“RUN RIGHT AT IT!” Jezzy screamed.
Jump the route. Isn’t that what Dexter had said to do? I pinned the controls down and our mech slingshot across the ice before the Ocho could take us out.
Our mech hit the ice, dropping low, playing small ball as we slid right between the enemy mech’s eight legs.
Jezzy fired a volley of shots into the Ocho’s belly, opening up a basketball-sized hole, but not doing any significant damage.
“That is one tough MOFO!” I shouted, pivoting our mech as the Ocho steadied itself and fired a missile that curled up into the air.
“MISSILE LOCK!” Jezzy shrieked.
The Ocho mech’s missile streaked up into the air like a tracer round and then flew down toward us.
“JESUS!” I screamed, white-knuckling the controls as the missile air-burst and we dove to the right.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a thermobaric explosive detonate, but it is a sight to behold, and not in a good way. The scuds were notorious for using them against populated areas during the invasion and occupation and that’s what the Ocho fired at us.
The thermobaric explosive set the air on fire, creating a blast wave that was larger and more intense than your garden variety munition.
It set off some of the exterior explosive-reactive armor. I could feel the pressure created by the shockwaves from the various explosions which seemed to shrink the ballistic glass on the cockpit.
Several cracks appeared in the glass and I could feel the stress of the blast on my chest. It was like a horizontally-challenged man from a buffet line was sitting on my lungs, trying to squeeze the life out of me. In addition, the heat from the explosion vaporized a stretch of the ice out in front of us, turning it to open water which looked dark and thick like molasses in the firelight.
The other operators were shouting over the commlink, asking us what the hell was going on. I couldn’t spare the time to respond, we were too busy fighting for our lives against the metal colossus.
Rolling the Spence mech over, I spotted the Ocho spidering toward us, firing its cannons that were kicking up ice and snow, and pinging off our turret.
We traded fire, aiming at the relatively under-armored areas on the Ocho’s twin turrets where we reckoned the A.I. core might be housed. If we could nick one of the cores, we’d have a chance of short-circuiting the machine.
The Ocho rampaged forward and then it skidded to a stop. I watched, dumbstruck, as a side panel on the drone opened and out came what looked like an old-timey mace, one of those poles with a spiked ball on the end of it. Yeah, that thing.
Anyway, the Ocho mech grabbed the mace like a baseball bat and bull-rushed us, swinging the mace—
TZINNNG!
—grazing the top of our cockpit as I pressed us down onto the ice like we were about to do a robotic pushup.
The Ocho’s momentum carried it past us and I realized we had our chance.
In one swift movement, I levered the Spence mech up and we rushed forward, on a collision course with the Ocho.
“HOLD ON!” I shouted.
WHAM!
We jackhammered into the back of the alien machine and fell to the ice. The impact was jarring and the Ocho dropped its mace, reeling, teetering forward. In those few seconds of confusion, I knew it was time to finish the alien mech off.
I manipulated our mech’s right hand and plucked the Ocho’s mace up off the ice, bringing it down and across the mech’s eight legs.
The mace slammed into the back of two of its legs, tearing loose a panel and exposing a concealed, nearly imperceptible violet cable.
I brought the mace back down again, crushing the cable.
Fluid jetted from the severed hose, spraying the ice like a punctured artery.
This had an immediate impact as the Ocho began sputtering and swiveling erratically.
Partially crippled, the metal monster acted like a wounded animal, firing erratically in every direction. For some reason, the fact that the mech wasn’t willing to give up, pissed the hell out of me. This, and the fact that my head throbbed and I had a mouthful of blood from my bitten tongue made me see red.
I kept the Spence mech low, searching for the right opportunity. The Ocho’s guns rotated around and I grabbed a section of metal railing on the back of the enemy mech and mounted the machine.
We crept up the back of the Ocho like a monkey scurrying up a jungle tree. The Ocho realized this, but a second too late.
Its cannons began rotating toward us but not before—
WHAM!
I brought the mace down like a sledgehammer on the bubbletop on the back of the mech’s left turret.
The mace came down again and again!
We brutalized the mech, smashing the bubbletop. I reached in and snatched a tiny object that was blinking red, the Ocho’s A.I. core, the mech’s brain for lack of a better word. I tugged on the A.I. core, pulling it out of the mech in a great gout of yellow liquid and furious cloud of friction sparks. The core had been connected to the mech by a yellow ligament that resembled the root on a person’s tooth.
Securing the A.I. core in a side compartment, we dropped from the Ocho, crashing into the ice as the brain-deficient machine rose back up, smoking, jerking wildly, unable to control its forward progress. We watched the dying Ocho stagger-run and then collapse into the open water created by the thermobaric weapon, the water foaming as it sunk down into the lake.
I sat there in stunned silence for several second and then craned my head. Jezzy’s mouth was hanging open. “Please tell me it’s over,” she whispered.
I mustered a smile. “Almost. One down … thirteen or so to go.”
