Mech 2

by Isaac Hooke

  He struck the ground a short distance in front of the drill. Other mechs landed around him.

  He aimed at one of the spheres, targeting the dish-like apparatus protruding from one side, and riddled it with bore holes. Another Jupiter targeted the left dish of the same sphere. The AI cores highlighted the different targets the mechs chose so that the platoon members wouldn’t attack the same marks, unless they chose to.

  “Reposition!” he shouted again, not wanting to stay in one place for too long, not while there were still more of those gamma ray dishes yet intact.

  He fired his jets again, leaping toward the rock face once more. This time he aimed while he was in midair, and released several shots, poking holes in yet another dish.

  “I’m detecting gamma ray scatter once more,” Nicolas announced. “Though it’s weaker.”

  “Is that because we’re constantly moving?” Rade asked. “Making it hard for them to target us?”

  “No,” Nicolas said. “It should be stronger, in theory, because they’re striking closer to our positions… and expecting us to move. But that it’s not, tells me that our attacks are working, and steadily reducing their firing ability.”

  Rade didn’t bother to latch onto the rock this time; instead, he fired his grappling hook down at the spheres, which had closed within the weapon’s range. He targeted one with cobra-riddled ears, and pulled it into the path of an intact unit, smashing them together. He released his grappler, withdrawing it, and fired his cobra at the next dish.

  Beside him, other mechs followed his lead, firing grapplers, and either cobras or stingrays. By the time they landed, they had deactivated all the gamma ray dishes, and destroyed a good number of the enemy.

  The units were now close enough to hurl their robotic tentacles at the platoon. Rade swung his ballistic shield back into place, and the tentacles of one Nemesis wrapped around it, crumpling the edges and pulling Rade in.

  He swiveled his cobra out of the way, intending to replace it with his stingray, but he had no time, and instead was forced to punch the sphere with his fists of bare steel. A dent appeared, but otherwise the sphere remained in the game. Rade’s shield continued to collapse where the tentacles gripped him.

  “They’ve got incredible compressive strength!” Snakeoil said, struggling beside him.

  Rade swiveled his stingray into place and lifted it toward the Nemesis—the sphere’s front section was folding back, revealing a glowing blue mass.

  Rade fired his stingray directly at it.

  The sphere exploded, and he managed to swivel behind his ballistic shield at the same time. He heard the thuds as it was sprayed with shrapnel.

  He pried the tentacles free and turned to face the next foe. A glance at his shield told him that the glowing mass had sprayed the surface when the host sphere exploded; strange plants were rapidly taking hold, sourced from the blue goo, their roots drilling into the metal itself.

  Rade switched to his cobra and pressed it into the base of each of those plants, targeting the goo. He dialed down the intensity to roughly a quarter, because he didn’t want to damage his shield too badly; as he fired, the substance turned black, and the vines emerging from them withered. He continued firing until he had stopped the growth of all the plants and then turned to face the next Nemesis, which was quickly coming toward him.

  It had its tentacles spread wide, no doubt intending to give him a deadly bear hug. Its spherical surface was also folding open, revealing a glowing mass inside.

  Rade reverted to the stingray and fired into the opening, but this time he jetted upward, and avoided most of the goo that splattered the area when the Nemesis exploded.

  The drill was already well inside the cave then, so Rade backed away toward it. He kept firing at the Nemesis craft, bringing them down, and he helped any companions that were sprayed with the blue goo.

  “Gah!” Bender said. His torso was covered with blue splotches that were giving birth to plants.

  Rade rushed him, and unleashed his cobra repeatedly. Once again, he had dialed down the intensity.

  “You’re damaging my armor!” Bender complained.

  “Not as much as the plants would if we let them grow!” Rade said.

  “The drill is through!” Lui said.

  “Inside!” Rade said. “HS3s first!”

  The HS3s swooped downward from where they had been perched along the rock face during the fight, and dove in.

