by J. N. Chaney
“Messenger, there are large contacts inbound from above the ecliptic plane”
Dash looked back at the threat indicator. Sure enough, three big ships had just translated into the system, and now stared down the minefield laid by the Horse Nebula and her consorts.
They were battleships. Three of them, and they didn’t belong to the Verity.
They belonged to the Bright—and that meant a slew of powerful Golden tech had just entered the battle.
The Bright opened up on the mines, trying to punch a hole through the field so they could enter the battle. That couldn’t happen. Each one of the Bright battleships outclassed the Herald or Retribution, albeit not by much—but it wouldn’t take much to swing the battle.
Dash flung the Archetype toward the Bright ships. “Leira, on me! We need to stop those damned things, or at least slow them down until the rest of the fleet is done with the Verity and can regroup!”
“I’m right behind you, Dash!”
The two mechs charged headlong, side-by-side, toward the looming Bright ships. On impulse, Dash slowed as they approached their side of the minefield. Leira immediately pulled ahead.
“Dash, what the hell?”
“Leira, grab a flash mine. Take it with you.”
“Grab—oh. Right, got it.”
Each clutching a flash mine, the Archetype and Swift powered up again, zooming directly toward the Bright squadron. The battleships shifted their fire from the mines to the mechs, heavy pulse-cannon batteries and petawatt lasers lashing out. The mechs’ shields immediately stepped up their opacity, blocking the worst of the laser energy; it was another upgrade, one learned from hard experience the last time they’d faced the tremendously powerful light beams. It meant Dash and Leira lost some situational awareness, anything coming in from near-infrared to ultraviolet, but the mechs’ scanners still worked through the shields. Dash flicked the heads-up to a schematic display, the battlespace now rendered down to icons moving around 3D axes.
It was like fighting through fog, Dash thought. Despite the fact the Archetype could gather data across the EM spectrum, and through her active scanners, it struck Dash that he’d still relied on what he could see with his eyes for a lot of piloting. It made no sense, but there it was.
He switched to firing solutions taken solely from the scanners then fired the dark-lance and more missiles. Incoming fire buffeted the Archetype; even the upgraded shield began approaching saturation.
“I’ll take the one forward left, Leira. You go forward right.”
“Got it.”
Dash studied the display, veering the Archetype, watching as the relative position of the icons changed—
A heavy blow hammered the Archetype. A missile impact. Then another. Dash cried out at the second impact, one he felt down to his bones. Grimly, he drove on, closing the range, firing the dark-lance as fast as it would recycle.
The enormous bulk of the battleship suddenly appeared, filling the heads-up as the Archetype’s shield died.
Close enough.
He flung the flash mine, at the same time accelerating hard the other way. The nearest battleship’s point defenses lashed out, streams of shots like searching fingers seeking the mine, trying desperately to destroy it before it could—
Detonate, just like that.
The Archetype was hardened against the effects of the blast; even so, a power surge rippled through the mech, sending some of its systems into reboot mode. But the effect on the battleship was far worse. It was much too large and robust to be taken entirely offline by a single mine, but virtually all of her systems on the side facing the blast went abruptly dead.
Dash saw Leira executing much the same attack on her target, with much the same effect. She jackknifed the Swift and raced in to attack the battleship at close quarters, taking advantage of the sudden dormancy of half of her opponent.
What she didn’t realize, though, was that the third battleship had maneuvered to get her full view and was about to open up with a full broadside of fire that could very well hurt the Swift—badly.
“Leira, get clear of there.”
“What? Why—oh, shit!”
He saw the Swift suddenly power up, driving up relative to the battleships, trying to get away from the looming threat. Dash threw the Archetype’s drive into combat over-power, racing over top of the battleship he’d attacked to help her, but he was too far away and just couldn’t maneuver fast enough—
Something flashed by at high speed, swooping beneath the nearest Bright ship, charging on and pulling up beneath the as-yet undamaged one about to open fire on Leira. A torrent of pulse-cannon fire erupted from it as it raced under the enemy ship, raking it from stern to bow.
