Combat Frame XSeed

by Brian Niemeier

  A wide avenue stretched between immaculate lawns fronting blocky office buildings to the circular drive of a French Regency mansion. Max recognized the house. The whole structure had been moved stone by stone from a Dallas suburb by a founding member of the Consortium. The sculpture of Winged Victory encircled by the driveway had once resided in the Louvre.

  Max walked down the short street unmolested and climbed the granite steps to the mansion’s entry arch. He tried the iron handle, and the dark blue oak door creaked open. The small square vestibule gave on an arched hall with several open doorways on both sides. An antique mirror in a gilt frame dominated the left wall and reflected the paintings by Dutch Masters displayed on the right. A trace odor of burnt eggs hung in the still air.

  A distant thump broke the heavy silence. Max hurried toward the second door on the left in search of the source, his boots clicking on the peach marble underfoot. The doorway led into a conference room furnished in the Edwardian style. Scattered papers and water glasses cluttered the flame mahogany table.

  Max stepped up to one of the empty places at the long table and skimmed the first page of an open leather binder. It’s a nonaggression pact between the Socs and L3. Megami and Prime Minister Venn both signed it.

  Footsteps echoing in the hallway spurred Max to turn on his heel with his gun raised. He locked eyes on a slight figure with long black hair and pulled the trigger. Jagged cracks traversed the mirror on the opposite wall, and the chimes of breaking glass followed the gun’s resounding bang. The hallway was empty.

  Am I seeing things? Max took several deep breaths to slow his rapid breathing. The unpleasant stench he’d detected on entering seemed stronger here than in the vestibule. He followed the scent. A brief search led to a cracked door at the far end of the conference room. His left arm still immobile, Max nudged the door open with the muzzle of his gun.

  A slumped female form bound to a chair. Blood and worse soaking the front of a blue EGE Navy jumpsuit. Cables running from a car battery clipped to black wires jutting from red holes where eyes had been. The stench of sweetness gone to rot.

  “Li Wen,” Max rasped, his throat suddenly dry. He gave a quiet prayer of thanks that no answer came, and his self-hatred deepened.

  “You just missed her.”

  The breathy feminine voice spoke from just behind Max’s left shoulder. He rounded on Megami, who stood facing him with a predatory smile. Her small hand intersected the arc of his right arm, and a numbing jolt lanced through his wrist. His gun fell, bounced on the rose carpet, and vanished under the table.

  “With my bare hands, bitch!” Hardly aware of the threat torn from his mouth by rage, Max lunged at the grinning girl. The tails of her blue trench coat flapped as she slid to his right, and her long hair brushed across his neck. A cold sting traversed his throat. Burning pain followed, driving him to his knees. Blood seeped from an invisible slit in his suit’s thick neck. He clutched the wound in a desperate bid to stop the warm sticky flow.

  “Carbyne’s good for more than batteries,” said Megami. “It can cut right through a standard pilot suit. Be glad you’re wearing one, though. It’s why you still have a head.”

  Max’s curses emerged as choking gasps. The sole of Megami’s boot dug into his back and shoved him to the floor. He fell on his dislocated left shoulder, but the stab of agony paled against the burning in his throat.

  “Don’t try to talk,” said Megami. “The toxin coating the monowire already paralyzed your vocal cords.” She crouched down beside him just out of arm’s reach. Her eyes gleamed with cruelty but not for him, as if she were anticipating imminent revenge against a despised foe.

  “You deserve more for giving me the XSeed,” she continued. “It doesn’t matter if Masz stops the EGE’s launch or not. Crashing Metis into the Atlantic is only a warmup. My Kazoku will hunt the survivors from above with weapons guided by Prometheus.”

  Max couldn’t raise his left hand, but he extended the middle finger.

  “Speaking of Prometheus,” Megami said, “my brother has been entertaining its pilot since both of you arrived. I should go out and greet my other guest, even though the invitation was meant for Zane.”

  Megami rose and swept forth like a spirit of malice. Max lay on the soft carpet in a spreading pool of his own blood, struggling to breathe.

  “Max,” said a muffled, tinny voice.

  Darving slowly and painfully moved his left hand to his suit’s front pocket and pulled out the cracked handheld device.

