by Isaac Hooke
“Not unless you want us to rush our asses back to engineering,” TJ said.
“No,” Rade said. “Lui, Snakeoil, open her up.”
The two of them used the ratchet tools to activate the internal winch, and the doors slowly parted. When the seal was broken, the air rushed out, drawing loose parts toward the crack that had formed. Rade and the others remained firmly rooted in place, thanks to their weight.
It took a good five minutes for the two Brigands to open those doors wide enough to fit a single mech. They continued widening it until they could be sure it would fit the biggest of them—the Titan mechs.
“You know, I don’t get why we didn’t just shoot through the doors,” Bender said. “Seeing as the ship’s a write-off anyway.”
“You want to overheat your cobras, go right ahead,” Lui said.
In another minute, Rade asked Taya: “Is that wide enough to fit the Titans with us?”
“By my calculations, it is,” Taya said.
“All right, platoons,” Rade said. “We jump. Single file. Cyclone, prepare the order.”
A moment later Rade received his jump order. He was number four.
Bender, Lui and Snakeoil walked through first, and dropped down toward the planet.
Rade passed though the twin doors, and stepped out into the empty space beyond. He fired reverse thrust from his booster rockets, decelerating. The starship quickly ascended above him.
He glanced at his overhead map, and spotted the three dots of Bender, Lui and Snakeoil below him; the remaining indicators updated as others jumped from the ship above.
When he hit the atmosphere, the booster rockets attached for the jump fell away. His aeroshell heat shield deployed, forming a dome beneath his feet. Orange flames sprung up around its edges. The heat increased threefold in the cockpit, and he began to sweat.
Rade tightened his abs and clenched his jaw as the air friction further decelerated the mech, and the Gs increased.
Then the flames receded, and the shield broke away.
He dropped through a thin layer of clouds next; he could make out the dome of the colony below, covered in small, hexagonal pieces of glass.
On the muddy plains beyond it, he saw several United System army divisions, dug in against a swarm of Draactals that covered the land to the far horizon. They seemed bigger than any Rade had ever encountered before, but that could have been an illusionary effect of his current altitude. He saw Nemesis spheres roving to and fro between them, as well as ground-based, enemy walker units that fired energy cannons into the United System defenders.
“Platoons, steer toward the eastern perimeter of the geodesic dome,” Rade said. He saw escape pods and shuttles landing there. Men and women in environmental suits emerged—the crew of the Radial—and rushed into the open hangar bays in the thick ring that formed the base of the dome. It wasn’t a coincidence that the Radial had gone down above the colony—the United Systems fleet had been standing guard in geosynchronous orbit above it.
“We’re going to hide inside the dome?” Bender asked.
“Yep,” Rade replied.
“Come on, Chief!” Bender said over a private channel, direct to Rade. “Why does the rest of the army get to have all the fun? Sure, we’re grounded… but damn, look at the defenders. That army could definitely use our help.”
Rade glanced at the divisions far below. Bender was right, the front line was crumbling under the assault. Those Draactals were driving a wedge deep into the units, while the walkers and airborne spheres mowed down swathes of defenders with their energy cannons. Raptors and other United Systems air support craft were falling out of the sky, hit by other energy weapons.
“You’re right,” Rade said. “And I want to help them. But you’re forgetting about the gamma ray attacks these aliens have at their disposal. We go down there, and fight them, out on the open plains, and we’re hit by one of those attacks, we’re all dead, to a man. Our mechs will go on fighting, but we will die.”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” Bender said.
“I know you are,” Rade said. “But I’m not.”
Bender sighed, and closed the private channel.
Rade fired his latitudinal thrusters to steer the mech toward the eastern side of the geodesic dome.
“I noticed you went back for her,” Taya said suddenly.
“Who?” Rade said. “You mean Cynthia?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I wasn’t going to leave her stranded on the ship,” Rade said. “We MOTHs have a saying. No one gets left behind. That includes civilians.”
