“Only junk left,” Horst comments. “It looks like they packed up and left in a hurry.”
“Left to go where?” Rhiannon wonders in her helmet.
“We’ve been keeping an eye on the Rim,” Paul explains. “We haven’t seen more than the random frigate. And nothing since they attacked you. There’s no other way out of this canyon.”
“Except the way we came,” I look up at the sky through the thin cable net.
“Their dirigibles couldn’t fly up there,” Paul argues.
“That new ship might,” I counter. “Assuming they did build more.”
“Or something newer,” Rhiannon follows, then considers: “That ship that hit you wasn’t big enough to carry what they probably took out of here.”
“Something weird here,” Horst calls on the Link. Some of his men have found the Zodangan version of cave art, though possibly more functional: Some of the big cut-stone hangar walls have been decorated with fairly detailed illustrations of their ships. The older-looking drawings are sail-dirigibles, powered gliders. But some fresher work includes drawings of the new ship Chang designed for them.
“That’s not good,” Horst points out what I hope is a fantasy scene (or maybe a long-term plan): it shows a formation of sailing frigates led by three of the new ships.
“Then this is worse,” Baker, one of Horst’s troopers, calls us to another drawing. It has a similar shape to Chang’s flagship, but in this illustration, it seems to dwarf the frigates portrayed flying with it. It’s hard to tell, because it looks like someone took a sandblaster to it, tried to erase it, but didn’t get the time to finish.
“Something newer?” Rhiannon repeats her concern.
“Hopefully it’s still on the drawing board,” I try, though not terribly hopeful.
“It would explain all the mining,” Rhiannon goes worst-fear.
“No,” Paul denies. “We would have seen something like this.”
“Not if it they took it out over the Planum,” Sakura joins the debate, her big bodyguard standing close behind her. (Her scouts have disconcertingly vanished from easy sight.)
“Then why haven’t they attacked again?” Paul doesn’t buy.
“Maybe they aren’t ready,” I let myself admit what I’m also fearing. “Maybe what they’re building isn’t ready. But they wanted to move it knowing we’d try to stop them.”
“Where would they go?” Sakura asks the next critical question.
“Somewhere we haven’t been watching,” Paul allows heavily. “Candor. Ophir. Tithonium. Ius.”
“They’d be living and working in near-vacuum…” Rhiannon starts to discount. And get’s interrupted when the caverns echo with a laugh that sounds like a bad Halloween effect: a barely-human cackle. And then an amplified voice:
“Ya dead cold an’ shit stupid...”
Female. Childlike. Or insane. But I know the voice. (And so does Sakina, who immediately steps in front of me.)
“…an’ late…I been waitin’ a week… Glad ya foun’ yer way…”
“Nina Harper!” I call out into the caverns, stepping into the middle of the big hangar, Paul and Rhiannon keeping close while Horst points his guns into the shadows down the branching tunnels.
More laughing, like I’ve said something really funny. Then, clearer, calmer:
“Glad ya ‘member a girl, Cap’n Colonel Ghost… Only I ain’ Nina Harper, or even girl anymore thanks tah ya n’ yers… Time ya get yer favors repaid…”
And I do remember: Harper was Bly’s chief gunner, and apparently his mate. I also remember slicing her hand off when she tried to shoot me in the face, right before Sakina kicked the crap out of her and left her standing at zero for one of her own cannon barrages. The last we saw, Bly was dragging what was left of her back toward his damaged ship, just as the ETE declared there would be no more shooting under their benign supervision.
My goggle HUD goes live as Horst shouts:
“Incoming!”
I hear popping and whirring that I realize is a
“Grenade launcher!”
Sakina knocks me to the deck as what look like 40mm grenades fly over my head at the ship. The blasts get absorbed by whatever shield the ETE throw up around it.
“Ya can protect yer shiny dick of a ship, but can ya take my dish on yerselves?”
A grenade blows inside a field not three meters in front of my face as I try to get up. I realize Paul has thrown up protection around me. But then I see Rhiannon—trying to advance into the deeper caves with a Sphere for a shield and a Rod for a weapon—slammed back off her feet like she was hit by a truck. A second and third grenade fired in quick succession kicks her back further, out of the hangar onto the big dock. A fourth blows the dock out from under her before she can get up, and I see her struggle to keep from falling through the hole, losing both of her tools in the process.
