by M. D. Cooper
Silva replied.
Silva looked up at the other two members of Hammerfall.
Silva nodded and kicked the comm unit, smashing the computer inside.
EVAC
STELLAR DATE: 12.02.8941 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City of Denmar, Naera
REGION: Parson System, Genevian Federation
The three women crouched behind the ruins of a factory on the edges of the city of Denmar. Parson’s light was just beginning to fill the eastern sky as they checked their weapons and loadouts for the final push.
They had already fought their way through several platoons of Nietzschean soldiers in their mad dash to reach Denmar on time. However, an entire army of the enemy now lay between them and the evac point.
Rika peered around the edge of the building at the maelstrom of weapons fire that arched between the advancing Nietzscheans and the retreating Genevians.
As she finished speaking, a blinding flash of light lit up the buildings around them, far brighter than Parson’s orb shone at high noon, before disappearing and leaving everything looking darker than it had a minute before.
Rika checked her rad-counter. It hadn’t spiked, so the blast hadn’t been an electron or proton beam. An orbital plasma shot was the most likely answer. She peered around the corner again and saw a stretch of molten ground, three hundred yards away.
The three women left the building’s cover and dashed across an open stretch of asphalt before ducking behind a row of ground haulers. They kept moving past several more buildings, and then skirted the edge of the area where the ground still glowed from the starfire burst.
Rika wished they still had drones, but their eyes in the sky had been lost when they first engaged the Niets at the edge of Denmar an hour ago. Now they had nothing but their vision to rely on—though with IR and UV overlays, it was still better than what any stock human came equipped with.
Rika spotted the enemy: a solitary Nietzschean in medium combat armor. The rounds from Kelly’s GNR slammed his chest plate, the first two ricocheting off before the third finally cracked the armor and turned his insides to mush.
Lucky for the three women, the enemy was moving in the opposite direction, assuming that nothing had survived the starfire to their rear.
Kelly groused.
When they finally reached it, Rika was amazed at how large the river had grown. It was the same water they had slipped into back in the hill country, but now it stretched over a kilometer across. Her HUD gave her spectral analysis, and she saw that the water was much more saline than when they had languidly floated in its currents.
Kelly shook her head.
From what they could tell, the far side of the river was still held by Genevians…at least, the amount of weapons fire arching over the water suggested it was. The trio was so close to safety, yet even on their best day—a day when they weren’t exhausted and running low on ammunition—they couldn’t best a thousand Niets.
Kelly twisted a party grenade apart and spilled the thermite packets onto the ground. Then she spread them out across the area she wanted to melt. Once they were arranged to her satisfaction, she manually activated the trigger inside the grenade’s shell and the thermite packets flared to life.
“Hey!” a voice called out from down the street. “What are you doing there?”
Neither the car nor the building offered much cover, but they couldn’t go far from the hole they were making if they wanted to get down it before the enemy was on them.
Rika slid her GNR under the car, using its sights to see who had called out. What she spotted was a half-platoon of Niets, all in heavy armor, advancing down the middle of the street.
She relayed the finding to her team, and then prepared to fire. Her nerves were shot—too much adrenaline and too many bio-stims from her augmentations. She took a deep breath, lined up her weapon, and fired seven bursts in rapid succession.
Four hit, and three tore the feet right off the enemy they struck. The enemy platoon scattered to the edges of the road. With any luck, their newfound caution would buy team Hammerfall enough time for the thermite to do its job.
The Niets returned fire, and their armor-piercing rounds tore through the car Rika was using for cover. She thanked the stars that penetrating the vehicle slowed the projectiles enough that they bounced off her armor, but at the rate the enemy was firing, there wouldn’t be enough of the car left to slow their shots down for long.
Kelly burst from behind the building, leapt into the air, and brought all two-hundred-plus kilograms of her body down onto the pavement the thermite was chewing through. With a deafening SNAP, she disappeared in a massive shower of sparks and fire.
Rika felt guilt stab at her. Did Kelly just kill herself to save us?
Rika tried not to smile at the hilarity of their situation as she fired at the vague figures of the Niets where they advanced along the edges of the street. She heard a scream, and then another as her shots
found their marks.
Kelly called up again.
Another round tore through the rapidly disintegrating car and pinged off Rika’s armor.
She didn’t have to be told twice.
She scampered across the pavement, diving headfirst into the hole Kelly had made. She splashed out of the way a second before Silva came down after her.
They’d only made it forty meters when a splash sounded behind them.
Then a concussive shock slammed into their bodies, and a wave of water pushed them forward.
Rika surfaced and looked behind to see that the tunnel had collapsed. She was about to congratulate her teammates when a split formed in the tunnel’s ceiling above them.
They pushed up over ten kilometers per hour in the tight confines, barely keeping ahead of the collapsing tunnel. Rika was beginning to wonder if the drain dumped right into the river or if it went to a treatment plant, when she slammed into a metal grate.
Kelly and Silva were there a second later, and the three women pulled at the bars, wrenching them open and escaping just as the tunnel collapsed behind them.
