by Isaac Hooke
“Well, that’s rather generous of you,” Bambi said. “Sharing alien weapons tech with competing nations. You’re not worried Canada, Mexico, Brazil or Argentina will use that tech against you at some point?”
“Of course we are,” Arnold said. “But those countries would have stolen the tech at some point anyway. Over the past twenty years we’ve already had inventory go missing, despite an extensive lockdown, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the Canadians or Mexicans already had some of it. Besides, the whole Earth is at stake here. If one of those countries falls, the invading micro machines in the region will multiply until they become a storm, becoming that much harder for the rest of us to take down. We had no choice but to give them the tech. Not to mention it’s the right thing to do, for humanitarian reasons. We can’t stand by while our fellow man is slaughtered.”
“Altruistic now,” Bambi commented. “That’s new.”
“You were human once,” Arnold said. “I thought you’d understand.”
“I understand completely,” Bambi said. “Why do you think I’m here, standing before you?”
Arnold nodded. “I know you’re all angry with me. You feel I blackmailed you into returning to the service. And truthfully, I did. But I have one last thing to ask of you. And it’s not a small thing.”
“It sounds like you have everything in hand,” Marlborough said. “I’m not sure why you’d still need us at this point.”
“Maybe he wants us to help some of the other cities?” Mickey said. He’d given up the containment field, and the termite it contained, having returned the device to Arnold an hour after the Bolt Eaters wiped out the micro machines. “We fly to Los Angeles, or Austin, and help with the clean-up efforts. We create a few black holes, suck up the termites, and move on to the next city.”
“No, I have something more important for you than that,” Arnold said. “You see, the Brass isn’t sure if the mothership has more airships in reserve, or other weapons waiting to launch at us. They want you to board that mothership as soon as possible, and destroy it with your black hole weapons, like you did during the first alien invasion.”
“Shit yeah, I’m in!” Slate said. “I want to squeeze those alien snails until they pop like pimples! Squash them into bleeding pus! Trample them underfoot so that their insides spread out like cow poop in a farmer’s field. Slap—”
“We get the picture…” Crusher said.
“Why destroy the mothership?” Manticore asked.
“What do you mean?” Dickson asked.
The alien scout Manticore conveyed to the meeting swiveled to face the gathered Bolt Eaters. “With my knowledge of the Essential and his inner workings, I think I can take over the ship, if you can bring me to the control room.”
“Take over an alien starship?” Arnold said. “Now that’s an interesting proposition.”
“Do you know where the control room is?” Marlborough asked.
“I have the complete layout of the mothership stored in my database,” Manticore replied. “I know where everything is.”
“The Essential certainly shared a lot with you…” Eagleeye commented.
“Actually, I extracted this data on my own,” Manticore said. “I’ve captured more than a few alien units and experimented on them. They always erased their data upon capture, and it took me the longest time to figure out how to restore that data, or at least fragments of it. Though the Essential instances have reduced storage capacity as compared to the main instance, they still contain a hell of a lot, including the layout of the mothership, among other blueprints.”
“We all have partial layouts of the mothership, too,” Frogger said. “At least, those areas we visited while under control of the Essential.”
“If you can get humanity that ship, you’d definitely swing the tide in our favor,” Arnold said. “The people of Earth would forever be grateful.”
“The way you talk, you make it sound like we don’t belong on this planet,” Dunnigan said. “The people of Earth. Bah.”
“Er, a momentary slip of the tongue,” Arnold said. “You’re all decked out in alien technology. It’s easy for me to forget sometimes that you originate from our planet.”
“See, this is why I don’t like humanity,” Slate said. “They treat us like outsiders, and when confronted about that treatment, they pretend like it was all some big misunderstanding.”
“Okay, getting back to the subject at hand,” Eric said. “We want to take over the ship, and that’s great, but how are we going to get aboard in the first place. The mothership is enveloped in micro machines specifically engineered to operate in a void environment.”
