I tore my eyes away from the incoming fire to the screen that detailed our weapons systems and the viability of the mech’s engine. Everything that had once been green was turning yellow. Not. Cool.
I looked back and saw one of the bomb beasts jump directly at us from the other side of the wall.
“INCOMING!” I screamed.
The thing’s metal legs contracted and I threw up our mech’s arm. The bomb beast ricocheted off our arm, the momentum carrying it down toward the alien fighters. I unfurled our other arm and Jezzy fired a burst from the cannons that pulped it—
BOOM!
—detonating the biomechanical beast, creating an airburst that knocked a handful of the alien fighters down, buying us several precious seconds of time as our EKIA counter continued to spin, tallying the twenty-three scuds we’d apparently dispatched.
The Spence mech and Ren’s and Sato’s machine reached down and grabbed the other mechs and heaved them up onto the wall.
We turned together and watched the alien soldiers regrouping, gathering up weapons and supplies. Then we spidered down the other side of the wall and slammed to the ground and started firing at them.
We swept our cannons and rocket pods left to right, mowing down the other aliens.
Billy and Dru fired rockets at the glider which was damaged, greasy smoke billowing from the rear stabilizers and rudders.
“WHERE’S TIMBO?!” Jezzy shouted.
“FORGET ABOUT HIM!” Simeon shouted. “WE CAME HERE TO KILL THE SCUDS AND DESTROY THE VAULT!”
He was right of course. We had to reach the vault’s power source which was not too far away. But why couldn’t we do that AND take down my old nemesis?
I scanned the viewscreen, but couldn’t make out where the demonic alien might be. I saw the power source, however, glowing like the wrath of God, only a few thousand feet away.
Swinging forward, we clambered over the deck of the vault, hunting for the power source, caught up in an intense firefight. Rockets and sabots flew through the hazy air, the structure ringing with explosions and gunfire.
Fighting through the incoming fire, we fired blindly, shooting first to the left, then the center, and finally to the right. Alien fighters dropped in bunches or tossed grenades that pelted the exterior of the Spence mech with shrapnel.
“We’re gonna need a serious tune-up once this is over!” Jezzy yelled over the clatter of our cannon fire.
I piloted the Spence mech forward, our weapons blazing, our machine dealing death in every direction. Billy said to act with bad intentions and that’s what we were doing. An alien jumped out of the corner of my line of sight. He was holding the largest sniper rifle I’d ever seen and before I could react he fired.
The round from his gun pierced the cockpit glass and—
WHUMP!
Vanished.
I looked left and right expecting the round to be bouncing around the cockpit, but there was nothing. Nada.
Then two things happened at once: a vice-like grip seized my chest and sounds began to dull. It was like I was underwater listening to things happening on the land. I mean, Jezzy was screaming at me, but I could barely hear her and I couldn’t make out a thing she was saying. Something about “LOOK DOWN! LOOK DOWN!”
I did and spotted a little spiral of smoke issued from the blackened wound in my operating suit.
That’s when I realized it.
I’d been shot.
16
I’m no doctor, but I immediately realized I’d suffered a serious wound. How did I know this? Well for starters, there was a pretty damned big hole in my chest and I could barely breathe. For all my allegedly off-the-charts dexterity and amazing abilities to react faster than most, I’d failed to anticipate the alien with the sniper rifle. What a jackass! I smacked myself in the head.
Looking down, I could tell that I was in bad shape because the hole in my chest was making a sucking sound and blood was pooling in my mouth as I gasped for air.
I coughed all over my lap and there was bright red droplets in my saliva. I don’t know if you’ve ever been shot before, but the strangest thing was even though I was upchucking clots of blood, the actual entry wound didn’t really hurt all that much.
Besides the tightness, a wave of the most intense heat I’ve ever felt rolled over my chest and then more blood began dribbling out of the wound.
