by J. N. Chaney
Twenty-seven of the smaller enemy ships remained. While Warren’s flight made multiple attack runs on the dropships, Bravo Flight fought their own war with the Commonwealth. They figured out they could break up into several smaller groups and simply follow the ships toward the surface, since the enemy wasn’t shooting back. With three or four of the cyborg pilots blasting a single vessel at the same time and combining their fire, the dropships didn’t stand a chance.
“Maybe we should just shoot their thrusters?” Rigby suggested. “That way the whole lot of them can just crash into the planet.”
“If one of those hits a dome, it might break through,” Lukov said. “I think we need to destroy as many as we can. Less mass in one spot.”
“Agreed,” Baker said. “Warren?”
“Stick to the plan,” Warren said. “We’ll deal with whatever makes it to the surface later.”
The strange Commonwealth vessel had gone silent. All of the smaller ships were gone, leaving it looking like an apple someone had just finished. The vessel was now ballooned on both ends with a thinner shaft connecting the bow to the stern. It was a tempting target, but it wasn’t the immediate threat.
“Alpha Flight, follow the small ships down to the planet,” Warren said. “Let’s destroy as many as we can. Bravo, as soon as the first one touches down, start strafing the hell out of them.”
Warren and the rest of Alpha did their best, but 12 of the dropships still made it to the surface. They’d used all of the squadron’s missiles. The only offensive advantage they still had were their forward-facing defenses. Those were used to great effect, but the limitations of the weapon’s field of fire made them difficult to employ.
The option of the Reotian guns would be a last line of defense. Warren didn’t want to reveal them unless they had no choice.
One of the ships they’d hit had been damaged enough that it lost control. It struck hard against the planet’s surface. If there were any living personnel inside the shuttles, they’d be spattered against the inside of their EV suits and turned into soup.
“They’re disembarking a bunch of... things,” Baker said. “Armored EV suits, it looks like. Dang, they’re big. I’m taking fire!”
Warren and the rest of Alpha Flight came in behind Bravo and began their strafing run. The troops he saw were oddly shaped. The enemy soldiers had long torsos, almost no head, and legs as thick as tree trunks. It was all wrong. There was no way a person could fit inside of one of those things and actually pilot it. They’d have to be scrunched up in a ball or have their joints in different places.
Warren squeezed his trigger, vaporizing two of the troops where they stood, but not before taking dozens of shots in return. Warning lights illuminated on his fighter’s panel. The stick became hard to control—it felt like he was stirring mud. He pulled the throttle back, reaching for the stars as he desperately tried to gain some distance between himself and the enemy peppering him with slugs, but he didn’t get far.
“Alpha, continue strafing,” Warren said. “My ship’s damaged pretty bad. I’m going to do something crazy.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Oplin said. “How about letting me in on the neat trick you’re about to show us.”
“Watch and learn.” Warren tilted his stick hard to the left. The ship’s response was sluggish, but it began to turn.
He started searching for targets. There were still three ships that hadn’t landed. Two of them were still too far away from the surface to allow his plan to work. One, though, was close, only about a hundred meters from Reotis. He aimed his ship toward that one and accelerated as fast as the fighter would go.
He knew what he was about to do was the right course of action. He regretted nothing.
After making sure his restraints were off, Warren focused on his target.
DISTANCE TO TARGET: 1280 M.
Just a little closer.
DISTANCE TO TARGET: 612 M.
A little more.
DISTANCE TO TARGET: 400 M.
Warren sprang from his damaged cockpit with all his might. He flew over the enemy dropship, which had already turned around, pointing its thrusters at the planet to slow its descent. As he passed over the craft, his ship struck.
This is what flying feels like, he thought as he soared through the Reotis sky.
The two Commonwealth vessels temporarily became one. His ship didn’t emerge from the far side of the collision. A lot of fire and shrapnel did, spraying out in all directions. The two vessels hung in the air, momentarily frozen in place as they expelled their kinetic energy against each other. He watched it all as he tumbled through the air, mesmerized as the whole thing detonated like a gigantic grenade.