  “Your pulse and respiration rates indicate severe blood loss,” said Marilyn. “Prometheus and I have cracked this compound’s security net. There is an emergency escape shuttle in a secret hangar beneath the house. I will guide you and grant you access, but you must hurry!”

  Rising to his feet sent more pain shooting through Max’s tortured body than he would have thought possible. He leaned against the table, smearing his blood on official documents.

  “Hurry,” Marilyn urged him. “I cannot help if you die of blood loss before reaching the shuttle.”

  Max forced himself to slog through a world of thickening red mist one trembling step at a time. At last he stumbled into a lift door that Marilyn revealed behind a shelf of old books in the mansion’s library. The door hissed open, and Max tipped forward onto the elevator car’s steel floor. The pain seemed to afflict someone else far away.

  He must have blacked out, because he awakened to Marilyn’s plaintive voice. “Max, please get up. The shuttle is just beyond the door.”

  With his last dregs of strength, Max crawled from the lift, crossed the blessedly small titanium-graphite deck, and hauled himself into the shuttle’s pilot seat. His numb hand fell away from his hemorrhaging neck as the angular canopy closed. The launch door in front of him retracted with a clang, revealing the star-flecked unknown.

  “I listened to the stars,” said Marilyn, “and I learned the code. The Gate can compress and dilate time. You will be safe on the other side.”

  Max’s head lolled as the shuttle shot forward. He looked up in time to see the colony mirror streak past. Matter, energy, and information froze. The stars contracted to an infinite point toward which he soared eternally.

  Ritter kept his back to the colony wall and his eyes glued to his monitor. He’d lost sight of the red XSeed after crashing through the mirror, and he knew Sieg was out there waiting for the right moment to attack. Ritter resolved not to give him an opening.

  Prometheus’ battery stood at a little over fifty percent charged. Ritter had learned better than to bleed off power with blind shots that would give away his position. I’ve got to avoid Sieg’s attacks and keep him talking—break Megami’s spell over him.

  But could a spell that had bound millions be broken?

  A sudden motion drew Ritter’s eye to the lower left corner of his screen. He relaxed slightly when the object turned out to be a small white shuttle instead of a red CF. The colony’s empty. Who could be launching a shuttle? Hope kindled in Ritter’s heart. “Max!” he radioed to the shuttle. “Is that you? Did you find Li Wen?”

  An alert on Ritter’s comm display notified him that Prometheus had received a message from the shuttle. The user ID was “Marilyn”. The subject read: “Gate Code”.

  “Open it,” Ritter told Prometheus. A flood of ones and zeroes filled every screen.

  Is this some kind of virus? Ritter reached for the system reset switch, but the monitors cleared on their own.

  The shuttle passed the mirror. Ritter was looking right at the one-man delta wing craft when it disappeared. His eyes reflexively squeezed shut. A negative image of the shuttle floated in the red dimness behind his eyelids and remained in his field of vision when he opened them. The triangle-shaped flash burn hovered over a red combat frame pointing a four-barreled gun right at him.

  Ritter slid left but caught the brunt of the golden blast. Atmosphere geysered through the breach in the colony’s hull to his right, forming a cloud of glittering i
ce crystals.

  Capacitor sixty percent charged.

  “A battlefield is no place to daydream,” Sieg said as he mirrored Ritter’s sidelong flight.

  Ritter rocketed off the wall in an arc that soared over the red XSeed’s head. Prometheus centered the targeting reticle on its crimson twin, but Ritter didn’t fire. Instead he continued downward following the direction of the colony’s spin.

  “You’re holding back,” said Sieg. A golden flash engulfed Prometheus’ legs and sent Ritter spinning backwards. “This is war. Sentimentality will kill you faster than bullets.”

  My battery’s two-thirds full. “I don’t want to kill you!”

  Ritter fired maneuvering thrusters to straighten his flight path but let the momentum propel him, inverted, toward the red XSeed. Again Prometheus gave him a firing solution. Again he ignored it and aimed into space to drain a charge. But Sieg shot first. The golden beam washed over Prometheus’ right arm. Ritter’s plasma rifle exploded, along with its fortunately empty magazine. The limb lost five layers of armor.

  Capacitor eighty-five percent charged.

  “What you or I want doesn’t matter,” said Sieg. He maneuvered to line up another shot. Ritter dashed aside just before the golden beam tore through space beneath the colony.

