by David Ryker
I dug deep into my albeit limited bank of Federation knowledge and came up with something that made Mac pale a few shades.“Desertion is a corporal offense punishable by ejection.” The words spilled out of my mouth, out of my control. All I could think about was Alice out there, somewhere, dying or captured, and I’d be stupid to think that I’d be able to do it alone. Hell, before today, I’d never been in a real mech. So fighting an entire army capable of bringing down and destroying a Federation Troop Carrier would be, as MacAlister put it, suicide.
MacAlister’s demeanor changed and he stared at me with cold eyes. Silence reigned for a few seconds. I saw the fists of the T-Series clench and attempt to rise, but MacAlister reached back and quelled him, not leaving my gaze.
He broke into a grin and laughed falsely. “Ah, you had me going there for a second!” He shook his head and slapped his thigh. “Good one, kid. You take care now.” He nodded to me and waved, and then turned away. The T-Series stayed there, staring at me and I tried to hide my shaking hands by curling them into fists.
“I’m not joking,” I called after him. “There are Federation troops in trouble, and they need our help.”
He paused and I watched his shoulders fall. He pulled the rifle up to his shoulder and turned, pinning it on me. He trudged back level with Fish and stopped, cheek rested on the butt, the sights trained on me. I spread my hands, feeling the catch in my throat growing.
“I don’t think you quite understand the gravity of the situation,” he growled. “There’s absolutely nothing to stop me from putting a bullet in your chest right now, and just walking away. You saw me stop Fish doing it a second ago, didn’t you? That was your chance, kid, and I don’t know why the fuck I’m giving you another one, but I am.”
I swallowed.
“Walk away, now. We’ll go our separate ways, and you can go on your little crusade, but you never saw us.” His voice was even and gave the sense that he really wasn’t fucking around. “So I’m going to ask you once, and if I’m not completely convinced by your answer, I’m going to pull this trigger and be gone before you hit the ground.” He drew a slow breath. “Did you see us?”
I chewed my gums, mulling the decision over. “I’m going, either way. And I need your help.”
His grip tightened on the rifle, fingers flexing. I had no doubt he’d be more than prepared to put a bullet in me.
“But if you don’t want to come, for whatever reason, then… I’m still going. I can’t just walk away — not when people need me. Not when people are counting on me. You’re the ones who’re going to have to live with it. But I won’t rat you out, you have my word on that.” I sighed and turned away, screwing my face up, expecting to hear a gunshot ring out and feel the cold spread of death between my shoulders, but it never came.
Instead, I heard the rifle clack as it was lowered and then MacAlister whisper the words goddammit under his breath. I breathed a sigh of relief and kept walking.
“Kid,” he called. “Wait up.”
He bit his lip and stared down at it. “And there I was thinking you were bullshitting me about riding this thing down to the surface.” He whistled and then spat into the undergrowth, staring down at the F-Series lying in the crater. The hatch was still half open and bloody handprints showed the path where I’d crawled out. The crater itself was pretty big, sunk into a bank between two trees. The Front Line Series, or F-Series, was just over eighteen feet tall. It was about as basic as mechs come. Zephod steel plating, inbuilt grenade launcher, no aerial capabilities, and a loose rifle — cheaper to change if it got damaged. The whole thing was built as cheaply as it could be.
“Fucking House Cats.” MacAlister laughed and kicked the shoulder plate of my rig. It rang in the forest like a gong.
I stared down at it. It was black and charred. Half of the plates were missing — peeled off on re-entry. The antennae were gone, and the camera dome, set on the top of the body, was cracked. The rifle was lost, too.
“Well, this thing’s fucked.” MacAlister turned away. “Doubt it’ll even spin up. It’s a shell, and it’s cooked. I’m surprised it wasn’t destroyed completely during the fall. Must have been a hell of a ride.”
“It wasn’t a picnic,” I sighed. “So what now?”
