“So, we’re safe once we get in?” I said, firing at the Syndicate forces.
“Mostly. There are areas that there are isolated sentry systems and areas with no systems.”
“Great.” I looked over the barricade I was hiding behind, letting a stream of plasma coat the far wall, making the pirates who held a z-turn in the corridor jump back behind cover.
I changed to the local channel. “Grab your swords, people. We’re taking a detour.” I pulled up a schematic and changed back to Eddie’s channel.
“Keep me updated if anything is needed.”
“Certainly. I will try to assist however I can,” Resilient said.
“I have Kuruvians moving supplies up to you as we speak so your guys don’t have to do all of the lifting.”
“Thanks, Eddie—we appreciate it. Have your people taken back the wounded? We need them up and moving as soon as possible. I would make the hangars medical rooms. Pull out all of the medical chairs in the shuttles to get people patched up.”
“Agreed, Commander.”
I mag-clamped my rifle and drew my sword, stabbing it through the wall closest to me and dragging it around in a circle. Snatching my pistol from my drop leg holster, I kicked the wall and followed the slab into what looked like someone’s quarters. My people followed as I continued into a new hallway.
“Eddie is not going to like this.” I spoke, not realizing I hadn’t cut the channel.
“Won’t like what?” he asked suspiciously as I pointed to the next wall. The commandos, getting the idea, cut through the wall into a storeroom. One of them whistled as they stepped into the massive space. I followed them into the room.
“Eddie, what do maintenance bots look like?” I asked, remembering one of Eddie’s famous rants where he went on about the lack of resources and help in fixing Resilient.
He flashed me a picture. I whistled.
“Well, I think we just hit the goldmine of them.” I sent him a picture of the room. I learned the Kuruvian dictionary dedicated to swear words.
“They have all of these in storage and they still don’t get any to perform maintenance! Wait, what is that in the corner?” He highlighted the offending corner in the same picture, sending it back to me.
I moved to go and look at it, sending him a picture.
His voice was dead anger and hatred behind it. “It’s a dismantler.” I heard metal hitting metal over the open channel.
“Those useless frisking pirates! Who in their right fracking mind would disable perfectly good repair droids when they don’t even know how to wire a ship right! Kill the lot of the useless slackers, I say! Don’t know what a day’s work is! Dismantle the robots then get engineers you demand miracles from to do their jobs! Idiotic, pure and damned simple!”
I jacked into the control panel of the dismantler, shutting it down before pointing to another wall. My team stabbed through it again.
“I’ve shut it down and after this we can get these working to fix the station.”
“Damn the station. You know what I could do with them if I had four months and materials? I could fix up the Resilient! Give me six months and I could fully refurbish her if I had the drones and a dock!”
“Salchar, if you put a wireless hub into this console, I can turn the drones to help and begin searching for others,” Resilient said over Eddie’s tirade.
I pulled the hub from my leg; the stick was shaped at one end like my universal port and was two inches long. I inserted it into the control panel as it booted up. A row of drones came online in a nearby rack.
“I will need to charge them, but I can give them to the Kuruvians to move supplies and wounded as well as inserting me into control systems across the ship where we aren’t already.” Small bots about the size of a football started picking up and entering air ducts and maintenance hatches, my HUD updating with a more detailed map.
“Resilient, you beauty!” I yelled, pumping my hand in the air. I noticed the commandos looking at me and the drones, their weapons raised and ready to take out the drones. I changed to the general channel, putting a text message through everyone’s HUDs so as to not disrupt orders. Don’t kill the drones—they work for us.
I followed my group of commandos, my shadows encircling me still. I walked through the next room and pointed to the last wall, checking my schematic.
The thought of a near-new imperial dreadnought did have its allure, especially after having seen the outside of it and hearing about the conditions of the shields and engines. When Eddie had gone through the issues of the ship, I’d learned how much it was stuck together with space tape and elbow grease.
“I’ll see what we can do. For now we have to take this station.”
“Yes, Commander. I’ll see what I can do from this end.”
“Thanks, Eddie.” I shut the channel as the last hole was cut and the commando behind it kicked it with all of his force. As soon as it was clear, another flowed through the gap. Swords raised, we charged. I ran in, keeping my shoulders down as I ran over two unarmored pirates, their screams in my ears as I brought my sword up in a savage blow that cleaved a surprised pirate in two.
We smashed into the pirates like a wave. They’d been so concentrated on our people down the hall they didn’t notice our plasmid swords cutting behind their corner and right into the middle of them. Plasmid swords and servo-assisted fists ripped apart the pirates who turned their weapons on us.
I spun away from a toppling armored pirate, my sword at head height as it bit into the shoulder of another pirate. It caught for a half a second. My servos kept up with my momentum, as it continued through the shoulder and then helmet. I kicked his headless Mecha over, yelling wordlessly as I saw a pirate moving their crew serviced plasma cannon to face the breach in the wall my AMCs were swarming out of.
Without a thought, my free hand snapped down as I drew my rail pistol, lining up the carat as I held the pistol at hip height. I snapped two shots through the gunner’s face and another two in the loader’s armor as they scrambled away from the gun.
