“Yeah, I’m good to go Whizz. The little bots have me all stitched up good as new.” Selfia was not exaggerating about the incredible capabilities of the nanomeds. The tiny robots flowing from her battleframe and into her bloodstream had miraculously repaired her wounded shoulder. Each damaged cell was individually repaired and those that were beyond repairing were replaced by other non-essential cells from other parts of her body. Fortunately, adequate doses of the anaesthetic, Evkon 316, were automatically administered by her battleframe to dull the considerable pain from her wound. In another five to ten minutes, the wound to her shoulder would be completely healed.
“Great, keep an eye on Acheron while I take out that TransWarp on level three.”
“CT. Do your worst.”
The noise below had abated a little from the tumult when Acheron had first assaulted the Scourge outpost. “He must be running out of targets on the ground,” Whizzbang mused as yet another yawning roar of mini-gun fire reached his ears. “Well, maybe not quite yet,” he chuckled to himself.
Standing to his feet, Whizzbang flipped his rifle onto his back and pulled out his favourite close quarter’s weapon, the grenade launcher.
After ensuring that both Acheron and Selfia were coping with the Scourge down below Whizzbang quickly jump-jetted from his rocky aerie to the roof of the outpost. Moving quietly on his padded Raven boots he peered over the edge to the balcony below to see if there were any enemies.
A Scourge Shock trooper swung around and looked up in surprise just in time to ingest a few grenades. The explosion instantly liquefied the contents of the troopers armour prior to splattering it like a macabre piece of modern artwork across the balcony and surrounding walls.
Whizzbang ignored the purple gore and flicked his wrist to reload his launcher in preparation for any additional enemies. He dropped off the roof and with a short burst of his jump jets settled onto the balcony that spanned one entire side of the third level. Nothing else seemed to be moving on the third level. Other than the Scourge he had just killed, the combined sniper fire of both Selfia and himself had taken out the enemy.
On the far side of the room, an exit to an outside walkway was visible at the top of a short ramp. The wall along the balcony was completely missing leaving the entire third floor exposed to the elements. There would normally have been a force field in place along the open wall if the Scourge had not messed with the outpost’s security protocols housed on the second level. A clutter of equipment, munitions and empty stacked crates lay scattered across the floor.
The TransWarp stood in the room’s centre, a dark narrow pyramid with a control interface built into one side. It was dormant for the time being but Whizzbang knew that it was only a matter of time before it activated to bring in Scourge reinforcements.
Whizzbang cautiously moved towards the TransWarp, looking to the left and right, alert for any sign of the enemy. Every so often, he could hear the crack of Selfia’s rifle as she fired at a Scourge target. Acheron had been relatively quiet the last minute.
A Scourge Slayer looked down at Whizzbang’s back from its hidden position on top of a stack of crates. It relished ending this accursed pilot’s life. With an almost silent shifting of its weight onto its front foot, it prepared to leap.
Whizzbang heard a faint sound behind him and instinctively dove to the floor just as the Slayer let out a primal snarl and leapt from its perch towards his him.
Surprised by Whizzbang’s sudden move the Slayer stretched its arms out towards its quarry to try to prevent it from escaping. Rather than embedding the eighteen inch tellurite crystal dagger between Whizzbang’s shoulders the Slayer had to be satisfied with driving it into the his upper right thigh.
Searing pain exploded in Whizzbang’s leg as the dagger struck home. With a crash, the Slayer and Whizzbang sprawled across the floor, smashing into empty ammunition boxes. Whizzbang kicked out with his uninjured leg connecting his lightly armoured Raven boot with the Slayer’s pale-skinned cheek. The quick move caused the Slayer to lose its grip on the dagger and allowed Whizzbang a second to glance down at his wound. The perfectly polished razor sharp blade cut through his thinly armoured battleframe and he watched with grim fascination at the point appearing out the front of his leg.
The moment the dagger struck home counter reagents flooded Whizzbang’s body from his battleframe in the event the Slayer had used a toxic coating on the blade. Evkon 316 swirled through his body and within his bloodstream millions of nano-sized micro-machines flowed into action to begin healing the wound. While the nanomeds stemmed the blood loss, nanites began the work of repairing the Raven.
