Battleframe (The Mindwars Book 1)

by Michael Gilmour

  Whizzbang and Bosk penetrated the energy wall and looked down as the Colonel lead the stream of administrative staff into the frigate. Gliding towards the central thoroughfare, they spotted two Scourge running away from them.

  “Bosk, I’ve got the left one.”

  “CT.”

  As one, two blue beams shot out and pierced the back of each Scourge’s neck, a spray of purple blood and the two warriors dropped to the ground dead.

  “Two to go.”

  “Whizz, I’ve got one but the other has disappeared down a rack of equipment.”

  Bosk fired and the Engineer died.

  By now, the racks of equipment raced past them on the left and right as they lost altitude. Bosk looked across at his friend.

  Rather than risk slowing down with a few quick steps on his partially healed leg Whizzbang skidded along the main thoroughfare on his chest. The screech of his battleframe on the plasteel floor reverberated off the roof high above. As he slowly stopped, he rested his damaged leg on his good one to help protect it and provide some level of support. Bosk sprinted past him and suddenly dashed between two long racks of machine parts.

  “Bosk, do you have him?”

  “I just saw a Shock move up ahead….”

  Bosk only had a second to watch the shockwave of an explosion race towards him. The foundations of the facility seemed to rock back and forth and then the wave hit with a mighty boom. One minute he was running forward and the next he was thrown back out into the thoroughfare. His battleframe protected him from any serious injury.

  Being further away from the explosion all Whizzbang felt was a rush of wind across his face. “What the frap was that?”

  Bosk picked himself up off the floor and said, “It looks like Altavia set off some explosive device. How’s the leg?”

  Whizzbang gingerly stood to his feet and tested his right leg. The nanomeds had not had sufficient time to heal the fracture but they were now well on their way. “I’ll manage. Let’s go find Altavia.”

  Bosk ran back down between the racks of equipment that he was just unceremoniously ejected from. Whizzbang hobbled after him by placing more of his weight on his left leg and letting the battleframe’s exoskeleton help brace the broken limb.

  Bosk again ran ahead and provided a running report via the comnet, “Frap that was quite a boomer. Look how some of these heavy racks have been pushed back.”

  “Any sign of Altavia or the Shock?”

  “Not as yet.”

  Chapter 15

  Bosk

  Laying prone on a massive rock looming over the Terrarium, Bosk kept his head down and out of sight while his battleframe’s nanites went about their busy repair work. A rising hum of a golden Scourge drone dropping in behind him alerted him to his danger. The sound always preceded a drone self-detonation that scattered shrapnel in all directions.

  “Frapping nasty little smart bomb aren’t you,” Bosk said to himself. Rolling onto his back, he pulled his Charge rifle out and pumped a couple of quick shots into the drone that fatally stopped the destruction sequence.

  Now that the drone lay smouldering at his feet, Bosk did a quick inventory of his battleframe. Although not perfect, Whizzbang and his squad had bought him enough time to partially self-regenerate.

  A grim smile spread across his face as he mumbled, “Time for some frapping payback!”

  “Hey Whizz I’m G2G. Engaging enemy snipers now,” he announced via the local comnet.

  As he jump jetted across to his new position, Whizzbang twisted in the air to let an eruption of deadly plasma launched by one of the Juggernaut’s shoot by. He could feel the heat radiated by the plasma as he weaved out of its path. Once landed on the plexiglass Terrarium roof, he ducked down and replied, “CT Bosk. Self, you stay down. Help’s on its way.”

  Selfia replied, “CT Whizz” and quickly followed up with “Oh frap!” as another ruby sniper beam missed her head by inches. Scrambling further back along the roof she yelled, “Frap Bosk, show me how good you are and be fast about it!”

  Through his scope, Bosk watched as the Scourge Sniper’s rifle tip glow as it built-up energy prior to firing. He had the enemy within his cross hairs and pressed his firing stud a few milliseconds before the other Sniper could shoot. The result was one dead Scourge Sniper and one alive Selfia.

