There will always people willing to commit unspeakable horrors in exchange for a scant amount of power and comfort.
David’s gaze lingered on the words he had scratched into the smooth metal floor at his feet. It was a quote from his favorite history professor, Walt Gilman, from his days as an undergrad at UC Berkley. His favorite professor, who had now been dead for over two hundred years.
He inhaled sharply through his nose. The acrid air inside his Jugger was tinged with the sour smell of ozone and metal as he prepared for another attack run.
The mechanical monstrosity he piloted shifted, the grinding gears vibrated the metal head where he sat as the heavy rail gun attached to the Jugger's left arm reloaded. His fingers twitched in the liquid console as he watched the battle unfold without him.
Giant ships floated in the inky blackness that yawned beneath his Jugger. Missiles and lasers tore through debris as damaged vessels spilled their guts and crew out into the vacuum of space.
It was the silence of war that he found most eerie. Besides the mechanical groans and metallic thunder of his Jugger, the only sounds were radio signals, the crackled and crunched screams, a chaotic symphony; the soundtrack of war.
An occasional wave of debris would spray across his armored colossus, the metal and plastic making a sound somewhere between a heavy rain and wind chimes. But at this distance, only the throbbing hum of the particle cannons recharging and the chattering of the carrion crawlers scraping across the body of his Jugger interrupted the silence.
The terrifying robots resembled seven foot long centipedes with sharpened metallic claws that danced and twitched in constant motion as they clattered across his mech to recycle the damaged pieces of his Jugger, repairing what they could from the available raw materials.
He felt rivulets of sweat skate down his face as he glanced at the yellowed photograph of his family he had plastered to the wall of his spinner. It looked startlingly out of place amongst the high tech gadgetry and wondrous machinery that he had grown accustomed to. A stark reminder of the simpler time and place he had come from.
Of what he had left behind.
His forehead creased as his stomach lurched to the left.
“Sir, I’m picking up a gravity anomaly,” Jonathan chimed. It had taken David months to grow accustomed to the penetrating voice of his artificial intelligence system.
His fingers moved through the liquid control panel in which they were submerged, expanding the visual display on his HUD. Seeing nothing, he turned on the grav sensors.
His HUD exploded with data as a gravity well formed two hundred yards away. His heart sank. It could only mean one thing. The Azrael were sending reinforcements.
“Sir, I strongly suggest—”
“I see it, I see it,” he muttered, cutting Jonathan off.
Spinning up his machine, he flipped the coms on.
“Commander Nam Rood, this is David Ryelle, do you copy?”
A voice answered him, a thin, distorted buzz making its way through the debris field. “David, where the hell are you?”
“About seven nanosecs above you. Gorgon needed a breather.” He patted the Jugger interface. “A colossal gravity well just blew up my sensors.”
He swam in silence for a moment, punctuated by a brilliant flash as one of the three remaining batteroons, hulking battle cruisers roughly three miles in length, exploded, sending huge spiraling chunks of metal through the rest of the Alliance fleet.
“Dammit! How big are we talking?”
David’s fingers danced again as he spun the Jugger around, backing away from the pull of the well.
“Sir, by my calculations, the mass of the objects coming through is equivalent to at least sixteen batteroons,” Jonathan interjected.
“Big,” David replied through the coms.
Silence.
David flipped several more switches.
“Jonathan, I’m going to need you to bring the eroteme online.”
“Yes, sir,” the A.I. replied as the Jugger's right arm exploded into motion, metallic sleeves sliding and locking into place, forming a massive glowing blade that crackled with heat and energy.
Nam Rood’s voice cut through the tense air. “We’re picking it up on our long range scanners. Gods help us, it’s a Geburah.”
David blinked heavily. He’d only ever seen a Geburah once, from a distance, but the experience had left him with the distinct desire to never see one again. Dwarfing even the giant human batteroons, the spherical white globes were the size of a small moon, and packed more firepower than the largest human fleet.
During the invasion of Zeredath, it took the combined power of seven full fleets to wrest control of the system from one of those beasts. Whatever the Azrael were looking for in this system, it must be valuable.
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“David, you’ve got to fall back”
With a sudden lurch, his Jugger slide forward as the gravity well snapped shut.
In front of him, the Geburah loomed, its brilliant white armor gleaming against the black backdrop of deep space. Underneath where the white armor plating parted, thousands of black spires twisted and turned like enormous tentacles. From this distance, it looked as though a cloud of dust was pouring from the spires as the Geburah launched ship after ship from its internal stockpile.
David twisted his head, cracking his neck. Shaking the nerves from his fingers, he fired up his weapons systems.
“You need to get what’s left of the fleet out of here, sir.”
Two kether class fighters locked in on his location, their tangled, twisted net of wings turning to attack position.
David kicked forward, his Jugger following his every move like a graceful metallic dancer.
The kethers fired a battery of missiles which spiraled through the void towards him. Barreling low, he twisted through a small gap in the tight formation, swinging his blade in an arc, cutting the missiles in half.
Pushing forward, he fired a quick succession of rounds from his particle cannon, which melted through the body of the first kether, cooking the crew inside.
Grabbing the wing of the second ship with the enormous Jugger hand, his blade slid easily through its reenforced hull, slicing it cleanly in half.
The molten edges of the once solid ship glowed a brilliant orange as half of the ship drifted aimlessly away from him.
Twisting, he tossed the chunk of ship that he still held into a third kether as it approached.
“David, what the hell are you doing?”
