Battle Harem 2

by Isaac Hooke

  The tanks and mechs returned fire, and Jason saw the green dots that represented the defense platforms wink out across the board. But for every platform that went down, at least three red dots went with it. In moments most of the smaller units were destroyed, leaving only the mechs, both small and large.

  The energy turrets and tank artillery began concentrating their fire on the smaller mechs, and ravaged their ranks. The mechs returned fire, eliminating most of the closest platforms. Three of the bigger Cataphracts had teleported to the tanks, and were busy destroying them: some of those Cataphracts fired plasma beams. Others stabbed with huge swords. Some simply stomped.

  As the smaller mechs fell, the bigger Cataphracts closed with the defense platforms and treated them in a similar manner to the tanks. But those weapons gave as good as they got, and energy weapons tore through arms and legs. Some of the Cataphracts used their teleport ability to dodge. Some had shields they deployed to protect themselves. But the rest were slowly poked so full of holes that they couldn’t function.

  The defenses in all six sectors continued to wear down the enemy in that manner until every last platform and tank was destroyed. By then only four of Bokerov’s units remained standing. The team still had active cameras and sensors out there, allowing Jason to observe the units in detail: one looked like a big steel spider. The second was humanoid in shape, with a big ax and shield. The third was vaguely dinosaur-like, while the forth appeared to be a big worm. All of them had secondary weapons mounted to their shoulders and other joints, capable of firing energy, plasma and laser bolts and beams.

  “We can take them,” Tara said. “Look at how damaged the Worm and the Spider are.” It was true: the Worm’s flanks were pocked with blast craters, while the Spider was missing three of its legs.

  Jason was still reluctant to commit. He merely watched the Cataphracts approach.

  “We can’t let them come right up to our front door...” Xin said. “We need room to transform.”

  “I know that,” Jason said.

  “He’s wary of bombers...” Tara said.

  “Bingo,” Jason said. “Aria, anything out there?”

  “The skies are clear, at least so far,” Aria said.

  “It could be a trick,” Jason said.

  “We have a shield...” Sophie said.

  “The ballistic shield of our combined form can hold up to a lot of punishment,” Aria said. “But cluster bombs dropped all on the same spot? The shield would give fairly quickly.”

  “We’re running out of time...” Xin said.

  Jason glanced at the overhead map. The Cataphracts had reached the edge of the ravine.

  “Fuck it,” Jason said. “If we want to keep this base, we have to fight. Let’s teach Bokerov a lesson he won’t forget. Aria, open up the front doors. It’s time to get out there. And combine.”

  The three inner portals in the storm drain that led outside opened. Aria led the way, her ballistic shield covering those who came behind.

  As soon as Jason entered the ravine, he switched to Bullet Time and initiated the combine. Immediately he and the others appeared in his VR, in front of the mountain lake.

  He held out his hands, and grabbed the palms of Lori and Tara on either side. The other girls link arms, so that all six of them held hands. In the middle of the group, Z appeared, and she too extended her arms, though pointed them directly upward.

  Blue pulses traveled down the arms of the girls, and into their neighbors. The pulses from Lori and Tara traveled into his hands and up along his arms; when they reached his head, the VR world fell away, replaced by the collective consciousness of their neural networks. He knew the deepest, darkest secrets of all the girls, and they knew his.

  He could hear all their thoughts in his mind as if they were his own.

  “Man, I’ll never get used to this,” Sophie said. “Get out of my head!”

  “No, you get out of mine!” Lori said.

  “I can never get over how much it sucks to be you,” Tara said.

  “Who, me?” Xin said.

  “All of you,” Tara said.

  “Speak for yourself,” Sophie said.

