by G Aliaksei C
“Human!” yelled the Cockroach. “Remain calm! We can deal with them!”
I noticed, then, the staring eyes of the two aliens. Inhuman, glowing, panicked eyes. Gold outlines highlighted the two, and the aliens shifted in fear.
They are afraid of me more than they are of the shooters! thought part of me.
If only I had some grenades… considered the rest.
The need for grenades was a natural solution to our situation. Ranged fire from both sides seemed ineffective against the deflector domes in use - ammo and beams bounced, deflected without dealing damage. That meant that, in order to win, we needed to get closer. The Inson was massive, and clearly a prime target for the anti-tank rifleman on the other side. The Cockroach, while smaller, was too busy shooting back to perform any sort of flanking maneuver.
If we wanted to end this engagement in our favor, I would need to help. I would need to bring a knife to a gunfight.
“Inson!” The alien was setting up some sort of long stick-like rifle with its four arms, but it granted me its full attention across the flash of the Cockroach’s beams. “Do you have grenades?”
The alien silently nodded. A claw took a flat disk from one of its massive rear leg pouches, throwing it to me over the insect between us. I caught the disk, spotting a large button on its top.
The Cockroach and Inson half-watched me, as if expecting a heroic charge through the enemy fire.
Holding the grenade with my teeth and the sword in my left hand, I dulled the glow in my eyes and began to crawl. There’s camouflage, I thought, there’s complete invisibility, and then there’s crawling. I no longer felt the initial anger at being shot. Forcing a calm over my rattled nerves I dragged myself forward, timing my movement so as not to be lit up by flashes. I covered the thirty meters to the enemy position in a few minutes. The bastards didn’t seem to be running out of bullets, intent on smoking us out no matter how long it took.
Illuminated by suppressed bursts of rotating barrel sets I saw Humanoids, smartly hidden behind a chain of rocks. My vector changed as I circled around the group and under the cover of their defense dome that so effectively blocked the Cockroach’s red beams. I felt nothing as I slowly moved through the energy shield, my slow motion ignored by the defense. Only four meters away from the group now, I paused and took a moment to examine them. One stood back, holding a large staff. Two were standing tall in front of him, sending a nearly endless supply of bullets downrange. The fourth lay between them, cradling a three-meter-long rifle. That must have been their hope for punching through to their prey. Only two of them had glowing, Gem-powered gear. The two minigunners lacked any glow, wearing and armed only with conventional equipment.
All four were small, much less than two meters tall. I was considered short in Corporate society, just over two hundred and ten centimeters in height, but these Humanoids seemed dwarf-like next to me.
And they were all distracted, focused downrange, completely ignorant of their flank.
A chill of excitement rolled through me. It was the sense of seeing while not being seen, a joy of flanking, a fear of messing up and losing the advantage.
I felt the Fall Coefficient boil in my blood, igniting my eyes with bright gold glows. Standing up behind the staff-wielder I flung the grenade passed him, aiming between the legs of the sprawled rifleman. I stayed back using the staff-wielder’s body as a shield against the upcoming explosion. He saw the small object fly past and turned around to stare up at me. Though the open helmet I saw Human eyes reflecting my golden glow, amplified by a flash of panic.
“What…” The single, muffled word was full of confusion and fear.
The grenade turned out to be more of a flashbang than an actual fragmentation grenade. The enemy was thrown off-balance by the shockwave, and the staff wielder before me had the pole blown out of his hands. The rifleman was flipped over his head and onto the rifle, smoke streaming out from between his legs. The grenade sent the defender flying at me, making me miss my attempt at a decapitation. The sword pinged off his helmet, knocking the stunned shielder aside as if he was a baseball struck by a bat.
Wielding a sword with my left hand felt unnatural, but convenient from my position. Raising the blade over the first blinded minigunner I struck down. The alien-gifted blade glowed, entirely ignoring the unpowered armor and digging into the left shoulder of my opponent.
