‘What the… Did that thing just fire at us?’ Frankie yelled.
The harsh staccato noise of the flyers cannon sounded again, followed immediately by the sound of bullets hitting the back of the van.
‘We can’t take too much of this,’ Gibson hissed, ‘that thing will tear us apart.’
‘Can’t you swerve, dodge the bullets,’ the Doctor offered.
‘I’m driving a large slow, lumbering target, I ain’t dodging shit, now stop back seat driving and do something,’ Gibson yelled.
Frankie looked at the gun in her lap and shrugged. She picked it up and lowered the window as more bullets slammed home. Frankie waited for this latest burst to stop, watching as stray bullets tore adjacent cars and their occupants to shreds beside them.
Twisting herself around, she climbed out of the window, sitting on the frame facing into the car and lifted her gun, bringing it to bear on the flyer and squeezing the trigger.
The gun barked in her arms as she fired burst after burst at the aircraft.
The bullets found their mark, creating a shower of sparks as they ricocheted off the armoured hull of the flyer.
The ship's cannon fired again in answer, making Frankie duck inside as the van and the road around them exploded with sparks and exploding concrete.
She threw the rifle onto the dashboard, angry at it.
‘This ain’t doing anything to that monster,’ she muttered to herself, as something the gun landed on moved and caught her eye. She pulled it from under the rifle and glanced over the basic Data Pad. It was a cargo manifest and described what was in the van.
Sweeping her eyes over it, she couldn’t help the slightly smug grin that grew on her face as she realised what the sheet said.
She looked behind her and saw the closed access hatch that led to the rear of the van and immediately started to climb over the Doctor, dropping the pad back where she found it.
‘Hey… What the… watch what you’re doing. Ow! That hurt,’ he finished as she moved through the gap between the long seat she and the Doctor sat on and the driver’s seat. She ignored the Doctors protests and went for the hatch, hoping that the cargo was still aboard the van. The hatch was locked, but with a modicum of brute strength, she forced it, breaking it open as gunfire hit the van once more, causing all three of them to flinch, waiting for the inevitable moment when the cannon broke through the van's armour.
The gunfire paused again, and Frankie slid the hatch across creating a small door that she could slip through.
‘This,’ she answered the Doctor, ‘is what’s so urgent,’ Frankie said and indicated they should look into the rear of the van.
Suspended from Kevlar weave straps, a large Mech filled the back of the vehicle, complete with high-powered weaponry of its own.
‘Aaah, of course,’ said the Doctor.
‘A Mech? Excellent,’ Gibson grinned. ‘Get in that thing girl and show them bastards what we’re capable of.’
‘I don’t know if…’ she said hesitantly, looking at the Doctor. She had been about to say that she wasn’t sure if she could pilot the Mech, only to see the Doctors eyebrows raise, making her rethink, and suddenly the knowledge of how to pilot a Mech flooded through her mind from the data storage of her cyber brain.
But of course the Doctor would give her that skill, he had given her everything else she needed. She wondered how long this would go on for, discovering these new abilities?
Frankie nodded at the Doctor and slid through the hatch into the shadowy interior of the van’s cargo area and inched her way around the huge bipedal Mech. It was difficult to make out the things true shape in the unlit cargo area in these cramped conditions. It looked like it had curled up to fit into the back of the van. The thing was covered in curved armour plating with large joints and limbs. She also noted there were a few weapons hung on the walls of the van with grips that were far too big for a human to use. These were designed for the Mech to handle.
Reaching the front, she saw no way to get into it, realising she would need to hack the thing first. She noted the cables and wires that led from a few ports on the Mech’s body and ran over to a data terminal to her right which had a few lights on it to indicate that it seemed to be running.
She scanned the area making the wireless signal details appear in her vision and wasted no time in using her breaching software to hack into the terminal. Moments later, as more bullets hammered into the van, she was looking at the start up sequence on the terminals readout and set it running. She looked around her and saw how the gunfire they were taking had begun to warp the back of the van, bending the armour inwards as each bullet hit.
