“Ready, Zor?” I asked, turning the hoverboard on and placing my feet under the auto-straps.
“Sure, big guy. What makes you think I wouldn’t be? Behemoth monsters from my nightmares that can eat me whole? Not if they can’t catch me!” he quipped before slapping his face shield closed, hopping on his board, and taking off in one fluid motion.
I dropped the visor on my helmet as well, engaged my board, and shot after him. Zorn had said he could increase the speed and battery longevity, simultaneously, by at least twenty percent. By the feel of it, he had boosted the speed by more than fifty.
Trees buzzed by at a rapid clip, faster and faster as I chased Zorn down, bobbing and weaving several feet above the ground. Only about twenty minutes had passed from the time I reached Zorn’s to now—I just hoped we would get there in time, and I still had one more stop to make.
* * *
“Where does your dad keep them?” Zorn asked once I dismounted from my board.
“Where doesn’t he? Be right back,” I said, then darted over the threshold.
I came out a few moments later, carrying a laser rifle for myself and a laser pistol with a forearm stabilizer for Zorn. Both had fresh packs. Kinetic weapons would have been better, but those were locked up and keyed to Pop’s biometrics. However, I did manage to snag a bit of laser det-cord.
“Here,” I said thrusting the small pistol toward my friend. “Once flesh touches the grip, there is no safety. You should be able to wield it. Remember the plan?”
“You know it!” he answered, mounting his board.
Throttles down, we flew. Wind and feathery pearlescent leaves both sailed away and circled back from the downdraft caused by our low-hovering boards of fury.
* * *
Bursting through the tree line to the clearing where I had left my folks, we saw only the imprints of landing gear and footprints. Some were recognizably human, but many more were something far more monstrous, unlike anything I had ever seen, both in size and shape.
I failed, they’re gone! I thought, letting out a guttural scream so deep and drawn out, the corners of my vision blurred. My knees hit the earth beneath me as I sobbed, taking heaving breaths in between agonized screams.
“Kav! Over there!” Zorn yelled, pointing toward a set of ivory bushes.
Through blurry, tear-filled eyes, I saw Zorn moving in the direction he had been pointing. Wiping the tears from my eyes wasn’t easy in my father’s armor. Once my vision cleared, I could see the dark black of a boot beyond the ivory bush, standing in stark contrast to its deep pearlescent white.
“Pop!” I yelled, getting to my feet and sprinting as fast as I could over to where he lay.
Rushing past Zorn, I halted short of the ivory bushes, not wanting to see what I thought I would see upon rounding them.
“Pop!” I called out again as I inched around.
Finally making it past the corner, I found an unrecognizable form before me. I knew it was him from the boots, and the HUD on my visor further confirmed it, giving his name, age, and other biometrics. On the bottom right corner my HUD, the outline of a heart, weakly pulsing, showed. He’s alive! I realized suddenly.
“Zor! He’s alive! Get me some water! Do these things have first aid kits or anything on them?” I asked gesturing at our suits.
“No man, none. We have water and a few rations…I think,” he responded pointing to the small canteen and food pouch on my hip.
“Pop!” I said, lifting my visor. I grabbed my canteen and splashed a bit of water on his face to wash away some of the blood so I could see the location of the gashes.
They were everywhere. It looked like he’d been in a knife fight with someone who had eight arms and a knife for each. I wasn’t sure where to start. I bent low to confirm his breathing. It was sporadic, but he was, at least, breathing.
“Zor, what do we do? Do you see any indication of Mom around?” I asked, turning back to my friend.
“Kavin…” a low, growling whisper said.
“Pop!” I said, turning back once again. “Pop! What do I do, Pop? Did they take Mom?”
“Kavin…your mom…they got your mom,” he said between bouts of bloody coughing. “I tried to fight them off and come for you…I tried, Son!”
“Pop, it’s okay. Just lie still. We’ll get help. We’ll tell the navy, and they’ll get Mom back.”
