Amped to Kill

by maximillian.zhang

It's been decades after the Wikus Van Der Merwe Incident. The prawn fleet sits over Earth, harvesting its abundant resources. Humanity and Newcomer alike fight the extra-terrestrial invasion with military grade Amplified Mobility Platforms and other modern military technology.

AMPED TO KILL: The Unofficial Follow-Up to Neil Blomkamp's "District 9" (formerly known as 'Alive in JoBurg') with elements borrowed from Rockne S. O'Bannion's "Alien Nation", James Cameron's "Avatar", and Steve Jackson's "Ogre". Other similar elements (e.g., Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", Joe Haldeman's "Forever War", David Drake's "Slammerverse", Robert Aspin's "Bug Wars", Keith Laumer's "Bolo", John Steakley's "Armor", Masaya's "Assault Suits Valken" and "Assault Suits Leynos", et al.) contributed greatly to the author's vision of mecha-based mayhem.

1.0 - REQUIEM TO LANDFALL

"Truth be told, Rook; I find Earth prawn delicious. They're great eating even if I have them grilled or cooked. Stupid Afrikaner slokaa. Why'd they call those filthy beasts 'prawn'?"

Miles, already a bundle of nerves before the drop, only listened with half an ear to the woman while he walked down the hall and fiddled with the various protuberances on his battle-dress. While Miles was a soldier, he would not be taking on the "poleepkwa" in battle fatigues. As the Van De Merwe Incident demonstrated years ago, that would be suicide, especially the aliens were now hostile and actively organized to kill anything that looked remotely human.

Speaking of aliens, the woman with Miles wasn't from Earth per se, but she was at least humanoid. The Newcomer female was slender, and at least as tall as Miles; he himself was a prime specimen of humanity at six feet and change, but that meant little. If Miles and his bald alien ally physically wrestled like two school children, she'd easily beat him down like a rag doll.

The Newcomer appeared far more at ease than "the Rook"; she occasionally stroked her smooth spotted head and kept chatting about her slim pickings of cooked Earth food as they headed for the drop bay. Soldiers tended towards nervousness regardless of how much they trained, and Miles suspected she was using idle chatter to keep her mind off the fact that they were both underwater in a submarine carrier.

Any hull breach meant the incoming seawater would dissolve the pretty alien woman in seconds unless she reached the escape vehicles, sealed herself inside a battle blister, or scrambled into a survival suit made for her kind.

Miles reflected on the many aliens now living on planet Earth. The prawn ship came to a stop over Johannesburg in 1982 and no one stopped to wonder if that species was the only one in the neighborhood. The insect-like aliens were called "prawn" by the South Africans, but everyone else called them something else; "crickets" by the British and Australians, but other countries had other monikers, all which focused on the JoBurg aliens' speech, which sounded like clicks and clacks.

Ultimately, the mystery of why the "prawn ship" stopped on Earth was answered when the Newcomers' slave ship crashed in California's Mojave Desert six years later in 1988. Between a space wreck and an inoperable craft, the best minds humanity had to offer surmised that a mid-space accident had somehow occurred, and that both craft touched down on the planet much like a two vehicles after a traffic collision.

Once dirtside though, the fortunes of the two alien races diverged rapidly. The Newcomers, having landed in the United States, were first held in quarantine as a precautionary measure, but ultimately assimilated into the human population. Not so with the "prawn" in South Africa. Their radically inhuman appearance, coupled with the vast political and social changes in South Africa at the time, proved to be the prawns' undoing.

Then in 2010, Wikus Van De Merwe happened. Miles' mind still reeled at the ineptitude of Multi-National United, and how poorly they handled the situation. While the United States was never officially invited to participate in anything MNU-related (having their own extra-terrestrial situation at home), America did send unofficial observers - even Newcomer scientists - who watched the events unfold in District 9.

Without any idea what would happen if the prawn came back, the United States erred on the side of caution and prepared. Armed with the scant technological scraps from their new alien allies and information on the aliens in South African, DARPA managed to developed the "amplified mobility platform" (AMP) to combat the hostile alien threat.

After initial teething troubles, America had started a new technological revolution in warfare with a militarized version of the AMP, the Gibbon CoRi (COmbat RIg). With help from Newcomer scientists, DARPA managed to get their various armaments programs working, and just in time too. Less than a decade after the stricken prawn ship departed for its home system, their invasion fleet arrived on Earth. Strangely, the prawn didn't come to "rescue" their brethren in South Africa, but to harvest the raw materials instead.

Miles and his alien comrade-at-arms entered a large loading bay where a dozen or so other operators were lined up. They were all in similar body-hugging battledress. Their codpieces sported protuberances and inputs much like as his. The group's commander - a 'Tactical Sergeant' by his insignia - was a short, wiry Chinese man with a dour face, and a more dour disposition.

"We're wrapping up," the sergeant's bald head glistened under the interior lighting as he glared at the new arrivals. "Small change of plan. Rook, you're ridin' alone. Tits will be driving Ginny. Move out."

At that, the others started moving towards ladders marked with names on large signs. A blonde woman with a mediocre but perky bust stepped up and waved to the Newcomer, saying, "C'mon Mary. See you in the Bactrian."

"All right." The Newcomer - Mary - turned and gave Miles a friendly punch in the arm as she strode off, "See ya, Rook."

"Uh, sir?" Miles seemed hesitant as the sergeant started off to his own ladder.

"Don' you ever 'sir' me. I work for a livin'."

"Yes Sergeant Cheng," Miles quickly corrected himself. "So, how's this going to work? I thought my blister was set for the Bactrian instead of a Gibbon? I thought I was to escort Miss Webster?"

"I swapped the control cards," came his response. "Just because you're not driving the Virgin Mary around -" a play on Webster's name and call sign "- doesn't mean you're not on baby-sitter duty."

Miles started up his ladder as Cheng continued in his American drawl.

"You're still new to movin' in a blister and cradle. Gibbons ain't training machines. Bein' on your own means you can make mistakes that won't get my people killed - 'specially my bot controller," the sergeant said simply. "You stay near the Bactrian, but do exactly as Tanya says. Understand?"

"Yes sergeant. Understood."

Probably more so than you want, Miles thought darkly as he settled into his battle blister. Tanya "Tits" Doyle, the unofficial bodyguard of their squad's bot controller, was rumored to have been a stripper, a porn star, or a hooker before the prawns invaded Earth. Miles heard a few sordid stories aboard the submarine carrier that ran rampant in small circles of how Doyle got into the CoRi program.

Some said she and Cheng were having some fun before the invasion, but that didn't hold up, as the sergeant himself was rumored to be a refugee himself. In any case, once the shooting started, Doyle, like Sergeant Cheng, quickly earned new infamy as skilled rig drivers with an adroitness when it came to killing the enemy.

Now, whether "Tits" and Sergeant Cheng were an item, or still an item seemed moot - Cheng and the slender Newcomer female, Mary Webster, were often found eating together in the mess, much to the disgust of the crew. The raw meat diet of Newcomers wasn't exactly a welcoming sight, except to other Newcomers.

Miles tuned out the innuendo and he concentrated on getting himself ready. He connected the waste line to a metal orifice on his codpiece, followed by the wash/rinse line. That done, Miles slipped his arms and legs into the metal and polymer cradles inside the blister.

With his limbs so encompassed, he would be able to control any rig his blister was installed into just as he would his own body - at least hands, arms, legs, and feet wise. The cradles' many joints were wired or motorized to provide resistance to his movements, if just to give the operator a sensation of feedback; physically and practically, he was a walking five meter tall metal giant, with proportionate strength.

The blond rookie was primarily standing, although there was a small rest protruding from the rear wall of the blister to allow Miles to rest on his buttocks. He seldom did so, as sitting like that was painful if he did it too long. To actually "sit" comfortably in a blister, Miles had to remove his legs from the lower limb cradles (in essence letting the auto-walk take over - not a good idea in combat). So, like any soldier, Miles toughed it out and took short sits when his legs were feeling tired.

There was a slight bump, and Miles felt his battle blister shudder. He was being loaded into his Gibbon. The war machine stood between nearly five meters tall; its upper body was voluminous enough to encapsulate the cylindrical cockpit containing its operator. So enclosed, the only means for the person to see while inside one of these assault suits was through the cam-plate - the prefabricated armored faceplate with bundles of fiber thin cables serving as cameras to the outside world.

The cam-plate wrapped around the Gibbon's bulbous upper-body and came down in a bib-like fashion over the forward and side facings of the torso. Special optic mountings in the outer frame's crotch and arm pits allowed the to "see" the ground beneath him.

Inside his armored cocoon, Miles felt connections being made between his blister and the rig. A brief moment later, the entire inside of his battle blister blinked to life. Liquid crystal displays pressed into sheets received input from the cam-plate and became a virtual window to the world outside. A clear, electronic voice buzzed through the battle blister.

:: sensors online. actuators connected ::

Miles cycled through the various vision modes: low-light and night vision, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, motion-sensing, vibratory, infrasound, and checked them against the various filters that let him distinguish between the biology of different species: human, prawn, and Newcomer.

:: weapons online. power optimal ::

Miles checked his Gibbon's armament. Doyle had either opted for the standard load-out, or the selection was restored when Sergeant Cheng made the last minute switch. No matter. Nearly all Gibbons sortied on a standard load-out; the few exceptions were just that - exceptions; many operators switched back to the standardized load-out after their attempt at being different.

There was no need to mess with perfection: a Particle Impeller Gun (PIG) firing pellets of antimatter held in stasis, an eighty Terajoule laser on the operator's off-hand mitt, and two backpack units, one firing soda can sized antimatter "grenades" and the portable indirect munition platform (PIMP) which launched small, self-guided cruise missiles.

Antimatter didn't only figure prominently in the weaponry, but a variation of the matter/antimatter reaction powered the Gibbon and other war machines.

Miles' Gibbon slowly clunked onto the landing vehicle; with prawn ships controlling much of the skies, human and Newcomer alike needed to adapt to survive, and the sea was one of the few refuges free of prawn control.

While both races could dig into the mountain terrain or ruined cities that survived initial bombardment, the underwater military complexes (which doubled as fall-back positions) saw few, if any, Newcomers. For the bald headed aliens to live underwater meant a potentially vile death. Many Newcomers opted to support their human allies by fighting alongside them in various mountain strongholds; their alien physique made them suited as mountaineering or SpecWar infantry.

Where the human-Newcomer forces on land were mostly stalemated by prawn forces, assaults made by sea were making good progress. Utilizing the cover of water to confuse prawn detection gear, the naval forces denied the aliens valuable food and grazing grounds for their eggs in the short term.

'A single adult humpbacked whale can yield enough nutrition for 5,000 to 7,500 prawn workers,' Miles remembered from his training.

While a single prawn could be killed by something as simple as a hunting rifle, a shotgun, or a fire axe, the creature was still capable of tearing apart a Newcomer - let alone a human. Miles saw the combat footage of Colonel Koobus Venter. One moment he was firing on a pack of angry prawn, the next, he was rendered limb from limb. And when the insect aliens were armed with their exotic weaponry, human and Newcomer forces were at a disadvantage unless they attacked with overwhelming firepower from their war machines, or with artillery.

Miles had his Gibbon hold onto the guidebar of the landing vehicle. Next to his Gibbon, Doyle's Bactrian - so named for its dorsal "hump" that formed the second crewman's position (where Webster was) - was already in position.

The Bactrian stood a meter taller than the Gibbon, but instead of equipping dorsal weapon pods, it had an instrument laden, semi-independent crew blister that linked the Bactrian with the engagement robots - affectionately called EARLs (Engagement Assault Robot, Legged). EARLS were unmanned, semi-autonomous killing machines, friendly to human and Newcomer alike, but responded to prawn by opening fire and alerting the military authorities.

"You doin' all right there, Rook?" Doyle's distinctive Manchester accent clipped through the private frequency to Miles.

"Yeah," Miles responded.

The murky underwater environ had nothing interesting, so he opted to put his escortee's real-time portrait in a pop-up window on his blister's display. The dirty haired blonde had a flat face, wide lips, and a cowling stare - all completely at odds with her cheerful and gregarious demeanor which Miles found attractive.

