Active radar emanated from the camp along with other sensors, pinging continuously for any sign of hostiles. Inside the steel ring, another 33 Steyr’s underwent various stages of light maintenance work along with a dozen of the heavy Mech armor referred to as HellCats, while dozens of armored personnel transports lined up in neat formations within the camp center. Hardened tents, each with its own man-sized airlock provided semi-permanent structures for the thousands of troops milling about the camp, breaking up the unending red landscape with their pale green waves.
Dead center of the camp prominently featured the last jamming and artillery units Mikkhael needed to eliminate before he could attempt a successful rescue of the Rebels, as well as communication gear for broadcasting the signal they had been following. In such close proximity to the main jamming unit, Aurora was entirely unable to use any of her vast and intricate network of cyber-powers.
Before losing the last strand of tenuous connection to her slave network, Aurora hived off an alias of herself, placing it out of reach of the jamming stations to maintain the electronic battle in her absence. She knew that even now, the copy of herself was orchestrating a series of delaying actions, protecting her assets as best it could until they destroyed the electronic jammer and she reassumed control.
She was the first to break the silence. “I know what you are thinking, but we cannot attack that and live,” she warned. There was no need for further explanation.
Mouth dry, but fear conspicuously absent, Mikkhael looked around one last time, judging the forces arrayed against them. He did not doubt her conclusion, and yet he felt oddly at peace for the first time in years as he looked out across the valley floor crawling with enemies. “You yourself said we don’t have time to waste. You said we were being surrounded by more than this…” He swept his hand in front him, alluding to the PDF. “We don’t have to kill them all, God knows we can’t, we just have to make it to the other side, one way or the other.”
Starkindler seemed to purr with approval, the reactor output briefly ramping up.
“You are finally ready.”
The simplicity of the statement could have well confused anyone listening in, unaware of its significance. He did not reply at first, continuing to scan the horizon before him, letting her words sink in fully as he considered them. He then looked down at his hands, noticing they no longer shook. He eyed his vitals, seeing that everything was as normal as if he were home eating dinner with his friends back on Earth, not facing off against impossible odds. As he looked back to the HUD, he was almost disappointed by his own lack of emotion. In these few, singular moments, he simply existed, taking pleasure in that fact as he waited for someone else to make a move.
Aurora waited a moment before continuing. “You are ready, on an instinctual level in complete synchronization with both Starkindler and myself. Rage is a frightening human emotion, able to drive humans to terrible actions. But, to cast aside all emotion and see events with unclouded eyes is the only way to truly dominate an overwhelming opponent. We always knew this moment would come. This is why Starkindler and I were created. We are outmanned, outgunned, and now Mikkhael Dreyfus you have to make a choice. They are arrogant and overconfident. Those are elite Marines down there, being held in reserve until you show yourself. Their numbers have made them complacent. You will have to face this enemy, now when you are most prepared to, or later when they have hunted us down and cornered us in preparation to finish you off. Those artillery pieces are pointed directly at Eve and the other rebels. I assure you, the forces in that camp are monitoring every single movement in the canyon in which they are sheltering. They may not be able to detect us, but they do not have to. The second we make our rescue attempt they will know, and death will then be certain.”
“I’m sorry, Aurora.” Mikkhael said. “This was always a one way trip; to Mars, and now to here where it all finally ends. I wanted to make more of a difference before my time was up, but seeing all this assembled just to stop us makes me believe we have accomplished enough; or nearly so. By the time this is finally over, they will never be able to forget the gravity of their mistake. I never wanted to be a martyr, but a symbol of resistance and hope for those who needed it. I have no intention of going quietly. I will not run away and hide. By the time this is over, they will never be allowed to forget us no matter how hard they try to erase the memory of our existence.”
Mikkhael scanned his systems one last time, stopping only to flip one single switch; It was a pre-set list of permissions that allowed Aurora access to any of Starkindler’s systems at any time she wished until he flipped the switch back. She could use her incredible processing power to fire any weapon he had with 100% accuracy without first asking for his permission, as well as take control of piloting if she saw something dangerous that he missed. In the worst-case scenario, if something happened to him, she could continue fighting without his input with instructions to self-destruct instead of allowing him to be captured. Until then, he would pilot and use the weapons mounted on Starkindler’s arms, while her focus would be defensive measures, rockets, grenades, and their remaining pair of drones.
“You know, you can still turn back. You might even make it out of this alive. There is not a person in this world that would blame you for making that choice.” Aurora asked him quietly.
“No, I can’t.” With that simple phrase said aloud, Mikkhael leaned forward in his seat, nearly standing to his full height as he slipped the cloaked Mech down over the side of the hill, quickly gaining speed as the wings half-deployed to help stabilize their headlong rush straight towards the center of the PDF encampment. They approached silently except for the wind whistling around the machine body that personified death incarnate, gliding at low power as their speed continued to increase, kinetic forces in multiple dimensions seeking to propel them towards this one inevitable moment insipidly referred to as destiny.
