BY ISAAC HOOKE
The ATLAS mech glanced skyward as the thermobaric warheads dropped.
“Mason, we gotta get out of here, now!” the mech pilot transmitted over the comm.
Never open a story with a battle scene, the editors used to tell me. You have to give time for the reader to get invested in the characters, time to care about them.
All right.
I’ll give you some background first, then.
My name’s Mason.
I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Got my Bachelors of Science in Engineering from the University of Tennessee. I’m a mechie. That’s mechanical engineer. Got my girlfriend from the same University. She’s one of them artsy types, but I love her to a fault. Well, when I’m actually in town that is.
Yeah.
I used to build remote-controlled model mechs when I was a kid. Ah, the flighty days of youth. I squandered more than one summer locked away inside a shed building those mechs. Once I was done, I’d send them out exploring. Empty culverts, tight crevices, underwater passageways—if it was some hard-to-reach place, sooner or later I’d be sending my mechs in, just for the challenge of it, the feeling of exploring some place no one else could. I even installed miniature jumpjets on the things, which helped me get to some even harder-to-reach areas, plus it was great for spooking the neighbor’s dog.
Fun times.
I kept building those mechs throughout my youth, and they kept getting bigger and bigger, so that by the time I graduated high school I had put together a mech that was almost as tall as me, coming in at four foot five—yeah I’m short. That mech got me a full University scholarship by the way.
One of my best friends through high school and University was Lui. (Well, Lui was his callsign. He’s still on active duty so for obvious reasons I can’t give you his real name. Sorry about that.) He took Mechanical Engineering with me. I met him in Grade Eight. I don’t know, I guess we kind of had the same interests. He built model mechs too, and we had some great fights with them. We could’ve played in the virtual worlds like so many others our age did of course. But honestly, there was just something about having a real live mech, even if it was miniature, fighting in the flesh for you and only you. Hearing those servomotors whirring, hearing the satisfying sound as you bashed your opponent’s metallic head in, you just couldn’t replicate that in the virtual world. Course, repairing them was a bitch afterwards.
That’s why you always wanted to win.
After graduating from University, Lui and I decided we wanted more out of life. We wanted to explore the galaxy. Inside mechs, of course. Oh, you know, we could have lived the comfortable life of an ordinary citizen, a life where all our needs were provided for. Robots did most of the blue-collar work. The government provided room and board. Work was entirely optional. Great, right? Problem was, if you didn’t work, you were stuck where you were. You had to rely on public transportation for everything, and that never took you further than the city you lived in. If you wanted to see the world, or the colonies beyond it, you had to get a paying job—and those were hard to come by, let me tell you. As I said, the robots had a lockdown on the blue-collar industries, and there was no way I was going to become an accountant or something silly like that just so I could save up for a trans-solar flight.
So Lui and I joined the military. Navy branch. Special Warfare Operator rating. Free ticket to the world and beyond.
Nice, huh?
We went to BSD/M together. That’s Basic Space Demolition / MOTH training for all you laymen out there. We graduated, one thing led to another, and we ended up assigned to MOTH Team Seven together. MOTH stands for MObile Tactical Human by the way. We’re jacks-of-all-trades—snipers, astronauts, commandos, corpsmen, et cetera—with a heavy emphasis on the commando side of things.
Oh, and we pilot mechs.
So anyway, this, my dear readers, was my first deployment.
Out here, in the mountainous war zone between Mongolia and Russia, we were working with the Marines, trying to flush out the insurgents who had taken over Baganuur City. Lui had shipped out a couple of months ahead of me and already got his callsign. Because he’d earned his name, when a position opened up for ATLAS 5 mech operators, he got it. I guess it helped that he had the highest Advanced ATLAS Warfare qualification scores of anyone on the platoon.
The ATLAS 5. The latest and greatest in the ATLAS line of mechs. We’re talking three meters of pure, towering war machine here folks. A thousand hydraulically actuated joints with closed-loop positions and force control. Head-mounted sensor package with built in LIDAR, night vision, flash vision, zoom. Crash protection. Jump jets. Active protection countermeasures. Swappable weaponry for each arm (gatling gun, serpent rocket launcher, incendiary thrower). Deployable ballistic shield.
The mechs we built in school were toys in comparison.
Lui, that lucky bastard.