“We…don’t. We don’t exist anymore, son. They…” More coughing. “They won’t…”
His words were replaced with a slow, choking gurgle, then his back arched with a gasping heave before going limp.
“Pop! Pop! Damnit, Pop!” I screamed, pounding on his chest, wanting him to wake up again. How can I fix this without you? I can’t leave Mom to die! They won’t what? I asked myself as Zorn tore me away from my father’s body.
“Kav, man, I’m so sorry,” Zorn said as he pulled me into his tiny embrace.
Sometime later, as my sobs turned dry, Zorn pushed away slightly to look me in the eyes.
“It’s going to be okay, man. We’ll call the navy, Z-Mining, everyone, and they’ll get your mom back. Your dad didn’t die in vain. You’ll see.”
“He said they won’t. That’s what he said when I said that same thing! She’s gone, too! I need to find a way to get her myself, man. Look what they did to Pop, and she’s the one they blame! She was the scientist! What are they going to do to her?” I asked, sadness giving way to vengeful anger.
“And how are we going to do that? How would we know where to find them, even if we did have a ship, which we don’t?” he asked.
I didn’t say anything for a moment or two, walking back past where Pop lay, digging through the bushes.
“I know it’s in here somewhere!” I called out as I rummaged through the ivory bush furthest from Pop’s limp form.
“What’s where?” Zorn asked.
“Pop’s comp. He shattered it and tossed it in these bushes as I ran earlier. He knew they were coming. He had access to some sat feeds or something,” I said as I focused on my search. “Here! Here it is. Zor! Buddy! Can you clone or recover what he was doing? Can you find those ships?”
“I mean, I can try, man, but I can’t make any promises. We still don’t have a ship.” He reached for the comp and connected it to his.
“One thing at a time, Zor,” I retorted.
“Got them!” Zorn called out a few moments later. “Your dad had heavy encryption on his comp, some high-level stuff, but it wasn’t that difficult to break since I had direct access to his comp. I accessed the memory of the sats—your dad definitely shouldn’t have had access to them by the way—and the shuttles are heading toward a small freighter. Based on its size, it couldn’t have a crew of more than five. So, maybe 15 creatures total? Better than a huge warship with 200 of those things, I guess, but still, I don’t see how we can do anything, even if we had a ship. Which again, we don’t!” he finished, looking defeated and confused.
I smiled devilishly, turning away from him and toward the Z-Mining repair yards about three clicks east.
“These suits are ID matched to the owners, right?” I said, striding toward my hoverboard.
* * *
We crept along the back fence of the Z-Mining repair facility. This wasn’t a military installation, but Z-Mining was one of the largest and, arguably, most powerful corps in the system. Security wasn’t exactly light. But our IDents showed we were security.
“You sure about this?” Zorn asked for the twentieth time.
“For the last time, yes!” I said, annoyed. “My IDent shows me as the DSH. Nobody will ask twice. When you looked at the logs, using Pop’s codes, you said there was a small scout and an old combat mech that had just been retrofitted with a mining laser. Grabbing them is our only shot.”
I had played the sims, and Pop had even let me run a real mech a time or two on his days off. At the time, I thought it was just because he wanted me to be his apprentice and get on a security detail after finishing school
. The more I thought, the more I got pissed off, but also the more things made sense. All the training. Survival skill development. Hand-to-hand combat. Tactical target shooting. Pressure tests. Beyond working toward “being successful in life,” Pop had said it was “to build character” and “to prepare for an invasion.” I honestly thought he was a crazy prepper. I guess he was, in a way.
We couldn’t enter through the front—the guards would have wondered why we had our helmets on—so we decided to discreetly make our own gate. Once in the bay, we would be forced to interact, but that was very different than being caught by a patrol in the yard.
The sounds of heavy machinery and power hammers could be heard intermittently. The repair yard had an on-site foundry and machine shop, and it processed metals and manufactured parts. In a pinch, they could manufacture whole ships, less the power plants.
