Dallas wet his lips and looked through the visor of his neurohelmet’s Heads Up Display. He could see the green outlines of his team’s mechs, drawn to mid-level detail with vector lines. He flicked his eyes down to the single, glowing word that said ‘scan,’ and tapped his finger against the side of his chair.

‘Scan’ lit up with an audible whine while a graphic on his HUD showed a rotating lit cone beaming up the area like a searchlight.

After three passes, several patches that looked like a computerized red haze appeared in the distance.

“Clarify,” he whispered. On the HUD, the words energy signatures appeared, with helpful arrows pointing out the four locations.

“XO, are you getting this?” Dallas said, still in a whisper.

“Sure am, boss. Looks to me like you got yourself a target. Know what to do next?”

“Hells, yeah,” Dallas whispered, and flicked another switch. “Okay, team? Eveyone hear me fine?”

“Got you, Cowboy,” they all answered in unison, with a sameness of cadence borne from a week of practice in the sim chairs.

“Okay, this should be a nice stroll in the grass. But we’re getting paid a lot more on this mission than I expected, which means there might be a surprise or two waiting for us. We’re gonna stomp, not sprint. One-Eye?”

“Yes sir!”

“One-eye, stretch those chicken-legs of your tin can. Go scouting ahead and make sure those en-sigs are our targets, and not some xenos waiting to eat us for supper.”

“On my way, Cowboy!” she said, her forty-ton mech leaping forward with surprising speed. Lost to sight in the mist in less than five seconds, Dallas could still see her as a blip on his HUD’s lower-left screen.

“Hope she’ll be alright,” Dallas said.

“Boss,” said House’s deep voice over the comm, “the first time I worked with One-Eyed Jill, I saw her dodge two laser blasts from short range and a full rack of long-range missiles from a hundred-ton home-mech that its owner had named Zeus. She’ll be fine to scope out a few turrets.”

“I’m thinkin’,” Joker cut in, “that the boss ain’t thinking we’re just gonna deal with turrets this trip. Remember Rigel Four?”

“Cripes, Joker, I knew you were gonna bring that up! When’re you gonna let that go? We got paid extra, didn’t we?”

“Huh,” Anja said, “we got a ten-percent bump in our pay, for having a baby-sitting job turn into fighting-for-our-lives-against-a-cult-with-war-mechs job.”

“Quit blaming me for that, Red Queen. You came back all in one piece, and the hospital treated you real nice, I heard.”

“Yah, and the mate of that cult leader? The one who drove the Zeus? She called herself Artemis, and she swore she’d put an arrow or a proj in my guts within a year.”

“How long’s it been?” Dallas asked.

“Eleven months. Are we going to approach, boss, or wait for One-Eye to report?”

“Let’s get walking. I’ll take lead; fall in behind with the arrowhead formation, House on my right, Joker on my left.”

“And we’re walkin’ boss.”

The mechs began moving, tens of tons of metal, steel, fuel and engines working in tandem, leaving footprints behind large enough to park a ground car in.

“By-the-thought, Cowboy,” said Joker, “I know you can’t tell us exactly how much we’re getting for the job. But can you tell us who’s payin’ the bills on this little go-round?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Sure,” said Dallas, moving the pedals of his mech almost unconsciously. “Some outfit called Jovian Photonics. They wanna study some kind of lightning applications out here and the turrets are in the way, or something like that.”

“You didn’t get any more details, Cowboy?” House’s crackled over the comm. There was a little distortion, but the worry in his voice still came through clearly.

“Like what?”

“Like who Jovian are?”

“Do you know?”

“No. And that’s a worry.”

“If the money’s good, House, who gives a flyin’ fat frog’s flupper?” Joker, trying to keep it light.

“ ‘Cause, Joker, number one, if we don’t know ‘em, we don’t know the money’s good. Remember when those miners tried to stiff us?”

“Yah, but we made it cost ‘em. So who cares?”

“I care, Cowboy,” said Anja. “You know what Jove was another name for?”

“Sounds familiar, but I forget. I think I was shooting spitballs at my tutor when he was tryin’ to teach that to me and my brothers.”

“Jove was a Roman name, for the Greek God Zeus.”

There was a few second’s pause. “That supposed to men something to us,” Dallas said.

“That crazy cult-bitch, Artemis? The one who said she’d kill me within a year? She drove a hundred-ton Zeus class war-mech.”

“And my pater managed to praz-off half the Corporate territories by not rolling over when they dropped in to take over. Queen, you can’t let stuff like this bother you. If you give up a minute of your sleep to worrying about them, they’ve already won.”

“Fine, boss,” Anja said. “But you just keep your eyes peeled for a hundred-tonner vith lightning bolt colors painted on its side.”

“We’ll all do that. One-Eye? You spotting anything?”

“My sensor’s picked up the first of the turrets. They employ medium range lasers. I am out of range, but perhaps Joker’s long-range weapons could reach them without danger to us.”

“Joker? You copy that?”

“Copy that, Cowboy. One-Eye’s already fed me the co-ords, an’ I’m moving into position.”

“Good. One-Eye, any other specs on those turrets?”

“They employ a surprising lack of shielding,” she said. “Normally a sensor like ours can only gather enough intel to spot and lock on a target. But now, I can see right down to its serial numbers, make and incept date. This is…Cowboy, this is very odd!”

“How so? Joker, hold fire.”

“Aw, boss!”

“Shuttit. One-Eye, details.”

“These turrets are functional, but barely. They’re over a hundred years old. Hiring us to take them out is the military equivalency of buying the services of a long-range missile launcher to crush a beehive. A team of infantry could erase these at a fraction of the cost of hiring a mech team.”

“Well,” Dallas said, “that sounds…interesting. XO, your thoughts?”

“We’re contracted to blow those turrets, Cowboy,” Gareth’s voice said in his ear. “Unless you want to try and take ‘em back to the ship and look for a collector, I’d suggest we blast ‘em and head back up here, pony-express, got me?”

“Got you, XO. Okay, Joker, light ‘em up, tight an’ bright!”

“Thank you, boss,” Joker said, with exaggerated politeness. “Oh, an’ for the record, Cowboy? Mechers like us don’t say ‘tight an’ bright’ anymore, ‘cept on old vids.”

“Duly noted, Joker. Now earn us some money, willya?”

“Yessir! Locked on, Cowboy,” Joker said, his voice now official and all business, “turret one of four, is-” he paused as a flash of red erupted from one of the blasters in his mech’s arm, three times in rapid succession.

“One-Eye?” Dallas said.

“Gone, Cowboy,” she answered. “Just a smoking heap of slag on a twenty-foot pillar. Locking on next target-”

“Cowboy!” Gareth suddenly yelled into Dallas’ ear, “Cowboy, do you copy?”

“What, Geeze, XO, you wanna make me deaf on my first command?”

“I believe your executive officer is concerned, Cowboy,” said Jue “about the blips that have suddenly appeared on an intercept course here on the surface.”

“How many?”

“Three, sir. Two fifty-ton mechs, and- one One-Hundred ton mech.”

“Anything else?”

“Sir, the hundred ton mech is- it’s a Zeus class, sir.”

“Derr’mo!” Anja shouted, “she’s found me!”

#

TO BE CONTINUED...