by David Ryker
I swore inside my helmet and breathed hard. Peeking up over the wall, I laid my rifle across it and starting putting shots into the air. I didn’t know what I was shooting at — there was nothing to shoot at. It was like firing into water and hoping to hit a fish. The House Cats drew level with my position and pushed up the rise toward the enemy front line. It must have been easier to wade into fire knowing you had twelve inches of steel protecting you. I looked down at my flak jacket and thought about how the guy in the foxhole had been blown apart. It was more for show than anything — a placebo. Around me other exo troops rose from their holes and fell into line behind them, taking cover behind the thick steel hulls of the House Cats. I watched them creep on ahead and the voice came back. “Deserting your unit is an offence punishable by death, soldier. Show us what you’re made of. Move up!”
I didn’t feel like getting killed. I was guessing it was going to hurt like a bitch, judging by the way that pain was triggering all over my body. However the headset was sending impulses, I could feel things. Not little things, like dust or wind, but the stony shrapnel punched at me as it rained down on my head, tossed by a stray shell shot from whatever the fuck we were fighting.
I grunted and scrambled back onto the road, taking cover behind one of the F Series there. It fired incessantly. Two other troops fell in next to me and we all strode forward. My helmet crackled with static. “Hey, exos!” The voice was hard, female, no-nonsense. “You’re my goddamn eyes, alright! You cover my flanks. Let’s get these fuckers.”
I stared up at the back of the F-Series in front of me. It was the pilot talking from inside the suit, cocooned inside her steel shell. I nodded, but I didn’t know to who. We surged forward, me covering left, the other two covering right. The House Cat picked up the pace and we followed. I kept my eyes left, shooting at everything that moved, ducking under fire when it came in, crouching close to the F-Series and firing through its legs when it came under attack. My heart hammered in my chest, but I wasn’t dead yet, which I was pretty happy about. I had no idea how long I’d been in — it felt like a long time. My mind flitted back to the kid with the tattoos — twenty something seconds. He must have been putting on a show. He’d been cooked by the time he got to the first foxhole. Must have been, but I didn’t have the time to consider it just then. I knelt down and pumped a dozen rounds into one of the things that was swimming in the smoke. The air was thick with it. Everything was burning. Wreckage of buildings, downed craft and mech, shell holes — everything. The smoke was thick and acrid. The alien stumbled under my fire, writhed in the air, and then collapsed. It was on all fours, at least three or four times the size of a human, with a tail and a long face — reptilian maybe? Couldn’t say. I kept firing.
One of the troops behind me clapped me on the shoulder and I turned, the sensation dull and vague. A muscle twitch more than anything, but real enough in the moment. He nodded his head to the right and motioned for me to follow him. He pointed toward a set of only half-destroyed buildings. Cover. Real cover. He motioned for me again to follow. I wondered if they were real recruits, like me, in a SimPod, or if they were just digital apparitions.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “We have to cover her.” I looked up at the House Cat towering over us, pummeling the reptilian enemy with the Samson rifle she was wielding.
They looked at each other and then grabbed for my arm. I shrugged them off. They tried again, pointing to cover. I pushed one of them back and the other lunged for me. “Come on, man! We’re going to get killed out here!”
I hit him with the butt of my rifle and then shoved it in the face of the other one. “Hey, we were told to cover her! I’m not just going to bail.”
“Shit, man! She’s a fucking Federation pilot and she’s protected by twelve inches of Zephod Steel! We’re going to die and it’ll be for nothing,” the one on the ground growled. “This ain’t our war, man. I’m not dying for the Federation. It’s not my choice to be here.”
We stayed silent for a second, but I didn’t lower the rifle.
The pilot shouted “Contact!” through the comms and I wheeled around, pinning the trigger. We both fired on the same reptilian thing rushing us, firing its own rifle into the House Cat, and it seemed almost pointless for me to be there at all. My rifle was like a peashooter compared to the F Series above me.