I was somewhat surprised at my failed attempt to cut the Humanoid in half. Ripping the sword out of the falling, screaming man I grabbed his head and shoved him aside. My arm flexed with the effort, and I felt the metal of the helmet buckle under my fingers. I dashed for the next shooter, this time managing to decapitate the unsuspecting fool with a clean cut. The last of the four, the rifleman, was up, his rifle abandoned but a large glowing pistol aimed at my gut.
This one, however, was simply flung off into the darkness when an oversized bardiche crashed into his chest plate, cracking it in two. The Inson moved with incredible speed, her armor glowing brightly, and she was suddenly to my side, finishing the first shooter I had struck.
I had never seen a tank in melee combat. ‘Drive me closer so I can hit them with my sword’ jokes aside, for the first time I saw the alien as a living being and not a machine - no mechanism could move so quickly and naturally, at least none that I had seen before. The speed and strength of the three-meter-tall insectoid was amazing - she effectively managed to cut the gunner into three parts before the body collapsed.
The two of us turned to glare at the surviving staff-wielder at the back. This one was completely unhurt, if somewhat dazed by my initial bashing. He was also the only one of the four with Gem-powered armor, the spheres glowing brightly at the joints of his armor. Two daggers swung as the suit of sleek armor charged me. The Inson stood back, simply watching our faceoff.
I tried to imagine the design of the suit of armor standing before me, the structure and layout of its frame. I guessed the most likely locations of the main power and control lines, the size and assembly of the servos in each joint. I considered what the suit was designed to withstand, and what kind of attack it was vulnerable to.
And I saw it.
Deflecting the suit-powered attacks proved more difficult than I imagined. The heavier sword was ineffective against the stronger opponent. I jabbed it into the ground, instead charging the defender with bare hands, trading the additional mass for speed and ease of motion. Every attack the enemy made gave me an opening for a single jab.
The Human body is its own worst lever. You can use parts of it to dislodge and break other parts. The twisted joints and shattered bones of the suit’s occupant was secondary damage to destroying the suits motors. The servos were strong against direct impact but warped easily when twisted. As one of the long daggers sliced passed me I reached out and grabbed it. The metal cracked under my fingers and the blade snapped in two. I let go, quickly grabbing the hand that was holding it instead, and began to bend. The extended arm holding the broken weapon twisted under my fingers, snapping the suits motors and dislocating the arm within.
The inflicted pain and damage gave me more time to expand on the success. I kept crushing, tearing the shoulder servos out of the suit’s frame.
As I twisted the arm, I felt my fingers slide over and exposed cable. The tingling sensation was unmistakable - I had torn the suit’s major power line, exposing a lead. I twisted further, shifting the exposed wire until it contacted a twisted servo.
Every joint within the suit glowed for a moment. Breakers and fuses turned to ash in miniature blasts of fire. Sparks and smoke tore free of the armor, the surge of power frying electronics and jerking servos across the entire suit. The Human within screamed, his pain muffled by the smoking helmet.
I broke his arms and kicked at his knees until the suit could no longer support those joints. It was a ruthless, incredibly painful way of inflicting damage, and the only way of disabling such powered armor effectively.
With a final grunt I struck
the opponent from the side, forcing the remaining dagger away, and took two steps forward, grabbing hold and ripping out the large green Gem positioned at the center of the chest piece. It did not come free easily, taking a chunk of electronics and wires with it. My pained right arm protested its use, immediately dropping the oversized marble.
Instantly, the glowing green lines illuminating the armor snapped off, and the smoking suit slumped and fell under the sudden, unsupported weight of the armor, allowing me to jab the sword into the slit at the back of his neck.
“What kind of weapon was that? You set him on fire!” The Cockroach was only just arriving on the scene, his bulky weapon slowing him down. He did an excellent job distracting the attackers with his weapon at range, but melee was clearly not his specialty.
“Artificial looping of the central conduit.”
