Horseplay

by Cam Daly

  “You thought that this would throw me off?”

  It was weird to hear Mezerello’s voice come from the thing, gesturing around with its left hand to take in the blast site and construction vehicles. She sounded almost amused. Or perhaps insulted.

  Another step. Each time the right foot crunched down, the thing in its right hand pushed into the ground as well, like a crutch or cane.

  “That’s far enough.” Kery brought her left forearm up in guard position, covering half of her face. She targeted the figure’s neck with the right Gunsleeve. It was designed for accuracy and armor penetration.

  She held her fire, waiting for more information. “Shadow, that’s definitely not a Fleet body. But it could be her head. I think I can sever it in one shot. Then I fall back and Striker 4 can pick it up.”

  “Hold off - let’s not just do this the ‘Keryapt Zess way’ and shoot everything. If it's Mez and somehow she has been hiding or trapped here, and you hit her face, that will kill her. The right arm cannon is too powerful and the suppression weapon isn’t accurate enough.” With the mysterious figure advancing at normal human speed, the two had a few moments to decide on a course of action before it could get appreciably closer. “I would like nothing more than to discover that she’s alive, but that’s effectively impossible. You should fall back. We’ll get performance data if she chases you. Then we can plan-“

  “No.” There was a sudden ferocity in the Active’s voice. “This mission started as a puzzle to solve, but now it’s a rescue mission. You have no idea what it’s like to be truly alone, and you never will as long as you’re safe back there. But I’m not leaving here without her.”

  Shadow didn’t respond for a few subjective seconds, and when she did her voice was flat. “Acknowledged.”

  Kery immediately regretted her outburst, and respected Shadow for not escalating the issue during the standoff. She was about to say something to that effect when events interceded.

  “Camera 17 just heard a near miss, from the west. Projectile weapon, not directed energy. I’ve got it mapped.”

  Keryapt appeared on the Planning Stage, momentarily distracted by the new threat. “Does it match the Knight sniper weapon?” The shot originated from near the elevated highway to her west, perhaps under it.

  “Possibly, if we account for noise suppression. Let me check…”

  Keryapt turned her head in the virtual space to check on her own forward view. The combat timeline showed that “Mezerello” had been moving for five seconds total. The threat status for her was still yellow - armed unknown. Recognition systems still couldn’t figure out what she was carrying but if it was a weapon it was not pointed in a threatening direction. She had taken eight or ten noisy steps forward and was just finishing another. Keryapt zoomed in on the presumed weapon as its barrel or base touched the ground at the same time as her right foot.

  Shadow started to say something but the Active had disappeared from the Planning Stage. The view from Kery’s Interloper suddenly changed.

  #

  Keryapt whirled around and leapt away from the Mezerello-thing at full speed. The ground where she had just been standing erupted in a fireball which blew the tracks off the bulldozer. A few chunks of flying debris tore holes in her grey shapecloth suit but did no real damage to the combat suit underneath.

  She caught the rear edge of the bulldozer’s cab with her magnetic grip and used her inertia to swing around and land behind it. “Mole grenades!” She was sure the enemy didn’t use the same name as Fleet for the weapon but Shadow would understand. With each step, the enemy had discharged a guided, tunneling bomb towards the Active. The battle had started before either Fleet woman realized it.

  Standing still with more Moles in the ground was not an option. There was a dump truck halfway between Keryapt and the gates out of the construction site. She scrabbled for it, keeping the wrecked bulldozer between her and her opponent for visual and physical cover. The broken surface provided poor traction and she felt herself kicking clouds of gravel backwards with each step. Luckily it would be obscured by all the other material blasted free by the Mole.

  It only took Shadow a moment to understand Keryapt’s words and focus on her role. “Striker is five seconds out. Wasps waiting on your command.”

  Kery hid behind the dump truck. The next piece of cover was a security trailer near the gates to the site. Another explosion behind her - a Mole at the back of the bulldozer where she had just been. The opponent didn’t realize her speed and didn’t have a way to spot her indirectly.