Until this moment, Mikkhael kept his remaining and strongest physical shield in place on Starkindler’s back, helping to further mask the engine exhaust’s IFR signature, relying up until this point on the regenerative power of the energy shields to carry the day. The sheer size of the enemy forces arrayed against him down on the plain below mandated that every effort would be needed in order to have any possibility of survival, to the point that he had so far resisted the urge to query Aurora for a calculation of his chances of persisting past the imminent approach of fate. Whether he lived or died would hinge entirely on how rapidly he could reduce the number of Marines before they recovered from his surprise attack and use their sheer numbers to overwhelm and then defeat him.
As death itself slipped silently, unseen down the side of the small mountain towards its prey, the wind whispered succulent promises of permanent release and eternal sleep, wrapping Starkindler in its ethereal arms, gently cradling the hurting and temporarily vulnerable suspended form of Mikkhael. Fear welled up inside him, twisting his gut, wrapping its cold, deathlike hands tightly around his heart, pressing down on his chest making it hard to breathe. Even Aurora started to express further doubts about their current course of action but he acted before she could finish.
A bystander might have commented that the inevitability of everything pushed him over the edge, some last reserve in him finally snapping, desperate to end the pain of continued existence. If he had been asked, looking back at that moment, Mikkhael would have tried to form ineffective phrases about how his instincts screamed at him to keep moving forward, that he could no longer wait to act. The truth was, he no longer knew what was driving him. No thought at all was put into his actions; there was no rational explanation. Instead, he acted on feelings older than higher reasoning back from the dawn of man, when humans had been forced to act in order to continue persisting, not stand idly by and judge whether or not acting was the right thing to do.
With everything, his life, his dream, and the only machine in the galaxy capable of achieving them placed on the line, the blood in his veins boiled wit
h desperate vitality as subconscious instincts strived to achieve a future no one bothered to explain to him was impossible. The warrior within him fully awakened, there was no thought, no sense of right or wrong, feelings were not taken into consideration, he simply existed with a need to press forward and achieve a guarantee of victory, something that would only be achieved after walking across a field of corpses.
Aurora helped him descend the hill through gaps in the drone patrol patterns, passing unnoticed with a window of only seconds. A patrolling Steyr passed on the other side of a boulder they used for cover, and then they maneuvered out of the way of a piercing narrow-band radar beam, passing unnoticed through a third drone’s searching IFR scan. Starkindler’s active camouflage system was perfection. The metamaterials and radar-absorbing materials cloaking them redirected all forms of radio frequency waves around the huge Mech armor as if it was not even there, making visual detection of their passing across the terrain their only danger, a task still impossibly difficult for unassisted human eyes to perform.
They hit flat terrain, gliding across the small interspersed crags filled with layer after layer of blood-red dust as Mikkhael gently coaxed the engines through more degrees of increased output, the wings now fully deployed like a hawk swooping down to snatch its prey. He began to accelerate into the camp, barely half a mile remained for him to reach the outer layer of the still-unaware perimeter defenses.
“Now!” He screamed into the mic. The reactor roared into life as Aurora activated full afterburners. Starkindler seemed to shake with anticipation for the battle to come as it fully awakened, leaping with eagerness as it was finally unshackled, thrusters screaming with raw power as twin infernos of unfettered exhaust raged violently in the wake of their passing. Aurora channeled every extra joule of reactor output into over-charging the energy shields to dangerously high levels, causing alarms to blare in warning, joining the cacophony of other warnings and alerts as the Marines started reacting to the danger in their midst as Starkindler recklessly flew straight into the center of their encampment at maximum velocity.
Mikkhael’s first targets were a pair of drone sentry guns randomly interspersed throughout the camp that homed in on their blooming IFR signature. He used the sub cannons to take them out and then targeted a heavy Marine Steyr walking slowly across the camp, destroying the unprepared Mech armor with a combined blast from both main cannons directly to the torso, obliterating the machine in a hailstorm of semi-liquefied metal. Shards peppered Starkindler’s energy shields, sizzling violently as they futilely sought to pierce his protective layers. Nearby tents and mechanized units caught fire as their unprotected frames were vulnerable to the molten fire raining down on them.
Switching targets, he lobbed a trio of grenades into a field-maintenance shed occupied by a Steyr while the main guns recharged. Not stopping to watch as the maintenance shed blistered upwards before catastrophically failing to contain the blast, thereby adding additional fuel to the conflagration fanning into existence behind them, Mikkhael proceeded further into the camp at a suicidal speed. As they raced past an armored squads readiness field, cleared for Steyrs standing prepared nearby, Aurora fired a full barrage of dozens of the small missiles in steady succession, targeting and destroying four more unmanned Steyrs. She switched to the medium anti-Mech armor missiles and launched a pair, finishing off an approaching HellCat, the lone pilot efficiently responding to the danger.
