He asked the whispers a question he hadn’t asked them before.
Why…why would Darkstream trick me into thinking Jess was dead? What would they stand to gain from that?
A high-pitched cackle rose up inside him, then, and he had to suppress the urge to clutch his head with his metal hands.
Gabriel Roach, must you really ask? Do your enemies need a reason for the evil they do, other than their evil natures? The laugh came again. They did this because they are war profiteers. The humans and the Quatro both—they conspire to make their species fight, and after each battle they count their credits.
“I see,” Gabe muttered, and of course it all made sense, now. He should have seen it before. It brought him shame that he’d been foolish enough to have to ask.
Continue your slaughter, Roach. It is the same mission you’ve been on almost all your life. Kill, kill, kill. It doesn’t matter who directs you to do the killing. It never has. Has it? Has it?
The whispers had become a single, unified shriek. Gabe returned to fighting.
He commanded his arms to transform from broadswords into rotary autocannons, and he sent streams of hot lead into all who stood against him.
As meteorites crashed to the earth all around him, becoming metal bipeds who also engaged the Darkstream forces, Gabe focused on one of the MIMAS mechs—the one with yellow swirls covering its face and body.
There, the voice inside him said, having become a whisper once again. Kill her, and you will have your answer.
“But how—”
That is their champion! Kill her, and your enemies will surely crumple! What can they do, then, but yield to you your beloved?
Gabe knew exactly who the whispers had instructed him to kill.
“Jess won’t be happy with me…” he mumbled.
But if this meant getting her back, it was worth it. Anything would have been.
He charged.
Chapter 46
Makeshift Gunships
In short order, the twenty or so Quatro who charged at the enemy holding the canyon were mowed down in a hail of gunfire.
They lack military training.
To Lisa, that was clear. If they’d possessed the discipline instilled by training, they would never have let their emotions lead them to their own deaths.
She’d hoped that the Quatro’s sheer size and ferocity would compensate for their lack of training, but now she began to doubt that.
I need to get them under control.
Suddenly, she remembered that her jumpsuit’s collar had an amplification function, in the event that coms went down and shouting became the only means of communicating in battle. She used her implant to activate it.
“All units fall back in an orderly fashion! You infantry in front—go to the right or left of the Quatro you’re retreating past!”
She wasn’t sure “infantry” was quite the right term for the Quatro—they were more like cavalry than anything else. Some of them had been outfitted with spare guns Lisa’s militia had had on the shuttles, making them…a mix between cavalry and infantry?
Now was not the time to puzzle over their classification. Bullets rained down all around her, sinking into Quatro flesh.
Rug positioned herself between Lisa and the robot army, and she saw the Quatro twitch as ordnance found its way into her body, her facial features contorting.
“Move out of the way, Rug!”
“I will not. You move back, out of harm’s way. Fall back, Lisa Sato.”
She let out a frustrated sigh through gritted teeth as she began striding backward, ducking out from behind Rug whenever she could to provide covering fire for their retreat. Her shoulder was killing her.
“Militia members and Quatro with guns,” she barked, “return fire against the enemy units that are pressuring us most!”
The swiftness with which her soldiers followed her command pleased Lisa—and also brought her a small measure of relief.
Maybe this isn’t completely hopeless after all.
Rug also turned around to fire on the enemy with the energy weapons strapped to her back, though she continued to provide physical cover to Lisa as she stalked backward.
At last, the majority of Lisa’s force made it to cover. The uneven terrain was good for that, at least—there were plenty of hollows, hills, and short cliffs to use.
Even those who could find no cover were protected by the distance they’d put between themselves and the canyon, which was where the robots seemed intent on remaining.
“Tessa,” Lisa subvocalized over a two-way channel. “What’s your location?”
“Taking cover to the south.”
“Looks like I was right about the robots organizing and opposing us.”
“It seems you were,” Tessa said after a short pause. “But I stand by what I said. There’s no point in obsessing over something until it becomes an actual problem.”
“Right. Well, it’s a problem now. There must be satellite photos of the terrain to the north and south—have you had a chance to look at them? Is there another route we can take?”
“Doesn’t look like it. According to these elevation readings, the land to the north is too variable to allow passage for a force of any meaningful size. To the south, mountains, with no discernible pass through to the west that I can make out.” Tessa sighed. “I’ll admit, it looks like these machines are clear on their goal: prevent us from returning west.”
Lisa racked her brain for an answer that didn’t involve trying to advance through that meat grinder.
We could ferry our forces back and forth using the shuttles…
But no, that was stupid. It would take weeks to move everyone, and they’d make themselves vulnerable to attack during the operation. Besides, they’d run out of fuel long before they transported everyone.
Somehow, I doubt Darkstream will be willing to lend us more.
At last, she said, “Tessa, do you see an alternative to battling through that canyon?”
“Not unless we leave the Quatro we’ve recruited behind. I’m assuming we don’t consider that an option.”
