by Jake Bible
“Listen to the guy I do not like, mechanic,” Morisaki said. “He would know how to make it worse.”
“It’s true,” Gore agreed.
“They are crawlers. That’s what they do. They crawl. You will call them crawlers from now on, understood?” Morisaki said.
“Yes, sir,” Rots replied and faced the crawlers. “Mechtopi, you are now called crawlers. Please reprogram.”
The crawlers issued a series of beeps then stood still before issuing another series of beeps.
“Confirmed?” Rots asked.
They beeped their confirmation.
“One and Three have your assignments, Two and Four are with me,” Rots said then took off running towards the drop ship.
Two of the crawlers followed on her heels while two remained where they were.
The second the drop ship was full, it took off, not even bothering to wait for the rear ramp to be locked in place. It flew over the trees and was lost from sight in seconds.
“Are those things creeping you out as much as they are creeping me out?” Gore asked Morisaki.
“Says the man that basically lives inside a mech,” Morisaki replied as he walked off.
Gore stared down at the two crawlers. He kicked out softly with a foot.
“Shoo,” he said. “Go away.”
One of the crawlers scurried off, the other stayed right where it was.
“I’m stuck with you, aren’t I?” he asked.
The crawler beeped.
“Fine. Whatever,” Gore said and started walking away. “Come on. We have to make a sweep of the LZ. Don’t want to get caught with our metal pants around our metal ankles, do we? I’m sure you get where I’m coming from.”
The crawler beeped and followed.
“What number are you again?”
The crawler beeped once.
“One?”
The crawler beeped again.
“Okay, One, do me a favor,” Gore said. “I’m gonna go high while you go low. Can you scan?”
Beep.
“Okay. You scan for movement at ground level and I’ll concentrate on the trees. If you detect anything that is not from our people, you beep like hell and let me know. Got it?”
Beep.
“Cool. This could be fun.”
“Gore! Do not make friends with that machine!” Morisaki shouted over the comms.
“Jesus Christ,” Gore mumbled. “The guy has eyes everywhere. Ignore him, One. He’s a bummer.”
Beep.
11.
The xeno hit Giga in the midsection and she doubled over, wrapping the mech around the battle armor-clad creature, her fists pounding at it as she fell onto her back. Tentacles shot out from gaps in the armor and tried to work their way through the cockpit hatch, but Giga wasn’t falling for that one. Many a thing had tried to crack a mech cockpit before and there were countermeasures for that.
Blades shot up then back down in the blink of an eye and the tips of the tentacles were sheared off. The xeno screeched and tried to roll off Giga, but she grabbed it in her arms, rolled over so the xeno was between her and the ground, and stood up.
Before the xeno could launch itself again, Giga jammed the tips of her fingers into one of the tentacle gaps then spread her hand wide, cracking the battle armor around the gap into shards that went flying every which way. Then she used her other fist and punched down into the new opening over and over and over until nothing but black pulp came oozing from the rest of the gaps in the armor.
One last screech and the xeno deflated before her eyes, a puddle of gunk and broken armor.
It would have been a victory if there had been only one xeno.
Giga was hit from behind and fell cockpit first into the puddle of gunk and armor. She tried to twist around, but there were three xenos on top of her and she couldn’t get the leverage. Tentacles whipped and slammed into the back of her mech then started working at her arm joints, their tips hunting for a way to pop the couplings loose.
“Schroeder!” Giga shouted.
“This might hurt!” Schroeder replied as several blasts from the drop ship hit the xenos.
The blasts didn’t get to the creatures themselves, the battle armor doing its job and protecting the flesh underneath, but the force was enough to knock two loose so that Giga could bunch her legs up under her and launch her mech to its feet.
The remaining xeno twined its tentacles all about the mech, hanging on for dear life. Giga had to ignore that one so she could spin her mech around and give one of the others a swift, hard kick, punting it like a football. It flew back several meters as the other launched itself at the mech.
