“I'm going to give you the chance to die on your own terms. Sure, its a bum deal compared to free meds, censored threedeeo and mashed synthesoy for the next five or ten years, but I want to remind you all that you took an oath. They never said it expired just when you felt like quitting.”
“Why do they need us, then?” asked an anonymous voice from somewhere in the back. “What the hell's going on out there, anyway?”
Gerhard grinned, flipping open the little keyboard on the inside of his forearm. A threedeeo globe appeared in the air before him, woven by tiny lasers in his shoulder pauldron.
“I thought you'd never ask, boys. But brace yourself – some of this is pretty ugly.”
When the show was over the whole room was silent. He'd picked the best parts from Omnivasive's coverage of the riots, spliced in Direktor Ascher's address about the Lords' demise, and then shown them a tantalizing glimpse of the Tankhunters marching ponderously toward the Beltway.
“It's gone insane, gentlemen. We can't trust the Cyben. We can't trust the machines. And that means I need every able-bodied man I can get. Even you.”
“But....we can't fight the Cyben! You know what they can...” began a dissenter, hidden amongst his fellow retirees.
“Stow it, Leonov!” roared Marty Maxwell, in a parade-ground bellow far to large for his tiny frame.
“Seems to me we don't have a choice! And anyway, do you really want to live like this forever?”
A rumble of assent rippled through the crowd, and Gerhard stepped down from off the card table, wrapping one bulky steel arm around the old man's shoulders.
“Now, let's see some action, gentlemen! I want you all front and center in ten, no slippers, no gowns, no complaints! Then we'll proceed to the gatehouse and requisition you some weapons. I trust you all remember which end is the dangerous one?”
They stood there for a second, confused, teetering on the brink of indecision. Then Marty pushed out of Gerhard's shadow, grabbing the nearest veteran by the lapel of his terrycloth gown.
“You heard the man, ladies! Now, JUMP TO IT! We've got some dying to do!” Tutor-Captain Mitchell watched them go, a curious mixture of pride and dread churning in his belly.
It wasn't that he was afraid that the old troopers would prove useless in the face of the enemy – between them they had more combat experience than a whole damn army. No – the difficult part would be trying to get them to stop...
A line of craters stitched their way across the bloody concrete in slow motion, closer and closer, sending up tiny halos of chipped stone and dust.
Still the deluge fell; red, thick and oily, and in his enhanced vision he saw every single drop splash and shatter, traced the descent of each shimmering particle...
They'd screw up the warmekan's tracking, make the obsolete old rustbuckets work for every shot.
That would do just fine.
Tsien faked right and jumped left, a bullet hissing past his shoulder as he tackled Centurion Benoic, wrapping him in a steely embrace. The old man was clearly out of his mind, but he was innocent. You couldn't judge the mad.
Well - he'd make an exception for Kronos. But for now... he turned the roll into a handspring, coming up off two fingers, ripping the ornate longrifle from the Centurion's grasp with his other hand. Cartwheeling now, upside down, and a missile shot by between his legs, trailing a streamer of blue smoke. His hands worked the bolt, inhumanly fast, his optical reticules razoring in tight on the camera eyes of the tankhunter which had fired it.
Once, twice, the rifle spat flame before Tsien's feet touched the ground, and the great machine was blinded, shards of glass winking and glittering in midair as it's head rocked back on hydraulic shocks.
Its second shot was still locked on, however. Tsien whipped his arm around, throwing the spent rifle in a spinning blur. It met the missile halfway, thousands of Slades worth of exquisite hardwood and silver exploding into shards and splinters in an eyeblink.
The debris was still falling as Tsien picked his next target. He leaned to his left as a flickering laserbeam lashed out, evaporating the blood-rain in its path. An ornamental gargoyle behind him glowed red for an instant and melted down to dripping slag. There - while the rain confused them. While his augmented body still burned with power, slowing the world to a crawl...
