by Tim Marquitz
“Callabera?” Macumber prompted. On his viewscreen, the soil and dust of the Verengeretti’s faceplant into the side of Mother Earth had yet to clear.
“Sir?”
Before Macumber could issue the order, he was already changing strategy as a blurring wheel of demolition launched from the dust cloud. The Verengeretti had flung itself from the mountain like a vertical, spinning circular saw, its tendrils propelling it across the cracked ground like hundreds of insectoid appendages.
“Brace for im—”
He never got the chance to finish the shout. Raidizer was slammed by the whirling pinwheel of tentacles and the armored head attached to them, like receiving a cannonball to the gut. The giant robot was sent sprawling across the valley and mashing into the side of a craggy hillside, the head and shoulders embedded in the ravaged, glowing soil.
Even inside the gel-cushioned compartments for the bridge crew, Macumber could feel that hit. His body tingled as if he had personally received a punch. He knew the ship would have received damage on that strike, and more importantly, if the crews in the limbs hadn’t been paying close attention to the viewscreens in their areas, they would have been unprepared for the impact. Unprotected by gel, there would be injuries, and probably also casualties.
Rutledge was already pulling in damage reports from his defensive teams while, without needing to be told to do so, Pekkarin had ordered engineering to reverse thrust and pull them from the mountain. Raidizer was on its feet before the Verengeretti had stopped rolling past them from its last strike.
The reports washed over Macumber. Twelve dead. Fifteen injured. Raidizer’s right leg thrusters down. Shield damage. Medical teams rushing to the injured. Dwindling armaments. One ax lost. Cannon lost from the head. The robot’s movements would be limited with the leg thrusters gone. The captain did some instant calculations in his head and reached the same conclusion he’d heard in the tone of the voices of his crew as they reported in.
They wouldn’t last until the Yardley arrived.
“Callabera, instruct your team to prepare our own spinning weapon.”
4
At a blink, the viewscreen switched to a close-up of the robot’s massive left forearm. The smooth gray and white surface was marred by what appeared to be a deep trench that ran along the top of the lower arm. The uninitiated might suspect it was a maintenance trench or something similar. In fact, it was an elaborate weapons system. Before Macumber’s eyes, Raidizer’s left hand mashed the end of its long ax handle deeply into the slot.
Simultaneously, Pekkarin had raised the arm to a position level with the ground, and another blink by Macumber showed that the spinning squid-creature had come to a stop a half a mile further along the valley floor. Another blink brought Macumber’s view back to the arm as the ax stood upright in the slot and canted forward, like a gun pointing up at the sky. Raidizer’s left hand swept forward and cocked the ax’s handle backward, like an old gunslinger swiping back the hammer on a Colt .45. The ax moved to the end of the trench nearest the elbow and locked into place.
“Fire when ready,” Macumber ordered, and the ax snapped forward as if it had been launched by a slingshot. The heavy double-sided blades moved forward and tumbled, whipping the tip of the handle out of the slot, and the weapon spun through the air as an impenetrable wall of slicing, razor-edged death.
Before the ax reached its target, the Verengeretti, still moving slowly after its rolling attack, Macumber made another order. “Fire all missiles. I want smoke.”
“All?” Callabera questioned.
“All. Then, tell your team to evacuate the fist.”
Macumber could hear the soft gasp that someone—he thought it was Rutledge—made. They had never heard that order before, but they all knew exactly what it meant. It was a desperation play.
“Missiles away,” Callabera reported.
Macumber watched as a river of smoke poured from the front of Raidizer as hundreds of rockets trailed vapor and chem trails. “Fire main guns, too.”
The whirling, flipping ax crashed into the creature’s visor slit, the blade embedding the weapon in the armor, but Macumber couldn’t determine if the flesh underneath had been severed. Then the maelstrom of missiles impacted the Verengeretti repeatedly, throwing up a billowing black mushroom of smoke, just as he’d wanted. The firing guns on Raidizer’s front were creating their own smoke screen of competing gray smoke.
