Fang: A World at War Novel (World at War Online Book 3)

by Mitchell T. Jacobs

  “Then what are they worshiping?”

  “The suit, maybe?” Nora suggested.

  “Why?”

  Nora shrugged. “Who knows? It's a moot point right now, unless we can take it out.”

  “Then we need to move.”

  “Wait,” Nora said. Her light had caught something up ahead.

  There was a pedestal with two grooves. They looked to be the same size as the feet of the mech.

  “A charging station?” Zach said. “Explains how they were able to keep something this complicated powered. Though it doesn't explain how they operate it.”

  “Maybe it's a magic ritual to them,” Nora shrugged. “Tech can easily be seen as magic if it's advanced enough.”

  “OK, so maybe if we can destroy the charging station we can keep it from being powered. That could make our job easier the next time around.”

  “Destroy it with what?”

  “We-”

  A screech filled the air, just before stalker came charging in with an axe in hand. It buried the blade in Zach's shoulder.

  His scream of pain was awful, but he didn't die. Zach dropped his gun and grappled with the stalker, slamming it into a wall and wrestling about. The axe was still stuck in his shoulder.

  Nora hesitated for a second, not sure what to do. She couldn't shoot because there was too great of risk she would hit Zach, and using a knife wasn't much better. She gripped her gun and started to charge. One blow from the butt of her carbine would probably be enough to get the stalker off from him.

  But then the creature screeched in pain. Zach had gotten his trench knife out and had stabbed the stalker through the ear. He collapsed on the ground with the axe still embedded in his shoulder.

  “Zach,” Nora said as she rushed over. “Javy, Zach is injured,” she said over the link.

  “Don't bother,” he said and then pointed. “Look.”

  Nora did so. To her amazement a panel had lifted up, revealing a small chamber behind it. But that wasn't the only thing.

  Inside was another powered armor suit, lying dormant.

  “There's our trump card,” Zach said.

  “Who's going to pilot it? Assuming that we can get it started,” Nora said.

  “The person who doesn't have an axe in their shoulder right now,” Zach replied with some snark.

  “OK. Stay there and I'll try to get help for you,” Nora told him.

  “Screw that. I can die for all I care right now. Just go kill the boss so we can take this place.”

  “I will,” Nora said.

  The hatch of the suit was open. Nora tried to figure out how she was supposed to get inside. She finally figured out that the mech was actually facing toward the wall. With that in mind she climbed into the suit, placing her feet inside the legs and her hands inside the arms. Inside the arms were two handles and something that felt like triggers inside of them. Nora accidentally pulled on one and the hatch behind her closed.

  Nothing happened. The blackness around here was complete, and for one awful moment Nora thought she had trapped herself inside a standing coffin. But then a screen flashed up in front of her. Initial Boot Sequence.

  A calm, computerized male voice came over the speakers inside of the suit. “Initial boot sequence started. Vocal recognition settings will be activated. Please state the phrase displayed in front of you.”

  “See Spot run,” Nora repeated.

  “Vocal recognition set. Please test upper extremity movement.”

  Nora wondered just how she was supposed to do that.

  “Please test upper extremity movement,” the voice repeated.

  She thought for a moment, then tried to move her arms just like she would with her normal body. To her delight the arms of the mech moved as well.

  “Test successful. All systems active. Please dismount from platform.”

  Nora wanted to know just how she was supposed to do that when she was facing the wall, but then the platform rotated. She stepped off and saw Zach giving her a thumbs up.

  “Go get 'em,” the speakers said in his voice.

  The front door wasn't an option, but there was another way out of the building. The boss had used it, after all.

  Nora found it.

  Outside the scene in front of her was carnage. Ghost Battalion was still fighting, but the situation was hopeless for them. The mech was too powerful for them to deal with on their own. But now she had arrived.

  Nora had been studying the systems as closely as possible ever since she had entered the cockpit. There were guns mounted on both arms of the exoskeleton. She wasn't sure how they fired, but she could make a good guess.

  In front of her the enemy monstrosity turned, looking at her almost like it was confused. Some of the Hydra troops looked like they were confused as well. Nora decided to end that once and for all.

  She extended her right arm and pulled the trigger.

  Even inside the suit with its considerable strength, the recoil was noticeable. A shell slammed into the enemy mech, forcing it to stagger backward. Nora pulled the trigger again. Another shell slammed into the enemy. She smiled in satisfaction. Finally, something could hurt it.

  The mech straightened up and made a desperate charge at her, swinging its blades with all its might. Against a squad on foot the charge would be deadly. But she was on equal footing.

  Nora dodged nimbly to the side. As the swing missed her, she put another shell into the enemy at point blank range.

  The pure kinetic force of the shot blasted the mech backward with a hole punched straight into the midsection. It slumped over and then slammed into the ground.

  A loud cheer went up from the remaining troops outside.

  Nora got on the line with Javy. “Zach's inside the main building, injured,” she told him. “He needs medical attention fast.”

  “Right. That you in the mech?” Javy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good job with that,” he said. “Now we might have a chance.”