“What?” Asked the Cockroach, my words stopping him no worse than a punch. He was clearly trying to decipher my words, shifting, my words confusing to him. I realized that mental terms escaped my mouth without switching undergoing the normal simplification.
“I short-circuited his main power line. Burned out connectors and fuses.”
“With your bare hands?”
I shrugged.
For the first time in years of memory, my hands were shaking. Foreign, unrestrained adrenalin, the manifestation of raw excitement, flooded my mind and body. Training and reflect gave way to the realization that I had just killed someone. I hadn’t fought for a long time, not since I joined the Corporation. That had always been my brother’s specialty. But now I realized that which I had never dared to find out earlier.
“Killing is fun,” I muttered under my breath.
“Your kind are all fucking insane,” said the Inson standing nearby. She cursed as one would say the word ‘computer’ without knowing what a computer is, how it worked, and only guessing its use in a sentence, as if seeking confirmation of its use from a more knowledgeable audience. “Complete maniacs,” she added.
I slapped the handle, sending my sword deeper into the corpse. The weapon was ruined, but I was glad it at least lasted this long. The gold in my eyes subsided and the darkness became blinding again. I was forced to navigate by memory, to guess where all the bodies were scattered.
“I am not sure if it is your style to fight with almost nothing, and you have clearly proven yourself to be capable of that, but I would strongly recommend taking some of these Human’s gear for yourself. You made half of the kills, so take what you wish, Human.” A lamp lit up in the alien’s hand, illuminating the bloody hill.
“Yes,” I muttered, the post-combat adrenalin hitting me with its high. “It is the style of my family line, to do battle with our bare hands in a gunfight, wearing nothing but our ceremonial battle bathrobe - which I currently lack - and traumatizing the enemy with our sight alone!” I ended the line with eyes and hands raised, shaking my fists threateningly at the dark sky. The Inson turned its little head at me in wonder. “But I will take you up on your offer anyway.”
I approached the nearest corpse, kneeling and removing the helmet. There was, indeed, another Human man under the armor. I still couldn’t believe how short and light he was.
“Humans attack you out here?” I asked, frowning at the older face. The man looked withered but strangely relaxed. In my time even bureaucrats looked more menacing than this corpse.
Come to the new world, I thought. Meet new people! Kill them all!
“The Raiders, yes. This is their prison, after all.”
Choosing not to reveal my inadequacy with further questions I removed the marble from my sword and threw the broken thing aside. While the Inson went to retrieve the corpse she had flung into the night earlier I examined the gear. The heavy gunner had thin armor with sizable extrusions parallel to each limb - an obvious sign of powered armor. That, unfortunately, was largely annihilated by the Inson, just like the shield-generating staff of the defender.
There were four broken bodies and suits on the hill. That gave me four sets of equipment to work with, and technology I wanted a look it. I dragged the damaged suits closer, the bodies within leaving trails of blood on the rocks. The aliens stepped closer, covering me with their deflector domes and lighting up the bloody pile of metal with the lamp.
“Corporate,” said the Inson. “You broke one of the powered suits, and I destroyed the other. They are useless.”
“Individually, yes,” I said, removing the joint casing and unplugging wires. “You got a screwdriver?”
The screwdriver was… normal. Usual. Standard. A handle with a switch and a button. Pressing the button made the tip rotate, and the switch changed the direction of rotation. The whole thing was basic, almost barbaric compared to the powered armor and weapons of my two alien friends.
In ten seconds I had a functional motor removed form one of the suits. In another minute I had the same part inserted into the mangled knee of the defender, the bent and disfigured original laying on the ground nearby. The modular nature of the suits allowed me to revive the defender’s armor in but a few minutes. As I worked, replacing and rewiring parts, I studied the design, mentally mapping out power lines, structural frames and joints.
“Hold the light still, please,” I muttered. “Void of space, this is caveman technology. Who makes this shit? Neural interface on the back, inflexible power lines… you call that a fuse?”
