by Mark Wandrey
“What happened?” he asked as he undocked and spun the submarine away from the extractor.
“The big marine mammals have powered armor and modern weapons!”
“Impossible,” the pilot insisted. “They would have used them already!”
“You would think,” Gloot mumbled. “However, my dead troopers would contest your statement.”
“What about the rest of the Xiq’tal?” his second in command, Yoold, asked.
“To entropy with them.”
The sub’s water turbine spun up to a scream as the submarine accelerated away from the extractor. Gloot could see through the front cockpit bubble as all three of the single-man attack subs fell in with them. He activated the radio.
“Be alert,” he warned. “The big marine mammals have modern weapons and armor. Only lasers, though. Engage with torpedoes on first sight!”
“Acknowledged,” the attack subs replied.
With their escort, they raced away at better than 30 knots. There was no way the massive mammals could match their speed. Sonar bleated an alarm. Four small returns raced past them at better than 50 knots!
The returns were too small to be the big predators, and he thought at first that they were poorly fired torpedoes, until they slowed and turned around to face them. It was then that he remembered the smaller subspecies of marine mammals.
“Engage them!” he ordered the attack subs. Instantly, the three accelerated ahead of the transport, and Gloot saw a torpedo launch from each one.
The sonar was a good model and provided highly detailed 3D imagery. It zoomed in on the four creatures facing them, and now he could make out the sleek, long forms with powerful flippers. They had proven fast and maneuverable, but against high-tech seeker torpedoes, they would be no match.
The torpedoes streaked toward them at 100 knots. Gloot nodded as the torpedoes unerringly sought their targets. Then, when the torpedoes were less than 100 meters away, there was a flash that made the screen white out. When it cleared, the torpedoes were gone, and the marine mammals were accelerating toward them.
“What happened?” Gloot demanded.
“A sonar burst,” the pilot said. “It was extremely powerful. It overwhelmed our receivers, even a kilometer away.”
Resolution began to return as the sub’s sonar recovered from the burst, and Gloot saw the torpedoes. Three marine mammals had the torpedoes in their mouths like fish.
“The sonar must have functioned as a weapon and disabled the torpedoes,” the pilot said needlessly. “They’ll be in laser range in five seconds.”
“Engage with lasers at close range,” Gloot ordered the attack subs, which acknowledged the order. The mammals raced toward them at an amazing speed. The seconds ticked down with the range, and Gloot tensed in anticipation of watching the annoying creatures cut into bloody chunks. Then the images became fuzzy.
“They’re employing sonar again,” the pilot said, manipulating his controls. “The signal is incredibly complicated, and the frequencies are slightly different from each creature.”
“Are you saying the sonar is a biological feature of the animals?”
Before the pilot could answer, the attack subs fired their lasers, to absolutely no effect. The beams hit the sonar distortion and attenuated in less than a meter. Lasers only worked at short range underwater, and even then, they were less reliable. The sonar distortion was acting almost like a laser shield. How can they know how to do this? Gloot thought.
The attack subs maneuvered out of the way of the streaking alien mammals, firing their lasers without effect until the quarry was no longer in line with the bow-mounted weapon. As the aliens passed the attack subs, two of them maneuvered so they could face the subs. Another burst of sonar static came from the two creatures, and the attack subs spun out of control.
“What happened to them?” Gloot demanded.
“They don’t respond,” the pilot said.
“It was some kind of attack,” the remaining attack sub pilot yelled over the sound of his craft’s straining engine. “They’re not responding.” A Tri-V came alive, showing the attack sub pilot inside his wet cockpit.
“Get away from them,” Gloot ordered the attack sub pilot, then addressed his pilot, “Emergency speed, head for the dome.”
“I’m trying,” the attack sub pilot yelled, “the aliens are too maneuverable!”
On the display showing the attack sub and the aliens, two others swept around and aimed their heads at it. The distortion returned. The attack sub pilot screamed, and the screen showed an all-too detailed view as the pilot was hit by a concussive wave of force transmitted through his craft’s wall, and by the water he used to breathe, pulping his flesh. The exploding cloud of blood and tissue almost managed to obscure the view of his gaping skull.
