by Chris Fox
“Apologies, great warrior.” Sissus gave a cringing bow. The mask came easily—and hopefully for the last time. “Krekon is busy prying secrets from his enemies’ minds. He sent me to return with spoils. He has captured one of the enemy’s war machines, including the core.”
That got the warrior’s attention. His fur darkened to deep green, and his eyes narrowed. “You will show me this core, now. Or I will feast on you, property of Krekon or no.”
Sissus knew it was bluster. There was no way this lowly warrior would risk offending Krekon, certainly not over something as valuable as a core. He wouldn’t steal it, but he might want to be the one who presented it to Takkar. Krekon might grant him that honor, if he were both efficient and humble in securing it.
That was the very ambition Sissus had sought to provoke. Judging by the green in the fur, he’d achieved it. The envy was powerful, enough that the fool would overlook any signs of the carefully laid ambush.
“Pardon, warrior,” Sissus whined, “but the war machine is in several large pieces. It might be wise to bring additional help to carry it back. Already, the ka’tok scurry from the shadows. They may grow bold enough to take this prize.” He found himself enjoying his role, knowing that he was convincing this fool to walk to his death.
“You left the core unguarded?” the Ganog roared. He spun, calling back up the ramp to the other warriors. “The defiler has need of us. Gather your packs.” The Ganog turned back to Sissus. “How far is this war machine?”
“Not far, great one, not far. I will show you,” Sissus retreated down the ramp, beckoning the Ganog forward. “There, you can see some of it now.” Sissus pointed at the remains of the captain’s mech, which the warrior they called Annie had carried here. It gleamed in a way little metal did on this world.
Greed lit the Ganog’s gaze. He saw nothing, except his own glory. The other Ganog followed his gaze, and each took on a similar cast. Only their Saurians were wary—the true threat in this situation. They trotted slowly past Sissus, eyeing him distrustfully.
There was little love lost between clutches, and he eyed them just as distrustfully as they passed. They’d expect nothing less. Sissus gave a cringing bow as the last of the Ganog warriors passed. He glanced behind him, inside the ship. It appeared entirely empty.
Sissus smiled, and walked up the ramp into the ship.
49
Pew, Pew
Annie didn’t much like Lieutenant Burke, or his sour-faced gal pal. They were too stiff, too set on doing everything right and proper. Their kind infested the Coalition military, and every day Annie was a little closer to going back to asteroid mining.
Today wasn’t that day, though. Today she needed to be a soldier, or there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow—not for her, or for the rest of this ragged outfit.
Burke’s voice crackled over her comm. The rust played havoc with the signal. “Annie, move three meters to your right.”
“Yes, sir,” Annie drawled back. She kept her tone cheerful, suspecting that Burke hated that about her, and guided her mech back three meters, which cut her view of the burly Ganog cruiser.
Not that she needed all that great a view. All she had to do was charge in and light up the enemy when the lieutenant gave the word. Easy peasy. Annie sucked at the piece of chew she’d been nursing for the last twenty minutes. She was almost out. That was gonna be a sad day.
Figures were moving down the ramp into the dusty street. Annie couldn’t get a great look at them, but she counted three Ganog elites and a pack of the lizards with the red scales. They reminded her of the venomous snakes that had infested the jungles of Arcada. A third of her squad hadn’t made it off-planet, and they’d never even seen the enemy.
That was one of the reasons Annie had gone into asteroid mining. She liked having a ship between her and things that could kill her. She’d leapt at the pilot training when the military had introduced the mechs a year back, because it got her off the front line. There weren’t many to go around, but knowing Nolan had its perks. That kept her from getting shot at directly, most of the time.
“Nuchik, get a bead on the lead target,” Burke ordered. “Annie, I want you to scatter the lizards. I’ll deal with the remaining Ganog.”
Annie knew the noise dampening in the cockpits would prevent their enemies from picking up voices, but his voice still sounded too loud.
