Cold War 2395, page 14
“Phew,” he says.
Yeah, I bet looking like that much of an asshole is exhausting. Nah, I’m just messing. Not like he knows the difference.
“Got every damn one of them,” I say proudly. Put as many baddies in their place as I do and you start to feel a little giddy about it sometimes. Comes with the territory.
“We ain’t out of the woods yet.” Beecher points back at what used to be my end of the catwalk. All the bots I left behind are pretty unhappy about not scoring the prom invite, it seems.
My turn to be the smart one. I go over to the railings of the bot-filled walkway and kick up my saws, their blades giving a high-pitched whir before slicing through the suspended platform’s poles like a knife through warm butter. Mmmm, butter. That’d go great with some toast right now. Yeah, some toast with butter, and some scrambled eggs on the side . . . I miss real food. I don’t like being here. Vitamin pastes fuckin’ blow.
“What’re you waiting for?” Beecher shouts, interrupting my daydream.
Guess I’ll have to settle for scrambled Reds instead. Now that both railings are split from the catwalk and its structural integrity is weakened, I give the floorboard one good rocket-powered stomp, hoping the thing will break apart right there and then. It doesn’t. So I stomp again. Second time’s the charm. Every bolt holding it in place snaps off in rapid-fire sequence. That’s more like it.
The machines’ end of the catwalk, now totally detached from our portion of scaffolding, buckles under its own weight. It bends downward into the lava, submerging the bots’ feet in a fresh bath of hot goop. Before the bots know what hit them, they’re knee-deep in the drink. They try to turn around, desperately clawing at each other to retreat to the safety of the other side, but their efforts are in vain—the lava pools over their heads and melts them all out of existence.
“Nice call, man,” Beecher says.
“You know it.”
“All right, so shouting is out of the question if we don’t want to become diner food, aka hot and greasy. How are we gonna—”
“Lee-ew-tennant Beeeecher,” McGregor’s loud and proud Scottish accent echoes from somewhere up ahead.
“Sergeant!” we yell back. Turns out the shouting worked? Marco?
“Lee-ew-tennant Goooourd,” he continues, encouraging us to find him. The nearby sound of bots clanking means we don’t have much time.
“Sergeant!” we keep yelling, sounding our way down the platforms in front of us until his voice is louder than the crackling of the lava and stomping of the machines. Almost there . . .
We make our way around a massive tower that all the noise bounces off of until we finally spot the man of the hour on the other side. His hulking ACA brawler fists are the first thing to come into view as he waves at us from across the way.
“Ay, lads! Talk about a hot zone, eh?” he says, still full of energy. Dude’s got bruises and a few budding heat blisters on his face as well as a piss-ton of damage to his suit, but he’s acting like he just got out of a bachelor party or some shit. Props.
“Sergeant, you all right?” Beecher asks, witnessing the same miracle I am. If such an incident had befallen anyone but McGregor, they’d have been totaled. He’s one hell of a tough cookie.
“I’m feeling a bit dizzy from the warmth, so let’s get out of here, yeah? Where we headed?”
“Closest exit is back with Yankee Squad at the entrance.”
“Don’t be telling me we’re out of the fight, lad.” There’s sadness in his voice. For a guy as battered as McGregor, I’d expect him to be happy finding out we’re almost in the clear. Turns out he wants more!
“Hold that thought,” Beecher says.
Crackling in my helmet’s earpiece tells me we’re about to make a call.
“Captain,” Beecher starts.
“Have you found him?”
“Yeah, here’s here.”
“Condition?”
“Still kicking.”
“Then get moving.”
“We going forward after we reach Yankee Squad? Or are we reinforcing them?”
“Utah Battalion is saving a shuttle for you at the LZ; not a chance in hell you three are done yet.”
“Roger,” Beecher says, switching off the line before giving McGregor the good news. “We’re still in the match, Sarge.”
“Then let’s go! Me head can’t take much more of the heat. Blistering, blazing barnacles, is it ever hot in here.”
“You’d think he’s playing into the stereotype for chuckles,” Beecher whispers.