Behind Whizzbang the Slayer scrambled to its feet, flailing wildly against a stack of crates as it stood up. Purple blood poured from a fresh gash in the side of its face. Its pink beady eyes seemed to flare in rage as it charged forward.
Still lying on his back Whizzbang fired his jump jets and scooted across the floor to flee his attacker and buy himself some time. The pain from additional pressure on his leg was almost unbearable. Crates caught in his jet blast disintegrated in a flurry of wooden shards that rained down on the Scourge charging after him. Thankfully, his helmet protected his head as he ploughed through a neatly stacked array of ammunition boxes, sending them in all directions. He finally slammed into the far wall. The Slayer still came onwards crashing through the destruction of Whizzbang’s passage.
Whizzbang twisted around and grasped the dagger hilt with his right hand to pull it free. Even the anaesthetic could not entirely mask the shock and he screamed through gritted teeth as he wrenched the blade out of his leg.
Whizzbang’s servo enhanced battleframe automatically braced the temporary weakness in his left leg as he pulled himself to his feet. The Slayer was almost upon him by now.
Kicking in his jets, Whizzbang shot towards the high ceiling and hovered while he lobbed a couple of grenades onto the Slayer below. Though tough, the slayers body is no match for the explosive power of a grenade. The resulting incandescent fireball created by the explosive impacts of rapidly fired tellurite infused grenades engulfed the Slayer until it was nothing but black charcoal.
With his jump jets exhausted and requiring time to recharge Whizzbang settled to the floor and collapsed against the wall. Taking deep controlled breaths, he waited thirty seconds to give the nanomeds time to deal with the worst of his wound. He had lost a lot of blood but thankfully, his arteries remained intact. It would not be long before his bone marrow began producing more red blood cells, spurred on by the nanomeds.
Unless he did something immediately, lethargy would kick in soon and he would be a sitting duck for any Scourge still roaming the area. Whizzbang wrinkled his nose as pulled out a replenishment syrup from a side pocket and with one gulp sucked down the highly processed disgusting cocktail that would provide his body the necessary nutrients to speed up the healing. “Why couldn’t they do something about the smell and the flavour?” he thought to himself as he limped over to the TransWarp.
For a piece of tech that could summon more Scourge from who knows where, the TransWarp was not really a big or complicated device. Standing about eight feet tall, it had what looked like a crown of metal plates that ended in sharp points at their apex.
Whizzbang bent over the control panel and instantly felt like he was falling through the air from some great height. Not like gliding but plummeting to his death. He gritted his teeth until the sensation passed. The moments of vertigo were coming more regularly but they seemed to go away after a few seconds. This one was no exception.
Take a deep calming breath he again looked closely at the TransWarp control panel and then extended his arm towards it. Two universal interface-connecting plugs automatically extended themselves from his battleframe and inserted into the TransWarp’s input socket. Whizzbang watched on his wrist-comp, numbers and symbols flash by as his battleframe began hacking the TransWarp’s on-board systems until, with a cheerful beep, he knew that he had access.
The TransWarp interface offered two options, “Summon” or “Self-destruct”. Whizzbang selected the latter and to avoid the blast he hastily retreated around the corner to the ramp leading to the middle outpost level.
It was then that he came face to face with a pink-eyed Juggernaut.
Chapter 11
Struggle
Whizzbang knew his doom was all but certain and felt a strange slowness of time as it trickled through his hourglass. In the twinkling of an eye memories flooded through his cerebral cortex of past achievements, lessons learned and most of all regrets. His first day at sniper school, his first kiss and his first kill all blurred together. They cascaded one upon another until the memories began colliding into a kaleidoscope of images so bewildering that his body reacted by instinct. Fight or flight?
In what appeared to be slow motion the Juggernaut lifted its plasma canon and levelled it at Whizzbang’s chest, ready to end his life. Flight!