  “One down, one to go!” Bosk said as he swung around to the second sniper’s position just in time to see the impact of Whizzbang’s Charge rifle beam render the warrior permanently inoperative. Without stopping to think, he pulled his scope around to centre the crosshairs on one of the Shock troopers and pressed the trigger. Two Charge rifle beams, one from Bosk and the other from Whizzbang, pierced the trooper. The resulting explosion of armour and flesh cascaded around the still living Shock trooper. It then also experienced the simultaneous effect of two super-heated blue energy beams through its body. Not surprisingly, the second Shock trooper also exploded into its constituent parts.

  Whizzbang smiled as he said, “Beat you to the target Bosk!”

  Bosk laughed in relief. “Whizz, you’ve really got to get a better hobby than splattering Scourge!”

  They had both been trading jibes for so many years that the two of them were accustomed to the banter in the middle of a battle. Bosk briefly raised his head from his Charge riflescope and suddenly screamed over the comnet, “Whizz look out!”

  From his many years of fighting alongside Bosk, Whizzbang knew that when Bosk screamed a warning, you did not try to work out why. If you valued your life, you just reacted. Even though he was lying on his front on one of the hexagonal glass Terrarium windows Whizzbang, instantly fired maximum thrust on his jump jets. The instantaneous kinetic energy rocketed him forwards off the roof and in an arc towards the ground beneath the scanning tower platform. It also sent him towards the two startled waiting Juggernauts.

  Just as Whizzbang fled from his perch, the two molten balls of plasma launched a few seconds earlier completed their high trajectory arc. With a crash, they slammed into the plexiglass roof of the Terrarium right where he had just been lying.

  The deafening roar from the detonation of the super-heated plasma against the cool plexiglass generated a concussive shockwave traveling outwards from the epicentre of the explosion. Razor sharp shards of plexiglass, some several feet long, propelled outward in all directions. The spraying glass instantly shredded the plants in that corner of the Terrarium, imbedded themselves in the scanning tower grating and some were even later found on the beach far to the east. The hi-tensile plasteel girders that supported that corner of the enormous Terrarium buckled under the impact. Far away in FreeHold, battleframe pilots looked up from working on the defences as the sound from the detonation and ricocheting glass fragments passed over them.

  Rather than stopping to fight the two Juggernauts intent on his destruction, Whizzbang kept his jump jets at maximum blast and twisted so that his armour bore much of the impact as he shot along the ground. Dirt flew in all directions and he ploughed a dead straight furrow that would have made his farming father proud. If it were not for the collision at the base a sixty-foot high solid granite cliff face he would have kept on going. Other than feeling a little groggy, he felt quite protected in his battleframe and surprisingly unhurt from his impromptu farming activity.

  The Juggernauts that Whizzbang had raced past were not so lucky. Both of them had half a dozen long plexiglass spears impaling their bodies. One of them was hit with such force, that the glass spear had lifted its body off the ground as it arrowed into the dirt. It looked more like a grotesque broken statue raised up on high. Purple blood dripped down the sides of the glass and soaked the ground around both bodies.

  Whizzbang groggily turned over in his furrow just to see one and then the other Juggernaut’s body violently shake under the impact of a shot from Selfia. Looking down from her rooftop sniper nest she said over the comnet, “Better to be safe than sorry with those brutes.”

  Still feeling a li
ttle light-head Whizzbang replied, “CT Self. I would’ve done it myself if I could just focus my eyes a little better. In some ways, if they could survive all those glass spears going through their bodies then they’d almost deserve to live. Almost….”

  “Not by a long-shot. When I see a Scourge I see a target.”

  “CT Self.”

  While Selfia ensured the two Juggernauts were completely dead, Acheron literally tore his way through the remaining Scourge Engineers and with Bosk’s help, silenced the two drop pods.

  “Whizz, you finished being a farmer?” Whizzbang heard Bosk chuckle in his earpiece.

  Whizzbang stood to his feet and a pile of dirt fell from the many crevices that made up the exoskeleton of his battleframe. He gently shook his head from side to side to test if everything was in still in place. “I’m done with being a farmer Bosk, although I feel like I’ve just been through a meat grinder.”

