by Isaac Hooke
“They really don’t like fire,” Tahoe said.
“No, they don’t,” Rade said. “Use the confusion, people! We take flight! To Keelhaul! TJ, send the HS3s forward, and have the Centurions join us from their hiding places in the trees.”
Rade scooped up the severed, burning torso of one of the hammerheads and used it to scare away any beast that crossed his path. His mech was impervious to the fire, of course, though Rade could still feel the heat generated inside the mech. Despite the cooling system and vented undergarments he wore, the environment inside the cockpit had reached body temperature, and his jumpsuit struggled to wick the perspiration away.
The other Hoplites regrouped with him, as did the combat robots, and together they continued eastward after Keelhaul. Conveniently, the horde of hammerheads had trampled much of the verdure in their mad flight. When Rade and the others had first entered the jungle the day before, none of the foliage had been flattened like that. It was another testament to the stark fear the fire had instilled in the beasts.
“Sit-rep!” Facehopper’s voice came over the comm. The chief had likely observed the scene already via their video feeds, and was only asking out of respect.
“We’re going back for Keelhaul,” Rade said.
“Let me send more mechs to help you,” Facehopper said.
“They’ll have a hard time getting to us,” Rade said. “The forest floor is still teeming with hammerheads behind us. And then there’s the conflagration, raging out of control. By the time reinforcements arrive, Keelhaul will be well out of signal range. Sorry, chief.”
Behind them, the conflagration generated its own wind system, which propelled the hungry flames outward through the jungle at an even greater pace. The hammerheads were in full flight by then, and those that were trapped within the fiery walls died a horrible death. Their agonized squeals drifted across the jungle, and Rade pitied the creatures in that moment.
“How’s the lieutenant?” Rade asked Tahoe, checking her vitals at the same time. He was trying to distract himself.
“Still in a coma,” Tahoe replied. “Though alive.”
“Glad you still have her,” Rade said.
“So am I,” Tahoe said.
Rade knew how easy it would have been for her to succumb to a stray blow during the attack. Even though she was secured in the rear passenger seat, that didn’t mean the hammerheads couldn’t get at her, especially since she was unconscious and defenseless back there.
“We never win,” Fret complained. “First they kidnap our scientist. We get her back, then they kidnap Keelhaul. The universe is against us.”
Rade glanced at Keelhaul’s tracking dot. Though the MOTH wasn’t moving away as fast as when the scorpions had taken Vicks, Rade and the others were still gradually falling behind, despite their best speed through the trampled jungle.
“Hang in there, Keelhaul,” Rade sent. “We’re coming for you.”
“They’re moving too fast,” Keelhaul said. “You won’t catch up. Like I told you before, just leave me.”
“No,” Rade said.
Facehopper tapped in again, but on a private line. “Do what you have to do out there, Rage. But don’t lose any more men to save him, you hear me?”
“I won’t,” Rade responded. But even he couldn’t keep the doubt from his voice.
twenty-one
Rade and the others encountered no further resistance as they hurried eastward through the jungle. However, soon the undergrowth thickened once again, as the hammerheads had scattered in random directions, and the jungle was no longer trampled underfoot in that area. He spotted the occasional signs that a Hoplite had been dragged that way—broken branches, a crushed shrub—but otherwise most of the foliage remained meticulously intact and the squad was forced to slow.
An hour passed. Rade occasionally communicated words of hope to Keelhaul, telling him to “hang in there.” Fret lost contact with the chief at the half hour mark.
Alone once more, Rade thought.
Unlike the scorpions that had taken Vicks, the hammerheads hadn’t done anything to prevent Keelhaul’s mapping software from updating, so on his HUD Rade was able to see the unmapped darkness of the jungle slowly fill out around the hostage, leaving a trail of terrain traced in his wake. The creatures were taking him on a slightly different path than the lieutenant’s kidnappers had, though the general direction was still the same.
Rade was also able to tap into Keelhaul’s camera, and he saw that four of the hammerheads ported the Hoplite upon their spiky carapaces, alternately carrying the mech via the protective plate of bony horns on their shoulder regions, or using their taloned gripping arms. He considered permanently positioning that video feed into the upper right of his vision, but the quality was fairly bad; he decided it was better to conserve bandwidth for communications anyway and shut it down.
“Something’s different,” Keelhaul said ten minutes later. “The terrain’s changing.”
“Changing, how so?” Rade asked.
“It looks like there was another fire here,” Keelhaul said. “I thought at first the hammerheads had looped back, but then I double-checked the map. We definitely haven’t retread. And this fire has already burned itself. It seems fresh, though. Maybe a day old? Which would explain why we didn’t spot it from orbit. I can still see the smoke rising from some of the cinders the trees have become. The flames must have been really bad. I mean, the jungle here has been burnt to the ground. Wait a second...”
“What is it?” Rade pressed.
“There’s something here,” Keelhaul said. “Something big.”
“What do you mean?” Rade sent. “Another creature?”
“No,” Keelhaul said. “Not a creature. I think it’s a ship. That has to be what razed the jungle. And when its thrusters activate again, everything within the immediate vicinity is going to fry. Like you guys when you get here.”
