Meltdown (Mech Wars Book 3)

by Scott Bartlett

  “Keep both your bayonets and your autocannons deployed at all times,” she ordered the others once she figured that out. “We have to keep them off our armor.”

  Though the robots looked fragile, and they certainly disintegrated in short order under concentrated fire from the rotary autocannons, they could do a lot of damage if they made it through. There was power in those little limbs, and Ash had a wicked gash down her right thigh, where circuitry was now visible and coolant had begun to leak out.

  I won’t let that happen again.

  She’d integrated the dream’s unique way of interpreting stimulus with the visual sensors that covered her mech, and whenever one of the robots attacked her from any angle, she developed an itch on the spot where it would hit, and the world flashed red in that direction.

  One of the robots tried to come at her from the air, having leapt far overhead. Ash’s head itched, making her wince at the image of the metallic creature digging into her brain, even though her actual head didn’t reside inside her mech’s.

  Either way, her bayonet sliced the robot clean in two before it came anywhere near her.

  Four more robots charged, having woven between nearby Darkstream units to take her by surprise. Two of them came from more or less the same direction, but the other two were spread out.

  She picked off the pair near each other, impaled one that was headed for her chest, but failed to deal with the fourth before it latched onto her bicep and began to savage it.

  Seizing it by its arm, she whipped it into the air while maintaining her grip, so hard that part of its body snapped off, sailing away over the battling robots and soldiers. She threw what remained in her hand as hard as she could at another robot about to reach her, which drove it back, buying her time to make it explode with her right autocannon.

  The tide of combat granted her a brief reprieve, then, which she used to check on her teammates. Nearby, three robots were descending through the air toward Beth.

  Ash spun up her autocannons, aiming at two moving targets simultaneously and taking them both down. As for the third, Beth caught it in two cupped hands, then crushed the thing between metal palms.

  “Thanks!” Beth said, turning to nod at Ash.

  “Anytime,” said Ash as she picked off another enemy headed for Beth, and her teammate shook one off that had begun to tear at her ankle with tiny metal claws.

  “How are you holding up?” Ash asked.

  “I’ve been better…though I guess this is what I signed up for.”

  “Fighting Quatro is what you signed up for. I can’t decide whether this is better or worse.”

  Beth turned toward her, and something about the way she froze told Ash everything she needed to know.

  “Ash, behind you!”

  She’d already begun to turn—far too late, however.

  A serrated blade made of dark metal sprouted from her chest, right where her body was nestled inside the MIMAS.

  The dream washed everything she could see in a deep scarlet, through which she could make out only dim outlines.

  The blade retracted, and Ash slumped to her knees. She fell forward, her face connecting with the hard ground.

  Chapter 48

  Everything at Her Disposal

  The dream rendered Beth’s anguish by sending cracks through the sky from which bled the darkness of space, staining the blue surrounding them.

  She charged at Roach, and he withdrew his blade from Ash to face Beth, massive arms folding inward to become energy cannons, which immediately began to crackle with light.

  Too late.

  Beth engaged her rockets, blasting into Roach’s midsection and carrying him backward several meters to crash into the side of a tank, which shifted sideways under their combined weight.

  Pushing off him with her feet, she surged forward once more to land a right hook on his jaw, then drove her bayonet as hard as she could into his midsection. It plunged through, hitting the tank on the other side.

  Roach tried to seize her, but she darted backward, reaching behind her to disconnect her heavy machine gun and swing it around, riddling his chest and face with bullets.

  Still, Roach plowed forward against the barrage, and she hit him with a pair of rockets at point-blank range.

  Praying it had bought her enough time, Beth ran back to the spot where Roach had impaled Ash.

  The robots had left Ash alone during Beth’s brief absence, probably assuming she was finished. At first, Beth feared that too, and the thought almost buckled her knees.

  But when she checked, she saw that Ash was alive, even though her vitals were awash with red.

  Knowing the MIMAS was designed to keep its pilot alive for as long as possible, Beth didn’t dare remove Ash from it. Instead, she bent and picked her up, balancing her atop her right shoulder while holding her heavy machine gun in her left hand.

  The little metallic devils ran at her once again, and Beth picked them off with her heavy gun, one by one, swinging it wildly from target to target while keeping a firm hold of the gun to prevent it from slipping from her grip.

  When the robots began to swarm her, she simply ran, firing behind her without looking.

  Her objective was a shallow rise beyond the fighting, and when she reached it, she gently laid Ash down on her back.

  With that, she turned back to face the oncoming robots, immediately sweeping her heavy gun back and forth across their ranks.

  Not fast enough. There were dozens of the robots approaching at a full run, unflinching in the face of Beth’s defense. More were joining the chase from the periphery of the battle, probably smelling easy meat. Two for the price of one.

  Worse: the meteorites that contained the robots were still falling from the sky at regular intervals.

  Beth tossed her heavy gun aside, since it would have taken too long to replace it on her back. Then she retracted both her hands to reveal her rotary autocannons. She opened fire.

