Voidstalker

by John Graham

  The door light was green; it was open and didn’t need to be breached. Doran and Viker leaned against the door on either side whilst Cato, Bale, and Gabriel crouched down with weapons ready. Doran stretched out his free hand above the electronic lock, indicating a countdown with his fingers. Four…three…two…one.

  On zero, Doran tapped the green button and the doors slid open.

  With weapons raised, the squad emerged into the ‘live-testing hall’: a cavernous chamber with a domed roof illuminated by flood lighting high up on the ceiling. The walls were lined with supplies and mechanical gear, but the centre of the chamber had been cleared to create a big open area that looked like an arena. Exactly like an arena.

  In the centre of the chamber was a giant metal frame equipped with restraint clamps and a set of robotic arms. Housed in the frame was a mobility platform: a piloted mechanical walker twice the height of a Human, consisting of an armoured cockpit with mechanical legs and arms. Mobility platforms were typically used for heavy lifting.

  This one was equipped with military-grade weaponry.

  The squad froze. They kept their weapons trained on the threat, but it wasn’t clear they could win this fight; at least not without heavy weapons or explosives. They had been lured out into the open against a threat they weren’t equipped to fight, with limited cover and nowhere to which they could fall back.

  A klaxon sounded and yellow lights flashed around the mobility platform’s support frame as the restraint clamps were retracted. The walker took a slow, heavy step forward and stomped its foot down loud enough to echo throughout the chamber.

  “Cover, now!” Gabriel shouted.

  He took aim and fired.

  THE MOLE

  Eternity passed before the work day finally ended. Doing the same checks and diagnostics again and again while waiting for instructions from above was mind-numbingly tedious; and the cloud of scandal and uncertainty that hung over the place didn’t help either. The project was pretty much ready, but with the company’s future in doubt, there was no point in the board of directors authorising a final test.

  That was the least of Aster’s worries as she passed through the security checkpoint with everyone else. Except for a smartphone – which had to be checked in and out of storage – nothing electronic was allowed in or out of the building. Barring a power failure, smuggling the data chip out of the building would be next to impossible. Still, it was safely tucked away inside the activation key safe, so she could figure out what do with it later.

  Aster joined a group of other people in the elevator back up to the station. Awkwardly, Felix was part of that group, and she tried to stand as far away from him as possible. The two spent an incredibly uncomfortable minute trying not to exchange glances; Felix started typing out a message on his smartphone whilst Aster stared intently at the wall. The hypocrisy of doing exactly what she had refused to allow him to do was almost too much to bear.

  When the elevator doors finally opened, Aster all but fled the awkward space, racing to the platform and joining the tussle to get aboard the first mag-train that turned up. Only when the doors had closed and the mag-train had started moving did she start to breathe normally. After a ten minute ride to the medical centre, she could pick up the children, hail a sky-car, and they’d all be home before sundown.

  Aster looked out the carriage window and took in the breath-taking scene before her. The first time she had seen it was almost a decade ago, and the shimmering forest of skyscrapers still looked like a heavenly citadel to her; a far cry from the tiny mining colony where she had grown up. But as she looked out on the man-made vista below, Aster’s sense of awe was tinged by a familiar emotion, like a bad aftertaste: resentment.

  Like hundreds of other frontier colonies – not to mention the intermediate hub-worlds – her own home planet had supplied some of the ore and that went into building this city. The pay-per-tonne offered by the corporates for each ore haul was usually paltry, the better to sell it on at a profit to the manufacturers.

  The whole arrangement was a racket in which the frontier worlds were bled dry to sustain the core worlds. As a consequence, most of the frontier worlds were desperately poor. Few could afford to go it alone, and many survived on financing from the same corporate parasites who fleeced them. Parasites like Jezebel Thorn.

  Aster’s smartphone buzzed, informing her of a new message. She fished it out of her pocket; and her face darkened when she saw who it was from.

  ‘I’d need to speak with you, urgently.’ Said the message from Jezebel Thorn.

  As Aster glared at the screen, a follow-up message arrived.

