by Isaac Hooke
Yes, he was a single huge mech, almost as big as the current attacker.
And he was very, very pissed off.
24
Jason flicked his shield in front of him as the big robot unleashed a barrage of missiles, lasers, and plasma bolts. He could see the result of those impacts on the inner side of the shield, because small red glows began to appear, expanding outward.
“The shield isn’t going to hold up for much longer,” Aria said. “You need to take us out of the line of fire before it starts getting damaged.”
Jason accessed his teleport controls—he knew instinctively where they were, thanks to his link with Tara. The range was vastly reduced, thanks to his size: he could only teleport a few paces in any direction, even with the power output available from their combined batteries. “Paces” was relative to his current mass, of course. And the drain on the combined batteries was great enough that he would only be able to use the ability three times—if he did, that ruled out the use any of his other abilities, like invisibility or the energy shield.
But that was more than enough for his purposes.
Jason teleported directly above the horse-shaped robot, and allowed gravity to pull him toward the ground. He swung down the large sword in his right hand as he did so—it struck the robot’s smooth neck, and cut halfway through before lodging. Big electrical sparks erupted from the impact site, enveloping the robot’s entire head.
Jason landed, and slid the sword free. Then he swung down again, into the groove formed by his previous impact, and sliced the head clean off.
The lasers and plasma bolt turrets on the flanks were still firing randomly. Jason cut them off in turn, first one side, then the other, then he gave the headless body a big kick and it toppled over with a resounding thud.
The legs still twitched, almost as if the unit were organic, but soon ceased moving.
Jason scanned the area, and the distant horizon. The area seemed clear.
He sent the Explorer to do a wide circle of the area, then glanced at the Rex Wolves, which were still cowering on the far side of the estate, behind the tanks.
Good. They’re safe.
“Why did they only send this one robot?” Jason said. “Are they that overconfident? And no air support…”
“My guess is it was a scout,” Xin said. “It probably dispatched a drone to alert the others. You can expect air support, and ground troops. Probably more robots on the scale of the one we just took down.”
“We can use this,” Jason said. “We’ll head east for twenty kilometers, and then swing north for another twenty, and then west, coming in toward the target site from the northeast. With luck, they’ll still have forces in this particular area, looking for us.”
“Or they might evacuate,” Tara said. “When they realize just how close to their doorstep we are.”
“Mm, I don’t think so,” Jason said. “They didn’t evacuate when our twins came this way before.”
“True,” Xin said. “If you want to do this, I advise we separate. We still have an hour before dusk: we’ll recharge faster in our individual forms. And we can move faster, too.”
“All right,” Jason said. He lowered his massive form to the ground and issued the separate command, and the combination process executed in reverse. In moments, the six of them were back in their ordinary, ten-meter tall mechs.
The Rex Wolves came running from cover. Bruiser and Lackey yipped away at Tara’s heels, while Runt did the same with Lori. Shaggy stood stoically beside Jason, staring at the body of the robot.
Jason rubbed him behind the ears. “It’s okay, boy.”
He led the team away to the east, as promised. They tried to keep as low a profile as they could as they crossed the different estates. He also had the Explorer fly relatively low, just above the treetops.
At twenty kilometers out, they turned north, and after another twenty klicks, headed southwest. So far, there was no sign of the enemy. The sun was beginning to set. But that was fine—they had all recharged fully.
Still, that meant they would have to use their power reserves wisely in the coming fight, because there would be no recharge.
About five kilometers away from the target, Jason slowed down. He examined the feed from the Explorer and studied the horizon.
“Their base should be coming into view anytime now,” Jason said.
“Got something,” Tara said. “Highlighting it.”
Jason zoomed in and saw some ramshackle outbuildings. It looked like another farm.
“Hey boss!” Lori said.
“What is it?” Jason asked.
“I’m detecting an encrypted signal,” Lori said.
“Everyone, stop,” Jason said.
“Are you happy I called you boss instead of babe?” Lori pressed.
“Just tell me when you’ve decrypted the signal,” Jason told her.
“Hmm, it’s got a signature that matches a few known video cameras,” Lori said. “This one should be easier than the previous transmissions.” She paused. “Got it.”
Jason received a video request and put it up on his HUD.
An estate filled his view, along with a few different outbuildings.
“It’s a hidden camera,” Xin said.
“Obviously it’s transmitting the video data to their nearby base,” Tara said. “They’ve probably got other cameras hidden nearby at different locations, not just this one. To cover all approaches.”
“They made a mistake by using omnidirectional transmitters with the cameras,” Aria said. “Instead of directional, whose signal they could have hidden from us.”
“Can you hack in, Lori, and replace the image with a static loop?” Jason asked.
“I think so,” Lori said. It took her a couple of minutes, and then she reported: “I’ve replaced the camera feed with a recording of the last fifteen seconds. It’s set to loop infinitely. They’ll never know we’ve reached this farm.”
“You’re not detecting any other cameras nearby?” Jason asked.
“Not yet,” Lori said.
She did detect a few more cameras as they advanced, and Jason paused the party so that she could hack into each of them in turn and replace the video with a prerecorded loop.
