Armature Noir: White Echo

Armature Noir: White Echo

This the sky was a vault of stars. Light pollution was one of the casualties of war. Those settlements that still had power now under careful black out to keep them off the radar of the aircraft and orbital strike assets prowling overhead. The tower was quiet visible though, a heavy, ancient structure, a tower of treated rock dating back to the colonization, one hundred stories tall and many hundreds across. It stood out against the starlight like a wall.

From one of the stars, fire fell, three illuminated trails, one for each of the heavy weapons towers on the tower’s roof. Fire blossomed out, a rip tide of wood and splinters edging each fireball, raining down towards the plains far below. Men ran across the stone, some burning, then tracers ripped out of the night and took them down.

After a moment, nothing moved on the vast roof top.

There was a shimmer in the air as aircraft, forms hidden in veils of countermeasures came in for landing. A suggestion of weapon and engine pods, the flicker of heat under the jets the motion of gun turrets. Open doors gave the clearest sight, showing red lit bays full of assault troops, humans and drones. They poured out before their carriers had even properly touched ground. After a few steps, their own countermeasures came on, and they vanished from normal sight as thoroughly as the aircraft.

Unseen by normal eyes, the force split in two. One group moved for the spider web of stairs and vehicle ramps on one side of the building, the other ran for the edge, cables in hand. The aircraft rose up behind them, the wind of their jets blowing debris off the roof in a scattering cloud.

Afsheen was with the second, sprinting full out, member of a wave a battalion strong. In full armour, and loaded down with rappelling gear, manoeuvring unit and her French made gauss cannon, it was a crazy pace. Her body could take it, augmented as it was and with the cocktail of uppers the medics had shot them full of before the drop, but she’d feel it later. God she would feel it.

She paused at the edge, of the roof, carefully not looking at the shadowed false colour countryside so far below, and pushed the winch down. There was a crash of bolts as it attached itself firmly and started to load line. A moment later, a green tell-tale lit above it in Afsheen’s AR display, and the assault force began to load. The drones went first, movements far quicker and more precise than even the most augmented human could manage, dropping down one after another, movement regular, spacing perfect. The captain gave the thumbs up and the commandos followed the drones down.

Afsheen felt her stomach lurch as she fell at speed, and winced as her gun hit the rope and bounced off, the attachment point jarring her arm painfully. She cursed under her breath, but most of her attention was on the descent timer. She always pressed the manual break, worried in case the automatics failed. It was foolish, but if they did fail, she’d crash into those below before she had a chance to know about it. The timer hit Zero and Afsheen pulled the trigger, decelerating sharply. The second stage of the automatics worked and she separated from the line, manoeuvring unit firing to take her along the wall to gecko grip at her position. The blurred shape of a drone was next to her on one side, a commando on the other.

Afsheen lowered a fiber optic down to look into the floor below. As expected it was filled with stacked prefabricated huts, with several of the ubiquitous ‘pike’ automatic beam systems rotated back and forth on the edges. Human guards and a few old drones, bell shaped minitanks left over from the Union wars sixty years ago, were in cover, weapons pointed out. The humans weapons were even older than the drones. Rifles and RPGs. Afsheen felt a flare of anger in her heart that this operation was necessary. How could they have lost to these people? Even if they hadn’t really lost.

“Wait for Bravo element to get into position.” The operation up to now had been conducted in such silence that the order was almost shocking. Afsheen ran a system check on her cannon, checking that bumping it against the line hadn’t fucked it up any. It looked good. She loaded the silhouettes and positions of her targets into the gun and the nearby drones, the basic set was already loaded, but with the close recon you could refine it. Human being with this equipment and within distance of this position was a target. Automatic gun system was a target.

“Drones in on my go.” The Captain said, voice slightly breathy with excitement. Afsheen released the hand she had on the wall, gripping it only with her legs and keeping a two handed grip on the assault cannon. “Go now!”

The drones dropped in. There was a blur of motion and gunfire that even Afsheen’s augmented senses could barely follow. “Everyone in now!” She let go, dropped and fired her maneuevering unit, dropping into the prison camp level through its open side. She landed on something that slide under her, maybe a bottle, and turned it into a roll. The wall behind her exploded as one of the drones fired a burst her way and her cannon swung slightly and fired back, shattering the old machine with a burst of fire. A human stuck a rifle out around the edge of one of the pillars and the cannon fired again, blowing the main backwards. Afsheen ran for the cover of a support pillar. More fire was coming from deeper within, a small force of larger drones and troops in full powered armour, hopelessly outmoded like the west of their equipment, but they had what they had. Afsheen looked through the cover on the composite vision of the drone array and saw fire coming in from the flanks on the new enemy group, Bravo team shooting them up from the sides.