As for me, because I still didn’t have a callsign and hadn’t yet proven myself, I was stuck in a communications role, carrying around this heavy rucksack of comm equipment on my back while Lui got to pilot an ATLAS 5. I’d only been in two firefights since I arrived—I’d taken cover, fired off some shots, but that wasn’t really enough to earn an official callsign. The others still called me by my real name, Mason, or just CWC. Caterpillar Without a Callsign. Well, that and Midget.
I hated all three.
There was another commo in the platoon. Fret was his callsign. This tall guy with a neck like a giraffe. The dude towered over me because as I said I was four foot five, and he was six foot five. Nice. I practically looked like his kid when we were on duty together. Sort of how we all looked when standing beside an ATLAS. Anyway, somehow Fret the giraffe had ended up coming with our squad today. Don’t ask me why. I just follow orders around here. If the Chief wanted two commos on the squad, I guess he had good reason.
So there I was, hiking with my squad up into the mountains of Khentii Province to check the validity of a rumor that said one of the tribes was harboring a handful of insurgents from Baganuur city. The local gossip had it that there might even be an insurgent leader among them, one of the warlords who had masterminded several guerilla attacks in the region. A man named Gansükh Tömörbaatar. “Steel-Ax Iron-Hero.” Whatever that was supposed to mean…
“Hey, Midget, pass me the thermos would you?” Fret told me.
He’d made me carry his thermos of coffee. Because I hadn’t earned my callsign, I still wasn’t considered a full member of the team. A newbie caterpillar, a baby moth, in service of those with the callsigns.
Maybe I should have just dumped the thermos out, but I dutifully handed it over to Fret. I’d been hazed enough times already to know that when those with the callsigns told you to do something, you obeyed.
“Don’t worry,” Lui had told me one time after a particularly bad hazing. “They’re just testing you. Want to make sure you’ll watch their backs when they really need you.”
“How does pushing me around and hazing me and making me do whatever they want prove that I’ll watch their backs?” I had asked him.
“It will. Trust me. It’s just Team culture. You’ll get used to it. And once you’ve got your callsign, most of that stuff will end. Because then you can stand up for yourself. But only then.”
I hoped so.
Speaking of Lui, right now he was clambering along the rocky escarpment at the head of our squad, acting as our point man—or rather, mech. The giant steel feet of his ATLAS just ground the rock underfoot, leaving behind these crushed, powdery footsteps. His callsign showed up in bright green letters above the mech, thanks to the Implant I had in my head, which tapped into my neocortex and fed my brain all the visual and auditory extras the military deemed fit to equip me with. I couldn’t hold back a surge of jealousy whenever I saw that callsign floating above his ATLAS though. We were good friends, but when I joined the platoon and found out he’d been assigned to a mech, relations had been strained between us.
There was another mech in the squad, piloted by a dude known as “Bomb.” He brought up the rear, acting as our drag man. I hated him too. Well, figuratively speaking of course. I loved Lui and Bomb like brothers, just not right at that moment…
The rest of my teammates and I wore strength-enhancing jumpsuits that also served as body armor, though the units were pretty useless against the armor-piercing heat the insurgents liked to pack. Those jumpsuits also had jetpacks strapped on the back, which might come in handy if one of us fell. We wore ordinary helmets, no facemasks or rebreathers or anything like that: The mountain range wasn’t that high. I should note that Lui and Bomb wore the same jumpsuits as everyone else while operating the mechs.
We were passing a wide valley on my right. A distant river meandered between the rocks, with pine trees lining either shore all the way to the horizon. There was a slight mist hanging in the air, blurring out the farthest end of the valley. The whole scene looked like a painting. Very peaceful. Very calming.
That was the thing about this country. Intermingled with all the ugliness of war you’d find places like this just full of beauty.
Fret took a long sip from his thermos. “You know what the problem with Mongolia is?”
I glanced at him. “Other than the war?”
“Yeah.”
I rubbed my chin. “Well, the fact that it’s a zillion miles away from civilization might have something to do with it. Get these guys a proper education and we wouldn’t have problems like this.”
“Typical Democrat answer,” Fret said. “But completely wrong. There are colonies in space way farther away than this place, full of uneducated dim nuts, and they’re bastions of peace.”
I shrugged. “Fine.”
We walked in silence for a few paces. Fret took another sip from his thermos.
“Well, ask me,” Fret said.
“Ask you what?”
Fret offered me the thermos. “What the problem with Mongolia is.”
