by Mark Wandrey
The blast was powerful, and hit him in the left thigh. The kinetic impact of the weapon and the armor exploding knocked him back into the crumbling tower with enough force to collapse the structure on top of him. Hundreds of tons of metal piping and steel skeletal structure shattered and pummeled him as it fell.
The advantage of being mentally linked with the Raknar was that he was the mecha. He was strong and fast, and he felt invulnerable. He could feel through the Raknar, it was an extension of his body. It also meant when it was damaged, he felt it as physical pain.
“Argh!” he cried as the energy beam seared into his leg. Then, “Oh, crap,” as the tower began to collapse on him. Jim tucked into a ball, protecting his torso and right arm as beams and burning debris slammed into him like multiple hammer blows.
Three Besquith tanks had survived the conflagration of their comrades when Jim detonated the storage tanks. They were all far enough away that the blast didn’t affect them, and none got covered in burning fluids, certain death for tanks even in the twenty-second century. They had all waited in a line abreast until Jim came around the corner, and then they had opened up. When the Raknar was blasted back into the structures they thought they had finished it.
“Move forward,” the highest-ranking commander of the three surviving tanks said. “Watch for movement.”
“Why not just fry the whole area?” one of the other commanders asked. “We’ve already lost 8 of our best tanks! A fully operative Raknar is almost impossible to destroy!”
“How would you know?” the last commander asked mockingly. “Children’s stories told to our puppies? You are a fool.”
“Enough,” their senior snapped. “We are paid to help secure this installation, not annihilate it! Besides, we will be at point-blank range. Should it emerge from the debris, we will be ready.”
The three massive tanks rolled forward slowly, each riding on six large uni-balls. They would have been almost silent except the roadway was covered in rubble and what was left of their comrades. They had to push through the debris, which squealed in protest as they moved and crunched over it.
As the point tank got within fifty feet of the collapsed building which marked what they hoped was the burial ground of the entropy-cursed Raknar, they all trained their powerful particle accelerator cannons on the site. Capacitor coils hummed with full charges, and the crews snapped their long muzzles in nervous tension.
“Nothing is moving,” the commander who had wanted to destroy everything complained. “How can we be sure it is there?”
“Fine,” said their senior. “Spray the debris with bullets, but no energy weapons!” He ordered the least senior among them to do the task. Inside that tank, the commander cursed his luck and ordered his vehicle to slide forward. He popped the commander’s cupola and gimbaled the electromagnetic autocannon up to face forward. Designed to keep light infantry at bay or deal with unarmed vehicles, the gun held a 500-round magazine. As he triggered a burst, the gun’s coils gave the customary high-pitched ratcheting squeal as hypervelocity rounds whanged off and through much of the tower’s debris, ricocheting around frighteningly. The few that came back toward him bounced harmlessly off the tank’s glacis armor, but he knew if any found him, his guts would rain into the tank.
“There is no response,” he proclaimed over the tanks’ shared channel. “Perhaps a round of cannon fire?” As he waited for his superior to make up his mind, the sound of tortured metal reached his ears. He looked up just in time to see a foot nearly the size of his tank coming down at an astonishing speed. His death was considerably quicker than it would have been if a ricochet had found him.
The other two tank commanders watched in horror as the Raknar jumped over the building and landed on the first tank. Like a firecracker stomped by an elephant, there was a “Phwunt!” and a little debris, but most of the explosion and pieces were crushed almost a yard into the ground as the 1,000 tons of Raknar settled and turned.
They’d been aiming at a point in front, and hadn’t expected their enemy to appear above them. Both tanks’ uni-balls squelched as they were put in reverse, and their turrets whined as they tracked upwards. Jim did not feel like being subtle. He simply jogged forward, kicked one of them over the next line of industrial buildings and stomped the last one. His path was now clear to the mysterious landing area.