Rika’s chest was heaving, desperate to oxygenate her muscles and working her CO2 scrubbers overtime. She sank to the bottom of the river, fighting a wave of claustrophobia, her mind trying to remind her body that her armor’s systems could keep her going underwater for an hour if needs be.
Her feet finally hit the riverbed, and her sonar picked up Kelly and Silva hitting the muddy bottom a few meters on either side of her.
It took the three women nearly ten minutes to pull their way through the sucking mud at the bottom of the river, and when they finally heaved themselves onto the shore, they felt like they’d run for a day.
“Don’t move!” a man’s angry voice called out. “Identify yourselves!”
“Corporal Silva, Alpha Company, 89th battalion, Division 253,” Silva said through her armor’s speakers. “Any chance we can hitch a ride with you guys?”
“Mechs?” the man—a corporal as well, by his insignia—asked as he rose from cover and peered down at them. “You’re pretty small for mechs.”
“SMI-2s, scout models,” Silva replied.
“Better come with me,” the man grunted. “Major’ll want to know that we have you with us.”
The trio of women followed the soldier—a man of medium build in light armor, mismatched at that—through the streets of Denmar, to a squat building sporting a sign which proudly declared, ‘Denmar Metropolitan Police – Precinct 49’.
They walked past a pair of guards in heavy armor, who looked them up and down but didn’t speak. Inside, several officers stood around a portable holoprojector showing the layout of the city. Rika could see areas highlighted in blue and red. The river divided the two colors, but there were a few places where the red had crossed over to the blue side.
Rika recognized a major, a captain, and two lieutenants.
“What the hell are you?” the major asked as he turned his steely eyes toward them.
“They’re the new SMI-2 mechs, sir,” the lieutenant to his right offered. “Scout models.”
“Scout mechs? I remember hearing something about that. Woulda preferred some K1Rs, but I suppose you three will do. You make it through those Niets on the far side of the river?” the major asked.
“Yes, sir,” Silva replied. “Took more than a few of them to their graves while we were at it.”
The major looked them over once more, shaking his head at their mud-coated armor and raising an eyebrow at the thermite burns covering Kelly. “I’m sure you did. Looks like you’ve been through hell. What happened out there, anyway? Yesterday we owned this world, now we’re buggering off.”
“I don’t know, sir,” Silva replied. “We got hit hard. A lot of nukes and captured K1Rs took out our company, then our battalion.”
“And you survived?” the major asked, his brow arched.
“Sir, mechs don’t die, sir!” Silva gave the standard response the mechs had learned to offer when their superior tactics and survivability made them the last ones standing.
“Let’s hope that holds true,” the major replied with a shake of his head. “As you can guess, we’re not long for this bit of ground. Last birds are ready to take off, and we’re pulling out. You three meats have the luck of the draw—you’re on rearguard.”
Kelly clasped Rika’s shoulder with her robotic hand.
Rika and Kelly complied, and a minute later there was nothing but a few empty streets between them and the oncoming Nietzschean army.
Rika began to worry. They had been through so much, fought so hard, but here they were, staring down the enemy once more.
You’re not going to make it off this rock, a voice said in her head.
She forced it away, thankful when Silva gave the order to move.
The three women fell back block by block, covering one another and taking shots at any Niets they spotted. The going was slow, and they got caught in one brief skirmish, then another. Five minutes later, they were on their own, moving toward the evac point, praying the squishies wouldn’t leave without them.
Kelly pleaded.
Rika’s heart went out to her. Rika didn’t have anyone, anything at all waiting for her back in the world, other than a good long binge-drinking spree. Ke
lly had kids, two girls who were growing up while their mother slogged through the ashes of a dozen ruined worlds.
She was on the east side of the road, farthest from the enemy they could see furtively working their way up the boulevard a half kilometer distant. She took aim and fired a uranium rod from her GNR, blowing the head clear off a Niet who took too long to get behind cover.
As she spoke, a Niet came around a corner only twenty meters from her. Rika could have sworn the side street had been clear, but the enemy must have been well concealed. He was in heavy armor, stood almost as tall as the SMI-2s, and the weapon he held unleashed a barrage of high-explosive rounds at Silva.
Rika raised her weapon to fire on him, but caught sight of another Niet on her side of the road as he threw a grenade at her. She dove out of the way and scampered behind a car for cover.
The grenade rolled under the vehicle, and Rika’s breath caught as the explosion lifted it into the air and flung it over her head.
She fought through the shock and rushed her attacker, swinging a fist at his neck, feeling his armor dent. He fell back, trying to bring his weapon to bear, but she swung one of her clawed feet up and snatched the weapon from his hand before planting the other foot on his chest and wrapping it around his torso while grasping the underside of his helmet with her left hand.
Rika heaved up with all her strength, trying to pull the helmet off so she could put one between her attacker’s eyes. The man—she thought it was a man, from the build—let loose a terrifyingly unnatural scream as she wrenched the helmet free.
She flung it aside and stepped back, aiming her GNR-41B at his head, ready to pull the trigger, when she realized he was already dead. In her rage, she had pulled his helmet off from the front, tearing his jaw and much of his face off in the process.
