The Battle of Tangine

by Will Crudge

  She continued to float through the wondrous firmament, and then images began to emerge. Images of her as a child playing. She knew in an instant that the image of this little person wearing a blue sundress was significant to her somehow, but she wasn’t sure why.

  The little girl was in, what seemed to be, some sort of park. Kara felt a sense of familiarity but wasn’t quite sure she remembered anything like this. The little girl had her brown hair in pigtails that were tied off with little white bows, and she was picking flowers.

  Kara felt a warm sensation of love and understanding coming from this little girl but couldn’t understand why. Who was she? The question was on her mind, but it didn’t come in any discernable speech pattern, but rather it seemed to be a burst of instant awareness. But to her surprise, the little girl replied.

  “I’m Kara. Are you a fairy?” The little girl smiled and looked straight at Kara’s formless being.

  “I think I might be,” Kara replied as if she couldn’t help herself. Whatever crossed her mind, seemed to manifest into something the little girl could relate to. The notion of timelessness meeting linear reality became a visceral fact in Kara’s formless being.

  “That’s wonderful. My dad says that fairies don’t really exist, but now I know he’s not right.” The little girl giggled.

  Kara could only feel love and innocence from this little person, but she still wasn’t entirely sure who she was. She only knew that she felt an inseparable connection with her. Then the little girl spoke again.

  “Do you want to play with me?” She said with a smile.

  “I think so. Would your dad mind?” Kara manifested her thoughts into words without any filter. She was almost startled by it. It was as if she had no limits… no fear… no inhibitions.

  “I’ll ask him. He’s right over there!” The little Kara stated as a matter of fact, and then pointed at a man sitting on a park bench. The man was slender built and had the same general facial structure as little Kara. He was reading something on a small device that seemed to float in the air above his lap.

  “Daddy!” The little girl’s voice sounded out, but there was another voice that matched it. The disembodied Kara was astounded that she knew who this man was. It was her own father. But how can this be? She managed to form the question within her own mind, but this time she seemed to be able to keep it from manifesting into words.

  The little Kara was startled and seemed to have heard the fairy’s voice mimic her own. She looked over her shoulder to where the fairy had been but couldn’t seem to see anything.

  “What is it, Kara? Are you alright?” The man replied and looked up from his device.

  The disembodied Kara tried to call out in response, but this time she couldn’t. She was being pulled away. Things around her were dulling, and somehow everything was being consumed by density of some kind. The image of the little girl and her father began to fade, and a new flash of images began to emerge. This time they seemed to be a formless, and chaotic. She fought off the growing sensation of fear that was gripping her.

  Now the images shifted to a well-built Soldier with powered armor who sat in the cockpit of some sort of spacecraft.

  ***

  “So, the two cops took off in escape pods?” The nameless Soldier asked.

  “Yes. I detected unusually large biological signatures from the civilian docking structure. It would seem the Crimson are gathering up civilians as a hostage strategy,” another nameless voice replied over the audio coms.

  “They’ll be outnumbered. It’s suicide. Do they even have any armor?”

  “They took a pair of backup suits from the armory, but they’ll only be able to use the augmented strength actuators. Their neural interfaces aren’t a good enough spec to fully use the sensors or onboard defensive measures,” the voice replied.

  “Better than nothing but they’re still as good as dead.” The Soldier frowned.

  “Some of those people may be their own family members, so they’d rather face certain death than do nothing at all.” The voice noted with a somber tone. The big man just shook his head.

  “May whatever god is out there be with them now. Any luck with Kara’s beacon?”

  Kara. That’s that little girl’s name? The words came out of nowhere and flooded Darius’ mind.

  “Who’s there?” The Soldier spouted, and then looked around the small cockpit as if to see someone in his periphery.

  “Who are you talking to?” The nameless voice over the coms replied.

  “I could have sworn I heard something,” the Soldier said, and then shrugged.

