by Richard Fox
There was a yell from behind and a cannon opened fire. Rounds struck the back of Roy’s shoulder and he spun around, punching blind. His fist arced down and struck the damaged Dragon’s exposed pod, cracking the shell.
His arm sank down to the elbow as amniosis spurted up and splashed across his helm, leaving a film over his optics. Roy froze, staring at the bloodstained fluid oozing out of the Dragon’s pod.
Alarm klaxons grew louder—or he’d finally noticed the noise, he wasn’t sure. Snapping his helm to one side, he saw Chinese characters pulsing on a control screen as the lift buckled against his feet. To one side, the hydraulics attached to shaft rails broke apart and one half of the lift tilted.
Roy grabbed on to the rail as the other side failed and the lift collapsed down the shaft. Dead Dragons fell against each other and the broken lift in a racket of banging metal as they all plunged into darkness. One of Roy’s hands refused to gain purchase and he braced his feet against the rail until he slowed to a stop.
Ugly red viscera dribbled down from the hand he’d punched into the Dragon’s pod. It pattered against his helm and chest as he looked up the shaft. He could feel the hot blood against his flesh in the pod. A trick of his mind, he knew, but for the rest of his life, he’d swear it was really there.
“Roy!” Sigmund looked over the edge and shouted down as tracer rounds snapped over the lance commander. “Roy, we’re coming to you!”
Sigmund grabbed the top of the guide rail with one hand and swung into the shaft. He slid down with one hand gripping the rail, a trail of sparks behind him. Digger and Payne came down the other side.
“There’s not…” Roy said, looking past his feet to the darkness below. “I can’t exactly say where we are.”
“Those Dragons must have come from somewhere,” Sigmund said as he slowed his descent, “and I bet this shaft has a couple stops along the way.”
“No friends up there,” Digger said as she fired up at a Dragon that glanced over the edge.
“Moving.” Roy loosened his grip and slid down to a set of double metal doors marked with Chinese writing in big yellow stencils, which he ran through a translation program. “Think this is…some kind of storage? The symbols aren’t standard and—”
Bullets snapped past him.
“Roy!” Sigmund roared.
“Any port in a storm,” Roy said and kicked the doors’ centerline. They popped off the runners, then fell down the shaft. Inside was a passageway not tall enough for Roy or the other Armor to stand up in.
He swung his feet into the passageway and rose to a crouch. The rest of his lance joined him, and more and more bullets blasted down the shaft as they escaped the shooting.
Digger’s arms and shoulders were a mess of impacts, the top of her helm pitted and bashed. One of Payne’s arms hung loose from a damaged servo. Sigmund’s chest looked like the surface of the moon with its irregular craters.
“Roy, status?” Sigmund asked.
Roy looked at his cannon-free arm, then the other hand covered in blood and thick fluid. He glanced at his shoulder where his rotary cannon should have been and saw a broken mount.
“Down to fists and harsh language,” he said. “Jet pack still functional.”
“Tough buggers,” Payne said. “Ibarra makes our armor plates out of the cheap stuff.”
“Try not to get your Q-11s shot,” Sigmund said. “Long way down. Keep moving forward. They’ll catch up to us sooner than later.”
Roy pressed to one side as Sigmund—and his still-functioning cannon—took point. The lance made its way down the passageway toward the heart of the Damocles, sirens blaring and a single phrase repeating over the PA system.
“What’re they saying?” Roy asked.
“‘Action stations’ or something,” Digger said. “Doubt they have a canned ‘We’ve been boarded by Armor’ button. Who’d be nuts enough to try this, right?”
“Us?” Payne said.
A door opened next to Roy and a Chinese soldier in coveralls and a clear helmet connected to an air tank stepped into the passageway. She looked right at Roy, his battered and bloodstained Armor, then the American flag painted on his right shoulder.
“Bu hao yi shi.” She smiled and backed into the room, then tapped a control panel as fast as she could, still smiling and repeating the same words. The door slid shut with a hiss of hydraulics.
“Well, it’s not like we’re sneaking around,” Roy said.
