by Isaac Hooke
“So where’s the source?” Jason asked.
A moment later a waypoint appeared on his overhead map. A small dot well to the north of Brussels, in the lowlands.
“It’s to the north,” Jason said. “Have any of you explored the area in your travels?”
The ladies all answered in the negative.
“Hm, so it’s only about fifty kilometers,” Jason said. “That’s inside the radius of the outlying towns and villages we encountered on the way here, at least those with intact buildings. If we decide to go, we can use those buildings for cover along the way.”
“You’re assuming the buildings will be intact the same distance to the north, as they were to the east when we arrived,” Tara said.
“I am assuming that, yes,” Jason said.
“How are we supposed to use the buildings for cover?” Sophie said. “We’re taller than most of the outlying buildings. The same will probably prove true to the north, outside the city.”
“We’ll move at a crouch the whole way,” Jason said. “Keep ourselves at the same height as the buildings.”
“Sounds painful,” Lori said.
“Uh, we’re robots,” Tara said. “It won’t hurt.”
“But it will put a strain on our servomotors,” Aria said. “Or at least mine. Considering my bulk.”
“If we decide to go, we’ll just have to stop now and again to repair any damage incurred to our servos along the way,” Jason said. “So the question now is, do we go?”
“I don’t like fighting…” Lori said.
“None of us do,” Aria said. “But sometimes we don’t have a choice.”
“We do here,” Lori said. “We can run.”
“I can’t speak for the rest of you,” Jason said. “But I for one am sick of running. Of being hunted. I want to know what’s going on, and why these bastards are trying to wipe away our existence.”
“Maybe it’s a military hunter killer team,” Tara said. “Maybe we were never meant to be activated, and they’ve come to clean up the damage.”
“If we go, we’ll find out soon enough,” Jason said. “If we don’t, maybe we’ll never know.”
“I say we go,” Aria said. “I don’t like what these bastards did to my work here. All my designs, my artwork… destroyed. Or abandoned, in case of the cistern.”
“If we handle these dudes, maybe then we can come back here again,” Jason said. “We’ll have taught them a sufficient lesson to leave us well enough alone.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Aria said. “But we’ll have to see what the rest of the team thinks.”
Jason glanced at the other mechs. “That’s two for. And one against, counting Lori.”
“I never said whether I was for or against,” Lori insisted. “I just said I didn’t like fighting. I’ll go with you wherever you go, of course.”
“I will, too,” Tara said. “And I want to fight. If we don’t handle this, they’ll probably hunt us across the entire continent. And we’ll have not just them to deal with, but roving bands of bioweapons, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I haven’t,” Jason said.
“How can we be sure this isn’t what our hunters want?” Sophie said.
“What do you mean?” Jason asked.
“Maybe they’re hoping we’ll come,” Sophie replied. “Maybe they left the location in their comm headers because they knew that was the only part we’d be able to decrypt.”
“Well, here’s the way I see it,” Jason said. “If we really don’t want to fight, we can proceed west, away from Brussels. But our enemy has air domination, and it’s only a matter of time, I think, before they track us down. Especially once we leave behind the cover of the outlying buildings, for the nuclear wasteland. And like Tara said, we’ll have to deal not just with them, but also with mutants. Bioweapons might attack us every night. Nightmares, and other creatures we haven’t met. We were safe here, because we had this base, but out there, we won’t be so safe.”
“You make a very persuasive argument,” Sophie said. “And what if I choose to stay behind?”
“You can stay here, if you like,” Jason said. “None of us will stop you. In fact, it’s probably the safest place to be, if the rest of us go north.”
“But if we do decide to go west,” Aria said. “Then you’re screwed.”
“No, I’ve already made up my mind,” Jason said. “I’m going. It’s time to hunt the hunters.”
“All right, then you’re safe if you stay,” Aria told Sophie. “But you’re still a coward.”
“She’s not necessarily safe!” Lori said. “What if… what if they launch bombers back to this site while we’re gone?”
“The reinforcements I put in can hold up to a fair amount of pounding yet,” Aria said.
“But not too much,” Tara said.
“A few more bombing runs, and it’ll show signs of wear,” Aria admitted.
Sophie walked her spider mech right up to Aria, and pressed her torso against the latter’s bulky chest assembly. Their heads were the same height, so Sophie could look directly into her emotionless face. “I liked you when we first met. Now, not so much.” Though her mech might be emotionless, her avatar certainly was not: her expression was one of disgust, and outrage.
“The feeling is mutual,” Aria said, her avatar exhibiting a similar expression.
“I don’t like being called a coward,” Sophie said.
“Ah,” Aria said. “I apologize if I offended you. But if anything, my words were meant less to get a rise out of you, but more to convince you to come.”
Sophie backed down, and turned toward Jason. “Of course I’m coming. You’d all be useless without my abilities. I’m the most powerful among us.”
“No, I am!” Lori said, curling her tail around her body and firing a plasma bolt into the wreckage of one of the armored vehicles. The strike broke away the bottom of one of the still attached missile launchers, and it toppled over.
Sophie shot out her replenished micro machines at the same ruined vehicle like a dart, and cut a huge hole into the front. “I did more damage.”
