Battleframe (The Mindwars Book 1)

  From directly behind her and only about ten meters away Selfia heard, “Hi there.”

  Selfia instinctively spun and dropped to one knee with her rifle up and ready. Gardner stepped out from behind a rock with his hands held out so she could see them. The soft gloves of his Recon battleframe clearly did not hold any weapons.

  “Oh frap! Don’t you ever do that to me again Gardner!” she yelled across at him.

  Despite his size, Acheron could move with incredible speed and it seemed that he almost materialised beside Selfia when Gardner raised his arms in the universal sign that he meant no harm and said, “Whoa there big fella!”

  Then speaking to Selfia he continued, “My team and I had to make sure that it was really you and not some Scourge trap. Frap, I know all about the sub-signal verification Blue Sky mumbo jumbo. Let me tell you, that when you’ve been out digging as long as me, there’s nothing like checking out a person’s skin and eye colour. If you know what I mean.”

  Selfia lowered her rifle as five more battleframes stepped out from behind various boulders down the path. “CT Gardner but don’t ever do that again. I could have blown your head off.”

  Gardner shrugged and replied, “It’s not by chance that we were able to avoid the Scourge patrols you know. Me and my boys know a thing or two about keeping hidden, and doin’ sneaky kinds of things.”

  “While you were sneaking around did you happen to see any more Scourge in the area?”

  Gardner smiled and replied, “Only the odd Sniper, scouting ahead of that main group that you put an end to. Me and the boys took care of them. It was that big group of fists that you took out that gave us the willies.”

  “CT Gardner. I presume that you’re the Squad Leader?”

  Gardner nodded.

  Selfia looked Gardner dead in the eye and said, “Gardner, we’ve got to get back to just west of Research Ravine and fast. Commander Whizzbang is depending on us, and we have to move double time, if he and a few of his friends are going to make it. You probably haven’t heard yet, but a massive number of Scourge are coming through there with the goal of over running Freehold. I need a straight answer. Is your squad fit for duty?”

  Indicating his digging squad by pointing with his thumb over his left shoulder, Gardner returned Selfia’s stare and replied, “Look, I really don’t care for what rank you are Self. Me and my boys have been digging tellurite or running half the night from Scourge patrols.” Gardner turned his head to the side and spat out a big wad of chewing tobacco before continuing, “Despite being as tired as all hell we’ve still got enough gas in the tank for some payback.”

  “I was hoping that you were going to say that. I need you and your boys to run a scouting screen in front of us. We’ve got a few Raven’s out on the flanks but you’d be mighty handy out front.”

  Gardner glanced at both Acheron and then said to Tiny, “So you following her?”

  Tiny took a long pull on his cigar and breathed out a waft of blue smoke as he calmly rumbled, “Gardner, I know we’ve split a few pints and a few heads over the years but she’s the brains of this outfit. Do you see any of that Scourge squad that’s been harassing you alive?”

  Gardner grunted in acknowledgement, “CT Tiny.” Turning again to Selfia he made a perfunctory salute and said, “Me and the boys are yours to command little Miss Selfia.”

  Selfia accepted the casual salute with good grace, and said in a voice that carried to the gathered troops around her, “As you all know, the Scourge are about to make a second massive assault on Freehold and all that’s between them and our friends and families are six battleframes. I’ve fought with Commander Whizzbang and Bosk and they’re good, very good at killing Scourge, but they’re fighting against overwhelming odds and they need our help! We must make for Research Ravine with all haste; the fate of Alpha Three depends on us!”

  Selfia turned towards where Gardner had been standing to find that he was gone. He and his squad were already scouting a way ahead for the battleframes to follow. She then turned to both Tiny and Acheron and said, “We’re not going to let Whizz and the others down. We’ve got to push our squads hard and push them fast. Move out!”

