Then, his ablative heat shield deployed automatically, just before he hit the atmosphere. The shield lowered the temperature to a survivable level by carrying the heat away using convection, but Gabe could see the flames that licked at it, and he felt their heat, too. He was really sweating, now.
It occurred to him how insane jumping from the elevator had been, without having tested the process first. Darkstream considered it worth it to gamble with their soldiers’ lives in this particular situation, and Gabe hadn’t said a thing about it.
He’d become just as reckless as the corporation he worked for, apparently. This type of thing never would have gone ahead, back in the UHF.
Of course, if he’d been in the UHF all this time, he would have been court-martialed several times over for the things he’d done.
At last, the fires receded, and now wind whipped past his metal frame, threatening to freeze his—well, technically he didn’t have those right now, did he?
In an attempt to distract himself from Eresos’ surface, which now grew gradually larger, he thought of an old story he’d heard just before leaving the Milky Way, about that pansy Vin Husher, taking a leap down to the surface of the Winger homeworld in nothing but a Darkstream reentry suit.
Ten credits says he wet himself on the way down. He accepted his own bet, though he wasn’t sure how the logistics of that would work.
To be fair, in just a suit, Husher would have had a much worse time than Gabe was having now. The drop weight was much lower in a reentry suit, meaning the number of Gs your body was subjected to ratcheted way up.
Either way, Husher wouldn’t have been able to handle this much machine. Of that, Gabe felt confident.
“How’s everyone doing?” he subvocalized to his team. “Check in.”
“Doing fine, sir,” Jake said.
“As good as can be expected,” said Henrietta.
One after another, his entire team sounded off. Which only served to distract him for around thirty seconds.
He thought of Jess, but quickly stopped himself. No need to show up for battle a sobbing wreck.
Come on, Gabe. This isn’t a big deal. You’ve entrusted yourself to the laws of physics, that’s all. And to Darkstream engineering.
Which, admittedly, wasn’t always the most dependable.
There was nothing to get overly excited about. This was only the first mech space jump performed in history.
Probably this was a very, very stupid idea.
His mech’s heat shield had dissolved, and now Eresos’ landscape expanded below him, its details growing sharper and sharper. Before long, a parachute would deploy, designed to disengage well before landing. After that, aerospike thrusters would take him the rest of the way.
He spotted Ingress below, surrounded on all sides by teeming masses of indistinct purple dots. As those dots grew larger, they became vaguely recognizable as Quatro.
“Sir?” It was Ash.
“Yeah?” he croaked, his voice coming out mangled. He cleared his throat. “Yeah?” he repeated, more confidently.
“Are you sure we calculated our entry angle correctly?”
Gabe blinked, trying to clear his head. He studied the ground. To do this, he didn’t need to tilt the mech’s head down—the machine had sensors all over, and it fed their data to his implant, which relayed it to him in lucid.
As he considered Ash’s question, his parachute deployed.
He cleared his throat again. “Uh—it seems we’re going to come down directly in the middle of the Quatro, everyone. Stay frosty and remember your training.”
In the meantime, Gabe’s chest tightened with panic, and he struggled to calm himself down.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Chapter 36
Heavy Ordnance
Jake’s mech crashed to the ground.
More accurately: Jake crashed to the ground, his metal legs buckling to absorb the shock.
Rearing to his full height of two and a half meters, he retracted the mech’s hands to reveal twin rotary autocannons, which he leveled at the Quatro who charged at him from all sides.
Inside the mech’s forearms, the guns began to rotate, sending heavy ordnance tearing into the beasts’ flesh, flinging them back as they yelped or barked throatily.
As he’d fallen toward the planet, his anxiety over the coming battle had quickly mounted, but that hadn’t prepared him for the level of sheer terror he experienced now. Even within the dream, he could feel his nostrils flare widely as he sucked in each ragged breath, and he became intensely aware of everything around him, wary of potential threats.