  Around the curvature of the mountain to the south, a fresh group of tentacled Nemesis spheres had arrived.

  Still defending against the closer alien units, the platoon members rushed into the opening after the HS3s. Rade and the others were forced to crouch low as they entered, squeezing into the dimensions carved by the laser.

  Around Rade, black walls engulfed the view, pressing in from all sides. He continued backing away, firing past Tahoe and Kicker, who were in front of him. More Jupiters blocked his view, making it impossible to aim at the enemies outside.

  “We’re all in,” Praxter said from the lip of the cave. “Just in time, too. The more distant targets have deployed their gamma ray weapons.”

  Praxter was still firing his stingray however, trying to keep the closer Nemesis units at bay. One of them was trying to enter the tunnel and follow the platoon.

  “Will the cave protect us from the rays?” Rade asked.

  Snakeoil was the one who answered. “It should! The surrounding rock is rich in lead. Plus, it’s fairly thick.”

  “I’m detecting only minor levels of gamma ray scatter,” Nicolas told him.

  And then the tight rock walls around Rade open up. He had backed into a larger chamber.

  No, not a chamber. He was in a bigger cave. Overhead lights illuminated a tunnel filled with exotic plants. They looked like large ferns, but were strange colors—blue, purple, orange—many with bulbous, fruit-like masses protruding from underneath.

  “The Anarchist has been busy,” Lui commented.

  Several of the plants were trampled, courtesy of the mechs that had entered ahead of Rade, not to mention the drill with those large treads.

  There was enough space for three mechs abreast, and the Jupiters could stand at their full heights here.

  Rade pushed further inside, making room for the others.

  “Praxter, I want you to plant demolition charges in the ceiling,” Rade said. “We’re collapsing the breach point!”

  Praxter immediately emerged from his mech, which continued to attack the Nemesis beyond. The spheres were piling up near the entrance, forming a barrier of their own, but of course such a barrier would be far easier to clear than a collapse.

  Praxter climbed down to his storage compartment, then retrieved several demolition blocks. He peeled off the backing and tossed them in turn at the ceiling of the tunnel; an onboard propellant self-leveled the bricks, and they attached firmly to the stone above.

  After a moment, Praxter sealed the compartment and leaped back inside his cockpit. “Charges in place!”

  Rade waited until Praxter was almost at where the drilled tunnel opened into the main corridor, and then ordered: “Detonate!”

  The charges ignited, filling the tunnel with dust that the overhead lights were unable to penetrate.

  Rade and the others continued to back away, making room for the others. On his HUD, the different platoon members were still silhouetted in blue, thanks to his augmented reality system, so, although he couldn’t see past the dust, he knew that Praxter had emerged from the collapsing tunnel unscathed.

  The makeshift echolocation chirps still sounded from their speaker systems, and the outlines of the surrounding walls and plants were also visible.

  “Echolocation reports that the tunnel has thoroughly sealed,” Praxter announced.

  “There goes our way out,” Fret commented.

  “We’ll drill our way out,” Bomb said, patting the big laser he had resumed carrying with Snakeoil.

  “All right, let’s proceed
toward the bomb deployment site,” Rade said. “TJ, Bender, lead the way with the HS3s.”

  He turned around, as did the other Jupiters, and the platoon made their way through the tunnel, three at a time. They trampled the foliage beneath them; the plants muted their heavy footfalls.

  The HS3s stayed close for the moment—they didn’t have echolocation, and had to rely upon the data generated and transmitted by the Jupiters for guidance.

  Soon the dust cleared, and the long, horizontal lights in the ceiling allowed the mech pilots to see the cave system, and the exotic plants that carpeted its floor. Nonetheless, the platoon members kept the echolocation operating in case SKs were hidden in the cave around them. Even though it essentially acted to broadcast their positions, Rade was fairly certain the enemy now knew where the platoon was, anyway.

  “Send the HS3s ahead,” Rade said. “I want them at least fifty meters in front of us.”

