"Best hope your magic hoops have the power to fry those demons," said Broom. "You know what they say about the Black Battlenaut's minions."
"Monsters. Abominations." Grist licked his lips and swallowed hard.
Just then, the line of Battlenauts began to move. Grist lurched to a stop and brought all magic wands and wish-guns to bear on the line.
All at once, the six Battlenauts raised their right knees, then dropped them. Next, in unison, they kicked their right legs in the air, swinging them to chest level.
And dropped them.
They repeated the moves. This time, they hopped a little as they lifted their knees and kicked their legs.
The ground shook whenever they touched it. Wild music skirled over the comm, its punchy rhythm matching the movements of the Battlenaut chorus line.
*****
Freak swore she could feel the hot breath of the Flesh Battlenaut gusting against her own Battlenaut's back.
She quick-checked her visor display and saw the horrible thing still gaining on her. She was running hard, maxing the specs, and she was still going to lose the race.
Just moments ago, she and Grist had been chasing the monstrous Black Battlenaut. Now, she was the prey of something equally monstrous.
"Freak? Come in, Freak." The voice on the comm sounded like Raw's, but Freak wasn't fooled. She recognized the disguised voice of the thing that was hunting her.
All she saw on the video feed from her rear-facing cameras was Raw's Battlenaut racing after her...but she knew that, too, was an illusion. The thing that was back there, reaching for her, could not be caught on video, though the naked eye could see its true form.
Her naked eye had seen it, and she would never forget it.
The thing had started out as a single Battlenaut that had stepped into her path. Freak had jammed her Battlenaut to a stop while Grist had continued running onward without her.
The strange Battlenaut had stood motionless for a moment, its gold armor glinting in the beams of Freak's forward running lights. Then, it had raised one arm from its side. It had turned its hand over and opened it, revealing something pink and wet in its golden palm.
Zooming her optics to maximum mag, Freak had gotten a good look at what was in that hand. Just before the mystery Battlenaut had opened its mouth and dumped in what it was holding, Freak had recognized it.
The mangled, naked body of a human being.
As Freak watched, the Battlenaut had chewed up the human remains. It had chewed them with its mouth open, the lower jaw swinging wide to give her a good look at the gruesome mess.
After a long moment, the gold Battlenaut had finished chewing. It had opened its mouth wide once more, showing that the mashed remains were gone, and then its mouth had closed.
Suddenly, streams of pink flesh had boiled up from the seams and joints and vents in the gold Battlenaut's armor. Rolling and twisting and meshing, the flesh had stretched over the metal like a suit of skin, one throbbing layer weaving over another.
It was then that Freak had turned around and started running.
*****
As the squad of Rightful Battlenauts opened fire on Freak, Raw leaped into action. It was either that or let them pound Freak into bits, since she wasn't fighting back.
Based on her recent behavior, Raw thought the odds were good that she didn't even know the enemy was there.
Lasers blazing, Raw charged the nearest rebel and did some damage to its guns. As slugs fired by another Rightful blasted his armor, Raw brought everything he had to bear on the first Battlenaut's midsection...lasers, sonics, missiles. The instant he let it all fly, he swung his Battlenaut hard about and bounded after the other rebel.
As Raw scorched the second rebel Battlenaut with laser fire, he checked his visor display to make sure Freak was okay, which she was: still running, barely staying ahead of the third Rightful Battlenaut. The Rightful was lighting her up with laser fire, but Freak was shrugging it off.
Unlike Raw's Battlenaut, which took a hard shot to the chest from one of his opponent's missiles. Raw's Battlenaut shook and teetered from the explosive impact and started to fall over backward.
Quickly, Raw spun the Battlenaut's upper body around and fired slugs at the ground. The recoil kept the Battlenaut on its feet and ready to continue the fight.
Raw just wished he could deal with the killer itch on the bottom of his foot so easily.
*****
Grist marched in the Battlenaut Day parade, waving at the throngs of Battlenauts of all shapes and sizes cheering from the stands. The whole time, he searched his surroundings for the Black Battlenaut, who had run off in this direction after Grist's last sighting.
The six dancing Battlenauts at the mouth of the pass, it had turned out, had all been parts of the Black Battlenaut. Right after their big dance number, they had crashed together, cranking and twisting and snapping into one giant Battlenaut with black armor and weapons galore. Then, instead of attacking, the Black Battlenaut had raced off, leaving Grist to try in vain to keep up.
"He's out there somewhere," said High Five, who looked like an oil spill with a mouthful of yellow tongues. His voice sounded like continuous belching. He floated in midair and was Grist's new best friend. "I can feel it, buddy-Joe."
High Five was never wrong, except about women. "I hear ya," said Grist, carefully scanning the crowd. He thought he saw the top of the Black Battlenaut's head peaking out from behind the stands, but the image faded when the hypo cuff poured more go-juice into his arm.
A droning electronic anthem played from speakers along the parade route, and all the spectators hummed along with it. Vendors sold candy-coated humans stuck on sticks, which Battlenaut children licked and crunched.
"You seen one Battlenaut Day, you've seen 'em all, right?" said High Five.