I glanced over my shoulder. The two exos were gone. The House Cat went to a knee as the reptile fell and ground to a halt in front of us. Its mouth opened, and its tongue lolled out, blue and forked between the hooked teeth. I swallowed hard and fought the bile back into my guts.
“Cover me,” the pilot yelled. “I’m reloading!”
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” I called into the ether.
“Eleven o’clock!”
I swore and dashed between the legs of the House Cat, slamming my shoulder against the inside of the knee for cover. I span out and pinned the trigger, filling the air with muzzle flash. A reptile rushed up toward us between the destroyed buildings and absorbed my rounds without slowing down. It was nearly on us when it faltered, stumbled and clattered to the ground. I dove to the side to get out of its way and it slid straight into the House Cat, bunching against its leg.
“Shit!” the pilot yelled.
“Shit? Shit what?” I dashed back to the fallen corpse and laid my rifle across the hulking jawbone, using it as a rest while I chased down one flanking us with a stream of bullets.
“Bullet jam!” she grunted.
“Bullet jam? You’re not fucking serious!”
“It’s no good. Punching out!”
“Punching what now?”
Before I even finished asking, the hatch on top of the House Cat blew open with a burst of flame and the pilot soared into the air on her seat. She sailed into the clouds above and was gone. The F Series sagged a little but remained upright. I stared around in disbelief. There were no exos nearby, I couldn’t see any other mech, and there was no sign of any sort of support.
Dark shapes swam around me, circling like sharks. I hunched down behind the monster’s head and looked up at the mech above me. I couldn’t believe she’d just left me. I gritted my teeth, regretting not going with those two exos now. The Federation didn’t give a shit.
I growled and threw down my gun. Fuck it, I wasn’t going to go out like this, feeling sorry for myself. If they wanted to play like that, then fuck their simulation.
I planted my boot on the jaw of the reptile and launched myself upward, hooking my fingers over the rungs that ran up the front of the House Cat. I swung my legs up, caught purchase and hauled myself inside. The pilot’s seat was gone, but there were caged footplates below me and haptic gloves in front. I slammed my feet into them and pushed my hands in, flexing. I felt the arms and legs judder to life on the F Series and it stood upright. The hatch closed automatically and the entire front of the cockpit filled with screens displaying everything outside. I couldn’t help but grin as I pulled up the rifle. I clicked the trigger but nothing happened. Guess it really was jammed.
I sighed and cracked my neck. “Alright, Jim, you can do this. Just like the Blower, huh? Arms, joysticks — same thing.”
I figured that being behind the twelve inches of Zephod Steel the exo troop had mentioned would be a better option than risking my ass outside. As I took my first step forward, and fell flat on my face, though, I started to wonder if that was the case.
5
My hands found the haptic gloves, not unlike the controls of my Blower, and my feet settled into the cages, suspended and hinged. The pilot had ejected with a seat strapped to her ass, and the distinct lack of one in the cockpit was noticeable. The controls moved the arms and the legs and without anything to get fixed to, it was like trying to stand on liquid. The F-Series lurched sideways as I tried to find level and then flopped forward, beyond my control.
The hull hit the ground and rang like a gong. Without a harness or seat, I sprawled into the screen in front of me, cru
shing the gloves and my hands underneath me. The arms of the mech followed and pinned themselves under the F Series. I couldn’t move. The weight of my own body on my own arms, combined with the weight of the mech on its arms, meant that I was stuck.
A voice rang out inside the cabin — stiff and robotic. “Proximity alert. Enemies approaching.”
“Who’s that?” I called back, trying desperately to roll the House Cat over.
“I am this F-Series’ integrated AI assistant. Who are you?”
“I’m the person trying not to get fucking killed!”
“Affirmative. DNA scans reveal you are a Federation Enlisted Troop. Self-destruct sequence deactivated.”
I twisted my arms and managed to shift onto my side, dropping the jammed rifle in the process. “Self-destruct?”
“It is standard protocol when a Mechanized Unit is commandeered by a non-Federation entity. Caution: enemies are approaching.”