  “Great job Nora,” Anna said over the radio. “You turned the tide.”

  “Just doing what needed to be done,” Nora replied.

  “Still, congratulations are in order. At least let us shake your hand.”

  “I will,” Nora said. She looked around the cockpit. “Erm, as soon as I figure out how to get out of this thing, that is.”

  “You pulled off quite the triumph,” Danny said from her left. They were leaning up against a wrecked brick wall, trying to collect themselves after the tense battle.

  “We pulled it off,” Nora corrected. “All of us.”

  “Well, that's relatively speaking. We'd be dead if you didn't come charging out in the mech suit.”

  “Probably.” She looked over at it, lying dormant in the middle of the plaza. “But at least we won. We have another district. And that's something to be proud of.”

  “Your guys did good,” Danny said. “All of them. They helped carry us to the win.”

  Nora smiled. “They did, didn't they?”

  “Mind if I try taking it for a spin?” Danny asked.

  “I don't think you can,” Nora told him. “I had to set a vocal recognition key to get it to work. Besides, I don't think we want to mess around with it until Hephaestus can get a look at it.”

  Danny nodded. “Right.”

  Nora looked up to see Xavier and Miko walking up.

  “Sorry I couldn't do much,” Miko told her.

  “That's OK, it was never going to be possible,” Nora said. “Once I got inside my mech I realized that the view port is actually a video feed for the HUD inside. There's actually no way to hit the pilot.”

  “What was it firing?” Xavier asked. “I didn't recognize the weapon.”

  “No clue, but it worked,” Nora said. “Have we taken the gate?”

  “The gate is blocked by rubble,” Xavier said. “No getting through that way.”

  Danny groaned. “So we have to walk all the way back through the tunnels to
get back to base?”

  Nora looked around. “Or we could stay around here for a while. We need to search the district anyhow.”

  “We also need ammo,” Xavier cautioned.

  “And I really would like to have my rifle back,” Miko said. “No offense, but your gun is rather lacking in stopping power, range and pretty much everything a sniper needs outside.”

  “None taken,” Nora replied with a tired smile. Her radio buzzed. “Wolf 2.”

  “Hey Nora,” Liz said on the other end of the line. “You stumbled across quite the find in here.”

  Nora looked back over at the temple complex. Liz had taken in her squads to sweep the building of any remaining resistance.

  “Did you find another one?” Nora asked her.

  “Not just another one,” Liz replied. “There's four more of them in here.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Industrial Revolution

  “You have to make our work so much harder,” Yusuf said. “First you want tons of ammo a week, then you a railway, and now this? Just how fast do you think we can move?”

  Zach shrugged. “Yeah, I get that we're stretched pretty thin. “And I still think that the railway is top priority. But still, five mech suits? You don't come across that every day.”

  “True enough, and that's pretty interesting in and of itself,” Yusuf admitted. “Did they come with instructions?”

  “The boot sequence seems like it's automated,” Zach told him. “According to Nora, she just climbed in and followed the instructions, then figured out the rest by trial and error.”

  “So we have no idea how any of these work,” Yusuf said, looking at the suit in front of them.

  “Yeah, and this one can only be operated by Nora. I tried to activate it, and then Danny tried, but it would only power up if Nora was the pilot.”

  “So we're going to have to choose carefully,” Yusuf said. “Because we're not going to get any do overs.”

  “That's up for Hydra Command to decide,” Zach said.

  “People are going to want to have the new toys,” Yusuf said.

  “Then can you build them?”

  “Unless we find a schematics, there's no way,” Yusuf replied. “I have no way to know for sure without disassembling one of these things, but there's probably advanced components that we have no way to replicate.”

  “So are they going to be too valuable to use?”

  “Well, we need to figure out how they work,” Yusuf told him. “It looks like these platforms are charging stations, so at least they won't use fusion batteries. At least, I think.”

  “Well, the shell of the one we had to fight is still out in the plaza,” Zach offered. “I'm not sure how many components are missing, since Nora blew a pretty good chunk of it away, but at least it's something.”

  Yusuf glanced over at him. “I'm also interested in the library that you guys found.”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “That... that might be our greatest find in this place. Come on.”

  Zach lead him out of the building and down the main route south. The district was busy with troops from Ghost Battalion trying to clean up the mess from their battle. There was a huge pit in the east side of the district near the river where they were piling the bodies. After it was full they would burn them all.

  Other troops were trying to clear debris from the western gate to allow easy access between this district, called Center City on their map, and the Eagle Creek district.

  It was out of their normal line of work, but Ghost Battalion needed to contribute what they could in order to get the city running properly. From what Zach had seen there was a lot of untapped potential within Center City, hidden beneath the appearance of a primitive and feral place.

  Within the ruins lay all manner of secrets, and it was those secrets that could help them. The discovery of the powered exoskeletons was a coup. They had also found huge stockpiles of ammunition in a few underground warehouses that hadn't been touched. Much of it was the wrong type and was worthless, but enough of it could be used, and that gave them a much needed boost.

