Somewhere on Micah Prime - Robot Federation Territory
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Kaya landed hard on the concrete, sidearm up as she rolled. The Heavy’s gun swung around, ripping cement shards from the base’s near-leveled walls, and she dumped her whole magazine into its chest.
It kept coming. A massive round crumpled her armor, and the light faded at the edges of her vision as pain blossomed across her whole left side. Then, just before she faded out, an armor-piercing slug ripped through the bot’s head and blew off her arm.
[Dropper Lost. You have suffered major chest trauma, dismembered right arm (╥﹏╥) ]
[Preparing Drop-Ready Clone: 5/8 Clones Available]
I’ll have to make a note to talk about friendly fire.
As the battle for Hill Thirty-Nine wrapped up far below her, Kaya forced herself to relax. The first few moments of darkness weren’t a relief anymore. If she’d had a chest, it’d be tight. If she had a throat, her stomach would be in it.
[Clone Prepared. Memories Installed. Good luck, Lieutenant Commander. O7]
Then her new body’s first breath rushed into her lungs, feeling like a red-hot knife slicing down from her chin to her navel. But after that breath, the next ones were easier, and she let herself squeeze her rifle to her chest as the drop-pod filled with crash foam and rocketed past a massive dropship.
She stared at the huge gray and black ship. It dwarfed her corvette, and for one horrifying moment, she thought it had to be a bot ship. Then she saw the EAF’s Eagle and Star symbol on its side and relaxed into the foam.
Gonzales had finished his work at the computer. They’d completed their objective.
Then the drop-pods’s engines started whining, and she slammed into Micah’s Prime’s dirt again.
“Excellent work, Lieutenant Commander! You make me proud!” General Gorsuch’s voice echoed over her comms as she got her bearings. The massive dropship was coming in over the hill, landing gear extending. In a moment, the whole base would be swarming with regulars, tanks, and enough engineers to build the Great Wall of Mars in a week—or, more importantly, a pair of massive artillery positions in an hour or two.
Gorsuch continued. “There’s a secondary objective to the west. A bot research station. I want what’s in it. That means you want what’s in it. Intact, if possible, but if not, wiped off the map. If we can’t have it, no one can. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Kaya said, taking another breath. “Will we have support?”
“Negative. Regulars hold the ground. Droppers take it. Now, get moving!”
The line went dead, and Lieutenant Commander Cameron took stock of the base. Or, more accurately, what was left of it. Every wall had been shattered, and the north and south slopes were covered in bot corpses; she could smell the stench of oil and fried electronics even over the reeking pollen that kept wafting from below.
Gonzales had it the worst; he’d dropped six times, including three times in less than a minute and a half, when a pair of Heavies had gotten the base’s terminal in their sights and Rogers was in transit from a bad drop. She’d only died twice, while Strathmore had picked up five. The HMG drew fire like a motherfucker.
She nodded as her team assembled, with Strathmore carrying a new Suppressor HMG over his shoulder. “Good work. General Gorsuch has a new secondary objective for us.”
“Can’t he take it himself? I heard he took eight primaries in one day, by himself, without a corvette for support,” Strathmore complained.
“Stuff it, Derrick,” Rogers said. She popped her helmet off and sucked in a breath of fresh air before wrinkling her nose. Her cropped blonde hair was matted with sweat, and her armor was stained with oil. “The fuck died and rotted on this planet? You know why the living war crime can’t drop, and so does everyone else.”
“Enough. We’re taking out a research facility. The general wants it captured as intact as possible, but if we can’t do that, we have permission to blow it to hell.”
“I don’t see why we have to do it,” Strathmore said.
[Attention!!! General Gorsuch has set a time limit of two hours on the Research Station objective]
“Because we’re droppers, we have orders, and Lost Earth’s children need us to shepherd them. Now, let’s get moving,” Kaya said.
◄▼►
Micah Prime fucking sucked.
After twenty minutes of jogging through its red sands and learning not to hang out by the exploding pollen trees, she’d decided the damn planet was uninhabitable. But it was also a spear pointed right into the Republic’s outer rim, and until that spear was blunted and shattered, it was a threat to her home, Aquarius Twelve.
So, even as her air filters clogged badly enough that she had to hold her breath and scrape them clean with her fingers, she kept pushing toward the research station. Her squad filed along behind her, with the exception of Specialist Rogers. She’d led them on a wild, circling course that dodged two separate bot squads.
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If either had found them, they’d have been in a running firefight all the way to the research lab.
Instead, they’d pounded dirt, ducked through ravines that hadn’t been on their briefing map, and waited while the sniper took out a pair of scout bots that had gotten a little too close for comfort. It felt like Rogers was playing a different game, and Kaya wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
“LC, the bots’ base is up ahead. Looks like another transmission tower, bunker, and a few outbuildings. They might be trying to grow something. Why would bots need to grow something?” Rogers asked over comms.
“Ours is not to reason why,” Kaya said sternly.
[There’s a very, veeerrry high chance they’re working on synthetic oil uwu. 85%]
[Bots like their oil!]
“Oil. Of course. Bots only care about oil. So why does Gorsuch care about this base?” Strathmore said. He set the machine gun down for a quick breather. The heavily armored, HMG-toting trooper was slowing down the squad. He needed a rest every ten minutes or so. Without a break, he’d start fading off, even with a constant, low-level dose of stimulants. “I mean, we could just [80-Millimeter Strike] it and be done with it, right?”