I’d expected it to spray all over the place (like it always did in the movies), but that didn’t happen until I stupidly reached down and for reasons unknown to me, jabbed my finger in the chest wound. As soon as I did that, the red began flowing, spritzing the viewscreen and dashboard as I grew dizzy.
Reality walloped me and my elf hat slid from my head and hit the floor. Jezzy was grabbing my shoulder while the others were shouting over the commlink: “SOUND OFF, DEUS!”
“I-I’M FINE!” I replied, even though I knew I was dying.
Pain spiked as my adrenaline ebbed. It felt like a hot poker had been rammed into the wound.
Jezzy screamed for me to turn my head to the left and I did, catching sight of her in the cockpit glass. She had one of those Lazarus syringes in her hand, the ones that were supposed to bring people back from the dead.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU—” I shrieked right before she tossed me the syringe.
I stared at the damned thing and then did the only thing there was left to do.
I plunged it into the base of my neck.
Pray that you never have to jab a needle into your own neck.
Number one, it’s super difficult to stab yourself in the neck with a syringe, and two, the pain from the needle was significantly worse than my chest wound.
“TALK TO ME, DEUS!” Richter said over the commlink.
“I JUST STABBED MYSELF!” I shouted back, delirious.
“WHAT?!”
“I MEANT THAT IN A GOOD WAY!”
Richter and the other operators began talking over each other as I pulled up my outerwear to examine my chest.
The wound was an angry looking thing.
The alien’s round had burrowed into my skin and charred the flesh around the wound’s blood-streaked, puckered edges, and then exited out the small of my back. Thankfully, I could still feel my legs which meant my repaired spine had apparently not been struck.
A roll of nausea rolled over me and I was on the verge of passing out when …
It happened.
The Lazarus drug suddenly kicked in.
A current passed through the entirety of my body and I felt a strange, yet comforting, body-wide bliss.
My breathing was no longer labored and my arms started flapping uncontrollably. I spasmed a few times and my heart started racing and then …
The edges of the wound began bubbling.
The flesh started shifting, pulling together.
New tissue began filling in the wound depression.
New flesh formed, covering the surface of the old wound.
Old flesh fell away and the edges of the wound pulled inward, the scab growing smaller by the second.
In seconds the wound was still ridged, but the hole was gone.
“I’m good,” I said softly into the commlink. “I’m okay.” Just okay? Hell, I was better than that, I thought. I’d been friggin’ resurrected!
Before I could thank Jezzy, my eyes shot up and I saw the bastard that nearly killed me. The enemy warrior, the alien with the sniper rifle. He was just standing there, readying to fire at me again.
Pissed, I punched the controls, torquing our mech’s right arm, throwing a wicked haymaker. Our mech’s metal fist collided with the alien fighter and sent him flying through the air.
The sniper’s body was just a blur before it pistoned into a wall and broke apart, leaving a red smear on the metal bulkhead. Over the commlink I could hear Simeon shouting orders, telling the others to finish off the aliens and then get ready to destroy the vault’s power source.
I wheeled our mech around and backtracked
across the decking where the other operators were finishing off the remaining aliens. Billy and Dru’s mech was cutting down the handful of scud soldiers where they stood, bodies lying at their metal feet, the deer antlers on their mech’s turret smeared with blood and gore. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, something flashed red.
I turned and there he was!
It was Alpha Timbo and a small posse of aliens who were pulling something up from a latch in the vault’s decking.
“THERE THEY ARE!” I shouted.
We turned our guns on Alpha and he threw something onto the ground to distract us.
It was a body.
An alien body.
Alpha’s right-hand scud, the blue-skinned alien named Carpe Kenyatta.
Kenyatta was very much alive and squirming on the decking.
Hesitating, we looked down at Kenyatta as Alpha Timbo and his crew pulled a long, black metal case up and secured it on what I could see was an alien craft called a “Strike Sled,” a ground transport craft that resembled a multi-person chariot without the horses.
