Mecha

by J. F. Holmes

  “That girl’s going to get a bullet to the back of her brain one day,” Miggy stated with a matter-of-fact tone. Uriah sighed again.

  “I hope not,” he said. “You know what sort of paperwork I’d have to do?”

  “None?”

  “Please quit tempting me. I don’t want to be reminded how easy it would be,” Uriah suggested in a cold voice, and the duo turned to the south.

  They walked for a time in silence, the long legs of their suits allowing for rapid transit. Due to the two suits’ weight and height, and the noise they’d make while moving at higher speeds, Uriah decided not to run, since the possibility of discovery remained high. Even still, they made excellent time and avoided the aerial patrols that had been out looking for them by staying under the cover of the thick tree branches. The overhead drones didn’t give up, but more than once Uriah found himself wishing they would. It would make the next part of the mission easier.

  The four bases had been labeled Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta by the mission planners onboard the DV Ebenezer. It was the first time a Watcher ship had actually deployed Wraiths on a planet, and given that the cramped space in the ship’s hold had barely been able to hold them, it would probably be the last, until the next generation of combat suits came out. Hell, even Uriah, who enjoyed small, tight spaces, had been miserable for the two-week journey to the rebellious planet.

  “Uriah?” Miggy interrupted his silent musings. Uriah’s head swiveled around, alarmed. They’d arrived at Target Delta, and the newly-minted squad leader hadn’t even been paying attention.

  “Fuck,” Uriah swore and began to inspect the open field. Unlike the previous base they’d scouted, Delta seemed to be some sort of armor field, complete with some of the weirdest looking tanks he’d ever seen. His cortex, which stored all the information he could ever need within the added memory banks in his implant nodule, had nothing on the oddly-designed vehicles. He glanced over at Miggy. “Seen anything like that before?”

  “Nope,” Miggy answered after a moment of silent contemplation. The big man shifted. “Those look like 105-millimeter cannons on that tank over there. I’ll mark it for you. What the hell?”

  “Mobile artillery?” Uriah suggested as he stared at the marker the heavy-weapons gunner sent to his HUD. Miggy shook his head.

  “There’s no way those cannons can angle up to even a 45-degree angle,” Miggy pointed out, “unless the vehicle has hydraulics underneath that can do it, but that would be the dumbest design ever.”

  “Shit, I know what it is,” Uriah said as he thought about it some more. “That’s a fucking tank destroyer.”

  “With ten 105 tubes?” Miggy asked, unconvinced.

  “Hell yeah.” Uriah nodded. “I bet those are recoilless rifles.”

  “With ten 105 tubes?” Miggy repeated his question. Uriah chuckled.

  “Oh, yeah. Overkill. I bet those things would be hell on a Wraith suit. Fuck, think of what that could do against a regiment of Wraiths.”

  “Forget the Wraith suit,” Miggy muttered. “Think of what that thing would do to the new Goliath tanks.”

  That was something Uriah hadn’t even considered. The new tank, designed as the mother of all tanks in technology and armament, was supposed to replace all other tanks in the Dominion’s marine contingent over the next ten years. They were tough, had an honest-to-God railgun as the main gun, and were technologically further along than any other piece of non-Navy military hardware out there.

  “I’m gonna call that thing the Ostos,” Miggy proclaimed.

  “What the hell does that even mean?” Uriah asked. Miggy shrugged his large shoulders.

  “I think it means ‘Angry Hornet’ on my home world,” he replied. “At least, I think it does. I forget.” Uriah laughed.

  “Pretty sure it doesn’t mean that, but you know what? Fuck it. Works for me,”

  “Uriah, it’s Cori, come in, over,” a voice interrupted over the comms. Uriah’s humor quickly evaporated. The pre-mission briefing had specifically stated they were to use line-of-sight communications, and that from a close distance. The rebels’ technology was surprisingly good at finding comms signals, it had been reported. Uriah hadn’t been eager to test this theory, and Joba had agreed. The now-dead squad leader had instituted the strict comms rules for the op, and Cori, the newest member of the squad, had just broken them.

