by Jake Bible
“Bite me!” the tiny voice replied.
“As soon as Hawker gets that mech up and running, we can go have a look at the other drop zones,” Schroeder said, a malevolent gleam in her eye. “Betcha ten to one that there’re holes like this at each of them.”
“Not gonna take that bet because I think you’re right,” Giga said.
“I know I’m right,” Schroeder replied. “Here. Patch it in to your display.”
Schroeder swiped at the tablet, sending a link to Giga’s mech.
“Thanks,” Giga said. “Damn. Those three move fast.”
“You ever know a rat to move slow?” Schroeder replied.
“Only when it’s been poisoned,” Giga said.
“Shut your mouth and curse your mother!” Schroeder snapped. “Don’t you jinx my people!”
“I wasn’t jinxing any–”
“Just shut up and try not to bring the wrath of God down on anyone else, will ya?” Schroeder said. “You’re a pilot. You should know better. You lot are the most superstitious of anyone.”
“I think you’re mixing up control freak with superstitious,” Giga said.
“Same thing,” Schroeder said. “Hey now…take a look at that will ya?”
***
Corporal Coda, rifle firmly planted against his shoulder, took point, leading the other two SpecCom soldiers through the tunnel. Although, calling it a tunnel was a stretch. It was way bigger than any of them had had to scout in a long time. Mostly, they worked tunnels that forced them to crouch walk for kilometers on end.
“Nice to stretch our legs for once,” Coda said.
“So damn true,” Corporal Lopp replied.
“Yuh,” Corporal Gershon grunted.
They kept moving, stabbing small spikes into the ground every few meters.
“You catching these, Sarge?” Lopp asked.
“Yep,” Schroeder replied over the comms. “Making a nice picture on my tablet and I can hear you sorry rats loud and.”
“Proceeding,” Coda stated. “No movement on my display.”
“This place is huge, Sarge,” Lopp reported. “I don’t know what uses this tunnel, but it’s big.”
“Any sign of Shock?” Giga asked.
“Giga, kindly stay off my rats’ channel,” Schroeder said. “Go find something useful to do until I need you. If I need you.”
Giga grumbled and swore then a chime indicated she’d left the channel.
“Hold,” Coda said. “You hearing that?”
“Yuh,” Gershon replied. “Explosive rounds?”
“That’s what it sounds like,” Coda said. “And…yelling?”
“Sarge?” Lopp called over the comms. “Not picking up movement, but there is certainly some shit heading our way. You want us to meet it in the middle?”
“I sure as hell do,” Schroeder said. “Keep dropping those relays. I need as much mapping done as possible. But the second you think you’re in over your heads, you bust ass back to the cables.”
“We’re in a tunnel, Sarge,” Coda replied. “We’re already in over our heads.”
“Louder,” Gershon said.
“You’re right,” Lopp said. “It’s getting considerably louder.”
Far down the tunnel, the briefest of flashes could be seen followed by the distinct sounds of explosive rounds. The three soldiers took knees and took aim.
“What is that?” Lopp asked.
“Display says it’s a mech,” Coda replied. “Messed up, but still a mech.”
“I see that, but what’s behind it?” Lopp asked.
“Xenos? Hard to get good readings from this distance,” Coda said.
“Yuh,” Gershon agreed.
“You taking a tea break?” Schroeder asked. “Keep moving. I want relays, people!”
“Gonna ignore what you want for the moment, Sarge,” Lopp said. “We’ve got a damaged mech and what looks like a group of xenos heading right for us.”
“Taking aim,” Coda said. “Permission to fire?”
“If you need to fire, then you damn well best be firing,” Schroeder said. “Try not to hit the mech.”
“I’ve got it filtered from targeting,” Coda said. “Rifle is locked onto hostiles only.”
“Six?” Lopp asked. “Eight? These things are playing havoc with my display.”
“Lock manually,” Coda said. “I’ve tagged them one by one as I see them.”
“Yuh,” Gershon said.