Tsien charged at the nearest warmekan, his legs pumping, his eyes set grimly on its fifteen-foot frame. Bullets and incandescent laserfire hazed the air between him and his prey - now he slid under a sizzling red beam, now he hurdled a withering hail of lead, his face split in a determined grin.
All around him he could hear the thud and whine of the tankhunter's crushing feet, deep bass notes behind the endless hiss of the rain. He found that he could actually sense their movements by the way they broke the deluge. One more burst of speed, sliding in sideways across the slippery concrete as another missile roared past, spiraling wild...
Then he was airborne - up to it's knee, where a carefully placed kick split its hydraulic couplings. Then to its arm, a great rotary cannon steaming with dried blood. It was already sagging down, its legs collapsing out from under it as he flipped up and over, onto its shoulders. Mounted on one of the corroded mekan's pauldrons was a plasma gun almost seven feet long - just the right size for a Super-Cyben. Tsien gripped the weapon in both hands, tearing it from its sponson in a shower of sparks. Wrist-thick
power cables still linked it to the warmekan, but with a deft twist he severed the skein of control wires which aimed and fired the antiquated gun, feeling them melt into the palm of his hand, integrating...
The tankhunter's giant cannon couldn't target something standing on its own shoulder. But its other hand came up in a crackling blur, a wrecking ball of electrified spikes designed to crush armor inches thick. Tsien leaned back as the ball whistled past, within a hair's breadth of pulverizing his body. He watched it reach the end of its arc behind him, poised for the backswing...
Then his eyes lit up with glittering icons, and the plasma gun came online. He swung the bulky muzzle of the blaster around to rest against the warmekan's head, and pulled the trigger.
Once, and a ball of blue fire tore through the faceless casque of the fighting machine, a fan of blazing debris ripping it's other shoulder to shreds. Wires and hoses parted with a sad little series of snaps and twangs, and its rotary cannon fell to the bloody ground, its gears grinding down to a standstill. Twice, and there was nothing left but a charred steel stump where its head used to be.
Freedom! Freedom at last! My name was Niall Giaccone, and I've been inside that thing for eleven centuries! Thank you, liberator! Thank you for killing me!...
The warmekan fell backwards, its strings cut, and Tsien leaped from his perch, playing out loops of power cable from its broken body. There'd be ten whole seconds before its batteries cut out - an eternity in his private little world, where each individual raindrop fell with glacial slowness.
He skidded to a stop, crouching, the great plasma gun cradled in his hands, bullets ricocheting and whining as they struck the collapsed body of the fallen mekan. From behind its cover Tsien listened, his eyes closed, feeling the bloody rain as it spattered and hissed off mechanized steel.
He came up from behind the broken carcass of the tankhunter firing, taking out the blinded warmekan he had crippled with Benoic's rifle. Uncertain, twitching, it was an easy target. Tsien's plasma blast struck home, igniting the magazine of missiles which fed the autolauncher on its left arm. With a series of cracks and pops they went up in flames, ripping its metal shell apart from within as incendiaries and high-explosives blazed rampant. Random rounds spiraled out, cratering the concrete, striking down another pair of tankhunters where they stood.
My name was Charan Lo. Thank you...
Down, but not out. Ten of the twelve machines were still fully operational, and now they were triangulating his position. He watched as the bulky shoulder-armor of one of the mekan split open, revealing hundreds of tiny holes, a micr
omissile nestled in each one. A barrage like that would slice him to mincemeat, his Cyben nanotech notwithstanding.
It would take the tankhunter precious fractions of a second to define its killing zone – time enough for Tsien to avoid such an explosive fate.
He dropped the spent plasma gun, snapping off a length of its power cable, and leaped back into the fray, sliding between two lumbering mekan as they closed on him. This pair were armed for close combat, their arms terminating not in cannons or autolaunchers but in cruel steel talons, each clawlike finger a whirring monobladed chainsaw.
