Mech 3: The Empress (33 page)

The mechs were relatively easy to follow, as they left clear tracks. At first, they passed by half-frozen mud and tundra. As they pressed more deeply into the colder regions, there was only ice and dry, blowing snow.

“We must press hard,” Nina radioed to Aldo. “We can’t let up for a moment. We can see their tracks now, but if the wind picks up and the snow falls deeply, the tracks will be filled in as fast as they make them.”

“Can’t you see them from the air?”

“Those assets have been reserved for surveillance over Twilight. You did your work well, Aldo. The Duchess is quite fearful of an attack on our best lands.”

Aldo privately thought the Duchess was the saner of the two, but he held back his opinions on the matter.

Not being certain where they would contact the mech forces, they spread themselves wide and sent scouts rushing ahead. A squawk of radio came back from one of the scouts on the left flank. Nina tried to raise him—but there was nothing but the single moment of contact. Not even an intelligible word had been heard.

“Swing left!” she shouted over the command channel. “Captains, detach your nearest group of squad strength and rush to that spot. Report the moment you get there, even if you are under fire.”

“You may be sending those men to their deaths,” Aldo said to her on a private channel.

“Command is difficult. Perhaps you are not up to these hard decisions.”

Aldo stayed moodily silent. In his mind, he could not reconcile this harsh woman with the soft sultry thing she had been when she’d first met him in a chiffon gown. He could scarcely believe he’d bedded her and enjoyed himself immensely.

Being within a reasonable distance, the two commanders sped to the spot with their personal guard drifting behind. They arrived in the middle of a full-pitched battle. Just before they came over a lip of land and were confronted by an immense column of rising steam, a squad-leader radioed in he’d met up with a small group of running mechs. The enemy turned and the fight began.

The enemy consisted of twenty ex-perrupters, each with laser cannons affixed to one arm and power-swords held in the other. The pursuing humans fired bolts at them, but with little effect. They soon turned their mounts and fled. The enemy charged after them, burning them down with well-aimed fire into the backs of retreating men.

Nina’s personal force of one hundred knights was the next to arrive. They crested the rise and charged without orders. There was hardly any need for Nina to signal the attack, as she herself was among the first to goad her mount to full speed. Aldo came behind them, breathing hard. This was not his kind of fight. It was too wild, too uncontrolled. A man could be taken out by a bolt of flying energy, never having notice the individual that fired it. He much preferred individual dueling. No one had consulted him, however, so he rode with the rest, bent over the barrel-like body of his mount and firing laser bolts when the path ahead was clear.

Both sides peppered the other with fire. The mechs were outnumbered, but it took many shots to bring down one. Usually, a single laser hit knocked a man from his mount and sent him tumbling over the ground. A dozen men were struck dead and three mechs sagged down before the two charging lines met.

Power-swords arced and flashed as men and mechs crashed together. Barrages of laser fire lanced back and forth at pointblank range. Ice-covered rocks sizzled and formed glowing hotspots when the laser fire missed or glanced off a metallic surface.

Aldo followed closely in Nina’s wake and watched as she swept off the head of a perrupter. Blinded but not finished, the perrupter dropped its sword and snatched at her with a gripper. She ducked under and rode away. As Aldo approached the flailing machine, it shot another mech in the side accidentally, causing it to stagger. A fraction of a second later, Aldo pierced the chassis, aiming for the braincase. The mech sagged down on it back, its heat sinks melting snow into steam.

The fight was chaotic. The naturally cold, dark environment was frequently altered by glaring flashes of heat, light and scalding vapors. Soon, the number of flashes fell off rapidly, as the dead mechs piled up. A moment later the humans realized they had won.

Nina was not finished, however. She rode her mount to every mech and examined it. She thrust her blade into the guts of any machine that dared twitch, and many that did not. Aldo followed at a safe distance.

“We’ve won, Baroness.”

“No, we’ve won nothing.”

Aldo cocked his head puzzledly. “In my opinion, any battle which leaves me breathing is a clear victory.”

