The lights of the various settlements gleam faintly on the black disc in the shadows. We have a joint operation with the Lunars on the southern pole, where deep crater ice and permanent shadows make the whole project easier to run. They’re still up and running, and they have already received automated cargo pods to tide them over. Still, we’ll also make a landing there to verify everything is going well.
The northern pole is where the Venusians have set up their base, for reasons similar to ours for setting up on the southern pole. If they’re in real trouble, they aren’t letting on; they say everything’s fine, and a few Venusian bioships are hovering around the north pole. Aside from the big facilities, there’s the occasional mote of light from the odd science station or exploratory mining facility. Most of those were shut down over the last year, though, with people congregating in the large bases.
The day and night cycle on Mercury lasts for two of its years, so the surface has frozen way down in the long, cold night. Against such a cold background, anything still running glows in infrared. Moving between the motes of light, courier motorcycles cross the endless cold wasteland, bringing supplies and equipment to the few remote sites still running. The big launch railguns on the equator are all shut down at the moment. The giant slugs of refined metals would just be captured by a passing ship or drone during the war, and the launchers would have made too tempting a target for a long-range strike if they’d remained in operation. Hopefully, Mercury will be able to send valuable metals back out to the rest of the solar system soon.
Since we’re not actually at war with anyone down there—officially, anyway—it’s just my squadron out at the moment. We’re splitting up into individual flights to take a closer look for possible trouble. Trouble could come from anywhere: improvised weapons, left over Saturnine weapons systems, or possible Venusian treachery. There’s a lot of territory to cover down there, but at least anything will show up on infrared when it powers up. Well, most things anyway; there could be directional laser mines or something like that down there, and we’d never see them.
Still, this is the easy part of the mission.
The hard part will be on the dayside. It won’t be the heat or radiation from the sun that’ll be the problem, though. Our frames can handle that fine. The danger is how hard it’ll be to see trouble coming in all that glare and radiation. The day side is hot enough that infrared will be utterly useless, too. Over there, currently on the dayside of Mercury, is the Terran settlement in Caloris Basin. This is the largest settlement and the one in the direst trouble, with reports of fighting going on in the facility. Worse, the Terrans had help from Saturn to build it, and they might still be there.
I suspect if there’s trouble, it’ll be there, at the sun-seared Caloris Basin.
* * *
Dawn breaks over Mercury.
As we’re whipping around the planet in a tight orbit, the daybreak that normally happens in a slow, imperceptible crawl now happens in a minute.
First, glowing filaments of the solar corona rise over the black, curving horizon, outlining the rugged shape of the small planet. The pale light quickly strengthens on the horizon and begins to shine on the surface features of Mercury, lighting up peaks and crater walls, but still leaving most of the planet in darkness.
Finally, the impossibly huge sun rises in thunder. Radio roars with the unending, howling solar winds. Blazing glare washes out everything in the direction of the nearby star. Radiation hammers at my frame, desperately trying to get in. The planet glows with reflected light and heat, a crescent of light broken only by the few dark spots of shadows huddling in the shelter of mountains and crater walls.
Above the planet, the solar wind hammers at the magnetic field, which twists and writhes under the ceaseless assault. Protons emit a radio howl as they change energy states in the magnetic fields and combining magnetic force bands crack like thunder.
I’ll never see anything in all this glare. When I block out more of the light, radio, and radiation, everything comes into crystal clarity. I can make out the rugged, cratered terrain of the world below me, battered and beaten by everything the solar system has ever thrown at it—yet it’s still here.
Now that things are clear, there’s another problem. By blocking out most of the light and other signals, I risk blocking out important signals and signs of possible enemy action. Still, there’s no choice. Either I’m blinded by the glare, or I shade everything way down to where I might miss things.
Either way, Caloris Basin is finally coming into view.