Tara meanwhile walked up to it and struck down her sword, splitting the armored vehicle right in half.
She glanced at Aria. “So what about you?”
Aria’s avatar shrugged. “I can’t top that.”
Tara’s avatar grinned in the lower right of Jason’s display as Aria walked away in apparent defeat.
But then Aria opened fire with her tanks, and she released her ZR-22 at the same time. In moments one of the pieces was riddled with holes and reduced to a mere fraction of its former size.
All eyes turned toward Jason.
He shrugged. “You girls are acting like a bunch of men.”
“Aren’t you going to show us what you can do, Big Boy?” Aria said.
“Nope,” Jason said. “I don’t play power games.”
“He could disintegrate that entire vehicle with his energy weapon,” Lori said. “I know he could!”
“That’s right, keep sucking up to him and maybe he’ll reward you sweetheart,” Sophie said.
“Already has!” Lori said.
“Okay,” Jason said. “Um, I’m gonna mute you guys for a while. So, uh, feel free to chat away. You can think about whether or not you want to come with me.”
“Already decided!” Lori said.
Jason touched mute before anyone else could say anything, and then sat back in blissful silence. He had pulverized enough raw material to last through the rest of the repair process, and decided it was probably best to retreat to the protection of the cistern. The others promptly joined him. The dogs stayed outside, lounging in the sunlight beyond the clearing debris cloud, soaking up the life-giving rays.
The overhead Explorer detected no disturbances during that time; the sun replenished the power used by its rotors, allowing it to stay in the air for the whole four hours.
When the tanks were repaired, Jason turned to addres
s the girls.
“So, the time has come,” Jason said. “Who’s staying?”
No one answered.
“All right,” Jason said. “I guess we move out.”
“The question is, do we leave the 3D printers, or take them with us?” Aria said.
“Who’s going to carry them?” Jason said. “While we’re mechs, it’s still quite a load. And I’m not sure the printer frames can withstand the stresses we’d put on them. There’d be a lot of pressure on the right sides, and they’re not exactly designed to support stress in that area…”
“True,” Aria said. “I didn’t design them to be portable. But if you’re really planning to leave them behind, we should probably destroy them so they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“I’m not so sure we need to,” Jason said. “Especially if we plan to wipe out whoever is hunting us, and then return here.”
Aria shrugged. “I’ll leave it up to you.”
“Might as well let them stay intact,” Jason said. “But we’ll lock the doors behind us.”
The team exited the cistern, and remotely locked the twin hatches. Then they set out to the north, leaving behind the damaged retention pond, and the base they had grown to call home.
21
The smoke cloud from the bombing run had cleared entirely by then, and the team readily made their way into the buildings of the outlying towns and villages. The Explorer led the way, acting as a scout ahead. The tanks followed, dispersed in a zig-zag pattern. The mechs came behind them, moving at a crouch, keeping low so that the buildings on either side provided ample cover. The buildings were closely packed, and the streets were small, so that the large mechs could touch the structures on either side when they extended their arms.
Jason was in the lead, trailed by Shaggy. Tara followed, with Bruiser and Lackey behind her. Lori came next, with Runt at her side. Sophie and Aria brought up the rear.
“We should make it to the target before dark,” Jason said. “At least, that’s my plan. Barring any unforeseen delays.”
About an hour into their walk, the Explorer sounded an alert.
“Down!” Jason said.
He and the others flattened themselves so that they were hidden by the buildings on either side. He had the Explorer land on a nearby rooftop.
He saw a bogey coming in on his overhead map.
“Do you see it?” Tara asked.
He switched to Bullet Time and overlaid the position with his HUD’s reference frame. He zoomed in, and was able to track the object, which appeared little bigger than a black dot in the sky, thanks to its altitude.
“I do,” Jason said.
“I think it’s another bomber,” Tara said.
“Looks like just one,” Jason said. “I wonder where the others are?”
“Maybe they only have one,” Aria said. “We never did see how many they had earlier, after all.”
“Tara, I want you to sync your laser with mine.” He and Tara were the only ones with lasers. Those weapons were the most long-ranged out of all of them. “I’m going to take it down.”
Jason swiveled his laser weapon into his right forearm, and aimed up at the incoming craft.
“Ready,” Tara said.
The green sync indicator on his HUD highlighted. When he fired, hers would release at the same time, doubling the punch.
He increased his time sense even higher, and the timebase was transmitted to the other mechs so that they would follow.
He switched to the viewpoint of the laser’s scope, which allowed him to zoom in even further: the bomber became the size of a thumbnail.
He ran an ID on the aircraft, and his external database pulled up matching blueprints. “It’s a G-25 Piercer. I’m looking for vulnerabilities.”
“Got it,” Aria said. “The AI core is too well armored, you don’t want to aim there. I’d go for the fuel tanks, on the lower left and right of the fuselage, under the wings. You spring a leak in those, it’ll run out of fuel before it can reach the target. In fact, it’ll probably be forced to turn back right now.”
“It’s not equipped with repair drones?” Lori asked.