  ‘Ignoring this message would be inadvisable.’

  Was that a warning or a threat? Knowing her, it was probably both.

  ‘I’m picking up my children from their check-up.’ Aster messaged back, then put her smartphone back in her pocket. It buzzed again almost immediately.

  ‘Already done. Come here first.’

  Aster’s heart leapt into her mouth. Had Jezebel picked up the children from the medical centre without her permission? That seemed to be what she was saying.

  ‘Where’ she messaged back bluntly, not even bothering to type a question mark.

  * * *

  “Cover, now!” Gabriel shouted.

  He took aim and fired, squeezing off a single, high-powered shot at the titanic mobility platform. A flash of blue energy covered its armoured skin as its shields activated. Unfazed by the shot, the mobility platform extended one of its arms and Gabriel dived into cover with the rest of the squad as it opened fire.

  Literally opened fire. From the mouth of the nozzle mounted on its right arm spewed a stream of bright orange flames at high speed. The squad barely made it to cover as the infernal jet doused the floor and wall, leaving black scorch patterns wherever it touched.

  But the flames didn’t persist, they dissipated almost as soon as the jet of flame had ceased, and the jet itself didn’t drop with gravity whilst travelling through the air. It must be a pressurised gas mixture, maybe even plasma based. If that was the case, then the fire would burn at a much higher temperature than a liquid fuel.

  The mobility platform stomped towards them like a heavyweight wrestler, bringing its railgun-equipped left arm to bear, and taking aim at the cargo crates. A single, supersonic round tore through the boxes, eviscerating their contents, and leaving Bale and Doran exposed. Bale managed to scramble to cover, but Doran was thrown to one side by the blast.

  The whole squad opened fire as the mobility platform advanced on Doran, who rolled onto his back and sprayed bullets on full auto at the advancing mechanical enemy. It didn’t do any good; the mobility platform’s shielding rippled and flashed with sapphire-coloured light as the hypersonic rounds were deflected to either side.

  Doran was a sitting duck as the mobility platform focussed on him exclusively. He tried too late to scramble to his feet, and the mechanical walker took a swing with one of its arms, knocking him back down to the ground. He was helpless as the mobility platform raised its mechanical foot and stomped down on him.

  “Doran!” one or more squad members screamed as their squad-mate bore the full weight of a multi-tonne metal foot crushing him.

  Doran’s life-signs turned red, and so did Gabriel’s vision.

  Violating every possible rule of combat training, Gabriel broke cover and ran straight towards the mobility platform. Taking a running jump, Gabriel removed an explosive from his belt and leapt into the air, the exoskeletal motors in his combat armour boosting him by several feet. He primed the explosive in mid-jump and landed on the mobility platform’s back, shoving the explosive into the mechanical enemy’s shoulder joint.

  A flurry of crackling energy erupted between himself and the mobility platform as their shielding interacted in a dramatic feedback loop. The resulting interaction produced mutual repulsion, sending Gabriel flying backwards in a spectacular storm of energy and light. As he hit the ground, he rolled back onto
his feet in one movement.

  The explosive Gabriel had used was a special anti-armour limpet mine equipped with a shield dampener. When it detonated, the shaped charge directed all of the explosive force down into the mechanical joint of the mobility platform’s right arm.

  The heat and power of the detonation ate straight through the arm joint like acid through plastic, and the mobility platform’s flamethrower-equipped arm was blown clean off. It clattered to the floor like a chunk of scrap metal, leaving only a glowing orange stump and damaged, spark-spitting circuitry.

  Both Gabriel’s and the mobility platform’s shields had been frazzled out by the feedback interaction and would need a minute to recover. But even though the mobility platform had lost its shields, its armour was still virtually impervious to small arms fire. Even having lost an arm, it was only marginally less dangerous.

  After regaining its balance and focus, the mobility platform’s torso swivelled all the way around on its waist to face Gabriel and walked backwards in his direction. Its targeting optics singled him out, painting him with an infrared targeting laser as it lined up a shot with its railgun. In the half second before the mobility platform opened fire, Gabriel noticed something about the glass canopy protecting the pilot: it was cracked.