Nina glanced over her shoulder at him. She held her sword over a fallen mech, but withheld her killing stroke for the moment. “I’m looking for a certain mech—one that dresses like a man. He’s not here.”

Aldo nodded and glided closer. Nina turned to her grim work, lifting her blade.

Suddenly, the mech’s gripper shot up and grabbed her ankle, and pulled. She was ripped her from her mount. She went sprawling.

The perrupter was missing its legs, but it was still capable of moving. It heaved itself up and lunged for her. A gripper rose and fell, and sparks exploded from the spot where it smashed into stones. Nina scrambled to escape, crawling away from the thing. She reached for her sword, but then it fell upon her.

Nina screamed as it crushed her down with its body. It stiffened a moment later, and warm liquids bubbled out of it. The mech stopped moving.

Aldo peeked over its shoulder, looking down into the face of the Baroness, who panted raggedly under the mech. “Are you all right?” he asked mildly.

Nina struggled, but could not escape from the dead mech, due to its great weight. Several knights had to help free her in the end, lifting and rolling away the body.

“It leaked its brain fluids all over me,” she said disgustedly as she got back to her feet and limped to her mount, which idled nearby. “Did you have to thrust your blade completely through its body?”

Aldo pursed his lips in annoyance. “Perhaps I should have let it have its way with you.”

She turned and glared at him, then finally sighed and climbed back into her saddle. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thank you for slaying the rebel.”

Aldo nodded and said no more about it. He sensed that apologies did not come naturally to the Baroness—nor to anyone else on Ignis Glace, for that matter.

“Where are we headed now?” he asked later. He noticed that she now allowed him to ride alongside, rather than always shying away. It was a subtle improvement of mood, but one worth noting. He calculated that if he were perhaps afforded the opportunity to save her life a dozen times more, he might be back in her good graces.

“We are going toward that great geyser. The tracks lead straight toward it. I believe they plan to hide from our sensors there. The clouds are constant and no electronics could pick out their heat signatures in that region.”

“What if they are hiding there? Waiting to ambush as this group did?”

“Then we root them out and destroy them all,” she said in a tone that indicated he’d asked a senseless question.

Aldo followed her without comment. One day out of the three he’d agreed to go along with this hunt had passed. They’d found and destroyed an enemy patrol, but he was less confident than ever after the experience. The small victory had been costly. He had no idea how the battle would go when they faced thousands of these tenacious machines.

#

Word of the destruction of his rearguard came to Sixty-Two as he stood gawking at Lizett and the man who called himself Ornth. He was goaded to a decision then, as the enemy were much closer than he had thought possible. There was only one reason they would attack now—they felt they had the advantage. There had to be a vast army of them.

Sixty-Two swiveled his head to the left and the right. The rim of the crater stretched on for miles. There was no cover, no fortress of stone to take and defend. Then he turned his chassis and stared back up the rise in the direction where enemy contact had been made. They were miles back, but on flying mounts, miles went by quickly. There were no good options, he realized. He would have to make his stand here. The enemy had caught him with back against this crater, which he now realized was trap rather than a refuge.

“Let’s form-up!” he broadcast to every standing mech. “Battle formation, centered on my location. Face sunward, and test your weapons now.”

All up and down the line, the mechs halted their walking and milling about. They ran on churning metal feet to do as he asked. Captains relayed orders and marshaled their companies. They broke radio silence freely now, since Sixty-Two had already done so.

“Sixty-Two?” called Lizett behind him. “You simply must come out here. It’s so lovely and strange.”

Sixty-Two barely glanced at them. “Stay where you are Lizett. If we lose this battle, perhaps the humans will not notice you hiding on that ledge, or whatever it is.”

“It’s not a
ledge
, silly. It’s a plane. You can walk on it, even if you can’t see it.”

“I made need your help, mechanical man,” Ornth called. “I urge you to come here and escape this pointless battle.”

These last words finally angered Sixty-Two. Since it was going to be several minutes before his troops had positioned themselves, and they required no further guidance, he whirled around and clanked to the rim of the crater. He addressed the two who hung in space in front of him.