Rade glanced at the HUD. The partial outline of a large object was displayed, courtesy of the mapping software in Keelhaul’s mech. Rade piped Keelhaul’s low-quality visual feed into the upper right of his HUD and studied it firsthand. The video feed halted and pixelated constantly, but Rade was able to discern the towering object well enough. It was composed of three black, pentagonal planes—Rade remembered the dodecahedral shape of the enemy vessel Lieutenant Commander Braggs had presented during briefing, and he thought it was certainly possible he was looking at three of the twelve faces from that very same starship.
Keelhaul’s captors conveyed him toward the hull, and through the feed Rade saw regular patterns embossed on the surface. No, not embossed—he realized the hull was actually composed of small pentagonal tiles. The hammerheads halted about two meters from it.
“What’s your status, Keelhaul?” Rade sent.
“We’re just sitting here,” Keelhaul replied. “Waiting for them to let us in?”
“All speed, people.” Rade tried to increase his pace and promptly tripped. He scrambled upright and continued on autopilot.
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” Keelhaul said. “But this waiting is torture. I wish they’d just kill me and get it over with.”
“No one’s going to kill you,” Rade transmitted.
The advance felt agonizingly slow. Ten minutes passed.
“Almost there, Keelhaul,” Rade sent.
He had kept Keelhaul’s camera feed active in the upper right of his vision, but it abruptly turned black.
“Keelhaul,” Rade said. “You turned off your camera.” No answer. “Keelhaul, update me.”
“You know, when I was a kid,” Keelhaul said. “My parents owned an old-style galleon, the Cestovatelský. That’s Czech for Explorer. They gave tours to well-heeled foreigners from the UC.”
“Keelhaul, turn on your camera...” Rade said.
“My sister and I often worked aboard,” Keelhaul continued. “My sister— she was such a beautiful thing. A little angel, with the looks and voice to match. At school,
she stole the hearts of all her male classmates. And when she sang at the youth choir, she brought tears to every eye. Anyway, one time when we had a break from our chores, and all the deckhands were occupied below, we found ourselves gazing out from the bow as the ship moved rapidly over the waves. I was always a troublemaker, so I bet her she couldn’t climb to the top of the forward mast before me.
“I never expected her to follow, but she did, scaling the ratlines on the shrouds like a little monkey. When I got halfway, I stopped, because I didn’t want her to hurt herself. But she kept climbing the rigging. I swore to myself, and continued. As she neared the top, the mast broke free of its restraints. It was a windy day, and it flung forward, over the bow. She hung there, floating out in empty space, and I struggled to reach her. Strove for all I was worth. But she lost her grip and plunged into the ocean. The fast moving ship plowed right over her.
“When she came out the other side, what was left wasn’t so beautiful anymore. Nor alive. It had been a long time since my parents had brought the Cestovatelský to dry dock for a proper cleaning, and the underside of the hull was laden with barnacles. The medic assured me she felt no pain. That she had been knocked unconscious by the very first barnacle. That she couldn’t have felt those sharp shells ripping off chunks of her face and body. I’m not so sure.
“It’s my fault she fell. She would have never gone up there if I hadn’t dared her. I’ve always felt it should have been me, and not her who plunged overboard. I promised I would spend the rest of my life making reparations. It was why I chose the toughest rating school when I joined the navy. I wanted them to punish me—I couldn’t get enough. It’s also why, when I transferred to Team Seven, I changed my callsign. I told you it was Keelhaul. It’s what I should have been called in the first place. So that every time someone said my name, I would be reminded of what I’d done: I was a man who’d keelhauled his very own sister.”
“Listen to me,” Rade said, reluctant to use the callsign now that he knew what it meant. Rade had thought it strange that the former Team Eight member had chosen a new name for himself, but when transferring Teams it wasn’t unheard of. Still, he wasn’t entirely sure whether Keelhaul was telling the truth, or perverting a name that was meant to honor the memory of his sister in some way. “It’s understandable to feel emotional, given the circumstances. But you have to turn on your camera. Or at the very least, tell me what’s going on down there.”
“Forget me,” Keelhaul replied. “Let them have me. I spent all these years trying to prove to myself that I was worthy of the name brother. I’m not. I don’t want any of you to risk your lives for a worthless piece of shit like me.”
“You’re just as much of a brother as any of us,” Rade said. “We’re not going to abandon you. You’re not worthless. I know what you’re trying to do. You don’t want us to risk our lives for you, so you’ll tell us anything to make us turn back. But the fact is, we’re not going to. MOTHs never give up. ‘Surrender’ isn’t part of our vocabulary. And you’re not going to give up either.”
Keelhaul didn’t answer. Rade began to wonder if the MOTH had deactivated his comm, too. And then:
“A ramp of some kind finally opened up,” Keelhaul transmitted. “A couple of scorpions are coming out.”
In front of Rade the jungle abruptly opened into the scorched region Keelhaul had described. The foliage layer was completely burned away, with some charred remnants still smoking. Because of the outward pattern of the damage, Rade thought it was definitely possible some sort of braking thrust had caused it.
