Giant Robots? Say no more. I’m in. Chapter 12

Giant Robots? Say no more. I’m in. Chapter 12

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Acinc

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Interlude: Robert Stein: A Scarlet Knight

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Madness.

Sheer. Absolute. Madness.

That was what I was in the middle of now.

Scarlet Knight was thrown back. The Seidans shouldn’t have anything that can push it back. At twenty tons, it’s a middleweight mechanized walker and considered heavily armored. Seidan pulse weapons, their only weapon that imparted kinetic impact, would take hours of sustained fire to get through to its armor.

But I was being pushed back.

Because a fucking Seidan mech just rammed me!

“Fuck. OFF!” It was a spindly thing. Half purplish flesh and half glowing nanofibers. It didn’t have any armor, and its weapons were expended. I considered it a non-threat. A mistake. It rushed me, while I was firing at tanks trying to get a firing solution. It proved me wrong by overboosting and colliding with my mech, while whatever it had for an engine started going critical. It failed to protect itself against the raw strength of my mech smashing through the pilot cockpit, and I threw it at the tank column. It exploded into a micro-singularity for a brief second, and the tanks and the mech disappeared. “They’re really desperate now!”

“A child could tell! Shut up and cover me!” Hoss cried out, and Blue Harbinger pinged me. Instinctively, I went to him. Blue Harbinger was covered in armor with most of its upper layers burnt away by plasma. Even as we spoke, combat damage control drones were frantically all over his machine, spraying ablative foam over the patches, applying armor panel patches that used explosive rivets to latch onto his machine, and some were even performing combat welds. They worked, staying out of the lines of fire of his various sub-weapons dotted on Blue Harbinger, even while he clamped down onto the surface of the ship and readied his artillery piece. “I’m killing that damn thing!”

That damn thing was the warbeast the Seidans typically used to power their weapons. Part of the ship, and a military asset at the same time, the warbeast had ports al over its body composed of wrinkled gray matter. The Seidans used the beasts to power their strongest weapons and do the calculations needed to rip into other dimensions. Scientists theorized that it would take a supercomputer the size of a building to compete with the thing’s processing power, and we’d nee multiple fusion plants to keep it operational, while the warbeast just needed a constant food supply.

Rankers who fought them said their armor is as tough as a ship’s, that they carried ship-grade weapons, and taking them on without artillery support was a death sentence.

Gray Corpse has been flying like mad around it, killing everything in the path of its strafing orbit around the creature, and setting it on fire, while tearing out chunks of it with its primary weapons and missiles.

The kid was making the thing look like a joke, staying out of its blasts, leaping over it whenever it managed to turn fast enough to catch him in its gaze. Beams of baleful light burst from the creature, killing Seidans incessantly, but it didn’t care. None of the Seidans on the ship cared about anything besides killing the three of us, and securing their ship.

A crackle on our communications system suddenly came.

The voice that was driving me mad came through.

“Take out the bridge first! Prioritize the mission!”  Fuck. The order made sense, but I didn’t want any part of it. As crazy as the kid was, he outstripped me and Hoss both in terms of skill. His ammo reserves were still at half. The amount of kills he had were both of ours combined. His accuracy readouts told me that he practically never missed. Anything that could be killed with a single shot died with a single shot. I wanted him off the warbeast, because we were going to get killed by the swarm if he didn’t come back soon. “I’m almost through to its core! Just give me fifteen seconds!”

I almost balked at the impossibility, and checked on the warbeast from the corner of my eye.

Oh.

He hasn’t just been orbiting and firing away at the creature wherever he could land a hit.

He’s been dodging everything it threw at him, all the Seidans coming to help their asset, while tunneling through the beast by hitting it nonstop at the Same. Fucking. Place.

The kid started tunneling through the damn thing the moment he engaged it!

I sent the info to Hoss and his reply was to turn his artillery piece towards the bridge, while his armor-weapons started clearing out all the Seidans suddenly rushing our way.

Standing their way was one mech out of its depth.

But with victory on the horizon, I wasn’t about to give up.

“C’mon and show me what you’ve got!” I roared out the challenge on open comms. The Seidans hesitated for a second. That sort of challenge would normally have them answer me and focus me down. But the insanity of the situation was swallowing them up, too. They knew they had to kill Hoss or the kid, or the ship will get taken. I made the decision for them and charged in. “Face me, cowards!”

