by David Ryker
I picked one out of the air and met it with a round, bathing the battlefield in white light as it plumed. The next three shots I put into the mech itself. The first connected with the hip joint of the F-Series and the leg snapped off and fell, crushing the barrels set between it and the other. The Free soldiers leaped back out of the way of the scrap rolling toward them and some of the fire stopped.
The next two punched into the same spot, blowing apart the body in a flurry of melted steel. It didn’t make for good cover anymore and the soldiers scattered.
A dull white cut through the din of the battle and I twisted left. Some of them had made it to a Tilt-wing.
I raised my arm and put two rounds through the cockpit window, another one through the front strut holding the Tilt-wing up. It buckled and folded, the nose slamming down into the earth, and the jets, held aloft until then, buried themselves in the plateau and sputtered, pulling the Tilt-wing in a circle as the pilots frantically tried to take off. Another well-placed shot put a hole in the tail fin. A final one blew a chunk out of the intake on the left engine. It coughed and died and the Tilt-wing tried to flip itself over, the right jet still roaring.
It pitted up on the bad wing and then started twirling, the wrecked tail spinning around and smashing into the nose of the Fixed-wing next to it. The engine howled and dragged the Tilt-wing toward the river around the plateau, plunging it in before it exploded in a deafening fireball that lanced a hole right through the cloud above it, plunging the battlefield into bright sunlight for a second before the wound closed up and the smoke blotted it out once more.
I heard Alice swear in my ear. “Jesus Christ! Watch it!” she yelled, flying down out of the cloud and landing hard in the space between the two sides.
The Fixed-wing came after her, trailing flames, and she met the pilot with a steady stream of fire.
The cockpit imploded in a shower of glass shards and the ship smashed into the earth and bounced, careening over her mech in a tumbling blaze before crunching down and settling on its roof, belching fire into the already inky sky.
Before she could move, a plasma round hit her in the shoulder and ripped into her mech. She yelled indistinctly in my ear, cursing and growling before she kicked off again and zoomed into the sky.
I turned my attention to the mech that had got her and put three rounds into its chest. It fell still and sagged forward, crushing two soldiers as it did. “Mac, how long?”
“Heating now — twenty seconds!”
I stepped back to shield him. They’d caught on to what was happening now and were concentrating their fire on us. “Alice, do you read?”
“Copy — damaged, but still flying.”
“I’m going to force them to bottleneck — can you come in from the south? Carpet bomb the fuckers?”
“With pleasure. Ten seconds.”
I spread my arms and put rounds into the outermost troops. The one on the right connected and blew the soldier clean off his feet. The one on the left lost a chunk of his chest and half his head and the ones next to them all dived inward.
I kept going, conscious of my dwindling ammo, picking them off at the edges, clustering their forces.
A plasma round zipped by my cam-dome, Greg’s lightning reactions twisting me out of the way at the last second. “Smoke!” I sank low and Greg flooded the field with it. I kept firing, switching over to the infrared cameras as I did. “Fuck!” I yelled, blinding myself. The whole screen lit up in red and yellow brightly enough to burn my corneas. The field was an inferno itself — what the hell was I thinking? I felt one of the plasma rounds connect with my flank and pull me sideways to my knee. One of the pistols came loose from my grip and skitted away into the smoke. Greg cycled back to normal view but by the time he did, Alice was ripping in overhead and dropping everything she had on them. They stopped firing and made for cover.
She whooped in my ear and put her thrusters in overdrive to pull away and get out of there. Explosions rippled through the air and the smoke wobbled in front of me. I’d blinded myself and couldn’t see shit, but luckily, neither could the Free. Their bullets popped through the smoke and pinged off our armor, but the plasma rounds zipped overhead, higher than Mac and I. They were figuring for full height, aiming for our chests and cam-domes, but we were both on our knees.
Mac didn’t need to tell me that he was firing — I’d felt it before. I knew before I even saw the light. The hair on my arms stood up and then a blinding flash obliterated the smoke and blasted it off the field, along with all the cloud cover. The shockwave rushed out and tossed me onto my side, the rail cannon on his back singing its song.
