by Isaac Hooke
Shaw leaped to her feet and thrust forward. She curled up her body, trying to keep as much of her Hoplite behind the reduced shield as possible. Red spots lit up on the digital representation of the shield on her HUD, indicating where she took fire from the fleeing mech.
Floating forward, she waited until the sync indicators were green across the board, and then she lifted her cobra over the top edge of her ballistic shield. She planned to aim her targeting reticle near the center of the enemy’s shield, make a best guess approximation regarding the location of the power core behind it, and fire.
But the rogue Sprint had already begun zig-zagging back and forth, obviously anticipating a synced shot. She couldn’t track it.
Not alone.
“Nemesis, I’m handing control over to you,” Shaw said. “Try to take out the power core.” She kept an eye on the crabs behind her. The team was moving away, thanks to their superior speed. She was still taking shots from the rogue Hoplite, however, which had evidently decided to choose her as its main target.
Another grenade plunged toward her, and she jetted out of the way. It exploded, and the digital representation of her Hoplite on her HUD flashed where she took shrapnel damage along the side.
“Unfortunately, at the current angle we’ll have our best chance of terminating the mech by targeting the AI core,” Nemesis said. “As the positioning is more favorable.”
“If I jet higher, can you target the power core more easily?” Shaw asked.
“Possibly,” Nemesis said.
An alert appeared on her HUD.
Warning, shield breached above AI core. Warning…
“Take the shot now,” Shaw said. She’d run out of time. “Target AI core.”
The laser head moved back and forth above the shield for a few seconds, and then activated. The team’s synced cobras fired simultaneously, boring into the same spot.
The rogue ceased zig-zagging.
“Tango terminated,” Nemesis said.
Shaw still had her POV inside the cobra, and she could see the bore hole that had drilled right through the ballistic shield and into the mech’s underlying armor.
“Good shooting,” Shaw said. She unlinked the lasers and glanced at the rear view feed. The crabs had started to close on her again. She accelerated forward. “Let’s move!”
Bender was facing the crabs as he accelerated in the opposite direction; he had both cobras deployed, and he shot into them.
“Bender, I want you facing forward like the rest of us,” Shaw said. “And get your shield deployed. Your back is completely exposed. Remember, there are still other mechs somewhere ahead.”
“Yes Boss,” Bender said. “Bye buggies. I’ll miss you.”
He turned around and deployed his shield as requested.
The tunnel swung hard to the right and the crabs quickly dropped out of view. The tunnel kept winding like that, so she couldn’t tell how far away the crabs were. She assumed the Hoplites were pulling well ahead of them, though.
The team reached another branch in the tunnels a few minutes later.
“Spread out!” Shaw ordered. “Both tunnels. Let’s get a propellant scan done on the double.” She remained where she was, keeping an eye on the rear.
Harlequin and Manic both detected propellant in the leftmost passage.
“The leftmost it is!” Shaw said, jetting inside. When the rest of the team had flown a short way into the new tunnel with her, she added: “Re-attach to the tunnel walls. We’ll move a little slower, but we’ll be less exposed to any Hoplite fire.” In theory. Once more she opted to split the team up in order to get the best view of any lurking tangos ahead. “Surus, you get the left wall. Manic, the right. Harlequin, the ceiling. Bender, TJ, with me on the floor.”
After activating the magnetic mounts on their feet, the Hoplites moved forward through the darkness at a jog. For Shaw, it felt a little like trudging through a swamp, because the way the magnets adjusted their power output in time to her gait, based on the current angle, torque and position of her foot in relation to the surface, wasn’t perfect.
Over the course of the next half hour, they reached two more branches as demarcated by the LIDAR, and took the tunnels where small concentrations of propellant had collected in hollows and depressions. Zhidao had left breadcrumbs in the maze, whether he realized it or not.
“I’m picking up what appears to be a ship on the LIDAR,” TJ eventually said. “Could be the Volare, given the design. In fact, the vessel definitely matches the size and general shape of a Regina Mercante class.”