A shadow fell across her, one of the gunships spinning down to look in through the open face, visible only by its shadow against the star light. Beams hazed out, one after another, each a perfect strike on a target. Its work done, the gunships lifted away.

Drones began to fan out forward, flesh and blood troops moving more cautiously behind. Building interiors sprang into relief as microbots and sensors found their way inside, reducing them to wire frames on the team’s vision. They advanced towards the prison camp proper in the middle of the level. It was a vast mesh cage, a gate on one side and rows of smaller cages between.

Empty cages.

They were too late.

1

Hikikomori. Was it even possible to be as rich as he was and still be a NEET? Daisuke sat in an armchair and looked out at the sea off the veranda. The armchair was his favourite to sit on outside, because the fibre didn’t stick to him in the heat. The house was as big and fancy as you could possibly want, founded in splendid isolation at the edge of this world’s Southern continent, of which he was the sole owner.

It was bizarre to think that at 19 years old his life was already basically over. Then again hadn’t he always known it’d be like this? Just him and his harem of 2d women stuck in a flat in Tokyo, never wanting to go outside.

This wasn’t a flat in Tokyo. He smiled and took an icy glass of coffee from the woman in the abbreviated maid outfit next to him. Another of his maids was fanning him on the other side. It could certainly be a lot worse.

He pulled on his sunglasses and checked his messages. Most of them were completely irrelevant, thank you notes from the anime studios he funded and various merch he’d bought. He stopped, stomach suddenly trying to crawl up his throat as he saw the last message. He straightened, looking at it to open it and tried to put his glass down.

It fell from his hand and struck the paving stones. Daisuke felt cold liquid spray across his legs, and heard the maid’s surprised yelp.

Neither of them seemed too important now.

2

“You’re asking me to leave our people to die!”

“I’m asking you not to betray our principles!”

“Principles? You know what they’ll do to our prisoners if we don’t pay the ransom?”

“What will it do to the whole company if we do this?”

“The company will survive. As long as we’re paid, as long as we have one another we’ll survive.”

“Our soul, our reputation.”

“This kid isn’t going to take our soul. Look at this. Look at who’s hiring us.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it. I had it checked and double checked. Your soul’s safe. Think on this when you have qualms.”

3

I stepped out of the spaceport building and winced. It was goddamn hot. I took a long drink from my water bottle then shook my head and dumped the rest of it over myself, pulling my sunglasses away with my other hand so I don't get water on them. Two local guys in board shorts and sandals checked me out as the liquid stuck down my tank top, but I gave them no more than a smile. I was in a hurry, and not in the mood.

Too goddamn hot.

I’d heard Argo-3 had the galaxies’ best beaches, but I hadn’t expected it to be basically all beach. The city was laid out across a series of free standing buildings on sand bars and built up coral reefs of a tropical island chain. Houses just above the tide line, with the gleaming lines of popup flood barriers around them, the metal covers uncomfortable to look at in the sun. Bridges extended across the channels but there was sand everywhere, gleaming white that matched the light wood of the bridges and boardwalks, and the white marble effect building, offset only by green palms, imported, and various garish native flowers. Most of the streets were covered, long lines of white sandstone supporting wooden rooves to keep the rain out when monsoon season came.

The space port was a lagoon on one side of the city, lift craft bobbing in the water in long rows between floating piers. Light craft were tied up all around them, probably to ferry supplies to the ships, but few of them moved now. Apart from the two guys now disappearing around a corner, there was no one around, just a few automated delivery vehicles. Not even a taxi, the heat seemed to have flat out shut the city down. I couldn’t really blame it.

I took off my cap and fanned myself. Dropping on the absolute cheapest passenger flight, Armature shipped in on a cargo line, I’d thought I was so damn smart. Little had I know why a midday landing was half the price of any other slot. I looked at the job sheet again. What the heck kind of a name was Domoto Daisuke? Almost certainly a fake one to be honest. Rich, claiming to be young, and semi-famous. I wondered why he suddenly felt the need for a pile of mercenary bodyguards. Maybe there was trouble with the locals. There had been a couple of guntrucks and an armoured deployed at the airport, so old that I'd assumed they were decoration, but maybe not.

