Slowly, the miners in their Rock Breakers marched across the blasted volcanic surface of LZ-Wolf VIII, falling into ragged ranks under the orders of Sergeant Dane Quan. Overhead, a thunderous boom tore through the air as a massive vessel shot across the sky at several times the speed of sound. Zayd strained his eyes to get a good look at the alien craft as it passed but the limited mobility of the Rock Breaker prevented him from getting more than a glimpse at the dark, spindle-shaped craft before it slipped over the horizon. Minutes later, the ground trembled with the force of the vessel’s impactful landing, sending a shiver down Zayd’s spine. Just how massive was that ship?
“Zayd,” Dane’s voice interrupted his thoughts as his com flared to life. “Take a look at this,” he said, passing several images to the younger man’s heads-up display. Unlike the Rock Breaker, Dane’s enforcer was designed to track targets at a distance, had a full human range of motion, and had much better systems for observing what was happening around it. “I don’t recognize the ship design, but this looks like battle damage to me,” he said, painting the images with several ring-shaped indicators. “That sounded like a hard landing, maybe we’re in luck and they’re half defeated already.”
As Zayd inspected the image of the dark vessel with crumpled sections of hull plating and multiple compartments that would have been exposed to space, he wondered how such a badly damaged ship could have survived moving through hyperspace to begin with. Clearly, these aliens were resilient if a ship that had been hammered that hard could still survive travel through the higher dimensions! “I don’t recognize it either,” Zayd finally said. “Anything from Overwatch or Ground?”
“Overwatch is still offline,” the older man answered. “Ground wants our visual feeds but otherwise they’re busy turning tail. They don’t know what the thing is either. We’re on our own,” Dane said before switching topics. “Look, I’m passing positions to the Rock Breakers, I don’t know what the aliens are going to fight like but I expect to lose half our men in the advance. I want you at the center of our wolf pack. You get as many people as you can to that ship and smash everything you can. Let the others soak up enemy fire if you have to, I’ll clear the way with indirect fire support but I only have twenty war rounds, then I’m over to immobilizers that may not even work.”
“Understood. Good hunting,” Zayd said, lifting the massive fifty-kilo rock-breaking hammer his mech carried and taking his place among the advancing mechs. ‘Wolf pack’ was an apt description for the formation Sergeant Dane Quan arranged them into. Thal drew the short straw at the point of the ragged formation followed by roughly ordered ranks of mechs in the teardrop-shaped cluster. Not everyone carried a massive hammer like Zayd, some carried oversized picks and a few had been fitted with impact drivers in place of their hands. The heavy, powered chisels functioned like old-style jackhammers and were often issued to the miners with the least manual dexterity since they didn’t have to worry about manipulating a handheld tool.
Thinking about the ship they were approaching, Zayd tagged the pilots of the mech with impact drivers and pulled them in closer to the middle of the formation. “Kels, Rikken, Awl,” he called to the three pilots. “I want you behind me, if we make it to the enemy ship, we’ll use your drivers like can openers. Heard?”
“Heard,” the trio acknowledged.
After several more minutes of marching, the ragged group of miners crested a rise and got their first look at the graceful contours of the enemy ship. Despite the battle damage, it was clear that someone with an artist’s sensibilities had worked to transform the craft from a utilitarian piece of machinery into a visually pleasing if intimidating work of art. The dark metal of the ship’s hull possessed an iridescent sheen of rippling energy that flowed from its pointed prow along its entire five-hundred-meter length. Starting from a point a third of the way back from the front of the vessel, several gracefully curved extensions pulled away from the central hull, like the tentacles of a squid flowing in a corkscrew pattern around the ship giving the whole thing an aquatic feeling, like it would be equally at home slipping through the depths of an ocean as it was sliding through the upper dimensions of hyperspace.
Around the ship, several humanoid figures in armored suits were organizing themselves when they spotted Zayd’s group of mechs. The armored figures stood just over two meters tall with gossamer energy wings flowing from the backs of their iridescent black armor. Many of them carried weapons that looked like a combination of a rifle and a harpoon gun with wires connecting the weapon to their armored suits.
“CHARGE!” Sergeant Dane shouted into their com channel as the miners gawked at the alien soldiers. Without waiting for the Rock Breakers to start moving, the older guardsman knelt on the blasted rock of the ridge and raised his shoulder-mounted cannon to fire the first of his limited explosive shells at the enemy soldiers. The shell arced high overhead before dropping precisely in the middle of the gathered alien soldiers, exploding in a furious wave of searing heat and concussive force. Shattered volcanic rock flew everywhere, impacting the alien soldiers with the force of a hammer blow from a rock breaking meck. Several of the armored figures were knocked to the ground or sailed through the air only to bounce off the hull of their starship before falling limply to the ground.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Yet for all the damage the first explosive shell had done, many of the alien soldiers were far enough from the center of the blast to weather its destruction with nothing beyond the impact of a few stray rocks that were far too small to do any significant damage. Those soldiers immediately took a firing position, aiming their strange rifle-like weapons at the advancing Rock Breakers and unleashing a torrent of crackling bolts of energy.