“Entropy!” his pilot gasped.
“Get us out of here!”
* * *
“Wikiwiki reports the small subs are destroyed,” Ki’i told Terry, who was riding on his back.
“What about the big sub?” he asked the KilSha.
“They let it go as you instructed. It is fleeing at high speed back to Templemer.”
“Excellent,” Terry said.
“Why bother letting them get back?” Katrina asked. A dozen meters away, she was astride the female Uila. Colin rode on Maka just behind them. All the members of the former Wandering Pod were in the second group. Kray and those from the Shore Pod were the lead element, with the exception of Moloko and Pōkole, who remained back at the Kahraman base, protecting the children and mothers. The little calf was quite upset at being left out of, as he called it, the coming fun.
“Because I want them to get back and either evacuate toward the surface, or even better, come out and try to fight.”
“Then we kill them,” Ki’i said.
“Absolutely. Skritch, are your scouts there yet?”
“Yeah, yeah, they’re checking it out now, man!”
Terry shook his head; the mannerisms and turns of phrase of the new BotSha had him bemused. They were like some of the surfer dudes back on Hawaii. It had to be on purpose; they were all talking the same way.
The BotSha leader came back on the radio a minute later. “Wikiwiki says the dome is fixed and full of air, dude!”
“How did you know they’d fix the dome?” Katrina asked.
“The Selroth made the dome,” Terry said. “They don’t like this water.”
“The water is awesome, dude,” Skritch said.
“For you and the orc—the KilSha, sure. Not for the Selroth. I don’t know if the Xiq’tal like it.”
“No matter,” Kray said from further ahead. “They will die in it.”
“We’ll need the dome,” Terry reminded everyone. “Be careful.”
“There’re a bunch of crabs coming out of the dome,” Wikiwiki called on the radio. “There’re crabs everywhere, dude!”
They’re coming out to fight, Terry thought. Doc’s right, aliens are predictable. “Kray, go ahead and attack their front ranks, we’ll begin our flanking maneuver.”
“Yes, General!” Kray replied, a hint of humor in his voice.
“Don’t call him General,” Colin said. “His head will get too big for his helmet.” Terry could hear Katrina chuckling over the radio.
“Remember what they did to Don,” Terry said, and the other two went silent. Their friend was alive, but horribly mutilated. The crabs had cut off both his feet and his right hand.
“And remember our families,” Katrina added. It was the fact that the aliens had murdered everyone that sold her on this plan. Payback was a powerful motivator. The KilSha just wanted to kill the aliens.
Now that they were close, the KilSha began sharing live feeds from their pinplants, constructing 3D maps in his head that the pinplants labeled a ‘battlespace.’ It seemed like it would be hard to separate things, but the implants made it easier than a computer game back home. The enemy units were highlighted in blue as they were iden
tified, friendly in red. The colors felt strange, so he thought about it, and it reversed.
As the four KilSha in Kray’s group swept in on the Xiq’tal, Terry took Ki’i and the other four in his group and angled sideways, then toward Templemer. The lights of the dome slowly became visible out of the gloom. Where they’d tried to make a home. Where Doc and his mom had died. He gritted his teeth and urged Ki’i to speed up.
A pair of BotSha came in from either side, matching their course and speed. “Crabs ahead, dude,” Wikiwiki said.
“’Sup dude,” Toba added from the other side.
“I thought you were supposed to be helping Kray’s group,” Terry said.
“Naw, he’s got that, I wanna hang out with you!”
“More fun here,” Toba agreed.
A laser beam from below hit Niho just to Terry’s right. A Xiq’tal’s red icon appeared in Terry’s head below them. The male KilSha yawed over hard, and Terry could see the glowing line on his armor. As Niho rolled, one of the two laser turrets mounted on his armor’s side, just behind the head, rotated and pulsed laser fire. A hundred meters below them, the Xiq’tal who’d fired from ambush was scored several times, and the red icon disappeared.