“Fist is ready,” Callabera said, and Macumber could hear regret in her voice.
“Launch it.”
Even through the gel cushioning, the captain could feel the deep rumble shuddering through the giant robot as nuclear motors fired the building-sized robot fist into the battle. The rockets severed the hand from the arm, just aft of the wrist, and the fist looked like and old zeppelin that had a trail of green flame extending from behind it as it accelerated. A cone of vapor formed behind it as it broke the sound barrier, its tell-tale boom coming just a second later.
Then the massive projectile was lost to view through the cyclone of smoke.
Two seconds later, the eruption of noise—a thunderous impact and the fingernails-on-blackboard squeal of pain from the alien squid—was even too loud for the audio dampeners, resulting in a bowel-loosening feedback shriek before the emergency audio settings killed all exterior sound.
Everyone waited in silence, hoping the fight was over. Hoping the menace from another dimension had finally been silenced, as their audio feeds had been, so they might have a brief reprieve while the creature’s tentacles would liquefy into the radioactive soil. The tempest of black and gray smoke dissipated and a smaller cloud of dirt-brown smoke unfurled within it. Macumber realized the fist-strike had driven the squid into the hill beyond the smoke blizzard, and they were seeing displaced dust and dirt from the ground.
“Pekkarin, can we get some altitude?” the captain asked.
Uncharacteristically, Pekkarin took some time to argue with engineering softly before he replied. “It will be dodgy, Sir, but we should be able to maintain Raidizer orientation and achieve flight. We just won’t have much maneuverability.”
“That’s fine. Take us up.”
Macumber switched his viewscreens a few times, taking in the valley around him as the massive war robot slowly rose into the sky. His view of the dissipating cloud was soon from above as the robot moved into a less-than-graceful, wobbling hover.
“Movement, Sir,” Rutledge said, and when he said it, Macumber could hear pain in the man’s voice. He’s injured, Macumber thought. And then he quickly forgot about his defense lieutenant. “Four hundred yards west of the smoke.”
What?
Macumber switched his viewscreen with a blink, and then his eyes opened wide.
The Verengeretti climbed the side of a steep hill, some of its tentacles doing the work as others dragged limp behind it. The ax was still embedded in the creature’s face, the handle sticking upward like a strange, fancy hat. It was the back of the creature that caught the captain’s interest, though. The armored covering was dented inward in the exact shape of the knuckles of Raidizer’s fist. The impact crater in the armor was so deep, Macumber estimated the squid’s body would have been compressed by at least half inside the corded helmet. Then he glanced at the creature’s bottom, under the walking and dragging tentacles, and sure enough, the creature had a huge, purple embolism protruding downward, from under the armor. It was a bubble of flesh that had been forcefully squeezed out of the invader’s shell. Macumber had the idea that if he could pummel that bulge, he might rupture the creature, like a child’s water balloon.
The Verengeretti didn’t appear inclined to give him the chance, though.
Turning and seeing the unsteady robot in the air, the massive squid crouched on its tentacles, and then launched itself off the side of the mountain, heading straight for Raidizer.
Pekkarin, in a move worthy of a promotion and a medal, dropped Raidizer from the air, and brought the robot about, as if
it intended to fall on its back, before he whipped the legs over in a twist, bringing Raidizer into a crouch on the ground, resting on its feet, the right hand and left forearm.
The squid adjusted its course in mid-flight, so the move accomplished little in the way of evasion.
“Kick and full stern thrust,” Macumber shouted.
Just as the Verengeretti’s tentacles wrapped around Raidizer’s ankles, the robot thrust one leg backward, connecting with the side of the creature’s helmet. Then the thrusters launched both robot and monster backward through the air. But the loss of ground from which to maneuver was a disadvantage for Raidizer now. The squid used its tentacle to scramble up the robot’s back, heading for its shoulders, where the tentacles wrapped around the head and blasted it with untold millions of amps of electrical discharge.
