Enoa slammed the edge of her staff into the flat side of an iron Shaper’s scimitar. The blade shattered, metal scattering. Her opponent tossed the useless hilt and got a two-handed grip on the handle of his second blade. Where before it was a short barbed knife, the weapon grew until it was a proper long sword, metal steaming from the transmutation.
They fought at the edge of the skirmish, away from the onslaught of prisoners’ blaster strikes and the response from the Rifle Troopers’ heavy repeaters.
“I can make more, faster than you break them.” The iron Shaper wore the standard officer armor, but with heavy bandoliers over his shoulders, all lined with solid iron bars.
Enoa took a step back toward the cart, where Max and the floppies still waited, hidden. Her water jug sat on top, mostly empty from the mad charge onto the ledge.
Enoa kept her staff toward the other Shaper. But she risked a proper glance over her shoulder and saw nothing of Dr. Stan. She saw only the rear guard of fighting and yelling and dying prisoners.
“Enoa!” Max’s muffled call came from the cart. “Move aside, Enoa. Move aside!”
The Iron Shaper took his chance when Enoa looked away, but she followed Max’s plan. She dove far to the right. Her elbow and knee guards met the deck.
The Iron Shaper brought down the sword into empty air. While the blade fell, Enoa heard the cart’s side door.
Max fired twice. Both blaster shots flew wide, arcing out and away from the perimeter, nowhere near the Shaper.
“You have a passenger.” The Shaper laughed and looked from Enoa on the ground to the still-open cart. “Who are you…”
A new bolt took the Shaper square in the neck. Then another struck his right thigh, above his armor, before he fell.
“They’re almost finished.” Dr. Stan stood from her cover, where she’d hidden behind the cart, her blaster raised. She pointed toward the unloading area and a final cluster of Rifle Troopers, hidden behind an iron shield, all driven toward the edge.
“You are quite the shot,” Max said. “I’m sorry.”
“You had a poor vantage point,” she answered.
Beyond the surviving Liberty Corps defense, Enoa found the skimmers like they’d left them. All three trailers sat at the perimeter, their work complete, the unloading long finished. The skimmers waited, unharmed, by the fighting on the ledge or by the fantastical chaos in the sky.
“Let’s get over there,” Enoa said. “We might have a hard time connecting the trailers if that big ship shoots at us again.”
In the sky, the last straggling escapees were taking the valley pass, an easier route with most of the cannon towers now crushed.
One of the old-timey planes exploded. A shot from the remaining frigate’s bow cannons sent its burning remains raining across the valley.
Enoa saw the final escaping fliers, two bald children, hands clasped together. Moving without craft or wing, they skimmed the perimeter above her.
One waved to Enoa as they passed.
“Big robots!” The child screamed to her. “Big robots coming!”
“What?” She yelled back, but they finally left the perimeter, well to her right. Both dove away from the base.
Then Enoa saw ‘what’. She saw a metal hand grip the edge of the Pinnacle’s decking. Fingers as thick around as her arm tensed against the metal. When the armored suit pulled itself up onto the platform, its shoulders barely fit between two cables back to the surface.
Then three more joined it, all along the ledge. They stood as tall as the trailers. Their eyes glowed green in heads that sat directly against their steel-gray torsos, swiveling without clear neck.
The armors issued no warning. The closest grabbed an eager prisoner, standing close to the edge. The machine threw the man over its shoulder, sending him screaming down the cliff.
“More rocks!” The voice of Sergeant Hale roared over the screams and projectiles. “More rocks! Where are my rocks?”
Enoa looked for Melanthymos and found her flanked by two other prisoners, standing where the ledge met the side of the building. The decking at her feet was broken and her arms were plunged, up to her elbows, into the exposed earth.
“Rocks!” Hale yelled again.
The towering armors barreled into the crowd of prisoners, stomping the fallen, crushing them or hurling them away.
Melanthymos pushed her arms deeper into the mountainside. A tremor rippled through the ground. Enoa gripped the side of the cart.
When Melanthymos pulled her hands back from the ground, she held a chunk of solid rock. She dropped the stone with a reverberating thud. There was fresh blood on her fingertips and the palms of her hands, but she plunged them back into the earth.
“Enoa!” Dr. Stan called over the other screams. “Could a staff explosion puncture the armor of those machines?”
“I don’t know!” Enoa yelled back. “I don’t think I could reach any higher than their legs. Maybe?”
