When she hit the ground, spasms of pain racked her body, and she was unable to keep her footing. She shook on the ground, hands curling uselessly at nothing.
Vickers landed beside her, and he didn’t ask whether she was ready to continue—he simply hoisted her up by her armpits and they kept hobbling along, somehow.
She was glad he didn’t ask. It was exactly how she wanted the soldiers she’d trained to act, actually. Wasting time on mercy or sympathy at a time like this would only kill Rug, or possibly all three of them. Either Lisa could make it in time or she couldn’t, and it would be much better if she could.
At last, they reached the ravine, and Lisa immediately opened up a wide channel, not bothering to take the time to configure a two-way: “Rug! We’re in! Now you come back, too.”
But the Quatro was already bounding toward them across the terrain, armor-piercing rounds from the Ambler’s twin autocannons tearing up the ground all around her.
Lisa had Vickers help her scrabble away from the entrance to the ravine—just in time. Rug barreled through, arresting her momentum several meters in.
“Let’s keep going,” Lisa said. “We’re still not completely safe.”
As though to confirm her words, more bullets bit into the rock face of the ravine mouth, sending flecks of stone flying through the air.
It took them an hour more at Lisa’s hobbled pace to get back to the shuttles, where the rest of the militia awaited them, unharmed.
Lisa’s chest swelled with pride, then—at her own actions.
It’s okay to take pride in your own work, her father’s voice told her inside her head. In her own voice, she added: Especially when that work results in saving your friends.
“We need to send a shuttle for Tessa,” Lisa said through gritted teeth. “I’ll go with that shuttle. Rug, you can stay with the one we came in, and we’ll return with its pilot soon.”
The Quatro studied her with solemn eyes. “No, Lisa Sato. I would share a shuttle with you and Tessa Notaras once more.”
Returning the alien’s gaze, Lisa marveled at the magnanimity of the Quatro—the capacity to forgive.
If we were all like Rug, the world would be a much happier, much safer place.
“All right, then. Come on.”
Lisa ordered their new shuttle pilot to take the long way around to pick up Tessa and the rogue pilot. She didn’t feel like having to worry about Ambler fire twice in one day.
They found Tessa and the pilot exactly where Tessa had said they’d be, and as usual, the older woman had the situation well in hand. The pilot sat with his hands over the back of his head, which was tucked between his knees.
“Look at me,” Lisa ordered, her voice cold. She leaned against Rug, who’d tried to tell her to stay inside the shuttle, but she’d insisted on coming out.
The pilot refused to budge.
“Look at her, Slime,” Tessa said, and now the pilot did look. The white-haired soldier smiled. “I’ve been passing the time by teaching him to heed me.”
“He’d better learn to heed all of us,” Lisa said, her voice strained.
Tessa squinted at her. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“She’s been shot, Tessa Notaras,” Rug said.
“I see. We’d better get that seen to, then.” Tessa paused, studying the Quatro with wary eyes. “How are we, Rug?”
“We remain part of the same drift, and our friendship remains intact.”
Bowing her head, Tessa said, “Thank you. Thank you, so much.”
“You’ve got some guts,” Lisa said to the pilot, her voice even tighter. “You knew about that Ambler being down there, didn’t you?”
The pilot didn’t answer, his face looking paler by the second.
“He did,” Tessa said. “He told me all about it while we waited. Came to find himself very loose-tongued during our time together, did Slime.”
Lisa decided not to probe too deeply into that statement. “We still need him to fly the shuttle,” she said. “But we need to start double-checking everything he claims.”
“Oh, I doubt he’ll try something like that again,” Tessa said. She paused before adding, somewhat grudgingly: “But I see the wisdom in what you’re saying.”
Inside the shuttle, Tessa inspected Lisa’s bullet wound. “Your shoulder’s a mess. Looks like the round only clipped it, though—it didn’t actually go through. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have a shoulder anymore. Those autocannons fire armor-piercers.”
