Grow Up

by Craig Anderson

  “A dinosaur?” said Shift.

  “Forget it, I’m kidding, although it would be easier than completing this task. How exactly am I supposed to defeat the entire Galactic Corp? That could take a lifetime. Maybe even ten lifetimes.”

  “Actually, it will take a few hours. The Galactic Corp have grown tired of waiting, they have challenged us in the final lawsuit, the one for the entire planet. It is tomorrow.”

  “What?” yelled Josh and Frag simultaneously.

  “They accelerated their timelines the moment they heard you had survived the trial. You do not appreciate how big of a threat they have deemed you. That is why the Blurgon High Command have chosen you to represent us in tomorrow’s trial. If you are victorious, they shall give you your A.I. back, and pay for you to go back home.”

  Josh grinned. “I’d love to be there when they tell Teacher that saving Blurgon is going to be up to me.”

  “They have already informed him. He did not approve of their decision, but he agreed not to challenge it.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Teacher I know!”

  Perhaps he is finally accepting of your obvious talent? Frag thought.

  That also doesn’t sound like the Teacher I know! Josh thought in response.

  Shift was staring again, so Josh said, “I’m assuming this isn’t going to be as easy as it sounds. Who is their lawyer?”

  “Jax of course. He specifically requested this case, said that you had unfinished business.”

  “Do we know what mech he is going to use?”

  “They have not officially confirmed anything, but one of our scout ships sent us this.” Shift handed over a data pad.

  Josh looked at it and shrugged. “So what, it’s a ship pulling along a box.”

  “That is one of the largest transport vessels the G.C. owns. That container is almost the size of this arena. There is only one thing that would require a crate that large. A level 10 Behemoth.”

  Frag tried to run, but he was still stuck inside Josh, which meant his legs tried to make a break for it of their own accord. Josh said, “Cut it out!”

  “Cut what out?” Shift asked.

  “Not you, I’m talking to Frag.”

  “Wait, you have Frag in your head right now?”

  “Yes. It’s a long story, I’ll fill you in later.”

  Frag ignored them both and screamed, You do not understand. The Behemoth is the most feared mech in all the universe. One has not been used in a trial in years, the cost to simply start up a mech of its size would be enough to bankrupt most planets. If the Galactic Corp are sending the Behemoth then they are way past caring about financial incentives. They are making a statement, letting everyone else know what happens to those that mess with them. Even the strongest mech that Blurgon possesses won’t last more than a few seconds against a Behemoth. It is a walking arsenal of death and destruction.

  Josh felt his stomach churn, but he wasn’t sure if it was him or Frag doing it. He took a deep breath and clutched his controller. Now wasn’t the time for panic. He’d already beaten impossible odds more than once; this was just the final boss. He thought back to his sadistic run of Shadow Souls and smiled. It was finally time to beat the Shadow King.

  Level 19: In Love & Law

  Mr. Tucker pulled himself up off the ground. He looked ready to shout, until he saw who it was that had knocked him down. His face lit up. “Mr. Harper. I have been looking everywhere for you, but you weren’t in any of your classes yesterday. Is everything ok?”

  “Yes sir. I was sick, but I am no longer sick,” said Gargle.

  “Well I am glad you are on the mend. Do you have a moment for a quick chat? It’s rather important.”

  Gargle shrugged and visualized his timetable. “I do not wish to be late for my Economics lesson.”

  “It will only take a moment, and when we are done I shall escort you to Economics myself.”

  “Ok, if it is important.”

  He followed Mr. Tucker down the hallway into a tiny office that could barely contain the two of them. It was stacked high with textbooks. Mr. Tucker rummaged through them and pulled one out from the middle of the pile, causing the tower to wobble and risking an avalanche of algebra. Once the swaying had stopped he handed the book to Gargle. “What do you make of this?”

  Gargle flipped open to a page. It was simple stuff, the kind he had learned shortly after being deemed a courier. It had been a long time since he had done math this easy; he was used to calculations that spanned pages and pages, with thousands of variables.