Enoa could feel the Shapers inside the metal armored suits. When the suits moved and sent their own heavy shockwaves through the decking, it was like Enoa saw the indistinct forms of their shaping pilots inside them, like the towering machines were shadows cast and nothing more.
One of the armors ‘saw’ her looking, felt her looking. Its head swiveled to the side, and the green eyes found her in the crowd.
“Take the cart,” Enoa called without looking back. “Leave my water here.”
“But…” Dr. Stan started.
But then the armor began to approach. It crushed a prisoner as it stepped around the nearest unloading arm’s framework. When the armor raised its leg again, some of the remains still clung to the foot.
Enoa heard the jug of water touch down to the deck. She heard the cart’s wheels moving back away from her.
When the armor approached, Enoa already had the water held in her mind. She found it without doubt or hesitation. She mingled the moisture with the thin mountain air, holding it like a sponge. She doubled the jug’s contents, all heavy vapor, held in her control.
When the armor cleared the other prisoners, the skimmers, and trailers, Enoa let loose with the water. Drops formed and flew, oxygen exploding against the chest of the robot, chipping at the body, chewing inward toward the Shaper who moved it.
Enoa yelled. She burrowed the bursting oxygen toward the pilot. All she needed was a handful of drops. That was enough to stop the Shaper.
But she didn’t have enough.
When the water was spent as vapor, Enoa saw only a fist-sized hole in the armor’s heavy abdomen. The armor hesitated, waited for her to attack again.
Enoa realized then how close she stood – fifty or sixty feet. She was close enough to see where the flexible metal segments met at knee and elbow. She was close enough to see the hint of motion through the hole in the torso.
The armor moved again before Enoa could decide how she might reach the opening. It ran at her, arms outstretched, reaching toward her. Her stolen Liberty Corps armor could never protect against it.
Enoa ran. She sprinted diagonally away from the machine, around the far side of the framework. She felt massive steps behind her. Her own small, human steps could never get away.
She tightened both hands on the staff, ready to turn again and sink the it into the grasping hand. She would deal the armor some final harm before it took her.
Enoa heard the unloading arm before she saw it, the heavy grinding, then the slow closing of the robotic fingers. When she looked back around, she found the nearest arm reached out from its framework. It held her pursuer, wriggling in its grip.
Then the arm swung to the edge of its frameworks and released the mechanized armor. The hand opened.
The suit flew from the ledge and out of sight.
* * *
Kol turned away from Jaleel’s fumbling work with the unloading controls when a heavy thud struck the command center door.
“Open in the name of Baron Helmont!” A voice screamed outside. “Surrender your arms or be killed on sight.”
“Whatever you plan to do, Jaleel.” Kol raised a new projection at the door. “Do it now.”
Jaleel didn’t answer. He cheered, hands still at the controls.
Kol turned back to the window in time to see the armor that had threatened Enoa thrown from the edge.
“I saved her!” Jaleel said. “I got it!” He took a deep breath and fell back against the chair. “Now, I know the trick. Time for the rest of them. Catch and release!”
Then the unloading arms struck out again, two of them this time. They constricted around metal figures and threw them out into the open air – catch and release. The final armor, in retreat, hugged the edge of the platform. It moved away from prisoners and skimmers and the unloading arms.
“I’m coming to get you too,” Jaleel said.
A second heavy thud struck the door. It rattled on its hinges. Kol felt the force of the strike through his projection, like he’d been leaning against the wall when the blow fell.
“You don’t happen to know another way to leave this room?” Kol asked. “Do you?”
“Uh,” Jaleel said. “There’s a little access ladder on the other side of the room, but that’ll only take us a level or two. You can’t just throw everybody on the other side of the door with your shield thing?”
“I can’t do anything unless I see the space,” Kol said. “I learned most of what I know while they were shooting at me.”
“Well, what about catching us.” Jaleel didn’t look away from his work. He stretched out one of the arms toward the last armored suit, driving it away, driving it slowly toward the range of another arm, further from the escaping prisoners.
“What do you mean?” Kol asked.
“You caught that last guy I stunned. Your shield held him up. Can it hold us? I have an arrow that might blow the window if you can do the rest – lower us back to the deck.”
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“I’ve never done that when I planned it.” But he’d held Duncan, caught him, maybe saved him. “I don’t know.” Kol watched the fingers on the next unloading arm begin to twitch, as that system came online.
“So you mainly do literal shields and barriers,” Jaleel said. “Oh, and holding doors open. Got it. How long will that shield hold back, like, bullets. Come on!”