The blast was huge and in a moment of stillness, I saw the effects like a snapshot from a camera. I could see it in the corner of the screen — the burning white line of fire, the lips of the hole peeled back on the hull of the dropship, exposing the ugly, gnarled innards. The beam lanced straight through one side and out the other, hitting the face of a mountain some ways off, thrashing it with a white-hot knout.
The sound built in the air and tore it apart like thunder, loud enough to shake my teeth in my head.
“Fucking hell!” Mac panted, now suddenly twenty meters back from where he’d started, deep gouges in the blackened rock under him tracing the path back to where he’d started. His HAM had put down anchors — rods in the earth to keep him steady— but the sheer force had pushed him back. The upgraded rail cannon was obviously packing some extra power over the one he was used to.
It took me a second to get my bearings, my mind stuttering with the sensory onslaught. I stared at the dropship and watched it catch up too. The beam was so sudden it took a few seconds for the impact to kick in, but then, sparks began to fly, flames shot out of the opened hull and a chain reaction of explosions erupted from the gaping hole.
The dropship coughed and howled and then took itself apart, firing panels into the air and bursting through its armored skin and catching ablaze. The fuel tanks went next and punched at the ground, sending the whole thing skyward. It hung there, trailing fire until it crunched down onto its tail and buckled, splitting in two. The rear half fell into the lava behind and cackled and sank and the front smashed down and lay broken in the center of no man’s land.
Everything was silent for a few seconds, a ceasefire in effect while everyone stared in shock at the burning wreckage of the dropship. Something so big — hundreds of meters long — had been destroyed. Torn apart. Everyone was frozen.
Sunlight dripped red off the bloodstained rock on the Free side of the field, the clouds overhead parted in a wide halo around the plateau. A black streak zigzagged toward us out of the orange sky and then Alice landed hard, skidding next to me, rifle raised. I pulled my remaining revolver level and searched for my next target.
Mac plodded forward and took up a stance next to me, raising his guns. He was still out of breath. “What now?” he asked.
“Now we finish this.”
17
A column of boiling air shot upward through the hole in the clouds and started to swirl in an ashy vortex, dragging all the loose, burnt dust off the ground and the rocks around the plateau and whipping it skyward.
The soldiers on the other side all held onto whatever they could, bracing themselves against the sudden tumult.
“Fish — do you hear me?” There was no answer on comms. I wasn’t sure if it was the mountain or something had gone wrong, but a creeping sense of dread had climbed up my spine. This was about as good a chance as we were going to get. Their dropship was down, the sudden squall had all their ground forces blinded, and they only had a few ships left standing — all of which could be taken out with some well-placed shots.
“Mac,” I yelled, already moving. “Move up and smash the rest of their fleet. Clip their wings — keep them grounded.”
“But—”
“Just do it! Alice, you’re with me. We need to hit that cave before they know what the hell’s happening. Swing wide, lay down some fire
, get their attention, and then drop in next to the entrance. I’ll hit them from the front, and I’ll meet you there. I want to draw them in, give Mac some space to work.”
“Got it.”
She didn’t need telling twice and took off to the right of the field, circling. Mac was back in line now too and was trudging forward through the swirl, following Alice’s path to the remainder of their ships. It would be as easy as popping an engine or trashing a wing. It was well within the capabilities of his HAM.
“Mac, you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” he grunted, his shoulder plates lifting to expose a bank of rockets.
I picked up some speed and covered the space between their forces and ours and then kicked into a leap, coming down right next to the mech I’d put down earlier. Shapes of soldiers swam in the gloom around me and I struggled to make them out. Greg placed as many outlines and reticles as he could, but the visibility was only good for a few meters.
They squawked and yelled, turning their guns on me as quickly as they could, but my fists were already around the severed leg of the F-Series.
