Landing on top of his opponent, Jake headbutted it, his forehead sprouting a rotating auger as he did.
His aim was to end this fight instantly, so that he only had one opponent to face. But he should have known from his first fight with an alien mech—the one he currently piloted—that this one wouldn’t go smoothly, either.
As the auger connected with his enemy’s face, that face simply split into two, and the auger hit nothing but the barn floor.
Twin spires shot up from the alien mech’s torso, digging into Jake and suspending him over his adversary by several feet.
Dangling there for a moment, he began to panic, and the insects covering his skin multiplied in number and size.
Then, he inverted, just as he had in the Belt while fighting Ravagers. Now he faced the barn’s ceiling, or at least where the ceiling once had been. That done, he rocketed away, loosening the parts of his mech that had been punctured in order to free himself.
A blast of energy caught him midair, dramatically altering his trajectory and sending him toppling end over end to land in a pond that neighbored the barn.
Use this, the dream-whispers suggested, and Jake instantly knew how. Drawing the water through vents that took shape atop his shoulders, the mech separated the water into hydrogen and oxygen, using the hydrogen to propel itself through the surface.
But Jake continued to rocket through the air well after breaking out of the pond, sketching a steep parabola. At its peak, he used his thrusters to keep him aloft while ordering his arms to become energy cannons.
It took him less than a second to locate his targets on the ground.
There. They were standing next to each other, seeming to stare up at him.
He loosed bolt after white-hot energy bolt at them, forcing them to scurry across the terrain like mice.
That emboldened Jake, and he altered the angle of his thrusters while sprouting new ones, the result being that he screamed toward his opponents, intent on ripping them both apart.
That turned out to be a mistake. The mechs turned as one, aligning their forearms, both of them pointing at Jake.
Then, the alien mechs did something unexpected. Their forearms melded together—one mech’s right arm joining with the other’s left—to become a single, massive energy cannon.
That cannon unleashed an immense blast of energy at Jake, scoring a direct hit.
After that, all was nothingness. Dim impressions of…something…reached him through the void he inhabited, but they didn’t seem to affect him. Not really.
Whatever those vague sensations signified, whatever events they provided an outline for, they were happening to someone else.
Jake was apart from it all, a spectator, and one who wasn’t paying very much attention.
Then, gradually, he returned to consciousness—or at least, the facsimile of consciousness offered by the mech dream.
The darkness began to lighten, and he became aware of great pain, as well as the insects that dug into his flesh, bloodying him, gnawing on his organs.
The alien mechs had set him against the base of the spire atop which perched the artificial sun, and the way they pummeled him against that black obelisk without breaking it was a testament to its exquisite engineering, not to mention the nanocarbons that had been used in its construction.
Jake’s head lolled down, and he became aware of the rough shape his own mech was now in. The front of his torso was splayed open in several places, and one of the enemy mechs continued to slam its fists into him while the other cut him with the blades its hands had become.
Submit to me, Jake’s mech whispered to him. Let us make our union permanent, so that we might become simpatico and gain the power to vanquish these interlopers.
“Submit…” Jake muttered.
It was tempting. He wasn’t sure what the mech was proposing, exactly, except that it would almost certainly cost him, probably dearly.
But if sacrificing himself was what it took to save Hub…to protect Sue Anne…
Embrace destiny and become one with this conduit to the void and to the universe, to the true oneness, yes, this will take us to heights greater than we could ever achieve alone. Good, we must seek the good, and the path to good is through unification. Our union is that which nullifies, that which makes the same, but to nullify we must unify and to unify we must—
“Sue Anne,” Jake said, speaking with conviction, now.
Did Sue Anne want her brother to return to her, or did she want whatever he’d turn into after accepting the alien mech’s proposal?
Would it even be worth surviving if survival meant living on as whatever creature he’d need to become?
Jake decided it wasn’t worth it, and that he would sooner die.
Looking down at himself again, he watched as the blades wielded by one of the enemy mechs laid him open completely. A final cut revealed the cocoon where Jake’s dreaming form was curled, exposing it to the air, as well as to the mech’s sword.
That sword darted forward, and in that instant, which seemed to stretch on for an eternity, Jake decided that death was also an unacceptable outcome. He needed to return to his sister.
A blade sprang from his mech’s ravaged stomach to parry his enemy’s thrust, and Jake’s left arm became a cannon which swung up to blast the mech who’d been pummeling him.
That only succeeded in driving the mech back a couple of meters, but it gave Jake enough space to do what needed to be done.
He seized the mech who’d nearly killed him, digging razor-sharp metal claws into its front. Then, Jake rocketed upward, carrying his adversary along for the ride.
As he flew, up and away from the central spire, he commanded the front of his mech to continue knitting back together, increasing the shielding that protected his human frame.
That was good, because his captive continued to employ its blades in a desperate attempt to escape.
It would not escape. As they drew level with the artificial sun in the comet’s center, Jake threw the mech toward it, blasting it with energy to ensure it didn’t alter its own trajectory in time.
Jake made sure to line himself up with the landing bay before tossing the mech, and as he fired at his enemy, he also thrust toward the airlock, sending it the command to open for him ahead of time.