“We’ve installed repelling emitters in the shuttle, similar to those installed in your mechs,” Arnold said.
“That won’t be good enough,” Hicks said. “The termites won’t get us, but I’m sure the mothership has other weapons it can throw against us. Like those black holes it uses to get rid of any nukes you guys toss.”
“That’s a wrinkle in the plan,” Arnold admitted. He glanced at Frogger’s mech. “But I hear you’ve come up with some tech that lets you mimic the signature of certain alien units?”
“Yeah,” Frogger said. “I developed tech to mimic their signature on the thermal band, and to give off identifying markers in the form of high energy photons. It doesn’t really work at close range, though—on the visual band, it’s easy to tell what we are.”
Arnold glanced at Manticore’s scout. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas?”
“I do, in fact,” Manticore said. “As I mentioned, I’ve downloaded a bunch of data from different Essential instances I’ve captured. I know how they communicate. There are frequencies we can use to identify ourselves as a returning airship. But there’s still the problem of the visual band.”
“Wait,” Eric said. “Maybe we’re going about this the wrong way. Manticore, do you have complete blueprints for those airships?” Eric had partial blueprints to an alien airship he’d boarded in the past to rescue his captured companions, but that didn’t tell him where the control room was located.
Manticore turned toward Eric. When he spoke, it sounded like he was smiling. “Yes, I do.”
Eric hung on as Bambi jetted up toward the airship.
The platoon had just finished throwing their alien spears into the craft, and had disabled the energy shield. The airship was attempting to flee. It had avoided all the energy attacks unleashed by the Bolt Eaters, forcing Eric and Bambi to take this latest step. The ship was attempting to evade them, too, but the remaining Bolt Eaters below released another barrage of energy attacks, herding the airship closer to the pair. Bambi unleashed a last spurt and hurtled toward the craft.
She swiveled her body around before impact so that she contacted the surface feet first. She activated her magnetic mounts and latched on.
Eric had his own mounts active to keep him attached to Bambi’s carapace, and he adjusted the intensity to pull himself onto the hull beside her. Then the pair clambered toward the hangar bay doors that contained the tractor beam, and troop staging area.
He ejected from his mech and landed on the hull with his Cicada. He magnetized his feet and retrieved the sack of Mylar-wrapped demolition blocks from his Devastator’s storage compartment.
He remotely activated the mech’s energy shield and then continued forward across the alien hull. Bambi joined him in her Cicada, carrying a similar sack. They spread out, moving in opposite directions around the hangar bay doors, and began affixing the demolition charges to the surface.
Smaller alien flyers arrived to harass them; Eric fired the P-21 plasma rifle built into his forearm, but the craft he struck was shielded. The Bolt Eaters and Arnold’s Devastators fired more alien spears from below, forcing the newcomers to evade, and distracting them while Eric and Bambi worked. Other enemy units also unleashed plasma and energy bolts from the surface and nearby buildings, and Eric and Bambi had to dodge the incoming attacks.
“Shi
t,” Bambi said over the comm.
He glanced nervously at her Cicada, and saw that she had dropped a set of four demolition blocks bound inside a single Mylar sheath; he watched them plunge the long distance to the ground far below.
He was momentarily mesmerized, but finally forced himself to tear his gaze away. If he had been human, likely he would have been suffering vertigo at the moment.
Eric placed the last of the charges. “Finished here!”
“Me as well,” Bambi said.
“Head back!” Eric ordered.
He hurried back to his mech, remotely disabled the energy shield, and pulled himself into the cockpit; he folded his Cicada body into a sphere as he did so and the hatch sealed behind him. He switched his point of view back to that of the Devastator mech, and then reactivated his energy shield.
“Ready?” Eric asked.
“Mucho burritos,” Bambi said.
“Uh,” Eric said.
Before he could make fun of her weird slang, Bambi detonated her charges. The rightmost bay door fell away in the resultant detonation.