“Urgh.” I drained the remains of the water in my bottle and pulled the second one from my bag. As I did so I saw something. A Shadow, growing rapidly, and a moving glitter, the sun reflecting off something and falling in front of me.

Knife.

I whirled around and stepped to one side, out of the way of the blade. It went past on one side of my chest, then came back and almost got me in the face. I ducked to one side, pivoted, and kicked at my attacker’s stomach. She blocked the kick with a raised knee, tried to knee me in return with her other foot, only for me to side kick it away. I tried to kick back but crashed into a light pillar instead. I could see the fury in her eyes as she came in at me with the knife, and grabbed her wrist, managing to get it off to one side so she didn’t stab me.

The clinch, both our hands on the knife, fighting for it gave me a chance to see who my opponent was. It wasn’t difficult to tell. There are not many people I know who are that white. I don’t mean she was Caucasian, I mean she was flat out white skin and white hair albino. Under her sunglasses, eyes of colourless blue. The tight bikini she wore was white too. The only colour on her body was the blue sunhat. I knew her very well. She looked at me from under a wide brim. “Your senses aren’t worth shit Melek.” She tried to knee me again, our legs working together in a rapid series of short thrusts and parries. Her face was furious.

“Everything around here’s pretty pale Hitoe, you’re camouflaged.” I smirked at her, hoping fury would make her make a mistake. She tried to head butt me, knocking her sunhat aside. The sandstone cracked slightly where she hit, but it dazed her a little. I threw her backwards and circled left, getting some room.

“Tch.” She came in at me again, leading with a kick, then going in for the knife again. I got my hand up just in time and grabbed her wrist again, reeling her in for a punch in the stomach she didn’t seem to feel. Instead we ended up trying to control the knife again, both hands on it. I felt the tip scrape across my midriff under my tank top, deflecting off my skin, and was eye to eye with her. “I was hoping to settle this in our machines, but if you’re here then we might as well…”

“So mad about those friends of yours?”

She snarled, forcing me back. “I can't stand you Melek, still using that fat body of yours. I'm going to carve their names into all that meat.” In a second I was going to have to change the game, twist to one side and push the knife past, then elbow strike her in the. . .

“Ahem.” We both stopped to look up at the throat clearing noise. The woman watching us was a splash of colour in the general whiteness. Dark skin and Chinese features, hair dyed bright red, her skin covered in a maze of intricate multi-coloured snake tattoos. Wearing a bandeau well. I knew her as well. “I’d rather you didn’t, given I took so much trouble to hire two of the best Landsknecht in the business. This is a business trip, isn't it?”

Hitoe glared at me, and then stepped back stepped back, frowning at me before the knife coiled back into her wrist band. “Fine. I don’t want your filthy blood on me anyway.” She leaned down to retrieve her sunhat.

“It’s too hot anyway.” I shrugged, resettling my camp on my short, messy hair.

“You guys can settle whatever it is between you after the job is done.” She fell in with me. “You have your machines here?”

“I don’t know about her, but mine should be being unloaded. How many more do we have?”

“Another Armatures and a Sikari team.” We walked down the hill towards the town proper.

“Anyone I should know?”

“You know Xue Blue? Her, and the Twins.”

“The Twins? Them I know.” If I was one who held grudges, I’d have a grudge against them nearly as severe as the one Hitoe had against me. “I don’t much about Blue though”

The whole Armature part of the Landsknecht community is fucking incestuous. Everyone knows one another and is constantly comparing. Of course there were exceptions. I didn’t know anything much about Xue Blue. An was our condottieri but the mails said the employer had reached out to us personally. “She’s an ex-Chinese military AI. I worked with her before on Alpha-C. She’s pretty ridiculous.”

“We’re all pretty ridiculous.” And we were. Children of the disastrous wars of epistemology. Augmented soldiers without a country, the ghosts of armies.

