by David Ryker
“Greg, how high can we get with our thrusters? Maximum altitude?”
The guys were hauling ass out of its path. They’d get clear, but I was trapped right in front of it. Only one idea was coming to mind.
“At full boost, I estimate that we can clear several hundred meters, though we won’t be able to sustain that height for long enough to move from the ship’s path.”
“I don’t want to.”
We crested the slope and I sank into my knees. Greg fuelled the thrusters and with a jolt that compressed every vertebra in my spine, we shot upwards, an explosion of thrust propelling us into the air.
My teeth clenched together as we rocketed into the cloudbank. The air tore around us as the dropship passed underneath, parting the smoke and creating a vortex of hot air, we spun, twisting downwards. The ship filled the screen in front of me, like some colossal leviathan passing beneath a tiny craft under the surface of an ocean.
I cut the thrusters and fell, landing hard on the surface. If they didn’t know we were there before, they sure as hell did now. Though the Raptor dropping off four unmarked, highly advanced mech on a dead planet probably tripped some of their sensors anyway. The Raptor may have had cloaking tech, but we didn’t. We’d been too slow, too cavalier, and they’d sent in the cavalry.
The dropship was moving quickly and though we landed on our feet, the force of it hurtling along underneath us bowled us over.
Sparks leaped off the hull and disappeared behind us as we fought for grip on the slick surface.
I couldn’t see anything but the steel between my hands as we slid to a halt halfway down. “Alice — come in, do you copy?”
“I hear you, Red,” she said, exasperated and out of breath.
“You safe?”
“Yeah, managed to make it out of the path, took shelter behind a ridge. Where are you?”
“Uh…” I pushed myself up and looked around, seeing nothing but smoke. “I don’t know. I’m on the ship.” It decelerated and banked, and the sound of grinding steel dying in the red-hot air as it pulled around and circled the plateau. I could make out the shapes of the ships below on the low side below.
“You’re on the ship? They got you?” She was panicked.
“No, not on the ship — on the ship. On top of it. We’re pulling up by the… Shit.” I cut myself off, seeing what was coming out of a hatch a hundred meters in front of me. It popped and bodies started pouring out of it, climbing up, armed to the teeth — masks and rifles, and some with bigger arms. I swallowed, scanning what I was seeing. Greg lit them up with red outlines, reticles appearing on their weapons.
“Get to the plateau — we’re made. We’ve got to hit them now, and hit them with everything we have.”
“Red — is that gunfire?”
I didn’t answer as I took off to the left. I thought the sound of bullets pinging off my hull was enough of a confirmation. She had enough to deal with herself.
A rocket whizzed by as we boosted out of its path, landing and skidding on the hull. I drew quickly, and leveled the plasma revolver, not hesitating as I pulled the trigger.
The round ripped through the lingering smoke in the air and hit one of the Free soldiers square in the chest. The round, mech-sized, obliterated him. I watched in slow motion as each limb separated and blew itself outwards. He didn’t even have a chance to call out before he was dead. His armor did nothing to protect him from the plasma round, and the revolver that Glaavus had given me carried a lot more kick than the one I’d had before.
The others around him scattered, his blood misting across the roof of the ship. They covered their faces from it, the spray speckling their full-faced masks. They kept firing, but their weapons were ineffective. They even ricocheted uselessly off the cam-dome, reinforced and now seemingly bullet-proof.
It was almost unfair — more like an execution than warfare.
The rifle rose over my shoulder, firm in my grip and in one fluid movement I holstered the revolver, keen to get this finished, and gripped the barrel with my now-free hand.
The trigger hit the stock and the muzzle opened up and spat fire, the large-caliber rounds cutting across the hull in a wide sweeping line. With every impact, blood spurted out, the cries of those hit ringing in the air as they twisted and spun sideways, blown off their feet by the sheer force of it.
The remaining troops dived and ducked for cover, firing back with everything they had — which wasn’t much.