The van couldn’t take much more of this punishment, she frowned.
The sounds of hydraulics hissing and levering open caught her attention and brought her focus back to the Mech. The chest of the metal beast had opened up like petals on a flower, revealing a human-shaped space inside that looked like a very snug fit.
She hesitated, feeling a little scared about getting inside this mechanoid fighting machine, wondering if Gibson or the Doctor might be better suited to get into it.
More gunfire peppered the rear of the van, and this time, a couple of holes appeared, letting small shafts of light stab into the shadowy darkness in the back of the van.
‘Are you in there yet? We can’t take much more of this. You need to get that thing working and quick,’ Gibson shouted back.
‘Shit,’ she whispered to herself. There was nothing for it, she had to do this, they were dead otherwise. ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ she yelled and started to clamber up over the thing and slid herself down into it. There were holes for each of her legs, a saddle to sit on and on either side of her, holes for her arms. In front of her small screens and readouts showed what she should do and where she should position herself to avoid serious injury when the thing closed up around her.
‘Aaah, crap, I don’t like this,’ she quietly muttered, but she did it anyway, and pressed her neck back against a data port that hooked up to the sockets on the back of her neck. Suddenly, as she connected up to it, it was almost as if the whole thing was a part of her or an extension of her, and all the doubt about getting inside of it started to ebb away.
With a simple command, the Mech closed up around her, the padded interior moulding to her shape and hugging her. The Straps that held the Mech in place released and she was suddenly in control. The screens inside of it had interlocked as the Mech closed up to provided a great wide angle view of the space around her as more gunfire sprayed the back of the van this time tearing sizable holes in the punished armour.
Frankie reached for the meanest looking cannon hung up on the wall beside her and moved the Mech into a crouch. She could see on the readouts now a diagram of the thing and saw that the Mech looked like a huge bulky humanoid in shape, covered in thick armoured plates, complete with arms and legs, and even a small head.
‘Go get ‘em, Frankie,’ Gibson said, as she reached up with her huge Mech arm and gripped the roof by one of the newly created holes that had been punched into it and pulled.
The entire roof of the van ripped back as she brought the Mech into a standing position, raised the cannon to point at the flyer and pulled the trigger.
The gun rained fire onto the aircraft, the bullets and tracer rounds exploding in showers of sparks against the Flyers hull as it accelerated forward to hover above the van. It’s underside hatch opened as she fired on it.
Frankie adjusted her aim and fired up into one of the jet engines which exploded making it tilt to Frankie’s left.
From the hatch on the flyers belly, three figures leapt out above the van and dropped towards her. Frankie moved the cannon and caught one in her field of fire, causing him to explode in a bloody rain of human and cyborg parts as the flyer banked away behind them
Of the two others, one female Agent landed behind her, the other, a man, just in front of her on the very back of the van. The man’s Cybernetic arms and clawed hands bit in
to the armour like butter as he climbed over the back of the vehicle. Frankie tried to bring her cannon to bear on the Agent before her, but she couldn’t quite get an angle on him as he was just too close.
Her struggle gave the Agent precious seconds, though, and he raised his arm which snapped open to reveal a gun, which he fired immediately at her. Frankie flinched, bringing her Mech’s arm up to shield herself, but wondered if that had been necessary. The rounds bounced off the Mech’s armour. A couple of orange icons popped up, warning her of the stresses that the gunfire was placing on the machine, but it seemed to cope perfectly well with the attack.
Frankie didn’t like being on the defensive, though, and decided she would use her cannon as a club instead, swinging the huge metal weapon at the Agent, hitting him around the head with it.
He flailed about, the skin on his cheek and temple ripped and bloody, revealing the armoured skull beneath. The Agent looked back at her and gritted his teeth in pure rage and started to climb forward with his clawed hands. Frankie reached for him and caught his head in the Mech’s hand just as red warning lights flashed in her Heads Up Display. The HUD warned her that someone or something was attempting to force open one of the access hatches on the rear of the Mech.