“Pointless? Our survival is not pointless. It is all that matters to my people. What good are we as slaves, or as dead rebels? In the next minutes, our status will be forever decided.”

“There is a third option.”

“We cannot evade them. You’ve brought us to this point personally. Our backs are pressed against an abyss.”

“You can evade pursuit, if you do it quickly enough.”

Before Sixty-Two could make another angry retort, Lizett interrupted. “I think I know what he means. I’ll show you.”

She walked toward him then, and as Sixty-Two watched, he came to doubt his connection to his optics. She was walking on nothing. Soundless, she approached on the roiling vapor and stood at his side.

“See?” she said proudly. “My little Ornth found this.”

“He’s not a pet rabbit, Lizett,” Sixty-Two said. “You must not trust him with your life.”

Lizett pouted. “You will not even try?”

“Try what?”

“Step with me. I’ll take your gripper and show you the way.”

Sixty-Two glanced over his shoulder. His forces had lined up on the rocky region around the crater. They were well-placed. When the enemy came charging over the ridge, they would be exposed to his fire from a hundred laser cannons.

Lizett took his gripper. His curiosity got the better of him and he allowed her to guide him into—nowhere. A moment later, he stood beside Lizett and Ornth. They looked positively smug.

“How are we standing here?” he demanded. “Is there some kind of magnetic field? Some kind of trick of physics? Or is the floor simply disguised?”

“It is the place that cannot be,” Ornth explained unhelpfully. “It is the place I have sought.”

“How far does it extend?”

Ornth made a sweeping gesture, indicating the entire sinkhole. “There is no limit.”

Sixty-Two looked around, and suddenly new possibilities occurred to him. “There are no holes? No gaps?”

“This place cannot be,” Ornth said.

Sixty-Two made a sound of disgust with his speakers, but he quickly began testing the ‘ground’ around him. It gave slightly under a mech’s feet, but only an inch or so. After that, it was as firm as land could be. He soon found himself marching this way and that. He returned to the rim of the crater and jogged along its border, a hundred yards in every direction.

Finally, he turned to his army, which had now formed up ranks before him and quietly awaited whatever might come to them. He felt pride in their stalwart nature. Mechs did not flee combat. They might fall and die, but never while screaming in terror.

He then gave the order for his entire army to retreat out onto the streaming vapors, to stand upon nothing—to hide in plain sight. They did as he asked, walking awkwardly at first, as if each step would be their last. But soon, they adapted, and they walked further into the pouring storm of hot gasses. They could not be seen, nor heard here.

As they waited, Sixty-Two reflected on what might seem to others to be a cowardly act. He knew his people were anything but cowards. But he also knew the enemy would not advance if they didn’t have sufficient force to destroy them all. They retreated in order to survive another day—or at least, another hour.

Twenty-Two

The Skaintz made planetfall a day after they’d swept aside the human fleet. The Twilighters on the ground were in a panic, calling up their personal armies and preparing to defend their own estates.

The nife spent the last hours in deep, tactical thought. By the time the
Gladius
slid into high orbit over the planet, he’d hammered out the final details. Nothing he could come up with was better than the most direct approach available. In the end, the Imperium battle plan was typical of its kind. It would be swift, direct and brutal.

The enemy had only one detectable spaceport with surprisingly little traffic. The port was in the middle of one of the two largest population centers, making it doubly valuable as a prize of conquest. If nothing else, the Empress would be extremely pleased due to the plentiful number of flavorful food-creatures.

The nife took the plan to her for final approval. As she listened, she became wild to taste fresh meats.

“An entire city of meat-creatures roaming around at will?” she asked. Her maw slavered at the description. “I’ve been eating dust and scraps for months. I will have a grand tasting on the very first day. I insist that you launch now. Our assault vessels have sufficient range, I know that they do.”

“Patience, Empress! The ship will soon be in stationary orbit. When the big engines stop, we shall launch the assault ships.”