Damage reports rushed in as the electrical systems weathered the assault. The impact gel on the bridge would also keep the crew safe from the electrical attack should stray lightning bolts find their way past Raidizer’s protected outer shell. Macumber was once again more concerned for his support teams in the robot’s limbs.
Then an explosion shook the entire structure, and alarms rang out around the ship. The hull had been ruptured.
“Evasive thrash!” Macumber shouted.
Even as Pekkarin relayed the order and Raidizer flailed its limbs and twisted, like an epileptic in a berserker rage, trying to fling the squid-like creature from its back, Macumber felt a lurch in his stomach, indicating the combination of a the hull breach and the Verengeretti’s electrical discharge had done the unthinkable. Their thruster engines had been knocked out. King Raidizer and the squid plummeted from the sky.
5
The tangled mass of alien flesh and new-age ferro-organic battleship mashed into the ground with enough force to send shockwaves throughout the Philippine isles—not the first time the cursed land had suffered Richter scale shocks in excess of seven.
“Get us loose, and get us up,” Macumber urged.
“Rutledge is dead, Sir,” Pekkarin’s voice came as Macumber felt a steady sway in his captain’s cocoon, indicating the ensign was rolling and flailing Raidizer’s legs and arms in an attempt to disentangle them from the persistent squid.
“Ensign Tubo, take over defense,” Macumber ordered without even considering who should replace the lieutenant. Mary Tubongbanua was the second woman on the bridge, and like all of them, she had already proven herself in battle many times. There would be time to mourn Rutledge and worry about proper promotions later, if they survived this fight.
“Aye, Sir,” Tubo replied. As both ‘Tubo’ and ‘Tubongbanua’ were proper Filipina surnames—and related ones at that—the ensign had suggested the abbreviated version when signing on with the crew.
Macumber’s viewscreen showed Raidizer stagger to its feet. Without the thrusters, they wouldn’t be able to take the battle to the sky, and returning to base would be a hassle, too. But between servos and smaller rockets, the robot could still function in battle mode without the larger thrusters needed for flight.
They had exhausted all their weapons, and with this last tooth-rattling impact after plunging out of the ravaged sky, even the ax that had been lodged in the Verengeretti’s eye slit was now lost. Raidizer spread its feet in a fighting stance, and the right fist came up, ready for the next attack.
The squid was up on its tentacles, swaying from side to side. Macumber couldn’t tell if the sway was a strategy, like a boxer’s footwork, or a drunken stagger from the injuries the creature had already sustained. He did note that the protruding sack of flesh below the creature’s helmet had sprung a leak, oozing a gelatinous substance on the ground, where the wavering tentacles danced in and out of large puddles of the goop.
“Do we have any ordinance left?” Macumber asked Callabera. He knew he’d ordered them to fire out the guns and the missiles, but he also knew she was savvy enough to maybe have had something hidden up her sleeve.
After a brief pause, where she spoke to someone on her team, asking several times for clarification, she replied. Macumber could hear a strain of embarrassment in her voice.
“Ensign Wallach says he’s got an experimental weapon we could try.”
“What is it?” Macumber asked, latching on to this faint sliver of hope.
“I don’t really know, Sir. I’ll put him on.”
With that, a screen jumped to Macumber’s view, containing a small, hairy man in grease-stained white overalls who rubbed his hands on an even greasier rag. Macumber wasn’t sure if the man was trying to get the grease off his hands and onto the rag or the other way around.
“Wallach,” Macumber said. “What have you got?”
“The Action Missile, Captain,” the man replied with a grin, obviously proud of his creation.
“What is it?”
“It’s the middle knuckle of the right fist, Sir. In place of a typical missile placement, we have what appears to be a missile. Same color scheme and everything. But when launched, it springs forward thirty feet and locks into place once fully extended. It’s more of an ejecting knuckle extension than a projectile.”
When Macumber’s face did not register any emotion, Wallach’s grin slowly faded.
