by M. R. Forbes
"Firedog, take the east point. Jones, go west. Kowalski, your squad is with - shit!"
A red dot appeared on his overlay, the p-rat sounding a warning tone. It was coming in fast.
"Drone," Shank said, rifle up and shifting to follow it.
"Shank, wait," Mitchell said.
Too late.
The end of the rifle sparked a faint blue, the only indication that the weapon had been fired. They heard the impact seconds after it happened, followed by the deafening noise of cracking trees and branches to their right, the drone falling from the sky and slamming into the woods.
"Got you, you frigging bastard," Shank said.
"No one gave you permission to fire, Colonel," Mitchell said angrily. "You just told them right where we are."
"Better us than the people in Angeles," Shank replied, matching the virulent tone.
Another mark appeared on the overlay. It was sweeping around them, taking evasive maneuvers on its approach.
Shank turned to follow. "Another drone. Can't get a clean shot on it. It's intentionally staying hidden by the trees."
The drone passed overhead and made a tight reverse, passing over them again.
"Son of a bitch." Shank tried to follow it with the sniper rifle. "Drones don't fly like that."
They didn't, and it confirmed what Cormac had only guessed. The drones had been upgraded, given a higher level of intelligence than they had previously possessed.
"It's marking our position," Mitchell said. "We need to take it down."
"I can't get a shot," Shank repeated.
"You got its attention, Colonel. Get the frigging shot. No excuses."
Shank growled over the comm, breaking into a run through the trees, vanishing into the brush.
"Colonel, more bogies incoming," Zed said.
Mitchell saw them appear on the overlay as they hit sensor range. Three, then five, then nine. He heard the movement in the trees a moment later and saw the shaking when he turned the Zombie around. Most of the action was below him, but there were bigger targets bringing up the rear.
His p-rat blared as a laser blasted into the head of his mech, a perfectly aimed shot that burned through part of his sensor array. Another drone passed above him, its cannon swiveling to stay locked on as it moved away.
"We're going to be overrun," Jones said. He was running towards him, getting into position to defend them.
"Not if I can help it," Mitchell said. "Zed, cover our flank. Firedog, get your fat ass over here."
"Yes, sir," they both said.
Mitchell pulled the massive rifle from the mech's back, bringing it up and laying down a line of fire towards the movement in front of them. Large slugs launched from the gun, tearing through the brush and sending mountains of earth spraying upwards. Some of the red dots vanished from his HUD.
"Come on you assholes," Cormac said, getting the heavy exosuit into position. He raised both arms and fired, the barrels of the mounted weapons spinning too quickly to see, spitting out hundreds of rounds per second.
Another laser jabbed into his mech's head, knocking his grid offline before secondary systems restored it.
"We need someone on the drones," Zed shouted.
There were three of them circling above them, staying under the cover of the trees, slipping out to fire as they crossed the gaps. Mitchell couldn't shoot back at them without the risk of bringing heavy branches down on his troops.
"Shank, sitrep."
Something hit one of the drones with enough of an impact to send it spinning out of control and crashing into the forest.
"Hunting, sir," Shank said.
Kowalski got Bravo into position, lining them up behind cover on either side of Mitchell's mech. They still couldn't see the approaching enemy. That didn't stop them from shooting at it.
"Two," Shank said, another drone dropping from the sky.
Mitchell put his eyes on the grid. The enemy was spreading out, giving up on the area of concentrated fire and moving around to their flanks.
"Zed, coming your way. I'll cover the other side. Kowalski, keep Bravo on the front. Firedog, double-up with Zed."
"Yes, sir," Kowalski said.
"Three. Birds are grounded, sir."
Mitchell guided the mech in the direction Shank had vanished, pushing branches out of the way to reach the center of the growing mass. There were at least fifty enemy targets identified by the CAP-NN, but it wasn't able to provide a designation for any of them.
They weren't known Alliance resources, human or otherwise.
