CHAPTER 5 - 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 through 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, this one was not buzzing with activity; instead, it seemed eerily silent and unresponsive. The only activity was on the ground under the vessel.
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 inert, 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 lit, meaning they had power.
Miles zoomed in as much as his 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 react.
"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 escarpment that shielded the bottom two thirds of the Bactrian. Her rig's modified PIG was bundled into a glitterstick. Essentially, it was a sharpshooter's weapon mated with a laser shotgun - a perfect weapon for both ambush and picking off 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, I think," Doyle said. "T'is 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 t' fire on the control module as planned. Your duties 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 occurred 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 somethun' an' 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 eardrums, 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 th' crater an' prep to fire on my mark! All units fall back on One Echo! 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, Teabags," Cheng snapped back. "Lansford, release Drache control t' Ginny."
Instead of the slow agonizing slurring, Miles only heard a series of clicks and clacks from Lansford's Dhampir, followed by the rig'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 Echo's Draches.
"Shall I launch?" the pretty Newcomer asked nervously.
"Hold f'r now," Cheng's voice cut through. "All units, you are weapons free. You have limited cover, so I sugges' you to hurry th' hell up an' get back here. We're goin' to dust th' crater with th' space gun."
At 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 M/AM 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 further away. Miles, Sikarna, and Rachid were now the ones most distant, and time was running out.
"Faraz, Hasan, Menshik, Soltyk! Hold near th' Dhampir and Bactrian! Cover their retreat!" Cheng shouted. "Scouts! Rachid! Sikh! Rook! You have three minutes t' get back here b'fore Lansford fires!"
"PIMP out!" Menshik's voice crackled over his fizzing portrait.
Good, thought Miles. Maybe that would slow that giant tick hurling after him. 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 canisters 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. "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 Precision PIG was unmistakably remarkable. The rookie could have sworn that any deviation would have crippled his machine or ruptured his weapon's cyclotron. He pulled his weapon arm free, turned his PIG onto some nearby enemies shadowing Rachid, shot them dead, then went into a full run.
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 bombs, with spectacular results.
"Ginny?" Cheng rasped. "There's your opening. Launch 'em now. Dive bomb 'em."
:: 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 blazed around them. Aliens were being cut down, their severed limbs spewing exotic viscous blood, or their bodies cut and cauterized from laser fire.
Webster guided her drones and flew 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 while the other four veered away to kill other enemy concentrations. 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 firing at their pursuers. The momentary gaps of weapons fire gave the enemy small gaps to advance on the position, 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 Dhampir. Miles quickly regained his balance, sliding close to 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 was no more panic.
"Nine. Eight. Seven. Six ..."