Tsien ducked under the piston-driven punch of the mekan on his left, coming up under its wrist to lock both of his hands around the clicking actuators there. He pushed up, right on the fulcrum, continuing its swing onward and upward into the studded carapace of its compatriot. Tortured metal squealed as those savage claws cut deep, geysering blue sparks, and the stricken mekan lashed out spasmodically, pummeling its attacker with a hydraulic sledgehammer. The Super-Cyben was too swift for the giant machines to follow, and he ducked between the legs of the hammer-handed tankhunter, looping a coil of wire tight around its feet. While the pair grappled with each other, their processors glitched and furious, Tsien bound them up together, sidestepping neatly as they fell. The clawfingered machine had all but eviscerated its brother, rupturing its power cells, while the hammer fist of the other machine had caved in the side of its head.
My name was Sevan Gopal. My name was Luc Radisson...
With a spitting, buzzing sound like frying locusts the micromissile barrage took to the air, obscuring the mekan which fired it behind a shifting curtain of blue smoke. One second, and they were at their zenith, tiny guidance fins snapping out from their tails as their rocket engines sputtered and died. Two, and they were falling, a rain of death which would saturate the whole area just as surely as the deluge of blood. The tankhunters themselves would shrug off such tiny munitions like water – but if Tsien were to be caught in the shrapnel-storm which they unleashed...
He was off and running even before the smoke cleared, headed toward one of the struggling 'hunters which had fallen to a stray missile.
He willed his bloody hands into blades, watching his fingers stretch and sharpen, then punched with all his strength through the chestplate of the upturned machine, feeling the nanotech on the edges of his knives sawing and ablating away the thick steel. With one hand he ripped it free, and with the other he raked his claws across the power cels exposed within, severing their connections in a flurry of crackling fire. The light went out of the doomed mekan's eyes as Tsien spun its chestplate in midair, bringing it up over his head like an inch-thick ferrous umbrella.
My name was Katerina Howe...
Then the missile swarm came down, and deafening, blinding explosions filled his entire world. For a moment, for two, all he could see was a white and purple blur, the sound of bells tolling in his aching head. The force of it drove him to his knees beneath his makeshift shield, and skittering shrapnel came in under its rim to flay his legs bare.
Multiple images blurred and swum in his electronic eyes, a horde of golems painted blood-red and rust ochre, marching forward to crush him into pulp. He heard the click and whirr and clatter of loading guns, and tried desperately to focus, knowing that at any instant...
Too late.
An explosive shell punched into the gore-slick concrete right in front of him, giving the Super-Cyben barely enough time to bring his shield down with an almighty clang. Wicked shards of glowing steel punched through the armor, and light shone through from the mekan' halogen lamps, jagged shadows scrawled across his face. He could feel the heat rising in his body as the nanotech tried to keep up with his wounds, burning up his energy and his humanity with each second. Through one of the holes in his makeshift shield he could see a line of three tankhunters bringing their x-ray lasers to bear, a combined force of arms which would reduce him to superheated gas, armor notwithstanding.
Tsien tried to stand, to move, the merest twitch... but his legs weren't responding.
Looking down the barrels of those massed guns he saw utter defeat. Kronos would make sure he was remembered as a monster, even by the people he was trying to protect...
The volley from the gates blew all three of the advancing machines apart at once, as twenty great howitzer guns laid down a swathe of carnage from atop the gatehouse wall. Every one of them was manned, crewed by blue-suited figures laboring behind a pall of drifting cordite smoke, and as Tsien watched they reloaded and fired again, tearing what remained of those three unfortunate 'hunters apart.
Gears and wires and burning chunks of plastic slithered across the bloody ramp as the gunners cheered, and among them Tsien caught sight of Gerhard Mitchell, his exoarmored frame standing tall above the heads of his men. The crazy old bastard had done it! He'd actually found reinforcements at the very last moment, and now the tables were turned.
My name was Anya Seran. My name was Grigory Vlasic. My name was Orynn Jao...
