by Isaac Hooke
The slug howled in pain and outrage, turning toward me to advance at a rampage.
The particle beams from Hijak and the other green with us quickly deterred the thing, and it dove behind a building for cover.
A serpent rocket struck me. There was no missile alarm. The detonation sent me reeling backward.
I landed on my knees, disoriented, one hand on the asphalt. I shook my head a few times, trying to clear it.
“Surus, damage report?”
“No damage,” Surus said.
Amazing. I used to be so afraid of those missiles. But now . . . the moment I clambered to my feet, I laughed. I turned toward the ATLAS 5 that just shot me.
“Is that all you got?” I activated my particle weapon, cutting the unit in half down the middle.
We joined up with the remainder of S1 and focused our fire on the horde. We took a few missiles here and there but always got to our feet again. I kept waiting for the enemy to break but no matter how terribly we gave it to them, the horde just kept coming. They weren’t backing down this time. Something overrode their instinct to flee and told them to fight to the death.
“The factory!” Chief Bourbonjack transmitted. “Watch your sixes!”
More shock troops had appeared inside the factory and were slowly creeping into attack positions behind us.
I had moved away from the cover of the building and was exposed.
I spun around and activated my shield, narrowly deflecting an incoming beam. Members of S2 and S3 weren’t as lucky because I saw two green dots vanish from our sister squads on the map.
I ducked for cover behind a building alongside the survivors of S1, and then I checked the roster: I was relieved to find that none of my MOTH brothers had been lost.
“Advance!” Azen sent. “Forget the horde! The enemy is using them as a diversion, buying time to dispatch more shock troops.”
“Make up your mind!” Hijak sent.
We moved toward the factory at a run, leaving behind the horde. The small number of shock troops put up a good defense and beams cut through the air around me. I intermittently activated my shield, firing at the source of those beams when I could.
Shaw and I positioned ourselves near the bomb as we sprinted, and we did our best to cover the two greens that ported the device.
Shells from pursuing Equestrians began to detonate. I ignored those shells, concentrating on the enemy before me.
With the combined fire of all three squads, we managed to eliminate the latest round of shock troops, which included black ZEUS mechs, and in moments we converged on the factory.
Two more of the company had fallen in the advance so that our numbers were reduced to sixteen by then. Again all MOTHs had survived unscathed. As had Azen and the squad leaders. I attributed our higher survival rate to the fact that the ZEUS units were designed for human operators, not to mention all of us had logged far more hours piloting mechs than the Phants.
We clambered over the debris, making our way toward the factory floor. Shaw disintegrated a shock troop that lay in concealment near the opening.
Behind us, the crabs, slugs, and ATLAS 5s scaled the ruins in hot pursuit. Threads of Gatling fire ricocheted from our golden hulls.
I paused to unleash a deadly swath of energy at the horde for good measure and took out the whole front rank.
Inside the factory, the half-built components of ATLAS 5s lay scattered across the floor between the toppled robotic arms of the former assembly line. Joining the useless mechs were the mangled body parts of shock troops we’d just eliminated.
In the middle of the floor, a smooth-walled sinkhole descended into darkness.
Our destination.
We jetted forward, soaring across the ATLAS pieces and alien body parts, and landed near the rim. A scout warily approached, then waved the rest of us forward.
“I just received word,” Azen sent. “Bogey 1 has ceased its attack and is experiencing orbital decay. It appears your sister squad was successful.”
“Right on!” Lui sent.
I couldn’t help but smile.
Good job, Tahoe. I knew you wouldn’t let us down.
It was up to us, now.
Metallic footfalls emanated from the sinkhole, snapping me back to the present moment. I exchanged a glance with the other expressionless ZEUS units, and then all of us dropped and waited. Most of us watched the sinkhole while a few guarded the rear. Shaw and I were part of the former group and we had our cannons fixed squarely on the dark hole.
The footfalls grew in volume . . .