The armor moved no farther. It stood equidistant between arms. Errant blaster strikes hit the huge torso but the metal was left unmarked.
Another strike fell against the door. The doorframe rattled. Kol spun toward the sound and saw a crack grow down the wall, beside the door.
“Just hold on!” Jaleel said. “Just this one guy, and then we’ll go. Then…”
A massive shape flew up from beyond the edge of the platform, light burning out from its feet, sending it up from unseen depths. The new armor had the same neck-less, green-eyed head as the other armors, the same body shape. But this last stood twice the height. Its fingers alone were as wide around as a man’s torso.
“It flies like Orson!” Jaleel said. “I hope this is the big boss battle and those other ones don’t come flying back up here.”
The new armor landed on the edge of the perimeter, and its weight shook the unloading arms in their frames. The armor reached out. It was tall enough, hands large enough to fit its fingers around the framework of the closest unloading arm.
And Kol heard the new armor, heard its movements like they were a loud echo from within.
“That’s Shaping,” Kol said. “And a Shaper is making it move. Maybe they were all piloted by Shapers, but this is the strongest. A knight.”
“Let’s see what you got!” Jaleel pulled back on a lever. The unloading arm reached out and coiled around the armor’s mechanized bicep. Jaleel twisted the lever sideways. Kol saw the unloading arm stretching back, straining, dragging at the armor.
Nothing happened.
The armor’s hands clenched. They twisted. The colossal machine leaned back.
The entire unloading framework, nine meters of metal, tore free of the platform. The uprooted unloading arm slackened and hung limp. The armor dropped the framework back to the deck.
Then the armor raised its left hand toward the next, nearest framework. Kol didn’t see the projectile bomb leave the armor’s wrist, but he saw that framework explode. Its unloading arm and fingers were left twisted and useless from the blast.
Then another blow struck the door of the command room, and Kol looked away from the new threat. The strike grew the crack in the wall. Tiny bits of concrete fell free and peppered the floor like pebbles dislodged before an avalanche.
“It may be time for our exit strategy,” Kol said.
Jaleel stared straight ahead. He still did not turn aside, but his hands had fallen free of the controls. The smaller of the two armors walked around the uprooted unloading framework and stood in the shadow of its larger companion.
The bigger armor raised its right arm and a gout of fire sprayed down and out of sight. Kol could not see if it hit anyone, but only sporadic bursts of blaster fire responded. And the armor advanced, spraying fire at the defenders.
And then the green eyes rose, the head bent backward. The armor stared through their window, as if looking at them, as if it could see them.
“We need to go,” Kol said.
“Uh.” Jaleel stood. “Right.” He took up his bow and quiver. “I’ll try to blast open the window. I should have a grappler arrow in here too, somewhere.”
“How fast is this grappler?” Kol asked. “Do you really want to go out the window toward that thing?”
“What about your shield?” Jaleel asked. “Can’t you defend us?”
The big armor twisted, swung its fists toward the building. Kol seized Jaleel by both shoulders and forced him back below the front console. Jaleel yelled, but Kol dropped to the floor beside him.
Nothing burst through the window.
Instead, Kol saw fire shooting straight into the sky. Only a hint of the red light could be seen from the floor. Kol rose and leaned over the console.
Both of the armor’s fists were aimed straight up. It fired flames, and a new explosive shot upward. Kol saw the glint of sunlight on another rocket bomb.
An explosion rattled the walls and windows, like the enormous flying creature had returned. Kol heard yells outside the command door, like even the breach team was jarred by the blast.
Something in the sky responded to the armor’s attack.
Fire shot back. It was like a waterfall of hot plasma fell down from the sky. It burned red and then it burned blue.
“Look,” Kol said. Jaleel stood with him.
A small, billowing figure flew in the sky, white light glowing below him. Red and blue fire burned from his hands. The waterfall engulfed the armor. Kol squinted away from the light.
The fire ceased and cleared.
The armor was left misshapen, like a partially-melted popsicle. No green eyes glowed out from the lump of heated metal.
The huge armor toppled. It crashed down to the platform and its weight sent out another shockwave that Kol could feel even yards away and indoors. The smaller armor was again left alone on the platform.
“Orson has the high score again!” Jaleel said. “I need to get me some crazier weapons.”
But a final blow took the command room door and the top hinge broke. The top of the door bent inward against Kol’s projection.
Looking at the door, he couldn’t see any sign of the attackers outside, but the crack in the frame was wide enough now to slip his fingers inside.