I sighed, taking the thermos, and asked.
Fret grinned widely. “Can’t get a decent cup of coffee anywhere.”
“I thought you made your own coffee?”
“Hell no, Midget. Where am I going to get access to an espresso machine? As for this swill, I got it from the robots at Dunkin’ Bucks.”
“Ah.” Dunkin’ Bucks was one of the flagship chains the military had spent big money to open at the base. The other was Tennessee Fried Bacon. My favorite.
“See, the root cause of all the malaise in this country is actually quite easy to track down,” Fret continued. “I mean come on, what else is going to eat away at the very heart and soul of a place? Make better coffee and you make a whole bunch of people a whole lot happier. You end the malaise, the political discontent. Make better coffee, and you change the world. The foundations of every great democracy were built on great coffee. Mark my words, caterpillar, the moment this country starts making better coffee, everything else will get a whole lot better.” He nodded at the thermos. “I left you some, by the way.”
“No thanks. I’m not a coffee drinker.”
“What? After everything I just said, and you’re not a coffee drinker. We’ll have to remedy that. Go ahead. Drink it.”
I reluctantly opened the thermos. I grimaced at the smell, kind of a mix between two acrid flavors: burnt mint and crushed cockroach. The green color definitely made it look like swill.
“I was never a big fan of espresso,” I said, swirling the contents around.
Fret laughed. “That’s not an espresso. It’s a grasshopper mocha. With some dip thrown in for good measure.”
“Oh.” Man, I really hated dipping tobacco.
I raised the thermos to my lips, trying to figure out how I could avoid drinking the terrible concoction—
Just then someone shoved past from behind, striking my shoulder. I exaggerated the blow, purposely spilling out the contents of the thermos.
“Out of the way Midget!” TJ said. The tanned squadmate looked like the son of a Victoria secret model and a football player. He was our drone operator. Not sure what he was looking for. Maybe he had lost sight of one of his drones or something.
Or maybe he just wanted to shove me.
“Well that’s a damn shame,” Fret said, regarding the spilled coffee. “You’ll just have to buy me a new batch when we get back to base.”
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
“I don’t. But I still gotta drink it. When you got an addiction, you gotta feed it even if you hate the taste. Why do you think those Mongolies smoke all those poppies? Because they like the taste?”
And so it went.
We eventually reached the tribal village, which was really just a bunch of dwellings carved into the rock of the mountain. Caves with curtains.
TJ sent out three HS3s—hover squad support system drones. The basketball-sized robots floated from dwelling to dwelling, slowly mapping out the place for our HUD—heads-up-display—maps. A HUD was overlaid onto every squad member’s vision courtesy of the aforementioned Implants we had in our heads. My squad brothers appeared as green dots on that map, while the HS3s marked out civilians in blue and hostiles in red, though none of the latter had been detected yet. There wasn’t too fine a line between a civilian and a hostile—basically anyone who carried a gun was marked in red. Of course, usually the people in those houses, civilians and hostiles alike, hid themselves pretty good when the HS3s came in, so we always had to follow up with a manual sweep.
We didn’t have any of the AI-driven infantry robots known as Centurions with us, so we had to go in and do the sweep ourselves. We split up into two five-person fire teams, with one ATLAS mech per team. While the mech took up a position outside one of the dwellings (mechs were too big to fit the diminutive doorways, which were actually perfect for my height), the rest of the fire team ducked inside and cleared the dwelling.
We’d been going from dwelling to dwelling for an hour so far, and other than a lot of frightened residents, we found no insurgents.
How could you tell an insurgent from a normal villager, you might ask?
Well, besides the fact that they shot first and asked questions later, they’d have a stash of weapons in their dwelling. And they dressed differently. Usually in black and gray digital camos with dark boots and headgear. This in stark contrast to the traditional garb of the tribesmen: white cloaks, fur sheepskin hats, Yak boots. Some of the fanatics had gotten smart lately though, and started wearing the same cloaks and hats as the locals. So we were forced to give a thorough pat-down to any residents we encountered, which got us some nasty looks from the women-folk and their mothers.
So yeah, my fire team finally made contact a little into the second hour.
