by Isaac Hooke
Rade ran his targeting reticle between the buildings, looking for tangos. He couldn’t see any Sino Korean mechs or combat robots out there, but that didn’t mean none were present, of course.
There, he spotted six of the aliens tearing into the blast shield at the base of one of the buildings. He had a good view of them, and could see them in their entirety.
“Got some tangos,” Rade said. “Marking the positions.”
He did so, highlighting the location on his overhead map. He used his LIDAR rangefinder to determine their distance—he was careful to point it at the building directly above the aliens, rather than at the creatures themselves, just in case they had detection abilities.
Then he lowered his aim back down to the aliens and studied them.
Their bipedal bodies were black, wiry, shiny, as if covered in a hard carapace. They had long tails with sharp spikes at the tips. Their legs were thick, elephantine things, tipped by three long toes in front, and two shorter ones in back, just like the footprints. Sharp, scythe-like claws awaited at the ends of each toe. Their front limbs were shorter and thinner, but tipped with five fingers arranged similarly to the toes, with half crescent talons that could pierce metal, judging from the way the blast shield folded beneath their grasp. Rade remembered how easily those talons had dented his cell door as well.
Bony, hexagonal plates formed a line down their backs, ending just beneath their oblong heads. They had a pair of bifurcated jaws at the bottoms of those heads, which they used to tear away thick pieces of the blast shield. There were several small dots above those jaws—perhaps eye, ear, and nose holes. Their positions seemed arbitrary.
“For once, I’m at a loss for what to call these bitches,” Bender said.
“That’s unlike you,” Tahoe said.
“I know,” Bender said. “Wait, I got it. Slicers. Because of the way they’re just slicing through that metal.”
“Works for me,” Pyro said. “Waiting for the order to fire.”
Rade wanted to pick the best possible spot to strike them, because though the rangefinder reported a distance of approximately one klick, it would take about three seconds for the plasma bolts to arrive at that range, so he had to account for any shifts in position the aliens might make.
He decided to go for the tried and true “aim at the center of mass” technique.
“I’m marking my targets,” Rade said. He highlighted two of the tangos, while Pyro and Bender divided the remaining four among themselves. Tahoe wouldn’t be firing his plasma rifle, as the bolt produced by the smaller weapon would fade out well before reaching the one klick mark.
“Fire,” Rade said.
He unleashed two shots in rapid succession, then adjusted his aim to target the next tango, and fired off another two bolts. He zoomed out slightly, and waited two seconds…
Two purple smears of light slammed into the first target, and an instant later another two hit the Slicer beside it. The surrounding four aliens were also struck at close to the same time.
The force of the impacts slammed their bodies against the blast shields, but their shiny carapaces seemed otherwise untouched, and a moment later all six of them arose.
Their heads swiveled back almost in unison, and they seemed, eerily, to be staring directly at Rade through his scope. Their bifurcated jaws glowed a subtle purple, as if the energy from the plasma bolts had somehow collected there.
“Well, that worked well,” Pyro said.
Bender launched another salvo.
“Hold you fire,” Rade said.
Bender’s shots hit one of the aliens, but the creature merely absorbed the impacts.
As a group, the aliens suddenly released their hold on the building, and began galloping through the streets. They utilized their front legs just as much as their hind limbs, and were fast approaching.
“Well, that confirms they can see,” Rade said
“So, what now?” Pyro asked.
Rade scanned the landscape behind him, away from the geodesic dome, looking for potential hiding spaces. The trenches and mounds in the rocky terrain provided some cover, but it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t take much searching for the aliens to ferret them out. They could always run directly away and hope the aliens grew bored and broke off the pursuit at some point. Rade suspected this was the maximum speed the aliens could sustain, especially for any reasonable length of time. It was a little below the top speed of his own mechs. So running was definitely an option.
The only other choice was to—
“Jump!” Tahoe said.
Rade instinctively activated his jumpjets. As he thrust upward, a purple plasma bolt slammed into the framework of the geodesic dome next to where he had stood only moments before. It melted the nearby frame section away entirely. More bolts came from inside the dome. They tracked Rade’s current flight, so he fired lateral thrust, zig-zagging back and forth as he descended. The glass of the geodesic dome was intact further up, and as those bolts arrived, they punched through, tearing into the air beside him.
“The SKs again?” Rade said.
“No,” Tahoe told him. “It’s the aliens. They’re sending our bolts right back at us.”
Rade landed on the rim, next to Bender, who, like Pyro, hadn’t been targeted. Rade aimed at the six incoming enemies, and noted that none of their bifurcated jaws were glowing at the moment. Probably a good sign.
“Now I understand why the support craft aren’t firing at them,” Rade said. “Energy attacks only charge them.”
“That also explains the plasma burns and blast craters marring the exteriors of some of the buildings,” Pyro said.
The Slicers were still coming in. Fast. Once more Rade considered retreating, but decided to go with the second option he had in mind.
Rade folded away his shield, and swiveled the stingray out of his right hand.
“Climb!” Rade reached up and slid his hand around the metal framework that supported the pane of glass above him. That frame formed a small ledge between itself and the glass.