“Steady,” Lopp said. “Let them get within range.”
The three SpecCom soldiers waited patiently as the damaged mech raced towards them with eight xenos right behind. The walls and the ground around the mech were being torn apart by explosive rounds, but the mech was managing to stay fairly nimble-footed and avoid any direct hits.
Then that nimble-footing failed and it took several shots to the back of its left leg. The mech staggered then fell in a heap, sparks coming off of it like it was an Independence Day fireworks show.
“Fire!” Lopp ordered as the three finally got clear shots once the mech was down.
Lasers lit up the tunnel and sliced into the xenos. Two dropped, screeching so loud that it almost shorted the soldiers’ helmet audio. The other six kept charging, heading straight for the soldiers. They scrambled over the downed mech, ignoring it completely, their attention solely on the people firing lasers at them.
Two more dropped, their bodies bursting open as Coda sent laser bolt after laser bolt directly into their wide open maws. But the success only lasted so long. In seconds, the soldiers were in range of the explosive rounds.
“Get back!” Coda yelled as he shot anther xeno, taking off four tentacles with one laser bolt. “We can’t hold this position!”
“Talk to me, rats!” Schroeder said.
“We have four xenos coming at us with infantry carbines!” Lopp yelled. “They know how to use them, Sarge!”
“Jesus Christ,” Schroeder said. “Fall back. Get to the cables now. I’m pulling you out of there.”
“What about the mech, Sarge?” Coda asked. “He’s down.”
“Can you get to the pilot?” Schroeder asked.
“No, Sarge,” Coda replied.
“Then there is nothing you can do,” Schroeder said. “Get your ass back to this hole! I want you topside pronto!”
“Schroeder! You can’t leave Shock down there!” Giga yelled.
“Pilot, I already told you to get off this channel!” Schroeder barked.
“I’m a lieutenant and you are a sergeant, Schroeder!” Giga barked back.
The three soldiers stood and ran as fast as they could back to the cables hanging down the hole as Schroeder and Giga shouted back and forth, the insults getting harsher, the threats getting more real.
“Goddamnit!” Schroeder roared. “That is enough, Giga! You outrank me, but this is my damn op! You got a problem with me running things the way they should be, then you call the Boss and complain! Otherwise, shut the hell up!”
Coda reached a cable and snapped it into place. As soon as Lopp got to him, he snapped one into place on the man’s armor then held out a cable to Gershon as she reached them too. All three soldiers were connected and barely had time to give the thumbs up before their cables were pulled taught and they were yanked back up the hole.
When they reached the top of the hole, they immediately uncoupled from the cables, turned, and began firing down into the hole. Xenos could be seen below, but they ducked back as laser after laser rained down on them.
“Close this bitch!” Schroeder yelled. “Close it now!”
Giga stomped over to the sergeant, the mech towering over the yelling woman.
“You blow that hole and Shock is trapped down there!” Giga shouted.
“Shock fell,” Coda said, looking up at the mech. “We saw him fall. He wasn’t getting back up.”
Two soldiers ran up to Schroeder, a black box held between them.
“Arm and deploy,” Schroeder ordered then tu
rned and looked up at Giga. “You going to be a problem, pilot?”
“I should go down there,” Giga said.
Her words were followed by several explosive rounds making it up out of the hole and detonating around the drop zone.
“No, you shouldn’t,” Schroeder said and snapped her fingers.
The soldier twisted dials on the box then hurled it into the hole. Everyone ran, even Giga in her mech. Two seconds ticked off then the world became fire and smoke followed by a sucking sound so loud that it overtook everything.
Then silence.
Dust filled the air as Schroeder went back to what had been a hole. In its place was a mound of thick plasticrete that was singed and scorched along the edges.
“Nothing’s getting through that,” Schroeder said, rapping her knuckles on the mound. “Not for a while anyway.”
She let out a whistle and twirled her hand in the air. Soldiers hurried over to the mound and began setting sensors all around it.
Giga could only watch.
