“Those terms are…” said Artemis over the comms, “they are- unusual for what we’d usually encounter.”

“Well?” said Dallas, pressing but not too hard, “I didn’t ask if it was unusual. I said it was a solution,” Dallas said. “You gonna say yes, or break your oath?”

“Boss,” whispered Gareth through the secure channel that only he and Dallas could hear, “No disrespect intended, but just what in the name o all that flups are you doing?”

“What happens if I break the oath?” Artemis’ voice cut in.

“Then I beam this up to my ship, who’ll beam it out to everyone with ears, brain, and a piece of metal to use as an antenna. Can’t you see the BigLines on the IntraNet? ‘Greek Goddess Breaks Oath- Followers Leave in Droves…”

“Artemis,” said the voice of the fellow calling himself Zeus.

“Shuddup, Zed,” Artemis said, “I’m thinking.”

“And I am your superior here!” yelled ‘Zed,’ his godlike persona suddenly completely shed, replaced by a voice that could have belonged by accent or tone to one of the low-lifes Dallas had seen on the bad side of town, right before Secunda had…

No.

Focus.

Now’s not the time to talk, Dallas thought, now’s the time to wait and see them hit each other, rather than us.

“It’s too easy,” Artemis said. “It’s gotta be a trick.”

“Well, mercenary,” said the voice of Zeus, “I guess you know you won’t be paid today, since we’re the ones who made that job, and did so specifically to get this crew here, now.”

“You’ll pay the rest of us with our lives,” Dallas said. “And you’ll be spared any repair bills, besides. Plus, you’ll have a great story about how you cowed the head of a brutal merc outfit- something every god should be able to say they did to their followers, right?”

“Your terms are acceptable,” Zeus said.

“Zed, I don’t think-”

“Shuddup, Astrid. I’m not going to lose all we’ve built up here just because you’ve got a bad feeling. Mercenary! Deliver the victim for the sacrifice, and you may depart with your lives!”

“Do I get a say in this?” Anja said, plainly upset.

“Hon,” said Joker, unusually serious, “we’re all dead anyway if you don’t.”

“Yeah, If you’re gonna make this hard, Queen,” said House, his voice nearly breaking with tears, “we’re gonna hafta shoot the legs out from under your mech, pry you outta the cockpit, and it’s gonna happen anyway. So, do us this last solid, okay?”

There was a pause. “Jue?” Anja said. “You, too, Jue?”

“Protocol forbids the use of given legal names during a mercenary exercise,” Jue said. “As such, I…I will choose not to answer that question.”

Anja sighed. “Fine,” she said.

They all listened in silence as Anja unbuckled her safety straps, rose from her chair, and hit the ‘open’ button on the hatch of her mech.

The cage-like window with its half-inch thick panes of plasti-glass rose up, a small ladder extending from the ‘chin’ of the machine.

Anja exited and slowly climbed down. When she reached the bottom, her foot tapped and touched solid ground. She stood for a moment facing the machine that had been her second home for years.

“Turn!” yelled Artemis, having once again assumed character. “Turn and face your god, blasphemer!”

Anja turned around. Her helmet did not show her face, but Dallas and the others could see her faceplate start at the feet of the massive, hundred-ton war machine and move up slowly until it was looking at the top of the construct, just over twenty stories in the air.

“Step forward, sacrifice!”

Anja obeyed.

“Remove your helmet!”

Slowly, Anja reached under her chin, and popped the double-straps that help her oversized neurohelmet in place. Using both hands, she slid it off of her head and her red hair spilled out onto her shoulders.

“The sacrifice is prepared!” yelled Zeus through the comlink. “Blasphemer, have you any last words?”

“Eef there’s a hell, Nadimss, ti-dam voich, Zhourney-sour!”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“What?”

“I- a ham so very, very sorry, Miss Artemis! I am…” she looked back at the Galatine, almost right into Dallas eyes. His gaze was locked on her, his right hand hovering over and quickly tapping away at one of the control panels in front of him. “I am,” continued Anja, turing back to the towering metal monster in front of her, “aware of what a terrible, terrible person I was in a moment of anger and weakness. I can beg for mercy, now?”

“Insolent creature of water and dirt!” yelled Artemis, “there can be no mercy for those such as you! Looking at you, your hair, your attitude! How you are…your- you’re so damn skinny! Reeaugh! Makes me want to vomit and crush you even more! No more! This will be your end! Prepare to meet thy gods!” Artemis finished, her voice rising to a shriek as the giant, metal foot of the towering machine of war rose up and blocked out the sun over Anja, who gripped her hands into fists and scrunched her eyes shut.

And,

Dallas hit the panel.

