by Jay Allan
Gatling gunfire poured from the front entrance as Lui joined in. Though he might not be able to squeeze his mech inside, his gun sure could fit. Those bullets, coming in at a rate of 6,000 RPM, literally chewed up the balcony. Wood chips fell everywhere.
Facehopper lifted from cover slightly. Cease fire, he transmitted.
Fret and I stopped firing and ducked back behind the table. Lui withdrew his gatling (and his mech’s hand) from sight.
Facehopper fired off two quick shots.
I heard two thuds upstairs, and the red dots vanished from my map.
Facehopper turned toward the doorway of the smoke room beside him.
A grenade tumbled out from that room and rolled along the floor toward me.
I grabbed Fret, threw him to the dwelling’s floor, and jumped on top of him.
The grenade went off.
My jumpsuit absorbed most of the blow, but I tell you, the back of my leg really hurt in that moment: A piece of shrapnel had embedded just above and behind my knee.
I was bleeding pretty bad.
Facehopper started to get up. “Guys, are you—”
Gunfire erupted from the doorway, cutting him off.
Fret rolled me off of him. I didn’t resist because I was feeling pretty nauseous. Fret dragged me to the other side of the table, where we were shielded from the gunfire coming from that doorway.
“You okay, Mason?” he said.
“Yup.” Nauseous? To hell with it. I’d experienced worse in training.
As Fret applied a tourniquet around the leg of my jumpsuit, I aimed my M4 over the edge of the table and fired off three rounds through the doorway, mostly for a suppressive fire effect because I didn’t see anyone. There weren’t even any red dots on the HUD map, which meant that none of us had seen the attacker yet.
You guys need a hand in there? Lui sent on the comm.
Negative, Facehopper sent. He was camped out just to the right of the doorway, against the rock wall. The angle’s too steep. You’ll end up hitting me if you try that front door stunt again.
Facehopper grabbed a grenade from his belt and rolled it into the smoke room.
I ducked behind the table and felt the explosion from here.
I noticed movement upstairs—
Something poked my face real hard, and forced my head right down.
At first I thought it was Fret, trying to protect me with his arm or something. But then I felt a sharp, excruciating burning in my cheek, and a simultaneous burning in the back of my head behind my ear. I could feel hot blood pouring down my face and back.
I’d been shot clean through the face.
I felt a wave of panic, which quickly passed.
I’d been shot before, in training.
We all had.
We knew what it was like.
Still, I was shot in the face.
That wasn’t good.
I guess I’d never reach Facehopper’s legendary status with the women now.
This was weird though. I was still conscious. I felt weak, and nauseous, but I could still fight.
And I would.
Till my dying breath.
Fret was returning fire at the balcony. Facehopper was transmitting something about being pinned down again.
I forced my head up and aimed my rifle at where I thought the upstairs attacker was. There were no red dots on my map or outlines augmenting my vision.
“You okay, Mason?” Fret said.
“Ain’t ever been better.”
“You look like shit, bro.”
I smiled. “Glad I could give y’all an early Halloween.”
“Can’t believe we missed one of them bastards upstairs,” Fret said.
I never let my eyes drift from the rifle sites the whole time. That’s why when the enemy peeked around the hutch I saw him immediately.
I fired.
Got him.
But not before he let off an armor-piercing round.
Fret collapsed. He had a gunshot wound right in the chest. Blood poured out of his jumpsuit.
I pried out the medkit he carried in his right leg pouch, then ripped open his vest and started stabilizing him.
Behind me, Facehopper was shooting into the opposite room, which still hadn’t been cleared apparently. I saw a red dot appear on my HUD map inside the wireframe representation of that room.
The dot vanished pretty quick as Facehopper took the enemy down.
You guys good for now? Facehopper sent to me.
Yup, stabilizing Fret, I sent back.
Big Dog, get in here, Facehopper sent on the fire team comm. Help me clear the place.