  Reality returned, and the six mechs dashed toward one another. He accelerated his time sense slightly to move the process along. The six mechs leaped onto one another, and parts of their bodies began to reposition, along different tracks built into the hulls. Jason became the head, Aria the chest, Tara his right arm, Sophie his left, Lori his right leg, and Xin his left leg. Aria’s shield and lightning bolt cannon had slid onto his left hand, which ended in eight spider-like fingers, courtesy of Sophie. Thanks to Tara, he had a sword protruding from his right forearm, along with a grappling hook, and his hand was two pincers. His energy weapon had moved to his right shoulder, where it had plugged into a slot on Aria’s body, to form a bigger energy cannon. The same thing had happened to his railgun, which now protruded from the opposite shoulder. He could fire superheated plasma beams from his right hip, where Xin’s eyes were located. And his tail could unleash plasma bolts, courtesy of Lori. Sophie’s micro machines were gone: they’d sealed the joins between different parts of the disparate mechs, and served to enhance the different segments and weapons as appropriate, for example lengthening Tara’s sword, and Aria’s ballistic shield.

  He also had Sophie’s jumpjets on his back, but the jump range was limited, because of their combined weight.

  As the final pieces of his Cataphract fell into place, Jason immediately made himself invisible. He was still operating in Bullet Time.

  He dashed forward, holding his ballistic shield in front of him. He still had access to all the missile launchers each of the individual mechs had possessed, and he fired several Hellhawks now. The missiles passed out from the sides of the shield and swerved toward the different targets. Unfortunately, each of the opposing Cataphracts had Battle Cloaks, and they used them liberally to deflect the missiles.

  Releasing the missiles had given away his position, so he shut down the invisibility, which was steeply draining their combined power cells anyway.

  Jason reappeared, and rammed into the Spider, shoving it onto its back. Then he slammed his sword down into the underbelly, and the arms went limp.

  The Axeman swung at him from the side, while unleashing plasma and energy bolts. Jason dodged the big blade, but those bolts struck his right side.

  “Gah!” Aria said. “Watch the ribs!”

  He struck down with his sword, and fired his own energy cannon at the Axeman. Meanwhile, beside that particular tango, the Worm unfolded its mouth—multiple jaw appendages peeled back, like a budding flower—and unleashed a long stream of energy.

  Jason dashed forward, putting the Axeman between himself and the Worm. The latter enemy smartly shut down its beam before allowing it to cut into the Axeman.

  An alert sounded on his HUD. The Damage Report screen indicated he was taking laser damage to his railgun, and lightning weapon. The Dinosaur was attacking from the left flank.

  Jason swung his shield to bear, and blocked the attack. Then he initiated a teleport so that he was on top of the Dinosaur, and he sliced his sword downward, intending to lop off its head.

  But the Dinosaur teleported away, and Jason struck only empty air.

  “This isn’t quite working out the way we planned...” Xin said.

  “Sure it is,” Jason said.

  The Axeman lowered his sword and unleashed an energy beam from the tip. Jason blocked it with his shield just in time.

  The Worm teleported into view beside him, its maw open wide and poised to unleashed its energy weapon...

  But Jason’s hip was tilted toward the Worm already, and he activated the plasma beam. It erupted from his hip before the Worm could fire, and struck the tango in the mouth, cutting through the weapon, and the head itself. The Cataphract collapsed.

  “Uh, look north,” Sophie said.

  Jason glanced that way. A rift was opening next to the ravine. He wasn’t sure
if it was random, or something Bokerov had arranged beforehand. Either way, it meant the battle was about to become a whole lot busier.

  He heard the high-pitched whine of shells.

  “Shit!” Jason said.

  He glanced at his overhead map, which calculated the trajectory of the detected shells, including the source to the east. He glanced that way, and spotted the reserves Bokerov hadn’t yet committed. There were literally hundreds of tanks and smaller mechs lying in wait there. The whole point of the attack had been to draw his team out.

  He teleported out of the way, using up precious battery power.

  He heard another whine, slightly deeper in pitch than the others. The Axeman and the Dinosaur immediately retreated; they fired their energy weapons at him the whole time, forcing Jason to raise his shield against the attacks.

  “Bombers!” Tara said.