It must be that second Agent. This first one was the decoy allowing his friend to go to work on her elsewhere.
‘Aaagh,’ Frankie yelled and forced the Mech to crush Agent’s head that it held in its hand. The man screamed for a moment until the armoured skull gave way and collapsed in the Mech’s hand. The Agent’s body went limp, so Frankie tossed it away off the side of the road as more warning icons flashed up on her screen.
Off in the distance, she noted the Flyer, still aflame had started to drop away and caught sight of a Mech, similar to hers, drop out of the rear of the aircraft and fire its boosters. The thing flew up into the sky and started to curve around in their direction. They were going to have company in a matter of moments.
Frankie focused back on the matter at hand and the last Agent who was attempting to pry open her Armoured suit. She didn’t waste any time trying to be clever. Instead, she just threw herself backwards crushing the Agent between her and the remains of the Van’s crumpled roof. The Agent screamed, and Frankie thought the voice sounded mildly familiar.
‘You fuck, you’ll pay for that,’ Frankie heard the Agent yell as she hissed with the pain. Sensors showed she was still holding onto the Mech, so Frankie steadied herself and threw her body forward in an attempt to throw the Agent off of her back.
Frankie looked up, the suits sensors indicated that the Agent was no longer on her, and quickly saw that the Agent was hanging onto the ruined remains of the back of the van with one hand.
Frankie brought the Mech into a standing position again and noticed that there was little left of the Agents legs. Frankie must have crushed the Agent from the waist down with her little backwards shove and destroyed nearly everything below her hips.
To top it off, she recognised the woman from earlier. It was Myasma, the Agent who had kidnapped the Doctor and attacked her in her apartment.
As Frankie looked on, astonished that the same woman was still causing her problems after having thrown her from her apartment window, the Agent raised her other arm that had transformed into the small Mini Gun and tried to aim it at Frankie’s Mech.
Frankie reacted before Myasma could shoot, though, bringing her cannon up, pointed it at the Agent’s hand that gripped the back of the van and fired.
Everything below Myasma’s elbow exploded in blood and metal as she fell away and rolled down the road behind them as the van continued to speed along the highway. Had she killed her this time? There was no way to know.
Movement caught her attention, so Frankie looked up just in time to see gunfire erupt from the swiftly approaching Mech. The rounds hammered into the van and her armoured suit, as she raised a hand to shield herself.
She heard a piercing yell from behind her and glanced back into the ruined cab of the van to see Gibson holding his shoulder and blood oozing from between his fingers.
Fury and rage rose up within her like a volcano as she snapped her head back around to look at the approaching Mech, and leapt from the van, firing boosters of her own.
In less than a second, screaming in rage as she went, she had slammed into the Corporation Mech like a battering ram. Using her gun like a club, she gripped onto the enemy Mech. Her view screens glitched with digital static from the collision as the pair tumbled from the sky and crashed into the tarmac of the highway.
Frankie still felt consumed with anger and wasted no time in rising from the ground and backhanding the head of the Corp Mech, smashing some of its sensors with sparks and warped bits of metal clattering to the floor.
It didn’t stop him, though, and the Corp Mech shot to its feet and charged at Frankie, picking her up and throwing her back into the side of a truck.
The trailer buckled beneath her as cars screeched to a halt all around them, their occupants running from them in panic.
The Corp Mech raised its arm and pointed it at her as a built in gun snapped out of its forearm and fired. Her read out inside the Mech fizzed as red icons and warning messages appeared before her reporting the damage.
Frankie still had hold of her canon, though, and aimed at the Corp Mech’s leg, pulling the trigger for the high powered, single shot explosive rounds. The rapport from the gun was immense, shattering the windows of a couple of too close cars as it tore the leg off the Corp Mech, sending it twisting onto the road face down.
Frankie forced her damaged Mech to pull itself from the side of the truck and dropped to the floor. Her suit’s left arm was useless now, but she wasn’t too worried.