“I checked your Implant’s positional logs,” Taya continued. “I see that Cynthia joined you in your berthing area a few nights ago, for twenty minutes, while all the other MOTHs were absent.”
“So?” he said. “She wanted to talk to me about the Anarchist.”
“Just talk?” the female AI pressed. “According to your logs, the two of you spent the majority of your time in close proximity. Even moving to the same bed at one point.”
Rade shook his head. “Unbelievable. She’s getting jealous now. Nothing happened, Taya. I’ll send you my full video logs if you don’t believe me.”
“There is no need,” Taya said. “I trust you.”
“Good.”
He thought that would be the end of it, but then after a few moments, she said: “Logs can be faked…”
“Do I have to order you to turn off your emotions?” Rade asked.
“Sorry,” she replied. “No. I will behave.”
The geodesic dome came up rapidly below, along with the ground beside it. The Brigand engaged its air brakes and fired the aerospike thrusters in its feet.
Rade landed, sending up a shockwave of dust—the ground here hadn’t been trampled into mud by the treads of tanks and mechanical feet, not like the field of battle on the western side.
The other mechs dropped around him, scattered across a square kilometer.
“Well, there’s no going back,” Fret said. “Not without booster rockets to take us into orbit.”
“Stop being such a moral leech,” Lui said. “We still have a whole fleet of starships overhead. They’ll send down booster rockets. When they’re ready.”
“Assuming they’re not shot down, first,” Fret said.
Rade approached the geodesic dome.
The lieutenant commander waited in an environmental suit next to the ring that lined the base, before one of the hangars.
Rade invited Scotts to join the shared encrypted channel of the two platoons, and the lieutenant commander came on the line.
“Cyclone, if you don’t mind?” Scotts said.
Tahoe knelt so that the lieutenant commander could climb into his passenger seat.
The platoons entered the hangar, and climbed a ramp to the large inner airlocks. Behind them, the hangar doors sealed—to keep out enemies. They were in perfect condition. Rade suspected that the airlocks on the western side were in far worse shape, thanks to the enemy units that had forced their way through the defensive lines in the previous days.
The airlocks at the top of the ramps were big enough to hold three to four mechs each, and the platoons spread out, crowding into them. The rear hatch sealed behind Rade, Tahoe, Bender and Lui, and the forward door opened instead, revealing the buildings of the colony beyond. Most were skyscrapers, though there were a few smaller, low to mid-rise buildings.
Rade advanced into the city, and Snakeoil emerged from the hatch beside him.
“I’m detecting a pressurized, habitable environment,” Snakeoil said.
“That’s some good dome upkeep,” Bender said. “Especially given the conditions just outside. If only everyone treated their shafts like they did their domes.”
“Why do I sense a double entendre in that?” Manic said.
“The words are there for you to interpret as you please,” Bender said. “When I tell you I like your pussy, for example, I’m actually talking about your cat, but
y’all interpret it as something else, and I can’t help that. Just like when I mention my dick. I’m actually talking about my detective.”
“Your detective…” Manic said. “Please.”
“Dude, ain’t you ever heard of Dick Tracy?” Bender said. “He’s a private dick!”
“Head toward the center of town,” Lieutenant Commander Scotts said over the comm. “You see the big buildings? That’s where the other human manned platoons will be holed up.”
Rade couldn’t see past the tall buildings, which crowded out the skyline, so he examined the overhead map instead, and switched it to orthogonal mode. “The three-sided, prism-shaped skyscrapers towering above all the others? The vertical prisms…”
“That would be them,” Scotts said.
“They’re not prisms,” Bender said. “Prisms are made of glass.”
“The chief said prism-shaped,” Manic said.
“Yeah, yeah, semantics,” Bender quipped.
Rade and the others moved through the city streets at a sprint. He occasionally saw a helmeted face peering from one of the upper windows of an apartment, but otherwise the streets were dead quiet.