* * * * *
Chapter 40
Jim came to a stop one turn away from the center of the complex, where his long-range sensor equipped Phoenix had seen the ship land. He could see the massive curve of its bulk over a line of processing machinery. He stopped and checked his status. Everything felt okay. He had several small injuries, the leg being the worst of them.
We are fine, a voice whispered in his mind. The ancient adversary awaits.
Ancient adversary...? What did he remember reading about the Raknar? His awareness that he wasn’t alone cut off his train of thought. CASPers were landing all around him, on the buildings, pipes, and storage tanks. They would want to communicate with him. How did they communicate? Radio, he thought, and concentrated on how radio worked, and a second later he heard Hargrave’s voice.
“You okay kid?”
“Sure,” Jim answered, feeling like he was speaking through a dream.
“You don’t sound normal, kind of like you’re in a fishbowl.” Jim didn’t answer. What had he been just trying to remember? “You’re kind of shot to shit too.”
“I’m fine,” Jim repeated. “The adversary awaits.”
“Hold on there, Jim, you—” Hargrave cut off as the Raknar started forward at a brisk pace. “Damn it,” Hargrave barked. “First Platoon, on me!” he ordered and triggered his jumpjets.
Jim rounded the corner, and the center of the complex came into view. The largest open area in the complex, it was where the shipments of unprocessed gas were delivered. As such, there was more than enough room for an enormous space tanker. The transport grounded there wasn’t a tanker, though. It didn’t look like any kind of ship Jim had ever seen. Part tanker, part transport. Almost a quarter of the side facing him was split open, half pivoted upwards and the other down. The lower part created a ramp.
They are there, Jim heard. The adversaries.
Jim felt his pulse quicken and was suddenly aware he was increasing power to the Raknar by pumping more fuel into the fusion power plant. He increased his walk to a jog. As he got closer, he could see there was a force field shimmering around the huge transport. Next to the transport, a cruiser was also on the ground, but there wasn’t any sign of ground defenses or a response to his presence.
The shield would be the problem, his mind analyzed as he closed rapidly. There was only a twenty-five percent probability that physically colliding with a shield of that order would cause it to drop, the remaining probabilities were a partial drop or he’d just bounce. All those probabilities resulted in serious damage to himself. The cannon should bring it down, but then he was reduced to fighting hand-to-hand, and the little voice in the back of his mind said there was something very nasty waiting for him inside. He was considering other options when the shield suddenly dropped.
The move caught Jim off guard, and he slowed. He was walking when he came to the end of the street, and the entire open area was in view. Roughly a mile across and bowl shaped, the space was designed to host several tankers landing at the same time, though the huge, unusual one was twice the normal size. Various mechanisms dotted the perimeter with hose-handling robotics designed to ease the offloading of liquid cargoes. Shield generators were placed in a rough circle, with the downed transport to the far side of that circle, opposite where Jim entered.
He knew he wasn’t alone. Some inner sense told him something else occupied the open depression. Another two steps, and he passed into the central area, and the shield came back on.
“Fuck,” he said and cursed himself for not recognizing a trap. Still, the power had to be coming from somewhere, so he raised his right arm and felt for th
e center of the huge ship’s fusion core. A single sixteen-inch round should put an end to it. Movement caught his eye. Something was inside the ship. He turned his attention to it, and gasped.
At first, Jim didn’t think it was real. How could such a thing take animate form? Half centipede with two sets of serrated claws, the thing rolled out of the ship on hundreds of legs and reared up, up, and up until it was 100 feet in the air, its glistening red eyestalks level with his own head. At least that much or more remained on the ground bracing the part that rose to oppose him. Its entire length was covered in thick brown armor plates. Segmented mouthparts broke open in what could be called a head, and it screamed a nauseating challenge that tore at his mind like gauntleted fingers on a chalkboard. Claw-like pincers snapped as it turned and moved lateral to him, in front of the transport.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jim gasped.
