by Isaac Hooke
“Warning,” Electron said. “Something has latched onto my leg segment.”
“Kick it away!” Rade said, trying to do that very thing.
He was rammed into a wall. His AI’s status indicator went dead. As did his LIDAR feed—his vision was replaced by darkness.
“Electron?” Rade tried.
Nothing.
He tried to move, but the actuators surrounding him didn’t yield: it was like he was encased in solid rock.
That could mean only his power source had been hit.
The hatch was supposed to have a backup supply source so that a downed pilot could eject in such a situation. He tried to open up the hatch and thankfully it worked. He kicked it open and activated his jumpsuit jetpack to thrust outside—
Straight into the giant metal hand of a waiting enemy Hoplite. Those fingers fastened around him, and Rade expected to have the life crushed out of him, but instead the giant machine simply held him fast. He realized the Hoplite was jetting back toward the fresh hole drilled by the burrower slug.
The Hoplite had used the screen of crabs to sneak up on him. With the proximity alert constantly sounding thanks to the aliens, he wouldn’t have noticed it.
“I’ve been captured!” Rade sent.
Now was the worst time to be abandoning his team, so Rade fought against the hold of that giant metal hand, but of course he couldn’t break it. The Hoplite held in an unyielding grip.
Rade’s jumpsuit was equipped with LIDAR, so he was able to see the other two rogue Hoplites that accompanied the first. Though he had “squad display outline” mode active, the Hoplites weren’t outlined. However, his HUD did label them Electron, Nemesis, and Sprint. The old AIs, no doubt, captured and reprogrammed by Zhidao.
“Uh, guys?” Rade transmitted to T1. “Did I mention I’ve been captured?” He glanced at his overhead map, but saw that the team was enveloped by the red dots of the crab swarm. He doubted any help was coming soon.
“Rade!” Shaw said.
On the map, her blue indicator kept frantically trying to move toward him. She’d break away from the red dots of crabs, but then more would intercept her. It was obvious she’d never reach him.
His captors jumped into the hole and jetted downward, taking Rade away from his team.
“Rade, hang in there,” Shaw said, her voice distorting badly as Rade neared the range limits of his jumpsuit comm node. “You’re not supposed to die today, remember?”
“Neither are you,” Rade said.
But she didn’t answer.
She had already cut out.
“I don’t suppose I can negotiate my release with any of you?” Rade transmitted to the Hoplite labeled Electron.
It didn’t answer.
Rade watched the three-dimensional wireframe walls of the tunnel pass by on either side.
He knew he was completely and utterly at Zhidao’s mercy.
He promised himself that whatever doom Zhidao had in store for him, Rade would take it stoically.
He just hoped that Shaw and the rest of the team survived up there.
twenty-two
We have to get these crabs off our backs!” Shaw said. She bashed a crab away with her shield. “Now! They’ve got Rade!”
“Who got him?” Bender said. “The bugs?”
Shaw dodged to the side as big mandibles bit at her torso. “No! The rogue Hoplites!” She fired her cobra into the crab’s side.
“You sure?” Manic asked.
“I saw them.” Shaw crumpled as a third crab slammed her into the rock. She shoved her grenade launcher into one of its mouths and squeezed the trigger. The head on that side exploded.
She shoved the weightless crab off of her and fired her jumpjets, thrusting away to the side. She slammed into another crab in the process and it set her off course. Another crab jumped at her, latching on. It sent her flying toward the ceiling.
She aimed past its body with her cobra, targeting its umbilical cord, and fired. The tether broke and the crab above her instantly went limp.
She extricated herself from its claws and shoved the dead body away. Then she jetted down toward the large hole the burrower had dug.
“Forget the incoming crabs!” Shaw said. “Rade is our priority!”
“We’re kind of pinned down,” TJ said.
She glanced at her overhead map and saw that she was the only one who had really broken free from the crab onslaught. From her position near the ceiling, she could see the slug in the distance, through the debris field, rapidly approaching the team.
Remembering that there were rogue Hoplites embedded among the enemy, she swung her ballistic shield in front of her.
