by Isaac Hooke
He caught sight of a blue sphere in his rear view mirror and spun around to blast the spider that emerged. More spheres materialized, and Rade was forced to repeatedly adjust his aim and squeeze the trigger. Spider corpses began to litter the rooftop, their bodies collapsing between goose neck exhaust vents and louver ventilation domes.
His proximity alert sounded, indicating movement right above him.
Rade rolled away and shot the alien that had just scaled the southernmost edge of the rooftop. It slumped onto the spot where he had resided only a moment before.
More bugs scaled the rim an instant later.
His position was overwhelmed.
Rade retreated at a sprint, firing at the aliens behind him. He weaved between the superstructures as more bugs materialized directly on the rooftop, and he took a running leap off the eastern edge of the building. He activated his jetpack at full burn.
He flew out into the space between the high rise and the adjacent building. He was counting on the fact that the spiders weren’t expecting him to make the jump; by the time they adjusted their turrets, he would have landed on the mid-rise office nearby.
At least, that was what he hoped.
He thrust randomly to the left and right as he fell, intending to evade any lasers the enemy might unleash. As he approached the target roof, he fired countering thrust to slow his descent but still landed hard, rolling.
He clambered to his feet and continued forward.
A blue sphere appeared in his path and he fired his rifle directly into the core, killing the spider as it emerged.
Rade swerved around the falling body and hurried toward the building edge.
In his rear view mirror, he spotted spiders moving onto the lip of the tower rooftop he had just vacated. Rade was directly in their line of site. Turrets swerved toward him...
Rade reached the building edge and instead of jetting across to the next rooftop, he dove toward one of its upper windows. He activated thrust, breaking through the glass a moment later.
He landed on the floor and slid into a wall. He rolled away. Holes appeared in the base of the wall where enemy lasers struck.
He raced into the foyer and opened the door. He entered the common hallway and dashed westward, away from the tower. There were no windows here. An open stairwell resided further ahead.
On his rear view mirror, he saw the rear wall collapse as bugs concentrated fire on the exterior and hurled their bodies through. Rade paused to fire off three shots, taking down two bugs.
Then he continued running. The hallway was wide enough to fit a jumper apparently, because a blue sphere appeared in front of him. Rade dropped to the floor and fired his dorsal jets to continue sliding forward. A spider appeared—he fired directly into the ventral portion of the abdomen as he passed underneath, ripping open its gut. Viscera tumbled out, misting in the vacuum.
The bug collapsed behind him, its body shielding him from view of any others beyond.
He reached the stairwell and descended a full flight at a time, taking giant leaps and using the railing for support. After four flights, he reached the apartment main entrance.
A floor-to-ceiling glass wall encased the foyer. Before he reached the door, a Hoplite stepped into view; it smashed through glass and door alike, and then halted in front of Rade.
The cockpit opened up.
“Hello, boss,” Electron transmitted.
“Storage!” Rade shouted.
The storage compartment in the leg popped open, and Rade quickly stowed the plasma rifle inside. Then he jetted into the mech and the cockpit sealed. The inner actuators enveloped him and he took control.
The anti-laser shield was deployed in his left arm. The cobra laser the right. He swapped the cobra for the grenade launcher, then fired a frag as a spider rounded the top of the current flight of stairs. The bomb struck, detonating; spider body parts coated the walls of the stairwell and foyer.
“Did you miss me in the long time we were parted?” Electron asked.
“Tons,” Rade said.
Rade switched back to the cobra and hurried outside, where the other Hoplites had assumed a defensive formation around the entrance. There was one Hoplite for every Argonaut—with funds from Surus, he’d expanded the hangar bay at the last dry dock so that it could fit four more mechs, which he’d bought before his combat robot license had expired. There weren’t any mechs for the civilians of course—Batindo was strapped in to the passenger seat of Shaw’s mech, and Kato to Bender’s.
The Hoplites held their shields outward, protecting against the incoming fire from spiders that had taken cover between the buildings, and upon the rooftops. The cobras of the Hoplites were aimed over those shields, and they returned fire.
“Where to, boss?” Tahoe asked.
“Surus, you have the Phant stunner?” Rade asked.
“I do,” Surus replied.
“All right, let’s grab the Phant and get the hell out of here,” Rade said. “We head toward the legislature!”
“Wait,” Surus said. “I don’t believe he’s in this dome anymore. His presence has... diminished.”
“Is he heading for the shuttles?” Lui said.
“That’s the only other option,” Rade said. “He must want to join his newfound friends in their ship.”
“It’s the most likely course of action,” Surus agreed.
“All right then, we head toward the main dome, and the shuttles!” Rade said.
He plotted the waypoint on the overhead map and the team proceeded forward at a run. They leaped onto a rooftop with the help of their jumpjets, fought their way to the far side, and, keeping their shields positioned underneath them, bounded across a street teeming with spiders to an adjacent rooftop. They jetted onto two more buildings, then dropped to a relatively quiet street below and continued the advance.