At last, the adversary! His new self spoke from deep within his being. My God, he thought, is that what the Raknar were meant to fight?! Then the word came to him at last: Canavar. This was a Canavar – a giant mutated creature. Not the spawn of some devil as his Earth-based mythos had tried to suggest. This creature was the product of ancient sciences and had once been responsible for a war that nearly scoured society from an entire galaxy – a monster that still haunted the nightmares of a thousand races, that was used to frighten and horrify children to this day. They were the ultimate terror weapon of an arms race long past, just like the Raknar were the ultimate weapon that defeated them.
It screamed that soul-scraping scream again, then began racing toward him. Jim took a couple of steps back and smashed into the unyielding force field. The Canavar turned from its blazing headlong rush across the landing area, now an arena of mortal combat, its body turning sideways in a blur as it lashed out at him with a segmented tail that held a shining spike. Jim, too stunned by the thing’s appearance to fully implement the defensive actions that came into his mind, instead went with direct action. He raised his right arm in a cross body block.
“WHANG!” the stinger crashed across the gun barrel in a magnificent explosion of sparks and with enough force to push his arm back into his chest and stagger him backwards. He could see a gouge taken out of the gun barrel at least two inches deep! Damn, had that compromised the barrel? The tail stinger was obviously not bone or chitin. The creature screamed and circled back a few hundred yards away, regarding him.
“Fuck this shit,” he said and leveled the gun. Its eyestalks stared at the barrel in uncomprehending malevolence. “BOOOM!” The sixteen-inch projectile slammed into the segmented body just behind the second set of claws, and exploded. Foot-thick chitinous armor, bodily fluids, and viscera exploded in a tidal wave of gore for hundreds of yards in every direction. It looked like a thousand tons of spilled ‘ocean surprise’ soup splashing down. A claw bounced off his chest, and gore dripped from the force field like paint from a wall. He took a few steps forward to the edge of the pool of bodily fluids and pumped an arm in the air. “Eat that!”
Yes! His other self rejoiced at the macabre scene. A second later another Canavar slammed into him at full speed. The Raknar was knocked off its feet and sent careening into the base of the force field. He felt as if he’d just been hit by an enormous bus and sent flying into a brick wall. The energy field was unyielding. Metal protested, and Jim was distantly aware his body had been slammed against the back of the cockpit with bone-breaking force. Worse, his head hit Splunk, knocking her unconscious and severing the connection.
Like being ripped from a splendid dream by having a bucket of ice water thrown in your face, Jim was rudely returned to his normal level of consciousness sputtering and gasping. He didn’t know where he was for a full second, and his head hurt like someone had jammed an icepick into the base of his skull. The last half hour linked with the Raknar was an altered-state experience, both completely real and surreal at the same time. He was now locked in the almost-dark interior of the mecha, glowing electroslime apparatus all around him, and had no ability to control his surroundings.
The Raknar gave a mighty groan, and he screamed as the machine was picked up bodily and thrown. He could only guess how as he suddenly felt weightless and spinning.
“Oh, this isn’t good,” he said as the machine hit something hard. Luckily for him, it hit front first, allowing more room for the support straps to absorb the impact. That kept his face from smashing into any of the controls or displays. It felt like he’d torn skin in at least a couple places from being jerked by the impact against the straps.
He turned as best he could, suspended half-sideways in the straps, and found Splunk still on her shelf. She appeared to be wrapped in what looked like bands of multicolored spaghetti, her ears down and head lolling to the side. A little pink blood was dripping from her nose slit.
“Splunk!” he yelled and twisted enough to get a hand on her. It took an agonizing second, but he finally felt her little chest rise. “Oh, thank God,” he said and gently shook her. “Come on, wake up. We’re getting our asses kicked.” The Raknar jerked, and it felt like he was being dragged somewhere as he worked in vain to wake the Fae up.