I advanced, cutting down a pirate with my plasmid sword and turning to kill another who headed for the cannon. I kept moving and shooting until I ran out of rounds. I threw my plasmid sword next to the cannon as I dove for it, slick with the past owner’s blood as I tried to hold onto it but my inertia kept me moving.
I twisted as I slid across the floor to let my shoulder take most of the impact, still denting my helmet with my movements. My now spider webbed HUD displayed a targeting reticule as it connected with the plasma cannon, its tripod being ripped off by my actions.
I had slid past the corner and now faced the reinforcements for the pirates. I looked at a mass of weapons and horrifying-looking armor. Rounds sparked around me and plasma raised my Mecha’s temperature. I hefted the cannon up so it was braced against my shoulder. I dug my feet into the ground and felt the wall against my back.
I thumbed the activator, which made the gun whine as I pulled the trigger.
The hallways turned into a blinding cyan haze. My spider webbed visor’s light protection had little effect as the light burned through my closed eyes.
I fired from one wall to another as warnings went off in my suit. My arm cradling the plasma cannon started to burn. The smell of insulation, hair, muscle, and other parts of my arm mixed with my Mecha. I knew that if I stopped, me and my AMCs would die.
Tourniquets strapped down on my arm, stopping blood loss as my nerve ports did their work, allowing me to shift the cannon’s fire even without an arm.
I kept firing, only able to tell when I was hitting the wall by the strange way the plasma hit it before coating the hallway again and hitting the other wall.
The pain was immense but I could still hear someone screaming. I finally stopped firing, realizing it was me screaming, and Yasu was yelling through our channel to stop firing. I did so, letting the deadly weapon fall from my hand and melted arm.
I felt myself going into shock. The He
llfire system fired. I went stiff in immediate pain.
“All right, can anyone damned well tell me if there’s anything down there? Because I can’t see shit,” I said after a few seconds of fumbling around to grab my weapons. Thankfully, the nerve ports were doing their job. With my arm being all but nonexistent and the exoskeleton on one side, it meant that I should have no ability to move my arm, let alone grab things with my still unburned but cut-off hand. I really did have a phantom limb at that point—well, half a forearm and a hand in a gauntlet.
“OORAH!” I heard and felt as the commandos rushed forward. Someone pressed my sword into my hand and my pistol into the other. I reloaded the pistol by feel and put the sword on my back. I held onto the walls like a drunkard as I tried to blink away the cyan imprints on my retinas. I tried moving my head to look away from the corridor, trying to get my eyes focused better. They were still tearing up but better than they had been a few seconds before. Only to find out, joy of joys, my helmet had become pinched at the neck servos by hitting the bulkhead.
“I don’t think cockroaches could live through that,” a commander said.
Swearing at all things mechanical, I ripped the helmet off with my good hand and tossed it into a nearby corner.
“Commander, let us get you to an aid station,” the same voice said as I tried to get to my feet.
“Just get me back in the storage room. I’m fine!” I growled, pain and fear at having lost my sight clouding my mind.
“Sir.”
I felt two commandos help me through the breach into the storage room, sitting me down as someone put a wet rag to my eyes.
“Thank you,” I said in genuine relief. My eyes rehydrated. I took the cloth off after a few minutes, finding that I could see a little bit. I grabbed my data pad from my lower back. The thing seemed to be indestructible as it started up.
My eyes burned severely as I focused on my display. I closed them for a few seconds, opening them to a largely recovered vision. That Hellfire shit isn’t bad. I looked at the data pad in surprise.
So far we’d taken about a fifth of the station. Our casualties had been heavy, seeing as the pirates had weapons in most places better than our own, or at least had something, whereas most of my force didn’t have anything other than their plasmid swords.
Though this had been a problem at first, now my people were happily cutting through walls and attacking the enemy from any direction possible. Some had left their rail guns behind altogether in favor of the deadly swords.
I cringed in thought of what the Kuruvians would say when we got back with the swords.
I took a deep breath, which was a bad idea. I smelled what seemed like cooking sewage. Then, as if a light switch had come on, I could hear the crackling of burning fat and popping armor from the heat of the plasma bolts I’d sent through the corridor.
Even my eyesight, as bad as it was, could make out the mangled corpses of the alien pirate’s metal and flesh burning as my Mechas ran past that hell and farther into the station.
I turned, releasing the contents of my stomach, pasting a discreet corner as I wiped my mouth and put away the data pad. Hoisting my sword and pistol, I re-emerged into the hallway flowing with people.
“Well, that’s enough damned lollygagging for one day!” I said, more to myself than the others.
“One of you, grab that cannon—see what ammo you can get for it and if that idiot who had it had any eye protection. Chuck it on a gravity cart if you find one.”
“Sir, you need medical attention!” one of my shadows said.
“We all need medical attention.” I waved to the commandos running past me, most with a wound of one kind or another. I could see the machinery in my forearm moving as I gestured, my arm thankfully numb. I quickly looked away as my stomach lurched again.