  Mr. Tucker was staring at him expectedly. Gargle picked a page at random, glanced at it and said, “For question 7, X equals 0.3217.”

  Mr. Tucker hurriedly took the book back, flipped to the back and nodded. “That settles it. I knew you were the real deal, but I had to be certain. I told a few other teachers about your performance in my classroom the other day, but they refused to believe it. They said you were tricking me somehow, that you had found a way to cheat, or downloaded an answer key from online, but this book hasn’t been in print for decades, there is no way you could find the answer key for it. You really can do these equations in your head, can’t you.”

  “Yes sir. I can teach you how if you would like?”

  Mr. Tucker was still staring at him, dumbfounded. He shook his head. “Perhaps later, but for now, there is something else you can help me with. A friend of mine has a particularly difficult math problem at the moment and he is stuck, which is really saying something. He’s an exceptionally bright chap, if he’s stumped then it must be a real head-scratcher. I haven’t been able to help him, but I thought you might like to take a look at it. The only problem is, he can’t send the formula via email. Apparently it is too sensitive to share electronically. He said he could bring it over at lunch time though, if you’re interested?”

  “Sure, I guess,” said Gargle.

  Mr. Tucker beamed. “Excellent, he will be thrilled. I should warn you that he is a little eccentric, but all the most brilliant scientists are I suppose. Shall we say noon back in this office?”

  “Ok.”

  “Excellent. I’ll let Professor Jasper know. Now let’s get you to Economics.”

  ***

  Josh sat in his room, staring at the viewer in disbelief. The screen was the size of a wall, but it was barely big enough to contain the Behemoth. It was huge, towering over the arena and dwarfing whichever mech he chose to fight it with. It had an almost centaur-like appearance, with four legs to maintain perfect balance and a taller torso at the front to house a ridiculous amount of weaponry. There was barely a flat surface that didn’t have a laser turret, missile launcher, or mortar attached. The stats were equally ridiculous:

  Level 10 Behemoth

  This mech is the ultimate expression of destruction. It will destroy most other mechs in a matter of seconds, and can take just as much punishment as it dishes out, and has a nano factory encased in its shell to slowly heal damage over time. Due to its immense strength it reduces all weight penalties by 90%. The only thing more extreme than the Behemoth’s capabilities is the cost to run it.

  Stats:

  Attack: 10

  Defence: 10

  Armour: 1,000,000

  Movement Speed: 9

  Weapon Slots: 18

  Booster Fuel Capacity: 0

  CORPS: 10,000,000,000,000 credits

  Josh had to read the CORPS score twice to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. The Behemoth cost ten trillion credits per second to operate, and that didn’t even include the cost of the ordnance it would use.

  Right now the virtual Behemoth was standing perfectly still. Josh navigated between the four towering legs, searching for weak spots. The joints were all heavily reinforced, there were turrets above him attached to the underbelly, and all manner of trapdoors that Josh didn’t want to know the contents of.

  He was currently piloting a Level 6 Contemptor, which was the highest-level mech the Blurgon Law School had
. It was a similar size to a Ticket Buster, but it was considerably slower due to the multitude of turrets and cannons jutting out of it. The right-hand mounted laser cannon was the strongest weapon available from the Blurgon arsenal.

  Josh found a suitable spot and prepared the cannon. It took agonizingly long to charge up—almost 10 seconds—and it could not be fired on the move. Claws in the mech’s feet deployed to keep it stable when the laser cannon fired, to prevent it being knocked over from the force of the blast. He would be a sitting duck if he ever wanted to use it.

  As soon as the cannon was ready, Josh unloaded it on the Behemoth’s underbelly. It left a small blackened circle where it had fired, but there were no other signs of damage.

  “Did that even hurt the Behemoth?” Josh asked.

  His fingers moved over a data pad of their own accord and Frag thought, According to the logs, it did approximately 0.1% damage.

  “0.1%! That is the best weapon we have access to, and we’d have to fire it over 1,000 times to kill this thing?”

