Scorpion’s Fury

by C H Gideon

  “Elvira was armed with our only pulse warhead.” Jenkins shook his head grimly, recalling just how difficult it had been to sneak that one missile into his battalion.

  Styles nodded. “I understand, sir, but Kamehameha’s got an old-style micro-fusion generator that could produce an EMP if overloaded. The mech would be destroyed, but it looks to me like we would render the remaining rock-biters as lethargic and confused as the ones Elvira hit with the pulse missile.”

  Jenkins sucked in a breath. Decisions between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ seemed to be the only ones he got to make any more, and this was no different. Kamehameha was easily his most potent mech in a subterranean setting, with its railguns capable of direct-fire unlike the artillery that required significantly raised fire angles to reach ranges greater than two kilometers, angles which low cavern ceilings precluded.

  “All right…” Jenkins nodded, his decision made. “Send Centipede and Kamehameha to the cavern’s center at maximum speed. Kamehameha’s crew is to initiate the overload on a time-delay, set the mech on autopilot to the center of the cavern, and then they’re to transfer to Centipede. Centipede’s systems are the oldest in the battalion, so the only thing the EMP will fry is her comm gear and automated fire control systems.”

  Styles seemed reluctant to relay the orders. “This is just a theory, sir.”

  “I’m in command, Styles,” Jenkins said firmly. “This is my call. Relay my orders.”

  Styles nodded and did as commanded, and soon the two mechs were moving toward the center of the cavern at best possible speed, as a surging tide of Arh’Kel soldiers advanced ahead of the emerging railgun platforms.

  “New fire orders,” Jenkins barked. “Clear a hole for Kamehameha. I don’t want those rock-biters tearing it down before it delivers its surprise.”

  Roy took a direct hit as an enemy railgun sniped it from across the cavern. Chaps was unable to return fire with non-HE shells, but the closer Babycake returned fire and scratched the offending vehicle from the field.

  Arh’Kel infantry crossed the cavern’s mid-line, cartwheeling at fantastic speeds. The aliens’ railgun mounts moved into the cavern behind them, with each spewing a bolt of tungsten as soon as it emerged from its tunnel. Monsoon was struck by a pair of bolts, each a relatively glancing hit, but those hits still cost the humanoid mech two of its six arms. The track-mounted Jammer took a hit as well, and like Rammer before it, survived the initial hit. Unlike Rammer, Jammer was fortunate enough to avoid a second hit when the railgun was knocked off-target by Babycake’s counterfire.

  Kamehameha continued its charge to the center of the cavern, where its EMP would have the greatest effect. The approaching tide of enemy soldiers adjusted until nearly half of the charging enemy were moving to intercept it. Like self-setting bowling pins, they converged into dense lines as they sought to prevent Kamehameha from reaching its objective.

  Jenkins loved a target-rich environment.

  Kamehameha slowed its charge for a few seconds as its crew abandoned it. Centipede, the long-bodied and aptly-named APC—armored personnel carrier—powered by honest-to-God diesel engines with design components dating back to World War II, moved to collect the crew as the auto-piloted mech resumed its charge toward the swarm of rock-biters.

  The heavily-armored Centipede, made of five segments with four tracks apiece, turned and red-lined its engines as it attempted to return to the eastern edge of the cavern. A pair of railgun impacts destroyed the fifth segment of the black-hulled mech, but the other four continued pulling away at maximum speed.

  Kamehameha took a pair of railgun strikes to its upper torso, with a brilliant flare of blue-white energy accompanying the destruction of the humanoid mech’s left arm and shoulder. The mech stumbled, but it regained its balance as its footsteps brought it ever-nearer to the horde of advancing rock-biters.

  “2nd Company,” Jenkins barked after approving a fire pattern and forwarding it to Styles, “clear a path for Kamehameha. Fire all HE rockets at the transmitted coordinates on my command…fire, fire, fire!”

  2nd Company’s launchers cleared one hundred and ninety rockets on his command with terrifying effect. The first launch preceded the last by three-point-two-seconds as HE missiles tore loose from their tubes, furiously streaking toward the converging Arh’Kel infantry.

  And when they struck, it was like the maw of Hell opened to consume the Arh’Kel horde within a raging inferno.