"You were a tad slow boarding," Doyle glanced down and fiddled with something - probably her own codpiece, "You're not upset with the duty change are you?"

"No," Miles replied. "It just caught me a little off guard."

"Well don't you worry your pretty little head," she managed a garishly toothy smile. "All you do is stay near me an' Ginny."

"Hello Miles," Webster chimed in. Miles moved her pop-up on his blister's screen underneath Doyle and felt the landing craft detach itself from the submarine carrier.

"Don't forget the Bactrian can't move worth a darn when it comes to movin' as fast as the Sarge wants," Doyle said. "Not moving quick and not havin' nothing 'cept a modified PIG and a laser glitterstick - well, if we get in trouble, we'd be in serious shit, even with Mary's metal pets."

"Not like we'll have any, slokaa," the Newcomer chimed in. "All of them will be out. None will be home."

Hence the me and my Gibbon, Miles thought to himself. The bots will be out busy hunting prawn. Good for them but bad for us if we get caught by a large enemy force.

The throb of the landing craft increased as Miles felt his ears ache slightly. Even with a sealed environment, there was no getting away with mild pressure differences coming from such a depth.

"Focus people," rasped Sergeant Cheng. "We hit the dance floor in thirty. Arsenyev, you and your team take the left -" Miles heard quick acknowledgment "- the scouts, Talua, and I will take the right. Faraz, do the usual. Straight down the middle. Kill 'em all."

Miles heard the last team leader exclaim gleefully in Arabic. He was former Taliban, or something. It didn't really matter now that the area around the Dead Sea was a nuclear wasteland for a hundred miles in all directions. Those damned prawn enjoyed the salt water so much they were willing to retake the area repeatedly. So, someone high on up decided to lure in a large number of enemy forces and glass the location with several mega-tonners.

The irony was the wholesale destruction of the Dead Sea brought about a faster truce between Jew and Arab than any number of peace summits or talks generations before - not that either side had much military might left to do much except to fight the alien menace and survive.

All other things considered, it was a small price to pay for victory. The blast destroyed one prawn ship and crippled a second one. The second ship eventually succumbed to an extended bombardment and crashed. There were no survivors, or at least none that the Search and Destroy teams reported when they went through the wreckage.

"Ready. Wait," the sergeant's voice was steady. "Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven ..."

2.0 - RED AFTERIMAGE

"Arsenyev's dead! And so's Brinkmann!"

Miles thought "frantic" best described the panicky soldier on the other end, but Sergeant Cheng exhibited little feeling except cold rage in combat.

"Soltyk, you fucking, chickenshit Polack," Cheng's words were enunciated with careful menace. "You get your bearings and point your suit, your PIG, your lasers, and whatever else you can lay your hands on and slice those hoppers from shitter to mandible or I will personally rip out your gutless spine if you don't die running, you get me?"

"Y-yes, sergeant!"

Just over a few hours before, Miles' squad hit their mark. The opposition at the initial landing was easy. Only a few prawn drones and few of their warriors armed with HIVELOC (HIgh VELOCity) small arms guarded the beach grazing area when Webster's recon bots pounced. They were soon followed by the manned Gibbons and the slower bots.

Raptors, fast bipedal hunter killers resembling beheaded ostriches, raced ahead and poured antimatter rounds from their stubby weapon pods into the hapless sentries while the rest of the squad advanced from the ocean floor. The aliens didn't stand a chance.

The heavier Mastiffs trotted ashore next, along with their lighter Jackal cousins on the outer flanks. The manned Gibbons waded ashore last, protected on all fronts by a moving bot wall. Once the beachhead was established, the squad separated into strike teams while Miles followed Doyle's and Webster's Bactrian.

The three of them were slowly moving east into enemy territory, approximately a dozen kilometers behind the forward teams, when Soltyk's frantic call came through.

Miles was to protect the two women while they did their thing. While Doyle acted as the driver, Webster was free to direct the bot teams and attack the enemy in coordination with the manned strike teams in the Gibbons. With everything before them completely devastated, there was little chance of any hostile activity this far back.

The rookie found he could follow the advance by opening a comm line and tapping into the bot feeds and gun cameras of his squadmates. From there, it was almost like a spectator sport, with very real results.

Cheng's Gibbon was peppered by a flurry of HIVELOC rounds from a prawn mech's linear launcher. Within seconds, Miles saw the enemy machine get shot to pieces with PIG rounds from the sergeant's rig; Cheng's machine suffered little thanks to the energy absorbent graphene plates and nano-carbon fiber weave used in its armor.

"You missed a mech, Faraz," Cheng managed a joke with his choice veteran. "Your killers are starting to slack."

"Almost all," Faraz corrected himself. Other sounds came through the comms, like the death screams of a dozen burning prawn as laser-fire raked across their unprotected bodies.

"Rachid say one, maybe two, ran away probably towards you. Sorry," the Arab team leader managed a snicker, and Miles heard the electronic bleep-bleep followed by the chuck-a-chunk of grenades being launched. The rail launched bombs detonated in mid-air over its target, each scattering a cloud of marble sized antimatter explosives. A second later, the landscape bloomed with explosive death.

"Sounds like you have most of your zone covered. Have Hasan or Rachid take over for you. I want you to lead my advance while I check north."

Miles heard Faraz's acknowledgment, but Cheng was already talking once more.

"Ginny? How are the EARLs doing?" The sergeant was nonchalant as he took aim and fired at something at the edge of his vision.

"Teams One and Two are still clearing the south - your zone. 100%," Webster's slender fingers danced across her glowing panels. "Teams Three and Four are supporting Faraz's team. They're at 85%. Five and Six are reporting at 35%. I think they have two Jackals, one Mastiff, and a Raptor remaining."

Not a good sign, thought Miles.

"Something's holding 'em up." Sergeant Cheng sounded more annoyed than worried. "If it is what I think it is, we may need some serious commitment and Soltyk isn't the cowardly bitch he's making himself to be."

"Have the bots complete their sweeps," Cheng turned his Gibbon and fired downrange at a group of prawn, "then prep me an EARL team with the most firepower."

"Just don't send 'em 'till I give you the go ahead." The sergeant finished giving orders just as he finished off some dying aliens.

"Understood," the Newcomer looked busy, keying in commands and touching displays out of Mile's view.

"D'you want us to move with you, boss?" Doyle asked. "We've got Miles and me. We can mix it up -"

"Negative on that," Cheng's response was prompt. "Don't go wandering until we know what's there. We may need to fall back. Where'd you say the Rook was again?"

"He's here-"

"Right here, sarge," Miles cut in as Doyle replied.

"Sounds like you're ready to do something useful," Cheng sounded smug. "Make a quick jog to where Rachid is. His team should be near a major highway entrance. Help them secure the area around it, then let Tanya know. The high road will be marginally safer."

"Yessir." Miles cut off the sergeant before he could complain about being so addressed.

He tuned a private channel to the British bimbo's Bactrian, "You two going to be okay, right?"

"Personally, I'd feel better if we had a bodyguard," Doyle stated flatly, "but the quicker you scout, the faster we'll know where we'll need to go, so don't dwaddle. Hurry it up."

Miles took that as his invitation to leave, and he did so with gusto. His Gibbon lurched forward awkwardly at first, then slowly regained its composure as he adjusted his gait to get the machine into a slow run.

His Gibbon's PIG was heavy enough to throw the whole package off balance, hence the tendency for operators to hold the weapon in both hands; however, the weapon's antimatter cyclotron - essentially its "magazine" - could be crushed by the Gibbon's off-hand, with catastrophic, if not fatal, results.

'If you need to hold it like a rifle,' Miles remembered from his training, 'grab the bracket anchor like you would a fore-stock, except its on the side, so it's like a side-stock. It'll feel funny at first, but no matter, 'cause your machine's actuators takes on the weight, not you.'

Miles had to marvel at the amount of thought the engineers put into incorporating ergonomics into such an ungainly device. The bracket anchor was designed to hold the PIG upright during maintenance and resupply, but Gibbon operators soon learned it was just as useful as a supporting grip.

Because of how the bracket anchor surrounded the PIG's linear launcher and the cyclotron, gripping the anchor on its top bar gave the laser mitt a clear line of fire (albeit off-center to the Gibbon's forward aim). Miles had seen combat footage of this being done, although it was never officially taught in training.

The rookie's Gibbon, now at ease in its balance and running full tilt forward at about 45 MPH (about 72 KPH) crossed the terrain scalded bare by antimatter weapons. A few uneventful minutes later, he came across a lone Gibbon standing guard along with a couple of bots.

"What are you doing here, Rook?" the other rig driver asked. "Thought you were babysitting the slaggot's secretaries?"

"New orders," Miles let slide the man's bigotry. "Is it secure to bring up the Bactrian? Sergeant says we need to secure this position, then head out on the highway across town."

"The Arabs are clearing out some last minute hold-outs," the other operator sounded bored and lackadaisical. "Decided they didn't need a Jew to go along with their ET jihad. Sat me here with a Jackal and a pair of Mastiffs as a fallback."

"Looks like this place is secure enough," Miles clicked the pop-up window to Doyle's Bactrian. "Tanya? Miles here. I think it's clear. I'll head back and meet you halfway. How's that sound?"

"Sounds s'alright."

Moments later, Miles watched as the Bactrian waddled leisurely towards him. Doyle was moving carefully like she was pregnant and walking across a patch of ice in high heels. Webster's battle blister was prominent on the upper back of the larger machine.

Any wild spinning motions of the suit would probably jostle the Newcomer female silly or even knock her out. It was probably why it made sense for him to guard them in a separate Gibbon - to do all the wild moves while Doyle moved their precious cargo across the battlefield.

"... Sergeant Cheng?" It was Webster. In the confusion of battle, she must have transmitted over the general channel. "I have a Colonel Hammer on the line. Says his tanks need some fire support."

"I have none to give," Cheng said simply. "Just found the problem up north. Shut the fuck up Soltyk," the sergeant snarled at something on his own display and went on, "It's a 'zerker with warriors in tow."

A berserker? Miles felt his heart skip a beat. Rare footage showed some fauna native to the prawn homeworld used for illegal "pit fighting" back when District 9 still existed. No one knew those were in fact, the spawn of one of the few large animals the prawn would use as autonomous living war machines.

Prawn berserkers were huge by Earth's standards; each one stood about ten or twelve meters tall - as high as a flat-roofed three story building - and about the size of one as too. Despite their bulk, they were also fast, capable of keeping up with a Gibbon at full trot. And that wasn't the worst part.

The prawn grafted their linear launchers, ARC guns, and other weapons onto the animal, using some form of neural training to teach it how to fire them. The beast was dropped in enemy territory, and used as a siege-and-suicide unit. What didn't get destroyed by the rampaging juggernaut would be exhausted trying to take it out.

Mop up by prawn ground forces proved much easier after one of those bastards went through an area - one of the many reasons human-Newcomer forces haven't been making much progress past the foothills. The only thing that kept the berserkers out of the mountain fortresses were the narrow defilements and passes that worked against their voluminous bulk. And any prawn mothership that tried to spacedrop a berserker would see its cargo destroyed long before it reached the ground, thanks to self-guided missiles with anti-matter warheads.

As for the prawn warriors, they were essentially larger drones, but their second set of arms were fully grown, allowing them to carry a second weapon. Additionally, they were much more aggressive, and did not require the presence of a hive coordinator to direct their attacks; theirs was a true hive-like mentality when it came to combat.

The presence of a berserker with warrior escorts hinted strongly that there was something major the insect aliens wanted to protect - that or they were here by mistake.

"Soltyk's damaged but otherwise fine," Cheng went on with his sit-rep. "Sikarna's here too, plus a scrap pile that were formerly bots. Where's the colonel, Ginny?"

"About twelve kilometers northeast of ... us," Webster paused then added, "Less than eight klicks due east of your own position."

"What's holding him up?" the sergeant asked.

"Looks like a dozen mechs," the bald bot controller replied.