Big Dog was the final member of our fire team (besides Lui). One of the more muscular members of the platoon, he was never the type to hold back. Facehopper must have given him specific orders to wait outside until now.
Big Dog came plowing in, and he and Facehopper proceeded to secure both floors of the dwelling. Then the two of them hurried over to Fret and me.
“How is he?” Facehopper said.
“Good.” I had just finished stabilizing Fret.
“Jesus, what about you?” Facehopper snatched the medkit from my leg pouch and started working on me.
“No no,” I said. “We have to get Fret out of here. Forget about me. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Facehopper applied a skin patch to my face. I flinched as the hundred thousand microscopic needles sucked to my wound, suturing it.
“Where else does it hurt?” he said.
“On my head you mean? Behind the right ear. Exit wound, I think.”
He put another painful suture there.
Big Dog helped Fret to his feet. “I’ll get Fret to the corpsman.”
Facehopper helped me shrug off the rucksack that contained the commo equipment and then put it on himself. He wanted to take off my jetpack too, but I wouldn’t let him.
He thrust one shoulder under my armpit and hoisted me upright. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Leaning heavily on Facehopper, I limped forward—there was still shrapnel in the back of my leg—and we parted the curtain to leave the cave dwelling.
Lui was waiting in his ATLAS 5.
I guess my face must have looked pretty bad, because the front of the mech immediately opened up and Lui climbed out. He was crying.
“Lui!” Facehopper said as the ATLAS pilot came rushing up to me. “Don’t leave the mech!”
“You take the mech, Facehopper!” Lui said, his voice choking up. “You take it.” He shoved his shoulder under my other armpit. “I got you Mason. We’re gonna get you through this, bro, I promise.”
I don’t why, maybe because of some premonition, or some sixth sense, but for some reason I glanced over the top of the mech. Behind the three-meter-tall ATLAS, positioned all along the top of the escarpment, maybe seven meters from us, I saw men dressed in black and gray digital camos. They had long thick beards and black headgear, and they all had AK-105s aimed down at us.
One man in particular stood out near the center of the group. He had a hard, gaunt face, with hollow eyes and cheeks, and countless scars crisscrossing his features above that disheveled beard. I recognized him immediately from the reconnaissance photos I’d seen: He was the very same warlord who led the fanatics in this region.
Gansükh Tömörbaatar.
I pulled my two squad brothers down just as his men opened fire.
The backside of the mech shielded us somewhat, but even so Lui was struck, as was Facehopper. Blood spurted from the two of them.
Maybe I was hit too, who knows? If so, I didn’t feel the pain, because I was acting completely on adrenalin.
There was only one way to save my squad brothers now.
Get into the ATLAS.
I activated my jumpjets and barreled into the mech.
The ATLAS 5s had been primed to the Implants of every member of the platoon, so the mech responded right away to my mental commands.
Seal! T
he ATLAS cockpit hatch closed tight.
I grimaced in pain as actuators in the suit pushed the elastic inner material into my jumpsuit, wrapping my body up like a cocoon—pressing the piece of shrapnel deeper into the back of my leg in the process.
Nothing I could do about that.
I was a MOTH. Pain was my middle name. Besides, the adrenalin was negating a lot of that pain right now.
There were no windows in these cockpits, not like in some of the older models, but the mech overlaid what it saw onto my Implant so that I looked down on the world from the height of the three-meter-tall ATLAS.
Unfortunately, that world was currently being riddled with gunfire.
All directed at me.
Lui and Facehopper were already gone—the two of them had probably jetted away the instant I leaped inside the ATLAS.
I activated the frontal jets of the mech and shot backwards in a horizontal line down the path. I did a quick check of the HUD map to make sure there were no green dots in my way. I’d never forgive myself if I accidentally trampled one of my squadmates.
Load weapon patterns seven and five!
A serpent rocket launcher swiveled into my left hand. A gatling gun swiveled into my right hand.