  A thousand Arh’Kel died in those three-point-two seconds, as even their rock-hard skins were unable to save them from the devastating barrage. Before the still-charging Kamehameha, a V-shaped wedge of the Arh’Kel horde was reduced to rubble and silicon slime. The one-armed mech continued its charge, and was struck in the torso by an enemy railgun as a trio of streaking tungsten bolts converged on it.

  Kamehameha’s status telemetry, displayed on a nearby monitor, began to flicker with a series of alarms, one of which was for the mech’s power plant.

  “All units, brace for EMP,” Jenkins commanded over the company channel. He watched as another railgun struck the humanoid mech’s torso. “Blow it, Styles,” Jenkins urged.

  “Six more seconds, sir,” Styles replied tensely.

  “Blow it!” Jenkins snapped as Kamehameha’s fusion reactor containment began to fail.

  “Three…two…one…now!” Styles declared, and a blinding flash filled the cavern as Kamehameha’s plant overloaded with a deafening peal.

  Roy’s onboard virtual systems reflexively shut down, but quickly cycled back online and began feeding data to the various displays in Jenkins’ command center.

  And that data confirmed Styles’ hypothesis: the Arh’Kel appeared to have been stunned by the EMP. Even the HWPs were dormant, though how long they would remain that way was anyone’s guess.

  “New order to the column,” Jenkins snapped. “Advance on the enemy at full speed with weapons hot. Hit anything that moves with secondary weapon systems—let’s clear this cavern before they wake up!”

  The column advanced as one in a crescent, sweeping from east-to-west. The northern and southern tips of the formation engaged fallen rock-biters first, sweeping across the stunned Arh’Kel with machine guns, coilguns, and flamers as they methodically purged the cavern of enemy soldiers.

  After the atrocities committed by Arh’Kel infantry on New Australia decades earlier, where over ninety percent of the colony had been brutally slaughtered in a surprise attack, the Terran Republic had declared the rock-biters a clear and present danger to humanity. Orders were simple: shoot on sight and without hesitation.

  Which was precisely what Jenkins’ people did.

  When the last of the Arh’Kel HWPs was scrapped, Jenkins growled, “Now in the name of all that’s holy, would somebody clear that fucking tunnel?!”

  5

  Breaking Through

  “That’s it,” Podsy declared triumphantly. “The last of the components have been transferred. Devil Crab is now fully online, sans the missile launcher which is bingo ammo anyway after Elvira’s remaining supply was bricked by the EMP.”

  “Missiles? Where we’re going, we won’t need…missiles.” Xi smirked tightly as she directed Devil Crab down Bravo Tunnel in hope of rejoining the column. Working the manual controls was tricky, but Xi Bao had always enjoyed a challenge that required her full attention, and manually directing the movements of a six-legged mech weighing eighty-six tons definitely fit that bill. She switched to Lieutenant Koch’s dedicated channel. “Good work, Lieutenant. We’ll rejoin the column and see you on the other side.”

  “Copy that, Devil Crab,” Koch acknowledged. “We’ll take Elvira back to the barn and see what else we can salvage. Bust some rocks, Lieutenant.”

  “We’re a regular chain gang, we are,” Xi snickered before cutting the channel and realizing she hadn’t signed off correctly. Comm discipline, like so many other forms of discipline, had never come easily to her.

  “You know, she didn’t look that ba
d,” Podsy mused as Xi tramped Devil Crab down the tunnel.

  “I find that hard to believe if you bagged her,” Xi quipped. “Oh wait, I thought you didn’t swing our way?”

  “You’re a riot and a half, Bao,” Podsy drawled. “I was talking about Elvira.”

  “I figured as much,” she said as the tunnel grew darker with each of Devil Crab’s steps. “Honestly, I doubt it matters. We’re marching to meet up with an armor column that’s got to be several kilometers below ground now. Whose bright idea was it to send armor underground, anyway?”

  “It’s a test program, LT,” Podsednik repeated, and Bao could almost see the eye-roll in spite of their in-cabin vid system being offline. “And since it was a bunch of rust-buckets like this one manned by convicts and bust-outs, Fleet brass didn’t see any downside in sending us in here to soften the landing for the main Fleet when they arrive in two days”

  “As if those guys like anything soft,” Xi snorted.