They reached the estate, and crouched behind the different outbuildings, using them for cover. According to a waypoint he’d marked on his overhead map, the final target was two kilometers away to the west. With the Explorer, he zoomed in on the far horizon, toward a small area that was illuminated in the twilight.
He saw what definitely looked like a military base. It was surrounded by a tall electrified fence that no doubt was meant to keep the mutants at bay. There were wicked looking laser and plasma turrets manning towers at fixed intervals along that fence. Inside, there was an airfield, along with several hangars and support outbuildings. He could make out two bombers sitting on the tarmac, along with several mechs of all makes and models. There were the familiar combat robots patrolling the grounds along the inside of the fence. Artillery squatted on the rooftops of some of the buildings, aimed at the sky. Three huge buildings near the center dominated, dwarfing everything else nearby.
“I wonder if those buildings are their command center?” Tara said.
“They look more like hangars to me,” Aria commented.
He noticed a strange crackling sound, then.
“What’s that sound?” Jason said.
“Their noise generators,” Xin said. “See the speakers underneath the turrets on the towers? The noise keeps the mutants at bay. We had something similar set up at our base.”
“If we’d known that earlier, we would have had an easier time in this wasteland, I think,” Jason said.
“Not necessarily,” Xin said. “It doesn’t work on all mutants. And sometimes they attack anyway. It only worked for us for a while, because it was an unfamiliar sound, I think, and the mutants were afraid of it. But apparently the mutants here haven’t grown accustomed to it yet.”<
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“Either that, or those in charge of the base have trained them to associate the sound with death,” Jason said. “Shooting anything that gets close.”
“Speaking of mutants, take a look to the south of the base,” Sophie said.
Jason scanned the darkening plains, and spotted four towering shapes well to the south of the base.
“Nightmares,” Jason said. “They’re in range of the base’s defenses. But they haven’t fired yet.”
“The creatures are probably only roving past,” Xin said. “The defenses are likely programmed to fire only if mutants close to a certain range, say one kilometer.”
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do.” Jason explained his plan.
Tara secured the Rex Wolves by their leashes to the different outbuildings. Thankfully the mutants remained quiet.
Then Jason and the other mechs dropped to a low crawl, and split up into a long line, seventy meters apart. They changed their antennae to directional mode, and pointed them along that line, to reduce the chances of the enemy detecting their signals. Then, with the tanks in tow, they proceeded toward the Nightmares.
The quadruped bodies towered over the mechs, coming in at twice their size. They moved their tree-like legs, limbs covered in stalks that produced tentacled bulbs to catch other mutants for food. Their massive, wormlike necks swung to and fro, searching the landscape around them for signs of movement. The white noise from the generators seemed to confuse them.
The team kept the Nightmares between them and the base so that the big creatures provided cover. When the mechs and tanks were five hundred meters from the closest Nightmare, Jason gave the order.
Jason and Tara aimed through the legs, and with their lasers targeted the different speakers attached to the towers. They moved in Bullet Time, releasing pulses as fast as they were able with the long-range weapons, and readily disabled the speakers.
The night air became silent.
A Nightmare lowed uncertainly.
“Play the recording,” Jason said.
From their external speakers came the white noise they’d recorded from the noise generators.
Now the lowing from the Nightmares seemed to grow angry, and they moved away from the party, heading toward the base.
“Tara and I will concentrate on the weapon turrets,” Jason said.
Jason fired between the legs of the retreating Nightmares. He fired his laser at the different weapon turrets, aiming at the bases where the swivel mounts were attached. He melted them away so that the turrets hung uselessly, their aim pointed downward.
Tara fired her laser as well. They used quick, hard to detect pulses. Eventually the enemy would triangulate their positions, but until then Jason was content to let confusion reign.
A klaxon sounded at the base.
Jason fired at the heels of one of the Nightmares, and that only spurred it on ever faster; it barreled into the others, and they too sped up.
Some of the intact towers began to fire at the Nightmares, and the animals roared in outrage.
Finally the artillery began to open fire.
From the shell trajectories calculated in realtime by his processor, he realized those shells were aimed straight for his position.
“All right everyone, they’ve got us,” Jason said. “It’s time for Part B.”
25
Jason jumped to his feet, as did the others, and he dashed forward to close with the Nightmares, which served as the mutant equivalent of their battering ram.
Now that their positions were revealed, there was no point in holding back. The girls opened fire with their traceable plasma bolts and beams, and lightning attacks. The tanks also fired, unleashing their railguns on the run.
Jason switched to his energy weapon and railgun, and opened fire on the turrets that were visible beyond the shield of the Nightmares. He also attacked any mechs and combat robots that came into his sight lines beyond the fence.
The Nightmares tore through the fence, cutting a path into the base. They trampled several mechs, one of the bombers, and cut through a small hanger.
Jason unleashed his energy weapon at the remaining bomber, which was in the process of moving onto the runway, and disabled it with a big hole through the fuselage.
Xin activated her Blaze hull, and she tore past, blindingly bright, drilling through a group of tanks that stood in their way. When she landed, she released the plasma beam from her eyes, cutting a swath through mechs that were emerging from a hangar.
