by Isaac Hooke
“We have to rescue my sister!” Lori said.
“Yes,” Jerry agreed.
Jason pondered the news. “What can you tell me about Bokerov’s base?”
“Well, we already lost two groups of War Forgers trying to capture it, so that should tell you everything you need to know,” Jerry said.
“Details, man,” Tara said. “We need details.”
“All right,” Jerry said. “It’s hewn into the base of the biggest mountain in the region. An iron rich cliff I named The Grange. It’s surrounded by defense platforms of all kinds: energy, plasma, and laser. All along the nearby shoulder of the mountain, he’s got solar panels providing power. Inside the base itself, he’s got an airfield from which he can launch autonomous bombers and fighter jets. He’s got mechs in there, and robots, but no Cataphracts as far as I can tell.”
“But you said you were attacked by the latter units?” Aria pressed.
“I was,” Jerry explained. “But those units were already outside the mountain. Maybe part of some permanent patrol. Or more likely he has another, bigger base somewhere in the region. He outflanked me, with the smaller troops pining me down from the front, and the Cataphracts and other artillery attacking from the rear. Meanwhile, bombers pounded us from above.”
“Sounds like his usual tactics,” Tara commented.
“So, anyone have any ideas?” Jason asked.
“We tunnel, maybe,” Sophie said. “My micro machines can dig through anything.”
“How long would that take?” Jason said.
Sophie considered it. “Hm, maybe not. Could take two months, if we started a kilometer out.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “That’s too long. We don’t know how long Bokerov is going to keep their AI cores alive.”
“I can only imagine what suffering, what tortures, they’re going through,” Xin said. “There’s no guarantee they’ll still be sane when we retrieve them.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “But we have to try. We can’t leave them.”
“Thank you,” Jerry said.
“My hope is that Bokerov committed most of his troops to the attack against our base in the northwest,” Jason said. “With luck, he’ll have spread himself too thin, so that even if he has another mountain outpost nearby, he won’t have enough troops in the area to mount a proper defense.” He paused. “We’re going to have to do this quickly. In and out. Destroy the defenses, grab the girls, and leave before reinforcements arrive.”
“It will be tricky,” Jerry said.
“It always is when dealing with a madman,” Jason said. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do.”
And he went over the plan.
Jason crouched on the outskirts of the mountain base identified by Jerry. It was midday. He had low crawled into position, as had the other mechs. Their antennae were in directional mode, and pointing at one another, away from the base, to reduce their EM footprint. They were just out of range of any thermal sensors.
The Rex Wolves were back at the valley, as were Aria’s tanks; Jason had decided not to use them for this particular battle.
Lori, meanwhile, slowly moved into position under the cover of her invisibility. There was a chance she would be detected, as a small thermal footprint was evident in the foot region of her mech, but only if Bokerov knew what to look for. The sensors near the solar panels probably weren’t sensitive enough anyway.
Sure enough, she maneuvered along the shoulder of the mountain without being detected. When she was in place, she sliced through the thick power transference cord that led away from the solar panels on that side of the mountain, using a specially constructed laser Aria had created for the task. Her invisibility could envelop small items she held with the fingers of her mech, and the laser cutter was just the right size to be included.
An alarm sounded, coming from the rectangular metal entrance at the base of the mountain, and a repair swarm emerged, escorted by tanks and mechs.
Aria’s Dominator clone was among those mechs.
“Would you look at that,” Tara said.
“Bokerov must have repaired her mech,” Jerry said. “And swapped out the AI core with his own.”
“Either that, or Bokerov broke her, and obtained her encryption keys,” Tara said. “Forcing her to give him administrator rights to her codebase.”
“But if Bokerov could do that…” Jason had a sudden moment of doubt. What if this was a trap? What if Jerry had been reprogrammed by Bokerov, and intended to betray them?
He tapped in Lori on a private line. Though she was closer to the base, because of the directional nature of her communication, the enemy wouldn’t be aware of the transmission.
“You’re certain Jerry is clean?” Jason asked. Earlier, at Jason’s behest, Jerry had given up admin rights to his AI core to Lori. She confirmed no malicious lines of code had been introduced in recent weeks.
“Positive,” Lori said. “If he betrays us, I’ll eat my panties. Well, if I had panties.”
“Okay, thanks,” Jason disconnected the private line.
He waited for Lori to reposition to the opposite side of the base, where the second array of solar panels resided. Jason knew where she was, because her blue dot updated on his external map. But that was the only sign he had of her.
When she was in place, she severed the transfer cord on those particular units as well, cutting the base off from all external power supplies.
The lights inside the entrance went out, only to reactivate as the base switched to its power cells. What could be considered emergency power.
Another alarm went up. More tanks and mechs emerged with another group of repair drones, and headed toward the new severed cord. Sophie’s Highlander mech was among them, though its movements were slightly spasmodic.
“I guess that shows he still has our AI cores captive,” Sophie said over the comm.
“It does,” Xin agreed. “Though somehow, your spider mech seems creepier in enemy hands.”
“The AI core is certainly piloting it more… jerky, than I do,” Sophie said.