But then it dawned on me — they weren’t trying to take me down, only stall me.
The dropship had settled to the ground now, and that meant that it was now in range of the other mech.
Two dull thunks rang out and from the smoke loomed the shapes of a pair of F-Series. But they weren’t standard, and they didn’t look like they were about to fire any warning shots.
The dim glow of plasma rounds heating in muzzles burned in the twilight. Four flashes sent rounds fizzing my way.
My rifle dropped and my left hand went to my midriff. The revolver whistled upwards and I pulled the trigger, jumping sideways as I did.
My round connected with one of the incoming ones and exploded in a fiery arc. The other three all kept coming. There was no blocking them — plasma rounds burned at thousands of degrees — enough to melt even the advanced armor on Greg’s chassis.
The first two flew wide, but the third glanced off my shoulder, sizzling into the alloyed metal and taking a chunk of my plate with it.
Red warnings flashed up in front of me and Greg silenced them, drawing reticles over the approaching mech. The troops seemed to disappear into the smoke, retreating into their holes or rappelling down off the side of the ship. I could hear shouts and gunshots ringing up from below. Alice and Mac must have joined the fray. As for Fish, it was anyone’s guess. Probably slipping in from behind and cutting their throats.
The two mechs advanced, the shockwaves from the explosions courtesy of Mac’s missiles blowing the smoke away.
They loomed toward me, hulking and battered. They’d seen more than a few battles, and that meant they’d come through them and won. They were F-Series, but looked modified — heavily armored and armed with more than the standard Samson. They were packing semi-auto plasma rifles and the round that winged me said they were of a large enough caliber to put a real hole in me if they hit center mass.
I skidded to a halt and rounded, charging forward at them, the nanites blocking out all the doubt in my mind. I lifted my arm, Greg and I working in synch, no talking necessary. Whether I was thinking more like an AI, I wasn’t sure, but as I lined up the shot, Greg showed the arc of the trajectory of the grenade I was about to fire.
I halted and spun, another plasma round skimming across my back. They might have packed a punch but they were slow to reload.
The grenade spat out of the chamber and sang in the air, its perforated tail keeping it on course.
It hit the one on the left square in the body and the explosion blew it backward, sending the second one scrambling from the flames.
My toes hit the bottom of the pedals and we kicked forward, landing with a plume of thruster fire in front of the second mech. There was a crunch of metal as my fist closed around the raised barrel of his plasma rifle and jerked it upwards. The finger in the trigger ring bent and snapped and the round shot into the air, clipping the crushed barrel and spiraling into the clouds with a warbling groan.
I ripped the rifle to the side and the mech’s chest exposed itself. The hot muzzle sizzled against the metal and then I unloaded two rounds straight into the gap between the plates, blowing the back of the mech clean out in a fountain of blood and sparks.
It keeled backward, landing with a heavy clang, and lay still. I cast my eye over to the downed mech behind, but it was gone.
“Greg, where’s the—” I was cut off, my face hitting the front of my visor and pinging back inside the helmet.
I regained my senses and stared at the hull of the dropship between my
hands. A structural warning was flashing — I’d been hit in the back.
“Thrusters!” I yelled, shooting forward from under the muzzle of the second mech, narrowly avoiding a plasma round destined for the back of my skull.
I blasted him with flame and got myself clear, my fists still locked around my weapons and unable to search for grip.
A quick corrective thrust sent me spinning, and as I looked up through the top of the screen, the mech rotated into view.
I put one plasma round into its knee and it staggered sideways as I ground to a halt, my thrusters blackening the steel under my heels. In a second I was charging forward, my revolver raised.
One carefully placed shot saw its cam dome shoot ten meters into the air, a sizzling hole left in the middle of the hatch just below it.
It bounced on the metal and skitted off the domed roof of the ship, sliding into the battle below. The mech sagged and then fell forward, a charred hole in its body right where the pilot’s head would have been.