"His channel?" Cheng barely flinched as his Gibbon's hand crushed a warrior who thought it could win in a hand-to-hand duel with a machine.

"Those tanks are not on MOCCASYM -" the standard militarized communication platform all modern combat units used "- should I bridge your conference?"

"Do it. His tanks are too slow against mechs," Cheng echoed Miles' thoughts; however, the sergeant was ahead of the rookie's curve. "but good enough distraction against a 'zerker. Tell him help's on the way."

Jesus, thought Miles. What good were a bunch of tanks - even if they were firing antimatter rounds - against something that was eight times more massive, more heavily armed, and moved faster than you did?

"Listen up," Cheng's voice carried across the general channel, "all Gibbons with two PIMPs to spare, send a one-two to these spots -" a list of targets came up, and Miles selected six.

:: targets selected. standing by. please finalize strike ::

"Rook, choose three." It was Cheng again. "Double up on one target. Have to make sure there's enough of the colonel left for phase two."

"Got it." Miles deleted three of his choices, and re-selected his first three targets.

:: targets re-selected. standing by. please finalize strike ::

The list quickly became filled by the other members of the squad. Every PIMP (Portable Indirect Munitions Platform) was loaded with three cruise missiles. Each missile carried six antimatter warheads. Each warhead was the same size as a single soda grenade and equipped with their own guidance and propulsion system.

Standard engagement procedure was to launch one such missile over the combat zone after designating targets on the Gibbon's MOCCASYM.

Each missile's payload would act like a pack of well-coordinated predators against a single prey once they were released, with some circling waiting to strike while others would pounce and attack when the prey's defenceses were distracted.

The system's user can designate six targets, hitting them with one warhead each (usually done against concentrations of enemy troops or bunkers), or hit a single target with six deadly blows (often a high threat target - like a prawn berserker), or make any combination of such strikes with his six shots.

:: system alert. munitions deployed ::

The sergeant (or Webster) group-fired the squad's PIMPs and Miles felt the clunk-whoosh from the back of his Gibbon. Somewhere on the other side of the battlefield, there will be some unlucky recipients of antimatter-laden death from above.

Miles counted to himself. One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand. Three-one-thousand. In the middle of his count eight, his blister's display came alive with new chatter and an update from his weapons system.

:: target one destroyed. target two destroyed. target three destroyed ::

"The colonel extends his thanks," Webster sounded relieved. "He's asking what can he do to repay the favor?"

"Give him the sit-rep," Cheng said calmly. "Tell him to have his tanks gang-fire on the berserker once in range, but fire and retreat, fire and retreat. I don't want him overrun by the warriors, and we need to buy some time. Sikarna, Soltyk, and myself will hit the 'zerker from one side. Send me that bot team you've been cobbling together. The rest of you, prepare to PIMP slap that 'zerker with an all-or-nothing shot."

Holy Jesus, though Miles. That meant zoning all six target selections on a single spot. That was pretty much overkill. Assuming the prawn berserker was only crippled and not destroyed outright, it'd have other ordnance on it, and ... of course. Miles felt like hitting himself.

Once the enemy juggernaut was stopped, weapons intact or not, they could lob grenades and carpet bomb the giant into oblivion from cover. And if there was any weapon with plenty of destructive potential, it was the grenade launchers almost every unit carried, down to the Mastiffs and Jackals. Plenty of ammo to go around.

"Rook, pay attention."

Miles blinked and his mind came back to reality as Doyle tapped loudly on her pop-up window to get his attention.

"D'you hear me?" Doyle sounded annoyed, "The sergeant wants us on that highway, ready to move in case the 'zerker lives and decides to pound us a new one. That's ev'ryone. Us included."

"Oh, gotcha," barely had Miles replied when several metal blurs zipped past him.

The faster bots had already raced into position and were waiting patiently for the slower units to mount the assault. A quick change of formation as well. The southern strike team had pulled closer to the rest of the team, in range to lend direct fire to the team in the center. It would seem that the firepower of the entire squad - or what was left of it - would be directed against the enemy juggernaut and its small cadre of prawn warriors.

The colonel's tanks were sending shells downrange towards the berserker by now, and Miles' external microphones was picking up the booming cracks of the hits. The rookie followed the Bactrian up the highway's entrance ramp. If his Gibbon wasn't so heavily armed, he could have tacked on a thruster pack to go faster, but Miles was thankful for the extra firepower. Without it, who knows when he'd need it?

"Er, Sergeant Cheng?" It was Webster again. "Something big incoming. It's not hostile. Weird. Has our signature. I wonder what -"

The Newcomer's transmission was quickly garbled as the prawn berserker was engulfed in a blaze of nuclear fire. Even safe inside his Gibbon, Miles thought he felt the warmth from the nuclear flash, and that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"WH-T TH- LIV-N- F-C-?!" Doyle screamed, her feed sizzled with static. Their comm systems were hardened against EMP, but even they had problems dealing with strong bursts at such close proximity.

"- that - nuke?! Was - a nuke?!" Webster lost her composure and asked repeatedly, "Was that a nuke?!"

Miles could barely hear over the multitude of chatter, and started closing the comm channels to reduce the noise. It finally dawned on him to leave the channels open, but to squelch the noise by lowering the volume inside his battle blister. Eventually, a simple text message clarified the situation. It played across the blister display like a marquee.

:: SQUAD TO ESCORT BOT UNIT TO HIGH PRIORITY TARGET. OBJECTIVE PRAWN VESSEL ::

3.0 - CROSS THE BREEZE

Miles learned later that the tank colonel was to provide an escort to a new model of robot - a missile carrying tank - one which could fight its way across the city to destroy the prawn ship to the north.

The colonel was unable to follow, not with the scant survivors of his decimated tank company. And despite the obvious strategic nature of the exercise, there was a lack of coordination somewhere "higher up" at United Command, and Miles' squad was not considered when it came to a nuclear strike by a robotic missile tank.

Now of course, much fuss was being made back to UniCom about this gross oversight, not just by Sergeant Cheng's commanding officer, but by the rest of the squad.

That, plus the message which flashed across their battle blisters, were rubbing everyone wrong. The message was from the robot itself, and someone had asked aloud if it was legal for a machine to order living soldiers around.

To the sergeant's credit, he allowed the complaint to go through before he quelled all dissension. Orders were issued, if not by the robot tank, then at least it was a courier for the same orders from some general in a mountain enclave. In any case, there was a new objective, and rightly or wrongly, Cheng's Gibbon squad was there to do the job.

The situation though, was less than ideal. Arsenyev and Brinkmann, already dead, were vaporized along with their Gibbons when their suits' antimatter containment fields failed. No effort was made to salvage their remains because there wasn't any.

Soltyk's Gibbon, damaged before by the berserker's rampage that caught his two luckless squadmates by surprise, came through surprisingly undamaged, along with Sikarna and Cheng. It was all thanks to the sergeant's timely action to collapse the street they were on to shield them from the nuke blast. Even then, their machines were hot enough that the outer frame would probably be relegated to the scrap pile if they returned to base.

Losses were appalling only in terms of the bot teams near the 'zerker when the nuke landed. The sergeant had Webster send her mechanical task force forward just seconds before the bot tank's warhead impacted. Now, the Newcomer had approximately half of her bots remaining. It was enough to make a retreat or a last stand, but not quite enough to do what was coming next.

Still, if the big bot tank was going to do most of the work, why not let it?

Miles glanced at their escortee, now silhouetted against the dim light of the dying day. From his brief examination of their new model robot, he was impressed. Instead of limbs, the missile carrier reverted to the centuries old caterpillar track design. Each bogey wheel was about half as high as a Gibbon stood (over two meters) and they were spaced fairly evenly in two rows, with interspaced drive sprockets on the bottom row.

Without a crew, the tank could afford plenty of redundant equipment, like extra engines ... and extra armor and weapons.

The robot was articulated, with a stout forward fighting engine encased in a domed carapace made from a potent mixture of graphene blocks and super-dense nano-carbon fiber. The curved dome mounted several rotating PIG emplacements, and the dome itself seemed to be able to rotate like a tank's turret.

An array of warheads (probably antimatter micro-missiles, Miles thought) peeked out from under the dome's outer rim, like evil metal bats nestled in a mountain of moving death.

Miles gaze swept towards the tank's rear carrier, and he wondered if it was being towed, or if it could run on its own power. He noticed it sported a similar wheel and track arrangement but had limpet-type PIG emplacements. The newbie could see some were missing - probably destroyed earlier in the fighting. What was most interesting were the large silo covers running all along the length of the vehicle on both sides.

The rookie counted ten on his side. If symmetry held true, he hazarded a guess the machine probably had twenty nuclear missiles at its disposal. Minus the one it used on the berserker, it meant it'd have nineteen left, although if the tank had fought other targets before, it would have fewer.

It's like having our own berserker, Miles thought.

The group of manned machines and accompanying bots followed the overhead highway. Big missing sections in the elevated roadway convinced the sergeant to leave only the scout Gibbons - Oiguchi and Sudek - up top with their thruster packs and laser armaments to deal with prawn missiles and attack drones while the rest of the squad followed the robot juggernaut on ground level.

While there had been no enemy contact since the bot tank destroyed its alien opponent, Miles was uneasy as he knew they were headed right into the jaws of the enemy camp. A simple text message played across the squad's display like a marquee.

:: CAUTION. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPEDIMENT DETECTED ::

"Heads up," Cheng rasped on the comms. "The big bot just bitched 'bout something it don't like."

"Hey Ginny," it was one of the scouts asking, "can't you control that thing?"

"Can't," Webster said simply. "It's self-contained, down to the tactical command level. All we can do is watch it do what it's been ordered to do."

"It won't blast us, right?" someone else asked.

"I don't think so," the Newcomer was thoughtful. "Not directly."

"Tell it again," Soltyk sounded doubtful. "It didn't seem to notice - or care - that we were near that hopper dreadnaught when the nuke went off."

"Consider it an occupational hazard," Sergeant Cheng cut in. "UniCom says the ship is over a large nest about eighty klicks outside the edge of the city."

"I see it from here," someone said.

"So can all of us, Sudek. It doesn't have its scrambler field on. Which means it's deliberately not hidin' or something inside it broke."

"That or it's a trap," Sudek was smug. Miles saw her partner, Oiguchi, nod in silent agreement on his pop-up display.

"S'you think it's a trap, boss?" Doyle pressed home the question.

"There could be enough XTs there to cream us, even if we sent in two dozen Gibbon teams," the sergeant quirked a brow before he let the surprise drop. "It could also mean that the ship contracted the same sort of xeno-plague that ravaged the JoBurg ship and left crew crippled."

There was a moment of silence, then general clamor broke out.

"New plague?" "Is it dangerous?" "How'd we know that?" "Won't nukes sterilize it?"

Cheng let the chatter die down before he answered their most pressing questions.

"We don't know if the ship is plague-ridden. If it isn't, the big bot here has orders to blast it."

"And if it's xeno-plague?" Webster's face was impassive. "What then?"

Cheng's expression was equally nonchalant. "We still down the ship, but as intact as possible. Once we do, we dig in and secure until UniCom sends in a salvage crew. Should be easy with this nuke-flinger backing us up."

Miles almost rolled his eyes at that, but didn't, since he'd be seen by the scrappy sergeant. That plan sounded ridiculously impossible given the hit and run nature of the squad's initial mission. Even if Webster's bots were up to full strength, and the squad wasn't down two machines, there was little to keep the prawn ship from dropping multiple berserkers and annihilating them in an overrun.

I think I just signed up for a suicide mission, Miles thought.

He spied Doyle's window, and her expression more or less mirrored his feelings about the whole thing. While Miles was ruminating on the stupidity of military planning, the group had come across a large aqueduct cutting across their path - the "environmental impediment" the big bot had alerted the squad about.

The men and women in the Gibbons halted, along with the bots under Webster's command, but the bot tank seemed to play down the tenacity of the obstacle. Suddenly, the robotic gargantuan stopped, then just as quickly revved its motors, changed course, and started off towards the ditch at an oblique angle. Another text message played across the battle blisters

:: WILL ATTEMPT CROSSING. STAND BY ::

"Looks like it's going to break its hitch," remarked Soltyk.