Rade remained close to the building walls, and constantly adjusted his route to avoid the swarm—the data provided by the city’s cameras was proving very useful indeed. He wanted to delay all-out battle for as long as he could, intending to save the armor and shields of the mechs for when they were really needed.
That said, they still had to deal with spiders, as at least one teleported into their path every thirty seconds. Sometimes the jumpers deployed to strategic positions on the surrounding buildings to fire down at the armored mechs. The Hoplites shifted their shields to defend themselves, and someone would either launch a grenade toward the enemy positions, or if a given spider was really dug in, one of the Argonauts, usually Bender, would use their jumpjets to thrust onto the building and squash the bug directly.
They neared the western side of the geodesic dome. The long surface conduit connecting it to the main dome was destroyed, so there was no point in remaining inside any longer.
“Argonauts, we exit here!” Rade steered his Hoplite directly toward the glass wall of the dome and opened fire with the other mechs, boring several holes into the surface. He leaped at it and the glass shattered.
The light from the geodesic dome illuminated rocks outside that were colored a mixture of orange and gray. Rade and the others proceeded over the craggy terrain, remaining in a circular formation with their shields pointed outward. This was to stave off the spiders that crawled over the rocks between the domes, many of which dug in when Rade and the others appeared, the tangos opening fire from different covered positions behind the rocks. If there were any jumpers here, they were smarter than the previous, in that they didn’t indiscriminately teleport into the path of the Hoplites to serve as cannon fodder.
Rade saw flashes overhead, near the alien mothership.
“Fret, tap me into Bax,” Rade said.
“You’re good,” Fret replied.
“Bax, what’s going on in orbit?” Rade said. “The alien ship isn’t engaging the Argonaut, is it?”
“Negative,” Bax replied. “I’ve been keeping the Argonaut well away from the alien vessel. It’s actually the mercenaries.”
“I did say that,” Bax answered. “They reached orbit a short while ago. They had been keeping their distance, but shortly after you reestablished communications, the mercenaries closed to engage with the alien vessel. They’ve been distracting it, which is why I was able to deploy the Hoplites so close to your positions.”
“The mercenaries are actually engaging?” Lui said. “I’ve heard of honor among thieves, but this seems off. If I was a merc, I wouldn’t rush headlong into battle against an alien vessel just to protect my client. Not unless I was promised shiploads of cash. And I mean shiploads.”
“I played a hand in that,” Surus said. “I’ve been in contact with them since we restored communications, and I managed to convince them to help fight the aliens. Apparently they have a conscience: betraying their own species at the behest of their original Artificial employer isn’t something they can live with. Of course, it helped that I offered them shiploads of cash, as you put it. At least ten times as much as their original employer.”
“Leave it to a Green to corrupt an honest mercenary,” Bender said. “Hey Surus baby, when this is done, you want to—”
“No,” Surus interrupted.
Rade glanced at his shield integrity. It was around sixty percent. His armor was in better shape, though he had some serious bore holes in the left side where Electron had taken hits earlier. He checked the integrity of the other Hoplites on his HUD, and saw similar readings.
Good enough.
Unfortunately, halfway to the target dome more bugs streamed onto the rocks from breaches in the surrounding domes, and the fighting intensified.
“Well that’s rude,” Lui said as a massive number of laser turrets fired from all sides.
Rade’s shield was taking too many hits. As were the shields of the others. With the team relatively exposed like that, the only option was to dig in if they wanted to survive.
Rade spotted a wide depression in the rocks ahead, suitable for cover. “To the crater!” He marked the location on the overhead map.
The Hoplites remained in formation, and proceeded into the area Rade had marked. They took cover all along the perimeter of the small crater, aiming out into the rocky plains. Tahoe remained crouched near the middle of the crater in his mech, ready to attack any jumpers that decided to materialize within the defensive circle.
“And now we’re pinned,” TJ said.
“These bugs really got a thing for us, don’t they?” Bender said.
“Sort of like how you have a thing for Fret?” Manic quipped.
But Bender ignored him. He was launching several grenades at the bug positions. “Come on, bug bitches, come on!”
“I don’t think they understand you,” Lui said.
A jumper appeared in the center of the crater. Tahoe took it down.
A few quiet moments followed. Rade lay flat behind the rim of the crater. He held his cobra over the rocky lip; he had switched his viewpoint to the scope, and he scanned the rocky terrain, looking for his next target.
There. A bug had partially emerged, its turrets directed toward the crater.
Rade squeezed the trigger, killing the creature.
“Maybe we should consider abandoning the Phant,” Fret said. “And instead make our way to the booster rockets. Leave while the getting’s good, you know?”
“Uh, we’re not going anywhere at the moment, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Lui said.
“We can’t leave,” Surus said. “Not when we’re so close to capturing our prey.”
“Are we?” Fret said. “I beg to differ. Like Lui says, we’re going to be trapped here for quite a while. Boss, what do you say?”
“We stay, at least for now,” Rade said. “But Surus, I’m expecting double pay for this mission.”
“Done,” she replied.
Another moment of quietude followed.
And then Tahoe said: “Help!”
twenty-one
Rade glanced at Tahoe urgently, and saw that his cobra was pointed skyward.