  “I heard it too.” Some growly digitized voice spoke from somewhere behind the Soldier.

  “What was that?” The Soldier asked.

  “I have no idea, but it felt – familiar – to say the least.” The growly voice replied.

  It’s me. I’m the voice! Where’s Kara? I can’t see her anymore, the disembodied Kara replied.

  “There it is again. But I can’t make out the words,” the Soldier spoke. He continued to look around the cockpit in confusion. Then he closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.

  I don’t know who you are, but if you can hear me, then speak once more. The Soldier tried to reach out via a digital medium that the disembodied Kara couldn’t quite understand. She became frustrated, and she felt a stronger sense of density set in. The images began to fade.

  Hello? Are you there? HELLO! She waited several moments, but no response came. There was only blackness, and the occasional spark of light. She decided to reassess what she had experienced and allowed the entire scene to flood back into her mind as if it were nothing but a distant memory.

  The images were hazy, and the words were indiscernible. But some bits and pieces became audible. [Civilians… hostages]

  The disembodied entity focused on the words, and then a new set of images began to emerge as the surrounding black firmament began to decrease in density once more.

  ***

  Eight armored soldiers casually paced back and forth. Their bright red coated armor seemed to make the dark tinted thin chevron shaped visor seem that much more pronounced… albeit terrifying.

  Hundreds of terrified civilians were huddled along the back wall of, what the disembodied Kara supposed was, a docking bay. Crying children huddled in close to their terrified mothers and older siblings. Grown men looked like scared children themselves. The view widened in an instant, and Kara could see four crew serve heavy weapon turrets of some kind. All four turrets looked like they were methodically laid out in even intervals and were pointing directly at the huddled crowd of innocent people.

  The soldiers seemed indifferent. They ignored the sobbing and acted as if the people were nothing more than furniture. One man broke through the crowd in a maniacal rant and began to charge one of the soldiers in a blind rage. Other civilians tried to hold him back, but he slipped through their grasping hands never the less. With a single shot from the soldier’s weapon, the man’s head exploded. His lifeless remains just slumped to the deck. There were a few twitches of his extremities before the body went perfectly still.

  The audible laughs came from the soldiers, as they began to huddle around the corpse in admiration of the result. The crowd just seemed to tense up as if it were a single homogenous organism. The only sounds that came from the terrified people were a handful of screaming babies.

  Monsters! Kara would have shed a tear had she been in a physical form. Then something dawned on her. A flash of thought. I must intervene!

  Her mind was a flurry of buzzing activity. Kara began to look at the crew served weapons. At first she’d seen nothing like them. She knew they were some kind of contraption or a tool. But for what?

  Her mind melded into the complex circuitry, and she could feel the entirety of the construct as if it were an extension of her own being. She held that thought, and then the answer to the purpose of the tool came into her mind as if she’d always known every aspect of the killing m
achine.

  High Powered Pulse Energy Launcher. HPPEL. She could feel every molecule of the deadly weapon… every subatomic particle. It was a part of her. Inseparable. She extended her focus on the others, and discovered she was somehow bound to all of them. It was as if all the energies that had stabilized into solid mass to form them were now at her disposal. She could feel the energy flow through her. The laws of physics were no longer a barrier.

  Kara saw all at once that every piece of matter she focused on was a part of her. She could feel the vibrations of the atoms. She could see the mathematical complexity of all things but understood it all. She was energy. There were no limits.

  Then a sound erupted in the bay, and her focus shifted. Two metallic objects entered the docking structure through the protective energy field that sheltered the atmosphere from the cold vacuum beyond. The barrel-shaped objects flared their thrusters, and Kara couldn’t help but notice how beautiful they looked.

  The soldiers reacted in fear, and all had their rifles pulled back into their shoulders. The scanned the two pods as if they were targets, and their muzzles seemed to track their every move but it would do them no good.

