by Richard Fox
Smoke rose from the barrel on the giant’s arm. The receiver on the weapon clicked and a spent shell casing fell out and onto the dead soldier. The arm with the cannon punched out and fired twice, each shot causing Bailey to wince in pain as her hand found the shaped-charge grenade in the rubble.
The giant’s helm snapped to her and optics twisted beneath the visor. “I’m on your side,” came from the suit. The accent sounded European, not Australian.
Bailey managed a sputter, flecks of blood coming off her lips.
“Where am I?” The helm turned away and an antenna rose up from a housing on its shoulder. “We’re supposed to be in Gilla.”
“You don’t know where the bloody hell you are?” Bailey tugged the splinter out of her cheek. “Who…who are you?”
“I am Armor.”
“You’re a Yank is what you are.” Bailey pressed her hand against the hole in her cheek and blood ran down her fingers.
“Name’s Sigmund. Telemark Lance. Atlantic Union Armor Corps. Am I in Gilla or not?”
“You’re in Kingaroy,” Bailey said, picking up the sniper rifle. “You see any of my mates? And why the hell is the Union in Australia?”
“Kingaroy…our insertion was way off,” the Armor said. “Where are the rest of the Chi-com?”
Bailey stepped over the remains of the outer wall. Dead recon soldiers lay scattered around and vehicles burned like pyres through the streets.
“We…we just saw this bunch. Came down in Beetles.” Bailey found Kenny and clutched the sniper rifle against her chest.
“That’s helpful.” The Armor snapped his weapon arm against his side. “If this is their lead element, then we can catch the rest of their assault force while it’s still deploying. You have communication with your higher headquarters?”
Bailey knelt next to Kenny and fished a bloody chain out of his shirt. She gripped a pair of metal dog tags wrapped in black tape, one shaped as circle, the other an octagon. She broke off the circle and slipped it into her pocket as the rest of her squad emerged from a small copse of trees a few blocks away.
“Girl!” boomed from the Armor’s speakers. “You have contact or not?”
Bailey looked over her shoulder, scorn on her face. “The Union finally remembered there’s a war Down Under?” she asked. “Not that I don’t mind the help just now…but fuck off.” She closed Roberts’s eyes.
“One of you has a radio. Good. Tell your higher command my lance will attack the Chi-com at…Tingoora. The enemy should be there in battalion strength. Send close air support.”
“You’re going to fight an entire Chi-com battalion by yourself?” Bailey asked.
“Not by myself.” Sigmund shook his helm. “I have one other Armor with me. Somewhere.”
“Two…of you?”
“We are all. But we are enough…how old are you?” The Armor stepped away from the house. “Twelve? Thirteen?"
Bailey held up a single bloody middle finger. “That’s how old I am, you seppo,” she said.
Plates on the Armor’s legs snapped up and treads emerged from hidden compartments. The legs hinged at the hips and the suit settled down onto tracks. A few blocks away, a second Armor in the same configuration as Sigmund emerged.
“There he is,” Sigmund said. “Call in our attack, crunchy.”
The two Armor thundered away, leaving Bailey and what was left of her squad behind.
“You good, Bailey?” another Home Guard asked her.
“I feel like hammered shit.” She reached into Roberts’s cargo pocket and pulled out a tightly rolled body bag. “Let’s get him and the rest home…someone call in that there’s a Telemark Lance about to go beat the ever-loving shit out of the Chi-com up in Tingoora.”
“Fuck me,” the soldier said, craning his neck up to see the Armor as they sped away. “I didn’t think those things were real.”
“What’s this mean?” another soldier asked. “The Union’s finally in the war with us?”
“Hell if I know.” Bailey flapped the body bag open. “Don’t care. Hurt too much. Take care of our own. We’re Australian, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
Stepping back from the body as the others maneuvered Roberts into it, she looked down at the dead man’s sniper rifle, then back to the Armor in the distance.
