The more I invited her in, the more Ardennes became my body, and the more I became her mind. I stopped ordering her legs to move and simply walked. I stopped peering through her exterior sensors; they became my eyes.
Rocco was right; no one knew this old girl like I did. I rumbled through the city streets, puffing with exertion but not out of breath. I stayed alert but relaxed enough to appreciate the experience of piloting an upright tank without spraying blue eggs on the auxiliary display.
I had never connected with an upright like this in the sim, not even the other Challenger-class variants. It was like a switch flipped in my brain, and it wouldn’t last forever. But there, keeping pace with Papa Felix on the outskirts of the university district, it would be enough.
This was the first time I actually felt like a jockey. And it was the moment I started to wonder if I could ever go back to just turning wrenches. That first, euphoric taste of a total nervous bond experienced only by combat pilots and upright jockeys was immediately and voraciously addictive.
But all good things come to an end, and far too quickly the sensation of true unity slipped away like a good dream you try so hard to remember as you slowly wake. I went back to piloting an upright, and Ardennes went back to being an MBU, albeit one with which I’d shared a moment. And she hummed, all her systems slipping more in sync.
The uprights don’t have a TruAI (at least ours don’t), or even any programming more sophisticated than subroutines adjusting nerve responses to new jockeys over time. The bulky logic cores necessary for sentience would be overloaded or damaged too easily by volted plasma or directed microwave weapons. But every jockey will swear all uprights have distinct personalities. Ardennes had just given me a glimpse into hers.
Hours passed. The suns kept climbing toward the zenith of Tyunta’s 18-hour day, and I continued watching students cycle in and out of the protest. I wondered if my new friend from the cafe knelt somewhere down there. Two hours left in the patrol, then food, then active standby again—
Vibration alarms kicked off on Ardennes’ threat identifier, but I didn’t need them. With the haptics turned back up, I could feel the low thumping through the pads on the bottom of the upright’s feet.
“All units in the University district, incoming indirect fire, shrouds up and cover!” said Kayle Kiles.
I lifted my ballistic shrouds overhead and sprinted for the shelter of an overpass. I heard a collective scream from the college campus as the anti-artillery guns spun and began to spit a wall of lead toward the incoming shells and rockets. The screams redoubled when incoming fire began to detonate midair or impact on the buildings south and west of the university, outside the anti-artillery cone of denial.
City sirens began to sound, signaling to the citizens to seek shelter in the underground bunkers below Tyunta Central. People abandoned cars on the street, running for the nearest building while artillery shells decimated crenellations and clipped the edges of buildings.
One shell cut the edge of the roof of the building I’d taken cover behind, showering me with polycrete dust and impacting on the road. I pushed my shrouds to full-forward and crouched before the shell went off, the shrapnel impacting the ballistic panels with metallic toonks loud enough to leave me shaken. I’m used to spending artillery barrages under several feet of polycrete while I wrench on uprights.
I lowered my shrouds. The blast had made a mess of every unarmored civilian car still on the street, including those of a few Tyuntans too stubborn to get out from behind the wheels. I looked away with a grimace. How did people willing to bomb their own city have so much support here?
Conventional shells wouldn’t do much to an upright without a direct hit, but they weren’t being aimed at us. I turned back to the university campus where the defense arrays continued to cut swaths of incoming fire from the air, but not every shell got intercepted.
Some landed on the grounds, among students now quite eagerly vacating the protest. One of the anti-air batteries exploded in a heap of twisted metal and magnesium-white sparks. Dozens of bodies littered the ground already.
Not all of the protesters had fled the green, either. Several had instead rushed the garrison positions, and the pop and flash of small arms fire ripped up and down both sides.
“Papa, rebels in the protest.”
“I see them, Vandal. Move to assist.”
My Bulldogs were loaded with alternating AP and HEAT rounds, a combat mix perfect for engaging enemy armor but nearly useless against an infantry rush. I got closer, about to arm my point-defense array, but the lines between the garrison and protesters had already become blurred.
Not only that, but not everyone who had rushed the positions had done so intent on fighting for the rebels; just as many sought cover underneath the anti-air cannons, hands clapped over ears.
I fired a burst into the dirt on either side of the advancing line, spraying soil and monocrete foundation over the line of protestors. Those students who turned to see an upright tank advancing bolted in the other direction. Some others turned small arms on me, hopelessly pelting me with small arms fire that could never hope to penetrate Ardennes’ thick skin.
Those, at least, I knew were hostile. Guns were illegal for civilians to own in Central. I swallowed and sprayed another burst with the low-caliber array. Several of the insurgents fell, dropping amid clouds of red mist. Their comrades broke and ran. Garrison fighting vehicles cut most of them down, along with multiple students with explosive rounds from the 50-millimeter cannons on their turrets.
I trained my sensors after the retreating crowd, unable to believe my eyes as I spotted the student I’d come across in the café, along with his buddies. Having first rushed the gun positions, they now sprinted for the cover of a larger student complex with a mural (I assumed, of the school’s namesake). But they never made it. A rebel rocket landed in their midst, indifferent of their support of the Princeps. They didn’t even know it had happened, they just keeled over from the concussion and stopped moving.
I wondered if he would have argued so vehemently for them if he’d known what would happen only a few hours later. The rebels launching the rockets hadn’t meant to kill him, I’m sure. But the idea the Princeps would shed any tears over their deaths would be laughable if it weren’t heartbreaking. All this senseless civilian death. It shouldn’t have bothered me. That student was right; I had no stake in this. But the waste of it did bother me. At that moment, I hated the Princeps.
Papa Felix came out from the other side, leaping on top of the student union building with a boost from his counter-grav. He gazed down at the scene, and then his rotary guns started spinning. They spit fire in short, controlled bursts, and I realized he was systematically annihilating any armed resistance with precision I couldn’t hope to match (even if I had wanted to). My first real combat patrol and it seemed I’d already had my fill of killing. Now I just felt sick, and not from the kineto-suppressors wearing off.
Kayle Kiles came onto the radio. “Ardennes, Steelmare. CIC shows two inbound armored columns penetrating through the outer positions en route to the University. One upright in support. Designated Alpha and Bravo targets.”
My blood froze. “Paladin?” I asked.
“Negative, initial report looks like a restored model from the Catalan annexation.”
“Crow’s Nest, Sioux and ’Dalgo moving to intercept Alpha target,” said Rocco.
Felix came on after. “That leaves us with Bravo and the upright. Let’s get after it.”