“Shit,” I panted, trying to wheel the F Series around. It was almost impossible without being strapped into a seat. My body was flopping around and I had nothing to pull against. “Is there anything you can do about it?”
“I am able to deploy grenades, though line of sight is required. A smokescreen is possible, though.”
“So I can be blind and lame? No thank you,” I grunted, flattening my hands on the ground in front of me. I pushed back as much as I could, suspended in the cockpit from the gloves and foot cages, and scrambled to a stance.
“I detect an imbalance in the equilibrium sensors. Are you fully harnessed?”
“Fully harnessed? There’s not even a fucking seat in here!” I turned as quickly as I could to face the red outline running at me on screen. The words ‘Automated Defense Protocols Activated’ popped up on screen and a barrage of miniature grenades exploded out of the shoulders of the F Series, obliterating the incoming reptile.
“It is not advised to operate a Mechanized Unit without being harnessed in. It is recommended that the pilot ejects. Ejection sequence started,” the voice announced.
“What!? No! Abort!” I yelled, turning and throwing my fist into another reptile that was trying to flank us. I met bone with steel and felt the skull crack under the force. It reeled backward and scrambled in circles. It was long, with muscular fore and hind legs, with armor plates secured right into the scaled skin. It had huge claws, and a strange-looking weapon slung across its back — half firearm, half melee club.
“Negative. Pilot does not have authorization to abort.”
“What do you mean I don’t have authorization?”
“I outrank you,” he said flatly.
My proximity sensors went wild and I turned to face another one. It came at me hard, slashing with its claws. I threw my arm out but it connected with nothing but air. The reptile weaved under me and sank its talons into the gaps between the armor plating, driving me backward. I swore loudly inside the cabin and felt the back of my helmet crack against the inside of the hull.
“Ejecting in three, two—”
“No!”
“—one. Ejecting.”
A loud click rang out below but there was no seat to eject. At the same time, the hatch above me blew open and out of reach. I leapt up instinctually to grab it but it was too high. I met the eye of the giant reptilian alien clambering over the hull for just a second before its jaws closed around my head. Its teeth sank into the flesh on my neck and I screamed, pain ripping through every fiber of my body. The world went black, and then I died.
I tore the goggles off and threw them down in front of me, panting hard. My neck was tingling and my eyes were stinging. I breathed raggedly and looked up at the screen in front of me. The words ‘Neural Link Terminated — Simulation Over’ were burned on it in white.
“Son of a bitch,” I grunted, standing straight. The door to my left hissed and light bled in around the edges. My head was pounding when I stepped out. The guy with the rifle told me to go left and I did. Before I rounded the corner, I stole a glance up at the timer above the door. It read twenty-eight seconds. What the fuck? It’d felt like forever. Time dilation. I’d never experienced it, but I’d heard about it. Not that it felt like that, though. Like being kicked by a horse. I didn’t think my headache could get any worse. I was wrong.
I made my way down the walkway, and stopped. Ahead, I could see Tattoos talking to a couple of soldiers. They nodded to him, and then he looked at me. They followed his gaze, and then turned toward me. Tattoos smirked, and then walked off.
The soldier at the front was humanoid, but not human, tall with dark green skin. I didn’t recognize the species. He looked comfortable carrying his weapon, like he knew how to use it. “James Alfred Maddox?” he asked loudly.
“Yeah?” I said back, conscious that I was leaning into the balls of my feet.
“Stop there. You need to come with us,” he said, striding toward me.
I tilted to the left and looked at Tattoos — his sly grin, his cocky gait. Motherfucker. He’d sold me down the river. That shit about jacking a transport. He’d told them. Told them that was what I planned to do. My fists curled and anger flared in my belly like a twisted fire. I looked left, and then right, at the rows of SimPods standing next to each other, each with a gap between. My eyes moved upward, looking for the Federation drones I knew were buzzing overhead.