The crater takes up much of the view below me. Kilometers-tall rim mountains are lit up in bright relief by the sunlight. Most of the floor is a flat plain stretching out over 1,000 kilometers, studded by smaller craters within it. In the middle is the reason for Caloris Base—the Spider. Instead of a giant mountain like what happens in some large craters, Mercury’s crust raised up in the middle of the crater, creating a series of fractures radiating out from the middle. Those cracks provide access to the planet’s mineral-rich mantle, useful for both mining and research.
Caloris Base is mostly hidden in the steep canyons of the Spider and underground. Flashes of light from the mirrors on the ground show where the surface installations are. The mirrors are like huge shields that track with the course of the sun, sheltering the landing fields, communications systems, and other surface features. Elsewhere, radiator fins rise like leaves, unfurling in shadow, not sunlight, and glow in infrared, dissipating heat from the complex.
You can bet the Terrans want us here; sure they do. The Terrans may need our help desperately, but they’ve likely remembered everything that happened when Jupiter invaded the State of Terra, and the planetary civil war that came from that. There’s a lot of bad blood now; anything could happen.
The main thing that concerns me is there might be spiders waiting in the Spider. The Terrans couldn’t build this base alone, so they didn’t. They got the Saturnine to help them put it all together. Are there assault-battleoids still lurking in the depths of the base? Mines? Infiltration AI programs? There could be anything in there.
Caloris is signaling me, letting me know they’re ready to receive our landing ships, and we’ve got authorization to land. Let them wait—I don’t trust this.
My flight orbits the Spider a few more times, scanning the barren surface with radar, lidar, ground penetrating scans, and launching clusters of recon probes. I feel like a target, shining with reflected sunlight and totally exposed.
Still nothing.
Well, since nothing is going to reveal itself by shooting at us, and we won’t know more until we land, I give the signal to land our flight and check things out from the ground.
* * *
Down on the surface, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.
We’re in the shadow of a several-hundred-meter segmented mirror that’s creating a rectangle of darkness that stretches off into the distance. Glare shines off mountains and rock formations outside the shadow. Lights shine from the nearby buildings and spacesuited figures as they make their way across the flat plain of the landing field.
Our transports have finished landing, and now our technical crews are unloading equipment and materials onto automated crawlers. Our flight is scattered among the landing fields here, each of us standing by a landing field, guarding a transport.
This might be our most vulnerable moment. Earlier, when we were flying in, we had defensive laser clusters and countermeasures systems to deal with anything incoming. Down here, with everyone spread out over the ground, it would be hard to repel an attack without serious casualties.
Still, we’ve scanned everything, sent probes everywhere, and infiltrated our snooper AI into all the local systems.
There’s nothing. No Saturnine assault-battleoids waiting with claws outstretched, no field of directed energy mines ready to go off, no squads of heavily armed men in power armor…nothing. No weapons or weapons systems have been detected anywhere up here.
Still, I don’t trust it, something’s wrong…
A low, rumbling vibration starts in the ground and quickly builds up. Something big is on the move. Talon estimates the vibrations’ epicenter is a large vehicle bay nearby. With a quick check, I can see that nothing’s supposed to be out and about at this moment.
I sound the alarm as the vehicle bay explodes outward in a spray of flying wreckage and freezing atmosphere. The icy mist soon clears to reveal the monster advancing on the transport.
It’s a Titan.
Rising to tower 100 meters tall, the vast robot is studded with claws, drills, and plasma cutters. Eight legs end in independent tread systems that grind over regolith as it rumbles forward. The kiloton robot actually shakes the ground as it goes. Stark blue light flares as it brings all four of its plasma torches online, and all its drill arms spin up to full speed.
It didn’t register as a weapon when we scanned because it’s not a weapon—it’s just a big mining vehicle, in use on Mars, Io, and yes, Mercury. Still, mass carries its own weight in battle, and anything this big will be hard to stop.
“Halt! Disengage your vehicle at once!” I send to the oncoming mining monstrosity.