“I’m betting that core is a clone of Bokerov,” Aria said.
Bombers launched from the runway, and more tanks emerged from the main entrance, setting up in a defensive half circle just in front of the opening. A thick blast door sealed, cutting the base off from external access.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Jerry said.
“We’ll work with it,” Jason said.
Trapdoors opened on the ground in front of the base, and from hidden silos defense platforms emerged. Their turrets ran the gamut from energy, plasma, and laser, just as Jerry had said.
“The bombers are turning back,” Aria said. “They’re heading our way…”
“Hold positions,” Jason said.
The tanks unleashed an artillery barrage that arced over the plains, and battered the ground nearby.
Then the bombers swooped past, and dropped their payloads over the same site.
“Decoys have been destroyed,” Aria announced. She’d constructed the five life-size mechs out of pulverized rocks from the valley, creating hollowed out shells in a fraction of the time it would have taken to construct a real mech. Each of the War Forgers had donated a battery to power the heat wires Aria had fashioned throughout those shells, wires meant to mimic the thermal signatures of real mechs.
Lori hurried back into the flat area in front of the blast doors, and began to sever the power lines of each defense platform. The tanks apparently still had trouble detecting the weak thermal footprint of her invisibility, and instead opened fire directly at each turret as it went down, hoping to get lucky and strike her. But she had already moved on each time. Lori chose the platforms in a random fashion so that the tanks wouldn’t know which turret to target next, keeping the enemy on their toes.
“The bombers are coming back for a second pass,” Aria said. “Looks like they’ve spotted us.”
13
“Time to move int
o action,” Jason said. “War Forgers, deploy!”
The tanks had finally learned to track Lori’s position by the thermal footprints at the base of her mech, and she was forced to flee in a zig-zag pattern as plasma bolts smashed into the ground all around her.
Tara teleported, appearing directly behind the half circle of tanks. She cut through three of the tanks at once with a wide sweep of her sword. The enemy Highlander jetted down from the solar panels on the left side, and Tara ran right at it, swinging her sword. The spider mech activated its energy shield in defense, sending Tara bouncing away. The Highlander created a swirling maelstrom of cutting knives out of its micro machines and hurled them at Tara, who simply teleported behind the Highlander and thrust her sword through the AI core.
“See, Sophie, if I really wanted to take you down, I could!” Tara exclaimed. But then she was on the move again as the nearby tanks swiveled their turrets toward her.
“Yeah, try that against the real me,” Sophie said. “And we’ll see how far it gets you. I would have never deactivated my energy shield so soon.”
Jason and the others left their position, and hurried toward the main entrance. Aria led the way with her shield deployed, and the others followed in single file.
The turrets opened fire, and Jason saw the inside of the shield glow red as it took the impacts. He had the Explorer’s point of view piped into the upper right of his vision so he could watch as the Dominator clone fired its lightning bolt weapon at Aria from the solar panels on the right side, and Aria’s shield deflected the impact; the bolt struck a nearby defense platform instead, and sent electricity arcing into adjacent units.
Sophie launched her micro machines up toward those solar panels, spinning them in a similar whirling maelstrom as her enemy clone had done. The machines dove behind the tanks, which the Dominator was using for cover, and swept underneath the ballistic shield. When those micro machines emerged again, the enemy Dominator collapsed, dropping its shield. She swarmed those machines over the rightmost tanks next, taking them down one by one.
“All too easy,” Sophie said.
Jason and the others reached the line of platforms and spread out.
Aria fired her lightning weapon against the closest platform, and the bolt arced between it and the adjacent platforms, taking all three down.
Xin superheated her hull and leaped forward, spinning as she did so, turning her body into a weapon. She burned through three of the turrets before landing, and once she was on her feet, she fired the plasma beam from her eye, melting the hulls of two tanks in her path.
Sophie’s micro machines had returned, and she fired her jumpjets to leap over the fray and land on top of a tank. She sent her micro machines arcing down into the hull, and cut right through it. A nearby tank fired at her, but she activated her energy shield and deflected the plasma bolt. Then she steered her micro machines toward the attacker, cut off its turret, and then curled the bladed knives those machines had formed into its hull.
Lori was back in action, moving invisibly between the different turrets, and slicing through their power cords with her laser cutter. She occasionally fired a plasma bolt from her tail as well, striking any of the tanks that were nearby.
Tara teleported onto the left shoulder of the mountain, where the secondary group of tanks were launching shells from the solar panels there. She utilized her sword to remedy that.
Jerry fired his energy weapon up at a tank that nearly struck Aria from behind, and then focused on a closer defense platform.
Operating in Bullet Time, Jason concentrated his railgun fire against two defense turrets on his left, taking both down, and at the same time fired his energy weapon at two tanks on his right in rapid succession.
“See how it’s done, Jerry?” Tara said, slicing through the last of the tank group she’d attacked.
Jason heard a high-pitched keening, and knew more bombs were coming. The Explorer scout calculated the positions of the drop, and in moments red circles overlaid the ground all around him and the team, indicating the blast zones. Those circles enveloped all of the terrain immediately outside the main entrance, encompassing not just the mechs, but Bokerov’s tanks and defense platforms: as usual, it looked like Bokerov was happy to sacrifice his own units to destroy an attacker.
