Spotting the hulking outlines of several mechs forty or fifty feet away, I threw caution to the wind. I mean, like I said before, a man who’s got nothing, has nothing to lose, besides, if I was going down, it was going to be on my terms. If I was dying, I was gonna make sure to burn the faux world down to the ground.
I reared back and charged up a hillock of bricks and atomized cement block. I rampaged over the summit and went airborne, firing my cannons all at once as I dropped through the air.
The fire from my guns stitched the mechs, splitting open their metal turrets and torsos, ripping apart pistons as machine oil spurted into the air.
I tossed my grenade, and it landed between the mechs with a cacophonous BOOM!
Pillars of flame erupted from the ruined mechs.
I pumped my mech fist, watching my score continued to climb.
Lowering my metal shoulder, I dashed forward on the treadmill, my breath coming in short bursts.
I suddenly felt the strange and awkward rhythm of moving in the machine. I was getting the hang of it now, my natural instincts kicking in. I could sense where objects were on the map and the head-up display with just an errant glance. I was firing reflexively, opening up on anything in sight. The barrels on my cannons spun so furiously that the metal began to swell and glow.
I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
I was taking out my anger on the faux mechs for everything the aliens had done to us during the invasion and occupation. I was gunning the bastards down in the name of Frank, mom, Spence and every other person who’d died during the invasion and occupation.
My scored continued to go up as I cut the mechs down. Emboldened, I charged up to a high point on the battlefield and raised up a fist. I bobbed left to right like a prizefighter, screaming, calling out the other mechs. “BRING IT ON!” I screamed.
The smoke suddenly dissipated, and down below me was another mech.
This one was different. For starters, it was taller and thicker than any of the other mechs I’d encountered. It looked like the offspring of a bulldozer and construction crane. Oh, and it was fitted with cannons and rocket launchers larger than the entirety of my mech and some wiseass had painted a yellow smiley face with fangs on the front of its turret.
It turned in my direction, and there was a look on its metal face that I can only describe as eerily human. It seemed to smile at me. Then its right arm came around to reveal a weapon I didn’t notice before. A shaft of metal clutched in its clawed right hand that was shaped like a sledgehammer and larger than a street lamp.
The mech lowered the sledgehammer to the ground and began moving toward me. Each step the machine took was like a mini-earthquake, and the pointed end of the hammer made a horrible screeching sound as it was dragged across the street, carving a trench in the asphalt. The smiley-faced mech held up the hammer and gestured at me. It surged toward me, and I ran toward it!
My attacker swung its mighty hammer, the blade clipping the top of my mech’s turret. Somehow, I’d angled my machine into a kind of drift-slide that allowed me to plow forward and skid right between the oversized legs of the attacking mech.
My POV shifted heavenward, and I caught sight of the space between the machine’s legs, the section directly below the smiley-faced mech’s turret. Ha! I had it dead to rights!
My cannons came up, and I unloaded into the mech.
I’d expected to blast the machine to smithereens, but then I noted that the targeted area had been reinforced. A section of steel plate had been welded directly over the area I was firing into. Not. Cool.
Before I could scamper away, the colossal mech dropped straight down on me!
WHUMPBOOM!
However, many tons of metal made up the smiley-faced mech landed on me, basically curb-stomping the hell out of my machine.
Red lights flashed on my visor, and the green hourglass exploded.
The lights came back on in the training room.
I was gonzo.
I was dead.
19
“You have left the land of the living, Deus!” I heard Jennings shout.
I stood in my mech, staring at the screen, my body slicked with sweat. I’d screwed up. I’d miscalculated and been killed. I saw Jennings and realized there’d be no time to consider the mistakes I’d made. These guys didn’t mess around. The simulation was starting up again.
“Round two is about to go hot!” Jennings yelled. “Beginning in three, two, one…”
WONK!
Another blast of green light and the following text appeared in the center of my visor:
Deus, Daniel
Hermitage No.: 002170176
Login Completed
Full-Sim Activated
2CL
I realized the “2CL” signified that I’d lost a life. The information suddenly vanished again, and the shattered city materialized in front of me once again. This time, I had an even better feel for the mech. I headed in another direction and surprised a troop of mechanized attackers, mowing them down quickly and efficiently. I stripped a war hammer from one of the fallen enemy mechs and blitzed down a ghost road.
Concealing myself behind a ruined church, I waited. Five mechs passed me, and I surprised them, leaping out of the murk. One of the enemy turned and fired, but ended up shooting down three of his fellow bad guys instead.
I took a few rounds to the turret but managed to avoid the others. I combat-rolled to my right and swung the war hammer, cleaving the turrets on the other two mechs which caught fire, the flames licking the semi-darkened night sky.
My score continued to soar with every enemy mech I put down. I was at 80,000 points and rising!
Sounds echoed all around, the kind of metallic notes made by large tractor-trailers when they’re applying their brakes. I reckoned one or more of the larger mechs was close by, maybe the big sonofabitch that had killed me in the prior simulation.