There was a loud metal clang from the big bot tank's hitch, but the linkage didn't break. Instead the two vehicles that formed the bot carrier separated. The lead bot tank scurried down the escarpment and sat idling on the aqueduct's bottom, waiting while the nuke carrying half tried its best to climb the opposite bank.

"Smartass mothe'fucker," Cheng muttered under his breath. "All right, Sikarna, Sudek, Oiguchi, and me will cover until everyone gets across. Move out."

"I think it's havin' some trouble. Too big," Doyle slid her machine smoothly down the into dry water channel, then looked around. "Just like us. Too bad the stupid thing can't make and use hand-holds."

Miles saw Doyle's Bactrian use her PIG like a crutch, one mitt on the bracket anchor while she leveled a powerful kick on the concrete escarpment.

"Step up an' step lively, lads," Doyle leaned her PIG against an undamaged facing of the aqueduct wall and leaned her Bactrian forwards against the bank, slowly climbing the concrete face. "Up, up and away!"

Oiguchi and Sudek, with their thruster packs, easily crossed over. One of the scouts even grabbed Doyle's PIG and put it down on the opposite side, ready for her to pick it back up. Miles followed the other Gibbons, using a side protrusion in the dry channel as a step for his machine so he need not drop his PIG. The different bots crossed over in a variety of methods, but they managed.

Only the big tank seemed stuck, and too stupid to realize it was stuck ...

Before anyone could step in to help it, the front half of the tank - the armored dome with the PIG emplacements - swiveled one of its guns and fired on the embankment. Miles and a few others nervously shifted their weapons, but before long, the robot tank had created a rough ramp for itself. The missile carrying tank half growled its way up the rubble strewn slope.

"Hmph, so the thing can learn by observation," Webster mused. "I always wondered how good AI would develop once it got cut out from a network."

"Well, now you know," Cheng said, then his tone got business-like quick. "We'd better move. As soon as its better half joins up, we can -"

:: threat alert. threat alert. threat alert ::

The sergeant didn't have time to state the obvious when the front half of the tank rotated its PIGs and fired down the dry canal as HIVELOC rounds zipped back the same path towards the squad. None of the Gibbons were seriously affected, but one Raptor's sensor snout was torn off and the leg of a Mastiff caught a few more rounds than usual, causing it to spark.

Almost immediately, the entire troop of Webster's bots spread out to shield the Gibbons, and to present individual targets to the enemy as they selectively returned fire. Despite their best efforts of not drawing enemy attention, the big tank's attempt to create a path for itself carried the distinctive signature of antimatter explosives. Enemy patrols were of course, sensitive to that and would've investigated.

The tank's robot brain could learn from this, if it survived, thought Miles as he ran his Gibbon towards a low revetment for cover.

Miles looked around his battle blister's windows to see where his squadmates were by their shared video feed, and found it was too confusing to follow. Miles decided to extend a small telescopic probe from his own cam-plate to see what his own situation was. No sooner than his viewing scope poked past cover than a warrior's ugly tendril laden face came into view and roared.

:: threat alert ::

Goddamn! Miles jumped back and fired his PIG. The electromagnetic warble of his weapon was soon followed by the deathly booming cracks of explosives hitting their mark. The enemy stood little chance against such a flurry of firepower, but Miles and his squad were being overrun by sheer numbers. His PIG rounds demolished the rubble, revealing a small band of warriors carrying a weapon in each arm pairing.

"Clusterfuck! Fall back! It's a clusterfuck!" Miles didn't know whether it was someone on the comms or his brain that kept yelling even as he fired at the enemy.

Prawn blood and guts splattered the rubble and his Gibbon as PIG rounds shed their containment fields and detonated against alien exoskeleton. While antimatter explosions were nearly devoid of extraneous matter, the explosive effect was - in effect - chunking the enemy into prawn giblets.

The alien bio-matter xeno-formed humans and Miles felt mildly queasy as his display gelled up with their innards. No Newcomer was insane enough to see if the insect aliens biology would do the same to them. Tissue tests in UniCom's labs suggested it was likely, so it was better to be safe than sorry.

That uncomfortable thought in mind, Miles stopped firing his PIG, and used his mitt's laser to fry the enemy. Cooked prawn residue made people sick, but it certainly didn't transform them into prawn. Unlike MNU, UniCom actually did tissue tests on death-row prisoners to be sure.

HIVELOC rounds pinged his armor once or twice, but did no noticeable damage. While switching his weapons, a dying warrior managed to squeeze off an ARC shot. The bolt of electricity would have been blinding, but the battle blister's display automatically darkened the flash of light so Miles could still see what he fought. The bolt blackened the outer layer of his rig, but apart from the tingling feeling, it did nothing to phase him.

:: threat alert. threat alert. threat alert ::

Markers of different colors, shapes, and sizes populated his blister's view, displaying different prawn units he and his squadmates could detect and identify on MOCCASYM.

Solid red squares were prawn warriors, as opposed to red triangles, which denoted prawn drones. A hollow red circle represented prawn units that other units had detected, but were not yet engaged by you - at least not yet.

Basically, the rule went that the bigger the marker, with more red on it, the more dangerous it was. As Miles walked backward towards his unit, blazing away with his laser mitt, red gear icons started polluting on his blister's display.

Shit, he thought. "Mechs!"

"Rook, get your ass back to Tits, now! Fallback!" Cheng's rasp cut through the din. Miles thought the sergeant might have overridden his volume control to get himself heard.

The rookie wanted to turn and run, but it was too late. Against a single prawn mech, a Gibbon would've destroyed it without much of a thought. The alien machine was smaller, and had weapons that wasn't as effective as the armament the Gibbon had to work with.

UniCom strategists had estimated (somewhat correctly) that a single Gibbon operator, with average training, was victorious against three enemy machines. It'd take four to call it a draw (whether the person inside the Gibbon suit survived was moot, only the destruction of the war machines were rated), and if the enemy attacked at five to one odds, they would win.

Of course, turning away and running wasn't an option at the moment, since the enemy's weapons traveled faster than you could run. If the prawn's HIVELOCs and ARC shots didn't shake up a Gibbon, their missiles could shred the limbs of a rig. Once that occurred, the aliens could take their time ripping apart the machine's armored shell to get to the man inside.

With no intention to become canned lunch, Miles quickly selected a spot about ten meters in front of his position. A point, swipe, and a tap on his battle blister's display gave the Gibbon's targeting computer enough information to launch a pattern of antimatter grenades in a high arc and a wide fan pattern. By the time the enemy got to him, the bombs would be dropping.

As Miles heard his soda pack launcher thump their deadly payloads overhead, he took aim with his PIG and blew apart one prawn mech, then another. Two machines destroyed, but another four clambered over the rubble, firing towards his direction. A third mech fell apart after Miles knocked it off balance, then shot it to pieces while it struggled to get back up.

"Get out of there, Rook!"

Miles couldn't remember who was talking, but he realized his grenades would soon reach the apex when he ordered them to drop their antimatter payloads. Anything and everything underneath that shower of antimatter would be flashed into energy regardless of what they were.

"RUN MILES! RUN!" It was Doyle screaming. "G'dam'it, Rook! The big bot's goin' t' blow!"

4.0 - COLOR OF NIGHT

Stupid fucking robot, thought Miles. He couldn't believe he was still alive. The tank's forward half, still in the sluice channel when the shooting started, didn't make it out before enemy mechs swarmed the machine en masse. Its PIG systems destroyed or disabled, it decided to shut off its power plant's containment field, creating an uncontrolled and devastating matter/antimatter reaction.

Unfortunately, the rear half decided it would fire its cruise missiles from the aqueduct rather than get close to the prawn ship. Even more unfortunately, the missile half of the bot decided that the best position to launch its payload of volatile antimatter warheads was the bank next to the self-destructing front half.

What kind of fucked up logic was that, Miles wondered as he mulled over his mission performance. The blond rookie relieved himself, and was amazed he hadn't sweated himself dry from his last encounter with the enemy. Still, he may have had drank a good portion of the distilled water installed in his survival column; the same water was used to rinse his privates after he went.

He was supposed to be safeguarding the Bactrian, which Sergeant Cheng demonstrated he could do by himself, command the rest of the squad, and save the ass of the idiot newbie without breaking a sweat.

Miles was more or less intact, thanks to the fast thinking of the sergeant and the skills of his scouts. Cheng covered the two scout Gibbons as they jetted in and hauled Miles to safety in two big jet-assisted leaps just before both halves of the bot tank leveled most of the immediate area.

Thankfully, the sluice funneled most of the resulting blast along the channel, sparing the men and women in the Gibbon squad.

It was now nighttime, and after the very destructive mess in the city, Sergeant Cheng moved the squad and the surviving bots - a limping Jackal, a Mastiff with a body partially cored by an explosion, and a pair of sparking Raptors - away from ground zero. The goal was now to circle around the enemy, who were sure to send in forces to pursue. Despite the temptation to send the bots to act as a decoy force, the sergeant had Webster keep her loyal metal pets close.

Thankfully, there were no casualties among the Gibbons, except the expected battle damage. Displays were probably fizzing out on some of the more heavily scarred machines, like Soltyk's, but all in all the squad's machines were holding up well given what they went through.

The group was moving - on auto-walk so everyone could rest their legs - silently through the filthy slums outside the city. There wasn't much debris or vegetation to hide a five meter tall metal machine (let alone a group of them) but the surrounding hills confounded radar detection, at least from the enemy's ground patrols.

"Given how things are going, I think it's best to have Faraz lead the second team," Cheng stated his case. "Any disagreements?"

Miles kept silent, although others murmured their opinions. Too put it mildly, the Rook was too embarrassed to speak after his rescue. And the meeting wasn't a normal situation conference, especially not for a leader of Cheng's temperament. It wasn't routine for someone like the sergeant to ask subordinates for input.

Then again, the squad wasn't run-of-the-mill infantry; each rig driver controlled a good amount of fighting strength on their Gibbon, and not coordinating as a team could lead to disastrous results.

"If you're divvying up the recon element," Sudek sounded displeased, "should we divvy up the remaining bots?"

Cheng kept silent and motioned for Webster to answer, and she did.

"Personally, I don't think so Nastasha," the pretty Newcomer managed a cute frown of frustration. "I can't do much with four bots. Splitting them up makes it worse. I'd rather have them around the Bactrian defending it 'til me and Tits get blasted. That frees up the Rook - Miles - to go on the front line."

"I can't argue with that logic. I don't have to like it though." Sudek sounded unhappy at losing her scouting partner, Oiguchi.

Of course, if Miles believed more of the shipboard rumor-mongering, Sudek and Oiguchi were much more than friends. And neither were bad looking either, for a couple of muff-diving dykes.

"No one's asking you to 'like it'," Cheng took command once more. "No one likes being out here. If I had my way, I'd send out bots to corral the hoppers into containment zones before we nuke 'em en-masse, but there are some things even bots can't do right."

"Case in point." Miles surprised himself by finally speaking. The bot tank's performance was definitely a sore point today. Webster busied herself with a post-battle report about its performance before sending it to UniCom.

"And some things bots do better than us," the sergeant barely skipped a beat at the rookie's outburst. Miles quickly lapsed into silence once more.

"Who go with me?" Faraz asked in his broken English.

"Your usual," Cheng was referring to Rachid and Hasan. "Plus Oiguchi, Menshik, and the Rook."

Miles kept quiet. Effectively, his job of protecting Doyle and Webster was over. While it was boring, it was also light, and didn't involve him running around getting shot at much. Except for his broken peeping scope and a few holes in his armor, his Gibbon was one of the least damaged. Now, it was all combat going forward, and he wondered about his luck.

"Sergeant?" It was Webster. "There's something ahead. Five hundred meters out."

"Let's put our shit to the test. Faraz, take your team forward. The rest of us find cover - quietly."

Cover? What cover? Miles looked around his battle blister, the display lit up showing an artificially bright hillside with little else apart from a few boulders and ram-shackle shacks piled on top of one another.