We continued to walk down towards the port. I began to feel envious of the other two women’s swimwear. The town began to get busier as we walked into the centre of it, passing hawkers and merchants, most sitting under awnings of predictable white and looking pretty sleepy and half hearted. They had stalls full of all manner of crap to sell to spacers, local food and ornaments, various novels and media, and most importantly, drink. I bought another bottle of what I thought was soft drink but turned out to be a particularly fizzy larger, and tried to drink it slowly. The crowd shifted around us, a distorted heat hazed mirror in the brightness of shop windows. The glass was dusty, boards bleached by decades of sun and salt air, the entire city seeming half decayed, people thin from more than just a good amount of exercise.

"So what's up with this dude who hired us?"

“Nobody really knows anything about him.” An shrugged. “Just rumours. He came out of nowhere three years back with a pile of money and no background. I heard he was the last prince of England. Apparently he has interests in a lot of Japanese media concerns. A lot of cash certainly. Most of it from investments now. Enough to pay certainly.”

“That’s got to be bullshit. Sounds like some organized crime boss or warlord who retired with a bunch of embezzled money.” I took another slug of the beer. We were leaving the market and going up onto an elevated wooden walkway over the bay. The sound of engines and the sting of alcohol fumes reached up to us. There were military vehicles down there, boxy, ground effect APCs and gun jeeps packed with infantry. A pair of old model spider tanks scuttled along, and a tank transporter filled with heavy, locally manufactured golems. Old style robotic weapons with guns for faces and arms. I could see Hitoe looking too. Police in khaki shorts and a button down shirts ran along in front, lights flashing.

“We are really out in the boonies here.” I paused, leaning my arms on the wooden rail and watched the traffic. “It’s a bit of a step down from fighting through Valles Marineris, and kicking in the door to the Sultan of Mars’s treasure chamber.”

“The great wars are done.” Hitoe leaned down onto the rail next to me. “And I’m glad they’re over.” She looked at me, expression unfriendly. “Too many people killed, don’t you think?”

“Guess so.” I looked down at the armoured column again. “Seems like we’re raising the calibre of forces here a lot. Is the client really worried about the fighting in the interior?”

“Don’t know, not really our business either.” An grinned. “If he wants to pay us 20 a week to laze around guarding beaches then that’s on him, not us.” She paused, introspective. “Though I don’t know if it’s just that. I heard he hired Echo-Chamber as well, seems a little much to stop rinky-dink militants with golems and union spiders. So maybe expect some action.”

Hitoe stopped at the top of the bridge and looked down. “There’s a bus stop up ahead. Let’s get down to the port and find our gear.”

“Urgh. Any local vehicle is going to be an oven.” I muttered. We walked down to the bus stop, and I finished the last of my beer. The bus was automated, but predictably oven like inside. I wilted into a seat and wondered how you could have automatic buses but not proper air conditioning. Maybe it just couldn’t keep up.

We rolled over a rise and saw the port proper. It was pretty normal, four large peers with various species of boats and water landing space ships tied up to them. The area around the port was lined with scrubby office buildings and apartments, all bleached wood and grey concrete, even more decrepit than the rest of the city. I could see construction equipment and cargo movers parked, seemingly abandoned in the heat. Hazes of it flickering atop the metal. There were no locals around. I spied the large suborbital lander that I’d loaded Grune Ritter aboard a few hours ago. I felt an unexpected spark of relief to see it. I wouldn't have thought I'd feel so alone without my machine.

There were more combat machines on the dock. An’s Naga, tall and green, its upper body humanoid, lower body a snake tail. The twins hefty Sikari, gleaming black and white reverse bearing a resemblance to the spider tanks we’d seen earlier in the same way a jet fighter might a biplane. A forth machine stood on the deck, a silver humanoid design with long wings of metallic blue. A blue flower was embossed on its frontal surface Three women were waiting in the shade of one of the Sikari, and I saw the glint of a bottle being passed.

“What are the wings anyway?” I asked.

“They’re exotic particle radiators, probably for a vector cannon.” Hitoe answered. “The base of that’s a Chinese Type-X, but it looks like she’s fitted an Alpha-Centaurian back unit onto it somehow.” I felt a pang for a moment, remembering when we’d been more than friends.

“Yeah, it’s a cannon. Pretty hefty one too. My gal spent a while reviewing the tech specs.”

“Where is Rara anyway?”

