Far above the surface of LZ-Wolf VIII a junior sensor technician looked at the blip on his screen and hoped that it would just go away. After a minute, when the offending dot still didn’t vanish, he smacked his console, wishing the glitchy system would resolve itself in a way that didn’t require him to do anything about the yellow dot on his screen. Tapping a few keys, he launched a quick systems self-check before staring at the chronometer on the wall and sighing. The system self-check would only take four minutes to run and he still had ten minutes left on shift. Silently, he cursed his luck while praying the dot didn’t actually exist.
The dot shouldn’t exist. There was absolutely nothing on that side of the system to warrant attention from anyone. It wasn’t even the right vector for traffic from the gate in LZ-Prime. Other than the large ore freighters and supply transports that came out here every three months, no one ever came to LZ-Wolf. There was nothing here but a dirty, smelly mining operation on the surface of a planet that had so many volcanic eruptions that it was practically covered with volcanic ash and eons of crystal deposits belched out of the planet’s molten depths.
The more the sensor tech looked at his data, the more he was convinced that it was an error. None of the readings made any sense. There was way too much energy in the hypertranslation wave, the velocity was way too high for something that just came out of hyper, and there was no contact with the craft on either the local Deep Space Network or the Interstellar Net Channel. It had been more than fifteen minutes since the thing hit the system for the first trace of energy to hit the guard station’s sensors and it should have squawked something by now!
Seeing the system check come back all green except for the yellow warning on the required maintenance interval, the tech hung his head in frustration. Raising his hand in defeat he called out, “Contact at grid Charlie Four, I need a supervisor.”
“The hell are you on about, grid C4? There’s nothing out there, run a systems check,” the supervisor said from his chair at the center of the operations room. The balding man didn’t even look up from the game he was playing when he gave his instructions. Much like his technician, he knew how many minutes were left until the shift ended and he wanted to wrap up his daily quest before he had to go through shift change with the snot-nosed kid, fresh out of school, who manned the night shift.
“I did run a system check,” the tech said, trying not to sound obviously frustrated with his supervisor. “The data’s all kinds of weird, the contact is headed in-system from C4 but it’s wicked fast and, wait, now it’s flickering in and out, like sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. This thing is just weird,” he said, staring at the conflicting readings from multiple sensors and trying to figure out what the strange data could mean.
“Let me see,” the supervisor finally gave up on his game to look at the data from the technician’s console. “Bah, sensor ghost,” the supervisor snorted. “See the yellow light on the maintenance indicator? We’re overdue for a replacement on the long-distance array. Shut your panel down for a system hard reset and leave a note for night shift that if the ghost is still there when the system comes back online in an hour they should send down to maintenance for an array overhaul. We’ve got the spares, we’ve just been trying to get a few more months out of each refresh cycle. Once you’ve written up your instructions, forward them to my panel for approval, start the reboot, and get the hell out of here. You’ve got three minutes, I’m not paying overtime for glitchy hardware!”
“You’re the boss,” the technician said, rapidly typing up the instructions that his boss really should be writing himself. It didn’t matter, as long as no one was going to drag them to action stations to stare at a sensor ghost for the next several hours, he really didn’t care if he had to do the work for his lazy boss to sign his name to.
On the surface of the planet, Zayd had been in his bunk for less than four hours when a shrill alarm began to blare throughout the barracks. Emergency red lighting came on throughout the camp with dim lights overhead and brighter edge lighting along the floor, doors, and hallway intersections. When he heard the alarm, Zayd’s heart began to race as he rolled from his bunk and began hauling on his piloting suit without bothering to wear anything underneath it other than his boxers.
In the entire time he’d been here, the company had never once run an Enemy Attack drill. Growing up, such drills had been a common part of life, and scoring well in the drills was often rewarded. Here, when Zayd dashed into the corridor, he found several other miners still in their underwear, standing in their doorways looking around for someone to tell them what the bother was.
“Suit up idiots,” Zayd barked as he dashed down the corridor toward the mech hangers. “Enemy attack!”
“What enemy? We’re not at war with anyone right now,” one of the portly old-timers said, scratching his furry belly and staring at the departing Zayd in disbelief.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Hey, Thal,” a younger man said as he turned back to his room to get dressed in his own piloting suit. “Maybe it’s a bullshit drill, maybe it’s real, but if it’s something like the station boss getting a bug up his ass to run a drill, do you want the write-up that goes with not going to emergency stations? I hit a massive load this week and I don’t want my pay docked,” he said, dragging on the suit and heading off in the direction Zayd had gone.
“Effing management,” Thal said, returning to his own room to get dressed while several other old-timers did the same.