Whizzbang kicked his jump jets to maximum thrust at the same time the ignition sequence in the plasma canon ignited the lethal molten projectile. Unexpectedly the Jug’s arm and plasma canon was violently wrenched around by some unseen force causing its point blank shot to miss. As he blasted into the air Scourge blood sprayed across Whizzbang’s legs from the Juggernaut’s wide-open astonished maw.
“I’ve got your back,” Selfia’s voice crackled over the comnet.
The mixture of relief at being alive combined with Selfia’s simple statement was almost overwhelming. From one hyper-charged adrenaline, enhanced second to the next, Whizzbang realised that he lived to fight another day. Subject to the hellish energies produced by a direct plasma canon erruption there was a good chance that the eport systems would fail in his battleframe. That end could have been his permanent game over.
“Thanks Self,” Whizzbang replied as he tempered the jump jet thrust to settle back down to the top level of the outpost. “I thought I was done for.”
“Just returning the favour Whizz. All’s clear on the ramp to mid-level.”
“Acheron is everything good down below?” asked Whizzbang.
“All Scourge accounted for. I’m heading up the ramp to the second level. Meet you in the middle.”
“CT, meet you at mid Acheron. Self, can you come and give us a hand?”
“CT Whizz. See you in five.”
Whizzbang watched as Selfia gently glided down beside him on flaming jets. As with him, the nanomeds seemed to have done their work and healed her wounds.
“All set?” Whizzbang asked.
Rather than being in any sort of discomfort Selfia appeared angry. In answer to his question, she deftly flipped her sniper rifle into its back holster and pulled out her close quarter’s assault rifle. “Let’s kill those frapping Scourge!”
Other than a lone Scourge Engineer who was trying to engage the outpost’s automated defences by hacking the central comptroller, the outpost’s mid-level was almost disappointingly absent of enemies. With a brief blaze of gunfire, Acheron dispatched the Engineer as it tried to hide behind a control panel. He then put out of commission a couple of golden Scourge drones by the time Whizzbang and Selfia made it to the control room.
“Alright, that was exciting!” exclaimed Acheron with a beaming smile on his face.
Like a cloud about to rain on a parade Selfia said, “It’s OK for you to say that Ach! You’ve got to take more care of yourself! Haven’t you noticed that the frapping Scourge are getting smarter every day? Did you even notice the number of Scourge that Whizz and I were taking out while protecting your frapping backside?” By this time Selfia’s voice had reached a crescendo. “Did you? Well, did you? What would have happened if I’d missed one Ach? Would you be smiling then? Protecting both you and Whizz kept me busier than ever!”
Acheron held up his hands in surrender and said in a more subdued voice, “I’m sorry Selfia. I just got so mad when I thought that frapping sniper had you.”
“It nearly did have me you big lunk! My armour took a pounding that will take a complete overhaul to completely repair.”
“You’re G2G now though aren’t you Self?”
“Yeah, I’m G2G. Now get over here.”
With that, Selfia reached up and grabbed Acheron’s chin in her soft Eagle-claw gloved hand. She stood on tippy-toes and gave a small blast of her jets so that she could plant a kiss firmly on his lips. Quickly recovering from his surprise Acheron lifted Selfia off her feet and returned the kiss with equal fervour.
Selfia beamed up at him but said with a stern voice, “Now don’t you do that again Ach. No berserking.” Then she kissed Acheron again, just a little more gently but just as passionately.
Whizzbang stared at his feet and said, “Hey guys, can’t we leave that for Freehold?”
“Sorry Whizz, I’d thought that I’d lost her.”
“And I thought that I’d lost him.”
“CT. Let’s leave playing lovers until later, we’ve still got to engage the towers defences and call in the militia before heading out to find Bosk.” Whizzbang typed the authorization code into his wrist-comp to get access to the outpost’s comptroller and auto-connect him to the internal outpost systems.
“Sure Whizz. No need to get shirty. Self and I have only been married a few weeks and we’ve never managed to get a honeymoon yet,” Acheron replied defensively.
