by Mark Wandrey
“Come, fight...
“Splunk, damn it, we don’t have time!” Her huge ears lay back flat against her head and she looked from him to the blue mecha and back again, unsure and clearly distressed. “Please! I have to go!” He climbed inside and started connecting haptic relays. The cockpit was like an apartment compared to cramming his huge frame into a CASPer.
It was obvious the operators had not been human, but it was also obvious they had been humanoid, with two arms, and two legs. The operator stood on a platform and was strapped into a harness from behind, which would then rise slightly and suspend him/her in open air where their motions could be interpreted by the Raknar’s control systems into movements.
Of course, Jim wasn’t the right size or build. Adayn improvised the harnesses so that it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. A pair of control panels were a few feet in front of him, just within reach while being far enough away to avoid being hit by the operator.
He flipped switches with labels written in permanent marker that read “Main Power” and “Primary Walk Motivator.” He’d recorded the startup sequence in a file on his implants.
Jim reached the “Close Cockpit” step and stopped. Because the Raknar didn’t have screens like the inside of the CASPer suits had, his techs had set up four small displays, gluing them to the inside of the control panels with epoxy. He didn’t have time to wonder how they’d run the damned things without any way of seeing outside. He could see Splunk was gone from Blue. Come on, he urged as his hand hovered over the cockpit control, I have to go! A second later she leaped inside.
“About time,” he said and closed the cockpit.
“This, wrong...
“Yeah,” he said as he took the first hesitant step. The movement was delayed by half a second, resulting in a terrifying stutter step. “Whoooa...Nelly,” he gasped as he struggled to stay upright using his implants to adjust the haptic responses. The human-manufactured computer fed data to the alien control system and the two found a point of agreement. He managed to stay on his feet and took another thunderous step. The power cables trailed to the power unit which hummed to life and followed him, keeping the capacitors in the green. “Here we go,” he said. Splunk settled on a piece of inactive equipment to his right, fiddling with it absently and warbling nervously.
* * * * *
Chapter 35
The Tortantula came at them in a wide front a dozen deep, just as Hargrave had predicted they would. The industrial complex that refined and stored the F11 was more than a mile wide and the Tortantula line stretched beyond its edge, with only a yard or so between each alien mercenary and the armored combat vehicles interspersed among them. They all wore armor and carried multiple ranged weapons, explosives, and blades on most arms. They could navigate the broken terrain easily at more than thirty mph, making the accompanying combat vehicles struggle to keep up. Seeing them pour over the land, swarming toward the city less than two miles away, only reinforced in Jim’s mind their similarity to an army of ants.
When they passed the one-mile mark, the city’s defenses opened up. The remaining missiles flew and directed energy weapons began firing. The Tortantula’s armored combat vehicles used interlocking shields and laser counter-missile fire to blunt the attacks. In places, the defensive fire penetrated, and the massive aliens were blown to pieces. Others came from behind to fill the holes in the lines, driven to a killing frenzy by the deaths of their companions. Once they were within a thousand feet, the Cavaliers joined the fray.
Most of First and Second Company fanned out to either side with the APCs giving fire support. They raced out of the city to meet the oncoming Tortantula forces. Each trooper carried as much firepower as their suits could handle, and they spent it with reckless abandon. Missiles, energy beams, and projectiles arced back and forth with blazing tracers as the two mercenary units tore at each other. The Cavaliers fought furiously to keep the enemy from rolling around and behind them while the Tortantula only sought to punch through. It only took the enemy a minute to realize their adversaries had sent almost all their might to the sides to avoid an encirclement. In response, the spiders immediately formed to the center and shot right at the city’s eastern gate. When they were only 100 yards out, the gate amazingly opened to welcome them.
The hundred-foot-tall Raknar strode out through the opening gates like Leonidas leading the Spartans against the Persian army. The Tortantula spearhead didn’t immediately react to the huge mecha, even as it picked up its gait to a trot as the cable connected to its waist disengaged and the doors began to swing closed behind it. Only when weapons fire from the emplacements around the door stopped did the enemy realize something had changed.