“By now she’s probably sunbathing.” An pointed to the end of the peer, where her gunship stood, partly concealed by a stack of shipping containers. I could see a figure sitting in a sun lounger next to it. “Ah, good, she is, that means everything’s ready.”

“I need to make a stop first.” I looked at a small municipal shelter we were passing, probably toilets. “If I don’t get another drink I’m going to be a heat casualty.”

The bus turned onto the road outside the port and began to pull to a stop, we got off and I stopped at a vending machine to buy another pair of water bottles. It was a silver finished machine, almost mirror bright. God, what was it with these people and brightness. As I did, I noticed something, a glitter in the middle floor of one of the towers. This was a day for bad glitters. A town for it maybe. I resoaked myself with one bottle and then began to sip from the other, increasing my pace to catch up with the other two.

“There’s optics on us. Third floor.” I said around the neck of the water bottle.

“Seen.” An said. Her eyes hadn’t moved, she was probably looking through her Armature’s optics. “There’s a guy up there with a rifle.”

“The local militia might not be so happy with a flight of armatures and a gunship in their nice clean port.” Hitoe said “Especially when there’s fighting in land.” We were close to the pier now, and I could see the familiar dark skinned blond forms of the twins next to a cute Chinese woman who only my secondary senses told me was an android. All quite sensibly wore bikinis, the twins in green and red, Blue in well, Blue.

One of the twins waved at me. I gave her an I’m watching you gesture in return, and saw her grin. I tried not to clench my hands.

“Let’s just get loaded up and get out of here. I don’t want to fight in a city.” An turned down the peer and waved to her pilot on the other end. The woman began to stuff her book into a backpack next to her, then collapse her sun-lounger.

“I don’t know if that’s going to be an option.” Hitoe nodded to the two UGV tanks, the gun truck and the golem transporter coming around the corner. Troops in hard body armour and visored helmets, legs bare in the heat. Automatic rifles hung from their hands. The heavy machine gun on the back swung around to cover us on the front.

There was a thrum and an armed helicopter swung over the building roof, guns sweeping around to cover us. At the front of the guntruck, a heavy set man stood on the running board. He dropped down as the truck came to a stop, his troops fanning out behind him, weapons raised, a heavy weapons spider among them, while the two tanks swung their turrets to cover the peer.

“Stop right where you are.” The man said. His face was set in a sneer, as if a plan had just come together.

“What’s the problem here Major?” An stepped forward.

“There’s no problem.” He stopped a few paces from us. “Under the emergency powers agreed by the new governing council, you’re under arrest.” He gestured to two of his men, who drew zip cuffs from their webbing and stepped forward.

“No way I can talk you out of this?” An raised placating hands. “We can pay.”

“You can’t afford me mercenary.” He grinned.

“Well, that’s a shame, isn't it Naga?”

There was a blur and Naga was standing between us and him. There were clangs as bullets rang against the Armature’s front armour, and then the hiss of its anti-riot measure. The UGV tanks were burning ruins on the peer. I hadn’t quite got to see what had happened to them, but the helicopter was pulling up and away, its cannon swinging into line. There was a crash from the peer and its tail rotor tore free. The aircraft shuddered in the air, yawing wildly, and then began to try to gain altitude, spinning wildly. I looked that way and saw one of the twins plugged into her machine through a finger jack. An on the other hand had her machine's AI.

"A real shame." the Armature said, voice lively.

Then the sniper shot me in the chest. I blinked, knocked down by the sudden impact, wincing at the flash of the explosive round. The nanotech in my skin basically ignored the explosive for such a light round but my tank top ceased to exist. “Ouch.” I rolled for the cover of some boxes, then found Hitoe on top of me, pushing me down. There was another crash of gunfire, then the harsh flicker of an electrolaser and I saw the gunman behind me collapse, much heavier anti-material rifle dropping from his hands. Hitoe was on top of me.

“You saved my life.” I blinked, a little nonplussed. I kind of didn’t mind having her on top of me right now.

“Don’t think I forgive you, but a contract is a contract.” She sniffed and then rolled off to a crouch behind the boxes. “We should mount up.”

“We should.” An was already loading into Naga as we sprinted for the cargo containers with our Armatures in them. I arrived a step or two ahead of Hitoe, and yanked the door open, wirelessly disengaging the lock.

