by Rick Partlow
And the Goliath wasn’t alone. Alerts were flashing and buzzing for attention, trying to penetrate the momentary haze of the concussive collision and let him know about the two other mecha strung out at fifty and a hundred meters down the broad cross-street.
Logan had seconds before they opened fire and the closest cover was the Goliath. He crossed the distance to the strike mech in a single step and slammed the conical end of the war club on the Sentinel’s right hand straight into the enemy’s cockpit. The canopy collapsed inward and if the pilot wasn’t dead, he certainly wasn’t in any condition to put up any resistance when Logan wrapped the metallic claws of the Sentinel’s articulated left hand around the Goliath’s right arm and spun the machine around between him and the two Jeuta assault mecha.
Logan wasn’t sure if the enemy machines had already been in the process of firing and couldn’t stop themselves in time or if they simply didn’t give a shit about fratricide and had decided to shoot him through their comrade’s mech. The outcome was the same. Cannon rounds exploded against the rear armor of the Goliath and pierced its reactor containment shield in a starburst of plasma plumes. The Sentinel’s cockpit was flooded with intense heat from the proximity of the plasma vent, but Logan sucked in shallow breaths and ignored the discomfort, using the catastrophic vent of heat and ionized gas to make a break for shelter behind the closest of the warehouses.
He tried to dodge a flatbed cargo truck but slammed into it with his Sentinel’s right leg and bounced away nearly out of control, grunting as if he’d scraped his own shin against the edge of the flatbed rather than his mech’s. The ricochet off the truck had carried him off to the right just a half a heartbeat ahead of a laser blast. The truck’s cab blew outward, metal and plastic sublimating violently and then Logan was around the vehicle and heading through the open double-doors of the building.
It was a move fueled by desperation, by the instinctive knowledge he wouldn’t have made it around the other side of the structure without catching a shot in the back. Had the interior been packed with machinery or stacked high with goods, it could have ended right there in disaster, but the central passage had only a few pallets blocking it, the wooden crates bursting beneath the feet of the Sentinel. There was, as Logan had hoped, another set of double freight doors at the opposite end of the building, not quite all the way open but he headed for them anyway, confident his mech was made of sturdier stuff than the sheet metal doors.
The Jeuta had obviously come to a similar conclusion about the building’s construction. Cannon rounds punched through the thin walls and through the rows of boxes stacked against their sides, igniting the contents in huge gouts of flame, incandescent escorts for the armor-piercing shells as they zipped past Logan and Katy and exited through the opposite wall.
Logan crashed through the partially open freight doors, thin metal ripping on impact with the irresistible force of fifty tons of mech galloping at thirty kilometers an hour. The screech of the rending metal set his teeth on edge, echoing through his head even after they were free of the insistent grasp and out into a bare-dirt parking lot for cargo trucks.
“Why the fences?” He could barely hear Katy’s murmured question from behind him, the words filling a gap of comparative silence between the collapsing door and the metallic clatter of the fence giving way.
“What?” he asked her, feeling a great sense of relief she was coherent enough to talk after the collision with the Goliath.
“Their warehouses, or whatever these are, they’re fenced in,” she went on. “Is theft or vandalism a big problem with the Jeuta? I wouldn’t have thought it would be, as focused as they are on killing humans and punishing us for our past sins.”
“If I learned anything from Kosti,” he answered, timing his words to let them out between the booming, rattling steps of the Sentinel’s broad, running stride, “it’s that the Jeuta are nowhere near as different from humans as they think they are. As they wish they were.”
Behind them, the two Jeuta assault mecha were flying up over the top of the warehouse…briefly. Logan kept one eye on the rear-view camera display, grinning expectantly.
They aren’t thinking this through.
One of them, a Golem, barely made it over the top of the building before crashing down to its feet, its jets sputtering out gradually, but the other had tried to go higher. When his intakes fouled with the volcanic ash raining down on them, the jump-jet exhaust flared brightly for a fraction of a second before cutting off completely. The Valiant plunged headlong through the roof of the warehouse, dust and ash and fire billowing out of both entrances to the building.
“Dumb bastard,” Katy said with a pilot’s contempt in her tone. “Who the hell doesn’t know ash clogs turbines?”
The Golem kept coming, firing its main gun as it ran. The lack of visibility and the uselessness of thermal sensors saved Logan and Katy once again as the shell snapped past the Sentinel’s right shoulder by a few meters and plowed into the frame of an industrial crane nestled into the side parking lot of a factory. Debris and metal fragments showered the Sentinel, and Logan turned the mech into the cloud of dust and smoke, using it for cover…because cover was becoming scarce as they neared the edge of the city.
The factory, or fabrication center, or whatever the hell this place was, covered about half an acre, with another three or four smaller structures attached to it and then nothing for a solid kilometer. He could barely make out the next building somewhere across the main road to the spaceport. The drifting smoke and particulate clouds could conceal a full battalion of mecha for all he knew, but he had to chance the open road if he wanted to make the rendezvous.