  Gabriel dived to one side as the railgun fired, the shot just missing him as he vaulted over a set of storage crates and into cover. The railgun was a single-shot cannon with a slow rate of fire; a weapon that large could only carry a limited amount of ammunition. All Gabriel had to do was keep the mobility platform wasting its ammo until it ran out. But then the doors on the other side of the testing hall opened and a new group of enemies appeared.

  Four lithe figures dressed in beige-coloured flight suits entered, using special jump-packs to soar through the air towards the squad. Gabriel paused for a brief moment to wonder just where this bizarre cult had gotten their hands on so much military hardware before being plunged straight back into the fight.

  Two of the jumpers came sailing over Gabriel’s head, landing catlike on their feet and opening fire with sawn-off shotguns. The double spray of pellets battered his unshielded armour to no effect, and he quickly returned fire. To his surprise, all of his rounds hit their mark, punching straight through the faceplate and blowing apart the target’s skull. Dispensing with armour and shielding? In favour of what, being quick on their feet?

  As Gabriel dispatched one of the jumpers, the other dropped its weapon and activated a device on its wrist: a portable shield generator that projected a shimmering barrier of energy in an oval shape. Even at point-blank range, it was powerful enough to deflect Gabriel’s bullets, sending them swerving off to each side.

  With its personal barrier still raised, the jumper reached over its shoulder with its free hand and drew a sword from its back. A sword? An actual sword? Gabriel wanted to laugh. Instead, he charged at his skinny foe, clenching his fist to unleash his combat claws and finish off his attacker up close.

  The jumper bolted forwards at the same time to meet Gabriel head on; in the same motion it activated a switch on the handle of the sword and brought the blade swinging round in an arc to meet Gabriel’s combat claws. There was a high-pitched whining sound as they connected, and the sword’s blade kept on slicing through the air.

  Gabriel was stopped dead in his tracks. His combat claws were made of reinforced carbon nanotubing, the same material as his armour. But the sword had cut clean through them, leaving behind three polished stumps. What kind of weapon could do that?

  The jumper didn’t miss a beat, completing the motion by spinning on its heel and trying to follow through with a stab to Gabriel’s gut. Gabriel kept enough of his wits about him to dodge the thrust and grab his attacker by the wrist. In the same motion, he kicked the jumper’s legs out from under it and snapped its wrist, catching the sword as it fell from the jumper’s grasp and severing the its arm in one stroke.

  Another railgun shot narrowly missed Gabriel’s head and punched a scorching hole in the wall beside him. He rolled into cover, dropping the sword, and picking his gun up off the floor. Keeping low and rushing back around towards the main entrance, he pulled another explosive from his belt.

  Gabriel’s earlier shot must have gotten through before the mobility platform’s shielding had activated. Normally for a vehicle that size, the pilot could simply look out through the glass canopy to see, but the enormous spider web-like crack left by Gabriel’s lucky shot made that impossible, forcing the pilot to rely exclusively on the optical sensor suite.

  Priming the grenade, Gabriel tossed it at the mobility platform. The grenade’s arc took it straight over the target before detonating. The damage to the mobility platform’s armoured skin was minimal, but the explosive spray of shards hit the optical sensor suite, blinding the mobility platform's pilot. While the wounded mech was still reeling from the damage, Gabriel primed another high-powered shot, took aim, and fired.

  A high-powered shot was a single round, flash-forged in such a way as to pierce armour, and accelerated to near-escape velocity. The mobility platform’s shielding was too weakened to block or deflect the shot as it punched straight through the damaged glass canopy, shattering it into thousands of pieces.

  The mobility platform froze up completely, the death of its pilot causing it to shut down. As its systems died, the mobility platform’s mechanical legs locked their joints to prevent it from toppling over, freezing the fearsome mech into an awkward-looking pose like a half-finished sculpture missing an arm and a face.

