Kella zigged and zagged, dodging missiles and lasers fired off from the trio of enemy machines with ease. The new Scythe was far and beyond anything it had been before. Gavin hadn’t simply rebuilt it. He’d reinvented it. Maneuvers that had once been difficult at best were now smooth and easy. Her onboard VI interface was fast and accurate, and, Kella noticed, had an avatar that looked suspiciously like Gavin’s camera remote. She smiled at the thought.
She’d also noticed as she’d mounted up, that Gavin had also repainted the Scythe in all new colors of black and deep blue, and anointed the machine with the art of Death’s Scythe stenciled across the cowling. She hadn’t even cared that he’d removed all logos of the Deep Wolves. Tenner wouldn’t be pleased, but she found that she really didn’t care. This machine was truly hers now. And that was thanks to Gavin. She realized she’d never received such an impressive gift before. Gavin had categorically, and vehemently refused and promises she made to repay him back as she’d strapped in. It just wasn’t his style, he said. It was a gift, intended as a partial apology for his cold behavior back on Dulabar.
A warning indicator flashed, and an enemy Lancer, as the IFF labeled it, ambushed her from around an asteroid. She fired her shoulder mounted missiles at the asteroid, using the resulting shockwave to blow the mecha out of position and she roared by as the machine tumbled away. She pirouetted around another chunk of rock and came dashing back into the fray against the three mecha, her missiles firing as soon as they achieved lock, and her fore-arm mounted lasers arcing out into space. The maneuver worked, and she caught one of the three through the middle. It exploded in a cloud of debris and hot gases, while the cockpit ejected out one end of the fireball.
She evaded the fallout and raced back around another asteroid away from retaliatory fire.
“Chow!” Martian roared as he watched the third man in his unit explode under the intense fire from the unknown mark.
“I’m fine Cap,” Chow came back, his speech stilted. “Just my pride’s been hurt. Take it out for me, will ya?”
“Roger that,” Martian said as he wheeled his Lancer around an asteroid and grabbed hold, finding purchase. He clung to the rock and waited for the enemy mecha to show itself. Janet continued on out in the open, keeping close to Martian’s rock, playing the bait. “Show yourself, you sunova,” Martia cursed.
As if hearing his plea, the enemy machine exploded from behind a cluster of asteroids, the PDE spiral glowing hot purple. It moved with uncanny grace and speed. It was even moving faster than Martian’s computer could keep up with, and he kept losing lock. Angered, he switched over to manual and fired a salvo of missiles from his shoulder tubes at a spot he expected it to be, his machine still hidden behind the rock. The enemy mecha was screaming in towards Janet, and she was running out of room to maneuver. He watched the missiles glide in a solid arc, and glanced at the scanner readout for the enemy. It was heading straight for the missiles. Martian had aimed perfectly.
At least, so he’d thought. The mecha twirled away at the last moment, and the missiles exploded harmlessly against an asteroid. Martian swore and dislodged himself from the rock he’d been clinging too and kicked his own PDE into high gear. He fought the acceleration as he raced to join Janet. But he was too late. He watched helplessly as blue lasers arced out brightly against the black backdrop. The enemy was coming in from an entirely different vector, and Janet was in the line of fire.
Martian roared a warning to Janet as he fired his missiles at the enemy machine. She brought her mirror shield up just in time and managed to deflect part of the beam, but not before it caused serious damage to her calf-mounted maneuvering thrusters and severing the leg at the knee. Martian heard her grunt from the impact over the channel, and watched as she tried to limp away, sparks and gases spurting from the stump as if the mecha were really bleeding. Martian’s missiles had been wasted, having given chase tracking a sensor echo, and disappeared into the field. The enemy machine had vanished. Martian ran his scanners in full sweeps, but found nothing.
“Janet, you alright?” he said as he brought his Lancer in next to her damaged unit. She was trying to navigate behind a slowly tumbling asteroid a little bigger than she was, but was finding it difficult missing the lower thruster.
“Fine, but my machine is fighting me,” she grunted.
“You’re missing half your leg,” Martian pointed out keeping his tone light. He surveyed the damage and was surprised her machine was still in one piece. If she hadn’t gotten the mirror shield up, she’d be sitting in a life pod like Chow.
“Damn,” she responded. “I’m going to try to limp home. Cover me?”
“You got it. Keep to the rocks for cover.”
“Right,” she said, and she fired the PDE at a low level. The purple spiral was small, but noticeable. Martian concentrated on his scanners as Janet limped away at a slow clip.
“Here it comes!” Martian called as his scanner began to warble. He pulled his machine around and made for the sensor blip. He kept asteroids between his machine and the target, not wanting to give his position away. Janet would unfortunately still have to play bait, but Martian was confident he’d nail the target before things progressed that far. The game was up.