“You’re not getting a comm ping of any kind?” Shaw asked.
“Nope,” TJ said. “He’s definitely got most of the ship in hibernation. There is some thermal leakage, though, so obviously he’s got some systems active. I’d guess life support and gravity is online, given the distribution of the heat profile across the hull.”
So Rade might still be alive.
Of course he was. She remembered how Zhidao had taunted her when he had taken Shaw sixty-five million years into the past to the age of the dinosaurs. He had kept her and her son alive. Dropped them off in a heat-drenched rainforest surrounded by man-eating carnosaurs, with no weapons save their wits, but kept them alive nonetheless. Zhidao was twisted in that way. He liked his prey to have a fighting chance of survival. What that meant in terms of Rade’s captivity, she wasn’t sure.
“I don’t suppose you’re able to detect any life?” Shaw asked.
“Negative,” TJ said. “Even if we had HS3s with X-Ray capability, we’d have to bring them right up to the hull. And they’d only be able to detect life in the adjacent compartments. Deeper areas would be a no go.”
“Surus, are you still sensing the Purple?” Shaw asked.
“Same as before,” Surus replied.
“Okay, we—” Shaw began.
“I’ve got movement on the vessel,” Harlequin interrupted from his position on the ceiling. “Hangar bay doors of some kind are opening.” A moment later: “Got a tango!”
A dot appeared on her HUD map. It was labeled Electron. The old, or the new? It didn’t matter. Both were likely corrupted by Zhidao by now.
“I’m taking cobra fire,” Manic said.
That answered that.
She spotted the mech on her main LIDAR feed. It was jetting across, zig-zagging back and forth, headed toward Manic’s position. Several small white dots erupted from one arm. Grenades.
“Terminate with extreme prejudice!” Shaw said.
She followed the rogue Hoplite with her targeting reticle, but then flashes momentarily blocked her sight line. When it cleared, she spotted Manic’s Hoplite and Electron grappling nearby. Manic had moved to a different position to avoid the incoming grenades, and it seemed Electron had caught him by surprise, because the robot was attacking his back, ripping parts from his jumpjets.
Shaw acquired her target, but Manic managed to flip Electron over, placing himself on top.
“Manic, you’re blocking our view!” Shaw said.
Manic jetted backward—so his jumpjets actually still worked—and once more she had a bead on Electron. But the rogue mech rolled into a hollow and she lost sight of it.
The tunnel floor shook underneath her.
“Uh, we got a burrower I think,” TJ said.
“TJ, Bender, move!” Shaw thrust upward, and the tunnel floor opened up underneath her as a sinkhole formed. But the burrower must have pulled back, or halted its ascent, because crabs erupted from the caved depths instead. Some of the biggest she’d ever witnessed, according to the LIDAR.
She jetted forward, but crabs leaped up into her path, and she was forced to bash them away with her shield or her cobra. She shot away as many of the dangling cords as she could get a bead on.
“Forget the crabs and Electron!” Shaw said. “Get to the Volare!”
The vessel’s running lights activated, filling the tunnel with illumination.
“She’s turning on,” Bender s
aid.
“You’re getting turned on?” Manic said.
“Yeah, by you,” Bender said. “It’s so hot how those bugs are whooping your ass!”
Shaw broke free of the crabs and swung her shield toward Electron’s last known position. She began to take cobra fire. She swiveled the grenade launcher into her right hand instead of the cobra, and launched a couple of grenades at the mech.
The ship was beginning to accelerate away.
She kept her LIDAR overlay active over her vision, since the running lights from the Volare didn’t illuminate all the nooks and crannies on the vessel’s exterior. She spotted what looked like Viper turrets on the hull. Hopefully those hadn’t charged yet.
“Does this ship design have any point defenses?” Shaw asked.
“No,” TJ said. “But it does have a missile launcher.”
“Great.” Shaw said.
A missile alert activated on her HUD.
There it is.
She dove, firing her Trench Coat at the same time. The anti-missile countermeasures erupted from all sides of her, seeking out the incoming object. The flash above her, followed by the compressive gasses that forced her downward, told her that she had escaped, but only just barely.