“Can you do anything for it?”
“I can dress it, in the old-fashioned way. Iatric nanobots would be ideal, but since we don’t have a nanotechnician with us, we’ll have to make do with what we can scrounge from the medkits.”
Within a half hour, they were underway again—hundreds of feet in the air, scanning the terrain for signs of the Gatherer convoy.
They picked it up again two miles past the ravine where they’d encountered the Ambler. This time, Lisa and Tessa pored over the landscape themselves, looking for signs of enemies.
They found none, so they decided to risk touching down and continuing their investigation. It was possible the same Ambler would find them again, but hopefully not. If it did, maybe they’d be able to finish it off, this time.
Lisa didn’t actually believe that. But their mission was too important to suffer further delays.
“I think you should stay behind,” Tessa said.
“Like hell,” Lisa said. “I’m coming, too.”
“Lisa,” Tessa said, leveling a characteristically stern glare at her.
“Don’t try that with me, Tessa. I’m not a little girl anymore. I don’t cling to your apron strings like I used to. Like it or not, I lead this militia, and I’m not being taken off this mission.”
Tessa didn’t argue any further, though Lisa did hear her mutter, “I’d look ridiculous in an apron.”
The shuttles touched down, and they picked up the Gatherer trail once more.
After twenty minutes of trailing them, the Gatherers disappeared into a tunnel that was naturally concealed by the terrain—cast in shadow by an overhang.
“We’re going in,” Lisa said, and that was that.
Rug insisted on taking point, and Nail joined her, along with Pen, Fan, and most of the other Quatro that hadn’t stayed behind to guard the shuttle pilots, all ten of whom they’d corralled inside the same shuttle for easy monitoring. Next came the human portion of the militia. The rest of the Quatro brought up the rear.
For a time, all that could be heard was the tromp of boots, the soft but audible padding of Quatro paws, and the skittering of the Gatherers.
Then, a scream broke the silence, from directly behind Lisa.
She whirled around, and she gasped, the shock causing fresh pain to shoot down her back, emanating from her injury.
One of the Gatherers had impaled Rodney Vickers.
Chapter 22
Shower of Shrapnel
Lisa reacted without thinking, switching her SL-17 to fully automatic and opening fire on the Gatherer attacking Vickers. She unloaded a full magazine into the thing, swapped in another one from her belt, and kept firing.
The Gatherer withdrew the thin blade with which it had skewered Vickers, turned to Lisa, and advanced toward her. Behind it, Vickers slumped to the tunnel floor, clutching his midsection and trailing blood down the rock wall.
Taking a step backward, Lisa continued to unload on the alien robot. At last, when she’d spent almost two full magazines on it, it burst apart in a shower of shrapnel, some of which pinged off the front of Lisa’s jumpsuit.
She nearly tripped over the Gatherer behind her, then, and she dodged ahead just in time to evade the swipe of a claw, freshly grown just for her.
Accidents involving the Gatherers were not unheard of, and she’d read plenty of news reports about people losing property to the things. There’d even been a few people who’d lost their lives to the machines.
But other than clearing t
he path between whatever resources they were collecting and the deposit sites, the Gatherers had never been known to use their transforming ability to shape weapons for intentional use against foes of any kind.
Before this, Lisa had only known the robots to have one function.
Now, she knew better.
She managed to roll a sizable rock off the tunnel floor and into her hand, which she hurled at the Gatherer that was inching toward her, now wielding four claws, each at the end of a ropey, metallic limb.
The rock connected squarely with the thing, knocking it back, and causing the sinewy limbs to flail in a way that would have been comical under other circumstances.
Lisa reached for one of the grenades clipped to her belt, but thought better of it. In these tight confines, that would have endangered her companions. Instead, she resumed the same approach as before, peppering the thing with bullets while walking backward.
She still had to swap in a second magazine to finish the job, and the Gatherer surged forward as she did. When her back connected with the rock face, panic surged through Lisa, and she desperately tried to click the magazine into place.
