Starkindler (MechaVerse Series Book 1)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  She complied, anticipating the order. Together, they watched it streak out in a zig zag pattern towards the Marauder, avoiding the tank’s attempts to knock it down with counter fire. The fire and forget missile automatically homed in on its target, impacting low against the side of the tank, for a split second looking as if the explosion would throw the tank over. But the Marauder’s onboard computer corrected just enough, using the anti-grav struts to balance out the force of the impact and land heavily, hidden by a cloud dust, but not before Aurora followed up with a remotely triggered shell from the rail cannon.

  The third shell to fire struck between the turret and the chassis of the tank, collapsing the remaining shields in a flash of lightning, knocking the turret askew like a punch drunk fighter. The front left of the tank gouged a deep hole into the Martian surface as it was slammed face down into the dusty red soil from the sheer force. Alone and panicking, the remaining Slayer traversed its torso and began to fire every available weapon while also turning to flee, sending rockets careening in cascading waves to crash explosively against the deformed face of the massif.

  Aurora used the point defense cannons to knock down any that came within range as both Mikkhael and the PDF tank crew attempted to recover.

  “Two shells remaining in magazine; recommend firing again on the Marauder while using rockets to finish the Slayer, then swap magazines. Shields stable at 60%. Incoming heavy rocket fire from remaining Slayer, deploying countermeasures, time until reloaded three seconds.” Aurora’s monotone voice droned through the pilot’s helmet.

  “Do it!” Mikkhael screamed.

  He absently processed feeling a pair of rockets launch as the seat relaxed, allowing him to once again reach for and grab the triggers and target the Marauder, with the rifle’s guidance laser active the entire time. Aurora loaded the single composite slug into the rail gun while directing one of the weapon guidance beams onto the Marauder for increased accuracy. Time stopped as Mikkhael guided the targeting laser to the tank seemingly one inch at a time. When both lasers aligned on top of one another, an acquisition tone warbled in acknowledgement, and then he fired one last time, killing another four men.

  As he did so, the enemy turret finished its turn towards them, racing against the lock on from their beams. Just before the turret re-aligned with their position, Aurora yelled, “Tone!” as his own acquisition acknowledgement warbled in agreement.

  The tank crew had been too late; the slug was already on its way, a vortex of swirling dust spinning in its wake, striking the unshielded tank mid-chassis. The heavy tank seemed to wrap in upon itself as if a god’s fist slammed down from the heavens to serve righteous judgment. The slug pierced the tank’s weakened armor with ease, passing through the tanks munitions, setting them off. A shockwave from the secondary explosions ripped outward from the epicenter, leaving nothing in its wake.

  Aurora switched the view screen, zooming in to display the remains of the last Slayer she took out with the fire and forget missiles, confirming the kill. Mikkhael fought to slow his breathing after he looked at the screen displaying his vitals, seeing them dangerously elevated from the close call.

  Lifting the HMD away, he took in the wreckage of the PDF littering the valley floor in front of him, collecting his thoughts. Before he could decide how he felt, an orange light pulsed twice inside the cabin; Aurora silently warning him that another patrol was now approximately five minutes out, closing quickly on their position. He looked back at the HUD, seeing a satellite view of the incoming formation. She efficiently populated the tactical overlays, continually gleaning data from her satellites on the approaching enemies.

  Mikkhael scanned his immediate vicinity, quickly judging it adequate for another round of fighting, although no longer as ideal as it had been before. The kite shield remained wedged securely into the bedrock; chunks of the cliff behind him fell during the fight in boulder sized forms, landing around Starkindler, further masking the Mech armor from view. Despite their overall position being revealed, the boulders provided additional protection, and Starkindler was still positioned with the mountain guarding their back. The PDF would be unable to attack him from behind as their Mech armor could not fly. They would be forced to approach him head on if they wanted to continue the fight, and he still maintained a significant advantage in that regard despite their numbers.