He saw it for himself a few seconds later when the front line of the assault broke through the trees.
The first wave was composed of smaller machines, spider-like in appearance, their limbs segmented and undulating, shifting across the terrain. The legs supported a three foot, rounded middle with a row of sensors across the top that made them look like they had mohawks, and a dozen small spaces in the face that he assumed passed as eyes. They had no visible weapons to speak of, but they charged towards the mech, the limbs guiding the center to roll, flip, and move in whatever pattern it had decided was most efficient.
"Holy Mother of God," he heard Kowalski say over the comm, right before he heard the screaming.
He opened fire on them, his connection to the CAP-NN guiding his hands, locking onto the small targets and hitting them right in the center stack. He targeted them with the secondary belly gun at the same time, bending the mech forward towards the ground so the weapon could reach. The first few rows vanished beneath the mech's overwhelming firepower, which reduced them to nothing more than slag and shattered parts.
"Lotus is down. Razor is down," Kowalski said. "We need help back here, Colonel."
Mitchell cursed, moving the mech backward, a maneuver that looked simpler than it was. More enemies streamed into the grid, smaller dots passing the larger ones and continuing the attack.
"This is worse than Nova-9," he heard Shank say.
It was worse than anything he had seen. Red dots were vanishing at a rapid pace from the two sides where the mechs were standing, but they were overrunning Bravo in a big way. Only two of the squad's signatures were still displaying as active. Jones was gone, too.
One of the larger enemy machines broke through the trees.
It was the size of his mech, and clearly built from pieces that would have been available in one of the Sonosome factories. It had none of the simple elegance of the smaller machines, completely sacrificing form for its singular function.
To tear his Zombie apart.
The alloy plating over its front was heavy and massive, thick rectangular blobs of metal layered over a large abdomen, two stiff, tree-trunk legs supporting the mass. Its arms were slightly smaller and lacking in hands, substituted instead for a pair of plasma torches that could burn through metal in seconds if it got close enough to touch it.
"Ugly mother-frigger," Shank said. He appeared through the trees to Mitchell's right, perching between heavy roots and taking aim with the Tactical. His shot hit the armor plating, digging in deep.
Not deep enough. The machine continued lumbering towards him.
"Ares, we're in trouble over here," Zed said.
Mitchell turned his focus to the grid. Two of the larger machines had broken through the woods and were approaching from the other side.
He fired the jump thrusters. He was going to hit the canopy, but right now it didn't matter. His entire team was on the verge of destruction, his mission on the knife edge of failure. He fired on the enemy mech as he rose, amoebic warheads pouring from his chest and digging into the target's armor before exploding.
His mech barreled upward through the trees, his p-rat screaming out collision warnings, the sensor reports and grid fluttering and threatening to fail with each branch he shattered above him.
Then he was through, fifty meters off the ground and arcing back towards Zed. He looked down on the battlefield, the whole area darkened with fire and torn foliage, with smoldering metal an
d the bodies of Bravo squad. He spun the mech around on jets of flame, aiming the railgun downward and opening fire on the spiders moving towards the other Zombie's back. He found the two larger Tetron machines and released another barrage of missiles downward at them, striking them in the top half and blowing them back and away.
There were more. Still more. He could see another three of the massive iron giants converging on them through a path that had been hewn in the woods by the army. They had been moving towards Angeles way before the shooting had started there. Had they known about the attack? Or were they already coming to confront the Riggers?
He began the descent, catching movement in the trees to the right rear of the machines. Was that a Knight? He didn't get a clean look before he lost sight of it, crashing back through the foliage and coming down a dozen yards behind Zed. He crushed some of the spiders beneath the mech's feet as he landed.
"Welcome to the party, Colonel," Cormac said. He had his back to a tree, his left gun motionless and out of ammo, his right making more calculated shots. "I don't suppose you brought me any bullets?"