It keeps on coming. I train my weapons on the behemoth, while making sure I scan the surrounding area for ambushes or other dangers.
My augments trigger, and time slows. With my mind now running at boosted speed, I have the time to consider what’s going on, rather than just react. My cyber augments also bring everything into absolute focus, and every detail or possible threat becomes crystal clear.
The various suited figures on the surface are running. They’ll never get away in time. The oncoming juggernaut is more than large enough to crush the transport and everything and everyone on the landing pad, including me in my frame.
There’s no sign of another attack, but it’s possible this is just a distraction, to pull us away from our positions, leaving the transports vulnerable, or leading us into an ambush. This is just a civilian vehicle—a massive one—but I’m not detecting any military weapons, targeting systems, or unusual radiation signatures. I should be able to handle it alone. Besides, others might not get here in time, and I’m worried that any incoming missile fire might damage the giant mirror that’s sheltering everyone right now.
I send the signal out for everyone to remain on guard at their positions and then repeat the warning to the oncoming Titan.
It keeps on coming in apparent slow motion.
I fire a warning shot from my x-ray lance into the ground, sending up a fountain of glowing glass from a new white-hot crater.
Nothing. The thing just keeps on coming.
OK, then.
My UV laser clusters would only pit the durable outer plating on such a monster, but it’s not a military war machine. The armor is to protect it from hostile environments, flying rocks, and spraying lava, not precision weapons fire. There are hatches, service panels, tubes, and cameras in exposed positions all over the thing.
All I need to do is hit the right places. The schematic for the Titan comes up from Talon, and I prioritize firing sequences, targeting sensors and cameras, power and fuel leads, and other weak points. Talon’s defensive laser cluster goes on fully automatic, methodically destroying vital exposed wires, tubes, and cameras all over the front of the behemoth robot. In a second it’ll be blinded.
Next, I target my x-ray lances on important structures that are buried more deeply. It takes specialized armor to stop an x-ray lance, and the Titan doesn’t have it. If anything, the armor it does have makes the damage worse, as it volatilizes into blasts of plasma that spread deep within the wounds of the leviathan.
It’s not enough.
The monster staggers and lurches, venting gas and glowing vapor from hundreds of tiny wounds, and its plasma torches gutter and go out, but it keeps coming. The main reactors and critical elements are buried too deeply inside.
A particle lance would probably work, but I don’t have one. My missiles in armor-piercing mode might work, but I’m worried about damage to the mirror shield behind it, so I’ll only use those as a last resort.
Infiltration systems should eventually take over the thing, but it looks like all its communications systems are blocked. I launch some SPGs to link up with the exterior ports on the metal monster and begin a physical infiltration of its computer systems, but that will take time.
I fire most of the rest of my SPGs in high explosive mode, targeting the eight treads. The little autonomous pods streak out to the sides of the Titan, then race into gaps in the giant tread links before detonating in a cascade of blue plasma flame. I know it’s my imagination, but the sea of plasma around the base of the Titan almost seems to lift it up.
The lamed monster continues to roll forward for a bit, sending glowing fragments of track and molten glass flying. Then it slides forward, digging a furrow as the Mercurial landscape scrapes past the bare treads. Finally, the metal monster rumbles to a halt as the ground shakes.
The spacesuited figures are still running, and they’ve gotten away from the landing pad now. The engine sequences on the transport have finished cycling up, and blue light from its four engines now floods the pad. It looks like everyone’s going to get away alive after all.
A series of blasts erupt from the eight tread legs. Then, one by one, the legs lift free from the ruined treads, arch out like some impossibly monstrous arachnid, and crash deep into the surrounding regolith with ground-shaking force.
No way.
It can’t do that.
Sure, looking at the schematic, it can eject treads as an emergency measure, but walk? It’s way, way past the size any robot or frame can walk on a world. It’s impossible.