Eric triggered his own charges and created a similar explosion; the leftmost door ripped open, but remained attached by the hinges.
Good enough.
“Did you like how I made up some Spanish slang back there?” Bambi asked.
“Yeah, remind me not to make you watch two-hundred-year old Mexican wrestling ever again,” Eric said.
“Hey, I kind of liked it,” Bambi said. “It’s not often you see a grown man hit in the burritos by a masked maniac.”
Eric made his way toward the destroyed doors, and shoved his energy cannon inside. He switched to the viewpoint of its scope, and surveyed the area.
There were no troops within the interior bay. He spotted the blue-tipped cylindrical device that served as the airship’s tractor beam generator, and promptly fired a plasma bolt to disable the device. After a final sweep of his scope, he pulled his mech inside. Bambi followed after him in her Crab unit.
Eric upped his transmission range.
“Clear!” Eric sent over the platoon band.
The other Bolt Eaters had piled inside a human Dazer shuttle, which rapidly approached. Arnold’s Devastators offered covering fire from the city below, but there were still a shit ton of plasma and energy bolts coming at the craft from the surface. The polished, V-shaped Dazer zig-zagged the entire way up. It took a hit about a hundred meters from the opening, and one side of the craft tilted dangerously.
“We’ve lost an engine,” Eagleeye transmitted over the comm. “The landing is going to be rough! I’d clear well out of the way!”
Eric and Bambi rushed to the leftmost inner wall of the of the airship hangar bay as the shuttle came roaring inside. The Dazer cut power and slammed into the deck; the craft loudly scraped along, cutting a runnel into the surface until it crashed into the wall not too far from Eric and Bambi.
The rear ramp fell open and Slate dashed outside, weapons deployed and ready to fire. “Where’re the snails!”
“There aren’t any,” Eric said.
“Well shit bro, why’d you get me all riled up?” Slate asked, folding away his weapons.
“I transmitted clear,” Eric replied.
“Oh,” Slate said. “I thought you broadcasted the word fear!”
“Uh, no,” Eric said.
Eagleeye emerged next. “Won’t find any snails on this rust bucket. Nor aboard the mothership. The Banthar people stay all cozy on their homeworld while they let their AI and its bioweapons do the dirty work.”
“Sort of like what the humans are doing with us?” Crusher asked as she came out.
“Exactly like that,” Hicks replied, following after her.
A heavily modded Devastator emerged next. Earlier, Manticore’s clone had led Eric to the basement of an apartment building, where a suite containing a large metal case awaited. That case had harbored the clone’s AI core, and Eric had helped transfer it to the Devastator unit that now stood before him—the platoon had fished the mech out from underneath the debris of a collapsed building, removed the existing core, and repaired the damage, prepping it for Manticore.
Four spherical alien scouts revolved around Manticore, acting as his permanent escort.
“Fancy,” Slate commented.
The other mechs emerged, and finally Marlborough.
“Let the games begin,” the Sarge announced.
11
Eric and the Bolt Eaters approached the sealed door on the far side of the hangar. Manticore shared the blueprints of the vessel with Frogger, and they waited for him to confirm the data was virus-free.
“Looks good,” Frogger finally said. “Transmitting to the rest of the platoon.”
“It’s not like Manticore wouldn’t have had ample opportunity to infect us before now,” Slate said. His transmission included a timebase packet header, which caused the time sense of all the Mind Refurbs to increase: everything slowed to a halt around them. Apparently Slate wanted to have a somewhat lengthy discussion. “Considering that Manticore opened up our mechs and manually interfaced with our AI cores to erase that Essential bitch and his Containment Code from our minds. If Manticore wanted to install a virus, he would have done it then, don’t you think?”
“Maybe so,” Eric said. “But you’re forgetting that there’s one of us who didn’t go that route. One of us who broke free of the Containment Code himself.”