"Ares, this is Perseus, reporting for duty, sir."
It had been a Knight. His Knight.
"You like to make dramatic entrances, Corporal?" Mitchell said.
"Yes, sir. These bastards are thick on the front, almost naked from behind. I cleared the rear for you, sir."
The arrival of the third mech had turned the tide almost instantly. The red dots began to dwindle, the spiders falling to their combined fire.
Within minutes, the enemy machines were all destroyed.
30
The remains of the strike force concentrated in the center of the battlefield. They were three mechs strong now, but their infantry had been reduced to Cormac and Shank. Sergeant Kowalski and Bravo squad had done their best. In the end, they had been overrun by the smaller enemy bots, which had used their overwhelming numbers and dextrous appendages to literally tear them apart.
Mitchell blamed himself for the carnage. He should have posted someone further to the rear. He should have strung them out so they would have had more warning.
Not that more warning would have helped them much.
He was in command, and it was his responsibility to maximize enemy damage and minimize theirs. As he looked down at the dozens of motionless spiders, the chunks of dug-out earth, the bits and pieces of metal mixed with shell casings, mixed with blood, he clenched his teeth, coming to terms with the truth.
It was a miracle they had survived at all.
He had been a soldier too long not to know that doing everything right didn't mean everyone got to go home. They had died so that the few that remained could live. Every enemy they had taken down was one less the others had to fight.
"My holding clamps were jammed," Perseus was explaining. "So were Raven's. The Valkyrie was bad. Really bad. Going down fast, smoke everywhere. Somehow, Raven managed to shoot up my clamps and get me free. I fell into a clearing and watched the dropship until it broke the horizon. I didn't see him drop."
"Colonel," Shank said. "I found the Mount. They tore it apart and shredded the packs. The weapons, the ammo. It's all useless."
"Damn it."
He was expecting the news. The way the mechanical spiders swarmed them, the way they tore into the soldiers. He was certain now that the first drones that had passed had picked up their position, despite Cormac's claims that they were moving too fast. The Tetron had been alerted to their presence and sent a small army of its creations out to attack them. Maybe it hadn't expected to win? Maybe what they faced was all it had left in the immediate area? It knew they needed supplies: rations, water, weapons, and ammunition to fight back.
It had taken almost all of them.
"I knew we were off course, and I wasn't reading shit on sensors or the comm, so I started cutting to the closest city." Perseus was still speaking, though Mitchell barely heard him.
He checked the readouts on his p-rat. The Zombie carried ten-thousand rounds for the railgun. He had two-thousand left. His belly-mounted heavy gun was down to twelve-thousand rounds. He had burned through half of the amoebic warheads, and the damage to the mech's head had forced the system to use less powerful backups.
"Next thing I know, there's this whole blob of targets on my HUD, and they're making a straight line north towards Angeles. I couldn't get around them, so I hung back behind them, just at the edge of sensor range. They didn't seem to notice I was there, or maybe they didn't care."
"We would have picked up the noise from your gunfire and known they were coming a lot sooner," Mitchell said.
He wondered if the Corporal should have opened fire on the enemy? Perseus would be dead for sure, but would it have saved Bravo? Statistically, a Knight was worth a lot more in a battle than six grunts.
If only he could think of them as resources and numbers like the Tetron did, instead of people.
What would they have done differently if they had more warning? Found better cover? The spiders hadn't been slowed by the terrain and had hit them with volume, not tact.
"Zed," Mitchell said. "Ready status?"
"Five, twenty, twelve. Lasers online. Reactor is good. Jets functional. Arm is still busted, which is making it harder to aim the railgun, and I can only fire one of the pulses straight down. The captain is complaining about the right ankle actuator."
The numbers were in order. Railgun rounds in thousands, heavy machine gun rounds in thousands, and remaining missile packs.
"How bad is it?"
"Limited rotation and flex. Going to be limping a bit, and if I try to jump on it, it might break completely."
