Finding strength he didn’t know he had, Jake leapt from the comet, using his thrusters to propel himself after the missiles as fast as possible. He took out one of them with his rotary autocannons, two of them…but the remaining four reached the Whale.
The ship had no chance. It was built for peace, not war—for building, not destruction. It exploded instantly into a million fragments. With his father aboard.
As the world washed with red, Jake turned toward the alien mech, his chin lifting slightly as he glared at the machine that had just taken his father from him.
The afterimage of the Whale exploding was still seared into his mind.
Slowly, Jake spread his hands, both bayonets extending. Even though he was in space, where no sound could exist, the dream still rendered the rasp of metal emerging from metal.
He rocketed toward the alien mech.
Chapter 51
Dynamo
The Darkstream tanks opened the fight, by pounding away at the enemy as they closed the gap to the hilltop where the tunnel borer was sinking slowly into the earth, seeking the siege tunnel dug by the Quatro.
Judging from the way the quad deftly avoided the anti-tank rounds, the alien piloting it had already grown fairly proficient.
Probably it has some help from the thing’s AI, too.
One round clipped its shoulder, then. When it did, the suit seemed to peel away, reforming soon after.
Can these things heal themselves? They reminded Ash of the versatility shown by the Gatherers. When you paired that versatility with a giant war machine piloted by an alien who was deadly even without a mech…
The Darkstream soldiers surged forward several meters, in formation, the front row taking one knee to fire on the approaching mercenaries and Quatro while the row behind them fired over their heads.
A third row remained behind, using the shallow hill to maintain their own firing solution on the enemy.
Red Company had brought rocket launchers, a fact that they’d concealed by hiding the fighters carrying them behind the lumbering Quatro. But now, the aliens peeled away, and rockets flew, with devastating effect on the Darkstream infantry. Ash watched as men and women were blown apart, their limbs spinning through the air to land several meters away.
“Forward, Oneiri Team!” Ash yelled over the team-wide channel. “We can take a lot more punishment than the infantry. We need to start absorbing some of the heat.”
Five MIMAS mechs surged past the much smaller soldiers. In response, the three dozen Quatro not in mechs rushed forward, firing on Oneiri with the artillery strapped to their backs.
Oneiri Team answered with a deadly mix of armor-piercing rounds from autocannons, heavy machine gun fire, and grenades fired into the middle of the charging alien ranks. Ash wished she still had her own heavy machine gun, as she valued its increased accuracy, but she made do with her autocannons.
Then the Quatro tide crashed into them, and Oneiri switched to bayonets and flamethrowers.
All around Ash became a confusion of fur and flame and death. She spun wildly, savagely, her bayonet sinking into whatever it could find.
Two Quatro went down, followed by a metal clink, which was followed by a scandalized shout over the team-wide.
“Hey!” It was Richaud. “Watch what you’re stabbing with that thing!”
“Sorry,” Ash mumbled, the dream world flashing pink with her embarrassment. She turned to find another target.
The Quatro corpses piled up quickly, and Ash allowed herself a measure of satisfaction—until an explosion drew her attention behind her, and she saw what the quad was doing to the rest of the Darkstream force.
It had already succeeded in taking out one of the two tanks, though Ash had not seen how. The noise of its destruction was what had made her look.
The quad made toward the only remaining tank, but to do so, it had to rampage through the humans not inside machines, shooting, impaling, and trampling the Darkstream infantry with alarming efficiency. Once it neutralized the remaining tank, it would no doubt target the tunnel borer.
But Oneiri Team had other matters to attend to. The mercenary piloting Tommy’s mech waded through the mounds of Quatro corpses and opened fire with its rotary cannons.
Ash cursed over the team-wide channel. “Spirit, Henrietta, Richaud—you take on the rogue MIMAS. Paste, come with me. We have to deal with that quad.”
As they rushed to back up what remained of the Winged Dragons, Beth glanced at her. “Don’t you think your allocation of forces is a bit off? I think there should be three of us taking on the quad, at least.”