My hands were a blur of motion. With speed and precision I worked up and down the suit, tearing out cables, electronics and burned out motors. The screwdriver in my hand whirred without pause, the small Gem in its core lighting up my work just as well as the lamp overhead.
The two aliens started, mesmerized, as I tore apart four broken suits and rebuilt them into a single, oversized, functional unit.
With a heave I stood the suit up. The joints went rigid as I inserted Gems into their places. Some adjustment allowed me to step into the result as if it were a skeletal coffin. Clamps caught my arms and legs, the suit shifting to match my stance. The neural interface in the back began scanning my spine for commands, mirroring my motion as if it were an integrated part of my body. The gloves didn’t fit my hands, and my height made the whole thing work at its limit, but it was still a functional exosuit. Gems at the joints glowed white with every motion as I gingerly stepped forward and stretched. After several minutes of adjustment I could comfortably move again, this time with enhanced strength and ease. The result lacked a lot of the armor, but it gave me the endurance and power I lacked in my unaugmented body.
“I have seen thinking Corporate, whose plans are as deep as the void of the sky,” said the Inson. “And I have seen fighting Corporate, their strength matched only by the strongest of the inner Rings. But never before have I seen a builder Corporate.”
“Met a lot of us, have you?” I stretched, pretending not to care about the answer.
“Few, but more than most.”
I wanted to yell, to ask for exact numbers, to understand what kind of world I was in. Instead, I resumed my preparations, pretending to be satisfied by the answer.
On top of the suit I secured as much of the surviving armor from the attackers as I could. On top of the differently-colored, misplaced, asymmetrical plates I attached the straight-edged knives that proved so defeating to my own sword.
Through the Menu I inventoried the battlefield, as well as the equipment worn by the Inson and Cockroach. I quickly realized the error of my ways and took the belt off one of the suits. The belt hooked itself into my armor, and I felt a sense of security as a deflector field solidified around me. A blue bar appeared in my vision, marking itself to be the ‘Deflector capacitor charge’. I willed the bar to the side, and it put itself at the edge of my sight, fading away as it filled up.
I felt even better about life. Perhaps I didn’t look like such a fool now.
Finally, I took two swords from the shooter’s corpse, hooking them onto my hips, and reached for the ammo bags on their belts. In the
name of curiosity I pulled one of the bullets from its case.
Fine white dust fell out of the shell. It was not gunpowder, I could tell as much, but nothing suggested as to what the reactant could be.
Whatever it was, I recalled the vast power of the gatling gun ripping through my shoulder and decided to commandeer one of their miniguns. Taking the heavy sniper rifle was not an option - it was far too large for me to lift or carry. I figured it must have taken two of the attackers to even transport.
The moment I stepped away from the bodies my alien comrades pounced on the remaining loot. They stripped every Gem and bullet from the corpses, shoving the loot into bags. The four worthless bodies were eventually hauled together into one pile.
Before I could reflexively interfere, the Cockroach emptied a bag of gray powder onto the pile and snapped its armored fingers, making a small spark arch over to the dust. In a chain reaction the dust ignited, engulfing the stripped bodies in flame.
I focused on the bodies and reached for my weapons in surprise. The mangled, broken, dead corpses still had auras of life!
My hand reached for my weapon, but the aliens seemed unconcerned, watching the fire, so I chose to wait. We stood over the flames, the two locals conversing about the Raider’s tactics, while I curiously observed the process. Most of the dust was concentrated around the attacker’s heads, and in the white flames I saw black cubes emerge, revealed as flesh burned away. As the hot flames died down flashes illuminated the night, and the four cubes disappeared. With the flash went the glow of life.
The aliens paid no attention to the event as they chatted, and I realized it had to be a well-known, common occurrence. Choosing not to ask another foolish question I began to think. It did not take me long to arrive at the only possible conclusion.
The cubes were in the Raider’s heads, and they flashed out, probably teleporting elsewhere when they were exposed.