  Chapter 6

  A Father’s War

  Soaring on the air currents high above the countryside, a lone hawk searched the landscape below for any sign of prey. The instincts of a mother, seeking to find sustenance for its surviving half-starved chick back in its nest, drove it back and forth across the landscape, ignoring its own gnawing gut. A mouse or even a rat would have been a welcome respite for mother and chick but nothing moved below since the world had changed. The hawk extended its wings further to catch an updraft as it searched. Questing and forever looking down for the slightest hint of movement, that would suggest a potential quarry was about to make a quick dash from the safety of its burrow.

  Other than a brief gust of wind, that created a swirl of dust nothing of interest moved in the land between the abandoned man-village nestled against the mountains and the two-legged settlement in the cul-de-sac at the end of the ravine. The bird searched the top of a hill that lay between the new and the old two-legs nesting grounds. Then it continued looking southwards down the hillside and on towards the jungle at its base. The lush green foliage sharply contrasted against the randomly strewn rubble that was sadly devoid of any life; not a blade of grass, a shrub or even a rodent could be spied on that hillside.

  The hawk remembered seeing, from its lofty position high above the terrain below, flashes of lightning. The sound of thunder and terrifying fire raining down on the hillside time and time again. It was not all bad for sometimes, after such events, the two-legs stopped scurrying back and forth, and this provided a great feast. The meat was not as good as a tasty mouse, but there were never any complaints from the chick in the nest.

  Looking more closely, the hawk spied a two-leg. With wings pulled tight, she rapidly descended towards the top of the hill. These strange two-legs had become more common of recent days, and she had learned to avoid them as unnatural clumsy flyers, that typically did not appreciate the joy of being one with the wind. As if confirming her suspicions the two-leg crashed into the ground, flailed around like a newborn hatchling until it began an awkward run up the hillside. A bright red flash streaked across the land from below, clipping the two-leg in the lower leg, and it stumbled and fell onto the ground in a cloud of dust.

  It looked like the time of lightning and peals of thunder had returned. This would mean meat for her chick and herself in plenty. Salivating at the thought, the bird spiralled downwards towards the fallen two-leg that was now screaming out in pain.

  She should have remembered. Maybe her hunger drove her onwards or the demands of her chick. From her meagre experience, she should have remembered that the purple skinned two-legs, boiling out of the jungle like angry Spyderlynx, were very different from the others. At first glance, they all looked the same to her. She should have remembered that the purple ones took joy in killing her lifelong mate with their red light, as bright as the sun. She should have remembered but now it was too late. As she hovered above the two-leg on the hillside she did not even have the time to register surprise when a red needle beam of energy pierced her heart. Her last dying thought was regret that her chick would now die because its mother forgot.

  Panting heavily from his exertions, Bosk was the first member of the squad to reach the top of the hill and look down the bare slope to the jungle below. He watched as a ruby beam lance out and rather than strike his son it strangely punched through a bird in mid-air and burst it into a cloud of charred feathers. The distraction of the bird had likely saved his sons life.

  In a single fluid motion, Bosk whipped his Charge rifle out of his back holster and dropped to the ground as he brought the scope up to his eye. He looked at his son lying behind the scant cover of a small rock on the hillside, screaming with the primal desperation of a wounded trapped animal. For Elzetro to live or at the best suffer the trauma of an
eport, Bosk would have to be faster and more accurate than he had ever been in his life.

  “Frap! I must save my son!” he thought to himself.

  In the space of a couple of heartbeats, Bosk identified the key Scourge Sniper targets, lined up the first and pressed the trigger. The blue beam of incandescent energy leapt from the muzzle of his Charge rifle and instantly traversed the distance between it and the Scourge’s forehead. Unlike Selfia’s bolt-action rifle, his Charge rifle drilled a neat hole about an inch across. Matter directly impacted by the beam vanished in a cloud of super-heated gas while any surrounding material instantly liquefied.

  The Scourge’s skull held together for a brief second and then vapourised in Bosk’s superheated needle of energy. He did not take any notice any of this as he was concentrating with such a ferocious intensity that he paid no heed to the bead of sweat that trickled down the side of his forehead. Timing the shot between heartbeats, he lined up his barrel on the next target and fired.