The autocannons weren’t enough to keep the enemy at bay. A Quatro pounced on him from behind, knocking him forward, making him stagger a couple of steps.
This can’t happen. I won’t let it.
As his hands reassembled themselves in front of the autocannons, blades sprung from his wrists, and he spun around, slashing wildly at his assailant.
Steel found alien flesh, and scarlet droplets flew through the air, but another Quatro crashed into him from the side, sending him stumbling again, and then another tackled him head-on.
Jake was sent sprawling onto his back. The Quatro piled onto him, tearing at his skin, racking his entire body with waves of pain.
This was nothing like training—even lucid hadn’t prepared him for this. Lucid, where even though his brain accepted the simulated reality, on some level he’d still known it to be a simulation.
This…this was real. Each claw mark left searing lines along his body. The aliens weren’t bothering to use their guns; they seemed content to tear apart his mech and rip Jake from it bodily.
Even before applying to become a mech pilot, Jake had considered himself among the best—the quickest kid in the Belt; one of the best lucid gamers in the system. Wasn’t that supposed to count for something? Can this really be it?
Some of the Quatro had long bayonets with wicked blades, and they gouged Jake with them, working at his joints, scoring his casing.
When Jake glimpsed the sky between the giant aliens covering him, it flashed blood-red—the dream’s way of reflecting the danger he was in.
His fear did a good job of that, too. He was consumed with fear. The world seemed made of it.
But then and there, he decided he would refuse to let it paralyze him. Motivated more by terror than determination, he managed to roll onto his stomach and bring one of his knees between his chest and the ground.
Then, he shoved the ground, surging up through the hulking aliens that pinned him.
One of the Quatro went flying, leaving a patch of red-flashing sky in its place, and Jake sunk his blade into another.
Then, an idea struck him. He knew Darkstream had designed the mechs to withstand a grenade blast.
Time to test that.
Pointing his grenade launcher directly at the ground, he fired.
He didn’t have to wait long for the explosion.
Searing heat washed over his body, making him cry out in the dream, and sound replaced fear as the universe’s main ingredient.
The Quatro smothering him were blown apart into several pieces. Time seemed to slow as alien limbs and torsos and heads went soaring away in all directions, streaming blood and sinew.
Jake watched in awe at the utter carnage he had wrought.
Then, he looked around for his comrades.
He felt confident one of them was very nearby. Not taking the time to consult his HUD to figure out who it was, he instead charged at the dogpile of Quatro covering his teammate.
Grabbing one of the beasts with enormous metal hands, he flung the creature away, sending it several meters into the air, yelping, before it landed with a sickening crunch.
The thing started spasming, but Jake didn’t take the time to watch. Instead, he plunged his blade into the next Quatro, ripping it open all down its body, and then he stabbed the next, over and over.
The Quatro turned to face him, lessening their pr
essure on the downed mech, and Jake retracted his segmented hands to let loose with his autocannons once more, backing up as he did. This gave him enough room to mow down the aliens as they came at him, and the mech they’d been holding down rose up, joining Jake in the slaughter.
It was Ash.
“Thanks for the assist,” she said, her voice echoing a little in the dream.
“Assist?” he said, chuckling, though his laughter sounded somewhat manic in his ears. “I saved your ass.”
“Oh, God. It’s going to be like that, is it?” Ash leveled her heavy machine gun at Jake and fired.
His stomach dropped, but then he realized what had happened—she’d downed a Quatro that had been charging at him from behind.
“Are we even now?” Ash said.
“Hardly. I could have taken that one.”
“Right.” Ash turned, striding toward Roach, who was just gaining his feet himself, and starting to visit havoc on the Quatro surrounding him.
Jake joined her, and together they waded into the war for Eresos.
Chapter 37
Crumbling
Gabe loosed a rocket, picking off a group of three Quatro charging toward him.
We’re turning the tide. We’re going to win this thing.