Warren pushed the scene from his mind and took note of how far away the planet’s surface was. He prepared for a contested landing and tucked himself into a ball. He hit a rocky patch of the Reotis soil, then he rolled for several seconds. He threw his arms out, trying to arrest his forward momentum. Once he slowed down, he got to his feet while still sliding in the red dirt, throwing a huge wave of dust in front of him.
Three CWS-14’s flew overhead, making another strafing run on the enemy troops and their dropships. Warren started running as fast as his legs would carry him.
Warren crested the hill near where he’d landed. It was steep and craggy, slowing his climb to the top, but it afforded him a clear view of the field around him. He saw his enemy close up for the first time. The troops resembled people, but he confirmed there was no way a human could be operating the arms and legs of that monstrosity. Not unless they were curled up inside the thing’s torso with no parts of their body sticking out. Not even the CoWs would do that to their own people.
What are they, then? Warren’s mind could only come up with one answer: Mechs.
27
“I’m in the mix,” Warren warned everyone. “Don’t shoot me. These things are mechs. That’s why they keep fighting. Robots. There’s nobody inside.”
“Warren, we have incoming,” Lukov said. “Dome-5. I have two other cyborgs with me. Do you have recommendations on the best way to destroy these things?”
Warren turned his concentration to the hive mind that was the collective body of his fellow cyborgs’ thoughts. No one had ever seen anything like this before.
“Not yet,” Warren said. “But I’ll let you know in a minute or two.”
Three of the mechs returned fire from weapons built into their forearms. It seemed a little overkill given that they had other weapons strapped to their torsos.
It was then that Warren realized he didn’t have his rifle to fight back.
“Don’t worry, we have you,” Lukov declared, picking up Warren’s distress from their new connection.
Two of the fighters swept overhead and lay down a line of fire that scattered the mechs on the ground. Knowing it wouldn’t keep them down for long, Warren scanned the wreckage from his suicide jump. His eyes landed on the broken body of a mech that must have been in the dropship.
He sprinted over, relieved to find that the robot’s head had been separated from the body and there wasn’t any movement. Unfortunately, its external weapons were gone too. A quick glance over his shoulder told Warren that the enemy was already recovering from the cover fire.
Continuing the search in earnest, Warren looked around the mech. He was considering the merits of ripping off one of the downed robot’s limbs to use as a blunt object when he spotted something mixed in with the burning rubble.
A rifle. He snagged it, ignoring the sharp stab of heat in his hands before the pain dampeners kicked in. It was a little bigger than his usual, but a standard setup. Warren spotted a handful of spare magazines attached to the mech’s body and snagged them.
The first enemy mech staggered when Warren fired three shots into its chest but didn’t fall. They turned their guns toward him as he continued firing center mass. They were a hundred meters away, giving Warren plenty of time to dodge, roll, and jump out of the
way of their slugs. He relayed an update with the information he’d just learned to the rest of his team. It would be vague, but every little detail could help.
“Taking cyborgs out to fight people machine on planet surface,” Lukov said. “We must not allow to reach airlock. Could detonate bomb, or bend, break, expose entire dome to vacuum.”
“Godspeed,” Warren said as he rolled to his right, dodging another volley from the mechs. They stopped firing, apparently out of ammunition, and charged him.
Each of the mechs had several holes in its torso, some of them clustered together in tight groupings. He could see daylight through the gaps, but the machines didn’t slow down. Warren added another hole to one of their heads, but the thing kept coming. Thanks to his computer-given marksmanship, his next shot went into the left knee joint of the one closest to him, which slowed it some.
Another fighter rocketed by overhead, peppering the ground around the mechs, but the robots easily evaded. The fighters moved on, circling around for another pass. The enemy mechs didn’t shoot back, focusing their fire on the more immediate threat: Warren.