At last, she got it, opening fire. This Gatherer only took two rounds from the second magazine before exploding.
Either the rock helped, or my aim’s getting better.
She spotted Rug to her right, contending with three of the beasts. The Quatro blasted one clean apart with her energy weapon, and then she swiped at another as it leapt toward her, knocking it into the rock and causing it to shatter in a satisfying cascade of sparks and shrapnel.
Even though Rug had vanquished it, the second Gatherer had managed to bloody Rug’s paw, and the third latched onto her side, ripping savagely into flesh.
Wincing, Lisa fired at the thing, praying she didn’t harm her friend in the process.
She got one round in before Rug yelled, “Stop!”
Lisa did, and the Quatro slammed the Gatherer against the rock—once, twice.
The robot finally disintegrated with the second blow.
“Let me see,” Lisa said, reaching for Rug’s side, which glistened with blood in the dim light provided by their jumpsuits.
“No time,” Rug said, charging at a Gatherer that was menacing Tessa. The Quatro batted it against the wall, where it exploded.
Nodding at Rug, Tessa turned to fire on another Gatherer with a shotgun.
Ten minutes later, the battle was over, with all the Gatherers destroyed.
But not without exacting an awful toll on Lisa’s militia. When she finally made it to him, Rodney Vickers stared into space with glassy eyes. Lisa was just closing his eyelids with her fingers when she heard a shriek from behind her.
She turned to see Beatie Anderson—a good soldier—holding her own intestines in her hands.
“End it,” Anderson moaned. “Please, please.”
Lisa shot a glance behind her shoulder, feeling helpless.
I can’t do this. No way I can do this.
Her gaze found Tessa, who was already walking past, her features tightening as she drew her pistol to place it against Anderson’s head.
“Goodbye, friend,” Tessa said. “You served well.”
Anderson only sobbed, until the shot rang out, and she fell backward, her skull glancing off a rock with a sickening crack. She still clutched her innards between her fingers.
Turning to face Lisa, Tessa reholstered her pistol.
“I—” Lisa said, and it came out as a croak. Her chin wobbled, and she felt like sitting on the tunnel floor and crying.
You lead these people, Lisa Sato. Get it together. Now.
“This…” She swallowed. “What does this mean? The Gatherers…they’ve never…”
“It means things just got a lot more dire on this planet,” Tessa answered, and Lisa thought she could hear the “girl” that she didn’t add. “And we’ve only just arrived.”
Rug joined them. “We must move forward. If these Gatherers were reprogrammed by my people to bring more resources to them, then those Quatro could be in danger. More will be coming.”
Lisa nodded, wiping her eyes on her upper arm. “Neutralize every Gatherer we encounter. We won’t let them travel among us like that anymore. They won’t get that advantage again.”
She didn’t know whether the others found her words comforting, but they did nothing for her, personally. They couldn’t bring back Vickers, or Anderson.
Checking over her assault rifle, she moved to take the lead as they progressed down into the pitch-black of underground.
Chapter 23
Cordage
As fast as the MIMAS mechs were, the quads were faster, and so, it seemed, were the Quatro in general.
We’ve never had the problem of having to chase them before, Ash reflected.
Probably, Chief Roach would have been able to catch up to them on his own, but he seemed newly attuned to the need for Oneiri Team to continue functioning as a united force.
Facing down fifty plus Quatro will do that.
That said, Roach had performed more than admirably while taking on three quads simultaneously. Even before fusing with the alien mech, the man had possessed battle calm in spades, but now his movements spoke of an entity that interfaced with battle, making it dance to a tune he played.
The moment they’d lost sight of their quarry, Marco had projected the enemy’s probable trajectory and deduced that they were headed straight for Cordage, another Glades village.
“I wonder if it’s a fluke, that their escape route is taking them toward another settlement,” Henrietta said when Marco shared the news.