  Ritter drew one of his plasma swords with Prometheus’ right hand, ignited the blue blade, and rushed the red XSeed. “That’s not what you said in that African village. You told me we all have a choice.”

  “And you said your greatest mistake was refusing to fight.” Sieg parried Ritter’s thrust with his golden plasma blade. “Here I am—the enemy that will destroy everything you love. Are you going to let me?” The red XSeed spun its wrist, flinging the blue sword into space. The golden blade tagged Prometheus’ right hip.

  Ritter fell back into a defensive stance. “We’re not enemies! We’re countrymen.”

  The red XSeed sprang forward. “Neue Deutschland is a failed dream,” said Sieg. “I belong to the Kazoku.” He slashed faster than Ritter could react. The golden blade raked Prometheus’ midsection. Sieg switched to an icepick grip and stabbed Ritter’s cockpit door, turning layers of armor to white steam.

  Capacitor ninety percent charged.

  Ritter’s cockpit trembled. The temperature started to rise. He fired retrorockets but the red XSeed matched his pace. Sieg held back Prometheus’ shield arm with his gun. Ritter clutched the arm holding Sieg’s sword, but he couldn’t budge the deadly blade.

  “What a waste,” said Sieg. “You had the intelligence to learn from your mistakes but lacked the wisdom to learn from others’. I regret that this final lesson won’t profit you.”

  “Prometheus is designed to assist the XSeed’s pilot, if the pilot will trust him. Can you do that, Ritter?”

  “Max?” Ritter keyed his comm but realized Darving’s words had been a recording. “How can I trust you?” Ritter asked Prometheus. “You’re a weapon. I don’t want to kill Sieg!”

  The next words Ritter heard were his own. “You told me we all have a choice.”

  An involuntary grin bent the corners of Ritter’s mouth. He chuckled. “Okay. Let’s do it your way.

  “Talking to yourself?” asked Sieg. “I recommend praying.”

  The golden blade had cut through a third of Ritter’s cockpit armor. His capacitor was almost full. The second plasma sword lit up on Prometheus’ schematic. Ritter reached his shield arm back, drew and ignited his second sapphire blade, and chopped at Sieg’s gun. The shaft of blue plasma sliced through all four barrels. Sieg gasped in surprise.

  Ritter gripped his hilt in both hands and parried the red XSeed’s sword. He followed with a knee to Sieg’s cockpit hatch and heard a pained grunt over the comm.

  Sieg dropped his cloven gun and darted left. Ritter dashed right at Prometheus’ signal. The A.I. was proven correct when the red XSeed feinted and slid into Ritter’s path. The twin combat frames crossed coruscating swords as they jetted sideways through space.

  Ritter stabbed at the red XSeed’s face. Sieg’s golden blade arced upward to parry, and Ritter landed another punch to his opponent’s cockpit. Ritter’s sword slashed downward on a diagonal. Sieg imposed his shield, but the blue blade cut off the tip.

  The white and red XSeeds slashed at each other’s throats. Blue and gold blades locked in a burst of green. “You’re finally fighting to win,” said Sieg. “That’s not enough. Victory means fighting to kill.”

  “Tell it to Prometheus,” Ritter said as he and Sieg spiraled along the colony wall, their swords clashing. “Megami built him to kill. Max gave him a choice. She’s condemned mankind, but an A.I. smarter than all of us wants to save you!”

  Sieg blocked Ritter’s high slash. Prometheus’s right hand grabbed the red XSeed’s shoulder, and the twin CF’s spun with their locked blades angled up toward the colony.

  “I came here to save someone once,” said Sieg. He drew his second plasma sword. Ritter opened his throttle and shot upward, but Sieg’s blade burned a swath of armor from Prometheus’ leg.

  Capacitor fully charged.

  “Gotcha,” said a breathy female voice.

  Chirping alarms warned Ritter of a target lock, but he couldn’t find the source. He pressed Prometheus’ back to the colony. A sharp impact rattled his bones. He started to slide the throttle forward, but his screen showed a thin black wire pinning Prometheus’ left arm, chest, and right wrist to the wall. It had penetrated ten armor layers on impact, and any forward motion only made it cut deeper.