  To pass the time efficiently, Mikkhael swapped the nearly empty magazine of the rail gun out with a fresh one. He then loaded a new slug into the side chamber, replacing the spent one that destroyed the tank, leaving two slugs remaining. System checks and status reports flickered on the side screens as Aurora performed a readiness analysis.

  With an almost nervous energy, she verbally ticked off the status report. “Kite shield status, 14% damaged; shields re-charged and holding steady at 96%, all systems responding normally. Reactor running nominally at full output, core temperature stable and dropping, weapons checked and ready. Enemy E.T.A. less than two minutes.”

  The remaining PDF pressed hard, headed straight for his location as rapidly as possible with additional forces behind them. Clearly, they had no intention of letting him run. They worked in concert to surround him in order that they could bring their superior numbers to bear as their manuals dictated they do; they did not consider that he intentionally remained in place to continue fighting, let alone that a single target might stand a chance against them because of their vastly superior numbers. But he also knew they did not understand the capabilities of Starkindler. For his part, Mikkhael had no intention of leaving any of them alive to learn their lesson. The longer Starkindler’s capabilities stayed secret, the more effective future missions would be.

  He saw that the incoming formation was compromised of one Slayer, two of the smaller Stalkers, and another Marauder. Under Aurora’s recommendation, he deployed two drones for entirely different reasons. The first was defensive. Deployed just off Starkindler’s side opposite the kite shield, the drone would provide anti-battery support, bolstering Aurora’s attempts at knocking down the large rockets the pair of Stalkers would certainly launch at him.

  Aurora steered the other drone down the cliff face, directly towards the incoming formation, where it would find a suitable location for an ambush and then hide itself. The drones did not have anything even approaching the sophistication of Starkindler; they were throwaway tools, easier to replace than performing a repair on the exotic materials Starkindler required, serving as force multipliers to be consumed during moments such as this. They were also much easier for the PDF to detect.

  Suddenly, a red strobe on his tactile display began flashing a warning of incoming fire. The Stalkers blindly fired a salvo of their largest rockets from over eight miles away at the last position targeted by their now dead-brethren. Their gumption provided a serious challenge to Mikkhael’s lack of a plan. He was left with the choice of defending himself, or be flushed from cover, which in the end was no choice at all.

  “Aurora, knock em down!” He yelled into his mic.

  As soon as the words left his mouth he noticed the tell-tale glimpses of bullets reflecting in the dying sunlight as she brought the point defense cannons to bear on the incoming rockets. Spent shell casings rained down around them as hundreds of bullets raced to meet the rockets, attempting to shred them and failing to do so as their evasive patterns outmaneuvered Aurora. Mikkhael watched helplessly as she futilely continued to fire, attempting to create a wall of metal for the rockets to implode upon.

  The rockets evaded her defenses, maneuvering with a deftness and sophistication that most PDF weapons lacked. They approached incredibly fast. A flash of fear raced through him as the cannons failed to take the rockets out; the anti-battery drone still working into position on top of some fallen rubble was still unusable with no line of sight available to it, leaving their options limited.

  “Mikkhael, give me control of the short-range mortars!” Aurora asked urgently.

  A flick of his finger transferr
ed control of all weapons over to Aurora; now was not the time to discriminate. She calculated the trajectory and time until impact of the incoming rockets, setting the mortar shells to air burst in a staggered sequence of paired explosions.

  Seconds that lasted entire lifetimes passed for Mikkhael, unnoticed by computer algorithms attempting to kill one another at speeds too rapid for the human mind to comprehend. Aurora’s mortars fired one after the other, immolating themselves starting at 1000 yards away from Starkindler, each pair progressively exploding 250 yards closer, leaving the last pair to explode nearly immediately after launching. Mikkhael’s view screen washed red with fire as the incoming rockets were shredded bit by bit in the midst of the mortars contiguous explosions. Small pieces of debris rained down on and all around them, lighting hundreds of small fires that were quickly extinguished because of the limited oxygen content in the air, reminding Mikkhael of meteor showers back on Earth.