How rude! Maybe he’s just proud of his heritage. Hmph. Besides, regardless of the guy’s funny talk, McGregor ain’t lying about his current condition. He’s drenched in sweat so thick I can hardly tell where his eyes end and the waterfalls begin, and even with all that perspiration pumping out, his increasingly noticeable heat rash keeps worsening. And I thought we had it bad.
Beecher and I pull up Sergeant Marx’s barely traceable exo sig on our HUDs. Beech takes front and center of our triangle and assumes the role of travel guide, marching us across walkways, bridges, stairwells, and yada yada yada. Put simply, we do a whole lot of walking, and the ache in my legs becomes increasingly noticeable as a result. Damn it, quads, why can’t you be as strong as my biceps?
“Last set of slopes until we’re just a few walkways from the entrance,” Beecher tells McGregor. Since we still have a ways to go, I might as well strike up a little chit-chat.
“So, Sarge, how’d you find us? Did the shouts work?”
“Maybe the first one, sure. Thought I heard one of your voices. What really did it was the fighting; swore I heard an army going at it down here. Was hoping it’d be ours.”
“Yeah, that’d be us,” I say with a chuckle.
We start down the stairwell of the final slope, walking toward a—wait a minute. That’s not just some weird pipeline down there. That’s a mold for something. Something big.
“You seeing that?” I ask, magnifying my helmet’s vision to get a closer look.
“Is that a cruiser nose mold?” Beecher asks.
I have no clue if that’s what it is, and I sure as hell don’t want to find out. We’re in the heart of the shitstorm here.
“If it’s a cast, where’s the filling?” Sarge asks.
Then it occurs to me: we haven’t taken a peek behind us yet. Shit, am I about to turn around and see something I don’t want to—
Yep. Right behind us on the inside edge of our stairwell is a big, big hatch with a massive valve on top. The thing is stupidly huge. Like “large enough to fit the nose of a cruiser” huge.
“Let’s not stick around to see that open up, yeah?” Beecher suggests as we speed up our shimmy down the insanely long flight of steps ahead of us.
“Right,” McGregor and I respond, bouncing down stairs as fast as possible, trying not to look back at the massive hatch that only gets taller the farther we travel alongside it. And I still hear bots trailing us, as if we don’t have enough problems.
“Just gotta move a little faster . . .” Beecher says, further upping the tempo of our descent.
Working to keep my mind off that massive piece of piping behind us, I scan the environment ahead for enemies. I can’t tell if I spot something up high or if it’s just a blur of smoke and my peripheral vision playing tricks on me, so I choose to disregard it in my haste to step off the never-ending stairwell and onto the massive mold platform.
“Almost there, just run for that walkway on the right—”
Beecher gets cut off by the arrival of a new challenger, one that doesn’t look like it’s going to let us stroll out of the current arena without a scuffle. Shit, so that’s the thing I thought I saw. Resting atop our escape lane’s biggest industrial smokestack is a three-eyed ship-wrangling bot, its launcher aimed and blade drawn. The blade’s layered sheets extend themselves over what appears to be a plasma cutter, hiding it inside a sharp metal shell. But that shell ain’t just a fancy carrying case for a multi-tool—it’s doubling as a sword built for skewering ships and absolutely decimating unlucky fuckers like me.
The enemy bot looks like the same model the fighters were supposed to take out—the one we needed fighters to take out. There’s an ear-splitting screech as its clawed feet dig into the stack it’s perched on, scrunching up metal until it’s so disfigured I couldn’t even call it scrap. I hope I don’t look like that by the time the upcoming fight is over.
No one has time to shout a strategy before big, black, and ugly starts lobbing rockets at us. I manage to dive out of the incoming projectiles’ blast radius with a harsh boot-boosted side-step that blasts me way too far forward, well away from Beecher and McGregor. They both slide back in the opposite direction. Shit, now is not the time to split up. And where’d my rifle go? Sometime in the last few seconds, it must’ve been rocked out of its magnetic sheath. Double shit.