“Hey,” the soldier yelled, going for his rifle. “Don’t you dare —”
I didn’t let him finish. I broke right and ran hard. My muscles groaned and ached. No food. No sleep. No water. I was running on fumes and adrenaline, and I didn’t think they’d last long. I dragged as much air into my lungs as I could and sprinted between the pods, darting between two lines before the soldiers administering them could turn to grab me. I stuck close to one of the queues and ran hard. I had no idea where I was going, but it didn’t matter. I’d fucked it. I was running from Federation soldiers in a Federation ship, with an impending charge of trying to incite mutiny. If they caught me, that was it — prison, or more likely, I’d just catch a bullet for resisting. In my peripherals, I caught sight of flashes of gray Federation uniforms between the recruits standing in line. Shit. One moved in. I halted for a second and skipped a step. He lurched through the line and made a grab for me, but swooped in front of me, sprawling to the ground. I leapt over him and went through the gap he’d made in the line. Another came at me and I sidestepped him. His fingers closed around my jacket and I ducked, spinning out of it. The sleeves slipped over my hands and I heard the soldier swear. I felt his hand graze my shoulder but I kept running.
The third one was quicker, sitting low on his heels, hands spread. The lines were dense either side and I was boxed in. He watched me come and I went right, pulling back my elbow for a swing. He knew how to fight — he was trained, and big. I wound up the punch and he went to block it with all the time in the world. I turned into my toes and lashed out backwards with my left heel instead of following through with the punch. It connected with his thigh and he staggered backwards, crying out in shock. Now I followed through with the hook, landing it as hard as I could on his cheek. It was like hitting iron. My knuckles rebounded off and he screwed up his face in anger, but didn’t go down. Shit.
His hand flew up and I felt the sharp prongs of a taser pierce the flesh under my ribs, and then the fuzzy tongue of ten thousand volts. My body convulsed for a second or two and I stumbled backward, my muscles not my own. I watched through the thickening haze as he stood straight and massaged his face, scowling. “You’re a dumb fuck,” he said, spitting blood.
As I fell, I couldn’t have agreed more.
I got dragged by the arms out of the hangar and into a brightly lit corridor lined with halogen lights. The din of the hangar disappeared, and doors flashed past, each even more blandly metal and nondescript than the last. We passed into another corridor and then into an elevator. I was still barely conscious and my feet wouldn’t even go under me. Whether we went up or down, I don’t know, but whe
n we stopped moving, the pace continued. One of the soldiers dragging me put his palm on a scanner and a thick set of doors opened to reveal a wide space. In the center was a hole that led down to the lower level, and all along the sides of both floors were narrow doors. In space or not, I knew what cells looked like. I tried to swallow, but the muscles in my neck just floundered a little. They took me up to a cell and threw me in. The door slammed shut and I was left with a steel cot and a seatless toilet.
I lifted my head off the smooth floor and climbed onto what was more akin to a shelf than a bed. My head was still pounding, and despite the bright lights, I fell asleep pretty quickly, though it was more like passing out from sheer exhaustion.
How long it was before I woke up, I couldn’t have said. The doors shot open and a woman walked in. She was almost six feet tall, and had her hands clasped behind her back. Her blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she had a gray naval cap on with some silver stars pinned to the side. Must be an officer. She stared down at me, limp on the cot, and rolled her eyes. “Sit up.”
She had the sort of look that told me she wouldn’t ask twice, so I did. Her hand moved from behind her back and she held up a communicator slab, staring indifferently at it.
“James Alfred Maddox,” she said, looking at me over the top of it. “Do you know why I’m here?”
“Look — it was just a joke, alright? I was trying to shut him up. I’d had a really bad —” I started talking, but she silenced me with a flick of her wrist.
“I don’t know what you’re blathering about, but a simple no would have sufficed.” She sighed, obviously discontented with her current job. “I’m here because of your simulation score.”
“Like I said, I’ve had a really bad —”
“Did I ask you to speak?” Her voice was hard. “Interrupting an officer is an actionable offense in the Federation Corps — but, considering your current predicament, and the circumstances that brought you here, it doesn’t surprise me that you didn’t consider the implications before you opened your mouth.”