  As she considered options and angles, an active radar and lidar source started up - the Mezerello thing was actively scanning for her at ground level.

  “Have Striker release from a hundred meters.”

  The falling autocannon would take a subjective eternity to reach her on the ground but perhaps it would be a distraction. She leapt directly to the trailer near the gates. The dump truck wobbled slightly as she pushed off and her passage left whirling eddies in the fog but it was better than the obvious showers of gravel.

  “Kery - suspicious activity north. It looks like a wheeled variant of the ESWAT insertion vehicle. You’re going to have enemy mechs on you in a few seconds. I'll try to Wasp it before it unloads.” Keryapt had left the Wasp missile array four kilometers to the south. The first wave of missiles popped up and hissed into the fog.

  The Mezerello thing jumped to the top of the wrecked bulldozer where the Dove remote could see it clearly. The thing’s grenade launcher was now at waist level in a two handed grip. A series of lines in Kery’s vision described a narrow and a wide conical shape extending off into the distance from it. They showed where it was currently aimed and how quickly her opponent could aim it elsewhere. The data was mostly estimations at this point but it was clearly pointed at the dump truck she had just been next to.

  Mezerello’s voice sounded again, but this time it was sped up to Active combat speed. “Just one opponent this time? I’m insulted.” She fired directly at the truck.

  Kery took advantage of the explosion of the grenade to peek directly at her opponent. The heat and concussion from the grenades cleared the fog in a hundred meter radius, giving Keryapt her first clear view. From the neck up she could pass for human but her body was definitely not. Its core structure was a bipedal body, but one which had been reinforced by smooth metallic tubing running through and along each limb. Keryapt ducked back down then raised her left arm and aimed at the lower torso of the thing.

  She fired a burst of nine bullets in a tenth of a second. Each unguided round was smaller and lighter than the ones in her right sleeve, designed to damage unarmored opponents or force them to cover.

  Most of them seemed to find their target as the Mezerello-thing staggered backwards and fell from the bulldozer, out of direct sight again. The Dove remote revealed her sprawled backwards on the ground, aiming the grenade launcher frantically in different directions. She didn’t know where the attack had come from.

  Keryapt used the moment to sprint back to the burning dump truck, halving her distance from Mezerello. She got as close to the flames as she dared, trying to hide in an unexpected location but also aware of how much heat she was generating at her current speed.

  “Keryapt, the truck is firing towards you.”

  Keryapt turned her head north and saw her combat system add six new shapes arcing her way from outside the fenced-in area. Knights, in some sort of delivery configuration. Their projected paths would have them land in two seconds slightly east of her, closer to the water. “Another six are loading into launchers on the truck. Wasps will beat them.” The Wasp missiles were still a few seconds away. Kery saw them as bright blue blips on the southern horizon. “Want some on the Knights?

  “No. I can handle them. Hit the snipers.” Keryapt realized that she believed her opponent was Mezerello, or something that at least thought it was. An autonomous remote wouldn’t have been talking during the ambush.

  “Talk
later. Your cranial temp is rising but you still have at least 20 seconds of full combat speed. Primary objective should be securing her cranial pod. The Observatory doesn’t spot any aircraft or fast fliers nearby except the ESWAT insertion vehicle. It’s airborne now but still a minute away. ”

  “Right. I almost forgot about the latecomer. Use Hawk.” The seagull-shaped remote was in position for just such an event. The miniature chemistry set in its belly had manufactured something more dangerous than the simulated seagull shit it used on the cameras at Alcatraz.

  Mezerello was up again and moving. Her body was clearly nowhere near as fast as the Interloper or even Intruder but it could take some punishment. She came running around the damaged bulldozer, launching grenades past Keryapt’s current position and towards the trailer that Keryapt had fired from. A second later the six Knight mechs arrived all around her.

