* * *
“Good girl,” Stone said in approval of Richmond’s courage.
He watched her fall and strike the ground with enough force to kill an unenhanced human. As a viper, he had survived it, but he hadn’t enjoyed the experience.
“She’s hurt,” Hymas noted. “The knee is weakening.”
“Yeah I know. I set it up that way.”
“You did? Why?”
He shrugged. “Because I want her to have the experience of my fight on Bethany as close to real as I can make it. Her decisions are her own, but I can stack the deck enough to limit her options. That way I can make her do what I did that day, while still leaving the actual choice to her.”
“That’s hard, Ken,” Hymas said sounding as if she sympathized with Richmond.
“Of course it is. I’m a hard charging fighting machine. Emphasis on the machine there.” He waggled his eyebrows to make his friend grin. “The decision was a hard one to make, but I made it. If she can bring herself to do the same thing for the same or similar reasons, I think we might have a winner.”
Hymas grunted noncommittally. She watched the girl limp around the hangar in pursuit of heavier firepower. “Will she find what she’s looking for?”
He grinned. “That would be telling.”
* * *
The pain in Kate’s knee was indescribable. Sweat was beading on her brow and she couldn’t hold back a grunt as she put weight on it. She limped around the side of the building and pushed her self into a mild trot. Agony flared with every footfall, and her damage indicator insisted on telling her the obvious. Yellow was flashing around her right knee, but it had darkened toward orange. When it reached red it would indicate critical damage, but she was sure to be well aware of that by then.
She had thought viper units were tougher than this. She grunted as the pain flared higher. Her nanobots should take care of the damage in time she supposed, already the blood had stopped flowing, but she couldn’t stop to rest it for the time it would take to heal completely. She managed to put several buildings between herself and the enemy in short order, but she kept her sensors on maximum and swept a full three-hundred and sixty degrees around her position. Luckily, her viper sensors displayed information in a fashion she was familiar with. Anyone who had piloted mech armour would have recognised their output instantly.
Kate watched the red icons representing individual Merki troopers leave the hangar. They separated into teams of three to cover more area in their search for vermin. That’s how they thought of humans. Non-Merkiaari were vermin to be exterminated, or some said, enslaved. No one knew for sure. Those listed as missing had never been found, but that didn’t mean anything. Billions had died in the war, and many of the bodies were never identified.
Kate reached her objective and without hesitation blew the door off its hinges. She quickly ducked inside before the Merkiaari could locate her. Limping hurriedly down the empty corridor, she turned right at the second junction and keyed open the hatch she found there. She breathed easier when she stepped into the dimly lit storage facility nicknamed the morgue. Lights flickered on as she entered and revealed hundreds of mechs standing in neat rows waiting for their masters, the rangers, to come for them. No rangers would be coming, she knew. Those few who had died on the runway had been left to delay pursuit of the base personnel as they evacuated toward the city. Millions of people in that city would die later today, or had already died two hundred years ago.
“I’m here now, that’s all that matters,” she growled and quickly activated the crane.
To suit up, she had to remove the torso of the armour. She chose the first unit and a moment later she was clambering inside. She activated the controls and brought the armour’s computer online. Keying in the close and capture sequence, she raised her arms to accept the torso section and arms. Fully encased in the mech, she activated the motor systems and stepped out of the cradle to turn deeper into the morgue.
Walking passed the dead sentinels of mech armour she came to the vault. As she keyed in her serial number, she had time to wonder if Stone had screwed up. Would her code work in a simulation that was constructed from a two hundred year old download? The vault door sighed as the compression seals let go and the huge door swung open. She stepped inside.
“Now this is what I’m talking about.”
On the rack in front of her was an H3B-AC, or Heavy Tri-Barrel Auto Cannon. It was a thing of beauty. She reached forward into the H3B’s docking port and turned her left fist clockwise. The weapon icons in the mech’s HUD had been dark, but now one blinked to life and flashed red as the armour ran a diagnostic. She watched it turn from a blinking red to a pure and solid green.
“Oooh yeah, gonna pay motherfuckers.” She frowned, and wondered why she was talking retro. “Stone, must be.”
Thoughts of Stone’s sense of humour made her smile, but then she sobered a moment later when she remembered he was a cyborg. He was a machine, not a real person. He had no soul; she had to remember that. She reached out with her right hand for an AAR and locked her fist into it. She didn’t strictly need the rail gun. The Merkiaari hadn’t brought armoured vehicles with them in the first wave of attacks on Bethany, but she didn’t worry about that. A rail gun was a handy thing to have against any target. The AAR turned green in her display and she decided it was time to take care of business.
Back outside the armoury, her sensors detected two Merki fire teams at three o’clock, another two at six with a further three passing seven and probably heading for nine. It was obvious they had detected her and were moving to encircle her. Deciding to take care of those at three first, she moved out toward the maintenance sheds using as much cover as she could find.
The heavy thudding of a gauss rifle staggered her. She took a step back, and then three more, as a Merki fire team found her and hammered her torso. She glanced at her mech’s damage control sensors, but they were still dark. That was at it should be. Ranger armour should sneer at slugs from a mere gauss rifle. She would have been splattered to hell and gone without the armour.