“Dammit, Shock,” she muttered. “Don’t you dare die on me down there.”
9.
It was pitch black and Shock could tell that the mech’s cockpit was compromised again. No surprise there. The real surprise was that he was able to wake up alive. Not that waking up dead was an option.
He lay in a pile of cradle. That was the only way to explain it. It rested underneath him like wet blankets, heavy and damp with his sweat and the mech’s many hydraulic and engineering fluids.
Shock blinked a few times. He couldn’t see jack, not even a spark. Not a single one of the systems still had even a trace of energy coursing through it. The mech was dead, dead, dead.
That meant it was time to get suited up and abandon ship. He didn’t need light to navigate the small cockpit. He knew the space like he knew his own body. Shock rolled off the pile of cradle and pressed a hand against a panel. No power meant it didn’t open at his touch, but a little wiggling and some good old-fashioned force popped the panel open just enough so he could wriggle his fingers in the gap and pull.
It came free with a loud clang. The loud clang was answered by a loud wail. A wail that came from outside the mech. Shock froze.
He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it. Something large sliding across the tunnel floor, a slithering sound like undulating plastic.
A xeno was out there, and it was big.
With all the mastery of his physical form that he’d learned through the years, Shock carefully, cautiously, slowly pulled out the helmeted battle armor that had been tucked behind the panel. He slid in one leg then the other. A lift of his butt then a slip of his right arm followed by his left arm. He patted the patch on his right breast and the armor stiffened where it needed to then flexed where it had to in order for Shock to move.
He was just putting the helmet on, ready to activate the seal, when the entire mech rocked at a forty-five-degree angle, sending him slamming into the side of the cockpit. The armor protected him from getting hurt, but it didn’t do a thing for his stability. The mech rocked the other direction and he was tossed clear across the cockpit, hitting helmet first into the environmental processors.
A hiss of air and a blast of steam shot from the processors. Shock hurried towards the damaged hatch, knowing exactly what was going to happen next.
The hatch was torn free and lost in the pitch darkness. Shock dove out of the mech, slammed into something very squishy yet solid, slid down the squishy, solid thing, hit the ground, scrambled to his feet, and took off running. He had no idea where he was going, but his helmet’s display had come alive and he was at least able to use night vision to make sure he didn’t slam into a wall.
Which was a good thing since a wall was exactly what he was running towards. A wall that had xeno’s trapped in it, their bodies frozen and stuck within a mass of plasticrete.
No worries. Standard protocol. Seal off the hole to prevent any other threats from using it. It was textbook, and Shock was more than sure it meant Schroeder was somewhere up top. An up top he wasn’t going to get to through the hole he had fallen down.
He was suddenly lifted up, tentacles grabbing his legs and flipping him upside down. Then he was flying. Open air was all he knew and he was moving so fast with such force that his helmet couldn’t process the data fast enough to give him an image to work with.
Shock hit the tunnel floor, cried out as the battle armor absorbed some, but not all of the impact, again scrambled to his feet, and was off and running once more. He doubted he could outrun the behemoth behind him, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stand around and wait to be thrashed like a rag doll.
Five minutes passed before he slowed down then stopped running altogether. He turned and began going through the various scan spectrums his helmet was capable of until he was able to see a little of what was happening way behind him.
“Well… That’s not good.”
***
“Roar!” Giga yelled. “Is your damn mech fixed yet or what?”
“I don’t know!” Roar yelled back over the comms. “Ask Hawker!”
“Don’t even start with me,” Hawker replied over the comms. “I will have it fixed when I have it fixed!”
“Can that be today at least?” Giga shouted. “I need Roar to cover this drop zone so I can go to the next one with the drop ship!”
“Yes, I understand how a leap frog operation works, Giga,” Hawker snapped. “Give me five seconds!”
“Five minutes?” Giga asked.
“Did I say five minutes? No. I said five seconds!” Hawker shouted. “Or five hours if you keep bugging me!”