While I’m busy recovering, the mech launches more volleys at my allies. Beecher’s and McGregor’s reckless dodges land them inside the pit of the mold. Their incautious maneuvers pay off and the rockets miss them by a few feet, eating the mold’s rim instead, but they’re fish in a barrel now. I don’t know if they’re disoriented from the blast or ready to dodge the next wave. I gotta help them out of there—
But twelve-foot-and-angry ain’t having any of it. Now that we’re separated and disoriented, it spots an easy opening to get up close and personal with that giant blade it’s wielding. Fuck.
With a colossal leap, the machine bounces off its perch and comes right at me. The metal monster clomps and stomps in my direction right as it makes contact with the platform, propelling forward way too fast for my liking. Given the size of its blade, my odds of survival are nil. No way in hell am I handling that thing solo.
Doesn’t mean I can’t try.
I rocket myself away from the lava-spitting fringe of the molding platform just in time to miss the robot’s first charge, its failed rush causing it to lose its footing and nearly fall into the sauce. So close! Damn it. Recovering in less than a second, it twists around, and the thousand piston-pumping joints in its body all refocus. Now I’m one clear stretch across from the mech. No diversions, no distractions. Just me, it, and a flat patch of platform.
I push off from the ground, rushing to get back onto my feet. It swings its foot in my direction and begins its push. I get back on my toes. It takes another step. I give myself a quick kick-off and spring forward. By the time I’m finally up and moving again, the enemy is charging at full speed. I raise my arms and hope these saws are as strong as I need them to be. Meeting in the center of the arena, the mechanical monster swings its blade toward me and we collide.
My entire body buckles as that son of a bitch puts every bit of force it can muster into its sword, but somehow I’m not dead yet. I’m not dead yet! The edge of the bot’s blade is caught in my saws’ ruts as I block the strike. The saw wheels twitch and jerk, both trying to spin upward while the enemy’s sword keeps pushing downward, making for the perfect deadlock. Even though the enemy towers over me, pressing forward as hard as it can, I manage to match its force, raging against the pressure with the added support of my boots’ rockets. The scene must look pretty fucking cool from the outside: one guy shooting blue-orange flames out of his socks while using saws to arm wrestle a bot twice his size.
But while it probably looks cool, I’m not feeling the part. I gotta say, the bucket of bolts I’m dancing with really knows how to keep the heat on me. The machine can’t see it, but underneath my helmet my teeth are grinding harder than Charlize Cormanne and I did at my high school prom. Every muscle in my body strains to the max, and even the ACA exoskeleton isn’t digging the current degree of stress-testing. My HUD warns that the suit’s skeletal integrity is faltering due to exceeded pressure limits—a fancy way of saying joints and pistons will start snapping apart in a matter of seconds if I don’t do something.
More sparks flash between us as the saws keep jutting upward, scraping against the bot’s blade. Jesus Christ, I can feel my boots digging into the platform. Literally digging in. Wait, that’s not me . . . that’s the ground getting softer. Shit, my boots’ jets are melting the platform. Oh no.
My sinking stand collapses into a kneel as big-bot starts to gain the advantage, locking me into a pose that almost makes it look like I want to propose to the metal asshole. My right knee plate meets the rapidly softening metal ground as the machine pushes down harder and harder until I can’t hold it any longe—
“Heeehah!” A shout erupts from behind the mech as it’s about to plant me into the ground.
As a result of being shoved forward and knocked off-balance, the bot presses down on me even harder. I slacken just enough to avoid getting every bone in my body crushed. My enemy’s disorientation is undoubtedly thanks to McGregor’s big-ass ACA fists. Instantly, the machine’s attention is off me. It loses interest in my dainty saws and decides the guy with the motorized, cinder-block-sized knuckles is the one to worry about.
Collapsing to the ground, I catch myself and get in a push-up position, which helps me avoid sinking into the melting floor. Not giving McGregor a chance to do-si-do with the enemy, I rocket forward parallel to the ground and waist-tackle the bot, knocking that fucker and myself right into the mold pit below. It crashes hard on its back, and I land in a perfect position to rain hell.
“Beecher, cut the lance arm!” McGregor yells.