She eyed the Mech on the floor before her. It lay still for a moment before suddenly moving again and doing its best to pull itself upright with only one leg.
Frankie aimed her cannon at the Mech’s head and fired a burst of its standard rounds, tearing it apart. The Mech dropped to the floor, suddenly still and silent.
The operator wouldn't have their head in there. It wasn’t a helmet. The entire body of the pilot would be inside the chest cavity, but destroying the sensor array in the head of the suit would render it blind.
‘Did I get you?’ Frankie muttered to herself, curious to know if she’d won. She walked up to it, cautious but confident and used her Mech’s foot to turn the thing over while pointing her gun at it.
As the enemy Mech rolled, the robotic arm knocked her gun sideways, grabbing the weapon and pulling. It had been bluffing. Frankie got yanked forward as well, and the Corp Mech’s free arm caught hold of the front of her suit pulling her sideways.
‘Damnit, I knew you were still going,’ she yelped, not that the other Mech could hear her.
She landed on her back as the Corp Mech used the momentum from her fall to get on top of her, and at the same time pull the cannon from Frankie’s hand. The Corporation Mech held her gun by the barrel and brought it down, hitting her with it as if it were a club.
Frankie raised her working arm to fend off the hits as best she could, most of which did little to her, but it did get a good couple of hit’s to her Mech’s head, destroying most of its sensors before Frankie finally managed to catch the gun in her Mech’s hand.
They struggled like that for a few moments, until the Corp Mech used it’s free hand to smash the remaining sensors.
Frankie’s screens went black, the Mech still worked, but she was blind now and could see nothing the Corp Mech was doing.
‘Aaaah, fudge it,’ she growled and flicked a switch. Weapon ports slid open on her Mech’s body revealing mini missiles beneath, which Frankie wasted no time in launching. They exploded against the Corps Mech just above her, hitting them both with the explosive shockwave and shrapnel.
Frankie felt the blast even inside the Mech suit. Had she been in her biological body that blast wave would have winded her at the very least, but her new body protected her.
Everything on the Mech’s HUD flashed red, and her Cyberbrain was reporting an unstable link to the Mech. Her armoured suit was useless, so she decided just to lay there for a moment looking at the black screens before her. She was no longer being jostled by the other Mech, meaning it wasn’t on top of her anymore, so she pulled on one of the emergency releases, causing all the hatches on the Mech to snap open.
Frankie disconnected from the Mech and felt much more like herself again as she pulled herself up and out of the machine. Her own Mech had been severely scorched and dented by the fight, while the Corporation Mech lay still a few meters away, smoking. Frankie knew from being connected to her Mech that there were a few concealed hand weapons on it, so she reached for one of the rifles, opening its protective hatch and pulling it out as she kept her eyes on opponent. It still hadn’t moved, so she reached again and found a pistol which she stuffed into the back of her leggings before picking up the rifle again and jumping down off the Mech onto the concrete, bringing her gun up and looking around her. A little way off she could see the ruined van and the Doctor stood next to it, looking at her. They were a few hundred meters away.
‘Frankie, come on, we have to leave,’ Frankie heard the Doc communicate to her in her head.
‘You have comms with me?’ Frankie sent back, not remembering setting that up with him.
‘I created that body of yours, my dear, of course I do,’ the Doctor explained like he was talking to an infant.
Frankie scowled back at him, she didn’t like being talked down too and didn’t like that the Doctor seemed to have access to her communication systems.
‘Gibson is hurt, he’s losing blood, we have to go,’ he continued.
‘I know, one moment, I have to be sure,’ she sent back, keeping her eyes fixed on the enemy Mech. She had no time to be cautious it seemed, so she moved quickly over to the downed Mech and immediately saw the holes her missiles had torn into it. She couldn’t see the pilot properly, but there was a lot of blood in there.
She pushed the side of the robot with her foot, rocking it a bit, but it didn’t move any more than that.
Promethean Files 1: The New Prometheus Page 11
