by Paul Tassi
As he found himself underneath the enormous light, the ground began to shake and he was thrown off balance.
“Readings spiking,” yelled the woman to his right. Everyone clutched their rifles and spun in a circle as they searched for the source of the disturbance.
It surfaced next to Lucas. A twenty-foot-tall colossus of metal with a blank spherical face and bladed arms. Heavy golden plating coated its chest and shoulders and its legs were mammoth canisters that looked like they could crush a car. By the time Lucas raised Natalie, he was flying across the room from a thunderous iron kick that sent him crashing into a pile of debris.
“Killbot!” Maston yelled, and Splinter Four opened fire. The metal behemoth was peppered with plasma rounds as Lucas extracted himself from the scrap around him. There was no official diagnosis, but he’d broken ribs before, and the old, familiar surge of pain came roaring back to his insides. His suit released a stream of painkillers into his system and his vision blurred like he’d just taken his fifteenth shot of the night at the bar.
Mercifully, the effect was temporary. As he wiped his eyes he found the machine was gone. The rest of the team was searching for it, but it had presumably found a pile of metal to hide behind, or another floor panel to take cover inside. The thing could move fast. Lucas wondered if it was autonomous or if someone was directly pulling the strings inside. Hadn’t advanced machines been banished for ages now after the last war? Whatever the case, this one was clearly predatory.
Lucas ignored the remaining pain radiating from his abdomen and flipped Natalie’s scope to thermal. The thing had to be emitting heat, right? He swept across the room, finding only the yellow-red shapes of his teammates against the cold blue, when suddenly the thing found them instead.
The blond Guardian couldn’t even formulate a scream as a razor-sharp blade plunged through the mesh armor on his back and out his chest. The killbot, as Maston had called it, materialized from behind a pile of metal it had blended into perfectly. It whipped its dripping spiked arm to the right, and the body of the soldier flew off of it toward the wall, a stream of blood following close behind it. The resulting sound when it struck the stone was something that would be hard to forget.
There was no time to linger on the loss of life, however, as the machine raised its bladed arm to reveal something Lucas hadn’t noticed before. A barrel.
The concussive blast reverberated around the bowl like a bomb, and a crater appeared in the wall where Kiati had been standing moments before. Lucas thought her annihilated on the spot until he saw a flash of red hair dashing behind another scrap heap.
Lucas took the opportunity to finally aim down Natalie’s sights. Throwing silenced mode to the wind, he let loose a spray of superheated plasma at the machine’s torso. When that failed to produce more than few black scorch marks, he switched tactics. The barrel extended and he lined up a shot at what he presumed was the machine’s head. The blank sphere was expressionless and mute as it recoiled from the singular blast that would normally decapitate targets with ease, but it was quickly apparent that no actual damage had been done. Another shot toward Lucas’s position forced him to flee rather than continue to fire. The subsequent explosion nearly defeated him, and his ears rang painfully as he scrambled for cover.
Maston and Silo rained fire down on the machine, but despite its size it was surprisingly nimble and danced around most of the rounds almost gracefully. What shots did find their mark were clearly not getting past its heavy plating. The robot reminded Lucas of Alpha’s mech used in their final stand against Omicron, but this was far more maneuverable than the bulky exo-suit ever was. It almost moved like a Shadow, the way Omicron had as he decimated the three of them on the bridge of his ship.
“Rana, spark it!” Maston yelled as he signaled to the dark-skinned female Guardian taking cover in the console cluster where Lucas had been. She nodded and threw out a blue orb from her belt that bounced as if it were made of rubber. Once it was within a few feet of the machine, it detonated and a visible pulse surged in a thirty-foot sphere around it. The machine shuddered for a second as electrical bolts rippled through its armor, but whatever the effect, it wasn’t enough. It raised its bladed barrel arm and Rana couldn’t move fast enough. The console enclave exploded, her along with it. Even fifty feet away, Lucas was spattered with blood droplets.