“Armor is never subtle,” Sigmund said. “Keep moving. Big doors at the end of this hallway look promising.”
“Good,” Digger said as the lance moved at a crouch through the passageway, “because we’re not going to blend in with the crew.”
To their rear, Payne’s cannons opened fire, smoke rising from his barrel, aimed behind them.
“They’re not happy we’re here,” he said. “Can we get a move on?”
“Breaching,” Sigmund said as he reached back and punched a door. It flew away, flipping end over end as it arced down and into a gigantic space. The door fell past the twin vanes of the Damocles’ main gun—the rail cannon—to the cloud layer far below.
The rail gun was mounted at the top of a frame shaped like an inverted volcano. Massive power cables snaked into the breach and a magazine with shells the size of cars extended up to the roof.
Sigmund planted a hand on the deck and swung his feet out. He stood up on a reinforced catwalk that stretched around the inner dome.
“Move right,” he said.
Roy followed, feeling like a glorified target as he followed behind Sigmund, the other two behind him. Air whipped around the Armor as they put their backs to the wall, weapons trained on an open bay to one side of the weapon chamber.
“Look at the size of that thing.” Payne stared at the massive rail gun then touched the twin points of his own, smaller weapon, sticking up from his shoulder mount. “They’re overcompensating.”
The Damocles shuddered and a wave of vertigo swept over Roy within his pod.
“The hell was that?” Digger asked.
“We’re rising.” Sigmund leaned slightly, the sensor arms on his helm moving up and down. “Higher elevation…longer range. The projectile velocity makes it into a line-of-sight weapon, so they—”
“They’re about to fire.” Digger aimed her arm-mounted cannon at the power cables, each as thick as her suit. “The rest of you…jump. I’ve got enough shells. I’ll hit something vital in short order.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Sigmund said. “We need to find the battery stacks. Take enough of those out and we can take out the whole thing. There—the mounts on those cables are clad in rubber. Follow me.” He pointed to the ceiling and took off at a trot to another set of bay doors nearby.
Across the way, there was a rumble of hydraulics and the big doors opened with a rumble. Crew armed with rifles stormed out and opened fire. The shots might have been a threat to regular infantry, but they barely scratched the Armor’s paint.
Digger’s rotary gun snapped up and mowed down the crew.
“They’re desperate and stupid,” she said.
“Doesn’t sound like the Chi-com,” Roy said. “Where’s all that Armor you fought on top of—”
The bay doors behind him cracked open and a Dragon arm shot through the gap, bending its cannon toward his helm. Roy grabbed it by the wrist and thrust it up as the weapon fired, the fireball of the propellant singeing the face of his helm.
The doors flew open and the Dragon he was holding lunged at him. Roy stepped a hip into the other suit and twisted the arm, using the foe’s forward momentum to leverage a throw as the cannon kept shooting.
Roy kicked his hip up under the Dragon, lifted the other off the deck, and twisted hard to put more force into the throw. The Dragon hit the edge of the catwalk and crashed through the safety fence with a yell of fright as he fell…fell without the jet pack the Union and Australian Armor bore.
Roy whirled around as a brawl erupted betwee
n two more Dragons and Roy’s lance.
Digger caught a halberd strike by the haft and slammed chest-first into the enemy. Payne slammed a fist into the Dragon’s back, the metal on metal clanging like a church bell, and the Chi-com tottered back, the soldier within rocked by the blow.
Digger wrenched the weapon away and swung the blade through the neck servos, severing the helm and popping it into the air with a flash of broken power lines. The headless Dragon went to all fours, still functional but disabled. Digger flipped the halberd in her hands then tossed it to Payne.
Payne kicked the Dragon prone, then stabbed the blade through its back, pinning the suit to the floor. Amniosis spurted up through the wound and pooled beneath the suit as the clang of blows sounded behind him. Roy turned and saw Sigmund pummeling his opponent’s breastplate over and over again.
Electricity crackled down the massive rail cannon.