“Roger that, sir,” Annie drawled. Soldiers didn’t say roger that, and she knew it would make the man’s eye twitch.
The report of a high-caliber rifle echoed through the skeletal buildings, and one of the Ganog slumped to the dust. His companions sprang instantly into action. The Saurians fanned out around the body, scanning the shadows with their plasma rifles. The remaining pair of Ganog began that bellowing breathing of theirs. It reminded Annie of that one guy in every gym who yelled whenever he squatted.
The Ganog began to grow, muscles bulging as they swelled in size. Burke stepped around the corner, his particle cannon punching a hole through one of the Ganogs’ chests. The other completed its transformation and charged.
Part of Annie wanted to intervene. Not because she wanted to help Burke, but because he was riding Hannan’s mech, and if it got damaged Hannan would be pissed. She’d want it fixed straight away, and that would send her begging to Annie’s bunk.
Annie was a good soldier, though, no matter what Burke thought. She followed her orders, and went after the lizards. They were looking for targets, so a bunch of ’em zeroed in on her mech the instant she stepped from cover. They peppered her with small arms fire, most of which pinged off her armor. There were a couple with plasma weapons, though, and even small plasma weapons could mess up her day if they got lucky.
“Guess we’ll just have to give you something else to occupy yer minds, critters.” Annie laughed over the loudspeakers. She doubted they spoke English, but that didn’t much matter.
To her surprise and delight, Aluki popped over a bent girder, holding something with a strong resemblance to a P-181 rocket launcher. She fired it, and a trio of Saurians were flung screaming into the air. None rose.
“Now that is an excellent idea.” Annie popped the cover on her missile tubes, tapping in the targeting sequence using her right gauntlet. Nine missiles shot from her mech’s tubes, zipping toward nine individual targets. The lizards, bless their scaly little hearts, tried to run.
Explosions sprung up, all up and down the street, and lizards popped like the melons she’d used to practice on before she enlisted. The few that survived the initial barrage started sprinting for the ship. Annie cored one with a quick shot from her particle cannon.
That left three more.
They were too close to the ship to risk either a missile or another particle shot, so Annie charged them. She leapt into the air, bringing one of her mech’s legs down on a lizard. The thing’s back broke, and Annie leapt again. She landed right behind the next lizard, pulping it with a metal fist. “That’s right, you ornery little bastards.”
The last lizard made it halfway up the ramp. Three plasma bolts came from inside the ship, ending him. Sissus strode down the ramp, nodding in her direction. Annie turned her mech to size up the rest of the combat, but all the enemies were down.
“All right, people,” Burke barked. “Let’s get inside and secure the ship. We need to get into the air ASAP.”
“Uh, sir,” Annie called. She raised the mech’s arm, pointing at the mound where the captain was supposed to be operating. “Looks like that planetstrider thing is starting to wake up.”
50
Knee
Nolan checked the bracket to make sure the cable was properly affixed. The drone had placed it near the monster’s hip, a thousand meters above Nolan’s current perch. He clipped on to the cable, activating the winch.
It came to life with a high-pitched whir, carrying Nolan up the cable. T’kon had already made the ascent, but Lena and Hannan still awaited their turn. They stood in a ridgy fold of dark green scale
s just above the creature’s knee.
Nolan focused on his ascent, wishing it were faster. They’d already been at this for seven minutes, and even with the cables they’d brought, it would take ten more to reach the hatch set somewhere on the massive metallic structure atop the planetstrider’s back.
“Captain, I’ve got something below,” Hannan cautioned over the comm.
Nolan risked a glance down, immediately overwhelmed by vertigo. It was a long way back to the ground. He forced a deep breath, looking for whatever had spooked Hannan.
“T’kon, those lights down there, they look a bit like what we’d use for fire crews. What am I seeing?” Nolan asked, unsure if the translator microbes could accurately convey the meaning behind fire crews.