“Tetsu!” Sakura shouts, and her big bodyguard gets in front of her. (I realize Paul has either inadvertently or purposefully failed to shield her.) I watch her eye Rhiannon’s lost Sphere as it rolls across the stone hangar floor, but then more explosions distract her.
“Fan out! Get cover!” Horst is barking orders to his troopers. “Fire for effect!”
I see one of our H-A suits slam the deck as a grenade blows just behind him. Another is already down, two more suits rushing to drag him to cover out of the hangar. I try to calculate the kill radius of whatever Harper is popping at us. We still can’t see her, and the grenades keep coming at us from different parts of the cave network—she’s mobile.
“Flares!” I remind Horst to light up his target.
It takes the troopers three seconds to load flare rounds into their own grenade launchers. Blazing self-oxidizing magnesium flies into the shadows. I think I see something moving back there, maybe seventy-five meters into the cliffs, popping at us from different tunnels (they must be interconnected deeper in). But it doesn’t move like a person. It… bounces…
Horst’s people are shouting directions, trying to get a shot. They start popping random bursts back at whatever is bombarding us, throw back a few grenades of their own, lighting up the maze of Zodangan caves, only to fill them with smoke and dust.
“I can’t see her!” Horst complains. “Not even on heat/sound or motion detection!”
He’s right: MAI’s showing me nothing but empty caves on my visor, and then the random warning of more incoming.
Sakura is crouched down behind her big bodyguard, still out in the open. I think I hear her whisper commands into her dedicated link, and she suddenly dashes sideways as her human shield takes off running toward where the grenades are coming from. A grenade flies past her head and blows against the Lancer’s shields, and I realize she’s running to get herself behind the personal field Paul has put around me.
“Fire discipline! Don’t hit our own!” Horst warns, watching Sakura’s “Tetsu” run right into the line of fire like we’re not even here. And I don’t know where her other two shinobi went.
Or Sakina. She’s gone, too.
Rhiannon has crawled out of her hole, and gets another Sphere out just in time to block a grenade, but it almost collapses the deck she’s clinging to. She rolls, draws a Rod, and uses it to propel her across the deck like some kind of torpedo, trying to get herself between Harper and Horst. Behind us, three of the other ETE—Orange, Purple and Yellow—literally fly out of the Lancer’s upper airlocks and throw themselves between the “vulnerable” and Harper.
More laughter—now far less audible with all the ringing in my ears—and more blasts: Harper begins throwing grenades wide, bouncing them off the ceiling and walls, getting them around the ETE’s attempts to block them. The ones the ETE miss punch holes in the dock between us and the ship, threatening our retreat. Another volley goes high and starts taking the roof down on us in big chunks, making the ETE direct their fields into a protective umbrella so we don’t all get crushed. They can’t move, can’t advance.
Then I
see Tetsu get hit with grenade, and it blows almost square in his gut. But his body doesn’t disintegrate in the blast like meat and bone should. He flies back, tumbles. Bounces on the cut-stone deck. Heavy—enough to gouge the stone as he lands and skids. Like he’s made of metal.
I see him flail, almost in slow motion. Try to get up. Scream. His left hand has been ripped away. But I don’t see blood. What I do see is metal: much of his sealsuit uniform has been disintegrated by the blast. What’s underneath looks like a bronze statue, scarred and gouged. The ragged stump of his wrist looks like it’s trying to re-knit, make a new hand, but doesn’t have the material to work with.
“What the hell…?” I hear Horst mutter as he sees it.
“Oh… No…” I hear Paul.
“Oh fun!!” I hear Harper cackle.
“Who the hell do I shoot at?” Horst needs me to tell him. I lock eyes with Sakura, but all I see are her mask and goggles. She’s crouched low, ready for a fight, her claws out but down at her sides. Waiting for my answer.
“Harper,” I tell Horst. “Priority is Harper.”
“Not Harper anymore!!!” I hear her scream like I’ve hurt her. And Harper—or what she’s become—comes at us. Running. Sort of.