Gazing around the room, Lucas saw nothing but stone walls and closed doors. They were likely locked, and attempting to run and open one was asking to be annihilated by the metal behemoth. Lucas ducked as another blast rocketed over his head.
Maston, meanwhile, was formulating a plan. His energy rifle had been completely depleted, and now he was letting loose with his long silver pistol. But not in a frenzied manner; he was aiming at something. As the machine danced around, shots were being leveled at its backward-bending knee joints, and Lucas realized Maston was trying to land a shot in between the cracks of the armor plating. It was an almost impossible target, considering how fast the thing was whirring around the room, but a sudden shower of sparks indicated he’d found his mark.
The shot had hit some sort of mechanism, causing the machine to botch the landing of its latest jump and come crashing down to its knees. Its left leg shaking, it stood up, but remained motionless long enough for Maston to land another round inside its other joint, and it bent awkwardly back on its legs. Silo and Kiati were firing short bursts at its torso, also aiming for gaps in the armor. Another flash of sparks and the robot could no longer lift its right arm.
Lucas circled around behind the machine as it fired a series of bursts with its remaining good cannon. Despite its injuries, it was still attempting to get to its feet. As Lucas drew closer, it became apparent that something was … crawling on the machine. Smaller robots were pouring out of its joints, attempting to repair the damaged limbs. And it was working. The other arm swung upward, fully functional once more, and nearly took Silo’s head off with a booming shot. Its legs sputtered as the microbots set to work on them next.
“It’s auto-repairing!” Maston shouted as he attempted to pick off the tiny machines with his pistol, but for every one he blasted, two took its place.
Lucas shouldered Natalie and reached for the black-bladed sword on his back. In the next few seconds, he’d either be in pieces or one step closer to Asha. As the machine fired at the other Guardians, Lucas sprinted up behind it as fast as the nanoenhancers in his suit would let him. He launched himself off a discarded cannon mount and landed on the killbot’s wide shoulder blades. Inches away from the spherical head, Lucas could now see what he had been shooting at earlier. The entire ball was a cluster of tiny lenses, focusing and refocusing under a protective coating; a thousand eyes that could see everything at once. But they hadn’t seen him, at least not quickly enough. A moment later, the robot was blind, its all-seeing eye rolling around on the floor after one quick swipe from the razor edge of the sword.
Unfortunately, its body didn’t crumble with a mere piece missing. Without targeting, the arms waved wildly around, blasting enormous holes in every section of the room and blowing a pair of metal doors wide open across from them. Lucas bucked as the torso surged beneath him, but he was able to plunge the blade into a slit in the golden armor. A flick of his thumb on the sword’s handle and electricity cooked the circuitry below to a crisp and smoke poured out of every crack of the machine. His suit insulated him from the surging energy. The killbot shuddered one last time before it froze completely, and the room was silent.
Lucas jumped down from the mammoth metal shoulders and immediately collapsed as the pain in his ribs returned. A hand waited outstretched in front of him. Silo’s.
“You’re the real deal then.” Again, a statement, not a question. Lucas took his hand and lurched himself onto his feet. He spoke through shortened breaths.
“What was that thing?”
Maston walked over to the kneeling metal monster and picked up a smoking microbot from the floor. The spider-like machine w
as about the size of his palm, and burnt a crispy black.
“Something that isn’t supposed to exist anymore,” he said, casting a wary eye toward the mangled metal monster. He tossed the smaller bot to the floor. “In the Machine War, they just called them killbots. They were as deadly a fighting unit as the AI could produce, but this one is more advanced than any I’ve ever heard of. Morenthic plating, dark matter cannons, microbot repair. And it definitely never moved like that. State-of-the-art tech on a ten-thousand-year-old machine.”
“I think the Xalans built it for them,” Lucas said, motioning to the now smoldering station behind him. He saw a dark-skinned arm on the ground next to it. “That cluster was coded entirely in Xalan symbols.”
