“Callista, the scouts just reported in. It looks like the main force is still sitting this out. A handful of long range configured MACs are surrounding the city. Their artillery has more than enough ammo to reduce us to rubble and, by the looks of the A and E blocks, they’re more than willing to do so.” Lionel’s voice came through the radio just as Callista closed the distance and crushed an enemy MAC’s cockpit with a well-placed kick.

“I was just over E block…” normally Callista wouldn’t respond, but she put aside her ‘legendary recording’ for this fight. Everyone made such a big deal out of it, and she was a bit embarrassed to admit it was just a children’s song that kept her calm. But Callista had no intention on trying to remain calm for this battle. She had no allies to worry about and no enemies to spare.

“Yes, now it’s an inferno and the buildings are collapsing or worse. You just need to focus on what you can do. We all knew we’d be taking a beating. We aren’t getting out of this unscathed even in the best-case scenario.”

Callista was fighting fine. Better than fine actually. She may not have been able to use Guinevere’s new design, but the team was able to modify her MAC a bit on the side.

Still, even with the benefit of the extra modifications, she was fighting far above what she was capable of. She knew this, but she couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was the shame of failing that test for the new MAC. Maybe it was some love for the city… or the people. Or maybe it really was just letting her rage run wild. She didn’t know. All she knew was that even the artillery shells that would normally be difficult to dodge seemed to move just as sluggishly as the missiles and UAVs. She didn’t waste a single second in the air; each move flowed perfectly into the next. Even the witnesses wouldn’t believe her kill count for this battle.

She tried to stop thinking. Any change in any aspect of herself might bring this dream to an end. Any mental lapse might take away her little miracle, “The artillery. Where?”

“Ever a woman of few words. I could give you the coordinates I was given, but the artillery is mobile, and our report is at least ten minutes old. And, in case it wasn’t clear, the artillery is very close to the main enemy force. You can’t do anything about that right now.”

A signal flashed on her screen. A spotter logged the position of an enemy. It was right behind a now collapsing skyscraper. Callista used the new beam cannon lodged in her machine’s leg to burrow a hole through the crumbling structure. She emerged on the other side right under the enemy MAC. A short five-round burst from her main rifle blew molten chunks of metallic limbs violently away from the rest of the body.

The enemy sunk toward the Earth like a rock, making a deep crater where it landed and blowing out the nearby fires.

Callista had no idea what to do, so she just kept killing. It was what she was good at after all, but it wouldn’t save anyone here. No matter how many she killed, the enemy had all the advantages.

The only card in Atlantis’ deck that could even hope to be of use was Guinevere’s pet project. But apparently both Guinevere and Jace were in a bad state of mind at the moment. Jace she understood. She failed to help him; might have made things worse. But Guinevere? Nothing gets to her. Especially when she’s working on a new toy.

Callista bit her tongue until it bled. She had no time for this. No time for these worthless thoughts. She had her objective: buy time.

But no matter what Callista did, she couldn’t ignore the city beneath her. Every enemy bombardment made another block disappear. Worse than that, for Callista’s psyche at least, was that every MAC she destroyed would cause more destruction on the way down. In the best case, the machine would just be inoperable and fall like the massive eighty tons of metal that it was. In the worst case, the generator or the weapon systems would end up with a critical failure and vaporize a handful of surrounding buildings.

Callista always fought in places far away. Her country, the one before this one, waged all their wars like that. They sent their troops to the enemy’s homeland. When Callista started doing defense work for Atlantis she was always just swatting missiles out of the sky. The few MACs she actually fought were intercepted outside the city limits.

All of this is to say that every second that passed showed the city eroded away just a little bit more by flames and explosions. And it was a new type of pain for Callista to witness such destruction.

No matter what she did, no matter how many she killed, the city was dying.

She slipped between two warehouses right before a well-aimed artillery barrage nearly flattened her and her machine. She made her way inside one of the buildings to restock on ammo. Based on the blips on her radar, this was one of the few resupply stations that was still standing.

The soldiers inside, normally lazy good-for-nothings drunk on a city-guard’s usual peace, moved quickly and precisely to reload and recharge her weapons. She opened the hatch as the hinged catwalk swung out at chest level. Another soldier was there with rations in hand. It was clear he wanted to ask questions. Probably about his family, his house, his favorite restaurant. All of which were likely gone. But surprisingly the man only said, “Thank you.”

He started crying, though he tried to hide it. Callista was glad he didn’t ask the questions she thought he was going to. She wouldn’t have lied, and that would’ve surely crushed him.