Grune Ritter stat inside, knees up, cockpit open and ready. I clambered in and pulled the crown down on my head and starting the count. Lacking a flight suit I’d have bruises, and the control would be a little rough, but I figured the next response from a military with the technology the locals had would be artillery, so we didn’t really have time.

I hit the hatch closed and saw the laugher tech coming out of the cockpit seams in the fading light. It’s not healthy to look at it too long, but I kind of like it. It looks like alien supertechnology should look: nothing like what a human can come up with. I felt it flow across my face, and fell into the world of the Armature, where everything was clear and slow. I stood, ripping out of the container, and saw a flight of artillery shells landed, blowing a mass of steam out of the harbour, but barely even shaking the Armature.

[They’re going to fuck up their nice shiny port like this] One of the twins said. The Sikari turned, emitter elevated and spat out a fan of vector beams. They arced up and then shot down to hit a distant target. [That should keep them busy for a while]

[Get aboard so we can lift!] Rara’s gunship was hanging at the end of the peer, is force bubble pushing the water back on all sides, drones patrolling around it. I did just that, running forward and pulling my Armature into the side compartment. There was a clunk as it engaged.

Thank god I’d put my duffle with my Armature rather than trying to carry it with me. There were a series of clanks as the rest loaded, and the gunship lifted away. I pressed the cockpit release and dropped the ramp. I wanted to get into my flight suit before anything else happened. The motion of the aircraft almost knocked me flying.

“Hold on!” Came Rara’s excited voice. “They’re still on us.”

4

“Perimeter, this is Sidereal, come back.”

“Sidereal.”

“The Yokels report that the Bandits have broken out of their trap on the mainland and are heading to the island at speed, with local fighter assets in pursuit.”

“Do they have anything that can actually stop a laugher gunship?”

“I doubt it, but they seem pretty set on this. They’ve sortied their whole damn air force.”

“Perimeter copies all. Over and Out. Radius, this is Perimeter, come back.”

“Perimeter.”

“You copy all that? The bandits are coming in and we’re realigning to stop them. You don’t have much time.”

“Copy. We should be on our way out in a few minutes.”

“I just hope we have that long.”

5

Daisuke leant back against the wall and breathed hard. He’d never been an especially active guy, and spending three years lifting nothing heavier than a glass of sake had not done anything for his physique. The lights were out, and he was shortly going to be found. There was no way out of that, there were microbots in the walls and he was pretty sure the enemy had control over his security systems.

How had it gone wrong? They’d been supposed to protect him, he’d hired a whole army and somehow that army had been turned on him. They already had the rest of him captured, the link with them severed.

There was no time to think about it now. Only for him to play his last card. In all the animes he’d watched, when someone had done something like this it had been to save a girl, or their friend or something. He was doing it to save himself.

He rolled out of the crawl space he’d been hiding in and stepped into the corridor.

They found him immediately, two hard suits, heavy articulated armour that covered the user fully. They didn’t have the cool cloth parts at the joints like the older style armour that usually showed up in military anime. Running at their side was a heavy spider drone, its turret tracking him. The three appearing out of the air in front of him, as if by a magic trick.“I’m Daisuke, you can take me, just don’t hurt any of my maids.”

The lead suit nodded. “That’s brave of you kid.” Then she kicked his legs out and shoved him against the floor. It took Daisuke a moment to realize she’d caught him on the way down and lowered him rather than slamming him into the floor. Tight cuffs went around his wrists and then a bag went over his head, blacking him out.

“We’ve got all the targets, and there are bandits incoming. Take him to the LZ.”

Through his fear, Daisuke exalted. In a small way, he’d won.

6

Rara watched the world pass around her in slow motion, feathering the gunship’s forcefield wing as she ran, mach 3 at a hundred meters up, towards the island. On the rear display, she could see the wave of more than a hundred fighter UAVs launched from the mainland. Their radar shouldn’t be able to track her gunship, but they were somehow matching her moves. Obviously there was something more behind them. As she watched, the first one launched a pair of long range missiles. Another pair followed. The missiles were closing at relative mach 1, it would take the missiles over one hundred seconds to reach her. Even though the low-yield banimax nuclear weapons they were tipped with were a relatively grave threat, that was an age.

Far more worrying was the streams of fire now rising up from the island ahead. [Everyone prepared to drop back there?]