  “I hear them!” Jason said.

  The rift next to the ravine solidified, and Phaser mechs began to come through.

  As the positions of the bombs were detected by the different sensors he had scattered in the area, calculated impact zones began to appear on the overhead map. Many of them overlapped multiple times, thanks to the profusion of bombs that were dropping.

  Seeing those impact zones, he knew the battle was over.

  “We can’t teleport out of those zones,” Jason said. “The range is too far. Nor run fast enough to escape. There’s only one place we can go.”

  He turned around and leaped back into the ravine; he fired his jumpjets to give him a boost along the way.

  When he was close to the storm drain, he initiated the separation command.

  When the mechs finished reverting, he shouted over the comm: “Into the cistern! We retreat!”

  8

  Jason dove into the storm drain that led inside the base, followed by the other mechs. When they were all inside, Aria sealed the three hatches using the remote interface.

  The cistern shook badly as the bombs struck. Dust and pieces of debris fell from the ceiling with the impacts.

  But the roof held.

  “Good job on the reinforcements,” Jason said.

  “Thank you,” Aria said.

  He felt another shuddering above him, followed several seconds later by a clanging.

  “Looks like they’ve discovered our escape hatch,” Tara said.

  “One of them,” Jason said.

  Aria had installed another in the fourth floor. She’d drilled a tunnel several kilometers underneath the city, one that opened up near the center of Brussels.

  He tried to access the cameras on the street above, but the bombing run must have devastated the area, because he got nothing.

  Jason directed his Explorer into the fourth floor escape tunnel. “The secondary tunnel seems clear.”

  “I’m registering an energy attack on the main hatch,” Aria said as the clanging continued. “So far, the hatch is holding. My guess is we have at least ten seconds until it fails. Maybe less, if that Axeman decides to lodge its blade into the weakened metal.”

  Red dots appeared on the overhead map, located just within the final inner hatch. They were moving in single file.

  “We got a breach,” Tara said.

  “No,” Jason said. “Not a breach.”

  He switched to a camera inside the storm drain and confirmed his hunch: the hatch was completely intact. But enemies were still coming inside.

  “Phaser mechs,” Jason said.

  Those mechs, which were the same size as his own, transitioned through the metal of the hatch and materialized inside the storm drain tunnel. Jason swung his energy weapon between the pillars beside him, and he aimed toward that tunnel. He saw nothing in the shadows, but on his LIDAR band, he could make out the small shapes of the encroaching attackers outlined in white.

  “To the fourth floor,” Jason said. “We’re taking the secondary escape route.”

  He fired his energy weapon, and before the weapon struck, the target phased out.

  The Rex Wolves barked wildly as Tara gathered their leashes and herded them toward the scuttle to the next floor.

  Jason switched to his laser as the first Phaser stepped into the light of the cistern proper.

  “Let’s see how well they’re able to dodge this,” Jason said.

  He fired. The laser impacted, causing surface damage, but before it could do much more than that, the mech phased out. Two other Phasers directly in the line of fire behind that beam behaved similarly.

  Jason stepped forward. “Hurry up. I’ll delay them for as long as I can.”

  “Jason, you can’t stay!” Sophie said.

  “I have no intention of doing so,” Jason said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  The lead Phaser mechs activated their sparking swords. One of them sliced at a nearby column, cutting right through it. Another pointed its blades at Jason, and he stepped behind the pillar beside him as some sort of plasma channel formed. A circular red outline marked the impact zone on the wall, and a moment later a huge lightning bolt erupted from those swords and drilled a massive hole into the cistern wall beside Jason, precisely over the previously marked zone.

  He leaned past and fired his laser weapon, aiming at the center of mass—the cockpit. This time, the Phaser didn’t blink out of existence—it needed some time to recover after firing that plasma channel. The beam cut a small hole right through that cockpit, and probably into the alien inside; the mech promptly froze.

  Then the reddish outline of another plasma channel surrounded him, and part of the pillar he was hiding behind.