“Never a good day in this war. Iron giants falling out of the sky to fight with us or not.”
Chapter 2
Sigmund floated within the amniosis fluid of his womb, a metal pod carried inside the torso of his Armor. He “felt” the constant pressure of his suit’s treads against the road through his feet and legs. A psych synaptic form of ghost pain let him connect to all the systems of his Armor. He didn’t wear or drive the Armor. He was the Armor. Data flowed into his mind from the umbilical plugged directly into the base of his skull and connected to the suit’s controls and sensors.
Feed from his helm’s cameras played out through his optic nerves, creating a HUD over his vision. Using mental impulses, he tabbed through data layers, plotting out a route to the small town of Tingoora, his hands and fingers twitching out of reflex.
Sensations within the pod were ignored. He was Armor. All that mattered was the suit and how he fought with it.
Sigmund sent a data query to the other Armor through a short-range IR link. The infrared beams would dissipate into nothing in the humid Australian air after a few dozen yards, making them impossible for an enemy to detect or intercept unless they were right on top of the Telemark lance.
And if they were that close, the enemy wouldn’t last long enough to appreciate what they picked up.
A wire diagram of the other suit came up on Sigmund’s HUD, along with a swatch of green icons.
“Roy…your ammo is at one hundred percent. Why didn’t you fire?” Sigmund asked as he sent a waypoint to the other armor, vectoring them toward a forest on the southern edge of the town.
“The scram jet ejected me almost a half mile southwest of where you landed, sir,” Roy said, his voice reedy with youth. “You eliminated all the targets before I could make a positive ID. But I did detect the Australian Home Guard. I can’t believe they fight in light fatigues. The Chinese gauss weapons are—”
“Not our problem, bean head,” Sigmund said. “Assume the recon element had enough time to radio back our arrival. The main force will be expecting us. Load high-explosive rounds. You’re on suppression. I will engage whatever vehicles they managed to land.”
Sigmund rumbled off-road and into a forest, leaning onto one track and kicking the other out, transforming it back into a leg. He leaned forward, planted both hands into the dirt and extended his other tread, then he swung both legs forward, keeping his momentum as he smoothly transitioned into a run.
He heard a crack of a massive weight against a tree and saw Roy’s icon slow and fall back.
“I’m good!” the younger Armor said. “I’ve almost got that maneuver down. Almost.”
“Intercept systems online and at max range,” Sigmund said. “Keep our telemetry linked or one of us will eat a missile.”
He activated radar emitters in both shoulders and his helm, and a fuzzy dome appeared in his mind, reaching through the forest and into the sky.
“Drone!” Roy shouted. A rotary cannon snapped up onto his shoulder and spun to life. It fired a quick burst and a red X appeared in Sigmund’s HUD, overhead and in front of them.
“Ha. Scratch one…so much data to take in,” Roy said. “There’s a residential area near some sort of a racetrack. What if the Chi-com are in there?”
“Australians have this as an evac zone. No civilians allowed. Weapons free,” Sigmund said. He lengthened his stride as his sensors picked up radio chatter ahead of him.
“But there have been reports of—”
“You kill them wherever you find them, Roy.” Sigmund half turned and leveled a knife hand at the other Armor. “This is not a sim. Default aggressive or you’ll get us both killed.”
He made out a gap in the tree line up ahead, adrenaline coursing through his veins as combat drew closer. Swiping a hand across his chest, he knocked a tree right out of root.
“You suppress. I’ll take them out. Til Valhalla!”
Sigmund burst out of the forest and into a weed-choked field. Ahead, a platoon of four Chinese tanks, squat and with hard angled turrets, turned their main guns from a mountain range to the east and the newly arrived Armor. Behind the tanks, a mass of support vehicles and Chinese soldiers scrambled around the middle of a dusty racetrack.