“Lucky I chose the morgue and not the barracks then wasn’t it?”
Kate doubted it was luck. The entire sim was a set up. Stone had used an illegal download to drop her in at the deep end—unless his superiors had ordered this? Surely not, but…
Yes, there was that wasn’t there?
As those thoughts went through her mind, her body was reacting. She turned toward the maintenance sheds and activated the H3B. The whine of its motor spinning up was nothing compared to the ripping sound of hyper velocity rounds sawing the sheds in half at knee level. She contented herself with a single sweep, she was husbanding her ammo, but she was more than satisfied when something in the now collapsing sheds exploded with a thunderous roar.
CRUMP, CRUMP, CRUMP!
The sheds disappeared in a ball of fire a hundred metres high at least. She must have taken out the spare fuel pods for the fighters.
Oops!
Her sensors indicated more troopers coming at the double. She swung to her right and hosed the barracks with the AAR. Thin plascrete walls blew apart and the roof collapsed with a crash that shook the ground. The opening was only partially blocked, but again that didn’t matter. The temporary barricade was enough to slow the group at six o’clock, and give her time with those at three.
She throttled the mech to a lumbering run, and slammed into the Merkiaari as they appeared from around the officer’s mess. A single burst from the AAR took out the first one, but the second was a female. She was enormous and towered over the mech. The monster grappled with the AAR and tried to tear it loose. Kate tried to lift the creature, and the mech’s servos whined in protest. Her own viper strength made the difference, and the Merki trooper was lifted off her feet.
The warnings on her mech’s display spoke of a second Merki trooper attacking the emergency hatch in her back. The steady beeping of overload warnings decided the matter. She swung her H3B toward the
female, which was busy trying to gnaw through her armour. Kate rammed the barrels in the Merki’s mouth and fired. She heard the clanking rattle of the barrels gouging soft flesh and shattering fangs even inside the mech, but once the motor finally reached thirty thousand rpm, the auto cannon fired a burst through the shrieking creature’s head.
No more problem, Kate thought happily, and dropped the twitching carcass to the ground.
The last one was a male and he was not co-operating. When she turned, he turned with her and continued attacking her back. Her sensors said the others were coming into range now, but the pest on her back wasn’t letting go. She turned and located the troopers running toward her. She fired the H3B, but the attack on her rear hatch caused her to stagger. She killed the officer’s mess, but that was all.
* * *
“Dammit girl,” Stone swore. “You know what you have to do. Do it already.”
“She’s thinking like a ranger. It’s the armour.”
“I know,” he said with a sigh. He had really thought Richmond would come through, but now…
He sighed again and watched the show.
* * *
In desperation, Kate kicked backward and shattered the Merki’s leg at the knee. Her own knee screamed at the impact, but she didn’t care. She was frothing mad. She pointed the AAR at the writhing figure on the ground and fired. The trooper blew apart and so did the plascrete below it and the soil below that. She released the stud and stepped back from the smoking crater.
The proximity alarm heralding the approach of more hostiles, snapped her back to reality. She activated the H3B even as she turned. A hundred rounds a second spat from the whirring barrels destroying everything in their path. Walls were shredded, windows shattered, plascrete was pockmarked, roofs collapsed, fires took hold… and Merkiaari were sliced in two. Silence descended as the H3B ran dry. The only sound was the crackle of the flames and the whirring of the auto cannon’s motor as it spat nonexistent ammunition.
“Oooh yeah, that did the trick all right.”
Kate released the stud and disengaged the now useless cannon. She dropped it and turned to the north. She knew her comrades were fighting for their lives in the city. The Merki landers would be coming down in their thousands now, firing into the tall buildings in a planned manoeuvre designed to kill humans quickly at the same time as blocking the Alliance tanks and APCs.
She throttled up and ran to help.
When Kate arrived, the city was burning, but it wasn’t yet the complete disaster it would later be. Refugees were everywhere, but panic had yet to set in. Bewilderment was the expression on most of the soot-covered faces, horror on others.
As Kate made her way in amongst the buildings, her mikes picked up the sound of a Merki troopship overhead. Her sensors reported another wave of ships coming in. She cursed as the first Interceptors roared by. She had missed her chance. With the AAR raised skyward, she waited and fired at another group of enemy ships passing overhead. She hit one of the Interceptors, but failed to knock it down. The second blew apart most satisfactorily. Burning wreckage rained down upon the street. The drive section smashed through a shopping arcade, and added to the destruction being heaped upon the city.
Kate blocked out the shrieks of people hiding inside, and moved on looking for ground targets instead.
She found another target not ten minutes later. A platoon of Merki troopers was performing a sweep through a housing district. Two troopers went into a building to flush out any vermin hiding inside, while the bulk of the platoon waited outside to ambush them. Kate kept her distance. She used the AAR to knock down the building and bury them all under tons of plascrete and steel.