His warmech launched forward, jet engines in the mech’s wide feet blasting him forward with a force designed to launch the machine into space and break the bonds of even high-gravity worlds. As such, covering the space between where his mech and Anja stood took less than a half-second.

Before Artemis’ hundred-ton booted foot landed, Dallas’ mech had launched forward shoulder-first like a slingball player trying to knock down an opponent. The mech’s left shoulder was pointed at the ground while it’s right arm extended out towards Anja, encircling her in a protective ring while she tried to run towards Dallas and get out of the way of the still falling foot.

Dallas’ Mech ground to a halt on its side. In the cockpit, his neurohelmet lit up and whined while his hands and arms pulled and gyrated levers in an effort to both shield Anja and use his mech’s shoulders as a brace against the foot.

“Now!” Dallas, his turn to roar into the comm, “Now, Anja! Run! Yue!”

“On it, Cowboy!” Yue said, her voice bobbing as her light mech ran circles around the fight for all it was worth. “On it, and- target painted!”

Dallas looked at the holographic representation of the fight on his panel; the four mechs of his team and Yue’s runner looked pathetically small compared to the behemoth of a mech in the center.

But now, two sets of red, pulsating concentric circles appeared on the right arm and the back of the giant’s head.

“Joker, headshot! House! Blast his arm!”

“On it, Cowboy!” Joker said cooly, no jokes this time.

“Got it, boss,” House said with the same tone, some strain audible in his voice as he gripped and pulled the levers which raised his own weapons to lock on with their adversary.

All of this happened in the fraction of a second after Dallas’ mech slid to a halt under the boot of the hundred-ton foot.

“Sword!” he shouted, knowing it might be the last thing he would say, the end of the word sounding higher than the beginning when he saw that Anja had numbly scampered away and was already halfway back to her cockpit-ladder.

The boot of Zeus and Artemis’ mech, capable of crushing a solid boulder with its weight, stopped just an inch or two below where the shoulder of Dallas’ sword mech lay, denting the much smaller mech’s metal shoulder and scratching its paint something awful.

“What the-” Zeus/Zed yelled at Artemis, “Astrid, the feet are your job! Crush him!”

“I can’t!” she said from her own control chair, which was directly below Zed’s “there’s something blocking my- oh!” she yelled as something shifted beneath them and threw them off balance.

“Astrid, what the hells are you- what the…?”

On one of the many scanners in front of him, Zed saw that a major hit had been recorded to the mech’s right foot.

And a closeup of the visual scan showed the wound came from a sword that had extended itself from the Galatine’s forearm, the elbow of which was propped up on the grassy ground below.

“This is impossible!” Zed yelled. “No one stands against Zeu-”

Zeus found his latest outraged speech cut off, as several missiles hit various points on and around his and Artemis’ cockpit, shaking them up, making the lights flicker, and twisted pieces of metal frame snapping, breaking and flying at and around them in short, sharp, deadly arcs.

“Zed?” said Astrid, her voice run through with fear, “I’m- I’m hit, Zed.”

Zed looked down at a new hole that had been ripped open below his feet, and saw what appeared to be a long piece of metal that was apparently growing out from the prodigious gut of his copilot.

“Flup,” he said, “Don’t- don’t worry, Astrid. You’re going to be f-”

More flashes, as the blasters from Joker which had missed earlier found their mark! The arm of the giant metal beast blasted open, as over two-dozen missiles ignited, exploded and lit-up their brothers next to them.

“Now, Everyone!” yelled Dallas into his comm, pulling more levers and shoving his own real right shoulder up.

The Galatine’s shoulder shoved up outside Dallas’ cockpit as well, as the sword from its arm moved up higher, cutting with its monomolecular blade further into the sole of the Zeus mech’s foot and higher into its metallic ankle.

The hundred-ton mech, which had never known defeat in the near-century of its existence, began to tip over.

“ZED!” screamed Astrid, blood flowing freely from her wound and filling the cavity of her mouth, “do something! We can’t fall, Zed! We can’t!”

“I’m trying,” Zed said, frantically hitting buttons and grabbing levers, “but the gyros are offline with that last hit! I can’t maintain…”

Suddenly, all the panels went out.

There was only a single hologram in front of him, hovering over the panel as the emergency power system kicked in.

He looked down, and saw the same picture in front of him was hovering on Astrid’s panel, too.

It was a simple, green, pixelated vision of Anja, aka Red Queen, looking at both of them, smiling.

“Dasvidaniya, bahgia-sutchka!” she said, as her own mech raised its arms and took aim at the toppling, twenty-story high war machine, with Astrid’s screeching voice in the background and Zed’s roaring denials filling their last moments with sounds of fear and anger…