"Over here," Menshik waved his Gibbon's arm while it stood beside the rubble. Miles recognized the pilot from earlier in the day; he was the one who was waiting at the highway ramp.

"Thanks."

Menshik didn't respond. Instead he slipped his left arm out of the cradle to make a "ssh" motion on his window before slipping his arm back in position. Miles looked at his battle map, and saw Sergeant Cheng and Faraz both drawing colored arrows, directing which direction their respective teams would shoot at when contact was made.

"Mary, any luck with what's coming?" Miles heard Doyle whisper. Contact could be anything, be it human, Newcomer, or prawn.

"No luck. The Raptor that picked this up has a damaged sniffer," Webster frowned more in annoyance than in fear. "Looks like a sentry though. One medium signature moving slowly."

Miles hefted his PIG and aimed in the direction Faraz had indicated for him. He noticed he was aiming effectively down range with a lot of ground to cover.

"Steady," Cheng rasped. "Hold fire unless it shoots. Conserve ammo."

Of course, thought Miles. We've been fighting all day, or at least the others were. Only he and Menshik had plenty of ammunition. They were directed to aim straight ahead, down towards where the unknowns were coming towards them. Miles waited with bated breath and wondered what was to come next.

"Sergeant?" It was Webster again. "The blip's stopped."

"Think it's seen us?" Cheng asked.

"I don't know. It just stopped." The Newcomer swiped at something on her screen.

"Faraz," the tactical sergeant rasped. "Check it out."

At that, the Arab team leader tapped at Menshik's and Miles' markers on his blister display, then made a forward motion with his hand. Feeling a mild sense of dread, Miles ambled forward alongside Menshik, who was equally as apprehensive walking point. Their Gibbons lumbered forth, their PIGs wagging ungainly in the dark of night.

The blister's did not sound any vocal alarm, and Miles slowly eased his itchy finger on his PIG. As soon as he set sights on the "unknown" enemy, he lowered his weapon. It appeared to be another CoRi, but it was not any design he'd seen before. However, it sported the UniCom logo and it was too large - and too human-looking - to be prawn-made.

The unknown machine sported a strange, pronged tube-like weapon perched on its shoulder, but with it lying awkwardly on its side, Miles figured it was probably unprepared for combat.

And it seemed to be occupied. Miles thought he could hear the light hum of its power plant in the cold night air from his Gibbon's external earphones, and could almost feel the vibrations of its servos through his blister's cradles. Perhaps the driver within was too injured to move?

"Sergeant?" Webster called to her commander, then suddenly dipped into her throaty native Newcomer tongue to speak.

Miles watched Cheng's face harden and his eyes narrow before the scrappy sergeant barked new orders.

"Hold position. No one move. Faraz, private line with me and Mary, now."

"All hold station," the Arab managed to say before his portrait blurred into a white hazy cloud. Cheng, Webster, and Faraz were now in a closed conference on their MOCCASYM while the rest of the squad stood guard in the cold black night.

"I wonder what's going on?" Miles broke the silence over the general channel.

"Who knows? When the chief's talkin' behind closed doors, it ain't ever good." Menshik sounded impatient, but he didn't venture near the fallen machine. Sergeant Cheng was not a man to be disobeyed, especially on the battlefield.

"Hang tight now," Doyle chimed in. "Mary's bound to tell. I still have to lug her around, 'member?"

"Yea, you're right," Miles shot her a grin of bravado.

"Yeah, I s'pose." Menshik did not sound happy, but then again, he never seemed to be either.

After a lengthy moment of tense silence and gossip, Cheng's, Faraz's, and Webster's portraits sharpened once more.

"People," the sergeant proceeded slowly. "I know we have a mission to take out that hopper ship, but we have to make an urgent detour tonight."

Cripes, thought Miles. What now?

"Faraz? Send Rachid and Hasan to relieve the Rook and Menshik."

"Sarge?" Menshik barely got his word out before Cheng rudely cut him off.

"That's an order, skin-dick. Fall back. Now."

Miles moved past Hasan's and Rachid's Gibbons as Menshik grumbled and followed his lead. Cheng continued as they were relieved.

"Most of you know what prawn bio-matter does to Newcomers and humans."

Of course, of course, Miles soured. Who could forget what happend to Van Der Merwe?

"Now, I'm asking you all to stay calm and hear out what this fellow has to say. Under no circumstances are you to interrupt, or do anything stupid, like open fire. Understand?"

Open fire? What the hell, Miles thought. Cheng made sure the squad mumbled their acknowledgments before he muttered something in Newcomer to Webster. The pretty bald-headed alien put on a brave smile and put up a portrait that caused Miles to blanch.

It wasn't human, or it wasn't anymore, that thing that was inside the battle blister. Someone cursed, and there was nervous laughter in the background. Miles thought it could have been him. Or it could have been someone else.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Cheng growled, "That is Lieutenant Clifford Lansford, of -?"

"Firrrst Marrrauder. Schpeshall Oppperrrashuns Grrroop."

Miles waited in patient shock as what was left of a man's mouth tried to work human speech. The prawn-like growths that were supposed to be mandibles were interfering nicely with Lansford's efforts. It took a little effort to understand his deep lisp, that Cheng jumped in to speed things along.

"SOG/1M - One Mike - was here to disable the prawn mothership with the big bot tank earlier," the sergeant explained. "Obviously, that didn't go as planned. What you're seeing is a SOG rig with an Einvelocity Cannon. A Dhampir."

Damn, thought Miles. He thought he'd never see that in his lifetime. The sergeant was referring to the metallic tube with the prongs and forks on the SpecOps machine. The weapon - also called the "Void Cannon" or "Space Gun" - gave Miles a chill down his spine.

It was considered dangerous, using hithero unknown concepts from adopted Newcomer technology to discharge a desynchronous wave that accelerated normal matter to barely faster-than-light speeds. A thin beam of antimatter was then directed through the center of the wave, and the resultant reaction turned all matter in the wave's path "vanish" into nothing.

The first live test of this weapon turned the Melbourne Research Facility into a gaping hole of nothing - as well as the surrounding area 20 miles equi-distant. A large bay now sat in southeast Australia, the ocean having rushed into the gap after the accident, along with part of Earth's atmosphere.

The only positives to have come out of that was the test was being monitored by UniCom, so the error (chiefly in power output, but also in the vector of the wave's discharge) was corrected and the weapon refined.

The other positive was that the prawn ship that routinely savaged the area got half of itself disintegrated with the accident, and the remaining wreckage crashed into the sea. UniCom submarine units made sure nothing escaped - not alive anyway.

"The SpecWar team was supposed to be the bot's back-up along with Colonel Hammer's tanks," Cheng continued his explanation as the squad regrouped on Lansford's machine. "Deploying the Void Cannon was a fall-back plan."

"So what happened?" Miles heard someone ask.

"The bot tank didn't make it, obviously," the sergeant replied, "but while One-Mike was busy following the tank's progress, they were ambushed near a refugee camp not too far from here."

"Refugee camp? Here?" asked Doyle.

"They ain't our kind of refugees," Cheng rasped. "How many of you know a Doctor Clara McKay?"

"Her name sounds familiar," Sudek temporarily freed a hand of its cradle to scratch an itch under her breast. "Don't know why though."

"McKay's the Shrimp Lover, Tasha," Doyle's tone went cold. "The Prawn Doctor."

"Half right, slokaa," Webster corrected her. "She's a xenologist. She studied my people too, when we were in Quarantine."

"You know her?" Cheng asked.

"Just barely," Webster smiled blandly. "I didn't know the name until I saw her on news video in school. After that, I had a name to put on her face."

"I thought all us humans look alike to you," Menshik managed to get in his barbs.

"Almost all." The Newcomer appeared unphased, but her reply was unmistakably curt.

"So, who is this Dr. McKay?" Miles asked.

"I'm guessing you don't follow political news much." Doyle's nostrils flared slightly before she gave the rookie a short history lesson.

"Like I said, McKay's a a shrimp lover. In short, an enemy sympathizer. She protested the MNU when the cricket districts were created, and supported the Newcomers to be discharged from Quarantine, but when X-Day came, her tone changed."

"Everything changed, Tanya," Cheng interjected, "but do go on."

"Well, she would've been left alone for the most part," Doyle continued. "Maybe someone in sanctuary might've slashed her face or beat her silly for prattling on about prawn rights, but she took things too far."

"What'd she do?" someone asked.

"McKay used her UniCom credentials to break into a hazmat vault and stole some XT bio-fuel," Cheng answered before Doyle spoke up.

"What? But why?"

"The doc went and exposed people to that shit," Doyle said angrily, "in vain hope we'd broker some sort of peace with the prawn."

"That's insane," Miles felt ill. "What was she thinking?"

"I don't know," the sergeant growled, aggravated, "but more importantly, I don't care. Lansford says McKay's at the refugee camp. She an' her bitch friends bush-whacked One-Mike, took their juice packs for the space gun, and exposed them to hopper shit."

"Innnjehckt," the half-human Lansford managed to lisp, but his deformed fingers mimed a needle going into his neck. "Mmmussst ssstohp."

Jesus, thought Miles. That doctor must have went complete psycho to inject prawn bio-matter into people.

"All right," Cheng growled imperiously. "This is war, and war can get ugly."

"I have no idea what McKay wants with those juice packs, but we need 'em for One-Mike's cannon. With ev'ry inch of land a free-fire zone, I don't e'spect there will be anyone to rescue."

Miles shifted uneasily in his blister cradle. Did the sergeant just imply what Miles thought he implied?

"Although I'm not all opposed to savin' anyone who ain't a sympathizer," Cheng finished.

"And how will we be able to discriminate?" Miles heard someone ask. Right sergeant. How are we able to tell? Mind-reading?

"Simple," the sergeant's voice hardened, "we find the camp, and anyone who don't cooperate can be considered a sympathizer."

"That should be easy." Miles heard someone say. The rookie tried rubbing his fingers and thumb, but his limb cradle limited him to stroking empty air; his Gibbon was carrying a PIG, and its stout handle was securely held by his machine.

"We can't use PIGs or any explosives," Cheng said soberly, "We need 'em later at the mothership. Bound to be heavy resistance there."

"Lasers then?" asked Oiguchi.

"Gettin' to that," Cheng knitted his brow. "Any lasers or glittersticks are going to be a dead give-away to patrols if we miss. It'll be a light show in the dead of night."

"So, what are you sayin' sarge?" Menshik asked the obvious question on everyone's mind. "How are we going to secure the place and get the job done?"

Tactical Sergeant Cheng's window temporarily changed from his portrait to the arm camera on his Gibbon. The squad watched as his machine titled slightly, grab a long piece of steel rebar, then heft it like a crude baton. When the sergeant's window changed back to showing Cheng's face, Miles saw the man smiling grimly.

"We do it the old fashioned way."

5.0 - UNDER THE CRACK

Miles' machine waded slowly in the muck that streamed through the narrow tunnel. The Gibbon's servos and actuators whined and hissed softly despite being mired in a potent mixture of human waste and sewage run-off. The rookie counted himself lucky that he had drawn a relatively easy assignment - he, Menshik, and Oiguchi, the team's scout, were to locate the batch of immobile prawn mechs near the refugee camp.

The two Gibbon teams broke into even smaller groups as they neared their objective. Cheng's team was to secure the juice packs needed to power One-Mike's Void Cannon. Faraz's team was tasked to destroy tactical targets of opportunity, and to provide both distraction and security.

Rachid or Hasan had reported a large collection of alloy in a side cistern; from the size and cluster of blips, they appeared to be mechs. Faraz split his team in half - one half (which included Miles) would destroy the enemy machines before they could be manned while the other half (Faraz and his former mujahadeen mates) would seize the sleeping area and keep everyone they find there. Hopefully, that would be enough.

The camp itself was tucked away under the city, away from eyes human, Newcomer, and prawn, under a labyrinth of sewers. There, under a civilization that was being ravaged and slowly xenomorphed, the camp's survivors eked a near subsistence-level of existence.

Though they were probably not "refugees", Miles reminded himself. They may prove to be more sympathetic to the invading aliens than to their own species.