I stared at it for a second, face down and limp, and then looked at the other bodies on the ship. I felt nothing for them.
“Alice — you hear me?”
“Copy, Red — where are you?”
“I’m coming down. How’s the situation looking?” Gunfire echoed around me before she could answer and sparks danced off the steel of the hull. A Fixed-wing flew in overhead and speckled the dropship with machine gun fire before peeling off into the clouds.
“We’re getting hammered down here!” she yelled, her voice shuddering in time with the chatter of her rifle. I could hear it banging in somewhere below.
I fired a scornful look at the disappearing Fixed-wing and headed for the edge of the ship. “Greg — can we raise Rhona?”
“There appears to be no answer.”
I growled and hit the slope, leaping forward and watching as the side of the ship fell away beneath me. As I reached the edge, a sea of fire seethed below — I could see Alice and Mac on the left, laying down a barrage, and on the right a dozen mech and three times as many troops. The dropship had been bringing in reinforcements. In the distance I could see mech swarming in and out of the cave entrance, carrying crates and other pieces of machinery I didn’t recognize. It looked like they were pillaging whatever the cave led to — a storehouse, or some sort of underground factory maybe, but it was out of reach. We needed to clear the plateau first. I thought of Glaavus and what he’d said — what Mac had paraphrased. This tech could not leave this planet.
And if they all had to die to accomplish that, then so be it.
16
The second my feet hit the ground I started moving.
A barrage of fire flew from either side, the air tearing and splitting with each bullet. Missiles wound their way overhead, hanging in the smoke before diving into the earth and rupturing, tossing Free soldiers like ragdolls.
A stream of white-hot fire zipped across the space between the two sides, shrouded in the shadow of the ships stationed around the edge of the round plateau, and struck one of the Free mech returning fire.
The bullets burrowed into its chest and sent it staggering. They punched at the metal until they blasted through the armor, and then a shot of sparks sent it sprawling flat onto its back.
Alice pulled down the smoking muzzle of her rifle and pumped two sticky bombs into the air. They arced, glinting in the glow of the lava flowing around us, their gelatinous shapes wobbling as they curved, and landed in quick succession, detonating on impact and throwing up black rock and dust.
The Free forces slid and dove into the fox-holes or ran for their ships. I was moving quickly back toward Alice and Mac, who were strafing and firing when I caught it.
My thrusters burned and I dashed toward them, turning and mowing down a brave soul who was laying into me with his rifle. Mine cut him in two.
“Alice — we need to move up,” I grunted, sliding into formation and joining their chorus of fire.
“Move up? To where? If you haven’t realized, there’s a whole lot of them and not many of us!”
“And not to mention,” Mac chimed in, “we’re completely without backup!”
“Shut it, Mac, this isn’t the time!” I yelled, pinning the trigger and raining down on their troops with a torrent of fire. The muzzle of my rifle started glowing and a tag appeared over it on screen, pointing to the button that would engage the secondary, incendiary fire. I thumbed it to active and the side of the barrel lit up with blue light.
I swept my eyes over the battlefield, taking it all in. They were still moving in and out of the cave in the background. Troops were still coming out of the dropship. The ones who didn’t have fox-holes were still headed for their ships — Tilt-wings and other small craft.
I swallowed, pulling my rifle against my shoulder. “Fish — you read me? You out there?”
“Affirm… ative…” His modulated voice rang in my ear and in the distance I saw one of their mech explode suddenly in a ball of fire, a culprit seemingly missing.
“I need you to head for that cave — get inside, give us a sitrep. Stay quiet, don’t get spotted. If you are, retreat, okay? We’ve got to work together on this one!”
He didn’t answer, but two Free soldiers carrying a crate down the slope from the mouth of it both fell within a second of each other and rolled in the dark earth, their box landing heavily on its side and staying there. That was enough confirmation for me that he was headed in the right direction.
“Alice — get in the air. Show us what that rig can do. Stop those soldiers from reaching their ships. Keep them grounded — clip their wings if you have to. We don’t let anyone leave. That’s our mission right now.”