  “Line of sight only,” Uriah growled over the comms, cutting short any niceties in case someone was listening in.

  “You idiot, I can see you,” Cori snapped back angrily. Uriah snapped up in surprise and looked around. His suit scanned for him, and in a minute he spotted her, walking out in the middle of the road. Exposed and in the open, which made Uriah want to scream internally. She continued, “Kleve walked into some sort of mud pit and got sucked in. I tried to get her out, but there’s no way to lift the suit, since the ground around it is too soft. She’s going to trigger the self-destruct in her implant node so they can’t take her alive. She said they’ll never find her body because the suit says she’s at least fifteen feet away from the surface.”

  “Shit,” Uriah cursed. He would much rather lose Cori than Kleve. The diminutive woman from Avalon was tough and reliable, the opposite of their newest squad member. “Get out of the road, Cori. There are drones up there.”

  “I’m not picking any up right now,” the newest Wraith argued. Uriah rolled his eyes.

  “Just because you aren’t picking them up doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” Uriah reminded her. “Christ, woman, they covered this at MITC!”

  As if to drive Uriah’s point home, a missile suddenly streaked down from the sky and struck the approaching Wraith suit squarely in the chest. His suit helpfully identified the missile as one of Dominion make and design, complete with penetrating warhead to ensure an instant kill upon detonation. The Hetairoi was a brutally efficient missile, designed to take on anything that didn’t feature thick armor like a tank. Light attack vehicles were what they’d been designed to take out, and it was a happy coincidence for the rebels that they also worked well on Wraith armor.

  Cori dropped to one knee, and for a moment Uriah thought the woman would survive the attack. The armor on the chest of a Wraith suit was immeasurably tough, all things considered, and could typically take a pounding. He allowed his hopes to grow for a brief instant. Cori struggled to rise to a standing position while parts of her suit burned. Much of the front was blackened from the flames, the opposite of the dull gray it had been mere moments before.

  Two more Hetairoi missiles streaked down from above and impacted on Cori’s armor. Uriah’s hopes were quickly dashed as the Wraith suit dropped back down to the ground. He didn’t need a special scanner to tell him the extent of the damage to the suit. Cori’s entire upper half was missing, blown apart into the dozens of little pieces covering the road, and the lower half was on fire. He idly wondered what was fueling the fire until he recalled that human flesh burned well with enough heat.

  Swallowing the bile that threatened to rise up into his throat, he turned and looked at Miggy. The big man had turned his suit and was looking back toward the Ostos. The large vehicle’s engine was running, which caused Uriah to wonder if it had been doing so a few minutes before. He wasn’t sure, and the suit couldn’t inform him either way. The sick feeling returned.

  “This is going to end badly,” Miggy promised just as the turret of the Ostos rotated. Suddenly Uriah and Miggy found themselves staring into the face of death. It was not a pleasant feeling.

  “Damn it!” Uriah said as he brought his rifle up. He began to shoot at the Ostos rapidly, his gun spitting out fire as fast as he could think. Bullets ricocheted off the armored hull, which only pissed him off. “Miggy! Paint that fucker black!”

  Miggy began firing, hitting the Ostos with a consistent stream of HEAVY rounds. The miniature exploding shells knocked the Ostos out of the fight before it began. The crew bailed out as the vehicle caught fire. Beyond the burning
tank destroyer, infantry could be seen in the distance. They were approaching quickly, and there were two more Ostos tank destroyers with them.

  “Oh, come on!” Uriah complained loudly as he snapped his rifle up and began to pick off the approaching infantry with a succession of rapid bursts.

  Over the sounds of gunfire, Uriah could hear the base’s alert system howling in the distance. Further off, the roar of engines echoed across the sky as planet-based fighter-interceptors screamed down runways for takeoff. It was as though they’d kicked over a hornet’s nest, then, to add insult to injury, dumped a bunch of water on top of it. Everything within 35 kilometers and militarily related was coming to try to kill them both.

  Until they died, however, Uriah was bound and determined to make them earn every drop of blood shed.