Sigmund’s forearm cannon fired, and a single sabot round the size of a man’s forearm struck the seam between the turret and the chassis. The tank exploded, sending the turret tumbling through the air like a flipped coin. His next shot pierced the crew compartment of a tank and the ammunition stores went up like a bonfire behind the turret.
The rattle of a snake’s tail filled his ears and a pair of rings circled over a house to one side of the track.
“Missile lock! Hit it, Roy!” Sigmund dove to one side as the two remaining tanks opened fire with their machine guns, tearing up the weeds into flying clumps of sod.
A rotary cannon snapped up out of the housing on his back and locked on to his shoulder, spraying bullets with a furious whine of spinning barrels. The rattle in his ears went to a steady tone and a puff of smoke burst from the house circled by the threat icon.
An antitank missile streaked directly for Sigmund, but a swarm of bullets struck the missile and it nosedived into the dirt, exploding into a fireball and sending up a cloud of gray dust.
“Roy!” Sigmund destroyed the next tank, waiting for the other Armor to engage.
In the tree line, Roy opened fire, the flash from his forearm cannon marking him out. Sigmund heard the crump of high-explosive rounds detonating within houses and the other Armor’s rotary cannon firing in bursts.
The fourth Chinese tank backed up, the light from the flames engulfing the other vehicles playing out across one side.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Sigmund ran forward and fired twice. One round tore apart the tank’s left treads; the other pierced the driver’s compartment. The tank came to a sudden stop, rocking back and forth as thin smoke poured out the top hatches.
“Close and destroy,” Sigmund sent through the IR and ran faster. He opened fire on gray metal boxes, each larger than a ship-carried cargo container. Chinese soldiers scrambled as his cannon shells ripped them apart, destroying the tanks and personnel carriers inside.
He slid to a stop next to the last tank he’d shot and cycled out the sabot round he had loaded into his cannon. The bullet flipped up into the air and he caught it with his other hand. The ammo line attached from the weapon to magazines on his back chugged as it loaded high-explosive shells into the chamber.
A tank’s main-gun round ripped past him, the air vortex managing to rock Sigmund on his feet. He ducked back around the smoking tank, cursing himself for switching munitions too soon. His point defense sensors warbled as more high-velocity rounds cut through the air around him.
“Tank destroyed!” Roy called out.
Sigmund stuck his hand around the side of the tank and opened fire on a dome at the far side of the racetrack; a Chinese command center dropped and popped from the same cargo containers they’d airlifted into the town. The shells burst inside the tent, demolishing it and sending enemy troops scattering, many on fire.
More high-explosive shells erupted through the landing zone, killing more and more of the invaders with each hit.
The tank turret where Sigmund had taken cover squealed as it slowly turned toward him. He grabbed the tube with one hand and wrenched it down, bending it like a straw. The top hatch popped open with a waft of smoke and a soldier scrambled out, a gas mask over his mouth and nose.
He looked straight into Sigmund’s helm optics and froze. The Armor snatched him by the shoulder and plucked him up and out of the turret. Sigmund tossed him up, caught him by the ankle, and crushed the man against the back of his tank like a fisherman killing a fresh catch. Sigmund tossed the body to one side.
“Sir…contact made with…” Roy’s IR came in weak through the smoke and fire.
Sigmund raised a foot and a drill bit popped out of his heel. He drove the tip into the ground and an anchor spike extended from his leg housing into the ground. The anchor tapped out a quick coded message as he picked off survivors with his rotary weapon.
The Chinese landing zone had been reduced to burning vehicles and dead soldiers within minutes of the attack.
“Found you,” said Roy as he ran around a burning tank, the smoke wafting over him. He looked at Sigmund’s heel. “I’m here, sir. No need to—”
“Not for you, bean head.” Sigmund paused for a moment, then felt a double tap through the anchor. He withdrew the spike into his leg.
“Saw some survivors heading north,” Roy said. “Should we run them down?”
“Main Chi-com force is a hundred miles away.” Sigmund looked around, scanning through the smoke and fire. “Locals will take care of them. Or the countryside will do the job for us. They won’t survive out here.”