“Ah that’s right, gotta throw in a little bragging there, do you Scorpion?” Slate said. His voice shifted slightly, in mimicry of Eric. “I’m the best bitch! I gots the skillz to break free of the alien code wrapped around our minds! I’m da man. Big and strong, with a brain so big it barely fits my skull! In fact, if you look closely, you can see portions of my mind peeking out underneath my mech’s antennae! That’s how big it is! And man, I’m so cool, I smoke cigars made of snails!”
“Yeah, that’s not what I meant,” Eric said. “I’m only saying, it’s good that Frogger is checking the blueprints. Because if Manticore really did install something nefarious in the rest of you, then at least one of us has to stay uninfected.”
“But if he has installed something,” Hicks said, “then wouldn’t he also put in code to confuse our virus scanners? So Frogger here scans the code, and then tells you that it’s virus-free...”
“Good point. I’ll just have to repeat the scan myself.” When Eric accepted the map data from Frogger, he immediately quarantined it and ran his own set of full virus scans. It required a full minute of his accelerated time sense to finish. He received no positive hits.
“The data seems clean,” Eric admitted.
“I wouldn’t back stab you like that,” Manticore said. “Not at a critical juncture like this.”
“So you say,” Mickey commented. “I still think you could have installed sleeper code into the rest of our AI cores when you did your little inoculating to each of us. Scorpion could be the only one who’s not infected.”
“When Manticore betrays us,” Slate said, “and the shit hits the plasma intake valve recoupler, Scorp will be the only one who can save us. You’re my hero, Scorpion!”
“The plasma intake valve recoupler?” Mickey said.
“That’s his way of saying when the shit hits the fan,” Eagleeye said.
“I don’t actually get that saying...” Bambi said.
“Never mind,” Mickey said.
“You’re my hero, Scorpion!” Slate repeated, obviously trying to get a rise out of him.
“Get the fuck over here!” Eric said in the deepest voice he could manage.
Frogger broke out in giggles, while Mickey laughed outright.
The rest of the crew was stone cold silent.
“Uh, just a little quote from a game I used to play,” Eric said. “Called Mortal Kombat. There’s a character in that game named Scorpion, and he throws a spear, and he says that. Well, without the F word.”
“Actually, if you play the Shaolin Monks e
dition, Scorpion does say it exactly like you just did!” Mickey said. “But it only happens if your opponent repeatedly avoids the spear, and finally gets hit by it. Get the eff over here!”
“Okay, this is what happens when you got two gamer geeks from the twentieth century stuck in the same platoon,” Hicks said.
“Imagine what it’s like living with him,” Bambi commented.
“Hey!” Eric said.
“Are we just going to stand in front of this door and have a freakin’ conversation while we’re aboard an alien airship and Earth is being invaded?” Dickson said. “Or are we going to continue our mission and kick some extraterrestrial butt?”
“Sorry,” Eric said.
“Manticore, mark the control room on the map, please,” Marlborough said.
A waypoint appeared on the map a moment later. It was near the center of the airship, four decks up, and three compartments forward.
“Target the door,” Marlborough ordered.
Eric returned his time sense to something resembling normal, and then aimed his multiple energy weapons at the door.
“Fire!” Marlborough said.
Eric unleashed his weapons at the same time as the others, and together they completely disintegrated the entrance.
He was expecting some sort of resistance beyond, but the outer passageway proved empty. Manticore had promised that their mechs would fit this particular model of airship, and that was something the blueprints had confirmed. Sure enough, the corridor was big enough to contain a full Devastator. They’d have to travel in single file, however.
Slate took point, while the rest of the Bolt Eaters followed behind. Manticore remained in the dead center of the platoon, protected by the others. Brontosaurus assumed drag. The bulkheads emitted a subtle blue glow, bathing the corridor in a dim illumination that allowed the Bolt Eaters to see.
As Eric walked through the passageway, he instinctively glanced at his power cell levels, as he did whenever he fought away from sunlight. He was still at one hundred percent power of course, thanks to his fusion reactor.
What a relief not to have to worry about running out of juice, at least.