Giga tried to punch the thing, but tentacles had her right arm nearly pinned to her side. She spun to her right and shot her left arm out, stiff-arming the flying xeno hard enough to buckle a good amount of armor. Black fluid squirted from between two of the gaps and the xeno dropped hard. Giga didn’t waste time and gave the xeno a solid sidekick with her left leg, crushing even more armor.
A weak screech came from inside the armor and the xeno went still.
The one attached to Giga’s mech tightened its tentacles and alarms sounded inside the cockpit.
“You got four incoming!” Schroeder shouted.
“Any chance for some help?” Giga called.
“Give us a few seconds,” Schroeder said. “If you can hold out for that long, then I think we have a solution to this problem.”
“I may only have a few seconds,” Giga said.
She sent electric shocks surging across her mech’s armor, but the xeno didn’t let go. Instead, it tightened its tentacles more.
“Son of a butch,” Giga said. “Goddamn power-eating freaks.”
The xeno she’d punted was coming at her again along with half a dozen others that realized they couldn’t get to the constantly circling drop ship so a stranded mech would have to do.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Giga said as she leapt as high into the air as her legs could.
Then she arched her back, tucked her legs up into a classic cannonball position, and let her entire weight fall. The xeno on her back popped inside that armor like a melon. The tentacles loosened as they turned to sludge and Giga rolled twenty meters to her right before coming up in a crouch.
Instinctively, Giga reached back for her KYAG, but it wasn’t in its clamps. It was halfway across the drop zone, having been knocked from her hands as the fight started. So, she improvised.
Giga stood and sprinted to the tree line, the xenos rolling after her like psychotic armadillos on her heels. When she reached the trees, she grabbed the closest one that her right hand could wrap around and yanked it right out of the ground. She knew she didn’t have time to attack so she jumped as the first xeno nailed her square in the back, letting the momentum throw her into the trees.
Her left arm hooked around the largest of the trees she impacted with and she swung herself about the trunk, her legs slamming into the other trees to stop her momentum. Giga stuck the uprooted tree out and used it like a lance, deflecting one xeno and actually spearing another. It screeched and popped at the same time.
Giga bunched her legs up then kicked as hard as she could against a tree behind her, bending it towards the ground as a third xeno threw itself at her. Then she twisted to the side, let her legs go, and watched as the tree snapped back into place, the flying xeno wrapping itself around the trunk like a drunk crashing a land roller.
That was about all she could manage as the remaining xenos closed on her. Between the standing trees, the fallen trees, the piles of armor, and the warped xeno that was struggling to get free from the tree behind her, Giga was pinned down.
Then the drop ship landed and Schroeder’s SpecCom squad unloaded. Most of them had rifles up and firing, but a few in front had spreaders instead. Spreaders were used specifically to extract soldiers from their battle armor when they were too wounded to get it off themselves.
“Get their attention, people
!” Schroeder roared. “I want them to engage us, not the downed mech!”
“Hooyah!” the SpecCom soldiers shouted as they charged the xenos.
Laser fire was flying this way and that as the battle armor deflected most of the blasts. Some got through and a couple of the xenos fell, the soldiers with spreaders leaping onto them so they could rip that armor wide open and toss a couple of concussion grenades down inside. The soldiers jumped off, rolled away, and covered their heads as xeno exploded everywhere, along with some seriously dangerous shrapnel from the battle armor.
“Are we good?” Schroeder shouted.
“Good, Sarge!” the soldiers replied, the ones with the spreaders getting back to their feet to concentrate on the next xeno.
Giga pulled herself from the tree line and grabbed a xeno by the tentacles just as it was going to whip them down on four soldiers firing on a different xeno. The thing twisted around and two more tentacles shot out, slamming against the view shield of Giga’s cockpit.
“Nice try,” Giga said and spread her arms wide, pulling the tentacles until they snapped off.