  The vein on the side of his temple pulsed with the blood rushing from each pump of his heart. Like a strange galloping horse, Bosk tuned his inner ear to his internal beating drum, timed his shot and fired again. The training back in Cadet School flowed through his veins and combined with more than twenty years of experience. Less than five seconds had passed and three enemy bodies were in the process of collapsing to the ground.

  Through the cold methodical Raven’s ritual of his Concord training, a thought broke through to the surface, “Get up son!”

  Again, Bosk listened to his heart so that he could more accurately fire his rifle in between the beats. Thump, thump. Fire. Thump, thump. Fire. Two heads snapped off enemy shoulders in the space of four heartbeats. He knew that he was pushing the recharging rate of his rifle but decided to risk firing shots that were not a maximum charge anyway.

  Ruby lasers raced instantly up the hill towards Elzetro missing him by mere inches. Like a plasma welding torch they clawed at the ground and punched boiling holes in the rocks around him. What seemed like hours, was only seconds and the nanomeds in Elzetro’s battleframe flooded his wound and eased some of the pain. At the same time, the battleframe nanites began repairing the hole drilled through the plate armour covering his calf muscle. Without his battleframe and nanomeds Elzetro would have permanently lost his leg. Crawling on all fours, he began to move up the hill. A singular thought raced through his mind, “Dad, I’m coming!”

  Thump, thump. Fire. Thump, thump. Fire. “There’s too many of them!” Bosk’s mind cried out in desperation.

  By this time, rapid assault rifle fire began pinging the rocks around Elzetro and Bosk as Scourge Shock troopers sprayed covering fire up the slope. A few rounds gave a metallic ding as they bounced off Elzetro’s back armour. An enemy sniper round tore a hole through a rock just in front of Bosk’s position and with a crack the escaping superheated gases split the stone neatly in two.

  Bosk was frantic. “Son, move faster!”

  Bosk ignored all the fire and noise around him even as a few machine gun rounds pinged loudly off his own shoulder armour. Thump, thump. Fire. Thump, thump. Fire. It was almost a routine now but the stress was showing on his face as he blinked away another trickle of sweat that made its way into his eye. Thump, thump. Fire. Thump, thump. Fire.

  He was the dealer of death to those that would harm his son. The best training in the Concord was being hyper-focused by a parent’s instinct to protect their child. Bosk became something almost supernatural as bolt after bolt of energy leaped from his Charge rifle to disable, maim, slice and tear at those that would try to harm his son.

  “Elzetro, keep moving!”

  Scourge gunfire rained all around Elzetro. Bullets thudded deep bass notes into the earth in symphonic counter point to the high-pitched pings when they bounced off his back armour. The kinetic energy induced by each impact threatened to push his face back into the earth and render him completely helpless. Elzetro kept crawling towards his father, one foot and hand after another he kept moving towards the safety of the other side of the hillside.

  "Dad, I’m coming!"

  A squad of three Scourge Slayers with their wicked sharpened teeth barred, raced up the left side of the hill and began cutting back across towards Elzetro as he stumbled his way towards his father. Thump, thump. Fire. Thump, thump. Fire. Thump, thump. Fire. Three shots.

  Three bodies.

  Ignoring the twitching remains of the Slayers through his scope, Bosk swung his rifle back around to the main body of Scourge. More enemies rushed out from under the trees even while others began climbing the hillside.

  Elzetro had spent months studying manuals to become a masterclass battleframe mechanic and he personally knew his own Rook frame from the inside out. Despite his injuries, he was certain that his frame’s nanites had managed to repair the connecting systems to his left-boot jump jet. Without both jets operating in tandem a controlled burst could end up with him flopping over the battle field like a rag doll and even possibly dump him down amongst the Scourge.

  “Move son! You need to move faster!”

  Looking up towards his father’s position Elzetro watched him firing one beam after another and never at the same target. It was not necessary. He knew that his father was shooting first at the targets that could reach his position quickest as he crawled his way forward.

  “I will get to you Dad!”