Not a moment too soon.
“Shield is taking laser impacts,” Nemesis said.
“I see it,” Shaw told her Hoplite’s AI. In the upper left of her screen was a picture of her Hoplite and its shield. The digital representation of the shield turned red where it absorbed laser impacts.
She had a choice, now. She could jet downward and pursue Rade. Facing off against three Hoplites to her one. Or she could wait for the rest of the team and improve the odds. Problem was, if she waited, she would very likely lose Rade in the labyrinth.
She made her choice.
She jetted toward the hole. “I’m going after him!”
Unfortunately, the crabs had a different idea. Before she reached the opening, a pair of mandibles latched onto her leg. Another pair wrapped around her shoulder. The vibrations from the strained metal of her mech were transmitted down to the actuators of her cockpit, shaking her.
“Damn it!” Shaw swung her shield toward her shoulder and bashed the crab off of her, and then kicked the other away from her foot with her free leg.
Several more crabs swarmed around her to replace them.
They just don’t want to let me go.
“Slug is coming up!” TJ said.
“Find a hollow to wait out its passage!” Shaw said.
Still fending off the latest round of crabs, she slammed into the tunnel floor. She fired her cobra at one of them, severing the umbilical, and bashed away another with her shield. The slug was almost on her position.
She engaged her jumpjets to launch herself into a nearby hollow, and flattened her mech as the large creature passed overhead. The slug slammed into the remaining crabs and drew them away.
“You know, this bitch is actually making things easier for us,” Bender said. “Clearing out its own crabs. You should look into doing the same with your own crabs, Man-Bitch. Clean up your pubes.”
“As soon as the slug goes by your respective positions,” Shaw transmitted. “I want you on your feet. And head for the new sinkhole. We have to get to Rade before we lose him.”
“It’s too late now,” Surus said. “The Hoplites will have taken him well away.”
“We still have to follow!” Shaw said.
“Yes,” Surus said. “But be reasonable. We still have seven Hoplites here somewhere, ready to fire on our positions. The best course of action at the moment is to remain where we are and take them out.”
“TJ, I don’t suppose you or Bender can remotely hack the AIs and disable them?” Shaw asked.
“Sorry, they’ve disabled any remote interfaces,” TJ said. “So no can do.”
“I might be able to hack in if I can get physical access to one of them,” Bender said.
“That probably won’t be happening,” Shaw said. “Not unless you want to find yourself split apart, first.”
The slug disappeared from overhead: it had passed. No trailing crabs were carried with it. The damn thing had cleared out most of the debris in the tunnel, too, seeing as the slug was essentially the same diameter: the slugs had definitely created this labyrinth.
“All right, I have a plan,” Shaw said. “Retreat to the new sinkhole. Hold your shields between you and the forward position. Protect yourselves from the rogue Hoplites.”
Shaw rose from cover and activated her jumpjets to thrust toward t
he sinkhole. The outgoing slug had passed right over it. Keeping close to the tunnel floor, she swung around to position her shield between herself and the remaining enemy tangos, whose positions weren’t yet known farther down the tunnel. However she had no doubt that the enemy mechs had similarly dropped to avoid the passage of the slug, and would be targeting her and the team once again.
Sure enough, a moment later the ballistic shield indicator on her HUD lit up to indicate where the laser strikes were impacting.
“Can we correlate their positions based on the shield impacts?” Shaw asked her AI.
“We can,” Nemesis replied. “I have an estimate.”
“Load the grenade launcher into my right hand and fire off a few grenades at two of the closest positions,” Shaw said.
She felt the vibrations transmitted down to her actuators as the mech obeyed. It fired three electromagnetic grenades.
“Done,” Nemesis said.
The grenades detonated. Other members of the team had similar ideas, apparently, because more grenades went off against other targets.
“Will that be enough to stop them?” Shaw asked.
“We might bring down one or two,” Nemesis said.
Shaw reached the lip of the hole and slowed down, not wanting to step into an ambush. She jetted forward more slowly, but the opening seemed clear so she accelerated, moving over the edge entirely. She jetted downward, taking cover behind the lip.