  Don’t be ridiculous, the nano factory inside the Behemoth heals damage at a rate of 1% every minute, negating any damage that you cause.

  “Ok, so we can’t hurt it, and if we do it will instantly heal itself. That’s not OP at all. We haven’t even tested to see if we can fire this thing while it is actively fighting us. Let’s test that out. Simulation, activate attack mode for the Behemoth.”

  A barrage of lasers and missiles immediately launched from every available turret. It looked like the grand finale of a fireworks show. Josh couldn’t even see his mech anymore through the thick cloud of smoke and debris. When the dust cleared there was a small crater where his mech used to be. There wasn’t even debris; his mech had been so utterly destroyed it was now a puddle of molten metal.

  “How long did we survive?”

  Frag checked the logs again. Almost a full second, until the first laser blast hit us.

  Josh pulled up the laser turret stats, to see if there was any obvious weakness or counter:

  Heavy Laser Turret:

  The Heavy Laser Turret can only be equipped by the largest mechs, due to its weight. It uses so much energy that it requires time to charge up a shot, but a single hit from this turret is enough to destroy most mechs.

  Stats:

  Projectile damage: 10

  Projectile speed: 10

  Effective range: 10

  Accuracy: 10

  Turning Speed: 5

  Firing rate: 3

  Weight: 20 (40% reduction in overall movement speed)

  Warning: Heavy Laser Turret requires 6 seconds between shots to recharge.

  Nothing jumped out at him except the firing rate, but the Behemoth could carry so many turrets that there were more than enough to fire one every second. This was just one of the weapon types.

  Josh rubbed his temples. “Ok, so to summarize, this thing has so much firepower it can vaporize us the moment we stop moving, our best weapon can’t hurt it, and we’d have to stand still for 10 seconds to fire it.”

  That is an accurate summary. There is a reason this mech is so feared.

  “Yeah, I’m starting to see that.” Josh pulled out his notebook and scribbled in block capitals:

  PROBLEM #1: ONE HIT FROM THE BEHEMOTH’S LASERS KILLS US INSTANTLY

  PROBLEM #2: WE HAVE NO WEAPONS THAT CAN DAMAGE THE BEHEMOTH

  PROBLEM #3: EVEN IF WE DID HAVE SUCH A WEAPON, WE CAN’T STAND STILL LONG ENOUGH TO USE IT, BECAUSE OF PROBLEM #1

  He was going in circles. He needed to keep working on the list.

  “What kind of weapons loadouts can this thing have?”

  It has a wide range. You know about the Heavy Laser Turrets but it can also equip missile silos, mortars, gatling cannons and flamethrowers, depending on the situation. Those weapons don’t do as much damage, but they are quicker to fire or have tracking capabilities. There are 18 different weapon mounts on the Behemoth’s chassis, and we will not know the exact combination until the trial.

  “So we can’t prepare even if we wanted to. We have to figure out the weakness for every weapon type and then adapt on the fly to whatever loadout the Behemoth brings to the fight.”

  This sounds increasingly unlikely to end in victory.

  There was a knock on the door, and Shift appeared. She had a fixed grin on her face. “How is it going?”

  “It’s going great, thanks for asking,” Josh said.

  Why are you deceiving her? Frag asked.

  What would you like me to say, that Blurgon is completely doomed? Josh thought in response.

  Shift sat on the ‘bed’, squirming uncomfortably. “That is a relief. The High Command must believe in you a great deal to place this kind of responsibility on your shoulders. They have seen you perform the statistically improbable and look forward to witnessing you doing the same during this trial.”

  “Well then they are in for a treat.”

  Shift gestured to the viewer. “May I watch you practice? The High Command has requested a status update.”

  “No,” Josh said, desperately trying to think of a reason why.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you may be a spy…” was the best he could come up with. He added, “We already know that is a cloned shell you are in, any Blurgling could potentially pilot one of those and pretend to be my envoy. We can’t be too careful, if the G.C. discovers our secret techniques then they will have time to develop counter-measures.”