Grist laughed. "You can say that again."
A second later, Grist noticed in an absent-minded way that the cockpit was full of fizzy water, and High Five had been replaced by a word, "GOOD," in bold black letters a foot high.
"What do you say, Word?" Grist slapped in annoyance at his hypo cuff, which had just shot him with more hot go-juice.
Word reshaped itself from "GOOD" to "LOOK," pointing at one of the video screens with the tail of the "K."
Without thinking, Grist looked at the screen Word had indicated. The words "BLACK BATTLENAUT" filled the screen from top to bottom and edge to edge, rapidly flashing bright and dim.
Grist tried for a better view through the forward viewport, and he got it. Just like on the screen, the words "BLACK BATTLENAUT" floated up ahead, blinking on and off.
Grist's heart beat faster. "Is that him?" He pointed at the words "BLACK BATTLENAUT" through the viewport.
Word swirled around and reformed itself from "LOOK" to "CRAY."
And it was at that moment that the comm kicked on again.
The anthem "Tried and True" blared from the speaker. A few bars in, a human voice spoke up over the music. A man's voice.
A familiar voice.
"Hi there, Killer. Time to settle the score."
"Cray?" said Grist.
*****
"Hello, Sharon," said the woman's voice over Freak's comm. "Been a while."
Freak kept driving her Battlenaut hard and didn't answer. That's Gwen Tuileries. Gwen Tuileries is dead.
The smell of burning Battlenaut and human flesh was so strong in the cockpit, Freak gagged. The hypo cuff was hitting her with go-juice what seemed like every ten seconds. Her head was spinning, her stomach lurching.
And her dead best friend was calling on the comm.
"You're headed straight for me," Gwen said over the comm. "Just a little further, Sharon."
Hearing that, Freak slammed on the brakes. A second later, as her Battlenaut stumbled to a halt, she remembered the Flesh Battlenaut that had been chasing her.
Freak whipped around, expecting the Flesh Battlenaut to pounce on her...but the pounce didn't happen. In fact, she c
ould see no trace of the Flesh Battlenaut in her searchlights.
She did, however, see a towering black figure.
Gwen laughed lightly over the comm. "Oops. I misspoke. Actually, I'm right here, Sharon."
*****
Raw had his hands full keeping the attacking Rightfuls at bay, when suddenly his Battlenaut was hit from behind by laser fire.
A glance at his visor display revealed a familiar transponder signal back there, and the feed from the rearward camera confirmed it. Even as Raw fought the rebel Battlenauts who were chasing Freak, Freak had turned around and was shooting at Raw.
So now it was three against one. Not that he was the kind of guy who sweated the odds.
First things first. Set your priorities.
As lasers and slugs hammered his Battlenaut, Raw stormed the closest Rightful. In spite of the heavy fire, Raw drove his Battlenaut up close and shoved the barrel of a laser cannon into a breach in the enemy's armor.
After pumping in a few blasts, Raw darted away. The rebel exploded, throwing out a shock wave that sent his partner reeling.
Even as Raw struggled to keep his Battlenaut on its feet, he growled with delight. One down, two to go.
That was before Grist charged up and opened fire on him, too.
*****
"Kill me once, shame on you," Cray said over the comm in Grist's cockpit. "Kill me twice...well, you can't kill the Black Battlenaut, can you?"
Grist tried to block out the voice as he fought to keep up with the Black Battlenaut. The behemoth had grown to colossal size; its walking strides were so vast, Grist had to run at top speed just to stay in weapons range.
He fired his lasers again and watched them skim harmlessly off the Black Battlenaut's ebon armor. The hypo cuff squeezed tight, flooding his arm with blazing go-juice.
That was when the Black Battlenaut stopped and turned. Each footfall made the earth tremble.
Grist cut loose with his Battlenaut's lasers and sonics, but he might as well have been firing feathers. The Black Battlenaut stood unfazed and stared down at him.
"Let me explain," said Cray.
At first, Grist didn't realize Cray's voice wasn't coming from the comm anymore. It took a minute for the truth to sink in.
"We should've done this a long time ago," said Cray, who now was leaning against the cockpit wall, aiming a lopsided grin at the man who had shot him to death.
*****
Raw wasn't sure which bothered him more: fighting off three Battlenauts, two of them piloted by his squadmates, or not being able to scratch his itchy foot.
When Grist suddenly stopped shooting at him, cutting the weapons barrage by a third, Raw's itch moved up to first place. Gritting his teeth, he barely resisted the urge to stop fighting, kick off his boot, and scratch like crazy. In the process, he dropped his guard for an instant and took a laser hit that charred the armor plating on his Battlenaut's left shoulder.
Cursing as a stream of wild shots flared around him, Raw swung around. He charged toward the source of the fire, targeting his own arsenal on what had become the most volatile threat of the moment.
Freak continued to pound him with lasers and missiles as he hurtled toward her.
*****
Freak unleashed the full fury of her weapons, but the Black Battlenaut kept stomping toward her.
Gwen's voice chimed over the comm with no more tension than if the two of them were chatting over coffee. "What do you think I'm going to do to you, Sharon? Burn you alive?"