His HUD alerted him of another enemy coming at him from his seven o’clock, barreling across the little minimap. Alongside that, the HUD also gave him a readout that listed the Quatro’s velocity and estimated mass, but Gabe didn’t have time to read.
Instead, he turned in time to roast the thing with twin gouts of flame to the face.
The Quatro yelped, and the smell of charred fur and flesh reached Gabe’s nose.
Whoa. I didn’t know this thing had olfactory sensors.
Darkstream R&D truly had thought of everything.
Turning just in time to impale another Quatro on the point of his right-hand bayonet, Gabe stumbled as a vivid flashback hit him, of walking through a blackened cave.
The Quatro slid off his blade and onto the ground as he lost himself in memory, the images just as sharp as they’d always been.
A charred Quatro corpse lay prostrate near the bottom of a cave wall, the wall itself smeared with blood where it had cracked off its claws in its futile struggle to escape.
Snap out of it, Gabe.
He turned to confront another group of three Quatro that had almost reached him, firing his autocannons at full bore, his shooting sloppy, this time. Two of the Quatro did go down—but the third crashed into Gabe, knocking him backward.
Another flashback. A mother curled protectively around her pups, all of them charred black as coal.
Another: two Quatro that had died locked in combat, driven mad by the fuel air explosive, which had turned their oxygen to fire.
Why? Why now? Is the dream amplifying it somehow?
Struggling to keep it together, Gabe kicked up with his legs, sending the Quatro pinning him flying over his head. Turning as he rose, he picked off the alien before it hit the ground. It didn’t move again.
Another memory took over his vision: a white shape, a summer dress, stained with the scarlet smear of blood.
Jess.
A gunshot. Jess’s father, Mayor Sweeney, driven to take his own life by the horror of it all.
Your fault. It’s your fault, Gabe. Admit it.
The sound of cheering reached his ears, jerking him from his dark reverie. It was his team, Oneiri Team, celebrating.
Why? We’re still surrounded by Quatro.
Then he saw: the rest of the reserve battalion had arrived. It felt like the mechs had hit the ground less than an hour ago, but now that he thought about it, he realized he’d killed a lot of Quatro.
Armored personnel carriers, tanks, infantry—they all poured out of the city’s open gates, giving it to the enemy, hard. Darkstream snipers fired on the aliens, from positions all along Ingress’ walls.
“We’re doing it, sir,” Jake said. “We’re beating them!”
Glancing to the right, Gabe saw Jake’s mech, its fist raised in victory. Blood smeared its twin blades, and fragments of viscera covered its metal skin.
“Get back to work,” Gabe rasped. Turning, he fired up his autocannons, barrels rotating as they sent round after round of hot lead into the enemy, who were swiftly crumbling.
Chapter 38
First Words
Given that the only macroscale organisms Lisa knew to exist on Alex were humans, and now Quatro, she worried about the source of the meat the aliens had left for them. Eventually, her hunger overcame her worry, and she ate it, as did Tessa and Andy.
“The Quatro haven’t actually done anything to hurt us,” she reasoned out loud. “Screwed with us, maybe, but not hurt us.”
“That’s probably coming,” Andy said, ever the optimist.
“I’m just saying,” Lisa said as she chewed, holding the remainder of her haunch of succulent…whatever it was. “I’m sure this food is fine.”
“Huh?” Andy said. “What do you mean, fine? It tastes good. What are you worried about? You think they might have poisoned it or something?”
“Uh…never mind.” She’d assumed they were all thinking the same thing, but apparently not. Lisa exchanged glances with Tessa, and they all returned to dining in silence.
Two days after their ordeal in the puzzle room, the hatch flew open to reveal a Quatro in the enormous corridor, staring at them with bright orange eyes.
For the first time since they’d been transported from the strange, puzzle-filled room, the invisible force seized them, dragging them into the corridor, where four more Quatro waited.