  Shift nodded. “An excellent point, and one I had not considered. I would protest, but that is exactly what an intruder would do. To remove any doubt I shall vacate your domicile and leave you alone to hone your strategy.”

  “Appreciate it, thanks.”

  “The High Command, however, will require an update before the trial. They are putting the planet on the line and will not do so without hope of victory.”

  Josh waited until he was sure Shift was gone before slumping in relief. “That was close.”

  I do not believe deception is the optimal strategy in this scenario. There may be assistance she is able to offer that we are now forfeiting.

  “Trust me, nothing is going to help us fight that thing. It is meant to be impossible…” Even as Josh said the words he realized the truth of them. He said, “The Behemoth is specifically designed to end all disputes, to be the nuclear deterrent that is so overwhelmingly terrifying that it never has to be used. Why then is the G.C. rolling it out now? They’ve had success with slowly wearing Blurgon down through smaller trials, picking away at them piece by piece. Why the sudden change of strategy?”

  Shift told us, the G.C. is afraid of you. They wish to squash you and end this hostile takeover before you can turn things around.

  “Perhaps, but I don’t think that is it. I can only be in so many places at once, and they know I can’t shell switch. One accident is all it would take to remove me from the picture. Something else has changed, and we are missing it.”

  I became a fully qualified lawyer, Frag offered.

  Josh was about to dismiss it as more humble-bragging when he considered what Frag had said. “Yes, you did. Why is that important?”

  Perhaps they are scared of me?

  “Or perhaps they are scared of how you passed the bar!”

  I do not follow.

  Josh rummaged through his bag and pulled out the knock-off controller that Frag had specially commissioned. “This is what they are afraid of! With this new controller design, pretty much anyone can pilot a mech with a couple of hours’ practice.” He slapped his hand onto his forehead. “Of course! I just set a precedent by winning that trial so that unqualified lawyers can pilot mechs. Combine those two things together and Blurgon just found itself with an army of lawyers that could outnumber the G.C. and turn the tide in the smaller cases. That’s why the Behemoth suddenly makes sense—it might cost a small fortune, but imagine what’s at stake if Blurgon starts winning cases. They could use the G.C.’s own strategy against th
em, file a bunch of trivial cases against them and start bleeding them of resources.”

  It is a solid theory, but you are forgetting something. No-one knows about my new controller, except you, me, and the M.C. Designer. I doubt she would tell anyone though, they are pretty secretive by nature.

  “And Teacher.”

  Yes, Teacher, but he wouldn’t tell the Galactic Corp, they are his enemy.

  Josh kept going along his train of thought, connecting dots he didn’t even know were dots until this very moment. He blurted the whole thing out, his mouth barely able to keep up.

  “Teacher is working together with Jax to overthrow the Blurgon High Command!”

  That is a serious accusation. What is your proof?

  “Think about it, Teacher has a star pupil, who suddenly goes rogue and starts fighting for the enemy, only to end up in exactly the right position to lead the charge against his former mentor. It wouldn’t be hard for them to coordinate fights, Jax gets to win and grow his influence with the G.C and Teacher gets to look like he’s doing his best and justify expanding the law school. Once it grew big enough, he’d be in a position to challenge High Command. Unfortunately for him, then I came along, and started winning fights. Suddenly the old plan isn’t feasible, so Teacher tries and fails to take me out of the picture. Jax tried to convince me to go work for him, and when I refused they attempted to have me killed. When we won that trial we completely undid their previous plan, there is no way they will expand the law school if anyone can pilot a mech, and Teacher loses any remaining influence he has with High Command. When he finds out about your controller he realizes their time is running out, so he tells Jax it is now or never. Now Jax gets to come in guns blazing and take Blurgon in a big show of force, and Teacher can sit back and avoid all the blame for losing the final fight. We take the fall for him, and once the G.C. are in control they can suppress the new controllers or take them as their own.”