World of Hurt Read online

  I grabbed her other leg and held on with all my might, kept locked in place by my metal leash. Jezzy pretzeled herself through the open latch and grabbed the edge of the parachute. Richter was, by this time, screaming at us through the commlink (“Do not G-lock on me!” he thundered, among other choice words that usually ended in an expletive). I couldn’t answer him of course, I was too busy making sure that Jezzy wasn’t sucked outside to her death.

  My eyes cut to the viewscreen which contained an altimeter.

  We were nine-thousand feet off the ground and dropping fast and then she did it. Jezzy unfurled the last remaining section of the parachute which snapped back as—

  WHUNK!

  The parachute ballooned and then deployed in full, slowing our descent, stabilizing the Spence mech.

  I pulled down on Jezzy’s legs a final time and she slammed the latch closed before crashing down into my arms.

  She was on my lap, facing me, our faces were inches apart, our mouths even closer.

  “Somehow I always pictured this moment with candles and soft music,” I said.

  She held out her hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m still a little woozy, Danny. I don’t have the energy to smack you in the face. Feel free to do the deed yourself.”

  I kissed her hand and she clambered back to her seat. I cued the commlink and studied the viewscreen, muttering to Richter that we’d had a bit of a mixup, but had resolved the issue. He said to locate our night-vision cameras and after some searching I found the switch and flipped it on. Scanning the viewscreen I could see that there was nothing but desert for hundreds of miles in every direction.

  “Check the altimeter,” Jezzy said.

  I did and noted that we were less than five-thousand feet off the ground. Following Richter’s orders, I did what was needed to prepare the Spence mech for landing. That is, I flipped a switch and deployed a secondary parachute (without error this time), that slowed our descent a second time.

  I lowered the mech into stoop and realized I could control our trajectory by the placement of our arms. Swinging them out, I was able to guide the machine down toward the landing zone, which was illuminated by a neon X on our viewscreen. I sucked in several breaths, counting the minutes as they ticked by, using what the Fabs called our SRTC, search radar terrain clearance, to whip us down to the landing spot. I blinked and looked down as the ground rushed up to greet us—

  WHUMP!

  We hit the desert floor hard and our kinetic shock absorbers instantly engaged to dampen the impact which nevertheless launched us forward into a half-assed somersault. We were shrouded in the parachutes, but miraculously maintained our balance.

  “Deus and Jezzy get a 9.9 for the dismount!” Dru said with a laugh over the commlink.

  Maneuvering our mech sideways in the soft sand, I used our metal hands to tear away the parachutes. Shapes resolved in the soft glow of the night-vision. The other operators were visible, standing where they landed, shucking their ‘cutes. We’d all made it down in one piece, including Simeon who was the closest operator to me.

  “Systems checks,” Simeon said. “If you’re disabled in any way we need to know about it now.”

  Jezzy and I scanned the viewscreen and operating monitors. I scoped a screen that detailed our weapons systems and the viability of the mech’s engine. Aside from several loose flange mountings on some of the mech’s servo motors, everything was green, and green was good.

  All of the other mech operators sounded off, listing their respective bumps and bruises, but none of the machines had suffered any significant damage on the way down.

  It was five forty-eight a.m. when we collectively crouch-marched toward a series of dunes that were ten yards away.

  We peeked over the dunes for a minute or two and, using our night-vision, noted a depression, a low point out on the horizon. There was a single object sticking up out of the ground at the center of the low point, which looked like a communications tower of some kind.

  “Activate your holo app,” Richter said over the commlink.

  I reached down and pushed the red button on the edge of the viewscreen. There was a pulse of green light from a projector on the cockpit glass and then an image of Richter’s face morphed out of the nothingness. His expressionless face was freaky looking and I waved my hand over it and made a set of “rabbit’s ears” with my fingers.

  “I can see you doing that,” Richter said.

  My hand came down.

  “The time is five fifty a.m.,” Richter said. “The sky will begin to lighten in approximately forty minutes give or take.”