We were standing beside a dwelling near the outskirts of the village, at the top of a sharp cliff. To our right was a steep escarpment—one misstep and we’d plummet right off that mountain. Good thing we all had jetpacks. The dwelling itself didn’t look much different from any of the others. A plain gray curtain hung over the doorway carved into the rock, with another curtain higher up on the second story “window.” On the top, smoke from a chimney vented out. Well, “chimney” was a bit of a misnomer—it was just a hole in the rock ceiling. Usually the dwellings had a small room known as a “smoke” room set aside for wood burning. The residents would use the room to generate warmth and cook meals. Sometimes those rooms served as sweat lodges, and were these wide-spaced areas with benches carved into the rock around the firepit. I guess when you lived in a cold environment, you thought up all these creative ways to keep warm.
Facehopper, the leading petty officer of my fire team, technically wasn’t supposed to go in first, but he did anyway. The guy was your basic ladykiller—good looking, twinkling blue eyes, slight British accent. He was the kind of guy who could charm his way out of anything. Rumor had it he had five girlfriends back home, plus another one among the Marines on deployment here. You ask me, that was far more trouble than it was worth. The Marine girlfriend I mean.
You definitely didn’t want to piss the Marines off.
Anyway, Facehopper slid aside the curtain of this particular dwelling and did a quick “pie” scan of the doorway with his rifle raised (that’s where you step away from the wall in a circle or “pie” pattern, slowly increasing your angle of exposure to whatever trouble might be waiting inside). Then he went in. Fret followed behind him. I went in third.
The gunfire started when I stepped inside. I caught a brief glimpse of a staircase hewn into the rock, leading to a second floor with a wooden handrail, before I dropped and rolled for cover. I ended up behind a wooden table. Fret was right beside me. Facehopper had taken cover on the far side of the chamber, near the doorway to another room—the smoke room, judging from the steaming firepit I could see from here.
Two attackers on the second floor, Facehopper sent via his Implant, on the fire team comm line.
Indeed, two red dots had appeared on the map overlaid on my HUD, because one of us had spotted the attackers, and the Implant transmitted the locations to everyone else. Those dots were situated on the second floor of the 3D wireframe map that represented the house.
What about the room beside you? Fret sent. The Implants only informed us of enemy contacts we—or the drones—had actually seen. If there was anyone in the smoke room, they hadn’t been spotted yet.
We’ll deal with it after. Suppressive fire if you please.
Fret and I started unloading our rifles at the balcony. Our ordinary vision was augmented so that the attackers themselves were highlighted in red, and even if the light was dim or they hid behind some object, we’d see a bright outline around those parts that were visible.
I saw a part of that red outline right now, behind what looked like a toppled hutch upstairs, and I fired at it. The red quickly vanished from view.
Gatling gunfire poured from the front entrance as Lui joined in. Though he might not be able to squeeze his mech inside, his gun sure could fit. Those bullets, coming in at a rate of 6,000 RPM, literally chewed up the balcony. Wood chips fell everywhere.
Facehopper lifted from cover slightly. Cease fire, he transmitted.
Fret and I stopped firing and ducked back behind the table. Lui withdrew his gatling—and his mech’s hand—from sight.
Facehopper fired off two quick shots.
I heard two thuds upstairs, and the red dots vanished from my map.
Facehopper turned toward the doorway of the smoke room beside him.
A grenade tumbled out from that room and rolled along the floor toward me.
I grabbed Fret, threw him to the dwelling’s floor, and jumped on top of him.
The grenade went off.
My jumpsuit absorbed most of the blow, but I tell you, the back of my leg really hurt in that moment: A piece of shrapnel had embedded just above and behind my knee.
I was bleeding pretty bad.
Facehopper started to get up. “Guys, are you—“
Gunfire erupted from the doorway, cutting him off.
Fret rolled me off of him. I didn’t resist because I was feeling pretty nauseous. Fret dragged me to the other side of the table, where we were shielded from the gunfire coming from that doorway.
“You okay, Mason?” he said.
“Yup.” Nauseous? To hell with it. I’d experienced worse in training.
As Fret applied a tourniquet around the leg of my jumpsuit, I aimed my M4 over the edge of the table and fired off three rounds through the doorway, mostly for a suppressive fire effect because I didn’t see anyone. There weren’t even any red dots on the HUD map, which meant that none of us had seen the attacker yet.
You guys need a hand in there? Lui sent on the comm.
Negative, Facehopper sent. He was camped out just to the right of the doorway, against the rock wall. The angle’s too steep. You’ll end up hitting me if you try that front door stunt again.