“Eat that, assholes,” he heard someone say in a cheerful tone.
Dash immediately recognized Amy’s voice, and his own ship, the Slipwing, now shredding the underside of the third Bright battleship. Explosions flung debris all around her, and for a moment, he thought she’d been lost in a huge, searing blast that must have marked an exploding missile battery. An instant later, though, the Slipwing raced back out of the glowing debris cloud, Amy letting out a fierce whoop of triumph.
“Yes! Dash, I love that I’m getting a mech, but not as much as I love this sweet little ship of yours!”
Dash couldn’t help laughing at the absurdity of Amy’s ferocious glee amid a raging battle, with the outcome still very much undecided. But they’d kept the three Bright battleships out of the immediate fight, at least for now.
Even damaged, the battleships remained a potent threat; he and Leira—and Amy, now—couldn’t let them join the battle still raging near the shipyards. He flung the Archetype through a hard reversal and began another run. Shots flashed past the Archetype, some striking with heavy, jarring impacts, but he gritted his teeth and held course, firing the dark-lance as fast as he could. He wanted to fire the Archetype’s big blast-cannon, tapping the raw power that could critically damage one of these battleships, but it took too long to charge up. Things were just happening too fast.
In war, no one ever slows down. Unless they’re dead.
“Dash!” Benzel called out. “We’ve got the Verity on the run here! What’s left of their fleet’s trying to make a break for it!”
Dash snapped out a dark-lance shot then veered to swoop over his target’s hull and slash at it with the power-sword. “Okay,” he shot back. “Up to you if you chase them or not. But these three big bastards”—he winced as yet another shot slammed home, blasting another gouge in the Archetype’s armor—“they’re still kicking, so you need to be ready for them if they break through.”
“I would suggest when they break through is more correct,” Sentinel cut in.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“It is not that. I have detected new power signatures from an asteroid bordering the shipyard. They are Harbingers.”
“What? Damn it, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I am not. Fortunately, however, they appear to be smaller, modified versions of the Harbinger-pattern mech in Verity service.”
Dash scowled at the threat display. He saw the rising power emissions from the asteroid; the Harbingers must have been stored there, and their crews had finally arrived to power them up and get them into action.
He took a deep breath as the Bright battleship receded behind him, sporadic fire reaching after him from it. “Okay, Benzel, let whoever’s running away from you keep going—the flash mines will thin them out, I guarantee it. But Leira and I have to take on this new problem, which means these three battleships are going to be coming your way.”
“We did beat them up some for you,” Leira put in as the Swift fell into formation with the Archetype. “I think one of them is nearly dead in space.”
“You guys do what you have to do,” Benzel replied. “We’ll take care of the rest.”
Dash had to smile at the former Gentle Friend’s confident tone. He knew that the Cygnus flee
t had been beaten up, as Leira put it, as badly as the Bright battleships. The battle was still far from won, and if some other major threat appeared, they probably wouldn’t be able to handle it.
“Dash,” Sentinel said. “The Verity Harbingers are fully powered up.”
Dash glanced at the heads-up. “They haven’t launched yet. Looks like we’re going to be able to catch them on that rock of theirs. Leira, when was the last time you were in a real knock-down, drag-out brawl?”
“About a month before I met you. Three assholes decided they wanted my table in a bar on Passage—you know, that one near the helium-3 storage plant?”
“I want to hear the whole story. Meantime, though, when we mix it up with these Harbingers, just remember that.”
“Where the hell am I going to find a giant bottle of hooch to smash over one of their heads?”
This time, Dash actually laughed out loud.
Dash tackled a Harbinger, slamming into it headlong, driving back against the side of a storage bunker squatting on the asteroid’s rocky surface. The recoil sent the Archetype bouncing back into space. The asteroid’s gravity was too low to hold onto the mechs, so as the wild melee raged, they’d be flung into space, then power themselves back down into the fight.
