Chapter Fourteen
Time slowed, but there was no stopping. A searing violet light roared through the clearing, ripped through Bravo’s AEGIS, and blew off the entire top of the chassis in a cloud of slag. It crashed and skidded, and Niner shouted. The ground rolled, bucked, and then Mike was flying. He hadn’t seen the rocket that threw him. It wasn’t the first time: he orientated in mid-air and opened fire at the huge insectoid tank stalking forwards along the gully. The bullets spanged off its shell. It was sucking in air for the next HEO blast.
The world was a wild blurry whine as Mike hit the ground and rolled, struck something, bounced and scrambled up to one knee… just in time to see the others rushing in. Alpha was up in close, grappling a huge machine on one of the tank’s arms. ATAs were firing; another shell hit the dirt, and Mike was thrown a second time. He hit the cliff with a body-blow that shook through his bones and knocked the air from his lungs, tumbled to the ground, and looked up to see an AEGIS falling towards him. Where the pilot had been, there was only a smoking ring of space.
Mike scrambled up, churning mud, and leaped as it crashed into the mud behind him, burning, and limp as a corpse. “Alpha!” He screamed aloud, but he couldn’t see who was who as he ran for the front. “Alpha! Symon, come in! What the fuck is this thing!?”
“Retreat! Don’t come at it! Get the fuck away!” Alpha’s voice was a static blur on the radio.
The Sentry moved like a dancer; it knew exactly where they were going to be, every time. Cries rent the air. Niner’s raw-throated shouts were a dim buzz in Mike’s ears, every heartbeat thudding sloppy and slow.
“AUGGGHHHH!” Niner’s voice pierced from the front of the smoking wrecks ahead of Mike. “FUCK! FUCK!!”
“Hold on!” No, there was no retreating: not while Alpha and Niner were stuck down on the ground. Mike ran and dove for cover as something flew over his head and crashed into the forest floor, showering him with rocks, some larger than his head. “Symon! Order in some backup! We’re getting slaughtered!”
Mike landed behind one of the fallen AEGIS, counted to three, then broke out from cover again, strafing, closing the distance between him and Niner. He saw him pinned under Bravo’s collapsed metal coffin, his helmet shattered, fighting to pull his legs out from underneath the Padfoot hulk. The Sentry’s HEO barrel was glowing white, too hot to fire. It was a glimpse of hope as the tank whirled on him and opened up with twin railguns. Something glanced off his shoulder as he dove and rolled behind another one of his brothers, the cockpit belching fire and black smoke towards the sky. “Hold up, Niner! I’m coming!”
But he focus on Niner, even as he called his name. In the crazy haze of black smoke, he couldn’t see where Alpha was. His BCI was no help. Mike reloaded without looking, grit his teeth, and surged up from his crouch.
His legs gave out. No, not his legs. The armor. He had barely pushed up when the whole suit powered down and collapsed around him, dragging him back to the ground. It was suddenly very close, very tight: Mike could smell his own breath as the filter cut and the helmet went dark. He snarled in frustration and hit the emergency release. The plates loosened and slid apart, but he had to fight to lift his arms up and tear his helmet off. Smoke rushed in. The air was thick, so thick, dense with cooked metal and burned flesh. He got the gauntlets off, but his feet got stuck in the boots, which wouldn’t expand. Mike kicked at them from inside, hauling himself out into the open.
He looked up to see the Sentry whirl on him from above, railguns spinning. They aimed down at him, black mouths dripping water, just as an AEGIS staggered across from his left and threw itself in front, guns blazing. The Sentry’s larger railguns opened with a roar, and the Padfoot’s fire cut. It slumped to its knees and then toppled over, crashing barely a meter from where Mike lay in the sudden, eerie silence.
Mike stared at nothing in complete disbelief. “Alpha.”
He didn’t know if it was his lover. The number on the side had been obliterated. It didn’t matter; he could hear the lack of movement in the clearing. No churning feet, no shouts, save for Niner’s agonized swearing… and the radio. It was utterly, accusingly silent.
Behind him, there was a soft whirring. Startled, he looked back and forth, expecting to find the black mouth of a barrel pointed down at his face. Instead, his hair ruffled as his corona spun, then generated a holo-display without his prompting. His Bible. It began to flick from page to page with crazy speed, cycling with letters and numbers and highlights flickering gold. He thought it was broken, too, until he saw the same page numbers repeated and stopped, drawn into the pattern of motion.
“I’m sorry,” the highlights read, cycling with synaptic speed. “They know. This is so much bigger than us.”
“Symon?” Mike’s eyes widened. “Symon! You cock-sucking son of a-!”
The Watcher shunted something through the Coronal feed like a fist forced into Mike’s brain: an absolute paralyzing pressure that floored him, still struggling out of the frozen shell of his powerless armor. Mike couldn’t even cry out. He dropped face-down on the dirt, senseless, his ears ringing with Niner’s screams of grief and pain.