I don’t spare a second to see what those two are up to. Right now, it’s clobbering time, and the bad bot’s head is first on the to-do list. Squeezing my plated fists as tightly as possible, I let ’er rip and start hammering the thing’s faceplate until it goes from being a three-eyed droid head to a splattered mechanical black cherry. By punch number six, I manage to break off a bit of metal covering something that looks like a motherboard. Like I give a fuck what it is. To me, it’s just one more thing to shred.
The machine’s neck pistons twitch in an attempt to shake me off. Not gonna happen. I launch one fist right into its mechanical Adam’s apple and get a good grip on the tubing inside, ripping with all my strength until I’ve got its robo-vocal cords severed and flopping in my hands. Black fuel starts spraying, but luckily I’m just out of spritzing range. That’s right, big guy! You bleed, and that’s all I need to know to kick your ass—
While I’m busy gloating, the robot spots an opening. It kicks behind me, and the force of the buck sends one of my fellow Marines flying. My split second of shock enables the bot to knock me off as well, flinging me onto the molding floor basin. How the fuck is it not dead?
Beecher sprawls out on top of the mold’s rim and he’s slow to get back to his feet. At least he’s out of the line of fire. But McGregor and me? We’re still trapped inside the mold with the company of one very violent robot. Not to mention it looks like the battered machine now has a plan in mind: it’s actively cornering us against the massive filling hatch. I don’t like what that suggests.
At least the bot’s missing its sword arm thanks to Beecher and the sarge, meaning all that’s left is its big rocket launcher—wait, that’s still really fucking bad. Robo-baddie lines up a shot just slowly enough for me to react. Time to dip! McGregor skates up the right side of the half-pipe while I move up the left. We need to make it to the edges before the one-armed bandit gets a shot on us. The rocket discharges, and I see the smoke, but I don’t know if we’re out of range—
Then the rocket misses the ground entirely. It shoots right past us, in fact.
“You’re welcome!” Beecher yells, dual-wielding pulse rifles as he unloads on the robot, disorienting its aim.
So that’s where my gun ended up.
I cling to the edge of the mold, pulling myself up just in time to spin around and see where the rocket winds up. It makes contact with a bolted portion of the big hatch behind us, popping one of its security fasteners right off. Now there’s a huge hole where the bolt just was—one that doesn’t stay empty for more than a second before lava starts guzzling out. Even if only one hole is exposed, it’s still bigger than the three of us combined, and it’s pumping out a thick stream of bad news. A few yards beneath my feet, the hot lava flows past, and our mechanical adversary sizzles, eating it head-on. What a pain in the ass that thing was.
“Lucky as hell, man,” I tell Beecher, sliding back on top of the molding platform, safe and sound at last. I try to ignore the fresh wave of brutal heat radiating from the nearby orange piss.
“At least it’s over.”
Then I hear metal tearing, followed by a deafening snapping noise. My guy just had to say something, didn’t he . . .
On the filling hatch’s lid, a second bolt pops off. Then another. And another. And a whole lot more than any of us ever asked for.
“I’m gonna have to argue that one,” McGregor says as the pool of lava goes from a small stream at the bottom of the mold to a rippling river, the rapids rising at a ridiculous rate.
I’ll tell Beecher to say that one five times fast if we make it out of here alive.
“That’s our cue to leave, I think,” McGregor shouts at the two of us.
And as if we need any more of an incentive to get the hell out of Dodge, it seems all the bots I heard earlier have finally found our location and are vaulting down the steps behind us. Rising molten tides and killer robots that want to make us eat lava soup for dinner. Yeah, that’s definitely our cue to leave.
We shoot for the exit catwalk, shortcutting our way across girders as the stream of hot sauce rushes toward us, the wave moving so quickly that it’s probably already swallowed up all those bots. Their mechanical hisses and moans—the sounds we should be hearing—are drowned out by the oncoming tidal wave aggressively eating up every square inch of safe space we leave behind.
“Just a little bit farther!” Beecher yells as all of us rocket forward faster than humanly possible, relying entirely on the thrusts of our suits’ boots to save our hides.