The mech collided with the artificial sun as Jake passed through the hatch. A blinding explosion erupted, spreading rapidly outward, and Jake commanded the inner airlock door to close while rocketing straight through the outer one, tearing it from its casing.
He didn’t stop, instead using his momentum combined with the mech’s thrusters to rip through the closed outer airlock.
Jetting away through space as fast as he could, he patched the visual sensor feed from his feet through to his HUD so that he could watch the entire comet rupture, great gouts of flame flickering all across its surface.
The entire edifice became a ball of white light before winking out to reveal the void beyond. Jake’s implant tracked the trajectories of thousands of pieces of shrapnel, but he was already over a thousand kilometers away, and none would hit him.
Chapter 34
Sea of Blades
The hours crept by inside their rocky prison, and Lisa dreaded the idea that she would have to attempt sleep on the jagged, uneven cave floor.
This far underground, her implant’s signal was blocked, and so there was no hope of calling for help. She also had no way of checking on Andy, and that upset her just as much.
Their guns had been taken, but their jumpsuits had lights, and they used those to suffuse the cell with a uniform blue murk.
Looking around the cell, Lisa’s chest ached to think of how many good people she’d lost since first forming her militia back on Alex. She’d lost many Quatro, too, but it wasn’t until now that the alien soldiers were gone that Lisa realized how few humans remained.
The fight to escape Habitat 2 had taken all but nine humans, and now they’d lost Rodney Vickers and Beati
e Anderson too. With Bob O’Toole and Andy back with the Quatro drift near the space elevator, that left only four militia members inside the cave with her.
Something creaked near the mouth of their cave-cell, and Lisa whipped around to see a Quatro standing behind the bars.
When she crept closer, the lights of her suit revealed that it was Rug.
“What are you doing?” Lisa hissed, but of course the Quatro couldn’t answer.
Instead, the alien held her stare for a long time, and Lisa got the impression she was trying to communicate something.
At last, she walked backward into the cell, picking her steps carefully across the uneven rock floor.
Only then did Rug act. As she retreated down the cave a little, the creaking sound from before continued, followed by a resonant groaning. Next, the bars were ripped from their rock frame by an unseen force to slam against the opposite wall of the tunnel.
Lisa motioned for the others to follow her out.
Looks like I won’t have to sleep on those awful rocks after all.
“Good job,” Lisa whispered as she neared Rug, throwing her arms around the Quatro’s neck.
But Rug wasn’t out of surprises. Behind her, the militia’s guns were stacked, along with their combat knives, grenades, and other equipment they’d taken with them from the shuttle.
“Rug…how did you…?”
But the alien turned, walked down the tunnel toward the exit, and glanced back at them before continuing a little farther. Clearly, she wanted Lisa and the others to follow.
They collected their weapons, and Lisa stowed as many grenades around her person as she could fit. Once they’d given their guns a once-over, they crept after Rug, weapons at the ready.
It didn’t take long to figure out what had given Rug the opportunity to spring them from their prison. A Gatherer sprang out of the darkness at the Quatro, and she batted it out of the air to explode against the tunnel wall.
With that, the Quatro shot a meaningful look back at Lisa.
“Rug, look out!” Lisa said, pointing.
Without the translator, Rug couldn’t understand Lisa’s words, but the panicked tone and the gesture seemed sufficient to convey her meaning.
The Quatro turned to behold what Lisa had seen: a host of Gatherers, stretching into the darkness, advancing on their position. A sea of wicked blades writhed at the end of steely tendrils.
Lisa opened fire.
Chapter 35
The Altar of Expansion
Lisa couldn’t deliver orders to Rug, and so she had to structure her troop movements around the Quatro, with the hope that she knew enough about squad tactics to complement Lisa’s efforts rather than hinder them.
“Spread out, two to each side of Rug,” she barked, putting two rounds into a Gatherer, which didn’t seem to have much effect.
“Rug will take point, but do not use her as cover. Instead, provide each other with covering fire, and use Rug as an anchor for your formation.”
Three of the soldiers responded with “Yes, ma’am,” though Tessa only offered a curt nod.
During their first battle with the Gatherers, Lisa had developed a hunch about their structure. Based on the varying effects her bullets had had then, she’d begun to suspect they were weaker on top than they were from any of their sides—which made sense. Their forward and side carapaces had to be extra-hard, for clearing obstructions as efficiently as they did.
But the tunnel grew narrower, and with her five soldiers spread out in a single rank, Lisa was having difficulty getting many shots in around them.
Though the tunnel was narrow, the ceiling hung pretty far overhead…
Lisa tapped Rug’s haunches with the butt of her SL-17’s handle.
The Quatro glanced back at her, and Lisa gestured at the ground in a lowering motion.
After a few seconds, during which Lisa was pretty sure Rug’s expression was some version of Are you really asking me to do this, the Quatro dropped to her stomach, allowing Lisa to clamber onto her back.
She quickly shimmied to the front, near the Quatro’s neck, and grabbed a tuft of fur to stabilize herself. The effort caused her shoulder wound to send shooting pain throughout her torso, but she ignored it.
