EngineMasters: Retribution, page 5
The engine came to a halt at a tall, electrified fence at the top of a rocky slope running down to the sea—the base’s eastern perimeter. Somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, lay the rogue territory Menuthias, often simply referred to as “the island.” Dawn had never understood High Command’s reasons for not simply taking the fight to them—striking at their capital, New Jericho, and bringing the civil war to a swift end. Maybe, once this engagement was over, her new Clan Corrin comrades could explain it to her.
“Now what?” Dawn asked, glancing up at Cal.
Dawn sighed and turned back to her instruments. Part of her felt ashamed—insulted, even—at being kept away from the fighting. But she didn’t especially relish the prospect of getting caught up in an engine engagement. This day had gone badly enough already.
“I’m sorry for what happened in the hangar,” she said, glad that she had her back to Cal and he couldn’t see her embarrassed grimace.
Cal chuckled.
“Doesn’t stop me from feeling fucking mortified,” Dawn admitted. “Besides, mistakes can get people killed.”
Cal sighed wearily.
Dawn didn’t know what to say to that. She shook her head and returned her attention to the world beyond the cockpit. She didn’t have a good view from her Engineer’s pit, so she had to rely on the main cam monitor linked to the sensor turret above the cockpit. The bulk of the base lay behind them, while the massive muster yard, perhaps a kilometer square, stretched out to their left. Tall jungle trees rose beyond the distant fence, and Dawn zoomed in on the tree line. There were no enemies in sight, but three friendly engines—all heavily armed Beta-Classes in purple armor—stood just beyond the fence, firing at the trees with their dual heavy weapons. The furthest one had red details across its purple armor, and carried a pair of shell cannons, each identical to Crimson Hunter’s single cannon. The central engine had white details and carried a pair of long-barreled fusion lances, which lit up in electric blue as they fired coherent energy beams deep into the jungle. The closest engine had blue details and was armed with one of each heavy weapon. On their shoulders each engine displayed a pair of crossed swords in bright red upon a burgundy shield, with a horizontal red stripe above and below. It wasn’t a clan symbol Dawn recognized.
“Who are they?” she asked. “The purple Beta-Classes.”
“That’s a lot of hands,” Dawn said, grinning as she watched the purple engines blasting away at their unseen foe. Heavier and stockier than either Alpha- or Gamma-Class, Beta-Class engines were meant for long-range engagements. Their bulky leg armor housed sturdy actuators strong enough to bear the weight of their massive weapons while providing a stable firing platform. Early generations had even been equipped with shoulder-mounted missile pods but, like all ultra-long-range weaponry, this advantage had been negated by the coronae’s disruptive effects.
Dawn grinned as she remembered sitting in a Beta-Class cockpit during her training, delighting in the sheer power coursing through its limbs and weapons. In the end she’d settled for a well-rounded Alpha-Class engine, but that bully Timo had mocked her for it mercilessly, claiming that a Beta-Class would’ve been too much to her to handle.
Stop dwelling on the past, Fletcher, Dawn told herself. Focus on the present!
“What the fuck are they waiting for?” she asked, frowning.
Cal replied.
Dawn zoomed in to where Cal was pointing. Beyond the Clan Verso trio, a white-and-blue engine wielding a pair of glowing shock blades burst out from the trees. The nearest Clan Verso engine—Hand of Justice, if Dawn remembered correctly—turned its guns upon the enemy engine, whose neutron shield shimmered as kinetic and fusion blasts hammered into it.
With a start, Dawn realized that this was the first Islander engine she’d ever seen in real life. Its left shoulder displayed a dark gray owl, wings spread, upon a teal shield—the symbol of Clan Tyto. It must’ve been one of those that had destroyed the Clan Hauser convoy. Killed her friends. Wrecked her engine …
Stop it! Dawn told herself, shaking her head to clear it.
“Identifying,” she muttered, activating Crimson Hunter’s scanner array. She grunted in annoyance when all it showed was the engine’s class and clan. Gen-IV scanners could identify the target from a database of known enemy engines, highlighting weak spots and even engine-specific vulnerabilities. Gen-III scanners clearly weren’t that sophisticated.