“Copy,” she said, not waiting for confirmation. She stopped firing and took off, the glare off her thrusters blinding. When I pulled my hand from my eyes she was already two hundred meters up and twisting through the air toward them, missiles peeling off her shoulders and heading for the cluster of ships nestled in the far corner of the plateau. The missiles whistled downwards and threw up a wall of flame between the soldiers and their ships. They all skidded to a halt and shielded themselves from it.
The same Fixed-wing that had hammered me earlier zoomed in from our six and chased her off the ships, peppering her hull with minigun fire.
She pulled back hard, spun one eighty and kicked off into the clouds. The Fixed-wing’s jets pumped and then it peeled off after her, disappearing into the black ceiling overhead.
“Mac,” I called, jumping next to him and taking a knee, slicing a white line of explosive fire across the enemy rank. Geysers of earth and blood shot up as the bullets connected with their forces and the dirt behind them, the bullets punching straight through their flimsy body-armor.
“This was a really good call, Red,” he grunted, firing off another cluster of missiles and driving them back into their holes with his miniguns. He concentrated the fire on one of their F-Series and blasted the plasma-rifle straight out of its hands. The weapon buckled and then exploded in the face of the F-Series, melting a hole the size of a horse right through the shoulder and chest. It walked sideways on unsteady feet and then collapsed in a heap. Soldiers flocked to it and jumped into cover, shooting through the gaps in the armor.
“You’ve really fucked us on this one, Red!” Mac yelled, turning his back on the incoming fire. A plasma round hit him between the shoulders, the thick armor plating over his railgun stopping the worst of it. It exploded and spat sparks over his head. He grunted and regained himself, twisting back around and lighting up the mech that’d taken a shot at him, pummelling it until it keeled backward and fell over, covered in holes and welts.
“Mac,” I said, ignoring the comment, “I need you to put that cannon to use. The dropship. Put a fucking hole in it!” I ducked under an incoming plasma round and drew from the hip, firing with my off-hand and plugging the mech that’d shot at me, clipping its flank as it twisted away. It stumbled backward and ran for cover, the graze st
ill smoking as it moved behind a rocky outcropping. They were starting to fall back toward the ships.
Alice came in from nowhere, stalled into a low hover, cut a line in the ground with her machine gun to stop the troops at the ships and then took off again. A second later the Fixed-wing dropped out of the cloud and then scorched the earth with its jets as it took off after her.
“You mean put a fucking hole in our only ride off this planet?” Mac scoffed, raising his arm to block an incoming grenade. His forearms were heavily armored, and though the metal warped under the force of the blast, the flames rippled off to the sides and left the rest of him unscathed. He lowered his now charred hand and kept firing.
“We’ve got a fucking ride, now shoot the damn thing! I’ll cover you.”
“If you thinking I’m going to—”
“For Christ’s sake, Mac,” Alice’s voice rang in our ears, “blast it!”
He grumbled but relented, sinking down onto his fists. “Just cover me,” he grunted, unfolding the armor on his back to reveal the cannon there. It started assembling itself, the plates shifting and the barrel extending, but it was going to be nearly a minute before he’d fire.
I dashed in front of him and popped off a spread of grenades. My secondary barrel had cooled off now. I’d need to get it back up to temp before I could engage the secondary fire again.
We needed a strategy. Alice was still getting chased around by the Fixed-wing. Fish was inside the cave, and Mac was out of action for the next thirty seconds, which was as good as a lifetime in the middle of a firefight.
The rifle had barely come up before it started clicking, the hammer falling on an empty chamber. The mag was spent, and though there were two more on my belt, swapping it out right now was the last thing I could do.
It clanged on the ground and my pistols came up, chugging and whistling as they spat out rounds alternately.
I had to pick my shots now and homed in on the downed mech. At least six Free soldiers had amassed behind it and had scrambled together a grenade launcher, too.