He began running backward as he swapped out magazines, keeping his opponents in sight. They reached for him with their large, three-fingered hands. Picking the nearest mech as a target, Warren sent three rounds into it and was surprised when its appendage exploded in a huge shower. The light show seemed to linger far longer than it should’ve as the fireworks swarmed around the Commonwealth machine, spun, and skittered along the ground.
There was no time to consider what those sparks might be. There was fighting to do, and if Warren didn’t keep moving, he knew it would be hand-to-hand. There was something about their three-fingered appendages that told him that would be a bad idea. As puffs of red Reotian dust erupted into the air around him, he knew he was being shot at.
Warren transmitted the need for help. His brother cyborgs didn’t answer, but Warren felt Lukov banking his vessel for another pass.
Lukov’s fighter tore by overhead. Red dirt exploded around the mechs, obscuring them from view. When the dust settled enough to see them again, Warren saw the attack had managed to take one out.
He stumbled back down the hill when the rest began to advance. The mech who’d lost a hand didn’t seem to notice. It kept advancing, finally cresting the hill and firing down at him. They were almost on top of him before he ran out of ammunition for the second time. After securing his rifle, he switched to his combat knife, which began vibrating as soon as his fingers closed around it.
The blade was constructed from carbon, honed and sharpened until its edge was just over a single molecule wide. It was light compared to its steel counterparts, allowing even non-cyborgs to effortlessly wield it in hand-to-hand combat. He pulled the blade just in time. The lead mech had closed the distance to within an arm’s reach. Warren ducked beneath its grab, easily sliding his 25-centimeter blade through the mech’s thigh.
He bit out a curse when his opponent didn’t go down. After his maneuver, the second machine was right in front of him. It grabbed his helmet with one hand and began to squeeze. Warren felt the pressure from its pincer grasp and alarms lit up his HUD. Damage warnings flashed across his vision, alerting him to his precarious situation. The system update about the malfunctions added to the confusion and chaos.
Warren dismissed the warnings and shoved his knife into the wrist of the mech that was gripping his helmet. Fluid poured out of the hole. A human would have let him go. The machine did not. He slashed twice, screaming in primal rage until he cut something important. The grip on his head relaxed. With another roar, he proceeded to dance around the mech, cutting, stabbing, and slicing in a blur of movement.
“More mechs are converging on you, Boss,” Cooper informed.
He’d been so caught up in the struggle with the two mechs in front of him that he’d missed the arrival of more. As he watched another mech take aim, Warren adjusted his grip and turned to face his attacker. Both suddenly staggered as he was hit by something. Skimming the data from his HUD, Warren saw that it was a tiny RPG fired from an open panel in the other mech’s shoulder. The mech near him started teetering backward from the impact.
Instead of trying to get out of the way, Warren sheathed his knife and retrieved his rifle. He reloaded his weapon as he pressed his back against the damaged mech and used the machine as a shield. The mech was heavy and although he tried to remain upright, Warren found it impossible to keep his traction in the soft dust of Reotis’ surface.
Two seconds later, he recovered, but so had the mech he was leaning against. It reached back as if to grab him, but another panel opened—this one in the center of its palm. Nothing good ever came out of a mech’s palm—or so he guessed.
Warren managed to tuck and roll out of the line of fire, but not before new warnings lit up his HUD. There was no way he was going to get a chance to fix anything now, so he muted all alarms and focused on the battle.
WARNING: RADIATION DETECTED
The sparks he’d seen when he shot the other mech weren’t sparks at all. According to his HUD, they were tiny rockets with radioactive heads, and one was burning and burrowing its way into Warren’s calf.