“We could, but this is the Champ’s first mission. There are a hundred fifty other corvettes General Gorsuch could be on, and he chose ours. I’m not letting him down.” Kaya stretched. Her shoulders popped inside her armor; dying increased stress, and stress increased tension. Gonzales hadn’t said anything in the last twenty minutes. She made a mental note to check on him later.
“LC, I’m getting interference. Whatever’s going on in that base uses a lot of electricity, and the static’s almost like a wall. I can’t see inside with any visor settings,” Rogers murmured. “And I’ve got a patrol of bots a couple hundred yards away. Three Heavies, a walker with six legs, and a bunch of Lights. If they hear fighting, they’ll get involved.”
“So we’ll do this fast, then. What did you see at the base?”
“Handful of Lights. Maybe one Heavy by the transmission tower.”
“Okay, plan incoming.” Kaya punched a code into her support system. A moment later, a map appeared in her vision. “We’re going to use Rogers and Gonzales as the assault team. Take out the bots by the base, knock out the transmission tower, and make sure any bots inside stay there. Strathmore, you and I are ambushing the patrol. You focus on the Heavies, then the walker. I’ll handle the lights. Don’t waste ammo rocking and rolling like last time. Got it?”
“Yeah, got it,” Strathmore said.
Kaya nodded and pushed the map out. “Here are your positions. System, unlock [80 Millimeter Strike] and [Strafing Run] for Specialist Rogers. I want the 80 on the tower. Strafe it after if you need to. Otherwise, save them for us. We’ll hold fire until something explodes back there. Questions?”
“Yeah. Why does soap come in bars?” Strathmore asked.
“Okay, no questions, then. Let’s roll.” She strode off toward a stand of pollen trees, right where she’d marked the blocking team’s position. Strathmore followed, lugging the HMG along with him.
They dug in next to a pair of massive red boulders, and Strathmore set up the MG’s bipod. Once she was satisfied with his position, Kaya found a spot a few yards away, where a single rocket couldn’t take them both out, and settled in.
The patrolling bots were moving toward the base Kaya’s squad had taken earlier that morning. For a moment, she thought about delaying the mission and letting the regulars deal with them, but she had the firepower and the strategy, and the engineers wouldn’t have artillery posts set up this quickly.
A moment later, a massive explosion behind her made the whole debate moot.
Strathmore’s heavy machine gun ripped into the first Heavy’s armor, and as the bots turned first toward the explosion and then toward the Dropper ripping into their flank, it went down. Kaya opened fire, quickly removing a pair of Lights from the fight. But even as the bots’ numbers thinned, the six-legged walker unfurled to reveal a massive cannon. It rotated toward Kaya, then fired with an ear-splitting boom.
[Dropper Lost. You have suffered major abdominal trauma (╥﹏╥) ]
[Preparing Drop-Ready Clone: 4/8 Clones Available]
[Clone Prepared. Memories Installed. Good luck, Lieutenant Commander. O7]
Kaya waited, riding the respawn pain out, then watching as her drop-pod roared toward planetside. The walker spun around to fire at Strathmore, but Kaya held down a button in the drop-pod, and the retrojets fired a second late. That was enough to put her pod on a collision course with the walker’s thin turret armor, and both of them exploded sky-high.
[Dropper Lost. You have suffered complete dismemberment (╥﹏╥) ]
[Preparing Drop-Ready Clone: 3/8 Clones Available]
[Clone Prepared. Memories Installed. Good luck, Lieutenant Commander. O7]
“System, give me the fast version of all this next time.” Kaya didn’t need the full briefing every time—not if she was going to die four or five times in a single mission. It was just a sniper shot to her morale. “Just the mandatory stuff.”
[You’ve got it, LC. Switching to Minimalist Mode]
The rhythmic thumping of Strathmore’s Suppressor cut off momentarily as her pod door opened again, then picked up for a couple of seconds. Then the man said, “All clear here,” on comms, and Kaya relaxed, but not entirely. Her bodies—two of them—were scattered across the sands, and she winced.
The bots could have any number of surprises up their titanium sleeves. Treachery and oil were all that filled their mechanical hearts, and Kaya wasn’t taking any chances. “System, what was that thing?” She asked, pointing at the six-legged walker.
[Your current armor and ship load-outs don’t include a Scanning function, owo]
“Ah, Rogers, how’s the research station going?” Kaya stood up and switched her rifle to single-shot, then put an extra round in each bot, just in case.
Rogers’s report came in a moment later. She was still clear, but a touch of static marred an occasional syllable. “Just great. Absolutely peachy. Electric interference…through the roof. Gonzales died twice. He’s got one clone left before they have to decanter another batch, so if he goes down again, it’s probably best to let him sit this one out, correct?”
“What’s killing you so much, Gonzales?” Kaya asked.
The man’s voice came across the shakey, static-filled comms. “It’s…armor and the job. I have to…still…working on computers. So they…me…and I’m a sitting duck.”
“Got it. We’ll look into different armors when we’re back on the Champ. I’m not happy with mine either. You two done there, though?”
“Affirmative,” Rogers said. “There might be a couple of damaged bots inside, though. We’re waiting for you before we go in to finish them off.”
“Negative,” General Gorsuch’s voice crashed through the comms network, overrunning Kaya’s defenses and obliterating her eardrums worse than the exploding walker. “Your mission is complete. I’m sending a science team from the Herald of Republic Virtue to scope out the facility, get whatever information’s needed, and return you four to the Champ. Well done, soldiers!”
Then her comms went to a private channel, and Gorsuch went on in a quieter, more conspiratorial tone. “Lieutenant Commander Cameron, meet me in my quarters as soon as you’re back on the Champ. I think you have what it takes to be a hero.”