  The HS3s pulled forward, and confirmed that the blueprints the platoon had for the cave system were correct.

  After a few moments TJ said: “HS3s are closing with the first intersection.”

  “Send one ahead,” Rade said. “And have the others stay back.”

  Rade glanced at his overhead map and watched as an HS3 broke away from the other scouts, which lingered. The HS3 reached the intersection, and darted past. It rotated three hundred and sixty degrees about its axis as it did so, twice, giving ample opportunity for its sensors to record either passageway. No red dots appeared to mark enemies.

  “Seems clear,” TJ said.

  “The HS3s don’t have echolocation,” Tahoe reminded him.

  “I said seems,” TJ told him. “One of us will still have to clear the intersection.”

  “I want an HS3 deployed in either passageway,” Rade said. “They’ll stand guard here, and act as early warning systems in case the SKs or their alien allies decide to cut off our retreat.”

  Via the map, he watched as two scouts moved a short distance inside either passage and remained there.

  “Have the rest of the HS3s continue forward,” Rade said. “Lui, Kicker, Pyro, Fret, you’re closest to the front. Secure that intersection.”

  The platoon followed the HS3s forward, and when they reached the edge of the intersection, Lui and Kicker darted forward, partially entering the rightward passageway. Lui went high, Kicker low. On the left side, Pyro and Fret did the same thing. They all held their ballistic shields in front of them, and had the muzzles of their stingrays peering over the top notches. The crouched men had their shields angled at forty-five degrees so as not to interfere with the mechs that stood.

  “Got nothing on the echolocation band,” Lui said. “Just plants waiting for an ass trampling.”

  “Same here,” Fret said.

  “Proceed down the central tunnel,” Rade said, “to the target.”

  The Jupiters continued the advance.

  “You know, for a second there, I thought Fret was saying he wanted an ass trampling,” Bender commented. “Because Lui was like, ‘nothing here, just plants waiting for an ass trampling,’ and then Fret goes ‘same here,’ as if he was waiting for someone to trample his ass too. And I was ready to oblige, but—”

  “I was talking about the echolocation band being clear,” Fret said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Bender said. “I realized that. Why do you think you’re not bent over in pain?”

  “You would want to trample his ass,” Manic said. “You got lots of experience in that department, I’m sure. I always wondered why you looked so longingly at Fret whenever we showered together.”

  “Bro, you got one sick mind,” Bender said. “I ain’t never looked longingly at Fret. For me, ass trampling means connecting the toe of my boot to your buttocks. Very, very painfully.”

  “Guys, keep it professional,” Rade said.

  “Sorry boss,” Manic said.

  Bender didn’t apologize, Rade noted. Well, as long as he didn’t comment further, that was good enough.

  The platoon continued to march through those plants. Those in the lead occasionally fired their cobras at suspicious looking ferns, worried that enemies might be nestled among them, but they never hit anything other than the plants themselves.

  “You know, it’s probably a good thing we brought a nuke,” Tahoe said at one point. “Otherwise we’d have to burn all this crap down. Which would be difficult, without incendiaries.”

  “Wouldn’t be that hard to start a fire,” Fret said. “Though I doubt there’s enough oxygen circulating in the cave to keep it going for very long.”

  The cave maintained its existing height and width, allowing the platoon to march forward in threes.

  They encountered more intersections along the way, including one T intersection. Every time, Rade had an HS3 clear the passageways, followed by the Jupiters on point. He instructed TJ to leave HS3s deployed at each branch to act as rear guards.

  “We’re almost out of range of the HS3s deployed behind us,” TJ said as they approached the target ahead.

  “Then leave another one here to act as a repeater,” Rade said. “And keep stringing them out, as necessary.”

  Rade glanced at his overhead map. They easily had enough HS3s to maintain communications, assuming the Anarchist was waiting at the target site as planned.

  They had only two HS3s left in front, leading the way to the target, which was very close now.