An “incoming missile” alarm sounded.
I activated the “Trench Coat” countermeasure, seventeen pieces of radar-guided metal that shot out from my mech in a peacock pattern. The theory was that one of those pieces of homing metal was bound to hit an incoming rocket. However, it didn’t work too well when you had four or five rockets on you at once. Don’t know how many I had on me right now though …
I was still traveling backwards when two missiles exploded not far from me, but my momentum carried me well away. I kept expecting a follow-up missile impact though, but none came. I guess Gansükh and his henchmen had launched only those two.
I halted my jumpjet burn and then, aiming at the insurgents, I fired off all four serpents available to my left hand launcher. Huge chunks of the mountainside fell away above me. I was forced to activate my jets again to avoid the falling debris.
When I landed, I just whaled on those heights with the gatling gun in my other hand—Gansükh’s men quickly took cover.
They thought they could hide from me, huh? Well, we’d just have to see about that.
I swerved off the path and started running my war machine up the slope, boosting my advance with jumpjet spurts. I could see some of the insurgents now, trying to hide behind the peak.
They realized that I’d seen them and unleashed a hail of bullets. There were probably a few snipers among them. All it would take was one lucky shot …
Left hand, swivel ballistic shield!
The ballistic shield swiveled into place, swapping out the empty missile launcher. I held it in front of me as I ran. Bullets deflected harmlessly from the shield.
Another missile alarm sounded.
I was too slow on the Trench Coat this time.
The rocket struck my shield and I was sent hurtling backwards down the slope. I had the presence of mind to activate the reverse jets, and quickly rolled to a halt, prostrate on the rock.
Lying down was probably a bad idea though, even if it wasn’t my choice. Alarms were going off all over the cockpit now, but as I lay there I hardly heard them: I just wanted to sleep. I felt nauseous. The gunshot and shrapnel wounds I’d attained earlier throbbed painfully. I had a headache.
Sleep sounded pretty good right about now.
I started to close my eyes. Two seconds. That’s all I wanted. Two seconds with my eyes closed.
No.
I forced them open. If I closed my eyes, I’d sleep, and I’d die, either from my existing wounds or from the new ones that Gansükh’s men would be happy to supply.
It would be so easy to give in, so easy to sleep.
But I wasn’t a quitter.
I’d gone through the hardest training in the galaxy.
I hadn’t quit then and I wouldn’t quit now.
I could do this.
My teammates were depending on me.
I sat up.
Some of the insurgents had decided to clamber forward, maybe thinking to get some cheap shot in. One held a rocket launcher over his shoulder.
I raised my gatling and turned those fools into a fine red mist.
I scrambled to my feet, tapping into my body’s energy reserves. I could do this.
I discarded the crumpled ballistic shield and broke into a sprint. I fired my jumpjets, boosting my speed, and in a few strides I reached a crowded plateau near the top of the escarpment.
I landed right in the middle of twenty insurgents wielding AK-105s.
Under ordinary circumstances I would have been a little afraid. But I was in an ATLAS mech. I could take on a hundred ordinary men.
I didn’t even bother to use the gatling. I swapped the weapons out of my hands and started bashing heads, clearing a path as Gansükh’s henchmen fired away. Fluid levels were dropping in some of my servomotors from gunshot-related damage, but I kept moving, if a little sluggishly. Some insurgents died before I could even touch them, because that crossfire was so frantic.
I swiped an arm to the right, sending three men flying off the mountaintop. These guys didn’t have jetpacks. They wouldn’t be surviving that fall.
I stepped forward, crunching two unlucky dudes underfoot.
I scooped up another three guys in one hand and squeezed. I’ll let you imagine what happened to them. All I’ll say is it involved heads popping off. Not pretty.
Suddenly I was forced to one knee. An alarm went off, louder than the others.
The main servomotor in my right knee had failed.