Six against two—not good odds. But the Verity apparently piloting the Harbingers had probably never seen a real, down-and-dirty fight, much less ever been in one. Dash and Leira quickly found their best tactic was to get their opponents embroiled in a close-up fracas on the asteroid’s surface, and then try to keep them there—
Something slammed into the Archetype as it touched back down, spinning the mech sideways, knocking it forward at the same time. Dash caught himself, the Archetype’s massive hands pulverising rock as he halted his fall; at the same time, he kicked back and got a solid, satisfying slam of contact in return. The Harbinger pitched forward, one leg driven out from under it. Dash rolled aside, striking out with a fist. All of his movements were smoothly turned into an intricate interplay of actuators, joints, thrusters, and even the main drive. It meant he could concentrate on doing what he did best—kicking the shit out of some bad guys.
Another Harbinger appeared, lining up a pulse-cannon shot. Dash grabbed the Harbinger that had almost fallen on top of him and heaved, pulling it up to shield him just as the pulse-cannon opened up. A couple of shots clipped the Archetype, but the rest squarely struck the Harbinger he’d grabbed as a shield. He flung the enemy mech at the one that had just shot; it was an easy dodge for the enemy, but it prevented the Verity pilot from firing again. That gave Dash the few seconds he needed to launch himself at the second Harbinger, while it struggled to stabilize itself about fifty meters above the rocky surface.
The Archetype crashed into the Harbinger, briefly shoving it back, until its drive kicked in. The Verity pilot apparently decided to try and slam Dash back against the asteroid, powering up the mech’s drive to combat overpower. Dash responded in kind, and the Archetype quickly won the shoving match—it was just bigger, and more massive and powerful than the slender Harbinger. Reddish light flared around both mechs as they rose from the surface, out of the gloomy shadow of the asteroid and back into the ruddy sunlight.
The Harbinger punched, a solid hit that caused warnings to flare across the heads-up. The Archetype’s left hip actuator went offline. Dash cursed as he struck back. Such a loss of mobility could be fatal in a fight like this.
“Sentinel!”
“I am aware and am attempting to bypass a damaged motivator circuit.”
Dash left her to it and concentrated on taking this Harbinger out of the fight for good. He drove a fist into its head, and another into its armored torso. The plates buckled under the blow, and one spun off into space. Dash didn’t hesitate, ignoring a glancing blow that still took the Archetype’s point-defense system offline, and driving his fist into the gap left by the missing plate. It sank deep into the mech’s internals.
He began to pull and rip, tearing away at anything he could grab.
The Harbinger desperately shoved at him, trying to get away. A second later, something vital failed, and the enemy mech went dead.
Dash kept digging away at its mechanical guts anyway. He finally wrenched off the Harbinger’s entire chest plate, flung it aside, and smashed at the internal workings again and again. That included the pilot’s capsule, which crumpled under the blows.
Dash literally hammered the capsule flat.
He spun away from the wreck and turned back to the battle. The Archetype had lifted a good two klicks off the asteroid’s surface, where the Swift still fought a pair of Harbingers. For a few seconds, Dash just watched her. She fought with a style and grace that was stark contrast to his own more brutal, beat-’em-down approach to brawls. Leveraging the Swift’s lithe power and natural quickness, she spun, punched, kicked, dodged, and kicked again. The Harbingers were clumsy by comparison, lumbering at her, their attacks uncoordinated; for every blow they managed to land on her, she drove home three or four of her own.
Dash powered up the thrusters and drove the Archetype back toward the surface. As the red sun went behind the asteroid again, there was one more Harbinger still operational, apparently determined to line up a firing solution with its pulse or chest cannon. The Harbinger pilot would have to be desperate indeed to use the chest-cannon, as the close range would destroy everyone nearby—friend and foe.