“SHOOT HIM!” I screamed.
Jezzy opened up on Alpha Timbo, firing bursts from the cannons that I knew would take the scud down once and for all.
But then something enveloped the Strike Sled, what looked like a semi-transparent membrane that glowed like a street lamp just starting up.
The rounds from our cannons were absorbed by the membrane, which was acting as a shield, protecting Timbo and his crew.
Before we could follow up with a rocket, the Strike Sled lifted up into the air and zipped off toward the other, larger glider.
“TIME TO END THIS!” I shouted.
Our right arm came up and I pressed the green button on my controls as—
WHUMP BOOM!
The Sump’n Sump’n weapon fired again, splitting the air, firing a shot at the Strike Sled—
Only to miss it by mere inches!
The energized round did hit the larger glider, however, tearing through the machine, breaking it in two.
Two things happened almost at once: (1) Alpha Timbo and his posse escaped on the Strike Glider, rocketing off across the desert; and (2) both halves of the larger glider that we’d blasted apart, began tumbling down through the air.
Directly at us.
17
“GET OFF THE VAULT!” one of the other operators wailed. “MOVE! NOW!”
The two halves of the stricken glider plunged down and I paused, staring at the only living thing that remained before us.
Carpe Kenyatta.
The rotund little alien was lying on the decking, his three eyes bugging out, his chest rising and falling.
The Spence mech’s right hand reached down and Kenyatta threw up his hands in a defensive gesture.
I should’ve splatted the bug, but instead I grabbed him by his single, trunk-like arm and spun around.
Debris from the falling glider showered us as we chased after the other operators.
“WHAT ABOUT THE POWER SOURCE?!” I shouted.
“I’VE GOT A LOCK ON IT!” Simeon screamed in response.
Billy and Dru surged ahead of everyone else, firing rockets at one of the inner walls which was smaller than the other ones. The low-slung wall partially collapsed and we used this to springboard forward.
The ground disappeared under our feet as we catapulted clear over the vault’s outer wall.
Kenyatta, still clutched in the Spence’s mech’s hands like a baby, squealed as we plummeted thirty feet through the air and then—
WHUMP!
Landed on the sand with a terrific WHACK! that signaled something in our right leg had snapped during the fall.
Kenyatta went skidding sideways across the sand, bruised and confused, but very much alive.
My eyes shot to the viewscreen and I watched the glider impact against the vault. Simeon turned in his mech and fired his red, hafnium-tipped rocket for good measure. The rocket curled up into the air and then headed back down toward the vault.
“GET THE FUCK BACK!” Simeon shouted. “IT’S GOING FOR THE POWER SOURCE!”
I jammed the controls and the Spence mech labored, but started moving forward. Our right leg was indeed damaged, but we were able to grab Kenyatta and gimp-run across the sand as the area behind us vanished in a bonfire-bright explosion.
You’ve likely never been in the middle of an explosion (thank your lucky stars for that!), so what happens is this: there’s a flash of light that comes from the initial blast, followed by a ring of shock waves that can cause serious primary and secondary injuries depending on how close you are to the explosion.
Luckily, we were sufficiently far enough away that the KABOOM! merely lifted our machines off their metal feet.
We were tugged forward by what felt like invisible strings and then face-planted in the sand.
I slumped over the controls, my head throbbing, my ears ringing.
“You okay back there?” I asked.
“Sure am, but I’m gonna have a serious workers’ compensation claim,” Jezzy replied.
The engine on the mech had died, so I fired the machine up and checked the operating system which was damaged, but still usable.
“We’ve got actuators and servo motors out on the right and front legs,” Jezzy said.
The Spence mech rose slowly and spastically, balancing on the left leg. We dropped Kenyatta to the ground as the other operators sounded off on the damage their machines had sustained.
I rotated around to see a mini-mushroom cloud rising up over the wreckage of the alien vault.
We’d blown the thing up and killed nearly all of the aliens.