  A blast of energy emerged from a cylindrical device mounted on one of the pods as they both hovered within ten meters of the soldiers. Kara could feel the energy pulse and knew what it was. Someone had rigged an electromagnetic pulse generator to one of the pods, and the soldiers all seemed to vocalize obscenities in unison.

  The red-armored men were all feverishly getting their rifles to respond, but it was no use. Kara could feel the pulse had not penetrated their armor, and they were free to move under augmented power, but some of their internal sensors were fried. She realized their internal HUD’s were off-line, and their coms systems would have to go into a maintenance cycle before they could try and reestablish external communications. Their speaker systems were off-line as well, and many of them began to remove their helmets in response.

  The pods landed gracefully, and then the hissing of atmospheric equalization began to flood the dock with a high-pitched squeal. The sounded deadened, and then two doors opened on both pods. Two new forms emerged. These appeared to be armored soldiers as well, and Kara noticed a distinct difference between these armored suits, and the ones of the red soldiers.

  Two sets of matte silver armor crashed into the deck, and then shouldered large multi-function rifles. Shots ranged out, but they were controlled and well-aimed. Kara could tell that these were some kind of allies to the civilian captors. The careful targeting was an indication that they didn’t want to harm any bystanders.

  Two red soldiers dropped in a heap. Their exposed heads were soft targets for the ballistic projectiles that slammed into them. But Kara could see the slugs were low-velocity hollow points that would go no further than their initial target, less a more penetrative projectile might continue to ride the inertial energy to an innocent recipient beyond.

  These two are good men, Kara thought, and then turned her attention to the red combatants. Unlike the matte silver Soldiers, the red soldiers had more tactical options to respond. The six remaining troops took cover behind the turrets. They scurried to refit their helmets and return fire on the matte silver men that were caught in the open.

  Shots deflected off their armor, but not without incident. The concussive impact of the pulse rifles was disorienting the two heroic Soldiers, and they began to take on too many impacts to take aim.

  They need me.

  The larger of the two matte silver troops was knocked back onto one knee, and before he could pull himself up by using his rifle butt as leverage against the smooth deck plate below, he was struck again. His bulky armor crashed to the deck below, and the other Soldier tried to run and grab his comrade. But it was a fruitless effort.

  The second soldier was struck by a hail of pulse rifle blasts and was knocked off his feet. One of the red-armored soldiers gave a hand signal of which Kara could not understand, and then another soldier stepped forward with a grenade in one hand.

  No! It was all she could think or say, and then time slowed down. The near still image of the soldier with the grenade filled her field of vision… as if she were actually using eyes to see. It was like time had slowed to her will, and now she had time to think.

  Kara focused hard on the grenade, and she could feel the entire composition of its makeup as if it were all on display at once. She could feel the coldness of the steel casing, and even smell the chemical mixture of the explosive charge.

  Detonate! She flooded her mind with intention and the grenade responded in kind. The world around her sped back up to normal linear time, and in a brilliant flash, the soldier holding the grenade was no more.

  The red-armored soldier that had given the hand signal was knocked onto his back, but his armor had absorbed the shockwave and shrapnel. Two other soldiers rushed from behind the cover of the adjacent turret and slid beside their fallen comrade. They helped him up and retrieved his weapon that had slid across the decking after the detonation.

  This was enough time for the two fallen matte silver troops to get to their feet and retreat behind the pods. But Kara recognized that the pods would be their only means of escape from potential reinforcements, and they couldn’t afford for them to take much damage.

  Then one of the turrets came to life. The humming of the azimuth drive motor filled the air, and the high-pitched whine of the pulse energy generator arming let out an ominous screech. An armored soldier was in the seat of the firing control and was being wheeled around behind the huge barrel of the turret. Another soldier was trying to speed the traversing action along by pushing the end of the barrel. Within a few seconds, the turret was all but lined up perfectly at the forward escape pod.