There was no typical roar of defiance. No psychic admonishment at my words. None of the usual honor or elegance that the Seidans tried to showcase while they took over our planet.

No.

In this fucking insane situation, we’re all just goddamn animals fighting for our lives in machines that can lay waste to cities in an hour.

They countercharged me, ignoring Hoss, and I dove into the fine mess that I made.

Don’t fail me, Scarlet!

…

After determining that Harbinger and Knight were badass enough to survive on their own against the chaff, I dealt with the warbeast.

Not as exciting as it sounds.

I’ve fought the squid’s warbeasts before, and for all their power and strength, that didn’t change the fact that they’ve all been imprinted with the same techniques and knowledge. They’re giant floating brains primarily used to power weapons and rip tears into dimensions. They don’t exactly go out there, train, and figure out new techniques for the next fight.

They’ve got three attacks.

Big purple laser beam of doom that’s also good at killing secondary objectives and lasts ten seconds per shot, fifteen if the thing’s almost dead.

Telekinetic strikes with random projectiles, almost always five or so in number, that homes in on you as long as you’re vaguely in its field of vision.

Then, finally, they control a drone swarm that pelts you nonstop with electricity-based attacks that threaten to shut down your systems and get you hit by the other two attacks.

After you’ve killed a four of them, you’ve pretty much figured them out.

The rampant AI have far more bullshit. They try to make mechs explicitly to counter you if you linger too long on the battlefield.

Even the bugs mix it up and adapt if you stay in a region too long, so they’re even more creative.

The squids?

They don’t change… in fact seeing them come out unarmed and underequipped was a surprise.

Heck, it was pretty cool that they started using new tactics like charges and suicide grabs.

Didn’t change the fact that they were unarmed and underequipped, though, and they were already the squishiest enemies and still had their regular moveset.

So, back to the fight.

“Quarter circle. Fire. Quarter circle. Fire. Leap over. Drift. Fire. Laser’s going off… now.” After the excitement of the climb, this fight was pretty boring. The brain was struggling to catch up, turning to try and face its most massive eye at me. Its drone swarm was fast and trying to ram me, but those things were basically fodder against one mech shotgun. Let alone two that were twinlinked and could go fully automatic. “You’re recording this, right, Cina? Like I said, this thing always makes the same moves.”

“I am.” Cina was being terse. Probably because the mission was more difficult than expected. I guess that it didn’t help that she could see that I was bruised and bloody from the climb. Oh, that’s a mech trying to grab me and hold me down I my rearview camera. I snap one arm back and shoot it full of hypersonic flechette, while pumping a shot down the tunnel I was digging through the creature with bullets. “You can stop recording. I no longer recommend calling in a tactical nuclear weapon.”

Yeah, they usually call in a small nuke for these guys.

“I mean, it’s a fast way to deal with it. Distract them enough, and they won’t notice the thing coming their way. They’re easy enough to kill, though.” Shrapnel and chunks of armor from the battlecruiser surged at me. If I had point defense weapons, they’d just be shot down. Since I didn’t have any, I holstered one of my shotguns for a moment, picked up a corpse I was passing by whilst skidding across the surface of the battlecruiser, and threw it at the homing projectiles. They connected and exploded as a shower of psionic shards. Then, I re-equipped my gun, while sighting the hole that I was making once again. “A few dozen shots at one spot, after opening it up with an explosive, can get you to its vitals.”

Past the meters of brain tissue, I saw the warbeast’s massive brain stem and heart combination. It looked like a pulsating, transparent tree trunk flowing with blood and crackling with energy, which allowed the massive creature to survive. It was really a lot of wasted potential. If they gave the thing a self-sustaining body, some massive legs with some weapons on it or something, then it’d need to devote less of its power towards just existing.

Mechanize this thing as a giant psychic brain spider, give it some heavy artillery and plasma autocannons.

Then, we can have a real cool fight worth calling in a couple of tactical nukes for.

But, until then, I guess I had to just be satisfied with shooting a massive glowing spot on an enemy after shattering enough layers of flesh.