“Fantastic,” Maston muttered as he ran his hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “Alright, we’re pulling out.”
“What?” Lucas exclaimed, his focus jerked back to the mission at hand. “We have to find Asha.”
“You heard Tulwar. She’s dead. We need to regroup at the Spear and try to intercept him.”
She wasn’t dead, she couldn’t be. Not like this. Lucas pressed him.
“And where do you think he’s heading? There’s only one chamber big enough to house a ship in here.”
Maston mulled that over.
“Alright,” he said. “You two take Rana and Chiron’s Finals and help out Splinter Three in the adjacent tunnel. Once they’re secure, get to the Spear.”
Kiati and Silo nodded and spread out to attempt to salvage something from the bodies of the two fallen soldiers. Lucas and Maston began to run toward the now blasted-open doors across from them.
“What’s a Final?” Lucas asked as he threaded the sword onto his back once more.
“A chip containing the last thoughts of a soldier for their family and loved ones,” Maston said as he reloaded his gun while running. “We all record them in the likely event of our demise.”
“And who should I give yours to if you die in the next few minutes here?” Lucas asked.
“None of your damn business,” replied Maston curtly.
The pain in Lucas’s sides peaked and another stream of liquid healing was released into his bloodstream. But it was thoughts of Asha, not painkillers, that propelled him forward.
Time blurred and the tunnels began to all feel the same as Lucas followed the tiny point of light on his wrist map. They encountered only minimal resistance in their trek to the central chamber, a few scrambling soldiers attempting to secure a location they would now never reach with smoldering holes in their heads. The comm chatter indicated that most of the Fourth Order troops had converged on tunnel six, where five Splinter groups attempted to hold them off as they retreated toward the Spear.
The main room they sought was up ahead. As they approached, the passageway was eerily silent, and he and Maston simply ran up to the large doors, as there wasn’t a guard in sight. Presumably they’d all fled to the surface or were reinforcing the other tunnels under siege. Maston immediately started sifting through the controls.
“It’s on lockdown. I knew this was a waste of time.”
Lucas was frantic.
“We can get through. Another chip?” he asked hopefully.
Maston stepped back with his arms out.
“Do you see any guards around here?”
In frustration, Lucas raised Natalie and fired a round directly into the door console. The echo bounced around the curved walls. Maston glared at him.
“Is that how you open secure doors on Earth?”
But suddenly, the circular locking mechanism midway up the door began to turn. It was opening.
“You did not do that, trust me,” Maston said. “Be ready.”
The door’s lock unspooled itself and the two panels slowly slid open. Maston and Lucas pointed their guns at the figure who stood there. It was a woman, whose dress was now a much darker shade of red. She held a curved blade in one hand, and her other was leveling an energy pistol at Maston’s head.
“Asha!” Lucas cried, and she snapped out of her daze and recognized him.
He dropped his barrel and embraced her. She was slippery with blood. Lucas quickly pulled back.
“Are you hurt?” he said, checking her for injuries.
She shook her head.
“Not recently,” she said hoarsely. “But I can’t say the same for anyone in there.”
In the room behind her was a trail of bodies. Some were armored, others wore plain black uniforms. None of them stirred. He should have known she wouldn’t need saving.
“As delightful as it is that you’re alive, we have more pressing concerns. Was Tulwar here? Where did he go?” Maston asked.
“Is that his name?” Asha said.
“We need to get you out of here,” Lucas said.
“Well, quickest way out would be up there.” She pointed behind her to a circular bay door on the ceiling. “Your friend got in a ship before I could get a shot off and flew out.”
Maston didn’t need to hear any more and was marching off in the direction of the exit port. Asha turned to follow him.
“Wait,” Lucas called. “You’ll want these.”
He handed Asha her Magnum, then presented her the black-bladed sword.
“Such a romantic,” she said as she grabbed him by the collar of his armor and kissed him deeply. Lucas didn’t even care whose blood he was tasting.