When Zayd arrived in the mech hanger he witnessed a flurry of activity around a battered green and gold Enforcer mech. The BQ-21A Enforcer was a modified version of the BQ-21 Punisher light artillery mech. While the Punishers were designed to fire their massive shoulder-mounted cannon over the horizon at hostile targets with explosive shells that could flatten buildings and crack open even heavily armored mechs, the Enforcer had stripped out many of the advanced sensors and targeting systems along with replacing the shoulder cannon with one that fired electronics disabling devices and grapples. The company knew that its workforce couldn’t always be trusted and the Enforcer was a not-so-subtle message to the pilots of the Rock Breakers that any attempts to utilize their mechs to fight against each other or the company would be suppressed immediately.
“Would you look at that,” a sturdy older man with a close-cropped beard and military crisp haircut said when he saw Zayd enter the hanger. “What is that, you made it here in under three minutes. Not bad kid. You serve somewhere?”
“Academy,” Zayd answered simply, not wanting to get into his history with the family more than he had to. “Washed out, no cyber.”
“Sucks, you look sharp,” the older man praised. “I’m Sergeant Dane Quan, right now, I’m it for Camp Echo’s actual guard force. Since you’re here, I’m pressing you as my second, crystal?”
“Sir, crystal, sir,” Zayd said automatically, reverting to the military-like discipline he’d been raised with. Inwardly, his heart sang. It might be temporary, but with a few short words, the sergeant had transformed him from a miner back into a soldier and the impact on Zayd’s mentality was tremendous. “What’s going on?”
“Overwatch caught something inbound, alien. It launched two shuttles, one at High Station and one at Approach Control. Ten minutes after they confirmed the contact, Overwatch went offline. Their last transmission said ‘We’ve been boarded’” the guardsman explained. “Ground Control picked up a massive inbound contact, they called it the mothership. We drew the short straw kid, it’s going to be on top of us in less than ten.”
“Are we evacuating?” Zayd asked, glancing in the direction of his assigned mech. In ten minutes, they wouldn’t be able to do much in terms of extracting valuables, but each mech was worth over five million credits and the Enforcer was twice that. If they force marched as fast as they could, the two dozen miners stationed here might be able to save the company tens of millions in hardware losses.
“You wish. Everyone else evacuates. We stall the enemy,” the old soldier said bitterly.
“Eff,” Zayd spat before quickly correcting himself. “I mean, understood. Sir, with permission, I’d like to get to my mech. It’s hard to fight in a Rock Breaker but if I can disable the limiters I stand a better shot.”
“Do it,” Dane approved instantly. “Looks like your buddies are finally here. You get set, I’ll wrangle them. In five minutes, we move.”
“Heard, I’ll be ready,” Zayd replied, breaking into a run toward his mech. Jumping into the cockpit, he ignored the MCS for the moment and unscrewed a service panel, plugging his suit computer in and moving rapidly through the system prompts. Safety limiters on the power generator: off. Power exertion limits on the artificial musculature: off. Impact hazard protection: off. Thankfully, he didn’t have to do anything beyond manipulating the settings already loaded in the software to release what warfighting potential the Rock Breaker had. Half of the things he disabled would have shut the mech down at the first sign of combat damage. Good for protecting an idiot miner from making a cave-in worse by flailing about, but bad for a mech pilot fighting for his life against some kind of alien monstrosity. The rest were all limiters that were intended to extend the operating life of the machine. The arms had more power than they were able to exert, you just had to unlock it all. If he tore the machine apart in a fight today, what did it matter? Either the extra capabilities he unlocked allowed them to win or he’d die in the attempt. If he survived long enough to get in trouble for wrecking the mech, he’d worry about it then.
Unfortunately, none of his modifications would do anything to increase the machine’s pathetic range of motion. He’d still only be able to fight like a puppet soldier. Still, he’d take every advantage he could get. In the next ten minutes, he’d be fighting for his life. The company didn’t expect anyone from Camp Echo to survive, they were just supposed to buy time, but Zayd didn’t care what the company thought. As long as he had something to work with, he’d use every bit of it to get through this.
“Listen up you sorry excuses for men,” Sergeant Dane Quan roared on the communications channel. “Our employer has decided to be good to us! We get hazard pay, one hundred thousand per minute we manage to delay whatever the hell the aliens send after us. Paid to you if you live, your family if you die. Only two rules,” he said to his instantly attentive audience. “First rule, I’m in charge and if I drop, you obey Zayd, if he drops, then it's every man for himself. Second rule,” he said, raising his shoulder cannon high. “You run, I will kill you myself and if I’m dead and you run, the company will blacklist you AND YOUR FAMILY. Crystal?”
“Sir, crystal, sir,” Zayd said into the channel, prompting the others to echo him raggedly. After all, what choice did they have?