He hauled himself up, grabbing a vertical portion of the frame to bring himself higher so that he could rest one foot on the horizontal section and stand. He continued scaling the ledges and ascents formed by that frame, and in that manner slowly made his way up the geodesic dome. On either side, Bender and Pyro were likewise climbing the dome. Their environmental blending still allowed them to fit in with their surroundings, but the whirring of their servomotors and the loud clang as their hands wrapped around the frame would probably give away their positions.
“You’d think,” Pyro said as he climbed, “since we were helping them out and all, that the Sino Koreans would have given us a heads up that the aliens could absorb and return incoming fire like that.”
“Maybe they thought we already knew,” Tahoe said. “We did claim to have a way to beat them…”
Below, the six aliens reached the inside of the geodesic dome, and began scaling the concrete base. Their claws sunk into the concrete to form handles, and they reached the top of the rim shortly; at that point they leaped through the shattered panes of glass, and promptly began to climb the frame, following the mechs.
While the mechs might have had the advantage of the speed on the ground, the Slicers had a slight edge here: because they moved easily up that frame, swinging their bodies like monkeys. They were gaining on Rade and the others, slowly but surely.
Rade upped the output of his servomotors and climbed as fast as he was able. That helped, but even so, the Slicers were still gaining. Rade estimated he had fifteen, maybe twenty minutes before they overcame him.
Rade and his team continued to climb. The dome slowly curved inward, leveling out, so that by the ten-minute mark he and the others were able to stand up and ascend the slope on foot. They dashed over the panes of glass, leaping from ledge to ledge, until soon they were bounding across almost flat sections of glass, and avoiding the framework entirely, which had become a trip hazard. Rade kept his ha
nds free in case he needed to recover from tripping.
“Am I the only one who doesn’t feel all that safe scrambling over flimsy pieces of glass set in a frame hundreds of meters above the ground?” Bender said.
“They’re not ‘flimsy pieces of glass,’ as you call them,” Pyro said. “They’re designed to withstand meteorite impacts!”
“Yeah, but we’re higher than the skyscrapers,” Bender said. “I feel like a monkey hanging from a brontosaurus’ dick! One small mistake, I step on the wrong fold of skin, or pull too hard on the sac next to it, and that brontosaurus is tearing me off its dick!”
Rade kept an eye on his rearview camera feed, and when he saw the six aliens crest the slope behind him and begin racing across the flatter section of the dome, he called a halt.
“Target the glass in front of them,” Rade said. “Fire on my mark.”
Rade folded his 5-way into his left hand, and his stingray into his right. The aliens were still using the ledges to leap from pane to pane, but as they got higher, they switched to vaulting over the frames, landing instead on the glass each time.
Exactly what Rade was waiting for.
“Fire,” Rade said.
He released his stingray and 5-way at the same time. Plasma and lightning bolts slammed into the glass sections in front of the aliens. The plasma bolts from him and his companions melted away the glass and nearby frame sections entirely, while the 5-ways weakened the surrounding glass enough so that when some of the aliens tried to divert around the gaping holes, they simply fell through the pane.
In seconds all six Slicers were plunging toward the streets below. One of them smashed into the edge of a building before bouncing away and continuing downward.
“Ouchy!” Bender said. “That’s gotta hurt.”
The creatures smashed into the ground in rapid succession, forming small craters in the asphalt.
Rade stared at the prostrate forms for a moment, hoping that they’d stay down, but then one after another they arose, and shook themselves.
They all looked up at Rade, and then howled in unison before racing off through the buildings toward the outskirts of the colony, as if planning to try their attack again.
“Resilient frickers,” Bender said.
“Got more incoming, three o’clock,” Tahoe said.
“Nine o’clock as well,” Pyro said.
In fact, all around them, more aliens were scaling the dome, and approaching from every direction. There were maybe twenty in total. These ones kept strictly to the frameworks between the glass, and avoided the glass panes, even though they were high enough to run solely on the latter.
“Fast learners,” Rade commented. “But it won’t help them. Target the frames in front of them.”
Rade and the others opened fire with their stingrays alone—as the 5-ways weren’t powerful enough to melt through the metal at that range—and carved holes into frameworks in front of the Slicers. The aliens simply leaped over the gaps that formed, and landed on the metal on the other side. One of those metal pieces gave, and the alien dropped through to the street below, but the others continued to approach.
“What’s the plan now?” Tahoe asked.
Good question, Rade thought.
7
Rade glanced down, peering through the current pane he stood on.
“This way!” he said, and ran diagonally away from the aliens. He folded away his 5-way, but kept his stingray in hand, since he still needed it.
He kept an eye on the glass below him, and when he was above the skyscraper he sought, he came to a halt. “Fire through!”
He unleashed his stingray into the pane, and the glass partially melted, shattering at the same time. He plunged toward the rooftop of the skyscraper, which didn’t have a blast shield, unlike others nearby. Pyro and Bender followed beside him.
“Tahoe, how you doing back there?” Rade asked.
“Bro, I live for this,” Tahoe replied.
Rade activated his aerospike thrusters, slowing his descent so that he landed almost gently on the rooftop. Pyro and Bender touched down nearby.