Gavin meanwhile was having his own problems. The Gladius had scattered sensor drones all around their sector of the asteroid field now that the tracker was disabled. They were hunting Gavin the old-fashioned way, and it was effective. He’d destroy them as he found him, but the self-propelled, VI-controlled drones were fast, relentless and in large numbers. Like hunting dogs, they worked in coordinated groups, and relayed data to each other and to their master. Sensor alarms would wail as Gavin tripped one, and moments later, the Gladius would glide in from the darkness firing banks of superheated plasma cannons.
The Gladius in action was a beautiful sight. Due to its small size and compact design, the ship couldn’t afford to waste space on self-targeting laser snubs like the Praetorian. Instead, the Gladius was equipped with rows of laser emitters that simply fired ‘outward’ along the dorsal surfaces of the ship. To aim, the ship scattered self-propelled mirror reflectors that would reflect the beams towards a single target. The system was fast and deadly, but relied upon a stockpile of the throw-away reflectors. Regardless, the compact size of the system allowed for the Gladius to carry nearly twice the amount of laser emitters carried by the Praetorian.
Like great red wings fanning out from the top side of the Gladius, the lasers shot out into space and bounced off of the reflectors creating beautifully symmetrical lattices of death and destruction. Acting like a spider web made of energetic light, Gavin found himself trapped in the Gladius’ attack. He maneuvered as best he could, but the lasers quickly strafed across the upper hull. The ship shook under the assault, but the mirror shields and reflective coating did their job and managed to dissipate most of the energy. Still, the hull took damage and warning indicators lit up across Gavin’s field of vision.
In response, Gavin launched a swarm of mini-missiles that rocketed off towards the Gladius. The ship changed orientation and used the reflectors to shoot many of the missiles down, but Gavin watched in satisfaction as a series of explosions lit up the blackness of space. A secondary explosion followed the first and Gavin knew he’d hit something critical, but through the smoke and debris, another array of energy lashed out. The lasers strafed all over the upper hull and Gavin felt the ship buck. A PDE emitter exploded on the starboard wing, and Gavin watched as the ship began to slip off course as the thrust balance ratio skewed.
He swore and knocked down the opposite PDE a couple of notches to compensate and the huge plane came back in line. They couldn’t keep trading blows. He had to do something, and fast. Gavin fired another swarm of missiles and flipped the plane into a wild evasive maneuver dodging around a massive asteroid. He skimmed the surface of the rock, narrowly evading collision, but still poured on the speed.
“Shut off that damned alarm!” Deckert roared over the warning claxon. A console had exploded at the back of the bridge after the last missile attack, resulting from the secondary explosion filling the small room with smoke and flashes of light. The missiles had ripped through the outer hull and vaporized a set of power transformers. Warning claxons had gone off warning of hull breach, but repair crews were already on the job, and emergency bulkheads had clamped into place. The Gladius was still very much alive.
“Weapons,” Deckert said as the claxon stopped. “Charge?”
“Charged, we can fire anytime,” the weapons officer said watching the gauges on his holodisplay. The Gladius had more power than it knew what to do with, so charging the laser batteries was exceedingly quick for a ship so small.
“Fire another salvo!” Deckert ordered.
“We’ve lost them!” Abigail called from the helm, aborting the process.
“What?” Deckert demanded.
“They used that last missile attack as a diversion. I think they disappeared behind that large asteroid just to starboard.”
“Send the hunters that way. Get a confirmation,” Deckert ordered as he wiped his forehead. Ship’s systems were in a state of flux with the battle, and the bridge was hot and smoky. “Diversion, my ass,” he grumbled under his breath. He stood straight again. “Get me a damage report!”
“Right away, sir,” Dawson said in acknowledgement and contacted the damage control teams.
“And get me a status on Red Flight,” Deckert added as he leaned wearily against the captain’s chair. The man hadn’t sat in the chair once since Hughes’ departure.
“Damage is moderate, sir,” Dawson
“Damn,” Deckert said. “I thought this ship was supposed to be the Military’s best, but it appears she has a glass jaw.”
“Sir, I have a status update on Red Flight as well,” Dawson
“And?” Deckert asked impatiently.
“Red Three is down, escape pod returning to base, and Red Two heavily damaged, also returning for repairs. Red Leader is only remaining unit and is aggressively hunting the enemy mecha.”
“And they call themselves elite pilots?” Deckert asked snidely. “What a joke. Three of them can’t handle one enemy by themselves? And they call themselves elite pilots?!” Deckert bellowed, working himself into a rage.
“Sir, Martian reports that the enemy is a unit he’s never seen before with capabilities beyond that-“
“Bullshit!” Deckert roared. “Excuses! Tell Captain Carter that if he doesn’t destroy that one enemy immediately, he can look forward to a firing squad on his return. If he returns.”