“I’m surprised the security forces didn’t simply round up all the citizens and force them into the main Breach Resistant structures,” Bomb said.
“It’s against the law here,” Snakeoil said. “If people don’t want to leave their homes, they can’t be forced to.”
“Actually, there’s something to be said about keeping the population spread out,” Skullcracker said. “More targets means more work for the enemy. By stuffing everyone into a few buildings at the center of town, we’re actually making it easier for the enemy to kill them all, if they do penetrate.”
“That’s a good point,” Kicker said.
“That’s right, Kicker, do be sucking up to Skullcracker, hoping to score some Brownie Points,” Bender said. “Maybe a big tough guy like Skullcracker will be your friend, and protect you when the bad man comes!”
“Bender, that’s enough,” Rade said. He switched to a direct channel with Bender. “We’ve got the lieutenant commander with us. I want you on your best behavior.”
“Sorry, Chief,” Bender said.
The two platoons reached the center of town, where the Breach Resistant skyscrapers contained eighty percent of the colony’s population. The exteriors were covered in long sheets of metal—the blast shields that ensured the interior remained pressurized in the event of a leak in the geodesic dome.
The platoons used their jumpjets to rapidly scale the different surfaces. They didn’t simply fire their jets all the way up, but ascended in successive leaps to preserve as much fuel as possible, latching onto the metal when the momentum from the latest burst expired, and crawling a short ways, forming their own hand and foot holds, being careful not to pierce the blast shields that protected the people holed up inside.
They were spread out over four rooftops, joining the other United Systems platoons already in place, consisting of humans, Centurions, and ATLAS mechs. Several laser-armed HS3s roamed the gaps between skyscrapers, the spherical units buzzing impatiently as they weaved to and fro. Equestrian tanks patrolled the streets at the bases of the buildings.
“Panther,” a voice came over the comm.
“Screwdriver,” Scotts said in return.
Rade traced the source of the transmission to an ATLAS mech. The pilot was labeled Philips ‘Screwdriver’ Wilks, Lieutenant Commander of Gamma and Omega Platoons, MOTH Team Eight. He would be the one in charge of the existing units.
Rade knelt so that Cynthia could clamber down onto the rooftop. She sat down with her back against a gooseneck vent.
“Someone want to escort her inside?” Rade asked. “To one of the floors where the other citizens are located?”
“I’ll do it,” a Centurion came forward.
Rade switched to a private channel, and told the robot: “Make sure you have someone watching her. Her loyalties are… questionable.”
Rade considered leaving her on the rooftop so he could watch her himself, but in truth, he wanted nothing to do with her. He was tired of babysitting her; let someone else do it for a while. He wanted to be able to concentrate on the battle at hand, if it came to it, without having to worry about some civilian running around.
“Understood,” the robot said. “I’ll watch her myself.”
The Centurion led her between the superstructures to a shed; an airlock opened, and the pair walked inside. The hatch closed behind them, and when it did so, it felt like a small burden had lifted from his shoulders.
“Well, men,” Scotts said, relocating to Rade’s now empty passenger seat. “Watch the four approaches to your buildings. It looks like our defensive lines out there are buckling, and it might not be very long at all until we’ve got tangos crawling up our collective asses.”
Rade dug his Brigand in on the western side of the building, and waited.
25
Rade deployed his cobra in his right hand, and activated the ballistic shield in his left. He aimed the cobra down at the street below.
“Taya, watch the closer approaches,” Rade said, switching the weapon over to her. The cobra slowly moved from left to right under her control; she would be using the camera feed from the scope to guide the laser weapon.
Meanwhile, Rade was still tapped into the head camera feed, and used that to zoom in on the geodesic dome. He gazed past the repaired glass segments, toward the battle beyond, and watched as the United Systems divisions took a beating.
“You think the Anarchist is out there?” Lui asked over the comm.