Seeing the man dash away tears while saying ‘thank you’ did fill her in a way that the rations couldn’t. It filled her in a way nothing ever had before. Callista waited until her cockpit locked shut before she smiled.

She exited the warehouse and dove straight back into the fight. Turning at the next block to use her high-powered beam cannon to melt two MACs in half.

She was still smiling.

~~~

Jace…

Jace was having a harder time than he thought he would.

He stood in front of a nearly broken Guinevere and a very loud Lionel and, in all honesty, couldn’t quite understand either.

Guinevere sounded half-dead. Every word was wrenched out of her by some ungodly machination. She had something important to say, Jace knew this at least, but she couldn’t quite translate it through her grief.

Lionel was matter of fact. The bits of concrete that fell around them and the constant shaking of the ground beneath them made it clear that the city was being flattened. As far as Jace could tell, The Alley really was trying to level the place. Lionel had a face painted in urgency, but his voice was trying very hard to remain calm. He was filled with cracks, just like the city, but it was clear he wanted to live above all else.

The specifics were far beyond what Jace could think about though. Only a few days ago he killed his first human. His drinking session with Callista only made that memory burn brighter within him. No matter how long he stared at the memory, he couldn’t quite understand what he felt. He knew there was fear, but he didn’t know what it was a fear of.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

And now?

Now Jace was being asked not only to kill, but to kill with a power unknown to this world.

Jace had already started to piece together some methods that could absolve him of his sin. A few extra thoughts that made his previous killing justifiable. But, Jace had no idea how he could justify the killings he was now being asked to partake in.

Justification was so hard for Jace. But he knew it was normal to have a justification for these types of things. If you killed without justification, without a way of reconciling with yourself, you would spend every night reliving the horror. This was what Jace had heard at least, though he hadn’t seen the dead pilot in his nightmares yet. Well, he had seen the scene play out in his dreams, but he didn’t think they were nightmares.

Guinevere’s new tech was far beyond what any organization had put into use. If Jace took the pilot seat of this newly refurbished MAC he would be, without a doubt, a myth of the battlefield. He would become a story that survivors, if there were any, would tell their comrades. He would become a horrible legend to his enemies and a living-god to his allies.

Jace was aware his lifespan would drastically shorten the moment he decided to use this new connection, but that didn’t matter much to him.

It would be like a punishment. That was how Jace decided to think about it.

Though, for some reason, he was feeling oddly excited about getting into the machine. He chalked up the feelings to adrenaline.

Jace didn’t acknowledge Guinevere or Lionel as he secured himself in the all-too-cramped cockpit. Neither of them were interested in the reasoning behind Jace’s decision. They were only interested in whether or not Jace would pilot this new metallic monster.

As much as he hated it, the machine felt comfortable. He wasn’t sure why, but he did like being inside. It was almost strange how immediate the euphoria was. Jace’s head was still so muddled. What sort of punishment feels good?

He would be helping to protect the city. That was it. Jace was sure that was why he felt himself becoming giddier and giddier as he flipped the switches and let the metal man roar and groan in tones of grinding gears and pistons.

Yes, that sounded right.

While Lionel and Guinevere were both still lost in their own little worlds, Jace ran through the basic checks. He stared at the switch that would attach the cord to his brain. Guinevere explained it as putting your consciousness in the machine’s hands. He didn’t flip it. Not yet. Jace didn’t know how long he would last with that thing burrowing into his skull. Lionel said he could make it for three to five battles, but Jace wasn’t so sure. He was an oddity, and he had a sinking feeling that it was a ‘weaker’ sort of oddness.

“Jace, Jace listen to me please!” Guinevere’s voice came through the comms. Obviously the machine powering up brought her mind back to the present. She sounded like she was speaking through tears, “Jace if you go out there… I mean, yes the machine is powerful. It could save us…” she paused. Jace tried to wait patiently, but the controls felt so natural, and the cramped cockpit was only becoming more comfortable. “Jace,” her voice was now entirely broken, the words had no life to them, “I don’t know what to do.”

Jace had a feeling, a distant feeling, that Guinevere was saying something important. Something valuable. But all he could really think about was sinking into those emotions again. Those emotions from killing the MAC pilot. What, Jace wondered, was that intoxicating cocktail of feelings?