Fifteen aliens in jumpsuits suddenly flowed out, packed three abreast and five deep.
We opened fire. Because the aliens were grouped so tightly together, we took out two or three with each shot, slicing through the surprised troops in a matter of seconds.
After they had fallen, Azen sent one of his greens forward to scout the pit. The assigned ZEUS entered the sinkhole and moments later signaled us forward.
Behind us, crabs and ATLAS mechs attained the broken entrance to the factory and leaped inside.
We launched ourselves into the sinkhole with alacrity and sprinted down the forty-five-degree incline. Our hulls glowed, dimly lighting the way as we joined the scout.
I felt righteous. We were piloting golden mechs for the forces of good, descending into the dark depths of hell to take out humanity’s greatest foe. The time of my vengeance was at hand.
The tunnel was roomy enough for us to sprint three units abreast; those in the forefront preemptively unleashed their particle weapons, not waiting for shock troops to appear from the murk ahead. At Azen’s order, the first two ranks activated their energy shields; the forward mechs separated to allow the next group forward, and once in position the second rank disengaged their shields and fired into the darkness in turn. The process repeated so that always there were three of us alternately shielding the company or launching particle beams down the tunnel. The only mechs not participating were those carrying the alien bomb.
The range of those cannons was one thousand meters, apparently far enough to easily hit any opponents lurking in the dark. And the strategy seemed to be working. We passed remnants of our handiwork along the way: the arms and legs of disintegrated black mechs and the pitted bodies of alien jumpsuits. Long runnels carved the ceiling, indicating where our beams had missed.
Sometimes we took return fire and had to momentarily dig in. We used the rank-swapping strategy to ensure our front line was always protected, and we usually overcame any resistance in under thirty seconds.
Behind us I heard the persistent clatter of mandibles and claws. The horde wasn’t going to give up so easily. Occasionally we fired blindly into the murk at our rear, hoping to temporarily stem the enemy pursuit.
The tunnel eventually leveled out and we reached a vault. It was similar to the teleportation area of Bogey 2 that had brought us to this moon in the first place, except it was bigger. Concave ribs divided the room into segments, with multiple tunnels branching off between them. On a dais at the center of the chamber lay a wide circular disc, its metal engraved with Fibonacci spirals.
The Acceptor.
A platoon of fifteen jumpsuited aliens immediately materialized on the disc.
We started disintegrating them.
One of the aliens turned its particle weapon down toward the Acceptor, as if intending to destroy it.
I aimed and fired. Got the unit in time. My golden companions had taken out the remaining shock troops by then and alien body parts scattered the disc. With those dismembered pieces blocking the Acceptor, more shock troops wouldn’t be able to arrive.
The aliens aboard Bogey 2 couldn’t simply destroy the source Acceptor to stop us because Azen intended to teleport the bomb to a random one: This Acceptor had link codes to all the teleporters on Bogey 2. The only way to st
op us now would be for the Phants to destroy every last Acceptor on their vessel. That, or block each teleporter. The latter was the expected course of action, which is why Azen had agents aboard who were ready to clear the target.
“We’ve halted them. For now.” Azen turned toward the porters. “Place the bomb—this ends here!”
Before the ZEUS porters could move, crabs of different sizes swarmed into the chamber from every entrance except the one we had come in. Perhaps that continuous clatter of mandibles and claws I’d heard all the way here hadn’t been from behind after all, but rather ahead.
The bigger crabs came in at half the height of our ZEUS mechs and had trailing cords as thick as tree trunks.
Because of our twenty-five meter heights, there wasn’t enough room to use our jetpacks—the ceiling was just overhead. There’d be no leaping over the enemy. We’d have to fight our way through.
“Clear a path to the Acceptor!” Azen sent.
We fired our particle cannons, taking down many of the alien entities. But the crabs were fast, and as we waited the requisite five-second-recharge interval between shots, many of the horde members closed the gap. We were forced to engage them physically, punching and kicking. I tried using my shield to disintegrate the things, but the energy screen had no effect.