“Are your arrows still ready?” Kol stood back away from the front window.
Jaleel also looked at the loose door. “Uh, yeah.” He retrieved his quiver, arrows, and bow, and he fit a feather to the string. “How is the noise reduction in your helmet?”
* * *
The cheers from the prisoners and the pithecus on the roof morphed together around Orson. He touched down beside the broken remains of the unloading framework.
He scanned the deck for his crew and even his HUD did not find them in the mass of bodies. There were broken and burned bodies all along the platform. So many had fought to leave and live and would not. But more survived. These cheered for Orson and for freedom.
ULTRADENSE AIRBORNE PROJECTILE – LOW COLLISION PROBABILITY (<1%)
Orson watched the boulder fly over the crowd. It struck the final armor and bowled it over the edge of the platform. The mechanized suit tumbled from the cliff.
Orson found his crew when he found the source of the boulder, a woman with bloody hands. Enoa stood beside her. His HUD found her face when she removed her helmet. Then Dr. Stan did the same, where she stood beside the cart. They waved.
New text filled his HUD’s view before he could join them.
SAW-WINGS – REORIENTING TOWARD YOU – ATTACK POSITION IHSA FRIGATE – REORIENTING TOWARD YOU – ATTACK POSITON
Orson looked at the scattered defenders and their blasters. Their only chance at escape was in skimmers that would travel near the ground.
And there were still four Saw-wings circling beneath the frigate, now angling toward him. It swung away from its position at the valley-center, so fast that Orson could see rocks swept along the mountaintops in its wake.
Orson touched his hand to his goggles. He reopened the direct Aesir tightbeam channel. “Hey, Ruby, what’s your ETA?”
“There is no Estimated Time of Arrival,” Ruby answered. “The Aesir has already arrived near your present location. Energy use for camouflage measures is very high. Power supply will be exhausted in less than forty-one standard minutes under current usage. Would you like—”
“No,” Orson interrupted. “I’m gonna go after the big ship. If a Saw-wing comes close to shooting me, blast it, even if that gives away your location. Stay hidden otherwise. Actually, if I get blown up, reveal yourself and pick up the crew. They’ll find you, if you appear. Do you understand?”
SIGNIFICANT ARTILLERY TARGET LOCKED – COLLISION 65% (INCREASING LIKELIHOOD)
“You suggested a detailed course of action—” Ruby began.
Orson flew before the voice could finish and before he bothered to answer. He fired his repulsor, all power. He arced low, down from the perimeter, below the frigate’s central axis and below the heaviest guns, the Naval style cannons that would sit above water if the vessel traveled at sea.
TARGET LOCK – SMALL BATTERY EMPLACEMENT TARGET LOCK – SMALL BATTERY EMPLACEMENT TARGET LOCK – SMALL BATTERY EMPLACEMENT
More target locks appeared before he had a chance to count them all. The text began scrolling, too many weapons found him, locked on, prepared to shoot him down.
Orson fired the lantern before any of them acted. He swung sideways as he flew, and poured the fire up at the ship. He twisted his hand across the handle on the lantern’s damper. The fire turned white-hot and then blue without touching the sword.
The blast intensified, and he saw the ship’s shield come alight from the touch of the heat.
But the great ship didn’t fire on him.
It waited, delayed by the gunners’ fear and surprise or delayed by the power draining to the overworked shields.
Orson flew with the fire. He held the lantern outward, still pouring blue fire, so much heat that Orson felt it even through his coat. He felt the stone of the lantern warming. It was too hot for any insulation to hold back the heat completely.
Sweat coated his skin from head to toe. It poured down his legs and arms and ran in his eyes even with the goggles tight to his face.
But Orson didn’t stop. He held out the sword and, with his thumb, slipped the disruptor to the blade’s edge. Metal clicked and bound to metal. The sword flickered when it doubled in size and a second wave of heat hit him.
The third wave of heat passed over him when Orson broke through the frigate’s fire-weakened shield, flying through at the point of contact.
And then he was inside and the slight golden glow from the shield was below him. He flew, hugged close between ship and shield. He twisted the lantern closed, its stone now so hot it warmed his skin through his armored gloves.
With his other hand he raised his sword. He held it high and stabbed it into the underbelly of the ship’s metal skin.
Some of the guns fired as he went, joining their own energy and light to the nova that cleaved the ship’s great, long hull. But none hit him through the blue flames.