“Below us,” Terry said to Wikiwiki.
“On it, bro!” The two BotSha rocketed downward as the KilSha began to evade more shots coming up from below.
“There’s a bunch of them, let’s go,” Colin said.
They didn’t want to leave Wikiwiki and Toba to deal with the crabs themselves, so Terry agreed, and all five KilSha dove as well.
The Xiq’tal had a squad of their troopers hidden on the rocky side of the volcano Templemer had been built on. Terry didn’t think they’d planned to attack when it had happened—maybe one of the crabs jumped the gun? Either way, the KilSha and BotSha were among them too quickly, and they were caught trying to hide from an expected attack.
This was the first time Terry had been directly involved in a fight, and his heart was racing. He could feel sweat on his skin, despite the armor. The Caretaker had called his armor a ‘Konar,’ and it had been custom-built in the manufactory in only minutes. The armor the KilSha and BotSha wore was unique and required slightly more time. With segmented armor from just behind their pectoral fins all the way back to their flukes, Terry was amazed at the final product. The way it articulated to open and allow the operating cetaceans to simply swim into it was even more amazing. He, Katrina, and Colin had just put theirs on by climbing into it from behind, and the armor had closed over them.
Doc would have loved these things, Terry thought as he watched them dive toward the enemy through his pinplants. It really was just like a video game. Each of the KilSha’s armor had an indentation just behind the dorsal fin where a Human could sit. Both armors then linked systems, almost like a spaceship docking. It had once felt incredible to be towed through the water by the powerful strokes of a bottlenose. Riding on the back of a battle armor-wearing KilSha made him feel like a god! The god of war, to be precise.
Mated to Ki’i’s back, Terry gained access to the KilSha’s own weapon system, effectively becoming like a rear gunner in a fighter. The Xiq’tal, realizing they couldn’t escape, began firing at the diving cetaceans and their Human riders. Terry saw Uila and Katrina take out a torpedo with a directed sonar blast and kill the Xiq’tal with their own torpedo.
“How do I know how to use this stuff?” Katrina wondered.
“The pinplants are doing the heavy lifting,” Terry said.
“Like looking up a file,” Colin agreed. “Point and click.”
“Point and kill is more like it,” Katrina lamented.
“It is glorious,” Kray said, either not catching her sentiment or simply not caring.
Another Xiq’tal was dispatched by Colin and Maka, leaving two who were trying to race away with a sort of underwater jetpack the aliens had mounted on their shells. Terry used one of Ki’i’s lasers and hit a fleeing crab, disabling the jetpack. Ki’i raced in and seized the alien in his jaws. The being made a hideous screeching sound as Ki’i’s reinforced metal teeth crushed the life out of it with an explosion of blueish blood and insides. Terry tried not to think about the fact that they’d just killed an intelligent being, focusing instead on what those beings had done to his friends and family.
Further ahead, Wikiwiki and Toba used the lasers on their own powered armor to disable the last Xiq’tal’s jetpack and weapons. Then they moved in and tore it limb from limb with their own reinforced teeth.
“Wimpy crabs,” Toba said when the Xiq’tal only had one pathetic limb left. The Xiq’tal was trying to crawl under a rock outcropping as blue blood pumped from its many severed limbs. The two BotSha harassed and snapped at it until Katrina dispatched it with a laser.
“Spoilsport!” Wikiwiki cried.
“That wasn’t sport,” Katrina said. “It was torture.”
The two BotSha left without comment, obviously disappointed that she’d ruined their fun. Terry observed the battlespace and saw that Kray’s forces had neutralized all the Xiq’tal, with only one minor injury; Byk had a pectoral fin pierced by a laser and a torpedo had exploded against his side. The injury was minor, and his armor was still functional. They are like warships, Terry thought.
“The Selroth are retreating into Templemer,” Kray reported.
