Ukrainian countryside, late afternoon
Two GL Jaegers kept their comms open across a span of some ten, twelve miles. Mohawk Anubis, known in every Shatterdome for the dumb name and on-the-nose Egyptian paintjob, was somewhere in the hills. Her counterpart, a more generic thing designated Miracle Hugo, buzzed in every ten minutes, always giving the grand old news that nothing was there. Just rain and clouds, mud and rain, clouds and mud.
This information would then be sent to their EU partners in another Jaeger some fifty miles west. The Eastern Reform League had been spotted outside their normal territory on the Russian side of the border, and that's when Hugo and Anubis had been mobilized, ferried and then coptered from Alaska over the old Breach and dropped to walk long-distance across land.
Anubis' Left Hemisphere, O'Connell, disengaged one arm to reach for his water bottle, the motion in his neck as he tipped back carrying to his partner. Then in turn to the jackal-like monster under their feet and above their heads. The unexpected shift in balance sloshed what water was left into his eyes.
"Gah!" He groaned. "Dammit. Helmet's soaked!"
His partner, Jonathan, didn't need to say anything. But O'Connell still replied aloud, even as the thought conducted from his mind through the Mark-Six into Jonathan, and the reply was instantaneous.
"Yes, I know they're waterproofed because of idiots like me. But if I'm in your head for this long, and you're in mine, aren't we both idiots by this point?"
Mental shrug.
"I think I'm gonna grab us some granola cubes. We're stopped for the moment anyway. And shut up, I know at this rate they won't last the week. But you should also know I don't think we'll be - "
He sensed the proximity alarm going off from three sides: his mind, his partner's, and the machine that detected something. Jonathan finally talked.
"Out here that long? Hope not." O'Connell stomped his boots back into their clamps, switched his left control gauntlet back on. He sighed.
"Crap. Anything on vis?" The thought sent with it: Is it them? See any red-green flags or Russian-speaking Jaegers anywhere? Maybe Chinese. Hell, Mongolian. With any luck, anything we fight is made in China.
With both minds racing they switched fully to verbal.
"That's a negative. Checking back in with Hugo."
Jonathan reached with his non-controlling hand for the middle console, reopened their line with Miracle Hugo.
"Miracle Hugo, this is Mohawk Anubis, you copy?"
Static.
"Miracle Hugo, this is Mohawk Anubis, do you copy?"
O'Connell: "Still not seeing anything. Just hills, and a lot of those. Seismic activity? Anything on the sats?"
He gave up on getting a connection.
"If so, it's not reading it." He opened the raw sensory data, O'Connell reaching with his right what Jonathan couldn't with his left. "Oh. Never mind. We had something - "
" - and something big - "
" - but it was so - "
" - quick it - "
" - was here and gone. Disengage hip lock, we'll need our legs back."
Beep beep.
"Already done."
Mohawk Anubis took her first steps since O'Connell reached for his water. She wasn't the largest by Mark-Six standards, and any Jaegnerd would laugh at her lack of proper armor, but she moved like the Second Coming of Striker, and you'd be surprised the damage she could do.
"Last known location?"
"The blip was in Hugo's general direction - "
" - our three-o'clock - "
" - eight-point-five miles out. Let's go."
Anubis' titular mohawk flowed lightly as they picked up speed, churning the dirt beneath their feet and kicking it to about their waist level.
There was a small village a few miles away. Not likely to see any danger, but they couldn't risk it. Jonathan punched in another transmission:
"EXCENT, get a signal to that nearby town. Hugo's dark and we read possible Reform League."
Several second delay. They took three more steps in the time it took to get a response.
"Anubis, this is EXCENT, Supervisor Choi speaking. Confirm, Hugo signal lost. I need to lock onto your signal, gimme a moment. No Reform signature?"
"None we know. None we can pronounce, either." What EXCENT didn't hear bounced between them: We could be reading Hanzyrillic in a few years. At least it'll be easier to pronounce then, when it's required knowledge for every citizen.
"Got your lock. Confirm: village several miles East? Less than a thousand people?"
"More or less. Send the message."
"Done. Satellites don't read anything, drones are coming up blank."
"We have drones?" Some things, Legion didn't communicate to teams on long excursions.
Another long pause.
"EXCENT?" Jonathan.
"Yeah, EXCENT, y'all okay?"
Silent.