Hardly something to quibble over if they start protesting. Miles felt his mouth go dry at the thought. Would some even look human anymore? Or would they be something that resembled Specialist Lansford? A walking parody of the enemy, destined for a lifetime of painful genetic therapy and social shunning?

Miles thought back to Doyle's story about the crazy doctor and her poorly thought out attempt at forcing a peace - an unwanted and unsavory one - on her own people. Her own species.

The newbie surprised himself with this line of thought. Perhaps that's the same type of thoughts that made Menshik say what he said.

Miles glanced at his blister display and saw that Menshik still had his PIG out, despite the order to hold fire. If anyone had ammunition to expend, it was either he or Menshik, not that they needed to; a Gibbon was quite capable of destroying another rig as long as it was not moving.

For a prawn mech, Miles could simply stake a piece of steel re-bar - or more practically punch - through the alien machine's opened chest cavity to wreck the interface connections for its single crew.

As Faraz said in his broken English, "Easy job."

Yes, thought Miles. Easy job indeed.

Oiguchi was ahead of Miles and Menshik. The scout's rig was seared and cooked from several explosive misses, but it still moved fluidly and with little protest. What damage would have been to her rig's exterior cameras; however, Yuko Oiguchi was not only an experienced rig driver, but she was one observant bitch.

Miles remembered how she wagged her finger back and forth when she caught him drooling over her ample cleavage back at the submarine carrier. Or was it her partner Sudek's cleavage? Maybe he was staring at one of their athletic asses.

The rookie quickly snapped out of his pathetic daydreaming when Oiguchi's Gibbon suddenly stopped and raised its left arm in a crude signal. Miles quickly froze. The scout's machine occupied most of the tunnel, and the rookie couldn't see what was going on.

"Take another six steps -" Gibbon sized steps, Miles translated internally as Oiguchi whispered "- and we drop right into their mech garage. Ready up. I'll head left, you two take center and right. Remember, no firing. That means you, Menshik."

"I'll put it down once we're in," the Jewish bigot hissed back unkindly, "but I'm not putting it away."

Oiguchi only snorted and Miles saw her Gibbon dip slightly.

She's going to sprint in, he realized. Without waiting for us to tell her where -

"Menshik, go take the right," Miles spoke quickly as the scout's machine suddenly lurched forward in an awkward sort of run. "I'll head straight ahead."

He didn't wait for Menshik's response as he followed on Oiguchi's heels. The tunnel seemed to extend a bit further than what she had said; then Miles remembered that he may have been a step or two behind her. Sure enough, the scout's rig dropped as she exited the tunnel, then just as she did, Oiguchi instinctively fired up her thruster pack.

Bad mistake.

With a high decibel whine and blast similar to a jet turbine, a thruster pack was as loud as a PIG round's explosive reaction. Certainly, three CoRis stumbling through an enclosed sewer was loud, but the dampeners on their footpads had significantly reduced their audio signatures (and they were moving slowly, to boot); furthermore, their rigs could have crossed the distance in the cistern before the camp was alerted with loud noises this far inside their perimeter.

Miles saw Oiguchi cut the thrusters and her machine slam down into the cistern's stone with a heavier than normal impact; perhaps that was why she reflexively used her thruster pack. However, it was too late. Miles could see activity in the various tunnels leading into the cistern.

:: threat alert ::

Small arms fire sparked against his rig's outer frame and the occasional BOOM CRACK of a rocket exploding near his Gibbon, but Miles was most afraid of the running figures.

Rig drivers. Or in this case, mech drivers who appeared human for the most part, but Miles could see the chitinous plates on their exposed skin, the enlarged inhuman looking eye, and the unmistakable bounding gait of someone with prawn legs.

So, that's how they'd interface with the prawn mechs, Miles shivered. His own machine drove foward as Oiguchi, realizing surprise was lost, quickly fired her thrusters, giving her a much-needed boost forward to a batch of parked machines on the cistern's left. She reached them in record time and began smashing them apart with her Gibbon's alloyed fists.

Miles soon got to his self-assigned section and only had a moment to admire the intricate details of the silent line of prawn mechs before he proceeded to break them apart.

'Punch t'rough the chest cavity while its open,' Cheng had instructed. 'You want to destroy the neural needles housed in the upper cavity so they can't start up.'

'And wrecking the cradle won't do the job if the neural needles still work.' Doyle added. 'They can still boot up and access weapons. Tear in and up towards the head.'

Miles took her words to heart and crudely punched into the opened chest cavity of each prawn mech. He then rotated his hand actuator, formed a claw, and wrenched his arm upwards. The result was the mech's shoulders and insect-like head would part from the rest of its frame.

When he needed to hurry, he simply brought a servo-powered first down on the head of a prawn mech; the result was just as effective - caving in the chest cavity such that it was nearly impossible for someone to get inside.

Clearly, these machines weren't meant to sustain such punishment. That thought gave Miles a reassuring feeling as he set upon the next batch of machines.

"I hear weaponsfire," Cheng's familiar rasp came over the general frequency. "Who the hell is violatin' orders?"

"Lasers if we don't miss, boss." It was Menshik. "I didn't miss."

"Cut that shit out," Cheng snapped back, "and get back to work."

"Understood. Menshik out."

In the general whirlwind of destruction, Miles had forgotten about Menshik. As the rookie tipped over the last machine in his batch before crushing the upper chest and head underfoot, he looked around the cistern and saw that Menshik had opted to stay back, using his laser mitt to fry the camp's drivers from afar.

Fortunately, the angry Jew didn't miss his targets. Unfortunately, he was unable to hit one, who made it to his machine and booting it up as if his life depended on it.

"Done here!" It was Oiguchi. "Hey, Rook?! Where's Menshik?"

"Taking it easy."

On his battle blister's display, he could see Menshik's confident smirk slowly turn to grim surprise as the little bigot realized that he had missed one of his soft targets. Menshik was still at the tunnel entrance that dropped into the cistern, and there was no way he could get to the enemy mech before it started up.

Miles released his grip on his PIG, letting it drop onto the pile of broken and mangled metal at his feet.

"Watch my pig!" the rookie shouted at her as he took to a sprint.

He reached the errant mech just as its hatch was about to close - the rookie had no other choice but to stop the enemy machine before it caused any trouble. The rookie jammed the Gibbon's fingers into the closing cavity, and grimaced as he heard a sickening sound come through his rig's external microphones.

Miles tuned out the mortal scream which was suddenly cut off when his machine's hand was palm deep in the enemy machine. The limbs of the prawn mech seemed to jerk to life, spasmed, then just as quickly went limp as its operator inside expired.

Only the sounds of falling water and the occasional thump of metal on stone returned to the cistern as Miles withdrew his rig's limb. The small arms fire quickly stopped as the refugees saw their chance of resistance vanish in the blink of an eye. No sane person was going to attack a five meter tall war machine with an assault rifle and some Soviet-era rocket bombs. Their only hope now was retreat, and that no one would come after them.

Oiguchi came up to Miles, holding a glitterstick in one hand and Miles' PIG in the other.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, just give me a minute." Miles rinsed the stains on his Gibbon's alloyed fingers in the sewer run-off before he handled his PIG once more.

"Oiguchi to Faraz. Enemy mechs neutralized."

"Faraz copy," the Arabic team leader yawned, then scowled. "Regroup on sergeant. He want to talk to us."

Probably about Menshik, Miles thought darkly.

The three rig drivers followed the virtual path Faraz transmitted to their blisters' displays. One of the tunnels on the cistern's ground level led to a larger cistern, which seemed to be where the area's sewage collected before going to a treatment facility.

Once there, Miles saw the squad's machines standing near a large pile of hastily assembled equipment. What caught the rookie's attention, aside the rack of evil looking delta-shaped Drache drones, were a half dozen large energy cells, each the size of a shipping container. Quite impressive, considering the juicepacks for a Gibbon's laser mitt was only about the size of a two person sofa (minus the back and arm rests). That combination was enough to power a laser mitt for over a thousand bursts at the eighty terajoules setting.

Those in the squad who carried glittersticks sported half a dozen cells to power their weapons, along with a handy number of spare juicepacks (chiefly for scouts). Miles was no engineer, but an energy cell the size of a shipping container could probably let a laser mitt continuously discharge for days without rest. That the space gun would require something that size to work was a testament to the power it devoured.

"Man, those are huge," Miles said as he came to a stop.

"Yes, they certainly are," Doyle nodded.

The rookie gave her a cheery grin and she gave him a toothy smile. Miles' grin thinned though, as he caught the sight of what he thought was something under Doyle's Bactrian. The long ugly knot of blonde hair and the shredded lab coat he could dismiss as fuzz on his display, but the bloody, mangled arm that was both prawn and human removed all doubt of what was crushed underfoot of the large CoRi.

Doyle saw Miles' expression, and her smile relaxed a bit. Her mouth twitched and he saw her shrug; that told him more than any words would.

"All right, we have what we came for," Cheng rasped stonily. "Lansford's told me the space gun needs two or three of these fully charged sum'bitches to fire, but we're not takin' chances. We are going to use 'em all on that ship. Scrap that heap, you get me?"

"The question is how to carry them," Webster mused. "That Mastiff doesn't have enough back left to carry something that size, but we can have it haul it. And I can use the Draches to screen."

"Save 'em. B'sides, it's too noisy and slow," Cheng said. "No, we do it this way: Lansford, you stick with me, Ginny, and Tits. The rest of you, pair up and each take up one end of these cells."

"You're not kidding, are you sarge?" Miles saw Menshik's jaw drop. "How are we going to defend ourselves?"

"One hand on a juicebox handle, the other on a PIG or laser mitt." Cheng's icy tone didn't do much to boost morale.

"But -!"

"We need to hurry. Get to that saucer ASAP, find a spot for Lansford to deploy. While Tits helps set-up, Ginny's bots can do guard duty. The rest of us will spread out and screen One-Mike until the job's done."

"Excuse me for speaking out of turn, sergeant," Menshik said angrily, "but I think that's a recipe for suicide."

"That would depend on how on well things go; Lansford's first priority is to down that ship. He'll do that by vaping the control module."

"That doesn't help out situation on the ground," Menshik sounded confused.

"With the hopper saucer crippled, we can use it as cover once it crashes," Cheng explained. "We should have enough juice and ammunition to hold out using laser mitts and glittersticks. The key is to down that ship on the first shot."

"And if we don't, sarge?" someone asked.

"Then you'd better start prayin' for a miracle," the sergeant said grimly, "'cause I got nothin' left."

6.0 - VERMILLION SUN

Moving and fighting all night had the newbie on edge. Miles was sure that he had taken more than a safe dose of stimulant, but he no longer cared. Even leaving his rig on auto-walk, he had to remain alert to enemy activity as he carried his half of the massive juicebox with Talua.

As much as he had shared experiences with Menshik, Miles avoided him. He was disgruntled for sure, and Miles wasn't sure why such a individual was still retained as a rig driver. That could explain why he was often relegated to lone duty no one else wanted.

Lansford, his fingers barely human now, had to satisfy himself with guarding Sergeant Cheng while his Gibbon and Doyle's Bactrian hauled one juicebox. Miles had grim respect for the ailing ex-human; his machine - a Dhampir - carried not only the Einvelocity Cannon, but also the rack of Drache drones. With this much on his rig, it took dedicated deftness to move through rough terrain, especially in Lansford's condition.

Meanwhile, the rest of the squad paired off and humped the remaining juiceboxes out of the sewers: the two scouts (Oiguchi and Sudek), Faraz and Hasan, Sikarna and Rachid, Soltyk and Menshik, and Miles and Talua.

The prawn mega-ship floated like a massive city above a depression of rubble. The sun's rays had not risen over the lip of the crater that sprawled below, but Miles could see well enough with his machine's eyes.

The rookie wondered if the ship had landed once before, only to take off once more. Unlike other prawn ships he had seen since their invasion, this one was not buzzing with activity; instead, it seemed eerily silent and unresponsive. The only activity was on the ground under the ship.