I heaved it into the air and spun on my heel, swinging in a wide arc, smashing it into three bodies before they could scramble clear. I turned, seeing the dim shape of a mech sidling towards me. I was inside its reach in a second, driving the leg upward into the barrel of its rifle. Sparks flew as the metal connected and the front hand came loose, the rifle spitting a plasma round into the closing sky.
It swiped at me with the empty hand and I ducked under it, swinging the leg into its knee. It sagged with a crunch and I grabbed the still raised rifle, fighting it as the F-Series tried to force it back down.
The leg hit the ground between us and I felt its arm on my shoulder. But it didn’t matter; my fist was already around the camera dome. Where I’d exercised restraint with Mac, I didn’t now, and felt the metal implode in my grip. Smoke and sparks leaped from between my fingers as the circuitry combusted, its free hand still hitting uselessly at my upper arm.
It was blind now and as good as lame.
I twisted the rifle from its grip and rotated it, putting a round through its other knee joint.
The metal groaned and the whole thing keeled backward, shearing the joint. At the same moment, the piercing hiss of Mac’s rockets letting off drew everyone’s attention that way. Great flowers of fire shimmered in the haze and one of the Fixed-wing crafts at the edge of the plateau sighed and fell to the ground, spewing flames.
As if rehearsed, Alice came in low and hard, raining down with bullets and bombs, scattering what was left of their forces. By my reckoning, we only had maybe two or three more mechs to go, and just a handful of soldiers. But that wasn’t even accounting for what backup was coming down from above. We needed to get out of the open, and fast.
I took off up the hill, trying to hail Rhona as I did. There was still no answer and I was started to get anxious. They’d stopped ferrying boxes in and out now on account of the fight, so the entrance was clear. No doubt they’d fallen back inside to fortify their position.
Alice dropped to the ground just at the cave entrance and we both turned our attention to the faint outlines of the mech heading toward Mac. I ejected the spent mag on my rifle and shoved a new one in, snapping back the mechanism and chambering a round. “Ready?”
Her answer was firing. She let off with a stream of fire from her rifle, washing back and forth with the bullets. I followed suit, knowing I’d struck the mech when the tinny report of a ricochet came back.
When bullets started flying our way, I knew we had their attention. “Fall back into the cave,” I said, already moving. “We’ll take up a position at the mouth and hit them as they come through the bottleneck.”
“Copy,” Alice replied. She turned and shouldered her rifle, heading inward, ready to tackle anything that could be thinking the same of us, but there was nothing.
She yelled, “Clear!” and I followed her in out of the hailstorm of bullets. The interior was dark and smoky, and not unlike I expected a cave to be. We trudged down the sandy slope and into darkness.
I flicked my feed over to night-vision and scanned for movement. There was nothing. Just the arched roof of the cave chiseled relatively smooth millennia ago. “How deep does this thing go?” I asked Greg, stopping to look back up. The light from the surface had all but disappeared now, but there was nowhere we could take up a defensive position — just one long tunnel angled down into the mountain.
“I’m not sure,” Greg replied, unnervingly. “My scans are being blocked by the natural heavy-metal content in the ground. This tunnel does stretch on, however, for a considerable distance.”
I sighed. “Mac — do you read me?” There was no reply. “Shit — I can’t raise Mac,” I said to Alice. There was no reply either. “Greg? What the hell’s going on? I can’t even get Alice.”
“There appears to be some sort of interference coming from deeper in the cave. I am unable to pinpoint the source, or the nature of it.”
I gritted my teeth, thinking hard. Alice — can you hear me?
There was no reply.
Shit. I raised my hand and waved to her. She stopped and looked over and I pointed to my head and then made a cutting gesture to let her know I couldn’t hear anything. She mimicked it.
I held two fingers to where the ‘eyes’ on the cam-dome would have been and then pointed to her before pointing again down the tunnel. I held my finger to my own chest then and jabbed it back towards the surface.
Her cam dome nodded and she went to a knee, tucking into the wall. I couldn’t just leave Mac up there, and there was still no sign of Fish.