  “Miggy, let’s go on the offensive,” Uriah suggested and slowly walked his massive Wraith suit forward. The Mark V responded easily, but as tall as it was, it drew quite a bit of fire from the approaching infantry. Rounds bounced off the armor, which made him chuckle. Unless they hit him with the same missile that had taken Cori out, it would take something like an Ostos or bigger to stop him.

  The trees around him were suddenly chewed apart by an unseen force. Mere seconds later he heard the roar of a 30-millimeter rotary cannon from a planet-based fighter-interceptor. He’d known the rebels had them, though there hadn’t been much information about their armaments. Judging from the carnage of the weapon firing and the scans his suit made of the aircraft as it screamed overhead, this was a ground support very similarly designed to the ancient A-10 Warthog he’d heard of while talking about the best anti-tank aircraft in history.

  Uriah fired off a few ineffectual shots at the retreating aircraft, not because he knew he could shoot it down, but because it had pissed him off. Miggy, however, tracked the craft with his gun and started firing as soon as Uriah stopped. The HEAVY rounds mostly missed, though two punched through the stabilizer wing on the right side of the aircraft. It didn’t seem to affect it, Uriah noticed, as it swung back around for a second strafing run. The thing was tough.

  “Miggy, close on the infantry!” Uriah cried out and began to run forward. Miggy understood exactly what Uriah meant and charged, shifting his aim from the aircraft to the infantry hiding behind the burning wreck of the Ostos. Wraith training on the planet of Corus always suggested that if the enemy had aerial support, remove it from the equation, or, if that wasn’t possible, close on the enemy troops to give them nothing to shoot at.

  Granted, if the situation had been reversed, Uriah knew without a shred of doubt that both the marines and the Navy would have no problem firing down into the midst of Wraiths and other Imperfects to kill the enemy. He didn’t see anything wrong with it, either. It was just another fact of life. An Imperfect was worth far less than a Perfect citizen of the Dominion. His death would mean a lot more to the Dominion than his life would if he took rebels and traitors with him.

  Miggy suddenly stumbled just before he broke through the last bit of jungle and got stuck in something, his suit leaning sharply to the right. Uriah fired off a few warning shots at the infantry to keep them at bay while he turned to help the other Wraith out. Upon investigating, Uriah realized his brother-in-arms wasn’t going anywhere soon. The massive man had partially fallen into a punji pit.

  In ancient times, punji pits were simply holes dug deep into the ground on Earth and filled with sharpened spears. The holes were then covered with leaves to disguise them. They were nasty traps, initially used to hunt game, but later, men. Even as late as the Ghazi al-Jizr War on Earth, the punji pits had been popular as a defensive tactic in jungle warfare, and were seen regularly. Apparently the rebels thought along the same lines and had used the same idea, only the spikes in the pit were junonium-tipped steel rods, which had punctured Miggy’s leg in six places. They were also attached to the bottom of the pit, which made escape for the big man almost impossible. He was an exposed target now, and eventually he’d be brought down by the rebels.

  “Keep firing!” Uriah ordered as he picked off rebel infantry one by one. Their burning cover was no longer protecting them as well as it had been, which gave Uriah the perfect opportunity to punish them for their stupidity.

  Miggy suddenly yelled in pain, and more rounds from the aircraft slammed into the ground around them. The big man fell forward slightly and stopped firing. Uriah looked over and saw, to his horror, that the containment case for the power source of Miggy’s suit had been breached. Blood began to flow freely from a similarly-sized hole in his back, as well. Miggy was hurt, and bad. There was little Uriah could do for him, though. He was too busy trying to keep the rebel infantry at bay.

  The fighter-interceptor buzzed low overhead a second time, the roar of the engines felt even through the armor. Shaking from the closeness of the aircraft, Uriah ignored it as best he could. He continued to plug the random rebel with a shot to the head whenever one of them decided to pop out to see where he was.

  “Breach imminent,” appeared on his screen. He thought it was his suit, until he realized Miggy had passed the message along via the HUD.

  “Miggy, get out of there!”

  “Can’t,” the other man replied. “Stuck. Hurts. I got shot.”