Ash shook her head—she didn’t have much time to talk before they reached the quad, but she managed to spit out, “I doubt the mercenary piloting Tommy’s mech will even know what to do with that much machine. The others will make short work of it, and you and I can hold off the quad until then.”
Then they reached the quad, just as it had started hitting the remaining Darkstream tank with devastating blasts of energy.
Ash sent a rocket its way, and it connected with the Quatro’s metal haunches, making it hop forward involuntary, its hind legs lifting off the ground several feet as the explosion blossomed around it.
Then, it turned to charge Ash, and suddenly, remembering how one of these things had knocked Jake down like he’d been a paper soldier, she felt somewhat less sure that she and Beth could keep the thing at bay.
At the last second before the quad tackled her, she sidestepped, coating its flank with a healthy helping of flame.
Extending her right bayonet, she swiped at her enemy, but the quad was too fast. It changed directions, squaring up with Beth to fire on her.
Beth hit the ground, propping herself up with her left hand while firing at the quad with her heavy machine gun, one-handed.
Ash charged the Quatro from behind to drive her bayonets into the alien’s haunches, putting her full weight behind the blades. They sunk in several inches, but then the quad turned, swatting at Ash with a single paw and sending her crashing to the ground.
She struggled to get free, but the quad used its other paw to steady her where she lay. As it did, its very head morphed, to form the biggest cannon Ash had ever seen; certainly the biggest one she’d seen the quads’ fluid surfaces form.
She could actually see the energy beginning to gather within the barrel, and she felt sure that if it hit her at this range, it would end her. But try as she might, she could not extract herself from beneath the quad’s girth.
Something collided with the quad from side on, then—a blur of dark gray followed by a trail of orange, yellow, and red.
It was Henrietta, shunting the quad aside, using her thrusters to do it, just as Ash had out on the Barrens. The quad’s head-cannon unleashed its energy less than a foot from Ash’s head, putting a giant crater in the ground.
Before the quad could right itself to throw off Henrietta, Ash regained her feet, leapt into the air, and extended her bayonets once more.
While the Quatro was on its side, she dropped, angling her blades toward one of its legs. They drove home, sinking through the metal limb to pin it to the ground below.
Spirit jumped on top of the alien, then, riding it like a mechanical bull. Henrietta remained on top of it, too, helping Ash to keep it in one place.
“Lasers,” Ash grunted over the team-wide. “While we have it pinned!”
Richaud and Paste didn’t hesitate. They positioned themselves where they wouldn’t hit their teammates, and then they trained their new weapons on the quad, dialing the lasers up to full power.
The quad thrashed and twisted beneath them, and one of Ash’s bayonets snapped in two. But the other held fast, and she threw her shoulder against the beast as well, to continue holding it in place.
At last, the quad’s shifting metal surface twisted, bubbled, and melted through, until the ray of death reached the alien below. The smell of cooking flesh hit Ash, then, along with a piercing wail that seemed to take fore
ver to subside.
“It’s done,” Beth said.
“Not quite,” said Richaud, and something in his voice made Ash turn around.
Two more quads were running at them from the hilltop. They would be here in seconds.
“Get ready, everyone,” Ash said, though she didn’t feel nearly as confident as she sounded. She still couldn’t believe they’d managed to take out one quad—two, though, she felt very little hope of defeating.
Something caught her eye in the distance. She instructed her MIMAS’ enhanced vision to zoom in, and when she did, she saw the alien mech from Valhalla station, sprinting across Eresos toward the oncoming Quatro.
Its speed seemed incredible to Ash, and yet the quads did not appear to register its approach. When the enemy mechs were still dozens of meters away, the alien mech—which could only be piloted by Gabriel Roach—crashed into the nearest quad, causing it to skid and tumble across the ground. Gabe traveled with it.