She tried to compensate for the sudden downward momentum, but couldn’t fire enough countering thrust and bounced off the tunnel floor. She jetted onward and spotted the Volare’s open hangar bay doors.
They were closing.
Shaw fired her jumpjets at emergency speed, burning through her fuel, and came up fast on the closing hangar bay. She darted inside.
Gravity pulled her to the deck immediately and she landed with a crash. She rolled across the surface, sending out sparks, and managed to right herself only to hit the far bulkhead. She bounced off of it.
Small laser fire was coming in from her side, so she quickly swiveled her shield that way. She aimed her cobra past the edges and took out the three Centurions who had been waiting in the hangar bay to ambush her.
Then she spun toward the bay doors. They were almost closed. Before the doors shut entirely, she saw several receding flashes out there: more missiles detonating near her team, no doubt.
“Guys!” Shaw said, hurrying toward the doors. She planned to bash them open.
“The ship is moving too fast, now,” TJ said. His voice distorted badly. “We can’t reach you.”
“It’s up to you now,” Surus said. “We—” But her voice cut out.
The blue indicators representing her team members froze on the overhead map. Also frozen were the red dots of the crabs that had surrounded them.
She had moved out of range.
It’s up to you now.
Shaw turned away from the bay doors and went to the airlock instead. She smashed her mech’s hand into the hatch and squeezed, crumpling the metal. Then she pulled her arm away and ripped the door right off. She reached inside the airlock with her arm, and did the same thing to the outer hatch, tossing it into the bay behind her. The hangar hadn’t finished equalizing the pressure with the rest of the ship, so destroying the inner door caused a slight explosive decompression, with items near the breached airlock toppling over from the induced wind.
That airlock, and the passageways beyond, was too small to fit something as big as her mech.
“Guard the hangar bay,” Shaw instructed Nemesis.
“Initiating guard mode,” Nemesis said.
“Release,” Shaw said.
The actuators around her body retracted and she dropped to the bottom of the cockpit thanks to the ship’s artificial gravity. Her vision became pitch black when the mech’s camera feed cut out, but a rectangular crack of light appeared in front of her as the Hoplite’s external hatch opened. She kicked the door open the rest of the way and drew the blaster from her utility belt. That blaster was the only weapon she or any of the Argonauts could carry inside the cockpits of their Hoplites; anything bigger disrupted the functioning of the internal actuators.
Shaw leaped onto the deck in her jumpsuit.
twenty-six
The hangar bay lights abruptly cut out, replaced by dimmer emergency versions. Zhidao wanted to make things interesting for Shaw, did he?
A klaxon sounded, with a computerized voice occasionally repeating: “Warning, intruder detected.” That she heard the voice at all told her the atmosphere had stabilized. She could also see red swaths occasionally shining from the corridor beyond, no doubt emanating from the rotating alarm lights out there.
She momentarily holstered her blaster to open up the storage compartment in her Hoplite’s leg area. She took three frag grenades from inside and secured them to the harness of her jumpsuit. She also retrieved the stun rifle she had stowed there, and an ordinary plasma rifle, which would be useful for penetrating any breach seals she encountered along the way. Though when it came to fighting, the blaster at her hips would be much more workable given the tight confines of the ship.
She slid the two rifles onto her shoulder via the straps and withdrew her blaster once more. She turned away from Nemesis; the large mech resuming its guard vigil.
Shaw had no worries about leaving the Hoplite behind. Nemesis had a shielded AI core, so Zhidao wouldn’t be able to take over, not unless the Phant could shut down the mech first. Good luck with that.
Her jumpsuit was also equipped with Phant repelling tech, so Zhidao wouldn’t be able to incinerate her in his native form. As such, he would likely come at her while inside a host machine. Probably a combat robot, or maybe the old Ms. Bounty. Either way, she’d be in for a fight. She dialed up the power output of her jumpsuit servomotors to full as she approached the airlock.
