"What took so long?" Syd asked as he followed.
"It's an airlock, it had to change atmosphere," Hephaestus said. As the ramp closed behind them, Syd realized how small the airlock was. He almost brushed both walls with his shoulders. With the ramp closed, Ptah was almost pushed against the inner door. The water slowly drained from the tiny room. Ptah poked at the inner controls. They turned a pus-yellow hue.
"It seems the Ygnaza would rather we not pay them a visit," Hephaestus said. "Too bad." The cannons slid up the tracks on Ptah's back and tipped forward to aim over his shoulders. Guessing what was coming next, Syd shielded his eyes against the bright flare of the particle beams carving into the inner door. Unhooking the hammer, Ptah slammed the shield into the weakened door. As it clanged against the far wall, new flashes marked return fire.
Zsh-ya was already withdrawing by the time his underlings opened fire on the intruders. Their weapons were made to avoid punching holes in the hull. While prudent in a boarding action, they were not going to do a lot against the armored figures smashing their way into the ship. Galloping through the narrow hallways, Zsh-ya hurried to the cargo bay. Compared to those on his previous vessel, the cargo bay on this shuttle was barely more than a glorified closet. It was still large enough to hold the nanoconstructor. The device had reconfigured itself to a hulking shape large enough to fabricate the starship components needed for the ongoing repairs. A green glow over the half-formed metal shape inside marked the current operating face. Tapping the interface of the controller with his manipulating hands, Zsh-ya struggled to read the alien text scrolling past. The nanoconstructor had been payment for past services, but didn't come with an Ygnaza language pack. Aborting the current operation, he set it to construct a weapon better suited to killing the intruders.
Ptah's hammer smashed through the last of the armed Ygnaza in the control room with a spray of pus-yellow ichor. A few limbs still twitched, but the ribbon-like aliens appeared to be mostly dead. The walls were covered in splatter and cast-off pus-yellow fluids. Syd stared at the carnage, trying not to envision the scene played out in red. Disquiet knotted his gut. He told himself that these were slavers who'd threatened the world with devastation to rationalize the butchery, but, Ptah's attack had been so brutal and one-sided that it just felt wrong. One Ygnaza still in the control room was left alive. A darker green than the others and clad in white, it was missing an eye sac. It cowered in the corner, orange-gloved hands held up in front of its face in an oddly human gesture.
As the larger intruder stared down at him, book in hand, Uth-sk hoped he was properly imitating the cringing posture he'd seen in his test subjects. With nothing resembling a weapon or an escape route, his plan to survive the next few moments hinged on appearing as piteous and non-threatening as possible. It was not exactly how he'd expected his research into humans to pay off, but he avoided becoming a part of the charnel house around them.
"Please don't hurt me," he warbled in his best imitation of English. Inwardly, he chafed, but reminded himself that humans would often ignore those too weak to be of notice. It was the blind spot he hoped to exploit.
"Shut up," the smaller of the armored figures said, advancing on the hallway Zsh-ya had vanished down. Its shield almost brushed both walls of the space at the same time.
"I'm not going to fit down there," Syd said.
"Hold the bridge," Hephaestus said, Ptah advancing down the hall, shield-first. Syd moved to the only gore-free place in the room, the central dais. The warbling alien klaxon and the pus-yellow alert lights had an oddly hypnotic effect. Though one panel was being more insistent than the others. It showed a wireframe humanoid figure advancing purposefully. At first Syd thought it was tracking Ptah through the ship, until he realized the figure wasn't carrying a shield and had what looked like a scuba tank strapped to its back. The screen changed views as the figure gripped the prow of the ship. The deck lurched under Syd's feet.
The sudden shifting of the deck underfoot threw off Ptah's shot. Instead of cleanly searing off the alien's head, the particle beam carved through the creature's middle and bored through the control panel behind it.
As Zsh-ya slid down the nanoconstructor in a pus-yellow smear, his flesh eye had already failed him. The bionic was pressed against the damaged display as its image warped and twisted. Text, barely recognizable, scrolled up those fragments that were still functioning. "...Controller damaged, initializing self-repair. Template corrupted. Beginning diagnostic. Controller damaged, initializing self-repair..." Slumping to the deck, Zsh-ya continued to leak vital fluids. Reaching skyward with a manipulator hand, Zsh-ya tried to retrieve the weapon from the nanoconstructor. He was a Lord Captain by his own hand, this was no way for him to die.
Ptah's armored foot came down on Zsh-ya's head in a spurt of ichor as the ship lurched again.
"What happened?" Hephaestus asked.
"Someone is pulling the ship towards the shore," Syd said.
"Molot."
"Are you sure?"
"There are only so many people that strong, and we knew he was on his way," Hephaestus said. "Meet Ptah at the airlock."