“Well it is,” Aria replied. “But it can’t deploy them at its current speed. It’ll have to land, first. And I doubt it’ll be landing out here in the middle of the wasteland. Especially when it realizes where the leak came from.”
“If you’re not careful, you could give away our position by firing…” Tara said. “Especially if you miss, and have to fire multiple times...”
“I won’t miss,” Jason said. “And I don’t plan to just let the fuel leak out. I’m going to cause a spark afterward.”
“Sneaky,” Aria said.
Jason aimed his laser rifle, using the blueprints to best approximate where the rightmost fuel tank was located. With his range-finding subroutine, he calculated how much time he should wait between shots to cause a spark to take place. The laser could pulse within the nanosecond range, and he determined that by releasing two successive pulses, spaced nine nanoseconds apart, he’d ignite the fuel. The first strike would penetrate the tank, the second, of reduced power, would strike the leading edge of the hole he’d carved, inducing a spark that would ignite the leaking fuel. It was doubtful the fuel would explode, but the damage would definitely be untraceable, especially from such a tiny entry point. With luck, the AI core running the autonomous jet would think it was an engine malfunction of some kind, or a mutant bird that it had hit or something, rather than coming to the conclusion that enemy combatants were somewhere down there.
Satisfied that his aim was as accurate as it was ever going to get at this range, Jason fired twice, holding his aim steady, and letting the prerequisite number of nanoseconds pass between shots. He was rewarded a moment later with the barest hint of flame from the targeted engine.
“Got it,” Jason said. He released his sync mode with Tara, and bumped up his time sense to normal.
“She’s banking,” Aria said. “Turning back. Good job.”
Jason tracked the bomber with his laser scope, waiting until the aircraft vanished over the horizon before calling for the march to resume.
Soon, the buildings began to give way to farms and estates, most of them damaged in some way: the outbuildings were usually dilapidated, or destroyed outright.
Jason used the Explorer to plot routes between the different outbuildings of each estate so that the team could cross with some semblance of cover. Between estates, it was a different story, and they maintained their zig-zag pattern. Jason considering switching to a traveling overwatch pattern, as described in the small units tactics manual, but decided to have the three tanks travel a hundred meters ahead of the main party, with the drone another two hundred meters ahead of that.
When they were thirty kilometers from the target, the Explorer picked up something strange to the northeast.
Jason examined the video footage. “Do you see that?”
“Looks like something crashed up there,” Sophie said. “Another jet, maybe?”
“It’s probably worth investigating,” Aria said. “If only for a chance to find spare parts.”
Jason considered that. “All right, let’s do it.” He steered the Explorer toward the wreckage, and Aria redirected the tanks to follow.
In a few minutes they neared the wreckage. The surrounding farm was a mess: all of the outbuildings were destroyed, and blast craters littered the ground. Some of the bramble-weeds surrounding the perimeter were burned away.
“Place looks like a war zone,” Tara remarked.
“Kind of like your pussy?” Sophie said.
“Har,” Tara said. “I’m sure you’d know all about that, Ms. Cleopatra, seeing as you’ve filled your VR with half-naked simulacrums to service you.”
“Hey, a girls gotta keep herself entertained,” Sophie said. “I wear my stretch marks as a badge of honor.”
“Stretch marks!” Lori said, tittering as if that was the most hilarious thing in
the world.
Jason thought it was some kind of joke, but he didn’t get it. And he wasn’t about to ask for clarification. The answer was a little risqué for his tastes, he suspected.
This is what happens when you only hang out with women.
Jason continued until he reached the wreckage itself. “Well, this definitely isn’t an aircraft.” The debris sprawled over much of the farm.
He steered the Explorer directly overhead so that he could get a better idea of what the wreckage looked like from above.
“Seems to be a mech of some kind,” Aria said.
“It’s huge!” Lori said. “I wonder what kind of mech it was?”
“I don’t think it was just one...” Aria said.
“What do you mean?” Lori told her. “It looks like a big humanoid to me!”
“Check out the right leg,” Aria said. “Notice how it has separated from the main body? It appears to be a mech in its own right. A mech much like our own.”
She was right. It was of a similar size and shape to Jason’s in fact, though the hull was battered all over, with a huge chunk taken out of the power cell area. And the right arm was missing entirely. It was obviously badly damaged.
“Hm,” Tara said. “I’m not so sure that’s the leg. I think the limb was blown off entirely, and this mech was simply fighting beside the main mech before it went down.”
“That could very well be the case,” Aria admitted.
“The ‘smaller’ mech could even be responsible for taking down the bigger,” Sophie said.
“Can we tell when the damage was made?” Jason asked.
“My guess, based on damage to the bramble-weeds in the area... two weeks,” Aria said. “Maybe a month?”
“I’m reading an intact AI core in the smaller unit,” Tara said.
“Are you sure?” Jason asked.
“Pretty sure,” Tara said. She had the most sensitive detectors of all of them. “It’s currently off line, due to damage to the power source region. The batteries are destroyed.”
“How about the main mech?” Jason asked. “Anything?”
“No,” Tara said. “If it had an AI core, it’s been completely obliterated, along with most of the other components.”