There were aliens everywhere, huddled in small groups, much like when the prawn first made planetfall. Many seemed still but there was movement here and there, with prawn dragging their weapons on the ground. Near the center of the depression, a prawn berserker lay intert, its many legs seemed to have given out under the massive bulk shouldered upon them. However, as still as the juggernaut was, the many weapons grafted onto its exoskeleton were alight with power.

Miles zoomed in as much as his Gibbon's sensors could allow and the sight was the same everywhere he looked. If the prawn ship detected the presence of their rig squad, it did not do anything.

"Rook. Tal." It was Sergeant Cheng. "See anythin' interesting?"

"Yes sergeant," Talua responded in properly accented English, his West African face showing confusion. "The enemy seems to be - I do not know how else to put it - drunk."

Drunk, Miles thought. That seemed to be the keyword here.

"Same here," the rookie chimed in.

"An' here." Miles saw Cheng glance to his side. "Tanya? What d'you make of it?"

"Dunno. I'll get back to you," Doyle paused briefly to reply as she busied herself stacking the last of the power cells for Lansford's space cannon.

Cheng checked with the other rig pairings while he awaited her response. The squad had split into teams of two and did their best to surround the alien vessel once it was apparent it wasn't reacting as usual. Miles and Talua were deployed with the two scouts to their right, and Rachid and Sikarna to their left.

Only the sergeant, along with Lansford and the Bactrian's crew, were clustered near the entrance to this place, along with their special weapon, ready to deliver the killing blow to the menace in the sky.

"If you want MY opinion," Webster busied tying what was left of her bot force directly to her control, "I think they found a large dump of cat food."

"I think Ginny's right." Doyle finally brought her machine into position, right behind a low wall or escarpment that shielded the bottom two thirds of the Bactrian. Her rig's modified PIG was bundled into a glitterstick - an antimatter cannon mated with a laser shotgun - a perfect weapon for ambush and picking off tough targets at a distance.

"How do you mean?" Cheng brought his Gibbon to position to cover the two women in the larger machine.

"R'member that multi-national that tried to trade cat food in bulk to the crickets?"

"Barely. When was it?"

"Just a few days before the invasion start'd," Doyle said. "I think this might be one of their places they stock'd up catnip."

"If it is, that s'plains this."

Miles nodded in agreement. The aliens was fond of cat (strangely, not dog) food, and it was only logical that they enjoyed much of the same things as Earth's felines. The rookie stabbed at the icon for the external air scanner on his battle blister. After few more pokes and swipes that told him the air outside was moderately safe for humans, his machine sent a small burst of sampled air inside his blister.

It smelled fresh and awful at the same time. The fresh air made Miles' nostrils open up, but the stench of prawn excrement was mixed in with their garbage and the sweet smell of ozone from their weapons. The newbie sharply exhaled through his nose to clear it out; once he did though, a faint smell of mint lingered.

"Rook? Were you stupid enough to take a whiff outside?" Cheng barked.

Miles blinked, and saw the rest of the squad looking at him through their respective panels on his blister's viewer. Some were rolling their eyes, and a few were shaking their heads in disbelief or staring back like he was a moron child who did something incredibly stupid.

"Uh, the air sampler said it was safe," Miles said weakly.

"Goddamn," Cheng shook his head, but there was a wry grin on his lips. "Well son, you got more balls than brains. Smell anything?"

"Yeah. Kinda," Miles brought an arm out of his cradle to rub his nose. "Smelled minty, nippy, after all the other crap got filtered."

"Good," Cheng's face hardened. "Lansford's going to fire on the control module as planned. Your responsibilities will simply be mop up."

"So, we're just going to dust 'em all?"

"Yep," came the laconic reply.

"Uh, sergeant?" It was Webster. "Movement towards us. I think we've been spotted."

No sooner had she uttered those words than the buzz-whing of HIVELOC rounds came through Miles' speakers. The rookie raised his PIG and started firing down into the alien inhabited rubble; they were coming out their drunken stupor and realized they were being watched. Sergeant Cheng quickly gave an order to fire.

"It's now or never, Lansford! The control module - NOW!"

Miles thought he felt time slow as a wave of energy seemed to engulf the rubble clearing below him. The rosy tinge of the dawning day seemed to wink out into sheer nothingness as the Einvelocity Cannon's linear wave washed through the sky and cut diagonally through the prawn ship.

There was no bright explosion. No sound. No obvious indication that anything had occured save that of a winking, blinking void of nothing that came and went like a light breeze rustling past fallen leaves.

Cheng's flat baritone cut through the silence, "Shot made. Repeat, shot made. Target hit, but negative impact. Repeat, the saucer's still flyin'."

In the blink of an eye, nearly half of the prawn mega-ship was missing, but the vessel was still afloat.

A big, big chunk of it, however, was gone. Vanished - along with a good portion of the nearby atmosphere. Now, the void was being filled in by the surrounding air, and the pressure of such a vast space being filled up was overpowering. Even the rigs were being sucked into the void left by the space gun's discharge.

"Dammit! The vacuum!" Cheng squawked as his machine seemed to lean forward. "Brace! Brace! Brace! Find something and hang on!"

The explosive BOOM that followed nearly blew out Miles' eardrums as his machine was lifted up by incredible forces and tumbled into the midst of the enemy. Thankfully, there were built-in safeties - his battle blister dampened the incoming decibels to a level that numbed his ear drums, but did not burst them. However, those systems didn't account for being buffeted by the winds stemming from localized depressurization on a planet surface.

Chaos broke out as most of the squad found themselves in the midst of the enemy.

"Holy God!" "Fuck! We're getting sucked in!" "Shit! Shit! Shit!"

"Lansford!" Cheng shouted. "Aim down into the crater and prep to fire on my mark! All units fall back on One-Mike! Move it people!"

"Dammit Stephen!" Webster's hysteric scream did little to bring calm to the rapidly escalating situation. "I've lost my bots!"

"That nearly killed us," Doyle shrieked unkindly. "Lucky I anchored myself to this retaining wall, damn you!"

"Sound me dry later, Tits," Cheng snapped back. "Lansford, release Drache control to Ginny."

Instead of the slow agonizing slurring, Miles only heard a series of clicks and clacks from Lansford's Dhampir, followed by the MOCCASYM's system voice.

:: command priority override ::

:: drone control transferred ::

So he's pretty much gone, the rookie thought sadly. Miles knew the man's condition was partially reversible with gene therapy. However, the longer the delay in getting someone to treatment, the more he (or she) resembled a prawn. Those who survived bore noticeable scarring, and occasionally retained enough prawn genetic markers to make living in a human sanctuary problematic; armed bots fired on them, security sensors restricted their access, and patrol drones dogged them.

Nevertheless, Specialist Lansford's mind was still human, and he was still a loyal soldier. Webster quickly acknowledged that she now had control over One-Mike's Draches.

"Shall I launch?" the pretty Newcomer asked nervously.

"Hold on that for now," Cheng's voice cut through MOCCASYM. "All units, you are weapons free. You will have limited cover, so I would urge you to hurry the hell up and get back here. We're going to dust the crater with the space gun."

With that, the focus became every person for himself or herself. Survival came first as Miles got his Gibbon back upright. He was lucky to have landed forward from his tumble; Talua wasn't. The black struggled to right his rig, rotating both his machine's arms back to prop himself up; however, this meant that he was unable to defend himself when the aliens swarmed him.

Miles was now standing, and was about to step in to help when the prawn berserker appeared almost out of nowhere and crushed Talua and his attackers without a second thought.

:: threat alert ::

The guttural roar of the alien juggernaut came from a tough thick diaphragm nestled deep in the beast's depths. The baritone sound of its war cry contrasted with the high-pitched warble of Miles' PIG as he fired on the alien hulk. Chunks of exoskeleton not flashed into energy by his antimatter rounds flew off in every direction as his shots impacted.

A higher pitched whine, either the antimatter core on Talua's rig or his PIG's cyclotron, reached Miles' ears, and he quickly took off running. The berserker roared once when a good portion of its body sucked up the reaction, but despite losing so much of itself, it still lurched after Miles' Gibbon, albeit at a slower pace.

Lucky me, thought Miles as he traced a route back to Lansford and Sergeant Cheng.

The rookie took a look at how his other squadmates were faring as he sprinted past and shot up a group of prawn warriors who showed up on his flank. Oiguchi and Sudek, thanks to their thrust pods, were able to overtake him, despite having started behind. He, Sikarna, and Rachid were now the ones furthest away, and time was running out.

"Faraz, Hasan, Menshik, Soltyk! Hold near the Dhampir and Bactrian! Cover their retreat!" Cheng shouted. "Scouts! Rachid! Sikh! Rook! You have three minutes to get back here before Lansford fires!"

"PIMP out!" Menshik's voice crackled over his fizzing MOCCASYM.

Good, thought Miles. Maybe that would slow that giant tick hurling after him some more. He saw the scouts bouncing a few hundred yards ahead of him, firing backwards as they bounded to safety and avoiding the berserker's beams with the grace of ballerinas.

Sikarna and Rachid now joined him, and the three quickly fell into a fluid pattern of retreat, cover fire, retreat, and cover fire. Miles set his soda launcher on automatic – the weapon pod hurling single cannisters of antimatter towards the enemy signatures hounding his retreat. This was like giving the blond rookie a helping hand as he ran for his life.

"Splash!" Menshik exclaimed with glee. However, none of the warheads hit anything near Miles' position, so he was no better off than before.

"Two mikes fifteen left," Cheng snapped. "Hurry the fuck up."

:: threat alert ::

Miles had stopped to cover Sikarna with Rachid when he saw red gear icons on his battle blister's periphery. The rookie managed to take down two of the incoming machines before a third, using its jets to boost its jump, latched onto his Gibbon's right arm - the one holding the PIG - and would not let go.

He switched to his laser mitt to fry the menace, but the alien machine used his captured arm as leverage and kicked his attacking limb with its feet, sending the beam's discharge into the air. Miles' assailant was too close for him to do much but batter it in melee; Rachid could not – or would not - help, as that meant stopping to fight and letting the berserker catch up.

"Someone! Help me!" Sikarna screamed as a swarm of aliens hurled explosives and HIVELOC rounds towards his machine. Then, "I've lost my soda launcher! Damn chirpers pranged the trigger!"

"Ditch it!" Cheng roared over the MOCCASYM. "Squad! Cover fire, now!"

"Keep running, boys!" Doyle's voice reached them. "Tash and Yoyo are here and you're all that's left!"

"You heard her, now run!" the sergeant snapped.

Miles felt a BOOM-CRACK as the prawn mech on his rig's arm jerked from an antimatter explosion. Doyle's marksmanship with her modified PIG was unmistakably remarkable. The rookie could have sworn that any deviation would have crippled his machine or ruptured his PIG's cyclotron. He pulled his weapon arm free, shot dead a group of aliens lurking behind Rachid, then ran.

He saw Sikarna's machine lumbering a few paces away, the shiny pod ports exposed from having jettisoned the soda grenade pack; the rookie didn't look back when a second larger BOOM CRACK came and a big flash of energy several meters behind him. Doyle had hit Sikarna's bomb pod, with spectacular results.

"Ginny?" Cheng rasped. "There's your opening. Launch 'em now. Dive bomb that sum'bitch."

:: alert drone launch ::

"Launching now." Webster held her fingers out before her, like a maestro conducting a symphony. "Lansford, do you know how big of a charge these drones pack?"

The now alien-looking Specialist could only make a few short clicks.

"Low-medium yield?" Webster wrinkled her cute nose. "All right. It'll have to do."

"Almost there!"

Miles' legs felt like jelly, even though his machine did most of the work. He, Sikarna, and Menshik cleared a ditch as explosions and laser fire danced around them. Aliens were being cut down, their severed limbs spewing viscous exotic blood, or cauterized from laser fire.

Webster guided her drones and hell-dived them into the sluggish berserker still single mindedly plodding towards them. With the bot-controller's deft guidance, six of the ten bomb drones found their mark. The berserker lurched, then leaned to one side, its body horrifically scarred and burned from low-yield nukes. Still, its grafted weapons worked, if erratically, and they hounded and nipped at the three retreating Gibbons.

"Fifty seconds," Cheng sounded off mechanically.