Jim was still fighting the haptic feedback controls; they didn’t want to stay in place, although the loping motion of the run helped. As long as he didn’t have to stop suddenly! He spared just enough action from controlling the headlong rush to trigger an audio file in his pinplants and play it over the external speakers. The voice boomed over the battlefield.
“…let’s do this. Leeeerooooy…...Jenkins!” Jim triggered the shoulder-mounted missile racks, which unfortunately began to unload in a non-stop rippling wave, instead of the one at a time he’d expected. As the missiles flew, the soundtrack switched to a blasting version of Drowning Pool’s Let the Bodies Hit the Floor. The spiders were...surprised.
The Tortantula advance slowed to a stop, the rear elements bunching up against the lead as the missiles tore into their ranks. The two armored shield transports directly in Jim’s line took multiple hits and went up in stuttering fireballs of debris and personnel. Dozens of spider troopers to either side were vaporized, and many more blown dozens of yards into the air. The front line tried to back up, their multiple eyes looking up in sudden horror at this terrifying mechanized creature of legend lunging at them.
Jim wanted to charge right through, stomping and kicking as he went. Instead he caught a foot on what was left of an armored transport and almost went flying.
“Shit, no!” he yelled and worked the body’s controls through the haptic system and manually inside the pinplant relays. He got his feet back under him, but turned slightly to the right as he fought for control. The giant suit tipped backwards, still hurtling at over twenty mph, and he put an arm back to catch himself. The palm of the three-fingered hand hit the ground and dug a six-foot-deep trench as the mecha did an unbelievable slide like a runner going for home plate. Tortantula troopers were pulped under the mass, dozens turned to multi-color goo while more were smashed into each other or thrown into the air.
He managed to not end up on his back by catching his leading foot under a massive pile of Tortantula bodies, bringing him to a bone-jarring stop and jerking his mecha back to its feet. He stood there for a long second, both exhilarated by what he’d just done, and amazed it had worked.
“Yeah!” he yelled as the heavy metal continued to blare over the speakers. “Holy fucking shit!”
“Kick, ass...
The momentary shock of the maneuver wore off as the thousands of alien mercs realized it wasn’t a vison from their personal hell come alive for vengeance, but a machine come to do battle. And in an instant, they loved it. They all wanted to kill it, or be killed by it. The hundred-foot-tall fighting machine gained almost instantaneous demigod status. Jim had studied the Tortantula in detail when he took command of the Cavaliers. He knew he’d have to face them sooner or later. He understood what motivated them and made them tick as fully as any human could. They were more like a human psychopath than anything else. They were devoid of empathy and loved combat for the pure exultation of it.
Jim knew something when he got in the Raknar, something he didn’t tell Hargrave or he’d never have allowed this plan. He knew the Tortantula would see the ancient battle robot as a chance to engage a living legend in combat. They’d throw everything they ha
d at him. And as Napoleon Bonaparte said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
“Come get some!” he screamed, and the Tortantula flowed at him. In their mad dash to get at him, they fought each other, huge insect bodies bounding and climbing. They became a living, writhing nightmare wave growing and reaching for him. Jim pushed both arms out and bellowed a war cry, triggering the flame units and sweeping them back and forth. Two-thousand-degree fire engulfed the wave, and Jim stepped forward to meet it.
“Oh my god,” Hargrave said as he watched on his CASPer’s screen. He should have known the crazy kid would try something like this. He desperately needed to prove himself. In that moment, he knew Jim was truly his father’s son – more guts than brains. The wall of squirming nightmare spiders must have been three stories tall when Jim unleashed the flame units, setting it on fire as he waded into them. It was a vision straight out of Dante.
“Sweet Jesus,” one of the squad leaders hissed over the command network.