His three remaining mechanized opponents encircled him as he opened fire, trying to stay mobile and target any potential weak spots. He was having no luck finding vulnerable points, but he continued shooting and dodging. As he scrambled to his left, the mechs raised their hands in unison and a swarm of the tiny micro-rockets buzzed out. There were so many fast-moving targets in such close proximity that his HUD began to glitch. More than 900 were swarming, according to Warren’s last HUD update before it quit counting.
Warren leapt and fired at the same time, striking one mech in its raised hand. A second later, more of the rockets found him and began burning through his toughened artificial skin.
A scream of pain ripped through him. He felt like he was being torn apart, cell by cell.
Pissed now, Warren dampened pain receptors and vented his frustration with another controlled burst at the enemy. Simultaneously, the mech that was missing its hand collapsed. A low-flying fighter told him why as it rocketed past. The other two kept closing, immune to such things as the self-preservation instinct or caution.
They’re designed to kill cyborgs, Warren realized. This is the Commonwealth’s answer to us. It seemed the enemy had evolved, taking cues from the Republic and upping their game. He didn’t know how they did it, but the usually disadvantaged side had created something that could turn things to their side.
He fired one more controlled burst, but in his haste, missed hitting the center of the next mech’s palm. More angry micro rockets erupted from the side of the machine and swarmed out in all directions. Cursing, Warren leapt away again, fired, and made another jump.
The mech furthest from him went down, hitting the Reotis soil, which bubbled as it reacted with the machine’s fluids. The machine twitched and flopped in a bid to right itself, then exploded. One of Wraiths had punched a single hole in it with its cannon. Warren made note of where it hit and began aiming in the same general area. His third shot caused the last mech to detonate.
With no more mechs nearby, Warren reactivated the alarms on his HUD. The little rockets had burned themselves out, but not before each one had burrowed twenty centimeters through his body. His left ankle was frozen in place—both the primary and secondary systems for controlling it completely ruined—but he was still alive.
Temporarily out of the fight, Warren read the urgent updates so he could plan accordingly. He hadn’t seen a message about Lukov dying, but he couldn’t seem to find him within the chaos of their cyborg comm network. Scrolling down, he saw an alert that caused him to catch his breath. The Commonwealth mothership was joining the action. It was a half-kilometer up, straight overhead, and had just launched missiles at the surface.
“Watch out!” Lukov shouted across the comms.
Warren dashed away from the expected impact zone as
two more KIA messages appeared on his HUD. “Someone come pick me up!”
He watched as the explosions rolled across the red ground. Several of the missiles struck the shell for Dome-5, but the shell looked like it was holding.
Lukov arrived a few seconds later. Warren jumped and allowed the craft to slide in under him. While in the air, Warren grabbed the edges of the open cockpit while Lukov headed toward the CoW mothership.
“What’s the plan?” the Russian asked.
“Get me close to it, that’s all I need. I’m going to pay a personal call to that ship. I’ll figure out the rest once I get up there.”
Warren considered his options as Lukov maneuvered through debris, missiles, and fellow Wraiths. In the two minutes it took to get to the extreme center of the craft, another cyborg bit the farm.
Warren didn’t bother waiting for the fighter to slow. Instead, he jumped off the fighter’s wing and landed on the relatively narrow waist of the Commonwealth mothership where he slid to a halt, windmilling his arms to keep from tipping over the curved edge.
The vessel was built like everything else the CoWs made. Rivets, mismatched paint, and sheets of rusty metal. The surface was rough enough there was little danger of sliding off the thing on accident, even with how much the craft’s thrusters caused it to vibrate.
He began to walk, searching for access panels, hatches—anywhere he might be able to punch a hole in the thing and get inside where all the good stuff was. There were so many mismatched pieces, it began to dawn on him how impossible his plan might be. Everything looked like random shit welded to other random pieces.
Warren found a nearby seam, aimed to one side of it, and fired, producing a fountain of embers. No atmosphere, he noted. Ignoring that for now, he repeated the action until there was a sizable hole.
“What do we have here?” He took a knee and probed the hole. The area behind the spot was hollow.