She pumped a never-ending stream of death further into the camp, reloading and firing again and again as she destroyed unmanned Mech armor, mechanized vehicles, drones, and several tanks that had all been arranged with military precision, laid out in such a way as to assist in their destruction, hapless to avoid the inevitable waves of carnage. Without their shields or pilots, the toll from the endless output of rockets and missiles was immense, and she efficiently eliminated one target after another. Meanwhile, Mikkhael reached the center of the camp, destroying several defensive drones as they activated with his main cannons, having to rely on the point defense cannons as other automated turrets and drones came online in cumulative waves and began returning fire with rapidly increasing ferocity.
There, in the center of the Marine encampment, the main body of the responding PDF were limited by a completely unexpected development; friendly fire. Their onboard targeting computers Identify Friend or Foe, or IFF algorithms would not allow them to fire if there was any chance of them missing and striking one of their own via crossfire. The PDF pilots found themselves only able to fire when they had a clear shot that their targeting computers judged to have 100% accuracy and landing rate, factors that never presented themselves for any reasonable length of time.
Aurora recognized their complication, and with her help, Mikkhael capitalized on their handicap, maneuvering wildly to stay in between as many PDF forces as he could manage. She hacked multiple Marine comm units, relaying the sounds of their pilots screaming in frustration as their targeting computers continuously locked them out of the opportunity to return fire, dying where they stood. She monitored the links to ensure that they were always one step ahead of their foes, seizing every small advantage they could.
The limitations placed on the PDF in no way affected Mikkhael as Starkindler power slid from one corner to the next in the center of the camp, dancing amongst the seemingly endless assortment of hobbled forces arrayed against him as g-forces punished his body. Countdown timers filled the top of the HUD, intermixed with priority tags of every color in all directions. Munition counters screamed in panicky alerts as their load outs were quickly exhausted, barrels warping under the stress of continuous fully automatic fire.
To their extreme credit, the Marines did not turn and flee. Working efficiently, their patrols collapsed inwards, working together, firing in tandem in order to pin Starkindler down in the center of the camp, trapping him until reinforcements arrived. They courageously fought as dozens of their numbers fell. Creative types hunkered down into the only available cover, using the charred hulks of their dead brethren and the limited camp infrastructure as meager protection.
Slowly seizing some of the initiative back, the Marines began figuring out how to return fire, quickly realizing Starkindler’s mammoth size meant they could raise the elevation of their attacks, landing strikes in quick succession against the top layers of Starkindler’s energy shields, watching as each successive strike gradually slowed him down. Still other quick-thinking pilots went low, firing at Starkindler’s feet and lower extremities as it desperately maneuvered in front of them. The drones were unable to compensate in the same way as the manned units, and instead were taken control over by remote operators who drove them into Starkindler’s path to be used as the fodder they were built for, getting chewed up and run over, their operators frantic to pin him down in whatever way possible.
Just as he began to hope he might actually stand a chance, Special Forces began dropping from hovering Chimeras behind the line of stalwart Marines, their powerful and capable Mech armor quickly assembling before performing a coordinated counter-attack, following the trail of destruction Mikkhael left in his wake.
Aurora warned him just in time. “Mikkhael! HellCats have arrived! They have learned from the Marines and were granted permission to shut down their targeting computers!”
Mikkhael rocked sideways, pinned in place by straps as they took an incoming strike head on. He watched white bolts of lightning angrily streak across the outer hull as several shots from the newly arrived HellCats struck against the energy shields, critically weakening them. They were unable to absorb and convert the sheer amount of raw energy being thrown at them. More of the super-heated plasma made it through the shields, impacting heavily on the physical shield that showed ample evidence of other recent strikes. Two of the shots made their way past every external layer of defense, burning up large patches of the heat-absorbing foam.
With nothing left to lose and all other options expended, Aurora activated the two drones held in reserve
up until this point, dropping both from their armored bays underneath the wings to keep the Special Forces busy, hopefully buying a greatly needed few seconds of time. Mikkhael activated the remaining pair of RATOs, using the extra speed to escape being boxed in by another squadron of Steyr’s returning from combat patrol. What felt like a kick in the gut momentarily blacked him out. The surrounding landscape and enemies melted into a blur, temporarily forcing Aurora to take over piloting, allowing them to dodge between the burning carcasses of destroyed Mech armor that rendered the PDF sensors useless while dodging shots fired at their quickly retreating back. The drones remained behind, taking enemies from behind where they were most vulnerable for a few moments before the Marines eliminated them.
Aurora kept up a steady narrative as Mikkhael regained consciousness, the battle continuing to unfold now at the far end of the camp from which they entered. “Shields at 30% and dropping, 45% reduction in regenerative abilities. Enemy force reduced by 3%. Priority targets to your 4 o’clock. Reloading missiles. Launching grenades three hundred yards intermittent spray pattern, lightly armored targets destroyed. Incoming missiles, brace for impact. Shields at 16% Launching missiles, targets destroyed. Danger 7 o’clock, three targets.” She complemented his capabilities perfectly. He handled offence and close range battles while she handled defensive countermeasures and the long-range fights with missiles. Her unemotional patter fell into a steady rhythm as the wholesale slaughter continued.
Starkindler (MechaVerse Series Book 1) Page 33