There was no sign of Rade underneath her. His indicator was frozen on the overhead map where he had passed out of comm range.
I’ll find you, my love. My life. I swear I will.
The remaining T1 Hoplites joined her. There was no sign of Electron, Rade’s mech. She guessed it had been lost.
“The slug is reversing course...” Harlequin said.
“And the burrower is coming back,” Manic said. “Look.”
Shaw peered over the lip, toward the forward area. Sure enough, the burrower was returning, its crabs leading the way. Turning around, she gazed past the far side of the sinkhole and saw the other slug moving backward through the tunnel, toward her and the team. The Argonauts were trapped in a pincer maneuver.
“Okay, no point in staying here,” Shaw said. “We’ll lose the Hoplites in the labyrinth below. We’ll attempt to make our way to the last known position of the Volare. Seems the most likely place they’ll take Rade. Assuming the ship is actually there. Be careful: one or more of the Hoplites that took Rade may be lurking in hiding somewhere below, waiting to waylay us.”
She let go of the wall and jetted downward into the winding depths. The other Hoplites followed.
Bender quickly accelerated ahead of her. “I get to be on point!”
“And so you do,” Shaw said.
Bender scouted ahead in Juggernaut, moving almost to the limits of comm range: his dot occasionally froze.
“Slow down, Bender,” Shaw said. “Try to keep in range, at least.”
“Sorry, Boss,” Bender said.
The Volare still showed up on the overhead map, though separating her team and the ship was a large swath of unmapped darkness. That darkness filled out as they descended into the depths of the asteroid, of course, and Shaw had to hope the current tunnel linked up with the main network, rather than terminating in a dead end. She also had to hope that they didn’t encounter too much resistance in the form of crabs and slugs.
The tunnel wound sharply to the left, cutting them off from any sight lines to the top of the sinkhole. That was good, because the tunnel branched three ways ahead. The enemy wouldn’t know which branch they had taken.
Unfortunately, it also meant Shaw didn’t know where Rade’s captors had taken him.
“Which way?” TJ asked.
Shaw was tempted to split the team into three groups, but she knew Rade would never do something like that. Not in a place like this, where they could easily be overwhelmed by aliens, or ambushed by rogue Hoplites.
“Harlequin, Bender, TJ, I want you to proceed inside each of those three tunnels,” Shaw said. “Searching for signs of chemical combustion—if the Hoplites were here, they would have had to fire their jumpjets in order to steer down one of the passages. Quickly, before our pursuers arrive!”
The three moved into position.
“The only signs of combustion I’m detecting are my own,” TJ said. “The densities produced by jumpjets just aren’t high enough to register, I think.”
Too bad.
She studied the map for a few seconds, and despite the dark areas, concluded that the central passageway seemed the most likely to reconnect with the mapped portion the quickest.
“We take the middle tunnel,” Shaw said.
Hold on, my big man. We’re coming for you.
twenty-three
Rade was carried into a Regina Mercante class Franco-Italian ship that his Implant identified as the Volare. The rogue Hoplite deposited him in the hangar bay and artificial gravity pulled him to the deck. The mech ripped away his utility belt—including the holstered blaster—and stood watch nearby as the wide doors closed behind it. The other two Hoplites remained outside to stand guard, Rade noted. Or actually, they weren’t really standing. “Floating” was the more accurate term.
Air misted inside from tiny vents all along the left and right sides. Rade exhaled, waiting for the atmosphere to equalize.
Finally the misting stopped and then the airlock opened. The original Ms. Bounty stepped inside, not wearing a jumpsuit.
She smiled widely, though her eyes were all hate. “Well hello.”
“Zhidao,” Rade said.
“Very astute,” Zhidao said. “Feel free to remove your helmet. The atmosphere is safe.”
“I’d rather keep it on, thanks,” Rade said. “What do you want?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Zhidao said. “I want you. You’re going to have a front row seat as I destroy an alien race. Or rather, the front row seat. You’ll be inside the asteroid when it impacts.”