Briefly, she was reminded of riding behind Andy on his hoverbike while gunning down Daybreak goons. She leveled her assault rifle at one of the Gatherers.
Success. Instead of absorbing two magazines’ worth of bullets before it popped, the Gatherer fragmented after a short burst.
She shifted her muzzle toward another target, then squeezed off another short burst. This time, it took two of them.
By the time she’d neutralized a third, and then a fourth, Lisa had realized that her shots had a greater effect the closer to the center she placed them.
Good. Maybe now we won’t go through our entire supply of ammo only to take out a dozen Gatherers.
Well, their supplies weren’t quite that limited, but they were far from unlimited, either.
“Shoot for the very center of each Gatherer’s top,” she yelled over the tumult of gunfire and the metallic clanging of the robots. “It takes a lot less to make ’em pop, that way.”
Lisa wondered how many times she could work the phrase “make ’em pop” into conversation today. She liked saying it.
The tide of Gatherers seemed never-ending, but with their improved targeting, the six militia soldiers managed to keep them at bay.
Then, from a side tunnel up ahead, two Quatro—also soldiers of Lisa’s militia—came charging through the Gatherers, ignoring the blades that stabbed and smacked at them to trample the robots with their sheer weight.
The Quatro’s near-kamikaze run instantly changed the battle, turning it into a rout. It also taught Lisa that the Gatherers were capable of fear, or at least of some manner of self-preservation instinct:
The robots retreated.
The two Quatro, Nail and Fan, were bleeding from dozens of wounds, with scarlet streaming down their heaving flanks.
“That was very brave,” Lisa told them. “Thank you.” But Nail’s translator had also been taken, and Fan hadn’t had one since before his drift was stranded on Eresos. Both Quatro only stared at Lisa, their expressions unchanging.
Shrugging, Lisa pushed down the tunnel, her newly bolstered squad backing her up close behind.
Without warning, the tunnel opened up into an enormous cavern, where the floor sloped steeply toward the center, though with wide platforms of level rock here and there.
Campfires dotted the gloom, and upwards of two hundred Quatro were locked in furious combat with what seemed like ten times their number in Gatherers.
The moment Lisa entered, one of the battling Quatro was forced back into one of the fires, and its shrieks echoed off the walls.
Lisa and her companions joined the fight without hesitation, hitting an exposed Gatherer flank hard.
It took the better part of an hour, and a lot of Quatro were slain, but at last they achieved victory against the invaders.
Lisa mourned the felled Quatro, but she also gave silent thanks that no one else from her militia had been killed. She doubted she could have taken that, today.
Shortly after the last Gatherer fell, Lisa came face to face with the Quatro who’d spoken with her through her cell’s bars.
“We thank you for your assistance in protecting our home, two-legs,” the Quatro said, sounding grudging.
“You’re welcome,” Lisa said, crossing her arms. “Are you going to ask us to surrender our firearms and return to jail, now?”
The Quatro had no answer for that, it seemed.
“May I borrow the translator? I would address your drift.” Lisa held out her hand.
Another long silence passed.
At last, the translator became unfastened, without any visible action from the Quatro. It clattered to the rock floor. The Quatro’s eyes never left Lisa’s.
She stepped forward and picked it up, fastening it arou
nd her own neck, though of course the translator drooped far down her chest. Her neck was somewhat thinner than a Quatro’s.
Casting her gaze at the host of Quatro assembled before her, Lisa said, “I come from Alex, where I had a fairly cushy job with Darkstream. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re the ones currently slaughtering Quatro in droves to the west of here.”
A long silence settled in after those words, too, and she let it, praying that the implications of her words were also settling in.
You Quatro carry nearly as much blame for those deaths as humans do.
But she didn’t say that, not yet, and she hoped she wouldn’t have to. “I was on a promising career track with Darkstream. My future was bright. My job was easy, too—I thought it was hard, but it was incredibly easy, and I could have phoned it in for the rest of my life while making piles of credits.” She glanced at Tessa, then, before returning her gaze to the Quatro.
“I abandoned that career,” Lisa went on, “when I realized how dangerous Darkstream is to the people living in this system. Both human and Quatro. They’re bent on constant expansion, and they’re willing to sacrifice the happiness and prosperity of regular people on the altar of that expansion.
“I sacrificed my future because I didn’t want to be a part of the death machine they’ve created. Now, I’ve devoted myself to stopping that machine. If you consider it a worthy pursuit to prevent the suffering and death of thousands more innocent humans and Quatro, then I hope you’ll join me in my fight.”
Lisa unfastened the translator, held out her hand with her fingers downward, and let the device drop onto the cave floor. With that, she walked away.
Suddenly, she realized what she’d just argued for: self-sacrifice for the good of the group. And when she thought about it, that was exactly what she’d been doing ever since turning against Darkstream back on Alex.
All right, she thought. All right. In certain, very select cases, it’s the right thing to do. But only very seldom.
And anyway, the Quatro tended to take the principle way too far.
Mech Wars: The Complete Series Page 51