Molot spat the regulator from his mouth as his head breached the surface of the lake, sucking in lungfuls of regular air. His fingers had gouged channels in the hull in their quest for purchase. The whole panel had felt dangerously close to pulling free from the ship when he'd felt a structural member and adjusted his grip to pull on that instead. Slowly but surely, he dragged the ship from the waves. As he got the nose solidly above the rocky shore, a ramp swung down from the side of the prow. Molot made sure the ship wasn't going to slip back into the lake before letting go and walking over to it.
A figure armored in black and gold landed in front of him.
"You're trespassing," a stern, icy voice said.
"I have to bring these aliens in."
"Not even you can carry this ship."
A second armored figure hopped down behind the first. With its bulky armor, this one was as large as Molot. Where the rune-etched power armor was metal and servos, Molot was a slab of meat and gristle. His physique was not sculpted, and would not win any bodybuilding pageants, but it bulged under the constraints of the gray-and-red hero suit. Molot limbered up his joints and stared down the pair. "Is time you two moved along," he said, keeping up the accent and idiom. After all these years in the United States, the exaggerated Russian affectations were an act, but everyone was used to Molot sounding like he'd just gotten off the boat.
"You do not have the authority to give such a command," Ptah's voice synthesizer said.
Before Molot could retort, his air tank exploded. The normally spine-shattering release of pressure shoved him into Ptah and knocked the two over. Molot, for his part, was merely dazed. Syd channeled energy into his armor and activated its full defensive suite of enchantments. The sigils raced along their courses while the runes remained anchored in place, glowing brightly. The flashes of energy bursts striking the protective field around him were the only signs he was being fired upon. The lasers themselves were silent and outside the visible spectrum. Not that their paths could be seen even if they were within that band.
Syd's grimoire flipped open to a new page as he gathered a nimbus of cerulean energy around his right hand. His eyes scanned the tree line for sign of the shooters. There had to be more than one from the scatter pattern and angles of incidence. The little spikes of light that flashed by whenever he absorbed another laser hit pointed to the entire periphery of the clearing.
"Van Wyck won't be in the first wave," Hephaestus said. "You're under attack by robots, take them out." Ptah rose to a crouch, keeping the heavy shield towards as many of the shooters as he could.
Syd cast a wave of energy at the edges of the clearing, splintering tree trunks and ending the opening fusillade. A few abused timbers crashed to the ground.
"Show yourself and we can make this quick," Ptah said.
"Oh come now, you know me better than that."
"There was a slim chance you'd changed." Ptah's particle cannons carved through the woman, parting from each other to rake the ravaged tree line. Already abused by the shuttle's retros and Syd's attack, the trees at the edge of the clearing snapped and fell, toppling in almost random directions. Most caught fire. The very human-looking gynoid crumpled into several sparking fragments.
"You've got a new toy. Neat," Van Wyck's voice called from another bot behind the devastation.
Molot rose and seized Ptah by the shoulder cannons. His hands crushed the weapons as he tore them from the armored tracks. "Now try that," Molot said. He took a hammer to the chin by way of response, then one to the side of the jaw. He deflected the third strike with his forearm and smashed the remnants of his air tank down on Ptah's head. The aluminum shell of the tank bent and he scuffed the black enamel paint, but Ptah looked undamaged by the blow. Ptah rammed Molot in the gut with his shield, causing him to skid back along the damp rocks.
"It's going to be one of those fights," Molot said with a sigh.
Part 3
Firelight flickered across the clearing as the roiling black smoke began blotting out the sky. A stream of artificial women in business wear and sunglasses nimbly poured around the flames to bring their weapons to bear. Most carried more of the laser rifles, but a few carried heavier weapons that Syd didn't want to be on the receiving end of. Wrapping himself in azure flame, he unleashed a coronal burst that scattered the lot of them. Smoldering metal and plastic rained down as his attack burned through the robots' cores. Despite being unscathed, Syd was getting winded. Ptah and Molot were exchanging and shrugging off bone-shattering blows that would reduce any ordinary person to a bloody smear on the rocks. Ptah's feet gouged parallel trenches in the rocks as a two-fisted hammer-blow landed squarely against his shield. He brought his hammer up into Molot's solar plexus, sending him flying almost to the fiery ring around the clearing.
Syd's attention was fixated on the edge of the clearing, so much so that he missed the quartet of gynoids that rose from the waters of the lake. One grabbed each of his arms, another hopped on his back and wrapped its own arms around the lenses of his helm. Unwilling to be fully blinded, Syd muttered the vocal component and changed his vision to one of nearsight. He could see anything close to him, regardless of obstruction. Seeing everything at once was momentarily disorienting, especially since that included the muscles and bones of his arm and the inner electro-mechanical workings of the gynoids climbing on his armor. He couldn't see very far, but he could see the fourth gynoid, confident of its cover, prodding at the seams of his breastplate. It was looking for the catches to open his armor.