  The vibrations that the autocannons sent through her arms was a pleasant sensation for Beth, and she also liked the way they made her forearms spin around and around in tight circles.

  It was even more satisfying when the sensation was paired with robot after robot disintegrating before her eyes.

  But it still wasn’t enough. Beth judged that the robots would reach the hill soon no matter how well she targeted them, and so she did the last thing she could think of that might prevent them from reaching Ash.

  She offered herself to them as their target.

  When she charged to meet them, the robots almost seemed to gain in speed, as though her approach had infused them with eagerness.

  They threw themselves upon her as she ran among them—but she increased her speed, causing most of them to miss.

  Two did manage to latch on to her; one on her calf, and one on the small of her back.

  She kicked off the first, sending it careening into another robot as Beth’s foot knocked a third flat on its back. But the remaining robot immediately set about burrowing into her mech, and Beth was forced to fall backward onto the ground, crushing it.

  The others pounced on the opportunity, rushing toward her while she was down, but Beth was in the finest form of her life, driven by the intense fury that had risen within her after what Roach had done to Ash.

  She snapped both of her arms backward, just as she’d seen some of the robots do in order to launch themselves up at the mechs.

  It worked—the maneuver sent her hurtling back to her feet, and she sliced through two more airborne enemies as she did, generating a storm of metal parts that rained down onto the dusty ground.

  Whipping around, she punched another robot in midair before jogging backward toward the hill where Ash lay, opening fire on the remaining hostiles.

  Yet more enemies emerged from the battle and fell from the sky, intent on destroying the two MIMAS mechs.

  Beth refused to allow it. To protect Ash, she would use everything at her disposal—her wits, her training,
her skill, and even her life, if it came to that.

  Chapter 49

  Instant Headache

  “How close are you, Rug?” Lisa Sato asked.

  “It is difficult to tell,” Rug answered. “I have not laid eyes on my destination for some time.”

  “All right. Keep me posted. Sato out.”

  Rug was trying her best. As she led her force through the mountains, she kept in close touch with Lisa Sato using subvocalization, a function her translator enabled. To speak out loud would have risked warning the machines on the cliff of her approach.

  Of course, that was provided she made it to the top of the cliff at all. Together, she and the twelve Quatro with her from Alex, as well as the sixty-five from the eastern drifts, had taken more than an hour to get even this far.

  All the while, the Meddlers’ machines bombarded Lisa Sato’s position.

  Rug knew that her human friend didn’t think of the machines as such—as belonging to the Meddlers. She preferred to put their very existence out of her mind, as a distant, undefined possibility that she didn’t have to deal with right now.

  That was not an uncommon tendency, among both humans and Quatro. But it never failed to aggravate Rug immensely.

  Lisa Sato did not endure the Meddlers’ onslaught. She did not lose everything to them.

  Still, Rug’s friend was not stupid, and she had ordered her force back as soon as the machines had struck, saving most of her soldiers. Rug herself had taken two bullets, one in her shoulder and one in her right flank, which had entered at oblique angles and hadn’t seemed to hit anything vital. She was able to navigate the treacherous mountain ways despite the pain caused by the bullets inside her.

  Before turning the next corner, she checked around it, as she had with every turn so far. At last, she beheld the cliff.

  Only one machine was there, but it was also one of the most fearsome machines Rug had ever encountered.

  It was an Ambler.

  Other than the fifty unarmed Quatro, she also had sixteen with energy weapons and fifteen with human guns. Rug felt reasonably confident she could take the cliff from the colossus. It would entail significant loss of life—possibly half her force or more.

  But there was no other choice.

  She sent the message of what she had seen back to the Alex Quatro, who were evenly dispersed throughout the force behind her, so that they could quickly disseminate to the others whatever news she gave them over their communicators.

  Once her companions had been given time to steel themselves, there was nothing for it but to emerge.

  Beyond the path she now exited, there was an expanse of perhaps one hundred and fifty meters until the plateau terminated at the cliff. That would afford their force space to arrange itself into some sort of attack formation, but Rug doubted they would have much time to do so. The Ambler would likely notice them forming up in short order.

  Nevertheless, she crept from the path as quietly as she could, taking care to disturb no loose rocks as she padded across the ground, keeping as far from the Ambler as possible while giving those behind her room to emerge and begin arranging themselves.

  Twenty Quatro—only three of them bearing energy weapons—had emerged when the Ambler finally turned, instantly opening fire with the heavy guns mounted on both its sides.

  Though Amblers possessed the same ability to morph that the Gatherers did, they used it less, and certain components seemed essentially permanent, such as the long, heavy guns it now used to send streams of lead into Quatro flesh.

  The seventeen unarmed Quatro who’d made it onto the plateau charged, with the four in front quickly falling to the Ambler’s fire.

  The felled Quatro crashed to their bellies, and Rug saw one Quatro’s head glance off a sharp-looking rock. It pained her to see a mighty warrior lose his dignity in this way.

  Rug opened fire herself, sending bolts of white light toward the Ambler’s dome, where she assumed its “mind” resided—if indeed it had one. Either way, the dome offered the biggest target, and her efforts didn’t take long to earn her the attention of the machine.