Guinevere’s crying was abruptly replaced by Lionel, “Well, come on Jace, get to it. You got in the machine, you’re the one who started it up. This is your conviction Jace, be proud of it!” He sounded like a man with a backup plan. Jace wouldn’t be surprised if he had one. Lionel was always the sort of guy who had a few dozen contingency plans. It was probably why he rarely left the office. All that thinking must be time consuming. Jace understood that Lionel was just trying to say the right words to get Jace to fight, but it really didn’t matter what Lionel said at this point.

Jace wouldn’t be running away.

Jace’s new machine, like Callista’s current version, no longer had the shield arm. For Jace, the shield was replaced by a cannibalized defense turret from the city’s outer walls. It measured fifteen meters in length and the rounds were stored in a simple box bolted onto the back of the MAC. The amount of rounds in the pack was dictated by how long the barrel would last before turning into a molten mess from overheating.

The rocket and missile batteries had been restocked, though the main missile battery was taken off the shoulder and replaced with a welded together mess of autocannons. The star of the show was the weapon he picked up off the charging apparatus. It was the same sort of laser weaponry that had been installed in the leg of Callista’s MAC. In fact, this was supposed to be the other leg for her MAC, but it was repurposed for Jace’s use.

Jace wondered, as he made his way out of the hangar, if the defense variant just rubbed him the wrong way. Why was it that now, laden down with such heavy and awe-inspiring killing potential, that he felt so at home in the cockpit?

Or maybe it was the difference in objective. Instead of swatting missiles from the sky he would be pitting himself up against machines on equal footing.

Jace was on the verge of realizing something as the hangar doors shut behind him and the roar of the burning propellant filled his ears.

The battlefield is no place for revelations.

Within moments of rising into the sky a wayward artillery round managed to bite into one of his propellant tanks, throwing his machine off balance and sending Jace through a nearby department store.

Those strange feelings of comfort were hardly dulled even as Jace, in a panicked frenzy, set about flipping switches and pressing buttons. He checked the status of his machine and weapons and, after seeing green checks, went about clawing his way out of the rubble.

Only after emerging from the pile of concrete did the voice of a spotter come through his comms.

Jace had no time to process what was said. Instead he was nearly knocked unconscious as his MAC was thrown backward. The kinetic force of the hit nearly ripped Jace out of the safety harness and had him cough up more than a few sprays of blood.

Dozens of different alarms were now sounding and flashing.

Jace, in a state of delirium, thought it was amusing that he still felt so at home, so safe, in this metal coffin.

The enemy MAC, a mass produced variant similar to what attacked them before, though it had no cannon on the torso this time, stood over Jace with the lance sitting directly over his cockpit.

Jace thought this would be the perfect moment for Callista to swoop in and save the day. She was always the better pilot. She knew what she was doing. She knew how to fight. She knew how to win.

But Callista was elsewhere in the city according to his map.

Jace stared at the pistons on the MAC’s lance-wielding arm. The smoke and haze of the burning and broken city interfered with cameras quite a bit, but Jace simply had to hope he wouldn’t miss the sign.

The set of silver pistons started to move. The reflections of the burning buildings helped to make it clear through all the interference.

Jace threw the thruster output to maximum, now making it twice that he nearly killed himself with such a move, and immediately buried his MAC into the neighboring research institute.

The largely windowed building had already been shattered into a gargantuan pile of glass by the constant shelling, but the steel support structure, an industrial skeleton, was in-tact.

While he was flying headfirst toward the institute, Jace used his prosthetic fingers to fine-tune the positioning of his cannon arm.

The enemy MAC was quick to react. It immediately boosted after Jace with its lance ready to pin him into the Earth while Jace was stuck on his back.

Like Jace told Callista, firing such a big cannon would be one hell of a rush, and it truly was.

The mix of the heat from the cannon and the concussive blast sent molten glass splattering out in all directions. The liquid coated the surrounding steel beams in a polka-dot pattern of reflective splotches. The recoil burrowed the back of the cannon into the concrete foundation, breaking through the fortified floor to cave in the basement below. Jace barely managed to roll his MAC away from the hole and save himself from being submerged in a pile of rubble once more.

The enemy MAC was nothing more than scattered legs and arms. The shot hit center mass and took the center away with it. The shot erased so much of the MAC that the generator didn’t have a chance to go critical.

Jace stayed there in his cockpit for a while, ignoring the screams and commands and lights and map markers. He felt sick. But as the smile on his face grew wider and wider, he became less and less sure why he felt sick.

If anything, Jace thought while his head still pounded, he was having quite a lot of fun.