  “Oh shit.” Jason dove toward the scuttle. Behind him, the huge lightning bolt carved a hole into the pillar where he had been standing.

  He slid along the metal floor, his hull scraping loudly against the floor underneath him.

  In front of him, another Phaser dropped down from the tunnel that led to the ceiling escape hatch. It activated its swords, and took a step toward him. He fired his laser, and the mech phased out. He followed up with an energy bolt that struck as the mech phased in. Two more Phasers dropped a moment later.

  By then the rest of the War Forgers had taken the plunge to the next floor, so he scrambled to his feet, and repeated his previous attack—firing off a laser, followed by an energy bolt to hit the Phaser as it returned to this reality—and then he leaped into the nearby scuttle.

  Jason landed with a loud crash below.

  Lori and Tara were waiting there for him.

  “Go!” Jason said.

  They hurried through the pillars, toward the opposite side of the cistern, where the scuttle to the next floor awaited.

  “Where are the dogs?” Jason said.

  “I let them go,” Tara said.

  “How will they know where to go?” Jason said.

  “I’ve been training them to take the secondary tunnel,” Tara said. “The verbal command is ‘Wheatie Time!’ They’ll be expecting a treat at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, I won’t have one to give them this time, but I think they’ll forgive me.”

  “Do I want to know what a ‘Wheatie’ is?” Jason asked.

  “Probably not,” Tara replied. “Unless you like decapitated Octaraffe heads.”

  “Ah.”

  The three of them reached the next scuttle, and Jason waited for Tara and Lori to leap down. Phaser mechs were already arriving behind him, landing underneath the same tunnel that took him to this floor. He utilized his usual dual pronged laser and energy bolt attack, this time adding his railgun to the mix. He took down five of them, but the Phasers kept arriving. Some of them were preparing plasma channels with their swords, and several circles of red light overlapped his body, and the wall behind him.

  He heard three successive clangs upstairs, and realized that was the hatches falling on their hinges. He didn’t think the Axeman or the Dinosaur could fit that tunnel, as they were far too big, but Bokerov’s smaller units—the tanks, robots, and ordinary mechs—would easily fit
.

  Jason stepped into the empty air of the hole that led to the next floor, and dropped. Above him, thick lightning bolts rammed into the wall.

  He landed, and weaved between the pillars toward the final scuttle with Tara and Lori. He kept expecting a Phaser to drop down from the ceiling, but none did—maybe they weren’t capable of altitudinal motion when phased out. It would make sense, otherwise gravity would pull them into the surface of the Earth, and when they solidified again they’d be trapped.

  When Jason reached the fourth floor, he saw that Aria, Xin and Sophie were trying to gather up as many 3D printers as they could. Frames snapped and heads broke away, as the printers weren’t designed for mobile transport.

  “Leave them!” Jason said. “You’re only breaking them anyway!”

  “What about our cache of rare elements!” Aria said. “And I also have three partially built mechs in there, along with a nearly complete AI core!”

  “We have to abandon them all!” Jason said. “No time!”

  “No!” Aria said. She dashed into the printer room. “I’m saving the AI core at least!”

  A Phaser mech landed with a loud thud underneath the scuttle behind him.

  “Damn it.” Jason swung his weapons toward the newcomer. “The rest of you, through the tunnel!”

  Jason fired in rapid succession, using his laser to cause the mechs to phase out, and timing the follow up energy and railgun attacks to strike as the enemies phased back in. He was forming quite a pile of metallic bodies at the base of that scuttle. But more of the Phasers simply landed on the first, crushing the bodies as they did so, and spreading out to allow more of their companions to jump down.

  Aria appeared just as the incoming mechs were becoming overwhelming; several red circulars appeared over his body, a nearby pillar, and the wall of the chamber behind him.

  Jason grabbed Aria’s mech by the arm and dragged it away from the printer chamber. The thick lightning bolts hit their targets, slamming into the pillar, and the wall, carving large blast craters.