* * * * *
Chapter 41
Hargrave and his platoon leaped clear of the careening Raknar just in time before it hit the shield backwards with a flash of resisting forces and slid to land on its ass with a thunderous crash. The fucking centipede-scorpion thing – the second one – rushed in and grabbed the mecha with two claws, contorted its body like a snake and did a sort of alien judo throw, sending the machine holding his boss hurtling a quarter mile across the arena to slam face-first into the reinforced concrete landing tarmac. Bits of concrete and debris flew up, and the machine skidded through bits and pieces of the first monster. As if things couldn’t get any worse, a third was now crawling out of the damned ship too! Okay, jumping on the back of the Raknar might not have been the best idea, but when Jim, acting weird and dreamy, just started to walk off, it was all he could think to do.
“Sit-rep?” he called to Sergeant Blackard in his platoon.
“Crenly is gone,” the Sergeant replied immediately. “He got hung up and turned into paste against the shield, the rest of us are fine and on your six, sir.” Hargrave slewed his view and spotted the other eight CASPers, all kneeling behind the gore covered carapace of the dead…he couldn’t keep calling it a centipede-scorpion, especially since there were now two more of them! Okay, fine, Scorpede it was! Whatever, better than Centipion.
He moved over to them, and tried to keep low. The two Scorpedes were circling the downed Raknar, which wasn’t moving after that crazy throw. Something must have been damaged. They needed to help him, but how? The other platoons were outside the shield, and the generators were all inside. Besides, they were protected by their own shield as well. He looked over toward the transport. That was surely powering the shield. If they could get it down, then the entire company would put a hurt on these monsters. They still had most of their heavy ordnance, even with their previous losses. How tough could the monsters be?
There was an earsplitting sound of metal rending and he looked over to see the two Scorpedes trying to pull the Raknar apart. Okay, that’s got to stop.
“First Squad, on me,” he called. “David,” he said to the sergeant, “take Second Squad. See if you can get those Scorpedes off Jim.”
“Is that what they’re called?” the sergeant asked.
“It is now. Try not to get eaten!”
“Oh, without a doubt. Come on, shovelheads,” he yelled. “You heard the boss!” The three remaining troopers fired jumpjets and roared away.
“Alright men,” he said to his four troopers and pointed at the transport. “Let’s go see if we can get this damned shield down!”
He immediately decided it was better to run than jump. He wanted all the attention on the other squad so his men could get inside unnoticed. He hoped there weren’t more of those fucking things inside the ship. Looking at th
eir size and the ship, he doubted it.
It was the better part of a mile and they took about a minute to cover it. Halfway there, he saw the flash of rockets and knew Blackard was making a nuisance of himself. The Scorpedes screamed, and he spared a glance in their direction. Both had dropped Jim’s limbs and were in hot pursuit of the CASPers who were leaping around and raining rockets and grenades on the beasts. He could see the explosions leaving angry black patches on the creature’s hide, but not much else. He wondered if the whole company could do anything to them.
They reached the ramp of the massive transport at last. All five of them settled underneath where it joined the body of the ship, about forty-five feet over their heads. Hargrave snatched a snooper ball from his belt and lobbed it overhand upwards, toward the door. At the top of its arc, the drone came alive and arrested its fall, spun in a circle to orient itself, then shot upwards, into the ship.
Inside his suit, Hargrave watched the drone feed on a little side screen. The interior of the ship was nearly one massive cavernous space broken into...stalls? Some kind of berth where the Scorpedes must have been kept. He was looking at some of the personnel moving around when he realized there were not three stalls, but four. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He took control of the drone and sent it flying right down the center of the ship, slowing and looking in each stall as he went. There was a lot of activity near the end, in the last stall. Aliens of a half dozen races were there, all standing around a gantry placed over the back of an inert Scorpede. One of the aliens had on a suit with a passing resemblance to a haptic suit, holding a bunch of cables in one hand, and was yelling at the others who were all using various instruments or doing other unknown tasks.