“I don’t. Do you?”
“No.”
“All right, then.” Lisa stared over the sunbaked land, at the canyon that would be her crucible. “There has to be a way to get to the top of one of those cliffs that form the canyon. What are you seeing on the photos?”
“Uh…I’d try for the southern cliff—try to find a path through the mountains that leads to it. The mountain slopes look treacherous, and I’m not sure humans could get up there, but maybe Quatro could. Maybe.”
“I say we send Rug and the Alex Quatro with their energy weapons, plus half the Quatro we’ve outfitted with guns and another fifty without. Their mission will be to take that cliff and fire down on the robots in the canyon as well as the ones stationed on the opposite cliff. They can time the attack with our own charge at the canyon. What do you think?”
“Well, it’s your call. You’re in command. But if you ask me, it still sounds risky as hell. I think we can expect our forces to get torn to shreds as we try to take that canyon.”
“Maybe not, if we order our ten shuttles to fly forward to join the fight. They’re combat shuttles, remember? If we use them as makeshift gunships, order them to hit the robots from the air, and Rug and the others to hit them from that cliff, we might just be able to make a go of this.”
“Huh.” Judging by the silence that followed that syllable, Tessa was mulling the plan over. “I sure can’t think of anything better.”
“Then we’ll run with what we have. I’ll start handing out the orders.”
“I’ll sit on my ass, I guess.”
“No you won’t. You’ll organize the armed Quatro we’re keeping with us, along with the humans from our militia. I want them to spread out from each other as much as possible, to reduce their vulnerability to enemy fire and to increase the firing solutions they have on those metal bastards.”
“Hey, some
one taught you well.”
“That someone had better get moving. Sato out.”
Chapter 47
Concentrated Fire
Ash soon discovered the most efficient way to fight the robots that continued to fall from the sky.
She kept her hands retracted and settled against her wrists but left her bayonets extended. That way, she could rip apart the robots with armor-piercing rounds when they were far, and slash them to pieces or impale them when they were near.
“Keep both your bayonets and your autocannons deployed at all times,” she ordered the others once she figured that out. “We have to keep them off our armor.”
Though the robots looked fragile, and they certainly disintegrated in short order under concentrated fire from the rotary autocannons, they could do a lot of damage if they made it through. There was power in those little limbs, and Ash had a wicked gash down her right thigh, where circuitry was now visible and coolant had begun to leak out.
I won’t let that happen again.
She’d integrated the dream’s unique way of interpreting stimulus with the visual sensors that covered her mech, and whenever one of the robots attacked her from any angle, she developed an itch on the spot where it would hit, and the world flashed red in that direction.
One of the robots tried to come at her from the air, having leapt far overhead. Ash’s head itched, making her wince at the image of the metallic creature digging into her brain, even though her actual head didn’t reside inside her mech’s.
Either way, her bayonet sliced the robot clean in two before it came anywhere near her.
Four more robots charged, having woven between nearby Darkstream units to take her by surprise. Two of them came from more or less the same direction, but the other two were spread out.
She picked off the pair near each other, impaled one that was headed for her chest, but failed to deal with the fourth before it latched onto her bicep and began to savage it.
Seizing it by its arm, she whipped it into the air while maintaining her grip, so hard that part of its body snapped off, sailing away over the battling robots and soldiers. She threw what remained in her hand as hard as she could at another robot about to reach her, which drove it back, buying her time to make it explode with her right autocannon.
The tide of combat granted her a brief reprieve, then, which she used to check on her teammates. Nearby, three robots were descending through the air toward Beth.
Ash spun up her autocannons, aiming at two moving targets simultaneously and taking them both down. As for the third, Beth caught it in two cupped hands, then crushed the thing between metal palms.
“Thanks!” Beth said, turning to nod at Ash.
“Anytime,” said Ash as she picked off another enemy headed for Beth, and her teammate shook one off that had begun to tear at her ankle with tiny metal claws.
“How are you holding up?” Ash asked.
“I’ve been better…though I guess this is what I signed up for.”
“Fighting Quatro is what you signed up for. I can’t decide whether this is better or worse.”
Beth turned toward her, and something about the way she froze told Ash everything she needed to know.
“Ash, behind you!”
She’d already begun to turn—far too late, however.
A serrated blade made of dark metal sprouted from her chest, right where her body was nestled inside the MIMAS.
The dream washed everything she could see in a deep scarlet, through which she could make out only dim outlines.
The blade retracted, and Ash slumped to her knees. She fell forward, her face connecting with the hard ground.
Chapter 48
Everything at Her Disposal
The dream rendered Beth’s anguish by sending cracks through the sky from which bled the darkness of space, staining the blue surrounding them.
She charged at Roach, and he withdrew his blade from Ash to face Beth, massive arms folding inward to become energy cannons, which immediately began to crackle with light.
Too late.
Beth engaged her rockets, blasting into Roach’s midsection and carrying him backward several meters to crash into the side of a tank, which shifted sideways under their combined weight.