Giga waited. Not patiently. She nearly crushed a man as she paced, her mech’s foot coming close to stomping him into the ground.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. Not that he could hear her since she didn’t have her loudspeakers on.
“I’m up!” Roar shouted. “Get going!”
“Schroeder!” Giga yelled into the comms.
“Goddamn, Giga! You trying to blow my eardrums or what?” Schroeder replied over the comms. “Turn that shit down!”
“Roar is operational again,” Giga said. “She’s got this drop zone covered. Let’s get the show on the road!”
“What show?” Schroeder said. “I do not consider this site to be secured yet!”
“Schroeder, do not mess with me,” Giga said. “We need to get to the other drop zone and see if there is a way down into those tunnels from there.”
“I can pretty much guarantee that there is,” Schroeder said. “But we aren’t leaving until I have–”
“Schroeder!” Giga roared. “I swear to every god ever invented that I will pick you up and squish you between my fists if you do not authorize the drop ship to head to the next drop zone right now!”
Giga waited then saw an extremely pissed-off Schroeder shove past the chaos of the SpecCom soldiers to stand directly in front of the mech.
“Try it,” Schroeder said, her hands planted on her hips. “Come on, big mech pilot. I dare you. Pick me up in those oversized grabbers of yours and squish me into pulp. Do it. Come on.”
“Don’t test me,” Giga said.
“Oh, I am goddamn testing you!” Schroeder said. “That’s exactly what I am doing!”
Someone shouted at Schroeder and she nodded without taking her eyes of Giga’s cockpit.
“Load up!” Schroeder ordered. “Norris will be here in two minutes! I want ground recon locked and loaded! I want perimeter crew set and ready! I want this damn drop ship filled to the ass with SpecCom badasses before I turn around!”
She shouted all of that without taking her eyes off Giga for even a second.
“Are we good, pilot?” Schroeder asked.
“Yeah, Schroeder, we’re good,” Giga said.
“Then march your metal butt over to that drop ship and hop on before I leave without you,” Schroeder said. She turned from Giga and stomped towards the drop ship. “I will leave without you,
pilot.”
A drop ship came flying over the tops of the trees, circled the drop zone, then hovered about a quarter kilometer off.
“That would be Norris! He needs a spot clear so he can land! We are in the spot he needs! Why are we still in the spot he needs?” Schroeder shouted.
Soldiers raced inside the drop ship followed directly by Schroeder.
Giga hurried over to the drop ship and climbed on top. She hooked the toes of her mech’s feet into recessed holds made specifically for that purpose while she grabbed onto metal rungs set towards the cockpit of the ship.
Technically, the drop ship could carry a full cargo load and two mechs on top, but that was pushing it. The engine drives whined as the drop ship took off, angled up over the trees, then sped away from the drop zone.
Giga kept an eye on the scanners the entire time.
***
“Hey, Boss?” Chomps called over the comms.
Parveet was sitting straight up in her chair, eyes flicking from one screen to another as she took in all the data coming from the planet. Yes, she had a bridge crew to do the analysis for her, but she hadn’t become commander of the Jethro by sitting back and letting others do the work.
“Go ahead, Chomps,” Parveet said, snapping her fingers at Wan as she thought she saw a strange blip on one of the scanners. Wan nodded and began scrolling back through the data. “What have you got for me?”
“Shock is still lost,” Chomps said. “Roar has her mech back up and running and she’s locking down that drop zone with Wall. Giga, of course, is on the drop ship with Schroeder and heading for the next drop zone to secure that and maybe find a way down into those tunnels.”
“What’s your take on all this, Chomps?” Parveet asked.
“Easy to see how regular infantry was taken out,” Chomps said. “These xenos are subterranean, obviously.”
“Not obviously,” Parveet replied. “Remember your Earth military history, Chomps. Plenty of wars have been fought by digging tunnel networks. Doesn’t mean humans are subterranean. If these things are smart enough to fly a damn drop ship up to the Dorso, then they can dig some goddamn holes to play war in.”