  Keeping his weapon raised, Gabriel approached the mobility platform to make sure it really had been neutralised. Through the smoke, he could see the pilot, now a piece of mangled meat with an entry wound through the chest. The rest of his flesh, including his respirator-covered face, had been sliced up beyond recognition by the storm of glass fragments.

  But the evisceration of the pilot’s body was nothing compared to his state when he had been alive. Not only was the respirator mask surgically attached to his face, but his entire body was filled with wires and tubes connecting him directly to the systems he controlled. The connections were so extensive that he was literally a part of the machine he piloted.

  It was grotesque.

  “Colonel!” Bale’s voice came over the comm., “Doran’s alive! Barely.”

  Gabriel flinched. It hadn’t even occurred to him to check on his squad.

  “Ok, I’m coming over.” he replied.

  Gabriel rushed over to join the rest of his squad. He saw the other two jumpers lying dead on the floor. One had been shot through the guts with gunfire, the other had a cauterised neck stump instead of a head. Viker was standing over the headless jumper, replacing his combat knife in its sheath and confiscating the dead jumper’s wrist-mounted personal barrier, whilst Cato and Bale tended to Doran.

  Doran lay motionless on the floor where he had fallen as Cato ran his gauntlet over Doran’s body, the sensor suite in his palm interacting with Doran’s own armour to evaluate his condition. As he did, the results were uploaded to each squad member’s suit computers.

  The results looked dire.

  Doran’s armour had held against the multi-tonne weight and pressure of the giant mechanical foot, and his suit’s shielding had negated much of the crushing pressure applied. But the sheer amount of force brought to bear had still been enough to break his ribcage in numerous places. In spite of his suit’s pain suppressants, the agony of simply breathing would have caused him to pass out. Were it not for his shielding, armour, and physical enhancements, he would have been flattened like a pancake.

  “He’s out cold, and his suit’s systems have been badly damaged as well,” Cato explained gravely, “if we don’t get him to a proper medical facility quickly, we’ll lose him.”

  “The medical bay is on the other side of this chamber,” said Gabriel, “move!”

  No one needed to be ordered twice. Cato and Bale took Doran by the arms and legs and hoisted him carefully in
to the air while Gabriel and Viker provided cover.

  Gabriel spotted the surviving jumper take off and soar through the air towards the door through which it had come. He took a quick aim and squeezed off a shot, hitting the jumper in the back, and causing it tumble from the air, rolling head over heels across the floor.

  In spite of a broken wrist and a missing arm, the jumper had still had the presence of mind to pick up its sword and stow it on its back before trying to make a break for the exit. Gabriel’s shot had damaged its jump-pack, rendering it useless; but the jumper continued to crawl with impressive determination across the floor towards safety.

  Gabriel marched over to the wounded enemy and took aim, preparing to put it out of its misery, but then thought better of it. Stowing his weapon, Gabriel picked the scrawny enemy off the ground and took it prisoner, twisting its remaining arm behind its back.

  “Aren’t you gonna kill that thing?” Viker asked, bewildered by the apparent mercy.

  “Not yet.” Gabriel replied.

  * * *

  The elevator doors opened on the 201st floor and Aster stepped out into the hallway of an opulent penthouse. The floor of the main hall had a blood red carpet – probably made from bioengineered fur – and was lined with exquisitely carved statuettes in various poses; there was even a water feature depicting two aquatic monsters intertwined in a vicious embrace. The statuettes seemed to stare at Aster as she walked passed them; perhaps they were, it would be easy enough to install micro-cameras in the eyeholes.

  Aster hurried past the creepy statuettes and turned a corner into a palatial living room. The arched ceiling was covered in a single giant fresco decorated with winged Humans dancing in the clouds, seeming to move ever so slightly. Completing the setting was a replica fireplace with flickering holographic flames, and a set of plush furniture arranged around the skin of some giant animal laid out on the floor as a trophy carpet.

  Madam Jezebel Thorn sat on one of the couches, waited upon by two servant androids and an antigravity platter floating next to her. The hostess herself was dressed in a snow white business suit, her black hair with blonde streaks tied into her trademark cornbraid.