Hakusan Angel

by Alex Powell

  "We left the door open," Mari said with a laugh. "Looks like someone was in here and cleaned up a bit on deck. I think you can turn your light off now."

  Kaede did, and she felt her way around in the dark until she found her seat. Plugging herself in was easy; she'd done it so many times over the years that she could do it in her sleep.

  "Can you do the back for me?" she asked Mari.

  Mari followed her voice, and hurriedly located the plugs, sliding them home quickly but with a sure hand. As soon as they were in place, she heard Mari say into her comm unit, "Beginning initiation sequence."

  "You're there?" The comm unit crackled as Sano responded. "Good. I thought you might have trouble getting to the machine. We've got a tech on the way to open up the surface hatch and get you to the top. Get Hakusan powered up while you're waiting."

  Kaede took a deep breath and started pulling power to the surface of her body. This time, she wouldn't make a mistake. There was no time to do so, not with everyone counting on them. She fed power into the three main ports on her back first, and this time the ache was hardly present and there was no pain.

  Her power spilled out into the machine, and Kaede remembered the pathways to take, which areas needed power first, and how to keep the balance of power even. Now that she knew what to do, powering up went much faster and more smoothly. She had the time now, to marvel at what she had become. Level 3 machines were large, but that was nothing in comparison to the leviathan she was powering now. She couldn't even feel her own body it was so miniscule. She was the machine, and it was marvellous.

  *~*~*

  "Come in, Ishigaki. We're beginning initiation sequence now. Hold on tight!"

  Mari sat up in surprise. Hold on tight? What kind of advice was that?

  She didn't have long to wonder as a loud and painful sounding groan came from the floor beneath the machine, and the whole cavern rumbled. She checked the external cameras and saw that the walls of the cavern were moving. The roof above them was parting, letting in moonlight and mayhem. The entire cavern was a lift, the floor ascending steadily and the roof gaping wide to allow them access.

  The sky lit up red and orange with fiery explosions, and they were getting closer.

  "Sir, what are my orders?"

  Sano answered quickly, "We need a base to attack back from. The Level 3 hangar bays are all on fire, and the Level 2 bays are under attack. Our personnel are all being forced to take cover. You can provide cover for us. Go to the Level 2 bays."

  Mari affirmed the order, and waited. All too soon, the rim of the surface came into view, and she could see what was going on above ground. There was fire everywhere, and as soon as they came in sight, the enemy machines started firing on them.

  Mari checked the levels on their shields, and they were holding steady for now. Her viewscreens were filled with bright starbursts of light as the enemy attacked. She didn't need to see in order to find her way to the docking bays, so as soon as Hakusan's legs were level with the earth, she began moving. Hakusan was far slower than anything she'd ever driven, but even she could feel the vibrations as each leg struck the ground.

  Abruptly, the enemy ceased firing on her. Perhaps they realized that all their fire-power was put to better use against their smaller machines. Hakusan's shields were far too strong to penetrate, especially for smaller machines. Looking at them, although they were of foreign design, Mari was sure that all the machines around her were Level 3. She ignored them for now, instead concentrating on steering Hakusan toward the docking bay, where all the Level 2 and 3 machines had been surprised by enemy rockets.

  Most of the Level 3 docking bays were on fire, and several were completely destroyed. Mari moved Hakusan in a position to shield them from incoming attacks. Once there, she halted the machine and surveyed all of her viewscreens.

  "Where did all those machines come from?" Mari muttered to herself, zooming in on them. "There are far too many of them for us not to have noticed them before their attack."

  She zoomed in farther, looking past the advancing army that had sprung up out of nowhere to try to find where they had come from. She was high enough up above all the surrounding buildings that she could see quite far. At first, she could only make out the shoreline about 500 meters away, the crests of the waves turning orange in the light of the flames.

  The dunes of the sandy beach threw up shadows all over the ground, but she finally saw it, hardly believing it possible. There was a gaping hole in the ground, and the rising tide kept spilling ocean water over the edge.

  "What on Earth created that?" Kaede asked, frowning and squinting at the viewscreen.

  She directed several of the other external cameras around to study the hole. It was wide enough that she had no doubt that the enemy machines had come through it. She could see several of them trying to find a way around Hakusan, but while she'd been distracted by the tunnel, their own Level 3 machines had come up on either side of her to defend their position.

  She pressed the spot at the corner of her jawbone, just below her ear and said into her comm unit, "Requesting communication patch-through with Level 3 machines."

  "Granted."

  "Hello, who's out there?" she asked, tapping her jaw.

  "This is Matsura. We have about 15 Level 3 machines up and running. No Level 2 yet, they have the area pinned down pretty well. If you move about fifty feet to the right, they'll be covered, too. It's weird, Mari. It looks like they weren't expecting you to pop up right in front of them. They're regrouping quickly though, so you better hurry."

  "If they weren't expecting me, does that mean they didn't know about Kaede?" Mari started moving Hakusan over while she considered the question. "Then why are they attacking us?"

  "I don't know; it doesn't make any sense!"

  "Can you see the hole in the ground from where you are? I'm pretty sure that's how they got here without us noticing."