  Filled with a sense of pride for his father’s prowess Elzetro risked firing his jump jets. The rapid acceleration threatened to break his leg in half but miraculously the newly formed armour, bone and sinew held together. Sensing the increased stress on his body, his battleframe automatically injected a cocktail of new counter pain meds that suddenly made the world a much happier place as he raced up to the crest of the slope. Bullets that had previously been bouncing off his battleframe now passed through empty space where he had been only moments ago. He had made it to the other side and temporary safety!

  A bellow of malevolent rage rolled like thunder up the hill from a hundred warriors denied their quarry. Like a rushing tide, the mass of Scourge began running towards the hills crest.

  “Elzetro was safe!”

  As relief for his son’s survival swept over him, Bosk looked down at the mass of Scourge coming up the hill. He now fired into the host almost indiscriminately to cause as much chaos as possible. He had never seen so many Scourge in one place before. The most important thing was that his son was safe, at least for the moment.

  Chapter 7

  Pyro’s Dance

  Bosk spared a glance up from his scope to see three squat automated turrets materialise out of the air around him. Once in place they immediately began firing at the Scourge climbing the hillside. Piloting his Rook Engineering battleframe DG dropped a health and ammo supply station just behind Bosk on their side of the hill and spoke the clipped staccato of abbreviated Concord battlespeak, “Bosk, supply, six o’clock”

  DG’s instructions drilled their way into Bosk’s consciousness and he rolled backwards towards the supply station just as Kheldar arrived flushing the area around the squad with a massive dose of nanomeds from his Concord BioTech battleframe. The instant health infusion blasted the fatigue of rescuing his son away and he turned towards Elzetro to see the last vestiges of the hole in his armour close over. Sadly, due to the Scourge racing towards them their greetings had to be short.

  Turning to Elzetro, Bosk said in battlespeak, “Status”

  “G2G”

  Bosk and Elzetro smiled back at each other for a second and then went straight back to their grizzly work.

  Pyro’s battleframe had a significantly slower glide speed than the rest of the squad with the result he was the last man to arrive over Bosk’s position. From his vantage point above the battlefield he surveyed Bosk’s handiwork with his Charge rifle and saw the huge number of Scourge racing up the hillside towards his squad-mates’ position. Rather than joining the others and providing a single position for the Scourg
e to focus their fire, Pyro decided to do something eminently more dangerous. He would become the second front.

  Diving earthwards Pyro pulled in his wings at the last minute, lightly touch down, and then fully introduce himself to the Scourge below. In some ways, introductions were unnecessary because many of the Scourge had heard of Whizzbang’s son, while others would never need introducing to anyone else in this life again. Seeing Pyro in action was like watching a ballet dancer leaping, rolling and pirouetting through the air. While a dancer wore a leotard, Pyro wore over half a ton of Concord Dreadnaught battleframe armour and carried a super-heavy chain gun that fully communicated his intentions.

  The Blue Sky research team designed the super-heavy chain gun to fire a thousand rounds of depleted tellurite every minute. Despite their every effort, they had never managed to resolve the Newtonian problem: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Put simply, when first fired, the initial chain gun prototypes dislocated the shoulders of the firer and shoved his back through the testing range door behind him.

  Thinking out of the box, the researchers did not solve the gun’s recoil problems, they just made the Dreadnaught battleframe massive enough to take the punishment. They massively increased the armour and structural reinforcement, which meant the size of the leg servos, and jump jets, had to compensate for the additional weight. For most pilots this meant a huge reduction in speed and mobility, which essentially turned them into a lumbering gun emplacement. However, as has been suggested, Pyro was not like other pilots.

  When he commenced his non-verbal communication with the Scourge below, it was in a language that both sides clearly understood and did not require translating. His chain gun did not rudely thunder its introductions to a fist of five Scourge Slayers, but rather it gently purred like a kitten as it sliced each of them cleanly in half. The seething mass of Scourge received Pyro’s message and roared in defiance back at him, even as they continued racing up the hill with all their weapons blazing.