“Time to finish this,” Terry said.
* * *
Gloot ran across the open area of the dome as fast as he could, his big, webbed feet making wet slapping sounds on the carved rock as he ran. One of the ridiculous paintings the Humans had executed on a building was visible as he went, the image partially degraded from being flooded. This particular painting looked like the dome he was running in with the cursed marine mammals swimming around it, though without the powered armor they now wore.
“How did these Humans and their pets get such advanced technology?” he yelled in rage as he ran. Nobody was nearby to answer him. His company commander had been outside leading the Xiq’tal against the same marine mammals. The initial wave of attacks had been swift and devastating. His commander had died in seconds.
“What’s happening, Unit Commander?” asked a technician moving a loader full of equipment.
“We’re losing,” Gloot said as he ran by.
“What should I do?”
“Run for your life, you fool!” Gloot yelled over his shoulder. Thanks to Gloot’s widely-set eyes, he had a good look at the technician staring after him as he ran.
The three heavy submarines were docked in the bay. He’d sent the general evacuation order the minute his commander was slaughtered. To entropy with the high command, the Izlians, and in particular the cursed Humans and their murderous pets. If they could control the aquatic death machines, they would soon depose the Veetanho from the Mercenary Guild and be running everything. If the galaxy was smart, they’d destroy the entire race now, while they still could.
Gloot was emboldened to see an entire squad of his troopers waiting at the entrance to the main lock. All were in full combat armor with laser weapons, and one had a rocket launcher.
“Where are the rest of the Xiq’tal?” a trooper asked.
“Dead, maybe,” he said. “Do you want to wait for them?” They shook their heads. “That’s what I thought. Let’s get out of this entropy-cursed place.”
They entered the airlock and passed through into the docking bay. Their submarines were sitting there with support crews rushing to load anything of value. “Get in the subs, you fools!” he yelled at them. Being non-combat personnel, they were responsible for the gear; they looked confused to be told to leave it behind. He turned toward the submarine and saw one of the armored marine mammals surface just behind it.
“Contact!” he yelled and raised his laser, but the mammal disappeared below the water the second it was spotted. Regardless, several of his troopers snapped shots after it. “Don’t waste ammo,” he said. Then the meaning of the creature dawned on him.
“Why is the outside lock open?”
“We opened it in preparation for departure,” a technician said.
He pointed at the water, where another of the smaller marine mammals was skimming the surface, apparently to get a sight picture of what was going on. “You didn’t consider hostile action first?”
The technician looked from Gloot to the water, not understanding. Then the marine mammal surfaced and shot the technician with a laser, killing him instantly.
“Take cover!” he ordered the squad, and they piled behind a concrete barrier.
Lasers began snapping regularly, picking off the feckless technicians with precision fire. Half of them were gone before the rest realized they were targets. Non-combatants weren’t often singled out during merc battles; there wasn’t any profit in it. Finally understanding what was happening, their response was to run in circles screaming.
“Suppression fire,” Gloot ordered. His troopers tried to help the technicians, but their panicky behavior worked against them. His own people killed two of them as they ran into friendly fire. Only one managed to get behind cover, leaving the dock next to the subs littered with dead and dying technicians.
“What do we do?” a trooper asked him. “We can’t reach the submarines while those creatures are in the water.”
“We wait,” he said. “If they want to attack us, they must rise up higher in the water, then we can engage them from cover. Once we kill a few, they’ll tire of this.”
But the small marine mammals didn’t expose themselves. They stopped attacking, and the docking bay fell silent. He began to consider a rush for the submarines, since they had heavier weapons, when something large began to surface. He stared in horror as one of the huge marine mammals broached the surface, its laser turrets seeking targets.
“Fire!” he yelled.
The squad rose as one and targeted the creature. The segmented armor plates covering its body seemed to move, and its head dipped downward. The laser fire hit the armor and was reflected. The armor was mirror shiny and somehow articulated. The tiny plates both deflected and broke up the beams in a way Gloot had never seen.