  A flash of rockets preceded the arrival of a new combat frame by less than a second. It hung before Ritter against the backdrop of space like a reflection of Prometheus in a cobalt mirror.

  “A third XSeed?” Ritter cried.

  “There’ll be more where this came from,” Megami said. A metal disc shot from the leading edge of the shield on her XSeed’s left arm, tethered by one of the black wires. She swung the disc in a horizontal arc. The wire detached from the shield, lashed across Ritter’s cockpit, and anchored itself to the colony wall.

  It sliced through half the remaining armor!

  “Now,” said Megami, “who are you?”

  The red XSeed flew to its dark blue sister’s side and racked its plasma swords. “That’s Tod Ritter,” said Sieg. “He and I fought together on Earth.”

  “Well, Tod Ritter,” Megami said, “why are you piloting the machine meant for Zane Dellister?”

  “Prometheus chose me,” said Ritter.

  “Darving and his damned A.I.,” Megami cursed. “Leaking intel through Naryal worked like a charm before that erratic calculator got involved.”

  “If you wanted Zane to pilot Prometheus,” said Ritter, “why did you let Masz kill him?”

  “What?” Megami sounded genuinely puzzled. Before Ritter could blink, she leveled the long rectangular gun in her XSeed’s right hand at his cockpit. “You’re a prime example of why mankind has to die. Give Byzantium’s ghosts my regards. Unless gravity drags you back to Earth, in which case you’ll have lots of company soon.”

  The red XSeed laid its hand on Megami’s gun. “Ritter’s just a stupid kid,” said Sieg. “I’ll handle him.”

  Megami brushed off the red XSeed. “Let’s compromise. I’ll fry his neurons instead of disrupting his atoms.” The gun’s barrel glowed electric blue. Prometheus read a magnetic field rising to megawatt levels inside.

  “Sieg,” Ritter said, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “I understood the lesson. I came here to fix a mistake.”

  “Never mind,” said Megami. “I’ll disintegrate you after all,”

  The red XSeed’s shield knocked the barrel of Megami’s gun up and to the left. The muzzle flashed like lightning. Prometheus detected a low-mass projectile leaving the barrel at a significant fraction of light speed. The softball-sized hole it punched through the colony rapidly grew to the diameter of a bulk shuttle. A dazzling ball of incandescent gas expanded into space from the breach.

&nb
sp; Megami rocketed back from the colony and trained her gun on the red XSeed. “Don’t interrupt me!”

  Sieg drew his right plasma sword, charged Megami, and bisected her weapon’s barrel. “Mind your elders.”

  “I’ve got about sixty million years on you,” she laughed. Her shield deployed another wire. Sieg dodged left as she swung, and the black filament anchored itself in Byzantium’s scarred wall. The blue XSeed shot forward. Sieg fired thrusters to climb, but the wire sheared off the red XSeed’s legs below the knee.

  The blue XSeed remained invisible to radar, but from his position bound to Byzantium’s wall, Ritter saw Megami’s CF invert and come about for another pass. “Sieg, she’s coming back!”

  This time Sieg dived a heartbeat before Megami blurred past. The wire sliced the crest from the red XSeed’s head, but Sieg slashed his golden blade upward and cleaved off the blue XSeed’s main thrusters. He caught up to his sister’s CF and locked its arms from behind.

  Megami’s laughter sent electrified ice water coursing down Ritter’s spine. “You’ve had a dozen chances to kill me,” she told Sieg, “so I know you’ll choke again. You couldn’t even finish Ritter.”

  “He’s not my responsibility.” Sieg slid his plasma sword into the joint between the blue XSeed’s shoulder blade and its right pauldron, severing the whole arm. “You are.” He stabbed the blue XSeed’s side where a human’s kidney would be and held the golden blade in place as layers of armor burned away.

  Megami’s combat frame appeared on Ritter’s sensors. Prometheus registered dangerous heat levels in the blue XSeed’s capacitor. “Sieg, no!” he said. “This isn’t what I meant.”

  Sieg fired his thrusters but kept his blade pressed to Megami’s capacitor. “You don’t understand, Ritter,” he said. “Sanzen put something in Liz’s blood—a terror beyond any other weapon. The Kazoku have it, and so do I. This is the only way to prevent another Sentinel.”