Facehopper grabbed a grenade from his belt and rolled it into the smoke room.
I ducked behind the table and felt the explosion from here.
I noticed movement upstairs—
Something poked my face real hard, and forced my head right down.
At first I thought it was Fret, trying to protect me with his arm or something. But then I felt a sharp, excruciating burning in my cheek, and a simultaneous burning in the back of my head behind my ear. I could feel hot blood pouring down my face and back.
I’d been shot clean through the face.
I felt a wave of panic, which quickly passed.
I’d been shot before, in training.
We all had.
We knew what it was like.
Still, I was shot in the face.
That wasn’t good.
I guess I’d never reach Facehopper’s legendary status with the women now.
This was weird though. I was still conscious. I felt weak, and nauseous, but I could still fight.
And I would.
Till my dying breath.
Fret was returning fire at the balcony. Facehopper was transmitting something about being pinned down again.
I forced my head up and aimed my rifle at where I thought the upstairs attacker was. There were no red dots on my map or outlines augmenting my vision.
“You okay, Mason?” Fret said.
“Ain’t ever been better.”
“You look like shit, bro.”
I smiled. “Glad I could give y’all an early Halloween.”
“Can’t believe we missed one of them bastards upstairs,” Fret said.
I never let my eyes drift from the rifle sites the whole time. That’s why when the enemy peeked around the hutch I saw him immediately.
I fired.
Got him.
But not before he let off an armor-piercing round.
Fret collapsed. He had a gunshot wound right in the chest. Blood poured out of his jumpsuit.
I pried out the medkit he carried in his right leg pouch, then ripped open his vest and started stabilizing him.
Behind me, Facehopper was shooting into the opposite room, which still hadn’t been cleared apparently. I saw a red dot appear on my HUD map inside the wireframe representation of that room.
The dot vanished pretty quick as Facehopper took the enemy down.
You guys good for now? Facehopper sent to me.
Yup, stabilizing Fret, I sent back.
Big Dog, get in here, Facehopper sent on the fire team comm. Help me clear the place.
Big Dog was the final member of our fire team (besides Lui). One of the more muscular members of the platoon, he was never the type to hold back. Facehopper must have given him specific orders to wait outside until now.
Big Dog came plowing in, and he and Facehopper proceeded to secure both floors of the dwelling. Then the two of them hurried over to Fret and me.
“How is he?” Facehopper said.
“Good.” I had just finished stabilizing Fret.
“Jesus, what about you?” Facehopper snatched the medkit from my leg pouch and started working on me.
“No no,” I said. “We have to get Fret out of here. Forget about me. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” Facehopper applied a skin patch to my face. I flinched as the hundred thousand microscopic needles sucked to my wound, suturing it.
“Where else does it hurt?” he said.
“On my head you mean? Behind the right ear. Exit wound, I think.”
He put another painful suture there.
Big Dog helped Fret to his feet. “I’ll get Fret to the corpsman.”
Facehopper helped me shrug off the rucksack that contained the commo equipment and then put it on himself. He wanted to take off my jetpack too, but I wouldn’t let him.
He thrust one shoulder under my armpit and hoisted me upright. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”
Leaning heavily on Facehopper, I limped forward—there was still shrapnel in the back of my leg—and we parted the curtain to leave the cave dwelling.
Lui was waiting in his ATLAS 5.
I guess my face must have looked pretty bad, because the front of the mech immediately opened up and Lui climbed out. He was crying.
“Lui!” Facehopper said as the ATLAS pilot came rushing up to me. “Don’t leave the mech!”
“You take the mech, Facehopper!” Lui said, his voice choking up. “You take it.” He shoved his shoulder under my other armpit. “I got you Mason. We’re gonna get you through this, bro, I promise.”
I don’t why, maybe because of some premonition, or some sixth sense, but for some reason I glanced over the top of the mech. Behind the three-meter-tall ATLAS, positioned all along the top of the escarpment, maybe seven meters from us, I saw men dressed in black and gray digital camos. They had long thick beards and black headgear, and they all had AK-105s aimed down at us.
One man in particular stood out near the center of the group. He had a hard, gaunt face, with hollow eyes and cheeks, and countless scars crisscrossing his features above that disheveled beard. I recognized him immediately from the reconnaissance photos I’d seen: He was the very same warlord who led the fanatics in this region.