“Except it won’t impact,” Rade said. “We’re dragging it out of the way even now.”
Zhidao flicked Ms. Bounty’s ponytail back over one shoulder in a dismissive gesture. “We’ll see. Most of your team is down in the tunnels, looking for you. The rest are ill-equipped to defend against another attack. We’ll have that tether severed in no time. And when your team repairs it, or moves it to another site, we’ll sever it again. And again.”
She produced a blaster and pointed it at Rade. “Come on then, let’s take you to the brig. Into the airlock.”
With a sigh, Rade stepped through the hatch and into the passageway beyond. Zhidao kept a good distance behind Rade, the blaster trained on him the whole time.
“So why are you destroying the planet anyway?” Rade asked over his shoulder.
“Simple,” Zhidao answered. “I’m hungry. Greens might be able to live off the meager geronium shavings one can find aboard the engines of a starship, but not me. I’m a Purple. I need more food. I’ve already extracted as much geronium as I can from these meager asteroids, and once I’ve destroyed the population of this world, I’ll seed it with crabs and slugs. They’ll process the lingering energy fields of the erased population, feeding and multiplying, digesting the dead population into geronium. I’ll have enough food to last me millennia. This will become my base of operations, in preparation for the arrival of the main Phant army seven hundred years from now. It will also serve as a feeding and refueling station for my brethren.”
That confirmed what Rade and the Argonauts had already guessed.
He soon reached the brig.
Zhidao gestured with the blaster. “Inside.”
Rade decided he wasn’t going to go down quietly. Ramping up the output strength of his servomotors to full, he kicked outward, toward the blaster.
But Zhidao was faster. The Artificial swung out of the way and then slammed into Rade’s body.
Before Rade realized what had happened, he was bouncing off the far wall
. He had a nice new crack in his faceplate.
“You might want to take off that helmet,” Ms. Bounty’s—Zhidao’s—taunting voice came over the comm. “To conserve oxygen. Then again, you’ll be incinerated before your oxygen runs out, anyway. Farewell, Rade Galaal. It has been a good game of cat and mouse we have played. But unfortunately for you, the mouse had slightly bigger teeth than you expected. I leave you now with some company. If you won’t take off your helmet, they’ll do it for you.”
Three Centurions stepped inside and the hatch sealed behind them. They carried various bashing implements: a pipe, a hammer, and an ingot. The latter was typical of the material used to feed a 3D printer.
Before Rade could react, the three robots set upon him.
TAHOE FIRED OUT across the surface of the asteroid as the latest barrage of crabs made their assault against the new grappler site. Lui and Fret were with him, and they moved their aims back and forth as fast as they were able. Like him, no doubt they had ceded control of their second cobras to the AIs of their mechs, because it was impossible to keep up with the number of enemies otherwise. The umbilicals were difficult to spot—the crabs had grown smart, and kept their tethers to the currently unseen host slugs extended well behind them—forcing the trio to fire at the hearts those crabs possessed.
Tahoe was really starting to wish Rade hadn’t taken so many of the Hoplites with him. The theory was that T1 would eliminate the rogue Hoplites and distract the other slugs and crabs away from the surface of the asteroid. Turned out the theory was wrong: apparently Zhidao had a lot more aliens to spare than anyone suspected. As Tahoe crouched there in front of the secured harpoon, firing at the crabs, he couldn’t help but feel a little like he was back on the reserve at Earth. He had a vivid memory of one particular hailstorm that occurred shortly after he’d bought a brand new flyer: he ran out there with only a small umbrella and tried to prevent the hail from ruining the vehicle. It didn’t work very well. He felt a little like that now, with only an umbrella to stave off the unending hordes.
“Okay, looks like the crabs were only meant to serve as a distraction,” Snakeoil said over the comm. “We just picked up two Hoplites hiding in one of the crevices a kilometer behind you. I fired at them with the full intensity of the Vipers, downing one. The other somehow had a premonition, and shifted positions at the last moment. When it saw what happened to its friend, it took cover immediately.”