They were about to cut the line when they got their reply:
"Sheeeee-it. Guys, let's just keep it between us that we have those. It's... They're on loan from another tech company, you'll be seeing - "
Signal cut. They knew exactly what it was. They'd been distracted, and now something was moving in.
O'Connell: "C'mon. Let's get going. They're basically on top of us. Deploy the Thing?"
"Read my mind."
They threw down their arms in unison, summoning their "First Course" weapon: wrist claws. Their Mohawk bristled, sensing danger - and that meant a chance to show itself off.
Anubis kept moving. No sign of activity. It was like they'd stepped from Ukraine to Iowa. Being born and raised there, Jonathan hated Iowa, but that's where Anubis seemed to lead them now. Just a bunch of dead hills covered in grass - green and brown - cloudy sky, jagged carve of a horizon from the land. If they listened, the patter of rain against their hull sounded more like rocks.
The pilots tightened their Handshake and became completely mute. Three bodies split two ways pooling into a single entity that felt and acted through all three. Jonathan saw through O'Connell saw through Jonathan saw through Anubis itself. Felt the weight of its arm blades, the hum emanating from their Mohawked head.
Seismic activity: big, but erratic. No algorithm they had could track surface movement. Even a Kaiju would have to be in naked eye range to make these kinds of rumbles, and they would never be this erratic.
Got anything?
We're seeing through our eyes. Dumb question.
And we still have the sensation of water running into our helmet. Thanks for that.
No problem.
They read a signature. A big red dot on the readouts. Pulsing on radar.
Felt for their wrist claws again. They would be facing battle. Whatever got Hugo was definitely coming for them.
O'Connell tried the comms to their sister Jaeger again. Both spoke as one through the mic, matching intonation and rhythm exactly, like two of the same voice. Keep up a Drift like this, they could take on anything. If their brains didn't polarize and melt towards each other or some sci-fi shit like that.
"Hugo, this is Anubis. Repeat, Hugo, this is Anubis. Please respond, over."
Silence.
Great. The event's approaching us.
See that.
Why'd we call out anyway?
We want it to come to us.
Right.
Our arms are extended. Sharp.
Anubis is the god of lost souls. Prepare to be found, fiend!
Synchronized chuckle.
They walked towards the event, passing over two small hills, feeling the muscles strain in their own legs as they climbed up and then down and then up and then down.
Right on top of it!
The signal went dead. The rumbles stopped.
Shit.
Might have to skip to Second Course.
Spear?
Yeah, pull -
BOOM.
Rumble behind them now, half a kilometer.
BOOM.
Three-hundred meters to their right.
BOOM.
Two-hundred, eleven o'clock.
The relay was quick:
Spiraling in. Nothing's that fast.
Missiles are.
Missiles don't crawl.
Their breathing was ragged. Their sync rate spiked for a moment, dropped below a percent of their average.
That's when it struck.
BOOM.
It came up from the ground, bursting the dirt of the hill like one giant pimple on the face of the earth, spurting like silvery blood. It was a machine that roared like a beast, and a big one at that.
The first half of its serpentine body shot straight up, covered in scales of treads and tunnel sensors, sending pockets of dirt flying hundreds of meters straight up. The Gipsy Legion Jaeger recoiled visibly in a shock that mirrored its pilots. That was good. They had never seen the Worm before.
Pilot flares tinted the sky with sparks, casting an aura on it. From its drilled mouth it let loose a scream like thousands of ungodly engines turning over, then fell forward as its second half freed itself from the dirt.
It shredded everything it touched, and burrowed with almost equal speed aboveground as below, most of its treads turning emptily across its long frame. The flares bathed it in smoke as they fell to earth again, obscuring bits of its body and masking its true length as it fully emerged.
It was just shy of a kilometer long.
Mohawk Anubis was not sure where to hit the metal Kaiju that was clearly the source of those seismic disturbances. It had to be a Jaeger of some kind, the Reform League's newest project. She drew back several paces as it burst forth, several more as it came up fully from the protection of the dirt.
Not that the Worm needed protection.
She wanted to charge it, dig her blades into its fat body. It was not so thick or tall that such a feat would be impossible, it was hardly much thicker than her own torso at the shoulders.
Oh well, she thought. Screw it. If she died, she died.
She leapt onto the Worm, arms raised, ready to drop and dig them hard into its body before it could so much as look up at her.
That did not happen.