Sigmund kicked the Dragon to the ground and put his heel to its chest. The diamond spike of his anchor snapped out, the killing blow holding over a few inches in the air. Sigmund looked at the rail cannon, then back to the Dragon at his feet.
He lifted his heel, then stomped the spike into the waist servo, twisting his foot and ripping apart the lower “spine” on the Dragon. He kicked forward and separated the suit into upper and lower halves.
“Get ready to jump,” Sigmund said.
“Wait. What? Jump to where?” Roy asked.
“Digger, Payne, fire on the power cables,” Sigmund said. The two Australians complied, landing precision hits up and down the thick black conduits. Short bolts of lightning struck out like short-lived branches of dead trees.
Sigmund slapped his hands against the helm of the stricken Dragon and pressed. The helmet deformed with a sickening crunch, and Sigmund ripped the helm clean off while the Dragon slapped feebly at the Armor.
“Shh…it’ll be over soon,” he said. “Thank you for this.”
Sigmund gripped the Dragon’s headless torso and heaved it at the Damocles’ rail cannon. The Dragon flipped like a coin and hit one of the vanes. Energy arced down the weapon and flashed against the Dragon.
Roy turned his helm away from the searing light, reflexively covering his optics with one hand. The stadium-sized aerial fortress listed to one side as blue light flashed below the edge of the opening. The cannon snapped at the base and tumbled to Earth.
“Ready your packs,” Sigmund said as he crouched slightly and his two rocket nozzles glowed to life.
Roy activated his Q-11 and was genuinely shocked when it came online without any issues.
“Payne?” Digger asked.
“She’ll be right.” Payne whacked an elbow against his pack and it flared up.
A flaming metal spar hit the catwalk between Roy and Sigmund and the view out the bottom of the Damocles tilted. There was a snap in the air and another wave of vertigo passed through Roy.
“Rings are out,” Sigmund said, beating a fist to his chest twice. “Jump!”
Roy ran through the guard rail and plunged down helm-first, the world going quiet as he fell. The blanket of clouds beneath grew closer and closer as gravity accelerated him to terminal velocity within a dozen seconds.
He rolled over and looked up at the Damocles. Fire exploded out the anti-grav rings and it began a long, slow descent that became steeper and steeper as the seconds ticked by. It left a trail of smoke and flame, like a long-tailed comet burning through the atmosphere. Escape pods blossomed out of the airship, but only a few.
As clouds engulfed him, Roy got a glimpse of the other three Armor. A priority message from Sigmund hit his IR channel and a landing zone popped up on his HUD. Moisture beaded on his optics and the gray abyss grew darker and darker.
Roy could feel his suit rolling in the cloud, though the view of rain clouds never changed. A dashed line appeared on his HUD, guiding him to a beach on a small island that appeared as a wire-frame outline beneath him.
Thunder rolled through the clouds, and Roy realized he was an exceptional lighting rod. He contemplated activating his pack sooner, but if God—or Odin or Zeus—was about to strike him down, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Red light diffused through the clouds on his right—one of the others activating their pack.
“Here we go,” Roy said as he braced his arms against the side of his jet pack like he’d done in simulations. “Just let it do all the work…just like training.”
A red timer popped up on his HUD, counting down far too quickly for his liking.
“Just like training.” He swung his feet down and lifted his knees slightly, orienting the nozzles toward Earth and activating the pack for the second time in his short life.
The Q-11 fired, jerking him back hard enough that he smacked against the inside of his pod, whacking his head and sending a flash of light across his eyes.
Shaking off the disorientation, he checked his HUD. He had another four seconds of burn left to cut his speed and turn his landing into something other than a crash.
The timer went to two seconds and his jet pack shut off.
“Wait…” Roy went into free fall, high over ocean waves pounding a beach. He activated the Q-11’s controls but got no response as it malfunctioned and went off-line. Roy let out an undignified yell as he fell toward the ocean and was smacked by a twenty-foot wave.
He felt his limbs flailing around him in the water and his jet pack tore loose. The water carried him forward and he came to a sudden stop against a sand bar as another wave rushed over him, pressing his helm into mud. He lay facedown, in no rush to get up as he didn’t fear drowning since the passage of waves overhead hinted that he wasn’t in water too deep.
