Bioforms 0/0
Powered Armor 0/0
Lost Machina Artefacts 0/0
I peek over the lip of my rudy trench, inhaling boiling air from my suit’s rebreather. Of course those last shots hit my air supply too. My HUD adjusts the amount of life support left, numbers spinning as four autocannons pivot towards my groin.
“Got a leak here, lettin' out emergency air—better grab a top-up, mate, quick as ya can!” Says the suit in its distinctly incorrect Australian accent.
*click click click* echoes through the trench as firing pins slam against empty champers. Long since dry of bullets.
“Can it you stupid bot. Can’t you tell the pilot’s already dead?” I snap, giving its servoes a power-armor enhanced kick.
Steel snaps under my boot, hydraulic fluid sprays across the groin and stomach of my armor, as if the dead pilot’s soul lingers, wishing to mock his murderer. I glance down at the cyborg, was the pilot even male? Impossible to guess after the augmentation they’d undergone to become a juggernaut. Bile rises in my throat at the thought of having myself cut apart and fused into the battle mech. Absolutely disgusting.
My helmet chirps at me, automatically opening the channel to my ‘squadmate’.
“Phfina? Awre you awight?” Asks a lisping voice too young to be on the battlefield.
Especially this battlefield.
“I’m fine,” I wince, trying not to let the pain show. “Suit is buggered. Ah, can you check that bunker for a spare?” I manage to say, struggling to keep my voice even as I duck beneath the edge and face my only remaining ally. She’s picking her way through the trench, heading towards a tunnel entrance. It's some kind of ammo depot or bunker. The girl’s suit is identical to mine, eight feet tall, made from layers of composite armor to deflect multiple hits from any angle. Except for the pilot. Given her handicap of being three and a half feet tall, I'm impressed she can move at all in that thing, albeit in a stiff legged waddle. We really should have used something other than artillery shells as stilts, they’re too rigid. Seems like they’re tripping the suit’s crush limiters. All the pesky little bits of software that keep the powered armor from actuating its limbs beyond what is humanly possible; and turning us into jelly along the way.
Things I wouldn’t have to worry about in her place…
Logic whispers an answer to my problems. I’m the one fighting for us, it’s only right for me to take the working armor. Kerrigan would last whole minutes in my busted suit before it cooked her alive. Disgust overloads me, hating that I even considered the thought!
“Otay Phfina.” Is Kerrigan’s response, oblivious to my vile machinations.
Nausea hits me harder than bullets. A one two combo with her innocence that hammers my ribs. She trusts me completely, if I asked she wouldn’t hesitate to swap suits. Might even ask if the air was supposed to burn as she handed me the only good rebreather.
A tear rolls down my cheek. No, This is my battlefield, I won’t lose myself. We will live or die together. They might have taken Earth away from us, but we’re still human! A blind scanner ping ripples through the trench, bouncing off our armors before I can duck or hide. In seconds those radio waves will tell someone exactly where we are. Probably enter us into their network of targeting computers and send an artillery shell at our predicted locations.
“Kerrigan! Run!” I shout, checking the rounds in my flechette pistol.
But I already know the answer. The pistol’s electronic readout displays 0/100.
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Kerrigan’s shuffle turns into a frantic straight-legged waddle, flailing as the suit compensates for a kid pilot. I don’t want the last thing she hears to be my shouting. So I activate the com once more.
“Thanks Kerrigan. Be quick now.” I gasp, doing my best to keep the pain to myself. No reason to make a child half my age worry about my bullet wounds. Besides, I already rubbed some dirt into them, nothing more I can do now.
My armor, slick with hydraulic fluid slips off the Juggernaut, sending me cartwheeling over autocannons and empty missile racks. Their dry clicking chases me into the mud twenty feet below. Suit dampeners cushion the blow, only sending fire through the bullet holes in my side and shoulder.
I need to get into the bunker before artillery or some curious little killbot shows up. The battlefield above the trenches is entering a lul, most factions seem to have their power cells sabotaged and are struggling to find replacements that don’t fuse their circuits. Courtesy of yours truly. A fact only the Novan Technomancy of Steel is aware of.
I think.
I really hope so…
Which is why I’m hiding on what I thought was their last soldier, praying the next Technomancer wave won’t come, or will be another bulletless juggernaut. Anything more than an unsuspecting soft dick will be the death of me. Flashing lights warn of my left reactor overheating, going super critical. Normally I could shunt spare coolant from my right to even out the load, but it’s nonfunctional from the five autocannon bullets inside it. Minutes of air left, enemies incoming, and busted armor.
Sorry Kerrigan, this is as far as I go.
My hud blinks red.
A new warning appears.
“Oi, big one’s on the way—grab your dingo an’ kiss that bitch goodbye!” Says the suit.
“Of every accent in the universe, why did it have to be Australian!”
The sounds of screaming artillery shells and laser fire cease abruptly as the few survivors of this pocket war receive the same warning. Except the Tulvarians who continue their war-hooting. For spacefaring iguanas I would have expected more intelligence from them, or at least vocalizations that are distinguishable from a dozen bovines in heat.
A thin line of black appears in the atmosphere above me. No reading on the HUD means the missile is out of my suit’s scanner range, yet visible. An infantryman’s way of saying ‘InterContinental Ballistic Missile’. I swallow, trying to work spit back into my mouth. The missile is falling straight down, plummeting on an angle of attack that is close to ninety degrees, indicating an orbital launch. Probably one of the warships who are here on ‘observational’ duties.
“Please don’t be a Technomancy nuke.” I whisper.
I value my own hide quite highly, it’s the best one if I can be allowed to say so. Yes, that’s not saying a whole lot considering I've only had two bodies, but still! Nuclear annihilation is low on my list of preferred deaths.
Energy batteries whine, thrumming to life for several horrible seconds. Each instant bringing the missile deeper into our atmosphere. A dozen lasers illuminate the sky. Nine go wide, vanishing into the darkness of space at .9C. Effectively the speed of light. Three beams score direct hits, one on the nose and two center mass. A blue sphere glows softly, little more than the blink of death.
The missile, dropped from orbit, is shielded.
No one puts shielding on an average missile. It can only be one thing. Someone broke the rules and decided to flip the table. Win the war by erasing everyone, including themselves. Galactic sanctions would be imposed, a small comfort to my soon-to-be vaporized body.
Damn, two lives and I couldn’t get laid in either one. Life’s just not fair.
A nuclear flash illuminates my world. Colored electric green by the instant sun over me, tattling on the treaty breaker. Why would the Technomancy drop a nuke on little ole me? They'd broken the only rule -tenuous as it might be- during this battle royale. More confusing still, they relied upon the solarium mines native to this world more than any other faction! Why poison the well? Now the nuclear radiation would be absorbed into the mines, irradiating anything that attempted to harvest them for the next millenia, if not two. Worse, the solarium would operate at one tenth efficiency until the radioactive particulates worked themselves out of the crystal lattice, a galaxy spanning death knell.
My faceplate glass polarizes to a hard mirror finish, deflecting nuclear light for all its worth. I’m too close. Soon the shockwave will hit. Motors whine, slamming the opaque “Hazardous Enviromental Litigating Protetections” over my faceplate. The HELP system is designed ricochet bullets and horny exes, like a steel shutter slamming closed. The highest level of protection possible for an armored trooper.
I sigh, surprised to still be alive.
NUCLEAR DETONATION DETECTED!
FIND COVER!
“Yeah yeah, thanks a lot. Never would have seen that without you.” I say, chinning the faceplate to silence the alarm.
All goes white.
—
Thirty six hours earlier…