It raised its crown, trained turrets hidden within its scales across that long body, and opened diverting fire. She took the hits gladly at first. Then they started to hurt. She tried running away, but always those little guns were there, like insects charging at her face with stingers out.
The Worm brought its mighty tail up, and all at once it smacked across Anubis' ribs with a force that nearly shattered her lungs (her "lungs" being the twin nuke chambers hidden behind the heavy breastplate that buckled now from pressure).
She needed to retreat, to get away, to get signal. Already this monster was killing her. It was like a manmade Kaiju, and her boys had fought enough of those to know. It moved like a Kaiju, it hit like a Kaiju. But Kaiju didn't bristle with machine turrets and mortar mounts.
She just needed to get away. The Worm did not let her.
It wrapped itself around her, she tried clawing at it like the wild jackal she was, but before she knew it her arms were pinned to her sides. It tightened its coil around her. Scales became spikes as turrets retreated into its skin, and sawblades reemerged.
Her skin was being ground to paper. Her boys felt all of it with nerves that were not there. Was this the fate her sister Hugo had also faced?
The "face" raised itself to her level. It was a swirl of teeth and red eyes that blinked randomly with no relation to one another. A tongue of cable flicked at them, its engines let loose a roar like that from a monster's throat.
It spoke in terse Russian with a modulated voice that echoed off everything. It was like its vocal chords were grinding, skittering.
"Иди домой, егерь. Не заставляй нас уничтожать тебя."
Her onboard translators kicked in: "Go home, Jaeger. Don't make us destroy you." She heard and understood.
She was silent. She could speak, but would not.
It tightened its grip.
She would explode and destroy both of them. Or maybe it was capable of withstanding the blast. The Mark-Three Gipsy Danger had survived both a nuclear blast and a whole ocean dropped on top of her. This thing must be indestructible.
The Worm's tail end raised itself to her face. It ended in a spike that could doubtless drive itself through her skull. Killing her boys and leaving her paralyzed.
"Это наша земля. Не твое, и не у Цыганский-Легиона. Иди домой."
Briefly, the tail pointed downward to the shredded remains of grass, taking the time to wipe its muddied blade against the ground. This land was now theirs, it told her. Not hers, not Gypsy Legion's.
It tightened. She felt things snapping inside her. Like ribs breaking.
Still she was silent.
The Worm raised its tail to her face again.
"Иди домой, или умри…"
Still she did not speak.
Her boys were planning something. They had to escape.
It tightened further. Anubis fell. The antennae of her mohawk, knocked loose sometime earlier, dangled helplessly to one side from her alloyed scalp. Her head was cracked. It was almost painful.
Still the Worm surrounded her, and always its head and tail were on her, watching. Dozens of red eyes blinked one by one. Its tongue lolled randomly at her. Its face rested above her.
The two Jaegers were in agreement: the Worm would kill Anubis. It was clearly not made in China. And it did not, as it claimed, want her to go home.
"Умри…"
Due to the experiences of its leaders during the Kaiju Wars, all GL Jaegers are equipped with certain safeguards, certain preparations. All were equipped with nuclear drives, long-range comms, food and water packs, anti-radiation and stimulant drugs, even basic living quarters. All had a rescue kits: flare guns, redundant liferafts, first aid kits and built-in medical scanners.
But other standard features were added for combat - specifically, Jaeger-on-Jaeger combat. These included offensive measures - standard melee weapons, limb engines and even a few explosives; defensive features - shielding, movable armor, EMP for digital threats; and more... ambiguous tools.
One of these is a prototype skeletal configuration that could be applied to future models should Anubis have proven it to handle well.
It wouldn't do her any good unless they had a window of escape to begin with, and as of right now there was none. But her boys, Jonathan and O'Connell, were thinking hard as one. If they could get free for a moment, their hilarious plan just might work.
The Worm wasn't tightening its grip further.
What weapons were in Anubis' head and feet? And how would it respond if she spoke?
Both sunk into the pool of consciousness that gave the Jaeger a mind of her own.
She readied her vocal chords, switched on her lights. The translator module gave her boys a tongue that was not theirs. It was stiff in their mouths, and stiffer in hers, but it could be understood.
She spoke. Were she human, the crushed lungs would have made that impossible. But still she did.
"Извини. Буду идёть домой, а не хочу умирать."