This time, the force did allow Lisa to walk on her own—but only in the direction the aliens seemed to want her to move in. If she attempted to head another way, it was as though a brick wall was stopping her.
They entered a part of the ship she hadn’t seen yet, and Lisa’s internal compass told her they were heading deeper into the subterranean vessel, though she had no idea of its actual size.
The corridor gradually opened up, until it became a cavern of a chamber, terminating in a multi-level dais covered in furniture similar in shape to the pieces the humans had been sleeping on, though these were much more sumptuous.
Twenty more Quatro studied them from atop that furniture, enormous paws drooping from lush upholstery, forty pairs of eyes studying them—ranging from orange, to pink, to green, to one Quatro with midnight eyes the likes of which Lisa had never encountered.
Without warning, the Quatro rose as one, and the dark-eyed beast pounced, crashing to the deck right in front of Lisa.
The beast loomed over her, body bunched, its feline face terrifying in its fierceness.
Am I about to die?
It seemed likely. Tortured, at least.
Something’s about to happen. And I doubt it will be pleasant.
Something did happen, but it turned out to be nothing like her fears.
It was no less shocking, however.
The Quatro spoke.
“Hello. Human.”
That done, it continued to peer down at Lisa, and she realized that what she’d mistaken for ferocity was actually curiosity. It was waiting for her to speak as well.
“Um…hi,” she said.
Chapter 39
Our Planet Now
Gabe walked the fields outside Ingress in his MIMAS, helping to clear away Quatro corpses, as well as a few that belonged to human beings.
The latter would receive proper funeral ceremonies and burials. The former would be piled in a heap and burned.
Perhaps one of the mechs would be the one to light the pyre.
Once his team had regained their footing and started fighting the Quatro in earnest, the battle had shifted quickly, with the aliens falling in droves. When the rest of the Darkstream battalion arrived, it had quickly become a slaughter.
The Quatro ranks, such as they were, had broken, and the enormous quadrupeds had begun to flee into the hills su
rrounding Ingress.
Oneiri Team hadn’t taken that as a cue to relent. Instead, they’d run the beasts down, metal feet pounding across the hard-packed dirt surrounding Ingress, guns blazing. They hadn’t wasted any more rockets on the fleeing Quatro, but they hadn’t been shy about pouring hot lead into their retreating backsides.
And so the hills, too, were littered with Quatro corpses.
The battle had been a rout, in short, and the MIMAS mechs’ first outing had confirmed Gabe’s high estimation of his team’s skill, as well as the power of the mechs themselves.
Still, the Quatro had shown up in numbers they were not known to have, with a level of cohesion that also had never been seen before.
Sure, the aliens’ behavior had always suggested Quatro packs were tight-knit, but an attack of this scale required a level of social intelligence that surprised every analyst Gabe had heard from so far.
It was worrying. From a number of perspectives.
Something else worried him—a thought he kept wanting to suppress. Mostly because it made a little too much sense, based on what he knew about the company he worked for.
From a distance, he spotted Jake Price loping across the killing field toward him. He could see Price’s mech in as much detail as he would have close-up, thanks to his own mech’s enhanced visual sensors. As with everything else, while in lucid, his mech’s sight was his sight.
He hadn’t gotten out of his mech since they’d jumped from the space elevator, and what was more, he had no desire to. In fact, the idea of returning to his lesser, human form filled him with reluctance; even a low-level dread.
His mech periodically injected him with a REM sleep-inducing sedative. Just enough to keep him in the dream.
A dream from which he had no desire to wake.
It would take Jake fewer than ten seconds to cross the intervening space, though he’d been quite some distance away when Gabe had first spied him. At a jog, the mechs ran faster than a horse at full gallop.
A soldier helping with the cleanup was outside her speeder momentarily, and directly in Jake’s path. She noticed that fact too late to jump out of the way, and her body language suggested extreme terror, but Gabe knew she wasn’t in any danger.
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