Ah, her jumpsuit. The great equalizer. The enhancement provided by the servomotors would put her on par with a Centurion in terms of strength, though she’d be lacking in the speed department: she didn’t have hardpoints on her body like Rade that allowed the suit to interface directly with her body’s nervous system. Well, she’d just have to make do. Ideally, she’d never let the enemy get close in the first place.
She entered the airlock and pied the passageway outside with her blaster. The darkened corridor ended in a bulkhead to her left, while leading away to her right. The alarm light out there continued to revolve its angry red fan over the dim illumination provided by the emergency lights.
Shaw stepped into the passageway, keeping the blaster raised in front of her. She tried to minimize her profile by staying close to the left bulkhead, but the passageway wasn’t all that spacious; even when she flattened herself against the metal wall, the sheer bulk of her suit and jetpack combination filled half the corridor.
The klaxon continued to sound, as did the voice proclaiming an intruder.
As she proceeded forward through that empty corridor alone, she had the sudden sinking feeling that Zhidao had let her board on purpose.
Is he toying with me again, as he did when he had me and Alex under his thumb sixty five million years in the past?
She almost dreaded finding Rade. What if Zhidao had done something horrible to him?
She remembered what the Phants had done to Fan in the first Alien War, when she had been trapped eight thousand lightyears away from the rest of humanity. Giant mechanical arms had hoisted Fan into the air and grafted a thick steel bar into his spinal cord so that the Phants could control his human body without incinerating it. A Red had seeped inside that steel bar and taken control of him, and when Fan had looked at her, he had seemed heavily drugged, with no recognition whatsoever in his dull eyes.
She shook her head, banishing the memory. Still, she feared something like that had happened to Rade.
Please no.
Then again, what use would Zhidao have for a possessed human when he had access to combat robots and Artificials already? There was none. The only purpose it would serve would be to mock and terrify her. Unfortunately, that was precisely what Zhidao seemed to enjoy doing best. Then again, Zhidao didn’t have the necessary grafting technol
ogy at hand. When Fan had been converted, Shaw had been aboard a Phant mothership filled to the brim with Tech Class IV technology. Zhidao had none of that here.
But I’m sure the Purple could improvise.
Once more she forced the thoughts away. She had to focus now, above all times. Concentrate on the moment. Especially considering that an ambush could occur at any time.
She reached a breach seal and holstered her blaster, lowering the plasma rifle down from her shoulder instead. She opened fire at the seal, and the metal turned red. She kept firing until the metal became white hot; finally the metal began to melt away entirely, with a hole forming in the center, eating its way outward.
She spotted the three Centurions waiting on the other side just in time, and she ducked, using the edge of the gaping hole for cover. She realized her jetpack was probably exposed, so she dropped further. She considered placing the muzzle over the edge of the hole and switching her viewpoint to the rifle’s scope in an attempt to take them out, but she didn’t want to risk losing the weapon, as the plasma rifle gave her the only hope of blasting through those breach seals—she doubted the manual overrides would work, considering she was the intruder here. Zhidao had probably plasma’d the manual open jacks as well, like he’d done aboard the Argonaut.
Instead, she slid the rifle back over her shoulder, grabbed two of the grenades from her harness, and tossed them through the breach. She unholstered her blaster, waited for the explosion, and stood as the deck shuddered underneath her. She fired her blaster through the gaping hole and into the rapidly clearing smoke of the passageway beyond.
She picked out the still-standing silhouettes of two of the robots, and targeted each in turn. As they collapsed, she searched the deck for the third, and fired at its prostrate form. The robot didn’t move as she drilled a hole in its power core area—apparently the machine was already down for the count.
She holstered the weapon and retrieved her plasma rifle once more, and released a few more shots to widen the hole in the seal. She waited for the edges to cool, then pulled herself through. She switched to her blaster once again and proceeded forward, stepping meticulously over the twisted wreckage of the robots underneath her. Sharp fragments of shrapnel protruded from the surrounded bulkheads. Gotta love a good grenade blast.