  “Commander Jenkins is good people.” Podsy shrugged. “He gave most of us a chance to slash our prison sentences by two-thirds or more, along with an honorable public service discharge to offset whatever felonies we might be dragging with us. Frankly, I doubt I’d have survived my full sentence. New Australia isn’t exactly known for having a posh penal system.”

  “Especially not for necrophiliacs,” Xi observed dryly.

  “Jesus, you’re never gonna let that one go, are you?” Podsy sighed.

  “I’ll die first,” she chuckled.

  “Usually, I’d try to hurry that kind of thing along,” Podsednik deadpanned, “but in this case, it would mean cutting my own meager existence short.”

  “Classic Catch-22,” Xi declared triumphantly. “Caught in a crossfire between the need to survive and the desire not to be known as the most infamous sexual deviant in Republic history.”

  “No press is bad press,” Podsy muttered weakly as a warning light came on for leg number three’s motivators. “Dammit…the coils are out of alignment. We’re going to burn through our lubricant in thirty minutes at this rate. Can you ease up on the forward motion by about eight degrees in Three’s walk cycle?”

  Xi adjusted her controls as he suggested, and after completing a dozen walk cycles, asked, “Is that better?”

  “Looks like it,” he agreed. “The recoil dampeners aren’t going to be much good on Three until we can rebuild the main joint. Until then, try to limit range of motion like this.”

  “It won’t slow us down much,” Xi said as she focused on improving her control of the mech’s drive system. Before long, she was moving Devil Crab down the tunnel at forty kilometers per hour, fully five times the speed the column would have traveled during its sojourn into the bowels of this God-forsaken planet. What took Commander Jenkins an hour should only take Devil Crab eleven minutes and change.

  A few minutes into the journey through the dark, Devil Crab’s comm system buzzed and a friendly icon appeared on the tactical plotter.

  “It’s one of our Owl drones. It’s en route to the surface requesting reinforcements,” Podsy said as the drone’s icon streaked past Devil Crab on its way back up the tunnel. “It looks like the column’s been separated. 1st Company is stuck behind a tunnel collapse while 2nd Company is cut off in a major transit nexus. Looks like Commander Jenkins is using HE shells down there,” he reported grimly.

  “Which means we need to hurry the hell up,” Xi snapped, throwing caution to the wind and maxing out Devil Crab’s walk cycle. “Keep an eye on Three’s main joint, but we can fight on five legs if we have to.”

  “You’re the boss, LT,” Podsy acknowledged tersely.

  “Damn right,” she agreed, though she felt like a fraud for doing so. She was barely nineteen years old while Podsy was already in his thirties. “Try to let me know before it goes kaput. I’ll back off if I need to, but every second counts.”

  “Agreed,” Podsednik replied. “I’ll pressurize Three’s main joint lube to stave off damage. It’ll shred the pumps, but we should get enough use out of them to make it back to the surface.”

  “If we survive that long,” Xi observed pointedly as she miscalculated one of her mech’s steps on a tight corner. Devil Crab’s front-right leg struck the tunnel wall, jarring her against her seat’s restraints as she adjusted course without losing speed.

  “Women drivers,” Podsy sighed in mock exasperation.

  “This bucket needed a new paint job anyway,” Xi retorted, flushing with embarrassment at the rookie error.

  “The Owl’s data packet showed 2nd Company is half a kilometer ahead,” Podsy reported. “Better slow down.”

  “Copy that,” she acknowledged, and soon the IFF—identification friend or foe—blips of 2nd Company appeared on her tactical display.

  Blue Lotus, Priscilla, Forktail, Creeper’s Daughter, and Dynamite were the first to appear on the screen, arranged in a dispersed file. They were soon joined by Mad Dog, Preacher, Spin Doctor, Dog Meat, Bad Joke, Wolverine, and Stuttering Steve. Devil Crab’s headlamps eventually illuminated the rear-most, humanoid Creeper’s Daughter in the hot, humid tunnel. As that light mech came into view, the final mech icon in 2nd Company, the bridge-laying Racetrack, appeared at the head of the company.

  “Devil Crab, this is Forktail,” came the nasal voice of Forktail’s Jock, Ensign Ford. “Take up position at the rear of the column and await further orders.”