The mecha swung, kicked, punched, and stomped as it moved into the fireball of burning Tortantula. Weapons fire exploded from all directions, raking across the machine’s impenetrable armor in showers of flashing sparks. Despite the chaos in every direction, Hargrave watched the war-machine-come-to-life move gracefully, as if in a ballet, sending dozens of the huge spiders flying with every punch and kick. A clenched fist swung low and hit the ground as he turned, and the arm came back with twenty Tortantula troopers clinging to it. He held the other arm out, palm open, and brought to two together with a thunderous clap, crushing some and dislodging the rest.
“The kid’s in the groove!” Hargrave crowed, pulling up the battlefield virtual space on his HUD. Amazingly, not only had most of the Tortantula force turned inward toward Jim, ALL of them had. Every one of them was racing toward the berserk Raknar like moths careening toward a bonfire. And they were dying in waves. “Go, go, go!” Hargrave silently willed. “You were right – you got this!”
“Shit, shit, shit!” Jim cried out as the makeshift computer system threatened to fail, and he danced around like a lunatic just trying to stay on his feet. Several haptic relays had come unplugged, helping him understand why the CASPers were so snug inside. Splunk was clinging to a power conduit, her eyes closed as the cockpit was continually smashed from side to side by the mecha’s careening movements. If it hadn’t been for the crushing mob of insane spiders trying to claw their way onto him, he’d have fallen over a dozen times.
Jim tried for another punch and drove his fist into the ground instead. Pulling it free, he found it covered in troopers. They started skittering up the arm toward him.
“Blech!” he blanched and slammed his arms together. He used far too much force, and the reverberations of tons of metal smashing together echoed up the superstructure and into the cockpit, making him see stars. At least the damned spiders were off his arm! Now, more were climbing up his body.
Jim stole a quick glance at his status board. Less than two minutes of power remaining, missiles gone (that had been a fuck-up), and flamethrowers were down to ten percent fuel. The endgame was here. He triggered the flame units and twisted his right arm, raking it up and down his own body. The left he swept back and forth as he turned the mecha into a whirling dervish of flaming spider death. Hundreds of Tortantula were set ablaze as the burning gel dripped from his armor. He felt the heat rising up through the internal structure and a warning light came on. The translation computer said there was a fire in the lower legs.
“No shit?” he asked as he felt the balance begin to deteriorate. No, there was a fire inside the thing. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“Fire, stop...
“Yes, try and stop it!” Jim said as he brushed a dozen arachnids off his mecha’s waist. Splunk jumped down and through a hatch just behind him. Jim felt a wash of heat as she opened it, and smelled burning plastics. His balance was deteriorating fast. Then something hit him with a resounding “BOOM!” and he was knocked back to land on the Raknar’s mechanical ass with a crash, crushing still more Tortantula. He scanned the screens and saw a tank. He didn’t even know the spiders used tanks.
“BOOM!” the behemoth’s gun spoke again, hitting Jim in the left shoulder. The status board screamed and he heard the scrape of rending metal. Immediately the entire machine shifted to the right. He glanced at the left view screen. The Raknar’s left arm was lying on the ground, and the tank was closing in for the kill.
“No, fire...
“To hell with this,” he said as the last of the power began to go. He threw himself forward, and with the squat legs pushed back upright. The next shot from the tank went between his legs as Jim turned and scooped up the arm. “Mess up my toy, will you?” he bellowed and activated another soundtrack. Carmina Burana blared over the remaining speakers as he stagger-stumbled a foot or so to the side, making yet another shot miss, then pushed forward, heading directly for the charging tank.
Dead Tortantula troopers lay in piles and drifts as he stepped forward, crunching them under his multi-hundred-ton bulk like they were bubble wrap. The tank tried to rotate its huge barreled energy cannon up to target him, but he closed too quickly. Holding the severed left arm in his right hand, Jim swung it down onto the tank with a thunderous “Clang!” sending secondary weapons and ceramic armor slates exploding in every direction. “You broke my mecha!” he yelled as the music roared. He swung again, and again, completely unaware that all around him energy weapons and missiles were lashing into the enemy.