  They came whistling through the tattered fog as roughly spherical shapes a meter across. A moment before impact, some sort of airbags deployed to cushion their landings. As they bounced and rolled across the rocky battlefield, Keryapt sprang into motion towards them.

  Her mind and body were in perfect synchronization. From her perspective, time seemed to pass normally while the enemy units moved like slowly animated statues. Her combat system mapped the potential firing vector of each one and displayed it in her vision as a ghostly red line. She had to lean forward and run with a slower gait than usual, stabbing each foot into the gravel to get enough traction, but as long as she didn’t cross any of the red lines of the increasingly complex obstacle course superimposed in her vision then none of the known enemies would be able to do her harm.

  She went around the burning bulldozer on the far side from Mezerello, using it as cover while she dealt with the ESWAT units.

  The closest airbag-encased mech was still rolling to a stop when Keryapt ran past it without slowing. She fired twice at point blank from her right arm cannon and left two holes clean through it. The next two were hidden from Mezerello’s view by the damaged equipment, one having had the misfortune of landing in a pool of burning gasoline. She shot that one with the suppression cannon to make sure it never got up then whirled to the third.

  It managed to detach its deflating airbag harness before she got to it, revealing the stubby automatic gun which had been nestled in the center of its ball shape. She closed the distance before it could bring the weapon up and punched its neck in half. “I’m leaving this one mostly intact.”

  The Striker 4 remote under Shadow’s control had dropped Keryapt’s autocannon three seconds earlier and raced away. As the Active had planned, the Mezerello thing’s own combat control system had detected the falling autocannon on radar and directed her attention to it. She pointed her grenade launcher straight up.

  At that moment, Wasp missiles hit their targets. The Knight-launching truck and the sniper mechs that Striker 4 had located just below the nearby highway were all obliterated in a shower of explosive shards. Now there were only three functional Knights left protecting Mezerello.

  Keryapt sprinted in a curving arc to the fourth Knight as it turned towards her. The red tracery of its line of fire angled towards her too slowly to catch her, and she ran into it at full speed with her hands outstretched. The force crushed its armored torso and sent it flying directly towards Mezerello.

  Her grenade launcher turned out to be more accurate than Keryapt had hoped, as the first round it disgorged flew in a perfectly vertical line and blew the Active’s autocannon to pieces. A split second later the flying Knight mech shattered against Mezerello and knocked her to the ground.

  The last two Knights were on their feet now and firing from 15 meters away but their weapons were too light and inaccurate to pose a serious threat to the Interloper. Kery had come to dead stop when she shoved the mech but now leapt back into motion. The two Knights fired at where she had been as she closed on the downed figure.

  Kery smiled as she closed on her target. She hadn’t been in a real fight for decades and it felt so good to be moving this fast again. She loved the Interloper body, and it thrilled her to see her opponents fall before her exactly as she planned.

  “Wait! There could be-”

  Kery didn’t heed Shadow’s warning. She was three meters from pulling off Mezerello’s head when one of the remaining Mole grenades went off at her feet.

  She was moving quickly enough that the blast erupted up and behind her rather than engulfing her completely, but it was still enough to blow her helplessly over her target and towards the burning wreckage of the bulldozer. She twisted in the air, getting a momentary view of her scorched legs and feet.

  Without any way to control her flight, she was an easy target for Mezerello or the remaining two Knights. She would be in the air for ten subjective seconds, which meant that-

  Her thermal limit alarm sounded.

  #

  “Kery!” Shadow’s control system had automatically brought up diagnostic displays to show what damage had been inflicted, but even before they resolved she knew that Keryapt’s brain had gone into thermal shut down.

  Shadow fired all the remaining Wasp missiles at her disposal and sent Striker 4 racing back. Then she activated the emergency override protocol that she had prepared a few seconds earlier. Her sensorium shifted, the Labworld Control center suddenly replaced by burning metal and roaring flames.