  “Where are the scuds?” Dru asked.

  “Intel suggests the enemy is en route to the target. Check your viewscreens for an updated order of battle.”

  I scanned the viewscreen which showed an incredibly-detailed rendering of the surrounding areas. The rendering slowly changed as a mass of interpenetrating points and lines appeared, coalescing into a proper map, a suggested route to take down to the low point which was indeed our target.

  “The first rule of hunting is patience. You will wait until the signal has been given to advance,” Richter said.

  “And then?” I asked.

  “You will attack at dawn with the sun at your backs.”

  13

  We sat in the darkness and silence, waiting for the aliens to appear.

  “What happens if they don’t show?” Jezzy asked.

  “Then we’ll all join up and make sand angels or have a sandball fight,” I replied. “I mean it is almost Christmas after all.”

  I looked back and she flipped me a middle finger. Something stirred outside and I whipped around. I flipped on our night-vision and spotted a form, a man, on the ground. Looking closer, I could see that it was Billy. He was climbing up the front of his mech, fixing something to the sides of this turret. One of the other operators flipped on a small exterior light which allowed us to see that Billy had placed reindeer antlers on his mech.

  Before I could cue up our boombox, one of the other operators piped some old Christmas tunes through the commlink, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.” I expected Richter at any moment to order us to shut the music off, but he didn’t and so we just sat there watching Billy placing tinsel on Ren’s and Sato’s mech. Then he slapped what looked like an “Elf on the Shelf” on Baila’s mech and waved at Simeon.

  “How come I don’t get anything?” Simeon asked.

  “Cause you’re the motherfucking Grinch!” Billy shouted. We laughed and he gestured for me to pop the latch on our mech. I did, undoing my carbon-fiber leash and crawling outside onto the top of our mech where I looked down on Billy.

  “You’re nuts, man,” I said.

  “That’s what my shrink keeps telling me.”

  He tossed me two objects. Red and white Santa Claus hats. Snickering, he returned to the mech he shared with Dru as I plopped back down in my seat. I fitted the hat onto my head and handed the other one to Jezzy. “Season’s greetings,” I said.

  She took the hat and cocked it on her head and then we just sat there listening to the music. I was halfway through humming the chorus to “Winter Wonderland” when beeping sounds echoed in the cockpit. I looked down at the viewscreen and the music ended. Simeon whispered: “We’ve got movement, boys and girls.”

  Dawn was beginning to leak into the gray sky, the sun rising even as the desert remained shrouded in semi-darkness. I waited and scanned the viewscreen again.

  Nothing was visible in the night-vision.

  Not a creature was stirring not even an …

  Alien?

  I saw one.

  Yep, there it was.

  The unmistakable silhouette of a scud, a misshapen head studded with what looked like horns, rising up out of the murkiness in the distance.

  Then another alien appeared, then four more, and before I could speak a word, the dunes on the other side of the target area (three quarters of a mile from our then-
current position) were full of forms lumbering forward like dark cutouts. And beyond that, cruising barely above the surface of the desert, was the unmistakable outline of an alien glider.

  “They’re heeerrrreee,” Jezzy said, doing her best approximation of the little girl in the old “Poltergeist” movies.

  I waited for Simeon or Richter to give the order to move out, but nobody said anything for several seconds.

  “That’s a lot of scuds,” Baila said, splitting the silence, saying what was on everyone’s minds.

  “Given that we’re outnumbered, now seems like an appropriate time to ask ya’all what kinds of funerals you’ll be wanting,” Billy asked.

  “Seriously?” Jezzy asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I always wanted to go out like a full-on Viking,” I said over the commlink.

  “Ah, yes. With the burning boat?” Sato asked.

  “The long boat, the fire, the works,” I replied.

  “I’m not a huge fan of flameage, so I’m thinking I’m gonna go for the Muslim thing,” Dru said.

  “What’s with that?” Baila asked, as the aliens drew closer.