The Sentinel pounded to a halt in the lee of the main building, absently kicking loose a water line feeding into the place from an underground pipe. Logan waited there, watching the sonic sensors, hoping to catch the footfalls of the Golem’s approach. There was nothing, just the quiet pattering of water splashing against the mech’s leg. The ash absorbed sound almost as well as it absorbed heat and light.
“We can’t play hide-and-seek with this asshole too long,” he murmured, half to Katy, half to himself. “He’s either coming up behind us or circling around the other side of the building.”
“Make a break for the road?” she suggested. “Straight out from here. By the time he gets around the other side, we’ll be far enough into the ash and smoke he won’t be able to target us.”
“Kind of feels like painting a target on our backs,” he said, “but I can’t think of anything better.”
The Sentinel seemed to take forever to work up any speed, its feet sinking into the soft ground with each step, the walls of the warehouse shrinking ever so slowly in the rear camera view. Ten seconds slipped by and they were only a hundred meters out by his rough estimate since the rangefinder was as useless as any of the other sensors.
“There he is!” Katy said.
The Golem driver had taken the long way around the other side of the factory’s main building, trying to catch them from the blindside, which put him nearly a kilometer away from them. It was well within range of the autocannon, but the Jeuta would have to target them manually. The flare of the Golem’s main gun was a yellow halo through the ashfall and the smoke and Logan clenched his teeth and waited for the hit, but the round struck short, throwing up a shower of black dirt.
The Golem was chasing after them with the persistent, quick stride of a short runner, but the gap between them was growing as the Sentinel built up a head of steam, and the road was less than a kilometer ahead. Just a quick left turn and they’d be home free.
The Sentinel’s light-intensifying circuits whited out Logan’s Heads-Up Display, and the canopy’s photochromic coating went nearly black and still couldn’t quite shut out the eye-searing flash of the laser. It cut across their line of travel, a sun rising in the west, and he blinked afterimages out of his eyes.
“What the…heck?” Katy blurted, apparently remembering her resolution.
Logan dug in with the Sentinel’s right foot and pushed off at an angle to his left. He was buying extra seconds of life, no more, but it was the only option he had.
“Love you, hon,” he said with the same casual tone he’d used when leaving their apartment on Revelation for a day out on the training ranges.
“Love you too.”
There was no sound but the steady, heartbeat rhythm of the Sentinel’s footfalls as they raced into the featureless cloud of grey haze ahead, the moment of expectant silence as they waited for the killing blow.
A swarm of fireflies emerged from the haze, clustered in groups of four, one after another. Logan watched them arcing overhead, knowing what they were and what it meant but not daring to speak it for fear of breaking the bubble of the moment and finding it was nothing but a last, dying fantasy.
But the missiles were real, and well-aimed. The Jeuta Golems had been bunched up, not expecting resistance from a single, unarmed mech, and now they were paying for it. Warheads detonated in a chain like fireworks at the New Year’s Night celebration in Argos, dismembering the platoon of Golems in blinding flares of plasma, the jagged remains tumbling forward through the conflagration with the momentum of their charge.
Logan slowed the Sentinel to a steady walk, checking back over his shoulder for the mech that had pursued them from the factory. The Jeuta pilot knew which way the wind was blowing and he’d apparently decided discretion was the better part of valor.
A full company of mecha were advancing out of the grey haze, a Golem at their center, painted in familiar patterns.
“What the hell you doing taking on a platoon of mecha without any guns, boss?” Valentine Kurtz asked him. “You trying to make us look bad?”
“You look pretty damned good to me about now, Val,” Katy said from the jumpseat.
“Nice to hear your voice, Katy.” Logan could hear the grin in Kurtz’s voice. “Boss, we got your ride ready for you, here.”
Logan’s Vindicator stomped forward from the second rank of the double wedge formation, stopping just a meter or so short of the Sentinel before popping open its canopy. Logan hit the quick-release for his seat restraints and turned back to Katy. She had, he finally noticed, a nasty bruise on her cheek from the impact with the Goliath, but otherwise looked unhurt.
“Gotta get back to work,” he said, grabbing her hand in his. “Don’t run off and start any dogfights while I’m gone.”
“No promises.” She squeezed his fingers. “I might get bored.”
He was laughing when he popped the canopy and crawled out onto the first rung of the emergency ladder. He had to climb down five meters to bring himself even with the cockpit of the shorter assault mech, then swung out to take the hand of the pilot still waiting there. The man pulled him in through the open canopy, not letting loose until he had his feet planted.
He recognized the pilot from training but couldn’t place his name. He didn’t envy the man being tasked with skipping the fight to shepherd Katy to safety, but he was grateful to him nonetheless.
“Get her back to the drop-ship ASAP,” he told the pilot.
“Will do, sir.”
The pilot leapt across to the Sentinel’s emergency ladder with an athlete’s agility and began climbing up to the cockpit while Logan settled into the Easy Chair of his Vindicator, pulling the lever to shut the canopy.