Freak's heart hammered. That's exactly what you'll do. Make me die the same way you did.
"Well, it isn't gonna happen," said Gwen. "Why would I try to kill someone whose life I died to save? Besides which..."
Suddenly, everything changed. Freak was in the cockpit of her old Battlenaut instead of the current one. Looking out the forward viewport, she immediately recognized the steam vents and weird geologic formations of another world.
Laser fire pulsed past her from the fortified walls of a Rightful garrison. Commander Endymion snapped out orders over the comm in the cockpit.
She was back on Gallop, during the battle in which Gwen had been killed.
"Besides which," Gwen said over the comm, "I don't blame you for what happened."
*****
As soon as Freak's weapons shut down and dropped, Raw doubled back and charged the Rightful behind him.
That was when something unexpected happened. A missile hissed out of his Battlenaut's rack and shot straight toward the enemy. Raw watched as the missile hit the rebel Battlenaut's midsection dead center and detonated, blowing a hole in the heavy armor.
There was just one problem. Raw didn't remember firing the missile.
Suddenly, Raw's Battlenaut lunged forward. Lasers ablaze, the Battlenaut raced at top speed for the Rightful.
As Raw watched through the viewport, his Battlenaut lit up the hole in the enemy's belly, setting off an explosion in its guts. The Rightful danced like a man touching a high voltage power line, then slammed to the ground in a pile of smoking scrap.
Raw quick-checked every status display in the cockpit, scrambling to ferret out the problem. Never in his career had a Battlenaut taken independent action like that.
He only stopped hunting the glitch when he heard a tapping sound in the direction of the forward viewport. He looked toward the noise, and his eyes widened with surprise.
His Battlenaut was pointing one of its own lasers into the cockpit.
The hypo cuff squeezed Raw's bicep and pumped him full of liquid fire. A voice echoed in his head, and he recognized it immediately.
It was the voice of a young man, barely out of his teens. "I'm back. Did you miss me?"
It was the voice of Braeburn Score.
*****
"If you say you're sorry one more time, I'm gonna pop you one," Cray said with a smirk.
"Okay. Sor..." Grist barely caught himself. He was still in a daze, struggling to deal with the fact that a man he'd killed was apparently sitting in the cockpit with him.
"Your apologies are meaningless," said Cray. "What's done is done. Get over it."
"I can't." Grist pulled off his helmet and set it aside. "Not a day goes by that I don't think about it."
"Big baby." Cray snorted and shook his head. "It was war, man. Chaos. It was nobody's fault."
"I panicked." Grist's hands were shaking.
Cray leaned forward. "Okay, look." He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands between them. "You're really pissing me off here. All this 'poor me' crap." Cray rolled his eyes. "The not sleeping and the volunteering for suicide duty. How do you think that makes me feel?"
Grist shrugged.
"Makes me feel like kicking your ass," said Cray. "How about getting your shit together, so I can at least feel like my death meant something. Like you learned from your mistake and went on to accomplish something."
Grist rubbed his chin. "I'll try."
"Just do it."
"What about the universe?" said Grist. "Are you going to destroy it?"
"Ask the chicken-fish." Cray hiked a thumb toward one side of the cockpit.
A long, green fish with the head of a chicken bobbed in a bubble of pink water floating in midair. "Redeye Base to Redeye Squad," it said. "Come in Redeye Squad."
*****
Once upon a time, a filthy young beggar decided to ply his trade outside the military academy in Soldier City on Archibald.
(As the hypo cuff pumped go-juice into his arm again and again, Raw listened to the voice in his head tell the story.)
Not surprisingly, the privileged and arrogant young men who passed through the academy's doors proved to be terrible pickings. They spat in his beggar's bowl and ridiculed him. Sometimes, they struck him on their way past.
But one young man was different from the others. Whenever he passed the beggar, this young man always greeted him and put coins in his bowl. Eventually, he even brought the beggar food and clothing.
The beggar was suspicious, as the young man's kindness was so unlike any of the other privileged military students. The young man, however, assured him that his motives were honorable.
Over time, the two became friends. They were of about the same age, in fact. Each week, the military student took the beggar to a local restaurant for lunch. The student even suggested that there might be a place for the beggar on the estate of his father, a baron.
The student was truly good luck for the beggar...especially after the beggar murdered him.
The beggar did it in a matter-of-fact way, with a strong cord around the throat. He slipped away with enough money to start a new life in another town as another man.
And he never looked back. He never regretted killing Braeburn Score in cold blood. It had simply been a thing that had to be done, a matter of survival.
His name was Flynn Jarvo.
He changed that name to Robert Pellucid. Nickname "Raw."
*****
"You don't know the whole story," said Freak. She had adjusted remarkably well to being thrown back in time and was pumping round after round from her old Battlenaut's guns into the enemy garrison. "That's why you don't blame me."
Gwen sighed over the comm. "Go ahead. Do it."
"Do what?" said Freak.
"This is when you send the signal," said Gwen. "The go-ahead for the rebel ambush."
Beware the Black Battlenaut Page 2