Listening to the semi-steady boom of a multi-ton power hammer, I noted a pattern and decided the first part of our plan would work. Taking the laser det-cord from my pack, I made a semi-circle—up from ground and around back down—on the wall of the building, just a bit larger than I was inside my new suit.
“We need to time this right. The third hit always seems more aggressive. One…Two…Thr…” my words where cut off as the charge and striking hammer sounds melded into one.
The laser of the LDC flashed, super-heating the alloy wall, shortly followed by the two-step directional charge into the nearly melted barrier. Tiny rockets popped, thrusting magnesium pellets deep into the wall, sizzling and melting the rest of the way through, allowing the wall section to fall in on itself, revealing our new access.
“Move fast, but be careful—you don’t want to get any of the slag on your suit. We need to assume we’ve been heard. Which way to our targets?” I asked.
“It’s not far—I chose this location partly because it’s a short distance to the bay where the mech and the scout are—they are both in the ready bay.”
I followed Zorn’s lead around piles of scrap and discarded ship parts, attempting to carry myself as if I belonged. As if I owned the place.
Always go into a room with your head high. Make eye contact and talk little. Demand respect, and it will be given, Son, Pop had told me.
I intended to heed his advice.
We made it to the bay without issue, using the ID chips in the back of our gauntlets to enter the building, and we walked through the doors like we owned the place. The bay was much larger than I had originally thought, and with the large ship docks closed, stealing the ship now looked far more daunting. In the far corner, opposite the entrance, we could see one of our prizes.
Even at this distance, a X489 Heavy Mech was hard to miss. Painted the green and red colors of Z-Mining and standing in a hover rack, the 14-foot-tall behemoth looked like new. The missile turret had been replaced by a powerful mining laser, and the gauntlets that used to carry belt-fed kinetic weapons—as well as operating as hands—had both been replaced. The right held a vicious-looking, two-foot-long, plier-like clamp, while the left had a hydraulic 18-inch cutting apparatus.
Deep breath.
“Zorn, follow behind me, comp out. Act like you’re taking notes, but find the ship.”
“Your show, man,” he responded.
Walking confidently across the bay floor, nodding periodically in a dismissive hello to maintenance workers as we passed, I made it to the mech. This was the real moment of truth. I looked around, searching the bay for my target. Polishing a small hovercraft, a few feet away, was a sheepish 20-something, attempting to avoid eye contact. Bingo!
“Son! What on this moon is my new gear still doing on this rack?” I said with cold annoyance.
Channeling my father, I was no longer a teen—to all those within ear and eye shot, I was DSH Bazzano.
“Who’s the foreman on duty?” I asked before the scared little man could say anything.
“Zelf is in his office, um, sir,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Never mind—get some boys and get this mech loaded into the dock of the scout ship.”
“Zenser?” I shouted as I turned to Zorn and pointed at him.
“Sir?” Zorn asked, recognizing the name of his suit’s owner.
“You find my scout yet? I’ll bet this lot have their heads so far up their own asses, they didn’t get the equipment transfer paperwork, either,” I said. “Or…” I continued as I turned back to the now-frantic young man and pointed at his chest, “Or were you all too lazy to get it done? You’re not lazy now, are you, son?”
“No! No sir, I don’t think we have any equipment releases scheduled for this week at all. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll go get Zelf, and he’ll fix this. I…”
“Son, if you take another step in a direction that doesn’t lead this here mech into my new scout, it’s your ass.”
“But I?”
“Negative—get it done, then get your boss if you need to. Look at the name tag, son; if I’m not off this rock in 20 minutes, it’s everyone’s asses. You hear me?” I asked pointing to the DSH Bazzano on my left chest.
“Yes, sir,” he said, turning on the mech’s hover rack. “Which ship did you say sir?”
“It’s in bay C02.” Zorn answered, looking up from his comp. “And thank you, Carter.” He used the man’s name for the first time. Nice touch. “The boss isn’t usually this tightly wound,” Zorn continued. “I was a bit late getting us here, which is why we’re already prepped and set for vacuum. I’m afraid his mood is my fault. If we could just get in and out, that would be fantastic and a boon for my day.”