  “They get this dude to clean you up after you die,” Dru answered “They burn incense and wash your body in lotus leaves and perfume and water tapped from a spring that bubbled up in the time of Abraham. I like the sound of that.”

  “Figures,” Billy said. “Only time in your life you’re planning on cleaning up and smelling good and it’s when you’re dead.”

  The commlink echoed with the nervous laughter of the other operators. My smile quickly slipped away as I returned to the viewscreen. There were more aliens than I’d imagined. Probably eighty or ninety at least. And they had that glider and several large battle mechs that dropped down from it on those leaders they were so fond of.

  My throat was as dry as the surrounding desert. I expected holographic Richter to appear at any moment to give us a final pep talk, but he didn’t show. Moreover, nobody spoke a word and I reckoned it was because they were looking at the very same thing and were like me: nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as my grandmother used to say.

  “Okay,” Simeon finally whispered over the commlink. “Let’s go.”

  I slotted the controls down and amped the Spence mech’s engine. I cued my head-up display and there was indeed a counter of some kind up and to the right of the crosshairs on our targeting reticle. A way for us to keep track of the number of enemy killed. In short, an “EKIA counter.”

  “We leapfrogging or using buddy rushes?” Billy asked over the commlink.

  “Negative,” Simeon answered. “This is a full-on assault. The desert’s a free-fire zone.”

  “Sweetness. Time for some straight-up, feel-good jammie-jammie,” Dru said.

  Jezzy laid a hand on my shoulder. “I count ninety-seven scuds.”

  “Ninety-eight,” I corrected after clocking the viewscreen which had identified all of the aliens including, I hoped, Alpha Timbo.

  We divided and moved forward without any semblance of order. I’d expected us to use some kind of military tactics, but Simeon said we were mechanized killers … we were like Viking berserkers. We’d just bumrush the bastards and kill anything that moved.

  Faster now.

  Our machines were sprinting up over the dunes.

  In seconds it would be light outside and they’d surely see us.

  I looked out the cockpit and caught sight of Baila. A faint smile played at the edges of her mouth and I nodded to her and she nodded back.

  “I saw that,” Jezzy whispered.

  I covered the commlink and shot a look back at her. “Just being neighborly.”

  “Sure you were,” Jezzy replied.

  “Nine-hundred yards from the target,” Billy said.

  “Lock and load,” Simeon intoned. “All weapons should be hot. Repeat. All weapons hot.”

  A beep echoed from the edge of the viewscreen and I tapped the red button as a holographic image of Richter and Dexter appeared. “They came on the fifteenth day of May,” Richter said. “Without provocation they attacked, destroyed, and enslaved our world. They gave no quarter. Give them none this day.”

  “Yes, sir,” several of the other operators answered back.

  “We remember what was said the day the Earth was liberated,” Richter continued. “Never again.”

  “NEVER AGAIN!” all of us shouted back.

  The holographic images vanished and we crashed over the top of the dunes and plunged down the other side.

  We galloped across the sand like a herd of mechanical horses, the sun rising behind us, obscuring our forms. For a moment I thought that we’d catch the aliens completely by surprise and then …

  The first rocket crashed into the ground ahead of us, kicking up a whirlwind of sand and debris.

  “CHARGE!” Simeon shrieked as we raised the arms on our mechs and opened fire.

  14

  There was a burst of orange flames and then three rockets from our mech sliced through the air and detonated in the middle of the aliens, scattering them like tenpins.

  I cheered and centered our firing reticle over the scuds as Jezzy fired volleys from our cannons, cutting the aliens down where they stood as our EKIA counter soared.

  Somebody cranked the Christmas music again and it wailed over the commlink as the other operators opened fire. In seconds, the ground ahead was dotted with small fires, the sand streaked with alien gore and body parts.

  I eased down on the controls and slashed forward, Jezzy firing as we advanced. The aliens regrouped and continued to fire back at us—

  BOOM!