"Almost there," Miles started up the incline to the edge of the depression.

"Forty seconds."

Miles could see the squad spread out line abreast. Their weapons - laser mitts, glittersticks, PIGs, soda packs - all firing at the enemy who were being cut down behind him.

"Thirty. Squad get ready to fall back," Cheng rasped. "Lansford, make ready."

Miles saw the squad fall back behind Lansford's Dhampir, one at a time, then resumed cover fire. The decrease of weaponsfire gave the enemy impetus to advance once more, but their numbers were not as great as before.

"Twenty." Cheng raised his PIG and blew apart a mech that bounded over the battlefield to flank them. Sikarna and Rachid took position near him, allowing the sergeant to stride ahead and pick apart some enemies nipping at Miles' heels.

The rookie was last to reach the firing line. Cheng reached out with his Gibbon's off hand, grabbed Miles' machine and pulled him to safety past the SpecOps rig. Miles quickly regained his balance, stopping near Doyle's Bactrian.

The dirty British blonde flashed him an encouraging grin, almost saying 'Glad you made it!'

Miles grinned back before he got himself back to the firing line, picking off the enemy elements still advancing on their position.

"Ten seconds." By now, the countdown was a mere formality. The line held, and there were no more casualties.

"Nine. Eight. Seven. Six ..."

7.0 - IN CLOSING

The old man cooked a simple meal in his similarly spartan quarters. There was a kitchen, a combined shower and bathroom, and a coffin like bed which flipped around to reveal a closet ... of sorts. Among his belongings was a faded portrait of a regal looking bald woman with liver spots on her head dressed in a incongruously fancy wedding gown. The portrait was an antique - the frame was made of real silver, and the image itself was printed on actual material.

As the stew simmered, he mindlessly scrolled through the news feed on his view sheet. The man's eyes were resigned to the continuous display of bad news. He stopped and lingered though, on an item that had a familiar name.

2154 AUGUST 24 - Colonel Miles Quaritch (RET.) formerly of UniCom's 1st Army's 14th Combat Rig Battalion, and lately the Chief of Security of Resource Development Administration, has been reported killed in action by aboriginal inhabitants on Pandora, one of the inhabitable moons of Polyphemus in the Alpha Centuari system. Witnesses describe that one of the moon's native fauna attacked Quaritch while he was in operation of a RDA AMP Suit ...

He arched a brow as he read. When he had finished, the old man set down his diaphonous reading sheet, then got two glasses and a bottle of brown liquid from the drawer. Pouring the contents into the cups, he began muttering to himself.

"Always had you pegged as smart, but guess I was wrong," Cheng growled as he stared at the second glass. "Fightin' giant Smurfs with construction equipment? That's sheer stupidity, Rook."

AUTHOR APPENDIX

Errata and miscellaneous notes during the writing of this fun little short. Some back story elements influenced the character's motivations, but were not explored within the time the story takes place.

CHARACTERS

STEPHEN CHENG - Male. Chinese. Approximately 40 to 50 at the start of the story. Tactical Sergeant in a United Command assault rig squad. Catherine Cheng, his last surviving blood relative, was a pediatric nurse killed during the first wave of the prawn invasion. Exhibits a blood thirst when it comes to anti-prawn combat.

MILES (THE ROOKIE) - Male. Caucasian. Approximately 20 to 30 at the start of the story. Member of a United Command assault rig squad. Rank not given. Principal narrator.

TANYA DOYLE - Female. Caucasian. Approximately 30 to 40 at the start of the story. Member in a United Command assault rig squad. Informal call sign "Tits". British (specifically Manchester). Shady or sordid past as an adult entertainer turned alien hunter and rig driver. This character is based off adult entertainer Tanya Tate (of whom the author knew personally). Doyle's last name is an anagram of sorts.

MIRIAM WEBSTER - Female. Newcomer. Apparent age young adult at the start of the story. Member in a United Command assault rig squad; serves as robot controller. Informal call sign "Virgin". Webster and Cheng were childhood classmates (although she would have been much younger than Sergeant Cheng). This character is based off a classmate of the author's with a similar first name. The first/last name combination is a play on the cruel jokes employed by American immigration officials to Romanize immigrant names.

NASTASHA SUDEK - Female. Russian or Slavic. Approximately 30 at the start of the story. Member in a United Command assault rig squad, serving as a scout. Romantically involved with OIGUCHI ... because the author loves lesbians. Partly based off the fictional character of Viktoriya Lychenko (who herself was based off Madame Drubetskaya).

YUKO OIGUCHI - Female. Japanese. Approximately 30 at the start of the story. Member in a United Command assault rig squad, serving as a scout. Romantically involved with SUDEK ... because the author loves lesbians. Partly based off Rinko Kikuchi's character in Del Toro's "Pacific Rim".

GLOSSARY

ACTUATOR - Machine capable of imparting motion in multiple directions, often a combination of several motors. Used in AMP and rig manufacture.

AMP - Short for Amplified Mobility Platform. Human operable machine that exaggerates and amplifies basic movement, physical strength, etc. Term introduced in James Cameron's "Avatar".

BACTRIAN - United Command combat rig model that carries a warbot control module into combat to issue mid tier strategic orders to semi-autonomous combat robots. Crew of two. Named for the dual crew blisters it carries.

BATTLE BLISTER - Common name for the BLISTER.

BERSERKER - Large alien fauna possibly native or gen-engineered by the prawn. Used as a siege and shock surface unit.

BLISTER - Operator's control chamber for a fully enclosed combat rig, featuring an interface CRADLE, connections for liquid waste disposal, connections to the CAM PLATE, and liquid crystal touch screens to operate MOCCASYM.

BOT - Short for robot. Robots are generally not autonomous, and generally follow instructions without questioning them.

CAM PLATE - Short for camera plate, the piece of instrumentation on the outer frame of an enclosed rig that features various devices by which the rig's operator may view his environment without exposing himself.

CHIRPER - Derogatory slang for POLEEPKWA. Chiefly Canadian.

COMBAT RIG - A militarized version of the AMP, featuring a fully enclosed environment that protects its user from unwanted or alien hazards.

CORI - Short for COmbat RIg. See COMBAT RIG.

CRADLE - Physical interface device in a BLISTER for a rig driverto translate the motions of his limbs to his machine's limbs, usually on a 1-to-1 ratio basis.

CRICKET - Derogatory slang for POLEEPKWA. Chiefly British.

DHAMPIR - United Command combat rig model made for their Special Operations Group. Crew of one.

DRACHE - Unmanned aerial vehicle launched from a V-rack. May be set to semi-autonomous or non-autonomous (controlled) flight. Carries a variety of ordnance, including low-yield nuclear packages.

DRONE - Unmanned vehicle capable of autonomous or programmed actions. Militarized versions often use biological IFF devices to determine the validity of engagement targets.

EINVELOCITY CANNON - Classified United Command weapon using "adopted Newcomer technology to discharge a desynchronous wave that accelerated normal matter to barely faster-than-light speeds." A thin beam of antimatter was then directed through the center of the wave, and the resultant reaction turned all matter in the wave's path 'vanish' into nothing."

FRAME - Referring to the outer frame of a combat rig. This is to distinguish the "expendable" hardware of a military AMP from the less expendable (and more expensive) BATTLE BLISTER.

GIBBON - United Command combat rig model manufactured for mass deployment. Crew of one.

GLITTERSTICK - Rig weapon that bundles six laser emitters around a carbon fiber pole. Each emitter may be fired in sequence, in pattern, in a simultaneous pulse, and/or directed to discharge their beams at differing angles, essentially functioning as a "laser shotgun."

HOPPER - Derogatory slang for POLEEPKWA. Chiefly American.

LASER MITT - Rig weapon that emits an 80 Terajoule beam. Often installed on a rig's off-hand.

MECH - Short for mecha. Mecha derived from "mechanical". Applies to mechnaized apparati used to enhance an individual's physical performance.

MOCCASYM - Short for Military Operating Command CommunicAtion SYsteM, the middleware used for intra-unit field communications.

NEWCOMER - English term used for the humanoid aliens who crash landed in the United States' Mojave Desert in 1988.

PIG - Particle Impeller Gun. Rig weapon that uses Gaussian principals and magnetic fields to propel antimatter laden rounds from a cyclotron down and out a linear launcher.

PIMP - Portable Indirect Munition Platform. Rig weapon that functions as a short range cruise missile with MARV capable antimatter armed warheads. Mounted on a rig's back.

POLEEPKWA - Afrikaaner term used for the insectoid aliens who landed near Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982.

PRAWN - Derogatory English term for POLEEPKWA.

RIG - Military grade AMP.

RIG DRIVER - User or operator of a RIG.

SKINDICK - Racial slur for a man of Jewish descent.

SLAG - Racial slur for a Newcomer (gender neutral).

SLAGGOT - Gender neutral derogatory term for a human who engages in sexual activity with a Newcomer.

SODA PACK - Rig weapon that launches antimatter cannisters each with the approximate dimension of a 12 ounce soda can.

SPACE GUN - Slang for EINVELOCITY CANNON.

UNICOM - See United Command.

UNITED COMMAND - Military organization formed of various human and Newcomer military and paramilitary groups to fight the alien Poleepkwa.

VOID CANNON - Slang for EINVELOCITY CANNON.

WARRIOR - Caste or sub-species of PRAWN who are larger than their worker drones. Has two fully functioning pairs of upper arms and is capable of independent action.

AUTHOR & TECHNICAL NOTES

I originally wanted to write this back in 2009, when Blomkamp's D9 and Cameron's Avatar were released that same year. I first saw Blomkamp's original work, Alive in JoBurg, in 2007 when it was featured on ImageMakers (a good reason to donate to PBS) and thought it was an interesting approach to South Africa's era of apartheid.

I did not think much of Alive in JoBurg as a technical demonstration of military mecha until the 2009 version of District 9 showed off WETA's "prawn mech" on the silver screen. As impressive as the prawn mech was, it was still not meant for human habitation (especially not feasible was the drilling of neuro-bolts into the pilot's temples).

Thankfully, James Cameron's Avatar visualized a more pragmatic approach to exoskeletons, but something about how the AMPs were portrayed disturbed me. If the purpose of military mecha was to protect and enhance the soldier within, why would the Cameron AMP use plexiglass for its canopy? Certainly the all-enclosed environment of D9's prawn mech was a better approach to design.

With that in mind, I set about "designing" an ideal mecha ideally suitable for human use. I am a terrible illustrator, but what I lacked in hand-eye coordination, I made up in the ability to cherry-pick the best traits of one thing and merge them with another to create the best possible combination. Hence, a completely enclosed powered suit with a deadly payload of effective weapons was the answer.

There have been many approaches to the machine suit in the past: Battletech's Elementals and Protomechs, the Veritech Fighters of Macross, the Fire Marines from Warhammer 40K, et al., with Heinlein's StarShip Troopers being the most revolutionary and Haldeman's Forever War being more rooted in real-life physics. That still leaves a lot of room for improvement since the original powered armor suit concept of 1959.

However, those concepts (with the exceptions of Heinlein and Haldeman) were chiefly one to create a universe where people use large fighting robots to do fictional battle (e.g., Mobile Suit Gundam, et al.). We often forget that old Frank Wright adage, "Form follows function." A military mecha is a tool designed to kill your enemy and to protect its user (at least until the first task is completed); hence, its very appearance, shape, and motion should be designed to do those two jobs and to do it well.

So, the Gibbon was designed with those goals in mind and then some: intimidate the enemy, correctly deploy lethal measures when required, automate the mundane things to simplify operator training, and - above all - be effective.

Mechanized warfare will continue to evolve. The human element of initiating the killshot (or putting into motion the events leading to killing another) will still be there, but the procedures and methods will be simplified, and in some cases, automated.

While completing this story, there have been mecha/robot movies (like Travis Beacham's atrocious "Pacific Rim") that has served as good examples for what not to follow. It's my sincere hope that the CoRi combat rigs - whether Gibbon, Bactrian, or Dhampir - and the units described herein will serve as a better example of what military machines ought to be.

2014 / grey228 / hotmail