  But the greatest find had been the library. While searching through the southern end of the district Xavier's team had stumbled across a building filled with books. Many of them were old and unusable, but then they had stumbled across a room in the basement. There, lining the shelves in a single room was a whole set of schematics.

  Not all of them could be read. In fact, most of them were too high level for even the best engineers to translate. Of the ones that they could read, almost all of them required materials that they had never heard of or had no way of obtaining. But still, there were three schematics that the could use.

  “Here we are,” Zach said as they reached the library.

  On the outside the building was completely unassuming. It wasn't especially large and only contained two stories. The inside wasn't that impressive either. The walls and floorspace inside was line with shelves holding thousands of books, though most of them weren't of any use. But it was the basement level that was of the greatest interest.

  Zach lead Yusuf down a flight of stairs and into the depths of the building. There were a few other doors in the basement, but they had no idea how to get past them. All of them were locked tight, and it wasn't possible to blast through them. They had used a metal detector to determine the feasibility and found that the doors were solid, too thick to breach. If they tried to do it with explosives then they might destroy the building itself.

  Anyhow, they had more than enough to concern themselves with now. Zach led Yusuf into the room where they had found the schematics. Several Hydra engineers were present, trying to decipher the secrets held within.

  “There's not much we can glean from them right now,” Zach said. “Everything is too high level for us. But we did get a useful prototype that we might be able to build.”

  He grabbed a schematic off one of the shelves and handed it over to Yusuf.

  “Take a look. How hard would it be for us to produce a few of them?”

  Yusuf looked over the designs. “Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm looking at a gatling gun, right?”

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Electric powered with six barrels. Fires standard machine gun ammo, so it's more of a minigun and not a gatling cannon. But still very useful. I'd like to mount it on the choppers and our river craft.”

  “You haven't used them much lately,” Yusuf noted.

  “That was because of our tunnel crawling,” Zach said. “The choppers still might not be as useful as they were, but we have a launching point for river craft in this district. We can use them to range up and down the middle of the city, and that gives us a lot more fire support.”

  “This is going to take some time,” Yusuf said. “Under normal circumstances this would be a cinch, but since we're building the railroad we don't have enough workers to do the job quickly. I'm actually glad that the other companies are picking up some of the slack.”

  “Hey, we're capable of doing some of the economic and engineering things as well,” Zach said.

  Almost every company in Hydra had been independent at one point or another, and that meant that they had needed to make their own weapons and ammunition. And while they might not have the expertise of Hephaestus Company, they still knew what they were doing and could get the job done.

  That knowledge was a great help right now. Companies that weren't on the front lines could help pick up the slack. They needed to, otherwise Hydra was in danger of running out of essential supplies.

  “I'll see what I can do with this,” Yusuf said. He scanned the schematic with his wrist menu and then placed it back on the shelf.

  Zach's own wrist alert went off. “Wolf Lead.”

  “Hey Zach. Is Yusuf still with you?” Danny asked.

  “He is,” Zach confirmed.

  “OK then. Can you two come find us? We're at the southeast end of the district, close to the waterfront and the south wall. We've got something interesting here. A l
ot of industrial equipment, it looks like, but we're not completely sure.”

  “We're on our way,” Zach said. He motioned for Yusuf to follow and exited the room.

  “What was that all about?” Yusuf asked.

  “Danny just rang me. Says his squad found some industrial equipment that you might be interested in. We're going to check it out.”

  Yusuf nodded. “OK, then let's go see.”

  “Behold,” Danny said with some dramatic flair. He lead them inside a huge building that looked like a warehouse. The interior was dark, illuminated by a few floodlights and the gun lights of the squad.

  “Sorry about not being able to see,” Danny told them. “We don't have enough lights to cover the whole place, but you can get the picture.”

  Zach pulled his carbine off his back and switched on his light. Yusuf did likewise, though he was only carrying a pistol. Zach wondered when the last time he had fought was. Not that it mattered, since Hephaestus was probably the most responsible for Hydra's success up to this point.

  “So, is this a storehouse?” he asked.

  Danny shook his head. “At first we thought so, but then after searching the place it looks more like a factory of some sort. There's huge stacks of junk everywhere and some the machinery looks pretty worn, but we might have something here. But I'm also not the one to make the best judgment of that.”

  Yusuf swung his pistol around and looked over some of the equipment lying about. “Yeah, a lot of this looks like it's junk. We can probably salvage the metal, but other than that it's not going to do much for us.”

  Zach looked around as well. The beam of his light passed over something in the middle of the building. He swept the beam back over it.

  “What about this?” Zach asked.

  “Huh?” Yusuf asked. “Oh. That might be something.”

  They walked over to it.

  “Move one of the floodlights over here,” Danny said. Two of his troops moved to comply.

  “Oh wow,” Yusuf said when the light fell upon the object.

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “This might be important.”

  A machine sat in front of them, a huge beast made up of several parts. It looked like an ammo press, much like the ones that he had used and Hephaestus operated, but it was much, much bigger.