  "What? No, I can't see it. It must be pretty damn big to be able to fit Level 3 machines. What made it, and how the hell did we miss the vibrations beforehand?"

  "I don't know, but I aim to find out."

  Mari had manoeuvred Hakusan into a better position to defend the Level 2 machines, and now that she was in place, she decided to start defending their line. Hakusan had enough fire-power to obliterate a Level 3 machine in a single strike. Unfortunately, the weapon fed off of excess power and took several minutes to draw enough energy to fire. She primed the weapon and waited.

  "I see the tunnel. It's massive! None of the enemy machines that I can see are equipped to do that."

  "Right. As soon as I have enough power to fire, I'm going to collapse it, so that no more enemy machines can come through."

  "I don't like this, Mari. There's something else at play here." Mari could hear the hint of unease in his tone, even over the comm link.

  There was a series of beeps indicating that Hakusan's weapons were powered up. Mari brought the guns around and calculated the angle she would need to bring the tunnel down. She had to make this shot count. She bit her lips in concentration, and she could hear her heartbeat, loud and insistent in her ear.

  She fired, lighting her viewscreens up in a flare of blue light. When it cleared, there was a pit in the beach where the tunnel had been, and the sand in the immediate vicinity had turned to glass. Matsura cheered in her ear and she grinned triumphantly.

  The enemy machines waited. Mari frowned, watching them. If she were in their position, she wouldn't know what to do right now, not with their escape cut off. But they were holding, not retreating or panicking. What was going on?

  She started powering up the weapons again, just in case.

  There was a sliding movement in the water, farther out in the deeper part of the harbour. Mari was reminded of the water snakes that sometimes swam in the ponds in the base garden, it was that kind of rippling movement. Then she saw it again, the glinting back of some sinuous creature moving in the water.

  "Mari ..."

&n
bsp; "I see it."

  "What is it?"

  The creature broke the surface of the water in a furious upward motion, sending sprays of water into the air. Water ran down its smooth surface, and the orange glow from the fires behind them reflected off its metal armour.

  It was a massive sea serpent, a metal machine that began uncoiling slowly, revealing its colossal length as it rose up out of the sea. It opened its mouth, and there in its gaping maw was the wicked point of a drill that extended out past its jaw.

  "Impossible."

  It looked as if Morwe had a Level 1 machine after all.

  5

  Mari and the other machine sat frozen for several long moments, and Mari tried to calm her breathing and the frantic beating of her heart. She had an inkling that the enemy pilot was having similar feelings as she was, neither one of them expecting to encounter their equal in battle, and now here they both were, facing off.

  A battle between two Level 1 machines would be like one between gods. Mari didn't even want to think about the damage the two of them could do, but she had no choice. Hakusan was equipped with guns that were slow to power up, but strong enough to shatter a Level 2 shield. The other machine didn't have an energy weapon, but that drill would not be repelled by Hakusan's shields, which were only a defence against another energy weapon.

  Also, it looked as if the other machine was faster.

  "Matsura, I really don't like this," she said, her voice rising in pitch as she considered her options and drew a blank.

  "I can't do anything, Mari. My weapons are useless against such powerful shields." The unease in his voice had shifted into fear, and Mari struggled not to panic.

  Luckily, the enemy seemed to be faced with a similar dilemma. Their attacks had ceased, and both sides were, facing each other, but neither side seemed ready to make a move. Mari fought the urge to laugh, because this was just ridiculous.

  Well, there was one thing she could do.

  "Commander Sano, we are encountering a Level 1 enemy machine," she reported.

  For several moments, there was no reply except a burst of static in her ear. Mari drummed her nails on her console, the back of her neck prickling with anxiety. Any moment now, the enemy could decide a course of action and then she would have to do something.

  "Can you engage?" Commander Sano finally asked.

  "Only if I have to, sir. The outcome of a fight between us doesn't look good for anybody involved."

  "You're saying that it could get messy?"

  "'Messy' is a huge understatement, sir."

  "Are there any other options?"

  "Not really."

  She was still waiting for Commander Sano to respond when her weapon finished powering up again. This could be her only chance for a clear shot. If it was moving, she probably wouldn't be able to hit it again. Mari aimed her weapon system at the other machine. It would be nice if she could hit the head area, but if she missed, there wouldn't be another chance. She aimed just below its head, concentrated, and fired.

  The beam lashed out and hit the other machine, sending up crackles of energy. The shield failed momentarily, but held, if weakly.

  The reaction was instantaneous. The serpent machine uncoiled further, zigzagging in their direction, across the beach. The Level 3 machines around Hakusan started firing at it, but the enemy Level 3 machines engaged them.

  "Shit," Mari had time to say, and then the serpent was upon her.

  *~*~*

  Kaede sat suspended in the midst of a massive energy web, a much vaster network than she'd ever had total control of before. The ebb and flow of energy within the machine brought her information from all over Hakusan, and she would tug on strands to keep Hakusan with a well-balanced field.

  In the back of her head, she knew that right now, even as she distributed energy, Mari was under attack and that technically she was in the midst of battle. It didn't feel like that. For once, all of her energy was at work, and her entire being was in harmony with the machine. She hadn't known what she was missing, being cramped in a Level 3 machine, until this moment.