A little circle of light came into view around the wall. I hadn’t noticed going down, but the path was very slightly curved. I stared back down into the darkness and couldn’t see Alice. I swore under my breath and picked up the pace, my legs pumping hard in the soft sandy ground.
An explosion reached my ears and the ground shook. I kept pushing, digging with my hands now to keep the pace, the vibrations causing an avalanche of sand and dragging me back down.
Another explosion rang out and rocks began to fall from above, clanging off my hull. I could see smoke rising outside, the entrance now just twenty meters away. “Mac!” I called, feeling sweat dripping down my nose. But there was no reply.
A shockwave shook the cave and I stumbled into the wall, more stone falling from above.
The slope was starting to level out now and I was panting hard, Greg’s gears and powercore near the point of overheating from the stress of the continual movement. I could see the temperature gauges all rising in the corner of the screen.
I was just about to break free of the cave when another blast hit, this one just outside the mouth.
The force knocked me backward and I started tumbling, rolling in the dirt back down the path, catching snatches of light as I spun. And then, suddenly, it was all darkness. I could hear stone peeling from the ceiling and crashing into me as I slid and rolled. The mouth had collapsed and blocked itself up, the thunderous cacophony of falling rock ringing in my ears.
I finally stopped, shrouded in a cloud of dust, and regained myself. I couldn’t hear or see anything now — whether it was one of Mac’s missiles or something else, I didn’t know, but there was no way we were getting out the same way we got in. I tried raising Mac again, knowing it would be futile. There was nothing on the line.
I swore loudly and turned back into the slope, swimming through the thick fog left from the cave-in.
I kept my hand on the wall, breathing hard, tasting the soot and salt in the air, even through all the filtration, and picked up the pace. There was nothing I could do about Mac now, but Fish was in here somewhere, as was Alice, and Mac or not, we still had a job to do.
I didn’t know how far I’d come, but it felt like further than before. And yet, there was no sign of Alice.
“Greg — where is she?”
“I don’t know, J
ames. I’m not detecting anything on my scans. I would recommend proceeding with caution.”
“Gee, you fucking think?” I growled, feeling bad immediately. “Sorry, buddy. I’m just on edge.”
“It is fine. The situation does not look promising.”
I broke into a light jog, turning a quarter on to brace the impact of each footfall as we headed down the endless slope, following the large, wide footprints of Alice’s rig. They were spaced out — she was running. But toward what, and why?
I kept going until the floor leveled out and widened into a low-ceilinged room. On the walls were ancient sconces and in them were large crystalline chunks of what looked like quartz, except they were glowing, emitting enough light to make out the color of the ground. What was black on the surface had turned to a pale gray now, the scorch of the unrelenting sun not reaching this far. But the sand wasn’t the most surprising thing. In the solid wall that stretched across the full width of the room was a large opening. It was cut into the stone itself in a perfect circle, the bottom section flattened by the sand. The jagged bedrock was smoothed into a rounded lip and strange runes and glyphs were carved all around. In the center was something I’d never seen before. It was a perfectly smooth sheet of what looked like obsidian, or tar. It was jet black, polished, and reflective. I stared at it, seeing my burnt and scratched, bullet-dinged and explosion battered rig staring right back at me. It was mirror-smooth and the tracks all led straight into it.
“What the hell are we looking at, Greg?”
“I’m not sure, James. It doesn’t appear to be emitting any sort of heat or radiation signature, and I don’t detect any sound or movement.”
“Is it a door?”
“Glaavus told me that the ancients mastered many forms of technology. There is no way to know whether it is merely a door or something else entirely.”
“Well, either way, we’ve got to go through it, don’t we?”
“With no means of escape, I think so.”
I muttered under my breath, cursing myself for getting into this mess and Alice for leaving me. She wouldn’t have just left me on her own accord. So, either she was being frog-marched, or she was chasing someone. Either way, I was going in, and there was nothing else to it.