  Acheron doubled over laughing. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I hear your friend Bosk give a warning and the next thing I see is a massive explosion followed by you getting the frap out of there. I just wished I’d captured the faces of those two Jugs on an imager! I’ve never seen a Scourge look stunned before but when you raced straight at them and right on past they looked hilarious!”

  By now, Acheron was in full flight recounting the story and his face mimicked the Juggernaut’s stunned expressions. With his arms imitating a massive explosion he continued, “That was when the plasma discharges smashed into plexiglass roof. Kaboom! After all these years, you’d think that they’d learn that plasma and plexiglass just don’t mix. What do you get when you add plasma and plexiglass?”

  As Bosk looked at the Juggernaut’s impaled on the glass shards, he could not resist yelling down to Acheron, “Statues?”

  Acheron pointed up at Bosk, “Exactly! You’re the winner my friend.”

  Whizzbang smiled at the joke. It was good to hear his friends having fun with one another. Only minutes earlier each of them were fighting for their lives and it was only by chance that the explosion did not seriously injure any of them. Laughter was always a good medicine.

  Whizzbang looked up at the bright purple Scourge blood that decorated one of the plexiglass wall panels of the Terrarium like some grotesque mural. “Will the fighting and death ever end?” he thought.

  The stench of battle was still evident in the air as Bosk drifted down from his rocky perch and finally settled next to Whizzbang with a brief controlled flare of his jets. Selfia and Acheron quickly followed him to stand beside Whizzbang. Whizzbang turned to his life-long friend and embraced him in the way that spoke of the depth of their friendship.

  Bosk was a few inches shorter than Whizzbang’s five foot eleven and had black hair, a solid build and a perpetual broad grin on his face. Through the years, the two adopted brothers had become inseparable as they fought side by side on a huge range of battlefields.

  As he hugged his brother, Whizzbang’s voice cracked, “Bosk, I thought I’d lost you.”

  Bosk returned the embrace even tighter and stumbling over his words as the impact of the moment hit him. He quietly replied, “Whizz, I knew you’d find me.”

  Half embarrassed, the two stepped away from each other and Whizzbang quickly wiped the corners of his eyes, leaving streaks in the dirt already smeared on his face.

  Once again, Bosk’s easy smile lit up his face as he said, “Hey Whizz, glad to see my warning about those Jugs wasn’t too late and that you’re still in one piece.”

  Now that he was more composed, Whizzbang said with a cheeky smirk, “I should thank you for that Bosk but if there’s a next time don’t cut it so fine.”

  Bosk gave a brief chuckle. “Where would the fun in that be? Seeing you blast off horizontally and plough a furrow will always be one of those special moments in my life.” Looking over at Acheron and Selfia, Bosk asked, “Whizz, are you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  “Of course!” Whizzbang did the customary introductions, “Bosk, this is Ach and Self, Ach and Self, this is my best friend Bosk.”

  Bosk extended his hand first to Acheron and then Selfia. “Great to meet you. I thought that I was a goner until you all showed up.”

  Acheron enthusiastically shook Bosk’s hand and replied, “At long last we get a chance to meet you Bosk. This is the third Scourge skirmish that Whizz, Self and I have had in the last few hours trying to find you.”

  “I’m really happy that we’ve found you in one piece,” Selfia said, “The whole of Alpha Three is in complete turmoil with this latest Scourge push.”

  Whizzbang nodded in acknowledgement. “So what happened to you Bosk? The last time we spoke I thought we’d be catching up at Folly’s bar in FreeHold.”

  “Frap Whizz, I could really use that drink right now. For the past eight hours, I’ve been running from the Scourge as far south as Fisherman’s Bend through to Rock Wall and now here at Terrarium.

  After leaving you in FreeHold, I decided to head out and do some quick solo Digging, to get enough tellurite for some new equipment to upgrade my jets. The Concord may be good but it still costs tellurite to maintain your frame. Besides, we all need to make sure that the Concord research team at Blue Sky are funded to invent stuff before the Scourge develop them.”