29
We picked ourselves up and rejoined the other operators who were involved in heavy, close-quarters combat on the ice. I was surprised to find that I could no longer taste blood in my mouth and my tongue, which I swore was bitten and throbbing only moments earlier, seemed to have healed. What the hell was going on? An explosion arrested my attention and I weaved around a smoking alien drone. We ran in what seemed like nightmarish slow-motion, braving a hailstorm of incoming fire from the aliens, trying to provide cover fire for our fellow operators.
We passed Billy’s and Dru’s mech which was hammering away at a pod of alien soldiers who were firing rocket launchers. Their mech strafed the aliens, striking the launchers which quickly went up in flames. I could hear the brothers cheering over the commlink as we drew up on four alien soldiers who were prepping a heavy weapon that resembled a Gatling-gun on growth hormone. I’d seen the weapon used before by the scuds and knew that it was capable of firing bolts of compressed plasma.
The aliens aimed the gun at us and Jezzy shot them down before they could open fire on us. I reached our mech’s hand down and grabbed the machine gun up. Small arms and rocket fire were still ringing out as I worked to manipulate the gun.
“Your fine motor skills suck, you know that?” Jezzy said.
“Blame it on my small hands,” I replied.
“Y’know what they say about guys with small hands?” I swapped looks with her and she grinned. “Small gloves.”
She took over the manipulation of the mech’s metal fingers and slowly pulled the firing bolt back on the alien machine-gun, while slotting it into the mech’s left hand.
“Now we’re ready to rock and roll, baby hands!” she shouted.
We set off, lashing across the ice, coming to the rescue of Ren and Sato who were under heavy fire from another Ocho mech.
WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!
We fired a salvo from the alien machine-gun, watching the balls of plasma rotate up and then slam down into the Ocho’s undercarriage.
The alien mech’s alloyed bones and rotating joints were fried by the plasma balls, causing the machine to topple onto its side and begin sparking.
Ren and Sato had little mercy for the machine. They repeatedly fired rockets into the Ocho’s turrets, then riddled the mech’s engine compartment with cannon fir
e. Fluids cascaded from the holes punched in the Ocho and then it caught fire and exploded, casting the dual turrets hundreds of feet into the air.
The other operators saw this and joined the attack. We were several hundred feet away from the exterior of the alien outpost and closing.
The glider began pouring fire down on us, orange tracer rounds from several cannons ripping holes in the ice even as we danced between them—
WHACK!
One of the orange tracer rounds pierced the cockpit glass.
I saw the faintest outline of the round as it rocketed through the glass, grazing my right shoulder before it slammed into the seat behind me.
A rope of blood leapt from my shoulder wound as I yanked the controls hard, shunting our mech sideways into a crouch behind a snow berm.
Covering my wound, which thankfully didn’t appear serious, I hazarded a look back at Jezzy. By some miracle, the orange round had missed her neck by an inch, maybe less, and lodged in a metal baffle at the rear of the cockpit.
“Jesus,” she said, gasping for air. “Jesus.”
She saw my wound and startled, reaching out as I waved her off. “But you’re bleeding,” she said.
I watched the blood dribble from my shoulder wound and still I grinned. I didn’t give a shit. I looked back at her. “You know what I’m about to say don’t you?”
She groaned. “What? That ‘you ain’t got time to bleed.’”
I cackled, somewhat delirious, totally zonked out on adrenaline and whatever else was coursing through my veins, remembering the line from an old action movie. I held up a hand for her to high-five, but she didn’t.
“You’ve got time to shiver though, huh, tough guy?” she replied, noting that I was indeed shivering. I followed her gaze up to the two-inch hole punched in the cockpit glass by the orange round. The cold air was already seeping into the cockpit. Before I could do anything about the hole, the ice around us was chewed up by a relentless stream of orange tracer-fire from the glider and then—
The ice began falling away, crumbling before our eyes.
Blue liquid spurted into the air and I realized the glider had pierced one of the glacial streams, compromising the structure of the ice sheet we were standing on.
The ground shifted and our mech lurched to the side.
I activated our stabilizers a fraction of a second too late.
We dropped the alien machine-gun and pitched to the right and slid down a sheet of broken ice into the darkness.
My whole life started unwinding before me and then—
WHUNK!
I instinctively keyed a button on the controls, withdrawing and then quickly activating the cleats on our metal feet.
This slowed, but did not completely stop our slide.
Our exterior lights flashed on to reveal that we’d dropped through a hole in the ice. We were ten feet under the surface of the lake, in a chute that had been winnowed into the ice by time and the elements. I could see pockets of water on either side of us, but we were falling straight down toward something that resolved to reveal a precipice. An icy crag maybe twenty-feet in front of us that dropped down into the icy blue nothingness.
“HOLD ON!” I screamed.
Caught in the grip of silent panic, I fumbled with the controls, a chorus of hissing sounds issuing from the Mech’s engine, the machine’s gears and pistons gnashing, straining under the pressure of trying to stop our rapid descent.
Jezzy suddenly did the opposite of what I would have done.
Left with no other options, she rotated our cannons and rocket pods toward the surface of the lake and opened fire.
The fire from our weapons obliterated the ice above us, sending jagged chunks down on the slope.
In seconds, the Spence mech was partially covered in the icy debris from the mini-avalanche, which blocked the path forward and stopped us from falling over the crag.