  An enemy missile struck just ahead of us, the backblast shunting our Spence mech sideways. My fingers tapped the mech’s equalizers, transferring weight from one foot to another, making sure we didn’t topple over. Our engine valves hissed and the sound of straining gears reverberated as we dropped into a crouch.

  We rose up to see the alien glider slicing by overhead. We fired on the glider with our cannons even as a compartment on its belly opened. A dozen objects dropped out of the machine.

  At first, I thought the objects might be bombs, but I was soon proven wrong when they hit the sand several hundred feet away from us. They were the size and shape of beach balls, silver in color, and seemingly metallic in composition.

  “What the hell are those?” Jezzy asked.

  Quick as a reflex, scores of metal legs erupted from the sides of the silver balls along with circular cutting devices. With the numerous metal legs, the silver balls resembled mechanical spiders. They instantly vanished from sight, tunneling down into the sand.

  “I don’t like this at all,” I said.

  I pushed the Spence mech forward, searching the ground when I saw—

  A glint of metal in the sand.

  I eased the Spence mech over and—

  WHOMP! WHOMP!

  The metal spiders shot up out of the sand, followed by other, larger creatures, including several purple-skinned scuds that resembled praying mantises.

  They angled toward us, firing rifles, and we quickly began inflicting maximum damage, the air soon thick with our cannon and rocket fire.

  The arms on the Spence mech swept left to right, raking the aliens, divesting them of heads and limbs. Gushers of alien blood streak the desert floor when—

  WHUNK!

  Four of the metal spiders spun from out of nowhere and attached themselves to our turret!

  They suctioned onto the mech’s exterior, their cutting devices whirring to life, casting off sparks as they tried to slice through the turret.

  My Santa hat shook as I rocked the controls, dislodging the spiders. I managed to fling them all off, and Jezzy shot all but one of the metal monsters like skeet before they hit the ground.

  The final spider tried to scuttle away and I grabbed the thing with our mech’s metal hand.

  I held it up and watched the thing’s gears and cutting device whirlin
g like dervishes. Then I flung it like a baseball at the glider where it slammed into the side of the vessel. I looked back at Jezzy. “They almost cut their way in.”

  “Almost only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades,” she said.

  Listening to the howls of the other operators, we churned forward, plowing across the bodies of dead aliens, the sand trembling with every step we took.

  The remaining fifty or sixty aliens took cover behind the dunes or their own Reaper mechs, which were pouring fire at us. I searched the enemy ranks for Alpha Timbo, but I couldn’t make out any faces because of the combination of screams, smoke, and incoming fire (which often created what one of the other operators called the “whirlwind of war.”)

  Suddenly, we were snared in the whirlwind, caught up in the deafening chaos of combat. I could hear the rounds from the alien guns bouncing off our turret against the numbing blasts of rockets and missiles that carved deep holes out in the desert sand.

  Spinning, I watched an alien grenade hit the ground nearby and vanish in a fireball. The resulting blast tossed us sideways.

  We slammed into the sand, carving a long trench as the Spence mech’s engines sputtered and sighed, but kept revving.

  I looked up to see one of the praying mantis-like scuds mounting us.

  The bug’s jaws unhinged and snapped at the air.

  I flicked my right thumb and our cannon rotated before the alien could react.

  We fired a burst into the bug’s stomach, a beautiful center-mass shot that turned its torso into pulp before another alien threw itself at us with a full-body heave.

  We shoved the second alien back and vaporized it with a rocket and then we were on the move again, steamrolling forward.

  I quickly saw cannon fire from the scuds tearing holes through the legs of Ren and Sato’s mech even as they waded into the counterattacking aliens. Their machine was like an angel of death as it cut a path forward toward the dunes where the scuds were hiding.

  The ladies’ mech absorbed a blast from a rocket fired by the aliens, the explosion chewing off a sliver of the top of their turret. I was scared that they might be injured, but the blast didn’t slow them down and they proceeded to shoot down the alien that fired the rocket along with five of its comrades.