The arm separated at the elbow and Jim tossed it aside, slamming his only remaining fist into and through the armor of the tank’s turret. He closed the hand around something inside, and pulled with everything he had. The tank’s internal structure bent, and gave. Inside, something failed, and the tank exploded.
The blast blew Jim’s Raknar up and back. More than 1000 tons of battle machine lifted into the air, arced, and crashed to the ground into piles of dead Tortantula like a giant felled. Inside the cockpit, Jim was cushioned well, but still got bashed pretty badly by the impact. Dangling from the harness like a bug on a pin as the Raknar slid through a puddle of liquefied spider, the power display read zero, the music moaned to a stop, and the great war machine shut down, its energy completely expended. The other arm was blown to bits at the elbow, and another blast tore away half of the machine’s pelvis, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
“I’m dead,” Jim said, shaking his head to clear the stars. He wondered where the techs had stashed his personal weapon as he heard feet on the outside of the machine. He hurt from head to toe and was physically and emotionally spent. “Fuck, that was fun,” he laughed as he watched the cockpit being opened from the outside. He smiled as fate came for him.
“That was a hell of a show,” Hargrave’s voice came over a speaker as Jim looked up at a battle-scarred CASPer. It reached down carefully and held out a hand. “You coming out of there, or do you need some more time to mourn your dead toy?”
“Hargrave!” Jim said, releasing his restraints and taking the proffered hand. The suit lifted him like he was a child. Splunk jumped and caught his haptic suit as he was lifted out, catching a ride. “But how?”
“That was the greatest diversion I ever saw,” Hargrave said, and sat Jim down on the smoldering ruins of his Raknar’s chest. The machine rested in the middle of the blasted landscape covered in mounds of dead or nearly dead Tortantula troopers.
Everywhere he looked there were piles of crushed, split, blasted, and oozing spiders. It was a kaleidoscope of carnage. Some twitched or moved spasmodically. Most didn’t. The smell of charred spider and smoke assailed his nose as enemy heavy equipment and defunct tank
s burned.
The Cavaliers’ CASPers were moving through the field, finishing off the few enemies that remained mobile. “I know you intended to take as many of them with you as possible, but once they went crazy on you, they didn’t even see us encircling them. It was a slaughter.”
A series of explosions rolled over them from the east. Far away, the Cartwright’s APCs were blowing the shit out of the now defenseless grounded Tortantula transports. The company’s dropships circled, providing air support as the mopping-up proceeded.
“Oh,” Jim said, almost disappointed that his noble act hadn’t quite worked. But it had, actually. Right?
“Don’t look disappointed,” Hargrave laughed. “You must have smashed half their force. All we did was clean up. They went plum apeshit on you. It was amazing. We have some great video too.”
“So, we won?” Jim said, shaking his head and regretting it. He tasted blood, too. Somewhere during all the craziness he’d bit his tongue.
“More or less. I think we can hold now. It’s obvious that was their main assault force.” Hargrave’s suit arm patted the mecha. “Man, that was amazing what you did. Excellent control, son.”
“More like out of control,” Jim admitted. “I felt like Buster Keaton out there.”
“Whatever it was, you did it.”
“Hargrave,” Adayn’s voice came over the radio.
“Go ahead,” he replied.
“We have another transport landing. It’s huge and landing with heavy fire support at the F11 processing plant ten miles to the east.”
“I knew this was too easy,” Hargrave said, shaking his head. “Defenses?”
“Manned by locals,” Adayn reported. “It fell almost immediately.” The cockpit on Hargrave’s CASPer popped with a hiss and pivoted upwards to show the older man removing his helmet and wiping sweat from his face with a towel.