  It was perfection.

  She'd been all off-kilter, and she hadn't even realized it. Kaede had finally reached her full potential, and she felt absolutely magnificent. She was overflowing and bursting with it. She lost herself in the revelation, and it could have been minutes or days by the time she came back to herself.

  There was something wrong. Her power wasn't flowing in its predetermined pattern, and it was throwing off the rest. She checked her energy web, and it wasn't her that was making the flow erratic. Something was restricting her movements. Her power flared as she tried to break free, but it had no effect, and even as she struggled, the restriction tightened.

  Kaede was just beginning to get angry when something burst through the surface of the machine, invading her energy web and disrupting her power flow. It felt like her time under the hands of the source-technicians––there was no pain, but she could feel the pressure.

  Whatever it was, it was digging deeper.

  Nothing she could do was making any difference, and it burrowed in deeper and deeper until Kaede wondered if it would find her at the very centre.

  What was going on? She'd never experienced anything like this while in a machine before.

  It stopped, but it didn't withdraw. Kaede waited for whatever was coming next, because she knew that it wouldn't just stop there. There had to be something that she could do to stop it.

  Then, she felt the pulling sensation of her energy being drawn towards the point where her invader had delved. It was trying to suck her power out through the breach and take her energy for its own. It was tugging on her energy web, but it hadn't made so much progress that her power levels were critically low.

  Kaede's anger seethed to the surface of her mind, and all her calming, blue energy turned a vivid red that expanded outward like a bomb's detonation. The invader couldn't have her power, not when she'd just discovered it. She took hold of her energy web and pulled hard. Her action disrupted the regular flow of energy, but by fighting back, the enemy wasn't getting her power.

  The drain on her power stopped abruptly. Something tugged at it tentatively, but Kaede held on hard, and when she realized that someone had a hold of the energy at the other end, she pulled it towards her. She got a sense that whatever was grasping at her power was startled by her counterattack and pulled again, dragging it back towards her.

  Then she had it. There was foreign energy entering her machine from the breach, and as she tugged on it, more and more was coming.

  There was another source at the other end of the breach, and if they could take her power, the same would work in reverse.

  Kaede kept pulling, steadily draining the enemy source of energy. As she weakened them, the energy came faster. Her opponent was losing the will to fight her. She was starting to overflow with excess power, and so she started feeding it into the shield and weapon systems until everything around her was glowing and pulsing with energy. Her enemy barely had anything left, their energy levels flickering like a dying light bulb.

  Suddenly, the enemy disengaged. The pressure digging into the side of her machine withdrew. Mariko was still keeping Hakusan in one position, but their movements were no longer restricted. Kaede waited for the battle outside to be over and for Mari to power down the machine. There were no further direct attacks on her from the enemy, so she could only assume that she and Mari had defeated them.

  *~*~*

  Mari knew she was in trouble as the massive serpent machine circled Hakusan faster than she could move her weapons around to aim. She still tried to hit them again once the weapon system had regained enough energy, but she missed, instead scoring a wide, glassy trench in the beach. As it moved, the coils encircled Hakusan's legs and tightened.

  In panic, Mari tried to move out of the way, but it was already too late. The snakelike machine had wrapped them up tight and was preventing them from moving. The more Mari struggled
to get loose, the more entangled Hakusan became.

  "Sir, the Level 1 enemy machine has disabled my movement," she said, trying to fiddle with the weapon controls.

  "Can you escape?"

  "No. Definitely no."

  "What can you do?"

  "Stand here and hope that I'm still covering our own machines so they can get into a defensible position," Mari said, hoping she sounded confident, and not like there was a giant snake wrapped around her machine.

  "Good enough for now."

  "Thanks, sir," Mariko said wryly, and then she snarled as she failed to bring the weapons around far enough to be able to hit the enemy machine.

  The serpent machine settled around them, and at first, Mari hoped that that would be the extent of their attack. Then, in one of her many viewscreens, Mari saw the serpent's head rear back. Its jaw opened up, impossibly wide, and clamped firmly onto the outside of Hakusan's hull. As predicted, their shields had absolutely no defence against a physical attack, and the drill dug deep into their metal skin.

  Mari's teeth jarred as the vibrations shook their machine. Even covering her ears did nothing to prevent the high, screeching sound as they were breached. Mari slammed her hands on the controls, struggling again to escape, but nothing could shake the serpent loose.

  The drilling stopped, and Mari was thankful for about two seconds, and then the energy readings spiked wildly on her screen.

  "Shit!" she yelled as one of Hakusan's legs buckled unexpectedly.

  She flailed at the controls again, but was certain that nothing that she had done corrected the situation. The energy was draining, and Mari watched wide-eyed as their power levels dropped. There was nothing she could do that she hadn't already tried.

  "Come on, Kaede," she said. "Do something spectacular and save our asses!"

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth, the energy levels stopped dropping and spiked again. Something was going on; their energy was fluctuating like mad, making it impossible to read. Mari tried anyway, and as she watched, the flow reversed, and their levels started rising, slowly at first, and then faster.