Rade rushed to the edge of the building, and lowered himself so that he was descending along the outer corner of the building. He used the powerful hands and feet of his mech to form holds.
Pyro and Bender descended on either side, smashing through windows as necessary.
Overhead, the first of the aliens arrived. And they actually threw themselves over the ledge, targeting Rade, Pyro and Bender with their bodies.
Rade was forced to move aside, letting the bodies plummet to the street far below. The other two mechs did the same. When the aliens hit the asphalt, they once more arose, shaking their heads a moment before scaling the skyscraper.
“Guess you were right about them being able to target us by sound,” Tahoe said. “Considering that Pyro and Bender are essentially invisible, except for the noise produced by their servos.”
Overhead, more aliens appeared, but these ones didn’t leap down. Instead, they began to climb, so that Rade and his companions now had creatures approaching from both directions.
“Valjean, if we place standard demolition charges on the exterior of this building, could we collapse it?” Rade asked.
“In theory, yes,” Valjean said. “Though you’d have to place them at the four corners of the building. In at least one of the following prescribed patterns.”
A three-dimensional representation of the building appeared before him. Different patterns began to appear, marking off the optimal charge placements, based on the team’s current height.
Rade selected one that seemed to have the charges placed the closest together. Then he assigned different quadrants to the four members of his team.
“All right men,” Rade said. “Dismount from your mechs, and retrieve the demolition blocks from your storage compartments. Then return to your passenger seats and let your mechs bring you to your designated quadrant, so you can place the charges. We’re going to collapse this sucker.”
“What if there are civilians in this building?” Pyro said.
“If there are, they’re dead already,” Rade told him. “They would’ve never survived exposure to the atmosphere without a blast shield.”
Rade had designated the current quadrant as belonging to Tahoe, so he waited for his friend to climb down to the storage compartment of his mech. Tahoe retrieved several demolition blocks, sliding them into the loops in his jumpsuit harness.
“You’re not afraid of heights, right?” Rade said in jest.
“I jump out of starships for a living.” Tahoe activated his jetpack to land on a window ledge nearby.
“Good luck,” Rade said. “I’ll be back for you shortly.”
“My people have a saying,” Tahoe told him. “Luck is for the rabbits.”
“Well that’s something I can agree with.” Rade swung himself around the corner, and fired both lateral and vertical jumpjets, sending himself toward the far corner of the building. On his overhead map, he saw Pyro and Bender similarly jetting into position on the remaining corners of the skyscraper.
Overhead, some of the aliens began climbing down toward his new position. They still had quite a ways to go, whereas above Tahoe, they were maybe thirty seconds away. He’d certainly have some jetting about to do.
Ever aware of the encroaching aliens, Rade cracked open his cockpit hatch, and swung down onto the leg of his mech. He opened the storage compartment and stuffed six demolition charges into his harness. He shut the compartment and hung onto the seventh charge: he had placed Valjean precisely where he needed to affix one of them.
He looped an elbow through the closest rung in Valjean’s leg, freeing both hands to peel away the backing of the charge; he slammed it into the surface, armed it, then began clambering toward the Falcon’s passenger seat.
“Take us to the next site!” Rade said, deciding that he didn’t need to reach the passenger seat—he intended to hang onto the rungs in the side
of the mech.
“Are you certain you are safe while—” Valjean began.
“Do it!” Rade ordered.
The Falcon mech leaped toward the next site and fired its jumpjets.
Rade kept an eye on the aliens overhead, in case some of them decided to start dropping down and using their bodies as weapons again, but they seemed content to simply climb.
Valjean landed, and Rade once more looped an arm through the rung beside him, removed the backing of one of the demolition blocks, and affixed it to the building exterior.
In that manner the Falcon quickly leaped among the remaining five sites, and Rade placed the rest of his demolition charges. Then he returned to the cockpit of his mech and took control. The aliens just above him were about fifteen seconds way.
He headed directly for Tahoe.
“Sit-rep!” Rade sent.
“Blocks all placed!” Pyro replied.
“Same here,” Bender said.
“I’m done, too,” Tahoe transmitted.
Tahoe seemed to have finished placing the blocks early, because he was busy distracting his portion of the aliens, which had already arrived at his position. Tahoe kept letting them get close to him, making them think they had a chance to catch him, before jetting away at the last moment. It certainly worked to keep the Slicers occupied, and had allowed Rade and the others to finish their tasks without any of the closer aliens bothering them.
“Cyclone, get aboard!” Rade sent.
Tahoe jetted toward Valjean, and Rade spun his back toward him so that the Navajo could load into the passenger seat. He heard the clanging above his cockpit as Tahoe secured himself.
“Everyone else, gather on the south side! Here!” Rade marked the location, and jetted downward across the surface of the building. He reached a ledge and leaped off, swung past the corner, and continued toward the target area he had designated. He reached it momentarily, at almost the same time as Pyro and Bender.
“This way!” Rade shoved off, heading for the rooftop of a smaller adjacent building.
He confirmed that Pyro and Bender were with him with a quick glanced to the left and right, and then detonated the charges.