Gansükh Tömörbaatar.
I pulled my two squad brothers down just as his men opened fire.
The backside of the mech shielded us somewhat, but even so Lui was struck, as was Facehopper. Blood spurted from the two of them.
Maybe I was hit too, who knows? If so, I didn’t feel the pain, because I was acting completely on adrenalin.
There was only one way to save my squad brothers now.
Get into the ATLAS.
I activated my jumpjets and barreled into the mech.
The ATLAS 5s had been primed to the Implants of every member of the platoon, so the mech responded right away to my mental commands.
Seal! The ATLAS cockpit hatch closed tight.
I grimaced in pain as actuators in the suit pushed the elastic inner material into my jumpsuit, wrapping my body up like a cocoon—pressing the piece of shrapnel deeper into the back of my leg in the process.
Nothing I could do about that.
I was a MOTH. Pain was my middle name. Besides, the adrenalin was negating a lot of that pain right now.
There were no windows in these cockpits, not like in some of the older models, but the mech overlaid what it saw onto my Implant so that I looked down on the world from the height of the three-meter-tall ATLAS.
Unfortunately, that world was currently being riddled with gunfire.
All directed at me.
Lui and Facehopper were already gone—the two of them had probably jetted away the instant I leaped inside the ATLAS.
I activated the frontal jets of the mech and shot backwards in a horizontal line down the path. I did a quick check of the HUD map to make sure there were no green dots in my way. I’d never forgive myself if I accidentally trampled one of my squadmates.
Load weapon patterns seven and five!
A serpent rocket launcher swiveled into my left hand. A gatling gun swiveled into my right hand.
An “incoming missile” alarm sounded.
I activated the “Trench Coat” countermeasure, seventeen pieces of radar-guided metal that shot out from my mech in a peacock pattern. The theory was that one of those pieces of homing metal was bound to hit an incoming rocket. However, it didn’t work too well when you had four or five rockets on you at once. Don’t know how many I had on me right now though…
I was still traveling backwards when two missiles exploded not far from me, but my momentum carried me well away. I kept expecting a follow-up missile impact though, but none came. I guess Gansükh and his henchmen had launched only those two.
I halted my jumpjet burn and then, aiming at the insurgents, I fired off all four serpents available to my left hand launcher. Huge chunks of the mountainside fell away above me. I was forced to activate my jets again to avoid the falling debris.
When I landed, I just whaled on those heights with the gatling gun in my other hand—Gansükh’s men quickly took cover.
They thought they could hide from me, huh? Well, we’d just have to see about that.
I swerved off the path and started running my war machine up the slope, boosting my advance with jumpjet spurts. I could see some of the insurgents now, trying to hide behind the peak.
They realized that I’d seen them and unleashed a hail of bullets. There were probably a few snipers among them. All it would take was one lucky shot…
Left hand, swivel ballistic shield!
The ballistic shield swiveled into place, swapping out the empty missile launcher. I held it in front of me as I ran. Bullets deflected harmlessly from the shield.
Another missile alarm sounded.
I was too slow on the Trench Coat this time.
The rocket struck my shield and I was sent hurtling backwards down the slope. I had the presence of mind to activate the reverse jets, and quickly rolled to a halt, prostrate on the rock.
Lying down was probably a bad idea though, even if it wasn’t my choice. Alarms were going off all over the cockpit now, but as I lay there I hardly heard them: I just wanted to sleep. I felt nauseous. The gunshot and shrapnel wounds I’d attained earlier throbbed painfully. I had a headache.
Sleep sounded pretty good right about now.
I started to close my eyes. Two seconds. That’s all I wanted. Two seconds with my eyes closed.
No.
I forced them open. If I closed my eyes, I’d sleep, and I’d die, either from my existing wounds or from the new ones that Gansükh’s men would be happy to supply.
It would be so easy to give in, so easy to sleep.
But I wasn’t a quitter.
I’d gone through the hardest training in the galaxy.
I hadn’t quit then and I wouldn’t quit now.
I could do this.
My teammates were depending on me.
I sat up.
Some of the insurgents had decided to clamber forward, maybe thinking to get some cheap shot in. One held a rocket launcher over his shoulder.
I raised my gatling and turned those fools into a fine red mist.
I scrambled to my feet, tapping into my body’s energy reserves. I could do this.