Tsien slammed down a fistful of overrides, bullying his Cyben implants back online by sheer force of will, staggering to his feet with the great concave dish of a tankhunter's chestplate still welded to his butcher-knife fingers. He could see the mekan with the micromissile batteries over its shoulders turning to face the gates now, and hear the thousands of tiny snicking sounds as its terrible weaponry was reloaded from within.
That one would have to go first.
One of the tankhunters which had been wrecked down to scrap by the howitzer fire had sported a six-foot close combat bayonet slung under its multi-maser, a great meat-cleaver of a thing designed to carve through light tanks with a single swipe. It was just the right size for Tsien's monstrous new hands, those killing claws at the end of his arms which had once been human.
He twisted and wrenched at the heavy blade as he slid into the cover of the smoking mekan's carcass, dodging shells and flickering laserfire. In the end he was forced to use one of his knife-bladed fingers, running it down between the bayonet's mounting bolts and shearing them off as neatly as a diamond-edged grinder. A huge piston-rod protruded from the tang of the blade, an augmentation which would make it saw back and forth to jar it loose from the gashes it hacked in platicrete and steel. Now the SuperCyben grasped the cutoff end of that ruined piston like the handle of a broadsword, a two-handed grip like that of a medieval warrior. The bayonet was as tall as he was, three feet thick, and it weighed at least half a ton. It was just the tool for the job.
Tsien sprung from behind cover, letting a little trickle of his intrinsic nanotech flow across the scarred and pitted blade, forming an edge only a molecule thick. Atomic-scale sawteeth flowed around it with a keening whirr, too high-pitched for human ears. Tsien could hear it slicing apart the smoke.
His eyes were fixed on the micromissile mekan, which was even now extending leg- braces from its bulky frame, preparing to unleash its deadly swarm against Mitchell and his men.
Bullets tracked toward him across the pavement, and hissing laserbeams wove a shifting cage around him as he jinked from side to side. But where they would have struck him down, now they were deflected by the adamantine steel of his blade, the bullets ricocheting off wild into the rain, the laserbeams crazed and haloed by its mirrored surface. The outsized sword seemed to guide Tsien's hands, describing an intricate kata through the crimson deluge, a cage within a cage...
Then he was apon his prey, his lips twisted into a grimace of hate and joy, his knuckles white under a crust of silver armor.
Once, overhand, then twice, the backswing, then thrice, a finishing stroke which clove through the luckless machine from shoulder to crotch. Time seemed to stand still as Tsien slid past his target, his iron-shod feet slick against the bloody concrete, his head bowed. Two blazing points of red smoldered in his shadowed face as he held the sword out at his side, waiting...
The micromissile barrage never came. Instead one of the tankhunter's arms dropped off, sheared neatly f
rom its torso, falling to the ground with a clatter and thud of ruined metal. Then its other arm followed, its assault claw flexing open and closed like that of a stricken crab. Finally, in that eternal instant of red and black and flashing chrome a
line appeared across the thing's body, a line of darkness in which crawled oily blue sparks.
The explosion, when it came, raised a cheer from the blue-suited troopers atop the wall, and a silver-toothed grin from Tsien, who brandished his ungainly blade in triumph as he turned to face the remaining tankhunters.
My name was Michael Atkins...
Twenty bolts thudded home as the gateway guns were loaded, aiming over the Super-Cyben's head as if he could call down hellfire with a gesture.
The three warmekan which remained seemed to hesitate, unsure of their superiority. Even the bloody rain was easing off, becoming a fine crimson mist which swirled in silken veils across the battlefield.
Tsien held his sword at his hip, the bolt-end of its piston grip resting against his leg. Just lifting such a thing bled away his humanity, as the mark-four Cyben system replaced more and more of his body with metal. Wafer-thin heat-sink vanes sprouted from his back as he stood there, defiant, unfurling like the fiddleheads of ferns with a lambent orange glow.
Zhe 02_Chains of Tartarus Page 18