by C H Gideon
Suddenly, Elvira lost power to her left legs. It was all Xi could do to keep the mech from tumbling down the scrabble as she fought to keep its still-functioning right legs pinned to the boulder pile. “Podsy!” she cried in alarm.
“I’ve got an electrical overload in the left main bus,” Podsednik replied, undoing his harness and making his way to the rear of the cabin. “We’ve got a coolant leak that shorted the thing out and tripped the breaker. I’m on it.”
The blast doors behind her slammed shut, causing her to demand, “Podsy, I need an update!”
“Keep fighting, LT,” Podsy replied tersely. “I’ll have the main bus back up in a few seconds.”
She continued pouring machine gun fire into the surging Arh’Kel as Flaming Rose came up beside her vulnerable left flank. Covering her, Captain Murdoch’s mech unleashed a swarm of rockets into the two railguns that had appeared moments earlier. The enemy mounts exploded, leaving a single railgun on her tactical board.
A handful of Arh’Kel had managed to crawl up Flaming Rose’s right side, which now faced Elvira. Trapper’s Pounders scratched Murdoch’s itch with a combination of small arms fire and hand grenades, sending the boarding Arh’Kel lifelessly off the Rose. As they did, Xi couldn’t help but think that Murdoch had been less concerned with covering her vulnerable flank than he was with scraping rock-biters off his own hull.
There was an audible pop from the rear compartment, followed by a flickering of the onboard electrical systems before Elvira’s left legs were once again at her command.
“Good work, Podsy,” she said, unable to keep the concern from her voice as she spoke.
“Nothing to it,” he replied, but she had spent enough time with him to know that Podsy was hurt. Bad.
There was nothing she could do for him now except keep fighting in the hope that they could clear a hole for Roy to come down and do its thing. If she wanted to help Podsy, she needed to survive this nexus. That meant fighting her ass off, even if she had to claw at the Arh’Kel with her bloody fingertips.
So that was exactly what she did.
17
Ballad of Metal & Meat
“Punch it, Chaps,” Jenkins ordered after Elvira and Flaming Rose faltered near the base of the rubble-strewn slope.
Chaps drove Roy down the slope, easily traversing the loose surface as the battalion’s most advanced mech stormed the cavern with coilguns spraying across the churning horde of Arh’Kel.
The four-legged Roy, half-rolling and half-walking down the treacherous path, paused its descent for a half-second as Chaps sent a pair of fifteen-kilo shells across the cavern. The railguns Chaps had targeted flew apart in a spray of shrapnel as Roy formally announced its arrival.
Jenkins saw that the junction contained far more rock-biters than they had initially expected. True to form, his people had done good work in thinning that number with a constant spray of depleted-uranium slugs. Muzzle flashes illuminated the dimly-lit cavern, making the Arh’Kel look even more terrifying as their bizarre cartwheeling movements brought them ever-closer to the mechs.
The roar of the other mechs’ machine guns was now complemented by the high-pitched whine of Roy’s coilguns, and as the battalion’s command vehicle neared Elvira’s rear, the Scorpion-class mech finally made it to the cavern floor.
Flaming Rose pulled to the left, its makeshift anti-boarding devices whirring and slicing through whichever Arh’Kel were unfortunate enough to get too close. From Elvira’s back, Trapper’s Pounders launched RPGs at rock-biters clinging to the Rose’s rear. Arh’Kel plasma torches had already cut deep into the Rose’s rear left leg assembly, and it looked like the limb could not withstand much more abuse.
Unfortunately, one of the Pounders’ RPGs went low and finished the job the Arh’Kel had started. Down one leg out of eight, Flaming Rose spun defiantly, spraying the cavern with roaring chain guns and sending AP shells into one of the tunnels through which rock-biters continued to pour.
Elvira stomped to the right, wading into the rock-biters and crushing several beneath her six-legged frame while her machine guns tore deep into the Arh’Kel line.