The enemy engine darted forward faster than anything that size should’ve been able to move, blasting away with its vambrace-mounted repeater cannon. The six barrels spun in a blur, unloading dozens of micro-shells per second at its opponent. Hand of Justice’s shield lit up under the intense rate of fire, hundreds of tiny impacts merging into an unbroken wall of flame as the purple-and-blue engine staggered backward. Dawn gritted her teeth as she watched; no neutron shield would last long under a kinetic onslaught like that. A warning icon immediately appeared over the purple engine, regrettably proving her right; its shield was down, and would take at least ten seconds to recharge. The enemy engine swiftly advanced on its stunned, defenseless foe, raised its blades—
And Morningstar was there, blasting the enemy engine with its own repeater cannon. It swung its shock blades to force the enemy back, and Dawn couldn’t keep a squeak of delight from escaping her lips. The white engine quickly recovered, lunging at the yellow engine’s waist. Morningstar spun and parried, knocking the blade away and striking the enemy’s torso. The glowing shock blade bounced off its shield, which flashed white as it absorbed and dissipated the energy. While a shock blade wasn’t that effective at penetrating a neutron shield—at least compared to a high-energy projectile—the kinetic force behind each blow would eventually wear down the shield.
The warning icon above Hand of Justice disappeared as its own shield relit, and Dawn breathed a sigh of relief. However, she was more interested in the dueling Gamma-Class engines and could barely pull her gaze away as they slashed and stabbed at one another. Melee combat between two skilled Pilots was always a treat to watch—or would’ve been, if the stakes weren’t so high. Still, it was a thrilling display. Dawn tried to identify the few dueling forms she knew—Low Zephyr, Slipstream, New Moon—but the engines were moving so quickly, each posture sliding smoothly into the next, that she struggled to keep up. The enemy engine was clearly Gen-IV, its movements possessing a grace—a smoothness—that its yellow-and-white opponent couldn’t match. The fact that Morningstar could compete at all spoke of Pilot Torres’s skill.
“How are your forms?” she asked Cal. It was unlikely that an Alpha-Class engine would get drawn into melee combat—but Crimson Hunter did carry a shock blade, so it was certainly a possibility.
“Octavia?”
“Ah, her. I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Cal snorted.
Dawn laughed; the first time she’d done so since … since she’d been with her Clan Hauser friends.
Stop it Fletch, came the voice of Abbas, her old Pilot. Control yourself.
She finally tore her gaze from the dueling engines and carried out a quick scan of the area. Nothing. She glanced up through the canopy—and abruptly froze. Those same dark specks against the blue sky, growing larger by the moment. Just like the ones she’d seen from the Clan Hauser carrier, before …
Her mouth suddenly felt dry, and she was reliving those final few moments all over again. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t—
08
Cal scowled and leaned forward in his restraints. He gripped Dawn’s shoulder and shook it, attempting to rouse her from her paralysis.
“Engineer! Respond!”
She stared back at him, her gaze distant.
“Will you snap out of it? What in God’s name is wrong with you?”
“What?”
“My God …” he whispered. At least eight drop pods were streaking down through the clear sky—at least a kilometer above them, he estimated, but falling fast.
“Command,” Cal said, resettling himself in the Pilot’s seat, “we have drop pods incoming.”
The Clan Verso trio immediately complied, turning their guns skyward and filling the air with explosive shells and blue-white fusion beams. A beam from Hand of Mercy sliced cleanly through one pod, scattering its dark metal segments. The hunched engine within was unharmed, thanks to its active neutron shield—but an instant later, a macro-shell from Hand of Vengeance slammed into it, overloading the shield in a fiery explosion. The other Clan Verso engines fired their fusion lances at the wildly plummeting engine, slicing it into half a dozen pieces. Two ejector seats shot free of the disintegrating engine, deploying bright orange parachutes as wreckage began crashing to the ground. Cal itched to raise his fusion blaster and shoot the survivors from the sky—but he swiftly rejected the bloodthirsty temptation. Enemy EngineMasters made valuable prisoners—and besides, there were other targets in need of his attention.
“Arm shell cannon,” he said, hefting Crimson Hunter’s left arm and bringing one of the drop pods into the center of his magnified view.
Cal adjusted his aim, letting the pod drift across his visor’s crosshairs until …
A quiet ping sounded in his ear, and the crosshairs turned green.
“Firing,” Cal said, squeezing the trigger. The engine shook from the recoil, and an instant later a fireball blossomed overhead—just missing the rapidly approaching pod.
“Again!”
Cal found it surreal—and painful—to hear an Engineer’s voice over the comm that wasn’t Zhao’s, but he forced himself to focus. He took a deep breath, held it as he reacquired his target, and squeezed the trigger.
The drop pod exploded.