“Val,” he said, patching his helmet into the mech’s radio, “I want the drop-ship to head back to orbit immediately. Get Katy out of here now. They can make a run back for us.”
“Yeah, boss,” Kurtz said, hesitance evident in his tone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. We got kind of a problem…”
29
We got a problem, Kammy,” Tara warned, shaking her head slightly, eyes glued to her station display.
“Yeah, I can see that,” he agreed.
“Firing,” she added almost as an aside.
The particle cannon obliterated the ship-killer missile, wiping the red icon from the threat display.
Which is all good and shit, except for all those other little red icons.
The display was a red starfield, the space from high orbit out to nearly a light-minute so crammed with missiles, cruisers, static defense satellites and in-system defense ships, which were little more than cargo shuttles bristling with anti-ship missiles attached to their outer hull. They were cheap, fragile and couldn’t stand up to even a point defense laser, but there were just so damned many of them.
And there was just the four of them.
“We can keep zipping in and out on the stardrive and losing the missiles,” she voiced the concern anyway, “but the Concepcion can’t, and the Jeuta are starting to figure that out.”
This should’ve been easier, and it had seemed it would be, at the beginning. The Salaminia and the Paralos had wiped out the enemy’s orbital defense stations in minutes, then turned their guns on the cruisers. Two of them had gone down to the kinetic kill weapons before someone on the enemy’s side had grown a brain and sent all their missile boats against the Concepcion. Dozens of missiles were accelerating toward the conventional cruiser, and every shot the Shakak and the Paralos put into destroying them was one they couldn’t put into the enemy ships.
Tarpeia’s mother world dominated the main view screen in sullen orange and red, overpowering the green and brown and blue arc of the moon as if it were an afterthought, as unimportant as the humans and the Jeuta and their petty squabbles. Usually, the visual image of the battlespace was soothing to Kammy during a fight, a reminder of the Zen connection of everything, because the laser blasts and fusion explosions were rarely more than inconsequential eyeblinks.
Not this time. Fusion drives lit up the ever-night in a stylized meteor shower, clustered together in twos and threes, the flare of igniting warheads like bolides exploding in the low atmosphere. Ships were terrifying close, close enough for him to make out their silhouettes against the reflected light of the gas giant and the habitable moon. His friends were too far to see, but his enemies were everywhere.
The deck shuddered beneath him and he had that queasy feeling of the universe snapping back, and knew what it was before Tara stated the obvious.
“Laser,” she announced, “from Bravo Seven.”
The enemy cruisers were Bravos One through Ten, though Three and Six were already drifting hulks. Bravo Seven was only two light-seconds away and the second wave of their own ship-killers were still heading toward her, but she didn’t seem to care enough to waste her primary weapons laser on them. Like a faithful lover, she was saving her best for the Shakak.
“Field attenuation forty percent,” Engineering informed him.
“Helm, ahead full with whatever we got,” Kammy ordered. “Move us out of his firing arc before his capacitors recharge. Communications, get me the Salaminia on the horn.”
“Full ahead, aye,” the Helm officer acknowledged. “We’re only going to hit about twelve gravity acceleration analogue.”
“Well, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth,” Kammy murmured, wondering if they weren’t all becoming a bit blasé about technology that still seemed magic to him. Twelve gravities of acceleration and I’m still just sitting here all relaxed. I could have a cup of coffee if I felt like it.
“Captain Hadfield on the line, sir,” Lt. Braham told him.
“Put her on the screen here at my station.”
> Rose Hadfield was young for her rank, Kammy thought, and especially young for someone assigned to an experimental, rushed-together ship like the Salaminia, but she seemed steady enough. There was a rock-solid squareness to her face, a certainty in her blue eyes he found comforting.
“Rose,” Kammy said, “what’s your situation? We could use a hand with these damned Bravos.”
“We’ve been tangled up with their weapons platforms,” she reported. “They’re armored all to hell and basically carved out of asteroids, so it’s been tedious blasting them enough to do real damage even with the RKKW. We can bypass them if you want, sir, but their railguns will play hell with our drop-ships and they can take pot-shots toward the Concepcion at their leisure.”
The platforms were a huge pain in the ass, Kammy had to acknowledge. They shared Tarpeia’s orbit around the gas giant, scattered far enough out not to be in orbit around the moon itself, and they couldn’t be ignored, not with the complement of missiles and other weapons they carried.
“Yo, Terry,” Kammy said, including the younger Brannigan in the conversation when he saw him lurking behind Hadfield’s right shoulder. “Any blinding scientific insight that’ll solve all our problems?”
“Not scientific,” Terrin admitted, leaning forward into the video pickup, “but maybe the blindingly obvious. We need to send the Concepcion out of the battlespace. That’ll free the other ships up to maneuver.”
“We can’t leave her alone,” Hadfield insisted. “She’ll get ripped apart if we don’t cover her until she’s out of range.”
“If we clear orbital space around Tarpeia,” Tara interjected, twisting around in her seat despite not having been invited to the conversation, “we’ll be leaving our ground forces open to assault shuttle attacks from their cruisers.”