  The Ambler turned lasers on her, and Rug immediately fled the spot she’d been standing, though heat had already begun to build up on top of her head, imparting an instant headache. A moment longer, and the temperature would have likely caused her skull to rupture.

  The other two Alex Quatro opened fire on the enemy, granting Rug covering fire, and more armed Quatro now emerged onto the plateau to join in.

  Perhaps this will go better than I’d assumed.

  The mech seemed unable to focus on any one target long enough to neutralize it—the Quatro were succeeding in fragmenting its attention and preventing it from doing significant damage.

  Then, one of her companions called out, and Rug recognized his voice as the one who’d imprisoned Lisa Sato and Tessa Notaras: “Look beyond, at the opposite cliff!”

  Rug looked from Salve—which was the name the drift leader had chosen for himself—to the far cliff.

  On it, two more Amblers pounded toward the edge.

  Then, incredibly, they leapt into empty air.

  Rug thought they must surely plummet to their doom—until rockets sprouted from their undersides, carrying them to the cliff where the Quatro fought. Both mechs crashed to their feet, flanking the Ambler already there and causing the ground to tremble.

  Rug had never before heard of Amblers having that capability.

  “Rug?” Lisa Sato’s voice said, sounding alarmed. “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”

  But there was no time for a response. A promising engagement had just become a losing one.

  Rug surged forward to do what she could to help her fellow Quatro.

  Chapter 50

  Locked in Combat

  Marco had seen Roach impale Ash, and he’d caught glimpses of Beth’s attempts to protect her from the swarming robots.

  But there’d been nothing he could do to help. He and Henrietta had been working together to engage one of the quads, to prevent it from killing more Darkstream soldiers.

  Even that was getting a lot less of his attention than it deserved, since it took almost everything he had to keep the smaller robots from shredding his mech.

  But when Marco saw Roach advancing on the hill where Beth carried on her desperate struggle to keep the robots from ravaging Ash’s mech, he knew he had to do something.

  So he charged, through the battling soldiers and robots, battering aside any enemy that got in his way while weaving around or leaping over friendlies.

  “Spirit, where are you going?” Henrietta said, frustration giving her voice an edge. “We’re making progress against this thing!”

  They hadn’t been, but Marco wasn’t about to contradict her right now. “If Roach reaches that hill, both Steam and Paste are done. Paste already has her hands full with the robots.”

  When he saw that Roach was going to reach his target no matter how fast Marco ran, he sent two rockets streaming across the battlefield at the alien mech.

  One missed, though it chanced to take out one of the smaller robots—and the other hit. It caused Roach to stagger a step, and then he whipped around to see who’d attacked him.

  It worked…I got his attention!

  But soon, Marco began to feel his gambit had worked a little too well. Roach dashed toward him, arms taking the form of broadswords, just as they had at the beginning of the battle.

  Aware that if he hesitated at all, he was lost, Marco extended both his bayonets and charged as well.

  As they neared each other, Roach positioned himself for an obvious thrust. So obvious, in fact, that Marco expected a feint, but he readied himself to parry it just in case Roach followed through.

  Roach did follow through, and Marco raised his blade to intercept. It didn’t go as planned. At the last second, Roach’s broadsword had become a massive, metal fist, which shattered Marco’s bayonet and connected with his chest, knocking him to the ground
with shocking force.

  Staring up at the sky, mentally shaking himself, he tried to get up.

  That didn’t work, either. Roach stepped forward, planting a heavy foot on Marco’s chest while bringing his arms together. Those arms melded, sending tendrils into each other to intertwine and twist around to become a single, gigantic energy cannon angled at Marco’s head.

  Lightning crackled inside that cannon.

  “Say goodnight, Gonzalez,” Roach said, and his voice sounded like that of the damned.

  Something streaked out of the sky, the angle of its approach vector changing rapidly until it was almost parallel with the ground.

  Just before it would have collided with the ground, it collided with Roach instead, knocking the alien mech off of Marco and sending it skidding, leaving deep furrows in the hard-packed earth to mark its passage.

  Marco managed to regain his feet, and when he looked in the direction Roach had been carried, he saw that Roach’s mech was locked in combat with its identical twin.

  Chapter 51

  Balance of Power

  Jake slammed into Roach, driving him off of Marco—just in the nick of time, from the looks of it.

  To avoid killing everyone on the battlefield, with the possible exception of the mechs, he’d devoted some effort to arresting the momentum he’d gathered from his atmospheric reentry.

  Even so, he’d hit Roach with a lot of force, which carried them both several dozen meters across the ground.

  Roach was beneath him, luckily, and it was his mech that took the brunt of the damage.

  Part of Roach’s mech slapped the ground, presumably in an attempt to slow their momentum, though the effect was that Jake tumbled forward instead, with Roach flipping around behind him and both of them rolling end over end, still locked together.

  Finally, Roach managed to regain his feet, separating himself from Jake, though their forward motion caused them to skid several more meters. For a few seconds, they “surfed” over the hard-packed dirt.