by Mars Dorian
Oh, Arrow.
Look at you now.
Grinding your teeth, wrestling your facial muscles.
Must suck to not be in control of this situation.
RX’s confidence upgraded.
“Give me the linker and I’ll tell you.”
“I swear, if you say one wrong thing and try to remote-activate your APEX, I’m going to splatter your face before the thruster turns on.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
Arrow’s left hand floated toward her thigh holster, while the right held the blaster straight. She broke eye contact for a half a second but that was all Bloom needed—she swung the crowbar and smashed the steel bat into Arrow’s shoulder.
“What the—“
Arrow down on the ground.
RX dashed toward Arrow and kicked her blaster away. Snapped his linker from her holster and grinned. Arrow wasn’t pleased.
“You tricked me.”
100 points for the candidate.
But Arrow didn’t stay grounded for long. She rolled sideways, pushed herself up and assumed her favorite CQC-stance.
“I don’t need a blaster when I’m rocking these guns.”
Arrow, the queen of disposable one-liners.
She brandished her fists and worked RX’s face.
He tried to evade her swing, but the girl was fast, rolled sideways and launched a kick to this ribcage he barely blocked. Bloom blitzed toward the blaster, aimed it at Arrow and squeezed.
Nothing happened.
RX knew why.
So did Arrow.
She came after him, sidestepped his ill attempt of an uppercut and roundhouse kicked him into the rubble. Bloom pulled the trigger again and again while Arrow dashed off to the entrance and disappeared into the tunnel. RX moved back up and accompanied Bloom who was still inspecting the blaster that seemed foreign in her gentle hands.
RX eased his voice.
“It won’t work.”
“Why?”
55
“Why didn’t the blaster work? I swear I squeezed the trigger.”
“I know you did. The thing is, Stryker’s arms are ID-tagged.”
“What?”
“They respond to the unique code embedded in the narnites we all carry. Each weapon is restricted to its user. Not even I can use her blaster, and vice versa.”
“Is that true for the APEX as well?”
“Of course.”
Speaking of which…
“She’s going to retreat to her APEX.”
RX ran off after Arrow, Bloom followed him. They ran through the tunnel, darted up the stairs and returned to the surface. Back in the commons, with no sight of Arrow. But now RX reunited with his BFF—Aida the Awesome.
He connected the linker with his implant.
“Start the APEX and bring it to the plaza.”
“Roger that.”
Bloom clutched his arm and squeezed tight.
“This should have never happened in the first place. Why didn’t you see her betrayal coming?”
Because, dick.
Couldn’t say that of course.
“I thought she’d change, I really did. Apparently, I missed a ton of stuff in space.”
Bloom’s eyes went big.
“You’re hopelessly naïve.”
Said the woman who believed in the benevolent flower power of an alien plant. But this wasn’t the time to argue. RX ran outside where Aida landed his APEX. Bloom pointed at the air space over the hall where Arrow’s craft lifted off.
“She’s fleeing.”
Bloom pushed her face into his.
“You must stop her. She’s probably flying to Stryker to call for backup.”
RX pondered.
Bloom gave him more motivation.
“They’re going to kill you for treason. It’s going to be your word against Arrow’s.”
That was true.
And RX remembered all-too-well who enjoyed more trust from the higher-ups. So he jumped into his cockpit and got his pilot mode on. Wrapped the astrogear around his uniform and onlined the display. RX sent one last glance to Bloom whose face spoke volumes of desperation.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.”
The cockpit closed.
The APEX launched.
“Aida, calculate the fastest catch-up route to Arrow’s APEX.”
The route appeared on his HUD. RX hit the full boost and tore through the airspace over Evergreen.
“What are you planning to do?”
Good question. He wanted to avoid shooting Arrow down, but he couldn’t let her escape. She’d ruin his destiny, but maybe there was still a chance for mediation.
“Establish a connection with her.”
He doubted she’d pick up, but now her APEX came into view. It thrusted two hundred and fifty meters away from him. Arrow’s flamehead avatar blinked on his display.
“What’s up, traitor.”
“Arrow, let’s talk about this. We don’t need to kill ourselves over this colony.”
“You’ve picked your side, RX, and I know mine. As soon as I can connect with the carrier, I’m going to send down an army to vaporize you and your greenies. After we have investigated the alien remnants, of course.”
So much for negotiation. Arrow carried the diplomatic sensitivity of an unguided bunker breaker. Nothing new on that front. And still, RX tried.
“Come back down and we find an agreement between Evergreen and Stryker. We’ll make a business deal. Win-win.”
Arrow answered, but not in the way RX hoped for.
“A rocket is worth a thousand words.”
Aida chimed in.
“I’m detecting multiple lock-ons.”
She showed a miniature version of RX's APEX on the upper-right corner of the tactical display. Target pointers rotated around the left wing, the right wing, the cockpit and the thrusters.
Arrow was going full frontal.
“Rockets launch.”