I boosted forward and jammed both my mech’s arms into the tunnel that I created. The creature screamed and tried to turn to face me, but I was embedded into it with both my mech’s arms.

I was sure that I was deep enough into the massive, alien brain, but I didn’t want to take any risks.

That brain stem was heavily shielded, despite looking so vulnerable.

I hit my boosters and embedded my mech further into the creature, my sensors became engulfed by the flesh of the creature… and the sympathetic sensors in the grip of my mech confirmed that the barrel ends of my two guns connected with something and could go no further into the tunnel.

There was only one thing at the end of this tunnel.

I flicked the massive, shed-sized switches on the sides of the immense shotguns upward with the thumbs of my mech.

 ‘FULL AUTO’ flashed across my vision.

Yep.

I unloaded both shotguns right into the brainstem/vitals of the warbeast. High explosive shells sped out of the barrels of one heavy automatic shotgun, while hypersonic flechettes streaked out the weapon’s twin in my other hand. The ammo counters for both were in the forties, and in a blink, they were at thirties, and another they were below twenty. A total of eighty massive, mech-shredding explosive and armor-piercing hypersonic rounds in five seconds. The twin-linked chains of ammunition ran out after just five seconds… and when it stopped, I found myself looking out the other side of the creature.

Then, it’s psychic death scream hit like a truck, like thousands of animals and people screaming out in agony at once in my own head.

Augh.

Damn.

My nose was bleeding again, my heart was surging past a hundred again, and I felt a sting of a needle as stimulants were applied to keep me from passing out making both worse… but the scream was pretty useful.

I extracted myself from the corpse of the beast and looked around whilst an echo ravaged my head.

The rest of the squids were convulsing whilst falling over or already dead.

Classic brain boss.

Kill it and the minions die.

…

I was patching myself up with a medical kit in my cockpit when a ping from Lady Hariss finally came through.

While a small fleet of blocky, human warships came in the distance.

After the defeat of the brain, we knocked down the Psionic tower with some called in nukes, and the drones and battlestations mopped up the incursions trying to reclaim the ship. With the Psionic tower down, along with their bases surrounding it, they weren’t able to send anything big through. Usually, squid incursions started on the ground with portals just a few meters wide putting tank columns, infantry, and mechs through.

Granted dozens of those small portals and tens of thousands of squids was a problem, but they weren’t as big a problem as their ships.

But back to Lady Hariss.

“OS-549, you are relieved. I am sending a transport your way. What is your condition?”

“Hey, boss. Alive. Not kicking anytime soon, but alive.” After the adrenaline high and the stimulants wore off, the pain hit. I was sure that I broke a few ribs and a few smaller bones. My suit was keeping me strapped to my chair and I barely had any range of movement. It hurt. Everything hurt, but I wasn’t coughing up any blood, and a scan told me my intestines were okay. Bruised, but not punctured or bleeding. That’s a win in my book. “If you want me wiped from the history books, can you do while I’m asleep with a full stomach?”

That statement earned a singular laugh from Lady Hariss.

“No. You won’t be escaping that easily, OS-549. Perhaps, those two Rankers can by retiring into obscurity, but not you. Not when you made this happen.” I was tempted to talk those guys up and drag them in, but decided against it. If they stuck around, I’ll be happy to fight with them. If they decided to retire and stop being pilots before things got even more crazy, I’ll let them. “The Empress heard of this operation the moment we acted upon it.”

“Oh, damn. We’re both in for it now, then. Sorry for dragging you into this mess.”

“I could have allowed her to take control. I did not. I will bring glory and power to my house.”

I parsed those words for a moment, considered my next statement carefully, and then spoke to my boss plainly.

“You know that she’s a psycho that’ll get rid of you the moment you’re not useful, right?”

“Empress is right here, OS-549.”

“Hello, OS-549.”

Again, I chose my next words carefully.

“I’m not wrong.”

That earned me a booming laugh from Empress, while Lady Hariss just sighed.

Guess we’re both hanging on for a wild ride.

I mean, for me, I’ll surely get to fight all the crazy shit that I want to fight while in a death-dealing giant mechanized walker that’s cool as hell.

Don’t know what’s in it for Hariss.

Wealth and reputation doesn’t seem worth it, in my opinion.