  “Move, you stubborn sack of shit, or I’ll kick your ass!” Uriah screamed at his friend, but Miggy remained where he was. The big man’s suit turned toward him. The mask of the armor was unreadable, but Uriah could almost feel the panic growing within Miggy’s large suit as the containment unit began to fail.

  Uriah slogged over to the giant and shoved his suit, hard. Miggy almost fell, but righted himself just in time. This allowed him to extract his leg from the punji pit. Blood was flowing freely through the punctured holes of the suit’s leg, and Miggy’s suit was reading critical according to Uriah’s suit sensors, but the big man hadn’t given up yet. He began to lumber toward the arriving Ostos assault vehicle, hammering the mobile recoilless artillery tank with every HEAVY round he had left. Every step seemed agonizingly slow and painful, but the big man limped on.

  “Get clear!” Miggy shouted at Uriah over the comms. The small of Miggy’s back began to glow white-hot. The containment unit failed at long last, and Uriah, not knowing what else to do for his friend, dove for cover.

  A sustained fusion reaction was extremely dangerous, and even the smallest amounts could create a crater the size of a house if it breached containment. This was part of the reason the containment units inside the power cells of the average Wraith suit were thick and lined with multiple fail-safes, to prevent a breach during combat. The amount of fusion material a Mark V Wraith suit carried wasn’t enough to destroy a city, but it was more than enough to wreak havoc upon a wide variety of lightly-armored attack vehicles, like the Ostos and the exposed infantry supporting the recon vehicles.

  The blazing hot fire washed over the back of Uriah’s suit, peeling off the last bit of grey that had been applied weeks before. Fire erupted everywhere behind the wall of flames, even though the ground had already been scorched bare. The raging inferno devoured almost everything in its path, be it vegetation or human. Only the Wraith suit protected him from certain death.

  It kept him alive, but it also failed, as the metal bearings controlling the leg functions melted into the suit itself, trapping him there on the ground. Struggling to get up, he found that his legs were no longer functional. His arms still worked, but the heat had actually melted the trigger of his gun clean off. Outside of a few grenades, he was unarmed.

  Uriah was still lying on the ground, pissed off and immobile, when the remaining rebels found him an hour later.

  Two weeks later Uriah was in a cell, sans his Wraith suit. Unable to move and not quite ready to die, he had willingly relinquished the suit instead of using the self-destruct mechanism built into the implant nodule at the base of his skull. It wasn’t that he feared death; he’d simply stopped caring for some reason.

  For so long, his
only drive had been to be the greatest weapon for the emperor. During the battle against the Ostos, when he’d been flattened by the rapid fire of the recoilless anti-tank vehicle and his suit was initially damaged, he’d truly questioned his existence for the first time. This bothered him. Why now? After being a Wraith for six years, why was he suddenly questioning everything that made him who he was? These were questions with no answers, for now.

  Something had changed within him. Without the constant background noise of his suit, and cut off from the rest of the Dominion, Uriah was lost. Not since his earliest days at the Holding Home had he felt this way. Without purpose, without meaning, Uriah simply refused to take an interest in whether he lived or died. It made life hell for his captors, who were trying to wheedle information from him. They had as much success as squeezing water from a stone.

  For months he remained there, silent. He answered their questions, but refused to engage them. Someone as worthless as a Wraith carried no classified secrets, so he freely told them what they wanted to know. With such limited information, the rebels eventually quit asking him even the most basic of questions. Uncertain what to do next, they simply talked.

  Talking wasn’t something that Uriah liked to do. Since his time at the Holding Homes, he’d always been a bit of a loner, preferring the company of his own thoughts to the opinions of others. He’d later be called a narcissist by one of the sisters in charge, but since he didn’t know the word, it meant little to him. Only later, when he had access to a cortex and was able to scan the ‘net with his brain, did he discover just what the word meant.

  The rebels initially wanted to execute him. Uriah would have welcomed it. Death was an escape from the life of an Imperfect, knowing that as a human being he was nothing but a burden on society, worth less than someone who wasn’t genetically flawed. Ease from this mortal coil would have pleased him greatly. He’d done his job, though they’d only killed a few dozen of the rebels on Maelstrom.