Five blasted from the rocket pods of Arrow’s APEX. They hovered for a millisecond before the internal motor overtook the flight control. The smart projectiles zigzagged through the air and decreased the distance to RX’s craft.
“Activate point defense lasers.”
He took control of the mass driver cannons.
Three rockets exploded thanks to his ADAM, the final two ripped apart because he mass driver'd them into particles with Aida's aim-assist.
“Threat eliminated.”
Not really, RX thought.
The real threat sported burning hair and ashen-black lipstick.
Controlled a superior APEX.
And carried the attitude of a vexed goddess.
“Consider this a warning shot. Turn back and pork your greenie girlfriend while you still can.”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
RX maximized speed and assessed the battle situation. His rocket arsenal was useless against Arrow, she owned a better point defense system than him. Which left RX the beam and the mass driver side-cannons.
"I can't allow you to shoot her," Aida said, as if reading his thoughts.
"She's betrayed me. And she's a threat to half a million colonists.”
"My priority objective is to assist you, my secondary to serve the interests of Stryker. I cannot possibly aid you in fighting your company peers."
"Aida, after all we've been through?"
"RX-88, I'm afraid I can't help you in this instance."
He feared she'd block him from controlling the APEX, but instead, she just tuned out. Hung up on him like an insulted girlfriend.
Well, crap.
But he had no time to mourn his loss. He needed to prevent Arrow from reaching transmission range beyond the stratosphere.
So he gave her a warning shot.
Fire.
The side cannons spat the projectiles. Fast little suckers that ripped through the air, way too speedy and small for Arrow’s point defense system. But sh
e evaded the volleys with her back-roll maneuver.
“Zero hits,” RX said to himself.
Of course.
It wasn’t going to be that easy. And now Mrs. Dynamics connected again.
“Don’t piss me off.”
“I thought you already were.”
“You have never seen me angry.”
RX begged to differ.
He felt the G’s pushing him into the seat as he left the lower levels of ExoEve’s atmosphere. Even with the astrogear on, the nanobots in his blood-circulation and the helmet, G’s still annoyed the crap out of him. RX hated the transition between planetary atmosphere and orbit, but that was a nuisance compared to the danger he faced now. He tried to appease his rival peer, but deep inside, he realized: this was going to end in blood and burned flesh.
56
Space.
The astral ceiling of ExoEve II.
Breathtaking, if it wasn’t for that elite APEX blitzing away from him.
RX channeled his concentration on Arrow.
Without Aida’s aim-assist, it was going to be challenging to fight her. The flamehead not only commanded a superior APEX but also possessed the skills to navigate it.
And now Mrs. Dynamics grunted inside her cockpit.
“I’m warning you, slacker, if you don’t stop following my tail, I’m going to pulverize you back to the pre-colonization age.”
So many warnings, it was out of character.
Arrow always loved the sound of her voice, but during battle, she knew when to shut up. Except for now.
“You were never the smartest, RX, but even you should see the stupidity of your venture. Stopping me will get you a dishonorable discharge from Stryker—if you’re lucky. If not, say hello to decomposition.”
“Stryker didn’t care about me when I crashed from my last mission, so why should I care about their punishments?”
“You’re under legal obligation to serve Stryker. The barcode is embedded on your chest, in case you can’t remember.”
“I don’t care. You’re not going to manipulate me again. You tried so many times to intimidate me and failed hard. It hasn’t worked when you sent those four brutes into my quarters, it won’t work now.”
“You imbecile. Did you really believe it was me who sent the ground-pounders?”
Her 3D avatar glimmered on his HUD.
“Who else?”
“Oh, you still can’t see it, can you? It was the same person who sabotaged your last mission. Spoiler alert: you weren’t supposed to crash-land on ExoEve II. You were supposed to blow up with the rest of the Separatist space station. There’s someone who wanted to wipe you out.”
“Who?”
“Someone very close. If you’re too dumb to notice, you don’t deserve to know the truth.”
Lies, nothing but lies from the redhead. She was trying to confuse him but why? She didn’t release any more rockets, didn’t fire a single mass driver shell.
Of course not.
She was buying time to connect with Stryker.
Was she within satellite range already?
Damn you, RX.
You got fooled again.
His scanners picked up an asteroid field a few hundred kilometers away.
RX activated the mass driver and fired off shells into the void. Remembered his Basic pilot training where they had to shoot without AI-assist. It was as challenging as he remembered it.
The projectiles flushed into the void.
Deadly silence, to no avail.
Arrow evaded them with ease.
Her maneuvers were out of this world.
Thanks to her endless hours in the simulations.
She was truly Arrow Dynamic.
“Try a little harder.”
And she teased him over the intercom, just like the old days.
Now with 100% more vitriol.
RX answered with another volley of mass driver shells.
They ripped through the black ocean and missed the redhead’s APEX by a long shot. It wasn’t just his fault, she commanded a superior craft.