But as much as he liked to see his people lay waste to the rock-biters, Jenkins knew that there wasn’t enough ammo on the planet to stop the horde.
“Get ready, Styles,” Jenkins said as Roy moved between Elvira and Flaming Rose, and together the three mechs advanced in a mutually-supportive triangle formation. Elvira pivoted, angling her prow toward the mouth of the cavern while Flaming Rose and Roy took position at hundred-twenty-degree offsets. All three mechs’ sterns pointed to the center of their triangular position, and together they waded into the cavern while the tide of rock-biter horde grew steadily in size and ferocity.
Small arms fire hammered at Roy’s armored hull, scraping away at the surprisingly effective anti-boarding systems that Xi and Styles had seen installed on the three mechs. But those systems still claimed dozens of Arh’Kel lives, while the wounded were trampled by their fellows as they surged toward the trio of mechs.
“Four hundred in range…” Styles called out just as a railgun bolt struck Roy’s prow. “Four twenty…”
Even with the three mechs’ anti-personnel weapons cycling at maximum speed, splattering rock-biter gore across the cavern floor until the stone was slick and purple, the press of Arh’Kel bore down on the advancing mechs.
“Four sixty,” Styles declared as Flaming Rose was struck by a high-velocity projectile. For a moment, it looked like the hit had killed the mech outright when it halted and its guns went silent. But after a few tense seconds, Murdoch’s vehicle stirred to life and resumed its place in the triad, though it was clear from its uncoordinated movements that the Rose was struggling.
The deeper they moved into the cavern, the more convinced Jenkins became that they could achieve their objective. In the face of overwhelming odds, and even in spite of shaky morale caused by insubordinate and inflexible officers, Jenkins’ people had finally come together in a way he had doubted possible as recently as a few days earlier.
Win or lose, this push represented the greatest success that Lee Jenkins could have hoped for. He had overseen the birth of an armor unit that had done more damage to the rock-biters in a shorter span of time than even the vaunted Marines had managed during their first engagements.
“Five hundred!” Styles declared, executing the command and sending the high-gain signal out into the crowd of silica-based warriors. For the briefest moment, the throng of rock-biters paused. Styles had actually done it!
But the moment was short-lived, and the Arh’Kel resumed their assault on the mechs with renewed vigor. Whatever Styles did had pissed them off, and they were looking to vent whatever passed for a spleen in their peculiar physiology.
“Try again, Chief,” Jenkins encouraged, knowing that it was all down to a second try. Roy’s coilguns were already half-depleted, and the command vehicle had only been down the hole for half as long as Elvira. Guns were going to start running dry, and when they did, the rock-biters would swarm and the mechs would die.
“Five forty,” Styles said shakily, and a quick look showed sweat streaming down his nose and cheeks. “Re-programming the signal…executing now!”
Jenkins held his breath and, again, the horde of Arh’Kel paused in unison. They were clearly being affected by Styles’ takeover attempt, but just as before, they quickly shook it off and resumed the attack.
Plasma torches tore into Flaming Rose’s hull, cutting deep gashes into the armor protecting her main leg joints. Elvira’s machine guns swept across Murdoch’s mech, sniping a few of the rock-biters while even more clambered aboard to take their place.
Roy was rocked yet again by railgun fire, causing warning alarms to scream across the mech’s status boards. Chaps returned the favor with a pair of fifteen-kilo slugs that wrecked the offending HWP, but plasma torches soon tore into Roy’s armor, causing more alarms to wail.
Roy lurched to the right as Trapp
er’s Pounders sent RPGs into the command vehicle’s flank, scrubbing a handful of boarders off the hull. The grenades missed the transceiver array—the key piece of equipment if Styles’ plan was to work. Jenkins knew that array would take mere seconds to destroy once an Arh’Kel went to work on it.
“Trying again,” Styles said weakly, sending another virtual signal out into the cavern.