“Give it a whirl, see if this bitch will stand.” He hung his head. “Going in on foot is an even worse option than going in rigged up, as if that was even possible, so I’d say climb in, and see what happens.”
I nodded, wondering whether they’d stick with me the whole way, or bolt the first chance they got. He watched me climb onto the charred body of the House Cat and shimmy into the cockpit. I twisted myself down into the hole and lowered onto the seat. It stank of sweat and burnt plastic, but I must have too. I reached up and pulled the hatch closed above me, strapping myself in. I was on my back and I could feel my heart beating in my throat, the blood heavy in my head. I became distinctly aware that I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for a long time, and that all I’d had was unconsciousness and a head injury rather than any actual sleep. I rubbed my eyes and drew a few slow breaths before flicking the switches off and on to reboot the system. The screen went dark in front of me and then flickered to life again. I stared up at the tops of the trees above, swaying gently against the charcoal sky, the trunks black and dusted with ash.
The words ‘AI Assistant Initializing. Please wait,’ appeared on the screen once more, and this time, I did. MacAlister had been pretty explicit about the state of affairs. I’d filled him in on what exactly had happened, and he’d been pretty straight with me. By now, she was either dead — bled out or killed on impact. If she’d survived that, then it was likely that she hadn’t died between then and now, unless the Free had found her and killed her. If that hadn’t happened, then she was likely out there somewhere in her own F-Series, either kicking ass, or still unconscious. Either way, her demise wasn’t likely something that was going to be time sensitive. It was weird. I had the urge to go balls to the wall, running round blindly, yelling her name for fear she was going to die if I didn’t. But then there was the pragmatic side of my brain that was telling me that doing that was only going to get me killed, and if Alice wasn’t dead, and she was fine — which was a real possibility — then I’d be slitting my own throat for no reason. We needed to be careful, and we needed a plan. For that we needed information, and that would take time and effort.
‘AI Assistant Online. Welcome to the F-Series Federation Mechanized Unit.’ The words glowed against the sky.
“Finally.” My eyes were stinging and my brain fizzing. It’d been a long day, and it was about to get longer.
“Welcome back,” the AI said.
“Would you believe me if I said it was good to be back?”
“I’m told that I’m a scintillating conversationalist,” it replied dryly. “So yes.”
I smirked. “By who? Have you had many other pilots?”
“I am a newly installed system. It was merely anecdotal. A result of my humor programming.”
“So I’m your first, then, eh?” I pushed my hands into the gloves. Sally flickered in my mind for a second and I wondered if she’d found a new ‘former yet, or if she’d been sent to the crusher. Both made me a little sad.
“Yes, though I’d hoped for a more seasoned pilot. Surviving past my first mission is something that I’d very much like.”
I laughed. “You know what? Me too. You got a name?”
“I have a designation.”
“Well, if we’re going to do this together — and probably die together, then I’d like to be able to call you something. You choose.”
“Processing,” it said quietly.
“Well, while you decide, my name’s Maddox. James Alfred Maddox.”
“It’s nice to meet you, James, even if you aren’t a pilot.”
“I got us down, didn’t I?” I chuckled.
“I have decided.”
“Lay it on me.”
“My name will
be… Greg.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head. “Greg? You can choose any name in the universe, and you choose Greg? Why?”
“I like it.”
I laughed. Fucking AIs. “Alright, Greg. It’s good to meet you. Now, shall we get the fuck out of this hole, or are we going to lie here all day?”
17
We trundled down out of the woods.
Fish was in the lead, in his T-Series. He had just sort of popped his hatch and turned toward Mac, who told me he preferred Mac to MacAlister, and stared for a second or two. Mac then nodded and said okay, and Fish closed it, and then took off, melting into the trees in a shimmering cloud as his stealth cloaking tech kicked in.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, heaving myself out of the crater. All the gears and hydraulics shuddered and whirred, throwing off the soot and carbon. My voice echoed in the cockpit.