“I doubt it, Razor,” Roach said. “I’d bet the Quatro have extensive intel on this area.”
Again, Roach surprised Ash by using the nickname she’d only just come up with for Henrietta Jin.
He really is making an effort to reintegrate with the team.
She experienced a glimmer of hope, then.
Maybe we can win this thing, after all.
They reached the village as dawn was breaking, the trees thinning once more, giving way to structures. Now that she could see them without engaging her night vision, and she had time to actually study them for a second, Ash saw that the homes were designed to match the forest, with logs that had not been cut to give that right-angle, rectangular look most buildings had. Instead, they cascaded down the buildings in waves. Somehow, the resulting aesthetic managed to appear elegant rather than ramshackle.
There was no sign of Quatro anywhere, though Ash now knew better than to take that as a reason to relax.
Still, a few villagers had already emerged from their homes into the early morning. The first person Oneiri came across was cutting wood behind what was presumably her home.
When she noticed the mechs approaching, she dropped her ax, wavering as though about to flee, her skin paling.
“You,” Roach barked. “Have there been any sign of Quatro around here?” He said it as though she wasn’t looking at them like they were a host of demons descending on her village for the sole purpose of wreaking havoc and bringing torment.
Her voice shook as she answered: “N-no, sir. No Quatro here.”
Roach grunted, marching past her, causing the pile of wood she’d stacked to tremble with each step. With the third step, it toppled over.
Crouching near the woman, Ash restacked the wood, though she wasn’t sure the new pile resembled the old one very much. The logs felt likes twigs beneath her metal fingers, and she was having trouble with the delicate motions the operation required.
She stood up again, clearing her throat. “Uh—don’t mind Dynamo, ma’am. Diplomacy never was his strong suit. I’m Steam.” She was about to extend her hand before thinking better of it, fearful that she’d crush the woman’s tiny digits in her grasp.
“Bethany,” the woman said, mouth agape.
Ash exchanged looks with Beth, who stood nearby. Beth’s MIMAS tilted its head sideways.
“Bethany,
” Ash said, smiling inside her mech. “What a nice name.”
They followed Roach through to the center of the village, where he was in the midst of questioning another villager.
The man quaked where he stood, and the rest of the village green was conspicuously empty of other villagers.
I wonder why, Ash thought sarcastically as she heard a door slam shut nearby.
Inserting herself between the alien mech and the man as carefully as she could, Ash craned her neck to stare up at the behemoth Roach had become.
“Uh, sir? Hi. What have you discovered?”
“I was just in the middle of asking this guy about the Quatro.” Roach moved his hand, as though to nudge Ash out of the way.
“Uh, yes,” she said, catching his hand by the wrist. “But—it doesn’t look like the Quatro have been here, does it? I’m not sure further questioning is necessary.”
“Hmm,” Roach said. “I guess not. We should search the surrounding terrain.”
“Good! Good idea. Let’s let these people get back to their daily tasks.”
Nodding curtly, Roach turned to march off the village green.
The man’s gaze switched rapidly back and forth from Roach to Ash to Roach again. Behind him, a Gatherer trundled toward a collection facility.
“Have a nice day, sir,” she said. “Best wishes.” She snapped off a jaunty little salute and followed the chief.
God. That was awful. Looks like I’m getting pretty terrible at diplomacy myself.
A scream rose up behind her, and she turned, extending her bayonets instinctively.
The Gatherer had abandoned its course toward the collection facility to tackle the man. It reared above him, blades snaking out from its ever-shifting surface.
Ash didn’t think—she just acted. Her right hand segmented, retracting to rest against her wrist, and she spun up that rotary autocannon. Armor-piercing rounds caught the Gatherer in the side, causing it to disintegrate instantly.
Shaking even worse than before, the man managed to regain his feet.
“Are you hurt, sir?” Ash called.
“N-no…” he said, staring down at himself. “I don’t think…”
Mech Wars: The Complete Series Page 47