He grimaced as a missile slammed into the torso of his Jugger. The force rattled his teeth. Seven more kethers. He hoped they’d keep sending small forces his way; maybe he could bleed them dry.
“Sir, you’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them busy.”
Three more kethers exploded in a rapid succession of particle cannon volleys as he skimmed below their line of fire.
He smirked. Must be Valaphar pilots. The Ralyians were accustomed to fighting in three dimensions, having evolved in the deep oceans. The Valaphar were much more similar to humans, and the adjustment from two dimensional to three dimensional combat did not come as naturally.
Thrusting upward with his blade, he made short work of the remaining ships.
Turning to gather his bearings, his face blanched. Drifting towards him, tentacles writhing in the vacuum, was the Azrael answer to the Juggers.
A Xaphan.
Bigger than even his enormous machine, these creatures, a grotesque merging of biology and machine, were bred for war. The bloated monstrosity sailed gracelessly through the void, its clawed arms and legs lurching and snapping hungrily.
All along its spine, long blades of black metal churned, tearing angry holes in the beast’s flesh. Its mouth slavered, its jaw in constant motion. Six long tentacles, each lined with serrated black hooks emerged from the creature’s back.
No two of these creatures looked alike. All were horrifying.
Sliding backwards, David opened fire with his rail gun, sending kinetic missiles into the Xaphan’s pasty white flesh.
If the creature roared, he couldn’t hear it. Maybe they didn’t even feel pain.
Its clawed tentacles reached out for him, it’s nightmarish maw open, revealing rows of jagged, black teeth ten feet in diameter.
“Commander, you’ve got to get out of here.”
“I won’t leave you behind, soldier!”
“Sir, they’ve got my Halabi drive jammed and a Xaphan breathing down my neck. I can’t jump. But you still can.”
“We can’t just abandon the system. The Five themselves ordered us to—”
David cut him off, “Sir, your options are stay here and die, or regroup and retake the system with the intelligence you’ve now gathered. Your call.”
David continued to back away from the Xaphan, firing as fast as he could into the creature’s bloated body. Globules of brilliant blue blood leaked from its wounds, leaving droplets wobbling and hanging in the blackness of space.
“Is there… Is there anyone I can give a message to?”
David looked down at the yellowed photograph of his family. His wife, Amanda, seated on the steps of their home, holding their newborn son. To her right sat Aubrey, precocious at only four, grinning her crooked smile. On the other side, Aubrey’s bitterest rival and younger sister Sarah.
Strange that it had been a little over two hundred and fifty years since he snapped that photo. Although to him it had been only seven.
“No, sir,” he said quietly.
The Xaphan closed fast, catching up to David despite his thrusters firing at full.
Nam Rood commed again, his voice somber, “Listen son… I’m sorry. If there was any other way, I—”
“Sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m a little busy here, and your emotional goodbye is distracting.”
Nam Rood’s voice caught in his throat; something David had never heard before. “It’s been an honor, soldier.”
“The honor was all mine.” David flipped the com off. “Alright, Jonathan, on my mark, open both missile batteries. Target the Xaphan’s sensory organs.”
“Yes, sir,” the A.I. replied.
David braced himself, continuing to fire as the creature’s taloned tentacles grasped at him. Slowly it drew closer, until he could hear the wet flesh rubbing and squeaking against the armor of his Jugger. He could hear the metal of his mech groan under the pressure of the Xaphan’s grasp.
“NOW!” he shouted, shifting his body and diving underneath the creature.
Jonathan unleashed hell, firing missiles directly up into the disoriented Xaphan.
Twisting his Jugger, David fired three rails into its torso, then dove straight in, cutting through its midsection with his blade.
The Xaphan reacted blindly, flailing, slamming its massive arm into the Jugger, rattling David’s bones.
Slashing through its back, his blade leading the way, David nearly severed the creature in half, spilling it’s glowing guts and blood into the inky blackness.
“Well played, sir!” Jonathan shouted. “Well played indeed!”
David spun like a dancer, sending the remains of the Xaphan twisting off into the darkness, spraying the blood and gore that covered his Jugger in a circling arch away from his machine.
Turning to face the giant white ship, David froze. Heading towards him now were five Xaphan, their eyes gleaming with hunger. Their jaws snapped and chittered as they sped towards him.
David’s shoulders slumped as his stomach fell through the floor. Five? He had most definitely gotten their attention.
“Jonathan, how many missiles do we have left?” he asked.
“Sixty seven, sir.”
He inhaled deep. Not enough. Not even close.
His fingers dancing, he turned to face the monsters as they barreled down on him.
“Sir, perhaps if we drop the remaining missiles as a diversion, we could slip past them and—”
David cut the machine off. “No. No.”
He thought for a moment. “Far be it from us to do such a thing as to flee from them. If our time has come, let us die bravely for our kindred, and leave no cause to question our honor.”
“You never pegged me as a particularly religious man, sir.”
David again stretched his fingers, shaking them to release the tension. Piloting a Jugger tended to make his fingers stiff, which in turn affected his reflexes and precision. “How does the phrase go? There are no atheists in foxholes?”
The Xapahan were closing fast. David shifted into a defensive posture.
“Ready that missile barrage. Let’s see if we can’t take a couple of them out with us”
“Yes, sir,” Jonathan replied; even his robotic voice sounded grim.
David fired up the boosters, driving straight at the Xapahan.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Jonathan?”
“It has been an honor.”
David smiled sadly.
“Goodbye, my friend.”
“Goodbye, sir.”