Dash kicked in the main drive, deployed the power-sword, and came thundering down on the Harbinger like a meteor.
A tremendous shock rattled the Archetype deep to its Dark Metal bones. It spun the mech around, momentarily turning the view on the heads-up into a blur. Dash fought to correct and regain attitude control—and where was the Harbinger he’d just hit, was it about to fire—?
He jammed a foot—actually feet, since it looked like Sentinel had just managed to get the balky hip actuator working again—against the asteroid; the momentum of the mech kept it plunging along, gouging rock from the surface with a cascade of sparks that shot off into space. At the same time, the thrusters kicked in. He regained control and reacquired the Harbinger about a hundred meters away, dreadfully certain it was about to fire and kill them all.
But it toppled back instead, the power-sword having severed it through the waist. He jetted the Archetype back to it, the power-sword raised—found himself looking straight down the muzzle of its chest-cannon—and slashed across chest and cannon, ripping both open.
“Dash!”
He glanced up from the fallen Harbinger. It was Leira.
The Swift hovered over two broken Harbingers, debris and pulverized rock drifting around it. Dash saw the mech had been battered so badly entire armor plates were gone, as was one foot, and one entire forearm.
“You look like hell,” Dash said.
“You don’t look so good yourself.”
Dash opened his mouth to shoot something back but recoiled as something drifted into the heads-up imagery.
It was a Verity, her face contorted in stunned horror, globules of fluid leaking from her broken body. He glanced down and saw that he’d cut the pilot’s capsule of the Harbinger open, letting her corpse drift free.
“Dash, look out!”
He turned at Leira’s warning. The first Harbinger they’d taken out of the battle had partly risen, its power output soaring to a spike—either some sort of overcharged shot from its chest cannon, or its reactor was about to blow. Dash didn’t hesitate. He lunged and drove the power-sword out, then slammed it straight through the mech’s head.
A hissing shriek briefly flooded the comm, a howling burst of Golden machine-language. It went on for a second or two, pierce Dash’s senses like a storm, then stopped.
“The Verity pilot of that Harbinger was clearly dead,” Sentinel said. “That final attempt at an attack must have been an onboard Golden AI.”
“Yeah. The Verity should have let them fight,” Dash replied, once more thinking of the unpredictable tactics of the G
olden drone he’d recently fought near the Forge.
“Arrogant jerks,” Leira said. “They must have figured they could do a better job.”
Taking in the scattered remains of the Harbingers, and the debris-strewn battlespace around the asteroid, Dash shook his head. “Well, they were wrong. But if there are AIs on board these Harbingers, they might still be kicking like this one was. Let’s make sure they’re all really dead.”
Far above the asteroid, searing flashes continued to ripple through space as the battle between the battered Cygnus fleet and the two Bright battleships raged on. Dash saw plumes of glowing gas, heard desperate shouts across the comm, and launched himself back toward the battle, Leira falling in alongside him. Before they even got anywhere near weapons range, though, the flashes and cries died, and the space ahead went dark and silent once more.
A long moment passed. Dash wanted to call for Benzel, but he also didn’t, in case he never got an answer.
Silence.
Okay, Dash thought, this might be bad. Better get ready for it. It might be very, very bad.
“Hey, Dash, you guys done playing around down there yet?” Benzel said, his voice booming across the comm. “We might’ve won this battle, but we’ve got lots of work to do yet!”
22
“—and we can now run two, simultaneous fabrication lines for mechs,” Custodian said. “So, in summary, with the increased capacity given to the Forge by the new Q-core, manufacturing output will be increased at least fifteen percent.”
Dash nodded and looked around the Command Center where everyone was gathered. They’d already done their initial post-battle briefing, immediately upon arrival back at the Forge and even before showering or eating. Dash wanted to capture as much information as they could, while it was still fresh in all their minds. Now, after cleaning up, eating, and getting some rest, they’d taken time to do a more thorough analysis of what had happened.