The towering black object loomed against the sky at the center of the devastation. Rade spotted Keelhaul’s mech at the base, near an open ramp. While the hammerheads held him down, two scorpion robots fired the lasers at the tips of their stingers in rapid succession, tearing open the Hoplite’s cockpit. The scorpions dragged Keelhaul’s squirming jumpsuit from the mech.
“They got me!” Keelhaul sent.
There was no need for Rade to link the cobra targeting systems at that short range.
“Select targets and open fire, people,” Rade sent the squad.
The scorpion holding Keelhaul got lucky, in that it maneuvered behind a hammerhead just as Rade gave the order. All of the bioengineered creatures went down in the resulting assault, as did the second scorpion, but the remaining robot scurried up the thick ramp, which shut behind it as the squad fired again. The Hoplite cobras only cut small grooves in the hull. The laser rifles the Centurions fired fared no better.
“Keelhaul, do you read?” Rade said.
“The scorpion passed me off to something smaller.” Keelhaul’s voice warped heavily as it transmitted through the hull. “Another robot. It’s got me in a vise... I can’t escape. It’s carrying me through dark passageways. Tight in here. You’ll never fit a Hoplite. The scorpion is waiting for you by the entrance behind me. I saw other, larger passageways there. I think it might be calling in reinforcements.”
Rade tried the helmet camera feed of Keelhaul’s jumpsuit. That worked. At least he hadn’t deactivated remote access to it yet, as he had done the Hoplite. Rade saw the tight, dark passageway around Keelhaul through the poor quality feed. It looked like a spiral, and as he watched, Rade felt like he was traveling through a corkscrew. He reduced the feed to ten percent size and placed it in the upper right of his HUD. While the bandwidth requirements could potentially interfere with any communications Keelhaul sent, Rade figured it was better to have eyes inside.
“Forward, people!” Rade sprinted toward the hull.
He tripped on a half buried log. He didn’t realize it at the time, but the act saved his life.
He saw a flash above him an instant before he crashed into the charred ground.
“The object is firing some kind of point defense!” TJ said. “Take cover!”
Momentum carried Rade forward a few meters, and when he stopped he heard a sizzling sound behind him; it came from the deep runnel that had been carved into the scorched earth where he had stood only moments before. If he had been hit, there likely would have been nothing left of himself or his mech but smoking slag.
Rade heard several loud bangs around him and thick gray fumes began to disperse throughout the area. He realized the others were launching smoke grenades.
Veiled by the smoke, Rade quickly got up and moved to a new position. He rotated the launcher into his left hand and released some of the same grenades. “Fill the space between here and that ramp with smoke! And use some flashbangs, too!”
He had Smith coordinate with the AIs of the Hoplites, and the mechs fired the grenades as the party moved forward. While the smoke would screen them from visual targeting systems, and the heat from the flashbangs would provide decoys on the thermal band, he knew the mechs were still vulnerable to other techniques such as radar, echolocation, and predictive algorithms, which is why he gave the order to proceed in a zig zag pattern.
He thought he heard the sizzling sound of impacts around him; either the enemy was firing randomly, or they indeed had a partially working targeting alternative.
The noises stopped when the party neared the hull. He hoped that meant the squad had passed out of the firing angle of the point defenses.
Rade moved toward the area where the ramp had sealed as the smoke cleared behind him. Though he couldn’t actually see the outline of the ramp embedded in that hull, his Implant had recorded the precise location.
“Use your cobras like laser cutters, people,” Rade said. “Line them up, and place them in a row. TJ, bring the Centurions in to participate. Have the AIs coordinate between us all. And I want those HS3s watching our backs!”
Though they all joined in, the going was slow. The biggest problem was the recharge period of the weapons, something that a commercial grade laser cutter wouldn’t have suffered.
Rade abruptly remembered the conversation he had had with Tahoe earlier.
“I don’t think I could ever leave anybody behind,” he had said.
“Then maybe you’re not fit to be LPO,” Tahoe had answered.
Rade glanced at the Hoplites beside him, at these men who would follow him to the gates of hell if he commanded it.
What am I doing?
“Once we’ve cut through,” Rade said as the AIs worked. “Some of you are going to have to stay behind. Maybe all of you. I can’t ask any of you to go inside with me.”
“You don’t get to be the lone wolf on this one, Rage,” Manic responded. “I’m in.”
“Me too,” Fret added.
“Wooyah,” Skullcracker sent.
“We’re all going, boss,” TJ said.
Rade glanced at TJ’s mech.
Boss.
“When we leave our mechs behind,” Rade said. “We’ll only have two days of oxygen left. You board this thing with me, and we become trapped, there won’t be any going home.”
“Then we won’t get trapped,” Tahoe said.
Rade turned to his friend. “You of all people are not going.”
“I’m with you,” Tahoe said. He sounded hurt.
“What about Vicks?” Rade told him. “You heard what Keelhaul said. There isn’t room for a mech in there. Not in the passageways he’s been taken down, anyway. You can’t drag the lieutenant around inside there while she’s unconscious. And you certainly can’t leave her here unattended.”
“We can have one of the mechs take her back via autopilot,” Tahoe said.