The Worm did not tighten its grip on her. Did loosen slightly. It clearly understood, but she made sure to phrase in in such a way as to come off as casual. Sure, it was crushing her to death exactly as intended, but she was fine. She was okay. None of it bothered her.
She returned to English.
"Hey, Worm, mind letting me outta here? I've got running and spreading tales of your power to do."
Silent. No response. Its many eyes just continued to blink in just as many directions.
She mentally checked her joints again. Her legs needed to stay, they were important. At least one arm. Her boys were in her head. One arm it was, then. The whole arm, or else it wouldn't do much. One arm might not even be enough.
It tilted its head at her, flicked that horrible tongue again.
Just how fast could the creature move? Incapacitated? How could she incapacitate it?
But she was still certain it was a good plan. Her lungs were not badly enough damaged that they would give on her as she ran. At least, her diagnostics didn't say so.
She did have weapons in her head. Jonathan had disabled one gauntlet to reach for a cord. Flares built into her broken head. Her head was at the right angle, they would go up. Her legs needed to be ready. Arms too. It couldn't accidentally think it had maimed her, or else the ruse would never happen.
How far did the monster's jamming range extend? How far would she need to run, and how long would she have?
Too late to worry now. Action!
She fired her flares into the Worm's mouth as it was opened. In the moment of shock it loosened some of its grip. She scrambled free before it could correct, and unhitched her left shoulder. Every blade in the arm was ready to deploy, and when it opened its mouth to roar again, she shut it up. The whole arm let itself be swallowed down the beast's greedy throat, and she broke free of it as blades shot from . The whole arm came loose, exactly as designed, and she was running. Heard chuffing, grinding as it
"Hah, eat arm!" one of her boys shouted. They were so pooled together, neither could tell who it was.
Anubis' legs were sucking mud on a scale no human could imagine. But still she was hotfooting along, chugging with her legs and one arm like a marathon runner. Less shitstained pants, too, thought her boys. They had dignity to simply drop an arm to escape.
The torso imbalance became obvious in several seconds, and she shifted her weight to compensate, leaning into the next little hill and letting back on the downside.
What computers in her head still worked showed a proximity alarm. It was catching up to them now.
Faster, faster! It was cutting through the hills, demolishing them, returning them to molehills while she had no choice but to go over them one at a time.
She could almost feel the dirt it was throwing. Was the Worm itself emitting the jammer, or was it another Reform machine nearby?
Both pilots could now free their left arms from the gauntlets to roll control panels over and handle less bodily matters: their own automated turrets, power reserve movement, realtime diagnostics. She was losing blood. Neither core was operating at full. Leakage was at safe levels but it was energy she would not get back. She needed more now.
The Worm shrugged off any hits she fired at it. It just kept coming.
And before she knew it, one of the hills was too much for her fragile balance. She fell forward. Tried getting to her feet, and the Worm fired cables around her ankle. She clawed at the ground, but it was wet and she simply muddied her remaining hand. It came freely with her as she was drawn to the beast. It was over.
She was over.
The rain had slowed, but the sun would not come out today.
And the Worm did not kill Anubis or Hugo. If anything, it would break one down for parts at a Reform base. And this Anubis, that limb design puzzled it. What practical uses had it in the hands of creative pilots? Enough to warrant further investigation.
It scurried across land, dragging its newest catch behind on cables. Its pilots would have no choice but to either disable their Drift and ride it out from a safer hole in the Jaeger's broken skull, or perish. Not that it mattered just yet. It spit out the fragments of the limb shoved down its throat. Leave it as a sign for Gipsy Legion.
The Worm would have its revenge.
...
"Well, hello, sure hope this was a decent comeback after, well, not updating since before the world went into its first lockdown.
So yeah. Any reviews would be beyond appreciated, and any reader who's made it even this far is special to me.
Stay safe. Stuff's crazy, man."
- The Toa of Science Fiction :)
(P.S.: I was explaining the Anubis/Worm to a scene and used the phrase "Eat arm, MEGATHOT!" Sadly, it would not jive with the more serious(-ish) story, but still thought it was worth sharing. Who knows, maybe this'll get popular enough to be made into somkinda shitpost. That'd be awesome. But we're not there yet.)
(P.P.S.: Learn Russian. Please. It'll be a journey for both of us, but it's a wonderful language, and I'm turning writing into a fluency exercise of sorts. Being able to read the native text and understand what it sounds like at least would help a lot.)
(Okay I'm done. Good night.)