  Bosk paused for a minute as he recollected, “Where was I? That’s right, I was minding my own business, bagging a few Spyderlynx that I could sell later on. You know those coffee table sized critters with the dark outer shells. The ones that look more like a giant spider crossed with a crab. Anyway, suddenly, all hell seemed to break loose. Two fists of Scourge zeroed in on my position and after a short but brutal discussion I only just managed to send my Digger back to the orbital station in one piece and get the frap out of there.

  After running for frap knows how long and dodging or hiding from one patrol after another I ended up at the top end of the beach due east of here. You know the one Whizz. It’s just north of that Concord outpost where we used to do sniping practice when we first arrived on Alpha Three. The crazy thing is that I’ve been regularly checking my scanner on my wrist-comp but everything must be frapped up as I’m not getting a thing. Either that or the whole networked is frapped.”

  Whizzbang interrupted Bosk. “It’s not the network alone. Right now, every sector is under a massive Scourge assault. When I first entered Freehold with Happy I just knew something was wrong and like you, I checked my wrist-comp. It was all clear until I patched directly into a tower.” Whizzbang placed his hand on Bosk’s shoulder and said, “Bosk, other than Freehold and Central Command the entire network was red with Scourge or not responding at all. The network isn’t frapped, it’s just not there anymore!”

  “Oh frap! Oh frap! Oh frap!” Bosk said with rising tension in his voice.

  “Bosk do you know where the others are?” Whizzbang asked.

  “The last I heard, Elzetro, Pyro, Kheldar and DG were planning on having a party with a few friends on top of that big rock overlooking Freehold. With any luck they’ve managed to make it through this whole mess.”

  “That sounds like them. I just hope that they’re still up there.” Whizzbang smiled warmly. “Frap I’m glad to have you with us Bosk. It’s only been a few hours since Freehold, but I feel like Self, Ach and I have lived a life-time. We managed to get the scanning tower up and going in Research Ravine. We also retook control of the outpost just north of there.”

  Turning to all three of his friends Whizzbang said, “OK I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we have to call down a new scanning tower from the orbital station right away. Without it, we won’t be able to get an accurate picture of what’s going on. As we’ve already found out, the network’s frapped up and we need to patch directly into a tower to find out what’s really going on.”

  They all knew what that meant. Calling down a scanning tower was like inviting the Scourge into your living room for a cup of tea with a few cakes on the side. It was a magnet to all enemy i
n the area to drop in a few battle-pods and immediately shutdown the tower. It was also a message that there were active Concord battleframes, which meant the Scourge, would come in mass and they would come in hard.

  Selfia, Acheron and Bosk looked at each other and then at Whizzbang. Finally, Acheron said in his deep gravelly voice, “CT Whizz, you point the way and we’ll follow,” this was quickly followed by nods from his two other friends.

  “Before calling down the tower we need a plan. But first I need to change my clothes” Whizzbang said with a thoughtful smile on his face. “Bosk, do you know if the Scourge had time to take out the battleframe console?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. I think they were more intent on killing me at the time.”

  “We’re all happy that you didn’t oblige them,” Selfia said.

  Bosk put on a dumb sounding voice and said, “Well, I do my best Mam.”

  Ignoring the friendly banter Whizzbang strode over to the building where Selfia had positioned herself on the roof for sniping. He sighed with relief when he saw that the battleframe terminal was undamaged. Pressing the power button on the side, it hummed into life and presented him with only a few battleframes from its limited memory capacity. The Terrarium terminal was much smaller than the one in the ready room at Freehold. Toggling through the list of available frames, he selected the “Rook”. It was Happy’s favourite and Whizzbang knew that it was the most suitable for what they were about to do.

  A marvel of technological simplicity the battleframe terminal was the culmination of hundreds of years of Concord technological endeavours. It was regarded as one of the greatest innovations ever developed by Professor Steinberg’s team at Blue Sky. It combined breakthroughs in malleable energy and molecular computing to build battleframes from raw tellurite energy.