I grabbed my war hammer in both hands like a baseball bat, ready to kick some robotic ass. I turned a corner in the street when—
WHACK!
A metal fist socked me right in the face.
I dropped the hammer and flew backward, feeling every inch of the punch.
I crashed through a window of a building and slumped to the ground, lights flashing, my shields seriously compromised. Sand was draining through the green hourglass at an alarming rate.
Glancing up, I spotted the same friggin’ smiley-faced mech as before, the one who’d done me in. It was rampaging forward, the ground throbbing under its metal feet.
I positioned my cannons across the atomized window frame and opened fire.
The rounds from gun bounced off the behemoth’s reinforced turret like pebbles off a tank. Not only was the thing armored on the bottom, but on the front as well. Dammit! I had to find its weak spot!
The mech vaulted into the air and fired a volley of rockets that obliterated what was left of the building I’d taken refuge in.
Scampering back, I barely avoided being crushed by the falling debris. Legs churning, I could feel my mech’s tendons and metallic muscles straining. I piloted my machine through the rear of the building, trying to escape my pursuer.
My head-up display revealed real-time images of the areas behind me. I could see the other mech gaining ground, thundering after me like a pissed-off elephant.
The map on my visor showed an apartment building nearby. I struck off toward it, sweating profusely as I ran across the treadmill.
I navigated through the front door of the massive tenement, churning up a staircase to a mezzanine level. I turned and looked back and opened fire with my cannons.
The smiley-faced mech just held up a mighty forearm, deflecting the shots, before peppering me with high-impact rounds that nearly took my second life. I was down to about twenty-five percent of the sand in the hourglass. If I didn’t do something quickly, I’d be dead.
Guided by my map, I climbed the staircase again, my machine so large
that I was ripping holes in walls, bringing down ceilings. The pursuing mech did the same until we were literally tearing the tenement building down from the inside out.
Pausing on the second floor of the tenement, I pried a metal cross-beam from a ceiling and flung it at the smiley-faced mech. The metal beam slammed into the machine, knocking it back. It was at that moment that I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A joint on the top of my attacker’s turret. A place where two dissimilar materials, the metal of the turret and the ballistic glass of the cockpit met. There appeared to be a depression in the turret, what I’d once heard one of Buddha Blades’s mechanics call a “knit line.”
A potentially weak area.
If only I could hit that spot, I might have a chance.
The smiley-faced mech shrugged aside the beam and fired at me. Ducking, I climbed through the stairwells like a bear shimmying up a tree. I was struggling to reach the top of the building which was five floors above me. I could see and hear my attacker, could feel the heat from the rockets it fired at me. My heart bottomed out and my legs slowly turned to jelly. I was also worried that my surgically-repaired spine might give out at any moment and didn’t know how much longer I could evade the other mech.
And then a rocket from my attacker sizzled past my head and blew open a wall in front of me which revealed two surprising items: a pineapple and a mushroom.
I have no idea what they were doing there, but there they were nonetheless. Faced with a split-second decision and turned off by the spikey spines on the pineapple, I reached for the mushroom.
I snatched the ‘shroom and it vanished as a sound echoed, as if my mech was ingesting the fleshy fungus, and then I watched everything around me grow smaller.
Because I was getting bigger!
Much bigger.
Arms, turrets, weapons, you name it … I was swole, baby, the ‘shroom acting like some kind of diabolical mech HGH!
I turned to my attacker who looked downright puny. Ha! check me now! I thought to myself, and then of course it happened …
WOMP!
My mech hiccuped and started growing smaller.
Dammit, why hadn’t I remembered that some mushrooms are poisonous? I should’ve eaten the friggin’ pineapple!
Terrified that I’d soon be the size of a child’s play toy, I retreated through a door out onto the roof—
Only to see that smiley-faced mech was already there!
The sonofabitch had somehow found a way to slip up through another door and surprise me.
Before I could react, the smiley-faced mech launched itself at me. I was grabbed up in the attacking machine’s enormous arms. I swung my own arms, trying to fight the thing off, but I was decreasing in size with every passing second. Still, I threw one good punch with my increasingly spindly right arm that caught the machine in the nose of its turret, knocking it back.
The other mech fell onto a huge HVAC compressor and ductwork, crushing the metal. I immediately saw something that had been hidden under the compressor. What looked like a warhead of some kind. Another prize!
If I could just grab the warhead and hit my attacker in its weak spot, I’d have a chance. I made a move for the warhead, and the smiley-faced mech fired a rocket that roared toward me.
My hand awkwardly snapped out, trying to deflect the rocket.
I missed, and the rocket caught my mech in the ankle and exploded.
I yelped, feeling the searing force of the blast through my mech’s tactors. I might not be able to die in the simulation, but I sure as hell felt that rocket.