“Wait,” Cal said, peering up through the smoke. “I can’t see—”
A huge, hunched shape crashed to the ground less than fifty meters away, shattering the concrete and throwing up a cloud of gray dust.
“Wait,” Cal muttered, cautiously advancing toward the unmoving shape. “I don’t think—”
The shape rose unsteadily to its feet, and the dust cleared to reveal a pale blue Alpha-Class engine with orange details. Its clan symbol was the red-and-white diagonal stripes of Clan Shin.
“Negative, Command,” Cal said. “It’s still active—but we’ll deal with it. Dawn, does it have a shield?”
“Fusion blaster, now!” Cal snapped, raising Crimson Hunter’s right arm.
With an arm missing and the entire left side of its torso a smoking ruin, the engine swayed, orange sparks flickering fitfully within its mangled innards. It toppled slowly, crashing to the ground and scattering scorched armor plates in all directions.
“Confirmed, Command,” Cal said with grim satisfaction. “Enemy engine destroyed.”
“Acknowledged.”
After checking his instruments and seeing no immediate threats in range, Cal took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat. His heart was pounding with the thrill of combat, and Crimson Hunter’s powercore rumbled belligerently as if in sympathy.
“Your first engine kill, Engineer,” he said, glancing down at Dawn. “How does it feel?”
Cal frowned. He focused the cam on the wrecked engine before them and saw that she was right. The EngineMasters hadn’t ejected, and the cockpit was a blackened ruin—either from the initial fusion blasts or the subsequent magazine explosion. He’d gotten his EngineMaster kills after all; he didn’t know whether to feel elated or ashamed.
She gestured out the cockpit, and Cal lifted his gaze to the fighting that had broken out across the flat expanse of the muster yard. Islander engines fought their Mainlander counterparts, alone or in pairs, amid the wreckage of fallen engines and the empty metal shells of abandoned drop pods. Cal winced to see the red-and-orange Clan Corrin engine Stormbreaker lying prone near the western perimeter, its lower legs sheared off by a fusion lance. A squad of auxiliaries had thankfully recovered its EngineMasters from the wreckage; they were hastily withdrawing in their A/G carrier as Oblivion’s Blade, the white-and-red Beta-Class engine, provided covering fire.
“Negative,” Cal said, “we stick to our orders and guard the eastern quadrant.” He hoped that Dawn couldn’t hear the reluctance in his voice; he wanted nothing more than to charge into battle alongside his fellow Clan Corrin engines.
He looked around for Morningstar and saw the yellow-and-white engine near the base’s eastern gate. Octavia and Zane had driven off their white-and-blue opponent but were now under fire from a pink-and-gray Alpha-Class engine. Morningstar staggered as a macro-shell exploded against its torso. The shield burst, and Cal’s breath caught in his throat as the enemy raised its fusion blaster—
But then Star Phantom appeared, the gray-and-white Clan Castus engine placing itself between Morningstar and its opponent. The enemy opened fire, but Star Phantom’s shield absorbed the incoming fusion blasts, giving Morningstar the time to recharge its own shield.
Cal turned his cam toward the southern perimeter about five hundred meters distant and saw a pair of enemy Beta-Classes looming above a cluster of low-roofed outbuildings. They had broken through the fence and engaged Hand of Mercy and Hand of Justice in a long-range duel. Shell fire and fusion beams crisscrossed the space between them, and Cal looked around for Hand of Vengeance, but the third Clan Verso engine was nowhere to be seen.
Cal spun Crimson Hunter around—and his blood turned to ice. About eighty meters away stood a bright green engine with black details. On its left shoulder, it bore the red-and-white striped shield of Clan Shin.
This was the engine that had killed Zhao.
The enemy engine noticed them too, and the barrels of its repeater cannon started spinning, becoming a blur as it raised the weapon. But Cal wasn’t going to give it the chance to fire and; with a snarl, he raised his shell cannon. The targeting reticule locked on with a faint chime and he and squeezed the trigger … but nothing happened. An amber warning message flashed across his visor: SHELL NOT LOADED.
“Dawn, why haven’t you loaded the cannon?” he snapped.
Before Dawn could finish, the enemy opened fire. The cockpit lit up with a barrage of micro-shell explosions, and Cal gritted his teeth in frustration as he struggled to keep Crimson Hunter steady. Zhao would have instinctively known to reload without being prompted. While this might be Dawn’s first engagement, he couldn’t cut her any slack—her lack of experience could still get them killed!