I discarded the crumpled ballistic shield and broke into a sprint. I fired my jumpjets, boosting my speed, and in a few strides I reached a crowded plateau near the top of the escarpment.
I landed right in the middle of twenty insurgents wielding AK-105s.
Under ordinary circumstances I would have been a little afraid. But I was in an ATLAS mech. I could take on a hundred ordinary men.
I didn’t even bother to use the gatling. I swapped the weapons out of my hands and started bashing heads, clearing a path as Gansükh’s henchmen fired away. Fluid levels were dropping in some of my servomotors from gunshot-related damage, but I kept moving, if a little sluggishly. Some insurgents died before I could even touch them, because that crossfire was so frantic.
I swiped an arm to the right, sending three men flying off the mountaintop. These guys didn’t have jetpacks. They wouldn’t be surviving that fall.
I stepped forward, crunching two unlucky dudes underfoot.
I scooped up another three guys in one hand and squeezed. I’ll let you imagine what happened to them. All I’ll say is it involved heads popping off. Not pretty.
Suddenly I was forced to one knee. An alarm went off, louder than the others.
The main servomotor in my right knee had failed.
I was vaguely aware that the gunfire had stopped around me.
I turned my head, and saw Gansükh standing right behind me. He wielded the biggest, baddest steel ax I’d ever seen. Blue electricity sparked up and down the surface of the blade, and I knew it was energy-enhanced. He swung it again, striking the back of my other leg.
I fell forward on both knees now.
I couldn’t believe it.
My ATLAS 5 had been hamstrung with an ax, of all things.
This guy knew all our weak points.
Okay, let’s see how well that ax did against a gatling.
I was still facing away from him, so I activated my rear jumpjets (at full burn, on the off chance that he was stupid enough to stay close and get caught in the 740 °C steam-gas mixture from my jet nozzles), then I applied lateral thrust to swing around. The upward burst wasn’t enough for my feet to lose contact with the ground, and when I landed it was back on my knees.
Gansükh was still standing—he’d prudently backed away from my jet burst.
I swiveled the gatling guns into both hands and brought them to bear on his position—
Gansükh hurled his ax.
I tried to swat the revolving blade aside, but my timing was off, and the energy weapon embedded deep in my mech, striking the CPU brain case just below my cockpit.
A perfectly aimed throw.
Like I said, this guy knew our weaknesses.
I started losing power.
The arms of the mech dropped, and the ATLAS slumped forward.
The vision feed from the mech winked out and I saw only the windowless inner cockpit, its metallic hull tinted red from the emergency lights. The elastic shell that held my jumpsuit in place retracted, and I fell forward against the hull.
I threw up.
I just stayed there, on my knees in a fallen mech that was little more than a useless hunk of scrap metal. I waited for this Gansükh character to come and kill me.
I heard the crunch of his footsteps on the rock outside, then the characteristic sound of metal grating on metal as he withdrew the blade. The cockpit shuddered slightly.
I knew what was coming next. He would lift that energy blade back and jab it as far as possible into the cockpit. Right into me.
Let the blade come.
I was ready.
No.
I couldn’t die now.
I wasn’t going to abandon Lui, Facehopper, and Fret.
They were injured.
They needed me.
And I wasn’t a quitter.
My cheek and ear still throbbed from the bullet wound, and so did the back of my leg (from the grenade shrapnel), but I was still conscious. And while I was conscious, I would fight.
I flung myself away from the edge of the cockpit and wrapped my fingers around the manual release latch.
The outer shell of the mech swung open.
And there I was, staring face to face with one very surprised warlord and two of his AK-105 wielding henchman.
There was a dead man just below the open hatch, which had apparently struck the fallen man on the head when it opened, judging from the blood.
Gansükh’s surprised expression hardened, and I saw hatred there like I’d never seen in my life. He hefted the energy ax above his head so he could make the killing blow, the muscles of his lean arms cording under its weight.
I was the faster.
I activated the jets of my jumpsuit and hurtled outside, right into one of the henchmen. The two of us tumbled to the ground, wrestling for the AK-105. Gunfire from the other henchman caused shards of rock to explode into the air around me.
I wrapped my arms around my man and pulled him close to me, turning him so that his body was between me and the incoming bullets. The henchman shook with each impact, shielding me, and the light of life left his eyes.
The other henchman paused to reload.
I grabbed the AK-105 from the fallen man and unleashed a hail of bullets, chewing up the second henchman while he reloaded.