“Pull back, War Forgers!” Jason said.
He and the others withdrew along the shoulder of the mountain in single file. Aria brought up the rear, her shield held in place. Some of the tanks fired artillery that arced up over the shield, toward Jason.
Sophie jetted beside him, and activated her energy shield. The shells struck her shield and detonated harmlessly.
The War Forgers hurried past the edges of those calculated circles with time to spare.
The carpet bombs struck, sending up large plumes of dust. The land behind Jason was covered by the resultant cloud, which enveloped everything.
“Notice how no Cataphracts attacked during all of that?” Jerry said. He sounded like he was trying to justify his own loss, versus the comparative ease with which the original War Forgers had won this battle. Then again, they hadn’t quite won yet.
“Jason was right about Bokerov having spread himself too thin,” Tara said.
“Cataphracts could be coming,” Jason said. “We have to proceed immediately.” He turned around and headed into the cloud. He activated his echolocation chirper, which was able to penetrate the thick cloud only three meters in any direction, outlining the ground and the rock wall beside him in white wireframes. He moved forward, keeping a hand on the white outline of that wall, and followed along the outline of the crater that had formed in the ground just beside it, a crater that had swallowed up the enemy tanks and defense platforms. In that manner he made his way toward the blast door.
“Lori, are you able to access any remote interface?” Jason asked when he reached it.
Lori approached. Her outline appeared on his echolocation display, meaning she had deactivated her multi-band invisibility. “No. There’s nothing.”
“Tara, it’s up to you,” Jason said.
Tara’s outline came forward in the dust, and then vanished entirely as she teleported past the blast crater and inside.
Jason waited impatiently. He heard the sounds of fighting beyond the door: explosions, the scraping of metal across metal, the clank of large hands and feet striking smaller objects.
Jason hoped she was all right.
And then a loud thud reverberated across the metal of the door, and it began to lift.
“She did it,” Xin said.
Some of the dust began to seep inside, but not enough to completely cloud the visual band. The overhead emergency lights remained active, forming visible rays through the dust.
When the door locked into place, Jason saw Tara approaching, walking with a limp. Her ankle actuator had a large chunk missing from it. Nothing the repair drones couldn’t fix later.
Behind her were the wreckages of several smaller combat robots. Most of them had been cut in half, but some bore evidence of blunt force trauma: either smashed by Tara’s fists, or her grappling hook. There were a few soot smears on the metal floor amid shattered machine parts, indicating where some of her rockets had gone off.
“Clear,” Tara said.
Jason and the others entered. They walked through a wide, rectangular corridor made of metal that could easily fit twenty of their mechs standing side by side. It was just tall enough to accommodate their heights: there was no room to combine.
The portions of the dust cloud that had seeped inside began to clear as the group moved deeper. The team approached another blast door.
“I don’t have enough charge to teleport again,” Tara said. “Not unless I go outside to charge in the sun for a while.”
“Lori?” Jason said.
A moment later the door began to open.
“Good job,” Jason told her.
“I didn’t actually do anything,” Lori said.
“De
fensive posture,” Jason said. “Everyone, behind Aria.”
Aria held her shield in front of her, and the others lined up in single fire, aiming their weapons past the edges of Aria’s ballistic shield.
Jason leaned past the left side and watched as four large shapes came into view. They were spread out, lying on the ground, with weapons pointed at the War Forgers.
“Open fire!” Jason said.
But he ducked as an energy bolt glanced past. It slammed into the ceiling behind him, carving a large chunk.
“We got clones of Tara’s Shadow Hawk, Lori’s Stalker, Xin’s Blaze, and your Vulture,” Aria said.
A chunk disappeared from Aria’s shield as an energy bolt slammed into the edge.
The enemy Shadow Hawk teleported behind Jason, and its sword stabbed down on him.
But Tara was there to intercept with her own sword, and she batted the weapon away.
A plasma beam erupted from the Blaze underneath the opening door, and it struck Tara in the side. She quickly dove forward, putting the enemy Shadow Hawk between herself and the beam. But as that plasma beam cut toward it, the enemy teleported away, leaving Tara exposed.
Aria opened fire then; she’d swung her lightning weapon over the shield, and struck the enemy Blaze, which caused the beam to wink out.
Xin leaped past the side of the shield, glowing bright white, and entered into a horizontal spin as she threw herself at the attackers.
Plasma bolts abruptly shot out from the side as the enemy Stalker, which had gone invisible, fired at Xin. The impacts interrupted her spin, and she crashed harmlessly to the ground.
Lori had also gone invisible, and she launched plasma bolts at the source of the attacks.
The Vulture dashed forward, leaping over the shield, and fired directly down at the exposed Aria. The energy bolt struck her shoulder, carving a huge gap.
Sophie launched a drill of micro machines at the Vulture, shredding its armor, but he fired at her neck, and carved a hole through her side.
Tara had returned behind the shield, and stabbed her sword through its chest. She hit the power cell, because the Vulture collapsed, surrounded by electrical sparks.