“Back armor is taking laser damage,” Electron announced.
On the map, ten dots had appeared above the party.
Rade spun around so that he was lying on his back, covering his torso with his shield. He aimed his cobra skyward.
Ten spiders were falling from the sky above the crater, where they had teleported.
Rade and the others rapidly engaged; several of the exposed bugs teleported away as they fell, but five simply dropped into the crater, falling like rocks, obviously dead.
“It’s raining bugs!” Manic said.
“Gah!” Bender said as a dead spider landed on top of his mech.
“I think it likes you,” Manic said.
Bender hoisted the dead spider off of him and hurled it onto the lip of the crater beside him. “Got myself a new shield. You mofo bug, try to squash me, will you? Well, you’re my new shield, bitch!”
As they fought, a new jumper appeared anywhere between two and five seconds, sometimes above the party, sometimes within the crater, so that Rade had to devote three Hoplites to scanning the skies full-time. Soon the inner area was filled with bug corpses, so that the bugs could no longer teleport directly into the crater, but rather above it.
Eventually, the teleporters simply ceased coming.
“Looks like they’ve finally realized their tactic isn’t working,” Fret said. He was one of those assigned to guard the skies. “And here I was beginning to think these bugs weren’t too bright.”
“These bugs are the dumbest ass bitches I know,” Bender said. He had accumulated quite a pile of trophies around his particular side of the crater.
“They’re withdrawing,” Lui said. “Look at the plains.”
Rade had noticed it, too. The spiders were racing away from their previous positions, swarming over the rocks and back to the domes.
“See that?” Bender said. “Bitches are scared shitless. Aww, little buggies going to poop your pants? Let me help you with that!” Bender opened fire mercilessly.
Rade likewise picked off as many as he could while the aliens were exposed, as did the other Argonauts.
And then, just like that, there was simply nothing left to shoot at.
“All right, Hoplites,” Rade said. “To the main geodesic dome. Let’s see if we can bag ourselves a Phant.”
They crossed the plains, avoiding the corpses of the fallen bugs, and reached the dome without resistance. They entered via one of the shattered rents in the glass.
Within, the streets proved utterly clear of tangos. But it still looked like a war zone. Many of the buildings were riddled with laser bores, and several had large chunks missing. Some had collapsed into the streets entirely. The wreckages of walkers and enforcers were strewn about smashed vehicles. Corpses littered the asphalt in profusion. It seemed the bugs had abandoned the practice of collecting their dead, because there were quiet a few spiders amid the human bodies. The aliens lay on their backsides, their legs crimped together above them.
Bender occasionally fired his cobra at those dead bugs, and giggled at the black blood that misted from the wounds he caused.
“Do you have to do that?” Manic said after the fifth bug corpse Bender fired on.
“What, bitch?” Bender said. “I’m checking that they’re dead.”
There weren’t any troop pods embedded in the asphalt of the current neighborhood, Rade noted. Most of the impacts must have been concentrated on the far side of the dome, closer to the alien ship.
Rade glanced at the overhead map and confirmed that theory. He also saw that the red dots of the active spiders, as revealed by the camera network, seemed to be retreating toward those pods.
Motion drew his attention to the rooftops: some of those pods were streaking skyward.
“Take them down,” Rade commanded.
He aimed his cobra at one of the pods and fired. He obtained
a direct hit, but the pod continued its ascent.
“Sync your cobras to mine,” Rade ordered. The others obeyed.
Rade acquired another rising pod and squeezed the trigger. A combined blast fired from all cobras at once, and this time the escape craft ceased its ascent and plunged.
“That did it,” Tahoe said.
Other pods reached the extents of the geodesic dome, and burst through, shattering the glass. They flew toward the mothership. In the distance, he saw other pods rising from the adjacent domes.
Rade was just starting to target another pod when Surus made an announcement.
“I can’t sense the Phant anymore,” she said. “He must have been aboard one of the pods.”
“He’s taking shelter in the alien ship,” Tahoe said.
“It would appear so, yes,” Surus agreed.
Rade lowered his cobra. He used his jumpjets to attain the rooftop of a nearby building.
“Boss, where you going?” Manic said.
The others followed behind him.
Rade surveyed the city below. He saw pods scattered throughout the nearby neighborhoods; spiders loaded inside them as he watched.
“We can use those pods to hitch a ride to the ship,” Rade said.
“Do we really want to board an alien ship?” Fret said. “Simply to capture a Phant? The money’s not worth it!”
“But the adrenaline rush is!” Bender added.
“We can’t do this for money alone, obviously,” Rade said. “We have to ask ourselves, do we really want to allow a Phant to escape?”
“I’m not letting a Phant get away,” Harlequin said. “Not after what their kind has done to me. I say we hunt it.”
“I agree,” Shaw said. “We owe humanity. If it’s colluding with the aliens, we have to stop it. Who can say how powerful these spiders will become if the Phant shares technology with them? At least we’re able to take down their units—for the time being. But ten years from now, the aliens might return with armor that matches, or even succeeds, our own. And they might have robots with them next time. Humanity will have the fight of its life on its hands.”