The xeno screeched and went limp. Before it could go full gunk, Giga threw it into another xeno, knocking that one off its attack as it raced towards Schroeder who was laying down cover fire for the spreader soldiers. Schroeder glanced back over her shoulder and gave Giga a nod. Giga replied with a giant thumbs up.
Then her right hip servo shorted out and she toppled over onto her side.
“Shit!” she cried as her entire right leg seized up just as a xeno was coming at her.
She reached out and snagged a fallen tree then swung it as hard as she could, nailing the xeno dead on. It went rolling back right into the drop ship, hitting it so hard that it rocked the ship almost up onto its side.
But that didn’t stop the xeno. It regrouped and came rolling at Giga once more.
Giga held her makeshift bat and counted off in her head, ready to time the strike perfectly.
Then the hole in the ground burst apart as two dozen more armored xenos came rushing up from below.
“No way,” Giga gasped. “Schroeder!”
“I see them!” Schroeder cried. “Full retreat! Everyone back on the drop ship!”
The xeno reached Giga and easily dodged the distracted swing of the tree she sent at it. Then it was all over her, tentacles pounding and searching, simultaneously trying to break her and breach her.
The drop zone erupted into a mass of explosions and the new attackers rolled to a stop as the ground in front of them became an inferno.
“We’ll cover you!” a voice called over the comms.
Giga couldn’t tell which drop ship pilot it was, but she didn’t really care either. She had a xeno to deal with.
“Giga!” Schroeder shouted.
“Get those soldiers out of here!” Giga yelled. “I got this!”
She didn’t have it as one of the tentacles managed to work its way between some of her armor plating and started to twist and warp the panel away from the mech’s main structure. This was why she and Shock made such a good team. She was the sniper, and he was the hand-to-hand guy. She absolutely hated grappling like the way she was.
“So, let’s not grapple,” Giga said as she popped her hatch open, let her cradle come loose, grabbed the human-sized rifle from inside her cockpit, jammed the barrel between a gap in the xeno’s armor, and fired until the rifle warned it was going to overheat.
It was overkill, literally as the xeno’s gunk began to spew inside the cockpit, but it made Giga feel better, at least.
“We’re coming down for you!” Schroeder yelled as the drop ship appeared above her.
Giga dropped the rifle, closed the hatch, and re-engaged with the cradle. It was a bit of a shock to her system, but she gritted through the discomfort as she was immersed back into the mech and reached up with her right hand. The drop ship was right above her and she clamped her fingers around the hold bar on the belly of the ship, letting it lift her up off the ground just as half the new xenos came rolling at her position.
The second drop ship laid down some more explosives then banked and was gone.
“I’m not going to be able to hold on long,” Giga admitted as the drop ship she was gripping got them out of that nightmare drop zone.
“No worries,” Schroeder said. “The cavalry has a mechanic on board. As soon as we can find a safe place to land, she’ll fix you up.”
“She? Hawker came with?” Giga asked.
“No, some rookie named Rots,” Schroeder said.
“Rookie? Son of a butch.”
***
There was more than one reason battle armor could filter bodily waste. It wasn’t simply because soldiers couldn’t be bothered with stopping to pee on the battlefield. It was also because sometimes, more times than most admitted to anyone, the pee was scared right out of them.
That was the case when Shock slowly came around a bend in the tunnel and suddenly faced something he had a very hard time comprehending.
“City? City. City?” he mumbled. “Oh…shit. City.”
There it was. The civilization that the Jethro couldn’t find on the surface. For as far as Shock could see, and it stretched for kilometers, there was a massive underground city that teemed with xeno life.
Seeing an alien city was not the hard part for Shock’s brain. A city was to be expected. Nor was the vastness of the city what seemed so overwhelming. It was the fact that the city was built everywhere. Ground, ceiling, sides. It encompassed every square meter of space that was available in the massive cavern.