  A few meters away, Mezerello shoved the broken Knight mech aside and tried to get back to her feet. Her grenade launcher was bent and broken, as were parts of the tubing that ran along her limbs. The two remaining Knights were marching towards Kery’s - Shadow’s - position with guns out. They weren’t firing yet. They wanted her intact.

  Shadow tensed her muscles cautiously, noting the slight delay as the command passed from her brain through the entanglement relay chain and reached Kery’s body. The system allowed instant delivery of data across any distance, but there was still some processing at either end. Years ago the team had put together a simulation of human inebriation, and this felt just like that. Everything was muddled and delayed. She cautiously wiggled her toes to make sure she would be able to run.

  The two Knights were closing in. Time to move.

  One of the Interloper’s arms was partially wrapped in wires or bent steel and the fire and smoke made it impossible to see exactly how. Shadow pulled at full strength and almost punched herself in the face as it came free. Then the seismic alarm went off.

  The ground heaved, sending her rolling sideways out of the wreckage and to the ground. When she looked up, things had gotten much worse.

  Boiling out of some underground vault, Dragons emerged. Three. Four. Five. The two remaining Knights were running towards her with guns ready and Mezerello was regaining her feet just behind them.

  Shadow stared at a point just in front of the horde of six legged mechs. “Wasps.” The missiles she had launched a few seconds earlier fell like rain on her enemies. She staggered to her feet and ran away as fast as the Interloper could go, barely ahead of the torrent of enemy fire.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Yo, Connor. You awake?”

  He pulled the phone far enough away from his face to see the time. “Barely. What’s going on?”

  “You told me yesterday that if anything came up about Dogpatch, to let you know.”

  Connor climbed out of bed and pulled open the curtains. It looked like a beautiful winter day. “Yeah. Are they sending you over to do another sweep?”

  “Man, the place blew up again this morning. Half the force is already there with fire and rescue.”

  “Oh shit! For real?” Connor struggled to find the remote and get the news on. His apartment was a mess and he almost never watched live news.

  “Yeah, for real. I got a message to go document the scene once they clear it, but I could call in sick and let you cover it instead.”

  Cable news didn’t have any details, just pictures of smoke rising from the Dogpatch area. Thankfully not as much a
s before. “Definitely. Thanks. Tell them I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “You owe me.”

  Connor hung up. No one could blame him for being there to do his job. Maybe he might see the not-lawyer Kery Lee there. The thought made him smile.

  He loaded his gear in a cab and traveled across half the city before realizing that it was colder than it looked. He forgot all about his temperature concerns as the cab approached the Dogpatch area and had to fight the deja vu that threatened to drag him back to the traumatic night of the explosion there.

  The ring of tall construction fences around the damaged area now separated a phalanx of would-be first responders from the site of some new catastrophe. Fire trucks, ambulances and a variety of police vehicles were parked haphazardly at the entrance to the work site, somehow blocked from entering the area where trails of black smoke stretched up and across the bay to the east. It wasn’t clear why they were outside the fences, but he could see men and women preparing protective suits and equipment without a great sense of urgency. The fences themselves were intact for the most part, although in a few spots something had cut or burned small holes in the tough fabric wrapped through the chain links.

  Connor lugged his equipment case past the news vans which formed an outer ring around the rescue vehicles and descended into the confusion. It was immediately obvious that no one there knew what to expect inside the fence.

  Police struggled to keep news crews and curious spectators away from the scene, but let Connor through when they saw his ID. An EMT he recognized told him that there had been another explosion there just before dawn, but she didn’t know any more than that. He had orders to report to the Incident Commander so he aimed for the main gate and tried to avoid bumping into anyone as he trudged along.

  He realized there was a different kind of shouting going on at the gate. It was the sound of men arguing about jurisdiction. Just past the last few rescue vehicles, a cluster of senior police and firefighters stood toe to toe with a group of suited men backed up by what looked like private security guards. Connor was not entirely surprised to notice a particular bald head reaching a few inches above the suited men around him - DeVries was here.