“What are you doing?” Surus said from the cockpit. “The shield cannot be used as an offensive weapon.”
“Yeah,” I returned. “Thanks for telling me that now.”
Crab pieces flew everywhere. We fired our weapons when the charge returned, taking care not to harm each other in the crossfire. As we fought our way forward, some of the crabs ahead of us swarmed onto the Acceptor, joining the shock troop body parts, apparently oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the transport of fresh units.
“Move!” Azen said.
Unfortunately, right then the crabs from the horde outside reached the chamber so that everywhere around us the alien entities swarmed, pressing in.
A slug abruptly burst into the cave from one of the side corridors, and we were forced to concentrate our particle fire on it. We dissolved most of the large creature in short order, killing it and its linked crabs, but as the corpse faded from this dimension, more crabs merely piled in after it.
“Can’t fire!” Bender sent suddenly.
“Me too!” Manic sent.
“Stay calm,” Azen transmitted. “Your weapons have merely overheated. They will function again after the five to ten minute cooldown period.”
Because we’d been shooting those beams non-stop for the past twenty minutes, Bender and Manic weren’t the only ones whose cannons began to shut down. Around me, ZEUS mechs stopped firing left and right. My allies were reduced to using their advanced weaponry as clubs.
Shaw’s weapon failed. I unleashed my beam at a crab that was coming for her, splitting it in half, and then I stepped in front of her, intending to fend off the next few enemies.
Shaw stepped past me without a word and walloped the next crab that came her way.
When next I tried to fire, a message flashed on my display:
Weapon Overheated.
Time to bash and stomp.
The crabs surrounded us on all sides but we managed to move, bit by bit, toward the Acceptor. None of us were firing anymore.
We made a strange team. Humans and Phants piloting super-high-tech mechs, reduced to walloping our way forward through a roomful of alien entities.
The light levels faded as the inky blood of our enemies coated our hulls. And that blood flowed freely. The floors were slick with it. The ceiling dripped with it.
“Surus, can the lot of you leave our mechs and disintegrate us a path through the crabs?” I asked the green who shared the ZEUS with me.
“No,” Surus returned. “Unfortunately, the entities you refer to as crabs are immune to our interdimensional effects.”
“Damn.”
The “weapon overheated” indicator kept flashing on my HUD. I tried firing my weapon a few times anyway. Didn’t work.
“The weapon will not activate when overheated,” Surus said.
I would have rolled my eyes if I weren’t in the thick of combat. “Thanks, bro, but I figured that out.”
Somehow Shaw and I ended up at the forefront of the group, leading the charge. Before we reached the Acceptor, a figure emerged from a passageway on the far side of the chamber, at the head of a squad of Centurions. It looked like a man in a typical UC or SK jumpsuit.
I zoomed in on the helmet, and as the crabs separating us milled about, I made out a face.
It was Fan, of all people.
“Fan!” Shaw said, using the equivalent of external speakers on her ZEUS. “It’s me. Shaw.”
Fan ignored her. His group looked so tiny to me. My sense of scale was skewed of course, given the size of the mech I piloted and the alien crabs I fought, making the newcomers appear like rodents.
And those rodents opened fire with their small arms.
I almost laughed.
But the bullets weren’t meant for us. Fan was firing at the crabs on the Acceptor. Apparently the alien entities seemed to finally understand that they weren’t supposed to be loitering there, because the things immediately vacated the disc.
Fan and his combat robots rushed forward, weaving between the legs of the intervening crabs, and then leaped onto the Acceptor. They began clearing away the debris.
“Stop him!” I said.
I fought more fervently, coming within two crab ranks of the Acceptor. But Fan and his combat robots finished momentarily and then leaped from the unobstructed teleporter in triumph.
A trio of black ZEUS mechs materialized on the disc.