On long, almost canine and clearly mechanical legs that give her a bounding stride like she’s on spring stilts. Her torso is big and bulky, with a kettle-style helmet and lots of torso armor like the early heavy construction pressure suits. She looks like she still has her left arm, though heavily armored, but her right terminates in an automatic grenade launcher, belt-fed from a big backpack. Her gun belt is also stocked with grenades. I can’t actually see any flesh with all the metal (her visor is only thin eye-slits), but it’s clear she’s cyborg at least from the waist down, her pelvis barely a frame sprouting a pair of oversized ball-socket joints. Not girl anymore.
“BRIMSTONE!!!” she howls, cycling her launcher, pounding the ETE fields, the shockwaves starting to compromise the whole cave system. “BRIMSTONE!!”
Horst’s squad doesn’t hesitate. Their guns open fire, and the ETE seem content to let their bullets through. But it looks like we’re using small arms to shoot at a tank. Harper barely staggers, whatever her armor is made of only dinging under the barrage. One of our snipers tries something higher caliber, which manages to almost make her lose her footing and does punch a hole through her chest plating, but then I watch it reshape, heal.
“She’s got nanotech…” I state the obvious.
“She’s not the only one…” I hear Horst state the other obvious, just as the mangled Tetsu gets up and tries to tackle Harper, pummeling her helmet with his remaining hand and even the stump of his ruined one. She plants her thick claw-like feet, spinning her torso back and forth, trying to shake him off. She gets desperate when her helmet starts to cave in, points her launcher and blows a grenade into his midsection that throws them both in opposite directions.
Tetsu’s metal body looks even more abstract than before, concave where his spleen should be, his left leg now almost separated from him at the hip. Harper’s armor looks amazingly little the worse for wear, probably built to withstand her own weapons (and apparently most of ours), but her grenade launcher has been smashed, its belt feed ripped away. But she rolls like someone in a big metal can, scrambles to get her robot legs under her again. I see her look briefly at her wrecked gun (or so I assume as she brings it up in front of her eye-slits), then she draws a stubby rifle-style launcher from her gun belt with her left hand. Pops off a single shell. It catches Tetsu under the jaw and blows his head off. The metal body falls back with a heavy clang and doesn’t move.
Something picks Harper up and throws her back, slams her into the cave wall. I already see her right hand grenade launcher trying to rebuild itself. Her helmet has already reshaped itself.
All five Guardians that were out of the ship are now advancing, trying to surround her, apparently convinced that they have an opportunity while her main launcher is down to leave us less protected. Her armor visibly ripples as they try to take her apart, but it doesn’t dissolve. Nor does further Rod battering seem to do anything more but get her laughing again.
Paul converts his modified Rod into a gun, and I watch him pound her center-of-mass. This seems to stun her, caving in her armor, but it quickly reshapes. Then he does something I doubt his people would approve of, even here: He uses his “tool” to scoop up rocks and other debris from the cavern and propel them at Harper like bullets, tearing up her legs, punching holes in her plating. She plants herself against the bombardment. I think I see blood, but she doesn’t look like she minds.
But then something does hurt her. I see the big helmet jerk, spin, and I hear a scream. There’s one of Sakina’s torpedoes sticking deep in her eye-slit.
And then something else chews her up.
Small spinning blades come flying out of nowhere, sink into Harper’s torso, her arms, her legs, cutting her armor like it’s made of wood. Then something heavy chops into her left shoulder, making it deep through plate, almost dismembering her. I realize I’m seeing a sword, but no wielder.
Or no visible wielder. Something roughly human-shaped ripples, barely visible, like a mirage. I see it drive the sword into her other eye slit, then bury it into the tight gap between helmet and neck armor. Another blade (and another mirage) hits her from the other side, chopping into her right leg, trying to disable her. Then the second blade tries to punch through her torso plates.
Harper is down on her mechanical knees, still flailing, but manages to understand her predicament enough to act. Her main gun is still down, but I realize she has a “hand” on that arm, though made of three heavy flat “fingers” the size of digging tools. She punches out, and I see blood. And a trail of it, leaking out of one mirage as it falls off of her. Leaving its short sword stuck in her. She tries to swing at the other mirage, which is on her back, but doesn’t seem to be finding anything soft.