Zorn laid it on a bit thick, but Carter seemed to eat it up. I guess everyone has issues with their boss and could relate to what he was saying.
Arriving at bay C02, I instructed a few Zordackians to open the bay and prep for launch as Carter directed the mech into place inside the bay.
The ship was a standard Z-Mining scout, which was based on a military scouting vessel. It held a crew of six but could easily be piloted by a single individual. The ship’s bay had ample storage space and three designated universal mech lockdowns which could hold almost any size mech manufactured, up to and including this old battle unit.
Although I strode confidently up the ramp and into the ship’s small bridge, I sweated bullets inside my air-conditioned suit. Along the way, I ordered everyone else out.
Closing the ramp, I let out a sigh of relief and turned to Zorn, laughing. “I can’t believe that worked!”
“Of course it did. Once we were inside the maintenance bay, I was able to get into the intranet through the comp and backfill the paperwork needed to show that the ship was released two days ago.” He lifted his visor and grinned, razor-sharp teeth showing.
“What the hell, man? Why did you let me go through all that? I thought we were going to get caught when he wanted to get the foreman!” I punched him on the arm.
“Yeah, that was funny, but hey, man, you did it! We’re here. We’re gonna go die now, but we’re here,” he said, his grin only faltering slightly.
“What can’t you do with that comp, man? I can barely use mine for anything but games and surfing the net.”
“I can’t protect us from giant monsters looking to disembowel us,” he said, the grin now completely gone.
“I guess that part’s on me and Bertha back there,” I said, gesturing toward the bay.
“Bertha?”
“My new battle mech. Dude, you have to realize, this is all ours now. We’ve done all this for the right reasons, but if we don’t die horribly in the next hours or days, we can’t ever go back home, unless we wanna go to prison. This is all Z-Mining property. You know the system government classifies any theft from a mining entity as piracy. My new battle mech is Bertha.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about that part. We’re going to die anyway, though, so, I mean…” He fell silent.
“Look, Zorn, you don’t have to do this. Get out now, and after I take off, tell them I held you against yo
ur will. I have a laser rifle. You don’t have to do this.”
Zorn looked at me for a moment, incredulous. Buckling his harness and turning on the outside cameras, he said simply, “So, what’s our ship’s name?”
“Huh?”
“If the mech is Bertha, what’s our ship’s name?”
I thought for a moment as I ran through all the controls in real life, which until now I had only done in simulation. Not on this particular vessel, but I had plenty of experience with this vessel’s class. Most ships in the Xavier System were fairly standard. This was due, at least in part, to there really only being two major shipyards. One of them made civilian and commercial vessels, while the other concentrated on the military.
We made final checks, and Zorn confirmed with ground that we were clear to launch. I initiated the atmospheric hover engines and gently released from the moon’s gravity.
“Van Helsing,” I said, raising my visor to better see Zorn’s response.
“Van who?”
“Helsing,” I said. “Pop told me about this warrior from old Earth myth. He hunted monsters of all types. He was like a Viking or something; I don’t remember all of it. But—”
“We are going monster hunting,” Zorn finished. “Van Helsing it is! To Valhalla!”
* * *
“Do you have coordinates for those two ships? Any idea which one Mom is on?” I asked as we exited the moon’s atmosphere. In all of Pop’s training, I had never been off our moon. At least not within my memory. If we survived, would I see my home again? Had I just doomed myself and my best friend to die as well as my mom?
“Well…” he began. “Kind of. I have the last known location. I can tell you they docked with their carrier vessel, and that they were heading in the general direction of the gate. They have a big head start, and this information is a few hours old.”
“Dang! How far to the gate? Assuming they took the fastest possible route, but at a normal speed to not draw any attention.” My thoughts were scattered, and there were too many at once. Forcing myself to focus, I continued, “Scouts are pretty quick. Can we catch them without their knowing we’re coming?”
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