  Xi bristled at Ford’s tone, haughty and hardly befitting the address of an officer in command. “What’s the situation, Forktail?” Xi demanded after biting back the flood of retorts that sprang to mind.

  “1st Company is cut off from 2nd Company by a cave-in,” Ford replied. “With Captain Murdoch engaged on the other side of the collapse, I am in command of 2nd Company. Stand by and await further orders, Devil Crab.”

  Xi had no idea how to respond to that. She knew that Ford was making some sort of power play at her expense, and she also knew that even as a lieutenant junior grade, Xi was Ford’s superior, even though Ford was a professional officer, straight from school, and Xi was merely the recipient of a battlefield commission. But precisely how she was supposed to respond to such insubordination escaped her.

  Thankfully, Podsy was quicker on his feet in this particular situation and cut in, “The lieutenant gave you an order, Ensign. Status report.”

  “Who is this?” Ford demanded.

  “This is Lieutenant Xi Bao,” Xi interrupted, fed up with the posturing in the middle of a combat operation. A garrison officer versus a combat officer—the difference was stark. She almost felt sorry for the pogue. “Let’s hear that status report, Ensign Ford.”

  A brief delay. “The tunnel collapsed during the insertion to the cavern, Lieutenant. We’ve tried clearing the rubble with explosives twice, and 1st Company has done the same from the other side, but the enemy has prepared counter-collapses. No matter how hard we try to...”

  The link went dead as Devil Crab’s systems briefly shut down. “What the hell?” Xi demanded before realizing what had happened: an EMP had just struck her mech. But this one was considerably less potent than the one she and Podsy had used on the surface, so Devil Crab’s systems were able to recover with a quick reboot. “I thought we had the only pulse warhead in the battalion,” she snapped as she manually restarted several of Devil Crab’s systems.

  “That wasn’t a pulse warhead. Too weak,” Podsy explained before it came to him. “It must have been a fusion plant overload.”

  “Only Kamehameha’s got a fusion plant.” Xi furrowed her brow as the last of the systems came back online.

  “Reports were after we spiked the rock-biters top-side, they went into a stupor,” Podsy mused.

  Xi nodded in understanding as she stomped Devil Crab past the motionless 2nd Company mechs, which were only now beginning to stir. “Which means Commander Jenkins knowingly popped Kamehameha’s core, and that we’ve got a window to breach the cavern before the enemy can counter our efforts. We’ve g
ot to move. Load AP into the fifteens,” she ordered, smirking triumphantly as she added, “let’s blow this hole.”

  “Seriously?” Podsy drawled as he directed the auto-loading system of Devil Crab’s twin fifteen-kilo guns. “Your one-liners could use some work. AP shells up.”

  She brought Devil Crab to a stop fifty meters from the pile of rubble blocking their path, a pile which was significantly smaller than she had expected it to be. At the very top, she could see muzzle flashes lighting the cavern beyond, which meant that with a few shots, she could probably clear a hold large enough to squeeze some of the smaller mechs through.

  A few dozen FGF Pounders were clinging to the tunnel’s walls, prompting her to pipe her voice through the mech’s external speakers. “This is Devil Crab. We’re going to clear the tunnel. All personnel are ordered to take cover.”

  The Pounders scrambled to safety behind the various mechs lining the tunnel, and when the last of them had reached safety, she commanded, “Fire One.”

  “Roger,” Podsy confirmed. Devil Crab bucked violently as her left gun thundered, sending its slug into the upper part of the rubble pile.

  “Fire Two.”

  “On the way,” Podsy acknowledged, and again the Scorpion-class mech rocked. When the dust had settled, she could see far more light streaming through the gap at the top of the rubble pile.

  Before she could call for the guns to be reloaded, the radio crackled to life with Ford’s pinched, nasal voice, “Cease fire! Cease fire, Devil Crab. Cease fire!”

  “Report, Ensign,” Xi demanded, more surprised than anything at Ford’s histrionics.

  “Are you insane?!” Ford screeched as his mech, Forktail, turned toward Devil Crab. “We’re half a kilometer underground! You’ll collapse the whole system on top of our heads!”

  “Stand down, Ensign,” Xi growled, noting that Forktail’s rocket launchers were cycling through their target-acquisition sequence. “We’ve got comrades fighting on the other side of that rock pile and we’re going to reinforce them.”