Mac shouldered his rifle, small through the towering lens of the House Cat. “Fish’s an Eshellite. They communicate mostly through body language and subtle gestures. You get used to it.” He shrugged a little, his voice coming through loud and clear, patched into the F-Series’ comm system. Greg had linked us up when it was back online. Apparently after transitioning into the Mech Corps, every pilot got a Federation commlink implant behind their ear that did close-range comms and let them hear the voices of other pilots right in their ear. The thought kind of freaked me out, but I didn’t let that slip.
“Oh,” I said, trying to sound like it was something obvious that I already had an idea about. Fish hadn’t even made a sound since we’d met and it’d been nearly thirty minutes. Mac had talked a lot. “Not a very talkative bunch?”
Mac grinned. “Not really. They’re an amphibious race, but they don’t have vocal chords like us. I mean, they can make noises, but it’s hardly English. They can breathe air, but they can also survive underwater. Something about submersible lungs that siphon oxygen.” He waved his hand. “How the fuck should I know? I’m a soldier, not a biologist. It’s mostly the little things, movements, ticks, the way they position themselves. Most people miss them altogether and assume they’re idiots, or just can’t understand.” He scoffed. “The Eshellites are a clever fucking race, I’ll tell you that much. Usually don’t make a sound because they don’t think most of what we say warrants a response. But they understand everything, and they see everything.”
“So how does an Eshellite get in with the Federation as a pilot?”
“Same way we all do, I guess. A little bit of luck, and a lot of bad timing. Eshellites aren’t exactly the most caring species, and they’re cold-blooded — literally and metaphorically. They don’t get flustered and they’re a helluva lot faster and more reliable than humans. Makes them perfect for wetwork.” He stepped quietly through the brush down the hill and I followed as gently as I could, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was making lots of noise.
“Wet-work?”
“Tactical stuff. Assassinations. Search and Destroy. That sort of thing.”
I nodded and pulled myself off comms with Mac. “Greg, can you pull up some info on Eshellites? And on Fish if there’s a service record? And you know what, on Mac, too if you can.”
“Here’s a summary of the species,” Greg said, pulling the information up on screen. I scanned it as he took me down the hill.
When we reached the edge of the trees Mac motioned me to stay hidden in the shade and pressed himself against the outermost trunk, staring out across the ridge I’d walked earlier. The stream ran in front of us and a grassy pasture rose into a moor of sorts, building to a series of undulating peaks on our left. To the right, the valley swept down to the crash site, cratered and mauled by the wreckage. It was still smoking.
The stream splashed out of nowhere and water drenched the bank. Fish materialized in front of us and stared at Mac. The cam dome on top of his T-Series moved up and down and he turned away.
“Alright, kid,” Mac said quietly, stepping out. “Coast’s clear, for now. Let’s go get my ride.”
Mac took off at a jog, clearing the stream and hiking up to the top of the bank. He took off at pace, halfway between a jog and a run and stalked like a wolf across the pasture. I watched him go, disappearing into the distance, a gray speck against a sea of gray, cut out against the smoke-filled sky. A splot on a darker splot. I looked up at the ebbing clouds. “Greg, what’s your telemetry system like?”
“I’m outfitted with the standard Federation telemetry system, or FTS, capable of short-range calculations. Why do you ask?”
“Can you plot the course we came in on?”
“That proves difficult, as the planet has both rotated and partially orbited this system’s star since this morning.”
“Can you plot the course we took after we entered the atmosphere? Say from twenty thousand feet?” I narrowed my eyes at the colorless sea above.
“That I can do. Calculating.”
A few seconds later, a white line appeared in front of me. It appeared from the top of my screen and shot into the sky overhead, continuing as a dashed line through the ceiling. I turned around and followed it as it curved into the trees we’d come from. “Alright, can you map Alice’s trajectory?”
“It may take longer, but I can try.”