“You know what’s wrong with you? You think you deserve special treatment.
You think you’re destined to be great, but that’s an illusion. That’s why you didn’t get promoted. The higher-ups of Stryker saw through your inflated ego. Ambition is useless if you don’t have the mindset to back it up. Worse, ambition and stupidity are a dangerous mix. And you possess heaps of both, RX.”
She paused.
“This conflict is two sizes too big for you, the sooner you realize that, the better.”
Pause.
“Thankfully, I’ll make you realize this fact as soon as possible.”
RX’s scanner detected a rocket launch. But this wasn’t a standard short-to-midrange hull penetrator, this was a heavy explosive.
No way.
She launched a nuclear warhead.
“You know the sad truth? You had great potential. You could have been a stellar Stryker elite pilot, maybe as good as me. But you blew it with your little colony takeover. What am I saying— you blew it all the way back on Alterra. Stryker should have never let you back into the fleet after that disaster.”
RX ignored her intercom chatter and targeted the nearby asteroid field. The space boulders dashed through the void with sufficient space to navigate through. RX chose the grandest opening angle and maneuvered around the rocks. Since every object in space was always in motion, the asteroid themselves behaved like oversized projectiles.
A natural minefield, unless you were an ace pilot.
Like RX.
Arrow chuckled over the connection.
“Oh, now you’re hiding from me. How cute.”
“Why don’t you follow me? We’ll have a romantic date among the stars.”
“Nah, maybe in the next life. In this one, you’ll have fun with little Johnny.”
Probably the name of her nuclear warhead, tracking RX through the asteroid field. He took three breaths and kept cool. Nuclear warheads in space weren’t as dangerous as their planet-side counterparts. Only the burst of energetic particles and the ensuing electromagnetic storm could havoc RX’s systems.
Worse enough.
Hello, little Johnny.
RX noticed the lock-on on his HUD and flew closer to the cluster of asteroids.
He didn’t need Aida to avoid the space rocks.
No genius pilot ever did.
Come get me, he said to himself in silence.
Missed a boulder by fifty meters and circumvented the next.
The nuclear warhead was on his trail, but RX knew its tracking capabilities were limited. He entered the space with the densest volley of asteroids and pulled off a back-roll maneuver himself. The nuclear warhead couldn’t follow up. It smashed into a space boulder and shredded it into pieces.
Optimal, but how many more rockets did Arrow have at her disposal?
Too many to run away.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” she said.
RX roared deeper into the asteroid field.
The rocks flashed around his cockpit.
He became one with his APEX.
An angel swimming through the cosmic soup.
Arrow had to share her commentary.
Of course she had to.
“Oh, you really have a death wish, don’t you?”
“You better take me down now, or I’ll chase you till the farthest corner of the galaxy.”
He paused and put more force into his next statement.
“You’ll never escape me.”
Because now Arrow entered an attack trajectory.
Deep into the asteroid trail.
Gotcha, RX thought.
My rockets are no match for your APEX.
But the asteroids were.
When Arrow followed him into the densest trajectory lines of the asteroids, he targeted the nearest space boulders and launched missiles from every port.
Fired everything.
Not at Arrow, but at the asteroids.
The nearby rocks detonated upon impact and broke up into a thousand little rocks that bulleted through the cosmic void.
RX smiled over the intercom.
“Coming at you from all angles.”
A beehive of boulders darted into all directions, crashed into other asteroids and shattered them as well. A storm of projectiles pierced the cosmos.
Much to Arrow’s dismay.
She sounded desperate for the first time.
“You idiot. You’re going to kill us both.”
A push of empathy overcame RX.
“I wish there was another way.”
He paused.
“But Evergreen is my new home now. I wasn’t meant to serve.”
A long pause of interference followed.
“Rex,” Arrow said, before the connection broke up.
She spoke his new name for the first time, but it didn’t matter anymore.
Her avatar pixelated out of existence, the HUD shook up with fragments.
RX blasted away from the organic minefield he just created and thrusted toward ExoEve II. Asteroid debris sliced his trail and ripped through the hull. Layers of steel peeled away like crust. The main thruster got hit and reduced the speed.
RX’s display flickered in red.
This was the end.
57
Silence.
Broken up by the warning signs on the tactical display.
Red, red, everywhere he looked.
The last thrust pushed him toward ExoEve’s atmosphere where the planet’s gravity pulled him in.
It didn’t matter.
He lost control of his APEX, every major system failed.
Shred apart by debris he unleashed.
It gave him new life on ExoEve, now took it away.
Oh, the irony.
RX closed his eyes and focused on his last thoughts.
Pictured himself and D12, saving the day.
Having a rare private moment with Bloom.
Chilling with Arrow, before she turned on him.
Good, old times.
Now pulverized to space dust.
Or maybe not.
“RX-88,” a female voice said.
Didn’t come from Arrow.
Didn’t come from his imagination.
But straight from the connection in his linker.
“Aida?”