Again they paused, and again they charged. Rock-biters clawed atop Roy’s hull, and the hiss of their plasma torches filled the cabin.
Just as Jenkins was about to lose hope, something completely unexpected happened:
Elvira slammed into Roy with enough force to jostle everyone against their harnesses.
More importantly, it knocked the clambering rock-biters off the command vehicle’s hull.
“Good thinking, Xi,” he whispered, knowing this battle was about to end.
One way or the other.
“Hang on!” Xi yelled, hoping that the Pounders weren’t so deaf they couldn’t hear her warning over the line. Raising Elvira’s front legs up, she struck them down on Roy’s stern, digging the sharp points of her legs several centimeters into the command vehicle’s white-hot armor.
Thankfully, Chaps seemed to understand what she was thinking. After a few seconds’ work, she managed to climb her mech halfway up Roy’s badly-battered stern where the all-important transceiver array was located.
Elvira’s machine guns rotated, firing down on the encroaching rock-biters as they surged forward. Dozens clambered aboard the Scorpion-class mech and were quickly repelled by Pounder hand grenades and RPGs. Xi had just sentenced the Pounders to death by shielding Roy with Elvira’s armor, but at this point, she didn’t see a choice.
The only thing that mattered was protecting Styles and that transceiver, so that was exactly what she intended to do.
And if someone had seen tears running down her cheeks as she thought about the fate that would soon befall the Pounders who had fought so hard to protect her, she wouldn’t have been ashamed to admit they were real.
Two railgun strikes slammed into Elvira, which shielded Roy from a full third of the cavern as her pilot threw herself on top of the command vehicle to buy it precious seconds.
“Seven fifty,” Styles said tremulously. “Transmitting…”
The horde stopped its movements, and at this point, Jenkins was so numb that he honestly didn’t care if it worked or not. He wanted victory so badly he could taste it, but the past few minutes had been more intense and terrifying than a human being was designed to cope with. Like any soldier caught too long in the clash of metal and meat, he felt disconnected from events around him, more an observer of his own actions than their author.
Whatever happened, happened. All he could do was focus on his job, which at that instant meant staring at the screen as Styles’ latest takeover swept across the nearby Arh’Kel.
Then they moved again, and he felt his heart sink.
The Arh’Kel within the fifty-meter perimeter churned, with plasma torches igniting and cutting into metal as they seemed set to resume their bloody work.
But then some of the plasma torches cut out. Some reignited, only to cut out a few seconds later. Then Arh’Kel outside the fifty-meter perimeter began milling around, apparently aimless as the unthinkable occurred before their very eyes.
“Styles…” Jenkins whispered. “You’ve done it!”
Styles’ eyes were wide as he sat, frozen mid-motion with his attention completely fixed on the displays.
The reverie was broken by an explosion from Flaming Rose, which began spewing fiery fuel across the nearby rock-biters. The Arh’Kel turned toward the explosion, but without the machine-like unity that made them such an indomitable force. Still, hundreds of them moved toward Murdoch’s mech, plasma torches igniting as they made clear their intention to finish the crippled vehicle off.
“Open fire, Commander?” Chaps asked, a rare note of uncertainty in his voice.
Jenkins was torn. He hadn’t anticipated a situation where the rock-biters might be partially pacified, but still dangerous enough to destroy one of his vehicles. But if they continued to ignore Roy, it might buy Styles enough time to fully complete his takeover which, at this point, appeared to be only partially successful.
“Negative,” he said, knowing it was one of the rare moments in his life that he would remember for the rest of his days—no matter the outcome. “Hold your fire. Styles…” He gently placed a hand on the chief warrant’s shoulder. “How do you finish this?”
Styles was frozen, incapable of responding or even acknowledging Jenkins’ query. Jenkins squeezed his shoulder firmly, causing the other man to snap out of it.
“Styles…” he repeated, keeping his voice low and steady.