  Overload. Kara directed her intension directly at the relay coupler that controlled the power distribution between the power generator in the turret’s base, and the blaster’s own charge capacitors. The capacitors were the functional solid-state devices that built up the core energy for each massive pulse burst that the weapon could deliver in rapid succession. But the energy flowing into it would quickly build up beyond its intended capacity. She knew that any capacitor would be rated to discharge once a predetermined amount of charge was achieve, and that the subsequent avalanche of voltage would burst out to be converted instantly into a magnetic pulse in the following stage. But now she shifted her intention to the inner core of the capacitor, and literally stopped the avalanche from occurring.

  The massive influx of energy would continue to build, but the soldier at the controls would have no idea that his weapon was being forcibly modified from some nether region of space. The soldier lined up his shot, and then squeezed the trigger mechanism. Only Kara could see the evil smirk on the soldier’s face behind his helmet’s visor, but she knew it would be the last act of arrogance that he would ever commit.

  The turret shuttered with a sudden burst of energy, and streaks of ball lightning enveloped the turret, platform and all. The smell of ions wafted through docking area, followed by the sounds of rending metal. The turret’s barrel slumped to one side as if it were a listing sea vessel, and the lifeless body in carbon scorched armor just remained reclined limply in the remains of the turret’s seat.

  The four remaining soldiers in red seemed to be in shock. Kara could almost read their minds, as they couldn’t comprehend how both a grenade AND a turret could have had back to back malfunctions… both with deadly outcomes. If she had a mouth, she’d have smiled.

  A young woman from the crowd of terrified civilians emerged and lunged for the dead soldier’s discarded rifle. She had, what Kara seemed to think was, a tattered police uniform. The young woman’s bright blonde hair may have been disheveled, but her body motions were precise. She slid on her side and snatched the rifle with a fluid motion. She kicked her feet up to stop herself, as she nearly slid into the ruined turret, and her skull narrowly escaped colliding with the metallic leg of the dead soldier’s armored suit.
The young woman took aim and opened fire on the remaining four soldiers.

  The red-armored soldiers were right in the woman’s direct line of fire, and one of them took a fatal shot to the exposed neck of his only partially fastened helmet.

  The other three slid behind another turret, and then took a few shots back at her in response but she was no longer there. The woman zig-zagged for about ten meters, and then dove into a roll. She came out of her roll, and her shoulder blades slammed into the side of another turret. She took a quick breath, and then wheeled the muzzle of her rifle around until she could line up a shot. The pulse blast bounced off the forehead of a defending red armored soldier, but it wasn’t fatal. The faceless man cursed loudly, and then retreated behind cover.

  Kara could tell this woman was no civilian. She must have been trained in close quarters engagements. Something about her movements, and controlled pauses between shots was familiar somehow.

  But now Crimson soldiers began to drop like flies. Their cover was more than adequate against the young woman’s position, but they were fully exposed to the pair of matte silver soldiers that were now advancing with their rifles blazing. After a few more head-shots, the enemy had been vanquished.

  The civilians all cheered in unison, and dozens rushed forward to embrace their saviors. However, Kara knew that it would be short-lived if she didn’t take action.

  The occupants of the docking bay were blissfully unaware of the company of red armored troops, and two robotic giants that were closing in on the dock.

  Not on my watch! The disembodied Kara now put her intentions into one of the large robots. She absorbed the full breadth of its information, schematics, and specs as if it was as natural as breathing. Mech. She now knew exactly what this thing was and what it was meant for but more importantly, she knew what she could make it do.

  She mentally seized control of the mech and leveled the right arm’s beam cannon right at the most vulnerable spot on the other robot. With a single blast of electrons, she burned away the outer layer of armored plating, and then immediately switched to the armored piercing sabot mode. With a single shot from the sabot cannon, a dart-shaped projectile made out of depleted uranium with a tungsten outer layer, penetrated the processing core of the other mech. That’s one dead robot.