Mirage Number Two is bleeding a pool on the cave floor, but I see more of those small blades fly—I realize they’re a kind of shaken (what the uninitiated call “ninja stars”). But despite their ability to cut whatever she’d made of, they only wound, annoy (at least someone as heavily armored as Harper—they would likely cut clean through even our H-A suits).
Then another of Sakina’s torpedoes hits Harper under the left armpit, sinking deep into her torso. I realize Sakina’s been keeping to the shadows, using the maze of smaller tunnels to move around the threat, size it up, find her best targets.
I see a blur in my peripheral vision that I realize is Sakura, trying to charge into the fight, hands ready to draw her sword. I instinctively reach out and grab her robes, stopping her. She turns on me, but I look into her goggles and shake my head, hopefully convincing her I’m looking out for her safety. She holds, however reluctantly.
The ETE have had to hold their attack to keep from harming what I assume are Sakura’s “scouts”, apparently enhanced by stolen nanotech, just not in the same way that the apparently dead Tetsu was.
(“Invisible ninja and iron giants,” I hear Matthew in my head again. “This just gets better and better…”)
Harper flails, trying to hit or at least throw off her mostly invisible attacker. She gets smart and uses her “claw” to grab the shinobi’s sword when he tries to get it through her armor again, and she’s strong enough to break it.
And then I realize: her main gun has self-repaired.
Despite the belt being gone, she had at least one round in the chamber, and wisely blows it into the ground almost between her feet. At the same time, her legs spring her upwards like a grasshopper, hard and high enough that she almost bounces off the hangar ceiling, getting her clear of the explosion so she doesn’t damage herself much again. But Paul manages to clip her with his Rod-gun in midair, and it sends her tumbling. She comes down on her back with a dense clang, and doesn’t get up immediately.
As the dust begins to clear, I see she’s not alone: two bod
ies writhe on the deck within a few meters of where she’d been, seen mostly by the grit frosting them, but they soon start flickering—their camouflage is failing. Not that it matters: Sakura’s scouts both look hurt, likely badly, probably mortally, caught close by Harper’s grenade.
Worse, Harper slams her gun against the side of her pack, and it comes away with a fresh feed belt of grenades and she manages to get her feet back under her.
The ETE coordinate to get a field around her as she starts pumping high explosives at us. But the shockwaves—however contained—are shaking the caves. The dock creaks, threatens to give way. The Lancer will have to risk coming into the equally unstable caves to pick us up. Or the ETE will have to carry us.
And the ETE are busy.
Harper, at least, seems to be suffering now. Her armor may be proof against shrapnel and crushing, but the pressure waves of her blasts should jelly the innards of a human being at the ranges she’s been willing to throw them. Her nanotech must heal her (or whatever’s left of her inside that can) as well as her armor and weapons. I idly wonder if it regenerates her flesh or simple replaces it with more machine.
“Paul,” I call into my Link, hoping he’s listening, “time for bigger guns…”
The Lancer lifts, turns 90 degrees to nose into the hangar cavern. The ETE hold position until the last moment.
“Horst, Zauba’a, make a hole. It’s time to go…” I order into my link. Then I turn to Sakura. “You too. We’ll talk later…”
Sakura gives me no argument or response, but she doesn’t appear eager to flee either. Horst is already coordinating his troops with the ETE to split our numbers and clear the centerline of the hangar cave, giving the Lancer an open sight-line to where Harper is barely pinned. I hear a hum, feel my skin crawl with electricity, and then the air feels like it’s got a strong ocean current flowing through it. Not wind—it feels like water. And it gets stronger, fast. We move as quickly as we can to get out of its way.
ETE “artillery” dug up the entire Shinkyo colony in minutes. Whatever they’ve loaded into the Lancer is somewhere between that and their personal tools. I see Harper thrown back into the deeper caves, and then I see the cavern start to strip, ceiling and floor crumbing and pouring into a hurricane of rock and dirt and scrap and crashing after her. Then the deeper cave tunnels start collapsing as well.
The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds Page 30