“We’ll have time later, after we take this station! So get with the program,” I hissed at my protection detail’s leader, my tone harsh and ruthless with iron in it. I didn’t have time to be polite as I was already moving through the hell I’d turned the corridor into.
I ran with my commandos into another gunfight as calls came back for stretchers. Drones came through, ferrying the wounded back and bringing ammunition and spare weaponry forward.
I twirled my sword experimentally as I followed other commandos already making a hole in a wall. My shadow detail had caught up with me by now, pushing me behind the other combatants. I grumbled, but I waited. It didn’t look good to be overeager to close with the enemy. As I waited for the Mechas in front of me to clear rooms, I again checked my data pad.
My face whitened. We’d estimated the force inside the station to be around fifty thousand. From the manifests we’d pulled from the station’s information hubs, there was over two hundred and fifty thousand, at least, in the station. Making it twenty-five to one in their favor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a plasmid sword come through the wall. Weapons snapped up to it. With a quick glance to my data pad, I yelled out. “Friendlies coming in, don’t shoot!” I said on a general wide broadcast.
***
Henry thought he was having a bad day. He couldn’t keep looking over at James. His armor was melted in places. His left arm was a ragged mess, only able to function because of his nerve ports. His helmet was gone and blood and gore covered his Mecha. Still, he stood there, issuing orders. The shadow detail Henry had put on him had already said how they’d been told he wasn’t going to get fixed up.
“Henry! I need you concentrating, man!”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Take a company and secure this processing hub. With it, we’ll be able to shut down this section and focus on the internal areas; it will also give us limited control of the internal weapon systems. Get a force to every one of the ships we’ve put into lockdown and secure them.”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said, using his data pad to issue orders.
“Good. Make sure they know to not harm the crew but to keep them in lockdown. Also, to play the information packet over the internal systems not to make entry, and make sure the weapons batteries in their area are jacked in so Eddie and his people can work their magic.”
“Understood. Ah, sir?”
“Yes?”
“Shouldn’t you get some medical treatment for that?” He pointed at James’s arm.
“I’ll do it once we’re done. I don’t have the time now.”
“Sir.”
“Medical attention can wait, and that will be the last of this getting medical attention kerfuffle.” James shared a pointed glare with his protection detail, who looked away. Some of them stubbed their feet on the ground. Henry was thankful Jeremiah, the commander of the protection detail, held James’s stare the longest before he looked away, dismayed.
Henry mentally congratulated himself in finding someone who could stand up to James’s basilisk stare that long.
“Yes, Commander.” Henry accessed his communicator, spewing more orders. Out of the four companies, each of two thousand people, that had stormed the station, he now had two companies fighting. Most of them were walking wounded and a half company was getting medical treatment. A company and a half had died already and the enemy was still twenty-three to one, and they were finally getting organized.
Henry glanced at his timer. It had been eight hours since he gained entry to the first air lock. It felt as if it had been a lifetime ago, and it felt as if it had been seconds.
“Everyone take a Wake-Up!” he ordered as he did so himself, feeling a prick on his neck as everything became clearer. He had a battle to fight.
More Scared, Terrified, and Alive Than Ever
Yasu felt alive for the first time since playing Mecha Assault Two. Her customized samurai blade was now identical to the one she’d left in Japan except for the green of the plasmid running across its front. The blade felt as if it were part of her arm, as if the two were connected in more than just a physical sense; it was as though they were one. She was a we
apon of metal and flesh. She had been fighting for ten hours and there was no one for her to call on for reinforcements. The battle was a losing one; she just hoped that she could give the forces behind her enough time to prepare for the pirates.
She wished she’d retained more of her people, but out of the company she had been with when she left the Resilient, she had lost half to other avenues of advance. Then they’d run into a series of emplaced cannons, which had taken out nearly a platoon before the corridor was cleared. Her own people had to carry back the wounded, but she needed to keep advancing and took the remaining half platoon forward.
The Sato sisters had rallied to her call with their own stiletto-thin, long dual blades, working together with such synchronistic movements it was hard to believe they weren’t telepathic. One wrong move and they would’ve killed each other.
They didn’t speak except for their chilling giggles. In Mecha Assault Two, these had scared even her. Now they brought a feral grin to her face as adrenaline flooded her system and she felt the power of her body and her Mecha working together. She felt the rightness of what she was doing: fighting an enemy that enslaved planets to do their bidding, for their monetary gain, and to terrorize the systems they traveled through.
She thought for a second how her life would be if she remained a slave to the pirates, not ever knowing the truth of what she was doing. She wouldn’t have known the wrongness of the acts she was party to if it wasn’t for James.
She paused for a second. A pirate saw his opening as he thrust their mono-blade sword forward. She parried and turned his blade; her sword lashed forward and stuck in her attacker’s chest. It stuck as he fell and she found herself open as another attacker was already advancing on her.
A bellowing cry that shook the hall gave her the time she needed to kill her new attacker, but there were three more who saw her weaponless and advanced on her. She felt the pounding of armored Mechas trying to get out of the way of the pirates’ elongated reach their alien bodies gave them before they paused. Yasu saw an image from hell careen through the hall out of her peripherals.
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