Her next target was a troopship near a chemical manufactory. She had no chance of destroying such a ship. It was much too big, but she might inconvenience those within it. She waited for it to begin its landing cycle before blowing away the pressure lines feeding one of the chemical storage tanks. The explosion was like the end of the world. Kate gaped as a wall of fire rolled over the ship and descended upon her. Without a second thought, she engaged maximum thrust and jumped as hard as she could. Her jump jets were not designed for flight, but with luck…
Kate landed and looked back to see the ship explode. The chemicals in the storage tank must have reacted with the air in some manner. She had certainly not expected the results she achieved, but it had worked. The troopship’s fuel pods exploded as she watched. She ignored the burning fuel raining down on her, and walked through it looking for more Merkiaari to kill.
Sometime later, Kate’s chrono said it was 18:10, but she hadn’t detected the launching of the drone. Thinking she had missed it, she asked her mech’s computer to confirm the launch.
“Negative. No launch detected.”
That was wrong. Her lessons all agreed that the drone jumped at 17:52, it was 18:13 now.
“Computer, confirm any launch with a destination outside the planet’s atmosphere.”
“Working… No launches detected.”
She was supposed to launch it; it had to be that. Damn Stone for this. He hadn’t told her the aim of her mission here, but now she knew. She throttled up and ran for the centre of the city.
* * *
“About time,” Stone said angrily. “You would have thought someone from Bethany would have known the importance of that launch. Without it, the entire planet would have been scoured clean!”
“I told you, Ken, she’s thinking like a ranger in that mech of hers. She knows now though. When are you going to stick it to her?”
“Now?”
Hymas nodded and he keyed in the final blow.
* * *
“For God’s sake, you have to help me,” a man shouted grabbing at the running people. His clothes were ripped and bloody. Blood trickled down the side of his face, and he wiped it away with a shaking hand. “You don’t understand,” he screamed, as everyone he tried to stop pushed him away. “They’re killing the children. Somebody, help me!”
Kate skidded to a stop and turned toward the crying man.
“Please, oh please. You’re a soldier; you have to help me. A soldier has to help, yes… you will help,” the man said with certainty.
Kate scanned the area, but there were no targets nearby. She activated her external speakers. “Who are you? What’s this about killing kids?”
“I’m the principal of… but that doesn’t matter. The aliens are killing the children. You have to help me,” he screamed up at her armour where she towered over him.
Kids… oh no.
Kate’s thoughts whirled. Just as she was about to demand directions, a viper ran toward her. He was a captain. She had never seen this one before, but he obviously thought he knew her.
“Stone?” the viper said in amazement. “What the hell do you think you’re doing in that crap?” he said looking over her fire-blackened mech. “You were supposed to launch the drone, not stand there flapping your gums. Christ… you haven’t launched it,” he said in sudden realisation. “They are going to take out the launch centre you idiot!”
“Sir,” she said hesitantly. She was off stride and worried about the kids. “Sir, this man say’s they’re killing the kids.”
The viper squeezed his eyes shut in grief, but when he looked at her again, he had eyes of flint. “If we don’t launch the drone before they take out the launch centre, we lose Bethany and all who live here will die. I can’t… I cannot abandon this world to save a few kids. I can’t…” he finished sickly.
“Please, you must help,” the principal said begging the captain and clutching at his arm. “It’s not a few. My entire school is being butchered. Thousands, thousands. For the love of God man, you have to help.”
“I can’t help you, we can’t help you,” he said and looked back up at Kate where she loomed over him in the mech. “Get out of that stinking armour. We have to launch the drone before it’s too late.”
Kate watched the viper accelerate toward the centre of
the city. He was almost flying he was running so fast. She would never keep up. She hesitated one more time, but then she deactivated the mech and popped the emergency hatch to climb out. When she saw the damage it had taken at the back, she was amazed she had survived. Power leads and hydraulic lines were exposed and fluid was leaking out. The thing was fit only for scrap.
“The school is this way,” the principal said running to the corner. “It’s not far.”
Kate glanced at him and then down the road where the viper had gone. She ran toward the city centre.
“You bastard! You’re not a man… you’re not even human! You’re a cyborg, a disgusting soulless freak! I hope you die screaming in agony! I hope you rot in hell…”
Tears were running freely over Kate’s cheeks. It must have been the pain in her knee. Her thoughts were on her brother and what he would have said. Leaving the children to die—he would have been disgusted. She knew he would have saved them if he had been here. She left the principal’s curses behind as she attained her maximum speed. Her knee was screaming in agony and her damage control display was indicating major damage. She shouldn’t have kicked that Merki trooper, but if she hadn’t she would be dead now. Tears of pain and rage blurred her vision.
She ran on.
* * *
“I never knew,” Hymas said quietly. “I was on Alizon then. The Merkiaari sent two ships, but they never gained the upper hand.”
Stone shrugged. “Yeah well, shit happens.”
“Did the kids survive?”
“Of course not,” Stone snapped looking away from the compassion he saw in her eyes. He didn’t deserve compassion, not for what he had done. “Sorry, Marian, but I don’t want to… oh hell, you might as well hear it. The Merki squad killed the teachers when they shielded the kids with their bodies, then they killed the kids. The principal survived and denounced the entire regiment as cowards and murderers.”
“I know that part. I didn’t know the Colonel and you were involved.”
Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour Page 15