“They are indeed alarms, Captain,” T’kon replied, calm as ever. Nolan glanced up. T’kon was bracing the cable, waiting for Nolan to reach him. “If I had to guess, I’d say the planetstrider has just been activated. The alarms are meant to warn us away, so we are not crushed when the creature breaks through the mound.”
“That probably means Fizgig has reached high orbit,” Nolan said. “The clock has started, people. Lena, get on the cable. We can’t afford to do this one at a time.”
Having more than one person ascend at once was risky, but they were out of choices. The cable shook as Lena attached herself and began to rise. Nolan avoided looking down, focusing instead on T’kon’s growing figure. He had less than a hundred meters to go, and was climbing quickly.
The cable jerked again, and Nolan looked down. Hannan was climbing, too, not far behind Lena. The cable was rated to handle up to five human-sized bodies, assuming it had been properly affixed. It was meant to be connected to rock, though, not through a planetstrider’s scales.
A low subsonic groan came from the creature, and it shifted its weight from one leg to the other. The motion caused the cable to sway violently, and when it reached the apex, the bottom bracket popped loose. The cable was now only affixed near T’kon, and he strained to keep it steady.
“Climb. Climb swiftly,” T’kon barked through gritted teeth.
Nolan accelerated his climb, moving faster than safety protocol normally dictated. He twisted and spun around the cable, his breakfast threatening to come up. Finally, he reached T’kon. Nolan grabbed a broken scale, bracing his arm against the creature. He unclipped himself from the cable, pulling himself to safety.
Lena was about halfway up the cable, maybe five hundred meters below. Hannan was twenty or thirty meters below the Tigris. The cable swung wildly as the planetstrider took a full step. Nolan cursed, bracing himself.
“Captain!” Lena shrieked over the comm. “By the goddess, get me off this rope.”
Nolan unclipped his winch and fired the bolt through a scale. He tested it with his weight, and it looked like it would hold.
“Give me a hand, T’kon,” he grunted. He pulled at the cable, and with the alien’s help was able to clip it through his winch.
Nolan punched the crank, and the winch began to spin. “Hang on Lena. We’ll get you out of there.”
The cable began to shorten. Combined with Lena’s own winch, it ate up the distance. In less than a minute, she ascended into range.
Nolan seized her outstretched hand. “Gotcha.” He hauled her to safety, not letting go until she’d found purchase against the creature’s tough hide.
Hannan appeared a moment later, unclipping her harness and grabbing a scale on the other side of the winch. “Lets do this quick. I get the feeling we don’t want to be here if the planetstrider wakes up and punches its way through that mound.”
51
It's Moving
T’kon knew the human was right. “I’ve seen this happen once before. We’re exposed here, and it’s possible one of the blocks could crush us. We need to move.”
“How much farther to the hatch?” Nolan asked, peering up into the darkness.
“I’d guess another two thousand meters.” T’kon tapped a sequence on his suit’s keypad.
The drone whirred into the air, carrying the winch toward their destination. T’kon’s lower nostrils were still scrunched shut from the stench, limiting his oxygen intake. It wasn’t enough to make him light-headed, so he ignored it.
“I’ve got a lock,” he said triumphantly. “The drone has found the hatch. It’s planting the winch now. We should be able to start our ascent in forty seconds.”
“That’s not going to be soon enough,” Lena cautioned. The Tigris pointed up. “Look.”
The planetstrider’s metal claw rose slowly back, then lunged forward. The wind from the moving limb plastered T’kon against the scale he’d been resting against. Then the claw punched into the mound. Metal and stone exploded into the air, banishing the darkness as the overcast sky came into view.
A piece of stone the size of a transport bounced off the planetstrider’s cannon arm, ricocheting toward the main body. Toward the waist, where they were huddled. “Move. Move now.”
T’kon grabbed the Tigris, throwing her upward. Her arms windmilled as she sailed toward safety, landing on a bony outcrop thirty meters above. The captain dove to the side, sheltering under a mass of scales.