Syd body-slammed the fourth, using his bulk to crush it against one of the larger stones. Stomping on a mechanical ankle, Syd ripped his right arm free. Seizing the throat of the one clinging to his left, he sent lightning coruscating through its frame. He jerked back as the electricity jolted through his own armor. In his distraction, he'd lost the defensive barriers. A particle beam slicing through his right pauldron drove the point home. Grabbing the gynoid on his back by the scruff of its neck, he threw the bot in the direction the shot had originated. Before he let his vision return to normal, he looked inside the shoulder to check the damage. The beam had missed his flesh by a hair's breadth, but most of the control cabling for the armor's right arm was severed.
A drop of molten slag fell on his shoulder, sizzling against the skin and fat. Gritting his teeth against the burning pain, Syd lost focus, his vision snapping back to normal. One of the bots with a larger weapon was drawing a bead as it recharged for a second shot. Fighting the stabbing pain of a ball of molten slag burning its way towards his deltoid, Syd gathered focus and energy. Bright blue fire engulfed the gynoid, cooking it. Two orange-green explosions ripped through the figure as the power plant in its weapon burst, followed by the one in its chest. Burning, caustic chemicals splashed the rocks, bubbling as they ate into the stone.
Syd turned his attention to restoring his defensive field. He didn't want to think about what was happening to his shoulder, but he could smell the melted elastic and burning flesh inside the armor. He could still move his right arm, but the armor's limb wasn't responding, so it simply banged around inside the hard shell. His left was unimpeded.
Molot swung Ptah by the hammerhead, smashing gynoids aside, but Ptah was locked to the handle of the hammer and would not let go. Once the swing slackened, Ptah spun about and delivered a two-footed kick to Molot's upper chest. The Russian let go of the hammerhead as Ptah fell flat against the stones.
"Repeat that?" Molot called. "Copy, is a scrap down here, with plenty of bots and heavies. But I've had enough fun and need to end it."
Ptah regained his feet as a downdraft made the fires flicker around them. With a clang, a pair of metal feet landed on the Ygnaza ship. With four toes each, two forward, and two back, the bird-like claws gripped the alien hull. Slowly rising, the emaciated form connected to those feet at the knee cast his gaze over the clearing. He had a head shaped like a blocky, stylized jackal, covered in short, black fur. From neck to knee, he wore a plain black hero suit under an ornate bronze breastplate. A cartouche of hieroglyphs covered his heart. He drew two sickle-swords with a flourish and his upright ears twitched anxiously. He hopped down from the ship and began advancing on Syd.
"Well crap," Syd said.
"Jester of Anubis," Hephaestus whispered. "Fall back, before the rest of the Elementals arrive." Ptah hurled his hammer at the newcomer and leapt on Molot. "Move!"
The shout in his ear sent Syd running, or walking as best as he could in his power armor. Molot ripped Ptah off himself and staggered back, moments before Ptah exploded. The shock wave from the deliberately-overloaded power plants snuffed out the fires and knocked Syd prone with the clanking he'd always thought the suit would make. Jester of Anubis skidded across the surface of the lake, skipping a couple of times before slipping below the waves.
Struggling to rise with only one working arm, Syd resumed his mad scramble back towards their parking spot. When he got there, the truck was gone. The Airstream sat, unhitched, where the towing vehicle was supposed to be.
"Where are you?" Syd hissed.
"I pulled back," Hephaestus said. "Use the forest to hide from flying eyes and make your way towards the oil field. There's room in the truck bed if you can make it unseen. We can get the trailer back later."
Syd dove into the cover of the trees and moved parallel to the service road as best as he could manage. A familiar white pickup sat idling with its tailgate open on the road at a spot where the canopy almost completely covered it. He let out a sigh of relief. "I thought you'd abandoned me."
"You know enough to tell them who I am; I'm not leaving you to be captured."
Syd pulled himself into the back of the truck, sliding along the bed liner. Hephaestus closed the tailgate, plunging him into darkness. A moment later, the cab door closed.
"So now what?"
"We move on to Plan B."
"What's Plan B?"
"I'll let you know when I figure it out. In the meantime, you need repairs and an upgrade."
"Can we get a doctor first?"
"If you promise not to harm me, I can help with that," a voice warbled from the darkness. The truck's brakes squealed as it skidded to a stop. A moment later, the blacked-out rear window of the cab slid open, and Hephaestus shined a light into the back. An Ygnaza in a white singlet folded
its gloved hands and lowered its head slightly.
"Who are you and what are you doing in my truck?" Hephaestus asked.
"My name is Uth-sk, and I am... a surgeon."
"And?"
"My Lord Captain is dead," Uth-sk said, his one good vocal sac filling and deflating as the other vibrated. "I seek new service. You are not of Molot's faction. We might be able to reach accord. Though I did not know that when I hid in your mobile... sorry, vehicle."
"Do I want to know why you think you'd be able to treat human injuries?" Syd asked.
Uth-sk paused. "Our cargos required repair from time to time. I can repair basic damage in humans, I have done so in the past."
"You're fluent in English," Hephaestus said.
Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus) Page 43