All three had their particle cannons aimed down at the Acceptor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Tahoe
A black cloud of radioactive particles consumed the sky directly above. But it wasn’t that dark smear that most concerned me at the moment, nor even the potentially lethal dose of radiation penetrating my body. All my attention was focused instead beyond the eaves of that cloud, past the cairn-like shells of the buildings underneath, toward the ever-enlarging Skull Ship on the horizon. The alien vessel was going to smash into Tau Ceti II-c and break this moon apart within the hour.
And there was nothing I could do about it.
Feeling doomed, I wrenched my eyes away, finding no comfort in the defeated faces of my brothers.
Motion drew my gaze to the right, where, five meters away, a blue Phant was leisurely flowing toward the squad from the remnants of a razed shed.
“Move out!” Facehopper said. “TJ, lead.”
Our Italian drone operator hesitated. “Which direction?”
“Any! Just as long as it’s away from the Phant!”
Wearing nothing but our rifles, boots, and cool vents undergarments, we jogged down the ashy street. I naturally fell into the drag man position, thanks to my limp. Ahead of me, my fellow squad members left eerie footprints in the fallout.
I glanced over my shoulder. The liquid Phant pursued, but we gradually outdistanced it. At least the alien entity wasn’t one of the faster purple types.
“Who remembers the layout of this bloody city?” Facehopper shouted as we ran. “We need to reach the port.”
“It’s downtown,” Fret said.
That wasn’t much help. Ports were usually situated downtown, especially on colony moons and worlds, where a central distribution point for delivery drones was preferred.
“Yes, but where downtown?” Facehopper said.
Fret didn’t have an answer.
“Why don’t we contact the two companies of Marines?” Trace said.
I’d nearly forgotten about the Marines who’d been sent down with us to stage diversionary attacks every six hours.
“Pro
bably long gone.” Facehopper eyed a deserted side street as our squad passed. “And even if the Marines were still here, and we had a way to let them know we were on the way, I doubt we’d reach their operating base on the city outskirts in time: Look to the horizon. That bloody bogey has already grown by another two centimeters. I’m afraid we’re on our own, mates. The port is our best and only option.”
None of us said a word to contradict him, though I was fairly certain everyone knew the chances of finding an intact spacecraft at the port were virtually nonexistent. But like the leading petty officer said, it was our only option.
Facehopper paused to draw something in the radioactive ash: “Keep your eyes peeled for this symbol.” He had written the Korean-Chinese characters for spaceport: 航天站.
The squad resumed its quick lope.
I glanced over my shoulder, wary of pursuit. I couldn’t see the blue Phant—we should have easily outdistanced it by now.
I felt mucus drip from my nose as I jogged, and I wiped it away. I glanced at my finger. Not mucus. Blood.
As I continued forward, I had this odd, dissociative feeling, like I was merely an observer to the events transpiring around me. Like I had become my own Spirit Guide, watching myself from afar.
I knew all about radiation poisoning. Knew it reduced the platelet count in the blood, made clotting difficult, made things like nosebleeds common. Knew that radiation altered consciousness: those random, penetrating rays caused neurons to misfire in the brain. I knew all this and countless other effects, but I pushed the facts from my mind, because knowing wouldn’t make dealing with it any easier. If anything, the knowledge would only hinder me.
All I could do was clear my mind and focus on the brother in front of me. That, and run on.
We encountered a group of Centurions on patrol shortly thereafter. Either the pursuing Phant had alerted them or sheer luck had led them our way. In any case, we heard the metallic footfalls well before we saw the enemy and it was a simple matter to duck into a side street.
When the patrol was gone, we picked our way forward a bit more carefully, since it was all too apparent we weren’t the only ones who had escaped the blast. And in our conditions, we definitely couldn’t afford to tangle with combat robots. I had hoped all the Phants and possessed units would fall dead after we vaporized the Observer Mind. That was how it worked in the movies after all: kill the boss alien and every invader conveniently died with it.