[Melek’s spraying on a flight suit. She’ll be 10 seconds]

That fucking girl. [As soon as she’s in, prepare to drop.] Rara spun the gunship to one side, drunk walking rapidly, and hoping she didn’t kill any of the pilots with hard maneuvers. None of them had been wearing pilot suits when they’d got into their machines, which made them vulnerable to high-G maneuverers. Hell, if she didn’t angle this right she could reduce herself to chunky salsa with an overenthusiastic jink. Maybe Melek didn’t have such a bad idea after all. Rara selected decoys and began to cycle drones out as fast as she could.

The first vector beam reached out at her from the island, slicing past the gunship to the left. Rara corrected, the blast raising steam behind, and then there was a forest of beams reaching for the racing aircraft. Rara's drunk walk got them through, some leaving glowing planes across the craft’s shields but none penetrating. In return, Rara fired off a wave of missiles back down at the emitters. Her own volley was less than the fire coming off the island, but maybe it’d keep their heads down.

For a moment she was in the clear anyway. Emitters would take a good ten seconds to recharge. In ten seconds they’d be too close anyway, over the horizon and into the realm of the pikes carried by whatever drones and vehicles defended. And here they came. Twin concentrations of unvectored beams, slashing in at her from both sides, a massive arc of fast moving brightness racing in towards the gunship as Rara pulled into another evasion pattern. Bolts passed by on both sides of the gunship, as Rara sought every hole in the pattern big enough to fit, her world a hell of fast moving bullets of energy.

[I’m back in my frame. Gods I almost cracked my fucking head open] Melek sounded stressed, unusual for her. Rara had no time or concentration for a quip.

[Drop light green. Get out there and break those pikes]

The six machines dropped away from the back of the aircraft, thrusters keeping them just above the water below. Rara almost screamed in relief as fire split away from the gunship and towards new target. Some, at least were her friends, but right now, the fire they were drawing was all that kept her alive.

7

I’d abandoned spraying a flight suit on after I got bounced off one wall by a particularly violent maneuverer and barely missed having my head smashed into my own Armature. I’d just have to be careful. The Armature hit the water and bounced up on its thrusters, and we were in it. To the perceptions of someone in the embrace of the laugher, the slugs of energy coming in at us were relatively slow moving. They covered a continuous arc, launched in plethora from the fast cycling emitters of the block that had launched them. Topography and the enemy’s relative location made the pattern complicated, an X pattern of energy bolts, with the left prong line slightly behind the right. As I tried to exploit the timing, it corrected, bolts now coming synchronized, with a few random ones thrown in just for fun.

<<This is intense. Who the heck is on the other end of this?>> I accelerated out into the lead and began to weaved through, blazing a trail for the rest. I could accept an occasional hit which my Grune Ritter. The Sikari and the Type-X spat out a volley, a firework display of beams bending away from the Sikaris and a sheet of lightning from the Type-X. The big Chinese suit's wings glowed, trailing glitter. Decoys shot away from our pods, trying to draw the central locus of the fire off of us and onto them.

A moment later the vector beams struck, small mushroom clouds of flame rising up on the inner part of the island. If anything, the enemy fire redoubled. I could sense it moving, trying to herd us further into the crossfire. The pattern changed, then changed again, each one harder to evade than the last.

Even over the link I could hear the strain in An’s voice. [I have a pretty good idea. The only unit of this strength on planet should be the Free Company who got hired as well, Echo Chamber.]

[Fucking Lunarian Pikes? This just gets better and better!>> One of the twins laughed, a little hysterically. The Sikari launched a screen of anti-beam smoke out front as a second volley of vector beams slashed in. Energy discharge deflected off the water in a spray of glowing sparks. The Lunarians have never been all that great at using vector beams, but the volleys they were throwing at us were nasty. <<Got 4 screens left.]

We ran through the anti-beam smoke and out into the thick of it again. There were cliffs up ahead, those should give us cover from the minimal vectoring on the pikes. It wasn’t going to happen though, because the Free Company machines were coming to meet us. The island looked like a paradise, more of the white sand, but coloured with a delicate mix of local and Terran plants, deep greens and purples. The effect rather spoiled by the swarm of enemy metal coming over it at us.

Heavy lunarian crabs moved up on the cliff, beams spraying out in profusion. We were closing still, but that just made the pike fire harder to avoid. There was steam everywhere, making it hard to see. I was starting to take hits regularly now, Grune Ritter’s mirror shield glowing with coppery light as it pumped the energy out.