“So how many is that?” I asked.
“Thirteen, Danny. Thirteen friggin’ times I’ve saved your ass.”
“Thought you weren’t keeping track?”
“I lied.”
“Put it on my tab,” I replied, pointing to the hole Jezzy had blasted in the overhead ice. We could see the enemy glider, still hovering over the lake.
“That thing is all mine,” Jezzy snarled.
Before I did anything else, I reached down and opened the cockpit repair kit and removed a swatch of material I’d used to fix a hole on the hoversurf back in the day, a combination of an advanced form of graphene mixed with an alien alloy that could repair almost anything. I removed the backing from the swatch and placed it over the hole in the cockpit. The sticky material instantly bonded with the rest of the canopy, covering the hole.
The repair job complete, I brought the Spence mech upright and we fought our way out of the debris, using it as a kind of staircase to pull ourselves back out onto the surface of the lake. Along the way, we found the discarded alien machine-gun and readied it for what was to come.
The glider was still spewing orange tracer-round fire in every direction as we calmly brought the alien machine-gun up and fired at the enemy vessel.
We jolted the glider, blowing out several side panels, the craft suddenly losing speed, smoke pouring from its side. I tried to fire again, but the alien machine-gun was out of ammo.
The glider listed and we gave chase, sprinting across the ice, coming up on Baila who’d just finished off an Ocho drone.
“You guys need any help?” she said.
I wagged our machine’s turret and pointed to the glider. Baila yanked off one of the eight legs from the Ocho drone and hurled it like a javelin at the glider—
CRACK-BOOM!
A fireball erupted from the right side of the glider, setting a portion of it on fire. Debris from the blast showered the ice and then the craft arced around to face us.
“Oh, shit,” Jezzy said.
The glider accelerated, and even though it was wounded, every weapon housed inside opened fire on us.
A wall of energized sabots and rockets shredded the ice and for a moment I was terrified that we’d be torn to shreds when—
WHUMP-BOOM!
The glider was struck dead-center by a pulse of energy, what looked like a ball of compressed plasma fired from the ground.
The plasma chewed through the glider, rupturing its external shields, setting off secondary explosions inside the craft that broke it in two.
Both halves of the glider dropped toward the lake like a bird with broken wings.
The glider’s wreckage hammered into the ice, spawning a wall of flames that smeared in all directions, setting a clutch of nearby alien soldiers and a handful of the Ocho mechs on fire.
We stood there, watching the soldiers and Ochos do a kind of twisted dance as they pirouetted through the murk, on fire, clicking and ticking before dropping to the ice.
I immediately wondered where the hell that ball of plasma had come from and the identity of the person, or persons, who’d saved our asses.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Out of the shadows near the edge of the alien outpost, strode four hulking forms. They were definitely machines, I could tell that by the way they moved.
I steeled myself, ready to open fire, fearing they were another bunch of Ochos and then …
The four machines stepped into a cone of light cast from the fires spawned by the downed glider.
They were mechs alright.
Larger than our machines and strangely decorated, but mechs just the same.
Instantly, I knew they’d arrived.
The ones we were supposed to link up with.
The other mech operators.
One of the mechs pointed to the downed glider. Then our commlink crackled, and a thick, Russian-accented voice said: “You are welcome.”
30
I knew that we didn’t have time for proper greetings. We’d taken down a significant number of the alien soldiers and Ochos, but Alpha Timb
o was already inside the alien outpost and most likely making a run for the bomb.
“Thanks for the assistance,” I replied over the commlink.
“Sound off,” Simeon demanded.
“Sound off yourself, zadrota,” the operator with the Russian accent barked back.
“We don’t have time for this,” I said, “they’re already inside the outpost and moving to get the bomb. We need to get inside now.”
We fired a rocket that blasted a hole through the exterior of the alien outpost. I thumbed the controls and the Spence mech jolted forward, picking up speed, racing toward the hole.
“Holy shit, that’s them isn’t it?!” Jezzy shouted, pointing at the other mechs who were visible through the cockpit. “The other operators!”
“So what?!”
“So there’s strength in numbers! We should wait for them!”
“No time!” I shouted back.
The other operators were shouting over each other on the commlink, so I flipped it off. Heart racing and hellbent on saving the friggin’ world, I amped the Spence mech’s engine. Fiery geysers still danced around the wreckage of the downed alien glider, but we leaped right through them and darted toward the alien outpost.
Up close, the rocky outcropping that the outpost had been built into was more impressive than I’d first imagined. A range of what looked like peaked hills rose up behind the alien structure, everything covered in a thick layer of ice and snow.
We ducked into the hole in the outpost and skidded to a stop. We peered into a darkened corridor that led through the interior of the outpost and darkness peered back.
I reached a hand down and ran a finger over my shoulder wound. The fabric around the wound was still frayed, but the wound itself had healed. I didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that apparently I could self-heal, because we had more pressing concerns. Specifically, we had to stop the aliens from blowing up the friggin’ world.
“Is now the right time to list all the ways you should be in a straight-jacket?” Jezzy asked, tapping me on the shoulder.
World of Hurt: Mech Command Book 2 Page 20