"Try not to jump on it."
"Yes, sir."
"Perseus, ready status?"
The Knight's configuration was different than the Zombie's. It was designed for longer field tours and was a more common complement to infantry. As a result, it was lighter, smaller, and carried less armor. It was also much less reliant on finite ordnance than the Zombie though it also carried a smaller version of the hand-held railgun. Six light laser posts ran down the center of the chest, with a pair of smaller machineguns on either side and two more heavy lasers mounted to the forearms. The heavy lasers could do some serious damage, but the heat they created meant they couldn't be rapid-fired.
"Five and ten. All lasers online. Reactor is good. Jets functional. All operations nominal. Some armor damage where Raven hit the shoulder when he was getting me free of the clamps."
At least one of them was in decent shape. "Firedog? Shank?"
"Left gun is dry," Firedog said. "Right gun?" A pause while he checked his p-rat. "Fifty."
"Fifty rounds?" Shank said.
"Yes, sir."
"I've got seventy-five left on the Tactical, and I dropped my sidearm."
"Anything we can salvage?"
"No, sir," Shank said. "They shredded the guns, the food, everything."
"I've got an M1 in the cockpit," Zed said. "Four mags. Three days of MRE."
"Pass the rifle off to Firedog."
"Yes, sir."
Mitchell closed his eyes, listening while Zed opened the rear of her Zombie and tossed her rifle down to Cormac. He could still hear the gunfire in the distance as the battle for Angeles continued.
They needed to get there.
"I didn't really know Sergeant Kowalski that well," he said. "We only met a few weeks ago. The same goes for most of Bravo, and for most of the soldiers who came down with us on the Valkyrie."
He saw Shank and Cormac pause below his mech, bowing their heads.
"I didn't need to know them as people to know that they were good soldiers. They were our brothers. Our sisters. They were warriors like us, and they believed in this fight. I know they would be proud to have died to see us go on, to see us succeed. To have given their lives for the Alliance. We don't have a lot of time, but we have a moment for them, to remember them and to keep them in our minds while we finish the mission. To the fallen. Riiig
g-ahh."
"Riiigg-ahh," the others said.
"Firedog, lose the exo. We need to make better time, and there's no way you're climbing onto my back like that."
"Yes, sir. I'll be happy for the ride, sir."
"Good. Let's move."
31
The trees still made it hard to move at speed, and Mitchell had to be careful where he stepped to keep from knocking Cormac loose from his perch on his back. They paused once for food, water, and toilet, and otherwise maintained their urgent pace. Finally, the trees began to thin out to grass, the grass turned into roads, and the roads led towards the now visible and smoldering city of Angeles.
The gunfire had stopped hours earlier, as the night had run its course into dawn, and the sky had brightened above light clouds. Now the city was silent and almost peaceful, save for waves of dark smoke that still drifted between the skyscrapers. The wide hyperlanes that connected it to York seemed to be suspended in time, tightly packed cars static within.
Dead.
There had been no further interaction with the Tetron's forces. No drones had flown overhead. No soldiers or mechs or spiders had appeared within the kilometer wide radius of the wedge formation they had assumed.
It was almost as if the Tetron had suddenly forgotten about them.
Or lost interest.
"I remember this time before I got sent to the Riggers," Cormac said. "I can't remember the name of the city. Me and my mates were on leave, and we went there because we heard they had the best whores. This reminds me of that place."
They had reached the tail edge of the city and were moving slowly through the streets, the buildings growing higher and more densely packed as they headed towards the center. Cormac and Shank had abandoned the mechs to walk on their own, leaving Mitchell free to maneuver however he might need to in the event of an emergency. Shank held the Tactical up, switching between its sight and his own every few seconds, scanning ahead.
The other two mechs trailed behind Mitchell's Zombie, shoulder to shoulder in the tighter confines. Each step they took shook up the pavement, making their presence a secret to nothing.