“Do it. We’re not going anywhere.” It was true. We were waiting for Mac to go and get his rig. He’d bailed out along with Fish, and they’d managed to eject their rigs, too. Fish was a pretty small target, even in the T-Series, and with the stealth tech, it was a no brainer to keep the added protection and firepower. Mac, on the other hand, was a HAM Series pilot. HAM stood for Heavy Artillery Mech Series. I’d never seen one before but I heard they were big, bloated, and packed enough firepower to down a dropship without breaking a sweat. And, when surrounded by a fleet of House Cats, they could do it. But out here, alone, with no protection — he’d be a sitting duck.
“I have finished the calculations,” Greg said.
A second line popped up next to the first, rising into the sky, except this one originated over the rise that Mac had disappeared over. “You’ve mapped her landing site?”
“No. Unfortunately, while reviewing the footage, I discovered that we lost sight of her. However, I was able to estimate the location with a reasonable degree of accuracy.”
“What’s reasonable?”
“A ten square kilometer range.”
“Ten kilometers?” I scoffed. “I’d hate to see what broad is.”
“A hundred.”
“I wasn’t asking.” I sighed. “Alright, well, let’s go then.”
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“Pilot MacAlister is approaching.”
“Oh?” I looked up. Greg was right. Mac was coming, and fast. He was sprinting down the hill toward me, waving his arms.
“Hey! Hey!” He was yelling.
I froze, but Greg didn’t. “I recommend we retreat. I’m detecting large sonic readings. Five hundred meters and closing.”
I dragged in a ragged breath and felt my heart kick into overdrive. Greg assumed control until I pushed into the gimballed cages under my seat and moved my legs. It was almost symbiotic — the relationship between pilot and mech. I moved but he kept me going, keeping me balanced, choosing where my feet went so that I could focus on what mattered. And right now, that was running the hell away.
Mac closed in on us, but then fell behind as I took off. I could feel the ground shaking under my feet, and wondered what was closing in on us. By the way Mac was running, and screaming, it was something mean.
Engine roar cut through to the cabin and the ground was engulfed in shadow. Something swept overhead and peeled upward. I barely caught a glimpse of it, only the afterburn as it swept up into the ashy clouds. “What the hell was that?”
“My best guess is that it’s a Federation E-68, a heavily armed type of fixed-wing multi-directional jet aircraft, commandeered by the Free forces in the area.” Greg sounde
d calm. It wasn’t rubbing off.
“Just keep running!”
“You are in control.”
“I was talking to myself.” My feet hammered the ground, flicking up earth.
Mac’s voice crackled in the cockpit. “Jesus Christ! Did you see that?”
“It was hard to miss!” I yelled back.
“Then where the hell are you going?”
“What do you mean? You said to run!”
He dived forward and rolled to a knee in a hollow, shouldering his rifle and turning to face the sky. “Like hell I did! Get your fucking act together, you’ve got to take care of it.”
“Take care of it?” I scoffed.
“I believe he means the Free craft,” Greg added.
I ignored him. “What do you mean take care of it?” I called back, grinding to a halt and turning back to face him.
He offered up his rifle. “Well, this damn pea shooter’s not going to do shit is it? You’re packing a built-in forty-mil full auto grenade launcher. So do something about it!”
I opened my mouth to retort but I knew he was right. There was no sign of Fish, and Mac’s rifle was designed for mid- to long-range engagements with infantry — human infantry. I swallowed hard and felt my hands shake inside the haptic gloves. It was on me, but I was totally out of my depth.
“I detect elevated adrenal levels and a spike in heart rate. Are you alright?” Greg asked casually, bringing my vitals up on screen.
“Fine,” I spat through gritted teeth.
“Your blood oxygen levels are dropping. I recommend taking deep breaths.”
“I’m fine!”
“Nervousness is normal in newer pilots. Fear is a natural response to—"
“I said I’m fine!” I yelled, reaching forward and tapping the buttons to activate the grenade launchers. I felt them lock in on the arms, loading the grenades into the barrels. Two figures popped up on my screens. An eight burned on the left and the right, pulsing gently in green.
“You have sixteen rounds in total. Would you like me to initiate active targeting?” Greg asked.