Partially crippled, my machine pitched forward, and the other mech spidered over and grabbed me like a wrestler trying to pin an opponent.
My mech’s arm telescoped out.
My metal fingers stabbed at the warhead, glancing off of it.
Before I could reach the warhead, I felt my machine being pulled back and up. I was turned around to face my attacker. I threw my arms, but that merely locked us up. I peered into my attacker’s cockpit.
It was unmanned of course, and there was a red blinking object atop what looked like a computer console, most likely the machine’s A.I. core. I reached for the object, but the other mech’s immense bulk and my frantic movements caused us to be wrenched toward the edge of the roofline. The last thing I saw before I fell off the roof were the hundreds of other mechs visible, just below the tenement building, watching the fight.
Our two mechs fell through the air in a kind of twisted embrace, and then we exploded upon hitting the ground as—
Red lights flashed on my visor, the hourglass exploded, and the lights came back on.
Dammit!
I was dead.
Again.
20
I remember somebody once said, show me the man who’s made the same mistake twice and I’ll show you a fool. I was officially a fool.
“Numero dos, Deus!” I heard Jennings shout. “You’re down to your last credit!” As if I didn’t already know that. For the third time, there was a blast of green light, and the following text appeared in the center of my visor:
Deus, Daniel
Hermitage No.: 002170176
Login Completed
Full-Sim Activated
1CL
This was it.
My score was at one-hundred-thousand, and I was down to my last life. The information vanished once again, and the shattered city materialized in front of me once again. Like the last time, I headed out and quickly dispatched the first five mechs I encountered. I found the grenade and laid waste to many more and then the smiley-faced mech appeared.
Just as in the last simulation, my attacker charged and nearly killed me. I retreated through the building and back into the tenement building, energized by the belief that I had a way to change things this time.
Like before, I climbed through the stairwells, barely avoiding the rocket fired by the smiley-faced mech that blew open the wall in front of me.
This time I grabbed the goddamn pineapple and two things happened at once: my score went up by twenty-thousand points and I was instantly able to levitate, powered by some kind of gaseous thrusters that were spewing out of my metallic feet. I could fly!
It took me an instant to get my bearings, but then I zoomed out through the door onto the roof where the smiley-faced mech was positioned.
The monster fired on me, but I was able to juice my thrusters and dodge the incoming fire. I zipped forward and punched the smiley-faced bastard and it crashed back into the HVAC equipment before firing the rocket at my ankle again.
Unlike the last time, I thought back on my training with Stryker.
I closed my eyes like I’d done with the ball-bearings and, hovering off the ground, was able to pluck the rocket out of the air. I brought it back and flung it like a fastball at the smiley-faced mech.
The rocket impacted against the other mech’s turret. It didn’t cause much damage, but it disoriented my attacker, buying me a few precious seconds of time.
Flying forward, I amped my thrusters and shot up into the air. Then I cut the thrusters and dropped down behind the big mech.
I drove my fist into the weak spot where the turret and cockpit met. The smiley-faced mech reacted, a metal scream echoing from whatever machine controlled it.
I reached into the cockpit and grabbed the small object that was blinking red, the mech’s A.I. core, and pried it out. Then I commenced beating the hell out of the thing. I brought my metal fists down on its weak spot, tearing away the machinery the guided it.
The mech rose uneasily to its feet and I jump-kicked the bastard, sending it crashing to the ground.
It stood again and I roundhouse-kicked the sucker for good measure, tearing a huge hole in the turret.
The mech fought back up to its feet, operating on pure electrical impulses, firing a few rockets at me that flew wide.
I flew into the air and brought both arms together and opened fire with my cannons. The rounds from my weapons tore th
e other mech to shreds, and it collapsed in a smoking heap on the roof as my score shot up to a hundred and fifty-thousand points. I was halfway there.
Turning, I moved over to the broken HVAC equipment and found the warhead I’d spotted earlier. It was time to implement part two of my plan.
Trudging to the edge of the roof, I looked down to see the hundreds of mechs I’d spotted before. I flipped them all off, and they began firing, but the distance made their shots ineffective.
I set the warhead down and began firing down on the mechs. Even though my shots were also largely ineffective, they had the desired result. The mechs on the ground reacted as I’d hoped they would, climbing over each other like crabs in a bushel basket. They headed toward the entrances to the tenement building, pissed and eager to taste my imaginary blood. I flew back down into the building and heard the other mechs as they streamed up to reach me.
I cursed at the mechs and fired a few shots to make sure they’d follow me, I backpedaled, taking the warhead and securing it in the middle of the roof. My thrusters were, by this time, out of gas, so I retreated on foot back to the roofline.
Looking down, I spotted a series of fire escape cages that had been bolted to the rear of the building. I planned to use those to escape to the ground.
Metal shrieks echoed, and I looked back to see the first mech emerging onto the roof. The thing fired at me and I ducked and then jumped into the air and fired a single rocket. “THIS IS FOR FRANK!” I screamed.
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