  For a while there, Rade had begun to think that they’d reach the alien entity without any further issues.

  But then TJ announced: “Just lost the signal to both HS3s.”

  15

  Rade switched to Lui’s perspective and studied the plants around his point man. The foliage was outlined by white wireframes, courtesy of the continual echolocation chirps; none of those outlines were out of place, which would have denoted a hidden object.

  “Recall the rearmost HS3,” Rade said. There were two on guard at that location anyway; Rade figured they needed only one, especially if it rotated every few seconds to cover both approaches to the intersection.

  The HS3 moved quickly, leapfrogging the other scouts placed between here and the breach point to act as repeaters.

  When it arrived, TJ sent the HS3 forward.

  “I want you to trail by ten meters, Lui,” Rade said. “Stay low. Let’s find out what’s knocking them out of the air. Forward, everyone.”

  The HS3 advanced and Lui trailed it at the designated distance. The other platoon members followed behind him, three mechs abreast.

  Rade kept Lui’s video feed active in the upper right of his vision, as he gazed at the backs of the three mechs in front of him.

  The small, spherical HS3 was visible on Lui’s feed. As it proceeded forward, passing above the plants, the ferns abruptly sprang to life—they wrapped around the scout and pulled it out of the air.

  “The plants!” Skullcracker said.

  The foliage animated around them, with branches and leaves wrapping around their mechs. Rade struggled against a vine-like plant that wound around his leg, and finally broke free when he fired his stingray at it. Other Jupiters fired cobras and stingrays, breaking away from the plants that bound them.

  Beneath Rade, new branches grew from the undergrowth he’d trampled, and he was forced to stamp out a fresh stream of additional targets.

  “This never happened on Newridium!” Fret said. “When we found the Anarchist, we were able to wade through the plants surrounding the alien without any problems!”

  “That’s because we were on the Anarchist’s side, back then,” Tahoe said. “Or thought we were.”

  “Yeah, until it decided to mindfuck us, and make us attack our own men!” Manic said.

  “How do you know we’re not doing the same right now?” Kicker posed.

  “Because there would be no point,” Tahoe said. “The only other thing these plants could be is SK units. Why bother to show them at all? If the alien had control of our Implants again, and these were SK
s, why not make them completely invisible?”

  “Maybe we’re not in the cave at all,” Kicker said. “Maybe we turned back somewhere, and left the cave entirely. Maybe we’re back outside, and we’re fighting against Bravo or other reinforcements.”

  “Don’t think so!” Rade said. “Trust your senses! We’re in the cave. Fight!”

  As he continued to shoot away those plants, the outlines of combat robots appeared on his HUD. These rushed into view from the forward area, past the mechs in front of him, from the direction of the target.

  “SK combat robots!” Lui said.

  Lui’s Jupiter swung his shield into place, and slammed it into the ground in front of him.

  Kicker and Pyro did the same beside him, interlocking their shields, providing cover for the rest of the platoon, whose members continued to battle the plants. The three of them lifted their stingrays over the tops of their shields and opened fire.

  Rade and the others continued firing at the surrounding plants; Rade also targeted the plant limbs that continued to crop up underneath Lui, Kicker and Pyro; their three mechs shifted from foot to foot, stomping each time, but it wasn’t enough to get all of the growing foliage.

  “Clear!” Lui said.

  “Press forward!” Rade said. “We’re almost at the target.”

  The three on point advanced, keeping their shields deployed, and the others followed.

  They reported more combat robots, along with two mechs.

  A fireball lit the air in front of Kicker.

  “What was that?” Bomb asked.

  “Serpent missile!” Kicker said. “I detonated it before impact.”

  More missiles exploded as the enemy mechs unleashed them, and the lead Jupiters shot them down.

  All of a sudden Kicker and Bomb were forced back. Their two shields bent inwards where the edges touched, and then twisted all the way to the sides, unable to withstand the force of whatever had thrown itself against it.