Not a bad day’s work and it was only a little after seven in the morning.
“My guess is Simeon has the high EKIA score,” I said, watching the cloud spiral up into the sky.
“We did it, Danny,” Jezzy said, slapping me on the shoulder. “We took those suckers down.”
“All except the ones that got away,” Richter said over the commlink.
I couldn’t tell from the tone of his voice whether Richter was pleased or pissed at the job we’d done. “Where are they?” I asked. “The ones that got away.”
“Unclear,” Richter replied. “Please check your viewscreens for the location of the exfiltration point.”
I did and then I looked down to see Carpe Kenyatta lying on his back before us, covered in dust and sand. Tapping the controls on my viewscreen, I zoomed in on him.
“What the hell is that?” Richter asked.
“Our first prisoner of war,” I replied, sliding my elf hat back down over my head.
* * *
We limped, bloody and bruised, along with the other operators through the sand (Carpe Kenyatta dangling from our machine’s right hand), headed toward a place where we’d rendezvous with Richter and the others. My hand slipped down to my chest. The fabric in my operating suit was still torn from where I’d been shot, but the wound was completely healed.
“So, let me state the obvious here,” I said, turning back to face Jezzy.
“You’re welcome,” Jezzy said.
“You literally saved my life.”
I saw this sink in and then she smiled broadly. “I gotta admit, I feel a little like God,” she replied. “You better be nice to me, Danny. I totally have the power over life or death now.”
I peered down at the empty syringe, rolling around on the cockpit floor. “So what do you think’s in it?”
“Don’t tell anyone, but from what I hear it’s some kind of super-secret alien concoction that totally saves your life but also causes your penis to shrink.”
I waited for her to smile or laugh, but she didn’t. “Jesus, Jezzy. Are you serious?”
She nodded. “Down to the size of a pea from what I hear.”
My face fell and she smirked. “Relax, Danny, it was just a joke. I don’t know if anybody knows what’s actually in it, but whatever it is, it’s in you now.”
* * *
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Thirty minutes later, we saw the outline of an old military base that lay in ruins. The C-130 was parked at the end of a runway along with another plane.
Richter, Fincher and his people exited the C-130, while titanic forklifts and other support machines drove down a ramp on the other plane.
We brought our mechs to a stop in the middle of the runway. I glanced at Carpe Kenyatta and had half a mind to squeeze the life out of the little devil. But realizing he probably had info on the whereabouts of Alpha Timbo, I lowered him to the ground. Fincher’s people quickly surrounded the alien and bound his hands behind his back.
Fincher’s people then drove the forklift up against the sides of our mechs to make it easier for us to dismount.
We powered the Spence mech down and descended the stairs onto the runway. The first thing we did was examine our mech, which looked as if it had been partially devoured. Sections of the turret had been ripped away, there were holes in our razor legs and the cannons and rocket pods were dented and discolored. The other mechs were in about the same condition. Jezzy was right; we were going to need some serious tuneups.
We were quickly greeted by several medical techs who gaped at my elf hat, then the chest hole in my clothing. Putting two and two together, they asked if I’d been shot and I told them I had. I held up the empty Lazarus syringe and they took it from me.
Swiveling, I took in the condition of the other operators, some of whom were obviously injured.
Dru was vomiting and suffering what one of the medical techs noted were the effects of a concussion.
Ren and Sato were mildly burned around the neck and upper chest as a result of the explosion that damaged their mech’s turret, and one of Jezzy’s ears was lacerated.
Billy and Baila were trying to manipulate their hands, but had either sustained broken fingers or strained ligaments. The only one who didn’t appear to have been injured at all was Simeon. Figures, I thought. The dude could probably walk between raindrops and not get wet.
I was given four pain pills which I quickly swallowed before marching toward Kenyatta who was trembling. “It’s s-so g-good to see you, Honorable Deus,” Kenyatta said.
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