The quad he hadn’t targeted broke away from its charge to help its fellow. Twin cannons formed on his shoulders, and Ash recognized the telltale energy buildup.
Gabe thrust both arms toward it, and a jagged spike emerged from each, disrupting the energy and blowing both cannons clean away, twin fragment clouds scattering in the wind.
The quad he’d tackled recovered, standing to come at him, but Gabe turned to meet it, his entire right arm becoming a giant broadsword.
He thrust forward, impaling the quad straight through its neck, and he withdrew the blade just as quickly. That left him ready to react to the other Quatro’s charge by leaping into the air, cannons of his own forming to rain down rapid-fire energy on his foe.
The spikes Gabe had used to disable the quad’s cannons were now flipping back toward him across the ground, and when he landed, they bounced up to become part of his arms once more.
The quad Gabe had impaled still functioned, somehow. He must have missed hitting the Quatro inside.
Both quads charged him together at full gallop, masses gathering on their backs to extend forward and take the shape of lances, which angled toward Gabe’s torso. Ash cringed.
The lances struck home, running Gabe through—right in the center, where Ash knew his body had to be.
Gabe’s mech went limp, suspended only by the Quatro blades.
Her heart fell.
Most of all, Ash felt saddest for her sister, who’d been killed in cold blood by these animals, and who would have no vengeance, after all.
The quads slowly withdrew their blades, and Gabe slid to the ground.
The moment his face hit the grass, his back morphed, twisting upward to become a massive cannon, which shot one of the quads at point-blank range, causing the front third of it to boil away.
As quickly as it had formed, the cannon disappeared, and Gabe’s broadsword was back once again.
He sprang up, driving it forward into the quad’s chest, the blade disappearing up to the hilt. When he withdrew it, the alien slumped to the ground. Neither it nor its counterpart moved again.
Slowly, Gabe turned toward Oneiri team, his surface reforming into a humanoid shape.
“How…?” Ash said, then took a deep breath. “How are you still alive?”
Not answering, Gabe walked toward them, until he was just a few meters away, regarding them all silently.
“Where are the other quads?” a voice called, and Ash turned to see Arkady Black, striding between the MIMAS mechs, looking minuscule beside them.
“We fought,” Gabe said. “They fled.”
Black nodded. “Dynamo,” he said, then turned to walk back toward what remained of the Winged Dragons.
“What does that mean?” Ash shouted.
“That should be Roach’s nickname,” Black said. “Aren’t you all coming up with names for each other?”
Ash turned back to Gabe, who stood inert, as though he was part of the landscape. “How are you still alive, Chief?” she asked again. “They impaled you. I saw it. You should be dead.”
“I’m not your chief any longer. I’m not even human, so I doubt Darkstream will be comfortable with me holding a rank.”
“Not…human?”
“My body was starving, inside this thing. Dying of thirst, too. I was still in a coma, Sweeney. This mech can’t feed me. It’s ridiculous to think it could. It would kill me in the attempt.”
“So…what did you do?”
“It offered me a choice. Die, of thirst and starvation, or join with it. Bodily. Dissolve until we became one, its nerves my nerves, my brain its brain. It harvested my body, broke it down, and used what it could to augment itself. It’s still my consciousness controlling it. But you won’t see the man named Gabriel Roach again.”
Chapter 52
No Choice
To meet Jake’s charge, the alien mech had again gathered together a massive fist made from both of its hands—a writhing ball of steel waiting to cave in Jake’s skull.
He channeled his rage into driving both bayonets straight through that fist. It shattered.
The mech shoved him away with the stumps where its hands had been, but right away, those hands began to reform.
Jake used his thrusters to counteract the trajectory his enemy had sent him on, and then he retracted his own hands, the segments of which were designed to settle around the extended bayonets.
Both rotary autocannons spun up, and he peppered the alien mech’s face with armor-piercing rounds at point-blank range. It quickly became a pockmarked mess.