Sophie arced over a group of enemy mechs with her jumpjets and when she landed, she swirled her micro machines like a serrated whip around her, cutting through the armored hulls of her enemies and disabling them.
Tara teleported directly among a group of enemy robots, and swung her sword in a wide arc, cutting them all in half.
Aria launched her lightning weapon at artillery weapons on the roof of one of the outbuildings, and bolts of lightning engulfed it; some arced to other artillery on the nearby rooftops.
Lori was invisible, and she fired plasma bolts from her tail into anything that got in her way. She kept moving, because firing the weapon gave away her position.
All of the automated turrets were disabled or destroyed by then. There were still a few artillery on the rooftops, and a group of mechs to the southwest.
The Nightmares crashed into one of the big hangers near the center of the base, and their movement was arrested. A large mech emerged. It towered over the airfield, coming in at thirty meters tall. It had two arms, a reptilian head, and a long tail that dragged behind it, but there were no hind legs.
The steel lizard bit into one of the Nightmares, grabbing it by the throat, and fired some sort of energy beam that disintegrated the neck entirely so that the steel maw chomped down onto thin air, and the head and body fell away. It fired more energy beams from slits just below its eyes, cutting in half the next Nightmare.
“Uh, this is probably what killed us the last time…” Aria said.
“Time to transform, people!” Jason said.
He switched to Bullet Time and began the syncing process. They appeared in his VR, and held hands in front of the mountain lake.
“Are you sure we can beat it?” Tara asked.
“We have to try,” Jason said. “Because it’s either that, or be hunted for the rest of our days. And we’ll never know why.”
“If we lose, we’ll never know why, either,” Sophie said.
“I don’t think we’ll care, at that point,” Xin said softly.
Blue pulses passed down the arms of the girls, and into the other members of the circle. They reached Jason, and he accepted those pulses, allowing his mind to join with theirs.
The VR faded away, replaced by the collective consciousness of their neural networks. There were no snags this time.
He reverted to the real world, and the six mechs began repositioning, with their weapons and portions of their bodies transforming along the different tracks in the process. Sophie’s micro machines melded with the hull, joining pieces, enlarging segments as appropriate, and in moments Jason had become Cataphract.
He activated his jumpjets to stand on his feet, and rotated his big silvery shield into place to deflect a barrage of missiles from the group of smaller mechs nearby that the team hadn’t yet handled. Then he lowered the shield and fired his hip plasma beam, drilling through them and destroying the lot.
He took a hit on the right arm from an artillery emplacement on a nearby roof, and fired his lightning weapon at it. The bolt arced into the two remaining artillery, taking them down as well.
The steel lizard finished with the last of the Nightmares, and then turned its attention on Jason.
The other two hangars burst open. Another mech stood in one of them, just as big as Jason’s Cataphract, and appeared similarly equipped: it even carried a sword and shield, among its other armaments. The final hangar held a large, scorpion-like mech, with a huge glowing weapon on its tail, and pin
cers and a maw that had more armaments.
“Uh oh,” Lori said.
All three mechs aimed their weapons at Jason, and opened fire.
He was still running in Bullet Time, though with a time sense that didn’t slow reality to a full halt; it was fast enough to fight with, but slow enough to give him time to respond to unfolding events.
He activated his teleport then, and appeared to the side of the steel lizard. He swung down with his sword, cutting halfway through the neck.
The lizard struck outward with one of its metal arms, hitting Jason in the chest assembly, and he stumbled backward, his sword withdrawing from the wound.
The swordsman mech materialized beside him—apparently it was also capable of teleporting. Jason narrowly swiveled his large shield into place to deflect the sword blow.
Meanwhile, the scorpion mech’s tail flashed brighter, and Jason ducked, using the body of the steel lizard beside him for cover. The air above him sizzled as an energy beam cut through empty space.
Jason fired his shoulder-mounted railgun into the gash his sword had carved into the steel lizard’s neck, and the robot shook as the threads of light tore into its innards. As the behemoth collapsed, he dashed forward, shoving his shield into the swordsman; he aimed his railgun and shoulder-mounted energy cannon toward the scorpion beyond, along with the bolt weapon on his tail, and fired all three at the scorpion’s tail.
The steel insect attempted to dodge the bolts, but the plasma weapon managed to cut into the side of its tail weapon in a glancing blow. The light went out.
He shifted his shield to the side slightly, exposing his hip, and he fired the plasma weapon at the swordsman, cutting into the mech’s big arm.
The swordsman unleashed a barrage of missiles in return, striking Jason’s exposed hip, and disabling the weapon.
Jason quickly reset the shield, and shoved harder, throwing himself forward so that he toppled the mech, and was lying on top of it.
The scorpion opened up its claws and fired two plasma beams then, and Jason activated his energy shield. It deflected the blows for a few moments, but the plasma beams didn’t let up, and the shield charge failed: the beams drilled into his railgun weapon, and the lightning bolt cannon underneath his shield. The scorpion was too far away to reach by teleporting, but perhaps he could use it to target someone closer…