I was vaguely aware that the gunfire had stopped around me.
I turned my head, and saw Gansükh standing right behind me. He wielded the biggest, baddest steel ax I’d ever seen. Blue electricity sparked up and down the surface of the blade, and I knew it was energy-enhanced. He swung it again, striking the back of my other leg.
I fell forward on both knees now.
I couldn’t believe it.
My ATLAS 5 had been hamstrung with an ax, of all things.
This guy knew all our weak points.
Okay, let’s see how well that ax did against a gatling.
I was still facing away from him, so I activated my rear jumpjets (at full burn, on the off chance that he was stupid enough to stay close and get caught in the 740 °C steam-gas mixture from my jet nozzles), then I applied lateral thrust to swing around. The upward burst wasn’t enough for my feet to lose contact with the ground, and when I landed it was back on my knees.
Gansükh was still standing—he’d prudently backed away from my jet burst.
I swiveled the gatling guns into both hands and brought them to bear on his position— Gansükh hurled his ax.
I tried to swat the revolving blade aside, but my timing was off, and the energy weapon embedded deep in my mech, striking the CPU brain case just below my cockpit.
A perfectly aimed throw.
Like I said, this guy knew our weaknesses.
I started losing power.
The arms of the mech dropped, and the ATLAS slumped forward.
The vision feed from the mech winked out and I saw only the windowless inner cockpit, its metallic hull tinted red from the emergency lights. The elastic shell that held my jumpsuit in place retracted, and I fell forward against the hull.
I threw up.
I just stayed there, on my knees in a fallen mech that was little more than a useless hunk of scrap metal. I waited for this Gansükh character to come and kill me.
I heard the crunch of his footsteps on the rock outside, then the characteristic sound of metal grating on metal as he withdrew the blade. The cockpit shuddered slightly.
I knew what was coming next. He would lift that energy blade back and jab it as far as possible into the cockpit. Right into me.
Let the blade come.
I was ready.
No.
I couldn’t die now.
I wasn’t going to abandon Lui, Facehopper, and Fret.
They were injured.
They needed me.
And I wasn’t a quitter.
My cheek and ear still throbbed from the bullet wound, and so did the back of my leg (from the grenade shrapnel), but I was still conscious. And while I was conscious, I would fight.
I flung myself away from the edge of the cockpit and wrapped my fingers around the manual release latch.
The outer shell of the mech swung open.
And there I was, staring face to face with one very surprised warlord and two of his AK-105 wielding henchman.
There was a dead man just below the open hatch, which had apparently struck the fallen man on the head when it opened, judging from the blood.
Gansükh’s surprised expression hardened, and I saw hatred there like I’d never seen in my life. He hefted the energy ax above his head so he could make the killing blow, the muscles of his lean arms cording under its weight.
I was the faster.
I activated the jets of my jumpsuit and hurtled outside, right into one of the henchmen. The two of us tumbled to the ground, wrestling for the AK-105. Gunfire from the other henchman caused shards of rock to explode into the air around me.
I wrapped my arms around my man and pulled him close to me, turning him so that his body was between me and the incoming bullets. The henchman shook with each impact, shielding me, and the light of life left his eyes.
The other henchman paused to reload.
I grabbed the AK-105 from the fallen man and unleashed a hail of bullets, chewing up the second henchman while he reloaded.
I stumbled to my feet, keenly aware of a fresh wound in my side. Stars swam in front of my vision.
Hang in there … just a bit longer …
I aimed the weapon at Gansükh.
It was just me and the ax-wielding warlord now.
For a few seconds anyway.
Thirty insurgents rose up from where they had taken cover behind the rocks and aimed their thirty AK-105s down at me.
I considered taking out Gansükh and dying with him right there. Surrender just wasn’t in my blood, you have to understand. I didn’t need them to take me away and broadcast my beheading for the world to see. That wasn’t how I wanted to go. It would kill my family.