[One of those nukes is still incoming from behind]

An’s voice came through. <<When the nuke goes up, cut thrust and sink. We’ll use the thermal flare to hide, then hit them as they start to pull back. Hold your volley till then.>>

[Cop-] I was going to say copy, but then the nuke went up. At the last instant before it did, I saw An’s machine spit out a cloud of decoys. As nukes go, it was pretty small, a five ton bomb, the maximum a banisher would let through. Still it was enough to boil the sea in a great gout of flashing steam. I switched thrust downward, dropping under the waves and falling towards the sea bed. There were still pike beams passing, cutting through the water as the mercenaries above us hosed the ocean with fire, but they were defuse. They’d followed the decoys, not us. We moved along under water, and I began to ache, nerve impulses catching up to me through the heady rush of the laugher control system.

I watched the map as we moves around, flanking the block with another part of the chalk cliff, flanking where the pike block had been. I pulled my Zweihander and ran a final check on the big weapon, then gave a thumbs up to the twins. Here, the Sikari would go up first. The four of us in Armatures waited in the shallows at the base of the cliff, still mostly under water. I checked my medical status, found nothing broken and instructed my body to take anti-bruise measures. If our employer was still here I wasn’t going to meet him black and blue, just on the off chance he was a prince. After a moment, the link went live, a double click. The Sikari were ready.

We went up the cliff easily enough, coming over the top to find ourselves on the enemy flank, and close, no more than a kilometre out. The terran between us was mostly bare, the forest starting further into the island. The twins fired their volley, but the vector beams paled next to the energy in the Zweihanders we all carried. Beams of dark energy whipped out, trees near them whipping back and setting aflame, and then there was a shattering series of explosions, tearing into the enemy formation in series. The alien energy weapon would never replace Pike or vector beam but it was sure as hell useful for dopple soldners like us. The steady crack of the Sikari railguns hit more spiders that had escaped the beams, knocking down the wounded one after another.

I kind of expected the Lunarians to charge, but Echo-Chamber were an old unit. They knew that there were Sikari out there and they knew that the position they had was untenable. Most Lunarian units I’d fought against hadn’t had that, they were just pure aggression. Echo-Chamber impressed the hell out of me by turning, laying down a storm of final protective fire and anti-beam smoke and pulling back through it. Targets multiplied as the decoys popped.

[Do not pursue. They’re a distraction. Sikari, hold here, Armtures, head for the house at maximum speed.]

[Sure hope this kid had a good force field and banisher setup cause otherwise he could get toasted if we have to fight] I observed. It was a pretty sour comment but I was hurting.

[He does.] We accelerated through the forest, drones up above the trees to spot for us.

The enemy weren’t pursuing, that probably meant they had what they came for. Telemetry from the gunship showed several air transports streaking away to the south, contacts hashing out under heavy ECM. The block that had faced us was pulling back in good order to another transport just landing behind them. It was strange behavior for Lunarians, even experienced ones to let us go after giving them a bloody nose. I wondered what exactly was up. As unready as we were they could easily have hit us again and maybe overwhelmed us. The units they were throwing at us were only drones anyway.

The house was big, and pretty and wrecked. A big English style mansion with attractive wooden fittings and big windows. The windows were broken and the doors smashed in. I could see the ruins of several security robots littering the gravel drive. I moved around the back, finding a veranda with a view onto the beach.

[Got some life signs inside. They register as the maids on the information system. They were hiding in one of the house shelters.]

[The Lunarians are pulling out. Got nothing on scope. Even those local fighters don’t want to come and play.] Whichever twin was speaking sounded vaguely disappointed. I envied her her Sikari’s more shock insulated cockpit. My body had really started to hurt.

[I’m going to try to actually put on my flight suit] I popped the hatch and slid down to the gravel with a crunch. My outfit really had seen better days after being hit with an explosive round. As I pulled the spray out of Grune Ritter’s cargo compartment I heard a hiss behind me and looked around. The ground beside the veranda had opened up and a young man, a little overweight but still quite handsome and wearing only a pair of shorts had risen out of it.

“Hey. I think I found our employer.” I looked at him. “You okay? How’d they miss you?”

He took a deep breath. “Well that’s the problem you see.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m only part of him.”