Pushing off him with her feet, she surged forward once more to land a right hook on his jaw, then drove her bayonet as hard as she could into his midsection. It plunged through, hitting the tank on the other side.
Roach tried to seize her, but she darted backward, reaching behind her to disconnect her heavy machine gun and swing it around, riddling his chest and face with bullets.
Still, Roach plowed forward against the barrage, and she hit him with a pair of rockets at point-blank range.
Praying it had bought her enough time, Beth ran back to the spot where Roach had impaled Ash.
The robots had left Ash alone during Beth’s brief absence, probably assuming she was finished. At first, Beth feared that too, and the thought almost buckled her knees.
But when she checked, she saw that Ash was alive, even though her vitals were awash with red.
Knowing the MIMAS was designed to keep its pilot alive for as long as possible, Beth didn’t dare remove Ash from it. Instead, she bent and picked her up, balancing her atop her right shoulder while holding her heavy machine gun in her left hand.
The little metallic devils ran at her once again, and Beth picked them off with her heavy gun, one by one, swinging it wildly from target to target while keeping a firm hold of the gun to prevent it from slipping from her grip.
When the robots began to swarm her, she simply ran, firing behind her without looking.
Her objective was a shallow rise beyond the fighting, and when she reached it, she gently laid Ash down on her back.
With that, she turned back to face the oncoming robots, immediately sweeping her heavy gun back and forth across their ranks.
Not fast enough. There were dozens of the robots approaching at a full run, unflinching in the face of Beth’s defense. More were joining the chase from the periphery of the battle, probably smelling easy meat. Two for the price of one.
Worse: the meteorites that contained the robots were still falling from the sky at regular intervals.
Beth tossed her heavy gun aside, since it would have taken too long to replace it on her back. Then she retracted both her hands to reveal her rotary autocannons. She opened fire.
The vibrations that the autocannons sent through her arms was a pleasant sensation for Beth, and she also liked the way they made her forearms spin around and around in tight circles.
It was even more satisfying when the sensation was paired with robot after robot disintegrating before her eyes.
But it still wasn’t enough. Beth judged that the robots would reach the hill soon no matter how well she targeted them, and so she did the last thing she could think of that might prevent them from reaching Ash.
She offered herself to them as their target.
When she charged to meet them, the robots almost seemed to gain in speed, as though her approach had infused them with eagerness.
They threw themselves upon her as she ran among them—but she increased her speed, causing most of them to miss.
Two did manage to latch on to her; one on her calf, and one on the small of her back.
She kicked off the first, sending it careening into another robot as Beth’s foot knocked a third flat on its back. But the remaining robot immediately set about burrowing into her mech, and Beth was forced to fall backward onto the ground, crushing it.
The others pounced on the opportunity, rushing toward her while she was down, but Beth was in the finest form of her life, driven by the intense fury that had risen within her after what Roach had done to Ash.
She snapped both of her arms backward, just as she’d seen some of the robots do in order to launch themselves up at the mechs.
It worked—the maneuver sent her hurtling back to her feet, and she sliced
through two more airborne enemies as she did, generating a storm of metal parts that rained down onto the dusty ground.
Whipping around, she punched another robot in midair before jogging backward toward the hill where Ash lay, opening fire on the remaining hostiles.
Yet more enemies emerged from the battle and fell from the sky, intent on destroying the two MIMAS mechs.
Beth refused to allow it. To protect Ash, she would use everything at her disposal—her wits, her training, her skill, and even her life, if it came to that.
Chapter 49
Instant Headache
“How close are you, Rug?” Lisa Sato asked.
“It is difficult to tell,” Rug answered. “I have not laid eyes on my destination for some time.”
“All right. Keep me posted. Sato out.”
Rug was trying her best. As she led her force through the mountains, she kept in close touch with Lisa Sato using subvocalization, a function her translator enabled. To speak out loud would have risked warning the machines on the cliff of her approach.
Of course, that was provided she made it to the top of the cliff at all. Together, she and the twelve Quatro with her from Alex, as well as the sixty-five from the eastern drifts, had taken more than an hour to get even this far.
All the while, the Meddlers’ machines bombarded Lisa Sato’s position.
Rug knew that her human friend didn’t think of the machines as such—as belonging to the Meddlers. She preferred to put their very existence out of her mind, as a distant, undefined possibility that she didn’t have to deal with right now.
That was not an uncommon tendency, among both humans and Quatro. But it never failed to aggravate Rug immensely.
Lisa Sato did not endure the Meddlers’ onslaught. She did not lose everything to them.
Still, Rug’s friend was not stupid, and she had ordered her force back as soon as the machines had struck, saving most of her soldiers. Rug herself had taken two bullets, one in her shoulder and one in her right flank, which had entered at oblique angles and hadn’t seemed to hit anything vital. She was able to navigate the treacherous mountain ways despite the pain caused by the bullets inside her.
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