“Right, right…” Styles exhaled several times before nodding. “Finish… Okay, I’ve got a few ideas,” he said, and his fingers were soon moving across his console.
Precious seconds passed as the rock-biters tore into Flaming Rose, which had either already died along with its crew or was playing dead in the hope of avoiding further bloodshed. Plasma torches rent the mighty mech’s legs off at their main joints, its guns were slagged, and its rocket launchers were cut into tiny bits of scrap as the rock-biters methodically tore the vehicle apart.
But before they breached the Rose’s cabin, Styles said, “Let’s try this.”
As soon as he sent the signal, the rock-biters turned into silicon-based statues.
Styles looked at a second display, which showed a real-time feed of an implant he had plugged into the system to better monitor the effects of his inputs. He had been fairly clear that it would be easy to overload the system, just as he had done back at HQ, and had convinced Jenkins to set up the ‘control’ unit right there in Roy’s cabin.
“I think…” he began hesitantly, audibly swallowing a dry knot in his throat before he said, “I think I’ve put them to sleep.”
“How long will that last?” Jenkins pressed.
“Arh’Kel can hibernate for decades, Commander,” Styles replied, though his tone wasn’t exactly filling Jenkins with confidence. “The problem is I don’t know enough about their nervous systems. The sooner I can take active control of them, the better. They might stay under like this for a few minutes, hours, or possibly even days.”
“We don’t have days, Chief,” Jenkins warned.
“I’m aware of that, sir,” Styles assured him, “but I think…I might be able to do this. Just…back off. Sir,” he added belatedly. “I need some space.”
“You’ve got it.” Jenkins nodded, and for the next hour, he did his best not to interrupt the talented technician as he worked frantically to re-shape the course of the Arh’Kel-Terran Wars.
18
A Key Assist
“Podsy,” Xi said, trying and failing to override the blast door that sealed her off from the rest of the cabin, “open this door. Now!”
“Just hang…tight,” he said, his breathing labored as he spoke to her through the mech’s intercom system. “I can’t seem to…get the thing…unlocked.”
She wanted to do something to help him. He had obviously been hurt in the fight, but as the minutes ticked by, it became clear those wounds would prove fatal if he didn’t get help. Fast.
Deciding that enough was enough, Xi broke open the emergency toolkit beneath her chair and took out the miniature plasma cutter. It would take a few minutes to cut through the door with it, but she couldn’t sit here doing nothing for another second. Her Wrench, her best friend, was dying on the other side of that door.
As she ignited the torch, another thought came to her, which filled her with a nearly overpowering sense of guilt that remained lodged in the center of her consciousness:
I can’t let him die alone.
She cut into the door, just as Podsy had shown her, and after a few minutes’ work that came over Podsy’s protests, she managed to cut a narrow window through which she could barely squeeze.
Ignoring the burns on her hips and sides, which had gone straight through her enviro-suit where she had touched the freshly-burned metal, she crawled into the rear cabin and found Podsy sitting beside his station.
The left side of his face was black from burns, and his legs were a ruined mess. It took her a few seconds to realize what had happened, but when it did, she couldn’t keep the tears from coming. The coolant system must have sprayed hot liquid all over his legs, covering them with second and third-degree burns before an electrical discharge had charred half of his face.
“Podsy, you stupid bastard,” she cried. “Why didn’t you say something?”
He smiled weakly. “I didn’t…want you to…worry.”
His breathing was hoarse, and in his hand was a partially-opened emergency tracheotomy kit from the mech’s medical supply cabinet.
“Only you would think you could do something like this yourself,” she said, fighting to steady her bloody fingers as she worked to open the damned kit. Screaming in more frustration than pain, she finally managed to rip the lid off the small polymer box, scattering its contents onto the floor.
“Just…it’s okay…” he said, placing a hand on her wrist.
“Like hell it is!” she snapped as she snatched up the scalpel. “I’ve done this on dummies a hundred times, so I’ve had plenty of practice,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Now lie down and shut up.”