  Crisis momentarily over, he toggled four medium missiles housed on the inside of the wings. Built for just this situation, the missiles should prove more than adequate. Aurora painted the pair of Stalkers with guidance lasers; hearing the lock-on warble, Mikkhael triggered their release, and then they were off, zig-zagging their way to their respective destinations.

  The Stalkers futilely attempted to obfuscate the radar lock-on status with smoke, chaff, flares, and aerial flash bangs. Aurora overrode the missiles targeting data using GPS information from a satellite passing over the battlefield, disabling the missiles’ tracking abilities. She instead manually guided the missiles to the Stalkers locations, rendering all of the enemy pilot’s attempts at self-defense useless.

  Mikkhael watched on his HUD as the formation stopped in its tracks, detecting the incoming missiles, and focused their combined fire into the path of the missiles. The Slayer and Marauder fired dozens of small rockets set to air burst, similar to how Aurora defeated their own missiles. Cannon shells flew in wide arcs attempting to box the missiles into the path of the rockets.

  Two of Mikkhael’s missiles were shot down by the rocket fire; the last detonated early, carving a path through the defenses for the fourth to strike, catching the Stalker dead center of the torso against the pilot’s cockpit. The Stalker ceased to exist as anything other than a ball of fire, leaving only a satisfying large crater in its aftermath. The other nearby Stalker teetered and fell over from the force of the explosion.

  A half-minute passed as both sides took stock of the situation, both of them caught by surprise at the turn of events. Then as one, the Slayer and Marauder surged to close on his position, leaving the fallen Stalker to flounder helplessly on its back. The approaching enemies expertly stayed close to one another providing mutual cover in case he fired more missiles.

  They closed to within two miles of Mikkhael’s position, forcing him to make a judgment call. The first shell in the rail gun was a high explosive round. With Aurora’s help, Mikkhael over charged both the rail guns and Starkindler’s electro magnets by twenty percent as the PDF continued approaching, and then he fired the first shell at the Slayer.

  The rail cannon bucked only slightly more violently then under a nominal charge. With the electro magnets reading a 60% charge once the rail gun reloaded, he fired a second high explosive shell between the Stalker and the tank while the first shell was still airborne. At the close range, the high explosive shell destroyed the Slayer with a single hit.

  Mikkhael turned to watch as the second shell struck the ground near the Marauder class tank, weakening the shields while stalling its advance, forcing the tank commander’s survival instincts to kick in, halting their advance at a critical moment. Next, he chambered the slug while watching the electro-magnets charge slowly, their temperature readouts dangerously high but falling slowly.

  The Marauder returned fire even as it shrugged off the damage from the near-miss of the high-explosive shell. Adjusting after the impact, the turret tracked towards Starkindler’s position once again and then fired a second time. Flames fountained from the Marauder’s barrel as the shell streaked towards Starkindler. Just then the anti-battery drone assumed position, spooling up, firing the laser that destroyed the Marauder’s shell in a blinding flash of light.

  Mikkhael deliberately took his time setting up the next shot, watching the electro-magnets’ temperatures fall into normal ranges out of the corner of his eye. He squeezed the trigger for the rail gun slowly, feeling the recoil throughout Starkindler’s bulk. The composite slug struck just below the Marauder’s turret with all of the subtlety of a drunken Scottish berserker, smashing the heavy tank nose-first deep into the dust. The back half of the tank blew off, flying hundreds of yards through the air before settling heavily. Nearly absentmindedly, he remembered the remaining Stalker, swinging the rail gun over and casually dispatched it with one of the remaining high-explosive shells.

  * * * * *

  “General Sir! Urgent missive from the Commander of the 14th Mechanized Brigade. Requesting your immediate presence at the Command Center Sir!” SSGT Anderson’s clean cut face appeared on the intercom monitor using the emergency call feature that cut in on his feed without needing his approval.