“I…I suppressed the residential area. Didn’t have a clear shot when that first—”
“I’ll deal with you later,” Sigmund said, pointing his barrel to the ground as two giant shadows emerged from the smoke—more Armor, both painted a dusty brown with a small crest of a horse’s head over crossed swords on their breastplate.
“Digger, 4th Light Horse,” came from one of the new arrivals, the voice female. “You two get lost?”
“Sigmund. Telemark. We came to fight Chi-com,” Sigmund said. “You know where we can find more?”
“Did you now?” Digger asked, approaching Sigmund while the other Light Horse stayed back, watching their surroundings. “I didn’t mind you distracting the Chi-com while Payne and I set up our assault, but thing is, I don’t remember anyone ever asking the Atlantic Union to get involved in Australian problems.”
Her suit bore small craters and lacerations, attesting to many fights. Half her helm’s optics appeared to be off-line, and the servos of her left hip caught slightly as she walked. She stopped a few yards short of Sigmund.
“Your problems are our problems now,” Sigmund said. “We boarded a scram jet infiltrator on Fort Knox two hours ago. Got dropped here to defeat the Chinese assault.”
“Really don’t recommend the scram jets,” Roy said with a slight wave. “The g’s you get when it kicks you out are no fun, even suited up.”
Sigmund and Digger both looked at the younger Armor, who turned around, suddenly remembering to provide security for the two.
“I see that you’re here.” Digger raised a hand, missing one mechanical digit, to the destruction. “I appreciate anyone that kills Chi-com. Thing is, the Australian Defense Force didn’t invite you, and my commander wants me to bring you in until we can get this all sorted. So you need to come with me and my lance mate, Payne.”
“Orders will come down your chain of command in good time. For now, I need—”
“Did I stutter, you seppo cunt?” Digger jabbed a finger against Sigmund’s breastplate. “Chi-com have had their boots on Australian soil for years. They haven’t had the manpower or supplies for a push like this since we crushed their last push on Brisbane. All of a sudden, they’re dropping tanks in the outback and here comes the Atlantic Union. You tin cans think you’re going to turn the tide? You being here might’ve just poked the bear hard enough to get the Chi-com to relaunch a full-scale war down here. Thanks for that.”
Through a secure IR channel, Roy asked Sigmund, “Sir, did she not get the memo?”
“Shut. Up,” Sigmund sent back, then switched to his speakers. “Then take us in,” he said to Digger. “You think that’s more important than killing Chi-com, then it is. Your house. Your rules.”
“Figured you’d find your manners,” Digger said. “Come on. We’re going to Fort Benarkin.”
/> She and the other Light Horse went to the tracked travel configuration and drove off to the southeast. Sigmund and Roy followed, falling into a diamond formation with Digger at the lead.
“You’d think they’d be a bit happier to see us, sir,” Roy said to Sigmund.
“After what happened on Taiwan, this is about what I expected,” Sigmund said. The four Armor drove on as twilight crept around them, the flames of the destroyed Chi-com force a funeral pyre behind them.
“But that was…years ago,” Roy said. “Lots happened since then.”
“None of it good, bean head. Be on your best behavior. Remember that we’re guests. Technically.”
“Sure thing, sir. I’m starting to wish we were staying out in the field, looking for Chi-com to shoot…even if they do shoot back.”
Sigmund didn’t reply. Neither Digger nor the other Australian, Payne, said a word to them.
****
Roy was in darkness, the total abyss of his Armor’s womb with no input or connection from his skull spike to the umbilical attached to the control systems. He felt a slight current of amniosis fluid against his skin suit as it drained away, then he floated to the bottom of the pod and braced his hands against the sides.
A seam of light appeared, stinging his vision. The pod opened and he felt a vibration through his skull spike. Grabbing the base of the umbilical, he squeezed down on the safety switch and there was a whirr as the device detached from his skull.