Somehow it does. Maybe it’s the low Mercurial gravity, maybe all the safeties have been taken off and it’s overloading, or maybe it’s just bad luck.
The legs sink deep into the rock, the ground trembles, and the Titan rises up slowly, and with a ponderous, thundering gait, walks forward.
It reaches one drill arm out toward the rising transport. I fire one of my missiles at the joint of the arm, programmed for armor piercing. The blue flash goes right through the thing’s elbow but doesn’t sever the massive arm. It does lame it, though, and the vast limb falls as the transport rises out of reach.
How did it see it? Maybe it’s using deeply buried radiation detectors, maybe I missed some cameras, maybe someone’s sending data to it by a wire or transmission, or maybe it’s just a lucky guess. Most likely, it’s just flailing around in the area of the transport. I’ve got to neutralize those arms before…
One of the arms sweeps up to the bottom of the mirror shield. Even as it moves in slow motion, it’s too late for me to do anything. If I hit the arm, its momentum would continue, and any fragments would also damage the mirror.
It crashes though effortlessly. It tears a hole through the solar shield, letting in a spear of light and radiation from the sun. Cracks spread and multiply on the underside of the mirror, and it slowly disintegrates into a cloud of glittering, razor-edged prisms falling on us below.
Radio calls of alarm are coming from everyone around me. The blazing light and radiation are being reflected safely by everyone’s spacesuits—at least for the moment. The locals are wearing mirror-surfaced armored suits with big coolant packs, and our people are wearing armored combat suits. The falling shards of mirror break all around us. Neither my frame, nor the armored suits of our engineers, are damaged, but cries of pain and emergency signals from the locals indicate some suit punctures. Our people are going over to patch up the wounded, and to try to guide everyone out past the deadly glare to shelter, but they’ll have to go past the flailing Titan.
I’ve had about enough of this guy.
I fire eight of my missiles in armor-piercing mode at the joints of the eight legs. Spears of plasma flame cut through effortlessly, breaking the knees of my opponent. The Titan shudders and then slowly collapses back down to
the ground.
When it hits, a massive quake shakes the whole landing field, and it throws up a huge fountain of dust and debris. The dust and rocks fall back to the ground, quickly revealing the Titan once more.
Which is good, because I can now see the giant drilling arm larger than my whole frame coming right at me.
I activate my booster and easily dodge out of the way of the titanic drill arm, which slams down where I was a second before. Flying out of reach of its flailing limbs, I orbit the Titan, firing my laser clusters and lances at every exposed device on the colossus, from every angle, bit by bit finishing the job of crippling it.
Now that it’s blind and immobile, I should be able to finish it off.
The schematics tell me the shortest path to its reactors is located right about…here. My plasma blade ignites as I land on top of the thing, and I carve away the access hatch for the fuel systems. Beyond is a glowing hot collection of tubes, pipes, and frameworks. No reason to stop here. With both blades active, I carve my way into the Titan, crawling into the cavity of glowing hot metal that remains. The heavy reinforced anti-plasma wall of the interior power housing resists my plasma blades somewhat, but I tear out the superconducting field generating cables that are protecting it with my claws, and then it melts like butter under my blade.
There we are. The three fusion reactors powering this big boy are in reach at last. I set my x-ray lances to cut though every power lead I can reach until the reactors shudder and finally go into shutdown mode.
As I clamber out of the molten hole I made, I can see that everyone got away from the area. This landing field will be useless for regular transports for a while until we can rig another mirror or shelter. Oh, and Commander Rackham wants to debrief me after we finish patrolling the area for any other possible attackers.
* * *
I’ll admit, the fight with the Titan was kind of fun. Things have been too quiet for a while, and we didn’t get to do much flying or maneuvers while diving in toward the sun. Also, we’d all been hyped up on the possible dangers waiting for us at Mercury. So getting to fight a Titan let me blow off a lot of tension.
Cherubim Page 9