“Helm!” Deckert shouted. “Have you found the Praetorian yet?”
“No sir, still searching,” Abigail reported evenly.
“Find it, now,” Deckert ordered quietly as he began to pace around the bridge. Once he returned to Dulabar, Davenport
Kella twisted away from another salvo of mini-missiles. She was still amazed at the maneuverability of her Scythe. She was over-powering the Military’s latest model mecha with little effort. Her new machine was nothing like the old. How Gavin had managed to build it while dealing with everything else of the past week simply boggled her mind.
She climbed easily over a group of asteroids and twirled past a blast of energy from her pursuing enemy. The pilot was good, Kella knew just from the limited time she’d spent fighting him, but he couldn’t seem to catch up with Kella’s maneuvers. It was only a matter of time until he made a mistake and provided Kella with an opening. She even had a plan for that, and was streaking through a gauntlet of asteroids just for that reason. Suddenly the enemy vanished from her display. Alarmed, Kella checked her scanners and found nothing, the mark had just disappeared. She brought her machine around, circling around several large asteroids to come back to her previous vector, but back at the beginning of her run through the gauntlet. She saw nothing.
“Where the hell did you go?” she said to herself flipping through her scanner’s modes. The modes were empty until she got to the heat composite. A shadow remained where the enemy mech had been at previously, and she could see the engine trails left by the PDEs, faint purple spirals slowly expanding through space. But what she didn’t see was the machine itself. She knew he couldn’t have just vanished, that was impossible. He was being clever. Kella could do that too.
She switched up a high-yield warhead from the ammo canister, one of six that her Scythe was carrying, borrowed from the Praetorian’s own armory. She took aim at the tanker-sized asteroid nearest the sensor shadow and fired. The missile took seconds to reach its destination and exploded in a massive ball of fire and debris. The explosion was so energetic that the asteroid tumbled off of its meandering course and collided with the asteroid behind it, as Kella had hoped. The resulting crash caused a massive expulsion of smaller particles. In short, she’d created a mini meteor shower. She focused on her scanner as small pebbles, the leading edge of her own storm, rammed her Scythe’s barrier shields. Her opponent would have to move from the shower, no mecha could withstand the debris flung from the explosion, but still she didn’t see anything on the scanner. And then she realized why. She twisted her mech in a bone-rattling one-eighty spin and saw the laser beam arc towards her.
Kella immediately brought up her forearm, activating the mirror shield and caught the laser head-on while launching a salvo of missiles in retaliation. She deflected the laser away as she backpedaled, her mecha firing its chest thrusters to move backwards. She saw a multitude of flashes from the shadows signaling incoming missiles at her, and immediately fired off the PDE at full-bore while dispensing chaff from the ejectors, pulling up and away from the incoming fire. She wasn’t able to see if her missiles had hit the target as she flew corkscrews and loops to evade the missiles coming at her. She finally managed to get clear, the missiles exploding as their fuel cells emptied.
She was lucky to be alive, only her quick thinking prevented her from succumbing to her enemy’s trap. She’d underestimated her opponent; that was for sure. Kella opened up her scanner’s range again, and performed a full wide-area sweep, and again, there was nothing. He had somehow discovered a way to evade her sensors. And then it dawned on her. He was using the same trick she’d seen before – he was flying cold. Damn.
“Kella,” Gavin’s voice crackled over the channel.
“Go ahead,” she said, still scanning the space around her.
“I’ve got a problem here, little Sellword,” Gavin said jerkily.
“Gavin? What’s wrong?” she asked worriedly.
“I’ve got some damage, but managed to get clear of that monster. I need you back to the ship on the double. I’m going to have to put down on Falldown.”
“Understood, I’m on my way,” Kella said firing the PDE up to full power. She looked at her scanners once more but only saw the asteroids floating silently through space. “Next time, then,” she said to her opponent as she rocketed off towards the Praetorian’s signal.
Martian sat hugging an asteroid. The enemy mecha was just outside of missile range. He had been so close, but his opponent had proven the better. He finished tying the tourniquet around his leg. The enemy’s last missile barrage had exploded too close and a piece of shrapnel had pierced the cockpit, slicing shallowly through his leg. He’d luckily been able to seal the rupture with sealfoam before he asphyxiated. Still, the damage could have been worse. His leg was still bleeding pretty well and he had a fist-sized hole patched just below his main holodisplay, but all in all, he thought he fared fairly well. He’d seen just how close those missiles had come to ending his career.
As he watched the enemy mecha, he heard the communications scanner warble. The enemy was getting an encoded transmission. Abruptly the transmission ended and the machine fired up its main PDE, heading away from him. Martian noted the course, and powered his machine back up from cold-running after it had gone out of range. The small Patterson Reactor powering his Lancer rumbled to life, and he punched up the Gladius to report in.
Martian waited for Dawson
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