Orson disemboweled the frigate. He flew with his sword buried in the ship’s belly until the golden shield glow flickered and failed below him. Then the sound of the Saw-wings returned, all around.
TARGET LOCK – INCOMING FIGHTER CRAFT TARGET LOCK – INCOMING FIGHTER CRAFT TARGET LOCK – INCOMING FIGHTER CRAFT
Orson cut his propulsion. His repulsor stopped. He fell away from the ship. The warnings faded from his HUD.
He pulled the disruptor from the sword. He fell. He dropped, far from the Pinnacle, down near the center of the valley. He saw the twisted wreckage of cannons and fallen ships – a shipwreck graveyard on dry land.
Orson sent a counter burst through the repulsor to slow his fall. He looked back and searched for the Saw-wings and for what had become of the frigate.
More sweat ran through his goggles and in his eyes. They filled with tears and everything went blurry. Even the new scrolling text in his HUD was unreadable.
“Ruby!” Orson yelled. “Catch me! Show me where you are!”
The Aesir appeared beneath him. Even blurred, he knew it. When it dropped its full camouflage and fired its boosters to meet him, he would have known it blind. It popped into visual existence, already flying to catch him and to save him.
But there were explosions over him and more shrieking Saw-wings and he could see none of it and all of it might kill him if he was sloppy or gave in to his exhaustion or if his luck faltered.
“Rad shields only, Ruby!” He fired the repulsor again, boosting toward the top of the blur that meant the Aesir. “Open the skylight.” He saw light appear at the ship’s roof, even as the Saw-wings homed in on him and opened fire. Orson sheathed the sword and touched down on the Aesir’s roof.
Two explosions hit the shield as Orson fell inside. They jarred the Aesir hard enough to drive his ribs into the lip of the roof door, hit him with enough force that even his own armor shoved the air from his lungs.
But Orson was home.
He fell inside and pulled the hood and goggles from his face. His coat was too drenched to wipe his eyes, but he didn’t need to see. He knew where he was from the sound of his engines and from the sound of the automatic countermeasures that awakened the ship’s Incursion Cannons. And he knew the distant chattering sound that could only be the still-penned Wesley.
“We’re almost done, buddy!” Orson blinked away the sweat and tears and slid into the pilot’s seat.
He saw the frigate. It was crashing in slow-motion and spewing fire. He saw debris and machinery and flailing shapes tumbling from his long incision. One of the Saw-wings still circled the doomed ship, escorted it down toward its final resting place.
The other three fighters flew at the Aesir.
“Damn, we really need the others.” Orson took the controls. He aimed the Incursion Cannons dead ahead. “Ruby, keep firing the tri-cannon at twelve O’clock. I’ll try to fly us so you hit something.”
The roof cannon opened fire without reply. A steady stream of bolts left the gun, aiming nowhere, all of them scattering off into the open air. Orson set his hand on the Incursions’ firing controls and barreled straight ahead. He charged the fighters in close-combat chicken. Lighter and faster versus his heavier shields and versatile guns – could he cut them down before they wore away his defenses or he wasted all of his power?
He didn’t have to.
Two quick boulders struck one of the fighters. They soared right through the smaller ship’s particle shield. The attacks bent metal and wing. The fighter spiraled away from its formation.
Lightning took the second. A forked strike of iridescent, purple lightning fell from the clear, open sky with enough voltage to burn through a Saw-wing shield as the lantern had burned through the frigate’s. The second fighter lost its propulsion. It shut down. Orson actually saw all its lights wink out. It fell.
The last fighter made a spiraling maneuver, spinning away from Orson and from whatever projectiles had struck down its fellows.
“Ruby, where did he go?” Orson asked.
“Do you mean the Saw-wing fighter that was previously marked as an immediate hostile?” Ruby asked.
“Yes!” Orson yelled. “Where did he go?”
“It has changed course and is now flying away from your present location.”
“He ran away?” Orson asked.
“Would you like me to keep watch on that vessel?” Ruby asked.
“Please.” Orson watched the frigate continue its slow, labored descent toward the valley. Even with all he’d done, some repulsors were still struggling to hold it up, but black smoke engulfed the falling ship. The final Saw-wing gave up on it. That too flew away from the valley. It offered no fight.
Orson sent the Aesir up and around the falling frigate, and he could no longer see any of the enemy fighters.
By the time Orson brought the Aesir to a stop beside the perimeter ledge, no Liberty Corps forces were in sight.
The sky was clear.