to the left.

  No Xantrissa. Just a speeding tunnel.

  She swung over the edge of the train and smashed open the side of the car making the entire train bobble and shimmy on its maglev cushion. She landed inside the car, heavy on her armor-feet.

  And there she was, the Bitch, waiting for her, grinning her nasty, crooked smile. “Hello, little birdy,” she said.

  Tawny reached back, unsheathed the concussion gun, pumped, pointed and fired, over and over—Ch’chuck Boom Ch’chuck Boom Ch’chuck Boom!

  Xantrissa went left.

  Dropped down.

  Evaded right.

  Jumped up.

  Spun around.

  Juked left.

  The Bitch was everywhere Tawny’s concussion blasts weren’t. The demon woman wasn’t guessing. She simply knew. And amidst the flurry, she somehow found a way to blow out the passenger windows to the right. Xantrissa flew out, and just like that, the Bitch was gone.

  Tawny’s last concussion shell dropped to the floor with an aluminum tink-tonk, and she stood there staring at an empty train car in disbelief. She had that wretch at point blank with several rounds.

  And missed.

  You can’t kill what you can’t shoot.

  Furiously, she threw the gun down, went to the hole she’d sheered into the passenger car and climbed back to the top of the car leaving dents and rips in the metal with her battle suit. The tunnel tube streamed by at high speed.

  Her intellect-connect intimated danger and she dropped into a guardian crouch immediately. Laser blasts came at her pounding off her shoulder pauldrons. She jerked and stumbled backward. Xantrissa was several cars ahead down on one knee, other foot in front, both pistols blasting away. The Bitch shrieked and laughed as speed and wind whipped around her.

  Tawny had to turn away from the blasts and hit the deck as her mech overloaded momentarily. The visor
overlay blinked in and out, and she could feel her intellect-connect fade and come back. The blasts continued pelting across her back, glancing off her helmet making her bark out. She couldn’t fire back. She had no fire weapon, only her thrasher blade strapped to her back. It was time to evade.

  With nowhere to go, she smashed the train’s roof with one big fist and ripped a long section of it up exposing the car’s interior beneath. Growling, she dropped down, free of oncoming laser blasts. Back inside the car, she got up and turned around, mad as hells. They obviously weren’t going to kill each other with firearms. That would call for a different kind of weaponry all together. That actually suited Tawny.

  She unsheathed her thrasher blade, a long, broad sword with a tremendous pommel, designed for battle mech combat, and started pounding toward the front of the train.

  A never-ending barrage of condensed light blasts struck back and forth between the lower gun decks along Malice 1’s sub hull and the surrounding Cabal corvettes. Explosions tore through hulls spitting flame and debris into space, littering the area with glowing embers and flipping garbage.

  REX streaked toward the heart of the conflict still weaving in his loping, lazy path, Blue Stripe following him to the tee. But they’d picked up a colony of swarmers who, in turn, followed Blue Stripe, swirling and spiraling around huge ventral fins and cantilevered control bridges as they flew by. REX slid between two of the gunboats hoping to lose the bastard.

  Nope. Still behind. As well as that wave of swarmers.

  One of the corvettes, with its starboard stabilizer thrusters damaged, began listing helplessly through the battle zone, its guns still adjusting, firing. Other vessels maneuvered free of its slow, whirlybird motion as it spun around.

  And then the Malice 1’s rocket ports targeted it for destruction.

  The corvette’s rear quadrant ruptured igniting its primary thruster fuel. The explosion ripped through its aft creating a new, reckless version of thrust, and it began whirling at one full revolution every few seconds—a few thousand feet of gunboat swinging around and around without control like Wi’ahr’s hammer.