Shock’s guess? Six to eight Jethro’s could fit within the space and maybe still have room for the Dorso or even two Dorsos. The immensity of it all was mind boggling. Absolutely mind boggling.
Then reality slowly crept into Shock’s consciousness and the mech pilot in him started crunching the numbers.
The xeno city didn’t mean a damn thing. It was the amount of xenos that occupied the city. There had to be millions. At least.
And that may not have been the only city.
But, that wasn’t the bad part. His helmet locked onto a signal and he zoomed in the display.
The escape pod. It sat down in the city, xenos swarming over it.
At that second, Shock realized that he was no longer trying to get to the surface simply for his survival, but for the survival of every single human that had landed on Hrouska. Even if the Jethro landed, which technically it could do once it was repaired, it wouldn’t matter. The xenos had numbers that eclipsed a quarter of the UEC’s fleet.
Shock slowly, very slowly, backed away and retreated into the tunnel once more. There had been branches. He had to take one of those and pray he found a way up top.
Otherwise, he and everyone that had landed from the Jethro would be dead.
12.
The drop ship circled the third drop zone several times, taking as many readings as possible, before Chomps gave the order to land, jumping from the ship as it was still several meters above the ground. Chomps landed in a crouch then slowly stood as she pulled her KYAG from the clamps on her back.
She turned in a slow circle, assessing the area and the situation. The third drop zone was considerably more sparse than the last two. There were plenty of trees, but they stood in clusters, small groves here and there that dotted a wide grassland.
“No jungle,” Chomps said.
“The planet isn’t a total mono-biome,” Norris replied over the comms, his SpecCom soldiers filling the drop ship that was slowly landing a few meters from where Chomps stood. “There’s desert too.”
“Reminds me of the plains in Africa,” Chomps said.
“Jeez, Chomps,” Norris said, laughing nervously. “No need to bring that mess up. Let’s not spook the troops, okay?”
“Sorry,” Chomps said. “My grandfather showed me pictures of what it used to be like a couple centuries ago. Total quagmire now, of course. This area just reminded me of those pictures.�
�
“You seeing anything we aren’t?” Norris asked as the drop ship touched down. The rear ramp opened and soldiers began rushing out to get set into their ordered positions. “Scanners are clear on my end.”
Norris walked down the ramp, his rifle in one hand and up to his shoulder, a tablet in his other hand.
“I’m doubling up on scans,” Norris said, turning in a slow circle. “No way I’m going to trust my suit’s scanners alone.”
“Good call,” Chomps said and began to walk about the destroyed drop zone. No drop ship anywhere in sight. Plenty of human-shaped scorch marks. “No bodies. Nothing. Not even scraps of weapons or armor.”
“I’m seeing that,” Norris said then tucked his tablet to his belt and pointed at the closest cluster of trees. “Skell! Take your squad and clear that grove. Too many shadows in those trees for my taste.”
“Yes, Sarge!” a soldier replied and took off at a fast jog, three soldiers following close on his heels.
“Barker? You hit that grove and Vasquez, you hit that one. Stay on comms and report in the second you reach the trees. I do not want any surprises.”
“Yes, Sarge!”
“I think this whole planet is one big surprise,” Chomps said. “Bad feeling creeping in my gut.”
“You got that too?” Norris asked. “Great. I thought it was the circles I ate this morning.”
“Probably is,” Chomps said. “Those were nasty circles.”
The distant sound of thunder rumbled across the landscape.
“Any intel on the weather in this region?” Chomps asked.
“Not that I can bring up,” Norris replied. “The Dorso didn’t have much of a chance to get into long-term climate research. Stands to reason there’d be thunderstorms, though.”
“Yeah…”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
The thunder rumbled again, but closer that time.
“Where’s the lightning?” Chomps asked. “I didn’t see a flash. I’m not picking up any static electricity in the air. There are clouds, but long-range scans aren’t showing a cold front and warm front colliding, let alone any thunderheads.”