“It stands to reason that the mech the entity was using evacuated, at least,” Tahoe said. “My guess is the captain had it moved to the secondary hangar bay. They probably couldn’t remove the AI core, because of the way Cynthia linked it to the Nemesis technology, not without damaging both.”
“That’s true,” Kicker said. “But they could’ve always removed the arms and legs to make porting the torso easier. So I wouldn’t necessarily agree that the Anarchist was relocated to the second hangar bay. A cargo bay, or other internal storage bay is just as likely. And if that was the case, it would’ve been all the harder for the Anarchist to evacuate the Radial.”
“Not so hard,” TJ said. “Considering the entity was able to hack the main AI, and those four Praxter-model Artificials with it. Who can say what mischief those four had gotten to before the Anarchist ordered them to attack? If the arms and legs of the mech were removed, the Artificials could have easily restored them, under the auspices of the main AI.”
Rade remained silent, continuing to observe the distant battle. It looked like the mech divisions near the center of the army had finally halted the Draactal advance, and the Centurions further forward were actively working to cut them off from the main body. That was one of the risks of driving a wedge into the army of one’s opponent: that you’d only end up surrounded.
At the rear, artillery continued to pound the enemy positions with arcing shells, while air support dropped bombs on the Draactals and the robots embedded among them. But the aircraft were quickly being shot out of the air, thanks to the airborne spheres the enemy had.
The left and right flanks of the army were engulfed as the Draactal swarm pressed forward, and the artillery divisions at the rear of the army immediately began to retreat. The other units followed, pushed back by the relentless onslaught of Draactals.
The forefront of the fleeing army—the artillery units—were overwhelmed as the Draactals on both flanks swerved in front of them, and cut off their retreat. Some Draactals rushed forward, to the base of the geodesic dome, and began hurtling themselves against the glass segments. The glass began breaking, and Draactals rushed inside, spreading between the buildings to wreak havoc. There was no explosive decompression, since the atmospheres on both sides were relatively equal in density; but toxic, yellow mist from beyond did slowly wind its way between the different buildings, foll
owing the Draactals.
“Looks like we arrived just when the shit was about to hit the fan, as usual,” Fret said. “We’re the unluckiest platoon ever.”
“Or the luckiest!” Bender said. “Frig yeah, little buggies are gonna learn what it means to have their asses squished.”
“Something you’ve got some experience with, huh, Bender?” Manic quipped. “All those years spent in prison…”
“Shut up, moron,” Bender said. “I ain’t even been to prison. Unlike your ass. Surprised you can still sit down properly after your cellmates had their way with you all those months.”
“Trust me when I say this, no one touched my ass when I was in max,” Manic said.
“You know I can hear every word you two are saying, right?” Lieutenant Commander Scotts commented from where he remained perched on Rade’s back.
“Whoops!” Bender said. “Sorry, LC. I forgot you were there.”
“Has anyone ever wondered why these Draactals can survive so many atmospheres and pressure differentials?” Bomb asked.
“Fleet scientists have done studies on captured Draactals,” Snakeoil said. “They have huge sacks in their lungs that allow them to filter out the oxygen they need from other toxins in the air. The surface area of these sacks is so big, compared to human alveoli, that they can survive in atmospheres containing less than one percent oxygen levels. And on planets where there is no oxygen at all, they’re able to switch over to processing other gases like carbon dioxide, sulfur and even fluorine, however far less efficiently.”
“Oh,” Bomb said.
Still outside the city, the artillery at the forefront of the flight drove over the Draactals in their path, crushing their body parts with their treads and firing into them at point blank range. Bodies exploded in gory fragments, or aliens simply dropped, depending on the weapons employed.
“Chief, permission to open fire.” Bender sounded eager, impatient.
“LC?” Rade asked.
“Fire away,” Scotts said. “Clear a path for the retreating army. And don’t let any of these Draactals get close to us!”
“Taya, you heard the man,” Rade said, happy to let his AI handle the opening volleys. His cobra arm shifted to the left, and he felt the trigger activate.