Thal’s mech fell first as a storm of energy bolts impacted on the legs of his Rock Breaker. Each bolt tore through the tough exterior plating of the mech’s legs before surging electrical energy fried delicate circuits and complex components. By the time the mech had been struck five times, both legs locked up and Thal’s own forward momentum toppled the advancing mech like a falling log.
“Spread out or we’ll trip over each other!” Zayd yelled into his com, using his mech’s limited range of motion to jog slightly sideways as they continued to advance. Heart thundering in his chest, Zayd rode the edge of critical distance between himself and the mech in front of him. Too far away and he wouldn’t have any cover against incoming fire from those strange energy weapons. Too close and he risked running into the mech in front of him when the enemy inevitably felled it.
The earth shook as a second explosive shell fell amidst the aliens, raising a cloud of hazy sulfuric dust and reducing visibility to a few dozen meters at best. The Rock Breakers thundered forward despite the continuing rain of crackling energy bolts. Voices cried out on the com channel again and again as the horrifying energy bolts crippled mech after mech. Thal had fallen first but he was joined quickly by more than a dozen fellow mechs!
Suddenly, the Rock Breaker running in front of Zayd shuddered to a halt, beginning to topple forward and to the side. Unfortunately, the slight twist in its fall would place the mech squarely in Zayd’s path as he charged! Pushing his machine to its limits, Zayd relied on his hasty modifications to get enough speed to catch the falling mech before it completely toppled. “Stay with me!” Zayd shouted at the pilot of the mech he’d forcefully grabbed. Wrenching upward with the powerful limbs of a mech designed to move vast quantities of earth and rubble, Zayd lifted the other mech off the ground and held it in front of himself as though it were a shield!
“What the hell Zayd,” the pilot of the other machine shouted. More incoming energy bolts slammed into the crippled mech, filling the air of the pilot’s cockpit with the sound of popping electrical components and the acrid smell of ionized air. “I’m going to die in here you son of a …”
The man’s voice cut off abruptly as Zayd tapped rapid commands into his console, silencing his com channel with the other mech and then cutting the other pilot out of the network. If they survived this charge, he’d apologize later! Right now, all he cared about was surviving, the rest wasn’t important! Using the other mech as cover allowed Zayd to cross the last dozen meters through the drifting dust cloud and to arrive within striking distance of the enemy soldiers.
“CATCH!” he yelled at the enemy, despite the fact they couldn’t hear him. Servos screamed in his Rock Breaker as he pivoted as much at the waist as the MCS would allow him to move, thrusting out with his arm and hurling the disabled mech he carried at a cluster of soldiers firing their rifles. The flailing mech soared through the air before slamming into two of the armored figures who didn’t manage to get out of the way of the flying mech. Whether the impact killed the aliens or not, Zayd had no way to know, he didn’t even know if the pilot of the mech had survived being used as a projectile either. At the very least, his fellow pilot had likely sustained a number of injuries from a fall his mech was never designed to protect him from. What Zayd did know, however, was that for a moment, there weren’t any soldiers between him and the alien ship!
Raising his massive rock-breaking hammer as high overhead as the MCS would allow him to reach, Zayd surged forward and unloaded all of his strength, striking at what appeared to be a hatch leading into the ship.
The hammer slammed into the iridescent black surface of the ship… and froze. All of the kinetic energy of the strike should have done something, whether it crumpled the metal of the ship or bounced back on Zayd. Instead, it did… nothing. No, not nothing. The iridescent surface of the ship brightened with the impact, a wave of energy rippling outward from the hammerhead before rebounding like a rubber band stretched too far. Before Zayd could pull back on the hammer, the energy wave reached the point of impact and surged toward him, slamming directly into the cockpit with more than five times the force of Zayd’s own hammer blow.
The last thing Zayd saw was the world turning end over end as his Rock Breaker mech sailed through the air before it slammed into the broken rocky surface of the world humans called the ‘Rotten Egg.’ Pain flared all over his body when the piloting frame failed to absorb more than half of the force of the impact. With a sharp CLANK, his head bounced off the piloting frame, filling his ears with a high-pitched ringing sound and his mouth with the coppery taste of blood. Moments later, darkness claimed his sight amidst sparking circuits and the beginning of an electrical fire.