  General Akari hesitated only long enough to acknowledge that he received the summons, left his office, and then headed towards the command center immediately. Maintaining a stoic pose and limiting himself to a fast walk took conscious effort. He had drilled his staff for years not to abuse the urgent classification; anything marked as such meant that an operation in progress had gone south or an attack was imminent. A General did not run in an emergency, no matter the circumstances, always maintaining an appearance of control to avoid inciting panic within the lower ranks. It was his role to provide leadership and the strategic vision for the forces under his command; they looked to him in any emergency, physically and mentally.

  A sinking feeling settled deep within his stomach that he already knew would get worse before it got better. On an instinctive level, he was aware that something dynamic was taking place; he also knew he was already likely too late to fix what was happening.

  While it was inappropriate for a General to run except in the most extreme circumstances, the restriction did not apply to his aide. SSGT Anderson met him halfway, not even breathing hard, carrying a data slate with the most recent information already pulled up, heightening the tension constricting the General’s gut.

  “Sir, the 14th Mechanized Brigade was conducting a standard investigation of the local area where the Ascender relay recorded the anomaly on their return from patrol. The local Commander, Colonel Akins, reports they are under fire from an unknown number of adversaries. In the last fifteen minutes alone the Commander reports he has lost seven Mech armor and a pair of Marauder tanks. Over half of his brigade has been wiped out; they are requesting support and possibly extraction. One last thing, General, they believe they are under attack from a single terrorist Mech armor but can give almost no data supporting that claim.” SSGT Anderson finished his assessment just as they arrived at the Command and Control Center.

  The General did not reply, processing what the SSGT had told him. They entered through a double set of blast doors, an armed Marine in full combat gear standing ready for anything on each side. Within, dozens of rows of empty work stations stood ready, providing a highly expandable modular work space should an emergency arise that dictated the need of extra technician support. General Akari knew his first order of business was to evaluate the situation and then call for sufficient supporting staff to assist the half dozen men and women currently on duty manning various work stations. Experience taught him that calling the right number of people with the needed skillsets worked most efficiently while blindly throwing manpower at developing crises only added layers of inefficiency to the chaos.

  Tactical command of situations were generally left to the Field Commander; in this instance, it was obvious from the General’s distant vantage point the Field Commander made a fatal error somewhere, and so far h
ad proved unable to compensate. Based off the report of only one enemy within the operation area, General Akari suspected the terrorist employed stealth, the only reasonable factor that could account for such a poor outcome when outmanned by such a high degree. For a single Mech armor to destroy most of a brigade was unheard of, but not impossible under the right circumstances. He continuously lamented the fact that Martian High Command failed to significantly update the main line Mech armor models over the years, leaving the most common legacy units falling behind on their survivability in encounters with terrorist forces.

  Chaos greeted them inside of the Command Center. The sentry belted out, “Commander on deck!” Cutting through the dull roar, forcing everyone to pause and look to the General for guidance. The confusion and panic in their faces shocked him; their palpable relief at his presence momentarily disgusted him.

  Recovering, he forced himself to ignore them, instead scanning the large displays covering the entire wall directly across the room showing various data types with multiple live feeds from drones and satellites. The main display stood center of the room, occupying over half the wall. General Akari assessed the fast deteriorating situation. The main display showed the Brigade commanders now reduced forces as dots on a screen without a live feed from the fielded Mech armor. An adjacent display showed few local assets, with only one real option able to affect the outcome of the battle in the time available until their complete annihilation.

  General Akari checked everything a third time, looking for another option before making the only call available to him. The assembled technicians in the room absently held their breath in anticipation, knowing there was only one choice, in direct contravention of multiple inter-planetary treaties and use of force agreements, yet they still waited for his command.

  “Vector in the Reaper drone C304 performing weapons testing from adjacent sector at maximum speed to provide support for the forces under attack. Close air support and danger close statuses are now in effect for friendly forces on the ground. Order the remnants of the 14th Mechanized to pull back and form a defensive position with the Chimera transports and infantry, they are to support each other and then evacuate as quickly as possible once the Reaper begins its attack, providing cover for them to retreat.”