Even that began to reform, however, and the mech’s arms were almost finished repairing.
Except, they didn’t turn back into arms. Instead, they became twin energy cannons, which proceeded to pelt Jake with blasts of light.
Or at least, they tried to. Jake’s focus was singular, honed by his anger, and he boosted left, resuming his steady rain of rounds, all down the mech’s torso.
The mech turned to track Jake’s path, and both cannons melded into one. An enormous buildup of energy began to take shape inside them, and Jake sensed that if that hit him, he would likely be vaporized.
He retracted the bayonets so that they wouldn’t interfere as he wrenched his heavy machine gun from his back and fired round after round directly into the cannon.
The thing exploded with the energy backlash, the mech’s hands once again becoming shattered stumps, though they quickly started to reform once more.
Not this time.
Jake engaged his thrusters at full power, hurtling toward the mech as it was busy healing itself. He extended both bayonets, and thrusting them forward, he impaled the alien mech straight through the center of its torso.
Even that didn’t seem to slow it. It struggled against Jake’s blades just as vigorously, using its truncated arms to beat at him.
With a titanic effort that made the dream flash scarlet more frenetically than it ever had, Jake pushed both bayonets apart from each other, widening the wound he’d made inside his enemy’s chest cavity.
That done, he withdrew both blades, retracted them inside their sheaths, and let a grenade tumble out of one of his launchers. He seized the explosive from where it floated in space, and then he jammed it straight inside the alien mech’s torso.
Rocketing away, he watched as his enemy pawed frantically at the gaping hole, trying to dislodge the grenade.
Unfortunately for it, its digits hadn’t quite reformed yet.
As the grenade exploded, Jake helped it along by firing both his autocannons at full bore once again.
The flash was brief, but the damage dramatic—possibly irreparable. So much for recovering this thing for study. The mech was completely laid open, sheared almost in two by the blast.
Bronson appeared before him, his face scarlet, sweat dampening his forehead. “Good job. Now, I’ve lost almost two squads two these robotic killers. I can’t afford for any more to get inside, Price.”
“I’m on it,” Jake growled. He grabbed his heavy machine gun f
rom where he’d left it floating in space, and then he rocketed toward the destroyer, neutralizing robot after robot still swarming across the destroyer’s hull.
After he took out his twelfth, the rest of the robots snapped their shield-like limbs downward against the ship, launching as one into space.
I guess they had enough.
“Sir, I did—”
“Not quite,” Bronson said, appearing before him. “Behind you!”
Jake turned in time for the reformed alien mech to slam into him, driving him back toward the destroyer once more.
I can’t believe it.
He managed to get his hand down to the EMP device clipped to the waist of his mech, and he activated it.
Both mechs crashed into the Javelin, becoming lodged in her ravaged metal hull. Paralyzed, Jake waited, pinned to the destroyer until Bronson sent someone to collect him.
It took the better part of a minute for Bronson to appear before him again, floating in space, wearing a strange expression.
“Price…how are you holding up?”
Jake stared at the captain, feeling as hollow as a mech without a pilot. The memory of the Whale disintegrating in an anticlimactic flash of light still stood out prominently in his mind. He expected it would for a long time.
Dad…
Jake had never truly appreciated Peter Price, and everything he’d done for him. He’d always assumed his father had been exaggerating, when it came to the horrors of war. The things you had to do, the things you had to witness.
Now, his father had proved his own point, in the harshest way possible.
“Where are those things headed?” Jake said, his voice devoid of emotion.
“Looks like they’re on a course to intercept Eresos,” Bronson said, and he clearly wasn’t happy with about it. His tone carried a serious edge.
“Where did they come from? They looked like the same one my…” His voice hitched, and then he forced himself to say it: “The one my father dug up.”
A third voice entered the conversation, then. “My theory is, after it escaped the comet where I found it, it must have gone to dig up its mates from other comets, to activate them.”
Dynamo (Mech Wars Book 2) Page 16