Maston had located the controls, and the three of them stood on a platform that had once housed the ship. A few buttons later, the ground beneath them was rising and the bay doors opened up above. As they rose, Lucas could see Asha’s handiwork from on high. The blood and bodies were strewn around the metal floor like some sort of nightmarish oil painting.
Daylight found them as they reached the surface, and what they saw in front of them brought a sick smile to Maston’s face. Tulwar’s Xalan ship, or what was left of it, was half sunk in the earth. Pieces of it were strewn all over the ground and smoke poured from the wreckage. A group of Guardians had laid waste to a number of Fourth Order soldiers and were now circled around two kneeling figures: Hex Tulwar, battered and bloody, and a skinny gray Xalan with green rings in his black eyes.
Above them hovered the Spear, its shimmer giving away its position from this distance even though it was cloaked. Alpha spoke in his ear.
“It was a simple shot.”
Lucas grinned.
“I bet. I’ve got Asha.”
“I can see that is the case; this is wonderful news. I will look forward to greeting her onboard.”
As Maston stormed toward Tulwar, Lucas was jolted back into the moment. This was going to be ugly.
Before Lucas could get anywhere near Tulwar, Maston struck him with a hard right cross. And another. And another. The man was already injured from the crash, and his uniform was split open to reveal four dark scars slashing diagonally across his chest, the same pattern that adorned the armor of his troops. The Guardians looked on approvingly as Maston pounded on Tulwar. Strangely enough, in the midst of the beating, the man was … smiling. The Xalan next to him cringed with each fresh strike.
Lucas ran over and pulled Maston’s elbow, delaying the next blow. Maston bolted up with wild eyes, his face spattered in Tulwar’s blood.
“You better turn around and leave, right now, unless you want this to happen to you too.”
“I can’t do that,” Lucas said. “I made a promise to Talis. He has to come back alive.”
Maston growled.
“I heard her orders,” he said, then paused as he considered something. “But there was nothing we could have done. Tulwar was killed in the crash as he tried to escape.”
He turned to the Guardians that circled them.
“Wasn’t he?” he yelled, and they all nodded silently in return.
Tulwar had gotten back to his knees.
“I died many years before today, Commander,” he said as blood spilled out of mouth. “You should know that better than anyone.”
<
br /> Maston turned and hit him again.
“If you do this,” Lucas said sternly, “you’ll start a war with the entire region. You’ll lose any intel he could give you.”
Maston was breathing heavily, winded from his strikes. He rubbed his shredded knuckles.
“It’s not what Cora would have wanted,” Lucas said in a quieter voice that only Maston could hear.
Pacing back and forth, Maston flexed his fingers back into fists.
“Well, it’s too bad she’s not here to stop me.”
Maston drew his pistol and pointed it at Tulwar, who was still smiling.
“My loves await me! My arrival will be celebrated by Kyneth and Zurana themselves!”
He raised his arms and eyes toward the heavens. The pistol started to shake in Maston’s hand.
“Not yet,” he said coldly.
He fired a single blast from his pistol. Tulwar’s right arm detached at the elbow and he collapsed to the ground crying out in pain.
Maston bumped past Lucas on the way toward the Spear, shouting an order to his troops.
“Get him inside and stable. And secure that thing so it doesn’t try to slit its own throat before we make it talk,” he said, motioning to the Xalan.
“What the hell was that about?” Asha asked as Lucas turned toward her. Behind them, Guardians were swarming over the Xalan and Tulwar, who was still screaming in agony.
“A personal favor to Talis. Believe me, I wish he’d taken the headshot too.”
“I wish I had,” she said. “But I suppose Talis has her reasons.”
The Spear landed on the cliff and troops began to file inside it. The sun had breached the horizon and surely the rest of Rhylos would soon be alerted to their presence if they didn’t depart. Lucas took Asha’s hand and the pair walked toward the ship.
“Who’s Cora?” Asha asked.