After a beat of silence, Macumber spoke again.
“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.” Wallach’s grin packed its bags and hopped a slow flight to cringing worry. The man’s eyes enlarged, fearful for his life if he had wasted enough time to turn the tide of the battle, leading to Raidizer’s destruction or worse—Macumber’s wrath.
“But what the hell,” Macumber continued. “Prepare to deploy your Action Missile.”
Wallach recovered his composure and nodded before his viewscreen switched off.
“Uh, how, exactly, Sir?” Callabera asked.
“With extreme, rocket-assisted prejudice,” the man said through gritted teeth.
“Aye, Sir,” Callabera responded, and Macumber heard several others on the bridge echo her enthusiastic sentiments.
The Verengeretti lunged forward, closing the distance, and Macumber ordered a kick. Raidizer took three running steps and launched into a flying sidekick, minimally assisted by those few gyroscopic rockets still functioning. The impact sent the squid backward, and Raidizer—even injured as it was—landed on its feet, balanced and ready for the next strike.
“Pursue,” Macumber ordered. “Multiple punches first. We’ll save the secret weapon for a bit.”
Pekkarin brought King Raidizer in closer, pursuing the recoiling alien creature. Like a martial artist in a sideways stance, the robot jabbed, right, right, right. Then it launched a right uppercut, the rocket-assisted arm bypassing the swirl of frantically defending tentacles and connecting once again with the creature’s cracked and buckled armor.
“Visor. Go in for the kill and deploy Action Missile.”
Pekkarin swung Raidizer’s handless left arm, batting the squid over to the robot’s right where the remaining fist was already thrusting forward for the creature’s faceplate. The knuckles of the fist pounded into the creature’s face hard enough to send yet another jagged crack fracturing across the coiled armor.
“Now!”
“Action Missile deployed,” Pekkarin responded.
The weapon, a thirty-foot-long brass knuckle equivalent, sprang forth and slipped through the angled crack in the creature’s armor that served as a slotted visor. The Verengeretti’s entire form shook and vibrated in a conniption of violence until the frantically flailing tentacles dropped, and the dead weight of the creature tugged it backward, the Action Missile slurping out of the visor and trailing a sticky rope of plasm and ichor.
The squid creature fell backward and impacted the ground with a dull thump. It was only then that Macumber realized the outer audio had been restored at some point during the battle.
There was a hush on the bridge as everyone waited to see if the Verengeretti would stir, but Macumber knew it was done
for.
“Contact the Yardley. We’re in no shape to take the next one.”
“Aye, Sir. Already done,” Tubo responded. “Yardley is twenty minutes out.”
“All right,” Macumber said. “Let’s peel it out of there.”
Pekkarin maneuvered King Raidizer into position over the fallen creature. The ship had received its unofficial nickname from the first battle they had survived with an armored Verengeretti. At the end of that fight, they had cracked the armor and pulled the squirming tentacled thing from its protection before stomping on the creature’s face, turning its pulsating purple flesh into a lavender paste. Since that fight, the WSF had deemed all battle chassis should perform the action at the end of a fight, just to make sure each invader was dead.
As Raidizer went about its grisly work, Macumber sighed. He was bone tired, but this was the job. The Yardley would relieve them, and they would limp back to base, for repairs, refueling, and rearming—in this case both figuratively and literally, as they would need a new left fist.
As the giant robot placed a foot against one side of the jagged crack in the Verengeretti armor and pulled with its remaining hand, the ropey plating gave a metallic shriek, and Macumber knew if he was standing outside—and if he could withstand the ambient radiation—he would be overcome instantly by the creature’s acidic emissions and that the raw stench of the dead alien would dissolve his innards.
“Stomp unnecessary, Sir,” Callabera notified him. “This one is already vaporizing. We must have hurt it worse than we thought.”
The damned things always melted when they died, but the fact that this one was already going gooey told the captain that Callabera was correct. The embolism, Macumber remembered. It was already dying.