Gavin Smith: Veteran

Balor’s Dog Soldier mech had Crom by the neck with one hand and was pounding him repeatedly and rapidly with its other huge metal fist. It didn’t seem to be doing much except stopping Crom from taking other action. Over the tac net I could still hear Pagan begging for fire support. God knew how many of Them were now infected by Crom.

Suddenly Crom grabbed the hand that was pounding him, pulled it off at the wrist and stood up, towering over Balor’s Dog Soldier. With a wrench he pulled the Dog Soldier’s hand from around his neck and then broke the joint in that arm. The Dog Soldier’s laser anti-missile defence system was firing point blank into Crom with little effect. With what seemed like agonising slowness Crom grabbed the front of the Dog Soldier’s chest and dug powerful claws into it, piercing and tearing armour plate.

‘Christ,’ I barely heard Mudge whisper over the net. Crom tore off a large piece of foot-thick armour plate, exposing Balor to space. We all watched as Crom pulled Balor’s impossibly still struggling form from the ruptured Dog Soldier. I could see Balor moving within Crom’s grip. Almost involuntarily I zoomed in on him. Balor’s heavy cybernetic conversion enabled him to survive briefly in a vacuum. I saw him reach up for his eyepatch. Terrified and fascinated I had to watch as he lifted the patch.

There was a very bright light. Before the lenses on the Mamluk burnt out, their flash compensators overloaded, I saw Balor as if in X-ray, his flesh transparent, the machine inside silhouetted by the light. All my systems went down briefly, which should not happen in a mech that was EMP-hardened like the Mamluk. My internal visual display went dark. It flickered back into life as replacement lenses slid into place. I had no idea what had just happened, and there was no concussion wave. I was still hovering where I had been. There was a huge crater in the asteroid, as if a chunk had been bitten out of it. Crom was lying next to the crater, the right side of his body gone. Silent, screaming mouths seemed to cover the left side of his body. Balor was of course nowhere to be seen.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Mudge asked over the net. I had never seen a weapon like it. I felt sickened as I saw that Crom was somehow still moving. I watched as tendrils grew from his cauterised and charred left side, pulling Them into the wound, Their flesh melting and melding into his as he re-grew his missing left side. Balor had died for nothing.

I felt numb. We’d done this: we’d handed Them to the Cabal. Pagan was still begging Gibby over the net, his pleading mixed in with prayers and sobbing. Mudge, Rannu, Pagan and I weren’t even taking evasive action now; we just hovered in space, the integrity of our armour slowly being chipped away by small-arms fire.

On the feed from Morag’s Mamluk I could see that one of the huge tentacles had formed its tip into manipulators and grabbed her mech by the back of its neck. I saw her armour jerk and spasm, presumably as the tentacle’s manipulators pierced it, and the singing stopped.

Crom stood up as more and more tentacles shot out into the void. Above the asteroid there was now a net of craft connected to the walking virus.

The drugs had pretty much worn off now, and I realised there was no more I could do. I could feel the sickness now, my body failing and shutting down much like my mech. I reckoned it had only been adrenalin keeping me alive for some minutes now.

I heard strident and abrasive guitar music.

‘Shut the fuck up, Pagan, you’re boring us,’ Gibby drawled over the tac net. Us? The air filled with plasma and heavy laser fire, missile after missile shot overhead and then the Spear soared into view, every inch of it under fire from the multitude of Them craft which swarmed around it.

Hit after hit from the Spear’s heavy ordnance hit Crom, doing real damage to him, blowing chunks off. Heavy plasma missiles turned the area around him into a sea of fire.

‘You’re coming in too fast!’ I screamed over the tac net. My only reply was laughter from Gibby. I realised it was too heavily damaged to change course.

‘Out of here now!’ I screamed at Rannu, Mudge and Pagan. Mudge grabbed Rannu as the Nepalese’s propulsion fin didn’t seem to be working, and the three of us triggered full burn on our jets, shooting away from the tethered asteroid.

Judging by the force of the explosion, Gibby must have triggered the remaining warheads he had on board. Behind us everything was red as the asteroid was reduced to gravel. The concussion wave slammed into us and mercifully I passed out, though I was pretty sure I’d died.

‘Do you think They’ll believe we came in peace?’ I heard Mudge say through the pain and the nausea. I hoped that Mudge wasn’t in my particular part of the afterlife just yet. I managed to open my eyes. I was still in the prison of my Mamluk. We were floating in space. Rannu’s Mamluk was holding onto mine. A quick diagnostic told me that my mech was just about working and keeping space out. Pagan was still with us as well.

All around us were flight-capable Them, Walkers and other organic mechs, their honeycombed propulsion systems glowing pale blue. The weird thing was They weren’t firing on us. They just seemed to be covering us. It was like They’d taken us prisoner, but They didn’t do that.

I was still receiving feed. Morag was still where she had been, suspended in space, the tentacle gripping the back of her neck. I checked her vital signs. She seemed fine. I mumbled something unintelligible.

‘He’s awake,’ Pagan said.

‘But not making any sense,’ Mudge pointed out.

‘What’s happening to Morag?’ I asked.

‘As far as we can tell, she’s in communication with Them,’ Pagan said. ‘I think they’ve connected to her through her plugs somehow, and the remnants of Ambassador in her ware are enabling her to talk to Them.’ My vision was very blurry and seemed to be fading. The pain was receding somehow as well. Morag was surrounded by light.

I wished I could hear the singing again. I wished I could talk to Morag just once more.

‘How’re we going to get home?’ Pagan wondered. Maybe I could hear the singing.

‘How the hell are we still alive?’ Mudge asked.

‘I don’t think I am,’ I said. I could definitely hear the singing now. Morag looked beautiful in the light. I kicked off towards her with a slow burn from my manoeuvring fin. There was shouting over the tac net but I ignored it. Morag seemed to glow brighter as everything else got darker.