I stumbled to my feet, keenly aware of a fresh wound in my side. Stars swam in front of my vision.
Hang in there…just a bit longer…
I aimed the weapon at Gansükh.
It was just me and the ax-wielding warlord now.
For a few seconds anyway.
Thirty insurgents rose up from where they had taken cover behind the rocks and aimed their thirty AK-105s down at me.
I considered taking out Gansükh and dying with him right there. Surrender just wasn’t in my blood, you have to understand. I didn’t need them to take me away and broadcast my beheading for the world to see. That wasn’t how I wanted to go. It would kill my family.
But for some reason, I lowered my weapon. I guess it was something in Gansükh’s eyes that swayed me. Gone was the pure hatred. Well, that’s not true, some hatred was still there, but now I also saw grudging respect.
“You are a true warrior,” Gansükh said, in English. “A rarity among the occupiers. You fight on, even when it is hopeless, even when you are dying, and shot in the face. For your courage, I will let you and your men live today. But when we meet again, I will not be so merciful.”
With that, he and his group of men retreated.
Big Dog hurried up the slope to my side.
“Wow, you really wrecked that ATLAS,” Big Dog said, surveying the twenty dead men and the toppled mech beside them. “You know how much those things cost, right?”
“Nice of you to show up now,” I said.
“Hey, I was getting Fret to the corpsman. A bunch of them pinned us down near the Chieftain’s house. Got here as quick as I could. Speaking of corpsman…” His expression turned grim as his gaze settled on my face.
I had some witty repartee in mind, but before it left my lips I collapsed.
Bomb showed up in the second ATLAS 5. “You guys are still here? What the hell?”
“Get Mason out of here,” Big Dog said, helping me up.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“We called in an airstrike.”
Ah.
The ATLAS mech glanced up as the thermobaric warheads dropped from the sky.
“Mason, we gotta get out of here, now!” Bomb said.
And so here we were, back at the beginning of this story.
Well, there isn’t much more to tell. Bomb scooped me up with his mech and sprinted down the hillside toward the village while Big Dog alternately jetted and ran along beside us.
Above, the mountain just lit up as the thermobarics exploded a few meters before impact. Huge chunks of the mountainside came tumbling down behind us.
Looking over my shoulder, I saw the devastation. About half the mountain seemed blown away. The bombs had been targeted with laser-sharp precision, and not one of the tribal dwellings had been affected by the aftermath. Well, except for the “house” we’d been ambushed in near the outskirts of the village. That one was buried in an avalanche of rocks, but there were only dead fanatics inside anyway.
Still, despite the damage to the mountain peak, I knew Gansükh and his men had survived. The man was too cunning, too full of hate, to go down so easily. I still couldn’t believe he’d let me live. There was honor among thieves after all, I guess.
I soon found myself beside Fret, Lui and Facehopper in the hut of the chieftain, where our corpsman, Bender, worked on me.
“You know, I don’t think I want to pilot an ATLAS ever again,” I said to no one in particular.
Lui opened his eyes. “Hey bro.”
“Hey.”
Lui grinned. “Heard you got into a little fight with our warlord friend.”
“Just a little one.” I bit my lip. Bender was doing some painful stuff to my cheek.
“Who won?” Lui said.
I reached out and gripped Lui by the hand. “We did, bro.”
“Good. Good.” He gave me a pained smile, and closed his eyes. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he added groggily.
“What, take your mech?”
“No. Take it whenever you want. I mean getting shot in the face. Never again, you hear?”
“I won’t.”
For my act of valor, fighting on against insurmountable odds despite life-threatening injuries, I was awarded the Navy Cross.
To be honest, I could care less about the medal. What was more important to me was the fact I had finally been given a callsign by my platoon brothers.
They called me Snakeoil.
You know, like those worthless medicines quack doctors sell?
Because when you first saw me, your initial impression was that I was some short guy, almost a midget, a guy who didn’t look like much. Too small to be a threat to anyone.
But that was all snakeoil and trickery, because once the battle started you found out real quick that I was one of the deadliest of all. I put the snake in snakeoil.
I still can’t believe they gave me the Navy Cross, though.
Ridiculous.
I was awarded a medal for doing nothing other than fighting to save the lives of my platoon brothers. Something they would have done for me any day of the week.
And there isn’t any snakeoil in that.