Hannan leapt in Nolan’s direction, and the captain seized her hand, pulling her to safety.
T’kon was so concerned with the others that he didn’t move quickly enough himself. The hunk of stone grew larger, filling his field of view. He kicked off the creature, sailing out into empty space. The boulder crashed into the spot where he’d stood, splintering into many smaller rock fragments. The impact would no doubt have killed him, but his leap had only prolonged his life by a few seconds. He was already beginning to plummet toward the ground, thousands of meters below.
The planetstrider took another step, its titanic leg stepping through the gap it had created in the mound. The motion caused the creature’s bulk to move toward T’kon, and he’d only fallen a hundred meters when he was finally able to grab a scale.
It arrested much of his momentum, but the scale snapped loose. He skittered down the creature’s leg, scrambling to find purchase. His boot caught between two scales, snapping his ankle. T’kon bellowed his pain, rage, and need to survive. He seized the planetstrider’s leg with both arms, clinging there as the creature continued forward.
“T’kon, are you all right?” Nolan’s voice crackled over the comm.
“Don’t worry about me, Captain. Get your squad to the hatch, and seize control of this thing, before it’s too late.” T’kon risked freeing a hand, fishing a morpha packet from his pouch. He jammed the needle into the access port on his thigh, panting as he waited for it to take effect. It would dull the pain soon enough.
T’kon’s head jerked up. The planetstrider had stopped. Its cannon rose slowly toward the sky, pointing at the clouds. A tremendous high-pitched whine began, and then the rifle discharged a beam of intense scarlet energy. The clouds boiled out of the way, leaving unbroken brown sky in its wake.
In the distance, T’kon could see both of the other planetstriders, each adding similar fire. The sky boiled under their combined fury. Whoever was commanding the human fleet was about to have their entire day ruined.
52
Down the Hatch
Nolan clung to a rung as the planetstrider took another step. It crushed a city block, pausing to fire into the sky again. That shot was aimed at Fizgig’s fleet—he was sure of it. He climbed faster, making his way up the last half dozen rungs toward the sheltered cubby above.
It was set under the enormous metal harness wired to the planetstrider’s back, making it nearly impossible to assault during combat—unless you were crazy enough to climb this thing.
“How’s that door coming, Lena?” Nolan called, unclipping himself from the line. He braced himself against the last few rungs, just below the hatch Lena was attempting to open.
“I’ll know in a few moments,” Lena called back over the wind. “I’m entering the symbols T’kon gave me, b
ut it’s an eight-digit sequence. It shocks me that they wouldn’t have changed the code after he broke in the last time.”
“You do not understand our culture, Lena,” T’kon’s gravelly voice came through the comm. “Do you change your holy texts? The password has been passed from techsmith to techsmith for generations. If the secret is discovered, they don’t change the secret. They kill the people who learned it.”
The planetstrider shook again, and Nolan tightened his grip. It took another step, crushing more buildings. In the distance he could see two others, also taking potshots at the sky.
Nolan glanced down. Hannan was directly below him, clinging to the ladder even more tightly than he was. Below her it was a several-thousand-meter drop to the rusted city streets the planetstrider was crushing underfoot. Each step shook them violently, threatening to knock them off.
It took several moments of scanning to locate T’kon. He clung to a ridge of scales on the monster’s lower back, just above the waist.
“I can leave the line secured after we enter, T’kon. It’s about two hundred meters to your left, and maybe another six hundred up.”
“Negative,” T’kon rumbled back. “Captain, given time, I can safely reach the hatch. However, if we leave the line intact, the kill squad they inevitably send will wonder why. They will find me. I’d rather take the risk of doing this without a line than risk alerting them to my predicament.”
“Noted. How’s the ankle?” Nolan asked. He didn’t like the idea of breaching this place without T’kon. Not only could they not afford the loss in firepower, but T’kon was the only person who’d been inside. That kind of intel was invaluable.