Whizzbang sighed, “I’m not shirty Ach. I see you two and I’m really happy for you. I really am. I just feel that there’s something different about the Scourge we’ve been fighting. At times it seems like they’re smarter or something. I picture my friends out there fighting for their lives and for the survival of everyone on this world. I’ve got to find them so that we can get some semblance of a plan together.”
“You’re right Whizz,” Selfia said, “We’ll help you find them.”
“Thanks Selfia. I appreciate you both helping me out. I really mean that.”
Whizzbang’s wrist-comp made the familiar cheerful ping of an authorized connection. While he was distracted, Selfia looked across at Acheron and raised one eyebrow questioningly. Acheron replied with a nod and a smile. They may have been ordered to guard Whizzbang but now they were coming together as a squad.
“OK, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Whizzbang said as he stared at the giant monitor in front of him. Logging into a Concord battle net system that is half-hacked by Scourge Engineers is not particularly difficult when you are in a battleframe, but sometimes they left little surprises that could be unpleasant.
“Thank goodness the Scourge Engies didn’t have time to leave any code hacks. That’s good for us. I’ll just reboot the system and help will be on the way,” mumbled Whizzbang more to himself.
“It looks like that’s got it. We just need to wait a couple of minutes for the defence net to reboot and we can call it done and dusted,” Whizzbang said, with a flourish, he toggled the activation key on his wrist-comp.
Just then the whine of multiple battle-pods reverberated through the outpost.
“We’ve got company!” yelled Acheron over the noise.
“How did they know and react so fast?” Whizzbang thought.
For some strange reason, despite all of the technical innovations by the Concord “Blue Sky” research team, they still had never managed to reduce the three minutes it took to reboot an outpost’s comptroller to activate the defence grid. Surprisingly, the Scourge seemed to immediately know when an outpost returned to Concord hands and launch a counter-offensive.
Crunch, crunch, crunch. The three Scourge battle-pods slammed into the ground around the outpost, sending sprays of dust and rock in all directions. The gyrating energy orb atop each sparked, flamed and pulsed as the warp connections routed through subspace to the Scourge base.
“Acheron, can you hold the east ramp?” Whizzbang yelled over the noise.
“I’m onto it Whizz.”
“Selfia, let’s you and I hold the west.”
Selfia nodded in agreement
.
Defending the two ramps that lead up from the ground into the outpost was their best chance against whatever materialised out of the three battle-pods. With any luck, they could hold the Scourge off from the control room and deny enemy Engineers the chance to re-hack the outpost defence network.
Through gritted teeth, Whizzbang said to Selfia, “Don’t fire yet. Wait until they appear and then send everything you’ve got.”
“CT Whizz.” Selfia reached into a pocket in her battleframe and pulled out a flat round metallic object that rested in the palm of her hand. Gauging the weight she said, “I’ll throw my deployable mine as soon as they begin materializing.”
“Good idea.”
“You G2G Ach?” Whizzbang yelled across to his new friend guarding the opposite ramp as he kept an eye on the battle-pods energy cycle.
“G2G Whizz. I’ll unleash hell on those frapping monsters as soon as they stick their stinking noses out.”
Whizzbang said to Selfia beside him, “He’s one of a kind isn’t he.”
She immediately smiled at the comment. “Of course he is. He’s my husband and yes, he’s one of a kind.”
A faint deep purple sparking appeared at five distinct points around the battle-pod that Selfia and Whizzbang were keeping an eye on. The sparking grew more aggressive by the second and began to take the shape of five Scourge Juggernaut battleframes.
“We’ve got five Jug’s here Ach!” Whizzbang yelled.
“A few Slayers and a couple of Engies here.”
“Open fire!” Whizzbang screamed as he launched his first of six grenades into the startled Juggernauts. Simultaneously Selfia hurled her deployable mine into the midst of the Scourge and pressed the remote trigger switch. KABOOM! The combined impact of the mine and grenades going off shook the foundations of the outpost to its core. That was nothing compared to what the combined explosive force did to the Scourge below.
Battleframe (The Mindwars Book 1) Page 9