Something kicked him in the side and he looked up.
Digger stood over him, waves crossing against her knees. “If you can walk away, call it a decent landing,” she said.
“I’m all right.” Roy’s hands sank into the sand until they hit bedrock, and he got up drunkenly, fighting for balance in the mud and the slap of storm-driven waves. Palm trees swayed past the beach and twin peaks on the other end of the island drifted in and out of view as the rain came down in sheets.
“Where the hell are we?” he asked.
“Long Island,” Digger said, heading to the beach, her legs sloshing through the surf.
“Long Island? How…how high up was that thing?” Roy looked over his shoulder to the sky. “Can’t be New York. There’s no way we—”
“Long Island in Papua New Guinea,” Digger said. “Bismarck Sea. Christ, you’re dense. They not teaching bean heads to read a frigging map at Knox?”
“Oh…” Roy panned through overlays on his HUD. “Now I see. This place is uninhabited. Why’d we land here?”
“Sigmund didn’t tell you?” Digger asked. “Hope he’s got something in mind. I didn’t make any plans for after the Damocles.”
They marched up the beach, and Payne waved them over to a stand of palm trees.
“We did it…saved Brisbane,” Roy said.
“Saved it from getting blown to bits by rail cannon, yeah,” she said. “City’s still under siege. Plenty of Chi-com in Australia. We’ll see if Beijing wants to take this to the hilt after they lost their shiny new toy. War goes nuclear, this uncharted desert isle might be the place to be.”
She leveled a finger at him. “You don’t have a chance with me. Last man on Earth or not.”
“What’re we talking about right now?” Roy stumbled onto the beach and joined Payne and Sigmund in a small copse of trees.
Sigmund was on one knee, his anchor heel pressed to the ground. Roy felt pulses through his feet as the anchor thumped out a message through the bedrock.
“What’s going on?” Roy asked.
“Shai-hulud,” Payne said. “He’s summoning a sea worm to take us home.”
Digger whacked Payne on the shoulder.
Roy felt faint vibrations, which couldn’t have come from Sigmund’s anchor so close to him.
/> “Good news,” Sigmund said. “At least one thing’s gone right today. Follow me.”
Chapter 13
Rain pattered against the Armor as they made their way through palm trees and thick underbrush that came up past their knees. They filed one after the other so their tracks would mask their numbers. Lightning cracked across the darkening sky as a storm rolled in.
“Something was dragged through here.” Digger motioned to their right. “Big. Cargo pod maybe. Temperature variance in the soil…plants don’t sway right in the wind either.”
Sigmund stopped a dozen yards from the base of a steep incline. “This is the place,” he said. “Now we hurry up and wait.”
“How long we going to play ‘I have a secret’?” Digger asked. “Roy. Cut the bull and tell us what this is.”
“I don’t know either.” He tilted his helm up as fat drops of rain pelted against his optics. “Must be above my paygrade.”
“It was above my paygrade until we took off in that damn box,” Sigmund said. “The locals may be skittish.”
“Locals? No one lives on this rock but colorful birds and lizards,” Digger said. “I didn’t plan on surviving the Damocles, but if we’re going to get Lord of the Flies out here, we might as well—”
Tink tink
Digger looked down at her feet and to a man in camouflaged power armor. The suit was bulky across the shoulders, thick plates of graphenium armor molded over the layer of pseudo muscles that augmented the wearer’s strength to nearly superhuman levels. Anti-armor grenades were mag-locked to the man’s chest, and he held a gauss rifle in one hand, pointed toward the ground. A dark visor looked up at Digger and the man gave her a little wave.
“Friendly,” he called up.
“Fuck me running! How did you sneak up like that?” Digger’s hands curled into fists.
“Lieutenant Ken Hale, Atlantic Union Strike Marines.” The man pointed to the mountainside. “Love to chat, but Captain Acera sent me out to make positive ID—can’t be too careful out here—and get you inside before Chi-com can pick you up. Let’s go, yeah?”